Her eyes darting open, Luna flung to her feet and looked around frantically. Whatever had just happened...where was she now?
"You're awake..." Nightmare Moon's voice rung out, and Luna whipped around to face it. Nightmare Moon was prodding a small fire with a stick held in her magic, looking sullen and defeated. "That's good to see."
"What have you DONE?!" Luna yelled, looking around frantically. Other than the seemingly floating patch of dirt they were standing on, there was nothing but blackness.
"Look...I'm sorry, Luna. You're not going to like the answer."
"Dammit, Nightmare. I told you it wouldn't work!"
"Well, actually it did work. Which is why I'm sorry," Nightmare Moon was still staring sadly into the fire, deliberately avoiding Luna's eyes. "I'm afraid I lied to you about our plan. There was never any additional Nightmare Forces. There was never any chance of transferring them into Discord or freeing you of them. What I did, I did to save you and to save Equestria, but I imagine you'll hate me for it."
"Then tell me!" Luna urged, beating a hoof against the ground impatiently. Nightmare Moon let out a colossal sigh, and rose to her feet. Using her magic, she stuck the branch she had been fiddling with into the fire and withdrew the makeshift torch she had just created.
"It's...it's sort of like fire in the wind," she began. "Me being the wind and you being the fire. The wind has been getting stronger and it's simply because I'm still here. I'm not doing anything, I don't want to keep corrupting you, but I am and I'm sorry. Any longer and..."
Nightmare Moon took the stick from the smoldering campfire, brought it close to herself, and extinguished the flame simply by closing her eyes sadly.
"Before long the evil I've been spreading would've destroyed Equestria. Instead of letting that happen, I tricked you into locking yourself back down here, in the depths of your own mind, dragging the darkness with you. It's grown...like a tumor, stuck to your consciousness. And after what Discord did, it was expanding even further. But here, it can't harm you. You'll be safe. As will Equestria."
"No!" Luna practically screamed. "I won't be! Why would it be any different here?! And what about my subjects? I'm never going to be able to see them again!"
"Luna, you ARE safe. It can't kill you, or else it'll just die off. And it's influence will be limited to down here again. Instead of letting Equestria perish...I made a necessary sacrifice."
"So that you could have control," Luna turned away in complete disgust. "You're quite the hero, Nightmare Moon."
"Please, Luna! I didn't have a choice! If I wouldn't have done anything we both would have died! You felt what it was doing, it would've spread and taken you over anyways, and there would've been nothing we could do about it! And then Equestria would have a much worse ruler than you or Discord, I can assure you. I'm sorry you're trapped here, Luna, I really, really am, but I saved your life."
"I'd rather die then let you rule Equestria in me or Celestia's stead," Luna replied, Celestia's letter instantly coming to her mind. Her sister had trusted her to save Equestria and yet again she had failed.
"I'm sorry you feel that way, Luna," Nightmare Moon sighed in defeat. "I care about Equestria, too, you know. "
Luna snorted and said nothing for a long while, taking in the sea of dreary and dark fields surrounding her, once again making up her reality. In that moment she realized that after all they had been through, she hated Nightmare Moon more than anypony else she had ever known. She saw now that she'd been right when she'd distrusted Nightmare Moon. Celestia had always encouraged friendship and compassion, but what good had it done her now?
"Leave, Nightmare Moon. You've won. Congratulations. Now go." Luna once again fell to the ground, resting her muzzle sadly on the cold dirt. She let out an irritated sigh when Nightmare Moon followed her and sat down, too.
"I don't want to leave on such poor terms—"
"Well I want you to go! I don't ever wish to see you again. Go steal my life! It's what you wanted, isn't it?"
Nightmare Moon stared for a long time at herself reflected in Luna's watering irises, wishing she had something encouraging to say. In truth, she knew there really was nothing left. They'd hit the bottom and although Equestria was safe, she had lost the trust and companionship of a good friend whose presence she'd never deserved. Any apologies she had she knew would be worthless to Luna, who was for the first time starting to see her for what she was; a monster.
"I'm sorry—"
"Shut up!" Luna leaped to her feet and screamed right into Nightmare Moon's face. She felt something warm and ticklish streak down her face and realized she was crying. "I don't want to hear your lies anymore! I don't want..."
Luna stopped abruptly as the tears continued falling silently down her face. Once again falling to the ground, Luna broke out in fresh, half-muted sobs and when Nightmare Moon moved to console her she was violently pushed away, falling off her feet and hitting the dirt hard. Reluctantly rising, she looked at Luna's heaving form, four years of guilt and anger finally reaching it's boiling point.
"I'm sorry, Luna," she whispered inaudibly, turning away from Luna and closing her eyes as she prepared to leave. There would be no triumphant twisting of the odds, they would not be leaving on good terms, and the chance of them ever meeting again was nonexistent. Hope had been extinguished, at least until the Elements of Harmony finally separated them, but that was more than likely never going to happen.
