The curtains billowed behind Celestia, blowing open as the room was filled with a bright, white light from behind her, “You are the element of magic… you are the single strongest mage I’ve ever known… an alicorn like you? If it got bad enough? I worry you’d drain the whole world.”
Twilight felt her heart quicken with the warning as Celestia suddenly began to look around, visibly confused.
“Princess, is something wrong?” Twilight asked, getting up in the bed, she squinted in the morning light filtering through the curtains.
Only something was wrong. The light was only coming through one window, and the rest of them were darkened. They looked like it was still nighttime.
Celestia didn’t answer, and walked over to the window through which the light was coming through. Twilight, now feeling much stronger after her sustenance, was able to get up and join her teacher.
The Principal Tower, highest of all Canterlot Palace, home of the Dias, was lit up for all the world to see. The light was sliver, stark. Like that of the moon. Twilight’s insides felt cold, however Celestia seemed more irritated than anything else.
“What tantrum is she having now?” the princess muttered under her breath, before turning to Twilight, “Twilight dear, it would seem Luna is conducting some sort of experiment with precious regard for the light pollution laws I set up for her benefit. I need to go and speak with her, but there’s nothing to worry about, okay? Please just rest.”
Before Twilight could ask any further questions, Celestia had vanished in a flash of sunlight.
Twilight remembered listening through their door that night. It seemed so long ago now, almost within the same time period as those arguments she listened to from her parents. The same level of distance and quaintness retroactively applied, seemingly incompatible with the horror of her current existence.
Twilight had always been a curious mare, a compulsive mare. Twilight wouldn’t be able to rest until she knew everything was alright. So, against her better judgement, surrendering to nothing but that screaming voice that told she needed to know. Twilight teleported over there as well.
When she reappeared the wind was immediately knocked out of her, a testament to how weak she still was. She slumped to her haunches as she had done, only a couple of hours previous in this exact same place.
She was so tired of feeling weak.
“I have asked already asked you once, little sister, I will only do so once more. Explain what you are doing with the Dias,”
Twilight looked up, Luna was looking over at her while Celestia kept her eyes firmly on her sister, even as she strafed around to put herself between the two of them. Luna’s gaze moved onto Celestia, and her expression was one of deep affront.
“Your stance would imply you think I mean our student harm, dear sister,”
“She’s my student, not yours,” Celestia replied, voice more dangerous than Twilight had ever heard it, “I don’t know what madness made me think you’d be able to teach Twilight about our ways, but you have failed, the poor filly can barely stand. Your lessons are at an end, Luna,”
“I would never hurt an alicorn,” Luna spat, ignoring Celestia’s declaration outright, “I was merely waiting until she joined us to explain what I was doing. More regard than you’ve ever given her, more regard than you’ve ever given me either,”
“Oh spare me with this, Luna,” Celestia bit back, voice totally devoid of sympathy. “You have come back from your failed coup, immediately had the return of your station and titles and you still are claiming unfair treatment from me? What else could you possibly want?”
“You know what I want,”
“Those times are over, gone, done. Next time, if you want to stick around for the transition period, maybe don’t make me imprison you within the moon for a millennia,”
“You did that for them, not me.” Luna countered.
“If I was doing something for them, dear sister, I would have slit your throat and then my own, for good measure,”
Twilight looked up weakly. The two of them were snout to snout, horns crackling. Twilight had never seen them like this before, she shivered pathetically, before her eye caught Luna’s.
The moon princess regarded her with disgust.
“Look at how she cowers.” Luna sneered, “You didn’t even blood the whelp before ascending her. Just another thing I will need to do for her own good,”
“Tell me what you are doing with the Dias before I render you incapable of doing anything,” Celestia said, stamping her hoof against the marble so loudly that Twilight thought she may vomit.
Luna said nothing, looking at her evenly.
Celestia’s face was like it always was in Twilight’s most anxious nightmares. Disappointment beyond measure.
