Between The Light And The Shade

by Alicia Van Hammer

Rating: teen
Tags: Princess Luna, Drama, Comedy, Derpy Hooves, Violence, Princess Celestia, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Alternate Universe
Length: 3739

Warfare is Magic as The Sun and The Moon meet on the field of battle. The clashing of gods and monsters, their fight will determine the end of all dreams, or will it?

The music wails from on high as two gods overlook the field of war. Ponies clash with ponies in contests of life and death by the hundreds. The twin deities, Celestia and Luna, take the field, racing headlong to meet in the dreamlike haze of a world gone horribly wrong... one way or another, this nightmare will end.

Published 2020-06-03 08:10:01 UTC
Last updated 2020-06-03 08:10:01 UTC

A Clash of Titans

The battle is joined.

A veritable sea of ponies clash. Thousands of lives, young and old batter one another. In armor and helm, with sword and spear, they throw themselves into violence. Spitting, cursing and enraged, by tooth and by hoof, they separate life and death. Their shouts and screams fill the air with the horror of clashing ideology, decades of strife and bitter feuds of desire and hatred.

It is war.

Two banners bitterly contest the field. One- a yellow pattern, a symbol of a gleaming white sun set against a bright yellow field, it rises high over the horizon. The other banner is a field of violet, cold and dark, serving as the backdrop for a silvery moon, empty, it stands alone and powerful.

Soldiers clash, arrows fly, spears sail through the air to find their marks. Sergeants bark their orders before throwing themselves into the fray alongside their brothers-in-arms. Squads of pikeponies play deadly bouts of fencing, jabbing and thrusting. Archers loose their arrows, blackening the sky with the barbs of their deadly fletchers hornets. Legions of warriors cast life and limb aside to aid their banner in achieving dominance of the field.

Earth ponies stomp the ground, shaking it with the combined might of their incredible natural power. Their prodigious strength is loosed in ferocious force, punting boulders like cannonballs into the masses of their enemies, felling saplings as makeshift clubs. The same mighty hooves, once the tools of farmers and shopkeeps, artisans, dancers and craftsponies, now bash and batter the opposing soldiers, slashing away like demons of fury. Helms are crushed like tinfoil. Breastplates are caved in, smashed, bashed and crushed underhoof as the horrendous final blows of mortal combat are unleashed by bone and sinew.

Among their number, a single scarred orange mare towers. Her shaggy blonde mane and tattered brown stetson shade her eyes in a grim darkness. The mare works a toothpick from side to side as she surveys the opposing forces. Her strength is legendary, her might, unmatched. She grits her teeth and rises to her hind legs. She is shackled to an immense boulder by chains constructed to steady sailing vessels against the gale force of storms. With a gutteral roar her powerful muscles flex. The boulder goes sailing in a wide arc overhead, carried by those very shackles to swing the stone as a makeshift flail. Circling overhead, ponies are scattered like tenpins, their bodies splintered and snapped as if they were matchsticks. The boulder impacts the earth with an almost cataclysmic force, nearly toppling an entire enemy legion as the mare gives a grim smirk.

Pegasi dart across the battlefield like fearsome warriors of The Einar. Valkyries they are, choosers of the slain. From on high, their wings carry them. They fly with precision, soaring over the combat to seek their targets. Some are armed with bows, loosing arrow after arrow into the mass below, peppering the opposing army with the sharpened tips of their shafts of death. Others follow more brutal orders, dropping stones to stove in the helms of their targets, crushing and maiming. Some carry buckets of caustic substances, protected from their own charges by both trained diligence and the magic of their own armies' unicorn sorcerers. Pails of poison, decanters of acid and in some cases, buckets of burning tar, all make for the rain of nightmares, spattering on foe and often friend alike with hideous, disfiguring results. Some of the high-flying angels of death serve as transports, carrying powerful soldiers into strategic locations and hurling them as living weapons into the enemy to bash, batter and flail.

High among their number, a bizarre angel soars. She seems so graceful, delicate and beautiful. Her soft yellow coat almost glows as the body of a daisy, her unnatural pink mane, a sea of petals cascading from her like candied clouds. Her nimble hoofs glide between the quiver at her back and the bow between their grasp. She looses bolt after bolt into the masses of ponies with unerring accuracy. Guided by the crystalline gaze beneath those rosy waves, each shaft finds its mark, felling warrior after warrior, twice her size or greater. She is a spirit of the forest, a dryad of the earth. Her genteel grace is the soul of the wind. Her bow is the gate to the great beyond.