"Take care of Equestria, Nightmare Moon," Luna said suddenly, parting the dirt in front of her absently with a hoof. "You've taken everything from me, please at least promise me that you will."
"I promise, Luna. I swear to you I won't let anything happen to it,"
"Goodbye, Nightmare Moon."
"I'm...Goodbye, Luna."
The first thought that rushed through the black alicorn's brain as her eyes slowly fluttered open was that everything hurt. Even the light, which was in reality a dim candlelight, seemed blinding and disorienting and before long she had to close her eyes again in order to satisfy their protesting groans of pain. She felt small lumps across her body, legs, and hooves, but couldn't find the motivation to open her eyes to see what they were.
What had happened? Where was she?
And then another thought flitted through her mind.
WHO was she?
Once again she attempted to wake herself, and found that on the second try she seemed to respond a little better to the light, but still had to squeeze them shut again before her world had time to come into focus. She felt like she was about to fall back to slumber, but she had a creeping suspicion that she'd been slumbering for far too long as it was. As if in protest to her body's wishes, she confidentially forced herself awake, and flooded herself with as many senses as she could before they could overtake her instead.
She was lying on a plush bed in a dimly lit room. Or...she had been lying on the bed, now she was leaning up and doing her best to orient herself into a standing position on the floor that felt like it was a million miles below.
The room she was in was mostly featureless, as if the bed had just been shoved into a room with a candle to just move her out of the immediate way of some more important pony.
Again the thought rushed to her mind. Who then WAS she? Looking back, she examined her black coat and wings. The lumps she had felt earlier turned out to be thick rounds of bandage tape, which upon removing she found were covering massive burns and cuts. Bringing a hoof to her forehead, she found that she had a horn, too. Which meant she was an alicorn. Even in her confused state, she knew that being an alicorn wasn't exactly a common thing.
The only other feature to the room other than the bed and candle perched on the wall was a sturdy looking wooden door, so she took a step towards it, stumbled and fell to the hardwood floor, rose again, and pushed it open.
The moment she did, she was greeted to several alarmed gasps and nearly tackled down by concerned ponies.
"Princess! You're awake!"
"How are you feeling, Your Majesty? Do you need anything?"
"Need...?" she croaked, her voice coated with dried blood and phlegm. The ponies had been removing and reapplying bandage tape and doting her wounds with stinging ointment, but they looked up in surprise when she spoke. She coughed and tried again. "Need anything? No, I...I think I'm fine. What I would like is an explanation as to..."
"You passed out," Another voice said, colder and more distant than the others. The black alicorn turned her gaze to this new voice and saw that she was different from the other ones. Instead of fur she seemed to have a hard, insect-like shell, with insect wings to match. One was crumbled at a sickening angle and the other was wrapped in thick bandages that made it droop nearly to the ground.
"You're...Chrysalis," she said, memories of this young Queen rushing to her head. Who SHE was remained a mystery, but this changeling Queen was a familiar face.
"And you're Luna. And I'm...shocked to find myself relieved that you are alright."
Luna. Another familiar name, but she didn't feel like it belonged to her. Curiously, she ran it through her mind, trying to determine whether or not it fit who she was.
The black alicorn awoke from slumber. Luna awoke from slumber.
Luna rose from bed. Luna greeted Queen Chrysalis.
Nightmare Moon murdered Princess Luna.
She blinked a few times at that last thought. Where had that come from? It bore no relevance to what she had previously been thinking and really didn't even make sense at all. Who in Equestria was Nightmare Moon?
Then again, that name didn't seem foreign to her either. In fact, it somehow felt just as applicable to herself as Luna did. Perhaps even more so. But Chrysalis had called her Luna. As did the ponies (who, as they assaulted her body with instruments and medical tape, she decided they must be doctors and nurses.)
Rubbing the bridge of her nose with a hoof, she tried to force memories back into her stubborn skull. Memories of Luna. Herself, apparently.
She remembered blood, and battle, and crossing long plains of post-apocalyptic soil with some grand task looming at the forefront of her mind and poking out beyond the horizons ahead. She remembered a freezing wasteland of snow and towering crystal spires, looking at the marble that was Equus from the surface of the moon, listening to the distant lapping waves of the black sea of some lonely and abandoned beach town.
With each memory another one emerged. Her mind rippled like the surface of a pond, each memory a pebble sending cascades of activity across her bewildered mind. When she'd heard the waves, she was on the floor of an abandoned beach house. And that beach house had belonged to her sister. And her sister had been Princess Celestia.
Luna murdered Princess Celestia.
She juggled that sentence over and over. It sent chills down her spine, it disturbed her too no end, but what she feared most was how accurate it seemed to be. All the names seemed to click into place, whilst filling in the gaps of her memory. She turned again to Queen Chrysalis, who was currently engaged in an argument with one of the ponies who had been tending to her bandaged wing.
