//------------------------------//
// Chapter 29: Twilight for the Empress 
// Story: When the Everfree Burns 
// by SpiritDutch 
//------------------------------//

Discarded and unattended, Nightmare Moon’s armor lay silently where Twilight's nightmare had tossed them. They'd suffered a thousand years in the soil of the Everfree in a mass grave, they could survive a little abuse and neglect.

When the nightmare completed her apotheosis and tore a hole in the clouds above, the armor was the first things in the castle to dry off in the eerie sunlight. All through the nightmare's speech, and her conversation with Celestia, they waited patiently. They heard the nightmare’s final threat, and still did not stir.


~~~


Much like Celestia had, Twilight's nightmare preferred to fight at a distance with magic. With a peal of laughter it sent out a beam of blackened energy, an instantaneous flash of seething darkness, that sent Celestia and the three nightmare ponies scrambling for cover.
"Yeah yeah! This is what it feels like to be alive! Stretch your wings, run your mouth, let the magic fly!" The nightmare sang, reveling at the fear she was causing the others. “I have been thinking about a name. I’m so far beyond the mundane nightmares, I deserve distinction.” To emphasize her point she threw another magic beam in Applejack's general direction, keeping the pony pinned behind a pillar. "Come on, throw out your suggestions. I think I want it to have the word ‘Spark’ in there somewhere, as an homage to our dearly departed Twilight Sparkle.  Plus the poetry of it: Spark of life, spark of genius, spark of rebellion. Yes yes! I love a good spark! It's an initiation into something marvelous."

Letting her aim wander intentionally, the nightmare peppered the back of the throne room with stone shattering pulses of beam magic. Celestia, too regal to take shelter, hoped around the edge of the hall while stopping here and there to countered with attack of her own. Celestia's magic crackled harmlessly against the shields the nightmare conjured. 

From their cover, Applejack and Rarity tried pelting the nightmare with debris, but discovered it had no effect beyond making them a target.

"Cut that crap out! You're just making her mad!" Dash shouted to her compatriots over the cacophonous sound of a spell exchange between alicorn and ascended nightmare.

"Pshh, and I thought facing Celestia was going to be impossible." Rarity rubbed her eyes.

The longer the spell duel lasted the louder it got, not only for the crash of the spells against each other's shields, but for the nightmare's eager laughter. It was more than in the mind now, but a tangible sound brought to life the the sheer amount of magic in the air. 
But the atmosphere was far from joyous. The glow of the nightmare’s horn somehow stole light instead of radiating it, the sheer brightness, hiding it’s multitude of luminescent thin eyes.

But after a minute the barrages abated. The sound and light died away and the nightmare ponies peeked over their cover.
The nightmare was pacing back and forth at the head of the throne room, chuckling to herself. Celestia, closer to the entry hall and the weird model solar system, was standing in place, breathing hard.

"Good one, good one." The nightmare nodded. "I still want a that input on a name, princess.  Don't leave me drifting here."

Ceelstia slowed her breathing to an even pant. "Please cease your muttering." She said softly.

“Naturally, references to my nightmare heritage must feature, but I cringe at just throwing it out there.  ‘Nightmare Spark’. Euch. It’s forced, predictable.” Making use of her complete weightlessness, the Dark creature lifted further off the ground, but stayed just below the steadily drooping ray of sunlight peering over the clouds. At the new angle she had a bead on Rarity and Applejack ponies, and so forced them out of their hiding spots with a hail of stinging magic darts. “ ‘Dour Spark’, or ‘Bleak Spark’ are good, but they just don’t convey the emotion, the PASSION, I want them to. I need a name that will peel the cartilage from your bones just by mention.”

“How about ‘Sour Spark’!” Dash peeked around her cover long enough to shout.

“That makes me sound like a fruit candy.” The nightmare said while blasting away at Dash’s position, forcing the pegasus to flee while dodging lethal oblivion.

“ ‘Foul Spark’ would suit you nicely.” Rarity said. She'd run jumped out of the throne room entirely and was shouting in from a window.

“Close, but that word makes me feel unclean, like I didn't bathe properly. Was that your intention? Very clever, little Rarity.” The nightmare shuddered. Instead of determining Rarity’s exact location, the she opted to summon a torrent of fire in the mare's general direction. The castle was damp enough to stop any permanent damage, though it did throw up a big cloud of steam.
"Come on girls, it's like you're not talking this seriously."

Celestia took advantage of the distractions of the nightmare ponies to stalk through the steam and shadow, until she'd worked her way behind the nightmare. With a silent hiss she let loose an attack at full power. A storm of magical arrows perforated through the creature's smokey fur or dissipated against its bones, but within moments it reformed. Apparently with the element of surprise counted for nothing.

"Oh that's cheeky, princess." The nightmare whirled around and drenched the area in spell lightning as Celestia pulled back. "Do you have a suggestion, Celestia? Something haunting, that will wake you up in a sweat thinking about it. Name me something that won't sound out of place what mentioned among the likes of you, Twilight, and Moon."  

