19: You and me we can light up the sky - Part Two.
You and me we can light up the sky - Part Two.
(If you stay by my side we can rule the world)
Chapter published 16 May 2013
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Allowing the memory of the first time she had sought out her sister behind these great doors fade from her mind, Princess Celestia felt herself return to the present. Even now, many years down the road, the memory of that day always brought such mixed emotions.
The royal sisters had met at the observatory again a great number of times since, her sister slowly growing in both size and power, her past becoming clearer to her as time went by.
But Luna’s recollection still wasn't perfect, the remaining gaps and ‘fuzzy spots’ as she called them having no discernible rhyme or reason to them.
She could remember everything that occurred at the last - somewhat strained - formal event the sisters had attended together before the princess of the night had fully embraced her Nightmare Moon ponysona, this being an anniversary of the long since departed Starswirl the Bearded’s birthday. She could even recall that the two-toned red and purple icing on the cake was both cranberry and raspberry flavoured but no matter how she tried she just couldn’t remember a single thing that happened in the year 209 AC. But taking into account the events that had transpired that year, maybe this particular omission was for the best.
There was also a seemingly random selection of ponies from the past that were completely absent from her memories. Sure, she could remember interacting with somepony, even recall entire conversations in excruciating detail, but still not have a single clue about who the pony she was conversing with actually was.
Throwing off these troubling recollections as one would shake off a warm bed sheet, Celestia steeled herself to to open the door in order to meet her sister. She didn’t know how long she’d been standing motionless at the top of the stairs but she had a summons that still needed answering and it would not do to tarry any longer..
But as she let her magic reach for the door handle, instead she found that another memory brought itself forth, pushing at the boundaries of her consciousness and demanding her attention. A memory of a more recent summons to this very tower and, as before, yet another conversation with her troubled sister that the princess of the day would rather not have to face.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Canterlot Palace - Royal Observatory
November 2nd, 1213 Anno Celesti
Fifteen months after the return of Princess Luna.
Princess Celestia made her way briskly up the spiral staircase towards the royal observatory, wishing not for the first time that they’d either built the observatory a bit closer to the ground or that over the years she’d restrained herself a touch more and partaken in a few less slices of cake.
Her week had being going so well up until this point; She’d had a wonderful - and a touch tipsy - time with both of the ambassadors from Shetland and the Emerald Isles, the nobles had been (relatively) well behaved for the last week or so and Princess Luna had spent the last few days away visiting with Twilight Sparkle and her friends.
While by all reports it would seem that the lunar princess’ first ever exposure to Ponyville’s Nightmare Night celebrations had not got off to an auspicious start, it had at least ended on a good note and the younger alicorn had elected to stay with her sister’s personal student for another night or two in order to ‘better appreciate the life of the common pony’.
Celestia had been glad to see that her sister was willing to spend some time with her subjects once again. For the last year she’d taken every possible opportunity to hole herself up in the castle’s incredibly well stocked library or to spend the majority of her days with the academics or bureaucrats that might visit the castle.
Other than that she’d spent a lot of time asleep as, after whiling away much of her millennium trapped in the moon roaming the land of dreams, she was apparently finding it a hard habit to break.
On a few rare occasions she would spend some time conversing with the nobles or dignitaries that would visit the court but for the most part she had not seemed at all impressed with either group.
Prince Blueblood especially seemed to have raised her ire, Celestia now having to find ways to keep the two separate lest her sister follow through on her emphatic (and hopefully non-serious) threat to ‘eat the annoying little ponce’.
On the whole the only ponies even remotely approaching what could be called friends were a scant few members of the castle staff and the captain of her pegasi guard, and even those few she kept well at arm’s length.
But for the crowd-shunning princess to actually suggest spending time with the citizens of ponyville had been a huge step forward, one that Celestia had encouraged wholeheartedly.
Plus, it was a good thing that Luna had been away from the castle for a few days as word had just filtered in from the borderlands that THEY, the unspeakable - and unthinkable - ones, had been making noises that Celestia wanted checked out.
While the princess of the day was sure THEY could be handled without issue, Luna had never liked them one little bit (‘detest’ was a much better word) and Celestia would prefer that her rather more volatile younger sister didn’t kick off a small war if it could be avoided.