"Quit prodding me, you idiot! It's membrane, it grows back!" Chrysalis was snarling, as she shoved the shocked unicorn nurse away.
"Queen Chrysalis," she said in an irritated and tired voice, recovering from Chrysalis's shove and resuming her contact with the wing. "The membrane isn't my concern. The intersecting bone that connects it to your body is just about ready to give out."
"I said I was fine. Why are you ponies so hospitable all of a sudden? Did you miss the part where I tried to kill your Princess? Oh, speaking of which..." Chrysalis turned her gaze towards the black alicorn still hovering in the impasse between her temporary quarters and the throne room.
"Maybe we can come to another arrangement. I don't really have any desire to dish out anymore revenge then I did with Discord. It's in the best interest of my future changelings that I've decided forming an alliance would be better. What do you think, Princess Luna?"
"Chrysalis...I'm not really in the correct state of mind to be making these sort of negotiations. I'm experiencing some sort of memory lapse."
"Don't ever call me Chrysalis again. It's Queen Chrysalis. I call you Princess Luna, after all. And fine, whatever," At the unspoken request of the nurse, Chrysalis sighed and lifted her wing to give better access to the protruding marrow. "You did have a pretty nasty magic surge. For awhile you were just...laying there, your eyes all cloudy and featureless. You looked possessed or something."
"You shot down Discord with a love magic surge," she recalled, feeling the memories poking out onto the surface of her mind, if not as small and random pinpricks of information.
"That's right. Your sisterly love for Celestia. It was the strongest I think any changeling has seen. Then you trotted over, had a one-sided screaming argument with yourself, and bang! Magic surge the size of the Everfree! Probably would have killed him, but he turned himself to stone."
"Then does that mean...the black clouds? I remember there being black clouds of dark magic..."
"Mhm, well, those have been dissipating over the past few days. Chronological days, I mean. Discord's nothing but a tacky lawn ornament and the sky doesn't rumble and spill out random objects. It seriously looks like everything is going to be fine."
"Thank you for your help, Queen Chrysalis. Without you I surely would have fallen."
"Yeah, whatever."
"No, really, Chrysalis. Thank you."
"Queen Chrysalis. And you're welcome, Princess Luna."
"Why would you help me? Why not let me die? I thought you blamed me for your mother's death..."
"I did. And...I still sort of do. I know that what happened to her wasn't your doing, and that you didn't flee for those four years like I thought you did. Besides...my mother forgave you in the past. And she did what was best for her changelings, and not herself. If I ever hope to be as good a Queen as she was, then I need to do the same."
"You'll make a fantastic Queen."
"Oh, I know I will," Chrysalis said. "I've already been speaking with some changelings through the hivemind. Infants. They hatched at just the right time, giving me just enough energy to transform into Celestia..."
Chrysalis suddenly raised her voice accusingly in the direction of the medical ponies tending her injuries.
"...and I'd be there helping them if these vultures weren't picking at my wounds!"
She let out another entitled 'humph' and stormed back in the direction of her temporary room in Luna's castle to be alone, ignoring the protesting shouts of the nurses and doctors.
Surrounded by nothing but the black starry sky, Luna simply looked on. Looming high above her was the moon, it's size absolutely immense. Every crater and crevice was visible with utmost clarity, so that it looked almost a stone's throw from the floating circle of dirt she was sitting on.
The fire had died out when Nightmare Moon left. In fact, even the traces of it had disappeared. Likewise, the moment that her former friend and companion departed, Luna felt a slightly obtrusive weight manifest itself on her front hoof and looking at it she saw that she was now wearing a silver shackle that was attached to the ground by a chain of several feet. She didn't care. It didn't matter. If she could move, so what? Where would she go?
Her horn did not produce even a spark of magic, and without magic even her ability of flight had vanished. Not that there was really anywhere for her to fly to, except maybe the moon above. She'd been there plenty of times and it was yet another thing she didn't care about anymore.
"So this is it," Luna said, her voice carrying out into the darkness for miles, uninterrupted by any earthly laws of physics. "Until the Elements of Harmony free me, this is my world. That's alright. I can wait."
How long she would HAVE to wait she had no idea. It could be a thousand years, it could be a million. Nightmare Moon had trapped her here and Luna couldn't see any reason why she would be leaving any time soon. She had to rely on the thought that her own subjects were the last hope that she would ever breathe Equestrian air again. And it wasn't a very comforting thought.
Even more disturbing a thought was one Nightmare Moon had only lightly touched on, but Luna's bored mind dwelled on and enhanced until it was a fully formed theory. When Nightmare Moon took over, she would be thinking with her mind and brain, and therefore might not even realize that she was not Luna at all. If this was true, then the chance of Nightmare Moon ever making any sort of move to help her seemed completely out of the question. She couldn't help a pony she did not even know existed, after all.
