Titanomachy

by Biochi

Rating: mature
Tags: Twilight Sparkle, Princess Luna, Gore, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Other, Romance, Adventure, Discord, Princess Celestia
Length: 55731

In the aftermath of the royal wedding ancient secrets come back to haunt the present.

The world was created by the old gods, the dragonequi. Their children, the new gods, overthrew them and created the world as we know it in the process. Only the gods know this history and the secret is well kept. During the Royal Wedding an act of kindness starts a chain of events that will lead to the discovery of this secret. Author's tags: dramedy, intrigue, mystery, Equestrian mythology, and a pinch of TwiLuna.

The story continues in both Ghosts of Whitetail Wood and Apoptosis

Published 2012-08-09 09:14:03 UTC
Last updated 2012-11-24 01:58:35 UTC

Chapter 2

Celestia

Celestia had a Headache. She closed her eyes for a moment and threw all of her will behind not rubbing her temples with her hooves. She assessed the grinding, pulsing, ice-cold pain running from the tip of her damaged horn to the base of her skull as warranting capitalization, perhaps even a “The” to precede it. Normal headaches came and went as the stresses of ruling a tribally diverse kingdom in a world full of competing sentient species waxed and waned. The Headache appeared to be here to stay.

She had winced when Luna forgot herself and used the Royal Canterlot Voice over breakfast. The antics of the children were not much better for her state of mind, if the truth were to be told. She had accepted the news that she had to hold court within her sister’s throne room with relative grace, despite the fact that the dark walls made her feel claustrophobic and look like the pale horse of death. She endured stoically the worsening reports about the damage and casualties from the changing attack. She even grimly endured the subtle glances to the charred spot on her horn. What set her off was her sister.

Her head was throbbing so badly that she was losing track of whatever banal request the unicorn in front of her was demanding when her sister arrived. She sang out a melodic and cheerful “Greetings!” that nearly caused Celestia to vomit from the pain. It was then that she noticed that her sister, a princess of the realm and divine queen of the night sky was smudged with dust and dirt, had her hair pulled back in a kerchief, and was carrying a pair of serving trays that likely contained lunch. Celestia glanced at the gentry in all their finery still gathered for the morning court, their eyes bulged and jaws were hanging at the sight of her sister comporting herself like a scullery maid.

She cut the unicorn off mid-sentence with the power of her Voice, “Morning court is adjourned.”

“But, your Highness...” the unicorn courtier questioned.

“Your matter will be heard first in the Night's Court. Now go.”

The nobles, shuffling and whispering, took less than a minute to clear the chamber. During this time Celestia sat silently upon the too small throne while her sister bubbled about something or another. “Blazing Tartarus, my head hurts,” she thought to herself while totally ignoring what her sister was saying.

“...and so we brought with us the daisy sandwiches for our shared luncheon,” the dark alicorn finished cheerfully..

“That’s why you barged in here while I was working, looking like some sort of street urchin? To bring me lunch?” Celestia snapped in frustration.

“Well, no. Not really, as I had just said-”

“No.” She said with a tone like distant thunder. “No, I cannot deal with you now. I’m stuck in here being read the lists of the slain, injured, and homeless while you are doing what?!? Playing...house? Dress-up? Having fun with the janitors?!

“But Cele-”

“No. I don’t have time for this, I don’t have time for you.”

Luna stared at her sister gobsmacked. “How...what...what is wrong with you?”

“What’s ‘wrong’ with me, little sister, is that I’m trapped carrying the entire burden of the realm while you are off playing!"

Luna shook her head while backing away. “You are not right sister. There is something wrong with you and you need to do something about it. I don't care what it is you need to do, but please just do it soon."

“Get out.”

“You know sister, I wouldst not sit in mine throne if I twas thou.” Luna nervously quipped as she was driven from her own chambers.

“Get...Out.”

“The contrast in size makes thine flank appear quite copious," Luna finished with a hard little smile. She turned and ran.

“Out!” She screamed throwing the sandwiches and trays after her retreating sister.

When she was alone, Celestia cried. It was from The Headache, that’s what she told herself.

Twilight

Twilight was content. She had arrived home a few hours ago and Spike had helped her with unpacking and getting dinner prepared. They ate in companionable quiet, having thoroughly rehashed the weekend’s adventures with the girls while riding the train. She was now sprawled out on her couch in front of her fireplace reading a book while Spike was curled up on the fireplace’s flagstones soaking up warmth.

Twilight’s attention drifted from her book to Spike. She remembered with a gentle smile the last time Spike moved to his basket after falling asleep in the fireplace. She’ll have to remind him to take a few minutes to cool down before entering his cloth and wicker nest. That time they were lucky, she was able to summon a bucket-full of water to douse the smoldering blankets before any wider damage was done. She chuckled once and softly. “He was so mad,” she reminisced. He thought it was a prank until she showed him the blackened blankets. “Love you, Spike.” She said, prompted by the memory. The dragon’s only response was a totally incoherent mumble.

“We’ve become quite the odd little family, haven’t we,” she thought while noting Owlicious and Pee-Wee perched companionably alongside each other. Her number-two assistant had been giving Spike a great deal of help raising his phoenix chick, much like her parents had helped her with raising her baby dragon. She thought, and not for the first time, that perhaps her choice to raise Spike herself (even with a lot of help) partially explained why she never learned to have friends.

Teenage mothers were one thing but she was still just a filly back then. Other girls spent time at the parks or markets having fun and making friends while she was home splitting her time between caring for an infant who could breathe fire and studying for the accelerated lessons at the school for the gifted. After she was old enough to be enrolled in the boarding school, her brother was already off serving in the guard and Princess Cadance was no longer needed to foal-sit. Her parents would visit but they too were no longer there everyday to help. That was when her world shrunk to just herself, Princess Celestia, and Spike.

She took a moment to silently thank Celestia for sending her here. This was better. She was happy. She was content.

Twilight did not believe in superstition. Deep down she even believed that Pinkie Pie was explicable as some rogue form of earth pony magic. But just then, as she was blissfully contemplating her life and family Spike began making the choked gurgling noise that presaged a letter from the Princess arriving while Spike was asleep. Green flame spilled from his nose and mouth, uncomfortably waking the young dragon, and coalesced into a paper scroll bearing Celestia’s solar seal.

“I’m sorry Spike. That can’t have been pleasant,” Twilight said as she rescued the scroll from any threats of orange, normal flame and brought it to herself.

“You’re telling me.” Spiked grumped with a retching noise.

It was late for a letter from Celestia. The princess of the sun was rarely active more than an hour after her divine charge set for the night. Also, she had just had breakfast with the princess herself just this morning. It had to be important and she said as much to Spike, hoping to mollify him a bit. Opening the letter she was immediately alarmed by the shaky and blotched horn-writing comprising the shockingly short note.

Twilight,
I need you here with me. I need your help.

Celestia

Twilight’s eyes were wide in terror as a train ticket fluttered out of the scroll’s curled paper.

“What’s wrong,” Spike asked quietly while handing her the fallen ticket. His own fear was pricked by his caregiver’s expression and his discomfort from moments ago was forgotten.

She saw that the ticket was for the overnight train to Canterlot. As Ponyville was still a small town the overnight train only had a Flag Stop here. She would need to be standing on the platform or they wouldn't stop. She checked the time printed on the ticket and blanched. “Spike! TellRaritywhathappenedandwereIwent!BegoodIloveyoubye!” With that the lavender unicorn grabbed the ticket firmly between her teeth and sprinted through the door into the night. She made her train with a minute to spare.

Luna

There were about twice as many words in modern Equestrian than in the version Luna was most comfortable with. It was obvious to her that ponies traveled more than they used to in her day. Words from Prance were snuggled alongside cognates from Nipony. Even some derivations from Griffon and Dragon had snuck in via the back door. Despite a millennium's worth of additions to the language she still found no single word to describe what she was feeling and this bothered her to distraction.

“I’m sorry, what was that again?” She asked the tired-eyed and apparently very frustrated unicorn noble who was standing in front of the ebon throne and addressing a princess for the second time that day. He stared at her unblinking for a beat. “Now that they have a word for, incredulous,” she mused while the white unicorn appeared to gather himself for yet another go at his petition. “Back in my day they would have had to settle with wroth or vexed but neither would convey to sheer disbelief that colored his frustration. To accurately describe this unicorn’s mood it would have taken the efforts of a great skald and lines of florid prose. And a drum, definitely a drum,” she thought as she watched his lips without hearing a single word.

“Maybe I should hire a court poet?” She continued internally, “We could make a grand competition out of it.” She imagined dozens of bright eyed colts and mares reciting odes to the beauty of the night sky, each vying to be judged the finest wordsmith of their generation by the enigmatic and beautiful Goddess of the Moon. “Oh, there would be pennants. I do miss proper pennants.” The thought brought a small smile to her lips, at which point she noticed the droning of the noble’s voice cease. “Um, prithee continue good and noble sir.” After a moment's pause with a look of concern he continued on.

Her sister was both angering and worrying her. Celestia’s behavior at court today was completely unreasonable. “Maybe I shouldn’t have teased her about her flank, that was rather petty and she is so sensitive about being twice the size of your average pony,” she admitted to herself. But in addition to being outside of acceptable standards, her sister’s behavior was also outside of her usual character as well. Celestia’s defeat by the Changeling Queen, her dismissal of Twilight's suspicions, the capture of the Elements, and the narrow victory only brought about at the hooves of the rescued Cadance all must be weighing heavily upon her. “Would that explain her behavior? Was it simply a matter of Celestia’s brittle mask of perfection being cracked?" Twilight knew her sister better than anyone these days, maybe she should ask her opinion.

How to ask Twilight about this without alarming the excitable unicorn was the rub. “Maybe I should summon her back to the palace to look in on Celestia. Was it too soon after the wedding, being only a day? Would I look too eager for her company?...What?” Luna’s eyes widened in alarm and private embarrassment at finding the errant thought like a pebble in her oats. “That is not acceptable,” she scolded herself silently while shoving the rogue thought back into the deepest recesses of her mind. “We are and shall only be friends, that is all that is proper.” It was then that she noticed the total silence that had fallen over her court.

The the white unicorn was looking up at her with despairing eyes. “Oops,” she thought. The wheels in her mind spun furiously trying to remember a single word this pony had said, and failed. “I’m going to refer this matter to the Court of the Day," she said trying for an imperious tone that would brook no dissent.

“But...I...I.”

“I feel that this would be better handled by my sister.” As excuses go, she thought that one would at least hold water.

“But your majesty, I...I just came from there.”

“Oh good, so she is already familiar with your petition.”

“No...not really...Not really at all.”

“Even better, she should hear your well considered words.” Her lips made a wan approximation of a smile. From somewhere the sound of a squeeze toy was heard.

He blinked and then hung his head. “As you say, Your Majesty.” He then shuffled out of the door in defeat.

“Page?” Luna called. “I require implements for writing and The Candle.” Moments later her staff brought the requested items: a brush with a fine tip and silver chased handle, a scroll made from pressed and dried reeds, thin reddish-brown ink, black sealing wax, and a foul looking yellowish-green candle twisting up from a black tarnished silver holder. The implements were taken into Luna’s aura of control and began to orbit the diarch. The brush skillfully moved across the papyrus, the goddess’ horn writing was more a work of art than simple communication. While it was the truth when she told her staff that she preferred the archaic method and materials for writing it was equally true that she had not yet mastered the skill of writing with quills or nibs on rag paper. Her latest efforts with that medium evoked a vision of spiders with diarrhea staggering across the paper in their last delirious steps prior to death. Or, at least it did to Luna’s overactive and self-critical imagination.

Dearest Twilight,

I wax concerned regarding the Humors of mine Sissy, Regina Diei Invicta. Whilst I realize your convenience might be greatly impaired by the request I am making forthwith I do beg, prithee, that thy time is accessible for a second journey t’wards myself and Canterlot to look in upon thy Dear Mentor. I hold within my mind the knowledge that the hour is still very late or early for thy mortal coil so I will await the Dawn for thy reply.

Per ardua ad astra.

Regina Luna reddita et redempta

“There.” Luna said out loud. To herself she thought, “A light and casual note, nothing to alarm anyone within and expressing a friendly connection via the lack of cumbersome titles and formality.” Taking the dragon bile candle under firmer control she lit the foul thing and melted the end of her sealing wax so as to secure the letter. She regretted having to use such a noxious focus for sending mail via Spike’s flame but she had not yet mastered the spell Celestia and Twilight invented for this task. The dragon bile candle allowed her to overcome this by providing a connection to the draconic essence required for the sending. She did not like to think about how the materials for crafting this candle were procured but she personally saw to it that the down on his luck dragon who volunteered for this effort saw his horde drastically increased in size. Shuddering at the thoughts of dragonic emetics and their consequences she focused her energies through the candle and offered the letter to the green, guttering flame.

To her surprise, a reply letter manifested out of a swirl of green mist within a few minutes. Most curious about this she opened the scroll made of modern paper and immediately saw that the note did not contain neither Twilight’s or Spike’s writing.

HRH Princess Luna,

While I am not entirely certain regarding my interpretation of your letter, it seems most relevant to inform you that Ms. Sparkle is already on her way to Canterlot. She received a letter from Princess Celestia requesting her presence and has taken the overnight train to the capitol. She is expected to arrive with the dawn.

Ms. Rarity,
Element of Harmony
Recipient of the Equestrian Medal of Honor
Proprietor of Carousel Boutique
Member of the Ponyville Chamber of Commerce

Luna simply said “Oh,” after she finished reading the letter.

Discord

Discord was still getting his bearings in his new location within the library. As he had no eyes of his own he was forced to look around by accessing the thoughts and memories of the ponies quietly working nearby. Sadly, since it was the middle of the night, all he had close access to was a monofocused study-aholic who only thought about what they were reading (totally useless), a love struck colt who was ‘working’ at the circulation desk but was actually fantasizing about the variously appealing anatomical features that a certain mare possessed (yuck), and an earth pony janitor with a secret talent for higher mathematics (eh, you take what you can get).

The Janitor’s mind was a delicious mess of discordant thought; mixed together was boredom, abstract geometric musings, resentment of the class structure, and reviewing this list of chores for the night. This made him easier to read and were he in a better position Discord felt that he could have had a lot of fun with this one. As it was, he only used the frustrated stallion’s eyes to get a look around the place. “Books. Books. Yep, more books. Hey! Look at that, a stairway! More and more books all numbered and sorted. Sigh. Well, that was exciting. Maybe the garden wasn’t so bad after all.”

Sulking, although he would have used a more elegant word for it, he opened up his perceptions to encompass the souls of all Canterlot and the surrounding mountainside. The conflicts, disagreements, competition, and striving of all of the ponies washed over him like waves on the beach. Love, greed, pride, hunger and fear all drove them and he had no shortage of souls to drink knowledge from despite the witching hour having come and gone. It refreshed him to do this, it was like bathing in a deep pool of himself, and there was nothing he so loved as much as that. He was the very concept of “I” made flesh, or the flesh that gave birth to the concept of “I.” With gods, both are usually true.

As the hours passed he began to sense something familiar entering his range of perception. “Twilight Sparkle,” he named the brightly flaring soul as it approached the city at a mysteriously fast pace. He pulled his mind back into focus and aimed his perception towards her to see what new trick she had learned. He was impressed with the contraption he found that she was riding in. The ponies had harnessed fire and steam with tack of steel (they called it a train) and the device shot them along the ground as fast as most pegasi flew. His bored and wandering mind crafted an image of Twilight as a violet furred draconequus riding a massive steel pony that breathed fire. Adding in a few fleeing peasants and burning cottages was enough to give him a chortle. But then he recognizing the configuration of miss-matched limbs his imagination painted onto Twilight his laugh stopped cold.

“Oh Harmony, dear sister,” he reminisced. “Would you still think all that sturm and drang was worth it if you could see them now, your dear ponies? Here I still am, millennia after you and your grass munching girls tried to kill me; still in the hearts of every thinking being in the world." He paused in his internal monologue, as if giving someone else the chance to speak. "I can't imagine your daughters would be anything but a disappointment to you with the whole Nightmare moon kerfuffle. They literally chose discord over harmony and undid your grand gesture.”

"Maybe the young one would tip the scales of you, make it all worth it?" He gave a derisive snort. Running his mind over the memories from last year’s conflict with Twilight he admitted to himself, “She is an impressive little thing though, isn’t she? She even managed to surprise me once or twice.” He felt Twilight's aura shift in response to his close scrutiny: she was suddenly alert, seeking for something that was watching her. “Ohhh, clever girl. Your're even more fun than last time.” He pulled back his perceptions so that he could only see soul as one of the many lights filling the darkness. She wasn't even yet in Canterlot proper and she was the brightest mote in the sky. Twilight was still dwarfed by the diarchs auras, blazing sun and shining moon, but as she drew nearer to the castle she grew brighter and brighter in his sightless vision.

Chapter 3

Celestia

It was a long night for Celestia. While she technically didn’t need to sleep it was a refreshing pleasure that she had grown used to having since the return of her sister. Despite her best efforts (thousands of counted sheep, liters of warm milk, and eventually a trashy romance novel read in a warm tub) the sun began asking for the dawn and she still had not slept one wink. Reluctantly, the alicorn hoisted her bulk out of the feather-bed and walked to her private balcony. This was a simple matter of a few meters but her head never lifted above her withers. Looking to the southeast she felt for her heavenly counterpart. She was there, waiting to be lifted above the horizon and bring forth the day. Her sister had already begun her part in this daily transition, half of the moon was already out of view, what was left was a burning crimson crescent dropping out of a indigo sky.

Comforted by the stability represented by the twice daily ritual, she reached out for her sun to propel it into the sky. It was like walking into a glass door that was too clear to be seen. Her magic, instead of sliding the sun smoothly into place, slammed into the massive sphere of heat and light. Stunned, she wobbled on her hooves for a moment. As her focus returned. her face twisted with fear, “No. No, not this,” she moaned. She reached out for her other half again, this time cautiously. She could feel it, sense it completely without any problems but when she tried to apply her magic to lift the heavenly body nothing happened. Straining she brought the entirety of will to bear, slowly ramping up the force so as to not lose control. Her vision whited out and her body shook, she held nothing back. In the midst of this effort, she more felt than heard a crackling coming from her horn. Before she could do more than open her eyes wide there was a sharp ‘plink’ and a line of cold lightning shot from the tip of her horn to root of her tongue. Landing heavily on her front knees her eyes rolled back and she collapsed.

Celestia woke up in her huge, soft bed. “Oh, it was just a terrible dream,” she said to herself with a surge of relief. “I guess I did get some sleep after all,” she thought as she opened her gummed together eyes. What she saw first was a shallow glass set beside her bed. It was filled with of some sort light pink juice with a chunk of opaque ice at the bottom. Not thirsty at the moment, she dismissed the refreshment from her mind and looked around the room. The alabaster walls were painted violet and pink with the light of an impending dawn. Concerned that she had overslept, she started moving to get to her feet and was interrupted by a most welcome voice.

“Oh! No Princess. Please, don’t get up.”

“Twilight,” she croaked with a smile that faded as she heard how rough her voice was.

“I came as fast as I could, Princess.” Her student quietly approached the bed and came within Celestia’s field of vision. The worry on her face further dampened the alicorn’s cheer at seeing her protege.

“If you are here, my dear student, then I must be quite tardy in raising the sun today. We can talk as soon as I take care of my duty.”

The expression of gentle concern on the unicorn’s face deepened to fear for a moment. “You...you don’t remember what happened?” Her eyes darted from Celestia’s face to the glass of juice and back.

The glass was important, according to her student’s eyes. Giving the presumed beverage a second look she remembered that ice did not sink. With a sinking feeling she remembered her ‘dream’ and noticed the elegant corkscrew pattern spiraling along the mysterious white chunk. A white chunk with dark discoloration on the blunt end with a deep red core. “Mirror.”

“Your highness, maybe now isn’t the best...” Twilight trailed off seeing the fear and need in Celestia’s face. “It isn’t as bad as it looks, I promise.” She said as she lifted a small mirror in front so her mentor could see.

Celestia’s face was stained pink with crusts of deeper red ringing her eyes. It was obvious that someone had tried to clean her, but their urge towards gentle care was stronger than their need for her to be perfectly clean. Above her face she saw what was left of her horn, the top third was simply gone. The stub was covered in a comically large bandage covering what must be the ragged edge of her broken horn. She remembered pushing against the sun will all her might and the strangely small sound that presaged her humiliation.

“We can get you cleaned up properly now that you’re awake, Princess.”

“Celestia,” the alicorn replied in a small, tired voice.”

“What? Er, I mean, thank you, but I - ”

“It’s just Celestia now.”

“What are you talking about?” Twilight asked, confused.

“I can no longer perform my royal duties, therefore I am no longer royalty.” Celestia said. “Why am I so calm about this?" she wondered to herself.

“We’ll fix this,” Twilight said with iron in her voice. “Unicorns get hurt like this all the time. It’ll be hard and it takes time but almost all of them get the use of their magic back again.”

The mirror, momentarily forgotten by the apprentice, lay among the rumpled bed-clothes. Celestia focused on it trying to move the tiny object. Her distinctive golden aura surrounded the mirror and it began to lift but at the same time a pain like biting down on a tooth’s nerve exploded through her horn and skull.

“Celestia!” Twilight shouted in panicked concern. Their discussion about protocol and proper forms of address was forgotten in that moment.

The all too mortal feeling goddess whimpered with the pain and ceased trying to use her magic. “You don’t...understand...Twilight.” She took a moment to catch her breath and clear her head. “I’ve never been hurt like this before. I can’t be hurt like this. Not if I still am what I was.”

“I still don’t understand, Princess. What do you-”

“I am more than just a pony with wings and a horn, Twilight, you know that.”

“Of course, you are an Alicorn - the goddess of the sun.”

“And as a goddess, I am immortal. I am nearly impervious to mortal threats. I am...I was as constant and unchanging as the sun itself. We sustain and protect each other.”

“Yes but-”

“Shush, my dearest student," Celestia interrupted. A tear ran down the alicorn's face. "If the sun no longer protects me from a simple monster and will no longer move under my command then I am no longer the Sol Invicta, no longer a goddess. I am just Celestia, a unicorn with wings. From now on I will age. Eventually, I will die.

Celestia forced herself to keep watching Twilight’s face. She watched her student’s universe shatter into billions of pieces. After that came the tears, she expected those. What she didn’t expect was her student’s jaw thrust out in defiance.

“No, Princess. I won’t allow that to happen.”

“My poor, little pony, no one can stop mortality. It’s ok, I’ve lived a long-”

“No. You’re wrong. You can sit up here and pity yourself if you want but I’m not going to stand by and just give up.”

Celestia smiled sadly, “I love you too Twilight, but it’ll be alright. I've still got the rest of a pony’s normal life-span left, maybe a little more. I'll be with you through this lifetime we now have to share.”

“Shut-up.”

Celestia paused at the phrase no one other than her sister had ever used with her.

“The horn surgeon will be here later today to evaluate you for re-attaching the tip. You will let him do his job and you will let me do mine.”

“And what do you think that is?” Celestia asked, taken aback by Twilight's sudden change in tone.

“To find out what’s really going on.” With that Twilight trotted angrily towards the door. “Don’t use your magic unless the doctor says you can. If you do so without permission, you might do more damage to yourself.” Twilight said these things without looking at the large, white mare. Her anger and fear were thick upon her voice and shown in the posture of her withers. “Get better soon,” she whispered before passing through the door.

Celestia lowered her head back to the pillow and closed her eyes. She had felt calm discovering her new-found mortality while Twilight was with her. Alone, she found that the thought of mortality now prompted a deep black terror. She laid there counting her heartbeats, thinking now that they were an inexorable countdown towards an unavoidable end. The former Princess shuddered as she silent tears grew into sobs. There would be no more sleep today.

Twilight

Twilight fought for composure as she left her stricken mentor's bedchamber. She knew the guardponies standing outside in the hallway, they were stationed at the palace back before she was sent to Ponyville, she couldn't allow herself to fall apart in front of them. She didn't think about where her hooves took her, she just placed on in front of the other to take her simply away from the scene that played out with the Princess. She came up short, finding herself in front of a pair of ebony doors emblazoned with the lunar crest. Not trusting her voice to her constricted throat she simply allowed her head to thunk against the solid wood.

"Haloo? T'was that a rap upon mine door?"

Twilight continued leaning her head against the cool door. She lost herself in the sensation of pushing her skull against the cool, solid wood of the doors. They opened without preamble, a slight indigo aura would have been visible if she was paying any sort of attention, which she wasn't. She stumbled as her balance was thrown off, looking for all the world like she was swooning. Luna was shouting her name, she knew somewhere in the back of her mind. "She probably thinks I'm about to collapse, that I'm weak," she thought to herself with a flash of embarrassment.

Twilight felt the goddess' neck twinning with hers, so that the larger mare's head was on her withers and her chest against her own. Her eyes, overflowing with tears now, were no use and she turned the supporting contact into a full-blown hug. Feeling the embrace returned was too much for Twilight and she let loose the grief that had been held under tenuous restraint. With a total loss of control and self-consciousness the unicorn sobbed and wailed for minutes while crushing herself into her friend.

She heard Luna ask her something but Twilight couldn't parse the words in her current state. She felt herself be led across the room and set down upon some sort of firm cushion on the floor. Luna sat alongside her facing the opposite direction, both able to face one another with the use of their flexible necks and yet providing the distance required for focusing. The alicorn pulled her flank into contact with Twilight's shoulder and vice-versa. Twilight laid her head on Luna's croup noting the large moist patch that covered Luna's withers. This embarrassment was enough for the unicorn to gather herself back under control. "I...I'm sorry Luna, I..j-just couldn't."

"Worry yourself not, my dear friend," Luna interrupted. She smiled what Twilight had previously cataloged as Luna's "I'm going to make a joke" smile. "It appears the tide has come in, for I am the moon and thine tears are salty as the sea." The truly terrible joke was enough at this grim time to help Twilight regain some of her composure - or at least groan at something other than her current misery.

In happier times (a day ago?) Luna would often seek out Twilight and subject her to, as the monarch of the moon put it, Royal Jests. Perhaps it was the changed language, perhaps humor itself had changed in the last thousand years, but Luna's jokes were universally terrible. The first challenge was determining if she was actually telling a joke or not. Luckily for Twilight she had noticed that Luna always smiled a certain way before attempting a joke. This had nothing to do with the fact that Twilight paid a great deal of nervous attention to the alicorn, at least that was what Twilight told herself about this. The second challenge was determining when to politely laugh as the punchline was not always discernible. The third was dealing with repetition. If by chance Luna stumbled upon a joke that was even barely tolerable she would tell it to everyone. Staff, guards, ambassadors, all of Elements of Harmony, even the petitioners at her next court would be subjected to what was usually some sort of esoteric pun. After receiving a letter from the dark alicorn containing a "best of" collection, Twilight began to privately wonder if these jokes were the real reason for Luna's shunning and the Nightmare Moon incident.

"Now," Luna gently requested, "What happened with Celestia?"

Twilight recounted her conversation with Celestia, interrupted at the emotionally difficult bits by crying jags, and eventually managed to convey the crux of the matter: Celestia believed herself mortal now and seemed to accept this as an unalterable fact. By the end her retelling, Luna's own tears ran down her face .