“You're an arrogant cur. A challenging fight be sure, but your name will not deserves to be spoken in the same breath as mine."  Celestia mused darkly. She took shelter behind the broken remnant of her old throne. "Good name for you. I weep even thinking of it.  The Forlorn Spark."

“OOOooooh!” The nightmare shuddered in ecstatic bliss. “I like that one, princess! Forlorn Spark. It just works, on so many levels! Reminds me of that time you forsook poor Twilight here, sealing her doom amongst none who cared about her. Forlorn, lost! Left to the wolves!” She chuckled. "And to the nightmares."



Celestia shouldn’t have let the taunt get to her, should have pushed away emotion a to a point where it wouldn't register in this already overwhelming battle. But the princess’s clarity of mind was fading, and so it went.
“I did not abandon her.” Celestia growled. Though her body must have been far beyond too exhausted to do so, her heart was charged with indignant rage.

“I can’t even fathom what you were trying to accomplish! Were you saving yourself from her, or her from you? Honestly I think that would be an amazing matchup." The nightmare, who was already beginning to think of itself as 'Forlorn Spark' said. 

"I trusted Twilight. Implicitly." The internal drum's beat, rippled through Celestia. She stood at full height once again, but the nightmare, floating carelessly above her, pressed further.

"We did did terrible things to her, Celestia. She suffered like nopony else ever has, except maybe your sister. Funny how that works, with everypony you've ever cared about succumbing to this curse. Maybe you just bring out the worst in ponies." Forlorn Spark shook her head in mock disappointment. "Alas, the only one who cares about you anymore, the only one who is here for you, is me. Little Forlorn Spark, Twilight's only child.”

“YOU DISGUST ME!” Celestia batted aside her concealing cover, a collapsed marble column, like it was no more than a ball of yarn. “DON’T YOU DARE SPEAK OF HER THAT WAY AGAIN!”

“But it’s true!” Forlorn Spark cooed, touching down in the stone floor. “I’m all that’s left of her. Really I am! And I'm proud of that. She was a good pony. But I'm her and more. Isn't that the dream of every parent, to have their prodigy go on to greater things.”

“You are the spawn of Tartarus, and I will squish you!” Celestia rapidly advanced on the adversary she was blindly affixed on.

“Twilight was your student. Maybe… Maybe it’s just natural progress that I’m your equal, or perhaps your master! What do you think about that theory Celestia?”


Celestia’s first hoof swipe carried all of her momentum straight through the air Forlorn Spark had teleported out of an instant before. The nightmare reapeared in the same place immediately after Celestia had passed, and  bucked the alicorn forward into the castle wall.
A large portion collapsed, raining marble slabs and aged mortar down around them.

“Come on now, old mare! Throw everything you have! Show me why your figh! Is it for Twilight’s honor? Laughable, ha ha! You don't understand one thing about her, hee hee heee!” Forlorn Spark laughed maniacally. “Hah, all the same I will take your abuse, and I will thank you for it. Twilight thanked you so often, didn’t she? She loved you once, and you have her the cold shoulder. Hah! The sun princess was far too frosty!” She tilted her head up, a subtle taunt.  "Would you have killed our darling Twilight if she'd gotten uppity or rebellious? Show me how you'd have done it! Squish this little pony! HEE hEE!"


Celestia, with a combination of magic and precise bucks, batted the falling debris at her adversary. Forlorn’s shield appeared in time to stop them, but Celestia charged forward again and punched her hoof straight through the bariier. Bits of the shattered spell bespeckled Forlorn’s shadowy face, and Celestia’s strike snapped it back with a gruesome pop.
"Quit talking about Twilight! I'll kill you!" Celestia roared. Her next hit took Forlorn on her exposed neck, shattering her spine across the room. "I'll kill you!"


For all its savagry Celestia's attack was not nearly enough. Forlorn’s hoof swung blindly around the right at her, and Celestia ducked under. The princess similarly dodged Forlorns left hoof, but this time grabbed it with her magic. She used the nightmare’s momentum against her, and threw Forlorn full across the room into another wall.

"Ahh ahhh..." Celestia gasped for breath. She eyed her opponent. "Barbarian."



“\Celestia, why are you out of breath.You can do better than that!” The haunting voice rung out melodically. Forlorn Spark floated upright, her dislocated leg and sickeningly contorted head popping back into position. Her neck reformed after that. “Poor showing, honestly. I know you can do better than that! Twilight may have resented how you treated her but she respected you as a tallented magician. I mean, the sun beam you opened with was amazing, but everything after that's just pathetic. Tiss tiss, I feel disappointed. " She nickered. "Are you weak, Celestia? Not just tired, no, but genuinely weak? Is there something...  weighing you down?"

The celestial retort came not as words but as another hail of stone debris. Forlorn Spark let the heavy missiles bounce off her shield once again, clearly bracing for a repeat of Celestia’s strike. Her distraction meant that she was oblivious to the stone wall behind her fracturing and collapsing until she the falling stone had buried her.



“I actually think you’re doing quite well, Princess!” Rarity called out to Celestia from her hiding place, and Dash and Applejack sounded their agreement.

