Titanomachy

Twilight

She remembered her surprise when Grogar broke free of the feedback she had set up in the wards. She hadn't thought anypony could have done that since the pain of passing through the active magical fields would be crippling. He had charged her while she was still focusing power through herself and the remaining wards so as to seal the gate. She couldn't break free of her spell and she was forced to stand and watch as the enormous, curling horns filled her vision. The Goat-Lord smashed her body with the impact and impaled her limp form on the twisted obsidian knives underneath. It had hurt but only up to a certain point. She hadn't known that there was a ceiling to the amount of pain a pony could experience. After Grogar had crushed her bones with his horns, the puncture wounds were like some unfortunate event taking place far away and only hearing about second hand.

Despite her fey frame of mind her body had still fought for breath. She remembered gasping with all her might as her side bubbled and red, copper tasting foam filled her mouth. She had thought that she should have been panicking then but it was only her body fighting for a breath. Her mind was far away and so very tired. Her last breaths were hitched, abortive things; more like the hiccuping gasps she made when she cried too long or hard. She had felt when that too stopped and she just lay there fading out as her heart slowed and then stopped with a sad little flutter in her chest.

"If I can remember dying, then how can there be an 'I' to remember it?" she wondered. She tried to open her eyes and nothing happened. Curious and concerned, she began trying to assess the condition of her body and noticed with mild alarm that she was not breathing, nor was her heart beating. Courting the pitfalls of meta-analysis, she examined her relatively mild response to finding out that her body was no longer functioning. She was surprised by the fact, concerned about the fact, but there was no panic - no surging adrenaline..."Oh." She re-assessed her lack of bodily functions in the light of her new hypothesis and found that she could not falsify the possibility that she no longer had a body. Her education had focused on applied and theoretical magic rather than abstract philosophy but at the moment she was fervently wishing that she had studied more about the nature of consciousness and the mind-body duality.

"If I don't have eyes, I don't have any of my other sense organs either," she reasoned. "So, what do I have?" The thought of spending her afterlife blind, mute, and paralyzed was deeply unsatisfactory to her so she tried to remember anything that could help her. "Magic?" she wondered to herself. The defining property of magic within the world was to alter or perceive the world in a manner that transcends the physical, three-dimensional structure of the universe. "But, how can I work magic without a horn?"

She began a focusing meditation, it was designed to help a unicorn perceive the flow and structure of complex enchantments. Usually, it took her most of an hour to reach this state of receptive calm. She was pleasantly surprised to find that without the distraction of her endocrine system she was able to focus far more quickly and effectively. "I guess that's one tally in the 'pro' column for being dead," she snarked to herself. As her focus deepened, she began to see subtle glows and shapes around her. This perception was different from that of vision, even though her consciousness interpreted the data in visual form. There was no directionality, as with eyes or even ears, she could see in all directions at once. Her only limit to how wide an area she could perceive at once was her mind.

All around her she could see the stone surface of Tartarus, and thanked Celestia that she had not been able to perceive it this way initially. She could tell that the substance making up the walls, floors, and ceiling was alive. The gate out was obvious in this mode of perception. She could see the remnants of the shattered wards ringing the esophagus and the five wards she had re-enforced as well. Those she had touched with her magic glowed with a magenta light, the shade of her own horn-light. Looking through the illusion of inertness, she could see that only their interaction with Tartarus forced the god to assume a stable form. Out beyond the relatively tiny sphere of caverns they had been walking in, there was nothing solid, not even directions or geometry. Her mind recoiled from the concept; to her, the rules of reality should be more than a polite agreement between old friends so she turned her attention away from Tartarus.

She focused on the area near where her consciousness was located. Immediately, she noticed a sphere of silvery-blue light resting against the nearest surface of Tartarus. It was surging and roiling like a pot on a high boil and rising intermittently to the surface were globs of absolute darkness that swam and juked under their own power before diving back into the depths of the sphere. The light was the exact shade of Luna's magical aura, given her location Twilight surmised that this sphere was some spiritual portion of the goddess, quite likely her soul. She could see that the sphere seemed to be leaking, a trail of glowing essence dribbled out of the sphere and pooled against the surface of Tartarus. She remembered seeing Luna moments before her death, she was engorged on the essence of Erebus and had resembled nothing more than a giant version of Nightmare Moon.

Twilight felt that she needed to confirm if Luna was the glowing sphere in her perception and to find out what condition she was in. She didn't think the distinct black blobs in her aura boded well. She reached out with what would normally be her telekinetic grip and probed the surface of the glowing sphere. As she made contact, the galaxy of little sensations that go with having a body came rushing back like a tidal wave. She could feel the cold pain of the volcanic glass cutting into her side, she could feel her tears rolling down her cheek, she could feel her body shrinking as her essence poured out of god-given rents in her flesh. It took Twilight an effort of will to keep herself separate from Luna. She keenly felt the temptation to just merge with the alicorn's divine soul and cease existing as an independent entity.