"Right she might be," Luna reluctantly confirmed. "We are proof against mortal threats as our lives are tied to the spheres above. It is my thought, belike, that real harm cannot be brought unto us without causing selfsame harm to our counterparts."

"Luna, the sun didn't rise."

"Tis still there, Twilight. I feel it calling out to rise. I've tried to summon it forth but it will not listen to me. The crux is that the solar orb is hale and burning bright. The Changeling Queen did nothing to wound the sun nor do I think she could."

"There has to be something else that could explain this," Twilight insisted.

"The only other way to cause such harm would be if she was divine as well; A goddess in her own right."

"Well, that's it then. She must be a goddess. She had both a horn and wings and she was the queen of her people."

"Twilight, 'tis more than a crown that makes a god. We know nothing of their species and the drones had wings and horns as well. To be divine she'd have to be connected to something, to be that thing in an essential way. Like me and my sister."

"I have to go. Now," Twilight said as she stood. That she was feeling a new surge of resolve was obvious.

Luna's face showed some mild disappointment as the close contact ended but it quickly vanished. "Where?"

"Isn't it obvious?" the unicorn replied. "To the library." Twilight then cantered off, leaving Luna alone on her cushion. She didn't look back so she didn't see the alicorn's face as Luna watched her go.

Luna

Luna watched Twilight leave until the unicorn rounded a corner and disappeared from sight. Sighing as she closed the door with a flicker of will, Luna again felt that "lack" she had noticed when the Elements had left for Ponyville after the wedding. She examined at the sodden patches of fur that now marred her coat. She felt deeply conflicted about them. As badges of trust and friendship, she cherished them. As a collection of tears and mucus stuck fast to her fur she was disgusted. She was never one for easy hugs and casual personal contact even before her...time...on the moon. After her time there, the wet and organic aspects of life in Equestria seemed all the more...messy. She got up from her bed and bathed for the second time that day.

When she was Nightmare Moon, she remembered faintly and with caution, she had discovered a truth about her alicorn body. She was able to focus her magic so that the essence of herself was no longer constrained into a solid form. Not only did this allow for her to augment her appearance but she was able to give up corporeality entirely. She could dissipate into a mist that moved independently of the wind, she could mold herself into totally different bodies, with effort she could even divide herself into multiple fully formed ponies with her mind spread out between the equinculi. She remembered that as Nightmare Moon she was delighted in discovering an ability her sister had not yet mastered and possessed no counter to. At this moment the thought scared her. She wondered if perhaps her body, something so central to her identity, was nothing more than a puppet. Also, for some reason she couldn't fathom, she felt mildly guilty washing Twilight's tears from her coat.

Once again clean, she donned her regalia and headed to her sister's private chambers. She estimated that it had been about an hour since Twilight had fled from this same doorway. After a moment's debate, she knocked with a small pulse of power. She wasn't surprised that there wasn't an answer. Their chambers were one of the few aspects of their domain that was not shared between the diarchs. Even Celestia needed her permission before legally entering Luna's private chambers; and vice versa, She grasped the handle with her will, causing it to glow, and then eyed the golden armored guards flanking her. She waited a moment, making sure they saw what she was doing and giving them a chance to decide and act. An ear flickered on the senior-most guardpony. It was a subtle motion since the guard required deniability, but it may as well have been a sweeping bow and a flourish to Luna. She opened the door and entered.

Her sister was not nearly as fond of lamps and candles as she was, Celestia's chambers were designed specifically to utilize the natural light of the sun for illumination. The halted cycle of the heavens had left the sky a gradient from indigo to bright pink where the sun lurked just under the horizon and the smooth stones of her sister's lair reflected this light as a murky twilight the color of a bruised plum. Her sister was still in her bed, facing the door and Luna herself, but her eyes were focused on a small glass of preservative fluid sitting on her bedside table. The macabre bit of glassware contained the the tip of her sister's horn. "You didn't answer when I knocked," Luna said as greeting and explanation of her breach of etiquette.

"I didn't need to. You have every right to enter as monarch."

Luna parsed Celestia's not too subtle abdication. "Stop spouting nonsense, Tia. Thou art just as much of a princess now as you ever were."

"Our monarchy was founded upon divine right. I am no longer divine, therefore I no longer have the right to call myself princess."

"Stars preserve me," Luna replied in frustration. "You are the queen of thespians sometimes, do you have any idea what effect your little pity party had on Twilight?"

Celestia, head still firmly on the pillow, focused on her sister's face as she deciphered her sister's mutilation of modern slang. "The term you are trying for is 'drama queen' and I am not one."

"Oh, then why was the term invented whilst thou sat alone on the throne?"

"It refers to..." She sighed. "Look, I don't have to explain it and I'm not in any mood or state to do so." She sat up. "Lu, look at me. I was beaten, I was foolish and didn't trust Twilight and nearly lost the whole kingdom for it. I am a laughingstock. Our subjects pity me. I'm dying. I've proven to them that I cannot keep them safe and now I can't even raise the sun. I called myself the princess of the day, undefeated. What am I now? I am no longer 'of the day' nor am I 'undefeated.'"

Luna's gaze was drawn, despite her best efforts, to the ball of gauze wrapping that bobbed in time with Celestia's words. "They're just words, Tia. Empty air. What matters is that you guide them wisely."

"You don't understand. Titles are part of what we use to shape perception. Just like the palace, the gala, the summer sun celebration. All those things exist for a reason, they helped me hold Equestria together when I was alone. It took generations for ponies to forget that one of us had...turned. The old capitol was destroyed, the country was in shambles. The tribes were coming apart again, I needed to become the god-queen. I needed to give them a sense of timeless perfection and insurmountable power. All that is gone now. Luna, I can no longer be what I was."

"They love you, they always have. They'll follow your lead because of that."

Celestia gave a single rueful chuckle, it was an ugly and self-pitying sound. "They loved me because of that mask I created and its gone now. They all know now that I am a fraud."

"Celestia, talk to Twilight. Tell me if she loves you any less for this." Luna said.

The white alicorn returned her head to the pillow as her sister's words hit the mark. "I am still in no condition to hold court."

"That's fine, sister. I may not be able to raise the sun but I can manage both day and night courts." Luna replied without relish.

"What about the sun?" Celestia asked her.

"Twilight's working on that," Luna said, thinking that was mostly true.

Celestia sighed, tired from the stress of the confrontation.

"I'll be going dear sister, be good for the doctors and get better soon."

"I'll try, Lu-Lu."

With that Luna closed the left and closed the door behind her. She had her sister's court to run.

The hall was jammed with petitioners, no doubt here to ask about the failed sunrise. She was thinking about what she should say to the public on this matter when the first petitioner, a vaguely familiar scruffy white unicorn in rumpled and soiled court finery came before her. He was desperately in need of a bath and looked like he had slept on a park bench. Normally she would never skip anyone in line for an audience, especially someone who looked so down on his luck. However, today was an emergency and she would have to put his petition aside until after the fears and concerns regarding the sunrise were fully addressed.

Discord

The sun failed to rise. That was not hard for Discord to sense. Between the drastic dimming of Celestia's soul and the angst and fear filling the population of Canterlot there was no way he could have missed detecting this. A few hours later he could sense the approach of the most interesting unicorn in the world. Discord waited eagerly for her to come within the Royal Library, in his "vision" her soul was an eye wateringly bright fuchsia mass roiling in emotional turmoil. Fear and anger warred with hope and resolve as she entered the marble entry hall. "Hello Twilight," he thought in her direction.

"Hello Library," she replied to his surprise. "Did she hear me?" He reached out for her mind and "saw" that she was looking around at the massive collection of tomes like a lover gazing upon their long separated mate. "I've missed you too," she said to the temple of knowledge. She smiled and the agitation in her aura seemed to decrease as she neared the card catalog. Discord wondered to himself how someone so emotionally discordant could be so orderly and meticulous when carrying out research. She was pulling cards a dozen at a time and noting the relevant information faster than most ponies could talk. He realized that he had never gotten to see her in her true element, it was impressive and just a little bit scary.

He skimmed along only her surface-most thoughts, not wanting her to catch him peeking. Watching Twilight as she worked, a blur of subjects passed through her mind: changelings, lists of kings and queens, histories of the other speaking races, a treatise on the nature of alicorn biology, a history about his war with the royal pony sisters, and unicorn medical texts? What in the name of Celestia's carefully plucked beard did this have to do with raising the sun? Her notes were similarly opaque, if detailed. Part of them resembled a primer for diplomats: They listed all of the civilized races of the world, their government types, the names of their monarchs, and the dates of their reigns. On some of these there were secondary marks denoting who knows what, they were far too organized and detailed for him to comfortably concentrate upon.

Turning back to her mind she seemed to be pondering a section of her noble's list that was problematically blank. Bovines had no lands or kings of their own but were widespread within pony territories. Goats could not speak but they were as intelligent and crafty with tools as any other speaking race. She angrily scribbled dark question marks in these areas of her notes as this made no sense compared to the other races. A light flickered to life in Discord's old mind. "Oooh, she doesn't know about that, does she? Typical Celestia, brush all the ugly business under the rug and let it be forgotten."

Discord quietly, subtly, and oh so carefully whispered into Twilight's mind. "Mythology?" she mouthed along. "Maybe what I'm looking for is older than what it strictly held as History?" she thought while Discord aproved. Forgoing the card catalog on pure impulse she walked the several hundred meters to the mythology and folk-tales section of the library. Unlike her more usual haunts in this library, this section was an admixture of scholarly work and bedtime stories for little foals. Pulling one of the latter type of books off the shelf with her magic, Dark tales for scary sleepovers. She flipped to a random page. It was the beginning of a tale called "Grogar of the Bells." She sat down and read the story, alone except for a draconequus reading metaphorically over her shoulder.

"Was it true? Could it be true?" Grogar was the god-king of the cloven hoofed, the tale described him as greedy and uncaring of other species. Supposedly he could work great magics with the power of bells, a form of magic Twilight had never even heard of before. He was supposed to be immortal like the princesses, but wrathful and bent on expansion of his people's power. There was some sort of ritual involving a massive bell that would spread his power over all the land (there was some nonsense about eternal darkness that Twilight was sure was a confluence of the later Nightmare Moon saga.) According to this tale, while their armies clashed, he was confronted by the pony sisters before his ritual was complete and he was defeated by their combined power. As an immortal god-king he could not be destroyed so the sisters banished him to Tartarus along with his entire capitol city. As punishment for their war of aggression the cloven hoofed were dispersed, bovines and swine were taken as slaves but goats were not willing to surrender. So instead, the pony sisters cursed their entire species and stole their ability to speak from them.

Twilight shivered at the conclusion of the horrible tale. The descriptions of the goat-king and his atrocities were scary but the thought of the pony sisters as wrathful goddesses destroying entire cities, enslaving species, and cursing another for all time shook Twilight to the core. Discord watched as she wrestled with this image of her beloved princesses. She asked herself if it could be true and Discord whispered "Yes" to the back of her mind. He was pleased to be telling the truth, the truth could hurt ever so much more than a simple lie. He still had no idea what this whole thing was about, but if simple chance had led to him destroying Celestia's prize pupil's image of the alicorn, then so be it.

After finishing the children's book she began pulling multiple texts from the shelves in rapid succession. She mixed her reading of folk tales with academic criticism and analysis of the themes and elements common to each tale. It looked like some portions of tales were far older than the surrounding stories they were part of. Scholars were able to trace the origin of elements from the presence and absence of other elements and she was beginning to think that there were hints of pre-history hiding among the fairy tales. There were other monsters, perhaps gods and kings in their day. Erebus - some sort of shadow demon or cloud king, Gaia - a dragon or a volcano, Tierek - a half pony / half ape monstrosity. Discord was among them as well, more of a trickster than a despoiler in that bygone era. The common threads were that they were from the dawn of time, they were immortal, possessed of power at least as strong as an alicorn, and except for Discord imprisoned in Tartarus. Discord could feel her thrill of fear and excitement as the thought was born: "Tartarus, where all the secrets are buried. Where I have to go to find them."

"Oh, Celestia will have kittens when she hears about this," he thought with glee.

Chapter 4

Celestia

A matched set of white pegasus stallions in gilded armor stood stiffly at attention in front of the door to Princess Celestia's private chambers. The position of guarding the diarch's chamber itself was a duty that required more than just vigilance or martial prowess. Often the ability to specifically not hear what was occurring within was clearly the skill most needed at the moment. Delicate international negotiations, the debriefing of master spies, even the occasional tryst all required the guards to be trained in not hearing. Their brows were furrowed and sweating with the effort they were manifesting to try, desperately try to not hear the shouts and bellows shaking the chamber door on its hinges.

"You are a liar!" Celestia proclaimed at near Traditional volume. The horn doctor's ears folded back both in displeasure and to protect what was left of his hearing.

"Your Majesty, I-"

"You told me that wasn't going to hurt!"

"Your Majesty, I need you to-"

"I do not care what you need, you lied to me!"

"It was only to-"

"Lying to me could be construed as treason, you know." Celestia's volume lowered as she started to recover from her shock.

"I had to inject the distillate of coca into the base of your horn to prevent pain."

"This was to prevent pain?!? What kind of sadist are you?!?"

"Lie back your Majesty. I must work before the anesthetic wears off."

"How dare you give orders to me within my own chambers, in the old days I would have had you flogged for - OW! You stabbed me! In the neck! What poison did you give me foul assassin?"

"It was a general anesthetic my Princess."

"Why would I need...a...gen...gener....anaaah..he-he."

"There we go your Majesty, now lay back like a good girl."

"I am...good...girl."

"And good girls get cake."

"Oooo, cake. I...like....caaaaaa...zzzzzzzz

As the chemically induced bliss wore off Celestia became aware of a noise like that of a particularly aggravated mosquito. There were vibrations traveling down from the tip of her horn so she attempted to look up its length to see what was occurring. From her eye-crossed vantage she could see that the doctor was hard at work but could not tell with any detail what he was doing. The buzzing whine stopped and the doctor, muffled from the surgical mask he was wearing, implored without taking his eyes from his work. "Please your majesty, you must not move." The buzzing resumed and Celestia did her best to not move a muscle.

She wasn't feeling any pain, per se. But she could feel vibrations and pressure whenever the doctor brought his tools to bear. She could feel him grinding away at high points on her broken horn, smoothing out the irregular surface. In her mind's eye the nooks and crannies on her damaged horn inflated into crags and crevices and she felt the drill remove whole mountaintops. She still couldn't see and he hated being so totally at the mercy of someone else. It bothered her deeply, to be so far out of control so soon after her recent losses. Closing her eyes, she endured the rest of the process; The interiors of each fragment were sterilized using magic, the ends of each fragment were ground flat and the two pieces were glued together with a cement that would be replaced with horn over time.

After the procedure was complete, the doctor instructed Celestia in the care and cleaning of her repaired horn. Additionally, he extended the complete ban on her use of magic for a week and then limiting herself to small acts of telekinesis for the next. Celestia soon grew restless and needed something to keep her mind occupied, so she ordered her staff to bring some of the most urgent paperwork from the office she and her sister shared. "I may not be able to raise the sun, but at least I can get though some of these reports," she thought to herself. Mostly she needed to feel useful and capable and this was an unwanted chore that everyone would enjoy seeing done.

Alongside the stack of unloved papers, her porters brought a floral arrangement. It was a somewhat stylized and overwrought example of the sort of gift one would give a friend or loved one who was ill. The arrangement was a combination of white roses, daisies, and the nameless green fronds that were used to add volume to bouquets. Dismissing her porter she examined the flowers with a smile, she found the card hidden within the green fronds.

Get Well Soon, Beloved Princess
Canterlot Banking Consortium

"Well, this was new," she thought. "At least they look tasty." She thought about he act of giving flowers or other edibles to a sick pony. The practice dated so far back that even Celestia couldn't remember an actual beginning to the tradition. What likely was a simple act of kindness, giving food to someone who was too weak to go out and forage, had evolved into a formal act of well-wishing with the colors and flavors of the flowers conveying increasingly complicated and obscure messages over time. Examining the floral choice and arrangement alongside the sender's identity, the message of the flowers themselves were symbols of pure sisterly love and that of an early and rapid spring. "Hm." She approved. "It seems they hired a professional," she thought.

Over the next few hours, the numbness in her horn and scalp changed into a strange buzzing and tingling sensation and eventually cleared into the strange metallic ache that only nerve damage could produce. Celestia had spent this time fruitlessly attempting to get through the paperwork she had requested. She had even gone so far as to ask her porter to bring her an earth-pony writing implement, a pencil. She had planned on spending the afternoon learning how to write with her mouth but the first gift of flowers was soon joined by others. The trickle soon developed into a flood and soon the porter was sweating and panting from the constant deliveries and her bedroom was taken over by a forest of white flowers as every flat surface was engulfed and there was only the narrowest of paths leading between her desk, the bed, and the door.

There was yet another knock at the door and Celestia looked up from her desk with trepidation, she simply didn't have anywhere else to put more flowers. "Cm n" was the princess' reply muffled by the pencil in her mouth. Instead of her porter this time it was Twilight who entered. The purple mare was carrying with her a small brown sack that was incongruously bedecked in bright pink ribbons. Celestia spat out the writing implement onto her desk and spun around to face her protege, "Twilight!" On the alicorn's a wide and genuine smile spread along with her wings, unfurling to assist her balance as she stepped carefully between the flowers towards the bed in the center of the room.

Twilight looked nervous, not that that was particularly unusual for her student. "I ended up having to rescue this when passing through security," referring to her burden.

"What is it?" Celestia asked as the sack was levitated to the cushions.

"I don't know how Pinkie heard about the flowers already. In fact I don't think it's possible for her to have heard about Luna's address and have had the time to post this here."

"Oh," Celestia replied as her smile faltered. "She asked everyone to send me flowers?"

"I wasn't there but not exactly. I heard that she said that those who wished to show their support to you should send you flowers and well wishes."

"That was better," Celestia thought despite being unable to put her hoof on what exactly made it so. "So, what is this?" she asked Twilight while taking a closer look at the sack. Printed on the side it said All Purpose Flour. "Oh." Her composure then began to crumble as she started making little snorting sounds.

"Princess? Are you-"

Celestia's mien broke and she began to giggle like a little foal. Twilight, after a few moments of gawping in amazement, joined in and laughed herself breathless.

"Oh, Miss Pie." Celestia said around tears of relieved stress. "Please tell her 'thank you' for me the next time you see her. She truly is the Element of Laughter.

Twilight, now having regained her composure, replied. "I will Princess, I will. Um, can I ask you something?"

"Of course, Twilight. You can ask me anything."

"Who was Grogar?"

Celestia's smile vanished abruptly, having been totally taken off guard. She looked at her student, aghast.

Twilight's face showed disappointment, as if Celestia's shock was a confession of a crime.

A voice rang out from the doorway, destroying the moment completely. "He was the black sheep of the family."

Luna was wearing that smile again.

Twilight

"Ugg, in the name of Cel-" Twilight glanced at her mentor and then started again. "By the stars and moo-" she then thought again about who she was talking to. She settled for a sad, little "That was terrible, Luna."

"We have been waiting eons to use that one!" the grinning alicorn replied.

"Bu- Bu-" Celestia sputtered, staring at her sister. "How can you joke about this?!?"

"I believe it is called 'a straight line.' Luna replied, smiling smugly.

"I don't care if Twilight was wearing bells and motley," the older sister admonished.

"Bells and motley? Twilight asked in a quiet shocked tone.

"Oh, fie on your black humors Cele. 'Tis simply a joke."

"It's not just a joke Luna, how would she even know that name?"

"You see I found this book-" Twilight started to explain.

"Why shouldn't she know about Grogar? He was a fell foe we fought and overcame. There are dozens of ballads celebrating our victory."

"I purged the records Lulu, I erased him and all that he did. All that we did."

"Why would you do that?" Luna demanded.

"Things are different now-"

"It's because of the curse. That and the slaves." Twilight surmised in a clear cutting voice.

Celestia nodded.

"Is something wrong with the curse? Are they beginning to speak again?" Luna asked, anxious but for entirely the wrong reason from Twilight's point of view.

"No, sister, they are still mute, they are still broken."

"You knew about this?!?" Twilight turned with surprising venom.

"Well, yes. Of course I did. I was there. I'm actually surprised that it isn't public knowledge."

"Doesn't it bother you?"

"That this tale is forgotten, yes indeed."

"No, Luna. About what you did to them."

"Why would that bother me?" Luna asked, genuinely confused.

Twilight stared at the alicorn with mute horror. "...I don't know you at all. Do I?"

Luna started approaching the distressed unicorn. "Twilight, what are you talking about, what's wrong?"

"What's wrong?" She asked. "You are what's wrong. Slaves Luna, you took slaves and we still have them to this day. And the curse, Luna, you broke a whole people. You turned them into animals. Worse, they're smarter than any animal should be but can't ever speak again. At least she," she jerked her horn towards Celestia, "knows she should be ashamed for what she did."

"Ashamed? We saved ponykind from that fiend and crushed his army. We made sure they couldn't hurt anyone ever again" Even confused and hurt, there was still a touch of prickly pride in her over the accomplishment.

"Go."

"But Twi-"

"No, I don't want you here. I can't talk to you right now. I- I can't even look at you."

Twilight saw that her words were hurting Luna and in her aching disappointment that was a good thing.

Luna slowly backed out of the room, picking her way through the flowers without looking. She never broke eye contact with Twilight until the unicorn slammed the chamber's door with a magenta shove. Dust drifted silently down from the rafters in the aftermath, highlighting Twilight's gasps. She was breathing as hard as a marathon runner on the last mile as the impact of what she said to Luna sank in.

Celestia's calm and quiet voice shattered the silence and dragged Twilight's mind back to the here and now. "Things were different then, my dear student. Do you think that language was the only thing to have changed in that time?"

"But she acts so normal most of the time."

Celestia's expressively raised eyebrow spoke volumes.

"I mean, normal for her, or me." Twilight replied, flustered by the eyebrow. "Somepony who knows right from wrong. Someone who is lonely but appreciates the quiet. Someone who you can talk to and who understands. Someone who you could be...friends with. Not...that."

"She still is all those thing but she is also much more. I know it is easy to forget how old we are, especially my sister. We've lived through countless pony lifetimes and some have been filled with war, blood, and savagery. The battles against Discord were just one of many fights we had to join against those who would destroy our ponies."

"So killing, cursing, and slavery is just fine to her? To you?"

"No, they were never 'fine,' they were necessary at the time. Doing those things are never easy and never should be."

"But you did them," Twilight replied with a tone of finality.

"Yes, we did. Despite the many battles you've fought in the last two years, you are a child of peace Twilight. You never had to fear dragons strafing your village with flames and then eating the survivors as they fled. You never had to face a platoon of armed and armored griffons bent on tearing your city from the sky itself. If you hear enough screams and smell enough blood, you will find that there are things which...There are things you think you cannot and must not do. You will find that you were wrong."

Celestia looked old to Twilight then. Not 'Granny Smith' old but mountains, oceans, and stars old. Her true age, Twilight reminded herself. "I...I don't want to think about that anymore. It's just too big right now."

Celestia simply nodded, looking every inch the ageless immortal despite her recent defeat.

Twilight forced her mind away from wars, terror, and Luna. It took effort, but eventually she was able to bring herself back to the reason she came to Celestia.

"So, was Grogar a god?" Twilight asked her mentor.

"Yes, or whatever term you want to use for beings like my sister and I. He was the king of the cloven hoofed in his time. He was the master of bells and the paragon of spite and greed." Celestia betrayed no emotion in the lecture, sounding more like a professor of history than someone who was there.

"What happened then? She prompted.

"You seem to have worked a lot of it out yourself. He challenged our rule and attempted to take the pony lands for his own kind. He was fiercely loyal to his people but thought nothing about destroying other species for his own gain. The two of us together, Luna and I, were able to destroy the bells he was using to power his sorcery. Without easy access to his magic we were able to bind him and place him within Tartarus."

"Bells? Sorcery?"

"Grogar was an accomplished magician and had mastered a form of magic that isn't practiced anymore. His people used to craft bells so that when they were rung a spell would be cast. The art is forgotten but I am given to understand that cows still wear bells to this day, for reasons of tradition and culture."

Twilight didn't know much about the cloven hoofed races in Equestria. They were almost never seen in Canterlot at all and the few she'd met in Ponyville were kept by the Apples. She had thought at the time that the bells around the cow's necks served some sort of practical purpose. Instead they were the remnants of a once powerful magical tradition, the details forgotten and reduced to a form of decoration. She felt sick.

"How did you know he was a god?

"Well, we knew each other, in the beginning."

"What do you mean?"

"In the...early times. Before all...this." The alicorn tried to gesture at everything in the universe in a single movement of her wing.

"So, there was a time before...everything?"

"Everything has a beginning and an end, Twilight. Even if the two are indistinguishable."

"Uh, what?"

"Sorry, never mind that. Just woolgathering. So, yes there was a beginning."

"So you and all the other...gods...popped into existence at the same time and place?"

"Oh no, dear. Some of us are much younger or older than each other. I am older than my sister because without the sun the moon could not shine. Our niece is much younger than us, she could not be born until after there were people with the capacity to love."

"Ehhhhh." The tiny noise escaped Twilight as deep truths about the nature of the universe were discussed like so much family gossip.

"But we really weren't all there in one place either," Celestia continued. "The world was much smaller then and more...mythic. So it was inevitable that we would run into each other. We sort of had to, so that the world would turn out this way."

"Eh."

"That's about it, my dear student. Why is this important?"

Twilight mustered some semblance of composure "I...I. So, you knew all the other gods because they were there with you, in the beginning and interacted with them."

"Yes."

"And the Changeling Queen wasn't one of them?"

"Exactly. Now, what does this have to do with anything?"

" I was just getting my hopes up about your injury. It looks like I was wrong."

"I'm sorry, Twilight. The Queen isn't a god and that means I'm going to grow old."

Twilight willed herself to not cry over this once again.

"Is there anything else I can do to help?"

"No, I should get back to the library. I wasted a lot of time on this wild goose chase," Twilight said with some frustration.

"It was born of hope, Twilight." Celestia smiled sadly as she said this. "And I thank you for that. I don't want to die either but we need to concentrate on getting the sun back into the sky as soon as possible. I'll last longer than the crops will, even like this."

"I won't fail you, Princess," Twilight said as she moved to leave.

"Of course you won't."

Luna

The door slammed on Luna's stunned face. "What just happened?" she thought to herself. She turned slowly from the door, feeling a tightness in her chest and a catch develop in her breath as she did so. "Twilight is upset at me, that much is clear, but from what slight?" The lunar mare re-ran the twisted conversation through her head again as she shuffled slowly down the hall. "Was it the joke? I thought it was funny but was it really that bad?

"No, it was something to do with their victory over Grogar. The enslavement of the cows and sheep?" Luna did feel that that old business was a bit unpleasant but what else was there to do? If she and her sister had allowed the cloven-hoofed to remain in control of their lands they would have waged a war of revenge within a generation. Was it the curse they had placed on the goats? She had offered them the same choice she gave the others, their freedom or their speech. The goats had chosen their path, stubborn to the end. The Minotaurs and other monsters were decimated and then banished to the far corners of the world. How were any of these outcomes better or worse, morally, than any other?

