Fallout Equestria: Duty

Fallout Equestria: Duty

Chapter 10

Dreams of the past part 2

“Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my ARRRGHH!”

I was still not completely comfortable with the suit of armor Princess Luna had provided me with, as I trotted towards the Everfree forest next to the ruler of the night. There was also a lot I had to to digest, for Princess Luna had told me what had happened to me, and that this armor was helping me to control myself. As if that wasn't enough, my formerly pristine white coat was now a light shade of blue, which had shocked me the most at first...

“So... your high.. ehm Luna... What are we doing here? The forest isn't safe.”, I said a little uncomfortably. When I had been younger, I had once been on a field trip to Ponyville, and had wandered off into the forest on a dare. Had it not been for a very nice Zebra mare who lived there, I might never have come out of it alive...

“There are thing you must know Frostmane. Things that nopony other than my sister and I know about, and that you shall never speak to anypony.”, Luna replied sternly, looking down at me.

“But... if it's that much of a secret, why tell me about it?”, I asked, feeling suddenly uncomfortable. The Princess had asked me to act casual around her, but the look she was giving me at that moment made me think that, if my tongue ever slipped about whatever she was about to show me, I would regret it deeply.

We were already a good way into the forest before the Princess finally answered my question, and even then her thoughts seemed to be occupied by something else entirely. Her expression was one of nostalgia, almost as if she didn't see the creepy forest all around us, but something she was very fond of, and hadn't seen in a long while.

“You may still be a Unicorn, but part of you is also an Alicorn now. All tests have shown that, despicable as the experiment conducted on you was, it was a complete success. Your magical ability has improved greatly, and so has your healing, which in turn lengthens your life span. But the scientists were foalish... What they used to make you so, was genetic material from myself when I was much younger. Since you killed all of them however, I have yet to determine where they got it from. Such an incident shall never happen again. You are part me now, and that means that you have to face the same hardships when I was younger...”, Luna explained, looking around with a fond smile on her face.

“I still don't...”

“Don't you feel it? This place is full of my own power. Everfree once was a bustling city, filled with very skilled Unicorn magi, and the capital of the first Unicorn settlers that came to this land to escape the Windigos. It is also the place my dear sister and I were... made.”

I came to a stop at that, unable to close my muzzle for a few seconds. Luna stopped when she noticed I wasn't at her side anymore. She chuckled sadly as she continued speaking.

“Yes, you heard me correctly my friend... I was made, not born. Now come, we are are almost there.”, the Lunar Princess said, as she trotted ahead of me. We stayed silent for the rest of the way, but I noticed something odd. Luna was right. I could feel the forest all around me, like an old friend who I hadn't seen in years, and couldn't quite remember the name of. The other odd thing was, that the trees seemed to part for us when we approached, like guardians stepping aside for their ruler... It sent a shiver down my spine...

Finally, we reached a clearing that was utterly beautiful. The gentle light of my companions moon shone down on a ruined building that sat atop a small hill, illuminating it in a gentle silver light. Every inch of the hill was covered in Moon Lillys that only bloomed during the night. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life, but there was also a twinge of sadness creeping into my heart as my eyes fell on it. Something had happened here, and it certainly wasn't anything good. My training kicked in, and I saw that parts of the ruin were scorched and that some of the stones had even melted. Something terribly hot had exploded from the inside out, no doubt turning everypony in it's range to fine ash.

Luna trotted right up to the ruin and went inside. I followed her, but I didn't understand why she had brought me here. The inside of the structure was completely blackened by the ashes that covered the walls and floor. Whatever had happened here, hadn't left a single piece of furniture intact either. So why were we....?

“Over here.”, Luna called out, as she cleared away some fallen rubble with her magic, revealing what looked like a metal trapdoor. She opened it, and we descended the stairs it had concealed up until now. The stone steps and walls showed stains of something rust colored, which I soon decided was dried blood.

When we had finally reached the basement level of the ruin, I couldn't believe my eyes. There were dozens of glass cylinders lined up opposite to each other. One row held misshapen Ponies that looked very much like the Pony standing in front of me, while the ones standing on the other side of them, held ones that looked like Celestia.

“Failed experiments.”, Luna whispered, as she trotted up to one of the vats and placed a hoof on it's transparent surface. The thing inside had three wings and two heads, only one of which had a horn. Others I saw had their guts on the outside, and looked like they had been killed immediately. The pain they had felt before somepony had put them out of their misery was still etched onto their features. I could hear soft sobbing, and saw that tears were running down Lunas cheeks as she saw me examine the bodies.

“I... I'm... I'm sorry...”, I said, as I backed away from a particularly gross specimen that floated in it's green liquid. Luna just shook her head.

“'Tis alright. You needed to see this, to understand. You see... I have been each and every one of them...”, Luna explained, as she wiped her hoof across her face to get rid of the tears.

“Ehm... what?”

Luna trotted towards me, gently nudging me towards a set of double doors at the far end of the room. A broken chain hung from it, the padlock that had belonged to it laying several feet away from it.

The room itself looked as if it had once been pretty luxurious, but much of it had been destroyed. Only a few pieces of furniture were still standing, covered by the dust of ages. One of them was a pretty comfy looking couch, on which the Princess of the night lay down, motioning for me to do the same on a slightly charred bench opposite her. When I had folded my legs under me, Luna began to speak again, looking around the room with obvious disgust.

“Alicorns... Can you guess what this room is, Frostmane?”, she asked, and I shook my head to indicate that I didn't have the slightest idea.

