Hidden deep inside the darkness of the cave did the blue eyes of the figure opened themselves again before it let out a mighty roar of pure hatred and primal power. Soon enough it was followed up by the clattering of hooves that echoed through the cavern and the being of eternal darkness spread her wings. Which on their turn revealed an even more terrifying shadow against the back wall.
“The gates of darkness are open... Celestia will pay tonight. And the night, will last forever!” it spoke in the female voice after which a grin of pure evil took form below her muzzle. A grin that showed the fangs and ragged teeth it had and then it was off. And then it just rocketed off into the darkness of night with one destination in her mind. The being flew even faster than the fasted pegasus alive and wherever she went there always was a trail of purple mist left her tail and mane.
---
Back in the desert itself was Daring still standing in front of the boiling darkness. Though her ears caught another sound in the skies. A sound that came closer with each passing second. Within a split second had the pegasus turned herself around. She took out her whip while her eyes began to watch the skies above her for anything that would be heading her way.
Finally it came into her sight, the creature that emerged from the darkness, the Empress of the Night herself had arrived. The figure dropped herself in the sand which send it sky high before dropping down again. There she stood, the black coated alicorn with the misty mane and tail of deep purple. Its blue eyes falling upon Daring and its expression turned like snow before the sun into an angry one. “You are not Celestia nor any of her servants! What is your purpose here?” it growled.
“My purpose, is to retrieve the Sun-piece,” Daring tried to reply as brave as she could.
“Do you not know who I am, foal? Do you not know the history of the Sun-piece?” the being replied to her with a menacing grin. Everything was falling into their rightful places.
“I know you, Nightmare Moon. And I do know the history of the Piece. And I am going to get it for those two stallions,” countered Daring Do with a massive smirk.
The creature of darkness began to chuckle deeply in herself. She would have tucked her wings back against her body again. Her tone suddenly changed from its dark and evil one into a quite normal one. “Right you are... Go ahead, grab it. The entrance is free for you to use,” Moon spoke before the two stallions appeared from behind her and calmly took their position next to her.
Daring her eyes opened themselves in utter confusion upon seeing them again as she stumbled over her words. “What? Y-You, two!?”
Nightmare chuckled lightly at the reaction. Her tone had changed into a rather joyful one. “I planned it all along, these two are nothing but my servants. Worthless puppets that are extensions of myself so to speak. I told them to find somepony who could help me to retrieve the Piece. I do admit, I didn’t know who they had found. Though I thought that ghost in the Everfree would have killed you there.” Her eyebrow rose at the mentioning of the spirit, wondering just how she got passed it.
“Ha! There is more needed than a ghost to get rid of me,” Daring replied in a teasing tone against the entity. Something she shouldn't have done to begin with.
The two stallion began to dissolve into the thin air and they entered the body of Nightmare herself. The dark coated alicorn consumed them with a great pleasure before she rested her eyes back on the daring pegasus. “Now, let me enter my temple so I can succeed on what I failed so long ago!” she spoke regal but her undertone had returned to the dark one.
“And letting you turn Equestria into a land of eternal darkness, over my dead body!” Daring replied as she readied her whip to go into the confrontation against her.
“This shall be easy,” Nightmare replied up under a grin. She then assumed a charging stance.
The two beings stood ready to face off against each other in a bloody battle in the sands. Nightmare began to charge up her horn and fired bolts of dark magic towards Daring who avoided them like they were nothing. The pegasus gave a couple heavy lashes with her whip. Lashes that caused Nightmare to wince a couple times in pain before letting her eyes fell on her chest. A small stream of black blood left through the open wound as her gaze turned back to Daring and she huffed with every exhale. “You will pay for that, you foal!” she yelled in utter rage.
“Bring it on then!” Daring replied in the same tone while leashing a couple more times with her whip, sending the sonic booms through the air. “All bark, but no bite, are you?!”
