1 - Arrival

Genesis
Chapter 1 – Arrival

In the In-Between, there is nothing. In the limbo, there is nothing. In that impassable void that stretches on beyond and between existence and all there is, there is nothing. It is a plane unlike any other plane, for it does not exist, yet still it is there, unreachable and unattainable. It cannot be seen, for it is empty of both light and darkness, empty of color. The In-Between is what separates all, but it is also what binds it together.

Two creatures, two kings, were aware of this. And when no other option had presented itself to the two, they had sought the safety of the nothingness, using their fantastic powers to go beyond the borders of existence itself in search of a new home for themselves and their subjects. Through the void of the In-Between they sped, travelling through inexistence and passing by more worlds than could ever be counted.

They were a comet of gold and crimson, blazing a trail through a void to which no other being had ever gone, the two kings shining brighter than any star as they led their herd through the infinite expanses of emptiness. The members of the herd, enveloped in the magic of their rulers, were the alicorns, equines possessing strong wings and horns that wielded phenomenal powers that no other creature could hope to match.

Above them all, however, were the two kings, set apart from their subjects by the impossible feats they could perform and the sheer, humbling gravity of their presence.

One was Ignis, a white stallion who possessed a mane of purest, flowing light. His eyes were a deep blue that radiated serenity, and from his horn flowed thousands of threads of ethereal gold that arced out behind him as he flew.

The radiant Ignis was accompanied by his direct counterpart, Umbraeus, the infamous king known to all as the Alicorn of Darkness or the Alicorn of Fear. His coat was of the deepest black, his mane nothing but a billowing cloud of darkness framing a pair of amber eyes said to have driven hundreds of alicorns insane. His ebony horn was wreathed in scarlet flames, red tendrils joining together with the magic of Ignis.

The alicorns flying behind them were of both rulers’ factions, held in a deep slumber and propelled forward by their kings’ magic. This magic was also what kept them alive, for nothing could survive in the nothingness of In-Between.

None knew for how long they had travelled, nor how far, for the In-Between existed outside the realms of space and time, but the two kings visited countless worlds in their fruitless search for a place to call home.

“This world is dead,” Ignis complained of one, for the alicorns desired to live in a place where life was abundant and food and sustenance were easy to come by.

“Much too small,” Umbraeus said of another, for the alicorns would need a home where they could prosper and grow without hindrance.

The last world they had visited was the one to have shown the greatest promise of all, a massive globe running rampant with most any kind of life imaginable, what might have been considered a true utopia were it not for a single fact. “Too fragile,” they had said as one, giving each other a knowing glance.

But now, after what had to the kings seemed a millennium of searching, they found themselves before what could very well be their future home. From In-Between, the world was a swirling, black orb, a sphere encased in an ethereal barrier that separated existence and void.

Umbraeus was the first to dive through the border of the world, soon followed by Ignis and the herd of thousands behind the two kings.

The alicorns emerged from the black sky into a world drenched in darkness. Vast and indomitable forests sprawled out below them, strange luminescent plants providing the only light in the world. Among the trees and upon the fields strange shadows flitted about, attesting to the immense abundance of life in the world. Mountains rose thousands of feet into the air, and strange, winged creatures soared among the tall peaks. Ink-black oceans roiled for as far as the eye could see, surrounding the enormous mass of land directly below the flying equines.

Umbraeus, who had oriented himself quickly in the darkness, dove toward the ground and Ignis followed, having easily lost the black alicorn in the dark world were it not for the blazing radiance of his horn. The two touched down near the foot of a great mountain range and gave a long sigh as they could finally allow their wings some rest. The sleeping alicorns behind them were gently lowered to the ground and soon the powerful magic flowing from the horns of the two kings faded away for the first time in countless ages.

The amber eyes of Umbraeus turned to the white king with a dangerous gleam. "We have arrived."

"We have," Ignis answered cooly, returning the black immortal's gaze.

"Two kings, one world," Umbraeus went on, and Ignis chuckled.

"Eager for the throne," he observed. "I must admit I have no intention of letting you tyrranize your people any further, just as I suspect you have no intention of allowing me to continue my... 'softhearted' rule."

"A duel," Umbraeus agreed. "A battle to be remembered for all eternity."

The two stallions stood before each other, eyeing the other for any possible weaknesses. To their regret, however, they found plenty, both among themselves and the other. “A rest,” Ignis finally suggested. “Or our struggle may hardly prove memorable. The throne of this world deserves a glorious battle, does it not?”

The black alicorn was silent for a long while, his eyes blazing with an unsettling enmity just as Ignis' radiated a maddening calmness to match the other's gaze. “Very well,” Umbraeus finally. “A respite then.”

And so, while their subjects slowly came to life after a centuries-long slumber, the alicorn kings surrounded themselves with their most powerful protective enchantments and fell into a deep slumber, preparing for the battle that would shake the world.

The heartvine gave an odd, shuddering sigh, one of its large, glowing sacs deflating slightly as Anancita walked by it. Its fumes, capable of killing lesser creatures, soon reached her nostrils and she hurried on away from the glowing plant. Although the wilds could be a dangerous place at times, the silver coated mare still preferred it over the atmosphere of the alicorn camp. In fact, her home had recently seemed to become even more dangerous than the forests of toxin-filled plants and savage predators. She looked back toward the fulgid crown, the enormous tree that marked the center of the alicorns’ temporary encampment, its draping, willowy branches bathing several square miles in a warm, yellow glow.

More than a year had passed since the conclusion of the grand exodus, and for more than a year the alicorns had been waiting for their kings to awaken. Anancita supposed that a year-long rest was well deserved, but like any other subject of the two kings, she wished that they would have given their people at least some instruction before retreating into their deep slumber from which none could wake them.

After another few minutes of walking through the dark fields, the mare arrived at the resting place of the great kings. The two lay very unceremoniously upon the ground in the same position they had been in for a year. Surrounding the rivals was a circle of odd shining runes; the old alphabet of their kind, Anancita had been told, although few seemed to remember it. Few seemed to remember anything of their old home. All they knew of the runes was that any creature that passed across them would burst into flames.

Surrounding the powerful rulers and their magical defenses were a number of soldiers, some sworn to protect Ignis, others to protect Umbraeus, while most were supposedly impartial.

“Still asleep,” Ferroce, the most talkative of the royal guards, greeted Anancita as she approached.

“I think we would all know if they should awaken,” the mare pointed out with a small smile. “But maybe they would desire some company that did not consist of their sworn guards.”

"For a year now, the most devout followers of both kings have desperately called out for their guidance," Ferroce reminded her. "Many have prayed that they would soon awaken. However, here we still stand. And here we may well stand for another hundred years."

“A hundred years of rest?" Anancita replied skeptically. "Last time I was here, you suggested it was a decade. I am afraid you have grown quite pesimistic since I first met you."

"I have stood here for a long time. Ten hours every shift, ten hours break. A year. I have done nothing but stare at that fulgid crown and wait. And yet I know that at any moment, our kings may awaken and leap at each other's throats, destroying all in their way. And the peoples, both Umbraeus' and Ignis', have changed. They no longer visit their rulers as they once did."

“Too busy looking for reasons to murder each other!” Anancita scoffed. The armored stallion stepped aside as she approached the lethal barrier. “Things keep getting worse. If they do not wake soon, I fear it may come to war.” She sat down a few feet from the glowing runes and her long horn shone pink as she absentmindedly directed her magic at the air in front of her. Within a few moments, a small crystal appeared before her eyes, drawing in the air around it as it slowly gained mass. After less than half a minute, a sharply faceted diamond the size of her own head had materialized in front of her. “My family is teaching me how to use my diamonds as weapons,” she despaired, slowly driving the beautiful diamond into the impenetrable barrier, watching the gem slowly disintegrate.

“Please don’t do that,” Ferroce complained as the other guards eyed the mare suspiciously. “It’s a waste of your beautiful talent.”

“So is going to war!” Anancita said, withdrawing the crystal that had now been grinded down to half its size. The gem splintered as she focused her magic on it, and each of the shards grew into sparkling crystal flowers. “I can make nearly impenetrable barriers or spears that can pierce steel, my father can meld with the shadows and disappear at will. I know a mare who can burn your eyes to ashes with the flick of her horn. Any alicorn can kill another, but none of that matters! In the end, what matters is the outcome of our kings’ battle!”

“So you still insist you support neither?” the guard asked, more than a little doubt in his voice. “It is said none are impartial when it comes to the king they would prefer to see seat the throne of our world.”

“I support them both,” Anancita insisted. She took one of her sparkling flowers and placed it in her bright white mane. "After all that they did, they deserve to be our rulers. If only they could get along."

Ferroce burst with laughter, but the mare's frown soon silenced him. "If they could get along..." he muttered, allowing himself a final chuckle. "They are each other's opposites. In each and every way."

"I know."

"You can't have a king that wants nothing more than your love and one who expects obedience or screams of terror."

"I know, I know!" Anancita exclaimed. "But my point still stands. They both deserve the throne."

“So they have your respect,” Ferroce concluded. “But why? Do you admire or fear them?”

The diamond alicorn gave the guard an annoyed look, but sighed in defeat. “They carried us through the very borders of existence and far beyond to find us a new home. I suppose I admire them.”

“And the admiration and love borne to him gives Ignis his strength,” the stallion concluded. “Some would say that means you support the Alicorn of Light.”

“But my family does not,” Anancita argued, stepping away from the runic circle. “They want me to fight for Umbraeus!”

“You said yourself that did not matter. What would matter is who you fear or admire, who you respect. Although we do not possess their formidable powers, we still have a say in who might stand victorious,” Ferroce pointed out.

“That is true.” She trotted past the guard again, placing her remaining diamond flowers in his mane. “I just wish people would stop pushing me.”

"You should fight for Ignis!" Ferroce joked, neatly avoiding a diamond rose as it was flung at him.

“Faster, Anancita!” her father ordered, losing what little patience he had. “A barrier doesn’t need to be pretty, it just needs to be sturdy!”

Anancita sighed with frustration, but focused her magic on the ground between herself and her father, a roughly hewn and flawed diamond wall the size of an alicorn rising up out the ground. “Can I go now?” The two alicorn stood in an empty field, separated from the main encampment by a mile of dark forest. Almost empty at least, since several diamond projectiles and structures now littered the area.

“And do what?” the dark alicorn asked. “You may not have noticed, but we are on the verge of war! The worshippers of Ignis may attack us any day now!” The stallion stepped around the small barrier and put a hoof on Anancita’s shoulder. “We need you, child. You have great powers. Use them in Umbraeus’ name, and he will reward you.”

“If he defeats Ignis,” the diamond mare pointed out, but her father only smiled at some humor she failed to see.

He pointed at the horizon behind her and asked, “tell me, what do you see?”

Anancita squinted, but could see nothing out of the ordinary. A dark field and darker hills behind it. “I don’t see anything,” she replied.

“You see darkness,” her father corrected her. “The favored element of Umbraeus. This world is drenched in it. Believing in Ignis is futile. It is foolish. The Alicorn of Fear and Darkness will stand victorious, he will ascend the throne of this world, and he will punish those who opposed him. Everyone around us is choosing sides. We have chosen the one that will win. All we need do is hold out against the white king’s followers until the rulers awaken.”

“If you say so, father,” Anancita responded flatly, still not swayed by his arguments.

The dark stallion hesitated for a moment, having noticed his daughter’s lacking conviction, but did not pursue the matter. “Good. Projectiles,” the stallion said. “Show me something that can pierce any armor.”

“I do not wish to pierce armor,” Anancita muttered between clenched teeth. “You said yourself that we only need to hold out until the kings awaken!”

“And how would you do that?” her father asked pointedly. “How would you defend our people from a thousand warriors of light? Give them your pretty crystal flowers? A flower will not win a war, child!”

“You keep speaking of my future as if I stand on the battle front, defending the name of Umbraeus. I should have told you weeks ago, and I had hoped you would see it for yourself, but… I do not wish to fight for Umbraeus.” At her father’s hostile expression, she was quick to add, “nor shall I fight against him.”

“You claim impartiality? Now? At the eve of war?”

“How could you have failed to notice!?" the daughter shot back angrily. "It is no recent decision! If you may recall, I have never claimed partiality either,” Anancita pointed out.

“It is said that none are impartial,” the stallion said, repeating what had apparently become a common saying as of late.

“I do not care.”

“And what of your family?” her father asked, his temper flaring again. “You would abandon us!? You cannot! You do not have a choice, child! As your father…”

“I am no child, Father!” Anancita countered. “I am a grown mare! If you believe me strong enough to stand before those thousand warriors of light, then I am strong enough to make my own decisions!” She turned and left, small diamonds materializing out of thin air in a circle around her as she once again idly practiced the more passive aspects of her magical talent. “And I decide I will not fight. You should consider the same.”

As she trotted away, her father only stood there, watching her go. Finally, he let out a frustrated roar, releasing a powerful bolt of lightning from his horn that split Anancita’s diamond barrier in two. “We need you more than you know, daughter! With you, we can defeat Ignis!” he called out to her.

Anancita ignored him. “He’ll understand,” she whispered herself. “Once all of this is over.” She looked away from the fulgid crown she was headed towards and gazed at the resting place of the kings, highlighted for all to see by Ignis’ brilliant luster. "Their slumber must end," she told herself. "Or all will be dead by the time they awaken. There must be something I can do."

And so, the very next day, the diamond mare left the vast and sprawling encampment of her fellow alicorns, its atmosphere thick with resentment and tension as always, and set off toward where the two kings slept, opting once again to go by hoof rather than fly. Even after having lived there for more than a year, Anancita still found her new home to be an excitingly different world. Although she could not remember much of the place Ignis and Umbraeus had carried them from, she seemed to remember that the sky was rarely black, and that it would change its colors each day instead of this world’s constant black sky. The plants were strange as well, the majority of them preying on small animals and insects and quite a few of them carrying very powerful toxins. She did not remember the flora of her old home to have been so hostile. The mountains rearing up far ahead of her were the steepest and most majestic things she had ever seen, rising thousands of feet into the air and inhabited by those strange creatures they had yet to contact.

Anancita drew to a halt as she noticed a purple flash of light near where the kings slept. Someone was using magic. The diamond mare frowned as she drew to a halt. She had visited the resting place every week since she had woken from the exodus. Lately, her visits had been even more frequent, but she had never seen the guards forced to use their magic before. She lowered her body to the ground and began creeping toward the resting place, giving the heartvines a wide berth not just to evade its headache-inducing gasses, but to avoid its light falling upon her bright mane.

As she approached the runic circle that held the two kings, it soon became clear to her that something was indeed very wrong. There were no guards surrounding the circle, but there was a group of alicorns not far to her left, five of them seeming to be overpowering a sixth, and, upon closer inspection, she realized that this sixth alicorn was Ferroce. Before she could open her mouth or intervene in any other way, however, the armored stallion was dead, flung to the ground by a powerful spell.

They had killed him. Had they killed the other guards as well? Was the war finally starting?

Anancita stood stock-still as the five alicorns turned away from their defeated adversary and approached the runic circle. Thankfully, none of them noticed the mare hiding in the grass not much more than forty feet away.

“How fast can you crack this thing?” a stallion, silhouetted against the glow of the runes, asked of a mare, his voice a rough and agitated whisper.

