Left Behind: Sunny Disposition

by The Psychopath

You are being vassilized. Rejoice!

Under the guidance of Sunny, the two ponies found themselves approaching the forest of the thestrals once again, and once more Moon could see the immense tree bigger than any castle she ever saw stretching high above the treeline. It almost seemed like it was holding onto the stars in the night sky or that its branches were stretching so far up that they had turned into stars. Moon thought back to the day she had. Strange runes left behind by her sister and what was unmistakably Celestia's presence. She let the day go by, waiting for night to fall, letting her look around the castle and see the progress of its defensive capabilities against both air and ground. She mused that, even if an air force came to attack her castle from above, that they would have no way to get any needed resources in place. They would have to fight a protracted battle, and that would never work. The mare had learned her lesson from her first attempt at having a fort built.

During the trip, she reminisced of when Mond and another ghost came to visit her right before her departure.

---

She had received a visit in her room by Mond, her unofficial successor, followed by some kind of behemoth of a pony that stood two heads taller than the Mare-in-the-Moon and was built like a fortress. It didn't help that it looked like whatever armor she wore had melted into her body and most of her lips were missing, exposing oddly shaped teeth that curved inwards like scimitars.

"You brought a guest, Mond?" Moon noted.

The first successor looked to the giant and nodded. "Yes. Mellow was able to manifest since her moon was the first you managed to link with consciously."

Moon rubbed her chin, intrigued. "Yet you were the first to come to me."

Mond shrugged. "We honestly don't know how it works. We already barely knew how our own powers worked. There's not supposed to be more than one alicorn of a specific thing, after all." She looked towards the giant who reciprocated the action. "Maybe the other alicorns would have known what to do?" she wondered.

"So what you said was a lie," Moon stated.

Mond shrugged. "I was just trying to be helpful."

Moon shook her head and groaned in disappointment. "Don't make assumptions about how our magic works if you have no idea what is happening with it."

"Well, sorry. It's not like you've been trapped in the moon for ten millennia." Mond glanced at Mellow a moment. "How did you wrangle the shades that you summon from her moon?"

"How do I what?" Moon asked.

The giant looked stunned. "You have to beat them into submission before you can unsummon them," Mellow explained as she took a step forward. Her voice was oddly loud but passive. "That's how I became as I did," she stated whilst flexing a foreleg.

"I haven't needed to do anything," Moon rebutted. "I simply felt a pull, and then the power came." She ran a hoof through her flowing mane and grunted. "Although every moon seems to drain me every time I use their powers."

Mellow stomped around, but being a ghost meant she couldn't damage anything, much to Moon's delight. "That isn't fair! They just obey you?! I had to fight them back every time I summoned them!" She slammed her hooves against the ground harmlessly and dragged them across her own face afterward. "This isn't fair! I want to be alive again to destroy things, but I'm stuck here!" Her eyes widened and she bolted in front of Moon, disgusting the living mare.

"Instead of lamenting your current situation, perhaps your coming is more fortuitous for the both of us." The mare pulled several parchment dregs she hid above her room and showed them to the ghosts. "I tried to redraw them from memory, but my...artistic talents are lacking."

The two leaned forward to have a better look. Moon noticed their expressions turning dour.

"This looks like what those tiny idiots used against my shades," Mellow stated. "That magic was dangerous."

"But it never worked right," Mond added. "There was always something going wrong with it. The user collapsing, the magic blowing back and sparking their horn."

"The caster imploding, them and everything around them being turned into fragile, black ash," Mellow counted. "So many things always went wrong, even when the casting was successful."

"So it's as I expected," Moon realized. "What in Equestria was my sister up to?" The two visitors shrugged, leading Moon to roll her eyes. "You just came here to tell me that another one has been able to manifest?" she asked Mond.

The aforementioned looked at Mellow and cleared her throat. "Uuuh...Yes? You're trying to find answers to the past so I thought it would be a good idea."

Nightmare sighed but nodded slowly. "True. Thhhhank you," she forced out. The pony shivered. "That doesn't feel right to say that."

