The way to Castle Everfree.
June 21, 1001. The last day of the Princess Era (PE), which preceded the Post-Reconciliation Era. Known somewhat melodramatically to later generations as The Night That Never Ended. “Friendship Is Magic, Part 2”.
Rainbow Dash flew back over the chasm, the end of the rope bridge clutched in her teeth. In a moment she had looped it around the post. “See?” she asked with a cocky grin. “I’d never leave my friends hangin’!”
Twilight Sparkle rushed forward, sending a wave of magic through the pegasus. “That’s impossible! I was nearly blinded by how much mental magic that construct was using against you!”
Rainbow blinked. “I didn’t see any magic. Is that some kind of unicorn thing?” She addressed the last question at Rarity.
“I think it’s a Twilight-and-Princess-Celestia thing,” Rarity speculated.
And Changeling thing, Applejack thought to herself.
“So how did you do it?!” Twilight insisted. “How did you resist? With the magic level I saw, she should have either made you her permanent slave, or turned you into a vegetable!”
Rainbow thought for a moment. “I said ‘no’.”
Twilight hunched over, pulled her mane with her hooves and let out a strangled scream.
“Relax, Twilight!” Applejack said in a soothing voice, running a hoof over Twilight’s withers. “We non-unicorns have quite a few tricks you might not be aware of. Rainbow here just used the purity of her heart to stay true.”
Twilight looked up. “‘Purity of her heart’? That’s a thing?”
“Sure it is,” Applejack said with complete sincerity.
Twilight let in a big breath, then slowly let it out. “Alright. Let’s…let’s go into the castle.” She led the way across the rope bridge.
With a pleasant smile and her eyes fixed on the bridge and its crossing ponies, Applejack reached up and roughly pulled Rainbow Dash to the ground. She waited until the others were out of sight and hearing, before turning on the pegasus. “Seriously now, how did you do that?” she hissed.
Rainbow shrugged. “I just said ‘no’,” she repeated. “Once that ‘Shadowbolt’ got close enough to me, I just knew something was up. I figured you were using one of your granny’s charms to protect us or something.”
“Granny doesn’t have any charms like that.”
“What, really?” Rainbow shuddered. “You mean I was face to face with Nightmare Moon using her ‘unstoppable brainwashing spell’ and I won? What are the odds?!” She then took to the air and flew over the chasm, whistling some Wonderbolts anthem to herself.
Applejack shook her head incredulously and followed after. With nopony watching her, she glanced back in the direction of her farm, and worried for the hundredth time about the state of her little sister. Members of the Apple (and Lemon) clan of changelings are born immature and go through several stages before they are strong enough to metamorphose into their full reformed states. Apple Bloom had formed her cocoon as a result of sharing her love with a terrified Applejack after Nightmare Moon had made her first appearance.
~ ~ ~
Applejack found Twilight surveying the castle, running her magic up and down the walls. She positioned herself right next to the unicorn and waited.
“Well,” Twilight finally announced. “There are no traps, that I can detect. After the things I’ve witnessed tonight, I can no longer be certain of anything.”
“You’ve done great, Twilight,” Applejack said. “You’ve spotted all kinds of traps that would have slowed us down or worse.”
Twilight wordlessly gave a nod of thanks, then walked cautiously into the foyer of the castle, followed by Applejack.
The others hung back for a minute. Applejack gave them an accusing look, and they followed shamefully.
“OK, maybe I was expecting you two to explode or something,” Rainbow Dash admitted. “But in my defense, those traps are vicious.”
“This place is in a state of severe disrepair!” Rarity exclaimed after entering the main room of the castle. And indeed there were numerous holes in the walls and ceiling.
Twilight put her hoof up to the scorch marks at the edge of one such hole. “This is the location where the newly-created Nightmare Moon fought Princess Celestia to a standstill. The Princess was forced to fight down her emotions after witnessing the brutal death of her own sister, Princess Luna.” She turned to the painted wall around the hole, a painting depicting the two sisters walking side by side. The image of Luna was the one that had been nearly obliterated by the hole. “Princess Luna was Star Swirl’s chief student in the art of monster hunting, and the greatest monster hunter of all time following his disappearance. Sadly, this monster was too much for her.”
Suddenly the halls rang out with Nightmare Moon’s tartaric laughter. “Is that the story that ‘Dear Tia’ told to her ‘faithful student’?”
“Nightmare Moon!” Twilight exclaimed, turning to look up at the ceiling.
