Left Behind

by The Psychopath

Sister's Dregs

Author's Note:

My friend made me realize what I had forgotten in the description of the pony in the last chapter. You can go back to it if you want to see it, or just continue reading through here. It's just a single line, after all.

The two alicorns stared at each other, neither of them making a move. Celestia's flames flickered and cracked in the air, filling the empty void forming between them, but somepony had to address the situation.

"How are you still alive? The thestrals said that you had died millennia ago." She shook her head and sighed. "Seems the tales of millennia are as unreliable as ever." Celestia remained silent, her teeth still bared. "And how are you even alive with the hypocrisy? You became what you chastized me over, pretending to care, and now look at you." Moon slowly circled around the burning pony, scanning her up and down. "Consumed by hatred, just like me," the black alicorn growled. "But I doubt this is truly you. Must be yet another of the security checks in place," she stated dismissively. The white alicorn raised her head like she was taking in a very deep breath. "What is this?"

Celestia belched a continuous torrent of fire at Moon who did nothing to protect herself. A stupid mistake. She was engulfed in flames. Her coat was burning and pain was devouring her body as she lay on the ground, writhing. In her mind, as much as she could manage to focus through it all, a night sky cleared, and twin moons fused to each other made themselves known. Her horn glowed a pale tan color then engulfed her body, extinguishing the flames and mending her burnt body back to its former glory.

"What?!" she gasped loudly. "You...can breathe fire?!"

"Wretched thing!" Celestia shouted. "You should have died! Filthy simulacrum!"

The black alicorn struggled back onto her hooves and stared at her opponent. The burning alicorn exhaled another torrent of flames, but Moon felt the magic in her well up and focus. If Celestia could do it, then so could she! She was her equal, if not her better in every regard!

White light illuminated Moon's throat, exposing muscle and sinew. The sides of her jaw imitated the light, making it look like her mouth had torn apart. A vortex of black light surrounded by silvery fragments that flowed in and out of the solid column impacted the flames. The intense heat melted the ground at the impact point, and blades of energy whipped out like explosive fragments, burrowing themselves into the material around. Celestia looked increasingly angry.

"I will melt you and your bones down!" Celestia threatened.

Moon felt herself tiring almost immediately. All this new magic and power was taxing a body not yet trained to utilize them, but this was exhilarating. Celestia was right here, and even if she wasn't in her right mind, Moon would finally get her revenge.

"Is that any way to greet...your sister, dear, sweet Celestia?" Moon taunted. Every word was exhausting, but worth it.

The white alicorn was taken back. "My what? I have no such thing. Only the sun is my companion, and I have been denied its light for too long!" she cursed. The mare stomped the ground, cracking it. "I have waited in these archives for weeks, looking for a way to break the ones foolish enough to besiege my home with their bizarre sorcery." Her hooves started melting the ground, but as always, the damage seemed to revert the moment she stepped away.

Moon took a double-take. "What is the meaning of this, Celestia? Do you not recognize your own sister?"

The white alicorn's eyes ignited. A simulacrum of a sun grew from several tiny vortexes of fire coming out of her horn. It was immediately thrown at Moon who flew out of the way, but she was still blown away by the heatwave. It ignited the bookshelves and drowned her in an unimaginable level of heat. Now, the black alicorn found herself deeper in the archives, and her eyes widened. It looked like a city that stretched for miles in one direction. There were even...bookshelves on the ceiling. She didn't have time to ponder that Celestia started throwing more suns at her. Nightmare Moon was chased further and further in, and the further she went, the more twisted and bizarre the supposed archives became. Everything bent and twisted, curved and bulged. Moon found herself on a twisting, tube-like protrusion of ground upon which a table and chair stood at awkward angles.

"Your castle has been buried for centuries! Were you dormant at this time, sister?!" Moon yelled out.

The white alicorn's current sun burst apart harmlessly, and she found herself falling sideways onto the ground, a hoof to her forehead. "I have no sister, fool!"

"Celestia! You cannot deny the wrongs you have done to me!"

"Cease calling me 'Celestia! I have long since lost that name and adopted one more befitting!" the mare shouted angrily. With every hoof she stood back on, the heat being emitted from her body became strong and more intense.

