Chapters Investigations (prologue)
Luna browses her computer. Its not an ordinary one. Its a futuristic machine with high level magics placed on it. At first it seemed a wise idea to be able to make inter-dimensional internet, but the vast majority of information was shocking to say the least. She figured the communications would improve magic, technological, philosophical and other ideas more rapidly to solve the problems of entropy. But Luna thinks she knows what is causing the entropy, after accessing a multitude of data. It uses similar magical technology as Celestia's mirror did centuries ago.
Luna cast a spell to assimilate a random portion of the vast swaths of the information of the connected thirty-two thousand alternate universes or dimensions. The spell is functionally similar to psychedelic drugs but with safeties, and what you might expect from downloading information matrix style. But it increases processing power magnitude extensively, allowing herself to browse three-hundred million pages in a mere three days as each thread of her mind aggressively scoured through the data. Perhaps this was a mistake. Every passing moment Luna examined what was ongoing in every other dimension had larger interconnected implications of all kinds of harrowing events. Even the language of species gives away the painful hierarchies they inhabit or enforce.
The answer for entropy to cease became obvious. You see the magical energies connecting each plane are more fundamental than the quantum mechanical differences between planes of existence. All the fundaments of each universe are all tied together from a type of energy that has pseudo-random activities that generates universes of various themes. There is no entropy in Luna's native universe, save for this basic law or force's determining, which was magically measured. They have no more than two hundred trillion years. This may seem like a lot of time, but its not.
Its a pity that spell Luna used increased compassion relative to the information level processed. It seemed to be a needed measure to not eventually cause a hierarchy with their species dominant above others because it'd send the wrong message, and its easier to do. Why be lazy, a single injustice can perpetuate an entire society's misery were it to fester inappropriately.
Little did Luna know, the peaceful universes are one of the few. Magic to bind straw together into a basket, can also be used to bind slaves. The same magic used to pick apples from a tree, could be used to pull someones heart out of their chest. The magic used to put the anxious to sleep were being used to take advantage of mares in their sleeping state! Every detail surrounding magic seemed to have negative implications in these other universes. Luna realized the real sacrifice Celestia gave in that moment, and for the briefest of moments felt guilty she couldn't have helped her those thousands of years ago, establish the control over society and nature that she did. But she did so rightfully and peacefully. Something only a thousand years of wisdom and knowledge accumulation could bring, perhaps.
Luna's wisdom on the nature of magic, her understanding of the multiverse force, and philosophy did however accumulate greatly during her spell.
Luna takes off her helmet slowly, eyes stricken, wires with many runes on them running off of the helmet to a towering interface behind her in various directions coiled up stacked as high as a mountain. Magic amplifiers rest in the middle of the coils and in various patterns, similar to the organ wind instrument, which connects electromagnetically to a floating silver liquid mobius strips which sparkle and fluctuate and shift about. Theres many machineries to aid in super-conduction and the like. But Luna doesn't notice these as the distortions in her visuospatial sketchpad slowly normalize, temporarily blinding her visual cortex.
The safety spells are providing Luna with many comforts so the trauma of what she has seen is rapidly depleted and her mind feels like it could drop into euphoria or agony at any second, but it does not. The danger of euphoria is pleasure seeking behavior, so it too is moderated. Memory is maintained but the emotions are processed to the point of neutralization of them. A healthy way to maintain a lack of bias, perhaps.
"One thousand seconds remain before you can safely leave the magical field." A polite almost monotone, yet pleased sounding voice announces. Luna waits. Her mind logically processing all the information she received. But the morality maintainer conflicts with the logical processing elements of the multispell collection in the machinery. Is it right to be complacent about this? Celestia doesn't know yet. This machine won't be handed over to the public as initially planned.
"Five hundred seconds remain before you can safely leave the magical field." Many universes, new or dying. Faced similar problems. Their records caught through this machine, Luna turns facing its towering behemoth of a self. You see, the logical thing to do, is tainted by the information received. Like receiving books for a lifetime on the conveniences of just kicking your problems to make them comply. Which contradicts the logic and emotion of her time in Equestria. The spell's resolution wishes to remain impartial, so cannot find a healthy solution for this problem. As the machine is finishing up Luna experiences intense emotions rapidly changing for safer consolidation as the spell moves her mind about, and she cries a tear for the briefest of moments she was sad.
"You may now safely leave the magical field, have a wonderful day and a good future!" This puts a sour pit in her stomach. Luna knows what must be done. Luna slowly builds up an anger at the unjust misfortunes pushed upon those many realms. Luna's memory won't change. That's perhaps the problem of the machine. But Luna knew the risks, she just underestimated them.
Luna's trot echoes endlessly down the halls as she makes her way down the long staircase, still thinking about what has just transpired. It reminds her of some of her time from eons ago, spent with an entity called Nightmare. Luna would normally wish to forget what has transpired to not fall into old habits, but now that risk is old. One good thing about the spell is its compartmentalized the memories from this event uniquely. Even so Luna can remember remembering how it felt and still keeps her analysis knowledge.
Luna pauses briefly, then hurries along at a faster trot, then a gallop, and she bursts into the room Celestia was waiting for her. Celestia looks up and stands up almost immediately to comfort her sister.
"What happened, Luna?" Celestia shows genuine concern. Luna calms her breathing.
