Moondust

by Parallel Black

1 - Indulgence

Dull blue. That was the colour of madness. Twilight Sparkle was certain of it.

The quill hovered above the parchment, its tip scanning across symbols and numbers, searching for a place to descend. There had to be somewhere she’d gone wrong. One of these values, or one of those expressions, had to have been miscalculated, or she wouldn’t be having this particular kind of issue.

The ink dripped, but the black droplet stopped before it hit the page, suspended in a tiny pocket of amethyst energy just like the feather above it. With a subtle motion, the drop was whisked back into the inkwell, and the unicorn refocused her attention, only to realise she’d lost her place. The entire scroll was covered head to hoof in scrawlings of the mathemagical variety, and the lines were starting to blur together.

Twilight leaned back and dropped the feather into its pot, letting out a quiet, frustrated sigh. Her posture was relaxed, but the frayed ends of her mane and the permanent scowl on her face told a different story. At the end of the table stood a vase. It was a cheap, shiny thing from the bowels of Manehatten’s industrial center, and its colour had started to fade only a few weeks after purchase. It was the perfect test subject for a colour changing spell. A bright lavender-purple might be nice. The attractive sky blue it once held was edging into the greys, but in spite of her efforts, the colour simply refused to turn.

One of the unicorn’s previous attempts rose into her levitation and unfurled across the desk. Like her current effort, its ends flowed off the sides, and though it too was covered in writing, it hadn’t turned out quite as robust. She compared them. Maybe she hadn’t copied the perfect parts perfectly enough. Most of the calculations were simple, and she was sure she’d written Starswirl’s First Law of Thaumium Growth properly; she knew that one by heart. The law dominated the first third of the scroll, the rest taken up by calculations of a more general nature that represented her own capabilities and the spell those capabilities fed into.

That was how it was meant to go, at least. Twilight looked to the vase again, closed her eyes, and allowed the spiral of her horn to glow once more. A bright, purple field of energy slowly bloomed from it, becoming a wavy, intangible blob atop her head. This time, surely. The previous attempt went back under the table and she read carefully through her writings again. Nothing seemed out of place. For the tenth time that morning she pointed her horn at the object and loosed a small stream of magic at it. The vase’s reflective surface glimmered and shone, almost seeming to move with the energy surrounding it, turning a myriad shades of purple as the laws governing how light moved through space suddenly became confused with the will of a sapient being.

The magic receded into her horn. The vase was still blue.

Twilight Sparkle let out a shout of frustration.

The quill returned, its tip newly wet with ink, ready to correct whatever mistake its master had made. It hovered there, then moved slowly over the parchment, once again scanning for somewhere, anywhere, that looked out of place. Twilight glared at the paper below it, searing her gaze into each and every character, as if waiting for one to look back and let her know where to strike.

Her ears twitched. It took the repetition of her own name and a painful jabbing in the side of her leg to pull her from her concentration. Scowling in a mixture of frustration and self-imposed anxiety, she looked down to see a worried pair of slit pupils staring back.

Her expression quickly softened. “Oh, Spike. Sorry, I didn’t realise you were there. Did you need something?”

“Not really,” the little dragon replied, rising up onto his toes to see what he could of the scroll. “I was just wondering if you were hungry. You’ve been at this all day.” He was taller than the table, but only on account of the large, soft plates of green scale that ran from the tip of his forehead to the end of his short tail.

Twilight blushed as she felt her stomach rumble, realising she had skipped breakfast. “What time is it?”

“It’s almost three in the afternoon. We still have some of yesterday’s salad, if you want?”

“Oh, yeah, sure. That’s fine.”

Spike trotted off to the kitchen, leaving Twilight with her project. Beneath the table lay three discarded scrolls. This was her fourth attempt, her most “perfect” by far. She hadn’t even been writing Starswirl’s First Law of Thaumium Growth properly in the first two, making use of its shorthoof variant rather than the full equation the old magician had preferred. Another test wouldn’t hurt, but another grumble from her belly finally tempted her away.

The study rooms possessed the largest windows in the school, giving the students on the cliff-ward side a grand view over the mountain edge. Twilight sat beside it, her gaze flitting between the various landmarks of the land far below. The miscoloured summer sky filled most of the panorama, with only a few clouds to be seen. The air was clear enough that the entirety of Central Equestria was neatly contained within the distant horizon. To the left of that stretched the farms and forests of the Eastern Leagues, and the Western Hills rose to her right. Further south, vanishing into the horizon, were the beginnings of the vast, multicoloured fields of the Palette Plains. It was all brought into light and colour by the Sun, but it was all overshadowed by the duller shades of blue covering the top half of the canvas.

