Sharing the Night

by Cast-Iron Caryatid

Chapter 12

Sharing the Night: Chapter 12

✶ ✶ ✶

“Are you sure you wish to do this, Twilight?” Luna asked. The two of them once again stood above the Sinkhole of the Royal Pony Sisters, contemplating its depths. This time, they would be going in.

“I’m not afraid,” Twilight said, asserting her mastery over herself to keep her voice steady and calm.

Luna shook her head with a sigh. “I should never have made it sound like you had passed some test,” she mumbled. “It is not about never showing fear or anger, Twilight—you know this. It is about not letting it keep you from being yourself. If you just blindly reject it… it’s just as bad.”

“Okay fine,” Twilight grumbled, begrudgingly admitting her trepidation. “Yes, I am scared; what else can we do, though?”

“We can assemble the elements of harmony,” Luna offered, almost pleading. “We can wait for my sister. We have no idea what is down there save that it wishes to eat you.”

“We have some idea,” Twilight said in her defense—though it was not much of a defense at all. “It’s not an alicorn. Just maybe… maybe what’s left of one.”

Luna frowned. “I am not hearing any reassurances, Twilight.”

“Look, there’s no point in waiting,” she said, shifting uneasily. “We can’t take the other elements down there—they’re more vulnerable than I am—and Celestia… probably wouldn’t be any help anyway. There’s nothing more we can do to prepare without answers, and the answers are down there.”

Luna looked torn as if she were very close to turning around and putting an end to this nonsense. Twilight wouldn’t go down alone… probably. No, no she wouldn’t. If Luna left, Twilight would go with her and put this off another night. Luna wouldn’t leave, though. Somehow, the both of them knew it.

“Very well, Twilight,” Luna said, shaking her head in defeat, “but do not stray from my side. I will keep you safe, I promise.”

✶ ✶ ✶

The night at the heart of the world was not a physical place, but it was a place. Twilight wasn’t sure what she had expected to find at the bottom of a giant hole in the middle of the Everfree forest, but the reality of the matter exceeded all expectations.

The deeper they went, the thicker the magic got until they left all physicality behind. They found themselves entering more than just the stars and darkness they had expected. They found an entire barren world.

Below them stretched a vast desert where sparkling stars piled up in dunes beneath a stark black sky. Here and there, stars speckled the darkness, but not as they did the night above. In this inverted night, the stars in the sky drifted slowly down, a powdery snow settling in the wake of windless flurries that blew across the shining stardust below.

Twilight flapped her wings in place, wary of landing. She was wary of everything. This was the source of the fear she felt every night. This was the source of her nightmares. Beautiful it may have been, but the apprehension and dread—both natural and imposed—were overwhelming. No matter how peaceful and serene it appeared to be on the surface, she couldn’t bring herself to trust anything about it.

The flapping of Twilight’s wings slowly quickened as she looked this way and that, finding only an endless desert of sparkling stars. A rising nervous instinct that she was missing something crawled up her spine only to be suddenly dispelled by a milky white hoof on her shoulder.

Twilight turned to see Luna, a figure of pure moonlight floating calmly in the black void of night sky. She was more concept than pony as she had been during their visit to Emberstoke earlier that night. As she stared into the white figure before her, Twilight’s wings slowed and stopped. Once again, they had found themselves treading where mere ponies could not; wings were only necessary for ponies with bodies.

Once again in control of herself, Twilight swept closer to Luna, gently brushing against the reassuring presence as she looked out over the place they had come to find themselves in. “I don’t even know what to say,” she said, her voice breaking what she only then realized had been utter silence.

Luna pressed up against Twilight, her moonlight soft and comforting. “Stay close,” she said. “You are nearly invisible in this night. I do not want to lose you.”

It took Twilight a moment to realize what Luna meant. Sure enough, when she held her hoof in front of herself, it was little more than stars and magic with nothing but form to separate it from the rest of this place. “I will,” she said, glad this once for Luna’s doting concern.

“Is this it?” Luna asked, searching the horizon for something—anything that would tell them what they were dealing with. “Is the presence that haunts you merely this endless desert of seeming night, lacking form or volition?”

The idea that they might have come here for nothing was bitterly reminiscent of Twilight’s visit to the castle of the royal pony sisters. It seemed like so long ago that she had felt very foolish indeed standing in an empty, frozen hole. Like then, though, she knew there had to be something more to this. She could feel it in her stars.

“No,” Twilight said softly as if she were afraid of waking the presence of this place. “No, these stars have been here for thousands of years. Something changed on the night when you made that hole. Something awoke. Something greater. There’s more to this place than the night that we’re used to.”

“I am sorry about that, you know,” Luna mentioned, veering off of the subject at hoof. “If I had just kept my temper, this would all have been much simpler.”

Twilight sighed and shook her head. “And then what?” she asked rhetorically. “We’d both still be skulking around Ponyville avoiding each other.”

“Perhaps,” Luna admitted, her eyes downcast, “but if I had kept my temper to begin with—on the day you came to see us in Canterlot—everything would have been different. I could have accepted you, and you could have learned about the intricacies of the stars over time; a hundred years ought to have done it without all of this trouble.”

“Could you have accepted me?” Twilight asked, wistfully remembering that day when she and Luna had had two entirely different conversations over coffee. “Or would that have taken a hundred years too? Even if we hadn’t argued, I don’t think we would have been friends. I wish I hadn’t been so selfish that day, but I don’t regret where it’s brought us.”

Luna’s moonlight form leaned into Twilight once again. “You are right, of course. It is strange for me to remember just how upset I was. I was being stubborn, yes, but… it hurt so much to think that I had lost the stars.”

“I never did understand why that changed so suddenly,” Twilight said. She had returned from the umbra only to be greeted by an entirely different Luna. “I wasn’t all there at the time.”

“Would it ruin it if I said that it changed when I began to worry about you?” Luna asked, fully aware of the answer she was going to get, yet addressing the matter directly all the same, as was her manner.

“Oh,” was all Twilight could say. She shrank back a bit though she didn’t mean to.

Luna took a deep breath and held it as she considered carefully what to say next. In one swift motion, she let out the breath and and swept around in front of Twilight to look her in the eyes. “My stars needed me, and I answered.”

The words blindsided Twilight. Her mouth hung open, and she was suddenly occupied with concern for what her starry form might be doing in absence of an ability to blush, because whatever it was, she was surely doing it very, very much. “I… oh, wow,” she stammered. She was working on putting together a reaction that made her sound less like a nervous schoolfilly when her mind went white.

✶ ✶ ✶

“Twilight!” Luna shouted. She suddenly sounded very far away and very frightened. “Twilight!” she shouted again, but the voice was muffled, washed out by countless others.

Twilight was buried in images, sounds, tastes, smells, emotions—lives that weren’t hers. Somehow, in between it all, she put together what must have happened. A flurry of stars had swept over her and Luna while they were preoccupied. The miniscule lights only blinded Luna, but Twilight’s dark form soaked them up like a sponge. Every star that touched her became her.

As quickly as the storm had swept up, it passed, leaving Twilight cradling her head in blessed, beautiful silence. Everything she had absorbed quickly sank into the depths of her being, drowned out by her greater existence, but there was one thing that stuck with her. For every dozen impressions she had of normal, everyday lives, there were several that were just one image: that of a moon that filled the sky like another world.

The first moment Twilight realized something was wrong was when the moon slammed into her. No—wait—that was Luna. Luna’s moonlight figure crashed into her, sweeping her up and enveloping her in its wings and squeezing her with its legs, thrumming in a rhythm as if it were breathing hard.

Twilight let the encompassing moonlight calm her, which didn’t take long. Finally, she took a breath and said, “I’m fine, Luna. It was a shock, but I’m fine.”

Luna squeezed her tighter before, slowly, the cocoon of light opened. “A shock,” she said, seeming to find humor in the statement. “Twilight, I am lucky to have caught you.”

Twilight was confused by the statement until Luna folded her wings and showed her where she was—barely a dozen hooves above the sparkling desert. The pit dropped out of Twilight’s stomach as she realized that she had been falling. If a dusting of stars had left her disoriented, then hitting the desert would have been… bad.

“Let us move away from the endless desert of stars, shall we?” Luna suggested, seemingly attempting to keep the mood light but failing to hide the tremor in her voice.

Twilight swallowed on a knot in her throat and nodded silently into Luna’s chest. The two moved as one for a short time, putting welcome distance between themselves and the dunes below, until Twilight saw something and stopped, pulling away from Luna.

Luna, who had been looking upwards as they rose, was startled by Twilight’s action and turned quickly to face any threat, but all she saw was empty stardust. One dune shifted, spilling a cascade of stars down its slope. Stars and… something else. “Are those… ponies?” Luna asked, aghast.

Twilight nodded silently. Now that they were closer and knew what to look for, the signs of more such shapes filled the desert—and not just ponies. Zebras, donkeys, minotaurs—bodies of all shapes and sizes littered the stardust dunes only to be quickly covered up as windless storms swept over them. Just when Twilight thought she had seen everything, a dune on the horizon disappeared completely into a yawning sinkhole around a shape that was too large and too familiar to be anything but a full-grown dragon.

“Is it some metaphor?” Luna asked, thinking aloud. “We must remember that this is not a real place, almost as if it is—”

“A dream,” Twilight said, finishing the thought in a hurry as she watched one of the buried figures dissolve into stardust.

Luna tightened her lips and nodded. “Look, you can see them breathing. They are asleep. Dreamers, then. This… undernight—it must be the land of dreams.”

“But that doesn’t make sense,” Twilight said, pressing a hoof against her head as she tried to work through the logic of it. “Ponies—there are stars in ponies—but the rest? The stars have no connection to any other races. I checked!”

“Then it is not the presence of the stars in them that is wholly responsible,” Luna reasoned.

Twilight quickly looked up at Luna. “Didn’t you say that the original Nightmare Moon was an alicorn also in charge of dreams?” she asked in a hurry.

“One of two,” Luna confirmed, even and measured. She saw where Twilight was going, but wasn’t quick to accept it. “I said before, however, that they were not alicorns, nor were they real.”

“But when you said that we didn’t know for sure that there were alicorns back then,” Twilight said, the pieces falling into place. “Now we do. They have to have been real. What were their names? Their actual names?” she asked, recalling that Luna had said that the original ‘Nightmare Moon’ had referred to the dark side of the moon.

Luna closed her eyes and gave her head one stiff shake. “Lost, I am afraid. Like the story you read of my own rebellion, no names were used.”

“Lost,” hissed the stardust dunes below. “Lost,” echoed the void above.

“Oh,” Twilight remarked flatly as the world around them began to stir. “Well, that works, I guess.” She watched the dunes of stars carefully, expecting them to pull themselves together into form much as Emberstoke had. What actually happened was much… stranger.

It was not just the stardust that lurched into shape but the black of night that also pushed down into it. Together the two swirled into a bedraggled-looking figure. “We are lost,” it mumbled as stars spilled off its crown like a mane of shining pearls.

“Everything we are—everything we were—gone like sand in an hourglass,” it continued, pulling each leg out of the stardust in turn. It shook stars off its body like water only for them to coalesce slowly into a limpid tail.

It was a pony. The shape was a pony the size of… a pony—or an alicorn at least, but still, Twilight was almost disappointed. “We?” She asked, swooping a little closer to get a better look.

Though the starpony was, in essence, much like Twilight in that it was a pony made of stars, the two could not have looked more different. Where Twilight’s body of stars was like a cutout of the night sky itself, this creature looked more like a ragged void crusted with them. It looked almost pitiful, Twilight thought, though it didn’t pass her notice that the clumps of stars that littered its form seemed solid in a way which she had failed to reproduce. Twilight was caught up in trying to divine what made the two of them so different when the pony’s heads suddenly snapped to look at her and she jumped.

Heads. Plural. The starpony had two heads, and when they spoke, they were slightly out of sync. “We are lost,” they repeated. This time it sounded like a plea for help. “Where are we?”