"Maybe it's been long enough? Is that what Twilight meant?" Luna thought, grasping for some hope. Eventually her hooves drifted to a stop, the front of her mind trying to parse what just happened between her and Twilight while the back of her mind sought the comfort of shadows. There has been no shortage of dark spaces in the palace over the last two days, much of the structure was designed to take advantage of the sun's direct light. The perpetual dusk blanketing the world painted the alabaster walls in hues of rose and indigo and allowed deep pools of shadow to gather in pockets and corners. Her subconscious sent her into one of these cool, black pools where she could feel the subtle texture of the shade and pull it around her like a foal's treasured blanket.

She was still deep in thought when Twilight came walking down the hall. The young mare looked sad but like she had calmed down at least. "Twilight," Luna spoke from the shadows as the unicorn approached.

"Gyaaah!" she screamed, jumping straight into the air in fright.

"Sorry! I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to scare you." the princess rambled in apology while stumbling into view.

Still panting from her fright Twilight turned on her with a look of irritation. "Don't do that. Don't you know you shouldn't sneak up on ponies?"

"Yes, I mean, of course I do. Twilight, I'm sorry. I wasn't hiding, I just didn't think." Luna still felt off-balance talking to Twilight. The previous argument added to the awkwardness of startling the unicorn.

Something Luna said must have affected her, Twilight quickly regained focus. "Yep, I'm pretty sure that was it," she said with a worrying coldness.

"Twilight, I...I'm sorry if I said something back there," she gestured back up the hall to Celestia's chambers, "to upset you. I know I don't understand everything about ponies these days but I'm trying to learn as fast as I can."

Twilight closed her eyes and sighed before replying. "Of course you are, I know that. Our...disagreement is as much my fault as yours."

"Really?" Luna's hope for reconciliation caused her to blurt out the simple word, forgetting the connotations.

Twilight pursed her lips for a moment and then replied. "I had forgotten my place; I forgot what you are. I treated you like any other pony and that was wrong of me. I hope you can forgive me for that."

Luna's heart fell through the floor. In desperation she brought forth words she hadn't even admitted to herself at this point. "But, Twilight....We've grown ever so fond of you."

"And I you, Princess." Twilight's use of her title rather than her name caused her blood to run cold. "It would be an honor to maintain a friendship with you, but I've been far too familiar and presumptuous in our interactions. If we are to maintain a friendship I must ask your forgiveness for this."

Friendship, a word Luna normally loved had become vile and poison. Her eyes ached with tears ready to march. "There is nothing to forgive Twilight, I refuse."

"And yet I beg for it, your majesty. I need your forgiveness or not even friendship will be possible." Twilight replied with increasing formality and a shimmering wetness in her eyes.

"Please, Twilight. Don't do this." Luna said with a thick voice. She took a step towards the purple mare, her purple mare she had begun to realize far too late.

Twilight took an equal step back and Luna's heart broke.

"Of course, Miss Sparkle." Tears overflowed their levies and ran down indigo fur. "I would give you anything for which you ask. Anything."

Tears were coursing down Twilight's own face as well. "I know." She whispered. The unicorn stepped forward and gave Luna a chaste kiss on the cheek. They both knew it was a kiss goodbye. Twilight then vanished in a magenta flash.

Luna was no longer within the shadow, she was shadow. In her sorrow she found the place within her that remembered how to cut the strings on the puppet that was her body and become darkness itself. She flowed down the labyrinthine halls of the palace like a subtle tide. The shadows grew deeper and more solid when she passed. Candles and torches guttered at the pressure she exerted on the light. Servant's napes stood on end and they shivered as she flowed around them. She poured herself into her ebon throne, tendrils of smoke and shadow gathering into solidity. Here, at the center of her domain she should have the power to do what she willed. Here, she should be too strong for pain. Here, she is too grand a being for a neurotic little filly to reject.

She shaped the darkness into a new body. As much as she was tempted by the merciless mien of Nightmare Moon, she had done far too much work over the last two years to separate her reputation from that pseudo-mythological figure to undo it all in a single fit of pique. Instead she crafted her body as an embellishment upon her latest form as Luna. She would be a hoof taller than before, a shade darker, and with a mane just a touch more nebulous. She had no need to terrify, she just needed to be more.

"WE ARE HERE!" she proclaimed in the Traditional Canterlot Voice. The courtiers and guards jumped and stumbled in their surprise. "THE COURT OF NIGHT IS NOW IN SESSION!"

Her ministers were the first to shake themselves out of their stupor. "Your Highness, we welcome you. Are there any proclamations you would like to make or should we begin with the petitions?"

The goddess of the moon paused a moment. Normally, she would begin with petitions immediately but tonight she had something on her mind. "WE DO!" Her ministers, not expecting any announcement were thrown off a beat. "WE PROCLAIM, FROM THIS NIGHT HENCE, ALL OF THE CLOVEN-HOOFED ARE NOW FREE AND MAY NO LONGER BE HELD AS PROPERTY." Silence dominated the throne room for several second and then chaos broke out.

Discord

Discord's attention was drawn back to inside the library by a spike of magical energy punching its way through some of the strongest wards in Equestria. "Ah, Twilight. The things you do when you forget to remember your supposed limitations."

He could feel that something was deeply wrong with the unicorn, her aura was burning, flaring mess. Despite the endless training and discipline he knew this unicorn put into controlling her power, several small objects d'art were knocked over, flung, or melted. She was straining against her raw power with all her might. "She'd be magnificent if she just let go," Discord mused while imagining reality flowing like so much candle wax under the unicorn's onslaught.

"Damn you for a collaborator, Fate. I'd bet my horns that you had a claw in this. Chances are it was all schmaltzy and poignant too. Bleh." Celestia had nearly ruined this mare, here she was clinging to the edge of sanity on a daily basis, gifted with power that could rival the gods themselves, and still she kept her mind and power under control. It was tragic to him, like seeing a priceless work of art defaced.

He pulled himself away from ogling the mare's distress and instead concentrated on hearing her surface thoughts. He dove in, hoping to see the results of his guidance on Twilight's studies. Instead of a young mare mourning the revelation of her mother-figure's imperfection, he found himself swept into a torrent of romantic strife and recrimination. While he was no stranger to love-based discord, heck he had two daughters who specialized in such things, it was as disorienting as snapping one's fingers and having strawberry flavored milk fall from the sky. It's not that strawberry milk is bad, it's just that he was expecting and looking forward to chocolate.

Wishing for the freedom to conjure himself up some popcorn, he watched the show that was Twilight attempting to berate herself while at the same time raging against Luna while at the same time begging her forgiveness while at the same time trying to convince herself to run to the mare and take her back while at the same time telling herself that that was a bad idea. Some details were clearer than others, depending on how much Twilight was going over them in her memory. "So, the Grogar info he led Twilight to yielded this? Perhaps he should consider a career in teaching," he thought to himself. It was obvious to the dragonequus that the two were crazy about each other and this little misunderstanding was likely to blow over, given enough time and love will conquer all. "Booooring," he thought. "How do I make this actually interesting?"

It took a few minutes for the overwrought unicorn to stop tormenting herself and get her mind back onto business. Once she did, Discord was gifted with the reason for Twilight's research binge in the first place. Celestia's injury and her inability to raise the sun, both were the result of her duel with Chrysalis. He knew she was hurt but this was the first mind he had been able to enter that knew the true extent of her wounding. He guffawed upon learning that Celestia didn't know that the Changeling Queen was his daughter and therefore divine. The big, white cry-baby had convinced herself that her wound was inflicted by a mortal monster and therefore her connection to the sun was broken, ergo, she was now mortal and was going to die. It was at this point Discord lost track of what Twilight was thinking - he was rather busy howling with laughter for the next several minutes.

Once he was done exalting in Celestia's ego-driven misery he tuned back into Twilight's mind. It made sense now, what she was researching. She had been hoping (against Celestia's insistence) that his daughter was a goddess and therefore able to inflict a divine wound upon her mentor. The mare was about to give up though, the Grogar story Celestia gave her had convinced the poor little thing that her all knowing goddess of light couldn't possibly be ignorant of the younger gods. "Sigh. Arrogance, pure uncut hubris. It was almost too predictable for Discord's taste but perhaps he could liven this up at the same time as the matter with Luna.

He lurked in the unicorn's mind, waiting for the right moment while she was putting away the books on mythical monsters and foal's tales. She had just thought to herself that "Celestia should know," referring to the alicorn's supposed knowledge of all matters divine. In a voice matching the one Twilight used when debating with herself, he whispered a single, short phrase: "Maybe she doesn't." It didn't hurt that it was also the truth.

Twilight froze at the errant thought. Discord worried that perhaps he had overdone it but then her next thought confirmed that he had hooked her. "If she doesn't know, where could I find out?" Twilight thought to herself. The internal thought was deliciously tinged with guilt over the treason implied by her doubting Celestia's perfection.

"She's not the only god you know about." Discord supplied.

"I can't ask Luna, not so soon after..." Twilight thought with a wince at the end of the sentence.

"Princess Cadance?" Twilight then listed. That was the dangerous one from Discord's point of view. His daughter did know the truth and might have even overcome her shame at being related to the "monster" that stole her fiancee to tell Twilight about the Changeling Queen. He had to steer her away from this line of inquiry.

"They'll ask about Luna." he whispered, softly, delicately, it all hinged on this.

Twilight shivered at the thought of her brother asking about her and Luna's fight. The potential embarrassment of admitting her feelings to Luna's own niece. There had to be another god, one who's whereabouts she knew.

"Grogar." She said out loud at the same time as Discord whispered the name in her mind.

"He was in Tartarus, imprisoned for his crimes against ponykind," she thought. A gate to that bleak realm was near to Ponyville she remembered, deep in the Everfree Forest. She had dealt with Cerberus before, she knew she could get past the three-headed guard dog if she was careful. She moved among the stacks of books, pulling titles that likely contained information on the prison of the gods. She was confident that if she read through these she'd have enough knowledge to get in, ask the fallen goat god about his relations, and get out without any trouble and before the Princesses even knew she had left.

She pulled the cards from behind the front covers of all of the books she had selected, stamped them and filed them properly. She was a librarian through and through and the thought of just taking the books never even occurred to her. The books were due in two weeks and she noted the date in the proper place inside the covers. "More than enough time to accomplish my mission," she thought with a touch of pride. Placing the several tomes into her saddlebags she headed out the main doors and towards the train station. Her heart was swollen with confidence and anticipated praise from Celestia.

"Hubris," Discord thought with a chuckle. "A lesson well taught, Celestia."

Chapter 5

Celestia

Celestia had spent the strange, gloaming-lit night in a long fight for sleep. She had been ordered by her physician to try sleeping every night for the next week despite her usual habit of usually only sleeping once a week. She felt drained by the tossing and turning and she wondered about her newfound mortality. "Do I need to sleep like a normal pony now?" She stretched and yawned while turning over one last time and finally opened her eyes. The smell of woodsmoke and the sound of milling ponies mixed with the violet light to permanently banish any more attempts at sleep.

Preparing to get out of bed, she evaluated how she actually felt. Physically, she thought that perhaps she was doing a bit better. The aches and twinges that had permeated her body since her defeat actually seemed to be fading. Her horn, however, was continuing to invent new ways to torment her. The bitter, metallic ache running the length of her horn was transitioning to an itching wrongness that wouldn't allow her a moment's peace. She was reminded of bucks rubbing the velvet from their antlers as she fantasized about savagely rubbing her horn against the countless wooden and stone corners that surrounded her. Instead, she licked the spot on the roof of her mouth that was nearest to the itch and wished that the action gave her some relief.

Her internal clock, always precise, was telling her that it was time to raise the sun. She got to her hooves before she could even think about the urge but then realized that there was no real point to the action. Two steps out of he bed and towards the balcony she simply stopped, surrounded by the hundreds of white flowers. Not wanting to confront the stubborn refusal of the sun to obey her, her attention passed to the hundreds of white blossoms forming an artificial meadow that brushed against her fetlocks. She was past raging or crying now, she had finished bargaining for more time and had endured Twilight's denial of the inevitable. She just wanted the simplicity of the moment to endure and just exist.

An ancient desire stirred within her. It had been so long since the last time she had indulged this instinct, it took her a moment to actually identify the urge. Upon doing so she smirked at the transgressive and most un-regal thought. The smile took on a more shameless character even as her eyes darted around guiltily to make sure no potential witnesses were lurking in the shadows. The white alicorn's crownless head then dipped to the level of her unshod hooves and she began to graze. While she did love the modern confections that ponies had invented, there was a primal pleasure to pulling the leaves and petals from their stems with dexterous lips and clipping teeth. It had been centuries since she had indulged in this pleasant atavism and the simple joy of being an herbivore helped heal her distressed soul. In this moment she was no princess or goddess, just a simple pony.

A noise, distinct from the general murmur of ponies about their day, broke her reverie. Instead of the usual cacophony of ponies greeting, haggling, arguing, singing, and engaging in all the myriad behaviors that they carried out day in and day out, there was a shout of "NO!" coming from the throats of several hundred ponies. Her ears flicked forward to focus on the oddity and they were able to discern that the crowd was responding in counterpoint to the speech of a single pony. Lifting her head from her breakfast she stepped gingerly around the remaining flowers and emerged onto her balcony. in the square facing the main gates of the palace there was a great bonfire, the flames of which leaped several stories into the air. The hot yellow light pushed back the gloaming shadows and revealed the faces of hundreds of ponies twisted in anger and fear. Atop an adjacent pile of wooden detritus, the pile presumably gathered to be fed to the hungry flames, was a vaguely familiar looking white unicorn. He was greasy and unkempt and wore what appeared to be rags. Celestia couldn't imagine where or when she would have met such a rough looking character but she felt that she should know him none the less.

The unicorn's voice was forged out of molten rage, the passion of which swept the surrounding crowd up into its frenzy. She heard him decry her as a false god, a tyrant, and a decadent sybarite. Her sister was reviled as an unstable lunatic, an unrepentant murderess, the killer of the sun, and (oddly out of place in this list) a thief. The crowd responded to the accusations with cheering and the chanting of slogans, none of which were flattering to the royal pony sisters. Petals dropped from Celestia's lips as her jaw slackened and her mouth hung open. "This, I did not expect." She said to herself.

She tried to run to her chamber doors but was caught up in stumbling though the countless potted plants that barred her way. The guard ponies outside her doors had just finished turning to each other out of concern for the crashing noise and even more out of place sound of Celestia swearing a blue streak when the doors burst outwards under the force of the alicorn's hooves. Utilizing a mastery of the Traditional Canterlot Voice that most did not realize Celestia had, she shouted one word: "LUNA!"

It only took a few seconds for the other alicorn to appear, she must have been nearby already. "What is it, sister? And why the shouting?"

Celestia stared at the creature speaking with her sister's voice. It looked very similar to Luna but was slightly off. It was taller, darker, a bit more regal in it's lines than her sister's most recent form.

The dark alicorn rolled her eyes, "Tis me, Tia. I have not changed anything of note, nor have I re-embraced Nightmare.

Celestia tried to reach out with her magical perception but was reminded of her doctor's orders by a vicious spike of pain shooting through her horn. "Ugg," she moaned while faltering.

The other alicorn rushed to her side, supporting her weight and wrapping a dark wing over her withers. "Sister!" she said with evident alarm.

"I'm fine, Luna. I just forgot myself for a moment and tried to use my horn."

"Thou knowest better, my dear sissy." The out of date endearment seemed doubly odd to Celestia given that her sister was now almost the same height as herself. "I need you to become hale once again."

Celesta had regained her balance and her horn had returned to merely maddening her with itching. "Luna, can I ask you something?"

"Of course," Luna replied.

"Why is there a rebellion in my front yard?"

"A...what?" Luna's eyes seemed a bit wider.

"Why is," Celestia grabbed Luna's wing in her teeth and pulled her to the balcony, "THAT going on?

Luna seemed distracted by the shards of pottery and scattered topsoil carpeting the room and only eventually poked her head out onto the balcony and confront the spectacle. "Ah, yes. That."

"Luna," Celestia said in her big sister voice. "What did you DO?"

"Well, sister. Do you remember telling me once that we should strive to do the right thing rather than the easy thing."

"Luna."

"You even once taught me that the moral choice was superior to even the prudent one."

"Lu-na."

"I may have emancipated all of the cloven hoofed peoples last night."

"May have?"

"Perhaps...it is more of a 'did'."

She sighed, "And then?"

Luna was actually surprised that her sister did not ask her why she did what she did. "Well, it seems that many of the nobles of Canterlot have invested heavily in what was, up until last night, livestock. And by freeing these peoples it appears that I just allowed a fair percentage of their wealth to literally get up and walk away."

"I take it that there was no system for compensation or a timeline for carrying this out?"

Luna answered by way of grimace.

"Right," Celestia acknowledged, packing that single word full of exasperation.

"But you agreed with Twilight that slavery was now-"

"And I do," Celestia interrupted. "If you would have asked I would have let you know about the plan already in action for accomplishing this. We were only fifty years away from it being done smoothly."

"I would have but the former princess of the sun had decided to lock herself away in her tower and mope until she died."

Celestia was about to retort angrily but then paused. Her sister had a point, she had thrown away all of her responsibilities in the face of her personal tragedy. "True, I am going to die," she thought, "But I'm alive for now."

"Fine, Luna. You win."

Once again Luna was confused, "What?"

"You win, you are right. It is time for me to come down from my tower and take back up my responsibilities. There is a lot that needs doing and handing it all over to you was selfish of me."

"Really?"

"Yes, really. I may be...sick...but I'm not dead yet nor really even infirm beyond the thing with the horn. There's no reason that I cannot actively help you rule."

"Help?"

"Fine, co-rule. I'll do what I can with what time I have."

Luna embraced her sister in a rib-crushing hug. "Thank you for coming back, I missed you."

Celestia returned the hug but was smiling sadly, her face out of view from her sister. "I know."

The reconciliation continued in front of the two silent and embarrassed door guards for most of another minute but then eventually the two sisters released each other.

"So," Celestia tentatively began. "Are you going to tell me about...this?" She indicated Luna's changed form with a wing gesture."

Luna pursed her lips in thought for a moment and then replied. "Nnnope." Turning tail she headed for her own chambers and a solid twelve hours where she didn't have to hold court.

Twilight

"Everything's going to be fine," Twilight reassured herself. "I have my checklists." She at the thought, she pulled out the relevant scroll to re-re-re-review her list of Do-Nots.

Do Not:

Eat or Drink Anything
Touch Water
Look Back
Accept Gifts
Trust Your Eyes
Leave The Path
Violate Hospitality
Behave Discourteously
Take Anything
Show Fear
Run
Shout
Get Angry
Give Up
Sleep

The list was compiled from all of the legends and myths she could find about Tartarus. She regarded the list of dangerous behaviors and she immediately felt better about not inviting her friends along on this journey. While her friends were wonderful and each bore an element of harmony, they also had foibles that would result in each and every one of her do-nots being violated by at least one of them.

It had helped that Ponyville seemed to be in some sort of uproar when she arrived. She was able to slip into her Library and then out into the Everfree without attracting any unwanted attention. Those of her friends that Twilight saw were fully preoccupied and paid her not the slightest heed. During her brisk trot through town she saw Pinkie Pie was running around the town shouting about a "super doozy." Twilight saw Applejack leading a group of earth ponies from atop makeshift barricades blocking the road that led out of the town proper towards Sweet Apple Acres and the other major farms. Draped across the front of the roadblock was a banner reading "Agricultural Property Owners Association" and Applejack was shouting something about the right to life, liberty, and property to the assembled crowd. Standing alongside Mayor Mare were several guards from the local detachment and Rainbow Dash who was calling them names and telling them to go home. At the time, Twilight had acknowledged she normally would have stopped and tried to intervene in the standoff but the mission she was on was too secret and too important to be delayed any longer. Whatever was wrong would have to wait until she got back.

Tucking the scroll of Do-Nots back into her saddle bag, she pulled out her other checklist and reviewed its contents while she walked.

Things To Find Out

Who is the Changeling Queen

Divine? Y/N

Relations?
Can a god lose their connection to their object/aspect?

If so, can it be repaired?

In not repairable, can control of the sun be transferred?
Is Celestia now mortal?

Is she going to die?

How can I save her?
Can I lift the curse that is on the goats?

Should I lift the curse that is on the goats?

The last item on that list was in a rougher horn-writing, she had added it only after a long debate within herself. She felt, that by including that line item, she was somehow betraying Luna. Twilight was still wrestling with the idea of changing societal norms and how she should feel about someone who was a good pony by the standards of their time but had done things that were considered evil now. She was lost in thought, trotting through the shadowed forest and fighting with herself. She knew, intellectually, that her mentor was right. She shouldn't hold the actions Luna took millenia ago to the same standards of behavior modern ponies adhered to. Her heart however fought, kicked, and bucked at the idea of just accepting the enslavement of whole species as just something you forgot and forgave. It was then that Twilight decided, if there was a reasonable way of lifting the curse she would. Luna would just have to live with her actions and see how she liked it.

The moon had set a couple of hours ago, she supposed that made it mid-morning if such things mattered in a world perpetually waiting for dawn. She knew the way to the gates well, she had passed this way not six months ago with a rubber ball and a forty tonne, three headed dog. Her hooves handled the path while her eyes and mind wandered. Around her, she could see the effects of the last four sunless days. Leaves that should be green and full were wilted and browning and birds and frogs were equally confused and refused to sing. Not for the first time this trip she worried about famine as the fields of the upset farmers were likely showing the same damage as the trees and brush around her. She thought back to the train ride and the back of the hoof calculations she had done. Current food stores could last a month, with strict rationing. After that, there were some edible mushrooms and treebark that ponies could eat if desperate but that was unlikely to make any real difference in the end. Unless she could find a way to raise the sun, her entire civilization, her species, would be dead in a little over two months. She sped up from a trot to a canter.

Her thoughts turned back to Luna. If Celestia was indeed now mortal that would leave Luna as the last living thing in the world. How soon would it be until her planet resembled the surface of the moon? How long would the ruins of civilization last? Would Luna be forced to be here forever, alone? How long would she remember life, or me? Twilight's blood ran cold as her imagination painted a portrait of Luna, having been alone among the dust and ruins for eons. A gaunt, black specter haunting a dead world. Long having ceased talking to herself eventually, now having forgotten even how to talk or even her own name. Twilight began to gallop.

She burst into the clearing holding the gate wild-eyed and covered in foamy sweat. The massive black dog raised his heads in alarm at her sudden and frantic appearance and barked with a force that blew Twilight back onto her haunches. "Easy there. Good boy. You remember me? Don't you?" Twilight said in her best imitation of Fluttershy. At first the beast growled at her, shaking the ground, but eventually her soothing words were enough for Cerberus to calm down and give her a good sniffing. The result was immediate. His tail began wagging with such enthusiasm that several trees were destroyed and his snuffling search for where she might have hidden another ball had knocked Twilight onto her back. His licks and sniffs were enough to drive the ticklish mare into peals of gasping laughter and she hugged the muzzle of his nearest head. The others, immediately jealous, were pushing their way towards Twilight to get their turn being petted under her hooves.

Twilight felt much better, if somewhat wet and sticky from several gallons of slobber. The unconditional adoration that only dogs can supply seemed like a type of magic itself. She couldn't recall when last she had slept but she felt far more refreshed by the loving tussle than she supposed she had any right to. "Well, if friendship and love between ponies are magical, why not doggie love?" She said while scritching one of the behemoth's chins. Mentally, she made a note to request what materials covering what research may have previously been done on the topic. Reluctantly, she pulled her attention from petting Cerberus towards the gate through which she must pass. The gates were crudely wrought of black iron and set into the side of a low, stony hill. The rise looked, to her amateur geologist's eyes, to have been formed out of a single formation of igneous (volcanic) basalt and the extreme signs of erosion on stone this hard told her that it was indeed ancient and exposed to the elements for uncountable years. The gate, obviously a later addition, was without ornamentation and each spar showed the marks of the hammer that forged it. What disturbed her most about the gate was that there was not a speck of rust upon it. From her studies of metallurgy, Twilight knew that iron alloys of this type corroded rapidly when exposed to moisture such as rain or humidity. The gate's metal, as it was behaving, was a scientific impossibility.

A triple whine at massive volume drew her attention back to the petting that she had stopped due to inattention. Giving the dog a final ruffle she stood back up and regarded her goal. The gate was unlocked and if the hinges were not rusted she should easily be able to open it with her telekinesis. She walked away from Cerberus towards the black gate and was brought up short by a monstrous bark. Looking back at the dog, "I'm sorry. I have to go in there." she told the guardian. She reached out for iron with her will and gasped. The gate was heavy as it normally should be but it felt different from ordinary matter. She could feel it's permanence, she knew that this gate had been here since the "beginning" to which Celestia had referred. It hasn't ever been anywhere else, it couldn't be. Her mouth dried at the feeling of surrounding antiquity and her own fleeting insignificance. As she pulled open the gate, Cerberus growled. His thunderous disapproval shook everything but the hill and the gate. Twilight turned to the dog and implored him with her eyes. "Please, I have to. If I don't everypony and everything might die." As she walked the final distance, the guardian didn't stop her. Instead he whined, pleading for her not to go. She shut her ears to his begging, shut her eyes, and crossed into darkness.

Luna

Luna stretched her new limbs and they felt great. She rolled over on her bed like a cat and spent a moment just feeling her new body and she liked what she found. She felt longer of limb, sleeker, taller, and more mature. Nothing like a silly filly who would get her heart broken by a simple mortal. Or scolded by her sister. Or cause a national crisis by throwing a temper tantrum. "Fare thee well, bon mood," she sighed as memories of her recent behavior collided with her pleasant frame of mind.

Rolling out of bed, she walked to the mirror that hung above her wash basin. She did like how she looked but she wondered if it was 'cheating' in some way. Was a mature aspect something that someone earned or was it, like so much makeup, something you applied to your face in the hopes of convincing others that you have become so? "And perhaps convince yourself," her mind unhelpfully supplied.

"'Tis good for my sissy to exit her chambers and address the current crisis," Luna said while examining her longer, darker face. "The one I caused and know not how to fix." The face looking back at her pursed her lips in response to the thought. "Could I ask Tia to help me with Twilight? She knows the young mare better than anyone," she said to her reflection. "And have her clean up yet another of your messes?" She cringed away from the mirror as the thought struck home. She knew she had to deal with this herself and so left her chamber for the library.

As far as Luna knew, Twilight had not yet asked for nor had been assigned a guest room in the palace. It looked as if Twilight had spent the last four days either in the library or with Celestia and hadn't slept the entire time. "The poor thing, she must be nearly dead with exhaustion," Luna thought with an undercurrent of admiration. Luna admired Twilight's dedication; her loyalty to the crown was unmatched. "No," She chided herself again, "Not to the crown, to my sister. A spike of cold jealousy stabbed Luna in the heart after the thought passed through her. The obvious love Twilight held for Celestia was a radiant wonder to behold. Mothers dreamed of daughters so caring while professors wished for students so attentive.

