Luna's Secret World Redux

Luna’s Secret World
Chapter 1
By: AzureKaRyu
August 12, 1008 PN

“Get AWAY!” Luna screams, risking one last glance behind her before reaching her destination, a very brief clearing in the forest, allowing her to jump into the air and take flight. As she takes her first few flaps a searing pain shoots through her right wing.

Torn? I tore it. Fuck!

The terrifying shadow being caught her by surprise and cut her side all the way up to the wing. She could feel that the tear was not caused by the cut itself, but rather the panic that ensued shortly after as she flared her wings and flapped the both of them much to powerfully. This is the most common cause of injuries like this for Alicorns like Luna, or even some very strong Pegasi like Rainbow Dash or Spitfire.

Biting her lip she continued to fly as fast as she could away from the monster chasing her. Luna snuck a peek back, looking into the clearing and was able to see something that frightened even the mare of Nightmares herself.

The monster that was chasing her did not try and continue its pursuit, as it was most likely unable to fly. It stared at her with blank, crimson eyes and its body was mostly a wispy grey shadow, its arms completely exposed with an interesting lack of skin, the muscle tissue a mix of crimson and grey. Attached to its muscular arms were two metallic devices which harbored one retractable blade each. The blade was very long, probably a foot and a half and while very thin, had a fairly large width, 4 or 5 inches, that is.

The design of the blade was very elegant, reminiscent of a crescent moon with ancient designs engraved into the steel. The monster wore a mask of navy blue colored steel shaped like a very small kite, it comes up from its chin like a v and curves inwards when it reaches its nose, covering the bridge of the abominations nose, and leaving its horrifying crimson eyes uncovered to strike fear into the unlucky few that run into it.

Luna turned away from the monster, unable to stare any longer. She flew as fast as she could, sprinting in the air, towards Canterlot seeking asylum from one of the few terror's she could not control. It quickly became apparent however that she was going to be absolutely unable to continue uninterrupted all the way to her home due to the torn muscle in her right wing. She had to land, and she had to do it soon or the injuries would escalate to possibly irreparable states. Well, that's not entirely true given that it is almost impossible to cripple alicorns, the reason being their innate earth pony magic.

Luna was going to be able to fly safely for a max of two minutes before injuries could get out of hand. Scanning the forest ahead of her, she is able to spot another clearing, this time much larger than the previous one. Flying towards it, Luna gets about 300 meters out from it before she starts to slow down and descend into the patch of openness.

She lands perfectly even in her state, and she takes some time to examine her wounds more carefully. It became a sudden concern when Luna realized she was bleeding a lot more from the cut on her side than she had previously thought. “Damnit! Such a pain.” Luna cursed as she prepared an extremely painful, but necessary spell to stop the bleeding. Charging her horn with a purple-black color, different from her usual dark blue. She was channeling a spell to cauterize her wound, as she judged that if she did not she may lose a significant amount of blood. Yes, it was going to be painful, and yes, it was most certainly going to scar.

A Small black flame appeared in the air in front of Luna. She carefully maneuvered the flame to the bottom of her wound. Before applying the flame to the wound, she brought her hoof up to her mouth and gently bit down, preparing to endure the extreme pain that this black flame would bring. The reason she had to use this special black ember instead of a regular one was simply because Luna had absolutely no ability to use the magic of the light, scientifically known as white magic. Luna was only capable of using dark magic while her sister, Celestia, could only use white magic.

Just as she was about to apply the flame to the wound, she got a sudden feeling she was being watched. Immediately Luna’s, for the most part, calm composure started to break. She felt terrified.

Oh faust oh faust, please!

Luna slowly turned her head to the left, and she caught something reflecting light. She swung around very quickly and less than thirty feet away from her was the same monster she had been running from, staring at her with cold murderous eyes, lurking in the shadows underneath a tree.

