• Published 7th Dec 2017
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Lacklustre-y Things - LackLustre



Or TotallyNotIceStar writes more things that aren't okay maybe.

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Lundance AU w/ Cupid!NMM and Psyche!Cadance [T/E?]

Author's Note:

Basically what it says on the tin. I started an AU story in the style of a creation myth that didn't really go anywhere. It had the four princesses as all one species/type of being (not how I usually write them) where they are primal sorts of gods instead of the usual kind that I write. The magic isn't as complex, and a lot of familiar characters I write aren't present. Mostly Sombra.


After writing two chapters (what's here) it just... flickered out. The way the plot was going for this story of what was going to be about... twelve or less chapters was going to be very much like the legend of Cupid and Psyche, as the title says, with Twilight and Celestia as the side characters.


Every time I try to write actual Lundance shipping it dies... darnit.

The first creatures to walk the world of Equus were the sun goddess and the moon goddess, first of four goddesses. They had wings, horn, strength beyond any that would walk after them, and heart. Nature itself stirred their incubation, siphoning power from the moon, stars, and sun to create the first sisters.

Celestia was the eldest of all the goddesses, and her coat was as white as the snow that blanketed a barren world. Century by century, she attempted to inch the distant sun close enough to warm their vast and lonesome home. Because she was not born as most life was, she stepped into being elegantly and fully grown, the seeds of loneliness already starting to grow in her, for the planet she lived upon was nothing but snow, stone, and sky, with an empty ocean of dark churning waters.

The dark was what helped shape Celestia's younger sister, Luna. She was mad slowly, stirred from stardust and shadow and snuck into being as a small blue maiden, a surprise to the already ancient Celestia, who had faint notions of creating other life in her head.

Where Celestia was sill and serene, Luna was curious and keen of mind. It was she who held godly wisdom with the growing wonder of a child as she beheld a world with chilly eyes, as blue as the daytime sky that Celestia was slowly crafting, and a color unlike any the two mares had seen: green.

Celestia was a mare like the world's glaciers, slow and patient. She pulled the sun closer with groaning-slow inches.
Luna was a mare of the closest thing to adventure in this new world of Equus, and she loathed passive waiting. She rolled a ball of snow and stone bigger and bigger while her sister waited, continents away, and the grown mare was surprised when the young filly tossed such a thing into the sky, knocking Celestia's sun far, far closer to the world than she could have dragged it at her pace.

Luna called it the moon, and the sun's flames seared it and marked it with spots. It glowed ivory to the sun's gold, and was Luna's own creation. Compared to Celestia's gradual magic and constant caution, Luna felt no border between life and magic.

Their world grew warm, and wind wore away stone. Thus sand and rivers spilled into their world, and Celestia rotated the sun, still thinking about life other than them.

Luna ran wild where she pleased, the wilds of the world following her and being visited by her presence. Trees, kelp, vines, moss, and the diversity of plant life followed. On bad days, she hammered canyons into the world, and at her highest moods, ran jovially about, leaping into flight and carving the mountains with her movement, magic, and thunder of her voice.

Her heart was happy, and she overflowed with love for their world.

Slowly, and in the scorching southern deserts, Celestia fashioned the first life of Equus other than herself and Luna, now marked with their 'toys' upon their hindquarters: the sharp crescent, stars, and shadows of Luna's night, and the soft rays of Celestia's sun.

Celestia was slow to act, mulling over and sculpting part after part in tedious attempts to create a whole, and when she wove each together in her attempt, she poured a generous amount of magic into her creature, knowing that magic was vital to all life, and that nothing was without it.

She beheld her creature, who spoke his own name, and he was Discord.

Calmly, Celestia explained to him his purpose: to bring about order in the world and to wrangle Luna and help her calm down, if she was to be a proper goddess, she would need to create life, and Celestia had an idea for how to make more.

Luna simply needed to be ready.

The excited and eager to please creation allowed himself to get lost in the world as he agreed to do Celestia's biding. Luna was a mare of shadows out ruling light, but light all the same, and she came and went as the light of her moon, drawing darkness when she needed to live.

She knew she was being tracked, and wished to retain her freedom. If her sister wanted her, then her sister would need to get her and finally see the world and do more than count the shifting grains of the sands.

