"The desire for freedom can lead to such cruelties," Celestia lamented after Luna relayed to her the current situation in Katerin.
"Indeed. Poor Diellza. Forced to rule when she simply was not in the mind to do so."
"What happened to her after?"
Luna looked over her information with a critical eye. "I believe she was sent to an asylum. Certainly the best fate you could expect for her. Moon knows what else could have happened to her after everything."
Celestia felt herself being jolted suddenly and Luna hurried to her in concern.
"Something is happening in the waking wor-!"
Before Luna could finish Celestia was torn from the peace of sleep by screeching metal and screams of terror. She was rolled around inside of her room, being thrown about. The world eventually righted itself, but pain was pulsating through her right wing, having landed on it awkwardly in the crash. Tears brimmed her eyes as she looked at the appendage, not just crushed but with the sharp bone poking through. Trembling, she found the suitcase she had bought in Griffonstone and bit down on the handle while her horn glowed gold and she carefully attempted to align the fragile bones back together. Teeth crushed right on through the handle as she cried out from the pain.
The train car had landed on its side, with her window facing up to the sky. With labored breathing she focused her magic and disappeared with a flash. She reappeared on top of the derailed car, only to lose her footing from the slight angle. Her wings flared out to try and cease her fall with flight but she yelped in pain and stumbled over to the ground some feet down, landing on her chest. Lungs burned for air as the fall caused several ribs to fracture and she scrambled up onto her hooves, panting and wheezing.
A sharp, burning pain erupted in her throat and she clawed at it with her hooves, feeling a length of broken steel having been shoved through from her fall. As panic blossomed in her she heard for a brief moment a familiar bird call just as darkness overtook her.
She had tried to stall for time, to reach out to her sister, but Luna wasn't there. It was only the Nightmare. The oily black sheen of the metal was marred with blood as Celestia's body was covered in stabs and slashes, the red staining her fur pink. Her armies had yet to arrive, but the whole point was to minimize bloodshed. A fire burned in her chest, untapped power just waiting, begging, to be grasped and used.
Another familiar power was felt, and as she looked up to see her fallen sister begin to gloat she closed her eyes.
"I am so sorry, little sister," she said before opening her eyes in a glowing light, the power of the Elements infusing her magic.
With a blast the Nightmare screamed before silence reigned, and up above on the moon's surface was the mark that would remain for a thousand years.
Her wounds screamed in bitter pain, but the pain of her heart was even greater. Slowly she stood up and could feel her flesh knit back together, the grinding of bones realigning from their fractures.
Hooves clopped behind her and she turned. "Oh Luna, it's been a-"
She froze as she saw the other alicorn with midnight black fur and slitted eyes.
"Surprised, big sister? Oh, don't be. Little Luna is sleeping, worried sick about you of course," Nightmare Moon said as she strutted around, taking stock of the solar alicorn.
The Nightmare's horn lit up and Celestia recoiled as her injuries in the waking world revealed themselves.
"Tsk tsk. Your mind blanked out before the healing could happen proper, and here I thought you were better than that! No wonder you lost the war. You're so weak!"
Celestia tried to growl but all she could feel was blood bubbling up into her mouth as more leaked down the wound in her throat.
The other mare gave a devious, fang-filled smile. "Ah, cannot speak, can you? Good! Then listen. I'm still around, I will never leave. I'm as much a part of Luna as she is of me. All of my plans, ruined, all because she knew, she just knew..." Her lips curled into a frown. "Had she accepted me, we would have defeated the changelings, defeated you! Everything had been set up so perfectly, with Rarity along we would have had her hostage and thus no Elements to be used against us!"
Celestia could feel the seething rage roiling off of the other alicorn. She tried to speak, but more blood dribbled freely from her mouth.
"The legions of Chiropterra would have been the vanguard! Taking the brunt of the changeling assault, all for the glory of serving me! We would have crushed Chrysalis, and the names of the dead would have been hailed as heroes!"
Her hoof came down with a mighty clop, causing the stonework to break. Nightmare Moon looked at Celestia and narrowed her eyes.
"Perhaps, the names of the dead could still have been heroes if not for you and your weakness!"
Celestia growled and her horn blazed. Gold wrapped around her throat and inside of it, keeping the blood in check.
"I defeated you in roughly five minutes," she said as she stomped over to the Nightmare. "You couldn't defeat my student and her friends over the course of an entire night. Do not speak to me of weakness, Luna!"
Nightmare's horn glowed but she was sent sprawling with a hoof-shaped mark across her snout. She blinked in surprise and looked up to Celestia only to begin to glower with tears forming in her eyes. "Where was that ferocity when we lost Acornage, Vanhoover, Tall Tale?!"
Heat boiled off of Celestia. "You were in charge of the armies! Someone had to maintain the civilian administration!"
"I tried, I tried! But Luna kept refusing my suggestions! We could have unleashed nightmares upon them, call out to the Chiropterrans to help their goddess' false form, anything!"
Celestia began to feel lightheaded as her magic sputtered out and more blood began to leak from her throat. Nightmare Moon staggered back up to her hooves.
"You, you could have done something. I know it, I can feel that power in you. The need to protect our little ponies from anything that could threaten them."
"No," the white alicorn gurgled out. "No. To do that, would be to fully forsake Harmony, to lead us down a path of no return. What use is it to win if we forfeit our very souls?"
The other mare's face softened as she regarded Celestia. "Sister, you already forsook Harmony."
