Supersymmetry

Chapters

Will Last Forever
Threadbare
Tunnel in the Sky
Friends in High Places
The Light of Day
The Dark of Night
Dampened Enthusiasm
A Challenger
Trust and Wariness
Light Reflected from the Moon

Will Last Forever

Solar Flare

Her Royal Majesty, Queen Solar Flare of the Crackling Sun, turned over in her bed and fell off.

She didn't cry out, she simply groaned and pulled herself to her hooves. She cricked her neck left, then right, before lowering herself and stretching like a cat. A groan built up in her throat, before turning into a gasp when her joints popped. She pulled herself back to her regal posture and shook her head. Her mane, white as sun-bleached bones, fell in front of her. With another shake of her head she tossed her mane out of the way, and let the power of her star flow through both it and her tail.

The fibers transformed into a roaring inferno of orange flame, eternally streaming off her body. Her tail blew outwards like a flame thrower and her mane's fires billowed upwards to double her height before lowering from purely vertical to sweeping down her withers. Her flames did nothing more than warm her, but many a mosquito and traitor alike had met their end in her personal conflagration.

With that done, Solar Flare swept her eyes across her eternally lit circular bedroom. Her carpet was dark orange and in its middle was her cutie mark, an orange sun with eight black rays coming off of it. Off to her left was her bed, a luxurious thing with bedposts of gold and blankets of finest silk, and mountainous pillows embroidered with her cutie mark, with a nightstand next to it holding her daily planner. There was also a desk, where Solar Flare handled the paperwork of state, and behind said desk were the closed doors that lead to her balcony.

To Solar Flare's right was a deceptively simple chest, sealed tight with spells that would set anypony who tried to open it without the correct authorization on fire. The number of ponies who had such authorization numbered three; she, herself, and her.

Solar Flare lit up her horn with a burnt orange aura, and effortlessly opened the chest. She then levitated her four ornate, amber horseshoes on, followed by her torc and helm. She slipped it down her horn and over her head, and smiled, closing the chest. With a flicker of magic she renewed the strength on her passive shields. Another quick spell to clean her up, and she felt good to go.

She looked towards the body-sized mirror, turning around and inspecting herself. Near the end of her turns, she smoothed out a patch of bed-coat from her luxurious orange fur, and then nodded, locking draconic magenta eyes with herself and smirking. She looked like a proper Queen now, ready to face the next twenty four hours.

Checking to make sure the fireproofing and intruder-incapacitation spells on her room were at their full strength, Solar Flare blew open the door to her chambers with a single stroke of a wing. She strode down the short corridor confidently, her two Coronal Guards - their armor enchanted to make their fur a dark orange - falling into step beside her without word.

Queen Solar Flare, without word, led her guards around her castle, climbing stairs and making sure her horseshoes clanked loudly on the marble floor to signal her arrival. Servants hurriedly bowed to her as she passed, causing Solar's face to slowly evolve a fanged grin. By the time she reached her dining chambers she was fully smiling at the obedience her subjects showed to her. She needed it, after that despicable display at the Eclipse.

The Coronal Guards assumed their watches outside the entry to her dining chambers, and Solar entered with another blast of magic, closing the gargantuan orange doors behind her with a kick from a hind leg.

Solar Flare's dining room was a fairly small room, reminiscent of her utilitarian youth, contrasted by having its walls bedazzled with paintings of her by artists from around the world; a profile of her with her burning sun behind her, laying down on a couch, striding on a cloud with her back half transformed into yellow flame. One picture in particular, from a century and a half ago, tickled her fancy; in that one, Solar Flare was in a shoddy little commoner's house. Before her was a Hearth's Warming tree, and she herself was reared up frantically, her mane having accidentally lit it on fire.

She had let the artist of that one live; he'd been funny.

There were, of course, many paintings that didn't relate to her or to just her, but she didn't dare look at those.

The table was a large, circular thing, made out of magically-reinforced glass. It could seat a dozen ponies, but only she used it. Above it, the ceiling was a glass dome, giving perfect sight of her burning sun, suspended at its apex in a clear blue sky. Four doors were spaced around the room's circumference evenly, and as Queen Solar Flare drifted to her tall red seat one of them opened, admitted a pony, and closed behind them.

Solar Flare's personal waiter, High Attendance, walked in and bowed low. After waiting the customary ten seconds, he rose and looked over to her. "My Queen, what would you like for breakfast?"

She didn't even need a second to consider. "Tomato soup with potatoes, a cockatrice leg, buttered toast seasoned with garlic, and a slice of chocolate cake."

High Attendance bowed. "At once, Your Majesty." He backed out of the room and closed the door behind him, leaving Solar Flare alone with her thoughts and the gentle crackling of her smokeless flames.

With a flash of magic, Solar Flare reached out into her room and summoned her planner to her, flipping it open to the date. She wrapped her fiery tail around the heat resistant seat.

She read aloud to herself, not that anypony would complain. "Wind exchange overseeing at the seventeenth platform, paperwork, lunch, training the guards in the Green Corridor, paperwork I forgot to do, dinner, recreation, sleep." She closed her book and, with another amber flash, sent it back. "Hmm, good enough." She hadn't dismissed it for one minute before the doors opened and two servants came in, each earth pony holding a silver domed platter on their backs.

"My queen," said the one in front, stopping next to her. Her partner stopped besides her, and waited patiently for Solar Flare to make her move.

"Acceptably quick," she said coldly, levitating the domes from their backs and placing them before her. "Leave."

Both bowed. "Of course, Your Majesty." With that, they backed out and left the room, closing the door and leaving Solar Flare to her thoughts. She lifted the metal domes off the plates and, with the barest flickers of thought, tossed them aside for the maids to pick up later. Almost immediately, the alicorn's mouth began to water. On one platter was the bowl of soup, with a spoon, and the cockatrice leg. On the other were two slices of perfectly browned toast and a luscious, luscious slice of...

Queen Solar Flare distracted herself with soup. Once that was done she tore her fangs into the leg of perfectly cooked meat, followed by devouring the two slices of toast. Only once that was done did she lift the fork and knife that had come with the dessert and, licking her lips eagerly, cut off a piece and stabbed it with the fork, levitating it to her mouth.

She smiled gleefully at the piece of cake, dark chocolate with maple frosting and rainbow sprinkles, and brought it into her mouth. Instantly her eyes rolled up in her head and she shook, moaning in delight as her wings fwhoomed out. Solar Flare set down the fork, and looked left. She looked right. Satisfied nopony was around, she dove headfirst into what was left of the cake, noisily devouring it. In moments it was over, the cake a desiccated corpse of crumbs.

She licked her muzzle clean of remains, then lifted her helm off. She telekinetically scraped the frosting and crumbs off her armor and into her mouth, then put it back on. As an afterthought, she dabbed her mouth with one of the provided napkins. Solar Flare got out of her seat and, with a flash and a bang, appeared above Everfree Castle, ready to go aid with the wind exchange.

However, even for her majestic and powerful wings, it was a long flight to the outpost. Of course, it wasn't the first time she'd made the trip, she'd done it tens of thousands of times. In that time Solar Flare had created a sequence of relays, invisible magical 'gates' in the air that would speed her along to almost anywhere in her kingdom she desired, or beyond. Those who feared her were well to fear her ability to appear almost anywhere at anytime.

With a burst of fire magic, Solar lurched forward and pressed her magic into the first relay. Immediately, the world around her distended and blueshifted, blinking past her before expelling her. She dashed into the next relay, then the next one in turn, until within two minutes she was at the border to the Great Sea.

It was here that the border of the day-side of the planet met with the night-side of the planet, under which was nothing but a vast ocean. The outpost in question was a little cloud base shaped like a bowl, upon which a hundred pegasi flitted left and right to the tune of one barking out orders. A dozen flew overhead, guiding winds.

All work stopped when she arrived, everypony bowing deeply to Solar. She counted exactly ten seconds before allowing them to rise, and then spoke. "Carry on with your work. You there!" she demanded, pointing a forehoof to the mare that had been shouting instructions prior to her arrival. The pegasus in question jumped to salute Solar Flare.

"Your Majesty!"

She walked towards her, "How go the wind exchanges? My schedule says that the area here is behind on the heat dispersion. Explain. And for my sake, stop saluting. You look like you're about to fall over."

The pale blue pony lowered herself onto all fours, hesitantly meeting Solar's eyes with her own green ones. "W-Well, my Queen, there are strong winds coming in perpendicular to the designated route, and we h-have to keep storms from forming along the intersection line, so it's taking a lot of ponypower away from the moving of air."

Solar Flare narrowed her eyes, manipulating the muscles in her iris to make her slit pupils constrict further. "Are those excuses?" she demanded hotly.

The poor mare she was accosting hastily shook her head. "No, my Queen, they are reasons."

Solar let her pupils relax and smiled. "Good. Understand that the world without us is chaotic, and that such slips through even our finest attempts. Recognize your limits so that you can work to surpass them." And then die of old age, she thought with an internal nicker. "I'll get you caught back up. Pray that these winds fade, lest I visit again."

The pegasus bowed again. "Yes, of course, Your Majesty." Without waiting for her to pick herself up, Solar Flare leaped into the air with a burst of unmatched pegasus magic, leaving the cloud base far behind and facing the night side of the planet.

She could feel the warm air and cold air mixing together, threatening to cause a major storm, so she began fixing that, pushing the moisture back over the ocean where it would cool and fall as rain far over the sea. With another motion of her hooves, Solar Flare grabbed a wind stream and pushed it, causing it to exchange warm air from Equestria with the night-side's freezing air.

She set up another few wind streams before descending back to the cloud outpost and heading back through her portal relay, arriving high above Everfree City.

Everfree City was a perfectly circular city. Cobblestone walls rose around the circumference, Coronal Guards patrolling the top. Pegasi flew around the airspace, keeping out aerial intruders while iron gates kept out those who couldn't fly. Everfree City was divided up into three parts. The uptown of Everfree, right at the edge of the ring, was painted yellow and blue. Further in, Everfree's downtown was a hub of the sciences and Equestria's military, a force unchallenged by any other nation on the world. And in the very middle, was Everfree Castle, her home for the past three millennia.

On the outside it appeared to be the old-fashioned castle it once was, made entirely out of mortar and stone, whereas on the inside it was crafted out of the finest metalworking there was. Its spires reached up, tall and proud, towards the heavens above. Parapets and walkways formed rings around the spires, shading the corridors where the army drilled. Solar Flare adjusted her course for one of the higher towers and set down on the balcony, trotting into her room after opening the doors.

What was next was by far her least favorite part of day-to-day ruling; paperwork. Equestria was a vast kingdom, a leader among world powers, and that meant a lot of stuff happened in it. Most of the paperwork for various committees, subcommittees, and taxes and laws and lawyers and vacations and holidays was handled by her lessers, but a sizable share still made its way to her desk via magical relays every twenty four hours.

Solar Flare groaned, cracked her neck, and trotted over to her desk. She levitated a quill plucked from her own wings, dipped it in ink, and chose a place to start: tax reports. There seemed to be less coming in than there should've. Not by so much that it indicated a problem with the economy, but enough that Solar suspected there was a significant percentage of tax evaders. Centuries of rule had given her a good sense for that kind of thing. She'd have the guard look into it.

After that were requests from the Equestrian Department of Disease Research for more bits for their projects. After some time to consider it, she rolled her eyes and denied the requests. She'd visited those departments just last month, and with all their fundraisers and such they did not want for money. What they wanted for was time; some diseases were simply very hard to cure. She sat those forms aside into the Done pile, and plodded on.

Solar Flare went through most of the rest of her depressingly large stack of paperwork before deciding it was time for lunch. Pushing herself away from her desk and left her room, her Coronal Guard, once again, falling into position behind her. Like clockwork, which it may as well have been for all the times they had done it, and the infinitely more times she had done it and would do it after they died.

However, something happened to break the clockwork.

As they were headed towards her dining chambers, taking a left down the hallway that brushed close to the servants' quarters, there was a blinding flash of light in front of Solar Flare. She drew back sharply, surprised, and both of her guards leaped forward to protect her. She herself lit up her horn, preparing both a shield and a counterspell to negate the magic. She reached out and probed it...

Solar Flare gasped as the flash of light turned into a swirling, howling vortex of rainbow colors, taking up the entire width of the halls. In the vortex she could feel... power. More magical energy than she had ever dreamed possible. The power to crush a planet like a pebble, to enslave the races of the world to one's will and to free them. Unmatched, overwhelming power that seemed to be a perfect antithesis of chaos magic. The rush of unstoppable magic condensed into a point, opened back up, and then...

As quickly as it came, it stopped. Where before the magic had been was a figure, about the size of Solar Flare with a coat as black as... as black as...

"Get out," she whispered to her two guards, who seemed also to recognize the figure from several paintings around the castle.

The two pegasi turned around to face her. "But, Your Majesty," said the one on her left. "That's - "

"Get out!" she bellowed. Both Coronal Guards backed away from the figure and past Solar Flare, their hoofsteps fading into the background. Once they were gone, she slowly stepped forward.

The figure was equine, and one of the few such that could match Solar Flare's height; that much she could tell despite the fact that the mare was on her side. Her coat was long and full, perfect for keeping warm at night, but was unkempt and ungroomed after the enormous magical whirlwind. Her mane and tail were both a deep shade of violet, long and languid. From the apparently unconscious pony's head sprouted a long spiraled horn, and two wings that looked like they hadn't been preened in far too long were folded limply at her sides. Confirming Solar Flare's rising suspicions was the cutie mark, a series of purple splotches of varying size, the crescent moon imprinted on the largest spot.

What absolutely confirmed it was a quick magical scan on the naked pony: there was not a hint of changeling magic at work. If that was true... if it could truly be...

Solar Flare stepped forward slowly, then hastened into a trot, then a full on gallop. Once she was almost there she slid to her hocks, placing both her armored hooves next to the alicorn's head. "N-Nightmare?" she whispered, not willing to believe her eyes. It couldn't be. It was too good to be true.

The black alicorn groaned, her eyes twitching underneath their lids. "N-No, no, don't want to go... not another thousand..."

Solar Flare swallowed hard and wiped at her eyes with a hoof. "Nightmare, is it truly you? C-Can you hear me?" She wrapped her forelegs around - it was too good to be true... - Nightmare's head and shifted so that her head was in her lap. "It's me, it's me."

Slowly but surely, the pony in her grip opened her eyes again, revealing turquoise irises and slit pupils that Solar hadn't seen in so very, very long. Her left ear flicked. "C-Celestia, no, don't... don't send..."

Celestial? What did that mean? "Nightmare, Nightmare it's me, it's me, it's okay. I've got you."

The pupils focused on her, and Nightmare opened her mouth. "Is it... you?"

Solar couldn't take it anymore. This wasn't one of her subjects, one of her lessers. This wasn't a mortal far beneath her, this was her sister damn it! With a joyful wail she pulled Nightmare up and buried her head in her neck, wrapping her hooves tightly around her barrel. "Nighty, Nighty oh I thought I'd never see you again! I, I thought, I thought you were..." She swallowed. "But you're not, oh you're not." She... she wasn't crying! There was just a thundercloud in her eyes.

"Grrk!"

Solar blinked, looked down, and loosened her grip. Immediately Nightmare took a deep breath, coughing once or twice. "Oh, I'm so sorry! Can you stand? Take, take all the time you need," she said, her voice breaking at the end of the sentence. All the same she didn't dare let go of the alicorn, as if she'd vanish from existence if she ever did. "Oh Nighty, Nighty."

Slowly but surely, the alicorn in her embrace began to get to her hooves. Solar rose with her, not daring to let go. "S-Solar?" she whispered, as if not daring to believe it. "Am I... am I really back?"

She nodded, tears still matting her fur. "Yes, yes yes, you're back." She leaned in to nuzzle Nightmare again. "Do you..." She licked her lips. "Do you want to go to your room? I kept it the same way you left it. Or the kitchens? Maybe, maybe the royal armory?"

Nightmare leaned into her. She was warm and heavy as ever, but even so she felt so weak, so magically drained. Her solid mane, not its ethereal form that no painting could ever do justice, was proof of that. "Can I... can I go see my room? Please? It's been so long."

"I know it has, I know it has," Solar whispered. "Come on, follow me Nighty." Solar Flare lead Nightmare Moon through Everfree Castle. Along the way they passed many other Coronal Guards, some of whom respectfully adhered to their patrols. However, more than one set looked at Solar Flare's sister incredulously, almost not believing their eyes, before she stopped their gawking with a simple murderous glare. Her fiery mane wrapped around Nightmare, doing little more than warming the other alicorn.

Eventually, Solar Flare led Nightmare down corridors she hadn't been down in so long, eventually leading to a simple door. Unlike the door to Solar Flare's room, which was emblazoned with her cutie mark, this one had no decorations on its outside. No guards stood watch, either; Solar had placed the strongest defensive wards she could around it. She probed them with the deactivation code, and opened the doors.

The inside room wasn't perfectly circular like Solar's was. It was an eight-pointed star, with the ones of the cardinal directions larger than the others. The door led into the blunted point of 'south', beyond which lay Nightmare Moon's old chambers. It was dark, so Solar Flare lit up her horn and sent out three orbs of white fire to hover safely around them, providing unflickering light. The walls were made of turquoise, flecked with streaks and spots of black. The carpet, matching the star-shaped room, was a deep ocean blue and, in its center, held Nightmare Moon's cutie mark.

Over by the North corner was Nightmare's bed, made of obsidian that had been hardened with magic to turn the glass-like stone into something tougher than steel. The silver bedsheets and pillows were all unmade, just as they had been a thousand years ago. In the little triangle behind it were some of the... things Nightmare had kept close to her bed.

Solar Flare didn't judge. Not her sister, at any rate.

The East corner of the star was where Nightmare Moon had kept her workspace, and old fashioned desk with a backboard of pegasi swooping around in breezes. There were no papers on it, but there was an antique inkwell given as a present by the long-dead minotaur king, Coron. The minotaurs had since switched to a republic, but here was a little pocket of history from ten centuries ago, perfectly preserved. Solar Flare hadn't let anypony inside ever since that fateful day, not even herself, happy to keep it magically preserved from the outside.

Nighty's eyes followed to the West corner, and she pulled away from Solar's side to stumble over there. She looked around at the bookshelves, stocked with hundreds of novels that she'd accumulated for her own personal reading. In several places on the shelves were little nick-knacks that'd been shelved for some reason known only to Nightmare herself. Nightmare reached out with a hoof and pulled off a tiny, model boat, its sails furled. She stared at it for a half a minute, then put it back and turned to Solar.

"I'm... I'm really home," she said, a tear tracing its way down her cheek.

Solar nodded. "I kept everything the way you left it," she whispered. "I missed you."

"How long?" Nightmare whispered. "How long has it been?"

Solar frowned. "How... how long do you think it's been?"

"A thousand years," she said, looking at her bed, then back at Solar Flare.

"I haven't seen you in a thousand years either," Solar Flare said.

Nightmare flinched. "You mean... you didn't look for me?"

"I did!" she shouted, taken aback. "But there was nowhere to look! You just vanished while in your room, and there was no hint as to where you'd gone! I, I looked everywhere! The Badlands, the Dragon Highlands, the Zebran Plains, everywhere! But after a few decades, with no hint, not even a clue as to what happened? I-I'm sorry, Nighty, but I couldn't imagine anything else. What happened? Where did you go? I thought you were dead!" The funeral had been a small, quiet affair. Solar hadn't been in the mood to entertain guests to her sister's funeral. Having her back was like a dream come true, a dream she'd long ago given up.

Nightmare Moon shook her head, dark purple mane moving back and forth and some getting into her mouth. "Pfft," she said, spitting out a strand of her mane. She shook her head again. "What happened... what happened?" She closed her eyes and furrowed her brow. "I was... in my bed and then... that's right, them!"

Solar Flare's mane brightened for a moment. "Them? Who? The ponies who took you?"

"No, I don't think they tried to take me. I went to... it's so fuzzy. I was insane for most if it, I think. All of it, probably. Sharing heads does that, and it didn't get any easier - "

"Nighty, focus."

"Right, right. So, I was in my chambers and, and I was sleeping. Then there was a red glow around me. Some kind of time magic. I-I tried to stop it, but by the time I called magic to my horn it was already too late. Next thing I know I'm in some kind of... tundra." She shivered. "There was another alicorn."

Solar Flare's eyes widened and her irises collapsed. "Another alicorn? Up by the arctics? How have we not heard of them before?! Who were they? Did they hurt you?" She was going to find this alicorn, and when she did -

"I'm getting to it. Her name was Celestia. Apparently she has a younger sister called Luna. Luna... I was in her head, I think. It's so hard to tell. Don't give me that look, Solar! I really was in her head. She was moving without my say, talking without my control. I don't think she heard me thinking, because she never responded, and I couldn't hear her thoughts either."

"So what happened?"

"We drove each other insane." Nightmare Moon shivered and sought shelter under Solar Flare's right wing. "Literally, two souls using one brain just slowly drove us both mad. I never actually heard her thoughts, but I think her attitude towards the world began to affect me, and mine hers. I'm not sure. It's all so... cloudy. From what I can gather, Sola?" Solar Flare's heart skipped a beat at the use of her old nickname. "From what I can gather, whatever that time spell was it sent me to some kind of... alternate universe. Celestia and Luna were our soft-hearted selves."

She opened her mouth to berate her sister for such a foalish idea, but held her tongue. Solar wasn't the one who'd gone missing. She wasn't the one who disappeared. "So... alternate universe?"

Nightmare nodded, not noticing Solar Flare's reservations. "Yeah. Apparently Luna - guess whose alternate version she is - was jealous of Celestia. They weren't twins either, Celestia was older." For no good reason, Solar Flare felt quite proud of that. "I don't fully understand, but eventually, well... you know how long I want the nighttime to last?"

Solar smiled warmly at Nightmare. "About as long as I want the daytime to last."

Nightmare chuckled. "Yeah, that long. Well, it sort of... combined with Luna's jealousy, and obviously we were both being driven mad by each other. I think... I think for a while I actually thought Celestia was my sister." Solar winced. Nightmare had... had forgotten her. "But eventually, I came out on top."

Solar frowned. "What do you mean?"

Nightmare Moon, still under Solar's wing, puffed out her chest. Not long afterwards, she deflated. "Well obviously I was the stronger personality. Eventually, I turned Luna's body into mine. It wasn't like I tried to, it just... happened." She turned contemplative. "At least, I don't think I tried. Either way, well, I was jealous of Celestia, and I wanted the night to last forever, and in my infinite wisdom I kinda, sorta, tried to stage a coup," she said with a sheepish smile. "And, well, I wasn't thinking clearly, so I didn't fight as well as you know I can, and..."

Nightmare Moon shivered and curled further into Solar's coat. "What happened?"

"I lost. She got these... things called the Elements of Harmony and... and..." She shivered. "It was terrible. There was this... flash of rainbow light and then I was on... I was on the moon, Solar. And no matter what I tried I couldn't leave."

Solar Flare brought her hoof to her mouth. "For... for how long? And what about that Luna alicorn?"

"Luna? I don't think she was aware for most of it. I pushed her pretty far down. Honestly, I'm not sure how much she knew about what was going on, but I imagine that for her it felt like I was possessing her." Nightmare frowned. "I guess I was, in a way."

A horrible thought occurred in Solar Flare's mind. "How... how long were you on the moon, Nighty?"

"A thousand years," she whispered. "A thousand long, horrible years before I could come back." She closed her eyes and shook, Nightmare's tears wetting Solar's fur.

"You were... all alone? For a thousand years?" she whispered, aghast.

"It wasn't as bad as it should've been. Didn't really... stick to me, crazed as I was." Despite her assurances that a millennium of solitude wasn't as damaging as Solar Flare thought, Nighty snuggled deeper into her chest. "Eventually I escaped, and of course, you know, I tried to stage another coup."

"But, those super weapons you mentioned - "

" - Celestia didn't have them the second time," Nightmare said. "I'm not too sure what happened, but I think she lost access to them. And wouldn't you know it? These six mortal mares picked them up just as I was returning and used them again."

"Mortals? Ouch." Solar Flare could feel her pride being stabbed. "What happened? What did they do to you?"

Nightmare Moon smiled warmly at her, her fangs sticking out of her upper lip. "They... they brought me here. I'm home." She squeezed her eyes shut, tears leaking out from under them. "I'm... I'm really... I-I'm - "

Nodding reassuringly, Solar gathered Nightmare in her forehooves again. "You are, you are. Nighty, tell you what. You get to bed, I'll bring you something to eat. Any preferences?"

Nighty looked unsure for a moment, looking down adorably. "A chicken wing would be nice. And some milk."

Releasing Nightmare Moon, Solar Flare stood up and nodded. "Alright. I'll bring you those, and when we get back we can get you your magic back. Bring you down to the armory, get you new trappings, and introduce you to the populace." She raised a hoof to wipe away a tear.

Nightmare nodded, climbing to her hooves and trotting to her bed. "That... sounds good. Thank you, Sola."

Solar Flare walked towards the door. "I'll be right back, Nighty." She opened the door, left Nightmare's room, and closed it behind her. She found two guards and posted them at the outside of her sister's chambers. "Guard this room with your lives," she intoned, before leaving for the Royal Kitchens.

She could hardly believe what had just happened. Her sister, Nightmare Moon, was back. It was like she'd come back from the dead. And her story! She was half tempted to dismiss it out of hoof as madness, but didn't. She was quite skilled in magical theory, and what Nightmare Moon had said happened wasn't entirely out of the realm of possibility. For the time being, she was going to nurse Nighty back to health, reinstate her as co-ruler of Equestria, and everything would go back to the way it had always been. And if she ever met this 'Celestia' pony?

She was going to kill her.

Author's Note

I hope you all enjoyed. Please do leave a comment. Even if it's just to say what you liked and not to point out an error, everything helps; knowing what works is as important as knowing what doesn't.

Thanks to trondason for editing this chapter.

I do not own MLP, Hasbro does.

Threadbare

Luna

Princess Luna was, contrary to popular belief, very much a morning pony.

The morning was the time she could finally take off her crown, peytral, and horseshoes. It was the time she could rest her charge beneath the horizon and cover the light of the stars. She could hoof over the governance of Equestria to her sister and watch the beautiful sunrise, before crawling under her sheets and falling asleep herself. Where most ponies would grumble and beg for five more minutes, Princess Luna greeted each morning with exuberance and joy.

The only problem was that it wasn't morning.

Princess Luna squirmed under her sheets, groaning. "Prithee, allow us five more minutes," she muttered in Old Equestrian.

Her mane, a portrait of night filled with twinkling stars, perpetually blowing in the interstellar wind, was trapped under her body and waved against her coat in something almost like anguish. With a resigned sigh, she sat up and let her mane smooth itself out before rolling out of bed onto all four hooves. Her horn lit up and floated over her royal trappings, slipping them on with practiced ease. Even with her enormous earth pony magic flowing through her limbs and granting them strength, she felt weak and wobbly.

Princess Luna was not at all a dusk pony.

Still, she forced her hooves to move. Luna trotted through her room to a door and threw it open, revealing her balcony. She trotted forward and beheld the planet's shadow, ready to rise up and cast the night. The planet's shadow, projected against its own atmosphere, took the form of a massive dark blue streak, tinted at the top with red. Luna opened up her spiritual link to the moon and stars, feeling the great motions of the cosmic discs above her.

There was a ripple through the cosmos as Luna's sister worked her own spiritual solar magic, wrapping around the sun and gently pushing it beneath the horizon. That was her cue; reaching through the link to her realm, Luna channeled her magic into a long-routine spell. Not even she could move the moon on her own, not an inch, not with a trillion times the power she wielded. Thanks to her spirit link however, she didn't need nearly that much power. She hefted the moon up over the horizon and sent it on its way, and then let forth the light of the incomprehensibly distant stars, arranging them in various constellations and patterns, before painting the sky with streaks of purple and deep blue, however the artistic whim in her desired.

Soon she was done painting the night sky and nodded, a gentle smile on her lips. Down below in Canterlot, a great many lights went out as occupants prepared to sleep, whose dreams Luna would guard, while other lights came on as Canterlot's vibrant nightlife began to pick up momentum. It brought a smile to her muzzle. Already the air was cooling down to something Luna, with her thick, full coat, quite enjoyed.

She turned around and walked back inside her private chambers, sealing the balcony door behind her. She opened the doors to the halls of Canterlot and trotted out, two members of her Night Guard falling into step behind her and matching her strides. Already she was waking up, though she wouldn't truly be awake till after her breakfast coffee.

Before too long, Luna made her way to her and Tia's shared dining room. Her guards took their places outside and she walked in, at exactly the same time Celestia walked in from another door. The two sisters shared a smile and then took their seats next to each other.

"Good evening, Luna," she greeted. "I hope you had a restful sleep."

She nodded. "Mmhmm, I slept like a foal. Had a good day?"

"Oh yes. Cadance wrote me, said that preparations for the Equestria Games are going well. Had a good lunch, productive court. Oh, by the way, the astronomers' guild wants a meeting with you, see if you can pencil them in sometime this week."

She rolled her eyes. "They're going to poke me for details about the upcoming comet, aren't they?" It was at that point that a third pony joined them. The earth stallion Gleaming Platter took their orders for food - Princesses weren't allowed to feed themselves in this age, pah - and trotted out to get their meals. "I don't see why they need to pester me about so many details. I've already given them the comet's trajectory, if they want to know anything more about it they can go to it themselves!"

"Lulu, air," the Daybringer reminded her.

She rolled her eyes. "Yes yes, there are spells for that and you know it!" The two of them continued with sisterly banter for a few more minutes - Luna relished her time with Tia, their conflicting schedules didn't give them enough of that - before Gleaming Platter returned. Celestia got her dinner of spaghetti and hayballs, with a cup of steaming tea, while Luna herself got a mug of that wonderful modern invention coffee, and a breakfast of buttered pancakes.

As they ate, they talked. They spoke of Twilight's most recent misadventure, they spoke of relations with the griffons, dragons, zebras and minotaurs, they spoke of Discord's latest prank around the castle that left half the staff gender-swapped for hours on end. Before long, however, they both finished eating their meals and stood.

"Well, I'm turning in," Tia said. "Good night, Luna."

She leaned in and entwined her neck with her sister's. "Enjoy your rest, sister. I'll make sure to give you pleasant dreams." They held the hug for a few moments longer before pulling apart. Celestia teleported away with a flash of sunlight, and Luna cantered out of the dining room. Her guards fell in step besides her, and with a full, happy stomach and coffee in her veins, she was ready to begin the night in earnest.

To start off the night, Luna returned to her private chambers and found, on her nightstand, a comically large stack of documents to sign. With a grimace she walked over to it and using a quill plucked from her own wings, got started.

It was the documents that'd made her realize just how much the world had changed in the thousand years she was possessed by that parasite. Equestria was larger, foreign relations were more stable. The country was nowhere near as militaristic as it had been long ago. While the Crystal Empire had already been smashed into a single city before she was corrupted, Luna still hadn't gotten used to their northern neighbor being so... small. Then there was the nobility, worse than in her time and indeed seeming to become more corrupt by the day. And the technology!

That thought made her pause in filling out some medical forms for her annual checkup - however unlikely it was for an alicorn to be sick it was better to be safe than sorry - before continuing.

This new age was filled with wonders which delighted Luna to no end. Imagine, a machine that toasts bread perfectly, all on its own!

... with some oversight, as she had once discovered.

