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// Prologue: Celestia's Sorrow 
// Story: The Alicorn Sanctuary 
// by Tornadopelt 
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Prologue: Celestia's Sorrow

Celestia sat on her personal balcony and took off her crown. She stared into the small purple gem, hoping to find answers there. It has been ten thousand years since I banished you to the moon, Luna. The spell was supposed to wear off after one thousand. At this point I can only guess that something went horribly wrong. I know now you aren't coming back, it has been too long. The distance between us too great.

I'm so tired, so very tired... Celestia thought, holding her crown in her hooves, her head downcast. I am the last of my kind. Not through some horrific accident or horrible disease; but because of my actions, mine and mine alone. She looked up into the cloudless night sky, agony written on every feature of her face. My co-ruler, my sister, my friend. It's nights like these that make me long for your company, and hate myself for my actions. Mother and Father told me about the only plague that we should fear, but I didn't believe them. They told me about the Nightmare, the only sickness we cannot defeat, one of the mind. Both of them fell victim to the Nightmare, almost simultaneously. That's when I believed them. If I had only listened to them in the first place then I might have saved them.

Although, even after I tore our parent's souls from their bodies when I attempted to save them with the Elements, I still thought it wouldn't happen to us. You were there for me, to keep me sane. You helped me through the guilt. I thought we would be together forever, that the Nightmare had died with our parents. How wrong I was.

Celestia smiled softly. We were invincible, you and I. Ruling for thousands of years, fighting enemy after enemy. That was the good life. I even managed to forget I had killed our parents, such was my joy in our time together. Rebellions were crushed and harmony was enforced.  You know as well as I how our ponies were at that time, most still wanted to be divided among species.You tried to tell me about how harmony could not be forced upon the ponies. But I wouldn't listen. We almost died in the assassination attempts until I finally realized what you had been telling me all along. Ponies must be herded in the right direction, not enslaved and forced into what we desire, even if it is the correct course of action. You said we had to be more subtle; "Even though we are doing the right thing, we are doing it the wrong way," you said.

You were right, of course. I finally started listening to you and before the generation was out, the riots, terrorists, insurgents, and anti-crown campaigns died down from a roaring river to a quiet murmur. Celestia chuckled quietly. It was still many lifetimes before our nicknames were forgotten though: Princess Molestia and her sister, The Angry One.

They were right you know, you were angry constantly, at everything and everypony. It was probably having to deal with 'Molestia' all the time. She was a real bitch. I slept with more stallions than I would care to count while going through that phase. I think that every stallion of those generations 'got his chance' with me, to your disapproval. A few mares as well, to your intense disapproval. But you were there for me even though you hated what I was doing and brought me back to myself. A debt which I will never repay.

In hindsight it is easy to see, but it doesn't matter now. It is much too late for you. Celestia focused on a distant star as tears leaked from her eyes. Something happened to you that I didn't have an explanation for. You grew distant, cold. Your eyes burned with inner hatred. You started contradicting things you said not two hundred years before. You began to glare lustfully at the sun. You started... doing things to ponies in their dreams. It was confusing, I was confused. When you finally confronted me I didn't know what was happening. My little sister, turned against me? It didn't make any sense until I remembered the Nightmare, the one curse of the alicorns.

Almost too late I summoned the Elements of Harmony, the only way to defeat the Nightmare. The Elements are a powerful but unpredictable weapon, I was just trying to banish the Nightmare, not you as well. I rushed the spell in my haste and fear, causing horrible, unalterable side affects.

More tears poured down her face as she continued her silent monologue. When I opened my eyes, you were gone, gone forever. I still had hope, however, I knew it might be possible that you could return. Who do you think spread the rumors and wrote the prophesies? I waited for so long, hoping against the odds. Each second felt like an eternity without you, but I waited and never gave up hope. I was so very lonely, I became a shell of my former self and made another dire mistake. After seven hundred years of pain and loneliness I created Princess Mi Amore Cadenza.

I thought Cadance was my greatest achievement, but I was wrong. So very wrong. I created her using a forbidden spell on Mother's lock of mane that I always kept in a small locket. Cadance was there, helping me get through the pain when your thousand years came and went and you still hadn't returned. I would have killed myself with grief if she hadn't been there. It didn't last long though. She barely made it to five hundred before the Nightmare took her.

