As they trotted toward the palace gates, Twilight suddenly heard her parents began to sob.

“N-no… no… no…” Her father murmured sadly, under his breath.

“Don’t look, don’t look Twilight.” Velvet whispered back to her.

But it was too late - there was no way that Twilight wouldn’t have seen… it.

Hanging from the royal gates - those big golden doors which had never been shut through all of Twilight’s life, dangling from a crudely lashed piece of cordage…

... was Celestia’s severed head.

Twilight stumbled, and fell forwards, shaking, sobbing. Seein her beloved teacher’s head - so crudely displayed from the gate was just too much. The alicorn had been like a second mother to her, coaching her through so many things in her young life - being there for her, encouraging her, inspiring her. She’d always been there to pick Twilight up when she was down, to find a way to make things right when everything was wrong.

Despite everything that had happened to her this morning, Twilight knew that Celestia had the power to overcome all of this, to unwind the clock of this hellish countdown to armageddon, she’d rescue them…. Rescue everypony! Even the ones who were dead or crushed or enslaved… that’s what Twilight had held onto. After all, Celestia is a God.

...was a God.

Now she was just a severed head, hanging from a gate. She seemed strange, hanging there - her face different, more evil-looking - her mane a fiery blaze instead of it’s usual rainbow-turquoise flow. Her face was pallid, too… having long since dripped out every drop of royal alicorn blood into a red spattered pool on the cobblestones below.

“Get up, or I’ll get you up.” The lieutenant hissed whirling on Twilight and jerking the chain.

Twilight Velvet struggled against the jerking chain and lifted her daughter up from the ground, a small bit of bitter comfort, quickly removed as the older unicorn was jerked back into line with a yank of the chain.

“Satanic bitch.” The lieutenant growled up at the gruesome, softly-swinging body part as she walked under the head, before spitting into the pool of blood.

Twilight could only cry as she was dragged along, her body automatically putting one hoof in front of the other as she did, dragging her hooves through the despoiled pool of her beloved mentor’s blood.

She didn’t register much after that. Her mind was stuck in a spiral of despair - remembering all of the good times she’d had with her teacher, her family, her friends, her city. All gone now, all wiped away into the terrible ashbin of a lost war. She didn’t see the bloody corpses of royal guardsponies in the halls, didn’t hear the screaming wail of serving-mares being defiled in the rooms as they walked down the royal hallways, didn’t smell the burning books from the smoke pouring out of the library.

She only started to slowly come back to her senses as she approached the royal throne-room gate, two huge ornate golden-metalwork laden doors. Doors Twilight knew well from so much of her time spent with the Princess.

With a rap, on the door-knocker, the door creaked open incrementally - a stoic, completely armor-clad thestral guard stood there. He looked different than any other that Twilight had seen, clad in a dark purple, with a flowing robe and a hawk-billed helm that didn’t let anypony see his face.

With a glance at the prisoners, the guard nodded, then stepped back, letting the lieutenant in.

Twilight heard the din of frightened murmurs and crying ponies as she entered the grand hall. Up against either side of the audience chamber were the nobility of Canterlot. Twilight recognized many of them - they had never been the types of ponies she liked to socialize with… many were so political or socially-minded that they were almost intolerable… but there were many fine, decent upstanding citizens as well. Ponies who really cared about the common-folk, about the ponies they represented.

All of them were cowering now, some holding foals and loved ones, shuddering together in groups.

In the center of the audience chamber was a massive pile of dead nobles, all of which had some horrific injury. Some were missing their eyes, some had their throats slashed open, some disemboweled… one corpse had a scroll teleported into his skull: a blank-brain dead look was in his eyes beneath the strange fusion of skin, fur, bone and parchment. Each body in the pile had been executed in some creatively evil, despicable way.

...there were foals in the pile too.

A lone pony stood near the pile, a meister unicorn with tattered regalia showing that he was one of the mages of the realm. He was an older unicorn with a grey-court and a white beard.

He was shaking.

“And THOU, thou art Royal Cross, the court physician?”

