AN: Don't own MLP or Dwarf Fortress.
Chapter 1: The Madness Begins
Luna slowly regained consciousness. She was laying in what appeared to be a workshop of some sort, surrounded by bits of metal, with a large blacksmiths hammer clutched in one hoof. A large glowing forge dominated one end of the space, and she could feel its sweltering heat from across the room.
Stumbling onto all four hooves, she tried to flap her wings for balance. They didn't respond. In fact, she couldn't even feel them at all.
She attempted a minor diagnostic spell, only to have the magic slip quietly out of her reach, almost like it had once when her horn had been... snapped off.
She quickly pressed a hoof to her forehead, feeling for the telltale jagged stump that she expected.
There was only a smooth expanse of fur and skin.
Something was terribly wrong. Alicorn horns could heal, but this was obviously something else entirely.
With a sense of muted horror, she craned her neck around to look at her flank.
A blacksmith's hammer, the spitting image of the one that she woke up with, stood bare and stark on her flank like a brand of damnation, without even a wing obscuring its mocking countenance.
A familiar voice sounded in the hallway. Even in her shocked state, Luna knew exactly who it was. It was that thing that wore her face, her body like nothing more than a fleshy mask. Nightmare Moon had returned.
Shoving away her terror in some deep recess, Luna strode to the doorway and pushed it open. She had a duty to perform, even if she had somehow been twisted by magics most foul.
It was worse than she had expected. Nightmare Moon had split herself into dozens of copies. Somehow, they had not noticed her foalish move, and she backed into the workshop again, closing the door quietly behind her.
Luna did what she should have done in the first place, reaching out with her spirit into the aether, and crying out to her sister.
There was no answer.
Mercilessly, she grabbed on to the primary solar ley line, and traced it end to end.
Nothing.
Celestia was gone.
A strangled sob escaped her throat, but she cut it short. She was a—the princess of Equestria, and she had a duty to her ponies.
Having created the all the little ponies with the help of her sister, she had a bond with each and every one of them. It wasn't something that could be affected by mere flesh and blood, or even the demonic energies of the beast that lurked about outside the blacksmith's workshop.
As she had tried with Celestia, she reached out, trying to find anypony other than the monster. Further and further she reached, encompassing the entire world with her spiritual search.
There was nothing.
Nopony was left.
“All my little ponies, dead and gone. My Sister, taken from me! Nightmare Moon, you will PAY in BLOOD!” Luna screamed in rage, picking up the blacksmith's hammer that she had awoken with.
She kicked open the door, and surprised the first Nightmare clone she came across, crushing its skull with a mighty blow.
Clone after clone fell to her righteous fury, but Luna was still encased in the body of a mortal earth pony. More and more of the monsters came, and she found herself struggling, despite the fact that in the confusion some of the Nightmares seemed to have turned on each other.
She had lost count of how many she had slaughtered, but they still kept coming. She was covered in wounds, and bleeding out.
She was going to die.
Luna was going to die, and Nightmare Moon would be left to rule a stolen realm.
She shook her head, being given a brief respite as a nearby clone went mad and attacked its fellows.
No. Luna was going to die, and so was Nightmare Moon.
With a peace she hadn't felt for millennia, she reached once more into the aether, and gave an almighty pull. Two crescent moons flickered briefly into existence, obscuring the bloody hammers on her flanks.
Having dispatched the aberrant clone, the monsters closed in on Luna. She simply smiled sadly at them.
A spear ran through her chest and an axe lodged in her side.
“I'm sor-ry Celly,” she gasped. “I love you.”
The moon crashed into the plane, followed shortly by the sun.
The Endless Fields, world, crumbled to its end.
AN: For any non DF players out there, this part of the story is a reference to a failed fey mood(a dwarf driven by unknown forces to create an artifact-if they fail, Bad Things happen), which can cause a dwarf to go berserk. The Moons fighting each other represents a tantrum spiral, which is when enough goes wrong in the fortress that dwarves start snapping and killing other dwarves, resulting in more of them snapping, and so on and so forth. As for the story, don't worry, it's not over yet! 2nd chapter in progress. (Also, if the question comes up, I am nnn.)
AN: Don't own MLP or Dwarf Fortress.
Chapter 2: Something is Wrong Here
Luna woke up screaming.
It was that damned dream again.
Not only was it unsettling, it was embarrassing—the Dreaming was part of her realm for crying out loud!
Still, it was oddly quiet.
Luna reached out with her senses. Ah, there they were; first the guards at her door, some servants scurrying around doing early morning chores. The silencing spell had done its job and kept her from disturbing them—oh, that was why it was so quiet. All her little ponies were fine. She could now even feel her sister stirring in the room down the hallway. She smiled as she imagined her sister kicking her blankets around like a filly, which she always did. She had probably kicked them clear off the bed again, which would explain her muddled and grumpy aura.
She stretched her lanky body out languidly. It was time to go visit Celly.