“I’ll have to read the symbols first,” the mare answered, walking around the circle slowly. “Then I’ll need to figure out which symbols to add to the equation to nullify the defenses and etch them into the ground. At least an hour,” she concluded to the apparent dislike of her partners, who let out exasperated sighs and grunts.

“The watch shift is in one and a half hour!” a second stallion complained, but the mare, studying a symbol intently, pointed an accusing hoof at a fourth alicorn. “This whole situation could have been avoided if Phasmaeus had kept his part of the deal. The guards would have been dealt with quicker and you wouldn’t have to protect me when the enemy shows up.”

Anancita flinched at the mention of her father’s name, and soon enough, the very stallion spoke, confirming her belief. “I did my best, but she decided she’d rather remain impartial.”

“You guaranteed Anancita would be here!” the fifth alicorn, a mare, hissed at the diamond mare’s father. Anancita recognized the owner of the voice to be a friend of the family. “How are we supposed to kill Ignis? Most of our team bailed on us, and the guards took down six of us!”

“He’s asleep,” Phasmaeus insisted, but failed to convince the mare.

“Ignis may be a soft ruler, but he is still much stronger than a hundred of us put together! He’s immortal! The way I heard it, he’s as invincible as the black king! The idea was risky enough with just fifty horns, but five!?”

“I do hope you are not entertaining the idea of running off, Paricia,” Phasmeus said in a threatening tone.

Anancita could hardly believe her ears. Her father was conspiring to assassinate Ignis, to interfere with the great duel between the god-like alicorn kings.

Do I let him do it? She thought, inching towards the runic circle without even realizing it. One who supported Umbraeus would stand by and watch or even help them. If I followed Ignis then I would either call for help or confront them. But what would one who was impartial do? No, not impartial. One who supports them both.

Memories flashed before her mind, the very faint memories of the stories she had been told of both Ignis and Umbraeus. They had been renowned warriors, for alicorn customs often demanded a great show of force, a demand that could not be ignored if you claimed to be a king. Ignis had always fought honorably, she remembered, and so too had Umbraeus. Were they to die would they not wish to do so with honor? Felled by their equal on the field of battle?

Umbraeus wouldn’t want this kind of victory, Anancita told herself. He would punish my father. Both kings carried us farther than any of us can imagine; none of them deserve to die by the hooves of an assassin.

The diamond mare took a deep breath to steady herself and stood, walking purposefully toward the group of assassins. “Father?” she called out in a shaky voice. She felt as if her knees would give way beneath her any moment now. They are five alicorns! What am I doing!?

Phamaeus and the others, all except the mare who was reading the symbols, whirled around to face the newcomer, their horns aglow with sinister shades of red and green. “Anancita?” he asked when he recognized her, disbelief tinging his voice. “What are you doing here?” He held up a hoof and ordered the others to stand down.

Anancita hesitated, wanting nothing more than to be back at the camp. The other alicorns were still shrouded in the shadows cast by the kings’ protective circle, but she could clearly see the gleams of anger and murder in their eyes. Finally, she found the courage to challenge them. “I could ask the same of you.” Again, she took a deep breath. “You can’t kill Ignis!” she blurted out as her father opened his mouth to speak. One of the stallions’ horn became wreathed in green as he no doubt prepared some destructive spell. “He carried you through the borders of existence, and this is how you repay him?”

“This is how we repay Umbraeus,” the mare who wasn’t reading the symbols argued.

“We do this to aid our king, to aid or people,” one of the stallions said.

“We end the war before it can begin,” Anancita’s father reasoned. “If Ignis is dead, there can be no war in his name. Help us.”

“He’s immortal. He’s invincible…”

“He can be killed,” Phasmaeus insisted. "Why else would the kings battle each other?"

“You’re not convincing her!” the mare staring at the runes hissed impatiently. “Kill her!”

Several things happened at once. Anancita’s father leapt at the stallion whose horn was blazing with green, shouting at him to stop. A polished wall of pure diamond rose between the same stallion and Anancita, absorbing the impact of the amalgam of fire and lightning that exploded from the unnamed stallion’s horn.

Anancita leapt forward, into the gap left by her father’s absence and focused her magic on the mare reading the symbols, throwing her backwards with a powerful telekinetic tug. Before the mare could get on her hooves, four pillars of diamond shot out of the ground at a sharp angle all around her, forming a small cage that prevented her from rising. The diamond mare whirled around so that the runic circle was at her back and erected another two barricades that were almost immediately pulverized by the attacks of the remaining two assassins.

“Anancita! What are you doing!?” her father shouted, breaking free of his wrestling match with the first stallion. He directed his magic at the trapped mare and forced the diamond bars to part, allowing her to stand.

Before she could answer, Anancita was struck hard in the chest by a bolt of lightning from one of the other assassins and sent flying backwards while her father shouted obscenities at the shooter.

For what felt like a full minute, she lay on the ground, her eyes clenched shut as she awaited the death blow. She knew her father would not be able to hold the others back forever. But when nothing happened, she opened her eyes. Her father was unconscious, lying sprawled on the ground at the hooves of the stallion who had first attacked her. The four other assassins were loosing bolts of unbridled power straight at Anancita, but for some reason, they all terminated a mere one foot from her face. She then noticed the runes forming a circle around her and panicked. She had breached the protective perimeter of the two kings. Again, her eyes snapped shut, expecting to burst into flame at any moment.

“What’s going on?” a gruff voice asked with frustration, and Anancita heard the assassins’ barrage cease. “How is she still alive?”

“She has some strange connection with diamonds,” Phasmaeus’ friend replied. “Perhaps she possesses some of their resiliency as well.

“It would explain why she survived Obrus’ attack, but not even diamonds can pass through the kings’ enchantments.”

“‘Whomsoever shall breach this ward with evil intent wished upon either king shall be punished with the might of both Light and Darkness combined.’ That is one of the imperatives of the spell,” the mare who had been reading the runes revealed. “Phasmaeus said the mare was supportive of both kings. It would seem he told it true.”

Anancita opened her eyes again and finally stood, the fear of death banished by the assassin’s revelation. As long as she stood within the circle, the four alicorns could not reach her, not even with their most powerful magic, it seemed.

“She is safe for now,” the mare continued. “But once we nullify these defenses, she’ll be as vulnerable as Ignis.” Her laughter was cut off as a small ball of diamond punched into her face and knocked her out cold.

Exerting her magic as she had never done before, Anancita screamed as she directed it at the ground surrounding the kings’ runes. A jagged circle of polished and faceted diamond rose from the ground, growing and growing as the diamond mare fell to her knees from exhaustion. The erected diamond wall began curving in on itself and within moments, Anancita found herself alone with the sleeping kings in a large dome of purest diamond, the only source of light being Ignis’ shining coat and mane of liquid light.

As she fought to breathe after her violent exertion, she heard new voices from outside her dome.

“Murder!” one shouted, having seen the bodies of the royal guards.

“The followers of Umbraeus have declared war! Kill them!”

Battles cries and choked screams of pain soon followed, and Anancita could do nothing but turn away, pressing her hooves against her ears in an effort to block out the sounds of suffering and dying while holding back her tears.

“He’ll understand. Once all of this is over,” she had told herself, but she could no longer find solace in that statement. Because of her, Phasmaeus now lay unconscious in the crossfire between the remaining assassins and the followers of Ignis.

The war had begun, and as she had predicted, she would not be taking part in it.

No. All she had done was start it.

2 - Supremacy

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Genesis
Chapter 2 – Supremacy

Umbraeus opened his eyes to see that the dark sky that had been above when he first arrived had been replaced by a ceiling of purest diamond. Either he had moved, or someone had breached his and Ignis’ defenses. Immediately he was on his hooves, eliciting a startled yelp from somewhere behind him. The dark alicorn whirled around, his horn wreathed in red as he locked eyes with a frightened mare. Her coat looked as if it were made from steel or silver, reflecting the light of Ignis, who had begun to stir. Her mane and tail were white, but not from old age. Rather, the hairs seemed to have some prismatic quality to them, catching the white light flowing from Ignis’ mane and shining with all the colors of the rainbow. Her eyes, quaking under the intensity of Umbraeus’ gaze, were a light pink.

“Who are you?” He asked in an emotionless tone of voice, which, as he had expected, only served to frighten the mare even more.

“An-Anancita… Your Grace,” the mare stuttered and went on to speak of heritage and anything that might serve to calm the black king. Umbraeus, however, paid no attention to the words flowing from her mouth, focusing instead on the energy he sensed seeping out of her, the fears that drove and sustained the Alicorn of Darkness.

The fear of death is palpable. She knows my reputation, and she is no follower of mine. But the fear is not certain either, meaning that she has done something she believes will grant her my favor. No supporter of Ignis either, then.

A fear for her family; they are in grave danger. A danger closely tied to Ignis? No, his followers. So the war has begun.

Umbraeus let his awareness spread beyond the confines of the thick diamond dome and his protective circle and was greeted by a roiling ocean of fear and desperation. Already he could feel himself grow stronger. For the moment, though, he decided to resume his subtle interrogation of the mare, babbling of her family’s strong support of his name in a desperate effort to appease him.

She fears loneliness, very much so it would seem. Our subjects have remained divided in our absence; my own faction living among Ignis’, uneasily at best. Either they were with me or against me, and this Anancita was neither. She has sacrificed both friends and family in support of us both. The ground shuddered as something outside detonated violently, and the dark alicorn sensed a fear of the mare’s dome shattering, confirming that it was indeed her who had erected the additional defenses around the two kings. Within only a few moments, he had divined much and more of the mare’s hidden motivations and the conditions outside the dome.

“Silence,” Umbraeus ordered of the silver mare, who promptly shut her mouth. “You have done us a service, Anancita,” he said as Ignis finally rose. “You have defended Ignis and thereby my right to gain the throne through honorable battle,” he explained mostly for his rival’s sake, his tone condescending enough as to make the white alicorn bristle with indignation. “Although five alicorns would hardly be sufficient for such a task, I am sure he appreciates your sentiment.”

“Thank you…” Anancita answered hesitantly, bewildered by the dark alicorn’s knowledge of the events she had yet to tell him of.

“We are most grateful, Anancita,” Ignis added courteously. “I am sure that whosoever shall prove to be victorious in the battle to be will see fit to reward you most generously for your service.” The white alicorn gave Umbraeus a hard stare. “But you should leave now,” he told the mare without breaking eye contact with the black alicorn.

Anancita, seeing the hostility burning in both kings’ eyes, backed away hastily. “Very well. Shall I… Shall I remove the dome?”

“No need to; it will be gone in just a second,” Umbraeus assured her, his horn lighting up once again as he summoned his formidable power. Ignis followed suit, his horn wreathed in golden flames.

A crevice opened in the almost meter-thick diamond wall, and Anancita slipped through it, retreating to the relative safety of the alicorn war outside.

“Are we prepared?” Ignis asked of Umbraeus.

“You shall not kill me,” the dark alicorn promised, bracing himself for the impact that would follow their initial confrontation.

Without warning, their power lashed out at each other, blazing tendrils of blood and gold that branched off in a thousand directions, each seeking to find a way through the other’s defenses. Each tendril was met by another, however, and soon the diamond dome was blazing with the glow of their arcane struggle. Lightning bolts of black and white exploded from where the two alicorn’s magic met, punching holes in the diamond barrier as the kings continued to pour power into their lethal tendrils of searing energy.

Eventually, the thousand golden and red branches coalesced into one beam, and Umbraeus charged at Ignis, lowering his horn. The white alicorn answered by breaking into a gallop as well, and the kings locked horns as they met, each attempting to force the other to his knees. After half a minute of the wrestling, the pent up energy in the diamond dome finally became too much for it to bear, and every particle within it exploded violently, completely obliterating the diamond structure and all around it, showering everything within miles of the battling alicorns with burning, sparkling dust.

Umbraeus, shielded by the same magic that had caused the phenomenal explosion, now found himself far above the ground, hovering in midair. It did not take him long to catch sight of Ignis, the white alicorn’s shining form easy to spot amid the darkness of the world.

Beating his wings forcefully, Umbraeus launched himself at the shining light before him, summoning his magic only at the last second to remain camouflaged against the black sky. A razor-sharp blade of pure energy ripped into the source of brilliant white, followed by Umbraeus, who would have skewered his enemy had he been there.

The dark alicorn gave a frustrated snarl as he realized the light had only been a decoy, but before he could search for the true Ignis, a pair of hooves drove into the area between his wings with enormous force, sending him plummeting toward the ground. The light in Umbraeus’ horn became several shades brighter as he summoned a violent lightning bolt that descended from the black sky and struck the white alicorn above him, lessening the pressure on his back. The dark alicorn twisted out from under Ignis and drove his horn upwards in another attempt to spear his opponent but instead ended up locking horns with him.

Once again, the very matter of existence around the two kings was shattered by their ferocious discharge of power, creating another massive explosion that rained down fire and lightning upon the battlefield below. This time, Ignis was the slowest to recover, and the black king drew in the residual energy of the explosion and released it as another bolt of scarlet lightning. With only fractions of a second to spare, a golden shield flashed into existence before the white alicorn, deflecting the lightning bolt, which instead impacted on a huge glowing tree in the center of the alicorn encampment, ripping it apart and further spreading the fires that were by now consuming the area.

Ignis answered with a bolt of his own which Umbraeus too deflected, causing another explosion below them. The exchange carried on for a few minutes until Umbraeus realized that the lesser alicorns below him had almost all ceased fighting, realizing that the true battle of the kings had begun. Without the war below him, Umbraeus would have much less fear to support his massive arcane exertions. He would have to do something quickly if he wished to maintain his advantage.

His horn flaring ever brighter, Umbraeus let loose a shower of explosive charges that homed in on Ignis. As the white alicorn fought to avoid or shield himself against the blasts, the black king dove toward the ground, howling at his and Ignis’ subjects in an inequine voice that sent even the bravest soul scurrying. As he dashed along the ground, the fire seemed to be ripped from wherever it had taken hold, being pulled along by Umbraeus’ magic instead. Within moments, a massive inferno spread out from the dark alicorn’s ebony wings, roaring loudly over his future subjects as he flapped his wings to gain altitude. The lesser alicorns screamed as the searing fires came within inches of burning them alive, and Umbraeus smiled to himself, regaining the strength he had lost.

He turned and saw that Ignis, as could only be expected, had survived the dark alicorn’s attack without injury and was now diving straight at him. Again, Umbraeus beat his great wings and darted forward to meet his foe, the flames at his side morphing into a spear point as he fired volley after volley of energy lances at the approaching alicorn. Ignis dodged and twisted his body impossibly fast, avoiding every single projectile without losing his speed. Finally, a second before they met, the Alicorn of Light dove beneath him, avoiding his fiery corona by mere inches. Umbraeus, in response, twisted around and hurled the fire he had collected straight at Ignis with deadly force. He had, however, once again underestimated his opponent’s speed, and struck instead the ground, creating a roaring wave of searing fire that killed at least a hundred alicorns and reduced several square miles of fields and forests alike to gray ashes.

Umbraeus’ chest and right wing were struck simultaneously by twin bolts of golden lightning, bringing the dark alicorn out of balance and sending him hurtling away from the encampment. A transparent red bubble formed around the falling alicorn only moments before an additional six bolts lashed out at him with enough force to make even the black king’s defenses waver. He touched down on the ground, banishing his shield and summoning instead the shadows surrounding him to hide himself from the white alicorn. Ignis’ horn shone brighter than any light could ever shine as he sought to banish the shadows that obscured his enemy’s location, but in this world, Umbraeus knew, such was futile.

