Chapter 21
☾ ☾ ☾
Luna launched herself skyward towards the location of the clash, but there was nothing to do; what had been done had been done. Even as Luna approached, the shining bits of Harmony were falling to Equestria, too numerous to collect. She thought, then, to entrap Astri before the mad alicorn could recover, but she, too, crumbled to stardust under Luna’s hooves, leaving her at a loss for something to do as she hung there in the sky.
All she could think about as she turned around and watched the shattered pieces of Harmony’s broken body fall out of the sky was that once again she had not appreciated somepony until their loss was felt, though unlike when she had been angry at Twilight over her reclamation of the stars, Luna did not expect that she would get a second chance to get to know Harmony… or for that matter, for Harmony to get to know herself.
That, perhaps, was the greatest tragedy; Harmony had not been particularly likable, but she could hardly have been expected to be, given her life up until then, such as it was. Luna herself had hardly been good company upon her return, even if one was to ignore the Nightmare Moon situation, but she had since grown past it.
Harmony never would.
Would she?
Were things truly so hopeless, or was Luna just letting her poor opinion of Harmony shine through, even in her grief and regret? It was true that no matter what happened to Twilight, here and now or long into the future, Luna would always believe that she would pull through where others would fail. Could Luna not muster up the slightest amount of faith in the aimless alicorn?
No. It shamed and saddened her to say that she could not. Aimless had been the word for Harmony, who had not the power or the will to manifest to begin with. The only things she had seemed to care for were her ‘little light’ and ‘shining light.’
Twilight and Luna.
Was it any wonder that Harmony had chosen this as her time to act?
Mayhap Celestia would be able to do for Harmony what Harmony could not do for herself, as had been done before—to put her back together into some semblance of the alicorn that she was meant to be—but it was unlikely to be the same alicorn she had been any more than Twilight and Luna were the alicorns that had come before them. Only Twilight could survive having her celestial body scattered, and that only because she was already broken; it wasn’t doing her any favors otherwise.
Luna took a long, uncertain look at Astri’s moon as she descended the empty sky to check on her sister. If there was any justice in the world, Harmony’s sacrifice had been the end of this nightmare and, as a part of Twilight, the moon would prevent it from ever happening again.
✶ ✶ ✶
Twilight only caught the slightest glimpse of Harmony in front of Astri before something tore her away from the book, cutting off her vision of the physical world. Before she could so much as react, she was cast off into the ocean of magic, and when she resurfaced, she discovered that the chunk of library she had been standing on had been ripped apart.
She had barely recovered, climbing back onto her own bit of library, when she realized she was not alone.
Astri looked haggard and thin, like a sodden cat dripping with malice. She quickly dried as she crawled out of the ocean of magic onto what was left of her own section of library, but it didn’t hide the fact that she was barely there, more matted fur than skin and bones; there wasn’t much to her, and what was there was surly and glaring at Twilight.
“I hope you’re happy,” Twilight said, fighting herself between exasperation and bitter anger.
Astri dropped her head, shrouding her eyes as she shook with repressed indignation. “You would blame me for trying to survive?”
“I would blame you for making it necessary!” Twilight snapped back.
Astri took a deep breath and grit her teeth. “Then it still all comes back to you, doesn’t it?!” she said with a snarl.
Twilight balked, taken aback. “I—what?”
“For making it necessary!” Astri shouted, lifting her head in order to bring eyes full of hate and tears to bear on Twilight. “For making me!”
Twilight winced at the accusation. “You think this is my fault?” she asked. “You think that I wanted this?”
“Are you the alicorn of the stars or not?!” Astri shrieked. “Either take responsibility or yield to somepony who will.”
Twilight scoffed, honestly affronted. “What, you?” she asked, making it clear how likely she thought that to be.
“And why not?” Astri sneered, pacing on her small island of library. “If you are not to blame for this, if you are not in control, it’s as good as admitting that you’re just another piece of the whole—and a broken one, at that.”
“No, stop trying to confuse things,” Twilight said, shaking her head. “I am the alicorn of the stars; I have been as far back as when my friends and I used the Elements of Harmony on Luna—Harmony established that—and my cutie mark—”
“—is no better than mine!” Astri countered, twisting briefly to show the patched-together moon on her haunch. “And what better a mark than a whole and undamaged moon? You broke and I was created, ordered and sane in all the ways you wish you were! If I am a part of you—if I am born of you—then I am just as much an alicorn as you!”
“You?” Twilight asked. “Sane? Undamaged?! There is nothing more to you than an irrational desire to destroy me and everything I’ve touched. You would kill millions for the crime of existing! That the world will look on you and see a monster should be all the proof you need to understand that your creation was a regrettable mistake that I have no choice but to rectify.”
“That you would rather crawl and limp through life as you fall apart rather than endeavor to fix yourself says as much of you.”
“I’m trying!” Twilight insisted. “I’ve made mistakes—everypony has—but I’m doing my best to understand and control myself! But better I try and fail a thousand times over than allow you to wipe out ponykind in your desire to reclaim pony magic!”
“You keep saying that!” Astri yelled, stomping a hoof on the wood of her floating island. “Calling me a murderer, claiming I want genocide; do you do it because you think it will help you sleep at dawn if you pretend you’ve put down an irredeemable beast?”
“Do you deny it?”