Twilight peeked out from her sudden new position on the other side of Luna to address the starpony. “You… don’t know?”

The starpony—starponies?—stared blankly back and did not answer.

Twilight looked to Luna for support, but she had little to provide except for a shapely flank to hide behind, and Twilight had absolutely not just thought that in the middle of this sort of situation.

“Right,” she said, gazing down at the twin-headed starpony as she made a point of floating around Luna back into the starpony’s view. “I’m Twilight Sparkle,” she said, forcing an artificial friendliness in the face of her natural fear. “Who are—” she began to ask, but quickly reconsidered her wording. “What can I call you?”

“Call us?” they asked in surprise as if this question had not occurred to them. They twisted in distress as they tried to reason it out. “We are the fate of night, the dream of death. What would you call us?”

“Well that’s… encouraging,” Twilight said under her breath—lying through her teeth. “I uhh.” She hesitated, not used to being put on the spot to name dead gods. She floated there for a moment, her mouth hanging open as she tried to fill it. In retrospect, it was actually quite simple; all doubt fled her when she realized that there could only be one answer. “Gemini,” she said, hearing it from her mouth the same instant it came to mind.

“Gemini…” they repeated, a look of surprise on their faces as if they, too, thought it was obvious. The truth, however, turned out to be quite the opposite. “This word means nothing to us,” they stated, smiling in apparent relief. “Thank goodness.”

“Is that how it works?” Luna whispered in question over Twilight’s withers. Twilight did her best to surreptitiously shake her off without drawing Gemini’s notice. If Gemini noticed Twilight’s ear flicking as if in response to a persistent fly, there was no indication.

“You are the thousand fires in the sky that haunt our dreams,” Gemini declared as it stepped up into the sky to face Twilight and Luna properly. Twilight locked her knees to force herself to stand her ground, an act that was sadly irrelevant and ineffectual as she floated above the surface of the stardust desert. Luna’s hoof on her back, though… that helped.

“And you… you’re the maw at the heart of the world that haunts my dreams,” Twilight retorted, keeping a stiff upper lip. “We’re just here to talk,” she said, mostly maintaining her calm. “About that,” she added hastily. “And, you know, everything, really. How much do you… remember?”

Gemini’s advance jerked to a halt and it reached one star-crusted hoof to one face. “Alicorns,” they said. “We were alicorns. Gods among ponies, until—oh no… I am sorry, Fati. I never wanted this. I never wanted to hurt you.”

“I knew it,” Twilight whispered softly, making quiet note of the starponies’ lamentations. “When the stars fell, ponies knew what they were. You knew what they were, so you remember what you are. But I don’t understand. You were two different ponies? You were both of the alicorns of the night?”

Slowly, Gemini’s other forehoof joined the first, cradling one head while the other hung limp. “Yes, the night,” they said. “Dreams and nightmares, two sides of the same coin. That was… how it was supposed to be, not this.” They looked down at their hooves, sparkling as stars fell away like sand. “Anything but this.”

Twilight wasn’t sure she quite understood that… but it didn’t matter. She took a deep breath and braced herself for what she was about to do. She glanced over at Luna and said, “Now, please don’t be alarmed, but Luna and I… We’re also alicorns of the night. You and us, we’re the same. The same two ponies, separated by death. That’s why we fear each other—but there’s no need to be afraid.”

Luna frowned, earning a quick glance from Twilight. It wasn’t unexpected, as this hadn’t exactly been in the plans. “Twilight,” she hissed quietly. “What are you—”

Twilight silenced Luna with a gentle hoof and stepped closer through the void black sky to approach Gemini. “You and I… we’re too big to just eat each other. That’s not an option, but we were once the same pony. We can be again. I want to remember my life.”

“Twilight!” Luna shouted in alarm. She quickly darted forward to grab Twilight bodily. “No! I—I forbid it! That is not what we came down here for!”

Twilight didn’t resist Luna’s hooves. She simply let out a breath and leaned into her then looked to Gemini for an answer.

Gemini looked poleaxed. They pulled their hooves away from the head they were cradling and looked at them. “I don’t understand. You claim to be… us?”

Twilight gave Luna a gentle nuzzle of reassurance and pulled herself away to approach even closer to Gemini. “Like I said before. I’m Twilight Sparkle, the stars in the sky,” she said, spreading her starry wings in display. “And that’s Luna,” she said with another glance back at the alicorn whose scowl was most assuredly not making her happy tonight. “The moon.”

“Luma?” Gemini asked, confusion writ on her face. “No,” they said through ragged breaths as they wrapped their forelegs over their ears. “No, you have it all wrong. That’s not how it is. You’re wrong.”

Twilight’s hackles rose automatically at being told she was wrong. She frowned and took another step forward, hoping to comfort Gemini, but stopped when there was a sudden jerk of motion from them. A jagged amalgamation of stars had come loose from Gemini’s back. They held it in front of themselves, staring at it.

“Stars?” Gemini said as if seeing them for the first time. “Is that what you call these shattered sparks of dreams and fate?”

Twilight halted, her outstretched hoof nearly to Gemini’s shoulder. Shattered. The word pierced her and pinned her down. “Y-yes, of course,” she said nervously, tilting her head in puzzlement. “If not ‘stars,’ then what did you call them? Surely they were one of you, once? As long as they’re split between the two of us… every night will be a nightmare.”

“Wrong wrong wrong wrong,” Gemini repeated, clutching the clump of stars to their chest and began to sob. “They are our shame—ignominy worthy of utmost contempt—like that abomination of a moon behind you!”

Shame. Ignominy. Contempt. These were not words that Twilight was used to having directed at her. Indignation welled up in her, but her breath caught in her throat as she tried to voice it.

If she said or did the slightest thing wrong, she might never know the truth. She had to know the truth.

Her need was not scholarly. If she could have chosen ignorance in this, she would have, gladly and guiltily. It was too late for that, though. Too much had happened; too many questions needed answers.

Even that was a comfortable half-truth, really. There was only one question in her mind—one fear that she had held on to ever since she had confessed it to Luna in a dimly lit library.

The fear that there might be something fundamentally wrong with her.

The fear that she might be… broken.

A fear that Gemini's words were doing nothing to calm.

The moment stretched on as Twilight waited for Gemini to say something, anything more. They just stood there, though, clutching the stars to their chest and crying, and it wasn’t long before Twilight realized that the light seemed to be going out of them—literally. All of the stars in Gemini’s body were collecting in their chest, leaving behind a hazy shape of black void.

With a sharp motion, Gemini pulled, and the stars came out of their chest. They held the brittle, jagged mess before themselves, looking at it like it was something precious, spoilt and blighted. “This is not our fate,” they whispered. “This is neither idyllic dream, nor sibyllic nightmare.”

With Twilight hesitant and Luna fuming unhappily several paces back, neither of them were able to react when Gemini suddenly swung the amalgamation of stars above their heads as one long, uneven shard.

“If you want them, ‘star’ goddess, then you can have them!” they yelled and plunged the splinter of stars into Twilight’s chest.

“Twilight!” Luna cried out, but she was too late to do anything. Visions of a thousand lives lanced through her mind, and she was only vaguely aware as Gemini lifted Twilight up with the splinter of stars and threw her down into the stardust below along with it. Without so much as a scream, Twilight disappeared beneath the surface where Luna could not follow.

The last thing Twilight saw was Luna reaching out a hoof with tears on her face as the starless black figure came at her from behind.

✶ ✶ ✶

Twilight was drowning in dreams. Dreams of running. Dreams of flying. Dreams of falling. Countless others flowed around her, through her, into her, but these are the dreams that stood out to her—the ones she had a connection to.

Applejack was running. At first, she thought she was following something, but it never stopped, never tired, never looked back to her. Soon, she realized that she wasn’t following it; she was chasing it. It raced ahead, always disappearing around the next bend. Finally, she found that she had lost sight of it, so she searched, running through a maze she’d normally avoid. Her running slackened, slowed and stopped. She had forgotten why she was running.

Spike was flying. Having finally grown into his own wings, he soared high above Equestria. All around him, the land stretched out open, but empty. He was free to fly wherever he wished, but the only place he wished for was home.

Fluttershy was falling. Cloudsdale shrank away into the sky above her as she drifted back home to her small cottage of peacefulness and serenity, back to the calm hills and breezy meadows and her little animal friends, back where she was content and had everything she wanted. Everything she wanted and nopony to tell her otherwise.

Pinkie Pie was baking. She was baking cupcakes. Tasty cupcakes. Mmm, frosting… Oh, oh. Twilight did not need to know that about her friend. Well, whatever made Pinkie Pie happy… was still too much information.

Rainbow Dash was running. She had someone to meet, but her hooves were just too slow. She was just too slow. She used to think she was the fastest, the biggest, the best—but there was faster, bigger, better. Time was running out. She was going to be late, so she ran.

Rarity was flying. Higher and higher she flew, and as she flew, a city shot up around her. She flew, and the city followed until the both of them touched the sky itself. She looked around with pride at her accomplishment, but the city was her only audience.

Celestia was falling. She sank silently into a deep pit, her wings wrapped around another figure so tightly that its identity was a mystery. As she fell, no wind pulled at her mane, and no noise filled her ears. She had wrapped herself up in cozy contentedness, all the while unaware of her plight.

These were the dreams of her friends? She felt a stab of guilt; they were closer to nightmares. They were all so similar, though. Were these truly their dreams, or had they come ultimately from her? She was the one flying, falling and running. What did it really mean to be the alicorn of dreams?

As if in answer, she saw a giant moon hanging heavy in the sky, laden with the memories of countless lifetimes. Unlike the dreams, these did not engulf Twilight. They pressed down on her, dense and suffocating. It was a grand irony indeed that the very memories which would have allowed her to deal with the deluge of thought were the very memories that she needed to contain.

No, not irony. Fortune. The memories were there for the taking—they were her only chance. Sure, they were the size of a very large moon, but she would just have to deal with that. It was up to her to reach out and embrace them as she had intended to in the first place.

So she did.

✶ ✶ ✶

Time stretched out before Twilight like a road well traveled. She couldn’t see the beginning of it; events of a seemingly endless past disappeared over a horizon of time and memory that would take lifetimes to reach.

There was too much. The number of possibilities before her now were as paralyzing to her as the whole of them had been crippling. She might have gotten lost in them then and there if she hadn’t had a purpose rooted in the pursuit of knowledge.

She hung onto that idea like it was an old friend leading the way. Before there was magic, before there were stars, Twilight had buried herself in books. It was books that had shown her magic—books that had shown her the stars.

Books had never betrayed her.

Oh, they could be used to lie, certainly—as Luna had said, any medium could be used to lie—but books said what they said to all who read them, without appeal or remorse.

The past, then, had to be her library, a library that would be open to her soon enough if she could only first understand the catalogue. She needed to know how to sift through and find what she needed, and then she would… leave.

She would leave, she reminded herself. What she needed was an exit. That was what she was looking for. It just so happened that she was going to have to explore the library for it.

Ironically, it was Celestia’s own words that came back to taunt and tempt her.

“As an alicorn, your past will always be finite—your future, infinite,” she had said, back when they had first talked about immortality.

Twilight could read them all. She could. She could see how the world had begun. Countless eras of forgotten history lay at her hooftips; all it would take was time, and time she had in abundance.

Except she didn’t. The time she had was unique. It was her own, and it had her friends, her parents—her life. Even Spike would eventually age, grow and go to sleep. Trading all of that for an equal amount of the past would be a losing proposition.

Luna, though, Luna would still be there when she returned. She and Celestia would always be there for her even if Twilight let herself go and fell into an archive binge to end all archive binges. It would almost be enough consolation… almost.

But no, not tonight. Possibly not ever.

Twilight gazed forlornly back to the beginning of time as memory marked it. Four fillies flocked and played, living simple lives and sharing simple joys. Those days would certainly hold the answers Twilight needed. As her predecessor had learned of dreams and memories, so could she, but it was too dangerous. If she looked back that far, it would always be one more year, one more decade until she stopped.

