Captain Helios left the throne room and stumbled down the corridors of the castle towards his beloved bed in his private room in the castle. He crashed through the doors and fell to the floor. He sobbed loudly while clutching his chest tightly. He tore the Captain insignia from his armor and threw it far from himself. He stripped his armor off with great difficulty and left in a heap beside himself as he continued to lay on the ground.
“I can’t, I can’t do this. I didn’t sign up for this,” he cried. “My friends, comrades, subordinates sent to oblivion.” He wobbled onto his hooves and went over to the picture on his nightstand. In it, himself and his parents stand grinning broadly after his swearing into the office of Captain of the Solar Guard. “Mom, Dad… I didn’t sign up for this. I didn’t sign up for the Royal Guard to… to do… DO THAT!” he wailed, throwing the photo to the wall and hearing a satisfying smash.
He curled up in the corner of his sparse room and cried into the night.
2
Luna rested her head on her pillow, staring up at the ceiling. Her mind was wild with quick flashes of the previous week in the forest and the old castle. And her sister’s corrupting magic in Volos’ bio-mechanical mind. She groaned and rolled to her side. Her silver leg stuck out in front of her, glimmering in the dark. Luna moved it around and carefully watched as it did so. She couldn’t feel anything.
“Is this what Volos feels like? Unable to feel. Feel the softness of the sheets, the cold in the air?”
She crawled off her mattress and looked into her full body mirror. She took in in every new detail of her body. The burn marks, her whited out eye, short mane and tail, and last her new leg. She did not scream, nor cry. She couldn’t. She moved to the desk beside her mirror and opened the top most desk drawer. She peered down and found her long pair of scissors and levitated them to herself. She broke them in the center, creating two separate blades. She put one back on the desk and one still held in her magic grip.
“Which am I?” she asked her reflection. “The creature of metal hiding in pony flesh masquerading as a Princess? Or, Princess Luna? Princess of the Night and Dreams tasked with the protection of those that sleep in the sunless sky. She brought the scissor edge to her mane and lifted the small portion left from her face. One midnight blue beautiful eye and a plain milky white stared back. She placed the tip of the blade to her eye just under the bottom eyelid. She felt the cold tip scratch against her soft eye and pull on the small bits of fur. Her reflection stared back, wide eyed and scared. “I choose me and me alone.” She threw down the blade and let it hit the ground.
These things, this leg, my body, my mind. They’re all mine. I am Princess Luna, Princess of dreams tasked with the protection of the ponies of Equestria while they sleep under the light of my moon.”
Luna looked back to the mirror and lit her horn. The blue glow encompassed her blinded eye. Her determination grew as she felt the magic evaporate her useless organ. She did not yelp or scream as her eye vanished. What stared back at her was another eye; an eye of glowing midnight blue just below the surface of the removed tissue.
3
Celestia sat in her room looking out to the moon Luna had raised not long ago. She stared at it intensely. Her eyes squinted and reopened getting them to focus on the moonlight itself. The light was dim and small, unlike the norm of a bright silver light warming the air in its blanket. She closed the window and pulled the curtains shut. She shuffled around in the darkness and lay down. She grabbed the blankets in her hooves and pulled them over herself. She reveled in the velvet and silk that comprised her sheet and blanket. She closed her eyes and sighed contently.
“Get up.” Celestia bolted upright. She recognized the voice. “Get over here.” Celestia got out of her bed and went into her walk in closet. “Good.”
“What is it?” she asked impatiently. A large silver pillar formed in front of her. Emblazoned in capital letters was the words “sound only.” It flickered and distorted as the seconds passed by.
“Watch your tone Princess,” it warned. “Your progress in this arrangement has been slow,” it droned. “His eminence is growing impatient. And the discreetness in its matters has become more noticeable.”
“I’m doing what I can,” Celestia countered. “I’m the only one doing anything!” she yelled at the flickering pillar. The pillar remained silent. “Who or what are you anyway? Oh, and while I’m at it, I want to see whom I’m addressing,” she stated coldly.
“Who and what we are is none of your concern,” the pillar answered at last. “Our identities are none of your concern. “What does concern you is that the arrangement is completed. And know this Celestia, myself and the others do not appreciate your tone. Should you speak to us that way again there will be consequences. Understood?”
“Yes,” Celestia answered half-heartedly.
“Do not fail us Princess. The Arrangement must succeed and should it; you will have your reward.” The pillar fizzled out of existence, leaving Celestia alone.
Celestia came out of her walk in and shut the door. She stood there shivering despite the warmth of the room. She turned quickly and punched the wooden door, nearly breaking it from its frame. She panted and held back the tears that threated to stain her coat.
“I can’t fail. It’s the only chance I have. I must succeed.”