Luna had been quite vocal recently in her opinion that Celestia had been much too lax with her military preparedness and intelligence gathering. In the end the solar princess had gone as far as to promise that both the royal guard and the Wonderbolts would undergo an extensive expansion project - with increased budgets to match - which had calmed the night princess somewhat, though Celestia believed that even this conciliatory action would not be effective at mollifying her sister for long.
In the meantime, Celestia had hoped that the trip to Ponyville would do her little sister some good and had been overjoyed when word had come back that this had indeed been the case.
This had changed however upon her return to the castle.
At first reports had come from the royal guards that the ruler of the night was acting somewhat erratically on the journey home, a state that had apparently only become worse when she had reached the castle grounds.
Then she had skipped the princesses habitual evening meal together and retreated directly to the tallest tower, banning all guards from venturing in after her.
It had reached a head when the captain of the lunar guards himself had come directly to the princess of the day to express concern over the sudden change in his regent’s mental welfare.
Which is how the princess of the day now found herself standing at the top of a spiral staircase. swearing to herself that from now on there would be a bit more ‘brisk’ in her life and little less cake.
Tentatively pushing open the door to the royal observatory, Princess Celestia poked her head inside, hoping to find her younger sister watching the stars.
Easily catching sight of younger alicorn, she could see instantly that her sister was in a distressed state; her mane and tail were both flaring from her body, the stars within their billowing folds blinking erratically as she paced back and forth from the large map table in the centre of the room to the doors leading out to the balcony.
Glancing around the room Celestia could see that the star charts and proposed designs for new constellations which had long replaced Twilight Sparkle’s drawings and diagrams on the observatory’s walls were being blown about by the waves of power being subconsciously emanated by her perturbed sibling.
“Sister.” Luna cried as she caught sight of the (still) larger while alicorn, her sudden movement causing plans for a spectacular aurora that the royal sisters had spent many an evening together planning out in meticulous detail to fall to the floor, scattering pages haphazardly as it went.
Rushing over to her sister, the princess of the night pushed her face right up in Celestia’s personal space, her eyes displaying an obvious expression of both abject desperation and deep confusion.
“Where is my captain, my shield? I can’t find him anywhere and my guards have no idea where he is. I have searched the castle for him but he is nowhere to be found!”
Consternation flooded Celestia’s mind as she had seen just Captain Spartan Shield minutes before. In fact, he was the very guardsman who had come to her to report of her sister’s worrying behaviour
“Sister, he is at the bottom of the stairs where I left him just moments ago.” Celestia motioned with a wing to the great spiral staircase behind her which lead back down to the base of the tower. “Should I ask him to come up and join us?”
“No, no, not that one...” Luna violently shook her head, backing away from her sister as she did so. “My captain . I mean my shield, my beloved, Sable Shield. Where is he? He should be here. I cannot find him... I need to find him.”
Celestia’s heart dropped. She hadn’t heard that name almost a millennium, hadn’t thought about him in centuries.
In the years before her banishment, Captain Sable Shield had been many things to her sister, both as Princess Luna and as Nightmare Moon. Apart from being the captain of the night princess’s pegasi guards - a feat all the more impressive in an age where stallions were almost unheard of in the armed services - he’d been her best friend, her confidant and above all the love of her life.
Hailing from one of the Bittish Isles’ older and more influential families - one that still held great political pull even a millennia later - Sable Shield’s gruff and unpolished exterior belied his caring and intelligent nature.
He was a rare stallion who was as much at home on the front-lines, standing wing to wing with the mares under his command, as he was in the debating chamber, facing down nobles and politicians alike with his rapier sharp mind and cutting wit.
As a fine measure of a stallion, he’d been one of the few things that had, in Celestia’s eyes at least, been a stabilising influence on her sister during her horrifying descent into madness and corruption.
He had shown no desire for power, no lust for glory, but instead a strong sense of justice and compassion. The very opposite in fact of what Nightmare Moon had become. Without his restrain and steady-hoof, Celestia was of no doubt that her sister would have become far more of a tyrant than even the most terrifying of old mare’s tales had made her out to be.
In her heart, Celestia had been glad that her sister had shown no memory of Sable Shield until now. To recall his fate during those last few terrible years before the Battle of Moon’s Apex would be painful memories that the newly returned princess of the night would have been in no fit state to relive. Even now, more than a year after her release, Celestia just wasn’t sure that her sister would be ready to cope with the truth, not yet anyway.
