Legend has it that on the longest day of the thousandth year, the stars will aid in her escape, and she will bring about nighttime eternal.
Predictions and Prophecies: “The Mare in the Moon”
By the time the first century came to a close, she had gotten over the crippling longing for companionship which had ached in her heart.
She might have thought, at the very beginning of her banishment, that she would be beyond such feelings already, the teachings which existed only to bind weak and frail ponies together. Surely it wouldn’t take long for her to breach the barrier which surrounded her prison and prevented her from returning to Equestria and exacting her revenge. Then a year had passed, then two, then three. Ten years of bellowing her fury into the void, venting her anger along with the torrents of raw magical power which were stored within her, with no progress to show for her efforts. It became apparent that she was trapped, and there would be no escape.
So she had needed to find something to busy herself with; even the mistress of the night, the embodiment of nightmares, had to have hobbies. This would have been a prime opportunity to catch up on her reading of the royal archives, but her jailer hadn’t seen fit to provide her with any access to books prior to her commitment. She set about exploring her new domain, cataloguing every crater, every mountain, every barren seabed, the grey and the white blurring together. This took a lot less time than she might have expected, not even a full decade – her immortal stamina permitted her to trot and to soar across the dusty plains indefinitely, a shadow flitting about in the silence. She found nothing alive, in none of the cracks or crevices. There was nothing to coexist with. Nothing to conquer.
The best she could make do with was to create her own subjects, her own victims. The primordial rocks littering the plains were weak and crumbled easily, requiring her to compact them into a denser form in order to retain any kind of reasonable structural integrity, but at least the lighter gravity served to pose less stress. With her magic she shaped the dust as easily as if it was clay, and she made whole herds of ponies and their villages and castles. She’d make life-size replicas of the little towns that she remembered, and then she’d emerge before them, cackling in sadistic glee as she gave out her demands for submission, and when, inevitably, nopony spoke up to submit to her, she swooped down and laid waste to them, trampled beneath her hooves, sliced apart by her horn. The dust would settle, and she was alone again, and a few days later she would rebuild all over again.
But one day, perhaps fifty-something years into her banishment, she rose over the horizon before her make-believe countryside, her black wings blotting out the sun, and she laughed as she made her proclamation: “Puny foals! Submit to the mercy of the moon or face our wrath!” In the moment that followed, it seemed as if she truly heard the resounding silence for the first time. The equine simulacrums could not resist her, but they also could not submit to her, could not worship her. They could not love her. With one mighty beating of her wings, she whipped up a gale that obliterated everything. It brought her no pleasure.
It wouldn’t be another year until she rebuilt again, and this time she did not seek to menace her creations. She walked among them, towering over the smaller equines, and she inspected them closely. In the interest of mass-production, her figures were crude and simplistic, their faces blank and featureless, lacking a mane or tail, standing upright and stock still. There was no need to do such a rush job; she had all the time in the world. And so she went about adjusting them, adding features subtly, differentiating each one by their appearance, their posture, their subtle personalities – this one had a sheepish smile, the other a jealous sneer. The buildings, which before had been solid blocks, were hollowed out one by one, rooms partitioned from one another, populated with furniture. With a little further enchanting, she could even coerce them to move, shuffling indolently about on automated tasks. It was the least she could do for her subjects. She had just wanted them to appreciate her.
She had been almost unconscious of herself as she built a palace up from the white dust. It was one that she had recognized very intimately, because it was the palace in the Everfree Forest where she had lived for most of her life before now. It was the palace which, the last time she saw it, had been in ruin. All because of her. And there, in the heart of the palace, she placed a statue of a mare, a tall, beautiful mare. She had a horn, and wings, a curvaceous body, and a billowing mane and tail, impressive even in this rough, untextured form. She was the only one in all of Equestria who could have been her equal.
She couldn’t stop herself from throwing her arms around her, and she wept and cried and begged for forgiveness long after the statue had crumbled in her embrace.
By the ninetieth year, she had cried out all of her tears. The pony figures around her laid forlorn and motionless, slowly falling back to dust one by one. She had fallen into a nearly catatonic state, sitting in one spot, unmoving, unthinking. She could not remember the last time she’d thought to speak out loud. There was nothing left in her but anger, smoldering and roiling, waiting for something to lash out at.
