Antithesis – she rather liked her new name, but right now she was a little busy and couldn’t really spare the time to admire it – popped back into being hurtling towards the ground at rather uncomfortable speeds. She gasped, which naturally meant she got to have a mouthful of dirt and mud as she collided with the ground, bounced, tumbled, rolled, hit and rebounded off of a tree, and then landed in the muck.
“Ow.”
Pain had by now lost its appeal as a new and interesting sensation. She decided she didn’t like it and resolved to take steps to avoid it in the future as she stood. The world before her swam, and there were stars in her field of vision, and she was reasonably certain she was about to black out. This, too, would be new. She suspected she wouldn’t like it.
“Hate…” she groaned, before collapsing to the ground, unconscious.
---
Some part of Lulamoon’s brain registered that getting down from the cloud would require considerable effort and timing. One of them would have to try and telekinetically lower the other two, one at a time, until they were low enough for Sparkle to catch them. Then they would have to take a leap of faith – jump down themselves, and hope that Sparkle’s aim was good enough to catch them telekinetically before they hit the ground.
Lulamoon reasoned, in her mind, that it would make the most sense for her to take that leap of faith. Twilight and Sparkle had far more magical power than her or Trixie, so it made sense for Twilight to go down first. Then Trixie – she was the innocent one, she didn’t deserve to be here, was completely out of her element. Lulamoon did not consider herself expendable at all, but with both Twilights on the ground, they’d stand a good chance of catching her.
Yes. This made perfect sense, and it was what should be done, said that small part of her brain. This part of her brain, however, was not in contact with the rest. Lulamoon found herself only staring dumbly at the moon, and the pattern of dark craters that had appeared across its surface in the shape of an alicorn’s head. She was vaguely aware of Twilight and Trixie both trying to coax her into action, but she had nothing. There was a brief sensation of being lifted, lowered, and landing on the ground.
But past that, all Lulamoon could register was that, for the second time in her life, she had seen her mentor, Princess Luna, banished into the Moon she claimed dominion over – and this time, there were no Elements of Harmony to help.
---
Twilight took a deep breath and hopped from the cloud. She kept her gaze focused down, on Trixie and Sparkle, hoping that the two of them could coordinate enough to catch her as she fell. Unicorn telekinesis was, unfortunately, not much use for exerting any leverage on oneself.
Her faith paid off. Trixie and Sparkle caught her as best they could, with about a hundred feet still to go to the ground, though they focused on cushioning her fall more than stopping it. It still felt like running into a wall, but that was considerably better than the alternative. She fought the urge to kiss the ground once she was set down, instead trotting over quickly to her fellow unicorns. “How’s Lulamoon?” she asked.
Trixie waved a hoof in front of her counterpart’s face. “Not good,” she said when she got no response. Her main focus, however, was on the Ursa Major. By now, it had shrank back down to its normal height, and the angry red glow to its eyes had disappeared. It was still a frightening sight to behold, or would have been, were it not nuzzling and playing with the Ursa Minor, the Star Beast cub play-biting and batting at its mother with its paws as the mother lay on her back, making the occasional half-hearted swing back.
The fact that the Ursas were paying no real attention to Trixie didn’t seem to calm her down too much. “Y…you’re saying that i-it remembered you?” Trixie asked Sparkle.
“Well, her,” Sparkle said, pointing at Twilight, “but I guess it can’t tell us apart.”
Trixie swallowed. “S…so, would i-it remember me?”
Sparkle shrugged, even as the Ursas finally stopped playing around with each other, or at least the Major did, the Minor not getting the message and continuing to bat and bite at its mother’s legs. The Major paid it no mind as it looked down at the four unicorns with deep, fathomless eyes. It huffed, then began to walk away, its cub in tow.
Twilight watched it go, and decided that, whether or not the Ursa Major liked her and her counterpart, she had bigger problems to deal with – problems that were highlighted when she looked up at the moon, and saw the imprint of the Mare in the Moon upon it. Suddenly, Lulamoon’s near-catatonia almost seemed like a good idea, as she felt her hind legs give out.
“Th…the Princesses…all of them…” she intoned softly, feeling tears in her eyes.
Trixie and Sparkle looked up at the moon, and both grimaced. Sparkle glanced at Twilight. “I don’t suppose this world has a Princess Cadenza?” she asked.
