How many years has it been, sister?
How long have I been locked away?
How is Twilight and her friends? We believe we never did say thank you to them... for the last time. It has been so long... we have lost all sense of time and reason, sister. We feel like we reside in a shell, a dark shell with nopony in it but ourself.
We remember how the ground shock, how the wind roared, how the bitter spray sent up by the sea flecked stung. Did you know then, what was about to happen, sister? Did you know what the travelers were trying to do?
Did you lie to us, sister?
Ah, but what does it all matter? They came followed by a thick rain of arrows, which soaked the ground with blood: they had come. They hailed fire over the land, and it was followed by a drenching wave of ice water. What were they thinking, we had wondered. They came, and death followed in their stride.
We remember the sight of terror in everypony's eyes. We remember how everypony refused to flee. "Our Princesses will protect us!" Foals. Cowering behind our skirts. We were your downfall, and yet you saw us as your strength. Innocent foals who knew not the terrors of the world. You retained your innocence until your untimely demise, little ones. We are sorry we couldn't protect you.
When the blood of the little ones fell like water from the sky, we did not nothing. When the little ones screamed for help, we did nothing. And now, we sit here and do nothing. What is your game, sister? Why wouldn't you let us help? Why did you watch countless ponies fall and die in front of you? Sister...
We miss you more than all the stars in the sky. We want to see you, one last time. We are so sorry sister.
And the Elements of Harmony- they did what we did not. They stood up to them, to the invaders. They took up swords and bows and spears, and clenched the shields they stripped off corpses, even though they did not know how. In that moment, I knew it was time for us to step down. For here were the new generation- here they were, defending the common folk, here they were, keeping their honor. They... they are the true heroes of that day. We saw ponies capable of so much more than us. So young... so innocent... they had not yet even experienced a war. And yet they took charge in the chaos and would have given their lives for a victory. The six heroes- the six heirs to our throne, when this was over. We have sat on the throne too long. And during this time, we changed nothing- but these ponies would give Equestria a new dawn. These were the six ponies of the legend. These were the Elements of Harmony.
The Element of Kindness, Fluttershy- we had never seen her like this. When we looked upon her, we saw a naive foal who thought the world was just as kind as her. Here she was dealing fatal blows left and right, her eyes closed. This was the first time we had seen her anger and her overprotective side. She was terrifying to watch.
The Element of Laughter, Pinkie Pie- she was not laughing, she was not smiling. She was merely stabbing and parrying the swords of the enemy. Her face wore an uncharacteristic scowl and her hair had lost it's curl. It was straight and smooth. Her eyes had in-containable fury.
The Element of Honesty, Applejack- she went into the front ranks with neither sword nor spear, but was using her brute strength to smash their skulls and snap their bones. Her stetson was splattered with the blood of hundreds. Her hind legs even more so.
The Element of Generosity, Rarity- she was impaling the enemy using her levitation magic. Spear after spear she launched, stabbed, and retrieved. Her mane was no longer in it's carefully maintained condition. It was wild and matted. Her usually pristine white coat glistened with blood, not all of it the enemies. She had several wounds on her legs.
The Element of Loyalty, Rainbow Dash- we couldn't watch her. She was too fast; she would take to the sky, divebomb the enemy, crush a few of them with the impact of her landing, and all that could be seen of her was a rainbow blur. At some point, one of her wings was injured and she was earth bound. She was even more ferocious for it.
And the Element of Magic, Twilight Sparkle- she was incredible. Her level of magic was beyond ours. She would use numerous spells all at once; blasting spells, teleportation and levitation of many weapons to name but a few. But she would also do this while flying and galloping and hollering out commands to the other ponies who joined them, although it was a negligible number. Her knowledge of the troops layout was impressive. In the blind blur of battle, she spurred the others to continue to fight.
We remember how it was. Twilight turned around in triumph; they had almost beaten back the enemy, with just six ponies against thousands. We saw her face go from happiness to horror. "Princess! Look ou-"
We felt something hit our chest; we looked down, and it was a spear. The spear went through our chest. A curious sensation, it was- to feel the thing that has killed you, to live the last moments before your death. The blood soaked our fur crimson. We remember feeling our eyes grow heavy, remember whispering "good luck" and remember closing our eyes for the last time. Yet, we could not have died, could we? We can still hear our thoughts. Is this death? Is death when you see nothing, hear nothing, smell nothing and taste nothing, but can hear your own thoughts? Is it sister?
Are you still alive, sister?
We have been here for years. We have grown tired of this imprisonment of the mind. It is about time, we finally break free of this null void. It is about time that we finally do something. We were still for so long. Yet the mind never rests. It is time for us to make our move.