Tearing her eyes away from the distant past, she chose instead something much more recent, much more vital. It pained the bibliophile in her to do so, but it was necessary—she directed her attention to the last page, the end of the story. Surely there would be something to help her in the days when the previous alicorns were at the height of their power, and perhaps… perhaps she would also get the answers for which she had braved the depths of Equestria in the first place.

It was not with any great amount of control that Twilight flung herself back into the past. If it had been, she could have simply remembered what she needed to remember. Instead, as it always is with memory, it was the emotional, rather than the most informative which came to her first. Still, one would lead to the next, and eventually she would have her answers.

● ✶ ○

Twilight remembered a palace of white upon white. The feeling of the floor under her hooves was like silk layered several hooves thick; it was solid, but completely swallowed all sound and shock. It was cloud, she remembered. Cloud crafted by the finest artisans that ponykind had to offer, the likes of which Equestria had not seen since.

She could see them in her mind’s eye; dun brown ponies lined up in form and dressed all in white, working the cloud, laboriously folding, smoothing and polishing it until it was luminescent enough for divinity’s hoof and solid enough for those less divine.

The memory swam as Twilight tried to shake her head. She was getting distracted. The memories were… thick. They didn’t come to her easily and seemed to contradict each other in turn. She remembered being on a balcony looking down at her sister. She remembered being down in the courtyard, looking up at the same.

“It is profane!” the her from down in the courtyard shouted. She was an alicorn taller than Celestia—or rather, taller than Nightmare Moon, for with her rich violet coat and new moon cutie mark, she was clearly of the night. Far from the fearsome visage of the self-styled queen, however, the inky black mane of the alicorn in the courtyard framed gentle eyes twisted in distress. “Why can’t you see how wrong it is?”

“Well, I think it’s beautiful,” the alicorn on the balcony said with a long, dreamy sigh. Her midnight blue coat outlined a form whose posture was less confrontational than that of her sister in the courtyard, and her auroral mane gave her an almost wispy look as she leaned out over the hoofrail.

“It’s the purest expression of love, don’t you think?” she continued to say, clearly living in a very different world than her sister. “Two eternal souls become one—how can you not see the wonder? Afternoon tea with Luma… flying with Vita… I’ll miss it, but we’ve been doing that forever. Literally forever. It’ll be a grand thing to have a new sister after all these years.”

“That thing is not my sister!” the figure in the courtyard shouted. She spread her wings wide and leapt up to the balcony with one strong flap to perch above her sister on the hoofrail. “Luma, the light of day,” she said stepping down onto the balcony proper and stalking around her sister. “Vita, the fire of life,” she continued as her sister rolled her eyes and got a hoof in the chest for it. “Somni, the dream of night,” she recited with a huff.

“And Fati, the fate of death,” the other alicorn droned in conclusion, giving her sister’s long violet horn a flick with her hoof. “Yes, it got old, didn’t it?”

“It was right!” Fati shouted, stomping her hooves on the balcony with an unsatisfying thump as she tried to put her feelings into words. “It was fate. That thing? It scares me, Somni, down to my bones.”

“Oh please,” Somni said, throwing a hoof over the balcony as she looked up into the late afternoon sky where hung their new sister. “Spare me your fate talk. You have no imagination. Not every future has to be a nightmare.”

“Well excuse me for guarding the gates of death itself and turning back those I am able,” she said, fuming as she rubbed her horn where Somni had struck it. “It’s not like that’s important or anything.”

“Say what you will,” Somni said, taunting her sister with a theatric shrug without looking away from the sun in the sky. “But for all you ‘guard’ the gate, you’ve still never poked your head through it. You’re as blind as the rest of us; we’ll never see the other side, and I, for one, am glad for it.”

“You do know that there isn’t an actual gate, right?” Fati asked with a flat sourness in her voice. “Look, I don’t need to see beyond this life to know that this imbalance cannot stand!”

“Oh, it’s about balance now, is it?” Somni asked, turning to look at her with a devious smile. “Well then,” she said, slinking a viridian-tipped wing over her sister’s shoulders and giving her a look that was anything but sisterly. “Why don’t you and I make it balanced, then?”

“You—you—” Fati’s face instantly colored; her mouth hung open, empty of retort. Eventually she managed to snap her jaw shut, and it was through clenched teeth that the wordless sound of her frustration echoed through the palace. “You are impossible!” she finally managed as Somni collapsed into laughter at her reaction.

Seeing that she would get no sympathy from her sister, Fati gave up and stormed off, leaving Somni lying there.

Somni’s laughter petered out into a melancholy smile as she watched her sister go. She was fun to tease, and Somni doubted that she would ever grow tired of it.

If only Fati had known that in her heart, she had not entirely been joking.

✶ ✶ ✶

Utopia. That was the name of the palace-city in the clouds where the four alicorns had lived since time immemorial. It was not fictional, Twilight realized, and she was more glad than ever that her own nation no longer resembled it even in name.

It was an awe-inspiring sight: that much was fact. It was a shining white pony-made mountain in the sky, its pearlescent tower-dotted peaks going on for miles and miles. In fact, it was so great that if one were to stand in the center of it, the city had its own horizon in every direction. It was as if the surface below did not exist—and there began the problems.

Utopia was not a city of any nation, and the alicorns therein suffered no titles given to them by ponies. They were simply gods, and they did as gods do—which is to say, whatever they wished. They did not consider this right or wrong; it was simply the way of things.

The city was, at its heart, an extended palace. All ponies in Utopia, from the greatest leader to the lowest foal, served the alicorns and kept it immaculate from end to end lest the eyes of the goddesses fall on anything unworthy. This was their duty, and it went far beyond simply keeping the streets clean. Their role in life, above all others, was to live beautifully.

Beauty, however, is ever in the eye of the beholder, and the owners of the walled garden that was Utopia had eyes that looked upon their subjects from high above. Raised in a society that rejected personal possessions, personal choice, even personal volition, it had long become a fact that the ponies of Utopia traded in the only thing they had: each other.

When truth became legend and legend, fiction, history would look back on the idea and call it many things—slavery, subjugation, servitude—and in their own ways each one was true. Wanton tales of decadent daylight debauchery, however, were not.

A pony of Utopia could own another in every way that mattered, it was true, yet no claim superseded that of the goddesses. There were no laws to bind what one pony could do to another, save that all was carried out as befitted this, the greatest city in all the land. It was simple, and, if one were an omniscient goddess, it worked perfectly.

The dragons of the world below disagreed. In fact, the two races seemed to go out of their way to be contrary to each other. Let the alicorns have their solitary city in the sky, they said. We shall build a multitude of empires across the lands. Let them reject all but their own kind; we shall rule all the races of the world—equines included. Let them rule by whim and absence; we shall have law.

The dragon empires dwarfed the city of Utopia. Utopia, in turn, ignored them utterly. So it had been for longer than even gods and monsters remembered, and so it was… until the day that four alicorns became three and the first dragon ambassador showed up at the gates of their great haven.

● ● ●

The dragon ambassador was, rather ironically, or perhaps in fact appropriately, not a dragon at all. As it went, he turned out to be a pony, but that was where any similarity to the fine citizens of Utopia ended.

He walked through the white on white streets of Utopia clad in red silks trimmed with gold and jewels as if he were an emperor himself—a useless bit of trivia as the ponies of Utopia had never actually seen an emperor, nor did they know what one dressed like. His coat was rough and bleached and his straw-colored mane long enough to raise eyebrows.

To say that outsiders were rare in Utopia would have belied the point. Utopia didn't have outsiders. The city was built to be impenetrable to outside culture as one below might be proof against siege. There were ‘imports,’ as they called them, but they were just that—hardly more than cargo. No pony of speaking age ever entered the city of the gods.

Until now.

So baffled were the ponies by this gruff stallion who had arrived outside of the lofty city on dragonback that glorious Fati herself had come down and see to the matter herself. Standing easily three times taller than her guest, she led the ambassador through the city, a sharp contrast to his gaudy adornment in all her naked glory.

The ambassador seemed to take this in stride, clearly used to beings much larger, greater and less-dressed than him. This made his countenance unique amongst the ponies on the streets of Utopia; in fact, rather than the goddess leading him giving him pause, it was his fellow ponies that surprised him.

Specifically, it had caught him unawares to realize that there were any other ponies on the street.

That was the point, of course. The alicorn-sized street was, as everything else in Utopia, white on white. The ponies in their white cloaks bowed their heads low, lined the streets in servility and would remain so until the goddess was out of sight. It was a small child whose curiosity had gotten the best of her and lifted her head. The ambassador was so startled that he ended up on his rump with his hooved raised before himself defensively.

Fati, one of the four goddesses of ponykind… stopped walking to see what was holding him up. Shocked whispers echoed through the prostrate crowd.

“Is something the matter, ambassador…?” she asked, barely tilting her head to bring him into view. “What did you say your name was?”

“Couscous,” he said, staring up into the eyes of the goddess of death. He quickly caught himself, shook his head and got to his hooves, hurrying on so as not to delay things any further. “Ambassador Couscous, Your Exalted Majesty.”

“And what does an ambassador do?” Fati asked without looking at him. “Other than invent useless titles for those whose station is clear for all to see,” she clarified.

Ambassador Couscous paled at having insulted her so quickly. “Apologies, Your—ahh—that is to say, what is the correct manner of address for one such as yourself?”

Now, the goddess turned her head all the way to look at him directly. “Fati. My name is Fati. I am the fate of death. You may add any honest aggrandizement you wish, such as ‘grand’ or, yes, ‘exalted’ will do, but you will use my name when speaking to me.”

“Honest, eh?” the ambassador said, rubbing his chin in thought. It was a credit to his gracefulness that he made the action look natural in spite of their continued walking. “Very well… Fati,” he said, a slight smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.

Again, the backlash from the crowd was a palpable unease in the air, but Fati simply grinned. “I like you,” she said, though her grin looked more like a baring of teeth. Quickly enough, though, her expression disappeared back into cold neutrality. “Answer my question.”

Straightening himself out, Ambassador Couscous added a bit of dignity to his step as he did his best to word his answer. “Very well. An ambassador such as myself is sent to another nation in order to represent their home nation, maintain friendly relations and encourage awareness of a more global scale.”

Fati looked up and inwardly cursed the heavens—literally. The things her sisters put her through. “In other words,” she said, cutting to the quick of the matter, “you wish to know about the sun.”

“It has recently come to our attention that there are a great many things about your fine city which are a mystery to us in the empires,” Ambassador Couscous said, tempering the subject. “But yes, it has been day for… days, and that thing, you called it a ‘sun?’” he said with a frown. “Most unnatural.”

Fati froze in place, clenching her jaw as, this time, the crowd remained silent as death. She sucked in a breath and let it out in a sigh. “This is why we cannot have nice things,” she mumbled to herself as the street grew bright with power.

“You dare,” spoke the sun, and the city trembled. “You dare,” it repeated and stepped out of the sky into the streets of Utopia like a vengeful goddess or a mare scorned, for she was both. “I am Solaria. I am the sun.”

Fati cringed at the hostility in her sister’s voice. Solaria was not like the sweet, lovesick Luma or the gruff, bashful Vita which she had known for thousands of years. The pieces were there, but the whole was… different, and Fati did not think it an improvement.

At more than three ponies tall, Fati was not a small goddess by any means, but Solaria was half again taller still. With her coat of burnished gold and her mane a living flame lined in the colors of the rainbow, she was every part of her a goddess among goddesses, though it was Fati’s opinion that Luma was underrepresented. That was Luma, though, mellow and forgiving to a fault.

Solaria’s prominent appearance was only exacerbated by Fati, who highlighted the disparity by sinking down to the ground where she had been standing. She hung her head in quiet melancholy, accepting of the inevitable outcome, yet unwilling to watch the proceedings.

Ambassador Couscous pressed himself against the street as well, but he out of abject submission rather than sadness. It was too little, far too late, however. Solaria towered over him with eyes of fury and wrath. “My sun adorns the sky in celebration of my divine unity—and it will do so until my sisters and I say otherwise.”