Twilight blinked, then shook her head. “I…I don’t know. I’ve n-never heard that name.” She tapped her hooves together. “U…unicorns can move the Sun and Moon if we all work together. I guess w-we’ll just have to do it again…w-without the Element of Magic, there’s no way to free Princess Luna or Princess C-Celestia…”
Sparkle grimaced, looking down herself. She glanced at Trixie, then back to Twilight. “I…I know why Antithesis didn’t kill Trixie when she had the chance,” she said softly.
“Because she’s a very sick pony?” Trixie guessed.
Sparkle shook her head. “She can’t tell us apart,” she said. “You, me, these two,” she waved a hoof at Twilight and Lulamoon, “she can’t really tell us apart, just like the Element of Magic couldn’t. And she’s worried that if she doesn’t kill us all at the same time, then the Element inside of her might…might default to one of us.”
There was silence as the three considered that, and they glanced between one another. Trixie coughed. “Trixie is too famous to die,” she insisted.
“I don’t like the idea either,” Sparkle said. “I was just…just letting you know. Just getting the information out there.”
Twilight blinked a few times, before closing her eyes, wiping tears from them – it was too cold out to be crying, she told herself, and they were all exhausted. They needed to rest somewhere safe. “L…let’s go,” she said, standing and telekinetically placing Lulamoon on her back. The catatonic unicorn offered no objections. “We have to find someplace safe to hide. We need to rest, without interruption this time.”
Sparkle grimaced again, glancing at Trixie, then back the way the Ursas Major and Minor had gone. “I…may have an idea about that, too – ”
“No,” Trixie said immediately, eyes widening as she realized what Sparkle was suggesting. “No! No! No no no no no no no no…”
---
Being trapped in the moon for a thousand years had been an exercise in bitter loneliness and resentment for Luna. She had endured a millennium of resentment and anger, even as she prepared herself for her eventual return – Celestia had let it slip that she had known that Nightmare Moon would escape, and no matter how much she tried to deny it to herself, Nightmare Moon was Luna was Luna.
What?
Being isolated and alone on the world under the sun for a thousand years had been an exercise in abiding loneliness and terror for Luna. She had endured a millennium of uncertainty and difficulty, trying to shape Equestria into the nation that she knew it could be. She had stumbled and fallen and failed many times, but she had risen to the challenge as often – but every morning and every evening, raising and lowering the Sun, she had touched the soul of Corona and felt hate and sheer rage. Luna and Luna had failed their sister.
What?
Luna was Luna. And Luna was Luna. Consciousness was a tangled mess between the two of them, a cacophony of images and memory, so many of them alike, precious few of them different. But Luna and Luna scrambled and struggled to hold onto the memories they knew were theirs. They found the differences and held onto them tightly, and from there rebuilt themselves, their individuality.
And at length, Luna found herself standing before a hundred crystalline steps that lead to a throne of polished white quartz veined with silver and obsidian, and upon the Selenic Cathedra sat Luna, gazing down at Luna, as the crystalline surface of the Moon stretched in every direction and the stars glistened overhead.
It wasn’t real – it was a mental construct, a dreamscape, a way to rationalize and interpret their predicament and make it easier for each to hold onto themselves.
Luna-upon-the-throne blinked a few times as she stared at her counterpart. “Every day?” she asked quietly, voice trembling. For the briefest of moments, their minds and souls had been one and the same but for the barest shreds of ego to separate the two, and of everything she had seen, the constant, recurring memory of touching the Sun and feeling pure hatred from it was the strongest.
Luna-below-the-throne bowed her head, wings fluttering. “Every morning. Every evening. Except…except the last six months,” she said. Luna-upon-the-throne stared in utter disbelief. To have had to deal with that for a month would have been too much for a lesser pony. Luna herself could not conceive of doing it for a year.
But a thousand? With no end in sight? Luna-below-the-throne had thought that Corona was banished forever – there had been no thousand-year prophecy, as there had been for Celestia and Nightmare Moon. Celestia had a goal to work towards, a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel, something to buoy her spirits. Luna had nothing, had been forced to feel Corona’s hate for her every day with no end in sight – yet somehow she had persevered.
Luna-below-the-throne looked then to Luna-upon-the-throne. “I am jealous of you,” she said plainly. Here, in the dreamscape, after having touched souls, she could be little other than honest.
