We fight for our freedom

Waking up a couple of hours later I was released from the chassis of my Atlas, the Titan looking down at me as I waved it off, yawning a bit as I cracked my back and went back into my Atlas to grab my Kraber, slinging it around my back and pushing myself out I landed softly on the dark marble floor with a weak thud.

My afternoon began with me going on a short patrol around the walls of the castle, just surveying all that I can see and almost as usual from my time watching an IMC Outpost I saw absolutely nothing of interest besides seeing a small flock of red birds flying off into the distance and my Atlas's pet manticore scratching a tree. Getting off the castle walls I ventured around the interior, seeing if I missed anything and for a while I saw some ruined portraits and destroyed carpets there was nothing out of the ordinary besides seeing a bird or two flying through the once thriving castle of ponies.

Heading to the throne room and with a cold chill taking effect I could only shake off the feeling for a while before it came back with a vengeance, my guess is that this particular part of the castle is haunted by some pony or something else that inhabits this planet.

Walking to the thrones I looked at the two again thrones but I went first to the white throne, it seems pretty wide yet short for a throne, I guess ponies don't really need a back for a throne since they sit ramrod straight like humans do, it looks like it has been broken during a fight of sorts. The black throne on the other hand seems to be perfectly intact, not a single crack or blemish or even a cobweb.

'Did someone repair this when I wasn't looking?'

As I inspected the throne I saw something that wasn't there last time I was in this room. At the base of the throne was a small indentation, two small rails just barely visible to the naked eye because of how well it is constructed, looks like this chair is meant to slide in one direction for some reason or another. Going to the other throne to see if it has the same tiny rails at the base of the throne I saw that I was correct, two small rails and putting my discovery into action I shifted over to the dark throne and with a bit of a push the throne moved on the rails and with a soft click I felt the ground slightly shift below me. Moving to the other throne I gave it a push as well and when it too moved and made the same click I heard from the dark one but this time instead of just a simple shake from the pedestal, I got instead the entire top section of the pedestal being split in half and beneath it was a long set of stairs leading to god knows where.

Turning on the lights on my ocular helmet I illuminated the dark stairwell, pulling out my knife and taser I slowly started to make my way down, wondering what exactly could be down there.

With each step down the stairs I saw cobwebs upon cobwebs and melted candles as the stairs descend into the earth, I don't know for how long this thing goes but from the obvious sights of dead candles I can guess for a fairly long way. Continuing down I started to feel at first chilled, as if something down there is generating a great deal of cold and the deeper I go the more cold I feel, soon enough I felt like I was freezing, and after ten minutes of walking down the stairs it was almost like being in deep space without a pressurized suit.

'Jesus...what the hell is causing all this?'

Putting my weapons away I moved my hands onto my arms, trying to rub the warmth back into them, my teeth starting to chatter and rapidly mash against each other and it only kept getting worse as I went down.

Eventually I arrived at the bottom of the stairs and waiting for me there was a large steel door with two torches resting beside it, completely lit and are strangely still burning even though the air down here was a bit stale from being sealed for god knows how long. Near the top middle of the steel door is a set of bars and a sliding metal plate allowing someone fairly tall to see into the room and seeing how ponies are short and would require at least three ponies on top of each other to look into the room I can guess that horses must exist in this world unless these ponies bring with them a ladder or stool to look inside. Looking at the door to see if there is anything out of place and to see if the key for the door is nearby but sadly I wasn't so lucky this time.

Peering through the open section of the door I saw nothing in particular seeing how it is so dark but when my lights kick in because of how dark it is inside I saw something that doesn't make sense.

Laying down in the middle of the room on top of a dark purple cushion large enough to be considered a mattress was a large horse. As my helmet zooms in to x2 magnification more details are shown about this mysterious horse, faint outlines of what looks like a wing, my guess is that those things are pretty large when they are fully extended and as I look at its head I saw that there was a horn on it, now what kind of species of horse is this? A winged unicorn? A horned pegasus? Whatever the hell this horse is I can be certain that it did something bad because the door is locked up tighter than Fort Knox and that around a hoof was white gold chain holding it there.