“I do!” she bellowed, shaking Twilight’s island of library with the force of her voice. “Tell me, o’ innocent and benevolent alicorn of the stars, if I am but a twisted bud from your magnanimous existence which only came into being hours ago… then who was it that killed those ponies in Las Pegasus? Tell me again which one of us is the murderer? Do I remember it because you could not bear to do it yourself? Who here is the monster?!”
Twilight shrank back under Astri’s tirade. She… she had thought of that herself when Luna had revealed Astri’s origins, but she hadn’t actually faced the issue. It hurt just thinking of—wait. “No, stop twisting everything I say! Celestia would have said something if it was like that! It’s a mostly Pegasus city, and Pinkie was there… Nopony died at Las Pegasus, did they?”
Astri’s mouth twisted into a sneer. “I wouldn’t know, since it wasn’t you that did anything to save them. Tell me that’s better.”
“Of course it’s better than actually setting out to kill ponies!” Twilight retorted.
Astri cocked her head in faux innocence. “And when have I ever said that I wanted to kill ponies?”
Twilight bristled in annoyance at going back and forth over this. “What else would you call it?”
“I would free them of their stolen divinity; are you so sure they would die?” she said. “You’ve threatened to do it in the past, haven’t you? Were you threatening death, then?”
“I threatened it as a punishment!” Twilight countered, her face coloring in embarrassment. “Not even that, it was just proof that they have me to thank for magic. Doing that to anypony—doing that to ponies as a whole—it would be cruel!”
“But not lethal,” Astri added with an infuriating smugness.
“No,” Twilight grudgingly admitted, but proceeded to double down on her next observation. “That you’d save for ripping stars out from beneath every city, farm and forest in the world.”
“You sound so sure of yourself,” Astri said with a teasing superiority. “But imagine this for a moment; what if I simply… didn’t? Surely an alicorn—a goddess!—can solve that problem! In fact…all those stars… perhaps it would be a waste to simply destroy them? Would you resist so much, would you be so sure of yourself if I instead thought it best to add them to my moon? To repair and invigorate myself to the alicorn that I should have been?” An unseen force brought Astri’s island closer to Twilight’s so she could look her in the eye. “If I could counter every objection you have, would you still fight me?”
It rankled Twilight that she felt like she was being taunted and it rankled even more that she was being talked around, her rebuttals ineffective and ignored; it was making her distinctly uncomfortable. “You expect me to believe that you can change, just like that?”
“I am a pony!” Astri screamed back with sudden force separating the two islands once again. “A living, thinking, feeling alicorn that you created just by failing to exist in a way that doesn’t defile everything you touch! How dare you prop me up as some sort of villain, set me on a course of conflict and then ask if I can change!”
Twilight actually stumbled back and fell at the shock of Astri’s sudden vehemence and piercing indignation. She tried to respond, but the words didn’t quite come and Astri overran any objection she could have made.
“No, what is there to even change?” Astri asked rhetorically. “My goal has never been to hurt anypony—I didn’t set out to ruin ponies’ lives—it’s necessary! Celestia thinks I’m shallow? You call me obsessed? Are those real objections or are they just excuses to justify the so-called ‘hard decision’ that you want to make because it’s less complicated—because it doesn’t involve being wrong?
“They say that everypony is the hero of their own story, and maybe you created me to hate you, but I don’t see how it can be any other way. I have a right to exist and a right to fight for that existence! I am not your puppet or your strawpony to knock down and pat yourself on the back for a job well done. You are a monster—a cancer on this world—and you deserve nothing more than to be forgotten for the pain and anguish you have wrought. I, at least, can grow past what you created me for once it’s done, while you are doomed to crumble and decay, corrupting everything you touch. The world is better off without you!”
The silence was absolute in between the creaking of the floorboards under Astri’s hooves and the panting of her heavy breaths.
“…You’re right,” Twilight admitted, slumping back on the floor of her two-book island library and staring up into the black void above.
Astri looked up in shock. “I’m what?”
“You’re right,” Twilight said again, the action no easier than the first time and twice as painful. “I… haven’t been treating you fairly. Creating you was cruel in the extreme, and for what it’s worth… I’m sorry it happened. I’m sorry for causing… all of this.”
Astri took a wary step back, guarded and not a little disturbed, not quite believing in Twilight’s words. “And this is where you laugh and say that in order to correct your mistake, I have to die, right?”
Twilight twisted her face in a grimace. “Do you really think so badly of me?”
“That’s not a ‘no,’” Astri pointed out, increasingly cagey.
Twilight took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh as she sat back up and hunched over her knees. “I would never laugh,” she said, her voice quiet and thick with emotion and doing her best not to look at Astri, which turned out to be a mistake.
Astri crashed into her, sending them both careening off the side of Twilight’s library island and into the ocean of magic. Without the ability to cast magic in this place, they fought and struggled, sinking deeper and deeper as Astri pushed Twilight down into the depths. Though neither of them needed air in this place, Twilight could tell she was losing something important; she had trouble identifying it in the chaotic tumbling, but eventually she deduced that it was being caused by having left the last of her stars behind. There was nothing but the empty expanse of magic around her and Astri pushing her deeper into it.
