//------------------------------// // 346. Dusk by Knight of Cerebus // Story: The Sun and the Stars: A Twilestia Prompt Collab // by Fuzzyfurvert //------------------------------// by Knight of Cerebus *** Luna stood atop the upper branches to Golden Oaks, eyes narrowed to resentful slits. "So, think thee worthy of my sister, child?" She spread her wings, horn aglow with magic. "We hath invented fashion trends that lasted longer than thine lifespan, knave. We would have words with thee, but we see from the filth that pollutes thine dreams that thou art too fargone for mere words to dissuade thee. Thou art but Dusk to our Night, and the Night must always set the Dusk in line." Twilight struggled to find the words for what she was being accused of, but Luna's having abruptly yanked her from her bed and challenged her meant she was still flabbergasted and still finding her bearings. She shuffled to her feet. "I, uh--Um..." "'Tis all thou wouldst say to defiling my bloodline in thine dreams? Speak, fiend! Justify thine perversion!" Luna stomped a hoof, causing a cascade of lightning to form in the skies above her. Thunder boomed for miles around. Twilight raised up her head. "Luna, please. Can we talk about this. This, uh--" Twilight cringed, her face colouring at the thought of Celestia even suspecting that her old pupil was having untoward thoughts about her. "This is something I'm not exactly comfortable with, either. To be honest, sometimes I wish it would go away. It would make dealing with her easier, an--" "'Tis a reccuring thought of thine?!" Luna's eyes flashed dangerously. "We shall not have such filth in our courts!" Luna lowered her head, eye still narrowed into a firm, dangerous glare. "Engarde, Twilight Sparkle! Surrender thine dreams of befouling my flesh and blood or surrender thine tutelage with her and the bond thou hast poached by it!" Twilight's eyes widened, then narrowed. The gestures all made sense to her, now. This was not Luna judging her for her feelings. This was not Luna enraged at a breach in composure. This was jealous Luna, possessive Luna, Luna angry at the bond the two of them had together. Twilight lowered her own horn, bowing to her formal opponent. "I accept. On my terms, I will take permission to court your sister should I win. Formally. Without my, um--" Twilight blushed, but regained her composure much more quickly than she would have in a modern parlay. "My untoward thoughts." Luna answered her request with the first volley, a bolt of pure star energy scouring the floor Twilight had once been standing on. The branches around the Golden Oaks wrapped Luna in their grip, then swatted her out of the sky. Twilight landed in a flash of purple energy, hitting the ground with a trot. The shut-in of a unicorn forced herself to remain calm. This was not her trying to defuse the magic of a unicorn that caught her in the school yard trying to bully her with artifacts he scarcely understood. This was not a lesson with a referee to intervene if things got out of hand. This was a Magic Duel. Wards flung up around her body as she ran. Protection from mind quash, immunity to lightning, pain tolerance, nightvision. She turned on a dime to see Luna steaming towards her, body crackling with blue-black energy. She sensed the kinetics spell before it had even moved her, but the raw power meant she had no time to counterspell. Luna's raw magic wrapped around her barrel and flung her from her house to Town Hall, her body tumbling through the sky. She hit a magical barrier, then another, and then another, each one forcing a groan from her chest. She propelled herself out of Luna's grip with a blast of energy from her horn, shooting into the air like a rocket. She cast a shield spell around her side, next, disappearing in a flash of lavender. Luna scoffed. "Art thou a hind for the skewering? Fight u--" She was cut off by a teleported Twilight uppercutting her with a force field backed by the speed her escape trajectory had lent her. Luna bounced against the library's surface, the wind flying from her lungs in an instant. She tried to draw another breath, only to find that Twilight had sucked away the air from around her mouth. She dissolved into a column of black smoke in response, worming towards Twilight as a column of dark gas. Twilight responded by wrapping herself in a forcefield, this one shimmering with energy. Luna smirked internally at this, then rematerialized to the left of Twilight's rear. Blasts of lightning rained down from the heavens, their force turning the ground around Twilight to glass. Luna saw the forcefield weaken, then dissipate, and exploited her opening the minute it made manifest. She lunged forward as a cloud of smoke, producing tendrils that wrapped around Twilight's horn and suspended her in