//------------------------------//
// Ch. 10: Solar Flare 
// Story: Once in a Blue Moon 
// by Trouble-Shooter 
//------------------------------//

Chapter Ten: Solar Flare

As they entered the castle ruins, the party paused, taken aback by the lurid light filtering in through the shattered windows from the waxing eclipse. Frowning as he trotted around the entry hall, looking at the angles, the Doctor asked, “Celestia, where would be the best place to see the setting sun in the castle?”
        Thinking a moment, the princess replied, “That would be the old chapel. In the ancient religion, the west was seen as the direction of worship and rest for the departed, since we all return to the Great Maker.”
        “And how long until the eclipse reaches full?”
        Consulting her internal clock, Celestia said, “About forty minutes.”
        “Then we'd best get a move on, hadn't we?” With that, he trotted down the corridor to the chapel, princess and guards following in his wake. As they neared the double doors, they could hear a low, sonorous chanting, as the air fairly itched with magic. Around them, the shadows seemed to whisper among themselves, waiting to see what the monarch and her companions would do. “Blast!” said the Time Lord as he tried the handle.
        Giving him a smirk, Celestia murmured, “Wood trumps sonic?” At his nod, she motioned him behind her as her horn started to glow. “Let me try mine.”
        WHAM! The doors didn't so much open as shatter, sending splinters and kindling flying into the room beyond, bowling over several of the acolytes standing in the altar circle. As the group entered the room, horns, weapons and screwdriver at the ready, the smell of death hit them like a wave from the eight bodies on the slabs with neat, almost surgical incisions over their necks where their arteries and veins had been severed. A series of channels and tubes strung between the altars led to the central dais, wherein lay a sarcophagus, much like the ones from the crypt.
        Exactly like the ones from the crypt.
        Exactly like Tartarus'.
        Celestia stared for a moment, then charged into the room with a yell summoned from centuries of pain and sorrow. Around her, the air sizzled as the unicorn cultists flung magical bolts at the guards, the armored unicorns returning fire as their pegasi brethren swooped down to harass the robed ponies from above. Even the Doctor entered the fray, sonic screwdriver buzzing as he aimed it at a cultist, causing her horn to feed back into her nervous system, dropping her into a twitching heap. Nearby, Bastion flew up to the roof and kicked off a support beam, planting both hooves into the spine of another cultist with a sound like wet celery snapping. For her part, Celestia didn’t even bother with magic or finesse, merely using her superior size and strength to trample any red robes she saw.
        Finally, the melee was done with, the surviving guards using hooves and horns to keep what few cultists were still conscious suppressed. On the four unstained altars, a family of earth ponies stared at the carnage around them wide-eyed. Gesturing to them with her horn, Celestia murmured absently, “Captain Bastion, be a dear and release those poor ponies, would you?” She walked slowly over to the sarcophagus on the central dais, looking down through the crystalline lid at the still form of her brother. As she looked, she noticed that several tubes carrying the blood of the dead sacrifices had been fed inside the coffin, her brother’s chest punctured to permit them entry. A low, slow, and hot anger began to burn in her chest at this desecration, smouldering at first, then catching and igniting into an indomitable rage.
        The Doctor stood by her side, murmuring, “I'm sorry, Celestia. I'm so, so very sorry. I had no idea, I really didn't.” She ignored his apologetic tone, his attempt to soothe as she stepped forward slowly, a low hum building from her horn as three thousand years of hard-won restraint started to slip. Her mane shifted spectrum from the shades of an aurora to the color of a dawning, terrible day as her eyes started to glow white, her baleful gaze causing cultist and guard alike to pause and tremble. All too soon, the commotion in the chamber died, the only sound that of the angered Sun Goddess' hooves as they hissed against the stone floor, leaving a trail of smoking hoof-prints in her wake as she approached Bastion. Finally, her voice devoid of compassion and emotion, she spoke.
        “Are these the leaders, Guard Captain?”
        Swallowing a lump, Bastion nodded. “Aye, my liege. They're the ones what are running this travesty.”
        “How many of mine subjects hath they slain this day, Guard Captain?”
