The streets of Everfree City had long been abandoned.
The dark grey city a half-ruin, the result of three sieges in the past two decades. Most plant life was dead or dying, the only light from the Sun coming from what could escape past the solar eclipse.
At opposite ends of the remains main street stood two equines, both bearing wings and a horn. If there had been other ponies nearby their much larger size would be have been apparent.
The figures were polar opposite in appearance, but near identical in demeanor. Even now, as they simply gazed at the other, the natural forces that coalesce into auras around them did battle.
Between the two, at the center of the street, there was a visible line that defined the end of their passive power. From the Sun shone a beacon, and the Moon a hole devoid of true light.
No words needed to be spoken, nor was there any will to voice any aloud. For now, they simply stared.
Celestia, Goddess of the Sun and Daytime, truly resembled her solar body in that moment. Her coat flowed like the surface of her own star, the stonework beneath her hooves glowed faintly from the heat given off, her mane whipped and cracked like fire.
Luna, The Nightmare and Goddess of the Moon, was a twisted, dark reflection of what was once a loving sister. Shadows fell off her body like water, forming a twisting pool of nether energies at her feet. With a coat as dark as her night, and a mane formed from the nightmares of twenty years of war, she truly resembled the demon she had become.
Their eyes flicked over each other, any hints of their once unbreakable affection had long since passed into hatred and anger.
The Sun and Moon watched their counterpart, and time seemed to come to a stop around the two deities.
The breeze ceased, and even the slow rustling of trees in the distance paused in awe and terror of what was about to happen.
For a moment the world stood still, the very forces of nature that each controlled coiling in preparation.
A small flick of Celestia's horn was all it took, a writhing beam of sunlight arching forward.
Without even moving the Nightmare conjured a shield, redirecting the force diagonally and away from her. The beam annihilates several storefronts in a blaze of heat and magic, turning them into a pile of slag.
Luna is swift to respond after the beam dissipates, summoning her own powers she tore the shadows from ruins around the Sun and barreled them in her direction.
So the dance began.
The nature of each sister, even after two decades of fighting, had not changed.
Celestia was more like her solar body than anyone truly knew, beautiful and radiant but just under the surface was a anger and fire just waiting to be unleashed. Her powers were devastating, removing large swathes of the city with nary a thought and a spell.
Luna was a mirror of her own sister, even though neither of them would admit it. She was stony and calm, and had a core as solid as her own moon. Her own magic was slightly less powerful than Celestia, but she was more advanced in the subtleties of the deeper secrets of the nether. Her spellcasting focused on sharp attacks and using the environment against her enemies.
In this fight, an environment that was slowly being removed from the picture.
Around the two gods, Everfree City was being torn apart.
The two sisters were much more than deities over the Sun and Moon, they ruled nature itself on Equis. Each had their specialties and poles of control, and it showed.
For hundreds of miles the natural order of the world broke as it turned on itself.
Thunder and Lighting rained from the sky, almost effortlessly turned away by the two combatants. Earthquakes rent the earth, the only stable ground being that which the two stood on. Mountains fell and grew, storms gathered and dissipated. But still, the clash wore on.
A battle of gods is not a simple affair, nor is it painless.
The Two felt their very beings protest this, tugging at what made them the true rulers of this world. It was not a painless experience, and each knew the other was going through the same.
If this battle was a war, it would be one of attrition. Neither sister pushed too hard against the other, allowing themselves to be defeated in one theater just to gain a costly victory in another.
In the future, the Everfree would never truly recover from this combat. Even after a thousand years it was untameable, and would always be so.
The sky above the two twisted as the walls of reality began to weaken, the walls between this plane and the next growing weaker as the battle dragged on.
Each could feel their resolve weakening inch by inch, neither gaining the advantage over the other.
Then they finally began the true fight, locking their magic in a beam that exploded into existence between them.
It did not take the form of two different colored lights fighting against the other. No, all it did was show that no matter how much the two were different, they merely a reflection of the other.
It was an extension of themselves, connecting each to the other. It flowed with their hatred, with their anger, and with their fear.
Twisting and turning, it warped the world around them. Reality rent as horrid visions of the elemental planes leaked through, peaking into Tartarus itself. The physical properties of the demolished city changed, the raw power forcing it into a mirror of the emotions at play.
Shadows lengthened, the ground darkened, and Celestia slipped.
It was not a physical happening, rather the metaphorical grip of her powers momentarily weakened. That was all that was needed.
In an instant the Nightmare gained the upper footing, gathering herself and focusing her strength into a singular attack.
Suddenly the battles tide took a much darker turn, the powers of the Night seeming to begin to overpower the Day.
If the Nightmare had been in the right mind she would not have made this mistake. Her sister was a strategist, a chess master of the highest degree. Luna was a soldier, not a planner. Her horrid flaw had always been her lack of foresight.
Her moment of victory turned almost immediately against her.
Celestia used her sisters attack to break the connection, allowing the positioned pieces of the battlefield to fall into place for the end-game.
With Luna having gathered much of her power into what was supposed to be a final assault, she was dangerously off balance when there was suddenly nowhere to assault.
As stated before, Luna was a soldier. If Celestia has opened up general combat once more, they would have returned to their stalemate. The Moon's skill of arms in personal combat was much greater than her sisters.
But a game master knows how to play her strengths. The Sun did not launch a assault, rather she took advantage of the connection she had whittled away at the entire battle.
With a brilliant flash of her horn, Celestia's own Star crawled from behind the Moon.
The Nightmare found she was unable to move her great equalizer quick enough to block this.
In a split second, the temperature around them raised by several hundred degrees.
Then a pillar of several thousand degree plasma descended from the sky.
The destroyed city around them was turned to glass in an instant, but the effects remained localized. Seeming to be contained by a field.
Screams of agony emitted from the pillar as a god suffered as much as one could, horrid screeches of pure pain and despair overcoming the roar of the Sun.
Celestia gazed at this sight, expression as unreadable as it had been the rest of the battle. The pillar continued to flow downward for many minutes, until the screams stopped.
The torrent ceased, revealing the husk of what once was a healthy alicorn.
Any other being would have been killed almost instantly by the power just displayed, but a god can never truly die. Not while they still hold divinity.
The Sun moved forward over the red-hot glass beneath her hooves, cracks ringing out as her solar form's weight descended upon the ground.
She reached what was once her sister, now broken and defeated.
Celestia gazed downward without mercy, reaching out her power and beginning the long work of untying a beings connection to the world.
This brought forward a new bought of weak screams from the blackened and cooked figure as it attempted to escape, but the Sun ruthlessly held her sister in place and continued her work.
After a time, Celestia released the defeated deity. She had severed every domain her sister once held except for one, allowing her to live.
Gathering her new power over the moon, the Solar Monarch chained the Nightmare's very essence to what was once her celestial body.
It was only a few moments before the once Lunar Diarch found herself forcefully dragged by magic to the Moon, to be locked away for a thousand years.
Now standing alone, Celestia gazes toward the sky. What was once her sisters domain.
From near her eyes, a small bout of steam rises into the now cool air.
In the distance the Sun fell over the horizon, casting the world into darkness.
