//------------------------------// // Chapter 3 // Story: After the Nightmare // by CORACK //------------------------------// Burning, it was all Luna knew. Intense and painful burning. It wasn't like anything she'd ever felt before. Physical pain she pain she could deal with. Daylight would reach into the hundreds of degrees on her moon, but this was nothing like that. It wasn't her wings that burnt, or her hooves, or even her body. This was a burning on the inside of her, and it shook her to the core. Completely unbearable yet utterly inescapable. She cried out, legs and wings thrashing wildly, desperate for some relief, but there was none. After what seemed like an eternity, the pain slowly began to fade from unmanageable to an ache that spread throughout her entire body. She opened her eyes, it was dark. This should have meant little to the Princess of the Night, for even complete darkness hid nothing from her, but now she could not see. She tried to cast a simple light spell, her horn flickered briefly, bringing with it a new kind of pain. This pain she was familiar with. It was the pain of complete magical exhaustion, she wouldn't be casting any spells for some time. She tried to remember what happened, where she was and how she got there. Memories came flooding into her mind. The loneliness, her betrayal and uprising against Celestia, her imprisonment and escape and... her destruction? It was as if a fog had lifted in her mind, and she suddenly could see clearly the consequences of her actions. A primal scream echoed in the dark, as guilt overcame her. Her face dripping with tears, she jumped up and ran blindly into the darkness. She stumbled on the rocky floor and crashed back down to the ground. Pain shot up from her leg. Something was wet. She lowered her head and sniffed. It smelled like blood. Her head flung back, recoiling in fear. She was bleeding. That wasn't possible. She had never bled before. What did Celestia do to her? Eventually her cries died down to sniffles, as she sat there contemplating the absurdity of it all. Mortals bled, not her. But there she sat, blood still dripping out an impossible wound, unsure of what to do next. The darkness slowly retreated as her eyes acclimated to the tiny amount of light available to them. She could just make out the shape of the walls, combined with the rocky feel of the floor, she assumed she was in some kind of cave. She turned her head back and forth, looking in all directions, a faint glow in the distance gave away what must be the exit. Picking herself up, she hobbled towards the light, pain shooting up her leg every time she took a step. Stumbling up the steep path, she climbed up out of the cavern. A bitterly cold wind stung her face, she turned around and looked back. With a bit more light, she was now able to see that the cavern entrance was tiny. It was situated between two large rocky outcroppings jutting from the hillside. With the small amount of light, she expected that the sky would be covered with clouds. Looking upwards she was surprised to find it clear. Something was wrong. She looked again, and noticed that the moon was not where it should be. She spun around, trying to find it, but it simply wasn't there. Even the stars were wrong, before her insanity, she had worked hard at creating the most beautiful night sky imaginable. She should have been able to see billions of points of light, but instead there was merely a hoofful. Celestia had been very careful to not touch the night sky at all during Luna's absence. The position of the stars had remained static for 1000 years, it was unlikely that she would suddenly go out and change everything now. With no moon and different stars, Luna could think of only one thing. Wherever she was now, it was not home. ##### Princess Celestia had to end her story there. It had taken the ponies nearly 16 hours to reach the castle ruins. Most of them had been awake for almost two days straight. She teleported the group back to Ponyville, it was then that Twilight noticed how exhausted Celestia looked. Not knowing what else to do, she invited Celestia to stay at the library instead of returning to Canterlot. Celestia agreed, court could wait, she was in no mood to deal with it. Twilight offered to make Celestia some tea, but the alicorn refused. "Go Twilight, get some rest. I will be here when you wake up," she said. Reluctantly Twilight headed off to bed. She woke the next morning feeling refreshed. True to her word, Celestia was downstairs in the library. She still looked incredibly tired. "Did you sleep at all Princess?" Twilight asked. "No, Twilight, I had much to think about." "Is there anything I can get you?" "I think right now, the most important thing would be to gather your friends. I still have not finished my story." Twilight nodded, she got ready and headed out into Ponyville. She found Pinkie Pie who helped her get a hold of the rest of the girls. When they got back, Celestia was sitting in the exact same spot. "Are you ready to continue?" Celestia asked. The rest of the ponies nodded in agreement. Celestia looked