The monster screamed a bloodcurdling scream and charged towards Luna, flying as forwards. Luna was frozen in place, unable to do anything. The monster got within striking distance in only a little over a second, and prepared to swing its blade straight through Luna. The monster swung and Luna prepared for the worst.

~~~~~~~

Luna shot up from her bed, hyperventilating. She threw the covers off of her and jumped out of bed, charging magic into her horn. She quickly realized she was in her room in the Lunar wing of Canterlot Castle. Luckily she hadn’t charged much magic into her horn and she was able to just let it dissipate into the air instead of causing an explosion which happens when mass amounts of magic is gathered into the horn and then suddenly released.

Quickly checking the time, Luna found that she had greatly overslept. It was 7 P.M. and tonight she had to help her sister by setting the night as she lowered the sun in less than an hour at a quarter to eight. She wouldn't even have time for breakfast! She had to prepare immediately.

~~~~~~~

Luna slowly lowered herself to the floor of her balcony after finishing the intense spell channeling involved in moving the moon and stars. She opened her eyes and looked up to observe her work. Of course, she already had an image in her mind but it was nice to see it with her eyes. She saw something irregular, her stars this night had formed a constellation that was not normally there, a six pointed star. The first thing that popped up in her head was why the stars had formed like that, but her second thought was Twilight Sparkle, Luna's most recent student of some of the less popular arts like how to wield spell swords or spell gauntlets, two ancient weapons last used by the military in the discordian time and during The Nightmare Rebellion just over a thousand years ago.

I rather like that mare.

Luna had thought that after all the time that had passed those sacred arts would have been forgotten, but Twilight approached her after the Changeling invasion and asked Luna to train her to use each one proficiently. When Luna asked why Twilight responded "I was always interested in how it worked and given the events these past couple of years I think its time to learn a real way to fight if the elements are not a viable option. I want to protect my friends."

Luna could not refuse. It was not very often, never even, that somepony would request to be taught such an old, unique, and dangerous art. They began training immediately and Twilight of course picked it up with flying colors and was one of the best ponies Luna had ever trained.
Luna felt a quick jolt of pain shoot through her horn, derailing her train of thought. She quickly spun around and observed her room. This was a unique pain. A pain that she hadn’t felt in a very long time. A signaling pain. She was being sent a message. But from what?
The dark alicorn looked around, even though she knew she wouldn’t be able to see the origin of the magical spark. Or at least she thought.

Then she looked up. The odd six pointed star pattern had now gained another star, this one at the center of the formation. Behind it was another star, and behind that, another.
The starbridge was forming. The starbridge was something that didn’t even exist in legends. No living being knew it existed or had even heard rumors of it. Not even Celestia.
Luna was the creator of this amazing phenomenon. The starbridge allowed her to expend massive amounts of her magic to travel to worlds billions of miles away. There was one world in particular, named Vineral, that Luna had made frequent visits to. It was a world where lts land masses took up a total of approximately 28% of the massive planet’s surface area. The rest of the planet was water, with some small islands in random areas usually not far off the shores of the larger continents.

What was more amazing about this place was it’s inhabitants. Yes, like Equestria, the largest species and most advanced species were ponies. But these ponies were different. They sported the elements of both unicorns and earth ponies, but could not fly like the pegasi. Their magic limited too and they had no horn to channel spells through. Instead they used their front hooves, which was substantially less effective than a horn would be. It was still magic however, and could be used in many ways.

Another interesting thing was that this species was a lot less advanced than Equestria was. They had few organized empires, the largest spanning across a quarter of the coldest continent, which Luna had named Iarna, which stood for winter in the ancient magi’s language. It also seemed that they loved war. It was constantly just battles and battles, huge armies clashing against each other in horrifically bloody battles, and occasionally some smaller city-states skirmishing against one another. This made it hard for technology to advance if it did not have anything to do with war. Because of this, if somehow this race were to suddenly show up on their planet, Equis, the entire population of Equestria would be wiped out by a group even a fourth the size of their nation.

It was impossible of course, Luna was the only living being who knew about the spell to enable such a long range teleportation. It was the most complicated spell in the history of magic. Previously, or rather, Currently the most complex known spell to unicorns across the world was a sixteen point spell named Ascension lock.

A sixteen point spell has never been successfully attempted by a single unicorn or even massive groups of unicorns, and the spell that the Lunar princess had to use to teleport such a huge distance was at least three times as difficult. It drained the alicorn of exactly 93% of her magic reserves, which is nearing the levels that would put a unicorn into an aetherhagic shock, which occurs somewhere around 95% of aether, or magic, loss. It is of course different for every unicorn, but that was a solid average.