“Oh Luna… again?” the elder sister said derisively, her manner of speaking more reminiscent of a parent finding that their child had wet the bed than someone who was being confronted with a coup, “Are you really going to make me do this again?”
“Then call the elements… you’ve got the element of magic right there… I’m sure it wouldn’t be hard to send me to the moon for another millennia. I’m even unarmed, unaided. No Nightmare this time… so if you’re going to do it…” Luna said, her tone one of absolute assurance, “Then do it.”
Celestia regarded Luna, shaking her head.
“I have other ways of preventing you from taking this course of action Luna-”
“Then take them, I will do this, Celestia. All I need to do is cast the spell, and I won’t get it wrong this time, I’ve had one thousand years to rework this, dear sister. So you can either banish me, or you can kill me… or I can change the spell.”
Celestia’s eyes narrowed.
“What… what is she doing?” Twilight rasped, returning to her hooves.
Neither alicorn replied, before Luna, retaining dangerous eye contact with her sister, began to trot over.
“Luna I’m warning you, do not-”
“Do you remember what I told you about the long night, Twilight Sparkle? The Eternal Madness, do you know why it was called that? My plan was never to have the world be dark forever, my plan was to use the magic of the moon with the Dias. My plan had been elegant. My sphere controls the energies of the mind, it safeguards ponies in their dreams, but it doesn’t have to…”
“She sent the whole country insane,” Celestia said, looking down at the floor, “The worst civil war the world had ever seen. A globe in the thrall of a maelstrom of bloody violence. She robbed them of their sanities, stolen into the dream realm, and what returned from that slumber were violent beasts, not ponies, it nearly destroyed everything. Whatever the nightmare did took years to wear off,”
“Ponies are violent beasts,” Luna interjected furiously, “Do you remember our friends, our parents? Our little brother? Ripped apart by their prey, killed down to the last. Only you and I to continue. Do you remember any of it?! And after all our family died, you sided with their murderers to help hunt down your own kind. Do you remember?! ” Luna screamed.
“Of course I remember.” Celestia retorted, her voice rivalling her sister’s.
“Then why do you love them? Why did you side with them?! Why did you send me away? Why won’t you sendt me away again and have done with it?”
“BECAUSE I LOVE YOU MORE.” Celestia bellowed, her nigh-unheard royal voice shaking the tower, “I had a choice, Luna, fight with the alicorns, and die, or pledge us to the serfs, and live. I told you once, and I will not stop telling you. I will continue mother and father’s line. With your leave, or without it. And helping to kill every other alicorn who’d ever lived was a small price to pay for you to still be here.”
Twilight looked over the edge of the tower, seeing lights begin to switch on across the city. The commotion was waking ponies up. She wondered if Rarity was awake, too. She was in Canterlot at the moment. Twilight would of course never go, but she remembered well the invitation, stained in beautiful, charmingly dramatic fashion by tear stains, arriving in the post.
Twilight had no doubt said tear stains were fake, administered by an eye dropper and done in the service of wooing Twilight with the great, dramatic romance of it all.
Twilight loved her beyond mortal comprehension.
Certainly beyond immortal comprehension.
“Rarity, if you can hear me, you need to get into the crystal catacombs, take as many ponies with you and get into the crystal catacombs, as deep as you can where you’ll be shielded from magic. Otherwise you will die. Blast the entranceway, leave an airhole that won’t let anyone get in. Take as much food as you can. Do not try to leave until I come to get you… I love you, Rarity.”
Twilight let the thoughts leave her mind, and with a faint glow of her horn, sent them to wherever Rarity may be. And then she made them repeat themselves, over and over and over.
All she could do was hope she got the message.
“If you love Celestia so much, why did you try to get the country to kill her?” Twilight asked, snapping Luna’s attention back to her.