“Show yourself, Nightmare!” Rainbow cried out. “Or are you scared to face six of us at once!” She raised her front hooves into a fighting stance.
“Insolent foals!” the voice of the Nightmare replied. “I am the very essence of Fear! None of you have a chance of stopping me. Not even you, ‘Monster Hunter’!”
“I have memorized all of the writings of your victim, monster, and I have no doubt that I will vanquish you!” Twilight taunted.
“The ‘greatest monster hunter of all time’?” Nightmare replied mockingly. “I have the complete set of Luna’s posthumously-collected writings before me as I speak. No doubt part of an idiotic ploy by Celestia to ‘cure me’ upon my inevitable return. I see they even misquoted me: ‘The demoness Empusa travels to the surface to seduce unwary travelers. The only way the would-be victims could defend themselves was by slaughtering her.’ Idiots! Empusa was completely invulnerable to physical harm—she could only be banished by slandering her.”
The other ponies started in shock. For the quotation from Luna’s Observations, Nightmare’s voice had reverted to that of an ordinary pony, a voice that Twilight thought bore a strong resemblance to Princess Celestia’s. A horrible suspicion arose in her mind. “How…how did you know that? Scholars have only deduced that correction in my own generation. Did…did you absorb Luna’s mind when you destroyed her?”
Another tartaric laugh. “No, no, Twilight Sparkle! I did not destroy Luna. I am Luna.”
“No!” Twilight exclaimed. “You lie! No pony has ever become a monster!”
“I had no choice!” Nightmare Moon’s voice cried out bitterly. “My cutie mark cursed me to this fate! As Celestia was the Mare of the Sun, I was the Mare of the Moon, and the night! Denied the light magic born of sunlight, I was forced to rely on dark magic to protect the ponies against the monsters.”
“And dark magic corrupts the user,” Twilight said in shock, completing Nightmare’s thought.
“Precisely! The others shunned me for my dark thoughts and appearance, and eventually even my own sister told me she could no longer love the thing I was becoming! Until finally, Luna died to give birth to me! But I possess all of her tortured memories. And I will revenge myself on all ponies for what they did to her, by bringing Eternal Night to Equestria!”
“And eternal night…will inevitably turn all ponies into monsters,” Twilight said in despair.
“Now come upstairs to face me, Twilight Sparkle. Do not bring your companions unless you wish to see them suffer horribly at my hooves. I know it was you who saved each of them when I tried to single them out for conversion or destruction.”
Twilight looked back at the others in confusion. All of them knew that Twilight had failed in every case, that all of the ponies ending with Rainbow Dash had saved themselves.
Applejack sighed. “Another unicorn supremacist,” she muttered under her breath.
“Take as long as you wish,” the Nightmare added in a magnanimous tone. “Or flee back to civilization and allow me my ultimate victory. The choice is up to you.”
“Is…is it true?” Fluttershy asked. “Was Nightmare Moon once a pony?”
“Yes,” Twilight said, her head bowed.
“And you’re going to face her alone?” Rainbow asked incredulously.
Twilight sighed. “You heard what she said. She has tested all of you. Now it’s my turn.”
“But this isn’t a fair fight! Nightmare Moon cheats!” Rainbow exclaimed.
“Well, you did say that you read all of her books, back when she was a pony,” Rarity said slowly. “So in a sense you know how she thinks. Perhaps you can use that against her.”
“Perhaps,” Twilight said listlessly.
Applejack took Twilight aside. “A moment, gals?”
The others walked over to the other side of the room. Pinkie meanwhile had been spending the time drawing mustaches on all of the Lunas painted on the walls. In such a serious situation, she felt that the only thing she could contribute was jokes, and that wasn’t needed right now.
~ ~ ~
Applejack gestured to the ceiling, and Twilight cast a noise- and thought-blocking spell around the two of them.
“It’s hopeless,” Twilight said. “She’s far stronger than I am. And I haven’t memorized Princess Luna’s Collected Observations. It’s too rambling to follow in most cases. I just don’t know what to do.”
“Look, Twilight,” Applejack said, staring straight into the reluctant unicorn’s eyes. “She just admitted that she’s a pony corrupted by dark magic. And you told me earlier that you studied how to counter dark magic. So just suck it all out of her, and our problem’s solved!”
