When the Everfree Burns

by SpiritDutch


Chapter 48: Arise, Orphans of Tartarus

The Moon.

Rarity had to admit, for being a monochromatic ball of dust, it had an eerie beauty. Without trees, without water, without ponies or houses or clouds or any other reference, the hills and crevices of the lunar landscape could have been as tall as the sky and she would be unable to tell.

Above it all, the Bright World, shrouded in eternal night, but still sparkling in greens and blues. The prize.


“This is all too much.” She said to Applejack, who stood beside her. “How do we ever come back from this.”

Rarity had never noticed before how resplendent Applejack’s smile was, even when it was a sad, forlorn smile. “It’d never work out. We’ve seen too much. More than any mare should.”

In this extreme, stark place, the quibbling petty grievances that weighed them down were left behind on earth. Their thoughts were clear, for better or worse.

“Why was it us who were enthralled by the night? Why have our faults and failing, above any other pony’s, drawn us into a cosmic battle greater than we could ever understand?” Rarity mused.

"Dumb luck." Dash said. "Good luck? Bad luck?" The pegasus still felt pangs from being stabbed, though here on the moon her body was returned to nightmare pegasus form.

"Is it us?" Applejack wondered.

Rarity pursed her lips and shook her head. "Is it her?”

The three nightmare ponies swung their gaze to the fourth. Neither of them were sure how to approach or talk to Ancepanox since that traumatizing experience in the dream. What even was Ancepanox? They had a hard time believing she was a pony anymore after seeing that horrible visage in that space of color and light.

The nightmare alicorn had returned to looking like she did on the earth, minus the stab wound, but nopony could trust Ancepanox wasn't hiding her true shape... Especially because as soon as she'd appeared on the moon next to them her eyes had begun to glow with feint purple magic. She was wearing Rarity's tapestry like a cape again, perhaps to emphasize her control of the situation, perhaps because she liked the look. She hadn't spoken much, only saying enough to get the other three nightmare ponies to follow her.


"Pick up the pace a bit." Ancepanox mumbled, her first words in a while. She didn't bother to face them, for her attention was drawn to something on the distant lunar horizon.

"We didn't ask to be here." Rainbow Dash said.

"None of us asked to be here. Not to beat you over the head with Schopenhorse, but our existences are total cosmic accidents. We've been cursed to live and understand what's going on around us, and turn it into ourselves." Ancepanox spoke barely loud enough to be heard, which in the near total silence of the moonscape was barely a whisper. "I say that, but do I believe it? Every damn alicorn I've fought believed in a kind of fate or higher meaning that they aspired to. Am I heading into this last fight because it was my destiny, or because I've lived and killed creatures that believed in fate?"

"Shouldn't you know these things, being an alicorn and all?" Applejack asked.

"You'd think so. The other alicorns were completely convinced of their beliefs, which all contradicted each other. They just chose something that kinda made sense to them and called it absolute truth." Ancepanox said.

Rarity tittered. "How charming it would make life to not to ever worry about being wrong."



That point on the distant horizon became prominent as they trotted closer. It was a hill or mountain, though it was impossible to tell how high it was, for they were still very far away.

"Something is moving, on our three." Dash warned sharply.

Everypony looked where she was pointing. A shadow was shifted back and forth around the inner lip of one of the small craters.

Ancepanox wordlessly galloped towards the unknown shadow, stopping at the edge of the crater. She waved the others closer. "They're moon denizen."


"A what?" Applejack squinted, but still couldn't get a good look at the thing. It was a hazy black, more like a smudge or a suggestion than a creature that lived and breathed. It was just a cloud with glowing white eyes.

"These are the creatures Twilight Sparkle tried to steal magic from while she was preforming the Ritual." Rarity circled the crater. "I must admit I expected them to look more like animals."

"The previous Nightmare Moon told me they used to look like animals. They've were entirely consumed by the nightmare curse during the Everfree Siege." Ancepanox rubbed her chin. "Give us some space."


Rarity, Applejack, and Rainbow Dash dutifully backed away from the crater. Ancepanox jumped down and began making small motions coupled with sounds. The moon denizen made a sound like a purr in return.


"Is it useful to dwell on the past?" Rarity wondered to herself. "For example, how would things have changed if we had killed Twilight Sparkle in the Everfree Castle, before Celestia arrived?"

"Celestia woulda killed us, then gone back to Canterlot." Applejack said. "We'd be dead but Equestria would still be alive."

"Good trade." Dash grunted.

"You don't really wanna die." Applejack rolled her eyes. "It joke was funny at first, but not anymore."

Dash shrugged "I don't want to die for no reason anymore. For the right reason I'll gladly off myself."

"Save your morbid prattle for later." Rarity said snippily.


Ancepanox concluded her strange conversation with the moon denizen and hopped out of the crater. "Celestia is there." She pointed to the distant rise at the horrizon. "There is an abandoned castle, overlooking the Mare Incognitum, a vast basalt basin. She's waiting for us there."

"Waiting? Sounds ominous." Dash remarked.

"There was no way I was not coming after her. The only question is what she has done to prepare." Ancepanox said. "But that's not all. Luna knows about Celestia's presence, and has gathered up ten-thousand of her moon denizens to meet her."

Applejack raised a hoof in the air. “Luna is the moon princess, right?”

“Yes, and the previous Nightmare of the Moon, before yours truly. She trusts me.” Ancepanox confirmed. “Also, put your hoof down. This isn’t magic kindergarden.”

"Ten-thousand sounds like a lot of ponies to bring to a welcome party." Rarity said, concerned.

"Is she going to help us, or help Celestia?" Applejack chimed in.

"Or neither?" Dash added.


Ancepanox took a long time to answer. “Luna’s motivations are unclear." She said reluctantly. "I hate to say it, but I don't know if I can trust her where Celestia is concerned. It would be better for us if we deal with Celestia and leave the moon before Luna even gets there.

"I adore that euphemism, 'deal with'. So much nicer than 'assassinate'. " Rarity laughed.

"You ponies are smothering me in sarcasm right now and it is not appreciated. This is important to me. This MATTERS." Ancepanox sighed. "Luna trusts me implicitly, but if we kill Celestia without her agreement, she will probably never forgive us."

"What's the chance Celestia manipulates Luna against all of us?" Applejack asked.

"Or seduces her with promises of power?" Dash nodded. "Is the chance more than zero? Are you willing to run that risk, boss?"


Ancepanox was motionless for a long while, deep in thought. "Luna... She means a lot to me. When the time comes I..." She paused, then shook her head with a sigh. "I don't know who to pray to, to steer me right. I just hope I make the right decision when the time comes."

"I don't sit right with me either. I figure I have a little bit of her in me right now, as part of this nightmare curse." Applejack said. "This is like kinslaying."

Ancepanox narrowed her gaze. "But if I asked you to, you'd do it."

Applejack averted her eyes. "Uh-" Ancepanox was willing to consult them, but was taking no challenge to her authority. "I'm right behind you."

