Back To The Stars

by NotanImportantPony

Chapter 3: Landfall

There were many things that the Cragadiles of Saddle Lake knew. They knew how to hunt. They knew how to hide. They knew how to sleep. That is what all of them knew. That is what they were taught since birth. But there were some, now only one who remembered the olden times. The golden times.

The times when many sapient beings lived together in peace and harmony. Much like they didunder the rule of Princesses. But there are some things that even the Princesses couldn't pry from the minds of the Cragadiles. A story. A story passed down through the generations. One not of words, not of thought nor intention. No. This story was one of genetics. One of the ‘beginning.’ And the ‘end.’

The Cragadiles were the sole remaining result of the story. A story of heartbreak and a final lesson, for it was on one day that the world knew that the hearts of men were easily corrupted. And the powers that permeated the veil, be them fate or fantasy, had a will all its own. It betrayed the newcomers, and led them to their deaths.

And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth. And for two and a half thousand years, the knowledge that was brought down from the stars was buried under a mountain of sin. Until one day. One day, their legacy would be unveiled and it would bathe the world in golden light. Until then, they would lay dormant, watching, and waiting.

---

Splish. Splash.

Went the waves that crashed.

Upon the shores they dashed.

And the stones were bashed.

Upon the mare they thrashed.

And.

She.

Lived.

---

Splish. Splash.

Wet. That was how Luna felt. She shivered and corrected herself. Wet and cold. Two terrible things that should never be together lest one catch a cold. A normal pony would just get a runny nose and a fever. But for an Alicorn like herself, colds were deadly. Not for herself, no she could handle them just fine. But for everypony else if an Alicorn got sick you stayed away from them. Not that Luna ever had many ponies around her in the first place.

In fact, now that she thought about it she couldn’t really think of anypony who was near her even when she wasn’t sick. Luna sneezed and several stones ranging from tear sized pebbles to hoof sized rocks went flying away from her. She sniffled and inhaled, she stopped as she felt something tickle her nose. She focused on the source of the offending feeling. Laying across her muzzle was the ragged leading edge of a black primary feather.

Luna’s crossed eyes worked over the feathers split and broken vanes. The quill was jagged and rough, almost as if it had been snapped off. The very tip of the feather’s shaft seemed to possess an alien coloration. The tip was her color. Luna’s color. A beautiful sapphire blue hew was seemingly contained at the tip and lay a rough hewn line across the tip of the feather. Further down there seemed to be a contested area that gave of a oily rainbow sheen. But as Luna’s gaze descended she saw the rainbow sheen give way to a permanent darkness. A portal to her soul.

And she blew the feather off her muzzle with a ferocious huff. The feather spiraled down out of the air then stopped as it came to rest on a soft bed of indigo magic. Luna’s eyes narrowed as she sought to see the feather through her horn’s twinkling aura. She could see it outlined in the late twilight sun as she bade magic to bring the feather, her feather closer to her. Luna’s twin cyan eyes sparked as she recalled that this thing was part of a body that deemed its dominion would be better off without a Princess of the Sun. Cooly she levitated the feather to the ground and bent her horn to it.

Looking back, Luna could see that everything she had done. Everything she had been, had been because of a spark. A spark of life. A spark that urged her to live and be free. And in the same fashion that she had been given a life of her own, so too would she take the life of another. With fire and fury.

“From one to another, another to one.” And so Luna, reciting the first part of Starswirl’s unfinished spell began to burn.

She turned deep, deep into herself and scoured every corner, every shadow and every grimey place she could find and drew them out through her horn. First there was one drop, then two, then a small stream of bubbling black tar oozed out of her horn and fell onto the feather. And still she scored every nook and cranny until her darkest places were shining with a bright white light contrary to her own moody darklight. And her horn oozed blood, as the first droplet fell. Luna’s eyes locked onto it and she let loose a primal scream.

“A MaRk-”

The droplet hit the distilled essence of lunar sin and started the reaction and Luna, so enraptured by the growing, hungry flames leaned in and quieted her trembling voice so as to not disturb her child.