What helped Twilight the most at that moment was Luna's spiritual and emotional pain. Luna was staring at a lavender unicorn's body while silently weeping. "My corpse," Twilight realized with a start. She almost didn't recognize the body as her own, it was so small. The ineffable essence that separated clay from life was entirely absent from the corpse, rendering it a thing and not a person. "Not entirely gone, just on a temporary sabbatical," she hoped.

Luna's mind was a spiraling nexus of guilt. Twilight could feel Luna punishing herself for every misdeed, every injury ever inflicted on another. The goddess was scourging herself for every sin she had committed during her long life, starting from the dismemberment of her own mother and ending with Twilight's death. Twilight was alarmed to sense the undigested chunks of god-stuff tearing and biting their way into Luna's soul as she opened wound after wound in her own psyche through which they could enter and feed. She estimated that it would not be long before Luna was consumed or corrupted by the shards of Erebus.

Twilight felt a twinge of guilt at seeing Luna's predicament. "It was my plan to have Luna absorb some of Erebus' darkness, I have to fix this," she said to herself. Neither of them had though that Erebus' essence would be poisonous, let alone independently carnivorous. The late unicorn reached, as if using her telekinesis, for a glob of darkness bobbing to the surface of Luna's soul. She didn't think about the mechanics of interacting with objects without the use of her horn, she just did it. Twilight was surprised by the sudden sensation of cold. As a mortal, she had never experienced cold like this before. Had she a body, it would have frozen solid in an instant's contact with this remnant of the monster; as it was, she simply endured. The fragment twisted and fought like a landed fish and desperately tried to escape Twilight's grip. It was a struggle but she slowly guided the shard out through the rent in Luna's side. The corruption bled out of the wound and landed into the puddle of blood and essence that had spread out from underneath Luna.

Twilight repeated the process again and again until there was nothing left within Luna's aura but glowing silver. The alicorn seemed calmer, her sorrow was now simply that of loss rather than a form of self-punishment. The pool of essence that Luna had bled was now alive with darkness. The bits of demon swam and circled like koi in a too-small pond. They wanted out, they wanted to feed. It would only be a matter of time before the shards began to coalesce into larger and smarter fragments of the Hungry Dark.

"They are too dangerous to leave like this," Twilight thought to herself. "They might even try to possess my body." She paused as her mind suddenly began working in overdrive. "I-dea!" she laughed at herself as she imitated Rarity's fashion war-cry. The laugh turned melancholy almost immediately as Twilight realized that if this didn't work, she'd never see any of her friends again. She started calculating the risks of her audacious plan and quickly came to the conclusion that only the most desperate of ponies would ever think to try what she was about to. "Well, desperate I am," she thought and got to work.

Twilight scooped up a small portion of the essence Luna had bled out into the pool, it was still glowing faintly with Luna's aura. She dribbled a path of glowing energy up the stream of her mortal blood to the punctures in her body. "And if I'm right..." She watched with pleasure as the darkness frantically swam upstream in their search for sustenance. As they neared the corpse, Twilight waited, ready to pounce for everything relied on the timing. "There!" she saw a flicker of pseudo-life pulse across her heart as the fragments of Erebus tried to re-animate her body and turn it into some sort of blood-drinking abomination. She dove for the glimmer of essence deep within the body that used to hold her soul, gripping the organ now that essence was bound to it and was tangible to her.

"Now for the hard part," she thought. She pushed with all her will and her heart lurched forward in a single beat. It pushed the blood forward through her body and dragged her body to the knife's edge between life and death. Her body called to her soul like a magnet, trying pulling her within. The window for her next action was a mere instant: the moment while her soul was re-entering her body but not fully encapsulated by the mortally injured flesh. If she was too slow, she would be limited by her body's capabilities and would quickly die again. If she was too early, she wouldn't be 'within' her body enough to carry out the spell she had planned. She intended to use Erebus' essence, now trapped alongside but as yet unmixed with her own soul, as a supply of magical energy for repairing her body to the point where she would remain alive long enough for Luna to help her.

There was no formal incantation for this; the conversion of essence to magic was strictly theoretical. (Twilight was unaware of the several instances of development and subsequent suppression of spells like this during Celestia's reign.) In her spare time, she had been working on mathematical description of this theoretical process - strictly for curiosity's sake. She believed, however, that her derivations were fundamentally flawed. Every time she attempted to derive the multiplicative constant describing the relationship between these elemental states of thaumaturgical energy her work returned a value far too large to be possible. Her best estimates placed this constant in the range of the speed of light, in pony-lengths per second, times itself - a literal unbelievably large number. Unfortunately for Twilight's current efforts, her calculations had been completely correct.

Twilight reached into the demon's essence, focusing all her available magic into the smallest possible portion of the dark. She visualized rice, then poppy seeds, then pollen. She kept going downwards in size, focusing her effort beyond the resolution of the finest microscopes ever produced. She lost herself in that single moment so that it felt unhurried, as if time was merely a construct erected for the convenience of mortal beings. It was then that she thought she felt something give way in the depths of this dark gods' soul. Light filled her mind's eye as the chain reaction built and the rate at which magic was released accelerated. She focused the growing torrent of energy into her broken body, knitting together tissue, sinew, and bone in an ever accelerating rate. With the magical torrent still flooding her mind and soul she took her first shuddering breath.

