Bad Dragon's Short Stories

by Bad Dragon

22 - The Haunting [2022.04]

In a cave-in at the Castle of Three Sisters, a guard got trapped in the hole. Celestia got called in because she was, besides the mare on the moon, the only one who knew the traps of the castle. Starswirl the Bearded came with her; more for emotional support than the need, for she had not yet recovered from the banishment of her sister.

When Celestia arrived, she shuddered upon seeing the spot where the hole was. “There was no trap here. ‘Tis the spot where Nightmare Moon struck me down a year ago on the Nightmare Night.”

Starswirl asked, “But if there was no trap here, why is there a hole in the ground?”
A voice called out from the hole. “Not to pressure anypony, but I’m soaking in rot down here.”

Celestia levitated him out of the hole and brushed a hoof on his coat, collecting the soft, moldy material. “Starswirl, hypothetically speaking, if there were a bunch of mattresses buried here, would that leave behind something like this?”

He used his magic to analyze the matter. “Indeed. You are correct. But how did you know? Why would anypony put a bunch of mattresses under the very spot where Nightmare Moon struck you down?”

Celestia gasped. “Every year she pranked me, but last year I thought it was real! She was Nightmare Moon at the time. She was…”

Starswirl looked at her with concern in his eyes. “Celestia, are you okay?”

A stream of tears burst down Celestia’s face as she spoke, “She was Luna!”

Starswirl opened his snout, but no words came out.

Celestia looked at him with a gaze of desperation. “The recall spell! Did you teach it to my sister?”

“Only the first part. She rescheduled my lesson about circumventing the star alignment requirement for the spell to work. She said something about needing more time to prepare a darkly prank.”

“No!” screamed Celestia and crumpled on the ground under the weight of the truth. “The stars won’t be aligned for the next thousand years!”

---

The realization of what she had done gave birth to regret that would haunt Celestia until the end of her days. Debilitated, she would be forever incapable of any action, letting her students wage all the battles in her steed.

All the while, the mare on the moon kept repeating the words she had hoped Celestia's ears would one day receive, “It was merely a prank. It was merely a prank…”

Even after the return of the mare from the moon, Luna too would avoid conflict and sleep over any major event, even if it was an invasion of her city, rather than risk being misunderstood again.

Author's Note:

This story took part in the 2022.04 writing competition.