Luna stared at the mound of sand, with the water jugs and harness and that strip of cloth lying atop it, and wasn't sure what to feel. She was vaguely aware of somepony talking, words buzzing in the back of her mind, but it wasn't until Twilight leaned into her field of view that the princess remembered herself. "I'm sorry, Twilight. I was just...thinking."
"Are you all right, Princess?" Her companion looked worried, and Luna opened her mouth to reassure the unicorn, only to stop.
"I don't know," she said at last, honestly, lifting the cloth strip from the sand and watching it twist in the breeze. "I'm not sure I wanted to do that, but I know I didn't want to leave him, either."
Twilight's face twisted in uncertainty, but finally she spoke, her voice firm. "I think you did the right thing."
"You do?" Luna looked up, surprised, her ears pricked forward at the smaller pony. She'd been half expecting Twilight to condemn her, assuming she'd speak to Luna at all after that.
"Well." Now Twilight sounded less certain. "I don't know, but I don't think I could have made a choice." She turned to look at the cloth strip as well.
"Oh." Luna was far from reassured. She frowned at the white cloth, unwilling the drop it, but not comfortable with keeping it. Finally she settled for tying it around the branch of a nearby tree, and that seemed somehow appropriate. "I suppose we should go."
"Go where?" Twilight swiveled her head to look at the forest front. "We're still lost, aren't we?"
"Anywhere. Away from here." There was a taut hollowness at the base of her throat, as if a laugh or a cry or a scream or all three at once wanted to escape, and the presence of the desert, the scent of hot sand, only made it worse.
"Um, all right. We still don't know where we are..." Twilight glanced around, found nothing remarkable to aim for in any direction, and pointed directly ahead into the forest. "That way, I guess."
Luna followed her companion into the trees, the canopy dense enough that the underbrush was sparse and scattered. The desert vanished behind them, as did the sun, as they stepped through the faux dusk cast by the dense tangle of leaves and branches above them. It was quiet here too, but not the dead, dry, dessicated silence of the desert. Leaves rustled, birds chirped in the distance, insects buzzed.
Ahead of her, Twilight muttered something and summoned a compass into existence, frowned at it and shook it, the casing bobbing in the air, and stopped. "You've got to be kidding," she complained, and showed the instrument to Luna.
The needle spun languorously in a slow circle, refusing to point in any direction in particular. Twilight rapped it with a hoof and sighed. "No stars, no magnetic field... it's just not possible. It's Celestia's sun and your moon..." Twilight smiled wryly. "Celestia did say there were things that couldn't be explained in the world. I guess this is one of them."
"I thought," Luna muttered, "when Tozómuc appeared that I was wrong about this being exile. But now I'm unsure again."
"Oh, don't worry, Princess!" Twilight Sparkle smiled at her reassuringly. "I know we're lost, but that's all. And honestly I've always wanted to go on an adventure." The unicorn flushed briefly. "I know that's kind of foalish, but I've read so many books about them."
Luna couldn't help but smile back at the unicorn's eager and honest excitement, welcome respite that they were from the darker emotions that seemed to plague her wherever she went. "Well I think you might be getting your wish. I don't recognize anything. Trees, plants, birds..."
"Me either!" Twilight said happily. "Just think, we could be the first ponies here for hundreds of years!"
"You're not worried about being able to get back?"
The unicorn's face fell, and Luna felt a spasm of guilt for reminding Twilight of that particular piece of their plight, and wished she could unsay it. But worry transformed into determination as the smaller pony looked up at her. "Yeah. I don't know what we're going to do, or where we could possibly be. But until I can figure that out, I'd rather enjoy this." She waved a hoof around at their surroundings, brilliant green with slashes of sunlight shining through gaps in the canopy. "We can't spend all our time worrying, right?"
"No," Luna replied, not entirely certain she was agreeing, "I suppose we can't." She looked around, inhaling the rich scent of deep soil and growing plants, and inexplicably felt a small bit more cheerful.
"So what do we do now?" Twilight asked, and Luna blinked at her, startled.
"I don't know... I've never..." She gestured helplessly. "I'm not good at leading. Ruling."
"But you did fine with Tozómuc," the unicorn protested. "You were very...princessy!"
"That was different," Luna protested. "That was..." She trailed off, searching for words. The basilisk had seemed to be a decision already made, rather than a subject, someone she had a burden of responsibility to. But she couldn't think of any way to explain that to Twilight. "It was different," she repeated awkwardly.