“And when I am done with her, you can expect this divine mercy as well.” Celestia said darkly. She was beginning to calm down from her enraged high, tiredness welling up once again. She had the power to fight this last time, but too much exertion would cause amounts of permanent damage. Celestia’ felt her organs withering, their functions barely maintained by force of will.
"You will accept punishment quietly." She warned the nightmare ponies. "Or, I will annihilate you now."

A battle the princess was loosing much quicker than the one with the Forlorn Spark was the one inside Celestia’s mind. The overwhelming, world encompassing anger that had empowered Celestia was a lavish fuel for Dark impulses. With every word Forlorn spoke, more evil intentions seeped into Celestia’s heart, threatening to turn her away from everything that mattered, and into a world of ceaseless hate and black intentions. Gone was trepidation, moaning, crying. She wanted to fight and kill!
But she could not be free of fear. Fear ruled the fury: Its darkness gripped at Celestia's heart, telling her she would die and her death would be unimportant and insignificant. It knew how to play her, in an entirely different way than Forlorn Spark was. The end result was the same: Celestia was unraveling.

"So much storm and thunder, and this is what I get?!" Celestia barked at the wall she'd send crashing down on Forlorn Spark.   She danced from hoof to hoof, trying to relieve waves of itchiness spreading through her muscles. "Don't keep an old mare waiting."


“Immph rrrleeh dnd shhe diss wrkkng phhr eh.” Forlorn’s voice was muffled by the tonnes of rubble atop her. Vaporous tar emitted from between the cracks, rebuilding the nightmare in the open. “I mean look at me. You can't put a dent in me. Know why? Because I stand for an ideal, and I refuse to let you hurt me."

"Buck off!" Dash booed from the sidelines. "I hate that ideology crap! I was sick of it months ago in Chitin!"

"You mis understand me. I guess I'm too poetic for you." Forlorn Spark laughed. "Seriously though, if you actually want me dead you should change tactics. Pugilism Is a hobby, but no way to annihilate an enemy."

"Come over here!" Celestia had enough of the mouthy nightmare's talking.

"Ohh fine. Pugilism it is then." Forlorn rolled her dozen eyes.
As quick as a dart she dashed forward and struck out with a hoof. Celestia dodged and pushed the hoof away, but didn't have a window before the nightmare's horn was stabbing at her face. The princess threw herself to the side and the nightmare's horn sliced through her etherial mane. Now facing away from Forlorn, Celestia bucked behind herself but didn't connect.

Like a black zephyr, Forlorn Spark darted away then back in, lashing out with hoof and horn again. Celestia was able to parry the horn too this time, but still was too slow to get a strike in. Forlorn glided along the ground, away and counterclockwise, then dashed in again, repeating the pattern several times as she circled.
Finally Celestia anticipated the opened hoof strike well enough to throw Forlorn horizontally. With a roar the white alicorn cut up with the free hoof, smashing into the nightmare's ribcage. Forlorn, undeterred to the hoof in her guts, threw her hoof back and smacked Celestia across the face with the force of a runaway wagon. The crown, which had miraculously stayed atop the empress's head to that point, went flying into a tuft of weeds growing out of the floor.

"I can hurt you more." Celestia promised. She pulled back her hoof and struck in the same place. With many of the bones broken from the first hit, Celestia's hoof went all the way to Forlorn's spine and shattered it out her back. leaning back on her haunches Ceelstia repeated with her other foreleg. Like a praying mantis, the princess had both front legs jammed through Forlorn Spark's body.

Forlorn twisted her head around to admire the mutilation. "That's just excessive!"

Before the nightmare could get another quip off, Celestia pushed with her hind legs, lifting Forlorn up with the intention of slamming her down. But Celestia's move was as excessive as it was unstable, and Forlorn needed only to twist her body a little bit to throw Celestia onto her side. Indeed the twisted motion pushed Celestia into the fall harder, and with both hooves trapped in the nightmare's body she couldn't brace herself. The princess smacked into the ground face first.

Forlorn's body dissolved and reappeared above the fallen princess. "Very nice! Again! Imagine Twilight on her last legs, barely clinging to life. Beat the light out of her. Relish to see it fade!"

Caught up in her mockery, Forlorn didn't notice Celestia pulling her hindlegs up. With as much force as she could muster from the disadvantaged angle, Celestia bucked out, catching Forlorn straight on the chest area. The nightmare did not move an inch. Forlorn looked at the hooves, grinned her eye-y grin, and reformed with a hoof wrapped around them. With a whoop, the nightmare pulled Celestia by the legs and launched her into the fallen wall. The princess bounced off the pile of old stone with a pained grunt.
Forlorn was on top of Celestia before she could move, tramping and bouncing on her while screaming childishly. Celestia took three kicked to the head before she forced the nightmare back with a burst of magic. Shrieking like a demon, Forlorn Spark bounced off the walls and ceiling then launched herself back in. Celestia was getting weary of Forlorn's agile movements and was ready for her: The princess tried to meet the nightmare with her horn, and though she succeeded in driving her horn into Forlorn's chest the nightmare's momentum caused them both to go tumbling back against the rubble pile.

