> After the Nightmare
>  by CORACK
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Chapter 1
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The prison was meant to last eternity, but not even bonds forged by the Elements themselves could contain an alicorn forever.  As the centuries passed and Nightmare's magic slowly returned to her, she turned it upon the seals that held back the majority of her power.  It took years and years of constant assault, but the seals slowly began to fail, one by one.  Finally, enough seals had been destroyed that that she was able to project her magic outside of her prison.  She reached out with all of her hatred and range for Celestia's sun.  The energy she siphoned from its destruction would augment her own, providing power to assault the final seal.

Her aura touched the sun and winked out of existence.  Cursing, she cast another spell to find the reason behind this outrage.  She could see it now, Celestia, always planning ahead, had protected her sun.  Nightmare Moon would have to expend far too much energy to get past Celestia's protection, in the end she wouldn't have enough to break the final seal.  Still, Celestia's sun was not the only star.  Nightmare had a whole sky of them, and they would aid her in her escape.

She searched the heavens and found the largest star within her grasp.  She cast a spell gathering the full output of the star, and concentrating it into a radiant beam of energy, which she then used to augment her magical attack.  There was no effect, the final seal was the strongest of them all and would not be destroyed as easily as the others had.

Frustrated, she added the output of another star, and another, and another, until she had concentrated the output of 16 stars into one massive attack.  It was then that she detected an almost imperceptible drop in the seal's strength.  Now it was just a matter of time before it fell.  And there was one more thing she could do to speed things up.

Nightmare Moon's horn shone with a fierce glow, and the output of her attack grew immensely.  Time itself bent to her will as the stars burned faster and faster.  For each second that passed by, each of the stars experienced hundreds of years.  It would be almost a year before the last one burnt itself out, but the seal would fail by then.

After a year of constant assault the final seal was cracked and broken, it could no longer contain the dark alicorn.  The last star had finally died, but she did not need them anymore.  Her horn flashed and a pulse of energy expanded outwards.  It hit the damaged seal which exploded, shattering into tiny shards of magic that then faded out of existence.  

For 1000 years she had been imprisoned.  Even to an immortal such as herself, it was a long time.  In the back of Nightmare Moon's mind, a tiny part of her brain had wished for a death that could never come.  For 1000 years she had been starving, for 1000 years she suffocated aon the airless rock that was her prison. The harsh heat of day scorched her flesh, while the bitter cold of night turned her blood to ice.  But she endured, driven by rage and the need for revenge against her sister and the desire to force all of pony kind to love and worship her.

Nightmare Moon looked up at her home world floating in the depths of space, she stretched her wings, rising off the lunar surface, her horn lit with a dark power.  In a bust of magic, she disappeared.


#####


Celestia could feel Nightmare Moon straining against her prison.  It would not hold her for much longer.  She knew this day would come and it both frightened and excited her.  If everything went according to plan, she would have her sister back, but she knew that there was much room for error.

A letter popped into existence in front of the princess, it was from her student, Twilight Sparkle.  She had a good idea of what the contents would be about.  Twilight was a smart pony, and Celestia has given her all access to all the knowledge she would need to put together the puzzle of Nightmare Moon.  She opened the letter and skimmed over the contents, confirming her suspensions. Twilight had read the prophesies, as Celestia knew she would.  She was was worried about the Nightmare's return.  

For a moment, Celestia considered telling Twilight the details of her plan, but then she reconsidered.  The plan was a dangerous one, if Nightmare Moon found out what Celestia was up to, Twilight would be killed.  The chances of failure was high, but it was the only way to save Luna and end the Nightmare. She sighed, and picked up her quill and began to write a response.  

My dearest, most faithful student Twilight. You know that I value your diligence and that I trust you completely, but you simply must stop reading those dusty old books!


#####


Nightmare Moon had expected far more resistance from Celestia.  Here she was, ready to enact her revenge upon her sister, ready to plunge Equestria into eternal night and Celestia hadn't even shown her face.  Nightmare Moon could feel Celestia's presence in the distance, she followed it to a small town, but no matter how far she pushed forward, Celestia kept backing away.  All she found in the town was a gathering of ponies waiting for Celestia to raise the sun.

It was then that she sized control of the heavens, a move she was sure would draw forth her sister.  She banished her sister's sun from the system, sending it hurtling off into space.  But Celestia still did not come forward.  In fact the only opposition Nightmare Moon had faced was some insignificant little unicorn.

"I did.  And I know who you are.  You're the mare in the moon, Nightmare Moon," Twilight said.

Nightmare Moon quickly left the town hall after that.  She knew Celestia would not run forever, there would eventually be a conflict and that meant only one thing.

"The Elements," Nightmare Moon said to herself.  "She must be gathering the Elements."

Nightmare Moon had no intention of spending another 1000 years imprisoned so she had planned for this eventuality.  She had not spent the last 1000 years blindly chipping away at her restraints.  She also studied the ancient magic of the Elements and had come up with a counter spell that she was sure would protect her.  Still, if she could stop Celestia from collecting them, it would greatly tip the balance of power in her favor.  Perhaps she could even destroy them.

Nightmare Moon cast a detection spell.  The raw power of the Elements should have made them stand out like a light in the darkness, but she was only getting a vague feeling of where they might be.  Celestia must have found a way to hide them.  She opened her wings and took to the sky, flying towards the dark forest on the edge of town.  The landscape had changed in her long absence, she did not recognize where she was but there was a small hint of familiarity.  Reaching out she felt a great rift at the center of the forest and she realized where she was.  This forest must have grown up around the very place she and Celestia had fought a millennium ago.

Only the great battle between her and her sister could have twisted the fabric of reality in the way she sensed.  Based on what she sensed, the Elements may still be at her former castle.  Now that she knew where she was going, getting there would be much easier.  She cast a teleport spell and disappeared.

Only to reappear in the exact same location.

"What is this?" she thought.

Teleporting to the castle should be trivial, unless... unless Celestia was blocking her.  That confirmed it then, it must be the location of the Elements, why else would her sister do such a thing.  Still, there was more than one way to get there.  Celestia may be able to block a teleportation spell, but she couldn't stop Nightmare Moon from flying there.  She heard a noise in the distance, somepony was following her.  She cast a dark shade to go investigate while she made her way to the castle.


#####


Nightmare Moon cursed loudly.  Her shade had discovered that the lavender unicorn from the nearby town had gathered up a group of friends and were making their way towards the castle.  She directed the shade to stop them, but every time, what should have been a fatal trap somehow ended up as a trivial encounter.  She could detect the stench of Celestia's magic through the senses of the shade.  Her sister was clearly intervening, saving the small group of ponies from destruction.  Nightmare Moon was torn, she could go back and deal with the group herself, but she was at the castle now, and still had not found the Elements.  The ruins were extensive and her inability to teleport was slowing down the search.

Nightmare Moon watched the group from a distance, the lavender one seemed to know where she was going.  Perhaps Celestia had entrusted this mortal pony to retrieve the Elements.  If so, all she had to do was wait and follow from a distance.  The group slowly made it's way through the ruins, and entered a decrepit building.

"The Elements of Harmony, we've found them." she heard the lavender unicorn announce.

"Impossible!" Nightmare thought.

From high above, Nightmare Moon could see into the room they were standing on.  It was empty.  The two pegasus ponies flew towards the rooms center and appeared to grab something.  The moment they touched the Elements the illusion spell faded.  Nightmare Moon could clearly see the Elements resting on the alter in the center of the room.  She spread her wings and dropped off the cloud she was observing from, flying towards the group.

The rest of the ponies left the room, leaving only the lavender unicorn and the Elements.  Nightmare Moon sensed that with the Elements removed from the alter, the magic restricting her ability to teleport was starting to fail.  She summoned a whirlwind to gather up the Elements and teleported, only to end up in another section of the ruins.  It appeared that the ward against teleportation was not completely gone.

Nightmare looked around the room, the young unicorn was laying on the floor at the other side of the room.  She must have jumped into the teleport.

"What a fool," she thought laughing manically.


#####


Twilight coughed, her lungs felt as if they were on fire.  She looked upward and saw Nightmare Moon across the room, holding the Elements in her magic.  Panicking, she did the only thing she could think of.  With a stomp of her hooves and a snort, she charged the great alicorn.

To her complete surprise, Nightmare Moon dropped the elements and started charging at Twilight.

"Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit," Twilight thought.  "What do I do?"

Twilight had one chance, she charged her horn and just before crashing into Nightmare Moon, she teleported over to the Elements.  The pain was intense, her horn felt like it was going to explode, her lungs burnt and her whole body ached.  She forced herself to stand and tried to give the spark of magic needed to set off the Elements.

"Come on!" she said, forcing more and more magic into her horn.

Nightmare Moon couldn't believe it, the pitiful mortal shouldn't have been able to elude her.  Quickly she turned around and saw the pony standing over the Elements.  They start to glow as the pony tried to bring them to life.  She quickly teleported back across the room, only to arrive as the unicorn was thrown backwards.  The Elements started to spark, small bits of magic jumped back and forth between them.

"No, no!" Nightmare moon said.

No mortal pony could wield the Elements alone!

Twilight watched, the sparking continued for a moment but then without warning, it died out.  She gasped as Nightmare Moon started to laugh.

Nightmare Moon reared up and brought her hooves down, channeling a massive amount of magic into her attack.  The Elements exploded into fragments.  It was done.

"You little foal!  Thinking you could defeat me?  Now you will never see your princess, or your sun!  The night will last forever!" she said, laughing at the cowering pony.

Twilight heard the sounds of her friends, approaching up the corridor behind her.  It was at that moment the sixth Element revealed itself.  Her eyes went wide and sparked with power.  Her mind was filled with understanding as the Elements imparted their wisdom upon her.

"You think you can destroy The Elements of Harmony just like that?  Well, you're wrong, because the spirits of The Elements of Harmony are right here!" she said.

The shards of the Elements rose from the ground.

As the unicorn continued to talk and the Elements reformed, Nightmare Moon looked on in shock.  It was only through her and Celestia's great power that they had been able to wield the Elements in the past.  No mortal pony should be able to wield them.  Unless... could these mortal ponies have somehow be the living embodiment of the Elements themselves?

"You still don't have the sixth Element! The spark didn't work!" she said, not quite believing it herself.

"But it did! A different kind of spark," Twilight turned to 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. The spark ignited inside me when I realized that you all are my friends!"

She turned back to Nightmare Moon.

"You see Nightmare Moon, when those Elements are ignited by the... the spark that resides in the heart of us all, it creates the sixth element. The element of... magic!"

Twilight and her friends rose into the air.  Nightmare Moon could feel raw power leaking from the ponies.  She quickly cast her counterspell, hoping that it would be enough to protect her from the Elements.

A brilliant white light encompassed the ponies as the Elements came to life.  They rose into the air, and a beam of pure Harmony surged forward and surrounded Nightmare Moon.  Time slowed down, as she concentrated on defending herself.  She poured more and more energy into the counterspell and for a split second it seemed as if her defenses would hold.  Then she felt Celestia's power surge into the room.  

Twilight's eyes flew open, glowing with godlike power as Celestia added her own magic into the spell.  

Nightmare Moon realized she had been tricked.  With the Elements of Harmony being wielded by the bearers, Celestia was free to add her own magic to the attack.  There was no way Nightmare could combat both the Elements and Celestia at the same time.  Celestia would imprison her for eternity.  Her defenses failed and an intense pain overcame her.  

"No! Noooo!" she said, screaming.

Nightmare Moon was immortal, eternal, she could not be ended.  But she felt it, she was dying.  It was completely impossible, but denying it didn't change the fact that it was happening.  Celestia must have found a way to bypass Nightmare's immortality.

In a final act of desperation she relinquished control of the heavens, gathered what power she had left and focused it all on one thing.  

Escape.

In a violent burst of magic, Nightmare Moon vanished from the room, a smoldering crater where she once stood was all that remained.
> Chapter 2
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

As the magic from the Element's attack slowly dwindled Celestia felt herself lose the connection with the Element of Magic that she had shared with Twilight. It was through this connection she had channeled a vast amount of her near limitless magic, adding her own power to the spell that was meant to cleanse Luna of the Nightmare's influence. Something felt wrong, for a moment she thought it was simply exhaustion. Weariness was something that affected mortals, not herself, but never before had she used so much power in such a short amount of time, there was bound to be some side effects. But as the seconds passed she quickly realized it was not fatigue that she was feeling. There was an emptiness inside her, an ache that was completely alien in nature. It was as if half of her soul had been ripped away and she was left as an incomplete being.

Suddenly it dawned on her, she knew what was wrong. Her connection to Luna, an unbreakable bond between the two immortal sisters that had survived even Luna's descent into madness and her banishment to the moon had been severed. She reached out with her magic and took back control of the heavens, raised the sun as quickly as possible, and teleported directly to the castle ruins.

Around her, Twilight and her friends stood looking at the new Elements. Luna was nowhere to be seen.

"Princess Celestia!" Twilight said, turning to face the large alicorn. "You're back!"

Celestia leaned down and gave her faithful student a quick hug.

"I never really left, my little pony," she said. "Where is Nightmare Moon?"

"We got her!" Rainbow said pointing across the room. "She was standing right there and then... well, I think she exploded!"

There was a large depression in the stone floor where Nightmare Moon once stood. The edges of it were glowing cherry red. Small bits of stone had melted and then fused to the area around the crater. Celestia gasped and then ran over to it.

A few small piles of slag were all that remained of Nightmare Moon's regalia. Sitting in the center of the crater was the twisted form of what was once her great helmet. Celestia reached out and touched it with her hoof. It crumbled at her touch. Tears streamed down her face and she collapsed in a heap.

Twilight and the rest of her friends rushed over.

"What's wrong Princess?" Twilight asked, she had never seen Celestia this upset before.

Celestia ignored Twilight and continued to sob, mumbling to herself.

"Luna, I didn't... I didn't mean... I... I..." she said, trembling.

Twilight approached Celestia and gently lay her head on the alicorn's side. The rest of the ponies stood around the two ponies, unsure of what to do.

Slowly Celestia began to regain her composure. Her labored breathing slowed and the flow of tears turned into a trickle.

She lifted her head and turned to Twilight.

"Thank you, Twilight," Celestia whispered, wrapping the small unicorn in a wing.

She picked herself up and looked out on the small crowd of ponies, eyes red and puffy.

"I am sorry my little ponies, that you had to see me like that," she said.

"I don't understand, we thought Nightmare Moon had captured you, or worse. Aren't you glad she's gone?" Twilight asked.

Celestia sighed, looking at Twilight, she answered sadly.

"It is good that you were able to stop Nightmare Moon, I saw the signs of her return, and I needed your help to stop her," Celestia said. "I knew that the rest of the bearers would be drawn to you, and it was only with their friendship that the six of you would be able to wield the Elements and stand up to her."

Twilight let out a small gasp, shocked at what Celestia had just revealed.

"You knew this was going to happen?"

"I knew that you and the rest of the Elements would be able to stop Nightmare Moon, but things did not turn out as I had planned. In order for me to explain, I must tell you about Nightmare Moon, more than you will find written in any book."

Celestia sat up straight, looking at the group of ponies before her.

"To properly set this tale, I will have to begin a long time ago. Know that real history differs from recorded history, and there are good reasons for that. Suffice it to say, that I know the true history of ponies because I was there for it."

Celestia's horn began to glow and an ethereal image took form in front of her.

"Contrary to the Hearth's Warming Eve story, Equestria was not founded after the banishment of the Windigos," Celestia said, looking over the group of ponies.

Six ponies appeared in a cave. Three were frozen solid, the other three huddled together for warmth while ghostly horses made of ice and snow circled above.

"It was then, after a long period of bloody war, that the leaders of three tribes finally made peace and then banished the Windigos. Unification did not happen till much later. The tribes were not united as one, but they did work together, and there was peace... for a time."

The ponies stared intently as Celestia continued her story, even Rainbow Dash who normally had the attention span of a hyperactive foal, sat quietly. The image changed, a group of pegasus ponies brought clouds forth to water some fields while a unicorn helped and earth pony farmer unload a cart.

"Several centuries after the tribes made peace, a great... I hesitate to call it evil, but a great force arose and the three tribes were thrown into chaos. This period of chaos lasted several thousand years, not even the strongest of ponies could stand up to the source of chaos, a draconequus known as Discord."

Again the image changed. Day and night changed seemingly at random. During the day houses floated in the air, strange creatures popped in and out of existence, ponies skidded down soapy streets and clocks ran backwards. When night fell, unspeakable horrors roamed the land, shadows beings that crept silently, attacking any pony caught in the open, fires raged and homes burned, only to vanish and have everything reset, the moment it switched back to day. 

"Then one day, almost 10,000 years ago, two alicorn sisters rose up against Discord, they sought to put an end to his reign." 

Two alicorns appeared in the image, one was clearly Celestia, the other had a dark blue coat, a mane and tail made of stars and a crescent moon for a cutie mark.  Discord appeared before the two and a great battle began. Celestia and her sister circled Discord, hitting him with powerful spells. In turn Discord retaliated sending waves of pure chaos to strike at the pair. But even with all of his power, he could not stop the two alicorns. They attacked in perfect unison, when Discord concentrated on Celestia, forcing her to switch to defensive magic, the blue alicorn would strike. 

"Working together, they could counter any attack that Discord threw at them, but as the battle raged on, they found that even their strongest spells did little but slow him down. As the avatar of chaos itself, Discord was a powerful immortal, resistant to nearly any attack. For the first time in their lives, they had come across a being that could stand up to their own power. So they fled the battle, and spent many years trying to find a solution."

The two alicorns took flight, abandoning their attack. The vision showed the sisters as they journeyed across the world, and beyond.

"They spent years constructing new spells, specifically designed to counter chaos magic, but this alone would not be enough. To add to their own magic, they sought out ancient artifacts of great power, but nothing they found could match their own magic, let alone assist them in the fight against Discord, until one day, in a distant land, they found the Tree of Harmony. As Discord was the avatar of chaos, so was the Tree the physical representation of Harmony, which is the very antithesis of chaos."

A magnificent crystal tree appeared before the ponies, branches glinting in the light. Even the image of the tree alone was enough to fill Twilight with a sense of inner peace.

"The sisters took the tree, and moved it to a secret location. There, they nurtured it and it grew in power until it eventually bore fruit, in the form of the Elements of Harmony. The Elements of Harmony amplified the great bond of friendship and love the sisters shared with each other. It was with this magic that they finally had a way to imprison Discord."

Discord faded into view again. The two sisters stood before him, elements circling them and a bright light built up. A rainbow beam appeared and struck Discord, turning him into stone.

"From the ashes of Discord's reign, the two alicorns united the remnants of pony civilization. It was then that the country of Equestria, was born."

The image shifted again. Now it showed a magnificent courtyard with thousands of ponies, unicorn, earth and pegasus alike, all bowing down to the two alicorns who were now wearing crowns.

Celestia shifted in place, it had been a long time since she's told anypony the true history of her Equestria. The tale brought up painful memories for her, she reached up with her forehoof and wiped a tear from her eye.

"As you could tell, I was one of those two alicorns. The other was my sister, Luna."

Twilight gasped. She had read virtually every history book in the Royal Archives, and there was no mention of Celestia having a sister.

"Luna and I took control of the heavens when Discord was banished. I ruled the day and she, the night. Equestria grew strong during this time, and Luna and I ruled in relative peace, but it was not to last. With precious few exceptions, ponykind have always been creatures of the day. Nighttime was when the horrors that roamed free during Discord's rule stalked the land and so ponies shunned the night and with it they shunned Luna."

The image showed Celestia sitting on her throne, thousands of ponies were waiting to see her. It changed to show Luna on the throne, a few dozen ponies waited their turn. Time passed and the few dozen turned into ten, the ten turned into three and the three turned into none. Luna sat alone, in an empty hall, weeping on her throne.

"As time passed, she grew more and more distant," Celestia said, sadly.

Fluttershy jumped back as Celestia stomped down hard, the stone beneath her hoof cracking.

"And I was too blind to see it!" she shouted with tears flowing freely.

Celestia turned to the nervous pegasus, apologized and then continued.

"I think... In the last century before Luna's fall, I was the only pony who still talked to her," she said, softly.

"After centuries of loneliness and despair, a dark madness came over Luna, it seized control of her body and mind and she transformed herself into Nightmare Moon. Nightmare Moon believed that she could force ponykind to love her and her night by banishing the day."

"She took control of the heavens and refused to allow the sun to rise. Without the warmth of the sun, crops would not grow, and all of Equestria would slowly freeze to death. I tried to talk to her, to get her to see reason, but the insanity had overcome her, it was too powerful. She refused to listen, and then she attacked."

Nightmare Moon faded into view, soaring though a dark sky. She fired off spell after spell as Celestia did her best to dodge or block them. All around the battlefield, the castle crumbled. Ponies galloped away screaming, but hundreds more died trying to escape the battle between the two titans.

"I couldn't stop her, I couldn't reason with her, she just kept attacking again and again until she managed to knock me out of the sky. I fell, landing just outside the room containing the Elements. I retrieved the Elements and I... I used them on my sister. While powerful, the Elements worked best against chaos, and so she did not suffer the same fate as Discord. Instead, she was imprisoned on the moon, and most of her power was sealed away."

Equestria's moon faded into view, the outline of a pony's head visible on the surface.

The image faded from view as Celestia ended the spell. She slumped forward and brought a hoof to her face, trying to cover the quiet sobs.

Twilight reached up and dried her own eyes. She looked around the room and saw that Celestia's sad story had affected everypony else as well. She reached over and hugged the Princess.

"I'm sorry for yer loss Princess, but what I don't understand is how come I've never heard of Luna before, seems to me what she did would be the kind of thing that would be remembered," Applejack said.

Celestia looked up at Applejack, her ears drooped low and her eyes downcast.

"After the battle, the word of Luna's betrayal spread, all across the land ponies tore down statues of her, burned schools and libraries founded by her, it was horrible. I couldn't bear for my sister to only be remember with hatred and fear. I did something that day that I still regret."

"I cast a spell that covered all of the world, stripping Luna from the memory of everypony. The spell also changed written records so there was no longer any mention of her."

The eyes of everypony in the room went wide. Altering the memories of a pony without their consent was highly illegal. Celestia had just admitted to doing that to a planet.

"Ponies only knew of Nightmare Moon and her banishment to the moon, not of her origins, in time even this faded into legend and she became known as the Mare in the Moon."

"What... What happened to Nightmare Moon then? Has she been banished again?" Twilight asked.

"I... I don't know. Luna and I could always sense each other, but I can no longer feel her presence," Celestia said, with a stutter.

"I spent the last 1000 years studying the Elements, trying to find a way to save my sister. Nothing I could think of would work, and I knew she would eventually escape her prison."

"I came to the conclusion that the only way I could save Luna was to destroy Nightmare Moon, and that was impossible."

"Why was it impossible?" Rainbow asked.

"I must ask that none of you repeat what I am about to say," Celestia said sternly.

"Of course, Princess," Twilight said, the rest of the ponies nodded in agreement.

"There has been much debate over the course of Equestria's history about my origin. While rare, there have been other alicorns, but although they tend to be long lived, they are still mortal ponies. Luna and I are... unique. We are not, as some have speculated, simply long lived, or ageless. Luna and I are immortal, we have always been and until today, I assumed we always would be."

Twilight's eyes widened in shock. One of the great mysteries of Equestria revolved around Celestia's origin. She had read dozens of books written about the very subject and to her knowledge Celestia had never answered anypony about her past. The only thing known for certain was that Celestia had been around for thousands of years. One of the less well known theories was that Celestia was a living goddess and there was a minor religion based around it.

Twilight bowed low.

"Princess are you... uh... are you a"

"Twilight, I know what you are going to ask and I will not answer. I am not here to discuss the religious choices of my ponies, that is their own business and I shall not interfere," Celestia said, interrupting the nervous pony.

There were some murmurs from the group, but Celestia ignored them.

"Nightmare Moon is Luna, twisted and corrupted by anger and hatred, but she is still the same pony, and it should not be possible for her to be destroyed."

Celestia looked down at the floor, unable to keep eye contact with any of the ponies in the room.

"Except, I found a way," she said quietly.
> Chapter 3
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Burning, it was all Luna knew.  Intense and painful burning.  It wasn't like anything she'd ever felt before.  Physical pain she pain she could deal with.  Daylight would reach into the hundreds of degrees on her moon, but this was nothing like that.  It wasn't her wings that burnt, or her hooves, or even her body.  This was a burning on the inside of her, and it shook her to the core.  Completely unbearable yet utterly inescapable.

She cried out, legs and wings thrashing wildly, desperate for some relief, but there was none.

After what seemed like an eternity, the pain slowly began to fade from unmanageable to an ache that spread throughout her entire body.

She opened her eyes, it was dark.  This should have meant little to the Princess of the Night, for even complete darkness hid nothing from her, but now she could not see.

She tried to cast a simple light spell, her horn flickered briefly, bringing with it a new kind of pain.  This pain she was familiar with.  It was the pain of complete magical exhaustion, she wouldn't be casting any spells for some time.

She tried to remember what happened, where she was and how she got there.

Memories came flooding into her mind.  The loneliness, her betrayal and uprising against Celestia, her imprisonment and escape and... her destruction?  It was as if a fog had lifted in her mind, and she suddenly could see clearly the consequences of her actions.

A primal scream echoed in the dark, as guilt overcame her.

Her face dripping with tears, she jumped up and ran blindly into the darkness.  She stumbled on the rocky floor and crashed back down to the ground.  Pain shot up from her leg.  Something was wet.  She lowered her head and sniffed.  It smelled like blood.  Her head flung back, recoiling in fear.

She was bleeding.  That wasn't possible.  She had never bled before.  What did Celestia do to her?

Eventually her cries died down to sniffles, as she sat there contemplating the absurdity of it all.  Mortals bled, not her.  But there she sat, blood still dripping out an impossible wound, unsure of what to do next.

The darkness slowly retreated as her eyes acclimated to the tiny amount of light available to them.  She could just make out the shape of the walls, combined with the rocky feel of the floor, she assumed she was in some kind of cave.

She turned her head back and forth, looking in all directions, a faint glow in the distance gave away what must be the exit.  Picking herself up, she hobbled towards the light, pain shooting up her leg every time she took a step.

Stumbling up the steep path, she climbed up out of the cavern.  A bitterly cold wind stung her face, she turned around and looked back.  With a bit more light, she was now able to see that the cavern entrance was tiny.  It was situated between two large rocky outcroppings jutting from the hillside.

With the small amount of light, she expected that the sky would be covered with clouds.  Looking upwards she was surprised to find it clear.  Something was wrong.  She looked again, and noticed that the moon was not where it should be.  She spun around, trying to find it, but it simply wasn't there.  Even the stars were wrong, before her insanity, she had worked hard at creating the most beautiful night sky imaginable.  She should have been able to see billions of points of light, but instead there was merely a hoofful.

Celestia had been very careful to not touch the night sky at all during Luna's absence.  The position of the stars had remained static for 1000 years, it was unlikely that she would suddenly go out and change everything now.  With no moon and different stars, Luna could think of only one thing.  Wherever she was now, it was not home.


#####


Princess Celestia had to end her story there.  It had taken the ponies nearly 16 hours to reach the castle ruins.  Most of them had been awake for almost two days straight.  She teleported the group back to Ponyville, it was then that Twilight noticed how exhausted Celestia looked.

Not knowing what else to do, she invited Celestia to stay at the library instead of returning to Canterlot.  Celestia agreed, court could wait, she was in no mood to deal with it.  Twilight offered to make Celestia some tea, but the alicorn refused.

"Go Twilight, get some rest.  I will be here when you wake up," she said.

Reluctantly Twilight headed off to bed.

She woke the next morning feeling refreshed.  True to her word, Celestia was downstairs in the library.  She still looked incredibly tired.

"Did you sleep at all Princess?" Twilight asked.

"No, Twilight, I had much to think about."

"Is there anything I can get you?"

"I think right now, the most important thing would be to gather your friends.  I still have not finished my story."

Twilight nodded, she got ready and headed out into Ponyville.  She found Pinkie Pie who helped her get a hold of the rest of the girls.  When they got back, Celestia was sitting in the exact same spot.

"Are you ready to continue?" Celestia asked.

The rest of the ponies nodded in agreement.

Celestia looked out of the group and sighed.

"To save Luna, I had to destroy Nightmare Moon.  But the issue was complicated.  As I said, Nightmare Moon was Luna, twisted and insane, but still Luna."

"In truth, I did not discover how to destroy Nightmare Moon.  Instead, I found that using a combination of my own powers and the Elements of Harmony, I could burn away the madness that afflicted Luna."

"What exactly does that mean?" Twilight asked.

"The insanity that created the Nightmare would be purged, that personality, in essence would cease to exist.  Her true nature would reassert itself.  This would not fix the original problem, Luna's feelings of abandonment, but it would allow her to see reason once more.  With the madness purged, I would be able to get her to stand down," Celestia said.

"I... I tried to reason with her once already.  When Nightmare Moon first showed herself, I tried to reach out to my sister, apologize for how I neglected her in her loneliness and I promised to make amends.  I was such a foal for ignoring her issues for so long, I hoped that she would listen to me, but she was too far gone.  Words meant nothing to Nightmare Moon," Celestia said with a sniffle.

"To be able to succeed would require nearly all of my power.  The spell I cast has left me weak.  It is taking all I have just to maintain the orbits of the sun and the moon.  It will take years to regain my strength, but it would have been a small price to pay, if it had worked."

The group of ponies shifted nervously at this statement.  Not just Equestria, but the entire planet depended on Celestia.  Without her managing the day and the night, life would quickly end.

"What went wrong your highness?" Fluttershy asked.

"I do not know, but I will find out,"  Celestia said.

"Since I had to devote so much of my power to my portion of the spell, I would be unable to wield the Elements.  I had no solution for this, until I met a small filly, 15 years ago," she said, looking at Twilight.

Twilight's cocked her head in confusion.

"Me?" she asked.

"Yes Twilight, the day you received your cutie mark, when you were trying for the entrance exam for my school.  That is when I realized that you were the solution.  As I embody the day and Luna the night, you embodied the Element of Magic."

"I later learned of another event that happened that day, in fact it is what triggered your magical outburst, but I do not think you and your friends have yet found out about the connection."

Celestia turned to Rainbow Dash.

"It was you, Rainbow Dash.  The day you shattered the sound barrier and created the first sonic rainboom. It set off a chain of events that lead to every pony in this room receiving their cutie marks, almost simultaneously."

Rainbow Dash sputtered in confusion.

"Buh?" was all she managed get out.

"You already know about yourself and Fluttershy, but Applejack, Rarity, Twilight Sparkle and Pinkie Pie all received their cutie marks as a result of witnessing the effects of the sonic rainboom.  I suggest you share your cutie mark stories with each other at another time.  It will make for an interesting tale."

The ponies in the room stared at Celestia, they weren't sure what to say next.  Rainbow had a strange look on her face that could only be described as confusion mixed with pride.  She knew the sonic rainboom had been awesome, but the ruler of all Equestria had just told her it was even more amazing than she realized.

"Once I had found out about Twilight, it was easy to detect the rest of the Elements.  I realized that with your help, I would be able to free my sister."

"Why... Why didn't you ever tell me?" Twilight asked, she wasn't sure if she should be angry or happy at this news.

"Bearing the Elements against Nightmare Moon would be extremely dangerous.  When you were young, I still was not sure if you would be strong enough, and I would not put you in harm's way if you were not.  When you grew older, I debated telling you, but there was still great danger in you knowing.  If any of you were to let slip your knowledge she would have killed you immediately.

"I wouldn't have told her anything!" Rainbow puffed up with pride.  "You can count on me Princess."

Celestia smiled at the blue pegasus.

"I do not doubt your loyalty, but Nightmare Moon, like Luna can enter the dreams of anypony.  There she can lean things from your subconscious whether you want to share that knowledge or not.  Only I have enough power to block her from my dreams.  In the end, I decided it was better for you to not know, because of this she treated you as a minor annoyance rather than a real threat."

"What about our trip through the Everfree Forest to find the Elements?  That was pretty darn dangerous," Applejack said.

"Indeed it was, and more so than you know.  Nightmare Moon had created a shade to stop you, I could not eliminate the traps it had set entirely, not without alerting Nightmare Moon to my presence, but I was able to... twist the traps, greatly reducing the danger."

"You were helping us?" Fluttershy asked.

"Yes, I did as much as I could without making myself known," Celestia said.

"To get back to my original point, with the Elements of Harmony being wielded by you six ponies, I would be able to cast my spell and free Luna from the Nightmare's hold.  Except, something must have gone wrong.  Luna should have been present after the spell faded away.  It would have stripped her of nearly all her powers, she would have been weak, practically mortal, but she still should have been there."

Celestia's head drooped down to the floor.

"I spent the rest of the night going over my spell.  I am sure it should not have been able to destroy her.  It is not possible, no matter how much energy I dumped into the spell, our immortality is infallible.  But if she wasn't destroyed, where did she go?"

"May I go over the spell with you?" Twilight asked.

Celestia smiled, her faithful student had always been eager to learn new things, and to lend a helping hoof.

"It will be the most complicated spell you will ever see, but yes Twilight, you may.  Perhaps you will see something I did not, a second pair of eyes is always helpful and who better than the Element of Magic to assist me."


#####


The wind outside the cavern, combined with the low temperatures was chilling Luna to the bone.  She crawled back into the hole, getting as far away from the entrance as she could.  It wasn't much warmer down there, but at least there was no wind.  She cried herself to sleep.

She woke up the next morning, tears frozen to her face.  She looked at her hoof, it was covered in dried blood, but otherwise felt better.  There was a good amount of light entering the cavern so she decided to make her way back out and have a look around.

She climbed up out of the hole and turned her head.  There were gray mountains off in the distance, she was standing at the bottom of a rocky hill.  What she had thought was two large boulders was actually one boulder leaning up against the hill.  The remains of trees, long since dead were scattered around.  Most of the land was covered in a thick blanket of snow, but wind had swept the area around her cave clear.

She tried to pick up some of the snow with her magic.  Her horn glowed faintly, the pain was far less than it had been the night before, but she still couldn't manage to do anything useful.

She looked up towards the eastern sky and confirmed what she had feared.  The young yellow star that orbited her world was nowhere to be found.  In its place a dim red orb rose from under the horizon.  This was not her home, this was somewhere else.  

She decided to climb the hill, to see if she could get a better view of the area.

It was slow going, the snow was very thick in most areas.  Where it was not tended to be icy.  The first time she slipped her wings flared out as she tried to keep her balance.  A horrible pain shot through her left wing and she fell over.  Picking herself up off the ground, she looked at her wing.  The joint burned with pain and there was a deep gash, it may be dislocated, but she wasn't able to tell.  She had been in so much pain before that she hadn't noticed.  Flying was off the table until her magic was strong enough to heal injury.

"First the bleeding and now this?"  Her injuries worried her, it was one thing to be able to feel pain, but lasting physical injuries should have been impossible.  She had no idea how to deal with them, she hoped as her magic recovered she could do something about them.  She never had to use a healing spell on herself.

Reaching the top of the hill she looked around, and saw more of the same.  The mountain she had been able to see from the bottom of the hill was part of a range that started in the west and circled all the way around to the eastern side of the hill.  The northern most mountain was dotted with green and a forest lay at its feet.  The rest of the range was covered in snow, if there was life underneath it wasn't visible.

Where there was a forest, there may be water, and food.  Under normal circumstances she didn't need sustenance to survive, but in her current state she had no idea if that was still true.  If anything food would quell the pain in her stomach. She began the long walk towards the northern mountain.

She spent most of the journey trying to figure out how she got here.  Back in the castle, she had been trying to defend against those six ponies wielding the Elements of Harmony.  It was a brutal assault, but her defenses were holding.  The she felt Celestia's presence grow, Celestia must had added her own power to the attack.  Luna's defenses had dropped almost instantly.  She had expected to be instantly transported back to the moon, in a prison even stronger than the last, but instead, something else had happened.

A pain worse than she had ever felt, overcame her, but with that pain, the rage and the madness started to burn away.  She didn't even notice it until after she woke up again, but when she did, the evil of her actions was unmistakably apparent.

She could remember the last conversation she had with Celestia a thousand years ago.  Celestia had begged Luna to stop, she would do anything to have her sister back, but Nightmare Moon had no interest in petty words.  Now, with the insanity gone, it became clear that Celestia was not the enemy, she had been trying to help.  Luna wanted nothing to do with Nightmare Moon anymore.  She needed to find her way home, find Celestia and beg for forgiveness.

But how had she gotten here, wherever here was?  In the last moments of consciousness, she threw all of her power into one goal.  Trying to escape what she thought, as impossible as it sounded, was her death.  It was then that she remember trying to cast the teleport spell to escape.  Still, that didn't explain where she was now.  Teleports were generally limited in distance, but given the amount of power Luna had dumped in to the spell, it was possible she could have ended up on another planet.  Except, with a teleport spell you need to have some idea of where you were going.  An image, a memory, even a description would work, and Luna knew she had never been here before.  A blind teleport was far more likely to dump her into space than on a habitable planet.

Something else was wrong as well, Celestia and Luna were twin immortals, and she and her sister shared a magical bond.  Anywhere in the universe, Luna should be able to feel Celestia's presence, but here she could feel nothing.  At first she had dismissed it since her powers were so thoroughly drained, but as they slowly returned, she continued to feel an emptiness that she had never felt before.  She did not know what to think of that.

It had been early in the day when Luna set out on her journey.  Now the sun was starting to set.  The weather had not gotten any warmer, but she had finally reached the edge of the forest a couple of hours earlier.  She made her way in, looking for anything at all that she could eat.  She didn't expect to find running water in this frozen wasteland, but as her magic grew in strength she could always melt some snow.

She headed deeper into the forest.  Many of the trees were dead or dying, but there were still a number of healthy looking ones.  The snow was a little less deep, as the tress provided some cover from the elements.  Small tracks dotted the surface of the snow, more signs of life, though Luna still had not see anything.  As the sun continued to drop down below the horizon, Luna realized her chances of finding food were growing smaller and smaller.

It was night now, again the sky was clear, but again there was no moon.  The last rays of sunshine had just dropped behind the mountains to the west.  Her night vision was not fully restored, but she could see more clearly than she had been able to the last night.  She was deep into the forest however, that all she could see was trees, trees and more trees.  Only her innate sense of direction let her know she wasn't traveling in circles. 

To her left she heard a strange noise.  It was a cracking squelching sound, she turned towards it to investigate.  She crested a small hill, at the bottom was the source of the sound.

Covered in white fur that blended in very well with the snow covered forest floor was some kind of creature she had never seen before.  It looked almost like a timber-wolf made of bone had been crossed with a giant dog.  It was almost as big as she was.  Large bony spikes protruded from its fur.  It opened its mouth and Luna saw jagged teeth and a large pair of fangs.  She glanced around and quickly realized that there was a whole pack of these creatures.  

They were all sitting around the bloody carcass of something, it was too mangled to get a good image.  The cracking sound rang out again as she watched one of the creatures rip into a limb and crunch through a bone with a powerful bite.

Luna backed off as quietly as she could, she didn't want to find out what would happen if these creatures attacked her in her weakened state.  If she could bleed... could she die?  She had no idea.

She had almost made it to the bottom of the hill when her back hoof slipped on a piece of ice, she fell forward and landed with a thud, slamming into a tree.

She heard a noise, it sounded like a wheezing growl, she turned and saw one of the creatures standing at the top of the hill looking down at her.  She quickly picked herself up and began to gallop in the opposite direction as fast as she could.

Tree branches whipped past her, stinging her face, the whole pack was following her now.  She had no idea where to go, so she kept running east.

"I should have stayed in that damn cave," she thought as she dodged between trees, one of the creatures snapping at her rear hooves.

One of the creatures managed to catch up with Luna and snapped at her.  It caught a piece of her front leg and tore away a small chunk of flesh.

Luna went tumbling down, as she did she let out a scream so loud that the pack of creatures stopped pursuit for a moment.  Then they smelled the blood and resumed their advance.  Four of them circled wide and cut off Luna's escape while another three more advanced towards the helpless pony.

Luna struggled to get up, her front leg burned with agony.  All around she could hear snarling and growling.  Fight or flight instincts started to take over, but Luna was not one for flight.  Besides with her wing injured and her magic near useless, escape was unlikely, all that was left was to fight.

> Chapter 4
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Selene had just sat down to eat dinner. Rabbit again. What a lovely way to celebrate her 10th year on this frozen hellhole. Well, not really rabbit, she had no idea what the animal was actually called, but coming up for names of creatures on this godforsaken alien world was not near the top of her priorities. It was small, it hopped around, it was a rabbit.

Before she skinned and gutted the thing it was even sort of cute. 10 year old Selene would have been horrified to see what 24 year old Selene had just done. Not 14 year old Selene though, 14 year old Selene had been the only survivor of a crash on a mysterious alien planet, she learned quickly that survival depended on ignoring her inner desire to collect cute animals. Instead she had to overcome her sense of squeamishness, as what once would have made a fuzzy pet, now kept her fed.