Luna-upon-the-throne’s eyes narrowed. “I let my loneliness overpower me,” she said. “I let myself tinker with dark magics to try and soothe my pain. I made the world revolve around me, my needs, my desires. For a thousand years I dreamed of nothing but laying my own sister low! Of making her suffer as I had suffered – of making all Equestria suffer! Yet thou art jealous of me?”
“I am,” Luna-below-the-throne said. “Because for you…the nightmare ended. And she was there. I envy you.”
Luna-upon-the-throne looked away, shamed at her own feelings. “And…and I am jealous,” she said. “I do not envy thy circumstances…but…but I wish I had thy strength.”
Luna-below-the-throne laughed. “I’ve spent a thousand years terrified of becoming Nightmare Moon. I’m not strong.”
“Thou art a liar,” Luna-upon-the-throne insisted. “A thousand years without slipping into darkness, when thou were far more lonely, more isolated, had more cause than any I ever imagined myself to have!”
“Nor can I rule,” Luna-below-the-throne said, as though she hadn’t heard Luna-upon-the-throne. “Equestria stumbles, slides into corruption. I try to fix everything…but it happens again. And again…I am a poor substitute for Celestia.”
Luna-upon-the-throne laughed now, not ironically, but as though her counterpart had told a true joke. She rose from the throne and descended halfway down the steps that lead to it, shaking her head. “My sister,” she said, “hath – has – created so many ministries and organizations, appointed so many officials and passed so much legislation, that it is a wonder that the whole thing has not collapsed under its own weight. It is as though…as though the entire government has gorged itself on the cakes that my sister loves so.”
Luna-below-the-throne stifled a laugh of her own at that image, as she considered her counterpart’s words. “Sub-Ministry of South-Central Weather?” she asked, as she tentatively placed a hoof on a step, then, at length, began her ascent towards the other Luna.
“Exactly,” Luna said. “I have begun trimming the fat, as best I can.”
Luna smiled softly. “Don’t…don’t trim out all of it. I feel I have invested too much power in too few ponies in my world.”
“I will bear that in mind,” Luna promised. The two stood now on equal footing, gazing at each other in silence for a long while. Beneath them, the stairs disappeared, the throne disappeared, and the two stood upon the surface of the Moon.
“I was trapped here once for a thousand years,” Luna said. “But that was by the Elements of Harmony, and then…I was alone.”
“And Antithesis is young,” Luna added. “And an imperfect, impetuous spellcaster. She would make some mistake in her spell. There is a way to escape.”
“We shall find it together,” Luna said.
“Yes,” Luna agreed.
---
Lulamoon didn’t have a memory of going to sleep, but she found herself waking up with a blanket over her and pillows beneath her. Opening her eyes, she found herself lying on her stomach, legs tucked beneath her and head resting on something soft and slightly furred and purple –
Lulamoon resisted the urge to yelp and leap away, instead taking in a deep breath and slowly pulling away from Twilight – or was it Sparkle? – who lay beside her, Trixie having lain her head across Twilight’s neck. On the other side of her, she found her counterpart, lying on her back, while the other purple unicorn lay beyond her. Each had their own blankets, but over them had been lain a fifth for additional warmth – the necessity of which reached Lulamoon when she realized just how cold it still was, and the quest for which had made her snuggle up to Twilight (or Sparkle) in her sleep. Her cape and hat lay nearby, as did Trixie’s and Sparkle’s. Glancing around, she found herself in a cave, which was illuminated by a low, purple light –
Lulamoon bit down on her hoof when she saw the Ursa Major, in order to prevent herself from screaming in fright. The Ursa Major had little interest in her, however, itself asleep, curled protectively around its cub.
Lulamoon heard a yawn, and saw Twilight (Sparkle?) stirring next to her, waking up herself. She glanced at Lulamoon, how close they were, and then her eyes narrowed slightly. “No jokes,” she insisted.
“What?” Lulamoon asked, blinking a few times in confusion, before the implication hit her. “Gah! No! That didn’t even – ”
The Ursa Major shifted slightly, huffing. Lulamoon again put a hoof to her mouth, quieting down as she stared. When the bear didn’t wake up, she continued in a lower voice. “That didn’t even cross my mind!”
The purple unicorn nodded, yawning again. She tapped a hoof to herself. “Sparkle, by the way,” she provided.
Lulamoon grimaced. “Lulamoon,” she identified in a low voice.
