The Stereotypical Drafts

by JinxTJL

First published 4th of April, 2023

The anniversary collection of Chapter 40 drafts.

Hello there and welcome, my favorite and most dedicated readers, to my celebration of The Stereotypical Necromancer's two year anniversary! Two years ago today, I began writing my overlong and worn-out recollections of a pitiful colt's reoccurring traumas!

I've been deliberating on what the best way to celebrate would be for a few anticipatory months now, and as today drew nearer, I hit upon a neat little idea. An idea I'd already had a little while ago, that I had put in my pocket for a rainy day.

Today is that rainy day! Today, I'll be presenting some of the discarded drafts I saved in the process of writing chapter 40! You can't ever escape it: chapter 40 will haunt us all until we die!

Nowadays, each disparate part of chapter 40 has been individually named, so any newer readers probably won't quite understand the pain we all feel. Anyone that's been around for a while will remember how tedious it all was, though. And now, whether you suffered through it yourself or not, you'll get to relive that experience! Lucky you!

I'm more glad than anything that chapter 40 is over, but there was a lot of intriguing stuff I cut in the interest of time, ironically enough. Some of these drafts are over a year old, and I don't even remember what they're about. It's gonna be a long, mortifying trip down memory lane.

I'll have some of the more notable drafts in single chapters, while consolidating some of the more disparate scraps into a collection. I'll also be sharing my thoughts and opinions on the content and why I might have cut it in the AN. It'll be fun to share a little bit of the background process of writing with you!

The naming format for chapters should be obvious enough, but inside the chapters, the top paragraph will noticeably be entirely italicized. If present, these beginning paragraphs should mark the published instance of what preceded the cut, so you can ctrl+f and find where we're picking up from, if you want. For your convenience!

Now, some of these drafts may contain ideas that may eventually make their way to actual chapters, and in those cases, I won't censor them. This is the anniversary, and I think anyone who's dedicated enough to care and to read these drafts in the first place will deserve to get a sneak peek into some ideas for the future.

And finally, I just want to give an additional thanks to all of you who read my garbage. Writing is the main source of stress in my life, but I've never had anything give me such a sense of profound purpose before. Seeing how others receive my works is my greatest source of joy in life, and I don't know what I'd do if I weren't writing.

Whether you've been here for a year or a day, you truly mean the world to me.

Let's look at some drafts.

12/25/21 - Chapter 41 - Complete Rewrite

Her head turned again, this time against Her chest: so Her gaze met his as directly as it could. Her hooded eyes over unnatural pupils seemed to dance with mirth and challenge, beckoning him to leap ahead and join in. "An interesting thought, isn't it? Guaranteed honesty at a risk? What might you choose, child?"

/////////// Bridge ///////////

He furrowed his brow and smacked his lips as set his face into the most thoughtful expression he could manage. If he looked like he was furiously deliberating, She'd probably give him more time.

Though, in truth: he knew there was only one thing to say. While this bait was obviously a trap, he could not for the life of him figure out how. Thinking critically and making random conclusions off of little information was practically his specialty, and a 'game' based off of that seemed designed to specifically benefit him.

Why would She do that, though? To play fair? She didn't seem the type... Was this a manticore's paw situation, where he'd end up regretting the promise of honest answers?

Images of a brown unicorn's head expanding and exploding into viscera flashed before his eyes for a moment, before he quickly shook them away.

No, that was dumb; answers were what he needed most. He didn't particularly care how traumatizing or dangerous they were, he just wanted them.

So, there was really no reason to refuse. If She was being truly genuine about answering honestly, then this would be an opportunity he couldn't let pass. Having to guess the premise for each answer would leave him to do a lot of the hard parts, but-

Oh.

His expression soured as instantly as the connection was made, and he turned a critical eye on the once again detached stare of The Queen of Nightmares. "This.." He spoke slowly, almost accusingly. "..this is just another part of your 'test', isn't it?"

It was a moment of hanged silence before Her face found a smile again, somehow both condescending and praising at the same time. "..And? Your choice?"

Bingo, he was right. The next part of the test was about thinking critically, and forming conclusions based on few and inconsequential details.

Ugh.

Well, he was still thoroughly on Her track, but he hadn't thought he was getting off anyway. He rolled his eyes as pointedly as he could, and nodded once. "I'll play."

There was nothing else to do, and nothing to say as Nightmare Moon's grin widened: showing blunt edges and sharpened points alike. "Then, play."

A command, spoken so casually, but with firm authority that he probably did not want to disobey. She wanted him to play, to guess. 'Ask your first question': Her eyes seemed to shout.

So he would.

He lowered his head, and brought his hoof up to his chin in the most classic 'thinking' pose he could think of. There were a lot of things to consider, and a lot of memories to go through. A placebo to help him think wouldn't hurt.

So... his question was why She had brought him here, why She had taken this specific time to fetch him. So, why had She done that? What possible reasons would there be? Think the facts over.

She was rather vain, having crowned Herself a moniker of Queen: maybe She just wanted him? In a material way? This was the first time She had been free in a thousand years, so maybe She just wanted him as soon as possible? She had said something to that effect multiple times in Her monologue of his memory, so it wasn't far-fetched.

But... no. As he flicked his eyes up to Her expectant gaze, and thought back over everything he'd gone through to get here...

She had been urgent. She needed him here, not just wanted. It was an important distinction; things he should carefully distinguish between. She didn't want him; She needed him, now.

Why would She need him, what for? He didn't have anything that she'd want, he was as naked and possessionless as the day he'd been born. He didn't have any special talents to do anything, not even in his actual special talent.

This was going nowhere, fast. Step back, he was focusing in too much on the details. Take a breath, and reevaluate. Find the core of the question, and work from there.

Why would somepony need somepony else? What is the most common cause to seek another's help?

No, wait: there it was in the question. To help them with something. She needed him to help Her.

What did ponies usually need help with, discounting mundanity? Oh, that was a little broad, though; now might be the time to consider the relevant factors.

Okay, what was She here for? What did he know about Nightmare Moon?

Over the years of Her apparently talking to his subconscious in his sleep, She had told him not-so-surprisingly little about Herself. She was Princess Celestia's long estranged sister; the Princess of the Night who had been banished to the moon exactly one thousand years ago after She had tried to orchestrate a coup.

Okay, so this was pretty obvious: She was here to depose Her sister and take over Equestria. Did She need his help with that?

No... She'd already done that, hadn't She? When they'd been together, up in Her room, She'd said that she'd come back victorious. Sure, She hadn't specifically said that she'd won, but she'd implied it.

And that was all she'd implied. That She'd defeated Her sister. Nothing else.

He narrowed his eyes up at Nightmare Moon; past Her awaiting gaze, and at Her fur. She didn't seem hurt or winded in any way, and Her coat was beautiful and blemish free as he'd described. She'd seemed that way earlier, too: when they'd been in Her room together.

She had no reason to lie about defeating Her sister in that moment, but She hadn't said how. Maybe that was on purpose.

If She had, say: assassinated Princess Celestia or some such thing, then it wouldn't exactly be the end of things, would it? No, The Pure Goddess was the heart and head of the country for sure, but She wasn't the entire country. If She disappeared, there'd be retaliation. The Royal Guard, at least.

Nightmare Moon's conquest wasn't over, yet. There was still something standing in Her way.

As soon as the thought processed, his head instantly flew into a frenzy of self-deprecating comments and refusals; but he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and did his best to sweep them aside.

Whatever it was, She thought She'd need him to help Her overcome it. It didn't matter if he could; all that mattered was that She thought he could help. Think in Her horseshoes.

That was it. She didn't want him here for some petty, vain reason. She needed him here; so urgently that She'd coached him through several heartfelt conversations and then forced him across a broken-down bridge over an indeterminably deep canyon.

Why would She have put him in danger like that? What would She have risked him for?

It was urgent; he'd had to hurry. He'd had to be here, now, for this moment.

This... was good. It left a lot of holes in a lot of places, but it also made a lot of sense. She'd put in a lot of effort to have him here for this specific moment; and there was no way she'd have done all of that for anything less than something dire.

It was a good guess, he was going for it.

His thinking done, he let his hoof fall to the floor, and raised his head back up to Nightmare Moon's. She was still staring at him with ease and breeze clear in Her general demeanor. Her eyes were hooded and glimmering with mischief, Her muscles were loose and relaxed, and Her wings sat stilly and comfortably at Her sides.

She didn't look pressured, but... maybe She was putting on airs?

He quirked his eyebrow, and lifted his hoof back up to sit under his mouth. "You... need me for something."

His question trailed off as a stray thought caught his momentary attention, before he was brought back around by a reproachful look from the mare in front of him. Focus in; be detailed, idiot.

He pursed his lips as he gathered his thoughts. How best to articulate it..? "You need my help with something. You went through a lot of trouble to have me here tonight, specifically." He narrowed his eyes in pointed suspicion. "There's something happening soon that you need me to help with. Something that, for whatever reason, you can't handle on your own; or, at least, you need me for."

Was that too broad? She'd only said that he'd need to land near the mark, not be exact.

"Some kind of.. opposition?" Finishing unsteadily as he caved to a strange sense of integrity probably wasn't the best thing to do in this situation, but he did feel better for narrowing it down; even if it might hurt his chances of being correct.

//let's do this nasty thing

The immediate lack of a response as Nightmare Moon stared blankly with hooded eyes at him was... somewhat concerning; but, before he could even begin to spiral into regret, She began to speak. Plainly and without any sort of grand, uncomfortable mannerism. "What sort of opposition do you foresee stifling me so? Be more exact."

The sheer lack of pomp in Her voice as She simply spoke threw him off for more than a moment, as his mouth hung open dumbly. It was just so odd for Her to forego any sort of tactic to make him uncomfortable; his jaw worked wordlessly and autonomously until something kicked into gear, and he stammered out a response. "Buh- uh- The.. The- uh- Royal Guard?"

He instantly wanted to kick himself for being so indecisive as the end of Her mouth almost instantly rose in a mocking sneer. It was only a moment of the disparaging look, though: as Her face strangely lost its ever-present malice, and Her eyes trailed upwards to the ceiling.

"The Royal Guard?" She whispered, seemingly almost asking the question of Herself. The uncharacteristic show of... indecision was almost enough to make him gape; but not before She was blinking and shaking the emotion off as quickly as it had come, and turning Her gaze back to him.

Whatever mystifying thing She was mulling over had passed, as Her face regained its former air of weirdly deserved superiority. "The Royal Guard, you say?" She barked out a single syllable of a laugh as She theatrically threw Her head aside. "You believe my sister's glorified retainers may yet come to save you? That there's any such hope left from her?!"

Her eyes turned back around to him as Her voice grew in volume, and he was taken suddenly aback at the wildfire burning in Her eyes. Her mouth stretched in a grin that almost seemed too wide for Her prim face, and Her rows of edged teeth seemed suddenly jagged and at odds in Her mouth.

"You believe you may yet find hope?! Some recourse?! Some tunnel of rescue to a tomorrow?! Is there still light left, Light Flow?!"

As escalated and dangerous as the situation seemed to be becoming, and as much as he was suddenly feeling as though he should back away: the tempest of anger on Nightmare Moon's face just sort of... drained. All at once.

Her wide, undeniably frenzied grin that had grown in an instant turned down, and the mania dancing in Her eyes was snuffed out as She suddenly closed them. Her shoulders slumped down as though Her strings had been cut, and She simply... hung for a moment.

It was disconcerting in nearly every way he could find a meaning.

He watched with wide eyes and a hammering heart as She took a single, deep breath, exhaled in one long stream, and opened Her eyes again. Carefully controlled indifference shone from them in front of something muted, and when She spoke again: Her voice came as a monotonous, matter-of-fact, drone; as if the words had been obliquely rehearsed.

"Unfortunately, the Royal Guard will not be an issue."

Her shoulders drew up against an invisible backboard to a meticulously straight posture; one which seemed nearly painful in its adherence. She sat perfectly stilly, like a statue; quite the change from Her work up to raving madmare mere moments ago. If he hadn't known better: he would say it was almost as though She had been reset, in a way.

But that didn't really make sense; not in any real definition.

Her lip curled as Her gaze fell, showing the edge of a.. strangely pained grimace; as if the words burned on Her tongue. "You see, my sister seems to have issued a standing order to what I gather as being every branch of the government; one that renders them rather unable to stand against me, and one they seem to be obeying."

He... what? No, wait, what?!

He wasn't sure what his expression of dumbfounded, gaping surprise was contributing; but: in truth, with the layering shocks, his mind had almost completely shut down. There was barely enough power left in his head to light a lightbulb, let alone to form more than one or two cogent thoughts.

"You- You can't be saying?!" It was all he could do to gather himself enough to ask something so short and obvious, stupefied as he was. Few things were connecting in his brain very well; as he struggled to comprehend the situation as it had apparently formed behind the scenes.

If Princess Celestia had ordered a cease-fire against Nightmare Moon, and Princess Celestia had lost... Wouldn't that mean..?

It was a strange thing to witness: Nightmare Moon looking almost as grim as the feeling creeping along his neck. She closed her eyes and nodded once; the action bringing an air of heavy finality to Her words as She spoke next.

"It seems that, in the absence of my sister, the kingdom has laid itself prone." Her eyes narrowed, and shifted to the side slightly. "Equestria... has surrendered."

Quick words, spat in an instant; like they had a sour taste.

The deceptively simple sentence held weight beyond imagining, and- as his eyes froze widely- he could only blink in autonomic reflex as multiple conflicting thoughts all collided messily in his head. A massively destructive wagon pileup of emotions and thoughts and ruined plans.

Nightmare Moon had won.

Sense had scattered around his mind like a cake dropped into a deep, dark cavern, but the general air of present urgency allowed it to semi-quickly grossly reconstitute into a semi-solid mush. Except: that was a pretty weird metaphor that he wasn't sure he would have made if he'd been in his right mind. Oh, but hadn't he made tons of weird metaphors over the years? Was this panic par for the course? What kind of panic was normal for him when he wasn't completely insane? Was it even normal to panic? What was normal, to a new, old, him?

Okay, he was badly drifting, now. Bring it together, okay? Remeber the certainty. Help wasn't coming. That was... fine. It wasn't like he was banking on a last minute rescue and a total defeat of Equestria's soon-to-be new ruler, or anything.

Except he was and now he wasn't sure what to do anymore and maybe it was kind of terrifying and maybe he was beginning to freak out a bit?!

He.. sure he had said stuff about being a villain and overthrowing the government and all that; but... It was just... different, to hear about it happening for somepony else.

It was scarier. It was... sad.

He lived in Equestria. He was apart of it.

He lived there.

He swallowed what little moisture there was in his mouth as his throat began to close up with a mixture of panic and something else, and flicked his blurry eyes up to the apparently completely unopposed conqueror in front of him. She must have been lost in Her own, respective thoughts of glory and conquest: as Her head and eyes were tilted thoughtfully somewhere along the ceiling.

It was weird, though; even through the slowly working fear fixing to paralyze him. To his eyes: She didn't really have the look of a vengeful Goddess, finally prevailing over Her fated enemy and gaining what She had suffered for a millennia to achieve. That glorious height of spiteful victory; of satisfying accomplishment.

She looked sad. Sad, wistful, and old.

Wait, who cared?

His legs were wobbling with the sudden weight of the world, so he allowed himself to fall back onto his behind; because the world could stand to rest for a moment. The impact bruised a bit, but the sensation was welcome; it meant he hadn't gone numb, or anything.

He... he needed to calm down. He was in a life or death situation, here!

But it was so hard.

With his jaw set tightly, eyes staring unblinkingly forward, and hooves together in what he supposed was his lap: he felt somewhat like a child. A child that had just been told something to the effect of their favorite playground having just been closed.

Trying desperately not to cry, even as civilization as they knew it crumbled to pieces around them.

Despite- or perhaps in spite of- his shell of confidence having been firmly smashed and stomped into the ground, his eyes rose up again to Nightmare Moon. She was sight for pained eyes, especially in Her current state. Face sunken and worn, gaze far away, and sallow emotion unabashedly regretful: one would think it had been her kingdom that had just fallen.

His throat was full of claws and rocks from keeping bitter tears down, but he let his voice rise through the discomfort to a hollow tune that barely carried into the hall. "Why so glum?"

Her eyes, hooded and glassy: seemed to lighten and zero in onto focus at his interruption. If She was upset at his presumed impudence, it didn't show in Her eyes as they flicked down to him, one barely visible behind the side of Her face. Her mouth parted the slightest inch, showing a bare glimpse of sharpened fangs.

"What?" Her whisper came out of a hint of a breath, though not from a usual place of scorn. It wasn't a remark in the form of a hidden rebuke, it was an actual question; She hadn't heard him.

What was She so preoccupied by? Even now, with Her attention on him, She looked... lost; as if She wasn't really in the situation. It was somewhat funny- hopeless and prone even as he was- but.. Her face just didn't look right without some form or another of disgust.

Actually, it... made him a little uncomfortable: seeing Her stare through him without the usual weight of insult behind it. Was it apropos to feel like that for the mare who had felled his nation? Was it disrespectful to Her and his country?

The thought brought a chuckle to his chest, despite the wide, staring eyes on him. It rumbled and shook through his body, like there was a little earthquake in his lungs; before something broke down and the laugh turned into a bitter cough. Or, maybe it was on purpose; for theatrical reasons.

Maybe it was all a show, as he turned a sour, broken breath into a harsh point. "That's an awfully strange expression for a victor, isn't it?" He found a sudden satisfaction in stomping his hoof, and forcefully tightening his jaw. Something approaching oddly righteous anger was building in his chest, and he let it show in the form of an angrily bent brow. "You've won. Shouldn't you be celebrating, or something? Why. so. glum?"

Each spat word barely felt proper through his clenching teeth, but it was becoming harder to care about what was proper for Her. Her Highness.

She had won, she had conquered. Why on Equus did She look so sad? What gave Her the right?!

What right did She have to luxuriate in the silence of his words; sitting with nothing on Her tongue and suffocating emotion in Her eyes? The tyrant who had ruined his life and toppled his kingdom. Sitting and staring there: chest falling into a steadier rhythm as his beat out of control? Her face gradually finding footing in apathetic serenity while he found nothing but fury and fire?

He had to find a spark in himself, for his kingdom. Not for any measure of simpering patriotism in his heart, he would never feel that way for Equestria: but because there was nopony else to.

It wasn't The Pure Goddess, or any of Her celebrated generals that had found themselves in dire realization following society's new order; it was him. It wasn't any of them sitting there in front of the now apt Queen of Nightmares; it was him.

Whatever happened and whoever sat on the throne, he was still here. He was a citizen of Equestria, no matter his emotional distance from it.

He would metaphorically stand, and make their case. For once, and maybe the only time: for Equestria.

He had cause.

Whatever crazy explosion of emotion was happening on his face, it must not have been interesting enough for Her; because Her expression was rapidly shedding any and all traces of feeling. Lines drawn down from misted memories smoothed into perfectly considered turns: far more familiar in their sardonic lack of tract.

Immaculate and unattainable in Her deep depths of distance. Her momentary lapse into whatever past She had been in was over, and Nightmare Moon had come back to Her own kind of reality.

A reality that could never stack up to Her expectations, apparently: as She regarded him with a high-held air of frowning, leaded, disappointment. At least it was recognizable, rather than whatever had been happening to Her before.

It was in Her voice, too; when was it not? She hemmed quietly, and Her brow bent inwards as Her eyes traced over his form; likely not finding whatever impossible thing She was looking for. That piercing stare roved and raved against his spirit, but for once: he stood against it.

Metaphorically, because he was still sitting. He stood in the defiant, heroic sense; despite how skeevy that made him feel.

Finally, Her inspection of his angry, sweaty face finished; and She looked pointedly away as She broke the silence in a quiet, dismissive tone. Her trailing, sparkling mane- which had as far stayed relatively unobtrusive- suddenly and unhelpfully chose to- as if by conscious effort- float along in front of Her face: hiding Her expression from further view."...I believe we haven't settled the matter of your first question."

His mouth fell open in muted indignation as Her hidden gaze apparently picked apart the wall to the side of Her, and Her voice continued on. "If you wish to... revisit this topic after, then I don't believe I could sway you otherwise."

And, for the moment: the matter was settled. Even as he sputtered furiously in an attempt to call out the undeniably bashful display in front of him, Nightmare Moon was already moving briskly on; clearing Her throat and drawing Herself up with prim poise.