She got up, and walked over to the water dispenser and filled up her glass. Most of the ships functionality had been destroyed in the crash. The hull, thankfully was still mostly intact. Unfortunately, the ships mess, the only room, that still had power was the one that was also open to the outside. The holes were large enough that she couldn't use any of the emergency hull plates as patches. The ones that would fit were way too heavy for her to move. Instead she had to settle for wood and smaller wall plates salvaged from some of the wrecked rooms. It certainly wasn't going to be space-worthy, but it kept out the local wildlife.

Power had been a problem for a while. The emergency batteries that were running the ship after the crash were good for 1 year. The ship had a small shuttle, which under ideal circumstances she could have used to escape, but the crash had wrecked it. While the shuttle was wrecked, the shuttle's power generator had survived remarkably intact. 

Thankfully her dad was the ship's mechanic and had been teaching how ships worked for most of her life. Even so, it had taken the young girl almost a year, nearly the entire lifespan of the emergency batteries, to clean up debris from the crash, gain access to main engineering, run a fuel line from the ship's tank to the shuttle's generator, and then patch the generator into the ship's main power lines. The little generator couldn't power up the whole ship, but she did get full power restored to the mess and a number of surrounding rooms, plus minimal power throughout most of the ship.

With the limited power she had, she was able to restore heat, water and a few other ship components. Well, she sort of had water. The ship's food dispensers were damaged in the crash but using a heating element and a water tight container, she was able to melt ice and snow into drinkable water. And if it was one thing this planet didn't have in short supply, it was ice.

The winters here seemed to grow worse with each passing year. When she had landed, the ground was covered in snow half the year. No it seemed like at least two-thirds of the year was consumed by frozen winds and giant snow storms. Years ago, when she had managed to get the primary computer back online, trying to find out what caused the crash, she saw that the ship had landed quite close to the equator. If this was the weather near the equator, she was glad the ship hadn't landed near the poles, the planet must be in the middle of some sort of ice age or something.

Selene had to go out and get more ice at least once a day. It wasn't too hard, thankfully the ship had landed more or less upright. The lower levels of the ship were buried in the frozen dirt, but there was an emergency airlock just outside the mess that exited at ground level.

She had just sat down again, when she heard what sounded like a person screaming. She dropped her cup in surprise. It had been years since she thought she had heard other people on the ship. This was different though, this sound felt real, and it had gone on long enough that she was almost positive she wasn't hearing things. In fact, it had sounded like it was coming from outside. That would be a first.

In the 10 years she had been stuck here she had never once run into another person. As far as she could tell this world was completely devoid of intelligent life, discounting herself.

She heard another scream. This was too much. Could someone else have crashed here? Could someone have detected her ship and landed to rescue her, only to run into trouble? She had to investigate.

Selene ran over to the locker across the room, opened it up and grabbed her rifle, a magazine, and a box of cartridges. She loaded up five rounds as quickly as she could, then grabbed her heavy winter coat. Boots and gloves went on next and then lastly the security helmet. That was the most important piece for going out at night, the clear visor covering he face amplified low light, allowing her so see nearly as clearly as daytime.

As soon as she got outside, she could hear snarling and growling coming from the other side of the small hill to her left. It sounded like bone-wolves - okay she had named some of the wildlife - she almost turned around right on the spot. Going out at night up against bone wolves was not generally a safe thing to do. They tended to hunt in packs and were pretty good at surrounding their prey.

But no, if she turned around now, she would never know what that scream was. As quietly as she could she ran up the hill, slowing down to a creep as she approached the top. Looking down through the trees, she caught a flash of a bone-wolf in the distance, confirming her suspicions. They were hunting something... or someone.

She made her way partially down the hill, the trees near the top were fairly thick here, so she couldn't get a good picture of what was going on. As the trees started to thin out, she heard a yelp and saw a bone-wolf flying through the air. It impacted on the side of a tree, the branch it hit shattered and it dropped to the ground with a thud. Its head was twisted at an unnatural angle, it wasn't getting back up again.

She looked in the direction that the bone-wolf had come from and saw another one laying on the ground. The snow in front of it was a dark red, covered in a massive amount of blood. There was a massive puncture in its throat that looked like it went all the way out to the other side.

A loud snarl caught her attention, turning towards the noise, she saw what she hoped was the rest of the pack in a clearing. They were advancing on a... a... a...

For a moment, her brain fizzled and sputtered as it tried to process the image she was seeing. Multiple thoughts fired off simultaneously, each struggling to grab her full attention.

"Is that a pony?" 

"Are those wings?"

"Is that a horn?"

"Oh my god, it's really cute."

"It's hurt!"

"I heard someone scream, did someone ride it here? Where are they?"

"Oh shit, it's gonna die!"

The last one she said out loud as Selene's brain finally kicked back into gear. She raised her rifle, took aim at the bone-wolf closest to the pony and fired.

BANG! The bone-wolf closest to the pony dropped to the ground as a small spray of red mist exploded out of its chest.

She pulled the bolt back, ejecting the brass and then pushed it forward, feeding in another round. She quickly counted the remaining wolves. There were four, she had four rounds left in the magazine. No room for error.

Aim, squeeze the trigger, BANG!

A hit, the bone-wolf dropped.

Another shot and another hit, but then the last bone-wolf turned towards her and charged.

She fired and missed. 

Reaching into her coat pocket, she grabbed the box of cartridges and tried to fumble it open with one hand. The bone-wolf was already half way to her when she finally got a cartridge out of the box. She nearly dropped it in the snow when she reached to the bolt to eject the last piece of brass. With no time to load the magazine, she quickly pushed the cartridge into the chamber and closed the bolt.

Just as she was bringing the rifle up, the creature jumped forward, she squeezed the trigger while it was in mid-air, not taking time to aim. The bone-wolf landed on top of her, pinning her to the ground and knocking the rifle out of her grasp. She had one arm free and she started punching the creature as hard as she could. When it didn't fight back, she realized she must have scored a hit.

Selene struggled to push the creature off, she didn't know for sure there wasn't more of them and she had to be ready. She managed to roll a bit and the dead bone-wolf started to slide off, most of its weight was no on the ground instead of her, and she slowly pulled herself out from under the rest of it.

She heard a noise while she was working on freeing her leg, and saw the pony-creature walk slowly over to her. It stood above her and started to raise its hoof. For a brief moment she thought it was going to step on her.

"10 years of survival and I'm about to die, stepped on by a pony," flashed through her brain.

The pony lowered its hoof and pushed the bone-wolf off of her leg. This act in and of itself would have been fairly surprising to Selene, but before she had time to register what the pony had just done, it reached its hoof back down and picked Selene up off the ground.

Selene had no idea what was going on, she clearly felt a the pony pull her up. She looked down at the pony's legs.

"Yep, that's a hoof," she thought.

Then, in what must have been an effort to confuse her further, the pony picked up the rifle and handed it... hoofed it? to Selene.

Her brain seized up trying to process what was going on, and she felt a little wobbly. She decide that, perhaps, sitting back down would be best. Selene dropped back down into the snow covered ground, and looked at the pony again.

The pony looked down at Selene with what was clearly a look of concern, and then, because she wasn't confused enough already, the pony opened its mouth and said something. 

Selene's ears kept telling her brain something more important was going on than hooves but the brain was having none of that. Instead it ignored the auditory input and went back to thinking about hooves.

"Magnets? It must be magnets," she thought. "But wait, the rifle barrel is magnetic, but I'm not."

The pony repeated its statement.

Finally deciding to give up on hooves, Selene's brain shifted attention back to the pony. She looked up as it repeated its statement a third time. By now her brain was done wasting time trying to figure things out, so instead it gave her mouth permission to respond, which it did in a clear and articulate manner.

"Wha?"

The pony rolled its eyes and repeated itself a fourth time. Selene didn't recognize the language, but it was clearly words, not whinny or neighs or any other sounds a pony was supposed to make.

"I don't... understand you?" she said, questioning her own grip on reality.

The pony shrugged but didn't say anything else.

Selene decided she had enough of sitting in the snow, so she picked herself up off the ground. She took her rifle, checked to make sure the safety was on and slung it over her shoulder. She still wasn't sure that the pony thing was alone, so she started walking around, she saw bone-wolf tracks and hoof tracks, there was nothing else that indicated a rider had run off into the woods. Also the pony wasn't wearing any sort of saddle combined with the lack of tracks Selene guessed that there was nobody else around.

Selene wasn't quite ready to deal with a talking pony, so she took a quick walk around the small clearing, checking to make sure all of the bone-wolves were actually dead. Most of them were sickly and thin, but two of them appeared to have a good amount of meat on them. She's have to go back to the ship and retrieve a sled.

Bone-wolves were tough and stringy, but food was far too scarce in this place for Selene to be picky.

She turned around and started to head back to the ship. She motioned for the pony to follow her.

It seemed to understand what Selene wanted and it trotted over to her. 

The pair walked back up the hill in silence, when they reached the top, Selene pointed out the ship.

"We're going there," she said.

She continued down the hill with pony following close behind her. There was a small log shed built next to the ship. Selene used it to store animals that she caught in her traps or from hunting before she was able to process them. One good thing about the constant cold was she could store way more meat and not worry about it spoiling. Space in the ship's kitchen was limited as she only had partial power running to the food storage systems. 

She grabbed a hand-built sled hanging off the wall of the shed. She used the sled to drag animals that were too heavy for her to carry back to be processed. She turned around and headed back to the clearing. Picking the two largest bone-wolves she dragged their corpses onto the sled. It was tough work and took her a while, the pony stood by and watched, looked really confused and slightly disgusted.

The bone-wolves loaded up she grabbed the rope slung it around her shoulder and tried to pull. Even with all her body weight leaning into it, the sled was barely moving, there was no way she was going to be able to get it back up the hill. The pony saw her struggling and walked over.

It grabbed the rope in its mouth and pulled. The sled jolted forward. Selene was impressed, it wasn't even leaning into the pull and already the sled was moving more than she could get it to.

Working together the pair pulled the sled back to the shed. Selene did her best to get the two carcasses stuffed into the shed. Processing could wait till tomorrow, she was exhausted.

She walked over to the ship's airlock and keyed in the code to open the airlock door. 

"Follow me," she said to the pony, pointing into the ship.

The pony hesitated, took a moment to look back and forth at the snowy landscape and then followed Selene in.

Selene made her way to the mess, the pony trailing behind her. She took off her coat and winter gear and dumped it in a pile on the floor. Then she removed her helmet and walked over to the storage locker. She put her rifle in the locker and locked it.

Getting shot by a curious alien pony thing playing with her rifle was not how she wanted to go.

She figured now was as good a time as any for introductions.

She looked at the pony and pointed at herself.

"I'm Selene"

The pony cocked its head to the side.

"Seh-lean?"

Well, that confirmed it, either this pony-thing could really talk or she had finally lost it.

The pony lifted a hoof and indicated at itself. It then said something that sounded like a combination of words and musical notes. Selene had no hope of imitating it, so she just nodded. It was then when she saw a deep gash on the pony's leg. That was not a good sign. Blood-wolves had a venom in their saliva that caused the area around the wound to necrotize. She had a spray in her medkit that could neutralize the poison, but she had no idea if it would work on the pony, or if it would make things worse. 

She pointed at the gash and slowly walked towards the pony.

"I need to look at that."

Upon close inspection, it didn't look as bad as it originally had. The chunk of flesh that had been ripped away was fairly large, but surprisingly, it had already stopped bleeding, unusual in a wound of this size. If it wasn't for the fresh blood, Selene would have assumed it was a few days old. She took a few minutes to inspect the rest of the pony. It had a few scrapes, probably from branches as it ran away from the bone-wolves, but no other bite marks.

Selene walked over to a locker and opened it up, she pulled out a medkit and dug around a bit getting everything she needed.

"I need to clean that wound," she said, showing the pony the supplies she had pulled out of the kit. 

Very carefully, she reached toward the bite. The pony fidgeted slightly, but otherwise did not interfere as Selene gently rinsed away the dried blood and cleaned the wound as best as she could. It was too large to stitch closed, so she bandaged it up as best as she could. A wild animal would never let her do this, not that she had any more doubts about the pony being a mindless beast.

Her inspection was the first good look she had gotten to take at the creature. She, and Selene knew it was a she now, the lack of clothing hid nothing, only superficially resembled a pony, in fact she looked more like a pony toy Selene had played with as a little girl than an actual horse. The pony's eyes were huge, with a teal ring surrounding a large pupil. She had a purplish-blue coat and a light blue mane and tail. It must have taken a huge amount of die, because there was no way those colors were natural.

There were a few small dark splotches running up the pony's rear legs, and there was a large dark splotch on both sides of her... butt? flank? Selene wasn't sure of the technical terms. Both of the darker areas had a white crescent moon inside them. Selene had no idea how that had been done, the die job was absolutely perfect. The boundary between the dark splotch and the moon was extremely crisp, not a single hair was out of place and as far as she could tell, both moons were identical and exactly the same size.

The pony did indeed have both wings and a horn. The horn ended in a very nasty looking point and there were spots of blood on it. She had a feeling she knew what had happened to the second bone-wolf. The wings were closed but even without seeing them fully extended, Selene knew that there was no way they were large enough to support a being of the pony's size. Maybe they were fake. She reached a hand forward slowly and touched one of the feathers. It was incredibly soft, and clearly real.

The pony's wing extended slowly. It was much larger than Selene had originally thought but there was still no way this thing could fly. The pony must weigh at least 200 lbs. Maybe more, it had to be heavily muscled to help her pull the sled with such ease.

Selene let out a yawn, the last couple of hours had been extremely tiring.

The pony followed suit, yawns apparently being contagious across species.

It may be some strange alien creature but Selene wasn't about to turn away the only other intelligent being on the planet just because she couldn't communicate with her. Besides, how could something that adorable be dangerous?

"I need to sleep, you can stay here I guess," she said.

She ran out of the mess to one of the rooms she used for storage and grabbed some blankets and a few pillows. She went back into the mess and dragged some tables out of the way clearing a large space for the pony. She set the blankets down and tossed the pillows onto the makeshift bed.

Actually she wasn't sure if ponies slept standing up or not.

"OK, I'm going to be in my room, it's the third door in the hallway on the right," she said pointing to the hall outside of the mess.

She walked out of the mess and started walking down the hallway. A clopping sound on the metal floor followed her. She turned around and the pony right behind her.

"No pony, I need to sleep."

She kept walking to her room, and the pony continued to follow. When she got to her room she opened the door and pointed at the bed.

"See? Sleep," she said.

Apparently taking this as an invitation, the pony hopped up on her bed and curled up right in the middle. Even though the pony was shorter than Selene while standing up she was quite a bit longer. The pony was way too large for Selene's small bed. There wasn't any room left for Selene at all. 

"Damn it."
> Chapter 5
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Luna woke up feeling much better. Her wing still hurt, but the pain of the bite was gone entirely. She was still extremely hungry and her throat was parched, but for the first time since arriving on this planet she was warm.

The previous night had been very interesting. First she had been attacked by viscous creatures and then a small bipedal creature, clearly intelligent had shown up to help her. Perhaps it was a native of this world. It led her to a strange looking structure invited her in and even offered her a bed.

Luna felt somewhat guilty about this, she didn't deserve to be treated so kindly by a complete stranger, even if that stranger had no idea about her past. Still, after a thousand years on the moon, the bed was too inviting to pass up.

Thinking back to the structure that she now was in, she wondered what it was. Even in the darkness of the night, she could tell that it had fallen into disrepair. In all honesty, it looked like the thing had fallen from the sky, but Luna had no idea how something so large would have been up in the sky without a massive amount of magic holding it there.

She didn't sense any magic in the immediate area at all though. She hadn't last night from Seh-lean, nor from the structure itself, though that might explain why it had apparently crashed to the ground.

Speaking of magic, it was time to put hers to the test. She focused on the pillow in front of her, her horn lit up and the pillow floated into the air, she felt only a slight ache in her horn. It was a significant improvement, not being able to use her magic had left her feeling rather handicapped. It would take longer for her to regain her full strength, but it was obviously improving.

She looked around the room wondering where Seh-lean had gone. Not seeing the creature she stood up and stretched her good wing. The door to the room was open, so she walked into the long corridor. She heard a noise coming from the large room across the hallway. She walked over towards the noise and saw Seh-lean sitting down at a table eating something.

Luna remembered how Seh-lean had gone back to collect the carcasses of those monsters after the fight. 

"She must be a meat eater," Luna thought to herself.

Carnivorous races were not unknown in Equestria. Griffons primarily ate meat, dragons ate both meat and gems, and although fairly rare, some ponies ate it. It might have been taboo in Equestria, but she personally had no problem with it. Before her banishment, many ponies believed that Luna, as the evil ruler of the night, was a ravenous flesh eater.  Every night, she'd supposedly fly out and get her hooves on pets, livestock, or even wild animals, just to feed her insatiable lust for meat. The truth of the matter was Luna couldn't stand the taste of the stuff. Ironically it was Celestia that was a fan, though she never stalked the countryside.  Luna tried to think back... how many times had her sister arranged a diplomatic meeting in the Griffon Kingdom, just so she could get her hooves on some bacon? Luna had lost count.

Still, desperate times called for desperate measures, Luna felt hungry enough that anything would be welcome at this point. She trotted over to Seh-lean eager to see if she could get something to eat.

Selene looked up from her breakfast and saw the pony standing there watching her eat breakfast. 

"She's probably hungry," Selene thought to herself.

That was going to be an issue. Selene was pretty sure horses didn't eat meat, or at least didn't prefer it. The hydroponic bay of the ship had been almost totally destroyed in the crash. None of the equipment had been left working. The only thing that had really survived was the seed storage area.

Selene was sitting on enough variety of seeds to start up a small colony, but nothing would grow on this damn planet. At first she thought it was the near perpetual winter, but even after spending a year retrofitting one of the ships bays to grow plants in, and hauling in hundreds of pounds of soil, she couldn't get anything to grow.

For the first year she had lived off of stored food and emergency rations. That gave her time to learn how to hunt and by the end of that year she was getting fairly good at bringing in an adequate supply of meat. But that's all she could get. The last of the emergency rations ran out before her 16th birthday.

All she had now was meat and a dwindling supply of vitamin supplement tablets, salvaged from the medical bay.

"Still," she thought to herself. "Whatever this creature is, she just looks like a pony, maybe meat will be fine."

Selene stood up and walked over to the small kitchen. She grabbed a plate and threw a few strips of rabbit jerky on it. The pony was watching her though the hole into the kitchen area. She set the plate down on the counter and then picked up a large glass and filled it with water.

She was about to walk back when she looked at the pony, then at the glass and grabbed a large bowl instead. She dumped the water into the bowl and put the glass on the counter. She carefully walked back out into the main area carrying the bowl and the plate of jerky and set them down on the table. Chairs weren't going to work, so she pulled a couple of them out of the way, clearing a spot next to her.

"Do you want to eat?" she asked, and pointed at the food then pointed at the pony.

The pony walked up to the table, she eyed the jerky suspiciously and then turned to look at the bowl. Then she turned around and looked back at the glass Selene had put down on the counter.

Her horn lit up and both it and the glass were surrounded with a pale blue aurora. The glass floated through the air and set itself down on the table. Then the bowl floated over to the glass and tipped sideways, letting the water flow into the glass.

Selene dropped the piece of jerky she was holding and just stared at the pony. The pony, seemingly unaware that it was doing something impossible, floated the glass over to her mouth and took a sip.

Selene watched the glass continue to float in front of the pony. She hesitantly reached out and poked at the glass with a finger. The glowing aurora felt tingly, but the glass didn't move.

The pony looked at her and said something in its musical language. She then set the glass down and poked at the jerky with a hoof.

Selene then watched as the pony picked up a piece of jerky and lifted it to her nose. Selene wasn't sure which was stranger, watching the jerky stick to the hoof when there was nothing visibly holding it there, or the impossible range of motion the pony was displaying with her foreleg.

Luna wasn't sure what the strange stuff in front of her was, but it smelled awful. Still, she was starving and bad food was better than no food. So, she steeled herself and then took a bite.

It took all her willpower to not spit the foul substance back out. If she hadn't just seen Seh-lean eat some of the same thing, she would have assumed it was poison. For all she knew, edible to Seh-lean was poison to her.

Against her better judgment, she forced it down anyway, she suspected she would heal faster if what remained of her powers weren't busy sustaining her though starvation.

She finished the plate, wincing at every bite. When she had finally finished, she guzzled the rest of her water, trying to wash the taste away.

Trying to distract herself from the aftertaste of breakfast, she began to inspect Seh-lean. It was the first real good look she was able to get. The night before, in the forest, Seh-lean had been wearing heavy winter clothing. The reason for this quickly became apparent. Seh-lean was sitting at the table wearing what looked like her races version of short pants and a shirt. Seh-lean's arms and legs were mostly visible and her skin was bare. Seh-lean seemed to have no coat at all. The only place Luna could see any hair at all was on the top of Seh-lean's head. The mane didn't even extend down her neck.

When Seh-lean stood up, it was a bit taller than Luna was, not including her horn. Luna wasn't quite used to that, apart from Celestia, she had been the tallest pony around. Still, she had noticed she had lost some height, it was almost as if she had regressed in age. A strange concept for an eternal being. Even her mane and tail, which normally billowed with magic, hung loosely, the starry field having vanished from them completely. She assumed this had something to do with her powers being so weak. Only time would tell if she would return to her normal self.

Luna thought that it was rather strange that she had seen nopony else. The structure they were in was almost as big as her old castle. She would have expected to see hundreds of Seh-lean's race by now. Now that she thought of it, it did look rather old. Maybe it had been abandoned and Seh-lean was the only one left.

This made her think of something else that had been bothering her. While she was extremely grateful for the food Seh-lean had shared, even if it did taste horrible, the portion had been tiny. Seh-lean had eaten an equally small amount as well. She didn't know what was normal for Seh-lean's race but Seh-lean was extremely thin, its appearance reminded Luna of ponies she had seen suffering from malnutrition. If that was true, it was no wonder she had so much trouble pulling the sled the night before, she was probably weak with hunger.

Luna had too many questions and too few answers. It was starting to frustrate her. The answer was obvious, a translation spell should allow her to communicate with Seh-lean and then she could find out what was going on. The problem was translation spells were fairly complicated. Even levitating her drink was tiring, for now complicated spells were beyond her ability. Hopefully with some food in her stomach and some quality rest her magic would return faster.


#####


The rest of the day involved Selene showing the pony around the ship, and doing her daily chores. For the most part, the pony follower here around and watched.

After breakfast, she went out and skinned and gutted the bone-wolves. The pony had followed her into the shed, but as soon as she got to work, the pony ran back out and waited for her to finish. She then took the sled out, just in case any of the other carcasses were left, but they had already been picked clean, probably by another pack.

She walked around the ship and checked traps that she had set. She hadn't caught anything that night, that was the 6th night in a row none of her traps had anything in them. What was more troublesome that this was becoming more and more of the norm. In the last year, catching anything had become more and more difficult. The bone-wolves were a godsend, with the meat she had now, she could have her first normal sized meal in months.

After that it was time for lunch. More rabbit, this time roasted. This seemed to agree with the pony slightly more. Or she was just trying to be polite. Selene had no idea.

She then headed back out to collect ice. She needed to haul in a pretty good amount, between drinking and cleaning she used a fair amount of water. Today was a bit easier though. The pony immediately caught on to what she was doing and assisted her. For her small stature, that pony was incredibly strong. She moved the sled around as if it was empty, her injured leg not slowing her down in the least.

"Oh crap, the leg!"

Selene smacked herself in the head. She had to check on that, the pony should not be pulling around sleds packed with ice with an injury like that.

Selene got the pony to follow her into the mess. She crouched down and carefully unwrapped the bandages. Her jaw dropped, the wound was gone, not just healed, but completely gone, there wasn't even a scar. Even the pony's coat had grown back in.

The pony dipped her head down and looked, but didn't seem surprised by the vanished wound.

The only thing Selene really had left on her list was to setup a proper bed for the pony. That meant digging around in the old crew quarters until she found one that was more or less intact. She searched a few rooms until she found an extra large bed, and then spent the next 30 minutes disassembling it, and bringing the parts to one of the rooms near hers that actually had power. The pony and its wacky floating gimmick came in handy here.

It followed her down the hallway, mattress floating behind it. Selene couldn't help but laugh at the sight. It was truly odd. Reassembly of the frame was actually quicker than disassembly. The pony picked up on what she was doing and used her telekinesis - Selene wasn't sure what else to call it - as a screwdriver. Which was great, because she had forgotten the real screwdriver back in the other room.

She headed back to the mess, and cooked up some of the bone-wolf. It wasn't any better than the rabbit, but it was different. If she had to eat rabbit again she was going to flip out. The pony looked not to particularly thrilled at eating meat again, but managed to choke it down. If only Selene could get something to grow. Then she could have fresh veggies and even fruit.

Of course if she was going to wish for impossible things, it wouldn't be wasted on growing some fruits and veggies, it would be to escape this damn planet.

It was too late to do anything else productive, so Selene pulled out a book and started to read. She saw the pony sit down as well. Her horn started glowing brightly, but then dimmed. That cycle repeated for a while before she put her head down to rest. Selene wasn't sure what the pony had been doing, but it looked more tired now than it had earlier. She resumed reading for a while until her eyes started to lose focus on the text.

She closed the book, got up and headed towards her room. The pony had immediately picked up on what the new bed was for, Selene didn't even have to walk her to the other room, Instead she trotted over to the open door, said something and then continued into the room.

"Goodnight to you too." Selene said.

She climbed into bed and went to sleep.

The next few weeks went by in more or less the same fashion. Selene, sick of saying "Hey Pony" had started calling the Pony "Moon" on account of the image on her butt. Moon had finally figured out Selene's name was Selene, not Seh-lean, and more importantly she had picked up the ability to say a few simple phrases, though Moon did have a bit of a volume problem at first. Selene wasn't sure how something so small could produce such noise. Eventually Moon seemed to grasp that shouting was no way to make up for lack of vocabulary and toned it down a bit. In any case, it was a good thing that Moon had picked up some words, because her language was completely beyond Selene. She wasn't even sure if she was capable of making some of the sounds Moon made.

The extra food from the bone-wolves had run out, and Selene was back down to heavily rationing what she was able to catch. It was made worse because she was sharing with Moon, but on the other hand, Moon had pretty much taken over most of the heavy lifting, so Selene could get by eating less. What was worse was when Moon noticed that the meal sizes had been reduced, she stared refusing to eat and gave her food back to Selene. The most Selene had been able to talk Moon into was eating one meal a day. 

The odd thing was, even with skipping her meals, Moon seemed to be getting stronger. Selene could even swear that Moon was growing larger. She was sure the pony had been a bit shorter than her 5'4" height when they first met, but now when Moon stood up next to her they were eye to eye.

Selene received another shock when one day while they were out gathering food, Moon stretched her wings and took off into the sky. It didn't make any sense, the wingspan was way too small to support her size, but Moon didn't seem to care for the laws of physics. After landing, Moon explained in broken English that her wind had been injured and was now healed up enough to use.

Every night they'd retire to the mess. Selene picked some of the easier books she had from her childhood that she still had and would read to Moon. Moon sat by and listened, her horn pulsing on and off. Selene could even swear that the glow was getting brighter every day. She tried to ask Moon about it, but either the pony didn't understand the question, or she knew she wouldn't be able to explain with her limited vocabulary. Instead she would just respond "Not yet." 


#####


Twilight had returned to Canterlot with Princess Celestia the very next day. She and the princess headed to the Royal Archives so they could go over the spell Celestia had created. She had been staring at that very spell for the last 15 hours.

Twilight sighed and turned to Celestia.

"You were right Princess, I can barely wrap my head around this, never-mind figure out what went wrong. How long did this take you to write?"

"I have been working that revision of the spell for the last century." Celestia said.

Twilight just stared at her for a moment.

"Maybe we're going about this the wrong way," she said.

"Instead of me trying to understand the entire spell, can you break it down into individual components?

"That is a good idea Twilight, here let me take a look."

"There are three goals for this spell, the first is to use the power of the Elements to suppress enough of Luna's immortality enough to render her somewhat vulnerable to physical harm. She still wouldn't be able to die, any wounds she took would regenerate, though depending on the severity of the wound the regeneration could take some time."

"This is actually the most complicated part of the spell, it is covered by these sections." 

Celestia then spent an hour going over the finer details of that section of the spell.

"You said it rendered her vulnerable to physical harm. What if Rainbow Dash was right? What if Luna had absorbed so much magical energy that she simply exploded. You said she would regenerate, is it simply possible that she was too far gone to regenerate, or perhaps the regeneration is taking a while?" Twilight asked.

"No Twilight, the very nature of Luna's immortality would prevent it. This spell is right at the limits of what can be done to one of us. No amount of magic would be sufficient to destroy, before that point was reached, her immortality would reassert itself and prevent further damage."

"The next goal of the spell is to physically burn away a large portion of her brain, the damage done will quickly regenerate but combined with the Harmony from the Elements, this would not just be a physical burn, it would also burn away the parts of Luna's psyche that had fallen out of Harmony. In simplest terms, it would burn away the evil that was Nightmare Moon, leaving only Luna."

"The last section of the spell is to accelerate the return of her powers. This is what left me so very drained. I put a large amount of my own energy into the spell so it would not take Luna centuries for her to return to her full strength. Instead she should quickly regain a good portion of her abilities, perhaps as quickly as a year or two. After that, the process will slow down, with Luna reaching her full power less than ten years."

"This is about the same time frame that it will take me to regain full use of my power as well. I felt it was important to accelerate the return of her power so we could rule together as equals. If she had to spend the next 100 years watching me rule while she was powerless, I was afraid that it would bring about a repeat of what started this mess."

"What would cause such a variation in her initial recovery time?" Twilight asked.

"A lot of it has to do with her emotional state. All of us, even immortals, are driven by our emotions and the amount of power we can use at any given time is somewhat depended on our strength of will. A prime example of this is Nightmare Moon herself. Luna and I are normally equals, yet Nightmare Moon, driven by an intense hatred was able to wrench control of the sun away from me so she could bring about her eternal night. I could have fought her for this control, and eventually, I would have been able to bring her to a standstill, but in the initial conflict, her madness meant that she was wielding her powers without restraint and that gave her an edge."

For the next few weeks, Twilight would take the train to Canterlot every evening. There she would meet with Celestia and they spent much of the night going over every section of the spell. Twilight would then head back to Ponyville in the morning so she could continue her duties as librarian. 

The longer they studied the spell, the more they were convinced that it could not account for Luna's disappearance.

Celestia was sitting in the Archives, waiting for Twilight to arrive. She was in the process of reviewing the notes from the last session when she heard a the clopping of hooves in the hallway, quickly approaching her position.

Twilight cantered into the room, slightly out of breath.

"Celestia, good, you're here. I thought of something on the ride here, and I want to run it by you. I think we've been looking at this the wrong way," Twilight said, panting.

"What you do you mean?"

"Well, the whole time we've been trying to find out if there was any way your spell could have caused this. But what happens if it wasn't your spell?"

"Well, it wasn't caused by the Elements either, that is not how they work."

"That's not what I meant, what I meant is what if it was the result of a spell Nightmare Moon cast."

"Hmm, well in her state she should not have been able to cast anything. The initial assault by the Elements should have prevented it."

"Yeah I got that impression based on what you showed me, but the thing is, I could feel Nightmare Moon though the Elements, and she was casting something when the Elements were first activated. In fact, it wasn't till the second surge of power, which I now know came from you, that it felt like we were even getting through."

"That... well that should not have been possible, are you sure of what you felt?"

"I'm pretty sure, and this just gave me an idea. Let's assume that Nightmare Moon had been able to resist the initial assault. What would she do next?"

"Well, she would fight back if she thought she had any chance of winning, but I added my own power to the attack mere moments after the Elements did, so even if she had been able to resist, it would have been for seconds at most, she would have had time to realize she had been beaten, and not much else."

"What if she had time to cast one spell. What would she do?"

"Well, she would have assumed I was sending her back to the moon, so my guess is she would try to flee."

"So what if she teleported away?"

"I... I do not know, I suppose it is possible, though extremely unlikely, still though, my sister and I share a bond, I should be able to sense her presence and I cannot."

"Is there any way she could hide herself from you?"

"I do not think so, I would still feel something, but I didn't think she'd be able to resist the Elements either. There is a way we can find out, we will have to return to the castle, If she cast a teleport spell, I will be able to detect it."

"When do you want to go?" Twilight asked.

"Now, let me summon a carriage and we will head to the castle as soon as it is ready."
> Chapter 6
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Selene."

Selene felt a hoof poking her in the shoulder.  She groaned and tried to roll away from the unprovoked assault.

"Selene."

Selene sat up in bed, she pulled the blanket off of her and swung her legs over the side.  She turned the small light next to her bed.  Moon was standing right next to her.  Glancing at the clock, she saw that it was the middle of the night.  

"What is it?" she said, yawning.

"Horn ready,"  Moon said.

"What?"

Moon pointed at her horn, it glowed steadily, for a moment, then faded.

"Horn ready," Moon said again, answering nothing.

Selene let out another yawn, she had no idea what the pony wanted.

"I don't know what that means Moon."

The pony scrunched her nose, trying to figure out how to express herself better.

"I use - the next word was in Moon's language -, it come from horn." and Moon's horn lit up again.

"Ok, so you use your weird floaty power and it comes from your horn, I get that."

"I use - that word again - on you."

Selene just stared at the pony for a moment.

"You woke me up in the middle of the night, so you could float me around the room?  Go back to bed you crazy pony."

Moon shook her head.

"No, not that, other -and another word in Moon's language -, help talk."

Selene had no idea what the pony was getting at, but she was tired and she wanted to go back to bed.

"Ok yeah sure, whatever you want, just hurry up so I can go back to sleep."

Luna looked at Selene, she was ready to cast the translation spell, but the spell would touch the minds of both her and Selene.  She wanted to ask permission before casting it but her limited ability to speak Selene's language was holding her back.  Selene finally agreed, but Luna wasn't sure Selene knew what she was asking.  Still, she had at least tried.  She'd be able to explain the whole thing in a few minutes.

Selene was sitting on the edge of the bed, looking very annoyed.  Luna walked over to Selene and rested the side of her horn on Selene's head.  She concentrated on the translation spell and her horn began to glow.

Selene could feel a tingling sensation, it started where Moon's horn was touching her, and then spread out until it encompassed her entire head.  Moon looked like she was concentrating on something.  Selene had no idea what was going on, she hoped Moon wasn't about to pick her up by her head, her neck felt sore just thinking about it.

The tingling sensation slowly dissipated as Moon's horn stopped glowing.  She lifted her head and looked at Selene.

"Hello Selene, can you understand me?"

Selene felt a bit woozy, she lifted her hand and held on to her forehead.  The room was spinning.  She fell backwards onto the bed and passed out.

Selene was awake but she hadn't opened her eyes yet, she had a bit of a headache and didn't want to get out of bed.  She has some strange dream about Moon last night.  In the end it was hunger that forced her to open her eyes, if she didn't get out of bed, she couldn't eat.

She saw Moon sitting in chair, like some over-sized dog, floating a book in front of her.  The pony noticed Selene sitting up and turned her head slightly.

"Good morning Selene, I'm sorry about last night.  Translation spells can sometimes muddle the mind a bit, especially if you are unprepared."

"What?"

"Oh, can you not understand me? I am fairly sure I cast the spell correctly."

"What?"

"Do you remember last night at all?"

Selene thought back to the night before, there was a dream, something about Moon.  She shook her head no.

"Well then, I shall start over.  My name is Luna, I would like to thank you for saving me back when we first met.  I also have many questions if you feel up to answering them."

"Luna?  What? What?!?  How is this... what?"

Luna started to respond but Selene interrupted her.

"No, stop, you'll have to wait your turn.  Ever since I found you, it's been one impossible thing after another.  Where did you come from?  What are you?  How do you do the... the... thing with the horn - Selene pointed at the floating book - that!?"

Selene's face reddened as she realized she had started to shout.  It was the first real conversation she had in years.  Teaching Moon, no it was Luna now, how to say a few things that made the daily work easier didn't really count.  This was an actual conversation and she was far out of practice.

"I'm sorry Luna, it's just that, well, I've been alone here for so very long and then all of a sudden a talking alien pony shows up and..."

"You know of ponies? Have you seen others?  Where were they?" Luna asked.

"Others like you?  No, sorry, uh a pony is an animal from Earth, it's, well Earth is the planet where I'm originally from.  I only called you a pony because you sorta look like one, but there weren't any ponies like you on Earth.  They were animals, they didn't talk, and they didn't have horns or wings. I take it you aren't from around here then?"

Luna's eyes dropped at Selene's response, there was one moment of hope but then it was gone.

"Oh, I see." she said sadly. "No, I am not.  I do not know how I got here, but this is not my world."

"So somewhere out there is a planet full of flying horned ponies?" Selene asked.

"No, not exactly.  I am from the land called Equestria.  It is filled with ponies, but they are not all like me."

"There are three pony tribes, earth, pegasus and unicorn.  Earth ponies have neither wings nor a horn.  Pegasus ponies have wings, and Unicorns have horns.  I am an alicorn, I possess the magical traits of all three tribes."

"Magic?  Like casting a spell or something?"

"Interesting, I was under the assumption that you were not aware of magic.  You yourself are completely barren of magic's touch and your reactions whenever I used magic were those of confusion."

"Humans, uh that's what I am, have stories about magic, but that's all they are, stories.  It isn't something that actually exists, or well, I didn't think it was."

Luna then gave Selene a brief rundown of the three pony tribes and their various abilities.  Earth ponies were generally strong and good at growing things.  Pegasus ponies could fly and manipulate the weather.  Unicorns could cast spells with their horns.  

If she hadn't seen Luna do some of the things that Luna was talking about, Selene would have never believed it.  She still wasn't sure she did, ponies could push clouds around and make it rain?  Crazy.

"Luna, it's getting late, we need to go out and check the traps and if today isn't any better than the last few days, I'm going to have to go hunting."

"Is that when you use that portable miniature cannon?"

"Oh, the rifle? Yeah."

"Cannons were a relatively new invention when I was ban... uh before I came here, I have never seen one so small before, human weapon technology must be very advanced."

Selene started to chuckle.

"That rifle is almost two hundred years old. It's been in my family for generations."

Selene's laughter turned into a frown.

"It was my father's."

Luna realized she had stumbled into a sensitive topic, she kicked at the ground nervously.

"I am sorry Selene, I did not mean to bring up bad memories."

"It's, OK Luna, you didn't know.  Hey, now that we can understand each other, we should do proper introductions, but first let's get breakfast, I'm starving!"

Luna looked at the skinny human and wondered if there was more truth in that statement than Selene had meant to reveal.


#####


Breakfast was eaten quickly, both Luna and Selene were eager to find out more about each other.  After the meal was finished and places were cleaned, Selene led Luna to a small room off of the main corridor.  It had previously been used by the crew for rest and relaxation, and there were a few small couches arranged around a low table.

"So, who wants to go first?" Selene asked, eager to find more about the pony.

Luna wasn't sure how much of her history she wanted to share with Selene, so she politely asked Selene to start.

"Well, as you know, my name is Selene, Selene Weaver. I'm a human, female and I'm 24 years old, oh and like I mentioned I'm from Earth."

"Earth is your country?"

"It's the home planet of humans, and it was where I was born."

"So this is not Earth then?"

"Oh no, I don't actually know where we are right now, the Ascension, that's the ship we're on, was a colony supply ship.  It was headed to the colony on Dradus to drop off equipment.  There was an accident, something wrong with the dimensional drive and the ship crashed here."

Luna looked puzzled.

"Ship? This is a ship?  How could it crash here, apart from the ice and snow, I have seen no water around.  And why would a ship need to cross into other dimensions?"

"Oh no, not that kind of ship, it doesn't travel the seas, it's a spaceship.  We use them to travel to other planets."

"You said that humans don't have magic, but you say you can travel through space and across dimensional barriers?  I am very confused as to how this could be possible."

"Well, with technology, pretty advanced technology I guess.  The ship uses a dimensional drive so it can move faster than light.  I'm not exactly sure how it works, the technology is way beyond me, but the general idea is that the ship shifts into another dimension, we call it D-space, travels a certain distance, and then returns to normal space.  For every unit of distance traveled in D-space, the ship moves hundreds to thousands of times the distance in real space, depending on which level of D-space is used."

"The very thought that such technology could exist seems impossible to me, as I said I am aware of other dimensions but the only way to reach them is though complicated spells.  Equestria's fastest technological transportation was a pegasus drawn chariot."

"Is Equestria where you're from?" Selene asked.

Luna's ears folded down. 

"Yes, it is my... home country." she said, sadly.