The unicorn giggled. "I suppose it was different at that." She sobered instantly though, as the topic of the basilisk was by far not a happy one. "Anyway. We might as well keep going."
"Yes," Luna agreed, grateful to drop the topic. "Maybe find somewhere for tonight." The dimness was not solely due to the canopy, the sun sliding inexorably closer to the horizon. After the day's exertions and the near sleeplessness of the past night, the alicorn was exhausted.
"Right. Fresh water, then." The unicorn's horn lit, a beam sweeping out from it and around before finally settling on a direction tangent to their original path. "My copy of Sugarsnap's Seventeen Simple Survival Suggestions says that a source of fresh water is the most important resource when you're living off the land," Twilight said conversationally. "If I'd known I'd be in the wood I'd have gone through that checklist, but as it is, all I have is cold weather blankets and scarves and a canteen."
Luna gave the smaller pony a sideways glance, half-amused and half-bemused. "Do you have a book for everything?"
"Almost!" Twilight flashed her a broad grin. "I live in a library, you know. And Spike -" She broke off abruptly. After a moment she resumed, more subdued. "Spike always helps me sort through them and we read them together. I think pretty much everything is interesting, so I have books on...well, everything.
"So what do you find interesting?" The unicorn added the question after a short pause, taking Luna by surprise. It wasn't a question she was often asked. Never asked, in fact, except by 'Tia on rare occasions.
"I..." Luna frowned, following Twilight who was in turn following the seeking spell glowing from her horn. "I love my moon and my stars, my sky. Even if they aren't really mine anymore. But interests, hobbies...? Who would I share them with, even if I had time?"
"But," Twilight protested, "isn't there anypony at Canterlot? And what about Princess Celestia?"
"Everypony at the palace treats me like a princess," Luna sighed. "And 'Tia tries, but she has so much to do."
"Oh, don't I know it." Twilight rolled her eyes. "Hours and hours at the Gala and I barely got three words in."
Luna startled herself with a brief chuckle, nodding agreement with the unicorn's complaint. "That's Canterlot. Endless amounts of business."
"I don't know what they do all day, it doesn't seem like it would be that hard to organize..." Twilight peered ahead, the seeking spell revealing things to her that were blocked from Luna's sight by tree trunks and sprays of leaves. "Oh, I can see water!"
She bounded ahead again, and the princess had to work to keep up, only now being able to distinguish the hiss and burble of running water from the sound of wind-stirred leaves. They broke through abruptly into a small clearing, the trees bordering a pool of blue water at a respectful distance. A stream cast ripples across its surface, disturbing the reflection of the sky above. Small, star-shaped blue flowers grew along the banks, casting a heady floral scent through the glade.
"This is great!" Twilight said gleefully, peering around the flat sward. "Oh, I bet Fluttershy would love this."
"Fluttershy?" Luna repeated, following in the unicorn's hoofsteps. The soft, lush grass looked inviting after all the rock and sand.
"One of my friends. Um." Twilight cast a glance back at the princess. "A yellow pegasus, with a butterfly cutie mark?"
Luna closed her eyes, recalling a single moment in time seared into her memory forever. "Ah," she said faintly. "The Element of Kindness."
"Er, right." Twilight gave her a nervous smile. "Anyway, we can just set up here for tonight." It wasn't quite late; the shadows were lengthening but the blue dome of the sky hadn't begun to darken. But if Twilight was as tired as Luna was, there was little point in going further.
"That sounds like a good idea," Luna agreed. "And we can decide what we should do."
Twilight removed her saddlebags, dropping them onto the grass and emptying them of their supplies. The cold-weather gear, superfluous in the near-tropical forest, canteen, and slightly battered fruits and gourds. She began to spread out the blankets, but Luna stepped forward.
"Let me take care of that." Luna was only too well aware that Twilight had been doing most of the work, and she certainly didn't need more reasons to feel useless. She might not be able to raise the moon and the stars, but she could certainly spread a blanket.
"Oh, okay." The smaller pony picked up the canteen instead, trotting over to the pool to fill it up. Luna watched her go, smoothing the blankets over the grass. There seemed to be some deep irony that she was stranded with the single pony that could intimidate her. She was still musing on this as Twilight stepped up to the shore. The unicorn dipped the canteen in the water, and the soft bank of the pool crumbled under her weight, and she squealed as she toppled head over hooves into the water.