Soon enough, Ignis realized this as well and instead rained down comets of golden fire upon the darkened area, though none came close to striking the place where Umbraeus stood. Answering his opponent’s deadly rain, Umbraeus sent forth enormous spheres wrapped in billowing shrouds of darkness, hurling them in a wide arc at the king who easily dodged the attacks. The dark alicorn was surprised, however, when Ignis went off in pursuit of the huge projectiles. He then realized that given the spheres’ trajectory, they would strike down upon the alicorn encampment. The white alicorn overtook the missiles and, when he had reached both his and Umbraeus’ subjects, turned around. One after one, the spheres turned gold and exploded in a shower of sparks.

And now they admire him all the more, Umbraeus thought resentfully, berating himself for his carelessness. He rose out of his shadows, ascending more than a thousand feet before launching himself at the white king, the air around him crackling sharply as he reached unimaginable speeds. Ignis, somehow spotting the black alicorn amongst the dark mountains that were behind him, launched himself at Umbraeus as well. The black king pulled into a slight incline as the two opponents came closer and closer to each other, coating his body in a pointed force field as he prepared for the impact. Again, Ignis did the same.

The two met in a deafening clap of thunder, the force of their impact causing a shockwave that uprooted trees for miles around and left the earth barren and wind-blasted. The two alicorns now found themselves in a crater, once again locking horns in an effort to bring their opponent to his knees. With a grunt of exertion, Umbraeus was the one to succeed, managing to throw Ignis to the ground only moments before the air once again overcharged with their magic.

The dark alicorn summoned a veritable fist of unrelenting energy that descended from the heavens to strike Ignis into the ground. The black king was caught off guard by a burst of concentrated light, however, launching him into the air. Umbraeus hurled his powerful magic at the crater and Ignis answered in kind, golden tendrils of fire whipping about the flying alicorn.

With a force that caused the earth to shake once more, Ignis launched himself off the ground, shrugging off the dark alicorn’s attacks as if they were nothing and sought to skewer his opponent. Umbraeus, however, was too quick for him, and managed to rise over him by several inches. Taking advantage of the white alicorn’s vulnerable position and proximity, the black king was able to exert his telekinesis upon his opponent’s horn, pulling him up and around himself in a tight curve and sending him hurtling even farther away from the alicorns’ encampment. Once again gathering the residual energy of their arcane struggling as well as the very light and warmth that surrounded him, Umbraeus lowered his horn and released a jet of inky blackness straight at the disoriented white alicorn.

A hastily summoned golden shield was shattered as the full force of Umbraeus struck Ignis, driving him into the mountains they had initially landed beside. Wasting no time, the dark alicorn pursued his opponent, using his magic to bind his opponent to the crater in the mountain. Summoning every last ounce of his phenomenal powers, the mountain Ignis had struck shuddered as Umbraeus’ magic took hold of its peak. Boulders weighing several thousand tons were ripped loose by his power, hurtling toward the trapped white alicorn. Only, he was no longer there.

A hoof struck the back of Umbraeus’ head with more than enough strength to crush any lesser alicorn’s skull, followed by a blast of fire that blinded, burned, and drove Umbraeus into the same mountain Ignis had been trapped on.

The fire persisted, holding the dark alicorn trapped against the face of the mountain, the rock around him soon melting from the intense heat. The first of the boulders struck him, and for the first time, Umbraeus realized that Ignis might win. In vain, he drew shield after shield about him, but the white alicorn had preserved his power for this very moment, it seemed. The mountain shook as the Alicorn of Light finished what the Alicorn of Darkness had begun, pulling the entire mountain down on top of the trapped king. Finally, the gold and white of Ignis’ wrath gave way to darkness and the crushing weight of billions of tons of rock.

The dark stain that was Umbraeus vanished beneath a shower of boulders hundreds or thousands times his own size, burying the black king under the weight of half a mountain.

Ignis, however, refused to underestimate his opponent. The earth shook once more as he applied titanic pressure to the boulders, soon forcing them to meld into one uniform mass of rock, sealing away Umbraeus and driving even the dark alicorn’s defenses to their very limits. When the flattened rubble of the demolished mountain would yield no further, the Alicorn of Light finally ceased his attack.

He hovered in the air above where his enemy lay buried, waiting for any sign of the dark alicorn to emerge. When more than ten minutes had passed, he dropped to the ground, approaching the mound of rock warily, searching for the slightest hint of the black king’s malevolent aura.

The beating of wings and the sound of hooves upon rock caught Ignis’ attention, but knowing that Umbraeus lay safely buried beneath him, he did not strike out at the one approaching him. He turned to see the diamond mare, Anancita, who had apparently been the only alicorn to defend both kings whilst their subjects warred amongst each other.

“Is he gone?” the silver mare asked, walking up alongside Ignis, who only frowned.

“You should not be here,” he chastised her. “He is buried beneath us, but he still breathes,” Ignis explained, gesturing at the rock beneath his hooves. “He and I are invincible; as long as we will it, we cannot die.” He looked back at the diamond mare. “You are in grave danger standing here. You should go.”

Anancita, however, remained where she was, and so the Alicorn of Light decided to simply carry on as if she were not there. His horn glowed golden once more as he summoned his still potent magical reserves and split open the mound of rock he stood upon. A wide vertical shaft opened up before him, and as he peered down its jagged stone walls, he locked eyes with Umbraeus, the dark alicorn still standing despite all that he had been put through.

Ignis frowned again and waved his horn, causing the walls in the shaft to blaze brilliantly as they instantly melted, tendrils of liquid fire creeping along the bottom of the stone well and wrapping around the hooves of the fatigued alicorn king below. The white alicorn leapt into the wide opening, summoning a small platform of solid light just above the lava as he spread his wings and landed, standing before his adversary.

Umbraeus maintained his cold stare, though Ignis could see that he was suffering greatly. “You may smite me with your golden fire and thunder, Ignis,” he hissed defiantly, wincing slightly as the molten rock inched its way up his hooves. “You may burn away my hide and my flesh and even my bone, but my spirit shall still stand defiant against you. You shall not kill me and I shall never let you rule my people.”

“Then you shall suffer for an eternity,” Ignis said, although he was soon distracted as Anancita once again joined him, standing upon a nest of diamonds beside the white alicorn.

“Or we end this,” she suggested, her horn flaring a bright pink as she approached the black king.

“You would summon your powers against mine?” Umbraeus demanded, forgetting Ignis for a moment as he addressed the silver mare. “Your impudence is both amusing and fatally misplaced.”

The bottom of the shaft was lit with the red aura of Umbraeus’ horn, but before any spell could be cast, Ignis’ power gripped him, suppressing his powerful magic and paralyzing his entire body. “Go!” he shouted at the mare beside him, shaking from the exertion of holding back his adversary’s magic.

For a second, the diamond mare hesitated, but instead of flying out of the shaft and away from the two god-like beings, she instead lowered her horn to the dark alicorn’s, enveloping him in her own pink aura. Umbraeus’ terrible amber eyes darted between the two alicorns in front of him, radiating pure hatred, but Ignis was unaffected and Anancita had her eyes closed, focusing only on the spell she was casting on the black king. After a while of painful struggling for all three alicorns, the dark one’s ebony horn shone a bright white as the silver mare’s magic spread into his very being, transforming him in a way Ignis had never thought possible. The light travelled like a slow wave across Umbraeus’ body, spreading from the base of his horn to envelop his skull and within minutes, his whole body was blazing brilliantly.

Finally, when the entirety of Umbraeus’ form had been enveloped by Anancita’s magic, she raised her horn again and the dark alicorn broke free of Ignis’ grip. He reared up on his hind legs, preparing to deal the silver mare a killing blow, but Anancita held her ground, confident that her spell would work. And before Ignis’ eyes, his greatest adversary, still wreathed in brilliant light, suddenly froze. With another bright flash, the light around Umbraeus dissipated, leaving a diamond statue where there had once been a living, breathing alicorn.

For several minutes, Ignis regarded the statue of his enemy, marveling at the sight he thought he would never see. I defeated him, he thought. In his world of darkness, the air surrounding us drenched with the fear and desperation of a terrible war, I bested him in battle. His subjects are now mine. This world is mine. Darkness has failed and light stands victorious!

He turned his head to address the mare beside him. “Anancita. I cannot express how grateful I am for your services. You have done the world a great favor. With Umbraeus gone, I can free your people from the shackles of his cruel dominion, and I can lead the alicorn race into an enlightened age of peace and prosperity.” The small sheet of light he stood upon expanded, and the diamond mare stepped onto it as it rose out of the shaft, leaving behind the frozen and beaten alicorn king.

The stallion and the mare emerged from the shaft to be greeted by a crowd of almost a thousand alicorns, all of whom had gathered around the small chasm to see which king had won.

My people, Ignis once again thought, his coat brightening as he smiled with satisfaction.

“Spread the word to all who live in this world!” He called out to his subjects, his mane becoming a shining beacon upon the great mound of rock. “The Alicorn of Fear and Darkness, the black king Umbraeus, has been defeated. I stand before you as the new ruler of all alicorns and this world, and I hereby say to you all: The terrible war that has plagued you is at an end! Light has defeated darkness and banished the shadows of fear and malice, and under its brilliance you shall be united as one people! Those of you who followed the tenets of Umbraeus and those of you who fought in my name, let us put aside strife and hatred now and live as we have dreamed of living for the countless ages we drifted through the void of In-Between! I will light this world for you, my subjects, and together we will bring peace and prosperity to these lands and to our peoples! So follow me, and we will leave this blackened pit of ashes and found the capital of our new world!” He turned his head to Anancita as the crowd applauded his words. “Fly with me.”

And with that, he and the diamond mare spread their wings and left behind the ruined battlefield in which they had first set hoof, flying off in search of a new beginning for the alicorn race.

3 - Three Immortals Born

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Genesis
Chapter 3 – Three Immortals Born

I… I. Me… I am?

What am I? Who am I? Where am I?

Gray, everywhere gray. There, gray. Here, gray. All around me…

Me… Who am I? What am I!?

Am I? Am I not? Nothing is here. Nothing is there. Nothing all around me. I am… nothing?

The gray is around me. The gray doesn’t… change? Change..? Change, yes. Nothing changes… no… no, nothing doesn’t change. The gray doesn’t change, nothing doesn’t change.

So… So if I am… What am I? If I am nothing, if I am gray, I do not change… Yes.

Do I change? Am I different? Am I gray? Am I nothing? I… I am. Nothing… nothing isn’t. The gray… the grayness… isn’t. I am different.

I change. I am change. I bring change. Where am I? I am in a place that doesn’t change. I am… something… something here in the nothing.

Why am I here? I… am different. I don’t belong… I don’t belong! I am change, this is not! I am… I am… trapped. I’m trapped in nothing! Nothing! Nothing! Nothing!

Wait… that… that was not nothing. Something. Something not me and not nothing and not gray. It was here. Now it is not.

I must know… I must… I must wait…

…

There! Gray, but not nothing! I must… I must have it… I must wait…

…

There, I hold it. It is… It is… life? No. Death? No. Neither. And both. It wishes to leave this place. Then we are alike. It has come from life. Where it was… That is where it belongs… That is where I belong. I must know more. This life… If I become life, I will belong where life is. Maybe… maybe I can leave this place. This something, this something that isn’t me has to be… me. We must be one. It struggles, but I am stronger.

…

I… sense it. There is something beyond this place. All around me, but not here. I see it. It… It’s gray? Are all things gray? Will everything I see be blank and featureless?

I… am change. I bring change… Is this what I must do? I must change what is gray. I must… I must bring…

I must bring chaos.

As it had done so very long ago, the great herd of alicorns took wing in search of a home, but compared to their previous foray through the void of inexistence, the trip across the great mountain range beside them took only a small moment. They settled once more after having travelled down the length of it, landing in a small, fertile valley at the foot of the mountains.

Joining their powers as one, the Alicorn of Light and the Alicorn of Diamonds worked together to call forth a brilliant tower of shining marble and diamond, rising up out of the very ground it stood upon. Atop the tower was a dazzling beacon that shone with the light of the new alicorn king, and it became the palace of the capital he named Orien, signaling the beginning of his rule; a rule that would last for generations upon generations.

For a century, Ignis worked hard and long, working his magic deep into the very core and into the farthest reaches of the sky of the world he and his kind now inhabited. The glowing, bulbous plants that spewed venom at any and all creatures soon gave way to colorful flowers and trees with vibrant green leaves and fruits that filled the stomachs of his subjects. The sky above turned from black to gray as his light, the superior element as he had dubbed it, saturated the air around the alicorns and propagated skywards to stain the very heavens.

The great city of Orien expanded as the alicorns grew more and more numerous, and soon the entire valley in which the king’s radiant tower had first been erected was paved with marble and diamond, with spires reaching heights of more than a hundred feet and mansions and manors that were works of art in themselves. Ignis’ people set out and claimed new lands, building cities and towns and the civilization the king had dreamed of since before he and Umbraeus had set forth from their old home.

The white alicorn’s rule enjoyed a blessed beginning, and he shared its joys with Anancita, the alicorn who had helped him defeat his greatest foe and the mare he had come to care so very much for. She became his queen and he her king and for a century they ruled together.

On the hundredth year of their rule together, Anancita bore Ignis his first foal, a beautiful filly with a soft white coat and a mane pink as her mother’s eyes. The remarkable thing about the young filly was not her appearance, however, but her companion. For as she was born, so too was the greatest wonder Ignis had ever seen, a sight whose magnificence far surpassed any hope the king had had of lighting the world he ruled. The dark sky he had worked so hard to banish for a hundred years was whisked away as smoke on the wind as a golden orb rose on the horizon, bathing the entire world in a warm radiance that could nearly put the white king’s own light to shame. The sun, as Ignis dubbed it, was the brightest marvel the alicorns had ever seen; a blazing globe of heavenly fire affixed to the sky whose dark grayness was transformed into a pale blue.

Ignis named the filly, his first-born daughter and beloved fellow bringer of the light, Celestia and he proclaimed that with her coming, the alicorns had entered into a golden age; an age that could last for an eternity, the white king realized, for Celestia was different from other alicorns. Just like himself, the young filly seemed to possess the same immortality that he had only ever seen in himself and Umbraeus.

Celestia became Ignis’ greatest pride and treasure and she was raised as the princess she was, basking in the adoration of her subjects as they basked in the light of her sun, which after a year had travelled to the very zenith of the sky and ground to a halt far above the world.

The Daughter of Light, as the alicorns took to calling their new princess, matured quickly from the love born to her, and her beauty became renowned throughout the world as she grew. Eighteen years after her birth, the Solar Princess underwent the fateful transformation which Ignis had named the Ascension. The pink hair of her mane and tail melded together and became a flowing veil that shone with the colors of the rainbow, her coat took on a faint luster much akin to Ignis’, and her magical powers were vastly augmented as she joined her father in the paramount echelons of the alicorn civilization.

Happiness reigned supreme now that the world had not only an immortal king, but a princess as well, the two of them along with the queen gracing their subjects with their powerful magic. Celestia would bring light to the world through the sky as Anancita brought the light through the diamonds of the earth and above them both stood Ignis, illuminating the world in its entirety. But very suddenly, after more than a hundred and twenty years of the alicorn king’s rule, the world changed irrevocably. After twenty years, Anancita bore him his second daughter, and the sky that had been so bright for more than two decades darkened so very terribly upon her birth.