Twilight looked up and saw her, setting up on the dais, on the throne of gold ornamentation and velvet-red seating… a chair which Celestia had always been loathe to sit upon, preferring instead to come down and sit with her citizens and nobles… A jet-black mare alicorn, her sharp features looking down upon her conquest as if it were no more than an ant, a brilliant blue mane trailing out behind her fully outstretched wings, poised in the regal spread that Twilight had only ever seen in artwork.

Nightmare Moon.

“Y-your m-majesty… I… tht-here is no need for this… I humbly resign my p-po-”

“Silence.” The night princess clipped him off. “As ruler, I have every right to review my… sister’s court appointments and see if they are fit to remain in the service of my new realm.” The way with which Nightmare Moon bit off the mention of her sister was filled with so much venom that a communal shiver roiled through the chamber.

“It is not your prerogative to resign before I have tested your capacity and professionalism to remain in my new court.” She smiled evilly, “Just because your colleagues - “ She nodded at the pile of corpses, “-have all failed thus far will not permit you to avoid my test. Your nation may have need of you… or it may not.”

The meister shook harder.

Nightmare Moon looked to her left, casually picking up a long scroll and glancing at it. “Royal Cross - it says you have a grand filly, Blue Belle? Why has she not come forth as well?”

The meister choked and coughed, sputtering with tears. He looked hopeless, defeated. “P-please your majesty… I beg you… you may k-kill me b-but-”

“Nonsense!” Nightmare Moon chuckled. “She should come forward and see her grandsire take part in an honorable and historic test of his ability.” Nightmare Moon’s horn flashed purple and a filly, scarcely older than 6 years of age was dragged out from the crowd of huddled nobles, who had been trying to shield her.

“N-no! Blue Belle!” The meister groaned, hugging his granddaughter as she was magically pulled to him by the Princess’s magic.

“Poppa!” The filly sniffled, hugging him back.

“Enough!” Nightmare moon sighed, shaking her head. “Now meister, as physician you must have much experience with the cardiac system of ponies, yes?”

The meister fell to his knees. “P-please, your majesty.”

“...and even without your magic, you should be able to demonstrate how to resuscitate a pony using the earth-pony method? I assume the teachings have not been lost this past… thousand years…” Again, the power in that venomous word made the whole room tremble.

“Y-yes, y-your grace.”

“Then… demonstrate.”

Nightmare moon’s horn flashed again. Suddenly Blue Belle coughed and grabbed her chest, falling to her knees, gasping and choking, before her eyes rolled up into her head and she fell onto her side.

“N-no!” Royal Cross moved quickly, rolling onto her side and placing his ear against her chest. After half a moment he rolled her onto her back, placed both of his hooves on her fragile little breastbone and began to pump in and out.

Twilight heard the terrifying crack of the filly’s fragile ribcage as Royal Cross desperately thudded in and out with his hooves, sweat pouring from his brow as he did so. Every few moments he would pause and lean in, blowing air into the Blue Belle’s muzzle, inflating her small thoracic cavity, before he would resume his steady pumping of her body.

“Admirably done, meister - mine ears can sense her weak heartbeat returning to life, you are nearly there.” Nightmare Moon smirked, “So let us advance a second complication - my reign will be filled with war…” Nightmare Moon stared down at the doctor, who was wholly ignoring her and focused on trying to revive his beloved grandfilly, “...so my physician must be prepared for the wounds of the battlefield… such as… a double amputation.”

Nightmare Moon’s horned lanced out two brutal sharp, cutting blast of magic, precisely aimed. Two thin red lines appeared on Royal Cross’s forelegs, an inch below his hooves. For half a moment it seemed as if Nightmare moon had only given the doctor a pair of papercuts on the hooves which were desperately trying to drive life back into the unconscious filly.

Then they both sloughed off.

“GAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!” Royal Cross’s scream echoed through the chamber, as his two detached hooves fell lifelessly to the floor with wet thumps.

Twilight had never seen such red, dark, arterial blood before… shooting out in great gouts of splattering arcs, like overpowered lawn-sprinklers.

The doctor thrashed about for a moment, stunned by the overwhelming pain and shock at having suddenly lost his two hooves - before he turned his attention back to the young filly. With desperation he tried to work his bloody, spurting stumps against her shattered ribcage, now wet and swamped with his own blood.