And then the hundredth year came at long last, and that was when he appeared to her.
She had thought that her longing had dried up, but she was so overjoyed to see other life that she had nearly fallen into hysterics as she bounded across the pale plains to the bright light.
“Maybe it’s her,” she thought. “Maybe she’s forgiven me.”
But it wasn’t.
It was only the beginning of her waking nightmare.
= = = = =
Nightmare Moon felt that the hold of stillness upon her was waning. It was rare that she truly slept in the way that mortal ponies did, her body not needing that kind of refreshment; rather she would simply lay still, and if she was tired enough her thoughts would go into a hibernating state while time marched by around her, hours, days, even months at a time.
Usually this would occur when she felt that the position she was lying in was no longer comfortable. So she turned over to the other side.
Grrng. Fwsh. THUMP. Crk.
The blankets fluttered and slid over her tender skin while the mattress groaned beneath her as she settled into place.
But, no, this new position did not feel any better. In fact it was far less than better. She was profoundly uncomfortable now. That could only mean that it was time to get up and take a walk.
The bed creaked and groaned louder still as she moved with greater intensity. Her head parted with the cushy barricade of pillows, the blankets slid away around her, and the veil which surrounded the bed parted to reveal her, a bank of clouds sliding away from a black sun.
Nightmare Moon was a very distinct mare. Her coat was dark as pitch, as if painted in shadow, her eyes cool and icy with narrowed, predatory pupils, and her mane and tail were comprised of swirling nebulae of blue, dotted with twinkling stars and constellations. She had both a long horn that projected from her forehead and voluminous feathered wings stretching out from her back, marking her as one of only two alicorns in existence (as far as she knew, anyway; who was to say what sister dearest had been getting up to on that front by now). She had always been renowned for her beauty, her regal splendor, but that had been long ago, when she had been a different pony; she would have hoped that nowadays she invoked more along the lines of reverence and fear, had she had true subjects who could revere and fear her.
But then, in those days, she had been more simply on the “voluptuous” side, not so much “swollen”.
The dark mare brought one hoof down over the side of the bed to rest upon the floor, and then, slowly, she rotated to the side so that she could ease herself off of the mattress. Her midsection weighed heavily upon the edge and then slowly lowered downward. The underside was resting against the ground, its rotund girth filling the span of her legs, before she could move her other hoof into the appropriate place. It was preferable to the pose she had been in while sitting on the bed, at least, with the great globe resting directly in front of her, heaving upward in a great arc, with the hills of her breasts further on top of that, obscuring her vision. Now the heavy mounds were able to sag freely downward, splayed slightly to the sides by her gut. At last she was able to stand, and the bloated cheeks of her rear parted with the bed, relieving it of its burdensome duty for the time being.
She glanced out a window: the lunar landscape lay far below, sculpted into strange geometric shapes that might have been buildings, with the bleak void of space over the horizon. Hanging in the heavens, amidst the twinkling pinpricks of starlight, was a bright disc of blue and green and swirling white. Ponies knew it as Equus. She called it Home.
A sigh heaved from her lungs, her chest rising and falling in a labored arc.
Clothing was not strictly necessary, not when there was nopony sapient enough to give a fig one way or the other, but she had grown to appreciate the sensation of cloth upon her engorged frame over time. Her horn flashed with a pulse of arcane power, and velvety sashes materialized around her, cinching around the breadth of her bosom and obscuring her pert nipples, tethering around her waist and between her legs (even if her groin was completely obscured by the gravid apron which hung over her), and a purple robe came to rest upon her shoulders. She gave pause, just long enough to stand there and take in her surroundings whilst holding her hands against the sides of her stomach. She felt the tautness of her form, the weight which pulled down on her, and the gentle embrace of cloth against her sensitive skin. She felt the slow churning deep inside her. Then, finally, she was ready to leave the bedroom.