Her mane floated away into a return to its serene wispy trail behind Her, revealing Her unnatural eyes set onto him with a vengeance; cold and hard. They caught him there, mid-protest, like an edged trap laid in wait. A snake's eyes, with little room for consideration or contemplation.

The message there was clear: he could shut his mouth and let Her speak, or She could do it for him.

It wasn't fair. She had shown weakness. She had shown fallibility! Shouldn't he be allowed to prey on that, as She would? Couldn't he be allowed anything, here?! Any kind of advantage?!

No, the eyes said. Not this, and not without earning it.

Pick your battles.

His mouth drifted closed, and he allowed the unspoken future promise of chance to simmer in his expression. Okay, they were still playing their game. Fine, that was great; he was thrilled. He had never been so happy to be subjugated in all his life!

Though, he could admit: he wanted to move on too. The matter of his last question hadn't been settled, after all; and he was still itching for resolution. There had been a little hiccup on both of their ends, but things hadn't really changed in any way.

He was still Light Flow: a no-name unicorn with no power but for his scrambled head; playing a deadly game of tests and trials against a Goddess.

She was still Nightmare Moon, and She was still waiting to speak; which She did: with narrow eyes and a subtle promise of hurt in their furrows even as Her topic moved on. "...First, I would ask you humor me in a tidy reminder of something."

His lip curled in confusion as he tilted his head forward in a questioning gesture. Where was She going with this, and why wasn't She just answering his question already? This entire spectacle was incredibly evasive for... what seemed like no reason whatsoever.

How long had it even been since he'd asked his question, anyway? Why was She so dodgy?

She must not have liked his movement: as She scowled in response, and Her head rose up an inch. "Stow your impatience, child." For the first time in what felt like hours, Her body moved as She rose gracefully to Her hooves, and shook Her head disapprovingly.

His instinctive lean away from the possible act of aggression found itself unfounded as She simply turned and took a step to the side towards one of the nearby broken stain glass windows. Her hoof raised in a graceful arc to point to the open portal, drawing his attention to what lay beyond.

"Tell me, what do you see here?"

Stars, black, a stray bush; that was pretty much it.

Actually, It was an odd thing to notice so late, but the room wasn't very well lit. The moonlight dappling in through the twelve or so shattered frames did well enough to light the room, but it was just well enough. He could see Nightmare Moon fairly well, and the windows and their surroundings and such; but beyond that: it was mostly all cloaked in darkness.

It was actually pretty off-putting, now that he thought about it. When he looked up: all he saw was a fairly encompassing black void. The walls simply rose up into a gradually shading shadow, before completely disappearing behind the curtained veil of-

"Light Flow. The window!"

The authoritative shout brought him back to focus, though focus found itself in the form of an angry expression and the stoke of a hot feeling in his chest. He whipped his head down to where Nightmare Moon was staring at him... pretty scarily, but She was also still pointing insistently at the window.

The unspoken words were enough.

He let his face spread in a snarl, and his voice followed sarcastic suite. "Yeah yeah, I know the window, alright?!" He threw his hoof out toward the offending aperture, as Nightmare Moon let Hers drop with a suffering expression. "It's nighttime, okay?! There're the stars, the moon, the darkness: it's all there! I know it's your thing, but what is it you want so badly to-"

Two very terse words halted him mid-sentence, leaving his mouth hanging open for multiple reasons.

"It's dawn."

His head inched forward slightly as his jaw worked bonelessly, and his blinking eyes struggled to find an answer on Nightmare Moon's stoic, frowning face. Finally, he managed to shake his head, and focus back fully onto Her face: where he found a very simple question on his tongue. "What?"

Her face drew another harsh line at his question, as if it offended in some way. Her head tipped down as She forewent Her usual greater-than-him posture to stare him directly in the eyes. "Not ten minutes ago, the dawn of the Summer's great eve came and went." She spoke briskly, as She raised Her hoof to gesture to the window again. To the window shading the nighttime sky.

Her words echoed tonelessly through the hollows of his head, while a chilling sense of non-feeling began to rise over his heels. "The gathering, the ceremony, the raising; their appointed times all lay in the past. We have crossed the threshold for day."

"Do you see, now? Have you an inkling at what I'm attempting to convey?"

Slowly, his eyes crept from the slim showing of twinkling stars behind a lonely bush, to a dark face shaded by piercing cyan eyes. Eyes so accented by violet blush and fluttering eyelashes, but more heavily by a plated helmet and an air of cool unfeeling.

Nightmare Moon wanted to bring about nighttime eternal. He had almost forgotten about that.

His eyes fell to his hooves, followed by his head. He grit his teeth and swallowed back a heavy lump of emotion as it threatened to crawl up his throat. Impudence, his head seemed to scream at him.

It was hard to stay angry, hard to keep a rebellion; when She could so easily remind him of his place. A place in Her world.

"I understand." His wide eyes caught the barest hint of a jump as he suddenly threw his head back up, setting them on Her calculating gaze. His quick tongue and a flare of desperation surprised even him as he found a hold against a tide he'd normally fall under. "But- But what does that have to do with-"

His mouth fell forcibly silent again as She lowered Her hoof down, drawing an unwilling flinch from him as he expected unexpected violence. Her eyes held familiar promise of rebuke and scorn, though Her voice was surprisingly softer than he'd expected. "Child, think. You tell me."

The game, right. Easy question, at least; he already knew the answer.

What to say, though?

He wanted to speak up, to shout and scream the answer in a righteous, unflinching fury like he'd imagined three minutes ago he would. The fire was still there, still burning and waiting for him to just draw on the strength he knew he was capable of..!

But... as he looked for breath... he just couldn't.

The sun had gone away, and She'd made that happen.

He was intimidated.

When he did eventually speak, it was quietly, and without looking up. Meek and humble, like a scholar presenting his tithe findings to royalty. "You intended me to look at the window as a show of power, as a reminder; because I was-" He bit his lip as the next, bitter words came to him. "I- I was being.. insolent."

He closed his eyes, and drew a deep, struggling breath as something grew hot in his face. He was falling apart, and he wasn't sure how to stop it. Every time he tried to draw the same, wonderful inner strength he'd had before- he grasped at nothing. Everywhere he sought, all he saw were reminders of his limits. Of his mortality.

His breaths were drawing deeper and coming faster with each second as the hot feeling of eyes on his pelt seared his flesh. From every direction at once and from every shadow and hidden nook; yet each still somehow just Hers.

He'd- He was- Damn it was so hard to breathe- What- How should- Who even was he, really?! What in Tartarus' unholy name was he even doing here?!

What could he even do, against a Goddess?! How could he think to struggle against Her, to fight against Her; when no matter how hard he tried, no matter how hard he fought for every thought; everything he did was just so invariably-

"Wrong."

What?

His mind stuttered and scratched in a false start as a single, powerfully spoken word set his downward spiral off kilter. He swung his head to look up with slightly misted eyes at the figure standing incredibly tall where it hadn't moved from its place at the window.

Nightmare Moon's expression, at first blurry glance, was a mixed bag of disgust, disappointment, and odd comfort. It would have looked out of place and chiefly insulting on anypony else's face, but it was such a close shade to scorn that it seemed more than natural on Her face.

It was weirdly comforting. Or, maybe he just had Steedholm syndrome. That would explain a lot.

Either way, the uncharacteristic show of support from his longtime tormentor was a cold splash of watery reality; and he was suddenly shockingly aware of his position. His very uncomfortable position.

Still sitting on the floor like a foal: now about to start crying like one.

What was this, the third breakdown he'd had tonight? Stars, he needed to get a grip.

He sniffed back grossly creeping snot, and shook his head roughly. His head thoroughly jumbled: he let his hoof rise to wipe away at his eyes as he spoke with something thick in his throat. "O-Okay, I was wrong. So.. So what's the deal?"

Her lip curled as She watched him attempt to compose himself, the first change of expression She'd made since he'd looked up. Her voice wasn't warm and comfy as She turned from the window and stepped back towards Her chosen spot, but it would probably be more distressing if Her tone hadn't been poisonous. "The deal, as you have so crudely put it: does not concern you."

Her head turned as She stood in sideways place where She'd previously sat, and Her gaze hardened into a point as She continued: placing firm emphasis on a certain kind of disappointment he could hear in Her voice. "You did not guess correctly, or anywhere near it, so I won't be sharing that particular ounce of wisdom with you."

He nearly managed to swallow back phlegm to protest before She beat him to the punch with a lecher's favorite word. "But, you still managed to guess the original question correctly; and, as a matter of chance, the question you failed has a certain relation to the answer."

..Huh?

His nose was beginning to clear, and astonishment was beginning to creep over his nape as Nightmare Moon's cruel, callous eyes crept away from his face for a single, solitary moment. "Thus: you've not seemed to lose anything at all. A favored star shines on you, child; do not let it down."

Bashful, yet somehow still droll. She was letting him pass with a loss.

Was She trying to make him feel better? About- About Her winning?

He... He didn't think he understood Nightmare Moon very well, anymore.

Well, he was going to be puzzling over the mere sight of Her face in the back of his mind for a wide-eyed while, as various pictures in his head failed to reconcile. Certainty was a concept long since forgotten; and, very suddenly, things were much more confusing.

Cold tyrant that had ruined his life... Pitiable Goddess who had lost a thousand years... His unwitting mentor who deserved his respect... Evil despot who had shaped his mind like malleable clay... Weirdly tall mare who seemed to both hate and like him in oddly equal measure...

She was a fairly mixed bag of all of that, at least.

His internal questioning went unnoticed even by the mare who seemed to know everything about him, as She kept the indifferent, brisk pace that She'd adopted. With Her uncharacteristic moment of kindness over: Her eyes walked themselves to his face again accompanied by their usual favored guest of disinterest and apathy. "You've asked me what it is I fear enough to require your services in protection, feeble though you are."

Well, he hadn't put it in those exact words, but he wasn't going to interrupt Her. Her breath drew in with a sudden contemplative air as Her head drifted to Her unseen side, before turning back to him with a furrowed, questioning brow. "You would not know anything of the Elements of Harmony, would you?"

His face fell into an uneasy slope as the words processed, and his mind carefully combed itself for the unfamiliar term.

Elements of Harmony, huh? Grand title, but he couldn't say it rang any bells.

Um... Was it...? No, that was...

"I... don't think so?" He managed uneasily after more than a couple moments of somewhat frantic thinking. It felt like the sort of thing he should know about; like a long forgotten fact about something really obvious: like strawberries not being berries.

But, there was nothing. The Elements of Harmony could be the kings of berries for all he knew about them.

He settled for a confused expression as he stared to his tormentor, whose mouth had pursed in... some kind of annoyance- She had a lot of similar expressions. "No... no I suppose you wouldn't..." She muttered, seemingly almost to Herself.

She quickly shook off whatever was tripping Her up, though: as She quickly drew in another, solid breath before continuing. "I'll dispense with the time-waster of a test and simply tell you, then." She shook Her head, and sighed. "I really shouldn't have expected you to somehow know of them, being your mind's shadow as I've been. I know all that you know of."

Okay, ouch. That was hurtful in a special kind of way that seemed specifically said for no reason other than to burn.

She did that special kind of rude so well. The kind of unattached, targeted jabs that managed to be the perfect blend of personal and matter-of-fact. It was about the casual tone, for sure. She always threw insults with the ease that a housewife might comment on the weather to a friend.

It was just about facts. 'Oh, it's quite warm out today.' 'Oh, you're a disgusting failure.'

Just... He just didn't know how to balance between having respect or reprehension for the way She conducted Herself.

Regardless of Her mastery over the common insult, She simply continued on with Her dialogue: with no mind spent on throwaway remarks. If only he could shake them off as easily.

"The Elements of Harmony are a simple concept, in truth; one that I won't bother finding lengthy definitions for. Simply know that, at their core: they are a set of powerful weapons numbered in six to be wielded against Equestria's enemies."

Her words let lie in the air for a moment as She paused, and stared meaningfully at him. She probably wanted him to say something about that.

Well, what was there to say? The Elements of Harmony were weapons. Equestria's weapons. Kind of a silly name, though; maybe it meant something?

Harmony.. That... no, that could mean anything.

Why was She bringing them up? Was that why She needed him? Was She afraid that they would be used against Her? It didn't seem like much of a threat. What kind of weapon could possibly threaten Nightmare Moon Herself? And, if they were a threat to Her: why would She need him?

Seriously, he needed to know about that deal, already.

Every answer he sought in his head didn't match up, and he was sure it showed on his face. Church lore would suggest that Princess Celestia- and by extension: Her sister- was nothing short of invincible. Near any method of attack would shatter like glass against their respectively holy and unholy coats.

Another reason fighting Her would've been stupid.

Though, when he thought about it: he didn't exactly have a high opinion of the church; especially not after he'd been laid under successful siege by a forgotten member of their limited pantheon. Pervasive through culture or not, maybe this wasn't a great time to buy into their gospel?

Could there be a weapon capable of harming a Deity? Was such a thing even okay to consider in Equestria's name?

It probably was in this situation. Equestria could handle a little heresy for its own sake.

In the end, regardless of plans for possible deicide, he was just mostly confused. There simply wasn't enough information to go off of. He sent his best shrug in Nightmare Moon's direction; who received the gesture with an expected level of exasperated anger. Her pointed fangs cut against Her lip as She frowned widely, and Her wings rustled restlessly on Her sides.

Her voice felt tired, even to his grated ears. "Your... motion is noted, child."

That 'child' felt more like 'child' than usual.

She pushed past his possibly 'childish' action with a deep breath, as some of the anger bled off Her face. Where Her tone had been hurtful as usual, it returned in a relative, informative drone. "Perhaps I will have to enlighten you." She scowled down at him again. "Your ignorance is far more grating than the loss of time would be."

That was the second time now that she'd mentioned time, or a lack thereof. That was markedly odd. She should theoretically have an infinite amount of time to spare, given that Her conquest had already finished.

Opposition... Weapons.... A limited amount of time...

Maybe not so farfetched after all?

Regardless, She was talking again. A tilted head, condescension in Her eyes, and obvious apathetic apprehension in Her voice: She was the perfect picture of a teacher who hated Her job. "They've a deceptively simple appearance: merely colorful gemstones the size or so of an apple each. Unassuming as any bauble you may find in the Generous gadabout's shop."

"Fragile in appearance, as well. Any trained eye would label them useless trinkets with no discernable worth. They've certainly not the look of crown jewels."

Oddly, some of the unfeeling drone in Her tone died away as She continued; and some of the disinterest left Her face as Her tone grew sharper. "And yet: their power yields no equal as I've ever seen. To wield them is an honor beyond any crown or rule." Her eyes hardened as Her hoof raised to cut the silence with a heavy stomp, and Her wings suddenly unfurled and slowly spread out from Her sides; posing an eventual wide and punctuating figure. "There is no recourse in their face. In this world, they are the arbitrating force."

Disbelief had been working his eyebrow up his face slowly but steadily unsurely, but as Nightmare Moon made a clear spectacle of really emphasizing Her point: the incredulous arc rose in a soar.

//i forgot to add these for a while

This was just too good to believe.

"The arbitrating force? The?" He repeated as his eyes narrowed in skeptic suspicion. He didn't know where he'd found the strength to snark all of a sudden, but the hot tone off his tongue made him curl his lip in regret.

Her mighty pose wilted slightly, and Her wings ruffled back to Her sides. Her head tilted at an angle and Her face tightened in barely constrained annoyance. "Have you something to say of my descriptions, child? Some concern you wish to air?" Her gritted voice was terse with the tension of Her corded neck; and he- for a single, silly moment- swore he could see a vein pop out of the metal of Her helmet.

Well, he wouldn't have said anything if he knew She'd get so huffy about it; but he supposed he was locked into the role of a neighsayer, now. If he was going to die forgotten, unburied and alone on a random hill, it might as well be this one.

He didn't quite go as far as to roll his eyes, since that likely would have lead to pain, but he did introduce a disbelieving tilt to his head. A subtle turn with cautiously narrowed eyes that spoke underneath his words: even as his mouth moved. "It's not exactly that I'm concerned, it's- um, well..." His eyes turned from Nightmare Moon's increasingly impatient frown as he stumbled over his words, before he managed to spit the rest of his painful sentence out.

"It's just that- I'm not really sure- The way you're describing these... jewels is.. is a little farfetched?" His gaze quickly flicked up to Her face, before tumbling away without even really seeing anything.

"I mean- I've just never heard of- of gems having the kind of power you're lauding, is the- the thing. I guess there are enchantments and the- the like, but... this seems.. different..." He stammered out somewhat laboriously, as his eyes stayed firmly on the floor just in front of Her.

Oh, he should've been calmer, he really should've; but he was still a little off-kilter and emotional from his 'freak out', earlier, and it was hard to keep his canter steady. His hooves were wobbling in a way that reminded him of Pinkie Pie hopped up on sugar, but without any of the sheer, building power. His heart was hammering under the weight of the possibly imagined danger in the air; and breathing was a little difficult in a way that was soberly familiar.

Why was he so all over the place? It felt like he was falling from one overblown emotion to the next every time Nightmare Moon so much as looked at him. He was practically in the throes of a second panic attack already, and nothing was even happening!

Was he just destined to fail? Could he just... was he just not capable of controlling himself anymore? Had the torment changed him for the worse, even with his demons banished?

Well, not all of them. Maybe it was just Her after all.

Regardless of his failure in the ways of composure, Nightmare Moon began to speak again. He was doing his best to burn the sight of the floor into his eyes, so he wasn't really sure what Her face looked like; but Her voice was very clearly definable as tired.

"Have you finished? Do you yet have more bumbling to perform?"

His mouth was doing an admirable impression of an encompassing desert, so words weren't quite the thing that came out when he first opened his mouth; but his second attempt went better after he took a moment to poke about with his tongue. "I- ah... Yes.. I'm- I'm done, yeah."

//do it good, child

Still not terribly eloquent, but given that his mind was still spinning uselessly around the concepts of 'eternal night' and 'comfort': he was glad he had managed to say anything at all.

This had seemed such an easy concept before... All he had to do was flaunt his somewhat cowardly nature, disregard his general apathy for Equestria, and stand heroically and unflinchingly against impossible odds.

What was so hard about that?

Lifting his eyes up to Nightmare Moon's usual stare full of negativity must have been whatever signal She was looking for, as Her body moved to sit back into place. Her metal-clad hooves made firm echoes into the silence of the hall as She settled back into a sitting position, visage once more faced solely towards him.

In retrospect, he should've taken the time to look at Her cutie mark.

He had barely even considered trailing his eyes down somewhere he shouldn't've before- with as little warning as anything ever happened- the gesture was completely halted by the sight of Nightmare Moon's face contorting in a strange measure of sudden focus. Her eyes clenched close, Her head lilted to the side, and Her jaw crept back in a snarl as lines of stress drew up under Her helmet.

"Uh," The half-word crept out on such a reflex that his mind immediately blanked at its exit; though, with its egress, committing to it seemed to be the only real option. "-are you okay?"

Why, oh why was he showing concern for the Moon Tyrant? What inordinate defect had bloomed in his head such that his first reaction to seeing his worst enemy under duress was concern?!

He had problems.

He sucked in a gasp as, mere moments after he spoke, Nightmare Moon's eyes flew open: showing Her pupils completely clear. But then: all signs of tension in Her face smoothed over in an instant, and a blink left Her eyes correctly colored. The change was so quick, his immediate thought was just that he had been seeing things.

But, no; he didn't hallucinate anymore, and he was completely certain that Nightmare Moon's eyes had just been a ghostly, milky white. Almost as though She was blind, or something.

That was creepy. Heavens, that was so creepy in such a bad way!

Well, maybe it would've been a good creepy in any other situation. It actually looked kind of cool.

The reticence he felt must not have been hidden very well, though: as Her widely staring eyes flicked down and hooded into interest at his face. Like most of Her emotion, though, it only stayed for a moment before dying into careful apathy.

"My apologies," She spoke in a slow waltz, silk and misdirection clearly present in Her voice. "I was momentarily... distracted."

She wanted him to forget what he'd seen. Yeah, right; as fat a chance as Her massive behind.

His eyes crept into a glare that felt good after his most recent simpering breakdown. "No.. No, that didn't really look like any sort of distraction. What were you doing?" He spoke with probing accusation in his voice that, extremely surprisingly, wasn't immediately rebuffed.

Nightmare Moon simply scoffed, and set eyes filled with scorn and crushing weight onto him. "Multitasking." She spoke the one word simply and quickly as the edge of Her frown crept up past Her fangs into a growling scowl.