But unfortunately, the truth is what she’d have to face. Princess Celestia had learnt very soon after her sister’s return that wherever possible she should not even attempt to hide the past, including all it’s nasty little details, from the princess of the night.
Luna always had been good at eventually sniffing out a lie, no matter how well it had been hidden. The element of honesty had chosen well all those years ago.
Catching her pacing sister squarely in the eye, Celestia spoke with what she hoped was her most soothing voice.
“I’m sorry to say that Captain Sable Shield left us a long, long time ago. As captain of the lunar pegasi guards I made sure that he was given a traditional cloud burial with full military honours as is befitting of both a brave warrior of Equestria and a stallion of his station.”
Luna’s motion ceased as she stood stock-still and stared, unbelieving.
“No, no, no. How?” Luna stuttered. “With my dark magicks he should have lived forever. I combined our auras, shared with him my alicorn magic, our lives were entwined. As long as I lived, he should still be alive. He could have shrugged off almost any mortal injury. As long as he found a decently powerful unicorn to regularly provide him with a suitable reinforcement spell he would have survived our thousand year separation easily.”
The princess of the night resumed her pacing, her eyes not even taking in the room around her as she circled the large cartographers table which dominated the middle of the room.
“I used only the strongest of dark magicks, my casting was flawless.” Luna muttered, darting around the room as if she had forgotten that her sister was even there. “For years I had studied spell after spell, gathered every example of dark works that I could find, consulting every practitioner and oracle. The nights I poured over every one of Starswirl’s journals of transmogrification, read everything ever written about the art of chaos. I even had a team working on recreating King Sombra’s work with elemental crystals. I did nothing wrong, I couldn’t have.”
Celestia watched as her sibling moved restlessly from overstacked bookcase to cluttered desk to disorganised pile of star charts and back again.
She knew full well what her sister had done all those years ago, how lengthy exposure to the dark side of the magic of harmony, as well as an unhealthy obsession with prolonging her lover’s life, had led her into a downward spiral. A descent in madness that had years later culminated in a bloody civil war which had raged across the formerly peaceful lands of Equestria and beyond, destroying cities and claiming lives wherever it had spread.
Moving from the door and into the room proper, Celestia tried to catch her sister’s attention.
“My sister, though your intentions may have been noble in the beginning, the dark magicks took a hold of your soul, it twisted you into only the creator knows what.” She said, Luna still seemingly oblivious to her presence.
“Once you were gone I had considered destroying your collection, the power held within was just too dangerous, the chance of corruption too great. But then I realised that once discovered, knowledge always finds a way to be rediscovered. So instead I locked your works away where they could corrupt no other pony. Not even my personal students have had access to the repositories of dark magicks."
Moving forward again the solar princess stressed her words more firmly, hoping that her sister could hear her, that she was not retreating into her own mind as she had done before.
“These are terrible powers that no pony, not even the most powerful of alicorns such as we, should attempt to bend to our wills, lest we find it is our wills that are controlled.
Try as she might, Celestia did not feel she was getting through to her younger sister, that her words were just washing around her like a raging river around a large rock.
“No, he must be in hiding somewhere, just waiting for my return.” Luna carried on talking to herself, nodding enthusiastically as she did so. “I wanted us to rule together forever. I just have to find him."
”Luna, please, look at me.” Celestia moved to one side in an attempt to better place herself in her sister’s path. “I’m afraid Captain Sable Shield did not survive our final battle. As was the case with many of his lunar pegasi brethren, he unfortunately perished at the Battle of Moon’s Apex. I tended to his body and presided over his funeral myself, the finest of my solar pegasi guards acted as honour guard to escort his cloud along its entire final flight to the western sea.”
The dark alicorn stopped, looking her sister in the eye, a touch of mania touching her features. The resemblance between her now and in the early days of Nightmare Moon was uncanny.
“The battle, the battle, I remember, he was there.”
While her words spilled forth seemingly without control from their mistress, Luna's eyes lost their focus as her brain started to spin, jumbled memories flooding her mind one after another.
“You had the six remaining elements, you were going to use them on me. But I had tricked you, you see, I had tricked you. I had you beaten, I was ready to make the final blow, but he was there, he was there. Arggh, why can I not remember.”
Luna stopped to beat her forehooves against the sides of her head, her tiara slipping from her troubled mane as she did so.
“DAMN THIS INFERNAL MEMORY OF MINE!”