North, south, east, and west, Luna evaded the creature, allowing the world to be overturned in the process by Discord as he chased her. Noise only pervaded so much of the world, in the whipping of winds, the grinding of the earth, and the cascades of water. To distract and confuse Discord as she was chased, Luna tossed out little chunks of haphazard, icky life into the world as she went, scattering the eggs and larvae of insects as she once scattered seeds of plants.

Their racket was horrid! Now the creature of Discord had to turn over even the smallest stones as he was chasing shadows in an attempt to find the unruly goddess. And, oh, how proud she was, with the chorus of new sounds, and plenty of distraction for Discord, the proud mare could sing in peace, all the songs of the world coming from her throat.

While Celestia waited in the south, for the first time in eons, her eyes grew heavy as she shepherded the sun across all she knew of her world now: the great sand dunes.

Unwilling to give up her duty, she batted away this pesky malady that seemed to be creeping on her with the world's first yawn, and thus it was lost to the winds. The mare who would never no sleep continued her task.

Sleep sailed the breezes, hoping to plague another, and stumbled upon a strolling goddess among a flock of moths. She knew no home but the world she lived, and came and went forevermore. She defended herself with skill and ran from whatever she saw fit to run from.

And then sleep grasped her, and with a curious yawn her steps began to grow sluggish. Within mere hours, she was snoring on the rock face of a mountain.

With the invention of sleep, Luna could not run in the world she knew, instead, sleep showed Luna the underside of the world, a void with few lone visions swirling about in it.

She grabbed onto one, and saw her sister as she tirelessly steered the sun, not knowing Luna had her spirit pushed to the ends of the earth, dreaming the world's first dreams.

Curious to learn more, Luna latched onto another vision, holding it carefully, and what else should she see but the creature Discord scooping up her comatose form?

She was shocked, her own freedom to be violated so? And what for, so Celestia could simply talk to her?

Celestia knew she would be angry too, didn't she?

Out of spite, Luna plucked a few more visions, and was struck with sights of things yet to be. A purple creature that called itself a drake and the shadows of two thing purple and pink, veiled by the fog of sleeps' edge.

Luna viewed the images of things yet to be that littered the vast expanse of her new, dark world while Discord snaked his way across the chaotic world on the long, long, long road back to where Celestia waited.

All the while, Luna saw each glimmer of something called a village that was small and sad looking. She looked upon it and brainstormed the improved idea of a city instead. She witnessed a single cloud in the uncluttered sky, and spent her time pondering the invention of weather instead.

When she arrived, dropped onto the sand before Celestia, the maiden-not-quite-a-mare faced her sister with a new face, a dark one, and a maw of teeth unlike any Celestia had seen upon her sister.

Luna was crowned with a dark coat, a great height, and all the shadows of the dream-void that had grown bound to her, for she knew the idea of queen and Celestia knew so little in comparison to her now. She knew the terror and beauty of some ideas; she knew dreams and imagination. She was Nightmare Moon.

Celestia greeted her with caution and a smile, and told Nightmare Moon about her idea for mares and presented Nightmare Moon with the small sandstone images of the first statues.

Nightmare looked at the soft images, and how docile they looked, how colorless. Discord stood on quietly watching Nightmare Moon mock the wingless, hornless, and spineless female things that Celestia had created in such pinkish sandstone.

Now, Celestia watched with a frown. She asked Nightmare Moon what could possibly be wrong with her creation, that she had spent so many centuries on. They would be good followers, and worshipful, humble, and plain.

Nightmare Moon laughed and pulled a small statue away from Celestia. She sculpted her differently, her stone becoming a vivider pink, her face and eyes brighter. She gave the mare strength and carefully poured a few songs of the earth into her and the feeling of grass underhoof. Carefully, she gave her more magic, and pulled stardust from the depths of space and fashioned it into something that Celestia had forgotten to give any living creation that she showed Nightmare Moon, but Luna and Celestia both had: a soul.

Celestia watched as true light sparked in such a creation, and got the idea to stick the image of grass upon her flank and the notion of farming in her head, but the black hoof of the Nightmare slapped hers away.

Squeaking, Celestia's given mark fell away, lost to the world, but the notion stayed.

"Whatever was that for?"