He tried.

Gasping through the pain, he tried to use his stumps to continue the life giving compressions, but it was much harder, almost impossible to do with the boney ends of his forelegs… and very quickly his strength was bleeding out, literally.

He quickly began to sag, slumping forward. “B-blue Belle… n-no… p-please…. Somepony… h-help…” His eyes rolled back and he fell forward onto his granddaughter, the two ponies now reduced to a bloody pile of still twitching body parts.

Nightmare Moon’s eyes scanned the room. “Does not one of you craven ponies desire to help the good doctor and his young progeny?” The huddled masses sobbed and hugged each other tighter, hugged their own foals tighter. All of them knew that catching the eye of Nightmare Moon at this moment would only mean death for them and their own foals… sooner rather than later. It was pure terror.

“Very well then, I believe our poor physician has failed the test,” Nightmare Moon casually lifted the two lifeless ponies and tossed them onto the pile with the other ponies she’d tormented. “So once again I must replace my sister’s choice for her court…” Again that deadly vituperative invective at the mention of her sister was clear to all.

“Now, who will be next?” Nightmare Moon’s eyes scanned the chamber.

Immediately she locked on to the new ponies who had entered during her ‘medical examination’. Twilight felt like a dark spotlight had been cast over her body, as those twin slit-eyes found her and flashed with excitement.

“YOU! LIEUTENANT!” Nightmare Moon hissed, stepping out of her throne for the first time. Each hoof-fall landed like a thundercrack on the white marble of the royal dais. “HOW LONG HAST THOU BEEN THERE?”

The lieutenant fell to her belly, sticking her nose into the floor, humbling herself as much as possible. “W-we only just arrived, Goddess, I ap-”

“You brought me the Sparkles! You should have interrupted me at once!” Nightmare Moon strode down th steps, never furling her majestic, black wings. “I have been so tired of these… distractions.”

“M-mercy my Godd-”

Nightmare Moon ignored her trembling soldier as she strode toward the chain-linked threesome, casually stepping over the ruined bodies of the noble-ponies she’d sadistically executed. “I had so many plans for the next thousand years with my dear sister… but that bitch had to go and deny me even my revenge - killing herself with that ridiculous transformation. Daybreaker… fool. Does she not know that the night dominates the heavens? Stars are put twinkles amidst the vastness of the dark.”

IN only a few strides the tyrant had walked across the entirety of the gallery. All of the noble ponies were gasping and screaming as they shifted along the walls to get further away from the terror as she moved, approaching the group. Twilight felt like the black alicorn was growing in size, her presence looming over all as she approached, swamping her, overwhelming her with fear.

“And so, frustrated and denied, I must turn my... attentions… to her successor…” Nightmare Moon was right in front of Twilight Sparkle now. A single black feather extended from her left wing, sliding underneath Twilight’s neck almost lovingly. “I have been waiting for you, child. You were my sister’s prized pupil, her most fervent hope for the future.”

Twilight shuddered, trying to keep her eyes glued to the floor - staring at the heavy metal-clad hooves instead of the fang-filled smile looking at her. She’d never felt the oppressive weight of attention, not like this. It felt like an anvil had been laid upon her back, making her knees almost buckle.

“I have been waiting for you little one.” Nightmare moon’s feather-touch tenderly lifted Twilight’s chin to look at her. “These pathetic nobles were a mere time-wasting titillation for what I have in store for you… the hope of my sister.”

Nightmare Moon wheeled around and spoke to the cringing, frightened mass of ponies still huddled and weeping against the walls. “I am now going to take my leave for pressing matters that far exceed the import of the State. However, based on your performance - I move that the entire council be… dismissed.”

Nightmare Moon’s horn began to glow violently, dark bubbles of purple energy physically appearing in the thaumic haze that pulsed with menace around the alicorn. Even with her magical inhibitor ring installed, Twilight could feel the surge of evil magic, could feel it make the hair of her coat stand on end. Twilight Velvet and Night Light huddled in close to Twilight, doing their best to embrace her despite their chains.