Rarity chuckled at Applejack's evasive answer. "I would do it, my lady. Celestia stands as a threat to ponykind. If Luna stands between us, then she stands on the side of evil and must be defeated.

"You girls are stalling. Luna or not, we gotta get to the castle." Dash said, grinding her hoof into the lunar dust impatiently. “Let's giddy up!”

"You're right Dash. We won't have the luxury of choice if Luna gets to Celestia before we do." Ancepanox nodded. "I can't teleport us without alerting Luna, but I have certain dream powers. One in particular could help us."


Ancepanox made a little motion with her head, but cast no magic. A tiny sphere of darkness appeared in the air in front of her, then expanded to the size of a pony.

"We can move anywhere in any dream with this." Ancepanox pushed her hoof into the sphere of shadow and pulled it back out. "I call it the Cosmic eye... This is the only way I'll be able to defeat Celestia."

"Cosmic Eye? Melodramatic, isn't it?" Rarity cocked her head.

"It's kinda a play on words. Agana's power was called Corrupting Eye, but I saw the..." Ancepanox trailed off. "Why am I bothering to explain. Just get in the sphere. I'm taking us closer to the castle."



Rarity shrugged and stepped into the ball of shadow. The scene changed before her eyes, trnsitioning briefly through that place of color and light that she'd seen before.
When normalcy returned, she wasn't on the moon.


She was in a richly decorated room with marble walls. Dark wood furniture, yellow and white ornamentation, and a nighttime cityscape outside the window let Rarity know she was somehow in Canterlot Castle.
"What?"

The dark sphere popped into existance beside her, and Ancepanox stepped out of it. "I'm sorry I had to trick you, but I had to talk to each of you individually."


Rarity's eyes wandered the room. Sitting on a cushioned stool on the other side of the room was a bizzare severed bird head with two horns, skewered through the top with that silver sabre Ancepanox had been carting around. "Whose dream is this?"

"This is one of my memories, one from early childhood." Anceapnox sauntered to the severed head and pulled out her sabre. "This was Agana, by the way. The rest of her is with Celestia."

"Charmed." Rarity deadpanned to the dead thing.

"As to why I had to talk with you..." Ancepanox faced back to Rarity, a very serious expression on her face. "I don't want to pretend nothing happened."

Rarity had the impression that conversation was a bit pedestrian for a god entity. “I tried to kill you.”

“It was mutual.” Ancepanox offered acquittal. “Besides, that’s what nightmares do. That, and hunt dreams.”

“But there has not been very much of that going on.” Rarity gave a forced laugh. She had the distinct feeling the unusual niceness was going to give way to something horrible. “Do you want to kill me then?"

"No." Ancepanox said, to Rarity's surprise. "In fact, I will go out of my way to not kill you. I say this knowing you will take every advantage of this."

Rarity couldn't suppress a devilish smile. "You think you are a good pony, do you?"

"I'm a better pony than you. That probably bothers you" Ancepanox returned the smile, showing her fangs. "And I'm a better nightmare than you! That must drive you absolutely insane. You won't be able to keep yourself from attacking me."

Rarity's playful facade broke. She snarled, her expression contorting. "Were you not so immensely privileged I would have surpassed and destroyed you! Your hubris will find you at my mercy one of these days."


"You can threaten my loved ones, or the things I care about, but you'll never actually threaten me, Rarity's nightmare. The next time we fight will be your last." Ancepanox mocked. "This is my offer: If you wait until we return to the waking world, I will let you get one free hit in."


Rarity's eyes burned indignantly, her heart raging to unleash her power right there. How delightful it would be to see every corner of that pretty little room shredded by her dark magic, as Ancepanox's alicorn body was cut to ribbons.
But she kept control, forcing herself to late long even breaths. "I'm going to shatter you through the planet with that free hit."

Ancepanox shrugged and laughed. "I trust you to make it count." She made a gesture and the Cosmic Eye reopened beside her. "Back to the moon we go. Feel your anger melt away, replaced by determination to see Celestia defeated."

Rarity roughly shouldered Ancepanox out of the way. "Bucker." She spat,, stepping into the curved plain of the sphere and disappearing out of the dream.

Ancepanox lingered for a couple more seconds. "One down." She winked at Agana's motionless head. She considered taking it with her, for while Agana's head was dead and her body was soon to be, it would be a kind act to bury them together.
Ancepanox giggled. "Ah, buck her." She summoned the Cosmic Eye and let it sprit her back to the moon where the others were waiting.


The castles of the moon were gross parodies of the glory age of Equestrian feudalism. When Princess Luna explored to the Bright World with her sister, she envied the splendor of the great warlords. The lunar denizens, her ever faithful minions, began the erection of thousands of fortresses across the moon in that idiom. Before they were finished, the princess’s fickle attentions shifted, and the grandiose projects were abandoned.

One such castle had been constructed on a bluff high above the Mare Incognitum, a dark basaltic plain deep into the southern hemisphere. It had been an ambitious project, and even unfinished it towered to great heights with voluminous halls and spiraling towers in the gryph-gothic style. Now nameless, abandoned, decaying and decrepit, the castle was slowly collapsing into the plain below. It’s only entrance was a winding path carved into the bluff, and that had largely worn and fallen away.



‘How did it come to this… Sitting here, not an empress, not a princess, just the shell of a mare sitting on a chair.’

“Silence.” Celestia squeezed her eyes shut. She cleaned the flecks of blood on her chin with the back of her hoof.


Ancepanox has been right, that Celestia knew that she was coming. However the nightmare alicorn had been in folly to ask what Celestia would do to prepare for the looming confrontation.
Celestia did not prepare. She sat slouched in the grand obsidian throne erected at the head of the crumbling castle's main hall. No, Celestia did not have to prepare, because her aide came unbidden and unwelcome, an incessant voice in her head.


‘Give up. You’ve lost everything. Ponies on their soap boxes spout your name in false reverence whilst peddling their lies. Your Equestria was rotten inside years ago, and now that you’re not there to hold the skin, all that disease and filth can come pouring out. Buzzards are tearing the guts.’

“Silence! Be silent at once! You think I don't know?” Celestia clenched her jaw. The damnable voice had started haunting her as soon as she'd arrived on the moon, but it was growing in frequency and volume. It sounded like it was coming from right beside her!
"Foul deava. This is not the deal I want. I still have my pride."


The throne room was more like the one of Canterlot Castle than the Everfree Castle, possessing a long clerestory window that ran the length of the open hall. When Celestia arrived, it had been filled with dust. Now, rivers of blood trickled from the bodies of moon denizens who had been squatting there. Celestia barely remembered killing them. Her mind was hazy.

