//------------------------------// // Chapter Nineteen - Enroach // Story: A Dance Between the Sun and the Voice in Her Head // by MistOverMoon //------------------------------// The amulet was shattered. The hairline cracks in its central gem had grown. Now it was a kaleidoscope of fractured crystal that reflected the light of the moon. The magic still held, but Daybreaker knew it wouldn't hold much longer. Two to three days at best. She still didn't have a new spell matrix to apply either. She needed to find something faster. "Time grows short, my sun. I think I'll chain you in an amulet for a few years, just so I can wear you around my neck." Gaiya laughed bitterly. "Then you can never forget about me again." "It doesn't matter what you think you can do; you will burn all the same." Daybreaker grabbed the amulet and left the circle of tents. There was no point in staying here anymore. The spirits of the dead had moved on, it was time for her too as well. "Don't you worry your pretty little head about Luna either. I'll make everything okay again. What was broken will be mended, what is shattered will be made whole. What YOU shattered will be made whole." Gaiya said. "This is as much your fault as it is mine. Don't bring Luna into this." Daybreaker took to the sky and gave only a glance back at the tents. She still wasn't sure to make of what she had seen. "You fell to the darkness first. It was you who became Daybreaker first. Now look at you, simply remembering what you did turned you back into her." Gaiya said. "You are broken, and you will never allow yourself to be made whole. Somepony will have to do it for you, and that pony is me." "I am no more broken than you are. I could play this game forever." Daybreaker snarled. "Then enter the amulet, finish this!" Gaiya yelled. "Do you have to wait for everything you locked to come breaking free? Can you never face what you did?!" "Silence. I still have time, and your mocking will not sway me." Daybreaker's voice boomed over the empty landscape. "I am powerful, unstoppable. Nothing could stand in my way when I am in this form." "Using the old Canterlot voice, eh? Thats charming, it's hilarious in fact. Reminds me of Luna when she stabbed you in the back as you did me." Gaiya said. "A trio of backstabbers, fighting on until the end of time. Don't you worry darling, I'll stop it all, and I'll stop if for you and Luna." "You will be forgotten." Daybreaker said. "I will forget you again." "Give it your best shot darling, I'm waiting right here." Daybreaker felt the connection fade. Once again, she was alone. Alone, drifting in wind. She could imagine Sandy standing in the camp alone. She could imagine him coming back from his trip, packs laden with gems only to come back to an empty camp. There had been no point to his struggles. She felt tired. Exhausted. The princess of the sun was not meant to be up at night. Daybreaker landed on one of the stone pillars with a thump and tried to curl up on it. The spell matrix could be worked on tomorrow. There was no use in trying to make it with a muddled mind. She couldn't get her thoughts off of Sandy either, his skeletal face kept showing up in her mind. It was nowhere as comfortable as her soft bed at the castle. It dug into her sides as she laid down. She laid there and looked at the moon while the cracking amulet laid next to her. If she slept, she had no doubt that Luna was going to enter her dreams. Ever since Luna had got the power, she used in nearly every night to fight off Daybreaker's nightmares. Now, that tool would be used for something else. Daybreaker thought of what to say but nothing came to mind. So, she simply laid her head down on the stone and closed her eyes. It took forever to sleep, but when she did, Daybreaker found herself somewhere else. Around her was a wasteland. It seemed to stretch on forever. Black ash coated the ground and with each step Daybreaker found her hooves stained black with it. There was nothing for miles other than dunes of ash. In the sky was the sun and moon, eclipsed in an eternal war. It was black as pitch with the only light coming from the faraway red skies and her own flaming mane. As the wind blew it revealed the polished bones of ponies. Their eyeless sockets stared at her. Even in death they watched, eyeing her movements, waiting for a crack in her armor to exploit. Daybreaker wandered amongst the ash, passing by the bones of those she had failed to protect, that she had burned herself. This land would never heal. "Tia." A familiar voice came from behind her. Daybreaker turned, her hooves shifting in the ash. Before her stood Luna. She was out of place here, perfectly whole amongst the shattered landscape. Nopony belonged in this place besides herself. "Luna." Daybreaker felt hollow. "What are you doing here?" "We waited for thee to sleep sister, so we could talk to thee." Luna's ethereal