"Twilight!" Luna rushed over to the pool just as the unicorn popped back to the surface, spluttering and laughing.
"I'm okay, Princess." The unicorn grinned at her, treading water, her mane plastered haphazardly against her neck.. "Actually this is really nice. You should try it."
Luna found herself smiling back, and she revised her earlier thoughts. It wasn't just that Twilight intimidated her, it was that the unicorn was completely blind to the vast gulf of royalty and history that separated Luna from other ponies. And being blind to it, she stepped across it without effort.
"Don't call me princess," Luna said abruptly.
"What?" A flash of bewilderment crossed Twilight's face.
"Just Luna. Please."
The smaller pony flushed briefly. "Um. If you're sure."
"A princess without her kingdom is not much of a princess." She removed her tiara, inspecting it briefly before setting it aside on the blankets. "And there doesn't seem to be much need for formality out here."
"No, I suppose there isn't," Twilight giggled. "This is the exact opposite of what we're supposed to be doing. No officials or meetings or diplomats here."
"I think I prefer this," Luna murmured, shucking her chausses and peytral and medallion and placing them next to her tiara. "All right, I'm coming in."
Twilight paddled away from the shore and Luna took a bracing breath of air before jumping into the pool. The water closed over her head, and there was a moment of close darkness and stillness that stirred something in the dusty recesses of her soul. Some memory of long ago, a half-forgotten dream from an untroubled age. Then the need for breath drove her to the surface and she emerged back into the world.
Swimming was a luxury she hadn't indulged in for centuries. It wasn't that Canterlot or, previously, the Royal Palace had been lacking in pools, but she'd never thought to seek them out. Splashing and paddling around that small pool with Twilight was the most carefree time she'd had in memory, and she wondered at what she'd been denying herself.
By the time the deepening evening turned the water black, she was more thoroughly exhausted than she thought possible, but it wasn't the taut, miserable exhaustion that she was used to. They hauled themselves out to dry in the warm evening air, and Luna was nodding off almost as soon as she stretched herself out on her blanket. She may have preferred the night, but this once she was happy enough to close her eyes and sleep through it.
Tick.
Tock.
Luna opened her eyes and found herself alone, bright morning sun sending dappled shadows across the grass. She scrambled to her feet, panic fluttering in her breast, and looked around wildly. Everything was still there but the saddlebags and the unicorn. "Twilight!" she shouted, and got a faint and indistinct reply from somewhere in the forest.
The alicorn picked her way through the underbrush toward the sound of that voice, and nearly ran into Twilight headed the other way. "Good morning, p-, um, Luna," the smaller pony said cheerfully. "I was just foraging for supplies. You can never have too much!" Then she frowned thoughtfully. "Well I suppose if you were trying to carry so much food that you couldn't move it'd be too much but other than that..."
Tick.
There was a faint vibration through the ground, and Luna looked around. "Did you hear something?"
"Hmm?" Twilight cocked her head, her ears twitching back and forth as she listened. "I just hear us."
"All right." There was still something else present in the forest, and it made Luna uneasy. Whatever ephemeral mood she'd managed to capture last night had vanished like a pricked bubble. The chains of the past weighed on her again, though, she dared to hope, somewhat less heavily.
Back at camp, she donned again the trappings of her station, even if she was, as she'd told Twilight, not much of a princess there. The saddlebags were even more overstuffed than before once they finished repacking, exotic roots and the tip of a blanket bulging past the buckles.
"Well, without a compass there's not much navigation to do, but by the position of the sun we were headed southeast." Twilight squinted upward and waved toward the far side of the clearing. "That way, generally."
"Let me see if there's anything nearby." Luna didn't actually fly too often, not with the palace guard to ferry her about, but here she had a good excuse. The alicorn spread her wings and leapt into the air. The clearing dropped away below as she ascended into the cloudless sky, and a panoply of green spread out below her.
Mountains defined the far horizon, tall and capped in white, startlingly clear in the morning light. Small spots of blue flashed shyly from beneath the forest canopy where other pools and lakes dotted the landscape. And not far away, there was a bare circle of stone with something gleaming, shining in the sun.
Tock.
Birds escaped from the trees, milling about, disturbed by a sound more felt than heard, flat, sharp, and without an echo. Luna dived. Her landing was rough and unpracticed, and Twilight rushed over her before she'd gotten properly settled. "I heard that!" The unicorn was looking as disturbed as she felt. "What was it?"
