Chapter 1

Luna stood in the primary command bridge of the Equestrian Capital Ship Sentinel, worry heavy in her eyes but stern otherwise beside her sister who sat fret-faced in the command chair, both staring into the holographic screen before them. Static filled it then, the distortion field of the portal necessary to fit the Sentinel’s eight mile high and nine mile wide bulk through, and to maintain it for her twenty-seven miles of length, still engulfed the foremost sensor array. Nevertheless did they demand the communications officers keep ready to search short-range frequencies for signs of distress once they’d passed beyond the interference.

“You’re certain they're in danger?” Celestia asked.

“As the grave,” replied Luna. “The Dream favors a mask, but it doth not lie.”

“Object detected in orbit of Lumina,” said the mare at the scanner.

Luna shot her a tense look. “The Eris?”

She shrugged, unsure. “It matches mostly, but there are some physical anomalies throwing off the ID.”

“Perhaps it was damaged somehow,” Celestia said, “or the distortion is hampering the feed.”

The mare at the scanner said, “It doesn’t seem like damage or distortion, at least not any I’ve ever seen. It’s almost like it’s… grown.”

“Grown?” Luna narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. “Have we visuals yet, or be our cameras yet blinded by the portal’s energies?”

A stallion at one of the other terminals nodded. “Forward cameras have outranged the portal’s distortion field and established visual contact. Directing feed to command chair.”

Before them the holographic screen flickered into a painting of space with a barren world there ensconced. The Sister’s eyes were drawn to the small rotund vessel hidden against the swirl of churning dust storms, distinguishable only by the unexpected blue flash of its thrusters.

“What are they doing?” Luna turned to the scanner. “They are on course to collide with the planet, what are they doing?!”

“Transmission detected, ID is the Eris!” The comm officer turned to the Princesses, her ears pinned back. “It sounds bad.”

“Redirect the feed to the command chair,” ordered Celestia, and so it was done. The audio was garbled terribly, but a moment later it shed its static and came in clear and raw.

“This is Captain Firewatch of the ECT Eris. One hour previous several alien fighters collided with our ship at high speed.”

“First contact…” Celestia lost her breath. The rest of the crew shared her shocked awe.

Luna sneered. “With murderers.”

The message continued. “Initial damage was minimal, but they were covered in some kind of organic growth that spread over the hull. There were bodies on the ships. Should have been dead exposed to the void like they were, but they just got up and started killing. Tried to seal them off, close the bulkheads, but they started crawling through the damn air vents! Had to space half the ship just to slow them down.”

Many a horrified gasp arose on the bridge, even Celestia failed to restrain herself. Luna ground her teeth quietly.

“It didn’t work, damn thing’s still spreading. Even crossed the species barrier like it was nothing. Like it was our purpose--" A tangled mess of pained grunts filled the air. The sound of hoof striking head, battering metal, seething gasps. "Agh! Guh... fucking voices, always chittering. Th-the security feed's full of recordings of corpses getting back up, swelling out like giant tumors, breaking into different shapes, by the Sister's...” There was a long pause, a breathing so heavy one could feel their own lungs burn, muted sobs. Seconds passed like hours until he managed to compose himself enough to continue. “I made an executive decision. Only distress beacon we have is old, short-range, but energy efficient, it'll do. Once I’ve recorded this and set it in stable orbit I’m gonna make my way to the bridge and end this thing before it takes over the ship. If you pick up this transmission, don't come looking. Whether I make it or not, there won't be anypony left to save. Firewatch out.”

Static reigned. The visual feed of the Eris charging Lumina filled the sister’s eyes, and all those too perturbed to keep to their work. They watched as it shrank and shrank and shrank, on until it was a mote of dust, then a flash of scarlet, a momentary gap in the storms, and gone.

Celestia shook her head. “Goodness…”

“If such a thing there be,” said Luna, “then Lumina soon will be but the ashen echo of our wrath! Are we free from the distortion field? The portal is sealed behind us?”