He was beginning to see a pattern. With so long spent enduring Her constant, paralyzingly brutal gaze, he was starting to understand how She operated.

There was no bite to Her bark that he'd seen. She had done plenty of murdering with Her eyes, for sure; but this entire time, throughout all of the uncomfortable silence: She'd barely even moved.

All She did was stare at him. Reproachfully and hurtfully, but it was just staring all the same.

Maybe he shouldn't be as afraid as he was? He'd been assuming that She wouldn't hesitate to hurt him just because he was important, but... with what he'd been realizing about Her...

Maybe he was wrong?

A different sensation of warmth began to spread across his chest as his brazen show of confidence went solely unpunished, and Nightmare Moon continued to simply stare at him with all Her usual flavors of spite.

He'd been too meek. She said he'd been wrong before, remember? She wasn't faulting him for being insolent.

Maybe... Maybe She wanted him to be insolent? Wasn't that what She'd told him to do, after all? To fight Her?

Had he been missing the point this whole time?

Well, realizations of his short memory aside: that still left the actual point of the window up in the air; as well as his original question.

He didn't care about whatever they'd just been talking about, anymore; there were too many things building up. Set whatever thing about Her eyes aside, and find the point.

He could do this; it was coming back to him!

The wonderfully familiar fire of confidence found home within his chest again as he squared his shoulders, and set his eyes to firmly clash against Her stare. His chest up, his hooves firm, and his frown stoic: the memory of uncertainty felt faded and worn.

Steely and strong. Now She had to contend with it.

The moments ticked by as he held his gaze like a solid shield against Her weapon of disappointment. He could almost imagine a bead of sweat trickling dramatically down the back of his neck as his hold threatened to waver, before he found strength to keep it steady amidst recollections of purpose.

Of course, that would be too dramatic for real life. It was just a staring contest; though his eyes were beginning to sting a little bit.

Finally, nearly as his vision began to redden at the edges, a smile quietly rose on onto Her face. Satisfaction: Her eyes seemed to call out as She leaned Her head back slightly.

She still didn't take Her eyes off his, because She just didn't need to blink, apparently; but he allowed his own head to lean back from where he hadn't realized it'd been inching. The first blink after too long without felt like victory, and he savored the moment even through the successive repeats.

"So... to answer your question?" Her sly, almost celebrative tone would have ordinarily set his thoughts after mocking, but, for once: he was going to let himself think that She meant it. She was even letting him pick whether he wanted to pursue the moment, or find the original topic.

Small victories. That's what this was all about.

A smile of his own came to his face; almost humorous in its uncharacteristic freedom. "Yes, back to my question."

He'd been missing the point. He'd been so stuck up on old habits and new rulers that he'd forgotten the point of it all. Of this entire weird spectacle.

Freedom. His freedom, for the first time in so long. Freedom to think, freedom to speak, and, most importantly: freedom to snark.

No more half-done insults followed by intense sulking, he was back. He was Light Flow.

He had always known words had power: as the internalized, self-aggrandizing speech sent waves of energy coursing through his veins. Bubbling excitement rose his cheeks in an unabashed grin as he leaned on his front hooves, and brought his back leaping up.

Two firm, clopping impacts against the ground as his posture returned to standing. A little stiff, but he wasn't a corpse yet. His mane swished against his eyes as he whipped his head up to stare embarrassingly proudly at Nightmare Moon: who was watching him with a toothy smile and glorious laughter dancing in Her own eyes.

A fight to somepony's death or no: there was little reason to turn this into a funeral. Debate was fun, debate was exciting! Just because there were two pessimists in the room didn't mean they had to act like two farmers at sea!

Show some pep, show some flavor!

"Well, look at you." Each one of Nightmare Moon's sharpened fangs gleamed in the moonlight as Her smile refused to die, even through Her drawling words. "It seems the colt has come to sense at last."

Oh, She'd been waiting for him to perk up, had She? That made a lot of sense; he wouldn't want to talk to the downer he was becoming, either. How many times had he cried, three? Eesh, what a drama-hound he was.

No more, though. Denial or not: he was going to the end with an insufferable smirk on his face.

He nodded in response to Her words as the silence stretched for a moment, before he broke it with his newly steady tone. "So, the Elements of Harmony? What are they?"

No more stalling, it was time to cough it up. She knew, too; though, surprisingly, the emotion in Her eyes didn't quite die as She moved onto speaking. Her tone, even: kept a sliver of high feeling. "Yes, I tire of playing around the topic. You've finally earned the answer."

Her eyes shimmered with mischief and mirth alike, and She spoke with a murmur of a laugh in Her chest. "It only took a mere half-hour or so. What an accomplishment, child. I'm so proud."

Despite the obvious insult behind a veil the size of paper, his bubbly grin did nothing but track upwards. "So, it's been a half-hour, then?" No, he wasn't being cheeky; the very thought! When was he anything but completely sincere and up-front?

The immediate death of Nightmare Moon's smile was immensely satisfying. "...The Elements of Harmony, then. " She spoke dryly, though he more than welcomed the chance of a fire. He would dance in the smoldering ashes of Her regret every time he won one of those small victories, and She would regret helping to cheer him up.

If it had been a half-hour since their fight had started, and it had been a marked ten minutes or so since the six thirty dawn a while back: then he could make a fair guess at the time being around six fifty or so. Maybe even seven. Somewhere around that inaccurately sized ballpark.

Knowing the time wouldn't really help him that much, but it was a comfort among other things. Showing Her that he could pick up on the smaller meanings in Her words was a big step towards... whatever he was working towards.

Nightmare Moon was still staring at him as his eyes probably glazed over, but he focused in on Her unamused face, and She drew in a short breath. "You've a lesson to be learned in concentration, child." Her words were barbed, but not overly so, and the curve of Her brow was more of a bend rather than a dip.

It was that which lent him the audacity to retort. "I believe you've a lesson to be learned in what multitasking means." He lowered his smile into a smirk as Nightmare Moon's frown found a trench.

Parroting worked wonders for annoyance, as She'd taught him. That was probably why Her frown only kept for a moment before She was raising Her head up with prim indignance rather than stormy fury. He was doing exactly what she'd wanted. "Would you have us sit to bicker like children for the entire day's night, or would you have me continue?"

Well, it'd be more fun to just sit and trade insults, but he did need to know about the Elements of Harmony. His laurels set themselves down with his smirk's suffocation, and its replacement by pure innocence. He was ready to learn, Miss Moon.

Barbs were still funny, even if he didn't actually say them.

"Then, onto the Element's power; or, more accurately: their source." With Her stare of pointed warning on him, he simply kept his eyes firmly on Her metaphorical chalkboard. Her face could probably work as a chalkboard, actually. At least, if not for the lack of space.

Maybe Her side? Oh, perhaps if the tyrant thing didn't work out, She could rent Herself out to unfortunate schoolhouses in need of resources. It'd certainly be more beneficial to the world.

He wasn't internally snickering, he was still paying attention.

"While my sister and I," She still spat that word with such venom, even in the cheerier mood. She really didn't like The Princess, did She? "-performed as much research as we were able to in our happier days, the core source of the Elements' power remains a elusive question."

He spoke out in the pause of Her words with sparkling enthusiasm in his eyes. "Oh, question!" He didn't quite raise his hoof, but his smile did widen a bit as Nightmare Moon quirked an eyebrow at him. "You used to be happy?"

He disguised a snicker as a cough as Her mouth opened slightly and Her brow drew deeper; before the laugh-cough died in his throat as he felt a painful pinch on his cheek.

His closest eye shut and his lips drew back in a seethe as he vocalized his pain in small, successive 'ow's. He leaned his head towards the source of the pain, and his one open eye identified a blue shimmer at the corner of his vision. Nearly standing on three hooves: he tracked the sight to the end of Nightmare Moon's towering horn, where the same shimmer glowed around the tip of Her horn.

"Do not interrupt me for snide comments, child." Her stormy, disapproving eyes were making a return to the heights of anger and vitriol that they'd held before; and he was suddenly thinking that maybe he'd crossed a line.

Too far, though at least it'd been funny.

"Yeah, yeah- okay!" He managed to make out through the increasing pressure stretching his cheek. Nothing stung quite so much as that special pinching feeling that only unicorns could manage.

Well, maybe being stabbed or something did, but he didn't exactly have frame of reference. He hoped he wouldn't anytime soon, either.

"What should one say?" Her voice held danger, even through the indignation holding his thoughts hostage. She really wanted to do this, huh? She was really going to go this far?

She wasn't his mother, no matter how annoyingly motherly She acted!

Still there was only one way out: as he swore something began to tear in his cheek. "Okay, sorry!" He was a little muffled through the hampering of his face, but the sentiment was clear enough that the pinching quickly cut off. His cheek returned to his jaw, and his hoof quickly came up to rub at the sore.

So much for physical danger being off the table. He cast his most petulant glare up at Nightmare Moon's own glaring face, though he was sure his beat Hers.

"May I continue?" Her short, terse words were the salt in the gaping wound, though Her ever-present position above him managed to add some kind of lemon juice.

He nodded, hoof still on his cheek. No more jokes for the moment, just listening. She was free to exposit all She wanted if that was Her idea of a rebuke. It would have been better if She'd just struck him, or something.

Would have been less embarrassing. There was honor and flair in a good backhoof; there was nothing redeemable about a cheek pinch.

Regardless of Her total theft of his dignity, Nightmare Moon returned Herself to the poise She'd held for the passing of wisdom. Her gaze calmed, and Her air became nearly as serene as it could for a crazy pony. The most lauded, labored schoolteacher in all the land, She was.

"Yes, while there are likely none that truly know from where precisely the Elements actually draw their strength; it is a common fact of how the strength manifests." She blinked Her hooded eyes with grace, down at his pouting face. "'Tis there in their title, in Honest fact."

Okay, the weird emphasis on the word 'honest' was highly suspect; and he was beginning to have some weird thoughts. Couldn't She just get on with it, already? He let the shuffling hoof on his face fall to the floor, where it began a righteous shuffle in the name of impatience. Why was She just staring at him silently? What was he supposed to say?

Was he supposed to have enough information to guess? How?! She'd told him nothing!

Fine, he'd guess; he'd throw the wildest guess he could think of!

He rolled his eyes as pointedly as he could, and sighed deeply as he hung his head theatrically. He whipped his eyes back up to Nightmare Moon's waiting expression

the most powerful weapons in Equestria, as said by Nightmare Moon Herself, somehow worked on the completely undefinable force of Harmony.

And he was about to magically sprout wings and obliterate Nightmare Moon- yeah, fat chance!

Author's Notes:

Now, this one's pretty interesting to start with. It's an entire other draft of chapter 41 going in a completely opposite direction. Front to back, this chapter was entirely complete, and it got cut and rewritten. Now, why would that be?

For one, I held onto the idea of the question game introduced in the previous chapter. If you forgot about that plot detail, don't feel bad. One of the reasons I cut this chapter was my dissatisfaction with the concept. At the time, it had seemed a reasonable way to keep their discussions two-sided; then, as it went on, I found it was just too needlessly circuitous. I wasn't enjoying the hoops I was jumping through to keep it going, so I ended up dropping the idea, as I'm sure you're aware.

I'm sure you noticed, as well, that the pace of this draft is tremendously fast. It managed to cover the length of about five chapters and a composite year of writing in just ten thousand measly words. It- it almost seems incredulous, doesn't it? How did I go from this, to what I ended up writing?

I can't say for sure. I guess I just like a slower pace, and this draft's fast speed actually contributed quite heavily to its cutting. I introduced a lot of ideas without much pomp or circumstance, and though Light Flow was still excellently characterized, none of it really moved me very much. It just felt too frantic, and left me too little time.

There are some key points of this draft that I want to highlight. Nightmare Moon told Light of the surrender of the Royal Guard at Celestia's behest, which never actually made it into their discussion, as far as I know. I brought it up in a Bon Bon intermission, but never quite hit upon it with NMM and Light. Whoops!

We brought up the question of time, and NMM asserted it was dawn. I'm really glad I cut this out, because chapter 40+ ended up spread very thin, and there's no way it would've all occurred after dawn. The actual timeframe- well, I believe I answered that in a reply somewhere. If you wanna know, then go dig for it!

There was an entirely cut concept of NMM physically showing when She was focusing on the Bearers, and yes, that is what my intention there was. I had the idea of Her periodically zoning out as She split Her focus to perform some new scheme to slow the Mane 6 down, which ended up getting cut. I think there was a point somewhere in the uploaded chapters where She loses focus, but it's never delved into. I remember this plot detail hurt the most to cut.

There's some stuff about the Elements way earlier on; some more intense back and forth between Light and his mother Nightmare Moon; a few //dividers I left in for posterity, and just some general wheedling.

Overall, this got cut because I just didn't enjoy the pace and where I was taking it. There wasn't enough space to fit in some of my grand ideas on how to present the interactions, and just too darn much momentum. The ideas are all really good and I still wish I had worked some of them in, but at the end of the day, some things just weren't important enough to fit in over 100k+ words.

If you've any specific questions about this one, feel free to comment!

1/17/22 - Chapter 41 - A Stupid Answer

He turned to eye the waiting Goddess, who seemed to be proving his descriptor quite readily with nearly genuine interest glimmering behind the regular general contempt and antipathy. Still all those different types of intimidating and terrifying, though; that wasn't going to change anytime soon.

"The reason you've brought me here..." He spoke slowly with a tilt to his head, as he eased his tentative guess into the air as non-confrontationally as he could manage. "..is because... you need me, right?"

////////// Bridge //////////

He pursed his lips in the descending silence as he squinted at Nightmare Moon's unfazed face. She... sure wasn't making much of a reaction. Just kind of staring blankly in a generally regal way.

Uncomfortable.

The complete, deadening silence continued to stretch and stretch, and his head continued to tilt as his lip slowly curled back in a waiting seethe. What was She waiting for, an invitation?

Was... was he wrong? How could he be wrong? His guess was as broad as possible on very specific purpose so that there would be no possible way to be wrong.

Had he missed something? What other reason could Nightmare Moon possibly have for grooming him from childhood, and then going through so much trouble to have him here? She needed him; what else was there?

After what was probably a minute of uncomfortable shifting that really felt more like an hour, various forms of fear were delightfully confirmed true in one, delicate motion.

One raised eyebrow, nearly disappearing behind cool, blue metal. Uh oh, that didn't bode especially well.

"Is that it?" She spoke out into the once-silent air that grew heavy under the pulling weight of Her impatience. In just three words, Her voice somehow managed to sound at nearly a murmur, yet so loud that his chest ached at the volume; painfully patient, and insufferably intolerant.

How did She do that? It was really quite impressive; so much so that it was a little hard to keep his legs steady under him. "Um... well... y-yeah?" It was difficult to keep the catch out of his voice through the ever-present awe that did so much to always remind him of who he was talking to.

Amazingly, his words had some effect on the nigh-unflappable Goddess. Her other eyebrow rose in a mocking pantomime of it counterpart to make for an excellently meaningful stare that brought a pained cringe to his own face.

That meaning, of course, being: 'idiot.' How funny, She reminded him so much of that voice in his head.

Actually no, that wasn't funny, that was the other thing. Concerning; yeah, that.

"Really," She started with a disbelieving bob of Her head; though it came out as less of a question and more of an insult, as everything She said seemed to.

The sheer tired disgust rising on Her face was making him feel more than a bit self conscious, so it was with markedly less confidence that he stepped back with a defensive tilt to his head. "Well, yeah! I'm- I'm right, aren't I? How could I not be?"

His - Sudden cliffhanger, and where this got cut.

Author's Notes:

Here's something small that got cut from chapter 41: an delightfully circuitous interaction between NMM and Light.

There's not too much to say about this one. It's not too dull or uninteresting, but it just provided too much of a wall to continue. This is a situation where, if I had continued down this avenue, we would've been on the subject of Light's mishap for too long.

It would've dragged out beyond what was needed, and slowed the chapter down. In the end, it got replaced by a faster pace, and forgotten. One of the many instances of such, though it didn't always get cut.

1/31/2022 - Chapter 41 - Furious Recollection

I have no idea where this got cut from! Enjoy!

////////// Bridge //////////

"Subterfuge and sabotage of this nature has existed for as long as ponies themselves, and it is my personal belief that there is no shame in what might be called 'dirty tactics' by some." She rolled Her eyes at that, before shaking Her head and sighing.

"Yes, it seems that the subtle art of espionage and trickery have been suppressed, as so many things have." She made several, small 'tsk'ing noises, before the shake of Her head stopped as She raised it to him. "Conflict is not the same as it was when I left. My sister seems intent on the notion that peace is sustainable, and She and the so-called 'enlightened' company She surrounds Herself with have seen fit to conduct their business with straight shoes."

Her voice as She spoke was as mellow and distant from the topic as it always was, but he didn't need Her special lessons in noticing tics to see the strained muscles in Her jaw. This topic was more upsetting to Her than how She was presenting it, even as She made a show of snorting in mocking derision. "Even those Celestia would kidnap to induct into Her 'special forces' lack a certain backbone, as I'm sure you know."

Her glittering eyes landed on him meaningfully, as Her head tilted in a gesture of pointing. The sudden focus was a little uncomfortable, but not nearly as much as what She was urging him to remember.

He only knew of what She was talking about through the little She'd told him, and what even littler he'd seen through his commandeered body's eyes. Absolutely incomprehensible at the time, but rather like the memory of looking through a peephole in hindsight.

That 'agent' that had come to his house to subdue him, who'd used his dwindling grasp on reality to trick him into opening the door for somepony he trusted: that's what She was talking about. Part of some kind of secret service that the Crown managed? Apparently trained from childhood?

He clicked his tongue, and searched the corners of his vision. "..She seemed pretty... um.. sufficient to me," he admitted, frowning at Nightmare Moon questioningly. "She was able to knock you out, wasn't She?"

If he wasn't so preoccupied with sifting through a pile of mostly worthless, blurry memory snapshots: he would've had the brain to think that maybe it wasn't a great idea to bring up the angry Goddess's loss. Something he wouldn't realize until after She scowled at his comment.

But as it was, She didn't seem intent on hurting him for the reminder. "If you recall, I was in an extremely limiting form at the time," She said tersely, narrowing Her eyes at him. She grimaced a second later, as if just remembering the details Herself, before turning huffily away from him. "My point lies elsewhere, besides. The candy maker's combat ability has little bearing; She would stand for less than a minute against me now."

The tight line of Her jaw as She seethed on that point for a moment made him think that maybe there was a grudge, there. An interesting little hint there, though; one that he wasn't sure She'd even meant to leave, flustered as She outwardly seemed.

That agent was a candy maker. That time at his house hadn't been the first or last time he'd seen her, but he'd never had a chance to peek at her cutie mark; so this was the first he was hearing of what he guessed was her regular profession.

That was good to know in case he might ever need to track her down, for whatever reason. Maybe for revenge?

A cough brought his wandering eyes and mind back to the present, where Nightmare Moon was staring at him again. He blinked, and stood to his best attention as the daydream of a burning house floated away. She stared at him with a furrowed gaze for a moment, as if seeing in his eyes the sordid deeds he was considering. "...Yes, as I was saying: it is not a matter of how she fares in combat, but her methods."

The corner of Her mouth turned up in a disgusted seethe. "The greatest standing threat to her kingdom's safety, and she made due with simple vigil; instead of ending the threat then and there. Even my sister, living and knowing as She does: would do as little as lidding the problem and hoping for a solution!"

////////// A cut from a cut //////////

"To think, that after all these years, my sister would not have changed at all. Still standing tall with Her shiny veneer of righteousness, fooling Her entire nation into believing She can do no wrong: all the while concocting the most vile and unbearable of tortures upon Her enemies!"

As She spoke, bigger and bigger drips of fury leaked their way into Her voice, until She was practically screaming Her words. He couldn't do much more than back slowly away, as Her eyes faded into a glassy stare, and She howled Her words at the empty space in front of Her.

"What farce! What decadence! She who would covet the stars themselves, stepping on whatever and whoever would dare to stand contented! Miserable wretch living in such fear of change that She would lock Her sister away for the rest of time rather than just open Her ear!"

Her wings unfurled as She went on, though Her body did little else to react to what Her mouth was saying. Each screamed syllable was a large, sweeping motion of Her exaggerated jaw, but Her head just stayed strangely still through it all.

It captured his attention oddly through the more immediate noise. The sheer discrepancy in action stopped him in his tracks before he edged too far, and he could only watch in cold fascination at the total, almost contrived contradiction before him.

