Doctor’s Log
Physician: Blue Cloudy Skies
Patient: Luna Argent Stellatris
Princess Luna appears to be stable. It appears sustained cutoff from her standard thaumaturgical pathway has changed her basic elemental complex, but she still retains her connection, if not having bolstered it.
The former Princess Celestia has reported that the moon “felt relieved” when she returned. Cannot confirm, assuming under Elemental Doctrine (see Article 23 Equestrian Medical Law) to be factual.
At present, patient is healthy in all respects, but shows severe mental fatigue. Sustained asocialization has lead to very obvious psychogical failures, presumably as coping mechanisms. Interim personality Cosmo is a signature of disassociative identity disorder, obviously a defensive persona to allow for enhanced time passage and self recovery.
Cosmo identifies as female and shares the same basic traits as the Princess, physically at least. Speech pattern is semi typical, though dated and slightly stilted by the passage of time and underuse respectively.
Personality has a mildly cheerful and optimistic disposition, with a significant inclination towards the care of Luna and her general health state. Cosmo has been very cooperative and helpful thus far in this case, apparently having drawn from Luna’s knowledge of medicine.
===
With a thunderous splitting of glass, a vertical crack sheared in midair above a verdant green. The jagged fractal gray spike pierced into infinity, extending forever against the laws of perspective before closing just as quickly.
Staggering as she stepped out onto the now Treehouse of Friendship’s lawn, an armor clad Princess Luna returned, almost a hundred years later.
So overcome with absurd exhaustion and then the pained exhilaration of the moon’s connection being restored, she then promptly fainted onto the dirt.
===
The returned princess is a barrel of issues herself.
According to record, she has spoken a total of five words in the week we have had her in observation. Her speech is halting, stilted, and extremely damaged, presumably as a part of the long-term isolation and lack of use.
Cosmo claims that during her thousand year banishment, Nightmare Moon was active instead of her and therefore she was effectively asleep for much of the time as opposed to here wherein she spent a subjective period no smaller than ten thousand standard Equestrian years trapped in a form of subspace well.
In addition, at some point she appears to have discovered the rough amount of time that has passed, and as a result has further retreated into a state of profound grief, according to Psychonaut Tarsus. Recommendation of further treatment by the both of us with emphasis; I personally do not wish to see what might happen if an alicorn’s depression develops further.
===
Careful, painful, work. Conjuring from the magic of this world was difficult, it had solidified without use. Still, she would return. It was inevitable.
Runes carved into stone, lapping slowly at both her power and background magic to charge themselves. The shattered remains of a week’s failures were neatly placed into a shipping container nearby.
‘And then, We shall return in triumph! Our sister shall undoubtedly be overjoyed as We stride into her very court, tired but unconquered! And then We shall claim Spa-’ Carefully, she halted, and filed that thought with the rest of them, alongside any untoward feelings.
Definitely the latter.
When they refused to sit down she gave them another shove and then they left, grumbling perhaps but still they left.
Luna shook her head, sighing. There would be time for flights of fancy later, when she was out of this place.
===
For nine months, a world had searched. Five hundred of the brightest Equus had to offer bent their minds and efforts towards finding what had happened that fateful day. Griffonian mystics exchanged notes with Zebra shamans who referenced Pony theory, while Yak rituals boosted by Draconic funding peered the veil.
It availed them not, though magic advanced leaps and bounds.
For forty-one years, the sister whose sibling and been torn away grieved without recourse or screamed her rage against fate and its mockery. War and peace, rise and fall, it did not change her sorrow. Even as Twilight Sparkle ascended to the throne, and the solar alicorn became a nomad, it only ebbed away gently.
For fifty years, ten months, six days, and four hours, Celestia Aurum Stellatris had come to terms with the loss. On her own, with the sweat of her brow and might of her soul, she had created a careful, quiet monument to her lost sister. It was etched with silver and built of timelocked obsidian, stained blue, so that it might never come apart, placed in a clearing she etched into the world, and then left for visitors along a trail she blazed.
And then, she threw herself into the world. She would see it for both of them. She would tell her sister to the world and tell the world to her sister.
The shadow of her sun would become known, Luna would become a living memory and she would spread her legacy with the winds of legend! There would be no burial, such a thing would be a travesty! One last voyage for the sister Celestia had failed!
And, then, magic surged with absurd force one day.
The moon reacted for the first time in almost a century.
A certain connection slid back into place, singing with power.
The sky lit as a hypersonic alicorn shattered all airspeed records with contempt.
===
The blue alicorn took another drink. It was far from the best, but it was not swill. She had learned well enough to make better, at least, but at the moment barring the proper materials and mindset, this would do well enough.
