Loudly hissing, the landing arms of the SS Twilight flexed against the ground, holding the weight of the massive spacecraft. It was the last ship to land, and ponies within all of the other ships cheered as it stopped moving. Without a single hitch, every ship in the fleet had landed safely! The Lunar Empire had been built next to both a forest and a massive grassy plain, and the plains made for plenty of room for the fleet to land.

As Luna had requested, all of the willing batponies in Equestria came out of their ships, gathering around her in a large crowd in front of the old city. At first, she didn't even seem to care about the city, since she was much too busy making sure she gave each batpony an affectionate nuzzle, and in some cases, hugs. Once everypony had gathered, and there weren't any stragglers, Luna led them into the city.

On the plains, ponies from all of the ships began to exit, not for the city, but to stand on solid ground again. Many of them began to unpack, and it wasn't long before building supplies and vehicles and tents were being brought out of the ships. On the bridge of the SS Twilight, though, things were somewhat tense.

"I don't know, Fluttershy! Something is wrong, though!" Polaris said, giving the robotic mare a worried look. She looked even more worried though, and so did Silver, standing at her side. Ever since the ship had landed, the blue stallion had begun to look unnerved, and it was clear that something was bothering him. He took deep breaths for a few moments, then he sat down, saying, "Okay, I'll try to explain this as best as I can". He glanced back as the door opened, and he nodded a bit as Northern and Pearl, his parents, came into the room, followed by Tinker the Dragonpony. "Tell me if you guys feel this too, okay?" He asked. Turning back to the AI, he said, "So, you know about my magic, right? Dark magic?" He asked. He didn't give her time to answer before he continued, "So, I can sense other dark magic users, no matter how small- Dad feels strong, since his magic is kind of like mine, and mom is a bit more faint, since hers is kind of dormant. Now, are you able to sense static electricity? I think you mentioned that at some point?"

Fluttershy frowned as she looked through her memories, and she shook her head. "I can sense the other ships, and the power they make, if that's what you mean?" "Even better!" Polaris said. Northern went to the window as his son talked, looking out with an expression of worry. "Okay, so you know how the other ships feel? Imagine that, as we landed on this planet, you felt the same thing, except incredibly more powerful, coming from that city". he said, pointing a hoof at the windows. Silver glanced outwards, but all he saw was the ruined city, and the forest behind it. Looked fine to him...

"But what do you think that means?" Fluttershy asked. "I.. I don't know!" Polaris asked. "But I've never felt something this strong! Not even when Sombra took over that one time! Hell, I doubt that every pony in DarkRock combined could put off magic that strong!" This time, Northern spoke up, as Pearl sat down next to Polaris to try comforting him. "I have to say I agree, and so do all the ponies from DarkRock... I'm hoping that it's just the planet that feels like this, but after what Luna said about the original empire's ponies...?"

Fluttershy sighed softly, then she said, "I wouldn't ever accuse you guys of lying, but I don't know what to do about it... could it just be stored magic? I think you guys told us that dark magic can be stored away?" She asked. Northern and Polaris looked at each other, then they nodded, and Northern spoke up as he said, "It would have to be an ocean of magic stored away for us to feel it this strongly..."

"Well, let me call Celestia and Cadence..." The AI said, as a nearby screen swapped to the call interface. Meanwhile, Tinker looked out at the city, his leathery wings shifting on his back. He and most of the other dragonponies had wings similar to batponies, but none of them had gone with Luna, as they weren't actually batponies. He sighed a little, watching as the last few ponies disappeared behind the city's walls. He had known Polaris for most of his life, and he had never seen him so worried before. Scared, even, and Polaris never got scared unless there was fire around. He trusted Luna though, she had built this place after all.

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The tour hadn't been going as well as Luna had hoped. She had been taking the tour of the city slowly, and as they went along, the group began to point out things that she had skipped over during her last visits. A sword embedded in a wall, a cart on its side, the remains of a steel door across the street from where it had been mounted. Armor scattered in alleyways, homes disheveled with furniture scattered everywhere. Sure, that might be normal for abandoned houses in Equestria, where ponies would vandalize things, but who was here on Equinox to vandalize the homes, if anything? And from the dust, the broken and scattered furniture inside the old homes had laid such for a long time.