Luna

"I killed her." Luna was laying on her side, head pressing against the uneven stone. She was staring into the vacant eyes of Twilight's corpse. An annoying part of her mind was trying to draw her attention to the fact that she was both bleeding and shrinking. She squashed it like a bug. "I came to Tartarus to save her and Twilight ended up having to save me."

She felt cold. Luna thought that it was because her heart had died along with Twilight. Neither she nor Twilight had predicted the survival of Erebus' essence as carnivorous entities within her. "I let power overwhelm me. I didn't become her again but I wanted too. I'm a fool and a danger to others" She knew that she should pick herself up and leave this prison realm; her sister would need her. "Does she need someone to betray her and our people just to salve their injured pride? Or is she lacking someone to disrupt her careful plans in a fit of shame?"

Luna didn't want to leave, nor did she believe that she deserved to leave. She wanted to stay with Twilight...what was left of Twilight. She gagged as the grief within her surged at the thought. She felt like the grief was a physical thing fighting for a way out, not caring about the path it took. Luna thought she could still smell Twilight. Not the charnel house smell of blood, offal, and death that filled the air, but the light scent that lingered on whatever her mane or tail brushed against. It was as if a portion of Twilight lingered still despite the her body's ruination. Luna felt, without knowing exactly why, that leaving Twilight's body was tantamount to abandoning her and refused to do so.

She shuddered as the pain from her wounded side reasserted itself. She felt the rate of bleeding increase. "Mayhaps I won't have to choose between flight and faithfulness," she said to herself between gritted teeth. She had thought her wound bad but survivable if she pulled herself from the spiked floor and limped out the gate. This new surge of bleeding made her doubt her initial assessment. "If I still bleed so while the knives yet lie within the wound, what bloody torrent will be released when I stand?" Her head swam as the blood-loss took its toll but she never shifted her eyes from the grim sight of the fallen unicorn. "I had wished to be thine hero. I dreamt of swooping in to save you from danger," she confessed to the corpse. "I wanted to earn the right to court you. Instead, you saved me and died for my sins."

She felt weary of sorrow and guilt. "My mother died so that I may live. Thousands die in a war of my own making. My one true friend lies here because of my selfish need to impress her. Tartarus is where you put gods that are too dangerous to live free, I can't think of no better place for me," she continued. She gave a chuckle that had nothing to do with mirth, "As I thought before, at least I'll have some company this time, right Twilight?"

Twilight's corpse jerked. Luna raised her head from the floor, eyes wide and doubting her senses. The body suddenly inhaled in a violent gasp that seemed to go on forever. "Twilight?" she whispered.

The thing spoke: "LunaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!" What started as Twilight saying her name shifted into an ever-growing scream. The cavern shook as sound and light combined in an unearthly fury centered around the unicorn mare. Magenta light, so bright it burned the eye, erupted from every opening in Twilight's battered flesh. Cuts and scrapes burned like arcane glyphs, her eyes flew open and beams of searing light shot forth In the same moment, the sucking wounds in her sides erupted in gouts of violet flame. Twilight's cry continued to build beyond mortal measure as magical forces ripped the mare from her impalement and lifted her several pony-lengths into the air. The mare's head was thrown back and the violet flames framed her body, taking the form of enormous wings.

Luna forgot her pain and injury as she pulled herself free from the floor's spines and scrambled away from the exploding mare. As if in response to her retreat, a coruscating arc shot out from Twilight's horn and knocked the breath from the alicorn. It felt as if fire were burning through Luna's belly. She panicked for a moment, thinking that perhaps Twilight had taken revenge upon Luna for her death. However, instead of burnt flesh Luna found freshly grown skin covering her wounds. She was whole again and felt hale and full of life.

The burning, magenta firestorm had shrunk during the moments of Luna's healing but then redoubled in intensity once the deed was done. The unicorn's tiny, dark body was lost in the glaring light of undirected magic as the light grew past the point where Luna's eyes could endure. As she turned away, twelve simultaneous arcs of power, sparking and jumping like constrained lightning, collided with the wards previously broken by Grogar. Luna could feel them slamming home, one after the other, as the strange light carved new, potent symbols over the ruins of the old. These wards felt fresh and puissant, buzzing with Twilight's signature efficiency. Despite Luna's fervent wishes for an end to this alarming display, the maelstrom of power moved towards and through the now repaired gate.

Darkness and silence attempted to retake their shattered dominion over the chamber but the still-sputtering wards would not allow them victory. Luna blinked, attempting to both regain her wits and her vision as phantoms burned by the magenta light danced within her eyes. With a whimper like a worried dog, she noticed that Tartarus' obsidian flesh was melted smooth by the passing of the...event. All of the surfaces, except for a small circle of floor surrounding Luna. As the solidifying stone cooled, the cavern walls began to plink and crackle. "Oh Twilight, what impossible thing have you done now?" the goddess said with a voice heavy with worry. She shook her head, took to her wings, and followed Twilight through the gate.

