Back To The Stars

by NotanImportantPony

Chapter 1: Stormfall

Deep within the Everfree Forest, high over a castle of twins, a dark storm was gathering. A dark storm brought forth by a dark and twisted mind for an even darker purpose. The sharp clacking of gilded horseshoes echoed around the vacant throne room as a lone equine figure passed through the throne rooms barred doors seemingly indifferent to their existence..

“Not another step!” A voice echoed, thunder and lightning exploding in time with the order. The lone, alabaster alicorn stopped in it tracks; the sound of her hoofsteps fading as the echoes died, giving way to a pertinent silence.

Clip-Clop. Clip-Clop. Clip-Clop clip-clop. The hard, unrelenting sound lived again, harshly intertwining with a cold voice that came from a room to the left of a dark, moon themed banner.

“Celestia! Did you really expect me to sit idly by while they all basked in your precious light!” Sneered the Lunar Princess as she stalked across the dias, lightning showing her path and thunder imitating her heralds. Immune to all that, she stood in front of her throne and basked in the rose colored sunlight that filtered through the stained glass window above her and to her left.

With a hard look she made her way between the thrones to a raised dais, reared up, flared her wings, gathered magic to herself and proclaimed, “There can only be one Princess in Equestria! And that princess will be me!” With that, she brought her front hooves down, flaring her magic blowing out the front of the dias’ railing.

Within seconds a dark shadow spread away from the impact, sliding up the stained glass window behind Luna. Filling the wall behind her, it shattered the stained glass window and the stone surrounding it, sending shards flying throughout the room, flooding the throne room with the dying sunlight of twilight. With the rays of sunlight came a soft golden aura that surrounded the flying shards, stopping them in their paths, the sunlight reflected off the glass shards, sending piercing rainbow light into the eyes of the two sisters. The shards fell, the glass ones shattering, the stones ones marring the previously pristine marble floor with small craters and countless debris.

Silence reigned over the picturesque scene, rainbow hued light gently shone from the scattered glass crystals and powders bathing three sides of the throne room with a peaceful rainbow color. The fourth side held no color, it was grey and cracked, broken like the mind of the raging alicorn that stood before it. Gradually ethereal winds were gathered and ripped through the hole behind her, dragging the wayward stones and rainbow hued glass to herself as she rose up, into the dusty, air.

Rising further into the sunlit rays she ignited her horn, and let loose with such base and untamed magics that the loose stones and sharp glass shards flew towards her with reckless abandon only for them to stop and fall mere inches away from her quivering breast. Through the field of broken glass and shattered stone shone a white light that grew ever more intense, unleashing an ever increasing amount of energy.

Nothing seemed to happen. The picturesque scene seemed to have come to a halt, one sister, kneeling and crying, surrounded by a flickering golden bubble, the small pieces of dust and debris inside her shield slipping out to join with their own; the other surrounded in a growing field of glass and stone, horn shining with a light that outshone the setting sun and the rising moon.

With a bloody, frothy gasp the white alicorn fell down onto her flank and curled up. Her nose, eyes, and mouth streaming blood onto the ruby red rug, both colors mixed and neither one showed more than the other. With a terrible heaving cry Luna bade the sun and the moon to come together and they obeyed her. Her monstrosity bathed the whole of Equestria in the blood red light of a dying sun swiftly followed by the shadowy tendrils of the moon. With the cry still ringing through earth and sky, the field of stone and crystal converged on the writhing form of the Princess of The Night.

The cry cut off, there was no echo, there was no resonating sound, there was only the soft mewling cries of the formerly alabaster alicorn, her coat dyed red by the merciless binding of her sun to the moon. Only one word could be made out through her bloody coughs and heaving breaths,

“Luna...”

The bleeding ball of glass and stone did not respond, it only dripped the life blood of her sister onto the scarred and blackened dais.

“Luna...” Celestia moaned using one hoof to try to claw her way towards the dais.

The dripping stopped, the last dribbling hole filled with a clink of stone on glass. The throne room fell into silence once more.

“Luna.” Celestia struggled to bring her hooves under her, to lift her sopping, bloody body off the the sodden rug.