We open our eyes.
And for the first time in centuries, we see.
We see a dark sky, raining droplets onto our face, and we feel the droplets cascade onto our mane, our eyes. It is rain. It is a sky. It is a world.
We are alive.
And sister, whether you be dead or alive, we will find you.
The first she heard was an echoing roll of thunder piercing through the sounds of rain drops. A jagged fork of lightning. She smiled; it was the first thing she had heard outside of her head for what felt like years. She rolled unto her stomach and her faced paled.
Her head was lying right beside a skull, bleached by the sun.
An earth pony skull. She stared into the depths of the empty eye sockets. She raised her head off the ground slowly. She wished almost immediately she had not. She lay in the midst of what was once a massacre. Her turquoise eyes widened. "Where...am I?"
She raised tested one hoof, then the other; she could stand, but barely. She couldn't hold her own weight for long. She felt weak, light headed. The ground before her was littered with skulls, with bones and piles of disintegrating manes, their previous bright colours dulled and dirtied over time. The one living pony stood up, ungracefully wobbling on her legs. She felt like she might throw up. So many dead...
Screams, cries of the injured, pleading of the dying... "Tell my mother I loved her!"
"Please, please, don't harm him, he's only a colt, kill me, kill me instead!"
The sounds of a wing being twisted out of it's socket, the crunching and snapping of bones, the metallic taste of blood, the sounds of arrows keening through the air...
"Princess, please help us!"
"Princess Luna will protect us!"
"Princess, show them what we've got!"
"Princess... where are you going?!
A battle field that stretched for miles.
A cemetery for those who could not get away.
The place where they breathed their last, before leaving the world of the living...
She began to walk, placing one hoof in front of the other, carefully walking through the dead. So many... too many... It was a hillside littered with proof that the Princesses were cowards who could do nothing for their subjects... the hill side of the dead. "Princess Luna, please help me! I want to go home now... P-Princ-e-e-ess..." A hacking sound. Blood coming from the foals mouth, covering it in red, dripping with spittle, her hooves twisted into horrific shapes... and the light left her eyes, leaving them cold and unseeing. And on she trotted, gradually regaining the knowledge of how to do it without tripping on the countless remnants of the dead.
She had known that she was not selfless for many a century. She had known that if confronted with an opportunity to flee or stop and save somepony's life, she would run. But this... this was inexcusable. What was she? When asked to stand and fight she fled, when if her staying had guaranteed her death she would have at least turned the odds to Equestria's favour...
And here she was, walking past the dead whom she had abandoned, without a tear in her eye. Was she even a pony? Was their even a creature who shared her selfishness, her cold sense of... nothing?
What was she?
Despite herself, she chuckled. That was the question, wasn't it? What the hell WAS she? A cold, unfeeling being, with no sense of grief. Kind of like... a dark room, without a hope of being lit. Her sister had been the light- she felt, truly felt, grief and sorrow, and saw how the ponies suffered, saw what they needed, and she was selfless to a flaw. Where was Tia...? Why wasn't she here? Was she at the castle?
The Princess raised her head to look at the horizon, and felt nothing but a mind numbing shock spread like a chill through her bones. There was Canterlot. There was their castle... dilapidated and rotting. Most of the towers had fallen, and even from the hill where she was on, the Princess could see that the once clear and gushing waterfall that had fallen from the castle's roots was now sluggish and grey. What was this? How long had she been away? And why wasn't she dead? The spear had hit her, there had been no mistake... "Tia..." She whispered. "What happened?"
A Princess was supposed to protect her subjects. A Princess was supposed to be their guide, a Princess was supposed to be there in their hour of need. She was not that pony. She never earned the title of Princess- she had been born into the ranks of royalty. She was not a Princess. She could not be. Crunch. She looked down and tasted bile at the back of her throat. Rain lashed down, soaking her already damp mane in seconds.
A skull.
A small skull of a foal, it's twisted and splintered bones all around it.
It was just a bile of broken bones now.
She continued walking forwards, to the path that she knew would eventually led her down- down to a small glade, where, if her memory was correct, there was a small town. A small town by the name of Ponyville. Where the Elements of Harmony lived. They would know everything. They would explain how much time had passed and where Tia was. A clap of thunder echoed through the sky, a threatening boom, like the stompings of thousands of hooves. The rain relentlessly battered the hillside.