Standing next to the throne was the body of Agana, waiting with all the patience of a hoofmaiden servant. Thinking about it made Celestia feel revolted at herself for bringing it along, but also a tug of depraved hunger. There was enormous power encased within that alicorn manifestation. It could be tapped by one willing to cross that line.
On her other side was Twilight Sparkle, still sleeping peacefully. How long had she slept... The changes in her head, turning back the clock for the young mare's memories, must have been almost complete. Celestia felt her body tense with conflicting feelings of hatred, hunger, and pity whenever she looked upon the unicorn. Wasn’t it all supposed to be for her sake? Was it not for her that she had reached into her heart to flee from the world, and before that had weathered the sludge of pony wickedness and corruption for so many years?

"Twilight..." Celestia groaned. "I'll save you from her."

‘From me, or from the Nightmare of the Moon?'

Celestia shivered in disgust. She would never have an uninterrupted moment with Twilight again, with the voice now haunting her. Her lips trembled uncontrollably.

'Look at you. And you had the gall to call Ancepanox the monster. Will you eat your protege before the Nightmare gets here? Was that what you meant by saving her? You're losing control of yourself, Celestiaan. ’


Celestia teased her hoof with her teeth, then bit down. She cracked straight through the layers of keratin, stopping only when she tasted her own blood. The pain cleared her mind of the evil thought seeping in. Coppery sweetness tingled along her tongue, until her last specks of magic sealed the wound.
Her eyes naturally roamed to Twilight again. Her head pounded with contradictory temptations. But no! She would, couldn’t! NEVER.

‘You are broken, Celestiaan. Your years of life among mortals has diluted you, turned your into a dreamer, and animal. Do as they do! Eating, excreting, fighting, fucking. But animals can't beat gods. You need me to survive the coming storm. Will you be an animal with her, or a god again with me?"

“Shut up!” Celestia screamed to be heard over the voices. She clutched the sides of her head with her hooves and curled up in the throne. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up shut up SHUT UP!”



was it gone?




She heard a subsonic gasp and groan ripple across the darkened hall. The Cosmic Eye. Then the clop of hooves against the stone floor.
Celestia pulled her head out of her hooves. Four nightmare ponies, an earth pony with dark green eyes, a pegasus with cerise eyes, a unicorn with cobalt eyes, and an alicorn with smoldering purple eyes, stood at the entrance of the throne room. Ancepanox and friends. Celestia rumbled with unending jealousy and rage. Her own eyes, purple with tendrils of black intruding form the edges, locked with those of her student.



Ancepanox grinned. There before her was the final step. Celestia, her mouth dripping the golden ichor of her blood, her wild eyes unable to stay focussed. The veins of the princess's neck bulged as she strained to keep the darkness she'd accrued from devouring her.

“Keep a safe distance.” Ancepanox commanded her nightmares.

“Yes my lady.” Dash began circling to the left.
“Gosh, she done looks like a rabid dog.” Applejack took the right side.

Ancepanox, with Rarity a step behind her, went up the center of the throne room. By the meager light from the windows she stepped carefully around the dozens of moon denizen corpses, but never broke eye contact with Celestia. She stopped five meters away from the base of the roughly chiseled obsidian throne.


‘Look at her. She’s a rat. A damn rat, filthy and ragged. And still she’s better than you! She has purified herself into something divine while you have polluted yourself into a mortal. Oh, you do train them well, to have a god rat among your progeny.’

Celestia forced down the raging energy that threatened to overtake her. After a few tenuous seconds, her mind was clear enough. She swallowed the blood in her mouth and spoke. “You’re relentless. I will give you that.”


“Hrmph. I wasn’t going to let a sour parting be the last we saw each other.” Ancepanox said softly. Celestia’s voice was hoarse and pained. She almost pitied her. “Besides, a child shouldn’t be separated for their mother, don’t you think.”

“Child?” Celestia dare not look away from Ancepanox to confirm Twilight’s presence beside her. She kept her tone as even as she could. “What do you know of children? Have you suffered for her? Have you sacrificed for her? You are desirous of a life that does not belong to you.”

“OH! You thought… You though I was talking about Twilight.” Ancepanox giggled. “Well her too I suppose, but that’s not the parent-child relationship I was referring too. Anypony else want to take a guess?” Ancepanox tilted her head towards Rarity. “As an outside perspective, what do you think?”


“I know not, my lady.” Rarity said stiffly.

“Come on. on’t you have any hypotheses? Who is the authority, the all knowing parent? Who is the child, the inheritor, the promise of the future?”

“We have no worry of knowing, my Lady.” Rarity dutifully replied.

“No. No we don’t.” Ancepanox licked her lips. "It's wrong to give any higher meaning to this, but at the same time, I can't help myself. I want Celestia to chose the metaphore, since she is better verse in alicorn catechisms."


Celestia sucked in a breath. She was being toyed with, and it was making her very angry. She tried to focus on the events leading up to that moment, all the times she had one over on Ancepanox. She tried to focus on the smug pleasure of leading the Nightmare on a merry chase.
But there was no joy in that. This was the culmination. All that smugness and trickery had been for nothing.

"Something is seriously wrong with her. This is not the princess we knew." Rarity observed.

“She has fallen to Dark, hard. Her mind and body weren't prepared for it.” Ancepanox said grimly. "She might not even resist if we attack-


Dash interrupted her with a sharp whistle. "New arrivals outside ma'am!"


Everyone went quiet, and soon they began to hear what Dash did.
It started as a low rumble, shaking the dust from the highest rafters. It grew strong and stronger, becoming a rolling rhythmic beat. The stones of the castle and the moon rock underneath shook. Then at last it could be heard. Hoofsteps. Forty-thousand hooves beat against the basalt of the Mare Incognitum below them, ten-thousand at a time.

“Luna is here. We lost our window of making a clean escape.” Ancepanox hummed contemplatively. "She will be coming up. We finish this later, Celestiaan.” She nodded to Rarity and backed away from the throne.

The nightmare ponies withdrew to the sides of the throne room and disappeared into the shadows. Only their glowing eyes betrayed their presence.


From the bottom of the bluff, Luna looked up at the ancient castle. The fleeting lunar wind sent shivers down her spine.
The monstrous citadels had been made in her honor. An honor she had never deserved, and perhaps still didn’t. The creatures of the moon marched at her command unquestioningly, without thought to cause or justification. Who could ever deserve such loyalty?

“We hold position here, for now.” She commanded her moon denizens. “I shall go up and parlay.”


Of all places, how and why had Celestia come here, to HER moon? If something bad had happened to Anepanox, she would have known, unless…

Refocusing herself on the task at hoof, she spread her wings and flew up to the castle. As she grew closer, an intangible feeling of dread grew within her. The Celestia waiting for her inside was not like the one she’d loved and cared for, nor the one she’d grown jealous of and rebelled against, or even the one who had killed her. This Celestia was sickly, dirty, tainted almost past recognition.

She landed on a high flying buttress, and jumped her way down to the entrance. She’d never been there before, nor to the vast majority of the moon’s abandoned castles. She preferred the total isolation of the wilds, where she could be alone with her thoughts. Looking at it now she wondered why she hadn’t come before; It looked like the perfect place to be miserable in.