Slowly as if obeying an internal source, the blood light of the eclipse was pulled into the orb through the stone and the glass. The shadows followed the light, from every corner, from every crevice, from every dark thought it flowed up and into the orb, where it was mixed and stirred into a dark concoction for an eldritch abomination. Colors of the night, wrong and horribly mixed swirled along the surface, spinning and swirling, dipping and diving. As Celestia watched, the spinning fluids changed, they spun faster and faster, letting loose arcs of magical plasmatic energy.

“Luna!” Celestia gave a heave, expelling bloody particulates from her nostrils as she shakily stood and braced herself against the coming storm.

A bolt of black lightning emerged from the black orb and went for Celestia. Lighting her horn, Celestia wrenched her head to the left, and the black bolt skittered off a golden hued glob of blood and blew and hole in the roof.

“Luna!!!” Celestia shouted spraying blood all the way to the foot of the dais, “I will not fight you! You must lower the moon!” She finished, sinking to her front knees.

The orb, now a mixture of black, and varying shades blue spun, aloof; until it drew Celestia’s blood into itself.

“Celestia.” A voice moaned as if from behind a thick veil.

The orb stopped spinning and two cyan orbs came to the forefront and seemingly gazed at Celestia before disappearing behind a veil of dark fluids. Slowly the orb descended letting the blood light flow once more into the room anointing Celestia’s kneeling form in crimson glow.

Touching the shattered surface of the dais, the orb stopped and the cyan eyes once again rolled towards Celestia who was gazing despondently at the emerging figure.

First came the long slender horn, alight with foul, cruel magics. Second, shone the cold lunar armour that contoured her head, feet and chest. Light, now a hard white light projected from the moon bathed the supple ebony figure in the dreams of a thousand stars.

Striding forward, snakelike pupils roved languidly over the ruined form of Princess Celestia and a hiss echoed from the demons black maw.

“Celestia, kneeling before me?” The demon spoke spat, “You give yourself too high a station. You-”

-Hauling herself up to her hooves Celestia took a single trembling step forward,

“Luna, I will not fight you! You must lower the moon!” Taking a breath, Celestia exhaled, “It is your duty!”

“Luna.” The demon spat, “Y-You think I am Luna. Ha! Hahahahaaa...” The demon dissipated in a plume of smoke and reappeared in front of Celestia.

“I am Nightmare Moon! I have but one royal duty now. To destroy you!” And with that she let loose the dark things that terrorized children in their dreams. Only to have Celestia blind her and dissipate her slaves with a flash of golden light, reminiscent of the sun at high noon. When her vision cleared Nightmare Moon found ash and charring extending from where Celestia had been kneeling. Looking up into the twilight sky above her, Nightmare Moon beheld a being of fire and light, truly the very embodiment of the Celestial Body that hung captive behind her glorious moon.

With a sharp breath Nightmare Moon launched herself towards her foe. And as if over a great distance she heard a soft, broken whimper deep within her mind, it came from a dark and twisted thing locked in a skeletal cage of its own making,

“Oh dear sister, I am sorry.”

With a beat of her wings she burst through the towering stone roof, shedding pebbles and dust as she flew upwards. With a second beat of her wings she charged her horn leaving an iridescent contrail in her wake. With the third beat of her wings she met the her opponents radiant blast with a dark, putrid lance of her own. Using those monsters and demons locked deep within her soul, she carved a long and bloody furrow through the celestial beam and met its maker in a burst of dark, prismatic light.

---

From the first moment the fight began, Celestia knew she would not be able to survive, suffering from injuries that went far beyond mental and physical she knew that she would lose. She would be brought down and drowned in the fears and panic of this demented demon that had stolen her sister and her sun. So, when she gathered to her the memories of the hopes and the dreams of every pony she knew in preparation for her fall she found a new source of energy and let loose a roar that shook the heavens as she fired a beam swirling, cleansing light at the demon. Then everything fell apart.

Her magic, some of the most powerful in Equestria fell apart, it unraveled even before it touched the demon. Her magic was shorn through like a hot knife through hot butter. And she, Celestia; Solar Diarch, an immovable object in her own right was met with an unstoppable force, and she shattered.

In a discolored halo of force and light Celestia was bloodily flung far below her position. And down she fell, through the stone roof and into what many considered to be a chapel. She came to rest curled around the fading shadow of a cruel and deadly lance.

With a distant ‘whumpf’ the dark winged demon closed the distance with murderous intent.