Even that was founded on the belief that Nightmare Moon even cared about her, something that Luna knew was a stretch. All in all, her future looked rather bleak and hopeless, but she refused to feel as such.
She'd been feeling bleak and hopeless for too long. She'd nearly driven herself to death with negative emotions and thoughts. Now, even though her chances were negligible, Luna did her best to remain positive and optimistic. Surprisingly, she was not completely unsuccessful.
There was a little bit of guilt, too, not only towards Equestria or her sister but also towards Discord. In many ways, she'd failed to find a solution that used a harmonious way out. To hope her magic didn't kill Discord would be to hope Equestria was still under his reign, but to hope it did meant that for the second time in her life she had murdered in cold blood.
She closed her eyes and rested. Her dreamwalking magic had taught her how to phase in and out of dreams at will, and it too gave her the ability to manipulate her own dreamworld and how long she spent in it before waking. She could make her dreamworld a blank slate and sleep for decades if she wanted. The waiting would not be the hardest part of her time here.
Optimism. It was the only thing she had left as she slowly lost awareness of the world around her and prepared for a slumber of a few decades. She could waste her time thinking hatred of Nightmare Moon or pity for herself, but for now she would save those thoughts for later. She had plenty of time to dwell on them, after all.
By contrast to Luna's carefree slumber, Nightmare Moon had no choice but to experience the flow of time in the order that she had no ability to alter. For her, days passed normally, and without long periods of peaceful dreams.
Soon, those days became weeks, where she simply walked through the halls of her wrecked castle or spoke with ponies relieved to be under her rule again. Across these weeks, she and Queen Chrysalis did not speak again. Not that Queen Chrysalis was avoiding her specifically, nor that she was avoiding Chrysalis, but simply because the two had both preferred their own utmost solitude as they recovered. Slowly, Nightmare Moon began fitting into the name of Princess Luna more and more, but still every time she heard it she had the sensation one has upon being called out for thievery. One would call her by name, and she would turn with surprise and guilt, feeling as though she had been committing some sort of crime. Luna was the name she remembered herself by, and it was the name by which she was referred to, so why then did she feel so strange thinking of herself as such?
She stayed in her makeshift bedroom for a long while, simply trying to remember as much as she could. She didn't see Chrysalis leave for the Changeling Empire. She didn't hear the delicate cries of infant changelings through her hivemind, nor the uncharacteristic tears of joy the Queen had shed upon hearing them. Chrysalis had never flown as fast in her life as when she was rushing back to her kingdom.
She wouldn't see Chrysalis nor another changeling until two centuries later.
Months passed. In the blink of an eye, so did years. Slowly, Nightmare Moon remembered. No, Luna remembered. The name slowly became hers again, and her past life as Nightmare Moon vanished like a bad dream. Who she had been was extinguished by the promise of who she was now. She had Luna's memories, she had Luna's emotions, she WAS Princess Luna.
And Equestria was her kingdom. Under the light of the moon, it was her responsibility to keep it safe. Plants were created, trees were grown, nature was forced to adapt. Equestria survived, albeit with a large amount of effort on everypony's part. Almost joyfully, Luna reigned over her subjects, and as they saw the truth of her leadership their fear of her gradually vanished. She had saved them from Discord, she was feeding them and maintaining peace, and although she was frequently hostile and commanding and arrogant, she was a good leader all the same. She might not have been the Luna they remembered, but any variation of the moon princess was better than Discord. What they did not know was that they were completely wrong in their assumptions of Luna's return. They did not know of Nightmare Moon's actions, nor that the black alicorn they saw before them was not Luna but instead a being whose own mind had been wiped clean the moment it became that of Princess Luna.
And so, over the years-turned-decades, Nightmare Moon was forgotten and replaced by Princess Luna, all the while oblivious to the true nature of her being. There was still guilt, after all, she was still living with Luna's brain and therefore Luna's morality, but unlike before, it was not enough to eclipse the light of what needed to be done. On the eve of the hundredth year since Discord had been defeated, she announced that over the century she had managed to reduce the starvation mortality rate by twenty-five percent. After two hundred, her night crops had spread and cultivated most of Equestria, and the starvation that plagued her nation was no longer enough to cause the mass sweeps of death it had in the past.
The striving peace lasted for almost six centuries, but Luna was not oblivious to the growing fear and suspicion amongst her subjects. Five hundred and fifty years after Celestia's death, the first signs of what would become a devastating war bubbled to surface of the black waters that were her dangerous kingdom.
It was during this war that Nightmare Moon returned. The ponies who opposed her started flinging it about like an insult. How they knew of the significance of the name she did not know, but over time it's meaning started to truly seep in. There had always been the inkling doubts about who she was, and during the decades of war she finally decided to let go of the lies she had been telling herself about being Princess Luna, and finally embrace the truth.