"I really don't know." Luna shook her head. "But I saw something over there." She nodded in the same direction Twilight had indicated earlier. "I couldn't tell what it was from up that high, just some bright shining thing on the ground, but I can't imagine it's not connected."
"Well." Twilight suddenly flashed her cheerful, eager smile. "We should go see what it is, then!"
"I suppose we should." Luna's smile was not as spontaneous as Twilight's, but it at least came easier than usual.
They made their way as best they could through the trackless forest, relying on the slow-moving sun and dead reckoning. Luna was about to take to the air again to find out how far off-course they'd swerved when the treeline suddenly stopped.
The clearing held an enormous stone circle flush with the ground, the surface smooth as still water. It was absolutely empty, clean of forest detritus, muddy smears or animal tracks, with only one thing at the exact center. A tall grandfather clock of glass and crystal stood with a faint blue glow flickering deep within its gears, and the pendulum swung far, far slower than it had any right to.
Tick.
"Well, that's not creepy at all," Twilight said dryly. "Do you know what this is, Luna?"
"I have no idea," the alicorn replied, mystified. The desert at least had made sense. This was thoroughly out of place in the middle of a forest, but it didn't seem to care about that, the gears turning impossibly behind a transparent facade.
"Well, how about we find out?" The unicorn took one step forward, onto the stone, looking back at the larger pony. Luna followed, somewhat reluctant but trusting more in Twilight's judgement than her own. Their hooves rang sharply on the bare stone, but after a half dozen paces they stopped.
The clock wasn't getting any closer. Luna turned with a frown and saw that the forest was further away, as if the further they got, the larger the stone circle became. "Twilight," she said urgently, and the unicorn followed her gaze.
"...oh." Twilight turned to regard the treacherous border. "Maybe this wasn't a good idea after all."
"You could say that!" Luna took a few steps toward the forest, then stopped when she saw that wasn't working either. She whirled and saw that Twilight was now three paces away, and walking without any apparent effect. They were stuck.
Twilight stopped and frowned, frustrated, then brightened again. "I have an idea."
Her horn flashed and she vanished, reappearing next to the alicorn in defiance of whatever strange rules of motion governed the area around the clock. Twilight gave Luna a brilliant smile. "It worked!"
That smile eased the incipient panic that had been building, and Luna replied to it with one of her own. "Now we can get out of here."
"Definitely," Twilight agreed with feeling, and there was another flash of light.
Tock.
•••
What appeared around them was not the forest. There was glass above them, glass below them, and a glass hallway stretching to the limit of vision in each direction. Through the transparent walls could be seen only more of the same, the transparent panes only visible by their edges. A diffuse sun shone overhead, diffracted by thousands of crystalline angles and illuminating a labyrinth stretching miles in all directions.
Twilight frowned, wondering if somehow her teleportation spell, which had worked flawlessly so many times, had somehow brought them much further than intended. She met Luna's eyes, the princess looking as bewildered as she, and reached out a hoof to rap at the glass. A vibration traveled through it, and she stepped back immediately, hoping she hadn't provoked anything. Instead there came a noise, soft but penetrating, and Twilight knew that she hadn't gone far wrong with her spell.
Tick.
"Where are we?" Luna had the faintest edge of panic in her voice, and Twilight had to admit it wasn't unwarranted, or that she didn't share it. But she also wondered at the enormity of the construct, a creation larger than Canterlot, and how it could have come about.
"I think we're...inside the clock," Twilight guessed. "Or whatever that stone really was." She cocked an ear, hearing the faint clicking of gears from far away. "That doesn't help much, I know, but it's a start."
"Well, how do we get out?" Luna pressed her hooves against the glass, peering through the pane at the clockwork maze beyond. There was another shuddering vibration and something in the far distance moved, angles changing and shifting.
"I'm not sure, and I'd rather not teleport if I don't know what's out there." Twilight waved her hoof at the near-invisible surroundings. "But we got in, so there has to be an exit. I wonder..." She closed her eyes, focusing on the concept of a way out and feeding it into the seeking spell. The magic trembled and wavered, flicking in a wildly uncertain halo before fixing uncertainly pointing at the wall and downward.
"It worked!" The unicorn grinned gleefully, looking back at Luna, and was heartened to see the alicorn smile back. "Let's go."
They clattered along the glass, accompanied by the inconstant trembling and clicking of the surrounding mechanism. Twilight kept a close eye on the wavering seeker spell, which was twitching uncertainly, as if the exit were shifting about. Which it might very well be, she thought, given the place they were in.