"Celestia. I have learned a great many things, including how to solve the entropy problem." Celestia processes what was said with poise. Celestia patiently waits while Luna struggles to say.
"T-tia!" Luna finally breaks down and cries. Celestia comfortingly holds and rubs her, worried about the possibilities of this event. Going into it they both knew the risks, but if memories were censored one would not be able to learn anything. So there was always going to be some risk even with therapeutic runic circuits. Because a problem needed fixing.
"My analysis was too complete, perhaps. I recall more than I wish to. But the true solution, is a wonderful thing. But it doesn't change what must be done. Its hard to put into words, but we are going to need to modify the machine that I have just used in order to make it work. Its, its definitely not going to be available to the public that's for sure ha ha."
"What will it do?" Luna considers not telling her, as childish as that sounds, briefly.
"Well.. You see. The force behind the multiverse biases locations relative to the magical tone they exhibit. If its too discordant it'll have a negative cascade of energy and the universe will fizzle out, kind of like the game of life. People do not realize the destructive properties inherently, in certain systems of order. They get more discordant as time goes on. And this is because of their respective Jungian psychologies collective consciousnesses not being in tune with their worlds. They behave without seeing, they act without knowing, they apply general rules to unknown and broad situations. This causes a destruction of their world, and it cascades beyond their world, like a tornado throwing houses into other houses, if a collection of destroyed houses were to for example summon a spirit of tornados. And it sort of cascades outward. Some worlds did fix this problem, but it was not remotely common... The only thing we can do.. Is to battle their collective conscious and end the tornados that are too large to fizzle out safely to put an end to their discordant energies destroying their worlds, and eventually it'll reach ours. This is what causes the entropy." Celestia thinks for a moment about the implications then realizes both the dangers implied and what stopping entropy truly entails.
"Oh sister!" Celestia holds Luna tight. They both cry.
The elements of harmony, don't work in any of those worlds. The only thing that can be done, is to irreparably damage the Jungian psyche of the darkest most entropic worlds, to the point there are no more, and can't make more, discordant hierarchies in those realms.
There's only one who can manifest combat against a collective unconscious, and that's Luna. First Luna will have to show the map of where its happening the worst, then dive in. Like trying to kill a black hole before it sucks the universe dry, by diving into it and bombing it with anti-matter.
"I'm ready." Luna sits some twenty years later, in a vastly modified facility from last time. Oscillating electricity crackling on giant ritualized floating stone structures that gild the supports of the massive architecture, a humming filling the air that coincidentally helps energize and calm the mind. Large crystalline structures diffract an ominous seeming light. The moon has risen entirely overhead, the monumental place looking almost like a passage straight to the moon its so colossal.
Twelve blind folded assistant unicorns stand in a crescent formation, their horns glowing ephemeral and cacophony of light fills the space. Luna's entire form energized into magic, launching into the moon, entirely coated in the substance normally used to craft mirror portals. Luna manifests through. It feels like each photon is dropping through her at the speed of light, while she launches vibrating at a note gaining in pitch, each of her energies of her form and spirit unified in this pattern. While to weeping Celestia who has already said her farewells it seem not but an instant, to Luna it feels longer than the two decades of anticipation.
A loud screeching fills the void as she is ripped into an abstract dimension. Eventually Luna's sensations return, the world seeming to have an after-image effect while her spirit attempts to make her existence concretely established in this realm. Luna is adorned alternately from where she came, instead manifesting a form of precision and grace to be able to respond and act as she must. She has a whispy ghastly cloak that helps her be in a stance ready to evade in any direction or attack in any direction at the force she would in a combative stance normally. Tendrils of shadow hide under her wings feeling out like sensors, her mane and tail similar. She can manifest what tools she typically requires for destruction from her shadowy essence.
Luna's distorted vision slowly pieces together what is before her. She passes through some archtypalized memories of the location, aware. There's a small cathedral of sorts ahead, sounds of misery puncturing the air. Luna decides to investigate and silently approaches at a surprisingly fast pace. Luna passes through the wall she hears sounds coming from.
"YOU!"
Luna freezes, and looks toward someone looking past her on the left, a tentacle of shadow looking to the right as she does.
It looks like a nun like back in ancient equestrian times addressing a small colt. Only in this dimension all the forms come as an almost extra material manifested pareidolia over the true events, based on the collective subconscious' memories and associations. Luna can interact directly with it, but needs to know more first. Luna remains unseen because her presence was not noted associatively in the collective, yet.
"I TOLD you! When you clean something do it RIGHT!" The old bag slams the colt into the cold stone wall knocking his mop bucket over, spilling dirty water.
"This is why god has forsaken you! Repent, or you will end up like your mother, who is burning in HELL!" The child shakes every time she screams at him raising her voice. She swiftly smiles revealing crooked teeth.
"Yes. Yes, good. Remember, suffering is how you pay for your sins, and it brings you closer to god. Because SUFFERING! Is what makes you desperate enough to call out to god! DESPAIR in agony and you will be closer to god. This is why HELL exists! You will be tortured in spirit until the only thing you know is the DESPERATION of clinging to god, then you will be spared! EAT your measly rations. Suffering is maximized from nutritional DEFICIENCY, yes, but eating a small amount regularly perpetuates hunger PAINS! Ah yes, good. Good." She pats him as he continues to clean up the sop she spilled. "Crying is the release of sin. But stay VIGILANTE! Its not your fault you were born! But crying can perpetuate WEAKNESS! You are a reminder from god for the REST of the CHOSEN! Turmoil is virtue! PRAISE god! DISGUSTING creatures!- Are some of the most blessed. Ha ha ha haa! Yes. Good." The kid shivers crying and nodding, and returns to mopping.
