Luna let out a contented sigh as the first hints of dawn twilight began to paint themselves across a serene and nearly cloudless sky.
Another perfect and gorgeous night of dreams and exploration had come and gone, and the princess reveled in the familiar feeling of dew on the grass, the soft melodic chirping of insects and night-dwelling birds as they returned to their places of diurnal rest, and all the other wonders of morning’s first light.
It was something Luna had come to admire almost as much as the raising of the moon each night. Despite it being the daily herald of her primary duties’ end and the waxing dominance of her sphere of influence over Equestria, not to return again for many hours, it held beauty and grace perfectly on par with that of its counterpart dusk.
From her vantage point in the Royal Gardens of Castle Canterlot, Luna scanned the canvas of blues and gradually advancing purples as she channeled her magic through her horn and into the great Moon above.
Luna felt the familiar warmth, a prickling sensation akin to static electricity, course through her from horn to hooves as she inhaled and exhaled through her nose with perfect measure. The intense output of energy from the ambient bright matter as well as from her own molecules that her body was channeling would have greatly exhausted a non-alicorn in the most optimal of scenarios. She felt the Moon in its entirety from hemisphere to hemisphere as its own native magics answered hers in kind while her mind continued the innately complex yet ostensibly simple process of directing and manipulating the magical particles into specific states for usage.
The nearly invisible cobalt magical link between them completed, and Luna began her careful, graceful tugging of the great mass across the heavens in its perfect orbit towards the western horizon. With the connections between spell, caster, and Moon solidified, Luna was freed to split up her concentration as the spell took over with the remaining technical side of moving an entire natural satellite.
Looking up towards a familiar balcony, Luna found much to her surprise that it was devoid of its usual occupier for this time of day.
Luna’s brows arched and her ears perked with inquiry even as her horn remained glowing before the princess called out, “Sister? You better not be pulling a prank upon me!”
In Celestia’s place was nothing but the resident portable telescope and a filigree-shaped wrought iron table clad in white paint that normally was topped by a freshly steaming mug of coffee, and perhaps a plate of cake if Tia was feeling particularly peckish.
“Hmm …” Luna sighed with bemusement.
With no sign of Celestia yet, Luna instead focused on the Moon again, watching its gradual movement as she continued her efforts. While the Moon of course remained on perfect orbital course as it always did when Luna moved it, she found herself growing increasingly worried.
None of vast galaxy of stars were moving with the Moon. Luna’s muzzle pulled into a quickly growing frown as the distant stars remained static from her perspective, their beauty remaining but their lingering presence surely a dreadful omen only she could fully realise.
“Something is not right … this is no normal dawn,” Luna’s voice trailed off as her eyes narrowed and she continued her scrutiny. “But what, then … surely it cannot be … “
All the stars had remained static and in place long enough now for the light of the encroaching sunrise to wash them out, rather than retreating in its wake as they properly did. A new edge to the alicorn princesses’ apprehension bloomed like toxic nightshade as her gut chilled and her coat broke into a sweat.
Without Celestia, the planet was not spinning.
Whatever abnormality was taking place that triggered Celestia’s abscence, the peace of her surroundings indicated to Luna that the castle, indeed the entirety of Canterlot and the world at large, may have been about to be caught entirely unawares in a potential grand crisis.
It was then that Luna decided to sneak a glance at the approaching Sun after another survey of her surroundings. The Moon was still doing fine, and Celestia had unfortunately still not materialised where she should always be each morning.
Luna’s eyes widened to their greatest possible extent.
In the east lay not a pleasing postcard vista of newborn clouds, fresh warm blues, and a radiant golden Sun. The approaching skies were the colour of blood, and the great sphere of plasma had erupted into a cosmic leviathan that loomed over all, filling the sky and seeming to devour the very heavens behind it.
“No … it cannot be … a Red Giant! But that would mean ...”
As much as Luna protested against and struggled to grapple with the stark and dreadful reality before her, the fact of what she was seeing could not be denied, she could feel it in the very air itself. Luna’s mind raced and her coat became soaked and matted from sweat, her mane and tail no longer blowing in their majestic flows.
Luna’s last beacon of solace, the night sky, was now only a pitiful sliver to the west behind her. It’s retreat would surely be the last she ever saw, yet still her mind struggled to steel itself for what was to come.
“CELESTIA?!” Luna called out one last time, shouting in the Royal Voice in the hopes of setting the crisis right, but to no avail.
No slender alabaster princess appeared at the balcony, nor anywhere else. Luna’s efforts were instead rewarded by the sounds of the palace finally responding to the crimson terror that was almost literally devouring the skies above and painting the atmosphere in crimson and scarlet.
Shouts and cries of many voices of confusion, horror, and shock formed a cacophony that assaulted Luna’s ears, and it at last brought her mind to a state of finality.