If anything, the alcohol dulled the pain, and if she drank enough of it, she could perhaps coax herself into blissful unconscious for a little while yet. It was better than the alternative.
Five hundred, and eighty two failures. A blue hoof weakly beat at the ground.
Damning.
Maybe it was her skill. She was a good runeworker, but her understanding of the field was mostly to physical sciences, and the advanced theory had escaped her. ‘Twilight… Twilight was always better than We at such things.’
Still she refused the idea that this place was simply inescapable, that the story of Princess Luna would be ended with a question instead of exclamation. But her failure wasn’t helping.
'Perhaps,’ came the morbid thought, ‘We have been cut away from Our connection with the moon, and now We are doomed to run out of magic and slowly die a true death in this damned place.’
Other thoughts played around. ‘Worse fates could yet be. If We lose our way surely Our mind shall go with it. If Celestia finds a broken husk of… No.’
“Should it come to thus… We shall endeavor to pass with dignity.” With a grunt, Luna crawled into her makeshift bed and began the process of sleeping off another day of drinking.
As ever, her sleep was empty, and the dreamscape was beyond her.
===
Mere hours passed before Celestia impacted the landing of Ponyville General Hospital. The ground fused into glass, her landing site thankfully chosen away from anyone else, a former diarch galloped through the doors at full speed, running along walls and roof when someone was in her path.
She had no need for directions. Her mind knew.
The local guards posted didn’t even manage to raise their maces before she was through them and at her sister’s side. They then promptly vacated their posts so they could void their bowels someplace more appropriate.
Suspended within the healing field of a medical circle, was an armored alicorn not seen in over a century, shimmering silver and blue. Celestia stopped then, though. Her last memory of her sister was carefully curated and tucked away.
As her hoof slowly reached out, as if expecting an illusion that would shatter with the whim of some capricious villain, she whispered. “Oh, Luna… What happened to you?”
The timelost princess had apparently forgone self care for some time, or had done it very roughly. Parts of her coat were matted down, others more or less hacked into proper length. Her armor was scored and blasted over her chest, among other places, but little else married the old suit of plate.
More than that, though, the physicians had shaved away some of her coat to get at some injury or another, and there, the centerpiece was. A blossoming maze of silver.
“…” A thousand questions began a trial by combat in the solar diarch’s mind, as she gently set her head against her sister’s side, trying to keep every impulse at bay.
“…Ssshister?”
Slowly, haltingly, her muscles warring to look up in a snap and not come up at all in fear of shattering another dream, Celestia met eyes with her sibling for the first time in over a century.
“I-I… I am, here, Luna.” Her voice shook and threatened to shatter into a hundred pieces, but iron control held it together. Luna slowly nodded, and her expression softened, long disused muscles flexing as muscle memory was called up again.
“Excéllance.” And then, the lost sister blinked, and her sister shifted. The sunbearer started at the transition of a suddenly very animated mare, who carefully exited the medical circle and gave her a look almost bordering on panic.
“W-wait, I-I can explain-”
Kring! The old warblade came from its sheath, lit for the first time since the Turbulent Age. Celestia stared down this apparent interloper, this hijacker, her eyes murder, flits of orange flame sparking in her mane. “Do so. Immediately.”
“I-I am Cosmo, Luna made me to deal with everything while she slept back in the gray placepleasedonothitherIjustgotdonefixing-” The alicorn, who had cowered back and squeezed her eyes shut, opened one when she did not feel an enchanted sword clash against her body.
“…and what would ‘everything’ entail?” A dangerous edge buzzed in her voice, the floor beginning to warp under a burningly hot body.
===
Most worrying, however, is the indications of her having used her total form as a transformer. At the moment, her psychoreal form is massively distorted, after what Professor Board says was the use of her body and soul to withstand the immense sparking load to recast the portal.
For an easy analogy, imagine a deep well that narrows at the top. Throwing a rope and going down this well is simple enough, but going up requires precision and power. Or, in lieu of that, brute force.
It appears that her highness chose the latter and attempted to, while doing so, do some self improvement via essentially stoking her metaphysical self. The result is apparently that she has the potential to outstrip any measuring system of mage power, should she ever recover from whatever Tartarus she went through.
Not only is her physical form’s channel structure nearly obliterated, her spiritual pattern is radically altered and burned. I don’t have the credentials to describe in detail, for those with relevant experience consult Figure 9, and the accompanying report.
===
In the throne room of Canterlot, a lavender alicorn spat out her juice and gagged, a presence from so long ago coasting along the aether.