The full power of the Royal Canterlot Voice shook the room causing star charts to fall from the walls and ancient books to jump from the many shelves. An ancient abacus toppled to the floor, shattering on impact and sending its brightly coloured beads to the four walls as it did so.
Letting herself collapse to the floor, the lunar princess pulled her forehooves over her face,
“He was my world, my moon and my stars.” She cried. “We were to rule the eternal night together, to bring a reign of peace and prosperity that the mortal ponies could never have imagined even in their wildest dreams.”
Celestia moved towards her distressed sibling, hoping to calm her somehow as the muttering continued unabated.
“We were bound at our very souls, the only thing that could separate our lives was alicorn magic…”
The dark princess’ words trailed off, her forehooves falling from her face and she suddenly stared up at Princess Celestia. A snarl sprang to her lips as in an instant she was off of the floor and moving quickly towards her sister.
“YOU!” Luna shouted, her sister’s mane pushed back by the sheer power of her voice. “What. Did. You. Do!?”
Celestia found herself shying back, away from her sibling. But before the princess of the night could even get within arm’s reach of her sister she clutched her head as if in pain.
“A memory. I see it now.” Luna backed off, a small clutch of stars at the very end of her mane surging in strength as she moved away. “His chest, covered in blood, a hole, a hole in his breastplate. Nothing could have pierced that armour, I crafted it myself, no mortal weapons could pierce it... Nothing could make that hole!”
Dropping her forehooves to the ground, Luna’s eyes once again turned to her sister, eyes filled with rage and pain.
“But an alicorn’s horn charged with magic...” She screamed. “No armour can withstand its attack.”
Celestia could see where her sibling’s battered mind was taking her, could almost be reliving the memories along with her beleaguered sister. She had been dreading this moment ever since her sister’s release from her lunar prison.
“No, you misundersta...” Celestia started, only to be drowned out by her sister.
“You killed him! You killed my love!”
“No, it was an accident.” Was all Celestia could manage to get out.
“YOU! KILLED! HIM!” A glass globe shattered on the tabletop behind the distraught princess of the night as the force of her words thundered through the room, water spraying against the walls as the ornament’s contents were thrown loose.
Luna’s face was incandescent with rage, her ethereal mane flaring around her, streaks of jet black flashing their way across her dark blue coat. Several of the stars in her mane were strobing so strongly that had any mortal pony been present they would have risked being blinded by the intensity of the beams of starlight that she was throwing out.
“The battle was over, I had you defeated, you were downed, but you did something didn’t you?” Luna clutched her head again. “You turned the tide, you came for me, but Sable, he put himself in front of me, he took your horn for me. FOR ME!”
Celestia hung her head. Her sister had taken the situation the wrong way, but maybe it was better this way. Maybe she should just let her sister hate her. Let her rage, let her vent it all out. Her sister’s bouts of anger were legendary, fighting against it once it was in full swing almost impossible. But often they were short lived and Celestia prayed that today this would be the case.
“Then when I went to catch his body, you used the elements on me didn’t you? DIDN’T YOU!?” Luna resumed her pacing, small pieces of glass and other debris crunching under her ornate horseshoes as she moved. “You didn’t even given me chance to catch him, banishing me to the moon before he even hit the ground. How could you, sister? How. Could. You?”
Celestia remembered that moment well. As a shocked Nightmare Moon had momentarily let down her guard, taking her attention from the princess of the sun, turning instead towards the plummeting body of her fallen lover, Celestia had desperately called upon the elements to banish her sister to the moon.
It had been a gambit that she had hoped she would never have to use, the very last of last resorts. But with the loss of Sable Shield’s stabilising influence, and with Nightmare Moon having shown herself to be more than a match for the solar princess in mortal combat, what had earlier seemed to be a desperate move had become her only viable option for victory, pyrrhic or otherwise.
“I’m sorry Luna. That wasn’t how I’d wanted it to end.” Celestia fought the urge to go to her sibling, to take her into her embrace. But she knew her sister, knew she was too volatile right now to get close, too unpredictable to be pushed too far too quickly. “If there was a way to take it all back I would have done it in an instant.”
Luna had turned her back on her sister, her attention now focused out of the balcony doors and towards the evening sky.
“We could have had eternity.” She cried. “But now he’s gone... he’s gone. There’s a huge hole, right here.”
Luna pushed a forehoof against her chest, directly over her aching heart.
