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// 18 The Heart of the Matter 
// Story: The Luna Cypher 
// by iisaw 
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Chapter Eighteen
The Heart of the Matter


If I hadn't known it before, touching her aura directly would have told me that the Nightmare was extremely powerful, alicorn level at the very least. And there was something else. Her magic felt familiar.

"What are you?" I couldn't stop myself from asking as the magical link between us faded away.

She slowly grinned. "Recognized me, did you?"

I shook my head. "No, you feel almost exactly like Luna, that's all I could tell. Do you take on the qualities of the ponies you possess?"

She laughed. "Oh, you are so very precious! So revoltingly naïve!"

I sighed. "I should have included something in the oath about not being a jerk."

She stared at me for a moment, and then she laughed even louder. It was weird, but I felt like laughing along with her. I stopped myself from doing so.

"Look, can we stop the fooling around and get on with the escape plan?" I grumbled at her. "Show me the way to get the power we need."

Her smile stretched so wide that her eyes nearly closed. "Follow me, Princess."


= = =


We went down.

The Nightmare assured me that the time-dilation effect worsened as we neared the center of the World Mechanism, so we moved as quickly as possible. It would take us nearly a month of objective time in Equestria to complete the journey, even though it would only seem like hours to us.

The metaphysical mechanism wasn't a direct analog of the physical planet, but it did get hotter as we descended, and the amount of free magical energy in the air increased dramatically. After a little while, I realized we were taking a path that always curved to the left, and the curve got tighter as we descended. The cycles of magic surrounding us moved more quickly than those above, though that was only by comparison. As we neared our destination, I saw several shattered circles of spells and cycles twisted into unnatural configurations.

"Is this your work?" I asked the Nightmare, sweeping a wing at a distorted magical flow. It was the first time in hours that either of us had spoken.

She paused and examined the twisting arch of marble and gems that seemed to be guiding enormous pressure leeched from more normal cycles nearby. "No," she said after a moment. "That is one of Celestia's."

"What? You... she..." I sputtered, while the Nightmare turned her back to me and trotted on.

"You'll see soon enough," she called back to me.

Only minutes later, we came to a place that was very different from anything else I'd seen within this world. The diameter of the loops and cycles was small enough that their curvature was obvious and the ambient light became a uniform bright red.

The Nightmare stopped as we emerged onto a ledge midway up the side of a large open space. Under-lit by the strong red light below, she looked ghastly. I took one hesitant step toward the edge of the ledge, where I could see the source of the light.

Below me, bound in chains of shimmering energy that nevertheless looked dull and lifeless compared to the blazing light that shone from her body, was a huge, blood-red alicorn, trapped in the twisted and re-purposed magic of the world itself. She would have topped Celestia by a head, had she been able to stand upright, and she was absolutely beautiful in the terrible way a tiger is beautiful. She was awake and aware of us.

The Nightmare looked down at her and said, "Hello, Mother."

I backed away until the red light no longer fell on me, trying to make some sense of what was going on. The Nightmare turned her head and watched me.

"What is this place?" I asked her. "Some part of Tartarus?"

"No," she said casually. "Oh, Tartarus is encoded somewhere nearby, I'm sure, but this place is very different. This is the heart of magic. This is where we dungeoned up our mother in hopes that the memory of her reign would be lost to the world forever."

"Wait... 'our' mother?"

"Well, I suppose you could say she is the mother of us all, but in the case of Celestia and I, it is literally true."

"You're not Luna!" I yelled.

She laughed. "No? Then who am I? You touched the core of my magic during the oath, and you felt Luna. Luna, and nothing else! Or do you want to add your own self-deception to all the other deceits surrounding you?"

"But you're some sort of parasite... You take over a host and—"

"Did they ever tell you that? Or did they just let you believe it?" She stalked over to me and leaned down, her muzzle wrinkling up in a snarl. "The lie of omission was the most convenient explanation, wasn't it? Better than believing Luna was responsible for her own actions. Better than believing that the sacred Rainbow of Light, pure essence of Harmony, would rip your precious Luna in half!"

There is a horrible aspect to having a scientific mind. All of my training and all of my carefully instilled instincts denied me a comforting belief in the face of evidence to the contrary. But evidence had to be valid. A theory had to be testable.

