//------------------------------//
// Chapter 15 
// Story: The Castle Canterlot 
// by Honey Mead 
//------------------------------//


The Castle Canterlot:
Chapter 15



“My sister is the most fiendish Stones player you will ever encounter. In a thousand years I will not be her equal.”


 —H.D.H. Luna Invictus to King Heyreddin of Parmeria


By the ticking of the clocks, morning had come once again, and still Sol failed to appear. In the high city of Canterlot, at the tolling of the fifth bell, when the first blush of dawn should have painted the eastern sky, an army of messengers poured from the castle gates. Within the hour, every citizen of note had received their invitation… their summons. By the seventh bell, when Sol’s light should have long ago coated the world in a warm, honeyed glow, the last of the stragglers entered the throne room, finding what space they could at the rear.

At first blush, the scene might have been seen as a little odd. All present were dressed in what could only be called ceremonial finery. There was no lack for silver and gold or diamonds and pearls, yet the common ostentatious flair was nowhere to be found. Those of military, current or retired, wore their formal uniforms, rank and honors on display. The rest wore suit or dress, clean and sharp and simple. Few so much as whispered to their neighbors, most shifted with a discomfort born not from their garb, tails tucked and still or swaying on their own. The throne room itself lacked any special decor, nothing of note save the long carpet splitting the room in two, leading up the dias to the base of the Solar Throne. 

The dais was occupied by a single plain unicorn wearing a simple jacket and glasses that had grown thicker with every passing winter. Upon Chronicle’s back, balanced there for he did not trust his magic to hold steady, was a the Equestrian Crown, a gaudy circlet of golden spires and precious gems, resting on a plush pillow of velvet—which Celestia had gone to great length to avoid when at all possible.

After the final guest arrived, the great doors were closed, leaving some two hundred ponies to wait under the oppressive shadow of a sunless sky. 

When the doors opened a sparse minute later to the fanfare of trumpets, everypony turned, a few jumped, and all remained reserved. No one cheered as a phalanx of Royal Guards marched in, half on either side breaking off to line the walls while the rest made progress down the long carpet. Not a single hoof struck the floor in half hearted applause as Shining Armor and Star Shimmer followed, the former bearing the weight of Penumbra as the latter did Cadence’s helm. And when the alicorn herself took her first step into view, there was not a single sound beyond the steady march of hooves and the soft scrape of platemail in motion.

All was mute and subdued, lacking only for the choked back whimpers of a funeral procession.

If any found comfort or peace in the pageantry, it was Chronicle, and that only out of desperation. Tradition and Ceremony. The bedrock of all civilization, the foundation on which to build and the blueprints to guide their hooves. When all else was chaos and uncertainty, he knew they would always grant him solid ground on which to stand.

When the guards reached the dias, they stopped and parted, two rows of golden plate and silver spear on either side of the carpet. Shining and Star proceeded up the steps, taking their places on either side of the throne and turning to watch over the crowd. As she passed, Star brushed lightly against her lover, offering the nervous stallion what comfort she could, slowing the quiver of his hindleg, but only just.

At the bottom of the steps, Cadence stopped, her eyes glancing up to Chronicle’s, waiting. With far more care than it should have required, his horn lit and took hold of the cushion, lifting it and the crown for all to see. His eyes closed. He swallowed. Time for a single breath and a hurried, desperate prayer passed, and he began to speak.

The words were not his own, archaic beyond his ken, and tasted sour on his tongue. There were plays he’d seen, wherein the actors made show of such language not spoken for centuries gone by. This was no such display. At best, he reckoned the bases of words he knew, but even those were made meaningless before the oddity of structure and form. Senseless gibberish, only through force of momentum and memorization was he able to carry on until the end.

As he droned, Cadence waited for her cues, listening only for those keywords that meant she could take one more step closer to her Aunt’s throne. She might have understood the recited words, had she the time and desire to parcel through them. At the time of her own birth, such language was already fading from common usage, reserved only for official rites and ceremonies such as these. They held as little meaning to her as the whole charade that demanded their use. Only for Chronicle and Shining’s insistence had she agreed to this farce. A tedious waste she regretted more and more with each passing second.

