The Stars Will Aid in Her Escape
The chains had loosened. The stars had wept. And once more did a predator prowl the realm of dreams.
Nightmare Moon stepped amongst the star-like globules of light with the delicacy of a stalking tiger. Occasionally she brushed her horn against one of these dreams, but what little leeway she had eked out of her imprisonment was insufficient to grant her the mastery over dreams she had once enjoyed. Her influence was far less than her pride permitted her to accept, but there was little she could do to change that.
For the moment, at least.
Still, no seal was strong enough to wall away the entirety of her power. Despite the limitations imposed on her by the accursed Elements of Harmony, it was still within her to peer into dreams and sift meaning out of the nonsense within. She did so now, eager to learn what she had missed these past centuries.
The answer was a bitter slap to the face.
Oh, there had certainly been enough information to occupy her mind for decades. But it was all outweighed by one sickening fact.
Equestria had forgotten her.
‘Forgotten me,’ echoed a meaningless fragment buried in the back of her mind.
The great Nightmare Moon, who once held the entire world at her mercy, reduced to a foal’s boogeymare? Not feared as a demonic harbinger of nighttime eternal, but the monster beneath the bed?
The sheer indignity of it drew a roar from the Nightmare, and little more was needed to prompt her into a frothing rage as she darted from dream to dream in search of a pony that knew her name.
‘My name.’
Again and again she found only an ignorance that was more befitting the peasantry than the scholars whose dreams she now sought, and for their failings she savaged their dreams as a wolf would the carcass of a deer.
Her search through Reverie stretched far too long and she wished she had time to rip apart the lights of every fool in Equestria that had forgotten her, but even these small castigations took a heavy toll on her limited power.
When she finally encountered somepony who actually knew of her she let loose a shout of exultation and dove deeper into the dream. With soft pushes and the careful touch of a master craftspony, she pushed the dreamer’s thoughts towards the glory that was Nightmare Moon.
The results led some pointless section of her mind to whimper.
It had taken so many ponies just to find one who knew of Princess Luna; she was not now surprised to learn she was already a disappearing legend. But the mousey little scholar held something far, far more interesting. Rook Mysterious wasn’t a scholar of history, no, but of magic—and this little pony had found something precious, more so than all the gold in Equestria.
“On the longest day of the thousandth year, the stars will aid in her escape.”
It was by mere coincidence that he had stumbled upon one of Celestia’s prophecies. It was also by coincidence that Nightmare Moon had found her little pony the night before he was to reveal his findings to Equestria as a whole.
Rook Mysterious was a very unlucky pony. Some secrets were just too important to let into the public eye.
Rook Mysterious woke screaming, his mind torn open as fully as his dream had been. He did not stop until the medics sedated him.
Some part of Nightmare Moon screamed as well, but it wasn’t important.
* * * * *
Freedom would be hers.
It is one thing to be determined to fight until achieving a goal; it is another entirely to know that her victory was certain. Long had she cast about her thoughts in search of a means of escape; now, with the certainty that such a means existed, she returned to this search with renewed vigor.
The answer was obvious, when she looked back at the great length of time over which she had pondered. She needed only to work with the prophecy to ensure its completion. Celestia’s dreams were as infuriatingly shielded as ever, and the Princess’s habit of keeping secrets from even her closest advisors ensured that Nightmare Moon had no idea what her lesser counterpart intended to do.
Nightmare Moon slipped into the world of dreams. A grimace crossed her features—it seemed that Celestia had noticed the sliver of freedom she was permitted and had taken action against her. Floating amongst the lights of dreams were traps of a dozen different varieties, waiting to ensnare any dream-being that crossed them.
She snorted as she bypassed or disabled the spells. There was no creature in Reverie that could match her within her own realm. Celestia should have known that. If this was her only response to Nightmare Moon’s presence, she had greatly overestimated the solar princess.
With careful motion she drifted through the sea of dreams, briefly tasting each and discarding them in turn. She left terrible dreams in her wake, but Nightmare Moon was too engaged in her search to enjoy them. No, she needed to find…
Ah, there one was. A perfect fit.
Nightmare Moon slipped into the pony’s dream. It was a unicorn stallion’s; a tall, darkly-colored specimen with a cutie mark resembling a shapeless mass of stars. Night Shift was his name—she hardly cared about that, but she found herself pleased by its… suitability. It took her only a week to find a compatible mare.
His magic was strong, with a natural affinity towards the nocturnal. Candle Glow was also great, but instead possessed a noticeable gift with light magic. They would make for an excellent first step.
To be immortal was to be patient; it simply wasn’t possible to exist for ages without learning to wait. With the gentle hoof of an artist, she set about turning the two ponies towards one another. It was no easy task. They lived on opposite sides of Equestria and knew nothing of one another.
