Author's Note
Halfway through the chapter the text turns bold. I don't know why it turned bold and have way too little time to look into it.
Thank's Knightly
Sister First
Crying, the sound of a distraught someone. It could mean pain, he fell down the hill and scraped his arm, or fear, she saw a clown holding a bloody knife in between its lips. anything under the sun that makes the brain spike into unknown territory, but that’s not what I heard. I heard the sound of whining, grinding against my ears. I’d bleed to make it stop.
“Please, will all of you just calm down!” I shouted to the dirt walls.
Where had it gone wrong? I’d been through this before a thousand years ago. I kept records, did everything in my endless power to keep everyone in the know, yet it happened again. History repeated itself.
“Why… why won’t you listen to me, now?” I stamped my hoof. My anger rushed out so hot that it short circuited my mane for just a second, but that was enough to see the pastel rainbow flicker once or twice, “You call me a God and yet, won’t listen to a word I say!”
When had they become weak? After Twilight’s passing? After Discord’s passing?
“Luna is my sister! My family,” I shook my head, eyes closed with tears. “I lost her once I can’t lose her again!”
Why had this happened!
I looked out into the crowd, seeing my ponies. Many I watched grow up. Coco Nutmeg, a pegasus from Cloudsdale came to Canterlot to save his fox named Huggles, and when Huggles passed, screamed to stay here with her. I’d footed the bill, willingly.
There were ponies I knew very personally and it hurt to see them act like toddlers caught with their hoof in the cookie jar and still refute that her sister took the cookie. They look so pathetic, like they need their mothers to wipe their bum after using the restroom.
That changed.
It was a flicker, but it was enough to bring hope to my breaking heart. In their eyes, the sparkle I’d seen in many ponies through many years appeared, and that was curiosity. I love curious ponies, the ones that just want to get their noses into everything the world has to offer.
My favorite pupil, Twilight Sparkle, had been the most curious pony I’d ever been given the chance to meet.
That curiosity meant one thing, that they were listening. That they wanted to know what she was talking about. That they were wisening up to their own stupidity and finally saying, ‘let's listen to the one pony we rely on for every little detail.
I began to give my planned facts right away. “My sister is the only one that’s been with me through the eternities. I love her with every fiber in my being, I can’t fight her.”
“But she’s Nightmare Moon!” A colt I recognized as Arid Sun, the pony that trotted to Saddle Ariba and came back bearing gifts of gold that was edible.
“Nightmare Moon has returned, save us Sun God!” the crowd chanted as a whole.
“Yes, Nightmare Moon is back, please, look beyond that one fact and ask yourself. Why has Nightmare Moon come back?”
“Well, why has Nightmare Moon come back?” Arid said in this gravelly voice.
“Because my sister, Luna, Moon God as you know her, isn’t receiving the love she deserves from you.” I tried to keep myself calm, but I blinked one too many times for my liking.
“So the Moon God is feeling a little left out,” a pony I didn’t recognize shouted, “that doesn’t give her the right to declare eternal night and kill every last soldier we have!”
“I lost my husband because of her!” A mare I didn’t know commented.
I breathed. It’d be so easy to cook them alive with the raw energy from the sun, but I can’t do that. I won’t get Luna back if I can’t get these little ingrates to think logically.
“And yet you don’t ask why Nightmare Moon killed the army,” I had no idea what I was talking about, but I had to spin it around somehow. I’d lose them otherwise, and they’d lose their lives. “It’s because you all are not paying attention to her. Gods are finicky, we have emotional shifts just like you all. It doesn’t make us evil if we want a hug when we’re sad, and lash out when we don’t get it. We just need support.” I stood up straighter as the ball began to roll in my mind. “Just like everyone here, My sister and I get sad, mad, we get all those bad feelings you know personally, and you know how we get beyond that?” I didn’t wait for a response, “I seek help. I confide in my sister much like all of you confide in a sibling or parent. You understand what I mean?”
There were a few nods and my hope bloomed once more. They were thinking! I was getting through!
“My sister, Luna is like all of you, I am like all of you, so please, help me fix her.” I turned my gaze upon every single eye in the room in one, practiced motion. “She had been possessed by a being foul and tortuous, and the remedy is quite simple,” a few more nods and an ‘uh-huh’ or two from the back, “all you need to do is love her, like you love me. That’s how Nightmare Moon came about the first time, and its why she came this time. Please, I ask you, beg of you, please love the Moon God.”
“The Moon God needs love to function! She’s a changeling!”
The pony that shoved the biggest monkey wrench into the gears of everyone, was Gravel Surprise. She’s the unicorn mare that had the bright idea of leading a march of all her friends through the throne room, during court, and loudly proclaim that the water tasted funny. No facts behind the statement, no logic or any kind of sense, just plain stupidity. It’d have been cute, and a nice change of pace, but she was a full grown mare. A mare that just made it to the top of her list of ponies she wanted to roast alive.
Gravel’s words begun the expected uproar. I took the moment to reflect as vocal bullets assaulted me from every side.