Nightmare Moon summoned up a sack of infinite possibility, shrouded in the dust of space and the infinite mystery of darkness and she withdrew only twenty marks, some unknown to Celestia, and tossed them about the world for the pony.

"Now really," Celestia said, "what was that for? I was about to give this mare an unshakable destiny, and then you do not even allow her to have infinite possibility, but only twenty one? If you are not giving out absolute, rigid order or the utmost chaos, what is it that you see to bestow our poor creation that you see fit to call a gift?"

Nightmare Moon looked coldly at Celestia. "Free will," she said scornfully, before giving the little mare her last spark and watching as she galloped off into the world.

Wanting to see what was being done by Nightmare Moon, Celestia watched as she remade another. She gave her a different face, made her shorter, and plucked a few of Celestia's feathers, sticking them on the back of the mare. The same mare, she called pegasus and gave thirty possible marks, altered bones, different magic, and then allowed her to live.
Celestia and Discord quietly scooped up the spare bits of feathers and made an array of creatures just as equal to the pegasus that Nightmare Moon had made: avians.

Celestia sculpted them carefully, and even put a bit of fire in one species, and Discord gave them variation Celestia wasn't all that fond of. Nightmare Moon, however, gave them souls and magic.

Nightmare Moon sculpted another mare, one with a short horn chipped from one of Discord's, and sharp eyes. She too, was gifted with magic both in her and around her, a soul, and a limited amount of cutie marks before she was brought to life and allowed to go live and talk to the other two mares.

Out of boredom, Celestia and Discord shaped dogs, fish, serpents and other creatures out of bits and bobs, scraps and more. Nightmare Moon, however, made sure that each was given a soul and that none got to live without a bit of magic.

Then, they both watched as the fourth mare was made. She had the brightest eyes of them all, a stomach that craved less food, hooves that could work and sprout crystals, and a hard glossy coat that would protect her from almost all cold, that made her look crystalline.

From an old cut, Nightmare Moon poured just a bit of ichor into her heart, so that she would hold a strange gift that might prove as infectious as sleep. She would sense her kin's plight closely.

Soul and magic, she was allowed to live.

Seeing the boredom of Celestia and Discord, Nightmare Moon showed them something new: bluish stone that she had sculpted differently, with a squarer jaw, and differences from the mares, for like Discord it was male. He too, got marks, magic, and a soul. This particular creation was a stallion, Nightmare Moon explained, and she watched as the crystal stallion trotted over the mare.

"That," Nightmare Moon said, "makes them ponies."

Celestia and Luna worked to sculpt more ponies to give the creatures a population. Most were sculpted out of blue and pink sandstone, that was magic-touched as it needed to be, but there were quite a few that had blue bodies and pink heads, or pink bodies and blue heads. Others had purple, gray, and a few other varieties heads.

This seemed to effect their souls, and only became obvious in what the ponies said, did, or felt. Discord changed each one so that they could have curly, straight, and other kinds of manes and different appearances.

He wasn't able to make his own creations, but he aided Celestia and Nightmare Moon, the goddesses, in sculpting creatures like minotaurs, dragons, and goats.

With their creatures created, Celestia and Nightmare Moon stood eye to eye again while Discord shooed away the creatures that had gathered to go off into their lives.

Celestia was unsettled by the transformation of Luna into Nightmare Moon, and the grotesque grin that the tall creature gave her, because this was not her sister. Her little sister was exactly that - little, a young maiden.

Now, she stood before a distrustful creature, a sister reborn in a world she had no knowledge of, and never would.
The mare who did not sleep tried to look calmly at the mare who ruled it.

"I would like Luna back, Nightmare Moon. Your hold over my sister is not eternal, and I think that this could be resolved peacefully if you were to forfeit her as your puppet."

It was all she had. She cared for her sister, and things like war, civilization, and weapons had not been invented yet. If they were to be, Celestia had no knowledge of them.

Nightmare Moon's cold sneer did not change. "Stay in the south, Celestia."

While Celestia's expression was one of hurt for the first time since her creation, behind Nightmare Moon's cold front were thoughts of the drake she had seen in the world of dreams, and how dragons had been created.

