In the Hall of Petitions, leading from the east wing of the Court of the Princesses, there hung an ancient scroll bearing a poem by Quaking Leaf. It was an ode to the dawn, and on its wall facing east it observed, every morning, the slow surrender of night to day. The loops and whorls of its script flowed like water, difficult to read even for one who knew the poem by heart, but within the twists of the brush and lines of ink lurked the hint of motion, as though each word were alive, waiting to crawl off the page. In the seven centuries the scroll spent on that wall, no fewer than a dozen foals received their cutie marks as poets or calligraphers simply by viewing it in passing.
There were rumors, never confirmed, that Quaking Leaf and Celestia had been more than just acquaintances. That their relationship was more than simply that of a wealthy patron and her client. That Quaking Leaf's ode to the dawn was a confession of love, never spoken aloud, for he knew well how fragile her reign was in those early years, when her rule rested on a foundation of sand, not stone.
Others said that Celestia simply liked his poems. Regardless of the reason, after Quaking Leaf's death she ordered the scroll hung in a gold frame from a gold wire on a gold hook, and sometimes, in the evenings when she was preparing to retire, ponies said they saw her stop and gaze at the poem, bearing an expression of one lost in thought.
The dawn was hours late when Celestia destroyed it.
She fled down the abandoned corridor, propelled by her wings and magic to several times the speed of sound. The sluggish air, far too slow to move out of her way, compressed before her and caught fire, filling the hall with a flash as bright as the sun. The black ink on the scroll absorbed a fractionally higher amount of this energy and ignited, and for a moment the words of Quaking Leaf’s poem lived in flames that licked the ancient, charring paper around them.
A thousandth of a second later the shockwave of Celestia’s passage smashed the scroll like a hammer, snuffing the fires and blasting the fragile thing into drifting embers. They died, and shadows and falling dust swallowed all the rest.
Celestia burst from the crumbling palace like a shooting star. Towers that had stood for centuries toppled in billowing shrouds of dust that swept down the streets. The city shook, and around her the broad avenues collapsed into the earth, forming depthless, yawning canyons. Entire blocks sank and vanished from her sight.
She landed atop a stone bridge whose graceful arches had yet to fall. The river below was no longer the calm, torpid stream that had long divided the city in two; violent cataracts and rapids, murky and full of rocks, churned beneath her. The water banged against the pillars, shaking them, and she felt the bridge begin to shift.
A small part of her wanted nothing more than lie there, to wait for the bridge to collapse, and to let the mad waters consume her. She risked a backward glance and noted that the palace was simply gone; only settling dust and memories remained.
A twinge in her side woke her from her brief reminiscence, and she looked down to see drops of blood painting black flowers on the stones beneath her. The world was bright but colorless – silver and shadows – and she gazed up at the source of this cold light.
A full moon leered at her. It was bloated, huge and monstrous, filling half the sky above the dying city. She could see the individual peaks of its mountains. No clouds dared occlude it; they streamed away, fleeing toward the horizon, leaving nothing between her and the moon's blinding gaze.
“Do you like it, Sister?” An icewater voice slid through her mind, and she dove from the bridge moments before the stone around her exploded. A black, formless mass flickered in the still-expanding fragments, grew still, then shot after her like an arrow made of night.
“Luna, please!” Celestia shouted at her pursuer. She banked beneath a row of flying buttresses spiraling up a slender tower, one of the few still standing in the city. They burst like stitches as she passed, and the tower began a long, slow fall into the ruin below. “This isn’t you!”
“This isn’t you!” the voice echoed. For a moment it sounded like Luna, like her sister, but just as quickly it was lost in mocking laughter that rolled on and on. It sounded like nothing sane.
Celestia chanced a look back. The boiling mass of shadows was closer now, or larger, or both. One liquid pustule rose to the surface and burst, revealing a cyan eye and a thousand teeth, as many teeth as there were stars in the night, all aligned in a shark’s maw, grinning at her. Hungry.
She flew faster.
“Where are they now, your beloved subjects?” Nightmare Moon's voice was like a shadow on her thoughts. “They are fled, sister. That is how much they loved you – not at all. And now only the stars and I shall witness your passing.”
They had not, in fact, all fled. She could see dark shapes, black in the moonlight, crumpled on the ground as she sped by. She smelled the iron and salt in their blood, spilled out on the marble flagstones. Many – far, far too many – had stayed.
She flew, and the nightmare chased, and above them both and the ruined city the moon watched them, never moving from its vault in the sky. She fled until her wings burned and her lungs failed and dark spots crowded the edges of her eyes.
It was pointless, of course – she could no more escape her sister than she could escape the night. Ahead of her rose a wall of shadows, a wave of darkness stretching across the horizon and rising to the edge of space. She slowed, stopped, and turned to face Luna.
“Please.”
The roiling mass of night exploded, revealing the monster within. If Celestia looked close, she could just barely discern her sister's shadow in the angle of the nightmare’s jaw.
“Too late, Sister,” it said. “One world, one god.”
“We’re not gods.”
It smiled. “And that is why I shall rule. You have the tools to stop me, but you are too weak to use them. Beg me, and I will be quick.”
Could she? Could she fight her sister? Always before the answer had been ‘no.’ Now, faced with this monster, with a silver spear crafted from moonlight lancing toward her chest, with her city in ruins, with her beloved ponies scattered in terror of the living, breathing night, Celestia closed her eyes and thought.
It was time to find out.
* * *
“I love you,” Celestia whispered.
Luna looked up. Their table was littered with dozens of letters from Twilight Sparkle – her sister had lately taken an interest in reading them.
“And I you, sister.” She paused. “May I ask what gives rise to such an unexpected, yet welcome, declaration?”
Celestia blushed. “Sorry, just daydreaming.” Her ears flicked back, abashed, and she turned again to the old book sitting open before her.
“Ah.” A pause. “What is that you are reading? You haven't turned the page in many minutes, now.”
“Just some old poems.”
“Hm.” Luna seemed to consider this, then nodded. “Very good.”
And they went back to their reading.