So often Luna had dreamed of having the roles reversed, where she would be the beloved and infallible one. In her imagination she saw a comically ugly Celestia, warty and bedraggled, always standing beside the great Empress Luna only to contrast their relative beauty.

“Luna.” The Celestia sitting on the black throne was not comically ugly. She was almost normal, but for her crazed eyes and that one of her wings was amputated at the base. It was that near normalcy that made her all the more unbearable to see.

“Sister.” Luna uttered, unable to formulate any other response.

“You know that I am not the Celestia who was your sister.” Celestia droned, as though describing bad weather. “I am several generations removed. The memories and the emotion is all dulled. I am... diluted." She winced at her own words. "I'm unpure. Celestia the First was a monolith of sanctity, but not I. I'm dirty."

Luna stood silently for a few moments. “In more ways than one.”

“Then what do you want?”

“To…” She averted her eyes. “help you.”

Celestia sat in silence.

“Listen, please.” Luna’s voice trembled. “T- This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.” She took tentative steps forward, not even noticing the blood covering the floor she walked on.



‘Vultures come in flocks. Even the weakest of the weak have come to pick at your flesh.’

Celestia stirred in her chair. Luna was lieing. Luna was coming to kill her too. “How was it supposed to be?” Celestia gurgled. “Perhaps you anticipated a happy reunion. Two goddess, two crowns both stolen away, and yet still optimistic for the future. The power of the nightmare of the moon is LOST to you, and so too is any fear I had of you, dear sister.”

“And I-” Luna swallowed the lump in her throat. She look down at her hooves, and when she looked back up her expression was detached. “I never feared you, sister. I only came to see if Ancepanox accomplished what needed be done.”

“And did she?” Celestia chirred. She not-so-subtly glanced at the nightmares still lingering in the shadows, waiting for the right moment to act out whatever plans they had.

Luna did not notice the gesture. “She has made me look foolish by going above and beyond. By sending you here, she has given us an opportunity we scarce deserve. We can be redeemed to each other! We can find what we lost. Ancepanox is a wiser mare than I to foresee that. Celestia, you are my sister, and I will embrace you with all my heart, no matter what!”


‘With how pleasant this vulture was, I doubted she was your kin. But that was imbecilic stupidity that could only come from your like.’

Celestia could almost see the comedy of it. Luna had let her naive optimism make Ancepanox an enemy. Now it was so clear why the nightmares hadn’t killed her right away: Doing so would have kept Luna from speaking her piece before Ancepanox knew her intentions.
Now those intentions were clear, and Luna was squarely in the middle of them both. It wasn’t Luna’s fault for giving Ancepanox more credit than she was due, but she would pay dearly for it.

Celestia's skin crawled. She loathed Luna with every fiber of her being! She hated Ancepanox even more than that! No cost was too great to make those arrogant black alicorns feel even one tenth of the misery she was experiencing! She was going to destroy everything they loved.
Starting with the thing they loved most: Celestia.



Luna noticed Celestia shake with anger, and misunderstood it to be directed at her. “Sister, I’m sorry about the past, but you don’t have to allow it to stop you from letting me help!”

Celestia refocused on Luna. Hate and darkness choked her words into a hoarse growl. “Help, you say. As if I would believe that. You wished me dead, and now you’ve come to see it through. And Ancepanox? HA! You never had any faith in anypony but yourself, and she knew it. I’ve been served up, to be executed at your pleasure.”

“NO! That’s not true!” Luna objected.

“Don’t deny you wanted me dead. The Nightmare of the Moon is the ANTITHESIS of all that I stood for, and you gave that power to Ancepanox for one purpose, and one purpose only!” Celestia beat a forehoof against the throne, the other pointing accusingly. “Don’t deny it! YOU WANTED ME DEAD!”


“No… No...” Luna stuttered, then turned resolute. “NO! This is MY Moon! You can not talk down to me here, Celestia!”

“No? You didn’t want me dead?” Celestia arched a brow.

“I… I did.” Luna lowered her eyes, grinding her teeth. “But don’t talk down to me.”

“Then where are we, relative to each other? You would imply that we are equal!” Celestia leaned forward, her laugh emptily of any goodwill. “Are we? I do suppose so, for that is how it has always been. Two celestial satellites, two dreams, two Celestiaan, two thrones.”

Luna’s heart leapt. Equals? Had her sister really said that? The more cautious side of her mind objected, vainly for she was already blurting out her enthusiastic words. “Yes! Yes! Out of this feeble common ground an understanding can be made! Our thrones have been smashed, our bodies and legacies destroyed. We have nothing left. Nothing but each other, Celestia.”

“You and I. I and you. Together at last.” Celestia’s wicked smile revealed that her own teeth had partially warped by the Dark, adding a set of fangs. “We will have the child shared between us.”


“Hmm?” Luna blinked. The tunnel vision fell away. Now she saw more than just Celestia. She saw the corpses she’d walked through, the headless body of Agana, and the sleeping Twilight Sparkle at the foot of the throne like a pet. “SIster, why is she…”


The whole situation came into stark focus for her. Ancepanox had not sent Celestia to the moon. Celestia had FLED to the moon! Ancepanox likely still wanted blood, and Celestia was fugitive with a death mark. “W- What have you done? You shouldn’t, COULDN’T be here!”

“Where?” Celestia titled her head slyly. “The throne?”

“MY MOON!” Luna screamed. “How could you come here if Ancepanox did not send you?! Not even at your zenith did you ever have the power to intrude on my moon. You and your mother have NO strength here.”

“And what about me alone?” Celestia asked. She glanced at Agana and Twilight. “Or mostly alone.”

Luna didn’t understand. “Sister what has become of you? Are you even madder than I think?”


“REBELLION, Luna. I have rebelled against my dear mother.” Celestia pushed herself off the throne and took measured steps forward. Her eyes were wide, and black presence at their edge pulsed inwards with every hooffall, advancing on the color of her iris. “She abandoned me. My sun abandoned me. And so, I reject her. I have found a different patron.”

“That is not possible.” Luna shook her head, but she could see and feel it was all true. “You-”

“I had NOTHING, not even my soul. So I make do with this one inside me now, an admittedly shoddy thing, to let me persist. That is the directive that drives us all, even gods. I will persist, Luna.” Celestia inched her way forward, step by step, until she was a hoof’s reach away. “That was our mandate on the earth Luna. We were sent to kill, or be killed. Clover died, our gods were saved, we survived.”

“Sister I-” Luna wanted turn her back and run away but a strange force transfixed her. “I want you to live too! I love you!”


‘Only a liar could tell you she loves you. The lie she tells is either told to you, or herself. Which one is more flattering, do you think?’

“You love me, you say.” Celestia stared at her younger sister, and the tears that traced their way down her cheeks. Celestia felt no love or compassion. Her ability to care and feel had been lost somewhere along the way. “In that way we are not equal.”

Luna sobbed. “Please, don’t say that!”

