Sundered Fate

1: Awakening

The day the Crystal Empire marched on the city of Canterlot, after Twilight and her friends had failed to stop the rise of Sombra - though the mare couldn't blame them, she couldn't, no matter how hard she tried -
(They were young, so young. Little fillies, a child dragon. They should not have been sent to do a Princess's job.)

• was the day that the sky blazed with the Sun's wrathful glare, staring down with a baleful eye, as Princess Celestia engulfed herself in its heat and tore a chasm between the two clashing armies. Each beat of her great, fiery wings turned the combatants caught in their wake to ash, regardless of which side they fought for.

(She'd been too slow. Too slow, and the flames had licked at her fur with cat tongues and broiled her flesh. She remembered screaming, screaming for her sister, screaming for her friend, engulfed in flames before throwing herself into the nearest patch of bloodied, hoof-churned mud, rolling until they ate at her no more.)

The Blaze of Glory, they called it - the thing that saved the lands to the south at such great cost.

The thing that had taken so many young lives, taken her sister from her, in a last-ditch effort to save so many more.

She still couldn’t see anything glorious about it.

The mare had been...pretty, once. She supposed she would have taken pride in her appearance, perhaps, if she’d been given more time. Now, standing in the cave on three hooves -
(She’d lost one leg to Sombra’s Empire, along with the use of the eye on the same side. She’d taken much, much more from him. She thinks her sister would have been proud, or perhaps appalled.)

-Runic words of protection, of power, of anger and grief carved into her scorched flesh by her own doing-

(She still remembered the pain of her magic cutting into the scar tissue, but the burns, the aching loss, had hurt so much more-)

She stood, and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath and letting it out in a plume of steam.

The mare didn’t feel the cold, not now - she couldn’t afford to.

Not when she was so close.

In some places in Equestria, the veil between worlds was thin. The mare was no stranger to the fact that there existed other universes to her own. Fate could converge, leaving marks of another place, another time, another world in their wake.

Before her was the stone statue of a unicorn stallion with a close-cropped mane and tail, all four hooves planted as if to stand against a tide, head held high, a skeletal helm fallen to the ground before him. A stone, carved in Old Equish, lay in front of the monument - reminiscent of a gravestone, marking some great hero.

Or villain.

“We are, all of us, slaves to our fate.”

She couldn’t help but snort derisively at that. Fate had deemed that her world would defeat the Crystal Empire.

If there was one thing the mare had learned, it was that Fate was a flighty bitch that could be tempted by a more exciting story.

“I hope this is exciting enough for you,” she muttered under her breath.

(She was talking to herself, to the statue, to Fate - when you spent so many years alone, chasing wisps of hope, you filled the silence with words yourself - or you let it consume you.)

Her horn sparked and crackled, darkness wrapping around it, filled with a million tiny stars. The runes blazed to light, one by one, filling the cave with celestial light.

The former princess of the Moon, Lunaria Polaris, last of the free Alicorn princesses, called to a paragon of Chaos to rise from his slumber, to breathe and walk this earth once more. Her magic wrapped around the statue, fairy lights in an unending darkness, calling to the faint flicker of light she could almost taste, bidding it to grow into the inferno it had once been -

(Like the inferno that her sister had turned into -)

• And to fight, to command, to live, as he had so long ago, in a different world, in a different time.

And this time, Fate will not collar you, Archaon the Everchosen - no, Diederick Kastner. You will find no excuses with me.

There was no great flash of light, no rumbling of the earth, no sign whatsoever that her spell had any effect on the statue before her. Luna struggled to maintain the magic - once an easy feat, but now, her runes sparked and flickered, sending little shocks of pain through her system.

You’ve felt worse. Without them, you couldn’t even cast this spell.

As the moment stretched, as the strain started edging into the unbearable side of pain, a small crack appeared in the stone. Time seemed to stop - her heartbeat certainly felt like it did - as the crack spread and widened, stone groaning and crumbling as the spell took hold. As it flaked from the massive figure, deep black armor was revealed, gleaming dully in the light of her magic.

Caramel fur rippled briefly as it settled, the white mane on his head joining it as he felt the air for the first time in a millennia. Tired eyes slid open, examining his new form with an almost detached interest. Archaon looked at Luna, and she felt as if she were being measured against some unknown standard.

The mare knew she must look a state, as she let her magic fade. Her fur was patchy and scorched, the runes carved into the exposed flesh flickering and going dim, until the only source of light was the orbs she used to guide her way. On her right side, she was missing a good half of her foreleg; her eye on the same side useless, milky white - the only time she could see with it was when she flooded it with her magic, and then she’d be plagued by a migraine when she inevitably let the magic fade.

He blinked slowly, then spoke in a feather-soft, but deep voice.

“...I did not expect to ever wake up. Are you the one responsible?”

Silence, as Luna looked him over - just as he had her. Granted, he didn’t have to turn his head to keep her in his full view.

"Yes." She finally answered. "I called you back to life, Diederick Kastner. I stoked the fire of your weakened soul."

The stallion let out a soft sigh.

“That man died long ago, alicorn. How did you learn that name?” Embers rose from the ground beneath his hooves as he took a hesitant step towards her. His legs almost buckled underneath him for a brief moment, before he quickly regained his balance.

“I doubt there are many who would willingly spread the name of the one who attempted - almost succeeded - in destroying the world, let alone that of his birth. How odd, then, that you seem to know.”

He gazed at her a few moments, then poked at the helmet beneath him with a hoof, a small frown crossing his face.