“All in favor?” Nightmare moon cackled, lifting one of her two wings higher than the other to signal her vote. “All opposed?”

The shocked and terrified nobility were too frightened to even react - most of them simply clutched their loved ones more tightly, trying to turn away from the almost painful buildup of magical energy around the phenomenally powerful deity-princess.

“Then the measure… passes.”

A dark black lightning bolt lanced out from Nightmare Moon’s horn, careening through the nearest noble. From there it hopped outward, branching out like a lightning strike from an ominous thunderhead - in a single blink of an eye the dark magical electricity had struck through the entirety of the gathered nobles.

It wasn’t pretty, or quick.

A hissing popping sound filled the chamber: the squeal of boiling, bubbling flesh as it boiled and charred, releasing acrid smoke as pony-flesh was instantly raised to thousand-plus degree temperatures. Flesh turned black and flaky, bone was exposed where the bolt entered and exited each pony. Some of the foals caught fire, some simply… popped. The smell of flying and frying gore filled the chamber… but Nightmare Moon didn’t cease sending her powerful thaumic energy through her spell, the crackling hiss of high-voltage thaumic force conducting through fragile bodies echoing back and forth off of the marble walls.

As the spell approached a minute of casting time, some of the bodies had been reduced to ash - falling out of the web of chained lightning… concentrating the energy on any bodies that remained. They all had to be dead by now. Twilight hoped they were dead.

The thought of any pony being alive underneath a charred, smoking layer of fourth-degree burnt flesh was too horrifying to consider. On some ponies, whole segments of their skeletons were now exposed, their bones only held together by skeletal muscle that had hardened and cooked. Parents and children that had huddled together had almost fused into blackened charred molds.

It was… horrifying.

Finally, Nightmare Moon let the spell release, leaving a smoking ruin of ash, bone, muscle and flesh in her wake.

“Ah, much better.” Nightmare Moon sighed, her horn still scorching from her recent exertion. “Lieutenant Dusk, you are dismissed - thank you for your service.”

“M-my Goddess.” The lieutenant began to crawl backward, never turning her back on the alicorn.

“Now, Sparkle family… Dam, Sire, and Twilight. Please follow me…” Nightmare Moon began to walk toward the back entrance to the throne room which connected directly to Celestia’s chambers. She didn’t even bother jerking the chain. Twilight and her parents just followed, as if drawn by some evil gravity, not daring to test the waters by disobeying the monster in front of them. “I wish to… converse with you in a more, private setting. My sister’s room shall suffice.”

Nightmare Moon opened the door to Celestia’s chambers.

“I believe I have something that may interest you.”

As the doors swung open, Twilight immediately saw a stallion, currently strapped up to the ceiling by his forelegs, stretching him out such that his rear hooves just barely touched the ground. He was in bad shape, black and blue bruises scattered across his ribs, a small swollen abrasion underneath one of his eyes - which had burst a blood vessel, turning the white sclera a crimson red.

At his feet was a thestral mare, covering up his lower half.

But she could still recognize that stallion, immediately.

An audible gasp came from Twilight Velvet first, followed by a sob of relief from Night Light.

“Shining!”

Shining Armor craned up his head, which had been hanging down limply. It was him! Twilight felt her heart thud with happiness. She hadn’t thought much about her brother this past morning, hadn’t wanted to dare thinking about what horrible faith might have befallen him after the sack of the castle. He would have been one of the final lines of defense between Celestia and the invaders, and was not a pony who would have tucked tail and run.

But here he was… alive!

“WHAT ART THOU DOING?” Nightmare Moon’s voice rent the air like a thunderbolt.

The thestral guardsmare who had been standing in front of Shining armor whirled in surprise, her hackles all bristled out in absolute fear. As she stepped back from the suspended unicorn, more of her brother’s body was revealed… including his lower parts: a bobbing well-endowed and wet erection.

From the way the Thestral pulled her hoof across her muzzle it was immediately clear to everypony present that she had been servicing him. A bootlace had been tied tightly around her brother’s base to keep him… inflated.

“I commanded you to guard the prisoner - to ensure he would not be touched.” Nightmare Moon hissed through her fanged teeth.