The future would hold two new goddesses, and Nightmare Moon would use this knowledge how she pleased. She knew of all the things Celestia didn't, and would further have access to an entire would. Two sisters, and two more sisters could spell all sorts of problems.

"But, Luna-"

A raised forehoof silenced Celestia's pleading quickly. "You wished to abate your loneliness, did you not? Now look, you have ponies all around you. I shall take half of them, the strong earth ponies, for they are the closest to me in spirit, and the resliliant crystal ponies north with me. They shall enjoy the perk of longer nights, too. Should we meet again, it will not be on good terms, sister."

Swallowing, Celestia kicked a hoof in the sand, her ears lying flat against her skull and rose eyes woeful. "...As you wish, sister," she whispered.

So the herds were parted, and the pegasai and unicorn herds remained in the warm, sunny southern plains and deserts with Celestia, and Nightmare Moon took the crystal ponies and earth ponies to the northern mountains, forests, and tundra.

Discord, seeking to divide the mares as different from one another as the day and night and comply with the request of Celestia to aid in protecting her ponies, circled the globe, slithering around it like a serpent.

Basking in the longer days of the desert, Celestia would look over her peaceful ponies and know one thing: of all the things that had made this way into this world, she hadn't counted on betrayal.

...

The second sisters of the four goddesses sprung not from the primal cosmos, but from the heart of the North and South. As though the world had learned from the solitary creations of the sisters before, who sprung into the world with knowledge clinging like mist in their minds both ancient and new, the next two goddesses entered the world with less of an inkling of it, and they were divided as the two hemispheres.

To the south was the younger goddess. The scorching sands and rolling plains were warmed by the sun and the caring nature of Empress Celestia, a soft-spoken and modest goddess who watched as her ponies shaped towns and villages. She saw the shining waves of grain in the country side of her agrarian nation with each tour she went on, and from behind the curtains of her palanquin, she could glimpse the shadows of great cloud structures looming above the fields of her nation.

Since their creation, pegasai had always had the closest connection to Celestia. They lived in great cloud communes that were often shaped by whatever way the wind blew, having little talent for real construction as the unicorns did. Fraternity was a value above all to them, and their social nature drove many to steroype them as the most talkative of ponies.
Market vendors, public speakers, weather ponies, town criers, mailponies, shop keepers, and most common trades in the average town of the Sol Nation ended up being managed by pegasai.

It was pegasai who had to do a fair deal of the nation's farming too, with the northern territory that wasn't plains of grasslands being canyons that were unable to be farmed. Pegasai were notably poor farmers too, having to have thousands of acres with average crops to make up for their less than green hooves. Unicorn assistance was always in high demand, which led to most of the nation's known magical skill being on botonay, and weather and earth based magics.
The unicorns that managed more conventional towns and canyon monasteries devoted to Celestial activities and worship had crafted numerous manuscripts on flowers, herbs, and proper farming technique - as far as unicorns could manage - to help the pegasai.

And of course, she saw other faces among her subjects through those gauzy curtains - only the capital city, Humility, truly saw Celestia's exuberant social nature in full - like the other races that had long been integrated into her empire after the Discordian colonies fell. Minotaurs, buffalo, breezie, and zebra had all united under the standard of the First Phoenix, Philomena, and lived happily. Potion-making, an art form of the zebra, flourished in the nation, for it needed it sorely.
Empress Celestia of Sol met the fourth and last goddess of the world when she witnessed something unbelievable, even to her eternal, kohl-rimmed eyes.

It began with Philomena stirring on her wither, and how Celestia's usual soft songs did nothing to ease the bird's reactions. Even after centuries, the phoenix still disliked being bought on tours in Celestia's palanquin with gilded tatzlwurms coiling around the pillars.

She had discovered, that in her life, only she would last. The creations of ponies and creatures and plants from eons ago all withered before her, but she had never been unaccepting of that, because it was her who let them go.

To look upon a pony shriveled up over centuries, who knows not their own name, who can do nothing, and is on the verge of utter mortality was the first horror she had known.

So, Celestia had invented death. Celestia, great goddess of the Sun was goddess of the Purge of death too, and thus she knew herself to be the goddess of Purity.

It was in that moment, her magic that she used for little beyond shepherding the sun flicking the gauzy curtain so idly, with Philomena squawking non-stop in her ear about how great and terrible the whole ordeal was that the goddess of purity thought a little, if she might be able to comprehend death, if such a headache was within her being, then could she not personally fathom death?

