For neither the first nor the last time, the Valley of the Dark Lords echoed with the sounds of malevolent laughter and screaming. General Grievous was roaring his delight out to the world, while Princess Luna was caught halfway between shrieking and sobbing. For no matter how much she begged or pleaded or tried to deny what she had witnessed, her eyes testified to the continued existence of Celestia’s severed head lying on the valley floor. Tears, hot and fierce, flowed freely down the princess’ furry cheeks.
“Heh heh heh ha ha ha ha ha!” Grievous continued to laugh, hoisting Celestia’s headless corpse above his head and tossing it with one hand. The macabre projectile hit the ground in front of Luna with a heavy thud, stopping just short of her. The princess of the night stared down at the headless, mutilated corpse of her sister, the one pony who had truly always been there for her.
Luna’s mouth opened and closed in a rapid, almost fishlike manner. No words emerged from there, no sounds at all save her heaving sobs. She simply could not find words.
“And now,” Grievous said, taking a step forward and igniting twin sabers. “Your turn.”
Luna’s rational mind had, for all intents and purposes, shut down. Overwhelmed by injury and weariness and grief and terror, the alicorn did not think. Instead, she defaulted to the inbuilt instincts of her species, the natural urges that had served the ponies of Equus since time immemorial. And at that moment, her instincts were telling her to run.
So she did.
Princess Luna bolted away from that spot with all the blind desperation of a mare being pursued by death itself. Adrenaline flooded her veins such that she felt as if her very blood were on fire. It drove away for the moment her grief, shock, and anger, leaving only the overwhelming imperative to get as far from that place as she possibly could, as fast as her legs could manage. Even the pain from her injuries became little more than a dull ache at the moment, something that barely registered to her chemical-fogged brain.
Luna fled through the Valley of the Dark Lords at the speed of the wind. Without consciously knowing it, her fear called out to the Force to bolster her already formidable sprinting abilities. Because of this, her pace was such that an observer standing still would note her not as an alicorn, but simply a dark blue blur. She jumped jagged rocks, weaved through fields of statuary, and ran face-first into the biting winds.
Behind her all the way was Grievous.
Somehow, impossibly, the cyborg was matching her speed. All six limbs once again in their insectile formation, he scuttled through the valley just as easily as he had before. Through sand and stone the nightmare figure pursued Luna, flipping, dodging, climbing, and crawling around any obstacle. His reptilian eyes were alight with inner fire and focused intently on his target. Little by little, the distance between them narrowed.
Death comes for you.
The tone of the voice in her head was hissing, gloating.
Your sister’s soul is with us now.
Luna tried to ignore the sound, but it was audible even over the whipping winds that grew fiercer by the second.
She writhes in torment eternal.
The red sands of Korriban were being stirred from their rests by the wind, bursting skywards in great clouds and dust storms that began to fill the valley.
She cries out your name in her agony.
The sandstorm that came was the most intense that Luna had yet seen on the planet, which was truly saying something. The vast storm covered the Valley of the Dark Lords in its entirety, obscuring vision for miles around. The speed at which it overtook the area was nothing short of astonishing, Luna’s vision going from clear to being forced to squint in less than fifteen seconds.
The winds only picked up speed, throwing sand at the princess to the point that not only was it dirty and disgusting, it was actually painful. The red grit got everywhere, burying itself in her old wounds and burrowing beneath her fur to create new ones. It snuck into her blue eyes, scratching the cornea in an extremely painful manner. Luna blinked frantically, her bloodshot eyes watering badly, desperately trying to get the horrible stinging sensation out.
Blinded by sand and tears, moving at a literally supernatural speed, it was perhaps to be expected that Luna would not be able to maintain her flight. And so it was: the alicorn failed to note a piece of sandstone emerging from the ground and crashed into it with both of her front legs. Luna plowed face-first into the sandy, rocky ground. Small, jagged fragments of rock made thousand small cuts in her flesh as she rolled forward with her own momentum.