My greatest creation, the evac zone was meant to bring safe haven for her children during times of strife. I had built the giant holes in the ground just before the Everfree Forest began showing signs of becoming absolutely deadly. It didn’t see much use, the dirt building was to hold three hundred ponies got no use during Nightmare Moon’s return a thousand years ago. Not in the second coming of Discord or any other natural disasters, only now, a thousand years later is it being used. Used for a problem that can easily be fixed!.
The shouts turning into screams pulled me from my thoughts. I turned and, for a brief moment, saw a pony being thrusted to the sky. The mare’s scream was a scream knife that cut the scream butter that was everyone else’s screams, it pierced my brain like a fork on a chalkboard.
The scream cut off and a loud, squelching and crunching silenced the rest. Seconds later that mare fell from the ceiling and landed in a limp, bloodless heap.
A black shadow rushed into my line of sight.
The screams came once again, rising out of the silence like a shark attacking a seal.
A bloodless death
The crackle of voices caught her attention. These weren’t incoherent screams, but rough pleas. Her ponies were begging her to protect them. They grabbed at me, sobbed at me – looked at me like I was going to help them. Me, help them?
But I wanted to. I couldn’t stand the look my ponies had in their eyes. I could feel their fear, taste the salt in their tears of sorrow, smell the fear farts! My ponies, the ones I cherished and protected like my own children. I couldn’t take it. My wings twitched, ready for take off, when a thought came to my mind.
Not a normal thought, but one of blood red hate.
It’s their fault.
I’d known all along it was their fault Luna turned into Nightmare Moon, even before her first return. Luna became Nightmare Moon because our ponies didn’t love her. Do you know how easy it is to fix that? Love her. Show the pony that lets you sleep at night in confident protection that you care. Write her letters! Say hello in the morning. Don’t flinch in fear and look away. Don’t create lies behind her back.
“Don’t take my sister away from me again!” I whispered those words with such malice, what I was about to do almost felt morally acceptable!
I looked out into the crowd, no more seeing the ponies I loved, but now gray molds of the ponies I loved. These weren’t my ponies, these were fakes! My ponies wouldn’t abandon my sister and then beg me to kill my sister.
Nightmare Moon was here, and she was hungry. I decided to put the bill for her meal on the house.
With a strong bubble shield I separated myself from them. I even collapsed trees over the hole that brought light into the evac zone, sending everything into a pitch black panic.
]A tamping started at my shield as my non ponies began to realize the situation they were in.
A scream came from the left as the second one began her ascent. Again the screams cut off with a loud, wet crunch.
A bloodless death.
The roar came back and I swear they can really tear at my nerves. They began pounding too. Hard and fast at first, then slowing down as their energy dwindled.
A third bloodless death, then a forth before Nightmare Moon finally stopped toying with them. Her loud hiss silenced the screams, demanding all of their short attention spans.
The soft crunching of bones being shattered under hoof came into my ear like popcorn, and I’m pretty sure this was the moment I cracked. The smell of bodily fluids, the sight of terror in my ponies’s eyes, the way they clawed at each other in the dark, it made a crack in the wall I’d built so long ago in my heart.
That crack spiderwebbed in all directions, crumbling to release all the times I cried myself to sleep knowing that Luna was on the moon, cold and alone. All of my pain came rushing out, the way her moon rejected me, fighting me over every inch, those days where I thought myself the reason, guilting my brain over things that had been out of my control.
All of my thoughts became coated in a viscous red ooze of hate toward the ponies dying outside to a bright, blue freeze beam.
They were at fault.
The answer was obvious, yet they refused to listen. I full year of trying to reach to the inside of their small minds, and it got me nothing but a bunch of broken drill bits I like to call my will. I tried to save them, I tried to help them see the folly of their ways, but alas, they did this to themselves.
They were at fault.
The body pile grew. Nightmare Moon really liked to play with her food. She made hills then forced the few left alive to climb all over their loved one’s body parts. It was fascinating actually. I liked the part where they’d fall back into the dark only to land neck first in Nightmare Moon’s bloodied fangs.
As I enjoyed that, another thought came to me. When all these ponies died, Nightmare Moon would attack her. I had to face the fact that my sister wasn’t coming back, and that she was due for another thousand years on the moon.
I began to psych myself up for the fight.
I saw Luna meditating, learning about the Nightmare planted in her heart, poking and prodding until it lashed out. She grew a tolerance to Nightmare’s attacks, but even that failed her.
Nightmare Moon was in control of her body.
Luna didn’t know why it came back, or if it had even died in the first place, but there was one thing she did know.
Nightmare Moon hated love and affection. It made her weak. She needed anger and jealousy to grow big and strong, “so as long as we make sure you’re loved, Nightmare Moon would never come back.” I got up and dropped my shield as the last pony died. “That’s what I said, but on my beautiful rear, I never saw this coming.
I bolted forth on my powerful wings.
It was their fault
I made the first punch, and Nightmare Moon went down, landing in one of her piles of ponies.
You’re in the right here
I pulled out the Elements of Harmony. "I love you Luna!” I shout as I blast her.