“If we were equal, you would understand the pain of my loss.” Celestia growled. Luna’s suffering gave her a dark pleasure she could barely understand, but craved. “You would know the agony of having everything you are stripped and defiled!”

“Of course I have!” Luna shouted, pushing Celestia away in half-hearted anger. “I have faced my nightmares, Celestia! You can not tell me I haven’t!”

“You were defeated, but you have dignity. You have pride! All that has been taken away from me, and you will not begin to understand until the thing dearest to your heart is stolen. TWO Celestiaan, Luna! Both of them have lost their throne, but only one has lost her DREAM!”

“Wai-” Luna’s protest was ended by a piercing pain in her side. Ancepanox’s silver sabre was in Celestia’s hoof, slicing through her right shoulder. How had Celestia gotten such a thing?!



‘Swatting at the carrion birds won’t save you know. You are just a husk, a scarecrow. You are empty on the inside and everyone knows it.’

“Do you hate me, sister? Do you loathe me with every fiber of your being? It’s useless to you now. All your feelings belong to the other Nightmare alicorn now. Wallow in your emotion knowing that you are still powerless.” Celestia seethed. She flashed the sabre back and forth, turning Luna’s body into a map of gashes. “I will cut the Moon out of you. It is deep inside, but it can be removed. I won’t stop until it is out!”

Luna tried to react. The pain was negligible, but a cold and smothering sensation pressed into her head, and she was unable to move a single muscle. A presence, some entity, was stifling her whilst Celestia hacked away at her.
As a final act, the magic that had hijacked her body closed off her windpipe. Torn by the trauma and stresses of Celestia’s attacks and the nightmare’s spell, she lapsed into unconsciousness, her bloody body joining the others on the floor.

Celestia stood over her. She would take Luna’s moon, and her pain would be known.



“Enough.” Ancepanox ordered. She and her nightmares stepped out from the shadows. The sabre disappeared from Celestia’s hoof. “I can’t have you killing her.”

“I-” Celestia looked at her empty hoof. Had Ancepanox given the sword it to her? The one moment, she had been yelling at Luna, and the next she had been slashing. She vividly recalled the absolute hatred she’d felt only moments ago, but felt only emptiness now. It was though it had been siphoned off, consumed by an outside force.
Celestia jumped in front of Ancepanox and yelled into her face. “You foul witch! Give me back my anger!”

Dash and Applejack grabbed Celestia’s shoulders and shoved her back, though Ancepanox herself was unperturbed. Rarity quickly used her magic to carry Luna and prop her up against a wall. Celestia struggled and spat for several seconds, and only when she stopped fighting did they release her and back away.


The voice in Celestia’s head was relentless in its pestering.
‘Was that all you had in you? For some reason, it falls flat against the god of rats and carrion birds. See now what great pleasure she takes in prolonging your life so she may drink in your torment.’


Ancepanox leaned away and wiped the spittle off her face. “Princess, you're really disappoint me. At least Luna was speaking from her heart, doing what she thought was right.”

“First Twilight, now Luna?” Celestia fought to keep her tone even. She felt so empty. She tried to stoke her passion back up, just to push that emptiness away. “You are covetous! COVETOUS! What more will you take?”

“It’s time for you to calm down.”
At Ancepanox’s unspoken command, Applejack and Dash struck at Celestia. A buck to her rib tossed her in one direction and a flying kick to her back sent her in another. Another buck, this time to a leg, sent her to the ground where the two nightmares began kicking her.
Celestia took the hits, limp on the floor. What was Celestia? What did a Celestia do in situations like these? Was she a Celestia anymore?

The number of kicks dwindled, until the two nightmares backed away.


“We’ve gotten to know each other too well, princess. You know how to push my buttons, and I know how to kick you ass.” Ancepanox was saying.

Celestia couldn't focus on the words. The space inside her head felt like a ball of fuzz. What did anything mean anymore?
Maybe... Maybe the anger had gone away because it had taken Celestia as far as it could.
It was time for a new emotion.


Something was dripping on the ground beside Celestia, mixing with the partially coagulated blood. Celestia, slowly looked up. Ancepanox was above her, leering.
No, not leering. Ancepanox stood over her like a concerned parent, mournful, regretful, hesitant. Tears ran down her black cheeks, past the edges of her grimacing mouth. Drip, drip, drip.
“But sadly, this has to end. No politics, metaphysics, or metaphore. You and I, my princess.” Ancepanox promised.


Celestia closed her eyes and nodded. She felt it now... The only emotion she hadn't cycled through in those uncountable hours fighting with and against the creature who called herself Ancepanox: Pride.
“I and you, you and I.” Celestia whispered. She addressed the other three. “Cavort no more, nightmares. This duel is between my sister and I, and none other.”

Rarity, Applejack, and Dash looked to Ancepanox for orders.

“I assume you have no objection of moving Twilight outside.” Ancepanox asked.

“Please do.” Celestia stood up, one hoof at a time. She looked terribly weak. “Keep her safe for me.”

Dash fetched Twilight from the base of the obsidian throne, while Applejack took Luna. They retreated to the door out onto the edge of the bluff, and waited.


Ancepanox and Celestia turned away from each other and strode to opposite ends of the throne room. Agana’s headless body trotted to Celestia’s side, the symbolic second for the duel.

Rarity tried swallowing and clearing her throat, but couldn’t rid herself of the ill feeling deep within herself. Her body was reacting to the tension, preparing to act nightmarishly. “Like I promised, I will help you.”

Ancepanox, however, pushed Rarity towards the door with a wing. “You've helped enough. Keep Twilight and Luna safe. If they wake up, avoid any questions until this is over and I return.”

Rarity felt slighted. “My lady-”

“Go.” Ancepanox growled. “Now.”



Celestia watched the nightmares leave, earth pony, pegasus, and unicorn. And last was the one who would not leave.
“Is there anything else left to say?"

“No, but we're going to talk anyway.” Ancepanox chuckled. Her cape, the richly embroidered tapestry weaved in deep blacks and mysterious blues, was lit up in her magic. She slowly and carefully ripped off a stripe of fabric. “Alicorns love to talk." Holding the strip of fabric in her telekinetic grasp, Ancepanox began wrapping a blindfold over her face. “I’m the child, Celestia. Smother me dead.”

“You promised no metaphors.” Celestia shouted, squeezing her eyes shut.

But the harangue went on, as Ancpeanox carefully tried the know behind her head, obscuring her own vision. “This is going to be the end of both of us, and the beginning of a new life. Call it selection, call it a synthesis. I'm going to become the better parts of both of us. If I am going to be able to love life and love living, I have to be the best pony I can possibly be."

"You don't understand the alicorn soul. It is not built for the world. If it is not filled by domination and control, it is soothed with decadence and gluttony. Our souls burn for higher purposes than any mortal can understand. If you try to work at their level you will destroy yourself, like I did." Celestia said. "Your goal is noble but impossible."

Ancepanox jutted out her jaw. "Hold onto the positives princess. I don't want to remember you as a neighsayer."