You will see her again, very soon.
Luna moaned once more and began forcing herself back onto her hooves. As she did so, the alicorn princess’ ears twitched. Over the howling winds she could just make out the telltale clacking of metal on stone, getting louder by the second. She swallowed. Grievous was near.
The princess’ eyes flicked about desperately. She needed a way to take shelter from the storm, that much was clear, but all around herself she saw naught but blinding wave after wave of red sand, concealing everything. She was only able to see a hooful of feet from herself no matter the direction she looked or how hard she squinted. In the background, the sounds of Grievous’ footsteps were increasing in volume. She could only pray that he was as affected by these sands as she.
With what she could only assume to be certain death closing in on her and her eyes virtually useless, Luna had little choice. Closing her bloodshot, watery blue eyes, she reached out with what meager supernatural senses she could still muster. Her fear and grief empowering her instinctive probe, Luna turned and kept running.
The alicorn’s pace was slow, far slower than before, as she forged head-on into the sandstorm ahead of her. The red grit, whipped into a battering rain of projectiles by the screaming winds, continued to cut into her flesh and draw tiny droplets of blood. But Luna ignored the pain, shut out the howling winds, and attempted to suppress the frantic pounding of her heart, focusing all her attention on finding her blind way forward. She clipped nearby objects several times and nearly stumbled once, and contrary to her hopes the sandstorm did not fade away. Indeed, if anything it grew sharper and more biting as she waded into it.
However, after perhaps half a minute of utterly blind flight through the impossibly thick storm, Luna’s effort was to be rewarded. Without warning the stinging flow of grit ceased as she ran quickly forwards. Peeking open a single wary eye, Luna observed that she had fled into a dark, carved structure of red and brown stone. Worn statues and harsh-looking symbols whose meaning she did not know dotted the chamber. Outside, the sandstorm still raged.
Luna panted heavily, struggling to catch her breath as for the first time in a considerable amount of time, she had a moment to rest. When she did so, the emotions that had flooded her mind upon witnessing her sister’s demise came roaring back. The miserable sorrow and utter rage at everything: Grievous for killing Celestia, Celestia for ignoring her demands to fly away, and most of all at herself for failing to save her. The night princess sunk to her knees, giving voice to wordless cries of despair. She was not allowed long to grieve.
He will know you are here. We will tell him.
Luna ignored the voice in her head, which seemed to have grown stronger and now echoed after every word. She was too focused on her own internal turmoil to care what it said.
For how long she lay there, sobbing, miserable, and alone, Luna could not say. She had no means of measuring time, and no real inclination to try. Her wails of grief echoed throughout the dark chamber and myriad halls branching out from it deeper into the cliffside.
“Tia…” she moaned between choked sobs. “Forgive us, dear Tia. Please… We were not… strong enough to save thee… not strong enough to save anypony…” Luna buried her head in her hooves and cried. “We are a worthless excuse for a princess, and now our failure has cost thee thy very life! Please… wherever thou art… forgive us…”
Your pitiful mewling is as pathetic as your feeble attempts at fighting.
Luna shook her head, once again dismissing what now sounded like a collection of many voices all speaking the same line inside her mind. But then her ears involuntarily shot up, twitching in response to stimuli. She heard the unmistakable clitter-clatter of metal on stone once again.
Death comes for you, weakling.
Acting once more on instinct rather than thought, Luna fled yet again, terrified to face this demonic cyborg that pursued her. Without pause or consideration, she picked one of the many lightless corridors going deeper inside and dashed down it quickly. The sound behind her quickly faded into nothingness, but the voices were not so obliging.
Your attachments betray you. Your cowardice has made you weak.
Luna continued to gallop blindly through the tomb. She heard the sounds of what sounded like swarms of insects scuttling around as she passed, but even her eyes could pick out nothing in the pitch black. Only the Force guided her steps.