Luna stopped at the thought, "Is my infatuation with her simply jealousy of the esteem she holds for my sister?" Am I that craven? Do I hunger so for affection that I would steal from the riches my sister possessed? Am I that horrid?" Rubbing salt into her self-inflicted wound was the fact that the one person who she would have turned to for discussing this was Twilight herself. Taking this to her sister was not even a possibility. Celestia would either be horrified that she felt this way about a mortal or be oh-so understanding and caring in the way that made Luna want to spit. "Can I talk to Twilight about this? "Would that be allowed under the auspices of their friendship?" she wondered. Screwing up her face into a determined grimace she decided to take a chance on Twilight and continued on to the library.

"Twilight?" Luna called as she wandered through the stacks. The librarian had directed her towards the mythology collection. Evidently, that was where Twilight had taken over a table for her research. Luna emerged from the bookshelves to find a pleasant, open area with several tables and chairs. One in particular seemed likely as the wooden tabletop was nearly obscured by the many pillars of texts perched upon it. Smiling, she rounded the table and expected to see Twilight either hunched over a book or perhaps adorably asleep with her head resting on top of one. Instead, she found nothing beyond a void in the books where Twilight had presumably been working. Luna's face showed her disappointment, with was tinged with irritation. "Where is that mare?" she asked the room in general. Slowly and methodically, she searched the library. Luna had with her a miniature map of the facility that the librarian had given her and was going from room to room, crossing them off as she went.

Her mood continued to degrade as her search continued far longer than was reasonable. At first, she was a bit nervous but looking forwards to seeing Twilight. Eventually she was running from one, nearly identical room to another. The other researchers were clearly becoming irritated with the goddess sprinting from room to room and disturbing their reading. Several minuted after she had begun to full-on panic she skidded to a halt, confronted by the petrified Discord placed in a nook between two bookcases. "Hello, my dear," his voice appeared inside her mind, his smarmy tone making the psychic contact feel dirty. "Lost something?"

"Discord," Luna replied in shocked tone. She had nearly forgotten where the draconequus had been stashed amid the other crises.

"Yes, that's me," he smirked playfully within her mind. "Miss me?"

"I-"

"Well, yes, I know I am irresistible. But really, running up to me frantic and panting? It comes off as a little desperate." His tone shifting from a playful sing-song to condescending within the same 'breath'.

"I am looking for Twilight, as I am sure thouest already knows."

"Oh, not for me? I'm wounded. I've been ever so lonely since your little marefriend left."

Luna felt the anger surging within her but managed to push her wrath back down. It would do no good to lose her temper with Discord. "Left, dear nuncle? Prithee, whither to?" she asked with a smile and an innocent bat of her eyes.

"Oooh, you are so much less fun than your sister. Cellie would already be threatening me by now."

"Yes, nuncle but I am far nicer to you," she replied. Past experience had taught her that flattery usually got you everywhere with the imp.

"Yes, you are," he admitted with a frustrated tone. "What was it you wanted again?"

"Twilight," Luna replied flatly.

"Oh, how scandalous. Does she know?"

Luna simply stared at the statue, not rising to the bait.

"Fine. She's gone."

"Gone where."

"Where you cannot follow and from whence she can never return."

Luna's expression dropped as fear clenched her gut. "Do not lie, old man. Are you saying she's died?"

"Ooooh, there's the family resemblance. No, as much as I love a good riddle, the answer to that one is not 'death.'"

"Then where?!?"

Discord was silent, imitating a statue most convincingly.

"Where?"

"TELL ME!" Luna screamed at her full force, shaking the library's very foundations.

The statue remained silent but she could swear it was smirking at her.

Discord, Celestia, & Luna

If Discord acknowledged any power higher than himself, he would have been thanking it. Since he didn't, he instead felt smug. By the time the royal guard had evacuated the library and Celestia had arrived on scene Luna had knocked him off of his pedestal and was attempting to choke the life out of his non-breathing, lifeless, statue self. Celestia was so surprised by the surreal tableau her mind screeched to a halt and her jaw fell open in shock.

"Luna! What are you doing?" Celestia demanded as soon as she regathered her wits.

"ARRGLE AM NARFLED TWRLIT FERKLE!" The other princess of Equestria explained while attempting to bite off one of the statue's ears.

"I am afraid for your dear sister's mental health. She appears to still be quite unstable." Discord added with a tone of sympathy.

"You be quiet. Luna, what is he even doing in here?"

Luna had given up biting and had begun slamming her silver-shod hooves to the statue's face with all the force she could muster. The building shook and the marble floor shattered underneath Discord's stone form."DIE YOU ANCIENT BASTARD!" she screamed.

"Her behavior is quite Nightmarish, wouldn't you say?" The Draconequus added.

"AFTERBIRTH OF CREATION!" Her hooves impacted again, sending hundreds of priceless books tumbling to the floor.

"Well," Discord asked Celestia, "are you going to do anything about this?"

"I WILL FIND A WAY TO KILL YOU!" This impact sent a nearby chandelier crashing to the ground.

Discord could see Celestia trying to come up with a way to stop her sister, without hurting the younger godling. Without access to her magic, the queen of day was actually having to think hard and fast to come up with something. The elder god of chaos actually felt a bit of pride at seeing this...in his teaching ability, of course.

Celestia opted for a simple plan. She rushed in while Luna was on her back hooves and brought her white face within a few inches of her sister's indigo snout. Thrown off balance and not wanting to hurt her own sister, Luna instead toppled backwards onto her rump.

Celestia then addressed her sister, who was busy sputtering with rage at the moment. "I believe there has been enough of that for the moment." Seeing that Luna was calming down she asked, "What did he do?"

In a tone of affronted innocence Discord interrupted, "Why do you assume I did anything wrong? She's the psycho-goth mare with a penchant for eternal night."

"I may not know what you meant by your japes, cursed Imp!" Luna responded while rubbing her battered rump. "But so help me, I will find a millstone to grind you into sand!."

"Luna!"

"But s/he started it!" The two ancient, immortal, and most wise deities whined in unison.

Celestia's head was prone to aching after her injury. This was not helping.

"Luna. And just Luna," she added for the benefit of Discord. "Why were you attempting to do," she gestured at the toppled statue and shattered flooring, "that to Discord?"

Luna collected herself visibly. "He's done something with Twilight."

"LIAR!" the ethereal voice of the draconequus echoed in the heads of both alicorns.

Celestia's patience was quickly wearing thin. "You will get your turn."

"Yeah right. Like you'll take my word over your sister's."

"I promise, I'll listen to you both." swore the alicorn.

"Hm, an oath from a princess. Well, I don't get those very often."

Celestia eyed the fallen statue silently.

"Oh, all right." and then the Imp somehow conjured the sound of a zipper pulling shut.

"So, Luna," Celestia re-re-began. Why do you think Discord did something with Twilight?"

"She's gone, it turns out she's been working right on the other side of the wall from the demon, I put him there and it's all my fault. And he told me so. In a riddle."

"Are you sure she just hasn't gone off somewhere to sleep? It is Discord we are talking about. He might just be lying to upset you."

"MMMRF MRMR!" said an outraged voice within their minds.

Luna replied, "I know, but it was a riddle. He's never just lied before when he's playing a game. It isn't his way."

"Mmrf." the voice replied with a satisfied tone.

"Very well. Discord, it is your turn to speak," said the annoyed alicorn.

"I just wanted to thank Luna for sticking up for me."

"Why I'll-," Luna began to surge to her feet.

"Luna," Celestia said her sister's name with the intonation that mothers and schoolteachers use to stop wayward youths in their tracks. Luna was still susceptible to its effect and froze in place, somehow managing to look guilty and resentful at the same time.

Celestia turned her attention back to Discord, "What was the riddle that you told my sister? Exact words, please."

"Of course, your royal fussypants. 'Twilight has gone where you cannot follow and from whence she can never return.'"

"I hath already guessed 'death,'" Luna added.

"Have you tried 'Sleep'?" Celestia guessed.

"Wrong."

Celestia took a minute to think and then smiled a lopsided grin. "Luna, show me where Twilight was working."

"Certainly," the dark sister replied with caution. Luna gave Discord a hate-filled parting glance over her shoulder as they left the ruined room.

It didn't take long for the two to reach the table where Twilight had been encamped. Celestia moved to the side of the table where Twilight would have sat and began to nose through the books like an earth pony. In no time the dust had given the older sister a sneezing fit. "If you want I could..." Luna cautiously offered.

"No." That was all Celestia had to say to make it clear that her current handicap wasn't up for discussion.

Luna backed off a couple of steps and allowed her sister to work, undisturbed. After about 15 minutes (and about 30 sneezes) of shuffling through the tomes Celestia turned to her, "There are some books missing."

"So?' Luna asked.

"Come and see," said Celesta. With a bouncing trot, the alicorn headed towards the main entrance and eventually to the circulation desk.

"The thing you need to know about my student, dear sister, is that she is a librarian." Celestia was pulling out drawers that contained small cards and began searching through them. "In her world, everything has a place and a category. Also, there are unbreakable rules." She pulled out a card with her teeth and placed it upon the desk. "One of those is that all library books must be checked out properly." The card read:

Tales of Tartarus
by
Holy Diver

checked out by:

Twilight Sparkle

Celestia's self-satisfied look vanished immediately at seeing what her student had checked out. "Bugger."

Luna's face contorted with horror at what the card and riddle implied. She winked out of existence as she invoked a teleportation spell.

Knowing full well where her sister was headed Celestia stamped her hoof in frustration. "Bugger!"

Chapter 6

Discord

Discord was expecting to be removed from the library immediately after congratulating Celestia on guessing the answer to his riddle correctly. The only real suspense for him was whether he was headed back to the gardens or was to be hidden within the deepest vaults Celestia could find. Upon thinking her name the alicorn in question re-entered the demolished room. "Sigh, here comes the moralizing lecture," he thought to himself and Celestia while preparing himself to endure several minutes of boredom at her hooves.

Somewhat surprisingly, she nosed underneath his statue and levered him back up into a standing position. "Oh, thank you. That was considerate." She ignored his thanks and sat down upon her haunches a few feet away. Her eyes locked onto the stony orbs that were where his eyes should be and stared at him silently for what seemed like several minutes. Growing more curious, Discord attempted to examine her surface thoughts but only picked up a strange, vacant static and the mirror-like view from her eyes.

Being unable to read her was new to Discord, normally she and her sister were open books to him. Speculating, he noted that since he could see himself through her eyes she wasn't keeping him out; as if that was possible. It was as if there were no surface thoughts occurring at all, something Discord's mind couldn't comprehend.

Celestia continued to meet the draconequus petrified gaze, occasionally blinking but never looking away. Discord's curiosity bloomed into full-blown suspicion and he began trying to look beyond the shell where surface thoughts lay. He felt like he was trying to scratch his way into an egg, there were no surface features to "grab" onto and use for entrance. The alicorn's mind was completely smooth, peaceful, and impregnable. He, metaphorically, kicked, pried, prodded and even tickled in an attempt to get any sort of response from his captor and therefore ingress. Nothing he did produced the slightest effect or response.

Discord felt stymied and his suspicions started developing a patina of anger. In a more cautious or introspective being the response might have been caution or worry, however the only kind of fear that Discord was familiar with was the sort related to direct and obvious threats. This quiet antithesis of struggle was something that his essence was just not compatible with and he had no mental or emotional tools for being dealing with this...calm. He filled the silent, white void with babble and insults, saying anything to get a response. "Bo-ring. Come on Celly, do something," He began. "Shouldn't you be telling me what bad, mean draconequus I am? 'Shame, shame, Discord; you shouldn't have told Twilight all those things?'" he said in a falsetto imitation of the alicorn's speech.

He waited for a response, she continued to look upon him placidly.

"Oh, come on! he railed. "Who in their right mind gets into a staring contest with a statue?!?" No response. "You can't win, I can't blink or look away even if I wanted to." Nothing. "Why are you doing this to me, too cowardly for torture ?" Silence. "I've been a statue for two millennia, don't you think I know how to be patient?" Since his voice was not real, there wasn't even an echo to provide sound. He challenged himself to meet her stony silence with his own; he lasted all of five minutes.

"I bet you think you are soooo clever, hiding what you are thinking from me," he commented snidely. "Well I know what you are thinking! You're judging me. You and your judging...judginess," he railed. "Well, you haven't the right to judge me! I am a god! I came along way before your namby-pamby notions of right and wrong! Little miss Jannie come lately," he called her in an in sing-song voice intended to be insulting, "spreading your light and warmth all over the world." His tone turned vicious, "Well you wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for me! Without me nothing would have ever changed and your usurping little hooves couldn't have come into the picture at all."

In the face of Celestia's silence, Discord continued in his monologue like a tenth-bit novel antagonist, "Your sister dared call me 'afterbirth.' If that's what I am, what does that make you? He ranted, "The universe was pristine before you ruined it with your birth. Your dear daddy Cosmos threw everything away for a damned one night stand with my sister. I call you, your sister, and all your cousins a venereal disease."

Still nothing from Celestia. Just that terrible, still silence which promised to continue until the sun burned itself out. The silence ate at him like acid, it gnawed at his nerves . He had endured centuries of petrification but this silence was a torment unlike anything he had ever experienced. It was clean, it was peaceful, it was orderly. Nothing else could drive a god of madness to the breaking point.

"YOU TRAITOROUS CHILD! YOU SIT THERE JUDGING ME WITH HOW MUCH BLOOD ON YOUR HOOVES! HOW MANY CRIMES HAVE YOU BURIED IN THE DARK?!?" Discord was screaming into her mind at this point, lost in his self-indulgent rage.

"What did you do to Twilight?" Celestia's quiet, calm voice hit him like a sledgehammer. He was in full wroth and nothing was going to calm him down or disorient him.

"A SINGLE WHISPER. THE SLIGHTEST NUDGE AND SHE FOUND THE TRUTH ON HER OWN. EVEN STUCK LIKE THIS, I BEAT YOU! YOUR FAITHFUL STUDENT EXPOSED YOU FOR THE FRAUD YOU ARE AND I DIDN'T EVEN HAVE TO DO ANYTHING!"

"And Tartarus?"

His rage took on a gleeful tint as he recounted his victory. "Just the slightest hint, that's all I did. I didn't even really need to do that, she would have reached the same conclusion a day later at most. If anyone 'did' anything to her, it was you. Your lies and self-pity drove her into the darkness. Your sister passing beyond the Black Gate is even more delicious. You are alone, forever, with me."

"Finally," he extolled to himself. "There! A crack in that blasted composure." He perceived a ripple of bitter grief pass over the smooth serenity of her mind. Discord grasped it in his mental talons and began ripping.

As he tore at her mind, Celestia asked "So, do you know the answer to Twilight's research? Do you know who the Changeling Queen is?

"Of course I do, I'm her father."

Celestia's eyes closed and the grief poured forth in a flooding torrent, "Of course you are."

"Her name is Chrysalis, she is the need to be loved."

"I've been such a blind, arrogant fool. I am so much like you, uncle."

The admission managed to derail his rant. "What?"

"Thank you for telling me what I needed to know."

"Wait, what?"

"For someone who's supposed to be the personification of chaos, you can be rather predictable in your way."

The shield around her mind dropped and behind the bile green bitterness and grey grief he saw the sun-like golden glow of hope.

"Bugger," Discord swore to himself.

Twilight

As she stepped through the gate, Twilight felt that not only was she falling but that she had always been and always shall be falling. It came as a shock when her hoof reached the end of that abyss and gently trod upon what felt like stone. She was shaking in terror and had to fight every instinct she had to not turn her head and look. Was the gate still there just a step behind her and still reachable? Or was there an endless, mind shearing drop down which she had plunged for all eternity? Forcing her head not to turn, she opened her eyes and saw nothing.

Being an astronomer, Twilight had thought she knew what darkness was. The dark was gentle, the dark was quiet, it was mysterious, and beautiful. She now knew just how ignorant she'd been. What she had been calling Darkness was actually Night. One was a gift from Luna the other was this smothering blackness that ripped all memory of light from her soul. She stumbled as the blackness crashed against her senses, one of her knees impacting what must be a sharp jut of stone. Crying out in pain, she was startled by how completely her voice was muffled and the utter lack of echo.

This place was horrible but she wouldn't have described it as evil. It was more like the ocean than some hateful monster. She was too small for something so vast to even notice her, let alone form an opinion about her. If this darkness was a sea, she felt as if she was at the bottom of it. There was a crushing pressure exerted by the dark, feeling both her soul and her bones creak under the weight of it. Her heart started to pound as her lungs fought to fill themselves. It was as if the air was heavy and somehow saturated with darkness and therefore without the ability to sustain life.

With a detached, logical assessment she noted that white sparks were appearing in her vision, they were the hallmarks of hypoxia and her imminent death by suffocation. "I never even wondered if there was going to be air to breathe," she thought with some irritation. She damned her fatal assumption as her vision filled with whiteness, with light. "With light," she thought, her eyes flying open with desperate hope. Her consciousness was already fading and if she passed out before the spell could take hold she was a dead mare. Focusing all of what was left of her rapidly fading will into one of the simplest spells she knew, she ignited the tip of her horn. Magenta light trickled out of her horn, pushing against the darkness like smoke thick as syrup. All she could see now was a single pinprick of light shining at the end of an ever deepening tunnel. As the light slowly pushed the darkness away from her lips she gasped, bringing the now clear air into her lungs where it burned like molten metal.

"LIFE!" she thought as she panted while painfully coughing and retching up tendrils of darkness from her mouth. She did not notice them slithering off into the shadows. Panting, she lifted her head and looked at her now illuminated surroundings. Her light spell formed a magenta sphere around her, about three lengths in radius. With horror, she watched as the darkness pushed against the bubble of light surrounding her. It prodded, pushed, and recoiled upon exposure to the light like something alive. "Maybe it's just something similar to convection?" she said to reassure herself. She could see now that she was in a tunnel and estimated from the angle of curvature that its diameter was between eight and ten lengths. The stone was glassy smooth and black, like volcanic glass. The surface was contorted into an almost fractal pattern, as if the stone had been rapidly boiling magma one instant and solid the next. Every edge of the pocked and twisted surface appeared to be razor sharp.

Once she recovered her breath, Twilight began gingerly picking her way across the uneven surface. While dry, the stone was smooth and nowhere was there a place to fit her entire hoof comfortably. All it would take was a single, unlucky stumble to kill her in this place so she took her time. Not that she didn't feel any urgency. She knew that she wouldn't be able to eat, sleep, or drink and if she became so exhausted or hurt that she couldn't maintain her light spell she would immediately suffocate. She forced her legs to stop shaking and pushed onward down the tunnel.

Twilight had no way to keep track of how long she had been walking, nor how far she had gone. There was obviously no sun to gauge time with and she could only see a few lengths in front of her and dare not look back, even to check her progress. Picking her way across the sharp rocks was exhausting and growing ever more difficult as blood from dozens of nicks and scratches ran down her legs to the bottom of her hooves. She worried about navigation and scale, two aspects of this journey into which she now believed she had not put enough research.

As of yet, there had been no branches off of the tunnel however the sphere of light which she occupied was smaller than the tunnel and if there were any branches on the left side she may well have missed them. One of her less scholarly books that she had read had presented her with the theory of the right-hoof rule for exploration. In many maze systems, consistently following either the left or the right wall will allow you to eventually explore the entire area. "Come to think of it," she said to herself, "it most likely was a Daring-Do novel. Dash'll flip if she ever found out that I was using something I 'learned' from that fluff." Smiling to herself, "Maybe I should tell her anyways, just to see her face."

She had plenty of time to muse of the potential mistakes she may have made. "What if Grogar was in a portion of Tartarus that was more than two days away on hoof?" she worried. Twilight knew a few spells that could keep her awake but they would exhaust her magic even faster, in the end. The darkness had not stopped pressing against the light for a single moment, it behaved as if it were hungered a hungry beast. She knew she was doomed if her horn-light ever failed. Mentally reviewing her "Do" list she partitioned a portion of her mind and assigned it the task of concentrating on her goal, Grogar. The rest of her mind was now free to concentrate on picking her way down the tunnel and worrying about the many, many ways she underprepared.

That was when she noticed something new. The tunnel had taken on an upwards slant, gradually enough that she hadn't noticed until now. What drew her attention to the grade was a sound, a dripping. Heretofore, Tartarus had been dry and silent except for the muffled noise of her own hooves. That sound was definitely a drip, a drop falling into a small pool. The slope increased as she pushed forward and soon she was confronted with a slope she would have to climb as much as walk. It was here that the dripping noise was originating from and as she had approached, more and more drips joined into a chorus that reminded her of the smallest frogs found along the banks of the town pond. Keeping her own admonishment against coming into contact with liquids of any kind close at mind, she cautiously approached the slow-motion rivulets.

In the reddish light of her horn the liquid appeared black. Against the background of the obsidian tunnel the trails of fluid were essentially invisible. Biting her lip, Twilight timed several of the drops against her beating heart, approximated their volume, and did her best to estimate the temperature of the air and rock. Calculating from that data, assuming that fluid dynamics and gravity were behaving the same here as they did back home, the viscosity was about four times that of water. "Blood," she said with a shudder. "Nothing else is in that range." As ominous as this was, flowing blood meant life. Life meant that there was somepony, someone, or something to find up there. "It might be a slavering monster up there but at least it would be something new," Twilight thought as she began climbing.

The way up was slow. Not only was she having to climb what was quickly becoming a cliff, she had to do so while avoiding nearly invisible streams of blood. Even if the fluid possessed none of the mythical properties water usually carried in stories about Tartarus, the slipperiness of the wet stone would send her tumbling to her death. Patiently she waited, watching and listening for telltale drips to show where the blood flowed. Eventually she noticed another noise among the dripping, the tinkling of tiny bells. The jingling reminded her of Hearthswarming Eve, and she chuckled at the juxtaposition of her current position and the warm holiday she loved. "I must be growing delirious," she thought to herself at first. "It wouldn't be the first time stress and strain had caused my mind to snap," she admitted to herself. But then she remembered Grogar's Bells.

It was with a thrill of both terror and victory that she felt the end of the cliff above her. Smiling and shaking she pulled herself carefully onto the flat surface, still getting a couple of scratches despite her caution. She started to look back down the cliff, to see how far up she had climbed but caught herself just in time. Eyes scrunched shut she turned her face back towards the intermittent tinkling sound. She knew sound could be deceptive here. The darkness seemed to muffle or carry at whim, usually to the detriment of the adventurers in the legends. Twilight pulled herself back to her feet. Oddly, she could feel a slight breeze blowing from up ahead, tugging at her mane.

Cautiously, she walked towards the sound of the bells. While louder ringing was seemingly at random, smaller bells tinkled nearly continuously. As the bells grew louder and more constant she began to accelerate, her caution dissolving in her excitement. "He is real!" she thought as she sped from a walk to a trot. "I made it!" she thought as she continued accelerating. "I'm going to save her!" she thought as the edge of her luminescent bubble broke upon the surface of something huge. The dark grey bulk, twice the mass of Celestia, shifted as it turned towards her. It's face didn't even register with Twilight's mind, all she saw was it's eyes. They were a grotesque mockery of the expressive orbs that should lie within the sockets. Molten lava filled the orbits and smoke rose from these burning pits. Twilight reared, her instincts taking over as she panicked. Her hooves slid out from under her on the slick stone and she fell to the stone floor, screaming.

Luna

"Stand aside fell guardian! I must pass beyond the veil of darkness thou'st protects!" Luna projected a most traditional manner.

In return she was stymied by three sets of puppy-dog eyes. The fact that each eye was the size of a watermelon did subtract some from the power of the sorrowful gazes, but there was enough doggy begging behind those stares to bring even a questing Luna to a halt.

"Oh come on!" she exclaimed, using an expression she learned while foal-sitting. "That's just not fair."

The puppy-dog eyes continued their assault, unabated.

"Twilight past through the gate, correct?" she asked in the hope that a different approach would yield a different result.

One of the massive black heads nodded.

"Well don't you see? We have to go in there after her!"

All three of the heads rotated to the right, questioning.

She sighed, "Not we 'We', I meant I 'We'."

The left-most head pant-laughed at a crude joke.

The princess of the night rolled her eyes at Cerberus. "Stop fooling around! Your jest is foul and ill humored!"

The two heads gave her wounded expressions of innocence, the third guiltily shifted his eyes back and forth.

"Fine! I'm sorry to have scolded all three of you for what only a single head hath done. Better?"

Three sets of drooling doggy smiles and a tail the size of an oak whipping back and forth confirmed that her apology had been accepted.

"Hay! Not you Lefty, you were the one being humorous."

The right-most head shot up in surprise and indignation.

"Gah! My left, my left!"

The left-most head (from Luna's point of view) busied himself with looking at the trees and birds off to his own right. The other two heads stared at him until he could no longer ignore the judgement and then lowered his ears and pouted.

"Good!" Luna said with an air of finality. "Now if you would kindly step aside, w-...I will be headed into Tartarus."

The 10 ton beast whined pitifully but did not budge. To make things worse, the eyes were back.

"What didst thou think we- I, would do after you told me she had passed through the gate? Turn around and go home?

One head panted a hopeful smile while the other two continued their barrage of soulful eyes.

Raising an eyebrow, "Really?"

The high-volume whine returned.

"Stop that. You know I have to go down there and save her!"

A cacophony of whines, growls, and a bark was Cerberus' reply.

"I know it's dangerous, that's why I have to go after her." She changed tack as a thought occurred to her. "You do like Twilight, don't you?

The beast's tail whipped back and forth again, causing a succession of booming thumps.

"Well If you don't let me down there she might die, or worse."

Three sets of expressive doggy eyebrows conveyed the conflict Luna had set up within Cerberus' doggy minds. If he let Luna in, that was against the rules and that made him a Bad Dog. But if he didn't let the goddess in, then that would mean bad things would happen to Twilight. Twilight was a friend and if he let anything bad happen to her that also meant that he was a Bad Dog.

"Your job really isn't to keep people out anyways, its to keep things in," Luna added, throwing him a proverbial bone.

The mind of a dog is not built to deal with "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situations and Cerberus, despite being massive and ancient, was at his core just a really big dog. So like any dog would, he grasped the flimsy moral cover that Luna had offered him and then slinked off to his favorite spot of dirt to deal with the existential dilemma facing any Good Dog placed into a bad situation.

Not being a dog, Luna didn't fully understand the psychological strain she had just inflicted upon the hound, but she did feel a large and nameless guilt. But being in a tearing hurry, she pushed the sensation to the back of her mind with a promise of extra-large doggy treats and a new ball for Hearthwarming's Eve. "Maybe, I'll stop and give him a belly rub on the way out too," she bargained with herself.

With the sigh of someone who knows that they struck a low blow, Luna turned away from Cerberus' hindquarters and regarded the entrance to Tartarus. This was a point of confluence, a place where things that did not and should not touch did anyway (much to the annoyance of the laws of nature). This place was old long before she had ever been born. "Celestia might remember when Gaia was chained and placed between Cosmos and Tartarus," she thought to herself, "but to me this has always been here." It was an odd thing, to feel both ancient and childlike at the same time. "A child among gods, yet a goddess herself," she labeled herself.

