The first Lunar Laws

by vadram

Chapter 2: Ali what now?

Ali what now?

Luna awaited for her friends to get a chance to drink before she even approached the puddle, only after the two had finished did she even approach the water.

Despite the light form mushroom being reflected by the crystals, there was not much of it. Most of the room was still covered in darkness.

Only when her face was inches from the waters surface she could see her reflection. What she was able to see troubled her to no end. What little remained of her coat was a lot darker than she remembered it to be, her horn was charred and was covered in small cracks, but, most frightening of all, was that a large part of her head was covered in iron. The metal covered part of her face, forehead, and it continued down the back of her neck. It was like a helmet but it also covered her face.

It wasn't the first time she was caught in the rain. While it hurt when the molten metal hit her, and the pain of it falling of her, after it had cooled, taking pieces of her coat and skin was excruciating. she would be able to heal after a few days of resting and preening. She had though it would have fallen off by now, but, the metal had hardened around the base of her horn. Forming the grotesque mask she now wore.

She turned around and notice that her once long and elegant tail was gone, her royal blue mane suffered the same fate, only small pieces of it remained. Her coat was almost gone, what she saw in it place was a burned body covered in scars and blisters. Blood was flowing from some of them, but for most of them had clotted. This both shocked and disturbed her, never actually seeing herself in that state before. She would have usually magically grown back most of her hair by the time she would have awaken but, her magic was running dangerously low.

All of it all paled in comparison with the horror of the thing on her face. She knew she could not remove it by hoof without risking damaging her horn. It would have to be magically removed. The operation was to dangerous to perform on herself. She did not know how verse the unicorns were in such advance medical magic, in fact, she had never saw them any spell more advance that an energy field for some time now, and Celestia energies reserves were in a worst state than hers. She would have had to live like that for a while.

Luna was always conscious about her looks, there was no way she would not have been. While not all unicorns were white they were the most common, her sister herself was white, even their parents were white. While the rest of them, as much as she remembered were covered in bright soft colors.

At her birth Luna's coat was blue as the sky on a clear day, but as the years passed her color gradually darken. By the time she became a full grown mare, her coat had become azure.

Both her and Celestia’s marks appeared very late in their lives, it was not easy to discover that you can control celestial bodies. She had always been marginalized because of her color and her lack of a cutie mark, Celestia had her problems too, being a blankflank at that age, but her white coat and pink mane still let her live something resembling a normal life. By the time her cutie mark appeared, the unicorns already formed their opinion about Luna, and it was not a good one.

As a filly she was known to have troubles keeping her emotions in check, and even as an adult it did not get any better. As a unicorn there was no greater shame than not being able to control her own magic. And when she was angry exactly that happened. Everypony knew to keep their distance when she was like that, eventually they kept their distance altogether.

She caused a lot of injuries during her moments of anger, not that most of them did not deserved what they got for the way they treated her. But, because of some ponies who out of stupidity or false bravado decided to pick fights with her, she became feared by all. The younger unicorns were the first, their fear quickly passed onto their parents, they spoke about it to their friends, each of them adding their little print on the story. Some stories were quickly blown out of proportion, but for the most it did not need to. Some of the spells Luna cast during her enraged mode were felt throughout the entire village, she nearly collapsed the barrier protecting them all a couple of times.

Banishment was often talked about, but Celestia and their parent managed to keep her safe, somehow, and together with her family.

During the destruction of their village at the hands of Discord Luna discovered her special talent, draining power from both the moon and the sun, she together with her sister finally drove him back, saving some of the villagers. Many lives were lost in the battle, their parents were among the ones that fell. During the battle both her and Celestia released their full unicorn powers and ascended. Their new powers and appearance caused her sister to be loved by the all those who remain, she became feared even more.

Now, years after, she finally saw herself the way the others did, a horrible monster. And it broke her heart.

