Adventures in Stellaria

Lunaris’ chest heaved as she stared the battered body of her sister. The flagstones beneath her hooves were blackened and warm with traces of magic, and moonlight filtered in through the hole-filled ceiling above them. The fight had been long, the damage done great, but it was coming to its natural conclusion now. Years of waste, of weak rule were coming to an end. Her sister had always been too soft, had never done what was necessary to make sure their ponies survived and thrived. All of her power, and not enough of it was used, especially not to protect their weakest subjects. No more, though, no more. It would end, and it would end now.

Taking a steadying breath, Lunaris straightened to her full height, her horn crackling with magic as a broken piece of her armor clattered to the ground.

“It’s over Tiara, submit. I will not ask twice.”

Tiara shouldered some of the castle rubble from her back and fixed Lunaris with a tired look, her armor long since destroyed.

“I will not,” she gasped, one of her wings bent at an awkward angle. “You are going too far sister, and I won’t let you. I can’t.”

Her horn flickered, but her magic failed for the moment, and she fell to a knee, her blood pattering to the floor. Lunaris’ snort was filled with contempt.

“You cannot keep hold of a nation and be this weak. How can you hope to defend your ponies when you can’t even defend yourself?”

She fired a beam of magic, and Tiara managed enough energy to roll to the side, letting the beam obliterate another section of wall. The room they found themselves in was filled with such holes. Lunaris imagined she’d have to rip it down, fill it’s place with something stronger. She would be doing quite a lot of that soon enough.

“Does this look like defense?” Tiara spat. “Do you think our ponies are happy with this fight? Do you think they feel safe?”

“What they feel is irrelevant to what they are!” Lunaris snapped, firing another beam.

Tiara again dodged, and a bookcase exploded, filling the air with burning pages.

“The words of a careless tyrant,” Tiara said, dodging again and again as Lunaris continued firing magic. “Did you learn nothing from our defeat of the Shadow King? Did you learn nothing from spending months repairing the minds of his drones?”

“I am not mad, nor am I a tyrant,” Lunaris snarled. “And unlike you, I did learn a lesson from the Shadow. I learned that danger lurks around every corner and will stop at nothing to take what is mine. Now I merely act with the force needed to make sure my son does not live in a world where he is afraid to step outside!”

She lessened the power of her attacks, but if Tiara noticed, she didn’t stop dodging. With the saved energy, Lunaris set a magical trap for her sister, and she sent out a sequence of beams, guiding her straight to her demise. As she rolled into the rune, Lunaris split her attack a dozen ways, sending all the beams to converge at once, forcing Tiara to use valuable time and magic to conjure a defense against the inescapable beams. Her magic sprang to life, and an amber shield absorbed the beams, but once again put Tiara on her knees. The shield shattered, and her magic sputtered away. Lunaris’ horn charged once more, but as Tiara tensed to roll away, a blue circle appeared around her.

Runes started to spin, and chains reached up, wrapping around and pinning the brown alicorn’s limbs. Lunaris stalked forward, a vicious grin splitting her muzzle.

“It ends,” she hissed. “No more, Tiara. I have bested you, and now you shall submit, or my first act as Queen shall be to punish you.”

Tiara tugged on the chains, but the more she resisted, the harder they pulled her down, until she was forced to lay down, panting as she stared up at Lunaris.

“I… won’t… submit.” Her eyes pleaded as she spoke. “Please Lulu, please don’t do this. There are better ways-”

“I don’t need your pet names and petty arguments.” Lunaris’ muzzle curled into a snarl. “A thousand times I have tried to convince you, and a thousand times you have refused to see the right path. If you won’t listen to sense, then perhaps you merely need time to think. A thousand years in your precious sun should suffice.”

Tiara paled.

“Lulu, you wouldn’t. The damage that spell would cause-”

“Your frailty and soft heart will do far more damage in the long term. Enough of this.” Lunaris took a deep breath as she summoned all of her remaining magic. It was nigh impossible to banish an alicorn without special artifacts, but her fury pushed her power to new heights, and even though the spell was unstable, she knew she could hold it long enough to cast it. She had but one focus now. One thousand years, and when she returned, Tiara would see an empire so mighty that nobody would dare even think of challenging it.

Lunaris leveled her horn at her sister, her teeth gritted as magic flared, threatening to obliterate the both of them. Arcs carved the stone beneath their hooves, and blew yet more holes in the walls of the tower.

“Goodbye, Sister. When you return, this shall be a paradise for all.”