"Prove it," I said to her in a calm, level voice as my guts twisted and ice water flowed in my veins.

She didn't get angry with me. In fact, she calmed down and nodded thoughtfully toward the imprisoned alicorn. "She would tell you herself, except it's far too dangerous to allow her to speak. You may think you can sense how strong her magic is, but believe me, that is only a fraction of her power. Even when we matured and came into our full strength, Celestia and I had to plan carefully and prepare for years before we could topple the Red Queen from her throne."

The Nightmare turned back to the cavern and motioned me to follow. "She didn't hate us for it, as you might expect. No, by her philosophy, we deserved to win because we did win. She was even proud of us for the act."

When we stood above the bound alicorn once again, the Nightmare pointed with a wingtip. "You see? She loves me still."

It was true, the blazing red alicorn was looking up at the Nightmare with what was an unmistakably loving expression.

"I still don't see any solid proof of what you're saying," I said. "I have a very hard time believing that Celestia and Luna would be a party to something like this, no matter what the provocation."

"Oh, you don't know our dear mother like we do, or you wouldn't say that. Still, we didn't do this without reservations. She is our mother, Twilight Sparkle; despite our belief that the world would be better off with us in her place, we still loved her." The Nightmare swung her wing to point at the nearly molten cycles of magic that fed the containment spell. "There is your proof. Celestia and I knew that, in a moment of weakness and compassion, one of us might be tempted to release our suffering mother. So we built into the spell a guard against just that. There, above the crowning circle, surely you can read those runes?"

I could. The abjuration only covered the royal sisters, Luna and Celestia. The ward would feed back any magic cast by those two in a painful and ultimately fatal way if any attempt was made to interfere with the structure of the imprisoning spells.

"Watch," the Nightmare said, when she was satisfied that I had understood the spell. She reached out with the lightest touch of her magic and made contact with an outer ring of the re-woven earth magic. A blast of red lightning immediately struck her in the horn, brutally throwing her to the ground.

"Proof... enough?" she groaned as she struggled to her hooves.

I made one last desperate test in the hopes that it was all some sort of deception. I touched the imprisoning spells. I wove my magic into them and into the ward against the royal sisters. But it was all true. I let my magic fade away.

"It's her, isn't it?" I asked, avoiding for the moment the new knowledge that burned in my mind like a cancerous ember. "That's why you need me. We're going to use her magic to power our escape and you can't open a path to it without being destroyed."

"Bravo!" She clicked her hooves against the stone in mocking applause. "You are quite a clever little filly. If it wasn't for your disdain, condescension, and death threats, I might even like you."

"You... you're really her, aren't you? I don't understand why the Elements did that." I was still struggling with the concept.

"Who knows why that Wild Magic does what it does? It has its own agenda, I'm sure. It could have lobotomized me, but instead it chose to preserve my pride and drive and ambition in this separate body."

"But Luna still has all that!" I protested.

"She does now," the Nightmare said. "She's had time to remember herself. Why do you think nopony saw her for so long after her return? She was a pathetic milksop for the longest time."

I frowned. "Then, what were you like? With no humor or playfulness or—"

"Or joy or happiness, and never will I know those again unless... Faugh! I grow tired of your endless questions. Every minute we waste here is an hour above!" the Nightmare snapped. "I will direct you, and you will extract the necessary magical energy from the queen. When we are quit of this place you can ask your foolish questions of Celestia. She may have the patience for such annoyances, but I do not!"

No joy. No happiness. I trampled down my sympathy for her. "Fine. Tell me what to do."

It was tricky. The Nightmare prepared a portal spell in conjunction with a helical guide, and I was to be the energy conduit between her spell and the Red Queen's energy. To tap into that magic without freeing the queen took a very fine balance of forces. Also, acting as a channel for that much raw power was not without risk, even though I had done similar work several times before. But I finally was satisfied with my preparations.

"I'm ready," I told the Nightmare.

She shared one long last look with her imprisoned mother and then said, "Do it."

"Just one last thing before we go."

She gave me a wary look. "Yes?"

"I want you to know that I respect you, even though we are enemies. If you want to cooperate instead of fighting one another, I will be glad to do that. I think you are remembering your kindness, just as Luna has remembered her strength. I'm sure we can work something out with Luna and Celestia."