What’s this? Change! Color! Not here in the nothing, but there! There where nothing is nothing and everything is! So existence is not gray. Existence is different from nothingness. A world that changes… that is where I belong.

But how to get there? Consuming the life here makes me stronger, but it is not strength I need…

…

A key, a key, a key is what I… this? What is this? It is there in existence, buried deep underground, but it is here as well, in the grayness, among the nothingness. Trapped… like me…

It is alive, and it is not… Here and there… And within it… within it is the key… within it is the path I seek… with this life, I can leave here, I can go there!

…

This life is strong. So very strong. Can it be stronger than me? It will not… let me… take it! Why? I need to leave! I… I’m change! I need to bring change! Why must I be trapped here in the gray where there is nothing!? Is this my destiny!? My cruel destiny!? Am I doomed to wander this empty, unchanging void forever, knowing what I must do, but knowing too that I can’t!?

Should I give up then? Whatever I try, however much I try to leave this world, some obstacle blocks my path. My whole life I have been trapped here in this void. I must… I must resign myself to it.

…

No! Again, existence changes! What was blue is now black! Again! What was black is now blue! Colors and change! Light and darkness! Only in existence! Why is it not here!? It’s not..! It’s not fair! I am change! I must bring change! Why am I here when I should be there!?

I must go there… I must, I must! The one who is here, the one who is neither dead nor alive, the one who is stronger than me… Umbraeus, yes that is his name. I must be stronger than him.

His name… a name… What is mine? Why do I not have a name?

Who am I? I… I am…

I am Discord.

Until it happened, she had had such a wonderful day. Truth be told, it was a day not much unlike any other, but Princess Celestia was wise enough to see that she led a wonderful life and so counted each of her days as a blessing; a day to be grasped and enjoyed to its fullest for, being hers, she could allow herself to do with it as she pleased.

She had awoken in her chambers at the very top of the Dawn Tower, the part of the multi-spired royal palace that belonged only to her, brimming with energy for the day that awaited her. She had stepped out onto her balcony and flown off toward the King’s Spire, the centerpiece of the shining white palace where her father and mother resided. Normally, the small royal family would break their fast out under the light of Celestia’s sun, but as the due date of her little sister loomed ever closer, her mother had found it increasingly difficult to move about. That, and for some reason, sunlight did not seem to be agreeing with her recently, the queen preferring instead to remain indoors.

And so the three alicorns found themselves sharing their meals in the dining hall of the main tower, which had otherwise fallen into disuse after Celestia’s birth. She and her father had discussed the recent breakthroughs in communication with the enormous and apparently largely sentient indigenes of their new world, the ones who called themselves dragons. While the two had talked, Anancita had eaten, for while Ignis drew power solely from the admiration of his subjects and Celestia fed upon the light of the sun, the Alicorn of Diamonds still required physical sustenance.

After breakfast, Celestia’s father had spent most of his day with her, teaching her everything he knew of the dragons, the only race in this world that could pose a threat to the alicorn civilization. During the afternoon, however, they were told that Anancita had gone into labor, and Celestia soon found herself wandering around the palace alone as her father went off to help her mother.

As so often was the case for the Solar Princess, however, she was not alone for long as she was soon joined by her friends from court. Most of her day had passed in the company of these friends, but when evening had come upon them, it had happened.

For the first time in almost two decades, the sun that shone so far above the alicorns had budged. Celestia and her friends watched, along with every other alicorn in the world, in horror as the sun seemed to drop down from the zenith of the sky. Not only that, but it seemed as if the very heavens were suddenly overturned, the brilliant blue of Celestia’s day giving way to the dark black sky she had only heard tales of. And from the east horizon, where her sun had risen twenty years ago, rose a sphere so dark that it was clear to see upon the black night sky, replacing the globe of fire that had lit the world for so long.

Almost immediately, the princess of the sun had dismissed her friends, and within moments, she found herself standing upon the balcony of her Dawn Tower, beholding the sun as it vanished beneath the west horizon.

For the first time in her life, Celestia felt truly vulnerable as her source of power, her source of life, was cut off from her and replaced by something dark and mysterious instead; something that seemed to be the very antithesis to the superior light she and her father brought.

Father… Celestia thought dully as she watched the black orb rise. Father will know what to do, he can help.

Spreading her wings, the Solar Princess took off once again toward the King’s Spire. As she alighted in one of the doorways leading from the palace exterior to the tower’s interior, she shivered at the alien darkness surrounding her. While the palace still shone with Ignis’ light, it was still strange to see it without Celestia’s light as well. Instead, the slightly luminescent walls cast oddly deformed shadows all around her that would otherwise have been banished by the sunlight streaming in from the now dark windows. Without the warmth of her sun’s radiance, there was some sort of ghostly quality over the glowing, diamond-infused marble of the palace, something that was definitely to prefer over total darkness, but still unsettling for those who had known only the light of the sun throughout their life.

Eventually, she reached the top of the tower and her parents’ private chambers, where all had become deathly quiet. The white mare soon found herself treading as carefully as she could upon the marble floor, wondering why the guards had all been dismissed. She flinched as a loud shout cut through the thick silence of the royal tower and recognized her father’s voice, although she had rarely heard it being raised.

The outburst was met by another long while of silence as Celestia approached the door to her parents’ bedroom. Finally, she heard Anancita speak. “What should we call her?” she asked in a voice that sounded as if on the verge of tears.

Yet again, there was a period of silence. “You ask of me to name this… to name… the one who has done this to my kingdom? Look outside, Anancita! Have you ever seen the sky so dark!? That… That thing has torn down everything Celestia and I stand for! Everything we have accomplished!”

“That ‘thing’ is your daughter!” Anancita shouted back, bursting into tears, and an unpleasant heat welled up inside of Celestia, one that made it difficult for her to breathe and left her ears burning.
She found herself wishing to be back in her own tower, but for reasons she could not explain, she was compelled to remain where she was.

“The Night Mare, that is what she is,” Ignis hissed, and before the princess could react to the sound of hoofsteps, the door to the bedroom flew open and the shining stallion emerged, a deep scowl set in his face. He showed only mild surprise at seeing his firstborn daughter at the door, but did not stop as he headed toward the nearest exit.

“Father…” the Solar Princess started, raising her voice so as to be heard over the sound of her mother’s sobbing.

“Not now, Celestia,” he cut her off dismissively and soon disappeared down a hallway. The young mare shivered although she was still suffering from the almost suffocating heat within her. She had never seen her father like this. Ignis was a kind and sympathetic king, not one filled with what could only be described as cold hatred. Was it her newborn sister that had caused this transformation? Was she the one to blame for the darkness?

Taking a deep breath to steel herself, Celestia went through the door to her parents’ chamber, finding her mother lying in bed, desperately fighting back tears as she clutched a tiny blue foal to her chest.

The little filly was crying with her mother, its face hidden partly behind a long, pale azure mane and buried against its mother’s chest. Where Anancita carried a diamond star and Celestia a sun, the newborn foal displayed only a dark, formless splotch on its flank.

“Is this my sister?” Celestia asked of her mother in a puzzled tone, circling the bed to get a better view of the blue filly.

The Alicorn of Diamonds started at the voice, but, realizing it was only her daughter, calmed down again and smiled through her tears. “This is… Luna, my dear. Your new baby sister. Is she not beautiful?”

With that, the mother detached her youngest child from her chest and held her out for the elder sister to see. Had the filly not been stained with its mother’s and its own tears and howling and screaming, Celestia might have agreed. “Why is she like this?” she asked instead. “Why is she a creature of darkness?”

“She is no creature!” the queen reprimanded the princess defensively, returning the little blue filly to her chest. “She is an alicorn like you and me!”

“And Umbraeus,” Celestia remarked, looking at the strange black mark on her sister’s flank. “How can her destiny be to bring darkness to our world when she is a daughter of Father?”

Anancita’s features both hardened and darkened as she stared down her firstborn child. “You never knew Umbraeus, Celestia. And you had better pray that you never do. You cannot compare what he was to the innocence of this foal!”

“But it has taken away the sun!” Celestia insisted, hissing in a hushed whisper so as not to disturb the foal that had finally stopped crying. “Without it, I will die! Alicorn or not, Luna is trying to kill me! What do we do!?”

“I do not know what to do,” the Alicorn of Diamonds said dismissively, shaking her head. “I am sure everything will be fine, Celestia. Speak with your father if you must. I am so very tired after all of this…” With that, the queen settled further into her bed and closed her eyes, still holding the little foal against her chest protectively.

Celestia pressed her lips together and turned away from the bed, exiting through the door to the balcony. She stood there for a while, leaning against the balustrade as she let poison cloud her mind.

Her life had been perfect. She had never wanted for anything, she had been loved by all that she knew, and her sun had shone tirelessly for more than twenty years. But now, all of that had changed. Luna had caused everything around the Solar Princess to transform. The sky was black as it was during the dark ages of her kind. The sun, her only link to life, had vanished without a trace. She knew it still existed, but where it was, she could not say, and neither could she say for how long she could carry on without it. Already, she could feel her vast and powerful magic shriveling away. In just a few days, there would be nothing left. Her parents had changed too, not just the skies. Her father had pushed her aside without even listening to the fears she now carried so strongly in her heart. Her mother had simply dismissed her and gone to sleep when she had told her she might die.

She glared disdainfully at her shadow, cast upon the balustrade by the enormous brilliant beacon of light set atop the King’s Spire. Why was it that after all she and her father had done, there was still darkness in this world? Why was it that darkness had now defeated them?

“The shadow is an enemy even I fear shall never be defeated,” she remembered her father saying once. “You must be wary of the shadow, my child, for it always lurks at your very hooves. And as we strive to become one with the superior element, the shadow will grow ever larger.”

Is this what we have come to then? Have we striven too close to the light we worship only to be cut down by some greater force of destiny? No, Father will not let that happen. He will help me, he must!

Jumping on to the balustrade, Celestia let her gaze wander upwards and, as she had expected, found her father sitting beside the great, shining jewel that adorned the top of the King’s Spire. Within moments, the white mare sat beside Ignis, gazing out upon the dark sky and the darker orb rising from the east.

“It is as if even from the realm of death, Umbraeus is able to cast his shadow upon me, upon this entire world,” the white king said after the two had shared a few minutes of silence. “My own blood has unwittingly become one if his agents. One of his most powerful agents at that,” he said, gesturing with frustration at the dark sky. “She is a newborn filly, and she has already banished your sun and drained this black sky of all the magic I had poured into it!”

“Will it be back?” Celestia asked with concern. “Will my sun return?”

For an uncomfortably long while, Ignis was silent as he looked at the rising black sphere. “It took your sun a year to rise to the zenith of the sky. This… this moon rises much faster.”

“But what happens when it reaches the top of the sky?” the daughter pressed. “Will it remain there for twenty years? Until you have another foal?”

“In our old home, the one we left when we came to this one, we had a sky very much different from this, I remember,” Ignis said. “Every day, it would have some new hue. I believe we measured our years after each completed cycle of colors. It is one of the few things I remember of my home.” The shining alicorn chuckled to himself. “It is strange how I can never remember why it was we had to leave. What I am saying is that perhaps something similar is happening to this world. I believe we will be subject to an eternal cycle of day and night from this moment onwards.” The father nuzzled his daughter affectionately. “Your sun will return to us, Celestia; you need not worry.”

The mare’s smile lasted only for a few moments. “But…”

“But so will the moon, yes. And with it, night shall return,” Ignis said. “Even if we could force your sun to remain upon our sky, my youngest daughter is no doubt as dependent upon this moon as you are upon the sun. Speaking of which, how is our Princess of the Sun?”

“Not as scared as I was,” Celestia replied, looking at her hooves. “But I feel… tired… vulnerable… All of my powers seem to be… ebbing. Disappearing as we speak.”

“They will return soon enough,” Ignis reassured his daughter once more. “Until then we shall just have to tolerate this change of scenery.”

“You said… You said we could force the night away?” the mare inquired after another while of silence. “If we are Bringers of Light, if we defend our people against darkness, should we not do whatever is in our power to preserve what is right?”

Ignis took a deep breath and stood, turning away from the twenty foot tall jewel of solid light beside them. The beacon that was now behind him seemed to shift in its luminance as he spread his wings, casting a faint shadow upon the city beneath the two royals. “As we approach the light, our shadow deepens. You must be wary lest it consumes you.” He folded his wings and the light behind him returned to its usual strength. “It is true that we must do what is right and that we should strive toward this end with all our power. But it is also true that we must do no wrong in the defense of what is right, or else all that we stand for will crumble and your shadow will overtake you. While the night is terrible, we cannot repel it without bringing harm to our newest family member. The Night Mare is many things, but she is my daughter, and she is your sister. We will have to… tolerate her. Who knows what the future may hold? Perhaps we will one day grow to love her despite her flaws.”

I doubt it, Celestia thought to herself. My sister she may be, but who could ever love this Night Mare?

The doors to Luna’s bedroom shone blue and swung open as the Princess of the Night entered, hanging her head low in defeat. Her black tiara, given to her the day she turned sixteen, slid off the top of her head and bounced off to the side as it hit her horn, but the princess did not bother to retrieve it.

A crown is for a princess… A crown is for a Daughter of Light.

The dark princess strode through her chamber and out onto her balcony, facing the twilight that had overtaken the world. Behind her, the sky was wreathed in the gold and scarlet of Celestia’s setting sun. Even in death, her sister’s fiery globe far outdid her own dark moon.

Once, she had been told, the sun would never die; it would never vanish beneath the west horizon. Before her birth, the world had been bathed always in Celestia’s golden light. But now Luna, and Luna only, took away that sun each day for the sole purpose of sustaining her own life.

And so I cast a million souls into darkness, she berated herself as she lifted the moon over the horizon, substituting the cobalt evening sky with the night’s dark shades of lavender and blue. …So that I may live another day.

And as it did most every night, a terrible feeling of selfishness overcame the young alicorn.

Every night, every week, every month! Eighteen years! For how much longer must I do this!? When will the wearying cycle of routine dull the pain of inflicting this atrocity upon the very people I should be serving?

“I am sorry,” she whispered to the world below her as the sun vanished, its remaining embers slowly dying away before Luna’s onslaught of darkness. “I do not hate you, my subjects.”

But the love you bear them is eclipsed by your narcissism, that hated part of her mind told her; the one that spoke with the voices of both the Bringers of Light. Words weigh nothing, especially when whispered to naught but the wind. Why are you not more like your sister?

“Why indeed…” the princess muttered to herself, lifting her gaze to Celestia’s shining abode which towered above her own.

Apart from the complete sovereignty of the sky which she so richly deserved, the Solar Princess did not seem to want for anything. She had more friends than Luna could ever keep track of along with hundreds more waiting desperately for a chance to receive the elder princess’ favor. As it was so clearly demonstrated by the towers of Dawn and Dusk, she had a family that was proud of her. One towered above the other, the other stood as far from the King’s Spire as possible. One was connected by bridges to all parts of the palace and beyond, the other was abandoned save for its one inhabitant and her reluctant servants. Luna had learned recently that there had been talk of building a dungeon in the lower recesses of her tower.

A place for all those enemies of light who do not bear an ebon crown. And above them all will stand the Princess of the Night. Fitting.

Luna shook her head, attempting in vain to clear her head of her somber thoughts. Recently, she had had difficulty distinguishing the thoughts of her self-loathing subpsyche from her own, even though the two spoke with different voices.