You will die here, and become ours body and soul.
Deeper and deeper the alicorn went, drawn by instinct and urged on by terror. Hooves kicked up clouds of dust as they traversed halls not used by the living for millennia.
Submit now to us, and we will make the end swift. Resist and perish in agony.
“Never!” Luna shouted wildly into the confined space. “We will not submit to thee!”
Then Princess Luna will die here.
The alicorn had no chance to consider the odd nature of the phrasing due to what she saw when she passed through an archway she hadn’t known was there. Four crystals set in the walls emitted a dull, faint glow upon her arrival, bathing the chamber in a faint red light. Luna could make out that it was a small, rectangular room carved from red stone. Thousands of unreadable glyphs were carved into the walls, floor, and ceiling. Additionally, there were several scenes of a skull-masked humanoid wielding a lightsaber locked in battle with a diverse array of opponents, from other lightsaber wielders to enormous beasts to armies. All of these were in curiously good condition, as thought someone had carved them yesterday.
The room’s central feature was a shallow rectangular pit, with a series of stairs descending from each side into the lowest position. There, prominently laid out where anyone could see, was a large stone slab covering a container. Encrusted on every available surface with countless thousands of hieroglyphics and decked handsomely in red and purple gems, both the slab and its stone chest were obviously items of great antiquity and value. Moreover, Luna could feel the energies of the dark side oozing slowly from this place, spreading out to plague the universe like some rotten miasma.
All this, Luna absorbed in a single glance. However, her attention was immediately drawn away from such considerations by a bone-chilling realization: there was no other exit. She’d come to a dead end. Turning herself hurriedly around, the alicorn made to run back the way she had come – only to be stopped by a dreadfully familiar sound. Luna’s heart skipped a beat, her chest clenching in fear.
Grievous was here. He had found her.
Luna backed further into the burial chamber as the sound of the cyborg’s approach echoed throughout the confined space, growing louder and louder with each heart-stopping second. The alicorn backed further and further into the Sith tomb, shrinking back down the stairs, not stopping until her rear pressed up against the stone coffin in the room’s center.
Then the dark archway was filled with the looming figure of her bone-white cyborg nemesis. He seemed taller and more invigorated than ever, his yellow eyes seeming to overflow with power and intensity. Grievous stalked into the burial chamber, two lightsabers adding their light to that of the mystic crystals’.
“So,” Grievous said. “A tomb. A very appropriate place for this to end, don’t you think?”
Luna said nothing, experiencing horrible flashbacks of this creature burning Equestria, crippling her, and beheading her sister.
“Heh heh heh,” Grievous took a step down the stairway to the coffin. “I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time. Too long.”
“Rargh!” Luna, swallowing her overwhelming sensation of terror, charged up the stairs, directly at Grievous. He met her with a single foot.
Luna went soaring backwards, smashing into the slab covering the Sith coffin and rolling over it. She fell off the other side, impacting painfully on the glyph-coated stone floor.
“You cannot beat me,” Grievous said, slowly beginning to circle the coffin. “You cannot escape me.”
Luna struggled to get back on her hooves, but she had already pressed her body well past the natural limits of its endurance. And in the face of imminent death, even the power of the Force seemed to abandon her, refusing to lend her muscles its vitality. Her wounded legs trembled briefly, and then collapsed back into the dirt.
Grievous completed the circle, looming tall over Luna. “And you are out of friends to pull you from the fire.”
Luna stared up into the eyes of the cyborg, blue and yellow staring each other down one final time.
Now the voices in Luna’s mind said. You die.
“No…” Luna wheezed. “It cannot end… like this…”
“Oh, but it can,” Grievous laughed. “Heh heh heh ha ha ha ha ha!”
“No…” Luna whispered in her fading voice, more to herself than him. “No….”
Grievous raised one blue blade high over his head. “Any last words?”
Luna only managed to look up at him with defiance and misery in her eyes.
