A Friend In Need

by sopchoppy

Requiem For A Dream (Part 2) - Luna

..ALL DREAMS MUST END, AND THINE ENDS NOW!!”

Luna spoke as she simultaneously finished her working. While this sphere’s moon was not hers it was of the night and so answered her call faithfully. The storm clouds directly above exploded as the magic of her working overcame them. Behind the cover of the clouds the moon had drawn close and now shone with an intensity that briefly rivaled that of the sun itself. The song of moonlight and magic reached a crescendo and a lance of lunar light and will pierced the atmosphere and struck the floating form of her opponent.

She opened her eyes as the light from her lance dissipated. Spurred by her magic the clouds once more grew to cover the moon, rain coming down in sheets as lightning crackled overhead. Before her, where the creature had been, now only a hole. Warily she trotted forward and stopped at its rim. Crystalline feathers far to dense to be carried off by the wind lay scattered about the fathoms deep abyss.

Acting on instinct deeper than thought, she transformed into mist just as most of a building flew through the spot she had been standing in. Reforming facing the direction of the throw, she leapt off the ground and spiraled to the side to avoid more telekinetic savagery. She spotted her opponent, missing more pieces of itself, but alive yet. Alive and apparently wishing a duel. A feral grin spread across Luna’s face as she spun and dove around the projectiles thrown her way from all directions.

Her horn lit and reaching into the other she drew forth her battle raiment. Forged from moonlight and magic, luminescent plate and chain began to materialize on her frame, flowing like molten silver and solidifying into a an armor last worn more than a thousand years ago. The impact of something large and metallic knocked her sideways in the air, but could not suppress her adrenaline fueled smile as she felt the cool touch of lunar plate upon her muzzle. Intricate and ancient runes inscribed themselves in patterns both beautiful and deadly across the armor as the familiar weight of wingblades and edged hoofguards settled onto her body.

She rolled and spun through the air as a spiked and weighted braid of metal wove itself among the night sky of her tail. Now properly attired she focused her magic on the objects around her. The blizzard of projectiles grew as Luna added to the storm and wrested control over some already airborne. She danced the sky with death as her partner, but she was not one to be led in a dance such as this. Her horn grew brighter and the buildings and strange vehicles caught in her opponent’s telekinetic grasp shuddered. Some dropped or flew into space, while others, guided by Luna, slammed into the alabaster figure knocking it out of the air to slide across the ground.

Luna dove forward, and extending a wing, sliced through a shield of crystal feathers that her opponent had brought up to protect against the attack. The razor sharp feathers struck back, scrapping against her armor but also finding flesh to cut. Luna rolled away through the air and was blindsided by a large mass of yellow metal and glass. She crashed through the one of the last standing walls of whatever structures had been here before her arrival and transformed into flock of ghostly bats before she could be crushed between the ground and whatever she had been hit with.

She flew in a hundred directions at once, and then dove and swirled around her enemy’s wings and between them before reforming inside her opponent’s winged guard. Hooves laced with mass increasing magic, she spun and bucked the alabaster nightmare in the face. Even as the creature was hurled backwards by her hit, its wings once again sought purchase against her armor, cutting grooves into its surface and slicing her lip open in a spray of blood.

Luna swung her head with the blow to minimize the cut while closing her wings and dropping to the ground to avoid a gigantic mechanical carriage that sped through her previous location and proceeded to smash a massive hole in one of the few standing towers by the city’s bay. The ground rumbled beneath her hooves and she teleported to the billowing cloud bank above just before an enormous fireball erupted from the street. Even two thousand feet above the ground she could feel its searing heat against her armor.

She reared up and slammed her hooves into the clouds beneath, unleashing a blinding cascade of lightning towards the white speck far below. Using the lightning as cover she extended her bladed wings, dove, and teleported into the face of her opponent. She twirled and her blades sliced into the crystalline flesh beneath her. Her own flesh cried out as the living blades of her foe retaliated and found purchase on her body.