A growing luminance caught her eye below her, and she saw one of the ornamental trees of the palace’s public gardens blooming out of season, its hundreds of flowers glowing bright pink by some magic. It did not take her long to identify her sister standing near the tree, half-silhouetted by the tree’s luminance. Beside her stood two other alicorns, no doubt her close friends, admiring the Solar Princess’ work as far as Luna could tell from their body language.

For reasons she could not explain, the dark young mare was struck by the sudden urge to join the three below her or at least approach them.

What have they done to deserve your presence? the voice in her head complained as she stretched her wings, but was ignored as she let herself drop from the balcony, her wings slowing her descent only seconds before touching the ground.

Aberrant shadows flickered about the Night Princess as she approached the large building that constituted the bases of both the King’s Spire and the Dawn Tower, its luminescent marble and diamond structure lighting up the gardens surrounding the palace’s various towers in an eerie glow. Silence enveloped the mare as she walked along the white cobblestone pathways, her urge to go see her sister evaporating as the fear of facing her sister replaced it. As she rounded a corner of the main part of the palace and the three alicorns standing before the shining tree hovered into view, she drew to a sudden halt, one of her rear hooves clacking noisily against the stones she stood upon. Before Celestia could turn, however, the shadow of a nearby tree shifted, veiling her in that evil element against the eyes of the Bringer of Light.

Celestia, seeing nothing in the shadows, soon turned her attention back to her friends. “You could at least try, Nimba,” she said to one of her companions, a sky blue mare with a dark blue mane.

The mare in question, however, simply shook her head. “You do not want to see me try, Celestia. My magic works best on clouds, not plants. If you want to see glowing clouds, I would be happy to oblige, but please don’t let me near these flowers,” she said, chuckling lightly at the Solar Princess’ insistence. “Neapentha can help you, or even better, you can do it yourself.” The little knowledge Luna inexplicably possessed of her sister’s friends helped her identify the third alicorn, this one a faint green with a faint red mane, as Neapentha, who giggled at the expression of shock Celestia adopted.

“Do it myself?” the princess exclaimed in a tone of mock haughtiness. “I am your Princess of the Sun! I do not ‘do things myself’! The audacity!”

“Come now, Nimba,” Neapentha teased. “Do as your princess commands. She wants to see pretty little lights on that tree.”

“They won’t be pretty…” The blue alicorn muttered as her horn glowed a deep purple, directing her magic at a tree standing next to the blooming one. After a few seconds, the tree did not start glowing, but rather caught on fire, every single leaf and withered flower exploding violently from the weather alicorn’s misplaced magic. “I told you!” she hissed loudly at her two friends as she stumbled backwards, tripping over her own hooves, but Celestia only laughed, her magic putting out the fire as soon as it had started and replacing the incinerated leaves and flowers.

“Well you did make the tree glow,” the Solar Princess said, trying in vain to suppress her laughter. “But perhaps you are right in leaving the duty to Neapentha and me.”

Ah, so this is why you inflict your presence upon them, the voice in Luna’s head said as she smiled at her sister’s antics.

“Oh, Celestia! Can’t you show us how it’s really done?” Neapentha gushed, the light in the glowing tree fading away as she cut off the power to the spell sustaining it. “Both of us have shown you our attempts.”

What other happiness can you experience than that of others?

“Very well,” Celestia answered, still smiling from Nimba’s failed attempt as her horn shone golden. “Though one tree will hardly be a challenge, now will it?”

You are so very much like a parasite…

The trees that had previously been subjected to the two alicorns’ magic took on a brilliant radiance as Celestia’s magic took hold. After only a few more seconds, the neighboring trees and flowers and bushes all began shining as well, and another moment later, the whole garden was ablaze with the princess’ powerful magic. Luna, without the shade the tree had provided, now found herself standing only in a small patch of shadow that clung unnaturally to the white path she stood upon.

“There,” Celestia said among whispers of awe from her friends. “That should banish the darkness of Luna’s night just fine.”

“In the palace at least,” Nimba remarked. “I must say I do not envy the commoners living in the darker recesses of Orien. Or the other cities, for that matter.”

“It used to be nice out there,” Neapentha remarked, a hint of nostalgia in her voice. “Before the Night Mare.”

“Everything was better before her,” Celestia pointed out, her smile quickly replaced by a more somber expression. “Ignis was happier, Anancita was… not as detached, the world was lighter, and, oh, how we thrived. Strange how such a creature can be my sister.”

“Strange how she can be the king’s daughter,” Nimba pointed out. “How did that happen? Seems more like a daughter of… him.”

It was no new thing for Luna to be equated with Umbraeus, but like raising the moon each evening, being compared to the greatest evil alicorns knew hurt each time.

“I wish you could be my sisters instead of her,” Celestia admitted, and the green mare laughed, agreeing heartily.

Luna turned away from the three alicorns, the shadows surrounding her finally yielding to the lights in the garden as she took to the sky, the only sign of her having ever been in there a few teardrops staining the white cobblestones.

“Anyone but her!” she heard Nimba concur before she had travelled beyond the reach of the three mares’ stinging words.

You believed she loved you? The voice asked mockingly of herself as she passed beyond the walls of the palace and above the city of Orien, her wings beating furiously to escape her own thoughts.

Love is not for the wicked. Love is for the light, happiness is for the light. Fear and misery, hate and despair, those are the companions of darkness. Those are my companions.

You will find no solace in light; you are its greatest living enemy!

“Then what is my life?” she whispered to herself and herself. “Why have I been born into a world of light when I am not meant for light? When all I bring is darkness and despair?” Beneath her, the alicorn capital finally gave way to the mountains to which its northern reaches clung, shining white substituted by shadowy ridges that towered above the rest of the world. But above them all soared the Lunar Princess, ascending blindly as the tears welled up in her eyes and spilled out onto the mountains a few hundred feet below her. “It’s not fair!” she screamed, her voice echoing off the peaks below her.

Fair? You speak of justice? You!? You said yourself that you each night plunge a million and more lives into darkness so that you may live another day!

I have no other choice, Luna told herself, stopping her mad flight and clearing her eyes of her tears. She found herself hovering more than three hundred feet above a jagged mountainside that led down to a small valley another three hundred feet below her. On the horizon ahead of her, she saw the very faint silhouette of a dragon flying around amongst the peaks of its home. Perhaps the beasts indigenous to this world would be more welcoming of her.

They would not welcome an alicorn and even if they did, you would still not be deserving of their love, would you? Love is for the light!

Then what would you have me do? Return to Orien and cry myself to sleep each night?

You could do that. Live your eternal life of misery and despair, bringing nothing but pain to the world.

Or..?

There is always the other option…

Luna’s attention was drawn from the dragon upon the horizon to the fatal drop beneath her. Six hundred feet in total with nothing but solid rock to meet her, should she fall. “Is this my fate, then? Seventeen years of unending misery culminating as nothing more than a stain on a mountainside?”

Do you wish to live on? the voice taunted her. Do you even wish to be remembered?

It is either death or it is an eternity of misery for myself and the entire world to bear…

Do you have the courage to do what is right? To bring light to this world as your family does?

One life for a million others… Luna thought, mulling the possibility over for several minutes. It would be selfish to refuse.

Cowardly, Celestia and Ignis’ voice added. Like a true denizen of darkness.

I am selfish, Luna pointed out to herself. I am a denizen of darkness.

Luna shut her eyes, folded her wings, and bid her night farewell as she began to fall.

4 - Three Immortals Joined

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Genesis
Chapter 4 – Three Immortals Joined

“Dinner is served, Your Highnesses,” Iovos, the chief waiter of the palace kitchen, greeted the royal family as he alighted on the small terrace connected to both the King’s Spire and the Dawn Tower, suspended more than a hundred feet above the two towers’ base. With him he carried three platters, bearing a small variety of brightly colored peppers. With a neat flourish of the vermilion stallion’s magic, the three dishes found themselves on the table before the royal family.

“I don’t believe you have ever served us this particular dish before,” Anancita commented, gazing curiously at the hollowed out vegetables filled to the brim with fried rice.

“It will be your aperitif this beautiful evening,” Iovos began explaining, but was silenced by Ignis.

“Celestia,” the white king said, turning toward his daughter. “You can tell us what this is, can you not?”

“This…” For a moment, the Solar Princess stared quizzically at the peppers, shooting a quick glance at her mother, who only shrugged. Her features eventually brightened and she adopted a proud smile, though she still deliberated for a few more seconds. “Aren’t they just called stuffed peppers? A dish from our southern provinces?”

“Where exactly?” Ignis asked, showing no indication of whether she was right or wrong. His own pepper glowed gold for a moment, his magic slicing apart the vegetable before popping a piece into his mouth.

Anancita and Celestia did the same, the latter staring hard at her pepper as she chewed. “Glutinous rice,” she declared as she finished her bite. “Mixed with almonds and apricot... One of the dishes typically served in Meridien, the southernmost city of our civilization.”

The waiter nodded, looking impressed. “You are very right, Princess Celestia. Beauty, power, and knowledge to name but a few of your virtues. Surely you will grow up to become a blessing to our world!”

“I am grown up!” the Solar Princess objected, earning a chuckle from her parents.

“You are only thirty-eight years old, Celestia,” Ignis reminded her. “You may have achieved Ascension at a young age, but you still lack oceans of wisdom. And manners, it would seem.” He turned his head to the waiter and nodded briefly. “You are most kind, Iovos. I am sure my daughter is grateful for your flattery. We will call upon you when we are ready for the main course.” The vermillion alicorn bowed respectfully and turned to leave, flaring his wings as he prepared to leap off the terrace.

“Iovos, a moment if you please,” Anancita called out to the servant.

The stallion seemed to halt in midair and instantly turned around again at her call. “Is there anything you require, your Highness?”

“I recently learned that you are to become a father, is it not so?” Before the waiter could answer, a necklace of diamonds formed out of thin air and hovered before his eyes. “Extend my congratulations to the mother.”

“My queen is most gracious! Thank you very much!” Iovos exclaimed, bowing deeply once more before finally taking off. The queen turned to face her daughter.

“You surprise me, Celetia” Anancita admitted in an impressed tone. “It seems I can no longer keep up with the speed at which our empire expands.”

“Meridia is but a year old, and this dish only half a year,” Ignis assured the silver mare. “Celestia and I went there a few months ago.”

“You should not understate Celestia’s accomplishments,” Anancita admonished the white king and smiled at the princess. “We have a brilliant daughter and you rule a land that will always continue to grow.”

“It is a land we both rule,” Ignis reminded her, leaning in to give her a kiss. “…My queen.”

“A hundred and thirty-eight years,” the Alicorn of Diamonds sighed. “You cannot imagine how happy those two words still make me feel when you say them.”

“My queen…” the Alicorn of Light repeated in a seductive growl that made Anancita laugh. His magic tugged at her as she was pulled into another kiss with the king. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Celestia roll her eyes and open her mouth to protest. She was promptly silenced, however, by a chunk of pepper stuffed into her mouth by the mother’s magic.

“Alright, my king,” the silver mare said, breaking the kiss. “Enough food for you. Some of us are hungry and do not feed on love.” She pulled away from the king and returned to the dish set in front of her, lifting another slice to her mouth. However, it wasn’t long before her eyes found themselves drawn to the late evening sun, still shining brilliant white as it hovered above the horizon. Her brow creased as she looked at the flaming orb, some deep sense of foreboding gripping her. After trying to ignore the feeling for several minutes, she finally dropped the clump of rice she had been about to eat, gaining the attention of the two white alicorns, who had already finished their modest meals. “Something’s wrong,” she said, looking back at the darkening evening sky to the east. “Should the sun not be setting about now? I have seen neither hide nor hair of Luna since yesterday morning.”

“It is hardly a rare occurrence,” Ignis pointed out. “There was that time she stayed down in her tower for an entire week.”

“Or locked herself up in the palace dungeons!” Celestia laughed, although her smile faded at her mother’s serious expression. “I don’t feel the night pushing against my sky,” the princess told her. “It’s as if she’s not trying to raise the moon.”

“She must still be sleeping. You must at least allow her such small eccentricities, my dear. She does not have much else,” the white king said, stacking his and Celestia’s plates together.

“Perhaps you are right,” Anancita yielded, gulping down her final bite of pepper. And yet I have never felt this way before. Could something have happened to her? She seems so frail... She might have been hurt, she might have run away. After another few minutes of torturing herself with ever grimmer scenarios of what could have befallen her youngest daughter, she finally rose from the table. “Excuse me, but… call it a mother’s instinct, but I need to make sure she’s alright.”

A few quick steps and a bound later, the Alicorn of Diamonds was soaring through the air, weaving in and out among the spires of the palace until she landed upon one of the small balconies leading into the interior of Luna’s tower. As she entered, the constant light surrounding Orien quickly melted away, replaced by the odd, liquid shadows that seemed to have a life of their own, all creations of her daughter’s pseudo-manifest passive powers. It was rumored amongst the serving people that the Dusk Tower was haunted by the forces of darkness, a rumor that Anancita had always fought to quash, although walking the dark and abandoned halls of the Lunar Princess’ home, the shadows about her sighing gently in her ears and whispering in unknown tongues, she had little difficulty imagining why she had been so unsuccessful in those efforts. Luna’s attitude did little to abate the servants’ fears either, the mother had to admit.

If only a mother’s love was all that a foal needed. If only I had the power to overcome all the hatred my people can bear against one princess.

She arrived at the blackened oak door that led to Luna’s chamber and gave it a quick knock. When no answer came, she knocked again, calling out Luna’s name. When she was met by silence again, the queen finally used her magic to unlock and open the door.

“Luna?” she called out again as she entered the room warily, casting her head about for any sign of life in the dark chamber. “Are you in here?” A pink light shone forth from the silver mare’s horn and banished the shadows clinging almost unnaturally to the walls. It was then the queen noticed the black tiara lying abandoned on the floor and the wide open doors to the balcony.

The tomb of the black king had been silent for more than a century, its awning long since sealed away beneath a small but ornate dome of diamond. No living creature dared approach the resting place, as if knowing what lay beneath the ground and knowing that to fear it was the wisest thing to do. Discord, however, felt no such reservations as evidenced by the dull flashes of yellow and red that now lit up the diamond structure from below.

Yes! Yield to me! Yield to Discord! To change! To chaos!

The monumental stone mound upon which the tomb had been situated heaved once as a massive release of energy rippled across the borders of existence and inexistence, a shrill sound echoing throughout the empty landscape as the sparkling spires and figurines decorating the dome began vibrating all on their own, cracks and fissures opening in the several feet thick layer of diamond. The energy continued to build until the grave finally erupted in a dazzling display of lightning and shimmering sparkles, a column of unrestrained power punching through the adamantine dome effortlessly. The column collapsed into a shower of liquid, white-hot fire, peppering the ground below as a roiling vortex of pure energy rose out of the ground, intensifying in size and strength as the spirit of chaos transcended from one plane into another, warping the blazing rock and stone surrounding him far beyond the point of recognition.

Yes! “Yes!” Yes! “Yes!” the spirit cheered, his voice sounding both within the oblivion in which he had first been born and in the existence he now sought to enter. The vortex reversed, drawing in the power of itself and amassing it all within its center, where a figure forged from the life force of the beings Discord had consumed began to take shape. A serpentine body grew out of the chaotic mist of pure energy, sprouting two wings only a moment later. A head and a tail formed, and soon arms, legs, and horns grew from the roughhewn body. Above him, night became day and day became night as the process of his incarnation wore on, the life force slowly and quickly transforming into flesh and blood and bone and the mind of Discord slowly settling within the new vessel that would carry his power through the realm of the living and existing.