Looking more at the horse I saw that the mane on its head wasn't even made out of actual hair, it was a floating wisp of bright lights and smoke, a purple cloud and it was moving in a non-existent breeze. As I looked at the horse it shifted on its bed cushion and that was when I saw the gentle curves and soft features on its face and that was when I was able to paint a picture of the face and even the gender, seeing how this horse is a mare, I should have know its gender because of the long ass mane and squishy looking body.

It was during my peeking that the mare woke up from her nap or sleep and seemingly sensing my presence she slowly turned her head to the door and saw from her point of a view a strange icy blue light seeping through and I think this interested the mare, for whatever reason I don't know but it feels like the chill in the air has stopped and instead shifted to a low warmth.

Slowly getting up from the cushion I watched the mare slowly make her way over to the door, slowly zooming out as to not get an eyeful of fur and what lies beneath it, the mare in question was almost at the door but is physically stopped by the chain holding her in place.

Looking at the mare's face I can see that she looks quite lovely...for an alien horned and winged horse that is, her eyes remind me of a cat's being thin and sharp at the ends and that they are turquoise in color, something I thought that would be abnormal but being on an alien planet filled with talking magical ponies...I am leaving that up for debate. For a moment we sort of stared at each other for an indeterminable amount of time but as time went on I watched an ear twitch every once in a while but the ice between us finally breaks when she tries to say something but I hear nothing but silence.

Tilting my head to the side I just look at the mare in question as she keeps talking but with each passing moment and lull of silence between each attempt of conversation I can see that she is getting frustrated that I am not saying anything back to her.

That was when I realized at the little bars where we can see each other there is a little button that was glowing white with power or energy and when I pushed the button I then heard what the mare was trying to say.

"-for all that is holy and sacred, answer me you dog!" wow, even her voice is beautiful even though she just insulted me.

"You know by insulting someone you lose any chance on making a friend or in your case someone to talk to." I said while crossing my arms, even though she couldn't see it I can only hope she knows what I am doing.

In the ensuing silence that followed I watched as the dark purple mare in question stared at me at first with malice but as my words sunk in I watched as she let out an exasperated sigh of defeat before going back to her cushion and laid down with her tail tucked in, the same way a dog would when it knows it did something bad and their owner yelled at them for doing it. I watched as she let out a sigh of defeat for a second time before turning her head up and looked right at me, her ears folded back and I can tell that she is trying to uphold her image of whatever it could be but it seems that being locked up in a prison cell beneath the throne room and being isolated for lord knows how long...I guess I could give her some leeway.

"Can this stranger at least learn the fair maiden's name?" I asked in a kind manner and after a while it seems that the dark horse finally came to her senses and got up off her cushion and came back to the door to talk to me.

"Very well then, my name beast is -" *ahem* I coughed out as I stared down the rude prisoner as she glared at me and let out a snarl before looking me in the eye and in a manner most amusing, tried to speak to me on a similar level "-my name is Nightmare Moon, the true queen of Equestria but you may call me mistress." the mare Nightmare Moon said with a proud smile on her muzzle as I just give her a flat stare of not amused.

"How about I don't call you mistress and I leave you here in your cell to be alone for another indeterminable amount of time, how does that sound?" I said flatly and that made Nightmare Moon growl at me with disdain but after seeing that I was slowly closing the little metal gate that allows us to see each other she gets my point and just lowers her head.

Growling mostly to herself she conceded to my demand to not call her by a submissive title and with that I pulled back on the sliding window allowing me to fully see her again as she can only see a fraction of my ocular helmet.

"Fine...you know for somepony that is making me talk to you like an equal we are by far not even remotely close to being equals. I have been alive throughout the ages while you are nothing more then a mere mortal who can only last through a few seasons."

