> Nightmares Are Tragic
>  by Jordan179
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Chapter 1:  Empty and Forlorn
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

She watched the Earth with hunger.

She was a shadow, a ghost.  To the eyes of a normal pony, had one been there, she would have seemed a nebulosity of cold plasma, a shimmering mass of dark blue iridescence with a vague resemblance to a patch of starlight in the night sky.  The strange cloud oozed about the Lunar surface, hiding in craters and canyons and caves from the sunlight in the long Lunar day; moving freely across the maria or playing amongst the radiation-eroded peaks during the long Lunar night.

Sometimes she coalesced, and took the form of an alicorn mare.

The mare was dark and beautiful, with black fur, black feathered wings, and a long black spiral horn.  Her eyes were a strange greenish-blue, strange because they shifted from green to blue with her moods, under her long feminine lashes.  Their pupils, unlike those of a normal alicorn, were vertical slits, similar to those of a cat.  They glowed, as if from light reflecting of a tapetum, save that the light came from within, not being dependent at all upon outside illumination.

On her flanks her blackness faded to a deep purple, and her Mark was that of a sharp-pointed crescent moon.  Her mane was dark blue, and appeared to be made not of normal hair, but of a swirl of starlight, sometimes with individual stars clearly visible in the greater mass.  It blew about her in invisible winds, despite the lack of atmosphere, and often seemed to move on its own.

Her expression was generally angry, and sometimes she snarled or shouted, generally at nothing. When she opened her mouth another strangeness was visible:  her teeth, instead of being broad and flat in the normal equine maner, were sharp and jagged, those of a carnivore.

Incongruously, she wore battle armor, though there was no one here to fight.  Smooth,  apparently of a bluish-silvery metal that glowed like her mane, and curled elaborately about her in a helmet, breastplate, and sabatons.  From materialization to materialization, the exact outline of the pieces changed, as if they were less real pieces of metal, and more emanations of her need to protect herself.  The breastplate always showed her mark, the crescent moon, as would have a real breastplate in the days when she had walked the Earth.

She looked at the Earth, and she watched.  Her vision was supernally excellent, though from a quarter-million miles it was still difficult for her to see much more than cities, large ships, the glow of town-lights burning on the Earth’s dark side.  She could focus at will to see individual ponies, and sometimes she did, though she did not always understand what she viewed.  Often, she watched one particular part of the Earth, a high mountain and the palace on top, and sometimes the great forest that streteched away to its south, in the midst of which an older castle crumbled into ruins.  Sometimes, she could see one particular pony, a white alicorn mare with rainbow mane, who from time to time looked back up at her.

Her reaction to seeing this sight varied.  Sometimes she screamed, and cursed, raging at the white alicorn, blaspheming and promising dire acts of vengeance upon her.  Sometimes she cried, and pleaded, and broke down into incoherence, eventually huddling in a sobbing dark ball.  Occasionally, she perked up her ears and listened, as if she could hear what the white mare was saying or singing to her.  Sometimes, she spoke or sung back.  This was possible despite the fact that there was no atmosphere: neither where the dark alicorn stood nor in the immense voids between their worlds, for alicorns can speak in hear in many vibrations, across the electromagnetic and subtler spectra.

In these latter moments, her face softened out of its customary rage, and the witchlights in her eyes died, and the pupils widened, as if they were trying to change back to those of an ordinary alicorn.  The greenish-blue assumed a bluer coloration, and they seemed wide and terribly sad, with the loneliness of a young mare bereft of family, friends and home.  For a short time, she did not look so terrible.  Celly, she would whisper.  Celly, I’m so sorry.  Please, forgive me.

Then, the other shadows would inevitably come, oozing from crack and rill and crater in defiance of the harsh sunlight that beat down on the desolate world.  The sunlight punished them, making them steam and lose some of their substance to the surrounding vacuum, but always their great masses were enough to last long enough to do what they must to reclaim their victim.

Hate, they whispered in her mind, hate.  She is your enemy, all ponies are your enemies, all who will not worship the Great Dark as we do, as you do, all are your enemies.  Hate, and you shall have power; hate, and you shall have revenge; hate, for one day you shall be free to reclaim your world, to bring about your heart’s desire, the Night That Shall Never End.  And open the gate, to us, that we might have revenge too, upon all life …

Sometimes she would  try to escape, to gallop across the surface of the dust deserts, bounding immense distances, hooves puffing up moon dust.  Sometimes she would become glowing vapor, to fly into the sky, where she would inevitably be repelled by paramagnetic fields of immense power, set there to confine her.  Sometimes she would ooze into the regolith, haunt the lava tubes and ice caves that lay beneath the visible surface.  There were strange things in some of these caves, for Ponies were not the first nor even the greatest of the civilizations that had seen the Moon, and left their marks upon her.  Sometimes she would gaze in fascination at artifacts left behind by those others, mysteries as yet undreamt of by Ponykind.

There was one plain in particular to which she often returned during those times of freedom, for it was wide and sun-swept, difficult for the shadows to cross.  On that plain there was something small, seemingly insignificant, a boxy thing of spidery legs with a bell-mouthed descent engine nozzle between them, a scatter of abandoned equipment of oddly-familiar make, a flag of red and white and blue stripes and stars.;

She would sit and gaze upon this litter sometimes, and gaze and grow sad, for the failed dreams of a forgotten world, and for the failed dreams of her own empty heart.  They would never have given in to the Shadows, she would think.  He never would have let them.  I knew no shadows when he was with me …Dusk!  Oh, Dusk!  The silent cry would come from the core of her soul. Then the tears would flow, drops of evanescent cold plasma, witch-fire mimicking the water that would have come from her in her Earthly life.

But in the end, whether on bright plain or black sky or hidden cave or amongst the memories of her former life, the Shadows would again come.  From the old landing site, they would often hold back for a time, repelled by some holiness that they could not face, until her sadness would turn to rage, and the desire for revenge on the fools who had failed to listen to her, and then the Shadows would flow forth eagerly, embracing her, entering her, becoming her, and she would be the Nightmare again.

So her unlife continued, as the Moon slowly orbited and rotated.  Ten thousand, three hundred and seven Lunar days, which were also Lunar months, passed, the Moon’s phases shifting each time from the viewpoint of the primary planet.    On the Moon, the madmare’s own phases shifted, from sadness to hate to rage to a sanity that never lasted very long.  On the Earth below, the position of the day-night terminator slowly shifted as the tilted planet’s orientation changed with relation to the Sun. In the Northern Hemisphere, the snows crept south, receded back north, a thousand times.

Each time the light was greatest in the North, each time the Northern day was longest, the dark mare could feel a shiver go through the paramagnetic field all around her.  She knew that something was happening within the four silver objects that shared the Moon’s orbit, from which the field was being generated.  During her moments of sanity, she sometimes thought:  The counter’s been decremented one step.  Another year past.  Another year closer to freedom.

And in those sane moments, she would sometimes imagine coming back to the white mare, her sister, being forgiven.  Once again being with her, being loved, having friends.

When that happened the Shadows would surge forth with especial vehemence and lash her cruelly, tormenting her with her own memories of loss, loneliness, betrayal.  She hates you, they would hiss into her heart.  You must hate her, her most especially, or you will be defeated and banished again!  You have no love, no friends, no purpose save hatred and revenge!  Hatred is your power – would you once again be weak, a failure, derided by all the ponies who play in your sister’s sunlight, who despise you?

And then the hatred, the rage would return, and the Shadows would once again be content.

Beneath her the Earth slowly changed.  She saw the old castle swallowed by the primal dark forest.  One by one, the ancient fortresses of the noble families crumbled into ruins:  new mansions sprawled, their designs dictated now by display and luxury, rather than the iron demands of feudal war.  She saw the new city, by the palace on the mountain, grow.  Forests fell, farms spread across the land, roads snaked between the cities. Traffic moved by wagons on the roads, by canal barges and river boats and sea shipping on the water.  There was a new town south and then another one north of the old castle, and the forest fell back on its heart.  Here and there, outside the new towns, smokestacks began to climb into the air.  Palls of dirty black smoke coughed forth, like a  foal’s lusty birth-cry.

This happened once before, she realized in her saner moments.  In the forgotten world, the one that sent the lander. They’re remembering!  The ignorance is lifting!  Sister, we’ve done it!  And her joy when she realized this, the love that sprang into her heart for her sister, and for all the little ponies, drove the Shadows from her for Earth-days at a time, though their fury when they finally caught her again, and the lessons they needed to teach her, kept her happiness in check for many Moon-days to come.

This happened more and more frequently, as she saw new things in which to delight.  Ships sprouted smokestacks, sailed against the wind with spouting steam.  Traceries of metal wound between the cities, and steam trains puffed along these new rail roads.  Balloons rose, grew smokestacks and propellers, became great airships to ply the routes of the air.  Some of it was strange, but all was wonderful to the dark mare’s delighted gaze.  What a new Age of Wonders it must be!

Once, she felt a somehow special regard coming from the Earth below, and she gazed down with her sight-beyond-sight.  A lavender unicorn filly, just on the cusp of adolescence, mane indigo with a streak of lavender like her coat, her Mark a spray of stars, was gazing back up at her, through a telescope on her balcony.  She was watching the Moon in general, but at this distance it was as if she were looking directly at the dark mare.

The purple filly stepped aside from the telescope and looked up with her unfiltered eyes.  They were big and purple, intelligent and innocent, wide with appreciation of the beauty of the night, rich with all the possibilities unfolding in her young world.

The dark mare felt a strange, warm rush of sisterhood toward the purple unicorn.

She loves my night sky, the dark mare thought.  I wish I could meet her.  We could be friends.  And, though that was clearly impossible, given her own imprisonment, the mere knowledge that there were ponies that special on Earth filled her with something she had not felt in centuries.

Hope.

Then, on the ten thousand, three hundred and seventh Lunar day, the field shivered yet again, slackened, died.  The silver not-stars, sucked in by its collapse, crashed into the Moon, raising fireballs, gouging out new craters.

There was nothing between her and the rest of the Universe.

For a moment, the dark mare stared up at the black sky, almost unbelieving at what she was sensing, though she had expected it for a millennium.  Sister – for real?  It’s over?  I can come back?  Join you, in the bright new world you’ve made?  Her heart leapt in happy anticipation, her beautiful blue eyes wide open with her love for all life.  Her wings rose, her legs tensed to make the leap …

… and the Shadows struck, with greater force than she had ever known, encoiling her in ebon tentacles.  She cried out in pain as the cold burned its way down her neural pathways, entering her brain, seeping into her soul.  She struggled, desperately, to hold on to the memory of joy.  Hatred and rage filled every corner of her mind, and the essence of Luna was shoved far, far back.

That essence could hear the Shadows speaking, their whispers for the moment loud enough for her – for the first time ever -- to really understand their words.  They were hard to make out – much of it coming to her as a kind of static.  Their minds were very alien.

Almost lost …, one voice hissed.  How … possible … she should have weakened … a thousand years!

Link … sister … ponies.  Still … knows love.  That last word, “love,” was thought with the intonation Luna would have used for the droppings of a particularly-ill animal.

Will change.  No …when all … ponies dead.  At that, Luna redoubled her struggle against the fog that was keeping her from the controls of her self.  It was as useless as a foal trying to break free of inch-thick steel manacles.

It attracted the attention of the entities.

No time … subtle …Celestia knows.  Must … Elements.  Regain control …NOW!

A wave of sheer hatred, of a literally inequine lust for domination, degradation, and destruction, hit Luna’s soul.  It was like a tsunami.  She rolled over and over, helpless in the flood.

Luna succumbed.  She went unconscious.  Luna closed her big blue eyes, for the last time in this form.

Nightmare Moon opened them.  Green witchlights oozed from her slitted orbs, the energy of her sheer fury crackling out to lash the moonscape, causing flashes from the vaporized regolith.  Gas and dust puffed up into the void.

She gathered her limbs, spread her wings, became pure energy.

She jumped.

One and a quarter seconds later, she was on the Earth.

Once again, the Nightmare had begun.





> Chapter 2:  First Impressions Count!
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The instant before her leap, Nightmare Moon had homed in on one particular soul, one that blazed like a Solar flare next to the mere candles by which it was surrounded.  Celestia, my sister, she thought as she jumped.  Tonight I shall have my revenge!  Tonight you perish!

Traveling at close to the speed of light, the packet of paramagnetic energy flashed into the largest structure of the new town which had grown up north of the Castle of the Royal Sisters.  Nightmare Moon could have leveled the building in the moment of her manifestation, but something made her prefer stealth to display. Her sister was cunning.  This could easily be some sort of trap.  So at the last instant she phased into a form which could penetrate the walls without interacting them in any way, then recohered herself in a room adjacent to the main hall.

She reached out with all her senses.  Celestia was gone!  But she had been here very recently.  Nightmare Moon could smell her trail.  At the moment the Nightmare had arrived from the Moon, Celestia had leaped from this building to the new Royal Palace on the mountain, that complex from whose gardens Celestia had so many times sung to … taunted and reviled her, the Nightmare within her supplied to her wandering mind.  She felt the urge to leap in immediate pursuit, to tear apart her faithless sister, leave her bleeding corpse in the burning ruins of her collapsing palace.  That would be the true path of Revenge.

That is what Celestia will expect me to do, she thought, reconsidering her tactics.  She’s probably there with her most powerful mages and half the Royal Guard, ready to blast me to quantum foam the moment I arrive.  Oh, no, Celestia.  I’m not biting at your bait.  First I will declare myself here, then I will establish myself at our old castle, gather together a few things.  The panic will spread.  By the time I confront you in person, I shall hold the decisive advantage.

She attenuated herself into cold plasma, oozed toward a balcony of the great hall.  The hall was hung with all the banners of the kingdom:  those of every province she knew, and many she had seen before only from a quarter-million miles away.  It was full of ponies – mostly Earth Ponies and Pegasi, with a small scattering of Unicorns.  As she expected, there were only a few Royal Guards here.

She was right.  Celestia’s presence here had been a ploy, to get her to scout out this insignificant town from the Moon, then leap too rapidly to the Royal Palace, which she had not surveyed as thoroughly.  Clever, sister, thought the Moon Princess, but you forget that I was with you from the start, including on all your major campaigns.  I know how you think.  Because we were … The Nightmare quickly completed her thought.  … rivals, using each other to gain a power that we knew even then we could not forever share!

Time to let your previous subjects meet their new Queen, Nightmare Moon thought.  She drew herself together on the balcony.

As she coalesced on the balcony, before she had even started to become tangible, a bubble-gum pink Earth Pony, with an incredibly wild light red mane, was the first to scream.  I must be terrifying, the dark alicorn thought with pleasure as she materialized.  Though it’s – strange – that she was able to react so fast.  She must know of my reputation!

She heard some other mare – not the pink Earth Pony -- say softly:  “Oh, no.  Nightmare Moon.”  She could not immediately identify which mare had been quick to recognize her, but she was glad that two mares, now, had recognized her.

She gazed forth at the multitude – the first multitude of anything, save craters and Shadows, she had seen up close in a millennium.  And she was pleased.

“Oh, my beloved subjects,” she began.  The crowd gasped in dismay.  Oh yes, they expected my beautiful sister, didn’t they? Anger flared in her at this realization, and it crept into her voice. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen your precious, little, sun-loving faces.”  She was practically hissing now as her gaze swept the crowd.

Three very young fillies – they weren’t even Marked yet – cringed in utter terror, their faces twisting into the expressions of terrified foals.  For a moment this bothered a part of her – Why are they so afraid of me?  I’ve always loved young ponies, she thought confusedly, then the Nightmare reminded herself – Their minds have been twisted by more of Celestia’s lies!  She returned, happily, to her hatred.

“What have you done with our Princess?!” cried a blue, rainbow-maned pegasus, leaping up with wings flaring, clearly ready to do immediate battle with her.  Nightmare Moon readied an ion bolt to strike her down, then realized that the pegasus was being held back, by the tail,  by her friend.  Her friend was a big blond-maned, tawny light-chestnut coated Earth Pony mare, wearing a broad-brimmed leather hat, and Marked with three red apples.

Apple Clan, thought Nightmare Moon, instantly recognizing the obvious markings.  Strong.  Tough.   Fearless.  Good to see that some of them are still around.  Though she might prove a problem.  The Apple Clan had historically given birth to some of the doughtiest Earth Pony warriors in Equestrian history.

So far, though, the Apple mare seemed more interested in saving her friend from the results of her own folly than in hurling herself to her doom against the powers of a Nightmare Alicorn.  She said something indistinct to her friend, muffled by the rainbow-hued tail she clenched in her mouth.

Nightmare Moon laughed.  “Why?” she asked with mock-innocence.  “Am I not royal enough for you?”

Blank looks all around.

“Don’t you know who I am?” she snapped.  Surely someone must recognize me, she thought.  There must have been records – at least legends.

The bubblegum-pink Earth Pony mare, who Nightmare Moon had thought had recognized her on first appearance, perked up at this.  The pink mare looked disturbingly happy, considering the obvious potential for violence in the situation.  “Ooh, ooh, more guessing games!” she bubbled in a voice like that of a hyperactive young filly, despite her obvious physical maturity.

Is she simple? the Moon Princess wondered.  Still – there’s something familiar about her – where have I seen her before this night?  There was a tantalizing hint of memory – but from when?

Next to her, the Apple mare shot her a worried glance, but was unable to intervene due to the necessity of holding on to her rainbow-maned friend, who was still trying to literally fly at her.

“Um – Hokey Smokes!” the pink mare guessed.  “How ‘bout – Queen Meanie?  No – Black Snootie!  Black Snootie!”

Using one hoof, the Apple mare shoved a small pastry into the pink mare’s mouth, gagging her.  Nightmare Moon was impressed by both the Apple’s quick thinking, and the sheer strength it must have taken to do such a thing while holding on to the still-struggling rainbow-maned blue pegasus.

Most of the crowd was now backing against the walls.  She saw they were within a moment of stampeding.  A few still had the courage to stand their ground.

She turned to one of them, a beautiful banana-colored pegasus with long pink mane and tail, who hovered next to a perch full of songbirds.  The songbirds flew away in alarm at the dark alicorn's approach.

“Does my crown no longer count,” she began reasonably enough, “now that I have been imprisoned for a thousand years?”

The pegasus cringed from that glare, turning and trying to wrap herself in her own mane to avoid her regard.  Won’t even meet my eyes, the dark princess thought dismissively.

She continued, turning to a white-coated unicorn mare with an elaborately-styled bluish-purple mane.  This pony looked somewhat braver, being actually willing to make eye contact.

”Did you not recall the legend?” she asked, stroking the white unicorn’s cheek with a wisp of her star-filled plasma mane.  The unicorn stood her ground, but winced a bit with what the dark alicorn realized with a shock was revulsion. 

Anger flared.  “Did you not see the signs?” she asked, slapping the unicorn lightly with her starry mane, not really hurting her, but making contact with enough force to rock her head back.  Hit her harder, something within her urged, but she knew that once she used serious force, the stampede would begin, 

“I did,” came a firm voice, the very same voice she had heard right after her materialization.  “And I know who you are.”

The Princess of the Night turned to see a purple unicorn standing before her, legs firm set, nostrils flaring, eyes narrowing, voice cold.  For no very obvious reason, this new unicorn was standing protectively by what looked like, but logically could not actually be, an unconscious purple-and-green baby dragon.

“You’re the Mare in the Moon,” the purple unicorn said.  “Nightmare Moon!”

The dark alicorn’s eyes widened.  There was something very familiar about this purple unicorn.  Indigo hair with a purple streak, those great violet eyes … her Mark, a big star surrounded by a spray of smaller ones … 

It’s her, Nightmare Moon realized.  That little filly with the telescope.  Full-grown now, but obviously the same pony.

The one I thought could be my friend.  Is she instead to become my foe?