midair. She drained valuable magic from Twilight's reservoir with her vampiric touch, shedding the filth of her rival's mana into the night as harmless smoke. It was then that Twilight dropped the lightning ward, and with it all the energy her body had been storing from Luna's assault. The entire world around Luna exploded with light, sound and fire, sending the alicorn of the night tumbling into a grocery stand and reducing it to splinters with the force of her impact. Luna raised up, her eyes white with fury. Her wings raised, her mane billowed, and then she was consumed by black fire. Fragments of glass broke themselves from the ground around Twilight, flying to punch her in the gut and legs. The ground around her turned to a void of pure darkness, and suddenly her whole body sagged with exhaustion. She felt her losing her energy with every passing minute. Defiant still, she raised a bubble of magic between herself and the glass and the sleep-inducing ground around her. A streaking comet of magic and ice tumbled from the sky, and she had to toss the bubble to stop herself from being crushed. The force of the blast knocked her against a wall of glass and the same black magic from before that Luna had formed beneath her. The pain and exhaustion brought Twilight to her knees, her head sinking towards the ground around her. The glass wrapped itself into a prison, encasing her and her horn. She was only able to stop the glass from reaching her horn's tip, leaving her completely encased besides. Twilight's teeth grit and her eyes narrowed, but her entire body screamed for her to surrender, to run away, to submit. But then she thought of never seeing Celestia again. Of that smiling face being gone forever from her life, of her never studying magic with her again, never reading with her or laughing at her stupid puns. Luna approached her slowly, head held high in triumph. She spread her wings, alighting to land before Twilight's hooves. "T'was more than the farce we expected, but however inventive, thou art mortal. Thine place is beneath me, and ever it shall be out of my sight. Perhaps some time held from my sister might quash these feelings for her." Luna leaned down to stare Twilight in the eyes, her own blue orbs glaring with an intensity Twilight had never seen before. "But thou are not worthy of her, and thou never shall be. And from this day forward, thou shalt forever know this day as the day Dusk bowed to the Night, as it is always fated to." "Maybe...I am...just the Dusk..." Twilight wheezed out. "But the Dusk knows the day a lot better than the Night does." It was then that Twilight inverted her night vision ward, eyes shining with the intensity of the everlasting sun itself. The glass magnified the light, shining it directly into Luna's sensitive eyes. The alicorn screamed at the burning, her whole body cringing from the assault. Twilight shoved the helpless alicorn directly into the glass with a last push of her magic, hitting Luna's head against the space filled by her horn. One horned tapped another, and it was then that Twilight copied the vampire spell Luna had used from before. But where Luna had dropped Twilight's spare magic in disgust, Twilight set the magic she stole to good use. Luna found her power draining away, her every attempt to resist made useless by the light clawing at her vision and burning her skin. The pain tolerance ward inverted itself, and Luna felt a sunburn forming underneath the fur across her body. The mind quash ward inverted, and Luna found her mind fogging like a pony caught in the beating sun of a boiling summer. Lastly, she felt her mind flooded with visions of Twilight and Celestia together. Reading, nuzzling, talking, laughing, smiling. The last thought to reach Luna's mind before it was overwhelmed by the magic loss, pain, dizziness and heat was one of Luna and Celestia embracing, Twilight herself standing off to one side with the other Elements of Harmony. Luna noticed that Twilight was smiling at them, and then everything went dark. Twilight broke from her glass prison, the remainder of Luna's stolen magic going into healing the beaten alicorn and repairing the town square. A pair of ghostly, magical wings floated over her back, hinting at things to come. Once she had at last completed her work, and Ponyville had been set back to normal, she looked down at her foe. "There. That's that, I guess. After all that, courting The Princess should be a breeze." With that, she herself collapsed atop Luna, her battered and drained body claiming the rest it had been screaming for earlier. In the world of dreams, Luna awaited her, a grudging smirk across her face. The grin turned sheepish when Twilight looked at her in uncertainty. "Greetings, Twilight Sparkle. We believe you said that you wished to...talk?"