Losing Luna

                Mornings. A time we usually go to bed. But today our sister required us to join her at the Solar Court because ponies were panicking.  The main reason was that stars were blinking out in our sky. After our sister raised the sun she stepped forward to talk to the ponies of Canterlot.

                “My dear ponies, there is nothing to fear, my sister has told me that this is a natural occurrence with the sky. She says new stars will appear soon. That is all,” she said.

                We headed back into the castle to our rooms. We had planned to sleep more. After we entered the castle we headed to our room and collapsed from exhaustion.

                We woke minutes before it was time to raise our moon. We headed outside to converse with our Lunar Court. They spoke of the stellar disappearances as if nothing was wrong. We felt there was something there behind it but it was not worrying to us due to the fact that it felt distant. We rose the moon and watched the stars as one blinked out. We knew this wasn’t natural but it wasn’t close enough to be certain of the cause. We returned inside to see our sister talking with her student, Twilight Sparkle, a purple unicorn.

                 Not being bothered by this we went to our tower to observe the sky. We used our telescope we had acquired. It was the latest model so it worked well. We had watched disappearing stars before. Every time before a star vanished we noticed it let out a burst of light making it shine brighter even if only for a few seconds. The stars disappearing now just vanished without a trace. Something was wrong. We gathered this information and went to our sister with it.

                “So this hasn’t happened before?” she asked.

                “No sister we only just observed this anomaly,” we replied.

                “Interesting… Could this be Discord?” she asked again.

                “Dear Celestia, what ever could you mean?” asked Discord who had just appeared by our sister. Upside down I might add.

                “This!” She held the paper with our data on it.

                “Oo. I wish I had thought of it. But it’s not my work,” he said drinking the glass of milk. When we say glass we mean he drank the glass not the milk.

                “But that’s impossible,” she said.

                “We trouble makers are quite common you know,” he said before he vanished without a trace. Our sister murmured something and the said out loud “I must get Twilight.” She ran out of the room.

                We returned to our room and started going through our data again. It would seem this anomaly began about a month ago. That was when one of our Lunar Court ran in.

                “Princess Luna!” yelped the dark blue unicorn. We believe his name was Splitzer.

                “Yes?” we asked.

                “Another six stars just went out!” he said.

                “Six!?” We asked with disbelief.

                “Yes ma’am,” he replied.

                “Get our best astronomers on it,” we said.

                “Yes ma’am!” he said. He ran out of the room.

                “We must talk to our sister,” we mumbled.

                We ran through the halls and found our sister talking to her student Twilight.

                “Sister! We must talk to you!” we called.

                “Oh hello Princess Luna,” Twilight said.

                “Hello Twilight,” we replied.

                “What was it Lulu?” our sister asked.

                “Six more stars just vanished!” we said.

                “Six!?” she gasped.

                “Yes,” we replied.

                “What could be causing this Lulu?” she asked.

                “I do not know sister,” we replied.

                “We must figure it out before it begins to terrify our ponies,” she said.

                “We know sister,” we replied.

                She turned back to Twilight. “Bring the Elements of Harmony here,” she said, “This may require their assistance.”

               “Come to our room when you arrive,” we said. Twilight galloped out of the room.

                We turned to prepare our tower. Our tower was the tallest of all in our castle. This allowed better viewing of the stars. We stepped into our room opened the door on the far side and walked up. We entered our observatory. That was when we noticed an entire section of the sky was black. It was right below Orion, the brave warrior stallion. We say this through a gap above our large telescope. There was another observatory in the castle but it was an emergency so we needed the best. We watched as another star went out. We turned the telescope to face the dark spot. We looked through the telescope and saw that there was one faint star in the center of the dark splotch. Then Twilight, her friends and our sister entered our room and Twilight called out,

                “Princess Luna? Are you in here?” she called out.

                We walked down the steps and opened the door.

                “Lulu? Where does this lead?” asked our sister.

                “Up sister. Up,” we answered.

                We all headed up the stairs to the room. We entered and we showed them the telescope.

                “Sister? How long has this been here?” Tia asked.

                “Since before our lunar imprisonment Tia,” we said.