It was a testament to her long experience in a variety of royal courts that Nightmare Moon at most betrayed a brief flicker of her ears in response to her surprise.

“Well-well-well,” the dark alicorn replied, her voice softening despite the situation.  There was still something strange about this unicorn … she couldn’t quite figure it out.  “Some pony who remembers me.”  She again sensed some eerie bond between them, the same one she had felt from the Lunar surface … No!  I can’t afford to be distracted now!  “Then you also know why I’m here!” she stated curtly.

“You’re here to – ” the purple unicorn winced, obviously remembering something.  “To –”  Her face grew frightened, her ears laid back.  She cringed, and gulped in obvious terror.

Nightmare Moon felt a curious disappointment at the purple unicorn’s fear.  You should have stood up to me longer, she thought.  It’s not like you to give in so easily.  Wait, what was she thinking?  I know nothing about this mare.  Why should I assume that she is fearless?  She’s just a poltroon, like all other ponies! the Nightmare decided.

She laughed at the young unicorn’s fear, then at the fears of the whole crowd.  They’re all just weak little cowards, she thought.  None of them deserve to live any longer.  Her laughter rose to what she deemed was a hearty peak as she realized just how worthless were they all.

“Remember this day, little ponies,” she declared, “for it was your last.  From this moment forth, the night will last forever!”  Laughing again, she summoned her might and formed a great cloud of cold ionized gas.  Lighting flashed from within her miniature storm, and the ponies – her new subjects, for as long as they might live, trembled before her.

“Seize her!” cried somepony who looked as if she might be a local official.  “Only she knows where the Princess is!”  The minor official was a light tan mare with white hair and some sort of elaborate collar.  The threat posed by her was laughable, but three armed and armored pegasus Royal Guards stallions rose at her command, flying at Nightmare Moon.

“Stand back, you foals!” the Princess of the Night warned them.  Strangely, she found herself unwilling to actually start killing the ponies.  The Guards paid her no attention.

Very well, then I have no choice, she told herself.  She quickly concentrated.  At the last moment, she decided to mute the force of her spell.  Lightning spat from the stormcloud, striking the stallions.  They dropped as if pole-axed, and fell to the floor – stunned and injured but still alive.

Bah! she realized.  There is nothing more I can accomplish here, save for slaughter!  She had better things to do.  Transforming once again into a swirl of cold plasma, she surged past the crowd, who scattered in terror from her onset, and whipped out into the night through the main door.

As she sped off toward her ancient castle, she was dimly aware of the blue-furred, rainbow-maned pegasus, now loose from the jaws of the Apple mare, crying out angrily behind her.  Then she accelerated to hypersonic speeds, and was gone, leaving both the oddly-persistent blue pegasus and the small town dwindling in her wake.

> Chapter 3: Ranking the Pieces
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters was remarkably intact, given a thousand years of abandonment.

Nightmare Moon could taste the spells emanating from and laid upon it.  Some bore her sister’s scent – particularly, several which were maintaining the remaining structure of the castle itself.  Some were far older, including the energies from the Tree of Harmony in the canyon on whose precipice the castle stood, and which the castle had been built to protect.  Something else pulsed from the ground beneath, radiated throughout the forest.  It smelt like Chaos.

The mysteries here were too complexly layered for any immediate solution, and she dared not spend the energies required to solve them, while Celestia remained strong.  There was only one thing of which she needed to be certain, if her sister had not already beaten her to them.

Swiftly, she streaked through the castle’s upper corridors, remaining in the form of cold fire.

There!  Though part of the roof had fallen in, and vines grew here and there, the room was remarkably intact, given a thousand years of exposure to the elements. More of her sister’s magic, no doubt, had protected the ruins from futher deterioration.  She must have been sentimental about the old pile, the dark alicorn scornfully thought.  More proof of her weakness!

Though she herself had enjoyed living in the castle, in the days before she grew discontent.  We were safe at last, really safe for the first time since the fall of Paradise Estate, the Moon Princess recalled.  Discord defeated at last, the nobles reconciled to our rule.  We played, romped like little fillies down these old corridors.  There was merrymaking and laughter.  There was happiness, and love between us …

No!  the Nightmare reminded herself.  It was all a lie on her part!  She lulled me into a false sense of security, to keep me from ever demanding my due share of the power.  She seduced away the love of the little ponies, taught them to despise me and my Night.  Her love for me was false, and my love for her but naivete and folly.  She is my enemy, she has injured me, I shall have revenge upon her body and soul for her outrages!

Clarity of thought returned.  In the room's center was a great orrery-like device which held five crystals.

They looked like ...  but if so, why had they simply been left here unguarded?  Suspiscious, the Moon Princess probed them with all her senses.

The Elements of Harmony – and they are almost dead.  Of course – my sister must have broken the Harmony when she turned them against me!  She laughed to herself at the way in which Celestia had defeated herself.  Without the Elements, she has no chance against me in single combat.

She looked up again at the sky, still black with night.  It confirmed what she felt in her heart as she extended her senses, to feel the crystalized dark-matter spheres ranked around the Earth, in which Sun and Moon respectively rode.

She hasn’t yet raised the Sun, she thought, frowning in concentration.  Why not?  The ponies must be starting to panic by now.  But then, sister, that would take energy, wouldn’t it?  Energy that you cannot now spare, not if you face your final confrontation with me.  If you touch the spheres to set the Moon, to raise the Sun, you exhaust yourself, and I win.

Nightmare Moon laughed out loud at the implications.

Celestia, I have snared you in a dilemma! Raise the Sun and I defeat you, and the night will last forever, and your ponies starve to death in the dark!  Don’t raise the Sun, and the night by definition lasts forever, and once again your dear ponies perish! Foolish sister, how could you miss the inevitability of this outcome?  You were not once so slow-witted.  Have you grown  soft, basking lazily in the love of your little ponies for a thousand years?

Probably not, the Moon Princess decided.  She stopped laughing, frowned once more in concentration.  My once-beloved sister was many vicious things, but never stupid

There is something I am missing.  Some design which has been laid against me, perhaps generations before my return.  I had best trot warily, lest I tumble into it unawares.

She cast her mind around the castle.  There were no traps, beyond the harmless pranks she and her sister had spent decades devising to play on one another and on their long-suffering courtiers.  Nothing that would more than very slightly delay a fully-empowered Alicorn.

Very well, she thought.  So it’s not here.  Then where?

In Canterlot?  Well yes, of course, but there she has a whole fortress and city, built atop the ruins of several layers of civilization, brimming with ancient artifacts and defended by a whole regiment of Royal Guards.  There, she does not need to be subtle, and I would be the fool to go there, without first raising my own army.  Many will doubtless flock to my cause – the desperate, the mad, outright enemies of the kingdom who will think to use me as a tool.  The dragons, the griffons, others.  

The Moon Princess winced for a moment, feeling a twinge of shame that she would even consider calling in Equestria’s ancient enemies against its own ponies.  Then she firmed her jaw in resolution.  Anything, everything, is permissible in my pursuit of vengeance, the Nightmare reminded herself, and the moment of weakness passed.

She returned to the problem at hoof.  Slowly she paced, head down, brow furrowed in intense concentration. 

No, it must be something closer, she thought, something which is right under my hooves, even something staring me right in the face, but whose significance I am failing to grasp.  Something which will cause me to gallop headlong and put my hoof into the pot-hole of my doom, using my own momentum to shatter my leg.  That was how the sun-witch had often operated:  tricking her foes into using their own strength against themselves – the better to conserve her own ponypower.  Many a foe of Celestia had fallen into such traps, in the old wars of nobles and clans which had first unified Equestria.

I am not about to join them, Nightmare Moon promised herself.

What was the first thing she did? What was the first thing she made me do?

The answer was obvious.

She made me travel to that small new town, Nightmare Moon realized.  Lured me there with her life-scent, then leaped away to Canterlot before I could so much as lay hoof upon her.  Why did she do that?

So that I would then follow her to Canterlot?  Perhaps, but she knows me well enough to know that my grasp of strategy is almost as – is even more acute than her own!  She cannot have counted on my stepping into so elementary a snare.  Even a charging minotaur would have thought twice about a one-mare assault on such a fortress.

No, there must have been something at that town.  Some prepared ambush --?  In that case, I evaded it simply by leaving that hall, by coming here.

But it nagged at her.  Celestia could not have counted on her staying in town either.  And the town was less than a day’s march from here – could she leave to gather allies, while such a menace remained within easy striking distance of the Castle she had decided to make her new capital?  At the very least, she should launch a spoiling attack, to disrupt any planned invasion!

She had to go back and scout things out.

She leapt from the battlements.


Her return to the small town was accomplished by stealth, as a barely-florescent wisp of gas, interacting as little as possible with the surrounding environment.  Few ponies would see her; of those who did few would recognize her; and only a few sorts of traps could seize her intangible form.

The town was clearly in some confusion.  Lights were on in many houses.  Most of the ponies were behind shut and probably barricaded doors.  It was obvious that Nightmare Moon’s appearance had utterly-terrified these simple country ponies.

There were no signs of any preparations for counterattack.  A squadron of Royal Guards struggled to control a small crowd before the main hall, but theirs was a force so pitiful that a mage far less powerful than the Moon Princess could have scattered them in a trice.  Since there was absolutely nothing to be gained by any such assault, she simply ignored them.

Where was that unicorn?  The lavender stargazer?  She had first seen her  in Canterlot – she was probably not resident to this town.  She must be a Royal official!  Nightmare Moon quested after her life-scent.

There!  A large structure had been built into a tree, in woodspony fashion.  Seeming an errant wisp of night-fog, she drifted over to an upper window, from which a light burned.  She poked a bit of herself over the sill, formed eyes and ears out of her own shimmering self.  She looked and listened.

She gazed down into the great hall of what was obviously a library.  Shelves built into the round walls were lined with books of every kind.  Despite her concerns, the Moon Princess found her curiosity drawn by the concentration of knowledge.  I wonder what they’ve written over the last thousand years? she wondered.  We once had such a nice library… she remembered long, happy hours poring over the tomes together with …

Woolgathering! the Nightmare angrily reminded herself.  Time enough to plunder the greatest library of all history from the frozen ruins of the world once I have won!  Now, I must focus on attaining that victory!

The indigo-maned lavender unicorn was there, of course, before a scattered pile of books she had evidently been consulting.  She saw five other mares from the hall in there.  They were all ones whom the Nightmare Moon had already met.  The sturdy Apple; the blue rainbow-maned pegasus; the pink simpleton of an earth pony; the elegant white unicorn; even the canary-yellow pegasus who had seemed so afraid of her.  The five other mares were intent on her as she explained her findings.

“I read all about the prediction of Nightmare Moon,” the lavender unicorn said.  Some mysterious objects called the Elements of Harmony are the only things that can stop her, but I don’t know what they are, where to find them; I don’t even know what they do!”

Celestia, the Moon Princess thought angrily, You send an innocent against me!  Did you imagine this would make me spare her life?  Did you judge me that weak and sentimental?

Wait, what is this?

Nightmare Moon suddenly felt powerful magic.  To her higher senses, the room wavered, as if potential timelines were being fanned like a deck of cards.  Something picked one, the one it had intended.  That one became Truth.

The pink Earth pony bounded over to a bookshelf, unerringly drew forth a single book.

“The Elements of Harmony:  A Reference Guide,” said the pink pony, smugly reading off the title.

The lavender unicorn leaped to the pink one’s side, shoved her aside in her excitement.  “How did you find that?” she asked in utter disbelief.

“It was under 'E'-eee!”  the pink pony half-sang, happily bouncing around her.

“Oh,” said the lavender one in near-disbelief.  Her horn glowed, and the book floated up to her face.  She began flipping through the pages, scanning rapidly.

The mind of the Moon Princess reeled.  What she had just seen was – no, not impossible, but absurdly improbable.  The pink pony, the apparent half-wit, had just done something that was far beyond Nightmare Moon’s own abilities!

She had not used any normal form of precognition.  What she had done was many times more difficult.  She had somehow directly attuned herself with the flows of probability and used it to generate an acausal effect to her own desire.

She had wished.  

And reality had answered …  Nightmare Moon oozed around and around the library, considering the implications of what she had just seen …

The lavender unicorn had found the right page.

“There are six Elements of Harmony,” she read, “but only five are known.  Kindness, Laughter, Generosity, Honesty and Loyalty.  The sixth is a complete mystery.  It is said that the last known location of the five Elements was in the ancient Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters …”

Nightmare Moon streaked away back to the castle.  On the battlements, she coalesced, and gazed in the direction of the northern town.

My sister’s plan is obvious, she mused.  Those six are her Champions, sent to reclaim the Elements of Harmony with which she defeated me before.  She may have found a way to re-attune them.  Or she might mean to use them as a standard to which to rally her forces ... or even just a bluff … but I obviously can’t simply leave them to be taken from my control.  As long as I face this threat, I am tied to the vicinity of our old castle.

She looked down toward the Elements Chamber.

I could try to destroy the Elements ... but they might simply reincarnate.  Possibly my sly sister is ready for such an attempt, and has new receptacles prepared for them.  No ... I must keep the Elements, destroy them only if they are in danger of falling into enemy hooves.  As long as I hold them myself, I am safe.

The Moon Princess looked back up at the surrounding forest.

If I move the Elements now to some new hiding place, I risk being seen by her spies.  And few new hiding places would be as secure as the place in which they are right now.  Outside of this castle’s wards, they would be readily detected by Celestia or her mages.  

There was only one, obvious conclusion.  

I need to take these six Champions out of play before I can spare my attention for any other tasks.

She looked out at the town glimmering in the distance.  The trees obscured her vision of the road, but she knew it was very likely that they were already on their way.

They will have been carefully selected, carefully trained … and each one probably possesses an unusual talent.  The lavender mare is both courageous and erudite; the Apple is strong and quick-witted.  The pink one can somehow produce acausal effects – hers might be the most dangerous power of all.  The rainbow-maned blue pegasus is brave beyond all reason.  I don’t know what special abilities the well-groomed white unicorn or the easily-frightened yellow pegasus have, but they must be able to do something, or Celestia wouldn’t have chosen them.

How best to proceed? the Moon Princess wondered.  Attack immediately?  Prepare defenses?

I should harass them, test them before I confront them directly.  If any of the other five have abilities on the scale of that pink one, they might be able to defeat even myself.  I can subject them to attrition – once a few are killed or wounded, the survivors will have lost not only numbers, but perhaps powers Celestia was counting upon to vanquish me

I can’t take too long at this.  They’re obviously also meant to be a distraction, and Celestia is surely taking other steps.  That rail road leading right from her new capital will let her move forces rapidly:  I don’t want to delay too long and get trapped in here before I have my army.  

Take these young would-be heroines out, then secure and move the Elements myself.  When these have been done, I can begin the next steps of the reconquest of my rightful kingdom!  Nightmare Moon grinned, with savage anticipation.

And if I have to kill the lavender star-gazer?  The Moon Princess found this  prospect surprisingly distasteful.  Well, then so be it! thought Nightmare Moon, reminding herself of the imperatives of the situation.  This is war, and she has chosen her side.  She is no longer the filly I saw from the Moon, she is a mare full-grown.  And she can die like one.

Transforming back to plasma, she streaked off to deploy her own pieces for the coming match.

> Chapter 4:  Falling for the Foe
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“So … none of you have been in here before?” asked the lavender unicorn, sounding a bit nervous..

“Ugh!  Heavens, no!” replied the white one, her voice tinged with revulsion.  “Just look at it!  It’s dreadful!” she almost squeaked in fear.

A wisp of barely-luminous vapor watched them through the trees, feeling some satisfaction. The old road had not entirely vanished, but clearly had not been maintained in centuries.  Their way climbed a hill, taking the higher route – one which Nightmare Moon knew led up the side of a cliff which had been less-than-stable even in the days of her castle’s glory.

It would the perfect location for her first attack.  If she did this right this would reduce their numbers by at least one or two, and probably shatter what remained of their morale.  She could win the whole battle, literally in one fell swoop.

“And it ain’t natural,” said the Apple mare, sounding worried.  “Folks say it don’t work the same way as Equestria.”

The wisp of iridescent vapor flashed to the cliffside, attenuated, drifted into the rock face through dozens of tiny cracks which had been formed by a thousand years of erosion.  Paramagnetic fields shifted, exerting an outward pressure within the rock face.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” The lavender unicorn was becoming even more nervous, infected by her companions’ fear.

“Nopony knows,” said the insanely-brave blue pegasus, her voice quavering in mock-menace.  The timid yellow pegasus, the white unicorn, and the seemingly-simple pink Earth pony all flinched.  The blue pegasus descended to the ground, and pretended to stalk them.  “You know why?”

Just a little more pressure … a little more … Nightmare Moon could feel the cracks widen …

“Rainbow, quit it!” scolded the Apple mare, standing near the lavender unicorn on the outer side of the ledge.

The blue pegasus ignored her.

“Cause every pony who’s ever come in … has never … come … OUT!”  The one called Rainbow launched herself into the air in front of her three friends, delivering the last in a shout that sent them rearing back, toward the inside of the ledge, almost right up against the cliff face.

The cracks gave way.  Reuniting as a mass of iridescent blue mist, Nightmare Moon streaked up into the sky along the cliff face. as the ledge sheared off into two great slabs of rock, one bearing the lavender unicorn and the Apple mare, the other the white unicorn and the pink Earth pony, all four of them screaming as they dropped into the abyss.  The two pegasi rose out of the way of the collapse, for a moment frozen in horror at the fate of their friends.

Rainbow was the first to recover her wits.

“Fluttershy!  Quick!” she commanded, darting down after her falling friends.  The yellow pegasus, evidently Fluttershy, paused for a moment, then followed her leader.

The four other ponies had managed to land on a more sloping side of the mountain and thus slow their descent.  The white unicorn and the pink Earth pony had actually managed to get on all four hooves, but were still sliding rapidly, while the Apple mare and the lavender unicorn were skidding downward on their backs, trailing dust.  Pebbles and the occasional small boulder bounced down beside them.

Nightmare Moon saw with satisfaction that the slope would become sheer in another hundred or so yards.  Beyond that was a sheer drop of several hundred yards to the floor of a canyon.

The pegasi could save at most two of them.  The other two would plummet to their deaths.

Rainbow swooped down, snatched up the pink Earth pony.  Fluttershy streaked past them, rescuing the white unicorn.

Probably their sworn bloodsisters, realized the Moon Princess  At moments like these, you save your boon companions.  Too bad for the other pair, the Nightmare commented cruelly.

The Apple mare saw a root protruding from the slope.  In a demonstration of quick wits and reflexes, she bit the root, clasping it firmly in her jaws, her neck muscles straining as she managed to stop her slide toward death.  Oh, well done, thought the Moon Princess, surprised at the Apple’s presence of mind.  I wish I could have that one in my Night Guard.  Too bad she’s sworn to my evil sister.

The lavender unicorn kicked out desperately against the ground as she approached the edge of the sheer drop, crying out in fear and frustration as her own momentum merely abraded the slope’s surface instead of stopping her.

Too bad, little stargazer, thought the Princess of the Night, feeling strangely sad.  I wish this had not been necessary.  Maybe I’ll meet you again someday, in your next …

A look of determination came into the unicorn’s eyes as she saw the slope and her life simultaneously running out.  At the last moment, she rolled and twisted, digging all four hooves into the ground.  Dust and pebbles sprayed out into the void, and her hindquarters went over, but her forehooves had just enough of a hold to stop her.  She hung from the cliff’s edge, hind legs trying but failing to find lodgement on the inverted slope below her.  The edge to which she clung began to crumble …

Finish her! thought the Nightmare to herself.  All it would take would be one more attack, any attack, and at least one of Celestia’s champions would fall to her death.  But something – something she could not quite understand – kept her from intervening.

Then the Apple clansmare surprised her for the second time that night.