The unicorns' horns glow- harbingers of doom. Some use the light of their magic to lift and hurl a variety of ammunition, transforming themselves into siege machines. Other, more skillful spell-casters hurl bolts of arcane power- shattering armour and pony alike in flashes of bright light- all colors of the rainbow, a prismatic array of death. Some more skilled in the ancient ways of The Clever create illusions of fog, pits of mud and fire, confounding the enemy and obfuscating the path to victory. The most skilled of their lot make no such illusions, rather the harsh reality of poisonous mists, bogs of deadly quicksand and walls of searing flame. Their magics are terrifying to behold. The damage they do is truly un-faustian.

A pocket of unearthly beauty, a single alabaster marvel stands. Perched on a hillside, cutting a silhouette against the silvery radiance far above her in the night sky, the unicorn mare glows like the will of the wisp. The shimmering luster of her violet mane flows around her like the cloak of royalty. Her delicate ivory hoofs draw sigils in the air, spreading and smearing the blue light of her horn like paint. The glowing pigment twirls, swirls and shapes, it's light fashioning the reality around her. Her art is altering the very ebb and energy of life and the soldiery surrounding her find that the horrors of warfare pale in comparison to the nightmare she unveils upon the runway they walk.

Two mercenaries lock eyes with their greatest desire. A grim, scarred pegasus leaves her fellows behind and rockets wildly into the field, her rainbow mane trailing between her wings, one feathered, one false. Unlike any other of her kind, her hooves clasp blades, three in each. Even an amputee, her skill is too great for only one weapon per hoof. Her red eyes glare for but one target as she cannonballs forward. Barrelling to meet her, grinning maniacally, a pink earth mare cackles madly with her one remaining crystal-blue eye. The chaos curls of her pink mane flutter in the blasts of the explosions left in her wake- friend, foe, she no longer cares. As if by a dark magic all her own, scores of blades, daggers and hooks seem to appear from nowhere, fluttering into her hooves. The final contest at hoof, The Cyan Dragon and The Pink Nightmare- moments from meeting fate each mercenary marks this as the stroke of grace, the time of their revenge.

Two field marshals race to meet in a collision course, headlong into eternity. Once perhaps, they were friends, lovers, maybe more. Once, each one may have used their desires for fame and their talents for magic to counsel or entertain. Once, the two may have used their hooves and horns to hold and to heal. Now the glimmering lavender star and the silvery-maned blue moon wield their sorcerous might as weapons of warfare. The two mares race to each other, a different kind of love to be made. This release will truly be final. Heads lowered, eyes narrowed, their horns scorch the very air with fireworks and searing power. The crackling of their arcane energies scattering ponies in their wake, they are now as harbingers of doom, the hands of the clock. Each hoofbeat pounds as a ticking of time leading to their midnight hour meeting and the decisions of destiny.

On this field, all make their own glory.

On this field, all become monsters.

The din of the battle is ear-splitting. The horror of the scene is beyond belief. It is almost a thing of wonder- to witness a nightmare on such a scale. So many lives, each one capable of changing the world for the betterment of all creatures- each one reduced to a snarling, engine of destruction, a pawn on a board- a soldier.

Each goes to Faust in a different way. Many do not even see the thing which separates their spirit from the flesh, taken by a bolt from on high or crushed beneath stone. Many others fall, teeth gritting, eyes locked with the one who defeats them. With their final breath, they curse the greater skill of their opponent. Their final thoughts are of that one misstep they made, thrusting when they should have parried. The saddest of the lot look up to the sky, broken, weakened but not destroyed. They suffer as their eyes search the heavens, the Sun above in the East, the Moon glowing in the West. They look up to their gods, hoof outstretched in a last desperate plea for alms. They beg to their gods for mercy- one more day, one more hour, just one more instant to stand and fight for the glory of their cause.

They find no alms.

The stars that guide them, do not shine with such accuracy upon things so small.

But their prayers are not without answer.

From high above the teeming masses of the screams of conflict, two generals trade eyes like daggers. They are separated by almost a half-mile of rapidly souring earth. Still, they behold each other as keenly as if they stood nose to nose, the only two on the field.

They glare. Each soldier's scream resonates in their ears. Each stamp of hoof and clash of steel is counted in the corners of their mind.

One is a white alicorn, a mare taller than any of her soldiers by twice their height, easily. Her mane of many colors billows in a wind all it's own, as if the rain itself has already fallen to its knees before her majesty. Clad in glistening golden armor, she glows like the sun, a radiant symbol of unity and a new dawn on the horizon.

One is a mare, deep indigo, her lithe alicorn body is the starless sky of midnight. Her gaze is as cold as the vengeance in her heart, the unstoppable inevitability of the coming of nightfall itself. The deep purple and obsidian blackness of her polished mail seem to drain the very light from the land around her, beckoning darkness to her like a cape of her prideful glory.

Wordlessly, it is as if they reach a consensus.

They leap, as one.