She could remember when Tartarus's maw used to be more discernible, but that was eons ago. Rain, wind, and lichen had weathered his petrified flesh so that none but those who already knew would recognize these hills and caves as the gaping maw of a titanic draconequus. She shuddered at the thought of the scale at which this battle must have been fought. She knew that this happened before Celestia and the other gods fell to squabbling amongst themselves and would have confronted both Tartarus and Gaia as a single force. She could feel a slight buzz of magic still lingering within the ancient iron gates. Once those wards were the most powerful protections that all the new gods together could muster and still they weren't enough. Discord's escape from the prison showed that most clearly. Abandoned in exchange for the guardian hound, Cerberus, the old remnants of the wards merely prevented the iron from rusting.

She pulled the black gate wide, unfurled her wings, and then she lunged forward with a beat of her wings lifting her hooves from the ground. Desperately, Luna tried to not think about the fact that she was literally tossing herself down the gullet of a monster that terrorized the ancient world. In that, she failed.

As she passed under the lip of the cave defining The Mouth, she passed into the space between worlds. In most cases she felt that the limited perceptions of mortals was a cruel blindness. This passage reminded her that perhaps blindness was not entirely a bad thing. In this distance that could not be measured in length or time she was frozen inside a single moment while she passed through a veil that was thinner than a blade of grass. In this terribly stretched out moment there was no light to see, nor time for light to reflect and carry images. There was no air or temperature, nor need or perception of either. There was just this single moment inching along for millennia and boring Luna to the edge of madness.

After the first few perceived decades of her journey through the moment of her crossing, Luna placed her mind into dormancy. It was a trick most immortals mastered at some point and her recent imprisonment within the moon was a very effective refresher course. However, since there was no warning that her transit was ending, she landed in the bleak and pitch black cavern in a clattering tangle of legs and wings while her mind scrambled to regain control of her body.

The first thing she noticed was that the floor was sharp and painful against her hide. While not cutting her divine flesh it was poking her uncomfortably in many sensitive areas. The second thing she noticed was that she still could not see. She knew that normally she could see without the need of any light, one of the benefits of being the goddess of the night she supposed. She wondered if this realm somehow could sap her divine abilities. Fearing the loss of her magic she ignited her horn with a thought and summoned a pale, silver glow. It was with dawning recognition that she noted the swirling, smoke-like dark that pushed back against her illumination.

"Erebus," she growled while allowing yet more power into the light spell and pushing the clinging, black tendrils away from her body.

The formless dark condensed and thickened into a swirling mass about ten pony lengths in front of her. Luna knew that this was just the smallest fraction of this being's body, as Erebus was said to completely fill the endless realm of Tartarus. Even taken as an estimate or an exaggeration, that made for a lot of angry god. Trying to get a glimpse of what the darkness was blocking her from she focused the light from her horn into a cone of blinding, silver light and aimed it at the center of the clot.

A pained hiss emanated from the mass as the portion contacted by the light boiled and fled. To her dismay, she saw that the cavern was pocked with entrances to tunnels, hundreds of them, each vomiting forth a torrent of congealed darkness. "Fie," slipped past her lips as she assessed her situation. She could hold back Erebus if she concentrated on her light spell, for now. The god was gathering his dispersed parts, unifying for the confrontation he's been hungering for since his imprisonment. To feel her time running out so soon after having far too much time on her hooves was disorienting and she chided herself to focus.

"EREBUS!" She called out at high volume. "WE HATH DEFEATED THEE BEFORE AND WE WILL DEFEAT YOU ANON IF YOU CHALLENGE US AGAIN!" She proclaimed, reminding herself that it was not a bluff if it was true...or mostly true. She had been little more than a filly then but she had her sister at her side and together they defeated the Hungry Dark. She was older now and wiser, she hoped. "Perhaps I can overcome this monster on my own now," she thought and yet fear caused her to sweat like a dray horse. The darkness accelerated in its gathering. So fast did it now flow that her mane blew and ears popped from the air being dragged along with Erebus' matter.

The cavern seemed larger now, filling with a towering mass of un-light. The clot was over twice the size of a full-grown dragon and brushed against the ceiling and walls. Luna flared her wings out of instinct and summoned a more solid shield of shimmering magic. Her cone of silver moonlight she sharpened into a blinding white beam that would slice through the hungry dark like a razor. Even with these tools she wondered not if she would overcome the darkness but how long she would last against it. Then, out of the deep caverns came a scream. The call was unmistakable to her, it was Twilight. Luna then returned her attention to Erebus, her mouth now set in a grim line and her brows knit in determination. It was time.

Chapter 8

Twilight

As soon as she felt she was out of the sight of Grogar, Twilight allowed her gait to shift from a trot to a walk. She was fighting to maintain control over her mind and emotions. She wanted nothing more than to cry, or scream, or rage in response to Grogar’s one-word answer. “Nothing my left-” she cut herself off mid rant. Her research had indicated that it was extremely hazardous to lose focus on her destination when traveling in Tartarus. In response, she forced her mind and body to become still.

Falling back on her training, she remembered a breathing technique that was suggested for purging one’s self of emotional contamination during complicated spellcasting. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the rhythm of her heart and lungs. She forced the adrenalin fueled organs back to their normal speeds and focused her mind on her destination. “Someone who knew. Someone who cared.”

Her heartbeat shifted and she grunted as she felt a lurch in her chest. Her heartbeat wasn't the one she should recognize. It was deeper, slower, and stronger than she ever remembered it being. It felt alien and wrong within her. She opened her eyes and saw that the tunnel had changed around her while her eyes were closed.

Before her was a wall, similar in color and texture to the rest of Tartarus but it was liquid. It flowed and pulsed and made quiet gurgles as waves formed and broke on its vertical surface. Her instincts shouted that the black fluid was about to come crashing down on her but the substance remained in its unnatural orientation, as if to mock the very concept of gravity. Strange shapes drifted and bobbed in the wall, they resembled nothing more than a multi-species collection of dismembered limbs. In just half a minute she saw leonine paws, dragon-like claws, and a feathered wing.

Twilight had begun to wonder if what she was seeing was a draconequus but the limbs didn't appear to sit in any anatomical configuration. She inched closer, her curiosity overcoming her fear. That was when she noticed a faint pulse of magenta light. It appeared far away, as if it was deep within the onyx pool. She extinguished her horn-light so as to better see the faint light.

The cavern was plunged into absolute darkness and Twilight’s breath hitched in memory of her arrival to Tartarus. She found that she was able to continue breathing so she focused on what was before her. The magenta glow was pulsing in time with her own strange heartbeat and it seemed to be coming closer. Her eyes were wide as she backed up a step. A white muzzle broke the surface of the liquid wall. It was long and slender like Princess Celestia’s but built at a somewhat larger scale. Its chin was well-developed but remained feminine. Two graceful horns with a half-dozen points each were perched upon her head (and Twilight noted to herself that she now thought of the creature as both a person and a female). Her eyes opened, revealing metallic silver irises that focused upon the relatively tiny unicorn.

“Kori tou aima mou,” the figure said through black lips that contrasted strongly with her muzzle.

“I-I’m sorry, I don’t understand you,” Twilight cautiously replied.

“Korez tou, pou einai kalae?” The creature blinked its eyes and they were now metallic gold in iris color.

“I don’t know that language. I don’t know if anyone does anymore.”

“Poso kairo echo eedee ton ipno?” Her face began to show concern. Meanwhile the many points on her antlers began fusing into the solid, curving horns of an ibex.

“Is there anything I can do?” Twilight asked the slowly changing face floating before her.

The creature closed her eyes and the magenta glow intensified. Twilight was beginning to become familiar with the sensation of deities entering her mind. She wasn't pleased at this development but perhaps this would allow the draconequus to communicate.

“Hear me? Understand?” a thickly accented alto voice appeared within Twilight’s mind, completely skipping the part of talking that involved the ears.

“Yes, I do. For both. Questions, that is. I mean the ones you asked.”

The white fur had shifted to a tawny color. She looked at Twilight with befuddlement.

Twilight self-consciously re-started her attempt at communication. “Yes.”

The creature asked, “Daughters mine. Do they well?”

“I don’t know who your daughters are. I don’t know who you are.”

“But you no seek me, how you here?” the creature asked. Its muzzle had shortened and now with the tawny color resembled that of a lion. Its horns had shrunk to the proportion of a goat’s.

“I was looking for someone who cared about Celestia’s fate.”

The face lit up and joy sprang into her now blue eyes. “My Helia lives still? What of Selene?”

“Blue hair, indigo coat, controls the moon?”

The draconequus’ excitement was easy to feel through the mental link.

“Yes, we call her Luna now.”

The figure sighed out loud. “So it was worth it,” she said inside Twilight’s mind.

“Who are you?” Twilight asked now that she had a moment to get a word in edgewise.

“Their mother I am.” Twilight felt her flip through her memories like pages in a book. “You call me Harmony. I am blood-mother.”

Twilight glanced down to her chest, where her heart was still beating with double deep strokes and saw a matching magenta glow filtering dimly through her fur.

“Charay'ghi,” Harmony said with a small smile.

“What?”

“Your name: Charay'ghi.” Eyes, now copper, glinted at the unicorn with something that looked like pride.

“My name's Twilight.” She said flatly.

“Very smart you are but only half your name.” In a tone Twilight was all too familiar with, leaving her with no doubt that this was indeed Celestia's mother.

“O.K., Twilight Sparkle is my name. Why is this important?”

“Charay'ghi Lampu,” Harmony said via the mental link. In her strange alto voice it sounded exotic and beautiful. “Your language breaks my words in your mind. Even now I cannot say the whole of you name name in this language.”

Twilight was utterly confused and made a mental note to herself to apologize to Luna for criticizing her mangling of modern Equestrian. Shaking herself loose from the labyrinth this conversation had turned into she tried once again to steer the conversation back to a topic that made sense. “I came here to ask you something. May I do so?

“Yes.” The dragonequus was still wearing her "ineffable goddess" smile. How it could look so similar to Celestia's while shifting from species to species was beyond Twilight.

“Celestia, er...Helia, has been hurt. Her horn has been broken and she can no longer raise the sun. She believes that she’s been abandoned by the sun and has become mortal. Is there a way to help her regain her power.”

“Who hurt daughter!?!” Harmony demanded. Twilight was thrown off-balance by the power of the wrath behind this statement.

“The Queen of a race that calls themselves changelings defeated her in a magical duel.” Twilight felt her mind once again being ransacked for information. She wondered if she could create a mental construct of a reference desk set up in there complete with card catalog.

“Oh, my Chrysallida, my poor little girl.” Harmony finally replied with immense sorrow. “Is my fault.”

"What? How?" stammered Twilight, shocked.

"I am here, not above. I could give no love to little daughter."

“I’m sorry, but I have no idea what you are trying to say.” Twilight deadpanned.

“Helia and Selene, my daughters by Cosmos." Harmony explained, as if to a slow child.

"Ok, I understand."

"Chrysallida and Aphrodite, my daughters by Chaos.”

"Chaos. You don't mean Discord, do you?"

The draconequus simply smiled in the affirmative.

"You and Discord had, had foals?!?" Twilight's mind relentlessly went on to where it shouldn't. "That means you and Discord..."

Harmony's smile softened and became coquettish at the memory of indiscretions committed long ago.

Twilight's eyes went wide as her subconscious provided a lifetime supply of nightmare fodder. Twilight's relationship with Celestia had always been a complicated one, straddling the line between mentor and mother. So now what could be thought of as her grandmother on her mentor's side was fondly remembering a tryst with a being that tormented her friends and herself and nearly destroyed all of causality.

"Oh, please no. Buck me in the head."

It was obvious that Harmony didn't understand Twilight beyond the wish to not continue the exploration of this topic. That was good enough.

"Chrysallida is Chaos daughter, is Changeling Queen, is likely hate Cosmos daughters and me."

"I'm sorry." Twilight said, unable to think of anything appropriate in scale to say at the implied heartbreak, conflict, and sorrow.

"Why do Helia, um...Celestia think dying?" Harmony asked.

"She thought that Chrysallida was just a mortal monster and if she was wounded like that by a mortal she had lost her divinity."

Harmony shocked Twilight by stifling a laugh behind her now llama-like muzzle. "Helia always was cry-baby. Bruise hoof think leg falling off. I see, no change. She get better on own. Need nothing but rest."

"Nothing." Twilight growled Grogar's answer.

"Do Selene still tantrum? Such angry foal. Never cry from sad or scared, just mad."

It was becoming clear to Twilight that Harmony, while a primal deity that helped form the world, was also a mother who dearly missed her foals. Those foals might have grown up to be goddesses, queens, and nightmares but to their mother they were always going to be her wobbly-kneed foals. "How about I take you to them? What do I do to get you out of this wall?" Twilight began probing the strange, liquid surface with her magic.

"No escape Charay'ghi. I am not alive."

"How...what does that even mean?"

"I gave up heart long ago for daughters, I gave up life to save from Chaos."

"But then how are you-"

"You bring back my heart, blood-daughter. It beats for two now but not long or you die."

"I have this crown-thingy back home. Its an element of harmony," of Harmony, she mentally corrected herself, "I can give it back to you."

"Crown-thingy important but not element. You, your heart are true element. Are part of me."

"What if I brought your daughters to you?" Twilight asked, tears now leaking from her eyes.

"No, they had to do to me this. They cried then, they'd cry now. Better just to tell them for me."

"Tell them what?" Twilight snuffled.

"Love them, always. See them at End."

"Harmony?" Twilight asked, her voice shaking.

"What?"

"I know some stories about your daughters, about some things they've done since you've been...here. They aren't all happy but as far as I know they are true. Do you want me tell them to you?"

"Yes, please." Her eyes were now green and filled with tears of her own.

Celestia

Celestia waited, patient on her surface but tense and worried on the inside. Applejack's reply would set the tenor of the entire negotiation. If she agreed that slavery was immoral in the abstract then, Celestia hoped, perhaps this entire thing could be over before dinner. She was tired and sore and was looking forward to getting back to her immense, soft bed.

“Well, I reckon that there is the simple truth,“ Applejack finally replied.

Celestia, smiled. “Good! I’m glad that we can-“

“I wasn't done.”

“-come together in agreement…” the Princess trailed off as she parsed the thick dialect. “Oh! Pardon me. You were going to say?”

Celestia noted a worrisome glint in the eye of the orange pony. “As I was tryin’ to say, I agree that slavery is immoral or wrong or however you wanna put it. But what does it mean ta your average pony when th' gov'ment supports a morally wrong position?”

“I suppose civil disobedience is then acceptable in those cases,” Celestia replied. "Perhaps the pony could petition the government to change said position."

“Well, I admit, tha'da been the most moral position to take. But tha’s also the one tha'd end you up broke if y’aller a farmer. As a farmer, I kin tell ya that if I had been payin these cattle and pigs, I couldn't compete with anyone who did. When the gov'ment allows a system like this, anyone who doesn't partake will lose their livelihood. So, yer sayin' that the right thing ta be doin' would’a been to go broke, lose yer farm, and starve?”

“Well, I suppose that would be unreasonable to expect. That’s why this is being handled in a civil manner and I do not intend for any retributive actions or assignment of blame.”

Applejack then pulled over one of the many sheets of blank paper that had been placed alongside the tea service and gripped a pencil in her mouth. She wrote a series of numbers, large numbers on the scale of a simple pony’s livelihood. Spitting the pencil out, the farmer explained. “Well ma’am, this here is tha total current value of the livestock we got on Sweet Apple Acres,” gesturing to a number at the top. “This here is tha value of tha work and agricultural products they’re expected to produce during their lifetime, corrected inta today’s bit values. An this here is the depreciation rate, on average, for each head and here’s tha’ same averaged over the herd. You take this an’ put it all tergether an y’all got what your “Dicto Emancipatio” is gonna cost one family.”

“That seems… a bit high.” Celestia cautiously replied.

“Are ya callin’ me a liar or are ya just callin’ me ign'rent?” Applejack countered in the tone of a thunderhead.

“No, neither!” Celestia rapidly added. “I would just like to give my actuaries a chance to look these over.”

“I ain't in no hurry an we got Spike just down the road.” The farmer hoofed over the sheet of paper that implied economic disaster as if it were simply paper and not a live grenade.

Celestia nodded to the guard stationed inside the room and passed the paper to him, after folding it so none of the contents showed. She quickly penned a cover letter instructing the palace staff to wake every accountant they had on retainer and have them estimate the cost and effect of immediately freeing all livestock. She watched the guard go, hoping dearly that Applejack was wrong.

“So, I hear that this Hort fella can whip up some darn fine vittles. Dinner while we wait?” Applejack smirked.

An exhausted-looking pegasus interrupted them during the coffee service. This was no great loss, as Celestia found coffee too bitter for her tastes and Applejack was obviously having trouble with the demitasse. “If you would allow me?” Celestia asked the orange mare across from her.

“To what?”

“Um, nevermind.” Celestia then opened the envelope that the guard had brought. Her actuaries proclaimed that the farmer’s estimations were depressingly correct. They also went so far as to extrapolate the total wealth lost to the entire economy, estimate next year’s horrendous drop in GDP and rise in unemployment (calculated with both counting the several-hundred thousand unemployed former livestock and without).

“I knew we shouldn’ta had that there funny cheese. ‘Bound ta make ya sick,’ I thought ta myself an here ya are goin' all green in the gills.”

The farmer’s smug tone made Celestia want to incinerate her on the spot, just for a moment. Placing the report face down on the table Celestia made her eyes meet those of Applejack. With absolute candor Celestia said, “We can’t afford to pay all of the farmers for their livestock’s value.”

“An' who’s problem is that, oh Great Emancipator?”

Equally honestly: “Everyone’s. If we pay you, the state goes bankrupt and everyone suffers. If we don’t pay, the farmers go broke and everyone suffers. Also, if you call me that again I will clap you in irons and find someone else to treat with.”

Applejack appeared to have realized that she may have gone too far, “Yes’M. What do you propose?”

“Perhaps, if we view this situation as a mess that everyone contributed to...” Celestia began.

Applejack nodded that this line of exploration was provisionally acceptable.

“If that is the case, then everyone has a responsibility, a fiscal one, to correct this error. Perhaps an equal responsibility?”

“You mean a fifty percent kinda equal?” the farmer asked.

“It sounds reasonable,” the Princess offered.

“Well, this livestock wasn't jus' sometin' you put on a shelf an sold later. They were capital investment, kinda like a tractor. They have an amount you expect em to earn per year or we wouldn't buy em. Their value, to a farmer who's bought them is that work.”

“Half of their estimated productivity, corrected for inflation, depreciation, et cetera?“

“That can work.” Applejack agreed.

“And half of that sum going to the former livestock, to pay for the establishment of their new lives.”

“What! No way. Twenty-five percent of their productivity is highway robbery. At that rate we might as well get back on the wall.”

“You don’t think they deserve compensation? Are they just to wander off of your farm with no resources or even shelter?”

Applejack’s honesty stopped her mid-argument. Sullenly she admitted, “Nah, it wouldn't be right ta just cut em loose wit' nothin'. But productivity is the wrong number ta be goin' off of fer that. This is establishment costs, like ya said. Their cut should be calculated from purchase price.”

Celestia didn't like that the former livestock was getting a smaller payment then the farmers but she was fairly sure that this was as far as she was going to get Applejack to give on this. "So, here’s where we stand: The crown will find funds totaling one-half of the lifetime productivity for all freed livestock. To the freed livestock we will give the portion of said monies equaling one-quarter of the purchase value to these freed individuals. The remainder of the funds then goes to the farmers, in proportion to their livestock herds.”

“Eyup,” the farmer agreed. “Now, we’re gonna need to figure out tha payment schedules fer both parties an to decide what prices we’re gonna call ‘market’. Oh, an we should probably go over what this is gonna do to the tax deductions that’re already in place. Oh, an we should also go over….”

Celestia sighed and missed her sister for very selfish reasons. Tax law was something Luna read for fun; Celestia eyes would cross within ten minutes of starting to read the dense, soulless documents. She signaled Hort to bring another round of coffee, this time in big mugs. Bitter or not, she knew she would need it to get through the next few hours.

Luna

The chains slid home, binding Luna in mute darkness. She couldn't see, she couldn't speak, she couldn't move. The panic rose within her. Memories, forcibly repressed since her redemption, bubbled out of her subconscious. Dark airlessness, chains, and dust. Raging. Cursing her sister, her mother, her father. He was here with her then. She could feel him, remote and silent as always. In all those years he never said a single comforting word. He never judged her. He simply was.

Endless eons passed as her moon slid along her father's black void. Luna could feel him watching, staring, but never acting. She was so lonely then and yet he gave her nothing. All it would have taken to salve her wounds was a single word, the slightest touch, any acknowledgement at all. When she was a foal her mother told her again and again that her father loved her despite not being able to come see his daughters. No matter her assurances, Luna's heart eventually broke as she decided that her father's love was just a story told to comfort her. That was about the time she and Celestia left their mother's cave and headed out into the shiny new world.

Her mind wandered amongst her memories of the bygone age of her foalhood. It was only a few centuries after they left out on their own when Discord suddenly changed. Up until that point he was just a trickster who loved to steal a free lunch and humiliate those who thought too much of themselves. But then one day, without warning, he came for their blood. There was no provocation nor discussion, not even one of the monologues Discord so loved to deliver. Instead, he came with fire in his eyes and hate in his heart; wanting nothing else but for them to die.

Ages later, Celestia would call what happened between them and Discord a war but Luna never forgot what it really was: a hunt. For years, they ran every day and hid every night. They took turns sleeping, terrified that Discord would find them slumbering. No matter what pains they took to hide themselves, eventually he'd find them. In those seasons of fear, she and her sister learned harsh lessons they've remembered to this day.

One day, the endless hunt brought the sisters back to their mother's cave. It was smaller than she remembered but still cozy and warm, the same as their mother. She gave them food, hugs, and kisses in equal measure. With mother everything was always equal in measure. After supper their mother showed the sisters her new foals, yet unnamed. One was pink and gold and the other was black and green. Despite their different colors they were twins. Luna liked them. They had laughed at the silly faces she made.

Her sister talked to their mother while she played with the foals. Both Luna and Celestia were scared, tired, and hurt but didn't know why Discord was chasing them. Luna expected mother to get angry when Tia told her about Discord's attacks, but instead she became quiet and sad. Luna's met her eyes when Harmony glanced at the basket with a look of guilt. Luna hadn't realized what that emotion was at the time, only now in retrospect could she identify the pained expression. Her mother then told them to stay in the cave and watch over the newborns while she left "to deal with things."

As things often seemed back then, the cave was a bit timeless. Luna played with the foals while Tia sat next to the fire worrying. The memory felt like a permanent image, as if it was somehow imbued with an independent existence if its own. Eventually, the moment ended and their mother returned, looking sad. Harmony kissed the two foals on their foreheads and then asked Luna and Celestia to follow her. She told them not to ask why and this bothered Luna a great deal, but she was a good pony and did what her mother told her to do.

Their mother led them over the hills and forests for three days, Discord never attacked them during this walk. Luna asked her mother about the little foals left behind. She told her that they were not alone, that their father was taking care of them. Luna remembered being very upset at this.

She had cried, "Why does their father come and love them? That's not fair!"

"No, its not, my sweet Selene." she remembered her mother replying, tears in her eyes.

At seeing her mother's tears, she made herself be brave and quiet. If her mother was sad then it was her job to be strong. Three days later their mother had led them into the belly of a gigantic beast that was also a dark cavern. Luna wasn't afraid of the dark but this was a bad place, she could tell. Mother led them to the bottom of the cavern to a room Luna had forgotten. Her mind shied away from the memory of this room. Her subconscious brought up a flood of other memories to shield her from what lay within: Her first kiss with a colt. Her first kiss with a mare. Her first lover's death. A comet streaking across the sky. A bone-white flower blooming by moonlight and kissed by a moth.

Up until now Luna had been drifting with her memories, not taking an active role in the reminiscence. But it bothered her that her subconscious would so abruptly and unilaterally intervene. She tried focusing on the blocked memory but her subconscious met her with equal force. She then tried to trick herself into remembering the forbidden room, coming at the topic obliquely and then rushing towards her goal. She caught glimpses using this technique, something about the Elements of Harmony but no details. Frustrated, she used pain to break through the mental wall. She pulled against the chains and they dug into her many injuries. She gasped at the pain and reeled as she nearly blacked out but, unfortunately, her gambit worked and she remembered.

She saw the wall, the blood, the pieces of her mother's body torn by hoof, claw, and magic. She saw her sister helping her mother in this terrible suicide. She remembered her mother begging her for her help with the same. Her mother couldn't complete the ritual herself and needed both daughters to help her in this obscene act. Luna cried but eventually helped her mother and sister make the Elements of Harmony. The crown and torque each held three gems of different colors, each one was the distillate of a portion of her mother's body and soul. Chaos, her mother explained, was an intrinsic aspect of the universe and could not be killed without destroying the world. These tools, the Elements, were crafted to meet Discord with a power equal to his own to render him safe without unmaking reality.

Three days later the pony sisters returned to Harmony's cave and petrified Discord mid-monologue. He was a creature that could not conceive of a world without himself in it and had no means by which to comprehend the act of self-sacrifice. During their many fights over the past year, nothing the sisters had tried had been able to significantly harm him. He had no reason or ability to expect this confrontation to go differently. He literally had no idea what hit him. The foals were not within the cave, Discord having already stashed them somewhere. Despite all attempts at making him tell them where the foals were, he never divulged a single usable fact. Heartbroken but alive, Luna and her sister sealed the cavern with Discord inside.

Luna had gone back to that cave ages later when she was becoming Nightmare Moon. She had unearthed him and brought the chatty statue back with her to her fortress. She had hoped that she could get him to divulge secrets that would give her an advantage over her sister. Despite his lessons and the power they contained, she was soon defeated; banished to the moon by the very Elements her mother had provided.

Perhaps a portion of her mother's soul was still within those relics. Instead of destroying her or petrifying her the prismatic beam had sent her into isolation where she could contemplate her crimes. Upon her return those same beams purged her of the Nightmare mantle she had crafted for herself. Maybe her mother's touch was now that of burning rainbow, but perhaps it was still interested in a foolish foal's well-being.

Luna then gave herself up to sorrow. She cried for her lost mother and absent father. She cried for her sister who she was so jealous of she nearly destroyed herself. She cried for the little purple mare who was so brave and smart. "Twillight!" she was jarred out of her reverie by the thought. "She's why I came here! She's in danger! I have to get loose and find her!" Luna felt a surge of shame as she realized she had been wallowing in her own memories while possibly allowing the young mare she came to rescue get further in in trouble.

She began throwing her weight against the chains, fighting for freedom. The narrowest links bit into her flesh, causing her to gasp, but she continued. Blood coated her and the chains, "Perhaps," she thought, "the liquid would allow them to slip." As she continued her struggle she noticed the chains were not passive. As she broke a wing bone to allow it through a loop of chain, the unholy things slid and shifted to as to re-bind her tighter than before. Panic made her heart flutter as she tried to buck and kick her way free to no avail. Exhausted and broken she collapsed onto her side.

Next she tried sorcery. She summoned power to her horn and focused on teleporting out of the chains. It was a complicated spell and risky but when she released it, she felt herself folding along a direction that did not normally exist. Bones tore through her muscles and fluids gushed through the many tears in her skin as she was magically compressed. Immediately, she cut power to the spell and the terrible sensation ceased. She moaned at newly discovered levels of pain.

After eventually catching her breath Luna then tried pulling the chains off of herself via telekinesis. She found that the chains somehow transferred the magical force into energy for tightening. The harder she pushed the tighter the chains wound. She eventually blacked out from burking herself.