Her tail lashed out and wrapped around the remaining leg of the creature and the edged lunar metal woven in it bit deep. She increased her mass many thousand fold and swung her tail and the creature now trapped by it with all the force she could conjure. The beast was flung with speed enough that it did not so much as hit the water of the bay, but push it out of the way before slamming into the bedrock beneath. Luna settled to the ground and swung her tail in a complicated movement, allowing the leg still bound in it fall to the ground, cratering the pavement beneath.

Blood dripped from between the gaps between the joints and plates of her armor, and flowed from her lip and the top of her head where the stump of her left ear throbbed painfully. The sky roiled above as the storm grew fiercer still, and small hail stones began to plink against her armor.

The ruined form of her opponent rose from the waves, its former beauty cut from it as its limbs had been. It’s face was marred by dozens of deep gashes. One wing remained whole and wrapped around a one-armed torso that was marred by the stumps of the others now littering the city around them.

Luna leapt once more into the sky and slowly began to make her way towards the bay and the creature above it. Ducking, teleporting, and weaving around a renewed telekinetic storm that almost seemed half-hearted in comparison to the barrage she had earlier endured. Retaliating in kind by altering the flight and accelerating thousands of pieces of hail to hypersonic speed into the body of her foe. She began to channel her magic once more through the moon, preparing a spell she hoped would end this.

Jerking her head back she narrowly avoided a gigantic metal beam that exploded from the side of the ruined building she was passing. The movement caused the line of blood flowing from her ear to divert and flood into her eye, and she lost the pattern of the working she had been preparing. Ire rose in her as the metal girder crashed into a line of overturned alien carriages.

“THY PETTY SCRYING SHALL AVAIL THEE NAUGHT. DOES NOT THY VISION SPEAK TRUTH? THY HOUSE OF CHANCE BE SCATTERED UPON THE WIND AND THE MACBRE PLAY’S STAGE LIES BROKEN. SURRENDER THYSELF UNTO THE COMING DAWN, RETURN WHENCE THOU CAME AND AWAIT A MORE WORTHY DREAMER FOR THY POWER. W-”

Her entreaty was ended as she found herself buried under a thousand tons of steel, bricks, and glass accelerated past the speed of sound. Reacting to instincts honed in battles long forgotten to time she dissolved herself into mist as soon as she was struck. The pain from the blow was substantial even as she became not so. As the boom and shockwave echoed out across the ruined city she seeped through the cracks and reformed into a new shape upon the settling pile of detritus.

Lightning made more of moonlight and magic than electricity rained down and struck her alabaster foe, driving it back as her new bipedal shape solidified. A flowing cape of green settled upon new shoulders as a deep cowl came to rest on her brow. Long sleeves covered her glowing minotaur-like arms and her voice deepened to a masculine tone as she spoke once more.

“FIE, SO BE IT. IF THOU CANST UNCOUPLE THYSELF FROM SUCH A FOAL’S FANTASY AS THIS, THEN IT SHALL BE AS THOU WISHEST. COME, COME AND MEET THY MAKER UPON THE FIELD OF BATTLE, AS IT WILL BE THY LAST!”

Author's Note:

Many thanks are due to Deadpan29 at the SpaceBattles forum, for many hours put in to beta-read all 10k words of new content for the Requiem For A Dream Chapters. Many hundreds of errors in grammar and phrasing were caught, and lots of other mistakes as well.

Comments

[FinalFan]

So ... Luna hulked out.

..ALL

...

far to dense

too

into a an armor last worn

(delete "a", and for my money you should delete "an" while you're at it; alternatively, "a suit of armor")

scrapping against her armor

scraping

IF THOU CANST UNCOUPLE THYSELF FROM SUCH A FOAL’S FANTASY AS THIS, THEN IT SHALL BE AS THOU WISH IT.

From context, I think you mean Luna to say "can't", while "canst" means "can". "CANST NOT" will do.

[lilbobchicago]

I just realised that luna and celestia together could probably crack planets

[macdjord]

7129133
Together? Luna grossly altered the rotation of the Earth. That puts her power output on the order of 10^29 joules. That's not enough to mass-scatter Earth - that takes on the order of 10^32 joules - but it's certainly enough to crack it.

[Storyreader21]

7134088
And just think...she did that using only a fraction of her power. She was still battle ready against the Simurgh, and not even winded after all.