“Of c-course, Your Most Holy Majesty,” the cowering Ambassador stuttered. “Forgive me, for I meant no disrespect.”

“A pony who cannot even speak my name deserves no forgiveness,” Solaria said coldly, lifting her hoof. “I am the light of day,” she recited as her hoof covered his chest. “I am the fire of life. For your ingratitude of these gifts, you shall have neither.”

Solaria lifted her hoof, and with it came a ball of light and fire not unlike the one in the sky. She stood there, holding it for the ambassador to see and comprehend before she stomped it against the ground in a shower of motes and sparks. The crowd watched on, nodding to each other in approval.

The effect was immediate. His mouth hanging open in bewilderment, Ambassador Couscous found himself growing weak in the knees. He looked up at Solaria, whose face reflected back only disgust, and slumped over onto the soft white street with hardly a sound. He watched the tiny dots of light drift up into the sky alongside those of the sun goddess herself as his vision faded and darkened.

With Solaria gone, Fati took a breath to prepare herself, stood and turned to look at the wretched creature behind her. His skin was visibly pale under his coat, and he was slowly curling up into a ball, shivering. She walked quietly over to him and bent her head down to calm him.

Ambassador Couscous started at the sensation and looked up at Fati with dull eyes. “Will I die?” was all he could think to ask.

“You might wish to,” Fati said, shutting her own eyes in empathy. “Without light, you will be forever blind. Without fire, you will be forever cold. Without life, you will be forever on the threshold of the gates I guard. I shall see to it that you make it home, as is my duty, but take care not to get ill thereafter. It will be the most ignominious death you can imagine.”

Ambassador Couscous let out a breath as if it were all he had left in him. “Then I shall die. The empires do not care for the weak and helpless.”

“Yes, I imagine you shall,” Fati said without emotion. “Will you face your fate with the dignity of your station?”

Ambassador Couscous swallowed, tightened his lips and nodded. “I will,” he said before his brow knotted. “How did you—”

“You may not know us,” Fati said, matter-of-factly, “nor Solaria and our ponies you, but it is my sister Somni that dreams your dreams for you that you might know wish and want. It is I who give birth to the nightmares that warn you to you temper them with wisdom and respect. We do this not just for our ponies here but all the creatures of the world large and small.”

“I had no idea,” he said in awe, and it was as if she had given him a light in the darkness. Tears came to his dead eyes. “Thank you—truly—for everything that you have done.”

“It is my duty,” Fati stated simply, “but I appreciate your gratitude nonetheless. It is… novel.”

Ambassador Couscous’ breathing evened out into labored contentedness, and Fati was about to leave him to the ministrations of her ponies when he spoke up one last time.

“I never got to ask,” he said, craning his neck to look blindly at her. “You said you were the fate of death… What are the other fates?”

“There are no other fates, my little pony.”

● ● ●

Solaria was waiting for Fati by the time she had arranged everything and returned to the palace. Somni was there too, but she was already asleep with her head curled up against Solaria’s chest. Though the sun was high in the sky, it would normally have been night at the moment, and ponies needed their dreams.

“Thank you for sending him off,” Solaria said, twisting Somni’s auroral mane around her golden hoof. “The empires will get their answer, and I do not think they shall send a replacement.”

Fati stopped just inside the entryway to take in Solaria’s gratitude. She shook her head and walked over to curl up on the other side of Somni. “He will die, you know,” she mumbled.

“I don’t,” Solaria said, sounding as if she took pride in the fact. “That is their business and no concern of mine. Was I out of line?”

“…No,” Fati begrudgingly admitted. There was no answer more appropriate than the one that had been hoofed down, but she was still upset that it had happened. She bit her lip in an attempt to keep her watering eyes from turning to tears, not to hide them from Solaria, but knowing that if she started, she might not stop until she had cried herself to sleep. “But you would know the consequences for yourself if you watched them. You fill the sky, you fill their hearts, you just don’t look.”

“I don’t see how you can,” Solaria said, looking down at Somni and brushing her down the flank. “Even after all these years, you love each and every one of them, don’t you?”

Fati swallowed, wiped her eyes dry with her fetlock and melted back down into the silken pillows underneath her. “I do,” she said, listlessly lying there as the day caught up to her, weighing down on her body like being buried in so much sand. “It is—”

“Your duty, I know,” Solaria said softly, sounding uncharacteristically sad as she closed her eyes. It was almost like old times, talking with Luma as she comforted an exhausted Vita.

Lying there and watching them, Fati couldn’t help but feel a little contrite on top of her trials of the day. Maybe her sisters weren’t buried so deep in Solaria as she had thought.

As she drifted off to sleep, something bothered Fati about watching Solaria with Somni in her lap, but she couldn’t think what. She eventually decided that it couldn’t be that important and let the darkness take her. Ponies needed nightmares too, whether they appreciated them or not.

“If only you’d give your love to the one that deserves it,” Solaria whispered quietly as she bent over and kissed Somni on the crown of her head.

● ● ●

It was several days of day later when Solaria was finally ready to set her sun for what would be the first time ever. The three sisters had gathered on a western balcony to commemorate the event.

“It didn’t bother you, did it?” Solaria asked, almost doting. “Going so long without night?” she clarified.

Ever since their conversation several non-days ago, Solaria had been downright pleasant. Fati was almost ready to write the frightening Solaria off as a fluke, though the imbalance of it all still bothered her. She seemed to be the only one, though, so she kept it to herself. Besides, it wasn’t as if there was anything that could be done about it anyway.

Still, the cloudsmiths were working overtime to redesign everything in the city to fit their magnified goddess, and Fati had seen some of the new architecture. It made her feel… uncomfortably small.

“No, of course not,” Fati said, shaking her head. Her eyes fixed on the golden-red horizon which three shapes shared in honor of this first sunset. She, of course, only had eyes for the black disc that was her moon—the Nightmare Moon. “It’s been eerie actually seeing it against the daylight sky, though,” she said. “Did you know, most ponies didn’t even believe it existed?”

“It’s not right,” Somni said with a huff, hanging onto her side like a willow. “You care so much, and they barely acknowledge you as more than a boogeymare.” Her own moon—the bright white dreaming moon—flanked the sun on its opposite side. It seemed a bit dim, though anything would next to the combined fire and light of the sun. Mortal ponies couldn’t even look at the new celestial object, meaning that this whole display was lost on them, but the three sisters were fine with that.

Fati gave a dry chuckle. “It’s fine,” she said, squeezing Somni with her indigo-tipped wing. “It’s always been considered an ill omen when I raise it in twilight; being visible against the day has only brought our little ponies more nightmares.”

○ ○ ○

Somni shivered against the chill of the evening wind as she watched Fati leave to attend to matters of state. She shivered again for a different reason when Solaria took Fati’s place, drying her tears with a warm glow of goldenrod magic. Solaria was just about to wrap a wing around her when Somni shook her off.

“Don’t. Please,” she said. They were two little words that took all of her willpower to say. She wanted so very much not to say them, but she had to. She knew what happened when she didn’t. As far as her moon was concerned, an alicorn was an alicorn, and Solaria was now more alicorn than ever, but Fati was right. Solaria was not the sisters she knew, and she most definitely wasn’t the sister whose wing she wanted over her withers.

“She doesn’t love you,” Solaria said. Her voice was warm and kind, but the words were not.

“I know,” Somni said with equal warmth, staring up at the empty black sky. Empty save for her it seemed, but Fati was up there. Not even Solaria could pinpoint their sister, but Somni could. Somni alone could see and feel her sister in the sky, and to her everlasting shame… she liked it like that.

“Your love is wasted,” Solaria insisted, no longer sounding quite so kind as she reached for Somni once again.

“Love is never wasted,” Somni retorted with all the venom she could muster as she warned Solaria off with a nasty glare. She waited for Solaria to back off before taking her eyes off of her. “I’ve waited ten thousand years; I can wait ten thousand more,” she said with a smile. “It’s good to have a dream.”

Solaria glared back, tense and tight-lipped. If Somni didn’t know better, she would have said that Solaria looked conflicted. “You mean that,” she finally decided. “You would wait that long.”

“I would,” Somni said, glancing up at the black moon in the sky with a wistful look that ended with her chewing her lip in a smirk. “I can always tease her in the meantime.”

Solaria didn’t respond to that, which was fine with Somni. No matter how else she had changed, Solaria still knew what it was to love. When Somni turned back to face her, however, she found herself looking at the great golden alicorn’s back.

Somni’s brow furrowed as she tried to puzzle out the reaction. It looked almost like she was chuckling to herself, but something wasn’t quite right with her posture.

“Are you… crying?” Somni asked, unable to believe it.

“No,” Solaria said, though her statement was belied by her hoarse voice.

She was crying. Her back still turned, Solaria sank onto her her rump and tucked her head between her knees, though she remained eerily silent.

It was impossible for Somni to reconcile. Vita never cried. Luma was melancholy at worst. Solaria… Solaria of all ponies? Somni didn’t believe she was even capable of it. The only crybaby in the family was Fati.

Somni blinked as she made a tentative connection. Fati? Of course. Suddenly it all made sense. She didn’t want to believe it, but Solaria had taken advantage of her weakness before. A cold fury filled her, shriveling her natural compassion like a rose in winter.

“You contemptible pony,” Somni snarled with quiet rancor. “Don’t even try to pretend that you feel half of what she does. She has the most beautiful, caring soul I have ever seen, and for you to try and use that to—to what?” she said, her lips quivering in rage as she stomped closer. “What is it you want from me? Why can’t you take a hint? The ponies that you used to be were so full of love… What happened to you? What made you such a—a monster?”

Solaria twisted to face Somni and stumbled back, her face wracked with confusion and fear as if she didn’t know what was going on, let alone what Somni was talking about. She worked her jaw as if to say something, but had no words.

Suddenly Somni got the sickening feeling that she had been mistaken. She backed off and really looked at the mess of an alicorn before her.

“Damn it, Solaria,” she cursed, completely baffled, “explain this to me because I have no idea if you’re serious or not, and I don’t trust you right now.”

Solaria looked at Somni, licked her lips and took several breaths through her mouth, looking like she wanted very much to run away, but couldn’t bring herself to. Finally, she tightened her lips, dropped her head and took her breath to calm herself. Oddly, a faint smile crept onto her face.

“I despise you,” she admitted softly, but her voice didn’t stay soft for long. Her head rose to look Somni straight in the eye with an expression full of… relief. Relief in finally being able to tell the truth. “It hurts to look at you. I want to tear that loving smile off your face.”

Somni stepped back, appalled that she could say such a thing. “W-why?” she asked. The sisters had had arguments in the past, but the sheer hate in Solaria’s voice went beyond that. “Why, Solaria? What did I ever do to you?”

“I don’t know what I expected,” Solaria said, unable to keep her rough voice steady. “But I didn’t get it. I guess I thought there would be some sense of completeness,” she said, just expressing whatever came to mind. “Eternal happiness with the one I love, was that too much to ask for? Was I too naïve?”

Somni covered her mouth with her hooves. “You regret it,” she stated numbly.

“Of course I do!” Solaria shouted at Somni, rearing up on her hind legs as she did so. She took a deep breath and then collapsed back against the hoofrail. “When it was over, the first thing I wanted to do was hug her and tell her how happy I was—but I was alone. I realized, then, that the love of my life was gone; I would never see her again—never wake up next to her—never hold her close and tell her I love her.”

Somni swallowed on a knot in her throat. “Which… one?” she struggled to ask.

“Which one?” Solaria looked at her with haunted eyes. “Both of them!” she cried, getting more and more upset. “I remember everything. Every last sentiment, every last feeling that either of them had. I love them more than I ever did before! That’s my reward—a love that I will carry for as long as I live for two ponies I will never see again. Tell me once more that I know nothing about wasted love, Somni. Tell me once more that I am a monster for wanting to feel it again.”