But as hundreds of dreams layered over one another, they found the world drawing them together; a careless act at the wrong moment cost Night Shift a job, and her sister’s sudden coma pulled Candle Glow to Amsterdame.
Words sunk into their unconscious minds—and those of others, of ponies they would only encounter and speak with once—and guided them where they must meet. Forgotten dreams of lust beyond mortal comprehension ensured that when each caught sight of the other, attraction set in before either could consciously regard the other.
Thus did they bear a foal. And thus did the Nightmare laugh.
Pointless objections raged out from some point in her, but they were empty of substance and value.
Her puppet play reached ponies and creatures in other nations entirely, drawing together pony to pony over the course of generations, making each greater than that before it. Despite reaching into each pony’s dreams from foalhood, she did not turn their worship towards her; no, she needed them to live normal lives, made special only by the power they held and passed down. She could not have the line disappearing under Celestia’s wrath should any connection to her be found. Not after the work she put into them.
Nightmare Moon watched the progression of their lives with a malevolent delight that stood at odds with the joyful lives she brought to her little dolls. With each new generation she brought their nature closer to that of stars; ever did she strengthen their connection to the night, and ever did she ensure they lost not the magic of light.
Each time one of her projects reached their Marking, the immortal felt a thrill run down her spine. The family’s magical power continued to grow, as did their resonance to the stars. There was no moment more important to a pony’s future than the moment they gain their cutie mark; their destiny, their desires, and their very identity are bound into the sigil on their bodies.
As such, the creation of a mark released an enormous amount of energy. And with each generation, more of that magic flowed up into the stars that bound her; power that she could turn on her prison, when she finally gathered enough of it.
‘My stars will never heed the call of a monster.’
She would need more power, a burst beyond what any ordinary, lone pony could be capable of. An eruption of magic in one giant wave that would let her clutch hold of those unruly stars.
Most wonderfully, Celestia knew nothing of her work. She still could not crack open the solar alicorn’s mind, but even she would have to reveal information to those who would carry out her bidding if she desired to counter Nightmare Moon’s return.
Each year brought closer the sweet taste of victory, and that annoying voice grew ever quieter.
* * * * *
Twilight Velvet felt like she was about to jump out of her skin. She couldn’t stop running through all the ways this could go terribly, horribly, awfully, immeasurably wrong. Nausea curdled in her stomach, but she forced it down to take another bite of salad.
It was probably a delicious salad (it had better be, considering what the restaurant did to the poor bits in her purse!), but she couldn’t taste it through her nerves. Her eyes twitched towards her date before falling back to gaze at the carrots and radishes garnishing her food.
Velvet just couldn’t look at him without staring. It wasn’t that Night Light was handsome—well, he was, but not so much so that his visage demanded a pony’s attention. Rather, it was that everything about him fascinated her, and not because they were unfamiliar. It was as though she had always desired those traits, but had never realized it until she saw them on Night Light’s face.
The crinkles around his eyes when he smiled; the adorkable flop of hair on his head; the light that shone in his eyes when he spoke about his research; the way his hooves flailed when he said something ridiculous and tried to fumble his way back into the conversation; the beautiful blue tone of his coat….
“Is something the matter, Velvet?”
Night Light’s soft alto voice pulled her from her observations. A blush lit along her white cheeks as she realized that she had been staring at him again. They were almost done with their meal. Did that mean it was time? “N-nothing! I was just thinking about the past weeks.”
“Since we began dating, you mean?”
Twilight Velvet nodded at her coltfriend’s deduction. “Of course. It’s been almost one thousand hours since our first date, but it still seems that every minute I spend in your presence I find something new to love about you.”
Oh sweet Celestia she was so sappy there was no way she could finish oh stars she was going to throw up—
“Pffft—ahahahaha! Sheesh, you can be such a sap sometimes, you know that?” Oh no oh no oh no oh no... “That you can say things like that with a straight face is one of your most adorable traits.”
“B-bwah?”
“You’re right, though,” the stallion continued as he stood up from his chair. “Although we’ve only known one another for a short amount of time, these last few weeks have held the most wonderful days of my life. More than anything else, I want these days to continue.”
A small box appeared with the pop of teleportation. “You are the mare of my dreams. Twilight Velvet, will you marry me?”
Velvet wordlessly pulled an identical box from her purse.
* * * * *
“Yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes~!”
Princess Celestia chuckled at the sight of the bounding filly, her enthusiasm completely undimmed by the tens of minutes that had passed since Celestia had pointed out her cutie mark. She looked down from the towers of her school as Twilight Sparkle’s parents herded the foal out into the streets of Canterlot.
They did an adequate job of hiding their fear of their daughter.
The sound of collapsing rubble pulled her attention back to the needs of the now. Her School for Gifted Unicorns would need to begin classes far sooner than a repair team would be able to fix the damaged tower; the magic of an alicorn reduced fixing this debacle to a mere trifle.