Twilight fought harder, trying to free herself from Astri’s grasp, but she was weakening. Was this it, then? Did Astri hate her so much that she would kill them both by stranding them where the stars could not reach them? She supposed that for all her ranting, Astri didn’t actually have much to lose—no friends or loved ones, no wishes or regrets as Twilight had—yet even with all that Twilight had to lose, wouldn’t she still win in the end? Though she had never had a chance to apologize to Luna and find happiness with her, Luna, at least, would live on; Twilight’s friends would live on, and pony magic would continue to bring success and fulfillment to the ponies of Equestria.
It wasn’t a terrible thing to die for…
…Yet even as Twilight’s muscles began to ache, it became clear that Astri was not tiring as Twilight was, nor did she give the impression of a mare sacrificing herself in order to drag her foe down with her. Astri was exultant—triumphant—and the ice that that idea sent running through her veins gave Twilight a second wind; enough to finally break free and see what was below them.
It was a library larger than any she’d seen in this place so far—or in the real world, for that matter—by several orders of magnitude. It stretched out below them far enough to have its own horizon. It was, by any reasonable estimate, the size of a small moon.
Because it was a small moon—Astri’s.
‘No,’ she tried to say as Astri drifted down with a wicked grin on her face, wasting precious moments in shock and disbelief. Belatedly, she kicked and thrashed, trying to push herself back up to the surface where she knew there were stars, but it was far too little, far too late.
Twilight’s last thoughts as consciousness faded away were that it couldn’t end like this—that it was impossible for fate to be this cruel. Her death, here, would accomplish nothing but bring pain to those who care for her. Then a flicker of memory came to her and everything finally fell into place.
No… it literally couldn’t end like this. It was actually impossible.
Thinking of Luna one last time, Twilight promised to her that she would not let this be the end. Putting all her faith and trust in this final act, she let go, allowing unconsciousness to overcome her.
☾ ☾ ☾
By the time Luna descended to the top of the Ponyville Palace tower, Fluttershy had already procured bandages and was proceeding to clean and wrap Celestia’s wound until dawn when she could remanifest.
The wound in question was a ragged tear down Celestia’s side and was leaking sunlight quite badly; horns were not known for making long wounds, and were Celestia any mortal pony, she would have been at great risk to her life and in a great deal of pain. As it was, she didn’t speak when she gave Luna a look of pained hope, only to have it dashed with little more than a shake of Luna’s head.
“We will gather as much of her remains as can be found, of course,” Luna said as she lowered herself down to sit next to her sister. “I can have the search begun immediately, if you like. I would leave it for you to do in the morning, but she was rather… shiny; there is the danger of some critter or another running off with bits and pieces.”
“No,” said the unexpected voice of Fluttershy, who was still wrapping and tucking gauze around Celestia. “There isn’t.”
Luna began to respond, stopped, and rephrased what she had been intending to say. “You’re sure that you can get the word out to them all?”
Fluttershy’s lips tightened as she finally tied off the last of Celestia’s bandages, backed away and hunched over on herself to relax. “I already have,” she mumbled, her voice barely audible on the windy towertop. “I—I’m not just omniscient.”
“Not… just omniscient?” Luna asked, not entirely certain how she was to take that. “I—ahh—don’t think I’ve heard anything about your demigoddesshood, come to think of it.”
Fluttershy wilted under the sudden attention she was getting. “W-well, it’s… if you see a cute little squirrel… that’s me. A-and if you see an adorable little sparrow… that’s me, too. They’re all still the animals they were, they’re just… also me. Everywhere. All the time. If… if you want me to collect Harmony’s remains, I don’t mind.”
Luna pressed her face into her hoof. “You’re immortal.”
“Oh, um… probably?” Fluttershy said, somewhat surprised by the subject at first, but her mien quickly darkened as she looked away. “But maybe we shouldn’t use that word right now, considering…”
Nopony spoke for a moment as they all remembered that immortal didn’t mean invincible.
“If you would do that for me, Fluttershy,” Celestia said with a pained grunt as she moved herself into a more comfortable position. “I would appreciate it very much. I will do what I can for her, of course, though I’m not certain she would thank me for it. She was neither especially tenacious or all too interested in living the first time I revived her. To have given it up for the sake of one of her ‘lights’… I think she would consider a life well lived and well spent in spite of its brevity.”
“And the other one? Twilight? Who’s going to save her?” Rainbow Dash asked, prompting everyone to look skyward. “Do we really have to keep that ugly thing around just in case she needs it? What if Astri isn’t gone?”
Luna chewed at her lip. “I would hide it behind my moon, but without the power over the night sky that I once had, I am not certain I can do so; it is far too close for me to simply place my moon in front of it.”
“But can’t you—”
“No, Rainbow Dash, I cannot—I will not reclaim the stars,” Luna said with absolute finality. “Not only are they hers and hers alone, but I would not risk endangering her return, nor, I expect, would you enjoy a repeat of the last time I took their power onto myself.”
Rainbow Dash audibly gulped. “Good point. I’ll just… yeah…” she said vaguely as she skulked off to do… something.
“She does have a point, sister,” Celestia admitted. “Not about reclaiming the stars, of course, but I feel we would be remiss if we should simply leave this moon be only for Astri to return from it. As much as it pains me to say it… I doubt that anything as quick as Harmony’s sacrifice would be able to entirely denature the magic that made her, and even if it did, there is the possibility that even that would not have been enough—that she had a true connection to the moon in spite of the evidence otherwise.”
Luna clenched her jaw. “You cannot be suggesting that we destroy it?”
Celestia shook her head. “No, but I feel we must do something.”