“I wish I’d never remembered him now. It feels like I’ve lost him all over again. I was so much happier not knowing, to have no memory of all that I have have lost.”
Her forehoof fell back to the ground, her unrestrained aura that had previously been pushing out her mane and tail lost its power, letting the strands of ethereal hair hang loose about her body as she continued to stare out at the world outside the castle grounds.
“He would have lived forever. We could have outlasted the world itself. We could have witnessed eternity together.”
“But at what cost?” Celestia ventured quietly, sure that her sister could still hear her. “What would you, both of you, have had to sacrifice for this eternity?”
Celestia stepped softly towards her sister, bring herself abreast of the shorter alicorn so they stood side by side facing out of the double doors leading out onto the balcony, panes of glass now cracked and broken. When her sister made no move to acknowledge her presence, the princess of the day pushed on.
“And did he really want that? To live forever? To watch as his friends and family died all around him while he was forced to outlive them all, to watch cities and civilisations rise and fall while he remained ever young. We are immortal; this is both our blessing and our curse. Can we really force this life on others, no matter how much we wish it so?”
Again Luna made no movement, let slip no sound.
“That is the way of mortals, they live and then they die. It is the shortness, the sheer transience of their lives that makes them so precious.
“There is a natural order to things my sister. LIke the sun and moon forever rise and set, mortals are born and then they die, all the while life goes on regardless of what we few immortals want. Our sister could not accept that, and that is why she allowed herself to fall.”
Celestia moved closer to her grieving sister, close enough to see the muscles twitching beneath the skin of the younger alicorn’s face, a testament to the internal fight being waged against her emotions.
“Nightmare Moon could not accept that and that is why she was banished.” Celestia’s voice dropped to barely a whisper. “Please my sister, do not take us down that road again. I could not bear to lose you a second time.”
Turning her attention to the evening sky, Celestia realised that it was now well past the what should have been the proper time for tonight’s sunset, the impatient sun hovering just on the edge of the horizon anxiously awaiting her ministrations.
Without really thinking about what she was doing the day alicorn reached out with her magic and tucked the sun away for the night, letting twilight spread across the land as she did so.
Casting her eye over the now darken sky, Celestia could see that a large number of the stars were being quite erratic in their illumination, some were much brighter than usual while others did not display anything near their usual luster. A small number were twinkling quite furiously, almost as if they were crying out for their mistress’ attention or enquiring after her troubled state of mind.
After a few moments the moon steadily began to rise from the eastern horizon, it’s radiance brighter than on other nights, the vast majority of its light being cast down in the general direction of Canterlot itself in a show of solidarity with her beloved regent.
All the while Luna remained impassive, nary a single sign of emotion making its way to her face.
And in this way the two sisters stood, side by side for a good few minutes until Luna, voice cracking as she finally spoke, broke the silence.
“Thou should leave us now. We should like to be alone for a while.” Luna said, falling back into her old inflections.
Celestia was hesitant to leave, but she knew that it would be best to let her sister be for now. Slowly and with great care she made for the door.
Pausing at the threshold, her magic reaching for the door, she looked back over her shoulder at her sister still standing alone behind her, her attention solely focused on the moon and stars laid out before her.
“If it helps you any, he died instantly. He did not suffer.” Celestia said softly.
“Just go.“ Luna replied just as softly. She did not turn to meet her sister’s eye, she did not move at all. Her voice now held no rage, no anger, just sorrow and sadness. “Please, leave us be.“
With that Celestia stepped out of the room, using her magic to gently pull the doors closed behind her as her sister’s tears began to flow.
As she made her way down the spiral staircase, her sibling’s wracking sobs reaching her ears, Celestia told herself that this was for the best, that it was better to leave her sister alone, that what she needed right now was some time alone to deal with her loss.
Try as she might, she just couldn’t bring herself to believe it.
But in her heart Celestia knew that Luna would eventually remember the truth.
Sable Shield’s life had indeed ended by an alicorn’s horn and another alicorn he had thrown his body across in order to save, to give his own life so that she might live.
But it had not been the princess of the night he was trying to save, nor had it been the princess of the day who had dealt the killing blow.
Luna’s recollections were obviously still clouded. Yes, the battle had been all but over, but it had been Princess Celestia who held a downed Nightmare Moon at her mercy, the princess of the night who had been so soundly defeated.
But then the dark princess had deliberately sacrificed a number of her own guard, killing several of them personally, in order to escape her sister’s hold and put Celestia at a major disadvantage.