The transformation finally complete, the ties that had bound him to the void were much too suddenly severed, Discord’s whole world shifting as he fully entered life. His senses, developed and employed within the realm of inexistence, faded from his grasp as he gained eyes, ears, and nerves, all reacting violently to the stimulants of his new world and filling his mind with images far more vibrant and powerful than he had believed possible. His perception of time was altered dramatically; where days and nights had before passed in the blink of an eye, the spirit now found himself measuring time in his ragged gasps for air, the sun and moon now moving painfully slowly across the sky in comparison. The vortex that breached the barrier between the two planes of inexistence and existence finally collapsed, depositing Discord on the ground not far from the black alicorn’s warped and ruined tomb.

For days and days, the spirit made flesh lay upon the flattened mountain, twitching and convulsing violently as he fought to gain control of the confusing mesh of muscles and nerves he had become. As time passed, however, his eyes soon adjusted to the light of day and the dark of night, and his mind developed an understanding of the subtle differences between sight and hearing, feeling and tasting. And as he began to sense, as the world around him became more and more apparent, he began to move about, crawling at first, but eventually rising up on his mismatched hind legs and walking about.

For a long time, for days and nights, he simply walked, leaving behind the barren rock upon which he had been born and venturing out into the crater-like area that lay beyond the tomb, it too devoid of any signs of life. He marvelled at first as the stone beneath his feet gave way to blackened and burned earth, its many differences from what he had seen so far leaving him preoccupied for hours. And as he entered into the vast and untamed forests beyond his birthplace, he entered into world of amazing wonders, the realm of life truly opening up to him as he had dreamed it would for the past two decades. Every tree and plant, every leaf, fruit, and root, every creature he met, no matter its size: Nothing was undeserving of Discord’s fascination and curiosity. Where before his world had been full of nothing but that accursed gray and empty of all but him and the fleeting and taunting ghosts of life and death, his new world was a place abundant in life, abundant in color, abundant in a completeness that was almost incomprehensible to the spirit. And he changed all that he saw. He knew not how, only that whenever his gaze fell upon anything that existed, it would change before his very eyes. The vegetation surrounding him would grow black and twisted, leaves would turn to spikes, beasts and creatures would turn to wood as trees turned to bone, and the ground would heave and roil beneath his feet.

The farther he travelled, the more he began to realize that there was something around him, something that followed him wherever he went. It was not air and it was not solid, nor anything in between. But as he turned his gaze back upon the path he had trodden, he could sense it. A strange entity, a power that clung to him and saturated everything and anything in his tracks, seeping into the ground and the trees and into the very air, distorting that which the spirit had already changed. Without seeing or hearing, he sensed great billowing clouds of what he decided to call magic drifting up and out of the woods he travelled to touch the heavens themselves, saturating them as it did the rest of the world surrounding Discord.

Now... what is this? Distracted from the excitement of exploring his new home and all that it held for him, the spirit began tracing his footsteps back to where he had first been conceived, the power growing more and more palpable to him with every step he took. It clings to my footprints. It flows through this realm like nothing else. What is it? Tentatively, the spirit pressed a leonine paw against the trunk of a tree, and it turned to stone. More of the magic now seeped from the tree, which soon transformed again, morphing into an enormous mushroom.

This power... It comes from myself... Of course! I have his power! His might! Mine now! I am change! I wonder...

Discord focused upon the energy swirling around him, attempting to control it, to bend it, to somehow influence it. He reached out a claw as if to touch the almost imperceivable force, but as he did so, the limb blackened and burst into flames, the recoil blasting the spirit several hundred feet forward and thoroughly embedding his horns in a tree which immediately shriveled away to nothing but a puddle of brown milk.

For a moment, the spirit was silent, his face submerged in the strange liquid his magic had created.

His magic.

Discord chuckled, the chocolate milk beneath him frothing violently as he rose. As he reached out to his magic and felt another limb blackening, he burst with laughter.

“Splendid,” Nimba remarked cynically as the evening sun without warning dropped out of the sky after having lingered on the horizon for almost half a day. As the black moon rose, the waning light of Celestia’s day was extinguished, plunging the mountains below the four alicorns into a darkness only Luna was capable of conceiving. “Just splendid. How are we supposed to find her now?”

Despite what her mother had insisted was a serious situation, the Solar Princess smirked. “I think you might be forgetting who you’re flying with!” Her horn blazed a brilliant blue, and her body began exuding a radiance that could only be matched by Ignis. Within seconds, the princess had woven the light about herself and her surroundings in such a way that the shadows within several miles of the group of alicorns were driven away, but without blinding her three companions.

“Guess I did...” Nimba replied to the impressive display of magic, but then sighed in exasperation. “But why are we even looking for her? We have soldiers for that!”

“Not enough, it would seem,” Celestia answered, rolling her eyes. “Mother’s growing desperate... Nearly every soldier in Orien have been sent out to retrieve Luna, but she’s somehow certain that I will be able to find her.”

“Even if she is the princess, she can hardly refuse the queen in a matter like this,” Neapentha pointed out from her position beneath the two. “Just as we can’t say no to the princess of the sun when she is in want of our company.”

“I know...” Nimba relented. “But I still think this is a waste of time.”

“We all do,” the princess reassured her friend and shook her head at no one in particular. “When I find that pestiferous sister of mine, she will have a lot to answer for!”

The princess, her friends, and the single guard accompanying them flew on in silence for a while longer before Celestia’s eyes were drawn to the blacker-than-black sphere poised upon the hastily darkened sky. Her brow creased as she realized that the moon had travelled across the sky at an alarming rate, having already covered a quarter of its journey after only a few minutes.

Now why would she do that? She already delayed the coming of dusk by several hours. Why would she willingly shorten the night when it is what sustains her? Perhaps she is being forced to do so. Or... perhaps she finds some perverted pleasure in seeing it upon the sky; perhaps she is indeed somewhere among these mountains, sheltered from the east horizon so that she cannot see it rise. That... that might very well be. With renewed resolve, the princess began scanning the mountains around her, searching for any areas in which the eastern sky would be blocked from view. “I think she might be somewhere over there!” Celestia told the others, pointing in the direction of an especially tall cluster of peaks to her right. Without further explanation, she dove under the guard flanking her and banked right, picking up the pace so as to get the search over with as quickly as possible.

A gentle but insistent tugging finally won out over the tranquil fog of her near comatose state, and the Lunar Princess finally regained consciousness. For a long while, she remained where she was, some insurmountable and incomprehensible fatigue rendering her unable of even thinking about opening her eyes. After what Luna could only guess to be several hours, however, the tugging that had deprived her of her sleep robbed her of her lethargy as well, its frustrating persistence replacing her exhaustion with vexation at the interruption to her slumber.

Met by silence when I desire love and companionship. Met with... this... accursed tugging when I desire peace!

As far back as the princess could remember, she had never been bothered by anyone in her tower. There were her servants, who flinched under the dark alicorn’s gaze and occasionally there was her mother, who was always a welcome guest but would never disturb her. For the first time in her entire life it seemed, someone wanted her to get out of bed. Luna attempted to open her eyes, trying her best to force back the shrouds of blackness that still clouded her mind and her vision.

Someone wishes for me to wake up... For once, they do not wish for me to lock myself away within my chambers. Today of all days... For once, they do not wish for me to simply throw myself off a cliff...

Her eyes opened fully, and instead of the soft pillow and mattress she found herself on every morning, there were only rocks and empty air surrounding her.

Cliffs... Falling... Wait...

Like a curtain being pulled aside to banish the shadows with the light of the sun, the remaining fogginess of her mind melted away, the waking world bringing nothing but sickening waves of pain coursing throughout all of her body. She screamed through a broken jaw and instinctively tried freeing herself of whatever crushing force was bearing down on her, only to realize that the bones in her legs had snapped almost completely. The weight pressing down on her was only imaginary, she soon realized, the sensation brought on from having almost every bone in her body broken by her long fall last night.

Night. Night!

Gasping for air with almost useless lungs, the Lunar Princess forced her attention away from her own broken body and toward the source of the tugging sensation which had woken her. With the aid of her magic, the moon finally broke through the east horizon after hours of persistent insisting. Making up for the delay, the black orb shot across the heavens, climbing over the mountains that surrounded the dark alicorn in a matter of minutes and obscuring the blue sky with its tenebrous veil of night, its deepening shadows soon caressing the princess gently and dulling her pains. The effects of being completely submerged in her hated element were almost immediately apparent as her groaning and desperate gasping turned into a strained but steady breathing. Grunts of pain escaped her lips as she felt her bones and squashed muscles shifting beneath her skin, her body healing as fast as only a daughter of Ignis’ could.

No one is here... the princess thought dismally as she realized what had woken her, propping herself up against a rocky wall that carried the metallic tang of her own blood. She found herself upon a large outcropping of a cliff suspended high above a shadowed valley, the mountains surrounding her blocking out the majority of her own sky. She turned her gaze to the moon, its terrible blackness faintly visible against the darkness of the sudden night. Except you. The evil that plagues our world. Why do you side with she who desires not your company? Why are you my only friend?

The princess punched a healing hoof into the ground in frustration, wincing at the pain as tears flowed from her eyes. A dead rock in the sky, a homage to the greatest evil known to alicorn kind! A suitable companion indeed!

“I hate you!” the alicorn screamed at her heavenly counterpart, though her crushed lungs prevented the shout from becoming any more than a garbled mass of chokes and coughs. I deserve no companionship other than that of demons, do I? Demons and rocks are all that I can ever know the love of. And as I have just proved, this solitude will last forever! Luna threw her head back against the bloodied rock, her consciousness slipping for a moment from the force of the impact. “Why can I not die?” the princess whispered to herself morosely, her lungs having already recovered significantly. “Why must I be the counterpart of Celestia and Ignis? Why must I be the evil one? When will I be able to look anyone in the eye? When will the self-loathing stop?” The princess returned her gaze to the cliffs surrounding her and sighed. Perhaps I should stay here. Where there are no alicorns and there is only stone and shadow as far as the eye can see. Let them turn my tower into a dungeon. Let them wonder what became of me, let them celebrate my disappearance. At least that way I can finally bring someone happiness. I will stay here, alone and loved by all the nothingness around me.

The Lunar Princess slumped to the ground, allowing her surprisingly intact wings some space as she closed her eyes, trying her best to welcome the feeling of the cold rock against her fur. She closed her eyes, and although the lingering aches of her recent extreme physical trauma rendered her incapable of sleeping, she remained where she was, having no idea of how to begin her new life.

The incessant but somehow soothing sound of some foreign insect’s chirping could be heard throughout the valley Luna found herself above by the time the faint beating of wings brought her out of her reverie. Reluctantly, she opened her eyes, only to wish that she had never done so.

Anyone but her, Luna thought dismally as she rose to her weak hooves, grimacing at what was to come. Let it be Ignis, wroth at his dark daughter, Umbraeus, resurrected and vengeful, a hungry dragon, anyone but Celestia!

Through the blinding glare lighting up the entire valley, Luna saw the eyes of her sister finally lock on to her, her face twisting into an angry scowl immediately. “Luna!” she shouted vehemently at her younger sister, and the Lunar Princess briefly considered taking another plunge toward the ground that was still rather far below her. “Do you have the faintest idea how much trouble you have put the entirety of Orien through?” The white alicorn landed firmly on the shelf, dwarfing the younger princess in both size and brilliance. Nimba followed soon after, wearing something between a satisfied smirk and an annoyed frown on her face as she landed behind Luna. Meanwhile, the Solar Princess massaged her temple with a hoof, the harsh light surrounding her figure fading as she ceased her spell. “I am so tired of this, Luna. You are eighteen years old, yet you must always act like a foal! You refuse to dine with your family, you lock yourself away within your empty tower, and now you run away without telling anyone! When I was your age, I was assisting Father with nearly every aspect of ruling the world, not driving our mother crazy with worry!”

Luna said nothing, eyeing the precipice a few steps to her right as she suffered her sister’s admonishments. Could I outfly the true daughter of Ignis? She glanced back at Nimba, who had apparently caught on to what she was thinking, cerulean wings flared and ready for take-off. Or perhaps it is her I should worry about. Doesn’t she live in the clouds surrounding the palace?

“Are you even listening?” Celestia demanded, forcing Luna to pull her gaze away from her surroundings, facing her sister once more.

The Lunar Princess bit her lip. “You hate me,” she summarized briefly. “Everyone hates me. I’m more trouble than I’m worth.”

“Even she agrees,” Nimba chuckled, ruffling her wings. “Can we go home now?”

“Signal the others,” Celestia told her friend after recovering from the slight surprise of her sister’s quick surrender. “I think even Mother will agree we’ve been too lenient toward you after this,” she told Luna sternly. “Guards shall be posted outside your quarters both day and night and you will have an escort following you at all times if you leave the Tower of Dusk.”

“Good luck finding anyone willing to do that,” Nimba laughed lightly as a multi-hued light began streaming from her horn and into the sky, spawning a vortex of clouds in all the colors of the rainbow. “I mean, who would want to protect something like her?”

You know, they are right... Celestia and Ignis’ voice sounded within Luna’s mind.

“Not protecting but... shall we say ‘keeping an eye on’?” the white alicorn corrected her friend. “There is a difference. You protect those you hold dear. You keep an eye on... creatures of the night.”

They call you a monster, but you know they exaggerate.

Monster would imply I am a threat...

You know they see you as an annoyance. A burden. The chains that hold the denizens of light trapped within darkness. You are the Night Mare.

Then why am I being dragged back to Orien!?

Why indeed?

I bring darkness. I have lived my life in darkness. I belong in darkness. Yet my family insists that I must teeter on the edge between both! They hate darkness and yet refuse to accept me into light! Why have I been chosen to lead this cursed life!? It’s infuriating!

Then sever your ties. Abandon light and never set hoof within it again. Is it that difficult?

The dark alicorn thought for a moment on the life she had led so far, comparing it with her imaginings of a life in darkness. She looked briefly at Celestia, the Solar Princess distracted by a conversation with Nimba, although she still bore the hint of the scowl she had first greeted her sister with. No doubt Ignis would be a true terror to face after what she had done.

Her mind made up, Luna turned away from her elders and faced the edge of the cliff she stood upon, flaring her wings as she prepared to leap. Nimba was quick to react, however, pushing the young princess back roughly.

“Where do you think you’re going?” she asked of the Lunar Princess, making a poor effort at concealing her laughter.

How far are you willing to go? To show them the truth?

Luna’s eyes narrowed as she turned her gaze to Nimba, misery turning into resolve. “D-don’t touch me.”

“Don’t presume you have any rights after what you just did,” Celestia warned her. “Do you have any idea of how long we’ve been searching for you? Nimba is far more responsible and mature than you, and she may lay a hoof on you if she deems it necessary. Now stay still while we wait for Neapentha and Tegos.”

The young princess ignored her sister stubbornly, attempting to leap off the cliff again. This time, however, it was Celestia who stopped her, a gilded hoof smacking roughly into her chest and a firm magical tug on her wings sending her flying back against the wall. “Luna, so help me, I will drag you back by the horn if you keep this up! Stay still!”

