Marry the Night

by Cadence5

Chapter 10

Night woke up against Luna. His tail was on top of hers and her broken leg was pressed against his flank. Her head rested against his shoulder with her muzzle buried in his starry mane. Nightmare Moon was lying on her bed across the room motionless. Night could still see the slight rise and fall of her side as she breathed in and out, but other than that she didn’t move. Drops of blood floated around her side of the anti-gravity room. A thin trail of red ran down one of her bed’s bedposts. Instead, where it would have dripped off of the bottom if there was gravity, it dripped about an inch or two before floating off across the room. Small drops combined in corners of the room where they bounced off of walls and made larger, pebble sized amounts of blood.

Night sat up slowly, so he wouldn’t wake Luna. Once he was up, he could feel his head start to hurt. Nightmare Moon shifted slightly in her bed as she started to wake up. He sat watching her groan as she tried to sit up. It took her a little while to get up, but once she did, it was easy to see that she had just lost a duel. Her mane hung in tangled strands around her face, a cut curved around the side of her left eye and onto her cheek, small cuts covered her shoulders and legs from flying through asteroid shards, and her side had a long cut on it. She blinked a few times before noticing that Night was looking at her.

“You did this!” she yelled. She stood slowly, wincing as she put pressure on her back right leg. She swayed a bit on her hooves, slightly disoriented from the black hole. Night looked at her with a blank expression, and then, when she opened her mouth to continue screaming, he made the glass wall sound proof. Once she realized what he had done, she shot spell after spell at it, but they only bounced off of the glass or were absorbed into it.

“What’s she going on about now?” Luna asked as she opened one eye and looked up at him.

“Other than the fact that I did this,” he nodded towards Nightmare Moon, “no idea.”

Luna smiled at him, “So what did Celestia say then?”

Night remembered the letter Celestia had entrusted him with to give to Luna, “Oh, I forgot,” he let the letter appear next to them before Luna took it in her magical grasp and opened it, “that was from her.”

Luna looked at Celestia’s sophisticated handwriting and smiled before reading the letter to herself:

‘Luna,

If only I had known about Nightmare Moon before I banished you, I would have tried to help. I wish you had told me, but I know that worse would have happened if you had. Night has told me his story, and I hope you ask to hear it, too. It is quite fascinating.

I do not know when I will be able to speak to you again, if at all. I would have asked Night to act as our personal messenger, but there are… complications with that (you can ask him about these).

I asked Night to look after you for me, I know you are old enough to handle yourself, but sometimes I worry about you. You are my little sister after all, and I know Nightmare Moon is still there with you. He has explained the difficulties you have been having with her, and I hope you can stay strong. Do not let her win these fights, Luna, I fear that she might be planning something else, a stronger attack that could take you out for good. Night’s story will help you understand this fear further.

Until we meet again, stay safe, if anything were to happen to you I would never forgive myself.

Always Your Big Sister,

Celestia’

Luna closed the letter and set it down next to her on the bed. “Tell me your story, Night,” she said curtly, blinking quickly and busying herself with her leg to hide her tears.

He was shocked by her commanding tone, but he quickly started to recite his story to her. He could see her eyes light up as he told her about how he traveled through the stars. Night continued the story all the way through his encounter with Celestia. Eventually, he lay down next to her and wrapped his tail around hers. When he finished, and Luna was resting her head against his shoulder, she said softly, “Tell me more, Night. Tell me more about the councils, and your travels.”

He smiled and rested his head on top of hers as he continued to talk. As Luna’s bed floated around the room, turning upside down and bouncing into walls, he told her of distant planets. Some planets were made entirely out of gas, so you could fly straight through them and planets made of churning fire that could explode at any second. He described what it was like to not just watch a meteor shower, but to be part of one, flying through a planet’s atmosphere, standing on top of a rock that was burning away to nothing under your hooves until there was nothing left, and you had to fly away and find another one to start that process over. Eventually, he showed her the planets on his tail, and told her their names and where they were.

They spent the day like this, lying on Luna’s bed and talking, discussing space, sharing stories. It wasn’t until after dinner that Night began to describe the councils to her, At least a dozen ponies, if not more, seated around a table discussing space. He told her of the ponies there, how some took care of only stars and others watched over entire corners of the universe.

When it started getting late, and Nightmare Moon had already curled up with her back to them, Luna asked the question that had been bothering her since she heard that the Council of Rerum was held once a year, “When is the next meeting?”

Night thought for a moment, flicking the tip of his tail around, changing the scene in his starry tail from a distant planet, to a view of a galaxy, and back again. “Sometime soon, I’m not sure when, exactly, but sometime in the next few months.”

Luna looked over at the black side of Nightmare Moon as she slept, her flank moving slightly as she breathed. When you saw her like this, you couldn’t imagine her being a murderous sociopath out to kill Luna. You could only see her as another mare, trapped in the moon with her rival, forced to compete to get a stallion, only to have him dragged out of reach by Luna’s sister telling him whom to trust. “Do you have to go?” She asked after a moment.

