Luna woke with a start. It wasn't a loud noise that woke her. In fact, it was the opposite—the air was filled with a grotesque silence. Usually some slight commotion was audible from anywhere in the house, but today, nothing. She could only make out vague, quiet mumbling from outside.
She got up, which revealed how dizzy she was. She stumbled into a wall. She felt ill in some utterly unnatural way. It was whatever she had been served the previous night, she was sure of it. She had to ask someone what it was, that much was certain. It wasn't any normal food. It felt like it was infecting every fiber of her being, and she couldn't stop thinking of it. It was so red, like it was bleeding and still alive.
It could have been meat, but she doubted even that could affect her so deeply. Everything, literally everything felt different somehow. In searching for a way to describe it, she realized everything seemed sharper now. She could see things she could never before, remember things that were previously buried in the back of her mind, and every motion now felt effortless and strong. It was similar to what she felt during the kidnapping, just multiplied a millionfold.
Suddenly, Luna realized her leaning on the wall was causing it to buckle under the pressure and jumped away from it. She moved so quickly she never even noticed when she was in midair, and had to look around to confirm someone hadn't teleported her. Then she realized she was standing and her sense of balance had returned. Somehow, in that short span of time, she had become reaccustomed to standing.
This only strengthened her resolve to find out what was happening to her, so she began to walk out of her room. This was, as she expected, more difficult than usual. Her body appeared to be improving faster than her mind could comprehend it, and she felt she had to restrain herself with each step to avoid taking one large one and crashing through the door. Because of that, reaching it took an inordinate amount of time. She wasn't sure if this was because she was walking slowly, or because her senses had been so fine tuned time appeared to pass slower.
Eventually, she reached the door, a moment she was dreading. She was afraid that with a single push of her hoof it would come crashing down. Yes, that would enable her to exit her room, but the power she was feeling scared her. Luckily, she didn't have to, because the door, suddenly surrounded in a blue aura, opened on its own. Luna put herself on guard.
"Who's there!?" she yelled, then gasped. Her voice came out far louder than she had intended, and it somehow sounded different too. Deeper. More authorial. She tried to ignore it and move on, but she couldn't. As soon as she took another breath, the new location pushed her into sensory overload.
The first thing she noticed was the smell. She could tell from it that no one was in the house. This was not entirely surprising from the silence, but still disconcerting she could smell that much. When more of the smell reached her nose, she realized that wasn't completely accurate—nothing alive was in the house. It was faint, but the stench of death hung in the air. With it was the smell of smoke. Something had been burning, but wasn't any longer.
Next was the noise. Even in the brief time she had been awake her hearing had improved slightly, and the mumbling outside, which before she could barely understand at all, began to become comprehensible. At the moment, the overload made it difficult to understand anything, but if her sense of smell was any indication, her mind would soon evolve to compensate. Right now all she could pick up were random words like "monster," "explosion," "end," which admittedly did not fill her with much confidence.
Then sight. This, luckily, did not feel as different as the other senses, and visually, aside from being able to make out each individual dust granule, the house looked the same as usual. Just empty.
Luna started walking around. She was beginning to become at least comfortable enough with her body to move around. Upon closer examination, the ability to see the distribution of dust particles, which at first seemed like a novelty, proved useful. She noticed they had been displaced strongly by widely spaced footprints. She deduced from this the house staff had run away, as fast as their legs would carry them. Whatever had attacked the house, which seemed like the most likely explanation now, must have been so horrifyingly powerful they had no choice but to run.
She began to track their footprints when she remembered her original goal—to find Celestia or her parents and ask what happened last night. As she ascended the stairs she tried her best to keep focused. Her mind had not yet evolved to take in all this data, and it was easy to become distracted.
Then she realized with some confusion and horror just how little it seemed to bother her now that her body and mind were rapidly changing into something else, into something she knew nothing about and doubted anyone else did. She remembered being horrified at her changes just minutes earlier, but now she could only call forth those feelings as memories. Now it seemed only a fact of life.
Without noticing, she had reached her parent's room. Personally, she had wanted to reach Celestia's first, but she doubted she could stay focused long enough to find it in this state. She mustered up as much weakness as she could into her hooves and knocked on the door. "Hello? Is anyone there?"
She was reasonably sure from the scent no one was, but she hoped she was wrong. She wasn't. No one responded. Not only that, the more the door got pushed open by her knocking, the more she realized that the faint scent of death was emanating from this room, and the only reason it was faint was the door. She braced herself. She supposed it was naïve to think her parents had been spared in an attack that scared away the entire house staff and had the entire town nearly silent in terror, but she could hope. She opened the door. Immediately the stench overpowered her, and she tried to not examine its intricacies. There was one corner to round before she could reach her parent's bedroom. She rounded it slowly.