“It was the nightmare,” Luna replied darkly, “My plan had always been to unite the country in resistance to Celestia, hypnotise the population to overthrow and imprison her, and be loyal to me. But once that parasite seized me, it wanted for nothing but bloodlust and rampage, and ‘eternal night’ as if I could ever be so vain.”
The moon princess spat on the floor,
“Back then, our disagreements were still about how to treat the population. I favoured a distinctly more martial approach. I could have never imagined the depths to which she’d stoop,” Luna said, looking at her sister in disappointed horror, “To return to a world like this, where we must hide our nature, where ponies treat us as their servant… I thought I could adapt, I thought I could see what you wanted me to see, but it’s simply not right.
“I agree with you, my sister, my one, only love, on one thing. I will continue our parents’ line, with or without your leave.”
Twilight watched them both.
For time that Twilight uncharacteristically didn’t mark, nothing happened.
“Princess, you need to stop her,” Twilight spoke up. Neither princess looked her way.
“Princess,” Twilight whined, pulled her teacher’s tail and feeling like a filly again, “You need to stop her,”
“Be quiet, Twilight!” Celestia snapped, shocking the weakened alicorn into silence. The sun princess took a few steadying breaths, before turning to address her sister once more, “Nothing happens to Twilight,”
“I would never hurt another alicorn,” Luna countered darkly.
“Then count yourself lucky,” Celestia bit back.
“Don’t… don’t you…” Twilight’s coughed threatened to return for a moment, before she was able to banish them and stand, finding strength for once in something other than the blood of her second mother, “Don’t you fucking tell me to be quiet!”
Both princesses turned to face her again, regarding the interruption with confusion rather than outrage.
“Haven’t you heard what she’s going to do?! She’s going to send everyone insane. We need to call the elements,” she cried, her stomach bubbling with absolute fury and disgust. Twilight wheeled on Celestia as the sun princess opened her mouth to interject, “Don’t you interrupt me, don’t you even dare.. I have saved your nation more times than I can count, and now it’s your turn. You are kept living by the magic of your citizens, and you’re debating with this fucking tyrant because she doesn’t feel adequately worshiped by everyone for simply being alive. How dare you, if you make me do this for you, again, then I will never forgive you Celestia. It’s time for you to be brave for me, okay?!”
Neither princess said anything, until Luna chuckled, regarding Twilight with some twisted approximation of affection and pride.
“You were right, my sister, this one will make an excellent alicorn," Luna purred.
“Twilight, please…” Celestia said, looking into Twilight’s eyes, “I’ve lost her once, she’s my only sister.”
Those eyes were less frightening when they were crying blood.
“You can banish me Celestia, or I will send the population into a revolt against you,”
“Yes yes yes,” Celestia said, waving her hoof impatiently, “And what’s your third little option, I know there must be one so just spit it out,”
“Well, you could always kill me,”
“Be serious,”
Twilight watched them, they discussed the matter like a board game where neither party fully agreed to the rules.
But then, this probably was a game to them, wasn’t it?
“I will pacify them. I won’t rob them of their sanity. I will take their personalities. They can be like cattle. We can feed and return to our full strength,”
“That’s what you want? A country of drones,” Celestia replied, sounding thoroughly unimpressed.
“I will not tolerate this world a moment longer, Celestia. What did father always say was the key to a good ruler? Hmm? What did he say?”
Celestia sighed, looking for the first time in Twilight’s whole life as the true sum of her years.
“Compromise,” she replied.
“We can find a new way to rule. You, me and your student here, but we need a clean slate, unless you’d prefer a cull?” Luna demanded, while Twilight backed away from them in horror.
“Rarity, crystal catacombs, run.”
Twilight decided that would get to the heart of things a bit better.
“And what of everything I’ve built? The world I’ve made?” Celestia asked, though the sickening resignation in her voice made Twilight think the argument had rather run its course.