“Y-yes G-godde-”

“SILENCE.” Nightmare Moon’s black aura began to pour out from behind her, turning the whole shade of the royal bed-chamber a few shades darker and filling the air with a chill. “I did not wait a thousand years for my revenge only to have it spoiled by an insolent, randy foal like you.”

“Goddess I was onl-”

“You dare to speak back?” Nightmare Moon seized the thestral in her magical aura, levitating her toward the door and over the sparkle family as if she were nothing more than a ragdoll. “Dare to put this body’s needs ahead of MINE?”

“N-no I-”

“Insolence! I will teach you how to ignore the demands of the flesh.” Nightmare Moon growled, bending the thestral in her magic. With a horrifying snap, the thestral’s spine was broken the wrong way like a toothpick. The evil alicorn didn’t stop there, however, bending the bat back and forth, and rotating the severed break around it’s joint, ensuring that now connection of the spinal column remained between upper and lower body.

“Aaaaarrrrhhhgh!” The mare screamed out in pain. Twilight somehow found herself sympathizing, terrified for the pony who had moments before been raping her brother. No pony, bat or unicorn, evil or good, deserved this.

Satisfied, Nightmare Moon tossed the mare away into the hallway, where she landed in a moaning, heaving, vomiting pile.

“Get out.” The princess menaced, “Or I will finish the job.”

The thestral sobbed, limply using her forehooves to drag her paralyzed lower body away from the royal chambers.

“You should thank me, Dark Star. I hath seen to it that the burning distraction between your loins is never felt again.” The cackle in her voice offset the sobbing form the hallway, as she slammed the door shut.

“Apologies, Sparkle family.” Nightmare Moon crowed, trotting over behind the limply hanging stallion. “My children do get so… lustful after battle. They take after their mother.”

“Cut him down!” Velvet shouted, taking a step toward her son.

Nightmare Moon simply glared back, affixing her with that steely, dead slit-eye. Twilight Sparkle could feel the very air of the room freeze with the angry menace of terrible violence. Velvet stopped in her tracks, shaking.

“...Still, I can’t blame her selection…” Nightmare Moon went on, circling around Shining Armor. “Most impressive for a unicorn of his age... “ She brought one of her metal-shod hooves up the underside of his shaft, pausing only briefly underneath his head. “Though I imagine you two are already well aware - he must have bedded you many times since he began his ruts.”

Twilight and Velvet shook their heads with disgust and confusion.

“Ah, is that no longer in vogue then?” Nightmare Moon mused, her face darkening. “You’ll have to forgive me… my knowledge of the current mores is 1000 years out of date.” The dripping rage she built up to as she went through her admission made both mares shudder.

“Perhaps, I should force you both to experience the cultural norms from my time.” Nightmare Moon ran her hoof down her brother’s cock, grasping him near the base. Twilight tried to turn her head away from the engorged penis. It belonged to her brother, she’d seen the thing of course, in accidental glimpses or the like. But seeing him in full display like this, was… grotesque.

“Do not look away!” A field of magic gripped Twilight’s head and tore her chin to face her brother. With a drag of magic she pulled the teenaged mare up to her brother’s cockhead. Pressing Twilight’s cheek into the fat, black flare.

Twilight sobbed as she felt Shining’s dome-shaped head mashing into her cheek fur, smearing whatever mix of fluids the thestral had left there onto her nose. She felt sick to her stomach, like she was going to vomit - this… this thing… belonged to her brother. She hated that she could feel it, its heat, its slickness, its musk. These were things she never wanted to know.

“P-please… st-stop…” Shining groaned, revealing a bloodied muzzle with missing teeth.

“Oh did you prefer your mother first then?” Nightmare Moon asked casually, dragging the other mare forward and forcing her to press her nuzzle into her son’s sack. Velvet struggled to avoid it, but Nightmare Moon easily forced her to breathe through a filter of her son’s heavy black testicles. “I suppose the last time you’d touched these your son was still in diapers!” She laughed.

“J-just...k-kill me…” Shining begged, unable to hold his head up any longer.