Luna whimpered softly as she struck the stone wall, though the pain was nothing compared to what she had endured just a few moments ago. As she scowled at her sister, Celestia’s voice laughed at her mockingly within her mind. Are you as timid as you are hated?

They call me Night Mare. They call me a monster. Perhaps I...

She got to her hooves once more and in return felt Nimba’s forehoof press down on her back to restrain her. “Honestly,” the blue mare complained. “Just stand still, you little brat! You aren’t going anywhere!”

Perhaps I should give them what they want!

As Luna was pushed to the ground, her horn lit up without warning, unleashing a blast of magic that sent Nimba hurtling off the cliff and caused the shelf to destabilize and collapse. The younger sister barreled past the shocked princess of the sun and launched herself into the air, hoping that Celestia would be too distracted with saving her friend to chase after her.

“Luna!” she heard Celestia roar in anger, and the night princess doubled her speed, straining her wings to the limit until the ground below her was nothing but a blur.

Clouds!

As the spirit thrusted a claw forwards and unclenched his fist, the odd glass sculpture in front of him vaporized into several wisps of purple fluff, slowly drifting apart before Discord’s magic took hold of them again.

Fire!

One cloud sped out of his grasp in response, joining its brethren in the swirling vortex that seemed to linger above the spirit of chaos at all times. The remaining clouds he held failed to comply as well, solidifying into giant golden spheres instead.

Now that was something new, the spirit commented to himself as he approached one of the spheres, the golden mass as tall as himself. If these powers are mine, then why can’t I control them? I want this, but I get that. He frowned, thinking of some explanation as he had done so many times before. But as always, he could think of nothing. It doesn’t make sense! he lamented, tapping the sphere before him with his claw. It responded by cracking in two, exploding in a whirlwind of flower petals as a titanic bird burst from its center. As he stared at the majestic being soaring across the night sky and disappearing into the clouds, he found himself smiling. Then again, what fun is there in making sense? Perhaps it is not such a bad thing after all... He could only watch as a second golden bird of monstrous size burst from its egg while three other spheres grew legs and danced away into the forest. Control. Is it that important?

Discord turned away from the final egg as it spawned a monstrous being covered in tentacles, the spirit leaving the blue and yellow clearing in which his magic had taken firmly hold. Change is important. The place I entered existence, it did not change. Without change, everything becomes gray. Without change, everything becomes the void. Discord shuddered at the memories of his time as an incorporeal being, and the ground he walked upon became a steep hill, forcing him to crawl up an almost vertical incline. Change is change and control is control. Change is important, and if control is not change, then it is not important. If control is not change... then control is bad.

Gravity shifted around the spirit and he rose to his feet, opting to go around what had now become a hundred foot tall spire of forest floor. Was that the void, then? A place of control? A realm where there is nothing and nothing can change? So... existence is change and change is existence. Control, lack of change, is nothingness, is death. Change is life and life is change. Yes, that makes sense. I was different from nothing because I was alive, wasn’t I?

He stopped at the base of a tree, rooted firmly in the vertical ground. Life... It is the very essence of change, isn’t it? Or is it the other way around? So many shades and nuances, such variety! The spirit chittered softly, and a squirrel scurried down the trunk of the tree, leaping onto his outstretched paw. These... animals. Squirrels and wolves and eagles. They change so fast, so rapidly! Blood pulses in their veins, they feel and see everything that is around them, they move about freely within the realm of existence. And then there are these... He turned his attention from the squirrel in his palm to the tree standing beside him. Trees, plants and flowers. The same in so many ways, alive like myself but different all the same. Their change... it is slow. Does that make it any less worth than other kinds of change?

The spirit pondered this for a while. As he sat down on the grassy column rearing above the rest of the forest around him, the squirrel grew wings and flew off the palm of his paw, though Discord hardly noticed. Time... It is something perceived, not something that is, isn’t it? Before night came to be, time went by faster than it did later. When I was born, time slowed even further, I realize that now. What I now see as days and nights passed by in the blink of an eye when I didn’t exist. If I had seen the trees then, they would have appeared alive like the creatures.

But now... He rose to his feet, regarding the tree once again. Now, the change is slow. When it is slow, it is hardly change at all. If something moves an inch after a thousand years, it hardly moves. The slower the change, the less change there is. But change is good, he reminded himself, running a claw down the length of the tree. Then... that is why I am here. To change the world. Give existence a little... push in the right direction.

A large fissure formed along the line he had traced down the trunk of the tree, opening up to allow a flood of kumquats to pour sideways onto the ground the tree was rooted in, piling up all around the thin spire of earth Discord stood upon. The small fruits soon dissolved into the grass they rested upon, eating away at the column until the majority of the spire had been separated from the ground below. The spirit snapped his fingers, and the spire rocketed off toward the heavens, exploding as it impacted upon the clouds amassing far above him and temporarily clearing the sky.

It was then he saw it. Far away, beyond the mountains to the west, a brilliant light shone forth, shattering into a glittering cascade that fell upwards to strike the very fabric of the black night sky.

That is... magic. Someone’s power, but not my own. Or is it? No, no. That is something else. But... it is change as well. It’s good. This magic... belongs to the alicorns!

And he remembered. Through eyes that were not his own, he saw thousands upon thousands of images, some faded from millennia of negligence, others vivid with fire and destruction. As the part of him that was Umbraeus stirred at the sight of the familiar magic, Discord recalled events and persons that had never been among his memories.

A white one. An alicorn. His light shines brighter than even the sun.

Myself. No, him. But now myself? Argh, who!? Umbraeus, yes. Before... before myself. Him when he was himself. Opposite. Darkness. Darker than the night and feared.

A hundred alicorns. Hundreds! A thousand!? Are they all here? In the realm of existence? Where? Why is it only now that I see them? Such power these alicorns possess, their life is not like that of the tree, nor the squirrel. Theirs is like... my own. Their power equals mine, they can change what is! Like me, they bring change!

…

A war? The lesser ones fight amongst each other, falling upon their own kin with... hatred. Above them all, I battle Ignis. Umbraeus battles Ignis. This change they bring... Waste and destruction...

Discord tore his gaze away from the light in the west and regarded the area in which he had been born. Although it was still quite a few miles away, his vantage point upon the remains of the spire he had spawned allowed him to see its pale and lifeless grayness reflecting the glow cast by the magic of the alicorns.

They brought change. Swift change. The spirit’s brow furrowed. That was good, wasn’t it? The best change there is? Then... then why does it feel wrong? Because of the grayness... They brought nothingness! The power to change the world, the power to turn wood to gold and flesh to glass, to build and improve and reimagine all that is around them and they choose to transform existence, my existence, into the void! The grayness! The nothingness! Why!?

Hatred. Greed. Fear. Pain. Distrust... Betrayal... Misery... Vengeance.

Everywhere, the light burns and the darkness suffocates. In the end, the fires of enmity destroy all that there is and leave behind nothing. Is this life? Struggling for survival and tearing itself apart? Perhaps I am different. The squirrel eats of the tree. The snake eats the squirrel. Where there is life, there is death. But the animals are balanced; they do not have the power of the alicorns or myself. The alicorns are unbalanced; their power wreak havoc on existence. But... balance, with balance, change is slow! The squirrel and the tree change, but oh, so slow! Without power, existence remains... static. With power... destruction and grayness. But... I have power. I have changed the world. I build and I improve and I reimagine! Then why do the alicorns not?

No... Discord’s eyes were once again drawn to the night sky, where the blackness was now pierced by thousands of flickering lights. Some do build. Some improve and reimagine. But if now, then why not then? If there, why not here?

For several hours, the spirit sat upon the hill he had unintentionally raised, watching the stars be sprinkled across the sky and the moon, which had before been as dark as Umbraeus, take on a brilliant glow that thoroughly banished the deepest shadows of the night.

I have to go to them, he realized, and rose once more to his feet, the steep hill lowering him gracefully to the ground as it slowly decomposed into a flurry of bubbles. We are both beings of power. I must find the ones who use their powers for good, and I must stop the others from bringing the void here. We are similar in so many ways and yet I am unique. Where there is life, there is death, but I am alive and neither kill nor die. Is it because I went the other way? Went from inexistence to existence? I don’t understand, but I must. Understand fear and hatred and misery. Understand life and death.

Darkening the sky every night for eighteen years. Banishing the sun and bringing the moon every evening, disregarding everyone in the world but herself, and now this! Assaulting a member of my own court! She could have murdered Nimba had I not been there! She has gone much, much too far this time!

The furious Solar Princess tilted her wings and neatly dove beneath an arcane bolt flung carelessly over Luna’s shoulder, the white alicorn’s sister obviously just as infuriated as herself. “Leave me alone!” the Lunar Princess screamed at the top of her lungs, but Celestia was not about to take any orders from the little beast.

Surprising her yet again, Luna’s wings began beating even faster, forcing the Solar Princess to her very limits just to keep up, the wind howling in her ears and ripping and tearing at her abused plumage. I wasn’t meant for this kind of flying, she chastised herself, willing herself to not lose her little sister. They were nearing the western outskirts of the great mountain range that extended northwards from Orien, and the great ocean that seemed to constitute the majority of the world’s surface appeared beyond the final ridges, its inky darkness blending perfectly with the black sky. I should have sent Tegos to chase her down and stayed with Nimba instead. “Land, Luna! Or I will force you!”

The alarming speed at which the two were flying had already halved the distance between themselves and the massive body of water, and it was at this point Luna simply dipped out of the air, plummeting towards the ground as she accelerated even further, a cone of vapor cloaking her body as she approached a speed Celestia had only believed her father and the most elite fliers of Orien capable of.

The wrath of the sun is nothing to be taken lightly. Do not say I did not warn you.

The Solar Princess’ horn let forth a dazzling light that would have blinded anyone looking, her magic surging up into the farthest reaches of the heavens as she called down a powerful bolt of lightning to strike her own sister. A loud snap rang throughout the air as Luna pulled out of her steep dive and rocketed away from her enraged sister, but even the speed of sound could not help her escape the elder princess’ wrath. The spell hit with impeccable accuracy, striking down just between the dark princess’ wings, although the sheer size of the bolt caused her entire body to be enveloped in its blaze. When the glare of the lightning had faded, the dark princess was still speeding ahead, though upon closer inspection, her wings were now hanging limply along her sides, her momentum carrying her out upon the sea where she skidded across the dark water twice before finally crashing fully.

Perhaps that was a little too rough, the Solar Princess thought to herself, diving down in pursuit of her sister. I wouldn’t have caught her had I not struck her down, though. As the white alicorn approached her sister’s crash site, it wasn’t long before she was enveloped in the dense mist of the water that had been thrown into the air by the force of Luna’s impact upon the ocean. I told her to stop! I warned her! She attacked Nimba! She has forced the majority of Orien’s protectors to leave the city and journey out across the entire world in search of her! Besides, bringing her home will be so much easier if she is unconscious.

A powerful burst of crackling lightning erupted from beneath Celestia, striking her hard in the chest and causing her to grunt in pain as her own wings faltered for a moment. The white alicorn’s horn blazed gold once more, and the mist surrounding her burned away to nothing, revealing the younger princess, cold blue eyes riveted on the elder sister as she tried in vain to move her paralyzed wings and escape the chilling embrace of the waves washing over her.

The dark alicorn gasped in pain as her sister’s magic took hold of her surroundings, freezing the water around her body solid and trapping her so thoroughly that she could hardly even move her head. The ice gained a life of its own and crept swiftly up her neck and enveloped her horn, the numbing cold making it almost impossible for her to focus on her magic.

“You’re coming back with me, Night Mare,” Celestia said, exhaustion clear in her voice as she landed lightly upon the still growing mass of ice encasing her sister. “Whether you want it or not.”

“No! Leave me alone!” the dark princess screamed in defiance, the muscles in her neck bulging as she tried to break free of her restraints.

Celestia’s horn glowed again, and the bulk of ice rose out of the water and began floating back toward the coast. “That is obviously not in the interest of our civilization, but we’ll have to see what Ignis says.”

“Wh-why!?” Luna stammered, her horn flickering and sputtering within its icy cage as she fought to free herself. “Why d-d-do you want me in O-Orien!? I am hated. Mother loves y-you more than she d-does me. F-Father pr-pretends I do not exist. You w-w-wish Neapentha and Nimba t-to be your sisters instead of me!”

“My si...? How would you know that?” the white princess asked, her eyes narrowing at her sister.

Luna’s gaze fell to the ice. “I l-listen... occasionally... in the shadows.”

Celestia gave a disgusted sigh and turned her back on her sister. “Do you want to know why I am loved and you are not? Because I commit myself to improve this world. I banished the darkness native to this world and I help Father in any way I can. I found cities and I do what I can to make my subjects happy. I even rescue my sister from herself.”

“Rescue!?” Luna demanded angrily. “You and Nimba t-tried your best to hu-hu-humiliate me! Y-you struck me down with a bolt of lightning! You... you have encased me in ice! H-had I not been Ignis’ daughter, I-I would have died!”

“Had I not been Ignis’ daughter, Nimba would have died!” Celestia retorted and pointed a hoof back at the direction Luna had flown before crashing. “Had I not apprehended you, you would have intruded upon established dragon territory! That could very well have resulted in an all out war for which we are not yet prepared! I think of others than myself. You, on the other hoof, lock yourself away in your tower, caring about nothing else than yourself and your precious night!”

“You think that is who I am!?” The trapped princess asked of her sister, becoming livid almost instantly. “You think that is what I think!? I am a monster! I am a beast! I am the evil spawn of Umbraeus! The false daughter of Ignis! The selfish narcissist who plunges the world into darkness so that she may continue her feeble existence! I am evil! You think I don’t know that!? You think I take enjoyment in that fact!? You think I want any of this!?”

Celestia turned back toward her sister, surprised at the outburst, but the dark alicorn had already calmed, a somber look in her eyes as she once again gazed at the ice encasing her. “No matter how much you hate the night, sister, I guarantee you: I hate it more. No matter the hatred any subject bears me, I guarantee you: My self-loathing is far greater.” The Solar Princess gave the trapped alicorn a skeptical gaze, finding it hard to believe the words her sister had spoken.

She hates herself? The Night Mare?

Luna failed to continue, and the oppressive silence soon compelled Celestia to speak. “You hate the night?” She forced a light chuckle. “Forgive me if I do not believe you. You are the Lunar Princess. You created the moon and the night sky; they are what keep you alive.”

“They are what make me the most hated being in the world,” Luna insisted. “Is any life worth living if you are never loved? If you have no prospect of ever being loved?” The princess burst into tears. “When all look upon you with scorn and disdain? Had I not been a princess, you would have killed me long ago, wouldn’t you?”

Celestia didn’t answer, eyeing her sister as she sensed some sort of trap. She is full of surprises tonight. She may just be luring me into lowering my guard.

“No, I fail to see life as a gift,” Luna continued morosely. “Immortality is but another curse the night has put upon me.” Both princesses were silent again as the mass of ice left behind the ocean and changed course to levitate southwards along the mountain range not far away. One waited for her younger sister to continue while the other debated whether or not to do so. “I am doomed to carry the burden of the night forever. At first I tried to relieve myself of this evil I carry...” The Lunar Princess sighed. “Is it true we cannot die, Celestia?”

“Luna..!” Celestia gasped, taken aback by what her sister had just revealed. “You didn’t!”