The papers were many, but even before the Nightmare she'd had fifteen hundred years of ruling alongside her sister to get used to the workload. Soon enough, Luna was finished with that workload and, quickly checking the moon's position in the sky, she realized it was almost time for Midnight Court.

Luna got to all fours and once again left her room, the guards falling into place behind her. She knew the path to the throne room like the frogs of her hooves, so when she didn't find herself in the throne room and instead what appeared to be a circular loop of a staircase that had no entrance she was rather confused.

Passing the window she affectionately regarded as Castle Window #13 for the tenth time, Luna paused and her Night Guard stopped with her. She sighed. "Discord, what are you doing?"

There was flash of brilliant white light from before her, revealing the draconequus in all his 'glory'. He reclined in the air, crossing his limbs. "Why Woona, I'm just practicing for the big day coming up! I call it - " He brought his hands together. " - the endless staircase!" He spread his arms out, forming an illusion of a series of stairs going in a square, but somehow never elevating. "Going pretty well if I do say so myself, got the inspiration after Pinkie showed me a picture of a inside-out cube." He grinned and clapped his hands, dispelling the stair illusion.

"And you thought it best to practice on me?" Luna asked with a raised eyebrow. "Discord, I'm late for court."

"So what? It's not like anypony interesting's coming. Sunbutt gets all the fun cases, you know," he said, slithering up to her and draping his lion arm over her withers. She held down a shudder of revulsion, and behind her the two guards bit their tongues. "You only get the boring blah blah border issues blah blah insurance fraud cases. It's not like they can't stand to wait."

"Discord, those are important cases. Let me pass now," she said with a stomp of her hoof. On the best of days, she and Discord got along... passably. Out of herself, Celestia and the draconequus, she was the least given to the art of pranking - not to say she wouldn't get back at Celestia for the Blue Moon - and so she and Discord had quite little in common. On the worst of days... the less she thought about those the better.

The chaos lord rolled his yellow, pupiless eyes, but snapped his eagle talon. There was a flash of light and something that felt like fizzy water in Luna's mouth, and he nodded. "Well, enjoy listening to Tweedledee and Tweedledum yapping on all night, Woona." He moved around in mid air until he was no longer laying down but instead hovering. "I've got places to go, things to do, ponies to dye, you understand. Arrivede - "

As he prepared to teleport away, Luna spoke up. "Hold, Discord." He did, forming iron manacles around his limbs, complete with chains that ran to the walls. Luna flew up next to him and whispered in his ears. "Tomorrow at six in the afternoon, Tia will have the royal kitchens begin making a cake for her consumption. Let's make it one she'll remember."

Discord pulled away and banished the chains, grinning wickedly. "Oh ho ho, I like the way you think, Woona." He reached up with his lion paw and tousled her astral mane, which behaved like it was solid and remained rustled for a few moments after he removed his paw before beginning to flow again. "Well, ta-ta now, I simply must be off. Those chrysanthemum's won't learn to sing the Ode to Joy on their own now will they?"

"You're teaching what to what?" she asked in surprise.

But before she could get a response, Discord pretended to do a pirouette in mid air and vanished with a flash of chaotic power, sending the sensation of being tickled with the blunt end of a feather through Luna's primaries.

Princess Luna sighed. She hadn't, of course, worked out any of the details of their upcoming prank on Tia, but that was probably just as well for Discord. At the very least, she could say anything that happened was his idea. A smile tugged at her lips. Discord, messing with her sister's precious cakes. Mayhaps she could get her hooves on one of those 'cameras' for the occasion and blame him for it all; she was least given to pranking among them, but she would get her revenge for the Blue Moon.

She blinked and shook her head. What was she doing, getting sidetracked like that? She had business to be on and she was late! Luna took a step forwards...

... and the room around her shimmered and she found herself in the throne room. She blinked, and sent a mental thanks Discord's way. She walked over to the throne, which in the night shifted to a dark blue throne her size. She trotted over to it and sat in her throne while her guards took up places with the other Night Guards around the throne room.

Princess Luna looked to her left at her seneschal, the yellow coated unicorn Sounding Voice, and nodded. "Let this session of Midnight Court begin! Send forth the first petitioner."

So began the Midnight Court. The first petition was a small matter between two ponies over the specific borders of their farms, a cabbage farm and a carrot farm in Hoofington. There was a lot of legal jargon thrown around, but Luna cut through it with fifteen hundred years of insight and ruled in favor of the cabbage farmer.

The next one was an appeal to justice by an inmate. Sour Grapes had been accused of embezzling bits from fundraisers and was in the midst of serving her sentence. She was pleading to be let out early on terms of good behavior, nonviolence in her crime, and claims of having learned her lesson. While such a thing would likely have worked on her sister, it did not work on Luna. She reviewed the papers of the crime in question, and found that what had been stolen to be in the realm of hundreds of thousands of bits. Sour Grapes had no family, no dependents. Luna decreed she would serve out the remainder of her sentence.

Midnight Court's work was pleasing, it was relaxing. It gave Luna the feeling of hooves-on helping her subjects that filling out forms and passing laws simply couldn't. And there was so many petitioners too, ponies who couldn't get an appointment with the Noon Court, or who desired a fair but firm decision, came to her. It made her feel appreciated, loved. Everything she hadn't had back... then.

Luna shook the feeling from her head and continued to listen to each case. Discord had had a point; they were quite boring cases. Important ones, but rather uninspiring as far as things went. What she wouldn't give to be painting her night, shuffling around stars and protecting dreams, or debating magic with Twilight Sparkle.

After settling a case of marriage paperwork being misfiled, they had a minute before the next petition. Luna looked over at Sounding Voice. "Tell me Sounding Voice, how has your night been?"

The unicorn looked up, one amber eye hidden behind a lock of gold mane. "Very well, Luna." It'd taken a great deal of work to get him to stop calling her Princess in private - guards notwithstanding - all the time. "Had a good meal, coffee from Starplucks. Money's not an issue, life's going pretty well. You?"

She smiled down at her little pony. "Quite well. The night is young, I've finally figured out how I want my next constellation to look - " It was to be a pair of scales. " - and I have been invited to a... I believe it is called 'sleepover' by Twilight Sparkle." She smiled to herself. Yes, things were going swimmingly.

Time passed and soon Midnight Court ended. Luna had gotten through every petitioner just the time allotted for Court ended, which left her feeling very happy with herself. She sent an order for a light lunch to the kitchens and asked for it to be delivered to her balcony, which she flew to. It was an hour and a half after midnight, a time she usually reserved for dreamwalking.

Once on her balcony, Luna relaxed and closed her eyes. Without effort, the dreamscape appeared before her. It was a shifting, chaotic mass of blue and dark green, like light reflecting off a pool of something that wasn't quite water. Surrounding her, in all directions, were tiny bubbles of air floating around her. Each one was opaque and impossible to see into unless she were to enter them. Every one of them had a differently colored sheen over them, indicating the status of the dream, and their different sizes showed how stable the dream was; smaller dreams were more likely to end.

Luna spotted a nearby, giant orb that she knew from its proximity to her was Celestia's. It shimmered grass green with potential and peace. Moving her ethereal hoof over to it, she tapped it and set it to blue wish fulfillment. She flew out on fake wings in fake space, looking over the various dreams. With but a look she could read whose dream it was. With a touch she could set the general tone. And pushing her hoof deeper into one she could enter the dream itself and see what it truly was, something she rarely did, rarely had to.

She mostly paid attention to the dark red dreams, the nightmares, steering them towards peace and fulfillment dreams. She easily soared through Equestria's dreamscape, taking care of it all. Part of her was aware in the real world, of a guard flying up to her with her lunch in his hooves. Acting in the physical realm while her mind was occupied in the dream realm, she took it and began eating.

She visited Ponyville, relieving the nightmares of Bon-Bon, Thunderlane, and Fluttershy. She looked the other way from the pink dreams of the Cake spouses; she'd learned long ago to let those dreams be.

The alicorn drifted through the dreams of Equestria as she ate her modest lunch, watching as dreams flickered and faded or popped into being all around her, like rolling waves, growing and shrinking and changing colors, some languidly and some quickly. She turned her magic on herself, poking and prodding around in her mind and finding that her 'orb' was intact -

wait.

Princess Luna thought she saw something.

She drew out of the dreamscape and ran magical scans over the forefront of her consciousness. When her scans found nothing out of the ordinary besides some additional confusion, she dove deeper into her subconscious, her soul, that which made her who she was. Still Luna found nothing, but she wasn't done. She knew she'd seen something, she was sure of it.

Lighting up her horn with cosmic energy, she opened her link to the night sky and all that dwelled within. She carefully went over her spiritual bond with her magic scan, looking for anything, anything at all, that was out of the ordinary. She went over the darkness of the sky, the stars, the moon.

There! In the portion of her link devoted to the moon, there was something. If her bond to the moon was a series of blue fibers stretching from her body to the surface of the cosmic sphere, then the irregularity was a single thread out of place, hanging out into the abyss. It was also quite dark, a deep purple that was almost black.

Luna frowned, prodding the magic. It was different. Deeper, honed, spiteful and filled with desire. The magic was also stale; clearly it hadn't been exercised in a while. The fact that it managed to hide from her for so long was surprising enough; something must've really hit that little flicker of magic hard for it to take so long to be noticeable again. In fact, looking closer, the unfamiliar magic was actually quite familiar to her. It was the same magic she'd wielded when Luna had called herself... called herself...

No. It couldn't be.

But no matter what angle Luna viewed the magic from, a tiny thread that cast itself out towards who-knew-where, she got the same results. In her magic, in the very bond to her sacred moon, was a tether of Nightmare Moon's magic.

She snapped herself back to the real world, and backed away from her balcony edge as panic began to sink its icy daggers into her chest. It couldn't be. How was that demon's magic still on her? How much of a hold did it have? She was sure it hadn't been there before, was it growing? Would it consume her again?!

Luna's mind flashed back to the horrible millenia on the moon, of wildly swinging temperature and no companionship, viewed dimly through the haze of her consuming madness.

"No!" she cried out, stumbling back. Raw, animal panic overrode all her composure in a second - I am not going back! - and she transformed into mist. She flew back into her room and squeezed through the door leading to the castle halls. Still in the form of scintillating fog, she flew through Canterlot Castle to the only pony she would trust with something like this.

She squeezed under Celestia's door and reformed inside. Luna retained enough presence of mind to soundproof the room, and then let her panic flow.

"Tia! Tia! Help us!" she bellowed in Old Equestrian. She found her sister sprawled atop her covers and launched herself at the other alicorn. Celestia shrieked and thrashed when she made contact, but Luna wrapped her forelegs around her. "Don't let her get us, don't let her get us!"

"Gwa, bah, nyah! Luna, what is wrong with you?" Celestia pushed herself up into a sitting position and wrapped her hooves around Luna, who was in hysterics. "Luna, calm yourself!"

"We can't, we can't," she whispered, holding Tia with all her immense earth pony strength. "She's still there, she's still out there. Don't let her get us, please Tia don't let her get us. We don't want to turn on thee again, we don't want to, we don't - "

"Luna, Luna get a hold of yourself!" she said sternly. "This isn't like you. Take a deep breath." Celestia put a hoof on Luna's heaving barrel. "In." Tia pulled her hoof away, and Luna's breathing shuddered. "Out." The hoof pushed back in, forcefully expelling the breath from her lungs. "In." The pressure relented, allowing Luna to take in air. "Out."

A few more cycles, and Luna had calmed down. "Right. Thank you, sister. I'm sorry, I don't know what came over me."

Celestia rubbed some sleep out of her eyes. "Maybe you could start by letting go?"

She shook her head and buried her snout in Tia's coat. "Don't wanna," she mumbled foalishly.

"Fine, just like when we were fillies then. Start at the beginning, Lulu. What's wrong?" she asked in a motherly tone. Luna hated it when Celestia used that tone.

"Alright, alright." She took another deep breath in and out, calming her frazzled nerves again. "I was dreamwalking, when I thought I noticed the barest glimmer of magic upon my own mind. I looked into it, and found it in my spiritual link. Tia, Tia it's her magic. A thread of some sort, connecting her to me. I-I didn't notice it before. What if it's growing stronger?" She hugged Tia harder, making the elder alicorn croak for breath. "I don't want to be her again! I don't want to betray you again!"

Pushing her far enough to breathe, Celestia rubbed her back with a forehoof. "Shh, shh. Luna, do you mind if I take a look?"

Luna shook her head. "No, please do." What was wrong with her? She was Princess Luna, the Nightbringer, mistress of dreams and goddess of the moon. She had faced off the demon Tirek and stood her ground against Discord back before his reformation. But one little thread of magic in her link and she was suddenly a scared little filly again? Perhaps the Nightmare had done more damage than she was willing to admit to herself.

Before too long she felt her sister's magic flowing along her horn, deep into her soul, and through the lunar bond. The magic was slow and methodical, caring and warm. The scan reached the dark portent of Nightmare Moon's magic and surrounded it. She felt Celestia focus her magic on it, trying to burn away the link, but it resisted stubbornly. Luna felt more magic force itself into her link and her eyes grew wide.

"Stop, stop!" she said, pulling away from Celestia. "You might damage my bond, Tia!"

Her sister frowned. "Is that even possible?" she asked.

"Do we want to take the risk?" Luna countered. She took another deep, cleansing breath. "No, no no. Let me at least try and contain it." Luna concentrated and lit up her horn, pouring magic through her cosmic link. It pooled in the channel and formed a shield around the angry, dark blotch of Nightmare Moon's power, sealing it away safely. She didn't believe for a second that it was a permanent solution, but it would at least buy them time to analyze what it was doing there.

"Done," she said, clambering off of Celestia's bed. Across from her, Celestia did the same, wiping her tired eyes with a hoof. "Sister, I am sorry for having awakened you with my foalish panic," she said with a hoof to her chest. "I apologize."

"Luna, it's not foalish," Celestia insisted. "You know that I'm here for you. Especially if it concerns the -"

There came a furious knocking on the door. "Princesses?" came a guard's muffled voice from the other side. "Are you okay? We saw you fly in, you appeared unwell!"

Celestia trotted over to the door and opened it, staring down at the assembled Night Guards. Luna followed her, standing side by side with her sister to address her guards. "Everything is fine," Luna said. "Thank you for your diligence, but we're fine; I merely had a scare. You are dismissed."

They saluted. "Yes, Your Highness," they said in perfect, eternally loyal synchronization. They returned to their posts, and with a sigh Luna closed the door.

Now that the only eyes on her were her sister's, she rubbed her temple with a hoof. "Alright. I think I've contained its magic."

"Luna," Celestia offered. "Can I take another look? I want to see where the thread leads."

She tilted her head, frowning. It made sense. If there was a thread of the Nightmare's magic latched to her, it only made sense that the other end would be in the Nightmare itself. Though that raised all sorts of questions, such as 'why hadn't the Elements obliterated it?'. On the other hoof, it could very well be a piece of magic dangling from her link, bound to nothing.

Princess Luna sighed, but allowed it and again opened her magic. "See if you can, sister," she said softly.

Celestia's golden magic swept through her again, pouring down her spiritual link and surrounding the little barrier she'd placed around Nightmare Moon's inert magic. She could feel Celestia's magic gently stripping away the shield, and pouring through the ragged thread of the Nightmare's power, carefully so as not to accidentally awaken the sleeping beast. In her mind's eye Luna followed the magic as it went down the thread, out of her spiritual link, out into the night sky, down towards the planet, and then...

... it vanished.

No, that wasn't right. Nightmare Moon's magic didn't vanish, as that implied it faded away into nothingness. No, it simply cut off. And right before it did the channels of magic seemed to distort, warp, fold away before being abruptly halted.

Celestia's magic withdrew, and Luna reformed the containment shield on the tainted magic. "What is it?" she asked the solar alicorn.

"It's... strange, Lulu. Almost as if the thread is vanishing into a portal, except not quite."

"I saw it too, sister." She sat down and brought a hoof to her chin. "But where is it going? Where is Nightmare Moon, if anywhere?"

"I can't say." Celestia sat down and mimicked her pose, just without her royal garb. "Luna, I've never seen something like this. We should probably conduct an investigation on this."

She nodded. "Good, good. We must stop whatever is happening before it can even get off the ground." She stomped. "I am not letting that parasite ruin my life a second time," she said resolutely.

"Should I send for Twilight? This is a magical conundrum so this is right in her area of expertise."

Luna pondered that for a moment. On one hoof, this was her and Tia's problem, no need to involve her dear friend and worry her. But on the other hoof, any chance of the Nightmare possessing her was a matter of highest importance, and Princess Twilight was quite the skilled spellcaster; she didn't have the raw centuries of magical knowledge she and her sister did, but her mind was sharp as a blade and her thoughts swift as the wind. She and Celestia had great experience with magic, but it simply wasn't their talent, they weren't inherently good at it like Twilight was.

"Yes, please write to Twilight, Tia. The more heads working on this, the better." She frowned. "All the same, let's try not to tell anypony else. No sense causing a panic if this really is nothing more than a leftover from the Nightmare I didn't notice until now."

Celestia magically summoned a paper, quill, and inkwell. She wrote a quick letter, and magicked it away. "Done. And now we wait." She yawned again.

"Sorry again for awakening you, Tia. I panicked when I discovered... it."

Celestia walked over and draped a large wing over Luna, nuzzling her. "Nonsense, Luna. I'll always make time for you." The unspoken after last time hung over them like a thundercloud. "We'll get through this. Now, how about we go to the archives? There must be something there we can use."

She stood and smiled at her elder sister. "Yes, let's."

The two of them left Celestia's chambers and headed for the Royal Archives. Luna was feeling much more confident. The Nightmare had been beaten before, not just once but twice. This time, there would be no mercy for that dark parasite.

Author's Note

I hope you all enjoyed. Please do leave a comment. Even if it's just to say what you liked and not to point out an error, everything helps; knowing what works is as important as knowing what doesn't.

Thanks for trondason for editing this chapter!

I do not own MLP, Hasbro does.

This story has 40 favorites but 8 comments. Something's wrong with this picture. :raritywink:

Tunnel in the Sky

Twilight Sparkle

BRAAAAAAP!

The resonating belch, accompanied by a surge of intense heat and a blinding flash of green light, woke her up quite unceremoniously. Twilight's eyes snapped open and her wings flew out to their full extent, and considering she'd been laying on her back this meant she was launched into sitting upright as her wings slammed against the bed.

"Ugh," Spike said, even more shaken than she was. "Letter for you, Twilight." He crawled out of his bed and handed over the scroll to Twilight.

"Thanks Spike," she said sleepily. What time was it? She had the blinds drawn so she couldn't figure it out. Either way, she took the scroll into her hooves and, lighting up her horn for illumination, opened it and started reading. First she smiled, then she frowned, then as she continued to read she gasped in panic, and as she reached the end she nodded resolutely. She would not let the Princesses down.

She got off her bed, already wide awake. There was nothing quite like reading that there was the potential of Nightmare Moon returning to possess Luna to wake somepony up. "Spike, I'm going to Canterlot, you're in charge."

The baby dragon rubbed his eyes with fists. "What's going on with Canterlot this time?" he asked sardonically.

Twilight shook her head at his sleepy snark. "Don't worry about it. The Princesses need my help on a..." She chose her words carefully. "... magical matter." Internally she felt guilty at leaving Spike out of it, but if it was considering experiments on Nightmare Moon's magic - however the Princesses got their hooves on that - then the fewer ponies around the better.

"You know, if you don't want to tell me what it is you can just say that," Spike grumbled.

Twilight winced in guilt, but went on to prepare.

She walked around her library home, gathering the few things she'd need in her saddlebags. Just a few stacks of notes, pencils. The castle would have magical instruments and such for her to borrow, so she could travel light.

Before leaving, Twilight grabbed a quick snack in the form of a lettuce sandwich, downed it, then slipped her saddlebags on. After adjusting the strap so her wings wouldn't chafe, she stepped outside of her library.

It was dark, still the middle of the night. Luna's moon hung high, slowly creeping down towards the horizon. Still blinking some sleep out of her eyes, Twilight stretched her wings and set off towards Canterlot.

The crisp night air billowing through her mane and whistling through her primaries was a shock to her senses, and she grinned. It'd taken quite a few lessons with Rainbow - and more than one mortifying preening session - to get flying down pat, but Twilight had always been a quick study. She was confident in her ability to reach Canterlot in a semi-timely manner. It wasn't like the city was that far, after all.

As she flew, she wondered about the letter. It hadn't explained much, but apparently Luna had discovered some trace of Nightmare Moon's magic within her mind and was understandably worried about it. Twilight was especially worried of what would happen if the Nightmare actually did take over Luna; all problems of how much the night goddess didn't deserve that aside, there were the logistics problems of them not having the Elements of Harmony anymore to purge the darkness. It was imperative that Twilight found a way to stop Luna from being corrupted once again.

She beat her wings as her pegasus magic propelled her through the sky, the Equestrian countryside passing beneath her and Canterlot's mountain looming before her like some great beast. Then she was flying over Canterlot, slowly spiraling down until she landed just outside the castle gates.

She trotted up towards the gate, which was flanked by two Night Guards. She nodded to each of them. "Good night," she greeted.

The one on the left said, "Good night to you too, Princess. Princess Luna and Princess Celestia are waiting for you in the Canterlot Archives." He gave an almost-smile and opened the gate. "I trust you can find the way?"

"Of course." She entered, bade them farewell, and set about finding her way to the archives.

In no time at all she was there. She opened the door, checked in with the librarian, and found both Princesses pouring over books in the teleportation wing. Celestia was bereft of her royal attire, which gave the sun goddess a strangely... mortal look. Twilight didn't like it. Luna meanwhile still had on her regalia, a tornado of books spinning around and above her horn.

Bracing herself to not use their titles, Twilight cleared her throat. "Celestia, Luna?" she asked.

Luna gasped, and her whirlwind of books came crashing down. Celestia set down the book she was reading and looked her way. "Twilight, thank you for coming on such... very short notice." She and Celestia walked together and shared a quick embrace. "I'm very worried."

"I can imagine, Celestia." They pulled apart. "What happened? Your letter didn't give me all the details."

"Is it safe," Princess Luna asked. "to assume that you know about the Nightmare's magic?"

She chuckled nervously and put a hoof behind her head. "Well, I know of it, but..."

"Come here," Luna said, opening a wing and gesturing to herself. Twilight walked towards her, nervously looking at Celestia for approval. In response, Princess Celestia nodded comfortingly. Once Twilight was within a few leg lengths of Luna, the Nightbringer lit up her horn with a blue corona. "Probe your magic into mine. Find my link to the moon, Twilight. A little more than halfway to it is the anomaly, currently shielded. Don't do anything to it," she intoned ominously. "Once you've found it, come back out."

From so close Twilight could see Luna's gentle, almost unnoticeable shaking and the tense muscles all throughout her body. She must've been really scared. "Alright Pri - Luna, I'll be careful." Twilight began her spell, scanning her magical signature into Luna's body. She was nervous; Celestia had allowed her to touch her link to the sun once when she was a filly, learning about spiritual links, but that was the only time. In a few minutes, however, Twilight found Princess Luna's link to the moon and sent her magic down it, keeping an 'eye' out for the shield around Nightmare Moon's magic.

Before long she found the shield of energy, both blue and golden magic forming a barrier around what appeared to be a tiny dark purple 'thread' poking out of the blue ropes that made up the bond. It was really small, she could certainly understand how it went undetected for so long. She wouldn't even have noticed it if she weren't looking for it. For a moment Twilight wanted to look further, but remembered what Luna had told her and pulled her scan's power back out, then shut off her horn.

"I see it," she said worriedly. They hadn't been kidding; Nightmare Moon's magic really was there. "What do we do about it? Can't we just, I don't know, cut it out?" Even as she asked the question she knew it was foalish. Despite how they appeared in her mind's eye, they weren't actually threads but rather hyperthaumatic weight distribution and identification spells. You can't simply cut a hyperthaumatic weight distribution and identification spell.

Celestia shook her head. "No, we can't." She lit up her horn and briefly connected her magic to Luna's. Luna's breath briefly hitched in fear, and Twilight had a feeling she would soon find out why. "Twilight, I want you to follow this thread as far as you can. Tell me what you think."

"Okay," she said uncertainly. It was Nightmare Moon's magic; she was really worried about poking it. What if she woke it up and made it possess Luna? Or what if it went after her instead? What would she even call herself, corrupted by it? 'Falling Dusk'? Still, the Princess had asked her to try something, she would at least try.

Lighting up her magic again, she pushed into the link. The shield around the tainted thread was gone, but the magic remained just as inert as before. Steeling her nerves, she placed several wards over her mind and a one-way shield around the taint, then touched it with her spell.

The magical corruption of Nightmare Moon, much to her surprise, didn't feel anything like corruption. After facing off against King Sombra she knew what corruption felt like, and this wasn't it. If she didn't know any better, she'd have said it was just like any other unicorn's magic...

She began tracing its length. The magic was incredibly thin and feeble, but solid enough that she wasn't afraid of it going anywhere anytime soon. She followed it through the void between Equus and the moon, and then -

it vanished. Just folded up and dissipated. Twilight inspected it closely, the way the Nightmare's magic rippled and twisted against space-time before vanishing, it reminded her somewhat of the reality folding techniques needed to teleport, but she couldn't detect any spacial coordinates. She almost pulled back, but decided to keep investigating.

Closing her eyes to focus more, Twilight investigated the part of the magic just before it ended. It was certainly behaving as if it teleported elsewhere, but there was nowhere it went. Nowhere that she could see, but it was still doing something and the knowledge of what that was would not be denied to her!

Pulling up some of Starswirl's spells on fixed teleportation fields - portals in laypony's terms - and how to identify them, she looked closely at the region around the end of the thread. It was locked firmly in the ethereal plane, where magic resided, so even if she'd gone to where it ended she wouldn't even notice anything was wrong. On the other hoof, since it was in the magical plane, it'd make it easier to trace its location. She knew it must've had some location, as it lacked the proper perturbations of a miniature black hole.

Trying out several spells designed to trace a portal, Twilight frowned when all of them came up with no result. Then she had an idea; what if she sent a ripple down the magic itself? Despite her paranoia of whose magic it was, it was just magic, not intelligent at all. With a gentle prod of her power, she sent a subtle ripple down the Nightmare's magic. Assigning several tracking spells to the wave itself, she 'watched' it reach the portal and disappear.

She smiled; she'd gotten a reading! A moment after it vanished, she got a reading. A brief instance of high magical pressure, and then nothing. Twilight decided that wherever the portal lead, the magical pressure had crushed her wave and with it, the tracking spells.

Pulling out her magic, Twilight shook her head. "Alright," she told her two senior princesses. "I got something. Wherever the portal leads, there seems to be very high magical pressure. With some experimentation I think I can find a way to send something through but... where would it even lead?"

Princess Luna sat down and crossed her forehooves. "Splendid, so I am to be a guinea pig," she grumbled.

Meanwhile, Princess Celestia gave her a smile. It was the smile that said 'I'm-proud-of-you-but-what-you-discovered-unnerves-me-and-I-don't-want-to-show-that'. "Interesting. Luna, any ideas on where it leads?"

The younger alicorn frowned. "If I had to take a guess sister, I'd say it leads to wherever that misbegotten demon came from. Likely nothing too hospitable."

"I can probably make something that can withstand the magical pressure," Twilight offered. "Put some instruments on it, send it through the portal using a resonance entanglement on the thread, I can probably get some environment readings." She paused to consider her options, flicking an ear. "Maybe some pictures if I can get a camera."

Celestia nodded. "Use whatever you need, Twilight. Meanwhile, I'll be starting the day. Luna?" she asked.

The blue alicorn nodded, igniting her magic. "Right." There was a pulse of ancient, unknowable magic through the air, sending a cold chill through Twilight's body. Then Celestia did the same, warming Twilight's bones. "I'll see you at dinner, Tia?" Princess Luna asked.

Celestia nodded. "Yes. Would you like me to send a meal here?"

Luna thought about it, looked at Twilight, and then nodded. "Yes, bring something for Twilight as well."

"I will." There was a burst of sunlight, and Princess Celestia was gone.

Princess Luna looked her way. "Very well then, Twilight. Lead the way to the magical testing grounds."

She smiled. "It'd be my pleasure."

***-_***_-***-_***_-***-_***_-***

Working together with the Princess of the Moon and her access to materials, Twilight soon got together something she felt would be able to go wherever the portal led. Likely a dark realm of shadows and nightmares. It had an air pressure gauge, atmosphere vial, pH strips, thaumatic meters, a camera on each side, thermometer, the whole scientific package wrapped onto something that resembled a decorated cardboard box not quite as big as Twilight herself; the portal wasn't very large and wouldn't be fooled by shapeshifting. They had taken every safety precaution imaginable, from a simple no-burn aura to an emergency beacon in case they made the Nightmare manifest itself.

She and Princess Luna trotted around it, inspecting it for anything that could be tightened, loosened, or calibrated. Eventually, their work done, Luna sat down and lit up her horn.

"Okay," Twilight said. "Are you ready?"

She nodded resolutely, eyes burning holes in the machine. "I am ready, Twilight Sparkle."

"Great!" she said enthusiastically. Behind her lay several plates with the remains of their lunches/dinners on it. They had gone on a little trek around Canterlot, visiting several universities for the instruments required, and now they were on the highest tower. Twilight had placed several protective wards around the room in case of a breach in the high-pressure environment on the other side of the link. She was ready to send it through the portal Nightmare Moon's magic kept open, to what she'd already dubbed in her mind as the 'Shadow Realm'.

"Alright," she said. "Here goes nothing. Probe venture into unknown realm via Nightmare Moon's residual magic, take one." Her horn lit up, and engulfed the box, and simultaneously pushed into Luna's spiritual bond.

The spell was tricky; she could track a wave through Nightmare's magic easily enough, but that was it. If she wanted to send the instruments through she'd need to entangle them with the wave, which required a hefty amount of multivariable calculus done practically on the fly, to say nothing of pulling it back. But the Princesses were counting on her to figure out what was going on with Nightmare Moon, and she was not going to disappoint them!

She found the tether of Nightmare Moon's magic and sent a rebounding wave through it, with enough force to withstand the magical pressure. Quickly she computed the math and bound the wave to the instruments. Immediately, it shimmered but went nowhere.

The wave approached the vanishing point. Twilight kept running the numbers through her mind and the magic through her horn. The tether of magic began to warp and the box became transparent. Then the wave went through the portal, and the box vanished.

Twilight waited with baited breath for the allotted amount of time she and Luna had decided on. Then the magical wave she had sent through, rebounding by nature, switched direction and headed back through, returning the box just before the wave faded.

It re-materialized where it had been and immediately broke into pieces with a loud crash. Both she and Luna jumped, their magic fizzling in surprise from the unexpected noise.

"What happened?" Princess Luna demanded. "I could feel it passing through but... why did it break?"

"I-I don't know!" she stammered, raising a foreleg in unease. "Let's see the readings," she said, walking over to it.

The box was quite damaged. Its metal had warped and dented, almost as if the box had... fallen from a height and, when it came back, all its momentum went into the ground. Luckily, the various measuring devices on it were, by and by, unharmed.

She scooped them up in her magic and began reading their layouts. "Air pressure, normal. Atmosphere composition - " She lit up her horn to analyze it. " - is identical to ours. Acidity reads six, temperature is three hundred and three Coltvin... everything seems pretty normal, Princess. The thaumatic meters recorded a high spike, but then it drops down to a little below our background levels." She looked up at Princess Luna, who was taking out the pictures of the cameras, which had been enchanted to take periodic photos on their own once they were sent to the Shadow Realm.