“It’s not that simple,” Twilight explained. “A pony’s personality is formed by three factors: their temperament at birth, the fate imposed upon them by their mark, and the sum total of their experiences. Luna became Nightmare Moon over the course of decades, and every memory shaped by dark magic contributed to her fall. To cure her I’d have to re-write the majority of those memories. Which…let’s not even get into how absolutely wrong it is to basically shove your hoof up their back and turn a pony into your own personal puppet. When it comes down to it, I don’t have the knowledge of those memories…or even the mental capacity to do something like that. It’s impossible.”
“So you’re saving you can’t save her.”
Twilight nodded sadly. “I’m sorry that I can’t carry out your wonderful philosophy.”
“Then destroy her,” Applejack said coldly.
“What?”
“She’s going to overthrow Pony civilization. Where do cutie marks come from?”
“Light magic.”
“Exactly. You were absolutely right when you said that she’ll turn us all into monsters. After a couple generations, there won’t be any pony left with cutie marks. And then, even if by some miracle she’s defeated and light returns to our lives, it will be life without cutie marks. Because the first mark was a fluke, and marks only come from being around ponies with other marks.” Applejack took a deep breath. “Nightmare Moon winning is the end of ponykind. Forever. I hate it, it goes against everything I believe in how monsters should be treated. But Nightmare Moon…has to go. And with Princess Celestia locked in the sun, you are the only pony on the planet who has a chance to defeat her.”
There was a knocking on the sphere that enclosed the two ponies. Pinkie Pie was waving at them and pointing at the Elements of Harmony book she somehow managed to sneak all the way here from the library.
Applejack and Twilight rolled their eyes in unison. “Or we can use the Elements,” they said.
Twilight ascended the stairs and stepped into the throne room. The first thing she saw was five stone spheres on a dais, each marked with a different symbol. There was no sign of Nightmare Moon. Quickly, she lowered each sphere to the ground and put them in a circle around her. She fired up her horn and began to siphon magic into the artifacts. But just then a swirl of magic the color of the night swept the spheres up and over to the empty throne, where Nightmare Moon materialized, laughing.
Angrily, Twilight pawed a hoof, and lowered her head to charge.
“You’re kidding,” the Nightmare said incredulously. “You’re kidding, right?” She stepped forward and braced herself to receive the physical attack.
Twilight charged, Nightmare Moon charged, and at the last moment Twilight used teleportation to bypass the Nightmare entirely and re-unite with the spheres. Once again, she tried to energize the spheres. A crackle of energy ran over them. “Just one spark! Come on, come on…”
“No, no!” Nightmare Moon cried out in fear. She teleported behind the glowing spheres and blasted Twilight into the opposite wall, but the magical reaction continued for a time.
And then it just fizzled out.
Twilight gasped. “But…where’s the sixth Element?”
Nightmare Moon laughed in triumph. “You little foal!” she cried. “Thinking you could defeat me?” She raised up her hooves and stomped them down amongst the stones, releasing enough magical energy to pulverize them. The gems that briefly appeared during this process made it clear that yes, these were the Elements of Harmony. Emphasis on the past tense. “Now you will never see your Princess, or your sun! The night will last forever!”
Twilight could now see the full extent of Nightmare Moon’s power. It was the power to move the moon and the entire night’s sky. It was enough power to destroy the whole of the Canterhorn with a single thought. Twilight stood no chance of defeating her.
It was at that moment that the other five ponies burst into the throne room, led by Rainbow Dash. “We don’t care what that monster does to us, Twilight,” she cried. “If this is the end, we’re facing it beside you!” One look at their faces showed that they all shared that sentiment.
Twilight gasped in realization. “You think you can destroy the Elements of Harmony just like that?” she taunted. “Well you’re wrong, because the spirits of the Elements of Harmony are right here!”
“What?” the Nightmare replied.
~ ~ ~
About two minutes later.
Nightmare Moon screamed as the whirlwind of rainbow energy engulfed her.
A beatific Twilight Sparkle opened her eyes, which were a bright glowing white…
Time stopped. Twilight and her newly-realized friends floated in formation. Nightmare Moon reared back in panic, the magical tornado around her frozen in place.
And now the decision had to be made: What was to be done with the monster?
Twilight couldn’t move. But she could think. And she could sense her friends around her with the new senses that the Elements had temporarily bestowed upon her. Not only their serene expressions with the Elements around their necks, but hints of their thoughts and emotions.
So what are you going to do, Twilight? Pinkie Pie’s thoughts addressed her. They were just as happy and bubbly as her speech, perhaps more so. The thoughts of Pinkie Pie resembled the joy of a young filly experiencing the best Hearth’s Warming ever.