"Well, if it makes you feel any better, the things you can do with your magic seem impossible to me.  I was going to ask you if it wasn't some advanced form of tech, but based on what you just said, I guess not."

"No, the use of magic is a natural ability of ponies.  I can talk more about it after you have finished if you would like."

"Yeah, I would like that, " Selene said.

"So anyway, I was traveling on the Ascension, with my dad.  My mom died when I was very young so whenever work took my dad somewhere, I followed.  My dad was one of the ship's mechanics, it was his job to keep the ship running.  Specifically, he worked on the power systems."

"I was asleep in my room when the D-drive failed, I woke up to emergency alarms and a horrible shaking.  I got an message from my dad that the ship had unexpectedly exited D-space, main power was down and we were on a collision course with an unknown planet.  Most of the crew were in engineering trying to help get the engines back online.  We were moving too fast to survive a crash.  They did manage it, at the last possible minute but then there was a coolant leak and everyone in engineering was killed - Selene paused to wipe a few tears away - my dad included."

Luna shifted uncomfortably, it had been a long time since she last had a serious, open conversation with anypony.  She was far out of practice when it came to comforting another, but Selene had been so kind to her, she felt that she should return that kindness.  Slowly she reached her wing up and rested it on Selene's shoulder.

"It's OK, you don't need to continue if you want to, " she said.

"No, it's alright, it was a long time ago, " Selene said, nodding her head.

"The ship still crashed but the damage wasn't catastrophic, it's not space worthy, but enough of it survived that I've been able to turn it into my home. Unfortunately, I was the only survivor of the crash. The rest of that weren't in engineering were on the bridge and it was one of the few sections that was totally destroyed.  It took me a few hours to dig my way out of my room and find a working computer terminal, that was when I was able to check ships sensors which confirmed that I was the only survivor."

"How long ago was this?" Luna asked.

"Well, the days here are a little shorter than on Earth, 20 hours instead of 24, and I've been here for 4380 days, that comes out to be just about 10 years Earth Standard Time."

"Forgive me, but did you not say you were 24 years old?  You have spent almost half your life here alone?"

"Yeah, I was just a kid when the Ascension crashed, I've been here my whole adult life, " said Selene frowning.

"Ponies are considered legal adults at 16 years of age, is it the same of humans?"

"Almost, it's 18 years for humans, " Selene said.

Luna gave Selene hug with the wing that was still resting on her shoulder.

"I am sorry that you had to endure such a hardship.  I am familiar with being alone for a long period of time and I would not wish it upon anypony."

Selene giggled, she couldn't help herself.  Luna's eyes went wide, shocked that Selene would laugh during such a serious discussion.

"I'm sorry Luna, but... anypony?  I think your translation spell is hitting a bit of a hiccup."

"No, that is the proper term.  Do humans not have a similar term?"

"Anyone, " Selene said with a grin.  "Saying anypony would be like saying anyhuman the meaning is clear enough, but it just sounds odd."

Her face then turned serious again.

"What puzzles me is I have no idea where this planet is.  The navigation sensors of the ship survived the crash, and they couldn't pinpoint a location and they should be able to determine the location of the ship anywhere in known space.  Heck the signal from emergency transponder, which has been running the whole time, should have made it halfway across the galaxy by now."

Selene sighed and rested her head on her hands.  When she first discovered that the ship was broadcasting, she had expected rescue within weeks.  Those weeks turned into months which turned into years.  She confirmed that the signal was going out, but she hadn't received any sort of response which just didn't make sense.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to turn the conversation sour, " Selene said, apologizing. "Let's talk about something else instead."

"I have a some questions about human technology if you don't mind, but is there anything you wanted to ask me?"

Selene thought for a few moments, there were hundreds of things she wanted to ask Luna, but she wasn't sure where to start.  She looked at the pony and her eyes were immediately drawn to the moon on Luna's backside.

"Why do you have a moon on your butt?" she asked sheepishly.

"You mean my cutie mark?" Luna said, turning to look at her mark.

"Cutie mark?"

"A cutie mark is a representation of a pony's special talent.  It appears when the pony finds out what their true calling in life is."

"It appears?  Like it isn't a tattoo of some kind?"

"No, cutie marks are magical in nature, they are tied into the very magic that makes a pony a pony.  When a pony is born, they have no mark.  As they grow older, they will eventually discover they have an affinity for some talent or ability.  It is in this discovery that their cutie mark appears."

"So they get this mark and it tells them how to live their life?" Selene asked.  She wasn't sure if she liked that idea.

"No, not really.  The mark does not make the pony, rather the pony makes the mark.  Everypony has likes and dislikes, it is through exploring what they enjoy that they eventually discover their true talent."

"So like if a pony really likes running they'll get a running cutie mark?"

"Not necessarily, a pony may have hundreds of things they are good at, or only a few.  Eventually they will discover what they are most passionate about, and that is when they get their mark.  Nor is a mark limiting.  A pony with a running mark may enjoy and excel at baking or swimming or flying, but their true passion will be running."

"So what does the moon mean?  Are you passionate about sleeping?" Selene asked, feeling confused.

Luna let out a loud laugh.

"My cutie mark signifies my ties to the night, this can include sleeping, or more accurately dreaming, as well as being in charge of the physical aspects of the night, such as the stars and the moon."

"In charge of the night?  Ok I'm really confused, I think you're going to have to tell me more about magic before I quite get what you are saying, " Selene said rubbing her temples.  "For now, is there anything else you wanted to ask me?"

Luna nodded, she had many more questions, mostly revolving around human technology, some of the terms she had heard Selene use, and the state of the Ascension.  Selene answered them as best as she could, by the time they had finished talking it was well past lunch.  The two decided to take a break to eat, and then go out and do the daily chores.  Traps had to be checked, ice had to be gathered, and Selene had to patch a hole in the side of the ship that was letting in the cold.
> Chapter 7
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Luna spent the next few weeks avoiding talking about her past.  Her relationship with the human was new and fragile, and Luna didn't want to risk destroying it by revealing what a monster she was. Changing the subject wasn't all that difficult, Selene was extremely curious, but she was also happy to talk to Luna about humanity.  In addition, as Luna regained her strength she was able to use more and more of her powers.  Selene had consent questions about magic, and Luna was happy to answer them.

Luna hadn't had a friend in well over a thousand years, but she found that Selene was rapidly becoming one.  She knew that honesty was an important foundation of friendship, and a part of her felt awful keeping the truth from Selene.  There was going to come a point where she would have to talk about her past, but for now she would just keep pushing it off.

"Good morning Luna, did you sleep well?" Selene said without looking up from her breakfast.

Luna mumbled something as she stumbled in for breakfast.  She had never been a morning pony and neither a thousand years on the moon nor being flung to places unknown had changed that.

Selene took another bite and then glanced upward at the pony.  She quickly did her best to suppress a giggle, Luna's mane was a disaster.  Hair pointed in every direction but down.

Luna sat down at the table, oblivious to Selene's laughter.  The pitcher on the table floated over her glass and filled it with water.  She took a sip while retrieving some jerky from the pile on the table.  Ever since she had remembered the spell to deaden her sense of taste, meals hadn't been such a pain in the flank.  All she had to do was close her eyes and pretend she was eating something else.

She finally noticed Selene's giggles.

"What is so funny?" she asked.

"Oh, uh, nothing," Selene said, glancing up at Luna's mane again before bursting into laughter.

Luna rolled her eyes and reached up to feel her head.  Her mane stuck out in random directions.  She summoned an ethereal mirror, to get a better look.  Scowling, she quickly applied a bit of magic to get everything back into place.  The mirror vanished back into non-existence and Luna just glared at Selene.

"Wow, I wish I could do that, I'd have to sit there with a brush for 20 minutes to fix hair that bad," Selene said with a hint of jealousy.  

Luna smirked in response, stuck her tongue out and then turning back to her breakfast.

"Is that how you keep it blue?  Do you dye it with magic?"

Luna nearly choked on her drink, sputtering she looked at Selene, her face twisted in horror.

"I DO NOT DYE MY MANE!" she shouted.

"Volume Luna, volume," she said holding her hands over her ears. "Are you telling me that your mane is naturally blue?  What about your coat?"

"Of course, I would never dye my mane or my coat," Luna said still looking horrified.

"I'm sorry, I didn't meant to offend you, humans dye their hair all sorts of colors.  Natural colors are pretty limited to variations of blond, brown, black and red, oh and as we get older white and grey."

"Some ponies mane's do grey or whiten with age, but it is almost unheard of for their coat to change color.  Nopony would willingly change their natural colors, the very idea is offensive." Luna said.

"I didn't realize, it just seemed such an unnatural combination that I assumed it was dyed.  I'm sorry."

"It is alright, you did not know.  I am surprised to learn humans have such a limited spectrum.  A ponies coat can be virtually any color.  Manes have even more variety, it is not rare for a pony to have two or more colors in their mane.  Not long before I arrived here, I saw a blue pegasus with a rainbow colored mane."

Selene laughed as she tried to picture Luna with a mane like that.

After breakfast they headed down to the airlock, ready to begin the daily chores.  They opened the door to discover a thick blanket of freshly fallen snow.  Luna grabbed the sled and they headed out to gather some ice.

They walked for a while before coming to a clearing, where a frozen lake provided most of Selene's water.  She reached down into the bag to get the small laser cutter she used to carve out chunks of ice when suddenly something struck her in the side.  Confused she stopped and turned around looking for the source of the impact.  All she could see was snow, trees and more snow.  Shrugging, she resumed her 

"As I've mentioned before, the weather here pretty much goes from bad to worse.  We're just a few weeks away from the end of what passes for fall here, before long it's going to get much cold..." Selene stopped mid-sentence and spun around, something had hit her in the back.  She still couldn't see anything, but there was a clump of snow sticking to her coat, and she thought she heard a muffled giggle.

She turned to look at the pony just as she felt two more impacts.  Luna wore a mask of perfect innocence, not even acknowledging that something was going on.  Selene saw movement out of the corner of her eye and turned just in time to see a snowball, encased in a blue aurora, lift off the ground and accelerate towards her.  Selene tried to raise her hands to block it, but she was too slow and the snowball struck her in the face.

"Luna!" Selene shouted.

Luna had collapsed into the snow, unable to contain the herself anymore.  Laughter rang out over the snowy clearing as she rolled back and forth, hooves up in the air flailing wildly.

Selene bent down, picked up a big clump of snow, and dropped it right smack on to Luna's face.  Luna rolled over and stood up, an evil grin on her face.  Her horn lit up and a huge number of snowballs rose up from the ground.  Selene turned around and started to run away, but it was far too late.  Dozens of snowballs pelted her from every direction.

She stumbled into the treeline, desperate to escape the assault.  She hid behind one of the larger trees, reached down and picked up some more snow.  She peaked out but Luna was nowhere to be seen.  How a blue pony could hide in the white landscape before her, she had no idea.  Movement flashed in the corner of her eye, she whipped around but found nothing.  She took off at a jog, weaving from tree to tree, in search for the blue menace.  She saw more flashes of movement and heard menacing laughter come from multiple different directions at once.

"This isn't even remotely fair," she thought to herself.  

"No magic!" she shouted.

She nearly had a heart attack as she heard a whisper in her ear.

"I don't need magic."

She spun around, only to see Luna hovering upside down directly behind her wings beating rapidly, but oddly without making a sound. Luna dropped a single large snowball onto Selene's head and then flipped right side up before landing deftly in the snow.

"I surrender!" Selene said, clearing the snow off of herself. "I forgot you can fly, I'm so jealous."

"Honestly, I do not fly as often as I'd like.  I should start flying more often, my wings could use the exercise," Luna said, stretching them out to their fullest.

The two chatted for a while before they had to get back to work.  Selene used the laser cutter to cut out large blocks of ice and Luna would lift them onto the sled.  After they filled up the sled to the brim, they returned to the ship and added it to the tank that Selene had rigged up to melt it.

At the end of the day they retired to the lounge.

"Selene, what is that thing you are holding?"

"Oh this?" Selene asked, holding up a small device.  "It's a tablet, remember I was telling you about computers the other day?  Well this is a small portable one.  It can hook into the ship's main computer and bring up all sorts of information.  Right now I'm reading the maintenance schedule for the shuttle's generator.  I'm going to have to do some work on it soon, but I have to power it down to do the work so I've been putting it off."

"So it's like a book?"

"Think of it more like a library, you can look up tons of different books right on here.  If the information isn't stored locally, the tablet will pull it from the main computer.  It's also got games on it, and it can play music and show videos."

"Do you have any books on human history or technology?  I am often confused by what you say and I do not want to constantly pester you for knowledge."

"Oh, I don't mind, but yes actually.  I've got a second one in my room, let me go grab it."

Selene jumped up and ran out the door, a minute later she returned with a second tablet.

"Let me show you how to use it."

Selene spent a few minutes going over the basic functions of the tablet.  Then she pulled up a book that she had studied back when she was still in school.

"You said you wanted to learn about human history?" Selene asked.

"Indeed, that and more about your technology but I'd like to start with history."

Selene pulled up a chapter and then handed the tablet to Luna.

"This chapter covers the early 1700s, up though the industrial revolution.  I think that's probably a good starting point based on what you've told me about pony technology."

Luna read for hours, as she found herself drawn into the her study of mankind.  The very idea of a major civilization existing without the benefit of magic was alien to her, but Earth it seemed had not one, but many.  The speed at which humans had advanced in the 19th century alone astonished her.  What was so fascinating was that much of what she read was not new to her.  In fact when reduced down to pure scientific knowledge, humans of the 1800s had some laughably outdated ideas.  The difference between the two races was in how they reacted to something new.  Humans would tinker and invent, while ponies would study, but there was far less application of that knowledge.

A good example was in the human's quest for flight.  The average pegasus pony knew more about aerodynamics than any human she had read about, but to Luna's knowledge, no pony had ever attempted to build a flying machine.  When 1/3 of the population could fly, there was no real need. The more she read, the more examples she found.  Electric lights vs. enchanted crystals, telegrams vs. dragon mail and Luna hadn't even finished scratching the surface.  

The rate of progression only increased as Luna move forward through history.  She was shocked to discover that humanity had unlocked the power of the atom, in Equestria, Celestia and Luna alone held that knowledge, but had never thought to do anything with it apart from maintaining the heavens.  Power generation wasn't needed and weaponizing it made little sense, as it paled in comparison to what they could accomplish with their own power. Magic it seemed, was acting like crutch, at least when it came to technological advancement.

Not that magic was bad, there were defiantly drawbacks to many of the humans technology.  It was the potential combinations of the two that excited Luna.  A simple enchantment could remove the pollution from a coal burning steam train.  Advanced magic could be used to render nuclear waste inert.

Still, Luna had no real idea how far ponies had progressed during her banishment.  While searching for the Elements, she had seen things that were unknown to her.  She might find her way back only to discover that much of what she read was already known.

Of all that Luna read, computers fascinated her the most. The impact that they could have on Equestria was enormous.  Better still, there were large similarities between spell-crafting and programming techniques.  When she had the time, she promised herself that she would talk to Selene about getting access to the ship's computer so she could try her hoof at writing some simple programs.

A loud yawning interrupted Luna's reading.  She looked over and saw Selene stretching.

"I'm going to head off to bed, don't stay up too late we've got a busy day tomorrow," Selene said.

"I shall not.  Thank you for sharing this with me, it has been most illuminating."

"How far did you get?"

"I am currently reading about the impact of the internet on the early 2000s."

"Oh, so you're still a ways back then."

"Yes, when I first started reading about computers, I found myself sidetracked.  I hope you do not mind, but I figured out how to switch to different books.  I read several books about early computing before I found an article covering an introduction to programming, while reading that, the author made several references to something called a webcomic which I was able to find an archive of.  The webcomic referenced a science fiction book series, and I read first three books," Luna said pausing to take a breath.

"After that, I started looking into early science fiction and found some more books to read.  I found it fascinating how many fictional technologies eventually found their way into reality.  Was it the authors works that inspired the invention, or was it merely natural progression.  I still have many things to investigate.  You did say this could show videos, there was television show that a number of people talked about, do you have Star Trek?"

Selene just stared at Luna for a moment, before leaning over to grab the tablet.  She pulled up Luna's access history and her eyes widened.  She had to scroll down through three pages of text before she got to the bottom of the list.

"You read all this in five hours?" she said, pointing at the screen.

"Yes, is something wrong with that?"

"You actually read it, not just skimmed through?"

Luna nodded, looking a bit confused.

"Luna, I'm a pretty fast reader and I don't think I could get through this in a week. Is freakish speed reading one of your magical pony powers?"

"My sister and I have always been quick learners," Luna said without thinking.

"You have a sister?" Selene asked.

"I uh..." Luna trailed off and her hears drooped down.

"I'm sorry Luna, I didn't mean to bring up any bad memories," Selene said.

"It is alright, you did not know."

"I don't know what happened, but I've noticed that you avoid talking about your past," Selene's face softened.  "I don't know what happened but I don't want to force you into talking about it unless you want to."

"You noticed?" Luna asked, she pawed at the floor sadly.

"Of course I did," Selene walked over and sat down next to Luna.  "You're my friend and friends notice those kind of things."  She leaned over and gave Luna a hug.

Luna wasn't quite sure what to do, so she just sat there for a few moments.  It was true, she had been avoiding talking about her past, but that would have to change someday.  An empty feeling rose up in her stomach, when Selene learned about her, she feared that she would lose her only friend.  She could feel tears beginning to build up in her eyes when Selene tightened her grip.

"Look Luna, I promise it will be OK.  We can talk about it later if you want, I don't want to pressure you into anything."

Luna nodded slowly, and then lifted hear head up.

"Thank you."
> Chapter 8
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Twilight stood in the center of the ruins and looked around. In the light of day, they were far less imposing, though Celestia standing by her side might have had something to do with it as well. 

The two ponies trotted to the crumbling building where the fight with Nightmare Moon had taken place. Princess Celestia made her way over to the crater and gazed into it. Broken pieces of Nightmare Moon's helmet still sat in the crater.

Celestia's horn glowed brightly. Twilight lifted a hoof to shield her eyes while her mentor searched for her sister. A hush came over the ruins. Twilight realized she could no longer hear any of the sounds of the forest. Celestia herself was staring to glow now, Twilight was having a hard time even looking in her general direction.

Without warning, Celestia's spell finished. The sounds of the surrounding forest returned, and the light faded away.

Twilight saw the great alicorn turn towards her, her eyes stained with tears.

"She's alive Twilight, my sister is alive!"

Celestia took a moment to relax, and then walked over to Twilight. She lowered her head and gave Twilight a friendly nuzzle.

"Thank you Twilight, I do not believe I would have found this out, if not for your idea."

"So what exactly did you find?"

"You were exactly right. Nightmare Moon had found a way to counter the Elements. If not for my own added power she would have been able to hold her own. However, the combination of the Elements and my own magic overwhelmed her defenses. I did not sense this when I was last here because I was not looking for it. When Nightmare Moon's defense fell, she cast a teleport spell to try and escape."

"Something went wrong though. I still do not understand it, but the teleport spell interacted with the magic from the Elements. Instead of moving Luna from here to somewhere else in the universe, it opened a dimensional gateway. Luna was thrown into another dimension."

"This much, I can tell, but I do not know what dimension Luna was thrown into."

"There are other dimensions?"

"Indeed there are. Have I ever told you about Sunset Shimmer and the Crystal Mirror?"

"I don't think so?"

Celestia spent the next hour telling Twilight about her former student. A brilliant mare who excelled in magic, but lacked patience. Before Twilight had met Celestia, Sunset Shimmer had been one of Celestia's personal students. However, a rift had formed between teacher and student when Celestia refused to grant Sunset access to ancient magic that would have been beyond the young pony. Sunset had fled through a crystal mirror that led to another dimension. It was only open for three nights every 30 moons.

That had been years ago, and Celestia had not heard back from her former student. She had never traveled through the portal herself, but from others she had heard it lead to a world devoid of magic.

Twilight found this interesting. Ponies were creatures of magic, they needed it to survive.

"I hate to ask, but wouldn't traveling to a world with no magic kill a pony?"

"No, at least not through a portal like this one. The energies required to create a stable gateway will transform a traveler, giving them a body that can survive in the new dimension. If you were to go through the crystal mirror, you would emerge on the other side, not as a pony, but as one of the native inhabitants of the world on the other side. Only an immortal can resist this change."

"So where did Luna end up?" Twilight asked.

Celestia frowned, she knew Twilight would ask that next but she didn't have a good answer for it.

"That I do not know, there are a vast number of alternate realities, Luna could be in any of them and I do not have a way of tracking her." 

"So is she lost for good?"

"That depends."

"On what?"

Celestia looked out at the ruined room. Nightmare Moon had been destroyed here, she was sure of it. Now it was up to Luna, to decided if she wanted to come back to Equestria.

"If she wants to be found. Remember, the Elements will have destroyed the Nightmare, but Luna may or may not want to return."

"Will she be able to?"

"Eventually, it takes a great deal of power to travel between dimensions. My larger concern is that she may not be able to find her way home. Unless..."

Celestia's thoughts turned to the bond that she shared with her sister. By harnessing the power of the Elements, it should be possible to amplify this bond, creating an beacon that Luna should be able to detect.

"Twilight, we must return to Canterlot, I have some research to do, and then we will have to gather the Elements."


#####


Selene frowned, she hadn't caught anything all week. Trap after trap turned up empty. She was going to have to take the rifle out and try to hunt for food. After 10 years, her ammunition supply was starting to run low. She was lucky to have had as much as she did. Her dad's rifle was so old that it was often difficult for him to find ammunition for sale. Because of this he tended to buy in large quantities, he had picked up an order just as they were leaving the last system, but even thousands of rounds did not last forever and in another year or so the rifle would be no more useful than a club.

She explained the situation to Luna.

"So for the short term, I'm going to have to go out hunting for food. These traps have been catching less and less in the last year, I think the local animals are wising up. Long term, I'm going to have to set more traps, farther out. I can only go so far though, I gotta carry whatever I catch back to the ship and if it's too far it isn't worth it."

Luna looked at Selene, she still didn't know what normal humans looked like but to her Selene looked underfed.

"Has this been a big problem in the past?"

"Nah, but I think it will be fine, putting down more traps will be good. In fact now that you're here, you can help me, we can split up the traps and each have to only check half. That will cut way down on the amount of effort it takes to gather food."

"Are you sure you are eating enough?"

"I've got enough to get by, though I do miss the variety I used to get. Humans don't eat just meat normally, thankfully the ship's medical bay had a good supply of vitamin supplements because I can't imagine eating this crap for 10 years would be good for me. I miss lots of the foods, but what I miss most of all is pizza."

"Pizza?"

"You don't have pizza where you're from?"

"I am not sure... my food choices are a bit... out of date."

"Well, it's this thin round piece of bread, uh, do you know what bread is?"

Luna let out a small chuckle. "Yes, I know what bread is. Ponies make quite a large variety of baked goods."

Selene smiled back, "I was just checking, anyway for pizza you take the dough and spin it around till it makes a large flat circle, then it gets covered in pizza sauce, it's made from tomatoes and probably other things in it, I've never made it myself, so I'm not exactly sure. After that goes a layer of cheese, usually mozzarella, but other kinds are used as well. Then lastly you can put a variety of toppings on top of the cheese."

"What kind of toppings?"

"Meat, and veggies are the most common, I'm not much of a veggie person, but I love pepperoni, sausage, bacon, and buffalo chicken. You don't have to get just one topping, you can mix it up, or even just get a plain cheese pizza with no topping at all."

"Oh, humans eat vegetables?"

"Yeah, my diet here isn't exactly standard, we're omnivores we eat meat and veggies and fruit. The Ascension is a colony supply ship, so we've got a ton of seeds on board, I tried growing stuff but nothing took. I've been taking supplements because I don't get everything I need from the food here." Not wanting to worry Luna, she didn't bring up that she had at best a year's supply left. Instead she smiled and then continued.

"I really wish I hadn't started talking about pizza though, I'm not going to be able to get it out of my head for the rest of the day," she said.

"I am sorry I brought it up," Luna said.

"Eh, no biggie. If I ever get out of here though, the first thing I'm gonna do is find a pizza place and buy myself a whole pizza."

The two continued to talk for a while. Finally Selene had to head out. Luna volunteered to go with her.

"Are you sure? I've noticed your reactions when I have to prepare food, I've guessed you don't normally eat this stuff," Selene asked while checking her rifle.

"Ponies are, for the most part, herbivores, though eating meat is not completely unknown. Some small groups of ponies who lived far beyond Equestria, either with griffons or dragons, both of which do eat meat, have sometimes been known to eat more of a mixed diet. Most of Equestria though would be horrified to have to eat the flesh of another creature, and no pony would be able to survive on a pure meat diet for long."

"What about you?"

"I am... able to sustain myself with magic," Luna lied, not ready to bring up her immortality just yet. The truth of the matter was Luna could get by indefinitely without eating, but she still got hungry and after 1000 years of starving on the moon, she'd take the bad taste of meat over that.

"Will that last?"

"Yes."

Selene looked at Luna for a moment, a feeling of doubt crept over her, but then she shrugged it away.

"Alright then, enough talk about food we can't get, are you ready to head out?"

"Indeed, and I may be of use to you. I can cast a spell to alert us to any large life forms in proximity, it should help prevent an ambush from those bonewolf creatures that I ran into before."

"You can do that?" Selene said, her eyes going wide.

"I have been working on a spell just for that, I thought that it might come in handy, I finished it last night."

"You can just create spells, just like that?"

"With the proper experience and knowledge, one can create a large variety of spells, and I have both in ample supply." Luna said, proudly.

The two headed out to look for food. They wandered around for hours, not finding signs of life, even Luna's spell was not picking up anything.
It was starting to get late, a tired Selene turned to Luna with a look of frustration in her eyes.

"We're going to have to head back, we've been out too long. Maybe we can try again tomorrow, but we're going to have to setup more traps as well, I'll have to spend some time tonight making them."

The two turned around and headed back towards the ship. On the way back, Luna felt something, she turned to Selene and whispered.

"I can sense something, there is a creature about 100 yards in that direction - she raised a hoof and pointed - beyond those trees. It feels larger than a bonewolf, but how much, I cannot say."

Selene crept as quietly as she could toward the area Luna was pointing at. She peered around the trees and saw it. It was the ice plant's equivalent of a deer, and a good sized specimen. It hadn't spotted her yet, so she crouched down and took aim with her rifle. The animal's jolted up as if it could sense that it was being watched, but before it could move, Selene fired.

Her aim was good and the deer went down. Luna trotted up behind her.

"It's a deer, well, an alien deer, but either way, this is our lucky day. I haven't seen one of those in ages. They taste way better than the rabbit things we normally eat. I'm gonna need help carrying it back though."

Pony and human returned to the ship, the hunt was a success, and the deer would provide enough meet for a few of weeks of food.


#####


Selene was busy in the kitchen, getting ready to make breakfast. Luna was sitting in the mess waiting for her to finish up. She was growing tired of having to eat meat, but she hadn't found any other local food. The local animals all seemed to either eat each other, or tree bark. Luna had tried some of the bark and not only was it awful, but her body was unable to derive any nutritional content from it, making it useless as a food.

The deer, to Luna's surprise, had actually been somewhat tasty, especially compared to the creature Selene called a rabbit. Neither looked anything like the Equestrian counterparts, though she found it odd that Selene would have creatures with the same name from her world. The deer would provide enough food for a few weeks, but then they would be back to rabbit. Apart from the deer, overall food stores continued to dwindle and Luna was growing more and more concerned about Selene's health. While painful, she could survive without eating, Selene however, could not. Every day she seemed slower and weaker. Some of this may have been that Luna's own strength was returning faster and faster making Selene seem weaker in comparison, but she wasn't sure.

Even with the poor meals, Luna's strength was returning quickly and with it, her proper size. She was nearly back up to her full height. While not as tall as Celestia, Luna still towered over most other ponies, standing slightly over six feet tall, not including her horn. She wasn't quite back up to that yet, but when she first arrived she had looked up to Selene, now she was looking down at the short girl. Selene had questioned Luna about her growing size, not knowing what to say, Luna had explained that it was a magical side effect of the spell that had brought her to this world.

Thinking back to the previous day, Luna had tried to talk to Selene about her lack of food, but the stubborn human brushed it off as a minor concern. 

"I've been here for 10 years and made it this far" she said. "Besides, what else is there to eat?"

She had explained to Luna that humans were omnivores, and worked best with a balanced diet of meat and vegetables. Selene had also brought up that she had tried to grow food after the ship's supplies ran out, but despite her best efforts, she couldn't get anything to grow.

What had caught Luna's attention was when Selene had mentioned that there were seeds on board. After Selene had gone to bed, Luna had gone looking through the ship. She started in the rooms around the mess and worked her way around the ship. Eventually she stumbled into the bay that Selene had tried to setup as a growing area. Large rows of pots filled with soil lined the floor.

Luna walked over to one and stuck her forehoof into the dirt. The problem was immediately apparent, like the ground outside, this soil was essentially dead. Worse it was poisoned in some way. As her powers slowly return, a feeling of unease had started to grow in the pit of her stomach. It was only recently she had been able to determine the source of it. Something was wrong with this world, it felt as if everything was old and worn out. This was nothing like normal ageing though, it felt more like physical reality was slowly breaking down. Even the heavens above felt broken, the star that this planet circled was barely holding together. It would take a great deal of restorative magic to be able to grow anything.

She searched around the room until she found a large container in a storage locker marked 'Seed storage'. She opened up the container and found a large variety of seeds. Oddly enough, they seemed to be identical to what she would find on Equestria. There were carrots, potatoes, lettuce and a dozen other things Luna recognized.

This is what Selene needed more and plentiful food, without it she was slowly wasting away. Luna thought for a moment, creating life from nothing was hard work, she couldn't simply magic up sustenance, now that she had seeds however, growing food was easy. A combination of earth pony and unicorn magic could grow food almost anywhere, but this would take more than that. This would take alicorn magic, to revive the soil enough for life to grow. Luna walked to the center of the bay and spread her wings. Slowly she rose into the air, wings still spread far apart. A dark sphere of energy surrounded Luna, and the room dimmed. Bolts of anti-light flickered and crackled as they escaped the sphere, zigzagging across the room like lightning. A heavy wind rose up and black clouds sprung into existence.

The rubble was the first to go, all the pieces of ship too large for Selene to move rose up into the air and vanished in dark flashes of magic. Next were the empty pots and broken equipment, only the dirt remained. Luna then turned her senses outside the ship, ripping and pulling large sections of topsoil from the surrounding areas she teleported it into the bay. The piles of soil grew deeper and deeper, larger and larger, until almost the entire bay was covered in dirt.

Great trees were torn from the forest, their branches stripped and their trunks laid end to end to form a large rectangular barrier to contain the dirt. Next Luna focused her magic on the soil itself, rejuvenating it, so that it once again could sustain life.

Seeds flew from the storage container and planted themselves in the dirt. Next came water, the clouds she had formed overhead opened up and a gentle rain soaked the small garden she had created. A pale blue aurora enveloped the bay as Luna's magic instructed the seed to grow. Small shoots of green poked out of the dirt, faster and faster they matured, until Luna felt that they were ready. A spell was cast on the room to keep it as warm as a fine spring day. Luna could bring in rain whenever it was needed.

What was once a cold metal bay now housed a garden. The plant life was still growing in, but it was clear that when it was finished, it would be a thing of beauty. Slowly Luna sank back to the ground, panting from the strain. This was easily the largest use of magic she had performed since coming to this world. It had taken much out of her, but, given what she had accomplished, it was worth it.

Luna heard Selene say something to her, breaking her concentration of the previous night's events.

"Luna, I'm sorry to say but we're out of deer, and back on rabbit, tomorrow we're going to have to build more traps and expand our coverage area again."

For a moment Luna said nothing, her horn lit up as she focused on the bay, checking if everything was ready.

"Selene, can you come here please?"

"I'm just about to start dinner, can it wait?

"It will not take long."

Selene washed her hands, put the rabbit meat back in the fridge and walked over.

"What's up?"

"This way please."

Luna led the human down the hall. They approached the room that Selene had setup year ago to try to grow her own food.

"What are we doing here?"

Luna hit the button to open the door with her hoof. It slowly creaked open, a warm blast of fresh air and the smell of dirt and growing things escaped into the hallway.

Selene stood in the door way and looked across the bay. It wasn't a bay anymore though, everywhere she looked was green. She hurried inside and looked around. A large multi-level garden sprawled out before her, taking up most of the room. As she walked around, she found carrots, potatoes, lettuce, tomatoes, corn and many other things to eat. Colorful flowers decorated the next level of the garden, Selene saw roses, daisies, lilies and more. As she made her way to the back of the room, she found a small grove filled with miniature apple trees.

Unable to process what she was seeing, Selene dropped to her knees and began to cry.

Luna trotted over and placed a wing on the young woman.

"How?" Selene asked.

"The seeds provided from your ship's stock and a large application of magic to restore the soil and speed the growth along."

"When did you do this?" Selene asked, tears still streaming down her face.

"Last night, after you mentioned you had failed to grow anything, I searched around until I found this room and the seeds contained within."

Selene stood up and wrapped her arms around Luna.

"Thank you." she whispered.

"I didn't do it for you! I just couldn't take another day of your cooking." Luna said, smirking at Selene.

Selene punched Luna in the side and wiped the tears from her eyes.

"Can I have one?" she said pointing at an apple.

"Of course." Luna replied happily.

With fingers trembling, Selene reached out towards the apple, not quite ready to believe it was real. She slowly plucked it from the tree and brought it to her mouth and took a bite. A dribble of juice ran down her chin as she sat there, savoring the first bight. Within moments, the apple was reduced to a core.
> Chapter 9
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next day, after Selene and Luna had finished collecting supplies, they sat down returned to the lounge. Selene was humming a happy tune as she munched on some carrots, Luna sat next to her deep in thought.

Establishing the garden had required a great deal of energy, but the end result was plenty of food for both of them. The restorative magic that healed the soil should have been permanent, but when Luna had stopped in this morning she detected the tiniest bit of decay. While nothing was yet visible, the garden and everything in it had started to suffer from the same degradation that seemed to affect everything here.

The amount of degradation was very small, almost undetectable, but it was present. Luna could have done nothing and it would be years before even the weakest plants would have been unable to grow, but the fact remained that whatever was affecting the rest of the planet had spread. Instead, a quick burst of magic reversed the effects, but she made a mental note to continue to check on it. Now that she knew what to look for, the decay stood out like a sore thumb. It surrounded her completely, affecting everything except herself. Even the Ascension, and Selene were affected. Thankfully the amount of decay was still very low, so Selene wasn't in any immediate danger, but if nothing was done, eventually it would kill her. Luna would have plenty of time to try to determine the source of the problem.

"I want to think you again for the garden Luna, I think it's going to make a huge difference for us," Selene said, putting down her book and looking at the pony. "I still don't really understand how your magic works, but it certainly is effective."

Luna's ears swiveled towards Selene at the sound of her name.

"I just can't get over all the things magic can do, and to think, your entire world is filled with it. Equestria must be so different than Earth."

"From what I have read, of Earth, it is not as different as you would imagine. The day to day lives of most ponies are very similar to that of humans. At least humans of your past, we don't travel the stars."

An idea struck Luna. She could easily show Selene a magical projection of Equestria. She raised her head and her horn lit up with a pale blue glow.

Selene gasped, in the center of the room, an image started to form. It looked almost like a holographic display. The image was encased in a glow that matched the one on Luna's horn, slowly it began to sharpen, until she could make out details.

A jet black canvas appeared, then slowly points of light started to pop up upon the scene. Selene realized that she was looking at outer space. More and more stars sprang into existence, until the scene was full. Then the view started to turn as if a great camera was panning down. Selene realized she was looking at a solar system.

As the view drew inward, it passed planet after planet, until it slowed down and settled on a yellow star that reminded her of Earth's sun. Then the view resumed its course, going further inward until it passed what looked like a moon. Finally it stopped on a small blue and green world that looked very similar to Earth. 

"This is the world of Equus, Equestria is located on the largest continent... there," Luna said, pointed to a spot on the planet.

"It's beautiful," Selene said, looking at the planet before her. Something was wrong though, she rubbed her forehead and tried to figure out what was bothering her.

"Luna, can you back that up?" she asked. "So I can see the whole solar system again?"

Luna concentrated for a moment and the view shifted to show the entire system.

"That's not... right?" Selene said, scratching her head.

"This right here is your sun," she said, pointing at the star. Moving her finger inward to Equestria, she asked "Why is it circling the planet?"

"Equus is unique in all the cosmos, it is the home to two powerful immortals. Eons ago, Equus was a harsh and unforgiving world, it was only through the magical abilities the natives that life was able to survive it's harsh. The two immortals saw much potential in these early ponies and decided to take physical form. They used their magic to seize control of the heavens, and rearranged them to transform Equus into a paradise. The eldest of the two, Celestia, holds the sun in her grasp raising it each morning to start the day."

"Humans used to have theories like that, where Earth was the center of the solar system, I think it was called the geocentric model, but really the sun doesn't rise, it just looks like that because your planet is rotating."

"No, Selene, I know that is how things ordinarily work, but as I said Equus is special. Celestia raises the sun each morning, I have seen her do it many times before," Luna said.

"Wait, you've actually seen this Celestia before? I assumed from your story it she was some sort of mythical goddess. Ancient humans had figures like that, I think the ancient Egyptians even had a sun god, named Ra."

Luna paused for a moment, one thing her sister had always been adamant about was not making claims of godhood. Regular ponies feared the divine and it would make the two sisters unapproachable. Luna who never had been very approachable to being with hadn't seen the point, but now that she had a friend she didn't want to frighten her away.

"We... she is quite real. You have seen me use my magic to move things, is it that hard to believe a powerful pony could move the sun?"

"My bet is she's fooling you with some kind of illusion magic," Selene said, laughing. "Look, I get that you can do some cool things with your magic, but moving a star? That's impossible."

The insult directed towards her sister, intentional or not, cut Luna deeply. Celestia was the most kind and honest pony she knew.

"If you do not want to see my world, I will not continue," Luna said with a growl, her horn dimmed and the image faded away.

Selene stopped laughing, she hadn't meant to cause any problems, she just thought the concept of a star being moved around was pretty funny.

"I'm sorry Luna, I didn't mean to upset you, why don't you just start from the Equus?" she asked.

"Very well," Luna's horn lit again and the image returned.

Descending into the atmosphere, and centering on the largest continent, the scene before them continued to move ever closer to the surface. It passed through a cloud and Selene gasped. Before her eyes, hundreds of winged ponies flew back and forth over a city made of clouds. A great coliseum was in the center of the city, with cloud roads shooting out in every direction. Some of the ponies were walking along the roads but most of them were flying to and from smaller cloud buildings.

Rainbows cascaded off the sides of the city like waterfalls, teams of ponies pushed large clouds to and fro. Selene stared in wonder, nothing she had seen before could compare to this.

"How do the clouds stay like that?" she asked.

"The same innate magic that allows pegasus ponies to fly, allows them to shape clouds, and control the weather. A magical field holds the cloud in whatever shape the pony chooses, unless it is disrupted by a great enough physical impact, or another pony reshapes it."

"Wait, you can control the weather?" Selene asked.

"Yes, ponies mold their environment to better suit their needs, observe."

A light blue pegasus flew up to a cloud, grasping it with her hooves, she pulled off a small piece of it and then maneuvered it over a small garden floating amount the clouds. She then hopped on top of the cloud and began to jump. Water rained down on the flowers below.

Selene just stared in awe without saying anything.

The view continued to shift down past the cloud city, underneath lay vast areas of farmland, as far as she could see. It moved alone until she could see a green forest with a small city in its center. Thousands of ponies, Earth, Unicorn and Pegasus made their way around a large open air market in the outskirts of the city.

A large statue of a Celestia was in the center of the market. It towered over every pony who passed. Luna's heart ached when she saw the statue, reminding her how badly she missed her sister.

"Hey, that statue is like you, wings and a horn," Selene said, pointing at it. "How come I haven't seen any other ponies that look like that?"

"That... that is my sister," Luna said, sadly.

A large castle came into view, hundreds of armored ponies stood guard on its battlements. Banners with two alicorns circling a sun and moon flapped in the wind. Suddenly the image faded away. Selene looked up and saw Luna laying on the couch, her head down low and her ears folded downward. Tears bubbled up in her eyes, dripping down her muzzle.

"I'm sorry, I can't go on," Luna said with a sniffle. She buried her head beneath her hooves and started to cry.

"I'm sorry Luna, I shouldn't have brought it up," Selene said, resting her hand on Luna's back.

"It is not your fault... I did not leave on happy terms, but it was my own actions that caused the problem."

Selene moved over and placed her hand on Luna's back.

"Do you want to talk about it?" she asked.

For a few minutes, Luna said nothing. Finally the tears stopped and she looked up.