She looked uneasy for a moment, then said, "I have slight regard for Celestia. If you wish to cooperate with me, I will allow it. "

I sighed. Well, it had been worth a shot. "Gee, thanks. Okay, then, let's get this over with."

We got into position, standing opposite each other on the nodes of the metal circle she had created to delimit the portal. I cast the spell that triggered the others I had set up around the Red Queen. A tiny pinhole opened in the containment spell, and a flood of raw magical power roared up around us, bursting into streams and filaments of directed force. I could feel the queen attempting to distort those forces to her own ends, but I had prepared for that, and each time the magical energy varied even slightly from the path I had prepared, I damped it down and opened a new conduit to shunt it into the portal spell.

The Red Queen's magic was terrifying. Once, I had possessed all of Equestria's alicorn magic, and later the poisonous dark magic from Sombra's crystal engine, but neither of those experiences had frightened me anywhere near as much as the primal magic that flowed through me then.

Though it felt subjectively longer, the transition only lasted an instant, which was good, because I felt that the queen's magic was trying to act on me in some way, even without being consciously directed by her. The super-powered portal spell carried us upward and outward in a direction imperceivable to our limited, three-dimensional minds. Then there was a burst of light and a wrenching sensation, and we were in the clear blue sky above the Badlands, a ragged corona of excess magic dissipating into the air around us. I instinctively spread my wings and looked down to gauge my altitude, and that's when the Nightmare attacked me.

I knew it was going to happen. When she had proposed our agreement, the logical thing to ask for would have been a mutual truce of a moon, a week, or even a day to let her get away and start in on her plans for the future. She'd tried to distract me with a laugh and a dismissive assessment of my own prowess, which had been carefully calculated to annoy me. As we had sworn it, the instant we appeared, our oath of peaceful cooperation was at an end. Just the way she wanted it.

Even though I was expecting it, the Nightmare came very close to ending me with her very first shot. I supposed I should be flattered that she didn't try to subdue me or knock me out, as is usual in battles of dominance; it meant she was afraid of me. No, her first move was to cast a blade of pure dark magic straight at my throat, just under my chin, where it wasn't covered by my armor.

I snapped up a shield spell the instant I felt the inceptive pulse from her horn, but I was almost too slow. If I had tried for a full-body shield, I would have been too late. As it was, the appalling force of her killing spell slammed my little shield against me and rocked my head back.

She threw blast after blast at me as I dodged and blocked, firing so rapidly that I had no time to bring up the spell I had planned. All I needed was two seconds, but if I had let my guard down, she could have impaled me a half-dozen times in the space of a heartbeat.

Then Luna was there. She materialized in a violent discharge of vortex energy between the Nightmare and I. Luna fired a blast from her horn but the Nightmare had become a black swirling cloud and the bolt passed through her, harmlessly.

"Luna, no!" I screamed. She was playing right into the Nightmare's hooves.

The air between the two of them darkened and the cloud began to streak toward Luna, sharp tendrils reaching out eagerly. That cloud of malevolent magic was going to take her over and Nightmare Moon would be reborn. The Nightmare was going to be whole again.

But not if I had anything to do about it.

When I was a little filly, I soaked up knowledge like a sponge. I overheard some of my teachers saying that it was a typical phase for child prodigies, and that I would soon begin to find learning more difficult and the real test of my suitability would come when learning was no longer effortless.

They were wrong. I loved learning magic with a passion that they never understood, and I never found it difficult to absorb the intricacies of a new spell. Far from needing hours of study and practice to be able to cast new magic, I only needed to have it demonstrated to me once in order to grasp the mechanics and structure of a new spell. This ability has served me well, as a certain little Hero of the Crystal Empire can attest. Watching Celestia cast a single dark magic spell had given me the knowledge to open the way for Spike to get to the Crystal Heart.

I know there is a lot of philosophical debate concerning the issue of learning dark spells, and even the ethical considerations of preserving such knowledge, but I am in agreement with Celestia on such matters. When asked for a blanket opinion on almost any subject, she often responds with, "It depends on how you do it," and when I once asked her about the application of magic widely considered to be outright evil, she said, "It also depends on why you do it."