Somni felt the pit of her stomach twist in horror. She couldn’t even manage any great empathy for Solaria; it was drowned out in sheer revulsion at the very idea. She couldn’t help it. She of all ponies had a fertile and vivid imagination, and in that imagination bloomed an oily black seed. She saw, not Solaria, but herself, for she had propositioned Fati on the matter just recently if only as a joke.

Fati. Somni did not truly know what nightmares were like, but surely this was one that even she would balk from. Surely Fati would cry for Solaria—for Luma and Vita cursed by their love—unlike Somni, who cried only for herself. That was the kind of pony that Fati was, and that was why Fati could never learn of it.

As she came back to herself, she could do nothing but stare at the pitiful figure before her with a growing sense of vertigo. Fati would have known what to do, but Somni would have to do without. She wasn’t without empathy, after all; it was simply a sprout overshadowed by the black weed of what ifs and what woulds that were entwined with it.

No, Fati may have been the most noble of them, but Somni could see out of her garden of dreams. She summoned up all of her will, stumbled awkwardly forward, taking two steps and nearly falling on top of Solaria with a hug. “I am so sorry,” she said and meant it too. “I am so, so sorry.” She felt a shiver run through the alicorn in her arms, and then she too started crying.

Solaria returned Somni’s hug with a vengeance, completely engulfing the smaller alicorn. “Me too,” she said. “I know I’ve been terrible, but will you stay with me tonight?”

“Of course I will,” Somni whispered. “Of course I will.”

✶ ✶ ✶

If she’d had one, Twilight’s face would have been red.

She, ah, she hadn’t known that alicorns could do… that… but then, there were a lot of things she hadn’t known about alicorns. She did her best to focus on the more academic aspects of what she’d seen. Was seeing.

Academically, she had to admit that the notes with which she had threatened her mother were now in dire need of updating. Updating and then burning, so that she would never have to explain any of it to anyone ever.

No. She shook her head to clear her thoughts. That wasn’t what she’d meant by academic. There were important things here entirely separate from learning about the alicorns and the… the alicorns. Things that didn’t have to do with why she had never felt this way when looking at stallions or mares… or anything small and fleshy.

Focus, Twilight. Focus. Luna’s story about the last Nightmare Moon made much more sense now—including why Luna was so adamant that they had not been alicorns when they clearly were.

“They were considered to be goddesses, but of the opposite sort as we are. Where we share in the traits of all pony races, they were an existence apart from ponykind. It was said that if you were to look upon them even in dreams, you would know them by their alien nature.”

It was ironic, really, and easy to miss. So little of what she’d seen even concerned mortal ponies, but it was there, hidden amongst the bent forms and downcast faces. Alicorns had not changed since time immemorial; they had been alien in the past for the same reason that they were now as kin, for there were no unicorns living in Utopia, nor were there earth ponies or pegasi. They were simply ponies, no more, no less.

Thinking back to the idea of Fati’s hidden moon being entirely separate from its shining counterpart, Twilight had a sinking feeling as she began to question—but no, she stopped herself.

She had the answers now. They were hers for the remembering. Best to go into it without any preconceptions. She already knew that there was no happy ending waiting for her at the end of the tale; she wouldn’t let her imagination get the better of her as Somni’s had.

Giving the events of that night a wide berth, along with any likewise afterwards, Twilight took a breath and thrust herself back into the recollection. Familiarity had improved her control, and she was able to direct herself this time to what she recognized as the beginning of the end.

The idea filled her with a creeping dread, and she hesitated. She already felt like she had gotten to know these ponies, and now, she was going to watch them die. It wasn’t easy, but it had to be done.

No matter how bad it was, she had to know.

● ● ●

It was a generation later when Fati was informed that another ambassador from the dragon empires had arrived outside the gates of Utopia. The news did not surprise her overly much, for such was the way of mortals. The young and bold would listen to the wisdom of the past only inasmuch as it presented a challenge to prove themselves against.

She paced herself as she walked down the same street she had the last time, which was half again larger now—a fact she reflected on as she walked. Perhaps a little humility from being made to wait for her would be beneficial to this one’s lifespan. There was, of course, the chance that it would have the opposite effect, but if this ambassador couldn’t even handle a short wait, he wouldn’t last long in Utopia anyway.

Utopia had no need of the sort of hustle and bustle that was intrinsic to the dragon empires. Life here was simple, honest and slow. In truth, it had no need of ambassadors, as the gods had no intention of involving themselves at all in the dragon empires’ so-called ‘politics.’

Then again, things had changed in the last generation. The… ugliness after Solaria’s genesis had mellowed out and the result was an alicorn with the patience of Luma and the playfulness of Vita. Perhaps she would find distraction in this new ambassador and learn something about the world outside of Utopia in the process.

Being what she was, Fati should really have known better than to tempt fate. When she arrived at the gate, she was surprised to see Solaria and Somni already there, as well as somepony else she knew.

“Oh, no,” she mumbled, cursing to herself. The new ambassador was not young and brash but old and cheeky. He was also, strictly speaking, not new.

Ambassador Couscous stood just inside the gate, flanked by an entourage of younger ponies who bore enough of a resemblance to the old stallion that Fati assumed them to be his children. It looked like gangrene had taken one of his legs, and the rest of him didn’t seem much better, but his weakness had passed. He remained blind, but any could see that he had a fire in him to replace what Solaria had taken away. They all did, as a matter of fact.

Dragonfire.

Fati could see the muscles of Solaria’s jaw flexing. She could hardly object and everypony knew it, but that didn’t mean she had to like it, nor did it mean that she wouldn’t smite him anyway. Lucky for the ambassador and his entourage, however, Solaria reined herself in when she noticed Fati’s approach. The lives of mortals held more weight when she was present.

Fati almost wanted to tell Solaria not to bother on her account. There was nothing she could do about those who willingly courted death except find a vase to keep the flowers in.

The sad thing was, Fati knew that Solaria’s reaction was exactly why Ambassador Couscous had been sent back. Perhaps it was why the empires had preserved his life in the first place. Did he even love the mare who had borne him foals, or was that too part of this farce? It was easy to forget that the one trait which the dragons shared with alicorns was the ability to take as long a view on matters as they wished—even for something as small as an insult.

Fati somberly took her place next to Solaria, opposite Somni as had become her custom. It was her own little gesture in the name of balance. There was no denying that Solaria had become the focus of things since her genesis. She was a leader of ponies, and next to her, Somni and Fati were merely followers. Fati was used to not being recognized, though, and Somni… well, Fati was reasonably certain that the two of them were sleeping together, so there was that. Fati doubted she minded.

Today, however, Somni’s expression mirrored Fati’s own if a little duller. Her brow was creased slightly with worry, and her distant, unfocused gaze drifted to Solaria as often as not. Though she knew them almost as well, Somni had a much more cavalier attitude about mortals than Fati, so it must have been Solaria herself that she was worried for. Fati supposed that that, too, made a measure of sense, so she didn’t dwell on it.

“Aha!” Ambassador Couscous exclaimed, his blind eyes touched by the warmest of smiles, as one might reserve for family. “Is that our beloved Fati I hear? I was just introducing my retinue to your sisters.”

Fati was not in the mood. “You should not have come back,” she said bluntly.

Ambassador Couscous’s smile broke out into a grin as she gestured around with his hooves. “And yet—here I am!” he said as if that explained everything. “Will you please show me around your grand city?”

Of all the arrogant… She pressed her lips together until they were blue then let out a breath as she finally made her decision. “No,” she said with curt distaste. She would not allow her compassion to be used like this. “No, I will not. If you truly wish to establish friendly relations with Utopia, I believe it is clear where you should start.”

Solaria was nodding when she realized what Fati had said. “Wait, what?” she said, blinking. She looked in panic at Ambassador Couscous then back at her. “Fati, what am I supposed to do with this?” she asked, gesturing at the rude old stallion. “Am I supposed to smite him?”

Fati’s conviction faltered. Her eyes were drawn back to Ambassador Couscous, who was no longer smiling. She turned her head away with a quick jolt. She had made her decision, she told herself, and turned her back completely.

“Fati?” Solaria asked, concern rising up in her voice.

“Do what you want.”

○ ○ ○

The dreaming moon was dimmer than usual that night, though in perfect black of the night sky it was hard to tell. The effect would have been much clearer had her moon been out in the day; the sun would have cast it in a shadow so deep as to confuse it for Fati’s.

It sounded silly, but the sun did have a shadow. It was a shadow so bright that no other light could remain in its wake. A suffocating shadow so invisible, impenetrable and inclusive that everything else was muted and gray.

Somni was almost grateful, as it meant that she only had to listen to Solaria ranting as if though a long white corridor. She couldn’t make out the individual words, but it didn’t matter; she had heard the like before, countless times. Solaria had spent the day with that ambassador from the dragon empires and she just… had to vent. That was what Somni was here for. It was what she was always here for.

Honestly, as Solaria’s voice grew more heated, piercing the veil of numbness between Somni and the world, she didn’t understand why Solaria hadn’t just killed the whole lot of them. Fati had said it was okay. Fati had said she didn’t care.

Fati didn’t care about a lot of things, she thought to herself in bitter reflection. Had it really been only twenty-five years since Somni had so passionately declared her willingness to wait ten thousand? Funny, it felt like someone had switched the numbers around on her.

Poor Fati. Wonderful Fati. Beauteous Fati. She was the only one left who had held onto herself, and she didn’t even know it. Somni could watch and pine and dream, but what was the point? Sharing herself with her beloved sister now would only corrupt the last beautiful thing in the world, and there was precious little left to share besides.

It wasn’t Solaria’s fault that Somni had nothing left to give—it really wasn’t. She was trying. Solaria was trying so very hard to be the pony that she should have been. Most days, she succeeded. That must be why she hadn’t killed that ambassador even though Fati had said it was okay. Solaria questioned and questioned, refusing to believe and it was driving her mad.

Fati was the only one left. She was their moral compass. She had been so since before Solaria’s genesis, and it was even more important now. Fati would show them the way, and Solaria would walk it. Solaria would walk it, and Somni would comfort her. Comforting ponies was… her duty, and none needed comforting more than the sun.

It wasn’t Solaria’s fault that Somni was like this. The sun was just too bright. It filled her with warmth and brightness until her mind was hazy with empty white light. As she drifted off to a half-hearted sleep, she wondered if this was the night that she would instead simply fade away.

She would have liked to say that the idea occupied her mind… but it didn’t. Her mind was vast and empty. She was one lonely pony, wrapped in a single hint of lukewarm thought, all alone in the white.

● ● ●

Fati had drawn herself a bath when there was a knock at the entrance to her chambers. This struck her as odd for two reasons; one, there was no door to bar ponies from entering uninvited—they simply didn’t—and two, as a consequence of the cloud-based construction of Utopia, knocking was highly ineffectual and not practiced in the city of the gods.

Fati lamented the first fact as she stormed out of the bath. Doors, she understood, were excellent for slamming shut, and she would have very much liked to have the opportunity to do so right this moment as she rounded on the opening in question.

She was halted, instead, by the sight of exactly the pony she had expected to find, who was also the very last pony she wished to speak to right now. Ambassador Couscous. Alive. She almost had to laugh at the peculiarities of her sister’s moods that had left him so, but her heart would not have been in it.

“How did you get into the palace?” she demanded, asking the first thing that came to mind. “Surely Solaria would not have seen fit to house you within a mile of here.”

“She did not,” spoke Ambassador Couscous in the most soothing voice he could manage as he lowered himself to the cool cloud floor. “The breath of dragons comes with certain gifts that the average pony lacks—but please, be calm, great Fati. I am here as… if not friend, then humble supplicant.”

Fati narrowed her eyes. “You are here as insult. Deny it and I shall cast you out as both a liar and the fool you are for tempting fate.”

Ambassador Couscous considered very long and hard on the matter, but his determination did not waver. “It is true that not all who approved of my reappointment did so with the highest regard for your feelings—or my life—but my purpose here is not so different as last we met, humble Fati—it is your sister who concerns those of us who know enough to worry.”