“No? Then die.”
The blade descended.
All of a sudden, time around Luna seemed to freeze up. She could not move, not even her eyes, but neither was Grievous moving. Everything, for just the slightest fraction of second, was held in perfect stasis all around her. Thoughts passed through her head, one after the other, wondering what was happening, wondering if this was somehow death. She wondered if she was now dead, and sentenced by cruel ghosts to spend eternity imprisoned in her own last moment in the mortal realm.
And then an offer was made.
No words were exchanged, for how could that which had no voice speak? There was conversation, no grand bargaining or devious loopholes. There was only simple, primal emotion and currents of thought. The choice was simple, and one that had been given many times before: submit, and gain all ones heart desires, or resist and perish.
It should be remembered that Luna was not the same mare she had once been. The proud princess of the night had seen her nation ruined, her city burned, her people slaughtered, and her very magic stolen from her. She had watched helplessly for years as her world was taken by powers greater than she. She had abducted from her world for daring to talk back to one of her “betters”, had endured cruel training on an ancient nexus of the dark side. She had watched her morals, her mercy, accomplish nothing. She had been unable to save those she loved, including most recently the one mare that was dearer to her heart than any other pony. Under these extreme circumstances, it can perhaps be said that she was not entirely to blame for choosing to submit rather than be martyred.
And yet submit she did.
The slab covering the Sith coffin burst apart, sending showers of stone in all directions. An aged cylinder flew from its resting place, shaking off the dust of the centuries. A blazing blade of crimson fired into life for the first time in lifetimes, interposing itself and catching the descending blue blade in a bright shower of sparks.
“Wha-” Grievous’ yellow eyes went wide. Quickly, he brought down his green blade as well, but the ancient Sith lightsaber moved to intercept, lighting the tomb with their clash. He took one step backwards.
Luna rose from her prone position at the head of coffin, a dark look on her face. Her wounds had faded to nothing in an instant, her countenance restored to its former glory and more. She seemed to stand taller, cast a longer shadow. Her once-static mane and tail flowed again with the glorious image of the night sky. At the edge of vision, faint wisps in the vaguest shapes of beings flitted, seeming to whisper excitedly.
“What in the infinite hel- aargh!”
Before General Grievous could even finish his sentence, Luna attacked him directly. She jerked her head forwards and an overwhelming wave of dark side energy flung the cyborg general backwards, slamming into the glyph-covered wall with a heavy cracking sound. He strained against the pressure, but the invisible fetters Luna had forged held him fast. With a second, almost contemptuous flick of her head, she tore the lightsabers from his grasp, sending them clattering away into the darkness.
Malice radiated from Luna’s yellow eyes, and she grinned broadly.
“General Grievous,” she said, advancing up the steps with the red lightsaber hovering at her side. “Thou art guilty of crimes both manifold and heinous. For thine lies, for thy treachery, for thy murder, for thy genocide…” she paused, enjoying the moment. “We sentence thee to death.”
The crimson lightsaber soared forwards at Luna’s command - impaling Grievous directly through his heart.
The cyborg let loose a tormented death scream as the plasma burned through armor and organs alike without pause or distinction. It emerged from his back seconds later, plunging into the stone wall behind and burning through many of the hieroglyphs there. Luna pressed the sword deeper and deeper inside, giving in to all her outraged hatred and enjoying his screams. Only when the hilt itself threatened to enter his chest did she stop.
For a moment, nothing happened. The cyborg continued to writhe and scream in a most satisfactory manner, and then… he exploded. An enormous wave of red dust and crackling blue energies burst forth from the image of the defeated Grievous, wreaking havoc and ruin on the surrounding chamber. Luna weathered the storm impassively, easily shielding herself from anything that might be truly dangerous.
Then, as suddenly as it had come, the storm was gone. And Princess Luna stood alone, deep in the Sith tomb in the Valley of the Dark Lords.