Mellow laughed loudly. "I never had to say thank you either! It's an awful sensation!" her voice boomed.

As loud as she was abnormally huge.

---

"Woah!" Sunny blurted.

He was getting used to Moon dropping him like a rock after their flights, but she never did it from the same height and still didn't warn him when she was going to do it. At least she didn't drop him so high that he would get hurt. As he nursed his aching limbs, a thestral jumped out of the trees and bowed to Nightmare Moon.

"Princess!" he chirped eagerly. "We never expected another visit!"

"Take me back to your village. I have something to announce a pony to recruit."

The thestral tilted his head, perplexed. "Recruit? For what?"

"I need a chef for my royal kitchens when they have been completed."

The bat pony scratched his head. "...And you came all the way here for that? Couldn't you have just sent a missive?"

Moon shot him a dark look. "I don't know the precise location of your village yet, and ponies don't exactly know where you live precisely. When I asked my guards they said that you don't have addresses or any real landmarks." She pointed towards the immense tree. "Aside from that."

"Well, I'll take you to our village. Maybe you will be able to remember it this time." He scratched the side of his neck. "And those three will probably stop bragging about having met you first."

"Those three?" Moon repeated quizzically.

"You don't remember the thestrals that found you in that mountain city and brought you back?!"

Moon tried remembering as best as she could. Only the vaguest memory reached through of annoying, young thestrals that were singing her praises nonstop.

"I have a vague idea of who you might be talking about," she noted with a hint of disgust.

"Follow me, your highness," the thestral said.

Moon barely took a step that she collapsed to the ground, her horn aflame. She clenched her teeth and tried her best to formulate a spell to relieve her of the crushing sensation around her horn. The thestral and Sunny had both become fluid like everything around the alicorn.

Scritching.

Scratching.

Something was digging at the recesses of the mare's mind. Something disturbing. Revolting. It felt familiar, but she wasn't sure what it was. Within all the noise, there was a whisper, but Nightmare Moon could not make out the words.

Then nothing.

She stood up with her eyes wide and shook her head. "It's alright," she reassured the ponies. "A brief lapse. I will figure it out."

Her words only served to worry the ponies more, but they knew better than to argue with the future Queen of Equestria. The village was there to greet her once again, excited to meet their alicorn of the night and Sunny. Before the ponies could even approach her and shower her with praises or propose a celebration, Moon elevated the ground beneath her with her magic, creating a small podium of dirt that tore away the roots of the plants around it.

"Thestrals of Equestria!" Moon bellowed. She hadn't used the Royal Voice in so long for a proper decree. It tickled her vocal cords to not use it to yell as loudly as possible for intimidation. "I was planning to wait for the other tribes to arrive, but I believe the announcement should come to those who were the first to meet me and accept me with open minds! I am vassalizing the thestralian territories! You will become the first part of restoring Equestria to its former glory! Rejoice!"

Nightmare's only response was silence. The ponies weren't sure how to react.

"Are you sure about this?" one of the thestrals asked her. "We're more than happy to have you return to us, but going so far? The king won't let it slide, and, with all due respect, you don't have an army."

Moon's eyes started glowing with rage. "I have an army."

"You have guards, your highness," Sunny corrected. He tapped the ground nervously. "You only have the guards you recruited from the base next to Snowfege. That isn't enough for a proper army."

The alicorn reluctantly agreed. She didn't want to deal with such a hassle, but the coming of the other thestral tribes could prove beneficial.

"Then would instilling military training help?" She faced the bat ponies. "Would anypony be willing to undergo training to become a soldier?" Most hesitated and shifted nervously in place, giving in to tics like clearing their throats or rubbing their leg.

"The thing is," the same thestral responded. "We have lived mostly peacefully this whole time, even if we refuse to acknowledge the will of the king and queen."

"Mostly?!" one of the younger thestrals shouted. It was the younger mare with the cut ear that lauded Moon's return at the city. "We're forced to pay exorbitant tributes to the royal family so they ignore our rightful stance!" she said angrily. The fury she held was palpable, and Moon grinned internally.