‘Can you match her on your own? Prove you are still an alicorn, Celestiaan.’

Celestia snarled. She called her magic to her horn, ready to let loose.

Ancepanox preempted Celestia with a blast of purple energy. Even with her eyes covered, her spells here honed with deadly accuracy. Celestia summoned a bubble of magic to deflect the bolt. Ancepanox cast another, and Celestia almost missed the window to cast another shield. A third bolt shattered the shield and almost clipped Celestia’s head.

Starved for magic, Celestia dodged desperately as she prepared her sacrifice spell. Her sheen of yellow gripped her remaining wing, and after a moment of pinching, Celestia could feel it tear off. Wasting no time she devoured the limb in a single motion, letting the surge of magic fill her body.
And just in time too, for Ancepanox cast another bolt that Celestia now easily blocked with renewed reserves. But this time the sun princess counterattacked, pouring her resurgent might into a plume of fire that engulfed the black alicorn. Celestia sustained the inferno for several seconds longer than she should have, and she ended up drained once again. However, the terrible damage she’d surely inflicted was worth the cost.

Ancepanox dispelled the fire surrounding her. The lethal burns were already almost gone due to the incredible speed that her body healed. Even the cape and blindfold were repairing their singed fibers.


“I thought you have to die because I hated you, but I had it all wrong. I don't hate you, no, it's just the opposite. I hate what has happened to you, and what you've become. Celestia... I love you. You were the best that there ever was. The wisest, strongest, most versatile, most able. It was my privilege to know you, and to be your student. I'm sorry that I didn't appreciate it while it lasted. Everything you stood for was for the right reason. I wanted to be just like you." Ancepanox said fervidly. “Only that wasn’t the real you. The real you is a stained sinner, trying to give her life meaning. But that’s okay, because everypony is like that. Even me, especially me.”


The black alicorn let off another deadly spell, a quintet of magical spears that whistled towards Celestia and the most convenient routes of escape. Celestia would either have to bear the brunt of the attack or use up the last of her magic.
Thinking quickly, Celestia devised a temporary third option. She jumped backwards, but forgot she had only the stumps of her wings to help maneuver as she moved. She was almost skewered by the spell hurtling towards her before she got into the shadow of the only cover in her vicinity: Agana’s body.
With a meaty thunk, a magic spear punched through the lumbering daeva's torso. Celestia was hit by a spray of black blood before the spear dissipated. She could feel the liquid on her lips, and when she darted her tongue out to clear it a chilling calm came over her.

‘An alicorn’s body is like a battery. Why would anypony waste a single drop of it?’


“You don’t have to fight it.” Ancepanox shouted. She sounded dejected, almost indecisive. “I don’t want to hurt or cause you pain. Only kill you. You can go out with dignity.”

Celestia couldn’t see what the next attack was, but the effect on her meatshield Agana was spectacular. The semi-equine torso was torn to shreds before her, and Celestia was bathed in guts and viscera.


‘This is the decisive moment. Ask yourself, are you really willing to relinquish everything you are to me? Even your name?’

“Yes. All of it.” Celestia craned her neck head, absorbing the shower of blood as fast as she could. The inky black that swirled at the edges of her eyes swelled inwards, consuming her iris and casting everything she saw into mire. With every passing second her reservations fell away, and her eagerness and hatred grew. She could kill Ancepanox. She WOULD kill Ancepanox. Her new patron would give her the power to do it. “I must persist, and so I give it willingly.”

‘I like that answer.’


The winding path down the face of the bluff, from the foot of the crumbling castle to the bed of the Mare Incognitum, was luckily sturdy and safe. Rarity and Applejack were halfway down the winding path, with almost a hundred vertical meters still to go. Rainbow Dash flew alongside them, having passed off her passenger.



“I ain’t entirely clear on this point, but is the moon real?” Applejack asked. The earth pony was having no trouble balancing Luna on her back. The princess of the night had healed away most of the cuts, but was still out cold.

"Real? Don't let Lady Ancepanox overhear you asking that or we will be subjected to a long-winded clammoring about what 'real' means." Rarity said. The motion force her to readjust how Twilight Sparkle lay across her back. She didn't want the little unicorn to fall- She didn't hold any antipathy for Twilight anymore, with the grudge having been transferred to Ancepanox. If she was to be believed, Twilight had been regressed to before they'd even met.

"If you don't know the answer, don't say anything." Applejack shook her head.

Rarity giggled. "The moon has both physical and intangible aspects, and I promise you I knew that before Ancepanox told me. It is the gateway to the dreamlike realms out in the cosmos."

"Is that a fact or is it just what your cult teaches?" Dash challenged.

"I try to be informative, and it is thrown in my face." Rarity tried to keep her mask from slipping. "It is very true. Look up there, to those stars and the spaces in between! We are on the brink of a universe that could swallow us up whole and be unchanged for it. Those inky black depths hide monsters billions upon billions of times more vast and grand as an alicorn." Rarity intoned. "This moon is the conduit for those inconceivable stellar entities. The alicorns we know and cherish were once nomads in that cast space sea, until they crossed the moon's barrier and descended onto our planet."


Rainbow Dash was stifling a laugh. "That's some real nerd stuff. Most religious ponies are pea-brains. Do they remember all that or do you remind them every day?"

"That's rude, very rude. Shame on me for playing along with you." Rarity ground her teeth, staring straight ahead. "And to think, I was going to spare you ponies?"

"Uh, what was that? Y'all saying you're gunna spare us?" Applejack scoffed. "Are you actually gunna have another run at Ancepanox? S'cuze me partner but did you SEE that THING in the dream with the color? You couldn't pay me a million bits to talk back to it, leave alone fight it."

"I have to. My dignity and pride as a nightmare demands it." Rarity growled

"You're gunna get creamed." Applejack tisked.

"Have some heart and think of the pony that has to wash you off the walls, which will probably be me." Dash snarked. "We're going to get cured of the nightmare anyway. Focus on staying alive. This is the mare with the death wish telling you this too."

"Whatever." Rarity mumbled. What would it take to turn the other nightmare ponies against Ancepanox? Didn't their hearts tremble indignant at how they were being treated?



Suddenly the ground beneath their hooves began to shake. Chunks of rock higher up the bluff began to come loose and fall, skipping down the terraced switchbacks and causing more small collapses.

“Uh oh.” Applejack gasped. "We gotta get off this hill!" Dash banked her wings and flew out to a safe distance, leaving Rarity and Applejack.

The shaking grew more violent, and a low rumble began to emanate from the top of the bluff. Rarity chanced a quick glance up, and saw that the derelict castle was aglow with lights of many colors. As she watched, one of the tall towers was torn apart by a concussive force from within. Rarity’s awe lasted up until black brick began to impact around her.