Now, Luna had some very tough decisions to make.
She had never let her sister know when she performed this, just telling her that she was taking a week off of her duties, which was no problem for her sister.

Also, the alignment of the stars was set to allow the teleportation for 10 days, which was more than enough time for Luna to safely recover all of her magic. This event only occurred once every seven years, and she hasn't visited the world for a little over a thousand years now.
Luna needed a vacation as well. Her recent nightmares have only been getting worse, Maybe this will help me calm down the beautiful mare thought

In the end, her positives outweighed her negatives and she decided she had to do this, for if she didn't her curiosity would be a very heavy weight to bear. There was no reason for her to wait an extra decade if she didn't have too.

Luna cracked open her door and told one of the guards “Awaken my sister, and inform her I will be visiting her in a few minutes.”

The bat winged pegasus saluted and walked down the halls to the other wing of the castle.
Luna went back inside and muttered to herself, “Well, looks like I have some work to do.”

******

Twilight yawned, looking up from her book and turning towards the clock. What? It’s already midnight? She grabbed a bookmark off of the desk next to her using her magic. Digging the bookmark into its place, she levitated the book onto her nightstand.

Getting off of the floor, Twilight started towards her bed. It had been a long day of reading and her sheets and blankets were just calling for her. The lavender unicorn gently got into bed and began to pull the blankets over her body. Unfortunately for her, right as she was pulling back the sheets of the bed, an intense pain shot through her horn, starting at the tip and ending at the base of her skull “AHHH” Twilight fell on the oakwood floor and her hoofs shot up to her horn, but as quick as it came, the pain disappeared like it had never existed in the first place.

It was obvious what this was, it was a magical surge that occur whenever massive amounts of aether is released from a single point. Twilight had to pinpoint the location of this phenomena and inspect the scene.

Immediately Twilight got to work. Pulling herself from the floor, she started scanning the town for massive amounts of magical residue. Very few unicorns were capable of detecting these intense surges and those that were able to were most likely sleeping, and normally would not awake because of a surge. Obviously, Twilight was one of such unicorns gifted enough to feel these surges, and she felt as though she had a duty to ensure it was safe.

After a couple of minutes of strenuous searching, Twilight still had not found the source of the surge inside the town, so she was forced to expand her search to the outer parts of the Everfree not far from the town. A few minutes later she expanded her search once more, and the origin of the massive release of energy became apparent. About six miles into the Everfree, a spell of unimaginable power was being channeled, and from the looks of it would take a considerable amount of time to complete.The origin of the spell was about five and a half miles into the Everfree very near the current location of residue, so Twilight went up to her bed and cast a spell. Suddenly a piece of the floorboard said to the side and a chest slowly rose from the mahogany floor. In the chest lay three items. The first item was a sheathed spellsword, a special sword given only to the most talented swordsmen and mages. A spellsword was made with runes carved into the blade of the sword which allowed talented unicorns like herself channel spells through the sword to make it more adaptable and deadly. This was given to her by Luna shortly after she completed a special course after the changeling invasion.

The sword was made out of a special material called fachium, a very, very rare metal that is almost as hard as diamond and one of the few metals that can conduct magic.
The hilt of the sword was purple and the blade itself was silver with an velvet streak in an erratic pattern running from base to tip.

The next item was simply a dark blue cloak, also given to her by the Princess of the Night, simply made to conceal her identity if need be.

The third and final item is known as a spell gauntlet. This very special item was created for very powerful mages such as herself give an extra point to channel their magic through
Twilight never, ever, with absolutely no exceptions, used any of these things unless she was alone and going into an area of high risk, such as the unknown of the Everfree. After the Changeling invasion, Twilight had braced herself with the fact that sometimes she would have to take violent action to protect herself and her friends, and sometimes she would have to do unspeakable actions, but she would only ever even consider if there was no other option.
Donning her gear, Twilight ran outside her home and inscribed a tiny teleportation rune into the ground to assist her in her fairly long distance travel.

Channeling magic into the rune, Twilight's vision flashed purple and she reappeared at her target location, a clearing in the forest of the Everfree. She had been aiming for this clearing for no other reason than it was the closest place to the magical surge than anywhere else she knew of.