So, on the day that I submitted to Tirek and let him take the alicorn magic from me, I paid close attention to how he did it.

There before me was a living cloud of magic, eagerly rushing toward union with another pony. By discorporating, the Nightmare had done half my work for me. I shoved Luna aside and stretched my mouth wide.

Ingurgitating the power and physical substance of the Nightmare was similar to the feeling I'd gotten when swigging down the revitalizing potion from Solar Flare's medical stores. There was a brief moment of dizziness followed by an expansive euphoria. I had only planned on stealing her magic, but the spell dragged in all of her. Fortunately, the disorientation didn't last long, and I didn't seem to be thinking-impaired afterward.

There was a great deal of commotion and consternation after that. Rainbow Dash and the Wonderbolt squad arrived so quickly, I didn't even have time to hug Luna. Bat pony guards showed up and placed themselves in front of their mistress in a protective formation at the same time as pegasi wearing uniforms with my royal insignia approached me warily.

"It's all right," I said. "I got her. It's over." My voice sounded kind of funny to me.

I heard engines below and looked down to see several small aircraft rising from the ground. I was shocked at the size of the tent city that surrounded the old crater; there was even a cluster of permanent wooden buildings along one edge of the pit.

"I guess I've been gone a long time, huh?" I asked of nopony in particular.

Luna shoved past her guards and approached me, but stopped a couple of lengths away. "Art thou well, Twilight? What dost thou intend?"

"I'm fine," I said. And then, acutely aware of the growing crowd around us, I added, "We should find some place private to talk... If the rest of you fine ponies will please excuse us?"

"Don't trust her!" somepony in the crowd shouted. I wasn't sure who he was referring to.

"You shut up about Twilight!" Rainbow Dash shouted back. Well, that cleared it up.

"Look at her!" another voice cried out.

"She's evil!" came a different pony's shout.

"BE SILENT!" Luna shattered the air with her Royal Voice. She cast a stern eye over the crowd, waiting for any objection, but there was, unsurprisingly, none. She turned back to me. "Twilight Sparkle, shall we speak together in peace aboard my vessel?"

I finally realized what had happened. I stretched out a foreleg and saw, beneath my now silvery armor, a coat as black as coal, though it was not quite the absolute darkness of the Nightmare's. I looked up at the crowd. They were justifiably nervous, and not a few of them were outright terrified.

"I mean no harm," I said as gently as possible. "I know I look a bit different, but I'm still Twilight Sparkle, I promise you."

"Nightmare," somepony in the crowd hissed, almost too quietly to be heard. I felt a flash of irritation and an impulse to pull the stupid pony out of the crowd and teach him how he ought to behave toward Equestrian royalty, but it quickly passed.

Luna, however, didn't let it go. She turned to glare at the half of the crowd that seemed to have formed up well away from her. "Presume not upon our patience, for we have none to spare. Now that the princess has returned to us, we have no need nor desire to suffer insolence from foolish ponies!"

Uh-oh.

Somepony must have started to reply, but there was the loud crack of a wing upside of a head and an urgently whispered, "Don't be an idiot!" from somewhere in the group Luna faced.

"Luna," I called to her. "We should talk. We should talk right now!"

Luna reluctantly turned away from the hostile crowd and nodded to her guard captain, who called out, "Make way for her Majesty of the Night!" and led us down to the big midnight-blue airship that lay at anchor over the crater.


= = =


"We have little time," Luna said as her guards closed the door to the main cabin behind them. "Celestia will be here soon, and I wish to speak with you alone before then."

"What happened between you two?" I asked, but changed my mind as Luna opened her mouth to reply. "No. Never mind, I can hear it from the both of you later. Along with the story of your mother. What I really need to know right now is, do you still love me?"

Luna didn't immediately answer, but her face fell. "Did she not tell thee? The Nightmare taunted me with the injustice she inflicted upon thee, Twilight, and she told me that she had made it known to thee. Do you—"

"Yes, yes," I said, impatiently, "I know all that, but you're not under the influence of a spell, and your feelings may have changed."

Luna closed her jaw with a snap. Then she sighed. "They have not changed, Twilight Sparkle."