Luna's brow furrowed but a look of focus still remains through the 'exchange'. Memories taint the place coming forth based on intensity. Luna slowly observes, trotting ever quietly down the halls as if gliding, looking, feeling about with her sensors. She feels immense hatred. But has to find the reasonably most intense associations in order to remain productive. She feels wicked vibrations through the air. She presses on into chamber after chamber.
She sees nuns getting raped by priests. Nuns molesting children. Nuns starving children and praising their agony. Some being found dead in their rooms, getting dragged out with a wooden wheelbarrow and dumped in a mass grave. Pregnant mothers having their babies taken from them until they repent. Some of their babies dying from malnutrition, then given up to the mother after. Some beat for crying. Repent. Repent! REPENT!
Its infuriating, the whole lot! Luna's eyes awash with a crimson hatred at the injustice!
"So, now is when you decide to act?" Luna spots the spirit of the hierarchy here, speaking, close into her ear, her thin, wrinkly, clammy, greasy, sharp hoof on Luna's shoulder. Luna instantly replies with a sharp slash from her opposite hip, rotating while leaping vertically and somewhat away at the demon slicing at its throat, maggots and black puss bleeding out while its eyes sunk inward and its face stretches against its skull in a great mirth.
"Ah HA HA hahahaha. Where is god for you? Forsaken? Desperate? Yes. To atone? HA! You will never get in god's good graces! This is good. You will be a FRESH beacon of SUFFERING!" Luna's hate colors the stage, the ground seeming to shake. Luna's horn, then whole form glows, crushing the heads of all the malevolent entities here, their scarlet blood filling the area. Luna chants an inaudible incantation. The blood forming into a demon the nun might mistake with Satan.
"Who will spread god's word now, you INSOLEN-!" Growing pulsating maggots come out of the atrocious entity with the sounds of regurgitation pumping forth, then an ominous force from above and all around, like eyes peering into the souls of those all around, a form of her god fuses with her, like angels descending from heaven ready to perform anything from a circumcision to a death by sawing, entirely made of skeletons, except their bald faces and bulging eyes, their pupils mere pinpricks, golden dirty cloth covers this fusing wretched entity. The air vibrates with the force of anger, this time, not from Luna's archetypal adrenaline response, but from the subconscious of the species here.
"YOU ARE NOTHING WITHOUT GOD! YOU CANNOT DO ANYTHING BUT DESPAIR! GOD WILL SAVE US! GOD CREATED EVIL TO CAUSE SUFFERING TO REPENT!"
The air feels like needles and ice, and the gravity of a thousand black holes filling the air dense and suffocating, and the smell of rotten corpses fills the air so pungent and vile Luna retracts her nostrils and mouth into shadow to not be effected by it.
This primordial fear. It won't hold Luna. Luna lets go of everything, surrendering. Possessed with her own spirit of calm, she remains unaffected by this satanic show of terror. She lifts her hoof up, her mane and cloak sprawling behind her, a blood moon eclipse forming above, the realm painted red, her sword a pitch black. The demon she called grows with the deaths brought by justice or injustice alike, a glyph forming before it lending power, as time is incongruent between each being here. A holy light shines through the air thick with dust too much to see with the usual senses as maggots and locusts fly around.
"You are FILTH! DISGUSTING! You make me want to gag rivers of bile! WEAKNESS INCARNATE! God is OMNIPOTENT! Theres no room for the weak! GOD HAS WHITE FUR! Know your place is with the MAGGOTS!"
Eyes melt off of the moon like water drops streaming from a squeezed porous bottle. Luna calls forth the truth she knows of the existence of everything, meditating on it, as a purple light shines through her sword painting the area, her blood demon shapeshifting with features of Spike and Twilight Sparkle through it, and as it does, sparks of feeling of the element of magic which has no true power in this realm, shines through amplifying the truth and harmony Luna is projecting outward, damaging the sphere of existence here.
The corpses come to life, healthy life, slowly. Greenery is finally visible. Vines start to grow into this dangerous entity closing it up sealing it away.
It takes Luna's entire focus. The being decays into dust, cloth, and blood stained gems gold and salt, passing like all things do in the face of time.
"Godddd........" Its final word. But the gravity of the place doesn't cease, and its beginning to twist and rotate casting colored shadows to the right side of everything.
"SIN." With the single word permeating through the air like a shockwave through water of something breaking the sound barrier. In an intentionally ironic move, the entire space is filled with rapids of blood monsooning oceans of it through the air swirling Luna about and destroying her concentration. Her sword bending from the force of the torrent, twisting her all around.
"You cannot know me. I cannot be known. Death is preserved for those who do know me. Life is preserved for those who do know me. Insanity is reserved for those who do know me. I am born from the subconscious ids and egos of those who worship me. Power. Hierarchy. Control. You won't be able to let go of my grasp. I am all permeating, all knowing, all powerful. You are nothing but a spec of dust to me. You will suffer my wrath. I can sear you with the force of a thousand suns. You are naught but an ant, a maggot."