"Be that as it may," she said. "The cameras malfunctioned." Luna's magic opened them up to reveal that the film was blank. "Not much to see."

"Doesn't the film need to be developed?" Luna frowned, looked at the strips, and briefly coated them in her magic. They remained dark. "Oh." Well, it would make sense that wherever Nightmare Moon came from would be devoid of light. "So, what can we conclude from this?" she asked.

Twilight rubbed her chin. "Well, judging by the readouts there was a high spike in magical energy surrounding it, which quickly dropped to unimportant levels. That raises many important questions; was it localized, or was it instead a temporary effect of traveling towards Nightmare Moon's place of origin?" She rubbed her chin harder, for emphasis. "I'm afraid that without pictures we just have no way to be sure."

"What if, we created a light source? Attach a light bulb, perhaps?" Luna suggested. In the meantime, she lit up her horn and began fixing the box, unbending metal and reattaching measurement devices.

"Maybe. Oh, and a cushion for it when it comes back. We don't want it breaking again," she offered.

Luna nodded. "Hold a moment, Twilight. I shall be right back." Dark blue magic enveloped the older Princess and then she was gone, leaving Twilight alone with her thoughts.

Mostly, she wondered what they would do with this information. Cutting the tether of Nightmare Moon's magic could have dire consequences on Princess Luna's bond with the moon, but at the same time they couldn't very well leave it there. Perhaps they could close the portal, but that would mean leaving whatever was on the other side undisturbed. If Nightmare Moon had been sent back to her place of origins, instead of purged by the Elements like they'd all assumed, then there was nothing to stop her from coming back a second time. They needed a good idea of what was on the other side. Knowledge was power.

The information that they'd already gotten indicated that wherever the portal led was high in the air - there may or may not have been any land at all in the Shadow Realm - and aside from a brief surge of easily shieldable magical energy that likely stemmed from the portal itself, it was perfectly hospitable. After they tried again, the next step was a pony mission.

A whoosh of displaced air heralded the return of the Princess of the Night, with a coffee cup as well as flashlights and a large pillow in her magic. "I have returned!" she announced. "Let us begin anew!" She took a sip from her drink and moved the pillow over, lifted the box, and rested it under.

"Great!" Twilight said. "Flashlights... here here and here," she said, Princess Luna levitating them into place as she did. Twilight magically adhered them to their spots, and nodded once it was done. "Okay. Probe venture into unknown realm via Nightmare Moon's residual magic, take two." Again she sent a large wave through the Nightmare's magic, and attached the device to it. She watched as it faded from sight, and then after a moment it returned, just as planned.

It rattled when it hit the cushion, but otherwise was undamaged. Princess Luna, taking another sip of coffee, grabbed hold of the cameras while Twilight turned off the flashlights and looked over the other instruments. There was slight fluctuations, but well within what was normal for... well, normal for the atmosphere in Equestria. Everything was going well...

"No photos yet again," Princess Luna declared.

... except for that.

"Really? Can I see it?" Twilight asked innocently. Luna magicked over the cameras, and Twilight began opening them up. Much like Luna had said, there was nothing. No damage, no nothing. It was simply like something had draped itself across the camera lenses to prevent any light from entering. Considering what sort of place the dark parasite would hail from, it wasn't hard to believe. No matter how she looked at it, there was nothing wrong with the cameras, so it must've been some property of the Shadow Realm. "Hmm, not good," she muttered.

"Any conclusions?" Luna asked.

"Nothing too certain, given the lack of visual data," she muttered in full scientist mode. "It confirms my hypothesis of the area in question having some obscuring effect on light. Other methods may be used to detect the layabout of the area such as magical echolocation, but in order to do that..." she trailed off.

"... somepony would need to go through themselves," Luna said. "Twilight Sparkle, you do not truly mean that, do you?"

She grimaced and shook a little in nervousness at what she was implying. "Well, we do need somepony to see what is going on on the other side. If Nightmare Moon is doing something on her end to get here, we need to put a stop to it. And besides, severing the link from that end would be much safer than doing it here; the portal would absorb most of the backlash. Either way, somepony's going to have to go through and... the portal isn't much larger than myself..."

The other princess affixed her with a shocked look. "Thou can't be serious!" she said, slipping back into Old Equestrian. "To willingly venture forth into the realm of that wretched shade, to risk confronting her with no aid, no Elements, and no way to exceed her power on thy own? Twilight Sparkle hast thou gone mad?!"

"There's... there's got to be some way to sever it," she countered hesitantly. "This isn't business we can leave unfinished and the only way to fix it is by going there. I'm not saying I want to build a house there, Princess, but I can at least take a look. A quick peek in, then I come right out."

The elder princess bit her lip. "Art thou... are you sure about this? There is no telling what you may encounter there."

"I know," she said nervously. "But the instruments have picked up nothing out of the ordinary. We need to send somepony over soon, and I'm the only one small enough to fit through the portal who can also bring themselves back." Twilight Sparkle swallowed. She knew she was digging herself into this, but her sense of duty to the princesses came first. This was important, much more important than any worry she had herself. Now if only she could get rid of that worry she'd be set...

"I... very well, Twilight," Luna said, resigned. "How should we go about this?"

"I was thinking," she said. "That I could anchor a thread of my own magic to here, in case I break the tether and can't use it to get back. Something unmoving, stationary, as close to unchanging as you can get."

"The mountain?" Princess Luna suggested. "Or perhaps the very castle upon which we stand?"

Her ears perked up. "Perfect! Let me just... just get this ready." Twilight's horn blazed to life, and she began setting up a thread of energy similar to what was clinging to Luna. She attached one end to herself, and the other to the ground beneath her hooves, tying them together in every possible way she could imagine, since it would be her only lifeline back once Nightmare Moon's magical was inevitably severed. "Alright." She frowned. "We should probably get some materials ready for me; I doubt I'll be carrying a thermometer with me."

"Nourishment should be priority," Princess Luna said. "In case you remain there for longer than anticipated and we need mount a rescue."

"Oh, and a pencil and some papers! To send back reports. Maybe... maybe a crystal here, tied to my tether. I can send signals every now and then to let you know I'm fine."

"Very well, let us gather the materials we each think of and reconvene here," Princess Luna said confidently. Twilight herself wished she had that confidence. She was going off into the realm of Nightmare Moon. Nightmare Moon! She didn't know what to expect, she didn't want to imagine what it would be like, but her brain did it anyway. She was afraid, but then Twilight's mind flashed back to how terrified Luna had been - whether or not she tried to show it - and she just felt bad for being scared.

Before long, they'd torn through the castle and got together everything Twilight might've needed for a journey into the Shadow Realm, and then reconvened in Princess Luna's room where they set up the containment measures. She had her saddlebags, several pieces of paper and three pencils to write reports, enough high-nutrient bars and magical water pallets to last a week, and several resonance crystals filled to the brim with magic, in case Twilight's power ran out and she needed it to return. Twilight kept reassuring herself that she was not going into too much danger. She was just going to go in, and if she couldn't do anything, come right back out.

Fixing her saddlebags on, Twilight nodded. "I'm ready, Pri - Luna," she said, correcting herself at the last moment.

"Excellent. I shall perform the spell now - "

The door opened and Princess Celestia walked in. They both turned to her - Twilight suppressed the urge to bow - and she looked at them confusedly. "Sister, I had a free moment from my duties and I thought I'd check in. What is... going on?"

"Hehe," Twilight said, scuffing a forehoof on the carpet. "Well you see, Princess - "

"Ah, Tia!" Princess Luna said. "Your student had a revelation with the bond. The opposite side appears to be hospitable, and we have decided the most prudent course of action is to send somepony there to sever the bond, and then they can return."

Princess Celestia's gentle smile turned a lot more tense. She turned towards Twilight. "And... Twilight. Just who did you decide to send?"

"Well, um, me. The portal's only so big, its ethereal qualities would strip any shapeshifting, and I'm the only one small enough who can bring themselves back. Oh, but I've made a link from myself to the castle, so I can still get back when I break the Nightmare's magic," she tried to reason.

"Twilight Sparkle, are you... sure about this?" Celestia asked worriedly. "There is no telling what's on the other side."

"Well, there's no light as far as we can tell," she admitted. "But I'm going in shielded in every way we can think of, and if anything goes wrong I can just come right back. Please Princess, I've done this sort of thing before."

She nodded. "Alright, but I'm still casting a few safety measures of my own. Send a message through every twenty four hours, Twilight."

"Every twenty four hours, got it," she said. Twilight took a deep breath to steel her nerves. "Alright." She lit up her horn and refreshed the shielding spells, which would protect her from mental interference, forced transformation, disjointment, and raw magical force. "I'm ready. Can you please tell my friends where I'm going?"

The Moon Goddess nodded. "I'll perform the spell," Princess Luna said. "Sister, watch in case anything unexpected happens. Twilight Sparkle... best of luck." And then, Princess Luna's magic flared to life, and wrapped itself around Twilight.

She gasped as immediately her head began to swim. The sensation was similar to the one of falling she got after leaving a daydream, but continuous. She didn't dare call on her own magic for a final refreshment to the shields, lest it interfere with Princess Luna's.

Princess Celestia nodded. "Be safe, Twilight."

"I will," she breathed. Then the world dropped out from underneath her.

Everything she saw became watery and started to flow into the middle of her field of vision, like a water painting that had a hole punctured in its middle, and was draining down it. She felt... numb, like her entire body's circulation had been cut off. The sounds of her and the other princesses' breathing became garbled, as if Twilight were hearing it by pressing her ears to an iceberg, and then her hearing failed her entirely.

She was sure she was shaking, because her vision was. Everything felt wrong, horrible. She was falling, gliding along a rope, but she didn't see it. It was like she was moving in a direction she couldn't see.

That's exactly what's happening, she reminded herself.

Where her vision flowed together was a total absence of light. Darker than black, deeper than night. It was the total, absolute lack of any form of illumination, featureless and eternal. When the last speck of her former vision flowed together and vanished, she could hear torrents of magical power rushing around her, searing her shield as she traveled through... wherever. The darkness was exquisite and all-consuming, and for what she estimated to be to be thirty seconds she drifted in the abyss, falling. And then, the darkness shimmered, rippled like water. The silence was replaced by the sound of her own breathing.

Slowly but surely, the darkness resolved itself, almost as if there was light. The sensation of falling intensified, forcing Twilight to close her eyes by instinct alone. The magic burning away her shields faded away into nothing. She kept falling, fallingfallingfallingfalling!

And then she stopped.

She started falling again, but her wings sprang to life and began to beat, keeping her in place. Twilight Sparkle dared to open her eyes and she saw that she was...

"Wait, what?" she asked.

... she was flying above Canterlot.

Author's Note

I hope you all enjoyed. Like always, please do leave a comment. Even if it's just to say what you liked and not to point out an error, everything helps; knowing what works is as important as knowing what doesn't.

Thanks to trondason for editing.

I do not own MLP, Hasbro does.

Friends in High Places

Twilight Sparkle

It didn't make sense. Had the spell failed somehow? How else would she be in Canterlot?

Flapping her wings, so far up that likely nopony even saw her, Twilight looked around what was supposed to be the Shadow Realm.

She was flying high above Canterlot, but it wasn't the Canterlot she remembered. The general color scheme was the same despite there being more gray, but the street layout was entirely different and it wasn't quite as opulent as the city she'd grown up in. But perhaps the biggest difference in Canterlot was that there wasn't a castle. In fact, now that she thought about it, the place she flew was precisely where the castle should have been.

Blinking several times to make sure her eyes weren't deceiving her, Twilight said the only thing she could think of. "Bwaa?!"

Had the spell gone wrong? No, it hadn't. A quick look at the magical tether she'd wrapped around herself - it was now going through a portal - confirmed that she was indeed on the other end of the portal. And she was... in Equestria? But then why was the castle gone? Why was Canterlot different? And why was it high noon despite the fact that she'd left, at the latest, at ten in the morning?

Twilight tried to picture what had gone wrong. Maybe... maybe instead of going to Nightmare Moon's world she instead came to this one, whatever it was? It was the only logical explanation. This merited investigation. Perhaps she could find a way further on this way. Before she did that, however, she sent a signal back along her tether of magic to let the Princesses know she was okay; she could send a report once she'd gotten a firm grasp on what had gone wrong with the spell. Was it the fact that Princess Luna had used her magic on the tether connected to herself? It seemed... viable.

Briefly wrapping herself in a Somepony-Else's-Problem cloak to make herself all but invisible - paranoia was fitting in this mission - Twilight Sparkle began a slow, spiraling descent into almost-Canterlot. The air was surprisingly humid and the thermals were immense, so it took a while for her to get down comfortably without being jostled by the rising winds, but before too long she touched down on the paved streets of upper Canterlot.

At first glance, she didn't see anything out of the ordinary. Ponies were walking around, visiting shops or speaking with friends. Like back home, the nobles wore lavish garments, but it was a shock for them to appear just as friendly and reachable as anypony else. She carefully made her way through the crowd; her spell would keep anypony from even noticing her in most cases, but if she bumped into somepony who didn't see her it'd be broken and reveal her to anypony around, including anypony who could be unfriendly.

Twilight tried to imagine why Nightmare Moon's magic would've led her here. Maybe she hadn't been dispelled by the elements, and instead sought out another world to put under her hoof? But that wouldn't explain the sunlight, unless the parasite had possessed somepony other than another Princess Luna. And that was assuming that among the multiverse she'd just so happened to have been pushed into another Equestria. No, something was very wrong here, and she was going to figure out what.

Walking around the city, Twilight tried to keep an open eye and ear to everypony's conversation around her. Normally she'd be against eavesdropping, but um... royal business?

She didn't really hear anything useful from the background chatter of everypony; there were mentions of Manehattan and business there, mentions of minotaurs and zebras. To her surprise she'd heard two pegasi debating the pros and cons of the Wonderbolts compared to the 'Shadowbolts', but she lost them in the crowd before she could listen in more. Twilight remembered that Rainbow had told her Nightmare Moon tempted her with the Shadowbolts; hearing about them in this wrong-Canterlot made her absolutely certain that the Nightmare was here. She was still confused that the sun was seemingly locked at high noon, but at least she'd gotten something to work with.

In terms of what she saw, however, she was only more confused. Canterlot's streets were completely different, so she'd walk down a street and expect to arrive somewhere at the next left, only to find herself nowhere near. The combination of similar and different played havoc with her internal map, but that wasn't even the most confusing thing. The most confusing thing was the Royal Guard.

Back home, the Royal Guard's armor was enchanted to give the appearance of uniformity, white coat with blue eyes and such. These guards however, they were much different in terms of uniform. For starters their armor looked like it was made out of solid amber in contrast to gold. And their fur, instead of snow white, was dark orange like cooling cinders, their manes and tails pitch black. There were also a lot more of them, patrolling Canterlot in groups of four, a zone of silence and awkward conversation following them wherever they went.

What would Canterlot need with so many Royal Guards on patrol? Did something happen? Twilight Sparkle resolved to find out.

She walked through Canterlot virtually unseen; the Somepony-Else's-Problem cloak was something her BBBFF had taught her as part of self defense, and while active everypony would look at her, and their subconscious would decide simply not to deal with her presence. However, that didn't protect her from ponies running into her, or from inanimate objects. She knew nothing about this increasingly strange world, and she needed to keep looking everywhere in case she got in serious trouble.

Twilight needed somewhere to sit down and organize her thoughts. The outdoor restaurant across the street was perfect. Trotting over to it and finding a random seat under an open umbrella to block the sun, Twilight took out a nutrient bar from her saddlebags and began going over what she knew.

Nightmare Moon was definitely here, if the existence of the Shadowbolts was known. Canterlot's layout was completely different and there was no trace of any castle save for little foal's dioramas in stores, and even those didn't look anything at all like Canterlot Castle. The sun was certainly not moving, which was more than a little disconcerting. Clearly she was in some sort of alternate Equestria, however bizarre the idea was. There was just too many similarities and differences for any other explanation. Perhaps the Nightmare had been 'blasted' here by the Elements, and had taken over this world's Celestia?

That was a worrying thought. Her mentor and friend, the pony she'd looked up to practically all her life, tainted and driven to madness by that... that demon! If that was the case then there had to be some way to free her, with or without the Elements. Maybe she could ask Fluttershy to guilt Discord into helping them, though she resolved that would be an absolute last resort.

If this world's Celestia had been... taken... then it would explain all the guards with different armor.

Twilight lit up her magic and focused on the link binding her back to home, and tried to find the tether of Nightmare Moon's magic. After all, their bonds went through the same portal, so she should be able to find it, snip it, and then go back home to reconvene with the Princesses on what to do with this... other Equestria. The only problem was that Twilight couldn't find Nightmare Moon's magic. Without Princess Luna's bond to the moon to give her a place to start, no matter where she looked she just couldn't find the tether.

She wasn't going to believe for a second that the magic had broken in the time she'd been here. She needed to find the other end of the tether, and odds were that was Nightmare Moon herself. Twilight faced a dilemma; she could try and find the Nightmare, break the magic then, and get home before being blasted to cinders, or return now and develop a way to trace the tainted magic while in the other-Equestria. The latter option seemed much safer and more likely to succeed.

She finished off her nutrient bar and, waiting until a patrol of guards passed, Twilight lit up her horn to begin the complicated spellwork to bring her back.

Twilight was interrupted when a pony tried to sit on her.

"Oh!" the stallion in question said. Twilight could imagine his confusion; he tries to sit in a seemingly empty space, but when he tries he suddenly 'remembers' that a pony was already there. He stumbled back from her. "So sorry miss, I didn't notice you there."

Twilight, her magic fizzling, chuckled and reformed the S.E.P cloak, but now that this pony had directly interacted with her it wouldn't work on him until she got some distance. "Heheh, don't worry about it. Everypony spaces out now and again."

"Even so, that was appalling of me!" he said, raising a steely blue hoof to his business suit, which was impeccably well pressed. "Let me make it up to you, miss...?"

Deciding that giving out her name would do no harm, she said, "Twilight Sparkle."

He nodded. "Miss Twilight." He raised a hoof, and she shook it. "Baron Track, Fast Track." Ah, so he was a noble. He tilted his head. "You know, I think I remember seeing you walking around. You wouldn't happen to be lost, would you?"

She rubbed a foreleg. "Well, sort of. I was just wandering, really." She decided to embellish the truth a little; how Applejack would be disappointed in her. Still, it wasn't really a lie. "It's my first time in Canterlot, so I don't really know the landmarks."

"Ah, well then! You my dear just stumbled on my favorite place for a break. Really no place better for a sandwich than Roasted Loafs."

"I'm at a sandwich shop?" She looked around. Sure enough, everypony around her was eating some form of sandwich, a fact that she'd completely skipped over in her musing. "I didn't notice."

"It sure is, Twilight Spark..." Fast Track trailed off when he looked over to the side, seemingly attracted to something on Twilight's back. His garnet eyes collapsed into pinpricks. "Wings?" His eyes widened and he leaned in to whisper. "You're an alicorn?!"

She leaned back at his sudden fear and nervousness. "Um... yes?"

His horn lit up with a scarlet aura and red magic layered itself over her wings, hiding them from view. "There. What were you thinking, walking around in the open?" he hissed. "Do you want the Coronal Guard to find you?"

"The Coronal Guard?" she asked dumbly. Was that the name for the strange dark orange guards? It was surprisingly fitting. But why was her being an alicorn also putting her in danger of the Guards? She'd done nothing wrong. "Why would they be after me?"

"Do you live under a rock? Last I checked there are only two alicorns, so another one is going to put a serious, serious strain on the government. How weren't you found when you were younger?" he asked urgently. "It's not like you're good at keeping yourself hidden."

She wanted to snap back that the S.E.P. was working fine, but settled on saying, "I only got my wings relatively recently."

His eyes narrowed, a dark shadow forming under his well combed gray mane. "Well that would explain it, I suppose. Listen, do you have any friends here?" She shook her head. "None? Curses. Do you have a home? Any bits?" Twilight shook her head to those as well. She had no home, not in this Equestria, and the last thing she'd thought she'd need in the 'Shadow Realm' were bits. "Well, that simply will not do! Does a daisy sandwich with cheese sound good?"

"Um, sure?" she asked, caught off guard by the apparent non sequitur.

"Great. Stay here." He got up and walked into the shop, much to her surprise. Was he... buying her a snack? She shifted nervously in her seat; she didn't want to bother him. Still, she was still a bit hungry after the snack.

There was apparently some stigma against alicorns in this world. If it was true that the Nightmare was here, potentially possessing either Celestia or Luna, then it would make sense for it to desire alicorns to be detained, or worse, lest they threaten its power. Them being called the 'Coronal' Guard, combined with the sun that definitely was not moving seemed to confirm her suspicion that it was this world's Princess Celestia that had been possessed. But that still didn't answer why there were Shadowbolts, and there was still her scientific curiosity over how it only felt like summer, instead of the world being a scorched wasteland.

Before long, Fast Track returned, a few crumbs on his suit, with two plates levitating in his crimson telekinesis as well as two large glasses of ice water. Hers flew over to her, and Twilight took a bite of the sandwich. It was good. "Thank you," she said after swallowing what was in her mouth. "That was very kind of you."

Taking a seat across from her, Fast Track lifted his own sandwich - lettuce and cheese - and took a bite. "Well, when you're in my line of work, it's expected." He took a large sip from his water. "Besides, how can I leave a newly minted alicorn out on her own? Gotta give some help."

"Err, what is your line of work?" she asked politely.

"I run several charities over in Everfree and one or two here in Canterlot."

That sent Twilight's mind reeling. Everfree? As in the forest? Who would hold a charity there? Unless... unless maybe the old castle was still inhabited here. Would the Nightmare try to relocate the capital of Equestria to there? It wasn't impossible.

"Oh, that's nice." She took a sip of the iced water, the coolness providing a wonderful contrast to the withering heat in Canterlot. "But really, I can protect myself. Thank you for the concern though."

He waved it off. "Think nothing of it, Twilight. That disguise spell on your wings should last long enough to get you safely out of Canterlot, you hear me? I recommend heading to the Minotaurian Republic, they'll keep you safe."

"Uh, okay. At any rate, when can I pay you back for the food? How many bits was it?" she inquired.

He held up a hoof. "No, no. This is a gift, from me to you. I insist you not do such a thing."

"Oh, um... thank you," she said uncertainly. "Well it was nice meeting you, Baron Track," she said, lifting her daisy-and-tomato sandwich in her magic and downing the ice water. "But I think I'll take you up on that offer." Not really, she was going to fly around Canterlot some more; her S.E.P. would hold unless anypony flew into her, like Fast Track had. There was a mystery ahoof, and she was going to figure out what was going on! "I'd better get going."

He waved to her. "Stay safe, Twilight! Nopony knows precisely what would be done if another alicorn was found, hasn't ever happened you see, but it can't be good." He reached over and put a hoof on her shoulder. "You're a good mare, hate to see anything happen to you."

"Hehe, right. Thanks, bye!" She stood and walked off, floating her sandwich along with her. Once far enough she spread her wings - breaking the disguise spell with a flicker of red - and flew into the air.

She found a perch on bakery's roof not too far away, and finished off her sandwich. Lighting up her horn to shroud herself in cool air, Twilight tried to ponder her next course of action.

There was zero doubt, the Nightmare was here. The capital city of this Equestria was likely still the Everfree. While before she'd planned to return to Celestia and Luna and inform them of the circumstances, Twilight's curiosity was burning hotter than ever. What exactly were the range of differences? The Nightmare had been blasted here not half a decade ago, how many changes could it do in that time? She needed more information, and to do that she needed to get to 'Everfree'.

But if the Nightmare was in Everfree, going closer to her would be foalish at best. She was better off staying in Canterlot a little and figuring out what was going on from a safe distance. It was at least somewhat more familiar to her than this 'Everfree' city... that and she was terrified of meeting the Nightmare. The wicked specter that had changed Luna into a demon of maddened jealousy, potentially possessing her mentor, was a terrifying thought to comprehend. She didn't want to see Princess Celestia like... like that.

She needed... she needed a checklist! Floating paper and a pencil out of her saddlebags, Twilight made a line down the middle and three columns: What she knew, what she thought she knew, what she needed to find out.

"Okay," she said aloud to herself. "I know that Nightmare Moon is here, in this 'other Equestria'. I know that Canterlot does not appear to be the capitol, but I think the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters has been rebuilt. The sun is not moving and the Royal Guard is instead called the Coronal Guard, which leads me to believe the Nightmare has possessed Celestia instead of Luna in this world."

She frowned. "As evidenced by Baron Fast Track, there is a stigma against alicorns in this world. No other alicorns have been found, but would not be treated well if they were. Possible fear of the Nightmare being challenged." She tapped the pencil against her chin. "What I want to know: Is the Nightmare truly possessing Celestia, if it is why does it use the Shadowbolts, why did the cameras not record anything, can I sever its magical connection to Princess Luna, why was it not dispersed by the Elements of Harmony, and what ways can be employed to disperse it for good this time?"

Satisfied with that, she decided it'd be in her best interests to inform Luna and Celestia of what was going on here; she pulled out another scroll and began writing furiously. "Dear... Princess, no erase the Princess... Celestia," she began. In her letter she jotted down everything she'd seen so far, including the alternate Equestria, her theory as to what the Nightmare was doing, and insistence that she was alright.

Before she sent it, she paused.

Following the tether of Nightmare Moon's magic had not brought her to Nightmare Moon, but rather to her corresponding point in this Equestria; since there was no castle, that equated to mid-air. She didn't know what her current location translated to in her home Canterlot, so her best bet would be flying to 'the castle'. She did just that, taking to the air and flying to roughly where she had entered this other-Equestria. Once there, she focused on the tether of magic tying her back to her home, and sent a wave down it. She shielded the note and entangled it with the wave, watching it fade out of sight.

"Alright," she said aloud to herself. "More extensive research needed... the library!"

***-_***_-***-_***_-***-_***_-***

Celestia

She kept the resonance crystal close at hoof, watching and waiting out of the corner of her eyes for any signal from her student that she was fine. The first one had come through almost immediately after Twilight went through, and she knew that there was one day until the next was due, but Princess Celestia couldn't help but worry. Twilight Sparkle was ever so dear to her, and every time she went off to face some danger, however much it may be necessary, made her sick with worry.

She had to keep reminding herself that Twilight wasn't the little filly who bounced around eagerly at the promise of a lesson. She was a grown mare, more than capable of taking care of herself, who'd faced off some of Equestria's most heinous foes... who bounced around eagerly at the promise of a lesson.

Currently, Princess Celestia was holding court. Her eyes looked down at her current petitioner, and her ears picked up what she asked for, and her mouth moved to create an appropriate response, but her mind was somewhere entirely different.

The pseudo-return of the Nightmare brought up all the old wounds and pain that she and her sister had already healed from, reopening them and pouring salt in the wound.

All the nights that Luna needed love and nopony had been there to provide it, not even her own sister! Luna had never been the same once they'd banished Sombra into ice, slowly descending into madness. She spoke to her less and less, became more withdrawn and prone to snapping at her and Celestia hadn't spoken to her about it! She always assumed that if Luna had wanted to talk about it she would. She knew what dangers laid in assuming things and... and she did it anyway.

The petitioner left, and another arrived. Still not focused on them, Celestia continued to beat herself up. And she was the one who hadn't been rejected, abandoned, and driven mad, exiled from any pony contact for ten centuries. She could hardly imagine what was going through Lulu's head.

She knew that it did no good to dwell on it, that they'd both made terrible mistakes, but she couldn't help it. Looking back on it, it was so easy to see what she could've done, how little effort on her part could've avoided the whole thing.

Then, much to her surprise, a guard came in, a scroll of paper tucked under a wing. The current petitioner's voice died in her throat. "Your Majesty, I found this scroll on my patrol over in the east wing. It was addressed to you, and scans reveal nothing harmful within it."

"Thank you," she said, taking it into her magic. "You may return to your duties, Blue Skies." He saluted and trotted out, while Celestia opened it up. Immediately, she recognized the hornwriting of Twilight. "Please excuse me, this is quite important." She began reading. At first she was happy to see Twilight was doing well, but when she described the world she arrived in, Princess Celestia's brows furrowed underneath her serene mask. When she reached Twilight's hypothesis of the Nightmare having possessed 'her', she suppressed a shiver.

Twilight was insistent that she be left to discover more information before they made any moves against the Nightmare. Every motherly instinct in Celestia screamed at her to do something, to send her Royal Guard over there to help Twilight, to throw herself into the other world if needed, but she had to trust in Twilight.

Deep breath in, deep breath out.

There was nopony better qualified to gather information on a place, and there was no good reason not to trust her with this. And at the very least, if something went poorly, she could always ask Fluttershy to point Discord at the problem and be done with it. She didn't want it to come to that; reformed or not, Discord was not exactly what anypony could call 'helpful'.

She rolled up the paper and returned her attention to the mare before her. "Apologies for the delay Miss Sunflower. Continue, please."

While Noon Court continued, Princess Celestia again allowed her mind to wander to the letter's topic. The idea of another Equestria was bizarre and confusing, but after Twilight's explanation of the Mirror Pool, she had to give some plausibility to the idea. The concept of her, possessed by that demonic parasite, ruining the land and terrorizing her little ponies made her coat stand on end.

She had a theory as to why the Nightmare was there, and not obliterated. It was simply possible that its corruption was just too potent to ever truly purge. When wielding the Elements of Harmony on her own, all she'd managed to do was banish her and her sister away. It seemed that even with six ponies using them, all they could do was relocate Nightmare Moon even further away. Just what would it take to finally end that monster?

Princess Celestia reminded herself that Twilight was busy figuring out just that.

***-_***_-***-_***_-***-_***_-***

Twilight Sparkle

The library had been a bust.

Coronal Guards had prevented anypony from entering without some sort of identification - which she lacked - but none of their security measures took into account an alicorn using an S.E.P field. As a result it hadn't been that hard to get into the library, but once inside she really didn't know where to look. The History section was, to her surprise, completely empty. No, not even that, there wasn't a history section at all. It didn't bode well if the Nightmare was actively covering up history, but what would it gain from that? Ponies had memories, didn't they? Or maybe Twilight just wasn't looking in the right spot.

Either way, the library hadn't turned up much in an hour of searching. One thing she noticed was that there was a clock, running counting out twenty fours hours in twelve spaces such that one and thirteen, two and fourteen, and so on overlapped. In the middle was a counter that was, at the moment, reading '12+', which combined with the clock's hands put it at three in the afternoon.

That meant she'd been here quite a while already. In that time she'd perused several medical articles and some of the clearly biased political newspapers, and had come no closer to figuring out the Nightmare's game than she was when she entered the library. Twilight had, however, found several maps.

This Equestria looked quite different from the one she knew, larger and completely consuming the northern lands; there was no Griffon or Crystal Empire. The other countries were quite different as well. The Diamond Dog plains, normally home to many scattered tribes, was instead labeled as the Mohr Empire. The Badlands were also labeled as the 'Unified Changeling Swarm'. Even some of the oceans and lakes had different names. Just what was the Nightmare up to?

Twilight had a sinking feeling that whatever it was, it was much more widespread than just keeping it day and ruling Equestria.