The heat flooding through the glass gained a chill, and Twilight directed her gaze at something else. Anything else would do.

The kitchen door squeaked open and Spike waddled out with a pair of bowls filled with chopped lettuce and carrots, along with one for himself containing leftover nachos and a bottle of ketchup. “Turns out, I had some, too!”

Twilight’s mouth curled into a smile. “I can see that. You aren’t planning on skipping meals as well, are you?” The whole arrangement looked ready to spill, so Twilight lifted her bowls out of his grasp and patted the floor, inviting him to sit.

Spike plopped down and tossed the first nacho into his mouth. “No one else seems to eat these, anyway, so more for me! Not that there's much else on the menu right now...”

The little dragon’s demeanour seemed to change. Twilight only gave a light chuckle. “And who was it that put ‘nachos’ on the weekly food stocks?”

Spike licked his lips as he opened the ketchup bottle. “Me!” he replied, filling with an eager sense of pride, before drowning his meal.

“I’ll never understand how you convinced Mrs. Polish to keep them on there.”

He shrugged. “Nopony really said anything. I just snuck in and the next thing I knew we had something new and delicious to have every day. Granted, it’s only me who seems to enjoy their sweet, crispy texture and the way they mush together in my mouth.”

Twilight rolled her eyes. They tasted bland to her pony tongue, and the harder parts always poked at her gums whenever she tried to eat more than one at a time. “Remind me to make a new diet schedule for you. You’ve really been eating a lot lately.”

“You just haven’t tried them with ketchup yet,” Spike responded, waving a tomato covered nacho at her. “Besides, there’s not much else I can really eat in there since Juniper cleared the whole place out.”

“Didn’t we get a new delivery yesterday?”

He shrugged and continued eating. It was always cute to see him enjoying himself, but Twilight couldn’t help but think he looked like a slob in this moment. Maybe he was just going through a growth spurt and needed the extra calories. She looked down at her own meal and felt a drip of saliva escape her lips. She quickly wiped it off and dove in.

To her starved belly the meal was an unwelcome chore. It felt strained, like an already exhausted mare being dragged out of bed to start the day. Twilight hadn’t wanted to get up this morning, though she hadn’t felt nearly as tired last night as she did today. Something was dragging at her fetlocks.

She looked outside again, at the dull, blue sky hanging over them. It wasn’t meant to be that way, to look so grey and depressing, especially when the landscape below was as bright and colourful as any other cloudless summer day. The sight didn’t make sense. It was as if something massive was overshadowing the planet itself, twisting the light before it reached them, adding its own strange element to the scene.

Spike spoke before she had a chance to see the thing floating beside the Sun.

“Hm?” she asked. She blinked away the strange look on her face and managed a smile.

“Are you going to be finished studying soon?” Spike repeated.

Twilight paused for a moment, her thoughts struggling to get back on the right track. She looked to her project, then back to him. “I’m still having some trouble with it,” she responded. “I think I’m getting closer, though, so it shouldn’t be long. Why?”

Spike suddenly looked diminutive, as if he was about to ask for something he knew he couldn’t have. “Well… it’s been a few days, so can we go outside yet?”

A short moment of silence descended. Twilight kept her gaze firmly away from the window, instead meeting Spike’s pleading eyes.

“You said we could leave in a few days,” he continued, “and… it’s been a few days. Right?”

“It has.”

He waited a few seconds before rolling a hand at her, a nacho held between his little fingers. “So…?”

“So what?”

He frowned and leaned forward. “So we can go for a walk today… right?”

Twilight took in a long breath. “I… don’t know about that. Th-there…” She glanced at the table again. “I still need to finish this project so that the Princess knows we’re doing ok.”

“Can’t we just send her a letter…?” Spike asked, one eyescale rising.

“Well, we could, but it would probably just get lost. She never responded to that first one we sent, so the castle’s probably still getting flooded right now.”

“So… can we, or not? I’m sick of this.”

Twilight shook her head sadly. “Not until the Princess says so.”

Spike’s face fell, his whole demeanour crestfallen. He glanced away, then frowned at his meal and continued eating.

They couldn’t risk it yet. They were safe here. Twilight grimaced as she ate some more; the lettuce tasted like it was starting to age. “That stallion came within twenty strides of our doorstep,” she reminded her small, scaly brother. “He could’ve burned the school down if the Vigil hadn’t been there.”

“He wasn’t even doing anything. He was just sitting there,” Spike grumbled in response.

“And what about everypony else? If he came all the way up here, then-”

“I get it.”

“I’m just making sure.”

