Luna picked her way through the old and worn paths through the Everfree, the very branches and brambles recoiling at her presence, either through fear, or at some unknown command. In here, she was no princess, no sovereign of the Moon. Here, she was just another pony. Such was the way that she would have wanted it, and to prove it, Luna had ventured in unarmoured, unprotected.
Eventually, her hooves stopped hitting dirt, and started clapping on polished stone, yet their cadence never ceased. Overhead, the sun and the moon appeared to hang in the sky together, but Luna knew that it was simply an illusion. A masterfully crafted one, but still an illusion. Luna pushed on the oaken door, causing it to swing open without so much as a squeak, and the sound of Luna’s hoofsteps echoed throughout the empty halls, announcing her presence to anyone listening. Tracing a path long since memorized, Luna found herself at the top of the highest tower of the old castle. The castle that had once belonged to her and her sister, and now was used by another.
“Hello, Luna.”
“Twilight Sparkle,” said Luna, approaching the meditating unicorn and kneeling down opposite her. “It is good to see you again.”
“It really has been too long, Luna. How’s Celestia these days?”
“You know exactly how she is. She’s stressed and worried. I will be blunt, Twilight Sparkle. We need you.”
“No, you don’t,” replied Twilight, “you need the engine of magical destruction that I refuse to be.”
Luna paused for a minute, collecting her thoughts.
“Yes, we do,” she eventually said, “The enemy cannot be defeated my anything mortal; our generals have confirmed as much. We are in a war of attrition, Twilight Sparkle. A war that we will lose. A war, Twilight Sparkle, that you cannot ignore forever.”
“Do not assume that I am ignoring it!” yelled Twilight Sparkle, her eyes snapping open, “Everyday, I can hear the cries on the wind, and I hate that our ponies are dying out there, but I will not become that again! You do not know what that’s like, seeing everypony look at you like you’re about to implode!”
“Do I not, Twilight Sparkle?” asked Luna, her voice soft. Twilight clapped her hooves over her mouth with a gasp.
“Luna, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to...”
“I have done terrible, terrible things, Twilight. Both as Nightmare Moon and as myself. Things that will never leave me. So has Celestia. Even Cadence has committed herself to courses that will forever stain her spirit. But we three are not enough. Not against this foe. We need Princess Twilight Sparkle, The Master of Destruction. We know that you do not like doing that, Twilight. None of us do, but there are times when it is necessary. The foe has angered the alicorns, and to save our subjects, we must take the field of war.They have invited the apocalypse upon themselves. Three times they ignored our offers of peace, our warnings. Now they must pay.”
Twilight sighed, and stood up.
“I can’t escape it, can I?”
“You could stay here, Twilight,” said Luna, also rising, “but sooner or later, they would find you. They would burn the forest to the ground, and you would be forced to fight sooner or later. You may as well make it upon your own terms.”
Twilight looked down at the castle below her, the castle that had long ago, convinced her that she had friends.
“Alright. To save the world, I guess I’ve got to go destroy a bit of it. These things aren’t going to know what hit them.”
Luna and Twilight shared a smile. It was not necessarily a nice smile.