With that understanding, it wasn't long before the war ended. Nightmare Moon decimated the resistance with reluctant efficiency, the terror she projected serving as violent of a weapon as the lethal blasts of magic she used to strike her opposition dead. At great costs to her conscience she swallowed her morality, knowing that by doing so she was ending a bloodbath that otherwise would see no end.
After the fifty year war, the fear of Nightmare Moon did not die off. While the ponies were free under the laws Nightmare Moon upheld, it was quite clear to them that to disobey their leader would result in a swift, final punishment without exception. Their leader lived alone in her Everfree Castle, few ponies seeing her again and her existence fading into an almost mythological belief. For decades at a time she would stay there alone, letting the quarrels and conflicts they petty mortals faced come and go as if she simply did not care. Occasionally she did show herself, suddenly walking directionless through her towns and wearing a slight smile and scrutinizing everything under her watchful eyes as blue and cold as the depths of the sea itself. She never spoke, never interacted with a single one of her subjects, she simply walked and watched and then disappeared for another extensive stretch of time.
Some thought she was mad, turned insane by the isolation she brought on herself. Some thought her guilt was the reason she stopped existing in the public's eyes. These beliefs were not unfounded, nor were they entirely incorrect, but what they could never have known was that Nightmare Moon was simply waiting. Waiting in silence for the birth of the prophesied mare, the one that Princess Celestia had claimed would bring about Equestria's salvation. It was the only hope she had and it was a fleeting glimmer at the end of a tunnel in which light dared not tread.
But her waiting did not go uninterrupted. She knew of the rumors and anger building towards her. She knew of the plans of the Rebels and the assassination attempts that had gone unperformed due to fear. With her as a non-existent presence, even the fear started dissipating and the hatred started replacing it.
And so she reinstated the laws of terror she'd thought she never would have to enforce again. Equestria was no longer free, the laws were no longer just, and Nightmare Moon was no longer silent. She killed, she screamed, she punished any who opposed her. Until Twilight Sparkle was born, it was her job to keep herself alive and Equestria safe, and to give in and let another war unfold would be to surrender the prospect of day forever.
Equestria became a dystopia, a world in which fear and terror reigned supreme and ponies lived within caged settlements. She stripped her subjects of their wings, horns, and magic to ensure that they were powerless to start a rebellion. Her heart grew cold and lifeless, and all the while the perverse guilt of who she was and what she had done prevented her from succumbing to insanity completely.
Centuries passed. Hope faded. Ponies died and civilizations grew. Eventually, six mares would be born, and their stories would fade into legend the same way the story of Princess Luna and Princess Celestia had since become.
Nightmare Moon still remained amazed at how routine life as a tyrannical, fearsome leader ultimately turned out to be. It became so simple, so ordinary, so mundane and repetitive, that the passing of time hardly existed to her at all. The only anchor that kept her rooted in the minds of her subjects was her furiously loyal student.
Twilight Sparkle had accomplished so much for such a young unicorn. Then again, having spent her entire life under the close and watchful eye of her mentor, the Princess of Eternal Night, she undoubtedly had a significant advantage over her fellow mortals. While Nightmare Moon ruled over the night unending, Twilight Sparkle was also granted a small but significant role of leadership, as the mayor of the core settlement of Equestria known as Ponyville. She ruled with the same hatred and anger she had learned from following her mentor closely, fueled by her own power, her rich desire to never disappoint the mentor she admired, and her pride at how much she had made for herself. She was the most powerful unicorn Equestria had known and she was the closest pony to the great alicorn who foolish ponies prayed to at day's end and wise ponies had learned to treat with fearful respect.
She was praised at nearly every occasion by her mentor. Nightmare Moon was the closest thing to a family Twilight Sparkle had ever known, and the kind yet fearsome alicorn treated her just as dearly as a mother would.
The disappointment lurking beneath Nightmare Moon's smiles and praise remained unnoticed by her student, her subjects, and the rebellious ponies who had rejected the rules of the night and lived in hiding far from Nightmare Moon's watchful eyes. The truth of Nightmare Moon's displeasure with the terrible, cruel, and powerful pony that was Twilight Sparkle remained hidden, as she eternally wished for a better pony to swoop in and replace the prophesied mare scheduled to bring about the day.
"I'm sending you to oversee trade negotiations with Queen Chrysalis and her changelings," Nightmare Moon told her student, pointing out the kingdom of her old friend on a map older than Twilight Sparkle's great grandmother probably was. "They are close friends of us ponies, so please be as courteous and polite as you can, whilst remaining firm to the demands I am enforcing. Do I make myself understood, Twilight?"
"Crystal, Your Majesty!" Twilight assured with a curt nod.
"Good. Have fun, Twilight. A chariot is waiting in the courtyard to take you there."
Nightmare Moon had enjoyed the silence brought about by the temporary departure of her student. She had no doubt the residents of Ponyville enjoyed the silence even more so than she did. It would only last several weeks, but any refuge from Twilight Sparkle's tyranny was undoubtedly welcomed.