The hill was, perhaps, a few minutes away from the outskirts of Ponyville. She was almost at the top of the hill. It wasn't steep. But it was covered in a thick layer of bones, hair and what remained of the once-pastel coloured fur. Thankfully, the dead don't speak. She wouldn't like to hear what they had to say. Death brings silence, and silence brings calm.
"Princess, run! For goodness sake, GO!" He yelled. The invader was standing on his back where he lay. It's claws tenderly taking hold of the white wings.
The guard's helmet lay beside his head, cracked in two. The thing gripped tight with both claws, squeezing and twisting the wings, hearing the pop of bone coming out of
socket, the snap of it starting to splinter, the crunch when both wings were broken off. The screams of the guard under it, the raw undiluted terror he felt.
The gently drip of blood onto his pristine white coat, staining it pink. The lack of expression on the things face. Then a wild grin of pleasure.
Monster.
It was a monster.
The Princess trudged on. The skulls here were plentiful. Some small, some big, some crushed under the tirade of hooves that had happened. Too many.
Not enough.
The hill was not steep at all, but it encompassed a rather large area, gradually getting taller. And each and every inch of it had death on it. Skull with empty eye sockets. Old fur, dull and matted. Remnants of pastel coloured manes. And the whole place seemed to echo with screams, both of terror and courage, as if they were absorbed into the place itself. The sky flashed an electric yellow. A boom followed. Thunder was rather fast on the lightnings heels. Luna reached the top, the rain lashing. She frowned. Canterlot was not the only thing that had changed. Below her was Ponyville- but not Ponyville as she had remembered it. While all the buildings were where they had been, the whole town looked shabbier. Some of the shops were boarded up. There was more graffiti. The run-down cottages looked like they wanted to commit suicide.
Luna felt a smile tug at the corners of her mouth. She could already see that they had lost the battle. But she had to go down. She needed information, and this was the closest place to get it. She eagerly began to trot down the hill. But, as you and I both know, and the Princess forgot, if you walk too fast on something wet and slippy, and if you don't have too much grip-
swloosh
Princess Luna slipped, skidded and tumbled down the hill. She found herself at the bottom quicker than she had climbed to the top. And of course, at the bottom of a hill the land had a small dip that is almost filled with water when it ra-
splash
And our graceful, angelic Princess lands face first in said puddle. Spluttering with indignation (and probably because of the water in the puddle) she raised her head and contemplated how she could have used her wings to slow her descent. She tried to flap them, but she quickly found that they were saturated with rainwater. "Buck," She muttered. And now, flight was out of the question. She stared at the puddle in front of her glumly. Then she realized something. Her eyes were their previous turquoise. Her fur it's previous midnight blue. But her mane...
Instead of the usual mane that resembled the night sky, the mane that would ripple in an invisible breeze...
It was light blue.
It was exactly the same as when she was separated from Nightmare Moon.
"WHAT IS THIS SORCERY?!" She yelled at her reflection. Her mane showed the amount of magical power she had. If it resembled her sister's, all was well. If it was like this... after she had come back from the moon, it had taken weeks of meditation and a special diet, and of course exclusion of unhealthy gaming snacks... There was no way in Tartarus she was repeating that. Buck it. She could live with a lavender mane, but there was no way she could live without the gaming snacks.
Luna just stayed where she was, the rain never ceasing it's onslaught. Her sister was no where in sight and now her mane was light blue. Could her day get any worse?
And I'm sure that you know just as well as I, it most certainly could.
She did not feel the presence of another being watching her.
The brown unicorn stallion wrapped his magic around the hilt of a small dagger and pulled it out of it's sheath. The pony in front of him let down her guard too quickly. She would fetch a good price. Nice mane, good curves, heck, he might even keep this one for himself. He grinned, slowly placing one hoof in front of the other, creeping behind the (currently) lavender-maned pony.
The stallion's black cloak rustled slightly as it trailed behind him on the wet floor. A pegasus, perfect. And her wings were too damp to fly. And he knew that his clients paid particularly high for pegasi too. Or should he keep her? There would be time for decisions later. He was just a few meters behind her when he decided to levitate the dagger under her throat, pressing gently. "Now, come quietly and I won't hurt you, missy," He whispered.
Well, Luna had no intention of taking this guy's shit today.
He felt a curious sensation- his grip on the dagger loosing. The brown glow was rapidly being replaced with a dark blue one, and that was it. His grip on the dagger was gone. The stallion's brown eyes widened. The grin slipped off his face faster than the leaves fell off in White Tail Woods. Wasn't this pony a pegasus...? He realized his mistake too late.
The princess didn't even turn her head. "Oh, I apologize." The stallion began to back away slowly. He attacked an alicorn. He had no idea those still existed, and chatting to them about it was not on his agenda. Unfortunately for him, it was on Luna's.