“It's going to explode!” She whined, breaking into a gallop. Applejack was close behind.
Chunks of castle rained down the bluff, breaking off more and more of the path. The rumbling from above was punctuated by a pop, then a deafening boom. Glass and iron joined rock in the material hail.
Dash was trying to call out warnings, but she was forced to juke and dodge for herself. She saw a tumbling boulder rolling straight towards Rarity, and bracing herself, swooped in and kicked the rock off course, to tumble harmlessly behind them. Dash retreated again, keeping half an eye to the others' safety.

After half a minute, the deluge tapered, but they had to stop nonetheless. The path down had been erased by erosion and debris. There was no way they could jump across or down to the next level, not with Twilight and Luna on their backs.

Dash landed on the opposite side of the gap. “Is everypony okay?”

“I’m bit rustled, nothin major.” Applejack coughed. “What happened?

“Magic duel, when it should have been a magic execution. Celestia is putting up more of a fight than she anticipated.” Rarity remarked.

Their discussion was interrupted by an even louder explosion, and she looked just in time to see half of the castle disappear into a bloom of white. A shockwave rolled through the air and down the bluff, throwing up a cloud of moon dust. When the dust settled Rarity could see the remaining half of the castle was teetering precariously above the drop, directly above them.

“I take back what I said. I ain’t feelin so good.” Applejack giggled nervously.



The air between Applejack and Rarity crunched and cracked as the Cosmic Eye swelled open, and Ancepanox jumped out onto the path.
The black alicorn was worse for wear, with a bruise on her cheek and several cuts across her barrel and flank. Her long mane had been burned short in places. “What are you still doing here?! Get Twilight and Luna out of harm’s reach!”

Rarity noted that Ancepanox had ripped a strip from the tapestry and tied it over her eyes. She was about start shouting about such poor treatment of her soul binding, but decided that complaint could come out with the rest, once they dueled. “It is more a matter of ability than will. What happened with Celestia?”

“Here’s the thing, I wasn’t expecting her to-” Ancepanox stopped mid sentence and her ears swiveled up, listening to something inaudible to any other pony. Perched on the top of one of the remaining buttresses was a grey alicorn. Rarity head swam with confusion; It didn’t look at all like Celestia, who should have been the only other pony up there. “Uh oh.”

The entire castle was surrounded by the telltale shimmer of magic. Impossible, Rarity thought, literally and completely impossible. No pony had that much magical strength. Her shocked expression became a tight-lipped frown.

Applejack was a bit more expressive. “My gods! What the heck have y’all dragged us in to?!”


The castle’s creaks and groans rolled down the bluff as it was torn by its foundations from the rock it had sat on for over a thousand years. Rock and dust sloughed off the roots of the castle, until most of it had fallen and the structure was left, suspended over its footprint.
The grey alicorn looked down at Ancepanox and the other nightmares, before kicking off of her perch and soaring into the open air over the Mare Incognitum. The floating castle slowly followed her, leaving the bluff behind.

"With exponential growth of telekinesis difficulty to mass..." Ancepanox ran the mental math. "An order of magnitude more magic expended every second than all of Canterlot in a year."

"She's gunna crush us." Applejack observed.

“No she's not aiming for us.” Dash said. Everypony, save the blindfolded Ancepanox, looked down to the army of moon denizens down at the base of the bluff.


“I'll stop her.” Ancepanox ordered. "This path could still collapse, so get moving!"

The black alicorn kicked off the ground, and for a good ten seconds Rarity expected her to disappear into the cosmic eye. But Ancepanox’s wings opened, and after a few experimental flaps, she rocketed away after the grey alicorn.

“Now I know I must be dreaming.” Applejack said flatly. Then the humor of the whole situation hit her, and she began to chuckle. “Then again, ain’t it the case that an alicorn who can’t fly is the odd one out?”



Ancepanox breathed deeply, letting the cool lunar air pass linger in her lungs, then expelling the gases after her body had warmed them. Even if it was just a dream, flying was exhilarating. It felt like nothing was beyond her. Maybe some day she would be able to fly in the waking world.

Of course, she would first have to deal with the looming threat.

Her eyes were covered, but the world around her was alive with magic. Just watched without changing anything with her own magic, admiring the swirling and churning currents. This moon had an aura all its own that flowed across its surface and through its skies. The last time Ancepanox had done this had been during her duel with Chrysalis, and for the same reason- Her foe was hidden.

For while the Nightmare Ponies, Twilight and Luna, and the thousands of moon denizens were like glowing tangles among the streaks of bright energy and subdued magical hues, brightest by far was the churning aura surrounding Celestia. No pony or alicorn Ancepanox had seen so far was that powerful, not even when the Sun had filled Celestia with her power.
This was not natural. This was not even the surge of power Celestia had taken by consuming Agana's body. This was something else... the mysterious 'new patron' Celestia had referenced.

"We're right on the edge of space. That's why Celestia retreated here. She was searching for someone specific." Ancepanox mused. "Something."

Ancepanox's confidence in victory was wavering. Celestia was was fast, overwhelmingly powerful, and unhesitating. But the cost had been great: The sun princess was coming apart even faster from the profusion of Dark magic inside her. Her outward manifestation, her ivory coat and ethereal mane, had become ferally bedraggled. She was grey in coat, mane, and magic. Her eyes were holes, bleeding the black ichor that had taken her soul.

"I could have prevented this." Ancepanox mumbled to herself. At one of a dozen opportunities, a slight word or action could have stopped Celestia from descending further into desperation and self-destruction. Ancepanox did not blame herself. "But so could she. This was her choice."



While Ancepanox was flying up to her altitude, Celestia was not idle. Her telekinetic grasp dragged the floating castle into position, directly over the moon denizens. Ancepanox could only guess why Celestia would target them; So freshly fallen to the Dark, Celestia was trying to slake her overwhelming destructive compulsion by obliterating of as many lives as possible, as quickly as possible.

Ancepanox knew she couldn't fight for control of the castle. Even if she'd planned ahead with special patterns and rituals, she would be too weak to even keep the castle even, let alone fight Celestia or drag it away. The best option she could come up with was to destroy it somehow.

Sensing that someone had come to stop her, Celestia darted under the floating castle and hovered between it and the other alicorn.


Fortunately or unfortunately, Celestia still had mind enough to speak. "You have opened my eyes. What does Equestria, or the entire planet matter? I could take a whole galaxy for myself with this power."

“Yeah, I don’t see that happening.” Ancepanox yanked a gargoyle off the castle with her magic and propelled it at Celestia.

Celestia didn't bother to dodge. With a little flick of her horn the gargoyle glowed a bright black before dissolving into dust. "You could join me. You could..." Celestia hesitated, and her next words came out stilted. "replace me."



Unwisely perhaps, Ancepanox pushed up the blindfold for a moment. She needed to see her princess with her own eyes. "Who? Who are you?"

Celestia grinned like a child being caught telling a lie. All her teeth had turned as sharp as knives. “I am your progenitor.”