Luna's eyes open and glow brightly. Her form might be moving about but her mind doesn't need to be.
"You talk a lot of shit for something that can't make a 'rock' it cannot lift." Luna rises out of the planet of blood, and gazes her eyes upon the entity. The shape of the sea is as a bowl with the entity residing in the middle, the blood up to its knees, at the height of mountains, the believers torsos and up writhing off of it without legs screaming vitriol and hate one might expect from a foul mouthed fervent crowd. A lot of the vitriol doesn't make sense, but Luna isn't listening to them. The ocean of blood from below seemed to be rotating clockwise, but from above its rotating counter-clockwise.
The entity snarls in anger its eyes bulging, grinding its teeth in its sockets like someone who has bruxism from malnutrition, seizing. The seizing shakes off the representatives of the believers, falling out of it like worms leaving the entity with holes all over its body, like eels they swim after Luna desperate to shut her down, Luna's eyes blazing with truth, pain, and justice, she flies forward, accelerating.
At first the serpentine ponies are faster than her, and catch up trying to jostle her. She slashes one through its skull cleanly, and others, from the shadows she has tendrils turn into hovering swords, floating like a super-conducted magnet, lashing out instinctively, cleanly, with the power of magic, instantly responsive and incredibly sharp and light. She decapitates, slices down the length, the side. Completely decimating them, her speed accelerates until they can no longer catch up to her, and she approaches the entity. Its form sagging as it loses the weight from its flesh tearing of its own accord, leaving one baby colt, angrily its eyes rolling, moving its hooves in gestures as if commanding, screaming without its mother. Without its control.
Luna turns behind her and sees all the floating corpses of the serpentine ponies. If any made it out alive, they fled, or vanished. The flood of blood returns to normal, leaving trees and greenery and even buildings and mountains unscathed as it settles. Leaving no trace of its existence. Except the foal. Luna sees her 'demon' sleeping, in it's presently gem-like form, she sees the faces of Spike and Twilight sleeping. She calls on the creature, which is no longer formed as a demon, but an entity representing the tree of harmony. Luna's regular colors and form returns to her coat and cloak, her swords returning to the shadows.
"If centuries spent with ponies taught me anything, its when to let go of a grudge. And what love can do for anypony."
The entity shifts into pony sized gems, representing the elements of harmony; Understanding, Bravery, Care, Truth, Knowledge, and Acceptance. Each of them has their own Alicorn representative back on Equestria. Twilight Sparkle, Derpy Hooves, Fluttershy, Luna, Sweetie Belle, and Tree Hugger, respectively. They each became an alicorn when they could represent all of the elements of the era. The lights of their coats and manes shines through painting this possessed baby with a healing light cleansing it of anhedonia and other maladies. Suddenly the life of the realm shines through! Like the color was desaturated for the majority of it, and dark.
She hands the baby over to the grieving mother from earlier.
A smile touches Luna's lips, and she spreads a wing to preen after a moment. She doesn't technically need to. But its a celebration in a way. Back in Equestria she would normally do it with magic.
"Mmm, doing 'Celestia's work'." Luna giggles.
Luna hesitates. Diving back in is a hassle. But its time.
"Farewell thee subconscious traits, your recovery into the future will for now go unaided for there is a greater thing I must attend to and can delay no longer. Fare thee well."
She implanted ideas into the minds of the locals to regain joy found in being balanced with nature. She taught them to desire beauty and harmony. And respectful use of psychedelics. She can infer what the physical state of their world might be to some extent, but not fully. In any case the more she delays the more risk of them getting sucked back into this dark vortex. Its worth lending a small hand tho, so the devastation doesn't lead to a different future of pain.
Luna calls on the process, the tree of harmony with a crescent moon on it, a toothed eye forms on the realm's moon. The tree forms into a magic circle glowing purple with runes, and creating many layers enlarging. Luna had her essence permanently changed with relation to the power that sent her into these planes of non-physical existence. Like forming a crystalline structure that can only form in space, but can be brought back down to the planet after and remain a crystal. Once her state changes back into the physical is when these inscribed powers will be lost to her from the form she is.
She trots into the circle, a whirring and buzzing fills the air. Images of cursed skulls and pareidolic imagery and flowers takes bloom competing and overwhelming the fear. The symbol of a flower. A short lived specie which is delicate, thrives at specific times, and is harvested for its beauty or tender petals, just before dying an ugly death. Hopefully its flowers from a new sprout of a tree, or a thorn bush at least. Better than a mowed field perhaps. Uniform, bland, ugly, monotonous, orderly, lifeless, subjected to processes for eternity. So its still an improvement.
Luna feels like the vapor released from a massive pile of burning wood, shaken with colorful electricity, she slowly forms from one realm into the next, feeling like she has two hooves in each realm, and being a chain of electrical charge filling the battery that is herself. Her vision and perception are highly distorted during this process, like if a tv was pulled apart like the strands in a wicker basket and refolded, and each strand tuning from one station into the next slowly.
A crystalline light surrounds her as her form organizes. Already she can feel associations tugging at strands of herself wishing to be known. The smell of love is stale and faint. The smell of fear and of stressful strained occupancy arises. The problems are less deprived, and more varied in this realm than the last.