“If you are going to have me by your side, that is the toll. We are to reset, and make something that we can both exist within. Otherwise, you can send me to the moon for another millennia and kick this can down the road, because I will say the same thing when I return, dear sister. There’s no nightmare to addle my spells any longer. I will do this, one way or another.”
“Celestia,” Twilight said, trying to force every memory and every emotion and every bit of history they had into her voice, to make her teacher see sense, she didn’t even notice Luna fading into smoke in the corner of her eye.
The sun princess, for all her benevolent looking sadness, was unmoved.
“You’re… you’re not better at all,” Twilight said, backing away, “You’re just like her. You don’t care about normal ponies at all, you only care about yourselves, you both do!”
“I’m sorry Twilight,” Celestia replied, “But I promise you, we can live long enough for me to help you understand.”
Twilight would have run, were it not for the moon princess rematerialising beside Twilight’s ear.
“Sleep.”
Twilight fell to the ground.
“If you’ve hurt her…” Celestia growled.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Luna retorted, “Gods be good I can get her a good meal when the poor whelp awakens,”
“She’s going to hate you… she’s going to despise me. For the rest of our lives.” Celestia said despondently.
“For the rest of their lives, perhaps. But forever is a long time, dear sister, she’ll understand, in time,”
“Will they suffer?” Celestia asked, only to be met with a scoff from Luna.
“The hordes who slew our family?”
“Those hordes have been dead a long time, thanks in no small part to you. I ask you again, will they suffer,”
“If you care so much for them, why are you letting me do this?” Luna queried as she attended to the Dias.
“I’ve already told you,” Celestia said, “Because I love you more,”
Luna was silent for a moment.
“It will just be like falling asleep,”
“You’re sparing them the pain?” Celestia sounded surprised, “Can I ask why?”
“Because…” Luna began, keeping her eyes on the Dias, “I love you more.”
Luna’s spell was effective.
But it wasn’t elegant.
And it certainly wasn’t remotely intelligent.
Twilight regarded it with disgust as she poked around the various charms and clauses and counter clauses. Her suspicion had been pricked the moment she didn’t detect the small counter charm Twilight had cast. She’d already gotten her with her ‘sleep’ trick once. It was rare the element of magic succumbed to the same charm twice.
But Luna probably couldn’t even conceive of being outsmarted by Twilight, and her spell reflected it. It was sophomoric, pathetic, worthless, smugness and unearned self-satisfaction radiated off every shoddy piece of its thoroughly underwhelming puzzle.
She kept her eyes closed as she fluttered around in aether-space. Watching each vertex of the tangled web of points that formed the spell with which Luna would charge with moonlight before rendering the world into a grey, listless army of slaves. Livestock for her, and Celestia, and Twilight to fatten themselves on. An endless legacy of slavery and tyranny.
She guessed, in that sense, Luna had at least done what she said. She’d continued their parents’ line.
Twilight was exhausted, whatever blood licked from Celestia’s cheeks now spent. She was scarcely sane any longer. She reached out into the aether and tried to find Rarity. Tried to send her another message, but so many ponies had woken up now. It was too hard to find her in her current state.
She opened her eye a crack and looked at the two sisters. The two of them had moved closer to each other as Luna put the finishing touches on the Dias. They looked closer than they had in a long time.
They loved one another.
Twilight thought of all of the things she loved. She thought of Fluttershy’s gentleness and kindness, Applejack’s honesty, sometimes to a fault. She thought of Rainbow’s cocksure grin, hiding behind it such a sea of loyalty and deceptive depths of feeling. She thought of how Pinkie could make her laugh more than anything. She thought of Spike, her little brother, finally starting to come into his own as a young man.
And she thought of Rarity. Her dramatics, her haughtiness, her mock outrage and high standards. These may have bothered others but Twilight loved her more than anything for them, not in spite of them. They were their own charm.