I…I feel like anything’s possible in this place, came the thought of Applejack. The thoughts sounded older than the physical earth pony, the voice of a pony who has experienced a lifetime of hardship over a too-brief fillyhood.
Encouraging thoughts and feelings came to Twilight from the others. All of them trusted her to make the right decision in this place. Even Applejack.
I know we’ve fought this entire time, Applejack told her. But I trust you to do the right thing now. Even more than I trust myself.
Yes, show us one of your ‘Trusted Twilight Sparkle Solutions’, Rarity thought at her.
We believe in you, Fluttershy quietly assured her.
We all believe in you, Rainbow Dash chimed in. Think your way through this like you always do.
Twilight mentally nodded. She did think her way through her problems. And for once it appeared that she had an infinite amount of time to do this right. But first, she needed data…
“Show me how Nightmare Moon came to be,” she ordered. She did not move her lips, but somehow the sounds formed anyway.
The Elements responded to her request. Before them appeared a screen showing a very young Luna, then only a unicorn, being bullied by some of the other young ponies in her village. Her normal magic failing her, she drew on another source, and blasted her enemies away, causing them to run away from her in fear. The other ponies of the village would never trust her again.
“Wait!” Twilight commanded. The image of the next memory, one involving a just-cutied Luna, froze in place. “Can I see all of Luna’s memories?” This was, just to be clear, a query as to what was possible, not an order to actually display all memories all at once.
YES. The thought was nearly overwhelming, and seemed to be composed of thousands or even millions of mental voices in unison.
You can do it, Applejack thought in realization. You can reform Luna.
Yes, literally re-form her, Twilight thought bitterly. But it would be the most-horrific personal violation imaginable. Every embarrassing moment imprinted upon my brain so I could never forget it, while Luna’s mind is smoothed out as flat as glass, leaving only the most-basic of memories. I’d save us all, but how could I live with what I would have to do to her!
Do it, a faint thought drifted into their conversation, the voice that Nightmare had imitated earlier. The voice of Princess Luna. End this eternal torment and do it!
Twilight paused, overwhelmed by the weight of her choice. And then… It doesn’t have to be that bad, she thought at the weak fragment of Luna within Nightmare Moon. Not if you help me. We can create your new mind together, then implement it all at once.
I…I do not know if there’s enough of me left to do that. I do not know which memories to keep, and which to wipe away. But…I trust thee, Twilight Sparkle.
I’ll make the best Princess Luna I can. The…the ‘perfect princess’ that Celestia always told me about.
Yes, thought Luna. I would like that.
Twilight began to raise a wall around the two of them.
Wait! Rainbow thought. We want to help.
This act will have a cost, Twilight told them sternly. To my sanity. And even with Luna’s consent, it is a crime, one I alone will answer for. She finished raising the magical wall before the others could stop her. Having named her as their leader within this thought space, she was more powerful than all of them together.
After a subjective period of twenty or more hours for Twilight and Luna, but only a few minutes for the others, time resumed. The glowing lights grew in intensity until they were blinding, and every pony in the room collapsed.
Some period of actual time passed. The others began to revive.
“Ugh, my head!” Rainbow Dash said as she slowly rose to her hooves.
“Everypony okay?” Applejack asked.
Rarity got up, and saw that her severed tail had been restored. “Oh, thank goodness.”
“Why Rarity, it’s so lovely,” Fluttershy commented after getting up.
“I know!” Rarity replied. “I shall never part with it again.”
“No. Your necklace,” Fluttershy corrected. “It looks just like your cutie mark.”
Rarity checked. “What? Ooh. So does yours.”
Fluttershy looked down, and gasped.
“Look at mine! Look at mine!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed.
“Aw yeah!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed on examining hers.
“Gee, Twilight!” Applejack exclaimed. “I thought you were spoutin’ a lot of hooey at the end there, but I reckon…” She stopped on seeing that Twilight was still unconscious. “Twilight?” She gently shook the unicorn’s shoulder. “Twilight, are you alright?”
“She is quite alright, I assure you,” a new voice addressed the group.
The five awake ponies turned at once and gasped, as a spark from the sun grew and approached until it materialized into the form of Princess Celestia. As the others bowed to her, she walked over and looked down for a moment at the form of Twilight Sparkle. Then with a sigh she lowered her horn and used her magic to revive her.