Luna trots through a city, with thin streets, large carriages, haphazardly organized. The city feeling like a tree covered in wire so the only branches it can form are the size of twigs. It feels like a maze. She witnesses ponies moving to a store with a line for wooden buckets, going to a line for a well, the wooden buckets having holes in them, they need them to get repaired. When they go back to the store, they are growing older. They are directed to another location who can repair buckets. The clothes off their backs are taken from them as payment. They reach back to the well, but its dirty water and drying out, and are directed to a new well, but the sign at the new well says metal buckets only.
Luna feels dizzy from this waste of effort she is witnessing, and flies high above. She spots cities without this problem, and cities with this problem multiplied. Its then a cloud passes through the air. Full of great color and music but an ignorant youth quality about it. But a cloud of smog hangs over the city, tainting and reducing it and it floats lower as if shackled, making way for bland brick and pyramid shaped clouds to float over them, forming more pyramids, and deconstructing and reconstructing repeatedly, and sucking the colors out of the nearby clouds when it can and floating wads of colored cash upward into the largest cloud Luna has ever seen, blotting out the sky, a disgusting shade of green, and it hides all the colors within it, not revealing any of its stolen beauty for others to appreciate.
Yet Luna cannot see the entirety of this thing. She grows a little frazzled witnessing this system of exploitation. Its not unique, but its still an injustice and this one seems more developed than she was expecting. Luna bursts high into the sky color trailing her like a sonic rainboom. From above she spots a hard to see network from if you were under the clouds. The network sounds like explosives and flashes orange and emits smoke from itself, causing the smog that hangs over the city. Most of the intersections of the network have a suit and tie hung up at the forking paths, the network every-changing for some of it, like a stream of water trickling over a new surface. And on top of the pyramid is another pyramid, which also wears a suit, and another pyramid above it mostly transparent, and one behind it that seems to rotate out of view.
"GAH!" Luna is suddenly propelling backward and feeling the motivation attempt to drain out of her, one of those smog clouds began eating up Luna's color from her flight stream and her tail is next!
It seems the surface area of the smog gives it its draining power, so Luna casts a telekinesis with water element and attempts to flatten it, so it sucks up the water instead of her tail, and as it gets flattened it loses steam and allows Luna to pull free.
"I don't think I'm even in the worst area yet!" This place is a bit chaotic and might get out of hand if Luna keeps observing.
Luna's anger rises deeply and slowly, a vein popping up on her forehead, her horn glows massively full of power barely able to contain its own resonances. She screams loudly distorting the air and stunning the clouds but not the network, the suits feel a gust of air. Luna summons a mountain which produces rivers of clean water to use in the middle of the worst part of the city that she can see, making it grow larger and larger. The ponies living in this dumb system don't immediately take notice, like an ant surprised its been gifted a sandwich.
The clouds and network lose control of the air over the mountain bending around it, and eyes pop out of the pyramids on tracks to observe the area, the tracks folding out and moving like a millipede. Suddenly a bunch of giant rats burst out of the ground as the road has been damaged and start attacking the ponies Luna tried helping and the network has branches underground feeding the rats. Luna can see the smog coming out from the ground as well giving it away.
"This system might be more complex than I have anticipated." Luna shrinks down to avoid notice and to relatively slow time and she hurries through to investigate properly, as she sweats with concentration. Images appear before her of ponies drugged into prostitution. Gang fights. Propaganda. Dried up posters of an era of love the pyramids were threatened by because it compromised their network. Many pyramid clouds holding crosses and screaming words they don't comprehend in an attempt to bolster their position. In the past the network was used to gain advantage to establish holdings and transports in different disadvantaged regions. The whole place is a rat-race of leverage profit betrayal and propaganda. The clouds and suits all independent, gang up on those who the systems they rely on deem a threat. The system of underground smog was produced in response to deprive these areas of influence and created a vortex of misery like a black hole that it was impossible to get anything done in, intermittently throughout the realm. And it turns out, the mutant rats were actually ponies poisoned by their network, effectively causing them to destroy themselves, to minimize expenditure of their hoardings.
Luna explores the past sensations that were weaker, focusing on them to strengthen them. Luna doesn't understand her plan of attack yet, but she is getting a workout evading the movements of the system's members.
A bunch of curious ponies in this realm, in the past, had stumbled upon the creation of magical elixirs that taught the value of peace. And they were shutdown because it threatened the vested interests of the powers that be. They were forced into decreased life qualities and imprisoned and treated as second class peoples. The results, were these demographics shrank, and the parodies of themselves increased from the propaganda machines the suits produced on behalf of the pyramid clouds.
Now Luna knows what to do. Luna forms her own network that produces rainbow clouds in a different location. The desert lands beneath it turn into fertile lands full of clean water. Luna has an eye in the sky observing the movements of the network and other actors as the sky slowly turns a dark red and other clouds spawn skull ponies and pour a river of blood they walk in. It cuts off the network, the skeleton ponies seemingly endlessly appearing. Luna produces portals that one-way lead into her network region for volunteers and disaffected to aid her. Eventually some suits switch sides, but no pyramid clouds or smog clouds are let in. Soon the sky is filled with beautiful rainbow clouds that rains rainbow raindrops, and causes the isle of sorts to really flourish. Vines form bridges, as the location becomes impossible to defeat and impossible to ignore.