It was a question that would go unanswered; the call of a dragon, a pained roar found her aching ears instead.
The dragons were a species ponies feared, and they did not mix with one another. Even when life other than Celestia, Discord, and the sister she had not seen since her betrayal at Mortal Creation, the dragons and ponies had never mingled.

To hear a dragon was to hear murder. Murder was not like the death that Celestia had brought. Murder was the bite of a beast that sucked all the undeniable frailty from the inferior mortals she never stopped caring for. Without murder, accidents, disaster, and a host of other things, the mortal husks of ponies withered endlessly, and that is why Celestia, the White Mare brought death upon the world.

With all the speed a mare of her size could muster, Celestia flew out of that palanquin without haste, the veil attached to her crown flying away in the wind, and revealing her worried eyes.

The last squawk of Philomena and the gasps from the palanquin-bearers upon seeing their usually docile empress behave so impulsively were all she heard, wind and determination overwhelming her.

Celestia found the source of the roar with ease, the worried beat of her heart quickening at what she saw when she landed, perched on a rock above it all, sunlight casting down upon her.

A quarry eel was coiled tightly around the purple egg of a dragon, no doubt having slithered up from the canyon Celestia passed not long before. Its teeth were embedded into the leg of a grown dragon. By the shape of its shining violet spines, Celestia could tell that this dragon was female, and must be the mother. This particular dragon had no wings from which she could use to fly away from her attacker.

It was terrible to witness the blood of the young dragoness mother being spilled so distant from where Celestia stood above them, and to see a meat-eating creature sink its teeth into another like that was so barbaric from the usual sights found in Celestia's empire of peace.

What amazed Celestia was not the bellow of the purple dragonness, but the second, dragon, the one that could fly swooped down from above. Gravel was disturbed and flung everywhere as the blue drake reared up, and breathed a torrent of fire into the sky.

Since their creation, dragons were creatures that gathered for two puposes: to fight one another and mate. They held no hatred for one another, but had no fancy either. No other bond existed between the dragons beyond those two.
But to see them work together, the way that the drake and dragoness pried away the fangs eel was a camaraderie that Celestia had never witnessed before, a strange courage that she felt no need to intervene in.

The teeth were not the only part of the eel, and it shifted its cools and slithered about, rearranging itself in ways that the furious dragoness and drake could not anticipate.

Like a spring, it wound itself... and Celestia's eyes widened when she saw where it was to pounce...

...and it threw itself at the wounded dragoness, her leg crippled from the ghastly bite...

...the dragoness hit the ground, the quarry eel's maw wrapped around her throat, teeth red.

And the egg?

That thought was enough to pull Celestia and the feral drake out of their trance, goddess and dragon caught sight of the precious purple orb rolling away from the site of battle and to a ledge, nearing the ravine from whence the eel came.
Celestia took off like a firework, golden light radiating from her, and the dragon was close behind her, but it was clear one thing was on their mind: to save the unborn, now orphaned dragon inside.

Hooves and claws touched the ground together, determination strong on Celestia's usually soft face, and her horn lit as she began to race forward, hoping to snag the egg in the telekinises she used everyday, skidding to a stop and feeling her heart stop... along with the quick steps of the drake beside her... when the egg teetered on the edge, mere paces away from the white mare, who closed her eyes, worried, and reached out with both her magic and hooves, leaping forward without any attempt at dignity to scoop the unhatched baby into her waiting forelegs.

Instead, she felt the soft fur of a stranger. Opening her eyes yielded only purple fuzz, so Celestia pulled away, sat up, and brushed herself off before getting a good look at the strange.

Encircled by a pulsing magenta glow, Celestia stared down at the tiny mare with eyes to match the strange light she radiated, and a mane that waved much less dramatically compared to Celestia's, its purple, pink, and sparkly hue so flashy in comparison to Celestia's soft pastel.

Her lavendar coat was not covered in dust, and almost blended in with the spotted egg she hugged lovingly in her forehooves.