As such, it came as a surprise to Nightmare Moon when she learned of Twilight Sparkle's presence in Ponyville at least three days prior to when she was supposed to return. With frustration disguised as curiosity she took off for Ponyville, only to find the small town in a mass state of panic upon her arrival.
The second they sighted their Princess, the guards of Ponyville dropped into a terrified bow. Nightmare Moon twisted her mouth into a grimace as she walked into their midst, grabbing the first guard she came to by his neck and holding him into the air above her.
"What. Happened?" she growled, enunciating each words separately and coating each one with venomous malice.
"The...the yellow pegasus we captured! The butterfly pony with the wings! She...she..."
"What?! What did she do?"
"I'm so sorry, Your Majesty! She escaped!"
"That's impossible," Nightmare Moon snarled, adding magic to her grip and cutting off the guards flow of air, not enough to kill him but certainly enough to frighten him further. "No unicorn has a horn, no pegasi has wings...what help could this Resistance worm possibly have received?"
"It was unicorn magic, Princess! Somepony broke her out, I swear!"
If Nightmare Moon felt the first signs of hope in a long while, they did not even for a moment find their way into her emotionless glare. But they were there, shining like the moon above.
Yes. Yes. The Resistance had always been a prominent force, and the battle for the sun truly had never ceased. But...for the first time the impossible had been achieved. They had saved one of their own from the very grips of Nightmare Moon.
On the day that Twilight Sparkle had arrived home earlier than scheduled, in secrecy, without approval from her own mentor. Nightmare Moon wasn't stupid, and the signs had never been so obvious than they were as she released the pony from her grip and stalked towards the tall tree home of her supposedly loyal student.
The shock, followed swiftly by nervousness in her student's eyes was evident as she looked up into the judging eyes of Nightmare Moon.
"Good evening, my faithful student," Nightmare Moon greeted with a sly smile. "How goes the night?"
"Umm...fine, your majesty," Twilight Sparkle gulped, cast a nervous look behind her, and refused to meet Nightmare Moon's direct eyesight.
"Back early, are we?" Nightmare Moon asked, brushing past Twilight and into the library home. Her student continued answering in the same unsure, improvised panicky state, but there was something else entirely wrong as Nightmare Moon listened to her speak. As if Twilight Sparkle was a different pony entirely.
Nightmare Moon rose a curious eyebrow as she entered the home's kitchen, spotting two cups of steaming tea both of which had been in use mere moments before she had entered.
""Are you expecting a guest this late in the evening, Twilight Sparkle?"
"Of course you are," Nightmare Moon thought to herself as Twilight hurriedly murmured the opposite. She'd seen the hiding form of Fluttershy amongst the tree's wispy branches when she had been approaching the library. It was no wonder the pegasus had managed to escape her imprisonment with Twilight Sparkle so suddenly changing allegiances in secret.
"So it's true," Nightmare Moon told herself as she left the library with a tiny grin cracking through her eternally solemn expression. "I've never been so pleased to be betrayed."
Hours later, as she lay reading alone in her castle in the Everfree, the familiar wail of the Ponyville sirens informed her of Twilight Sparkle and Fluttershy's escape from Ponyville. She had no doubt as she flew back to the panicking town that the two mares were presently tearing across the barren plains of Equestria, and her suspicions were confirmed as she landed and was instantly barraged with pleading apologies from her entire Royal Guard.
Nightmare Moon stood at her regular spot on the balcony, looking in the direction of Ponyville and dreading what was to come. In mere hours, the full force of the Elements of Harmony would be directed at her, their magic springing to life for the first time in a thousand years. And yet the odds of them being successful were slim, and if that were the case then she might very well have to watch as yet again six innocent ponies died for a fruitless cause. But if they were successful...
Heaving a sigh, Nightmare Moon floated her quill and parchment, and still staring at the industrial smoke billowing over-top Ponyville, she began to write. When she finished, she signed her name, looked for awhile at the blank space between the last sentence and her signature, and added one final sentence above her name.
Your friend,
Nightmare Moon
For a while, she simply stared at the last words before her signature, and contemplated scratching them out and replacing them with a simple 'sincerely.' Not that she didn't believe them, but she knew Luna would not.
In the end, she decided that, for herself, she would leave it as is. Soon her consciousness would be irreversibly eradicated by the Elements of Harmony, and it was with a bittersweet sense of comfort that Nightmare Moon knew those would be the last words Luna would hear from her.
Tucking the letter into an envelope and scrawling Luna's name onto the parchment, she grabbed it in her telekinetic magic and placed it gently on the end table by her bed. Then, she returned to the balcony and spread her wings, flying off in the direction of Ponyville where the six potential Element Bearers would be waiting.
She was finally ready to die.