“-of one’s destiny-”

Luna’s slitted pupils contracted and she lept back, her horn flaring, the smoke stinging her eyes and the flames licking her face. Shaking her head and running a wing over her face to gather her ash stained tears Luna whispered,

“-singled out alone-”

With a sigh, Luna shuttered her magic and the blue curling flames stopped eating away at the embodiment of her sins.

“-will always be alone.”

The minute pile of fine ashes stirred gently in the cooing wind and Luna gently placed her tears in the middle of it.

Luna sat down on her rump, and with her hot, salty tears freely flowing down her shattered facade she cried and let loose a century's worth of pain and punishment upon the valley that contained her.

Through it all the ashes barely moved. They shifted when one of the rocks under them moved or when Luna stepped on them but other than those few things, the pile of ash didn’t move. At the end of Luna’s cathartic tantrum she fell down in a shallow puddle; a small result of her release.

Rolling around in the now muddy water, Luna cooled herself off and lay her head down upon a smooth river rock as she felt the efforts of her tantrum catch up with her. She was just closing her eyes to give herself over to the dark void of sleep when she heard an odd warping noise come from behind her. Rolling over to face the noise, Luna lit her horn and it spat a small stream of pitifully weak sparks out and onto the ground. Now fully turned over Luna had to blink and shake her head many times to ensure that she was not imagining things. For sitting, upright and unmarred was her helm. Nightmare Moon’s helm, and it was staring at Luna.

Luna saw the slitted cyan eyes of a snake, liar, and manipulator. Nightmare saw the eyes of a tired, broken mare with no where else to run. Luna brought her magic to bare and crushed the helmet with her magic. As it was crushed, Luna saw the dull light in Nightmares eyes wink out. The helmet landed on the worn stones with a heavy clunk and tumbled away from Luna. She smirked.

Laying her head down again and banishing distracting thoughts from her mind, Luna prepared to sleep, out in the open and completely vulnerable.

Luna did not hear it over the sound of the small waves coming onto the shore of Saddle Lake, but the helmet she had crushed slowly broke apart and drifted with a phantasmal wind back into the shadows of a walkway long forgotten. It reformed and sat there, waiting as the faint cool tendrils of the moon curled around it. The Nightmare blinked and the scenery changed.

---

High above Luna, far beyond Celestia’s Equestria lay the bright unmarred moon. And it did something it hadn’t done in aeons, it cried. It cried for something that no being on the planet could see or feel. It cried because no one else would. A single snow white tear fell through space. It fell through clouds. It fell and fell and fell until it didn’t need to fall anymore. For it had landed.

And Luna woke up.

---

There are eyes. Eyes in the night and they are always watching. Always seeking. Never resting. Ever sleeping.

Luna woke up. Her eyes shot open and she launched herself into the air to escape the creeping sense of dread. Only to be brought to a halt by the well hewn roof of a well lit cave. She smashed into it and fell down onto the floor, throwing up a plume of dust upon landing. Luna spent the next several minutes attempting to stop coughing long enough so that she could clear the air. But each time she tried to stop coughing she couldn't and she threw more dust up and into the air, creating a cycle.

Eventually she got her body and by extension, the dust, under her control. She waited for her eyes to stop watering and her chest to stop heaving. They did both of those things in short order. And Luna cast a charm to purify the air around her, blocking any air-bourne debris from interfering with her-

-Luna spun around and looked down.

And glaring up at her was the dust covered helm of Nightmare Moon. And behind that was a mottled, hazy, imperfect vision of herself outlined in a diagram of squares, each stacked next to and above each other with a perfect spiral growing out of the center. And looking closer, Luna noticed that there were faint words etched along the notched and tarnished spiral. She could barely make them out and she struggled to read them.

“Only one; a mix of equal tempers may enter our sacred temples.”

Creasing her brow and narrowing her eyes, Luna looked deeper than the surface and lay her cracked and chipped hoof upon the spiral. It lit up and at the base of the diagram, the helm of Nightmare moon became clouded and obscured by falling ash. The helmet shifted out and away from Luna’s body as she collapsed. The helmet tipped over and the darkened cave rang with the funeral knells of a thousand lost souls.