Celestia awoke in her opulent chambers in the Dragon Lord’s palace. The dragons were well known for their greed and took every opportunity to flaunt their wealth, often to excess. Her chambers consisted of a large room, extravagantly decorated and lavishly furnished with (in her opinion) far too many gems to be tasteful. A balcony on one side of the room, its railing covered in emeralds and revealed a stunning view of the mountain range the palace was built on. The bathroom connected to her chambers had a bathtub that glittered with thousands of sapphires, and that wasn’t even the half of it.

Seriously, who has a diamond-encrusted toilet?’ Celestia thought wryly.

She yawned as she lit her horn in her to raise the sun and was annoyed when it resisted her call to rise. She frowned, it never failed to ruin her morning when the sun had to be forced up like a petulant child. It was a reminder of the damage Discord had done to this world during his reign, before she and Luna had used the elements to turn him to stone. Irritated, she put more force behind her magic, but the sun continued to ignore her efforts. Now she was worried, the sun had never resisted her this strongly before.

Has Discord broken free? She thought as she pushed more and more magic into her spell. As she poured more and more effort into bringing the dawn she could feel something resisting her efforts. Something or someone was fighting her magic. Now she was scared, this magic didn't feel like Discord's, it was too ordered, too structured to be anything created by the lord of chaos, but she couldn’t think of anything else that could do this.

She threw the full might of her magic, honed over thousands of years and hundreds of battles at the chains holding down the sun, and fell to the floor as the bindings sealing the sun casually ignored her power. The negotiations with the dragons could wait. She needed to find Luna. Together they would find whoever is doing this and put a stop to it.

Leaping off her balcony she flew as fast as she could in the direction of the Everfree Castle.

Celestia’s wings ached from her barely subsonic flight as she approached Everfree Gliding over the city she immediately noticed something wasn’t right, the city was quiet and still. Shadows occasionally moved in the corners of her eyes, but when she looked nopony was there. The sun’s absence should have had ponies panicking in the streets, but everywhere she looked there was nothing but shadows and deathly silence.

At least Celestia knew Discord wasn't behind the unnatural night. He would have been positively offended by the lack of panic at his return and done something about it by now. But that only raised more questions. Who else had the power to do stop her from raising the sun, and why would they?

When she reached the castle, she saw the main gates empty, the mangled doors laying on the ground before them. The gatehouse had been shredded. Torn apart as if it had been caught in a whirlwind made of razor blades and broken glass. Bloodstains covered splintered wood and stone, and several golden slivers of armor, now stained red, were all that remained of the guards that had been at the gate.

The gates themselves had been torn off their hinges, the heavy oaken doors laying in pieces, the solid iron hinges bent and twisted from the forces that had been applied to them. Compounding the mystery of what had done this was that the gates had clearly been assaulted from inside. Scratches and dents littered the inward-facing portions of the door, but the outside was almost untouched. Whatever had done this had already been within the castle when they had torn down the gates, which confused Celestia. If somepony had already gotten in why would they bother taking the time to tear the gate apart? It would be faster and easier to simply push it open.

Entering the castle, she nearly missed a step as she felt the overwhelming distinct miasma of dark magic pulsing from within. This dark magic radiated of hate in a way that was sharp. It was a feeling that would remain fresh in her memory for centuries to come. The taint emanated from the castle with a power she had never felt before. Even Sombra in his prime never had power like this.

She lit her horn, shadows retreating from the golden light. Continuing through the castle, Celestia had the distinct feeling of being watched, but, despite her scanning spells, she could detect nothing living. She readied shields, wishing she had her armor with her, but it was currently locked away in the castle vaults. She hadn’t worn it in decades, and it likely wouldn't fit her, even if it weren't buried deep within the vaults. She didn't have the time to search through piles of treasure and refit the armor, her ponies needed her now.

Celestia desperately hoped that Luna hadn’t been at the castle when it was attacked. Luna had been spending a lot of time on hunts recently. After this is over, she really needed to convince Luna to take a vacation, she had been working far too hard.

Reasoning that any survivors would have barricaded themselves in the throne room, she cautiously began head in that direction. When she came to the first checkpoint between the gates and the throne room, she was relieved to note the absence of guards and the lack of signs of combat. At least some of the guards seemed to have escaped. Celestia checked each room she passed for survivors or enemies. Whatever attacked may seem to be gone, but that is no reason to abandon caution.

