Midnight Hour [Fall of Equestria ANTIDOTE story]

A museum to those who had been conquered. A hall of victory. A reminder of what could be taken, and from where all mares were destined to go. Countless horns, endless feathers, it was all so terrible, it was not a museum. It was a mortuary of power.

And the centrepiece of this place was the horns and wings of the Princesses of Equestria. Celestia. Luna. Cadance. Twilight Sparkle.

Something that was missing that Whisper Blue hadn't expected were the crowns of the Princesses. The ornamental horsehoes were here, depictions of their Cutie Marks, the decorative collars ... She was a little surprised to see a copy of the Flag of the Royal Sisters as well, and one of the Crystal Empire that she had to guess had been changed since the invasion. Still, she was here to do a job, and she would do it well ...

She couldn't fly. She couldn't cast magic. But she had the knowledge of Canterlot, and she had access to the Royal Archives. Knowledge was power, especially in a place like Equestria, and she was putting that to good use as she slipped past the waiting alarm systems that were sensitive to magic being cast, and looked above her at the other system that would be triggered by pony flight. Earth ponies, it seemed, were not considered a true threat. At least, not ones that were free.

Celestia and Luna's horns were side by side, held in place with glass stands that almost looked like a candle for a macabre birthday. She had to consider which ones to take; Luna's horn was a given, but Celestia? Twilight? Cadance?
For the sake of her Princess, she decided to take the horn of her beloved sister, the first one that was sure to be on Luna's list of Red ponies to be redeemed. Twilight and Cadance were both Red, enthusiastically Red, but they would take longer to come back to their senses, and she wanted to ensure that the Caribou weren't too alarmed yet. Once Princess disappearing had sent them into a rage, having someone take the horns of all four could possibly cause them to do something rash and terrible to the three they still had in their power.

Caution and care. Essential traits in a secret society. Slipping into the darkness again, she made her way back to the Castle ...

"I can't believe the improvements overnight" Silver Song examined Luna's wings, keeping a safe distance behind her and his hands in front of him to show where they were, but not touching her. He had heard from his Sisters how poor they had been, but hadn't seem them up close until now, "How do they feel?"

"Itchy" Princess Luna admitted, stretching out the bones, "It takes everything in me to stop myself from scratching them!"

"The skin is quite dry, but that's probably after being in the air after so long in those horrid cases" He mused, "Plus all your feathers are coming out ... I always hate summer and winter moults, feathers everywhere and the itching ... oh, stars, the itching ..."

"The maids hated the moults too ... always cleaning up after the guards, as well as myself and Celestia" Luna smiled, remembering seeing so many feathers littering the Throne Room after a particularly heavy winter moult, "You would have thought a swan had exploded with the amount of feathers from Her Royal Fluffiness!"

Silver Song laughed at the Moon monarch's description as Luna flapped her wings experimentally, trying to exercise the long-neglected muscles and get a feeling of her own flight again. Soft downy feathers ruffled as well as longer, stronger ones but they would not support her weight even a little; she would need to wait some time before she gained her powers of flight back.

A sound of a secret entrance opening. Silver Song immediately moved in front of Luna, ready to protect her and Crystal Clear similarly prepared a defensive spell just in case. However, both immediately relaxed upon seeing Whisper Blue emerge from the shadows.

"Oh, thank the stars" Crystal Clear breathed out, "We were growing afraid for you, Sister Whisper. Did you get it?"

Whisper Blue pulled out Princess Luna's horn from her cloak, walking over to her and presenting it to her on bended knee.

"..." It was surreal, seeing it before her. Luna gingerly, after hesitating, took her horn from the Earth mare's hand, turning it over as she examined where it had been cut from her head. No pony should see their own horn like this, normally ponies would see it and then would need to seal it away. Unicorn horn repair was extremely difficult, very few ever truly worked. The younger the Unicorn, the better the chance, but the older the Unicorn ...
But it wasn't impossible. It depended on the pony, it depended on the horn, it depended on the healer. Some Unicorns could use them as they did before the break, some could partially use them after the horn was put back together but the broken-off parts couldn't cast magic. These ponies, however, were determined to restore her, as her magic was important to the balance of the world.

"I also fetched Princess Celestia's horn" Whisper Blue stated, producing the white horn from her cloak and handing it over to Luna for safekeeping, "If they become angry and wish to destroy the horns, however way they can, then I did not want hers to be taken"

"Unicorn horns are impossible to destroy. They can break, they can be shattered, they can be ground into dust for dark purposes, but they cannot be fully destroyed. Not in the same way. Even a powdered horn will come together and try to form what piece of the horn it once was" Luna examined Celestia's horn, longer and thinner than her own, "An Alicorn's horn is even stronger. It took a lot of force, a lot of brute strength, to separate our horns from our heads. To repair that ..."

"It's not impossible, my Princess" Crystal Clear, stepping forward, "May I see the horn, and where it should be?"

"..." Luna sat on a small footstool to allow the mare to examine her, holding up her horn. Bowing her head for a moment to show respect, the cream Unicorn took the horn in hand, and carefully examined the base through the glasses perched on the end of her muzzle.

"A clean cut ... no damage, they didn't seem to cauterise it when they cut it ..." She looked closely at the remains of the horn on Luna's head, the inch-long protrusion that marked the Princess as someone who unwillingly allowed her horn to be taken, "This must have hurt so much, my Princess ..."

"It did ..." Luna confirmed, looking down. Though the horn itself was mostly bone, or cartilage yet to harden in younger ponies, it still felt pain and cutting too close to the skull resulted in bleeding. Severing the Unicorn's magic caused mental agony too, sometimes worse than the physical.

"But can it be repaired, Sister Crystal" Whisper Blue asked the obvious question, and Crystal Clear nodded with some caution.