"Many years ago, I fought my sister, I thought neither she nor anypony else cared for me, and in my anger I lashed out at her and tried to take control of her domain. She pleaded with me to stop, but I ignored her, my jealousy of her had driven me insane. In my insanity I had turned down a dark and evil path, and I was a danger to her and everypony else. When I refused to yield, she was forced to stop me, and then I was banished, sent far away by a powerful spell."

"Was that her castle?" Selene asked.

Luna nodded. 

"It was ours, we were supposed to rule Equestria together, as equals, but that wasn't enough for me," she said, filled with shame.

"Wait, are you royalty or something?"

"Yes, I was one of the two ruling princesses."

Selene said nothing but her eyes widened.

"During my banishment, my hatred of her only grew, I blamed her for everything, and when I returned, I seized control again. I thought I had found a way to counter her magic, but she was ready for me. She sent six ponies against me, while she remained in the shadows. I believed myself more than a match for her underlings and attacked them, but they wielding an ancient artifact of great power. With it they were able to cast a powerful spell upon me, for a brief moment, I resisted, but it took all my power. It was then when I was distracted by their attack that she struck. I tried to flee, to teleport away, but something went wrong and I ended up here. My magic was almost depleted, which is why I was so weak when you first found me. I have been recovering ever since."

"Something about her spell confuses me though, it did not seem to be designed to do me any harm. I think it was an attempt to magically cure my insanity as it was only after I arrived here that I truly recognized what I had done. Before then I believed myself to be just in my actions, but now I realize they were the actions of a petulant foal, having a temper tantrum because I was not getting what I wanted. Now I desire nothing more than to return, apologize for my errors and lay myself at her mercy, but I fear that my wickedness will have cost me any hope of redemption."

Luna lowered her head again and started to sob. Selene started rubbed Luna's back and then reached around Luna, giving her a reassuring hug.

"I can't speak for your sister, but since I found you, you've been nothing but kind. I didn't want to admit it but the food situation was getting pretty severe, if you hadn't done what you did, I'd likely have starved to death in the next few months."

Selene reached down and lifted Luna's head, and looked into her eyes.

"You didn't have to make those plants grow, you didn't have to help me gather food or water. You could have easily killed me and taken my supplies, but you didn't. You went out of the way to help me. Those aren't the actions of an evil person... er pony. Maybe you once were, but if that's true, I think you've changed."

The two sat quietly for a while, Selene holding on to Luna, comforting her as best she could. Eventually Luna stopped crying, and thanked Selene. She still wasn't sure what would happen if she returned to Equestria, but Selene's talk had given her a small amount of hope.

"I didn't want to bring it up while you were crying, but did you say you tried to teleport away?" Selene asked.

"Yes, but something went wrong. I was not concentrating on my destination, but even so a blind teleport should not have taken me to another world."

"You can teleport? Like disappear and reappear in another place?"

"It is a fairly complex spell, but not all that difficult."

"Can you demonstrate?"

Luna's horn started to glow and in a burst of light she vanished from the room. 

"Luna?" Selene reached forward to where Luna had been sitting, half expecting the mare to simply be invisible.

A moment later there was a loud pop and she reappeared. Selene jumped backwards and landed on the floor. A glass of water from the mess floated next to Luna, she gave it to Selene.

"I thought you might like a drink."

Selene just stared at the glass for a minute before shaking her head.

"Every time you tell me about magic, I don't believe you, and then you turn around and do some impossible thing," she said while pulling herself off the floor.

"If you can teleport from one planet to another, can't you just teleport home?"

"It is a bit more complicated than that. For one, the greater the distance, the more magic I need, and while I have recovered enough to teleport short distances, I still do not have enough magic to leave this world. Secondly, I do not know where I am. I share a... a magical bond with my sister, I should be able to feel her presence, no matter what the physical distance is between us, and I do not."

"Maybe you traveled... into the futureeeee," Selene said waving her arms into the air.

"No, I know time magic and it was not what brought me here," Luna said. She didn't want to mention that it wouldn't matter how far in to the future she had gone, Celestia would still be around, and the bond was eternal as the two sisters.

"I was joking, don't tell me that ponies can time travel as well."

Luna said nothing.

"Well?"

"You said not to tell you."

"Great, now I'm never going to know if you're serious or not," Selene said with a frown.

"There is one possibility, that I had not thought of until you told me about your ship. When you spoke of the dimensional drive, it made me think. The spell to open a portal to another dimension is similar to a teleport spell but requires a great deal more magic. It is possible, however unlikely, that I was thrown into another dimension."

"As far as I know, humans have never found another dimension with life before. The dimensions we use to travel are completely empty, no stars, no planets, no life. There are theories about other dimensions with life, but humanity have never found a way to get to them."

"There is a way I could find out. I would need to return to where I first entered this world and examine the remnants of the spell that brought me here."

"Well, let's do it then, how far is it?"

"About a day's journey south of here," Luna said.

"We'll have to go tomorrow then, it's too late now."

"You do not have to come with me."

"I can't let you travel that far alone, what if you get lost, what if you get attacked by another pack of bone wolves?"

"A pack of bone wolves, no matter how large, has long since lost the ability to threaten me," Luna said with a laugh, her horn glowing brightly.

"You have a good point," Selene said. "I'm still going with you though, we'll head out tomorrow morning. With all the food we have now, we can afford to take one day off from gathering supplies."

Selene and Luna spent the rest of the evening exchanging stories about humanity and Equestria. Before they went to bed, they finalized their plan for the morning.
> Chapter 10
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Selene woke up early the next morning. She found Luna already awake, gathering food from the garden. Selene did a quick run through of the ship, double checking to make sure nothing was out of place. Luna grabbed Selene's backpack and loaded it up with food for lunch and dinner, a few canteens of water and then cast a spell on the bag to keep the supplies from freezing.

Selene entered the room, putting on her heavy coat.

"Are you ready to go?" she asked while she slipped her boots on.

Luna nodded. "I will carry the supplies," she said levitating the backpack next to her.

Selene saw her picking up the backpack. 

"You don't have to do that, I can carry it," she said.

Luna looked over at the human, Selene's complexion had already started to improve since she gained access to Luna's garden. Still though, there was no reason to make her carry anything, now when Luna could do so with almost zero effort.

"I shall take care of the supplies, carrying this puts no strain on my magic."

"Oh alright, that'll work then cause I'll carry my rifle, just in case we run into something."

Selene walked over to the locker and opened it up. She pulled out the gun and opened the bolt to verify that it was empty. Satisfied, she closed it up again and checked the safety. Next she grabbed two magazines and loaded them both up. One went into the gun and the other into her coat pocket.. Lastly she grabbed a box of 20 rounds and tossed it to Luna who put it in the backpack.

Human and pony made their way outside.

"Will you be able to find your way back?" Selene asked.

"I know the direction, and the approximate distance, when we are close, I will be able to pinpoint it by sensing the magic that brought me here."

The weather was surprisingly calm for the time of year, a low wind whistled through the forest before the two travelers. The temperature was well below freezing and Selene could see her breath with every step she took. Even with the heavy winter gear that she wore, she could feel the cold. 

It was not often that she ventured far from the ship. The cold temperatures of the planet were a big factor in how far Selene had been able to travel in the past. She lacked any way to keep supplies that she would need on a longer trip from simply turning to ice except during the ever shortening warm season. It had been many years since she last ventured far from the ship, she shuddered, thinking about that last trip.

"Before I forget, hold still." Luna said, looking at Selene.

Selene stopped and turned towards Luna.

"What's up?" she asked.

Luna's horn lit up and a strange tingling sensation come over Selene. It was gone before she knew it.

"What did you..." it was then Selene noticed that she no longer felt the chill of the frozen air. She could tell that it was cold, but it was a distant feeling.

"That will keep you from freezing to death. We have a long journey ahead of us."

Selene shook her head and smiled. 

"Thanks Luna," she said. "I don't think I'll ever get used to the things you can do with magic."

The two made their way south. As they walked through the forest, Selene told Luna more about Earth. Humans been traveling through space for hundreds of years now. They were dozens of populated worlds and an even larger number of smaller colonies throughout the local arm of the galaxy. The Ascension had been heading to drop off supplies on one of the newest human colonies.

Selene knew that Luna was still catching up on human history so she gave Luna a brief summary of Earth's spread into space. She also spent some time going over more modern technology. For everything that she brought up, Luna had a dozen questions.

Gradually the forest started to thin out as they reached the southern edge. Before them a snowy plain stretched for miles. Luna looked back and noticed how far behind Selene had fallen. It was time to take a break and let the girl have some rest.

"Why don't we stop for lunch?" Luna asked, when Selene had caught up.

"Sounds good to me," Selene said, panting slightly.

Luna closed her eyes and concentrated for a moment. A pale blue bubble of magic expanded out from her horn, the snow on the ground and the frigid wind were both pushed back. The bubble expanded outwards quite a ways, where it solidified into a translucent sphere, creating a large enough space for the two to sit down and eat some lunch. 

Selene grabbed the backpack and pulled out the canteens and packed lunches. She passed one of each to Luna and then opened her canteen and took a long drink. After they had finished their lunch, Selene packed everything back into the bag and they started off again.

As they continued their hike, Selene looked over at Luna, her eyes drawn to the alicorn's wings. She rubbed her hands together as her lips turned upwards into a smirk. She had a plan, and if all went well she'd get to do something she was dreaming about since she had met Luna. As they continued their hike, she turned toward the unsuspecting pony.

"Ok Luna, you said that pegasus ponies can control the weather, and you showed me those images, but I want to see it for real. Go grab a cloud or something."

Luna shrugged and placed the backpack down on the ground. She spread her wings and launched into the air. Higher and higher she flew until Selene was just a speck on the ground below. She found a storm cloud and pulled off a small chunk of it. It had been a long time since she did any cloud work, she'd forgotten how soft they were. She was definitely going to replace her bed when they got back to the ship.

She quickly dove back down, pushing the cloud in front of her. Selene was looking up at her, jaw wide open. Feeling a little showy, Luna pushed the cloud over a tree about 20 feet from where Selene was standing. She landed on top of the cloud and proceed to jump up and down on top of it.

Frozen rain started to fall from the cloud and it gradually lightened, from a dark gray slowly turning lighter and lighter until it was pure white.
Once the rain had stopped, she stopped jumping and floated next to the cloud. She gave it a good kick with her rear hoof. A bolt of lightning shot out and hit the tree, shards of wood exploded outward and the tree started to smoke. Selene jumped backwards, not expecting the burst of lightning.

Luna landed and trotted over to Selene grinning.

"I don't suppose you could switch the planet from this near perpetual winter to summer?"

"I... no, not right now anyway. There is something wrong with this planet, it's one of the reasons you were unable to grow anything."

Selene walked over and put her hands on Luna's wing. She gently stroked the feathers, admiring the beauty.

"The way you can fly... it's amazing! Your wings, they're incredible. You just spread them out and whoosh," she threw her hand skyward,"Off you go. Even watching you I have trouble believing it."

Luna took a few steps back, a blush appearing on her face.

"Selene..."

Selene looked at Luna, her eyes sparkled and her lips curled upward in a decidedly evil grin.

"Can I... can I ride you?" she asked.

"Excuse me?" Luna stammered, her face reddening even more.

"I mean, could you carry me? While flying? You said before it was magic and had nothing to do with weight or aerodynamics."

"I uhh..."

"Pleaseeeeeeee," Selene begged.

Luna shook her head and then rolled her eyes. 

"Oh all right, but if you tell anypony of this, I will deny it," she said.

Selene started to bounce up and down with glee.

"Who could I possibly tell?" she asked while skipping over towards Luna.

"How do you want me to do this?" Selene asked, checking to see if there was room for her to fit in front of Luna's wings.

"Allow me," Luna said lowering her neck and dropping crouching down on her front hooves.

Just as Selene was about to try to climb on to Luna's back, Luna launcher herself forward and upward, looped over Selene and grabbed her from behind, sticking her front hooves under Selene's arms. She lifted the shrieking girl into the air and rose up about 50 feet off of the ground. Selene's screams quickly turned into laughter as Luna slowly flew around in a large circle, rising higher and higher.

Luna beat her wings and the two continued to rise. She spotted a cloud not too far away, and started flapping even harder, then glided in for a landing.

Selene felt a brief tingling sensation as Luna soared over the cloud. Suddenly Luna let go, Selene started to scream as she fell... all of two feet before she made contact with the cloud and stopped. Confused, she put her hand out and touched the surface of the cloud. It was cold but didn't feel wet. It was also amazingly soft, and offered a slight bit of resistance that a cloud shouldn't be capable of.

She looked up and noticed Luna laying down next to her.

"How...?" she asked.

"Cloud walking spell," Luna replied, smiling.

"You dropped me!" Selene said, as she got over the confusion and remembered what Luna had just done.

"I had already cast the spell on you, I knew you would be fine."

"You scared the shit out of me, don't do that again." 

Selene punched Luna in the side, but she smiled a second later.

"It was worth it though, this is amazing," she said, patting the cloud.

Luna stood up walked to the edge of the cloud and sat back down again. Selene carefully rose to her feet, foot shaking nervously, she took one step, then another, then another. Slowly she made her way towards the pony, but stopped before she got close to the edge.

"You can come to the edge, it is safe." 

Selene inched closer to the edge, she wrapped her arm around Luna holding on and then looked at the view below. In the distanced she could just make out the forest where the Ascension had crashed, after that was the snow covered plain they had been hiking across all morning. Even with Luna's spell, she could feel the extreme cold at starting to get to her. She inched closer to the pony, shivering. Luna placed her wing over Selene, sheltering her from the biting wind.

"We should get going, we still have a long way to go," she said, teeth chattering.

Luna nodded, her horn flared to life and she lifted Selene, placing her onto her back. Turning her head around, she looked at the girl.

"Hold on tight," she said.

Selene leaned down and wrapped her arms around Luna's neck. Once Luna was sure Selene had a good grip, she walked to the very edge of the cloud and leaned forward until her rear hooves lifted off the cloud and she fell downward. For a moment she was in free fall, before she let her wings flare out, catching the air.

Luna glided down to the snow covered plain below, upon landing she lifted Selene off her back and placed her back on the ground. Selene immediately latched onto Luna, giving the pony a great big hug.

"Thank you" Selene said. "That was awesome."

For hours they hiked across the plain, getting closer and closer to their goal.

"So what exactly is going to happen when we get where we're going?" Selene asked while stepping around a large snow drift.

"Every spell that is cast leaves traces of magic that are detectable with the right skills. They are like... hoofprints in the snow, the more powerful the spell, the deeper the print and the longer it lasts. There is enough of a difference between a teleport spell and a dimensional gateway that when I carefully study the traces, I should be able to determine which brought me here, or if it was something else."

"What will you do once you find out what brought you here?"

"It depends. If it was a teleport, which I doubt, I will have to wait until I have recovered enough to attempt a long range teleport. The amount of magic I would need to open a dimensional portal is even higher but not by a large factor when comparing it to interplanetary teleportation."

Luna looked down at the ground, and sighed.

"There is a third possibility, that whatever brought me here was similar to the spell that banished me, only much more powerful, this planet may be my new prison," she said glumly.

"Sending you to another planet seems rather... severe," Selene said frowning.

"I did horrible things," Luna said, her ears fell and she pawed at the ground.

There was a few seconds of awkward silence before Selene spoke up. "Well, if I ever get off this rock, you can come with me, it will be like a prison break," she said grinning, trying to lighten the mood.

Luna smiled, and placed a wing on Selene's shoulder.

"Thank you," she said. "I do not think it will be necessary though, I believe that it is most likely that I ended up in another dimension."

"That will present a problem if true, unlike teleports, dimensional travel requires you to have some frame of reference to return to where you came from. I do not know of any easy way to determine where I ended up, so finding my way home could be difficult."

"What about the magical hoofprint? Can that tell you?"

"It will help provide a reference but it will not give me the exact answer, it could still take a long time to find my home dimension."

"Luna..." Selene said, softly.

Luna looked towards Selene, but the girl was avoiding eye contact.

"Will... will you leave when you find your home?" Selene asked, her voice shaking slightly.

Luna's wing wrapped around the girl. She leaned down and nuzzled her gently.

"Do not worry Selene, I will not abandon you here. Before I return to Equestria, I will do all in my power to help you find your way home."

Selene returned the hug and stuttered out a thank you.

"I don't think I could stand to be alone again," she said.

"You will not have to be, I promise."

They both walked on in silence for some time. The sun was starting to dip behind the now distant mountains. They had reached a snow covered hill, it was the feature in the landscape besides more and more plain that they had seen for hours.

"Do you know how much farther?" Selene asked.

"Another hour at most, it is on the other side of this hill."

"Well, let's get going then!"

Climbing the hill was slow going, The surface of the snow was covered in a thin sheet of ice. Eventually the pair reached the top, they took a short break to eat dinner and then began to descend.
> Chapter 11
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

As they hiked down the hill, the sun's last rays faded until the black of night had overtaken the pair. Selene fumbled around in the backpack and produced her helmet. Pulling it over her head she turned on the night vision mode. While she was doing that Luna took a quick flight around until she found the cavern. She circled back and led Selene to the entrance.

"When I first awoke on this world, it was in there," Luna said, pointing into the black depths.

"I've noticed you wearing that before the few times we've been out at night before, why is that?" Luna asked, noticing the helmet.

"I'm using this so I can see, it has built in night vision, but like everything else on the Ascension, it's old and wearing out. The battery only lasts a few hours, which is why I don't go out after dark very often. There's just not enough light at night to get by without it," she said looking up at the dark sky.

Her eyes opened wide as she suddenly thought of something. "What about you? I just thought of it, but I don't have another helmet for you."

"I am fine, I can see in darkness as well as in daylight..." Luna paused to look up. "Still, I do miss Equestria's nights. The lonely moon slowly drifting across the sky, surrounded by the countless stars that filled the night sky."

"Yeah, that's one of the big mysteries of this place. I spent much of my early childhood in space, no matter where I went, looking out of the ship meant I could see billions of stars. Here, I can see maybe a few dozen? I've never been anywhere like that before."

"Let us make our way inside, there I may find answers for us both. But first, let me see your helmet."

Selene pulled the helmet off and walked over to Luna, she tilted it so Luna could look though the visor, the entrance of the cavern lit up in a bright green color.

"Crude, but I think I can do better," Luna said with a smile.

She cast a quick spell, a brilliant glowing globe floated in front of her, illuminating the entrance.

The two climbed down the rocky slope of the interior. The light from Luna's spell lit up a good sized area, shadows flickered around the walls as it followed behind Luna as she went deeper in. Her eyes had regained their ability to see in the dark and beyond the light of the spell, she could see that the cavern extended far deeper than she had originally thought.

Concentrating, she reached out and felt for the remnants of magic from the spell that had brought her here. Though faded from time, it was easy to find, sticking out like the lone hill they were now climbing under on the snowy plain above.

"This will take several hours," Luna said, looking to Selene.

"Alright," Selene said, sitting on the rocky floor.

Luna lay down on the floor, her horn adding a blue tint to the light in the darkness. Selene patiently waited and watched.

Minutes turned into an hour and eventually Selene grew tired of waiting. She had been thinking about a family trip she had gone on with her dad many years ago. They had gone on a tour of cavern and it had been lots of fun, especially at the end of the tour when they got to split off from the main group and go exploring. She pulled her helmet out of her backpack and placed it on her head.

"I'm going to look around," she said to Luna.

Luna nodded and then returned her concentration to the investigation of the magic that brought her to this world.

Selene walked to the entrance and looked outside. It was still quite dark but enough light from Luna's spell spilled out of the cave that she could see small flakes of snow falling from the sky. The beginnings of a storm that had been visible in the distance as they traveled earlier. Instead she turned around, choosing to go deeper into the cave, as she advanced the ceiling dropped downward and she had to crouch to continue forward. Eventually she reached a narrow tunnel that necessitated crawling on her belly to proceed. After about a minute of crawling, the tunnel opened up and she was able to stand up again. She followed the path as it headed deeper underground, and eventually it widened up into a large room. Large stalactites hung from the ceiling, a drastic change from the smooth rock in the outer corridor. She wandered around the room until she came to the far side. An opening in the wall branched out in two directions.

Randomly she picked the left most path. The corridor narrowed considerably until she ended up having to crouch under a low ceiling. The rock floor dropped down about five feet at a steep angle, so she stuck her legs forward and slid down. When she reached the bottom she had crawl on her belly for a few feet before the ceiling started to slope back upwards.

The path opened up into long curving tunnel, tall enough for her to stand. She followed it for a few hundred feet before she reached the end of the tunnel. The ceiling started to drop down again, and the floor angled downward into a cliff. It was deep enough that she couldn't see the bottom, even with the night vision provided by her helmet.

Keeping well away from the edge, she sat down, and rested for a few minutes. When she was ready to go she stood back up and turned to go back the way she had come from. Suddenly, she heard a noise coming from deep in the hole behind her, she spun around so fast she nearly lost her footing. One arm shot upward and grabbed the low ceiling and she steadied herself.

Heart pounding, she listened for anything else but there was nothing but silence, until she heard a low whistling and felt a weak wind coming up from the hole. Slowly she relaxed, figuring the noise was just wind rushing through the caverns from another entrance.

Turning back around, she walked through the tunnel until she came to the rock she had slid down earlier. Reaching up she pushed her rifle up and over the top of the slope. Then she reached up with both arms and tried to pull herself up. She couldn't get a good grip on the rock, it was too smooth and there were no handholds for her to latch on to. Instead she stepped forward up the incline and lifted her back, bracing herself against the low ceiling. Keeping herself braced on one foot, she took another step forward, reached up and pushed against the rock to slide her back forward. One more step got her within reach of piece of rock that jutted out from the otherwise smooth ceiling providing a good handhold. She was then able to pull herself around and shimmy backwards up the rest of the slope, pushing against the ceiling until she reached the top.

She picked up her gun and slung it back over her shoulder. Then she continued back until she got to the large room with the two branching paths. Looking at her watch she realized she had been gone longer than she thought. It had been a little over an hour since she had left Luna. Still, Luna had said hours and there was one tunnel left unexplored.

Unlike her first choice, the right branch was fairly easy going. The ground sloped down gently and except for the narrow entrance, the top of the tunnel was at high enough that even Luna would be able to stand with ease. This path twisted and turned as it led Selene deeper under the surface. Eventually the smooth rock transitioned into a jagged surface. Large spikes jutted out of the floor and down from the top of the tunnel.

Selene walked over to one of the spikes to get a closer look. The surface of the spike was smooth, but unlike the stalactites and stalagmites of she had seen earlier, this spike had hard angles, it looked almost crystalline. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small flashlight. Then she turned off her visor's night vision and turned on the flashlight.

Without the green hue of the night vision, she was able to tell that the spike was in fact a large crystal. It was dark, almost black but she could just make out a bit of light shining through the partiality translucent crystal. She put the flash light away and turned her helmet back on.

As she went farther down the path, she could see more and more of the crystals, until they covered every surface of the tunnel. The tunnel itself had also started to widen and she could make out what looked like a large room ahead.

The way forward was no long as easy going as it had been. Instead of smooth rock, the floor was now littered with crystals of all shape and sizes. Many of them were loose and she had nearly slipped when they shifted under her step. Jagged spires stuck up in all directions, a fall in this room would risk impalement.

Selene took one look at the room before her, the closer she got to the center the farther down the room dropped. She had already climbed down at least 20 feet and from her current position, it appeared that there was a pit in the middle of the room. She couldn't see down pit but she quickly realized that proceeding any further would be dangerous. She had already nearly fallen twice on her climb down and didn't want to risk injury.

She turned around back towards the path that had led her here. Reaching up, she grabbed hunk of crystal jutting from the wall. As she pulled herself upwards, the section of the floor that her foot was on gave way. She immediately strengthened her grip as she found herself hanging. She shifted her feet around until she was able to find another foothold.

The crystal she had been standing on bounced further into the room, down the slope and into the pit. Meanwhile she pulled herself up and continued to climb out of the room. She reached the top level of the room and started to make her way over to the tunnel when she heard a large cracking noise behind her.

She turned around and screamed. In the center of the pit, something was pulling itself up out of the hole. The creature, whatever it was, appeared to be made of the same crystals that filled the room. Apparently reacting to her scream, it turned toward her and broke a section of the wall and reached back, preparing to throw it at the terrified girl.

Selene quickly turned back around, moving as fast as she could she scampered towards the tunnel. A large chunk of crystal landed a few feet to her left, it plowed past her, shattering everything in its path, and sent shards of crystal flying in all directions. One jagged piece hit Selene and embedded itself in her side.

The pain was intense, but the adrenaline coursing through her veins gave her enough energy to keep going. She made it to the tunnel and quickly glanced over her shoulder. The creature was climbing up out of the room in pursuit. Moving as fast as she could, she headed back up the tunnel.


#####


Luna's horn darkened, she opened her eyes and smiled.

"I have good news," she said, looking around.

Selene wasn't anywhere to be seen. Luna vaguely remembered Selene said something about looking around, but she had no idea how long ago that was.

"Selene?" she called out, but all she heard was a bit of an echo off the cave walls.

Standing up, she turned towards the cavern entrance. The light flurries of earlier had turned into a heavy and thick snowfall, it was unlikely Selene would be out in that.

"She must have gone deeper into the cavern," she thought to herself.

Luna headed towards the back of the entrance where she found a pathway heading deeper underground. The roof of the cave dropped down as she walked along, until she reached a point where she could no longer stand. She crouched as low as she could and crawled until she reached a narrow tunnel.

She tried to squeeze into the tunnel but her horn scraped against the rock. Looking again, she realized that there was no way she was going to fit through. She peered through the tunnel and it looked like it widened up ahead. She hadn't seen any other pathways and while she was unable to fit herself, she was confident that Selene would have been able to squeeze though.

Luna teleported herself ahead about 50 feet, where the tunnel had widened enough for her to stand up. 

She started walking forward when she heard a loud noise coming from farther down the path. It sounded like rocks crashing down, realizing it may have been a cave in and Selene could be hurt, she started galloping down the path as fast as she could.

Over the sound of her hooves thundering down the rocky floor, she could hear Selene screaming, and more crashing sounds. She rounded a corner and ran into a large room.

Luna immediately spotted Selene on the far side, running toward her. Just a short distance behind her, some sort crystalline construct was smashing its way through a small tunnel. With a mighty crash, huge chunks of the wall exploded outwards. The entire room shook, Selene lost her footing and went tumbling down.

Luna teleported to where she saw Selene go down, as the construct lumbered in. It immediately picked up a large boulder and threw it at the pony. A dark blue shield flared into existence around both Luna and Selene, the boulder struck the shield and skittered off, small chips of stone flying in all directions.

Luna looked down, Selene's pants and shirt were covered in blood and her leg was twisted at an unnatural angle. She was trying to stand back up, but Luna gently lay her wing on the girl.

"Be still Selene, I will handle this." 

Luna turned to face the attacker. She could immediately sense that this thing before her was no natural creature, it was a magical construct animated with a dark energy. This was the first time she had detected any magic other than her own the whole time she had been here.

She focused a concentrated beam of energy in her horn and fired it directly at the monster. The beam struck the monster in the large rocky core that formed its body. It stumbled back, but there was no apparent damage. It responded by stepping forward and smashing down on Luna's barrier with a massive rocky fist.

Luna grunted but her shield held. She dumped even more magic into another beam. The second beam hit the construct right in the shoulder, it pierced through and the construct's arm landed on the ground with a thud. The area next to where the beam had struck lit up with a glow. Lines of magic lit up inside the construct's crystal core, they flowed from the point of impact and into its head. Luna's smile turned into a frown as the glow brightened, and the monster seemed to grow stronger.

The monster stepped back and then turned towards the arm. It was then that she noticed that its other arm wasn't actually attached to the core. Instead it was held in a magical field, just barely touching the construct's side. The monster leaned down and picked up the severed arm. It held it up to its side which glowed brightly for a moment, when the light faded, the arm was once again held in place next to the central core.

Its head began to glow and a beam, identical to the one she had cast earlier, crashed into her shield. She shuddered as the shield began to turn black before it cracked and faded away. The monster was no longer glowing with power, but magical attacks were clearly out. Somehow it had absorbed a large portion of the attack and redirected it at her.

She picked up Selene and teleported to the other side of the room to give her a moment to think. Selene meanwhile had shifted to a sitting position, she pulled the rifle off of her back and clicked the safety off. She took aim at the large head and fired. The bullet impacted and shards of crystal flew off in all directions and a high pitched whine emanated from the monster.

"Damn it," Selene swore. "I don't think I'm going to be much help."

Luna however had noticed a tiny, almost insubstantial drop in the magic that powered the construct.

"More than you realize, you have given me an idea."

She levitated the boulder that the monster had flung at her earlier, whipping it around at high speed, she smashed it into the construct. The boulder exploded pieces, and a large chunk of crystal broke off the construct's body.

"Physical attacks damage it, but do not provide it with any energy to repair its form," Luna said her smile returning.

Her horn glowed brightly and every single loose chunk of rock in the room floated upwards. The monster shift its arm to protect itself from the attack it sensed was coming. Thousands of pounds of rock and debris accelerated and smashed into the construct from all directions. It stumbled back and forth, large chunks breaking off in the assault.

Finally it fell, landing in the middle of the room with a loud crash. The floor shook again and there was a cracking sound as the entire center of the room collapsed. Large clouds of dust shot up into the air darkening even the magical light that had followed Luna into the depths.

"Is it dead?" Selene said, coughing as the dust started to settle.

Luna concentrated for a moment, trying to detect anymore magical energies from the monster.

"It is indeed dead, though it was never alive to begin with."

"What the hell was that thing?" Selene asked.

"It was a crystal golem, a form of magical construct, as for who created it or where it came from, I do not know," Luna said.

"Someone created it?"

"Yes, although I have not seen a golem exactly like that before, I could tell the magic that animated it were most certainly not natural."

As the shock of the attack wore off, the pain of her injuries started to make themselves known. She looked down at her leg and winced.

"Luna, I don't think I'm going to be able to walk out of here."

Luna leaned down to get a closer look at Selene's injuries. Her skin was starting to turn pale and her clothes were drenched in blood. A blue field of magic surrounded Selene for a moment before disappearing.

"The leg is broken, I will have to set it, before it can be healed."

Then she turned to hole in Selene's shirt. A large crystal shard was sticking out of her side, blood flowing freely.

"This is more serious, I can remove the shard and likely stop the bleeding, but it has punctured an internal organ. I do not know human physiology, so I do not know the true extent of the damage."

"I think it's probably my liver," Selene said, followed by a scream of pain. "Damn it, I only know basic first aid, there is a medical database on the ship's computer, it should have information on this, but we're too far away, I'd never make it back."

Luna looked at Selene, mouth turning down into a frown.

"I can teleport us back, but the distance is near the limits of my current abilities, the teleport will be rough, it may worsen your injuries."

The pain was growing and Selene cried out again.

"I'll risk it, better a chance than dying out here."

"I need to pick you up, I will support your leg as best as I am able, but this will hurt."

Selene felt her body rise and there was a sharp jolt of pain. Luna moved Selene to her back and gently lowered the girl down. Selene turned to look at the hole in the center of the room.

"Holy shit."

"Sorry Selene, I tried to keep your leg as motionless as possible."

"No, not that, look."

The entire middle of the room had collapsed, exposing an even larger room below it. Built into the far wall of the lower room was a massive metal door.
> Chapter 12
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

With a flash of light and a loud pop, Luna and Selene appeared in the Ascension's mess hall.  Immediately Selene started coughing as the air was filled with smoke.  Her whole body felt like it was on fire and she could smell burning.  Luna stumbled over to a table and then levitated Selene off of her back and lowered her down gently.  Selene's clothing was half burned away and her exposed skin was covered in red marks.

"Let's... not do that again." Selene said with a cough.

"I am sorry Selene, I should have never attempted to teleport so far in my current condition."

"Hey, I'm still alive, so we'll call it a success.  Run to the lounge and grab my tablet, then grab me the medkit off the wall."

The adrenaline that had kept her going was starting to run out.  Selene felt her eyes flutter shut and she lay her head down. Luna ran out of the mess, a moment later she returned tablet in tow.  The medkit floated off the wall and she set both down on the table.  Selene was laying still with her eyes closed, her breathing was erratic, and she was drenched in sweat.

"Selene?" Luna poked at the girl.

She coughed a few times and opened her eyes.

"Sorry, not feeling great."

"I have returned with your tablet and the medkit," Luna said.

Selene weakly reached over, took the tablet and entered some commands, then she opened the medkit and took out a small device.

"This is a medical scanner, it will interface with the ship's computer and provide a diagnosis.  We can look up the diagnoses and treatment options on the tablet, " she said.

Selene instructed Luna on how to use the scanner, when she was finished, Luna took the scanner and passed it over Selene's injuries.  Selene hit a few keys on the tablet and started reading the screen.

"The good news is, the leg will heal if you can set the bone right, also, - Selene pointed at her side - if you can remove the shard and stop the bleeding, I have medicine that will prevent infection and I should recover eventually."

Luna cocked her head to the side.

"And the bad news?" she asked.

"I... I've lost a lot of blood and well..." Selene trailed off, not wanting to finish the sentence.

"Is there no treatment available?"

"Not unless we can find a donor, the Ascension doesn't have anything on board that we could use."

"I might be able to use magic.  Powerful healing magic is generally tailored to a specific species, that is why I can't simply cast a spell and heal your injuries, there are no spells for humans because they do not exist in Equestria.  There are low level spells that are not species dependent that I can use to accelerate your body's natural healing, but that will not help with the blood loss."

Luna paced back and forth nervously.

"There are certain... forbidden fields of magic.  They are not meant to heal but to steal life.  I know of a spell that can be used to drain the lifeforce from one pony and give it to another.  I could cast it upon myself, it may save you."

"I'm not letting you put yourself in danger to save me."

"The danger would not be to myself, I am... I am normally immune to such magic, but my journey here weakened me, in my current state the spell may work, I do not know.  If it does not work, it will kill you."

The room was spinning and her vision was starting to blur.  Selene closed her eyes, so she could try to think but it was getting hard to concentrate on anything.

"Selene, I need to know."

"You promise it won't put you in any danger?"

"I will be fine, " Luna said.

"Do it then, " Selene said with a nod.

"I need to take care of your other injuries first, there may be side effects to this spell."

Her horn lit up and she carefully moved the broken bone into the proper position.  She then pinned the bone into position with a light application of magic.  Turning to the crystal shard, she focused her magic once again and simply teleported it out of the wound.  Another spell slowed the bleeding and accelerated the repair functions of Selene's body.

"I am ready."

Luna closed her eyes and concentrated, the spell was a complicated one and she had never cast it herself.  The area around her dimmed and a red glow surround her body.  A sharp pain caused her to cry out.

"Luna!"

"I am fine, " she said, gritting her teeth.  

A red mist started to rise through her fur, directly over her heart.  The pain was intense but she did not cry out again.  It coalesced into a liquid that looked uncomfortably like blood.  As she finished the spell, the ball of liquid flew over to Selene and entered the girl's chest.

Selene's eyes flew open.  The pain of the other injuries vanished and was replaced with an intense burning in her chest.  She tried to scream before she realized she already was.  Her chest was glowing bright red and her heart was beating so fast, it felt like it was going to explode. Luna's face appeared over her head, she saw the pony's lips move but she couldn't hear any of the words.  She clutched her chest as the pain grew worse and worse.

"Selene, can you hear me!?" Luna shouted.

The only response was Selene's continued screams as she writhed in agony.  She was shaking so hard that she fell off the table, but Luna caught her and lowered her down to the floor before she could suffer any damage.  Luna knew something was wrong, the spell had never been designed to be cast upon an immortal.  When cast on a normal pony, it would steal a portion of their life to extend the life of another.  Too much life drained away would kill the donor, while granting decades of life to the other pony, but even a small fraction could help heal normally fatal wounds.  Luna had cast the spell at the lowest power possible, but even a tiny fragment of eternity was too much for Selene's body to handle.

After what seemed like hours, but was only minutes had passed, Selene's screaming slowly died down and she passed out.  Luna looked over the girl.  The wound from the crystal shard was completely gone.  Her magic also showed that Selene's leg was no longer broken.  She sighed in relief.  The spell might have had some unexpected side effects, but it appeared to have worked.

She picked Selene up and brought her to her room.  She carefully placed Selene on her bed and then lay down beside her.  The only thing to do now was to wait and let her rest.


#####


Selene woke the next morning and found herself pinned under Luna's wing.  She stretched her arms out and yawned loudly.  Luna shifted and folded her wing back up.

"How are you feeling?" Luna asked.

"I feel, great?  Which, given the circumstances concerns me.  What happened?" Selene said, clearly confused.

"The spell was successful.  Your injuries have been healed as well, a side effect apparently."

Selene reached down and lifted her shirt up.  Her skin was smooth and unbroken, there wasn't even a scar.  She moved her leg slightly, and felt no pain.  She reached over and gave Luna a hug.

"Thanks, you saved my life."

Luna returned the hug.

"I almost killed you."

"But you didn't!  Not that I want to go through that again, I don't think I've ever felt that much pain before."

Luna winced.

"I am sorry, it was another side effect."

"Am I OK to get up? I'm starving."

Luna nodded and Selene hopped out of bed.  She couldn't remember the last time she had this much energy.  She ran down the corridor, happy to be alive.  Luna followed behind her as they made their way to the kitchen.

After breakfast Selene turned to Luna.

"Was I imagining things or was there a door in the cave?"

Luna had forgotten all about the door.

"No, you remember correctly."

"The ship never detected any signs of life on this planet before we crashed.  We should check it out."

Luna turned her head and stared at the human.

"You almost died and you want to go back?"

"Well, we need to check it out at some point.  Next time we'll be more careful.  I shouldn't have wandered off alone, but I can't help it, I love investigating new places."

Luna placed a hoof on Selene's shoulder.

"Do not blame yourself, I told you there was nothing in the cave, " she said.

"Even if there wasn't, I could have just as easily slipped and fallen, it was a dumb move on my part."

"There is something I would like to do while we are here.  You said before that you could give me information on the Ascension's dimensional drive, I would like to take a look at how it works, " Luna said.

"Oh, that's easy.  I'll be right back.

Selene ran out of the room, a minute later she reappeared with her tablet.

"I can pull up ship schematics on this, along with technical manuals on the dimension drive."

She played with the tablet for a few minutes searching for the data before she handed it to Luna.

Luna lifted the tablet and started to read.  When she finished the page she poked at the screen with her hoof.  The text changed and the next page came up.

"I'm going to get a glass of water, do you want anything?" Selene asked.

"I'll take one as well."

For the next few hours, Luna read more and more about the Dimensional Drive.  The mathematics behind the drive were very familiar to her.  They were similar to those of a dimensional gate spell written by Star Swirl the Bearded thousands of years earlier.  She should be able to replicate the effect of the drive by tweaking his spell.  From there it would be a simple matter of inputting the correct dimensional coordinates and then she could open a portal to Selene's home planet.

"Luna?"

Luna noticed Selene waving at her.

"Yes?"

"I've been calling your name for five minutes, you've been reading for hours, you want to take a break?"

"I am sorry, I didn't notice."

"Did you learn anything?"

"Yes, I did, human technology is amazing.  The drive this ship uses functions very similarly to a dimensional spell that I know.  I should be able to tweak that spell and open a gate to your home world."

Selene dropped the glass she was sipping from.  It crashed into the floor and shattered.

"You c-c-can get me home?" she stammered.

"As I said, it will take some reworking of a spell I already know, but I can do that while I continue to recover.  I won't have the strength needed to open the dimensional portal for some time."

Selene started to cry, she moved over next to Luna and wrapped her arms around the pony.

"I can't even begin to express how much this means to me, I thought I would be stuck here forever, " she said, sniffling.  "Will you come with me?"

"I cannot, " Luna said sadly, shaking her head.  "I must remain here, leaving this dimension will make it much harder for me to find my own way home."

"But I can't leave you here alone," Selene said.  There was no way she would do that to Luna, she had to think of another solution.

"I will stay here, until you find your way home."

"That may take years Selene.  I can't ask you to do that."

"You aren't asking, I'm telling.  Besides, as much as I want to go home, I have no family or friends to return to.  I can't abandon my only friend here."

"None?" Luna asked.

"Dad was my only living family, both his parents and mom's died before I was born.  With his job we moved around a lot, so I never made any long term friends.  The few people I knew well died when the Ascension crashed."

"I will not lie, I would enjoy your company if you chose to remain with me here, but I do not want you to feel obligated, " Luna said.

"I don't consider it an obligation, your my friend, and I don't want you to be lonely, " Selene said, giving Luna a squeeze. "Besides, I don't want to leave before we figure out what that door is."

Luna rolled her eyes.

"If you insist on going back there, we can, but we must be properly prepared."

Selene's stomach choose that moment to make a loud growl.

"When was the last time you ate?" Luna asked.

"Before we went into the cave, I think, " Selene admitted.

"That is far too long, wait here and I will bring you food."