Still, the library had more or less not given her anything, so now it was time for her to exhaust another option. She promised herself that if her next idea - the library in what should be Ponyville but was instead called Harvest Brook - didn't pan out she'd go back home and ask the Princesses for ideas. There was no sense putting herself in excessive danger.

There was, however, Baron Fast Track. His presence indicated that some ponies were still resisting the Nightmare's influence, which was good. Even if it was just a token effort, every bit counted. She could go follow after him under cover of her new S.E.P., but that involved finding him again. She could in theory do it, but it'd take up so much time and Twilight had no idea what she'd do if she found the Baron again.

She walked out into the streets of Canterlot, the unfamiliar, strange streets of Canterlot, which she thought she knew but didn't making it so easy for her to get lost in a moment.

Taking to the air for a moment to see which way 'Harvest Brook' was, Twilight landed and began to canter there at a brisk pace; no sense flying and missing out on something important.

She took a few wrong turns, but she soon felt she was going in the right direction to leave Canterlot. In fact, if her eyes weren't deceiving her, that up ahead was the gate out of Cante -

"Ow!" she yelped. Stumbling back from whatever she'd rammed into, Twilight raised a hoof to rub her cheek. "So sorry, I should've been paying more attention."

The pony in question turned around, glaring down at her with stark, fiery red eyes, his amber armor blinding in the sunlight. "That is correct, citizen," the Coronal Guard answered gruffly.

Twilight's next apology froze in her throat, and her wings suddenly felt very, very heavy. Numbing, primal fear settled on her like a blanket. Maybe if she didn't move her wings, he wouldn't notice. "Ah, um, hehe, err, uh..." she babbled. "H-Hey," she said weakly.

"Mmhmm. Move along," he said, his three companions watching the exchange silently. He turned around Twilight was about to breathe a sigh of relief, teleport away and refresh her Somepony Else's Problem, when he froze. The Coronal Guard turned back to her and narrowed his eyes.

"Hold on," he said. "Miss, turn ninety degrees." His tone of voice brooked no argument. Twilight knew right then; she was busted. She knew that placing her trust in the Baron's words a hundred percent wasn't exactly intelligent however, so she resolved to give the guards the benefit of the doubt. Regardless, she formed the matrix for a quick teleport in her mind in case she needed to get away, quick.

"Oh, of course," she replied carefully, turning around to show the guard there was no doubt about that fact that she was an alicorn. "Is there a problem, sirs?" she asked, pretending not to know what was wrong.

The four Coronal Guards began whispering to each other. Twilight couldn't make out what they were saying, but she was certain it was nothing good.

It was time to leave.

She fired up her horn to teleport away, but that was as far as she got. Moving faster than anypony ever should, the closer of the guards sprung towards her and delivered a heavy punch right to the base of her horn. A strangled yelp rose in Twilight's throat as the energy she'd built up went askew and, erupted from the tip of her horn. The magic first formed a bubble around her, then crashed down and exploded outwards radially.

When the sharp pain receded into a painful throb, Twilight looked around and saw that she'd blown everything back quite a ways, knocking ponies off their hooves and stripping some loose feathers off of pegasi. The Coronal Guards had been blown back quite a ways, but they'd open their wings to catch the backlash easily, and were already flying head on towards her at remarkable speed.

Twilight's horn lit up again, this time to form a shield, but the guards advanced faster than she'd expected and while her barrier kept most of them out, it trapped one of them in with her! He lashed out with a forehoof in a large arc, but she expected that and ducked below it. What she hadn't expected, however, was for him to use the momentum to spin around, clip her in the head with a wing, keep turning, and buck her in the head with both legs.

Lights out.

Author's Note

Thanks to trondason for editing.

I do not own MLP, Hasbro does.

The Light of Day

Solar Flare

Queen Solar Flare stood on a raised podium overlooking her guards as they trained, fighting with one another using a variety of weapons. The weapons, while blunt, were enchanted to cause all the pain of real injury and then some.

Of course, she wasn't just looking. Her horn was alight with a deep orange glow, a brilliant yellow light shining from its tip. A torrent of yellow fireballs spewed out from it to saturate the courtyard, arcing through the air before smashing into mostly-random places around the guards and forcing them to stay nimble on their hooves lest their Queen blast them. The fireballs weren't lethal, but in case of an accident she knew many healing spells and there were multiple medics on standby. She could have let her fireballs be incredibly destructive, hot enough to melt lead, but that would result in a much higher casualty rate in training than was acceptable.

And so, she stood on high and sustained a non-lethal but far from harmless hail of fireballs on her sparring guards. Her magic flowed easily into the bombardment, a simple but effective spell made easier by the low power she pumped into it.

Solar Flare sneered each time she saw one of her guards get hit by a fireball. They weren't going that fast. They had plenty of time to avoid. Though she supposed their exhaustion was beginning to take its toll. Still, in a real battle the enemy would not stop their attack just because you were tired. She sustained the volley.

She only stopped when she heard the clip-clop of hooves on marble behind her. "Your Majesty," said a voice behind her. "I come bearing important news."

Reluctantly, she stopped bombarding her guards and turned to the bowing Coronal Guard who had approached her. "Speak quickly," she snapped.

He rose from his bow. "My Queen, the forces in Canterlot report having captured an unidentified alicorn." Solar Flare's blood ran cold.

"What?" she whispered threateningly. Her horn lit up and she lifted the guard to her eye level; to his credit, he didn't even flinch as he neared the flames of her mane "An alicorn? Describe this... alicorn to me," she hissed.

"It is described as approximately the same size as a mortal pony, with a purple coloration, and a cutie mark that indicates either talent in astronomy, fireworks, or magic. Young, roughly twenty years of age."

Solar almost let her relief show. That didn't match up at all to how Nighty had described Celestia, or Luna. "Where is this alicorn now?"

"She has been detained in the Canterlot High Prison," he said. "As per protocol, I have been sent to alert you as soon as possible."

She dropped him, and he expertly spread his wings to land softly. "Excellent work, return to your prior duties. I need to make a visit to Canterlot..." If it wasn't Celestia or Luna come to take her sister away from her again, then that meant there was another alicorn from her world here, and that was almost as unacceptable as their counterparts arriving.

He saluted. "At once, Your Highness!" he turned around and stiffly marched away. Meanwhile Queen Solar Flare walked with a hurried canter towards her royal chariot, painted with yellow and red flames that seemed to flicker when somepony moved their head. With a flare of her magic she signaled two pegasi to come and strap themselves to the chariot. Solar Flare climbed into her chariot after they arrived.

"Bring me to Canterlot," she said. "There's somepony there I want to have a little... chat with."

Without word they took off, climbing into the air and leaving Everfree Castle behind, flying fast towards the cultural hub of Canterlot. Her mane and tail streamed fire behind her, leaving no doubt in anypony who looked up; their Queen was busy. Everfree vanished behind her and Canterlot loomed before her. She was happy to let the nobles enjoy their little city while she and Nightmare ruled Everfree, it was well to keep the economy and the government separate after all.

Within the hour she touched down in Canterlot, and stepped out of her chariot. They were near the Canterlot High Prison, so there weren't many ponies around, but those that were dropped into deep bows that warmed her heart to see.

Canterlot High Prison was a squat, depressing building, all grays and sharp angles and no windows. She trotted in through the front gate, entering the lobby where a single stallion sitting behind a desk looked up at her, scrambled out of his seat to bow, rose, and then approached her.

"My Queen!" he said. "I'm assuming you wish to see the alicorn prisoner?"

She nodded. "Yes. At once. Do not tarry, I want to see this."

"Alright. Let me just send the signal..." He fumbled around with his desk, then pushed a button. "Alright, please follow me."

Queen Solar Flare did just that. She hadn't felt any large spikes of magic to indicate a theoretical ascension, so she assumed that this alicorn had been born naturally, and kept hidden by their parents for a long time out of fear of Solar Flare killing them. It wasn't an entirely unfair assumption; anything that dared challenge the Sun and Moon was dealt with, using extreme prejudice. That was, of course, provided that this alicorn wanted that in the first place.

If not, then Solar Flare mused that Nightmare would love to make use of her.

The little pony led her through the halls of the High Prison, past several empty cells, down some stairs, and into a room packed filled with prison guards. "The prisoner is currently sedated, Your Majesty. She should wake up in a few minutes."

"Good. Move aside." They did, allowing her to move forward and open the door, then step inside the prison cell. She shut the door behind her, and illuminated the scene with an orb of white light.

The walls were inscribed with all manner of inhibition runes, negating magic of all sorts inside. However, they had also been tuned not to affect anypony with the proper identification, or herself and her sister. She looked down at the alicorn in the middle of the cubical room, sleeping soundly in spite of the thick chains around each of her limbs, including the wings.

Solar's eyes scanned over the tiny alicorn, taking in her coloration, nonathletic body shape, and cutie mark. She trotted closer and lifted her head with a gilded hoof, holding open her mouth with telekinesis.

"How odd," she told herself. "No fangs." She held one of the alicorn's eyelids open. "Regular, pony pupils too. Hmm." She lit up her horn and engulfed the pony with detoxification magic, rapidly draining the sedative from her veins. Once it was complete, she stepped back and waited for the pony to awaken, silently counting her blessings that her mane and tail were magical in nature, and as such didn't need oxygen to burn.

She watched the pony stir, then tug at her bonds in confusion. "About time you woke up," she said, cutting off the pony's panic and making her eyes snap up to her. "Let us begin with introductions. Who are you?"

The pony's swallowed, looking up at her. She hesitated, and then spoke. "T-Twilight Sparkle, my name is Twilight Sparkle." She flinched, as if expecting her to lash out for saying her name. Twilight then looked at her more closely. Solar Flare felt the pony's eyes drift over her cutie mark, at which point they widened and her jaw dropped. "No," she breathed. "No, no no... u-um, may I ask your name, if it's alright?"

Solar raised an eyebrow. Did she not recognize her? Perhaps she had lived in the middle of nowhere all her life. She held out her wings to their fullest extend to make herself look bigger and loomed over the alicorn. "I am Queen Solar Flare of the Equestrian Crown."

Twilight worked the name over. "Solar Flare... oh no, no no no. I was right, oh sweet alicorns I was right." She looked up at her worriedly, looking almost... betrayed? That was curious. In fact, everything about this alicorn was curious. "Please, please listen to me, you can fight this, you can beat this, Celestia. I know you can, I believe in - "

Icy panic gripped her heart. Solar Flare broke her bonds in a moment, grabbed Twilight in her magic, and wrenched her up to eye level. "How do you know that name?!" she bellowed. "Besides me, I can count the number of ponies who know that name on one hoof! How do you know it?!" Twilight Sparkle stammered a bit, but Solar Flare's mind was already racing.

This pony knew about Celestia. How?! The events that had happened to Nighty during her disappearance were a tightly kept secret, known only to herself and her sister. So there was no way in Tartarus that this pony should even know the name Celestia, unless...

... unless...

She sneered. "Oh, I see," she said darkly. "Why are you here?"

"P-Princess Celestia sent me to find where the Nightmare had gone after being purged from Princess Luna." Solar Flare held down a snarl. 'The Nightmare', she said, as if her sister was just a mindless beast. "A-And, I thought it'd returned to its place of origin," She had! "but instead it came here and... and it got you. Please, you have to believe me. I know you can beat it."

She tightened her magical grip on Twilight. Not enough to hurt, but enough to send her a message; shut up. "Oh believe me, I know all about Nightmare Moon, much more than you. I can tell you with one hundred percent certainty that she is not possessing me. I have always been Solar Flare and never Celestia."

Twilight Sparkle looked confused at that. "But... then where is - "

"Nightmare Moon's whereabouts are currently unknown," she said, and that was the truth. She was out in disguise, mingling with the populace. "As for you though... why don't you tell me your experience with Nightmare, hmm? Start from the beginning."

"Oh, it's a long story," Twilight said nervously.

Solar Flare gave the magic a brief squeeze. "I am immortal. I have time."

"Alright, alright. So, it all started back when I read this book of old mare's tales in Canterlot, and I got to thinking about one story in detail..." Twilight Sparkle began to relay the story. Eventually Solar put her back down and sat on her haunches to better absorb the story, of journeying to Ponyville, the return of the 'wicked' Nightmare Moon, the Everfree Forest despite Everfree not having any forest around it. Solar Flare grit her fangs whenever the tiny alicorn before her described Nightmare Moon as 'evil'. Then she got to the 'Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters' and described herself and her friends acquiring the Elements of Harmony.

There, Solar hid her breath catching in her throat. This wasn't just any pony. This was one of the Bearers of the Elements, who wielded the weapon that had banished her sister to a millenium of isolation, who had... who had brought her back to her. Then she described briefly how she'd become an alicorn herself, and then the reason she had come to her world. "... so you can understand we're really kinda worried about the Nightmare coming back to possess Luna."

"She won't," Solar Flare said coldly. "Rest assured of that." She chuckled. "So, Princess Twilight Sparkle. You have brought our two nations into contact with each other." Twilight wasn't here to steal Nighty away from her. In fact, she was here to make sure that Nightmare wouldn't go back to their world. That, combined with the fact that this pony was responsible for her sister returning in the first place, meant she owed her at least some hospitality. "Please, allow me to escort you back to our capital and get you set up for some ambassadorial duties." She knew that, eventually, Nighty would return to her room in the castle. Oh she couldn't wait to see the look on her face when she brought in 'Twilight Sparkle'.

"Huh?" Twilight asked.

"This... other Equestria you come from intrigues me," she said. "It could provide a powerful ally for us." Or a large territory to conquer, depending. She'd need to get more information on the situation beforehoof. After all, knowledge was power. "You are here, in my country, and a princess of your own. I would like to, how should I say, open negotiations?"

Twilight considered this for a moment. "I don't know, I mean, I need to help the princesses ensure Nightmare Moon won't return."

"Oh, she won't," Solar said. "Trust me on that. Come along, now. I have a chariot not too far, we can take that to Everfree Castle." She started walking out of the cell.

Nervously, Twilight Sparkle followed her, seeming almost shell-shocked. "Right. Everfree."

Oh yes, she couldn't wait for her to meet Nighty.

The police guards quickly bent under her insistence that she was bringing Twilight with her back to the castle. She walked out with the younger alicorn besides her, and approached her chariot. She made a motion towards it with her head. "Get in." She did without complaint, apparently still stunned. Her Coronal Guards had waited there, ready to serve their Queen, so while Twilight Sparkle made herself comfortable she told them, "We are headed back to Everfree, post haste." She flew up and then down into her chariot, making sure Twilight had enough room to be reasonably comfortable. Then they were off.

As they flew, Solar Flare watched Twilight out of the corner of her eyes. The purple pony was looking over the side of the chariot, inspecting the land carefully. No doubt it was notably different compared to what she was used to. Finally, Twilight asked, "So, may I ask something?"

"Do so."

"Well, a few questions actually." Solar Flare rolled her draconic eyes. Oh joy. "Well, why did your guards attack me? I've done nothing wrong."

Solar took a moment to consider the question. "That is two part. They've always had standard detaining orders for unidentified alicorns, simply because our kind are so rare that the emergence of a new one presumably heralds great upheaval. Given what your presence here means, I can't say that is entirely wrong. In recent years however, those orders have become a bit more... enthusiastic thanks to Celestia," she said, snarling out the name.

"What did she do? I'm not aware of her ever having encountered, um, your world."

"All in due time, Sparkle. All in due time."

"Um... okay. So on another note, if you don't mind, why is the sun still in place?"

"Hmm?" She looked up directly at the sun, its unmatched radiance not even phasing her eyes. "Oh, that. I'll lower it in a few months. Why, what is the day and night cycle in your world?"

"Well, twenty fours hours of roughly equal night and day, sometimes varying a bit due to seasons."

She frowned. So it was the same cycle that the unicorns had kept before Discord. How disappointing. "I see. To change the subject, when we arrive in the castle I will show you to your chambers, then I must leave to manipulate my schedule to accommodate your arrival. Should you desire anything, there are servants to speak to, and I shall personally vouch for you should any... incidents occur. When it is time for dinner, I will send for you." She was going to have to ask Nighty to have dinner in her chambers when she got back to the castle. Her sister'd understand once everything was made clear.

She considered the angle that Twilight Sparkle was lying about her motives, that she was truly here to take her sister away, but even considering that was laughable. Nightmare Moon, in her world, had splintered their government in half with her attempt at Eternal Night, and if 'Celestia' was anything at all like Solar- unlikely but possible - then losing Luna had hurt her almost as much as losing Nightmare had hurt Solar. There was no reason for them to want to bring Nightmare Moon back, so while she was going to keep an eye on Princess Twilight, she wasn't going to implicitly not trust the mare who'd, as far as she was concerned, brought her sister back to life.

It didn't take long for them to arrive at the castle. Her guards swooped down with the chariot towards an open landing zone, making large circles to burn off their speed. She saw Twilight looking at the castle in awe. That made her feel quite proud. Whatever castle she knew of, it clearly didn't hold against Everfree Castle.

***-_***_-***-_***_-***-_***_-***

Twilight Sparkle

That was not what a castle should've looked like.

It looked more like a crown made out of spikes than a castle. Seriously, they were everywhere. And the guards! If Twilight had thought there were a lot of Coronal Guards in Canterlot, they'd practically taken over Everfree Castle, training in large courtyards surrounded by walls. If she didn't know it was a castle, she'd have assumed that it was a military fort. Especially with all the cannons.

The city of Everfree was, much to her surprise, not surrounded by any forest whatsoever, but rather by green grass as far as the eye could see. Not far from the bustling 'capitol' city was a small clump of houses that she assumed was Harvest Brook, located squarely where Ponyville should have been. It was actually rather... jarring, to look at a place like Everfree, knowing you should see something, but instead getting the near polar opposite.

She'd ridden by chariot before, but when they touched down and she got out after 'Solar Flare' her legs were shaking and her stomach was heavy. The palace was decorated in heavy golds, oranges, and reds, arrayed in such a way as to give the illusion that the floor was the base of a fire and the walls were the rising flames. A quick, innocuous magical scan revealed multiple enchantments, including reinforcement spells and, oddly enough, color changing spells.

She followed after Solar Flare warily, passing servants and Coronal Guards, the former of whom bowed and the latter of whom saluted sharply. It was easy to see why their fur was enchanted to be orange, given who their queen was.

And what a queen she was. Solar Flare was scary. Between her fangs, slit pupils, raging inferno of hair, and harsh demeanor overlaid with what could barely be called hospitality, she was just as terrifying to behold as Nightmare Moon. She wasn't torturing her for information, so that was a plus, but her guards had knocked her out - seriously, where had that guard kicked? A pressure point or something? - and put her in jail.

Queen Solar Flare was precisely what Twilight would've imagined a Nightmare-corrupted Celestia to look like, especially since her cutie mark's sun had black rays, but she claimed to never have been Celestia. And yet she knew her name, and it made her angry? She just didn't know what to think. She walked through the castle almost in a daze, this day was not at all going the way she'd expected. If she was right, it hadn't even been a full day since she got the princesses' letter.

Was this Solar Flare a natural counterpart of Celestia? Or was she just lying about the Nightmare not corrupting her? If she were a demonic soul-twisting parasite that's what she would do. But then why was Solar Flare being semi-polite to her and talking about opening negotiations with her Equestria? Was it all an elaborate ploy to get back to Luna? Twilight resolved to keep that in mind.

Twilight also decided to keep in mind that Solar Flare had started talking and she should probably listen!

" - given Ambassadorial Suite E. It's not the most opulent we have, but Ambassadorial Suite A is currently closed for repairs. I trust that will not be an issue?"

"Oh no, it won't," she said sheepishly. "I'm told I'm quite modest."

Solar nodded. "Good, good."

The passed by several other rooms, most of which appeared to go towards either servant or guard rooms. There was one, however, that caught her eye. It was a large, wooden door with two Coronal Guards standing before it. It was a tall, oak wood thing with many arcs and triangles carved into it. It was also locked. "What's behind there?" Twilight asked.

"Those are the history archives. She who controls the past controls the present, and therefore the future."

"Can I look in there? It'd be interesting to see where our history diverges..."

"No." Solar looked down at her with something bordering on contempt. "There are few circumstances that warrant me providing authorization to look into the past. Come along, Sparkle. We mustn't be late."

"Um... okay," she said morosely, following after Solar with a final, longing glance back at the doors. She really wanted to look into them, see where the point of difference was. But she was not in any mood to defy the alicorn that could probably roast her to death by simply hugging her; just walking next to her was parching her throat.

They took a few more turns, and soon came to a stop by a certain door that was rather unremarkable, all things considered, patterned with the same golds and red as the rest of the castle. Solar stopped and turned to face her. "This will be your room for your stay in my country. It had better be adequate, miss 'modest'." With a flick of her deep orange magic, Solar Flare opened the door to her room.

"Wow," she breathed. As she surveyed the room the only sound was the gentle crackling of Solar Flare's mane and tail. It was fairly large. Not exactly giant, like the guest rooms in Canterlot, but still sizable. The bed was no larger than it had to be but seemed so soft, the cabinet drawers were open to reveal their contents; countless brochures - a fair number of them about recruiting into the guard - and several books about how the government worked. There was a separate door leading to what she assumed was a bathroom, a ticking clock, and a window that offered a view to the circular city of Everfree. She had to be honest, it was quite beautiful, especially the fact that the place was painted to resemble the day sky.

"I trust it is to your liking? Good. I did not anticipate the room to be in use for some time, so it is not properly stocked. I will send a maid by to do so in addition to bringing you back your confiscated belongings, Princess Twilight. Feel free to peruse your room, but do not leave. I will call you to dinner when it is time." There was an immense surge of heat and light as Solar Flare teleported, and then Twilight was alone.

She looked around uneasily, alone in the room. She trotted in and closed the door behind her, electing to explore in case of any unkind surprises. After a magical scan revealed nothing, she locked her eyes on the bed and, with a flap of her wings, flew over and flopped down on it. It was very soft, almost cloud-soft, and it felt remarkable after all the stress she'd been under recently.

She wiggled around the covers, doing her best to doze off. In that moment, Twilight Sparkle didn't want to worry about dark parasites, alternate universes, or strange versions of Princess Celestia. The alicorn was happy to let her mind wander and let her breathing level out. She'd had a long day, after all. She'd earned a little rest -

Knock knock knock!

"Ponyfeathers," she grumbled, dragging herself out of bed. Firing up her telekinesis she opened the door, revealing a pegasus, pulling a cart behind her filled with all manner of towels and such. "Hello?" she asked.

The mare bowed low, her well-trimmed chocolate-brown mane flopping before her. Twilight couldn't see her cutie mark due to her outfit. "Greetings, Princess Twilight. I have supplies to stock your room, if it is alright with you?"

"Um, sure, come right in." The mare came up from her bow and trotted past Twilight, dragging her cart as she did. "May I ask your name?"

"Oh, um, I'm Plush Pillow. Um, just Pillow if you please, Your Highness." She reached into the cart, pulled out a brown sack, and placed it on the bed. Probably Twilight's belongings.

Twilight laughed nervously. "Please don't call me that, just Twilight's fine, Pillow."

The maid smiled. "Pleased to meet you, Twilight." She walked over to the shelf and, reaching into the cart, she pulled out what looked like a little fan, with a gently glowing crystal in its back. "Air filter," she explained, seeing her confused look. "Pollen's always nasty this time of day."

"Right, day," she said. Given that the day seemed to be eternal, 'time of day' could mean anything. But if it was eternal, then what was Solar Flare's remark about lowering the sun 'in a few months'? "Thank you, Pillow."

"Oh no, it's my pleasure," she said. The beige mare trotted into the bathroom and began unpacking toiletries into it in silence.

After a long pause, Twilight decided to break the tension. "So... what can you tell me about the Queen?"

Plush Pillow's irises constricted. "Um... what do you mean?"

"Well, I'm rather... new to Equestria, so I don't really know what to expect from her. She's invited me to dinner, so I want to know if there's anything I should avoid saying that would offend her."

"Be very polite," she said. "If she says something is true don't challenge her on it; Queen Solar Flare is a hundred times older than you and she'll make sure you know it." She put up a towel. "She doesn't have a problem with you speaking without being spoken to, but never interrupt her. Over all, just be polite, respectful, and you will probably not get incinerated in the nuclear inferno of the sun." Lovely, Twilight thought.

"Um, thanks." An awkward silence passed while Pillow kept unloading her cart around Twilight's room, and then the pegasus began to leave. "So, um, bye."

"Goodbye to you as well, Twilight." She curtsied, making Twilight laugh nervously. "You need anything, please just ring me down."

"Thank you, that's very kind of you."

Pillow blushed. "Oh, well, it's nothing. I'll see you around... probably." Plush Pillow trotted out of the room, cart in tow, leaving Twilight alone in a well-stocked guest room, in an opulent castle, in an alternate universe ruled by what appeared to be Celestia's evil twin.

She collapsed back on the bed and made herself cozy. She saw a clock out of the corner of her eyes: It was seven in the afternoon. She was getting a little peckish, but what could she do until dinner? Organize her thoughts, maybe send the Princesses another report. Should she still send the next pulse twenty-four hours after her last one, or after her report since they served the same purpose? How could she even send a report to Canterlot Castle, given that she was in the middle of what, in her world, was undoubtedly the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters?

So... no more letters for the time being, but at least she could still send the magic 'I'm okay' signal. Resolving to do so before she forgot, or slept in the next 'morning', Twilight sent the pulse down the thread keeping her tethered to home.

Her mind drifted back to Baron Fast Track, and his warnings about alicorns. All things considered, things could've gone much worse. She still wasn't entirely sure where Solar Flare had heard the name Celestia - provided she was telling the truth about not being corrupted - but she had ideas. It was possible that the Nightmare had told her and... wait. What he'd told her...

'Do you live under a rock? Last I checked there are only two alicorns.' Two alicorns? There was Solar Flare, obviously, so did that mean Nightmare Moon was the other? But how was that possible? Had the parasite somehow manifested a body without possessing somepony? Or what if it had possessed somepony else? Or maybe this other alicorn was somepony completely different. Or maybe not.

Solar Flare was very familiar to Nightmare Moon. The slit pupils, the fangs, the armor, and the whole 'eternal day' thing. But then what was that comment about eventually lowering the sun about? She didn't know, and that made her want to scream into the pillows and throw something through a wall.

Knock knock knock!

"Oh now what?!" she shouted, flinging open the door with her magic.

Behind it, a stallion in a suit stood with wide, unblinking eyes. "H-Her Majesty, Queen Solar Flare, wishes to extend a-an invitation to dinner to you, Princess Twilight," he stammered.

"Oh," she said, getting off the bed. Twilight wasn't quite ready to meet his eyes after the scare she'd given him. "Thank you, I'll be right there." She stretched her limbs and folded her wings back. Apparently she'd flared them out when she snapped at the poor stallion, which was an interesting reflex to say the least. Twilight wasn't sure if she'd ever get used to it. She walked over to the stallion. "Please, lead the way. I'm afraid I don't really know my way around yet."

She caught him giving her wings and horn an extra glance, and then he nodded. "Right this way, Your Highness." He turned tail and began a brisk canter through the castle. Twilight closed the room behind her and marked its location with a tracker spell so she could find her way back, and followed after the servant. She took note of the Coronal Guards standing around diligently, briefly looking at the enchantments woven into their armor with no small amount of amazement.

The servant led her towards a not-quite-spacious room with a long, oval glass table in the middle. There were paintings of all sorts around the walls, including one of Solar Flare... with her mane lighting a Hearth's Warming tree on fire? And why were some of the paintings covered in a film of opaque magic, as if to hide them from her eyes?

Sitting at one end of the oval was the alicorn herself, Solar Flare. Before her was a plate of spaghetti and... were those meatballs? Twilight was fascinated, apparently the fangs weren't just for show.

The queen noticed them enter. "Well done. Leave us, servant." The pony bowed and left the way they'd entered, leaving Twilight Sparkle completely alone with Solar Flare. "Come Twilight, please take a seat. I hope you like what I had made for you." Twilight trotted to the place Solar had gestured to and sat, staring at her plate of intricately cut daisy sandwiches as if they held the secrets of the universe.

"It looks good, thank you," she said, careful to keep Pillow's advice in mind. "May I?" she asked, gesturing to the food.

"What, do you think I had that put there so you could look at it? Eat, little pony." Twilight obediently brought a sandwich to her mouth and took a bite. It was good, the bread fluffy, the lettuce crisp, the flowers powdery. "I trust everything in your room is to your satisfaction?" she asked.

Twilight swallowed what was in her mouth. "Yes, thank you. It's all very good."

"Excellent." Solar Flare magically moved her fork to twirl some spaghetti onto it, which she ate. They two alicorns ate their dinner in silence for a little while, the only noise coming from Solar Flare's crackling flames.

Every now and then Twilight caught the larger alicorn looking at her out of one eye, judging her. One slit-pupiled eye which reminded her less of a cat and more of a dragon. And thinking about that just made her think about Spike, which in turn made her think about all her friends. How they didn't know where she was, what was going on. She hoped that Spike had at least told them she was on official business with the Princesses. Maybe if she were lucky, they would tell her friends in more detail about what was going on.

"So," Solar Flare said at last. "Your first day in a new world, must be quite exciting."

"Well, it hasn't been dull," she said with a nervous laugh.

Solar nodded with a mirthful smile. "I can imagine. Anyway, once we finish up here, there's somepony I want you to meet."

"Really, who?" she asked suspiciously.

"I think, that you already know her," Solar said with a growing grin.

"I do?"

"Oh yes. My sister, Nightmare Moon."

Author's Note

Thanks to trondason for editing.

I do not own MLP, Hasbro does.

The Dark of Night

Twilight Sparkle

Twilight's brain stuttered to a halt in the most magnificent fashion. Her jaw dropped, her right eye developed a twitch, and both her mane and tail erupted into tangles the likes of which would give Rarity cardiac arrest.

Sister. Sister. SISTER?!

"Ehhhuewhahe?" she stammered. "S-S-Sister?!"

Solar nodded, a wicked grin on her face. "Indeed. We aren't entirely sure how she got fused with your Luna, but whatever the case I'm quite happy she's home again."

Nightmare didn't mean to possess Luna. No, she's lying. Nightmare Moon's a pony? Solar Flare's a demon parasite? What? How?! We all thought she was... Princess Luna said...

"But... but..." she stammered.

"Oh, you look so surprised!" Solar cooed. "What's wrong? World turned upside down?"

Twilight nodded. "But... how? Are you... where is... eternal night, eternal day!" She let her head fall onto the table. "I'm so confused," she admitted ashamedly.

She glanced up to see Solar Flare lean in with a cheeky grin. "Gotcha."

You have got to be kidding me, she groaned in her head. "But... what?! How does that even work? Nightmare Moon is - "

"- a pony," Solar Flare cut off harshly. "Just like me. She always has been and hopefully always will be. A thousand years ago she vanished without a trace, and four years ago she just as suddenly returned. I think you can connect the dots."

Twilight took a moment to consider what she'd just been told. Nightmare Moon was... an actual pony, and lived in this alternate Equestria. And she'd... what? Somehow 'fused' with Princess Luna? What in the world could do that? And... she supposed it made sense that when she and her friends wielded the Elements properly, it sent the Nightmare back home. But even so... what the hay?

"I'm so confused," she complained.

"Just eat your dinner, we'll see about showing you the truth of the matter once your stomach's full."

"Okay," she whispered, lowering herself to her sandwiches.

