Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot

by Equimorto

Crab

The spell and scale almost reached Nightmare Moon. Almost. They got so close, Twilight couldn't even tell they wouldn't from where she was. But the moment they touched, the moment the portal appeared, Nightmare Moon was gone. She was already gone, gone a single instant before that, gone just quickly enough to avoid it. The next crystal Starshine hurled at her, not much smaller than the then pulverised tower that had stood there just a day before, passed untouched besides the portal, but the alicorn was already gone.

Twilight never knew how Nightmare Moon had known. Not if she'd known all along, not if she'd reacted by pure instinct, not if it had only been luck that had made her aware of what was coming her way. She had other things to worry about, much sooner than those questions could even properly appear in her mind. Nightmare Moon didn't teleport away to nowhere. Twilight didn't know if it was luck or instincts that had saved the other alicorn, but she did know it came down to a combination of both when it came to saving herself.

She rolled to her right, fast, and immediately teleported herself a hundred or so metres in the opposite direction and half as much upwards. From there she got a perfectly good look at the crater left starting from where she'd been and ending a long distance in front of it, and an equally as good look at the spell causing it as it was still being fired from Nightmare Moon's horn, the alicorn herself standing just behind where Twilight had been.

In the time it took for all that to happen, an admittedly brief span if a rather dense one, Starshine also took notice of things. For one she noticed the portal suddenly there in the air, floating in the middle of the sky. But mainly she noticed that Nightmare Moon was gone, and while she could have thought she was gone as a result of the portal being there such a possible guess was quickly snuffed out as she saw the stream of energy fired by the alicorn leaving a new, long crater on the ground that connected to the one Twilight had previously left.

And after that, Starshine took notice of where Twilight herself was, and teleported there. In the, again short, time it took her to do so and get there, Nightmare Moon did more or less the same. Less in that she didn't look around as much, more in that she still kept firing her spell awhile before disappearing again. As a result of such, Starshine appeared at Twilight's side almost exactly at the same time as Nightmare Moon did. Only a fraction of a second before. Meaning, before she had a chance to speak the words she was already planning to, she was hit in full by the alicorn's charge as she unintentionally put herself between her and Twilight.

She took the hit better than a regular pony would have, far better. Not to say she took it well, but still much better than a regular pony. She had a different mane colour by the end of it, but at least she still had a perfectly intact and sufficiently functional head. Whether or not the way she was pushed into the shield Twilight had put up already before she'd arrived there made things better or worse, that was hard to judge. But she did catch herself fairly quickly once she was pushed off of it, and from there she quickly took action.

Before Nightmare Moon, pushing against Twilight's shield and pushing her through the sky above the Empire, managed to fully break through the already cracking barrier Twilight struggled to hold around herself, Starshine returned the favour and charged towards her. Things did not mirror previous events, and Nightmare Moon avoided the charge entirely by pulling back, but that did give Twilight enough time to teleport away again.

She reappeared close to the portal floating in the air, thankful she'd managed to get there properly despite being unsure of what her position had been when she'd teleported, and from there got a clear look at Starshine keeping Nightmare Moon busy again. The coilborn mare was on the losing side of the confrontation, it seemed, but her peculiar resistance allowed her to hold things together despite that. Twilight considered going back there to help her, but chose against it, partly because Starshine managed to put herself in a slightly more favourable position again after a brief struggle.

Chosen against that, she instead considered what to do. Get Nightmare Moon to the portal or fire a new one to hit her with, obviously, but how? She would be alert after avoiding the first blast. Under different circumstances Twilight would have been panicking at the failure of her first attempt, but the situation called for her to keep it together and do her best, not waste time grieving over something she couldn't change any more. It was terrible that she'd failed the first shot, but the only way she'd get out of that situation would be fully focusing on getting the next attempt to land, and that meant not focusing at all on how bad things had gotten.

Direct confrontation was needed, she thought as the two alicorns clashed in the distance, loud and bright. At that point, either she'd push Nightmare Moon into an existing portal or she'd incapacitate her enough to fire another one on her. No sniping shots anymore, that ship had sailed and promptly sunk. But direct confrontation happening so far away from the portal would be pointless, doubly so if then Nightmare Moon once more moved the fight to a different location. To a degree, Twilight needed first to bait the other towards her. And hope she'd respond by coming and not simply by shooting at her, of course.

But she would come for her, that much at least she could bank on. She was looking to fight, and probably, definitely really, meaning to kill her. That she could work with. Most definitely use to her advantage. What she needed to do was get her closer, and to do that figure out a way to communicate efficiently with Starshine without getting close. Then they'd figure out something.

Comments

[Speckle]

Are magic telepathic messages a thing?

Also, I just realized, back in States of Matter, it was implied that things wouldn't end after Nightmare Moon's death...that she died, but the fight continued. Which makes me wonder: if Nightmare Moon herself is dead, then what - or who, for that matter - the hell are they fighting?