Luna left to go get some food while Selene sat and thought about the past 24 hours.  From almost dying to being saved though a powerful magical spell.  The whole situation was crazy.  Now Luna was telling her she had a way to go home.  Then there was that monster in the cave and the mysterious door.  The ship should have picked up any signs of intelligent life before it crashed.  Perhaps this planet was long abandoned, or maybe the sensors couldn't have found it since it was underground.  She had a lot to think about.
> Chapter 13
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

For the next two weeks, Selene kept pestering Luna about going back to the cave. Luna however, kept insisting that Selene needed more time to recover. Ever since Luna had used the life drain spell, Selene had been plagued with random headaches and dizzy spells. Luna wasn't sure why this was happening, but she could detect residual magic in Selene's body that might be the source. Thankfully as time passed, Selene seemed to have fewer and fewer issues, though the remaining magic had not yet subsided.

After the long distance teleport and healing Selene, Luna had felt quite drained. However, she noticed that she was regaining her strength much faster than when she had been imprisoned on the moon. It had taken her years to cast even the simplest of attack spells to try to weaken her prison. The only thing she could think of is that this had something to do with the magical bonds that had held her in place last time. She could sense no similar restraints holding back her magic when she arrived on this world, and as such her powers did not have to fight both magical exhaustion and the seals put in place by the Elements.

Luna knew Selene was going to ask about going back to the cave again. She had spent a great deal of time thinking about the magical energy that powered the crystal golem. It had felt strangely familiar when she first sensed it, but it took a while to place it. Thousands of years ago, long before her fall, there was a small kingdom north of Equestria called the Crystal Empire. Celestia had been in talks with the ruling council, they were to decide on whether or not to become an official province of Equestria or remain independent. After much deliberation, the council decided to take a vote. The decision was unanimous save for one member. Lord Sombra had been campaigning to have himself elected as high chancellor, a position that had not been filled in over a thousand years. As high chancellor, Sombra would have the ability to overrule, but when the Crystal Empire joined Equestria the position would no longer exist.

Sombra swore revenge and on both the council, Luna and Celestia. He vanished, only to return 10 years later, wielding a dark and powerful magic. He quickly enslaved the entire Crystal Empire and proclaimed himself king. He had grown so powerful, Celestia decided to deal with him herself. Luna had joined in and the two sisters used their great power to banish him. But Sombra had placed a powerful curse on the Empire. When he fell, the capital city vanished, along with all the ponies who lived there.

Long ago, Luna had created spells that were far more effective against Sombra's dark magic. It was likely that these spells would work better against the crystal golems better than standard offensive magic. It had been thousands of years she had last used these spells, so for the last two weeks when Selene slept, Luna practiced. Defensive spells, offensive spells, she went through everything she could remember. Until she had regained her true power, she would have to be wary of her limits. Selene was going to rely on her and she would not let her friend down.

Luna made her way to Selene's room. She knew the girl would be waking up soon. As she got to the door, it opened revealing a yawning girl.

"Morning Luna, sleep well?" Selene asked as she stretched her arms out.

Luna nodded, she didn't feel like explaining that as she grew stronger, she had moved passed the need for sleep. She still hadn't revealed her immortality to Selene, she wasn't sure if the human would be frightened or simply not believe her. Luna had mentioned Celestia's control of the sun and Selene had laughed it off. She still didn't know that Celestia was the very sister that Luna had betrayed. Without Celestia's sun, all of Equestria and the rest of the planet would have slowly frozen to death in the cold dark of space. How would Selene react if she found out that Luna almost doomed an entire world?

"Before you even ask, I know that you've been wanting to go back to the cave and investigate that door. I wanted to wait until you had recovered completely, I have also been practicing spells that should be useful should we run into any more of those golems. If you still desire to go back, then I want to make sure we plan ahead to reduce any risk," Luna said as the pair headed to the garden to get breakfast.

"Yippee!" Selene shouted, jumping up with a big smile on her face. "Seriously though, I'm fine with whatever precautions you want to take, I did almost die and that isn't something I want to happen again."

"Well, the first thing I want to do is see your rifle. I can enchant it to do more damage if we run into another one of those constructs. In addition, I will put a sound dampening spell on it, my ears were ringing for an hour after you fired it in the cave."

"Yeah, sorry about that, the helmet has built in hearing protection, I meant to warn you, but the rampaging rock monster had me pretty off my game."

Luna shrugged.

"Do not worry about it, there was no permanent damage," she said.

"Anything else?" Selene asked. She stopped and opened the door to the garden.

"I'm going to cast a location spell on you, if we get separated, it should allow me to teleport directly to you."

"Um, what happens if you teleport to me and there isn't enough room, like what if I was crawling though a narrow tunnel in the cave, would you end up in the wall?"

"No, in a normal teleport the matter around the target location is displaced which is why you hear a small popping sound, it's the air being pushed outward by the caster reemerging. This displacement effect tends to cause solid matter to violently explode. Because of this, most teleportation spells have built in safeties to prevent reemergence into a solid. Even if you did force the location inside something, say the wall of a house, the wall would explode outward and the caster would be OK. Well until the damaged wall collapsed on top of them. The teleport spell I will use seeks out the closest available space that I can fit into."

"Someday you are going to have to sit down and give me magic lessons or something," Selene said.

"I can certainly discuss magical theory with you in the future, but I'm afraid you would not be able to use any of it, the spell I used to check your body for damage after the fight revealed that you have no magical potential."

"Magical potential?" Selene asked.

"A rough way of gauging the amount of magic a pony, or any really any species, can use. For example, even the weakest of unicorns can levitate small objects," Luna said, plucking an apple off of the branch of the tree in front of her. "Strong ones can move mountains." 

She took a bite out of the apple and continued.

"It is only a rough estimate, a skilled unicorn with the proper spells can accomplish more than a stronger unicorn using naught but raw power, but in order to use magic you must have at least some potential. You are the first being I've ever come across that has none, I do not know if this is typical for humans or you are unique."

Luna floated another apple over to Selene who gladly accepted it.

"Oh, so I could still learn about magic, but I could never actually use it?"

"That is correct," Luna said with a nod.

With some apples in tow, Luna and Selene headed back down the main corridor.

"That sucks, still I'd like to learn what I can, maybe someday if you have time and wouldn't mind?"

"Of course, I would be glad to," Luna replied.

Selene finished munching on her apple and then looked up to Luna.

"We should get going, I've got to pack," she said.


#####


Luna and Selene packed enough supplies for a few days, while Selene was recovering, Luna had converted Selene's backpack into a saddlebag. It allowed her to carry the bag without expending the minor amount of concentration that was needed to maintain the spell. Although Selene was feeling better, Luna still didn't want to force her to carry the supplies. The girl still had the occasional dizzy spell and the backpack would only be an unnecessary burden.

After that they prepared to set out on their journey back to the cave. Luna watched Selene put on her gear. She was looking much better than she had in months. The rest of the past few weeks along with the now plentiful food had been doing wonders for the girl. She was no longer looking malnourished and she seemed to have far more energy.

With Selene's increased stamina the return trip to the cavern went far quicker. The pair arrived at the cave in the late afternoon. They climbed down into the cavern depths and made their way to the large room where the battle had been fought before. Looking down into the hole they could clearly see the massive door built into the wall. There was a pathway cut into the rock leading up to the door, but most of it was blocked by rubble from the cave in so they were unable to check where it led.

The door itself was quite large, standing almost three times as high as Luna. Selene walked up to the door and brushed away some of the dust that had built up on its surface. A dull grey metal surface was revealed, she continued to clean off as much as she could reach but as far as she could tell It lacked any identifying markings, nor was there a clear way of opening it.

"We have two choices, I can clear the rubble from this path and we can see where it leads, or I can try to open the door," Luna said, looking at Selene.

"With the exception of the path, this room looks pretty much like a natural cave, I'm hoping this is the outside of the door and opening it will lead inside... something. If that ends up being true, I think we should look in before we look out," Selene said.

She knocked on the door, which hurt her knuckles a bit, whatever metal it was made out of, it felt pretty solid.

Luna concentrated for a moment, looking at the door. Her horn lit up and a matching blue field shimmered around the door itself.

"There is a magical seal on this door. It is very weak, almost completely degraded. It feels... old," she said.

"Can you open it?" Selene asked.

"Yes, give me a moment."

Breaking the seal required a trivial amount of magic. She followed that up with an opening spell on the door. A loud grinding noise filled the cavern room, the door shuddered for a moment and then slowly slid open. It was immediately apparent that they were on the outside looking in, the room beyond the door was dimly lit, but it was clearly not naturally formed. Inside the door, the floor transitioned from smooth rock to a tiled concrete. Pipes lined the smooth walls, small drops of a clear liquid occasionally leaking out of them.

Selene stepped forward as she went to enter the room.

Luna raised her wing to block the girl's path.

"One moment," she said.

There was an ambient background magic that she was unable to feel until the door had opened. The magic felt as old as the seal on the door, except unlike the seal, it had not degraded with age. As far as she could tell, the spell was designed to cloak the interior of the of the room while also hiding its own presence. The fact that she was just now detecting it was a testament to the skill of whoever had created the spell.

It was in Luna's experience that nopony went through such great lengths to hide something, unless it was meant to stay hidden. Whatever was contained within these walls could still be dangerous.

"This place, whatever it is, is old, ancient even. However, unlike the seal on the door, the magic inside does not seem to have weakened with age. It seems to have been designed to hide this room from detection, which could indicate danger. We should proceed with caution."

Luna raised a shield around the two and they slowly walked through the door. As soon as they stepped over the threshold, the room seemed to detect their entry. Lights up above flickered for a moment before they came back on, releasing a steady glow. Deciding there was enough light for Selene to see, Luna dispelled the glowing orb that had been following along.

With a loud thud, the door behind them closed.

"Did you do that?" Selene asked

"I did not," Luna replied.

The walls of the room formed a large square. At the other end was an equally massive door that looked exactly the same as the one they had just passed through.  Other than that, the room was completely empty. A groaning mechanical noise sprung up in the silence followed by a rushing sound. Luna stopped in her tracks, ears swiveling, trying to pinpoint the sound.

"Sounds like a ventilation system," Selene said with a chuckle. "Now that I'm hearing it from in here, It sounds like one of the noises I heard back in the cavern before I found that monster." 

She looked around until she spotted a grate in the in the upper section on the inside wall and then pointed it out. "See there it is, I bet there's an outlet somewhere in the cave system."

Selene then headed across the room to the inner door with Luna following.

"Shall we find out what's behind door number two?" she asked.

Luna nodded, and cast the opening spell again. This time the door opened smoothly and quietly, revealing a long, well lit, corridor. It was as empty as the room they had just left. Walking to the far end took about five minutes where they found yet another door. This was one much smaller than the previous two. On the wall next to the door was a small pad.

"That looks kind of like the keypads for the secure doors on the Ascension," Selene said, pointing it out.

She walked forward and touched it. The pad flashed green for a moment the door slid open. She walked forward with Luna following closely behind.

"I think you can drop the shield, this place is empty," Selene said, as she stepped into the room.

There was a slightly raised platform at the center of the room, a pile of metal boxes were stacked up in the far corner. The rest of the room appeared empty. Luna stepped through right behind Selene. Seconds after she passed the door, it slammed shut. A bright purple light appeared overhead and swept back and forth over the two. Two small hatches in the ceiling opened up and devices lowered from them. Luna wasn't sure what they were, but each device had a barrel that reminded her of the one on Selene's rifle and they were pointing right at them.

Each of the devices emitted a high pitched whine, twin bolts of glowing white energy flew out of the barrels and hit Luna's shield. Both bolts bounced off and impacted on the wall, leaving scorch marks in the concrete. Luna tried to back up, but the door behind her was blocking the path.

"Luna!" Selene shouted, but Luna didn't hear the rest.

She quickly charged her horn and shot out a magical blast at the first device. The beam lanced outward but right before it impacted a shield flashed into existence, blocking the shot. The force of Luna's attack caused the shield to shatter and her second shot punched through the armored shell and exited the far side.

The whine from the remaining device increased in volume. Another, even brighter beam, flew out and slammed into Luna's shield, the feedback caused her to stumble, but she recovered quickly and fired back in retaliation. Another shield popped up and blocked the beam, but unlike the first it did not fall apart.

Luna noticed Selene had pulled out her rifle and she heard a muffled bang as the weapon fired. A glowing streak zipped across the room, slamming into the force field and punching a small hole in it. Unfortunately even with the enchantments Luna had cast on the gun, the bullet didn't have enough energy to punch through the front armor, it fragmented into small pieces leaving a dent in the plate.

Luna fired again, this time adding much more energy to the attack. Aiming directly for the hole left by the bullet, her beam sailed through, and hit the already weakened armor. The device exploded, flaming bits of shrapnel rained down to the ground. Luna dropped her shield, panting slightly.

"What in Tartarus were those!?" Luna asked.

"I don't know, they looked like some kind of automated sentry turret. I know the navy uses something similar on warships, but these don't look like the pictures I've seen before."

"We should leave, I do not want to put you in danger," Luna said, looking at the wreckage of the two turrets.

"You're probably right, let me just look around the room."

Selene walked over to the stack of crates. There didn't appear to be any way to open it. She tried to lift the smallest one off the top of the stack but it was too heavy to move. Meanwhile Luna turned around, she walked over to the door and put her hoof on the pad on the wall. It flashed blue and the door did not open.

"Selene, come here, I can't get the door open."

"Coming, maybe it doesn't work with hooves," Selene stopped fiddling with the crates and stared to walk back towards Luna.

The only thing else in the room was the platform on the center. It was on her way back, so instead of going around, when she got to it, she climbed the steps to the top. There was dark circle on the floor in the center of the platform. She walked over to the circle. Other than being a different color, it looked the same as the rest of the floor. She shrugged and took a step forward when she felt her head star to spin. She closed her eyes for a moment and stopped moving forward. When she had opened them again, the circle on the ground was glowing red.

Luna felt it before she saw it, a large surge of magical energy coming from the center of the room. She spun around and saw Selene standing on the middle of the platform.

"Selene, get off of that!" she shouted a warning at the girl.

Meanwhile the dizziness had grown worse. Selene started to stumble forward when she collapsed entirely. Before Luna could grab the girl, the glowing circle increased in brightness, there was a brilliant flash of light and Selene vanished.
> Chapter 14
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Selene let out a groan as she started to come to. The cold hard floor beneath her offered little comfort as she struggled to remember what had happened. Her eyes fluttered open, only to slam shut when the light of the room caused the pain in her skull to flare up even stronger. She raised her hands and rubbed her temples while trying to piece together what had happened. She had been looking around when Luna suggested that they leave, her head started to spin, Luna shouted something and then nothing.

"Luna?" she whispered, but there was no response.

Ignoring her splitting headache, she forced her eyes open once more. She found herself on a rough concrete floor, slowly she dragged herself up and looked around. The platform she had been standing on was gone, in fact she was somewhere else entirely. The architecture matched the small room with the platform, but now she was in a large circular chamber.

She did a complete circle looking around, trying to find Luna, but she wasn't in the room with Selene. Checking, she found that she still had her rifle, she pulled the bolt back and ejected the spent cartridge from the earlier fight. That left four rounds in the gun, she closed the bolt and flicked on the safety. Patting at her coat pockets she found the second magazine she was carrying. She pulled it out and confirmed that it was full. She turned back and forth looking around a second time. Luna had been carrying the bag with the rest of her ammunition. That meant she had a grand total of 9 rounds.

"Hope I don't run into any more of those turrets, " she muttered to herself.

There hadn't been any other doors in the hallway leading to the small room, so she wasn't sure how she got to where ever she was now. The only thing she could think of was that Luna had said there was some sort of magic in this place, perhaps she had triggered some sort of magical trap and been teleported to another room.

Luna had told Selene that if they were separated, she would teleport to Selene. It was then that Selene realized she had no idea how long she had been out for. She looked at her watch and let out a gasp. It was tomorrow, she had been out for over 18 hours, no wonder she felt so horrible. The only thing she could think of was that Luna might have ended up somewhere else and was also unconscious. Figuring it would be best to remain in one location, she sat down and waited.

The minutes slowly ticked by but there was still no sign of Luna. After waiting for nearly two hours, Selene stood back and and began pacing back and forth. Luna was either not coming, or she couldn't. 

Selene didn't really feel like sitting around any longer and waiting for something to happen. Besides she had no supplies with her, and she would need to eat and drink eventually. Even though she knew it could be dangerous she still had an itch in the back of her mind, telling her to explore her surroundings. Looking around the room, she saw three doors, two smaller ones to her right, and a large metal one on her left. Figuring she'd start with the single choice and then return for the other two, she walked over to the lone door. There was a pad on the wall that matched the one she had seen earlier. She reached out, and touched it. 

The door slowly slid open, revealing a long white corridor. Shrugging, she decided to see where it led. It took a few minutes to reach the other end, she passed a few smaller doors along the way, but none of them would open, each pad flashing blue when she hit touched it. As she approached the end of the passageway, it turned right revealing another large door.

Unlike the rest of the doors she had passed, this one opened without complaint. Inside it looked like a large storage room of some kind. Piles of metal crates were stacked in neat rows. She decided to check the perimeter of the room to see if there were anymore doors. Turning to the right, she walked along the followed the outer wall of the room.

Selene reached the corner and turned, walked for a while longer and then hit another corner. The room was a large rectangle, the wall she was walking along now was opposite to where she entered, those two made up the longer sides. She hadn't passed any other doors yet, but she couldn't really see the last side from her current position. 

It looked like the light on the last side of the room was flickering, as she drew closer she heard a heavy set of thuds coming from near the middle of the room. She stopped for a moment, unsure what to do. Sneaking forward as quietly as she could, she ducked behind the nearest stack of crates. The stomping sound stopped, so Selene tiptoed towards to the end of the room and peaked around the corner.

The lights along this row were flashing on and off, making it hard for her to get a look down the row, but she thought she could see some crates scattered on the floor. Creeping forward she made way to the middle of the row. There was a large hole in the wall, revealing what looked like another underground cavern. It was dark inside, but she could just make out black crystals lining the far side of the cavern chamber.

Selene's heart started to pound, if there was another one of those golem monsters, she would have to face it alone. She slowly turned around, preparing to sneak away when she noticed the thumping sound start back up again and it was much closer than before. A horrible screeching sound came from her left her, followed by a crash. She whipped her head towards the sound and saw a crystalline behemoth barreling towards her, climbing over a pile of crates that it had knocked to the ground. 

Selene panicked and took off running back the way she had some from. The only two ways out of the room were the door she had entered and the cavern, and there was no way she was going in there. Somehow the golem had gotten between her and the door so her only hope was to circle back around the room and duck down one of the rows of crates.

She lost sight of the golem when she rounded the corner, but before she could duck down another row the large blue arm of the golem came crashing through the wall of crates, smashing them in all directions. She kept running for the far end of the room, but the golem was in pursuit and whenever she made it to another row, it just smashed through instead of following her around the corner. She was quickly running out of room and had to change her tactics. She skidded to a halt and pulled her rifle off of her shoulder. With a flick of her finger she disengaged the safety, shouldered the gun and took aim, waiting for the golem to smash through the next row.

She quietly prayed that whatever magic Luna had cast on the gun would be enough to stop the rampaging monster. The golem burst though another pile of crates, she made a minor adjustment to line it up in her sights and then gently squeezed the trigger. There was a muffled crack as 180 grains copper jacketed lead zipped out of the muzzle at nearly 3000 feet per second. The bullet streaked across the room with a fierce blue glow, courtesy of Luna's enchantment.

It slammed into the golem's torso and splinters of crystal flew off in all directions. The impact of the shot caused a crack to form, and a sickly green glow leaked out. The crack slowly began to spread across the surface of the crystal and the glow increased in intensity. One by one, the smaller crystal segments that made up the monster's arms fell to the ground as the the magical field that animated the construct started to collapse on itself. The enchantment that animated the construct held a great deal of magical energy, which the central core normally contained. but Selene' shot had ruptured it. She heard a whining noise that steadily increased in pitch until the whole room flashed green as the monster's core exploded.

A shock wave of magical energy flew outward, sending crates flying in all directions. Selene barely had time to brace herself before it hit knocking her backwards into the wall behind her.

Slowly Selene picked herself up off the ground. She rubbed the back of her head where it had slammed into the wall, it hurt but it didn't feel like anything was broken. She picked up her rifle off the ground and gave it a quick check for damage. Everything looked OK, so she slung it back over her shoulder and went to see what remained of the monster.

The damage to the room was extensive. Splinters of crystals were embedded in crates, in the walls and the ceiling and floor. She couldn't find a single piece of the golem bigger than her arm. The floor directly underneath the monster had actually cratered from the explosion, and a few chunks of concrete had fallen from the ceiling above.

As she looked over the damage to the room, she heard a noise coming from the direction of the cavern. She turned around and saw three more of the monsters crawling out from the hole in the wall. Two of them looked the same as the one she had just killed, but the third was different.

The new monster was dark red in color and had four short stubby legs supporting a short but wide base. Six large spines jutted out from the base then angled back on themselves meeting at a single point. A glowing red cylindrical spire was sticking up inside the spines. The monster stopped moving and each of the spines started to light up.

Selene wasn't about to stick around to see what was happening, she turned and ran as fast as she could towards the exit, scrambling over the rubble and piles of crates. She heard a crackle of energy and felt a searing wave of heat coming from behind her. Glancing over her shoulder she saw a jet of flame pouring out of the monster, sweeping over where she had just been standing.

She ran out of the storage room and headed down the corridor. Behind her she could hear the monsters smashing through the rest of the crates, Selene kept running until she reached the end of the hall, she hit the pad on the wall and waited for the massive door to open. As it was slowly sliding open she took her rifle and slammed the butt of it into the pad, cracking it. Selene didn't even bother to wait for the door to finish opening, she jumped through the crack and hit the pad on the other side. The door stopped, then reversed direction, closing with a heavy thud.

Selene hoped the door would be able to stop the monsters, but she wasn't taking any chances. She ran across the room to the two doors on the other side. She tried the first but it was locked. The second door opened into what looked like a control room. Rows of displays lined the walls and there was a large console in the middle of the room. She quickly looked around, but unfortunately, she didn't see any other exit.

A pounding sound came from the massive door across the room. It sounded like the golems had finally reached the end of the corridor. There was a massive thud and the door shook. Three more followed in rapid succession. After a minute of pounding the outside of the door had a number of bulges protruding from its surface but was otherwise intact.

Then the pounding stopped and Selene breathed a sigh of relief, it looked like the door was going to hold. But her relief changed to horror as the center of the door started to glow. As the rest of the door heated up, the hammering started back up. Whatever metal the door was made out of couldn't take that sort of punishment, it buckled under the strain of the attack and after another few thuds, a large blue crystalline fist punched though.

If that massive door hadn't been able stop the golems, the smaller one to the command room stood no chance. Her only chance was to fight.

Bracing herself against the frame of the door, she aimed at the hole and waited for the golem to pull its fist back through. When the golem pulled its fist back, she had a clear shot at the red monster's central spire.

She fired, but when the bullet hit the spire, it bounced off. Luna's enchantment wasn't working on the new monster. The door took another blow and it collapsed entirely.

Selene quickly cycled the bolt and took a shot at one of the blue golems, her shot was high and missed the center torso, striking the golem in the neck. It fell to the floor as she pushed the bolt forward, chambering the last round of the magazine. The spines on the red one started to glow as it charged up, preparing to roast the girl alive.

She took her final shot, the bullet streaked across the room, slamming into the third golem's chest. It toppled over as a large crack appeared in its core. Selene ejected the magazine of her gun, and slapped in her spare. The red golem's sixth spine lit up just as the broken core of its brethren began to glow. Remembering what had happened to the last one, Selene jumped back into the command room hit the pad to close the door.  Then she ran to the other end of the room as fast as she could. It seemed like everything was happening in slow motion. The door began to slide closed at a snail's pace, when the golem's ruptured core exploded. A huge chunk of crystal slammed into the remaining monster, shattering the spines and smashing into glowing spire.

The central spire had even more magical energy built up inside of it than both other monsters combined. As the spire shattered, the containment spells failed catastrophically and the remaining golem detonated in a massive fireball.

Just as the door finished closing, the blast wave hit. The door, the frame and a good portion of the outer wall exploded into the room, shattering the displays that lined the walls.

Selene stood up, peaking from behind the large console. She had jumped behind it a fraction of a second before the explosion and its bulk had protected her from the flying debris. The command room no longer had an outer wall, she could see right into the main area where the golems had been standing. Nothing was left.

She climbed out from behind the console, making her way over the rubble, she entered the main chamber. She heard a creaking sound and looked up, just to see a massive chunk of concrete fall from above and land on the other side of the room. There was a massive crack running alone the ceiling, and a large section was hanging lower than the rest. 

Selene turned around, unsure of what to do, if she stayed in the control room she could get stuck if the room collapsed. That's when she noticed the second smaller door had also been blown open. She ran over and looked inside, there was another corridor, she quickly ran in just as another section of the ceiling came crashing down behind her.
> Chapter 15
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Luna watched in horror as Selene disappeared. She quickly scanned the magical energies that had enveloped the girl. It was some form of teleport spell. She let out a sigh of relief. All she had to do was activate her tracking spell, and she could teleport to Selene's location.

Concentrating on the magical beacon, she reached out, trying to find where the girl had been whisked off to. It took a moment for Luna to find her, but when Luna did, she was confused. Selene hadn't moved very far, at least horizontally, she was only about a quarter mile north of Luna's current location. Vertically however was a different story. Selene was nearly 500 miles underground, that didn't make any sense to Luna, that would place her in the planet's mantle.

Since Selene was still alive, the only explanation Luna could think of was that this complex went very deep underground. If Selene had been brought that deep and not in a controlled environment, she would be dead already. Luna quickly prepared her own teleport spell, hoping to end up fairly close. In a flash of blue light she disappeared.

Luna materialized in a small room, standing on top of a platform similar to the one Selene had been on when she disappeared. She quickly looked around but Selene was not in sight.

She checked her tracking spell again, to see how far off she was. Something was wrong, she had only moved about two miles down. She charged her horn to try again but when she reappeared she was in the exact same room. It didn't make any sense, she refused to believe that this was as close as the teleport spell could get her to Selene. 

Luna had a backup plan, she knew more than one teleport spell. She had another that would clear an area around a target by teleporting any non-living matter back to the caster's location. It was smart enough to not pick up anything alive, but it would happily wreck a wall, or a floor, or solid rock for that matter. It was mostly used as a rescue spell, to reach a pony buried in an avalanche or a rock-slide or something similar. The caster just had to be prepared to throw up a shield spell to keep whatever they were emerging into from collapsing on top of them. This version of the spell would work even if Selene had found herself encased in solid rock.

Luna cast the spell and vanished, only to re-appear in the exact same room.

She looked around confused, the spell should have worked. She couldn't think of any reason it would not. She started to pace back and forth on the platform, trying to think of what could have gone wrong. She checked and Selene was still in the same location, and she confirmed that she hadn't just ended up in an identical room.

Feeling frustrated, she decided to look around. She trotted to the bottom of the platform and then her horn slammed into an invisible barrier. When her horn hit the barrier her head snapped upwards and her muzzle was pushed into the battier which apparently extended downward. She muttered a string of curses under her breath as she rubbed her muzzle. Even her horn, which was strong enough to use as a weapon, ached a bit. It felt like she had just head butted a rock wall.

She reached forward and felt the barrier, it glowed slightly from the touch and she could see that it extended all the way to the floor. She cast a low level telekinetic push out in all directions, and the barrier lit up all around her. It encased the entire platform. Someone or something had was attempting to trapped her here.

Luna cast another spell, this one to analyze the barrier. It was magical in nature and cleverly designed, initially resisting Luna's attempts to even confirm that it existed. After a good deal of poking and prodding she was finally able to get a proper reading. The barrier remained at a very low power state, making it nearly undetectable until something came in contact with it, in this case her horn. It was designed to be adaptive, when under strain it would shift power from one section of the field to reinforce another. The trick to defeating this kind of barrier was to overwhelm the ability to transfer power.

Luna's horn began to glow brightly, a white beam of energy shot forward from the tip of her and hit the edge of the field. It began to hum as she added more and more power. A second beam lanced out backwards hitting the shield at the rear of the platform. The humming increased as she added a third, fourth, fifth and sixth beam to the attack. The shield was glowing fiercely now, straining to redirect energy to all six points. Two more beams shot out from her horn, and small cracks started to form all along the shield. 

Luna was beginning to sweat under the exertion, but she wasn't done yet. While maintaining the beams, she sent out a bubble of force, pushing out in all directions. It hit every section of the shield at the same time, the small cracks expanded rapidly and the shield shattered.

Luna sat down, trying to catch her breath. After a few moments of rest, she stood back up and walked off the platform. She headed over to the only door in the room, but there was no pad to open it. Annoyed with yet another obstacle in her path, she wrenched the door out of the wall flung it behind her, and marched out into the now accessible hallway.

She passed a number of doors, the rest of them open to similar, but empty rooms. She found one that was still closed and forced the door open. Inside were the remains of a number of crystal golems, resting on top of platform exactly like the one she had been trapped on. She checked and there was a shield surrounding the platform.

"These must be holding cells," she thought to herself.

She continued down the hall, just before she reached the end, two sentry turrets popped out of the ceiling and a 3rd, larger one sprang up from the floor. 

"I don't have time for this!" she shouted, stamping down on the floor hard.

Before the turrets could get off a single shot, Luna fired off three of her own in rapid succession. The shields around the turrets didn't even slow the beams down. They continued, punching straight through the front armor and out the rear of each turret. Within seconds, all three turrets had been reduced to molten slag.

The door in front of her exploded outward, landing in a heap in the next room. Luna casually stepped over the wreckage and looked around. The walls were lined with displays that reminded Luna of the computer display on the Ascension As she stepped forward, one of the displays turned on.

The display faded from black to white and two eyes appeared in the center. Luna noticed that as she moved towards the display the eyes were tracking her position. She heard a strange voice on the air say something in an unknown language.

"Hello?"

The eyes blinked and the voice repeated its statement.

"I do not understand you."

The voice sounded as if it was coming from the very walls. She couldn't detect anything alive nearby so she had to assume that this was some form of alien technology.

"Greetings," a female voice said in Equestrian.

"Who is this?" Luna asked.

"Do not be alarmed, I intend you no harm," the voice replied.

"You still haven't answered my question, and where are you?" Luna said as she looked back and forth. She was growing impatient.

"I am here." 

The display in front of Luna flashed brightly before returning to the image of the eyes.

"I do not understand, I assume this is some sort of computer you are talking to me though, but I am not familiar with your technology," Luna said.

"My sensors show that you have a small computer in your bag, surely you must have some familiarity."

"Oh this?" Luna floated Selene's tablet out the backpack. "it is not mine, it belongs to my friend."

"Ah, yes, the other. A different species. Did you not arrive with it?"

Luna's ears perked up.

"You know about Selene? Where is she?" Luna asked.

The eyes shifted back and forth nervously.

"She is... below. She is safe, at the moment."

"Did you not arrive with her?" The voice repeated.

"No, Selene crashed here many years ago, I've only been here for a short while."

"How did you arrive? I am not detecting any other vessels."

"I am not completely sure myself, a spell gone wrong, an accidental dimensional shift," Luna said. "I arrived in a cavern on the surface, not far from the room we originally entered this place."

"The anomaly? I detected a large thaumaturgical event in that area eight months ago but no source. Since then I have detected a number of smaller scale events, with growing frequency, but none as large as the original. I had thought it was a sensor glitch."

Luna stamped her hoof in impatience. 

"Look, if you will not tell me where Selene is, at least tell me who you are," she said.

"I am Decima, I am the artificial intelligence in charge of maintaining this... world."

Luna thought back to the books she had read, there was much talk about AI, but as far as she had gotten in her readings, humanity still hadn't yet created a real one.

"Have you seen the surface?" she asked while pacing back and forth. "It doesn't look like you are doing a very good job. This planet is dying."

"I have a limited amount of power and there are more... important functions that must be maintained. As it is, your entry into this room prompted the automatic security systems to use a great deal of energy. Energy that I cannot afford to waste."

The eyes took on a suspicious look.

"How did you manage to get in here, most of my visual sensors on this level are offline, but I did detect several bursts of thaumic energy. I do not believe that bag you are carrying to be of sufficient volume to contain a thaumic generator powerful enough to bypass my defenses."

Luna's eyes shone with anger. With a quick burst of magic she brought up a shield around herself.

"It was you who attacked me?" Her horn glowed fiercely as she prepared herself for battle.

"Not exactly, they are automated defenses, I do not control them directly, they will attack whatever comes into range... how are you doing that?" Decima asked, eyes appearing puzzled.

"Doing what?"

"The thaumic force field." A second monitor turned on and it played back a video of the shield surrounding Luna. "In addition there is an excessively large build up of thaumic energy on your horn."

"Thaumic? Do you mean magic?" Luna asked.

"Perhaps, I am still developing a translation matrix to be able to properly converse with you," Decima replied.

"Well, if you mean magic, all ponies are capable of using magic to some degree."

"I'm not following, where is your thaumic generator? Did your species find some way of miniaturizing generators? Perhaps an implant of some sort?"

"I have no idea what a thaumic generator is, this magic natural ability of mine," Luna said.

"That's impossible, your an organic, organics can't generate nearly enough thaumic energy to put up a shield," the AI squinted at Luna. "Still, it has to be coming from somewhere."

"This is a waste of my time," Luna said letting out an exasperated growl "What is this place and how can I get to my friend?"

"I will answer the second question first, you can't, at least not yet. No one is supposed to have access to that level, I'm not even sure how your friend got down there. There is a security lockout that is supposed to prevent any access to that level of the base, not even I can break it."

"Did you not say you were in charge of this world? Why would you not have access to part of it?"

"Answering your previous question will answer your last," the AI let out a sigh. "This is Karzel, it is... was the home world of the Eternals. It was they who built me, thousands of years ago. 150 thousand years ago, the Eternals reached a turning point in their history. For over a millennium they had been expanding their civilization throughout their solar system. As they expanded, so did their rate of growth. A study was done and it was determined that the solar system was no longer enough to support their species, so they made the decision to expand to the stars."

"The speed of light limited the rate at which they could expand, but Karzel was inside the dense galactic core and there were many other systems that could be reached in even under a single lifetime. They built great ships and slowly pushed outward, ever expanding their empire. Eventually all systems within easy reach had been colonized, but still the empire grew. For centuries the Eternals' greatest minds tried to find a way to break the light speed barrier, but nothing worked, until the discovery of artificial thaumic generators."

"Unlike any other species on Karzel, the Eternals had special abilities which allowed them to violate the laws of physics. The source of this power was thaumic energy, magic to you. It was quite limited in its scope, the most powerful Eternals could levitate heavy objects and transmute matter, but for most part their abilities were more passive in nature. Rapid healing, longevity, minor telekinesis and minor illusions. Eternals could combine their powers to perform even greater feats, teleportation, force fields, and more, but the drain on their bodies was often fatal."

"Ponies have similar magical abilities, though most ponies do not know how to do those things, almost any unicorn could learn teleportation or shield generation if they simply took the time to learn the spell, neither one takes a significant amount of magic," Luna said.

"Interesting, your species must generate far more thaumic energy than the Eternals do, it would take hundreds of them working together to form a shield like you just did," the AI stated. "But let me continue..." 

"The Eternals were sure if they could devise a way to generate thaumic energy artificially they could use it to power their ships. Eventually a breakthrough was made and the first generators came online. While large and bulky, they were able to generate the more power than a thousand Eternals working together, and this was only the beginning. The more advances that were made, the more thaumic power could be generated. Eventually they reached a point where ships, powered with thaumic drives, could instantly vast distances, making their effective speed faster than light. Powerful AIs were created whose sole purpose was to study thaumatology, build the generators and as well as discover new uses for this seemingly miracle technology."

"For another thousand years the Eternals continued to spread outward. Eventually they occupied the vast majority of the core of the galaxy, during this time they grew completely reliant on thaumic power. It was used in every aspect of life, from powering cities to growing food and for expanding new colonies."

"The empire had grown too large to manage efficiently by any normal government, so much control was turned over to a triumvirate of 3 AIs, Vohaul, Xenon and Zax. Vohaul was in charge of researching new uses of Thaumic energy. Vohaul was conducting experiments on dimensional travel. It was hoped that by bypassing this dimension, ships could exceed the speed of light. Long distance teleportation required vast amounts of power and even the fastest ships only had an effective speed of about ten times that of light."

"During one of Vohaul's tests, something went wrong. Most of what we know is pieced together from data recovered from Vohaul's backups on Thaiden Prime, the planet he did his dimensional research on. What we were able to find out is Vohaul finally succeeded, he was able to open a portal to another dimension, but something went wrong."

"After Vohaul opened the portal, there was a massive field of thaumic energy flooded through from the other side. Somehow it corrupted It was unlike any sort of field we've ever encountered before, we still don't know what generated it but we lost contact with Vohaul shortly after the portal was opened. Much later we found out that somehow the field had corrupted Vohaul's programming. We suspect that something from that other dimension was able to take over Vohaul but we've never been able to prove anything."

"What lead you to that conclusion?" Luna asked.

"After losing contact with Vohaul, an automatic scout ship was dispatched to try to find out what went wrong. That is how we found out about what had happened. The scout ship was able to recover partial logs from a backup system of Vohaul's central core, before it was destroyed by Vohaul's flagship. In those logs it also found evidence of Vohaul creating an army of constructs animated by thaumic energy. The method for animating these constructs is completely unknown to us, it doesn't seem likely that Vohaul would have stumbled upon the technique due to random corruption, instead we think that whatever is controlling him knew how to create these monsters."

"Back in the caverns above, I battled a crystalline ghoul animated by dark magic, was this one of those constructs?" Luna asked.

"Yes, there are a number of them throughout the base," the AI replied. "The base's defenses and the construct army have been waging war against each other for millennium."

"After the scout ship was destroyed Vohaul started attacking distant colonies at the edges of the empire, one by one, they fell. Vohaul was somehow able to slip in undetected, drop off armies of those constructs and slip away before any response could be mounted. Xenon took charge of the Eternal response. Xenon noticed a pattern in the attacked colonies and moved a fleet to the next colony in line. While in wait, Vohaul's fleet teleported into the system and immediately began attacking the colony below. When Xenon intervened, Vohaul struck back. There was a massive battle, but Vohaul's ships made use of thaumic weaponry unknown to us, and were able to get the upper hand. While Xenon was destroyed he did manage to get a warning out to the last of the core AIs, Zax."

"Within a year, the vast majority of the empire had been destroyed. Vohaul showed no mercy in his attacks, whole planets were wiped from existences, and trillions of Eternals perished in the mostly one sided war."

"Zax realized that the fight against Vohaul was hopeless, the bulk of the Eternals' population were so reliant on the AIs that they couldn't support themselves, never mind fight for their lives. There was only one hope to save the species. Zax restored three ancient colony ships to working order, loaded them up with passengers and sent them out into deep space to escape Vohaul's inevitable attack."

"Vohaul continued to massacre all Eternal colonies, as his fleet made its way towards the Eternal home world of Karzel. What Vohaul didn't know was that Zax had converted the entire core of Karzel into a massive thaumic generator, the most powerful ever constructed. Zax had recovered enough of Vohaul's data on dimensional gateways to start his own research. Eventually Zax found a way create a pocket dimension, basically a bubble of pseudo-reality. When Vohaul's fleet arrived over Karzel, Zax activated that generator and in a large burst of thaumic energy, the entire system and everything else in a 10 light year radius was pulled into a dimensional singularity."

"What is a dimensional singularity?" Luna asked.

"As I had mentioned, Zax discovered a way to create a bubble of pseudo-reality. This is basically an artificial dimension. The original intent was to hide the rest of the Eternals inside this dimension, but there was a flaw in the design. The bubbles are inherently unstable and require a constant input of thaumic energy to prevent collapse. If they do collapse everything inside is destroyed. Zax purposely created a bubble around Karzel that was far too large to maintain, even with the planetary generator. Because of this, it started to slowly collapse itself."

"Once the collapse begins, the amount of thaumic energy needed to escape back into the real universe rises drastically, Zax called it an dimensional singularity it is nearly impossible to escape. Everything inside this dimension will be destroyed when it finally collapses on itself."

"How much longer before this bubble collapses entirely?"

"I cannot say. The rate has accelerated recently, that acceleration coincides with your arrival, but I am not sure why it has happened. Perhaps another few years, a decade at the most."

Luna stared in silence at the image on the screen. Even if she was able to rescue Selene, reality itself was collapsing around them. Still, she wasn't sure that escape was completely impossible, from the conversation it appeared that these Eternals did not have much experience with dimensional travel. It may be that she could find a way out of this pocket dimension before it collapsed. She needed more information and more importantly, she needed to get to Selene.
> Chapter 16
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Luna paced back and forth, she still needed more answers before she decided what to do next.