She woke up, coughing and sputtering as red-streaked spittle sprayed from her mouth. Celestia looked up and saw she was in a rather dingy cell with padded walls, laying on her left side. Breathing didn't hurt, so she gingerly pressed her hoof against her chest and felt her ribs were fine. The same to her throat and how it was partially closed, though she could still feel a hole in the skin under the bandaging. Turning her head she looked to her right wing and saw it bandaged carefully. With her magic she unraveled the gauze and didn't see any obvious injuries. Slowly she stretched it out, and not a bone was out of place.
As she stood up the door opened, and a griffon hen dressed as a nurse squawked in surprise. She scrambled back out of the door and shouted for a doctor. Celestia sat down on the floor and tried to stretch her muscles out as she waited.
Another griffon came in, an older one with thick spectacles. He seemed rather surprised to see her up as he adjusted his glasses.
"Greetings princess, to asylum," he said in unsteady Ponish.
"I speak Herz, doctor," she replied in a low tone, her throat raw and sore.
"Ah, good, my Ponish is very poor. Now, I apologize for your quarters, we've had to make due with all of the wounded from the train, and you were in rather bad shape that we felt it best to keep you somewhere private. But where are my manners? I am Gilles Janet, physician and psychotherapist."
Her ears twitched. "You're Aquileian?"
He nodded as he stepped closer to examine her. "Yes. I was working in Flowena when Queen Vivienne retook the Peripherie. Myself and many others fled the violence, you see, but I was going to return until I received a request to work here."
As he gently poked and prodded her to check her injuries she shifted here and there to give him ample room to examine. "Princess Diellza?"
He glanced up to her with surprise. "Why, yes. I was requested by Grandmaster Hector personally. His order of knights are quite the doctors, but illnesses of the mind are still a mystery for many and require experts such as myself. He recognized poor Diellza was not in her right mind and was someone that needed help. Truthfully if any other griffon had asked I would have come to help the poor hen out anyways."
He stepped back after his ministrations and quickly wrote down on his notepad.
"How long have I been out?"
"Two days. Your recovery has been, impressive."
Celestia stretched her wings out. "While I can heal swiftly, the wounds themselves still hurt like Tartarus." She frowned. "I mistook the angle of the train car when I teleported and lost my footing, and with my wing injured I couldn't arrest my fall and landed on some metal."
Gilles nodded as he wrote it down. "Yes, yes, folk said they saw the very same thing."
A realization came over her and she closed her eyes, her horn flaring with gold for a moment but once she found it she let out a sigh of relief. "Oh good, Luna did my duties for me."
He let out a little chuckle. "The professors of Yale would claim the sun and moon move on their own but have yet to explain the orbit they make around our planet. Well, other than the hole in your throat you seem to be in better condition than you came in as. I have to check up on the others, but you are free to leave."
Gilles bid her farewell as he left to go about his business and Celestia followed out shortly after. The hall was full of doors much like the one she just exited, and from the sound of it they weren't as full as she had thought, or perhaps they were and it was with griffons too injured to be awake. As she walked down the hall she saw nurses check in on some of the rooms and from the brief looks she could get there were indeed grievously injured griffons from the train.
Her path took her upward, and as she ascended she realized that the floor she just left was underground, a place to keep those truly well lost out of the way of patients better off. A pit formed in her stomach. Were asylums like this in Equestria, where those that really needed help were shunted out of the way? Such a chilling thought, made worse now that any patients would have been subjected to whatever misdeeds the changelings would inflict upon them.
Passing through double doors she found herself in the recreation room, mainly just bare tables for the patients to do hobbies under the watchful eye of nurses and orderlies. What ones in the room turned their attention to her but she ignored it as she continued her way out. As her hooves clopped against the cold floor she noticed an orange and black griffon out of the corner of her eye, and the griffon had quietly slipped out of her seat to approach.
"Princess Celestia," the griffon said in a soft, shy tone.
Pausing in her steps she turned to the smaller hen and offered a pleasant smile. "Yes?"
"I'm Diellza von Katerinburg," the griffon said with a curtsy, "it's an honor and a privilege to meet you. Your sister is worried about you."
Her jaw dropped slightly. "You spoke with Luna?"
"I did, she searched the dreamscape for you since the accident and found me in... Well, she helped me that night, and she had all but given up on finding you when I said that the accident had happened close by and those in need were brought here. Please, will you sit with me for a bit?"
There was a brief bit of hesitation on Celestia's part before she nodded. "I'd like that."
They sat down together at the little table where Celestia noticed Diellza had been writing. She inclined her head slightly as the griffon took her pencil back up.
"We're the more, reasonable group, so things like pencils are allowed. Though, I wasn't allowed any such things in the first year here."
"And what are you writing?"
Diellza looked up briefly. "Letters. I write to those whom I wronged in my madness. Living and dead alike."
Celestia watched as Diellza wrote out the letter. "Not in pen?"
"No. Pens are too messy for patients to have."
She nodded at that. "A letter... I fear I'd be writing until the end of time for all those whom I have wronged," the alicorn said in a bitter tone.
Diellza reached over and gently grasped Celestia's foreleg, surprising the pony. The griffon looked up at her with sadness in her eyes. "It might not help you to do so, but it couldn’t hurt to try. Would you like to write one?"
A spare piece of paper was slid over to Celestia and Diellza offered up her pencil. Celestia took it in her magic as she looked at the blank sheet. She stared at the page as for every person should consider for the first letter it all came back to one. Slowly she lowered the pencil to the paper and began to write, her griffon companion watching the first few words being written out.
To my dearest friend, Twilight Sparkle