There is Nothing Harder than Just Going On

Dusk shook his head roughly, his head still ringing from the impact he'd made against the dome. It was nothing compared to the one his brother could cast, but it was still powered by the sun itself, apparently, so he'd have to take a different route.

Feeling his magic pool surge and empty, he sagged in the air before forcing his wings to push himself up and over the dome.

Drawing deep into his pool, he held his breath as he made himself invisible. The blood pounded through his ears, twice, thrice, and then he dropped the spell with a massive inhale. He was starting to get a thaumic headache, and it was throbbing a heavy flamenco between his ears. Taking in a deep breath of the cold air so high above the mountain, he let the first lapping waves recede as he was given a small break from the spell that made creatures forget him.

He carefully let one of his hooves touch the very summit of the orb, smiling gently as the familiar warm surge of the sun washed over him. He let it soak into his muscles and bones, pulling it in a familiar dance that he hadn't been able to practice in too long.

Gently, he bent the surging power back into the orb, and used it for dowsing back into the source of the spell.

Closing his eyes, he frowned as the smell of burnt hair and bone reached him, along with the biting scent of blood. Ignoring those for the moment, he pressed the magic against several layers of runes, reading them aloud as he ran over their defenses.

"Nothing to stop feedback," he murmured. "They just depend on the shield to act as its own sink."

He pressed further on, further down, and found a rough orb of crystal relays surrounding a miniature sun, a star flickering in its mortal guise.

"They're using the caverns to store her magic," he said, shaking his head. "At least they aren't dumb enough to pull from her directly..." He inspected the circles around her, and the runed staves of crystals that were transferring the power into several crystals large enough to be called boulders.

He then felt as one was moved away from the thaumic ducts and rolled into a slot in the wall. His scruff stood a little when he felt the power trickle back up into whatever medium they were channeling through, and the smell of burning hair and muscle reached him again.

*****

"We're burning straight through them at this point!" the Third Magus yelled. Had to yell, to be heard over the screaming coming from the chair they'd rapidly nicknamed the Nightmare's Throne. "We'll be switching over to mudders at this rate!"

The Second Magus stood silently for a long moment. "Combine them!" he yelled back. "Single ponies are not working! Bundle two mudders with a mage, use them as a thaum sink!"

"We only have two more mages available!"

The Second looked pointedly at the Third. "You'll find we actually have four! Pray that the first two last long enough for another solution!"

*****

Dusk's head reeled back; the words barely present as the screams rang through his mind. "Oh no," he whispered, his mind scrambling to find a solution that wouldn't hurt the pony currently sitting in that heinous monstrosity of a chair. But even as he extended his field down into that room once again, he felt another trio of heartbeats approaching the room.

"Forgive me," he whispered, before flapping his wings twice.

Looking down onto the shimmering field that was the current bane of peace and unity in his country. He'd never been able to outmaneuver Celestia, not truly, but this was a brute force projection and nothing as elegant as her usual casting.

Looking up into the sky, he reached out with his magic. Not towards the sun, that celestial body blazing through the sky with an aberrant trail of magic pushing it with Celestia's weight, but through the planet and out to the moon.

He winced slightly as he barely touched it, and icy tendrils of fear and howling rage tried to claw their way back to him.

YOU ARE NOT MY SISTER
WHAT ARE YOU

"Shhh, shhh," Dusk murmured, gently moving aside the howling hurricane of all emotions terrible that was Nightmare Moon. "I'm here to help her, Luna; I'm here to help."

The tendrils retreated, hissing away from her true name just long enough for Dusk to pull out a sliver of the moon's power and pull away himself.

Shivering through the cold vacuum of the moon, Dusk gently shaped a chisel out of the cold, dark magic that was trying to grip him. Pushing it away gently, he focused the cutting wedge down and gently pulled it against the magic of the dome.

He shuddered as a fresh wave of screams and panic reached up to him from out of the castle, but he continued pressing in the chisel, and he watched as a thick swath of the orb started to pull away from itself and start pushing magic out into the air. Gently pulling down, Dusk watched as he continued to rend the sphere apart, until the cut reached from the sky all the way into the ground.

He let a breath out then, and released the moon's power back into the world.