She woke up sometime later, there was no way to judge time in a place like this. She supposed that was part of the intended torture. She had no way of escaping and as a goddess no way of escaping the pain of her body. "Her body," she thought with a weak smile. She felt for the "strings" that connected her essence to this broken body. She released herself from physical form and expected the pain of her body to stop. Instead, the chains bit deep into her tenebrous substance but did not pass through. The blood, her blood, gleamed on the surface of the chains and she knew that her own essence that betrayed her.

Without her body to shield her, the chains cut into her soul. Memories vanished, instincts died, spells were lost. In a desperate struggle against oblivion she reconnected her essence to the body she was in the middle of leaving. She reformed but the damage was dire. Chains now ran through her since she coalesced around them. The chains, now flushed with an unlimited supply of blood to power them twitched and slithered through her body. As nerves were touched spasms wracked Luna, further tearing open the wounds that covered her body.

It was now that Luna knew that she was doomed. Her mind was damaged by chains passing through her skull and she could no longer think clearly. Thoughts and sensations came only as disjointed flashes. Only the simplest concepts didn't immediately slide out of her hooves. The broken goddess lay upon the cold, smooth stone whimpering, praying for her life to end.

Light.

It was just a pinprick in the vast darkness but it was magenta. Magenta used to be important, a portion of her mind remembered. Magenta and violet used to make her happy.

The light grew until it was a spark bobbing in the blackness.

"Oh, you." the spark said.

The voice made her sad. It knew she was a bad pony. She didn't want to be bad, but she knew she was.

"You must have thought you were so sly, telling me 'Nothing,'" the voice continued scolding

"I'm sorry mama." Luna croaked with an agonizing jingle of chains.

"That's right, you should be...What?"

"I'm sorry mama, come back. I'll be good. I promise."

The magenta glow grew closer and brighter. "Who is that?" it said.

"Tia, is that you? Can I come home now?"

It hurt when the light pushed on the chains with magic. It pulled on places that made her think wrong.

"I'm sorry."

"Oh no. Please no. No, no, no. Luna how did you get in there? What did they do to you?"

She could see that the light was on top of a horn, it was on top of a pretty purple face. She was crying and that made her sad, so she cried too. Luna didn't want to make the pretty face cry. "I'm sorry," she apologized.

"Oh Celestia they're in you!"

"Tia. Miss you." Luna closed her eyes and sighed.

"No!"

The light changed, instead of cool violets and purples a burning white radiance burned its way through Luna's eyelids. Where the pretty pony was there was now a burning white alicorn. Her mane, tail, and wings were made of fire and her coat was like white-hot steel. In a voice that shook the cavern she shouted, "Don't you dare give up on me! Not after all this!"

The flames comprising Twilight's mane reached out for the bound goddess and consumed her with fire. Her broken body was blasted away by the furnace heat of Twilight's rage. Luna was in agony until the last drop of her blood boiled away and then the chains lost their power over her. As thick black smoke she slid between the enchanted links as they clattered to the floor. She swirled once around Twilight, her incandescent wings guiding her to a space just out of reach of the longest chains.

Luna pulled herself together, both physically and mentally. She condensed out of the smoke and began building herself a new body. It was smaller than her previous form, close to her size the night she was freed from the Nightmare. Her coat remained dark and her mane was full of stars but she appeared smaller, humble in countenance. She turned new eyes to Twilight, who was once again just Twilight. Gone was the terrible specter of dawn. The young mare tackled Luna and wrapped her in a rib-crushing hug while both mares laughed and cried at the same time.

Chapter 9

Twilight

"Um, Luna? the purple mare tentatively asked from her circle of reddish light.

"Yes?" The dark alicorn looked up from the dark, craggy surface she was busy picking her way across. When she met Twilight's eyes, she smiled warmly.

"We should talk."

Luna's head turned to the side, "Now? Here?"

"In case something happens before we get out of here; its important."

"In that case, of course. What do you wish to talk about?" Luna replied.

Twilight had thought the implications had been clear, "We need to talk about...stuff."

"Very well," Luna pronounced. Twilight then waited patiently for Luna to start, given that she sounded so confident. The moment stretched into an awkward silence. Finally Luna spoke, "Twilight, what is 'stuff'?"

Twilight tried to facehoof mid-stride and stumbled. She managed to catch herself but the movement was far from graceful. Recollections of how frustrating talking to Luna could be started to work their way back into her mind. With a sigh, she tried again, "We need to talk about us, about what we are."

"Oh, yes. I can see how that is important to discuss before anything else happens, " Luna replied with enthusiasm.

"Finally," Twilight commented to herself. "So, what do you think?"

"I'm not entirely sure."

"Oh," Twilight's heart fell. "I suppose its only right for me to accept and respect that."

"Do not be so morose, Twilight. We can certainly enjoy the process of finding out. Think of all the experimenting we can do!" Luna's frank answer and enthusiastic tone caused Twilight to blush deeply.

"I- I'm flattered but I'm not that kind of mare, Luna. I don't want to do that first."

"But Celestia told me that you are practically insatiable and are likely the best at it in all of Equestria." Luna said, her confusion growing.

"WHAT!?! NO! I never, ever! Celestia?!? Why would she say such a horrible thing?" Twilight's flush displeasure under the emotional impact of hearing this slander spread by her mentor. Tears started gathering at the corners of her eyes as her knees started to shake.

Luna was staring at her with shock and horror in equal measure to her own.

"I've never- not even once!" The tears were streaming down her cheeks now. "I've never even dated, not really."

"Twilight, what are we talking about?" she asked, cautiously.

"What?" She asked in return, snuffling and hiccuping.

"I had been talking about the fact that you appeared to take on the form of a flaming alicorn whilst you were freeing me."

Twilight looked up from her misery in utter disbelief, rage building like a volcano.

"Celestia said that you were the best experimental researcher she knew of."

"Ghaaaaaaahhhh!!!" She screamed while hoping on her hooves. "I can't believe that-. You thought I was-. You-. Researcher?!? MmmmmmmmBaaah!" She gathered herself while panting, "You know what, Luna? Just forget it. Forget I asked you anything. Let's go."

Luna followed quietly, apparently deep in thought while Twilight's posture and tail eloquently expressed extreme frustration. A few minutes of silence later Twilight heard from behind her, "Ohhhhh."

Twilight whipped her head around, shame and anger still burning within her eyes. "Seriously? Now you get it?"

Luna's eyes and lips were round in an expression of shocked discovery. "I...Well.. Um...But...Oh, dear." the goddess stammered.

"Right, that's great. Just great." She shook her head and went back to walking.

The sound of hurrying hooves approached her from behind. "I...Twilight, I...just had not considered."

"You hadn't? Well, that makes things very simple. I won't have to bother you about it then." Her tone clipped and sharp.

Luna kept trying, despite Twilight's warning tone, "It's just that it's...very complicated."

The unicorn stopped in her tracks. "Is it?" The short question lay between them like a rotting fish.

"You see Tia, she said that-"

"You, you're going to try quoting Celestia again? You know what, I love her like a mother but I don't give a damn what she says about this. Either you feel something, or you don't. Either you want to do something about that, or you don't."

Luna's jaw hung open, speechless.

Twilight exhaled a puff of a sigh, "I swear to everything that's ever called itself a god, I'm like, five words away from just leaving you here." She stomped off towards the exit with Luna following as quietly as she could.

Minutes passed. The quality of the silence between them shifted as they moved from chamber to chamber. At first it was the roaring silence, so loud that nothing could be heard above it. Next it changed into the fragile silence, feeling so delicate and brittle that the slightest noise would be unthinkably destructive. The awkward silence came afterwards, the silence taking on the properties of a vacuum - begging to be filled but each not finding anything to fill it with. Eventually, Luna succumbed to the pressure and spoke.

"Twilight? I would like to talk again." Luna's voice reminded Twilight of Fluttershy.

"What is it?" she replied in a tone that did not invite conversation.

"I like you, romantically." Luna continued despite Twilight's tone.

"Praise Discord," sarcasm flowed thick around those words.

"I'm serious."

"Sure you are."

"Really, I am. And I'd like to do something about it."

"Great."

"With you."

"Be still my heart."

"Twilight!" Luna complained in a hurt tone.

"Sure, OK. Let's go on a...date or something when we get home. OK?

"I'm sorry."

"Don't!" Twilight snapped, surprising the both of them with the harshness packed into that single word. "I mean, don't apologize. Not like that. Please. It reminds me of how you were when I found you. It really upset me...because I like you too. Romantically." Twilight realized that Luna looked scared of her. "I'm sorry."

The awkward silence ruled Tartarus once again.

This time Twilight broke first. "I talked to your mom." She kicked herself for blurting that fact out. She had been planning on telling the alicorns after their escape from Tartarus. The world did not need Luna running back into the depths of this prison.

"That seems unlikely, Twilight. My mother died long ago."

"I know, she was still dead," she replied in a casual tone.

"There are many creatures here that can trick the mind and eyes, Twilight. Is it not more likely you talked with some deceiver?"

"I know how she died, I know what she made you and your sister do. I know who the changeling queen is."

Luna looked near emotional collapse, "Twilight. My mother is still down there? We can save her?"

"No, Luna. She's dead, been so a long, long time. She can't leave."

"But I can go see her? Talk to her?" Luna's dangerous excitement was growing.

"She asked me not to bring you." Twilight tried to come up with a way to explain Harmony's motives.

"She doesn't want to see me?"

"She doesn't want you to see her, like she is. It's not...pretty."

"I didn't want to...do-"

"I know Luna, I know and so does she." Twilight put away her anger and frustration and came over to the distressed alicorn. "She doesn't blame either you or Celestia. She still loves you and says that she'll see you 'at the End.'" She draped her neck over Luna's, a hug while maintaining her footing.

"Did- did she say anything else?" Luna's voice came strained and thick from behind her own head.

"There was one thing. She called me something funny."

"She made a joke? Her sense of humor was always terrible."

Luna's reply was literally stunning. Twilight's mind reeled while trying to imagine jokes that Luna would find bad. "No, I mean strange. She called me 'Cherry-Gi Lamp-oo,' She said it was my name."

"Charay'ghi Lampu," Luna restated with the proper pronunciation. "Wow, I haven't even thought of that language for eons." Luna was quiet in thought for a time.

"Luna?"

"Oh! Yes. Goodness, that is so 'Mom'. It means the light you get when you change from day to night, or vice versa."

"So, Twilight Sparkle?" She said in a sarcastic tone.

"That, but also Dawn Glimmer or Shine or whatever synonym you want to use in modern Equestrian."

"She said that it was important, why?"

"Knowing her, it likely has something to do with you bursting into flames and wielding god-like powers."

"Oh...that. I kinda forgot about it after our...fight."

"At some point we are going to have to talk about that too." Luna said as she backed out of the hug. Her eyes were sad but she was smiling a little.

"We do?" Twilight pleaded.

"We do, all three of us."

"I'm not going to end up banished or anything, am I?"

"Over my dead body," Luna assured her. "Come on, we should get out of here."

"Ok," she started walking side by side with Luna, the color of their horn-lights mixing together. "I'm actually surprised that we haven't run into anything awful yet."

"Hush, Twilight. Don't jinx it."

Luna

She was sure of it now, Tartarus was messing with them. While Luna wasn't overly familiar with the most ancient god's capabilities, she remembered her mother telling her during that last journey that the draconequus could still control his topology and geometry. "In layman's terms," she thought to herself, "he's leading us in circles." She knew that you could force the realm to take you where you wanted by keeping one's mind completely focused upon their destination but that wasn't going so well since she and Twilight had their talk.

A surreptitious glance at the purple mare, the subtle noises she made as she walked,or even stray wafts of her scent all shattered Luna's concentration every few minutes. Her heart beat faster at the memory of their conversation; joy, shame, grief, and nearly lethal embarrassment washed through the alicorn like a succession of waves. Sighing, Luna brought her attention to the branching and spiraling tunnels in front of her and noted that they had likely shifted once again.

Next to her Twilight yawned and in a voice raspy with dehydration she asked, "Do you think we are getting close, Luna?"

She worried for her mortal...friend. The needs of her body could undo her. Luna, herself, ate and drank because she hungered and thirsted but she knew from horrible experience that those needs could not actually kill her. Sleep, too, was a luxury rather than a requirement, for a goddess. Luna's mind was drawn to morbid thoughts of Twilight's eventual mortality and her blood ran cold. She knew that between the three of them, they had an amazing amount of power but she also knew that nothing could stop the ravages of time upon mortal flesh. Her sister had warned her about this, about the grief that would inevitably follow once an alicorn allowed herself to love. Thinking about the passion her sister put behind the warning, she wondered: "How many times had Celestia known that grief?"

"Luna? Did you hear me?" Twilight asked again, her breath coming in dry pants.

"Fie! The tunnels!" Again she dragged her mind back to their current situation. "It can't be much further now," she lied.

"Do you think it would help if we coordinated our thoughts?" Twilight asked in return.

"Have you already mastered a spell for telepathy, Twilight?" She asked with some amazement. Such spells were notoriously difficult to maintain, especially without maintaining physical contact.

"Um, no. I was thinking we could just say 'the gate out' together again and again. Do you think we'd need telepathy to do this?"

"Stars above, Twi! That is so simple, its brilliant. No, we don't need telepathy, your idea is perfect. Let's start."

"The gate out." They chanted together as they walked.

Following Twilight's suggestion, they reached the exit in less than an hour. Despite their concentration, Luna was sure Tartarus was still trying very hard to stymie the two travelers. The tunnel had begun to slant downwards. Additionally, the flooring had changed from the dangerously sharp and irregular obsidian that was commonly encountered into dangerously slick and smooth obsidian that offered no purchase for a hoof. Twilight had to use her telekinesis just to stay in place and Luna found herself involuntarily flapping her wings to maintain her balance.

The princess inched forwards down the 45-degree slope, cautiously sticking her muzzle out into the cavern. She could see that they had finally reached their destination, the shimmering blackness stood against the far wall. Silently cursing Tartarus, she also noted that their tunnel entered the chamber near the ceiling, several hundred lengths above the floor. Subsequently cursing herself for the time they lost due to her mental wandering, she noted that both Grogar and Erebus were in this chamber, working together on something involving the gate.

The mass of semi-solid darkness had formed a platform on the end of an extended pseudopod. Grogar stood upon the limb as he was lifted to the stone edging the membranous gate. She was too far away to see details, but Luna could see Grogar feeling the stone, searching for some detail with his hooves. As she watched, he found what he was looking for and tilted his head forward. Luna was transfixed by the sight of Grogar pouring molten stone onto the sole of his right hoof while crying out in pain. Lifting the smoldering limb to the wall, the maimed god spread the congealing stone onto whatever feature he had found.

Luna's eyes sprung wide as she felt the 'twang' of a massively powerful spell shattering and she scrambled back up the tunnel to where Twilight perched awkwardly. "Discord's bloody bowels!" Luna swore in a whisper. Twilight blushed at the sheer profanity of the curse. "Grogar and Erebus are at the gate, breaking the wards and they are almost done. If they finish, everything down here could just walk out."

"Grogar and who?" Twilight asked.

"How could she be down here and not know this?" Luna thought with shock. "Erebus is the Hungry Dark, a primal demon from the ancient world. It snuffs out light and life in equal measure and was banished here by my sister and me so that life could survive the night."

"Oh, that. Is it really that dangerous? I got it to leave me alone with a simple light spell."

"I do not think it was even aware of you then, let alone trying to kill you. It it one of the most dangerous things in here. It nearly killed me while I was looking for you."

Twilight's eyes widened at the thought. She had been under the impression that Grogar and his chains were what had so badly savaged Luna's body and soul. "Then how do we fight it?" she asked.

"We don't. Twilight you are the most accomplished unicorn I've ever met but I am very, very hard to kill and it nearly did me in. I can not stand the thought of losing you, not so soon. Perhaps I can distract..." Luna trailed off as Twilight's expression broke through the divine mare's obliviousness.

Roughly translated, Twilight's face was saying: "Don't you dare patronize me oh goddess of the night whom I saved from eternal torment while she was trying to 'rescue' me from the dangers of Tartarus against which I was doing just fine on my own."

"Um, may I try again?" Luna asked Twilight, who nodded in reply.

"So, Twilight. Do you have any ideas about how we should handle this?" The emphasis upon 'we' was subtle but quite deliberately detectable.

Smiling once again, Twilight replied, "Tell me about these wards and how he's breaking them. Oh and Luna?"

"Yes Twilight?"

The purple unicorn kissed the goddess' indigo cheek. "You're cute when you're learning."

Luna's heart was full of fear as they dropped out of the ceiling to do battle. She was facing two fell and eldritch beings from the world's dawning, both of whom had recently defeated her on their own. Adding to her fear was her concern for Twilight- as a mortal she was so fragile. She thought back to the vision she had of Twilight as a burning alicorn while she was freeing her, and hoped that the strange sight wasn't just a hallucination brought on by the chain's torments and her own hopes.

Twilight fired beam after beam of intense magenta light at the limb with which Erebus was supporting Grogar. She missed with about half as her aim was slightly off due to clinging to a flying alicorn's neck. Luna added her own lances of pale blue to the attack and the pseudopod finally collapsed with a keening scream that seemed to emanate from the whole of Eerebus' formless body. Grogar tumbled from a height of at least 10 lengths above the sharp floor and his roars of pain added to the cacophony shaking the walls. Luna landed upon the dark stone and Twilight dropped off of her back and ran.

Luna brought up a shimmering shield of light while peppering the titanic mass with short bursts of light. She kept to Twilight's plan and reminded herself that while Erebus wouldn't win any prizes for science or philosophy the Hungry Dark has a cunning which had bested her during their last confrontation. Out of the corner of her eye she saw her mare ("Where did that thought come from? Stop it! Concentrate") charging Grogar while he was still struggling to his feet. Her quick, short bursts seemed to be working and tone of Erebus' keening changed from one of surprise and pain to one of fury and impending revenge.

As the goddess watched Erebus launched its full weight against her, she kept her eyes wide for the blind-side attacks that had undone her last time. An instant before the black tidal-wave crashed upon her, Luna dropped her shield and released her hold on her body. Gaseous shadow mixed with the liquid darkness as it fell upon her and two gods of the night occupied the same space at the same time.

Luna flinched as she came into contact with Eerebus' mind. It was a terribly simple thing: Burning cold hatred for all life consumed the creature. Her's was the night of sweet dreams, a lover's embrace, and primroses blooming in her moonlight. Erebus night was that of the vacuum: Burning and freezing at once, blood boiling while you suffocate, and unfiltered starlight irradiating the life out of a world. Luna would have gasped had she a body, her mind trying to do so and failing was most disconcerting.

Gathering her will, she pushed back against the other, filling the darkness around her with herself. Once she had spread herself out as far as she could she ripped herself from the strange union and forged a new body out of the syrupy darkness. The sound of fear greeted her newly-made ears. Erebus wailed desperately as it fled from her in horror. Her body was huge now, half-again the height as and thrice the weight of her sister. Her coat was the ebon non-color of the void between the stars and her mane burned with the blue radiance of the Milky Way while billowing in ethereal winds. This body was familiar to her, seductively beautiful and powerful but tainted by the tragic memories it brought with it.

Luna turned to seek out Twilight, to see how the unicorn had fared against Grogar. The mare was incandescent, Luna was proud to see. Magenta sparks of power were dripping from her horn, hooves, and back while she focused power into the remaining wards. Tendrils of the same color reached from the gate, seeking Grogar's bloody but hulking form. Twilight had effectively re-sealed the gate, Luna could feel the pressure of the wards pushing against her own divine essence. "That might be a flaw in our plan," she thought to herself. "If we must remain trapped here, at least the world is safe from these two. And at least I'm not alone this time."

She turned her attention back to Erebus. The Hungry Dark had backed away from her as far as the chamber allowed. Luna's lips curled in a feral smile she hadn't used in over two years. She could see now how foolish she had been when she last fought this demon. Again, she relegated herself to being a pale imitation of her sister. She had fought Erebus with moonlight where Celestia would have fought it with sunlight. She wasn't just the younger sister of a god, as she so often defined herself, she was god in her own right. The truth scratching its way out of the depths of her mind was that being an alicorn was as much of a facade as anything else about her body. She was the moon, she was the dark, and this sad relic of ages gone could never have hurt her had she not allowed it to do so.

She reached out with her mane and tail and tore great rents into the creature, stealing its mass as well as its strength. It tried to flee down the tunnels Tartarus opened near his child. Upon witnessing he desperate act of a parent to save their child, a small flash of pity crossed her rapidly changing mind . She paused in her assault as the sight tickled old memories of her own. In that moment she heard Twilight grunt in pain and felt the power flooding the wards falter. Rage was an emotion intimately familiar to this body, it flowed down the well-worn channels and flooded her mind. As she turned towards Grogar her soul asked her to move with the intention of saving Twilight while the mind attached to this body bared fanged teeth and focused upon the utter destruction of Grogar.

She saw Twilight speared upon the serrated floor and Grogar standing over her. She knew his eyes were sightless but as a god there were other ways of seeing. She smiled as his jaw dropped and he paled in horror, relishing the fear that she inspired in him. She recalled the memories she had of the pain Grogar had inflicted upon a previous body. She savored them, examining them as a jeweler would examine a diamond. They would be her inspiration. She would raise suffering up to a form of art for the old goat and he would be her canvas. A voice, scared and small, tried to remind her that tending Twilight's wounds was more important than revenge. She laughed at both the voice and the pitiful little goat-god, Twilight was dead, she would be avenged, and she would enjoy every second of it.

The old goat pawed the floor, setting up to ram her. She smiled as she said in a deep, dark contralto, "Oh good, I hoped you would put up a fight." Menace dripped from her words. She summoned her power, readying a strike that would at once deflect the ram's charge and stun him - she wanted him alive. With a final lung Grogar suddenly turned and threw himself through the gate, ignoring the red sparks of rebounding magical flux.

A second passed, "NO! Come back here and face me you coward!" she demanded of the now absent god. Her wrath was such that she had totally forgotten Erebus before a rush of darkness surged across her feet, dragging them out from underneath her. As she toppled, she saw that Erebus was following Grogar's lead and passed through the crippled gate and into the mortal world.

Perhaps Tartarus had shifted and sharpened the spines of his floor while she wasn't watching. Perhaps she was just unlucky with how her added mass landed upon the spiked floor. Twisted blades of obsidian tore into her flesh as she landed, blood gushing forth from severed arteries in a black spray. Luna blinked in shock, her vision narrowing as her body begged for the blood lost to the growing pool on the cavern floor. She turned her now-massive head so that she could see Twilight. The mortal mare was ran through by several spines, her own blood spreading from underneath her in a crimson pool. As Luna lay there, she watched the spreading tides of black and red touch and begin to seep into each other.

Celestia

The moon lay sullenly upon the western horizon. With neither princess currently able to set it, the moon was simply stuck there. In the aftermath of Celestia's defeat by the Changeling Queen, unusual and unstable astronomical events had become the norm. After the initial bouts of rioting the populace had come to begrudgingly accept a degree of chaos in the heavens. When the moon suddenly turned blood-red, however, everyone decided that enough was enough and that it was time to give rioting another go.

At that moment the remaining princess of Equestria was having pancakes. She and Applejack had been negotiating "the little details" of the legal framework within which emancipation was to take place through the entire night. Despite Celestia being a goddess and technically not requiring sleep for her survival, the accursed orange earth pony was obviously more chipper and awake then the alicorn. Roosters crowed in the background, seemingly delighted to be proclaiming the night over and Celestia's chance for sleep gone.

Pancakes were brought out along with the fourth coffee service of the night (or morning) and while they were delicious, Celestia only ate them to provide her stomach some protection from the acidic coffee. "Section 47b - Impact upon universal primary education." Applejack read out aloud between sips of coffee.

"What about it?" Celestia asked, a small fraction of her annoyance beginning to leak through her serene facade.

"Would calves receive free primary education? And if so, would they do so alongside foals in the same schools?" The farmpony asked

"I don't see why not. If they are citizens of Equestria then the are due the same rights and privileges as any other citizens. Much like the resident griffons, I'd think."

"I'd avoid sayin' it that way, if I were you, Yer Highness. Given any excuse, the pegasi would try to git rid of that as well."

Celestia sighed, "Very true, Ms. Applejack. However, in all of that I did not hear that you say that you were opposed to the idea."

"Tha's correct, Ma'am."

Celestia regarded the 'simple farmpony' under half-lidded eyes. She was able to negotiate (cuttin' a deal, as she called it) better than most of the lords in Parliament. If Applejack revealed herself to be any more 'simple' she was going to end up the ambassador to Griffonheim, whether she liked it or not. "And likely solve all our border disputes within a week," she added to herself.

"Very well, next item."

"Section 47c - Inter-species marriage and implications for adoption."

"Good gods, please deliver me from this purgatory," Celestia prayed silently to no one in particular since praying to oneself was generally futile and in bad taste.

A pegasus guard burst through the door, "Your Highness! It's an emergency!"

"Thank you." Celestia mouthed silently towards her anonymous benefactor. "What is it sergeant?"

"It's the moon, Ma'am. Its gone all red."

Celestia pursed her lips as her joy melted into a puddle of guilt. "And the patrol I requested over the gates of Tartarus?"

"They haven't reported in yet Ma'am but they are only about ten minutes late."

That was enough to worry Celestia, "Gather everypony we have here. All of the guard pegasi, we need to move fast." She turned back to Applejack, "I'm sorry Ms. Apple, this is something I have to see to personally."

You want the Elements to come with?" Celestia noted with genuine affection that there was no hesitation on the part of the earth-pony. No matter how bitterly they had been fighting last night, the offer to run alongside her headlong into danger was genuine.

"The artifacts are still locked in their vault in Canterlot and we cannot spare the time to go get them. Gather the Element Bearers and be ready to help in case things go badly. Ponyville is the closest village to this crisis and if I cannot stop what's happening then I'll need you to help everypony here evacuate to Canterlot. Once there, you'll be able to access the Elements if they are needed."

"I guess it turned out pretty good that Twilight stayed behind in Canterlot."

Celestia kept her face perfectly neutral while reassuring herself that noone knew where Twilight was besides herself and Discord. If her friends found out, they'd run straight down Tartarus' throat in a fruitless attempt to rescue her. Equestria couldn't afford to loose all of the Elements, so she lied. "It seems it did. I'll see you here if things go well. Otherwise, I'll see you in Canterlot."

Applejack's eyes went cold but Celestia didn't notice. "OK then, Ma'am. And good luck out there."

"Thank you, and to you as well." The alicorn then strode to the hall's door and leaped into the air.

The flight to the gate was a short one for a normal pegasus. For an alicorn and war-trained pegasi the trip could be made in under ten minutes. She and her escort flew in a “V” with her at the point and skimmed the treetops at full speed. This approach gave no opportunity for an enemy to ambush them but it did limit their own visibility. They wouldn't know what was happening until they were on top of it.

Celestia was feeling terrible about her innocent wish back in the town hall, if anything had answered her prayer it certainly wasn't a "Good god." No one else alive could know what the red moon might portent but she remembered. When Luna succumbed to the Nightmare she had turned the moon that same bloody hue. Celestia didn't know what that color change meant this time but she'd bet her tail that it wasn't anything good.