The little mare smiled up at Celestia through her bangs, and spread her wings - the feathers blended into the Twilight sky behind her, at the cliff's edge. Her horn was prominent compared to a unicorn, but lesser compared to Celestia's.
Celestia looked carefully at her. "Hello, Twilight," she said calmly. "I am Celestia, the Eldest. It has been so long since I have seen another of my kind, and I extend my companionship to you, goddess and Sister."

There was a small spark in Twilight's eyes at that, and she smiled happily. "Hello, Celestia! My name is Twilight Sparkle, and it looks like I have a lot to learn, for I am the Youngest of the Four, and I know so little. What I do know is that to learn more about the world and the Friendship that I defend, I am ready to be your Student!"

Celestia laughed her first laugh, because though she was kind and good, she was not as merry as she wished. Patience, indecision, and eerie tranquility ran through her, along with the constant small thought that something might be missing, and she had never known her own laugh, or that it sounded like bells.

This too, made Twilight smile.

"Of course, Twilight Sparkle, you can be my most Faithful Student and-"

Celestia, ever likely to take something slow, was going to say 'friend'.

Instead, quick Twilight scooted forward eagerly, the spark on her flank now clear to Celestia, and cheerfully blurted out: "Consort!"

Celestia gaped at her, and thought how unusual this mare was, and how speedy little Twilight Sparkle, whose eyes sparkled like a unicorn's aura and whole body just glowed with energy, was going to stir the sleepy slow sands of the South.

Of course Celestia was hoping for that, eventually, there was something so likable about this little mare, with fuzzy dimples and a perky smile. But she had wanted to take things slow, because of course she would. She was Celestia the Pure.

She also knew that 'Fourth' was something she needed to fear, because for Celestia to be the goddess of Purity, its paladin, and the Eldest, and Luna to be the goddess of Wiles and What-Celestia-Knows-Not, and the Second-Shadow, and for Twilight Sparkle to be the goddess of Friendship and Unity, the Youngest, that meant that there was a Third that the young one had sensed, and a Third was something Celestia did not know and her love Twilight's eyes were innocent of.

For while Celestia had two Sisters, she had only one sister.

...

The Third came much earlier than Twilight Sparkle, and the Third goddess was Mi Amore Cadenza of the land unknown to the goddess of the Sun and all its Light, because that light shed only upon the South.

The North was everything the South was not. Its ruler was Nightmare Moon, who knew to be both Queen, mighty and regal, and God, with her ancient Helm that she has known from dreams. She was a goddess of Wiles whose heart was as dark as the long nights. With the first scythe she had cut the sky apart so that the color of dreams bled through and rippled across the sky and land, from it, ghosts of memory and peculiar hauntings of the psyche walked among the crystal and earth ponies she ruled with distance and powers. Mysticism and superstition made true hung heavily in the many citadels of her nation.

The earth ponies were strong, and shaped the stone and mountain into cities as proud as their ruler, with halls carved deep into the throats of mountains and mines running through the veins of the Nightmare's proud creations from liftetimes ago, when she was something they knew nothing of, and their pickaxes and the stomps of their hooves were a harsh song.

They were better farmers than any of the ponies in the south, and even if they found themselves looking at a plot without much land, their harvests were bountiful. They did not work the land, they had always worked with it.

Earth ponies were the closest to Luna, and felt some nature with their goddess. She was the mare of the night, the mare of Wiles and of War. She was stubborn, and so were they. Their goddess, the Nightmare had more fighting spirit than all their tribes united. They united rarely, completely satisfied with their relative individuality, but if needed, they would unite eagerly under their queen.

Earth ponies and crystal ponies wore their marks with pride. Names, professions, clans, and cities were given in that order as a badge of honor, bearing themselves before their kin.

Crystal ponies were artisans that created unrivaled artifacts of the arcane and great cities across the tundra. While they had no gift of strength and will as the earth ponies did, they herded ewes and and tended to their lush cities. If an earth pony entered a mead hall to have a drink and spend their coin betting on a fight, it was a crystal pony whose singing filled the hall up to its rafters.

There was no grand capital among cities of timber, stone, and crystal for ponies to flock to. Instead, their queen lived away from the her subjects, only walking among them bedecked in her armor when she was doing her duty.

For Nightmare Moon, whose frosty social style was contrasted with mystery and privacy of solitude and extreme isolation when she was away from her ponies, she dwelled within a structure only she could acess and warp to her whim.