Dusk looked down at the ground, noting for the first time the camps and tents of ponies that traced around the orb and the gathered spots that were ponies. To his slight amazement, he felt unicorns in those camps, and he watched as either side of the sphere was seized in hundreds of thaumic fields and pushed apart. They widened the break as a stream of soldiers began rushing up the mountain path, led by a large indigo unicorn wielding a long but thin blade in his magic.

He was torn for a moment, wanting to go down and plead with them for mercy for their fellow ponies. But he shook his head sadly, turning away with the thoughts of what might happen should he interfere any more than he had. Instead, he flew down towards the half-built castle.

At the last moment, he cast the wall-walking spell, dipping through walls and floors as he soared down through marble and carpet, and twice a very surprised pony. Flaring his wings, he stopped directly outside of Her doors.

Dropping the wall spell, he looked at the two guards shaking beside the door. Raising a hoof, he grabbed one in his field and bodily threw him down the hall before looking at the other.

He let a breath out as the spear hit the floor, and the pony started running down the opposite hall.

Walking up to the large door, he frowned as he ran a hoof over the marbled surface of heavy oak and crystal. While the fort had been a bit lacking in magical security, this door at least was resistant to all forms of magic, and he didn't have a key.

So instead, he knocked.

"The castle is fallen!" he cried out. "Release the door and walk away, or face Celestia as we release her!"

He waited for a long minute, counting down from sixty and sighing. He started to walk away, intending on finding something nice and heavy to throw at the door for a while, but he stopped and whipped around at the sound of a key turning in a latch.

As soon as the door started to open, Dusk shoved his hoof through and yanked the door all the way open, magically backhanding the pony starting to cast across the room. He simply ducked a wildly thrown spear, before picking up one of the other guards and bowling him into the artillerist. Glancing around the room, he snorted before trotting up to his mentor, the Sun itself in mortal form, kneeling on the ground with a familiar series of metal and straps leading back from her jaws.

Reaching around the back of her head, he fumbled for a moment with the metal buckle with his hooves, cursing the slippery magic coating the item until he managed to free the belt. Tugging gently, he pulled the bit from between her jaws and let it fall to the floor before her. Looking around the room and finding it had emptied itself of ponies, he watched her stir for a moment before leaning forward and giving her a gentle kiss on her forehead.

"See you in a thousand years," he whispered, before gathering up his power for a chain teleport.

The last thing he heard from the chamber was a quiet, "Luna?" before he was gone.

***** ***** ***** ***** *****

She rose shakily, her legs trembling as though they hadn't born her weight in weeks, months, and looked around the room as she sought the warm touch once again of the only other creature who she loved and knew loved her.

But she wasn't there, and the last fifty years crashed around her ears, the slow descent playing piece by piece once again, and she wept as she looked around the room.

She had the presence of mind to teleport the unconscious ponies around her away, though no thought was wasted as to how or why they were there at all. Instead, she banished them to the dungeons she had prayed never to need, prayed less than two decades ago never to need, as the pink and teal wisps of her mane began to flicker deeply within themselves.

She tried to take a couple of deep breaths, counting backward from ten more than twenty times, but each time the flickering face of her sister's fear came to her near the end, and she couldn't stop the rising tide of anger and betrayal as the stone under her hooves began to soften.

"Stay back," she whispered, more to herself than to any extant creature. "You can not have me."

then let me have them

She shivered, her mane rising from her shoulders as the room's heat shot well into the several hundreds. Distantly she heard the pops of several stones as they cracked under the heat as she ever so briefly considered the voice.

"You cannot," she whispered again.

They Must Be Punished

Her hide shivered, her coat glistening not with sweat but with heat.

"Please—"

Punish Them

She bit her lip, the blood pooling between her teeth sizzling and popping like fat in a fire.

After a full minute of struggle, her mane finally caught fully alight as her thoughts came to a head.

"Only one," she whispered. "Only the lead in this act."

She shivered once again as the voice purred within her head.

Very Good

She sighed then, as she finally gave herself over to the flame.

*****

We must pull back here. Not because of the fire and white-blue flames that lick at the very edges of sight, but because we lose any shoulder to sit on. We must pull back here to see the tale unfold.

The doors we stare at are largely resistant to heat, thanks to their largely crystalline structure. This does not keep them from cracking, then splintering, then falling to the warping and cracked ground as we watch the creature emerge from behind them.