In the absence of Celestia, there was only one thing she could do.
Gazing at the Moon longingly for only a few heartbeats, a now wistful Luna turned to face the almost impossibly vast Red Giant staring her down, daring her to even dream of trying to match it might for might, to test its primacy over the final fate of all she knew.
Luna let her previous spell drop, and felt the magics of her Moon break from those of her own as the Moon continued moving westward for a time only by virtue of its velocity.
“Celestia, where are you?” Luna said aloud as her horn ignited once more, the cobalt aura quickly shifting to a pure white hot energy.
Tears began to well in her eyes as they themselves assumed a piercing white glow, rendering the beautiful cyan of her irises invisible as Luna’s new spell neared its full power. She felt the connection forge with the life-giving star that was now, in that moment, turning against them all as well as itself, its lifespan reaching a final critical milestone.
Sol’s magic and indeed its very fiery aura felt alien to Luna compared to the more cool, passive soul of the Moon. It was unique and powerful especially in its final stage of existence, and above all else, incredibly ancient in both age and magical cadence.
The dying star almost seemed to be acting with anger in the vast and chaotic harmonics of its magical bright activity that helped to fuel its already naturally exponential growth. It’s as if it were a sapient being that had lost all sense of identity or reason, and turned hostile; a mad god taking its creations with it in its final grand conflagration.
Despite her hope, Luna was under no delusions of grandeur as she amplified her magical output, groaning as her body strained with effort and her muscles burned in want of rest. She was determined to meet such an explosive fate at least trying her best to stave it off, a diverse and lush but ultimately miniscule world’s final show of defiance against cosmic forces that took and gave life seemingly at a whim on the great scale of existence.
Surely there had to be some chance she stood against the great behemoth, had her sister not managed both Sun and Moon in the ten centuries of Luna’s absence? But what even was her power compared to that of Celestia, Equestria’s Princess of the Sun for so many generations of ponies?
The Red Giant, already the largest physical thing Luna had ever seen, now blotted out almost everything in the sky above as its growth continued at the same rapid pace.
Air began to radiate and ripple from heat radiation and heightening temperatures. Luna could feel the very essence of the world both beneath and around her changing, reacting, being gradually stripped away of its atmosphere as things began to boil closest to the star’s advance.
“Stand firm, stand firm!” Luna told herself in a fierce tone, demanding her very essence to give all its will in this final desperate spell. She craned her neck and groaned once more as her legs threatened to gave out, but still her eyes and horn continued to glow with a heavenly fire. “Errant star, return to your peace and spare this world!”
It was at that moment that Luna’s spell, aimed at holding back or even halt the encroaching Red Giant long enough to find a means to completely reverse its degradation, became fully visible as a golden white pillar of light connected the alicorn to the dying star above. Perhaps enough time could be bought to assemble and light the Elements of Harmony?
But who could do such a thing for her? She could not leave her position without abating any flow of magic that could buy herself or the world such time, and despite the sounds of panic from the rest of the palace, Luna had not seen anyone since she had awoken.
Luna could have ran, sure, but to where? There was no physical place that could defend against such a cosmic onslaught, but perhaps there were places where it could be ridden out in less pain until the final detonation occurred?
Swearing to herself and shaking her head, Luna carried on.
The surface of the Sun seemed to react ever so slightly to the magical contact despite Luna’s increasingly labored breaths that had now turned to pants as she gave it everything she had. The writhing masses of solar red closest to where the beam connected seemed to halt in their bulging caused by the many storms that defined the star’s outermost layer, returning instead to a more normal intensity of regular eruptions into the dwindling space between star and planet.
It was a shock to Luna that none of the solar eruptions had yet physically reached the planet as flares, blasting and vaporizing everything away in an instant.
Luna’s beam seemed to put the growth into a tenous stasis … but the visible region of effect in comparison to Sun’s current mass was akin to a boulder against a mountain.
For every portion of the star that Luna could bring to order, the Red Giant could match her harmony with chaos of far greater measure. Now even the air seemed to be turning against her, the rippling now seeming as if she were submerged in a surreal sea as steam erupted from the destabilising ground and many materials began to melt … including organics.
A voice in her mind began whispering that seeking physical refuge may in fact be an increasingly attractive option while it was still possible.
“No … no!” Luna bellowed in rage as she found herself amplifying the spell with the remainder of her power.
By now, Luna’s body had begun to feel the physical effects of the ongoing event, in addition to her already unprecedented straining from magical labor. Her entire body down to her nervous system and bones felt like they were being prickled and punctured by millions of tiny needles as the heat became increasingly overwhelming.