Finally, she reached the plateau to stand before the Solar Throne, Chronicle’s voice droning through overwrought sentence after overwrought sentence until she could turn around and look down upon her subjects and… frown at the marble-white pegasus stepping from the herd.

Chronicle froze, his field shattering, cushion and crown tumbling to the ground, the latter glittering and flashing in the silver moonlight. It struck with a clang, bouncing down every step before rolling to a stop at the insubordinate pegasus’ hooves. 

The Royal Guards reacted first, closing rank and leveling spears. Those ponies nearest the Commandant General retreated into their fellows, ingracious in their attempts to distance themselves from anypony who drew so baleful a gaze from the Princess, as confused and curious whispers began to circulate.

Snow Blind cast her eyes and ears about, savouring the moment of contact. Soon enough, chaos would ensue, and all her plans would be ruined.  Such was the way of war, after all. But in these first few seconds, she was in complete control, everything balanced so perfectly, waiting only the touch of her hoof.

“My apologies, your… Highness,” she said, grinning almost madly at the vigor coursing through her veins, “but I cannot stand idly by and watch this face play to the end.” 

As she spoke, her bubble expanded, pushing the weak willed foals further from her presence. Upon the dais, Cadence had yet to move, though Shining Armour had made swift movement forward, his long sword half-drawn. The ever timid senechal fared poorly, his eyes rolling back as he collapsed in a heap, only saved from a nasty concussion by the Arch-Mage’s quick intervention, catching him and setting him gently upon the velvet pillow.

She did not need to look away from the stunned alicorn to notice the surreptitious movement among the cowering masses, her co-conspirators pushing against the tide and working their way toward her. A few more seconds and the real work would begin.

“Or, rather, I should say ‘we’.”

So focused on her eminent victory, Snow Blind failed to note the change in the air. The differences between verging panic and burgeoning terror were lost on her enraptured perceptions. She didn’t even notice when her fellow revolutionaries halted their progress and faded back into the anonymity of the herd, their courage sapped in an instant. Her gambit was working better than she’d dared hope, so well that even Cadence’s had dilated with surprise and more than a hint of fear.

Selene’s light had seemed to focus on her, her white coat shining in stark relief against the darkening and bulging shadow she cast just out of view. It had risen, her shadow, like hot pitch seeping through the flagstones, pooling into a great mass of formless black. Writhing and churning, it had quickly taken shape, a horned head rising up as a pair of jet-black wings fluffed and stretched from its side. At last, it stood, towering over the lone pegasus, still unawares.

A single glint of light dashed across the dais and the ponies gathered atop it.

The air screamed in a hushed whisper, and the hollow thump that followed would presage the cold-sweated end to nightmares for years to come.

Limp and lifeless, her body collapsed into the spreading pool of crimson. It was not alone, a number of similar thuds sounding amid the trembling herd as the faintest of its members sought solace in the darkness behind their eyelids.

Cadence quivered in rage and fear, paling beneath her coat with lips parted in a too late warning. Shining Armour’s held his sword between them, a carmine glow seething about his horn as Star Shimmer rose from the unconscious unicorn at her hooves, her countenance unaffected by all that had happened. Below them, the Royal Guard valiantly held their ground, no matter their rattling armor and quivering spears. It was all they could do not to break and run.

Before them all stood a creature torn from the annals of legend, a myth, a demon whose name was only ever whispered in erie tones around campfires. Selene’s silver glow illuminated this monster of shadow and steel, daring any to chance averting their gaze and losing sight of her for even a moment.

All was quiet, frozen in dread anticipation of a future painted in blood and shadow, and filled with silent, hopeless prayers for salvation as her attention and sneer remained on the corpse at her hooves.

“Such is the fate of all traitors,” she said in a whisper heard by all. 

Raising Tamashi, she gave the blade a violent flick, casting off a spray of blood into the huddled masses.

With that, the paralyzing grip of terror ended in a torrent of screams. Individuals turned en masse, pushing and shoving in a panicked rush to be the first to reach the great doors and the false safety beyond. They fought each other, fear and panic quickly turning into pain and violence as the press of bodies began to crush those closest to escape through doors thought would not open.