What we see step through the melting flames is not altogether truly a pony, not anymore. Though its shape is similar, and it does still step on four feet, its body is no longer the flesh that makes up a pony.

Instead, we can see that its body is made up of what seems to be fluid energy, flowing up from its forehooves into its barrel before being discharged into the air by its fluttering mane, the heavy smell of air after a lightning strike coming off of it in sickening waves. Its back legs fuel into its tail, a graceful arc that flares and darkens much as the orb it commands.

Commanded.

We watch as it opens its eyes, dark sclera pulsing with the same darkness that passes over its coat in spots violently. The iris is golden, and the pupil long and thin as a snake's.

As her sister's.

Its head moves to look down the hall, then up the other way. With another creature's memory, it begins moving through the halls, leaving behind black and warped hoofprints and scorched walls.

It barely glances at the first guard who is unfortunate enough to cross its path, barely grins as the pony's armor melts in an instant, and the corpse isn't even allowed to fall to the ground as it is vaporized almost instantly.

I said one! One only, the leader!

"Indeed you did," purrs the voice, barely needing to open its crackling lips to bare the long-fanged maw. "And only one shall I keep, as I agreed. The rest will stay here, in your domain, as you wish."

We can almost hear the pained howls of the true embodiment of the alicorn, the horrible screams of treachery and grief and hate, but the thing only continues down the halls.

She counts the eighteen individual souls it finds in the hallways, and she weeps for the platoons sent against her, and she screams as it pauses in its slow walk to the main hall to allow for one last offensive against the creature.

The doors to the courtroom combust as it turns the corner, and she sees nopony more against it as it moves down that corridor.

It pauses as it reaches the doorway and a magical weapon flies through the air, piercing its shoulder and being consumed by the boiling blood that oozes slowly over the hilt.

"Bang-on, Soft Shoe! I'll see you raised to a Prince for that shot, marvelous—"

It glances at the small, trembling thing beside the throne, and watches carefully as it lets off just enough heat to begin the pony's boiling. It steps slowly into the room, keeping its furious touch from the thing on the throne as it watches the screaming, wavering shape as it becomes a black, tarry puddle on the stone. It smirks then, before switching its gaze to the trembling creature on the throne.

To his amazement, it bows low before him, its knees gently resting on the ground before it straightens and smiles benevolently up from below the dais.

"My liege," it says. "I come to bestow upon you gifts, in exchange for freeing me, even if only for a moment."

"O-o-oh?" he says, straightening as he refuses to look at the stinking smear on the floor beside the throne. "Truly? You want to give me something?"

"Truly!" it crows, beaming widely. "Several enchantments, to assure your safety in the coming years!"

He slowly nods, a smile daring to slip onto his face.

"First, of course, is resistance to fire! You will be imbued with some of the power of the sun, allowing you to weather nearly any fire with no damage at all."

His smile widens, and he shivers as several white runes appear on his flesh with a flash.

"And along with this, I bestow upon you a portion of the life force of the star itself, so that you will live for no shorter than the eternity of the Sun's life."

He giggles as another series of runes tattoos themselves over his barrel.

"And now, I can give you your last gift," it says, grinning up at the King on the throne.

"Yes, yes, please!" he calls, his blood pumping and his eyes wide with the smile plastered on his muzzle.

"Myself, as your companion," it says, dipping its head and fluttering its eyelashes up at the king. "Only, my liege, you will have to swear your life to me, to be with me forever, no further from my side than any true lover would wish."

He glances over her quickly, and his visible greed sharpens, and his teeth glint as he matches her grin. "I will," he said, lust flowing through his enamel and over his tongue.

It lifts its muzzle and gives him the prettiest grin he's ever seen.

"So is it done," it murmurs, a series of chaining runes flowing over his legs unnoticed. "Then my business here is done, I'm afraid. I'm to be off, as soon as we're done speaking."

"I'll pack now!" he cries, leaping from the throne and glancing around himself. "As soon as I can find one of the servants, we'll be off on a grand tour of our new country! We'll travel and slap down those fools who would fight us, and soon we'll both be fat off the offerings of every pony in the land! And—"

"Oh, poor thing," it simpers, raising its head and looking down at the King with a softness placed in its gaze. "Why settle for a mere country?"