"And this mortal is the only person you can talk to unless you wish to talk to nothing but shadows and silence." I said back as I snorted ever so slightly, how this horse can just talk so big when she is chained to the floor, stuck in a room all alone and most likely has been abandoned by its previous owners.

As we stare at each other I eventually removed my helmet, letting the mare see my face and also to see that I am currently the only living thing that is willing to talk to her in her current state.

"So I was talking to a bald diamond dog...how quaint. It would seem that Celestia has forgotten all about me then if she allowed your kind to take over this abandoned castle."

"Not a diamond dog for the fourth time and also who is Celestia? Is she your captor or something?" I said as I patted down my body for the small water canister that I had refilled yesterday and when I found it I removed it from the leather holster and uncapped it to take a swig before putting it back.

"Do you live under a rock or something? How do you not know that sun tyrant!" When she just insulted me again for not knowing something that I had no clue about I grabbed the small handle on the cover and started to pull the cover back.

"Wait wait wait!" I stopped as it was just a small sliver of light from the torches poking through the crack leading into Nightmare Moon's prison cell.

I waited patiently for her to speak up and when she did I heard something that I was not expecting a prisoner with the name 'Nightmare Moon' to ever use in their tone or even in their dialogue.

"You...you really know how to force somepony who has already been beaten into submission to be brought down to an all new low to obey your word. I concede I-I do not wish to be alone again...not for another one thousand years..." now when she said 'one thousand years' I thought she was yanking my chain, I mean there is no way she could have been down here for that long, I know that sharks and some other creatures back home can live for almost that long besides trees but this...this is to much to be real.

"A thousand years? I highly doubt you were in this cell for that long or even for that matter alive for that long. Unless you are secretly a tree in disguise for a horse then you are obviously bullshitting me to the highest degree." crossing my arms again I looked through the small window in the cell and that was when I saw something that didn't make sense.

I knew that Nightmare Moon is a mare and that she was chained up inside that room but without my helmet to produce a concentrated beam of light on her body and with nothing but the faded light that is coming off the torches I saw that maybe what she is saying has some merit of truth because parts of her body isn't as solid as the rest of it, in fact I think her entire body is nothing more then an illusion of a real body, like a shadow or even a phantom.

"I see...you might be saying something that might hold a fragment of truth into your long life but I think you are still lying to me in some way."

"I am telling you the truth...whatever you are..." Nightmare Moon said and for a moment I thought I saw a look of sadness adorned on her muzzle, it could be a genuine one or it could be a false one being used to lure me into a false sense of security.

"Human." I said, hoping to clarify that with the apparently false horse, aberration, thing in the room.

"Human...hmm...if you are not swayed with that then I guess I must tell you more about myself before you pass your judgment unto me." Nightmare Moon said as she laid her head down onto the cushion.

Nightmare Moon began to tell me her story, how it all started thousands of years ago, something along the lines of six thousand years that she ruled alongside her side Celestia, who is an alicorn, a combination of all three of the pony races and are significantly taller then the other ponies, and that these two alicorns ruled over the lesser ponies as fair princesses. Apparently the three pony races all hated each others guts to the point where they were all at war with each other, fighting for resources and power, almost just like how us humans still are, and that the two alicorn sisters eventually settled the dispute when the freezing howling winds of a near endless winter nearly wiped out the pony race.

Apparently whenever a race's hatred reaches its apex it creates something called a Windigo, some sort of spirit of hatred and malice that slowly causes the land around it to wither and die in a maelstrom of snow and ice. I was going to call her out on it but I held my tongue cause Nightmare Moon was still talking and that her voice sounds rather lovely for a prison mare.

Anyways as the story went on I heard that before she got here in this cell she and her sister ruled this country in perfect harmony, something I find impossible because of greed, power, money and other motives are always present in society but seeing how she doesn't believe that I am just going to have to take her word for it, and as these two sisters ruled together a being of pure chaos who goes by the name Discord, came literally out of nowhere and overthrew them for what they said was at least two thousand years that is until they found an ancient artifact called the Elements of Harmony and when they were found in an ancient looking tree they then turned around and used them. Apparently whenever the Elements of Harmony are used on a being of evil it seals them away, for Discord it turned his ass into a statue which sounds like a fate worse than death.