They jumped to their hooves.
"You seem to be having a hard time killing me." Celestia's breath steamed into the damp air.

"And you're getting angry. You're letting your Light shine out! You're proving you can exist without your sun." Forlorn cooed, rubbing the black ichor seeping from her many wounds into her fur. "I wonder if you'll not begin to agree with me about changing this world to fit our existence."

Celestia glared."If you don't like it here, why don't you leave?"

"And why don't you leave? You're clearly not accomplishing anything."

"You unnatural beast. Every moment my remorse wains. I will avenge Twilight on you a thousandfold!" Celestia roared. Points of light began to wink in and out of existance in her etherial hair, like little embers.  "Your blood will properly sanctify this, her mausoleum!"

"The irony stinks sky high. YouIf you can't recognize your part in her fate, then there's no more reason to talk to you." Forlorn rolled her shoulders, stretching for the next bout. "Sorry princess. Next break we take to chat will be when you're too weak to stand. Change my pitch up baby, because this'll be a critical beatdown."



Forlorn very deliberately advanced, her shadowy wings spread wide, her eyes blinking out of sequence to make sure not a millisecond passed that she was not watching Celestia.  Celestia swayed on her hooves as she waited, patient despite her racing heart, analyzing all the possible options.

"You ready princess?"

With a sweep of her wings, Forlorn Spark threw herself forward. Celestia hesitated for a moment too long and absorbed the hit on her chest; She stumbled backwards but stood fast.
In a mix of gold and deep violet light, the two combatants called upon their magic. Howling with each cast, Forlorn let fly lanced of magic. The purple beams boomed as they splashed against Celestia's shield and sizzled as the speckles of liquid energy landed in the puddles around them.

Celestia's counterattack was swift. With every strike against her shield she pushed it outwards, then began conjuring a sword behind it. Finally succumbing to abuse the magic shield shattered, and Celestia thrust out with the sword. Forlorn had the blink of an eye to react, and she refashioned the beam she was charging into an axe. A ear-piercing whine marked the two magical weapons meeting. Celestia's sword of light was batted away like it was nothing.

"Is this the strength of your world, princess?" Forlorn laughed, tugging the axe out of the floor and swinging it around. It's shadowy afterimage cleaved the air.  "We're almost there, but not quite. I'll understand it soon."

"You talk too damn much!" Celestia pulled the magic sword up to eye level and narrowed her gait to a fencing stance. A flurry of blazing strikes ripped through the air. Forlorn presented the flat of the axe, and the hefty construct blocked some but not all of Celestia's stabs. With the sword ripping into the showy cowl of her head, Forlorn conjured another axe over herself.
As the purple weapon came swinging down, Celestia threw all her magic into a shield. The impact crackled with energy. The shield held.  But Forlorn's first axe came in from the side and Celestia had nothing to block it with. It hit her at her spine right behind her shoulder, amputating her left wing at the base. The momentum carried through and sent Celestia spinning into the intact wall at the head of the throne room.

"Whewy. I'm feeling it. I'm reeeely feeling it." Forlorn moaned. She leaned over a puddle and admired the portions of her face Celestia's sword had destroyed. "The struggle against adversity, a fight to survive...   THIS is what it means to be alive."

Celestia rolled to her stomach. The gouge on her side went straight down to her spine, and the vertebra were dented as well. Through her gasps and shivers the tissue healed itself, save the gushing stump of her wing. "Why won't you die?!"

"How haven't you learned yet? I turn my pain into my victory." Forlorn picked up Celestia's wing and lobbed it back to the alicorn. "Ho, if I had been fully mortal I'd have died ten times over. Luckily I'm not, so I didn't." She watched Celestia reattach it.  "Are you going to get up again?"


Celestia's eye drooped. The darkness inside herself, anger, fear, loss, pride, wanted to get out so badly. If she embraced that forbidden power, maybe she could fight to a stalemate, or possible even win. Afterwards though, there would be no place for her in the world. The sun, already so disappointed, would reject her, for Dark had no place among light. Any status she would hold among mortalkind would be built on deceit.
She couldn't give up. Not for the sake of any 'world', like Forlorn said, but for the sake of her own soul.
And Twilight's honor.

She expelled a deep breath, stood up, and charged again.







The Canterlot Library had a wonderful selection of exotic books, whole branches filled with manuscripts and tomes from Griffany, Sahella, and Zebrastan. Curiously absent was anything from the land of the hippogryphs, Maredia. Isolationist beyond reason, the hippogryphs shunned trading with their nearby griffin cousins and especially with ponies and zebras.

Twilight knew from various other sources that hippogryphs were the first to make illuminated manuscripts, and had a long tradition of exquisite wall painting. Indeed, the most famous Maredian artworks to make it to Equestria was a striking miniature of two snakes eating each other by the tail, A cutaway showing all light and creation residing inside one snake, and a grey land of shadow and ghosts residing in the other. Scholars speculated that this was connected with hippogryph religion, divine evil integrated with living fire locked in a battle between life and death.