Not even the scent could prepare her for the sight. She figured its strength was due to her amplified senses, but she was wrong. The room was indeed in such a state to reek that much. Almost every inch of it was caked in blood. Hardly anything recognizable from her parents remained. She didn't know a lot about anatomy, but she knew enough to know pieces were missing, presumably eaten. Its brutality reminded her of the reports of the scenes the serial killer left, but it lacked the sometimes artful simplicity of their crimes. This was brutal, animalistic, messy. No wonder the house staff had run. Whatever did this had raw power beyond the darkest corners of Luna's imagination. Only two details caught Luna's eye as being controlled, and unfortunately, the message those details spelled out made the situation infinitely more complicated and hopeless.
One, a sentence was spelled out in the curtains with her parent's blood. "Come with me, Luna."
Two, a hole had been blasted in the wall. It had been carefully framed in a way to make the Royal Castle the only thing visible.
Luna recognized the handwriting immediately.
Celestia.
She did this.
She did all of this.
She changed Luna, killed her parents, and now had her sights set on the castle.
Luna extended her wings. She no longer bothered to restrain her now freakishly powerful muscles, and thus the wind raised by this sent the walls shaking. She didn't care anymore. Stopping Celestia was now her only objective, and she was sure she would need all her strength to do so. She flew out through the whole towards the castle at top speed, the ground an incomprehensible blur. She could hear townspeople scream in the distance. Someone yelled, "It's another one!" but she dismissed it.
When she reached the castle, she briefly wondered how she would find Celestia, but quickly noticed a large, obvious hole blasted into the roof of the main wing. Of course. Celestia was leading her here. She rushed down and landed in the room with a deafening thud that sent shockwaves through a large portion of the castle. She looked up.
In the corner was a large section of the royal family, huddled together. Next to them were the corpses of the king and queen, cleanly split in two. Around them were the corpses of various soldiers, treated with much less respect.
The culprit, Celestia, was proudly sitting on the throne. Whatever grotesque transformation she had been undergoing the day before was nearing its completion. She was significantly larger. Her poise was tall, proud, and unnaturally still. Her horn was thinner, longer, and… she had wings. Huge, powerful wings, carefully extended just enough to reveal their massive size. Her eyes looked down at Luna, amused but full of contempt. That stare alone was so belittling, so complete in its disdain for life, it could have robbed the strongest knight of their confidence. Unfortunately, it was not the worst part.
Her hair. Her hair, which previously filled Luna with just a vague sense of nausea and discomfort, was now something strange and disturbing. It did not move in perspective. From every angle it appeared exactly the same, except not, because at the same time it never stayed still, not even when Celestia did. It colors had been altered, and now, instead of being Celestia's normal pink, her hair was indiscriminately filled with every color from this world's color spectrum and possibly a couple other's. It was only through her vastly improved vision that Luna began to see a glimmer of order in the abomination, but even then she could just barely comprehend the phenomenon, and for a normal pony it must have been the first step to madness and despair.
Celestia opened her mouth.
"Do you think I should call myself Queen Celestia? Or Princess? I can't decide," she said.
Luna didn't respond.
"I think I'll go with Princess." Celestia smiled. "It sounds less intimidating."
She was barely recognizable. Only with great focus could Luna find any similarities between this and the voice of the friend she once knew. It was deeper, older, and somehow laced with the same unnatural qualities her body now had. But the intonation was the most different. Usually she talked quite fast, as if there was never enough time to say everything she wanted to, but now she moved slowly, letting each word linger in the air, as if time was no longer an object.
"Did you… did you do all this!?"
"Yes."
"Why!? Why!?" Luna screamed, ignoring the unnatural eardrum ripping volume of her own voice. "Why would you kill my parents!? They took care of you! And now you want the throne!? WHY!?"
"It's simple," Celestia said. "I found out what my parents were doing."
Luna stopped.
"They predicted you would try to hide their work from me, so they installed a secret compartment into that chest that held all their research." Celestia smiled. "Don't you want to know what they were doing?"
"I know what they were doing! You're not answering me!" Luna yelled.
"Oh," Celestia said, smiling wider yet harsher, "so you were hiding that from me."
"Can you blame us?" Luna looked around at the rubble. "Look at what they were working for!"
"They were working for peace," Celestia said. "Peace of unprecedented length and prosperity. But you can't create anything without destroying. It's all part of the cycle. Even your father built his success on the back of others."
"Don't you dare talk about my parents!" Luna screamed. "You murdered them in cold blood!"