I actually shook with the effort of not rushing forward to sweep her up in an embrace. My voice was tight and unsteady as I forced out the words that had to be said. "I hope you understand that I have to make sure I am free of any magical compulsion, before I can...." I was at a loss for words but Luna understood.

"I'sooth, 'tis meet that it be so," she said in a very small voice.

"Oh, Luna! Please don't cry, or you will break my heart! Spell or not, I'm sure I will always love you as a friend and mentor. When my mind is my own again—"

Celestia appeared in the room with a blast of magic that made the deck creak underhoof. Luna's head shot up and her eyes narrowed. Celestia ignored Luna and turned her gaze on me, and for the first time in my life, I was afraid of her.

"Who am I speaking to?" Celestia asked as little flickers of magic ran along the grooves of her horn.

"Me," I said, "your one-time faithful student." But I had a sudden impulse and I acted on it, waiting until Celestia's lips began to part, so that I could interrupt her. "But if you want to talk to the Nightmare, she's listening."

There was quite a long silence after that.

"I used Tirek's spell," I finally said. "I didn't anticipate that the Nightmare would have this effect on me, but my mind is still my own. I am in control. If there is any way you can test me—"

"Enough!" Celestia held up a hoof. "If you are volunteering to be tested, you are, in all likelihood, Twilight Sparkle."

I gave a big sigh of relief.

Celestia stepped forward and gave me a brief hug. "I am glad you have come back to us, Twilight.” Then she stepped back and examined me more closely. "Your return is fortuitous, but your current appearance will not be of help to heal the damage that has been done to Equestria and the rest of the world."

"What?"

"Much has happened in the last year, Twilight Sparkle. Let me explain..."

Equestria was a kingdom in turmoil. Though Celestia had been in the right when she had told Luna that there was nothing they could do to reach me, Luna had taken it as her sister using the situation as an excuse avoid the consequences of the prophecy. It was obvious to her: Separate Night and Evening, and the Sun would not set.

In formal session before the Day Court, Luna had demanded Celestia turn all available resources to my rescue, which put her in an impossible situation. When Celestia denied her sister, Luna had declaimed the prophecy before the entire court and accused Celestia of abandoning me. The terribly formal, and terribly public, argument that ensued had driven a wedge between not only the sisters, but between the ponies of the kingdom as well.

There were ponies that supported Celestia, and ponies that supported Luna. At first, it was not much more than gossip and letters to the editor, and the situation may have never progressed beyond grumbling and partisanship if it weren't for the third faction. Many nobles and politicians, smelling an opportunity for a power grab, began to express the opinion that if the princesses couldn't agree on how to rule the kingdom, it might be better off as an oligarchy of nobles and wealthy merchants.

The sisters called a truce with one another for the good of the kingdom, but by then, the anti-monarchy faction in parliament, the Council of the Elite, had gotten the bit firmly in their teeth. The uproar spread far beyond Equestria's borders. With the princesses appearing weak and opposed, the borderlands protected under the Pax Equestria had begun quarreling with each other, and trade routes that had been safe for centuries were plagued by robbers and pirates. Rumors of military build-up in the griffin kingdoms circulated as if they were fact.

I was absolutely horrified. "But I'm back now! You and Luna are reconciled, and things can go back to normal!" It sounded stupid to me even as I was saying it.

Celestia sighed and shook her head. "It is not that simple, Twilight. Trust, once lost, is not easily regained. We rule by consent, not by our strength."

"Luna?" I moved around the table in the great cabin to be close to her. "We will fix this. I'll do whatever it takes."

She gave her sister a longing stare before replying to me. "As things stand now, our show of unity has been taken for a pretense and nothing more. The prophecy is widely known, though much distorted in the telling. The last line, 'The mare of darkest hue must die,' is oft repeated, and many ponies have called for my destruction." She paused for a second before dryly adding, "It has thus lowered my opinion of many of my subjects."

"No!" I cried out in horror. "How could they? You are not the mare of darkest hue, I thought we had settled that!"

"That much is true, Twilight Sparkle," said Celestia. Her horn lit and a cheval mirror appeared next to me. "Look there and tell me what you see."

I could see both Luna and myself in the mirror, and it was immediately obvious: Now, the mare with the darkest coat in Equestria was me.


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