“I know,” she said, eyeing the Ursa Major. She looked to Lulamoon. “Ursas feed on starlight and solar winds, not ponies. And this one doesn’t think we’re a threat. As long as we don’t do anything to disturb her, we should be fine.”
Lulamoon blinked, then nodded, looking down. Sparkle eyed her. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“I’m fine,” Lulamoon said. “Why wouldn’t I be? All that’s happened is Princess Luna just got trapped in the Moon again. As well as Princess Celestia. Oh, and a whole new Princess Luna, too. Antithesis has so much magic to toss around because she’s an alicorn. And the Element of Magic. Which is still shattered. So I'm just peachy. How are you?”
Sparkle pressed her lips tightly together, tapping her front hooves a few times. “I figured out why Antithesis wants to kill us at the same time,” she said, and told Lulamoon her supposition.
Lulamoon thought it sounded patently ridiculous, but at the same time, she didn’t have anything to counter it. Instead, she stared at her own hooves as she considered what Sparkle was saying, and the implications. “Last, last, last resort,” she said.
“I agree,” Sparkle assured her. “I want to go home. But…but I can’t think of anything else that might work. Antithesis is just too strong.”
“She isn’t,” Lulamoon said, glancing at Sparkle. “Not really…she isn’t really casting any spells at all. Like what my clone here said,” she poked a hoof at Trixie, who snorted in her sleep and buried herself under the blanket, but didn’t wake up. “She’s just tears spell-shaped holes open. She wants a fireball, she tears open a fireball-shaped hole. She wants to enchant an Ursa Major, she tears open a dominate-shaped hole. Magic rushes in to fill the void, gives her the same effect, without her having to use any of her own magic – because she doesn’t have any. Her? Nothing. Magic is almost going out of its way to avoid touching Antithesis herself.”
Sparkle blinked at that, shaking her head. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Nothing about this makes any sense.”
“How can she be alive?”
“I don’t think she is,” Sparkle’s own voice answered, but from the other side of Lulamoon. She looked, and saw that Twilight had woken up, and was sitting on her own barrel. “I think she’s just…just exactly what she says she is. A pony-shaped thing wrapped around the remains of the Element of Magic.” She looked to the other two awake ponies. “She keeps saying she’s just bile and hate and anger. She won’t ever learn or grow, she doesn’t understand why she’s doing what she’s doing beyond that it makes her feel good, and she doesn’t want to understand. She just wants to hurt ponies, starting with us…but if we’re gone, she’ll just move on to her next victims.”
“So how do we stop her?” Lulamoon asked. “Without any of us killing ourselves, I mean. How do we stop something with basically limitless magic, that only wants to kill us?”
The three of them were silent, each trying to come up with something. “Have we tried just hitting her a lot?” Sparkle asked.
“She went hoof-to-hoof with my Princess Celestia and your Princess Luna,” Twilight noted. “I don’t think we can hit her hard enough.”
“And she has those nothing-pockets,” Sparkle said, sighing. “Ugh, how do you deal with something that’s just a hole…”
“Fill the hole,” Lulamoon said absentmindedly, though she stopped after saying it and thought about what she’d said. “Fill the hole! That’s it!” She looked between Twilight and Sparkle. “Magic is avoiding her. Why? Maybe it’s because she’s keeping it away. If all her spellcasting is based on just tearing spell-shaped holes in the world and magic rushing in to fill it…maybe the only reason she exists is because there hasn’t been any magic rushing to fill her in!”
Sparkle thought. “Maybe,” she said. “Without knowing how she even exists in the first place, we can’t be sure…but it’s better than nothing.” She looked to Lulamoon. “So…so, we just have to get close to her and just start dumping magic at her until she’s, what, just sort of negated?”
“That sounds like it could backfire pretty badly,” Twilight said, shaking her head. “And something just seems…seems wrong about it. Like we’re missing something important.”
“Maybe it's a couple of alicorns for making sure day and night happen?” Lulamoon asked. “Unless there’s somepony here who could take over?”
Sparkle shook her head. “There’s no Cavallia in this world, and Twilight’s never heard of Cadenza.”
“Right,” Lulamoon said. “We’re on a time limit now, until this world freezes without the Sun. And we can’t keep running away. We have to take the fight to Antithesis, challenge her on our terms, surprise her for a change.”