“Silence, guardsman. I am your princess now.” Nightmare Moon grinned. “And I know that my soldiers desire nothing more than to wet their rods… I can assist if you lack the stamina, guardsman… just let me know - would you like your sister or your mother’s marehood on your cock.”

“Stop!” Night Light growled, standing up taller. Instantly a thaumic burst struck him in the gut, winding him and sending him onto his knees, choking and gasping for air.

Nightmare Moon sniffed, bored with the reaction. “Well, perhaps not… bringing back the old ways will take time after all.” She released Shining’s cock from her grasp. “I mustn’t get distracted with trying to teach you young ponies about the more civilized ways of my time.”

Nightmare Moon trotted away from the suspended stallion and took a seat on a chaise just off to one side of Celestia’s bed. “You see, I had no intention of hurting you, your family or any of the ponies in your city.” The princess of the night stared straight at Twilight.

“M-m-me?” Twilight choked out, withering under that awful gaze. She wasn’t sure why she figured into this at all - why she was here and under attack.

“Yes, you.” Nightmare Moon leaned back. “I am not a monster.” The black-coated alicorn paused with consideration, before continuing to speak. “Well, I was not a monster. My intention was, and always has been to exact my vengeance upon my sister.”

Velvet made a move toward her son’s manacles, hoping to unbind him. Nightmare Moon watched casually, as if glancing at ants scurrying under her hooves, then she continued to speak.

“You see, Twilight Sparkle, I was cast onto an airless, barren, lonely world for more than a millennium.” She growled. “For the first few years I cried. Hot, bitter tears of anger at my sister’s betrayal. But soon, those tears turned to desperation, a cry for mercy.” She shook her head sadly. “Alone, starving, thirsty, without even a drop of magical sustenance… only my magical immortality sustained me as I lay choking in the lunar dust for decades. Let me tell you: immortality is not a gift, little one. It is a curse.”

“...” Twilight couldn’t respond. She’d never thought about what that must have been like for the ‘mare in the moon’, doomed to never die.

“Even as I begged for her forgiveness, cried out for my sister’s love… she left me there. And so I broke, Luna was no more.” Nightmare moon straightened up as she spoke, her spine stiffening. “From the lunar regolith rose a new pony, a stronger pony.”

“A nightmare.” Twilight mumbled under her breath.

“Yes. My sister’s nightmare.” She smiled. “And I reached out, to those who have lived in the shadow of Celestia’s golden empire, sculpted them, whispered to them through their dreams, gave their women fantasies about their strongest, most savage stallions… my invisible hand bred them into the fierce warriors they are today.”

She glanced down at Shining Armor and Twilight Velvet, the latter currently scrambling with her hooves to try to undo the cruel bootlace that choked his base and kept him stiff.

“Your brother, stalwart and… well-endowed as he is for a unicorn, would be like a foal aside the cream of my night-warriors.” Nightmare Moon sniffed. “Celestia’s guard never stood a chance.”

“I know.”

“Ah, did you see them then, in your city?” A short, sharp laugh followed. “I wonder if you felt that innate desire for any of them… a whiff of their handsome superiority - even now I am sure your mares are being bred with my masterfully crafted genetic seeds. It won’t be long before my soldiers’ will be irresistible in the eyes of equestrian mares… and those few who do resist… well… resistance just makes the act more energetic.”

“M-monster… w-why… we did nothing to you!” Twilight sobbed.

“I know this, child. And it was not my wish to unleash such devastation upon the innocent. Many a unicorn has loved the moon and the night sky, even in my absence. No - you have your teacher to thank for your misery. She shirked this burden onto you.”

Twilight tilted her head in confusion, not following the logic.

“I called her out, for one on one combat.” Nightmare Moon deadpanned. “And just when I had won, when I had struck her down… she transformed into the evil solar tyrant I knew her to be - Daybreaker… and instead of accepting her fate nobly, sparing this realm from war… she ran… she ran and signaled the charge of her armies, dooming her guardsmen to bleed in her place.”

“Th-that… that’s not true!”

Nightmare moon continued, ignoring Twilight’s plea. “Even after their crushing defeat, after all that remained was for her to kneel and bare her neck for my righteous stroke… she ran back to your city, dooming all of you to war and destruction.”

