Broken Dawn

by HIDEMYPAST

Prologue - Defeat

Nightmare Moon knew a setback when she saw it.
That rainbow beam, spawned from the 'magic of friendship'? Definitely a setback. An embarrassingly stupid one, too.
Curses! She yelled inwardly. She was so close... Out of all her many, many attempts, this had been the closest she had come to exacting her revenge on the world.
Never mind that. It's not over yet. It's never over.

But, as worthless as the defeat had been, it could still hurt like hell.

''NOOOOOOOOOO!'' Almost involuntarily, Nightmare Moon found herself screaming at the top of her lungs. The burning sensation started at her hooves, and quickly shot through the rest of her body. Slowly, it faded, to be quickly replaced by another wave stronger and more powerful than the last. She reared upwards, hooves thrashing in a hopeless attempt to block the attack.

I know I shouldn't reveal myself so quickly, wouldn't want to be caught...but...ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow!
A fresh burst of pain made her mind up for her. Gritting her teeth, she let herself melt away from Luna's body. Almost like dust being blown away from an old statue, she formed a small dark cloud and darted behind one of the cracked and broken sculptures that were scatted around the room. It's not much good as a shelter if they see me, but it'll do.

The next moments passed slowly for Nightmare Moon. Had they detected her? Was it all over?

The rainbow light slowly faded, leaving behind the sight of seven collapsed ponies. Breathing a sigh of relief, she glided out of her hiding place and surveyed her surroundings. Her eyes fell on the six ponies, still wearing their elements.

''Damn you all.'' She snarled angrily, but it came out as a hoarse whisper. Her voice was much weaker than she had expected - now that she thought about it, her strength was fading at an alarmingly fast pace. That could only mean one thing...

Through the cracked window, a beam of sunlight struck the floor, illuminating the room with much more force than a normal sunrise. The cloud barely avoided it, knowing if she touched the beam in her current form she really would have been destroyed - and being destroyed did not fit into her plans of world domination. Slowly, the beam spread to cover the rest of the room, and she could feel the burning heat on her tail.

Gotta hurry. Within a split second, the dark cloud had catapulted itself across the room using the last of her power reserve. She rocketed towards the six ponies just as they began to awake. Aimlessly throwing herself at the group of ponies in the hope of latching on to one of them, the last thing Nightmare Moon saw before everything turned to black was a pair of surprised, purple eyes.

--------------------------

Twilight Sparkle yawned and drowsily fumbled with the library keys, being careful not to let a sleeping Spike fall off her back. She was tired out from the day of celebration, to the point where easy tasks like opening a locked door seemed almost impossible.. After the defeat of Nightmare Moon, she and her new-found friends had been named heroes, and in their honor a great party calling ponies from all around was thrown by the Element of Laughter herself.

But now, all Twilight wanted to do was sleep. She didn't even feel like reading - a sign she was on the verge of collapsing. Carefully levitating Spike into his bed nest, she tucked his miniature blanket over him and whispered a goodnight.

Crawling into her bed, Twilight quickly scanned the room to make sure no-one was watching. After she confirmed that there were no spies watching her from the shadows, lurking menacingly - or even worse, Spike - she reached under her bed and pulled her Smarty Pants doll towards her, hesitating for only a moment before cuddling it close. Slowly and comfortingly, she fell into sleep.

--------------------------

Darkness, that was all she could see. Darkness and more darkness. Powerful. Ever growing and all consuming. Twilight felt terrified at the sight of it. It seemed to throb with an unseen red light, giving off the impression of fresh lava. Twilight had only seem something like this before once - at the gates of Tartarus.
Almost without thinking, Twilight tried to back away from the horrifying sight, but she might as well have been trying to walk on thin air. For the first time since she arrived there, she realized her hair was lifting upwards and air was rushing past her, almost like...

Almost like she was falling.
Then her body tensed, and she began to shake uncontrollably. She was falling - into the darkness, to be exact.

''Not quite, Twilight. You are falling, but you aren't falling into darkness. You're falling into me.''

The voice seemed to come from all around, terrifyingly loud, beating at her ears like tiny knives. In the few seconds that she heard the voice, she felt like she wanted to die.
Then it was gone, and Twilight screamed. The darkness closed in on her in less than a heartbeat, but to Twilight it seemed like an eternity. She was surrounded by black and red, pulsating with evil. She felt like it was contaminating her, and she screamed again, this time for help. For her friends, for her parents and her brother, for Celestia.

But no pony came.

Twilight jolted up in bed, knocking Smarty Pants to the floor. Breathing heavily, Twilight tried to calm herself down. She'd had nightmares in the past, but never ones like this. Not even ones where she turned her parents to plants, but she couldn't ever turn them back and everypony thought she was a murderer and-

Twilight shook her head, chasing away her bad memories. ''I shouldn't be thinking about this.'' She muttered aloud, letting her breathing return to normal. Yawning, she retrieved her doll from the floor and pulled the covers back over her. ''Only a nightmare.'' She yawned, she snuggled down. She needed the sleep - Spike would doubtlessly be asking for all of the details again tomorrow, and Twilight wanted to be ready.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, just before she fell asleep, she could swear she heard a laugh.

Comments

[SteampunkBrony]

hmm... tracking.

[HIDEMYPAST]

A dislike already? Even faster than my shipping story, too!

[The-darkevil101]

that dislike was not me....

i'll read this later..

[Armasyll]

I read it, I didn't not like it, and I could imagine the story up until, and after, the dream :l
It would have been nice to know NMM's point of view during the dream; otherwise the whole nightmare/NMM scenario feels dull and overused :l
But that's just my opinion :3

[NaturalGlitch]

Oh, look, this story hasn't been done to death! Wait, yes it has.

[HIDEMYPAST]

1106928>>1106858
Oh, wow. Not gonna lie, Imade this because I've only seen about 7 of them on here, and compared to the HiE's that's not alot.
But thanks for telling me, I guess x3

[Candy Drop]

How often are you planning to update? Or do you not have plans for that?

Also, I like the idea. Tracking.

[John H]

1106928 1106969 My first fic idea before doing a romance was a take on Nightmare Moon similar to this, but the only similarity is that NMM would be an entity and not just an alter ego of Luna. TBH I did some research into it, and the majority of NMM fics are dramas of Luna battling her inner demons, and don't really go into NMM as a separate personality. The only memorable fic I know of that tries to distinguish Luna from NMM is past sins.

Also, in the author's defense, Twidash has been done 456,378,912 and a half times. But I'm doing one, and people like my spin on it. If people like this author's spin on things, then there should be no problem. People that don't like it should free free to comment or not comment then continue to browse for more stories.

Now for what I was going to comment in the first place - the synopsis has a Star Wars prequels feel to it. Which is fine. I just haven't seen too many fics in which Twilight Sparkle is seduced by the dark side of the magiks.

[Pleaseworkforonce]

it is fairly common but i love these anyways so continue writing

[DthWaker]

1106969 The fact that it's been done so much before puts you in a difficult position, if you want this fic to grab attention you are going to have to be as original as possible and avoid the clichés in the "genre". Also be very careful with your writing as you'll be less likely to be forgiven for even the smallest mistakes. Good luck, I hope you can make this it's own story and not just another one from the pile.

[Golferguy758]

Looking forward to more from this story. tracking

[HIDEMYPAST]

1107025

Not too sure, I will try to get a schedule of stuff, but for now hang on to the hope of one a week xD

1108825

Thanks for this piece of information!
Seriously - I now have a huge plot point, and I already planned to have the story revolve around history and adventures to find the blehblehblehbleh.

1107599

Maybe I'll try that