out of the group and sighed. "To save Luna, I had to destroy Nightmare Moon. But the issue was complicated. As I said, Nightmare Moon was Luna, twisted and insane, but still Luna." "In truth, I did not discover how to destroy Nightmare Moon. Instead, I found that using a combination of my own powers and the Elements of Harmony, I could burn away the madness that afflicted Luna." "What exactly does that mean?" Twilight asked. "The insanity that created the Nightmare would be purged, that personality, in essence would cease to exist. Her true nature would reassert itself. This would not fix the original problem, Luna's feelings of abandonment, but it would allow her to see reason once more. With the madness purged, I would be able to get her to stand down," Celestia said. "I... I tried to reason with her once already. When Nightmare Moon first showed herself, I tried to reach out to my sister, apologize for how I neglected her in her loneliness and I promised to make amends. I was such a foal for ignoring her issues for so long, I hoped that she would listen to me, but she was too far gone. Words meant nothing to Nightmare Moon," Celestia said with a sniffle. "To be able to succeed would require nearly all of my power. The spell I cast has left me weak. It is taking all I have just to maintain the orbits of the sun and the moon. It will take years to regain my strength, but it would have been a small price to pay, if it had worked." The group of ponies shifted nervously at this statement. Not just Equestria, but the entire planet depended on Celestia. Without her managing the day and the night, life would quickly end. "What went wrong your highness?" Fluttershy asked. "I do not know, but I will find out," Celestia said. "Since I had to devote so much of my power to my portion of the spell, I would be unable to wield the Elements. I had no solution for this, until I met a small filly, 15 years ago," she said, looking at Twilight. Twilight's cocked her head in confusion. "Me?" she asked. "Yes Twilight, the day you received your cutie mark, when you were trying for the entrance exam for my school. That is when I realized that you were the solution. As I embody the day and Luna the night, you embodied the Element of Magic." "I later learned of another event that happened that day, in fact it is what triggered your magical outburst, but I do not think you and your friends have yet found out about the connection." Celestia turned to Rainbow Dash. "It was you, Rainbow Dash. The day you shattered the sound barrier and created the first sonic rainboom. It set off a chain of events that lead to every pony in this room receiving their cutie marks, almost simultaneously." Rainbow Dash sputtered in confusion. "Buh?" was all she managed get out. "You already know about yourself and Fluttershy, but Applejack, Rarity, Twilight Sparkle and Pinkie Pie all received their cutie marks as a result of witnessing the effects of the sonic rainboom. I suggest you share your cutie mark stories with each other at another time. It will make for an interesting tale." The ponies in the room stared at Celestia, they weren't sure what to say next. Rainbow had a strange look on her face that could only be described as confusion mixed with pride. She knew the sonic rainboom had been awesome, but the ruler of all Equestria had just told her it was even more amazing than she realized. "Once I had found out about Twilight, it was easy to detect the rest of the Elements. I realized that with your help, I would be able to free my sister." "Why... Why didn't you ever tell me?" Twilight asked, she wasn't sure if she should be angry or happy at this news. "Bearing the Elements against Nightmare Moon would be extremely dangerous. When you were young, I still was not sure if you would be strong enough, and I would not put you in harm's way if you were not. When you grew older, I debated telling you, but there was still great danger in you knowing. If any of you were to let slip your knowledge she would have killed you immediately. "I wouldn't have told her anything!" Rainbow puffed up with pride. "You can count on me Princess." Celestia smiled at the blue pegasus. "I do not doubt your loyalty, but Nightmare Moon, like Luna can enter the dreams of anypony. There she can lean things from your subconscious whether you want to share that knowledge or not. Only I have enough power to block her from my dreams. In the end, I decided it was better for you to not know, because of this she treated you as a minor annoyance rather than a real threat." "What about our trip through the Everfree Forest to find the Elements? That was pretty darn dangerous," Applejack said. "Indeed it was, and more so than you know. Nightmare Moon had created a shade to stop you, I could not eliminate the traps it had set entirely, not without alerting Nightmare Moon to my presence, but I was able to... twist the traps, greatly reducing the danger." "You were helping us?" Fluttershy asked. "Yes, I did as much as I could without making myself known," Celestia said. "To get back to my original point, with the Elements of