"They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time," Celestia said. "It was… unintentional. I was planning on giving them a seat right next to us at the top of our new empire." Her eyes widened in some sick state of arousal. "We would all rule together as one… happy family."
"You… bastard…" Luna seethed. "You can't even see it's all for nothing!? Do you think you can just get away with killing the king and queen!? Not to mention all those other people! As soon as word of this gets out, you're going to have the entire army of this country and every one of its allies after you! And you're just sitting here laughing!"
Celestia was utterly unfazed. "If word gets out," she said. "Besides, the idea of an army coming after me is hilarious. Just watch." She looked at a soldier huddling in the corner. "You. Come here."
He hesitated.
"Now."
He rushed over.
Celestia craned her neck down to his level. "Now, take that sharp sword of yours and slash my neck clean through. Quickly now."
He looked upon her in confusion. "Wha… but…"
"Do it. You know how easily I can kill you." She breathed inward, reveling in the possibility. "It will be like snapping a twig. Just like the king."
That inspired the guard to some level of confidence, and in his anger, he slashed her head clean off, just like she instructed. It rolled to Luna, who looked at it in shock.
Then the guard turned on her, his sword shaking. "Now for you," he said.
"What?"
"You're just like her."
Before Luna could interpret that, a blast of magic hit the guard and he collapsed to the ground in a lifeless heap.
"Now, I didn't say anything about that," Celestia's disembodied head said. Her decapitated body moved over, and the neck bent down to reattach itself to her head. Tendons, skin, and then fur slowly formed to bridge the gap, and when it was done, Celestia leaned back and cracked her neck like nothing happened.
"Do you see?" Celestia said. "I can't die. I can never die. That," she leaned closer to Luna, "is the whole point of this transformation. Everything else, the strength, the wings, the power… is just a side effect."
Luna was utterly lost for words. She didn't know what to do. If Celestia was right, she could take command of this country, and, in all possibility, the world. But what kind of horrifying kingdom would she create? Luna didn't want to think about it. She would rather die than submit to Celestia's now deranged mind. Someone had to stop her. There had to be some weakness to her transformation. Everyone died, no matter what. And Luna, with her unusual strength, felt she had an unusual advantage. She lunged at Celestia at rocket speed, hoping to at least disorient her with a blow no normal pony would ever be able to land.
It didn't.
Celestia sent her careening into the opposite wall with the flick of just one wing. Luna was left pathetically gasping for air. The blow hit her with more force than she thought any one creature could muster, and it must have broken her entire ribcage. The force of hitting the wall, which then collapsed on top of her, took care of the rest of her body. Pain enveloped everything, and she knew this was it.
Luna knew it was pointless, but before she died, she had to ask again. Through the blood, she managed to get out, "Why…? I thought… we were… friends…"
Celestia slowly walked over to Luna. Her smile was even more sickeningly wide than before. Her eyes were filled with ecstasy. She had been waiting for this moment, it was clear. Luna was sure Celestia would continue to gloat in front of her, and felt utterly pathetic. She wished desperately that she could go any way but this.
Celestia, unfortunately, surprised her.
"Luna," Celestia said, "you're still alive." She paused. "Why do you think that is?"
Luna looked down.
Her wounds were slowly repairing themselves.
It dawned on her.
Celestia's strange behavior. A suitable mate. The red meat. Luna being sick. Her new strength. The door opening on its own. The blue aura. Her new senses. Her new body. The person that screamed, "It's another one!"
Celestia had done to Luna exactly what she had done to herself.
And in that moment Luna knew that she would never die, that her and Celestia would live together for all eternity, that nothing would stop Celestia, and it would only be a matter of time before her mind would snap under the rigors of that insanity and would become just like Celestia.
Luna, with more certainty than she had mustered in her entire life, knew she never wanted that, and ran. Ran as far as she could, as fast as she could, flew up high into the stratosphere, and rocketed down. She could feel the reentry burning her up, and she had hope. Hope that she, unlike Celestia, wasn't completely changed, and could still die. Hope that Celestia would find the same solace.
Hope that in the smoldering crater she left behind, slowly melted into desperate tears. For a while, she didn't even have a body. It was disintegrated, and she was just a floating mind. She could almost feel death's embrace. Almost. Immediately afterwards she got pulled back and her body reconstructed itself from scratch. First the bones. Then the blood. Muscles. Skin. Fur. Hair. It was obvious then there was no escape.
Celestia landed next to her.
"Do you see it now?" Celestia said. "That this was your destiny?"
Luna could do nothing but cry. Celestia edged closer and covered her with one of her wings.
"There… it's okay…" Celestia said, gently patting her. "Just let it out…"
She wondered whether to tell Luna about the hunger.
No, she figured. It would be more fun that way.