“Who are you?” Ancepanox repeated.
Celestia wrenched a ten meter length of parapet off the castle, and used it to swat at Ancpeanox. The black alicorn enveloped herself in a shield, and the chunk of stone exploded into pebbles against it. “Who are you?” She asked the grey alicorn again.


Celestia tensed and untensed. Her muscles bubbled horrifically under her skin before returning to normal. "When you surrendered your name, what was the scope of your loss? I see you gave up more than you gained. You gave up a name and a past, but only gained a name back?"

"I gained a future." Ancepanox repudiated.

"That remains to be seen." Celestia purred. "Your chose a very weak companion for your change. Myriadess... even saying her name fills me with pity. You should be commended for your mercy." She shrugged. "I chose better patron, and a better time to sacrifice."

Ancepanox blanched. "I'm still the pony I was, but more. You have lost your mind."

"Don't kid yourself. You are making the same transition only more gradually." Celestia countered.

Ancepanox couldn't refute that. She had the conciliation that Celestia was mocking her for being weaker: If power meant bleeding black ooze out the eyes, Ancepanox was fine remaining weak.
"You are not going to deter me. The world still needs your death."

Celestia flapped harder, rising up to the top of the Tower. She landed on one of the towers, were she stood stock still, as motionless as the grotesque gargoyles. "You speak full control and a clear consciousness. You only gained those through struggle against yourself. You purged your weaker parts and became, as you said, 'more'. WATCH AS I DO THE SAME."

Ancepanox braced for an attack but Celestia, or whatever entity had control of her, was not done with the diatribe. One wondered if the power of alicorns corrilated with how much they ranted.



"You know nothing of the races of gods that dwell among the stars. How deliriously IGNORANT the alicorns of this planet have made themselves to assure themselves they are superior life forms. In truth, your 'Bright World' is a backwater haven, a place so unimportant that refugees like the ancient alicorns, the sun and moon, and the nightmares, can sulk in the open unmolested. That I have been beckoned here to interfere should be HUMILIATING to me... but it was not so long ago that I was a prisoner on your world."

"Ah... You." Ancepanox grunted. "I've heard so much about you. I was wondering when we'd get to meet."

"By mortal terms my accomplishments here were legendary. I birthed the Deava, powerful and sinful children. I forged the Harmony, a whole new power that had never existed in the history of this universe. I created the Ritual, making mortals into gods... But none of that compares to the most lethargic flick of we gods of the void." Celestia intoned, but the volume of her voice died away into airy rasping, but a new psychic voice grew in volume. "That is why I dwell on my time here fondly. My most trivial triumphs that meant the most to the most entities."

Ancpeanox nudged the blindfold back over her eyes, to witness the unfurling that was taking place.

The skin of space curled back around the grey alicorn, invisible except to magical sight, as strange and otherworldy power began to wrench their way into reality. Thin black seams formed in the air around Celestia, through which reached a fluid indigo tendril, then another two, then hundreds. The multiplying swarm of dark tendrils twisted around whatever purchase they could find. Then out of the mass jutted two enormous black wings, each over six meters across with scaly talons jutting off the alula, scraping and clawing at the air. The talons grabbed onto parts of the castle and quivered, struggling to pull something up along with them. With a horrendous squelch, the Dark god was at last revealed.

It was almost equine, in the same way that the shadowy Forlorn Spark, or Agana's torso had been almost equine- A detail on a mismatched and revolting composition. For it had a pony’s head and neck, but of such consuming blackness that it could only be seen by the silhouette against the castle and stars beyond. It’s taut body disappeared into the bed of tendrils, out of which jutted those vast clawed wings and a dozen small heads. It’s uncountable eyes were of the brightest indigo, and radiated the pure and flowing power of the cosmos.

"Out there, I am Anima Astral Nacre, one of many of my kind and caliber of divine. Down there, I was THE DARK LADY. Who can not love a name so grand, portentous, and final." The dark god rumbled, her psychic voice sending trembles through the magical currents around the two alicorns. "I am not owed, nor am I desirous, of anything on this planet. I would very much like to see it again through new eyes. It has been a thousand of your years, and that is a long time."
The dark god stretched her wings, and Celestia did suite in mimicry, shaking her stumps. "I have no particular gripe against you, but you in my way and I find you annoying. You can have your way with Celestia when I am finished with her, in a century or so."

Ancepanox wasn't going to lie: Anima Astral Nacre was beyond intimidating. Just looking at the enormous trans-dimensional horror sprouting from spaces beyond filled her heart with a frantic dread she couldn't suppress. That thing could not, should not exist!
But she had known that it was only a matter of time before one like the Dark Lady showed up. And truthfully, there was no better arena than the moon.
"I'm not going to wait. Give Celestia to me to face justice, or reap the consequences." Ancepanox stared defiantly into the deava's burning eyes.

The Dark Lady's psychic voice defied description. Like Agana's it was melodious, but changed and warped along a whole range of pitches, the sounds ringing out like singing bells, then turning into yowling flutes and screaming horns. The words overlapped and repeated themselves, as if a whole orchestra was drunkenly shouting and whispering and cooing it. It was deliriously beautiful one moment and maddeningly dissonant the next.
"You think to make war against me, my little friend? Very well. Do not draw this out so long then. Assume what form you will and let this test of strength and will begin."

"If its the only way I can keep up, then I will." Ancpenaox nodded. WIth the foe revealing her true form, Ancepanox though it only proper to reciprocate.
There was no denying it to herself, something had changed over the course of the night. Something in her blood, or soul, or something... Ancepanox wasn't just Twilight Sparkle with a different name. She was an altered pony. Devouring Agana's soul had cemented it, but Ancepanox didn't quite know just what it was yet. Yes, she'd seen it in the nightmare ponies had cringed away from her in the space of color and light. She felt it in how the dream magic now came naturally. Always at the edge of her consciousness she was aware of the other dreams around them, like visions through distant windows, alluring but separate. Yes, suffice it to say, Ancepanox was altered.
The moon around them flooded the black alicorn with power. Ancepanox welcomed it, slackening her self-imposed limits, taking on as much energy as she could- If she had to start bleeding out her eyes like Celestia was, so be it! Her body shifted and wavered, her spine lengthened, her legs stretched. Her mane and tail began to billow and dissolve, their color expanding into a cloud around her. From out of the cloud, dozens of purple eyes peered, and so too from her face, cast into consummate shadow.
Ancepanox let the breath out, relishing the power rushing through her. Strange light began to sweep from beneath her blindfold.


The Dark Lady crooned in pleasure. "There it is. A more true form of a Celestiaan. This will be an epic dance, one sister against the other. Let us reveal if the dreams of your planet can hope to match against the power of the cosmos."

Ancepanox tried to answer, but let out cacophonous roar instead- Her form was not made to talk, only to battle.

"Well said!"
Celestia stretched her legs and rolled her shoulders, and the horrible phantasm sprouting from her threw its head back and howled, a horrible sound like the sounding of a million sirens.
"I am Anima Astral Nacre, the Dark Lady, and this is the warmest welcome I could have wished for!"