Luna emerged from the eternal moment separating Tartarus from the living world far more gracefully this time than during her previous transit. She felt muscles she didn't know she had relax at reentering the universe proper. "Dark gods below, Twilight! What did you do?" she gasped as she took in the vision of the ruined valley before her. The green forest which encroaching upon the Maw was destroyed, Luna presumed that it had been shattered in some violent paroxysm of Twilight's uncontrolled power. Dust hung thickly in the air and the sounds of violence echoed from somewhere within that miasma. Hanging in the eastern sky, above the devastation was the thing that might be Twilight. It did not hover like a pegasus. It just hung in the sky, as if daring gravity to try and come for it. Bookending the vault of the sky was her moon, glowering at her from the western horizon, red and angry at the neglect she had shown it. "Soon," she said to her celestial orb, trying to reassure her charge.

Luna tucked her wings to her sides and began galloping towards Twilight, channeling the power through her hooves. "There has to be something I can do," she hoped. Before she could arrive, she felt another surge of power cut loose from Twilight, this one dwarfing all of the previous events she had been witness to. Luna slowed her gallop, nearly stumbling as she saw what Twilight was doing. There were no bolts or arcs of power this time. The focus of the effort was simply too large and far away for any such visible displays. The aura coruscating off of the unicorn faded as unbelievable torrents of magical power poured into the heavens themselves. Luna felt it as her moon was gripped in clumsy and slipping tendrils of power. Her charge complained at the rough treatment but was delighted at finally getting to set in the west.

Immediately after complete darkness fell, a rushing wind lept from the east. Scattered clouds were torn into streamers as they were flushed from the sky and the thick dust of the ruined forest was swept away into the west. A single, pink pinprick of light, brighter than any moon, appeared at the horizon. The burning mote was quickly followed by the remainder of the sun, brightening from purple to red to orange, and finally to the bright golden shade that was the orb's usual color. The world seemed to pause as if sighing in relief as the sun rose for the first time in a week.

After the timeless dark of Tartarus the light of the sun fell on Luna's coat like a lover's warm caress. Her reverie only lasted a moment as the sudden peace was slain by a keening howl she recognized as Erebus. Whipping her head in the direction of the sound, she saw Grogar, Celestia, and Erebus locked in a bloody, mortal struggle. Luna was about to turn towards her sister as she noticed the light in the sky dim. The dimmed aura of power around Twilight's body finally flickered and went out, leaving the tiny unicorn at the center of it all free-falling from a cloudless sky hundreds of pony-lengths above the ground.

Swearing in frustration, Luna redoubled her focus and pushed all her energies towards speed. Her hooves threw up sparks against the stray stones in her path and she stretched her gait to its fullest extent. "My sister is a goddess and should be able to hold her own for another few seconds," she told herself in an attempt to justify her decision. She could see that she wasn't going to make it in time to save the mare from impact. Her horn sprung to glowing life as she redirected her magic away from her hooves and strained to reach the falling body with her telekinesis. Twilight was falling fast now and was far enough away that Luna's magical grip was tenuous at best. With a groaning effort she focused all of her will into the purple pony projectile and her hooves tangled as she stopped paying any attention to her gait. Her heart sank as Twilight, slowed but not stopped, slammed into the blasted earth, kicking up a small cloud of dust with her impact.

Luna's hooves tripped and skid over the dusty ground as she ran up to the small and crumpled body. "Twilight! Twilight!" she shouted while nosing the body onto its back.

"Unnng, Luna...volume." The purple mare replied in an irritated tone that was pure Twilight Sparkle.

Luna felt herself start to shake and tear up in relief and wanted nothing more than than to take Twilight into her forelimbs and crush the impossible mare to her in a hug that would never end. Her emotions boiled over into a strange strangled laugh and shed tears but Luna knew that she couldn't even allow herself to pause and savor this resurrection and rescue. She forced herself to turn away from the mare to run back towards her imperiled sister. As she finished her turn.
She reared and whinnied in surprise as a squirming mote of blackness shot past her, boiling underneath the rays of Celestia's sun and screaming all the way. Before she could react it was lost in the distance, apparently running for shelter within the shattered but shadow-filled forest.

Luna saw Celestia standing tall before the prone form of Grogar. Her face and body were caked with blood, dirt, and bruises; but her head was unbent and her wings were flared in the position of a warrior victorious. Luna was warmed by the sight of her sister's success until she saw a field of circular, prismatic distortion around the sun and felt the flow of power from Celestia's horn. Luna knew this spell. The smile fell from her face and horror filled the space left behind. Luna once again ran as hard as she could so as to save a life. She again pushed herself with everything she had left within her and and prayed to anything with a name that she'd be in time.

She could hear Grogar's screams begin as she drew near and she knew she was almost out of time. Without pause she made a decision, one that was hard to justify in words but one she knew was correct. She dove into the beam of columnated sunlight and its heat hit her like an open kiln She flared her wings as she landed to shield Grogar from Celestia's ultimate expression of wrath. "Sister! Cease!" she screamed out.

"Luna?!?" Celesta said in shock.

"TIA!" Luna screamed as the feathers of her wings ignited.