Past wild snow and windigo-stirred winds was the fortress of the Nightmare, crafted from storm clouds that loomed above the ill-maintained skies. The walls crackled with lightning and it was said that the hoofsteps of their queen formed every thunderclap that rang throughout the queendom.

With ponies left to their own craft in the north side of Discord's coils, and bards plentiful, legends arose about a peculiar madness that effected their dark queen, leaving her soul as impure as fleeting firelight and waning as the moon.

Could anypony say for sure? No, they could not. Clans were bound in camaraderie; houses with blood, sisters and brothers were united by oaths, but the Nightmare Queen was a goddess unbound by near all mortal concern. Throughout her entire reign, no great companion had walked her thundercloud halls, even if earth and crystal ponies could. She had none who held any fathoming of what lay beyond her mysterious demeanor.

Her fortress in the sky drifted across the vast stretches of her realm, and there the Nightmare would sit, brooding among the stars and mulling over the predictions and prophecies she had learnt in her world of dreams and visions since her sister's betrayal.

Often, Nightmare's toxic form, tall and harsh and that of a true warmistress, had rarely wavered, and it simply never did around ponies. When her shadowy guise was pulled away, the shadows still clung to the form of a dark blue maid with a mane like the clearest, starriest nights and sharp eyes of unusual hue that pondered every puzzle piece her dreams of destiny and otherworldly ventures had gifted her.

She knew what mortals would not know, whether she stood as forgotten Luna or the wicked Queen Nightmare Moon.
She knew, no matter the phase of her moon, when her mind waned with her, that the Third of the goddesses would be a Sister but not a sister, though of the latter she would have one of her own.

She lacked any knowledge of what this goddess would be like beyond the images of snowflakes dancing across the mountain winds that chilled a city built by her crystal ponies, with distant fires flickering merrily within the colorful dwellings.

That was what the mare who slept in storm clouds knew. The Third of Four would have something to do with the first of the crystal ponies' cities, the one that was built in the shape of a snow flake, yet held no center, and founded by the proud Crystalline house of Snjórinn.

Nightmare Moon did not feel the same kinship with the crystal ponies as she did with the earth ponies she knew were truly hers, for they were her first children, in the same way the pegasai should have grown to be Celestia's own, and the unicorns would grow to belong to the Fourth or Third... and the crystal ponies, too. She had a strong suspicion of how all might play out if only two goddesses were to remain unborn.

Nightmare Moon, who watched the world from above, harnessed her magic and prepared for the move, shifting her stormy domain so that it cast its shadow over the city of her dreams.


And then she waited.

...

When Nightmare Moon was Luna, and the world was newer, knowing only Celestia, her, and Discord every mountain and fissure had been a product of Luna's journeys. She pulled stone up from the ground, she hammered it with her hooves. The world was reformed because of her.

She had sung as she did so, too. When she was young and innocent, when she was Luna, she had looked up at the stars that were like snowflakes stuck up, up, up in the sky and the way they twinkled in her young eyes had inspired her and her songs.

With her voice so great and loud, she had sung up at that dark sky, before the world knew betrayal and Discord, who still quaked with all the discontent that mortals knew every now and again.

That singing had struck the sky, and one of those bright and far away stars had fallen down, down, down it had fallen, and that star was buried deep in the stone of a new mountain. As time went on, and the First Betrayal led to the founding of the North and South herds. Nightmare Moon knew not what the extent of her sister's herd had become beyond what dream-glimpses offered.

But she knew that star had fallen, and she had seen it. The whole star had long since become wrapped up in rock and dragged into what had grown into the Crystal Mountains, encircling the First City of the crystal ponies.
One of those mountains, blurred by snowstorms, the hints of memory tainted by her 'new' magic, and the shadow of her great fortress.

Night after night, she stalked the dreams of the city's inhabitants in search of any sign of the Third. Dream after dream held only memories of love and light. The ghosts of smiling family and friends taunted her from where she peered at the smiling dreamer. Oh, how she tried to concentrate on the visions of the future and how the dream realm tempted her with knowledge, but instead she was forced to look upon happy, smiling ponies!

