//------------------------------// // Déjà Vu // Story: Do Not Go Gentle // by ShinigamiDad //------------------------------// Luna and Reaper sat up at the same time, squinting at the sunrise streaming through Luna’s chamber’s windows. “How quickly can you get to Appleloosa?” Reaper asked. “I can be there in a matter of moments, but are you ready to teleport? How much power do you have after that display in the dreamscape?” “Sufficient for our needs, have no fear,” Luna replied, stepping to the side table and raising the carafe of cider to her lips. “However, I do need a moment to slake my thirst…” Reaper nodded, and looked around the room. “It looks like Twilight took most of the scraps and fragments with her,” Reaper observed. “I hope she’s doing alright.” “I am sure she’s fine,” Luna replied, emptying the carafe and setting it down with a contented sigh. “As you have pointed out, she is bright, and has more than a modicum of power in her own right.” Reaper furrowed his brow: “I know, but I really have no good idea what she’s going to find down there. I haven’t seen the abandoned catacombs or mines or any of that in several centuries--especially not under the old High Tower.” Luna nodded: “Then let us get to Appleloosa and regain Grey Thorn’s trail so we can resolve this situation, and ensure Twilight’s safety!” Luna departed with a flash, leaving Reaper alone for a moment. He stared at the floor and cocked his head as though listening intently for something. He chewed his lip, straightened up and disappeared. Reaper, again, found himself on the outskirts of Appleloosa, next to the now-ruined statue of Nightmare Moon. He arched an eyebrow: “Not that I disagree with the sentiment, but I wonder who knocked this thing down?” He blinked out, and reappeared in a neighborhood of cottages and cabins near the center of town, searching for Luna, but trying not attract attention while doing so. “Where in the name of Celestia’s holy teats did Luna end up?!” he wondered aloud. He rounded a corner, and thought he was experiencing déjà vu: Before him was Luna, again confronting Grey Thorn, ponies fleeing, several shops ablaze with eldritch fire. Fearing the scenario might repeat itself even further, he phased back to his fully-solid form, and trotted across the open market square. “Flee!” he cried to the clusters of frightened and confused ponies. Luna joined his warning: “Run, all of you! This is no longer the dream you were just experiencing! This monster has come here to take advantage of your confusion!” Reaper’s sword flashed deep blue as he magically drew it, sweeping its tip toward the towering Void. An arcing band of energy raced toward the blackness, forming a web-like barrier between Grey Thorn and several potential victims. Numerous ponies now found themselves seemingly trapped between some kind of infinite darkness, and Death incarnate. They began to scream. Luna, seeing the Void momentarily restrained, dropped down from on high, sweeping the terrified ponies aside, thrusting them out of the line-of-fire. Luna called out to a frightened constable: “If you value your life and the lives of your fellow citizens, round up everypony you can and evacuate!” “And send word to Canterlot, if you can!” Reaper added, stepping forward, renewing the barrier with another sweep of his sword. Grey Thorn lunged forward, the Void sweeping over and around him like a living thunderhead, tendrils stabbing at and around Reaper’s barrier and Luna’s blasts of magic. “Pretty brazen of you, G.T., showing yourself in the real world, in the full light of day!” Reaper shouted, pressing closer, trying to hem in the Void’s tendrils. “Truly,” Luna added, “for my sister will soon join us, and your doom, a thousand years in the making, will finally be nigh!” Grey Thorn laughed, rising into the air, seeking an advantage against his opponents’ barriers and counter-strikes. “A thousand years in the making?” he shouted, “You have no idea what a motivated pony can accomplish in a thousand years!” Shafts of golden energy lanced out from his horn, knocking Luna back, and forcing Reaper to shield behind his cloak for a moment. Luna recovered, flared her wings and resumed firing pulses of deep-violet magic at the Void’s periphery. “I think I have a good idea of what can be accomplished!” she replied archly. “And I know I do!” Reaper added, falling back a few paces, avoiding an advancing tendril. “I know what thousands upon thousands of years feel like!” “Bah!” Grey Thorn spat, “you know only the quotidian grind of time, as you tediously clean up after Entropy!” He turned to Luna with a sneer: “And you wasted your power toying with ponies’ dreams, when you could have been so much more!” “My evil was sufficient, thank you!” Luna replied hotly, “I wrought more than enough woe with it to last another thousand years!” “Oh, if only it could have been so!” Grey Thorn cried, rising ever higher with the Void, threatening to crest Reaper’s shield and Luna’s counterattacks, looming over the center of Appleloosa like a suspended tidal wave. His eyes shone like golden diamonds: “With another thousand years, I could have achieved everything! With your dark majesty by my side, and Entropy’s errand colt eliminated, we could have feasted for eternity! We could have transcended Equestria and reached into the Cosmos!” Luna recoiled in shock: “What do you mean “by your side?” I would never serve you!” Grey Thorn brushed aside Luna’s nearly black bolt of energy: “Serve me? No–rule with me! I would have fed you all the power you could ever have wanted, while you kept Equestria’s ponies in a narcotic daze, docile and pliant.” Now Reaper reacted with horror: “Disgusting! You would consume the essences of sentient creatures in order to continue your own endless existence! I can think of no finer candidate for Tartarus' Pit!” He slashed at a tendril that had worked its way around the shield, and fired a crimson ball of energy at the heart of the Void. Grey Thorn deflected Reaper’s attack, sending it careening into the town’s central fountain, blasting it to dust. He laughed bitterly: “Oh, don’t sound so shocked, errand colt! It wasn’t my idea!” “We know--Starswirl began the research…” Reaper replied. “Began?” Grey Thorn shouted, “He nearly completed it! That twenty years you graced him were all the time he needed!” “So you are a mere parasite after all!” cried Luna, swooping and pirouetting, attempting to get behind the Void. “Don’t act so high-and-mighty, Nightmare-who-was!” Grey Thorn shot back, repositioning the Void so that she couldn’t slip behind him. “He knew you were sliding into darkness,” he continued, delighting in exposing Luna’s hidden past, “he put it in his journals. He warned Celestia, but she was, as usual, indecisive. He could have stopped your transformation, though at great cost, but was unwilling to do the hard things required.” A voice rang out clear and terrible from high above as a gold-and-white streak descended like a comet, leaving a burning heat trail in its wake: “Then let us do the hard things now!”