Her hoofsteps echoed through the vast, empty halls of the palace. It was far, far larger than a building occupied by one pony had any right to be, even one for such ostentatious purposes, but when one has such vast magical prowess, access to a bottomless supply of material resources from the dream world, and years upon years of free time on their hands, there was plenty of room to be excessive. The throne room alone was large enough that it could have contained the entirety of the castle she and her sister had lived in (a replica of which still stood a few plateaus to the east), a chamber of vast obsidian with tall pillars, carved to resemble the gnarled bark of ancient trees. Armies of equine soldiers could have marched through the halls and done battle with each other, and ursa majors could have stood to their full height and not reached the ceiling, swathed in darkness high above. Nightmare Moon thought that it was appropriate; there was no better way to represent the emptiness that she felt inside.
The emotional emptiness, of course, certainly not the physical emptiness.
In spite of her enormous encumbrance, walking was not a truly difficult activity for her – her strength was physical just as much as magical, making it a simple task to carry so much weight, and the moon’s lighter gravity made it all the easier. It was the way the bulk served to get in the way that really posed problems to her daily activities. Even lying down was a strenuous task, as there was just no position that really worked well for her – laying on her back meant bearing all that weight directly down upon her, and her wings would go numb while pinned beneath her, laying on either side resulted in an uneven posture from the way her hips and shoulders jutted outward, and laying on her stomach was just right out, far too stiff, even worse when its contents shifted. Even an immortal alicorn did not appreciate the sensation of pins and needles running along an aching joint or limb.
While she was walking, the underside of her belly only brushed against the floor whenever the bobbing motions of her gait caused it to swing downward. With each step, her legs had to push against the underside of the dark globe, rolling from one side to the other over the breadth of her thighs, and there was a dull pang whenever it came to rest against her loins. Her skin stretched and strained with each pendulous swing, carried by the monumental weight of her engorged frame. With all of this, the quickest pace that she was capable of was a brisk stroll; to attempt to run while this far along likely would have resulted in punting her gut upward, in turn knocking her breasts into her face.
Not to mention it would result in disturbing her passengers, which was never a desirable outcome.
Nightmare Moon came to a stop. Outside the throne room was a balcony overlooking an immense circular hall, staircases ringing around the outer perimeter. At the center there was a series of structures made of dull gold, abstract shapes constructed of long rods and circular nodes, floating and drifting through the air. It was an artistic endeavor which she had constructed about seventy years ago during one of her indolent phases – she had taken to calling it “Building Blocks of the Universe”. She had begun to prepare a small lecture about it, how it represented the rigid construction of reality at its most fundamental levels, as if it was an exhibit in an art museum, before she remembered that nopony was ever going to be visiting her and seeing it.
“It’s been…quiet for a while,” she said aloud. The sound echoed, and the golden sculptures seemed to ring in response. She stood beside the balcony railing so that she could rest a hand upon it (having to turn to the side in order to reach around the span of her own form). She then looked downward at the slopes of black that swelled out before her, bosom and then belly below that, a horizon that extended too far for her to see the bump of her navel at the end, and she placed her other hand against the side of its surface.
The Nightmare Moon of history (or folklore, more accurately) was known to be bellicose, violent, angry, jealous. This was not necessarily an inaccurate estimation, but she had changed dramatically in the time since then. Unfathomable years, generations and generations of mortal ponies living on the surface, had dulled her anger and her temper, leaving only the yearning deep in her soul.
But it had become a legitimate necessity with the addition of the charge in her womb. They responded vehemently to her changes in mood – and that pregnant mares were prone to being boiling pots of emotion didn’t make that equation any better. Control was something that she could easily exert upon herself, provided she was in the right mindset for it, which meant that mistakes typically only arose in the form of catastrophic cascade failures that resulted in a rampage across the lunar plains as her innards were stirred up like batter in a mixing bowl. The past century had been a particularly calm span of time, the calmest she had been in the entirety of her banishment, perhaps. It had been during this time that she had created this piece of enchanted golden metal work, and there were several similar pieces throughout the umbral palace which she had made in this period as well – her “tranquil” period, she might call it. It was almost enough for her to feel content with being secluded up here.
“…Century…Century…?”
Her pale blue eyes widened, and the narrow slits of her pupils dilated.