The crew were slow to respond. “Yes, your highness.”

“Good. Ready the MAC.” There came another pause from the bridge crew. Luna skewered it on a fiery question. “Wherefor aren ye frozen?! Ready. The. MAC. Assume maximal acceleration range, fire when ready.”

“Luna.”

Worry crashed against Luna’s hard face. “Celestia?”

Celestia shakingly had to right herself on the command chair. Luna braced her with a hoof, and she nodded in thanks. “How many were aboard the Eris?”

Luna’s face softened. She closed her eyes, drew a deep breath. “Too many.”

“The exact number,” Celestia demanded, eyes burning, breath smoldering. “Please.”

Luna drew her lips into a contemptuous line. “Twelve-thousand.”

Heavy and hateful passed the long moment thereafter. Malice burning in Celestia’s eyes, she asked, “How long until the MAC is ready to fire?”

“MAC is armed and ready, your highness,” somepony on the bridge said. “ETA to position is 15 seconds.”

“Good, maintain speed,” Celestia said. She fixed Luna with a dire look and nodded. “Fire when ready.”

The Sentinel leered as a gun between Lumina’s eyes. Anomalous forms resounded back to the scanners from the planet’s near orbit, fighters like those that had taken the Eris.

“Point defenses are active?” asked Luna.

“Full spectrum,” answered one of the crew. Another added, “Ranged cannons as well.”

“One fell turn deserves another,” said Celestia. “Burn them.”

From the fore cannons of the Sentinel arced streams of killing light, each focused upon its own target. The enemy vessels were devoured whole. More came from the surface, only to fall likewise, the dust itself broken before the star-core heat and scattered to the mnemonic winds.

“We’re in position, your highness.”

Celestia waved a hoof. “You have your orders.”

Klaxon howls filled the halls. The bowels of the Sentinel shook with anticipation. Into the main cannon that ran the length of the vessel went the MAC shot, its rockets primed. The explosive crystals within it hummed malevolence. Throughout the ship ponies hastened for something to hold onto, others more fortunate hunkered down upon their mag-shoes. Then it came.

A great reverberation wracked the ship, the whole of it shaking like a storm-stuck leaf. Metal groaned and grated, wailing against the pull of the slug as it rocketed forward and the bellowing titan coils turned on, one after the other after the other. Were it not for the Sentinel’s artificial gravity all things not fastened to a wall or floor would have been yanked out of place as the cataclysmic brick of death gained impetus. Faster and faster and faster. More coils ahead. More speed. Faster. Faster.

Out flew the round and lightning-quick it pierced the atmosphere, a glowing rod of anger six miles long, four in diameter, devoured whole in a massive cloud of fire and blazing dust upon impact. Outward rushed a ring of fire, blowing out the great storms of dirt and spores and scattering the wind in its charred wake. On and on it went, from impact and over the horizon, from there to the other end of the world, Lumina wrapped in a noxious mourning veil. The Eris, avenged.

The various bridges of the Sentinel beheld the destruction through their holographic screens, aware of its theoretical capacity to bring ruin but awed to silence to see the reality of it. Celestia’s stern reserve stood out in its contrast, and seemed to be drawing worried sidelong glances from the crew. But a sound from beside her pulled her attention away, and fear stole over her.

“Luna?!” On the floor beside the command chair Luna lay sprawled, convulsing in the throes of a seizure. Celestia swooped down to check on her, calling out as she did for the crew to summon medical personnel. She elevated Luna’s head, saw she was gritting her teeth and had screwed her eyes shut. “Oh, sister…”

The dark of death enveloped Luna’s vision. Her limbs were cold, weightless, her head pounding. She fumbled for recollection, and felt ice trail her spine as she remembered the crushing psychic scream that rent her from consciousness. Millions of voices it had seemed like, millions of thoughts lashed shoddily together like the logs of a raft, all wailing and dying, limbs of the mind clutching to the stars for salvation. They found only her, unprepared, basking in the balmy, basal warmth of ire’s satisfaction, and struck.