Now the crosses, suits, pyramid clouds, networks, and rats converge shifting into one massive entity with the largest pyramid for its head, as large as the mountain Luna summoned earlier. Composed of muscles machinery bone and smog, wielding a cross as its weapon which summons locusts around it spontaneously. The beast bellows in the direction of Luna's planted paradise and it grows as it shapeshifts around the rivers and in the sky, trying to entirely encompass Luna's territory to detach it from existence.
Luna gives a massive cry of a shout, casting spells fueled by her own soul, vibrating as magical energy intensely, she teleports pieces of her city all around the territory the beast left, leaving it to content with the blood and skeleton ponies slowing it down.
The roars into action nearly collapsing the air out of the atmosphere with the force, and causing earthquakes trembling the ground and tearing it up, as Luna's growths and clouds convert the rest of the suits.
Reality changes for Luna because of the expenditure of energy- she is dazed in effect. While Luna is weak and the spells she has put in motion may carry out some work, she herself is trapped in the experiences of the realm around her.
In a tunnel festering with disease Luna communicates with a pony for them not to proceed, she senses landmines, but he is too effected by his friend getting shot, his skull splitting open, to listen to reason. He steps on a landmine and explodes, and during the commotion of the mine, the enemy ponies slowly approach from a side tunnel. Two skinny ponies leap out toward Luna in the darkness, throwing their muzzle towards Luna, a knife held in their mouth, Luna steps under the blow impaling one's jugular, hot blood pouring over her back. A change in atmosphere is felt.
Luna is caught by a dull enforcer entity, licking its tongue around her horn, putting a distorted scythe like baton upon her throat she catches with her hooves. Its tentacles prod at her various locations while she grimaces with grit teeth, her swords bursting forth from her cloak impaling it, its foul smelling blood spilling forth as it squelches and crunches beneath her attack. She grows infuriated and stomps her hoof into its skull repeatedly, first crushing its exoskeleton then its pony skull beneath. A change in atmosphere is felt.
Luna feels sluggish and is getting rut from behind by a mutated rat pony. Luna has tears well up in her eyes while it has its way with her, then the area quakes as Luna remembers her rage felt thousands of years ago, and her subconscious embraces the terrors she found and locked away from the eons she felt from the alternate universe net. The dark knowledge on inflicting suffering on others and comprehension of great suffering. This rape practically doesn't exist anymore. Luna loses her ability for words instead reacting out of her deep well of an id she had developed with her time as Nightmare. Nightmare was a semi-distinct soul from Luna's. This is the part of Nightmare that is not distinct, and is a part of Luna's unrepressed mind.
Nightmare inverts from being down and facing away, to facing up at her violator and throws the mutant rat pony back smashing into a concrete wall, before it even is half way to the wall Nightmare already is pushing through the air rapidly crushing it with her hooves its eyes bulging in its sockets as its flesh is cut and bones breaking and trajectories changing as she hits it like an empty plastic bag out of the air. As it crushes into the concrete wall, she has needles and knives peeling back its flesh slowly making sure it doesn't miss a moment of its tactile sensation from happening too fast. It has a panicked look in its face and wimpers, as Luna pummels its side breaking its ribs and mounts it. Her tentacles and tendrils skinning it alive while raping it and stabbing needles through its testicles. She bites the flesh off of its face and spits it out and lets its blood drool out between her teeth. She lifts it up with one monstrous shadow, pulls back her other limbs wielding an impaling tool and impales it from thigh through its abdomen, all the way through its throat and knocks an eye out of its socket. It gurgles and seizes in pain and terror as Nightmare finally forces vomit of acid down its eye socket and sets the remaining skin of the creature's ablaze before teleporting back into the realm's higher existence, leaving it to suffer.
The reason why equestria was devoid of proper darkness like the other realms, is thanks to the elements of harmony, and how Nightmare and other individuals coalesced a concentration of the realm's potential for malevolence, so was exceedingly convenient to deal with.
Nightmare forms, and sees the entity ravaging some of her lovely progresses as Luna.
"There's a simple way to deal with this!" Nightmare pronounces, and flies into the core of the entity, as she is now fearless in her bloodlust.
The tone and atmosphere of the place is like a gritty humidity that feels like skeletons biting down tactile-y on your flesh.
"There is a peace within you that must be extinguished. The natural order of the world is hierarchy and control. Look as you try to enact control yourself! The world is in dire need of it. And it is up to ME. I am justice. History decides the righteous and the evil. The truth is subjective, outside of the need for ME in it. Narcissism? HA! Why not! Its true! No one can survive alone, therefore everyone needs ME. I am pardoned for my crimes. People hide my atrocities for me because of the profit and fear I bring. Don't you see we need a war to prevent the *other evils* from taking control? If you end me another will take my place! AH HA HA HA HA HAHA! AGH!!!!" Nightmare doesn't care to argue, just to torture it for having the gall to bring her into such a miserable state, and its fun, and its just... Or is it?
Nightmare drills natural poisons and parasites into the creature within the realm inside the malevolent entity with her shadowy~ malice! She crushes its eyes with her hooves her eyes pinpoint, as it struggles beneath her. She drills and hammers screws into and through its bones into a metal plate its fallen on that she constructed with dream logic. It quivers in agony, as Nightmare raises her shadow up loosely resembling a pickaxe the size of an anvil, then Luna stands in the way of Nightmare.
Luna becomes herself again at eye contact and realization.