“No…is it time already?! It can’t…it can’t-!”
COME.
They lurched inside her.
Nightmare Moon always thought that she had grown used to this. She also always managed to forget that each time it was worse than the last.
A scream erupted from her throat as her face contorted with agony. She clutched at her midsection as her legs gave out beneath her. The brunt of her weight came upon the banister beside her, which groaned and buckled, bending outward slightly, but it remained steady. The golden sculptures rang shrilly in a deafening cacophony. Her chest heaved in labored gasps as she futilely massaged the dark globe of flesh, the surface of which now rippled and convulsed. The insides of her thighs grew moist, dampened by fluid leaking from her innards. It could have just been her water breaking, or it could have been something cruder, hotter and stickier.
An alicorn’s superequine toughness should have made the pangs of pregnancy an effortless task, her body durable enough to suffer no damage from the churning movements of a developing child (or however many there were inside that hot, sweltering dark).
Pony foals were not known to have claws or barbs, though.
“Help…help…!” she cried out in sobs, gentle at first, and then she took in a deep breath before bellowing one more time, “Help me!”
They came for her. Like shadows given shape, they emerged from the walls and floor, came dripping down from the ceiling high above. Inky masses of darkness that billowed and shambled in the vague approximation of an equine form. As they converged, they joined into each other and progressively lost their shape, turned into a wave of solid darkness that crashed around her. Vague pseudopods in the shape of hands groped at her form, and they tenderly pulled her away from the precarious balcony, then began the process of lifting her off of her suddenly all-too-overtaxed legs. In spite of these enchanted servants’ blind obedience, though, and in spite of Nightmare Moon’s express request for their assistance, she thrashed wildly amidst her pained moans in response to their touch, succeeding in slamming into a number of head-shaped protrusions, splattering in vaporous wisps of black before reforming. She was in need, but even though she had become so much mellower over the years that did not diminish her pride.
Nightmare Moon’s cries and curses filled the palace halls as the dark bore her from one room to the next – it knew where to go without being directed by her. She was scarcely conscious of her own surroundings along the way, her eyes blinded by rage and pain, it all turned into a blur. Her belly had grown hot, and she could feel it beating and pulsating like a heart as the passengers riding inside her thrashed, trying to force themselves out of her. Her skin was tighter than it had ever been, and her vulva, remaining sealed shut like fortress gates, was under an unbearable strain to keep her contents from escaping. Not time yet. Not just yet.
Outside. A crisp, aromatic smell filled her nostrils, fresher and stronger than the dull, still air (or what approximated air; Nightmare Moon had never been too sure exactly how these logistics worked) of the interior of the building, and the light of the stars grew stronger. They entered a broad courtyard, the majority of which consisted of gardens, home to droves of vivid blue flowers. Out beyond the enclosing walls, spires and minarets rose, the rooftops of an empty city isolated within the center of the palatial grounds. The shadows left her here upon a dais at the very center before fading back into the black stone. She lay upon her side, choking and sobbing through her breaths, fighting to maneuver into an upright position. Her hands clutched at her middle, but aside from the short hairs of her coat there was nothing to find purchase on, the mass turned into a balloon of flesh.
She glanced upward just as the light shone upon her.
When Nightmare Moon had looked out the window of her bedroom, she had seen a sky full of stars, more than a pony could ever hope to count on a single night. Now there was only one, blazing and bright, larger even than the distant blue and green planet that hung in the heavens, swallowing everything. Her eyes ached as she stared directly into its searing brilliance, brighter even than her sister’s sun. Everything around her was bathed in white, obliterating the shadows of the gloomy architecture. It was engulfing the moon.
And then, amidst the blinding void, a shape emerged. It seemed a dark figure from her point of view, cast in black by the light which bloomed behind it. Slowly, as it came closer, it solidified into a shape that was more clearly identifiable, but for the briefest of moments the outline flickered and wavered, betraying a shape that was beyond comprehension.
As the defender of Equestria and the guardian of dreams, she had been well-acquainted with monsters, the things that go bump in the night and give young ponies fright. There were some things, though, which no pony, not even an alicorn, was meant to see.