The guards at her door, Star Shine and Spark Sword, smiled at her before saluting. They weren't the most disciplined of the royal guard, but that was precisely why she had chosen them for her personal guard. It was nice to have ponies that didn't stand on formality all the time around her. She returned the salute and smile, and trotted quickly to the end of the hallway to visit her sister.
The guards at Celestia's door didn't so much as blink at first, but as she got within a wingspread of them they snapped off picture perfect salutes, and Luna paused to inspect them. They stood stock still, and she was struck by a sudden immature urge to make faces at them. She gave them a smile, and finally returned the salute, freeing them to return to their original position. Their pride at passing her cursory inspection was almost palpable. Her little ponies were so cute when they were being serious!
And speaking of cute... Luna opened the door to find her sister just like she had expected, blankets thrown askew on the floor, with her rear legs twitching like a sleeping puppy. She grabbed the blankets and placed them atop her sister. She stopped to survey her hoofwork, and was pleased by everything she saw except for one thing. Her sister's formerly serene features had begun to twist in fear and anxiety.
Well, even if she was having issues controlling her own dreams at the moment, she could at least help her sister. it was foals play for her to reach out into the Dreaming and calm the roiling currents that her sister was caught up in.
Or at least it should have been.
Her efforts seemed to do nothing but enrage the roiling ethereal sea, and Celestia began to thrash about on the bed.
It was almost as if—
Celestia shot up out of the bed, eyes wide and horn glowing.
With a single blast, Luna was blown off her feet and through the doors. Celestia's guards went flying and landed crumpled against either side of the hallway.
Celestia approached, Sunfire blazing in her eyes, mane billowing out behind her, and her horn glowing brighter than ever before.
“You won't take her from me forever, bitch! You will burn when I'm through with you! When all is through, I will cast you into the Abyss myself. You will burn. You will BURN!” Celestia screamed, pressing Luna even harder into the wall and crushing the breath out of her.
Her mane lost all semblance of it's former prismaticism at this point. Flickering with heat and light, it became Sunfire, and random objects in the room began to shudder and incinerate.
At this point Star Shine and Spark Sword burst onto the scene, placing themselves squarely between the Princesses. At the sight of them, Celestia halted her advance, horror dawning in her eyes as she realized what she had done.
In an instant, she released her hold on the moon princess, took a couple of steps back, and vanished in a flash of light.
Luna fell to the ground, gasping for air. Star Shine and Spark Sword hovered around Luna, as if expecting a mad Celestia to pop out of thin air to attack the princess of the night.
As her lungs painfully reinflated, Luna watched her two personal guards buzzing worriedly around her, she started to laugh.
“This has not been my morning,” she giggled. The giggles grew in volume to full on laughter, and suddenly she was no longer laughing but sobbing, curling up on the floor and weeping.
Two pairs of wings and hooves encircled her. It was Star Shine and Spark Sword again. Two of her favorite little ponies. Her little ponies.
She shot to her feet, purging the despair. She was a Princess. She was the God-Empress of the Night. And she knew that their had been four guards on duty that day in the Royal Hallway. Sure enough, there were Celestia's guards, crumpled on the floor.
She turned to her guards.
“Go to the Medical wing. I will meet you there.”
A silver flash filled the hall, and Princess Luna and Celestia's two incapacitated guards disappeared.
~~~
Princess Luna paced back and forth on the balcony. Three minutes to sunrise.
She was coming. She had to be!
Two minutes to sunrise.
Celly always had liked surprises. She had just chosen a spectacularly inappropriate time for one.
One minute to sunrise.
After her sister rose the sun, she was going to ban cloud cake from the castle for the rest of the year.
Thirty seconds.
Forget year, she was going to ban cloud cake for the next century!
Fifteen seconds.
Come on, Celly. Please come.
Five, four, three, two, one.
It was still night. For the third time in a millennium, sunrise was late in Equestria.
A few early risers had begun to nervously mill about on the ground beneath the balcony, glancing between the clock, the balcony, and the moon that was still hanging on the edge of the horizon. A few started to look at Luna fearfully.
After about five minutes of this, Luna could take it no longer.
She leaped into the air wings curved in a near perfect circle, and grabbed the sun from its hiding place.
The sun was not pleased with this, and reams of Sunfire coursed down the link, setting Luna on fire. Bits of her coat burst into flames, the air filling with the smell of burning flesh and hair.
She finally subdued the sun, forcing it to travel its well worn path once more.
Falling more than gliding to the ground, she walked unsteadily to the peak of the balcony.
“My little ponies, my sister is feeling poorly. She is resting, and we will return to our normal roles soon.”
Luna knew that she should grab the solar ley line and force it to show where her sister was. But even now, with muscles and sinew charred by Sunfire, she couldn't bring herself to do it
It wasn't rational, it made no sense, but she was afraid.
And somewhere deep inside she knew that she was right to be.