Sensing a grim inevitability mere seconds away, Luna’s pain-besieged mind in its chaotic state of primal burning rage versus mighty and compelling fear, made a final decision. She held her ground and maintained her efforts of producing the amplification for her spell, a final effort to save her world.
For a fleeting second, Luna paused and clenched her eyes shut, hearing a great rumbling and convinced that the final moment had come. But nothing happened.
With her eyes opened, Luna witnessed a Red Giant whose growth had stopped. It’s mass had stopped at a critical size just close enough to not swallow the world whole, but still close enough to do lasting damage if Luna’s body alone was any indication.
Luna finally collapsed from her efforts as she felt there was no more that she could do. She crawled to the threshold of the nearest palace wing entrance as the air changed dramatically and the omnipresent prickling seemed to completely vanish from her being as one of a tiny group of miracles staring down an ambivalent doom.
The cooler air of the interior greeted her as Luna’s vision swam before her and the sounds of panicked voices continued to fill the distance. While her eyes were growing weary, her hearing remained ever sharp as well as her mind.
Had she succeeded within her power, could perhaps even a sliver of the planet have escaped the Red Giant’s power unscathed? Luna’s musing was not left unanswered for long.
A tremendous popping noise filled Luna’s ears and mind with a searing pain, striking her deaf as an overwhelming light bathed the gardens outside. The final thing Luna saw was the palace buckling and vaporising as a blinding, towering wall of red-orange and white tore through everything in existence.
~~~~~
Luna awoke to a cold sweat and a throbbing head from her horn to the base of her skull.
Drawn out groans narrated a bedraggled alicorn as she toppled out of her covers and made for the outer room of her royal chambers, where a variety of soothing, magically cooled and heated teas awaited.
Sitting down to fix herself a cup, it dawned on Luna that no mere beverage could begin to address what she had just awoken from. Dreams of her own seldom ever came for one such as herself who had no true need of sleep as mortals knew it, and nightmares even more seldomly.
Surely sister could help Luna with pondering this nightmare? Luna did not hesitate any longer than it took her to finish her tea in one final sip. She set the cup down, and with a dulled pain in her head, the Lunar Princess made her way out of the room with purposeful strides.
Celestia heard the sounds of Luna’s hooves on her floor before the door closed, as she spent the early morning just before sunrise reading over some of her most favourite literature as well as the now Princess Twilight Sparkle’s friendship reports spanning back the various years.
“Luna,” Celestia greeted warmly, putting down her tomes to smile up at her sister, “Please, have seat.”
Luna sat down on her haunches beside her sister with a small smile, her ears plastered to her head. “Thank you, Tia. I’ve come because I have experienced another … well ... “
“These happen, yes, although I do notice with much optimism they have been happening with much less frequency as the months go on,” Celestia interjected with a knowing nod, closing her eyes as she offered Luna a pillow to sit upon, which she promptly accepted. “What did you see, Luna?”
“The Sun … it went supernova, sister. You were nowhere to be found and, I, I struggled against the star in its final moments of blossoming into a Red Giant.”
As Luna continued to impart every detail she could recall to Celestia, she noticed that her elder sibling was beginning to have a twinkle in her eye despite her reactions to the visceral detail.
Celestia saw the curiosity in Luna’s own eyes and gave her explanation upon Luna’s completion of her tale.
“I have my speculation, as always when you come to me with tales of each of your nightmares, and this one is simpler than most others I have offered,” Celestia began. “It was a figment of your willpower, part of what makes all Equestrian magic possible, communicating to you through your subconscious.”
Luna’s ears perked up in question and interest. “My willpower, you say?”
There was a nod from Celestia before she continued. “You held your ground in a desperate situation demanding your attention even when you were unsure that you could make any kind of true difference, and not leaving or fleeing from your efforts until you had no choice but to conclude that there was nothing more you could do.”
“Willpower … of course!” Luna’s eyes began to twinkle as Celestia’s did. “How unfortunate it was a nightmare from which I was reminded of this, but such things are necessary in our times. Willpower, one of the many catalysts for not only greatness, but also as importantly: friendship, and by that measure wielding the Elements of Harmony for good! Of course!”
“Indeed,” Celestia said, smiling greatly, “it is something you are exemplary in, I know that personally for recollection of that fact is part of what helped me through the past ten centuries. It helped shape me as a ruler, a pony, a friend, and as a sister. But your presence here does more for that cause than any mere memory ever could, Luna.”
There was a delay as Luna felt her eyes mist over with happines. She wiped her eyelids clear before saying, “Celestia, you, Equestria, and our friends honour me so much in spite of my past. Sometimes I struggle to find the sufficient means by which to return the honour and the kindness with my own.”
Celestia gave Luna a reassuring chuckle as she lead them both out onto her balcony. “You already do in your own ways every day, Luna. Come on, let’s start the new day.”