“Silence!”

That single word struck like the first cannon’s roar, quelling the cacophony of battle in an instant as all eyes and ears turned toward the source. 

“Ah,” the demon smiled, “much better. Now, Kneel.”  

Two hundred ponies, once gathered to witness the coronation of the first new Princess in Equestria’s history, fell to their knees, bowing in supplication to this creature of nightmares. 

She turned to face Cadence, still standing before the Solar Throne, and put on a slightly disappointed frown. “That, my daughter, is the proper way to command the reverence of your subjects, not with this…” she gesticulated toward the dais and discarded crown, “meaningless pageantry. You need not their recognition nor their consent. You are an Alicorn, a goddess, not some puffed up mortal propped up on the backs of the multitudes. Allowing this farce to continue would only encourage more like this one to challenge your rule… if it was yet your time. Now, be a good girl and step aside.”

As the Nightmare spoke, Cadence regained her composure, standing taller and drawing her lips into a tight, thin line. She met the demon’s draconian eyes, her mother’s eyes, refusing to be cowed even as her own eye began to throb with a phantom pain from the long since healed bruise of the night before. Fear and adrenaline pulsed through her veins, driving her to take action, any action. Her foe stood before her, the cause of all greatest sorrows, both past and present. She could end it here and now, victory or defeat would matter little for herself, one would presage the dawn while the other would grant her the peace of the grave. All she had to do was act.

“N-no.” The stutter, no matter how slight, nearly broke her resolve.

Nightmare Moon’s frown wavered under a tremor of amusement, like a mother catching her foal playing with her makeup. “Your time has will come, I promise. But you must be patient. Celestia has made quite a mess of things, and it is my responsibility to clean up after her, not yours. There is no reason to drag this out over long. Step aside and I will see that all is made ready for you.”


“This is not your throne,” Cadence said, or tried to, the words coming out as little more than a strangled wheeze. Swallowing, she drew all her will into ensuring her words came out with a confidence she did not share. “This is not your throne.” Retrieving the fallen crown, she placed it behind her horn. “And this is not your crown.”

Her amusement at an end, the Nightmare’s lip twitched with suppressed scowl. “Useless trinkets. I need no crown or throne. Equestria is mine by right of birth and conquest. You will accept your proper place at my hoof or I will bind you there with shackles and chains.”

“No.”

“Why do you persist in this pointless posturing? I am offering you the chance to make all of this as painless as possible, and yet you stand before me as though the outcome was not already decided. Do you think it matters to me the mechanism of your compliance? I assure you it does not. I will have it one way or the other. The only choice before you is how much pain you will endure to get there, and how many more will lay down their lives for your stubborn pride.” 

Cadence bit the inside of her cheek until the sharp tang of blood curdled her tongue. She could see the ponies framing her mother, all still bowed and cowering. She could see the Royal Guards, all but shaking in their boots, terrified but unwilling to abandon their post. And she could see her Shining Armour from the corner of her eye, defiant in the face of a demon, a fly before a dragon. The reality that she’d been trying desperately to suppress finally broke free. 

The Nightmare was right. There was no hope for them. None save Celestia could stand against her, even Cadence herself would prove only a minor hinderance, a truth too fresh in her mind to deny. From the moment of Celestia’s capture, they’d lost. It was already over and all that had happened had been nothing but theater, a stage play organized for her benefit…

Her brow creased, eyes falling and darting from side to side, seeing nothing but feeling the wrongness of it all. It didn’t make sense. All of this should have happened already. The Nightmare had captured Celestia a full day past. If she’d already been in control, it made no sense that she would wait until now to make her claim. Something was missing, something outside Cadence’s purview. 

Celestia had known this would happen. The how didn’t matter, only that she’d known and planned for it. She wasn’t infallible. She made mistakes as all ponies do… but only ever out of ignorance. When the game was known, however… 

Cadence stood up straighter, meeting her mother’s gaze once more. She schooled her face into an expressionless mask, trying her best to imitate Celestia’s disapproving posture and frown. 