Twilight bit her lip, before nodding. “Okay,” she said, looking down at Trixie’s sleeping form. She nudged her a few times with a hoof, trying to wake her. The only response was Trixie burying herself even deeper in the blankets and mumbling “cinq minutes…”
“Maybe leave her,” Lulamoon suggested. Twilight and Sparkle glared at her, and she held up her hooves defensively. “I mean it in a good way! She’s not as good a spellcaster as us three, this really isn’t her fight, and I don’t want to see her hurt! I don’t think she could do much to help – ”
Lulamoon was interrupted not by either of the purple unicorns, but by Trixie, who sat up suddenly, pulling her hat and cape on from where they were laying and throwing them on dramatically. “That’s what you think!” She exclaimed, suddenly wide-eyed and awake.
The Ursa Major again huffed in its sleep, and Trixie eeped and ducked down low. When the Star Beast didn’t do anything other than twitch its nose, she stood again, one hoof in the air. “You forget,” she said, albeit in a low voice, “that Trixie’s magic has something yours does not: style!”
Lulamoon blinked, wondering if she had ever woken up so suddenly and easily as Trixie just had. “I have style,” she said defensively. Sparkle and Twilight also seemed off-put by being told that they lacked style.
Trixie offered a simple smile, and patted her counterpart on the head. “Trixie is sure that you are quite the hobbyist,” she said, “but Trixie is a professional magician. Misdirection is Trixie’s life. She has been listening to you three talking – incessantly – while she was trying to sleep – honestly it was extraordinarily rude – and has come up with the perfect plan to amaze, astound, befuddle, and bedazzle Antithesis, leaving her quite vulnerable to our efforts to fill her with magic until she explodes!”
The other three unicorns all blinked at Trixie’s rather vulgar description of what they were planning on doing. “Ew,” Twilight finally put forward.
“I can’t believe I’m going to say this…” Sparkle said, sighing, “but…what’s the plan?”
---
Antithesis woke up suddenly, and was instantly on her hooves, scrambling around, wings beating rapidly and horn glowing brightly to banish the darkness she was surrounded by. She was hyperventilating, sweating, ears swiveling.
She was right: blacking out was a singularly unpleasant experience. It was rather like not existing for a time, or what she imagined not existing to be, if she had any recollection of what it had been like before she had been at all. She had grown rather fond of being, and did not want it to end.
An image of one of the Twilights, the one with the brown cape, popped into her head. She was the one who had teleported her – who had made her sail down and hit her head and get a mouthful of dirt and muck, who had reduced her to her present state, covered in grime and dead leaves. Oh, the Princesses Luna and Celestia had done their part, too. Antithesis’ whole body ached. But the Princesses and the sound beating she had taken from were was such a secondary thing next to the knowledge that it had been one of the Twilights who had actually driven her to unconsciousness.
Antithesis resolved to never sleep again, no matter what, even as she took to the sky, trying to get her bearings, head whipping around and looking for landmarks. Fortunately, the site where the battle with the Ursa Major had taken place was not hard to find, and in a moment, she was off.
“I was just trying to have a good time,” she said as she reached a broad swath of forest that had been completely leveled. She alighted atop a fallen tree, horn still glowing bright as she attempted to look around and see if she could find her quarry. “Just trying to enjoy myself. But no, you have to all make it so difficult!”
Antithesis looked around, stowing her wings – alicorn or no, she found it easier to keep track of four limbs rather than six. Unfortunately, she had no idea what she was looking for – in the mess the Ursa Major had created, there was no sign of any hoof-prints. She could have given herself the nose of a bloodhound, but she didn’t know what the Twilights or Trixies smelled like. And try though she had, Luna and Celestia had come along before she could have had any real fun with her victims and made them bleed, so there was no blood to follow, either.
Antithesis was just about to scream in frustration when there was a flash of multicolored light and the sound of a distant, small explosion from behind her. Turning quickly, she saw the remains of a fireworks going off – then as she watched, a second, then a third, all launching straight into the sky, maybe a mile distant
“Come one!” A voice shouted, probably meant to be loud, but from this distance it was rather faint, though just inside Antithesis’ range of hearing. “Come all! Come and see the greatest show in all of Equestria!”
Antithesis blinked a few times. That was Trixie’s voice. Was she – what was she doing? Why was she setting off fireworks? Was it some kind of trap –
“Unless you’re scared to be finished off, Antithesis!” Trixie’s voice followed up.
“OH I AM GOING TO KILL YOU!” Antithesis roared, unveiling her wings once more and shooting off towards the fireworks, seeing nothing but red.