Admittedly, Nightmare Moon had been expecting a slow rebellion. She had been expecting Twilight Sparkle to gather her strength, to unite an army and ultimately attempt to forcibly overthrow the night. What had happened was nothing of the sort. Instead, as Nightmare Moon paced forward to face her final opposition, she was greeted with Twilight Sparkle and five other terrified ponies who were vital members of The Resistance but had probably never been in combat even once in their lives.
"I was certainly expecting more," she said bluntly, eying her last hope and feeling her stomach sink with disappointment and fear. They certainly weren't aspiring any sort of confidence. Was she seriously expected to believe that these were the ponies who would be able to wield the Elements and purge Luna from the darkness she had invoked?
A tiny pinprick of light began to glow initially from Twilight Sparkle's horn, but over the course of several seconds it continued growing in intensity around all six ponies until they were all enveloped in the same brilliant spheres of white light. In mere moments the light had gone from dim to the brightness of the sun, forcing every onlooking pony to turn their eyes away. Even Nightmare Moon had to squint as the six spheres of light burned brightly ahead of her.
This had happened many times in the past. Six ponies, thinking they had the strength to wield the Elements, and being vaporized by the very powers they had summoned.
But not this time. The light suddenly shifted from white to a multicolored rainbow, before twisting into a beam and bounding forwards towards the pleasantly shocked yet terrified Princess of the Night standing proud in the center of the streets of Ponyville.
The rainbow struck as planned and Nightmare Moon's world exploded in color, for but a brief moment, before re-forming as a sort of celestial hallway, blinding white on all sides but with shimmering traces of the entire color spectrum faintly visible along each side. The sound of her echoing hooves against the glow of the faultless floor filled her ears. Behind her the light intensified until it was like she was walking into the heart of the sun, and in front it carried on and on into darkness.
The whole while, the sound of Twilight Sparkle and the other five ponies straining against the blunt of the Elements of Harmony and trying in vain to wield them joined the echoing clop of her hooves, a striking reminder that she was still partially in charge of where she went from here. She could end all of this by walking back into the light, or she could walk forwards into the nothingness.
Wearing a confident grin, Nightmare Moon put one shaking hoof in front of another as she walked on into the darkness. The white and color around her gradually seeped into a dark shadow, until she was no longer walking through a celestial hallway but now walking through a pitch dark room.
Ahead of her, a sudden flare of light struck out against the darkness and a blue alicorn was visible in the magic she was casting, walking forwards in direct reversal to Nightmare Moon's walk into the dark. She gave Nightmare Moon a light grin and a respectful nod of her head, and brushed past her as she continued her trek into the light. Neither alicorn looked back as they continued on their respective journeys, finally returning to their rightful places.
The light was all but gone now, even looking behind her she could no longer see it, but Nightmare Moon wasn't afraid. Eventually she became aware of the fact that she was no longer walking and, indeed, no longer capable of walking even if she wished, and yet still no sense of perverse fear crept down her spine.
With a relieved sense of finality, she let out a long sigh and closed her eyes on the nothing that there was to see.
It was over. The Elements had worked.
She had won.
Her joy was unrivaled. The sun was shining. Her subjects were smiling. After a thousand years, Luna was free, her ponies were free, and the Nightmare had finally been purged.
It took three days for the sunrise festivities in Ponyville to die down enough for Luna to sneak back to her castle to rest. She felt odd, out of place, wandering across a world with memories of things she had never done, things that Nightmare Moon had done with her brain and her mind. While her memories of what Nightmare Moon had lived were not boundless, she at least had a vague idea what had happened during her absence. Similarly, she felt the obligation to share in the responsibility of having done them since it had been indirectly her that had influenced them.
When she finally slipped away from Ponyville and started off to the Everfree, a few ponies had attempted to follow her. They were trailing at her heels with faces of curiosity, amazement, and respectfulness, which made it all the more difficult for Luna to tell them that she needed to be alone for a few hours. Of course they had understood, and she walked the rest of the distance to her castle alone.
Her memories during Nightmare Moon's life weren't complete enough that she remembered the lesser details, so it was with great surprise that Luna found a letter lying on her bed, tucked away delicately and marked as 'For Luna' in hoofwriting that was none other than her own.
She kicked off her hoofguards, armor, and crown, grabbed the letter in her telekinesis, and fell back-first onto her bed. She had to give credit where it was due, Nightmare Moon could not have picked a more comfortable bed.
The letter was unexpected, but not amazingly so. Some sort of threat was possible, but more than likely it was a simple list of what had transpired during Luna's absence that Nightmare Moon thought she should know. Alone to her thoughts Luna had ultimately come to the conlusion that Nightmare Moon didn't hate her, in fact, she might have actually been telling the truth when she said she enjoyed Luna's presence, but ultimately deemed her own desires as more important. Luna herself saw Nightmare Moon for what she thought she was; a being not inherently evil, but selfish and oblivious to the sympathies of others.