                “Why sister… This is huge!” she said.

                “We know Tia,” we said.

                We all walked up to the telescope and we aimed it at the lone star.

                “If you look here you will see a lone star in the center of the dark splotch,” we said.

                “Oh. I see it… Where did it go?” Twilight said.

                “Wait? It’s gone!?” We said as we rushed to telescope. “Oh Faust…”

               “Princess Luna? What does this mean?” asked Rainbow Dash.

                “It means something is interfering in my domain… but who?” We pondered as we looked up to the dark splotch.

                As we gazed we noticed something on the horizon. It was a black wave of sorts that rushed at our borders. We gasped.

                “Sister! Send out an emergency call!” we said.

                “Lulu? What’s wrong?” asked Tia.

                “That,” we said as we pointed at the wave.

                “BY FAUST’S MANE!” shouted Tia, “the only way to warn our ponies would be to use an eclipse.”

               “Of course sister,” we said. Tia began to raise the sun as we stayed the moon. The sun passed behind our moon and stopped. We shouted out in our Royal Canterlot voice, “OUR DEAR PONIES! PLEASE COME TO CANTERLOT AT ONCE!”

               “Thank you sister,” Tia said.

                “You’re welcome Tia,” we said.

                We rushed to the front of the castle as ponies came pouring into the courtyard.  Some unicorns had teleported themselves and earth ponies. Pegasi came flying in like crazy. The courtyard was soon filled and some ponies ended up on the walls of the courtyard. Finally after we had all our ponies within hearing distance Tia began to speak.

                “Our dear, dear ponies we have discovered something. Stars are disappearing and it would seem so is part of Equestria. A dark wave that my sister saw has begun to flood our lands and is racing towards us as we speak. My sister and I will do our best to stop the flood with the Elements behind us. If we cannot succeed caves underneath the castle have been prepared. We have guards ready to bring everyone in. these guards will watch the cave entrance constantly to see if the wave has passed,” she finished.

                Everypony just stared in shock. They could, apparently, not believe our sister’s words. We watched as many ponies went pale and immediately stood to head for the caves. Others just gaped. Even a few laughed. Although in the end they all went to wait in front of the caves.

                We teleported ourselves the tower looked around and gasped. The Crystal Empire had been consumed by the darkness and was gone. We instantly teleported back down.

                “Tia… The Crystal Empire is gone,” we said with a hint of fear.

                “I-It’s what?” she stuttered.

                “Gone,” we said, “there’s only darkness left.”

               “Cadence….” Our sister said sadly.

                “We know sister but we can’t worry about her right now,” we said, “we have to help our own people.”

               “Yes… She would do that too,” our sister muttered.

{([Note~ Cadence is not dead, of course])}

                We turned back to Twilight and the other Elements.

                “Let us try working with my sister first,” we suggested.

                “Oh, yes, of course Luna,” Twilight said.

                Twilight and her friends began to float up and then Twilights eyes glowed. Then our sister shot the Magic of the sun at Twilight’s horn which, using the elements, focused it and aimed it at the dark wave.

                “Now!” shouted Tia.

                The beam of focused light hit the darkness and vanished.

                “It didn’t work!” we shouted.

                “Your turn Lulu,” said Tia.

                We focused our magic at Twilight’s horn and as before the magic shot at the darkness and… nothing.

                “Together Tia?” we asked.

                “Of course,” she replied.

                We both focused our magic and then Twilight and the elements amplified it and… nothing. We turned to Tia. Her faced showed nothing but terror.

                “The caves…” she whispered.

                Lifting her up with our magic we raced into the caves.

                “Is everypony here?” we asked.

                “Yes princess. Or at least those not taken by the darkness,” replied Captain Windburn.

                “We need to go as far into the caves as possible,” we said.

                “Yes. Of course princess,” he replied.

                He called for the guard to move everypony to the farthest spot into the caves that was reachable. Once everypony had gathered we sat.

                “Princess?” asked another guard.

                “Yes?” we replied.

                “The darkness is flowing into the cave,” he said.

                “It-“ we said before the darkness overwhelmed the cave.

                The last thing we remembered was darkness.