As she flew to the west, she could feel the moon begging to set and the sun to rise. It bothered her nearly as much as the itching in her damaged horn used to. Thinking about the magical appendage, she focused upon it, assessing it for use in the coming danger. It no longer felt strangely numb, nor did it really itch so much anymore. It just felt strangely congested, like a full sinus during a cold. It was an odd sensation but not overtly painful or acutely bothersome. She felt that she was mending and hoped that that would allow her to confront whatever it was that was waiting for her in that dreaded clearing.

Celestia's cohort ripped through the air at just a hair under the speed of sound and as they passed above the clearing that held The Maw she only got a glance before the scene was out of sight. She pulled that moment from her stream of consciousness and examined it while she and her escort banked and slowed. She saw an obscenity she had hoped that the world would never have to again endure. Darkness vomited forth from the gate in a horribly organic torrent. Blobs, tentacles, and pseudopods were harrying the great hound Cerberus from all corners. His three heads were all slashing and tearing at the living darkness but still it surged over him, drowning the noble dog in its filthy touch.

She recognized Erebus, the Hungry Dark. It was supposed to be bound to its father’s realm, unable to enter this reality ever again. Celestia had no idea how it had managed to break back into this reality but she was willing to bet that her sister and Twilight had something to do with it. She had defeated it once before, but only with the help of her sister and while at full strength. Together, they had retaken the night from its grip and forced the thing down its own father’s gullet. The thought of fighting Erebus alone worried her. The thought of fighting it alone while crippled terrified her. But the thought of Erebus back in the living world was unbearable.

She shouted across the sky to her wing-ponies, “There’s nothing you can do against this! Get out of here!” Her banking turn was nearly complete now and she streaked across the clearing. Before she could strike she heard a heartbreaking "Yarp!" that only gravely injured dogs could make. She focused upon her anger that the cry summoned, her anger had overcome her horn's injury before. She came around again and released that rage as a ray of golden light. The darkness burned and screamed as her radiant lance raked across its bulk. She thought she saw something scurry out of the way after she passed. She hoped that it was Cerberus escaping from the eldritch horror's grasp.

She decelerated and banked so as to come about for another strafing run. As she slowed she became aware of a burning smell rich with ozone. Her horn was incandescent with pain as it was forced into duties far beyond its current capabilities. She grimly acknowledged the fact that she was damaging herself yet again but this could not wait for her to heal. Erebus was here, now, and had to be stopped before all mortal life was consumed. Gritting her teeth, she passed back over the clearing and gasped as she saw whole trees and boulders the size of houses launch into the air as dozens of black tentacles flung anything they could find at her. She pushed her magic to the limit and raised a shield to deflect the fusillade and passed through with only minor scratches but was only able to fire back with a thin, wavering ribbon of light.

The burning in her skull intensified and a high-pitched ringing began in her head. Her flight wobbled as she grew disoriented and she shook her head in an effort to clear it. She forced her exhausted body around into another pass and dropped her shield. She instead concentrated all of her remaining power to smite the demon and hopefully finish this fight. Spiraling and dodging she managed to pass through the rain of improvised projectiles without any major hits and released all the power she had left into a burning shaft of sharpened sunlight. As she struck home she could hear the screams of the demon and smell the foul smoke its burning released but then her head began to loll as the ringing in her skull redoubled.

The infernal tintinnabulation grew rapidly, consuming her ability to think, to see, and finally to fly. Celestia tumbled through the air at a significant fraction of the speed of sound. The force of the air was enough to rip feathers from their roots and twist the angelic limbs into grotesque knots. When she collided with the forest it wasn't as much of a crash as an explosion; centuries old oaks disintegrated into clouds of splinters and dust. Her tumbling came to an abrupt end against a tangle of pine dead-fall; the moss covered trunks bent and squished under the force of her landing but did not break.

Celestia shook her head and snorted, her nostrils full of the atomized wood. Despite her efforts, the horizon stubbornly remained detached from rest of the world and the ringing continued to grow in intensity. She drunkenly flailed in search of the ground, desperate to regain her feet.

“I’m given to understand that you style yourself a ‘princess’ now.” A voice out of her oldest nightmares rumbled. A shadow detached itself from the forest gloom. Eye-sockets full of nothing but hate burned red in the dark while flaming ichor dripped, smoldering, into the undergrowth. The chaotic scene of arboral destruction was illuminated in shades of blood and fire.

Celestia whimpered and redoubled her efforts to regain her feet. That was when she noticed a crude brass bell gripped between the goat's cloven hooves. It looked to have been crafted in a moment's effort from an over-sized dog-tag with the letters "Cere" still visible upon its surface. It rang with the exact same pitch and tone as her head and Celestia understood what had torn her from the sky.

"Grogar, wait! I-"

"I've waited long enough!" he cut her off, visibly shaking with rage.

Celestia fought with the enchantment, her legs less steady than a newborn foal's.

"Don't you think I've suffered long enough?" He stalked forwards as he denounced her, foam flecking the sides of his mouth as he raged.

"Don't you think I've had time enough to appreciate your 'gifts'?" He whispered into the prone god's ear.

"Please, you have to list-"

"NO!"

Celestia flinched, her horn jerkin towards Grogar's face but only clattering against one of his own, curling horns.

"Heh," Grogar laughed at what he must have thought as a pitiful attack but he did back up a few steps. "I don't have to listen to you ever again, Helia, and for that, I will be eternally grateful." The scarred face crinkled in a bitter smile, "Now, it's your turn to listen."

"I'll hear anything you have to say Grogar," Celestia gasped. "I'll listen, I promise."

"Good," Grogar said as a tendril of unnatural blackness slithered up alongside where he stood. "I've waited far too long to say this, 'Your Majesty'." He placed a familiar hoof upon the dark, amorphous shape. "In the name of justice for my people,murdered, banished, and enslaved, I sentence you to death."

Grogar

"I promised myself that I wouldn't do this again." He stepped out from what the myriads of tiny eyes in the forest told him was shadow. "Stick to the plan, damn it! Why didn't I stick to the plan?"

“I’m given to understand that you style yourself a ‘princess’ now," he said; loving and regretting every word of his taunting. The smell of her fear sent a thrill through him as he heard her scrambling for purchase among the scattered trunks and limbs.

"I was supposed to run." He regretted using Erebus as a distraction but with Luna and Twilight nearly killing them he had to make due with what was available. "I was going to run, let Celestia deal with the breakout, and live. But then I heard the ringing from the hound's three collars. Then I saw how weak she was.." He raised the bell he had made out of the bent brass and let it sing.

She opened her mouth and begged. "Grogar, wait! I-"

"I've waited long enough!" He shouted at her so hard it hurt. Her pleading enraged him. "How dare she beg when she had so thoroughly destroyed me?" He could feel his body shaking, his rage consuming him, he was unable to contain his emotions. "Don't you think I've suffered long enough?" He didn't know if he was telling her, asking her, or begging her for respite from her punishment. As he drew near her, molten tears began running down his cheeks, the pain as acute as ever while the lava burned through the scars. He leaned in close to his personal devil's ear and whispered, "Don't you think I've had time enough to appreciate your 'gifts'?"

Again she begged, "Please, you have to list-"

"NO!" He millennia of rage and pain into that single scalding word. Red-tinged flecks of foam were torn from the edges of his mouth and speckled the white fur before him.

Her reply was to try and stab him. He caught her attack on his own curling horn, saving the arteries of his neck from her strike. He leaped back and panted, out of breath from that simple action.

"I don't have to listen to you ever again Princess and, for that, I will be eternally grateful."

"Run, run and live! Stop monologuing you stupid, old goat!" His bitterness had won out. He was gambling with his hard-won freedom for no possible profit besides immediate emotional satisfaction and he knew this fact. "Now it's your turn to listen."

"I'll hear anything you have to say Grogar. I'll listen, I promise," Celestia voice shook as she tried to placate him. He was savoring her fear. He rolled in it like a dog in filth, knowing that it was wrong but unable to resist. He knew that she was stalling for time, regaining her strength, and he cursed himself for giving in to his baser needs.

"Good, I've waited far too long to say this, 'Your Majesty'." A portion of Erebus slithered up beside Grogar. He leaned against the demon's bulk, grateful for both its bulk to support his shaking limbs and the numbing cold that blunted his aches and pains. "I should let her go. If I let her go, I can still run. If I let her go, she'll hunt me forever. She's weak and hurt, I'll never get a chance like this again. I can't forget them. I can't forgive her. Mother help me, I'm going to do it."

"In the name of justice for my people, murdered, banished, and enslaved, I sentence you to death." It was then that the world exploded.

Grogar couldn't see the rainbow hues of the shockwave that ripped through the forest, he only heard its thunder and felt its impact. The two-ton god was flung into the air like a rag doll and beaten senseless by the trees torn from their roots by the blast. He didn't actually remember landing but when his mind cleared he was lying in a thick puddle of what felt like mud and smelled like blood. He flinched as trees, dead and undetectable to his divine senses, landed in a random array of thudding impacts. He also noticed that his improvised bell had been lost during the explosion.

Upon entering the living world he had used the small, scurrying minds he found in the forest to provide him with an approximation of sight. His perceptions via this method were unreliable and disjointed. With the forest destroyed, its myriad of tiny occupants were all fled or perished. He pulled himself free of the mud with bruised and trembling limbs. "Hopefully," he thought, "Celestia suffered just as badly in...whatever that was." Remembering his opponent, he cast about with his divine senses, looking for her luminescent soul dreading that she might be attacking him in his weakened and truly blind state. Unexpectedly, he instead saw what appeared to be a mortal soul approaching at an equally unexpected speed.

"Awww Yeah! Take that whoever-you-are! Betcha didn't see a low altitude sonic-rainboom coming! Right?" The voice of the mortal seemed pubescent to him, as if it was eternally on the verge of cracking.

The back-draft from her approach and deceleration carried her scent to him, female, pegasus, and again Harmony's scent. "It seems that this is one of Twilight's peers," he thought to himself.

"That'll teach you to pick on the princess!"

"Sonic-rain what?" he asked the mare. His voice was surprisingly shaky sounding, like that of an old man with palsy. Her soul, quite visible in his mind's eye, drew up close to him. She burned with youthful exuberance and pride, he noted, but also saw that her bravado was masking deep insecurities.

"That is my signature move, Ugly! Messed you way the heck up!"

"Indeed it did, but there is something I noticed about your technique."

"What?! You sayin' there's a problem with my flying?" The mare flew fearlessly up to the bridge of Grogar's nose, obviously taking offense at his implied criticism.

"Well, if I you don't want to hear it..." he baited.

"No way bucko! You opened that can of worms now you've got to spill the beans!" she demanded.

Her colloquialism viscerally bothered him, "Were ponies eating worms with beans in this age?" he wondered idly before continuing. "Very well, what I noticed was-" Grogar head-but her without preamble with the force expected of a two-ton ram. The mare fluttered to the ground and lay there as boneless as a sack of cheese. "-that you are an arrogant fool." He then began limping away from his impact site and fallen pegaus.

"What am I even looking for?" he asked himself as he wandered in darkness not much deeper than that of the world. The Rainboom had obliterated the forest for a thousand lengths in every direction, the air was still full of dust and it absorbed what little light there was at what he believed to be a pre-dawn hour. "Do I seek the edge of the forest so that I can run and hide? Should I find what remains of Erebus to join what strength I have left to his? Or do I seek Celestia, wounded and battered, so that I may sate my thirst for revenge." He was deadlocked within himself, he knew what was smart, run; he also knew what he wanted, vengeance; and he also knew what was right, justice. He didn't have an answer to give himself so simply placed one hoof in front of another, trusting his path to the Fates.

They provided his answer within a few minutes. Celestia's clarion-clear alto voice shattered the silence to challenge him. "Grogar, your enchantment upon me is broken and your infernal ally lost to you. Your escape ends now, villain." Without the forest's life, he had only his ears and nose to rely upon. He could smell blood and fear on her, he could hear her panting and the faint tremble in her voice. She was hurt, likely swept along in the rainboom's maelstom as well, but he could not tell how badly from here.

"I won't go back, Helia. I can't go back." he told her.

Her voice was grim in her reply and fell into the stilted measure of mythic speech. "This was your chance to surrender, Grogar. I do not relish this but I will not regret it either."

He wanted no part in legends or myths, he knew how he'd likely been painted by those stories. "Shut-up and just murder me already. If I have to die at your hooves could you at least not torture me with poetry first?"

"As you wish." she lowered her horn, unfurled her damaged wings for balance, and charged.

He could both hear and feel the thundering of Celestia's hooves as she charged across the blasted plain that once was lush green forest. He stood his ground, waiting. He was exhausted, injured, lame, and old; without some sort of trick or assistance he knew what the outcome of this battle would be. He expected to be afraid but looking within, he instead found sadness in his heart. He knew why he was here, about to be killed instead of running through the forest looking for somewhere to hide: his wrath. He knew he had a temper, he knew he had done wrong as well back then, but he still couldn't let it go. He had watched as his people were scattered, cursed, or killed and despite the long years, he could not forgive the pony sisters for what they had done.

Grogar could hear the wind ripping over her wings and the snorting of her breath as she came closer. In response he rose high on his back legs, his hips aching as the weight settled upon them. He had not taken this position since the war and he wondered how much a god's muscles could forget over the eons. It felt strange to him, accepting his own role in his death. He knew that it were anyone else's fault he would rage and bellow and kick. But as he contemplated the doom he brought down upon himself, he felt oddly quiet and composed.

He could now smell her, she reminded him of freshly cleaned linen drying in the sun. He fell forward and released the spring-like tension stored in all the muscles of his legs and back. He curved the path of head and horns, down and to the right, as Celestia's horn sliced through his face, parting his right cheek and passing underneath his ear. In that split second he twisted his head, tearing her lance-like horn free from his flesh while binding her with his own curling horn. The movement lifted the point so it only grazed his neck and Grogar was still alive.

He torqued Celestia's trapped horn and to his shock, the alicorn screamed as if he had torn out her innards. "Thank you," he whispered to the Fates while relishing this miracle. He smiled and snarled at the same time as he increased the pressure on the goddess' surprisingly fragile horn. He used this leverage to drive Celestia face-first into the stony ground as hard as he could, over and over. His mass, roughly twice that of the alicorn's, he used to press his advantage. As Celestia's horn and neck creaked under the pressure, he shouted "Beg! Beg for your life!" It served no purpose, he knew, but by all the gods ever born he felt good to do so.

Perhaps it was the blood that coated both of them or perhaps his enthusiasm for taunting her made him reckless. Regardless of the reasons, the lock holding their horns fast slipped and Grogar's face slid down Celestia's horn towards hers. He could not see the change in her lavender eyes, the hard gleam that took root. If he had he'd have known he was in trouble. She rotated her head with the axis of her horn, bringing her muzzle against his. The sockets of his eyes widened in shock and then re-doubled in pained alarm as he fought and shook to detach Celestia's teeth from his bottom lip. Celestia had worked her forelegs up between the two of them during their struggle and used them to push away from Grogar, without releasing his lip.

The goat god screamed in pain as he fought against her efforts but after a few seconds his howls rose it pitch as the sensitive meat tore free and Celesta's horn slid free from his own. She climbed back to her feet, her face now half-covered in a mask of blood and dust. She turned her head and dismissively spat out the chunk of Grogar's face while he wailed incoherently.

Grogar rose back up upon his hind legs shot forward towards the mare he hated most in the universe. She backpedaled while flapping her wings and twisting to the side. While she couldn't entirely escape Grogar's attack, she scythed her horn across the god's back as he closed. His impact crushed her ribs on her left side her breath blew out in a blood speckled moan. Grogar faltered as well, the muscles and bones of his back were as exposed as an anatomical illustration. A long bloody flap of skin and muscle dangled from his side and dragged in the dirt.

Celestia stumbled backwards and struck Grogar's bloody face with her forehooves, again and again, snapping bones in his nose and cheek. On one attempted strike he caught her limb in his jagged teeth and tore the meat from it like a wolf. Screaming, she buffeted him with her wings but he managed to land on top of her, on the left side of her barrel. Her scream cut off as shards of rib slashed through her lung and her eyes rolled from the pain. Celestia shook her head and clamped onto the tip of his muzzle with her teeth, biting down hard enough to hear cartilage snap and bone grind against bone. Blood and magma sprayed all over Celestia's face, burning her badly enough to make her let go.

Grogar shook his mauled face and smiled toothily. He had felt his salvation arrive and Celestia hadn't notices. "Perhaps," he thought, "she was just too focused on trying to kill me." Erebus slithered underneath the princess and gripped her limbs from behind, pining her legs and wings while also sending a coil around her neck. She was defenseless, beaten, and about to die. "Goodbye, Helia." he croaked.

She struggled but didn't beg this time. She had fought, was still fighting, and never gave up or held back. He looked on her with a measure of pride. She stilled her struggles and her face took on a cast of calm composure. "Goodbye, Grogar." she answered him. Voice clear and strong with no hint of fear or weakness. He reared back for a killing blow, he intended it to be quick and painless. He would give her that, at least.

It was in that moment which dawn broke and the sun rose.

Chapter 10 + Epilogue

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.

Chapter 1

Celestia

The party continued long after the carriage left, bearing Cadance and Shining Armor away to their bridal suite. Over the next few hours the music softened from the energetic rhythms that made DJ-Pon3 famous to slow songs about love. They were the classics, the ones to which everypony knew the words. Celestia watched from the edge of the celebration and smiled at the sight of her little ponies swaying together to the romantic rhythms. She quietly left the garden for the throne room where the marriage ceremony had taken place. The hall, now empty except for the remnants of confetti and fallen flower petals, brought a melancholy tinge to the smile on her face. By the time she reached the tucked away alcove she was seeking, the smile had completely faded. Celestia pulled back the curtain with a gentle tug from her mind and looked up into the terror filled eyes of a stone dragonequus.

Discord, still imprisoned in stone, had been relocated from the garden to this secluded portion of the throne room. “I trust you enjoyed watching the wedding, old fiend,” Celestia said, the loathing in her voice was completely undisguised.

“I thoroughly enjoyed both of them, my dear.” Discord’s lilting voice appeared inside the monarch’s mind directly as vocalizing was both impossible in his current predicament and unnecessary for communicating with a creature as magically sensitive as an alicorn.

“Of course you would,” Celestia growled. Her own horn still showed the burns from where the Changeling Queen had bested her. “The repairs will take months and we still have no idea how many ponies were injured in that thing’s attack. Exactly the sort of festivities I would expect you revel in.”

“My, my...getting knocked onto your rump certainly has gotten you into a foul mood tonight. Maybe you should send your little sister over. She is far more polite, even if she was upset that you stuck her with guarding me all day.”

“I can’t believe I agreed to this in the first place. If it wasn't for Luna you would have spent tonight in the garden.”

“Well, she understands a thing or two about confinement, what it might mean to an old man to watch his daughters’ weddings. Why do you think that might that be?”

Celestia glared silently at the statue, her flattened ears showing that his words had struck hard and wounded her. Missing the hidden plural and the implications thereof Celestia replied, “Goodnight Uncle, I've had enough of your games for tonight. You’ll be moved back to your usual spot in the morning.” Stopping after turning around, her tone changed to a gentler one. “You really should thank Luna, you know. She did this for you.” She drew the curtain closed.

Celestia may have been walking at her usual serene pace, but in truth, she fled.

Twilight

Twilight woke up pleasantly late but dehydrated and sore. Stretching, she went over her mental checklist of muscles, noting which ones twinged from overwork and which didn't. “I don’t think I've ever danced that much before,” she thought to herself while scanning through her memories of the various birthdays, cutecenaras, and the events she'd cataloged as ‘Pinky-Pie fill in the blank’ parties.. “Yep, we have a winner,” she said out loud while pulling her mildly abused body out of warm, soft bed.

Stepping carefully so as to avoid where she thought Spike’s basket should be she turned to head to the bathroom for a nice, hot shower. Her plans were brought up short by the distinct lack of stairs and the presence of an unaccounted-for wall. Rubbing her bruised snout and levering up her eyelids she remembered where she was: her old room in the palace. With a put-upon sigh, she turned around and headed to where the bathroom actually was.

Half an hour later Twilight, feeling much more equine, trotted her way to the “private” dining hall that the princesses used when not entertaining hundreds of nobles. The table was still longer than most houses back in Ponyville and seated thirty ponies at a time. Seated at the far end of the board was her mentor, Princess Celestia, along with a couple of dozen relatively close relatives and friends who stayed the night at the castle. “Good morning, your Highness," she greeted brightly. Turning towards the Ponyville contingent she continued with an enthusiastic, "Hi girls!”

In reply she received a cacophonous mixture of greetings.

“Good morning to you, my dear pupil.”

“Howdy!”

“HiaTwilightIhadthebesttimeeverlastnightdidn’tyouitwassoawesome!”

“Fabulous morning, Twilight!”

“G'm'rn'ng.”

“Ughhhh, why so loud?”

Scanning the table while she sat she noticed a few absences. She asked her mentor “Will Lu- Princess Luna be joining us this morning?

As if on cue and accompanied by a smirk from the white alicorn, three fillies, a baby dragon, and the ancient and immortal goddess of the night careened around the corner. Thick woolen socks covered their hooves and feet as they slipped and slid across the polished marble floors in an alarming collection of high velocity limbs. Priceless works of art escaped destruction by the barest of margins as the four held their low-friction race.

Scootaloo’s tiny wings were buzzing ferociously as she led the pack. She was followed by Spike jetting backwards with the sharp point of his tail jutting in his direction of travel and trailing an eyebrow-raising tongue of flame that appeared to be supplying his propulsion. Sweetie Belle was also traveling backwards but at a much slower pace as her horn sparked erratically. Apple Bloom's limbs were windmilling furiously as she tried to catch up with her friends through sheer stubbornness. Luna deliberately brought up the rear of the pack. Her gangly legs effortlessly kept her up with the smaller engines of destruction as she allowed the slowest of them to just barely beat her to the dining room.

Luckily the ratio of noble to friend at this informal breakfast was skewed strongly towards the friend end of the scale and there were more rolled eyes than looks of shock. Unfazed by this entrance, Twilight scooped up the high-velocity orange pegasus before she actually collided with the table or the guests. With a glint of mischief Twilight placed the hyperactive youth in the seat next to the nearly comatose Rainbow Dash. Rarity performed a similar trick to secure her sister and Applejack bent to capture her sibling in her hooves with the accuracy of a league-topping goalie. Unfortunately, this left Spike without a gentle means of stopping and his collision with a centuries old tapestry was quite spectacularly flammable. Luna, being the world's expert in ‘sock racing,’ she was able to generally control her own trajectory and came to a stop with a pirouette and a grass-eating grin.

“I won, I won! Didjasee Dash? Didjasee? Dash? Dash? Dash!”

Rainbow Dash replied by lifting her head off of her plate and squinting at the painfully noisy orange and purple blob seated next to her. After ten seconds of having her sleep burned away by the radiant smile of her number one fan Dash croaked out, “Yeah. Good job squirt. Keep it up.” Her head then returned to the plate with a hollow sounding ‘clonk.'

Meanwhile, the burning tapestry was put out before a significant amount of smoke could accumulate and Spike was removed from the former work of art. Celestia addressed her sister. “So, it looks like you five had a good time together.”

“It was most verily so my sister! Many games were played! I was rescued from the clutches of a vile dragon and then rescued again by said dragon!"

“Volume, Luna.” Celestia reminded with a slight furrow in her brow.

“Oh yes. Better?” At a nod from her sister she continued. “I do understand why our niece agreed to foal-sit Twi- Miss Sparkle. It is enormously rewarding.”

“And you, my little ponies, did you enjoy staying the night with Princess Luna?”

“Verily!!!” The three replied in the Traditional Canterlot Voice.

Rainbow Dash fell out of her seat sputtering and flailing. Rarity’s left eye twitched in anticipation of hundreds of future headaches. Applejack face-hoofed while wondering how far away from the farm house the CMC headquarters could be safely relocated.

Luna

After breakfast, the Elements of harmony, with the Cutie Mark Crusaders in tow, gathered their luggage and left to catch their train back to Ponyville. Luna retreated to her private chambers and watched them leave from her balcony. She felt a stab of loneliness as she watched them happily leave for their homes. "Tush, tush.” she chided. “You just spent nearly a week with hundreds of guests, the element bearers, their younger charges, and dearest Twilight.” She paused and revised her thoughts internally. “My sister’s prize student and thrice over hero of the realm, Miss Sparkle.”

She continued speaking to herself, “Then why am I still lonely? She thought, "When I hunger for food I eat and I no longer hunger. When I desire companionship I have hundreds who wish to meet me. And yet I hunger all the more. What kind of perverse starvation is upon me?” She sighed as the last of the fillies she supervised last night were lost to view as the crowd of bustling ponies swallowed them. “Fie.”

She shook herself, trying to shed her melancholic ruminations, and then moved to exit her chambers. There was much that needed doing so she began the long walk down to the main throne room. While she walked, she contemplated the damage the changelings' attack had caused. While she didn't have her abacus with her, she had a head for numbers and was able to quickly develop an estimate for the cost of repairs. The scale of the number she calculated was terrifying so she re-did her estimation and the number stubbornly remained huge.

"If we only cover the cost of rebuilding public property we might be able to manage it," she mused out-loud. "But it was an act of war, not a natural disaster," she reminded herself. Long established statutes held the Crown liable for any damages that were the result of foreign aggression, the changeling invasion fit that description very well. "If I tax the nobles they will squeal like offended swine," she said to herself. She didn't notice the guardspony desperately trying not to laugh at the description. "If I tax the townsfolk the guilds will raise their prices for everyone." She dismissed the thought of taxing the farmers out of hoof. Most earth ponies didn't own the land they farmed and the rent they paid was already too high in Luna's mind. Darkly, she wondered if the current system of nobility had developed because of her sister's negligence or her incompetence.

“That is not true and you know it.” Luna said out loud while shaking the errant thought out of her head. A distant guardspony, overhearing the outburst, silently shook his head. “It is that she uses a different calculus than yourself and you know that, she reminded herself.” She tried to imagine what the feudal system would look like through her sister's eyes. Her sister was always focused on people, not systems. She estimated that the noble houses would provide a stable network for her sister's social interaction. It would matter less that you outlived everyone if there was always a Duke of Canterlot and that he was always a prat. "Maybe Celestia's nobility fulfilled some purpose," Luna admitted to herself as she thought about how united the three pony tribes were. The nobility certainly cared more about titles than wings or horns; the entire lot of them were a slightly inbred tapestry of second-cousins.

Luna sighed. She knew she had neither the patience nor aptitude for such intrigues and chose to apply her legal and political power very differently. She had resumed her political duties after celebrating Nightmare night in Ponyville and it wasn't long after she re-opened the Night's Court until it had developed a reputation as the "Commoner's Court." She ruffled her feathers in pride as she remembered the scathing editorials the newspapers had printed about her rulings. "If the owners wanted to be treated with 'proper respect' then they knew where to go," she thought while smiling. Some of the nobles were appalled by the thought that rock-farmers, dray-ponies, or ponies of even less savory professions deserved the same respect and treatment under the law. She had made sure to have the letters from those ponies framed and hung in her office.

