Black Angel

by Zobeid

Scraps & Notes

It's been years since this story was completed, and it's still the only novel-length piece that I have actually finished. I was just digging through the old hard drive and found a number of out takes, bits of prose that were cut from the story for various reasons. I thought it might be amusing to give them to you guys (assuming anyone even remembers this story, har har!) along with some notes.

Nightmare Moon interacted with a number of dreamers, and some of those encounters made it into the story, but a couple ended up on the cutting room floor.

“Great party, Pinkie Pie!”

Pinkie grinned and called back, “Thanks, Buttercup! And give the punch a try, if you haven’t yet!”

“Pinkie Pie, this cake is fanstastic!”

“Thank you! I’m so glad you like it, Bon Bon!”

“Hey Pinkie, you gotta see this game of Switcheroo we’ve got going. Rarity and Carrot Top are up next, it’s gonna be a hoot!”

“Oh, I don’t wanna miss that. I’ll be over there in a jiffy, Rainbow Dash!”

“Pinkie Pie, you murdered me.”

“That’s… huh, what?” Pinkie Pie turned to see Nightmare Moon looming large over her.

“You and your friends, Pinkie Pie. You used the Elements of Harmony and killed me.” She stepped forward.

Pinkie Pie stepped back, ears drooping, tail between her legs. “It wasn’t like that… We saved you. The Elements turned you back into Princess Luna, so you wouldn’t be a big meanie anymore, and then we all celebrated. Everypony was happy.”

Nightmare Moon shook her head and stepped forward again. “No, Pinkie Pie. The Elements of Harmony killed me, and then you all threw a party to celebrate my death.”

I didn't continue this bit, because it seemed like a diversion that wasn't going to advance the story in any way. Pinkie Pie would never have any other role in the story, and, frankly, I'm not very good with her. On the other hoof, Trixie Lulamoon is one of my all-time favorite ponies, and I did at one time want her to become one of Nightmare Moon's “friends” along with Abel, Spell Nexus, Derpy and Dominus Tusk.

“When all hope was lost, the ponies of Hoofington had no one to turn to, but the Great and Powerful Trixie stepped in, and with her awesome magic, vanquished the Ursa Major and sent it back to its cave deep within the Forest of No Return!” Trixie illustrated her story with a magical projection, a little glowing outline of herself waving a magic wand at a larger glowing outline of a bear.

From the audience came boos angry shouts. “LIAR!” yelled one. “FRAUD!” yelled another.

Trixie faltered. “You… You don’t believe the Great and Powerful Trixie?” She ducked a thrown banana. “Trixie ch-challenges you all! Anything you can do, Trixie can do better!” The audience broke out in laughter, and they began to disperse. Trixie burned with embarrassment, her head hung low.

A crunch made her look up and see the glowing outline of the bear grabbing her banner with its teeth and paws, tearing it down. She shrieked, “NONO! Don’t eat that! Bad bear!” The bear paid no heed, attacking her fireworks spinner next.

And that's as far as I got. At this point Nightmare Moon would have intervened in the dream, but again I realized that I didn't really have a plan for what to do with Trixie in this story, especially since the Great and Powerful Spell Nexus was already integral to the plot, so it was better to stay focused and cut Trixie.

Another aborted bit of interaction:

“I know the night sky, Derpy. I know the moon and the planets, and I know the Milky Way. I know the northern lights and the zodiacal light. I know meteors and comets. They all dance to my tune — all except the stars themselves. They are so far away, so mysterious. Even I don’t know what they are. My magic cannot touch them.”

Derpy awwed. “That’s too bad.”

“Not really. It’s their mystery that unicorn magic first came from. In ancient times those unicorn ponies gathered on hilltops to look up at the stars and puzzle over them. It was from that shared sense of wonder that their magic grew, and they learned to cast spells. I think that if we ever learned exactly what the stars are, that we would be diminished. The mystery would be gone, and with it some of the magic would go from our world, never to return.”

Derpy resumed eating her muffin

If Trixie had remained part of the story, I'm sure she would have found that discussion a lot more interesting than Derpy did.

After Nightmare Moon captured Nim (The Nemesis, or Proto-Nyx) she asked it where it came from. It was still half-formed, its personality still undetermined, and it recounted several possible origin stories. All of those little stories were basically taken from other fanfics, as various authors tried to fill in the background of Celestia and Luna with their own headcanon. Nim was groping to explain herself in much the same way. Then, Nightmare Moon almost retorted with her own (presumably more real!) account of her origin, but at the last moment bit her tongue and decided she didn't owe Nim any explanations. However, if she had proceeded, it would have been my own headcanon for Celestia and Luna's origins, the history that I presume for my own stories:

Nightmare Moon snorted. “You really have no idea, do you? You’re just making up these stories.”