Coming into view of the throne room doors Celestia gasped. Dozens of guards, or what was left of them at least, were spread around the corridor. Celestia had seen many battlefields in her time, but the sight before her still made her sick to her stomach. Some of the guards looked like they had been attacked by whatever had destroyed the gatehouse, their armor had been rent and scratched, and any exposed flesh had flayed into bloody chunks. Others had nothing but scraps of skin hanging from their charred frames, just enough flesh clinging to their skulls to make it clear that they had died screaming in agony, burning from within. Their armor had melted, mixing with the blood on the floor in red and gold swirls.

The huge throne room doors were warped and seemed to have melted slightly. Luna's silver moons that were intermixed with Celestia's golden suns had been tarnished to black by the corrosive magic in the air. The defensive enchantments, meant to withstand the might of an invading army, had been shattered completely by the titanic forces that had been applied to them. It seemed that the attackers managed to make it into the throne room after all. Celesta was afraid to find out what is in that room. But she needed to know what happened here.

Moonbeam wept among the burnt-out remains of the throne room.

When Luna’s shield had shattered she had been able to feel Luna’s pain. Her agony as the dark magic of the Amulet, no longer bound to its physical anchor, tore through her. As a spiritual being bound to Luna’s mind, she had been able to see Luna’s soul crumbling in a way no other pony could. She had tried to shield Luna, intercepting as much of the deadly magic as she could, but it hadn’t helped. The maelstrom devastated Luna’s mind and tore apart her soul, scattering the broken shards around Luna's dreamscape, but the dark magic filling the room wasn’t finished.

With Luna no longer resisting it, the magic eagerly took the outlet the alicorn’s body provided, funneling into her corpse, twisting Luna’s body into a parody of its former appearance. Luna’s form grew taller, larger even than Celestia’s massive frame. Her teeth sharpened into terrifying fangs, built for tearing flesh. Her eyes became slitted and reptilian, changing from emerald green to something more toxic. Finally, her fur darkened from a sky blue to a light-eating black and her star-filled mane turned darkened and became indefinably deeper, a hole to the cold void of space than the tapestry of the night sky it had been.

An eternity later, when Luna’s pain had stopped, Moonbeam looked to find that Luna was gone, leaving nothing but the torn fragments of her soul, scattered across the dream realm. She was without the one she had been with for all her life, her friend, her mother.

She was utterly, crushingly alone.

Within the dreamscape, Moonbeam gathered the tiny fragments of Luna’s broken soul, trying to patch them together. Luna wasn’t gone entirely, maybe Moonbeam could put her back together. The thought wormed into her mind. It wasn’t rational, she knew that, but even the slightest glimmer of hope was like water in a desert to her. She just needed the power to do it, the power that was all around her.

Without a body, she had no magic of her own, but she could manipulate the unbound magic that was already present. She grabbed ahold of the dark magic of the amulet like a lifeline, taking ahold of it and guiding it as best she could. She ignored its taint seeping into her, ignored the sharp fragments of Luna’s soul tearing into her own, desperate to fit them back together. As she failed to make any real progress, her thoughts turned darker, her grief morphing into rage. Looking at what her efforts had wrought, she was disappointed to find that they had been useless. Trying to repair Luna’s soul was like trying to reassemble a broken vase with half the pieces missing.

As she screamed and cried out her frustration she was startled to feel her hoof move, her physical hoof. Gingerly, she pushed at the connection she had found, slowly working on raising herself. When she had finally made it to her hooves, she looked into the cracked tiles of the floor to see a parody of Luna's face looking back at her, a nightmare's face. Moonbeam bore her fangs savagely as she flexed Luna's magic. Now her magic. She had been unable to restore Luna, but between Luna's magic and the power of the amulet that she had absorbed she could make the ones that had done this pay.

She was distracted from her new body and magic as felt the sun rising. “Oh no Celestia, this isn’t a Nightmare that will be chased away by the sun.” she growled to herself, forcing the sun back down and surprising herself with how easy it was. The magic of the amulet had made her far stronger than Luna had been.

She pushed more magic into her horn, forming chains of magic on the sun and binding it under the horizon. Equestria had treated Luna like a bad dream, a monster that would haunt their dreams, a Nightmare, and it was time they got one. This Little Moon would become a Nightmare they would never forget.

Nightmare Moon. It has a nice ring to it. she thought.

Over the centuries Luna had been the guardian of dreams she had encountered and imprisoned countless terrors of the Dream Realm. These monsters were those that preyed on ponies’ fears, that hunted them in the darkness of their minds, and consumed their hope. They had been bound in a prison of Luna’s own making, the Vault of Dreams, a Tartarus for those who could not be bound by physical chains.