"They were cruel in how they cut the horn, there's no doubt about that. But the cruelty has worked in our favour; they were too concerned with cutting to burn the ends or do something to stop them neatly fitting together. With the right magic ... our magic ... I think the chance of success is high"

Luna broke out in a relieved smile ...

Some of the ingredients needed were obscure and a little guesswork was required when translating from Old Ponish. They had referred to current books on nursing, of course, but sometimes older works also had little pieces of advice worth a note. Crystal Clear thought it wise to combine both, seeing how an Alicorn different from a Unicorn in terms of power.

Whisper Blue stood before her table, filled with so many tomes that they threatened to tip over at any moment, many pages opened as a bowl of moonwater from the healing pool was brought over. Within the silver bowl, edged with designs of moons and stars, Whisper Blue carefully added the ingredients.

Black orchids from the most mysterious depths of Tartarus. Silver pearls from the freezing North Luna Ocean. Delicate Crystals from their namesake Empire. Fine golden sand from the hottest region of the Badlands. Warm scales of an ancient dragon that roamed the Dragon Lands centuries ago. A whispy piece of cloud from the factories of Cloudsdale. And, finally, an exceptionally rare silver phoenix feather, the light counterpart to their fiery counterparts, only seen once every hundred thousand moons to a pair of lucky parents.

Carefully stirring the odd mix, Whisper Blue muttered words under her breath as Silver Song and Crystal Clear prepared their own ingredients. Silver Song pulled out a little primary feather close to his side, adding it to the shimmering, silvery liquid in the bowl, and Crystal Clear added a tiny chip of her own horn, one that would repair itself after a short while naturally.
For her part, Whisper Blue cut a portion of her left hindhoof, a symbol of an Earth pony's connection to the land, and the source of their quiet, latent power. Adding this portion caused the mixture to thicken, becoming more akin to soup than water, and the Princess couldn't help but be enchanted by the swirls of metallic silver across the surface, how they rose and fall, curled around each other and blossomed into new shapes ...

"One more item" If the silver phoenix feather was difficult, then the next ingredient was even more taxing. Like the most exotic spice from the south, Whisper Blue picked up a thin vial with a dark grey powder inside, sprinkling it into the mix like she was, well, seasoning a soup. Which she essentially was.

"Meteorite?" Luna knew that substance well; her own crown was fashioned out of meteorite, at least partially. She always thought it gave her magic something extra, but that was likely wishful thinking on her part.

"Tears of the moon, it says in this book" Whisper Blue said whilst stirring the mixture more, "It does not elaborate further, but we can guess they mean meteorite. My Princess, may I have your horn?"

Luna was oddly reluctant to hand it over. Perhaps so long without it had made her possessive? Or did she not trust these ponies as much as she wanted to? No, the likely answer was that she simply didn't want her horn damaged further if this spell or potion somehow didn't work. At least she was not being asked to drink the mixture; it would likely make her exceptionally sick and she really didn't need that on top of her present state.
None the less, she did as she was asked. Whisper Blue placed the horn within the bowl, submerging it totally, and causing the mixture to suddenly start to swirl in a uniform direction clockwise.

"..." Luna held her breath as all four ponies watched the potion ... Before the IlLUNAnati turned to their Princess.

"Princess Luna of Equestria" Whisper Blue addressed her with sudden ceremony, "Please take a seat and we will try the final portion of the spell"

"..." Luna looked at them, but decided it was worth a try. Anything to regain her horn. Her magic. Her domain over the moon. A chance to save Equestria.

Sitting on the little footstool that she had sat upon to let Crystal Clear examine the remains of her horn, she was surprised to see Crystal Clear carrying the bowl as Whisper Blue and Silver Song followed, all three standing before her as Whisper Blue dipped her hands into the bowl. Bringing out the horn, coated with the potion, she pressed it against the stump on Luna's forehead as her opposite hand painted and coated the stump in the potion. Luna was almost amused, it felt like they were plastering the potion back on.

Much to her shock, she felt Whisper Blue take her hand away ... but the horn stayed affixed to the stump. She didn't dare cast, not when the ponies were watching so intently. She certainly didn't expect Whisper Blue to paint her forehead and cheeks with sigils she couldn't see nor understand.

The bowl was placed at the Princess's feet, each pony placing their hands into the potion and painting a crescent moon onto their foreheads, standing in a circle around Luna at precise distances from each other. Holding their hands up, Silver Song's wings aloft, they started to chant something that Luna couldn't understand, nothing that was in any language she knew from past or present. Just as she opened her mouth to question this, an overwhemling feeling gripped her, one of light and of air, of suddenly having no pain, no weight, no fear. Her eyes glazed over, seeing nothing and everything at the same time, but most of her attention was directed to her horn. She could feel, she could feel the horn and the stump knitting together, becoming whole, becoming one. Fur and flesh, bone and magic, all became the same. Her Cutie Mark glowed bright, brighter than any sun, and the lashes obscuring it burned away. The degrading new symbol of Equestria, the symbol of her and Celestia's combined marks lashed together with chains, it became nothing more than mist and dissolved away, the flank that had been scarred by the brand filling and becoming clean and healed. It was almost as if it had never been there ...

Breathless, Luna stood as best she could, the IlLUNAnati standing around her with their arms now down, awaiting her response.

Luna touched her horn, touched where the stump had stopped, where she should have felt a seam from this repair. There was nothing, the groove that spiralled around her horn was perfect and complete. To test this, she looked to the books on the desk.
Move She directed her magic at the closed spellbook that teetered dangerously close to falling over. It moved, but it did more. Enveloped in her blue aura, she picked it up and placed it back on the shelf flawlessly.

"I ... " Tears pricked her eyes, "I don't believe it ..."