From high atop a waterfall, the alicorn of blackest night presses against the glistening rocks and soars into the velvet backdrop of stars. The silvery light of the moon behind her frames her every motion- graceful beyond compare, terrifying in her god-like beauty and power. Her leap carries her unbelievably high, further than any living thing should be able to move, terrible in her power, awesome in her might. She almost seems to take flight, but the glimmering blackness of her spread wings does not cleave the air so much as demand its obedience. She chooses instead to join her soldiers and light upon the field below. So graceful is her step, so unearthly her glide that not a single pebble is displaced by the gleam of her obsidian hoofs. Her steely gaze and slender, immaculate armored form are so very cold, an implacable and unknowable statue of death.

Death has taken the field.

From high above the battlefield her mirror god answers the challenge. A single thrust of her powerful ivory thighs against the rocky surface of her mesa perch hurls her skyward. She shines, a star against the golden glow of the sun behind her in the clear blue beauty of the morning light. A sparkling halo seems to form around her- A nearby slipstream of smoke and unnatural purple flames joins the golden glory. The lavender armored figure glares in steely determination. Another alicorn, soaring like a rocket, the magenta blaze of her horn transforms her into a comet of living violet flame. The mare purposefully glides beneath the golden goddess with the precision of only the most loyal of blood-kin, becoming her living equestrian sky-sled. The golden goddess alights upon her lavender field-marshal's back and rises to her hind legs, folding her forelimbs across her barrel. A smile gleams across her ivory lips. As her flaming chariot soars across the sky, she stands- monolithic, the light of the morning itself, a gleaming marble statue of the terrible fury of the sun.

The Sun has come to burn them all.

Slowly, The Moon herself paces forward. Amidst the terrible din of conflict, she is the very embodiment of the decay of the universe. She is entropy. She is finality. Truly, she is the end of them all. The ground itself seems to grow pale beneath her hoofs. Her eyes gleam, cold- SO cold, like those of a serpent, slits as dark and deep as the great beyond. With a flash of imploding air and a motion almost too quick to even perceive, a gleaming black scythe has been drawn from the ether and swung. In an arc as wide as the walls of Yak-yakistan, uncounted scores of ponies fall. Like puppets cut free from the strings which give them animation, they simply collapse where they stand, cold and empty shells, gone to their maker. For her part, she does not even flinch. The long, lustrous lashes framing her terrifyingly beautiful eyes do not even flutter. She is cold. She is unstoppable. She is death.

Death has come to take them all.

From high above in the sky, the lavender comet pirouettes, twirling about as it leaves a majestic slipstream of purple flame. The golden goddess perched nimbly upon her back leaps once more, spreading her glorious golden wings to shine with all the colors of the rainbow. In the rays of the sun, her magnificence and majesty are unparalleled and beyond compare. She lands on her hoofs amidst the soldiery like a meteor, violently planting into the earth. The ivory white goddess throws back her head and roars defiantly to the sky. The ferocious sound echoes in the ears of every creature like the heartbeat of creation. Rising to her hind legs, wings spreading like the terrible song of the flames of creation, she raises a golden armored hoof overhead. The hoof comes crashing to the ground in a moment of thunder and fury, sending out a shock-wave of golden light. The fireball of pure devastating might sends ponies into the air as if they were but the playthings of children. Bodies hurtle skyward, crashing to the ground hundreds of yards away, thrown by the might of a goddess. She is the fire of destruction. She is as unavoidable as time itself. She is the coming of dawn.

The Sun has taken the field.

Their eyes remain locked across the mass of flailing bodies, slashing hoofs and final utterances. The gods of day and night, the coming of time and the decay of mortality.

Their pace quickens as the gap between gods narrows.

The Sun raises her hoof and grins. With a mighty shout she swings a hoof, seemingly at nothing. With the motion of a punch, the air itself erupts in flames. From her single motion, a typhoon of force bursts forth, the invisible might of the wind and it's gods fleeing from her power. The wave of heat and pressure scorches the earth clean, throwing a trench of earth several fathoms deep into the air as the wave of force scatters the mass of soldiers like flaming vermin. Bodies fly and bodies fall. Ponies crumble in scorched suits of mail and siege engines of wood and metal are reduced to coal and slag. The maelstrom of The Sun's fury hammers through the battlefield, an unstoppable wave of destruction cascading towards the approaching darkness of The Moon.

The Moon pauses, turning slightly sidelong. Her face is cold. Her expression is unreadable, empty as the starless dark of midnight. Her serpent's eye regards not the incoming wave of flaming death but the golden eye and lion's roar smile of her mirror opposite beyond. The pressure wave scours the earth as it races towards her, leaving a smoking ravine carved in it's wake. She does not flinch. She does not falter. With a motion so slow, so smooth as to almost be imperceptible to pony eyes The Moon slightly lowers herself. Somewhere between the considerations of time, she moves. In an instant, her scythe has swung, reaping the life from the air itself. The wave of flame and fury is cleaved in twain, spent. The bombastic roar of solar destruction crackles away, mere embers of waste, trickling into nothingness on the wind.