✶ ✶ ✶
It was like waking up from a dream with a kidney stone and a mouthful of hair, but it was waking up, and for that, Twilight was grateful. The hair, actually, was literal, as that was the situation in which she’d been when she’d fallen unconscious.
She had forgotten something which she had noticed the very first time she had consciously come to this place that was not quite her full existence as the night sky—back when the ocean of magic had been full of stars rather than the books she had reconceptualized them as during her experience in the desert of dreams.
She had forgotten how her ethereal mane had connected her to the ocean of magic.
She had forgotten that the ocean of magic, as much as the stars that were in it, was her. Even starless, she could no more suffocate from lack of magic than she could choke on a star, and now that she had reconnected to that magic… the concept of being ‘starless’ had ceased to exist as well.
She was everywhere. She was every star in the sky, every star in the ground, every star in every single pony, all at once. This was how she was supposed to be; not cutting bits of herself off every morning and reclaiming them at night. This—not Astri’s moon—was the answer she had been searching for all this time.
Speaking of Astri’s moon—that was the kidney stone feeling she had. Well, probably. Twilight had never had one herself, but she figured having a small moon lodged in distressing places was probably a good analogue. Jokes aside, though, it was… a rather big problem, actually. She felt a rising sense of panic as she realized just how big.
Astri’s moon was connected to her in a way, yet not of her. It was like a heavy, tumorous growth or a petrified limb weighing her down, and in spite of Twilight’s new state encompassing all the stars in the world—even those of starbeasts that she had not yet claimed—it was an alien thing that she held no dominion over it and so could not excise.
The more things she tried, the more nightmarish her situation was revealed to be; she was crippled, unable to reach into the physical world that seemed so close. She was everywhere, yet nowhere; trapped in a body that spanned nations, yet pinned in place like an insect pinned to a wall.
She could go back—cut herself off from her true existence once again—but what would that accomplish? She might be able to gather enough stars for a disconnected part of her to form a body, but it wasn’t certain to happen with any expedience, and she really, really didn’t want to mutilate herself again; cutting off her nose to spite her face was not a proper solution. No, she wouldn’t do that unless she had no other choice, and there was still one thing she could do.
She still had influence in this halfway world, and wouldn’t you know it? There was an alicorn in the area that she could punch. The sense of relief she felt at having a concrete goal lasted all of two seconds before she realized that with access to her moon, Astri might not actually be present for much longer.
Chanting ‘damn it damn it damn it’ in her mind, Twilight pushed and wiggled, taking stock of what she could actually do, and for once, it was actually more than she had expected. Wasting no time, she formed a body on the surface of her magic, still connected to it via her ethereal mane.
All around her, tiered bookshelves and rolling ladders formed into a great circular structure packed with books; the stars that fueled her magic. Twilight could not directly manipulate Astri’s moon—could not push it from her—but that didn’t mean it was completely beyond her grasp. Downwards from the circular island of library that Twilight had formed, more and more books came together, forming a structure that pierced down to the heart of her magic where Astri’s moon lie; a hollow, inverted tower down the center of which formed a great well, and it was through that book-lined shaft that Twilight dove, flapping her wings for speed.
She was in such a rush, pushing herself as fast as possible to prevent Astri from escaping back into the physical world where she could hurt her friends, that she got to watch with her own eyes as her library pierced into the structure representing Astri’s moon, worming its own wooden paneling and velvet sofas into the gaps in its structure. Perhaps in time, like a tree taking root, she could weather it away and break it up, but she didn’t expect to have that time.
Twilight caught herself on a ladder, slowing her decent as it extended downwards, speeding along its tracks for only a short moment before jerking to a stop and flinging Twilight the last few bookshelf-heights to Astri’s doorstep.
She had always wanted to do that; she was definitely going to have a say in making sure there were more sliding ladders when they rebuilt the palace library… which was a thing that was going to happen. Because everything was going to be fine. Twilight would just stomp right into Astri’s library, and… and… punch her?
Wait, what exactly had been the plan, here? Punch her? Really?
The sudden kerfuffle of black and white on top of her screaming, “Why—won’t—you—die?!”
Twilight rolled over on top of Astri, her ethereal mane whipping around along its length as it trailed up the shaft from which she’d come as she struggled to hold the alicorn down. “Because I have something to live for,” she growled back.
“And for that, you would—”
“Shut—up!” Twilight yelled, actually cracking Astri across the face with her hoof—so yes, apparently the plan was to punch her. It wasn’t nearly as cathartic as she had imagined. “I’m all for talking out my differences with somepony, but you just never stop, do you? You tried to kill Luna; if not for Harmony, you would have. Luna would have died never hearing me apologize—an apology that even you got, for all the good it was worth.”
Astri heaved Twilight off of her and scrambled back, eventually finding her way to her hooves. “They would have killed me!” she yelled.
“But you didn’t stop there, did you?” Twilight said as she slowly got to her feet. “Not only did you try to kill her, but you taunted her with what you would do to her reincarnation; that’s… it’s sick, and you disgust me. There is something wrong in you the same as there was something wrong in Solaria, and no amount of feigning victimhood for pity can disguise it. You may have been born yesterday, but you were never innocent; and I think that’s the problem. No childhood—no empathy—just a selfish, callous shell of an alicorn suffering meaninglessly for a hollow pride.”