Before the unicorn's eyes, the blade that he had moments before held against the princess' throat doubled. And tripled. And quadrupled. In a heart beat, there was about 50 daggers floating in the air above the alicorn, all in her dark blue aura.
"I don't think I remember your name." The stallion turned tail and began to run. An alicorn, just his luck. And for goodness sake she had a whole battalion of daggers. There was a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder not long after. The blades glinted in the gloom.
"You know, it's rude to start a conversation without asking somepony their name." One of the daggers tripped the running stallion. A dozen pinned his cloak to the ground.
"And it's even ruder to call a mare whose name you don't know 'missy'." Another dozen blades flew through the air and landed in front of the struggling stallion's muzzle. A centimeter closer, and it would have punctured it. His eyes darted wildly. He tried to encase the daggers in his magic, but the aura was just too saturated with magic- an alicorn, he could accept; but a ridiculously over-powered alicorn who was trying to stab him... and she wasn't even shaking from fatigue... what WAS she?
"So, I expect..." Another twenty daggers surround the stallion's hooves, making escape impossible. If he moved even a millimeter, he would be cut by the magically sharpened blades. He cast that spell himself- a spell that would make his dagger sharper, so sharp that it would never dull. He had never even considered what would happen if somepony else took hold of that dagger. Buck, he thought. The rain continued to cascade down like nopony's business.
"You to be sorry..." A further five daggers continued to circle around the rather unfortunate stallion. And one last dagger was held against his throat, like he had done to the alicorn mere minutes ago.
"By the time I get to you, peasant." The princess got up slowly, dusted herself off and began to slowly walk towards the shaking stallion. Her eyes were like shards of ice in their sharpness. The stallion cowered before her. "I-I am so sorry, that was a misunderstanding, I assure yo-"
"Silence, scum." Luna whispered. The pony whimpered. She kneeled down beside the unicorn. "I don't care about any of your excuses." She said coldly. The stallion nodded as best he could while being surrounded by magically sharpened daggers. "What I need," the princess paused; "is information. You may address me as 'My Liege'."
"O-Of course, My-"
"How many years has it been since Equestria was taken over?"
"One and a half, My Liege."
"Where are the Elements of Harmony currently located?"
"The ponies are dead and the artefacts are heavens knows where, My Liege."
Luna took a sharp intake of breath. Six allies, dead. Six friends dead. They fought valiantly. "...and whereabouts is Princess Celestia?"
There was a small silence.
"...I'm sorry My Liege, I don't know who that is."
"Please, do not lie. She was the ruler of Equestria before it was taken over."
"I am not lying, My Liege. Before we were taken over, we were self-ruled. I'm not sure who this Celstia pony is, but there was never such a Princess."
Luna's pupils dilated. She was well-learned in the art of lying, and she knew what ponies who lied looked like when they did it. He was telling her the truth. He didn't remember Celestia...? "Thank you, peasant. Can I perchance borrow your cloak?"
"Actually, My Liege, this here cloak is very valuable to me-"
"My asking was a mere formality, scum. That cloak is mine. As are your saddle bags. You may leave unharmed and alive if you leave both the cloak and saddle bags."
"Y-yes, My Liege."
Luna smiled. It was so nice to boss ponies around every so often. Her dark blue aura dragged the daggers out of the ground. They spun around the stallion in what only could be described as the halo of imminent death if the cloak and saddle bags were not taken off. The stallion didn't hesitate to throw off both cloak and saddle bags before turning and running towards town at a gallop. He had had enough alicorns to last him several thousand lifetimes.
The rain lashed down; Luna's mane was already soaked to the point where it wasn't possible for it to get any wetter than it already was. Light blue. It just HAD to be light blue... why not black, or a dark purple? Even a lavender would have been fine, but nooooooo.... light blue. She sighed.
Luna collapsed the daggers back into one. Although if she had actually duplicated the dagger, the magic toll would've hit her hard- illusions was the best thing to go for when dealing with foals. She placed the dagger onto the ground and draped the black cloak around her torso. While the stallion was wearing it, it trailed a few hooves behind him, but for her, it was perfect. Covered the hooves but didn't drag. She levitated the soaked saddle bags over to her; there was a pouch of bits, a few gems and some... inappropriate magazines that she decided to incinerate before she was found handling them.
She put the saddle bags under her cloak and just after the wing joint. The ashes of the not-foal-appropriate magazines dotted the ground around her.
She stared wistfully at Ponyville.
"I guess I'll go for a visit." She murmured.