Another shock of pain ripped through her mind and instinct bade her reach for something against which to brace herself. An unexpected surface met her hoof, and opening her eyes she beheld a sight uncomfortably familiar to her: a vast chess board with unusual white and black pieces. The white, with their golden ostentations of design, marked them as Equestrian, though there were others – the harshly utilitarian designs fielded by Griffins, the hulks of jagged metal as Dragons used, and more. And then there were the black pieces, singular and disparate planets one and all, or so they had been.

That same realm of dream had informed her previously of the Eris’ distress, when the bulging colony ship had, as she neared the black planet Lumina thereupon, turned a dismal gray. What exactly it meant she was not sure, and ere she could long ponder it at the time a loathsome agony had clutched her brain.

It had felt as if a million years of history had swept through her consciousness in the span of seconds. Dizzy, pallid, head throbbing with instances of terrible battle, deadly lights arcing from the sky, sickly earth burned to glass, she'd cried out. Strange suited creatures on two legs screamed and killed each other, volleys of white-hot plasma hissed through the air, seared blood to ash on the wind. Above all a shadow loomed, terrible and vast, the abyss of her fears. She felt eyes upon her, hideous with intent, unseen in the dark. Her heart shriveled, and she was flung back into the waking world, thunder in her chest, brow cold with sweat. Thus had she rushed to the bridge and urged Celestia to unmoor the Sentinel from Equestria’s orbital space docks, and thus had she later raced to the communications suite to hail the Eris to be sure.

The pieces that had been Lumina and the Eris were gone. But now beneath the black banner lay an array of ships that ranged in design from the harshly angular, to cumbersome and like unto the firearms wielded by Griffins and Diamond dogs, to others with a sleekness that flowed from bow to stern like water, and a scant hoofful with the likeness of great broken rings. Not a one like anything she had seen before, nor read of in field reports, nor in tales of voyages deep into their traverse of space. Yet there they were, as sure in their place as hers were their own, this realm of the Dream a seeming live map of the galaxy.

Luna feared its portent, but deeper on that she could not fathom ere a flyblown chorus slithered into her ears. “So life again comes to our grave to join our timeless song,” it sang, “It seems that I was right to wait for more to come along.”

Luna looked frantically about. The void of space loomed awfully around her, undulant seeming behind its inky pitch, sensate with evil. “Who speaks? Show thyself, or be marked craven!”

Slithering came the suggestion of laughter, or was it insult muttered? The bevy of pulsing thoughts that assailed Luna was difficult to parse. “I?” it feigned ask. “I am a monument to things long past, and that soon will be. But you.” Luna felt the stare of a trillion lidless eyes and shuddered. “You are different. New, but known.” The emptiness of space parted as something massive and invisible leered close to Luna, felt her up with feelers of thought, caressed her brain and muddled her perceptions. She saw Equestria in its youth, ere nature stilled her sun and moon, ere its land and sky were by pony hooves tended. “I know you, little ponies.”

She had to force herself to speak against the foul rapture between her ears. “We… I… am Princess Luna. I…” She centered herself, and with a quickness that came only through centuries of practice brought to bear a myriad of cloned thoughtforms as she would to tend her many ponies’ dreams, partitioned her magic, her self, among them, and faced her foe. “We are night and terror to all whom would our ponies threaten,” she ground out, slipping around the thing’s mental assault. “We are the blue flame of vengeance, the majesty and hatred of the dark! Luna We are, and Nightmare Moon! Now name thyself, or be craven.”

A trill of bemusement rattled space. “So very many words you have,” it said, “so many ways to say…” Luna felt foul tongues lapping through her consciousness after her. She had summoned many clones, but this force itself was many, many more. The effort to stay uncaught set a cold sweat on her brow. “… that all you are is prey.”

