There was no wind. That was probably what unnerved her the most. It was unnatural, just like the static and unmoving dust at her hooves, disturbed only by her slow and steady hoof-falls.
The silence. She could have sworn that it made a noise of its own.
"Monster."
Silent, save for the voice whispering in her ear.
"Why are you still here?"
"Be quiet," Nightmare Moon spat. Her words reverberated and warped in the perfect silence of the lunar landscape. The infinite, unquenchable darkness of the void watched her as she wandered, stars twinkling in grim amusement.
“Not until you give me back what is mine,” the voice whispered.
Nightmare Moon laughed. “Yours? My dear, you should have thought about that before making a deal with me. We’re in this together from now on.”
“You are nothing.”
Nightmare Moon hit her hoof on a stray rock. It clanged against the already battered and misshapen armour on her leg. She cursed. “Shut up! You and your insufferable whining.” The Nightmare grabbed her greaves with her magic and wrestled it off, throwing it into the dust. Then she pulverised the offending stone with a frustrated stomp.
“Always destroying. Always fighting. Always complainingwhen you don’t get your way. Is that all you can do, monster?”
Nightmare snorted. “At least I’m a monster that admits to being a monster. Now, what do they say about monsters who are so deluded that they pin all their crimes on another?”
The other mind retreated, allowing Nightmare a chance to focus on… Nothing. She looked around for something to preoccupy her thoughts with, and found nothing. Nothing but ash and dust and pain and emptiness and—
“Monster.”
Nightmare Moon’s thoughts leapt instantly to the voice in her head. “Ha! You’re like a broken record, you know that?” She opened her magnificent black wings and flapped, once, leaping into the air.
“What are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m flying around looking for something to do on this blasted rock.”
“Why?”
“Because I—” Nightmare cut herself off with a grunt. She was falling, slowly. She flapped her wings harder and faster, but she couldn’t ascend at all. “What— What are you doing to me?”
“Nothing. You’re falling on your own.”
“What are you talking about? I am the greatest flier on the face of Equestria!”
“We are not on Equestria. Don’t you remember the last time you attempted to fly here?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Give up.”
“Never!” Nightmare screeched. She continued to plummet towards the moon. “You’re just dragging me down. AGAIN.”
She hit the dust and stumbled forward on four unsteady hooves. A crater emerged before her, and she tumbled down with a yell. The dust bloomed out around her, floating through the empty air and landing gently. Nightmare picked herself up, brushed away the dust, and looked around the crater.
In the centre stood the remains of a castle, from what Nightmare could discern. The alicorn treaded softly through the ashes, dispersing the gathered sand with a whisper of magic. She excavated the ruins, revealing the perfectly black walls of what once must have been a beautiful palace.
Nightmare Moon pondered it. Who had built it? It seemed almost too perfect a fit for a grand, divine goddess such as herself. Had someone been here, on this desolate rock, once before? The air was too thin. It was too cold. There was no food or water. How Nightmare had even managed to survive this long was beyond even her own brilliance. How long had she even been up here, anyway? It seemed like only yesterday since… that.
Nightmare shook the thoughts away, directing her attention elsewhere. She wondered what Luna thought of this discovery.
“Monster.”
“Speak of the devil,” Nightmare Moon said, with a smirk. “Does this look familiar, perhaps?”
She felt the other mind focus on the ruins before them. “Yes.”
“Ha,” Nightmare Moon gloated. “You built this, didn’t you? And then you lost it, like the pathetic waste of space you are. It’s no wonder why you summoned me to do your dirty work.”
No answer.
Nightmare Moon’s smirk turned into a grin. “I think I might claim this little patch of dust for my own. I shall rebuild what you and your incompetence lost, so long ago.”
She gathered the dust at her hooves into a mound, then wrapped it in the glow of her horn. She forced magic into the material, compressing it and fusing it together. With a whispered word, she held a block of pure black onyx in her hooves.
“Perfect,” Nightmare Moon said. “I shall be Empress of my own world, and this shall be my castle.”
And the voice whispered: “Monster.”
Her hooves hurt. How long had she been working? Days? Weeks? It felt like several hours, at most. Her magic continued to flow, as mighty as ever. She had used up all the dust within the basin of the crater, and now she had to drudge backwards and forwards gathering the material needed.
It would be worth it in the end, however. This would all be worth it, Nightmare knew. After all, who was better than that pathetic excuse for a Princess of the Night?
“I am,” she whispered.
Yes, she was. And she would prove it with a castle of her very own, and further the insult by using the very bones of Luna’s old castle as the foundation.
Her hooves pounded into the dust. The silence stretched on. The emptiness above and beyond her continued to mock and insult her with its treachery. Surely, it should be bowing to her divinity. She was Empress of this place, was she not?
“You are nothing.”
“Oh, darn,” Nightmare said, with a roll of her eyes. “I was hoping you’d decided to leave for good this time.”
“Nothing you do ever matters. You are nothing.”
“I’m certainly more than you are, right now. I have a body of my own, for one.”
Nightmare felt the other mind attempt to respond, and she consciously suppressed it. It certainly never said anything useful. Nothing that could help its gracious host with her masterpiece.
The crater appeared out of the darkness once again, and Nightmare slowly floated down to the floor of the basin. Before her stood the castle. It was taller than before, the walls rising to halfway up the depth of the crater. Nightmare looked upon it with a wistful smile, imagining the grand, tapered spires of a palace so perfect that it would make even Castle Everfree look like a peasant’s hovel.
Gray dust turned to sleek black rock in the grip of her magic, and she melded the onyx with the walls of her castle. Slowly, the towers began to climb higher, reaching up into that impossible black void.