"The amount of terrors you inflict upon the world you justify, is not truly justified. To say it in a way you understand, if you were right you would not be lying here defeated." Luna summons her black sword which glows purple, and with a gracious blow slices the entity in two, revealing a young colt of about three years of age, cold in the rain and mud, with blood staining him from someone he had killed in self defense, as the redeemable core of the entity.
Luna smiles at the colt, showing a cool blanket of her cloak looking like the amazing stars from her home galaxy and realm. She wraps up the colt who ceases shivering and offers Luna a hug which she accepts. The colt jams a knife into her but it finds nothing but six gems in the space behind her cloak, Luna smiles at the colt holding him stationary and shoots him with the elements of harmony, then their true hug ceases, and she walks him back to the self-repairing growing developing sanctuary she made for the realm.
Luna finds a ruby red bed to sleep in and cuddles some ponies, deciding she needs a good nap before she continues to the next realm, at least.
He was hard to look at for multiple reasons. For one he shone like a sun, an erratic star wobbling about to die off. The other reason is he is a tap-dancing foot-bee. The room is half open to the outdoors half a therapy room.
"Why do you keep tap-dancing about, Joe?" Luna inquires. The bee knocks into random shit knocking stuff over the table as it bounces up and down in a weird dance, as he repeatedly goes over to a naked prostrate woman who keeps muttering traumas to herself, contemplating stinging her but he would die from his stinger breaking off.
"Well you see there's this great idea about hierarchy interpretation. You can interpret hierarchy as good, because I can manipulate you. I can force certain meanings on symbols to lead people to a fascist ideology. I am a bee so I do interpretive dance and this caused me to join the far-right because they also do interpretive dance. The Sun in my name gives me a complex that I associate to god and the father. I am also hiding a deep intrinsic foot fetish inherited from my mother. So I met with, HighLow YawnalotaBuss and we kind of had gay sex, to empower our compassionate alpha ideology I espoused. We roleplayed using the symbologies of the primitive triangles. At first I thought the standing triangle was erect, but HighLow taught me it was in fact not a penis, but symbolism for caves and hence an entrance and vaginas, like the legs spread on a woman. And the other triangle, with the tip facing downward, is in fact a cock ready to be stepped on, because its not an entrance, you don't walk through it you walk on it. So HighLow stepped on my dick. By the end of the night he penetrated my bussy and I felt the Logos as my eyes turn up in my skull, come to me."
"Did you know that cringe is processed identically to pain in the brain?" Nightmare Moon's teeth turn sharp and she holds up a distorting butcher's knife eager to retaliate, but she didn't have to. FeeterSun penetrates the woman out of fear, losing his stinger in her he bleeds and flickers light.
"AHhhhhhhhhh its happening! God's not real! But he is real! I'm real! The Logos! Return to daddy!" He explodes leaving the remains of a common bumblebee, setting fire to a local Sunflower, Sunflower being the name of the female mare in the room. Nightmare Moon is unaffected by the non-supernova, it passing past her like a gust of wind. The blazing mare turns rabid and begins to assault Moon while screaming distracted by the pain.
"Fucker shouldn't be messing with therapy patients! Fuuu~ck this shit hurts!" Aflame screeching out of pain mare stumbles and leaps forward pushing her blazing hot hooves into Moon's fur searing like a soldering iron frowning and then slowly smiling manically. But it was hard to make out for what should be obvious reasons. As soon as Moon sees the smile, she knows its too late for her.
"Trying to make more Mother Teresas Joe?!" Moon cleaves down her skull and she sizzles and collapses, spilling into a pile of ash and coal in the shape of a pony rapidly.
Outside there's a massive tree similar to the tree of harmony in this realm. Its height is non-Euclidean, and theres many FeeterSuns and other entities made of fire, hopping around it threatening to set it on fire, and trying to manipulate which flowers get to grow from it, and there's ponies trying to put out the grass fires around it, some of which get set on fire and scream in pain as others try to put them out and give them medical attention. Moon never heard screams worse than those whom were set on fire.
Moon looks forward in disgust.
"Fucking morons, don't they know if the tree dies they're going down with it!" Moon grows a Luna head to handle this task for her because she is too distracted with emotion and trauma. Luna slowly shifts, Moon becoming the shadowy cloak. Luna pulls out a sniper rifle made of psychedelia and shadow. She snipes them with thin streams of ice-light turning the entities she snipes into magically cold crystal statues. Fires cannot be started within a radius of them. But now they turn their attention to Luna. Some of the entities just shrink over time, others seem to be trying to manipulate vulnerable ponies in neighboring cities. Some blazing skulls reach Luna.
She dodges backward glidingly and backflips without changing the height of the center of her gravity, and sends out black spikes to intercept the skulls, but some of her shadow starts catching fire! Luna gets a burst of adrenaline, time slows, she separates from the shadow dissipating outward then regrowing it. She modifies her sword on the fly letting it enter her hoof and it bends into a crescent-like shape and she swings her hoof pointing it at the skull as it tries to bite her and it gets hit square on the forehead cracking like a vase as its fire is extinguished! It bleeds and sputters out a reply.
"OnE rApIsT cAn RaPe NiNeTy PeRcEnT oF rApE vIcTiMs. YoU cAnNoT sToP oUr SpReAd." It dies. Luna looks up at the rest coming at her. Almost every entity that's not a copycat is a unique specie. Many of them risking explosion like the original FeeterSun. Many of them different colors and permutations like a virus. But there's something odd about it. Luna embraces her royal canterlot voice
"WHY DO YOU BELIEVE AS YOU DO!?" Her voice booms flattening grass and putting out a good portion of fires. One explodes in agony and a puff of dust to break the silence.