Celestia shoved the beam away from the huddled forms in front of her and then released the spell she had used to focus all the sun's light onto the spot where the bloodied Grogar lay. The soil around them had been reduced to white ash that flew away on the morning's breeze. Also burned away were the feathers from the surface of Luna's wings, the strangely shaped flesh underneath was exposed as the cinders and ash fell away from her too.

"Luna! What are you doing? Get off of him!"

The smaller alicorn panted and turned her face towards her sister. Their eyes locked and the younger said, "No."

"Luna," Celestia chided, her tone like that of a teacher dealing with a slow student. "He was trying to kill me. Get out of the way so I can finish this."

"No, Tia. This is done. It’s over."

"No, Selene. It isn't. All I have left now is revenge. Kill me or be killed." Grogar's voice was weak and blurred by the many wounds to his face but the rage burning within him was still audible.

Luna turned to the broken god, panting. "They're free Grogar. I set all your people free. Twilight didn't know. She left before finding out."

"Liar. Why would you ever do that, after what we, what I, did?"

"Because it was enough. You've paid enough in blood, grief, and time," Luna replied. "Your people are free now. So are you." She collapsed against the larger god's bulk, gasping for breath. It was an oddly intimate moment of silence only pierced by the labored breathing of all three gods.

"What about...what happened...between us?"

"I forgive you," Luna said. "I understand why you did that. I won't take your place but I forgive you for trying."

"Luna," Celestia interrupted. "You don't seriously think-."

Luna cut her sister off, "I do and we will. It's over Tia, let him go or you'll have to go through me."

Celestia was shocked at this direct defiance from her sister. "What happened to you down there?"

"She learned...and grew." Twilight's voice drew their attention to where she stood on shaking legs.

All three gods turned their attention towards the unicorn.

"You know what happened, Twilight?" Celestia asked her prize pupil.

The small mare nodded, then remembered Grogar's blindness and added, "Yes."

"And you agree with her?" Her mentor continued.

"Completely," she confirmed, confident in her answer.

Celestia turned her attention back to Luna and Grogar, "And what for his crime of releasing Erebus back into the living world?"

"The night is my domain, sister, and Erebus is of the night. I get to judge him for this crime and I again choose forgiveness. The world is more dangerous now but I will hunt the demon down in time."

"This is your ruling, Luna, and yours alone. Every death that these fiends cause will add to the weight of your crown, not mine."

"I understand and accept."

Celestia sighed, "Grogar?"

"Yes?"

"I hope I never see you again."

"Heh," he laughed, "the feeling's mutual."

The goddess of the sun then turned her gaze on Twilight, the mare winced at its intensity. "I will send a chariot for you, I must return to Canterlot. Please check on the state of Ponyville and let them know that the crisis has passed." She looked meaningfully at her sister. "Mostly." Celestia's wings unfurled, white feathers speckled with red blood. She seemed about to push off into the sky but then paused, her angry face softening. "I am glad the two of you have returned safely; I truly am."

"We'll see you tonight then, at home," Luna replied.

Celestia nodded and then took off into the bright blue sky.

"By the way, your pegasus friend is somewhere around here. She may need medical attention."

The two remaining mares turned disapproving looks on Grogar.

"What? She started it," Grogar rumbled sheepishly.

Celestia

Celestia stood on her balcony overlooking Canterlot, cherishing the feeling of purpose, power, and correctness that came with successfully lowering the sun for the first time in a week. Her body was a battered wreck but that didn't seem to matter like it once did. She felt like she was larger than the flesh, blood, and bone she occupied. It was like her body was only a small appendage, and her massive injuries no more dire than a skinned knee. She knew that her body would take months to fully heal, god-inflicted wounds were like that.

"God-inflicted," her mind savored the phrase while listening to the bells pealing throughout Equestira. She rolled it around her mind like a piece of hard candy in her mouth. She shivered as the memory of her battle with Grogar passed though her again. The response was to more than just the thrill of remembered fear, there was a physical, almost sensual pleasure mixed up within the complicated reaction. She felt like she had stretched muscles in her body that she had forgotten she owned.

The bells had begun ringing in Ponyville, some hours after she left her apprentice and sister behind with the old goat, and had then spread across all of Equestria. Over the next few hours, reports of the bells autonomous ringing had reached her desk: any bell anywhere that could peal was ringing on its own. Subsequent reports detailed the effect this ringing had upon the cloven-hoofed within her kingdom. It seems the noise carried a message only the cloven-hoofed could hear. Their heads and ears perked up and then they began walking to Ponyville, no matter the distance. Inquiries only produced the vaguest answers as it seemed the cattle didn't know why they were walking or even where their ultimate destinations laid, only that they were being called and it was in the direction they were walking.

Celestia then turned her gaze upon the rapidly disappearing scaffolding and debris that had been marring the square in front of her palace's gates. She smiled at the scurrying energy with which the former protesters removed the evidence of their occupation. While flying home, she had snatched that annoying white unicorn from his stage mid-speech with her telekinesis. He screamed like a filly on a roller-coaster while she flew with him to her balcony and private chambers. Her bloody and battered visage was apparently an image that inspired the spirit of compromise and civil discourse as well as sudden incontinence. The protest was over as soon as he had galloped back to his compatriots and it looked as if the occupied square was going to be clean quicker than her rugs would be.