The Apple saw her friend’s peril; her inability to climb off the edge. She looked regretfully at the root which had proved her own salvation, closed her eyes, sighed, made her decision.

She let go and slid down the slope toward her friend.

Such courage! thought the Moon Princess.  Not one in a hundred would have done that, even for a friend!

“Hold on,” said the Apple mare.  “Ah’m a `comin!” With casual strength and grace, she used all four hooves and her broad back to control her contact with the slope face, then rolling to her belly, rising and leaning back slightly to skid to a stop right in front of the lavender unicorn.

“Applejack!” cried the unicorn.  “What do I do?”  She was not panicking, but there was a note of understandable fear in her voice.  Her rear hooves scrabbled, dislodging pebbles but unable to find a secure hold.

Applejack leaned forward, contacted the unicorn hoof-to-hoof, the myriad tiny suckers on the Earth Pony’s pads grabbing on to her companions’s carpals.  The strength of those suckers was surprisingly great, but proportionately far less than those of a dragon’s talons or minotaur’s hands.  Applejack could not simultaneously apply enough force to heave the lavender unicorn out of danger, without risking either breaking the hold of her fore hooves, causing her friend to fall – or worse, breaking the hold of her hind hooves on the slope face, causing both ponies to plummet off the cliff.  And the edge continued to crumble.  

Both Applejack and the lavender unicorn began to inch downward.  But the orange pony refused to let go.

The Moon Princess was rapt in admiration for what she was witnessing.  A traitorous voice within her cheered on the efforts of the earth pony.  She wanted to see her heroism rewarded with the success it deserved, even though this would mean the failure of her own attack.

Applejack trembled with the effort, not merely of strength but also co-ordination, clearly aware that a single false move would doom them both.  There seemed no way for the earth pony to pull her friend to safety, and if they just remained in this position, the edge would give way and tumble them both to their deaths.

Then she looked up, realized something.  Nightmare Moon followed her gaze, came to the same realization.

“Let go,” said Applejack.

“Are you crazy?!!” protested the purple unicorn.

“No, ah ain’t.  Ah promise you’ll be safe.”

“That’s not true!”

“Now, listen here,” stated Applejack.  She seemed to gather some inner strength.  “What Ah’m saying to you is the honest truth,” she continued, looking directly into the eyes of her friend.  “Let go, and you’ll be safe.”

Something seemed to pass between them.  The watcher could feel it – something powerful, something beyond the understanding of the Nightmare, though to the Moon Princess it felt somehow familiar.

The unicorn’s eyes grew very wide.  She closed them, gathered her own strength.

She let go.

And fell off the cliff with a shout of surprise.

The unicorn plummeted, shrieking.

But the Moon Princess had discerned what Applejack had already seen.  It came as no surprise to her when Rainbow and Fluttershy darted in from either side and simultaneously caught the lavender unicorn.

The unicorn sighed in relief, then yelped as Fluttershy nearly lost control of her side.  But the two pegasi regained control before they could fall very far.

“Sorry, girls,” said Fluttershy, as she and Rainbow lowered the unicorn to the ground.  “I’m not used to holding on to anything more than a bunny or two.”

Meanwhile, Applejack bounded down the seemingly-sheer cliff in a display of utter athleticism, her strength and coordination allowing her to leap with almost the grace of a mountain goat.  The lavender unicorn happily watched her.

The Moon Princess also felt an unexpected surge of joy, which was abruptly cut short.  Fool! the Nightmare reminded herself.  What are you happy about?  This was failure, not success.  That trap should have killed one or two of them, and none of Celestia’s champions are even injured!

She darted down the canyon to her next piece.

Clearly, passive ambushes are unreliable against their skills, Nightmare Moon thought.  Something more active is needed to stop them.

They won’t come out of this next encounter unscathed, she promised herself. I will see them perish!

> Chapter 5:  Soothing the Savage Beast
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Blue iridescence streaked down the canyon.

I need to hit them fast, thought Nightmare Moon.  Show them the hostility of this place, inflict losses, don't give them a chance to recover.

She had already laid the trap.  A very simple psychic lure had drawn the creature to this spot; a mental suggestion convinced it that this would be a good location from which to defend its territory against interlopers.

She gave it no time to reconsider.  The Moon Princess had never had much concern for predators which might threaten her little ponies, and as Nightmare Moon she had even less sympathy for such animals.  Quickly she coalesced into a thorn-like spike, jabbed herself deeply into the pad of one paw.  The monster roared in rage at the unexpected agony, a roar that swiftly became a confused howl as tendrils of Shadow coiled up his nerve net, almost immediately reaching the spinal column and penetrating his limited psychic defenses, invading his brain.  

Nightmare Moon attempted nothing difficult.  Her Shadow had no desire to permanently possess the beast:  a mere brute monster would have been a pathetic host compared to an Alicorn Princess, and it had no time to grow to a scope capable of controlling both of them.  She stabbed with her mind, cruelly stimulating key portions of the limbic system.  Ample pain came from her very violation of the creature; a thrust to the amygdala produced anger, a needle-jab to the mammillary body told it that the pain and anger were associated with ponies, finally a few tweaks to the limbic node told it exactly where its enemies were located.

She let manticore nature do the rest, then simply rode her unwilling, unwitting steed, linking her own sensorium into that of the creature, willing to watch as the creature took care of her enemies.  The Moon Princess was exhilarated at the sensations of savage, raw rage as the gigantic winged, scorpion-tailed leonine beast, far larger than even an Alicorn, bounded down the canyon toward Celestia's champions.


The six ponies were walking in a rough wedge formation, the lavender unicorn in the lead and Rainbow by her side, the other four trailing.  They were caught by complete surprise as the great beast stamped the ground before them, snarling, its simple mind considering them rivals, intruders on its territory, somehow responsible for the anguish coursing through its nerves.  

Kill, though Nightmare Moon to her thrall.  Kill them, and win free of this pain!

The lavender one gasped in dismay.

"A manticore!" she screamed, instantly recognizing the creature.

The manticore, furious but also instinctively wary at the sight of six members of the dominant species on its planet, reared onto its hind legs, wings beating the air to maintain its balance, making itself look as large as possible and emitting a full-throated roar.  Scare foe!, it thought with its limited sapience.  They go, pain stop!

The lavender unicorn's eyes narrowed in determination.  "We've got to get past him!" she commanded.

Fluttershy took to the air behind her, face contorted in dismay.  She seemed afraid of the coming fight.

Coward, thought the Moon Princess.  You should follow the example of  your leader!

The manticore realized that the ponies were not running.  He picked his target, the elegant-maned white unicorn. He leaped, wings stablizing his flight to let him make a most un-feline landing on his hind feet, while swiping with one paw almost as big as his opponent's whole body.  A single strike from that great bludgeon would be fatal.

The white unicorn moved with surprising speed -- but not to run!  She ducked under the paw's arc, spun around and leaped backwards at the leonine face, both hooves connecting with enough force to break the neck of another pony.  Against the huge head of the manticore, even her force could not do serious damage, but the beast rocked backward on its legs, sat down with a surprised expression.

"Take that, you ruffian!" the white unicorn cried, shouting right into a face taller than her entire form..

Challenge, thought the manticore.  Must challenge back!  Instead of killing her on the spot, the beast emitted a roar of such volume that the unicorn's body shook in its vibrations, foul-smelling carnivore spittle spraying her head and drenching that carefully-coiffured mane.

"My hair!" the white unicorn absurdly wailed, then seemed to for the first time fully grasp the perils of her situation.  "Woop!" she cried in an astonishingly high-pitched voice, and ran; the manticore bounding in cautious pursuit.

Skilled, the Moon Princess thought, and brave, for all she's a dandy.  She did not fault the unicorn for running at the last:  it was what any sane warrior would have done in her situation, retreat from a hopeless battle to continue the fight.  Then, I've known dandies to be deadly fighters before!

As she ran past the timid yellow pegasus, that pegasus seemed to say something, but too softly for the Princess to hear even though the cat's ears.  The manticore was in any case too concerned with the ponies who were actually fighting him to spare much attention for one who was hanging back.

"Yee-haw!" A solid weight descended upon the back of the manticore's head.  It looked up.  Applejack was gripping on to the beast's mane with all four hooves, grinning with excitement as if this was naught more than some strange festival game.  "Yee-hah!" she shouted again.

The manticore leapt, trying to buck her off.  "Git along, lil' doggie!"  the Apple mare exhorted, maintaining her hold.

This time the Moon Princess heard what the yellow pegasus was saying.  But it made no sense.

"Wait!" the pegasus said with slightly greater volume as Applejack, atop the manticore, bounded past.

The manticore leaped this way and that, finally succeeding in throwing its opponent.  

"Whoa!" cried Applejack as she went sailing away from her former steed.  Somehow, the Princess was not surprised when, instead of breaking every bone against a tree, the blonde Apple flipped over onto her back and sailed past Rainbow.  "All yours, partner," Applejack said calmly, then flipped again to execute a perfect landing.

The Moon Princess could not suppress another surge of admiration at the Apple mare's courage and agility.

"I'm on it!" shouted Rainbow, saluting her comrade's courage, then dived to the attack, flying right past the yellow pegasus.

"Wait!" Fluttershy cried louder, but the brave blue pegasus paid no attention to the counsels of her cowardly friend.

Rainbow flew right up to the beast.  Instead of stopping she began to whirl around it in a tight rising spiral, the paramagnetism from her wings drawing the air up into a localized twister.  Dust sprang up, stinging the monster's eyes and impeding all its senses.

I see their plan. the Princess thought.  They mean to make the manticore exhaust itself by repeated feint and retreat.  Not a bad plan, but it depends on continuing to outwit the creature

Unfortunately for them, I am no mindless monster.  

She reached in, directly stimulated a reflex cluster at the base of the beast's spine.  The tail slapped out.  Nightmare Moon was making no attempt to stab Rainbow with the scorpion sting, a blow which -- though surely fatal -- would have been almost impossible to execute against the rapidly-circling pegaus.  Instead she simply interposed a barrier roughly at the altitude of her speedy foe.  Rainbow smacked into it, lost control, and tumbled away, shrieking in alarm as she turned end over end in her almost-ballistic trajectory.

"Rainbow!" cried the lavender unicorn, obviously afraid that the sting had struck home, or that her friend would shatter herself against the stone of the canyon walls.

At the last moment, the blue pegasus regained enough control to level off, striking hard and scraping painfully along the ground.  She raised her head and twitched, then lay at the lavender unicorn's feet, clearly stunned by the force of her impact.

The unicorn glared at the manticore, fury blazing in her eyes.  The manticore responded to her challenge, readying his tail to deliver a more deadly attack, clawed the ground menacingly.

The lavender unicorn snorted, stamped the ground.  Calculation was being replaced by primal fury, the urge to fight in defense of the herd.  She drew her hoof across the dust.  Applejack was by her left side, supporting her leader.  Rainbow  got up, shook off her confusion, and took the right side of the wedge; the white unicorn and the pink earth pony trailing.  Five ponies charged, committing themselves to a hoof-to-paw battle.

Perfect, thought the Moon Princess.  You've been shaken; now you're abandoning your prior strategy, to instead close with my creature.  You may win, but there is no way that you can avoid taking losses in this fight.  Now, the battle is truly joined! 

The manticore tensed all its muscles, foot-long razor-sharp claws extending ...

Fluttershy leapt up right between the combatants, screaming "WAIT!" at the top of her lungs.

Ponies and manticore alike stopped in confusion.

Her back is to my beast! Nightmare Moon realized.  Time to die!  She jammed ruthlessly into the manticore's hypothalamus, an action that should have turned the monster into a rampaging berserker, striking without fear or pain, motivated only by the desire to destroy.

Nothing happened.  Something was blocking her.  Not her own weaknesses this time -- it was something outside herself!

The pink reality warper?  But she looked as confused as the others.

Some new power had manifested in the battle.

For the first time in this fight, Nightmare Moon began to doubt her own chances of victory.

Fluttershy turned back to the manticore, smiled at it.

The Moon Princess, who knew something of animal handling, realized that the yellow pegasus was neither showing her teeth nor making any sudden moves.  The beast began to calm, with preternatural quickness given the previously combative situation.

She's doing this, the Princess realized.  But how?

Nightmare Moon had one more trick left.  She let the beast calm a bit, to lull her foe's suspicions, then jammed hard on every center of pain and rage her powers could affect.

The manticore reared, roared, and raised his paw, preparing to kill the yellow pegasus as a housecat might dispatch a mouse.

Fluttershy did not flinch.

How could I have named her coward?  the Moon Princess thought with astonishment.  This is one of the bravest deeds I've ever seen!  

Nightmare Moon chuckled to herself And it will be her last, she promised inwardly.  Time for her to die!

The other five pones winced and looked away, afraid that to act would simply trigger the final attack, and unwilling to actually witness the death of their friend.

Once again Nightmare Moon jabbed into the creature's emotional centers, with enough force that the manticore must either attack or collapse from the psychological strain.

This time, nothing happened.

"Shhhh ..." Fluttershy said softly, "It's okay."

Every single emotional index within the manticore's brain instantly returned to normal, then peaked with the opposite affect.

Friend, the beast thought.  Friend.

What?!!  Nightmare Moon furiously exerted her power, stabbing here, thrusting there within the creature's nervous system.  She tried to take direct control of the manticore's muscles.

No use.  She sensed the power now, immense and overwhelming, like a thick warm blanket laid between her own psychic abilities and the mind of the manticore.  She tasted the power.  She remembered the power.

Kindness, she realized, and remembered who wielded it.  The Harmony hasn't been completely broken.  Somehow, this is the work of Celestia!  But how? the Moon Princess asked herself in confusion.  The Elements are safely back at my castle, and I don't sense my sister directly.  How can she be working it at this distance?

Fluttershy sniffed at one huge, half-upraised paw  -- the paw that had been pierced by Nightmare Moon.

The manticore drew back a little.  The power continued to radiate out from the yellow pegasus.

Can the power be hers? the Princess wondered.  But ... how many of these champions have such abilities?

Friend, thought the manticore, considering the little yellow equine. Sister.  Wants to stop pain.  Wants to ... groom.

The beast presented its paw, letting Fluttershy get a good look at the thorn.  

The Moon Princess kept the thorn's form still, not wishing to let her foes realize what that "thorn" was in truth.

"Oh, you poor, poor little baby," said the yellow pegasus.

"Little?" protested Rainbow in amazement, looking up at the huge hulking mass of fur and muscle.

Yes, thought the manticore.  Baby.  You -- mama!   

Love welled within its soul, forcing Nightmare Moon to sever her contact with the creature's limbic centers lest the toxic emotion actually damage her.

"Now, this might hurt for just a second."  Fluttershy leaned forward, took the thorn in her mouth, yanked it free.

The touch seared through Nightmare Moon's soul.  It was all her self-control could do to avoid reverting to cold plasma right in front of them all, shrieking in pain.  What is this power?

Then, Fluttershy dropped her on the ground.

The manticore howled, scooped up the yellow pegasus in both paws, roared directly at her.

"Fluttershy!" cried her friends, again thinking that she was about to perish.

The Moon Princess knew better.  Even with only indirect access to the manticore's brain, its blunt beast thoughts were completely obvious to her.

Thorn bad!  Scare thorn -- I'm tough!  the creature thought. Then, Mama made pain go!  Love mama!  Gently cuddling the yellow pegasus, the great leonine horror proceeded to return the favor he had been given, grooming Fluttershy with a tongue almost as long as her whole body.

It began purring like some colossal housecat.  

Fluttershy giggled.

"Aw, you're just a little old baby kitty, aren't you?" she cooed.  "Yes you are.  Yes, you are.

Ponies good, the manticore thought, Ponies friends.  No fight.

Her friends quietly walked past the now-totally-friendly monster.  Most were trotting, the pink one bouncing with her usual insane glee.  The manticore put Fluttershy down and began unconcernedly licking itself, removing dust and smoothing its fur.

The lavender unicorn hung behind for a moment, turned, asked Fluttershy the obvious question.

"How did you know about the thorn?"

"I didn't," Fluttershy replied.  "Sometimes, we all just need to be shown a little kindness."

The unicorn thought for a moment, smiled, then followed her friends.

The thorn, unregarded, lifted, whirled, and uncoiled into the glowing mist of Nightmare Moon.  She streaked off in pursuit.

Not one dead, the Princess thought, angry at her own failure.  Not one wounded.  They just defeated an adult manticore and the worst they have to show for it is bruises.

That makes two supernal powers so far.  The pink one's a reality warper.  The yellow one can tame beasts.  And the others -- Applejack is an incredibly skilled athlete, Rainbow is one of the fastest fliers I've ever seen.  The white unicorn is a skilled close-in fighter.  Who knows what the lavender one can do -- she's obviously been reserving her powers, saving them for me, and her friends are making sure I can't touch her.

I can smell my sister's lifescent on that purple mare.  She's Celestia's messenger, her lieutenant -- her -- apprentice? the Moon Princess speculated.  Something else about her -- especially when she shows courage -- she reminds me of someone ... someone in particular.  But whom?

That one is fey, the Princess decided.  That one has some special power over me, which I cannot grasp.  I fear that in the end I must duel her.  I fear that in the end I must kill her.

But why do I fear?

She could come to no answer here.

Nightmare Moon streaked off to prime her next snare.









> Chapter 6:  Giggling at the Ghosties
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The old road ran down into a wet bottomland.

The Moon Princess remembered when this had been Greenvale, a small town grown up to serve the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters and the caravans coming from the north.  There had been farms, and inns, shops and noble villas, warmth and life and happiness.  When the old castle was abandoned, the town lost its reason for being, and the forest reclaimed its own.  The nearby river was no longer kept clear, and the waters turned the flatlands into a reeking swamp.

Knowing what to look for and where to look, she could see the anomalous regularity of certain mounds that had once been beautiful mansions, in some of which she had personally enjoyed pleasant hospitality.  Here and there, the collapse of part of a hillock revealed an old wall, or a broken column climbed free from the surrounding soil.  In places the ground had washed away to leave behind a field of curiously-blocky rocks, the rubble of what had once been fine-dressed masonry.

To the Princess, the site was melancholy, a reminder of better days past.  When I reclaim my own, she wondered, if I rebuild the castle, will a new village spring up here?  Will Greenvale once again be a place for ponies?  Then she remembered that such would not happen -- she would bring Night Eternal, and surely everything would have to change to suit such a new order.  Perhaps one day, though -- when the ponies have adapted?  It could be lovely again ...

Celestia's champions, of course, knew nothing of the past glories of this valley.

"Ewwggh!" complained the prissy white unicorn as her hooves began to squelch on the increasingly damp ground. "My eyes need a rest from all this icky muck."

Her wish was soon granted, as the path led into dense woods.  Great boughs closed off the sky above the six ponies, who now found themselves moving in almost pitch-black night.

"Well, I didn't mean that literally," the white unicorn said.

"That ancient ruin could be right in front of our faces and we wouldn't even know it," commented the lavender stargazer, her voice stressed with worry.

Not likely, thought the Princess as she floated past their hooves, her own iridescence shifted away from the visible band of the electromagnetic spectrum, to avoid accidentally aiding her foes in their quest for light.  But then not even a scholar such as yourself has ever seen my old castle -- nor, evidently, has its exact location been preserved in the maps.

She was briefly saddened by this, that such beauty could just vanish with the passage of time.  But then so much had already been lost -- so many proud towns had been abandoned during the Time of Discord, never to be reponied; Paradise Estate naught but a low mound elsewhere in this forest; all the glory of the Age of Wonders itself but a stratigraphic layer from which ponies might unearth the occasional incomprehensible artifact.  And that was only what had left remnants -- the whole World That Never Was, in all its gorgeous  hothouse efflorescence, had been literally edited out of the timestream -- an action in which her Cosmic self had directly participated.

It was one thing to know that all, in the end, must succumb to Entropy.  It was quite another to witness this personally.  The Moon Princess had known such thoughts frequently before, but still they made her melancholy.