Suddenly all the opponents start up discussion with Luna and it goes about as well as the conversation with Bee FeeterSun. Most end up disgusting each other and they part ways. The only ones remaining have crosses engraved on their person. Luna facehooves.
"Why am I noticing a trend?" Two ponies approach Luna.
"You should join us, you seem useful. But, you kinda knocked the wind out of our sails. So we want to give you a proper crucifixion before we convert you into our mysterious order of mysteries." The smaller of the two ponies says.
"Hahahaha! Fucking morons!" Nightmare Moon appears in an instant and pulls the larger pony up by their false alicorn horn, and pulls a surgically sharp hook up through their body watching the life leave their eyes after they shiver and panic in agony. She pulls out the lower jaw of this pony with the hook, all in one motion, then steps on the skull intensely increasing the pressure until it cracks like a watermelon and its brains are crushed.
"You don't scare me! I'm not sure if this one had the proper faith anyways. I am catholic, and I am certain its true because of the Eucharist Miracles!" The little pegasus says. Luna scans the memories of the web to relay it to Nightmare.
"Oh yeah! Its totally real! You got one asshole, create an object then, personally verify it in a lab, by themselves. Wow! Its like you never even heard of cornstarch before! Lemme educate you!" She lifts up the small pegasus filly and spawns a liquid cornstarch toy that becomes a solid.
"Woahhh look at this, its like, eternally running liquid or something, BUT! When you touch it its a solid! WAOW! Don't believe me? I got real physical evidence!" Moon condenses the liquid cornstarch heavily into a hammer shape and swings it so rapidly it stays a solid, smashing the filly avatar in the face repeatedly, the skin tearing and revealing bone. She flails trying to break free of the Nightmare's grip, the fake fillies eyes start rolling around from one hit too many, until she eventually loses consciousness her skull cracking at its thickest part until brain and viscera seep out of this hammer smashed face.
"its like you don't even realize how fake artifacts can be engineered, you bucking muppet! 'Lemme just be a Nazi cuz gods real and hates degenerates and Gods on my side cuz I think he is real wooo~'." Moon mocks swiveling her hips around like some fifties cartoon, then drops the corpse into her puddle of blood in a heap. Moon stares at the corpse and Luna has to snap her out of what else she wants to do to it.
"Alright enough of this shit. How about~, I fight the embodiment of this Logos idea!" Nightmare forces all the minds of the emblazed to connect with magic string to one point, connecting all their consciousnesses. A shadow of a phoenix is born.
"Hm, makes sense. These fires are actually, basically self extinguishing. Like, how can their ideology even be pure? Everything's so twisted, yeah it perpetuates more fire in death. Its like literally the only cohesive point that's non-variant is what team they were on. If we look at the religions in this world, they are behaving similarly. Branching into different disagreeing denominations that fight with each other once their common enemies run out. Its like how the Nazis dug their own grave challenging the world. If you have explosive potential, you also have rapid death. There's no cohesion. It was destined to fail. The only question is how much are you taking down with you? This is what happens when you live your entire ideology into confirmation bias. Like a plant growing through multiple pots then once it reaches for the light it falls over and the pots shatter and it dies."
The phoenix of immaterial blackness gliding across the ground materializes white fire in its rage and sadism towards Nightmare, as a floating ball like a sun resides in the air where it truly lies, invisible. It launches this orb that destroys the dirt and grass around it from bending space-time threatening to form a black hole.
"You know, ego is kinda like fire! It burns hot! So what happens if I give it the cold shoulder? The only reason why the radical religious in this realm fight is because they are conscious of what they view as a force against them. They are aware of their impending demise. The access to information is threatening them. As churches become more radical, they alienate more people. Entryism can only take them so far." Luna glows with her element of truth dissipating the Nightmare, enlightening the entity of its inevitable demise, its wrongness, and its counter-production. They were trying to find the golden thread of logos or truth, when it was nothing more than grasping for a straw. If truth is the entire basket, this was a straw that the more the followed it the more it loosened the basket. They were following their own tail this whole time. Like Ouroboros, a symbol of confirmation bias. Once they eat themselves, once they understand themselves truly. They cannot continue existing.
The phoenix cries, turning into a grey pony of dark grey and light grey fires and holds a firey gun into its mouth, tears streaming from its eyes, it pulls the trigger, and all the fires are extinguished in the area.
Luna vibrates with the energy Nightmare has about this event and slowly calms down because it might teleport her to the next realm before she is ready, again. And she doesn't need to kill pony enemies who are defeated in spirit. Luna tries calming the blood lust.
"Now that they know the truth, there is no reason to kill them. Now we need to educate them and help alleviate their depression. But they also may never forgive themselves. Well, I actually don't think I revealed the full truth to them. Just the hopelessness. Hmm. I should fix that. One DMT trip coming right up!" Luna smiles, almost giggling, and casts a spell on all the ponies in the realm causing them to trip for 30 minutes or so, a spell with safety features and guides incorporated into it so it cannot cause a bad trip, and cannot lead people away from the Elements of Harmony's six virtues.