"Oh, and this is what used to be the market..." Luna said, as she watched the last few ponies come into view. As they went through the city, Luna's guide of the old city had slowly turned into an investigative expedition, and at one point, she had commanded that all of the batponies who wanted to help her investigate stay with her, while the rest headed back to the ships. She could do the introductive tour later, right now, she wanted to use her clear head and the batponies she had with her to try solving the ancient mystery. "Look!" cried out a younger batpony, as he pointed down an alleyway. At one end of the alleyway was half of a skeleton, and quite a distance from it was the other half. Luna made her way over, and she glared into the dark pathway. She sat down to talk to some of the more knowledgable batponies, making extra sure to listen to the one with a Fossil for a cutie mark, since she knew her way around artifacts. "Princess, everything I've seen so far is textbook for... for a battle site, or an evacuation, all these buried weapons outside? And the armor scattered around?" She said, looking up to her. "I don't gotta be an expert to assume that that dude got ripped in two..." Grumbled a stallion to he other side.

"Something awful happened, I know it did... but what?" Luna said, standing back up. "Maybe it was changelings!" One batpony said, getting the blue mare to roll her eyes. "Chrysalis hadn't even been born at the time, and it was her that turned her hive against us" Luna said. "I'm wondering if this planet holds danger that went undiscovered during my time" she said, frowning down at the ground. "Come on, we want to be back at sundown, for the sake of seeing properly" She said, starting to walk. As she did, a mare came closeby, saying, "Maybe it was somethng on this planet? Like, we haven't seen any animals yet..."

"Well, when I first explored this planet, I spent... stars, it must have a year I spent here, flying through the forests, poking through bushes, I looked everywhere for anything that woulkd pose as danger, but all I found were plants and bugs" Luna said. "That's why I built this empire, i thought it was safe..."

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"Hey guys, look at this!" chirped a mare, from the group of batponies who were heading to the ships. Some of the batponies who were leaving the city with her stopped, turning to look. She had found a statue, standing in quite a weird spot. It was a pony, and it looked remarkably clean compared to everything around it. But its cleanliness was strange, considering where it was- it was hidden away in a tiny alleyway, most of which had collapsed behind it. "Poor thing looks scared..." She said, giving it a worried look as she poked its nose. With it, she felt a shock. "Ow!" She squeaked, pulling her hoof back. Where she had touched the statue, it had begun to glow. Then, it turned black. The blackness seeped along the entire pony, going down its head and to its body.

The mare took a step back, and as she did, its eyes opened. She yelped as its dark red eyes took focus on her, and it lunged towards her. It couldn't do much, since it was still mostly frozen in place at the moment, but her friend pulled on her and said "We gotta go!" Tentacles shot out from the pony as the small group started to run, and they called out the other ponies who were going back to the ships, yelling "Run for it!" Some of them looked back, some of them began run, and a lot of them flinched as the mare who had discovered the statue was tackled by it. She let out a scream as the Inky magic began to cover her up, and within moments, the freed monster tackled a batpony stallion who had turned around to help. It also snared another pony with magic tentacles that it shot out ahead of them, dragging them backwards as the magic began to cover them up, too. And as it did, the mare, now transformed into another one of the Inky monsters, snarled as she took off running to hunt down another batpony.

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As his blue friend rambled about his magic to the princesses over video, Tinker was watching the Lunar City. It really was a cool looking place, and he was wondering if he would prefer living on the ship, or moving out to a real home in either the city or an actual house. He was pulled from the fog of his thoughts as he saw movement, and his ears raised as he saw three batponies come racing out of the city. Then, he spotted the horde of beasts behind them. Without thinking, he turned, and he raised his voice to yell "Polaris!". Tinker was not a pony to raise his voice, so Polaris looked at him right away, giving up on the argument he was having with Celestia. "Look!" Tinker said, meeting his confused gaze with one of rising panic as he pointed outside with his paw. Polaris teleported to the window to save time, looking outside, and his own eyes widened just as Northern's did when he came running over too, not wanting to bother teleporting such a short distance.