The offending bit of floor covering had been removed hours ago, while she was soaking in a hot bath. The return of the sun had not gone unnoticed and nobles had been falling over themselves to congratulate her on retaking her proper place within the cosmos. She made sure to note the most effusive ones, as those were the nobles most likely involved in revolutionary schemes inspired by her convalescence. While she was nearly a week behind in the meetings and paperwork she would have done had her week been a normal one, she wasn't stressed. She had delegated most of the paperwork to her ministerial staff; they had looked like they had swallowed lemons at the time. She smiled at the memory. The committee meetings she had missed would be assessed in the coming week. If they hadn't accomplished anything during her absence their respective memberships would need reassessment.

"Maybe Luna isn't the only one who has changed a bit this week." she said to herself as she turned from her balcony and headed out of her chambers. "I was a goddess and I changed myself into a fussy old bureaucrat. Why did I do that to myself?" she wondered. Thinking it over, each step had seemed tiny and required for the greater good. Looking back, she was amazed at the distance a millennium of tiny steps had taken her. She loved her ponies not their paperwork. "I should concentrate on what I'm best at, dealing directly with ponies," she continued musing while she walked. She accepted the bows from the guards flanking the silver-chased, ebony doors in front of her and walked through them and into her sister's sanctum.

Luna and Twilight were sitting together on the chamber's bed. Her sister's wings were already regrown, mere hours after their destruction and Celestia's brows rose involuntarily at the surprise. "Seems she has learned a few new things," she thought to herself. The new wings were canted upwards like a swan's, expressing a feeling of deep contentment as the two mares leaned against each other. Celestia retook control of her own face and wings, knowing that her sister could read her slightest expression.

"...and you could feel the sun below the horizon?" Luna was asking Twilight as Celestia walked into her sister's private chamber.

"I could feel everything...and that's when I realized that I had to use the energy for something huge or I would explode. Again!" Twilight was saying excitedly before noticing Celestia's entrance. "Oh! Princess!" Twilight's face contorted into a strained smile appropriate to having been caught sneaking cookies from the jar. Luna's face, behind and not visible to Twilight, flashed irritation at the casual invasion of this private space and moment. Twilight attempted to subtly break physical contact and scootch over a hoof on the bed, subterfuge never was the purple mare's strong suit.

"My faithful student and dear sister," she said as a greeting.

"I was just telling Luna how I raised the sun," her Twilight burbled nervously.

"So I gathered. How is your pegasus friend, Miss Dash?"

"She has a concussion and a hairline skull fracture but Doctor Stable says she'll heal up fine." She paused, "Although, I am confused about one thing."

"Yes, Twilight?"

"Grogar visited Rainbow at the hospital and I was really worried that they might be really angry or fight again." Twilight paused for Celestia to nod. "Instead, they were laughing and joking about it like the whole thing was some sort of game. They were trying to kill each other not a day ago and now they're friends. Could Grogar have worked a spell on her?"

Celestia made a small noise of mild amusement, "I'm glad to hear that she'll recover. I do not think it likely that Miss Dash is under a spell however, I think you have found a good topic to research for your next friendship report."

Twilight's mouth opened into an 'O' but Celestia cut her off before she could speak. "Now," she changed the subject, "about raising the sun."

"Um, Yes, Princess?" Twilight replied cautiously.

"I am to understand that this action saved your life?" Celestia asked

"Yes, I-"

"It was done without efficiency nor grace but I understand that inefficiency under that particular circumstance was a virtue."

"Yes, it-"

"However, I do think it would be best from now on, whenever you are in Canterlot, if you were to attend each of us during the turnovers between night and day: Myself at dawn and my sister at dusk. Do you agree, dear sister?"

Luna was watching her like a hawk, assuming that Celestia had hidden motives in the offer. "Of course. In the case of another emergency like the last one, it would be good to have backup...capacity." What her sister meant by her statement was: "Why?" After thousands of years as siblings, subtextual conversations were almost as good as telepathy.

"Yes, we must be prepared for every eventuality and part of that should be Twilight's expanded training," she replied verbally. "Because she's potentially dangerous." is what she said beneath that.

"Charay'ghi Lampu," Twilight said, totally oblivious to and completely derailing the sisters' subtextual conversation.

"What?!?" Celesta said, off-balance.

"It's what your mother, Harmony, called me when we talked."

"The last glimmer of light at sunset and the first ray of the sun's dawning light," she translated. "Mother called you that?"

"Yes Princess, is that a problem? Did I do something wrong?"

"No Twilight, not a thing. But tomorrow morning we need to talk to you more about your meeting...her. Tomorrow. Before the dawn," she said to Twilight, forcing an ill-fitting mask of composure back onto her face.

"Mother apparently liked her," Luna said to her with a smile. "I think I'm falling in love with her," was the subtext.

"We don't know what that means, coming from her," Celestia answered. "She'll break your heart when she dies."