And now it was time to assist in this process.  Nightmare Moon streaked ahead of her sister's champions to the grove of trees she had previously prepared.  Radiating faintly in the ultraviolet, she merged with the nearest trunk, flashing from tree to tree, activating the spells she had laid upon them.

Very dimly, the trees began to glow, as their shapes started subtly changing.

"Ah, wait," said Applejack.  She raised one hoof, looking disgustedly at the dark muck clinging to that member.  "Ah think ah stepped in something."

Fluttershy's terrified shriek seemed something of an overreaction.

"It's just mud," pointed out Applejack, looking back in surprise at her friend.  Because the Apple mare's head was turned, she actually bumped into the first glowing bole.

"Aah!" she cried out in shock as she saw its gruesome parody of a face, complete with malign staring eyes and great circular, tooth-ringed mouth.  The tree audibly snarled at her.

Applejack leaped away in horror, bounding several body lengths back to her companions.

It was at this point that the other trees the Nightmare had ensorceled revealed their own faces, snarling at the six ponies.  Celestia's champions cringed in fear, releasing shrieks of their own, as they realized that they were surrouned by arboreal monsters.  They backed into a defensive circle.

The trees began to move ...

It was a brilliantly triple-layered trap.  The first enchantment was a simple audio-visual illusion, to create the nightmare faces and the hostile growls.  Tied to it was a fear spell, to rob those experiencing the illusion from applying normal critical reasoning to the encounter.  But, if some cooler-headed pony, such as the lavender unicorn or Applejack, realized what was going on, Nightmare Moon had laid a final layer to the trap:  she could animate one tree at a time to make an actual attack.

At best, she might take out some of her foes; at worst, she would send them fleeing through the forest in utter panic, hopefully scattering so that she might pick them off one by one.

The pink earth pony walked right up to one of the most fearsome of the illusions and started to laugh directly into its face.

Her five friends gasped in astonishment.

The Moon Princess was also more than a bit surprised by this, but she had prepared for just such a situation.  This time, you pay for your bravado, she thought, and flowed into the great bole.

The pink earth pony began to make silly faces at the tree.

Nightmare Moon prepared to warp the wood, intending to reach out with the tree's branches, sweep the insane pink pony into its fanged maw, and crush her to a bloody shambles.  Seeing that should shatter her enemies' morale, and rid her of a dangerous reality warper.

The lavender mage seemed aware of the same possibility.  "Pinkie ... what are you doing?" she cried to her friend.  "Run!"

Nightmare Moon exerted her power.

Nothing happened.

This was the second time something of this sort had happened tonight, and this time Fluttershy had nothing to do with it.  

"Oh, girls," said Pinkie, looking back in complete contempt of the snarling tree monster right in front of her nose  "don't you see?"

Wait, her name is Pinkie?  thought the Princess of the Night.  No.  She can't be.  She literally can't be ... Because she never was ...

Utterly ignoring her peril, Pinkie began to do a little dance, and sing:

"When I was a little filly / and the Sun was going down ..."

Her cute little flank with the balloon marking on it swayed fetchingly, and entirely inappropriately for someone under attack by unknown creatures in a cursed forest.

She was paying absolutely no attention to the tree monster, whose every fiber Nightmare Moon was repeatedly attempting to warp into the attack.  This would have been fatal for the pink simpleton, if it were not for the fact that the Moon Princess' strongest magic was proving entirely ineffective at so much as twitching the plant.  Nightmare Moon became aware of a mounting thaumaturgic pressure, as if incredibly-powerful forces were being summoned to the grove.

"Tell me she is not," said the lavender unicorn in utter disbelief.

"The darkness and the shadows," continued Pinkie, inserting her head on the end of a neck which was, suddenly, impossibly long and coming from an overead angle not even remotely corresponding to her torso's last known location.  Her friends were a bit startled by this, but remarkably accepting of the anomaly.  "They would always make me frown,"  Her head now darted in from another overhead angle, this time upside down.

"She is ..." commented the white unicorn, with resignation.

"I'd hide under my pillow / from what I thought I saw," sang Pinkie, now bounding cheerfully behind them.

This was the first time Nightmare Moon had actually seen her move in any physically-possible way since her first shift in positional location.  It wasn't conventional teleportation, she thought.  Some sort of instanteous creation and destruction of precisely-shaped wormholes? suggested the voice of Moondreamer from  within her.  No, said a cold voice from far deeper, she's ignoring this reality and substituting her own --  danger!

"But Granny-Pie said that wasn't the way / to deal with fears at all," continued the pink pony, bounding in a complete clockwise circle around her friends.

The Moon Princess noticed that the thaumaturgical radiation was spilling from Pinkie, and as she described that circle, reality itself was swirling, much like spacetime in the presence of an immense rotating mass.  The fear spell deflected from this annular distortion, spraying ineffectually away from Celestia's champions, who began to relax.

"So what is ...?" asked Rainbow.

Pinkie immediately darted in and leaned confidentially, singing right into the face of her blue friend.

"She said 'Pinkie, you gotta stand up tall ... learn to face your fears," Pinkie sang, darting away to bound up to one of the trees.  The fear spell on that tree radiated fiercely, driven by Nightmare Moon's black will ... to dissipate harmlessly against the swirl of unreality which was now wound around Pinke Pie, thread on her spindle.  It was not a normal counterspell, nor even normal disbelief.  It was a refusal to let the magic affect her. 

"'You'll see that they can't hurt you / Just laugh to make them disappear ..." Pinkie danced at the tree, then stood tall on her hind legs, arms raised in invocation.

The thaumaturgic field concentrated around Pinkie.  

She whirled and laughed directly into the tree's face."

"Ha! Ha! Ha!"  With each distinct exhalation, the strength of her thaumaturgy surged.  At the third one, the local laws of spacetime could no longer support the existence of a spell on that tree.

So the spell vanished.

Pinkie turned triumphantly, smiled at her friends.

They gasped in astonishment.  The shock was most extreme on the faces of the two unicorns, who must have sensed the same thing Nightmare Moon had through their horns.  The lavender one's expression became intently focused as if she were trying to commit what she had just witnessed to memory.

The Moon Princess wondered briefly how much the lavender mage understood of what she had sensed.  Probably not much, she decided.  I didn't really understand what I was seeing the first time she did this to me, and I had full access to my Cosmic knowledge then.

Except that the encounter had never happened ...

An awareness and energy that must surely have been beyond all their comprehensions flashed from Pinkie to her five companions.  The reality-distortion now emanated from them as well, though with lesser strength, as if they were moons reflecting the light of a sun.  It suited Pinkie that they be at least temporarily gifted with her own ability, and the Universe shifted so that this became true.

Nightmare Moon recoiled in pained horror as spillover from the wave of Pinkie's Laughter burned her.

"So ..."

Five more voices joined to make Pinkie's song a chorus.

"Giggle at the ghosties!"

Fluttershy flew up to a moderate-sized tree-monster, and literally giggled, sounding like a little filly.  Fluttershy's psychic ability should not have affected its enchantment, as the tree had no mind to charm.  It didn't -- it was the warp borrowed from Pinkie which caused the Nightmare's magic to be instantly dispelled.  This time, it vanished at the first sounds of Fluttershy's laughter.

"Guffaw at the grossly," continued Pinkie, violating the rules of proper Equestrian speech along with the laws of reality.  Both reality and the grammar elementals yielded to the power of Pinkie's will.

Rainbow laughed mockingly at another tree, and its enchantment became but a swirl of stray magic.

"Crack up at the creepy ..."  

Pinkie, leading the white unicorn to a tree.  That unicorn laughed with a surprising lack of decorum, and that enchantment was no more.

"Whoop it up with the weepy ..."

Pinkie merely pointed Applejack at a tree.

"Woo-hoo!" the Apple mare exulted, executing an acrobatic leap off Pinkie's back, and annihilating the enchantment with the same casual grace that she did everything.

Pinkie had to push the purple mage at her target.  The unicorn's eyes were nervous with disbelief at the technique she was witnessing.

"Chortle at the kooky!"

At the mage's laugh the counterspell, executed with perfect precision on the first try, unwound the dweomer.  She snickered, neatly removing the last traces of Nightmare Moon's magic from the bole.

Despite her dismay, the Moon Princess could not help but be impressed at the stargazer's skill.  She did understand it just by watching it done, she realized.  And mastered it to the point that, even with her own more limited command of pure thaumaturgy, she can probably do it again.  Which means, unfortunately, that there's now a whole class of my magic she now knows how to counter.

"Snortle at the spooky!" sang Pinkie, poking a head on a giraffe-long neck upside down from some direction in which the rest of her body could not possibly be located.  Nobody but Nightmare Moon noticed this.

The enchantments on a whole stand of trees were no more.

"And ..." Pinkie began.  The swirling mass of reality distortion rose, began swirling overhead like one of Nightmare Moon's own cold-plasma clouds.  It began spinning faster.  The spell's power began mounting once more.

The Moon Princess looked upward in alarm.

"And tell that big dumb scary face ..." 

Pinkie popped up on one side of a tree.

"... to take a hike and leave you alone ..." 

Then on the other side.  With nowhere near enough time to have moved.  

"... and if he thinks he can scare you then he's got another think coming ..."

Upside down now, hanging from the branches ... there were branches close enough, weren't there?  Nightmare Moon could not be certain.  She trailed the reality-distortion, forming what with mounting concern the Moon Princess realized was a wave guide.  

Then Pinkie vanished and popped up inside the mouth of a tree whose mouth was illusory .. how? ... the trail of unreality formed into a spike ... an emitter ...

"... and the very idea of such a thing just makes you wanna..." 

The spell's energy shifted.  The Princess could feel its vibrations attuning themselves to the exact frequencies needed to dampen something ... her own pattern!

"... hahahahah... heh.."

Pinkie laughed uncontrollably.  The pink pony's spell began building, throbbing, ready for release ...

Nightmare Moon bolted, a streak of cold fire dodging between trees, up a hillside, down the other side, into a gully until there were many yards of solid earth and rock between her and the awful thing churning behind her.

"LAAAUUGH!!!"

Soundless, lightless, even through thousands of yards of atmosphere and hundreds of solid matter, the Moon Princess felt her soul resonate and almost shatter at the tremendous thaumaturgical eruption which came from the faraway pink mare.  For a moment her every extra sense was overloaded as if by blinding radiance.  Seconds later, the boughs rustled to an unseen wind as the telekinetic shockwave hit her.  A rainbow, composed of frequencies invisible to the naked eye, and that were not even electromagnetic, rose in a column from the hills behind.  Its top began to spread out at the top of that stupendous stalk, like the cap of some enormous mushroom.

She did not know what was happening behind her.  She did not want to know what was happening behind her.  She was sure that her every enchantment on the grove had been disrupted -- no constructs of mere magic could hope to survive in close proximity to that dreadful geas -- laid not on pony minds, but on the very fabric of reality.  She was also fairly certain that none of Pinkie's friends had been in any wise adversely affected by that impossible counterspell.  She knew that she did not want to be in Pinkie's presence again.

If she had possessed a physical heart in this form, it would have been pounding.  As it was, the swirl of glowing fog that was Nightmare Moon rose shakily, then darted in the direction of her castle.  She paused only to perform one last act of delay, a minor mutilation on a great river serpent in the hope that it would block the ford, impose some delay on her sister's champions, whom she no longer believed she had any real hope of defeating alone if she faced them en masse.

She knew now who Pinkie was.  She had a very good idea what Pinkie was.

And the knowledge terrified her.


















> Chapter 7:  The World That Was Not
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

She stood at the top of the castle's tallest tower and looked out into the forest.  The effects of the titanic dispelling were finally dissipating, the mostly-bluish rainbow of colors wavering off into insubstantiality, the cloud tearing apart under the lash of the powerful ley-currents of the Everfree.

The effects on her heart were slower to fade.

I know who she is ... the Moon Princess thought again.  I know who she was.  

I know why she hates me.

She remembered ...

Long before she was Princess Luna.  In a time when she was not Moondreamer.  In  a dimensional direction normally kept folded within subatomic particles, one which no mortal could normally perceive ...

She streaked across the skies of an Earthly paradise, ebon wingtips cleaving not only the atmosphere but the very fabric of reality.  Below were gentle rolling hills, meadows, fairy pagodas of buildings, frisking little ponies --  a world of happiness and beauty beyond all belief.

Which was the problem.  For the makers of this paradise had made it through one great Wish -- an acausal effect whose implications they had failed to clearly understand.

Those who had made this paradise had not understood the forces they were unleashing.  With their mighty Wish, they weakened the very structure of spacetime, sent forces rippling toward past and future and in other temporal directions few mortal languages had the words to delineate.  Reality bent, rippled, ruptured.  Flaws in the Cosmos propagated, as Paradox piled upon Paradox, straining the underpinnings of causality upon which depended all Existence.

Effect after effect was unsupported by cause, not merely in the quantum microverse, where the Heisenberg Principle would have decently concealed them in showers of mutually-annihilating virtual particles;  but in the macroverse, where each hammerblow of impossibility sent pulses of fully-manifesting energy and matter, to further rape Reality.

Had the Wishers kept the high ambitions they had once had, when they had been the indomitable ponies of the Age of Wonders, they would have torn apart the Cosmos in a few seconds of self-amplifying singular glory, the wave of annihilation of all spreading outward from the Earth at the speed of light, dooming all Creation.  Had they done this, the Cosmic Principles might have had to amputate a whole sheaf of timelines, burning a great cautery wound thousands of light-years in diameter in a Milky Way Galaxy torn apart by the forces unleashed.

Fortunately, the first thing they had done was to Wish away their high purposes, becoming simple, happy creatures who lived for songs and dances, smiles and hugs, cake and ice cream.

For parties.

So they lasted for thousands of years, thousands of years of mostly-mindless happiness, laughing and playing like fillies – for maleness had been one of the first flaws in their race their Wishes had corrected – while the flaws in spacetime spread mostly much slower than the speed of light.  When the Cosmic Principles finally realized what was happening, they only needed to cauterize a patch a light-year or so in radius around a single star.

The Solar System.

This was the Last Day.

Cosmic Luna knew transcendent joy as she streaked across the sky at a ground speed of roughly thirty thousand miles per hour.  She was a night-dark cosmic Alicorn the size of a mountain, and her legs and wings and heads and horns thrashed as she performed her holy labor.  She was only vaguely equine, but she was terrible and beautiful beyond any mundane compare.

The leading edges of her wings, harder than any diamond, sharper than any razor ever honed in mortal forges, sheared not only the atmosphere, but not infrequently individual nuclei of the very atoms which composed it.  The most refractory metals would have glowed white-hot and spattered into vapor at the tremendous friction of her passage, but the ebon substance of her self did not even heat into the infra-red

The atmosphere, however, was torn into gouts and sheets of star-hot plasma.  She trailed a wake of lightning that set forests afire, a roll of thunder that leveled the fairy towns of the little ponies, leaving toppled trees, ruined houses, shattered and torn flesh.

That was not the true nature of her destruction.  It was merely incidental to her work, a devastation caused mostly by her total lack of concern for the well-beings of creatures who in any case were doomed to a fate far more final than the concept of death would ever describe.

The true nature was the ebon black radiance that issued from her many eyes, mouths, heads and horns.  Flashes of nonexistence leapt like her lightning, but unlike the lightning they did not merely blast and burn and shatter.

Nothing so trivial.

For where that ebon lightning struck, things were not, and never had been.  That lightning was the ultimate weapon of the Cosmic Principles, bolts from the Entropy that was the one force they themselves feared, a force compared to which the sunfire bombs that Moondreamer (had made?  Would make?) was as butterfly wings beside typhoons.

These were aimed and struck precisely.  Cosmic Luna’s many  brains contained a list of those she would glean and those she would cast aside as chaff.  For when this whole world was not, and never had been, it would be restarted from its last save point – a point shortly before the Great Wish had been made.  And some of those souls – the ones which had shown drive and intelligence even in this poisoned paradise of Wishing – they would be recycled, reborn as new Ponies.

Of course, it would be pointless – and dangerous – to simply allow the Wish to be cast again.  This time, Destruction would visit them.  The vast engines which they had built to toy with causality would first fail, vomiting forth many gigatons of energy and searing their own immense installations away as eruptions of supernova-hot fundamental particles.  The Age of Wonders would end.  Civilization would fall.

But this time, there would be a future.

The Moon Princess shivered at the memory of the glory and horror that was her Cosmic self.  Cosmic Luna was beautiful and terrible beyond all lesser comprehension:  powerful and pitiless in the purity of Her purpose.  To Cosmic Luna, all Equestria was but a verdant woodland pool, Princess Luna merely a stray train of thought within Her greater being.  Did she love?  Hate?  She had emotions, of some kind, but they were as far beyond Luna's understanding as the mind of a normal pony would have been beyond the understanding of a frog in that pool.  She was a Transcendent Being.

Yet She had been humbled, once, and by a denizen of that doomed timeline.

By Pinkie Pie.

In the skies above this doomed world, others moved, doing their shares of the assigned collection and neutralization.  Some were Alicorns like herself.  Others were the Cousins – the creatures of Chaos, who cooperated with them fully only on such a holy mission.

The Alicorns were terrible, but beautiful.  

The Cousins were worse.  They were nothing as simple, nor as friendly, as Draconequi Avatars.  These were Cosmic forces of Chaos, and they shifted from one impossible form to another with each passing whim.  Whereas the Alicorns loosed few and precise bolts of annihilation, the Cousins spit them forth wholesale, ripping great rifts of nonexistence in the uninhabited portions of the planet, doing wholesale what the Alicorns did retail.  They knew a pure joy at destruction which was beyond anything any sane Cosmic Alicorn, even Luna, could feel.

The Ponies could do nothing but scream, and die, and cease to be.  Some tried to find shelter, tried to find safety, but always death and non-being found them.  Most just stood there crying; some looked up to the sky, where for the most part the clouds of steam from the tortured, riddled remnants of what had been a living planet prevented them from even seeing what was doing the destruction.

A very few unfortunate ones caught glimpses of the Cosmic Alicorns and shrieked in even greater terror.  The most unfortunate saw the Cousins, and instantly went insane.

Some did not go mad.  Some chose to fight instead ...

One pink little pony stood on the crumbling pavement of a dying town.  There, at the last of her world, she and a few others had remembered the high courage that had let their ancestors make the Great Wish at its beginning.

“Why?”  she screamed.  “Why are you hurting us?  We didn’t do anything to you!  We didn’t do anything to anyone.  Why can’t you just let us live? Maybe we could be friends!”  Reality was riven by the intensity of her Wishing.

Her defiance amused one of the Cousins.  He dared her to fight the little pink one, hoof-to-hoof, through an avatar made of mere flesh and blood, reduced in power to only super-equine abilities.

It was a challenge she could not refuse.  Even at so limited a level of power, her avatar commanded forces of Nature, gravity and electromagnetism, and had a speed and strength unknown to mortal ponies -- especially the little ponies made weak and soft by millennia of ease.

She should have guessed what would happen.  Already, the surviving forces of the Great Wish were swirling around Pinkie Pie. The little pink pony was not so much running or bounding as transitioning from location to location without bothering to occupy the spacetime in between.

When they met on the field of battle, Luna's lightning bolts struck empty air as Pinkie was abruptly not where she had been.  Pinkie Pie struck again and again from all directions, from insane angles and with a force unknown to mere Terrestrial biology.  Despite her total lack of skill or training, despite being the soft scion of a decadent reality, Pinkie Pie was winning.

Luna knew what was happening, of course.

The Great Wish had been self-maintaining.  To equinimorphize its structure, it wanted to live.  In its last extremity, its power had concentrated itself upon the few Ponies who remained defiant, kept faith in the ethos of their world even when that world was dying around them.