Fati frowned. “What has Solaria done, now?” she asked, wary of any duplicity. “To this day, she refuses to so much as look upon your empires. I doubt very much that she has given you a reason for this visit.”

Ambassador Couscous closed his eyes and shook his head. “No, fair and innocent Fati, the sun has been a great boon to us these last two decades. Prosperity spreads across the empires like wildfire, yet its people lay sodden in the streets.”

“You have… a weather problem?” Fati asked, not really certain where the ambassador was going with this. The alicorns could manipulate the weather with bare hoof or magic as no other pony could, but she was sure she was missing something. Sure enough, the look on the ambassador’s face put the lie to Fati’s assumption.

“If it were so simple, the dragons would take action, but this ailment lies outside of their purview—indeed, it afflicts them as well,” he explained out of necessity, though he would rather not have had to mention the alicorns’ seeming rivals. “It is not rain that burdens us, but a sweeping malaise so insidious that none can say how long it has gone unchecked.

“Beneficent Fati, the world has ceased to dream.”

● ● ●

Fati stopped dead in her tracks the moment she stepped out of darkness in Somni’s chambers. The scene before her was exactly as she had expected—with Solaria once again holding Somni’s head against her chest.

It was identical to the last night Ambassador Couscous had been in Utopia. They looked so peaceful lying there—Solaria’s hooves around Somni—that the moonlight-stained sheets were even more disturbing.

“Fati?” Solaria asked quietly. She was doing her best not to disturb Somni, even placing a gentle hoof over the sleeping mare’s ear.

Fati looked carefully into Solaria’s eyes, wary of making a mistake. “You don’t love her,” she stated with brusque determination.

Solaria looked down at the figure in her hooves with a warm smile. “No, I don’t,” she said. “Nor she, I. Funny how that works out, isn’t it?”

“You think this is funny?” Fati snapped, raising her voice enough to make Somni stir. “This is wrong.”

“And you just have to put so much stock in being right, don’t you?” Solaria asked, her smile turning to the slightest of frowns at the mare in her lap being woken.

Somni’s weary green eyes opened slowly as if they were reluctant to do so. At first they were unfocused—lost—but they quickly widened in distress as they finally found focus. “Fati?” Somni croaked quietly. “Oh, Fati, no,” she whispered, curling up closer to Solaria. “You weren’t supposed to see this.”

“Yes, why are you here, Fati?” Solaria asked in a clipped, disapproving manner as she hugged Somni closer. “Why did you pick this of all nights to suddenly realize what was going on under your nose, hmm?”

Fati’s attention was torn between the helpless-looking Somni and an aggressive Solaria. The latter won out. “Why?” she asked rhetorically. “Do you have any idea the consequences of this? Do you? The dragon empires are in chaos—our own ponies are hardly better. Somni hasn’t been dreaming for them, and now I know why.”

Solaria took a sharp intake of breath at the accusation, but, oddly, turned her full attention to Somni, who had barely reacted at all. The two of them locked eyes, and some meaning passed between them that Fati couldn’t fathom.

Uneasy with the sudden silence, Fati stepped forward and reiterated. “It’s you—you’ve killed her spirit,” she shouted, barely able to contain her anger and indignation.

“Me?” Solaria scoffed, refusing to take her eyes off the form in her lap. She brushed Somni’s mane with her hoof; the action seemed to relax her at first. As tension left her, she slowly uncurled, her grip loosened and she fell limp. “No, you did.

“Do you hear me?” Solaria growled, raising her voice rather loudly for having just coaxed Somni back to sleep. Somni, however, did not stir. “If her spirit is bereft, it’s thanks to you.

“Inch by inch, year by year, doing exactly what you do, being exactly who you are. Everything you say, everything you don’t say, every time you put mortal ponies above your own dragon-damned sister! For decades, centuries, millennia—I don’t even know—up to just now when you admitted that the only reason you’re here—the only reason you even care—is because of them.

“Can you even comprehend what you’ve done?”

“What I’ve done?” Fati asked, looking at her sister as if she was quite mad. Maybe she was. Maybe she had never been right in the head since her genesis. “I’ve done nothing worthy of reproach.”

“No, of course you haven’t,” Solaria said with biting bitterness in her voice. She looked down at the limp figure in her hooves, let out a breath, and let it roll over onto the floor between the two of them with a grim finality.

Somni’s face was staring out, blank, uncaring and very much not asleep. The only sign of life left in her were the tears of moonlight leaking out of her cold, vacant eyes.

Fati stepped backwards in alarm, but a shift in the sky caused her to stumble. It wasn’t much, but it felt distinctly wrong. She glanced down at the empty shell in front of her for any sign of purpose, but there was none. Quickly, she dashed over and threw open the curtains to the balcony.

There was no sign of anything wrong, but she could feel it—and the feeling was growing. Quickly, she whipped her gaze back to Solaria. “What have you done?” she snarled.

“I have done my best,” Solaria insisted, still sitting on the bedding and shaking her head. “You may see a monster when you look at me, and maybe you’re right. I tried, though. I tried to be good to her. You don’t know how many nights I’ve stayed up, trying to make up for the hurt I’ve caused—how many have you?”

Fati’s ears folded back as she straightened herself in indignance. “I’m not the one that’s been hurting her!”

“Oh for the love of—” Solaria groused, burying her face in her hooves. “Get it through your thick skull—she loved you!” Solaria yelled, jumping to her hooves and advancing on Fati. “She loved you and she got me!”

Fati stumbled backwards out onto the balcony. “Don’t be ridiculous. She is my sister!”

“She was your equal!” Solaria bellowed, bearing down on Fati and backing her further out onto the balcony. “She was your other half—your complement in all things. She knew it. I knew it. Even Luma and Vita knew it. You’re the only one who let some sick fascination get in the way of that!”

Fati only stopped retreating when she ran into the balcony hoofrail behind her. “It wouldn’t have been right!” she retorted as her wings fluttered to keep her steady.

“It’s the only thing that would have been right!” Solaria yelled, rearing up onto the handrail so that she loomed over the smaller alicorn. “It was supposed to be your fate! Your fate, Fati, can you appreciate that?”

Fati wilted under the power of Solaria’s accusation. Looking up at the alicorn towering over her, she could come up with nothing to say, and all thought of trying fled her mind when a light made itself known from behind Solaria.

The dreaming moon was larger than it should have been. Much, much larger.

“She’s falling,” Fati whispered in horror. Ducking under Solaria’s legs, she ran back inside to the still-limp form of her sister. “Somni, wake up!” she cried, shaking her, but there was no response.

“She’s not asleep,” Solaria called from the balcony entrance. “She just stopped caring. Rather poetic that her last act will kill all the precious mortals you loved instead of her. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was doing it on purpose—but no, she has no purpose, not any more.”

Finding shaking Somni’s vacant body fruitless, Fati dropped her head next to Somni’s. “You have a sick mind if you can think of her like that,” she said.

Rather than deny it, Solaria agreed. “I do,” she said with hollow resignation as she leaned on the balcony entranceway and slumped down. “I really do. I’m not far behind, I think. Hate me if you want, but I did need her… unless you feel like taking her place?”

Fati refused to even dignify that with a look. “You disgust me,” she said quietly into Somni’s mane.

“Oh, you scoff now,” Solaria taunted, “but you might change your tone once they’re all dead and gone and it’s just the two of us left on this cold rock. Then again, maybe you’ll develop a thing for dragons? I wouldn’t put it past you.”

“You think I don’t know pain? You think I don’t know loss?” Fati asked, baffled. “I know more than you.”

Solaria let out a snort. “You don’t know loneliness,” she said with a sad sort of surety and held out her hooves. “You don’t know what it’s like to feel the happiness slip between your hooves and know in your heart that it’s gone forever.” With a sigh, she dropped her hooves and shook her head. “You will, though. Give it time.”

Fati stubbornly refused to respond to that, and Solaria, it seemed, had nothing more to say. The two of them lapsed into silence for a time as Fati ran a hoof down the side of Somni’s face, hardly believing that this was real. She knew those empty eyes, though; she had seen them many times before, just not on her sister. Not knowing what else to do, she bent over and hugged the body to herself as the moonlight outside grew brighter and brighter.

Soon, disbelief passed and Fati lit her horn. Slowly, she picked Somni up and took her outside.

“Which of us is the monster, Fati?” Solaria’s taunting voice echoed from behind as she passed over the balcony threadhold, taunting her. “Of the two of us, which one still has dry eyes? It’s not me.”

Fati clenched her jaw in anger. “I hate you so much,” she said, continuing out onto the balcony.

“Get used to it,” Solaria said, glancing upwards at the glowing moon that nearly filled the sky now. “Or don’t. I never did anything to Somni that she didn’t want—it might be interesting.”

Fati ignored Solaria as she set the empty shell of her sister down under the growing light of her moon and stopped to look up at it. It was as if the shining white shape was the only thing in the world; it filled the sky in a way that sent a shiver down her spine. There was no describing it—it was a vast sense of impending as it hung there in the sky above, obliterating all rational thought. Suddenly, nothing mattered.

All of the anger, the accusations, the bartering of blame—none of it mattered at all. There was no vindication to be had, no reckoning of guilt that could turn back time. The entirety of her world had shrunk to this one moment alone under the endless expanse of a luminous white sky.

She knew what she had to do; in truth, she had already done it and was only now coming to accept it.

“No,” Fati said with absolute certainty, not turning away from the moon that filled the sky. “You will be alone—you and all the mortal ponies who don’t deserve to die for our failures. I hope that one day you understand them as I do.”

“What are you—”

Without warning, there was a deafening crash that shook the world. Fati lurched to the side and fell next to Somni. Solaria looked on in horror.

In the moments after the impact, the sky was filled with lights—not one, but many. The dreaming moon spread out across the night, shattered and broken by the sacrifice of its nightmare twin.

There were several seconds of absolute silence before the first pieces hit the ground, rippling staccato death across the surface. It was several more before Solaria was able to stumble her way over to where Fati had fallen.

“Fati?” she croaked, turning the alicorn over so that she could see her face, but her tiny hopes were crushed. Fati’s face was blank, matching Somni’s perfectly. The suddenness shook her almost as much as the impacts of her sisters crashing into the surface below.

As moonrock—both black and white—fell from the sky all around Solaria, the reality of the matter hit her. Just like that, she was the only alicorn left in the world. There was nothing for her to do but fall back onto her rump and watch the ongoing destruction in devastated shock.

“You win, Fati,” she said, beginning to feel ill. “You win.”

✶ ✶ ✶

Twilight recoiled from the memories like they were… exactly what they were; the ignoble ends of three—no, four mares who had each loved too much… and too little.

Her hackles rose as her body tried to physically reject them. She had been wrong. They weren’t her memories. She wasn’t an alicorn reborn. She was… something new. Stars were something new.

Stars weren’t supposed to exist.

She was made up of shattered fates and broken dreams, nothing more the floating detritus of gods long passed—and Luna? Luna was her counterpart in more than name. Twilight remembered that too, though the memories were even more fragmented and vague than before—little more than an impression burned into thousands of dying stars.

After the two moons had collided, saving Equestria and dooming it to an age of Discord, Solaria had made one last desperate effort to save something of her sisters. She had taken from her heart all that was left that was good and pure and attempted to forge a new moon, half light, half dark.

As it so happened, she’d had more good left in her than she knew, but it still was not enough to undo the damage that had been done. In her desperation, the sky was set alight in fire and passion. The moon she forged that night remained cold and dark while the stars were born, a candlelight memorial in monument to her failure.

Her last chance lost, the fires of her heart fell to Equestria alongside the burning stars, and she too died, broken and alone.

Twilight shook herself free of the recollection. It was just too much. She didn’t want to see it, didn’t want to remember it. This was the truth she had come for? The knowledge that the fulfillment of her fillyhood wish was instead proof positive that she was nothing more than damaged gods?

She wanted to wake up and find that this whole thing had been one bad nightmare.

