//------------------------------// // Chapter One // Story: Eternal Nightmare // by Jgame //------------------------------// I looked into the crater. Images of the land I would soon return to were reflected in the water. It was odd how the water worked. It would show you close to what you wanted from it, but never the exact thing you were looking for. What I sought for was anything that could stop me from defeating my older sister, yet I only saw ordinary citizens of a town named evidently named Ponyville. One pair of ponies chatted about how she was going to be at this town for a festive event. Another pair of pegasi briefly appeared and seemed to be chatting about some famous performance troupe named The Wonderbolts. One image lingered. A pink earth pony was chatting with a blue Pegasus. “Are you excited for the Summer Sun Celebration? Because I’m excited for the Summer Sun Celebration! And that means you should be excited for the Summer Sun Celebration!” The pink pony said, faster than I thought would ever be possible for a pony, or any living creature, for that matter. “Uh-hunh.” The blue Pegasus said, clearly annoyed at the pink pony’s antics. The pink pony failed to take the hint and kept talking as the image faded away. My eyes narrowed. I had asked for information about any obstructions on my rise to power, not some crazed pony on too much sugar. I took in a slight breath as I realized I had gotten what I had asked for. Was the pink pony the key to defeating me? Panic rising, I asked the water for the pink pony’s weakness. The image shimmered. I was presented with muted blue paint drying on a wooden wall. I struck the water with a harsh amount of force. How dare it mock me? Some of the water splashed onto my helm and rolled down it. A small water droplet hit just below my eye and slid down, like a tear. I chastised myself for being so frivolous. Tears do not matter. In two days, even less for me as time on the Moon passed faster than on Earth, I would return and bring about eternal night. My new subjects will love me. With a faint smile playing upon my lips, I found my favourite crater, the bottom smoothed out slightly from a millennium of day’s spent sleeping there. I woke up. I had woken just in time. I could sense that the bars of my metaphorical prison cell were well and truly brittle and ready to shatter apart. I took a breath and prepared the spell. The spell was like a key to a lock. It took over several decades to figure out the sort of lock and a few more to figure out the key I needed for it. As I spell finished, a large spectral key inserted itself in an invisible padlock and turned, making a very faint click sound as it then dispersed itself into thin air. The force field that kept me here slowly shimmered into view. Patches of ugly brown rust, created from too much exposure to the stars, were visible on the otherwise pale white sphere of my imprisonment. I concentrated and sent a bolt of ghastly green energy from my cobalt horn at a particularly large patch of rust. A green ripple came from the center of where I had hit the force field and emanated outwards like a ripple in a pond. The rusty sections began to crack, and then completely shattered. The rest of the partially broken sphere slowly followed suit, making more and more musical cracking sounds. Finally the scattered fragments of the former force field exploded in a dazzle of white light, like stars winking out of existence. After one thousand years of agonizing wait, I was free. I looked towards the Earth. Twilight had begun. And so had my new reign. I spread my wings, black as the dark space around me, and flew towards my rightful place. I had an easy glide towards the Earth, mostly due to no wind resistance existing in space. After soaring close enough, I shut my eyes and concentrated on a long range teleportation spell. The resulting crackle sound filling my ears, as well as the wind whipping through my mane alerted me that my attempt had been flawless, like the beauty of the night that other foolish ponies could not see. As I opened my eyes I discovered that I was quite high up in the air. The second thing I noticed was where I was. I could see the city of Canterlot. The third thing I noticed is that she was on a hill, in plain sight. The white coat and pastel mane stuck out like a bright star in an otherwise desolate night sky. If stars could be revolting to see. I tensed my body and leaned in, quickening my descent. I landed in a patch of woods a few meters away from the hill, to ensure that my landing would be uninterrupted. I watched from the trees as my enemy merely waited, completely still. As I trotted up the hill, Celestia finally spoke, “Sweet sister.” “I am not your sister,” I corrected. Celestia frowned. “So you have not changed from our last encounter.” “What did you expect to change from our last encounter?” I asked sharply. “I had hoped that you would have thought about the relation between day and night,” Celestia said. “What is there to consider? The day is cherished and praised, and the other sister is loathed and avoided!” Celestia went silent for a brief moment. “You said ‘sister’.” My body, that had been fluid before, turned rigid with anger. Almost too late, I realized, I had dropped my guard. Celestia prepared her spell. Light flooded the area as a wave of déjà vu came over me as I realized what spell it was. It was the spell that banished me the first time Celestia and I had fought. Without having thought about it, I casted my own spell. Light collided with darkness. And slowly but surely, darkness blotted out the light as Celestia’s spell failed. Celestia stood there, dumbstruck. “Did you think I spent all those years in that forced vacation you sent me off to doing nothing?” I demanded. “Did you forget that you lacked the Elements?” Celestia said nothing. I casted a new spell. A pillar of shadows sprung up around Celestia and enveloped her, like a thick unshakeable blanket. By the time the shadows receded, there was nothing left. Like how Celestia had banished me to the Moon, I had banished her to the Sun, and as long as I held the land in an eternal nightmare, it would stay that way. As I tensed my muscles to take flight and leave to Canterlot, a stray thought halted my departure. I thought back to the image I had seen in the water on the Moon. The one thing that could stop me from defeating my sister. Yet, I had already defeated her, and none of the ponies I had seen had interfered. My muscles tightened. The water never showed exactly what the user was looking for. Perhaps the water instead showed me - what would defeat me in the near future! Panic surged through me. I swallowed and fought the panic down. I was starting to quiver, as I realized the banishment took more energy than I had realized. The ponies hadn't defeated me yet. The water had given me a chance to succeed, not a guarantee to failure. I dissolved my body into a shadowy mist and began to head towards Canterlot. Not to announce myself as their new ruler, not quite yet. A ruler needed to eliminate threats as quickly and efficiently as possible. And so I needed to destroy the threat that stood in my way. But first, I was in desperate need of a map to Ponyville. As I slinked stealthily in the skies above the brightly lit streets of Canterlot, I marveled at two things. One, ponies rarely looked up. Two, finding a map to Ponyville was going to be slightly more difficult than it seemed. As I continued my search, I listened to the snippets of conversations of the ponies below. "I must say, I’m looking forward to the Summer Sun Celebration this year,” one mare said to a stallion that was walking along with her. The mare in question was magically pulling along a suitcase beside her. The stallion sniffed, “I still don’t like that it’s being held in Ponyville this year.” “You really shouldn’t be that way,” the mare admonished, “it’s held here in Canterlot most of the time, it’s only fair that other places besides Canterlot would be able to see Princess Celestia.” “You’re only saying that because you get to go to Ponyville and see her anyways,” the stallion huffed. “And you’re only saying that because you waited too long to get yourself a ticket,” the mare countered. The stallion opened and closed his mouth noiselessly as he tried to find a way to bow out of the conversation gracefully. By now they had stopped walking, having reached a train station. Suddenly, I was furious with myself. What was I doing, wasting time eavesdropping on unimportant conversations? I had forgotten my goal. I had to focus on my goal. A screeching noise filled the area as a train came to halt. “All aboard the Canterlot to Ponyville train!” A light brown pony said in a loud voice that carried across the train station. The mare I was eavesdropping on kissed the stallion and went onto the train. I watched as the train began to slowly leave Canterlot in the direction that was presumably to Ponyville. Of course. That was it. I sped off, following the train tracks, determined to make it to Ponyville for my grand appearance.