1. Return of Nightmare Moon
Nightmare Moon watched through the eyes of one of her Dreamshadows as Twilight spoke to five other ponies of varying colors. Cold satisfaction curled up inside of her to wait when Pinkie found the book her mentor, Dark Sun, had magically floated into the Golden Oak Library right under the muzzles (or should she say, over the muzzles) of all the ponies attending that ridiculous party inside. Once she was sure they were on their way to the Castle of the Two Sisters, she ordered the Dreamshadow to join the others for the first part of the plan.
* * *
The pride of Rainbow Dash was truly a force to behold. And as a result, the Shadowbolts were Nightmare’s favorite creation of the day. To see such conceit in a pony who was supposed to be on the “good” side made her eager to see what would happen to that pride after the split. And now that she had seen them all in action, she was one hundred percent sure that these were the ponies she and Dark were looking for. The time to strike was soon. The bearers of the Elements just needed to realize their full potential, their full power before the split was practical.
She held back a shiver of delight when she saw the ponies cross the bridge with her own eyes from her vantage point in the remaining tower. “Soon,” she whispered. Dark chuckled at her blatant eagerness, and Nightmare spared him a glance and a shrug. He was sitting on the floor behind her, going over and over six completely different split spells in his head. It had long since started to wear on him, but luckily the moment for action was almost at hoof. He shook his wings out, trying to release the building tension in his muscles, and a few small, black feathers settled into the shadows at the edge of the room. One caught in a cobweb and wriggled free to land with a dizzying spiral at Nightmare’s hooves. It floated up and tickled her on the muzzle. Incessantly. Until she had to raise a hoof to her muzzle to hold back a sneeze with an embarrassing honk.
“Dark!” She threw him a patronizing glare. “You’re supposed to keep yourself under control!” He looked up from where his gaze was fixed on the floor to find Nightmare leaping and dodging around in a circle, trying to keep one of his feathers from flying into her ears. He howled with laughter until Nightmare gave up trying to get away and put up a shimmering blue shield around herself. She hovered in the air above his head, the feather slamming itself into her shield over and over again while she silently glared. Dark sighed and rolled his eyes, expelling the feather with twin flashes of yellow light, one around his exceptionally long horn and one around the feather an instant before it disappeared. He shrugged.
“Whoops… The feathers have the tendency to be a little playful.”
“You call that playful?” Nightmare landed, dropping her shield, and used a spell to illuminate the scene at the edge of the wall more clearly. The two other feathers Dark had shed were shamelessly tormenting a spider about the size of a bit, yanking on its legs (two of which were now missing) and twisting it up in its own web.
“So they play a little rough.” Dark shrugged again and grinned before expelling those feathers as well, leaving the six-legged spider still tangled in the web. Nightmare shook her head and settled on the dais in the center of the room. She closed her eyes and extended her consciousness to her Dreamshadows, looking through them successively until she found the one that had the best view. Twilight was sitting on the floor, staring intently at the Elements.
“The book said, ‘When the five are present, a spark will cause the sixth Element to be revealed,’” she explained.
“What the hay is that supposed to mean?” the orange one (Apple-something?) exclaimed.
“I’m not sure, but I have an idea. Stand back. I don’t know what will happen,” Twilight replied, turning her attention to the orbs on the floor.
“Come on now, y’all. She needs to concentrate,” Apple-something said, leading the others away. Nightmare stiffened and reeled her consciousness back to herself. This wasn’t supposed to happen!
“Dark!” He flinched at the urgency in her voice. He had moved to stand beside Nightmare while she was watching the bearers, and his unexpectedly close proximity startled her into silence for the barest of seconds. It was long enough for him to grab her shoulders and shake her impatiently.
“What!? What is happening!?”
“They left Twilight alone with the Elements!” Nightmare’s panic broke on Dark’s fierce demeanor, and her panic lessened to see his determination. Dark growled with frustration.
“Have one of your Dreamshadows bring the Elements here until they group back together and then take them back!” Dark commanded. “Maybe they’ll get the idea. They need to be together for the spark to reveal the sixth Element!”
Nightmare communicated the order to her Dreamshadows, and they condensed together and took the Elements into their swirling grasp. But just as Nightmare initiated the spell to bring them to her, she felt Twilight jump into the vortex. She had just enough time to yell, “Hide!” before both the Elements and Twilight appeared. Luckily, Twilight was too busy coughing and focusing her hate on Nightmare to notice Dark’s black rump and orange and yellow tail disappear behind the dais.
Nightmare laughed, partly to cover her surprise, partly to fill the silence since she didn’t know what to say, and partly because there was nothing that made her feel more confident than a good hearty evil laugh. She kept the Elements close, hovering around her, mostly because she didn’t know exactly what to do with them. Twilight was on her hooves before Nightmare knew what was happening, head bowed low, scraping the cold stone floor with a front hoof.
“You’re kidding. You’re kidding, right?” Nightmare didn’t want any sort of confrontation to happen close to the dais where Twilight might see Dark. She didn’t know why, but Dark had told her that it was critical to the plan for him to remain unseen until the split was complete. When she asked him to elaborate, he had responded with, “Let’s just say Celestia might recognize me from her past, and we want a little time to build our power before we confront her.” Nightmare had to keep Twilight away from the dais and Dark. So she did the only thing she could think of and met Twilight’s determined charge halfway.
Twilight disappeared an instant before impact, and Nightmare pulled up, startled. She whirled to find Twilight standing in the middle of the five Elements. Right where Nightmare had left them on the dais. Facing towards Dark. You fool! Nightmare berated herself.
“Just one spark. Come on, come on,” Twilight said, just before Nightmare landed where she was standing, knocking her off the dais toward the staircase, and most importantly, away from Dark.