Moon stood straight, looking down at her sister with disgusted contempt. "Then what should I call you, Celestia," Moon emphasized.

Celestia ground her teeth against each other, and tiny rivulets of lava leaked out between her teeth. "I was called Daybreaker by my subjects, but I go by Solar Flare now!" A burst of extreme heat came from her body at those words, melting the stones around her. "They betrayed me and now deny their wrongdoings! Harboring the ones who brought this upon themselves! I--oomph!"

Moon had engulfed herself in white, crystalline growths, coating her entire front in them. She quickly tackled the enraged 'Solar Flare' into the ground, shattering pieces of her new defense. Thinking that was at least superficial damage, Moon flew away back onto another strange geometrical shape. Flare shook the fragments off of her body and looked up at the pony with black eyes. Lava poured from slits and punctures in her fur onto the ground, each landing and cooling into tiny, black specks.

There was something odd about this...Celestia, aside from the usual. The damages she was causing weren't staying on the surrounding environment, save the heat. Far enough away, the burns and melted material reverted to their former stature, but Moon remained damaged as well.

"Did you not hear what I said previously? Your castle is buried!"

Solar Flare cackled in a disturbingly familiar manner. "This isn't my castle, foal. I threw it away for my new palace. A veritable fortress! They simply imprisoned me here temporarily."

Moon narrowed her eyes. "You told me they had you trapped here by magic and that you were looking for a way to get rid of the spells."

The burning alicorn's body seemed to go transparent for a moment. That settled it. Every muscle in Moon's body tensed up with frustration and hatred. Celestia was alive! She was going to get her revenge, even if this was just a corrupted version of her, and then reality set in. Her vision started becoming blurry, but she wasn't sure what was causing it. Solar Flare still found it humorous.

"Terrified by what I'm going to do to your friends after you get out?" She laughed through her nose. "Taking on the guise of an alicorn like the other, but that didn't help them. What makes you think this will help you?"

"You're not her..." Moon mumbled.

"What?"

"You're not her!" The black alicorn exhaled her own breath once more, but it was still weak, and Solar Flare managed to hold it back with just an energy shield. "You're a magic echo! You're whatever shattered off of her and was placed here to protect this place. You're just a memory of her emotions." She stomped the ground several times afterwards, destroying it further and further until all that remained was a dark crater and rubble. Her mouth trembled, and her words came out in croaks. "You're...just her ghost..." Supposedly extremely insulted by this, Solar Flare prepared herself for another attack. "Come, then!" Nightmare Moon challenged. "Show me what passed for the fury of my sister! Burn me with her sun!"

The response was swift. Moon was tackled faster than she could react by a pony wreathed in a pillar of white fire. It felt like her body was going to turn to ashes at any time, but the twin moons remained a powerful element in her mind. Whatever they were doing was keeping the pony as strong as possible. She countered by forcing the stones in the newly excavated tunnel to smash into both sides of Solar Flare, rattling her brain. It was the perfect opportunity to grab her head in a lock with a foreleg and compress her magic onto their bodies. When the strain was too much, Moon let go. While she was simply throwing out of the tunnel and back into the air, Solar Flare found her body being twisted and contorted several times in a row in different directions. She smashed into a dozen bookshelves, throwing wood and reading material everywhere. The weird gravity of the archives made everything go in different directions; Some even elongated to suit the new zone.

"Pathetic," Moon taunted.

Solar Flare gave her 'sister' a toothy smile, and the black alicorn felt why. Throughout her body it felt like everything was on fire. It burned and burned, but, over a few seconds, she managed to disperse the spell, chasing away the smile directed at her.

"Are these the spells she used on ponies of that era?" Moon realized in horror. "What other things did she even do to them? What am I not seeing?"

Moon took a moment to catch her breath, but her opponent was not a patient sort, nor fair. She spun her head, growing her mane. From it came a tornado of fire that greedily ate away at the archives as it went towards Moon, but the alicorn was not impressed. She tore open a hole to space that extinguished the spell almost instantly.

This exchange continued for many hours on end, with each spell being more focused and grandiose than before. Solar Flare opened a hole to her furious sun that pelted the area with its own fury, missing Moon narrowly several times until she was caught and burned intensely. Nothing but blackness remained where she had been hit until her new magic finally healed her back to health.