Twilight gasped loudly as she jumped to her hooves. “Princess Celestia!” she exclaimed. Then she looked over at the small dark form huddled in the corner. “I…I’ve done a horrible thing, Princess,” she said, lowering to the floor and presenting her stretched neck for summary judgment. “I violated the mind of your sister.”
“You saved my sister,” Celestia insisted. “And if you’re wondering how I knew, the Nightmare kept my mind linked to hers, so that I might be forced to witness all of her horrors without being able to do anything about it.”
“But I…”
“You did what I thought was impossible, what I had given up on eighty years ago. You gave me back my sister.”
“But I…”
“I can think of no solution better than the one you came up with, Twilight,” Celestia pronounced with authority.
“But the crime…?”
“We live in an absolute monarchy. Well…diarchy, now.” She looked fondly over at her huddling sister, and beckoned her over.
A gangly and seemingly-adolescent Luna rose to her hooves and ran over to stand before the much-taller Celestia. “I’m so sorry!” she cried. “I missed you so much, big sister, and I did such awful things…I think. The memories are awfully fuzzy. But I know they were unforgivable.”
“Nonsense,” Celestia said sternly. “As I said, this is an absolute diarchy, Twilight Sparkle, and if I decree that you…and my sister…be forgiven for ‘unforgivable crimes’, then you are forgiven. In fact, it will be the condition for the continuance of my reign.”
“That is a gross misuse of power,” commented a voice. It sounded sort of like Pinkie, but that pony couldn’t possibly say anything thing that sarcastic. Also it sounded rather metallic.
Celestia smiled to herself for a moment on hearing it. “Yes it is,” she said smugly. She then looked Luna over critically for a moment. “You reverted her to adolescence,” she noted to Twilight.
Twilight cringed. “Yes, the most painful, embarrassing moment in a mare’s existence.”
“It’s perfect,” Celestia declared. “This adolescence will be nowhere near as awful as the original, and I will ensure that she will grow up into exactly the mare that Luna always wanted to be. It also will be over in months instead of years.” She turned to look down at the small alicorn who was nestled under her wing. “I remember every dream you ever told me, little sister.”
“Even the ones that you ignored at the time?” Luna said in a trembling voice.
“Especially the ones that I ignored at the time. Come on, let’s head home. I’ve missed you terribly, and there’s a whole wing of the palace I built especially for you.”
Pinkie Pie, now restored to her normal self, loudly blew her nose on a materialized hooferchief. “Hey!” she suddenly realized. “You know what this calls for?
“A party!”
Several hours later.
Applejack completed her report to Granny Smith.
“And she doesn’t know?” Granny asked. “Even with all of your minds joined, she doesn’t know what you are?”
“None of them do,” Applejack replied. “It’s as if…the Elements themselves shielded that knowledge from them. It went both ways, of course. I saw far less of their emotions in that space than I do in the real world.”
“All right,” said Granny, stroking her chin in thought.
Big Mac ran into the room. “It’s time,” he told them tersely.
Granny and Applejack quickly followed Big Mac into the barn and down the secret passage into the lair under the barn. A hard-shelled green cocoon tethered to the ceiling was thrashing around.
With three flashes, the three ponies were replaced by three changelings with the same general color schemes. The changelings shared their love with the being inside the cocoon, who was finally able to break free and slide out of the shell. It was a small yellow changeling, with red eyes and belly, and orange wings. As the other changelings continued to feed her love, she rose to her hooves and with a smile gave some of her love back to her family.
“I’m back!” Apple Bloom exclaimed. She put a hoof to her throat. “And my voice sounds like a pony now!” She looked around her. “What did I miss?”
With a whoop of joy, Applejack scooped up Apple Bloom and ran up the stairs to the barn, taking them two at a time and heading from there straight out into the front yard under the setting sun. Big Mac and Granny Smith cried out in alarm, but Applejack paid them no heed.
“Wait, Big Sis,” Bloom exclaimed. “I haven’t put on a…” And that’s when she saw the sun for the first time in her life. “Wow…!” she exclaimed. “I know you told me but…wow!”
“We didn’t think we were getting this back the whole time you were cocooned,” Applejack told her. “I went into the Everfree with the Princess’ apprentice, risked exposure at every turn, because I wanted my sister to see the sun.”
Apple Bloom’s jaw dropped, before she kneeled down to hug her sister.
She didn’t have to tell Applejack how much she loved her, because the changeling could feel every drop of it.