Realising that the only way to cease the bloodshed once and for all was to take out this abomination that had supplanted her loving sister, Celestia had finally made up her mind to banish her sister, only to find herself caught immobile in Nightmare Moon’s magic.
Once trapped and unable to even move, the opportunity for escape now gone, Celestia had then found the black alicorn hurtling towards her, a viciously sharp horn point aimed directly for her chest, dark magicks crackling about its length as it came ever closer,
As she resigned herself to her fate, Celestia found her view blocked by a gray pegasus stallion, his bat-like wings beating furiously to put himself between the royal sisters.
As he cried for the night princess to stop her attack, that there must be another way to end the conflict, Nightmare Moon’s magically charged horn had burst through his armour, piercing his heart and killing him instantly.
His body sliding from her sister’s horn, beginning the long fall back to solid ground, Celestia could swear that for an instant that the kindly young alicorn that was Princess Luna had momentarily forced her way free of the monstrosity that was Nightmare Moon, that for an instant her beloved sister was the one who turned her attention from her enemy, reaching for her slain lover as his lifeless form slid away from from her horn, beginning his long fall to the ground far below.
But there was no time, the Nightmare had soon regained control and turned her attention back to her solar foe, but those few scant seconds were all Celestia had needed and the fully unleashed power of the elements of harmony had done the rest.
While it was inevitable that Luna would eventually remember the truth of these events, Celestia could not help but wish that her sister would never know. But she knew it was hopeless, just as night follows day, the truth would one day return to the younger alicorn.
For now a lie was easier to handle, if her sister hated her for killing her one true love then right now, in Celestia's eyes at least, that was better than her knowing the truth and hating herself.
Her sister’s hate was a burden Celestia was willing to bear.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The royal sisters had not talked for a number of weeks after that day. Luna had kept herself either tucked away in her observatory or dealing solely with academics at the local university, the historians in particular, throwing herself back into her studies of the thousand years that had turned her long lost home into this modern Equestria.
Celestia had kept guards posted at all the major depositories of magical works - just as a precaution of course - but as far as she had been told Luna had not made any move towards any of them.
Then one day she was back at the supper table, eating her breakfast as if nothing had happened and while she had assured the older sibling that the matter was now dealt with, Celestia could never manage to sooth away the small but persistent knot of concern that had made itself at home in the pit of her stomach.
Shaking herself from her reverie the solar princess realised that in her distraction, much as she had in her memory of that awful day, she had allowed the allotted time for tonight’s sunset to pass her by.
Mortified that her mental wanderings had allowed her to be remiss in her sworn duties she reached out with her magic to make contact with the sun in the sky, only to find that it was not there.
Desperately spreading her magic around the sky like an earth pony grasping about in the darkness for a box of matches after their oil lamp had blown out, she could find no sign of the sun, only the moon languidly making its way across the heavens and a small number of startled stars which had been jostled about by her erratic actions.
Wait just a minute. If the moon was out then that meant...
Casting her magic towards the sun’s nightly resting place she found it safely nestled away, though she did feel the edges of their contact coloured by an element of reproach from her fiery ward over the matter of her dereliction of duty.
Sending her apologies and many, many promises that it wouldn’t happen again, Celestia pulled back her aura and returned her attention to the large double doors to the royal observatory that stood before her.
After steeling herself with a few deep breaths, she gently extended her magic field to slowly push open the grand double doors before her.
Taking a tentative step inside, Celestia felt her heart drop as she spotted her younger sister standing on the balcony of the observatory, her attention focused outwards towards the night sky.
The princess of the night was a majestic sight, but there were subtle differences to her appearance this night, differences that Celestia had spent these last few years watching for, dreading the day that they finally arrived.
Even during their millennia apart every detail about her sister’s appearance had been etched into Celestia’s mind mind the entire time After all, when it was possible to live until the end of time then you and your fellow immortals were the only stability in each other’s lives that you truly had.
Tonight Luna’s coat had finally become a pure black, a black so dark that it seemed that light itself would fall into its clutches never to escape; her mane and tail had each become that bit longer, flowing beautifully as they were in the solar winds, the pools of stars within them that much deeper and distinct than they had ever been for the last millennia, breathtaking nebula drifting majestically along its edges.
To top it all was her size, for only the second time in her long life the princess of the night was exactly the same height as her sister.
