Chapter 6
The Battle
Luna dashed down the stairs, Captain Lodestone hot on her heels. She needed her armor and her blades. She needed to get up there and fight. She needed to lead her men.
She'd have to hurry.
***
There was a flash of blue light.
Lodestone shook his head quickly, trying to get his bearings back as Luna dashed about the command pavilion, snatching up armor and strapping it on.
The helmet was still in the wooden chest which she usually kept her armor in, neatly piled. There was no time to find the key. She gave the chest one vicious kick, splitting the wood and shattering the lock. It sprang open, revealing the helmet.
The helmet was equal parts fearsome and awe-inspiring. The rest of her armor had been changed into a new shape when she had become Nightmare Moon; the helmet had never changed one iota.
Slowly, reverently, she picked it up. She was one of the most powerful beings in the world, there was little she had to show reverence to. The armor she wore was one of those. It had been forged in the Time Before Time, in the Twilight Hours, by the Die Alten, whose magic was greater than any that had been or ever would be. They had created the Seven Artifacts of Power, along with the Elements of Harmony. Luna posessed three of the Artifacts, The Armor of the Moon and her blades, Moonbeam and Lightshaft.
She slid the helmet onto her head and glanced around.
Speaking of her blades...
Captain Lodestone held them out to her reverantly, obviously aware of the immense power in the blades.
“My Princess.” He said. She nodded to him, gently taking the blades and strapping them over her back.
“Let us show them the mistake they hath made.” She said to him, her voice ringing through the faceplate of the helmet like that of some forgotten deity of war.
He stomped his foot and saluted. “YES, MA’AM!” he roared.
A flash of blue light flared above the chaos of the battle, causing the Solar Empire’s men to cringe and shield their eyes. A cheer went up among the Lunar Republic Forces as they recognized their princess, her armor burning with furious blue flames, her wings spread in all their majesty, flaring outward in a cascade of night-blue feathers. In all her glory, she appeared as a god, shining like a sun herself as her wings blocked out the true sun. All the soldiers on the battlefield were awestruck.
What few noticed was the Pegasus just off her left wingtip, hovering expertly, sighting in his rifle. The loud crack of a gunshot interrupted the silence.
Accompanying the gunshot was a splatter of gore from the commanding officer of the Solar Empire forces. He crumpled from his perch atop a bolder, where he had been urging his men onward with his drawn saber. His head had been completely obliterated by the fifty-caliber anti-tank round.
There was silence for a moment.
Then, with a scrape of steel on steel, Luna drew her blades. She held Moonbeam high, then pitched it down, pointing it at the Imperial soldiers. Several of them cringed, as if expecting lightning to strike them dead where they stood.
If only their fate had been that kind.
“Engineer battalion, FIRE!!!!!” she roared, her metallic voice echoing. About a hundred soldiers stepped to the frontline, shouldering their shotguns. There was a loud SHICK-SHUCK as one hundred shotguns were pumped and the spent shells hit the ground.
The Imperial forces realized what was happening just a moment too late as one hundred shotguns fired at close range. The front line of the Imperial attackers was very literally torn to shreds.
“ATTACK!” Luna screamed. As the two forces charged at each other over the mangled and bloody corpses of the fallen, she herself descended into the fray. This was a battle of the boot knife and the rifle butt, of the pistol whip and the bare saber. This is where her soldiers excelled-
As did she.
She began to dance, blades slashing and stabbing and ripping and tearing. It was a sight both beautiful and terrible to behold, a dance of steel and blood that was both brutal and elegant. None could stand before her, any feeble resistance she met was easily swatted aside. For Luna, time slowed to a crawl where, if she wanted, she could easily have caught a flying bullet between her fingers.
She could feel the Nightmare rising inside her, begging to be unleashed, crying to kill. But she pushed it down.
And she continued her dance.
It was not long before the survivors of the Imperial 23rd infantry battalion threw down their arms and surrendered.
Luna stood in the center of the battlefield, her chest heaving with sobs.
She snatched her helmet from her head and threw it to her feet. Tears coursed down her cheeks as she slowly knelt in the bloody morass of mud and gore. She could hear the victory cries, the celebratory laughter of her men.
But there would be no laughter for her tonight.
When would the violence end? Was she truly any better than the monster her sister made her out to be? She recalled Twilight Sparkle’s tears, the shattered innocence of the one person in this world she could truly count as a friend in this world.
She could see many men in the Lunar Republic winter fatigues among the dead. Her men. It wars inevitable in war.
War never changed, did it?
Sadly, she recognized faces among the Imperial dead as well. That man there had been a guard on the third floor corridor, just outside her room. She’d said hello to him every evening for years, even talked to him about his family. That man there had owned a bakery on the edge of Cantalot, the best in the city. She’d visited every Saturday, talked to him.
How many more would die? She wondered. How many more lives would her sister throw away in her quest for power?