In the past he had come to her wearing the dresses of noble stallions from her time, frilled jackets and pantaloons, even a powdered wig for good measure. Now he wore a jacket and leggings, woven from threads of silken darkness. A crimson tie, red as blood, hung from around his neck.
Dressed thus, the only part of his body that was clearly distinct was his face, but the face was all that one needed to see. His skin was pallid, waxy, hairless, stretched taut over the shape of his skull, muzzle thin and cheeks sharp. He had no lips, leaving his huge rectangular teeth on full display, yellowed, but not that characteristic of poor dental hygiene, rather of old, worn bones. His mane was scraggly and flat and lifeless, hanging limply in strands around his face. And his eyes were nothing but sockets, vacant pits, and yet bearing an incomprehensible presence. She had learned not to look into these too long, for they contained madness.
He was
(abominable)
stunning.
He extended one hand in a flourish to her and then bowed; his face always remained pointed in her direction.
The mare felt herself rising again, lifted from the unseen floor. It wasn’t the same as when the shadows had lifted her – she was not being pushed against the pull of gravity that had kept her anchored in place. It was not even like levitation in the way that unicorns were capable of performing it with their magic. It was as if weight and gravity suddenly simply no longer mattered. They were subservient to his will.
She still ached all the same as her womb shifted uncomfortably, ready to tear open if jostled too much more. The gushing fluid of her loins splattered somewhere beneath her gut still, squeezing through the gaps between her engorged thighs. Her cheeks stung from the tears that had run glistening tracks along the contours of her fur.
“Take it out.” It was during these meetings, as she begged, that the voice of the pony she had once been broke through. “Please, take it out now. It’s been long enough.”
He did not say anything, but he opened and closed his mouth, and his skull-teeth knocked against each other terribly. There was not enough of a face for him to have distinct expressions, but she still knew when he was smiling.
“It’s been a…a hundred years!” Luna cried between labored breaths (each swelling of the lungs bringing her to the verge of bursting), and she bared her own teeth for all their worth, the pointed canines glinting. “I can’t…it’s…it’s too much! I didn’t want this!”
Swelling. Tearing. Convulsing. Oh gods, so unbelievably full. The bumps against the interior of her stomach’s surface from her contents’ movements had ceased, but only because there was no room for the infernal spawn to move, and the horrible shape of their structure was etched into the black skin, a bas-relief of writhing tentacles.
(But that was Luna, and Luna did not know what was best for Nightmare Moon.)
And the monstrous pony gave a deathly rattle of laughter as his teeth continued to clack together, independent of the voice that then began to speak.
NINE.
NINE CENTURIES.
ONE.
ONE MORE TO GO.
And then he put his hands against her bloated, gravid stomach, and it gave Nightmare Moon pause. It did not make the panging pulses of pain go away, but it suddenly made them seem astronomically distant, as the touch of his palms and fingers was cold as ice, sucking all the warmth out of her instantly. It numbed her brain, thoughts frozen and crystallized.
A THOUSAND.
A THOUSAND YEARS OF IMPRISONMENT.
THEN.
AND ONLY THEN.
ABSOLUTION.
That was the most that he would speak.
He made no motions to unbuckle his belt and pants; they simply did so on their own, moving fluidly to loosen themselves and fall slack, revealing the naked legs beneath and
(the instrument of her destruction)
a stallion’s penis, already flaring and erect. She saw the true form just for a brief moment: something in the pony’s groin that wriggled violently, dark and too terrible to be imagined. Each time, she saw it a little more clearly.
And that was all that Nightmare Moon had time to see before she began to tilt backward, and the mountains of her bosom and then her belly rose up to eclipse any view that she had of that horrible skeleton face. A small mercy, as she knew that he now had view of her groin as he spread her legs to either side, and her dampened underwear melted into the ether from which it had first come. He pressed his bony face against the underside of her midsection, his hard, pointy features pinching the tender flesh like needles, and his clammy, rancid breath came wafting out, the stench discernible even with so much meat in the way.
The first time, she reminisced, she had thought that this was death.
She knew better than that now. He was too old for death.
(Oh gods, just do it already.)