And so, the Nightmare would indulge a little, washing and swatting away images of home and hearth with fearful apparition of her own creation before scattering such pleasant thoughts into the thick fog of dreams with beats of her mighty wings. Each good thing and feeling she would strike from the dream world itself and into the waking one.

Now parted from their dreamers and tangible, the dreams and memories of light and love fell to the world in the form of crystalline teardrops, hitting the snowy ground of the city and surrounding mountains with a series of whisper-soft plinks before dissolving like snow.

Through snow and stone, the magic in these happy memories were drawn to the enchantment of the buried star, and let the powerful magic of the lonely and forsaken thing absorb all of the cheer and love inside, polishing the star and restoring it to its former beauty.

Filled with all that was bright once again, the star hummed and sang happily where it was, buried deep beneath the earth and knots of mountain. In the morning, when the ponies of the First City awoke with foggy recollections of terrible dreams - something they had never known - and the star-song vibrating under their very hooves.

Urged by the whispers of happiness and love that felt so familiar, and yet so new, the subjects of Nightmare Moon, who loomed above them still, began to labor in the crystal mines with great speeds and eagerness, unknowingly in search of a song as they all banded together, drawn by magic.

Day and night, in shifts and in excess, they would toil in the mines, striking into stone to dig out a song they could just barely hear.

And above them all, the Nightmare stalked her stormy halls, gloating and brooding alike, her emotions torn. The arrival of the Third goddess would not be long. She need only wait. Still, her thoughts strayed to images of the past and when she first caught the dream world impressions of purple and pink, two mares yet to be. Which of those mares would she be facing? Which of their new eyes would she stare into? What is it they would hold away from her and claim in this world?

All the Nightmare could do was wait.

One day, she needn't wait any longer. The pickaxe of a crystal pony had struck the stone just right, and cleaved open the crevice of the world that cradled a singing star. Free from its pocket, song and light overwhelmed the weary workers, and they brought their labor-dulled hooves to their eyes so that they might not be struck blind, for what they took to be a sign of Nightmare Moon's divinity laid within, did it not?

The merry, flute-like, and high whistles that were heavenly and straining to the ear grew louder as the bluish-white light grew brighter. They did not squint; they did not blink. The crystal ponies gathered around their once-dim fissure would have believed the sun itself was standing before them by the way the light touched their thick coats. But, no matter what, they kept their eyes shut tight.

They did not hear her hoofsteps at first, but that was not a loss, for they were few. A bell-like whinny rang out, and everypony heard that, awe-struck to their stardust-spirit. In their bones, they knew that this mare - her voice was that of a mare's, her call feminine - was just as much a goddess as their queen.

She leapt out of the earth in a burst of light, her coat a bright pink and her eyes new and pure. Soft, rippling curls of color like the stripes of color not unlike the lights of leaking dreams the Nightmare Queen had ripped into the starry sky. They fell long and glossy, hanging as freely as she smiled at the small ponies before her.

Upon her flank was the shining symbol of the star that was part of her, and gold twining around it. Gracefully, she extended her forelegs in a bow, her wings folded carefully as she greeted every pony gathered around her.

"Hello to all of you, my lovely ponies. I am not sure why you gasp and point, for my heart is telling me that I am not the only mare like this you have seen. Would you all be so kind to take me to the mare you know?"

Nervously, all the crystal ponies looked down toward the glittering star-mare before them. A few shook their heads woefully, and one stepped forward to say what the other mortals found their tongues too knotted to speak. "We cannot, Dear Mare, take you anywhere at all. The other like you, she is dark and fearsome, and loved through awe. Our queen is a strange and distant mare, the great Nightmare Moon, who lives in the great big cloud in the sky, and we have no wings, Dear Mare. There are none in this land with wings save you and her, O Nameless Goddess."

The pink mare of stars and an innocent, ancient heart rose as they bowed, a joyous smile upon her face carrying all the innocence that would be expected of a child and all the beauty of any young maiden. "That is fine, my lovely ponies!" she said with a bright laugh, "I am sure that your kind queen shall not mind me visiting her, and it is such great news that I can test out my wings! Oh, this will be so fun! Maybe your queen even knows my name!"

Before any of the gathered ponies could answer her, the Third had already taken off, her fresh wings flapping as she soared through the mines, and her laughter ringing through the mountains.