////////// Back to the revised cut //////////

"It is sickening," She spat harshly, as Her voice grew more severe. "That my sister would have changed so little from the time I knew Her. Her reigning pathology continues to persist, while those who follow Her are blind to little but Her light. Still just throwing problems passively to the side..." She finished with a cold snap to Her voice, and She did little but stare darkly ahead in the moments after.

Even as he waited, and coughed to get Her attention: She seemed... lost, in some kind of far-off daydream. Her guarded eyes didn't say much about what She was thinking, and most of Her body was hidden by Her laying posture.

Very few clues, and he was beginning to understand what it was like to talk to him.

She seemed very upset about the conflict with Her sister, though She still wasn't saying much about it. He understood that some vague event that evaded elaboration took place about one thousand years ago, which ended with Nightmare Moon's imprisonment in the moon.

And that was about all he knew, since his source of information was Nightmare Moon Herself, and She had always become too angry to talk more about it at that point. He could infer that She was probably the mythical 'monster' from the mysterious Banishing War that had restarted the calendar, but that didn't help much, since the war itself was undocumented.

What else was there from history class? Was there something about a crusade against knowledge? Because he kind of remembered that.

His unsuccessful musing was interrupted as Nightmare Moon seemed to bring Herself out of Her trance with a deep breath.

Author's Notes:

This one's interesting, none the less because I saved a draft from this ultimately cut draft. For clarity's sake, I nestled the draft's draft into the overall draft like a matryoshka doll, which I can only hope makes sense!

Now, I actually have no idea where this draft picks up from. I know it's from chapter 41, but I think the preceding material got itself cut, and evidently, I didn't save it. We're left with a scant glance into what may have been, and what I have long since forgotten.

The cut itself is pretty interesting, at least. A familiar rant from Nightmare Moon about Her sister, as She so often does. This one is about Celestia's ethics in regards to her covert dealings, which is a topic I believe I didn't get to explore very much in the actual story.

It was always something I wanted to explore in great depth, and I did get around to a bit of it in chapter 48, but not to the extent that I'd wanted. I always loved having Nightmare Moon postulate something grand and dangerous, you see, and there's nothing so grand or dangerous as subterfuge!

I had wanted to talk about Bon Bon from NMM's perspective as well, but I never got around to that, either. You know, I actually dropped a lot of concepts I was toying with over time. Hm.

Ah, well. C'est la vie.

3/1/2022 - Chapter 42 - Self-Deprecating

It felt like he'd asked that so many times, as Nightmare Moon held her promise of truthful answers just over his grasping hooves. When was She going to stop needling him and just tell him anything?!

Maybe never; as She continued to simply hold that lofty smile over him; leaning Her head back from its gradual lean with a smug air. "There's something I feel you must understand if we're ever to continue, Light. When I say that a pony is a weapon, I want you to see outside of the traditional meanings.

////////// Bridge //////////

"I'd hope that you've found my meaning already, but if it is not clear enough: I am saying that there is far more than one way to use, and even abuse a pony. Different methods for utilizing them, as one might any regular tool."

His face twirled into a rough scrunch as he looked through the rant for some hidden understanding. There must've been something, right?

Well, if it wasn't a trick, then it wasn't that hard to understand. A simple matter of forward thinking. A little ethically dubious, but what had She taught him that wasn't?

Very straight forward, though. Of course he knew about using ponies, it was a frequent topic between the two of them. She practically never left the topic.

Obsession or what? Maybe overcompensating for something... A perceived lack of control? Had She ever undergone periods of powerlessness? That and Her very put-forward disregard for ethics could definitely imply overcompensation.

Tangent.

He nodded to show his obvious understanding, and let the second question that came to mind roll off his tongue. "So, you have some kind of alternative use for me in mind, then?" He raised an eyebrow. "It isn't my temper, is it?"

Nightmare Moon let out a hearty chuckle at his joke that wasn't really supposed to be a joke, which She made a show of half-hiding behind one hoof. "Oh, if only something so frankly silly, Light. You know that I could have my choice of far more unstable ponies if needed."

The way Her words slipped off Her hidden smile sent uncomfortable creeps down his spine, but he largely ignored the feeling in favor of frowning in consideration. He blinked a few times, before his face fell askew in a questioning tilt.

Well, it could be anything, then.

"Okay, If not my temper, what else is there? I'm not exactly bursting with power over here." The question as it hung in the dead air felt familiar; probably because he'd been asking the same thing over and over the whole night. and She'd been dodging for the past however long they'd been here.

Nightmare Moon's eyes narrowed, and Her hoof fell away from Her mouth to show Her regular frown. Her eyebrow arched, and the hum that rumbled up from Her throat had an almost trill-like quality to it.

"Let me ask a question... If I could be so... bold." Her face lifted in a toothy smile for a moment, before it parted to roll out an exaggeratedly defined cackle at Her own joke.

Yeah, because he was in any position to be refusing Her anything. The 'joke' was so funny, he found himself nervously chuckling along while his ear not-so-subtly flicked in irritation. A purposeful gesture he made very sure She saw.

So funny.

After a second of leagues-apart spectrums of laughing, Nightmare Moon drew the noise to a close with a gradual peter out, before fixing him with a lidded, glimmering stare. Mischief mixed with malice poured from Her cat-like eyes, filling Her next question with a putrid tonic such that his stomach nearly rebelled from the intent.

Author's Notes:

This one's not so exciting, though I was apparently excited about it at the time I cut it.

There's really nothing much to say, except that I have no idea where this was going! I believe I felt it was too much of a wall to continue, or that it was simply too circuitous, though it could've easily been a case of simple drafting and cutting chaff. Really, this draft is so rough and so unmemorable, I don't even know If the preceding paragraph actually fits!

It's a very close analogue to what actually made it into the chapter, which is why it's so uninteresting. Everything stated here was more or less stated in a different way in chapter 42. I believe I'd had some grand idea of heavily accenting everything Light had unknowingly learned from NMM, but it didn't go over so well.

This one's sort of confusing to me! I have no idea why I saved it, but I did, so here it is!

3/18/22 - Chapter 43 - Too Tight

Confidence was forgotten in a second as he gasped in a breath too quick for his body to properly react. His chest ached as his lungs stuttered in a cough that he forced into a peter to instead stare wide-eyed at the figure he'd forgotten was so tall. Tall enough to eclipse him by entire heads as length upon length of limb revealed themselves to stalk quickly toward him.

He felt like he should run. He couldn't bring himself to run.

He stood dumbstruck and panicking more than his gaping face would ever convey as the black expanse of a figure that was Nightmare Moon stopped to a halt just in front of him. She was so large, so predominantly dominating of one monotone color that all he could see was endless fields of black tar parted by centric streams of silver all the way up to two cyan eyes that sat so calm.

////////// Bridge //////////

They'd been lame, and glassy. Lost far in the past like the mare a thousand years displaced in time She was. Now they were sharp. Urgent. They focused on his own stare so perfectly that he could swear for a moment that he was staring up into a mirror. Except a mirror would never reach forward and take rough hold of his withers and pull him closer. Would never lean forward with sharp scentless breaths to stop close to his face so all he could hear was its whispers.

"Listen to me, Light. Listen and never forget. In your entire life you might never hear words more important." Her voice was quick and quiet and filled with paranoia as if She was afraid somepony might steal Her words away if they were too slow.

He was having a panic attack. It was so so clear to see in every rushing thought that slipped through his grasp to twirl into outrageous conclusions that he never would have considered otherwise. It was simple to realize. It should have been simple to stop. All he had to do now that he'd identified the problem was use his superior sense of logic to debunk the baseless, unconstrained fear. The easiest pen put to paper there had ever been.

But he couldn't as long as She was still there. Holding him and squeezing him and just there.

Her voice came again; battering his ears with harshly driven rhetoric that was clear even through a creeping sink into muffled stillness. "In this world there exists a force greater than any countable number of ponies. Greater than I or my sister or even our sum. A force to move the Gods themselves. An incontrovertible force beyond any constraining definition or explanation.

"It is not destiny. It is no prophecy. They are small in comparison. To name it even now would do little but belie its strength to a degree bordering on heresy. It is arbitrating; and when that is said: it is said that there is no higher authority."

Her eyes. Boring into his without mercy yet barely seeing him for it. Not moving or shaking or jerking but full of wild energy held so still like a blade kept at the waist.

It was fear. Nightmare Moon was afraid.

"It would never matter enough to give you its name, you would never understand its importance. Its weight. What you can and should understand is that it opposes me. It would find any conceivable way to sway events in favors opposing me or mine, to the extent of tortures that the darkest scum in all of history would have gagged to imagine.

"It accepts only what it believes is correct, and to its standards, I am not. It holds that which I would attempt to achieve in gross contempt, and it has decreed that I must fail."

Everything about Her screamed insanity except for Her eyes. Her words were unbelievable nonsense spewed like street gospel and libel; yet still: sanity burned like a torch in the wide scope of Her eyes. It was impossible; Her entire tirade was inconceivably outlandish and he did not believe it for a single second.

But She did.

"You asked why I could not simply kill the heroes. I could. I could do that and so much more but it would never matter. Never be enough. It would find new ways. New methods. New powers never recorded. It would and could and already has invented completely new heroes in their places and it would turn out that they were always the ones 'meant' to have been there. It lacks reason and it lacks sense but it has so much power."

It was gone. In an instant; like the sharp snap of a cord tied too tight. The spark of reason, of lucidity. In a single moment it was entirely snuffed.

In its place was a raging monster that stretched its mouth in a cavernous grin and laughed. Shrilly. Breathless. Like the howl of a banshee. Like a demon.

"Can't you see, yet? Can't you?! This is why I need you, Light Flow; this is your destiny!"

He wanted to cry. To scream that he didn't understand She wasn't making any sense. He couldn't.

She was holding him too hard.

""
///probably cut this

Author's Notes:

Now this is fascinating! Here we have a draft that I remember I was loathe to cut; to this day, I still wish this dialogue had made it in.

It's just incredible, and it's actually really interesting. If we're talking about quality, I think this breakdown is far superior to the one I ended up going with. It just packs so much punch; with every frantic word, I feel as though I'm truly being pressed.

So, why did it get cut? Well, this is a rare example of a draft being too dramatic.

Now, I know that seems impossible, but hear me out. This is extremely frenetic, and it does invoke feelings of panic and fear- but inappropriately. The preceding paragraph unfortunately isn't an exact parallel to what came before this, but either way, it's simply too abrupt. The shift in tone, while excellent, came far too quickly to be at all sustainable.

I love the way I worded NMM's assertions about Harmony, and especially Her line concerning its seeming omnipresence, but it just didn't fit the needed mood. At the time, It felt impossible to transition from this to the drawn-out conversation that pervades most of chapter 40+. I just felt as though the shift would've been irrevocable.

This was a rare problem I faced, but every time I did, it hurt to rectify. Out of everything I cut, this is one of my favorite drafts.

3/24/22 - Chapter 43 - Dead-End Destiny

He was here. He was listening. He was scared- how could he not be- but that was no reason to shut down.

Nightmare Moon seemed to take solace in his affirmation, as the almost unseen lines of tension in Her face lightened just that little bit. His fur itched uncomfortably as one of the metal-clad hooves softly swept across his shoulder; to repeat again and again in a gesture that might've been comforting from anypony else.

She didn't say anything for a few seconds; just staring down at him with conflicting emotion in Her eyes as Her chest shook with a suppressed sigh.

////////// Bridge //////////

"Do you remember, so long ago now, what was said in the letter that spoke of your future? Your first, buried abstinence?"

The low tone of Her voice begged attention, and as much as he wanted to ignore the heed in favor of thinking of some kind of insult about Her pores or something: the thread of memory was tugging voluntarily.

He did remember. A letter sent one week after he'd gone into the Everfree for the first time. A frightening letter detailing and dictating his entire life to him; including his potential deaths. He'd obsessed over it, even after he'd buried it in the backyard to protect him and his mother; the writer had seemed so lofty and all-knowing.

If he ever somehow cracked the secret to Chronomancy: his first stop would be that day to tell his younger self that the writer was completely full of it. They didn't see Nightmare Moon coming, and that mistake far outweighed whatever help they'd been trying to give.

"Yes... of course I remember," he spoke, slowly. He enunciated each syllable as they tied off his tongue to watch the face in front of him for any hint of change. So far, nothing of interest. "It was.. unforgettable. I don't think I ever really stopped thinking about what it said about my destiny."

His eyes lowered, narrowed down at the scuffed stone floor. "I think I began to hate it as time went by. It... Thinking about it sometimes made the idea of.. of villainy sort of... disgusting."

Maybe it had been the consuming corruption by way of moon parasite, but he hadn't really thought of himself as much of a villain in recent years. Maybe that was a good thing; his entire outlook had been a bit childish.

Applejack certainly wouldn't abide by villainy. He'd been more conscious of Applejack lately, too.

He wondered if Applejack would know what to say to Nightmare Moon.

He was literally shaken out of his reverie with the floor as Nightmare Moon's grip on him tightened and shook him. Startled, his eyes swept up to see a reproachful stare on him for a moment, before the same, sincere stare returned.

"Listen, child. Your feelings on the matter do not matter as does your memory." Her tone slowly grew more severe through Her words, even as he bristled noticeably at the disregard for his feelings. "You identify the letter's contents as speaking of destiny, and that is well enough; but have you given it greater thought?"

Greater thought? What, about destiny?

He had a weird feeling.

He shook his head, and let an incredulous expression take his face. "If.. If you're trying to say something about the concept of destiny, then why did you..?"

She'd just gone on and on about destiny as a matter of fact. Was She contradicting Herself? Was She- Okay, She was definitely absent enough to argue against a point She'd made just minutes ago. Or was that crazy? Absent, crazy: She classified as any number of concerning mental states.

He'd let his question trail in an obvious lead, though She waited for longer than he would have expected before She got the heavy hint that he was done. She must have known what he was going to say, though: because She eventually sighed, and let Her head hang.

Incidentally, Her hanging head was close enough that Her sharp horn came dangerously close to his head. He couldn't help but stare at the sharp point pointed precariously at his forehead with wide eyes, even as Nightmare Moon began to speak again.

"You ask why I would raise question to destiny, when I have so enthusiastically raised the term to a pedestal."

Author's Notes:

Despite the great title I came up with for this one, it's not too interesting. Especially when compared to what I replaced it with.

This just came in the junction between my cutting of the last draft, which I really liked, and what I decided to publish. An in-between idea that went nowhere, and so, it got cut. Some funny jokes and a reference to Chronomancy just weren't enough to salvage this one.

I believe I found this lacking for speed, funnily enough. Just too circuitous, and not brisk enough. Actually, now that I mention it: in the folder I saved this draft to, I titled it 'keep it brisk.'

There was some interesting development on Light's feelings that I'd like to reassert someday, but overall: not very interesting. Some drafts just aren't. More often than not, that's why they get cut.

4/2/2022 - Chapter 44 - Miniscule Wizardly Musings

I have no idea where this got cut from! Enjoy!

////////// Bridge //////////

Because he was feeling queasy about the picture he was drawing.

When a pony is excluded from something, that either meant they were or were not special.

Special.

Focus came in a brilliant shock of inspiration that wasn't at all like being shocked, but he didn't really care because metaphors were dumb and he had a pretty good idea of why books written for a general practitioner wouldn't be helpful for him.

His hoof came away from his head, and as he hefted it in a figuring point at Nightmare Moon's unblinking face: She began to smile. A small smile, without any teeth or slick expectation whatsoever.

"These books were written by somepony rather unlike me, weren't they?" His voice was perhaps a bit too gloating, but Nightmare Moon didn't stop smiling: only raised Her eyebrow. "Somepony who, if they even were a Necromancer: didn't have a certain advantage that I do."

Okay, now Nightmare Moon wasn't smiling. Oh no, She was rolling Her eyes and shaking Her head. Sagging Her shoulders and what had he gotten wrong?!

"Light Flow, must you make everything such a drawn out occurrence?"

Author's Notes:

This one is very minor, but I thought I'd include isolate it for serendipity's sake.

As Light Flow feels a need to make everything a drawn out occurrence, as do I! I make my editing process an extreme test of patience as I go through the entire work and snip and tuck and fold and press every little instance until it's all been looked over thrice or more. Invariably, in the process of such an exercise, some ideas get cut.

This is one of those. An altogether innocuous, unimpressive, meaningless little cut for the sake of brevity. Nothing special, but it's nice to get a reminder that I can cut things for the sake of keeping word length down.

Ah, and I probably didn't like where this draft was going very much. Scratch everything I said about brevity; I just plain went in another direction.

4/4/22 - Chapter 44 - Meaningless Circuity

He licked his lips, just to feel the cold air as he swept his eyes blankly across the room, before he turned again to stare at Nightmare Moon's tightly closed face. "So... sabotage, huh?" His mouth felt a little clammy as he spoke, and smacking his lips wasn't doing as much as he'd expected. "Is that... I guess- apropos? I mean, is... whatever you're talking about really so... deliberate?"

He really didn't want to believe it, and he was going to hold tight to that ship until it was kissing a bank.

////////// Bridge //////////

"I..." Her jaw seemed to become that much tighter as Her words failed, before She swallowed, and cleared Her throat. "I would not say in such deliberate methods as you seem to be thinking of; but by the standards of specificity: it was a brutal throttling of your potential."

She nodded to Herself, seemingly confident in Her words once again. Great. He was glad they had persevered through yet another dropped ball; now they could move onto the topic of lunacy!

His fell to a tilt as he allotted more thinking power to the riddle, but things still didn't quite add up. If he was understanding what Nightmare Moon was saying- and he was pretty sure he didn't- then... then the books were accidental sabotage?

What did that mean? Okay, no: he had a fair understanding of what that meant; but what did it mean for him?

"You're saying that... I don't even know what you're saying..." His thoughtful diction quickly bled into a mutter as he immediately lost track of the sentence he'd put together; and he let his legs fall out from under him as he put a hoof to his head, and grimaced.

"You're saying that-" He let the hoof on his head loll off to a lazy, underhoofed point at what he assumed was the waiting expression of Nightmare Moon. "-these books were... misinformation? They... what, they don't pertain?"

He heard the intake of breath as Nightmare Moon's mouth began to open, began to explain: but he waved his hoof in the air in a vague gesture of silence. He got it. He let it hang for a moment before bringing his hoof up to rest on the side of his head, to return the comforting feeling of warmth on his frog.

The idea beginning to form in his head was... a little odd, maybe a little presumptuous,

His eyes swept up, off their heated battle with the floor: to Nightmare Moon. Her eyebrow quirked. "You... You used some pretty specific wording, back there," he intoned, as he tapped his head thoughtfully, and returned his stare to the floor.

'You.' 'Any one horn.' 'Your potential.'

She was pointedly singling him out in direct relation to the relative helpfulness of the books. Why would that be?

The books do not pertain to him; but they might to others?

"Whether it was intentional or not- and with you I know it was- I think you've been putting a very fine point on me. You were demeaning the books like they were some kind of filthy corner store magazines, but at the same time: you were elevating me more than I think I've ever heard from you."

His short tirade was cut off almost mid-word, and he was left with his jaw hanging open for a moment as a sharp bark of a laugh rang out. He shut his mouth quietly as he raised his eyes back to Nightmare Moon, to see an indulgent smile on Her tilted face. "Do not be so quick to assume me your biggest fan, child."

Her lips parted, to show a flash of Her sharply shining teeth. "I simply do not believe in giving credit where none is due." Her smile quirked down, and for a moment: some kind of anger flashed in Her eyes, almost too quick to catch. "Especially in the case of your 'mystery benefactor.'"

Lot to unpack there, fitting a whole bunch of puzzle pieces together: leave it for later.

He nodded, just to move them along. "We'll come back to that: what's important is that you know something about me that I don't."

Nightmare Moon's falling face may have spoken of what She thought of his hurrying

What was different about him?

Well, there was really only one answer he could think of.

He tapped his head once, before bringing it down to point languidly at Nightmare Moon, who leaned in with raised brows. "The pony who wrote these books..." He furrowed his own brow as he sucked on his teeth for a moment; hoping behind his veneer that he was right. "...they didn't have a Necromancy cutie mark, did they?"

That was the only thing it could be. His special talent was, coincidentally, the only really special thing about him.

It was a moment of quiet, of him sweating with with his hoof and the air and Nightmare Moon leaning, and staring with hooded eyes. Eventually, She silently began to slowly lean backwards to a gradual return to Her normal posture, where She continued to just stare.