starlit mane blew in the wind. "I don't want to talk." Daybreaker looked over the empty landscape. "Leave me be." Her own form was fractured in this dream. The golden armor was tarnished and dull, a crack ran up the length of her horn, her flaming mane had turned red, the color of a dying star. Black sludge dripped from a painless wound in her chest, viscous and virulent with an inner darkness. "We remember." Luna said. "We remember everything." "So, you know what I did then." Daybreaker's wings drooped. "We do." "Then you know why it must burn." Daybreaker stared into the ash. "Sister. We wish to help you, even if you wish to bury this forever, we wish to help you." Luna stepped towards her. "Look at thy surroundings sister. Is this what you want? To burn? To turn the world to ash?" "I have to find a way to make this all okay. I have to fix this." Daybreaker shook her head, a single molten tear dripping from her burning eyes. "This future will never come to pass. I won't let it." "Please sister, we need thee to realize. Open thy eyes, we need each other. We need each other in this world. This is not a place you can live alone." Luna gently wiped the tear from her eye. "Open yourself to us, and we can work together on this. Whatever comes our way, we can face it together." Daybreaker closed her eyes. There were a million things she wanted to say but she had no way to say it. The words wouldn't come to her. "I don't care anymore. The chance for that passed." Daybreaker said. "I chose my path, and that path is alone." "It doesn't have to be." Luna said. "When we fell to darkness we felt the same way. We just never realized that you felt the same all along. You were always the figure we looked up to sister. You were always so impossibly bright that it never occurred to us such a thing could happen. That beneath the light you shed you were alone." "I am NOT you." Daybreaker pushed her sister's hoof off her shoulder. "I am not alone..." "We are sorry sister; you are your own pony with her own problems. We just want to be here for you. Do you know how hard it is for us to see you like this?" Luna said. "This was always our greatest fear, and to see it realized... we cannot let that happen." "So, you're afraid of me." Daybreaker said. "We will not deny it." Luna said. "Yet, we know that we can move past it. Who else in this world can understand a pony like her sister? Only you Tia. Without you... we would be alone. Nightmare Moon is a good friend, but we could never forgive ourselves if we lost you. All we have is each other in eternity." "Eternity..." Daybreaker whispered. Old thoughts, new thoughts, freshly opened scars of memories came to her. The lives of ponies she had seen that passed on without her. When did she begin to shelter herself behind a mask of sunlight? "Will eternity ever end? Where does our road go? When does the cycle end?" "We don't know." Luna buried her face into Daybreaker's side, staining it wet with unshed tears. Her voice choked. "But we can face it together." Daybreaker felt the flames in her mane flicker. She could feel the hate within her, the urge to lash out at Luna. To show her everything that she had locked away for more than a millennium. To hate her for not noticing. Yet, she could only hate herself. She had done the same thing. She had not noticed the rise of Nightmare Moon, so caught up in her own problems as she was. She had not been there for Luna when she needed it most. What did they make them then, if they had both failed in their duty as sisters? Who was wrong, and who was right? "I love you Luna, more than anything in the world, but I can never forgive myself." Daybreaker gently pushed her away. The grief-stricken shocked eyes of Luna met her own. "This is my burden; I will not allow you to suffer because of it." "No." Luna shook her head. "No. We will not let this happen to you sister." "I won't let you get hurt Luna." Daybreaker said. "I will make sure that nopony will suffer for my mistakes. I will fix all of this." Luna took a step back. Her eyes, beacons of moonlight and herald to dreams and stars, glistened. Then, they hardened, hardened to sharp points like the spear Daybreaker had left behind. It was a look that Daybreaker had only seen once before. The day she turned into Nightmare Moon. The day that she decided to do something, and that nothing would stop her. "Tia...If thou will not open your eyes." Luna's voice grew low and dark, foreign to Daybreaker's ears. "Then we will make thee." "I don't have time for this Luna." Daybreaker growled. "I have to repair the ritual matrix when I awake." "Fear, Daybreaker, fear the pale-mooned night. We will show thee the warmth of light and love once more." Luna said. "And when we are done, Daybreaker will never be again." The ash blew past them in streams of black, shrouding the eclipsed moon and sun. "Sweet dreams are overrated. So be it."