After Discord was defeated Nightmare Moon and Celestia helped rebuild their kingdom, instated new laws and created the royal guard to help safeguard their freshly liberated country of ponies and whatever else lives there. Their new capital was this very castle that we are in and it was during that time after Discord's defeat that Nightmare Moon started to fall from grace. Seeing how that she rules the night and pretty much everything falls asleep at that time it felt like to her that her work went unnoticed and unappreciated, something that would drive lesser people mad if that was their sole purpose in life and seeing how that she rules over the night and creates the constellations, which I call bullshit but seeing that her mane is filled with stars and other space-related crap floating in there so I kept my tongue to myself, so when she saw every day for hundreds of years her precious ponies sleeping through her night she eventually hopped onto the path of darkness and fell from grace.

It finally came to a head when she snapped and brought about an eternal night which automatically was a stupid decision which I straight up told her that her plan of an eternal night was doomed from the start unless she had a few things considered. As soon as Nightmare Moon fell into darkness she roused her night guard and those that are loyal to her and led them in a hundred year civil war that started and ended in this very castle. Nightmare Moon later said that when she invaded this castle at the end of the war she knew this assault would be an all-or-nothing attack, something of which she knew was her last chance to defeat Celestia and win the war but sadly she was outplayed by her older sister and was defeated both in combat and by the Elements of Harmony.

When those artifacts was used on Nightmare Moon it didn't turn her into a statue like it did for Discord but it instead banished her straight to the surface of the moon, keeping her there forever...or so it seems.

Apparently Nightmare Moon managed to escape her imprisonment early by waiting for the stars to align just right and to use their combined lunar powers to break from the element's hold on her, something that was not known to any of the ponies at the time, and as soon as she came back she tried to bring the eternal night again but was soon defeated by six mares, all of which I have just recently met but I was not going to tell her that right now.

And here she is now, its been two years since her defeat, nobody came to visit her in all this time and I am her only visitor besides her sister who only visited her just once and that was when she was freshly defeated.

Once her tale came to an end I just looked at her sadly for a while before making a decision that could quite possibly alter the scales of balance for this country and quite possibly the world into uncertain future.

Looking down at the metal door I pushed it to see if it was locked but when the metal hinges squeaked loudly from never being oiled for two years, I felt the door that was in my hands slowly but surely yield to my touch and was slowly pushed open.

Taking off my Kraber and my knife I place the two beside the door and with my helmet off I slowly make my way inside the dark chamber, taking a torch with me for light I ever so quietly and slowly made my way into the prison cell.

Getting a good look inside I found it to be less of a prison cell and to be more of a fancy luxury suite you find in a five-star hotel in Angel City with the exception that there are no electronics in here and that everything is more medieval than modern. The floor was the same dark marble as it was outside of the cell but it has been covered up by thick carpet, there was a fireplace in here as well but the fire has long gone out as there was no spare firewood to be burned, I also saw a bookcase filled to the brim with literature but it seems that none of them as been touched at all.

Staring at me dumbfounded Nightmare Moon simply just laid there as I looked around the room before stopping right in front of her, letting the dark mare in question get a good look at me which for the most part was covered up in plastic-steel and leather armor but I can guess she has seen nothing like me before. Kneeling down in front of Nightmare Moon I reach a hand out and at first she thought I was going to harm her but when my hand came into contact with her mare it felt warm and smooth, even though her mane is made of stars and strange magic it was more akin to running luke warm water.