4
Luna passed through the dreamscape, its never-ending tendrils spread throughout her mind as she looked for those tendrils holding nightmares and other horrors of the mind. She peered through her sacred realm and passed from tendril to tendril sending love and happiness to those who needed such things this night. She neared the end of the tendril path and her focus shifted to the darkest tendril she had ever witnessed. It waved sporadically and was covered in thorns and thistles; its darkness threatening to seep into the other pure tendrils nearby. She gazed at this abomination of a nightmare in wide eyed horror. One other had ever been created. Her own. The one that made her into Nightmare Moon all that time ago. She steeled herself and ignited her horn, readying herself for the scene inside.
The golden throne room stood all around Luna in its splendor filled with a good number of ponies from the Solar Guard and Captain Helios standing by Celestia, looking proud. Celestia held a pleasant smile as she placed a medal around one of the guard’s neck and stood back smiling. Luna saw that the guards in the room all had these medals on their necks. She remained hidden among the shadows of this dream, only a small blue glow coming from her.
“I am very proud of you my little ponies,” Celestia said, still smiling. “You followed orders to the letter and did a great service to your country in tearing down that old castle and you did a personal favor for me in doing that as well. From the bottom of my heart I thank you.” Celestia moved back to her throne and sat down. She looked over the assembled guards for brief minute and smirked. “As you know from your debriefing, this mission was off the books. A training mission went wrong.” She gestured to Helios. “The Captain assures me that you will not speak of this to anypony. I have complete confidence that you will not either. However, I must be sure. Your service was appreciated and you will all be missed. I will send my personal condolences to your families and other loved ones.”
Helios was confused by her words as were the other guards. Celestia’s horn ignited with a brilliant light and a great vacuum opened in the floor. It’s red and orange pools circling sucking in those standing above it. The guards wailed in pain and terror as their armor melted and burned their bodies as they were pulled down into the swirling vortex of fire. Their skin melted revealing nothing more than bone and liquefied gold armor. The vortex sealed and closed with a loud bang and the throne room was silent.
Luna stared in horrified wonder at the crime that her elder sister had committed. She wanted to leave this sick nightmare and never return to it. Yet she could not. Her dream magic could not open the gate back into the dreamscape. She lit her horn and tried again. And again. Still nothing worked.
“This isn’t a dream,” she realized, her heart filling with dread. “It’s a memory!” She looked back to the scene replaying again and again. She watched a second time, a third, a fourth, as the guards were pulled to their deaths inside the vortex. Her good eye swam in its socket looking for the source of the memory. Her eye fell onto the form of Helios, who unlike the other forms of the memory was not resetting position and remained with the same petrified look. “There.”
Luna jumped from her position and put a great deal of magic into her horn making glow brighter than before. She jumped onto the frozen Captain Helios and touched her horn to his head. The great blue light enveloped the surrounding area and released a bright flash. Luna shot from her meditative position and shot across the room. She hit the wall hard and groaned as she rushed to her hooves.
5
Helios lay on the ground frozen in his fright. He could hear nothing and he could feel nothing. He only felt the chill of the air coming from his broken window that he had hit when he woke up. He heard a frantic knock on the door. He could not understand the words coming from behind it, so he did not move. He looked lazily as the door was smashed from the hinges and in came an unknown pony; a pony with a short blue mane, silver leg and a glowing blue eye with horns and wings.
“Helios! Helios get up!” the pony demanded frantically. “I know what happened. To your brothers in arms,” the pony said somberly. Helios looked up at the pony that stood over him now and found his voice for but a moment.
“My brothers and sisters. They’re gone. My comrades, the ponies I shared my life with. Went through basic with. And loved so dearly. They’re all gone. Burned in the sun, never to return,” he said quietly. “Now I will join them again. I am going to see my brothers and sisters again.”
Luna wrapped her legs around the body of Captain Helios feeling his blood permeate her coat, and turn the silver of her leg red. Tears fell from her remaining true eye and the other’s light dimmed ever so slightly. She buried her head in his lifeless shoulder and remained there for a time.
When she regained herself she placed his body down to the ground and stood back up. She stared at what remained of the former Captain of the Solar Guard. She felt her teeth clench and her brows furrow. She roared into the air. A primal roar. Bestial. Her breath became ragged and short. Her body shook, her mind rocked and raged.
She felt the rage of a beast. The primal hate that dwells within the soul of the tormented. She felt the hate that made her into the Nightmare. Luna’s good eye became red, glowing in the darkness of her own night mixing with the blue of her left. Her mane grew form the short burned into a raging, twisting blue inferno of moonfire. She roared again to the wind; waking the castle from its ignorant slumber.
Her ears heard the clopping of armored hooves and the flapping of leather wings. Gold and black guards appeared at the door and gazed to the sight before them. Luna turned quickly to her small audience. She frowned deeply and growled with unholy hate.
“The Sun will know vengeance!”
The guards fell to the ground.