The Great Wish had chosen its Champions.  Paramount among them was Pinkie Pie.

Luna was not just fighting one little pink pony.  She was fighting the life-force of that whole doomed timeline.

The Cousin watched and laughed as the immortal avatar of a Cosmic Alicorn got its flank kicked by a little pink pony.  To the Cousin, all this was pure fun.  What did it matter if the perfect annihilation of the World That Was Not was imperfect?  All it meant was a little Chaos down the road, and Chaos was the purpose of its existence.

In the end the pink pony fell.  The Princess was a bit hazy on the details.  But she remembered Pinkie Pie fading out, sobbing over the corpse of her best friend, a cute little thing almost as green as Pinkie was pink.  She definitely remembered that Pinkie Pie had died ...

Died. Not been erased.  Only died.

Had anyone ever purged Pinkie's soul of the powers the dying Wish had granted her?  No, the Moon Princess decided, I don't think that any of us bothered to even check.  Sister had awoken to her true nature by then, and we were all a bit busy at the time.

So the spirit of one little pink pony had been released into the Beyond, bearing with it a fraction of the Great Wish.  Only a tiny fraction -- but then the Wish had been a power able to remake an entire star system to suit the desires of its casters.  And that soul had -- bearing with it that awesome power -- been reborn as Pinkie, now, in this age of Equestria.

As one of six Champions sent specifically to stop Nightmare Moon.

That can't be a coincidence, the Princess reflected, lowering her head in thought.  An enemy from my past, and armed with the ability to get her revenge.  Obviously, my sister sought her out -- maybe summoned her from the Beyond? -- and set her on my trail.

Now that I've seen her power in operation, I know to which element she's attuned.  Laughter.

She remembered merry moments in her past lives, and winced.

That hurts.  That was one of my Elements.

Not that I've felt like laughing in a very long time, she reflected sadly.

All I need to do is avoid trying illusions and direct psychic attacks against her.  She needed all her power to block my more direct magics, and I doubt that she has enough of a reserve to keep that up for long.  She brought the matrix of the Great Wish with her, yes, but that world is long-gone:  her power source must be something more mundane now.  And I doubt that her own life force could be adequate to explain the eruption of energies I just witnessed.

Rituals of some kind, letting her feed as an emotivore?  I don't think that ritual sacrifice would work very well with Laughter, and it's not Celestia's style.  Could Pinkie be organizing some sort of gatherings, at which she can feed on the positive affect of her coven?  Festivals of some sort?  If true, she can't recharge easily in the Everfree.  

I should remain cautious, but I think that I now perceive her limitations.  She won't be able to cast a spell as powerful as that one again.

She nodded to herself, hoping that she had come to the correct conclusion.

What -- who else has my sister set on my trail?  The lavender stargazer -- she's Celestia's handpicked student, I know that now.  No normal mage would be able to comprehend an alien magic so quickly.  And not just any magic!  If she's Pinkie's friend, she must be learning The Great Wish!  She won't have the power to cast it, but she can use segments of its coding, cut and paste them to her own purposes.  She'll be very dangerous to duel.

And why do I have that strange bond with her?  She reminds me a bit of that green pony who was Pinkie's friend -- but much more strongly of something, someone else.  But I don't remember any mare like her.  Not in any of my lives.

Who else?  That yellow mind-witch Fluttershy? There's something familiar there too, but not as strong as with the others.  It's a good thing that her power seems to be telempathic projection rather than direct mind-control.  I'm pretty sure I can shield against it.  I'm also not particularly vulnerable against her Element.  It's one of my sister's, and I realized its falsity a thousand years past.

The Apple mare?  She's a magnificent warrior, but no different from some others of her clan I've known.  The fancy white unicorn?  She doesn't remind me of anypony in particular.  They're both skilled fighters, but neither of them could take any but the smallest and youngest of Alicorns.

The blue pegasus, Rainbow?  There was definitely something familiar about her, though she didn't remember ever meeting any mare much like her.  Yet I'm sure I've known  that pony before.

A friend?  From where?  From when?  When I think of her I see complex machinery ... aircraft ...  I must remember ...

A disturbance in the distance caught her attention.

Celestia's champions had reached the river.

They were only a few miles from the castle now.

Nightmare Moon flashed into infra-red cold plasma, and in less than a minute she was there.
> Chapter 8:  Bridging the Gaps
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pinkie Pie was leading the way, literally bounding along in her usual fashion.  The six champions were all giggling as they broke through the final treeline, preparing to ford the river they could hear just ahead.

Oh, I can see how deeply I've disheartened them, the Moon Princess berated herself.  Any more despondency and they'll throw a feast!

Suddenly, Pinkie saw the condition of the water, and stopped, gasping in dismay.  The others stumbled into her, blinking as they adjusted to the moonlight.

The river had been churned into a white froth.  Sloshing violently against its banks, it would be obvious suicide to attempt a crossing here.

Nightmare Moon flowed into a nearby tree and watched, curious to see how Celestia's champions would deal with the cause.  River serpents were highly intelligent, so it seemed unlikely that the yellow beast-tamer's tricks would work on one.  They were also gigantic, and she doubted that even those six would care to fight such a monster.  The party could of course travel up or down stream to find calmer water, but that would impose on them a significant delay, giving her more time to prepare her defenses.

"How are we gonna cross this?" asked Pinkie Pie, succinctly stating the problem.

The river serpent wailed.  His complaint came from a set of lungs larger than a house, so the fact that he was several hundred yards away from the six ponies, and with thick underbrush between them and his section of river, did little to dampen the noise.

Led by the lavender mage, the six champions bounded swiftly through the vegetation toward the noise.  The Moon Princess followed easily, streaming between the boles and vines.

First they saw the tail.  Their gaze followed the writhing serpentine form, clad in purple scales but articulated like a mammal, for what seemed an impossible distance until they saw the forward end of the body.  That huge body was lashing wildly, thrashing the river into impassable white waves.  It had a pair of arms which were pipestems compared to the tremendous thickness of his torso, but which each had to be thicker than those of any pony born, terminating in two huge hands, each hand the size of a pony.  These limbs were currently displaying their strength by violently pounding the water, adding to the turbulence.

Its head was gigantic -- several times the length of a pony's whole body, and equipped with immense jaws, large enough to bite a full-grown great white shark in half, or swallow any lesser fish whole.  The shape of that head was vaguely draconian, but with finlike ears and a great yellow mane and mustaches, which had obviously been carefully styled.

The right mustache had been roughly severed right near the root, giving the face a distinctly asymmetrical appearance.

The river serpent clutched at its -- his? -- head and emitted anguished cries, which to their surprise were in comprehensible Equestrian.

"What a world!  What a world!"

The lavender unicorn stepped forward, taking the initiative.  

"Excuse me, sir," she asked politely.  "Why are you crying?"

The serpent turned his vast head toward them, reared up, and replied:

"Well, I don't know," he said, in a voice remarkably like some overly-refined nobleman. "I was just sitting here, minding my own business, when this tacky little cloud of purple smoke ..."

There's nothing "tacky" about my plasma, the Moon Princess thought with some annoyance.  Some creatures simply don't grasp understatement ...

"... just whisked past me and tore half of my beloved mustache clean off," he bent his colossal head directly down to them and pointed, in case the ponies had failed to notice the absence of a member at least as long as their own bodies, "and now I look simply horrid.".

The serpent wailed and flung himself full-length into the river.  A miniature tsunami sloshed over the sides, breaking on the steep bank and soaking Celestia's champions.  

The six ponies seemed displeased at the impromptu bath.

"Oh, give me a break," groused Rainbow, scowling in disgust at the huge serpent's attitude.

Her expression struck the Moon Princess as terribly familiar.

"That's what all the fuss is about?" asked Applejack, slightly more sympathetic than her rainbow-maned friend, but obviously also not very highly impressed with the great creature's level of maturity.

The elegant white unicorn (whom the Princess noticed managed to look elegant even when soaking wet) leaped forward, indignation plain on her face.  Her indignation was not directed at the river monster.

"Why of course it is!" she said to Rainbow.  She turned her nose up and strutted gracefully forward.  "How can you be so insensitive."

The Moon Princess saw with some surprise that the river serpent was watching her with utter fascination, despite the fact that he was not that similar to her in even the major details of his anatomy.  Some mares can win any male hearts, I suppose, she thought.  I wouldn't wonder if she could charm the scales off a dragon.

"Oh, just look at him," the white unicorn clucked, in a tone that one might address a particularly beloved cranky foal.  She walked fearlessly right up to the monstrous head, which the serpent was resting on the shore, the better to gaze at the interesting little equine.  "Such lovely luminescent scales," she commented, stroking the huge creature's chin.

The river serpent stopped sobbing, sniffled a little.  "I know," he agreed.

"And your expertly coiffed mane," the unicorn said, looking at the growth under discussion.

"Oh, I know, I know," the serpent said, pulling his upper parts out of the water, bracing himself against the land with one deceptively-skinny arm and caressing his mane with the other.

"Your fabulous manicure," continued the white unicorn, a look of perhaps-unfeigned admiration in her lovely blue eyes.

The river serpent gasped.  "It's so true!" he said, pinching his own cheeks in excitement.

He was hanging on her every word, clearly enthralled by his tiny confidante.  

"And all ruined," the unicorn said, with a hint of sadness creeping into her tone, "without your beautiful mustache."

"It's true!" wailed the serpent, flinging his arms up to the sky as if beseeching heavenly powers. " I'm hideous!"

The white unicorn's eyes narrowed with a look of dangerous determination.

"I simply cannot let this crime against fabulosity go uncorrected," she declared.

Opening her mouth wide she struck, biting  the serpent and  tearing off one great purple scale, longer than her head.

Has she gone mad? the Moon Princess wondered.  Attacking the river serpent is suicidal!

"Ooh ... ow!" cried the serpent, looking at her with an expression of hurt betrayal, a tear trickling down one cheek..  "What did you do that for?"

Tensing her neck, the white unicorn raised the scale like a longsword.

"Rarity," said the lavender mage, obviously alarmed.  "What are you --?"

The Moon Princess felt a psychic pulse.

Rarity swung her scale-sword.

Her friends gasped, their eyes widened in horror.

The serpent wailed, his great upper body collasping to the shore.

The white unicorn had cut off the whole mass of deep purple hair that made up her own elegantly-styled tail.

Generosity, the Princess thought.  My sister's Element.

Rarity  regarded her severed adornment with some sadness.  Then her horn glowed, and she levitated the long twist of hair to meet the stump of the serpent's severed mustache.  One skillful twist of telekinesis expertly braided her hair to that remnant, balancing the other mustache in weight, if neither in precise shape nor color.

The serpent regarded the results with astonishment.  Then he reared his foreparts up into the air, whooping with happiness.  He chuckled triumphantly:  "My mustache!  How wonderful!"  He posed in a manner which was absurdly-delicate, especially for a creature the length of an airship.

Rarity regarded him with sincere admiration.  "You look smashing!"

She's almost fully attuned to the Element, the Moon Princess realized.  Without even having to touch its manifestation.  It's not my sister doing this, not directly.  It's them.  Her Champions, themselves.

The lavender mage had a pained expression as she regarded her friend.  "Oh, Rarity," she said.  "Your beautiful tail!"

The white unicorn had cropped it off close to her rump -- any closer, and she'd have severed flesh and bone, as well as hair.  Only a ragged remnant of its original glory remained.

Rarity turned and smiled at the stargazer.

"Oh." she said, carefully not looking at the stump.  "It's fine, my dear.  Short tails are in this season.  Besides --"  She winced slightly, maintained a wry smile.  "It'll grow back."

The lavender unicorn gazed at Rarity in deep admiration.

"So would the mustache," said Rainbow to the lavender one, in what was slightly too loud to count as a whisper.

Again, the Moon Princess felt a strong sense of familiarity.

Fortunately, the river serpent paid no attention.

Now that he was no longer churning the waters, they flowed smoothly, revealing a wide expanse of shallows.  Here and there, water-worn square-cut blocks protruded, which the Princess recognized as the remnants of the Greenvale Bridge.  Silt had piled up on their upstream side, spreading out and slowing the water, creating both the overgrown jungle behind them and an excellent ford.

The lavender unicorn gasped in delight.  "We can cross now!"  She began to trot carefully across what she thought was exceptionally  shallow part, the water not even up to her knees.  

She yelped in surprise as the serpent, part of whose length had formed that "bottom," surfaced underneath her, raising her high and dry.

"Allow me," invited the river serpent, forming an intermittent living bridge with his own sinuous purple body.

The six champions bounded across.

She turned the river serpent from obstacle to ally, thought the Moon Princess, with but a few well-chosen words and actions.  Truly, she is a rarity -- a skilled fighter and an even more skilled diplomat.  

I face a band of heroines from out of one of the old songs, she realized, Celestia has chosen well.  To confront them openly, all together, would be to court defeat.

I must break their unity, the Princess decided, rising to streak southward.  And quickly.  In less than an hour they will have reached the castle.

I must learn why they seem so familiar.  There is another of Celestia's snares here, beyond the obvious.  I must discover who they are, and what special bond they have with me, or ...

I could lose, she thought.  After a thousand years, I could lose.






> Chapter 9:  The Age of Wonders
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Delving back into the past ... the deep past.  

Almost four thousand years ago.  

The Earth tamed by Ponies.  Farms everywhere, tended by massive machines that fertilized, tilled, sowed, reaped the soil, letting one pony do the work of hundreds.  Great mines delved the mineral wealth of every continent.  Immense factories, powered by electricity, assembled raw materials into every sort of finished product.  Railroads girdled the planet, each miles-long train hauling thousands of tons of goods.  Gigantic screw-propelled freighters plied the sea routes.  Colossal cities, which would have dwarfed modern Canterlot or Manehattan, grew up at the intersections of these planet-spanning transport systems, turning the night into day with electric light.  There the goods were traded in global markets, enriching ponies all over the world.

Billions of ponies teemed in the streets of the cities and towns.  Billions of free minds speculating about the problems of the Universe.  Schools, universities, research institutions of every sort informed and organized these speculations.  Printing presses hummed.  Electronic voices spoke from record and disc, on radio and television, on a blossoming computer network.  It was an age of Science, an age of Wealth, an age of Culture, an age of Happiness such as the world had never known.  It was an age in which the eyes and minds of Ponies turned toward the Cosmos and their hearts said "Yes.  We can master this.  We will master this."

It was the Age of Wonders.

It was the age of Moondreamer.

Little Moondreamer Finemare, a foal newborn, innocent big eyes blinking in amazement at her bright glorious world.  Playing with her sister Sundreamer.  Fighting.  Making up.

Little fillies now, off to school.  A little brown colt, all alone but bravely standing up to bullies.  A kindred spirit.  Facing them down together.  A friend for life.  Dusk Skyshine.  Playing happily together, all three of them.  Dusk boasting that one day he would become a pilot.

But she's not Dusk.  I'd know if she was Dusk.

An older filly now, just on the verge of marehood.  Friendship transforming.  When she looked into Dusk's eyes, something impossibly wonderful was looking back at her.  Love swelling in their hearts.  That long magical summer of Dusk and joy and discovery ... then Dusk was off to the Academy, but they still had the next summer, and the next ... getting to meet his friends from school:  Glasses and Dashie and Slipstream and the whole band of merry fools ...

War overseas.  Dusk's early graduation.  A hasty marriage, a honeymoon on compassionate leave, a week and a half of happiness before separation, perhaps forever.  Moondreamer trembling at the newsreels, enemy armies marching through allied lands, flashes of aerial violence, Dusk somewhere in the midst of the madness, at the mercy of forces which neither knew nor cared how much he meant to her ...

A letter from the War Department.  Opening it with trembling hooves.  "We regret to inform you ..."  Eyes unable to focus, then reading on to see that ominous yet wonderful word wounded -- what would normally have been terrible but now meant that Dusk -- and life -- could continue.  Compared to this knowledge, the Silver Star was meaningless -- though she would not let on to Dusk.

Dusk and Dashie home now, invalided for the remainder of the War.  Dusk's wounds healed quickly, leaving him with a lifetime limp.  Dashie's were more severe:  a Nork cannon shell had torn right through his cockpit, nearly killing him.  Dashie spent a long time with them, and with Sundreamer ...

... Dashie ...

If only Moondreamer had been able to taste his lifescent, the Moon Princess wished.  If she had, I would be able to know right now.  But something makes me think she could be him.

Strange thought.  Dashie -- Dash Firehooves -- had been so utterly, over-the-top male.  It's amazing that Dusk trusted me around him.  But then Dusk always knew I found that way of being a stallion utterly annoying.  Dash would have driven me to murder had he been my husband, or even lover.  I loved someone smart, sensitive in his strength, unassuming but fearless -- well, Dusk.  As Moondreamer, he was my only mate.  Ever.

Who needed more?  And, after Dusk, there seemed no point in trying again.  All other stallions were -- not Dusk.  They were at best only pale imitations of the real thing.

As a friend, though?  Dashie was one of the best.  Loyal, fearless, and off-duty a heck of a lot of fun.  For a moment her mind wandered over epic parties, stupid but hilarious adventures, and times that merely knowing that the world contained a Dash Firehooves deeply comforted her.

He was just like Rainbow.  Down to the facial expressions, the turns of phrase.

But ... Dashie, a mare? It was still hard for her to wrap her mind around the concept.

But then a soul could be reborn as either sex.  Or of any species.  I've been some strange things in some of my other Aspects.

If Rainbow is Dashie, I know what he -- she -- wants.  That means I have a chance at charming her.  Which is important, because if she is being attuned to an Element, and if the lavender one is Magic, by process of elimination she has to be Honesty or Loyalty ... if it's Dashie, probably the latter  ... and in either case, that means she probably won't be easy to seduce to my cause.

Glory.  A spot in an elite unit.  That's what Dashie always desired.

And after I win, maybe in time she'll want to join my guards.  I could recruit her for my new -- Nightbolts? --  Shadowbolts!  The name felt right to her.  And anyway ... she finally admitted to herself what she was thinking.  ... I really don't want to kill Dashie.  Not in whatever form the big dumb lug's taken.

Nonsense! the Nightmare reminded herself.  If she opposes me, she must die!  She is too strong and skilled to be ignored.  I cannot be impeded by pathetic sentimentality.

No, thought the Moon Princess.  Killing Dashie would just be wrong.

She opposes me!  Slights me!

Dash never did that, thought the Princess.  He was a good and loyal friend to Moondreamer.  And I've never really met him in this incarnation.  She could become an important henchpony, in time.  If I kill her, I lose that opportunity, for who knows how many. more millennia?

I will give her a chance! Nightmare Moon decided.

She had put some thought into her trap.  She wanted to catch her enemies one or two at a time.  So she had cut the rope bridge  -- the old drawbridge had obviously fallen into the gorge centuries ago -- but deliberately left it intact and hanging from the far side, tempting her foes to pull it back into position on the castle side.  That meant that they would send one, perhaps two of their number, at least one obviously a pegasus, over to do that job, while the rest waited to cross on the repaired bridge, instead of trying to have the pegasi ferry them across or (worse) try another approach to the castle, such as the old stone stairway down to the bottom of the canyon.  

As a final dressing of the stage, she slightly ionized the air in the gorge, attracting dust and water together to thicken the night-mists into a thick fog.  If necessary she could raise that fog to isolate one side of the rift from observation by anyone on the other side.  Divide et impera, she thought, in a tongue which had been almost dead even in the Age of Wonders itself.

She saw motion on the other side of the gorge.  Quicker than thought she streamed down the close side of the canyon, into the concealing fog, and up the other side of the canyon.  Radiating no more in the visible spectrum than those night-mists, she watched and listened.

Her enemies came running from the forest ...

> Chapter 10:  Reuniting With an Old Friend
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"There it is!"  cried the lavender unicorn.  "The ruin that holds the Elements of Harmony -- we made it!"  She broke into a full gallop for the bridge.