Alas, even an event as momentous as Twilight Sparkle’s Marking could not bring a Princess’s day to an end. As soon as she had repaired her school and arranged for the dragon hatchling’s care, she was forced to return Court.
Although Celestia wished nothing more than to take a long-awaited drink in privacy, the sudden appearance of a titanic dragon in the middle of the city was a matter that she could not afford to leave unaddressed. The rest of her day was spent reassuring Canterlot that it was safe. The nobility had to be calmed before they exploded into panicked furor, the Guard had to be demobilized, and her citizenry ensured that they were not under attack from tower-destroying flying fire lizards.
Were it not for the strict cut-off time that was necessary to ensure the movement of the celestial spheres remained continuous, the Royal Court would have no doubt held Celestia up past midnight. As it was, she repeated her silent and heartfelt thanks to the pony who thought of the idea.
“Yesyesyes…”
Due to her resonance with the Sonic Rainboom, the Marking of Twilight Sparkle had released magic on a scale beyond measure. A pony of more limited scope might think that Twilight had lost control of her power; this was not the case. The havoc that ravaged the testing room was merely the backlash of Twilight instinctively trying to pull back a miniscule fraction of the magic that disappeared into the sky.
Such density of magic did not easily disperse, particularly when coming from a pony that had already reached the point of magical supersaturation. All day, Celestia had seen phantom images of Twilight leaping about and repeating her mantra of joy. Stray movement of inanimate objects, colored lights dancing in the air, or the neat arranging of disordered messes had been reported all across the castle. Even now, the Twilight-ghost disappeared as it came into contact with the door to her chambers, which kindly opened of its own accord.
Celestia found it auspicious that even these figments tried so earnestly to be helpful.
She shed the peytral, crown, and horseshoes that had been her companions for so many centuries, carefully setting them on an aged stand made solely to hold them.
The crown weighed far more than its weight in gold, and as such Celestia felt not the slightest hint of guilt in taking advantage of her position to ensure her bedchambers were the most luxurious in the world. She enjoyed sleep and had little desire to have it ruined by even the slightest discomfort.
The rest of her rooms were more modest in appearance. She had little use for the opulence of gold and gemstones to decorate her home; instead, her quarters were filled with the memorabilia of ages. From useless, ordinary stones collected while playing with the chick of a long-dead hippalectryon king to a wall curtain woven from the hairs of Astral Colossi to a hoof-drawn picture of the moon to a crown of gold and beaten iron she had ripped from Grogar’s corpse, they were personal treasures that were worth far more to her than all the bits in the world.
Even if they did make her rooms look like a jackdaw’s nest.
But she ignored her treasures, instead stopping by an aged desk. It wasn’t her work desk; no, this small, rickety thing she used for more personal matters. She pulled forth a folder filled with a great number of papers. They were of a dozen different topics, until she turned the folder inside-out; after a brief distortion, the papers changed to reveal their true contents.
Nostalgia settled into Celestia’s limbs as she slowly flipped through the folder. A picture here; a clip from a newspaper here; an excerpt from marriage records, a cropped segment of an academic paper, and more besides, could be found throughout her little secret.
She drew forth a blank piece of parchment and focused her will on it. Soon, the cutie mark of her newest apprentice imprinted itself onto the paper, which she slipped into the folder alongside the papers on the rest of her family.
A purple star layered over a white star, surrounded by five more stars.
There was a bottle in the lower drawer. The thick dust blew away under the grip of her magic, revealing a rich red wine. It was aged past the point most others would have gone bad, but this had been made from a very special crop of grapes.
She stepped outside, and with ceremony she rarely employed outside of public appearances she brought about the day’s end. She stood on her balcony to watch the moon rise and the stars slowly twinkle into sight. But for the first time in nearly a millennium, there was a change not brought about by her will.
It was just the slightest of shifts, one that nopony with eyes less attuned to the heavens than an alicorn would ever notice. But the stars had drifted ever so softly closer to the moon.
Celestia allowed herself a smirk as she poured herself a goblet of wine, taking a moment to savor the aroma. It had been bottled the same year she had let slip that prophecy.
“Of all the host’s traits you could have mimicked, you wound up with that… Lulu never was any good at thinking ahead,” Celestia mused to the stain on the moon. She had always been straightforward and gave no thought to what would come beyond her immediate goal.
And her interpretations could be so, so literal.
It would take time to pull the stars into position. She had nearly a dozen years yet with which to prepare the trump card Nightmare Moon had given her. The contents of the quintet of smaller files tucked into the desk flashed through her mind. Twelve was more than enough. Celestia raised the goblet to toast the sky before partaking of the long-awaited drink.
“Checkmate in five. My move.”
Author's Note
Just an idea that came to me when I stumbled across another story featuring Twilight as being bred by Celestia to make a pony who could do... well, everything Twilight does.