It tilted her head down to see the chessboard. Pain flashed over her, set her vision ashudder, and when it returned she beheld the board then a gray mesh marred with enough black bits to challenge the count of stars. Then did the thing from beyond drag her gaze to the lonely speck of white nestled in its midst like a grain of sand near the center of an endless black mat. Tears filled Luna’s shivering eyes, her mouth gaped in silent horror. She went limp, a beaten ragdoll, forced upright by the rotten tendrils of the omnipresent other covering her inside and out. Despondence slew her higher notions. But instinct remained, and it demanded she flee.

There came a roaring that hearkened to the scream before, but inside Luna’s head. Arcing lightning raced between her neurons, the stench of burning flesh poured from the back of her nose. Already she had sent her thoughtforms fleeing, galloping into the great beyond and out of reach. For those ensnared it was too late.

Images flashed before her eyes. Pain and suffering, torment and hideous transformation. Worlds of corpses coalesced into abominable mountains of flesh, bodies and brains putrefied, melted into a slurry of thoughts bent toward hunger, feeding, domination. Visions of tumid ships crashing through orbital defense stations, infesting planets, gunfire, retreat, so many terrified young. And behind all resounded the mocking, cacophonous laughter of vigintillions of minds raped into one unending fetid refrain.

The Luna that had remained behind had died. She had died well before the thing had finished its defilement of her senses, curled up somewhere among the onslaught of dead and pustulent worlds, unable against such a deluge of grotesquery to muster the will to live. But it was not all of her. Blindly loping, hurling hoof over hoof, flapping frenziedly, never daring to look back, some had escaped.

Sterile white and phosphorescent light filled her waking eyes, and voices spoke beyond it that met her ears as if through deep water. Luna stumbled to say something, but all she could muster was a groan and sharp gasp as her senses returned. Her head pounded like a cracked anvil, her lungs burned, her muscles ached, and clenching her teeth she found them quite sensitive, but she was alive.

A familiar face hove in sight above her, the pallid light wreathed about her breezy mane like a halo. “You had me terribly worried,” the face said, “you had us all terribly worried.”

“Celestia,” Luna muttered weakly.

“Yes,” Celestia answered before Luna could go on. “The doctors figured you had slipped into a coma, they weren’t sure you would be awake so soon, some that you would wake again at all.”

“What… what happened?”

“You collapsed into a seizure just as Lumina was impacted,” said Celestia. “You’ve been unconscious for twenty-four hours, though nopony has been able to figure out exactly why.”

“Twenty-four hours? But I was… I s-saw…” Luna froze. Her eyes shot open, her heart pounded a dissonant tune. A hammer battered down her courage, and she flung herself out of bed, ripping off the sensory equipment that had been placed upon her. She stumbled forward dizzily, tripped over her own hooves, tried to crawl toward the exit like a wounded animal. Celestia called her name and reached out to her, only for her touch to earn a scream and her hoof to split partially against Luna’s wild swing. A moment later, when Luna had realized what she’d done, she collapsed into a sobbing heap.

Celestia shook her head, her eyes wide and mouth ajar seeing what had become of her sister. “What happened to you, Lulu?”

Luna retched on the floor, the action making monstrous noises of her wails, until at length she managed to level her shuddering, bloodshot eyes upon her sister, and muttered something under her breath, voice choked with fear. Celestia came and laid carefully beside her, draped a wing over her, lifted her chin carefully with the other, and bade her speak again as several nurses arrived to handle the sudden flatline. Shaking bodily, cheeks matted by hot tears, she said merely, “We need to leave.”

“Leave?” said Celestia. “Leave what? Why?”

“This galaxy,” Luna whimpered. She took a deep breath and a moment to muster some of her old composure, though it was bereft all of her former hope and high meaning. What next she had to say must be clear, must be certain. Dourly she spoke, and frankly as the grave. “Because if we don’t,” she said, “if we can’t, then it will be our tomb.”

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