“You think you can scare me like that?” Nightmare spoke before she released even more beams of magic into the surrounding. As quick as she was on her hooves, Daring almost danced around over the cold sand as she avoided the blasts. But every blast evaded caused the patience of the alicorn to be shorter. She tried everything she had in her package. Even hoof to hoof combat.
Her hooves made a couple good hits on the body of the Pegasus but she returned the punches and kicks just as hard. In a hopeful attempt to get away from the being of darkness, Daring took a leap into the air while spreading her wings. She hovered for some yards before tucking her wings back in and landing in the sand where she quickly readied herself for another round. But the fight had been exhausting her deeply, Nightmare allowed her eyes to fall upon the panting Pegasus who just couldn't give up. “Come on then,” she managed to speak under her breath.
“Hmhmhm, with pleasure,” replied Nightmare with a grin. “You cannot finish me, you are far too weak to defeat an Empress! Step aside and let me into the temple, and I might spare your life.”
“Might? Then, I take, my chances...” Daring said to her. Moments later had she lashed out with her whip multiple times again. Some of them hit nothing, whereas some hit her opponent on the forelegs and chest. Resulting in her wincing deeply in pain from the sharp cuts.
“I have had enough of you little foal!” Nightmare yelled while she guarded herself with her wings. But Daring was blinded by rage and exhaustion. She would have kept on lashing into the wings. She would send cuts all over them. They began to bleed fast enough, making her wince a bit.
Daring stopped for a minute and at this the alicorn removed her wing to the side. Her horn coated itself once again the magical aura as she began to snicker like the devil she was. Soon after it did a sharp pain began to race through the very heart of Daring. It felt like a needle and thread were jammed into each side of her heart and starting to tear it apart like it was nothing, but very slowly.
With the pain that was racing through her chest did the pegasus drop herself to the ground and simply reached for it while she tried to hold in her screams. But many tears rolled down her cheeks with the alicorn laughing darkly. “The Weaving of the Heart, something I should have done a long time ago on you, little foal.” She walked up to Daring in order to make the pain even worse.
But the mare didn't want to die here and certainly not by her hooves. Painfully and unable to hold her screams of agony, she tried to reach the boiling gate. Much to her own luck had Nightmare closed her eyes while listening to the agony of Daring. “Music in my ears,” she spoke to herself as the pegasus almost had reached the entrance. She lifted a hoof towards the boiling darkness with care.
The very second she placed her hoof on it, Daring was sucked into the darkness of it under a loud slurping sound which caught the attention of Nightmare. Her eyes opened themselves again and turned over to the entrance, only to see the boiling darkness fading away. “What!? No!” In one last hope to reopen the gates, she called upon most of her magic and released it into whatever was left, but nothing worked and soon enough, there was nothing left of the entrance.
“I will get that foal!” she spoke in utter rage while starting to think about a way to open her temple again. “Just mark my words on the matter. I will get you for that, I will get what is mine!”
---
Daring found herself lying face flat against the stone floor. The pain in her heart was gone and she felt her strength returning in her body. Carefully raising herself back up on her hooves, her eyes watched the room she was in now. This room, was the very room she saw in her vision. There was no more doubt now, for Daring Do had entered the very temple of the sun piece. In the very middle of the room it could be seen, a big piece of dark stone that was boiling in a black, tar like substance. Fears crawled up on her for she was now standing eye in eye with the very thing she was sent out on to find. “The... The... Sun... Piece,” she said while shivering in utter fright.
With each step she took more towards it, there was a horrible image that popped up in her head. Imagines of death, destruction, forgotten pasts and chaos all started to haunt her. “I, I can’t... It is not worth it,” spoke Daring while she shook her head deep. She tried to get her gaze off from the rock. Her eyes traveled further around the room where they saw many scrolls and painting. On many of the painting Nightmare Moon could be seen posing on many different thrones like she was ruling the land. “Who made these in the first place?”