He plunged into her, and her howls rent the air asunder, throwing her head back in an agonizing rush of ecstasy. She had seen the dark shaft with her own two eyes, a length of only a foot at best (had he made himself larger over the centuries?) but it felt like a tree was being inserted into her vagina, branches and thorns and all. She was already full to bursting, she didn’t need even more inside her!
(No, no, more!)
He didn’t bother with beating around the bush, he never did – there was no pleasure in his actions, nor even cruelty. Nightmare Moon had come to understand this in the rare moments when she allowed herself to think about these meetings in any detail, given that during them she was too preoccupied with other matters to put much thought to them. She might have been ashamed to confess that she had never had much in the way of sexual relations before her banishment. She was just familiar enough to know the way that stallions acted when they were aroused, filled with virile vitality, a carnal hunger of the loins, flaring into bloom, injecting a lance of hot seed into the mare (or sometimes other male) of their desires. She had begun to understand that this was not what he was doing in the slightest, for he could not begin to care for her, did not even care for the act in itself – it was merely what her mind conjured in order to comprehend it.
This was not sex, not for him, it was a parent feeding their young.
The thing that masqueraded as a pony contracted his innards, a purely voluntary internal mechanism that squeezed out some vile fluid inside her. She did not have to feel the full brunt of the load splashing against the inner walls of her packed womb, for the children were hungry, those equally vile things which had taken up residence inside her, but still there was some left uneaten, and it burned like acid as it was absorbed into the fleshy lining. She had gone just about blind from the sensory overload which surged through her brain, nearly rendered catatonic, her eyes rolled back in their sockets. It was necessary, though; she needed the supplement just as much to prevent from splitting at the seams. The astral spawn convulsed violently inside her as they not only swelled in girth – new limbs formed, girded with cords of musculature, claws and teeth yearning for flesh, and its roars thrummed through her – but also multiplied, dividing like cells, but this time it did not cause her further pain. At last, she actually felt that the pain was diminishing, the strain of her skin easing away as she stretched to better accommodate the increased mass. She was lost in the swelling waves, rising up over her head.
FREEDOM.
VENGEANCE.
ADORATION.
He had promised these things to her once, long ago, when he had first appeared to her in a corona of light. It would be a long-term investment, but it would be worth it in the end. All she had to do was carry his children to term, and with their power, an army of cosmic evil, she would be free at last.
Such a simple task. What reason was there to say no?
It hadn’t seemed too hard at first. Adjusting to her shift in balance had taken a while, and she had experienced a few mild mood swings here and there. Then it came time for his centennial progress check, and suddenly the strain increased drastically. The next time after that, it had grown further astronomical, exponential. She had begged to be rid of this burden more than once, but there was no going back now.
And in time, the concept of the pain became scarily natural to her.
NOT MUCH LONGER.
ALL SHALL BE YOURS.
As the stars’ light faded back into their proper places in the heavens, Nightmare Moon was left lying on her side on the dais, unmoving save for the shallowest possible breathing. Her jaws hung open, slack, and her eyes were glassy and still, unseeing. There wouldn’t be a whole lot for her to see anyway.
Her breasts rested heavily, one stacked awkwardly on top of the other, flopped out before her, scant inches away from her face. Had she been conscious, they might have made a decent pair of pillows, far more comforting than the hard stone floor. Beyond them, the crest of her belly extended further still, a dome of dark-furred flesh that had now thoroughly eclipsed the rest of her body. If she were standing, it would have been laying firmly upon the ground, and it alone would probably rise high enough to obliterate any view in front of herself, even with her bosom splayed out to the sides. She was more midsection than mare.
It had become expected by now that she would be rendered comatose by this meeting, as she had been for each that had come before for increasingly long spans of time – she had already been planning for the likelihood that this time it would be a whole month, maybe more. In that span, she would only be able to think of the distant sensations of her body, taut and heavy, her occupants still and silent for the time being.
She could only dimly think to herself, “One more…one more century…then freedom.”
Freedom from her prison, or from her burden?
She had begun to question how much she wanted either of those.
There would be plenty of time to think about it.
Author's Note
It's like Resonance except the fetish comes right at the beginning instead of halfway through!