Harmony being wielded by you six ponies, I would be able to cast my spell and free Luna from the Nightmare's hold. Except, something must have gone wrong. Luna should have been present after the spell faded away. It would have stripped her of nearly all her powers, she would have been weak, practically mortal, but she still should have been there." Celestia's head drooped down to the floor. "I spent the rest of the night going over my spell. I am sure it should not have been able to destroy her. It is not possible, no matter how much energy I dumped into the spell, our immortality is infallible. But if she wasn't destroyed, where did she go?" "May I go over the spell with you?" Twilight asked. Celestia smiled, her faithful student had always been eager to learn new things, and to lend a helping hoof. "It will be the most complicated spell you will ever see, but yes Twilight, you may. Perhaps you will see something I did not, a second pair of eyes is always helpful and who better than the Element of Magic to assist me." ##### The wind outside the cavern, combined with the low temperatures was chilling Luna to the bone. She crawled back into the hole, getting as far away from the entrance as she could. It wasn't much warmer down there, but at least there was no wind. She cried herself to sleep. She woke up the next morning, tears frozen to her face. She looked at her hoof, it was covered in dried blood, but otherwise felt better. There was a good amount of light entering the cavern so she decided to make her way back out and have a look around. She climbed up out of the hole and turned her head. There were gray mountains off in the distance, she was standing at the bottom of a rocky hill. What she had thought was two large boulders was actually one boulder leaning up against the hill. The remains of trees, long since dead were scattered around. Most of the land was covered in a thick blanket of snow, but wind had swept the area around her cave clear. She tried to pick up some of the snow with her magic. Her horn glowed faintly, the pain was far less than it had been the night before, but she still couldn't manage to do anything useful. She looked up towards the eastern sky and confirmed what she had feared. The young yellow star that orbited her world was nowhere to be found. In its place a dim red orb rose from under the horizon. This was not her home, this was somewhere else. She decided to climb the hill, to see if she could get a better view of the area. It was slow going, the snow was very thick in most areas. Where it was not tended to be icy. The first time she slipped her wings flared out as she tried to keep her balance. A horrible pain shot through her left wing and she fell over. Picking herself up off the ground, she looked at her wing. The joint burned with pain and there was a deep gash, it may be dislocated, but she wasn't able to tell. She had been in so much pain before that she hadn't noticed. Flying was off the table until her magic was strong enough to heal injury. "First the bleeding and now this?" Her injuries worried her, it was one thing to be able to feel pain, but lasting physical injuries should have been impossible. She had no idea how to deal with them, she hoped as her magic recovered she could do something about them. She never had to use a healing spell on herself. Reaching the top of the hill she looked around, and saw more of the same. The mountain she had been able to see from the bottom of the hill was part of a range that started in the west and circled all the way around to the eastern side of the hill. The northern most mountain was dotted with green and a forest lay at its feet. The rest of the range was covered in snow, if there was life underneath it wasn't visible. Where there was a forest, there may be water, and food. Under normal circumstances she didn't need sustenance to survive, but in her current state she had no idea if that was still true. If anything food would quell the pain in her stomach. She began the long walk towards the northern mountain. She spent most of the journey trying to figure out how she got here. Back in the castle, she had been trying to defend against those six ponies wielding the Elements of Harmony. It was a brutal assault, but her defenses were holding. The she felt Celestia's presence grow, Celestia must had added her own power to the attack. Luna's defenses had dropped almost instantly. She had expected to be instantly transported back to the moon, in a prison even stronger than the last, but instead, something else had happened. A pain worse than she had ever felt, overcame her, but with that pain, the rage and the madness started to burn away. She didn't even notice it until after she woke up again, but when she did, the evil of her actions was unmistakably apparent. She could remember the last conversation she had with Celestia a thousand years ago. Celestia had begged Luna to stop, she would do anything to have her sister back, but Nightmare Moon had no interest in petty words. Now, with the insanity gone, it became clear that Celestia was not the enemy, she