Tiara let out a sad sigh and bowed her head.

“For your sake, I hope you are right. Goodbye, Sister.”

Lunaris started to release her spell, but a flicker of bright colored movement caught her eye. She looked behind Tiara to find a small, orange, thestral colt, peeking out from behind an overturned bookcase. His brilliant blue eyes were filled with tears as he looked to her for comfort.

“Momma?” he whimpered.

Lunaris’ eyes widened, and she reached out a hoof to him. In that moment of distraction, the already unwieldy magic pouring from her horn was freed from her steely focus.

The tower exploded.

Lunaris awoke quickly, a boon of her alicorn physique. She couldn’t say she’d been through worse, but the wounds she bore were those she could shake off. Just a little time in bed, some proper breakfast, and a nice story book to read with…

“Fireheart!” she screamed.

Lunaris bucked free of the stones that pinned her down, and though one of her eyes was swollen shut, the other darted around, desperately seeking her little flame amongst a tower of flaming rubble. Tiara was gone, the rune still glowing on the floor where she’d been standing, a sign that she’d been successfully banished to the sun. The wall that had been behind her, however, was gone. The bookcase that Fireheart had been hiding under was naught but ash, and Lunaris felt bile rise in her throat as she pictured the tiny orange bat sharing a similar fate.

“Fireheart!” she cried.

Her horn sputtered as she reached out to throw rubble aside, and she let out a feral scream of rage. Her composure failed as she set to digging the old fashioned way. Her hooves cracked as she threw stone after stone into the wind, uncaring of where it would land. She needed to find him. Nothing mattered more than finding her sweet, innocent little bat. How could she have been so careless? She’d left him asleep, but if he’d heard the sounds of battle, of course he’d come running for her. He’d always been a bit timid since his original parents…

She shook off that dark memory and ripped aside the sheet of timber and shingles that was the remains of the tower’s ceiling. Lying underneath, half-buried underneath some stones, was her adopted son’s tiny little body. His eyes were closed, his fur scorched. He didn’t move in the slightest.

“Fire!”

She quickly dug away the last of the stones and pressed her ear to his chest, nearly falling to tears with relief as she heard a tiny heart beat. Her horn charged, then flickered, sputtering out useless sparks. Lunaris stared up at the burnt out bone, then back to Fireheart.

Her voice, formerly confident and proud, was now hoarse and terrified.

“Help!” she screamed. “Please, my son needs help!”

She looked back to Fireheart and gently stroked his cheek, brushing away some of the soot.

“Please wake up Fire, please wake up my beautiful son…”

He still didn’t move, and Lunaris felt tears stream down her cheeks as she again cried out for help. Looking back to Fireheart, she wept and laid her muzzle on his chest, trying to force magic through her horn.

“My dear son… Please wake up…”

Her horn continued to sputter, failing to fill him with the healing magic he needed. Lunaris threw her head back and let out a wail, screaming her pain to the night sky. As she ran out of breath, the tiny form beneath her shifted, and Lunaris immediately smiled, crying as his eyes cracked open. She stroked his cheek as he let out a whimper.

“Shhh, Momma’s here little flame, Momma’s right here.”

He let out another whimper, and tears carved trails down his soot covered cheeks.

“It hurts…”

Lunaris ran a hoof through his mane.

“Shhhh, help is coming. We’re going to get you all healed up, and then we can get a whole bushel of mangoes, then…”

She trailed off as he shivered, his eyes starting to close again.

“I’m scared,” he whispered.

He immediately fell limp again, and Lunaris felt her heartbreak. She stared at his battered body as she stroked his mane. Then she looked around the destroyed tower. Only one wall remained standing, allowing her an easy view into the night. Fires raged, and screams of pain and grief split the normal silence of a pristine night. She could see buildings leveled, great craters pockmarking the ground, evidence of their battle. Of her jealousy.

She flexed her wings. The motion brought her immense pain, but they bent and curled as much as they needed to. She could fly, and fly she would. Lunaris gently scooped Fireheart up and cradled him in her forelegs as she took flight. The orange bat pony slept, and Lunaris planted a soft kiss in his mane.

“I will fix this my little flame. When you awake, you will be healed, and the world will be right. That much I promise you.”

As she flew through her devastation, she thought back to how exposed her son was, how easily he had managed to find a place where he could get hurt. She looked down at his battered body, and she made one last promise.

“I will build you a place where this can never happen again, Fire. I will build you a world where nobody will get hurt.”