“No! No!!” Nightmare cried when she found her hooves planted in the center of the magically activated trap Dark had applied to the Elements earlier. Fortunately, Dark noticed the warning sparks from his position quickly enough to deactivate it before it triggered the beginning of the split spells. Nightmare had already been split once, and all of Dark’s attempts to split a pony more than once had resulted in some pretty messy failures.
“But where’s the sixth Element?” Twilight despaired. Maybe it was the adrenaline left over from the averted crisis that gave Nightmare such a brash idea, but it was brilliant. The Elements didn’t technically need to be in one piece to function. And some serious stalling needed to happen right about now. Everything was spinning out of control. If Twilight thought the Elements were gone, she and Dark could “resurrect” them later when the situation was more manageable. So Nightmare shattered the elements with the slightest hint of some magical assistance, laughing as she did so. She needed Twilight to give up and leave for a while, coming back with her five friends preferably.
“You little foal! Thinking you could defeat me! Now, you will never see your princess. Or your sun! The night will last forever!!” Nightmare commanded her Dreamshadows to circle above her and laughed evilly. She didn’t want Twilight to fight her, she just wanted her to leave. Judging by the expression on Twilight’s face, Nightmare’s display was successful. Nightmare was just about to fire a bolt of harmless light at her to scare her away when Twilight suddenly turned her attention to the stairway.
Nightmare saw the shadows and heard the voices a split second after Twilight did. Maybe this could be salvaged… She glanced down at Dark who had risked a peek above the edge of the dais. “Can you still do it?” Nightmare whispered. Dark hesitated a mere moment before nodding.
“You think you can destroy the Elements of Harmony just like that!?” Twilight demanded as she turned around. “Well, you’re wrong. Because the spirits of the Elements of Harmony are right here!!” Nightmare held back a grin as the stone shards at her feet rose, glowing.
“What?” she prompted. While it was clear that Twilight had finally realized what Dark and Nightmare had known all along, she wasn’t sure the other five ponies had. So she stood quietly, looking concerned, as she let Twilight finish her speech. The shards rose to meet their corresponding bearers as Twilight named them: Applejack (yup, she remembered now) for Honesty, Fluttershy for Kindness, Pinkie Pie for Laughter, Rarity for Generosity, and Rainbow Dash for Loyalty. But there was one more…
“You still don’t have the sixth Element! The spark didn’t work!” Nightmare was getting a little impatient with the speech-making.
“But it did. A different kind of spark. I felt it the very moment I realized how happy I was to hear you, to see you. How much I cared about you.”
And here we go with the mushy stuff… thought Nightmare, very subtly rolling her eyes.
“The spark ignited inside me when I realized that you all are my friends,” Twilight continued, turning back to face her. With a flash of white light, the sixth Element appeared to hover above Twilight’s head.
Yes, yes, yes! Now we’re back on track! Nightmare pretended to shrink from the light of the Element of Magic so she could smirk into her elbow. Containing her excitement was taking way more work than she had thought it would.
“You see, Nightmare Moon, when those elements are ignited by the… the spark that resides in the heart of us all, it creates the sixth Element. The Element of… Magic!” The Elements attached themselves to their bearers, each with a flash of brilliant light. The bearers came together as twin rainbows twined together and climbed toward the ceiling. The resulting magical burst dove straight for Nightmare Moon, who laid on the act.
“Nooooo! NOOOOOO!!!” she cried as she was surrounded. Dark shook his head and grumbled under his breath as he harnessed the magic from the Elements to aid him in the six spells that were required of him. During the ensuing storm of whiteness, no one could see the six extra ponies that Dark could feel as he breathed life into their souls. He touched Nightmare with a wing to give her the signal, and she teleported away in nearly the same instant that she teleported Luna to the place she had been standing. Dark teleported the six new ponies and himself to the rendezvous spot after releasing Luna from the stasis spell she had existed in for a thousand years.
When he arrived, the yellow of his magical aura appeared for a second, signaling the expelling of the rope they had tied Celestia with. He felt kind of bad about that. It had taken him forever to make that thing, mostly because he had needed to place a control spell on each individual strand of hair. Otherwise, they would have taken on wills of their own. That little quirk of his was both incredibly annoying and incredibly useful.
The hair-rope had been Dark’s idea. That way, they could release Celestia without either of them being there. Everypony needed to think that Nightmare had been defeated and that Luna was Nightmare. And now with the rope gone, Celestia could release herself from the binding device he had created for her horn.
Dark and Nightmare made eye contact and grinned at each other. Nightmare stared at the six ponies sprawled out unconscious on the floor with awe.
“You did it!” she laughed. Dark was still grinning proudly, looking very satisfied with himself despite the fact that his mane and tail were ruffled, his wings drooped toward the floor, and even the effort of holding his head up was proving difficult. Holding onto six spells at once had drained him. That’s why he had set the trap on the Elements. It wasn’t possible for a split spell to be carried out completely with a trap spell. For some reason Dark needed to be actively putting his own magic into it. But the trap could start the spell. If Twilight had not triggered the trap too early, Dark wouldn’t have been so magically drained. But he had still done it.
“How long before they wake?” Nightmare asked.
“About an hour,” Dark replied with a yawn.
“And you’re sure their counterparts won’t notice anything’s amiss?”
“They might have a headache.” Dark’s eyes fluttered. “I’m gonna take a nap. Wake me in an hour.” Nightmare nodded as he walked away, then settled on the floor to wait. An hour was nothing compared to a thousand years.
Author's Note
Please let me know what you think! If there's anything that doesn't make sense or is a little unclear, tell me. I tend to get ahead of myself sometimes. Also, I'm very open to constructive criticism and would appreciate any you want to give me!