had been trying to help. Luna wanted nothing to do with Nightmare Moon anymore. She needed to find her way home, find Celestia and beg for forgiveness. But how had she gotten here, wherever here was? In the last moments of consciousness, she threw all of her power into one goal. Trying to escape what she thought, as impossible as it sounded, was her death. It was then that she remember trying to cast the teleport spell to escape. Still, that didn't explain where she was now. Teleports were generally limited in distance, but given the amount of power Luna had dumped in to the spell, it was possible she could have ended up on another planet. Except, with a teleport spell you need to have some idea of where you were going. An image, a memory, even a description would work, and Luna knew she had never been here before. A blind teleport was far more likely to dump her into space than on a habitable planet. Something else was wrong as well, Celestia and Luna were twin immortals, and she and her sister shared a magical bond. Anywhere in the universe, Luna should be able to feel Celestia's presence, but here she could feel nothing. At first she had dismissed it since her powers were so thoroughly drained, but as they slowly returned, she continued to feel an emptiness that she had never felt before. She did not know what to think of that. It had been early in the day when Luna set out on her journey. Now the sun was starting to set. The weather had not gotten any warmer, but she had finally reached the edge of the forest a couple of hours earlier. She made her way in, looking for anything at all that she could eat. She didn't expect to find running water in this frozen wasteland, but as her magic grew in strength she could always melt some snow. She headed deeper into the forest. Many of the trees were dead or dying, but there were still a number of healthy looking ones. The snow was a little less deep, as the tress provided some cover from the elements. Small tracks dotted the surface of the snow, more signs of life, though Luna still had not see anything. As the sun continued to drop down below the horizon, Luna realized her chances of finding food were growing smaller and smaller. It was night now, again the sky was clear, but again there was no moon. The last rays of sunshine had just dropped behind the mountains to the west. Her night vision was not fully restored, but she could see more clearly than she had been able to the last night. She was deep into the forest however, that all she could see was trees, trees and more trees. Only her innate sense of direction let her know she wasn't traveling in circles. To her left she heard a strange noise. It was a cracking squelching sound, she turned towards it to investigate. She crested a small hill, at the bottom was the source of the sound. Covered in white fur that blended in very well with the snow covered forest floor was some kind of creature she had never seen before. It looked almost like a timber-wolf made of bone had been crossed with a giant dog. It was almost as big as she was. Large bony spikes protruded from its fur. It opened its mouth and Luna saw jagged teeth and a large pair of fangs. She glanced around and quickly realized that there was a whole pack of these creatures. They were all sitting around the bloody carcass of something, it was too mangled to get a good image. The cracking sound rang out again as she watched one of the creatures rip into a limb and crunch through a bone with a powerful bite. Luna backed off as quietly as she could, she didn't want to find out what would happen if these creatures attacked her in her weakened state. If she could bleed... could she die? She had no idea. She had almost made it to the bottom of the hill when her back hoof slipped on a piece of ice, she fell forward and landed with a thud, slamming into a tree. She heard a noise, it sounded like a wheezing growl, she turned and saw one of the creatures standing at the top of the hill looking down at her. She quickly picked herself up and began to gallop in the opposite direction as fast as she could. Tree branches whipped past her, stinging her face, the whole pack was following her now. She had no idea where to go, so she kept running east. "I should have stayed in that damn cave," she thought as she dodged between trees, one of the creatures snapping at her rear hooves. One of the creatures managed to catch up with Luna and snapped at her. It caught a piece of her front leg and tore away a small chunk of flesh. Luna went tumbling down, as she did she let out a scream so loud that the pack of creatures stopped pursuit for a moment. Then they smelled the blood and resumed their advance. Four of them circled wide and cut off Luna's escape while another three more advanced towards the helpless pony. Luna struggled to get up, her front leg burned with agony. All around she could hear snarling and growling. Fight or flight instincts started to take over, but Luna was not one for flight. Besides with her wing injured and her magic near useless, escape was unlikely, all that was left was to fight.