The land was parched. After weeks of a seemingly endless eclipse there was little water left anywhere. The heat beat at a town, one that had once sat in the middle of a great lake but most of the water had been burned away, leaving water's edge a little ways away. There were no grumbles or curses at the heat, no worried sounds from mothers caring for their young, from inside the buildings. It was deserted, the people having fled when they caught the first sign of what was coming. Any town alongside a source of freshwater would face the onslaught of a thousand armies before leaving, yet one thing, only one thing, could cause a water-boardered town to turn tail; a female Aes Sedai.
The ground roiled before her coming, the winds howled around her, and the skies spewed lightning and fire in her wake. Only her desperate need kept the lakeside town from utter destruction, exacting some measure of control over her power.
The woman was wearing what seemed to be a lord's garb and cloak that was coated with the dust of the wilderness or scorched from flame. Her hair was so caked with dust that none could tell the original color. She had a single straight segmented horn and a pair of dust covered wings, both in a state little better than the clothing or hair. She had faced some small backlash of her destruction.
The fact that the inhabitants were missing did not seem to register to the woman. She stumbled from exhaustion and dehydration, calling the town-folk who had long since left, and cursing them when they did not come.
"Light burn you for your lack of compassion!" she called before entering what she recognized as an inn. Franticly searching for some sort of liquid, she failed to notice the black-clad woman with her hair held up in a snug bun, with wings and a horn, both as dark as her garb, sitting at a table in the back of the common room. The woman in black watched smugly as the first found a small cask of ale, left behind in the townspeople's flight, and proceeded to pry it open with her belt knife. The second woman only made herself known when the first plunged her entire face into the cask.
"So this is what has become of you. Ha. Pitiful."
"I'm sorry for barging into your inn like this, Mistress," the first woman said when she pulled her head out of the cask, realizing her rudeness "but there was no one who would give me water."
The second woman only seemed amused by this. "Have you so little memory as to think me an innkeeper! No, I am not the owner of this place, he left long ago. You of all people should recognize me, Celestia."
"Who are you?" Celestia asked, now suspicious of the black-clad alicorn. "How do you know my name?"
"So I must spell it out for you. I once called myself Nightmare Moon, but now I have a different name—"
"Betrayer of Hope," Celestia completed hatefully.
"So you have more memory than I thought. Yes, I am now known as the Betrayer of Hope, just as you will now be known as Droughtbringer, causing famine and death to spread around you. Or do you not remember the counterstroke of the Great Lord, how his taint remains, even after you and your Companions sealed him away, us with him? Do you not know how you and your precious Companions now ravage the land? No? I can fix that." — an ethereal glow surrounded Nightmare Moon — "But the Power I use now is quite different from what you are used to. Now, with the Power given to me by the Great Lord of the Dark, you will remember!" As Nightmare Moon boomed with a greater voice than what she truly had, Celestia felt her blood turn into acid, searing her flesh; turn into ice, freezing her body deeper than the bone; her bones were infernos, scorching her body; blizzards, freezing her muscles; she felt as if she was melting from the heat and shattering from the cold. But above all she felt the taint of the Dark One, its feeling of putrid sewage, of the death it brings.
But it was an ant compared to her memory, of the deeds that brought her loved ones doom, of the destruction she had brought as well as that she had seen, memory that could make her go mad again if it was not for Nightmare Moon's Power.
Celestia ran from the inn and her sister's laughing, just to see that her subconscious hold in the town had been released while she had been sheltered and it was being hopelessly destroyed. Light, she thought, shock and fear having cut through her pain enough for her to think. Is this all that I must bring?
Pushing herself of from the True Source she spread her wings and flew from the ruined town, from her sister. She then wandered — never near ponies, always sorrowful — until she neared Canterlot, the place she helped destroy; the place she wanted to die.
As she approached the broken city she drew from the saidar, first a trickle, but quickly growing into a stream, then a river then a flood, as much as she could handle and more still.
No more, she thought. No more pain. No more drought. No more of this deathly heat. I must right some of the wrongs.
She thought of her husband, Ikandar, how he tried to stop her, how he died for it. "Forgive me."
She loosed the Power outward, flows of Fire, Earth and Spirit to the sun and moon to free them from their locked position in the sky, of Water and Air to bring rain to the thirsting land. I deserve death. She tied off the flows she had sent to the sun and moon and let the One Power consume her. Light forgive me. The ground roiled and pulled upwards, enveloping her and bringing the home of the now broken Aes Sedai up as well.
Up, and up earth and stone climbed carrying the city with it, fusing it to the mountainside. And after it had settled, if there was one who took the time to listen, the final fading words of the Dragon.
Light! Forgive me!
Nightmare Moon watched as the mountain that would soon be known as Dragonmount was erected. So this is what your final act is. She smiled. I will find you again. Her laughter remained even after she disappeared.