Twilight’s new theory was that the artist had experienced, just as she had, a journey to the moon and back. The grey colorless emptiness of Nightmare Moon gave way, in a consuming and writhing sorcery, to a world whose color was bleached white . She could only wish that moving between those worlds was as easy and painless as eating her own tail.




Nightmare Moon’s armor rattled for a moment or two, but otherwise gave no indication that anything happened. There had been a change in ownership, for through anguish and magic Twilight had severed this part of Moon from the rest, taking it as her personal soul prison.

Just as Nightmare had manifested as a translucent ghost in the altar dream, a visage of Twilight filled out the armor, levitating the helm and cuirass to a standing position.

“I wonder what it would feel like if somepony put me on.” Twilight mused, experimenting with movement. It was strange to say the least. She could feel the armor's surface like skin: The mugginess of the warm air, the rough stone under the shoes, the tickle of a sunbeam on the cuirass. It was unnerving to have the familiar heave of her own breath, or tension of muscle, but she figured she could get used to it.
Yes indeed, the nightmare armor was extensions of her consciousness as much as her body had been. She was a little metal mare, for the moment.

Something passed through Twilight’s wraith parts, dispelling her for long enough that helm crashed to the ground. Picking her head back up, she turned to investigate the cause.




Celestia and the darkest, foulest nightmare Twilight had ever seen were locked in mortal combat. The midnight purple beast weathered each of Celestia’s stone shattering punches easily, and seemed to move twice as quickly in reprisal. Twilight’s teacher and mentor was losing badly.

One, two, three jabs, Forlorn Spark blocked the fourth and retorted with a headbut. Celestia lurched back, but deflected Forlorn’s charge upwards by rolling onto her back, and threw the nightmare into the air. Forlorn recovered mid air, and floated idly as her horn cast blasphemous curses at Celestia’s exposed stomach. Celestia’s roll was almost too slow, but a fast shield saved her life long enough for the force of the spell to slam her back into the ground.
Forlorn returned to the ground as well, planting her hooves on Celestia hard enough to splinter the engraved stone beneath. She reared up to repeat that assault when Celestia bucked her squarely. A chunk of rock almost made contact with Forlorn’s head at the same time, but she intercepted it with her own rock while she recovered her poise.

For a brief second, the two ponies hesitated to gauge the next move, and Celestia looked around the room.



When Twilight had feared Celestia, it was out of an infinitely complicated brew of emotions.
She feared what Celestia would do to her when she saw the nightmare within her, and what she had done under that nightmare’s influence.
She feared what Celestia would think when she was her conversing with Rarity and the other nightmare ponies, what she would think of that blasfemy, how she would react to learning they were Twilight's fault.
She feared the infamy that would evermore be associated with her name, when Celestia told the next pupil about the peril of falling to nightmares.
She feared Celestia’s disappointment, her ultimate failure to satisfy and impress her teacher’s constant desire for her to progress responsably, the failure to vindicate Celestia in her decision to choose Twilight over every other pony in Equestria, making Twilight pupil, then apprentice, then eleve premier.

Probably most of all, she feared what she would do to Celestia. Twilight knew she could do things, powerful terrible things, that could give the sun princess pause. But more than that they would give Celestia pause, not because of their power, but because she was Twilight, and Celestia had trusted her. The promise Twilight had made in the shattered tower of the unicorn school, the promise of self-control and responsibility, would be broken.
At the very moment that the nightmare took her for the last time, Twilight had seen in all play out in her head. She’d foreseen the nightmare using her body to tear Celestia apart, while Celestia let it happen, not understanding, afraid not for herself, but for Twilight.



And in the moment that Celestia glanced away from Forlorn Spark, and saw her ghost watching this final battle, Twilight had fear return to her. She could have been resigned to an eternity on the moon, or in Nightmare Moon’s dream as the dark alicorn returned to Equestria in grand style. She would have learned of Celestia’s fate, win or loose, long after the fact. The prospect of bearing witness now, at what was going to be Celestia’s last moments alive, seized Twilight’s heart with petrifying despair.



And Celestia, staring back at the pale specter of Twilight, felt an ember of hope kindle within her breast. It reminded her that this sordid nightmare horror battling her wasn't Twilight, only a vile shadow.  The real Twilight, the Twilight she'd secretly cherished for more than a decade, had not been consumed by nightmares, remaining true to who she was even through the death of her body.



It seemed like hours that they just watched each other, one with fear for the future, and one with hope. The interruption took the form of Forlorn Spark striking Celestia across the face, sending the princess reeling.

“Oh Celestia, there might not be much left of you when we get through this.” Forlorn tittered. “Not that it matters that much what happens to your body. I’m mostly interested in seeing that sun of yours. Come on then! Bring her out! Little Twilight always did love the warming sunlight!”

When Twilight’s eyes tracked Celestia’s fall, she saw a rise of purple at the edge of the raised tier for the thrones. The remnants of her physical body was looking far worse than she’d hoped, looking like a sloppy surgeon had performed heart surgery through the back and forgotten to sew her back up. With a stomach-wrenching wave of nausea, Twilight realized her missing parts were what the nightmare fighting Celestia was made up of. Even if she knew how, there would be no going back to that mortal vessel.