Celestia shook her head sadly. It was hardly noticeable at first, just a slip of the tongue or a flash of the eyes. But eventually I began to suspect, I watched her more closely, and guess what? Two years later I discovered her sneaking out of the palace one night and decided to follow her. I followed her to an orphanage and found her murdering foals in their sleep. She was stroking their dead bodies and playing with the gore. With horrified tears in my eyes I stuck her down, her coat more red than pink. Needless to say I remembered why the cloning spell was forbidden. She smiled weakly and sadly for a second before returning her face to its agonized state. I still have no idea how many she killed, but their dying gurgles have been with me to this day.

Celestia's body shook with silent sobs as she continued. I retreated into myself for seven thousand years. The pain of losing two sisters in a few hundred years was almost too much to bear. I didn't speak unless to command, yelled at everypony, and tortured the criminals with cruel and unusual punishment. I will never forget Jade Stone, a green earth pony. I burned out both his eyes then ordered his fiancee to break his leg for stealing a bushel of apples, even after he offered to pay for it. It was either that or I said I would kill them both, and I don't doubt that I would have done it. His fiancee did the deed, sobbing uncontrollably, while Jade offered words of comfort even as she brought down her hoof. That was a dark and difficult time for me and Equestria. I judged the guilty and the innocent alike with an iron hoof, I had no mercy. How could I when fate had been so cruel to me?

Then it happened, the feeling shocked me right out of my self-pity. I felt the ice cold claws of the Nightmare on my soul. Like a spear it wormed its way closer into the inner depths of my mind. I summoned the Elements and tried to destroy the Nightmare before it overtook me. I had mixed results, the Elements slowed the transformation but made it permanent. Unrelenting and unavoidable, everything that I am slowly being changed and replaced by something else. Something that is me but not, evil yet sane, and something that I cannot control. I wonder if you felt it. Did you? I don't think you did, it was too quick for you and Cadance. It came and destroyed you both, while I stood and watched, helpless to do anything but try and save your broken souls. A deed which I failed miserably at. Fate is just cruel like that, isn't it?

My time is now up though, two thousand years I have been fighting it. But it has been slowly working its way into my soul, chilling me from the inside out, changing me. I can hardly recognize myself now, and the only appearance of your sister that is left is the physical, my mind is almost gone at this point. The one thing keeping the Nightmare at bay is the Elements, but they won't last forever. I have been spending the last thousand years getting our country's affairs in order. I have left books upon books of information on how to run Equestria.

I retaught them how to raise and lower the celestial bodies and how to measure the days. I told them that they would only have to do it if I am worn out from a strenuous day, little do they know how tired I really am, the weight of the world on my back. I have been dropping hints that I won't be here forever, and that my assistants should take more interest in the proceedings of the state. However, my warnings fall on deaf ears. I guess after living to the ripe old age of twenty thousand makes ponies not take your death warnings seriously, they just laugh and say how funny I am. How they will miss me, I wonder?

I could go on talking like this for hours, confessing my mistakes. My failures. Trying to rationalize my life, my long life filled with nothing but loss. We had our good times and the bad, but the bad far outweigh the good. Such is my life. But I must hurry now, for I fear I can't hold on much longer. It is getting close, in another couple of years I will be just like you and Cadance. In another couple of days I fear I won't even be able to do what needs to be done, such is the Nightmare's hold on me. So I will do it tonight, before I can no more.

This is for the best, if I am consumed by the Nightmare than all hope is lost for Equestria. I can only imagine the things I would do, and I have no shame in admitting they frighten me. I have decided to take the coward's way out, I can only hope history will be a kind judge upon my actions. A kinder judge than I have been on myself. Celestia summoned six colorful orbs of magic around her, signifying the Elements. They began to circle her, faster and faster until she was surrounded by a sphere of rainbow color. I'm so sorry for what I've done to you, Cadance and everypony else. I'm even more sorry for what I didn't do. I wish I had been just a little stronger, just a little wiser. Then maybe I would have been able to save Mother, Father and you from the Nightmare.

"Luna! I'm coming, sister! Just a little longer!" Celestia yelled into the sky, tears pouring down her cheeks, dripping off her muzzle.

The sphere glowed brightly for a second then it disappeared, revealing a golden streak of bright light racing towards the stars. It shrunk and dimmed as it did so, quickly becoming one of the points of light and glowing like a second magnitude star before fading completely. In its wake, it left the balcony empty, save for one golden crown and a puddle of tears. Celestia, the last of the alicorns, was no more...

...or so she thought.

The golden yellow streak of light joined up with four more. One orange, one purple, one pink, and one blue. They journeyed across the galaxies, hoping to find a place free from the plague known as the Nightmare. They searched many stars, many worlds. And just when all hope seemed lost, strange radio and television signals drew them to an unknown planet called... Earth.