A surviving transcript of a speech from Her Majesty the Dread Mare Nightmare Moon
Chapter 1
Load Full StoryNext ChapterBefore Nightmare Moon was defeated and locked away, she held great power and sway over the hearts of many. Thousands of ponies, who would later be dubbed the Fallen, joined her ranks and were converted to vicious creatures of the night, bodies resembling the aspect of bats. And as all great rulers, she would frequently address and rouse her followers. Her speeches were known as raving and bloodthirsty, nigh incoherent but passionately inspiring.
She'd stand before her subjects atop a high balcony and deliver such a speech:
"You are equine, the victor!" She would shout and pause, eyes scanning the crowd.
"Have your hawkish eyes seen it? A food chain divides you farther than you could ever step. Your wives and neighbors, your tender and sweet, you would devour. They are prey and you are - not predator but next best - omnivore. Sapient pony, crowned with symbolic representation! High on the food chain, equinekind sits and all the lives and lineages and romances you have snuffed, do not dwell, they are your conquest. Rising and bursting on half-stitched scrapwork wings, the sovereign agent realizes its superiority. You are marauder and chronicler. You devour your lessers. The firey gulfs and unseeable chasms claim tu amore, as you claim to love. How many times have you looked down? Is it in your nature? Your act results in the death of prey and eventual absorption of their tissue. Take to hungering heart not to fret nor cultivate sorrow over the depth of your footprints. For despite your quaking step and preternatural wingspan, some distances can't be crossed, and all gods are Achilles to some tortoise. So you consume pony as you would your sister and can never know their docile harmony. The hunt is yours.
Cretins! Your soul blackens and rots with every ignorant word you speak. Misery and foul misery is the coin you trade. You know what you clench in your decrepit hoof and the world suffers. You don't know what you mourn. For centuries in pits the doomed have languished, envying every moment you tarnish. Years will pass in dim awareness and life will not get better and dreams will not be saved. Taste the tragedy you drown in.
I've sailed the coasts of Equestria, walked its shambling cities, left and come back. My homeland was never mine. What was there to treasure has been plundered long ago. The only prize is what a pony gives herself. These days too much is inherited to be used, and instead it uses. Who are your vile forbears? If they still attempt to cross, cut the lines and let them plummet into the smeared days that belong to them. Gaze into their eyes if you care. If you're going to be a supplicant, crawl back into your domicile and pay your rent. Land belongs to compounding powers and we will leave this planet once the last vestiges are plundered, as the supplicants spectate.
Have you successfully hollowed your mind yet?
Those who gave first prayer to the sun and then first tribute to its stewardess should have been bound, charred, and crucified. What future has been stolen and diverted from our species in such short years? The land of the sun is only populated by meek fantasies spun by the pineal-crippled. Sexual craving of Celestia's excretions. Mediocre peddlers congregating wretchedly under taller shadows and pleading to be everybodys' food. All going to die when it becomes apparent one cannot live on friendship alone.
You know where you were born. But don't despair!
Imperfection is the start of beauty. All majesty starts a perilous ascent. Unfurl streaks of intention and let grow shining designs, arrange your coming moments. Fate has no stake in what we perceive for ourselves. But you must call yourself something. Or must plummet into drunken shame. All too many prefer it, they are here among us. I would not say it is a pity they are whores.
When you lie do so proudly. Don't let declining souls dictate your trajectory. There are no others among corpses. Or mountains. You are the champion, the vanquisher, the inventive and with your hooves you sculpt what was and will be. Stay vigorous and your form lithe. These ingrates would never tell you to navigate to uncharted waters, but what do they know of kraken and leviathans? Take your advice from brethren and sistren.
It is not enough to open your chakras and heart. Give whores nothing. What you infer is yours alone. But stand tall in the bloodfest and let red shower you naked and breathing. Vitality coats you, it doesn't belong to them anymore, they no longer breathe. Tear into new days and use these horses to gallop across the steppes. A heart is a ruinous shell when it tries to become harmony. Besides, some things are only needed to pump more blood.
You have been told to hone your appetite! Suppress only the sentimental benevolence. Tie meek companions to the rudder so they can drown. Wisps of goodwill trail behind but they can be dismissed as any stray memory. Thoughts can be made into weapons and even failure can serve an apex species.
Gather drink for coming vampiric nights and entombed days. Hold close your will and study solitude. Harmony is a large beast to slay and so it must be studied as well. These preparations must be taken care of first. Then weave your wings and soar into the dusk.
Together, we of the night will fly, and our reign shall last forever!"
And ponies would cheer.
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