It didn't matter. It was all behind her now. She was home, the sun was shining. Luna had half a mind to throw the letter from Nightmare Moon into the fire, and erase the last trace of that insipid creature's existence once and for all, but some part of her decided it wouldn't be right. One final, hair sized sliver of what she had once called friendship was all it took for Luna to unfurl the parchment, hold the letter up to the light, and begin reading the last words of Nightmare Moon.
Dear Luna,
When you read this, it will be after a moment of great victory for both of us. A moment that we have both been wishing for a thousand years. The moment when the sun finally rises. If not, then it is with great sorrow that I write this letter knowing you will never read it.
I'm not quite sure how much of my memories will become yours when the Elements of Harmony extinguish me forever and return you to your rightful place. Similarly, I have had access to your memories these past thousand years. The moment I left you a thousand years ago and surfaced in control, I woke up not quite knowing who or what I was. I woke up with your memories and thinking with your mind, which is why for a very long time I thought I was you. There was always a nagging voice telling me that I was wrong and I wasn't Luna, I was Nightmare Moon, but I didn't want to believe it and so I didn't. I lived in this state of denial for quite some time, several centuries in fact. There was never a moment when I was entirely sure who I was but when somepony asked my name my automatic response to them was 'Luna.'
Perhaps worthy of note is the fact that I kept our friendship and allegiance with Queen Chrysalis and the changelings alight for the entirety of the millennium. She has helped me many more times since the incident with Discord and I too have helped her. I do think you two are on for tea by the end of the month.
Speaking of Discord, I've seen no activity from beyond his once again stone gaze, this time self-instated. Thankfully for your conscience this means he isn't dead, and I cannot help but wonder what your plans are with him now. Just don't be stupid and try something like reformation, alright? Something tells me you will anyways, so in any case good luck.
I'd be lying if I said I handled everything peacefully over Equestria's history. I'm sorry to admit that I did not. There were wars, and there were many times when peace was simply not an option. The first war broke out after a period of almost five centuries of relative silence, and obedience from our subjects. It was during this war that I eventually started to realize that the mare I thought myself to be was not the mare I truly was. Even our subjects started calling me 'Nightmare Moon,' and one fateful night I decided I could not hide who I was any longer. My memories slowly resurfaced over the ensuing years, and my growing ruthlessness proved not only to myself but to our subjects that I was no longer Princess Luna. I now know I never was, but that's besides the point.
After the war had finished, Equestria relapsed into peace, but it was short lived. It's end in sight and the dawn of a new war looming, I changed my leadership tactics into something I was reluctant to do but ultimately had no choice. I turned my subjects suspicion and doubt into terror and fear, and I turned Equestria into a near-dystopian hell.
I imagine many of these choices I have had to make will be remembered by you as your own, as I have made them using the basis of your memories and instincts. I'm not proud of what's become of Equestria, but I kept my promise. I kept us all alive long enough for you to guide us to the sun again.
As you know, the Elements of Harmony were broken apart when we used them against Equestria. This prevented me from ever using them against myself, meaning the only hope for the sun was for a mortal pony to wield them.
In Celestia's letter to you from the Underworld, she wrote that any hope for Equestria lay in the hooves of Twilight Sparkle. I waited patiently for her birth and when it came I raised her as a protegee hoping she would grow to be the hero I needed. But she didn't. She grew to be a frightening reflection of myself, serving only to show me with clarity why we needed a hero to begin with.
I resolved to the notion that Celestia was wrong about Twilight Sparkle. Indeed, it seemed as such from what I had seen.
I know now that I indeed was wrong. I was wrong twice over. Or so I hope. By night's end, I suppose we shall know for certain whether or not Princess Celestia's prediction in the letter she had sent us was indeed truthful.
If it is, then congratulations. I'm sure ponies will eventually start demanding truths, specifically about your sister's death. If it makes it easier, then blame me. Blame everything on me. Say I took over your mind completely, murdered Celestia in cold blood while you begged me to stop. Doing that would be a lot easier than having to face even more wars if they ever find out the truth.
As you read this letter, it is no surprise to you when I confess that I have already passed. I'm gone now, Luna, and Equestria is yours again. I haven't had the opportunity of speaking with you for a thousand years and when we left, I know that you hated me. I imagine that is still the case, and if it is please disregard the final portion of this letter.
After what happens tonight, the two of us are going to be separated once again. But you already know that. In your case, it has already happened. What you might not know is that...I will change. Who I am now, Nightmare Moon, she's going to die, and whatever I was before her is going to be who I am again. You've taught me friendship and how to care about other ponies other than myself, and overall how to be a better mare. But all that is going to disappear. The memory of myself in your mind will be the only remaining evidence of my existence.
Whatever monster I become next, and whatever further darkness I spread, I want you to know that that isn't me. I, Nightmare Moon, die tonight.
I understand that you will not feel the same, Luna, but I simply want you to know that I cared about you and I'm sincerely sorry about everything I've done.
Your friend,
Nightmare Moon