"Those tributes stock up the emergency stores of Equestria!" the older thestrals rebutted. "Without those, what would we have to eat during poor harvests?!"

"They never gave us any food! My brother almost died if braver thestrals hadn't gone out to steal from the storage!"

"They were fools! They almost brought the wrath of the royal army upon us!"

Moon watched as the village visibly started to divide itself slowly, but silently. The bickering between the two started getting on her nerves, so she decided to step in by stomping so powerfully that even the squishy ground of the forest couldn't help but cave in.

"Enough!" she bellowed. The two bickering thestrals fell onto their backs and shrunk away. "Military training is not mandatory, and with the coming of the other villages, we will know who will be willing to join my forces. Know this first: I am attempting to gather as many territories to my banner through diplomacy as I can." She ground her teeth in irritation. "Despite simply wanting to take back what was rightfully mine from my sister, I find myself forced to do this instead."

"Perhaps you could have them train in secret?" Sunny suggested. "Like the two we met in the griffin city were doing?"

Moon pondered the concept. Training them with wooden and stone weaponry was all they would be able to do at the moment. Those resources were obviously plentiful in a forest, but she had no smithy outside of the small, private one for her personal guards. the further along she went with her plan, the more complicated things became. She would need to ask the thestrals and the acting mayor twins about any mines. If there were any orichalcum or, preferable, calchinium mines, then even she would be able to contribute to the production of equipment. Preferably high quality, finely crafted armors and swords she would reserve as rewards for her hardest working troops, and even some sort of...elite royal guard? She salivated internally at the thought. Her own army and kingdom, both inspiring fear in her enemies.

"We can discuss that with the other tribes when they arrive." She looked around grimaced. "Where's the chef that aided me when I was poisoned?!" she bellowed in the royal voice.

"Here I am!" a large thestral shouted from above. He was positively gleaming in delight. "You want another feast, your highness?"

"No," Moon blurted immediately.

The light faded almost instantly from the thestral. "Wh-what? B-but...I...I don't understand, then."

She pointed her hoof at him. "You...will be serving me and my guests in my castle at Snowfege."

The chef gasped deeply. "A royal chef?!" He couldn't muster the words to express his joy and bounced about randomly. "A dream come true!"

"I'll have some of my guards come by and escort you to Snowfege," Moon explained. "Gather whatever you believe is necessary for the cooking." She leaned towards him, her eyes glowing and fangs gleaming in the light filtering through the leaves. "The kitchen is ill-equipped, so you won't be making master level dishes. You'll be responsible with choosing and ordering everything needed to make it worthy of me and my home." She stood back up, looming over the thestral. "Am I understood?"

"Absolutely!" the chef bellowed.

"They're coming!" a voice announced from the trees.

"I still have those ghosts to speak to after all this," Moon thought to herself.

The alicorn winced in pain for just the briefest moment. The scratching came back, and it was a searing sensation etching itself onto her skull, trying to burrow through. Moon looked around to find the source, but there was nothing. Even the sunlight still seemed as peaceful as the day she killed that false alicorn. Odd and uncomfortably familiar. She felt a knot form in her stomach from worry.

Comments

[Different_Point_Of_View]

What she envisioned:

The Reality:

[Anon E Moose]

I see the word "changeling" several times when I think it's supposed to be "thestral"

[The Psychopath]

11355855
Damn it. I thought I fixed that.

[Hariester]

11355893
The two leaned forward to have a better look. Luna noticed their expressions turning dour.

[The Psychopath]

11355941
Pfooou. First 'changelings' and now 'Luna'. I've been looking at that changeling story of mine too much.

[kluck]

great story wish you had more I read both in one sitting! will wait with much anticipation for your next chapter! keep up the great work your stroy is fun and i love how you do nmm!!

[Vigriff]

11355576

[Black--Soul]

I guess the Alicorn Magic released is about to bond with Nightmare, at least what is compatible with her.