She’d stolen his appetite along with his hopeful mood, the little dragon now idly dipping a nacho into the pool of ketchup, staring at his bowl. The sight twisted something in Twilight’s chest, but she knew she had little alternative. They were fine here. Even if the deliveries to the kitchens had started to thin out, and even if the taps were starting to buckle and judder, they would still be safer in here than out there. If the stallion had wandered all the way to the upper streets of Middle Canterlot, then what did that mean for the rest of the city? Were the gardens of the nobility getting trampled and grazed? Was there graffiti on the walls of the castle itself?

Twilight shifted in place as she chewed. Her shoulders felt tired and stiff, and that persistent itch between them had been growing worse as her anxiety grew. The noise outside had died down and, last she checked, there hadn’t been as many plumes of smoke rising from the Rabbles.

Just a few more days, then Celestia would return.

“What’re you working on, anyway?” Spike asked, still sounding grumpy.

“Mgh.” Twilight took a moment and swallowed. “It’s meant to be a more academic way of learning how to cast spells.” A pause as her stomach settled. “Something to help me learn new spells quicker by breaking the basic process down into its component parts, and then either changing it or adding to it. Although, I’ve had a lot of trouble so far...” Twilight frowned with annoyance, glancing back at the dull, blue vase on its table.

“So… it’s like you’re learning magic all over again?”

Her aggravation gave way to a smile. The very suggestion filled her with a rush of enthusiasm. “Essentially, yeah! If it works as intended then I should be able to learn new spells at a rate of one per five days or so, if my calculations are correct. Give or take for complexity.”

“Huh, that’s pretty cool,” Spike replied, a small smile on his face. “You learn fast enough already. Celestia will probably be pretty happy if it works.”

“If I can get it to work, at least,” Twilight added. “If I can’t even cast a simple colour change spell using this method, then I doubt it’ll be of much use.” Twilight looked back to her bowls and took another mouthful of lettuce and carrot. One was empty already and the other was halfway there. She’d been much hungrier than she realised. “I need to make sure she knows I'm ok and still advancing my studies, even while the school is closed.”

“Can I help?” Spike offered suddenly.

For a moment she glanced between him and the remaining bowl, wondering why he’d suddenly gained a taste for vegetables. “Oh, I mean… it’s pretty complex, even for me.” Spike’s help was always appreciated when it came to locating the right books and references, but the little dragon was no good with sums. He had a good visual memory, but little of the knowledge or skill needed to make proper use of it. He’d even gained a habit of giving all of Twilight’s mathemagical symbols odd names to help himself remember them, rather than memorise their real, more difficult ones.

Spike shrugged. “I’ve helped out before. You can trust me.”

“Of course I trust you, Spike. It’s just that what I’m doing digs straight to the core of magical theory. A lot of the simpler mathemagical methods don’t apply here, especially since this is essentially an entirely new one.”

She caught a momentary grimace on Spike’s face at the mention of maths, but he stayed the course. “Two heads are better than one...?” he suggested with another, more desperate shrug.

He was giving her that look again; the look of a child trying to work a bar of chocolate into his hooves. Twilight found it rather heartwarming that he would use it for the sake of convincing her to let him take part. She couldn’t help but smile back. “I can’t say no to that face,” she replied. “Come on. Let’s see what we can do.”

She stood and turned to the table, only to feel Spike’s little claws grasp at her back leg. “And then can we go for a walk? Just a super short one to see if everything’s alright?”

Another moment of silence. Twilight felt a chill envelop her forehead, as if she she’d just seen a ghost. It was a wonderful day outside, but the heat would only serve to ripen the bags of trash building up in the streets. The soft, golden light would be glittering off Canterlot's pearly white cobbles and the broken shards of glass that covered them. Nopony would be stopping to enjoy the weather with that thing hanging over them.

“I’ll think about it,” she lied.

Twilight loosened her jaw as she rose, levitating their bowls to the kitchen door. Putting the unnatural shadow of the thing in the sky behind her she returned to the table with Spike at her side. The formula lay there on its scroll, an unholy copulation of numbers and magical theory. Any round of research that required intensive study and practice gave Twilight the motivation to press onward and achieve her goals. Her enthusiasm for the field was self-sustaining in that sense. But somehow, this time felt a little bit different. The formulae almost seemed to stare back at her, inviting her to try again, knowing she would fail.

The quill rose once again, its tip releasing a droplet of ink onto the wooden surface. The vase was shifted well out of sight and Twilight placed both hooves on the table with Spike coming up beside her on a stool.