---
Back outside in the sands was the entity still trying to find a way to get the open the entrance. “I will get that little foal and make the world mine as it should have been!” In her horn she gathered every single ounce of dark magic she had in her, something she did five hundred years ago as well and under a loud roar released it all upon the gate, hoping it would open up for her. A small cluster of darkness emerged as her eyes grew in excitement. “Yes..! Yes..!” she spoke with a joyful voice. Time didn't had to progress much longer before the entrance was filled with the boiling darkness again.
Being pleased with the result, Nightmare began to walk over towards it with a regal pacing and was willing to let herself become consumed by the boiling blackness.
But something inside of it, made her stop. She was prohibited from gaining access to what she had created ever so long again. Many more attempts would follow in the hope she could enter, but everything failed.
“What sort of treason is this!?” she turned around facing the desert and lifted off the ground releasing the loudest roar to date and she spoke furiously. “Celestia, you will pay for this!”
---
Inside the temple had Daring been looking through most of the documents and she was simply ready to leave the place, just get out and away. For she had been discovering many things about the piece that were better be hidden away from any single soul. She was reading through one of the many scrolls that made her cringe even more. “Once the piece is placed back into the sun, the corruption will keep move on. After months of study, I've finally discovered that.”
She took another scroll and began to read that one out loud as well. “Too much time, I have spent down here, she warned me about the dangers of the Dark Arts. But I was foolish enough not to listen, I do not know how much time I have left, before it fully consumes me, before I am part of, it.”
Daring gazed upon the scrolls and looked up the dates of writing, only to make yet another terribly discovery. “Not even a year between them, what happened to the poor soul that wrote them to begin with?” She ventured a little bit more around. She tried to dispatch of the horrible images in her mind and picked up another scroll. A scroll that was covered in dried up blood. Daring broke the seal open and she began to read once again out loud. Fearing what was inside of it.
“This will be my final report. I shall tell on this very paper that what I have discovered and its history in the two years I have been working on this, piece of the sun. That is become corrupted by the most powerful Dark Art, the Arts that Nightmare Moon studies and that the sun itself, cast this piece into our land in order to repair itself, to uncorrupt itself. However, the impact wiped away an entire city and made everypony go crazy that came near it. This temple was built around it in order of Celestia and I was placed in charge of it, to make sure nopony would enter it. It was I who placed a spell on the entrance to make sure she wouldn't get in. I also discovered, that the longer one stay in its presence, the heavier the images get and the more horrible their meaning becomes. The power this Piece houses, is unmatched and only Nightmare can control it, the walls are thick enough to stop any magic radiation coming from it so nopony can become corrupted due to it. I need to speak a spell on my own, to clean my mind from the corruption every day. But unfortunately for me, it is too late to return to the world. I will sacrifice myself in order to make sure this stays hidden. If anypony by dumb luck find this, you know what happened to me now. I gave up my body and my soul now rests into the afterlife.
-Starswirl the Bearded.”
The explorer blinked a couple times in an attempt to see if she had been reading things correctly. “That poor soul, was Starswirl himself!?” Her eyes fell upon the date of the last scroll and she recalled the other two she had been reading. But her memory wasn't the most clear one at the moment. She needed some physical evidence to see what the dates were.
While she walked back to the other scrolls, there were many light screams that popped up in her head together with the images. In another attempt to just dispatch herself off of them, she stood still the very second she found the other scrolls and another horrible revelation had been made. “Not even one month after this one, the last one was made!” she exclaimed to herself.
Daring fold up the last document and hid it inside of a pocket within her vest. The pegasus had seen more than enough of the place as a whole and was even regretting to have introduced herself to the shady figures back in the bar. She galloped back over to the spot where she originally had landed. The images became only worse with every step she took. But then they were strong enough to have put her further on the edge of insanity.
The only bright side happened to be that Nightmare had opened the portal again and that created an exit for Daring to use. One she more than happy to take without a question even though she knew what she would find on the other side of it. Finding her death at the hoof of the entity of hatred was a lot better than the cursed item that laid inside of the tomb.