"Where could this have come from?" she wondered aloud, glancing sideways and up at her larger companion. "Is it something that ponies could have made? Or dragons?"
"Well it's pony sized..." Luna shook her head. "No, I would remember something like this, even after all I've been through." She looked thoughtful for a moment, and sad, a shadow passing over her face. "Unless this was built sometime in the past thousand years..."
"Nothing in the histories hints at anything like this." Twilight looked around at the untold immensity stretching away in all directions. "It just seems... impossible."
Tock.
There was a sudden draft of wind, and the floor shifted. Twilight screamed. Luna screamed. The ponies tumbled downward, but only for a moment. The unicorn found herself askew in another glass corridor, with Luna visible in similar disarray on the other side of a trio of glass walls. They stared at each other for a moment across the uncrossable distance, and then the corridors began to move.
"Luna!" Twilight yelled, scrambling to her feet and pressing her hooves against the glass as the alicorn's figure receded. She could see the faint outlines of an enormous armature, bearing Luna away from her, and the pony's muzzle shaping her name, and then she was gone in the infinite angles of the vast and vitreous maze.
Twilight pounded fruitlessly on the transparent walls of her prison, worried far more about the princess than about herself. Oh, it was true that Twilight had all the supplies, food and water, but Twilight had come to the conclusion that loneliness was far worse for the alicorn than any physical deprivation. And she could think of no way to help or reach or even contact Luna, not while the walls sped past at dizzying speed, nearly transparent gears spinning madly as they bore her along.
All at once, the motion stopped, the walls fell away, and she was standing in a broad open space that had absolutely nothing to distinguish it from anything else in the construct. The unicorn took a few paces away from where she'd arrived, just to be safe, and sat down to think. She really, really wished she had her books, her library. Twilight always felt more comfortable somewhere there was the smell of old paper and cloth, with the knowledge of ages close enough to touch.
But it was a vain wish, and Twilight finally followed through on the only idea she had. The seeking spell had worked on Luna before, and there was no reason it wouldn't again. Twilight's horn flared briefly, a searchlight oscillating around her, but to no avail. "All right," the unicorn muttered to herself, closing her eyes and drawing on the deep well of power that dwelled within. The light surrounding her scintillated brilliantly, then suddenly steadied. "Aha!"
Twilight opened her eyes and grinned, an expression that slipped away as she saw the spell didn't point in one direction, but two.
Tick.
The spell fluctuated wildly, the twin guides wavering like windblown smoke before settling again. "Oh," Twilight said in a voice of wary fascination. "That can't be good."
The shifting floor broke her out of her reverie as half the vault she was in vanished upward. Twilight took a few steps back, even though the change wasn't anywhere near her. "All right, Twilight Sparkle, think." Even if she was only talking to herself, speaking aloud made her feel less adrift. "If it's a clock, all the gears will go in circles. Or spheres, I guess." She grinned briefly. "So if I get to the center, I won't have to worry about getting shifted around."
She wasn't sure if that would help much, but one of the possible-Lunas was in the right direction, from what she could tell of the movements along the periphery of the room. The unicorn began trotting in that direction, hooves clattering loudly against the clear fundament.
As she reached the far wall, it folded down, a soft whirring and clicking heralding another shift in the mechanism, and she was suddenly in a long hall. Glass shifted like the most complex origami in the world as the clock realigned itself, some sort of silvered reflection gleaming briefly in the direction of her spell.
"Well, I'd call that a sign." The unicorn grinned briefly and picked up her pace, cantering along the featureless passageway. Trillions of gears whirred about her, visible only by their edges where they interlocked, a constantly shifting cutout of massive machinery. Twilight ran though the center of it all, her hope rising as one of the two points of the seeker spell vanished, leaving only the single destination ahead of her.
Then the floor bucked like a wounded animal, throwing her from her feet and sending her skidding along the corridor. Somewhere far away, a flywheel screamed in agony, going up and up past the range of hearing before shattering with an angry roar. Twilight stared upward in horror as a hairline crack cut a jagged path through the ceiling. "Oh, no." She breathed.
Tock.
Twilight found herself running without any clear memory of getting to her feet. The glass trembled and shuddered, gears groaning and screeching as they slipped. Something enormous and fast moving whizzed by close overhead, the concussion like a slap from a giant's hand, making her stumble along the wildly careening floor. Somewhere far above there was a growing darkness, a shadow blotting out the sun.
