• Published 29th Oct 2013
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Memoirs in Ink and Blood - Corah Il Cappo



She betrayed us. She mislead us. She imposed her rule upon us. We rose in defiance. Sequel to The Monster We Made

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Mischief

Mischief is a wonderful thing.

Whether it was replacing the sugar with salt as someone made their morning coffee, or changing an army’s spears into rubber chickens, mischief was one of my specialties.

And now I had replaced an ancient steel helmet with a banana cream pie at the most opportune moment.

I stood there laughing hysterically as Luna proceeded to slam the pie down upon her head, smearing her navy blue coat with whipped cream and custard. The other bits of armor she had been wearing fell away, and her face contorted with a mixture of embarrassment and confusion.

I clutched my sides and doubled over, practically crying as I laughed. I wiped the tears from my eyes and they burst into flames upon the cobblestones. I looked up to continue savoring my comedic handwork, but I was unfortunately clouted across the cheek by a rather angry lunar goddess.

"What are you doing here Discord?"

I tried to stifle my giggles. There was still whipped cream dripping from her muzzle. I just couldn't take her seriously. I burst into chuckles yet again, only to graced with another vicious slap from the princess. Luna never could take a joke.

"Oh, just having a bit of fun. And stopping you from making a horrible mistake. Other than that nothing much."

She looked devastated. Her body seemed to slump upon hearing my words, and she slowly sank to the ground in a huff. I couldn't tell, but I almost swore I saw tears running down her cheeks. It was in that moment I saw the weight of our situation fall upon her shoulders.

"Where is the helmet, Discord?"

"Gone. It could be anywhere now."

Her eyes took on a look of anger. She sat bolt upright, then lunged for me. She struck at me, but was far too slow. She lashed out with both hoof and spell, but to no avail. I was four thousand years her elder. I wasn't going to fall to a flurry of angry punches.

"Without that helmet I can't become Nightmare Moon!"

I dodged another hoof blow, and Luna instead struck the pillar that had been behind me. With one punch she shattered it.

"Without that how am I to defeat Twilight?"

A bolt of lightning arced past me, followed by a gout of fire, which engulfed me entirely. With a snap of my fingers, I doused the flames with a glass of strawberry soda. Luna again charged me, and this time I had to physically restrain her from striking me.

She screamed, blurting out something that was nearly incomprehensible, then melted to the ground. She lay in a crumpled heap, her entire body shuddering. Even though her face was pressed to the ground, I could tell she was crying. I don't think I had ever seen Luna cry,

Luna had always strove to be a paradigm of godlike strength and pride. Her face was always hard set, her posture always rigid, and her voice always booming. In the ancient days, when she and her sister had rebelled against my tyranny, it had been Luna who lead the army to victory. She was a strategist and a warrior through and through. She had spent centuries fighting, whether it was against me or later against her sister.

Now however, she was cut off from her source of power. Her throne, her crown, her title, her palace, her kingdom, her sister, her moon... all of these things had been stripped from her. For the first time in her life, she was powerless. Abandoned in a new world of gods and monsters without direction.

So lost was she that she would turn to Nightmare Moon, the icon of her greatest folly, simply to feel powerful once more.

All these things I pondered in my mind. I kicked at a pebble on the stone cobbles, and promptly transformed it into a goldfish. It flopped about uselessly for a bit, until I decided it should swim in air rather than water. As I turned my attention back to Luna, I realized she needed to do the same thing.

If you cannot breathe water, breathe air.

I placed a claw upon her shoulder, and she looked up at me with tear filled eyes. Here were sat, two former enemies forced together by a greater evil.

"I couldn't stop her."

Luna sniffed, wiping the tears from her eyes.

"There was nothing I could do to stop her. She’s more a goddess than I ever was. She has more magical talent in her right hoof than the rest of the Equestrian Pantheon combined. She’s everything we trained her to be. She’s our greatest success, and our ultimate demise. Perhaps Nightmare Moon could have given me the edge I needed to defeat her, but now we’ll never know.”

“Nightmare Moon couldn’t stop her. I’ve experienced the power of both firsthand, and I know which outweighs the other. You would have only brought more misery upon the land had you donned that armor. Darkness clashing with darkness does not breed light. Not unless I make it so of course.”

Luna sighed, hanging her head low. I placed a hot fudge sundae in front of her. She only stared at it blankly, as though I had handed her an empty glass. I grabbed a spoon and promptly shoveled a bite of it into her mouth.

At first she recoiled at it, cringing like she had a mouth full of poison. Slowly however, her grimace melted away. She swallowed, and for the first time, I saw Luna smile.

Despite all she had been through, all she had lost, she smiled. It wasn’t a wide smile by any means, but it was a smile nonetheless. Through the hurt, through the pain, she smiled.

Somewhere deep inside, she had hope.

“Where do we go from here?”

“That’s the nice thing about starting from rock bottom. We’ve only got one place we can go. Up.”