The Nemesis looked at her. “Then let’s hear yours?”

“We’re monsters.”

The Nemesis blinked. “Say what now?”

Nightmare Moon took a deep breath, and then she elaborated. “In the early days of Equestria, not long after the first Hearth Warming of legend, the Wizard Wars raged all around our fledgeling nation. Warlocks, witches and sorcerers raised armies to battle one another, plundering the land and building their empires. They used morphogenic spells and created chimeric monstrosities to fill the ranks of their armies: griffins, minotaurs, manticores, cockatrices. Thus… In Equestria there was universal concern, fear of invasion by Malaclypse Magus and his son, or by Queen Katrina, or the warlord Grogar, or King Sombra, or Queen Nastinka, or the witch Hyddia and her daughters.”

“Equestria needed its own morphogenic monsters that could stand against whatever abominations the warlords would, inevitably, send our way. They put their most skilled unicorns to work on the problem, and they invented us: Sola and Luna. Alicorns. Living super-weapons.”

The Nemesis lowered its ears, flared its nostrils. “I don’t believe it.”

“You saw what I did to Tambelon and Grogar’s army — and that was without even casting spells. It’s exactly what I was made for.”

“But… How did you become princesses?”

“Oh, that. Well, you see… When Malaclypse the Younger heard about us, he became very determined to create the most powerful morphogenic monster of all, one that could surely defeat us. His theory was that the more different creatures he combined, the more powerful the resulting monster would be. Body of a serpent. . . equine head… one antler… one ibex horn… paw of a lion… bird’s talon… a feathered wing… a bat wing…”

“He made Discord?”

“Yes. And Discord showed his appreciation by turning Malaclypse the Younger into an eggplant. That was the end of the Wizard Wars. Everyone, good and bad, ponies and monsters alike, scattered and struggled merely to survive the unleashed chaos of a world turned upside-down. Sometimes literally. Nopony knows how long the Reign of Discord lasted. The sun and moon rose at random, and even the passage of time seemed scrambled by his magic. When Sola and I finally defeated him, Equestria had to be rebuilt from ruins, and we — the heroes of the day — took up the reins of power.”

The Reign of Discord has always fascinated me, and it's a subject I may return to someday. However, it's not clear that Nightmare Moon's rule over Equestria would have been much better. We got a hint of that from her sand-induced dream-within-a-dream of having Lord Numbskull (is there really any other kind of Lord?) tossed into the Fiery Pit. I also scribbled this scene that I never found a good place to insert:

They looked down upon the milling crowd. Nightmare Moon commented, “Ordinary ponies. Oh, how I loathe them!”

Spell Nexus leaned against her, and clutched her arm. “Me too!”

“What do you know?” she retorted with a snort. Then she moved her foreleg to gently push him away. “Nexus, what did we discuss before about personal space?”

He released her, reluctantly. “But you’re so beautiful, Mistress!”

“Don’t call me that! It makes me sound like a dominatrix.”

“uh… Ma’am? Majesty?”

She nodded. “Either of those is fine.”

“I love you, Majesty! Soon the ponies of Equestria will too.”

“No… No, they won’t. Once I wanted them to love me, but I’ve learned my lesson. Love is fickle and weak. It’s nothing more than a tingly feeling. Even if they loved me, what would it matter? They would turn against me as soon as another came to put a little fear in their hearts. Fear comes so easily to them!”

She reached with a hoof to ruffle his mane. “I shall begin my own reign of terror. You, Spell Nexus, will be free to join in, along with all the rest of my blessed followers. Soon we’ll have all the ponies of Equestria screaming on cue. I’ll make a renaissance of their nightmares.”

I also found this quote from the actual ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead:

X. The following shall be said when one cometh to the TENTH PYLON. Ani, the scribe of Osiris, whose word is truth, saith: “Goddess of the loud voice, the lady who is acclaimed on the day of darkness, the awful one who terrifieth, who herself remaineth unterrified within.” The name of her Doorkeeper is SEKHENUR. — The Book of the Dead

Is that not a spot-on description for Nightmare Moon? There was no good way to work it into the story, though.

Comments

[Admiral Stoic Rum]

I thought necromancy was a forbidden art.

Neat to see another piece of the story laid out

[Admiral Stoic Rum]

10356309
I forgot the emdless were basically timelords in a way