Nightmare Moon released them all. These shadows of ponies’ minds normally couldn’t touch them while they were awake and separate and unconnected to the Plane of Dreams. However, Nightmare Moon’s connection to the plane and raw magical might was enough that she could bridge the walls between the planes and allow the shadows into the physical world.

“I want them to suffer.” She commanded harshly as a tide of darkness poured from the black rifts in the air that formed around her. "Hurt them like they hurt Luna, let them know that their guardian is dead by their hooves and that the Queen of Nightmares Has been born in her place!” She roared.

Stalwart Shield, an earth pony of the solar guard for thirteen years, looked at the throne room doors, startled out of his thoughts by a muted thump coming from within, which was odd as the doors were spelled against sound.

“Looks like the wards need some maintenance.” He said to his watch partner, a pegasus named Swift Wings “Remind me to let the captain know when he gets out of his meeting that–” His speech was cut off as the wards on the throne room door blazed to life.

The wards were fighting against whatever was within, shining like the sun. He turned and lowered his spear as Swift Wings, readied his blades.

“Swift Wings.” He commanded abruptly. “Get reinforcements. Now!”

Swift nodded sharply and took to the air, flying down the hallway towards the barracks.

The other ponies in the hallway looked on nervously. That wouldn't do, he need the noncombatants out of the area before somepony got hurt. Knowing that panicking ponies would just slow down the evacuation he began shouting commandingly.

“Everypony may I have your attention! There has been a minor accident with one of the artifacts in the royal vault! You are in no danger, but the castle is being evacuated in case the situation escalates! I repeat! You are in no immediate danger, but as we don’t know what is wrong yet, we are evacuating the area until the situation is dealt with! Thank you for your cooperation.” That should get rid of the civilians. It was a good thing this happened at night. With the castle almost empty the evacuation should go quickly.

Grumbling, the few ponies in the corridor began filing out. The orderly evacuation rapidly turned to panic, however, when the throne room doors began shaking in their frames, thundering from innumerable impacts within. The ponies began screaming and running out as fast as their hooves could carry them. So much for an orderly evacuation.

Stalwart turned back to the doors, which were now so bright he could barely see them as the magical reinforcements fought whatever was trying to break them down. An aura was starting to leak through the heavily warded doors, feeling unlike any magic he had experienced before. Most powerful magic had a presence to it, being near the wards on the Royal Vault, for example, was similar to diving deep underwater, the magic pressing down on everything around it. This magic on the other hoof, felt sharp and toxic, like diving in a sea of acid that was filled with shards of broken glass. It burned and tore at the minds of those who felt it and made Stalwart’s coat itch.

The throne room doors had begun leaking a caustic-looking black mist when reinforcements arrived. The guard ponies seemed apprehensive of the almost painful aura of dark magic coming from behind the doors. “Form up!” The officer commanded. Lieutenant Fireball was a tall unicorn with, fittingly, a fireball for a cutie mark, and was well known for his magical skill.

“Stalwart! What’s going on here?” The officer demanded as around fifty guards, including a dozen unicorns, quickly surrounded the door. “Sir!” Stalwart saluted. “At 0400 hours Captain Bright Sword entered the throne room with several guards. At 0530 Princess Luna entered the throne room escorted by private Quick Hooves and the doors were sealed. A few minutes later a noise was heard coming from within and wards lit up like a Hearth’s-warming tree. I sent Swift Wings for reinforcements evacuated the civilians. Just seconds ago I felt a massive aura of dark magic and a black mist began seeping through the doors.”

“Thank you for the report Stalwart.” Fireball said as the mages starting to set up magical defenses in front of the doors. The mages had only begun setting up their shields, however, when the wards on the throne room fizzled out. That was very bad as the frightened expressions of the unicorns declared. Stalwart had heard the battlemages brag about the wards on those doors. The mages had said the wards could hold up against an artillery barrage a week, but it had barely been ten minutes and they’d collapsed.

For a few seconds, there was only silence.

Then the doors burst open and the torches and mage lights of the guards were extinguished as a wave of inky darkness poured from within. Stalwart felt claws tearing at him from every angle, ripping into any skin uncovered by his armor. He heard the other guards screaming as they were torn apart, flares coming from within as unicorns attempted to cast spells and instead caught fire and burned in seconds. Stalwart attempted to push through the pain, feeling the life leaving him as he began bleeding out from his many wounds. He attempted to swing his sword at the force that was attacking him but it had no effect, the shadows simply parted before his attacks are reformed immediately.

Then his pain stopped as a blade of pure darkness tore through his eye, snuffing out his life.

Author's Note

And so the Nightmare begins.

This is the extent of the gore in the book. I'm not sure if this is enough to deserve a gore tag but I'd rather be on the safe side.