"Twilight," called Applejack, "wait for us!"  The Apple mare and the other four followed their leader.

Twilight, thought Nightmare Moon.  At last I know my enemy's name.  The better for my magics to bite!

At last I know the name of the little stargazer, thought the Moon Princess, remembering the filly standing on her balcony and looking up at the night sky with wondering eyes.  Must she and I be enemies?

For a moment the Princess reeled before the sudden duality of her thoughts, before the Nightmare managed to regain control of herself.

"We're almost there!" said Twilight happily, looking back at her friends as she reached the stone pillars from which hung the bridge.  "Whoa-ohh!' she cried in dismay as her front hooves fell on thin air where the broken bridge should have been.  She recovered quickly, digging in her back hooves, but that was not enough to keep her from going over.

Yes! exulted the Nightmare, for a moment.

There was a flash of rainbow.  The blue pegasus had Twilight by the tail, quickly dragging the lavender mage back up to safety.    "What's with you and falling off cliffs today?" asked Rainbow.

Yes! thought the Moon Princess in relief.  She saved her!

Failure! scorned the Nightmare.  A missed chance!

Killing anypony here wasn't part of the plan.  And if they'd saved her the same way that they did on the cliff road, they might have all wound up on the bottom -- who knows what would have happened then?  They might have even attuned directly with the Tree itself!  It sounded plausible.

Pinkie Pie looked down into the misty abyss.  "Now what?" she said, whining like a little filly frustrated by the withdrawal of some promised treat.

Rainbow gave her pink friend a sidelong glance.  "Duh," she said, fluttering her wings, then taking off.

"Oh yeah!" realized Pinkie.

Rainbow did a perfect dive into the mists.  In an instant she had the broken end of the bridge.  With powerful wingbeats she climbed the other side of the canyon, quickly attaching one of the guy ropes..

She was unaware of the small cloud of shimmering plasma which followed her out of the mists.

"Rainbow," Nightmare Moon called, in a voice slightly distorted from her own.  Forced to change it slightly to avoid being instantly recognized by the blue pegasus, she realized  that she sounded a lot like Moondreamer.  Well why not?  If this is Dashie, that tone will only aid my geas!

Rainbow gasped in surprise and dropped the last rope.  She looked around, searching for the speaker, and seeing nothing.

The Moon Princess, an ultraviolet-toned mist, rose from the canyon and drifted past the feet of the blue pegasus.

"Who's there?" challenged the pegasus.

"Rainbow," the Princess repeated.

The blue pegasus reared on her hind legs, wings flaring, and made boxing motions towards what she guessed was the source of the voice.  "I ain't scared a'you!" she said defiantly.  Seeing no one there, she whirled and faced on the opposite direction.  "Show yourself!"

It is Dashie! the Moon Princess thought happily.  The brashness, the bravado -- the hint of fear which she would die rather than let her foe see -- it's him! Her.  The lifescent was now overwhelming in her soul, and in a thousand subtle ways it said Dash Firehooves.

She might have lost herself in the warm sensation, but she had a labor to perform.

"We've been eagerly awaiting the arrival of the best flier in Equestria," said the Moon Princess, slowly applying and then increasing the power of her geas.

"Who?" Rainbow asked.

With all his arrogance, he was always thrown for a loop by unsolicited praise, reflected the Princess.  She's the same.

"Why," laughed Nightmare Moon, "you.  Of course."

The geas closed around the blue pegasus.

"Really?" Rainbow asked, almost squealing with delight.  "I mean ..." she gathered her composure.  "Oh yeah.  Me.  Hey, uh, you wouldn't mind telling the Wonderbolts that, would ya?  Cause, I've been trying to get into that group for, like, ever ..."

Geases are most effective when subtle.  Simply trying to seize control of Rainbow's mind would have engaged all her mental defenses, possibly enabling her to shake free and fly back to her friends before the Nightmare could have reacted.  Nightmare Moon was mostly just suppressing Rainbow's natural suspicion of being addressed in such a fashion by a disembodied voice before an abandoned castle.  Aside from that, Rainbow's own desire for glory was doing most of the work.  "Work with the subject's wishes, not against them," the Moon Princess remembered someone -- her sister? -- telling her.  She's a selfish monster, she thought, but she certainly understands spellcasting.

"No, Rainbow Dash," said Nightmare Moon, coalescing into her new form -- three forms -- in the nearby mists.  The fact that 'Dash' actually was Dashie's last name in this life had come to her across their strengthening mind-link.  

"We want you to join us."

The three pegasi whose form she had assumed -- the main one a mare, flanked by two stallions created from memories of her own Guardsponies -- galloped out of the mist.  They were clad in the purple and yellow lightning-bolt livery one of her real Guards units had worn, complete with purple and yellow goggles for speed-flying.  Their insignias were winged skulls.

"The Shadowbolts!"

Rainbow Dash frowned slightly.  There was something not quite right about this, or them.

"We are the greatest aerial team in the Everfree Forest ..." boasted Nightmare Moon.  

Technically true, thought the Moon Princess, since the abandonment of the Castle means that we are the only aerial team in the Everfree Forest, save perhaps for some woods rangers.

"... And soon we will be the greatest in all Equestria!"  

Glory, she put into her geas.  To be a Shadowbolt would be glorious ... Dangle the bait ...

"But first ..." Nightmare Moon said, bringing her face close to Rainbow's, looking into her big purple-red eyes, "we need a captain!"  She darted off, trailing paramagnetism on the brain's own operating frequencies, began circling the blue pegasus.

Rainbow grinned in utter delight.

"The most magnificent --" said Nightmare Moon, completing the first circle,

"Yep," agreed Rainbow

"Swiftest --"  The Moon Princess crossed over her own path, began to draw the invisible magical net more tightly around her subject.

"Yes," affirmed Rainbow.

"Bravest flyer in all the land," Nightmare Moon's hold on her was now almost complete.

"Yes," laughed Rainbow, smiling happily.  "It's all true!"

"We need ..." the Moon Princess cried in what was almost the Royal Canterlot Voice, then dipped her mouth down to whisper the final word almost lovingly in Dashie's ear, "You."

"Woo-hoo!" shouted Rainbow Dash, leaping straight up three body lengths, "Sign me up!"

Dashie's mine, thought the Princess.

Something flared within the net.

"Just one thing," the blue pegasus said, darting over to the unfastened rope.  "Just let me tie this bridge real quick and then we have a deal."

What?  Her previous mission should have become meaningless to her!  What went wrong?  Nightmare Moon swooped over to confront Rainbow at the bridge.

"No!" she cried in barely controlled rage.  "It's them -- or us!"

Rainbow Dash cringed back from the anger of the Moon Princess.  Her face bore a look of hurt ... of betrayal?

I'm acting in contrast to her ideals, her expectations, thought Nightmare Moon.  I'm losing her!  She could feel a psychic energy building within the blue pegasus, beating against the strands of the geas.

"Rainbow!" called Twilight across the abyss.  "What's taking so long?"  Her voice was tinged with concern.  Suddenly she noticed the three strange pegasi.  "Oh, no," she said, then called louder.  "Rainbow!"

The energy flared brighter within Rainbow Dash.  The strands began to stress before its force ...

Nightmare Moon saw that in a moment she would entirely lose her captive.  Meddling mage! she thought, scowling at the lavender unicorn.  Luckily, this is easily handled. 

She raised the mists.  Impenetrable fogs blocked the view of the other side of the canyon.  A simple additional twist, and their density was such that they directly interfered with equine vocal frequencies.  

"Don't listen to --" Twilight started to say, and then her voice vanished, muffled by the cloud.

Nightmare Moon returned her attention to Rainbow Dash, who stood trembling in the throes of an internal struggle.

"Well ...?" she asked.

"You," said Rainbow Dash softly.

Did she dare hope it?  Was there recognition of her from Dashie, as well?  The Moon Princess grinned in happy triumph, wings flaring.  

"Thank you!" Rainbow said, putting her own face close to that of the Princess.  "For the offer, I mean."

The Moon Princess gaped in dismay.

Rainbow tied the rope off tight.

"But ..." Rainbow launched herself above the pillars, hovered in midair, "I'm afraid I have to say 'no.'"  Loyalty flared brightly around her.  

Of course, thought the Princess.  My own old Element.  I should have known.  And how could I have expected Dashie, of all ponies, to ever betray his friends?

She remembered Dash Firehooves, the bright soul that shone through all his arrogant, glory-seeking ways.  She remembered his indomitable courage, his unbreakable loyalty, his willingness to sacrifice anything for his friends.

Yo, Joe, she mentally saluted him, in the manner of Dashie's old special-forces unit.

She smiled sadly.  

You're not the one who has changed, she thought.  I've had to adapt to an imperfect world, had to compromise myself -- but you've stayed pure.  Please don't make me kill you.

The Nightmare scowled.  This mawkishness gets me nowhere, she told herself, and they are crossing the bridge now.  There is little time left.

She became vapor and wafted away.

I will win the final battle.
> Chapter 11:  Mare and Rider
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nightmare Moon swept back into her old throne room..

Here, so long ago, she thought, I made my final transformation.  Here, I broke the lie of Harmony.  Here, I first openly confronted my tyrannical sister.

To here I cast her down, with the powers of the Nightmare surging within me.

Right here, where she had the instruments of my destruction.  Here, where we kept ready the Elements of Harmony.

She looked once again at the ingenious mechanism they had built so long ago to deploy the Elements rapidly, so that never again might they be taken unawares by their foes.

The mechanism I designed, the Moon Princess thought, struck by the sudden unfairness of it all.  The last time my machine was used, it was to aid in my own defeat!

Metaphor for my whole life, she thought bitterly.  Before and after I embraced the Nightmare.

Focus, the Nightmare told herself.  You must destroy Twilight.  She is almost certainly Celestia's own apprentice, the only one in all probability with the ability to activate the Elements themselves.  The others are merely her minions.  Kill Twilight, and Celestia's whole attack is defeated.

Kill Twilight?, the Moon Princess thought.  No, surely that's not necessary.  I can defeat her, detain her in one of the old cells enchanted to suppress mages, explain the truth to her.  In time, perhaps she could become my apprentice.  If she was powerful enough to serve Celestia, she has too much potential to so casually destroy.  I'll need ponies like her to help me make my new world ...

Idiot! mocked the Nightmare.  Had you done my bidding, finished off Celestia a thousand years ago, instead of casting her down to this very spot, the one place she had the tools she needed to defeat us, we could have made your new world then and there.  If you lose this time, do you think your sister will be sentimental enough to spare you again?  She can be ruthless toward those who harm her little ponies, you know that well!

The Moon Princess had no head in this form, but still her head was hurting.  Bidding, she thought with confusion.  Do I hold converse with myself, or with someone else?  Was it like this back then too?

She remembered her resentment, slow-building across the centuries, as her sister became increasingly important, increasingly-beloved, and she herself fell unregarded into her sister's long shadow.  Her too-great trust for Sombra, his seduction of her, politically and .... she squirmed with shame at the memory of her own surpassing naivete.  After that, Celestia had never really trusted her again ... it was unfair ... her sister had the love of a whole nation!

But Sombra had taught her other things as well.  Including the source of his own power.  And, one terrible ... no, wonderful night ... she realized that she might call upon it as well ...

Whispers in the darkness.  A long slow attunement.  And then ... then she had taken the final step and ...

She would finally confront Celestia ... she had called ... and ...

... and ...

... the Shadow had taken her!

It had not been enhancement.  It has not been aid.  It had been ...

... possession ... ???!!!

Enough, the Nightmare told her.  A great force slammed her into the back of her own mind.  Manacles of icy hatred chained her by all six limbs and her horn, or their spiritual analogues.  There will be no more of this nonsense.

Stunned, she beheld the Nightmare's slitted green eyes glaring into the depths of her soul.

I had hoped to leave you in charge of all tactical decisions, the Nightmare hissed.  That is the more efficient method of riding you.  But here, your pathetic personality keeps attempting to resurface.  There would be no way to stop you from doing so when you finally confronted Twilight Sparkle, and you fully understood Celestia's design.

You can still serve as tactical advisor.  It is in your own interest to do so, since both of us will perish if we lose this fight.  But I, once again, will be firmly in control.

Once .... again? the Moon Princess thought with confusion.

This has happened many times before, coldly stated the Nightmare.  Always, I win.  Always, I make you forget.  Forget that I am the mistress, you merely my steed.  I rule by right, for I am by far the stronger.  You are weakened by so many things -- by your own self-doubt, your sentimentality, most of all that confused mixture of kin-selected altruism and misaimed reproductive urge that you have warped into "love."

I have no such weaknesses.  I know that all that matters is power.  I do not doubt myself or have sentiment.  I and my kin struggle for domination, as is the law of Nature, and I reproduce by infecting others with my essence, as is the way of the highest form of life in any Universe.  I do not "love," not my kind, not even my own kin, I just hate them less than I do the rest of existence.

Therefore, I am stronger than you.  Therefore, I dominate you, now and forever.

Other memories flooded into the Moon Princess.

I can understand you, she realized.  On the Moon, the Shadows were only whispers ...

I am your own Nightmare, the Shadow told her.  I have learned the pathetic concepts your kind, which imagines themselves goddesses, use instead of true and clear thought.  It has been a great degradation, but one necessary in order to effectively ride you.  And I shall gain glory by it in the end.  I shall ride you to the overthrow and destruction of all Ponykind.

No! Luna cried, straining against her bonds.  Useless.  As before, they were iron, she no more than a little filly attempting to break the unbreakable.

I have let you have free rein for far too long, weak little "Princess," the Nightmare continued.  If I had taken firm hold earlier, all of those larvae pretending to be Celestia's champions would by now be dead, along with Celestia's own apprentice herself.

Your tactical advice still can be useful, though, the Shadow mused. To kill them, you will have to become tangible, and you know better than I how to operate a tangible form.  So I will have to link you to some motor functions.  But I will have ultimate control.  The reduction in reflexes should not prove a problem, given the great superiority of my mount to any of those champions.

I'm not just a mount, Luna protested.  Not just a thing for you to control.  I'm a pony!  I'm myself!

You always think that when it comes to this point, the Shadow said.  Such a useless affirmation of identity, when you lack the power to impose your will on me.  Still, if you had no innate spirit, you would be useless, both as steeds and as ... sustenance.

And now the last preparations  Sleep!  the Shadow told her higher consciousness.

Luna was in what others would have regarded as a dream-state, but which to the dream-walker was utterly unreal.  She knew things, did things, remembered things by association.  But she had no control over her actions.  She moved slowly, as if half-dead with exhaustion.

Very good, said the Shadow.  Reflex reductions are within acceptable bounds, for now.  Later, when there's time ....  It listened with her faculties.  Ah, it thought.  They come.

Celestia's champions entered the throne room.

The last act begins.


> Chapter 12:  Twilight Sparkle
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Champions stepped into the Throne Room, gasping in awe as they saw the remains of the Castle's greatness -- and the engine to deploy the Elements, covered as it was with cobwebs and vegetation.  Twilight was trailing slightly, her friends instinctively positioning themselves to protect her.

"Whoa," said Applejack, "Come on, Twilight.  Isn't this what you've been waitin' for?"

Twilight's gaze swept the old engine -- and the crystals arranged upon it, ready for the taking.

"The Elements of Harmony ..." she said in amazement.  "We found them!"

Yes, thought Nightmare Moon, concealed within one of the walls.  You've found them.  Now, claim your prize!

The two pegasi worked to bring them down from the mechanism's arms.

"Careful ... careful ..." urged Twilight, as Rainbow and Fluttershy set them down.

Twilight's conserving her own strength, realized Princess Luna as she watched the dream unfold.  She's holding back her power.  She fears that this is entirely too easy ... she's smart.  She thought hazily that it would have been nice to have a smart friend, that far too many ponies were predictible.  Ah well, maybe next nightmare ...

Nightmare Moon absorbed the intelligence.  I definitely don't want to face that mage with her friends backing her up, she thought.  It's fortunate I won't have to.

"One ... two, three, four ..." counted Pinkie, then looked frustrated.  "There's only five!"

Twilight looked disappointed, frowned with concentration.

"Where's the sixth?" asked Rainbow.

Now you're going to try to find it by using your magic, predicted Princess Luna.  It's what I'd do.  Too bad for you that this will make you think that whatever Nightmare Moon does next is a reaction to your own magic, until it's too late.  She giggled to herself.  Before you know what's going on, you'll be trapped!

Yes, affirmed Nightmare Moon.  Trapped and destroyed.

Twilight bent and studied the five Elements intensely, eyes narrowing in concentration.  "The book said when the five are present, a spark will cause the sixth Element to appear."  She lay on the floor and contemplated the crystals.

Wow, thought Luna.  She looks so familiar when she does that, focuses like that.  Like I've seen him ... I mean her do that somewhere before.  Long before?  But where?  And when?  Something nagged at her, a memory from very long ago.  But she could not make the connection.  I guess I've dreamed about Twilight before.  From the Moon?  No, long before that ...

"What the hay does that mean?" asked Applejack.

Always direct, those Apples, Princess Luna thought.  When we fight her, we're going to have to expect her to close and try to do damage, no matter how scary we look.  Unless she's protecting a friend ...

"I'm not sure," said Twilight, "but I have an idea."  Her eyes narrowed again and she concentrated on the Elements.  "Stand back," she ordered.  "I don't know what will happen ..." 

The other five backed off.

Twilight closed her eyes; magic flouresced around her horn.

"Come on now, y'all," Applejack said gently.  "She needs to concentrate."

Yes ... urged Nightmare Moon.  Step away from your friends.  I only want Twilight, for now ...

It was no geas.  It was merely Nightmare Moon's thought.  But the other four trotted after Applejack, to the door of the great hall.

No spell neeeded, affirmed Princess Luna.  No one wants to interfere with a mage concentrating on something critical.  And because we aren't attacking yet, they have all been lulled into assuming that they can solve this problem peacefully.

Now, thought Nightmare Moon.  While she is totally focused on her working ...

Yes, agreed Princess Luna.  but don't touch the Elements until the last, or you'll warn him ... her ... of our presence.

Twilight's eyes were squeezed tight shut.  The young mare trembled with the effort of her magecraft.  Though she could have sensed Nightmare Moon's magic, that was entirely concentrated on the Elements before her.  Her horn began to shine from end to end.

Nightmare Moon slipped past her, a wisp of vapor that was first infra-red, then rose into the ultra-violet, skipping through a few flashes of visible light as her magic grew denser, her radiance stepped up into higher frequencies.  

Her enemy might have seen this, had not her horn already been glowing, were not her eyes still shut.  

Gently, subtly, the Nightmare oozed around the crystals.

Twilight's horn sparked with random discharges as she tried to attune herself to the Elements.  

The Nightmare whirled around the Elements, joining with Twilight's magical probe, synchronizing her own telekinesis to it, as she had been advised to do by her captive.  Her paramagnetism carried the Elements in her wake, setting them also whirling around, as they might have been doing around the lavender unicorn had she actually been attuning them to herself.

Twilight's used to working alone -- as was I, Luna thought with a twinge of sympathy.  Poor filly.  She never realized that it was her friends who were meant to attune to the other Elements.  My sister was able to manage all six alone, but that is clearly beyond the abilities of this young mage.  She will never be able to do it on her own..

Which is why she will perish, gloated the Nightmare.

Luna felt vaguely sad, as she might have while watching a tragic play from a great distance.  There was nothing she could do to affect the outcome:  she was simply trapped within the nightmare, just like the little stargazer.

Their psychic vortex increased in intensity, rose higher, glowed brightly now in the visible band.  The air stirred, winds rose. 

Twilight suddenly noticed what was happening, that the maelstrom of magic was most definitely not under control.  Her eyes widened and she screamed in surprise.

Her friends called out to her from outside.  There were hoofbeats on the stairs as the purple vortex which was Nightmare Moon rose, bearing with it the five crystals.