“Why do you persist? Why are you so obsessed?”
“Because I am better than you,” Nightmare hissed, straining as she manipulated the forces under her command, “and I will show you just how perfect I am.”
“You are nothing.”
“No!” she screamed. “I am not nothing! I—”
“Stop. Please,” the voice begged. “Just stop.”
“I must be better. I must be Nightmare Moon.” Hot tears froze to her cheeks. “I must be perfect.”
Her hooves bled. The dust coated them, digging into the wounds and stabbing her with a thousand tiny needles. The cold froze her warm blood to her skin. She just wanted to sit and lie and rest until her wounds recovered. Until she could sleep forever. Until her lungs finally stopped breathing.
But she had done it. The onyx palace stood before her, crawling out of the crater and disappearing into the impossible darkness above her. It was sparse, yes—and it was, perhaps, a little isolated. But that was irrelevant. Who would truly be capable of serving her majesty, anyway?
Nightmare Moon smiled. This was her castle. Her stronghold. Her sanctuary. She stepped forward, lightly, her hooves planting themselves in the dust and carrying her forward. The open maw of the castle devoured her, swallowed her up in the omnipresent darkness. A weak light glowed from her horn. The insides lit up, revealing all her perfectly carved handiwork. Staircases, corridors, windows, and—the centrepiece of her work of art—her very own throne.
Nightmare’s hooves clacked against the icy floor. The throne stood at the far end, atop a perfect dais. The light of the stars shone through the window above it, shining on the midnight black throne, lending it a perfect sheen. The throne, too, was perfect; perfect in shape, perfect in size, perfect in splendor. This was not like her—Luna’s—pathetic stool, far away in the Everfree castle. This was a statue of blades, stone, darkness, and blood; a throne for the perfect goddess of conquering, destruction, and tyranny that was Nightmare Moon. It dug into the spine, drew blood, froze it in their veins, reminding them just how utterly perfect and indomitable they must have been.
It was perfection itself.
Nightmare Moon climbed the dais slowly, reverently, and gazed upon her masterpiece. She sank into the unyielding stone of the chair, feeling the sharp edges of the seat cut into her skin. She shivered as warm blood poured down her back. It pooled on the seat, freezing against her backside. The pain was both unbearable and oh-so-very-delicious.
Nightmare Moon sat atop her perfect throne. The perfect throne in her perfect castle. Even the voice had decided to leave her alone. Perhaps now she could find a modicum of genuine peace. She smiled.
Perfect silence. Not a soul moved. There was no wind. There were no ponies. It consumed and submerged, drowned and devoured, worming its way under the skin and into the brain.
Perfect.
Silence.
In the maddening quietness of the moon, the whispering in her ear boomed.
“I will take back what is mine.”
Nightmare Moon’s eyes opened. She didn’t remember when she closed them. Before her, a blue alicorn stood, at the base of the dais. Her eyes were glassy, dull, their gaze as icy as the stone that made up her throne.
Nightmare Moon glared at her. “How are you here? That’s impossible.”
Luna ignored her. “You are nothing.” She began to walk towards the throne.
“Stop,” Nightmare Moon commanded. Luna ignored her again. “I said stop.”
Those eyes, they stared right through her, unbreaking, immovable. Nightmare panicked. Her horn lit up threateningly. “I said…” A bolt of black lightning tore towards the approaching princess. The attack phased through her as if it wasn’t even there.
“You delude yourself,” the voice whispered. “You call yourself perfect. You are not. You are simply a frightened little filly in the body of a god.”
Bloody black hooves scrabbled against the smooth stone. Her movements shifted the blades in her back, and she cried out. Her frozen skin tore when she attempted to pull herself to her hooves. Her cries turned to a long, terrified shriek.
“Why won’t you leave me?! Your goddess commands you!” More lightning. Magic stormed throughout the room, reflecting off the ebony walls and scorching the transmuted rock.
“Listen to me.” She was right there. Right in front of the throne. Nightmare’s fangs bit deep into her bottom lip, drawing more blood. Frozen tears scorched her eyeballs.
“No!” Nightmare screamed. The room shook with the force. “I will not listen to a weak and pathetic being such as yourself! I—” She stomped the floor with her hooves. “—Am—” Twice. “Perfect.” The floor shattered, as the magic holding it together began to crumble.
Nightmare looked up at Luna, and froze. Light was shining from the Night Princess’s eyes. She slowly grew taller, her fur turning from blue to blinding white.
“No,” Nightmare whispered.
The white goddess took a step.
“No, stop.”
Another.
“Stop!
Her mouth opened.
Nightmare clamped her hooves over her ears. “No, please, don’t!”
The whispers struck her like the fist of an angry goddess.
“WHY?”
And Nightmare Moon screamed as her perfect palace crumbled into dust and ash around her. She screamed as her perfect black fur turned blue, the stars in her mane falling, the energy dissolving. Her slitted pupils becoming clear teal orbs for a single instant.
And as she screamed, her answer rang clear in her mind.
Because I wanted to be like you.
And then she, too, turned to ash.
Nightmare Moon woke up.
She blinked slowly. She was lying in the sand. Her face was half-covered in dust. She couldn’t hear anything.
She climbed to her hooves, awkwardly. She looked around at the unceasing desert around her, pondering how she got there. She didn’t remember anything. How long had she been lying there?
She hesitated, then took one step. And then another. And another. She trudged forward, no direction in mind.
The silence was perfect. The darkness was infinite.
A voice whispered in her ear.
“Monster.”
The stars twinkled with grim amusement.