In fact, that was exactly what she had to do.

In the time before, the night had dreamed dreams for ponies and fate had birthed their nightmares. That was no longer true; ponies now had in them each a tiny spark of divinity, allowing them to dream their own dreams and birth their own nightmares in this stardust desert. The rest of the dreaming races existed in-between—not quite dreaming on their own and not quite being dreamed for by any single pony.

Twilight didn’t have to be a part of it. Maybe some day, when she could handle it, but not here. Not tonight. Not with Luna out there, alone with Gemini. How long had she been lost in dream already? How long had reliving the lives of ancient alicorns taken? She hoped she wasn’t too late.

She didn’t have any time for dreams, and the memories were the same. They weren’t hers; they were just the twinkling of ancient stars, echoes of a long-past fate. They were a nightmare she could wake up from.

No, not a nightmare, she rejected that thought. She had gone into this looking for a way to handle these stars—this influx of being—and escape their crushing weight, but she could not do so by anchoring herself to them. She’d had it right to begin with.

Dreams and nightmares did not answer to her, nor did she concern herself with them. If these stars were to be a part of her, they would have to be numbered, catalogued and registered. In her mind, each star was a book, precious, yes, and enlightening, but separated from her by page and cover and shelf. Each one was to be picked and perused at her leisure. No more, no less.

She took a deep breath and shut the book she had in front of her. This particular book was very large indeed, yet it somehow managed to fit comfortably in her hooves. She marveled one last time at the cover, with its stylized images of six alicorns, four in the center, overshadowed by one above and casting a shadow of one below.

Her gaze lingered on the images of the two she had yet to read about. Some day, perhaps, she would start it from the beginning, but not tonight. The book had served its purpose for now—not just in helping her escape, but… everything she had wanted to know about alicorns and was afraid to ask.

Yes, even that, she thought with a shudder.

The book made a soft thump on the endtable as she set it aside. In the silence afterwards, she found herself looking at her hoof and the stars therein. As she stared, she realized it was shaking and quickly clutched it to her chest. Stars. She took a deep breath, her heart was pounding. Stars.

The word meant something else, now.

It was nothing. She stood, stretched the kinks out of her back and started to walk away. Somehow, the book managed to remain in the corner of her eye, reminding her of the things she’d learned, and she wondered if she had erred.

Dreams, after all, are forgotten in the morning.

The silence the book left in its wake was deafening.

She hurried on, leaving the book behind and trying not to think about it. She had to find Luna and tell her about this, then everything would be fine.

As soon as she found Luna, everything would be fine.

She didn’t see the sparkling trail she left in her wake.

Author's Note:

● Author's Notes ●

Comments

[DrakeyC]

"The Sinkhole of the Royal Pony Sisters"

[Obsidian]

It truly was an epic chapter. I can't wait to see how Luna/Twilight resolve Gemini. Putting the ghosts (read: fragmented memories given life, of a sort) of Fati/Sommi to rest?

[Fr3AkAzOiD]

Yay, new stuff.

[Poco]

Okay, so I got that there were 4 alicorns, 2 combined into the sun one? Then the alicorn of dreams was in love with Fati, alicorn of death or fate, But Fati wasn't in love with her. Then the dream one shacked up with the sun one, and then stopped giving a shit about the dreams because Fati didn't love her? or was like, blinded by the sun alicorn? Or maybe kept up at night so she couldn't dream their dreams for them? And then basically killed herself and decided to kill them all with a moon drop? and then Fati pulled a moon collision thing causing stars, and then the sun one tried to make another moon and made the current moon, killing herself. did I get that right? I'm slightly confused. or was when I started writing this comment. Will probably have to reread it a couple times to get it fully

I also didn't expect the Nightmare moon story to come into play. Well played.

Also this explains Celestia's issues better too.

[Bulder]

This fic was updated... buzzlamp.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/fan1.gif

[TheStratovarian]

A lovely end to this wham chapter. And bravo, this was a jewel to read. A heartbreaking one, but a jewel none the less for all the blood spilled.

[reginaldg]

4896201
Luma and Vita loved each other so much that they decided to merge into one being, so they could always be together. They didn't realize until afterward that they missed being separate.

Somni was waiting for Fati to finally return her love, but eventually she wasted away because Fati was too concerned with her duty to the world to make time for love. She and Solaria tried to comfort each other by doing things that would make Twilight blush, but that wasn't enough for Somni. First she gave up on her duty to dream, then she gave up living, and apparently her moon fell when she wasn't there to control it. And it seems that, in death, they've been joined in the way Fati hated about Solaria.

So the real question, I think, is: Will history repeat itself?

[Poco]

4896308

Yeah, that's what I eventually figured after repeated readings and the authors notes. I should really edit my comments BEFORE I post them... only thing that's really slightly unclear is Somni's death/dream problem. the way its written makes it seem like Solaria is accidently somehow responsible.

[Marching Thunder]

Go wow, that was friggin impressive! You've outdone yourself again!

[LightningDashes]

breathtaking chapter

[ArguingPizza]

This reads almost like Paradise Lost, such an epic drama playing out. That has to suck for Twilight to learn that she's basically a Cobble Fighter. I'm really looking forward to seeing how she deals with it, and especially Luna after learning all this

[Ninjayorkshire]

Man i felt like i was reading some Greek Tragedy, thank you for the chapter it is written beautifully and full of emotion

[sorathecrow]

Wow. My head kinda hurts. In a good way.

Love Twilight's reaction to alicorn-boinking.

[Obsidian]

4896327 - She is in part.

Solaria was unstable since her genesis. She latched onto Sommi and sorta guilt-tripped Sommi to act the part less she become more unstable. Sommi, living in the shadow of Solaria was completely overshadowed, both metaphysically and literally. If Solaria hadn't been a strain on Sommi, Sommi might well have been able to continue on with her longing from afar for eons.

Unfortunately, it took only 25 years and a moment of honesty from Fati to have Sommi simply give up.

[sorathecrow]

4896659
Yeah, it seemed to me like Solaria was a main cause for Somni's rapid fall into depression, roping her into an emotionally leechy/abusive relationship like she did.

[FLUTTERxxDASH]

I am quite positively speechless, I cried numerous times reading this chapter, never before has a feeling so deep and strong welled up within me over a story. This was beautiful, truly a rose among weeds, the best thing I have ever read. I just wanted to thank you, thank you so much for giving me this melancholy feeling, this sad but lovely feeling. I cannot wait for the next chapter, I wouldn't even mind waiting ten years if it was as brilliant and deep as this chapter, carry on with this fine piece of art. Forever a fan, Serra. I love this story so much

[Cast-Iron Caryatid]

Eep, I just realized I hadn't actually responded to anyone here yet! I like to let other readers answer questions whenever possible, not just because I like hearing people's interpretations, but because it tends to carry less of a "I'm the author, so I'm right" vibe.

That said, 4896694 4896659 4896308 <-- these are all right on the money

Also, 4896645 4896581 4896576 4896572 4896438 4896257

I don't thank you guys for these comments enough. It's hard for me to come up with something to say to each one, but I want you to know I really appreciate them, and that you enjoyed this as much as I did.

4896695
That goes double for this one. You're making me blush

[TheStratovarian]

4896786 You deserve praise as well for writing these enjoyable gems. I hope you keep up the drive you have inspired in yourself. It shows in the great quality.

[FLUTTERxxDASH]

4896786 I am glad, you deserve every word of praise

[ForSpite]

And then Twilight learned that to save the world she had to embrace the magic power of threesomes... Joking, I'm joking.

But I did totally call the "Twilight is not attracted to normal ponies because only alicorns do it for her" thing in a previous comment.

Huh... I wonder if Cadence or any similar ascensions will happen at all in this time line or if such a thing is even possible? All the 'slots' may be taken.

[PoweredByTea]

This chapter managed to exceed all my expectations during the preread. It was incredibly imaginative, but we know Cast-Iron has an amazing imagination by now. What I wasn't expecting was how quickly and viscerally I would latch on and start caring about these characters. I was assuming that I would feel a kind of academic detachment, after all, they were long dead. Instead, by the time I reached the end, I felt genuinely haunted.

Impressive stuff. Even people who haven't read the rest ought to read this chapter.

[Ozbrony]

My god, that was amazing. Bravo.

[sorathecrow]

4896786
Thanks for the thanks!

I really admire authors that think big and see their fics through to those grand heights. I always wish I had the drive to see my fic ideas through like this.

[Glazius]

So the desert is full of... the dead dreams of the past?

[Sutetsu]

As soon as I saw the update, I got myself some snacks and iced tea.

...and then I completely forgot about that, because this chapter captivated me too much.

Great job, I really love your worldbuilding.

[Luminous Lead]

Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Libraries indeed!

[Antiguo]

It was... Heavy. Like watching a dream and honestly, not that really amusing. Or interesting. True, it was informative, but the dialogue came as broken (which I think it was your point, since it's twilight remembering the broken past of the previous cycle), stilled and vague but not deep. The way you constructed the alicorns, they didn't feel like real characters and more like a half forged doll that it's being manipulated in an Avant garden production.

The best I could describe it is when I'm in the middle of a cold and I haven't slept for nights because of my running nose and my dry throat and I'm trying to understand my existence through my dampened feelings. Nothing seems real, yet they are the most important things that can ever be comprehended. Yet when I'm out of it I can't believe how many hours I wasted thinking about them.

Honestly, I was more interesting in the ambassador and his fate than in the Alicorns. And he was mostly a plot point than a living entity were alien, yet they held no fascination with their psyche or their desires, since it was crammed to fast into the readings of Twilight. Or just the parts that were important were not put into them.

What I liked was your view of Utopia and your interpretation of what Godesses would create if they could have a hoof into the lives of mortals in the material world compared to the other deities and their celestial realm and the apathy of simply be ideas made form; the construction of Geminis as a homunculus of forgotten guilt and horror that had been crushed into a primordial if basic life and how you described Twilight control of her inner realm, which felt very natural and progressive from her mortal form to her anthropomorphic personification.

I think this video says it best

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbsWQqnWS_s

[Another-Unicorn]

Nice creation...-ish mythology. Loved it.

[Ebguinea]

So Twilight is basically the remnants of all the alicorns, a mixture of fate moon/dreaming moon shards that have been ignited by Solaria. That means that stars are dreams and nightmares infused with the light and fire of life, or in other words thought given life, as seen in the star-beasts and other manifestations made of stars. This conglomeration of the essence of all the fallen alicorns into the form of the many stars also explains why she is able to access all the memories of all the different fallen alicorns, along with any dream or nightmare of anyone. Also, after the fallout of the alicorns' deaths, it would now be required for something else to maintain balance. Thus, the ponies took on the responsibility, made possible by the combination of all the old gods' essence, stars.

Or something like that.

[Cast-Iron Caryatid]

4897297
I'm sorry to hear that you didn't like it. I knew going into it that I wouldn't be able to please anyone, and even though most of the comments have been positive—which I am grateful for—I do pay enough attention to note that I've gained three downvotes.

In any case, thanks for your feedback; it is valuable to me.

[Ozbrony]

And then Twilight learns that she and what is known as ponykind is just an aborted remnant of a real goddess.

[ForSpite]

4897442
Well, if you want some more, less positive feedback, to me the flash back worked but it wasn't enthralling. It told me what I wanted to know and made me feel bad for Twilight receiving this information. For the actual flashback characters? Not so much. But I didn't actively dislike it either. Because I don't need to care that much about these people, they aren't the stars of the story, pun not intended but amusing in retrospect. It wasn't so bad it was boring and there was a sort of gnawing horror in picturing Twilight's reactions. And amusement when we got to her commentary on... certain things. It occurs to me that she may have to give Luna and Celestia 'the Talk' now, since neither of them have seen true Alicorn mating.

Also... Three more downvotes? That put you at... what? Still under 2% compared to upvotes?

[Dusk Sliver]

Wow. An epic tragedy event. My mind has been blown and eyes now watery.