Moon herself had created latices of the black light she breathed previously, striking Solar Flare over and over again. With every hit it seemed like more and more light left the ghost and it became sluggish, but this specter was stubborn.

This would have continued on for several more hours, but Moon could hear the statues starting to move again and didn't have time. With how exhausted she was and what little magic was left to her, she tried one last attack to destroy the heart of this echo, but it was too late. Solar Flare had caught her neck in a vice grip of lava and laughed as she tightened slowly.

"For your affronts to me I will slowly wring the life out of you, then the heat of your body shall feed my sun. It must be hungry after so long without anything to sav...S...Umff."

Solar Flare looked down and saw multiple blades of black light sticking out of her body. The lava was starting to cool as she looked up. She had been holding nothing. Moon had tricked her.

"A cliché tactic...But I learned that those who...who are most sure of themselves...are always open..." Moon wheezed.

The archives were a mess. Their powers had been so impressive that everything had been destroyed. Craters lay everywhere, books burned in midair, strange spatial tears seemed to corrupt the very air around them, turning them into a strange, black space or a burning zone of lava.

Moon grabbed the echo and looked at its furious gaze. That anger had not subsided. Just how mad was Celestia that this thing, which had only a fraction of her magic, only held such emotions even in its supposed death. And just how powerful had she become? Moon felt woefully pitiful now. Such immense power. Even if she hadn't been weakened by the poison, she would have had the same amount of difficulty handling this 'Solar Flare' as she did now.

As Moon looked at the burning, black eyes of this entity, it still raised a hoof, struggling to keep it straight, and gently bapped Moon on her cheek. Solar Flare gasped several times as the lava in her body cooled and turned black, but there was one last death throe in her.

"Give...her...back...!" she demanded weakly.

The pony instantly burst into thousands of tiny black particles that raised up and lingered in the air, and the archives reverted to a normal location. Well, relatively normal. They retained the oddity that the mare once saw when she entered, but the size was not even remotely close to how it was as she fought.

Moon had done it, though. She had finally triumphed over her sister! She had gotten her vengeance, and it was a hard-fought one! Her magic had been all-but-exhausted, and so some marks of battle remained singed upon her, but it was a victory nonetheless!

A victory...Why then, did Moon feel...hollow? Why was her vision becoming blurry? She fell to the ground. Only a few, faint hiccups voiced their existence in the vastness of Celestia's archives. The dark, empty, silent archives.

Comments

[valexto]

Whoa! Didn't expected an echo, really surprising! And as it is written, one can only fear what might be the full power of the real Solar Flare.

[Anon E Moose]

Moon herself had created latices of the black light she breathed previously, striking Solar Flare over and over again. With every hit it seemed like more and more light left the ghost and it became sluggish, but this specter was stubborn.

Dark types are super effective vs ghost types after all

[Thranx]

Wait... That's just an echo? Goodness, even a fraction of Celestia's power left NMM spent.

[Dr Freaky]

Those last words were really good

[stag the story teller]

Wow, now that was something

[Midknight Defender]

"Sister's" description reminds me of this:

derpicdn.net/img/view/2021/2/23/2557148.png

I know, not quite the same, but still.

[The Psychopath]

11073140
Ooo. That's pretty close to what Sister's coat looks like. Just make her blacker and with white-hot light running along the sides the veins of lava.

[FanaticLunarist]

Celestia did some powerleveling and then went mad

[PaintedPony]

11071077
Well, NMM is still recovering from that poison. Poison which killed other alicorns from what I read into this. So I'll give her a pass... for now.

[redandready45]

Moon realizing she could only barely beat a shadow of Celestia has got to hurt her ego.

[FanaticLunarist]

"Wretched thing!" Celestia shouted. "You should have died! Filthy simulacrum!"

From this line alone I feel like a technological regression has happened

[Mocha Star]

Woah, I can't wait to find out what happens next!

[Black--Soul]

I hoped for answers, but got not one... Disappointing.
When will we get to learn of the past?

[tsaukpaetra]

Interesting that the copy claimed Nightmare herself was a copy. That has implications!