The wisp twitched, fighting against a bond that neither Moon nor Sunny could see. The monsters around them made no sounds, much to Sunny's surprise. With the few books he had read he had expected them to perform intimidation acts like animals; false charges, roaring, growling, and swiping the air. Instead, they followed him, silently, with their eyes, confused and entranced by his appearance and size. The battlefield's voice had gone silent, leaving the muffled screams of the city inhabitants to take its place.
If Nightmare Moon wasn't there next to him, the unicorn would have frozen from fear if this occurrence had even happened in the first place. A thought crossed his mind as he looked up at his...aunt. He felt more comfortable next to her wherever he went. His fur dried at the realization.
"Why have you stopped the siege? My retaking of Equestria stops for nothing!" a voice cried out.
Sunny suddenly felt himself suffering under sweltering heat the likes he never experienced before and began panting from the exhaustion. The sky seemed to burn red as the sun brightened the closer the source came. His eyes widened when he saw the titanic pony made from molten lava stomping before them. Its every hoofstep burned the ground. Its every breath filled the air with toxic gasses. Its mere presence cooked everything around it.
"I-is that Solar Flare?" he asked with a tremble.
Moon snorted. "A more bombastic shard of my sister, for sure."
The eyes of Solar Flare glowed brightly and flames erupted from her body, each screaming in hatred. "Who are you who dares to stand before Equestria's ruler garbed in the face of my sister?!" She stomped on the ground, cracking it and causing the monsters around to cower. Moon remained unphased and slightly raised a brow. "Who are you to stand before me so brazenly with empty bravado and not immediately bow before me?!"
Solar opened her mouth, seemingly dislocating her jaw. From the depths of her maw came a flood of burning magma that Moon blocked with a shield. Layering a spell of 'deep space' on it, she froze the molten slag in place and startled the alicorn.
"Really? You vomit hot stone now sister?" Moon mocked. She shook her head. "That's disappointing. Even I did not resort to such things." She leaned closer to Solar Flare who leaned back reflexively, her mind swimming. "This fragment of yours is perturbing, to say the least."
A flash of light came from the firey alicorn's horn and pushed Moon away, digging divets into the ground. "Wha-How did-Fragments?" She grit her teeth, creating sparks. "How do you know that I--" Solar's eyes drifted towards Sunny and the fires within her flickered to a quiet. She jumped at him and embraced him. "My daughter! You didn't betray me after all! Even if you did, I have missed you for so long!"
Moon chuckled silently while Sunny glared at her. He felt himself being burned alive. However, their faces turned to worry when Solar Flare froze in place and pulled the stallion away. She eyed him up and down and stopped at a specific place that made him cover himself up. The burning alicorn's body ignited with even greater fire, and her eyes became veritable sparking suns.
"You aren't my daughter!" she bellowed furiously. Every word caused fire to escape her teeth.
She made to throw him, but Sunny was caught by Moon and placed him gently back to her side.
"He is your descendant, sister," Moon explained calmly.
Solar Flare's temper dimmed slightly as she looked to Moon then the young stallion. "What?!"
Sunny waved a hoof at her from behind the alicorn of the night. "H-hi, great great great-something grandma," he greeted nervously.
"Wh-what? It's only been a few years," Solar claimed.
"Then how else would I know of your fragments?" Moon asked. "How else am I here?"
"Trickery! They stole my sister from me and use you to attack me psychologically!"
Solar Flare concentrated her magic 'in front' of what they could perceive as the sun and sent a beam of light directly at Nightmare Moon. It was big enough to engulf an entire house. The night pony dug into her new powers and opened a gulf in space in front of her, engulfing and dissipating the magic.
"Impossible! You're only one pony!" Solar shouted in disbelief.
"So you finally succeeded at that spell?" Moon cackled. "Last time you tried that you burned Starswirl's beard off and set the garden ablaze."
The sun alicorn blushed. "That was an accident and you know it!"
Too blinded by embarassment and rage, the molten pony dug her hooves into the ground and dug out two sharp pillars of rock and hurled them at her opponent. Moon Caused two swords of moonlight to crash down from above, slicing the pillar in two and sending their halves into the crowd of monsters around them instead.
"I was never a fan of that spell," Moon lamented and she swiped some dirt off her coat. "More primitive, and I thought you gave up on using spells that required you to dig into the planet and pull out its flesh and blood."
"Th-that-!" Solar stammered. She panted heavily, her spells having failed so spectacularly. "You can't be here! It was only a few years that I broke myself apart!"
Moon's confident expression flushed away to pale uncertaintude. "A fragment shouldn't be so self-aware," she thought to herself. "But that's impossible. The fragments must have been sealed off somewhere and some destroyed."
"Moon?" Sunny called out.
He watched as a bewildered Solar Flare came closer to Nightmare Moon, the magic of the two canceling out their atmosphere-affecting bodies.
"If you are truly my sister, then you wouldn't know of my daughter," she stated firmly.
"You're right, but I found a burnt journal of yours in Canterlot." Moon pointed down. "Buried under a mountain. A result of many wars we weren't part of in our exile." Her eyes started glowing brighter and brighter with every word, and the black mist engulfing her body spread out with every following word. "And I killed the one responsible for keeping me trapped in that damnable moon!"