”I am not a puppet!” Astri screamed, charging at Twilight to gore her with her horn and coming up short. “Stop treating me like I’m not a pony!”
“This has gone far past the need to deponify you,” Twilight retorted sourly. “It’s not about what you are—what you’ve done speaks for itself. Nothing you can say will change my mind—just as I don’t expect knowing that you helped make me whole again will change yours.”
“What?” Astri said, not looking shocked so much as confused, as if the sentence just didn’t make sense to her.
Twilight let her head fall in a solemn nod as she sighed, sending a ripple up the long stream of magic that was her mane. “Yes, when you tried to drown me in my own magic, I realized that my manifestation methodology was… incorrect. I admit it; I was wrong, I was doing it wrong, and it’s something that I’ll have to face the consequences of on my own time.
“But it also means that you’re wrong, and everything you believe about me is wrong. I’m not broken, I’m not defective and I’m not going to inevitably fall into madness, splintering off into more and more things like you. Harmony may not have intended to create me, but looking at how ponies have developed alongside magic, I think there was never any chance of it going as self-destructively wrong as we all thought. You see it in names and cutie marks—magic is not random. It’s not perfect; it’s not always what we expect, but it… finds a way, and the fact that my existence brings that quality to ponykind as a whole… I think it’s beautiful.”
“I think it’s an abomination,” was Astri’s predictable, automatic response.
Twilight let out a heavy sigh. “Right. I did say that you wouldn’t care, so I don’t know why I would have expected otherwise. That’s… it’s fine. Everything will end in sunshine and rainbows—or auroras and stargazing, I suppose—just so long as that path of magic takes me through you.”
“Fine. Let’s end this,” Astri snarled. “Do your worst.”
Twilight bent her knees and scratched at the ground with her hoof. She just needed to… do what, exactly? She had stopped Astri from escaping, which was good, but her plans still hadn’t evolved past the whole punching idea which had been kind of lacking, so long as she was being honest with herself. She was no fighter, and without her magic or orbital friendship lasers to fall back on, she really was scraping the bottom of the barrel as far as options for fighting alicorns went.
Wait.
Would that—yes, it would, and yes, she could do that. They were all out of the friendship type, but regular old orbital lasers? Those she could get.
All at once, Twilight and Astri rushed each other. Astri tried to gore Twilight down the side as she had Celestia, but she didn’t know that Twilight had been watching the last time and was expecting it. Twilight juked in the same direction as Astri and gored her down her open side. Twilight allowed herself to feel a little bit of vindication at not only actually winning an exchange of horn-to-horn combat, but also paying Astri back for what she’d done to Celestia—but that wasn’t the point. Astri would recover quickly, but Twilight just needed a few moments to seal her fate.
Not even looking back, Twilight continued her charge until she reached the edge of her library shaft and drew a book off the shelf. Quickly making sure that it wasn’t the star of an actual pony, she threw it to the ground and tore a page out with her hoof. Another short scramble later, she scrounged up a quill and inkpot and began to write.
Dear Princess Celestia,
Wait, no, not that. She had just scratched that line out and was about to write something else when a hoof cracked into the side of her head, sending her sprawling. For once, Astri said nothing, her face stuck in a grimace of pain as she stomped after Twilight, limping and bleeding black-spotted moonlight.
Twilight’s head swam from the impact, but she still had the wherewithal to grab the inkpot in her hoof and splash Astri with it, aiming for her eyes. Regretfully, Twilight then proceeded to waste any time this tactic had gained her by appreciating the fact that the ink had made no appreciable difference to Astri’s splotchy coat.
Just as Asti was about to reach her again, Twilight grabbed the quill and parchment in her teeth and scrambled back, considering her options. Astri continued to plod forward, a crazed wrath in her eyes when the whole floor jerkly tilted then shook with a wrenching crash, knocking the standing alicorn to the ground.
Twilight had pulled her shaft free from Astri’s moon, and as the two of them got to their hooves again—with Twilight taking every spare moment she could to write her letter—it was retracting to the surface, lifting them along with it. Unfortunately, some of Astri’s moon had come free, so she wouldn’t be deprived of magic, but Twilight would take any advantage she could get. Worse, she was also steadily losing an advantage as Astri’s wound was almost healed, causing her to limp less and less.
Still, Twilight wasn’t out of tricks. Astri came at her again, and Twilight leapt out of the way, dodging two—three times, until her back was to the wall. The next time Astri rushed her, Twilight grabbed the ladder behind her and let it pull her up, aiming a kick at Astri’s horn as she did so; it wasn’t a solid hit, but it certainly did piss her off.
Twilight used one hoof to scatter a shelf full of books on top of Astri and then used the flat, empty surface to scribble a few more lines of her letter before the irate alicorn leapt at her, taking to the air on her wings rather than bother with the no-doubt uncooperative furnishings. Twilight didn’t really have the fine control of the environment to effectively combat Astri, though she definitely could have made it uncomfortable given the opportunity. As such, the reading chair that Astri took to the face was, as it so happened, an entirely chance circumstance, but it did give Twilight a chance to reposition herself a few shelves higher with a couple flaps of her wings and write a few more lines.
Twilight’s luck in evading Astri couldn’t hold out forever, though, and on Astri’s next pass, Twilight ducked right instead of left and took a painful kick to the side. If that had been all, it would have been fine, but the kick also knocked her clear of the ladder, sending her crashing down onto the wooden floor more than two stories below. She wasn’t sure if she could actually break anything in this place, but the pain in her body told her it wasn’t for a lack of trying.