But then, She smiled; and laughed.

He blew a long, relieved breath, and let his hoof fall to his side as Nightmare Moon rolled Her head around Her quiet chuckle. Her eyes, now filled with glimmering mirth: dropped to him, and Her smile grew wider. "Would you like to know something interesting?"

That caught him a bit off guard, and it showed in the way he stammered nonsense for a single moment: before his body nodded and his mouth eventually caught up. "Uh.. well... um.. Sure?"

Nightmare Moon chuckled again, and nodded along with his still-nodding head. "It's a rather amusing little tidbit; one that I only realized as I spent more time with my hooves on them."

Author's Notes:

Ah, a cliffhanger, and ah, a reference back to a bit of writing that no longer exists. The hardest thing about consolidating these drafts is figuring out where the heck they would've fit into the chapters. Sometimes, I can only make a good estimation.

Here we have NMM and Light discussing the mystery sender of the books, as they did in chapter 44. I dunno why this got cut, really. I guess the books part of chapter 44 was already so long, and it's not the focus of that chapter, so this got cut in the interest of saving further interest.

I had struggled with striking a good balance of intrigue and keeping their identity secret, I remember. In fact, I think the cliffhanger at the end may have been leading into NMM outright telling Light who it was.

Lost to time, though. Don't think I ever actually wrote that bit, and the pressure of revealing the wizard may have been the prevailing reason this got cut.

4/9/22 - Chapter 44 - Descriptive Agony

Now or never.

He let a familiarly unfamiliar energy rise up in him, and lit his-

The world spun, heat flared behind his eyes, and suddenly: he couldn't see.

////////// Bridge //////////

His chest was hot! Burning and seething and spreading in agonizing, perverse detail. First warm, then hot, then immolating his flesh in coils of meat that snapped off at ends then found more. Lines through his body lit like oiled rope, and he could count every one of them as though he was staring directly at them. One, then ten, then hundreds and only higher.

It cordoned his heart, then tightened into the organ like electrified barbed wire pulled taut. His stomach upended, but the sick he could feel expelled up his throat just fizzled into fuel for the fire that then crept in opposite directions through his body.

Down the line of his spine, and could swear he became airborne for one, terrified second; before he fell hard to the earth, suffocating him with great mounds of dirt as it engulfed his hooves.

Up the veins of his neck, and his throat filled with water that boiled in an instant as the fire stopped at his neck; before creeping up the charred tube into his skull.

He first felt it behind his eyes just before they popped, as his vision swept away in an instant as his sight melted away. Each sense filled in turn with fire as it crept along the last bastion towards the tips of his being, and then, it finally reached his-

He blinked, and it all swept away.

The world returned in an instant as his head jerked back, to an upright angle that only seemed as upright as- It cuts here. Too bad!

Author's Notes:

I had gone a little wild with the descriptors here. Can you tell?

It's too bad this got cut, but I know why it did. It's another case of simply being too dramatic. I was worried people would misunderstand the phenomena of Light's magic turning back on if I made it too gruesome, so it got toned down.

...Oh yeah, if you hadn't understood this part in the actual chapter, It was Light's magic turning back on. I sort of made that fact a little innocuous if you're not the sort to sift carefully through every word.

The assumption that I don't think I ever got around to explaining being that, while he was stricken with amnesia, there was some sort of block on his magic. He hadn't actually performed any magic since having his memory returned to him, and when he went to try, he experienced... let's say it was something like a broken dam.

The descriptions I came up with for his mana filling his veins once more are pretty vivid, and actually point to a bit of magical lore I plan on introducing someday. Too bad it got cut, huh?

Chapter 45 - A Six-Month Long Draft

These snips have no date, nor preceding paragraph. These are a few of the many cuts made during my long absence.

////////// Bridge //////////

Well, he had one.

The question was spreading long stalks of confusion through his mind, tangling every thought that tried to make sense of it. What She was proposing: it just... didn't make any sense?

Talk through it. Vocalize the thought, and find the answer.

"I.. still don't really understand?" His mouth felt clammy all of a sudden, though it didn't stop him from catching the rising annoyance on Nightmare Moon's face, and quickly preempting it. "I mean, I understand what you're saying, now; but it just doesn't make sense."

His hooves at his lap felt weirdly stagnant as he sat, and he took to quietly rubbing them together in front of his chest as he continued speaking, and staring down at them. "You're saying that it might matter whether the soul is mine or not, but... It's not?"

Why did he feel so nervous? What was with the slick taste in the back of his throat, and why was it making it so hard to express?

His teeth felt dirty, and he licked along the back of them for a moment as he tried to focus instead on the gritty feeling of his hooves scraping against each other. "Just because it's in me, and just because I... own it, doesn't really mean it's... mine?"

He felt... unsteady. "It isn't the one I was born with... so... it's not..."

He trailed off, in favor of taking a deep breath. It was becoming more and more of a strain to take clear looks at himself, to keep the clarity. He didn't know why his confidence was crumbling so rapidly, and whether he could keep a hold on it wasn't a problem: so much as remembering that he'd had it.

His hooves were an anchor. The rubbing, nearly sandy sensation was keeping him grounded: helping him remember to think. To recall that everything had dimensions. It was easy to think that way, to look that way. All he had to do was keep clarity.

All he had to do was think of the warmth.

He let his eyes wander up to Nightmare Moon, just to take stock of the situation. No doubt She was bored to tears with his little trip-up, and his sub-par reasoning. He knew he was. If this was his crowning moment of intelligence, then he was still a C grade at best. 60 percent score for effort, and he was going home with a referral. Study harder next time, and maybe he'd actually get a score worth a Tartarus damn-

His half-sincere tirade to himself halted in a moment of wait shut up as he caught a glimpse of Nightmare Moon's face, and things suddenly made a little less sense.

Nightmare Moon was... staring at him oddly.

She had a lot of odd stares, of course; including a very- Cut off, and a cut out.

////////// Bridge //////////

He couldn't finish. He didn't know what to finish with, anymore. It all felt... half-baked. What was he even talking about? He didn't know anything about souls, and he barely knew anything about himself.

His hooves were little but a slow circle around each other, now. He didn't think he had the... presence to be much more energetic. Really, it was becoming a chore to still be sitting there. All he wanted to do now was... flop over.

He felt cold.

////////// Bridge //////////

What was it? What was this? It wasn't his entire mind; he could actually still hear the never-ending spew of recurrent garbage in the muted background. But he was still able to hear himself louder, perhaps in a different sort of... lane of hearing.

Light Flow felt distant.

Distant, in some tiny, clean part of his thinking mind. Staring with total blind impunity, and commenting on every little detail like some omniscient third party. A wonderful gift of off clarity; while panic turned his mind to mush and his body tore his reins to shreds.

So removed from feeling; and it all seemed calm, above the misty red tide.

////////// Bridge //////////

As for his hyperventilation: it was likely because the motion of breathing was a comfort in action and thought, and because he'd latched deliriously to the metaphor of being in water due to the somewhat warmth-dulled mental cold of the shock he was undergoing. Just his imagination. All his imagination.

Author's Notes:

I don't have a lot to say about many of these. During the time I was gone for six months, I began to save fewer and fewer of my drafts because of how many I was making. I had become so very uncertain with my writing that I frequently began to double back on ideas that were just fine. I would cut things and change the entire outcome of the chapter with alarming regularity.

If you're savvy, you can probably tell about where some of these snips go, especially since a notable few of them take place right at the start. The draft at the top, though, I have no idea where it might've gone.

I don't much like these drafts, because they bring back some bad memories of writing habits I'm still trying to break out of. Remember to value your own writing highly, kids. It doesn't blend well if you cut things because of the tiniest dissatisfaction.

Chapter 45 - The Realm Beyond

"It's not like I really left, you know," he murmured lowly. He let his eyes rise up, to Her watching, searching face; feeling the melancholic turn of his felt frown rise into a smile: bitter with something he didn't quite feel. "I was only having a panic attack. Hardly a day trip down to Las Pegasus."

His voice didn't sound as bad as he'd imagined. He could only lose it by doing nothing so many times, he supposed. Maybe he'd actually earn that wear soon.

////////// Bridge //////////

The contemplation drawn into the cleft of Her brow lessened with his attempt at humor, and Her mouth hooked into a flashy grin. "Ah, but weren't you?" The slick tone of Her question was an easy lead into a self-serving chuckle. "Lost such in your own mind: could it not be said that you'd left this realm for another?"

His eyes fell. He wanted to scoff; maybe even snicker. It was a joke. Obtuse phrasing. It meant nothing. Just more meaningless prose to throw onto the pile of things said to generally befuddle him. She delighted in confusing him.

But what if it wasn't? What if... for whatever dumb, overthinking reason... he took that literally?

It was so easy to just let himself consider, now, in the void left in the furrows of shock. His body too weak to flinch, and his mind momentarily broken of its emotions: it was the definition of clarity left without prejudice. There was no fear to think; no weight from the past dragging his hooves.

What pit was there in letting his imagination run?

Nightmare Moon walked in dreams, and... what were dreams at their basest but a figment of the mind? A fantasy: but apparently made physical enough to traverse? And... and maybe using such words as 'walked' and 'traversed' weren't so much of the same, tired metaphor?

Break it down. Let it run.

What was a realm? A fancy word for world.

What was the world? It was the planet, the place he lived. The dirt he walked on, the sky above his head, the air he breathed. It was Equus.

He walked Equus. She walked dreams. Minds.

What was the same?

He could leave hoofprints in the dust. Touch the dirt, and till the soil.

She could tread the roads of the mind. Touch memories, and alter ideas.

Equus... and another.

"What is the realm of the mind called?"

As his eyes rose with it, the question felt quiet: in both tone and stature. Perhaps he could have put more emotion or emphasis behind it, but the question itself was somewhat listless. He wasn't invested enough to really desire the overt answer, rather than to have his own question posed. To make it known that he'd not narcissistically brushed Her words off, as he might've.

Not so much a question, as it was a statement.

He felt smart.

Nightmare Moon seemed taken aback by the turnaround he'd posed. It wasn't immediate; perhaps a moment spent with Her eyebrow bent and furrowed, only for Her to lean back on a quiet rise of surprise. Not quite as defined by upset as shock: but more purely astonished, if not so explicitly dire.

She looked... simply surprised. No better, smarter word for it.

Oh well.

"You are... different," She mused, Her face falling into a thoughtful squint as She tilted Her head to the side. He let Her look; not shying away from the gaze even as She leaned around to stare with a vengeance at his sides, for whatever good it did Her.

Her gaze didn't make his fur crawl as much as it used to.

She soon set back, eventually satisfied enough in name even as She seemed disappointed by whatever She hadn't found. "No, perhaps not different: but changed, enough." She drew back even further, standing to Her full height with a straight back as She put a hoof to Her chin. Looking down at him.

Perhaps not for the insulting action of towering over him, but for the perspective it gave Her? Not everything was as antagonistic as he might believe.

"Shaper, more entirely... focused. It is in your eyes... the way you look at me, the way you speak: it is more... precise than it was before." She nodded: Her own eyes still not entirely focused on him. "There is true thought behind your ambling, much unlike usual."

Each quiet observation was a testament given in his favor, but for Her vacant, thoughtful tone: She may as well have been commending the qualities of a fruit. Insulting, of course, but that didn't mean it was meant that way.

It was so plainly fascinating to see Her whensoever She dropped the posture and the cunning; to just stand in witness of eyes not clouded by the rage or the plots. Maybe not ever wholly clear, but... was it right to expect that of Her?

She was more than guile, than pure calculating force. Even behind the broad, blind intelligence, he could see... consideration. Deceit in a backwards, blunt honesty. Grandeur played genuinely, but sometimes... lacklustre?

It was easy to forget Her; to see past Her character.

"Truthfully: I had expected little but the inconsolable wreck you had been for what time it took, yet..." She went quiet for a moment; tensed face stony but for consideration as She clearly mulled for words. She soon found them, and Her expression became thoughtful.

"...I suppose you chose the greater method of dealing with grief. The road of thought, rather than hasty action."

Thought, rather than action...

He let his head fall at that: to stare at the scant floor in sad, knowing remembrance of his state moments passed. Grief wasn't the word he'd had in mind... but it fit. "Yes... You could say that I... found something else to focus on."

His throat tightened around the words, and he swallowed thickly just to think of his distraction. It was such an off feeling to see Nightmare Moon in the impartial light he was standing under for however long it would shine. Having his understandably crass feelings for Her put aside by somewhat forced passivity, to see the facts and figures as they really stood.

Though, there was still an angry little stump of discontent in a sad little corner of his mind that tugged every thought down, trying to force his underlying feelings of conflict. He couldn't completely kill such a predominant part of himself, though it was easy enough to ignore for the moment.

In any such case, it was hardly a curse. He would actually loathe to become so partial again, for the grand perspective he would lose to the feeling. Not anytime tonight had the world seemed so clear. Everything so easy to see.

Was it really all just from the cleansing relief of a breakdown? Where had this wonderful clarity been before? What had changed?

It didn't really matter; though he knew it couldn't last forever. He couldn't make it through this night without passion, however little it seemed to do for him. In the cold state he was in now, he could honestly evaluate the situation and make truly intelligent decisions based on decently unbiased information rather than emotional preconceptions.

That wasn't a good thing. Because he was doing that right now in the back of his head, and he knew the correct answer he'd arrived at was the wrong one.

He had to stop running away from the reason he was panicking. Stop dancing around the subject with vague mentions and thoughtless references; and dive directly to what he needed. What he wanted.

It would hurt, at first, but it was only a step. The first step always hurt.

His eyes drifted closed, and he took one deep breath to punctuate what he would remember of being so intelligently detached. His eyes were on Nightmare Moon before they'd even opened, Her face expectant in the least.

"How do I get the soul out of my body?"

The merest mention, the barest taste on his tongue and it was already beginning to consume his thoughts. He'd somehow kept even the picture of it from his thoughts, but now it seemed fixed to the back of his eyes. A heady desire now itching to be let out, and for him to let it out.

He wanted the soul back. He wanted it safe in his hooves, and he wanted more than anything else to just touch it some more.

Still: he kept a silent, neutral expression as Nightmare Moon stared back for a moment; Her eyes roving lightly around his face while Her own sat still. "You simply believe that it can?" Her eyebrows furrowed, and Her head dipped in time to a question. "You would skip the refractory question of whether? No such tired tale of woe and pleading for answers?"

She seemed almost taken aback.

A tiny lick of aggravation touched his tongue, adding to the spiced taste of wanton need that just mentioning the soul had brought him. He frowned back at Nightmare Moon's placid face. "I am capable of occasional intelligence." He put a hoof to the side of his head, and tapped once for emphasis.

He closed his eyes, and began a brief drone; still holding his hoof to his head. "Whether I am different or not, I am still a pony. Obviously different from a crow, but similar enough as a living being. We both possess souls; and there's been nothing to make me believe that taking them would be any different. Therefore..."

He trailed for a moment as he opened his eyes, to watch Nightmare Moon's face. It was placid, but not disinterested. He blinked. "...the process should be much the same, shouldn't it? I took the soul out of a crow, so I can take the soul out of myself."

He wasn't really asking for confirmation- he was fairly confident- but he'd be a fool to deny Her a chance to interject. This was time for him, after all. He needed whatever information he could squeeze, even if it came at peril of his confidence.

Nightmare Moon stared at him for a moment, as She usually did. Was that what it looked like when he stared? Probably not. He'd been described as vacant; but She simply looked still.

One corner of Her mouth ticked up briefly. A break in the stillness. A smirk: shown only for a second. "When you speak of a difference, you mean your cutie mark, correct? Your status?" She paused for a moment, as if he'd be stupid enough to believe it was a chance to speak. "You do not believe the difficulty would stem from your position?"

Now there was a lead She seemed intent on, and now She waited for a response. A response that... he didn't think he could give? "I don't understand."

As easy as it felt to simply state, and as conducive as it was: it was still a little bitter to admit he didn't get what She was saying. His processing power was relatively incredible at the moment, but no matter how 'smart' he was, some things just needed clarifying.

Position, in this scenario, could mean... either end of the extremes of nothing and anything.

Nightmare Moon seemed slightly put-off by his brazen show of fallibility; Her face falling into an bemused, slightly angry tilt. After a moment of glaring, though, something seemed to occur in a moment of softened expression; Her mouth extending in a silent 'oh.'

She glanced once to the side, then fixed him with an ever so slightly awkward expression. "Perhaps... not the best wording," She conceded with a nod. He nodded back, and She seemed quietly mollified, in Her own inexpressive way.

Her head tilted, and She narrowed Her eyes questioningly at him. "To be less concise: have you considered that taking your own soul out would be a difficult thing? Nothing said for how different it may be to extract it from your own body; is the prospect not daunting to you?"

Her piece said: She raised Her head in finality to stare down at him from the bottoms of Her eyes, waiting apparently raptly for his answer.

He had one, easily.

He frowned, as he looked up at Nightmare Moon with his own questioning tilt. A mime of the gesture She so frequently passed his way. "Does it really matter, when you're just going to teach me anyway?"

His words hung for a moment, Nightmare Moon doing little but staring unchangingly at him: but it soon gave way to a small, tepid smile. She hummed; the noise not unlike a laugh. "It seems you've left me the fool; asking such questions in such a time."

The hum turned quickly into an open laugh, and he watched with passive eyes as She shook Her head with it. "You're correct, truly. With or without difficulty, there is little doubt in my mind that you will succeed."

Her smile widened, showing larger flashes of teeth between each word. "I can't say for sure why I asked in the first place. Perhaps to test your conviction?"

He was lucky he was already frowning; he already had his expression all set for his response. "Right," he intoned dryly; not bothering to hide the weary feeling that that tone in Her voice was beginning to bring him.

Author's Notes:

Ah, now this one is interesting. It features two ideas that never made their way into a chapter: a discussion on the dream world, and a confident Light Flow! Two very foreign concepts!

Now, on the topic of the dream world: it was a concept that I had only then wondered whether I should explore. It came to me on a whim, as many things often do, which is probably why it was discarded. It's an interesting idea and it makes for a fascinating talking point, but it was tangential to the plot points I was trying to push. It'll likely see the light of day sometime in the future.

Light had a pretty noticeable shift in confidence in this draft, which I probably deliberately cut. People often ask me why Light is such a wimp, and to that question, I will provide an answer someday. For now, let's just say that Light having any sort of ability to stand up for himself is just too OOC.

To be frank, though, I felt as though I was making him too confident, and too incisive. His personality was being lost in his forward attitude, and It didn't feel very much like Light Flow.

That's about it for my thoughts on this chapter, because the musings on souls was pretty thoroughly explored in other facets. That was something I really struggled with, by the way, and wondering whether I was doing it properly probably contributed something to this chapter getting cut.

Chapter 45 - For Want of Normalcy

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At one point, he was sure that listening to Her drawl and mislead in every possible little undertone had lit some sort of awe in him. She spoke to him so promptly, yet the way She said things always made it sound like She was hiding meanings under ever recursive meanings.

But he was tired of it now; it just made him tired. She obviously wasn't 'testing his conviction;' She could stand to let Her mistakes stand once in a while, rather than throwing them under any rug She could find.

He just... wanted to talk to Her.

As his steady wall of indifference continued to stand defiant of Nightmare Moon's smiling leer, it slowly faded. One corner at a time: Her face fell, and there was suddenly a heavy silence between them as they both just... stared.

Her fallen eyes studied his sunken, hooded own; and he... couldn't help but imagine what She'd look like if Her eyes were... different.

She was a pony, so what would She look like with normal eyes? Not... cut long and foreign, but round, and familiar. Regular. Softly curved, on a face not hardened with the strength of a Goddess.

All of the intelligence, the depths of wisdom and surprising humor; what would it seem without the edge?

Author's Notes:

There's not much to say, here. It's just a sad little idea I wish I had tried harder to showcase, that came second to the things I deemed more important.

In the end, he only ever resented Her. I never gave him the chance he needed to imagine a better time. A calmer time.

A time before the insanity.

Chapter 45 - Needle The Unicorn

"I'm just fine, thank you," he retorted, and Nightmare Moon only smiled humorously at him. Because She was not threatened, or offended, or unamused, because he was just her little plaything, wasn't he!?

...Well, yeah, he kind of was.