Solar Flare trembled as she raised a hoof towards her furious sister and flinched when she touched her cheek. The sun mare's body started to simmer down and the monsters around started to lose their energy along with it. "Is it really you?" she asked with a trembling voice. "After all this time...how did you get out?"
"The spell keeping me trapped could no longer hold all the power I had accumulated, and its strength had weakened considerably after ten thousand years."
The molten alicorn flinched and pulled away immediately, her eyes darting between Moon's at her words. "T...Ten..." She dropped to her rear and held her head between both hooves. "N-no. It's not possible. The fragments were meant to reform after at least five years."
"That's the thing, sister. Our plans and our spells never work out in the end. I would know," she growled.
"I-if it's all the same to you, g-Solar Flare," Sunny hesitated. "You have family alive right now. I learned that we're your descendants from my mom's side."
Solar Flare looked at the stallion, terrifying him. "B-but..." the alicorn stammered. "Where, then, is my daughter? She should be around. Alicorns are immortal."
"She was an alicorn?" Sunny blurted out loud.
He shrunk down when Moon glared at him. "Setting aside your grandchild's misplaced words, I have many things to share with you based on what I have learned."
Solar listened patiently, asking questions and clarifications as her sister shared her words. Sunny, however, wasn't feeling so comfortable. He was trapped between two literal gods. Worse, the second one shouldn't have even been alive in the first place. Were there other alicorns still alive? Gods of other races hidden around the world? He was too terrified and exhausted to move or speak anymore. He just wanted to go to bed. However, Sunny found himself pulled out of his stupor by Solar diving onto her sister and crying her eyes out. She was slumped against Moon's chest, much to the night alicorn's discomfort.
"A thousand years of regret, expecting you to finally come back so I could make reparations! A thousand years of seeing you rise into the sky as a result of my selfishness! I had planned for your return and sent a pony of mine to Ponyville, but you never came back, and she never stayed. Everything went wrong!" She hid hersellf from Sunny with a wing, which her sister reciprocated. "Then they declared their actions and I was...filled with so much vitriol. I hate all the ponies so much!"
"But they're all dead now," Moon said flatly.
"Yes, but this is the world they made!" Solar said. She looked up at her sister with a maniacal and toothy smile. "We can do this together: Destroy everything they made and build it back up. With us together, the neighbors won't bother us, then we can go after them!"
"Why?"
Solar Flare's fires started to ignite. "I asked their leaders to help me free you from your prison, but they all refused." She pulled away, stomping the ground. "I catered to their every whims, but they spat in my face in return! I want to destroy their legacy!"
"Sister."
Solar turned back to her sister, excited. "They'll never see it coming, the foals! Erasing everything they ever loved after we've rebuilt Equestria in our image!"
"Sister!" Moon shouted again. "There's no reason to destroy everything. As I was trapped in that moon, I had so long to contemplate." She leaned in to look at her sister in the eyes. "They will not submit through conquest, but they'll submit through voluntary obedience. Already I have cities and provinces in my grasp. They submit to us because we are alicorns of legend. Eventually, the king will have to submit, too, then we will have entire worlds to explore. We will no longer be limited by the goings on of this place." She smiled, throwing Sunny off. "A fresh start with the descendants of your daughter. They were prepared to offer me a home in their hearts. I'm certain they would be more than ecstatic to welcome you as well if your heart is bleeding from the loss accumulated for so long."
Solar Flare backed away and started to mull over the concept, but the two observers could see that something was wrong when the fires surrounding her body started to reignite more intensely than before.
"No. No! I won't have this world that spurned me after all my hard work continue to exist!" The ground under her hooves started to melt. "I will not exist in a world where my daughter's face will haunt me wherever I go!" She dug in and her eyes took on the aspect of a sun again. "You will survive, but the rest of the world won't."
"What are you planning, sister?"
The sun alicorn laughed. "I discovered the location of a gigantis vesuvius vulcan." Moon's pupil's shrunk."With it the world will become a wasteland!"
"Are you out of your mind?!" Moon shouted. "Nothing will be left if that abomination is awoken!"
Solar shrugged. "Too bad! We'll be able to stay together forever and no pony will ever threaten us again. See you soon, sister."
"No!" Moon shouted.
The alicorn attempted to catch her sister in a spell, but the sun alicorn had warded herself, making her free to teleport away as she pleased."
The monsters around them were also taken away, much to the joy of the defenders cheering from the walls. Neither Sunny nor Nightmare Moon had any reason to cheer, however.
"What was she talking about? I know about the vesuvius vulcan, but what's the 'gigantis' for? A bigger one? What's so bad about that?" Sunny asked.
"The gigantis epithet is not because it's bigger. They live in super volcanoes," Moon explained. "If the classification system is still valid nowadays, they would be above titans. Something nigh-indestructible. A veritable, unstoppable force of nature."
Under the weight of the sudden realization, the stallion slumped to the ground. "N-no. They wake up the volcanoes when they burrow themselves in their magma chambers and fill it out...so if this one follows the same pattern of sizing..."
"We'll be able to see it from the moon."
Horns blared in the distance, prompting the two to look to the sky. Several chariots, including a gaudy one covered in gold, were coming in from the horizon accompanied by hundreds of soldiers.
"What now?" Moon groaned.
"Why is the king here?!" Sunny asked.