“Hypocrite.” The Nightmare’s face scowled, bearing her fangs at Cadence’s pronouncement. “You stand as judge, jury, and executioner over a traitor, proclaiming death as their due while you yourself still live.”

“So, this is your choice?” The snarl faded Nightmare Moon’s muzzle, melting into a narrow eyed frown. “How… disappointing.”

Removing the crown, Cadence paused to see herself reflected in one of the gems. She knew what she was doing, recognized it for the folly that it was. The Nightmare was beyond her abilities. If she lived it would be by what little maternal love her mother still held for her, and when she fell, there would be none to stand against the Nightmare. It was all she could do, however. Celestia was alive, and she had plans, and if they were to have any hope of victory, Cadence needed to play her part and hope it was the part Celestia intended for her.

With the crown set upon the throne, she looked to the Arch-Mage at her side. “My helm.” Star Shimmer did not seem to notice her, staring as she was at Nightmare Moon. “Arch-Mage, my helm, now.”

Star Shimmer’s continued disobedience drew Cadence’s ire and Nightmare Moon’s amusement both. The former grew increasingly frustrated while the latter regarded the upstart unicorn with interest. She did not look particularly impressive at first glance, tougher than the average unicorn mare, certainly, but nothing spectacular. At closer inspection, however, the plethora of whirls and crests of her coat hairs, the ready signs of scarring, were easy to see. The sword and breaker belted to her either flank were not mere decorations, rather the bloody and worn tools of her trade.

In the blink of an eye, the Nightmare understood what this mare, this ‘Arch-Mage’ intended, and she could naught but smile.

“I accept.”

“What?” Cadence’s head snapped to the Nightmare before following her gaze back to witness Star’s acknowledging nod, then back again. “No!” she screamed, violently tearing the helm away her and slamming it into place on her own head before nearly taking Shining’s head off as she drew Penumbra from his back. “She is not my champion! This is my throne, my responsibility! You will fight me!”

With a dismissive flip of her wing, The Nightmare turned her back on the dais, walking to the open space’s far side before facing them once more and responding. “I said nothing about sparing you. If you wish a more public thrashing, I am happy to  oblige. You must merely have to wait your turn.”

Star stepped forward into the make-shift arena, the guards parting as she descended the dais. Cadence made to follow, to grab the mare and save her from her folly. The guards and Shining held her fast, the former closing rank as soon as Star passed while the latter simply touched a hoof to her shoulder and shook his head. Had it been anypony else, she might have lashed out, decrying their senseless adherence to tradition before taking control of the situation by force. Instead, she gaped and fumed, but remained at her post, while silently ashamed by the solace she found in her own duel’s delay.

The longsword sang as Star drew it, quickly joined by the sharper note of her sword-breaker. She did not flourish the blades, holding them steady on either side of her withers. Her every movement was loose but reserved, controlled and exact without wasteful tension. The Nightmare nodded at the sight, a predatory smile just letting her fangs peek between her lips, and mimicked her posture and stance.  

Cadence watched as they turned to obliques and began to move in a meandering circle, each step added to the sense of dread welling up in the pit of her stomach. This was all wrong. Senseless. Star was going to die. She had to know that.  No mortal pony could hope to match an alicorn, much less her mother. 

Helplessness dragged her haunches to the floor, Penumbra’s tip cutting a divot in the marble as she let its hilt rest against her shoulder.

“You do know how to use those, yes? I will be very put out if this proves too short a distraction.” When Star failed to respond, she spun Tamashi in a lazy circle at her side. “Arch-Mage? That is not a title I am familiar with. Tell me, what is an Arch-Mage?”

For the first time since entering the throne room, Star spoke. “When this night ends, I will tell you.”

The Nightmare gave an amused, if derisive, snort. “I think I like you, for a mortal. I would know you before I end your life.”

“I am called Star Shimmer.”

A beat passed where Nightmare Moon’s amusement faded into a tight frown. “Do not vex me. What of your parentage? Who was the first of your line? From what province do you hale?”