“I don’t believe you!” Twilight sobbed, tears slowly running down her cheeks. “And… wh-why… why would you let your soldiers rape, and kill, and murder as you have?”

“BECAUSE!” Nightmare Moon smashed a crystal pitcher that sat on the end table near her chair. “There is a karmic debt to be repaid, child! You do not feel it? In the very air? The thaumic field cries out for a millennia of absolute suffering to be repaid! I wanted my sister to pay it, but she has skirted the bill.” Nightmare Moon sneered.

Twilight shook her head. She’d always felt something - an unease in her stomach. There had always been such happiness in her life, in the lives of ponies of Equestria and Canterlot… she always wondered, when so much of her magical training showed that all things existed in a balance… why the pony’s paradisiacal life should be exempt from the rule.

Perhaps it wasn’t.

“And so, your city, your country, your ponies must pay.” Nightmare shook her head. “And Celestia, defeated and angry, in her final moments decided to spare you the brunt of your inevitable pain… taking her own life with a foul, cowardly potion… too proud to fall, even though it would doom so many to suffering.

“N-no…” Twilight choked, imagining her mentor downing a suicidal cup of magical poison.

“And what can I do, then? I must have satisfaction, child. The world cries out for it.” Nightmare moon gestured toward Twilight’s father, mother, and brother. At the state that they were in.

“The… the townsfolk… they are suffering.” Twilight gasped, a terrifying shaking wracking through her as she looked at her family and realized what Nightmare Moon was implying.

“Do not be so quick to throw other ponies in front of you in an effort to save yourself, Twilight.” Nightmare Moon shook her head disappointedly. “That is one lesson I do not wish you to learn from your teacher.”

“P-please… there has been so much hurt already by so many!”

“A millennia of pure agony, Twilight. This city’s anguish is but a drop in the ocean.” Nightmare moon rose from her chair, menace growing as she did. “And so - I must turn to you… my sister’s star pupil. Her greatest, most secret hope for the future of her empire. A mare that would birth an era of friendship and magic…”

Twilight shrank back, her ears folding back, whimpering under the growing shadow cast by the alicorn’s outstretched wings.

“And I must take that legacy, and corrupt it. Make it mine. Make your progeny of friendship, become my progeny of darkness. Change that future. It is the only way… to achieve my justice.”

Twilight scuttled backward, terrified, bumping into the end of Celestia’s royal bed, trying to stay away from Nightmare Moon as she advanced upon her.

“Stay away from my daughter!” Night Light jumped in front of Twilight, shielding her with his body as he did so, despite the fact he had no power beyond those of his muscles.

With a laugh, Nightmare Moon ignited her horn, grasping all four of the ponies and lining them up against the end of the bed in front of her.

“You have courage, sire Sparkle…” Nightmare Moon laughed. “A good thing, a trait that will be passed down to your grandfoals I am sure.” She plucked shining from the lineup, rotating him in mid-air as she did so. “But I would not have your heirs coming from a non-matrilineal line. In exchange for the honor of entwining with the royal lunar line - only Twilight Sparkle shall continue your family’s descent.”

Author's Note

This chapter doesn't have much sex.

But it has death.

A lot of it.

I felt really bad for that grandfather and his foal. It was tough to write it.

But as you can see, Nightmare Moon has a cosmic price to extract from the world. A big one.

THIS CHAPTER'S CONTEST QUESTION:

Do you think Nightmare Moon will be able to extract enough suffering from Twilight? Or is her fate to be only a sliver of the pain that must be suffered to bring justice?

What did you think of Celestia's decision? Was it her? Was it Daybreaker? Was it a lie from Nightmare Moon?

And just what is in store for the Sparkles?

Best comment answers will score points. Top comment scorer at the end of the fic will win a 2500 word fic from me, the subject of which will be the winner's choice.

Current Leader:

-Exuno 5pts
-gapaot 5pts

Others:
-ponypron 4pts
-spoonlol 3pts
-carbonnanotube 2pts
-dustyhooves 1pt
-GNSLNGR 1pt
-Triv_ 1pt

Some great answers and comments to start things off. Hard to pick a single one, so I just went with gut.