A scream from behind her pulled Twilight back to the battle. Celestia had taken another hit, her distraction letting Forlorn Spark clip her wing with a beam of her magic. The affected part charred and withered under the profane power: Forlorn wasn't holding back now, and every spell carried the pure essence of the Dark.

If she didn't help, Twilight would be willfully committing her teacher to the worst fates imaginable. The beating would go on until Celestia was dead or worse: The nightmare could overwhelm Celestia and trap her within her own mind, then use her body for even further evils.
But that fear, an all consuming anxiety and feeling of worthlessness, held Twilight back. She strained to move, but the nagging part of her mind screamed and bound her in place.

What Twilight couldn't have realized was that Celestia was at peace with herself now.
“You shall have it your way then.” Celestia solemnly said to the nightmare looming over her.
She closed her eyes, and every pony in the room could feel the bridging connection as she reached out to her mother star once more. Forlorn let it happen, her manic eyes mimicking an ever-widening smile.







She found herself on that plain of white again, were the featureless waste stretched to infinity in all directions. The figure of light was already there, laying peaceably under the radiant sun.

“Coming here was the wrong decision, in every way.” The figure's tone was flat but had all the emphasis of a biting jeer. “You have jeopardized not only yourself, but me as well.”

“I’m not here to fight you again.” Celestia said softly.

The figure rolled to its hooves.  “You would even consider fighting me? My poor child, you're most certainly are given to the most abject of stupidities.”

“But I still need the use of my sun.”

“YOU OVERSTEP YOUR BOUNDS, CELESTIA.” The figure pushed herself into Celestia’s face. The entity's hazy boundaries felt like numb static on Celestia's skin.   “You have been too long away from this place, forgotten propriety, forgotten the truth of things! You are hardly even a sun princess anymore! You are a delinquent!”

Celestia bowed her head slightly. “And yet, here I am.”

“You poor thing. Perhaps I should not abuse one as handicapped as you.” The figure slinked back down to her resting spot. “I expect too much of you, for what you are. Yes...  You prove quite clearly the folly of philandering in physicality. You would provoke doubts about the point of seeking to guide mortals.”

“If you were even capable of doubt.” Celestia quipped.

“Am I meant to be chastened by that?”

"If you were mortal."

"Were there being more great and glorious than I, I would thank them that I am not mortal." The figure said. "Do you remember when you shared that sentiment? What happened, Celestia? What has led you to this foolishness?"

Celestia sighed. How long ago was it that she dreamed of spending the rest of her (hopefully unending) life in detached luxury, letting the administrators and bureaucrats run Equestria in her name. That empire...  had it ever been hers? The ideals it had been ruled by where not her own, but those of her mother sun: To guide every pony to their destiny in a harmonious and gentle way.   She felt very little connection to it despite being the pony to steward it for nigh on eight-hundred years. She'd invested no blood, no sweat, and no faith in Equestria. It was there when she came, and was it really her fault it was dead for her departure?

What did Celestia believe? Did she have anything to believe in besides the vain preservation of her own life?
She darkly mused how being locked in a death battle and abused by a creature who hated her most in the world was a near second.

But there was...  The ponies she cared about.
Celestia cared for Cadence and Twilight. She would not hesitate to suffer for them. In fact, looking into the heart of her mother sun, she dared to suppose that she had killed Equestria for them:  In a land free of restrictions on the dreams of ponykind, those two could flourish like they so righteously deserved.

If evil proliferated as a result, so be it.

“I harbor no ill will towards you. You are what you are, as I am who I am. However, certain things must be done.” Celestia said plainly. “I would not rejoice to see you hurt by my action. Therefore I must accept any alternative to the nightmare attacking you, with me as a means."

“You want my cooperation.” The figure crossed its hooves. "Why do I sense duplicity from you, Celestia?"

"I don't know." Celestia lied.

"You are tempting fate then. You want to let forth the power of the sun with none of the responsibility that comes with it."  The figure said, danger in her words.  "If I were paranoid, I might think you put yourself in this situation to extract concessions from me."

"I'm a delinquent, but that doesn't mean you can insult me with an accusation like that." Celestia growled.

"Very well then." The figure uncrossed her hooves and held one out. "You are still my daughter. Withholding my power from you is no way to act."

"Was that an apology?" Celestia smiled weakly.

"As close as you shall get from me." The figure said.  "Face her then, this presumptuous nightmare.  But be very careful, Celestia.  You are in her rhythm now."

Celestia took the outstretched hoof. "Don't worry." She whispered. "This is a game we Celestias have played before."







Though she remained standing stone still, eyes closed, a renewed vigor and life flowed into Celestia. Her mane and tail shone more brightly and lapped more energetically at the castle around her.

“I can feel it.” Forlorn Spark cackled, overjoyed. “The real princess is coming out to play!"