“When this night ends—”

“Not,” the Nightmare said with a harsh bite, her ears tilting and brow furrowing, “as amusing the second time. I was inclined to provide you with an invigorating fight before the end, but I am growing less enthused with the idea.”

“This was never going to be a fight.”

“No. No it was—”

“It is a lesson.”

Rolling her eyes, the Nightmare groaned. “Oh yes, of course. A lesson. How silly of me. And what, pray-tell, was that lesson to—”

Only four ponies were tracked the exchange, if it could be called such, most only able to register the sudden dash and tumble. 

Star had launched herself at Nightmare Moon, more jumping that running and closing the distance in an instant. Her sword and breaker had moved in tandem, the former swung in a wide, downward arc aimed for her foe’s neck and the latter was thrust forward, aimed to pierce just above her collar. 

The ploy proved less effective than it might have otherwise. The Nightmare had matched her speed, easily deflecting the smaller blade first, sending it flying out of Star’s grasp, before blocking the sword. Where the two blades met, steel screeched, the greater blade sundering the lesser with ease. Almost as an afterthought, Tamashi had came around again, aimed to take Star’s head from her shoulders. 

Star rose from bruised and bloody knees, her face twisted by pain and annoyance. Blood gushed from the side of her head, staining the soft-pink of her coat a dark cherry-red. She touched the fresh wound, her ear, feeling the raw edge and how it tapered to an unnaturally sharp tip. 

She held up her sword, or what remained of it. Little more than a hoof of blade still protruded from the hilt, the sheared edge glowing orange and hot, a thin streak of black ichor sizzling at the furthest point. With clenched teeth and scrunched eyes, she jammed the hot steel into the wound, her sharp hiss mingling with the wretched stench of cooking meat and burning hair.

Similarly, the Nightmare seemed in a world all her own. She moved as though dazed, blinking and confused. A slow wing tip reached for her collar, brushing it a quarter-hoof above the top of her peytral. Wincing from surprise, her feather came away wet, stained by a few drops of blood. Her blood.

Barely a paper-cut, the wound had already over, gone save for those scant few drops of ichor that clung to her coat. But a wound it had been. A blade, a broken one forged from fire and steel and wielded by a mortal mare, had graced her divine flesh, pierced it however shallowly. Her feather, she brought to her lips, gently sucking it clean of her divine essence as a small spark of her magic removed all evidence of its existence from her coat.

She turned. She gazed down upon this… mortal, this mare who dared to stand before her, to raise a blade against her and to strike her, to wound her, and smiled. Not grinned, not smirked, but smiled. Her lips stretched like they never before, mirth and excitement the likes of which were commonly reserved for foals crinkled her eyes and vibrated through her ears.

“You… That… That was the dumbest… You couldn’t have… But you had to have…” Stomping her hoof, and cracking the marble, Nightmare Moon forced schooled herself as best she was able, but nothing could dispel the pure joy radiating from her eyes. “No pony could react that fast. You had to know, not only that I would sunder your blade instead of simply deflecting it, but also where and… your ear… How? And why? If you knew all that, you had to know how ineffectual it would be. If it was simply to impress me, than you have succeeded most admirably. But I must know. You must tell me.”

“She is the Arch-Mage, Celestia’s personal boogiemare.” All eyes turned toward the throne, toward the alicorn they had come to see take that seat but remained on the dais before it. Cadence did not understand what she felt, the strange awe and fierce pride, the satisfaction of seeing that monster, her mother, bleed, and too incensed to question the wisdom of her words before they left her lips. “You have been usurped, mother. Ponies don’t fear your name anymore, mother’s don’t whisper it in the ears of misbehaving foals, they whisper hers. Arch-Mage Star Shimmer. The Demon Mare. From Hackney to Roam, she is the one who haunts the dreams of Equestria’s foes, without ever setting hoof in the realm of dreams. You are nothing but a half-forgotten myth.”

All the bubbling joy melted from the Nightmare’s face as Cadence spoke. She quivered, visibly vibrating as her every muscle tensed. Her nebulous mane and tail became as maelstroms, writhing storms of hate and rage. And her eyes were violence.