And that was to say nothing of her generosity, her intrinsic goodness and kindness. The depths of her love for all those dear to her, seemingly never ending. Out there, in the aether, a cluster of lights seemed to move as one, led by one that was so bright, so warm, such a beautiful shade of sapphire blue.
All these things would be lost, and never brought back again. All these things scrubbed clear, bodies nothing more than vessels to be sapped by gods.
Twilight thought of every single thing she loved.
For the first time in her life, she felt like she finally, truly understood what hatred felt like.
Twilight was scarcely sane.
Twilight didn’t want to hurt anyone.
Twilight didn’t know if she was doing the right thing.
But Twilight had to try to stop it.
Even if she only saved a single pony.
Luna’s spell was a mess of tangled lines, but it was laughably easy to unpick. She thought of magic like one would a list. She thought of it as a series of problems to address. Defence from counter charms, check. Self perpetuating to keep it casting if she was incapacitated, check. An interface to work with the Dias, check.
But her issue lay in the lack of specificity. It was an arrogant spell, befitting of a god. It was the creation of the world’s most powerful hammer, but with the assumption one would only ever use it to hit one very specific kind of nail.
What Luna had forgotten is that a hammer can hit anything you like. It could also smash your skull to powder.
Even in her current state, Twilight was able to repurpose Luna’s hammer. Changing the subjects, the purpose, the output.
Luna lit her horn.
The hammer raised.
Twilight wondered whether this would work.
Twilight steeled herself and did what she needed to, even as it felt like it would kill her.
Twilight redefined what it meant to be a nail.
“Forgive me,” Celestia replied, looking over at Twilight.
Twilight finished adapting Luna’s spell. It had taken her seconds. It was all she needed.
The hammer descended.
“Forgive me.” Twilight replied, opening her eyes and registering a split second of shock on her mentor’s face.
The Dias lit, connecting with a beam of pure energy to the moon. For a second, Luna smiled.
Then the Dias connected with the energy of the now rising sun.
Then Luna frowned.
Then Luna screamed.
The spell worked as it had been cast. It hammered nails.
The two nails in The Principal Tower, housing of the Dias, put there for both functionality and as a mark of respect for the most powerful weapon in Equestria shrieked like dying stars as all the energy of the sun and moon, magnified many times by the intricate weavings of magical glass, was pumped directly into them.
Again, and again, and again, and again.
A spare amount of energy was syphoned into Twilight. Allowing her to stand again. To feel strong again, to feel like she did when she was a unicorn again. She backed away, cringing at the horrific display. The lights were too intense to see what was happening to Luna and Celestia, but Twilight could hear enough to hazard a very good guess.
And as her mind returned, and her sanity returned, Twilight realised what was going to happen. Her legs shook in panic. The lights brightened.
Despite what she would have liked to expect from herself, she wasn’t ready to die.
The sound of rocks being blasted at the crystal catacombs went unheard by the screaming masses of Canterlot, who ran around in a blind panic. Twilight felt some odd pride at how she felt linked to them. There was no steely look of godhood in her eyes. Twilight felt like a terrified filly.
With her newfound strength, all she wanted to do was see her home again.
She teleported and was thrown across spacetime to fall in her bed, in the castle. It wasn’t her real home, of course. The smouldering remains of golden oaks would provide little cover from the oncoming storm, and she still held out some belief that she may survive this.
She had no time to prepare though, and an explosive cracking that would destroy mortal ears rang out in the now distance. The windows shone with light from the sunrise that was quickly engulfed by more light, until it looked like the brightest day she, or anyone had ever seen. And then it got brighter still.
The most powerful thing in the world was the energy released by the destruction of an alicorn. Not the death of an alicorn, but the complete and total destruction.
The blast front carried the energy of two.
It crossed the land in seconds, leaving only the protected crystal catacombs untouched. Twilight barely had to ponder whether her alicorn biology would spare her before the light knocked her unconscious, scouring her brain of memory as sure as it scoured away every mortal life from the surface of the planet.