ShadowSide Tales

by B-Navigator

Prologue

¬ Princess Celestia floated above the lake, panting with exertion. Around her five stone spheres flew, trailing rainbow light as they circled the alicorn. Pushing fatigue aside she focused the magic of her horn, forming a shield of iridescent light before her just in time for a dozen arrows formed of blackness to shatter against it.

"Tired so soon Sister?"

Celestia looked across the surface of the water, where a great roiling mass of darkness seethed, her sister calmly floating in it's center. "The night is young. Forever young." Luna added, her eyes suddenly igniting with ebony flame as she reshaped the blackness into a huge spiral vortex of darkness.

With a fierce stroke of her wings, Celestia fled skyward, her mind willing the sixth stone sphere floating just before her to keep drawing power from the other five Elements of Harmony. The continuing sluggish trickle of power from the elements made her teeth grind in frustration.

Abruptly Celestia sensed a threat from above, and looked up, forming her defense moments before a blast of darkness struck, piercing her rainbow shield to slam into one wing. Celestia dropped from the sky like a stone, only to ignite her horn to land softly on the hillside at the last second.

"Well caught Princess." Her sister's mocking voice declared as Luna floated down, stopping to hover a dozen feet above and before Celestia. "But you must have long since realized your power is insufficient to rival our own, not even with your precious little toys." Luna laughed, and more than anytime before Celestia was sure that there was another face hidden in the black aura laughing in sync.

'Can't run, can't keep fighting much longer, and I can't get the Elements of Harmony to give me the power I need! The only spell I can cast is a banishment … The only …' Celestia's thoughts churned as she looked up at her sister, Luna's kind face twisted into a mask of cruelty and hate.

"I suppose it's time to end this then, sister." Luna declared. For an instant Luna's expression faltered with a flash of uncertainty, then sneer restored she gathered the darkness before her, weaving her spell slowly as though to show how little fear she had for Celestia.

'No choice, I can banish her before she completes her spell, it's the only thing I can do … It's the only thing I can do … while defending myself.' Her eyes narrowing with determination, Celestia dropped all her defensive enchantments, directing every shred of her personal magic into the sixth element, feeling it merge with the power of friendship it had gathered from the other elements and take the form of a single spell.

"Goodbye!" Luna declared as she released her spell, the darkness lashing out to envelop Celestia, then hurling her into the sky as her sun rose above the horizon for a final time. Luna watched as her sister shrank as she drew closer and closer to the sun, vanishing into the fiery orb, a cruel smile on her face.

Then her gaze snapped downward, toward the rainbow storm the elements of harmony had suddenly formed. An instant later the element of magic pivoted toward her and a rainbow shot forth from it, curving to envelop her dark aura in a sphere of rainbow light. "NO!"

As the rainbow light pressed in boiling her shadow aura away, one final spell suddenly erupted into her mind with a surge of dark power. With snarl of rage and hatred she wove the spell and hurled it through the rainbow sphere, to shoot upward tracing the path Celestia had taken

Then the rainbow globe imploded, it's light washing over her and piercing thorugh her. Luna screamed, but her scream faded as she felt the light's warmth, sensed the love that seemed to saturate it's every photon. Then light and darkness vanished, leaving the dark furred alicorn to drop to the top of the hill.

Moments after hitting the ground, Luna shook her head and pulled herself to her feet. "What… Tia … Why …" She muttered in confusion as she looked skyward. Eyes widening she stared in horror for a heartbeat before the cry of "NO!" burst from her lips.

The sun seemed to be shrinking, as though being pushed further and further away, and then, suddenly ripples began to shimmer in the sky around it, as though the sky were a lake and the sun a boat being lowered into it.

Luna tried channeling her almost depleted reserves of magic to halt the Sun's withdrawal, then as it continued to sink into the darkening sky she ran to where the now inert elements of harmony lay.

"Please," she whispered as she channeled all her remaining magic into the Element of Magic. "PLEASE."

The rippling continued, now shifting as the slightly translucent darkness of the sky began to wash over the surface of the sun, it's fully visible portion shrinking rapidly.

"please."