Nightmare Moon. What could have caused Princess Luna to become the evil, cruel tyrant that everyone feared? The answer is simple. The oldest form of evil and distress, dating millions of years before Discord. The evil powers that were the exact opposite of the Elements of Harmony. The Nightmare. Like a parasprite, the Nightmare looked for a strong power that doubted harmony, or was weak due to some trauma, and corrupted them.
Princess Luna was one of the first corrupted by the Nightmare. Many were hopeful that Harmony could overcome and eliminate the Nightmare, as it (In the form of Nightmare Moon) had been banished by these elements by Princess Celestia. The hope for peace was supposedly fulfilled when Twilight Sparkle and her friends harnessed the Elements of Harmony and reverted the evil Nightmare Moon back into Princess Luna; Then returning the powerful Princess to the way of harmony.
All those ponies old or well educated enough to remember the Nightmare rejoiced, feeling that the Nightmare had been destroyed forever, and that harmony and the power of friendship had finally prevailed. However, the Nightmare had still left its mark on Luna, and she found it hard to adjust to new social interactions and even more difficult to be understood or gain friends. An even worse problem was overlooked: the Nightmare was not destroyed that night.
The discovery of its existence had not been discovered, as it had temporarily corrupted others. This was done so as to not be discovered due to long instances of strange behavior from the corrupted ponies to be discovered by their friends, but long enough to cause distractions to make unlikely any chance of the Nightmare's discovery. Such examples were the corrupting of Trixie to cause chaos in Ponyville to distract Twilight from noticing the Nightmare gaining power. The next was the influencing of the Cutie Mark Crusaders to bring about the freeing of Discord to distract all of Equestria.
The truth was the Nightmare was just biding its time and gaining strength, and that its dark powers are now strong enough for a long-term corruption. The Nightmare is looking for a new pony to corrupt.
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Crimson Dusk was laying on her bed. Her eyes drifted to the small marbles she was controlling woth her horn, which was giving off a bright red aura. Her gaze drifted down to the bed she was relaxing on. It was by no means anything fancy. Just a hard mattress with coily springs that barely pushed out into her bright red coat of fur. Her room was not of any higher quality either, and she so envied the richer fillies and colts at school who bragged about their new "things" each day. She let out a groan. She had long since given up on complaining about her situation to her parents, because they both worked emotionally stressful jobs but still could barely pay for Crimson's schooling much less her sister Night Shine's. Plus complaining only upset her parents and got her yelled at. *Sigh* "My parents never yell at Night". Crimson liked to call her The Night Mare around her parent's, but tend to call her sister A Nightmare when she was upset, which happened a lot. Crimson Dusk was a fairly normal teenager. Scratch that. She always hoped she could say that about herself someday. She had graduated from Filly School last year (with few friends) and had enrolled as a Freshmare in Ponyville Colt School. She had finished her gruelling homework minutes earlier with a *huff* and a "When will I use this stuff?" This was the average day in this mare's life, but it was about to become a NIGHTMARE.