He gasps and prances in place, grinning widely. "Truly! Why settle for some little plot of the earth when we could rule over the whole thing!? We'll raze the griffons to ash, and even the dragons will tremble before me!" He glances at it and gulps. "Uhm, us."

"Still settling," it coos, tutting and smiling softly. "Why gaze longingly at something so small as this blot of dirt, when the sun itself calls?"

His eyes, clouded over with glee, twinkles as he laughs out loud. "Indeed! We'll take over the sun itself, and all—"

He stops, his eyes clearing with a few blinks.

"Indeed, precious, we will bask in the flames of the sun," it says, lowering its head to brush under the King's jaw with the tip of its nose. "And we'll barely even be able to see this poor, pitiful ball of water and dirt. Just me," it pauses to playfully reach out and place a smoldering hoof on his chest, "and you."

"Th-th-the sun, huh?" he says, trying to give a winning smile and failing miserably as his heart sinks under her grinning gaze. "I, uh, doubt there will be many servants up there. Maybe we could—"

Daybreaker tilts its head back and laughs, loud and hot and full of glee.

"Why, whatever servants could you want, my dear?" she asks, nuzzling him. "You have me!"

Blinking, he starts to inch away from her. "Uhm, dear, that heat enchantment of yours seems to be failing," he says, raising a hoof to his hot muzzle, nearly sizzling.

"Oh, no dear, it is exactly as strong as I made it," it says, reaching a hoof out through the air and pulling, the stallion being dragged to her by the runes on his legs. "After all, I can only make the enchantment so strong, or you wouldn't be able to feel anything, could you?"

Its voice is hissing now, and heat leaks from its every pore as the King begins to yelp, pushing vainly at its hide as it draws him closer.

"Come now, dear," it giggles, the laugh looser and less melodic now, "we need to be off! I only have so long, and we need you to get installed into the core of the sun! Then we can stay there, together, for as long as you live!"

The King screams as he begins to smolder, its control waning as she struggles from where it pushed her. His flesh stays, however, sparkling as the power of the stars heals him even as he turns into a screaming effigy of himself, his form soft but ever healing as he continues to be burned alive.

"Come dear, we're to be off now," it says, before grinning widely. "I'll see you soon, Celestia," it calls to the courtroom, before a massive flash cuts off all sight and we find ourselves elsewhere.

***** ***** ***** ***** *****

General Stone Blood shivered as he watched the corona of light flicker around the castle, having watched as the occupants fled from the castle screaming about another Nightmare Moon. The few soldiers that had actually put up a fight had been pulled into it by a series of orders and officers, but all of the chained earth ponies they'd tried to throw out had immediately surrendered, and joined under his army in most cases. The fighting had stopped long ago, and now an unnatural quiet fell over the mountain.

"Steel Gaze!" he barked out after watching the glow fade completely. When he saw a salute out of the corner of his eye, he said, "Stay here. You're in complete command until I come back out of there."

He saw his second in command tense, readied himself for an argument, before letting a breath sigh out as Steel just murmurs, "Be safe, Stonehoof."

"I don't think I can," he said, turning his head and smiling at his Lieutenant. They shared a nod before Stonehoof takes off at a canter, between the ajar castle doors and up the flight of stairs inside.

He was forced to slow down when he came across the first line of warped and cracked marble flooring; the walls scorched black. His heart sinking, he followed the trail and slowly, wincing at the heat on his hooves, walked between the piles of ash that used to be the doors of the courts.

Inside he saw a small mare, in the middle of a ripple of stone forever warped by heat and polished to a fine mirror. Slowly approaching, he flinched as he began to hear the sobbing that wracked the mare's coat.

"Aunty?" he said aloud, as much a question as an announcement of his presence.

She shivered, hard, and as he moved closer, he heard her whispering something just under her breath, over and over again. When he got closer, he began to make out her chant.

"One-hundred and seventeen," she whispered. "One-hundred and seventeen burnt, one-hundred and seventeen souls sacrificed, one-hundred and seventeen—"

His heart sank, and as he reached her, he gently wrapped his legs around her, and rocked her comfortingly as she sobbed the number, over and over again.

One hundred and seventeen.