////////// Bridge //////////

He sighed, and redoubled his repentant stare. "I'm sorry for getting distracted," he recited blandly: making sure to keep his eyes on hers. "I was wrong to get so caught up in my own head, and overthinking things will not help me progress."

The air was tense with the heavy weight of Her unimpressed stare, yet impossibly light with the underlying humor of his drill-like monotone. It was a stark dichotomy that almost made him want to crack up himself, except that his ability to feel humor was long dead and She would plant his head on a spike for daring to laugh in Her presence. Or something.

Yet after only another moment, Her frown rose into a smile, and She nodded. "It is a very good thing to find your humility." Her smile rose further: once again showing the tips of her freakishly sharp teeth. "Yet, it is another thing entirely to give yourself up for the schoolfoal you are."

His inexpressive expression fell to a muted glower as She threw Her head back and cackled at Her own joke. It went on for longer than it ever karmically should've, before She threw her head back down, and fixed Her eyes on him through Her rolling chuckles. "The absolute confidence with which you parroted your sweet little apology merely made it all the sweeter how absolutely meek it was!"

She'd said it between laughs, and then She threw Her head back and began to laugh all over again. Over and over Her voice raised in merriment, and just as he rolled his eyes and checked the window, she seemed to begin to peter off: before she found her seeming fifth wind, and continued gaily crowing.

It went on for longer than he'd care to remember.

Author's Notes:

...And moving on from the last, much sadder draft, here's a useless little thing wherein Light is insulted!

It's obvious why this got cut, funny though it may be. There'd already been a lot of senseless emotional drubbing of the poor colt over the chapters, and it wasn't really necessary to include it as the plot ramped up.

It's always something I struggle with: momentum verses characterization. I've been trying, as of late, to keep chapters moving faster. Unfortunately, in the process, the well-tread moments of character interaction might suffer as a result.

As much as I enjoy having NMM needle Light, it got cut for time. That's how it rolls, baby!

The reason a few of these don't have timestamps, by the way, is because I found them all consolidated into a single notepad. It seems I had taken to recording the separate drafts of a single chapter into the same document, because I was just making so darn many.

10/20/22 - Chapter 45 - Saucy~

The very idea that She had known somepony so similar to him, that was so similar to him was... eugh. But then, She nodded, and the tense knot of uncomfortable, wriggling incertitude in his chest grew larger. "Yes... you are... very much like..." She murmured, trailing off tonelessly. And then, very slowly, Her head began to tilt down to him.

////////// Bridge //////////

She trailed off, and finally, Her eyes came back down to his. He wanted to scream, for Her lidded eyes were not misted with reminiscence as he'd thought, but sharp, and very nearly predatory. "He held the very same fire that you so bravely wielded." She purred, and something acidic stung at the lowest latch of his throat.

He shook his head: no, he wanted to say. Nightmare Moon shook her head: yes, Her eyes said. She took as step forward, and he took his largest back. "The exact sciences behind Necromancy were hardly ever developed, and what was understood often found itself rediscovered as that understanding was stamped out." She drawled, taking another step.

He fell to his haunches, and began to scoot backwards on his butt: glancing shallowly behind him once to check for obstructions. "Are- are you saying that- what are you saying?!" He stammered out. He'd never been good at speaking under pressure, or when he was embarrassed, or happy. Really, he was only very articulate when mad, and right now, he was not mad.

Just very, very uncomfortable.

A stray brick bumped at his haunches, and in the time he took to whip his head around to it, Nightmare Moon was in front of him. Close enough, again, that he could smell how Her breath was scentless. "What I am saying, Light Flow," She whispered, and Her eyes were still so massive, even lidded as they were. "-is that Necromancers are often very... passionate, in learning about their craft."

Her breath was... on his ear..!

Each shallow breath from his trembling lips was difficult in ways he'd never experienced before. His hooves felt clammy- his chest ached- his face somehow felt cold- And the worst thing, by far, was that he just couldn't look away.

Something within him felt... strange...

Author's Notes:

Hehehehehe~

I've had a few people joke with me about whether I would ever write porn, and I believe one such joke came a few days before I wrote this. It was on my mind, and as I was feeling silly, I wrote what I thought would make a good lead into amorous activities.

Though the question of whether I'm receptive to writing such things is still in the air, this was never intended to be in the chapter, and was written for my own laughs. And now, for your laughs!

Enjoy thinking of the world in which I'm known chiefly for my ability to arouse!

Chapter 48 - Peaceable Negotiations

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I had... not meant to tell you of that..." Her murmur towards the floor was cut by a pained grimace, and Her tired eyes peeled slightly open. "Again, my own mind has done so much to undermine me, and my secrets are laid prone." Her next breath was shallow and clipped, and She raised her head to stare glimmeringly at the ceiling. "Sometimes I wonder it it is some curse that compels my fits of rage, but I think I am only searching for an excuse..."

At one point, the entire spectacle he'd just been witness to would've laid him flat; something as practically awesome as conjuring an entire thunderstorm was the kind of thing that would... well... awe him.

At this point, though, he'd already seen Her breathe fire, catch a bird in flight with nothing but Her magic, and crack solid stone with nothing but Her hooves; his tolerance had kinda moved on from remaining speechless.

So it was that when he sighed and shrugged his shoulders, he stared up at the woeful monarch-to-be with nothing more than a mild apprehension, and the nagging reminder to try to be tacit. "You've... had a lot to deal with," he offered as gently as he reasonably could: stepping forward and keeping his eye out for sudden actionable twitches. "I think I can forgive your... slips, what with all that you're... going to do."

He stopped his hesitant amble forward as he came a hoof-length away from Nightmare Moon, and from there he could see the absolute misery on Her face all the better. It tugged at his heartstrings, it really did. Too bad for Nightmare Moon that he hadn't had those strings tuned since birth, and the only noise they made were hollow twangs. No symphonic sympathy out of him, not-so-sorry to say.

There was a lot to think about in what She'd told him. Nothing about Celestia's war crimes surprised him- coincidentally, he already happened to hate Her- but for all that Nightmare Moon was clearly very terrified of Harmony, She also seemed to... deify it, funnily enough. A Deity's deity. No wonder She'd tried so hard to instill that fear into him.

No matter how he thought of it, there was still a... a disconnect in the logic. She and Celestia had once wielded the Elements of Harmony- they were once forces for good- they'd founded Equestria- etcetera upon nauseating etcetera. Then they'd had a falling out- but because Celestia had turned away from Harmony, not Nightmare Moon.

That was the part that boggled his mind the most. It just... didn't fit in his head for what he'd expected, nor for what he'd known. The Banishing War of famous history was no crusade against some great monster, but an Equestrian Civil War. Equestria split in two along the heavens, and gone to war with itself. Then, it'd been covered up in the aftermath.

He felt like screaming. No matter how he thought about it, it just didn't fit. Celestia, the ostensible evil sister, had ruled Equestria for a millennium, yet the land was at relative peace, or close enough that a pony could live in ignorance. Nightmare Moon, the self-purported good sister, had been banished, but now that She was back She wanted to... She had already...

"So, your sister... had a fall from grace, if I'm understanding... your ravings correctly," he managed after a long moment of thinking, as he eased himself to a seat in front of Her. Close enough to touch, but more importantly: close enough to watch Her downcast face. A face whose eyes turned immediately away from his, but he had already seen the shame.

Now She was trying to ignore the problem: that was just great. He blew out a short breath from his nose and shook his head reproachfully, for all it did to the mare who was avoiding looking at him. "Celestia had become... cold, and you..." He bent his head down to try to catch Her eye, for which he failed. "...you tried to revolt against Her. Which... didn't end well."

He was getting nothing from Her, and Her silence was beginning to grate on his nerves. He put a hoof to his head for the cold feeling against his warming skin, and grit his teeth as he leaned back in exasperation. "I just don't get it." he muttered: tapping his hoof repeatedly to his head. "If you're telling the truth, then by all rights your sister has more to answer for, but you're wanting to do worse."

He had hoped tapping his hoof in a rhythm would conduct his thoughts into a neat pattern, but all the percussion was doing was making his head hurt. He shook the growing pain away as his hoof fell, and grumbled in frustration as he turned his gaze to the side. Open window... Dark, blue sky...

"You just don't make sense to me," he murmured. The stars twinkling so faintly across the distance were of little comfort, and for whatever reason, they struck him as a very honest phenomena, then. They did not hide themselves, or lie, or make the truth so difficult. They only shone. The sun would drown them out come day, but they were still there. Still bright, and clear.

He sighed, and at the same time, so did She.

When he turned to see whether Nightmare Moon had come out of Her funk, he was only marginally surprised to see Her eye at the same window that his had been. Her face was creased and clenched in clear contemplation, though he doubted She was thinking anything so useless as he was. Probably thinking about the very real things happening to Her.

Probably thinking about him.

"My sister cannot return to the throne."

She suddenly spoke, and though he was tired and haggard from the recently past torment, he still sat a little straighter to listen better. The complete and utter sadness was draining bit by bit from Nightmare Moon's face, and quickly being replaced by a stoic, stony knowing. A genuinely unfeeling reverie, yet still spoken through a clenched lip.

"I watched helplessly as the lifetimes of peace wore Celestia down, and at times, I felt it as well. Through the days and the nights passed, I saw what happened when Harmony was not needed. When it was not constantly tested."

She turned back to him, then, and it struck him instantly how haunted the shadow behind Her eyes was. "I had only time to think in my banishment, and I had only my past to reflect on." Her frown fell deeper, but the wide expression in Her eyes that spoke of something seen did not abate. "There were times I thought it would never end. That I had already experienced the rest of my entire existence."

Her next breath was sharp, and Her eyes fluttered as the unseen millennia fled from Her face. She shook Her head, then raised it as a resolute hardness returned to Her. "I came to realize that my sister and I owed everything we were gifted to He whom we hated the most. He who destroyed the world before only paved way for the world we built. If it was not for his ceaseless villainy, Equestria would not exist. If it were not for Chaos, there could never have been Harmony."

A sick, shallow anticipation was building in his chest, because he was sure he knew where She was going.

Her eye bored into his: a plea clearly present there through the solid wall of impassioned dispassion. "I realized that there must be a villain for virtue to prosper. There must first be a tyrant for whom heroes are bred to defeat. Without adversity, there is only complacency, and in complacency, there is no Harmony."

Author's Notes:

There isn't much to say on this one- but you could probably guess that already, couldn't you?

This particular draft is more or less a rewording of something that made it into the final draft, so it's not too interesting. I believe I had cut it because it wasn't meshing well with my vision of how the chapter should've progressed. That it was too fast, or something. It's a common reason for why I cut things.

I suppose I see that, reading it. A breakdown is best built up to over several tens of thousands of words, after all.

Through all these drafts, though... I'm really seeing the lingering traces of a plot thread I ended up not developing, and it irks me. It's my plan to develop it at some point, but I had also planned to develop it before, so... Who's to say what the future holds?

1/12/2023 - Chapter 48 - Death of Innocence

This is most akin to an alternate telling of chapter 48. Wait with bated breath, and see what could have been.

////////// Bridge //////////

She grimaced, and feeling emboldened by the short flash of vacancy: he stepped forward. "It's something from before, isn't it?" he pressed, and as She turned Her troubled gaze to him, he allowed the prickling sensation of performance to fuel his insistent tone. "Something from before you... became like this?"

He nodded persistently as Nightmare Moon, sans most everything that made Her Nightmare Moon, watched him with low, lidded eyes. Not responding to his increasingly bold strides to put words into Her mouth, at least until She blinked twice. "And how would that be?"

His head caught in the middle of his brazen overture, and as his mouth hung dumbly open, Nightmare Moon frowned. A frown that was more immediately Her as it gained a soft edge of scorn, though still comparatively soft. "I'm not fool enough not to see your tasteless bid. It's your thought that as soon as I come to say something to your effect, I'll undergo some great epiphany and-" Her frown became a scowl. "-'come to my senses,' as may be assumed."

He bit his lip and leaned back onto his haunches, feeling a new sense of shame worming into his skin as Nightmare Moon raised Her chin: looking altogether as haughty as She ever had as the unreserved emotion She'd begun to show buried itself. "You claim I am without pride; you assume me weak simply because I struggle to control myself; yet if you believe I am so tawdry as to upturn my belief on mere accusation alone, you must instead yourself question."

He opened his mouth to respond, but almost immediately he found he didn't know what to say, because he was fairly sure he didn't understand at all what She'd just said.

As if Her goal was to confuse him with Her archaic manner, She huffed lightly and straightened Her back again: seeming satisfied in Her rapidly chilling expression. "I was bid to make clear my past and my duty as I had believed you finally worthy to share my burden, yet now..." She sneered, and he felt his shoulders begin to sag with a cold sense of failure. "...I am no longer sure that you are so astute."

With a shimmer and a whoosh, her helmet came from Her side to set itself down in front of Her hooves, to lay inertly and ordinately with its face towards him. "Tell me yourself of how I 'used to be' if you understand so much of me and mine, as you do seem to be so enlightened. I am sure it will be no difficult thing for someone of your exhaustive talents."

With the simple motion, Her face finally hardened in stony stoicism. "You may speak now, my dearest child. Speak, and tell me of my past."

Okay, he'd made Her mad. No- actually- wait- this was worse than lackadaisical old mad. To say he'd stepped in something foul was an understatement akin to likening a typhoon to a windy day. No, this time, he'd flown way beyond the bounds of what was okay. He'd taken the impossible level of trust She'd placed in him with the removal of Her helmet- something not even Her own sister had seen- and he'd tried to reach further. Like a greedy child snatching impatiently at what wasn't theirs.

She wasn't angry; She was disappointed.

Though, as funny as that was, She was probably also pretty mad, too. Oh, why'd he have to go and make Her so mad when She was just letting her guard down? He'd so nearly tasted the impossibly sweet taste of victory, but it was only the bitter taste of something foul. Like... grapes. Blech.

As a second passed and it became clear She wasn't going to budge from her sudden vigil against his advance on Her past, Light sighed heavily through his nose and lolled his head back against his neck. The motion felt nice, but it was more important in that it let him catch a quick glance at the door behind him.

Still closed; She hadn't tried anything, it seemed.

Though...

He straightened his neck and clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. "Aren't we out of time?" he tried hopefully, causing Nightmare Moon to raise one eyebrow high enough that it touched Her forehead. He tried to shrug his shoulders, but it might've come off as a lukewarm roll- he wasn't sure. "Aren't the heroes in the castle? Do we really have time to sit around and play guessing games again?"

It was hard to say why, exactly, he was arguing against his tertiary plan of stalling her until the heroes kicked down the door. He was reasonably sure it was because he didn't want Her to surreptitiously try anything sneaky without his knowing. He was less sure it wasn't just because he didn't want Her to think he was stupid.

Or maybe he liked the idea of resolving the whole thing before Applejack got there. Let him be the historic hero that everypony remembered how great he was- wow, he'd gone way off the track of his foalhood dream. Maybe it was time for a checkup after this if he was still alive; he seemed to have discarded everything that made him, him.

Whether Light Flow was stupid and his personality discordant and whether She thought him so, he still kept his eyes beaded on Her as She set Her jaw and raised Her chin barely. "We have time yet; I am diverting my attention between you and they as I distract them with spectres," She spoke loftily, which immediately begged his question of how She was doing that.

He blinked bemusedly as Her eye flicked and narrowed onto a particularly blank stretch of wall to their side. "This castle is large and fraught, yet we still only have so much time." Her frown peeled back until She was nearly snarling in constrained annoyance. "They are each and all extraordinary by themselves, and it is particularly difficult to stay abreast of Rainbow Dash."

His curiosity at Her purported self splitting and multi-management was washed immediately by a moment of exasperation at hearing the familiar name, but then, something bright that seemed awfully like an idea squeezed between the tightly-wound irritation.

His tongue darted out to whet his drying lips, and he shot a quick glance to the wall Nightmare Moon was staring at. "I've got a question, if you'd dare to answer it." He tapped his hoof intermittently to the ground in a patternless pattern as Nightmare Moon turned slowly to sneer at him, but he didn't let it dissuade the growing question on his buzzing tongue.

He puckered his lips for a second just because he was nervous, then nodded shortly. "Why haven't you just hidden the weapons they're looking for?"

The question felt enormous, none the less because Nightmare Moon's eyebrows immediately jumped then hardened with nearly no in-between. "Do you honestly think me a complete dullard?" She snapped: drawing Her frown deeply into an angered glower which nearly made him startle. "If there were any way in which I may be rid of those accursed things, rest well assured that I would away to have it done now!"

She was becoming angrier: the veins in Her forehead popping visibly. That was good; that was what he needed.

Despite how he felt a bit like he should cower, he instead raised his head and kept his eyes wide open and full of dumb persistence. "Are you sure? With every resource no doubt afforded to you- me notwithstanding- I'm sure you could have found some way of getting rid of them. Like throwing them in a volcano or something!"

He stepped forward, and though his eyes were wide open, he didn't notice how Her muscles began to tense.

"I can't believe there could be anything truly beyond you!" He felt the token 'except concede' begin to crawl up his throat, but he swallowed it back down as he instead began to nod insistently. "Maybe there's some other reason you haven't done it! Maybe you just don't-"

There were many warning signs to his folly, yet all the same, he noticed too late simply how large that anger in Her eyes had become.

"'Perhaps I simply don't want to-' is that what you think you are getting at?!" Nightmare Moon roared: Her hoof raising high and then falling to the ground in such a forceful stomp that he was nearly deafened by the echo. As it was, the fluffy pressure against his ears was so momentarily overwhelming that his legs wobbled forcefully enough that he nearly lost his balance.

Then, as he shook off the ringing and took an unsteady step back, his jaw was grasped and his head was jerked roughly to stare forward at Nightmare Moon who had pressed Her face forward until they were nose-to-flaring-nose.

He squirmed and tried to backpedal out of the grip, yet all he managed to do was squish his cheeks as Nightmare Moon's intensely open and unhinged eyes dominated his view. "You want so desperately for it all to just go away as though it were a dream: that of a madmare's lunacy dissolved in an instant as though clarity could be so Kind!"

She was screaming so loud and Her face was so so close and his jaw hurt and suddenly nothing he'd been thinking of was as clear as it had been a second ago. Everything felt muddled and jumbled and no matter how hard he pushed himself back on his hooves he couldn't get away and he was just sorry, okay?!

But Nightmare Moon wasn't reading his thoughts or the terrified emotions on his face: only continuing to yell as though he still even cared about whatever they were talking about! "There is nothing in this world I would wish for more than for what I must do to be so unimportant! So worldly and fringe that I could simply forget it all entirely- but that is nothing more than a fantasy!"

He desperately tried to shake his head against the increasingly crushing pressure, but Nightmare Moon bent Her neck back: taking him with it. His hooves skidded audibly across the floor, then not along the floor, and suddenly his neck hurt so much more because he was floating in the air with nothing under him and he still couldn't get away from those blue burning eyes.

And he couldn't breathe. His mouth was filling with backwash, and he couldn't breathe.

She was choking him.

"Perhaps you have been right all along, Light Flow!" She spat with newfound venom as a strange recklessness entered Her eye, but he didn't care that he was right he couldn't breathe! "Perhaps I have sabotaged my own efforts of designs dead and buried, but can I be so blamed?!"

His hooves, kicking along the air, hit against something hard and there was suddenly the sound of metal clattering and scraping across the floor. Yet not even then was Nightmare Moon affected: Her cyan blue eyes wide with a frenzied mania all too suddenly familiar to him. "Do you know of the pain I feel to act as I am?! Do you know of how sorrowful it is to consign mine own kingdom to oblivion for a good that I am unable to reap?!"

Her shaking grew more desperate, as his struggles grew weaker. There was a strange dimming growing at the edges of his eyes, yet Her glowing eyes seemed all the brighter. "You are so thoughtless as to play at the role, yet you know nothing of the toll it takes to be a villain! You could never even begin to fathom the agony of turning thine back to a land thou built with thine own hooves!"

Her words- so loud- were growing oddly faint, as a strange kind of ringing was taking its place. And that dimness was growing larger- so much larger that he could barely see Her anymore. He couldn't really tell if he was still kicking his legs anymore...

The pain was growing fainter...

Everything slowed to a blurry halt, and as Light Flow was being held in the air by his neck: at the whim of an insane Goddess with no more familiarity in Her eyes than he would have at squashing a bug, he came to a realization.

As he saw the tears running through worn trails across fur, long and deep enough to bead and drip off a chin, he had assumed in his terrified state that they were his.

Yet, he wondered how he was able to see his own face.

And then he realized.