The rest of dinner passed in silence, with her occasionally sneaking glances at Solar Flare, the alicorn who had just casually upturned everything everypony knew about Nightmare Moon. At one point she noticed Solar channeling orange magic along her horn, and the barriers on about half the paintings faded away. Twilight looked at them, and her stomach sank. The ones covered up all had Nightmare Moon depicted in some form or another. Standing above a crowd, leading at the forefront of an army, holding the moon while Solar held the sun. One painting in particular caught her attention.

Twilight Sparkle was no art enthusiast, but even she could tell that the painting was a masterpiece among masterpieces. No brush strokes were visible, depth was easy to see. In it, Nightmare Moon and Solar Flare - bereft of any garments - stood with their horns aglow and their backs to the viewer, atop of a slab of black stone. Said slab was riddled with red cracks, and there was a geyser of lava painted underneath it. The sky was, of all things, green.

From before the slab of stone was, to Twilight's surprise, Discord. He'd decorated his long, thin body with golden lines and held out his paw and claw. His lower half was obscured by the slab, and his face was even and expressionless as he stared down at the ponies. Nightmare Moon was firing a dark purple beam at him, which turned into licorice halfway there, and he held Solar Flare's beam of blue fire in his lion paw. Meanwhile, all around him were magical blades also under the control of the two alicorns, and Twilight realized that the gold streaks weren't decorations but wounds, bleeding immortal ichor, and that the same marks were present on the alicorns.

Solar Flare wasn't kidding, was she? But if the Nightmare was here, and was its own pony... then why had it fused with Luna? What would that even do to a pony's sanity? Twilight had some suspicions, none of them good.

She finished her meal before Solar Flare did, and then Queen noticed. "Finished already? Great. That means you can go to the next thing I have planned for you today." she said in a sinister tone.

"Planned?"

"Why of course." The Queen got up, magically banishing what remained of her meal. "As the visiting dignitary of your country, it falls to you to make good relations with the leaders of the nation you visit. You've already met me, and there's now somepony else you need to visit."

"You don't mean - " she stammered, going wide-eyed.

The larger alicorn got out of her seat and began shooing Twilight out of her own. "Oh yes I do. Come, Princess. You wanted to see the situation with Nightmare, didn't you? Well what better way than first-hoof experience?"

"But - "

All of a sudden Solar Flare's inferno burned much brighter. "That was not a request, Sparkle! Remember who holds the cards here!"

"Okay," she squeaked as she leaned back.

Solar's mane and tail dimmed. "Good. Follow me." The sun alicorn trotted out of the dining hall at a brisk pace, forcing Twilight to nearly gallop to keep up with her. They took a few turns, and Twilight had the impression that they were headed west. Soon, the fiery tones of the castle began to dim, turning to greens and blues, then blues and purples, and the sharp angles softened into circles. Twilight couldn't help but marvel; even the air temperature seemed to decline slightly. Solar Flare's fiery hair was much more noticeable in the dark hall.

The queen stopped before a large, decorative door. By then, the walls, ceiling and floor were all pitch black. The carpet was purple, and there were occasional streaks of the color throughout the hall. Twilight looked up at the door, and Twilight realized that the violet streaks formed a pattern, growing more and more numerous as they neared it, forming a spiral pattern that ended with a single point of bright color in the middle of the door. The resulting vortex was quite mesmerizing to look at, seeming to shift and change color each time she moved her head.

Then she saw the purple-and-moon cutie mark above the spiral, and her breath caught in her throat. All at once she knew who was behind the door. She knew who was waiting for her.

"Go on," Solar said. "Nightmare's waiting for you. She won't bite... hard."

There was a whoosh of teleportation as Solar vanished, and Twilight gulped. She started up at the door, contemplating leaving. But then Solar Flare would know, because Nightmare could tell her that Twilight hadn't come in.

"Not getting out of this," she told herself. "Come on Twilight, you're a big filly. You can do this." She pushed open the doors, and entered the chambers of Nightmare Moon.

The room was spectacular. The walls were pitch black and speckled with stars, and the entire place had a layout similar to that of a compass rose. On the floor was a large rug with the Nightmare's purple splotches and crescent moon on it. Over on the bed she spotted her. A large black form, with a perverted version of Princess Luna's cutie mark and a mane and tail of ever-shifting stars and nebulae, smoothly fading into the air. The alicorn had her back to her but when Twilight entered, the ears, black as sin, swiveled and the alicorn chuckled.

Behind Twilight, the door closed.

"So you're the surprise my sister told me about?" came that dark, sensuous voice of Luna's alter-ego (Who was looking to be less an alter-ego and more her own pony by the second) as Nightmare Moon moved out of bed, so smoothly Twilight could've sworn she floated. Nightmare was naked, as ponies usually were, with none of the trappings or the helm that Twilight had seen her in last time. It gave her a strange, otherworldly - ha! - look, and considering how scary the armor was on both Nightmare and Solar, Twilight decided she much preferred Nightmare Moon not to wear it. Beyond that she was exactly as she remembered her; dark, alluring, dangerous, embodying everything a moonless night was.

Nightmare Moon looked at Twilight and froze, the smile melting off her face. Twilight herself suddenly had the intense urge to search for a window and jump through it, anything to get away from those piercing dragon eyes. "You," she whispered.

"Um, uh..." Say something smart, you idiot! "Y-Yeah, me. Solar Flare led me here."

"Element of Magic," Nightmare Moon said, straightening up and letting her mane billow around aimlessly. "What is your name? I don't remember ever catching it."

"T-Twilight Sparkle."

"I see." Nightmare Moon hesitated, then stepped forward. She lowered herself to her hocks and bent her neck over.

It took a moment for Twilight to realize what was going on; Nightmare Moon was bowing to her and - Nightmare-Moon-is-bowing-to-me!

"What? Please don't, why are you - "

"Twilight Sparkle, I am eternally in your debt. Whatever you wish of me within reason, simply speak it and it will be done!" Nightmare Moon, the Usurper, the proud and arrogant Lady of Darkness, was bowing to her and claiming to be in her debt! Whatever was going on, it simply did not compute.

"Err, what? Please, you don't need to - "

"I don't, but I choose to! Twilight Sparkle, you saved me," Nightmare said, looking up at her. "You saved me and brought me back to my nation, my sister, my home. There is nothing I can do to repay you, but I can try. Speak what you wish and it shall be."

"U-Um..." This was about as far from what she'd expected as possible. Twilight had thought Nightmare Moon would desire vengeance against her, or at least be cold and indifferent. But this? The more she thought about it, the more it lined up with what Solar Flare said, with everything else. The enormous differences between her Equestria and this one weren't due to Nightmare arriving recently, the divergence point must've been centuries ago.

And the offer? What about it? She could refuse it, but however much Nightmare Moon was bowing to her she didn't feel it was smart to turn down her gift. What could she ask for? Twilight's stomach flip-flopped at the concept, it felt like she was being demanding, pushy. Either way, she opened her mouth and spoke. "Well, I was wondering if I could maybe get access to the, um, historical archives?"

Nightmare Moon shot to her hooves and pointed a foreleg to the ceiling. "Done!" She lowered her hoof and looked at her, then frowned. "You're afraid of me."

She pawed at the ground with a hoof. "Well, you know, our last meeting didn't really go too well."

Nightmare Moon didn't flinch, but her left eye did slightly twitch. "Yes, it didn't. I... must apologize for that. I wasn't entirely in my right mind back then."

"So... you don't really want eternal night?" she dared ask.

Nightmare shook her head, the nebulous mane scarcely affected at all. "Oh no, that is still one of my passions."

Twilight's throat tightened. "But... the environment! And, Solar Flare's eternal day!"

"We take turns," the taller alicorn said evenly. "Don't you know?" She shook her head, and Nightmare's expression grew deadpan. "Oh. My sister didn't tell you, did she? Just like her; she becomes stupidly obtuse whenever she sinks her fangs into a good joke. Well, I will tell you. Solar Flare and I came to an agreement long ago regarding the day and night cycle. She would get one year of day, and I would get one year of night, alternating. Careful control of wind currents keeps things from getting too hot or too cold quickly."

Twilight considered that with a hoof on her chin. "That... actually sounds like it could work." She wasn't entirely sure how plant growth worked during the night, but given how nopony was starving - that she saw - they'd likely worked out something. "Is that what you were going to do on my world?"

"No, just eternal night straight through." Nightmare Moon tapped the side of her head. "I wasn't all there at the time, remember. Merging with Luna wasn't really good for either of us."

"Um, uh, right. I think I'll just head to the history archives then, if it's alright with you. I'm really curious to see where our universes split."

Nightmare Moon smiled at her, and warmly at that! "Good idea, Twilight." Her horn lit up with dark purple magic, and a card with a stamp on it appeared. "This is my personal seal, use it to gain access to them whenever you wish." The black alicorn winked. "Though you may want to get some sleep beforehoof," she suggested.

Twilight considered that. "Yes, that might not hurt. It's been a long day."

"I can only imagine. Where are you staying?"

"Um, Ambassadorial Suite... E, why?"

"I'll send you back. We'll meet again, Twilight Sparkle." Nightmare Moon curtsied, and lit up her horn. Twilight only had time to open her mouth before the teleportation magic took hold of her, and carried her away from Nightmare Moon.

***-_***_-***-_***_-***-_***_-***

Nightmare Moon

Her Royal Majesty, Queen Nightmare Moon of the Glowing Night, grinned.

"Twilight Sparkle." She rolled the name around on her tongue, and decided she liked it. Yes, it was a very fitting name for her, the one who'd brought Night and Day back together in not one, but two worlds. Presumably; she wasn't entirely certain what had happened on Celestia's world, and the Elements may very well have killed Luna. Clearly, a lot had happened in Twilight's world because, while her memories of her time controlling Luna were hazy, she was absolutely certain Twilight hadn't been an alicorn back then. To be honest, she preferred her as an alicorn; she wore her wings very well.

"Twilight, Twilight, Twilight," she said over and over. Nightmare Moon chuckled to herself. Oh yes, she really liked that name. She could hardly wait to see the younger alicorn again. But that would come later. She wrapped herself in magic and transformed into a cloud of mist before zipping out of her room, through the halls, for a hooffull of seconds before finding Solar Flare in her own chambers. Nightmare Moon let her nebulous body whirl around for a moment before reforming, approaching her cheekily grinning sister.

"Well?" Solar asked. "What did you think of my surprise?"

She punched her sister in the shoulder. "You didn't tell me you were bringing the Element of Magic to me!"

Solar Flare betrayed no discomfort besides rubbing the area Nightmare had hit. "Well, how'd you hit it off? What do you think of her?"

"As much as I am indebted to her, I don't think I ever learned precisely what she's doing here. How did she even do that?"

"Apparently our counterparts found some sort of thread of your magic in Luna's cosmic link, and they sent her over to investigate." Solar chuckled. "Apparently they thought you were some evil, parasitic monster who chose to prey on poor Luna."

Nightmare Moon scoffed. She felt free to act however she wanted around Solar; they were sisters, after all, and virtually the only ones they could relax around. Around Solar, she could scoff as much as she wished. "Of course they did. Wonder if we owe any explanation to them."

"We don't owe those two anything, Nighty. Not after what they did to you."

She fixed Solar with a deadpan glare. Truly, she meant well, but... "Really Sola? Why do you even think they were the ones who did that to me?"

Nightmare's sister shuffled her wings and looked away. "I... I'll be honest, no reason. But still! I don't want to lose you again."

She sighed and stepped forward, reaching over to hug her sister. "Relax. We've got Twilight Sparkle on the case," she said half-jokingly. "What could possibly go mmph!"

Solar removed her hoof from Nightmare's mouth, glaring at her. If looks could kill. "Anyway, trust issues about those two aside, how do you feel about her?"

"I like her," Nightmare said wickedly. "I think I might spend some more time with her."

Solar smiled. "Good to hear. How about this... other Equestria? Conquer or ally?"

"Personally, I don't want anything to do with them ever again. Whether or not they meant to do what they did to me, I lost centuries of myself because of their very existence. I ever see them again, I'm shooting first."

"And Twilight?"

Nightmare frowned, laying down and shuffling her wings. Solar joined her, and Nightmare rested a wing over her twin's withers. "I don't know. I owe her more than I shall ever be able to give, Sola. I don't want her to think of me as... as some sort of parasite! If that's the legacy I've left in our counterparts' world then I feel I have to change it." She snarled. "Think of me a demon will they, I'll set them right." Nightmare realized that she was quickly changing her stance on the other Equestria back and forth. It was... frustrating to be so indecisive.

"But what if returning makes you fuse with Luna again?" Solar asked. She moved her wing out from under Nightmare's and draped it over her withers. "What if it makes me fuse with Celestia?"

"We'll just need to make sure it doesn't. Twilight, obviously, doesn't have a counterpart on our world. Wherever our worlds diverged it was too long ago. Still, with her able to move to our world, she should be able to move back and forth. Maybe serve as correspondence."

"We still need to learn precisely what her country is like," Solar remarked, nuzzling in closer to Nightmare. "We may need to take over them. We may need to seal off our access to them entirely, given the existence of that superweapon. There are so many unknowns."

"So, ask Sparkle. She's friendly enough." Nightmare pondered it. "Go less for intimidation, and more for helpfulness with her, I'd say. She's already out of her element being in a new world, scaring her anymore is liable to freeze her up. Be helpful, and she'll loosen her tongue."

Solar Flare nodded. "I was thinking much the same, Nighty. Well then, I think I'll retire for now. Staying up to dreamstalk?"

Nightmare grinned wickedly, showing off her fangs. "You know it."

Solar returned the grin. "Excellent. Well, I'll see you later."

Lighting up her horn, Nightmare Moon faded into mist. "Sweet dreams, I'll make sure of it," she whisper-hissed, flowing away from her sister's room and into her own.

Once there she reformed, sunk into her soft, lovely bed, and closed her eyes. Nightmare Moon's breathing slowed, hitched a bit when she was overcome with the sensation of falling, then fell into the rhythm of sleep.

She opened her 'eyes' and found she was in the dreamscape, an endless void of flickering blues, greens and blacks, with bubbles suspended around her. Each bubble had a separate size to indicate the stability of the dream within; larger bubbles were less likely to suddenly awaken. Each one was colored differently, giving her insight into how the dream was. Before long she spotted her sister's dream, a small orb of silver potential. 'Moving' over to it, Nightmare tapped it with a 'hoof' and set the dream to golden wish-fulfillment. Then she turned her attention to the others, and set to work.

She'd long ago gotten used to dreamstalking's ins and outs. When there was a red nightmare, she pressed into it to see what the dream was about. If she was feeling merciful, she nudged it away to green peace or popped it and freed the dreamer from their terror. She inspected blue 'reality' dreams for hints of treason, memorizing the dreamer's name if she found any and pushing it towards a crimson nightmare.

Nightmare made sure to stay away from yellow dreams of lust, except for when it was the orangish-yellow of powerlust, in which case she popped in and sometimes made the decision to steer towards red. Obviously, Nightmare Moon couldn't visit every one of her subjects' dreams, but she'd learned over her centuries of ruling how to prioritize, and despite her millenium long absence, a few months was all that was needed to get back into the swing of it. She hopped from dream to dream, circling around Equestria and some places beyond.

She found one particular, seemingly innocuous nightmare and dove into it, the subconscious offering up the name Tough Cookie.

In it, an earth pony she identified as Tough Cookie was in Everfree. He was bound in chains and hoofcuffs, led by Nightmare Moon's Singularity Guard towards the castle. Nightmare Moon - invisible and unnoticeable - dove down and merged herself with the stallion. The drawback was that she was unable to see anything other than what he did, but the advantage was that she gained changeling-like insight into his emotions, and he would still be none the wiser.

He was led up to a platform, with caricatures of Nightmare and her sister staring down at him. Around him was the jeering of crowds of faceless dream-ponies, shouting noiseless horrors at him that made Nightmare Moon feel terror run down his spine. He looked up at the images of the queens, while Nightmare Moon inspected his emotions closely. Hatred, revulsion, and primal terror. Ah, so he was one of the ponies who disapproved of their rule and wished they were more lenient, like the Zebra Council. Curious.

She and her sister were saying something, in perfect sync. "Find you guilty of jumping llamas and the green cake eats November!" Of course, it was a dream. It didn't make any sense to Nightmare Moon, but apparently it made perfect sense to Tough Cookie.

A pony who hadn't been there before - not that Cookie would realize that - walked forward. She wore Coronal Guard armor, but was not under the influence of the disguise spell. This one was a mare, a few decades younger than Tough Cookie. Her features were blurred, the colors and cutie marks shifting, but Nightmare simply had to read his emotions to ascertain that the unicorn was Lime Jelly, daughter.

Hmm, she pondered. A possible rebeller, perhaps with a personal grudge against us? I might have to put him on the list.

Lime Jelly's dreamself stepped closer and her horn lit up with ocean blue light, summoning an axe out of dreamstuff. Tough Cookie began to talk, begging her to stop, but the caricature stepped closer and brought the axe down on his neck. The dream popped, sending Nightmare Moon out into the dreamscape.

That was... interesting. Apparently one of his deepest fears was the two of them. Nightmare Moon resolved to search for records on a 'Lime Jelly', then tomorrow maybe she'd go pay Tough Cookie a little visit incognito. Maybe add him to the list of ponies to keep an eye out for, or even outright throw him in the dungeons if he was dangerous to their rule.

Turning back to the dreams in Everfree Castle, Nightmare spotted one specific dream signature: Twilight Sparkle's. Her dream was an orb like all the others, rapidly shifting between nightmares, purple memories, and transparent incoherence. Suddenly feeling protective, Nightmare Moon dove right in.

The dream was rather hard to make heads or tails of. Nightmare kept herself invisible, watching as Twilight went through her dream almost dumbly, pulled around in all directions. She read a book, a page of which flew out and turned into a test the size of a library. One of the multiple choice bubbles flew out and grew fangs, swallowing Twilight whole. Twilight was tossed around through senseless brain-vomit hallucinations, and before long Nightmare Moon grew tired of it.

With a wave of her cloaked hoof, the dream stabilized. Twilight was back inside a library, humming as she read. Nightmare Moon floated over; the page was blank except for the ever-moving portion that the smaller alicorn read, and its sentence progression didn't make any sense. Either way, Twilight read, occasionally humming in pleasure. Nightmare Moon couldn't help but smile, watching her at ease.

Deciding that she wasn't really that busy, Nightmare Moon forced more of her essence into the dream and manifested next to Twilight. Her very presence stabilized the dream even more, made it practically impossible to distinguish from reality, save for the lack of details in some places.

"Hello, Twilight," she said, deciding against forming her armor out of dreamstuff.

The purple alicorn jumped and looked up at her. Without her attention on it, the book began to dissipate."N-Nightmare Moon?" she asked, panicked. "What are you doing here? I thought you were - "

She held up a hoof. "Twilight, you are dreaming. You came to my chambers and, after our discussion, went to go sleep before you head to the historical archives."

"Oh," she said abashedly. "So you're a dreamwalker too, huh? I suppose it's obvious, given that Luna's also a dreamwalker and you're her alternate self."

Nightmare Moon smiled. "You're taking this a lot better than you were before. I'm glad to see it," she said with a dip of her head.

She shrugged, getting to her hooves. "When presented with evidence that contradicts your theory, you must change your theory. It's... still pretty strange, to be honest. Ever since my friends and I separated you from Luna, everypony's thought of you as some spirit of greed and jealousy that possessed Luna and drove her to attempt eternal night. But here... you're your own pony, with your own history, your own sister... everything! To find out there's suddenly so much more to you is almost overwhelming."

She nodded. "Yes, it must be. I was quite surprised myself when I first fused with Luna. She was in control at the time, so the entire experience was quite... jarring. It also didn't help that both our mental states began to rapidly degrade afterwards."

"Hmm, odd," Twilight said. "Wonder what did that. I mean, your old body was destroyed while you were in Princess Luna's head, right? Matter can't be created or destroyed, maybe it was converted into energy, and that was used to bring you over the dimensional divide. But then what would even do that in the first place? Hmm..."

"Think about it when you wake up," Nightmare said. "You don't want to try complex math in a dream."

Twilight Sparkle shivered. "Oh, you're right. Two plus two can equal fish here really easily, no matter how much I don't want it to do so." Twilight looked up at her, met her eyes briefly, then averted her gaze. "I'll... I'll need to send a report back to the other princesses soon. Let them know about the reality of the situation."

Nightmare scowled. "Yes, the other princesses. Wouldn't want them to worry. Why can't you simply... send them a letter? Surely you've found a way to keep a channel open, yes?" While she was thinking about it, Nightmare Moon added Investigate possible tether of magic with Luna to her mental checklist.

Twilight nodded. "I have, but the problem is that it ends up in the corresponding location in my home. If I send it here, the letter will just appear in the middle of the Everfree Forest."

Nightmare Moon rolled her eyes. Right, the Everfree Forest, which her counterparts for some reason had never clear-cut. "You do not have to worry about that, Sparkle. If you need travel somewhere, our guards will provide a chariot for you freely. Keeping correspondence with your... fellow princesses is important so that they do not worry." And if they don't worry, they can't come over here with those Elements and convince you to blast us again.

Twilight blushed. "Oh... oh! That's very generous of you, thank you."

She waved a hoof. "It is of no concern. Now, is there anything else you need?"

The little pony blushed, which made Nightmare Moon feel mischievously happy. "Oh, um no, thank you for the offer, you've already done, heheh, a lot more for me than I thought." She scuffed a forehoof along the floor. "Sorry about planning to come here and destroy you."

Nightmare Moon's mouth momentarily flickered into a frown. "You were doing the best you could by the information you had available. Please don't try it again, Twilight. If you're truly okay, then I'll be taking my leave now. Right after I fix this dream a bit..." She lifted a bare hoof and stomped it on the floor, but instead of hitting wood she hit dreamstuff and twisted the color into from blue to gold. Before the changes could take effect and Nightmare saw something she might not have wanted to, she fled the dream, swam through the dreamscape, back into her own body.

Nightmare Moon's eyelids fluttered as they opened. She felt refreshed and renewed after that; dreamstalking was the equivalent of sleeping, after all. She rolled around in her bed, humming as the soft mattresses flexed and bent around her spine. What a day. What a day! Contact had been again made with the alternate world that she'd wanted nothing to do with. With it brought a method to go there, possibly to other worlds, new territories to conquer, new countries to intimidate into allegiance. With it came a way to see her old friends Celestia and Luna, ensure they would never harm her or Solar ever again.

And with it came Twilight Sparkle, the wonderful mare with a beautiful soul who'd saved her life. She could give that alicorn everything she had and it would never be enough. Surely there was something...

... oh yes, there was. It was mutually beneficial too. Nightmare Moon chuckled. "Oh Twilight, I think I'll bring you along to see my day job." Not yet, though. Solar Flare would want to introduce Twilight to the populace, show off their discovery for everypony to know, and Nightmare agreed with that wholeheartedly. Let the little ponies know that there was not just the two alicorns, but five.

Teach those who would dare rebel that they could never win.

Author's Note

Thanks to trondason for editing.

I do not own MLP, Hasbro does.

Dampened Enthusiasm

Celestia

When Princess Celestia awoke that morning, the last thing she expected to see was Luna standing above her, looking down at her intensely. She closed her eyes and fell back to sleep.

Poke.

"Tia."

Poke.

"Tia."

Poke.

"Tia, your former student sent a letter."

She cracked open her eyelids and gave Luna her best glare. "And why did you find it necessary to come into my bedroom, wake me up at..." She checked her connection to the sun. "six in the morning just to tell me that - wait, Twilight sent a letter?" Like fog under the sun her sleepiness evaporated and she sat up in her bed, with Luna smoothly flying off to give her room. "Let me see that." She took the scroll out of Luna's blue aura into her own golden one and began to read.

Her eyes widened comically as she read through it, trying to process the letter's contents. It occurred to her it may have been fabricated, but the horn writing was perfectly identical to Twilight's. The scale of what was written was staggering, the implications it had were profound.

Nightmare Moon was her own pony. She hadn't intended to possess Luna and drive her to darkness. The other Equestria was a well functioning diarchy under 'Solar Flare' and Nightmare Moon, Twilight was being treated well... it was all so much to take in.

She looked over to her sister. "Lulu, do you know what this mean?" she whispered.

The Nightbringer nodded and stepped aside, letting Celestia get out of bed. "Indeed, Tia. That the Nightmare has such a different nature than we have been lead to believe, that it has a sister... it confuses me. I do not know what to do. Do we go ourselves to see?"

Celestia, levitating her royal trappings over, shook her head. "No, I don't think that would be a good idea; what if we fuse with them, like last time?"

"We'll need to figure out just how Nightmare Moon came here in the first place," Luna said. "If it's true, then I believe she arrived sometime after we banished Sombra into the ice. Tia, do you think that his time-lock spell on what remained of the Empire had any... side effects?"

"Maybe," Celestia pondered. "Though we've never been able to figure out the dark spell he used to do so, so we can't exactly look at the formula."

"Either way," Luna said. "We should probably discuss this over dinner." Breakfast. "Come, let us be off!" Luna's horn lit up dark blue, and a teleportation matrix engulfed Celestia and the letter.

She hardly even blinked when the teleport tugged her through the space between spaces, landing her in her seat. The letter remained in her telekinesis. In addition to that, she took her fork in her magic and began to eat the already-prepared plate of pasta, while Luna dove into a stack of moon-pies. Dessert for dinner... Celestia had no ground on which to argue against that, so she let Lulu be and continued to eat, rereading the letter over and over.

Twilight had apparently met this 'Solar Flare' and her supposed sister Nightmare Moon. While she knew Twilight was smart enough to look past deceptions, she was worried she would not even think to do so and believe Solar Flare out of hoof. Unless of course what was in the letter was indeed the truth, which came with a whole host of other problems. Technically speaking, if Nightmare Moon was really a queen of another nation, then she had assaulted a whole host of other nations without declaration of war, and Celestia had imprisoned a foreign ruler without due process for generations.

It was a whole mess of a situation, so Celestia resolved to ignore it and eat until she could better organize her thoughts.

They continued to 'feast' for a while, occasionally taking a sip of their orange juice to wash it down. Celestia set the letter down, contemplating whether or not she should - or even could - send a message in return. Twilight's 'I'm okay' pulse had arrived yesterday at night, so she was confident Twilight was fine, especially if the letter spoke true. Anything more than that was paranoia. But she dearly wanted to send a letter. Let her know they got her messages. Maybe if she -

FLASH!

With a burst of white light Discord appeared standing on top of the table, rotating on an invisible pedestal. "WOOOO!" he shouted, holding a crate of what looked like bottles of watermelon juice under his lion arm, holding up a glass made of snowflake obsidian in his griffon talons. "Woooo!" he shouted again, continuing to spin, a sombrero on his head and glasses over his asymmetrical eyes. "Woo... woo," he said tiredly, stopping his spinning to face them.

Discord let go of his glass - it remained floating - and brought his talons to push down the glasses. "Hey there Sunbutt!" Leaving his case, glass and hat to continue floating in mid air, Discord slid over to Celestia's side and crossed his lizard and donkey leg, much too close for comfort. "You too, Woona." Luna growled at her nickname. "So, what's going on over here?"

"Why don't you tell us, Discord?" Celestia asked coldly, still hurt over having her cake mysteriously turned into a cake-shaped piece of plastic a couple days back. "You're usually not over here so early in the morning." Speaking of which, Celestia lit up her horn with magic, as did, Luna, and the night cycled to day.

"You're right, I'm not!" he said, flapping higher above them. "You see, I was just in the neighborhood of Ponyville, and a little birdy told me that everyone's favorite Sparklebutt came here for something important-y, and that little birdy maaay have been oh-so worried about her, so naturally being the good friend that I am I came to ask."

"A little birdy?" Luna asked with a raised brow, before turning to Celestia. "Tia, is this one of those modern phrases I've yet to hear?"

"Possibly," Celestia said.

Discord, having reached the ceiling, let himself fall down, sinking into the fabric of the table and reforming as a moving pattern on it. The fabric's weave gave him a stranger than normal look. "So, tell me, where is the purple little thing? Researching the growing patterns of corn? Pouring over tome upon tome of how snowflakes are made?" Discord laid down facing Celestia, as if the cloth was a three dimensional plane, resting his chin in his paw.

Celestia frowned. She could tell Discord the truth and hope he'd leave it at that, or she could lie and hope he believed her - she really didn't like to lie, even when she had to - or she could just remain quiet and he'd find out anyways.

An idea occurred to her; maybe Discord finding out wouldn't be that bad. But before Celestia could open her mouth, Luna apparently had the same idea and beat her to the punch. "Twilight's investigating Nightmare Moon," she said. "I found a strand of magic in my moon link leading presumably to her world, and Twilight Sparkle volunteered to go through as reconnaissance. Since then, she's sent a letter that... undermines a lot of my beliefs about Nightmare." She levitated the letter over to Discord's image, to which he stuck his paw 'out' of the cloth, grabbed the paper, and pulled it 'in'.

Discord's eyes scanned over it a few times, then he tossed the paper back 'out', where it landed and folded itself into an origami Fluttershy. "So, the little lavender zap-zap's gone universe hopping?" He reclined back in a seat in the fabric, nodding sagely. "I've taught her well."

"You can travel between universes?" Celestia asked, intrigued. Had he always known about the real nature of Nightmare Moon?

He scoffed and snapped a talon; his snowflake obsidian glass stopped floating and fell down, into the table, where Discord grabbed it and drank the entire thing like water. "I can, but it's not much fun. Most of the universes out there, pah! Boooring! Either gravity's set too high, or electrons are too light, or antimatter and matter annihilated perfectly in the beginning. Nothing out there! I like it here, home's nice." He nodded sagely, then rubbed his chin. Slowly, like an ice sculpture melting in reverse, he began to rise out of the table. "Hmm, if Woona here's got a link to one that's got life in it, I might just have to go take a look! Fluttershy's worried about Twilight, too... I could knock out two stones with one bird!"

He finished rising pressing his horns back into the sombrero, and Celestia nodded. "If you could go check on Twilight and let her know we've been getting her letters, I would really appreciate that Discord."

Suddenly wearing an unfamiliar military uniform - the sombrero was gone - Discord saluted. "Aye aye, ma'am!" He leaned over to Luna and tapped her horn, grabbed the tip with a talon and then pulled out a thin black string. "So long and thanks for all the fish!" he shouted, before the string pulled back into Luna's horn, Discord shrinking and going with it, before vanishing.

Luna blinked and raised a hoof to tap her own horn a few times, as if afraid that Discord was going to spontaneously pop out of it.

"Well," Celestia said. "Now that that's somewhat taken care of, why don't we finish up here?" She eyed the crate of juice bottles Discord had left floating in mid air, and shrugged. Taking it in her telekinesis - which somehow destroyed its natural levitation - and lowering it, Celestia opened up one of the bottles.

Though the juice was pink, it tasted like honey.

***-_***_-***-_***_-***-_***_-***

Twilight Sparkle

It was weird to go to bed at high noon, fall asleep at high noon, and then wake up at high noon. A calendar hanging on the walls informed her that it was October, which was weird because back home it was March. Twilight assumed that was another thing starting long ago; Solar and Nightmare's world had probably experienced Discord's reign for a different length of time than back home, so when the calendars reasserted themselves there'd be deviation.

Today, the two Queens were going to 'announce' her existence to Everfree and, by extension, the rest of the planet. Twilight felt like she was going to throw up just thinking about it.