The twin gods look to each other with the eyes of the unknowable ancients. Somewhere in-between them the final countdown is announced.

The Sun looks to The Moon with a defiant grin. The unstoppable light of the morning dawn is at her back. Her flowing mane of rainbows is a cape of glory. She is the fire and fury of creation itself. She is light. She is life. She has existed since time began for this planet and her flames will consume it again someday. She is both Alpha and Omega. She is Beginning and End. She is ALL.

The Moon looks to The Sun in cool, aloof emptiness. The dark sky frames her elegance. Her billowing mane of blackness and stars is the swirling of the cosmos. The twinkling pinpricks in the blanket of the world's shroud are hers. She is beyond light. She is beyond life. She is the energy decay of the galaxy itself- far beyond the machinations of one little star-god. Her shadows encompass ALL.

The gauntlet of eternity shatters.

The two gods barrel towards each other in fearful symmetry. The gleaming Sun's power scorches the soil beneath her to glowing volcanic embers with every beat of her hoofs. The shimmering Moon glides in silent melancholic doom, the very joy of the soil itself reduced to lifeless ash in her wake.

They clash.

Nopony can perceive the nature of the impact as the two titans hurtle past each other.

Hundreds of ponies are sent hurtling into the air, scattered as less than ants in the waves of the great convergence of the cosmos.

The Sun plants her hoofs as she rounds to a halt, digging in and casting flame and sparking magma from the stone underhoof. Her golden eyes burn with the fire of life itself, raging against the dying of the light with all the passion and energy of the New Dawn. The light drives out the darkness. The blusterous joyous Day shatters the curse of the horrible night.

The Moon slowly turns her snake-like stare. Crouched low, her scythe raised over head, all around her is silent. The air itself has been broken into lockstep, drawn into the emptiness and inevitability of the revenge dwelling in her eyes. The darkness of death comes to all, in time. The still calm of Night silences the boisterous childhood of the day.

As terrifying as it was, that pass was but a feint.

The gods' eyes meet. The air between them is the blood of all creation. The next moments will decide how it is shed, if history will end or begin anew.

As one, they act.

The SUN bounds towards her younger sibling, each hoofbeat a thing of fire, fury and thunder.

The MOON glides towards her elder sister, her every motion is her own, the emptiness of silence.

As one they leap.

THE SUN draws back a hoof. She is the fist of the heavens themselves. The ferocious gleam of her snarling grin blazes like the flames whipping about her glorious ivory body.

THE MOON coils like a serpent. Her scythe draws behind her. It is the extension of her darkness, the fangs of eternity, shaving seconds from the universe in her obsidian grasp.

THEY STRIKE-

Celestia sat bolt upright in her bed, panicked.

"WHAAAAA-?!"

The sun-princess panted heavily, wiping the wetness from her forehead with a hoof. The red silken sheets of her large four-poster bed hissed with her kicking. The nighttime air wafting in from her balcony door made the material sensually cool, only made moreso by the sweat of her night-terror.

"Eeyugckh..."

She gave up a wince, peeling the damp material from her barrel. The sun-goddess sat awkwardly, hind-legs outstretched. Bug-eyed, her breathing relaxed slightly. She looked around the darkness of her royal bed-chambers with a hard swallow. Slowly she managed to drive away the fog of dreams and the horror of nightmares, replacing the haze of the otherworldly battle with the peaceful stillness of her room.

There's her photos of Twilight and her friends, all alive and well...

There's her pet phoenix, Philomena...

There's her stuffed teddy, Mr. Fuzzywumpus...

There's that empty plate on the nightstand...

The sun princess glared at the plate. Her anger wrestled with her fuzzy grasp on the reality of the waking world. The off-white platter and it's golden trim mocked her silently. It wore a thin varnish of crumbs like the cloak of an assassin, daring her to speak of it's treason against her crown. She should NOT have had that last piece of cake so close to bedtime.

Next to the solar diarch, a warm lump stirred. From beneath the sheets a grey hoof reached over to gently pat her on her ample plot. The touch of the grey pegasus was soft and reassuring- as gentle and welcome as her sleepy, mismatched golden eyes. The mail-mare, Muffins, leaned over to plant a sweet kiss on the sun-princess' neck and tenderly nip at her ear before laying back under the covers.

"Go back to sleep, honey..."

---fin---

Author's Note

I hope you enjoyed, everypony.

After the last story was so harsh, I wanted to offer up something a bit more on the silly side. Although I know this one is pretty dark in the beginning, I felt the zinger at the end paid it off. I wasn't sure how to classify "dramatic and grim but it gets funny at the end, there, I promise".

That and, come on. Muffins. <3 Love for Muffins, y'all.

Love yourselves and love one another.