Luna was quiet, watching him contemplatively, before she settled back on her haunches, tail flicking around her rear hooves much like a cat’s. Balancing carefully, she rubbed a hoof along her muzzle, a quiet sigh escaping her mouth.

She was so tired.

"You dreamt, in your stone cairn. Your heart still, your lungs empty, but you still dreamed." She watched him now, night-sky eye locked on his face, studying him as if he were a book she could read and decipher.

"You dreamed of your crusade. You dreamed of your massacre. You dreamed of fighting and bloodshed. You dreamed of your defeat, snatched from the jaws of victory."

She let those words hang there for a long moment, the echoes of what she had once been putting steel in her voice.

Then, unexpectedly, it softened.

"And you dreamed of guilt. Hopeless rage. Deep sorrow and loss. Bitterness. A sense that your hooves had been set upon a path you were not allowed to choose. A man named Diederick Kastner, a faithful servant to a silent god."

She looked down at her hoof, then back up at him.

"Tis a risk, releasing you, aye. I'm quite curious to see what you'll do now."

A humorless chuckle escaped him, his eyes almost dead.

“What...I will do?”

“I have never had a choice. Diederick was a pawn of the false god, Sigmar. Abandoned when he needed his god most, when all he wanted was to be told Fate wasn’t set in stone, and receiving only silence.”

He took another step forwards, kicking the helmet aside with contempt on his face.

“Archaon was a pawn of the Four. They whispered lies to him, told him they were setting him free while they wrapped him in chains so tight he didn’t know they were there, until he grew to love them. His one and only act of defiance, meaningless.”

He chuckled again, a glint of madness in his eyes.

“Before you stands a husk, bereft of any purpose. Will he be your pawn?”

Luna regarded him with a steady gaze as he spoke, waiting for him to finish, not moving a muscle as he stepped closer.

"You say you are a husk, and yet I fueled your soul. I brought your shriveled, blackened heart to life once more."

Here, she stood, magic coalescing into a limb to balance her out. Her words would need to hit their mark and stick, and she couldn’t do that if she was wobbling like a newborn.

“I must say, I never thought your slumber would leave you so very, very stupid.”

Her wings shot open; the left, where her burn scars were most prominent, was a skeletal facsimile, ashes still drifting between what remained of her feathers.

The right was the same as it had always been, dark blue guide feathers glinting in the light of her magicked leg.

"Look at me." Her voice echoed with power. "Look at me, Everchosen! Look at me, with your dimming star of a soul, and know this!

“Fate is a fickle thing. It said my kingdom - that my sister was to survive and thrive, and yet she wrapped herself in the rays of the sun and burned a chasm between the North and the South at the cost of hundreds, thousands of lives, not to mention herself!

“Fate dictated me to guide dreams and paint the sky with stars, and yet now I am crippled and marked and alone, chasing whispers in the hopes that I might find something other than ash!

“Our heroes, enslaved! Our countries, at war! Our people, living in fear, not knowing when Sombra’s Empire will darken the horizon once more!”

She stepped closer, her presence alone filling the cave, oppressive and dark, an abyss glinting with a million tiny lights. She knew her pupil was narrowing, becoming slit, but she didn’t care.

"You did not get the answer you desired from your God, and thus walked into your fate. If you are a husk, part of the reason falls upon your own shoulders - instead of fighting, you gave up."

Her wings snapped shut, and suddenly, her royal presence was gone - in its place, a tired, broken mare, who stared at him with an eye as bright as the moon.

"I will not make you my pawn. You are free, now, to do as you wish. I can only wonder, though - will you fall into old patterns, and become a slave, a trained dog, to the whims of so-called Fate once more?"

She stepped closer, invading his space, nearly muzzle-to-muzzle with him.

"...Or will you fight? Will you try to make something better of yourself?"

A heartbeat.

Two.

More silence.

Luna stepped back. Once, twice.

Then, she turned, and began to walk away, pausing at the entrance of the cave to look back.

“The choice is yours, Archaon. Make it well - I will not force you to walk any path you do not wish to follow. Burn this world, aid me in saving it, or simply exist.

“I do not have it within me to persuade a fool from a path he is determined to walk. Regardless of what you do, I will keep to my road, and keep trying to save my kingdom.”

A humorless chuckle escaped her.

“It’s only cost me an eye and a leg so far. I have much more to give.”

After a moment, she heard him follow her, slowly - his steps unsteady, as if still getting used to walking on all fours. She heard a clunk, then a skittering; he’d likely kicked his helm even further away.

When they broke into the clean air of the Everfree Forest, Luna took a deep breath in appreciation, allowing the magic that served as a leg to disperse. Maintaining it cost her more energy than she was willing to spare at the moment.

“Why me?”

The question caused her to turn, an eyebrow quirked as she eyed him.

“What salvation could I possibly offer?” There was no heat to his words, simply confusion. “You say you have seen my dreams. You know, then, the monster that stands before you. And still you seek my aid. Why?”

“Join me at my camp, and I’ll tell you a story. It might answer your question. Either way, I hold to what I said - your destiny is your own.”

With those - Rarity would have called them maddeningly cryptic - words, she walked towards the banked fire and pile of soft grasses and moss she called a camp and settled down, folding her legs under her with a sigh.

A spark of magic had the fire roaring to life again, chasing off the chill of the quickly approaching night. Luna watched the moon rise, simultaneously happy and sad that the duty did not fall to her anymore.

Silence, save for the crackling of the fire, until Luna finally began to speak, her voice soft and lilting in the way of somepony that had told a story again and again.

“Once, long ago - a century, perhaps more - there was a young mare and her sister, who ruled over the land of Equestria together.”