The maid from before, Plush Pillow, has brought her breakfast and a letter from Queen Solar Flare. While Twilight ate the eggs and hay bacon, she read it over. It summarized how the revealing of her and her home Equestria would proceed: Nightmare Moon and Solar Flare would call a large portion of Everfree's population to right outside the castle and go give a speech summarizing her situation.

Then she would be escorted there, greet them, speak a little about why she'd come and how much she hoped that they could be friends - Twilight found it slightly odd that the queens would suggest that to her - and then answer some questions, before being led back inside by Solar Flare while Nightmare Moon went incognito to see what everypony thought.

She couldn't stall; there wasn't enough time to stall. She finished up her breakfast and put it on a table for the servants to take care of, put on her saddlebags, then stepped outside of her room. The two Coronal Guards there looked her way with almost mechanical precision, and the one on her right spoke up. "Princess Twilight, follow us to the ceremony."

She dipped her head. "Of course, thank you." Before she knew it, Twilight was being led through Everfree Castle, following the two guardponies as they took turn after turn. Before long she was in a hallway outside the main castle, elevated above the city proper, trotting towards the balcony on the end of it.

Alright, calling it a hallway was a bit much. It was open air, and the walls barely went up past her withers. Ahead of her - way ahead - she could see the balcony, and the contrasting orange and black spots of Solar Flare and Nightmare Moon, who took turns booming words to the crowd in the 'Royal Everfree Voice' that Twilight still wasn't able to make heads or tails of.

She swallowed nervously as the guards continued to lead her forward. What would this be like? From what she'd seen, the ponies of this Equestria really weren't that different from back home; Solar Flare and Nightmare Moon seemed to be the main difference.

She was closer now. She could hear Solar Flare speaking. "So now, I present the stage to Princess Twilight Sparkle of the other Equestria, to address any concerns you may have."

Twilight took a deep breath to steady herself and stepped forward. Solar Flare moved to her left, and Nightmare Moon was to her right. She walked forward until she was right in between them, and looked out at the sea of multicolored bodies. There were a few ponies holding notepads and pencils, scribbling furiously.

"Hello, everypony," she said, pulling her words more or less right out of her flank. "It is great to be here. I'm going to speak candidly; when I first came to your country, your world, I expected it to be a dark realm of fear, mist, and demons." She gave a smile. "I've been happily surprised." A few laughs in the crowd, and Twilight had to remind her that they were laughing with her, not at her. "Equestria - the one I come from, that is - prides itself on friendship and harmony, and I hope that before long our two nations will be able to see each other as just that. I'm happy to be here, and I extend to you all greetings from my home."

She took a deep breath. "Now, I understand many of you will have questions about this, so I'll be taking some." A smattering of hooves shot up. Twilight looked around. "Um... you, green pegasus mare with the notepad."

"Hot Start, reporting for EFN. Princess Sparkle, we have heard about Princess Celestia and Princess Luna in your nation, but who is the queen?"

She blinked. That sort of question was actually very common in history classes. "We actually don't have a queen; the title of princess is considered the highest authority in accordance with the Platinum Pact. Next question?"

The inquiries began to flow, and Twilight slowly eased up as the answers came to her unbidden. What was her hometown? Easy. How many alicorns were there back home? Not even a challenge, though her answer of four made Nightmare and Solar both cock their brows. Eventually, Solar motioned for Twilight to wrap it up.

"Alright, last question... yes, you! Earth pony in the blue vest."

He didn't give his name, instead the news paper he was working for. "Princess Sparkle, what is your association with the return of Nightmare Moon four years ago?"

"Oh, um, well it's a long story, but long and short my friends and I rediscovered artifacts known as - "

"And we're done here," Solar Flare ordered, stepping forward. "Disperse," she commanded the crowd, and so they dispersed. The two alicorns turned to Twilight, and Solar continued. "We're done here," she repeated.

Nightmare Moon nodded. "I'll go undercover, see what they're talking about her. Oh, before I forget, Solar. Our friend won't be able to make it with the other nations' ambassadors, and she won't be sending a representative, but she'll be coming herself a few days later."

"Oh, excellent!" Solar Flare said happily. Then Nightmare's horn lit up and, with a soundless burst of purple light, she vanished.

"Undercover?" she asked. And who was their 'friend'?

Solar nodded. "Indeed. Follow me, Twilight." Solar Flare trotted at a brisk pace back into the castle, forcing Twilight to nearly gallop in order to keep up with her. "Try not to reveal any information about the Elements," she explained once they were back inside, no guards with them. "I'd like to keep knowledge of them out of the public's mind."

"Why?" she asked. "I mean, only me and my friends can use the Elements of Harmony, and we don't have them anymore so - "

Solar Flare stopped abruptly. "What do you mean you don't have them anymore?" she asked, looking down at Twilight curiously.

"Well, we had to give them up to the Tree of Harmony - their origin as far as we can tell - to stop a... mostly natural disaster.

Solar looked off into the distance, humming. "Interesting," the queen mused. She shook her head and began to walk again, though slow enough that Twilight could keep up without too much diffic -

The flash of light before them was as sudden as it was unexpected. Before Twilight could quite piece it together, Discord was there, his face next to hers. "Hey there, Purplesmart! Been looking for you; Flutters is really worried and - " He seemed to notice Solar Flare, because his eyes widened and he pulled back, standing on two legs. "Whoa! Fire!"

Discord pulled his arms back and a bucket filled with water materialized in them. He threw his arms forward and a surprising amount of water flew out from the bucket, soaking Solar from head to tail and turning her orange fur dark. Much to Twilight's surprise, her fiery mane and tail actually went out, the individual fire streams coalescing into long strands of white hair, hanging down limply under the weight of the water while Solar Flare gasped and sputtered in surprise, dripping wet.

Discord nodded to himself sagely. "Well, that takes care of that! So Twily, how are you, how's the alternate universe life been treating you?"

Twilight smiled slightly. Despite their past... misgivings, she was making a dedicated effort to see Discord as a friend, and she knew that he was doing the same, in his own way. "It's okay. Discord, what are you doing here?"

"Well Fluttershy was worried about you, so I went to ol' Sunbutt and Woona, asked them about the whosewhatsit, and here I am!" he said, floating in the air and throwing his arms to the side. "Gotta say, I'm loving the - "

Solar Flare growled and, with a flash of magic, dried her coat. Her painfully white mane and tail lifted themselves, smoked, and then burst into flames once more. Her horn lit up, the orange glow brightening until it was painful to look at. "Demon!" she shrieked, fixing Discord with a death glare. Then the solar alicorn fired a narrow beam of blue fire at Discord's chest, which he twisted away from, leaving it to melt a hole in the wall.

"Whoa there!" he said. He dodged another fire blast. "Easy there, hot stuff!" Solar Flare shot a duo of fireballs with a thread of flame between them. They wrapped around Discord and pinned his arms to his sides. "Ooh, ow, that's actually kinda hot." The fireballs turned into hayballs and the thread into pasta, which Discord easily freed himself from... in time to be nailed in the head with a ray of magic. "Hey now!" he shouted, snapping his paw and erecting a transparent barrier around himself. "Enough of that, that stuff actually hurts!"

"Deceiver!" Solar roared, blasting away freely with what looked like a narrow stream of lava. "I thought we were rid of you!"

Twilight, in spite of the rising heat, ran over to Solar Flare's side. "What are you doing?! That's Discord, he's my - " Suddenly she understood what was going on. Alternate universe. Discord was never reformed. Twilight's Discord showing up made Solar Flare think that her Discord had escaped.

Much to Twilight - and Discord's - surprise, orange magic flickered around his barrier and dispelled the construct, forcing him to sink down into the floor as a moving image before the lava could blast him. "What's her problem, Twilight?"

"I don't know!" she said, backing off as the fires of the queen's mane and tail grew. "She must not know you're - "

"RrrrraAAH!" A portal appeared in the air above Discord and a column of solar plasma shot down directly from the sun, vaporizing the given area of the floor and forcing Twilight to put cooling wards around herself right after Discord flash-teleported to a wall. Another portal opened and blasted it, only for Discord - looking rather nervous - to slide away. He snapped his talons and Solar Flare began to shrink... but then an aura of orange magic around her reversed the changes. She responded by tearing out the section of wall housing Discord, him with it, and shattering it to pieces.

Twilight ran up to her as Discord reformed from the pieces, seemingly winded. "Stop it! Stop it!"

She snapped her head over to her, snarling. "Why? Do you know who that is?!"

"Yes! He's the Discord from my world and he's friendly!"

Her magic went out and Solar Flare's fury vanished in a moment. "... friendly?" she whispered, looking over to Discord, then back to Twilight. "He's... friendly?"

"Yes!" Twilight said, moving back to give Solar some personal space. She paused. "Okay, he is now, but you should give him - "

"I think," Solar interrupted. "It'd be best if we related our respective stories with Discord. Begin."

"Alright, so some twenty-five hundred years in the past Discord appeared and took over both Equestria and the world, sending every species back to the stone age with his reign. Celestia and Luna found the Elements of Harmony and used them to petrify him, before becoming the rulers of Equestria. When Celestia used the Elements on, well, your sister, she and Luna lost their bonds to them so recently my friends and I bonded to them instead."

"I see," she said dispassionately.

"And because they were unbound from the Elements, Discord's prison weakened and not long after we took up the Elements of Harmony, he escaped and tried to repeat what he did before. It was really harrowing, but in the end we turned him back into a statue." Relating the tale to somepony else made Twilight remember just what Discord had been like before. Vile, jovially cruel. It made her remember watching her friends being corrupted, the horrible sickening dread that came with having been tainted herself...

"And he's running around freely?!"

"A year or so later," she continued hastily. "Princess Celestia decided to let him out on... on sort of parole to be reformed, to use his powers for the benefit of the country instead. And he did, and he's our friend now." Where was Discord anyway?

She and Solar looked to find Discord off to the taller alicorn's side, reclining in a camping chair made for bipeds. In his talons he held a long stick with marshmallows stuck on the end, roasting them in Solar Flare's mane. Solar gave a wordless shout of anger and stepped away.

Discord flashed away and reappeared next to Twilight, a marshmallow in his lion paw. "Want one?"

Twilight shrugged and took it, inspecting it in her hoof. It was perfectly browned all around. Squishy, but not sticky. She wondered...

Ignoring the way Discord swallowed his stick and marshmallows whole, she leaned in and took a bite. It crunched and she recoiled in surprise at the taste of apples. Inside the marshmallow were what resembled smooth, glass blueberries melted together.

"Reformed," Solar said weakly, looking at the draconequus. "Reformed." She seemed rather pale. "He's aiding your nation?" she breathed. Before either of them could answer, the orange alicorn growled. "Well, that's not at all what happened. We didn't have any Elements of Harmony. Discord appeared just around the time Nightmare and I had become grown mares. We saw what he could do, so for five years we trained and sparred in combat, building up our muscle, magic, and reflexes." Meanwhile, Twilight finished up the marshmallow.

Discord teleported over to Twilight and reclined on a red and green sofa. "Go on," he said, tossing a pawful of blue popcorn into his mouth.

"We confronted him, battled him, and he smacked us down, laughing himself away," Solar Flare said with a sneer. "So we tried harder. For another fifteen years we worked to better ourselves in the havoc he wrought. We came across some of his chaotic constructs and reverse engineered them, so we had some idea of how to dispel his influence." She shivered. "We challenged him a second time, did combat, and after a harrowing day of battle we broke his power," she said with a growing grin. ", and then we killed him."

Discord blinked. "As in... killed him?" he squeaked, his red irises turning into red X-es.

"Oh yes. It was challenging and painful, but we outmaneuvered your counterpart, tired him, and executed him before taking our rightful place as Queens of Equestria."

"Right," Discord said nervously as his eyes changed back, rubbing his talons and paw together. He leaned over to Twilight. "Welp Twilight, the princesses just wanted to let you know they've been getting your letters, are happy you're okay and..." He turned to Solar Flare. "BYE!" He vanished in a flash of white light.

She looked at Solar. "You two didn't... actually kill Discord, did you?" she asked, worried. "I mean, he's Discord! Short of the Elements of Harmony, he just has too much power for anypony to fight against."

"Actually, Discord himself doesn't have that much raw power. It's the nature of his chaos magic that makes him so dangerous; he can do a lot more with a lot less. But that's beside the point; Nighty and I - " Nighty? " - lived in his playground for two decades. Chaos is many predictable events intertwined so as to be unpredictable, but it's not random. We could make ourselves stronger while increasing our knowledge of his tricks, how to counter them," she explained.

"But why murder him? Why not reform him, or petrify him?"

She scoffed. "As if we'd have the means. No, our battle with Discord was too intense to do so, nothing we had short of death could contain him. Especially once he started to take us seriously, and realized we could follow through." She shuddered. "Things got really painful then."

Twilight could scarcely believe what she was hearing. They had... they had murdered Discord! Her throat went dry and her legs shook in nervousness, stepping back from Solar. Twilight could hardly believe it but... it made sense, didn't it? Discord wasn't omnipotent, he'd never have become a statue in the first place if he was. And it was obvious that Solar Flare and Nightmare Moon were very warlike. In a world with no Elements of Harmony to provide an easy fix, how else would they have overthrown Discord, and what influence would that have on their psyches? The horseshoe fit.

"I see. I'm just... just going to go to the history archives before anything else distracts me."

At Solar's nod, she lit up her horn and teleported away, reappearing before the door that led to the historical archives.

Approaching the two Coronal Guards posted there, she levitated the card that 'Nighty' had given to her. They inspected it, then nodded to her wordlessly and let her open the door to enter. They sealed it behind her, and Twilight heard her inner librarian squee in delight. Books. So many books. Organized onto wooden shelves by eternal candlelight. Each of the dozens of shelves covering a certain time range, divided into sections of smaller time ranges, which were organized via author name, with thousands of books total.

Twilight found a series of books under 'Pre-Discord', an unsurprisingly empty shelf. Even back home, the times before Discord had arrived - erasing virtually all historical records in the process - was a time of much speculation, with only folk tales such as Hearth's Warming Eve, or the limited memories of Celestia and Luna, to go by. It wasn't much of a surprise to find that virtually all the books here were the same as back home; evidently, the split had not been Discord. Twilight had a suspicion what it was, but she had to make sure.

Moving further on in the timeline, there were quite a few poems and ballads written about the reign of Discord. Some of them she recognized, such as The Serpent, or The Day that Lasted a Minute. Giving them a read, they were identical to the ones back home, which shouldn't have been eerie but all the same made her coat hairs stand on end.

There were, however, others such as Cosmic and Chaos, and The Two Who Stood, that she did not recognize at all. The latter was a poem, filled with flowery language that, with her talk with Solar Flare, she recognized as describing the two sisters' struggle to overthrow - murder - Discord. The first was an account of the two's rise to power, apparently written after Discord's rule was over. And pouring over it, she soon reached what she was looking for.

Celestia had never made her origins a secret; why would she? She and Luna had been born to two earth pony parents nearly two decades before Discord emerged from wherever draconequi come from, named Tough Heart and Fiery Heart. And apparently, Nightmare and Solar held a similar view about their origins, and their parents were named...

Tough Heart and Fiery Heart.

That went a long way towards confirming things for Twilight. There was a chance that something had occurred beforehoof to make Fiery Heart give birth to Nightmare and Solar instead of Celestia and later Luna, but she couldn't find it. Clearly, the reign of Discord in this alternate Equestria had lasted longer than back home, so less texts had survived; the odds of finding any divergence back before Solar Flare and Nightmare Moon were born was slim to none.

And more likely than not, the birth itself was the divergence. It wouldn't even take that much; conceiving on a different day, or just one sperm as opposed to another reaching the egg. Such a small, tiny, unnoticeable change brought forth by the subtly-unpredictable paths of subatomic magical particles varying from each other, and the change that had built up over twenty five hundred years was staggering.

"Wow," she breathed. Looking at a nearby clock, Twilight was startled to realize she'd been reading for seven hours. It didn't even feel like five.

She... she needed to write a paper! A scientific letter, more than that. Equestria, both Equestrias, both worlds needed to know. She could picture the title already. 'Variations between Different Realities from a Minor Divergence with respect to Time'. And now that she knew where their worlds had split, she could - !

Grrrr.

she could go eat lunch.

But even as she left and bid the stoic Coronal Guards a good day, Twilight's mind was ablaze. Maybe she could meet up with Discord, hear what he thought. Maybe calm him down after Solar Flare had confessed to murdering him once before, a fact that still boggled her mind. Having enough skill to not just challenge Discord in combat, but to defeat him and kill him. It was unreal, it was absurd! But the facts were all there before her.

Remembering Cadance's breathing exercises, Twilight took a minute or two to relax. Good. She was going to go to lunch, then - if her schedule was right - Nightmare Moon was going to show her around Everfree under disguise.

She was looking forward to it.

Author's Note

Remember, I keep the status of the next chapter routinely updated on my profile.

Thanks to trondason for editing.

I do not own MLP, Hasbro does.

A Challenger

Nightmare Moon

They took turns ruling.

When the sun hovered in the sky and cast its searing rays upon the world, Solar Flare ruled from her throne in Everfree while Nightmare Moon went incognito, assuming a disguise and mingling with the populace so as to take the measure of their feelings. After all, while she and her sister made their rule crystal clear, public opinion was important to them. What was a ruler if their subjects weren't satisfied? Even if sometimes they had to make it clear they should've been satisfied with something.

And naturally, during the night, they switched. Nightmare Moon sat on her throne and Solar Flare assumed a mortal form to mingle with the little ponies. And so they swapped, year after year, cycling like night and day.

Nightmare was already in disguise. She had any number of options available to her by sealing off all but one of her types of pony magic. She knew from past experience that Solar Flare preferred to use a unicorn disguise, and while magic and flight were both abilities she enjoyed, Nightmare Moon herself was much inclined to earth pony form; sealing off her earth magic made her feel so weak and frail, as if the slightest gust of wind could knock her over.

And so, Queen Nightmare was currently a regular, uninteresting mare known as Sea Shells, with a mostly aquamarine coloration and the cutie mark of an anemometer, bearing faux-leather saddlebags inscribed with her cutie mark. Nopony ever paid her any mind, and the banks would never investigate the fact that, despite never working a day in her life, Sea Shell would never want for bits. Obviously Sea Shells wasn't a real pony, that would just be too much of a headache. But she served Nightmare well all the same.

It was interesting to hear what was being said about the revelation of another Equestria. Some were chomping at the bit to invade it, and she could surely understand that view when the 'others' had harmed their 'beloved Queen Nightmare'. Mostly, however, the population was indecisive on the issue, with an undertone of interest. The newspapers, with headlines such as 'Queens make contact with alternate Equestria' explained it well. And that was just the first few hours after the fact.

Nightmare Moon made her way towards a dark alley, a rather specific one that had two Coronal Guards and Twilight Sparkle waiting outside of a secret passage that lead from the castle, with several wards erected around it to keep nosy ponies away. It was the same one she and Solar used to sneak out, so seeing Twilight there wasn't a big surprise. She trotted right up to the mare and offered a smile. "Hello, Twilight."

"Um, hello?" she asked. Nightmare dispelled her illusion, rising to her full height in a matter of seconds. Now that her coat was once again black, the scorching sun's rays became rather intense on her hide. Twilight jumped. "O-Oh! Right, I didn't know it was you. So... how are we going to go without getting swamped? I mean, I know you can do that, but for me - "

"I'll make a disguise for you," Nightmare explained. "Which of the races do you prefer?" she asked, lighting up her horn with an aura of darkness.

Twilight took a moment to think it over. "Um, unicorn if you don't mind, I'm more used to it."

She nodded. "Then take a deep breath." Twilight do so, and Nightmare Moon projected her magic at her, finding the magic inside Twilight, sealing away the pegasus and earth pony magic, as well as placing a five-senses illusion to hide her wings, rework her coat colors, change up her mane and cutie mark... there.

Nightmare Moon smiled. "There. You are now a unicorn named Pale Light. Your cutie mark is a sign of your skill in astronomy."

Twilight looked over herself, noting her ghastly white coat, gray mane done up in a ponytail, and her starscape cutie mark. "Huh," she remarked. "Princess Luna can do something similar, but I didn't think you could do it to somepony else."

She shrugged her wings and sank back into her earth pony disguise. "I've had a lot of practice. Come, we are old friends since fillyhood from Harvest Brook, here in Everfree to sight see. I've already been here before, so I'm also leading you around by the fetlock. Guards," she said with a nod in their direction. "you are dismissed."

They saluted. "By your leave," they said in unison. They pulled aside a seemingly random set of bricks to expose a tunnel, trotted in, and then the unicorn among then closed it with his telekinesis.

Twilight turned to Nightmare. "So, what should I call you when you're like this?"

"This persona is known as Sea Shells, but we're old friends, so call me Sea. Got it, Pale?"

She nodded. "Okay. So, what did you want to show me?"

Nightmare considered it. "It's about lunch time, and I know a good restaurant to go to. You'll like it."

'Pale Light' turned a a shade of green. "Oh no, I just got off from lunch, I couldn't possibly go eat."

"Then I'll eat both our meals, I skipped breakfast today anyhow to prepare the press conference," she said evenly. Then, switching to a significantly warmer tone of voice, she said, "Come on Pale! I'm hungry, and I've heard good things about this restaurant over on Golden Street!"

Twilight rolled her eyes, but followed after Nightmare and got into character. "Alright, Sea. Nopony around anyway." They trotted out of the alley and Nightmare, by memory, aligned herself towards We Bake Things, one of her favorite places to get lunch outside of the castle. They passed by the commoners trotting on the streets as they moved further and further out from the castle, its spires looming behind them like some great beast.

"You'll like it," she insisted. "Their toast and salad is to die for. Especially when they bake their croutons in garlic oil... mm!"

"Okay," Twilight said warily. As they trotted through, Nightmare Moon noted that they passed what she had researched to be the residence of Tough Cookie. She'd need to check on him, or at least his identification in the citizen registry, but that could come later. For now, she had a foreign dignitary to entertain.

Pushing through the crowds, the duo soon arrived at We Bake Things, a simple little shop on the outside but warm and comforting on the inside, lined with bricks, unlit fireplaces, and faux-fur rugs. The fireplaces meant that it usually had better business during the chill of her night, but it was quite famous even during the day. They trotted in, and were soon greeted by a rather simple looking unicorn stallion, who gave them a winning smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.

"Hello ladies! What can I get you?"

"A table for two, please," 'Sea Shell' said.

"Of course," the stallion said, taking a moment to smooth out his blue uniform. "Right this way, ladies." He escorted them through the restaurant, and while Nightmare moved gracefully, she saw out of the corner of her eyes that Twilight was somewhat uncoordinated in her new form - it wasn't that different - and had to put visible effort in not colliding with other ponies. Around them, ponies pecked at their meals and made polite conversation with each other. A mare and a stallion gazed longingly into each others' eyes over a slice of dessert. At another table, two ponies just out of colthood sat side by side with what looked like technical schematics in front of them. The entire restaurant was filled with life and energy.

Before long they were brought to a round table made of stained glass arranged in random shapes, colors and sizes. Nightmare sat at one of the table, and Twilight at the one directly across from her. There were already two menus out. "Somepony will be along momentarily to take your orders, ladies. Welcome to We Bake Things, where we bake things."

Nightmare took out her menu and began scanning out, and Twilight did the same. "So, um, Sea, what do you recommend?"

"Well, the tomato soup is really good. They don't just sell baked goods here. Oh, also they roast their salad and even give the croutons once over, gives them a delightful, spicy crunch that is truly to die for."

"Hmm," Twilight said, poring over the menu. "Alright, I think I know what I want."

Spotting a dish that involved hay, Nightmare Moon also knew her order. And so began the tense, silenced-filled wait for somepony to come by and take their order. It was a thestral mare in a red vest with a cute little name tag, the bright colors clashing horribly with her pale grey coat and dark blue mane. She stopped before them and offered a wide smile, the kind Nightmare Moon had come to recognize as signifying that she wasn't faking it; the two of them arriving was genuinely the highlight of her day.

"Hi there!" she piped. "My name's Gloom Shade, and I'll be your waitress for today! Are you two ready to order?" she asked, taking out a notepad and pencil from her mane and holding them, balancing with her wings.

"Yes," Twilight said as she scanned her menu. "I'll have the avocado soup with buttered toast, and just some water to drink." The unicorn folded her menu in her now-white magic.

"Garlic hay with baked carrots, and a glass of Red Soil Wine," Nightmare said.

Gloom Shade jotted those down in her notepad, then stuck both back in her mane and gave them a soft grin that let her fangs poke through. "Thank you, your food will be right out. May I take those?" she asked, motioning towards the menus. Twilight lit up her horn and gave them to the thestral, who tossed them onto her back. "Thank you, enjoy your stay!" she chirped, then turned around and happily cantered away, humming a peppy tune.

Once they were alone, Twilight cleared her throat. "So, did you hear that announcement about another Equestria?"

Suspecting where the other disguised alicorn was going with this, she nodded. "Oh yes, I did. Exciting stuff."

"Huh." Twilight flopped an ear convincingly. "So have what've you heard about it? I want to know what everypony thinks before forming my own opinion."

"Well, a minority wants to invade that other Equestria for daring to foalnap Queen Nightmare. But again, they're the minority, and few are so devoted to them over an event that their great great great great grandparents weren't around to see." Twilight nodded. "Most ponies are curious, like me." She winked. "And of course some of them don't want anything to do with them."

"Hmm, so a pretty good spread. I'm not sure, I'm pretty curious about their history, seeing where it diverges. I've already got a pretty good idea myself, though if I'm right there may be more than one."

"Oh?"

"Yes, I hear rumors that there was a thing the other Equestria used on Discord and Queen Nightmare, and the fact that it isn't in our world may be of note, just as the difference between the queens and their princesses."

"Hmm, perhaps, but we don't exactly have the resources. Anyway, I seem to remember Princess Twilight saying there were four alicorns in her world, counting herself. Can you imagine it, four? That's twice what we have here! Wonder who they are," she said hintingly.

"Huh? Oh!" Twilight looked left, then right. "You wouldn't happen to have any paper, would you? Something to write with?"

"Hmm, let me see." Nightmare reached into her saddlebags and fished around inside. "As a matter of fact..." She pulled out a stack of papers and a pencil. "I do!"

"Perfect." Twilight levitated them over and began writing on it furiously, then passed it back over for Nightmare Moon to read.

Celestia, Luna. Myself, ascended recently, realm still undecided. Cadance, former pegasus, ascended years before me, realm love. Ruler of Crystal Empire along with her husband and my brother, Shining Armor; unicorn.

Cadance then. How curious, the Crystal Empire? She'd heard Luna and Celestia briefly talking about it, back when she was in Luna's head but had not yet taken over, but that it was still a sovereign nation in the other world? Most curious. She'd have to inquire about that later.

It was only a few minutes later that Gloom Shade returned, expertly balancing a plate in her hooves as she flew at low altitude towards them. With clearly practiced ease, the thestral placed their orders on the table and landed. "Alright, there is your soup, water, glass of wine, and your hay. Is there anything else I can get for you two today?"

Twilight shook her head. "No, thank you."

"That will be all," Nightmare said stiffly.

The thestral nodded her head and, with a cheery smile, said, "Alright, just flag me down if you two need anything!" Then she trotted away, oozing cheer with every step.

For the time being, conversation cut out as the disguised queen and princess dug into their meals. The food was, as always, remarkably good. Not quite as good as the food in the castle, but for a restaurant it was quite spectacular. As Nightmare ate, she considered the existence of this 'Cadance'. Was she fully immortal or not? Twilight wasn't, not yet at least. The lack of ethereal mane was proof of that. And ruling the Crystal Empire as a separate nation? Curious. Likely they still possessed that Crystal Heart with all its unknown origins and powers. It wouldn't be too harmful for Nightmare herself, but getting close to it had a fair chance of disrupting her dark magic.

If she ever came close to it. Speaking of which.

"So Pale," she said. The 'unicorn' looked up from her soup with a start. "I recently got myself tangled in some thread, but I somehow didn't notice until you came here and pointed it out," she explained. "I just wonder, did the same happen to you, and how should I go about cutting the yarn?"

Twilight tapped her chin. "Well, Sea, it did happen to me as well, but I did it on purpose with my own yarn, so I could retrace my steps. Don't know about yours though; my friends back home thought you were going to do something with it, but.... "

"I have no intentions," she confirmed. "Though if I were to - "

"Okay this is just too frustrating!" Twilight snapped. Light swirled around her horn, then around them. "There, privacy field. So you didn't know about your tether to Luna, and you aren't planning to go back, right? You don't know how to sever it either, though it might be prudent to do so just in case something happens - "

"Relax," she insisted, cutting off the younger pony's tirade. "Let me take a look." Nightmare Moon focused her magic inwards, around the nearly-black purple magic that tethered her to the moon and stars. Sure enough, there was a tiny little line of her magic streaking off into nowhere. So small that, if she hadn't been focused on finding it, Nightmare Moon would never have noticed it at all. She followed it, and a fair distance away her magic simply cut off. Watching it in her mind's eye was quite alarming; she had a connection back to the world where she had lost a thousand years of her life, and Nightmare hadn't even noticed it?!

She took a moment to relax herself. It was inert for the moment, and she doubted that her counterpart would be anymore willing to poke at it than she was.

"Well, there it is," she said. Nightmare took her fork in her right hoof and twirled some hay onto it, before lifting it to her mouth and taking a bite. Delicious, as always.

Twilight gulped down her soup, then took a bite of her toast. She paused, her eyes widening, then devoured the rest of the toast in two large chomps that prompted Nightmare to raise a brow at her. Already had lunch, Nightmare scoffed to herself. The other alicorn chuckled and, using a provided napkin, wiped away the crumbs stuck to her muzzle. "You were right, Nightmare. This is really good." She took a sip of her drink.

She chuckled quietly, gently swirling her glass of wine. "Well of course I was. This is my home, it's fitting to know your home. Now Twilight, tomorrow you will be meeting with the delegates of the surrounding nations. It would perhaps not be harmless for you to inform me of anything important about your home, lest it come as an unpleasant surprise?"

The 'unicorn' tilted her head and hummed. "Oh! This came up after the meeting, but I had to explain to your sister about our version of Discord."

Nightmare Moon's insides did an uncomfortable flip-flop at the mere mention of that vile serpent. "What about him?"

"He's reformed," Twilight explained. "He still gets up to mischief every now and then, but nothing too severe or cruel. Apparently he came to your world to check up on me. I don't know where he is now, but if you see him please don't try to kill him."

She gave her a deadpan look and set her wine down. "Discord. Reformed." Nightmare looked closely at Twilight, searching for any sign of deception. Finding nothing, she leaned back in her seat. "Merciful heavens, you're serious. How did you even do that?"

"Actually, it was my friend Fluttershy who reformed him." Nightmare blinked. "Um, the Element of Kindness." She nodded in understanding, and motioned for Twilight to continue. "She befriended Discord and, without him even noticing it, reformed him to use his chaos magic for the good of Equestria. Recently he came here to check up on me - he gave your sister quite a scare." She shrugged. "I haven't seen him since, but if he teleports next to you please don't hurt him."

She frowned, but nodded. "Very well, I will attempt to exercise restraint." They continued to eat. "So, I was thinking that once we were finished here we could return to the castle. Before she knew of your nature, my sister intended to give you over to me, and I could use somepony to help out with my schedule; there is reason to believe it will become quite chaotic in the coming days and weeks."