Now she was frightened. The world itself was falling apart around her, shuddering and shivering and crying out in pain. She ran, and wasn't entirely certain where she was running to. Something fell, crashing through the path in front of her and leaving a ragged gap. She had no time to stop, so she jumped, hanging for a small eternity over a bottomless abyss, remembering back to a similar leap of faith and wishing she had Pinkie's effortless nonchalance.
She landed on the other side, breathless and stumbling, trembling with adrenaline as she ran on, tortured gears screaming behind her. The darkness was getting closer. She risked a look back, and saw the frayed edges of night engulfing the path behind her, stars shining through the onrushing nightmare.
Ahead of her the silvered glow was brighter, and Twilight fairly flew along the glasswork shaft, gasping for air as she ran toward what she hoped was the princess and some sort of safety. It seemed an impossibly long distance away, and the more she ran the further away it got. But then, suddenly, she was through, and she saw that her seeker spell hadn't led her to Luna. It had led her to the moon.
Tick.
Twilight stared, transfixed, at the immense orb hanging in the center of an unimaginably large escapement wheel. "But... that's impossible," she protested to nobody in particular. It was becoming a litany for her, an automatic reaction that she didn't really mean.
The scale was so large that any ability to judge size broke down. The features were the same as the celestial body that she viewed through her telescope at nights, but she couldn't imagine how it could be here, inside this place. But as she looked around at the vast dome enclosing, the endless clockwork stretching outward, she had a deep intuition that it, despite all logic, was Luna's moon.
The floor trembled underhoof, the destruction outside muted in the chamber, as if it could defy Armageddon by its sheer scope. Twilight walked toward the sight, entranced, as her seeking spell unraveled in a fizz of purple energy, and realized hers was not the only magic in the chamber. There was something threaded through the floor, twining its way up the teeth of the escapement and outward.
It was, most strangely, a familiar magic, a spell that she'd encountered somewhere before. Even with the approaching destruction, she couldn't help but indulge her curiosity. She dipped her own power into the swift flow below her, and was staggered as images assaulted her - the night sky, the moon rising, comets... suddenly she understood.
She didn't understand everything, she didn't understand how it worked or how the moon could be there when it sailed across the sky every night. But she did understand that it held the largest memory spell in history. And she understood why.
Hoofsteps sounded behind her, and Twilight whirled, a greeting ready for the princess, but instead she simply stared. Out of the starry cloud walked a tall alicorn with a jet-black coat and the cosmos itself for her mane and tail. She was clad in cold blue armor and her eyes were narrowed to icy slits. Nightmare Moon.
Tock.
"Well," she said, her rich, throaty voice cold and precise. "I had always wondered how sister dear managed to raise the moon." It was no mere illusion this time, no trick. It was the dark goddess returned once again.
"L-Luna!" Twilight stammered out, refusing to call her by a name best left forgotten. "What are you doing?"
"Why Twilight, I thought that would be obvious." Nightmare Moon's voice dripped insincere sweetness as she walked slowly and deliberately toward the unicorn. "I am destroying this... obscenity."
"Wait, you can't!" Twilight pleaded with her. "It's for you! Listen to me -"
"NO!" Power flared outward from the alicorn with that shouted word, threatening to shatter the great wheels that encircled the room, and in desperation Twilight cast her own spell. She'd never tried combat magic, but there had been more than one book on it in her library. A sphere of purple energy enclosed them, sizzling and humming as Nightmare Moon's anger spent itself on the shield. Twilight smiled triumphantly, and then staggered backward as the alicorn shattered her spell with a casual pulse of energy from the ebony horn.
"So, you would set yourself against me, would you?" Nightmare Moon glared icily down at her. "We have been here before."
"Luna, stop. Listen to me." Twilight stepped forward, hooves striking firmly against the ground, her voice sharp and determined while she hoped desperately she could reach whatever part of the princess was still reasonable. She hoped, and felt guilty for it, that Luna had been telling the truth about being afraid of her.
A tense silence stretched out between them. The Nightmare's horn glimmered with barely restrained magic, her mane and tail blowing in an unfelt wind as the clockwork shuddered and groaned around them, the muffled echoes of destruction still sounding in the distance. Finally the alicorn tapped a hoof softly against the ground. "Why?"
"Because it's not just a device to, to move the moon." Twilight told her. "I don't know how, but it's been remembering.