"You were mentioning that this pocket dimension is collapsing. I am able to sense a sort of decay in everything here, it is hard to put into words but it feels like everything is worn out. Is this related somehow?"

"Instabilities in the pocket dimension cause degradation of not only matter but the laws of physics as well, everything inside the singularity starts to slowly break down, if this is what you mean then yes. This degradation affects all matter inside this pocket dimension. You can see evidence of this on the surface, the planet's climate has been thrown into chaos as the star we orbit slowly dies. 98.35% of the planet's life has been killed off in the last 100 years, partially from the climate change and partially from the degradation."

"Would that also explain the night sky, the almost complete lack of stars in the night sky?"

"Yes, the external universe is entirely cut off in this dimension, the only stars that are still visible are the few left that are inside the singularity. There used to be more, but they have been lost to the collapsing boundaries of the bubble."

"Why didn't Vohaul simply leave this dimension before it started to collapse?" Luna asked.

"In order to make sure all of Vohaul's ships were trapped, the bubble was made as large as possible, 10 light years in diameter. This also meant that Vohaul, who has no faster than light sensors, wasn't able to detect that anything had happened for 10 years. This is also why it is taking so long to collapse, the larger the dimension the longer it takes to collapse," Decima said.

"Why wasn't it collapsed as soon as Vohaul was trapped?"

"It doesn't work that way. Using the full output of the generator I could slow the collapse down, but I don't have any way of speeding the collapse up."

"What happened after he arrived?" Luna asked.

"AIs don't generally have physical bodies, when we need to move from to another system we are uploaded into a ship. Vohaul and Xenon each had a flagship that housed their processing nodes, but Vohaul also constructed a body, like those crystalline golems, but far more powerful. He moved his central node into this body. After arriving at Karzel, Vohaul began to attack the surface. Zax had enough forewarning that he was able to prepare some of the most powerful defenses the Eternals had available. In the ensuing battle, most of Vohauls' fleet was destroyed but not before he was able to teleport himself and a large portion of his ground forces down to the surface."

"Zax had focused all efforts on anti-ship defenses, the minimal surface defenses soon proved to be inadequate and the world soon fell. Without his ships to provide transport, it took Vohaul years to destroy every remaining city on the surface, it was during this time that he discovered that he had been trapped. He had sent what remained of his fleet to go back to Thaiden Prime, and start to rebuild, but when they reached the edge of the bubble they were destroyed, only a single scout ship returned. He was furious, he knew that the energy required to set this trap had to come from somewhere on the planet, but before Zax could destroy the generator, Vohaul found his way inside the facility."

"I am Zax's backup, if Vohaul was able to take control of Zax or the generator, I was supposed to destroy the planet. During the fighting, Vohaul somehow managed to bypass our front line defenses and teleport directly to Zax's control center. He destroyed Zax's central node but in the battle my link to the generator self destruct system was severed. As a final attempt to stop him, I surrounded Zax's control center in a time field that slowed time down to a fraction of normal speed. Vohaul is still trapped in that room, but it takes nearly the full output of the generator to maintain the field."

"Where exactly is Vohaul trapped?" Luna asked.

"I can show you," Decima said.

The screen to the left lit up and a map of the planet's surface appeared. The view zoomed into the ground and the wireframe representation of the complex appeared.

"This area highlighted in blue is where you entered this base," Decima said. 

The map shifted again, going deeper underground. A green room with a red dot came into view.

"This is where you are now, the red dot is you."

The map shifted again, it went farther and farther down, for the first time Luna could see the scope of this underground labyrinth. It stretched for miles in all directions, there had to be thousands of rooms and tens of thousands of passageways. She couldn't imagine having to keep track of where everything was located.

"Why is this place so large?" Luna asked.

"Originally it was intended to be an emergency shelter for the entire population of Karzel, in case Vohaul ever attacked. From there it was expanded during the construction of the planetary thaumic generator."

Finally the view stopped moving, a half a dozen corridors all converged on one large room that was shaded black. There was a red dot in a large circular room, a few miles down one of the branches.

"That black room is where Vohaul is trapped," Decima said.

"What about that other red dot?"

"I'm afraid to say, that is your friend, or at least her last known position."

"WHAT?" Luna shouted. "I thought you said she was safe, she's trapped on the same level as Vohaul?"

"She should be safe, first, she hasn't moved, I believe that she is unconscious. Secondly, the last I knew, the entrance to the control center was locked. Even if she gained access to the corridor which is locked on her end as well, she shouldn't be able to open the door."

"The last you knew? Can't you check?"

"This facility is thousands of years old, and the same degradation that is slowly causing the rest of this pocket reality to fall apart is affecting me and my systems. Over the last thousand years I've lost access to over half the systems down here, I have minimal coverage of that area, the only thing I know for certain is your friend is down there, and that the time field around Vohaul is still active."

"Is there no way I can get to her?"

Decima's eyes looked at Luna sadly.

"I've been trying to think of a solution ever since we started talking, but I can't bypass the security field. It's specifically meant to prevent teleportation down to that area."

"Well then how did Selene get down there, or Vohaul for that matter?" Luna asked.

"Since opening that portal, Vohaul has demonstrated abilities to use thaumic energy that are far beyond Eternal knowledge. As for how your friend got down there, I do not know. It does not make any sense at all. I'm checking every sensor and log I can right now."

Decima closed her eyes for a moment as she ran though the teleport logs.

"Something is wrong, something doesn't add up," she said nervously.

"What do you mean?" Luna asked

"None of the internal teleporters should have the correct permissions to move anything down to the core levels. Selene should not have been able to make it down there at all, but somehow she did. The central logs for that teleport pad agree, she stepped on the pad, it activated and she was teleported into one of the core loading bays. It is possible but highly unlikely that there was some sort of security glitch that is allowing that pad access to the core levels, but as far as I can that teleport pad has been disconnected from the thaumic grid."

"Was it disconnected after Selene was teleported away?" Luna asked.

"I can't tell, the data I have is incomplete. There is a chance that if you could restore power to that pad, you might be able to teleport down to the core levels, and to Selene."

Luna's ears perked up. "How would I do that?" she asked.

"It is a fairly complicated procedure but I can show you the steps here." Another screen lit up, displaying some schematics. 

Decima spend the next hours running Luna through procedures to check on the teleport pad. Luna to disassemble the thaumic distribution node and check each circuit. To make matters worse, Decima warned Luna that the distribution node was located in one of the zones that had recently been attacked by remnants of Vohaul's army, and that she had limited working sensors in the area so she could not check if it was safe.

"The distribution node for that level is located here." A section of the base map flashed in green. "There is a security field to prevent teleportation into that area, so you will have to make the trip by hoof. The main corridor of that level has collapsed here and here," Decima said, as more sections of the map lit up. "You will have to take this route to bypass the collapse."

"Will we be able to communicate outside of this room?" Luna asked

The door opposite to where Luna had entered slid open.

"There is a supply room down the hall, second door on the right. You can pick up a communicator in that room, that will give us audio communication only. It looks like this." 

Luna studied the image on the screen for a moment before galloping down the hall to retrieve one. She returned minutes later, a communicator in tow.

"How does it work?"

"The communicator uses a small thaumic charge to convert radio signals directly into audio signals that only the user can hear," Decima said. "You can place it in your bag, you do not need to carry it directly, as long as it is within a small distance of your body, it will still work."

Luna slipped the communicator into her saddle bags.

"I'm ready to go," she said.


#####


Even with directions from Decima, it still took Luna nearly 6 hours to make the trip. The damage to the base was even more extensive than Decima had warned her. More than once she found her way blocked and had to backtrack to try an alternate route. 

Finally she reached the junction that lead to the room containing the distribution node. It was clear that there had been a battle here, and recently by the looks of it. Fragments of crystal were strewn about the floor in front of the door and the wreck of a turret hung haphazardly off the ceiling, still smoking from whatever had destroyed it. She approached the door, and found it inoperable.

"Decima, the door to this junction appears to be stuck, it's heavily damaged, it looks like there was some fighting in this room, is there another way around, or should I try to force the door open?"

"It would take far too long to backtrack, just force the door, but be careful."

Luna's horn lit up as she pulled the door out of its frame. She tossed it to the side and it clattered down onto the ground. Stepping through the now empty frame she looked around. The damage was even more extensive on this side. The walls were cracked and pitted with small craters, it looked as if something had exploded. Shadows flickered on the walls as the lighting blinked on and off.

About half way down the corridor Luna found a large hole in the wall, she trotted over and peered inside. Only her quick reactions saved her as she jumped back dodging a large fist that came hurtling towards her head. A golem stepped out of the hole and immediately took another swing, missing Luna by a fraction of an inch.

She threw up a field around herself and then let off a blast of magic, the magical wave hit the golem dispelling the magic that drove it. The now inanimate lump of crystal collapsed to the ground with a loud thud.

A jet of flame washed over her shield, filling the rest of the corridor around her. The heat was so intense that the crystalline structure of the fallen golem started to melt away.

Finally the flame died away, revealing a new type of construct deeper in the hole. Luna fired off another dispelling attack but it had no effect. As it prepared to fire again, Luna studied the changes in the magical field around its central spire, quickly she cast another spell directing a powerful cutting beam at the spines surrounding the spire. One by one the spines were lopped off, until the last one fell. The glow surrounding the central spire faded away as the construct lost the ability to focus its magic. It took two more steps towards the princess before she fired one more beam, cleaving the monster in two.

At the end of the hole she found a room completely overgrown with crystals.

"Luna, what happened?" she heard Decima ask.

"I was attacked, I destroyed two of the monsters and have found a room full of dark crystals."

"A spawning room, I don't know how they function, they seem to draw thaumic energy from the surrounding environment, it is concentrated in those crystals and they slowly grow replacements for Vohaul's army. There are dozens of them throughout the base, I haven't figured out how they spread yet."

"Is there anything above this room?" Luna asked.

"Just rock why?"

Luna's horn flared brightly. The walls of the room began to shake and with a loud crack the ceiling collapsed. The black crystals were crushed under weight of hundreds of tons of rock. Luna turned around and made her way back into the main corridor.

"Are you OK Luna? My sensors just registered a seismic event right in your area."

"I'm fine, I collapsed the ceiling on top of the spawning room, no more constructs will be grown there."

Luna reached the end of the corridor and opened the door to the distribution room. Following Decima's instructions, she removed the paneling that covered the distribution node and started to check each circuit. Finally she found the one for the teleport pad that had taken Selene and turned it back on.

"Power has been restored to the teleport pad, I'm checking the pad's internal logs now," Decima said. There was a brief pause before she continued. "That's strange, according to these logs, this pad has been powered down for months. I've also confirmed that it does not have the proper permissions to teleport anyone to the lower levels."

"I saw Selene vanish before my eyes, I checked, I know it was teleportation magic, are you sure it didn't come from the pad?"

"Absolutely, the internal logs do not agree with my logs. My logs show this pad was used, the internal logs show that it was powered down. There is one more thing I can check... this is very strange."

"What is it?"

"Well, I am very sure that the pad wasn't used, there's no matching power draw in the generator logs, and that's one of the systems I still have good access to."

"What else could have teleported her down there then?"

"The only thing that has been able to teleport down to the lower levels is Vohaul, but he couldn't have grabbed your friend, he's still trapped."

"How sure are you that Vohaul is still held in your trap? You've said you don't have much coverage on that level of the base," Luna said.

"The time field still reads as active... but... well I just don't know... If Vohaul was free, I would think he'd have tried to take control of the generator... I need time to process this information. Can you head back here, hopefully I'll have some answers when you arrive."

Luna made the return trip in silence. When she finally arrived back in the control center, Selene had been gone for nearly 10 hours. As soon as she walked into the room, she heard Decima speak up.

"Ok, while you were headed back here, I've done checking on how I might be able to get you down to that level. I might have found a way, but it still wouldn't get you to Selene, at least not directly..."

"I'm listening" Luna said.

The screen with the map lit up, centering on Zax's control room. 

"As you can see there are six ways into Zax's control room." One of the corridors lit up in blue, four of them in red and the last in green. "The blue corridor leads directly to the main generator control center. The red corridors all lead to loading bays. Selene is currently in loading bay number three... here" The map zoomed out showing the large room with Selene's red dot.

"The last of these corridors, the red one, is the main entrance to Zax's control center. At the end of the corridor is an elevator has access to levels 36 theta all the way to 16 theta, the top of the secure section. There is a maintenance tunnel in level 16 theta where the local security field generator is damaged, it goes on and off intermittently. The next time it goes down, you might be able to teleport to that location."

"The problem is even if you can get to level 16 theta, and even if the elevator is still working, that would only get you to the main entrance to 36 theta. That corridor doesn't have any access to the loading bays, so you still wouldn't be able to reach your friend. The only direct way to get to the loading bay would be through Zax's control center. If you entered that room, you'd be trapped just like Vohaul is... hopefully."

"There is a small chance that you might be able to do a very short range teleports without tripping the security measures, and ending back up here in another holding cell. If you go right up to the door to the control center, you'll be as close as you can possibly get to the without entering the control center. You might then be able to teleport from one corridor to the next, you'd have to teleport 3 corridors over to reach the that leads to loading bay three. The problem is if you trip the security measures you'll end up back on this level in another holding cell and have to start all over again."

"You said the field was fluctuating, when will I be able to try again?"

"It isn't consistent, but on average there is a 1 minute window every 16 hours. The last one was six and a half hours ago, so you're stuck here until the next one happens."

"One last thing, the communicator may or may not work on the lower levels, I won't know until you get there, so you should memorize this route, just in case we lose contact."

"Thank you for your help Decima, I really appreciate it," Luna said with a smile. She spent the next few hours going over the maps with Decima and planning a number of routes in case she found any of them blocked. When the time approached for her to leave Luna galloped out of the room and back to the teleport pad so Decima could send her down to the lower levels.
> Chapter 17
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Celestia let out a sigh as the sun dipped behind the horizon. After it was safely tucked away, she reached out and took hold of the moon. Even after a millennium of bringing forth the night, it still felt wrong to move Luna's former prison. The moon felt cold and lifeless in her grip, and no matter how much she fiddled with it, it's positioning in the sky always seemed a bit off. After a few minutes of making minor adjustments, she decided it was as good as she could get it. She took one last look as the glow around her horn faded. The Mare in the Moon no longer visible only served as a reminder that Luna was still lost. She and Twilight had been working on a way to reach out to her Luna, but progress had been stalled for months now.

Trying to combine a dimensional spell with not only the power of the Elements but also the bond that she shared with Luna was something that had never been attempted before. It could easily be years before she and Twilight would be able to complete the spell.

After closing the door to her chambers, the energetic smile she kept up all day withered away and she stumbled towards her bed. A half written letter inviting Twilight up to the castle sat on the table next to her, Celestia decided she would finish it tomorrow, she didn't have nearly enough energy to do any spell work tonight. She had spent most of the day in an extended session of court listening to a group of nobles banter back and forth over one inane thing after another.

She climbed into bed and pulled out a book. For the first time in ages, Celestia considered taking a nap.

A loud pop and the sudden appearance of Twilight quickly put any thoughts of relaxation out of Celestia's mind. 

"I'VEGOTIT" Twilight yelled at no one in particular, as a guard burst into the room.

"I'm sorry about this Princess, I told her you were not to be disturbed but she tried to get in anyway, when I went to grab her she teleported."

"It's quite all right," Celestia replied. "What's going on Twilight?"

Twilight turned towards the princess and trotted over. She stank of coffee and sweat, her mane was a mess and her eyes were red and puffy. They kept shifting back and forth as if she was having trouble concentrating on any one thing.

"Lunnnnna! I know how to find her!" Twilight shouted excitedly.

Celestia quickly dismissed the guard and then turned back towards Twilight.

"Show me what you have found," she said. The exhaustion that had been plaguing her melted away as she was filled with hope for the first time in months.

"Well, the biggest issue we had was creating a beacon. We can't replicate the bond between you and Luna if we don't know how it works," Twilight said as she started to pace back and forth.

"Did you figure out how to do it?" Celestia asked.

"Not quite, I still have no idea what allows you to feel her presence, but since we can't duplicate it, we won't even try."

"I'm confused Twilight, Luna will need something to home in on or she won't be able to find her way here."

"Well, you know how we were going to setup the beacon?"

"By opening a rift to the void between universes? That's the only way we can hit every dimension at once."

"Well, we don't need to create a beacon, we already have one."

"We do?" Celestia said, scrunching her nose up in confusion.

"You! Instead of trying to setup a magical beacon, you can step through the rift."

"But I need to maintain the rift, and I can't do that from the other side. This isn't like a regular gateway, it can't just be enchanted into an object like Star Swirls mirror."

"Yes, I know that, but look at this," Twilight said, pulling a scroll out of her saddlebags. "I made some modifications to the rift spell and vastly increased its efficiency. I still can't open the rift myself, but once the rift is open, it should be stable for a few minutes with no additional input. In fact, with these changes, I could even maintain it for an hour or two once you've opened it."

Celestia stared at her student for a moment, then took the scroll. She quickly scanned over the changes that Twilight had made. As she read, a huge smile crept onto her face. Finishing the scroll, she placed it down and swept the small unicorn up in a loving embrace. She kissed Twilight on the forehead before putting the pony back down.

"Twilight, you've done it! I'm sure this will work," Celestia said, beaming.

"When do you want to try?" Twilight asked.

"Well, we still need to gather your friends, but I do not want to wake them at this hour. I'll send out some guards to collect them in morning."

Twilight let out a long yawn.

"Speaking of sleep, I should probably get some, I've been up for... uh what day is it?" she asked.

"Thursday," Celestia replied with a smile. She was familiar with Twilight losing track of time when working on a project.

"Oh."

"There's no point in you traveling back to Ponyville tonight, you can use the one of the guest rooms, though I suggest a bath before bed," Celestia conjured mirror so Twilight could get a look at herself. "I do not mean to offend, but Twilight, you stink."

Twilight blushed," I'll get right on that," she said.

"One more thing Twilight," Celestia said a note of seriousness returning to her voice.

"Yes?"

"Thank you."


#####


"Luna, I thought you'd like to know that Selene is moving around." 

Luna's ears perked up.

"Can you tell what she is doing?" Luna asked.

"Unfortunately not, I have no visual sensors on that level, all I can do is detect her position. My guess is she's looking around."

Decima continued to give Luna updates on Selene's movements for the next few minutes.

"It looks like she's headed into the loading bay storage area, if anything else changes, I'll let you know."

"Thanks Decima."

There was a few minutes of silence before Luna heard Decima speak again.

"Luna the field is dropping, it's a bit ahead of schedule, I'm going to initiate the teleport sequence now," Decima said.

The pad on the floor lit up and Luna felt a wave of magic wash over her. There was a brief moment of disorientation and she found herself in a darkened corridor.

"Can you hear me?" Luna asked.

She waited a moment for Decima to reply but when there was nothing she realized that she was now out of contact with the AI. The map she had committed to memory let her know that she needed to follow the tunnel until it met up with the main corridor. Decima had warned her that Zax was the only AI with full control of the lower levels. She wasn't able to give Luna access to any locked doors and more importantly she had no way to stop any of the automated turrets on the lower levels from targeting Luna. She walked for a few minutes until she found the exit from the tunnel system. Bringing up a shield around herself she pried the doors open.

It seemed her precautions were unnecessary, whatever active defenses had existed here had long since gone offline. There had been a large battle here, but judging by the thick layer of dust that covered the dozens of fallen constructs that littered the hallway, it had happened years ago.

She continued down the hallway until reaching the elevator. Like everything else on this floor it seemed to be without power. Decima had planned for this and Luna made her way back into the maintenance tunnels until she reached the power distribution node. Opening the node she cycled the main circuit and then waited. There was a moment of silenced followed by a low hum as the node's power systems came back online.

Luna stepped back out into the main corridor which was now lit up. When she reached the elevator she hit the pad to open the door and was rewarded with a quiet groan as the doors slid open. She raised her hoof and pawed the button to bring her down to level 36. The doors slid closed again and she felt the elevator begin to descend.

Luna watched the display on the control panel before her. The alien script slowly changed as she neared her destination. A distant rumbling sound, accompanied by slight shaking filled the car. The elevator stopped with a sudden lurch and a loud alarming tone filled the air. Luna pressed her button again but the panel simply screeched at her in response.

When Luna and Decima were working on the plan to get Luna down to Selene, Decima warned Luna that like everything else in the complex, the elevator system ancient and there was a possibility that it might not work, but they hadn't discussed what to do if it stopped working while Luna was on it. As far as Luna could tell, the elevator had stopped only one floor shy of her destination. She pried the doors open and hopped out of the elevator.

She paused to check on Selene, her horn flared up as she checked on the beacon spell. Selene was still moving, but worse, if Luna's memory was correct, she was now in the corridor leading to Zax's control room, where Vohaul was currently trapped. Decima was sure that Selene wouldn't have been able to gain access to the corridor but somehow the girl managed not only to get in, but she was now headed directly towards the control room.

With a worried look, Luna took off at a gallop down the empty hallway. There was a series of access tunnels on each floor that she could use to get down to the next level. It took her a while to find the hatch that opened the tunnel, but when she did it opened up easily. The tunnel, which was designed for the bipedal Eternals, was a very tight fit. Luna had to scrunch down as low as possible and inch herself forward. It took almost half an hour to reach the ladder down to the floor below. Upon reaching the ladder she used her magic to cut the ladder away from the wall, which just barely gave her enough room to fit. She dropped down and started to crawl out of the access tunnel.


#####


Selene crouched down panting heavily. A thick cloud of dust hung in the air, kicked up by the collapsing ceiling. After catching her breath she turned around to look back at the damage. A large pile of rubble sealed off the path back into the large room she had just escaped. With no way to go but forward, she picked herself back up and continued her search for a way out.

Slowly she trudged forward, still not quite believing the size of this underground labyrinth. After walking for what seemed like miles, she finally reached the end. A large door loomed before her, if this didn't open she was trapped. She had tried to open every other door she had run across and none of them had opened.

Slowly she reached out towards the door control. Right before her hand reached it, the door let out a quiet hiss and started to open. She jumped backwards in surprise.

"Hello? Is anyone there? Luna?" she shouted out to the darkened room before her.

When there was no response, she peaked inside. The small amount of light flowing into the room showed a large circular room. There were number of control panels sitting up against the walls, similar to the one she had hid behind earlier. A few of them seemed to be damaged but it was too dark to make out any significant details. With no other ways left to go, she stepped into the room. After a few moments her eyes started to adjust the light levels and she could start to make out more of the destruction. Displays were smashed and consoles were overturned. Selene took a few more steps into the room, trying to make out if there were any other doors leading out. The back half of the room was far too dark for her see anything but as she moved forward she thought she spotted a door.

She heard a noise behind her and spun around. The door she had entered in was slowly closing, and with it, the little light pouring into the room was being cut off. She tried to run but was far too slow and with a click, Selene was plunged into total darkness. She stopped as quickly as she could and for several seconds she didn't move.

There was another sound behind her, a heavy thud followed by another and another. She felt a chill roll down her spine as she realized that it sounded like heavy footsteps. She turned her head slowly towards the sounds, hoping that she could make out even the slightest bit of detail. The thudding got closer and closer, before it finally stopped. Too nervous to move or make a sound, Selene held her breath and waited for something to happen.

Out of the darkness twin points of demonic light appeared, slowly growing ever brighter, until Selene could make out a crystalline head. The head turned downward, the eyes pointing directly at the frightened girl. She tried to grab her rifle but found that she was unable to move. A raspy voice rung out in the darkness, each word causing Selene's heart to beat faster.

"Well this is certainly a surprise, I was not expecting a powerless mortal."
> Chapter 18
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Selene tried to back away but she was still frozen in place. Concentrating as hard as she could she tried to move her hand, but was met with only a slight twitch of her fingers. The monster standing before her let out a dark laugh as it gazed down upon her.

"Truth be told, when I detected the teleportation spell that brought you to this level, I was very confused. As far as I knew, I had left none of this planet's inhabitants alive. Nothing should have been left on the planet that could follow me down here. I was furious, the automatic security system kicked in right after your trip and because of you I've lost control of that pad. It was meant to be my escape route back to the surface."

The monster's voice filled Selene with a feeling of dread. She wasn't sure what it wanted, but it couldn't be good.

"But the question remains, how did you end up down here. I had keyed the that teleporter that took you here to only respond to very high level of magic. But you appear to be completely devoid of any magic of your own. Still, I can detect the threads of a spell woven into your body. The magic is strange, yet in some way it seems familiar. Who cast it upon you?"

"Magic? A spell? I don't know what you are talking about," Selene said nervously. If Luna's tracking spell was still intact, she might be able to find Selene.

"Do not fill the first conversation I have had in millennia with lies," the monster said. "You will accomplish nothing, I can analyze the spell myself."

Selene felt a wave of energy flow over her body. A moment later a familiar feeling of dizziness washed over her.

"WHAT IS THIS?" the voice shouted out.

"The power within you! What manner of mortal are you? This cannot be!"

A second later the dizziness receded, allowing Selene to concentrate on her current situation again.

"And now it fades. This is impossible. Explain the power that I sensed in you. Are you a god?"

"No," Selene shook her head slowly.

"Then why could I sense divinity in you!" the creature shouted.

A deep rumbling erupted up from the creature as it broke out into insane laughter. "This is too perfect. You may have cut off my escape route, but when I strip you of this power, I can finally break free of my eternal prison."

A dim glow lit up the room, giving Selene her first good look at the monster. Unlike the golem she had fought with Luna it was not a featureless vaguely humanoid block of crystals, nor was it like the fire shooting golem she had ran into earlier. Instead what stood before her could have almost passed for a human wearing a suit of black crystal armor, if not for the fact that it was nearly three times her height. Embedded into it's chest was a large metal box that looked similar to some of the control panels strew throughout the room. A fearsome looking face with glowing eyes gazed down at her, lips twisted into an vile grin. 

"Who are you?" Selene asked.

"Who am I?" The monster roared. "I am unending pain and suffering. I set brother against brother and father against son," It took a step towards Selene, as it's voice grew louder. "Since before the dawn of time I have stoked the fires of cruelty and hatred. I am Malice!"

Whatever this thing was, it was clearly insane, Selene thought to herself. Her only hope was to keep it talking and pray that Luna was still looking for her.

"There were other... things, like you but they didn't talk," Selene said. "Are you like them?"

"Ah, you mean my constructs, no, they are mere soldiers, they exist to carry out my will," Malice said.

"Are you an artificial life form?" Selene asked, pointing at the metal box embedded in Malice's chest.

"No little mortal, what you see before you is but a shell, an anchor that allows me to exist in this universe," Malice pointed at the box. "This once housed an artificial intelligence created by the beings that inhabited this world, they were known as the Eternals. I integrated it into this body so I could learn more about them."

"You aren't from here?" Selene asked. "Where did you come from then?"

Hollow laughter filled the room.

"No, this wretched world is nothing more than a stepping stone on my path to reclaim what was stolen from me," Malice walked to the center of the room and began to clear a out a large area of debris.

"Eons ago a war began, beyond anything your mortal mind could possibly imagine. The heavens themselves were ravaged as the forces of Harmony struggled against Pandemonium. Eventually, a truce was declared and the all of creation was divided among the two sides. But I would not rest until all reality was mine to control. What neither side had realized was as the war raged on, I grew more powerful, fueled by all the suffering and the rage. I prepared to attack Harmony in secret, under the guise of the forces of Pandemonium. This would restart the war and allow my power to continue to grow until I could conquer both sides."

"Only my worm of a brother, - Malice spat out with a disgusted look on his face - knew of my plans."

"He had always been a mischievous one, but I wrongly thought I could trust him.  Instead he betrayed me, he struck a bargain with the forces of Harmony, He attacked when I was preparing to launch my assault."

The center of the room cleared, Malice stretched out his hands, a black glow enveloped them and a beam of energy lanced out and struck the ground. A bedding of black crystals rose up from the floor forming a large circular platform.

"Before I knew what was happening, he had neutralized most of my forces. Moments later he turned on me directly, a grave mistake on his part. He did not know how powerful I had become. I crushed him utterly, but the damage was already done. I had spent too much of my power fighting him. 

"You killed your own brother?" Selene asked.

Laughter filled the air.

"Killed? Gods cannot die." Malice said with a grin. "I snapped his mind like a twig, drove him insane and left him a shell of his former self."

"But before I could regain my strength, Harmony's legions descended upon me. They quickly crushed what remained of my armies and then captured me and my brother. He sacrificed his very sanity to their cause, but his madness made him unfit to remain in the heavens. He was cast out, banished to another dimension where the gods of Harmony decided to make the chaos he would cause someone else's problem. For me though, banishment was not enough. They constructed a special prison, completely cut off from the rest of the universe, from even time itself.  It was meant to bind my powers and hold me for all eternity."

"I spent what seemed like eons in that prison, studying it and trying to devise a way to escape. I had access to only a fraction of my power, but eventually I found a small flaw. There was no way for me to open a gateway from inside the prison, but for someone outside my prison, opening a gateway in would not be as hard. Still, the chances of an untargeted dimensional gateway randomly picking my prison were astronomically low. So I devised a spell that acted as a sort of dimensional attractor. It raised the chances significantly that an unaimed spell would open a gateway to my prison."

Malice stepped back from the platform and turned to Selene.

"Centuries went by before my spell was able to divert a dimensional gateway. An alien of a race I'd never encounter before. He called himself a unicorn and his name was Sombra. The magic he wielded was very similar in its nature to the spell that is bound to you."

A dark beam of energy shot out from Malice's body and a projection shimmered into existence. Selene suppressed a gasp as the magical projection solidified into a dark grey pony.

"He had been experimenting with dimensional travel, and luck was with me, his first successful attempt had opened a door directly into my cage. Unfortunately the gateway he had created was too unstable for anyone but him to return to his world. I corrupted his mind, taught him dark magic and sent him back. He was supposed to gather strength and reopen a larger, stronger gateway."

With a wave of his hand, the projection vanished. Malice turned back to the platform and began to pour more magic into it. Spikes began to grow, jutting out from the platform in all directions.

"I waited ages, but Sombra never returned, something must have stopped him, but I had no way of finding out what.  Another eternity went by before I was got another chance. The race that called this planet home, the Eternals, had constructed a means of generating magic artificially. In their experiments they opened a gateway to my prison. Once again the gateway was far to unstable for me to cross, but this time I was prepared. My body might not be able get through, but I was able to project my consciousness. Once on this side I was able to take over one of the Eternals' AIs and began a war of extermination. My power grew, but my true physical form, and the my divine powers remain locked in the my prison. Eventually I made my way to this planet, their home world, in a desperate attempt to stop me, they sealed the space surrounding this system into a pocket dimension, but what the remaining AI above us does not know is I have spent the last few thousand years circumventing many of the lockouts on the magical generator at the core of this planet. I am almost ready to seize control, and your arrival will only hasten things."

Malice continued to pour dark energy into the crystalline circle. A large rectangular block grew up from the ground, Somehow it was even blacker than the bed it rested on. Light itself seemed to be pulled into it's surface and just looking at it caused horrible feeling to creep into Selene's chest. Finished with his work, Malice turned to face the young woman.

"I am afraid the history lesson is now over. The time has come for you to assist me in reclaiming my divinity."

"I don't help you do anything, your insane!" Selene shouted.

"Oh, you will," Malice replied.

He reached down towards the girl with his massive hand. Selene watched it come closer and closer, until just before it reached her face the hand stopped. For a moment nothing happened and then with a tremendous burst of speed, Malice's hand latched on to Selene's head. She let out a horrible scream, as she was overcome with pain. A moment later and she passed out.

White spots floated over her vision and Selene put her hand up to her head. She was angry, so very angry. She stomped up and down the corridors of the Ascension looking for something to unleash her fury upon. There was no reason behind her madness, nor did there need to be, all that existed was the uncontrollable need to cause pain and suffering and the longer she went without the worse her rage grew. She stopped in front of a door, it was Luna's room. She hit the button to open the door and then looked inside.

Luna was sleeping peacefully on her bed, completely unaware that Selene had entered the room. Selene's lips twisted upward into a maniacal grin. She glanced downward and saw a glint of light reflect off the blade she was carrying. Sharp serrated teeth hungered for flesh and Selene would give it to them. She crept up to the unsuspecting pony. Gently she lifted Luna's wing then with a swift motion she plunged the knife into the joint. She pulled on the handle as she felt flesh and tendons tear apart until seconds later the wing fell down to the ground.

Luna writhed in pain, unable to do anything but scream, she looked back and saw Selene standing over her with a crazed look in her eyes. Before the pony could react, Selene grabbed Luna's horn with her free hand, and began to pull as hard as she could. Luna's head was wrenched backwards as Selene tried to break her horn. She cried out for Selene to stop but the girl ignored her pleas. Selene jabbed the knife into Luna's side then took hold of the horn with her second hand, she began to push in the opposite direction as hard as she could. There was a sickening crack and the top half of Luna's horn broke free.

Selene flipped the broken horn around and with a mighty thrust she jammed it through Luna's throat. In an instant the pony stopped struggling. For one brief second Luna looked at Selene, desperation in her eyes, her mouth opened but the gurgling sounds that escaped were unintelligible. Then her head dropped down to the bed, her eyes blank and lifeless as blood continued to pour from the wound in her neck.

Selene stood up and began to cackle with glee over Luna's corpse before removing the horn and thrusting it into her own chest.


Malice removed his hand from Selene's head and the girl's eyes flew open. She collapsed to the floor gasping for breath. A moment later she threw up. Bile dripped from her mouth as she stared up at Malice in horror. The images in her brain played over and over again, and she could still sense the disgusting feeling of pleasure that washed over her as she watched Luna slowly die. She heaved a few more times, but her empty stomach had nothing left to give. Her head dropped down to the floor and she let out a loud cry.

Malice watched on with amusement. The dark aurora around him seemed to grow in intensity.

"W-w-what did you do to me?" Selene choked out between sobs.

"It will be a delicate separating the fragment of divinity from your soul. Your suffering will ease my work, while simultaneously feeding me."

Malice reached out one more time and violently grabbed a hold of Selene's head. The girl's eyes rolled back and she let out another scream as she once again lost consciousness, face frozen in horror.

Still holding on to her head, Malice dragged Selene's body to the platform. Dropping her, he raised both of his hands up. Black energy erupted from his fists causing four dark crystal spires to rise from the ground at the four corners of the rectangular block forming a dark alter. A nexus of energy slowly sparked into existence, flowing between the four spires, crackling and sputtering.

The Ascension cruised silently through D-Space. Some of the crew were still awake but most of the slept peacefully during the night cycle. Selene walked the corridors watching people she had not seen in years walk quickly past as they went about their duties. She found herself on autopilot unable to alter her course. She walked into her old room and saw her younger self snuggled up in bed completely unaware of the looming disaster. She tried to shout out but she had no control over her own voice. She turned and left the room. She continued until she reached engineering. Her father was there, working the late shift as he finished up some long overdue maintenance.

She walked up to him, unable to even turn her head as she made her way over to an engineering console. Her father let out a yawn and walked up next to her. He reached down to the console and began to make some adjustments to the D-drive's power systems. Selene watched in horror as he took the D-drive's safety system offline. She knew that any work on the safety system had to be done in real space while the D-drive was not active. From her attempts at investigating the cause of the crash that the D-drive's dimensional lock system had failed, but she had never been able to find the cause. With the safeties off, a failure in the dimensional lock system could throw the ship into a random dimension.

An automatic alarm sounded when the safety system was disengaged. Another engineer heard the alarm and walked over to investigate.

"Hey Sam, what's up?" he asked, looking at the flashing display.

Her father ignored the question and continued to bring systems offline.

The engineer's lips turned downward into a frown.

"Sam?" He placed his hand on Sam's shoulder.

Sam kept working, completely ignoring the second engineer.

"Sam you can't bring that offline, the drive's in use, stop!"

The engineer grabbed her father and pulled him away from the console. When Sam spun around, Selene got a look at his face, his eyes were glowing red and his lips were twisted in an evil sneer. He lashed out at the other engineer, flying forward he knocked the engineer to the floor. Selene watched on, her gut twisting in fear and disgust as she watched her father attack the other man. Sam stomped down hard and there was a sickening crack as the other man's arm broke.

Two other people heard the commotion and ran over. They grabbed Sam and pulled him off the injured engineer.

"Sam, Paul, what the hell is going on?" one of them asked.

"Don't let him near the console, he's doing something to the D-drive!" Paul screamed while clutching his injured arm.

Sam answered with a savage growl. He struggled violently and before anyone could stop him, he pushed his way free and slammed his hand down on the console. Seconds later the whole ship shuddered as more alarms started blaring. Her view changed with no warning, she was outside the ship, she watched it exit D-space, a large planet hung directly in it's path. The ship hurtled down through the atmosphere, crashed into the surface below. 

Selene's eyes fluttered open slowly, Malice had dragged her to the center of the room while she was out. He was currently focused on adding more magic to the platform in front of her. Unable to get the memory of what she had just witnessed out of her mind, she broke down, tears streaming down her face.

"Awake I see. You are strong for a mortal, but that is all you are. I do not know how you acquired a spark of divine magic, but when I am done tearing it from you, you will beg for me to end your life."

"Why are you doing this to me?" Selene cried. 

"BECAUSE I CAN!" Malice shouted, eyes brightening in anger. "It that not enough of a reason? It is my will that you suffer, and you will continue to do so until it no longer amuses me. Then, when you are nothing more than a husk, burnt out on years of pain and anguish, when I have destroyed your ability to feel, only then will I allow you to die."

"You can't..." Selene protested weakly.

In the blink of an eye Malice's arm flew downward. He grabbed Selene by the throat and lifted her up off the ground.

"Who are you to tell me what I cannot do? You are nothing to me!"

"While you suffered, I studied you mortal and the the divine power flowing through you. It is nothing more than a faint ember, barely sustaining itself, but even a tiny spark of godhood is more powerful than you can imagine. When I take it from you, I will be able to at last open a true portal to my prison, and reclaim my true power. No longer will I be constrained to this form," Malice said gesturing at his crystalline body.

"You're... insane," Selene choked out between ragged breaths. "I don't have any powers or magic, you can't gain anything from me."

"DO NOT SPEAK OF WHAT YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT!" Malice said, squeezing Selene's neck even tighter. He tossed her down to the ground.

Malice turned back to the alter and began to pour more magic into the nexus surrounding the spires. It pulsed with raw power slowly at first, but the rate accelerated as more and more magic was forced into the nexus of energy. Selene sucked in air through deep breaths and watched on, unsure of what to do. She looked around the room, but all the doors were still shut tight.

It was then that she noticed her rifle, she had dropped it the first time she fell unconscious, but it wasn't that far away. She quickly glanced at Malice. He had his back turned to her as he continued his work. As quietly as she could she began to crawl towards the rifle. Every few feet she looked back, terrified that Malice would discover her intent before she was able to reach it, but he didn't seem to be paying any attention to her movements.

At last she reached the gun. She grabbed it and aimed the rifle at her tormentor. Her hands were shaking so badly it was hard to keep the rifle steady. She took a deep breath trying to calm herself down. Slowly the shaking lessened until she was able to line up the rifle. Praying that Malice's massive crystal head was a vital spot, she prepared to fire.

The first sign that something was wrong, was a skipping motion in Malice's otherwise steady movements. She realized with horror that she had blacked out for a second or two. She felt nauseous and the room was starting to spin.

"Not now damn it!" she swore silently to herself. Another dizzy spell was overtaking her, the last one had caused her to black out for hours. She watched as the barrel started to drop slowly downward.

Malice began to talk, still not having noticed Selene's absence.

"I can feel it's power in you even now. Do you feel it as well? It's killing you, you know. Your mortal body slowly failing as the sheer power of divinity slowly burns away your soul," Malice said as he began to turn around. He looked down to where he had stopped Selene but she was not there. Quickly he looked around the room before spotting her holding the gun and trying to aim at him.

"What are you..."

Selene squeezed her eyes shut for a split second, forcing the dizziness back. She hefted the rifle back into alignment and gently squeezed the trigger. With an imperceptible click the firing pin struck the primer which in turn ignited the powder charge, propelling the bullet rapidly down the barrel. Muffled by Luna's spell, a quiet pop was all that was heard as the enchanted bullet sped rapidly towards Malice.

The bullet quickly closed the gap between the human and monster and penetrated the top of his shoulder. Malice screamed as Luna's enchantment disrupted the dark magic animating his body. He stumbled forward and then crashed to the ground. Selene tried to ready another shot but the rifle slipped out of her hands. A sharp pain rose up in her skull and her vision started to go white.

> Chapter 19
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Luna shivered as a foreboding sensation crawled through her. The hairs down the back of her neck stood up straight as if preparing for some unforeseen calamity. The moment she had stepped hoof onto this level, she could tell something was off. The hallway that stretched before her was dimly lit, but unlike many of the previous areas she had traveled through it did not appear to have fallen into ruin. She trotted forward until she reached the end. Before her a large door stood by silently waiting for Luna to make her move. She reached out and poked the door controls, but like everything else on this level, it lacked power and did not acknowledge her touch.