The unicorn looked calmly at the very beginning of her formula. The long version of Starswirl’s First Law of Thaumium Growth was important for the sake of accuracy. Twilight had little idea of what kind of a pony he’d been, but his refusal to shorten any of his own major breakthroughs into simple expressions spoke of a very stubborn mule with a very straightforward view of the world. Looking at the complexity of what could otherwise be stated as “M=M+TxM”, it was no small wonder she’d had to scrap the other attempts. After getting its details so horridly mixed up that simply wiping the parchment clean and starting again wouldn’t remove the animosity she felt towards each offending scroll, Twilight had finally written the entire sum correctly, or so she hoped. She knew it by heart, she reminded herself. It couldn’t be wrong.

The other major names featured within the numbers were not Twilight’s favourites, but she had nonetheless replicated their contributions to the field. Quilliam and Atruvius had notoriously been at each other’s throats for their entire careers, and countless minor controversies stalked them beyond the grave. Twilight knew less of them than she did of the star-gazer she admired so much, but—

Twilight’s ears perked up and Spike retracted the claw he’d been about to point something out with, and they both looked to the door of the dormitory. The knock came again and, releasing a quiet huff, Twilight popped her quill back into its inkwell and wandered over. The young stallion on the other side was just a postmare, she was thankful to see. She didn’t like being disturbed by others unless it was important, let alone when she was right in the middle of something.

The postmare hoofed her a small but weighty package. Carrying it through the air, the table made a worrying creak as she thunked the box down.

“What is it?” Spike asked, leaning over to give the cardboard a poke.

Twilight gave the package a quick once-over and noted the first class stamp and then the one of royal approval. Not quite royal enough for a golden print, but still very much important enough to handle with care. “I think it’s from my mom,” she replied. She retrieved her quill and swept the ink from it. The wavy field of levitation slowed and solidified, its tip sharpening to a point to turn it into a makeshift box cutter. The cardboard split with ease.

Peering inside, it was as Twilight had suspected; pages upon pages of important documents. Tax reports and written legal requests and disputes for the nobles who lived close to her home in Upper Canterlot. A simple convenience for them, a firestorm back home. The only reason her mother ever risked sending such things to her daughter’s school dorm was because she knew Twilight was the most methodical—and therefore careful—mare in Canterlot. It would also be because the filing rooms back at the manor were likely up to the ceiling with all kinds of official complaints, notices of absence, end-of-the-world sales adverts, and more.

With every word she read, the pit in Twilight’s stomach started to reopen, all thoughts of distracting herself with study peeling away as reality stormed into her thoughts. It felt like her dorm’s giant window wasn’t there anymore, like the gaping abyss of Canterlot Mountain’s cliffs were about to curl back on themselves and climb into her room. There would be no ignoring it today.

Slowly, her gaze drifted to the beautiful view.

It was still there.

From leagues and leagues above it hung, motionless and malformed, as it had done for four weeks now. Staring back with its one pillar-shaped eye, any sign of the Mare in the Moon wiped clean from the heavenly body’s surface. Beyond the pillar, the Moon was as smooth as a billiard ball. It had only been mere happenstance that it hadn’t tried to knock Epona into the metaphorical table’s pocket. At least it felt like it. Supposedly there was nothing to fear now that the queen of the night had been defeated, but the remnants of her landbridge were still there, and so was the Moon itself, unable to continue its journey now that ownership had been passed from Celestia to her sister.

“Twilight?”

For the first two weeks she'd found herself staring at it. The disfigurement adorning the object’s surface was impossible to ignore, and the shadow it cast across its face was a horrid reminder of everything that had nearly happened. Studying was her only respite from the images of black that filled her mind. Landscapes veiled in darkness, creatures in the night, plants dying, society breaking down…

“Twilight, are you ok? Come on.”

Her breath caught in her throat.

“I’m ok,” she responded quietly. “I just… got a chill.”

Comments

[Cross Lament]

So this Nightmare Moon was into megascale engineering?

[Comickook]

LOVED the "sibling banter" between Twilight and Spike and, yeah, this DOES look like an intriguing start to your AU series. Indeed, Twilight and Spike ARE both enough in character where I COULD see the stuff in this prologue happening under the right different series of events.

[Parallel Black]

9553592
I'm really happy that you like how I'm handling Twilight and Spike! Spike is always one of those difficult characters to write due to the simple fact that he's a kid and can't really do that much as a result. While this story is definitely more focused on Twilight's perspective, I've still got places where Spike can contribute here and there.

9553502
Pretty much. My version of Nightmare Moon is monumentally more powerful than the show version, and it only makes sense that someone with ownership over the Moon can essentially do whatever they wish with it.