She put an end to her musings as she entered Celestia's throne room. She was immediately greeted by a dozen members of the palace’s custodial staff that were awaiting her. “Ah, more shadow dwellers," she smiled at the thought. "They clean our dishes, do our laundry, and repair our garderobes...um, toilets," she mentally corrected. "They do all this while being invisible to the courtiers and diplomats. Many of them even keep the same hours as myself, more used to seeing by the moon than the sun. These are my ponies.”

The foremare, a dun pony with a mass of white foam for a cutie mark, approached Luna and knelt, “Your Highness. I am honored and surprised to have been told that you would be directly supervising our work today.”

“Rise, Bubbles. I am sorry to say that you were misinformed.” The foremare looked worried at this, “I will be working with you today.”

The humble ponies fell to confused mutterings. Luna used just the smallest fraction of The Voice to regain their focus, “There is a statue that needs to be moved back to the garden." Once she had their full attention she continued, "It is...fragile and of great import to me and my sister. I will be primarily concerned for its care and relocation but I would appreciate your assistance in making sure the path is clear so that I do not damage the statue nor any of the several doorways it will need to pass through. This explanation, doth it clarify matters sufficiently?”

The cleaning staff all nodded in the affirmative and were obviously much more comfortable now that the situation was framed in such a way that it was compatible with their notions of nobility.

“Good,” Luna told the group. With that out of the way, she pulled a white kerchief from under her wing and tied it so that her mane was held back from her face and out of the way. “Now, we need to get everything cleaned up before I can move the statue. Somepony please pass me a broom and we will begin.” Luna smiled inwardly as she destroyed yet another part of the mystique the nobility had accrued during her millennium of imprisonment.

Discord

Discord could feel the myriads of souls teeming across the skin of the world. He perceived them directly, without the need of eyes or any other organs, which was convenient as he did not currently possess a body in any functional sense. Without eyes to get in the way of spiritual perception, he saw them each as a unique mote of light. To him, they brought to mind the image of fleas infesting a dying animal, his sister.

He remembered her as she was, before this infestation, and missed her dearly. He remembered her beauty, unmatched by anything that had existed back then. He remembered her love of dancing and of creating art simply to create something beautiful and new. Inevitably, this caused him to remember her sacrifice. She gave up her body so that there would be somewhere for "here" to be. At first it wasn't so bad, she could still dance and she used her red-hot blood to sculpt the mountains and valleys of this world. He remembered when she used to birth entire mountain ranges in a day only to erase them the next, just to have the room to try something new. But then the usurpers arose and clapped her in chains. Now her skin was thick, cold, and covered with life.

Each soul-light was unique to the individual, and one that stood out among the others was heading in his direction. Unlike the mere wisps of the swarming mortals Luna's soul burned with a blue-white radiance that eclipsed the lesser spirits around her. He had been waiting for her and forced himself to greet her amicably. “Good morning Luna, are you up early or late today?”

“Late, but ‘tis no hardship.”

While the alicorn spoke out loud from habit, it was not her voice that Discord heard but the thoughts guiding her speech. As he dipped into her mind to perceive her intended speech, he noticed her self-image. She had her ethereal main bound back in a kerchief, was wearing an apron, and was covered in dust and dirt. “God-Empress Celestia has you...sweeping up?” he sputtered in honest outrage.

"Yes, my evil sister has stripped me of my title and lands and I am reduced to a mere chamber-maid," she gasped melodramatically.

Discord saw that on the surface she was just having fun with the role-playing but underneath that light humor he could sense forbidden pleasure at needling her pompous sister. "If you release me I can be your god-sire and sew you a gown of dewdrops and golden sunbeams."

"Not casting yourself as the brave knight in this ballad, Discord? What's wrong?"

"The redeemed monsters and ugly knights always die in those tales. I find them depressing."

Luna's joking mood blew away in the face of his reply. "The truth is that I volunteered for this service and have enjoyed myself greatly for the entire duration.”

Discord could see that this was true but not the whole story. It felt like there was some sort of ulterior motive hidden within her answer but it wasn't near enough to the surface of her mind for his to read it. “I have to admit that I’m a little surprised to see that it is you here to collect me and not a squad of guards armed with hammers and chisels. Considering the mood little Celly was in last night, I’d have thought she was going to try to turn me into gravel.”

“We all know how much good that would do,” Luna sarcastically replied. “No, it is just time to take you back to your place in the garden.”

Discord sent a sigh over his connection to Luna. “Must we?” he asked.

“Well, I shan’t be leaving you in the throne room to add colorful commentary to everything.”

“Fine, I can see why your sister doesn't want me here, but why the garden? I can’t see the flowers or the sky nor smell them. I can’t even feel the sun warming me.”

At this Luna paused and Discord could see her mind working on the question. He enjoyed watching the alicorn actually think for a change. The colors and textures on her soul shifted so much more rapidly than the dreary mortals she surrounded herself with. "The world has become so dreary and dull," he thought to himself. "There is barely anything left within it that could actually challenge a god." He felt that the usurpers had become so comfortable in their position that they have forgotten how to actually try at something. That was why watching Chrysalis challenge and defeat Celestia was so delicious; Celestia could have crushed the bug-queen but simply forgot how to do so.

“I...don’t know why.” Luna finally replied, bringing Discord's focus back to the present. “Perhaps so that no one will ever forget what you are and what you have done.”

“Schoolfillies gawping at my hideous face, frightened by the lists of my misdeeds? I am a trophy." he said flatly. "She displays me like she displays this palace, a gaudy testament to her absolute power. I’d rather be in a cellar.” Discord colored his words with a touch of petulance but made sure that the hint of despair would be detectable. “When she banished you to the moon, she at least let you keep your privacy and dignity. Me? I'm a side-show attraction."

A troubled look crossed Luna’s face. Discord could hear her warning herself against his silvered tongue but he could also feel the stirrings of sympathetic shame within her. “True, he is dangerous but he is also a person. He's an immortal like Celestia and I,” he heard her think. "Maybe there is a way to both protect the realm from him and yet let him retain some shred of dignity."

“You might be right,” she eventually replied, worry still creasing her face. “But my sister and I will decide this together, in harmony.” She nodded to herself as she pronounced this, mostly for her own reassurance.

Discord desperately wished for his eyes back, simply to have the ability to roll them.

Later that day workponies came and loaded him onto a cart. After hours of careful work they had moved him into position, which was to his delight, within the royal library. “In every change there is an opportunity,” the captive god thought to himself.

Chapter 7

Twilight

Twilight screamed until she landed on her back. She had expected to feel the burning agony of volcanic glass shredding her skin and the muscles underneath. Instead she landed with a "thump" as her shoulders impacted with solid, smooth-feeling stone. Her magical light sputtered out as her head cracked against the stone as well. She closed her eyes and inhaled with all of her might, trying to gather a breath to hold before the darkness closed in on her.

"That isn't the response I was expecting." Its... his voice was like mountains rubbing against each other. Twilight felt the hairs of her coat shake with the basso tone. She opened her eyes again and, unexpectedly, was able to dimly see. Everything was stained ruddy by the fires in the god's eyes but the miracle was that she could see at all. Nor, she realized after a moment's assessment, was there the terrible pressure that had greeted her upon her arrival.

"H-how?" she asked in a shaky voice, her curiosity beating our her fear.

"How what?" The terrible face with the flaming eyes asked her.

"How can I see and breathe?"

"If you don't know that, what are you doing here?"

Feeling that her diligence was being questioned Twilight responded with a sharp tone in her voice. "I'll have you know I performed quite a lot of research on Tartarus. In fact, I've read every book in the royal library on the subject before coming here."

"Hmmm, how about this: I'll tell you, if you answer my question first."

Twilight nodded but got no response. After an awkward moment she said, "I agree."

Grogar pulled himself to his feet. Chains layered his body like a second coat of fur. Each seemed to be made of a different size of link and a different metal and they rang in a cacophony of pealing bells. The face approached her, coming within only a few hooves of her own muzzle. He then inhaled deeply through his nose.

Her eyebrows knit together when she realized that he was sniffing her. "Of all the rude-" she thought to herself before he spoke.

"What are you?"

"I...I'm a mare." Embarrassed by the thought that he could smell such a thing and then ask for confirmation.

"No. What kind of being are you?"

"Oh," she said while feeling much relieved. "A unicorn."

An eyebrow was cocked in the craggy face above her.

"A unicorn!" she repeated a bit louder, wondering if he had heard her the first time.

His face went sour, "Liar." The bulk shifted with another tinkling maelstrom of bells as he turned away.

"What!?! What do you mean liar?" Twilight asked, feeling both angry and confused.

"What you said is not true. Isn't that still the meaning of the word? Since you will not deal honestly with me, I don't have any reason to speak with you."

"But I AM a unicorn. Just look at me!"

The face turned back to her, straining at the end of his neck. The sudden movement caused some of the lava to slosh and spill over the edges of his eye sockets. They burned smoking furrows into Grogar's cheeks and plopped, smoking and sizzling on the smooth stone underneath them.

"You...you're blind?" She asked, her voice offering a touch of sympathy.

The hatred was thick on his face. "A gift from an old foe, perhaps you know her? I smelled her on you! I smell god after god on your flesh and yet you claim to be 'just a unicorn?' Don't play me for a fool, little one."

"Celestia? You smell her on me?" She looked at her fur in panic as the thought of someone else's scent clinging to her brought on the hysteric need to shower.

"And why would that be, 'just a unicorn?"

She licked her lips before answering, predicting trouble. "I am her personal student, her protege and occasionally her agent and representative."

"See, that wasn't so hard." Grogar reoriented on her, his massive bulk only hinted at in the reflected, red light.

"Very well," she said while nodding. "Now for my question."

A deep rumble emanating from the goat god interrupted her, the sound blended with a distant crash and thunder coming from the tunnel behind Twilight. "You aren't finished answering me yet."

"But, I-" She interrupted herself to think about what the god meant. "I am an Element of Harmony."

"Good, which one?"

"Friendship," she proclaimed while trying to sound defiant.

"And?"

"Friend and companion to Luna, goddess of the night."

He snorted. "Not quite right, but close enough for the moment. And?"

"My brother, he married Cadance."

"Who?"

"Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, the alicorn of love."

"Ah, yes. And?

Now Twilight was confused, "What else could there be?" She had listed everything that could possibly be a divine connection and she wasn't entirely sure why the Element qualified in that way. "It seems that I have more to ask Celestia when I get home," she thought to herself.

Grogar cleared his throat, focusing her back to the here and now.

"I...I don't know." she said quietly.

"Good, that is truer than any other answer you could give me."

Twilight felt truly confused and was starting to get quite tired of the puzzles all gods seemed to love.

"Now for your question. The-"

"Wait!" Twilight shouted, causing Grograr to snuffle and cause more of his flaming ichor to slosh down his face.

"What!" he demanded through a grimace of pain.

"Can I change my question? You said you'd answer a question of mine, does it have to be about the dark?"

The goat took his time answering her. "I suppose it is allowable, but I reserve the right to refuse answering you."

"But anything you tell me will be the truth?" the mare asked.

"If I choose to accept your question, my answer will be truth. I swear it."

Twilight nodded, then felt awkward and guilty at using the silent gesture. "Good. Here is my question: Princess Celestia has lost control over the sun. What can be done, that would result in her regaining this power?" She phrased the question carefully, trying to not give Celestia's ancient enemy any room for deceit.

Grogar's eyes felt like they met her's despite just being burning pits. She felt like a kind of skin was being removed from her, that she was exposed in some way that was far more intimate than simple nudity. She felt a presence in her mind, very much like the quiet internal voice of her subconscious. Instead of speaking, the presence seemed to be looking. Flitting through her mind she gasped when it latched onto the memories she had regarding Celestia's condition. She could feel it, him, Grogar pouring over her recollections. An unknown time later, she was released and he was seemingly satisfied with his research.

"I will answer your question, 'just a unicorn'. The answer is 'nothing.'"

"Nothing." Twilight repeated flatly. "There is nothing I can do."

"You have my answer. Now go home, you amused me so I will not slay you where you stand."

"You're wrong." Twilight was standing stiff-legged in anger.

"Why do you say that?" His massive face was showing a hint of irritation.

"Because that cannot be truth and I won't accept it."

"I gave you my word."

"And you are an evil creature who tried to kill off all ponykind."

He snarled, "Is THAT what they tell little ponies? If you are looking for a liar, I'd suggest you start with Celestia."

She snorted her irritation at the giant. "I want a second opinion."

"I am not a physician and that's not how this works. I gave you the answer to your question, now get out!"

She didn't budge despite his volcanic tone. "What leads that way?" She asked while pointing further down the tunnel past his site of incarceration.

"It depends." he asked, mostly out of reflex from the non-sequitur.

"I thought so," Twilight responded smugly. She turned towards the gaping tunnel, re-lit her hornlight, and focused on 'someone who has Celestia's interests at heart.'

"Just a Unicorn," Grogar called after her, using it like a name.

"Yes?" she asked without turning around.

"Remember what you are, Just a Unicorn. You are like a sister to one goddess, like a daughter to another, and like a paramour to the third."

Twilight shivered in response and trotted off into the darkness.

A few minutes later Grogar heard the approach of limping hooves trying to gallop and the desperate flapping of wings. He smiled as he said to himself, "Right on time."

Celestia

The last 12 hours had been some of the most stressful that Celestia had ever known. She didn't dare go after her student and sister; without access to her magic Tartarus would have been a deathtrap, even to her. The immortal found herself in the unusual situation of having to hold faith in other people, one of which was a young mortal and the other was her baby sister. She honestly couldn't say which she trusted more. Luna had the weight of experience on her side but she was her little sister. Placing faith in Luna. Quarrelsome Luna. Passionate Luna. Temperamental Luna. Nightmare Luna. She dashed the last one from her thoughts, not feeling capable of holding faith while remembering of that old betrayal.

Twilight was talented and smart, smarter than herself she sometimes admitted to herself. But she was so young. Her face still showed the roundness of foal-fat. She was neurotic and full of social phobias; a near recluse prior to being forced into her current studies. Twilight had power, sometimes a terrifying amount. More than half of their time as student and teacher was spent on control. In life or death emergency, Celestia still wondered what Twilight was capable of and what Twilight would allow herself to be capable of.

The injured goddess looked up from her desk and sighed. The wood surface wasn't visible underneath the glacier-like pile of reports she had requested. They were a depressing read, the largest agricultural earth-pony clans were in open revolt. One of several distressing aspects of the protest was that they were calling themselves the "Cider Rebellion." The Apples were one of the largest and most prosperous clans, with their orchards being found in every region of Equestria, and they were right at the center of this mess. The Apples had intermarried with so many other clans that odds were good that every orchard oriented family were about a quarter Apple. Except for the Pears, there was some sort of bad blood there.

While the protest in front of the palace was annoying, the protest in Ponyville was the most dangerous. Applejack, an Element of Harmony, recipient of the Equestrian Medal of Honor, three-time national hero was the face of the rebellion in Ponyville. Celestia didn't know if it was quick thinking by Mayor Mare or if it was just the natural competitiveness between Applejack and Rainbow Dash, but Ms. Dash had been deputized into the local constabulary. Having the Element of Loyalty opposing the rebellion helped the optics of the situation immensely. It appeared from the reports she had just finished that the Apple clan, and their relations going by other fruit-themed names, were a major factor in nearly every protest. Celestia had made up her mind; she knew what she needed to do.

Less than an hour later she was airborne. Despite vigorous protests by her physician, she had decided that the royal chariot sent the wrong message. She insisted that she fly under her own wing-power to Ponyville and kept her personal guard to the minimum level that Shining Armor could be pushed into accepting. The six white pegasi surrounded her in a triangular pattern, the point about a thousand lengths ahead. Celestia doubted that there was any need for this escort, unless there were more goddesses unknown to her lurking in the shadows she would be fine no matter what happened.

The site of the stand-off was obvious from the air as she approached the town. A pair of fires were burning brightly in the pre-dawn gloom, illuminating a ramshackle yet impressively large barricade. Ponies milled about on either side of the impromptu wall, she could see that their expressions were a mixture of anger and boredom as she drew closer.

"Archer's. Draw!" Came a shout from the battlement ahead. Celestia pushed herself to try to catch up with her advance escort, far more worried about their well-being than her own. "Fire!" the same voice shouted and Pony-length missiles were launched into the air. The arrows universally flew wide of the two armored pegasi that were presumably the targets. Shouts of alarm broke out among the ponies on the ground as the projectiles randomly fell from the sky.

Celestia was moving at speed now, her mane and tail were leaving a trail of luminescence the color of the dawn sky behind her. Tucking her wings she fell the last hundred lengths and landed solidly on her hooves atop the wooden structure. Wood splintered and beams snapped like twigs as her golden-shod hooves transmitted her momentum into structure. She felt a trickle of magic leak from her damaged horn, her anger at the pony-on-pony violence overcoming the half-healed damage. "YOU WILL CEASE THIS, NOW!" she shouted at the full volume she was capable of. Earth ponies on top of the wall dropped their bows and fled to the ground, some jumping to get away faster.

She examined one of the hoof-made weapons that was left lying were it was dropped in terror. Her little ponies were clever, as always. The bow had a flattened area near the center where both hind hooves would be placed while the fore hooves pulled back the string. Given a typical earth-pony's strength, these things would be deadly against even armored foes at ranges of hundreds of lengths. She stepped on the accursed thing, snapping the wooden body and causing the broken pieces to smolder. When she looked back towards the earth-ponies now gathered below and behind the wall she was immediately confronted by an orange and blond mare with bright green eyes.

Applejack was standing firm at the front of the gathered protesters. She showed no fear of Celestia and it bolstered the courage of the ponies behind her. "Apologies for tha fright there, ma'am, but as you can likely tell by now, those were warnin' shots not meant to hurt no-one," The mare's rural twang was as thick as Celestia remembered but reminded herself that such an accent meant nothing about the intelligence of a pony.

"You are fortunate that none of those arrows fell on anyone by accident." Celestia replied with heat still in her voice.

"We're confident in our ability." the earth-pony replied, unfazed and unapologetic. "So, anything in particular brings ya down here to our neck of tha woods? Ma'am?" The last was added, deliberately Celestia thought, as an afterthought.

The alicorn realized that the mare was trying to goad her into taking insult, into losing her temper, and into making a mistake. "She's smart, that's what I would do if I was in her situation." Celestia thought to herself. Forcibly calming herself down, Celestia responded, "I'm here to address a complaint that was brought to my attention via peaceful political demonstration. I am in need of a representative from the group protesting the Dictum Emancipare. It needs to be someone who can negotiate in good faith."

"I'm your mare." Applejack predictably replied

It didn't take long for Mayor Mare to set up a the main gathering room in the town hall for the negotiations. What appeared to be a kitchen table sat between two cushions, the relative sizes clearly telegraphed who their intended occupants were to be. On the table sat a silver tea service, several sheets of paper, ink and other writing utensils, and a pitcher of water. Celestia had insisted that the Mayor not seat her first. The two mares, one a goddess and the other a farmer, entered at the same time via separate doors. Nods were exchanged, seats were taken, and tea was poured. The single attendant was Hort Cuisine, who had begged the Mayor for the chance to serve tea during this event despite having his own restaurant.

Applejack's patience gave out first, not being accustomed to the glacial pace of formal negotiations. "So, how do we start?" she asked.

Celestia sipped her tea and replied in a patient and ethereal tone that she knew was infuriating to anyone in a hurry. "Usually, negotiations like these begin by each side making a declaration of their guiding principle for their position. The pattern of the negotiation and the likely solutions are very different in cases where both parties can agree to each other's principles than in cases where the statements are not held to be true by both parties."

Applejack nodded along. "I guess that makes sense."

"If you like," Celestia offered, "I'd be willing to go first so as to provide an example."

"Thank ya ma'am, but I'm pretty sure I understand and would rather go first."

"Please, go right ahead." Celestia replied.

Applejack didn't take long to think about her reply. "Ponies have the right to their property. Theft of that property by the government is no different than someone stealing my apples off of my trees."

Celestia was familiar with the argument, the right to personal property had been invoked nearly universally by the protesters. "A very compelling statement, Miss Applejack. One which I fully agree with. May I go?"

Applejack blinked at Celestia's quick and unconditional agreement. "Um, sure."

Celestia looked the mare directly in the eyes. "The enslavement of any sentient creature is a moral wrong." She made sure to project the conviction behind her words and was pleased to see that the question made the farmer uncomfortable. She gave Applejack a few moments to digest the simple and unequivocal statement. She knew that the orange mare was trying desperately to find a way to say the truth while supporting her position. "Ms. Applejack. Your answer?

Luna

The standoff ended as Luna launched herself into the air with a thrust of her hind legs and a powerful down-stroke of her wings. Erebus instantly responded, darkness flowed upwards while the monster began toppling in Luna's direction. The tactic was simple and brutal, much like Erebus itself, Luna noted. "Also predictable," she thought with a smile.

The darkness crested like a tsunami, intent on crushing the relatively tiny goddess in a decisive first move. Luna's response was to increase the power of the horn-light and focus it into a lance of burning silver. She aimed the radiance at the intended point of impact between herself and Erebus. The darkness seared and boiled at the lance's touch, burning a crater into the giant's umbral substance. An instant before collision she shifted her protective shield away from her body, forcing the inflicted wound even wider. She burst through the other side of the monster, flying free of the Hungry Dark while momentum carried the formless mass down to the floor of the chamber.

Luna pirouetted gracefully in the air and hovered a few lengths below the ceiling. She sent bolt after bolt into the writhing mass below. A keening howl filled the chamber as her attacks boiled away more and more of her opponent. Luna pressed her advantage, turning almost all of her available power into more and brighter bolts. In that instant, with her attention turned completely upon the steaming mass cringing before her might, a pony-sized dollop of darkness launched itself from one of the tunnels above her. It landed astride her withers and sent sharp tendrils into the flesh at the base of her wings. She screamed as this minor part of Erebus dug chunks of bloody muscle from the base of her wings, causing her to plummet.

The darkness coating the floor pulled away, revealing the obsidian daggers that awaited her impact. She threw a pulse of telekinesis at the blob attacking her back, flinging it away to join the rest of itself. As the air whistled by her she then focused her will against the direction of her fall, slowing her descent into something painful but not crippling. Again her focus betrayed her; a tendril of blackness snaked around her rear-right leg and swung her into a tight, flat arc. At the apogee the tendons and bones of her leg gave way under the centrifugal force. Her scream rose in pitch as blinding pops and snaps traveled up the length of her leg. The scream ended abruptly as she collided with the chamber's sharp wall with explosive force.

Luna regained consciousness a moment later and the pain and terror washed over her mind again. She felt like she was floating, weightless and wondered if it was simply shock or some sort of horrible spinal damage. It was after that thought that she landed upon the chamber's floor with a sickening impact that shattered several ribs and pushed the floor's spines into her flesh. She gave a shuddering moan out of agony, her consciousness once again threatening to leave.

Forcing her eyes to focus, Luna could see Erebus gathering itself together for the kill. It extruded a massive pseudopod that swelled in a horribly organic manner as more of the creature's substance was dedicated to forming that weapon. Luna desperately reached for what magic she could gather and found only a guttering candle-flame. "Forming a shield would leave me just as dead," she though as Erebus positioned its limb for an overhand swing. "The force would impale me upon the spikes," she concluded. The pseudopod began its arc, accelerating constantly but moving with a deceptive slowness due to its size. As the weapon curved overhead, she poured all of her remaining power into another ray of moonlight. She aimed it at the point where the limb attached to the counterbalancing hulk of its remaining mass. She didn't have enough power to sever the limb but the damage was enough and the pull of the limb's arc tore it free from the rest of Erebus.

The crushing limb was sent careening into the ceiling and wall, shaking the entire chamber and breaking up into a monsoon of black droplets. Erebus howled again in shock and pain. Seizing the moment, Luna tore herself free from the floor spines with the stomach-turning sensation of suction and tearing. She immediately cried out and collapsed as she tried to get her hooves underneath herself, the right-rear limb wasn't of any use anymore. It just dangled limply as broken bones ground against each other with her every movement. The alicorn could all too easily imagine Erebus reconstituting itself for another strike while her back was turned to it. She gritted her teeth and flapped her wings as best she could, trying to make up for the crippled limb. The damage to her wing muscles was extensive but she was able to produce enough lift to allow her to scramble gracelessly towards the nearest tunnel opening.

Luna panted, partially out of exhaustion partially from the pain as she pushed herself forwards on three legs and two injured wings. Her horn sputtered and smoked as she dug for the smallest residual of power to throw telekinetic barriers behind her. They collapsed on their own as soon as she lost line of sight with them but she hoped that they would at least slow down the darkness that hunted her. Her world had narrowed to a single focus, "Find Twilight." Every moment was punctuated by that thought.

"It hurts. It's just pain, find Twilight."

"It hurts so bad. Stop crying, you foal, find Twilight."

"I'm so tired. Stop whining, find Twilight."

"Am I dying? I don't care, find Twilight."

"Maybe she's already dead and I can go home? Don't you dare think that, find Twilight."

She could feel the slope of the tunnel increasing. The smell of blood was thick around her and she could hear dripping. "How much blood did I lose?" she wondered. "Don't think about that, find Twilight." She climbed with the grace of an injured bird, pushing with her three barely functional legs and pulling with her injured and blood-soaked wings. Her vision was a narrow tunnel as she strained upwards. Her faith in her senses was lost as she began to hear the tinkling of tiny silver bells. "Hallucinations, I must be close to passing out. Focus, find Twilight." She wept in relief as she pulled herself onto the plateau at the top of the climb. She laid panting and bleeding on the smooth cool stone, simply grateful for a place to rest for a moment.

The bells continued to ring, her brow knit as she realized that they were much louder and variable in tone. She felt the touch of something metallic probing one of the open wounds on her torso and her eyes flew open.

"It's been a long time, sweet Selene." a familiar and dreaded voice rumbled from out of her line of vision.

Luna looked up and gasped as she saw the two burning eye-shaped holes in the darkness. A face she knew, one that she used to consider family, arose out of the darkness. He was older and grayer than she remembered. The eyes were the same horror Celestia left him with and his cheeks bore the scars of countless molten tears.

"Grogar," Luna said as she backed away but came up short with the silvery peal of a chain pulling taut. "What?!" she gasped.

"Have you forgotten? Was it so long ago for you?" More chains detached themselves from the goat-god's form and whipped around the alicorn's legs and torso.

"No, wait. You don't have to-" Luna stuttered

"Yes. I do. Only a god's blood will satisfy these chains. Only a god's blood could empower them to hold us for all eternity."

"I'm not here to fight. I'm looking for a unicorn." Her voice shook as more and more metal dug into her coat.

"Yes, yes, I know all about that. I'll thank her for this, if I ever see her again."

"No...Please..." the chains were now thick around Luna, leaving only her face exposed. Her fur bunched as the edges of the chains dug into her flesh.

"But Luna, you were the one that loved irony so. You forged my chains out of my own bells and laughed at the joke of it. My beloved bells," Grogar smiled, "bells that loved me back. How does that irony suit you? Are you amused?"

Her eyes were the only part of Luna visible through the blanket of chains. She was rendered mute by the bindings around her muzzle but her terror-filled eyes answered his answer clearly enough.