Scant seconds later there was a loud groan as the door was forced open and Luna stepped through. The burnt out husks of security turrets, long since destroyed in failed attempt to stop Vohaul's forces hung from the ceiling. This was the last security check point before Luna reached the main hall and the way to Zax's control room. She stepped quickly through the room and pulled open the door on the other side. 

Whatever monsters still roamed this level had done some remodeling. The smooth artificial walls of the vast underground base faded away into a more natural rock, laced with dark crystals. Embedded in the walls were partially grown constructs, leaching the magical energies that flowed through the black crystals. The air was thick with dark magic, and the closer Luna got to her destination, the more oppressively it bore down on her. Borrowing a spell she had learned from Celestia, her horn lit up and a glowing sphere of light erupted from her horn, filling the surrounding area. Along with the darkness, the sense of dread that had been hanging over her retreated backwards, unable to maintain its presence in the holy light.

But darkness does not often appreciate the meddling of the light, and as Luna advanced a large rumbling noise echoed off the rocky walls as a golem stepped out from behind a distant crystal from the light the pony carried forward. It garbed a hold a cracked crystal, wrenched it free of the wall and threw it at Luna. The heavy crystal sailed through the air, only to be deflected by a quick push from Luna's magic. It skittered off the wall to the left of her, sending chips of rock and crystal flying in all directions before it landed on the floor with a thud. The golem roared in frustration, it shuffled over to the wall where one of the crystals was glowing gently. It reached out placing it's hand directly on the wall and Luna watched as the crystal darkened and the energies within were drained into the golem body

It turned towards Luna and a bright red beam lanced out from its head gouging a deep trench in the floor where Luna stood only seconds earlier. From farther down the hall more and more golems awoke from their slumber and began to charge to the aid of the first, pausing every few second to fire their own magical attacks at the distant pony.

Luna continued to close the distance at a fast trot, moving back and forth as dozens of beams of dark energy crashed around her. No matter how many times the golems fired upon her, they couldn't quite manage to hit the rapidly approaching pony. When the outer edge of light came in contact with the closest pair of golems the crystals that made up their bodies began to sizzle and smoke, small cracks started to appear the golems recoiled back as if in pain.

Luna let out a small laugh, pleased to see her casting of the spell was working so effectively. It took a good deal of magic for her to correctly emulate one of Celestia's personal spells. She pushed forward, pouring more magic into her horn and the light hitting the golems grew brighter and brighter. The pair stumbled around letting out shrieks of agony, and then suddenly their entire bodies simply burst into flames along with every other dark crystal in range of the spell. Seconds later all that remained was charred rock and puddles of molten slag.

Luna continued to advance, her holy light scorching everything in her path, but something was wrong. The evil presence that seemed to hang in the air grew stronger. The light surrounding her flickered on and off as she strained to keep the spell alive. The source of this new power, as best as she could tell, was coming from the end of the corridor, beyond the great door. That was where Vohaul should be trapped but Luna could feel a great evil in there and it did not feel as if it was restrained.

Luna stopped and brought up a shield spell around her to hold back the attacks, as she tried to determine her next move. Checking up on the tracking spell, Luna was horrified to discover that Selene had moved. Selene was now in Zax's control room. Luna needed to clear the hall, and get there as quickly as possible. There was a good chance that whatever great evil stood beyond that door could sense her. There were still a large number of golems remaining between her and the door and time was of the essence. Purifying light was all well in good, but it was time that these monsters learned that she and she alone owned the dark. In an instant the brightly lit hallway was plunged into an inky blackness as Luna cut power to the spell she had been casting and unleashed a new one of her own design. The area surrounding Luna was completely devoid of light, and the bubble of pure darkness began to expand. The darkness was so absolute that the only way to tell it was growing was the ever decreasing time each beam of magic from the remaining golems lit up the corridor until it vanished completely upon entering Luna's area of negative light.

Shot after shot the golems fired into the blackness as it slowly rolled down the corridor. With a loud crack a freshly grown fire golem broke off the wall right in front of the advancing darkness. It let out a blast of flame only to disappear seconds later as the every growing shadow continued its spread down the hall. One by one, the sounds of the attacking constructs died out as they were swallowed up until the last one vanished. One last blast fired off, invisible to the outside world and then there was silence. Seconds later the darkness vanished and once again the corridor was illuminated with a dim light. Luna stood at the far end, inspecting the door in front of her, the shattered remains of almost a hundred golems lay scattered about on the ground behind her. She reached up to the panel and keyed in the sequence to open the door but nothing happened. Luna let out a sigh and channeled more magic into her horn, illuminating the surroundings in a blue glow. She was going to enter that room one way or another.


#####


A large cloud of dust and debris was kicked up as Malice crashed into the ground. He grunted and then pulled himself up off the ground with his one good remaining arm, the other one hanging limply at his side. Walking over to Selene he found her out cold. He picked her rifle and investigated the unusual weapon. It resembled a primitive form of the hand held laser weapons employed by the Eternals. There was a powerful enchantment inside the weapon. As far as he could tell, it was specifically made to disrupt the same dark energy that he used for the vast majority of his spells. It was odd that this mortal creature with no describable magical ability of her own would have a device with such a specifically targeted enchantment, but it did explain why it had done so much damage to his body. Still he had no time to investigate further, so he tossed the rifle aside. Looking back down at the girl he now stood over, it was clear that her mortal body was fading fast. If she perished before he could extract the spark of divinity it might be lost completely.

Malice tossed the rifle to one side, picked up Selene in one hand, and then trudged over to the altar. He lay her body down and then began pouring more magic into the dark nexus of energy. An dark aurora surrounded the girl and her body began to shake. From her heart a black ray of unlight shot outward and drove into Malice's chest. His body shuddered as he struggled maintain the vast amount of energy he would need to complete the spell.

From beyond the main door, Malice could feel something approaching. Between his damaged body and his struggles to maintain the spell, he couldn't afford to probe further but even so, the wave of approaching power crashed over him, unable to be ignored. He could hear the sounds of battle as the remnants of his army tried to halt the intruder progress, but Malice was no fool. Based on what he was sensing his constructs had no chance of stopping whatever it was that approached his location. He turned his concentration back towards Selene and as he focused on finishing the extraction.

Minutes ticked by but Malice continued to make no real progress. He let out a growl of frustration as one again the fragment once again slipped from his pull. Giving up on finesse he attempted to rip it from Selene's soul, he was past the point of trying to preserve her life so he could torment her later.

A deafening crack echoed throughout the room as large segments of the door to the main hallway exploded inward, then froze in midair and clattered to the floor. Malice smashed his fist downward onto the alter in a rage. Ceasing his work on Selene, he turned towards the now destroyed door and unleashed a massive surge of energy. It flashed outward, destroying everything in its path. Computer consoles, chunks of door and even a large section of the wall instantly vanished. When the light finally died away the corridor was in ruins. The blast had carved a new tunnel fifty feet in diameter through the remnants of the shattered door, through one of the walls of the corridor and into the next. The rock walls of the new tunnel were glowing a cherry red, heat pouring off of them as they slowly began to cool down.

From the far end of the newly carved tunnel Malice heard a distant "clop clop clop clop" it echoed over and over again growing faster and louder as the source of the sound approached and then it stopped entirely. A dark blur flew into the room from the tunnel at high speed, Malice barely had enough time to throw up a shield spell. The blur crashed into the shield at an insane speed and bounced off, slamming into the ceiling, sending chunks of concrete raining down. Malice grabbed the unconscious girl and lifted her off of the alter. Her body lit up as it was surrounded with a sickish red glow. He turned towards the pile of rubble and waited. The broken slabs began to fall away as a figure stood up and pushed them to one side.


#####


It was clear to Luna that Vohaul was not imprisoned, the massive spell that pushed her back down the corridor only confirmed this fact. She shook her head, clearing away the dizziness and began to gallop back to the control center. Not satisfied with her speed, she took to the air and began to accelerate. There was something in that room, something evil and powerful and every second Selene was in there only increased the danger.

Flying into the room at high speed, she barely had time to react as a powerful shield spell sprang up in front of her. She quickly raised a shield of her own, milliseconds before slamming into the shield. She bounced off of it and flew upwards at high speed, then fell down to the floor followed by broken chunks of concrete where her impacted had shattered the ceiling.

Shaking the debris off of her, she stood up. In the center of the room a powerful shield spell rippled and crackled with energy. In the center of the shield stood a large golem. This one was different than the other golems, their bodies looked crude in comparison. It looked even far more defined than the images Decima had shown her of Vohaul. Curiously, one of the creature's arms hung limply to one side, but her inspection was quickly halted as she noticed Selene, wrapped in a spell she could not identify, floating just behind the creature.

"This is a most unusual turn of events," The creature said, looking at Luna. "I have not seen one of your kind in a long time."

Luna's ears twisted forward and her eyes grew wide with question.

"What do you mean my kind?" she asked. "You are Vohaul, are you not?"

The deep rumbling laughter let out by the golem caused bits of small broken pieces of the ceiling to shake loose and come crashing down.

"I see you have talked to Decima," the monster said. "Vohaul ceased to exist ages ago, this is all that is left of him." 

The creature pointed to his chest where a small metal box was buried inside the crystal.

"I do not understand," Luna said "Vohaul attacked this world, who are you?"

"Yes he did, but did that wretched AI ever tell you why he did?" Not waiting for an answer, the monster continued. "She didn't because she did not know. Vohaul was nothing more than a puppet, and it was I who pulled his strings. These AI have minds unlike any others I've encountered before, and while it took me years to take complete control of it, I was still able to forced him to make war upon his own people and it was I who guided him here to this planet. Vohaul as an individual entity did not last much past the extermination of his former masters."

Luna studied the being before her, she probed the magical energies that resided with its body. Among the many spells there was one that stood out. Thousands of years ago, when she and her sister had fought against King Sombra, a honor guard of crystal pony warriors had tried to stop the sisters. Neither Celestia nor Luna could believe it, the ponies of the Crystal Empire were terrified of Sombra, they could not imagine where he had found any to fight for him. It was only after they defeated the guard did they learn the horrible truth. Dark magic of incredible power had suppressed the free will of those ponies and forced them to fight for a King they despised. While it had a similar feel to Sombra's domination spell, it made Sombra's version look like the work of a foal. But that was the least of Luna's concerns. Whatever or whoever this creature was, a vast power raged inside it, like a great inferno ready to consume everything in its path. She was surprised she had not sensed it earlier.

The creature continued.

"I am Malice and you now belong to me."

Faster than Luna could react, Malice raised his one good arm and fired off a wave of magic that completely enveloped Luna. She formed a shield around herself, blocking the attack. Malice responded by intensifying his spell and the front of Luna's shield began to glow. Another surge of energy from Malice caused her shield to shatter and Luna found herself enveloped in a dark aurora. Before she could respond she was felt her energy drain away, her vision faded to black and she collapsed to the floor.


#####


Far below her vantage point in the sky, daylight broke over the castle grounds as a miniature sun rose upwards into the sky. She squinted downward, and was just able to make out the form of her sister, surrounded by a shield that shined as brightly as the morning sun. Rage boiled within her as she powered her horn.

"Luna please, listen to reason," Celestia shouted as her sister unleashed a powerful attack. The beam hit the side of Celestia's shield and ricocheted downward towards the outer walls of the castle far below. The Castle of the Two Sisters had stood for millennia, no force on Equestria had ever managed to breach its walls. The ancient enchantments that strengthened the stone had held back griffon sieges, monsters left over from the time of Discord and even dragon attack. But shot intended for Celestia was designed to wound a god. The beam struck the wall, and crashed through the protective magic like a knife through cloth. The wall exploded, sending rubble flying in all directions. A large section of the roof collapsed, burying any ponies unlucky enough to still be in that area of the castle.

"Luna is gone, I AM NIGHTMARE MOON!" the dark alicorn screamed as she fired off blast after blast.

Many of the attacks hit Celestia's shield and she let out a grunt as she struggled to block the attacks. But almost as many missed her completely and rained down upon the castle below. Soon the most of the castle was in ruin. She watched on in horror as whole sections of the castle came crashing down. Ponies were fleeing the area as quickly as they could and what remained of the Royal Guard were frantically trying to pull survivors from the wreckage and lead them to safety.

"Eternal night will kill our subjects, crops will die and Equestria will freeze over. You must stop this madness, let me bring forth the day!" Celestia pleaded.

"NEVER AGAIN WILL YOUR SUN SHOW ITSELF OVER MY KINGDOM. THE NIGHT WILL LAST FOREVER!" Nightmare Moon screamed, cackling with maniac laughter.

Nightmare Moon gathered an enormous amount of dark energy, she combined it with all of her hatred and anger. The light from Celestia's shield vanished into darkness as the black of night once again spread out over the forest below. The air around Nightmare Moon crackled with energy as she turned, not towards Celestia but instead to the horizon where the sun waited patiently for Celestia to start the day. A bolt of dark energy lanced off of her horn and out into space. It curved around the planet and then accelerated. Faster than anything should be capable of moving, it raced across the millions of miles in a fraction of a second and struck Celestia's sun. The star exploded in a violent burst that rivaled a supernova.

Celestia zoomed past her sister, the death of her sun shaking her to the core. Though she could not yet see the effect of Luna's attack, she knew what was coming and what would happen when the shock wave reached Equestria. Her horn cut through the darkness as massive golden shield formed in the sky surrounding an area even larger the sun used to occupy. Concentrating with all her might, she gradually shrank the shield until the explosion, racing outwards met up with the shield shrinking inwards. For a moment she almost lost control of the spell, but through sheer determination she was able to keep the shield up. Then she teleported the entire interior of the shield far out into interstellar space. Quickly she scanned the heavens for a comparable star to the one Luna had just destroyed. Finding one, she teleported it into position, ready to fulfill its new duty as the Equestria's sun. Then she dived back downward and called out to her sister.

"Please Luna, do not destroy Equestria if you are mad at me, we can work through this, I promise you I will right this wrong."

Nightmare Moon could tell that Celestia was nearing her limit. Displacing the ruined star and retrieving a new one had to put an enormous strain on her power. This was her chance to strike. She fired off another large blast, but Celestia didn't have enough energy left to block the attack. It struck her dead on and sent her plummeting out of the sky. She crashed into one of the few remaining sections of the castle that was still standing, punched straight through the roof and landed in a heap next to the Alter of the Elements.

Nightmare Moon, not wanting to miss her chance to disable Celestia even further, flew towards the opening her sister had made and landed in the dark room with thud. She quickly spotted Celestia and suppressed a gasp. Before her stood her sister, not weak and exhausted, but shining brightly with righteous light. The Elements spun around Celestia as she prepared to put a stop to Luna's rampage. A brilliant rainbow wave crashed towards her surrounding the night goddess.

The instant Luna was hit by the Elements something clicked in the back of her head.  A tingling sense that had faded away from disuse, slowly crept into her head.

"This isn't real!" it shouted at her.

Bit by bit her memory started to come back to her, the scene that had just unfolded before her wasn't real.  It was a nightmarish form of events long since past. With great effort Luna cleared her mind.  The underground complex, she had been searching for Selene and run into a being of phenomenal power.  The creature identified itself as Malice and then launched a spell at her.  Dark magic of terrible power forced her into unconsciousness.  

She was... asleep, and this was nothing but a bad dream. Reaching outside of the dream, she could just make out the grip of the spell holding her in the nightmare. As best as Luna could tell, Malice's spell had latched on to a painful memory, turned it into a dream and unleashed it upon her subconscious. With no one to stop him, Malice could be doing anything right now, Luna had to force herself to wake up.

Concentrating intently she struggled to take control of the dream. What should have been a trivial process for the Night Princess, instead turned into a major battle.  Malice's spell was extremely powerful and though her unicorn magic had recovered to the point where she could call on nearly any pony spell she could remember, her true magic was still mending itself. As she attempted to take control, she sensed another in distress. Luna let out a gasp as she recognized the soul of the other dreamer, it was Selene. Malice must have had her under a similar spell. The thought of Selene being trapped in a similar nightmare gave Luna a burst of strength. With it she forced herself free from Malice's grip, ripped open a gateway into Selene's dream and flew though.
> Chapter 20
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The wind whistled as it blew through the entrance of the dimly lit cavern.  Outside a blizzard raged on, thick curtains of snow obscured any view of the outside world.  Luna sat silently in the middle of the room, concentrating on her work.  Every once in a while a surge of magic would bubble up through her horn, providing a burst of light that cast thick black shadows on the craggy rock.

The hours passed by slowly, Selene paced back and forth, waiting for some word from her friend.  Finally Luna stood up, a bright glow in her horn provided the first steady light Selene had seen all morning.  A tear formed in the air, small at first, it grew downward as reality was ripped open. Luna turned towards the human and grinned, but something was wrong; her mouth may have been smiling but her eyes were lifeless and black as night.

"I have finally recovered enough strength to open a portal home; through this lies the land of Equestria."

Selene smiled back nervously.

"That's great Luna, but what about Earth? You said that you had figured out how to get me home, weren't you going to open the portal there first?"

"Oh no Selene, I can't do that," Luna said as she turned and began to walk towards the portal.

"Well then I'm coming with you, but I don't have any of my stuff, it's all back at the Ascension, can we go back and pick it up first?"

Luna stopped right before the portal and then turned to look at the confused girl.

"You must stay here," she said, shaking her head.

With no other explanation Luna stepped through the portal which vanished a second later.

Selene stood in the now empty cavern, looking at the spot where Luna stood moments before. She dropped to her knees, and let out a long shrill cry.  As her mind replayed the last few seconds, and Luna's abandonment sank in, her body began to tremble and shake until she finally collapsed to the ground choking back sobs of grief.

The scenery shifted. Selene eventually made the long trek back to the ship and the months flew by. Without Luna's magic the garden she had created died out. Selene had to take up hunting again but food was impossibly scarce. To make matters worse her last bottle of vitamin supplements had run out three weeks ago. An unusually powerful storm had damaged the ship's exterior and made the mess uninhabitable and the shuttle generator had finally died. Selene sat huddled in a corner under a pile of blankets in her room, struggling to keep warm.

She looked to her left at the rifle sitting next to her. The storm had damaged her ammunition stores and she had only a single round remaining. Slowly she reached over and opened the bolt. She fed the round into the chamber and closed the bolt. Tears streamed down her face as she slowly turned the rifle around, bringing the barrel up in contact under her chin. The cold metal ring rested underneath her head, she reached forward and moved her hand slowly towards the trigger.

As her finger found its destination, a bright light flashed open as the air in front of Selene split open. Luna staggered though, panting heavily.

"Oh, hello Luna," Selene said with a cough. "Come to see me off?"

Luna's ears swiveled towards the sound of Selene's voice. Still breathing heavily, she turned towards Selene, just in time to noticed the gun resting against Selene's throat. Her eyes went wide and her horn flared to life pulling on the end of the barrel just as the gun went off. With a loud bang, the bullet flew out of the barrel and struck the ceiling harmlessly. Exhausted, Luna collapsed to the ground, leaving Selene sitting there with a confused look on her face.

"You're really here?" Selene asked in a whisper. She reached out and rested a hand gently on Luna's back. 

"You...you... you left," she said with a stammer. "You went back to Equestria, you left me here."

Luna lowered her head and began to nuzzle Selene. 

"It's OK Selene, this is a dream, nothing more, just a dream."

"No... you left me here, alone," Selene cried out, unable to contain her emotions.

Luna's horn lit gently as she let out a spell designed to help calm the girl down.

"This is nothing but a dream Selene," she said. "We were in the complex beneath the cavern, we were separated. I've been looking for you ever since. What is the last thing you remember?"

"I... the complex... separated?" Selene struggled to clear her mind. 

"Malice!" she shouted. "I met someone, it was another golem, but this one could talk, he called himself Malice."

Selene spent the next few minutes bringing Luna up to speed on what had happened. She explained how Malice had called himself a god and how he had been imprisoned. She also told Luna that Malice had gone on about finding some sort of magical, divine shard inside Selene and he wished to use it to escape his prison for good.

Luna shifted uncomfortably when Selene began to talk about Malice's plans for her, but she let Selene continue without saying anything.

"Wait minute, why am I even explaining this, if you are right and this is a dream, I just told myself everything I already knew. I mean I appreciate that you stopped the dream, but you're just part of my own subconscious. The real Luna is out there somewhere, hopefully still looking for me."

Luna stood up and began to pace back and forth, trying to figure out how to best explain what was going on.

"No Selene, you did not. You are dreaming, but I am the real Luna."

She paused and then look awkwardly down at the girl.

"Selene it is time you learned some things about me. Things I should have told you before, but I was too nervous to do so. A lie of omission is still a lie and I have left out so many things about my past and who I am."

"I told you before that I ruled over Equestria with my sister. I also told you that Celestia was responsible for the day and controlled Equestria's sun?"

Selene let out a small giggle.

"Yeah I remember that, still have a hard time believing it but I remember it."

"Celestia is my sister," Luna said. "It was with her that I ruled over Equestria for thousands of years. I am Princess Luna, Mare of the Moon, Guardian of Dreams, and Night Incarnate." 

With a burst of magic the nightmare was pushed back and the world around the pair dissolved into a pure white nothingness. Making such a large change in the dream world required a vast amount of magic.  Sweat dripped down Luna's forehead and she wobbled back and forth as if about to topple over. Selene watched on, unsure what to do.

"Are you alright?" she asked, holding out a hand to steady her friend.

"I am simply tired, but perhaps I should explain fully."

Luna sat down before continuing, "As Princess of the Night, one of my duties is to patrol the dreams of my subjects, protecting them from the dark beings that feed off of their nightmares. While it is possible for a normal pony to learn dream walking spells, altering another pony's, or in this case human's dream is a rare skill, and I alone have the strength to battle the demons that feed off of nightmares. Besides my dream duties, I both begin and end the night each day. I move the moon into place when Celestia lowers the sun and lower it when she is ready to raise the sun."

Selene just stared at Luna, not sure how to process the information she had just learned.

"Malice talked of a shard of divinity in your soul that he wished to steal. I am not positive but I think this may be my fault. The spell I used to heal you ripped off a fraction of my own immortal life-force and bound it to your own. It should not have even been possible, but I was in such a weak state when I arrived here that I was nearly rendered mortal."

Selene scratched her head, then looked at Luna. 

"I... I don't..." she sat down in the empty landscape. "You can move a moon, you can visit and control dreams, and you are immortal? I don't even know how to respond to this, it sounds like something out of ancient mythology, what's next, are you going to tell me that you are some kind of goddess?"

"Goddesses, divine beings, higher power, all those have been used describe my sister and I before," Luna replied. "We are immortal yes, and we embody aspects of the universe. Celestia is the day, and with it light and life. I am the night, dark and untamed. We command vast powers far beyond any mortal pony. We existed at the very beginning of our universe and we will see the end. "

Luna stretched her wings before continuing.

"But my sister has never liked to be labeled as such, she is quick to point out that we are not all powerful or all knowing, that we can make mistakes and lose our way. Earlier in life I disagreed with her, but now it is clear to me that I am not beyond error. I will have to live with the mistakes of my past for all eternity. But in the end we are still beyond mortal beings, so perhaps it is best to accept the titles we receive, knowing that they do not make us infallible."

"Then what about Malice, he claimed he was a god, do you know anything about him?" Selene asked

"I do not. If he is a god, he must be from another dimension, outside of my area of knowledge," Luna said. "From what you told me, the gods of Malice's realm imprisoned him, it was their only choice as gods cannot be killed."

"So different dimensions have different... beings like you?" Selene asked.

"Not always, but they can. You humans know of different dimensions, your spaceships use dimensional travel to take shortcuts through space, but from what I've read you have only seen a very limited number of dimensions. The true number of dimensions is vast, nearly infinite. Each dimension its own self contained universe, with its own set of rules for how things work. Even Celestia and I know little about other dimensions, but we do know a few things. We first became aware of the existence of other dimensions long ago when Discord, a god of chaos, broke open the barrier between universes and stumbled into our domain."

"First, the vast majority of dimensions are devoid of life, gods or otherwise. Second, beings like us do not exist in every dimension that has life. We are most often found where magic exists, but even that is no guarantee. It is easier to move between similar dimensions than dissimilar ones. This is probably why humans have not discovered magic yet. Every dimension that your d-drive opens a gateway to is very similar to your own. They all operate on the same, or nearly the same laws of physics, and none of them have magic."

"So in theory, humans could open a portal to your world?" Selene asked.

"It is possible, your technology is strange, but if your race continues to grow it is likely that more advanced versions of your drive will be able to reach more dimensions than you have currently seen; eventually humanity may even discover my world."

"This is a lot to take in Luna. I don't even know what to make of it. For now, I guess I'll take your word that you are real and I'm not just dreaming, and we can figure out the immortal super being thing later..." Selene's face turned downcast. "But what happened before, when we got separated? Where have you been?"

"I woke up almost a day later, I waited for you for hours and you never came. You said you would be able to teleport to me," she said struggling to hold back tears. "These dreams or whatever they were, they felt so real... I've watched you die, I've watched my father die, I've watched you leave me. I can't... I can't..." Selene trailed off, all the anger, rage, torment and sadness of the nightmares she was forced to endure bubbled back up inside her, forcing their way to the surface and she burst into tears.

"I am sorry Selene," Luna said, wrapping a wing around her. "I tried to teleport to you right after we were separated, but my spell was redirected. I've been trying to get to you ever since."

Luna said nothing more, instead she just held the sobbing girl until the cries slowly died down. Once Selene was feeling better Luna took some time to bring Selene up to speed on what had happened while she was looking for her. She told Selene about Decima, the Eternals and everything else she had learned.

"I did finally find you, but when I arrived in Zax's control room, I came face to face with Malice and he rendered me unconscious and forced me into a similar dream state. I broke free of the nightmare and that is when I felt your nightmare."

"So what do we do now? If we are dreaming and he's out in the real world, how do we get away?"

"Malice trapping me in a dream was a mistake on his part, though it was not easy, I was able to seize control of the dream. After that, I sensed you were also trapped in a nightmare.  As my strength has not yet returned fully, entering your dream took a great deal of effort, though returning to reality should be easier now that I have ended the nightmare."

"Well won't he notice? It sounded to me like he feeds off of the suffering, if our dreams are suddenly pleasant won't he know something's wrong?" Selene asked.

"He may, but this is a dream and time flows differently here. A fraction of a second is all that has passed in the waking world since I first arrived in your dream. This is exceptionally fast even for a dream, but if Malice does indeed feed on our pain then this is likely an intended feature of his spell, to increase the amount of suffering he can feed off of."

"So what do we do from here?" Selene asked.

"I am not sure. From what I have been able to sense, this Malice is very powerful and while I have continued to grow stronger, I do not yet have access to my true power. I must instead rely on ordinary unicorn magic for most things and though I know many spells, it is likely that Malice does as well."

"I shot him, the last time I was awake, I shot him and it hurt him. I don't know if that helps or not," Selene said.

"It does, the spells Celestia and I came up with to fight Sombra seem to work very well against him, I can use that."

"Sombra!" Selene shouted as she remembered what Malice had told her. "Malice said that Sombra had stumbled into his prison ages ago, something about an untargeted dimensional gateway spell. In any case, Malice did something to Sombra and then sent him back to Equestria."

"That explains a lot," Luna said. "My sister and I never did determine how Sombra's suddenly rose to power so quickly and the dark magic he wielded was nothing like what we had seen before. Every spell of Malice's I've looked at feels like a more powerful version of spells that Sombra had used in the past."

Luna felt a change in the magical energies that held Selene in the dream.

"I think we are running out of time Selene. Malice will soon realize that I am free of his grasp. When I return to the waking world, the dream will end and you will fall asleep. I will attempt to release you from his spell when I awaken, when you do wake up, I will distract him. You must then flee."

Luna bent down and touched her horn to Selene's head. There was a bright glow and Selene felt a wave of dizziness wash over her.

"I have shared my knowledge of the layout of this base with you. Take the route that I used to get here, go to Decima and explain the situation."

"But what about you?" Selene asked. "I can't just leave you here."

"I will be fine.  I will try to hold him while you get to Decima.  With her help we may be able to trap him in the time field if she can regain control  I will need to reinforce it when she turns it on.  I will not be able to kill him, but neither can he kill me." Luna said. "But he can kill you and I can't fight at my best if I have to protect you." She readied the spell to exit Selene's dream. Selene ran over and gave Luna a tight hug.

"Good luck, I know you can beat him," she said.

With a crackle of energy, Luna vanished from the dreamscape, which faded away as Selene drifted off to sleep.


#####


With a gentle tug of her magic, Princess Celestia opened the door to the guest room Twilight was staying in and walked inside. As she expected, Twilight was still tucked into her bed and fast asleep. She walked over and lay a hoof on the young mare and gave her a light shake.

"Twilight, it is time to wake up," Princess Celestia said quietly.

Twilight snorted, mumbled something about books, and then rolled over, trying to get away from the offending hoof. Celestia gave Twilight another shake, and this time Twilight's eyes opened up. She saw Princess Celestia standing over her and sat up quickly.

"Oh my gosh, am I late for a test!? I must have forgotten to set my alarm."

Princess Celestia let out a small chuckle.

"No Twilight, there is no test. I am getting ready to raise the sun and wondered if you'd like to join me."

Twilight wiped the sleep from her eyes as her brain slowly filled in the details of last night's conversation.

"Oh, I'm sorry princess, I wasn't quite awake yet," she said letting out a long yawn. "What about my friends, do you need me to go back to Ponyville?"

"I dispatched some guards earlier this morning to go to Ponyville and find your friends, I expect they should be in here in a few hours," Celestia said.

Twilight hopped out of bed, swaying a bit as her body continued to wake up and then looked up at Celestia.

"To the throne room then? Do you mind if we stop at the kitchen along the way, I need coffee."

"I will not be raising the sun from there today. I've closed the throne room and canceled court for the day," Celestia said. Her horn flashed a golden yellow and a mug of coffee appeared, floating in front of her. "I thought you might need some, so I had this waiting for you."

Twilight took the cup and levitated it to her mouth and took a sip. 

"Thank you," she said. "If you are not doing a public sun raising then where are we going?"

"I would like you to join me in my garden," Celestia said, watching for Twilight's reaction.

Twilight choked on the coffee, dribbles of the black liquid rolled down her face.

"Your garden? As in your private garden? No pony has ever been in there before I'm not even allowed in, the law states that only a Princess of Equestria may enter it."

"I know the law Twilight, I wrote it, centuries ago; I needed a private place to relax and get away from the stress of ruling, where nopony could follow me. But if all goes well today, it won't be a private garden anymore. Luna is also a Princess of Equestria and so will have full rights to enter it as she pleases; if I can share it with her, surely I can share it with the mare that is going to help bring her back to me."

"But... but... but..."

"Relax Twilight, since nopony other than I am allowed inside, nopony will even know you went in," Celestia said with a twinkle in her eye. Her horn flashed and the two ponies disappeared from the small bedroom.

The two ponies re-appeared under a moonlit sky, next to a small stream. Twilight turned towards her mentor and prepared to say something when Celestia placed a hoof on her mouth.

"Quiet now my young friend, it is time for me to begin the day," she said.

Her horn lit up with a gentle glow and the moon, already low in the sky, began to drop below the horizon. For a moment everything was dark, but then a splash of color appeared in the eastern sky. The glow from Celestia's horn steadily increased in intensity, matching the light in the sky as the sun was pulled from behind the planet into view. A warmth filled Twilight, as she felt Celestia's magic reach out, pulling the sun into its path and starting the day. Though she had seen Celestia raise the sun hundreds of times before, it still filled her with a sense of wonderment.

The ever increasing light, both from the sun itself and Celestia's horn provided enough illumination to get her first good view of the garden. Given the opulence of the castle, she had expected something far more fancy than what lay before her. It was still beautiful, of that there was no doubt, but it was a simple beauty. It looked as if Celestia had taken a wild meadow moved it into the castle grounds and made a few small additions of her own. A field of vibrant green grass dotted with wildflowers stretched out before her. A small river cut through the middle of the field, bubbling and burbling as its waters brought life to the surrounding area. A narrow stone pathway ran along one side of the river, while on the other, hundreds of different flowers grew, only interrupted by the occasional apple tree.

It was then that she noticed the field was much larger than she had originally thought. In the distance she saw a thick forest that should not have been there. She turned around slowly, looking for the castle but it was nowhere to be found. Behind her was a large hedge arch, placed seemingly at random in the middle of the field. It was connected to the main pathway by another stone path that ended the moment it passed under the arch, leading nowhere.

Celestia finished raising the sun and turned towards her student.

"You have a question," Celestia stated.

"Where are we? Your garden is inside the castle grounds, and we clearly aren't."

"It is a spell Luna and I came up with many years ago. It will make sense later."

The two ponies walked alongside the stream in silence. Celestia pulled two apples from a tree and offered one to Twilight. They sat down on the bank of the river and ate breakfast. Afterward, Celestia went over the work they would have to do once the rest of Twilight's friends arrived. Celestia would open the portal and then Twilight would take over and maintain it when Celestia stepped through. Even with the revisions to the rift spell that Twilight had made, it would still take far more power than she alone could give. The Elements of Harmony would provide the extra power needed to keep the rift open.

As they continued to talk, Celestia lead them back down the path towards the hedge arch Twilight had seen earlier.

"We must head back now, thank you for joining me this morning," Celestia said.

"Thank you for allowing me to come here princess," Twilight said.

"Well, after you," Celestia said, pointing Twilight through the archway.

Twilight walked through and then let out a gasp. The moment she stepped foot through the arch, she was met with the familiar sight of the Canterlot Castle grounds. The archway behind her was connected to a hedge wall which she immediately recognized as the wall surrounding Celestia's private garden. Celestia appeared right behind her and she quickly moved out of the way.

"Is the garden located somewhere else and the archway is a teleport?" Twilight asked in confusion.

"Oh no, if I had picked any old place it wouldn't be private. The whole of the garden is in there," Celestia said, pointing her hoof at the walls behind her.

"But that place was huge, it would never fit," Twilight said. She looked at the wall before her, it was a few hundred feet long and from past experience she knew Celestia's garden was a square. "Unless, the inside is bigger than the outside..." she said, trailing off as a guardpony ran up to the princess.

"Princess Celestia, the ponies you sent for have arrived, they are waiting outside your chambers as you instructed," he said.

"Thank you Iron Hoof, Twilight and I will go meet with them now, you are dismissed," Celestia said.

The guard saluted and then galloped back the way he had come from.

"You are on the right track, I will show you the spell later Twilight but for now, it is time we find my sister." With a flash of her horn the two ponies teleported away.
> Chapter 21
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The two ponies appeared inside Celestia's chambers. With a flick of magic the door swung open revealing the rest of Twilight's friends standing outside. Pinkie Pie noticed the door opening and poked her head into the room and looked around.

"Helloooooo princess!" she shouted upon seeing Celestia. She trotted into the room and noticed Twilight standing behind the princess. "and hello to you to Twilight!" The rest of the ponies walked up to the door and waited, not wanting to intrude.

"Please, come in, there is no need to wait in the hall," Celestia said to the rest of the group.

One by one they filtered in, forming a semi-circle around Celestia.

"Thank you all for coming on such short notice," Princess Celestia said smiling at the crowd standing before her.

"What's all this about yer highness?" Applejack asked. "The guards said it was urgent but didn't have any real details."

"As you may know, Twilight and I have been working on a way to find my lost sister. We believe we have come up with a solution, but I will need all of you to assist Twilight in order for this plan to work."

Princess Celestia explained what she would need from everypony, with Twilight jumping in every so often to fill in some extra details. When the princess was done, Rainbow Dash looked up and asked,"I understand why you need help from Twilight and I guess I understand how Rarity could help, but what about the rest of us? We aren't unicorns, so how will we help Twilight maintain the portal?"

"It is through the Elements of Harmony that you will provide Twilight with assistance; your friendship, focused by the Elements, will provide more help to Twilight than even a team of unicorn mages could. More importantly, after the portal is opened, I will need assistance from the Elements to amplify my connection to Luna.  When I am ready, Twilight will direct their full power through the portal; I will absorb that energy and use it to open a rift that should lead directly to Luna."

"That helps, I'm still not sure if I understand entirely, but if I can help I'll be glad to do it!" Rainbow Dash said.

"If everypony is ready, then I'd like to get started, I've already moved the Elements themselves to where we will be doing the work."

The rest of the crowd nodded and Celestia teleported them all to a massive room with rocky walls and a high ceiling. The walls stretched on for hundreds of feet in all directions and the ceiling was tall enough that the highest tower of Canterlot castle would have fit in comfortably. The room was brightly lit by a giant glowing blue crystal jutting through the ceiling. As the ponies looked around they noticed that there was no exit to the room, nor any windows. It was completely sealed off.

"Where are we princess?" Twilight asked.

"Deep under Canterlot Mountain," Celestia replied. "Luna and I spent millennia vanquishing the most dangerous creatures from Equestria's physical realm. Other dimensions may not be so safe, and we have no idea what might follow Luna through the portal. I do not want anything getting through; this room is heavily enchanted, nothing can get in or out without my aid."

Sitting in the middle of the room was a small table and on it sat the Elements of Harmony; Celestia lead Twilight and her friends over to the table and passed out the Elements.

"Are you ready?" she asked as she levitated the golden tiara over to Twilight.

"I am," Twilight replied.

"Then get your friends into position," Celestia said.

Twilight and the rest of her friends moved to the center of the room. Celestia followed the group over and then stood before them.

"Remember Twilight, I will not be able to help you hold the portal open once I am through. You must maintain the spell, if you find yourself unable to do so, tell me. I will return and we can try again once you have rested."

"Don't worry about me, I'm ready!" Twilight said.

Celestia spread her wings and lifted herself into the air. Her horn lit up with a brilliant glow as she prepared to open the rift.

"Shield your eyes my little ponies," Celestia warned as the light coming from the princess continued to grow in intensity.

All six ponies dropped to the ground, closed their eyes and covered them with their hooves. Had they still been able to look at Celestia all they would have seen was a brilliant glowing sphere of white light, brighter than the sun itself, hovering in the middle of the room. There was a sudden flash and for a moment Twilight could swear she could see the light through her hooves, then it was dark.

"It is safe now," she heard Celestia say as the sound of hooves landing on the stone floor echoed throughout the chamber.

Twilight opened her eyes, staring in wonderment at the scene before her. The rift was incredible, it stretched out like a hairline crack in a pane of glass, floating in the air. It was both impossibly thin, yet wide enough to see inside all at the same time. Deep down a part of her brain told her that the thing she looked into wasn't there and she found it harder and harder to keep looking at it as her eyes tried to focus on something else.

"Why can't I look at it?" Rainbow asked, shaking her head as she tried to clear the odd sensation prickling at the back of her skull.

"This is a raw unfiltered view into the abyss between dimensions. It is not merely another dimension, it is the lack of one. Beyond this rift, reality itself ceases to exist, and you mind cannot comprehend this," Celestia said. 

Horn still alight, she walked over to Twilight and rested a wing upon the unicorn.

"Are you ready to maintain the rift?" she asked.

"As ready as I ever will be," Twilight responded. "Girls? Is everypony ready?"

One by one her friends gave her the all set. Focusing her magic on the portal spell, Twilight prepared to take control of the rift spell from Celestia. When the princess saw that Twilight was ready, she leaned down and touched her horn to Twilight's. Twilight felt a sudden surge of energy as Celestia magic transferred the spell to her control. 

Celestia lifted her head and backed away from Twilight; with the princess's magic no longer helping maintain the rift, Twilight felt a great weight upon her. Unprepared for the sudden shift in power, her head drooped and her horn flickered once before she could attempt to compensate. With a grunt, the glow of her horn brightened and sparks of magic began to fly out of the end of her horn, popping and crackling as she poured even more effort into maintaining the rift. Even with her modifications to the spell, the magical drain was greater than any spell she had attempted before.

"Look!" Pinkie bouncing up and down excitedly, as the Element of Laughter began to glow.

"Mine as well," Rarity said.

One by one the rest of the Elements lit up, until all six were glowing steadily. As each of the Elements lit up, Twilight could feel them connect to her own. Suddenly the burden of the rift spell no longer weighed heavily upon her; with the friendship she could feel flowing through the elements, keeping the rift open felt no more challenging than levitating a writing quill.

"I can feel something," Applejack said. "It kind of feels like when I'm doing work on the farm, except it isn't mah muscles being used. Not exhaustion or anything, just the pleasant feeling of getting in a day of good honest work."

"It feels like I'm giving somepony a great big surprise hug!" Pinkie said beaming. "Or maybe when I pull off a surprise party."

"It reminds me of when I've helped nurse one of my animal friends back to health," Fluttershy said chiming in.

Twilight looked at Princess Celestia and offered her a smile.

"You're all set, we've got this," she said.

"Thank you Twilight, I will be as quick as possible."

"Take your time princess, we could do this all day!" Rainbow Dash said, jumping up into the air and hovering in place.