Scanning once more to see if the aether residue had moved, Twilight was pleased to note that not only had it stayed in the same spot, but she only had to walk a mile and a half to come upon the energy’s location.

Twilight started her trek. It would not be a long journey, the lavender unicorn was capable of traveling a mile in around 8-9 minutes at a quick pace, and she was extremely eager to see what she was going to discover.

Twilight tilted her head upward, looking at the stars. Such a beautiful night sky she thought, Luna really does do a wonderful job, painting the sky every night.

As the mare gazed onward, she noticed a very peculiar pattern with the stars tonight. There seemed to be a group of stars forming a constellation she had never seen before it. It kind of looked like… well she couldn’t tell, but it kind of looked like a star.

The lavender colored mare looked back down and noticed a faint blue glow in the distance. I must be getting close Twilight thought to herself, she noted the odd constellation and would be sure to check it out when she got back home.

Twilight picked up her pace to a light jog for the rest of the way. It was only a matter of minutes before the mare reached the edge of the glow. What she saw was absolutely amazing.

There was a massive clearing, most likely a mile in diameter and completely circular. Inside the circle was a six-pointed star with edges expanding to the corner of the clearing and met with trees. The trees had massive arcanic inscriptions that now sported a blue hue, and inside the six pointed star were dozens upon dozens of magic circles and inscriptions.

By Celestia… this is the creation of a goddess

Twilight was wrong in her assumption, but not too far off. In the center, she finally
noticed a dark blue unicorn… no, Alicorn standing in the center with an intense brightness surrounding her horn. Twilight could do nothing but stand in awe as the magic circles and inscriptions flashed blue, and she had somewhere in her mind realized Luna must have been casting a spell of proportions never seen by the eyes of any living unicorn.

Twilight had no option other than to watch. Her flanks fell down to the ground and her jaw dropped, just watching the Alicorn do her work.

Luna was surrounded by magic circles, and floating around her were many small runes. Her eyes were closed and she was obviously in intense focus. Her hair flowed quicker than normal and seemed to glow the same color as everything else.

She’s beautiful… Twilight couldn’t help but to stare. The alicorn truly was something amazing. There was not a more beautiful being on the planet and at this particular moment, Twilight's heart fluttered, not just at the gorgeousness of the mare herself, but also the unimaginable act of power she was showing.

And then, everything pulsed outward.

There was an explosion of energy, and the six pointed star that had been previously trapped by the edges of the clearing had expanded outward destroying all vegetation in its path and was now encompassing Twilight.

The magical prodigy panicked and shot up from the ground, but quickly relaxed when nothing else happened. Right as Twilight let her guard down however, her vision flashed blue and she was pulled into something she had never imagined before.

She was pulled into the matrix of an unclassified level spell that required more power than Celestia had at her command.

Now Twilight started really panicking.

Oh god oh god what do I do?

This was a very dangerous situation for Twilight. She knew that if she tried interrupting or leaving the matrix, she could cause the spell to fail and collapse which would, with this much power, most likely destroy a majority of the everfree forest and all of Ponyville.

Twilight could always do nothing, but that would be dangerous as well. Now she was pulled into the matrix that another pony had started, so Luna would have to pour more of her power into the spell to make sure that whatever she was doing would allow for both of them.

Thats impossible. She thought immediately. There is no way that Luna will be able to complete this monstrosity of a spell now that i’ve been an idiot and been sucked into this.

So, Twilight could not sit and do nothing, but she couldn’t leave the spell either. This left her with only one option. She had to analyze the spell, and she had pour her energy into the spell to assist Luna, and she had to do it quickly, before the spell collapsed.

Immediately starting from the center and moving out, Twilight discovered the meaning and purpose behind each rune and inscription, each magic circle and in the end the star itself.
This was a teleportation spell that the world has never seen before. It was designed to transport a pony millions of miles.

Twilight had no time to sit in awe, her life and Luna’s as well was at stake. She focused magic into her horn, and a magenta glow blended with the already existing blue. That on its own was one of the hardest things she had ever done in her life, but now she had to hold it there for however long the spell would take to complete.

Luckily and also unluckily for Twilight, it didn’t take very long for Luna to finalize the spell. With the brightest flash of light the mare would probably ever witness, she lost consciousness, and she would not like waking up in the morning.