“Give her your sword.” The command, for it could be nothing less, did not waver or burn, was neutral and uncolored by its source, and was all the more terrifying for it. It stuck with the same dull thump of Snow Blind’s head and carried the promise of worse. Cadence failed to react, the full weight of her folly rendering her a living statue. “Give. Her. Your. Sword.”

Mindlessly, Cadence moved the blade from her shoulder, holding the hilt between her forehooves and let her eyes trace it from tip to pommel, truly seeing it for perhaps the first time in centuries. Dark-blue, verging on midnight-black, and nearly long enough to cleave a pony from snout to dock, Penumbra was otherwise unremarkable in appearance, simple and efficient. Such had been Luna’s hallmark before her fall—or so Celestia claimed—when the blade she’d forged refused her touch.

A smile twitched at the corners of her mouth, a tiny thing born of amusing—if impossible—imaginings. The irony of how it could all play out was staggering. Just to imagine it: Star Shimmer, the Arch-Mage, besting Nightmare Moon in a duel while wielding Luna’s own sword. The sheer audacity coupled with the almost poetic justice was almost too much to bear. It was ridiculous, of course, fanciful beyond all reason, and yet she could see it… no pony was perfect after all, not even Aunt Celly. A slip, a single mistake… Star had already managed more in a single exchange than she had ever thought possible. Maybe… just maybe…

She let go.

Penumbra teetered, the dark blue blade leaning toward its master, pommel a breath away from her muzzle. Cadence’s eyes snapped to Star, and the sword quivered with something akin to excitement, then, like a pinwheel, tumbled through the air, clearing the line of guards and slamming blade first into the ground at Star's hooves. 

“And I am the theatrical one?” Nightmare Moon snorted. “Well?” she added with a growl, glaring at the mare and the blade. Tamashi became a blur of motion, slicing the air around her before coming to a sudden stop beside her head as her knees bent into a ready stance. “Arm yourself, mortal, that none may say you were ill equipped.”

The broken sword clattered where it was discarded, thrown aside like so much trash. With no more reverence, Star’s field surrounded Penumbra’s hilt and wrenched it from the ground. Tearing free with far more ease than it should have, the blade swung in a wide arc, momentum carrying it to the edge of Star’s influence, her magic flickering, threatening to lose control, before it arced back into a far more controlled flourish that ended with the blade angled down and back in a low ready.

Once more, they began to circle, but only for a few paces. This time, the Nightmare charged. Her attack came in a series of heavy, hacking blows, Tamashi driving down more like an axe than the long, elegant blade it was. Penumbra rose to meet the assault, deflecting each to one side or the other. Sparks exploded where they met, but neither blade showed signs of damage or wear. The speed and power on display forced Star back, pushing her towards Snow Blind’s corpse and the puddle of blood surrounding it.

Her back hoof splashed down and slipped. Her balance taken, she started to fall. Nightmare Moon turned her sword on the upswing, spinning it into position for a downward plunge. The time between the latter's commitment to the strike and the former’s teleportation could never be measured.

A flash of magic preceded the hard crack of air rushing to fill the suddenly empty space. 


Perhaps, if Star had grimaced or gasped as her fall began, something to sell it as true misstep, she could have succeeded. Instead, Nightmare Moon spun her whole body around, catching Star’s thrust with her still down-pointed blade, turning it aside. But the tables had turned, and the Arch-Mage was now on the offensive. 

The duel enraptured all eyes, riveting them to the action they could barely follow as blade struck blade in a flashing web of steel and blood. Neither combatant showed signs of slowing, throwing themselves right back into the fray whenever they had cause to part for even a second. 

Star turned up a wealth of tricks and dirty tactics, everything from stealing a spear from an unsuspecting guard and hurling it at Nightmare Moon’s exposed back to ripping tapestries from the walls to conceal her movements hinder her foe’s. Her efforts proved less than effective, never landing so much as a glancing blow. The Nightmare’s pernatural speed was more than enough to deflect and defeat everything that Star threw at her. Worse, her own abilities were barely enough to keep her from losing her head. She couldn’t truly keep pace with Nightmare Moon’s speed, and though she managed to defend herself exceptionally well, Tamashi still found openings to exploit, spilling her blood in long gashes even if she never quite landed a solid blow. 