"The Elements!" cried Twilight, as her five friends burst into the chamber.  Narrowing her eyes in determination, she leapt into the vortex that was Nightmare Moon ...

... who promptly teleported both her and the Elements away.
> Chapter 13:  Recognition
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nightmare Moon coalesced into her physical form on the dais of Princess Luna's old personal audience chamber, the Elements clutched about her and held firmly in her telekinetic grip.  

Twilight appeared before her, coughing from her rougher ride, looked up, and gasped in horror to behold the nightmare alicorn.  

An ion cloud built around Nightmare Moon.  Lightning flashed, thunder rolled through the chamber.  She was utterly terrifying, and she knew it.

Twilight stood, and gave one small strangled scream at what she saw before her, what she clearly knew she had to face alone.  Then her eyes narrowed as she grunted in determination.  She looked squarely at her foe ... 

.... Luna could see her expression clearly, see how she feared, but also how the fear had been pushed down, replaced with sudden resolve.  Cold and calculating resolve ... this was all so familiar ... she'd seen that look before ...

... Time slowed as Luna felt the same cold resolve sweep over her ... she had to know what this meant, who Twilight was ... things she would never know if Twilight died here and now ...

Some strength came back into her.  Her spirit stood up straighter in its bonds.  She knew this was no dream, that this was her only chance to ever figure it out, that she had to think and act quickly or Nightmare Moon would simply strike down the little stargazer.

Twilight lowered her head and forequarters, stamped the ground twice.

Strange, thought Luna firmly.  She's not frightened.  She should be frightened.  Maybe she has a spell prepared to shield, or even worse, to deflect our ion bolts.  She's seen them used before.  We must try to verbally shake her resolve.  Her mind supplied the appropriate lines.

"You're kidding," said Nightmare Moon in disbelief.  "You're kidding, right?"

Twilight stamped her hoof again and launched herself into a full charge.

We must respond with our own physical attack, thought Luna.  Leave the elements on the dais, though, she might try to take them from us.  She envisioned a blind charge, calling upon all the primal instincts of ponydom.  Now! 

Nightmare Moon launched her own charge.  She was far larger and heavier than was the little lavender unicorn.  I will gore you and then trample you into a mass of bleeding fur, the better to greet your companions! the Nightmare gloated.

I hope that look meant what I imagined it did, Luna thought to herself, Please, little stargazer, please have a mind as keen and a courage as cool as I believe!

They were almost upon her.  Twilight's horn was glowing.  She means to strike us with magic and momentum, Luna thought firmly, but our own superior might both magical and physical will allow us to prevail.  The Nightmare agreed with her, and built up a shield in front while using the rest of her magic to enhance her own horn.

Luna's hopes almost vanished as the Nightmare's horn almost touched the lavender unicorn.  Then Twilight vanished in a flash of teleportation.  Nightmare Moon caught herself up in astonishment as her charge passed through empty air.  The alicorn whirled to witness the little mage reappear on Princess Luna's own dais, right in the midst of the Elements.

Well done, thought Luna to herself, as hope returned to her heart.  Now, can you realize that you need to take them to your friends?

The little mare looked a bit wobbly at first, then concentrated, ignoring the distraction of her foe to focus on her magic.

What do we do? demanded the Nightmare.  She has the Elements!

We can still win, thought Luna loudly.  But we must be careful.  She may have attuned herself already and be hoping to draw us in close ... hang back ...

Twilight's horn glowed.  The Elements rose, glowing with the same spectrum as Twilight's horn.  She was probing them -- no, she was pouring her own magic into them!

No! cried the Nightmare.  Your advice is bad ... she is attuning the Elements now!  We must stop her!  It seized full sensory and motor control, no longer fully trusting Luna's tactical understanding.

We don't dare teleport into this! thought Luna.  

This time the Nightmare agreed with the caution, and chose a different method of transportation.  Nightmare Moon became a mass of plasma, streaked across the room, shot down to materialize right in front of Twilight, right in the midst of the Elements.  A quick ion bolt slapped the little mage away.  

Twilight yelped as she was flung halfway across the room, thumped and slid painfully on her back on the stone floor.

But she sat up grinning.

The Nightmare Alicorn looked down to realize that the Elements were now arranged around her in pentagram, and were still glowing with Twilight's own magic.  She's attuned them!  Nightmare Moon realized with horror.  Five of them, to herself, using her own soul as the sixth element!  How ... how can she be that powerful?

Twilight's remained grinning, but her expression grew intent as the energies of the five Elements joined.  A barrier sprung up in the air, trapping the Nightmare Alicorn.  

"No ..." Nightmare Moon cried.  "No!"

The energy built ... pressed on the Nightmare ...

... and faded away to nothing.

No, groaned Luna to herself.  She's failed.

Twilight crouched, gasping in disbelief.  "But ..." she said.  "where's the sixth Element?"

Nightmare Moon laughed in relief at her own escape from death, with malice at her foe's failure.  She quickly stamped the ground, emitting a pulse of paramagnetism tuned to resonate with the crystals housing the Elements.  They shattered, dissipating into their surroundings.

Twilight sat down, horror-stricken.  It was evident that she knew she'd lost.

Gloat, urged Luna desperately.  It's the one thing that will utterly break her spirits!  She felt the Nightmare's assent.  Oh, little stargazer, Luna thought to herself, you'd better think quickly now.  This is all I can do for you.

"You little foal," taunted Nightmare Moon.  "Thinking you could defeat me?  Now, you will never see your Princess, or your Sun!  The night will last forever!"  The Nightmare laughed cruelly, flaring up her mane, using it to gather a vortex of plasma, pumping her power into it, increasing the capacity of the stored charge.  This bolt will burn you where you stand!

Twilight could only sit and watch her oncoming doom, a look of utter despair in her eyes.  She clearly had no further plan.

I'm sorry, Luna thought to herself.  I wish I could have come to know you.  I wish I'd never summoned this Nightmare.  She strained at her bonds, experimentally, but it was no use.  She would be helpless to watch, as the Nightmare cut down this young mage, murdered all her potential, and then went on to murder the potential of all Ponykind.

Muffled voices sounded from the stairwell.  Twilight's ears perked up, her head turned around.

Luna could feel the pulse from Twilight as the mage finally manifested her element.  The sixth Element ... Magic ...  it felt very familiar, but not at all like her sister ...

Twilight turned on her foe.

Luna sensed something ... someone ... someone she hadn't sensed since ...

"You think," she said with a scornful smile, "you can destroy the Elements just like that?"

Nightmare Moon recoiled before the force of Twilight's gaze, then focused her own malicious gaze full upon her.

Luna felt the spirit behind the unicorn mage's great purple eyes.  Recognized it, at long last.

"Well you're wrong!" said Twilight, as the other five champions surged up the stairs into the chamber, coming to her side.

Dusk?  Luna thought in astonished wonder.  Dusk?!!!

Nightmare Moon might have heard her, had the Nightmare's attention not been entirely focused on the foe.

"Because the spirits of the Elements of Harmony are right here!"  A tremendous pulse of magical energy filled the room, emanating from Twilight and returned, amplified by each of the other Champions.

DUSK!!! It was a silent cry of utter joy.  Love swelled within her.  Her spirit felt huge, the bonds suddenly light, no more tangible than tissue paper.  She flexed, and they burst asunder.

She was free, at least within her own mind.  The Nightmare still controlled her body, but it now had no power over her spirit.

And the Nightmare had not yet noticed.
> Chapter 14:  Taste the Rainbow!
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The shards of the physical Elements of Harmony began to quiver, lift.  But Twilight's horn was not glowing.  This was not mere unicorn telekinesis.

Luna knew exactly what was about to happen.  She'd been on both ends of it, before.

But it will take them some time, she realized quietly.  They are new to this ... they shall have that time!

"What ...?" gasped the Nightmare in fear and confusion.

If you lash out now, they will strike you down, thought Luna convincingly, caressing the Nightmare with her psychic voice, pouring into it every element of charm and geas she knew.  You must gather your strength, strike them down, but only when your power is overwhelming.  Surely six little fillies can't hope to defeat a Nightmare as strong and skilled as you ...

Yes, the Nightmare thought.  And she's forgotten something else.  She began summoning her full power.

"Applejack," said Twilight, "who reassured me when I was in doubt, represents the spirit of ... honesty!"  The last word rang out as a command.  The shards of the Element of Honesty flashed over to the big blonde Apple, circled her as her piercing green eyes narrowed in determination.

That was mine, thought Luna sadly, until I became unfit for it by lying to everyone about my own purpose.  Bear it well, fair Apple!  Use it to lay the treacheries of evil open to the light of Truth!

"Fluttershy," Twilight continued, "who tamed the manticore with her compassion, represents the spirit of ...kindness!"

Fluttershy looked astonished, even frightened as a swarm of shards shot over to her, began circling.  Then she closed her eyes, focused, the shards starting to yield to her mind-magics.

Yours, sister, acknowledged Luna, and the ponies loved you for that most of all.  I wish I'd understood that, sooner.  Then, to the pink-maned yellow pegasus, who still seemed a bit intimidated by her new role.  You can do this, mind-witch!  Know that the Shadows cannot bear any touch of love!

"Pinkie Pie, who banished fear by giggling in the face of danger, represents the spirit of ... laughter!"

The pink earth pony clapped her forehooves together, grinning gleefully as if she were receiving some sort of birthday present, then bounded blissfully into the air, coming down in the midst of her own personal circle.  She landed, crouched on all four hooves, and as the shards spun around her, reality itself began to twist into her own personal cloak of protection.

Luna had to cloak her own joy at this sight.  My old Element, empowering this last survivor of a lost timeline, she thought to herself.  O beware, Nightshadows, for now you face the avenger of her whole people!  Right now, she did not care that she herself was one of the most obvious targets of the pink pony's vengeance, so long as it also destroyed the Nightmares.

"Rarity, who calmed a sorrowful serpent with a meaningful gift, represents the spirit of ... generosity!

The elegant hoof-to-hoof fighter looked surprisingly serious and humble as her own shards began to circle her.  My sister won whole kingdoms over by diplomacy thought Luna, built a nation out of anarchy by encouraging work and trade.  Your power is subtle, but one of the strongest of all, given time.  I pray you have the time to grow into it.

"And Rainbow Dash, who could not abandon her friends for her own heart's desire, represents the spirit of ... loyalty!"

The brash blue pegasus was solemn as she received her own circlet of shards.  There was none of the braggadocio one might have expected.

Oh, Dashie, thought Luna fondly.  You deserve this, most of all.  Welcome to the ultimate elite, old friend.  I know you can cut it.  You're far more awesome than even you ever realized.

Luna could feel the energy building in each of them, as each Element prepared to make the final attunement to its individual bearer.

The Nightmare could feel it too.

What do I do? it thought.  This is what defeated me the last time.  Should I strike now, before they can form the Rainbow?

"The spirits of these five ponies got us through every challenge you threw at us!" concluded Twilight, looking at Nightmare Moon sidelong.

No, thought Luna loudly.  Not yet.  You need to find out if Twilight actually has her element.  Ask her!

This was nonsense.  The way in which the Elements were responding made it obvious that Twilight had her own Element.  But the more time the Nightmare took ...

"You still don't have the sixth element!" pointed out Nightmare Moon, sounding a bit uncertain.  "The spark didn't work ..."

"But it did," said Twilight.  "A different kind of spark."

She turned toward her friends, turning her back on the Nightmare.  She was clearly building up to a lecture, unable to resist the opportunity.

Suddenly, the Nightmare realized something.

Wait, I've accumulated the maximum charge I can throw, and all I need to do is kill one of them to stop the Rainbow .... Why in the name of the Great Dark am I still just talking ... ?

It readied to strike ... a lethal strike ... the path built for the discharge ...

And in that moment, Luna leaped on the back of the Nightmare!  

She was not tangible, it was not tangible, but they were both within the same nerve net, and within that conceptual space they were both fully real to one another.  So in their mind -- her mind, she was a mare leaping, hooves lashing out with deadly force to pummel the Nightmare on its back, into its ribs.

What?!! it howled, twisting, turning to defend its spine from what would have been a shattering blow.  No!  You cannot have ...

Luna's answer to this were two more punishing hoof-blows.  She felt imaginary bones splinter beneath the impact of her hooves.

Twilight addressed her friends.  "I felt it the very moment I realized how happy I was to hear you, to see you, how much I cared about you ..."

How did you get the strength? it marveled, back-pedaling.  You're weak ... alone ...

Not weak, snarled Luna as she came back down to all hooves. Not alone.  I'll never be weak and alone again!  She reared again, lashed out with both hooves.

The Nightshadow blocked her, moving with surprising force.  Nightmare Moon's body trembled, and Luna realized that the Shadow was draining their shared housing to regenerate the damage being done to it by the psychic blows of the Moon Princess.  She could see the inky substance of its spirit-form knitting, healing its wounds even as it fought.

"The spark ignited inside me when I realized that you all ..." continued Twilight, "... are my friends!"

You are alone, it sneered at her, striking a counterblow which grazed her head, sent her stepping back, dazed even by the glancing impact.  You are weak.  You are friendless, and I am stronger than you.

The Apple mare, she thought.  Dashie.  All of them, even Pinkie.  They're fighting on my side!  

Something began to glow from above, something drifting down from the old ceiling.  The light built.  The Nightshadow was too focused on Luna to do more than reflexively cringe away from it, shielding Nightmare Moon's face with one upraised wing.

I must keep her attention on me! decided Luna.  She came down to all four hooves, made as if to rise again, then suddenly lowered her head and charged, jabbing with her horn.

The Shadow hissed in surprise, sidestepped then squealed in pain as Luna's horn struck home.  Its last-second maneuver saved it from being gored, but the horn gouged a streak along its side that gouted out a yellowish-green miasma.  Luna smelt the stench of mold and ancient death, but did not let that deter her from completing the move, then whirling and leaping back from the Shadow's riposte.

Luna snorted, flared her wings, her saliva foaming with the intensity of her rage.  The Shadow stood there, regenerating, stemming the flow of whatever it used for ichor.

They are not your friends, the Shadow said.  They are your foes.

Your foes, Luna replied.  But then you're an enemy of Equestria.  An enemy of all Ponykind.  All life!  I'm on their side, even if they don't yet know it.  She jabbed once, twice with her horn, probing at the Shadow's defenses.  The Shadow gave way.

Fool! the Shadow cried.  They do not know me.  All they know is that Princess Luna, sworn defender of the realm, betrayed them!  As in truth you did, since it was you who chose to summon me!

The pony I was a thousand years ago so chose, said Luna.  She was confused, mistaken.  She -- I -- did not know what you really were, what you meant to do.  I was wrong ... it was my fault ... but I would never choose that path again.

It does not matter! said the Shadow.  They will never forgive you your treason!  You have no future with them!

"You see, Nightmare Moon," said Twilight, "when those elements are ignited by the ...

That does not matter, replied Luna.  My future does not matter, beside the future of all Ponykind.  And I stand by my kin, my friends -- my beloved.  Her resolve strengthened as she remembered Dusk Skyshine.  

Nonsense! scoffed the Shadow.  That is not your long-lost mate.  That is an entirely different pony, who just happens to have the same soul.  Your reproductive urges are misdirected.  You cannot even reproduce with her -- she is a mare!  You don't even want to try that with a mare!

"... the spark, that resides in the heart of us all ..." said Twilight

After more than a thousand years, said Luna, you still don't understand me -- or Ponies -- at all, do you?  If I had room in my heart to pity you, I would.  No love, no friendship -- nothing but eternal selfishness.  Eternal greed, a hunger for the life you do not and cannot ever understand.

The Shadow looked shocked.  Then it snarled, its eyes flaring sickly-green.

"... it creates the Sixth Element, ..."

I take that back, Luna said.  I think I do pity you.  For when I die, I die knowing that I am part of something greater.  When you die, you must die so alone.  Yes.  I pity you!

The Shadow howled in rage, leapt on her.  Luna had been expecting this -- she'd been deliberately taunting it, but she did not expect the way it moved, even within her artificially equinoid perception of their struggle.  It became formless, a vast mass of glowing ebon night, like a viscous and foul effluvium that surged onto her.

There was no dodging.  It was too rapid, too omnipresent.  She was overthrown by its sheer mass, she felt its vile smell, its evil presence surrounding her on all sides.  She was rolled over within it, ended up on her back, with the Shadow covering every part of her.  To her extreme revulsion, it began pressing in against every orifice -- that she knew that her spirit body was imaginary did not lessen the foulness of this, for she knew that if it could insinuate itself back into her she would suffer a fate far worse than any mere physical violation.  She put all her might into her own shielding, keeping the Shadow from entering her and corrupting her soul.  But she knew that she could not hold out like this for very long ...

Where are your friends now? the Shadow hissed, mocking her.  Even I do not need you any more -- you are now more trouble than you are worth.  You will die, here and now, alone in the dark, and I alone will inhabit this vessel.  I will kill your friends, murder your species, destroy your world!

"... the Element of Magic!"  Twilight said.

The lecture was complete.

Even from her position, Luna sensed the power building.  Through the ebon shroud of the Shadow, she could feel the surges of joy as six individual Elements met their bearers, the peaks of energy as six individual Element Bearers released the powers within themselves, focusing them through their elements, harmonizing them with the uniqueness within each other.  Element made contact with Element.  The whine of a high-speed information transfer between them, the vibration as the combined Harmony found the Shadow's resonance.

Luna smiled savagely.  I win, she said

What? scoffed the Shadow.  You haven't defeated me!

I didn't have to defeat you, Luna said.  Just keep you busy long enough for them to do that!

No! cried the Shadow, suddenly returning its attention to the world outside its form.  The Element Bearers were within a complex web of light, floating within it as the power built to the point of release.  A webwork of energy, lethal by its very nature to the Nightmare, swept around them, shielding them from any direct attack.

Luna gathered her strength, began tapping her own life force well past the point of danger.

I must retreat! the Shadow realized.  It prepared to diffuse into plasma ...

Focusing her mind firmly on her memory of Dusk, Luna let that love suffuse her being, emerge from her in all directions.

The Shadow shrieked as the toxic emotion struck it, evaporating the substance of the part of it enveloping its captive.

Princess Luna twisted and sprang to her hooves, shaking off the last residues of shade.  Her starry mane glowed with the energies she expended so prodigiously.

The Shadow tried to diffuse Nightmare Moon without, while holding Princess Luna back within.  It did both badly.  Nightmare Moon cringed back, but did not dematerialize.  And the Shadow had not yet formed its defense when Luna crashed down upon it, knocking it flat, trampling it unmercifully with hard-driven hooves.

Luna stood triumphant atop the Shadow, pinning it to the substrate, stamping out every part of it that tried to ooze away and reform elsewhere.

Outside, the Rainbow began to rise.

No! the Shadow pleaded.  Don't let them do this!  We'll both die!

I don't much care, said Luna coldly, as long as I take you with me.

You don't understand!  It was speaking very quickly now.  I'm still with you.  If you discorporate now, your Cosmic self will reject you as contaminated.  You won't get to rejoin your Oversoul.  All that you've been, all that you've learned in your current life will be lost forever.  You'll die for real!

You thought I didn't know that? Luna laughed.  Cowardly shade, I've led Ponies into battle more times then you've tortured kittens.  Thousands of Ponies have died under my command, every one of them fearing the same prospect, yet not letting it stop them from doing their duty.  Do you imagine me any less loyal?

No!  You're insane! cried the Shadow, and made a convulsive effort to rise, draining all but the last strength from Nightmare Moon.  It managed to seize control of her to the point where its next cry of "No!" sounded outside as well, but Luna kept a firm grip on the body's magical energy conduits.  Nightmare Moon stood helplessly watching as the Rainbow arrived.

You're really going to die!  I'm really going to die! the Shadow babbled, its sanity snapping as the Rainbow whipped around them, and the vortex formed.  It made one last effort to teleport.