Twilight considered this, and nodded. "I'd love to, give me something to be occupied with. And maybe we could discuss your merger with Luna; from the timeline, I suspect that King Sombra had something to do with it, so if we can figure out what dark magic he used - um, I'll explain who he is later - then maybe we can open a stable, um." She stumbled over her words. "A stable gate between our worlds without you and your sister merging with the princesses."

"Hmm, I do have quite the knowledge on dark magic. When we have the time, Twilight, that'd be a great idea." She wasn't quite sure about opening a permanent path between their worlds, given what was on the other one, but if the danger of their alternate selves could be nullified then the other world could offer great benefit. In fact, if their Discord was reformed, and they could ally with him... yes, it was looking like a better idea by the second. Nightmare was looking forward to that.

Soon, they finished their meal and Twilight popped their privacy ward. Nightmare flagged down the waitress, the cheery thestral bouncing over to them. "Hey there, everything okay for you two ponies?"

Twilight nodded. "Oh yes, it's very good. May we, um, pay for the check?"

She nodded vigorously. "Mmm-hmm! Lemme just get that for you!" Gloom Shade bounced away, and then shortly returned with a slip of paper tucked under her left wing. "That'll be twenty seven bits, please."

"Of course." Nightmare leaned over with her head and flipped open her saddlebags. She fished around inside with a hoof, and soon produced the bits and gave them to Gloom. "Here you go."

The thestral snatched them up with a wing and put them into one of her uniform's pockets. "Thank you, you mares enjoy your day." With a nod, she trotted away humming.

Nightmare looked at Twilight. "Okay, Pale. I should probably lead you around Everfree, let you see what it's like, before we go home." The more Twilight liked their country, the more favorable it looked compared to her prior conceptions, then when she inevitably returned to her world - a thought that disquieted Nightmare Moon - then the better a report she would give their counterparts, and the less likely Twilight would be convinced to turn the Elements on them.

Nightmare Moon was in no mood to be struck by the Elements a third time.

They got out of their seats, leaving the plates for the restaurant workers to clean up. They walked out of We Bake Things, and Nightmare began to wonder where to go next. "So Pale Light, where do you want to go next?"

She tilted her head. "Hmm, is there an astronomy center, or something of the like? I'd love to see what sort of star formations Queen Nightmare has come up with in the past."

Nightmare smiled and gave a little dance. Lacking both her horn and wings the balance was a little off, but the impression was still there.

"Of course! It's right this way."

And of course, showing off her skills would only make getting on Twilight's good side all the easier.

***-_***_-***-_***_-***-_***_-***

Tough Cookie

With a long, languid yawn, Tough stretched and rolled over in his bed. It was so soft, so warm and inviting. He didn't want to do anything else. Of course, his younger-by-one-year brother, Anvil Head, had other ideas.

"Rise and shine, wakey wakey!" he boomed in his deep voice. Tough Cookie cracked open an eye to look at the gray, pegasus-shaped annoyance. "Up you get, it's past lunch! You've slept in long enough, bro!"

He groaned and dutifully got to his hooves, drearily blinking the sleep out of his eyes. "How'd you get in?" he slurred. "I locked my house."

Anvil punched him in the fetlock. "That's what you think, Cookie. Besides, what sort of brother would I be if I let you sleep in and miss work? I got your back, bro."

"It's my day off," he deadpanned.

"Yeah yeah." Anvil took to the air and flew behind him, pushing him towards the bathroom with his forelegs. "Now, you go and freshen up while I check on our lunch."

Lunch? Was it that late already? Maybe Anvil had a point in getting him up. With sleep slowly releasing its grip on him, Tough Cookie became increasingly aware of the hole in his stomach that suggested he had slept in big time. He made his way into the bathroom and stared at himself in the mirror. He brought up a hoof and pulled down below his bloodshot blue eyes, then let the skin go. Tough tried to tame and smooth over his bedmane, but the brown fibers simply didn't want to obey him today so he let both his mane and tail settle into the tangles that came with sleeping in.

After getting himself cleaned up, he trotted out into his kitchen. Anvil was acting unusually peppy and helpful; he was cooking? Something was up with his brother. His kitchen was a large room, with shelves stocked with all sorts of oats, bread, hay, cereal and the like, one of those solar-powered microwaves that sat unused in the corner, and several ice boxes with no ice in them. Anvil Head was fluttering around the mahogany table, shifting plates this way and that, two of which had buttered pancakes on it.

Tough Cookie made his way over to the table and took a seat, an action that Anvil soon duplicated. "You never cook," he mentioned. "What's got you in such a mood that you decided to cook?" He took a bite.

"Well, there was a big announcement by the queens earlier. You are gonna want to hear this."

Tough Cookie's hooves stopped, the fork holding a slice of pancake on it inches from his mouth. Great, the queens. The damn tyrants who ruled with a stranglehold over all the land, even those beyond Equestria. "What was it?" He put the pancake slice in his mouth, but it didn't taste as good anymore.

"There's been a first contact made with, and you're not going to believe this, another Equestria. Apparently Nightmare Moon was accidentally abducted to there for her absence, and one of their rulers has come over here. One 'Princess Twilight Sparkle'," he explained, making air quotes with his wings.

His ears perked up. "Really? Another Equestria?" That was... worrisome. Raising public awareness of how wicked the queens were was difficult, especially since they'd had centuries to cement their rule and the loyalty of the masses. He was lucky to have what assistance he did. Tossing in another Equestria, another planet, into the mix was just going to make things even worse. "This is bad."

"Actually, this is great! Apparently, they're ruled by princesses; no title of queen. The princess let slip that they possess powerful magical artifacts before Solar Flare shut her up. You get what I'm saying?"

"These... magical artifacts? They're in the other world aren't they?" He scoffed and put another piece of food in his mouth. "I dout da queensh will efen ophen up a path." He swallowed. "Especially if these artifacts are there."

Anvil wrinkled his snout when Tough spoke with his mouth full. "I don't know. Fast told us he had a little run-in with her in Canterlot; from what he told me, she didn't know about the queens when she came over and might not be their biggest fan. Think about it, the other Equestria's highest rulers are called princesses, not queens." The dark gray pony put a hoof to his chin and began extrapolating, putting his cutie mark - a red dot pointing to a purple dot with an arrow - to good use. "They must be much humbler, then. Probably kinder as a result, they may even sympathize with our cause. If only we could get to them." That was a long shot, but Tough Cookie wasn't the one with a deep-thinking cutie mark.

"You think the queens will open a path," he said. Anvil was always the idea stallion, coming up with plans and such about how to get at the queens. Tough was the one who could get people at least briefly listening to them, and their good friend Fast Track kept the guard from catching up to them. "Well they might, more territory to conquer and trade with I suppose, but will they take the risk?"

"We should hope so," Anvil said. "And if they don't, maybe we can get close to this 'Princess Twilight' and ask more about whatever those artifacts are."

"Alright," he said. "I'll head out now, ask around, see what I can get together." He quickly finished up his breakfast and down the glass of milk his brother had prepared. "What're you doing today?"

"I've got some work to do for the company," Anvil said. "They want to find the rate of pegasi who run into thunderclouds in April, but that's not for an hour anyway."

Tough Cookie nodded and moved away from the table. "Well you have fun with that, I'm gonna take my day off to ask around, see what everypony's heard about this 'other Equestria'. Maybe I'll find a rumor that's true."

"Go for it. You need anything just swing by, I'm always open for you bro."

He nodded. "Gotcha." Tough Cookie left the kitchen and went into his expansive living room designed for three ponies. He picked up his amulet from closet, a green crystal brooch with its central amethyst enchanted by the crystal ponies, a gift to him from Fast Track that would disguise him. Slipping it over his neck, the magic washed over him and changed his cutie mark from a red flag into a simple avocado. His brown coat turned a hideous shade of rotten green, the magic washing down his withers and over his legs, and then he was properly hidden.

"Time to snoop around," he muttered, stepping out of his home into the streets of Everfree. At times it was hard to remain on track, to remember his eventual goal of unseating the queens or at least making them relax their harsh, unforgiving policies. After all, practically the entire planet was under their policy, and who was going to challenge them? What force on the world could hope to challenge two goddesses who could slay the demon of chaos?

And now the answer was clear. No force on their world could.

Author's Note

Damn this chapter took forever.

Thanks to trondason for editing.

I do not own MLP, Hasbro does.

Trust and Wariness

Twilight Sparkle

"In and out," she told herself as she sat on her bed. "In and out. Breathe deeply." She took several more deep breaths, then looked out the window into Everfree City. The sun, predictably, was high in the sky in spite of how it was just after breakfast. Fluffy cumulus clouds and wispy, high altitude cirrus clouds wreathed the sky, tended to by pegasi. Coronal Guards patrolled on both the land and air, waiting for the ambassadors to arrive.

Their arrival had been pushed back due to some weather event that Twilight wasn't adequately informed about, such that it was now her fifth day in the alternate Equestria. In the time since she'd gone on one more sight-seeing trip with Nightmare - the queen rarely went undercover in Everfree, usually going to small towns or places of commerce.

She had also spent a great deal of time in the library with either Solar Flare or Nightmare, discussing dark magic. It was rather unnerving just how much they knew about the subject; Princess Celestia had taught her some, of course, but it was only the basics of how it functioned so she could defend herself from it and extremely basic transformation spells. Their knowledge of dark magic was absolutely terrifying; blood rites, soul binds, demonic conjuration, just to skim the tip of the sinister, corrupting iceberg. Twilight was especially disturbed by how easily their notes and tomes made sense to her, how easy it was to memorize the formulas. She knew objectively that dark magic fell under her role of 'magical special talent' which made it easy to learn, but she still couldn't help but feel that it came too easy to her.

Her fifth day in the other world, and now the other nations would be coming. Nightmare had given her quick run-over of who to expect at the meeting; the Minotaurian Republic, the Zebran Plains, and the - in this world, strangely effective - Dragon High Council. It surprised Twilight to learn that the griffons weren't sending any represtenative and that instead the 'Mohr Empire' was sending a diamond dog. That promised to be an interesting meeting.

"Deep breaths," she told herself. She still had a few hours until they arrived, so she sent an 'I'm okay' pulse down her link to her home-Equestria. In that time there were a lot of things to prepare, "There is nothing to worry about. All you have to do is answer any of their questions truthfully and honestly. Don't worry too much about offending them; I mean, they've lived on this world with the queens all their lives, they've gotta have tough skins." Even though they aren't that bad, especially not Nightmare.

Speaking of which, the door to her chambers glowed. A starry blue mist squeezed itself underneath the door and flowed next to her, swirling around in midair. Twilight looked at it calmly, knowing who was about to step out from it. The fog condensed itself into equine form and took on the shade and solidity of Nightmare Moon, clad in her armor and regalia as she approached her. "Twilight, are you ready?" she asked with a little fanged grin. "The ambassadors will be arriving soon and you need to be there to greet them."

Taking one last breath and letting it out, Twilight nodded perhaps a bit too quickly. "Alright, I'll be right there." She wasn't quite familiar with this Everfree Castle yet, however she did know the way to the throne room where she'd be meeting the representatives of the other nations.

Nightmare tilted her head and frowned. "There's no need to be worried." One of her jet-black wings unfolded, hesitated, then wrapped around Twilight's back. It was surprisingly warm, and the feathers were densely packed. "If you really do hold one of these 'Elements of Harmony' then I know that they'll like you. And besides." Nightmare's voice grew thin. "None of them would dare make trouble in our city. The last ambassador who did..." A wicked, fanged smirk formed on the dark alicorn's face.

That was ominous, but it did something to help calm down Twilight. Nightmare was right, the two queens could easily make sure no trouble was started. She had nothing to worry about. "Um, okay. Thank you."

"Of course, Twilight. Now come, we need to go." Twilight nodded her affirmation and began to clamber off the bed. By the time she got to her hooves, Nightmare had already assumed mist form and vanished from sight.

With a deep breath Twilight got off the bed and opened up the door, walking past the Coronal Guards into the flame-colored halls. A flick of her magic closed the door behind her, and she began to wander through the halls, over carpet and marble, her wings spreading slightly whenever she was startled by somepony coming around a corner, until she reached the Everfree Throne Room.

It was incredibly large. The room was shaped similarly to the crystal that Celestia had used to demonstrate the effects of the Crystal Heart months ago, if it was laid on its side, but blown up to a massive size. The doors were colossal, tall enough to fit a fully grown dragon, and inscribed with two alicorns, their horns touching at the middle where the doors opened. Windows throughout the throne room let the light of the sun stream in, casting brilliant light spots on the marble tile floors. There were surprisingly few Coronal Guards, standing at the perimeter of the room and by the doors.

A carpet rolled up to the thrones from the doors, a wide thing that seemed to be made of shifting, flowing flames trapped under glass that gave them a bubbly appearance. The thrones themselves were on an elevated pedestal, similar to the one back in Canterlot, but there was no water flowing behind it and there were two instead of one. Facing towards them, the one on the left was Solar Flare's and the one on the right was Nightmare Moon's.

By the time Twilight got there both alicorn queens had taken their place on the thrones; Solar Flare on her throne, black at the base, then red, orange and yellow as one's vision went up. Nightmare's throne was as black as her own coat, but seemed to have an insidiously hidden depth, stars twinkling out of the corner of her eyes and vanishing when she went to look, an unseen, unimaginable horror just out of sight behind the black paint, greedily sucking in anything that got too close. Above Nightmare Moon was a window to the sky, and a narrow shaft of magically-amplified sunlight streamed down. It stopped just short of Nightmare's horn, though Twilight assumed that when Nightmare wasn't on her throne the light would wash over her throne and obscure it from vision.

Aside from the guards there was nopony else present, so Twilight moved to the Nightmare-side of the carpet and stopped a few paces from it, backing off the carpet and facing the door to wait for the ambassadors. It was broiling hot, humid and stuffy, making Twilight sweat under her coat. She hoped it would be over soon.

Twilight didn't have to wait long. Within five minutes a unicorn guard fired his pale pink magic at the doors, and they slowly pried themselves open inward. Outside Twilight caught a glimpse of Everfree City, but then her vision was attracted to the zebra stallion trotting in. He reminded her somewhat of Zecora, though his eyes were a similar shade of purple to her own despite being as teardrop shaped as Ponyville's resident shaman/alchemist. His mane was the precise opposite of Zecora's, being short and wide down his neck, impeccably groomed so that not a hair was out of place. His stripes gave the impression of ocean waves cascading down his back, and his cutie mark was a single branch, with leaves hanging from it. The zebra walked up the carpet, the clip-clop of his hooves muted by the carpet. Once he reached the thrones he bowed to the queens. After holding that for a moment he moved to her, then stopped to speak in a flowing, nonrhyming accent.

"Greetings, Princess Twilight Sparkle. I am Chancellor Torelnu of the Zebran Plains. A truest of pleasures to be in your presence." He bowed slightly and picked up her left hoof, laying a kiss on it before pulling away, moving to the side of the carpet across from her and leaving Twilight to her blushes. Torelnu was a... pleasure.

It suddenly dawned on her she had no idea what to expect from anyone. The other nations had twenty five hundred years of divergence, she would have to throw all her expectations out the window and take things as they came.

She didn't have to wait long for the dragon ambassador to arrive. Luckily, instead of a fully grown dragon, it was rather an onyx-scaled drake that flew in. His eyes were completely overtaken by an orange light, indicating that another dragon from far away was controlling him, probably in the interest of size. The dragon council even back home did that whenever meeting with the 'smaller races'. The drake landed easily and smoothly, much better than Twilight could hope to, and folded his large, leathery wings behind himself.

The dragon walked up, his claws clicking lightly even through the rug. Whoever was possessing him stopped before the queens and bowed to Nightmare, then bowed extra long to Solar Flare. The dragon then turned to her and raised a brow.

"Hmm, you are smaller than I expected." She felt smaller, too. The dragon was neck-craningly tall, even for an adolescent. "Princess Twilight, I presume."

Finding her backbone, she stood up straighter. "Yes, and you must be - "

"Counselor Trumble, possessing Volunteer Speck. I hope that this will be a pleasure." He stuck out a claw, and Twilight raised a hoof to shake it. Once that was done, he took a position next to her and they began waiting for the third ambassador out of the four to come.

Standing next to a towering, teenage dragon possessed by a fully grown one didn't do much good for Twilight's self confidence. Even with Spike as a brother, it just made her feel uncomfortably flammable. However, she was representing all of Equestria, so she kept her nerves in check and tried to appear as regal as she could. If only she had her crown. Twilight chanced a glance up at the queen; Solar nodded, and Nightmare gave her a reassuring grin that said you're doing fine.

Twilight assumed that the next ambassador saw her before she saw him, even with Trumble/Speck stepping back to accommodate the parallax his larger size created. The diamond dog stood tall on his hind legs with long, well-cleaned golden fur and a tapered muzzle. One eye was blue and the other was green. Around both wrists were bracelets covered in tiny diamonds and nuggets of gold, and a similar collar around the diamond dog's throat encrusted with amethyst. He carried himself with poise and confidence as he entered the castle, ignoring the pointed looks given to him by the Coronal Guards.

Like the others, the diamond dog bowed to the queens, then approached Twilight. "Ah, you must be the pony that everydog's been riled up about. Princess Twilight Sporkle, was it?" He offered a paw.

"Sparkle, actually," she corrected, sticking her hoof into the offered paw. He winced in what must've been embarrassment. "And you must be - "

"High Speaker Rifter," he interrupted. "A pleasure to meet you. I and the Mohr Empire look forward to opening relations with your country, Princess Twilight."

"The feeling is mutual," she replied as she shook his paw.

"Yes well," Rifter said, pulling his paw away. "I suppose now we need to wait for our last arrival." The diamond dog moved to stand beside Torelnu, giving the zebra dirty glances.

Twilight for her part was floored. She had just had a civilized conversation with a well groomed, well bathed diamond dog, from a diamond dog empire. She wondered just what sort of influence the queens had on the world. More than likely a stabilizing one. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more it made sense. Conflict in outer regions could spill into their own country, so stabilizing other species was the best way to prevent that. She wasn't entirely sure how they'd go about stabilizing other countries, but...

Soon the last of the day's ambassadors had arrived, one minotaur from the Minotaurian Republic. She'd seen minotaurs before in Celestia's court, bipedal and self-assured and naturally bulked up. Not all of them were as muscled as, say, that traveling show-bull Iron Will she'd heard so much about, but fairly decently so either way.

The approaching minotaur's fur was the brown of fired clay pots, his horns curved backwards slightly, and he wore an elaborate suit that covered most of his broad chest and pants that went over his legs, with a hole to let his tail swish about. He moved jerkily up the carpet and bowed stiffly to both of the queens, then came over to Twilight, crossing his arms and staring down, down at her with narrow yellow eyes.

"Princess Twilight," he mused. "Ruler of the other Equestria."

She nodded and extended a hoof up. "Indeed, and you must be?"

He frowned, but shook her hoof with a tight grip that, were it not for her earth pony durability, would surely have left her sore. "Tightened Grip, your majesty. I hope this will bear fruit." With that remarkably short introduction complete, he moved to stand besides Trumble.

This prompted both queens to stand, Solar Flare opening her mouth first to speak over her crackling fire. "Thank you all for joining me. Now we can enter the next stage of talks, one on one with Twilight so there are only two people combining their interests at any given time."

"Princess Twilight, with my sister. Everyone else, with me," Nightmare said. "I must fully bring you four up to date on the situation."

They all muttered their agreements and followed one of the royal sisters. Twilight caught up to Solar just as she was turning towards a hallway, and settled into a light canter in order to keep up with her legspan. "All in all I think that went fairly well," the taller alicorn said. "Of course, whether it will remain well is still to be seen."

"I hope it does," Twilight admitted. A nervous energy began building in her stomach. She hadn't spent as much time with Solar Flare as with Nightmare, since in the day her schedule was filled to bursting already, so Twilight didn't feel as much at ease around her as with her twin, especially since Solar's mane and tail heated up the summer-esque weather even more when she was near. Solar led her through the Everfree Castle into what looked like a small study, Coronal Guards flanking them all the way, sealing the door behind them.

A pulse of orange magic ensured their privacy as Solar moved to sit on one of the green cushions around the bookshelf-filled room. "Please, sit," she said, motioning towards another at the same time Solar summoned a paper, quill, and inkwell. As Twilight went to sit down, she had to wonder how her fiery tail wasn't setting the pillows ablaze. "Now, first of all tell me; how likely do you think it is to open a stable portal between our worlds? One that anypony could use?"

She shrugged. "Well, it would certainly be tricky, but there's no reason it can't be done. Stable interdimensional portals are a poorly researched subject, but the theory all stands to reason. A week or so, and I'm confident I can get something working. Especially if Discord decides to be helpful for a change."

The queen sneered, baring her fangs. "Yes, Discord. You do have him on a tight leash, don't you?"

"Well, sorta," she said, rubbing a foreleg with the other. "It's less that we have him under control and more 'we've convinced him not to do anything horrible'. But we do have a way to help keep him that way while helping Discord blow off steam; we're renovating April Foals Day so that it's basically Discord's free day to do whatever he wants, provided it's nothing too extreme and he puts everything back once the day is over."

Solar Flare looked more than skeptical at that. "And you can trust him to not betray you? That he won't simply decide to keep it as such? You do not have the Elements of Harmony anymore, after all, and while my sister and I defeated his counterpart we aren't quite as skilled as we were then. Your Discord now knows we can do that, he would take us far more seriously and destroy us while we garnered our reflexes again."

"Oh no, he wouldn't dare disappoint Fluttershy. He's very attached to her."

Solar looked skeptical at that, but relented. "I hold great reservations about giving that serpent even an inch of space to do as he wishes, but... he is not under our custody. You know your version of Discord better than we do. In any case, first we need to decide where a hypothetical portal between our worlds would be placed. Our capital corresponds to the middle of a forest in your world, and your capital of Canterlot is far from ours."

"Well, Ponyville and Harvest Brook are both very close to our capitals, and seem to occupy the same space. Though I'm not sure about opening a transdimensional portal that is essentially the border between two nations in small little towns like that." Even if Ponyville had experienced something of a boom since her ascending to princesshood, it was still a small town, absolutely eclipsed by Canterlot. "Canterlot has the space, but what does it say if our capital has a way to your world but yours doesn't to ours?"

The queen nodded sagely. "What indeed? How about Manehattan? An economic and cultural center for us."

Twilight hummed. "For us, too. Alright, when I go back I'll see about setting up a portal in Manehattan. I'll need schematics though, so placing a portal in a street in my Manehattan doesn't place it in a wall for yours."

"Interesting. As to what we can offer each other, we have very advanced weather manipulation techniques. We need to, to be able to handle the day and night. I'm certain we can show you how to perform them."

"Hmm, maybe, though I don't know if they're even needed for us."

She and Solar Flare began to talk, discussing various resources each kingdom could bring to aid each other, sometimes snacking on biscuits brought by servants of the castle. Not surprisingly, in terms of raw resources both of their countries were more or less the same. It would have been better for them to also be able to discuss with Celestia and Luna, but they were absent, so it fell to her. As her talk with Solar Flare dragged on, Twilight began to wonder what was keeping her in their world. She could probably manage to send herself back with some prep-work, and she still had the way back. Twilight brought it up to Solar Flare, and she nodded.

"There would be no political issue with you returning, however I think it would be in your best interest to remain here. Less risk of teleporting into a wall, less back-and-forth. Concentrate your efforts here. Besides, if you leave then the only other from your world is, ugh, Discord, and I do not look forward to being alone with him."

Twilight rubbed her chin with a hoof. "Hmm, I suppose that makes sense."

Before too long, she'd finished up her conversation with Solar Flare and the two of them had crafted a large paper scroll, filled with all sorts of legal jargon between their two Equestrias. To distinguish, Twilight's home was written as Equestria(P) and theirs was Equestria(Q). She still had to send it back to the other princesses to look at - one out of three was not majority, obviously - but it was fairly well constructed. Though Solar Flare was quite incensed at not being able to talk Twilight into having their weather teams help.

"I'll see if I can get this back to Canterlot Castle," Twilight said when their time ran out. "So... I'm guessing this is where we part ways?"

"For now, at least. I'm certain we'll still see each other." Solar Flare offered a warm smile, which still managed to show off her fangs. "After all, Nightmare's grown quite close to you these past few days."

Twilight shrugged, the room suddenly growing warmer. "I like her company. She's very knowledgeable about magic, too." Suddenly, she sought to change the subject."So um, I'm meeting with Rifter next?"

"Certainly. I'll send him in, Twilight. As the main attraction you get to stay here while everypony else comes to visit you." Solar Flare stood and left the room, leaving Twilight alone for a few minutes with only paper, quill, and ink to keep her company.

It was done. Twilight had officially gone into a parallel dimension, befriended Nightmare Moon and - sort of - her twin sister Solar Flare in an alternate Equestria where the day/night cycle was over seven hundred thirty times longer than back home, and drawn up a rudimentary treatise between them.

That didn't last long, however. Soon enough the diamond dog from before, Rifter, came in. His gait was smooth and confident as he approached and sat down, crossing one long leg over the other. "Why hello there, Princess. How are you this fine morning?"

She snuck a glance at a nearby clock; it was two in the afternoon, then back to him. "Uh, I'm great. Still a little out of my element with the whole other-universe thing, but I'm adjusting. The day and night cycle of this place is throwing me for a loop, though."

"Hmm, interesting." He twitched his left hand and it shimmered lightly with brown energy. Much to Twilight's surprise the diamonds and gold around that hand came off and seemed to transform amethyst, dancing in intricate circles around his hand. She couldn't help but gawk; she'd heard that diamond dogs possessed a modicum of geomancy, but she'd never actually seen it in action before, since the tribes in Equestria didn't make much use of it. Rifter seemed to notice her attention. "What?"

She shook off her confusion. "Oh, sorry. It was just the, um, magic you were using. I've never actually seen it first-hoof before."

He smiled. "Please, if you think this is interesting you should see what my bitchfriend can do. Why's it so fascinating?"

"Oh, well um... before we get into that, would you mind telling me about the Mohr Empire? I'm only into the early six-hundreds with this world's history, so I haven't seen any mention of it yet."

"My kind have not formed such on your world?" he asked with a raised eyebrow.

This was going to be awkward. "Well, back home your people are, well, less than civilized. A multitude of roaming packs, mostly." Twilight's face flushed; it wasn't every day you had to tell a diamond dog that their kind was only known as eternally fighting brutes.

Rifter's muzzle twitched, but he didn't betray much else. "Huh, that's... rather unfortunate. Well, it's neither here nor there," he said, waving it off and putting his gems back on his wrist, their appearance shifting back. "You see, gems do form an integral part of my kind's economy. Very culturally significant, and all that. Also good for our health." Their health? Twilight was - for obvious reasons - familiar with the process dragons used to digest gems and the like, but diamond dogs weren't known to have that process. Perhaps it was something else? Maybe something more related to their immune systems...

"Princess?" he asked, shaking her out of her trance.

"Oh! Sorry, I was elsewhere. Now." She pulled writing utensils over. "Obviously I can't make a decision like allying with a new nation all on my own, majority rule and all that, but the leyline arrangement of Equestria gives rise to a tremendous amount of gemstones. I'm assuming that's the same here?"

Like she had with Solar Flare, the discussion soon devolved into polite negotiations. She and Rifter talked about various things each of their nations could have from each other, the issues with any portal relays, and so on. The novelty of having the discussion with a diamond dog never faded for her. Twilight wasn't a specist, not at all, but back home it was simply a fact that the society diamond dogs had formed... left much to be desired. Within an hour, Rifter and his pleasing demeanor had helped her draw up a trade agreement with the Mohr Empire, though most of it was based on speculation about portals.

He left, and then Torelnu came in. The same process repeated; the zebra was a real gentlecolt, but they already had sufficient trade of runestones from the Zebran Plains back home, they hardly needed more. The draft they drew up for that was more or less neutrality. Trumble, the dragon, was rather indifferent to her, but Twilight got the impression he didn't harbor any actual dislike for her. From conversing with him, Twilight got the impression that the dragons had a loose government in this world as well, where laws were more 'suggestions' that the more respectable dragons followed. Any treatise formed with the Dragon High Council was, by their very nature, tenuous, but preferable to simply ignoring them; dragons tended to hate being ignored. But all in all, things went smoothly and uneventfully, save for some minor culture shocks such as the zebras in this world being more... sensitive to the demonstration of unicorn magic.

The minotaur, Tightened Grip, however... things got interesting with him.

The towering bull stormed in and slammed the door behind him, towering over Twilight imposingly. She sprung to her hooves and met his glower. "What is your game?" he snarled. "Another Equestria? Another diarchy? What do you want with us? Why are you here? What do you want from my people in particular?"

"Huh?" she said, stunned by his sudden, unexpected aggression. "What do you mean?"

"Equestria has kept a stranglehold on the rest of the world for the past fifteen centuries!" he bellowed. "And now your world comes along, with your Equestria in it. Even if you don't practice quite the same international policy as this one, the tales of this 'Celestia' and 'Luna' are telling enough that your country holds much sway."

"Well, Equestria is considered the world's predominant superpower," she said. "Why is this cause for concern?"

"Your leaders move the sun and the moon with their magic, keeping the day and night cycle going and thus ensuring the planet survives. You manipulate air currents to keep the planet from getting too hot or too cold." They... what? Did he think the days and nights were a year each back home? "Tell me, do you know why Saddle Arabia has not sent any representatives here?"

"Um, no?"

"Because they want nothing to do with Equestria. They don't want to even risk upsetting the queens, and they know that, so they stay as far away from their politics as they can." At her horrified look, he backed off. "You don't know," he whispered. Grip shook his head. "No, of course not. How would you?"

"Don't know what?"

"When the queens first took power, so many years ago, they couldn't decide on eternal night or eternal day," he explained. "This resulted in - "

"The Alicorn War," Twilight recited. "I read about that. The civil war lasted four years before the queens put aside their differences and came up with the cosmic cycle used to this day."

Tightened Grip nodded. "So you know about that. Well, afterwards the queens consolidated their power and became very isolationist, building up their wisdom and Equestria's infrastructure after the Reign of Chaos and the Alicorn War. They annexed the Crystal Empire and put the Crystal Heart to good use. The peace lasted until about fifteen hundred years ago when the griffons decided to invade from up north, deciding to put the queens' warrior culture to the test."

"Oh," she said weakly. Something similar had happened back home as well, around fifteen hundred years ago as well, but that was more of a series of interlocking treaties blowing up than anything malicious. "I'm guessing it didn't go well?"

Tightened Grip's face grew stern. "The Queens smashed them. The actual conflict was even for a while, but once Equestria got an inch they took a mile and crushed them; Nightmare Moon rained meteors on their capitals and Solar Flare personally threw the emperor into orbit. And then they folded the griffon empire into Equestria, so the griffons haven't had independence for centuries."

Her jaw opened slightly. "They... did?" Now that she thought about it, it was odd that the griffons had sent no representative. But if they were already a part of Equestria, likely keeping to the northern reaches if they were anything like the griffons back home...

"Yes, and after that they wanted to make sure nothing would ever invade them again, so they extended what looked like peace offerings. Pegasus teams to better regulate the weather? They weren't fool enough to decline." He scowled. "Of course, over the years the queens made it more and more important. Necessary to keep away deadly storms and droughts. So today they have world-wide influence, and hardly anybody can say no to them for fear of them simply not helping anymore."