“This room was Celestias and my bedroom for the first fifty years of our life. The Unicorns, ruled by Princess Platinum, controlled the sun and the moon during that era, but the spell they used to do it, was dangerous. Many skilled magi died during the ceremonies, and soon the civilian population was screaming for a safer solution...”, she explained, looking at a mural at on the wall next to us. It depicted a group of about twenty Unicorns standing in a ritual circle, that looked a lot like the mega-spell chamber I had once seen. Four of them were lying dead in their spots however. Under it, somepony had written the words “For the greater good”.

“So... they tried to... refine the ritual?”, I offered, knowing that I was wrong, due to what I had seen in the other room. Luna shook her head sadly.

“They were so sure of their power, that they decided to create beings that could handle the enormous magical stress the ritual brought with it. Creatures they could manufacture easily, and  replace like the part of a machine. Many years passed, while they studied the ritual, and the inherent magic of the other races. Finally, the first Alicorn Prototype was created in a ritual much like the one you see on that wall. Her body was unable to survive, so they killed her pretty quickly. They realized that they had set the mark to high, since they had tried to create a being that could control the sun and moon. They finally decided to create a separate being for each heavenly body, and that was when Celestia and I were born. Our first incarnations were powerful indeed, but our bodies were in constant pain due to flaws in the spell that created us... so we were killed as well... But our spirits did not move on. The amount of magic that had created us, allowed us to stay in this world, and with each attempt the magi did, we were drawn into the newly created flesh...”, Luna explained, having closed her eyes to keep her tears from leaking out.

I couldn't begin to fathom how painful it must have been to be killed, and be reborn into an imperfect body again and again. Seeing the pain on the Princess's face, I stood up and put a hoof on her shoulder, only to be thrown across the room by a burst of her magic. Had it not been for that special armor she had given me, my impact on the far wall of the room would have killed me for sure.

“Finally, Celestias body became perfect, and they were overjoyed as it did. They had finally created a being that could control the sun, and even the moon to a degree. Not satisfied with her control over the moon, they started to work on me more intensely... Finally, they decided that, since the night was the time of darkness and shadows, they should try and bind a being of darkness to my very soul. It worked. What you see in front of you now, is the result of that experiment, but it did have side effects...”, Luna went on as if nothing had happened as I extracted myself from the wall she had knocked me into.

“Nightmare Moon?”, I muttered, and she nodded, a slight grin on her face.

“The darkness didn't affect me for a long time, but Celestia instantly knew that something was wrong with the both of us. I just was the first of us to loose my sanity. You see... the greater ones magical potential is, the harder it is to stay sane. Everypony who reaches a certain level of power will, without fail, go insane. The shadow creature they bound to me was just speeding up the process. The day they noticed their mistake, they wanted to kill me again, but Celestia, who up to that point had not had a chance to really get to know me, stood in their way. When they came with their swords, I was resting on this very couch, and Celestia protected me.”

“I guess they didn't like that very much, did they?”, I asked, not liking where this was going. Luna shook her head.

“No. They didn't like it one bit, and forced her to step aside by wounding her with their weapons. Now, don't get me wrong, I have rebelled against my sister and was prepared to kill her if I had to, but I do love her dearly. It was that moment that Nightmare Moon showed her ugly face for the first time. I lashed out with my magic and ripped them apart, using their corpses to break the door down. Celestia tried to calm me down, but I was on a rampage, and soon she was too. When I was injured upstairs, Celestia unleashed the full power of sunlight upon the building above. It was much bigger back then, but as you saw only rubble and molten slack is left of it now.”

I gulped. Luna chuckled as she noticed my uneasiness.

“So you see... That darkness within you exists because of what happened here so long ago. The fragment they used in that experiment still held trace amounts of Nightmare Moon.”, the Princess said, standing up and looking at me intently.

“But... But... what happened then?”, I asked, suddenly afraid again.

“We conquered Equestria. That is what happened. We both knew that, while the current government was in place, we would never be truly free, and so we burned their cities to the ground, driven utterly insane by the pain we had been put through, and the wish to live in peace. When we finally realized what we were doing, Celestia and I decided to change our ways. We had spent most of our build up magic, so our minds had become much clearer, showing us that we were nothing more than monsters. You may recall that Nightmare Moon looks a lot different from me, and so did Celestia when her insanity was controlling her actions. In one of our more lucid moments, we decided to try and repent for the sins we had committed. I sealed most of Celestias power away in a spot only known to me, and she sealed mine in Everfree. The Ponies of that time were, of course, afraid of us, since it had been two Alicorn mares who had brought them to the brink of extinction, but when we turned out to be much gentler then the mares they knew, they soon accepted our help and guidance. Over the years, we swore to make Equestria a land of Harmony, so that nopony would have to suffer through what we had. We used powerful magic to erase or alter the memories of Ponies who remembered the old times, and the rest is history...”, Luna concluded, and an awkward silence befell the room that lasted for several minutes.

“But... what does that have to do with me?”, I asked, feeling very confused.

“Don't you see? You can overcome the darkness in you. It will feed on your negative emotions, and it will break free if you feed it too much. But if you learn to control your emotions, you can use it. The spell I have put on your armor can only do so much after all...”, she explained, and I began to understand. She couldn't take the darkness away, since it was now a part of me, but she could help me keep it under control, and to know where it originated was important for that. That was why she had told me all of this....

Footnotes:

Frostmane:

No status changes

Firestorm:

No status changes