“My bones had finished healing when you and Nimba found me,” the dark alicorn revealed. “I saw no reason not to. Why not end it? Why not simply die? But Ignis’ heritage prevents such a mercy! Failing that, I wished to live out the rest of eternity away from... everything... But even that you deny me!”

“I only...”

“No matter,” Luna interrupted her sister dejectedly. “‘Tis but another drop of sadness in a sea of sorrow. A sea that is of no concern for you denizens of light.”

The Solar Princess was silent for a while as the two travelled onwards on their strange vessel. “Why..? Why should I believe you?” she finally asked, a deep sense of regret entering her mind as she looked upon her frozen sister.

Perhaps... I was wrong. Perhaps her evil is not fully intended. Ugh, how could I believe such a thing in the first place? No, there must be more to this Night Mare than I thought.

Luna made an attempt at a wry smile, although the coldness was slowly numbing her facial muscles. “W-why should you listen? I... I-I no longer care. I thought I was worth saving, that I deserved to be rid of this Night Mare I am. B-but... it matters l-little, does it? My sorrow concerns none.”

One chance. If this is a ruse, she will suffer greatly.

The Lunar Princess flinched as her prison shuddered violently, the large mass of ice landing heavily upon the ground as the glow in Celestia’s horn was cut off abruptly. Luna’s eyes cast about warily for any signs of danger, but the white alicorn had eyes only for her sister, the creature she had so thoroughly misunderstood for eighteen years. “Your sorrow is of my concern,” she finally said, drawing the attention of her sister once more. “It is the concern of us all.”

Luna sighed unhappily. “I know. Our soldiers and subjects are all out searching for me. My burden becomes your burden. It is exactly what I tried to prevent.” The ice vanished in a blinding burst of the Solar Princess’ magic, evaporating instantly without harming either of the alicorns. When the dark princess recovered from the bright flash, she found herself in the tight embrace of her elder sister. “What are you doing!?” Luna cried out, struggling weakly to escape her sister’s tight hold around her chest.

“I’m hugging you, silly!” Celestia half-laughed, half-cried into the soft azure mane. Has she never experienced such a gesture? “I have wronged you, Luna,” she continued in a much more serious tone of voice as Luna ceased her struggling. “Irreparably so. I never understood you nor did I ever attempt to. I... I believed what you brought to be what you were... and I hated you for it. I told others to hate you as well... I daresay I have been spreading nearly as much darkness as you yourself have.” The white alicorn’s horn pulsed once, and her sister’s freezing body was warmed instantly. “I... I’m sorry...” she sobbed, crying in earnest now as she held her still immobile sister in her forelegs.

Celestia gave an inaudible gasp of surprise as her sister returned the embrace, the dark princess sobbing wordlessly against her elder sister’s white fur.

I’ll take that as a ‘yes’, then, Celestia thought to herself, smiling at her younger sister.

“I always thought I hated you,” she said, more to herself than her sister. “But... I didn’t know you. Eighteen years and you are still a stranger to me.” Her musings were met only by another series of indecipherable choked sobs. “But maybe I should take the time to get to know my own sister,” the white alicorn said, stroking her sister’s mane comfortingly. “You have shown me a light deep within you. One that I would hate to see extinguished. You don’t belong in darkness, Luna.”

“B-but th-th-th-they-they h-hate me!” Luna finally managed to croak out after several failed attempts. “I do not belong in light either!”

“They hate the night,” Celestia insisted. “They think the night is who you are. From what you have shown me, that seems not to be the case.” The white alicorn broke out of the embrace and her sister followed suit a few seconds later. “Make a gesture for all to see,” she told her little sister. “One that will grant you the favor and admiration of our people.”

“I... I’m the spawn of Umbraeus,” Luna countered. “What gesture could possibly give me the favor of our people? Everything I do brings misery.”

“Join our family as a bringer of light,” Celestia suggested. “Light up the night sky.”

“I can’t!” Luna whimpered. “I’ve tried and tried, but the night swallows all light! I-I don’t know how to...”

The Solar Princess shushed her reassuringly. “Then it is good I am here to help you. I will show you the way; you bring the light.”

“I-I don’t have any...” Luna muttered despondently as Celestia lowered her horn to hers.

“You do,” the white alicorn insisted once more. “Look deep within yourself. I know that you are a lot stronger than you let on.” Celestia’s horn glowed a soft gold, and the younger sister gasped at what the Solar Princess presumed to be her first time pooling magic with another alicorn. “Show me who you are,” she encouraged her sister once more, feeling the beginnings of Luna’s magic joining her own. “Show the world.”

“I’ll... I’ll try.”

Power flowed into the union as the young alicorn’s inhibitions slowly melted away, Celestia focusing on channeling her sister’s magic into the heavens while Luna struggled to wield the superior element. Both soon felt themselves shrinking to an immeasurable size as their consciousness merged with the ethereal canvas above, spanning the world from horizon to horizon and far beyond.

Massive amounts of power began flowing through the bond as Luna succeeded in finding her light, her progress translating into large, flowing wisps of pure light that zoomed upwards to strike the sky, although the night remained dark. “It is not working!” Luna complained after a few minutes of making no progress, her efforts already weakening as despair overtook her. “I cannot bring light!”

Celestia said nothing, but instead let loose her own power, using her bond with Luna to force her magic into the strange sky as best she could, emboldening Luna’s attempts as the two worked together to brighten what was black. After a while, however, even the Solar Princess had to quit. “You’re right; your night sky seems content to swallow all the light we meet it with.” She pondered the problem for a moment while Luna slumped to the ground in defeat. “A different approach,” she finally suggested. “Pierce the sky. Bring light to one pinprick of darkness at a time and keep that light burning.”

Luna got to her hooves. “I shall try,” she answered hesitantly, summoning her powers once more to join Celestia’s and seeking out single points upon the sky, the two alicorns firing blazing comets of light into the air that tore apart the darkness upon which they landed and nestled themselves amid the blackness.

Spurred on by the initial success, the dark princess redoubled her efforts, her horn giving birth to a flurry of the brilliant white sparks that erupted into a shimmering column of light before branching outwards, the orbs of light falling gently upwards to touch the night sky. In little more than an hour, the entire breadth of the night sky been sprinkled with twinkling stars that glowed as brightly as the little princess’ eyes as she gazed upon her work in wonder.

“It’s beautiful...” she breathed when Celestia finally broke contact, lifting her head so she could see the sky for herself. “Wh-why are we stopping?”

“We have expended much of our power,” the white princess told her sister, smiling with satisfaction at their progress. “And there is one last thing I thought we should try to do. Transform the moon. Make it not a herald of light’s doom, but a beacon in the darkness.”

“You can do that?”

“Only with your help,” she reminded her sister, quieting as she once again thought of how best to overcome the darkness that was somehow darker than the black sky. “Now, imagine the moon is not a disc fixed to the fabric of the sky, but a globe floating far above us. Imagine it has two halves: One darker than night upon which we now gaze, and another side, hidden from us below behind the moon’s shadowy, terrible face. One that shines as brightly as Orien... perhaps even as the sun itself. Are you ready?” she asked of her sister, looking down at her again as she brought her horn within reach of Luna’s.

”I don’t know...” the dark princess replied shakily, touching her horn to her sister’s. “The moon cannot shine, Celestia! It devours all light! It is stronger than both you and Ignis!”

“The moon is yours,” the Solar Princess only told her sister, summoning her powers for one last joint effort.

For the next many hours, the two princesses toiled away at the night sky, pouring everything they had into the dark orb above, though the moon, true to Luna’s words, swallowed every speck of light they threw at it. It was not until the moon had entered into the final quarter of its journey across the sky and a despondent Luna had been comforted several times that a thin sliver of pale and bright light finally emerged along the right side of the black sphere. The light slowly grew brighter and larger as the sisters renewed their efforts, pouring what remained of their powers into their extensive spell until it had finally driven away the darkest darkness alicorns had ever known.

“There.” Celestia said, sitting back on her haunches and gazing up at the bright moon. “In but a single night, we have banished the strongest shadows of this world.”

“I can’t believe it...” Luna muttered, sitting down beside her sister as she shook her head slowly, taking a few deep breaths to steady herself. “The night has been tormenting me for years, but now... is it finally over?”

“The night has changed,” Celestia said as tears of joy and relief ran from her little sister’s eyes. “The moon itself has changed.” She gestured at Luna’s flank. “And it shows on your person as well.” Upon the black splotch that had previously been the only feature to adorn the young princess’ flank now was the image of a bright crescent, much akin to the shape the moon had assumed while waxing.

“I’m... I’m a bringer of light?” Luna whispered in amazement, staring first at the crescent upon her flank and then the full moon. “No longer a demon, no longer a monster or a spawn of Umbraeus?”

“You have never been any of those things,” Celestia insisted, wrapping a foreleg around her sister affectionately. “You might even have grown a little just now,” she said as she noticed the younger princess’ visibly larger frame. “Stand up, let me have a proper look at you.”

Luna did as she was told and stood, adopting an expression of both bemusement and excitement as she twisted and turned her neck to inspect herself. Almost a foot higher, Celestia marvelled as she regarded her sister curiously. The mane has grown a lot longer as well. And... is it developing the ethereal quality possessed by Father and myself? Is she finally nearing her Ascension? One can no longer call her a filly, that’s for certain. Strange how she has matured so slowly.Then again, indirectly, I may be the one to blame for that.

“I’m sorry,” the Solar Princess blurted out, and the younger sister gave her a quizzical look.

“Why? What for? You just...”

“I should have paid more attention to you. If I had... you would not have been driven to attempted suicide.”

Luna was silent at the confession, no doubt, Celestia assumed, because she couldn’t argue with what had been said.

“You have always lived in the shadow I cast,” she continued apologetically. “And that is a vast darkness to be born into. I should have been there for you as Mother was. For eighteen years, you suffered so because of mine and all others’ neglect and scorn. I should have shown you the light earlier... Can... can you forgive me?”

Luna smiled warmly, a sight Celestia doubted even her mother had seen. “You lit up my night,” she whispered, taking a quick glance at the sky, as if to make certain the stars were still there. “Of course I forgive you!”

“Thank you,” Celestia said, spreading out her wings as she adopted her sister’s smile. “Should we return to Orien, then?”

The two sisters were met with a brilliant ray of light leaping into the sky and spreading bright ripples of Ignis’ magic to the farthest corners of the world as they neared Orien, signalling the return of the Lunar Princess to everyone out searching for her.

Although Celestia had hated to do so, she had decided to take her sister straight to the capital instead of returning to where she had left Nimba. It did, however, seem the best possible option at the time, given the tension that would no doubt be present between her and Luna. The bright clouds the sky alicorn had summoned prior to the assault should have led Neapentha and Tegos to her position, Celestia assured herself as she glided past the walls surrounding Orien. By now, the two alicorns would have healed any injuries Nimba had sustained and seen Ignis’ signal for them to return home.

The Solar Princess looked at her sister with a reassuring smile as they neared the palace, only to find that she was no longer flying beside her. She gazed at the streets below her and found the dark princess landing gracefully before a large group of alicorns. “The princesses have returned!” they cheered, letting forth a dazzling display of light from their horns in celebration.

How much she has changed. Yesterday she shunned and feared our subjects just as they did her, but today she approaches them with a smile.

The Solar Princess halted in midair, both excited and trepidatious as to how Luna would cope with such a large crowd. It never proved to be a problem, however, as the alicorns below took Celestia’s stopping above them as an invitation for them to join her, all of them taking wing and leaving behind the dark princess below.

“The Solar Princess has brought light to the night!” a stallion ahead of the others shouted excitedly.

“She has tamed Princess Luna!” another declared.

“Truly a daughter of Ignis!”

“She has spread the superior element even farther than he!”

Oh dear... the white alicorn thought with worry as she was soon surrounded by congratulating alicorns. Lighting the night seemed to have changed nothing.

“Th-thank you!” she responded to her admirers distractedly, smiling politely as she tried to look past those gathered below her and catch sight of Luna.

“Is the sky yours once more?” An excited mare asked from somewhere to her right.

“Will the age of light begin anew?”

“I-it never truly ended,” Celestia insisted, though even she herself doubted those words. “I really just helped... Luna!” she called out as she saw a dark shape silhouetted against the light emanating from the palace, the Lunar Princess already closing in on the Dusk Tower. The white alicorn became wreathed in light and vanished, appearing outside the gathered throng of her subjects and chasing after her sister for the second time that night. “Luna!” she shouted once more, but the dark princess either ignored her or didn’t hear, delving into her tower without looking back. She heard a muffled explosion, and the dimly glowing diamond-marble around the entrance collapsed behind Luna, barring access to anyone attempting to follow her. Celestia sighed with exasperation as she found an alternate route into her sister’s home. The light of her horn, at first banishing the unnatural shadows clinging to the walls around her, dimmed as she ventured further and further into the dark and unfamiliar corridors, the curse of darkness pervading the air soon overcoming even the Solar Princess’ power.

“Betrayal... Trust none... Monster... Love... Never...” The white princess shook her head, trying to rid herself of the disconcerting and disembodied voices all around her, the animated shadows murmuring and moaning from the anguish Luna felt.

When she finally found the black doors leading to her sister’s bedroom, she found it wreathed in the Lunar Princess’ magic, crackling dangerously with the power of an alicorn who could move the heavens.

“Luna! Come out!” Celestia begged of her sister, but was met only by the sound of the rushing arcane currents that comprised the barrier surrounding the young princess’ chambers. “They misunderstood! You misunderstood! Show them the real you and you’ll find that they’ll love you as I have learned to do!”

“Lies...”

“Lower your barrier, Luna! You’re acting like a foal! This time I mean it! Come out, and we’ll explain everything to them!” Celestia sighed at the unwavering transparent blue screen before her. “I can’t very well tell everyone that you were the main driving force behind lighting the night and refer them to an impassable barrier!”

Silence. Nothing but the fragmented whispers of darkness.

“Can you even hear me!?” The white princess touched a gilded hoof to the force field and yelped as the vast amounts of arcane energy pent up within the wall lashed out at her, flinging her against the wall behind her with enough force to break any mortal alicorn’s wings.

The princess resisted the urge to scream, not out of pain, but out of frustration, picking herself up from the floor. “Lower that barrier!” Her powers weakened by her recent lighting of the night sky, the princess unleashed the most devastating lightning bolt at her disposal, though the force field only trembled slightly under her onslaught. “Lun...” The glowing wall of energy became abruptly incandescent as it returned the full force of Celestia’s attack, a blast of lightning sending Celestia hurtling through the same wall she had struck just a few seconds ago, ending up in a small library.

“Not welcome... Leave...”

“Fine!” she shrieked furiously as she picked herself up from the floor, now littered with dimly glowing rubble and ruined books. “Stay in there! I lit the night for you, but you refuse to accept the gift I give you!”

I can’t believe her! the white alicorn thought to herself angrily after realizing Luna was probably unable to hear her. Of course they are bound to think I lit the night! What did she expect!? What did I expect..? But will she stay and let me explain the situation? Will she do anything to help her own damn self? No! Ten seconds of things not going as she had expected, and she locks herself away inside her tower! So much for the self-pitying and self-loathing! If she truly dislikes her life as it is, she must be the greatest masochist I have ever known!

The white alicorn fumed silently for a few more minutes until she finally managed to find a way out of the increasingly dark tower. I’ve had quite enough of dealing with darkness for the time being. It is high time I raised the sun!