"Remembering what?" Her voice, sharp and dangerous, cracked like a whip.
"The night!" Twilight shouted at her, frustrated. "It's been remembering the night for you, Luna!"
Nightmare Moon's eyes widened briefly in surprise, then narrowed again. "I don't believe you," she said, flatly. But Twilight thought she detected an edge of uncertainty, however faint.
"The memory spell runs through the floor. All you have to do is access it," Twilight urged. "Trust me."
"Trust you?" The alicorn threw back her head and laughed, to the sound of distant thunder. "Oh, no, I know better than that, don't I Twilight? After all, you brought us here, didn't you?"
The accusation rocked her backward. "It wasn't on purpose!" Twilight protested. "It just happened!"
"Just happened to bring us to a place between realities, where a machine the size of a planet drives my moon through the heavens. No. I deny it." Each word sliced the air with winter-sharp bitterness, and Nightmare Moon lowered her head aggressively. "This was all your doing!" Storm clouds built behind her, lightning flashing and thunder growling.
"I don't have any idea how we got here." Twilight took a step forward, holding the alicorn's eyes. "I'm just as lost as you are. Fighting each other won't help." Another step. She had to get close enough to touch Nightmare Moon if she wanted to trigger the memory spell lying latent in the great machine. It was the only thing she could think of to reach Luna, without the Elements here to help her.
"You have never," the goddess said darkly, "been as lost as me." She pawed the ground impatiently with a forehoof, the tip of her horn glimmering. "Now stand aside."
Twilight was as close to Nightmare Moon as she was likely to get. The unicorn took a breath, gathering herself up, and leapt. She saw, too late, that she wouldn't make it. That she would fall just short, and there would certainly be no second chance. But then something gave her that second chance.
Nightmare Moon flinched. Her head reared back and the glow disappeared from her horn, granting Twilight the scattered fragments of a second necessary to close the distance and invoke the memory spell. The alicorn's eyes widened as the very walls seemed to take a breath, and then the spell took hold.
Twilight was knocked off her hooves by the force of the released magic, sent sprawling and sliding along the glass floor. Colors and shapes flickered in the air around Nightmare Moon as the power surged out of the mechanism, painting stars and the palette of night in the air from the unleashed force of unrestrained memory.
The goddess threw her head back and screamed. The sound twisted at Twilight's heart, because there was so much of Luna in it. She watched helplessly from the floor as a thousand years of night poured into Nightmare Moon, black lightnings crackling and arcing against the floor, the stars shining out from under that black coat.
Tick.
Twilight rushed over as Luna fell to the floor, the dark persona of Nightmare Moon dissipating in a fizz of indigo magic. "Luna! Are you all right?"
The alicorn stirred, looking up at Twilight, and burst into hoarse, wracking sobs. "How can you stand me?" She choked out between gasps for air. "I can't stand me!"
"Oh, Luna..." Twilight said helplessly, cradling the alicorn's head as the princess shook with agonized sorrow. "It's okay," she soothed. "You're okay."
"No," Luna replied in muffled disagreement. "I'm not okay." She took a deep, shuddering breath and pulled away from the unicorn. Twilight looked up as Luna rose on wobbly legs, then stood up herself. They looked at each other in a moment of drained quiet, even the great escapement's mechanical sounds muffled.
"I still don't understand," Luna said at last, quietly. "I don't understand why you keep forgiving me."
"I - " Twilight stopped, aware of a strange, nervous tension deep in her gut. It was not an easy question to answer, and she would never be able to forgive herself the consequences if she answered it wrong. "...because you keep trying, Luna," she said at last. "Because you don't want to be that way. Because I know at heart you aren't Nightmare Moon."
"I wish I could believe that," Luna said softly, turning away to stare wistfully at the moon rotating slowly in its place. Twilight stepped beside her, putting a comforting foreleg over the alicorn's shoulders, and Luna leaned in against her, eyes closed. Twilight cast a glance back over her shoulder, where the mechanism was repairing itself, new glass planes replacing old, spinning gear and armatures out of nothingness.
"So," she said after a small space of time, "how do we get back to the forest?"
"Oh," Luna replied vaguely. "We never really left. We're just a tiny bit displaced." Her horn glimmered briefly and a hole appeared in the air, spreading to engulf them, the enormous machine fading. The escapement tripped one last time, holding the moon until Luna was ready to take it up again.
Tock.