"It means: Mom liked her." Luna's subtext was, "I don't care."

"We have time to figure it out, perhaps it will be clearer in the morning." Her hidden message was, "You will, sister. One day you will." Turning to Twilight, "Should I call the palace servants and have your old room freshened?"

The two mares on the bed glanced at each other before Twilight answered, "No, I think we're fine." Celesta was acutely uncomfortable as Twilight's subtext became clear to her, "No thank you, tonight I'm having sex with Luna."

"Well, in that case I should be going." Celestia meant exactly what she said.

Celestia was turning to leave but her eyes caught on something odd about the shadows thrown by the lamp beside the bed. Two silhouettes were painted on the wall by the light, both had horns and wings. Celestia stopped dead and craned her neck around to have a clearer look.

"Princess is everything all right?" Twilight asked. "No, no, no! I should I have asked her to have my room made up! Now she knows I'm planning on sleeping here. Celestia knows I'm planning on sleeping with Luna, her little sister. The Princess knows that I'm going to have sex with her baby sister. Please, embarrassment, kill me before Celestia sends me to the moon!"

The shadow moved as Twilight shifted in her panic, mirroring her actions and supplying accurate pegasine gestures of alarm, shame, and fear. Celestia felt for any illusions placed on the mare and found none. Whatever it was that she was seeing, it was real. Celestia's mask slipped again, "I...I honestly don't know."

She turned her back on the two mares she loved and walked out the door.

Discord

After Celestia bolted from the library a couple of days ago to rescue her sister and student, it was very quiet in the library. Later the next day, a pair of guards came and strung criss-crossing strands of bright yellow ribbon across the entrance that read "Unstable Structure - Do Not Enter." Discord found the attempt at droll humor a bit clumsy and underwhelming but did appreciate the effort.

His bored isolation continued until he felt the world's nature crack and shift. About one hundred miles to the West, in his mind's eye, he perceived a banished god returning to the world and an ancient horror older than himself breaking loose from Tartarus. The abandoned moon dimmed to a sullen red glow and took on the role of grim harbinger. Discord thought it pretty and entertained himself by imagining what the effect of the return of long-absent divine forces would be on the nature of reality.

Shortly thereafter, his attention was riveted upon the western horizon. He stared in shock as Celestia's sun rose but not at Celestia's, Luna's, nor his own will. He stretched his perception as far as he could, still caught fast in the trap of his petrified flesh, but could not feel the unified effort of thousands of unicorns nor the imprint of another god's influence. He didn't know who did this but as he ran out of plausible options he began to suspect a humble purple unicorn of having done the impossible yet again. "I will have to examine her most closely when next we meet," he thought to himself.

It was later that same day when the ponies came for him. A team of workers, earth ponies all, cut down the warning tape and surrounded him. They pulled hammers, pry-bars, nails, and timber planks from their work-saddles and began to build a wooden box around him. "I am a god, not a Hearthswarming gift to be parceled up and sent by post," he tried to complain to the ponies around him, however, none of the minds around him were magically sensitive enough to hear him. Eventually, he gave up on the endeavor as a waste of a good rant on an audience unable to appreciate it. He relaxed his consciousness and allowed himself to drift in obliviousness while the ponies scurried about him like so many ants.

He sensed a change in the pace and pattern of the work around him and decided to use one of the stallions' eyes to see how far along his relocation to the garden was. "Well, this is different." He said to no-one but himself. He had expected to be removed from the library but had also expected to be returned to his spot in the garden, not...here. The worker showed him a labyrinth of twisting tunnels through dark-gray rock. Sprouting from the stone, like so much fungus, were clusters of faintly-glowing crystals. The light surrounding him was a sickening admixture of pink and green, supplied by gems of the same color.

Discord released the dumb beast's eyes and reached out with his own perceptions. He found, with growing concern, that the crystal-infused stone was opaque to his native senses. Substantial magics flowed through the bones of the mountain and the walls of the tunnels were as opaque to his senses as the stone would be to mortal eyes. No longer could he feel the teeming lives of Canterlot. He couldn't even feel the nearby alicorn sisters nor their celestial charges.

Concern grew to dismay as the work-ponies began packing up their tools and materials in preparation to leave. Discord began to shout mentally, focusing as much power as he could into being heard. To one he simply shouted "Stop!" To another, he insulted the stallion himself and his mother for good measure. To the third he offered unlimited power, riches, and the throne of Equestria itself. Nothing he said had the least effect and provoked not the slightest reply. As the last worker trotted from the chamber and beyond his newly curtailed perception, he begged. They couldn't hear him. These workers, earth-ponies all, were deaf and blind to magic and therefore unable to hear his whispers, shouts, and cries.

"Celestia!" he said her name as a curse. He surmised that the immortal nag had chosen the work crew deliberately for their magical obtuseness. "It's just like her, sending geldings to guard a virgin," he said to himself, knowing how much she hated taking chances. He hadn't thought it possible that Celestia would have been building her own, personal version of Tartarus but the evidence before him was compelling. He was blind, deaf, and totally alone.