[Crystal Moose]

Well, Cast, you've done something I am not sure any other fic has ever done: Kept my interest after introducing its own mythology.

Normally, when someone starts writing their own history and making up their own 'gods' as such, my usual reaction is "I'm out!" because frankly, very few people can pull it off.

You did!

Excellent update, and I can't wait to read the next chapter.

[Kage no Brony]

And then Twilight burst free from the star-desert.

That. Wasn't. Nice.

[ultra1437]

Twi's getting her answers, but are they the ones she wants to hear?

I really liked this chapter. The four, technically three, alicorn gods not so much, but they're not supposed to be likable is my guess.

If I had to guess which of the alicorn gods played a part in their (the alicorns we know of) creation, Twilight herself is a partial rebirth of both Somni and Fati as well as a tiny bit of Solaria. Luna's not really related to either of the three, cosmologically or physically, but she shares bits and pieces of their personalities. And Celestia's mostly born of Solaria, just with a differing personality.

[Cedric Bale]

She didn’t see the sparkling trail she left in her wake.

This being on it's own line, and the final line of the chapter, gives it the weight of importance... but I can't figure out what it's supposed to signify, and it's making me feel like I'm missing something important.

So, if this isn't spoilers — I get the feeling this chapter answered this and I'm just still confused, though — the modern moon is a decidedly new thing, correct? And so Luna is actually legitimately a new god, not an old one reincarnated? And is Celestia a reincarnated Solaris, or is she legitimately new too, since the sun isn't an 'original' and 'natural' thing (for a given definition of natural)? It would explain her emotional response to Twilight being 'taken' from her, if she's somehow inherited Solaris's issues. And last question: how many of the old gods is Twilight reincarnated from? Is she even reincarnated from any of them at all? She specifically said at the end that she's "nothing more than damaged gods", but she also said that the memories she received from Gemini weren't hers. It's all very confusing to me.

Like I said, I'll understand if this isn't supposed to be completely understood at the moment, and will be clarified later, making them spoilers you don't want to give now, but my fear is that I was supposed to know the answers to these from this chapter, but was too stupid to get it.

[Not_A_Hat]

This was very well written, in many ways.I liked your worldbuilding for the most part, and this story remains fascinating and well-characterizied.

that being said, once I realized what Solaria actually was, the ending was seemed fairly obvious, and obviously painful. I was invested enough to finish it out, but the impending doom made it a bit of a slog. Not sure if there's any way around that, though.

Not that I'm unhappy with the chapter. Thanks for the update!

[Ebonysdagger]

Heh, nice. Always a pleasure to read a good myth even if it is a fictional one. That 'vagueness' that was mentioned pertaining to the past alicorns I felt actually helped sell that these creatures were gods and higher powers. They aren't supposed to be even vaguely similar to mortals and their minor issues and should occupy a somewhat stilted other worldly existence comparatively. Doubly so for gods of dreams and nightmares.

[Marching Thunder]

Bets for future chapters:
1. Twilight's parents will successfully conceive another foal.
OR
2. Celestial is going to potentially fall into a state similar to nightmare moon and/or splinter into two alicorns, a reverse Vita and Luma. There's too many fore shadowing a for it not to happen I think, especially in regards to giving rainbow dash her rainbows. Also Celestia's fondness for and remembrance of the story the word Utopia is from troublesome.
3. I predict that there might be either a fusion between Twilight and Luna to perform some save the world action, or potentially some massive sacrifice on Twilight's part. Technically she could sacrifice all the stars in the sky and continue to live, because as she as said "all of me is here right now" she can afford to lose them.

Notes picked up from re-reading:
1. Twilight was surprisingly correct when she called herself Nightmane Twilight, especially if she's made of the stars that destabilized Luna in the first place.
2. The Utopia Celestia wanted to name Twilight's nation after is what the original alicorns ruled, very distressing. Surprisingly said story seems to be an accurate tale of the first alicorns that has survived the millennia. The fact that it has survived so intact and relatively untwisted is deeply concerning.
3. For being made of two dead alicorns, I don't think Gemini was described as looking like an alicorn, merely a two-headed pony.

[Foxhole]

This was a very well-written, well paced chapter. It not only develop the history of the world, but it also created a interesting take on dreams and stars. Although, i do have one question about the chapter: Were the past goddess controlling the celestial objects or were they the celestial objects?

[Marching Thunder]

4898373
A last minute set of notes as well:
1. We're still short the identity of one of the ancient alicorns I believe, we have Vita, Fati, Somni, Luma, and Solaria. This is also deeply distressing.

Emberstroke said there were four alicorns when the world began, however we have clear knowledge of five and circumstantial evidence for a sixth. This would potentially suggest that Emberstroke was lying. As from what we've seen, the number of alicorns didn't grow from four at the start but rather reduce towards it. The fact that Vita and Luma were still spoken about as separate mares despite their merging also throws a little bit of suspicion on Twilight's statement regarding the death of four alicorns at the end rather than her initial three or the confirmed five.

All in all, for all the amswers that were down the rabbit hole, we only have more questions than we started with.

[NightPony Dee]

4898415
Actually, I think it was, if not explicitly stated, than heavily implied, that Vita and Luma were somehow joined to create Solaria. Vita and Luma were in love, and that is why Solaria was so upset, because as Solaria, all she could do was remember that love from both sides, but never actually feel it again. Fati and Somni were sisters the way that Vita and Luma were, except where they loved eachother, Somni's love for Fati was unrequited. That unrequited love was what caused her to lose all sense of hope and purpose, and what led to her death, which was why Solaria said what she did to Fati at the end. It's all rather tragic, if I did in fact read it correctly. Somni somehow joined Vita and Luma, who did not object because they liked the idea of being joined forever with their love as one being, only it didn't turn out as such, as Solaria was miserable. Than Somni's own dream, of having her love for Fati returned, sucked the life from her, while Fati, so wrapped up in the lives of mortal beings, was blind to what her obliviousness was doing to her sister. Of course, I could have misinterpreted something, but if I am correct, than there were four Alicorns: Vita, Luma, Fati, and Somni, which became three: Solaria, Fati, and Somni, which became one after Fati and Somni's deaths.

[Drakshaa]

So, we know what Twilight and Luna are but what is Celestia? Is she the remnant of Solaria who was killed by the creation of Luna.

This really nice and informative but it did feel a bit...dead. I guess I don't like tragedies. With that in mind I really hope that the Celestia situation is resolved soon by rational conversation and freaky-deaky semi-sibling- and-student loving instead of making this into a fall of gods and rise of new ones cycle. Cyclical stories are nice for some but to me they feel like a cop-out (im looking at you Dark Tower).

[kajisora]

She wad nothing more than damaged gods

I can do nothing but applaud this pun.

[stardust flare]

Confused.... Brain commence fic data sorting operations: time 8.35.
Fic sorting Operabions commenced: time 8.35... time till completion unknown.

[Pacific plus 12]

Crazy and beautiful as always, but in much higher degree. It reminds me that epic means poetry and not just something of large scale.

[Cast-Iron Caryatid]

4898082
Curious interpretation. I suppose I can see where it comes from, considering the chapter's focus on Twilight, but Luna is as much Somni and Fati as Twilight is.

4898245

She didn’t see the sparkling trail she left in her wake.

This being on it's own line, and the final line of the chapter, gives it the weight of importance... but I can't figure out what it's supposed to signify, and it's making me feel like I'm missing something important.

At this point, it's primarily indicative of her current state (and somewhat similar to Gemini at the start), though the specifics will become important next chapter.

the modern moon is a decidedly new thing, correct? And so Luna is actually legitimately a new god, not an old one reincarnated?

Solaria basically just took the biggest remaining parts of the moons and fused them together. She and Twilight are equally 'new,' really.

And is Celestia a reincarnated Solaris, or is she legitimately new too, since the sun isn't an 'original' and 'natural' thing (for a given definition of natural)?

Celestia is... less legitimately new, but she's not 100% the same, either. She's technically missing the bits that Solaria used to fuse the moons (though I should note, those bits are mentioned to have fallen with the stars–they aren't part of Twilight)

how many of the old gods is Twilight reincarnated from? Is she even reincarnated from any of them at all? She specifically said at the end that she's "nothing more than damaged gods", but she also said that the memories she received from Gemini weren't hers. It's all very confusing to me.

Essentially, Twilight and Luna are both basically Somni and Fati's children, each receiving about half of their "parents." Twilight can't ignore where she came from, hence the 'damaged gods' comment, but she's rejecting the identity that goes with it, which is easier since she's not wholly either one.

And again, for the record, Twilight's stars burn and their magic resembles the sun a bit more, but none of Solaria's essence is really in her.

Like I said, I'll understand if this isn't supposed to be completely understood at the moment, and will be clarified later, making them spoilers you don't want to give now, but my fear is that I was supposed to know the answers to these from this chapter, but was too stupid to get it.

Neither, really. They aren't exactly secrets, but I've only had a short section to explain matters. Things should become clearer when Twilight addressed Gemini.

4898310
Thanks Yes, I struggled quite a bit with the fact that explaining the two separate moons would kind of spell it out. I could have been more vague about it, but that would have been a cop out and a disservice to actually explaining things. In the end, the only thing that really obfuscates it at all is the whole thing with Solaria, which introduces another less violent way things could have gone. In the end, I don't think I surprised many people, but I hope it was still dramatic enough regardless.

4898373

Bets for future chapters:
1. Twilight's parents will successfully conceive another foal.
OR
2. Celestial is going to potentially fall into a state similar to nightmare moon and/or splinter into two alicorns, a reverse Vita and Luma.

Why not both?

For being made of two dead alicorns, I don't think Gemini was described as looking like an alicorn, merely a two-headed pony.

Correct. She really is just a starbeast—now without stars. It's not very intuitive for the reader, I know, but in spite of all the things that are made of stars, Twilight herself is still the one-and-only alicorn of them (now).

Although, i do have one question about the chapter: Were the past goddess controlling the celestial objects or were they the celestial objects?

The past alicorns were their representative celestial objects, the same as the modern ones—hence why Fati's sacrifice of her moon kills her. The old alicorns had, however, grown into a much more complete understanding of themselves, though, hence their more primal aspects. Celestia COULD do what Solaria does to Couscous, if she wanted to and really understood herself beyond her identity as the sun.

4898415
This is basically explained by 4898613 . Emberstoke's knowledge is incomplete. He was born after the Fati's sacrifice into a world of falling stars which had destroyed civilization,. He had never met an alicorn himself. He knew there were four alicorns (which was true for all but 25 years of a very long history), but pretty much everything that happens in this chapter never leaves Utopia except small bits that Couscous tells his superiors. To the rest of the world, the alicorns were mysterious, distant goddesses.

4898613

Somni somehow joined Vita and Luma, who did not object because they liked the idea of being joined forever with their love as one being, only it didn't turn out as such, as Solaria was miserable.

Joined is not the right word. Like 4896694 said, they had an emotionally abusive relationship, which is the primary cause of it. The physical side—which is that their magic conflicts, as has been shown in the past by the fact that Twilight's sight-through-starlight not playing well with other sources of light—just makes it more "real." Perhaps it would have been clearer if I had explicitly referenced the fact that dreams feel less real in the harsh light of day... Hrm. I'm always learning, I suppose.

4898726
Solaria didn't really die from making Luna, she just gave up, like Somni did—though I suppose you could look at it that way, as the bits she gave up to do so would have contributed to that giving up.

Anyway, you don't have to worry that the story as a whole is moving towards tragedy—drama, yes, but definitely not a cyclical fate. Twilight learns of the past so that she can learn from it, avoid making the same mistakes and maybe even put some things right.

[Drakshaa]

4898932
Yay for non-cyclicality (word???) and resolution. I can take drama.

This head canon is awesome, I can see why it took so long to write. The wait until the next bit is going to be excruciating.

[sopchoppy]

This chapter was excellent, enlightening but also embracing mystery - a hard target to hit, but you accomplished it with style. Can't wait to read the fallout in the next chapter