Chapter 24
“The queen can wait no longer,” said a voice she now knew well, one she’d been learning to fear all this time. It was Spell Nexus, directing the cultists as he’d done so many times before. Only this time, there was a particular pain to it. Midnight Storm was there at the front, and her hooves were among the firmest holding her down. “Get her into the ritual circle! Yes, drag her if you must! It doesn’t matter if we cause a little harm, she will soon reward us for our persistence.”
You finally gave up too, she thought, despairing.
Of course she did. She submitted to the rule of Equestria’s true master. Everypony will in the end. Even me.
Midnight Storm yanked her roughly to her hooves, and Nightfall squeaked painfully in response. But the mare didn’t respond. Didn’t seem to be looking at her any more than the other cultists now. Her strength really had failed.
And they didn’t care about hurting her, either. They shoved, and she nearly tripped over herself as they dragged her towards the opening under the sky. The moon was high there even now—the height of her Alicorn power. Except that she didn’t know how to use any of it. Too little too late.
Nightfall could barely even see the ground inside the circle now. There was nothing there anymore but an endless, gnawing void. Stars drifted in that space, like discolored fireflies that nipped at the skin whenever they got too close.
And she fought again, digging her hooves into the ground, and not caring when they scraped painfully. Midnight Storm was much too strong—she couldn’t be resisted.
It’s not her you’re fighting, Nightfall. It’s yourself. And the fight is over now. It’s time to take back our throne.
With one last painful shove, she tripped over an outstretched rock and went screaming into the void.
For time that stretched beyond perception or memory, there was nothing before her. There was no night, no day—just the void. A void that hungered, reaching tentacles up from greater darkness to twist around her hooves and drag her deeper.
“You can’t fight me anymore,” said a voice, and suddenly there was light. A blinding, sickly green washed over everything, a light that she knew would be instantly destructive to lesser creatures. But Nightfall was more than a mere pony—she was an alicorn. A small goddess, in her way.
As she watched, the backward reflection of that light illuminated a palace. It was a great deal like the Castle of the Two Sisters might’ve looked before it had crumbled, but twisted and warped. The spires rose to impossible heights, and the windows were lined with sharp barbs that could impale a passing pegasus. Evil torchlights shone out from every window, and the moat that circled around it was filled with dark water.
This is what she’s going to do in Equestria. What she wants me to do.
Something dragged her over the drawbridge, through the courtyard, and into the great hall. It blurred around her, as though she were really just dreaming. She was asleep, and so place was meaningless.
The throne room was nothing like the elegant place in Canterlot Castle—it was the same room, except that the windows depicted terrible atrocities. Things she’d done during her first campaign—ponies slaughtered in agonizing ways. The world freezing where her staunchest adversaries had lived. And the beautiful, perfect moon, unchanging in the sky forever.
And up on that throne was herself—but worse than she’d imagined. It was Nightmare Moon all right, if the Alicorn had melted completely into a swarm of a thousand writhing tentacles. Though a few of them remained on the throne to approximate the shape of a pony, far more stretched out into the throneroom all around, vanishing from sight.
It could still see her. The “pony” seemed to turn, luminous pits fixing on her as though they were eyes. It’s not me that she can see. It’s light. Here, Nightfall would seem strange by virtue of having anything good in her. Her whole body glowed, and the green light didn’t go as far as her coat.
But that was a far cry from fighting. “You’ve come so far, Nightfall. I don’t understand… why do you run?”
She didn’t run now. She knew there was no way to leave this place—not without this creature wanting her to.
But aren’t we the same thing? Maybe I could get my magic to work, or something… But she couldn’t try it overtly, or else it might give her less leeway and attack immediately. What am I supposed to do, Celestia? Luna?
“Because I don’t want to be like you,” Nightfall said. She stopped just out of reach of the tentacles, as though it would make a difference. But she knew it wouldn’t—the monster could reach into almost anywhere. Anywhere that had been touched by its power, anyway.
“You do,” answered the Alicorn that was herself, rising taller and taller in its throne. As it did, the light of the moon seemed to shine brighter. Invigorating her, even as the world all around was a terrible, unholy green. “Because we’re not different. You’ve been tricked by the ponies—I will free you.”
Her vision changed, and she realized she was looking down at herself. Seeing her as the monster saw her.
As a rotten corpse of a filly, her hollow gut filled by more writhing tentacles that wrapped up around the bones and sinews, puppeting her. Dragging an ichorous trail of corruption along the ground wherever she went. “The only reason the Equestrians do not flee from you in terror is they do not understand what you are. But Twilight Sparkle will soon, perhaps more. If you stayed with them, you would only be doomed to be rejected. They’ve done it to us once before.”
Nightfall yanked herself backward, and realized that one of the tentacles of the monster before her had wrapped itself around a foreleg. The instant she’d severed it, the awful vision went with it. It’s not real. It’s just manipulating me. Trying to make me take its side. It wants a willing recruit.
“Those aren’t our memories!” she yelled back, feeling a little taller, a little bigger. A little stronger for the moonlight pouring down around her. The sickly light of the inverse-moon no longer seemed so bright by comparison. “Those are Luna’s demons, not ours! We can be something different!”