She was crying.

Everything came rushing back, yet it all felt so slow. Slow enough that he could count the connections in his body as they lit with mana. Slow enough that he could feel the energy behind his eyes before it lit his horn. Slow enough that, as his horn lit, he had already begun to kick his hooves up.

Her grip was around his jaw, not his throat, but his own weight was working against him: crushing his windpipe by simple application of gravity. It wasn't the most painful thing that had happened to him, but it was plenty awful in other ways. Like the uncontrollable fear of not being able to control that vice-like grip: that made the inward squeezing sensation and the clenching so much worse! He'd really never expected he would be strangled, though he'd never expected being poisoned either. What a fun life he lead.

It was so hard to breathe..! It wasn't Her fault; it wasn't Her intention, but still, he needed to speak!

In the moment that his mana made contact with hers, he'd thrown all of his strength into curling his body up. He was no athlete, and he wasn't even very fit, but he'd still managed to press most his his hindlegs into his stomach as a reddish glow mixed with cyan blue.

He'd never known why it made ponies so uncomfortable to be touched by his magic.

Nightmare Moon, in-between a bout of screaming, gasped in slight shock as his manifest mana touched Hers, and the grip around his jaw loosened just barely. Enough that he felt the freedom of sucking in a new breath, though it was going to be gone just as quickly.

It was less than a second that his hooves were up, Her grip had loosened, and his chest was full, but a moment was all he needed.

"Tell me why..!" was the only thing he managed, and his hooves were already down, and he was again being choked. Whether it was because his horn blinked out as something within his throat again closed or because She'd simply recovered: Her firm strangle was renewed. His previously limp hooves flew with renewed vigor to press uselessly against his throat and swat forward at the air, though even as he closed one eye in exertion, he knew it was probably useless to struggle.

He wondered if She'd even realized She was doing it. He didn't think so: there was still nothing short of total lunacy in Her eyes, even as they narrowed again in anger at his question. They did that a lot. She'd probably hate being interviewed- buck it hurt! He missed breathing..!

"Of course you want to know why," She hissed: floating him closer as She stared resentfully into his strained eye. She shook him roughly, and he gasped breathlessly out in renewed pain as something that probably should've stayed still jostled. "It is all you ever bemoan: 'answers, answers, I want answers,' yet only mistrust do you offer in return."

Her mocking was punctuated by a vicious snort, and he had to remind what little of his brain was receiving oxygen that She was so insane that there were still fresh lines of tears on Her cheeks even as She carelessly strangled him. Still, he could certainly throw all that garbage about Her never raising Her hoof to him out the window. That innocence was nice while it lasted.

Out the window..?

The forming idea was cut short as, to his utter surprise, Her magic cut short. He tumbled to the ground in a rough heap: landing first upon his rear, though then did his head follow dutifully after. What a joy it was to experience gravity all over again; he'd surely missed that cruel bitch of a law.

Though most of his attention was focused on coughing, wheezing, and writhing for some relief from the pain on the floor, he still faintly heard through the pounding as Nightmare Moon stepped closer to him and began to spit more curses at his prostrate self. "Very well. If you would desire the truth of my past so badly that you would cast aside the love of the moon itself, then you may have it."

If he'd not been too focused on the new, awful soreness around his throat to do anything but gasp for shallow breath, he would have stood immediately up and screamed his confusion. He'd not 'cast Her love away!' He'd done nothing of the sort!

She was insane. Less lucid than She'd ever been before, even when She'd nearly thrown Herself at him. Now, She actually had.

It was terrifying. He'd thought he was safe from Her attacking him, but if She had lost so much sense that She'd view his simple questions as some kind of hateful incursion, then he was far less safe than he'd thought.

It seemed he'd forgotten how She'd come to tear his mind apart in the first place. Not through concerted malice, but by misplaced wrath.

He wasn't sure if he could stop Her, anymore.

He rolled to his back, for as painful as the motion was, and cracked an eye open to see as Nightmare Moon's towering face set so stonily into apathy began to circle above him. "There was no one day on which I realized my sister had become unfit to rule, though there came a day in which it became too difficult to ignore."

His overwhelmed brain caught up, and it occurred to him that She was beginning a monologue; walking in a circle around him with her eyes set forward for long enough to have completed a full pass. As such, he was treated very quickly to a view at the back of Her head which was, surprisingly, completely black. Not the slightest bit of blue to be found; it seemed the aberrant color was only on Her face.

And... not that he was focusing on it with everything else going on then, but the dense cloud of starlight and mist wafting from Her head was actually coming from Her head. Just... spouting in a vertical line across Her head where there should have been hair.

He'd thought- With Her helmet on- It had looked- No, he didn't really know what he'd thought of it before, and all he knew now was that having mist for a mane looked impossible.

It seemed as though She was going to go on for a while, so he worked his hooves under his torso, somehow, and leveraged himself into half reclining and half laying, barely. He'd make this monologue a dialogue if it killed him. "What do you mean... unfit to rule?" he rasped throatily.

His voice was ragged from the choking, and though it was somewhat jarring to hear himself, it wasn't why he flinched. As he coughed out the last syllable, Nightmare Moon jerked Her head to shoot him a dangerous glare, though did not break Her stride.

He almost thought that She wouldn't respond. But then Her fierce scowl ticked into a slightly less harmful glower, and Her eyes returned to Her front. "When my sister and I rid the world from the shackles of Chaos and founded Equestria, we took an oath to uphold the values we had earned through adversity. A solemn, virtuous thing, I had thought."

Her head lowered, and Her voice tore into a full-on growl as She spat the words out. "My sister broke that oath."

Light nodded slowly, though it was more to test out any pain as he spared a hoof to rub his sore neck. It was interesting to hear Her speak, with absolutely no reverence in her voice, of something as grand as the entire founding of Equestria. It really put into perspective just how far She'd fallen given how much anti-virtue propaganda She'd screamed at him.

Of course, it wasn't very surprising to hear the short tale appended from his historical recollection; he'd pretty much taken for granted that She'd just been written out of the 'Celestia created Equestria' doctrine taught to foals. It probably wouldn't have blown over well to include a second Goddess who had taken to shunning purity.

'Chaos,' though... He didn't know what that meant... Did it have anything to do with the way She spoke about Pinkie Pie? Was Pinkie Pie some kind of timeless monster whom the two of Them had defeated in an era past?

He wouldn't be all that shocked.

Nightmare Moon's next step was louder, and as he flinched back with one eye open, he noticed Her gaze on him for a moment as She passed his front, though She quickly passed. "Never had I believed my sister would fall far enough to treat those whom we called ally with such vitriol as she did, nor did I think her capable of rank betrayal. Yet it was nothing less which we were all discovered on a day very much like any other."

She stomped Her hoof heavily, and he jolted as She suddenly audibly snarled: spittle flying from Her mouth as She flipped from monologue to screaming in a contradicting instant. "Those whom I had claimed as my devout felt her unprovoked ire that cursed day, when she dared to claim their ancestral home for her so-called reform!

"Hated and reviled and called mutants as they were within our society, they had no place to go when she forced upon them her ultimatum!" She whipped Her head from its heated gaze to instead heatedly gaze at him, and he was startled further by the pure venom within. "What was I to do as those whom I loved were left without their homes?! I had no choice but to put an end to my sister's senseless cruelty!"

Light felt short of breath, though he couldn't quite pin down whether it was because his throat was still bruised from being choked or because Nightmare Moon's psychotic glare was piercing directly into all his deepest fears or because She wasn't making any sense at all?

"Can you even hear yourself?!" he cried raggedly, and immediately began to regret it as Nightmare Moon took one enormous step towards him that he felt reverberate through his bones. Still, as he cringed, he swallowed his rightful apprehension, and scooted back on his butt for safety as he continued. "I'm all for demonizing your sister, but you're talking about everything She's done as though you haven't done worse!"

He was glad he'd begun to scramble back, because even before he'd finished speaking Nightmare Moon had begun advancing: an advance that began with a stone-cracking stomp about where he'd been sitting. He wasn't sure if Her coming for him or how audibly the stone had splintered was scarier.

"I am a saint when measured against my sister!" She roared unreservedly, and he could see the bones in Her neck against how taut Her muscles had become. His rear began to pinch from his scrabbling slide along his tail as Nightmare Moon stalked highly after him: what he could only describe as fanatic delusion in Her pitching voice. "The evils she has committed- the evils she committed in my absence are vast enough that they are known through history as wars! Wars that never would have happened if only I had stopped her!"

He was struggling to control his breathing and his thought process as his hooves continued to propel him backward: watching wide-eyed as before him Nightmare Moon seemed to morph by fluid seconds into a beast. The scant moonlight casting in from broken windows shedding light across Her inky black body as Her limbs elongated and lost focus between strides.

Her gaping fangs dripping fluid across their pointed lengths: open to tear him into pieces if he were to stumble. Shapes too jagged to be wings risen from Her back: too formless in their inken existence for any action aside from rot. Piercing blue eyes reddening and blackening until they were so draconic he could feel the fire coming off Her breath.

A dread beast conjured from a Nightmare.

That continued to spout antigovernmental tirades.

"How many wars begat by Equestria have you the names of?! How many can you say were just, or warranted?! For the defense of our home, or our way of life?!" came the gurgling roar from the figure squelching across the stonework- except it wasn't... It didn't-

Light Flow sucked in hot breaths one after the other, and as he opened his eyes from a sudden pang in his head, again was the figure Nightmare Moon: though not how She'd been. Not large, and cold, and apathetic. Distant, yet open. A monolithic figure kept at hoof's length, but still reachable.

This Nightmare Moon was lean and possessed of a fierce hunger in Her wild eyes like a rabid animal. Her helmet was gone, Her physical defenses lowered: but it was then that She seemed more dangerous than ever. Stalking lowly against the ground with Her wings, covered along their clear ridged bones with gleaming sliver armor, pitching high and back as though She were about to take off after him.

He'd pushed too much. Forgotten himself for too long. Now Nightmare Moon was speaking of Her past, exactly as he'd wished.

Would it have been better to have left well enough alone?

Light swallowed dryly, and though he didn't check over his shoulder, he could feel the end of the room creeping towards him. "I- I know much of many wars!" The boast was weak and felt like a lie in his mouth, and even She in Her mindlessness snapped Her jaws in a feral cackle as though it were a joke. He shook his head desperately, and tried again to sound proud. "But there's not- not much to know! Thorough documentation of most historic wars from within the past thousand years is difficult to find!"

Nightmare Moon snorted heavily, and with Her next step did Her back arch high and Her head fell low. He could feel Her spit onto the floor all the way from his prone position such that he slowed his backwards crawl, just in time to flop back and bang his head on the floor as Nightmare Moon jerked Her head up to stare directly at him. "The censoring of Equestria's history again owes to my sister, and it is yet another crime resulting directly from my absence!"

He flipped himself to a sitting position quickly: holding a hoof to the stinging bump on his head as he tried to look reasonably assured through the extreme adrenaline. "You're saying that Princess Celestia's been censoring history?! That- that can't be right!" His voice came out too loud; Nightmare Moon's pupils shrunk by a fraction, and he cursed himself for sounding too knee-jerk disbelieving.

It was, perhaps, the most singularly terrifying second of his life when he realized that Nightmare Moon was about to leap forward. He'd spent so much of his life watching ponies: feeling abjectly ostracized by, admittedly, his own wanting, and it was a particular memory of watching Rainbow Dash take off through the corner of his eye that he compared Nightmare Moon to in that instant.

She was already low, but then She crouched just lower. Her shoulders shifted- slightly more together. Her wings pitched higher and widened away from each other. Her waist came up- Her piercing eyes stayed on him. Her entire body tensed.

He spent the next moment, having seen everything happening all at awful once the moment previous, panicking.

It was the moment after that he began rolling.

The world blurred in a messy smear of colors running as he pushed himself to the side, and though it was only three short turns lasting maybe as many seconds, by the time he stopped himself with his hooves impossibly below him, something fast and large impacted the floor to his side.

The resulting powerful shockwave of force that filled his ears with the horribly dense sound of metal pulverizing stone rocked him such that his third hoof to begin bending- as he'd already begun standing up- slid out from under him, and he came crashing down to knock his jaw painfully into the floor.

With his pounding face on the floor and his hooves still weak from the shock, Light Flow cracked his eye tentatively open to see what had happened: an entirely disquieting moment that he felt in the skip of his heart. A sight he may never forget.

Nightmare Moon, standing with Her front two hooves in the shallow concave ditch filled with tiny shards of grey stone, standing with Her wings still pitching back up from where they must have recovered from propelling Her forward, staring down at him with Her back straight and Her piercing, slotted eyes so full of lunacy.

Once, She'd nearly caused the death of his mind by tumultuously removing parts of his memories and personality until he was nothing but a tired shell.

And now, She'd just tried to kill him. She'd actually tried.

He didn't know how long he held Her gaze; it couldn't have been longer than a moment, yet it felt like forever. Having a hundred moments of security dissolved in an instant, while searching with a wordless plea on his lips for anything behind the mania to show some familiarity. Some remnant. Some reminder.

But there was nothing in Her eyes except the madness, and for as long as he'd though he understood something of Nightmare Moon, only then did Light Flow truly understand that Her true deception had been in pretending She'd ever been sane.

He'd always thought he was decently insightful, but in that moment he wasn't sure if he'd ever felt like more of a fool.

And then he began again to stand.

He gasped in exertion as his hooves found the floor and he pushed himself to standing; the action came none too soon as he glanced away to see Nightmare Moon pull Her hooves free of the rubble where his broken body could've been with a shake and a grimace. And still, no matter how he searched, he could find nothing but apathy mixed with annoyance mixed grimly with mania.

He backed off as his hoofing steadied: backpedaling such that he never took his eyes off Her as She turned to him, but he could still begin running at less than a moment's notice. Perhaps seeing his surprisingly prompt response at dodging- or running away- She did not immediately attack, choosing instead to stomp Her hoof decidedly.

"Equestria's history is nothing as you, or anypony knows it!" She bellowed, and as he flipped from despondency to bemusement, She snorted roughly: tossing Her head with a snarl. "From the eve of my banishment to the moon, my sister saw fit to 'wipe the slate clean,' as it were, and have only the events that she deigned recorded!"

Okay, he was in the process of having his entire education invalidated while being extremely menaced, but both things were being done by a figure that was comparatively timeless, so what the hell- he'd remain open to it. He'd come out of this a smarter, smugger pony- if he came out of this at all.

How would he make it out of this, though? She clearly didn't care very much about him anymore- or Herself, given that She'd just tried to pulverize Her only way out- so the chances She would listen to his arguments and back down were... pretty much null.

He just had to keep talking. Keep refuting. Keep himself alive, and maybe, just maybe, he'd find some miraculous out to this dangerous hole he'd stepped into.

He licked along his bottom lip, glancing quickly but not at all sneakily to his side, before refocusing himself on Nightmare Moon. He was thinking, but there was only one thing predominantly on his mind. "So you were banished, what- a thousand years ago, right?" He swallowed thickly, not bothering to wait for a response to a question he very well knew the answer to. "That means the Equestrian calendar restarted after you were banished, which means history was significantly altered around that time, which means you probably are telling the truth."

She'd never said, but he'd already assumed that Nightmare Moon had been the oft-speculated figure from the obfuscated Banishing War that had restarted the Equestrian calendar- but it was thought that the monster from the war had been the one to destroy most of Equestria's records. He supposed it was possible, in such a timeframe, for the actual information to have long since been suppressed: that it had been Princess Celestia who'd waged a war against history after Nightmare Moon had been banished, rather than the opposite before.

Either would have made sense: this was just about agreeing with the right pony right now.

He blinked out of thought, and Nightmare Moon was still standing stilly in front of him. About three hoof-lengths: a very short distance. "But why would Her Highness do that? It doesn't seem like-"

He was lucky he'd just blinked- he would've missed his que to throw himself to the side.

As he jumped away from where he'd been standing- skidding forward on his heels until he turned- Nightmare Moon had long since flapped powerfully forward and whizzed by him at a speed that blew his tail around to smack him in the side.

His breathing was ramped; his attention rapt and ready to run as the full figure of Nightmare Moon flew towards the approaching wall- until Her wings pulled up, and She flapped once. That one, single flap was enough to offset Her forward speed, slow Her, and even slightly propel Her back. And then, as She was caught hovering in the air, She flapped again, dipped slightly, and rose nearly silently up.

He'd never seen a pegasus move like that- except, She wasn't a pegasus.

His life was in true danger for maybe the first time in his entire life, and of course, it was from a living Goddess. He'd always imagined he'd had the worst luck, and it really was incredibly unlucky that he'd been proven so right.

Her ascent was short-lived as nearly immediately after did She turn to face him. "You would grace her with an honorific after all she has done?! To you- to I- to the world?!" She screamed furiously, and for once as they weren't directly in front of one another, Her voice fully gained a loud, reverberating echo that rattled his thoughts.

Buck his soul straight to Tartarus, he hadn't even meant to call Her by Her title, it was just instinctive! He'd spent a lot of his life over at the Apples', and Applejack's grandmare was very religious! Granny Smith wasn't above smacking other ponies' foals if they were disrespectful of Celestia- he meant Her Highness- he meant Princess Celestia!

He didn't think saying sorry would help at that point, and Nightmare Moon didn't give him a chance to, anyway. "My sister, 'Her Royal Highness, Princess Sol Celestia, is as worthy to be honored as mud for the lifetimes she's spent pushing others into it!" She jeered: throwing Her hooves skyward as She bellowed again. "She did very well to subjugate our own race, effectively enough that they would sooner question the ground beneath their hooves before peering into their own history, yet even the other races were not safe from her wrathful designs!

"Know ye of the Griffons, and the war named by Equestria as the 'Annexation War?!'" It was incredible that Her eyes still shone so brightly, that even at their distance, he could see the fury within. "After all they had suffered in the past, when they dared to question my sister for my whereabouts following my disappearance, she turned upon them, and Equestria was rallied to beat them into abject poverty!"

He did know about The Annexation War, and it was one of the most important wars taught in schools. From what he remembered from class, Griffonkind had largely made nuisances of themselves for being nobody's ally and everyone's general enemy. They would sack and pillage throughout the respective eastern and western countrysides whensoever they seemingly pleased, and whatever opulence they enjoyed was oftentimes literally built off other creatures' backs- they purportedly used to practice slavery.

That was until Equestria put a stop to their largescale banditry and subsequently reabsorbed the bulk of their ill-gained territories. As an official Equestrian province with the Crown officially keeping watch over them, they were forced to stop robbing and start trading. He couldn't remember exactly what they exported, but he was pretty sure he'd aced the test at the time.

They were allowed to keep general autonomy back then, but even today the Griffons were largely subordinate to Equestria. He'd always found their state a little strangely grim for a supposed equal province of Equestria, but he'd never really questioned if the historical account were entirely true, especially because of how happy grim things tended to make him.

Was it any less believable to think that, whether the Griffons were banditfolk, Equestria had aggressed them for no reason?

He'd have to look into it another time.

He blinked- and Nightmare Moon was descending.

He yelped skittishly, and threw himself forward as quickly as he could. Luckily for him he was such a dope- if he'd done it any quicker, Nightmare Moon could have just adjusted to stomp wherever he landed.

As it was, he felt the wind blasting down from Her descent as his barrel scraped the floor, and though there was no great shock that blasted his frail body with pressure, he still groaned in discomfort as every part of his body that had hit the ground throbbed.

And then it occurred to him the reason he'd thrown himself forward, and he scrambled to his hooves. For as long as it'd taken him, he honestly expected to be met with a faceful of stone-shattering hoof as he turned around, but thankfully Nightmare Moon was still crouched low from where She'd hit the floor.

Only a moment after he'd turned, though, She turned as well: throwing Her head to the side to cast a hideous glare over Her shoulder that rooted him to the spot with a feeling very much akin to staring down a Manticore.

"It is recorded, in Equestria, as the Annexation War," She hissed: Her entire body shaking with the long, hateful breath. "But it is known to Griffonkind as The Fall."

She extracted Herself from Her low posture: returning to standing at full, towering height; all the while Her piercing gaze, full of hate and cruelty and chilling difference, never left him.

Yet, as Her wings flapped to blow a swirling cloud of dust around Her, there was an edge of sorrow there, too. Understated against the rage, but perhaps, unless he was mistaken, exacerbated by her slipping sanity. It was nearly as if the emotion was coming through more genuinely for how little control She had.