She ran away from the water doing her best to remain strong, not to show that she was hurting, that she was crying. Living the room and following the tunnel that lead them there, she arrived in the room they were previously in. Convinced she was alone, she felled to the ground, placed her face on her forelegs and started to cry.

She cried for some time until two moving green dots caught her attention.

From the darkness the two green lights came closer. Luna's vision was blurred but she still managed to see them through her teary eyes. She did not care what monstrosity approached her, the way she was right now a fight would have been a welcome distraction. Anything would do. She would have done anything to take her mind from the horrible image that was haunting her mind. And if that evolved inflicting excruciating pain on another living being all the better. Even in her weakened state, with almost no magic, and her scarred body, she could still be a formidable opponent for any vile creature she knew of.

When the green dots became large enough that Luna could believe the monsters face was a few feet away she picked herself up, lowered her head so her horn would now be pointing right between the monsters eyes, spread her wings, braced herself and started gathering her magic energies around the tip of her horn. She was about to released them when she heard their voices.

“Miss Luna! Miss Luna! Where are you? Miss Luna it’s us! Are you alright?”

The two lights she moments before thought were the eyes of some unknown abomination dwelling deep within the earth, proved to be two little ponies with the caps of glow in the dark mushrooms on their heads.

They have been searching for her for a while now, and had almost given up hope of ever finding her until they saw the light emanating from Luna’s horn.

“You two. What are you doing here?” She stopped channeling her spell and the light died down.

“We saw you ran off and we were worried about you.”

“We came to see if you were alright.”

“I am fine, now leave me I wish to be alone.”

“Why would you wish to be alone miss Luna?” the mare asked her.

“You would not understand.”

“Oh miss Luna", she continued "for as long as I remember we were alone, only me and him.'

"From what we knew we could have been the last ponies alive." the stallion continued where she left off.

"We saw no creature that could talk in all that time. Your kind voice was the first one we heard in a long long time.”

“So i think we know a few things about being alone.”

They talked as if they were reading a play, the moment one of them stopped the other began to talk.

After hearing the two's story, she realized she was not as alone as she thought. Celestia had always been there for her, and while the others they traveled with feared her, at least she could hear their voices, their annoying and arrogant voices, constantly bickering or complaining about one thing or another.

And, even if they were now gone, she still had the memories of her parents and of the few friends she had while she was a filly. But these two, they had lived their entire lives only having each other, no family, no friends and no memories of either.

Compared to them she had a great life, and still these two were worried about her. She felt pathetic.

She wanted to go and hug the two, but as they go closer she remembered the reason she ran away.

“Stop, do not come any closer.”

“Miss Luna, what happened?”

“Don’t come any closer. I... I don’t want you to see me like this.”

“What is she talking about?” the mare told her companion, doing her best to keep her voice down so Luna could not hear her.

“I have no idea.” he answered, doing the same. But the acoustics of the room were so good that she could hear everything.

“I am a monster.” she said. She finally said it, it felt like she stabbed herself with a dagger.

“Oh, miss Luna. It could not be further from the truth.” one said in a sweet almost motherly voice.

“No matter how you look like you are still the same pony that risked her life saving us.”

“He is right, what truly matters is what is in here”, she said touching her chest.

Luna was startled, she did not expect the two to be so close. But after the initial scare passed she grabbed the two and hugged them, passionately. Luna's love could have broken a pegasus, or even a unicorn, luckily for the two, earth ponies were made out of sterner stuff. It hurt them a little, but they hugged her back.

“Beside, you looked like that since you saved us” the stallion said to each other, lucky Luna did not noticed.

After the moment passed and Luna stopped hugging them she got up and whipped away her tears.

“Come on you two let us get back.”

“Sure” They slowly walked back, none of them were in a hurry. Luna was lighting the way with her horn.

Since they first saw Luna standing in the caves entrance one question kept bugging them, but they were afraid to ask. They did not wanting to embarrass, or worse, to insult their savior and protector. Finally after that heartful moment, one of them mustered the courage and asked her.