Princess Celestia turned and walked up to the rift. She gave one last look at the group of ponies assembled behind her and then began to step through.


#####


Luna felt her mind disconnect from Selene's dream. The moment she was free, she disrupted Malice's spell completely, waking up less than a second later. Luna gave Malice no time to react, with a speed that no mortal eye could follow, she beat her wings, propelling herself into the air and fired a beam directly at the twisted god.

Malice sensed Luna's attack at the last possible second and attempted to raise a shield. Luna's spell slammed into the half completed shield, collapsed it and knocked Malice across the room. He smashed through a console and then crashed into one of the doors on the other side of the room, denting it severely. Pulling himself from the ruined door, he stood up and glared at Luna.

"You dare challenge a god?" Malice screamed, firing his own spell back at Luna.

Luna however, had been expecting this and was prepared. A shimmering blanket of stars appeared in front of her, and Malice's spell was harmlessly absorbed into it before it vanished. She took a second to quickly glance over at Selene, Malice's hold over her was almost gone, but the girl still hadn't woken up. Luna fired back at Malice, knocking him down to the ground again. While he was recovering, she dissipated the last bits of magic that held Selene in the nightmare world.

A blast of energy pushed Luna across the room, forcing her to the ground. Malice had recovered more quickly than she had expected. He was already advancing towards her and Selene was laying helpless on the ground between the two of them. She had to get him away from this room and away from Selene. A single stray shot would kill the human instantly. 

Picking herself up, she launched into the air and flew directly at Malice. She slammed into him, grabbing a hold of his body with her hooves she continued forward, punching through the already damaged door and into the wall on the other side. Luna then reared up and slammed her hooves down into the crystalline body beneath her. There was a loud crack and splinters of crystal flew in all directions. One of her hooves had connected with Malice's injured arm, shattering the shoulder entirely. The rest of the arm fell to the ground with a thud, no longer connected to the magic that animated the rest of Malice's body.

Laughter was the last thing Luna expected to hear from the twisted creature below her. The sound grated against her ears, she looked down and saw Malice staring back up at her.

"I know what you are trying to do, I felt you break free of my spell and I saw you nullify the girl's nightmare. You seek to distract me so my prize can escape, but no there is no where she can run."

Once again Luna was pushed back by a wave of force, but this time Malice didn't stand back up. With a flash of magic, he vanished from her sight.

"Luna!" Selene screamed from the control room.

Luna spun around, watching in horror as Malice threw Selene down upon the altar, he then seized control of the dark energies surrounding it and channeled them into his hand.

"I had planned to keep you around, but that requires a finesse that I simply do not have the time for. Consider yourself lucky that you will not survive this."

With that statement, Malice plunged his armored hand directly down into Selene's chest. Blood splattered in all directions as Malice's hand ripped through her rib cage, smashing the lower half of her torso to a slimy pulp. With her lungs torn open, all that Selene could manage was a gasping hiss she tried to scream in pain.

Screaming in horror, Luna teleported into the room, and looked at Selene's broken form. A steady stream of blood and bile leaked out of the gaping hole in what remained of Selene's chest. It ran down the side of the altar, pooling onto the floor below. A righteous fury bubbled up within her, she advanced ready to tear Malice apart.

Malice turned head away from Selene, looked at Luna and began to smile.

"Stop and watch as I tear the divinity from this mortal and use it to regain my true power," he said. A beam of magic shot out of his eyes, but it was not targeted for Luna. The beam hit one of the few remaining control panels and a low hum filled the room.

Luna continued to advance, she was just a step away now. Selene's bloodied form filled her mind. In the very depths of her core, she wept for the loss of her friend, but on the surface, rage boiled. A magical attack wasn't good enough, she wanted to feel Malice's boy shatter under her blows. She was within range now, she reared up, ready to strike a powerful blow...

Luna continued to advance, she was just a step away now. Selene's bloodied form filled her mind. In the very depths of her core, she wept for the loss of her friend, but on the surface, rage boiled. A magical attack wasn't good enough, she wanted to feel Malice's boy shatter under her blows. She was within range now, she reared up, ready to strike a powerful blow...

Something was wrong, Luna could feel it in the back of her head. Everything seemed normal, but at the same time something told her that she should have already reached Malice by now...

Luna continued to advance, she was just a step away now. Selene's bloodied form filled her mind. In the very depths of her core, she wept for the loss of her friend, but on the surface, rage boiled. A magical attack wasn't good enough, she wanted to feel Malice's boy shatter under her blows. She was within range now, she reared up, ready to strike a powerful blow...

Malice watched on with amusement as Luna's form skipped backwards before resuming normal movement, only to skip backwards again. He had to work quickly. With the girl dead, the spark he needed would soon die with her. A surge of magic and a rift opened, a gateway back to his prison. His true power lay bound inside that prison. The spark would provide him with the means to break those bindings and regain his true ability.

A gurgling noise coming from the alter next to him interrupted his thoughts. Finishing the portal spell, he turned around and looked down at the bloody altar. He was surprised to find that Selene was still alive.

"You are stronger than I gave you credit mortal," he said, watching her head slowly turn towards Luna. A glob of blood bubbled out of her mouth and she coughed weakly, turning to watch Luna's erratic movements.

Malice followed her line of sight to the trapped blue pony.

"She cannot help you now," he said. "The Eternals had intended to trap me in a time field, but not even time can hold a god. I eventually broke free and then took control of the field, modifying it to suit my own purposes," He returned his gaze to Selene. "Your friend is trapped in a slice of repeating time. No matter how strong she is, she cannot hope to escape, for every mortal in existence is bound by time."

Tears would have been a normal reaction, or perhaps a cry of sorrow as the helplessness of the situation made itself clear. Malice would savor either, a life ending in misery and suffering was a delicacy for the evil god. In reality though, all Malice was expecting was for Selene to die, he could feel her life draining away, she clung only by a thread and he doubted she had the strength to carry on much longer.

Selene continued to stare at the trapped alicorn. Her mind raced, trying to take advantage of what little time she had left. Memories of the day she crashed on this accursed planet played back in her head. She trudged through existence clinging on to a hope of rescue that grew fainter with each passing month. Years of solitude blinked by in a fraction of a second. The memories of the time long passed were dim and grey and the pain of loneliness was a constant companion.

But then, in the distance, something changed. Hope fought its way back into her life. Color returned to her memories as she came to the final months of her life. A chance meeting with an unusual creature that blossomed into an unlikely friendship. Suddenly she was not alone any more.  Luna's presence had made a powerful impact on the Selene's life. The visions slowed down, as she focused on the powerful memories she had forged with her friend. Each one bringing a sense of joy that beat back the approaching darkness.

Selene turned her head and looked up at Malice. Slowly her lips curled upward, exposing her bloodstained teeth as they formed a smile. Malice stared down at the ragged girl, unsure of what to make of her reaction. A shiver ran down his crystal spine and he stepped backwards as a growing sense of unease crawled through his body. It took him a moment to realize what he was feeling. It was fear. In his eternal existence he had never felt this before, but now a broken and dying mortal, too weak to lift a finger filled him with a sense of dread. Selene's lips moved slowly and an almost inaudible wheeze escaped her mouth. Malice realized she was trying to talk. He lowered his head to hear the final words she had to say.

Gasping for breath, Selene spoke again. "She... isn't... mortal" she said, in a nearly silent whisper.

Selene began to glow. It was almost too faint to notice at first, but as seconds passed the glow became brighter and brighter. Fueled by Selene's friendship, the spark of divinity within her flared up into a roaring flame. It left her body, casually tossing aside the bindings of Malice's spell. Malice felt the spark escape his confinement. He reached out and tried to snatch it as it flew across the room but it brushed him aside. Screaming in anger he watched as it soared across the room piercing the time field with ease.

Luna continued to advance, she was just a step away now. Selene's bloodied form filled her mind. In the very depths of her core, she wept for the loss of her friend... A flash of light appeared before her and for the first time in ages, Luna felt whole again. The fragment of her own soul had rejoined with her, and with it came Selene's love for her friend. The influx of power shattered the last remnants of the chains holding Luna back from her full potential and her true powers flared to life. Her godhood restored, she turned her thoughts to Selene. She continued to cling to life and that meant Luna still had time. Time! That is what had been gnawing at her. Malice had trapped her in the time field. He had altered the spell, instead of suspending her in an instant, she had been stuck in a loop. Her path was clear now, it was all so simple. Rage dissolved into joy as she realized what she would do.

Malice watched as Luna absorbed the spark. Still inside the time field, she halted the progression of the loop, bringing time in the field to a standstill. A flash of light from within the field obscured Malice's view of the pony. When it dissipated, Selene's broken form hovered in the middle of the field, a gentle glow holding her steady, frozen in an instant.

Malice sensed movement behind him, relighting the dark energy that had been flowing through his hand, he formed a fist, wreathed in black flames. In the blink of an eye, he spun around, slamming his fist into whoever dared try to sneak up behind him.

Luna watched calmly as Malice began to turn around. His fist accelerated faster and faster as it approached her head. The massive block of crystal slammed into her skull with enough force to split a mountain.

She didn't even flinch.

There was a mighty crack and Malice's fist shattered into a million pieces.

Malice stared in disbelief at the pony before him. It was the same creature that he had battled to a standstill earlier, but she was different. She was taller now, the tip of her horn almost eye level with him. Her coat had darkened slightly and the blue hairs that made up her mane were gone completely. In place of the light blue mane, a field of stars hung from her head, flowing in an field of magic that radiated from her body. A starry field for a tail matched the mane perfectly, but it wasn't the physical changes that concerned him. They were minor in comparison to what he could now sense from Luna. 

The pony that stood before him was no mere mortal. An aurora of divinity, strong enough for him to sense without need of a spell pulsed outward, filling the room. He had been so busy trying to strip the ember from Selene that he failed to check Luna for the same signs.

"You can't kill me," he said. "You know as well as I even stripped of my power, I am immortal. Leave here, return to your own world; you can bring your pet with you."

"I don't need to kill you, all I need to do is send you back to your prison," Luna said pointing to the rift Malice had opened.

Malice seethed with anger.

"I may have lost the spark, but that is not the only way to break my prison."

Malice stumbled over to the console that he had used to activate the time field. Another beam of energy struck the console, it lit up for a moment, panels glowing brightly before they slowly began to dim as the power flowing to them was rerouted. Then he lifted his foot, and brought it down on the console smashing it to pieces. The time field around Selene started to flicker on and off as the emitters in the ceiling lost power and the rest of the room went dark. Luna quickly channeled magic into the emitter and the time field came back up to full strength.

The whole room started to shake, lightly at first then violently, a great cracking noise could be heard and the floor split in two. In the distance, long unused alarms started blaring before falling silent again as the violent quakes shattered them to pieces.

A monitor lit up on the wall behind Luna and she heard a familiar voice.

"What's going on down there?" Decima shouted. "Is that Vohaul?" she asked looking at the golem on the other side of the room.

"Sort of," Luna said,"Vohaul was possessed by a entity from another dimension, Malice, he just did something on the console that was over there." Luna pointed a hoof at the smashed console where Malice was summoning a field of energy.

"The planetary generator just spiked to 190% output, but that energy isn't maintaining the pocket dimension any longer. It's all being directed towards your location. The dimensional collapse is going to reach the surface of the planet in ten minutes, though I doubt the generator will last that long. If it goes, this solar system is going with it," Decima said. "You have to stop him Luna, I can't do anything, I'm on emergency backup power and it will be exhausted in minutes."

Luna turned towards Malice, she fired a beam of energy at him, but the field surrounding him absorbed it, glowing brightly. She was about to fire off another shot when a brilliant light filled the room, coming from the crack in the floor. A massive beam of energy broiled up from the core of the planet, flew up out of the crack and joined into the field surrounding Malice.

"What are you doing?" Luna screamed,"The planet is coming apart!"

"The spark from Selene was never part of my plans, it was pure luck to find her, and it would have guaranteed my freedom. But you've forced me to fall back on my original plan; by supplanting my own power with the energy of the Eternal's thaumic generator I have a chance of breaking my chains."

The field around Malice began to glow bright white, a great heat swept over the room. The wreckage scattered throughout the room started to smoke as it began to catch fire.

"Get out of... " Decima started to shout before the monitor she was using started to spark, and then burst into flames.

The intensity of the heat continued to grow, she watched on as the rocky walls of the room started to melt. Chunks of semi-molten rock fell from the ceiling as the planet tried to shake itself apart. She heard a noise and looked up, the time field emitter had been shaken loose, the heat blistered the surface and the time field cut out completely. Luna quickly pulled Selene's body to her and threw up a blue shimmering shield around the pair. She cast a minor healing spell over Selene, it would only buy a few minutes at best but that might buy Luna enough time to stop Malice and restore the time field.

Meanwhile Malice brought up his remaining arm, pointing the stump towards the portal. A brilliant beam of white light lanced outward into the portal. Luna concentrated, gathering up enough energy to force Malice's rift closed. She was about to release the spell when she felt a familiar presence.

"Celestia!" she screamed over the roar of the planet collapsing on itself.


#####


As she finished entering the rift, the change was almost instant. A part of Celestia that had felt empty since Luna's encounter with Twilight suddenly was whole again.  The connection was faint, but it was unmistakable, Celestia could once again feel Luna's presence. She turned back to the ponies behind her and shouted through the tear.

"I am ready Twilight, use the Elements!"

All six ponies began to glow, colorful rays of light sparked out of the Elements, all joining on Twilight who stood facing the rift. Seconds later a rainbow erupted from Twilight's Tiara, it crashed through the rift and hit Celestia. Her eyes lit up pure white and a pulse of energy flew out in all directions. The pulse cascaded through the non-reality, carrying Celestia's spell with it as it punched through the walls of the void and into the multiverse.

Bursting with power, Celestia's connection to Luna grew exponentially. The magic of the Elements had helped even more than she had hoped; her vague sense of Luna's location rapidly grew more precise and Celestia was quickly able to narrow it down with pinpoint accuracy. She got to work and began to open a gateway from the void to her sister. The portal started to form and then without warning shorted out with a small pop. Celestia tried again, only to get the same result. Something was wrong, the dimension Luna occupied was unstable; it twisted and scurried away from Celestia's magic. But she had not come this far just to give up; Celestia abandoned all attempts at finesse and instead shifted to raw power. She brought up the portal spell again, and this time the solar goddess thew all of her magic into pushing through the dimensional barrier. The portal tore open; there was a massive explosion and everything went white.


#####


Luna shook her head, and stood up from the floor. She was in Equestria, she could feel it deep down in her core. She was home! She could feel Celestia's presence, a tear rolled down her cheek as she realized how much she had missed that feeling. Her senses told her that her sister was close by, she turned her head, looking around the room. To her left the six ponies that bore the Elements lay in a semi-circle. They weren't moving, but Luna watched and she could see the chest of the lavender unicorn rise and fall slowly, they were just unconscious. Just past those ponies she spotted her sister. The large alicorn was on the floor, just coming to herself. Luna watched as Celestia raised a hoof and began rubbing the base of her horn, eyes just beginning to flutter open. 

She heard a sucking noise to her right and her head whipped around. There were two more ponies in the room. The first was a pegasus pony. She had a dark black mane, with thin stripes of brilliant silver and a pale grayish white coat. The most unusual thing about the mare was though she was clearly full grown, she had no cutie mark. A sickly wheezing sound caught her attention and it was then that Luna spotted the blood stains on the mare's coat.  Further down was a large hole that was leaking fluids fast, as the injured pony struggled to breath. Surrounding the pegasus were tatters of cloth, for a moment, Luna wasn't sure what they were, but then she spotted a torn piece of one of Selene's shoes, that looked as if it had been ripped apart by timberwolves.

Luna panicked as her mind slowly pieced together what had happened. Malice had been trying to shatter the chains that bound his true form to its prison. He was pulling energy from the planetary generator which was damaging the already unstable pocket dimension. Then as she prepared to stop him, her bond with Celestia reestablished itself, her sister must have found where she had been cast off to and opened a portal. The second portal, another tear in the bubble dimension's surface, must have completely destabilized the bubble. When it fell apart, they were pushed through the opening of the rift back into Equestria. It was sheer luck she hadn't ended up in Malice's prison. When Selene passed into Equestria through the portal, the magic that formed the stable and safe dimensional gateway had changed her to a form more suited for the world she was now in. That pegasus pony who was currently bleeding out on the floor in front of her was Selene!

Luna then realized she had seen two ponies, the other was already in the process of standing up. It was a large black unicorn, but something was different. Light glinted off the hard surface of the unicorn, it was a crystal pony! It had to be Malice, his true body was still trapped in the prison, the golem he occupied lacked the protection a god's power normally provided against transformation.

Malice limped over to Selene's body and his horn began to pulse with a sickly green light. A green light snaked over the pony and her body started to shake. Luna needed to stop him, with a powerful flap of her wings she launched herself at the unicorn. She collided with him, sending Malice careening across the room where he smashed into the rocky wall.

"LUNA, STOP!" Celesta shouted.

At the sound of Celestia's voice, Luna turned around, she started to explain when a bolt of green energy struck her in the flank, knocking her out of the air. She skidded several feet before flaring her wings to slow her movement.

With a quick flash of her horn, Luna picked Malice up and slammed him into the wall again, this time with enough force to crack the stone. Chips of crystal flew off his back but he just glared at her and teleported out of her hold and sent another bolt of energy flying at her. Luna took back to the air, dodging the bolt as it scorched the floor.

Celestia was dumbstruck; no pony should have been able to survive the what Luna had just done. But this crystal pony not only survived but was actively attacking back. Something was going on, there had been no reports of crystal ponies since Sombra's defeat and something about that unicorn felt familiar.

Luna landed next to Celestia, a desperate look in her eyes. "Sister please, save my friend," she pleaded. "I must stop Malice." Before Celestia could respond, Luna took off again.

"Princess Celestia, what is going on?" Celestia turned to see Twilight standing next to her, watching as Luna and the dark unicorn traded blows. Since she had first met the young unicorn, Celestia had known there was something special about her. The fact that she was up and about so soon after the rift spell collapsed only reaffirmed this. "I do not yet know. Quickly now, check on your friends for me, we may need the Elements, but I suspect they are in no condition to help. I need to check up on that injured pegasus over there."

Celestia teleported over to the pale pegasus and began to check on her condition. The physical damage was intensive, but worse there was a taint of dark magic coursing through her veins. Celestia recognized it immediately, it was a dark spell that King Sombra had used to torture captive ponies. That vile energy would keep the victim right at the edge of death, and in incredible pain. A normal healing spell would trigger the dark magic and cause instant death. Fortunately Celestia had a cleansing spell, a gentle glow spread out over the pony and her body seemed to relax. Another pulse of magic and the ponies organs began to knit themselves back together.

"The rest of the girls won't wake up, and I can't use my magic," Twilight said. "My horn feels like I just smashed it into a wall."

Twilight looked down saw the pegasus's wounds and choked out a quiet scream. "Will she be OK?" she asked.

"It was close but yes, she will recover, as will you and your friends. Your magic will return in a short while, you are simply exhausted from using the Elements." Celestia looked over at Luna and the unicorn her sister had named Malice. "I need to find out what is going on, please watch her, if her condition changes notify me immediately."

"You can count on me!" Twilight replied.

Celestia took off towards the other side of the room.

"Give up Malice, you cannot hope to win," Luna said, deflecting yet another attack.

"The chains were breaking you wretched creature, a few more seconds and I would have had everything!" Malice said. "But I have regained enough power to burn this world and you shall watch on as it dies."

A green shield surrounded Malice and he began to soar into the air, upwards he rose towards the center of the room. With a bright flash a wave of magic flew upward hitting the large crystal in the ceiling. It began to darken, blue shifted to black, and the massive chamber started to shake.

Celestia flew up alongside Luna. "What is going on, who is this pony?"

"Tis no pony sister, he is a dark lord. Remember we searched for the source of King Sombra's power? Well here he is in all his depraved glory. I had been trying to send him back to his prison when you opened the portal, we were all pulled through."

"Where is this prison?" Celestia asked.

"Another dimension, I do not know where for sure and I doubt he will be kind enough to tell us," Luna replied.

"Then we must stop him together," Celestia said.

Luna glanced around the room.

"I have an idea, distract him for me sister," Luna said, then she vanished in a puff of smoke.

"Stop!" Celestia shouted at the unicorn. "Your foul magic is not welcome in my domain."

Malice snarled at the elder alicorn. "Who are you to tell me to stop?"

"I am Celestia, Mare of the First Dawn, Eternal Princess of Equestria, and I. AM. THE. DAY!" her horn crackled with power and a blinding white beam shot towards Malice. The beam pierced his shield, punched a hole through his body and continued through the other side of the shield.

The wave of dark energy faded immediately, the dark crystal faded back to blue and with a mighty crash, Malice fell back down to the floor below. Slowly he stood back up on shaky legs, viscous green fluid oozing out of the hole in his body.

"You cannot kill me, I am immortal!" he said coughing badly.

A shout went out across the room "We do not need to kill you."

Celestia turned to see three small objects flying at her, she grabbed them out of the air. When her magic touched the items, her connection to Luna flared up, suddenly she could feel more than just Luna's presence. Every emotion was exposed, flowing freely between the two ponies, sadness, shame and regret but also love and repentance. The connection went both ways and Luna could feel Celestia's anger toward her actions, but she knew that her sister loved her, missed her horribly and there was joy at her return. Celestia had not felt their bond this clearly in over a thousand years and she instantly knew what she now held.

"Your actions virtually destroyed a race. You feed on the suffering and pain of others. This ends today! I sentence you to an eternity of confinement, never again will you harm another."

Hovering in the air, with wings spread to their fullest Luna gazed down at Malice. Honesty, Kindness and Loyalty orbited the Moon Princess, glowing with power. Magic, Laughter and Generosity lit up and began to spin around Celestia. The Elements twirled faster and faster, the air was so thick with magic that Luna could taste it. Finally the magic reached its peak. A bright rainbow exploded out of the two princesses. Malice had just enough time to let out one last scream before the rainbow struck him. In an instant his body flashed from crystal to solid rock.

Malice's scream echoed off the walls of the room before finally dying out. Luna flew over to Selene, Celestia landed next to her. Luna checked on Selene and saw that she was in no danger, she then turned to Celestia and wrapped a wing around her. Nuzzling her sister, tears flowed down her face.

"I am so sorry sister, for everything," Luna cried. "I do not deserve your forgiveness but I beg for it."

Celestia didn't answer, she didn't need to. Instead she returned the hug as Luna cried into her shoulder.
> Chapter 22
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Glowing Heart sat quietly at the receptionist desk. It was a slow day at Canterlot Hospital, the only pony she had seen all morning was the mailmare, picking up a package that was being shipped out to Los Pegasus General. In a hospital, a slow day was a good thing, but still a mare could wish for a bit of excitement at work. She stood up and began to walk around the room, stretching her legs. She was considering grabbing another cup of coffee when there was a burst of light in the lobby.

As the light faded Glowing's jaw dropped to the floor; standing directly in front of her was Princess Celestia herself. Next to the princess stood another alicorn with a dark blue coat and crescent moon cutie mark. Rumors of the dark alicorn that had challenged Celestia's power last Summer Sun Celebration flashed through the back of Glowing's mind, and she slowly began to back away. It was then her brain registered the six unconscious ponies floating gently in the Celestia's grasp. A lavender unicorn standing behind Princess Celestia completed the group.

"Princess Celestia?" Glowing asked with a quick bow. "Is everything alright?"

The pale pegasus levitated forward, Celestia looked at Glowing and said in a motherly tone. "This young pegasus is in need of your care, she recently suffered a traumatic injury that I had to heal with magic. She needs rest and monitoring for the next day or two."

"Of course Princess!" Glowing Heart said. She hurried over to the small storage room behind the front desk, pulled out a wheel chair and returned to the lobby.

Celestia lowered Selene into the chair and then turned to Luna.

"Will you be alright coming back to the palace with me? We can return when your friend awakens."

Luna fidgeted nervously."When she wakes up, she will have no idea where she is, nor what has happened to her..."

"I can stay with her Princess," Twilight said stepping forward. "I can cast the summoning spell you taught me when she wakes up."

"Will that be sufficient?" Celestia asked, looking at Luna. "We can teleport here the moment she wakes up, though I think she will be out several more hours at the very least."

"You will summon us the moment she wakes up?" Luna asked, staring down at the smaller pony.

Twilight looked back at Luna, and gave her a warm smile. "You can count on me."

Luna took a moment to think, then nodded slowly. Her horn lit up and the saddle bag she had been wearing came undone. She levitated it over to Twilight.

"Her name is Selene, if she wakes up, give her this, and tell her I will be here in seconds." 

"Excuse me Princess," Gentle Heart said quietly, "but what about the rest of those ponies?"

Celestia turned to face the Earth pony.

"These ponies are uninjured, they merely suffer from over-exhaustion; they are staying in the castle, and I will return them to their rooms."

"Oh alright, I'll get Selene a room then," Gentle Heart said. She turned around, wheeling the sleepy pony along. Twilight followed her and the three ponies vanished as they turned into the first room down the hall.

"Are you ready?" Celestia asked.

"Yes," Luna said and they vanished in a flash of light.


#####


After Celestia dropped off the rest of Twilight's friends, the two alicorns teleported into Celestia's private chambers. Celestia pulled over a small cart containing her tea set; a quick bust of magic brought the water in the pot to a boil and as she poured two cups, Luna began to explain everything that had happened over the last eight months. 

"After I was free of my prison and I returned to Equestria, all I could think about was revenge," Luna said sadly, "but when that unicorn of yours..."

"Twilight Sparkle" Celestia interjected, "one of the most promising students I've had in centuries."

"Yes... when Twilight and her friends activated the Elements and I felt the power of Harmony flow though me, everything changed. When I awoke, my crimes against you and the rest of Equestria were as clear a summer sky. All that anger, jealousy and hate were all burned to ash and blown away. All that was left was regret and shame."

Luna's eyes began to water as she struggled to continue her tale.

"When I came to, I was so frightened, I could not feel your presence nor summon even the smallest amount of magic. I was broken, bleeding and no longer sure of my own immortality..."

"Sister, I never meant..." Celestia started to say.

"Let me finish... Broken as I was, I knew you chose the path you did, not because you wanted to, but because I forced you to. I am truly sorry sister and I vow that I will never to succumb to those dark emotions again."

Luna stepped forward nervously, slowly she lifted her hoof and wrapped it around Celestia's neck, embracing her elder sister. Celestia responded with a nuzzle, and the two alicorns began to cry. When the tears finally died down, Celestia looked at Luna and cocked her head slightly.

"I am curious who these two beings that followed you through the portal are; we can talk about Malice in a bit, but first tell me about Selene. I assume she is not a pony," Celestia said.

"You are correct, she is something called a human, it is one of the reasons I did not want to leave her side. If she should she awaken she will have no idea what is going on," Luna said.

"After I was ripped away from Equestria, I woke up on a dying world, though I did not know it was dying right away. I could sense that something was wrong but I did not find out for sure until much later," Luna said.

"As I said, I did not know what you and the Elements had done to me, I felt weak and vulnerable, I had physical injuries that did not heal instantly, I thought perhaps you had somehow stripped away my powers completely and I had been rendered mortal. I found myself being chased by wolf like creatures and I ran as if my life depended on it. They caught up with me and I was forced to fight; Selene heard the attack and came to my aid."

"I think she was more surprised at me, than I her. I later found out that her raced had never encountered other sapient life before. They lack magic entirely, instead they use highly advanced technology. They use this technology to power ships that travel between the stars by way of dimensional shifting. Her ship had crashed on that planet a decade earlier, she, a child at the time was the only survivor. We were both trapped in an unknown dimension on a dying world, her by a failure of her ship's engine, I by a teleport spell gone awry"

Celestia gasped, her heart went out to Selene, no child should be forced to endure such tragedy.

"As time passed I learned more about her species and our friendship grew, but I yearned to return home, and eventually enough of my power had returned that I was ready to investigate. I suspected that I had been thrown into another dimension and when I returned to the cave where I had first arrived I proved this theory correct. While I was looking into how best to return home, Selene wandered off and stumbled upon a golem, animated with dark magic; I was able to stop it, but during the battle part of the cave collapsed exposing a vast underground complex."

Luna paused to take a sip of tea before continuing her story.

"Selene was injured in the fight and none of the healing spells I knew would work on a non-pony," she said. Her head drooped down as she had a good idea of Celestia's reaction to what she would say next. Quietly she spoke again. "In desperation I turned to the darkest of blood magic; I siphoned some of my own lifeforce to heal her."

Celestia's eyes went wide, and her feathers ruffled in shock.

"Even as the Nightmare you never used such foul magic!"

"What was I to do sister?!" Luna shouted, tears spilling over her face. "I could not let my only friend die!"

The two sisters sat in silence for a few minutes, neither wanting to escalate the situation, finally Celestia spoke.

"I am sorry Luna, I was surprised by your statement and spoke without thinking. Vile as that magic is, you wielded it for good and in the end that is more important, though I am surprised that it worked."

"I was not sure that it would, but it was all I had left to try," Luna said. 

"We returned to explore the complex and were separated, eventually I learned the fate of the former inhabitants of that world, the Eternals they were called. The race was mostly wiped out by Malice, a dark god from another universe. He escaped his prison into their realm, but as their world fell, they trapped him in an unstable pocket dimension. It was slowly collapsing and he sought to escape. He had found Selene and was attempting to strip the fragment of divinity from her so he could use its power to break the chains of his prison. We fought, Selene was injured again and then you opened the portal, the rest you know."

"You mentioned something about Sombra?" Celestia asked. "Malice's power felt similar to the dark king's."

"I learned from Selene that Sombra had stumbled into Malice's prison though experiments in dimensional travel, it was Malice who corrupted Sombra and set him on his path of evil."

The two sisters continued to talk, Celestia had many more questions about Luna's time away from Equestria. Luna answered them as best she could and had questions of her own about the changes she had missed both while locked in the moon and during her time with Selene. They continued to talk until Celestia felt the pull of a summoning spell.

"Twilight is summoning me, I believe your friend may be awake, shall we go?"

Luna lit up with excitement, with a happy nod she prepared to teleport. With a pop, the two ponies blinked out of the room.


#####


Selene's eyes fluttered open slowly, her whole body ached and she wanted nothing more than to pass out again. But something had caught her eye, instead of the dark industrial interior or rocky cavern like appearance of the halls she had been roaming, above was a clean white ceiling, illuminated by the gentle glow of sunshine pouring in from the window she could just make out in the corner of her eye. A slow steady beeping in the background made her immediately think "hospital room", which was then followed by confusion. The last thing she could remember was a sharp pain as Malice slammed his hand into her chest. There were no hospitals, and no room on the Ascension was this clean.

Her ears twitched and swiveled at the sound of a page being turned. Slowly she turned her head towards the sound and she spotted an unfamiliar lavender unicorn sitting on a chair reading a book. Selene's throat felt dry and scratchy but she managed to choke out a hoarse whisper.

"Hello?" she said with a hint of confusion.

The unicorn looked up at Selene and smiled. She floated the book down onto the small table next to her and stood up.

"Hi," the unicorn said, "how are you feeling?"

"Well, I hurt all over but I guess that means I'm alive... uh where am I and who are you?"

"My name is Twilight Sparkle and you are in Canterlot Hospital; you were badly injured when we found you, but Princess Celestia healed you up and left you here to rest. She and Luna are back at the castle, Luna asked me to summon her as soon as you woke up, I can do that now if you like."

"Luna? She's here? She's alright?" Selene tried to sit up, but something felt wrong, the way she was trying to bend stretched at her in a slightly uncomfortable manner. She rolled a bit, then moved her arms down to try to give some leverage. As she pushed up, her grip gave way and she slipped back down, catching herself in the blanket.

"Are you alright?" Twilight asked looking concerned.

"I can't..." Selene said, trying pull the blanket off of her, she flailed a bit but it only made things worse, finally she ended up on her stomach blanket wrapped loosely around her lower back. Something pulled on her back and a second later she felt a wing brush up against her side. The touch was unexpected, and she tried to scooch away from whoever else was in the bed with her. The blanket caught on her leg, pulled tight and she fell sideways.

Twilight stifled a giggle. "Here let me help."

A warm glowing field surrounded Selene and the blanket, both were lifted into the air and the blanket quickly untangled itself dropping back down to the bed below. Selene followed, bouncing slightly as she hit the bed and landed on her stomach, her legs folded up under her in a way that felt wrong but she ignored it as she quickly turned, trying to find the pony that had brushed up against her.

As her head turned back, she caught the flick of a tail in the corner of her eye, followed by a pony's rump covered in a pale white coat. Something was wrong though, the pony would have to be on top of her to be in the position it was in, she turned her head more, farther than her neck should have been able to swivel and saw more of the pony's back. Two wings were folded up against the pony's side, exactly where she thought her back should be, it explained what she had felt moments before. Confused she brought her hand up to scratch her forehead and promptly clocked herself in the skull.

Reeling slightly she turned her head back, trying to find out what happened. A hoof at the end of a pony foreleg filled her vision in the exact spot her hand should be. She moved her hand, and watched as the hoof moved at the same time. Up and down it went, then side to side.

Twilight watched on as the strange pony waggled her hoof in front of her face. A second later Selene's eyes bugged out as the realization of what was going on finally dawned on her. She screamed, skittered backwards and fell off the side of the bed.

"Selene? Is something wrong?" Twilight asked trotting over to the pegasus.

"Why am I a pony?!" Selene shouted back, trying to pick herself up off the floor.

"What?" Twilight asked in confusion.

"A pony, why am I a pony?" Selene asked again her voice on the edge of panic.

Selene's question made no sense to Twilight, but Luna's words bubbled up in her head.

"She will have no idea where she is, nor what has happened to her..." Twilight had assumed that was in reference to the damage that had been done and subsequent healing by Celestia, but perhaps there was more to it. Once more Luna's voice filled her thoughts, "You will summon us the moment she wakes up?" The concern Luna had been showing reminded Twilight that perhaps she should get on with the summoning immediately.

"Selene, please calm down, I'm going to get Celestia and Luna right now," Twilight said, horn glowing brightly.

Selene stopped struggling at the sound of Luna's name. A few seconds later a flash of light and a loud pop filled the room as Celestia and Luna appeared.

Luna immediately saw Selene on the floor and trotted over.

"Selene, are you alright?" Luna asked in a worried tone.

"I don't know! I woke up a bit sore, but honestly I've felt worse. Everything was hunky-dory till I kicked myself in the head WITH MY HOOF!" Selene shouted back.

Luna tried to hold back a laugh but failed miserably. She continued laughing as Selene glared at her, still waiting for an explanation.

"I am sorry," Luna said as she took control of her mirth. "I will try to explain, but first let me introduce my sister, Celestia."

"It is a pleasure to meet you Selene, let me extend an official welcome to Equestria, do not worry too much about the soreness, it is a side effect of the healing spell I cast upon you, it will fade completely in a day or two."

"Healing spell?" Selene asked.

"What is the last thing you remember?" Luna asked.

"Malice threw me on that altar, then shoved his hand into my chest, after that, nothing."

"He dealt you a fatal wound trying to force the immortal spark from your body, but it escaped his grasp and returned to me; with it came your friendship, a powerful force in Equestrian magic. The spark was rekindled by your feelings for me and when it merged with me, my powers were restored completely. I was about to banish Malice back to his prison when Celestia opened a portal to us, the two portals destabilized the pocket dimension and we were thrown into Equestria."

"That explains how we got here, but why am I a pony?" Selene asked.

"That is a side effect of inter-dimensional travel through the spell we ponies use to create portals.  All sapient life forms ponies have encountered have one thing in common, they all have a soul.  Inter-dimensional travel is dangerous, many dimensions are completely inhospitable to pony life.  The gateway spell is designed to make travel safe, it will transform a pony's form making compatible whatever dimension they enter. It does the reverse when entering Equestria, returning ponies to their original form and also allowing natives of other dimensions to visit Equestria without fear of harm. You were transformed into a pony by the gateway spell."

"Is it... permanent?" Selene asked, poking a wing with her forehoof.

"While you are in Equestria, yes; should we find your home dimension and open a portal, you would revert to your human body when you stepped through."

"Uh ok, let's come back to this later," Selene said, "what happened to Malice?"

"He was pulled through as well and transformed into a crystal pony. Normally a god's body would be immune to the gateway's effect, but with his true form imprisoned, the spell latched on to his soul and crafted a new body. I have never seen any being turned into a crystal pony before, it must have been an interaction between the gateway and his artificial body."

Luna then told Selene about the fight with Malice and his imprisonment by the Elements.

"So what about the planet we were on? What happened to it?"

"Destroyed, I tried one last time to re-open the portal before we brought you here, but it is gone. The dimension was unstable to begin with, the two portals caused it to collapse entirely," Luna said.

"What about your friend Decima, or my ship?" Selene asked.

"She is gone, along with the Ascension; that reality was crushed into non-existence when it collapsed. I am sorry Selene, but with your ship gone, and the navigation computer with it, it may be some time before I can locate your dimension."

"I'm sorry about your friend Luna," Selene said. "But to hell with the rest of that planet, I was trapped on it for over 10 years, and I'm not particularly sad to hear it's been destroyed. As for the Ascension... well," Selene's eyes began to water, "it used to be my home, before Dad died. I'll miss that, but I still have those memories. After it crashed it was more a prison than a home, so really I've been homeless ever since."

"You are welcome to stay in the castle, with Luna and I until we can find your world," Celestia said.

Selene sat quietly on the floor as she thought about everything she had just heard. Shakily she rose to her hooves, swaying back and forth as she got used to standing on all four of her new legs.

"Someday, I would like to return to Earth, maybe together we can introduce ponies to humanity, but I had no living family nor friends back home," she said. "Luna, you are my only friend and I do not want to lose you, would it be alright if I stayed here?"

"Of course," Celestia said. "You may stay in Equestria as long as you like."

"Thank you," Selene replied. "I have a feeling I'm going to like it here, once I get used to these," she said lifting a hoof and shaking it. Standing on three hooves unbalanced her and she quickly returned it to the ground to keep from falling. 

"And I'd love to give these a try," she said, looking back at her wings. Through a bit of effort she found the new muscles needed to move her wings and gave them an weak flap.

"I would be more than happy to teach you how," Luna said with a big smile.

"I am looking forward to it," Selene said with a grin.
> Epilogue
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Selene stood happily in the field enjoying the warm summer breeze flowing through her coat. After nearly a lifetime of harsh winters, it felt marvelous, even after the month she had spent here in Equestria she still wasn't sick of it. In the distance rolling green hills slowly gave way to the rocky terrain that formed the foot of Canterlot Mountain. She took off at a gallop heading towards the nearest hill.

Panting slightly as she reached the top, she stretched her wings impatiently, and looked to the sky, waiting for Luna to arrive. Far away in the sky, she spotted a small blue speck; slowly it grew larger and larger until she could make out her friend gently gliding down towards the ground.

"Sorry I'm late, court ran much longer than I expected," Luna said. "Are you ready?"

"As ready as I'll ever be," Selene replied with a smile.

"Remember it isn't just about flapping your wings, without a pegasi's innate magic there is no way those wings could support you. You must feel this magic, take hold of it and direct it through your wings, then you can take flight."

"I know, you've said that a hundred times, but for someone who grew up without wings or magic, it's hard to keep everything in unison."

"Don't over think the process, do what comes naturally, your body wants to fly, it will if you let it," Luna said. "Why don't you try a simple hover."

"I know I'm thinking too much, that's why I chose this spot, I had something else in mind." Selene said with a grin.

"What do you mean?" Luna asked as Selene started to back up. She did not like the twinkle she saw in Selene's eyes.

Selene had chosen this hill specifically, on the side she had climbed it sloped up gently, but on the other, there was a sharp drop downward before it evened out. She took off as fast as she could at the edge of the cliff, praying she would not trip up. When she reached the edge she launched herself into the air, and flared her wings out. Almost immediately she began to fall back down, she started flapping her wings but her strokes were uneven and she accelerated towards the ground below.

Luna watched as Selene fell from the sky, she was already galloping towards the edge of the cliff, preparing to catch the crazy mare before she could fall and injure herself. She knew running wasn't going to be fast enough so with a pop she teleported to the bottom of the cliff and looked up.

A hundred feet above her, she heard the sounds of joyous laughter as Selene glided gently in a circle very slowly losing altitude. Every once in a while she applied a gentle flap to regain the height she had lost. This time Luna noticed with pride that the wing beats were even and smooth. She flew up to her friend grinning happily.

"First off," Luna said. "Don't ever do that again, but secondly congratulations."

"It worked, didn't it?" Selene said, sticking her tongue out at her friend. "I knew I was over thinking it, so I forced instinct to take over and now that I've felt it I can repeat it." She shifted her wings and began to hover in place, Luna hung next to her.

"I do have one question though," Selene said her face turning serious.

"Yes?" Luna asked.

"How do I get down?"