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"They're faster than us in the air, too!?" Yelled a stallion. By the time the batponies got to the exit of the city, the ships were now in sight, but only three of them were left by that point. The rest of the group consisted of a horde of inky black ponies, which flying after the bats using wings of their own. Polaris whipped around, jabbing a hoof at the camera. "Stay in your ship, but I fucking told you!" he said, before turning to North, saying, "Get DarkRock, I want every magic storage crystal they have" He said, before teleporting away.

"Where-" Tinker said, before he looked out the window, and down... Polaris had teleported outside. Not only that, he had tapped into his own magic, his fur darkening to gray as he grew a bit larger in size, his eyes turning red to match the monsters on the approach. The three batponies flying towards him looked terrified at first, but they didn't have time to react as Polaris' magic grabbed onto them, teleporting them to the bridge of the Twilight, since it was the first place he had in mind. They were understandably terrified, but they had Tinker, Pearl, Fluttershy, and Silver to help calm them down and check them over.

With their prey suddenly gone, the group of ponies came to a stop, landing on the ground. Some of them looked at Polaris, and when one of them snarled at him, the others turned to look. Realizing that they had identified him as a danger, Polaris took his chance, and with a growl of his own, he shot tentacles of his own magic into the fray. He used it to ensnare all of the ponies in the crowd, much like they grabbed their prey, though he wouldn't know that. He tightened it, trapping them in place, where he intended to drain their magic from them. Draining such a large amount of magic, though it paled in comparison to what he was feeling in the distance, was a lot for one pony, and he hissed as the enslaved batponies began to try breaking free. Some of them did, and they came running towards him, but he grabbed them in his magic like the others to try to keep them in place.

Still, it was clear he was fighting a losing battle by the time Northern teleported outside, holding a gemstone as big as his head. Each time one of the ponies escaped, it got harder for TInker to re-trap them, and one of them got dangerously close to him before Northern grabbed onto it, and he pinned it to the ground. Northern's magic surrounded him as he switched over to his own darker form, and he yelled "Polaris!" as he held up the gem for him to see. Polaris glanced over, then he reached out to the gem, grabbing onto it just like Northern was. North looked to the crowd of cursed ponies, and he fired his own magic into them, joining Polaris' efforts to keep them contained. With both of the stallions at work, they could hold the ponies in place, and then they set to work draining the magic.

One by one, all of the snarling batponies lost their magic coverings, collapsing onto the grass. The gem between Polaris and North began to glow as it absorbed the magic, and by the time it was finished, it was shining brightly within their magic's grasp. Once all of the ponies had been freed, Polaris and North put the gem back in its box, and they both let their magic retreat as their gray fur went back to being blue and darker blue. Since the action seemed to have stopped, Celestia teleported out to the two ponies, immediately asking "What WAS that!?" As she looked back and forth between them.

"Dark magic!?" Polaris said, as if it was obvious. Northern had better control over his racing emotions, and he waved to the gem, saying, "Something ensnared these ponies with an awful curse, they're going to need to rest and eat a good amount of food to regain the energy it took to manifest itself, thankfully, we were able to sap all of its power away and store it in this". Celestia started to speak, then she paused, then she gasped. "Luna!" She said, turning to look at the city. "A-Ay, wait!" Polaris said, but Celestia's sister was more important to her than the words of the former King and his son, the space-tech inventor.

A lot of ponies had come running once the magic fight had ended, and Northern and Polaris set to work placing batponies on the backs of rescuers, so they could be taken to the medbays in the nearest ships. All except for one. "Dad, look at what this one's wearing..." Polaris said, as he gently nudged one of the sleeping ponies. The mare was wearing tattered, ripped clothes, but they looked nothing like any of the clothes from the ships. Northern frowned, then he pointed to her flank, saying, "Her cutie mark, is that a hat?"