“Um, miss Luna can I ask you a personal question?”

“Sure, you can ask me anything.”

“Umm, miss Luna... if you do not mind me asking, what are you called?”

Luna took a minute before responding.

“I do not understand. I already told you that my name is Luna, so I know this is not the answer you seek. What exactly are you asking me.”

“Well you and your sister don’t look anything like her children, I mean we know that they are called unicorns..."

"But they do not have wings, so what we really are asking is if unicorns grow wings when they grow older?”

“No, unicorns do not grow wings when they grow older, the reason why Celestia and I don’t look like her...”

“Miss Luna?”

Luna had no idea what came over her, but the thought of her sister being the mother of all those unicorns amused her to no end.

As far as she knew unicorns couples rarely had more than two children during their entire lives, unlike pegasi who she knew had six or seven, or earth ponies who usually had over ten, well at least that was what she heard during their journeys. But still her sister, who never shown any interest in stallions her whole life, having that many children was too much for her.

She busted into laughs and had to sit down. Her eyes became teary again, but this time with tear of joy. After managing to stop laughing, witch was no easy feat, she tried to explain it to the best of her ability. But before that she had to clear up something for the two.

“Firstly, those unicorns are not her children, they are her friends, well some of them are, the rest are the children of some of her friends that are no longer with us."

"Oh sister how i wish to have seen you face. What a pretty shade of pink your face would have become”, she let out a small giggle.

“A while ago, we were unicorns like them too, frail bodies and no wings.”
“But then something wonderful happened. We could only remember bits and pieces, afterwards. While i cannot say what exactly I saw, I still remembered how it felt. I felt both happy and sad, I wanted to embrace change, but I also feared it, in a way it was what most ponies describe dying would feel like, a moment of terror, followed by eternal bliss.”

Luna looked at them, both were staring at her, their eyes filled with wonder. Just like a colt's when hearing a epic story of adventure for the first time. She became embarrassed, this much attention was a bit overwhelming for her.

“So... umm... we have no name to call ourselves”

“So you were a unicorn and now you also have the wings of a pegasus?”

“And the body of an earth pony.”

“We noticed”, the other pony poked him in the side.

“Oh... Oh... I am sorry. You are not hurt, are you?”

“We are fine. Do not worry about it miss Luna.”

“So.. you are part unicorn, part pegasus and part earth pony?”

“Well yes, and no. I mean I only was a unicorn before, but I don’t feel like I am only a part of a unicorn.”

“...”

“I feel like I am a unicorn and also a pegasus and a earth pony. If that makes sense.”

The two stood there pondering the implications of what that meant.

“It sort of does. So you if you are like all three races.”

“So how about we call you an allunicorn.”

“It does not sound, right. but i get where you are going. Hmm... Oh i know, allcorn.”

“Better... but still, what about alicorn, it has a softer ring to it.”

“Alicorn... alicorn? It sounds nice, what do you think about it miss Luna?”

“I do not know, I never thought we would need to invent a new name just for my sister and me. But alicorn does sounds nice... Alicorn Luna... Alicorn Lia... I think that could work." Luna said smiling. "Now you two, let's get back to the rest.”

Not soon after resuming walking a high pitched sound grabbed Luna attention, it sounded like a buzzing sound. She stood up on her back legs, and looked around nervous. Her eyes darting from place to place trying to identify the source of the sound. But even with the light of her horn she could not see anything.

“Luna what is wrong?”

“I thought I heard something.”

“Listen you two, head back, do not stop for anything. I will be back shortly. I just want to make sure.”

“Okay we will, but please Luna, be careful”

She gave them a quick smile before heading down a tunnel, to investigate the noise.

“We should head back.”

“Yeah. I think we should”

Author's Note:

The first three chapters of "The first Lunar Laws" are taken from my other story "Dreams"
I loved these chapters so much that I decided to make a new story out of them.