        Oh, buck me running, she's going all Old Stable Wrath-of-the-Sun over this. Bastion shoved this thought aside and responded, “Eight here today, Majesty, and a further thirty-six elsewhere.”
        “Forty-four.” said the Goddess, “Forty-four lives, ended by your hooves. Tell me, priest and priestess, by what are you called?”
        Father Sun and Mother Moon quavered at the sight of Celestia's unbridled fury. The stallion replied, “F-Father S-Sun and M-Mother Moon, Highness.”
        A low, dry chuckle erupted from the princess' throat. “'Father Sun' and 'Mother Moon?' Thine crimes are exceeded only by thine arrogance and presumption. To what purpose have you done this thing, Sun and Moon?”
        “We were told... we were told by the spirits to restore the balance. The Goddess of the Night is no longer with us, so the world is tipped all to one side – your side. We were told that we had to restore that balance by removing your power from the world.”
        “Tell Us, what spirits speakest thou of?”
        The stallion swallowed, and replied, “The... They said they were the ghosts of your family, Your Majesty. That they were upset, that you had killed them, one by one, and taken their power for themselves. They said that the banishment of your sister was only the latest step in your plan to dominate the whole world, and that we had a duty to stop them.”
        “I see. And the sarcophagus of Our brother?”
        Mother Moon replied this time, “The ritual called for two foci – one to ground your body to the earth, the other to ground your power out to the sun.. and the earth focus had to be a relative, and well, ah... he was the closest one to the floor collapse?”
        Celestia’s eyes narrowed. Even if the foolish mare believed every word, the princess had a few thousand years of magical study behind her and was not fooled for an instant. She knew a profane resurrection ritual when she saw one. She leaned in closer until they could feel the heat shimmering off her pelt. The guards wisely took a step back as Celestia's horn flared, pinning the pair to the wall. “And what of this magical focus, that thou wouldst seek to destroy Us with?” Shaking like a leaf in a stiff breeze, the mare pointed to a large crystal globe that the Doctor was examining with his screwdriver, frowning furiously. The cult mare replied in a shaking voice, “It i-isn’t m-meant to h-harm you, Princess. Only to r-restore the balance.”
        Frowning, the Doctor glanced up, his eyes troubled. “As near as I can tell, this is something meant to suck in and channel artron energy -- magic -- and funnel it someplace else.” He tapped a hoof on the coffin beside him. “In here, given the way they’ve got this set up. To what purpose, I have no idea. Your brother’s dead, and generally speaking, unless you make Time your mare, there’s no getting ‘round that.”
         Celestia put a hoof to her forehead, her white coat unmarred by the heat seething off of it. “So be it. There will be no trial. Thou hast admitted to thine crimes, and We are ready to render judgement.” At that, the Time Lord looked up in near-panic.
        “Celestia... Celestia, don't do this. Please.”
        “And what wouldst thou have Us do, Doctor? Release them? Spank their flanks, call them bad colts and fillies, and let them go to cause further mischief?”
        “Well of course not, but --” Cutting him off with a wave of her hoof, the enraged Sun Goddess turned back to the cultists.
        “Of the crime of murder, thou art guilty.”
        “Celestia, don't. Do not do this.”
        “Of the crime of conspiracy against the Throne, thou art guilty.”
        “Celestia, DON'T!”
        “Of the crime of royal desecration, thou art guilty.” She ignored the Time Lord's cries as she pulled magic into her horn, the glare from its tip soon rising to a blinding light. “Thine sentence shall now be rendered, passed, and executed. Thou art banished to the Sun, there to reside until the End of Time.” A faint but utterly chilling smile crossed her face. “And to burn.” With that, she loosed the spell building in her horn. As one, the cultists were enveloped in a white-hot glow that carried them out the window in a streak of sound and light and fury, around the moon, and into the setting sun, leaving naught but scorch marks on the walls behind them.
        “What have you done?” said the Doctor into the silence that followed. Everypony around her stared at her as if she were some abomination to be feared, even faithful Bastion. It was his expression that did it. With a sound like a flame blowing out, the princess dropped to her knees and stopped glowing, tears flowing from her eyes as the full import of what she had just done hit her. “What have you done, Celestia?”
        Looking at her hooves, she whispered, “I did it again.”