Twilight had to spit out the third of the quill that was still in her mouth, and was looking for the letter when a shadow descended on her from above. She tried to throw herself to the side, but her bad luck was all coming at once, and this time there was a distinctive snap as Astri came down on one of her back legs, forcing her to cry out in blinding pain. She was only saved from a follow-up attack by the surprise of the walls around them suddenly vanishing.
Twilight’s shaft, the book-lined walls of which had been pulling in as it retreated from Astri’s moon had finally reached the surface, and instead of stopping there, suddenly inverted into a great tower rising into the void-black sky. She had expected this; it was an important part of her plan. What wasn’t an important part of her plan was the sudden burst of wind that it caused.
Twilight desperately searched the towertop for the letter she had been writing, but there was no sign of it. She fell limp as her heart sank with the expectation that her luck had failed her three times in a row.
Then she shifted herself and noticed a little less friction under her broken leg than she had expected. Gritting her teeth, she ignored the stab of pain as she reached around her back and pulled the paper out from under her—it really was the letter. She hadn’t finished it, but it was good enough.
“Really?” Astri asked, as she walked calmly towards Twilight, her side having fully healed sometime during the fight—if it could be called that. “I can’t even begin to guess at what goes through your head on an average day, let alone in a situation like this, but is writing a strongly-worded letter really the best you can do?”
“I distinctly remember you asking for my worst,” Twilight snarked back at her, grinning through the pain with a smug, satisfied look on her face.
“Am I a joke to you?!” Astri bellowed, her voice echoing out over the ocean of magic.
Twilight’s face slowly relaxed into a somber mask as she looked Astri straight in the eyes. “No, Astri,” she said, crumbling the letter up into a small, shining star, which she chucked off the tower to Astri’s side with an involuntary grunt caused by a twinge of pain in her healing leg. “No,” she repeated as she slowly, agonizingly got herself up on three hooves, her injured rear leg curled up under her. “I promise you that I am taking this with all deadly seriousness,” she assured her, slowly backing away from Astri.
Just as Astri was striding forward confidently, opening her mouth to gloat or insult her some more, Twilight let out a heavy breath and said, “Goodbye, Astri,” before throwing herself backwards off the tower; her body dissolving into the clear, blue magic of her mane, quickly becoming invisible against the empty black sky.
“W-what?” Astri yelled, rushing to the edge of the tower she was now alone atop of. She whipped her head back and forth, expecting an attack from an unseen direction, but it never came. “What did you do?!” she screamed out into the darkness at the top of her lungs.
“WHAT DID YOU DO?!”
☾ ☾ ☾
Luna sat opposite Spike, looking at him with all seriousness while Celestia’s bandaged form lounged nearby, directing a squad of royal guards as they unloaded a wagon-sized crate from a paradoxically larger wagon.
“Do you understand what we need you to do, Spike?” she asked, forcing herself to appear gentle and kind when inside she was anything but.
Spike chewed at his lip, glancing uneasily at the crate. “Yeah, you’re going to use the Dragon Emperor’s Toe Ring to age me up into an ancient dragon, and then you want me to fly up to the moon that looks like it was put back together with super glue and use my fire breath to mail it to Rainbow Dash in Tartarus.”
Luna gave him a grave, dignified nod. “Very good, Spike. Rest assured, we will be able to return you to your proper stature post-haste once your mission is complete; we would not ask you to participate so otherwise.”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” he said waving off the issue as it was no less than the third time they had covered the matter. Truthfully, Luna was nervous and she was taking it out on the young drake. “But, uh, Luna? Why is Rainbow Dash in Tartarus?”
Luna stared blankly at Spike for an awkwardly long time. “So that we have somepony for you to send it to, of course. Most of the actual beings already imprisoned there are far too dangerous to drop a powerful moon on top of. She volunteered, of course.” Not that it was difficult to get Rainbow Dash to volunteer for anything, Luna added silently.
Spike returned Luna’s long look. “Riiiiight,” he said, drawing the word out in suspicion. “Wait, drop a moon on?”
Luna waved her hoof to the side, dismissing the matter. “She will be fine,” she reassured him.
Just as Spike was considering whether or not he should attempt to belabor the issue, a tiny star bonked Luna on the head from behind and began to orbit her, just barely grazing the tip of her horn each time it passed in front of her. Annoyed, she snatched it out of the air, just as the true significance of its presence dawned on her.
With incredible care, Luna reached into the star and found, curiously, the impression of a single, torn page. Taking a deep breath and swallowing before letting it out, she took the greatest care and attention as she turned the image over in her mind.
What would it be? An apology? A tirade? A plea for rescue? Perhaps it would even be… of the romantic sort, she thought, blushing. Perhaps it would be best for her to save it for later perusal when the young drake was not present—but no; she chided herself. It could be important—so she read.
Dear Princess Celestia,Luna,
Plz b 2 pewpew bitchmoon kthx
Luv u Twili
Luna stared blankly at the page. The hoofwriting was awful, it was torn, smeared with dust and there was the faintest pattern of wrinkles that gave the impression that it had been sat on at one point. A single tear ran down Luna’s cheek as she read the last line over and over and ran her hoof down the probable outline of Twilight’s rump on the page.