She lasted longer than she should have. Despite the Nightmare’s greater speed and skill, Star succeeded in guarding herself from anything more than a flesh wound, Penumbra always seeming to be in just the right place to save her from serious harm. 

It wasn’t enough. 

Every slice cost her, spilling her blood, darkening her soft pink coat with blotches and streaks of dark, cherry-red. Her field-range gradually shrank, forcing Penumbra into a tighter, more desperate form lest it be wrenched from her control. Sweat soaked into her coat where it wasn’t already stained with blood, running in rivulets and spraying from flared nostrils with every breath. 

And still, she never faltered. The blood might as well have been dye, the sweat sprayed upon her by an ocean wave. 

She pulled back enough that Tamashi only glanced across her shoulder before leaping to the attack once more, forcing Nightmare Moon to parry a flurry of thrusts that turned into a low sweep that very nearly took the alicorn’s leg at the knee. Instead of wasting precious time trying to recover from the miss, she allowed herself to roll with the momentum and take another slash across the flank rather than lose it at the hip. If she felt the wounding, she made no show of it, rising back to her hooves and bringing Penumbra to bear.

For the first time, the Nightmare did not move in to attack, instead simply turning to face the unicorn, her own sword low and loose. 

“It is done.” 

“No,” Star rasped, unable to mask the exhaustion in her voice.

“Foal,” she growled, glaring at Star only long enough to add, “I was not speaking to you.” A hard flick cleaned Tamashi of blood as her eyes lost their focus. “I admit that this has been more entertaining than I anticipated… less than I might have expected, but fun.”

Star whipped her head toward the windows and the night sky beyond. Selene had not moved since last she’d looked, still far too large and unmarred by the Nightmare’s prison. The stars glittered in their ancient appointed places. Of Sol, there was no sign, not even a hint of glow from the horizon.

She attacked again, getting three good swings in before being rebuffed and having to jump back to avoid having her head removed from her shoulders.

“Stop being foalish. This contest is over, and I have won. The—” 

Again, Star attacked, only for a blast of pure force to strike her left fore-knee. The sound of shattering bone was overwhelmed by the scream of pain tearing from Star’s throat as she crashed to the floor, Penumbra skittering across the floor. 

Nightmare Moon glared down at her with a scowl before turning toward Cadence and the throne. “The Elements are destroyed,” she said to the room at large. “Celestia’s champions are defeated and powerless. I have won.” To Cadence, she added, “I will not be petty in victory. Step aside, daughter. There is no more need for us to fight.”

The shocked gasps almost went unnoticed by the two alicorns staring each other down. Cadence was the first to look to the cause, Nightmare Moon quickly following.

Star Shimmer stood on three legs, cradling the broken fore to her chest. Her horn flickered twice before the glow took and a matching field wrapped around Penumbra’s hilt, slowly drawing the blade to her side once more. 

“Really?” Penumbra arced through the air and slammed into Tamashi blocking its path toward Nightmare Moon’s neck. “This is getting tiresome.” Annoyance twisted her voice as the blades retreated only to meet again, sparks cascading from where they clashed. “I was trying to be nice, but… no…”

Tamashi faltered. Where its downward arc should have forced Star onto the defensive, it instead swung wide, cleaving through the floor in a spray of marble chips and debris. In the same moment, Star leapt forward, raising her sword high. 

Penumbra, the sword forged by Luna’s own magic, the sword that had rejected her after her transformation, carved an unerring path through the empty air straight for Nightmare Moon’s head, poised to split her in twain.

And for a brief, fleeting moment, Cadence believed it would.

With less than a hoof between her muzzle and Penumbra’s leading edge, Nightmare Moon’s eyes dilated and refocused. The air caught flame as Tamashi slashed through it, fire leaping from the blade in a fountain of orange and red where it stopped, holding Penumbra back a hair’s breadth from the tip of her horn. 

Fear and rage mingled in the primal scream that tore from the Nightmare’s throat as a pillar of rainbow magic swept her away, Star stumbling forward as Tamashi clattered to the floor.