"I'm so sorry, Lucas" Alalia whispered as she caught her breath far from Zecora's cottage, "But I made a promise. She wouldn't let you go without knowing, and there is only one way to know for sure."
"Knowing? Knowing what? What are you talking about?" Lucas asked knowing full well he was only inviting disaster on a soul that was already troubled by this latest intervention.
Alalia lowered her head in embarrassment, "The experiment can't end with only half the data. We both know that. You have to see her. The real her." The zebra-coated changeling bashfully shuffled her hoof in the grass. "I wasn't there, and I've never heard the story. Fuck! I can't even fucking tell you what to expect. All I can do is show you where she hid the damn seams."
She stopped speaking when Lucas caught her catching him smiling. The inundation of seriousness had broken him, he supposed. That all he could do to get through this moment was take pleasure in the simplest of things. The audaciousness of a mare who would turn away from no experiment however unethical—monstrous even—could not even look him in the eye when describing what he was supposed to have been capable of.
"Canterlot..." she slowly said as she brushed a large loop in her mane from her eye that she turned them up to meet his. "I mean, she was always fucking psycho," she added with a shrug, "but Canterlot changed her."
"It changed me too," Lucas knowingly added.
"No," Alalia refused to accept the comparison, "For the worse. Fucking worse than anything she's let you see yet."
Lucas accepted her vote of confidence, and nodded to signify that he was ready to proceed. To which Alalia’s changeling transformation added a pair of wings to her zebra-unicorn partial. She spread them wide and cast a simple back-lighting spell that caused her eyes, nose and mouth to project white light as she spoke the words: "It's what we do. The impossible."
***
The infiltration of the castle took insignificant effort. Relieving the guards during a shift change was all too easy and, once the guards’ guard was lowered, they were easily incapacitated. No muss, no fuss, and certainly no ruckus would work its way into this false-flag carrier's plan. M and M saluted as the hall chilled on Deception's approach. Despite the batpony forms, it was simple enough to tell the two apart by the way one's eyes drooped, and the other had a barely contained smile tucked away behind its fangs.
She paused for a moment to cast her gaze out a glass stained window to the Vault of Harmony from which the fabled Element Bearers were being drug away. It appeared that the assignment of Dissolution to the so called sun code as a needless precaution to compensate for the shadow of doubt cast by an overly analytical mind. At least, so it should appear to her new student whom she did not yet trust to think critically of deception.
"You will remain here," she instructed to the pair, more so to Melancholy than to Madness.
"And if you can't handle it?" Melancholy, the Disonant of Laughter, directed his life's suspicion of inherent failure to the mare who had known nothing but success this day.
"Then I will die. But you? You will remain here," she repeated authoritatively whilst Madness's filly-like giggles carried its appearance closer to that end. Latere shot it a sharp glance but said nothing as her mind was on bigger things.
The doors swung open and, after M and M's eyes could be pried from the sleeping alicorn's four-post bed curtain, Latere Vesco stepped through and closed the large doors behind her. Though elegant in design it was a simple thing. Flimsy, and as transparent as any lie. It was decorated in a manner that, with all likely-hood, was supposed to accurately depict the endless expanse of stars in heaven above. Though the position of the stars were totally out of alignment, the dull grey hemming told why. It was the night's sky as seen from the moon.
To carry such baggage to bed on the eve of every day piqued Latere's curiosity as she made her approach. A horn burned out of her earth pony facade as the changeling reared its ugly head. It was not in the plan to kill the alicorns. Though Princess Mi Amore's return heralded the return of the fabled Crystal Heart, Latere wondered just how catastrophic events would half to be to wretch it from Chrysalis's grasp, such that keeping these sisters alive would be worth the investment.
That thought lit Latere's horn with malice. When she leaned through the gossamer, it melted around her, as if it intended to escape the harm she had in store for the Night Princess; when a sudden outburst caught her unawares.
"We are in the presence of great evil, child! Go from this place. Turn away from the path of destruction!" Luna cried in her sleep as she lie confined in her bedding. Entombed.
The sudden shock of the statement caused Latere to question the turn of events. She turned to the door and gave thought to Madness's lessons but Luna's continued wailing drew her attention to another question. How was it even possible for this mare of dreams to have nightmares?
"You? This monstrosity is thy doing? No... such an innocent child. It cannot be. ‘Tis all a lie! Thou art being deceived!” The accusation came in a tone that reflected an unfinished nature of the argument, as if Luna had not had the chance to object to what ever truth she held inside.
"Deceived?" Latere's was not willing to see beyond her own situation to consider that there may be no pain she could inflict on the aliorn greater than what Luna had suffered already. She was determined, however, to prove her mentor wrong. She tilted her horn toward the restless alicorn and fired a green bolt deep into her body, scorching through tender flesh, and surely piercing her delicate heart. Strangely Luna did not die, nor was she awakened by the attack, but she did stir once more– this time with purpose.
Smoke bubbled out of the wound that dark crystals quickly sealed before paving the way for future flesh. Into her coat micro-crystals grew giving the Mare of the Moon her tell-tale black-satin shine. A dull fire cast off light from beneath the cracks of her tightly closed eyes—as if she had no more need of it, being at home in her inner darkness—before its source burned itself out. It was the raw power of Nightmare and Latere could scarcely imagine it. The terrible power that filled Luna's body, and polluted her mane, was the consequence of circumstance.