"It was no coincidence that my sister first chose to assault the Griffons after she was finally rid of me," She hissed fitfully, though this was less scornful and more muted: Nightmare Moon's gaze sinking low, though keeping a far-away rage. "She knew well, and had always disapproved of my strides to make peace with them. There is no doubt she was only biding her time to make war them, and I suspect she'd always wished to.

"She'd harbored ill-will for them from the day we donned our Crown, seemingly in spite of my attempts to bridge our differences." She tsk'd in an angered exclamation at whatever memory She was seeing. "She never understood how I felt, as she had never seen their past as I had, and likewise: I could never understand her malice, knowing as I did."

Light eyed Her quivering, leaning wings with apprehension as Nightmare Moon bent Her head low, and then- to his respectfully silent shock- She literally spit onto the floor. "And look at them today. For how mighty they once were, their civilization lies in shambles, even after a thousand years." Her eyes rose from the dull sheen of Her mark upon the floor to stare hatefully at him, which he tried very hard not to flinch away from.

"It is cruel, what my sister has done to them. Continues to do to them, as she levies eternal subterfuge and plots to prevent their rise." She muttered; Her voice growing louder again with every word as Her face clenched further into fury. "Her crimes know no end! Would you really bid me stop; allow her to return to the throne after all she has done? Am I- for all my flaws- not the lesser evil?!"

He jumped anxiously back as She suddenly leaned forward and stepped quickly toward him, though it was with only a single step that She thrust Her head forward: the burning ice of Her stare undoubtedly posing a question to Her menace. Even then, while She was still advancing to painfully aggress him, there was still a small voice somewhere in his head that made him think twice about discarding Her argument.

Was She the lesser evil? Would it be worse to have Celestia return to the throne? What did it really mean to have Nightmare Moon rule Equestria?

He knew what it would mean for him, allowed to have anything his heart desired, but... what would it mean for everypony else?

What would it mean for Applejack?

Unless you desire death.

...Oh... that was what She'd meant...

It was an odd thing, to have such an underwhelming sense of understanding dawn on him. It was no great epiphany to realize that She'd not been threatening him, though She'd sort of carried through on that inadvertent threat anyway. No, Her real insinuation had been- Cut.

////////// A Slight Step Back //////////

'For all that I had done for the griffons, my sister had done as much in turn. All my efforts amounted to naught.' (approx. quote)

She shook Her head slowly: the first non-aggressive motion She'd made since taking flight. "It was not until long after I was banished that I was aware enough to tread dreams, and it was only long after that when I found my efforts to establish Harmony undone." His ear perked: barely catching how Her voice quieted.

"How it hurt me."

Light... wasn't sure what to make of it. He didn't quite feel at ease enough to be at ease, but neither did he think Nightmare Moon- head low and eyes distant with stormy memory- was fit to lash out again. Not so quickly that he wouldn't be able to see it coming, at least.

See it coming..?

Something occurred to him, though he chose to shake his head and stow it away for later as he gradually allowed his muscles to relax. Dubiously scanning each and every tense cord behind every loosening muscle: he was caught between feeling pity for Her and feeling as though this was a good chance to run away before She recovered.

He thought about telling Her he was sorry, but that seemed about as helpful as screaming purposeless rebuke at Her for trying to unceremoniously murder him without thought for the consequences. He chose, after a short moment he took to stare towards the nearest window and think again of Applejack, to think constructively.

He swallowed, took a short step back, and readied himself to run. "I'm... You're making it all the harder to understand you, and what you're planning." He trailed off as Her wings, laying low over Her back, twitched slightly at his words. He swallowed, again, as his throat had dried at the movement. "It's okay: I believe that your sister is the greatest evil the world has ever known. She's done enough to you, as you say, and She's done enough to me."

He raised his hoof in the beginnings of a backpedal: clenching his entire body in expectation of something explosive as he tentatively finished. "You've made it abundantly clear that you oppose your sister's views and her ethics, but you've also made it clear that you're going to emulate Her. You're willingly choosing immorality while obviously hating yourself for it."

He blinked rapidly as his breath sped; slight tension raising in his chest as Nightmare Moon shifted barely upwards, though he managed to keep his voice steady. "It's almost like you want to be genuinely evil- but then, you wouldn't act like you're doing something good. Like you regret what you're doing- like it's necessary evil.

"I don't understand why you're so willingly contradicting yourself. You... you are aware of it, aren't you? You have to have some actual goal at the end of this, don't you?" he eased: shaking his head softly, and trying to search Her subdued face for any sign of clarity.

It felt desperate to directly ask Her if She could conceptualize Her own insanity, but then, he was desperate. He couldn't lie to himself, and he wasn't even afraid to admit that he wanted Her to be sane. Now that She'd thrown conscience to the wind and literally pounced at him a few times, he found that he really missed Her cold, apathetic demeanor. He missed the lofty, intelligent mare who would sneer at his ignorance, surely, but would also engage with him. Do more for his faults than trying to hurt him for them.

But the Nightmare Moon he'd very gradually come to know was gone, or at least diminished. In Her place was a mare he didn't recognize: with Her head bowed low enough that he couldn't even catch Her eyes. On one end of the extremes of aggression and depression, and She'd flopped so quickly that he still felt tension just watching Her.

A warm feeling was beginning to grow in his face, but he blinked it away with a rough shake of his head. He wouldn't cry for Her. Not the mare who'd strangled him half to death, nor for the mare She'd been only momentarily. He just... wished he could understand Her. He wanted to understand.

He was missing a crucial puzzle piece that She just wouldn't provide. He knew She wasn't genuinely evil: Her regret and the way She spoke of Her sister's actions made it clear She had solid definitions of morality that She would just as soon flaunt. But he couldn't figure out why! Why was She going to overthrow Equestria from her apparent tyrant of a sister, only to then assert that She would rule dominantly? Why would She decry Her sister's warring nature in the past, only to declare that She would evidently instate some kind of martial law?!

It would make complete sense if She were wholly good: then it would be a clear-cut story of the good sister deposing the bad one. Something like- Celestia had a fall from grace, and Her sister took to ruling alone after wresting control of the kingdom away. It would've made Her a hero, if it'd worked out that way.

It would also make sense if She were just wholly bad: then it'd be a struggle for power between two similar forces. Something like- Nightmare Moon had a fall from grace, so Celestia banished Her to the moon. For as little as he knew of Celestia's history, it didn't make much sense to think of Her as the 'good sister,' but it wasn't as though Equestria was under martial law.

Either of those would be quite simple; very much unlike what was actually happening. Nightmare Moon was acting bad, while possibly being good, while feeling bad about feeling good: all the while being so insane that She couldn't stop Herself from doing bad things!

He was grasping at whatever forgotten straw was left in his head, and as he skipped from the theory that She was only doing all of this to spite Her sister, another happened to land on his tongue. "You said-" He coughed, then smacked his lips and cleared his throat as his mouth was unexpectedly dry, then tried again. "You said something about how you tried to foster Harmony between Ponies and Griffons earlier, didn't you?"

Nightmare Moon hadn't moved in the entire time that he'd been thinking, and neither did She move but an inch at his words. He seethed in quiet frustration at Her very sudden listlessness, before deciding to take a bold step forward: speaking as he did. "That sounds innocuous, but you've told me of the force of Harmony, so I think you meant something a bit more literal than a turn of phrase."

He stared straight forward at Her hunched form as he slowly approached Her, but forcibly averted his eyes after a moment when his chest began to pang. Shaking his head, and trying to think clearly through the burning memories of safety. "Harmony is a great force of order laying dormant in the land- but even though you spoke of it fearfully, it basically represents something righteous. I think."

He was trying very hard not to allow his growing worry over Nightmare Moon's state affect him, even as he drew slowly closer. Close enough that he could see how Her chest shook and fell under Her peytral, yet still not close enough to see anything of Her face. Was She still frightfully wrathful? Had She truly fallen to such a deep depression at simple memory of grief?

"You said that you and your sister took an oath- something about your values." He found his gaze sliding to the side, and forced himself to stare directly at Her. No matter if it hurt, he needed to be ready if She lashed out. "I don't think it's wrong to see a connection between your values and the word Harmony. I'm beginning to think that, since you seemed like you knew of Harmony intimately, the oaths you and your sister took were related to..."

He faltered, realizing that he hadn't actually stopped to think about the end of his sentence what with thinking mournfully of Nightmare Moon. He licked his lips and stammered for a moment: blinking nervously and stuttering out the first thing he could think of. "...um- upholding Harmony?"

That felt right, though not to Nightmare Moon for as much as She reacted. He was close enough to Her that he couldn't actually get any closer without outright touching Her, so he came to a cautious stop. "Are you- No- You'd said that your sister broke her oath, but that implies... you haven't."

////////// Bridge //////////

Continuing on, after thoughts never realized.

Light swallowed heavily: feeling very much like a mouse in the den of a sleeping lion. Was he really about to imply what he was, after all She'd done and would come to do in the future? It... felt stupid to accuse Her of it, yet... he didn't really have any better idea. That was the right way to do this, right? Process of elimination?

Standing in the moonlight before the ragged, hunched form of a Nightmare that had recently broken every trust he'd had and tried to kill him, Light still felt as though he was doing something wrong. "You... want to be defeated, don't you?"

Motion. A twitch: barely noticeable at Her shoulder. "You're doing evil, knowing it's evil, and knowing it's wrong. You're taking the throne with the expectation that it's going to be taken away." He pressed forward, not with any sort of confidence in his chest, but with a slowly growing ice. A sick feeling of worried anticipation, like the feeling at seeing an arrow fly. Knowing that it would harm, and knowing that it... very well might hit its target, but knowing all the same there was nothing to be done.

He didn't want that arrow to hit. But then, if he'd really wanted to avoid it, he wouldn't have fired in the first place.

"You're going to act as a martyr, aren't you?"

It was that word. It wasn't anything else he'd said, it was that word that made her react.

It happened too quickly for him to react; as he was, there was no way he ever could've moved fast enough to get away as She lurched forward- no, as She sprung forward. There was hardly even a second in-between his final word, and the envelopment of a shadow sprung across a mere hoof-length.

He didn't catch Her eye. He couldn't see Her face. As weight pressed in on him at every side, his only thought was that he was- Probably something about danger. We're done here, and this telling of events is over.

Author's Notes:

I want to start by saying that cutting this chapter and rewriting it into The Madmare was not easy. Not in the act of discarding most of the events to reimagine them from a different light, nor to how it felt emotionally. At the time, and despite its flaws, I loved this version of the chapter immensely. Probably more than what I went with, and I would even say I put more effort into this telling.

So, why did I cut it? There are a lot of reasons.

I made a point, in all the chapters involving NMM and Light, to make it evident that She did not want to hurt him. Not once did She ever physically assault Light, and though She played with his mind several times, many of such instances were inadvertent, or done out of insanity. Emotional and mental damage is one thing; Nightmare Moon never physically hurt Light.

That's probably the largest reason this got cut. With her reluctance to hurt Light and the few times he'd noted that himself, I thought a good way to showcase the fragility of Her mental state would be to subvert that. To actually make Her hurt him would cause all of us- Light included- to realize that She was well and very truly insane. It would've been a massive shock.

As thrilling and impactful as that would have been, though, it would have caused serious problems for the future. If NMM had tried to kill Light Flow, then whatever would happen in the future with Luna would be extremely affected. There was a certain point where that thought became very dominating, and I started to lose confidence in my idea.

I had some stupid, contrived thought that NMM was purposefully missing him every time, and that it was all a ploy to make him hate Her all the more, but that just wasn't sensible. In the end, for all the plot details I had to change and drop after I wrote this, the future of this chapter just wouldn't have been sustainable.

There are a lot more plot details here that... I'd like you to deliberate on your own. So many things were told in this telling that weren't in the other that I'm entirely uncomfortable definitively affirming their canonicity. The griffons... Nightmare Moon's motives... There's a lot to think about, but the fact of the matter is that this was all cut for a reason.

At the end of the day, there's nothing I love more than dramatic tension.

Random Cut Quotes

/// The Fallibility of Strangers ///

"Why do you care? You are clearly in a situation that he had never expected; and to naively assume that he had should only beggar yet more distrust. Would that he cared what happened to you, do you not think he would have warned you? Is his startlingly inaccurate recount of your future as it has already transpired not cause for denouncement? At best, he is a long dead sorcerer from the distant past who did nothing but send you worthless materials and false prophecy; and at worst, he is nothing more than a charlatan persona created by my sister to have you effectively made worthless."

/// Vanity Come To Light ///

"This fool that sent you his books was a very vain stallion. I can only imagine that he thought he could compound the most 'brilliant' glossaries of the art ever created. It is sheer hubris, and nothing more; for he knew nothing of what a real Necromancer was."

/// Weight ///

She sighed again: staring down to Her helmet, which floated listlessly out to face up at Her, with something very quickly approaching regret. "The name was an invention of mine; a relic from before my banishment that I hoped would... ease the burden."

Her eye rose to his again: the mournful, pleading gaze sending heavy shivers down his stiff spine. "I had believed... if there were evil in my future, it would be easier instead to ascribe it a different name."

/// Proactive Measures ///

"You could have just waited for somepony evil to show up," he murmured: trying to look mostly at the floor because he knew that was weak.

Nightmare Moon coughed out a humorless laugh. "And stand idly by as my sister became that evil?" He forced his gaze back up, and She shook Her head reproachfully. "I could never."

/// Permanence ///

"Kings and Queens, Princesses and Gods: none are immutable. They wish themselves so, but are as much facts as you and I are. Harmony? Harmony is a fact."

/// Incomprehension ///

It was the inherency of an argument. It was an inexorable ideal spoken between an ephemeral idea. A written story always ended with a period, but this story- this reality was unfinished. The final, ultimate line stopped not with a period, nor trailed with an ellipses, but remained cracked barely open with a question mark.

/// Musings on War ///

"The so-called 'Annexation War' whence she raged 'gainst the Griffons! For all they had suffered in the past, when they dared to question my sister for my whereabouts, she would turn on them to reduce them to the sad state they live in today!"

"Then came 'Equestria's Sunset,' for which my sister had turned towards the Dragons, as though she alone could topple the giants of our world. Those beasts, feeling the heated flame within their hearts, would seek war regardless, yet my sister brought it foolishly to them!"

"It would never have been necessary had my sister not for so long met them with nothing but terse behaviors! Peace would have long since been amended had we simply met them by the will of Harmony!"

/// In Preemptive Memoriam ///

He trotted forward wordlessly, shaking his head no please you have to reconsider as he circled slowly to Her front: just to watch as Her head dipped further and Her eyes closed in quiet misery. "I am prepared to see mine own hooves covered in my subjects' blood. On the lonely moon, there was little else to do besides... prepare."

/// Back and Forth ///

-"Can't you see what you're doing? For all your lofty claims at understanding, you're not realizing just how much of a hypocrite you're being!" - "Fine! So what?! Maybe I am being hypocritical, but am I not allowed that for all my suffering?! Can I not, for one simple matter, be even slightly selfish?!" that to "Selfish? You think you're being selfish for that, of all things?" -something something- "In everything you've said, you've still not explained Eternal Night!" blah blah "I don't know! I- I can't remember why!"

Author's Notes:

Here we have a few, random quotes I managed to pull from some various documents I had lying around. Some are rather fleshed out and simply missing a place, while others are rough concepts I had at some point that I likely forgot about.

The last one's state, especially, is exactly how I found it in my notes.

I think these disparate little flashes of creativity are really interesting- but they're all up to interpretation! I'm keeping mum on where they would've been used, or whether they're even canon!

Bonus - Unsorted, Unverified Drafts

////// Accusation of Caring //////

"Did you realize that you allowed me to remember everything? Even the moments when you had possessed my body?" he questioned: his eyebrows jumping for every accentuated syllable.

He lowed his head: staring up through his eyebrows angrily as Nightmare Moon's nostrils flared widely. "I remember what you said with my mouth when Princess Celestia had us pinned. It kept coming to my mind whenever I thought of your plans for Equestria, and it kept seeming so contradictory."

That agent holding his limbs and breathing into his ear, and all She had done was keep his eyes on Her sister.

A queer note of satisfaction swelled in his chest as a flash of recognition passed across Nightmare Moon's face, and suddenly, Her hateful stare was still. "I remember the things you whispered into my ear after I left the party, too. After you made me leave Applejack."

Trotting forward, every second that he wasn't looking at the stars an agony: not even the slightest care for the jubilant sounds of partying ponies as he left them behind.

He felt some sort of heavy joy rise behind his cheeks as Nightmare Moon cast her gaze down with clear regret tinging Her bitter scowl, but his face kept a hard edge as he bravely edged his hoof forward. Caught Her eye; stared Her down as he bared his teeth.

"Everypony on Equus grew up hearing tales of the violent and vengeful Nightmare Moon and how She tried to blanket the world in an eternal night, but ever since I've known you, you've shown me so differently."

...Finally, something we agree on.

...Together, we are going to save Equestria.

"You act so cold and apathetic, but I know you. In everything you've said, and everything you do, you show that you can't help but care." He edged closer to that monolith of clashing fur and steel, and it was so clear to hear a rising growl from behind Her snarling fangs. Yet still, he pushed himself forward until they were almost nose to nose and he could feel her seething breath mixing with his.

"You're still Equestria's Princess, and you don't have any intent at all-" Cut.

////// Contradictory Goddess //////

It made a certain, twisted sense, considering everything that She'd been presenting Herself as. In one moment, She'd claim that She intended to save Equestria, yet in the next would claim that She intended to conquer it. She'd denounce Her sister for apparently pressing orphans into the military, yet turn around and claim that She'd do worse.

What She'd done to him... was worse, but... there was still Her clear lunacy. If, as a fact, She was masquerading as a villain to accomplish some enigmatic purpose, then the clear contradiction She seemed to live as was explained all the more by the fact that She just wasn't right in the head.

////// Point of No Return //////

He'd read somewhere- too long ago to even begin to remember where- that in the moment before a great shock, there's a sort of calm clarity. A sense of inordinate, immaculate peace in the midst of a storm, as though the world itself had slowed to allow a moment of reflection.

He'd experienced something like it a few times before, but just then, he gained a new awareness for the sensation.

First: he heard the dull thud upon sound itself as the air around them burst from the anticipation of a pressure. Milliseconds before anything had even happened yet, and yet: there were some forces that made such an impact, the world felt it first.

Second: he was treated to the bone-chilling sight of Nightmare Moon's eyes turning completely white in a quick flash, before they unexpectedly bled from their tops to their bottoms in pure, runny black.

That was about the end of what he understood, because from the instant that his ears had popped from a pressure so great as to preempt itself, he'd begun to stumble to his hooves. It was around the time Her eyes began to ooze black from their sclera that he'd turned, and began to run.

None too soon.

////// Luna Shining Through //////

"I'm sorry..."

He wished he could feel heartened at Her apology, but there was so little to gain from it at this point. It was hollow, and useless, and didn't make him feel or think of anything except the ceaseless insincerity that constantly spewed from Her mouth. Even as Her saddened gaze with its round pupils that sat at such disparity with how he'd come to know Her turned to catch him, there was something in his chest that only chilled at the pure emotion.

"I've been... afraid to tell you what I'm doing here, Light." Her quiet murmur was accompanied by a gentle rustle from Her wings, and before his dispassionate eyes, Her posture straightened to a semi-proud tower. The morose lines of Her face lightened until they were nearly invisible, and She stared at him a little less reservedly than before. "I harbor such misgivings, myself, and I can only wonder what you might think to hear of it."

That didn't surprise him in the least. As a pony who hid a lot of things, himself, he knew that kind of fear. He could very well empathize with that, but not so much with the entire shipload of personal regret and trauma She was lugging around.

Author's Notes:

And with that, gentlefolk and ruffians alike, we come to the end of it all. There were a few drafts that I've purposefully obscured, but for the most part, we've now seen every draft I saw fit to save in the long period it took to write The Nightmare Moon Arc.

Of course, we'll never see the various little nips it took to get to the final product. The little things I just flat-out deleted and rewrote. There're even a few longer drafts that relate to some of the drafts recorded here that I just don't have.

After all of this, I can only say I'm a little bit exhausted. I feel a little sick at the prospect of sharing these long-forgotten scraps with you, but you can't deny it makes a statement. I'll just swallow the acrid taste in my throat, and flash my dirty laundry for all to see!

For the anniversary of the story that's been mostly about Nightmare Moon at this point, there isn't any celebration that fits more!

Happy Birthday, Light Flow!