Luv u Twili
Luv u Twili
Luv u Twili
Luna clutched the star to her chest like it was the most precious thing in the world, all the while her moon darkened in the sky preceding a stark white flash that shattered and scattered the offending celestial object into a cloud of dust that slowly, mote by mote took on the light of stars that would eventually form a shining ring around Equestria.
“Luna—what the fuck?!” came the angry cry of Celestia’s voice, but she didn’t care; she had proof that Twilight was alive, and they could communicate. With both of those, the chances that they could bring her home had just risen… astronomically.
And then, a beautiful lavender figure clad in an alicorn’s regalia coalesced out of starlight right in front of her, and those chances became irrelevant. Everything became irrelevant. The two of them stepped together in utter silence, pulled each other close, kissed and collapsed together crying.
It was over. It wasn’t the kind of victory that they were used to; they had lost somepony, and neither of them were entirely without blame, but here and now, in the dark of the night they had each other, and that was enough.
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I am truly, deeply sorry if the last section of this isn’t as completely utterly hilarious (and heartwarming) as it seems to be to me at 4:14AM
Once again, this is 100% unedited; I have not even had a chance to read through the complete version; I need to be up for my own Christmas celebrations in less than five hours.
As I said in a previous comment, this is shorter than a normal chapter, but it is a complete chapter! Come back on New Years Eve for the epilogue.
Oh, and just for fun, here’s a section that I had to cut out because it was just veering too far into crackfiction territory.
ok, I liked th eend but I don't get what Luna actually did.
Yesssssss!
Looks like Twilight needed a little 'me' time.
... That letter slew me.
9366430
She blew up Astri's fucked-face moon after fangirling over Twilight's butt-letter from beyond the sky-grave. Then they had happy spontaneous sloppy makeouts at night.
What I don't understand is how Luna got "blow Astri's 'moon' the fuck up" from that, though...
The letter is great, but I love that the last thing said is literally ”Luna—What the fuck?!”
9366466
Pewpew aka shoot the moon thx
Also nice update and thx for it merry chistmes to you
9366466
Luna has experience
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/403718/pistols-at-dawn
Pewpew haven't you ever shot a toy gun by going Pew! Pew! or Pow! Pow?
Ohh that was... crack fix mixed with self help sudden realization.
Whatever it was it was appreciated and fun to read. That last scene!!!
Ah Merry Christmas’s indeed!
"In the dark of the night, Evil will find her~"
Best Christmas present I got this year. You did a fantastic job pushing comedy and feels side by side.
Also, Fluttershy's demigoddesshood is absolutely perfect.
I'll be really said when this ends. It became a nice holiday tradition to get the next update.
YAYY!!! DOWN WITH BITCHMOON KTHX!
LOOOOOOLLLLLL
LUV IT
Minor quibble:
This seems out of character for Celestia (both in tone and since Luna had used "clop" instead earlier in the fic). Perhaps "what the buck" or "what did you do"?
I'd also missed the part where you'd established that Luna could "pewpew" celestial objects, but it's been a while since I've read the entire fic.
I'm still certainly enjoying the fic; thanks for writing it! I look forward to seeing the no-longer-4am edited version and the epilogue.
Pewpew!
9367059
That was actually intentional in order to… communicate the severity of Celestia’s shock? But again, it was 4AM. I may change it, yeah.
(It’s not the first time I’ve used the actual word “fuck” in the story; I’ve done it in exactly one other place—during Twilight’s initial blowup at Luna.)
As for pewpewing celestial objects, it’s never been applied to celestial objects specifically, but I would remind people that that last time Luna gathered up all the moonlight from the sky and pointed at something, she accidentally put a very wide, very deep hole in the ground and poked a hole into the dream world.
Edit: Also, I didn’t have any chance to really get intro the specifics other than a couple of mentions here and there, but Astri’s moon really wasn’t that big! Luna’s moon is a full half of the available nocturnal celestial mass, and Twilight’s stars were already most of what remained. Astri was basically about the same amount of alicorn as Harmony was, only instead of being baked in a solar oven, she splintered off of Twilight and was sort of halfway reliant on the stars)
Haha, Luna just vaporized that small moon.
Huzzah, Twilight isn't broken after all and the finish line is in sight! So, maybe a bit early to be asking, but are you going to be more active with "Sparkle-ling Perfection" once you're finished with this anxiety source?
Please Be To Shoot Moon, ok Thx.
It's the 'Be To' part that is confusing people and me. Take it out and you have "Please Shoot Moon, ok Thx." Why the 'Be To'?
Can I give an upvote when I already have given an upvote?
is our tale drawing to its close...i wonder if you can get the last chapter out in time for new years
a new beginning for a new year?
9367449
you try writeing a coherent letter while being chased by the incarnated form of all your worst aspects.
9367627
But she wasn't being chased... She even has like a full 30 seconds to a minute of when she was gored and limping slowly.
I was expecting something much longer with how often she was pausing to write for so long. I might what she wrote would literally take like 10 seconds at most.
9367695
thats not how i interpreted it, the way i read the scene she had gaps of only a few seconds between impacts with astri after that initial long gap that she wasted by choosing the wrong opening line for the letter she probly only had time to get in one leter at a time and she wasnt likely thinking particularly clearly either hvaving to split her focus between the letter and astri like that
if she 'had' been thinking shed have realized that she didnt have to write the damn thing at all, she could have just willed a complete leter into existence and sent it off.