Celestia uncurled, the hole in her barrel contracting and bleeding out, the stump of her wing wiggling in the cool night air. Her vision, heightened by the remaining adrenaline made out a room, one that brought back memories of a weapon powerful enough to bring down gods and demons. With the light around her horn fading, Celestia activated the only thing she knew could stop this demon.

A rumble filled the air and the sound of grinding gears and rusted chains and steadily rose out of the damp, earthy depths rose the pedestal. Upon that pedestal sat the greatest and most terrible weapon known to anyone. The Elements of Harmony.

With one last desperate flare from her horn illuminating her failing vision Celestia pumped her remaining magic into the elements begging them to work not for her, but for her sister. With one last gasp Celestia’s magic failed her, the elements fell around her body as the shadows closed in.

“Oh dear sister, I am sorry.” And she headed towards the light.

---

Warmth. That was the first thing she felt but not the first thing she remembered. Images and feelings haunted her, a cage of grinning, laughing skulls and a feeling of hopelessness, a feeling of darkness pressing ever closer. Searing heat, like that of the sun and a feeling of weightlessness as she flew ever faster. The sight of prismatic rainbow shards, dark melted stone and a feeling of rage, unrepentant, uncontrolled, unfocused rage hotter than the sun. A lone alicorn figure bathed in red, blood dribbling from the eyes nose, and mouth. A light in the darkness then a feeling of sleep.

Warmth and a vibrant ringing sound. Warmth, the kind you get from laying with somepony, and the sudden realization of what you’ve done.

With a gasp Luna jumped away from the soft, white form that was her sister... That was her sister. The great, powerful, majestic alabaster alicorn called Celestia; called sister, now lay on her right side, her left wing askew, feathers rumpled and broken and the other, the left one, it was a stump, there was no wing. Instead, there was a great off white mass right in front of the fleshy stump. A scar.

A scar that, as Luna timidly paced around the body, she could not help but marvel at.

“Wh-What monster could...do...this...”

And her rear legs collapsed, her mouth opened in shock, she brought her down low enough to view the twisted, warped flesh that made up the left side of Celestia’s breast. But one spot in particular, a deep spot, a spot where it looked like someone had taken a jagged piece of steel and brutally ripped and carved a hole into the left side of Celestia’s chest.

“M-Me. I-I-I d-did this.”

Celestia’s right wing twitched, searching for the warmth that Luna’s body had provided. Luna jumped away from the twitching limb tripping over a stone in the process, she fell over in a heap.

The wing continued to twitch, growing increasingly spastic as it searched for it’s missing charge. Luna continued to look on in fear as she backed away but stopped as she passed a round orb.

‘The field of stone and crystal converged, blocking out the light.’

She shook her head to clear the vision away and it faded like smoke before a wind. Before her, at her hoof lay the Element of Loyalty, she reached forwards and touched it.

A feeling of rage, unrepentant, controlled, focused rage.

Luna ripped her hoof away, shocked and repulsed.

“Luna...”

Time stopped. And the facade fell. Through tear soaked eyes Luna turned her face upwards and locked her cyan eyes onto the unfocused red pits that were Celestia’s. A deep primal fear exploded in Luna, she cast a shield spell and averted her eyes but still she saw her eyes. Those sad, hurt eyes.

“Lulu? I-Is that you?”

All at once, the sound of her voice seemingly carrying the weight of all of Luna’s crimes fell upon Luna shoulders, binding her in white hot chains, denying her the rights to life, liberty, and happiness. They dragged down and away to the deepest pits of Tartarus and she went willingly.

Spinning away from Celestia and her eyes, Luna spread her wings and leapt, she flapped them once, twice and on her third try her right wing crumpled sending her spiraling to the floor where she landed in a sweating, shaking mass.

She froze as she heard the sound of a body shifting and the tones of her sister pleading.

“Luna! Luna! Why! What-”

Luna did not hear the rest of it, she flung herself away from the sum of her crimes and jerked her wings open again, she stumbled and tried to fly but only managed to collapse again as she skidded to the edge of the chapel. Her sister’s voice, growing stronger with every passing second cried out to her,

“Luna! Wha-What are you doing!”

Turning her head ever so slightly, but averting her eyes, she mouthed two words.

“I’m sorry”

And flung herself off the edge of the chapel into the gaping maw of the canyon.