An absolute no one stared into the roiling crash of ponies that were running past her, down the street, away from danger, looking for safety.
Indeed, Moondancer was no one. She’d spent her life chasing the coat tails of the princess’s personal student and found herself outmatched in every possible way, and now that student had herself become a princess, achieving impossibility with all the ease in the world. A cruel twist of the knife.
And she was the princess of friendship too, for there was no limit to cruelty. The mare who had forgotten her birthday and instead gone to a whole new town to make new, better friends. She’d been rewarded the title of princess of friendship. Moondancer had to be no one then, it was the only way it made sense.
The stragglers of the stampede were passing by now, she could make out the form of the red centaur that was the cause of the chaos running the streets.
He slowed as he neared her, eyes catching her as the odd one out. He seemed like he was trying to recognize her. No doubt thinking that any pony who tried to stand up to him must be important. He would have no luck there, she was no one. His wicked grin returned.
“Is this all the sisters of Canterlot can muster?” His voice boomed, full of smugness. “A puny unicorn binoclarde?”
Binoclarde, she hadn’t heard that one before. Prench maybe? Points for originality at least.
“Lord Tirek.” The no one said, looking at the towering figure that almost obscured the horizon in its entirety, recognizing him from her history books.
“Well well well, some pony who remembers me. Then you know why I’m here?”
“You’re here to… to…” Moondancer faltered, her self preservation instincts seeming to catch up to what she was doing. She forced them down, but too late. She watched the grin of the minotaur grow wider at her sign of weakness. She knew she couldn’t defeat him, probably couldn’t even harm him, but revealing that had been a mistake.
Her goal was much more down to earth, much more achievable. She'd tried for fantastic victory before, she'd always fell short of it. So she'd set her sights lower. The princesses had fled Canterlot, so they must’ve had a plan, Moondancer had to believe they had a plan, and plans took time to come together. She couldn’t beat Tirek, but she could play for time.
Even if it killed her.
She could feel her dedication faltering and took action before it gave out completely. Moondancer fired a bolt of magic, a simple offensive spell she’d read about in a self-defense book. It was supposed to knock the target off their feet, what it did instead was bounce harmlessly off one of Tirek’s horns. The retaliation from him was immediate, a lightning fast back hand that sent her skipping over cobblestones like a pebble over a calm lake.
She felt her body battered by the attack, every skip across the stones tearing away at her fur and flesh. Eventually she came to a stop with the help of a metal base belonging to a magical light pole. She heard something crack inside her at the impact. The world swirled around her in a sudden cascade of pain.
Moondancer lay there for a moment, trying to take stock of the damage. An impossible feat, it turned out. The background pain from all the damage she’d received from a single, simple, non-magical attack from Tirek was drowning out any other feeling, making it impossible to focus on any particular wound.
She lay there a moment longer, ears ringing, before she tried to stand. Her bones voiced their disapproval immediately, a lightning bolt of pain shot through her, from head to tail in a single red hot moment. It dropped her. She gasped. She breathed.
She attentively wrapped her back and torso in a weightless magical grip.
Carefully, she stood. Then, she walked.
Right back into the middle of the road.
Tirek watched her, amused. “Not a quitter, it seems” His tone was mocking.
Moondancer didn’t need his input, she knew she probably looked stupid. She wondered if she’d delayed a full minute yet. That had been her aspirational goal going into this.
She looked at him and realized one of her eyes had swollen shut. Her vision was also extremely blurry, but she understood that was because her glasses had been absolutely destroyed somewhere during her tumble. The edges of her sight were going dark. She felt… wet inside.
Internal bleeding, a helpful diagnosis jumped to mind. She wondered where she’d read about it.
Tirek appeared to grow tired of waiting for her response. “Do you really think that you can defeat me?”
There it was again, so self assured he didn’t even think that every wasted second was a victory for Moondancer, he thought she was trying to defeat him. “No.” She answered truthfully. “But I think I’ve got enough magic for one last try.” She lied as easy as she breathed, then. Which, given the damage, was with extreme difficulty.
Even Tirek, king of ego, could see it. “You’re barely holding yourself up.” He scoffed. Then shrugged. Deciding it wasn’t a worry of his either way. His patience was up now, he was going to conclude her desperate little last stand.
Sensing the closing window, Moondancer fired another bolt as a final desperate act. The bolt went wide, didn't even connect. Her blurry eyes with no depth perception made the shot all but impossible to begin with. Her magic buckled as she overtaxed it with the attack, she felt the pain shoot down her spine, she watched Tirek lunge.
Before it all went dark, Moondancer thought about how much she hated her name. It was a stupid thought to have, but she couldn't help herself. Moondancer. A joke. The twilight does sparkle, the sunset does shimmer, the starlight does glimmer, but the moon doesn’t dance.