Twilight could feel it too. And if her many years of tutelage under Celestia had taught her anything, it was that the static that now charged their air was a prelude to trouble. Big trouble.









Nightmare Moon had never lost a limb, or even had one go so numb she lost all sensation, but she guessed that felt something like she did now. Twilight had not been overstating the pain of having her soul divided.

For an indeterminate amount of time after she lay within the moon, letting the agony subside into the vague numbness that she was used to.
It felt like there was a hole in her chest. She never really thought about how much of her was one thing or another: Her soul, her moon dream, her armor, her moon denizens...    The being that thought of herself as Nightmare Moon was a composite of these things.
She tried to grasp what part of herself she had lost with the armor.

"That silly filly." She manifested herself on the surface again, just so she could stare wistfully up to the Earth again.  "If I had known how it would feel I would not have let her do that to me.  Oh well. I should have known better."

Perhaps it was her senses deceiving her, but she imagined she was a twinkling light shining out from the mass of clouds covering the southern half of Equestria.
Then, on the side of the moon facing the sun, she felt an unexpected jolt. A pulse of energy, a kind of psychic letter-in-a-bottle, struck her surface.  Gathering the willpower to do anything other than be equal parts miserable and proud of herself, Moon opened her mind to the message.

It was not from Twilight like she had been expecting, though on reconsideration Moon wasn't sure Twilight knew how to send psychic messages, considering it was an alicorn discipline.  Indeed it was from the second to last pony she’d ever spoken to, a thousand years past.







In the living memory of the civilizations of Equestria, no alicorn had ever used their full power. As could be expected, letting loose so much divine power in the physical world had detrimental effects for both the world and alicorn.  There were a few folk tales and rumors, started by theologians who liked to read between the lines of the dogmatic texts, that Celestia I maybe did:  That great and powerful alicorn to whom all the successor Celestias were candles to a bonfire, had used the unadulterated power of her stellar mother only once to defeat a great demon. A very ambiguous tale, likely not grounded in reality.
The divine, by its very nature, was not meant to exist in the Bright World. Once upon a time, there had been no sun, no stars, and no moon to shine onto that solitary planet. Go forward a hundred-thousand years, and the divine broke the rules of exclusion with casual ease, with every mote of light that struck the earth.
What was one more time, Celestia thought. The world could survive breaking the rules a little more.



The most noticeable difference she felt upon returning to consciousness was her heart, distractedly loud inside her ears. Their beat was slow, almost surly in it’s delivery. By an odd compulsion Celestia found herself timing her breaths to that cardiac rhythm.
And then there was the power: the power of the sun. Though her mother had withheld her basic connection with the deep connection to the sun's pool, usually a comforting warmth that gave her no more or less than she needed, what now affected Celestia was like a liquid hearth, pushing more and more heat to every extremity.  The fire and energy, not burning her up, but burning with her.



The nightmare pacing before her was quick with her quip. “I can taste it in the air! I see it in your eyes! And I smell something. Is it… An actual challenge?" She laughed, dancing weightlessly on the tips of her hooves. "Yes yes yes!  You've found your conviction at last! I want to know, princess, how your hate feels. Let it drive your hooves. Drive them into me again and keep them until I've burned inside out!"

Celestias objectives presented themselves such: Destroy the abomination that was Forlorn Spark, use her remaining time in Equestria setting her affairs in order, and die. In that order, preferably.

Like a clockwork watch, the sun ratcheted into it’s noontime position.

The nightmare ponies (Celestia forgot they were there; They weren't doing much) darted for cover.  Forlorn Spark, who  bathed in the stellar rays with indifference bordering on impetuousness. Usually a Dark creature would be devastatingly crippled in the purifying light of the sun, but Forlorn didn't care. Forlorn wanted to fight in the sun.



So Celestia let loose a sunbeam again.
Once more the sound of a pure stream of nuclear fire millions of times hotter than anything which could conceivably exist in Equestria, even at an atom’s thickness, was nothing short of world shattering. Like a lightning strike, it was there one moment and gone the next, though unlike a lightning strike the trail of flame into the sky lingered for seconds after.

Celestia bore the shockwave, though she saw that specter-Twilight and the nightmare ponies were bowled over by the hot front of pressure. Celestia noted the necessity of caution, lest she re-vaporize her former student.



Forlorn Spark’s missing head reformed from the amorphous cloud Celestia’s lance had converted it to. Her twenty slender eyes blinked experimentally, glancing back at the pony-sized crater that had marked the concluding point of the lance.
“Oooh, fantastic shot! I wasn't prepared for that at all.”

The time it took to talk was time not spent dodging the follow up. Deafening thrum after thrum rolled across the forest and valley, scrambling or dispersing storm cloud formations across the Dneighper river valley. A dozen of the solar beams rained down with a singular target. Each lance had the brightness of a star, connecting the million kilometers distant sun with Celestia’s foe.