"Can't they set up their own weather defenses?" Twilight asked. A chill went down her spine: Solar Flare had offered to send pegasi to her world to help with the weather. She'd tried to do the same thing to them, to make them dependent on their country lest they be torn apart by rampant hurricanes and snowstorms. She'd have to talk to her about that later. Maybe to Nightmare instead, she was much more at ease around the black alicorn than the orange one.

He crossed his arms and raised a brow. "And anger the queens? As if. So you must understand, with the sort of stranglehold Equestria has on nearly every other nation on the planet. Having a second Equestria coming into the game, that has the potential to upset a lot of the established order. No matter how stifling it may be."

"The Equestrian Triarchy does not perform such practices," she said resolutely. "Nor would Celestia and Luna ever break the cycle of the night and day."

Tightened Grip grunted. "We'll see. Now, to speak of something else, the Minotaurian Republic's most recent invention is a denser form of gunpowder that..."

The day stretched on and on.

***-_***_-***-_***_-***-_***_-***

Once all was said and done, Twilight left the conference room to go meet with Nightmare, regarding what the minotaur had taught her. Her head buzzed lightly with what he'd said. The alicorn twins supposedly kept a hold on the rest of the planet by way of having extended an 'olive branch' years ago, and then they turned it into plundervines. And Solar Flare had apparently sought to do the same to them, to make the princesses forever dependent on their decisions, unable to tell them 'no'. She had to get to the bottom of it... carefully.

She was starting to get an idea of the castle's layout, so it wasn't all that hard to reach the room Nightmare Moon had gone with the other ambassadors while Twilight spoke one on one. The Coronal Guards didn't give her any trouble, but they did track her with their eyes, like gargoyles ready to pounce.

The room was comfortingly large and had many cushioned seats all around. A breeze blew in through the windows, working to counteract the scorching temperature. A few trays with various pastries sat to the side, gaps in the rows of food showing what had been taken.

Nightmare Moon herself sat on an especially large cushion, a stack of papers before her suspended in her dark violet aura. She looked out from behind them with a neutral expression, but when Twilight closed the door the taller alicorn's face lit up. "Ah, Twilight! It's good to see you, I assume everything's done for today?"

"Um, yes." She glanced at a clock out of the corner of her eye; seven at night?! But the sun was... oh. Right. "By the way, have you checked your tether to Luna?"

Nightmare Moon nodded, suddenly tense. "I have. Can't believe I didn't notice it until now. I've quarantined my end of the link for until a more permanent solution can be devised." She raised a brow, and the draconic pupils flexed slightly. "But I'm guessing that's not what you wanted to talk to me about?"

"No. I want to know, and don't take this the wrong way, what's this about your sister offering us weather services?"

She frowned. "Oh. So you figured out our angle?" Twilight nodded. "Well what about it? Twilight... Twilight." Nightmare set the papers aside and moved closer to Twilight, raising a foreleg and draping it over her withers. "However much I trust you, neither I nor my sister trust Celestia and Luna as far as a foal could throw them. Especially since they have Discord on their side."

"But I told you about them, didn't I? They wouldn't intentionally do anything like this first."

"What am I, Twilight?"

"An alicorn?" she asked, looking up at Nightmare.

She shook her head. "No, that's not what I mean. What position do I have?"

Ah, so that's where this is going, she thought. "You're a ruler."

"Exactly. And as a ruler I have to take into account potential threats and resources. Whether or not Celestia and Luna would willingly cause us harm is irrelevant. They have access to the Elements, and even if they are gone for now they may get them back. Even if they do not wish us harm now, they may in the future, and since we're immortal that's a very long time to plan for. We can't force your country to do anything as it is now, Twilight. We don't want to do so just for the sake of it, either. It's preemptive. I still think you should agree to it, it would be best for us both. Mutualistic symbiosis, after all."

Twilight wanted to protest it, but it made sense. It was ruthless, unharmonic, needless and vicious, but she understood why Solar and Nightmare would want to do that. Their country had to come first, that was paramount.

Still, it was a firm reminder that this was not Celestia and Luna she was talking to. They were conquerors, warrior queens. They moved the sun and moon not only out of duty, but also to remind all other nations who called the shots, making them dependent on their will so they could never rise against. They were proactive, and they on their own protected their country, with no Elements to call on or Discord to use as a last resort. They were mighty in body and will.

"I understand." She didn't pull away from Nightmare's foreleg, but she did stomp a hoof and look up into her eyes. "But I stand by what I said; we don't need your pegasi to help. The shorter days and nights keeps our world's weather relatively stable, so advanced weather-crafting is less needed than it is here."

The corner of Nightmare's mouth bent up in a warm smile. "That is good to hear, I suppose. Now, the ambassadors will be retiring for the day soon. What say you and I go send them off, then we disguise up and go to the Haywaiian observatory? I've been meaning to show you it for some time."

She nodded. "I would like that."

Author's Note

FOR REAL THIS TIME!

Thanks to trondason for editing.

I do not own MLP, Hasbro does.

Light Reflected from the Moon

Nightmare Moon

Once Nightmare finished jotting down the last of the suspects her dreamstalking rounded up, she turned back to the map. Wracking her mind for what she remembered of the other Equestria, both from her brief time there and her friendly conversations with Twilight, Nightmare looked at the map. "She seemed shocked when I mentioned the Crystal Empire," she mused. A pencil moved in her magic to cut off a track of northern Equestria, reducing its landscape. "The griffons also have autonomy," she mused. Nightmare knew she could have simply gone and asked Twilight what their Equestria looked like, the smaller alicorn was quite honest, but she didn't want to bother her. The thought of Twilight made Nightmare grin and momentarily pause her work.

Ah, Twilight. She'd have to make some time to find that alicorn. She enjoyed the mare's company greatly; while she cherished the time with her sister dearly, Solar hadn't changed much in her thousand year absence - none that Nightmare was privy to, anyway - and variety was the spice of life.

It was a shame their plan to control the other Equestria had failed, but that was merely a slight disappointment. There wasn't any real need for them to do so, after all. Worst came to worst, portals could be closed as insurance. Though she would have to talk to her sister about inventing some new chaos magic countermeasures - when and if her sister came back from gorging herself on the Royal Dessert Closet - she was fairly certain they had nothing to fear from this other Equestria, and so long as it stayed that way they would have nothing to fear from them. She owed her savior at least that much.

Nightmare chided herself. It's not healthy to think of Twilight like that, the alicorn reminded herself. Having a savior complex like that for her couldn't be healthy, but she was steadily working past her instinctive adoration. Now, she was mostly just fond of her. Twilight was brilliant, inquisitive, and extremely friendly. She rather reminded her of herself and Sola, back before Discord emerged from nopony-knew-where. She looked forward to spending more time around the little purple princess; she hadn't felt like that about another pony since a thousand and fifty years ago, when -

Oh.

Oh.

Well that made things tricky, didn't it? Nightmare set her pencil down and rubbed her temples with a forehoof. She wouldn't keep this to herself, obviously. Why should she embarrassed about being attracted to such a lovely mare? The problem was, interleader relationships had a tendency to be messy. She'd lived long enough to know that. Still, if things went well, then their relations with the other Equestria would be even more solid, and fallout was less likely to occur. And that was just the political aspect of it, to say nothing of how lovely Twilight was. But...

Nightmare sighed and ruffled her wings. Truth be told, she was nervous. She'd always been more romantically active than her more withdrawn sister, but it had been centuries since she'd last taken a partner. Did she still have it? How should she go about earning Twilight Sparkle's affections? The pony was very scientifically and magically minded, maybe if she gifted her a -

Knock! Knock!

Nightmare Moon's ears flicked in agitation. "Who dares?" she demanded, standing and facing the door, throwing it open.

Her sister's face appeared with a slightly goofy grin. Her helmet was spotless, but her slit pupils were dilated, frosting was smeared across her fur, and the last vestiges of an invisibility charm were slipping off of her coat. "Hello, Nighty," she breathed, letting herself in and closing the door.

Nightmare's scowl lifted into a smile. "Hello, sister. What brings you here?"

Solar trotted over and they shared a nuzzle before pulling apart. "I'm just wondering about you. You've been around Twilight Sparkle a lot, are you sure she's not using you?"

She scoffed. "Please. Their rulers don't think like we do, Sola. And even if she is, I'd spot it a mile away. Actually, speaking of Twilight, I believe I am falling in love with her."

Her sister tilted her head. "Are you sure?" She nodded, prompting Solar Flare to sigh. "Oh no, not again. Sister, are we going to have a repeat of the Chief Heavyback incident?"

Scoffing, she lightly punched her sister's left foreleg. "I managed to keep all out war from happening, didn't I?" Her gaze grew distant. "Besides, Heavyback was so confident, and headstrong, and strong, and oh-so heavy..." She slowly began to drift off.

A series of miniature firecrackers went off in front of her face, wrenching her back to reality. "Focus. What are you planning to do?

"I'm not quite sure. Part of me wants to just, you know, slowly cue her in. Maybe the bat of an eyelash there, a gift there, a sway of my hips here..." Solar looked at her unamused, which prompted Nightmare Moon to sigh and drone, "Buuut I know that that's ineffective, and a roundabout method, and odds are it will just result in a lot of humiliation for the both of us and delaying what I want. I'll go tell her soon, alright?"

The other alicorn nodded and smiled. "Good, good."

"Why are you even taking such an interest in my love life, hmm?" She poked Solar in the chest, right below her torque. "I don't recall doing the same to you."

Solar sighed. "Nightmare I - I just don't, I don't want you to be hurt," she admitted haltingly, her eyes turning downcast and her fangs poking out sorrowfully. "I couldn't bear to lose you again."

Her face screwed up with the remembered pain of a thousand years that she would never get back. Then her face softened and she approached her sister, wrapping her forelegs around her neck. "Solar, please stop with the pouting face. I'll tell her, face to face, alright? None of this sneaking around subtle stuff." Something occurred to her. "Wait a second." She pulled away. "Aren't you supposed to be in the western wing right now? Instead of coming back from dessert?"

Solar Flare's slit pupils shifted left and right. "I may have delegated that to an underling. B-But this isn't about me, it's about you and Twilight. If this is how you feel, I think you should just go to her and say it."

"And if she doesn't return my feelings?" Nightmare asked, her wings fidgeting against her barrel. "There could be some complications, especially with the chaos demon around. I still think I should warm her up to the idea first."

"And if she discovers your intentions before your efforts succeed?" Solar asked. "What then? Please Nighty, just tell her!"

"Okay, okay," she relented. "I'll go right away, does that sound good?"

Solar eyed the paperwork on her desk. "Maybe not right away, if you have anything else to do."

"Well..." She took a look back at her guess as to what the alternate Equestria looked like. "Not really. I suppose I could knock out two birds with one stone. Alright, let me just clean this up. Thanks for the advice, sister."

"Anytime, Nighty." Solar edged closer to the door and lowered her voice to a conspiratory whisper. "And I'm sure you remember, but don't forget to pull on her mane!"

It took a moment for Nightmare to understand what she was implying, and the world suddenly felt several degrees warmer. Her horn lit up with magic, grabbed the first thing she could find - her abacus - and flung it at her cursed sister. Before it could connect, Solar Flare let loose an unhinged little laugh, vanished behind the door, and slammed it shut so the abacus collided with it and clattered to the floor, its beads scrambled.

She growled irately, debating whether or not to go after her sister. "She's probably gone anyway," she grumbled. Nightmare ruffled her wings anxiously, and let out a deep breath. "Okay. I should go over to her now... wait, no, I have a better idea!" she declared.

***-_***_-***-_***_-***-_***_-***

Twilight Sparkle

Twilight's tail swished back and forth as she looked at the pictures, pictures of the sun, taken through a massive telescope, with a solar filter to block out the worst of the light. The Haywaiin observatory had lived up to its reputation, high up in the air to reduce atmospheric distortions. She'd have to see about constructing something similar back home.

She stared at them in awe; the sun was an enormous yellow disk, littered here and there with what appeared to be brown cavities, despite her knowing that they weren't. She had about three pictures of the whole disk, and several others zoomed in on various locations.

"Fascinating." This confirmed a lot of theories about solar magnetic fields in relation to the discrepancy between equatorial and polar rotation. It could mean a lot for the ideas to put low-orbiting magical crystals around the planet, lest the sun's winds damage them. "I'll have to write a paper about this." Outside, Everfree was clad in shades of gray as a vicious thunderstorm rattled the city, rain falling like sunrays and gale winds battering the window against its frame. Every now and then a clap of thunder or flash of lightning nearly made her start.

She shook herself away from her scientific revelry, pulled out a paper and quill from the nearby desks's drawers, and dipped the feather in an inkwell. As much as revolutions in solar science interested her, the queens had just shown their hoof to her regarding what they had intended for Equestria and, presumably, other nations on the world. It was more than a little worrying, so she penned a letter to the other princesses regarding what had happened with the queens, as well as some of the less-important interactions with the other nations that had visited, and finally as her estimated date of return to help coordinate things on their end.

Twilight finished the body of the letter, then went back over it and used an ink-erasure spell to correct a few typos and grammar errors, elaborate on a few details, and shorten parts that were overly wordy, before she was satisfied enough to sign it. "Sincerely... Twilight... Sparkle. There!" Due to the sensitive nature of the letter's contents, she layered a blur enchantment on top of it before folding it into a sealed envelope. "Now I just need to find somepony to take me to Canterlot - "

FLASH!

"Yah!" she screamed, jumping backwards from the nova of light, the chaos magic making her frogs feel like they were taffy for a moment. A miniature Discord - made out of toothpicks - appeared on the desk and did a pirouette. She raised a foreleg to her chest. "Discord!"

"Well hello to you too! I wasn't interrupting anything, was I?"

"Sort of yes, sort of no." One of her ears flopped. "Hey wait, where've you been? You just disappeared after you came here and found me with Solar Flare," she questioned.

"Oh pish posh, I was just taking in the scenery!" He held out a toothpick claw and unfurled a little painted toothpick map of the alternate Equestria and its surrounding lands. "Isn't this place just so wonderful? You've got different islands, apparently the sea ponies changed them up, the Badlands are pretty lively, and don't even get me started on the penguins!" The map rolled up into his claw. "So many things different, and most importantly." His face turned deadly serious, despite being made of toothpicks. "None of those draconequus-killing-capable alicorns around, yeesh."

Twilight smiled wryly. "You know, if I didn't know any better I'd say you were afraid of Solar Flare and Nightmare."

He flicked his talons at her. "Pfft, me? Ha! Oh perish the thought, Princess Sparkle. I just thought some time away from boring old Equestria would be nice before dropping back in to chat with my good pal Twilight."

"Mmhmm, whatever you say. Hey, since you're already here, can I ask you for a favor?" she asked.

The toothpicks seemed to multiply, and a wooden, full-sized Discord leaned over her shoulder. "What ever about?"

She held up the folded envelope. "I need to get this to the princesses, the sooner the better."

Discord transformed into an appropriately-colored mailbox, eyes on top of its door, which functioned as his mouth, flapping open and closed. "What am I, your personal mailbox?" he asked, before changing back into his normal form with a flash of light, a smug grin on his face. "What is so important about it anyway? Personally I can't see why the queens offering to do this is such a big deal! Portals can be closed, if worst comes to worst." He floated up, laying on an invisible bed. "Personally, I'm wondering why you're even bothering with this place. I mean, it's not like you need to contact them any more." He twisted around her, his furry body paradoxically slimy on her coat, like snake scales. "Both worlds were doing fiiine on their own, so now that you know that Nighty's not coming over to invade - " Nighty? she thought incredulously. She had to remember that one. " - what's stopping you from just snipping the tether, heading home, and brushing this whole thing under the rug?" He snapped his claws and her letter was swept under a rug, embroidered with Discord's likeness, that had suddenly appeared on the table.

Twilight raised an eyebrow. "What are you getting at?"

Discord was no longer beside her, but the draconequus in the rug stroked his beard. "Well, I just have to say, for somepony so dedicated to her friends and nation, you sure are spending an awfully large amount of time here."

"I've only been here a few days, and besides, it's always beneficial to make friends," Twilight said. "Nightmare Moon and Solar Flare may have desired to quietly subjugate Equestria, but I'm confident we can make them see there's no reason to rule so harshly."

Discord's sickle-fang stuck up from the rug, like a tent, and his face appeared on it. His fang raised the larger of his two eyebrows. "So you're planning to do to them what you did to me? Hmmm." He slithered up, the rug unraveling as he did, Twilight's envelope in his talons. "Color me intrigued," Discord whispered. "Though I suspect that might not be the only reason you're so reluctant to simply separate your universes like they were prior."

Twilight frowned, confused. "Huh?"

"Oh," he said, waving it away with his lion paw. "Nothing, nothing. I just wonder, what's keeping you here?"

"This is an interesting world," she claimed. "I still haven't caught up on their world history either, I have eleven hundred years to go. Besides, I'm planning to go back in four days to help build the portal." She frowned. "Are you insisting on something else?"

DIscord was suddenly next to her on all fours, claws raised to his chest. "Moi? Why Twilight, I'm insulted that you would insinuate that I have a secondary meaning. You wound me, friend!" She gave him a level look, which prompted him to roll his eyes. "But anyway, let's get this blah blah paperwork out of the way." The envelope folded itself into a paper airplane, which Discord threw at her. Twilight made to grasp it in her magic, but it slipped through her kinetic field, sank into her horn, and vanished without so much as giving her a headache.

"Um... thank you, I guess. It went straight to the princess, right?"

"Pssh, who do you think I am? Straight to her? Come on, Twilight." He stood up. "Now that that's all done I do have to wonder what's keeping you here. Surely you could've gotten those maps of Manehattan far earlier, hmm?"

Her eyes widened. "How did you know about - " Actually she already had them, and had a good place picked out for the portal, but -

"Unless..." he said, backing off into the air with a smirk. "There's not something keeping you from running back home to your little library, but somepony? Hmm?"

An uncomfortable feeling materialized in her stomach and her primary feathers itched ever so slightly. "What are you getting at? Have you been spying on me, Discord?"

Without skipping a beat he, with a straight face, said, "Of course. Why, am I not supposed to?"

"No, you're not. That's an invasion of privacy," she explained through gritted teeth. "Now what's this about somepony keeping me here?"

"Well isn't it obvious?" he asked, coiling up to her with a comically oversized magnifying glass pushed to her face. "Clearly you have your eyes set on a certain eternal-night bringing somepony." He pulled away, both hands clasped to his chest. "Oh, warms my heart."

"Are saying I think of Nightmare Moon in a - "

He reached over and pinched her lips together with two claws. " - romantic manner, of course! Why, anypony could see it! I'm surprised, truly, that you yourself haven't noticed already."

When Discord pulled his paw away, it took Twilight a moment to be able to open her mouth again, like it had been glued shut. "That's ridiculous! I would know if I was romantically interested in anypony, wouldn't I?"

The draconequus's grin rubbed her the wrong way. "I don't know, would you?" he intoned. "Well then, would you mind explaining just how you view our dear dark alicorn?"

She rolled her eyes and stood from the desk to face the chaos deity. "Alright," Twilight sighed. "I'll play along." Celestia knew it'd get her out of this ridiculous situation faster than if she just ignored Discord. "Nightmare's a much better pony than I originally thought she was. She's not genocidal, nor is she completely obsessed with making the night last forever. There's much more to her than met the eye those years ago."

"Go on," Discord urged slyly.

"She's smart, and she knows a lot about magic. A lot of it's dark magic, which is kinda off putting, but she's scientific about the rest of the fields. Ever since I've arrived here she's been nothing but kind to me. The only times she's been at all unpleasant is when she has to remind me that she's a queen of an entire nation, but the pony beneath the title is wonderful to be around. Her wit is sharp enough to cut myself on, Nightmare's incredibly capable and doesn't even need Elements of Harmony to, well, to overcome you. I don't know if Sombra was ever born, or anypony similar to him, but since the Crystal Empire was annexed into their country I imagine they had no trouble with hostile invaders."

Twilight barely noticed the smile spreading on her face. "She's also pretty, she keeps her coat immaculate, and her mane's so wispy near the edges I can barely tell where it ends and the rest of the world begins. Nightmare - " She stopped herself with horrible realization, gave Discord a glare, and rolled her eyes.

Oh, I actually... oh hay. She chuckled nervously. "Okay, so maybe I have a tiny, tiny little crush on, heheh, on Nightmare Moon."

Discord cheered, still floating. "YES! She admits it!"

"So what? I've had crushes before, and they always passed. It happened for Celestia when I was an adolescent, after all, and I grew out of it."

"Ah, but you're all grown up now, aren't you?" Suddenly Discord was in a diaper with a pink sash along his snake-like body, a quiver on his back and a bow in his hands. He shot her with an arrow, the heart-shaped tip sinking harmlessly and painlessly into her cutie mark. "Ah, love. More Candy-Mane's domain than mine obviously, but still! So wonderfully unpredictable." His bow turned into a miniature version of the flower he claimed would cure his 'Blue Flu'. "Will she not return your love?" The flower wilted. "Will she embrace you and you two live happily ever after, la-di-da?" The flower rose to full bloom. "It's perfect for me!" The flower exploded. "What ever will you do with this, newfound realization, hmm?"

"You're making it sound like I'm head over hocks for her, Discord." She pulled the arrow out of her flank, and it vanished without leaving a wound. "It's just a crush, really!" she said irately. "It's nothing. I'll just work around it."

"Oh, please!" He pinched her cheek like she was a foal. "It's just so... so cute, you know?" He flashed a respectful distance away and struck a pose similar to that he'd held as a statue the first time. He'd painted his entire body black. "Oh Twilight, how you have melted my cold heart, and I have come to find love in you, my adorkable defeater and savior!"

A smaller Discord, painted the same color as Twilight's coat, appeared next to him, looking up with big, doe eyes. "Oh Nighty!" Twilight did not sound like that! "After years of having love only for books and friends, I have finally found the pony who can pierce my brainy shell!"

Twilight threw a small book at the two Discords. The smaller one vanished into thin air while the real one opened a hole in his stomach, letting it pass through before reforming and changing his colors back to normal. "Knock it off!" she growled. "It's just a crush. I know just how to figure out what to do with it."

"And what would that be, hmm?" he asked, placing his chin in his paw.

"I need to draw up a chart," she said, her magic grasping several writing utensils. "I need two scenarios, one where I act upon this knowledge and one where I do not, as well as a second category depending on whether or not Nightmare Moon returns my... affection, then - "

Discord flashed away, which prompted a smile from Twilight. Just as planned. But while using her organizational skills to scare Discord away was the main idea, she still could use a chart now that... this had been brought to her attention.

What if she didn't act upon this knowledge, and Nightmare returned her feelings? Nightmare Moon didn't seem like the type of pony to not take action, so it would be likely that the other alicorn would approach Twilight and confess, which would in turn make it easier for Twilight to do so in turn. If she didn't return her affections, and Twilight did nothing... well, she'd either be agonized over it for the rest of her life, or be agonized over it for until she moved on. Neither one was truly preferable.

If she did act on her feelings and Nightmare didn't return it... oh. Well, it wasn't like she'd be destroyed. It was just a little crush, heh. Not too big a deal...

What if she confessed it to Nightmare and the queen felt the same way? At first glance the situation would have everything be okay, but it wasn't that simple. Not only were they both rulers of nations, they were rulers of entirely separate nations, of entirely different universes. Truly a long-range relationship. To say nothing of the political implications, and that compounded with how Nightmare and Solar made it clear that their nation's security had to come first...

Twilight frowned. On the one hoof, going to Nightmare about this had a lot of potential cons. But if things went well then she'd gain a marefriend, for the first time in her life. She hadn't been making things up to Discord when she listed what she thought about Nightmare Moon. Sure in comparison to her list of cons it seemed quite short, but it also contained the nullification of several cons that came with 'not acting'.

Busying herself with her chart, Twilight's mind slowly began to reduce it to numbers, assigning 'importance points' to pros and cons and percent likelihoods, et cetera. Her graphs began to expand, more and more paper flying to the mass, expanding in a mass of sigma and theta, projections and chaotic model formulas...

There was a knock on the door, prompting Twilight to pull away from the massive chart she had created and opened the door with a flick of her magic. "Oh, um, hello Princess Twilight. I mean, um, Twilight," said the pegasus Plush Pillow. "Queen Nightmare wanted me to extend to you an invitation to speak with her in her chambers. She is expecting you."

Nightmare Moon!

With the recent discovery of her sort-of-very-little crush, Twilight's cheeks heated up and her heartrate nearly doubled. "She is?! I mean, she is? I'll be there right away." She hastily rolled up her graphs into a large ball of paper before anypony could notice what was written on them. "Her chambers, right?"

"Um, yes," the poor maid said.

"Great!" she said a little too eagerly. She hopped onto her hooves. "I'll be right over there!" She dashed past Plush Pillow, who followed after her and closed the door. Twilight, just shy of a gallop, soon left her in the dust as she roamed the halls of Everfree Castle. The Coronal Guards gave her little trouble - probably the Queens' orders - as she sped through. When she reached the hallway where the bright flame-colors began to cool and darken, slowly slipping into the purples and blacks of night, she slowed down. The door to Nightmare Moon's room loomed at the end like a great beast, a whirlpool of purple swirling together just next to the image of the alicorn's cutie mark.

She gulped and walked forward. What Discord had said now circled through her mind like an angry hornet's nest, filling her mind with images of her and Nightmare Moon doing couple-things that were welcome and unwelcome at the same time. She raised her hoof to knock, and the door opened of its own accord with a purple aura around its inside.

Nightmare Moon stood in the middle of her room, wearing none of her regalia. The taller alicorn looked down at her with her slit pupils, smiling gently. "Hello Twilight, I wasn't expecting you to arrive quite so soon," she said calmly. "Did you run all the way over here?"

"Heh, well, not all the way. But um, what was it you wanted?"

"I just wanted to talk with you," Nightmare said, closing the door and locking it with a light click. "Alicorn to alicorn."

Okay. Not too bad. Keep it together, Sparkle. "Of course. What do you want to talk about?"

Nightmare opened her mouth, closed it, frowned, and sighed. "So, how is your planning for the portal going?" she asked wearily. "Find a good spot yet?"

Twilight beamed. "Actually, I have!" She lit up her horn and summoned the map of Manehattan to herself with a pop. "I was thinking we could put the portal right next to the Unity Bell, that seems to be one of the shared features our two versions have." She lit up the location on her map with a ping. "I've run the math, and I think I have the correct formula for the portal coordinates down. There needs to be some infrastructure built to support the portal though, about fifteen kilograms of crushed resonating diamonds for each portal to start, and that's not even considering what we need to keep the shielding intact."

"Hmm, we could probably talk about it when I next go out in disguise. Privacy shield and all," Nightmare said.

"Sounds good. If we're going to open up this portal though, I'll need to go back to my Equestria to help coordinate it on the other side."

The older alicorn's face fell. "Oh... you'll be leaving soon."

"Only in four days," she promised. "And after that hopefully the portal will be up and, once the alliance is properly instituted, we'll be able to cross back and forth more or less at will."

"Right," Nightmare said. "Hopefully, if all goes well of course." She shook her head, making her ethereal mane whip around in slow motion. "Twilight Sparkle, I am stalling. There's something else I want to talk with you about, concerning the two of us, that has arisen recently and which I have noticed even more so."

Twilight's heart skipped a beat. Is she talking about... no, there's no way she could have known I have a crush on her, I didn't know until mere hours ago! Then again, Discord said it was obvious, or was that a lie? The only other explanation is if Nightmare feels the same way, but the odds of that - "Really?" she asked, blood rushing to her cheeks as she tried her hardest to keep a level voice. "What is it?"

Nightmare motioned over to her bed with a wing. Wordlessly, Twilight followed and, after a few long moments of hesitation, got onto Nightmare Moon's bed. The cushions where heavenly soft, made of clouds if she had to guess. Nightmare wouldn't even need to pay a pegasus for its upkeep, she could do it herself. It was warm too, unnatural heat stemming from it and soothing her leg muscles as she slowly laid onto it.

Nightmare Moon got on with her and folded her long, long legs beneath her. "My personal gratitude to you aside, Twilight, you are a wonderful mare. You are smart, kind, and beautiful." No way, she thought. There's no way. "So I find myself in the complicated spot of the leader of a nation who has, for the leader of another nation entirely, well, um..." Nightmare Moon was stammering. It would have been adorable had it not been such an odd sight coming from the alicorn.

Nightmare locked eyes with her. "I find myself... attracted to you, Twilight." With that said, the older alicorn looked away nervously.

Her eyes went wide, and it felt like a castle was lifted from her withers. Yup, I was right. "Oh," she whispered. "Well that's... quite the coincidence, actually. Earlier today Discord stopped by and convinced me that I, actually, with you, um... oh Celestia this is embarrassing."

Nightmare Moon looked at her hopefully and grinned. "I think I understand what you mean, Twilight. Do you really?"

Twilight tried to hide under a wing. "Well, a little. You're much nicer than I expected. I, um, yes. I wouldn't mind spending some time with you outside of business."

Nightmare shuffled closer to her on the bed and tentatively held out a wing. When Twilight didn't object, it draped over her like a blanket, warm and dark. She shivered at the sensation, and then Nightmare spoke. "You know, this will come with all sorts of complications. Title changes, ponies argue for country joinings and government changes, suitors, eyes upon us. It's not going to be easy."

Her heart grew heavy at those words, but she swallowed hard and nodded. "I know. I still think we should give this a shot, Nightmare."

"Please, if we're going to be marefriends, then just call me Nighty." She leaned down to nuzzle at Twilight's head. Her heart leaped into her throat, which tightened around it, but she allowed it and gave a nuzzle back. It was nice, and made her head feel tingly. "So, how about tomorrow we go to Harvest Brook for lunch? My treat."

"That sounds nice, Nightm - Nighty." Were those butterflies in her stomach? Oh dear. "It sounds really nice." Definitely a crush. Maybe a little more than that, given how intensely happy she was. Nightmare felt the same way! She did! Had Discord known about that? Twilight wouldn't put it past him. If so, he was getting a present...

They exchanged several more pleasantries before Twilight remembered that she did have a portal network to be working on. "Oh, I should go back, I have a lot to do."

Nightmare sighed, exposing her long fangs. "Yes, the life of a ruler is never dull, is it? Thanks for helping organize my schedule, by the way. There's so much I need to get caught up on..." The wing withdrew from Twilight, and she reluctantly stood from the bed. Both she and 'Nighty' clambered off, and she made for the door. Before she did, she debated with herself, then said to Tartarus with it, cantered over to Nightmare, and gave her one last goodbye nuzzle; emotionally she wasn't feeling up to kissing. It was all happening so fast.

Once it was done they separated, and Twilight Sparkle made her way back to her guest chambers almost in a daze. Nightmare Moon is my marefriend. I have a marefriend! And it's Nightmare Moon! Part of her felt like it was absurd; she was Twilight Sparkle, she had no time for things like romantic love! But that was what she had said about friendship in the past, so she was willing to try. And besides, it feels so good, in a weird kind of way.

She got back to her room and locked the door. Twilight stumbled around, found the ball of her charts, and lifted it in her magic. She set it ablaze with spellfire, watching the reddish-purple fire consume it without consuming air or producing smoke. Once it was mere ashes she condensed the ashes into a ball, and teleported it outside the castle for the storm to whisk around. That done, she looked around, then a wide grin plastered itself onto her face as she began bouncing around. "YYYYYYYYYES! YES! Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes..."

Author's Note

Thanks to trondason for editing.

I do not own MLP, Hasbro does.