It was several hours later in a moment of deepest dread that he was rescued by the sun's arrival; Celestia did not enter the chamber as much as dawned. Her soul was aflame and a corona of searing power filled the chamber. Wisps of power leaked from her aura into the crystals embedded in the stone walls causing them to glow in both normal and mystical sight. She had changed, profoundly, from the self-crippled thing that had been defeated by his daughter. Reclaimed was the divine power that was her birthright and it overflowed the limits of her physical manifestation. In Discord's eyeless vision, Celestia filled the room and her body was just the nucleus of her being.

"Uncle," she greeted him. The word resonated across the cavern.

"You're looking better," he attempted a light and sarcastic tone but real fear leaked into his voice. "I take it that you are fully recovered from the changelings?"

She stalked up to the statue. "My flesh is broken and yet I am whole."

"Ah...well...that sounds rather mythic and ineffable," he said while trying to force his tone lighter.

"How do you like these caves? I find them...restful." She continued, "I had them dug centuries ago, not long after my sister fell. I had this theory at the time. When I found you there, inside her fortress instead of in our mother's cave where we left you, I started to wonder about the source of those magics and powers Luna suddenly developed. Those same powers that let her become Nightmare Moon; the ones that forced me to banish her to the moon. I let myself believe that, perhaps, you had taught her those sorceries. Would you happen to know anything about that?"

"Um, well-"

"No matter, " she cut him off. "We're talking about ancient history, after all." She returned to her narration, "As I was saying, about the time I was done burying all the dead was when my ponies had finished digging this chamber from the stone. I also had in my possession a problematic statue of a draconequus that required a safe place to be stored in. I had to make a decision regarding where to put this very dangerous bit of masonry and I chose to place it in my garden."

"Many have wondered and opined regarding the decision I made that day," she continued. "Some have said that I put you there to be an abject lesson to my enemies. Others have claimed that I had you put there as some sort of educational display. Some even claimed that I kept you near at hoof so that I could gloat over your imprisonment. Can you guess my reason, Discord?"

The old god was transfixed by this new Celestia. Her mien was almost predatory and her focus was unnerving. All he mustered in response to her question was a pitiful, "Um-"

"It was for mercy, Discord, mercy for you. I have this pit into which I could have thrown you at any time and I chose to place you somewhere beautiful and full of life. I blame you for destroying our childhood, robbing us of our mother, and helping my sister destroy herself and yet I chose to give you an existence any fiend or godling banished to Tartarus would beg for. And yet you use my name as a curse."

"I-" Discord verbally fumbled.

"I'm not finished. You could have stayed in the place I gave you. You could have even stayed in the place my sister gave you. But, instead, you chose to strike at me through those I love. Your antics nearly killed Twilight and Luna. You almost destroyed the whole of creation by simply whispering hidden truths to a young and curious mind. You have proven to everyone, myself included, that you are still amazingly dangerous, even like this. Give me one reason I shouldn't I just leave you down here to rot?"

Discord took his time in answering as the stakes were astronomically high. "Because you aren't any better than I am. You can say all you want that you showed mercy on me but deep down you knew it would have been the height of hypocrisy to abandon me to this pit. You killed your own mother and have trampled gods and kings alike into the dust. You are the Sol Invictus and you don't get to call yourself that by playing nice with others. If you are 'The Undefeated Sun' then, by definition there is a trail of bodies leading right up to the foot of your throne."

The draconequus watched as Celestia's aura exploded in shock at the audacity of his accusation. He could actually feel the burning solar wind of her rage push against his spiritual form. But she didn't leave. It took several minutes, but her temper faded and she eventually regarded him calmly. In an even voice she replied, "I didn't kill her. She chose to give up her life to save us from you."

"She chose you and your sister over me and the children we had together."

"You forced her to choose by hunting us!"

"She had already chosen the two of you before all that! We weren't good enough for her as long as the two of you were around for comparison. Second place is first loser and table-scraps are meant for dogs."

"I didn't know all of that but I still blame you for her death," Celestia answered.

"And I still blame you," the older god countered.

Silence filled the chamber for a small eternity until Celestia broke the moment.

"I still miss her."

"So do I."

Celestia then passed from the chamber, leaving Discord in solitude and darkness. The next day the same crew of work-ponies packed him up and carried him away. The entire time they were working, the ponies complained bitterly about bureaucratic mix-ups and supposed paperwork errors. When they had finished their work for the day, Discord was once again on a pedestal within the royal garden.

Erebus

Far away in the frozen north a black smudge marred the pure white surface of a snow-covered glacier. Its rear whipped back and forth in a frenetic motion, propelling itself through the powdery and drifting snow like a beached lamprey. Its front never varied in its orientation it seemed to know where it was going and did not require any landmarks or scent to find its goal.

Later, the last remnant of the Hungry Dark found a crack in the surface of the mile-thick ice. Ancient wards bound a darkness born of a mortal soul within the ice's depths but the wards were old and weakened by the forces of wind and weather. The tendril pushed against the mystic barrier and a rumbling crack came from the ice below. It was a small opening but the Dark appeared to judge it enough and it slithered into the hairline fracture leading to King Sombra's prison. An echoing laughter soon followed.