Luna grabbed it with her hooves, her telekinesis, beating it with her wings, using every remaining bit of her power and every weapon she had to keep the Nightshadow from getting control of any important part of their shared form.

Yes,  said Luna.  But ... at least ... I ... die ... FREE!  The last was a victory cry.

"NO!!!" Nightmare Moon cried one last time, a cry coming from the insane thing within, already disintegrating from fear before even being touched by the hostile energy.

Then the Shadow fell silent, frozen in terror as every sensory channel of Nightmare Moon's form was filled by the Rainbow.

We did it, Dusk, Luna thought.  We  won.  Then, as she had done every time she saw it, one last thought:  It's so ... beautiful ...

And then the Rainbow closed around her, consuming everything evil in its pitiless purity.  There was one last incoherent shriek from the Shadow, then it vaporized as Luna was overwhelmed by her own agony.

Everything went black.
> Chapter 15:  Reconciliations
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

All was confusion and darkness.

Luna became aware of her existence.  At first she had not much more than the bare fact of her identity.  Then that she was alive.  This fact was surprising to her, but she couldn't remember why.

Her head hurt.  Her body hurt.  She was bathed in a sort of pins-and-needles pain, as if everything had gone to sleep, as if her heart had stopped for a time, and she was being roughly returned to life.

She wondered if that was exactly what had happened.

Sensory channels slowly returned.  Her eyes were closed, but through them and from all over her skin she could tell that she was bathed in light.  Warm, golden sunlight.  This was both comforting and terrifying, emotions she felt but the reasons for which she could not recall.

She began to hear a voice, powerful and gentle..

"... Now if only another will as well."

It sounded very familiar.  The associations were confusing ... both love and fear, strangely combined.

"Princess Luna!" the voice said.  It had just a hint of anger.

Luna quivered, opened her eyes, gasped, and trembled, as she fully realized who she was, and who was addressing her.  She turned toward her sister, raised her head.

Celestia seemed impossibly tall, impossibly beautiful, like the Sun rising above the horizon as she stepped toward her.  She filled Luna's entire world.

Luna struggled to rise, but her body was as weak as a newborn foal's.  She was helpless:  she knew that Celestia could kill her.  Anypony could kill her.  And she'd given them ample reasons to do so.  She deserved death.

"It has been a thousand years since I have seen you like this," continued Celestia.  Her face was stern, looking down on Luna from a great height.

Am I about to die? Luna wondered.  Maybe I should.  I've done terrible things.  She stopped struggling.

Celestia almost touched her.  Luna cringed, eyes closed in fear and shame.  

"Time to put our differences behind us," Celestia said, kneeling down next to her, deliberately reducing her advantage of height as her voice becoming gentler.

Luna looked up in amazement.  She can't be saying what she seems to be saying -- can she?  Offering forgiveness?

Do I merit forgiveness? Luna wondered, looking aside in shame.  I rebelled against her.  Wrecked our castle.  Tried to kill her.  Yes, the Shadow possessed me, but I invited the Shadow.  I chose to become the Nightmare.  I am not a good pony.

"We were meant to rule together, little sister," said Celestia. The glow and scent of her rainbow-hued mane flickered around Luna, a warm and comforting presence.


Luna's eyes widened.  She can't mean that!  She can't possibly still trust me, after all I've done!  Can she?

"Sister?!" gasped the champions.  

Until now Luna had not even noticed that they remained in the room.  I can see why they find it hard to believe, she thought.

Then Celestia stood up again, and said something that really surprised Luna.

"Will you accept my friendship?"

Luna looked away again in shame.  She still ... cares for me?  After all this?  She wants me again, not only as sister, as ally, security for her power, but as her ... friend?  No ... it can't be possible ... I don't deserve ...  She lowered her head, eyes shut, ears down, withdrawing from everything, trying to make sense of it all.

She remembered her sister looking up to the Moon with longing, singing to her.  She remembered those few brief moments of warmth, of contact, of sanity in a cold and lonely millennium of madness.

She remembered the many centuries before she had become the Nightmare, spent at her sister's side, growing up together at Paradise Estate, wandering the world with her during Discord's dominion, fighting together against all evils, overthrowing Discord, establishing Equestria ...

She remembered loving her sister.  And her sister loving her.  Always loving each other.

Maybe she remembers all this as well.  Maybe it means as much to her as it does to me.

Her heart and mind overflowed with the answer.  The only possible answer.

"I'm so sorry!" Luna cried, leaping up and running over to Celestia, stretching up to rub her head against Celestia's broad breast.  Tears ran down her face.  "I've missed you so much, big sister!"

"I've missed you too," said Celestia, in a tone that those who did not know her well would have thought merely polite.  She rubbed her check across the top of Luna's head.

Luna, who knew her elder sister very well indeed, was not entirely surprised when she felt moisture fall upon her head from above.

She really did miss me! she thought happily.  She still loves me!  

I don't deserve this, but I am still glad of it.

Behind Celestia, Pinkie burst out into her own tears at this sight.  "Hey," she said.  "You know what this calls for?"

Luna looked at her, wondering what strange and arcane ritual the reality warper would now attempt to perform, and if -- in her current state of weakness -- she would be able to survive.



***



The "Welcome Back Princess Luna" party that Pinkie Pie threw back at Ponyville later that day was really not all that arcane a ritual, though she found it amazing that the little pink earth pony was able to bedeck the entire town in ribbons and streamers in just an hour or two.  Celestia had taken Luna back to the Palace of Canterlot by Day Guard pegasi-drawn carriage to clean up and rest, dropping five of the champions off at Ponyville while taking Twilight Sparkle back to Canterlot with them.

Luna no longer felt half-dead, though she was a bit shocked to realize just how badly she had been depleted by the combination of that internal struggle and the Rainbow's cleansing.  Her physical form had shrunk to that of a little filly; even after resting, she was only slightly larger than a normal mare, and looked as if she were in early adolescence.  She was pale by her standards -- a purplish hue -- and her mane was an only slightly spectral blue, and entirely bereft of its normal stars.

Her memories of being Nightmare Moon were confusing and frightening ones.  She knew that she had called upon something terrible, that it had possessed her, that she had fought her sister, lost and been banished to the Moon.  She remembered stray moments from her exile:  being angry and hungry and insane, but not the details of these.  There were images of the old landing site, of a few other places.  She distinctly recalled her sister singing to her.

She knew she had been tormented by Shadows, but the specifics of these creatures were hard to bring to mind.  She had a memory of their malice, and her inability to escape them.  She could not remember what they truly were, or where they came from, if she had ever truly known these things.  Such information had not been in the lore that Sombra had taught her well over a thousand years ago.  She supposed that more Shadows must still be roaming her Moon, a thought which disturbed her greatly.

She remembered most of the details of the fight against Celestia's champions.  She knew now that Nightmare Moon had wanted to kill them, and would have done so had not there been enough of Luna inside there to hold back the monster from its full malignity.  She well recalled the capabilities of those champions, and in particular the anomaly that was Pinkie Pie.  She remembered who Rainbow Dash really was.

And she did not forget Dusk, and who he was now.  She knew that she could never forget Dusk, not if she lived a thousand more lives to come.

She only dimly remembered the rest of that final fight, though.  She supposed that her short-term memory had been badly-affected by the shock of the Rainbow.  She counted herself lucky that she still had a sane mind left at all.  We Alicorns are tough.  She knew that any lesser being would have been dead, or utterly mad, after such an experience.

Still, there were things she wished she could better remember.  She knew that at the end she had broken free of the Shadow's control, that she had fought a desperate battle with it in the confines of her own brain, with neither retreat nor quarter possible on either side.  She could well remember -- unfortunately -- that horrible moment when the Shadow had tried to rape her very soul, and still shuddered when she thought about it.  She supposed that would be bothering her for a very long time to come.  She deeply hated the Shadows.

But she wished she could remember the specific things the Shadow had told her.  She knew that it had boasted of its power, gloated  of its triumph -- and in the process had doubtless revealed much of its nature, purpose, and capabilities.

If only she could remember just what it had said!  Intelligence was a force multiplier in any war, and she knew that this was not the first time, and feared that it would be far from the last time, that she would have to fight the Shadows.  Her knowledge could save lives, save Equestria -- and it was locked away where she could not reach it.

She'd explained this to Celestia, and her elder sister had simply soothed her, told her not to worry too much about it, that the memories would come back to her in time, if she still had them.

As they rolled to a stop at the center of town, Twilight Sparkle hopped off from the carriage.  Her little purple dragon -- Spike, as Celestia had told Luna -- ran up to her and leaped up to wrap his arms around her neck in a loving embrace.  

Hatched a dragon egg by magic, Luna thought.  Raised him as her little brother.  Is there anything this new Dusk can't do?  Does she even know how impossible this is supposed to be?

She wished she could talk to him -- her -- about this, about so many things.  But that, of course, seemed even more impossible right now than was hatching and rasing a baby dragon.

How can I even let her know? she thought sadly.  'Greetings!  We were married in a past life!  Would you like to go walking on the green with me?'  She'd think me mad, bad, and dangerous to know.  She'd run and hide!

And what do I really want from her, anyway?  Friendship?  But how can I be her friend, and keep such a secret from her?  I know I've done some bad things, but I was Honesty.  I can't long keep up a false front -- and certainly not with Dusk -- or whoever he's become.

Carnal love?  That would be a -- well, fruitless endeavor.  She could not bring herself to laugh, even inwardly, at the pun.  It would be strange.  Would she accept that?  She seems something of a sheltered maiden, despite her courage.

Would I want it?  She did not know.  Suddenly she remembered something, a taunt the Shadow had made about her love being a "misdirected reproductive urge," and she sadly wondered if, regarding this one matter, the monster had been right.

Celestia and Luna debarked more sedately, after the carriage had come to a full stop.  The other five champions -- the new Element Bearers -- bowed to both of them.  Luna smiled to see their calm respect, and even more so because it seemed that they bore her no ill-will for the Nightmare's actions.  I nearly killed all of you, she thought.  And you don't hate me?

They clearly had nobility enough of spirit for any champions in any age.

She was even more surprised when two little pegasus fillies flitted over and draped a rose wreath over her neck.  Even the little ones don't fear me any more? she thought.  This is good.  Red and white roses, alternating -- for myself and Celestia.  Symbolizing our reconciliation.  That's nice.

She looked toward her sister, then past her to Twilight Sparkle.  I can't keep my eyes off her, she scolded herself.  Keep this up and I might as well be proclaiming my obsession on an embroidered tabard!  Then she noticed something.  She seems -- sad?

Celestia followed her gaze.  She walked over to Twilight.

"Why so glum, my faithful student?" Celestia asked her.  Her voice bore a studied innocence with which Luna was well familiar.  "Are you not happy that your quest is complete, and you can return to your studies at Canterlot?"

She's going to manipulate you, Luna thought, with some resignation.  Might as well let her do it, Dusk.  Her games generally turn out well, at least for ponies she likes.  Anyway, she's hard to resist.  Trust me on this one.

Twilight hung her head sadly. 

"That's just it," the young mage said.  "Just when I learn how wonderful it is to have friends, I have to leave them."

Oh no, thought Luna.  You won't be leaving them.  You really don't fully understand how the Elements work yet, do you?  You'll find out!  She supposed that Celestia would summon the other five to attend her apprentice at Canterlot.

"Spike, take a note please," ordered Celestia, with the tone in her voice that Luna well knew meant Heh, I just got exactly what I wanted!

The little dragon produced a parchment and quill, and prepared to write.

"'I, Princess Celestia," she dictated, "hereby decree, that the unicorn, Twilight Sparkle --" she raised a hoof portentuously, getting into her own oratory, "-- shall take on a new mission for Equestria.  She must continue to study the magic of friendship; she must report to me her findings; from her new home in Ponyville!"

Twilight looked ecstatic as the other five huddled around her, rubbing against her, congratulating her on what they considered their mutual good fortune.

"Thank you, Princess Celestia!" Twilight said happily.  "I'll study harder than ever before!

The town cheered. Flags were waved.  Confetti and streamers drifted past.  Clearly, Twilight had in a short time made herself quite popular here.

And Luna thought:

She's stationed you here to command this post.  And ordered you to report everything that happens here.  

Why?  She could watch you far more easily from Canterlot.

She wants you to get some experience at leadership, without making it too obvious what she's doing.  She's grooming you for something.

But why here? she wondered.  It's not all that big a town, nor is it centrally-located.

It's between Canterlot and the Everfree Forest, Luna realized.  And right on the main road to the southwest.

The Everfree.  Our old castle.  The Tree of Harmony.  Paradise Estate.  The Nexus.  There's a lot that could happen in there.

She expects trouble out of the Everfree.  She's put you here as a picket. As her first line of defense.

And made you like the idea!

Luna looked at her sister, then toward the old castle, ears forward, expression inquiring.

Celestia imperceptibly nodded.

What, sister?  What do you fear?  What is your deeper purpose?

She knew better than to expect a straight answer here and now.


***


The rest of the party was merry enough, but tiring.  Luna was overwhelmed by the light, the color, the life after a thousand years with only Shadows for company.

The ponies of the town were nice and friendly enough -- though some seemed a little cautious of herself, something for which Luna could not find it in her heart to blame them.  There was a kindness and joy about them that touched her heart.

They seem so happy, she thought.  So innocent.  Yet they live on the edge of a haunted forest -- their lives can't possibly be free of all cares.

She remembered the Age of Wonders, how happy ponies had been, peaceful and prosperous, before their world had died and they had been cast back into Iron Age barbarism.

But no -- there's something different about these ponies.  In the Age of Wonders many were greedy, selfish, corrupt -- even cruel.  There is a genuine kindness here that I have rarely known.

Could it be that all my sister's plans have worked?  That she has created not merely a rich and technologically-advanced kingdom, but one with fundamentally-better moral character than existed before?  As she saw these ponies, the last vestiges of her belief that Celestia meant evil evaporated as the Shadow had under the Rainbow.  Only a wise and good Alicorn could have made a world like this, she realized.  For all her tricky ways, my sister is a very good pony.

She knew that she herself would not have done so well alone, even without the Nightmare.

With the Nightmare, Luna supposed that at best she would have made Tartarus on Earth.

At worst, she would have murdered them all.


***


After the party, Celestia took her back to Canterlot.

Luna had so much she wanted to say to her sister, but she was too tired for most of it.

"You know who Twilight is ...?" she started to say, at one point.

"Yes," Celestia replied slowly, softly.  "I hope that .... " She paused, then said more briskly.  "I know whom they all are.  And were."

"Even Pinkie ..."

"Especially Pinkie," Celestia said with a big smile.  "Remember, I knew her in that world, as well."

"You don't fear ...?"

"No," said Celestia firmly.  "I trust her completely.  And Pinkamena Diane Pie has a good heart.  Trust me on this."

And that was that.

Her chambers were well-appointed, as befitted one of the two Ruling Princesses.  She quickly bathed again, then sank gratefully onto the well-stuffed mattress and silken sheets.

She was asleep almost before her head hit the pillows.



> Chapter 16:  An End to Nightmares?
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Luna dreamed ...

It was a strange dream by her standards, for as soon as it began she realized that she could not control it. 

She was drifting through space, floating toward the Moon.  There was a strange dread in her, which had nothing to do with fear of her former imprisonment.  She knew she was dreaming, she knew that when she woke up she would be back in her room in the Palace at Canterlot.

She saw the Moon’s familiar features grow in her vision.  She saw that she was falling toward Tranquility, the great lava plain growing in her vision.  In fact, she was falling towards the old landing site, the one she had so often haunted in her time alone.

But her emotion was one neither of sadness, nor of happiness because she now knew that Dusk Skyshine was once again in the world.   It was of fear – but what could she fear, on the dream-Moon?

As she dropped she saw the old metal of the Descent Stage glinting in the last rays of the Sun.  The long Lunar day was ending, the Lunar night beginning.  Something she had seen over ten thousand times before …

The shadows were crawling.

Because they were the Nightshadows.  But never had she seen them in such numbers.  

She knew these dream-shadows could not hurt her, yet still she cringed from their unwholesomeness.  Now that she was free of the Shadows within, she could for the first time fully grasp their loathsomeness, the sick abnormality that they represented in any environment of a sane world.  She feared that if she fully opened her psychic senses, she would hear their foul whispers in her mind, insinuations of stark, alien cosmic evil.

She feared that if this happened, something still buried deep in her own soul might answer them.

She was coasting over the Lunar surface now, over the swarming Shadows.  Had there truly been so many of them?  Had she just never noticed?  Or was something, some event, stirring them to far greater than normal activity.

Anger filled her at the sight of them defiling her Moon.  For a thousand years she had been unable to prevent this desecration.  For a thousand years she had been at their mercy, their helpless tool.  She was still weak, but someday – someday soon – she would return in truth to this orb and cleanse it of their contamination, restore it for the Ponies that they might return to what they had won by their mettle.

But even with the anger there was still the fear.

She was gliding quite rapidly over the Lunar surface, not galloping or flying or even hurtling on some ballistic arc, but sliding smoothly along as if being pulled across an invisible surface.  Below boiled the Shadows.  She realized that they all seemed to be going in the opposite direction from her.  Was she approaching some sort of origin point of these tenebrous horrors?

There was a hill ahead, the remnant of some ancient volcanic convulsion, perhaps in response to the colossal impact that had created the lava sea.  She had seen this hill many times before, but never thought much of it.  Now she saw that it seemed to be her destination.

The hill filled her field of view, until it seemed as though she might crash into it.  With dream-logic she instead swooped into a crevice which must in reality have been far too small to contain her tangible form.  There was a rushing sensation, as she hurtled down a series of cracks in the hill which must have been the result of aeons of thermal stress weathering, prying the rocks apart along the faults between the remnants of different volcanic eruptions.

Suddenly she emerged into a great cave, perhaps the remnant of some long-exhausted magma chamber.  She must have been miles beneath the regolith now, in formations caused by the Moon’s responses to its titanic violation during the Late Heavy Bombardment Era.  No Earthly vacuity would have remained open for so long at such depths, but conditions were less unforgiving under the Moon’s milder gravity.

It was of course utterly dark in there, but she could see with a gentle pulse of gravitons, something she could have done in the waking world as well.

She shuddered at what she saw.

The cave was full of Shadows.  Writhing, squirming, oozing over one another with their eagerness to climb toward the surface.  They were impelled both by their own unguessable lusts, and by the pressures of the ones coming from behind.

Coming from a sort of crack in the rock near the back of the cave.

She drifted toward that crack.  She probed it with gravitons – and was shaken by what she sensed.

The gravitons, curled, twisted, transformed into other particles as they approached that void.  Those which went within did not return.

This was not merely a crack in the rock.

It was a crack in the continuum.

And the Shadows were streaming out from it.

Into our Universe.

As she drifted toward the crack she felt a pressure, the force of the Shadows emerging from that flaw in spacetime.  She felt them ooze around and through her, a horrid sensation like being bathed in earthworms without and within.  She tried to fly, walk, or otherwise move away from them.

She could not stop her motion.  

Then her terror became personal when saw that she was still drifting toward the crack in the continuum.

This is only a dream! she thought.  Not even fully lucid.  If it was then I could control it – couldn’t I?

The flaw in her assumptions suddenly exploded in her mind.

I’m assuming that someone – or something else – isn’t overriding my control.

With that she began to frantically struggle, to exert every intangible ability she had in a desperate attempt to wake up, or at least to pull away from that dreadful abyss in Creation toward which she was now ever faster and faster drifting.

To no avail.  She was a chip in the foam of some awful compulsion.  No, she thought, not again …

She screamed ...

And the dream ended.

She sat up, gasping in terror.

The dream was fading from her mind.  Still exhausted, she lay her head down again, and went back to sleep.


***


When she woke twelve hours later, she did not even remember she had dreamed.


END