I watched Nightmare Moon as I started to stroke her mane, something that seems to calm her down as she moved her head into my hand, almost the same a way cat would do when you are petting them, and this girl is doing just that but is humming softly but as I kept petting her I looked at her body more closely and saw that her cutie-mark was a purple cloud with a moon smack dab in the middle of it. It was during my mane petting did Nightmare Moon snap out of her daze and bat my hand away from her head with her hooves.

"Stop that!" Nightmare Moon shouted at me while for the briefest of moments I saw a faint flustered glow on her face.

"Sorry, just wanted to see if that was real and not just an illusion."

"Why of course its real! Its my mane! Why else would be atop my head!" it seems I might have irked her...

"I said I was sorry, sheesh girl you really need to calm down and relax." I said as I cross my legs and my arms, hoping to get my point across, its not like I knew this ahead of time or something.

She crossed her hooves and cutely pouted as she raised her muzzle to me, something almost akin to when children raised their heads to the side trying to act stuck up.

"For a mortal you really seem pretty keen on staying here with me even though it was just for a minute. Most ponies would do anything just to get away from us but you...you actually want to talk to me and hold a conversation instead of trying to form an angry mob."

"Sounds like you are expecting me to pull out a torch, rope and a pitchfork."

"I was expecting my sister to make a visit but seeing how she hasn't and that you are genuinely interested in talking to me I must say that you, human, have peeked my interest to warrant a question."

"And that would be...what exactly?" I said as I leaned back a bit, rocking back and forth ever so slightly.

"Why are you still here?" Nightmare Moon said and at first it almost sounded hostile but I realized that it was more along the line of a question of why I was still here with her when everyone else has left her alone.

"What?" was all I could say, I was slightly stunned by her question.

"Not to sound rude but you are the first pony or human in our case, that have shown genuine care for my situation and that you asked me how this transpired instead of reading it from a book that has been edited to make it look like it was just a simple scrabble for power instead of a war of who would rule the celestial bodies and skies. You actually wanted to know my side of what happened all those centuries ago unlike every other pony that simply accepted Celestia's word just because she said so."

"You, if you would permit me to, call you a friend?" Nightmare Moon said shyly and nervously, I guess I would be her first friend that wasn't coerced or ordered to become one.

Smiling slyly at her I raised my hand and moved it back to her mane and ruffled it up which earned an angry snort and to have my hand knocked away with a wing by the flustered mare.

"You may, if I can play with your mane a bit whenever I come down to talk to you." I said with a smug grin that changed when she threw a brush at me with her mane.

"Fine, but you better brush my mane when you are done, keeping it flowing freely like it is now isn't as easy it looks." she said with an equally smug grin as I can only chuckle under my breath as I got up.

"Alright, but you better check your attitude, you just might scare away your friend if you keep that up." I said with a bit of a snarky tone before exiting the room, closing it behind me but I left the sliding window open as I looked in to see a saddened expression on her face before I slowly made my way back up the stairs.

'Maybe I shouldn't have said that...she has been through enough as is...maybe I should try to find those ponies I spoke to earlier to get more information on this...hopefully Nightmare Moon will be alright while I am gone.'

Once I was outside of the hidden passage the two thrones moved by themselves and closed behind me, my Atlas waiting patiently as she looked down from above and with a tap on a leg she opened up and I climbed in before closing my eyes for a nap but this time that cold chill that I had received has been replaced with a slow spreading warmth, I don't know what this is but it is a welcome change of the constant chills.

'I got jealous of my sister because everypony in our kingdom praised her for raising the sun. Nopony ever praised our night, no matter how hard we try to make it appealing to them, even when we defend them as they sleep and even in their dreams to purge their nightmares they still fear us...I just don't understand why they fear us so.'

'I don't fear you Nightmare Moon...I only fear what would happen if this world ever comes across the IMC...'

My mind started to wander as I started to fall asleep again, for the most part I didn't have much to do since I am living here all alone with nothing to do or orders to follow, I just might go crazy if I can't find something to occupy my time.

'A friend...you are my first friend I ever had...even before I became a ruler of Equestria...thank you...my first friend.'