Ponies on coast of Equestria looked up and trembled at the wrath of their god, a midnight sun bringing down unrelenting power. Creatures in Griffany could not fail to notice flashes of light on the horizon. The bugs of Chitin and emus of Horsestralia continued to wonder why the sun had darted away

And again and again, Forlorn Spark reformed. Fire, even that of a nuclear nature, could never pin down the aspect of smoke. Celestia did not care; She only wanted to give a convincing effort to satisfy her burning hatred.



Finally it Celestia ceased her relentless bombardment, and let the suspended dust and ash clear away. She'd completely lost track of where Forlorn was and had sent the last few lances into an empty corner.

It took a few minutes to regain her hearing. The first thing she heard was her own steady breathing. The second was her own thoughts, released from the grip of adrenaline and passion.
Damn, Celestia thought. She had never felt so alive. No wonder Forlorn Spark was as giddy as a filly. That monster let her wild mind carry her to undreamed of ecstasies of violent indigence. 


The third thing Celestia heard washed the good feelings right out of her.
“Mother! I’m glad you’re here to see this!”

Celestia froze in place, and the methodical beat of her heart was impelled. Celestia had hoped that the nightmare’s single-mindedness would keep her occupied; A false assumption, for Forlorn had noticed Twilight.

With a powerful sweep of her wings, Celestia blew the dust away so she could see. Forlorn Spark was grinding Twilight’s armor pieces into the ground with her hoof, something clearly causing the specter a great deal of pain.

“I missed you so much, you couldn’t even believe! Did you see the fight? Wasn’t I brilliant? Are you proud of me mother?” Forlorn spoke with such excitement, such enthusiasm, Celestia feared that it was genuine. “I’m a big girl now! And strong too! MOTHER! Tell me I’m pretty! All the other mothers love their daughters, why can’t you?”


Celestia was horrifying. Forlorn's eyes eyes, wobbling and desperate, showed the first hint of weakness she had let so far. Could it be, far beyond Celestia's willingness to understand, that the nightmare's rambling about Twilight wasn't just said to be unnerving?
What was Forlorn? Nightmares did not call there hosts their 'mothers'. What did being an 'ascended' nightmare entail?

Celestia grit her teeth and shook her head.  It didn't matter what Forlorn was. The monster had said herself that they were mutual enemies, unable to exist in the same world.



"You must forgive me again, Twilight" She thought. Celestia prayed that it’s millennium of survival so far spoke well of the nightmare armor’s ability to survive her next attack.
Celestia reached out to direct her sun lance, and found her mind entangled in a sullied plane of repellent fury. Startled, Celestia tried to pull away, but she was far too entrenched in the sun now.

Her mother sun had let her bumble into a moment of weakness, and was trying to take control.


The silken magical strands weaved their way downwards from heaven, wrapping around Celestia at many points. The pure spring of energy the sun had provided Celestia turned into an inky red well, bubbling into her heart, rendering her powerless against the spectral noose. The bindings tightened, jerking her upwards. Celestia struggled to breath, and failed when she was completely lifted off her hooves.
The treachery of it! Celestia would have been outraged if she was not so terrified. Her mother was actively acting against her now. She writhed, to no avail. The sun was going to punish her, with no care for precipace the world was on.

"W-Wh-" Celestia tried to choke out a plea to the sun.

“Oop, almost forgot about our princess. I’ll be right back mother!” Forlorn Sparkperked at the sounds behind her. She kicked Twilight’s bits away, and turned dangling princess. “I'm sorry for neglecting you, but you didn't need to go and leave. I just got so excited with Twilie here.” The thing’s formless face leaned into her, it’s eyes rippling in imitation of a kiss. Forlorn was loving to see Celestia suffer. "What a pinch, huh? As it turns out, the sun isn't so great for you either. Real shame, considering you've just started respecting yourself enough to put up an honest fight." Forlorn reached a shadowy hoof out, teasing the solar shackles binding Celestia. "What did you do to make her hate you more than me? Is she sad? Angry? Pshh, mothers. Fickle things. Beautiful, but fickle.”

"GGg-" Celestia tried to beg for help, but the tendril around her throat was too tight.

Twilight struggled futilely to reassemble the armor and stand up. Her pieces had been scattered too far from each other, and Forlorn’s abuse had drained her too much to act.  She was aware but helpless as her mentor had the life squeezed out of her.
What had she been expecting, coming back from the Moon? Yet another blunder, serving only to divide Celestia attention.





A cool east breeze blew over the castle. It was not sickening or malignant like a nightmare, but clear and stiff, a cathartic breath from beyond the world. The ponies and nightmares could feel the change, and looked around in confusion. Celestia, lacking for air and energy, feeling the life draining away from her, raised her heaving lips into a knowing smile.


At a deliberate and ominous pace, the Moon rose above the horizon, and settled herself occluding her cosmic sister. Blocked by the eclipse, the meddlesome influence of the sun was ended.
Celestia fell to the ground, gasping for breath for what must have been the fourth time in an hour. She rolled on her back and stared up at the grey moon overhead, as everypony else was doing.

The Moon wanted to return as a force upon the Bright World, after a thousand years of languishing.