Nightmare Moon rose from the bed as if she were falling into it, but in reverse. When her hooves touched down on the marble floor, crystal grew up around them to form her pointed princess slippers. As a black moon eclipsed her heart, a crystal fog too spread from it to form her battle armor. A small crack of white completed the emblem as the would-be queen opened her mouth to speak.
Finding no words, a hellish shriek instead proceeded an expulsion of malevolent energy that blasted the doors wide open, and the guards from their feet. It lingered on the walls and floor transforming the room into a hellish planescape of phantasmal fire.
The tiniest pinpricks of sunlight was enough to cause the Nightmare to shy away as her eyes opened. She focused her eyes on the interloper and fumbled. Borrowing words from its host, the Nightmare echoed with Luna's hauntingly empty voice. "A child? What brings you before us?"
Despite the timid cowering of Melancholy and Madness it was apparent Nightmare Moon was addressing Deception. "Consequence," Latere muttered not quite believing herself. "Beyond my control?" she muttered again and as she did so she could feel her voice slipping away under the strain of a truth that freed itself from her battered mind.
"A genie!" the excitable voice of M called from the hall.
"N-n-nightmare Moon!" the cowardly voice of the other M called afterword.
Deception's horn lit once again, though not to do battle, and as she tilted her head the doors closed on her command. Nightmare Moon grinned at the wide in response to the wide varied interpretations of the menfolk. Though it was Deception who first turned hate filled eyes to the other mare.
Organs that played a processional, that marked the itinerary of Shining Armor's approach to an altar somewhere in the distance, distracted the alicorn as the phantasmal flames threatened to flicker into reality. "The one that got away?" Nightmare asked in confusion but was interrupted by Deception as the last pieces fell into place in the mind of Latere Vesco.
"No. Your business is with me now."
The dream-weaver lashed out with another burst of flame that had washed impotently over Deception. Of the two mares the alicorn's lies had no power in the waking world. "Why did you summon me from the moon?" Nightmare reverberated the question through Luna's hollow soul, "Back to this world of magic?"
What began as terrified crying built steadily into laughter. The maniacal kind heard only at the end of days, and from there, slowly descended into fevered speech. "I didn't," Latere laughed while her mane split and frayed. In the same way that Madness's gender changed with his mood, her body began unraveling with her mind. "I have no such power," her eyes widened at the realization, "Even the choice to believe I do is a deception I perpetrate on myself!"
An odd hesitation crept into the demeanor of the alicorn, that was characterized by rapid glances in all directions. A search that marked the fear of an event a thousand years ago, or perhaps the more recent repeat that caused the formation of the Harmony Spell Breakers to begin with. "You, who are so close to Honesty, yet approach from the other side. Where are your other five whom seek to destroy me?"
A reluctant sigh from the younger mare put the older one at ease, if ever so slightly, as her fear was replaced with suspicion.
"I did not come here to destroy you," Latere half-giggled and sensing Nightmare Moon's objections she added in a more serious tone: "I came to feel. To know what it is to feel. I shot you, content in the possibility of your death, just to feel something. Anything! And, oh the revelation that action has given me."
Bemused the Nightmare was not in a position to question sanity, and beckoned the child to tell her what truth she had uncovered, but Latere only shook her head. "If you are to be destroyed, then your fate is already sealed, unavoidable. If I am to live, then it shall be in pursuit of my own death."
A wicked smile carved across the black blight of Nightmare Moon "Then the elements will be undone once again, and with the Crystal Heart sealed away I'll–"
The diluted machinations of this monstrosity gave Deception an even clearer picture of her own fate. "Oh, you poor thing," she interrupted with expert knowledge, "You have so terribly deceived yourself. I am not an Element of Harmony, the Crystal Heart is within our queen's grasp, and your host grows stronger every moment."
With that vote of confidence that did not go unmeasured, a struggle broke out from within the possessed alicorn. As Luna fought to regain control, the crystals in her blood broke and the bleeding began again as she flopped back onto the bed.
Latere Vesco took the opportunity to take what she sought. Once more her horn took on a magical green aura and the doors opened revealing two changelings still uncertain of their role. "I want just one thing now," she said, addressing all parties involved as she calmly stepped out into the hall, whilst Luna lie atop the covers writhing in pain behind her. Madness turned away when Deception approached Melancholy directly.
"There's no way!" Melancholy stammard as he connected the dots that lead Madness away. One profusely bleeding alicorn and one untouched changeling, "You can't trust her! She’s the enemy. We’ll tell the others she was changing. They won’t question it."
Deception leaned in and whispered into his ear, "That's not what I need."
Confused and cautious Melancholy belabored his plight, "What do you need?"
"A reason to feel guilty."
Maligned to this inevitable end, Latere changed forms, donning the mask of flesh from the mirror pool, and harnessed all of her raw destructive magic. Unbridled, unfocused, and unrefined she poured it all into her fellow changeling just as she imagined one might do in an emotional fit. She turned from the blast that sent Melancholy flying through the window whilst Luna flopped onto the bed victorious in, but consumed by, her own personal struggle.
In her about-face she called to Madness, with the male voice appropriate to her guise, "I will create a choice where none exists."
"Oh?" Madness called back as the doors slammed shut once more.