I was confused the entire time... But pewpew made me giggle.
Thank you for the update, and for writing the story in general. :)
And Merry Christmas back to you, even if, ah, it's a little bit late now. :)
I just finished re-watching the Captain Marvel trailers when I opened up this chapter, and I gotta say the music track for the CM trailer was the perfects audio score for the fight scene in this chapter.
personail I want twilight to somehow seal other alicorn memories and power and make her into cute filly to take in raise only to have said power and memories return years later.
9367449
Because it's fewer characters and she was literally fighting for her existence?
Also it's an archaic but technically valid grammatical form.
I have to wonder. How long before they tell Rainbow Dash she can leave Tartarus? I imagine she was told to wait until the patchwork moon shows up
9367449
She was probably trying to write plz blowup the moon when she first got decked the fuck out.
9367078
To be honest I can see why it seems out of place to some people but to be even more honest the letter and Celestia combo has had me laughing for the past half hour.
I wish I had the skill to animate Luna talking to spike while facing away from the moon just to get hit by a star like a little paper ball. Her looking down at the letter while caressing the butt indent, then looking up while holding the letter to her chest looking off into the distance while the moon gets exploded behind her and you just see Celestia off to the side completely lose her composure and shout "Luna what the fuck?!" While Luna is still in a dazed lovestruck stare.
It's comedy gold. If you ever feel the inspiration to write a comedy crack fic about this story I will die. If you do remove this scene please put it in you cast iron cast offs, or maybe an epilogue blooper reel of the crazier ideas you had, or something, anything.
There are still posts here I’d like to reply to, and I will get to them (as well as proofing/editing the chapter), but for now I just wanted to toss up a note that in preparing the epilogue, I’ve decided on a few pretty solid ideas that I can build a sequel off of, so it’ll probably happen eventually when I can get a solid outline done. A Sparkle-ling Perfection and perhaps some other things will continue in the meantime.
9367624
That’s the intent. It won’t be a long one, but it should “finish up” my 10k quota for the month and set things up for the likely sequel.
9367283
Yes, expect some ASP updates in the near future. Normally I would have alternated months between ASP and StN, but, well, the timing of this was too good to pass up. Going forward, even if and when I continue StN, I am going to be focusing on shorter, ASP-like chapters and aiming to get several out per month, so you might start to see one (or ideally more) of those from each story each month. The 10k chapter size I settled on for StN has really become a burden—not in my ability to actually produce that many words per month (I actually managed to make myself write 2.8k of this last chapter in the last day before publishing!) but just having each chapter be a daunting project on its own has made it difficult to just sit down and power through them like I know I can.
Now there’s the Twilight we know!
9370601
ASPs chapters haven't left me feeling like they were too short, so I think I'd prefer shorter but more frequent chapters! Especially if that would help you to stop feeling daunted at the prospect of writing.
Great chapter.
That was awesome!
Also
Hmmmm
Well, she's screaming a whole lot... kinda implies she ain't actually being rational at all.
Not to mention, she keeps adding qualifiers like 'might' and 'maybe'... and throwing around rhetorical questions and fractional information, rather than making any truly logical statements.
Clearly, they're BOTH inferior to me.
I should get all the stars. (Then I shall RULE THE UNIVERSE!! MUWAH HA HA HA!!! ... What? At least I'm honestly evil!)
Anywhoo, this is why giving mentally-deranged beings god-powers is top on the list of 'BAD IDEAS'. You gotta pass all sorts of tests before you join the Q Club.
Ha! She's totally channeling DBZ:A Lord Freezer there.
9367214 That's no moon... it's a space sta- *squints* No, that is a moon. My mistake!
well for what it's worth the story had an interesting premise and start, if nothing else.
We go from a passionate discussion on morality, to a god-like fight to the death, to the letter and Celestia.
I. LOVE. IT!
That's going to leave me smiling for the rest of the night right into the new year at midnight. 100 out of 10! Fucking ace!
9368809
The reason I found it out of place is that when people are surprised and/or angry (just like when people are drunk), they lose their filters and we see how they really think.
We've seen Celestia angry in this fic, and we've seen glimpses of how Celestia thinks, directly (the formation of Everfree Lake) and indirectly (when she's been wrong-hoofed in a conversation). As far as I can tell from what we were shown earlier, she'd be blunt rather than profane (as when she took Twilight's suggestion regarding the "camping trip"). Her way of getting angry seems to be to drop the schemes and go into "I don't have time for these horse-apples" mode.
I certainly still enjoyed the fic and enjoyed the update, and I look forward to the conclusion/epilogue!
New year's day listen/run, and I'm yet again a chapter behind. Figures.
Hmn. I wonder if the problem with Harmony is that she shouldn't have been artificially put together in the first place and instead should have been left to coalesce naturally once the then still mortal Bearers passed on.
Never just stand there and listen while the villain monologues, Twilight.
Yikes. Well, hopefully whatever she thought of is the right plan to trust in.
👀 Fluttershy is everywhere, always watching. 👀
Alicorn of Stars and Magic, oh yeah.
Books are great for everything.
I like the sound of this.
Now that's wild plan.
Fantastic.
That was fricking beautiful.
This is truly Twilight's most desperate hour:
She's resorted to l33tspeak instead of proper grammar.
"Plz b 2 pewpew bitchmoon kthx"
... Pffft.