"A... that looks like a hat from the middle ages" Polaris said, looking back at him. Northern frowned, and he picked up the mare himself. "I want to check on this one when she wakes up..." He said, and Polaris nodded before they continued on their work. With enough time, all of the batponies were taken to safety, and Northern had left Fluttershy with a request for Luna to meet him once she came back.

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"Luna! Luuunnnaaaaa!" Celestia yelled, as she flew overtop of the old city, It was quiet, and she hoped that the blue mare would hear her. She saw movement in the distance, and she gasped as she spotted a brightly colored batpony fluttering up onto a building to look at something. The stallion in question looked up just in time to see a white missile coming towards him, and he let out an "Eep!" as she landed on the structure next to him. "Luna!" Celestia yelled, looking down into the street, "What?" The blue mare marked, looking up at her with an annoyed frown. When she saw the look of panic on Celestia's face, her mood changed, and she immediately asked "What's wrong?"

"I-I don't know, how are you okay? Three batponies just came barreling out of the city, being hunted down by a bunch of other batponies who'd been turned into monsters by some sort of dark magic!" She said. "I- they- what?" She asked. "The ponies we told to go back?" Gasped a mare nearby Luna. "Oh stars, that's... are they okay?" Luna asked, her eyes widening as she looked back to her sister. Celestia glided down to her, then she briefly hugged her sister, saying, "Yeah, they're all fine, Polaris and his dad took care of it with one of those crystals from the underworlders, but it didn't look like they had an easy time with it"

"I thought one of them was supposed to be as good with magic as Sombra or something?" Luna asked, a frown on her face. "Uh, Polaris, I think, and you're right, that just worries me more" She said, shifting her weight at the idea of encountering such a powerful source of dark magic that not even Polaris, his dad, nor those underworld dark magic users could handle. Suddenly, she wanted to agree with his rants about an ocean of dark magic.

Luna frowned again, then she looked around at the crowd she was investigating with, saying, "Come on, we're getting out of here" As she took off into the air. The entire gathering of batponies took off into the air, and once Luna and her sister picked up the ones that couldn't fly, they headed for the plains where all of the ships rested. Thankfully, not a single hitch came of their plans. They filed back into the ships, and Luna headed to the Twilight, where the odd-batpony-out was resting.

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"Ow!" whimpered a mare, as she poked her hoof on a jagged shard of rock. Misty, a red-velvet-cake-colored batpony mare, had gotten lost a long while ago on her mission to help Luna figure out the fate of the old city, since she had decided to follow what looked like a scrape in the stone to see where it led to. She had managed to follow it to a dirt road, where tons of old hoofprints were still visible in the dirt. It looked like a whole city had walked through here! And well, wasn't that a clue? Maybe all the ponies of the Lunar City had walked out one day! But why?

Misty could take off and fly back to the ship at any time, so she figured it was fine to explore this new lead on her own. It's not like she could get so far away that she couldn't see her way home, the ships were like giant brightly colored boxes even at a huge distance! Misty had followed the trail to the outer wall of the city, and boy, there was a big hole in it. Something had broken through the wall, it looked like, with a lot of force, too. The wall looked fine to either side, and the rocks were pushed away to turn the jagged hole into an entryway, but why? For who?

Well, those were the questions, weren't they? So, Misty kept walking, following the hardened ground towards the forest. Maybe the ponies had moved into old fashioned treehouses and Luna had missed them! Or maybe she'd find a bunch of skeletons... Misty hoped it wouldn't be that one, but it would solve the mystery. She wouldn't know how to bring the news home though...

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"So this one was with the group, then?" Luna asked, as she sat down next to Polaris. He nodded, looking back to the sleeping mare. "With those clothes, too" he said. Luna sighed, then she said, "So, you're theorizing that everypony in the empire was turned into these monsters? And that they somehow survived all the way to now...?" She asked. "And somehow, that group stumbled onto this one" Northern added. She sighed, saying, "That's... what could have done this?" Polaris weakly shrugged, saying, "I mean, it's super rare, but ponies can manifest dark magic without actually coming into posession of any... or you could have brought over a dark magic user who went mad? Or something?" He asked.