“I know you don’t want me to go, but I need to. It’s my duty and part of my agreement with Universe. If I don’t, I don’t know what will happen,” Night replied, suddenly annoyed by the rules of the universe.

“I wish I could come with you,” Luna said as her eyes clouded over, and she began to daydream. “I could see the stars, but my sister’s spell trapped me here with her,” she continued flicking her ears at Nightmare Moon.

“Well, I don’t know, were you banished to the moon, or were you banished from Equestria for a thousand years? Because I got Nightmare Moon out, maybe I can get you out, too.”

Her eyes brightened as she looked at him, “You really think you might be able to?”

“Maybe,” he said, smiling at her enthusiasm, “but I couldn’t bring you this time. It wouldn’t be smart to show up to the council with somepony they don’t know.”

Luna sighed, but nodded anyways, she understood, she could only imagine how Celestia might’ve felt when Night showed up saying he knew Luna. “Another time, then? Maybe the council after this one? I mean we have a thousand years, so that’s one thousand councils. You can’t expect me to just stay here the whole time.”

“No, I can’t,” he said with a smile. He lifted his wing above her, “Sleep now, talk more in the morning?” he asked. She leaned against him as he folded his wing over her.

She laid her head down against her legs, and he rested his head against her neck, letting the scent from her mane fill his nostrils. He made sure their tails were still entwined, and Nightmare Moon was still asleep before following the lead of the dark mare and falling asleep with the young princess he had started to love.

---

Nightmare Moon woke up in a pool of blood, while she lay on bloodstained sheets, and felt a pain along her side. She looked at her side to find the cut that all of the blood was coming from. She sat up slowly wincing from the pain in her side and along her shoulders. She looked up to see Night sitting next to Luna on her bed.

“You did this!” she yelled at him. She watched as he made the glass wall separating them soundproof, but she continued to yell. “Night, don’t you dare! This is your fault! Both of your faults! I could’ve conquered the world! You should be helping me not Luna! She’s weak, and she’s never done anything for you! Listen to me!!! I will destroy both of you!” Nightmare Moon kept yelling at them until her throat was raw and her voice cracked with every syllable.

She sat down on her bed defeated. She mindlessly cleaned the blood off of her sheets and bandaged her wounds before lying down on her bed once more. She needed a plan. Night was going to protect Luna with his life; she was sure of it. She looked over her shoulder to see them cuddling on Luna’s bed as it floated around her part of the room.

Nightmare Moon needed to destroy Luna. If she could get Luna alone, she could destroy her, and then say it was something else, something she couldn’t stop. How to do it… That was the problem, but that didn’t faze Nightmare Moon. Even Night couldn’t stay cooped up in the moon forever. When Night and Luna weren’t looking, Nightmare Moon cast a spell on the glass, so she could hear them talking.

“I have to go to the council meeting once a year,” Night was explaining. “It’s my part of the promise that I made with Universe, so I can travel the stars.”

“Do you have to go to all of them?” Luna asked.

“Yes, I know it could be bad to leave you here with… her, but there’s no other way. I’m sorry, Luna.”

Nightmare Moon smiled into her pillow at the thought of Night having to leave Luna here alone once a year for one thousand years. That was a lot of opportunities for Nightmare Moon to end this once and for all.

“I think Celestia’s right about Nightmare Moon, though. It’s very likely she’s planning something against me. Whether it will happen in the next thousand years or when we get back, I don’t know, but if she gets one opportunity every year…” Luna trailed off with a sigh.

Night nudged her with his shoulder, “Hey, I’m not giving up on you just yet, you can do this. I know you can.”

Nightmare Moon turned her back on them and smiled. Hopefully Night’s next council meeting would be soon because then she could make her move. Luna’s chances were not looking good.

---

She waited until Night and Luna fell asleep to get up and fly over to the glass wall that kept her away from Luna. The cracks she had made in the glass when she attacked Night were still there, and they didn’t look close to breaking anytime soon. She tried to levitate a piece of paper on Luna’s side of the room.

She could feel the magic of the wall resisting her plead to lift the paper, but after a second she felt a snap in the magical energy, and the paper flew up. She had manipulated the magical field between Luna and her. Nightmare Moon set the paper back down and flew back to her bed.

She sat looking at the sleeping form of Luna and Night. His wing was folded over both of them, but Luna’s broken leg still stuck out from her side. 'Why hasn’t Night healed that with a spell?' she thought. That seems pretty easy for a pony like him.

Nightmare Moon’s eyes lit up suddenly. 'That’s it, and it’s so cliché it might work! If I pretend to be their friend, I can get close to them and when they least expect it: attack.'

She focused on Luna’s leg, imagining the bone healing, the muscles and tendons, pulling together again as though they had never been disturbed. She felt the bone heal up, and as Nightmare Moon let the magical field snap back into its place once more, she felt exhausted. Lifting the paper was one thing but this, this was something entirely different. She smiled at her new plan. This one just might work.

Author's Note:

Sorry about the slightly strange formatting on some of the paragraphs...

Comments

[Mydnyt Rayn]

I really like where this is going. Keep up the good work!