“We can’t!” the voice screamed, and suddenly the tentacles were searching for her. They were thicker than her body, soft and yielding to the touch, but their strength was absolute. She kicked, but even though her gesture tore some of the soft flesh, there was so much more beyond it. She wouldn’t be able to escape.
“Remember how we were used! How we were forgotten!” The gripping tentacles forced Nightfall’s mind screaming back to that past—to the memories she’d been quietly reliving since she woke up.
She saw through Princess Luna’s eyes, saw a country that barely knew her name, and a sister who didn’t care. That memory came with her ancient emotions—rage and betrayal.
She could see two memories then, for just an instant. A tiny spark of something, smaller and feebler than any alicorn. Something that was drawn to her jealousy. Something that answered her cries when her sister did not.
Then she saw herself becoming Nightmare Moon. The flood of power, and the joy when her subjects finally learned their place. The satisfaction as she gave them back some of the pain they’d given her.
Or maybe that was what the monster expected her to feel. But as she watched closer, Nightfall’s eyes only got wider. She kicked and squirmed, and suddenly she was tossed onto the ground in a mass of severed tentacles, swimming in a greenish ichor that tasted foul and stained her coat where it touched.
“That is us!” Nightmare Moon insisted. “That is me, you. Being severed like this was… never meant to happen.” It twisted a little in its throne, and Nightfall saw something else.
A huge chunk of this thing was missing, near the center. It had been hacked off in ragged ends, still dripping what passed for this monster’s blood. She could almost see a pony shape there—the silhouette of Nightmare Moon.
This is where Spell Nexus’s spell started. Maybe it would’ve taken the whole thing… but it got interrupted.
“We’re damaged,” said the creature, more like a beaten animal than a queen now. It flared out, but where she’d kicked she’d damaged almost as much as the spell. The part at the center was the strongest. Its grip here is weaker.
This was where she needed to target.
But “Nightmare Moon” went on, its strange power warping into something else. Tentacles were too concentrated to describe it, it now looked more like rays of moonlight, shaping into the outline of a pony. Wisps of fog that might be blown away. “You’ve forgotten how you really feel. We felt those things together once. Now that you’re here, we will be one again. You won’t be weak again. You’ll have all the power you want. Power to protect the ponies you love. To punish those who hurt them.”
It reached out again, extending a translucent hoof. She tried to pull away, but too slow.
She felt its rage again—its hunger to tear down, to freeze, to unravel what Celestia had done. They were so powerful that Nightfall doubted there was anything else to this creature. It wasn’t really a pony at all, but a bundle of terrible feelings and the magical power that had once belonged to Nightmare Moon.
This is what I could’ve been. If I’d come back the way Nexus wanted me too, I wouldn’t have been cut off.
But as frustrated as she’d been to give up so much power, Nightfall didn’t want revenge. “Nightmare Moon hurt a lot of ponies, but was a long time ago… You don’t have to be her if you don’t want to be.”
And Luna… her sister had already forgiven her. She had already made amends. Her burden, not mine.
Nightfall Storm pushed the power away for a second time, yanking her hoof back. The ephemeral castle seemed to rumble under the force of an invisible earthquake. From the crashing stone all around them, she suspected whole towers were crumbling. The stained glass windows depicting her atrocities shattered one after another.
Yet the sickly green light shone in from a midnight sun all the brighter then, and it seemed to be calling to her. Nightmare Moon wasn’t tentacles anymore, wasn’t even a shadow. Now she was just a feeling.
A feeling of thoughtlessness—a feeling of letting go. She hadn’t been lying about Nightfall’s injury. She’d been born from this thing, in the moment of Nexus’s failed spell. That much was true. This thing might be hideous, but becoming part of it again would be repairing herself. Restoring things to the way they ought to be.
She wouldn’t have to doubt herself anymore, wouldn’t have to question. The guilt would be gone—everything that had tormented her in Ponyville. She would never have to wonder if the ponies accepted her, because she would make them. They would know their queen again.
I don’t want to be queen. She pulled away again, and this time she yanked so forcefully that the entire world seemed to crumble. A fissure split open in front of her, and something sickly and rotten poured out. Trees and other plants crumbled to ash, before getting ripped up into the air. I’m sorry. I used to be part of you, but I don’t want to be anymore. The ponies are right, and we were wrong. Goodbye.
She could hear a few more faint wisps of objection—cries of pain from a wounded animal betrayed again. But then the sounds settled into something peaceful, and she was vomited back up into the Castle of the Two Sisters.
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Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
9228955
THE HORROR! THE HORROR!!!!!
Truly a TERRIFYING Halloween trick
Wonder hwo the cult will react
Also
.... Okay so maybe that was a bit overdramatic, but only maybe
Welp, guess I’ll wait here.
Ooooh, I can feel the Cthulhu vibes roling of my screen. And what an inspiring way to free herself.
Now to see how Spell Nexus reacts when he finds out his Goddess just had her metaphorical heart ripped out, and WON'T be coming back into the world. Something tells me that he'll react badly.
Not a hiatus! Argh! Nooooooooo *gwarble wargl blaaaa* *thud*
Still, this was a good one. Nice turning point for things. I too wonder if that little deathcry got heard by anyone. Then again, the fact that the wrong one wakes back up (in their view) is a fairly good indication that things just went to the crapper.