Luna sighed, shaking her head, and she grumbled "I don't know, Polaris... what am I supposed to tell the others? I'm sure the rumors are going wild, I've already had ponies asking me about the monsters". "No idea..." He said. She glanced at Northern, but he shrugged. Luna stood up, coughed, and she gently set a hoof on the pony's leg, saying, "We're going to fix this..." in a somewhat soft voice. She wiped away tears, saying, "I hate the idea that I could have brought a traitor to this planet... but how would they have done it?" She aked.

Polaris hesitated, but he lit up his horn, enveloping himself in his magic. Instead of taking his beefier, darker form, Polaris opted to use the magic to change his eyes, add some batpony wings and fangs, and then he looked up at her, showing off the fangs as he (clumsily) fluttered his wings. Luna looked him over, and well, if she didn't know better, she would have assumed he was a batpony. Polaris turned back to his normal self, and Luna closed her eyes, muttering, "Wouldn't put it past myself to unknowingly doom a bunch of ponies to their-"

That was when the pony finally woke up. Their eyes shot open, they gasped, and they sat up on the bed with a wide-eyed look of terror, looking around the room until their eyes settled on Luna. "L-Luna?" She asked, and the princess' eyes widened. She hadn't heard her name in that accent in so very long... the pony, struggling against their weakness, pushed themselves to the edge of the bed, pressing against the alicorn mare. "W-Where am I? Is it over? Is everypony okay?" She asked, as Luna laid a wing over her. She looked to her, saying, "Y-You were gone for a century, what happened? Did you come back to save us?" She asked. Luna's heart twinged with pain as she listened to the mare, and she climbed onto the bed, sweeping her up in her arms and hugging her tightly. "Oh, my child..." She whispered quietly. "I didn't think any of you remained... I was gone for a thousand years, and when I came back, you were all gone".

Polaris and Northern had connected the dots, and they gave each other wide-eyed looks, since this mare was far older than either of them. "A thousand? But... it hasn't been that long" She said. "What do you remember?" Luna asked. The mare shivered, then she said, "I... the bells, they rang the alarm bells... my husband, he took his sword, he ran into the street, and these... these monsters came, they had this terrible magic, we tried to fight them but all they did was turn ponies into more of them" She said, shuddering. "I... I tried to hide, but one of them found me, and... it wrapped me in that magic, and I... I couldn't breathe, and... and here I am?" She said, looking at the room again. It was completely alien to her, and Luna sighed quietly. "You've missed much, my child..." She whispered. "Bring food, please?" She asked, and both Polaris and his dad looked to each other before getting up, rushing out of the room. Luna kissed the mare's forehead, and she couldn't help but smile as it got her to smile. "I'm glad you ponies didn't forget about me, then... you look too young to have been there during my last visit" She said.

"No, I... but my mom was" She said softly. "Everypony knows about you, Luna..." she said, putting on a happy smile as she gazed up at the princess. "I guess mom wasn't kidding when she talked about how beautiful you were" she said, giggling shyly. The way she acted and spoke sent both happiness and anger through Luna. Happiness, because ponies would usually behave in that manner around her sister. Well, most of them, Luna was surprised to learn that many ponies lived their lives at night when she returned to Equestria, and she gained a reverent following of her own. But the anger... the dark blue mare nodded slowly, and deep within herself, she vowed to save every last one of her batponies. Whatever happened, it had not killed them, it had kidnapped them, and she was not going to allow the pony or creature responsible to live any longer on her planet. Before she let her anger stew enough for the batpony to notice. Luna let out a gentle sigh, clearing her mind. Now wasn't the time. She settled down on the cushions, and she held the little hatmaker close, giving her snout a gentle little kiss.

The cute smile she got from the little mare nearly brought a tear to her eye, but instead of overwhelming the mare with her own scattered emotion, Luna made herself comfortable on the bed, and she began to tell her about everything that had happened while she slept away as a statue. Luna was a good pony for the job, too, since she herself had to be educated on everything that had happened during her time on the moon!

Author's Note

misty no don't do it