But amongst all this, Celestia’s trained eye caught another detail that she was sure no other living being would ever notice; tonight there was an extra star in her sister’s mane.
Moving her eye away from the her sibling, Celestia searched the night sky through the balcony door for the corresponding constellation, the vast arrangement of stars that would match that particular section of her sister’s mane.
There, resting between the stars Enif and Baham, nestled at the very heart of the Pegasus constellation was a new star, brighter than any of the others that surrounded it.
Making her way across the main room, Celestia was careful to move as silently as she could. There was no fooling her sister though.
“I call it ‘Aegis’.” Luna said quietly, a great sadness held in her voice, her attention never wavering from the magnificent spread of stars crowning the night sky. ”It means ‘The greatest of shields’, for it is the star of the protector. The protector who died to save Equestria’s last hope from its biggest ever threat.”
But with the sadness there was something else, an undeniable element of power and majesty that may have even transcended Celestia’s own.
Looking back over her shoulder, Luna locked eyes with her sibling. Not as the younger sister, but finally as equals.
“He protected it from me.”
So the day had finally arrived, the day the solar princess had hoped would never come. Her sister was back at full strength, the full and true powers of an immortal alicorn were hers to control.
And she remembered.
She remembered it all.
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EDIT: Downvotes? Seriously? This song's fantastic.
Damn you, I didn't need to be crying at work today.
I only finish reading the 1st part and after I refresh the page this was up. Awesome timing, you
Well, Luna will now either go coco in the loco, or will become full blown awesome.
As always, great great writing
That was very good. Thanks.
Beautifully tragic, and the line about "six remaining elements" has me intrigued. Only one thing mars this story's perfection.
Millennia is the plural. The singular is millennium. I don't normally nitpick like this, but that's one of my pet peeves.
tears were not shed but damn damn close to
Can't all have happy endings.
This is an incredible bit of writing. The feels are being had all around. One question, are THEY supposed to be the Gentry?
i.imgur.com/k9tL9d1.jpg
2586740 excuse me for a moment, I think there is a ninja peeling onions near right.. now..
Well... Since we know lucient is going to be courting Luna... We know she stabilizes.... Imagine Tabitha's nightmare moon voice saying I call it aegis. Not evil maniacal or confident but somber and resolute. It sends shivers down my spine.
Someone get Aegis Shield in here - he needs to know how often he is referenced as a Lunar Guard/Captain/Consort.
So, the lover stopped Nightmare moon, and was sluaghtered by her in the process?
I feel silly for being reminded of the fall of skywalker, I know that such falls with similar motivations are common in fiction, but my mind went straight to Vader.
I've read that scene!
Lovers... I think that's what it has to do with Lero and this story, but I think this chapter's purpose is to establish how different Luna is here in this universe compared to the canon verse and that there's going to be a time when Lero finally meets This Luna later in the story.
Least I now know the entire last chapter was a flashback, though I was greatly confused since I was expecting it to jump back before the chapter end.
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I too was confused as to how this related in anyway to the Leroverse. I suppose it could be setting up the characters for something later, but there are already a couple of "later" chapters.
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I'm supposing Lero will meet this powerful Luna later in this story and we'll get a full description of her looks when she appears to him. This is basically her origin story. But yeah, there are so many later chapters going around here.
I think it is a tribute to Luna's strength of mind and personality that she did not instantly go insane and/or try to kill herself when she fully remembered what happened that last, darkest day.
I meant to post this before.
...but I forgot. Sorry
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Could you be any more melodramatic?
I have no words to appropriately describe the feels.
Powerful and emotional, explaining a lot about Luna's past and what she has to deal with in the 'present'.
To counter the downvotes on your first post, have my upvote. Rule the world is a beautiful song that fits this chapter well.
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D[TV-Y]. Well done.
(Near the end, "...were her's to control." should be "hers".)
I am glad she had finally reached some level of understanding and acceptance...but shes going to carry that guilt for quite some time.
That sounds delicious, actually.
Double period.
C'mon, I don't think any of us can blame her.
You know, ponies can eat meat.
1) comma after staircase, and 2) Nopony believes you, Celestia. You're going to have double desserts before you know it.
Comma not period, and uncapitalize was.
Double capitals.
Damn. Twist those feels a little harder.
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I think if you take a step to the side and listen to these lyrics from the perspective of Princess Luna speaking to/ of Nightmare Moon, they work almost perfectly.