Dusk Has Fallen ~ PART I FINALE

Muffins would have been delicious. Like, really delicious. So, if one were to admit that no muffins were available at the time it would also mean that nothing delicious at all was to be had. As a matter of fact, there was no food whatsoever to be had. Neither good nor bad tasting food was available and that was probably the worst thing about everything right now. That and the fact that she could hardly remember anything after Canterlot.

There had been another earthquake and then she had been running. The last remaining bits were about a golden throne, a white alicorn and that she couldn't even stand up on her own, again. The little brown filly was back once more. Standing on weak legs that couldn't carry her own weight and feeling colder than before.

Somehow she felt better for it.

There was no exact way to describe what she felt as Derpy helped her from the ground and her two unicorn friends stood beside her. Physically she felt the same as ever but somehow her spirit felt lighter, better. For one second she didn't know why but then she remembered the alicorn, white as a pearl and with a smile warm as the sun.

As she leaned on Derpy, she gave the little pegasus her thanks and Derpy replied with but a scrunchy face and a smile.

"We should try to go back," Trixie said and Twilight noticed how she looked.

Trixie wasn't exactly what one would call a beautiful pony, piebald with a two-toned mane, a black eye, bandages on her legs and a smile that showed half her teeth missing, some had fallen out and not yet regrown and some probably had fallen out once and then again, for other, less natural reasons. She wore a giant hat and her coat was hidden beneath a cloak with stars on it. Thing was, Trixie had not once looked like she cared about her looks. In fact Twilight would have said that there had always been a certain pride about Trixie, a pride she herself could hardly comprehend. Yet it had given her courage and something to trust. That had been before and now she could hardly find anything admirable when she looked at Trixie. The filly seemed so much smaller, like she was using her cloak and hat as things to hide beneath, as if she was ashamed of something. Words faintly resounded in her mind, but just as that thought she couldn’t figure out what they meant and from whence they had come.

Beside the caped unicorn stood Lyra. She was a bit taller than Trixie and a bit more lanky. Also aquamarine.

Twilight took a moment before fully realising the strangeness of the color. "What happened?",  she asked.

"Oh, this? I guess I found something I lost again." She said it like she was talking about a misplaced book, which Twilight found weird. But then Lyra smiled and the weak filly stopped caring. That smile was better than the one before and it didn't look like it hurt at all.

Lyra was tall and beautiful.

Trixie looked at them from beneath her hat, "I know we need to catch up and all but considering everything: We need to get back to Canterlot. Or is this Lunarium a lie,  too?"

Both Lyra and Twilight stared at Trixie.

"What?", she asked, clearly freaked out by the sudden looks.

"I- I don't know, but  just now. . . Lu---narium." Lyra stretched the word and then looked at Twilight. "Do you hear it, too?"

"Hear what?" both Trixie and Derpy asked.

Twilight nodded. She hadn't realized it before but she could hear the power in the word now. She didn't know what exactly that was or why but she found courage in it.

"I think it's real! I believe it. There's a power in that word," the frail filly stated, "Yes, yes, we should go back, hopefully the others will think to do that, too."

Trixie nodded and gestured the others to follow her. Twilight was just thankful that she had other ponies to help her. She didn't remember the details of her dream, only that she had talked with the white pony and that something important was giving her courage.

She had read about Nightmares, or Night Terrors, as they had been called in the old days. She had read that they had been the most cruel beings, but they had died out. The only thing that had remained of them in this world had been the taint on the dreams they had left. Nightmares were nothing more but bad dreams nowadays and she hadn’t been scared of them.

They had taken refuge the ruins of a house, one of the many and stalked through the ruined alleys with great care. The sun had reached the horizon, coating the world in tones of orange as the stars slowly started to reveal themselves on the night sky.

"Dusk has fallen," Derpy mentioned, "isn't it past bedtime?"

"Trixie has no idea why you're talking about bedtime now," their very nervous leader stated. Trixie always said her name when she got nervous, Twilight figured.

"Because I'm getting tired! We've been running around the whole day," the pegasus whined. Trixie rolled her eyes.

"We'll need to meet the others before we can rest and Trixie doesn't think she could sleep after-," there she paused. Trixie looked down on the ground before her, yet didn't stop to walk. Was she thinking? Crying? Twilight couldn't tell. "Trixie thinks we all need to be together. Just follow Trixie."

Twilight couldn't say much. She felt much like herself again and was quite thankful to have her friends aiding her. She looked around. Whatever remained of the populous city of Canterlot was ruined and burned. The others kept their eyes focused on the road before them. The destruction of all the buildings had left a layer of dust spread across the city. Like mist it surrounded them, slowly coming down from the sky.

For once Twilight was happy needing to concentrate on getting one hoof before the other rather than look at her surroundings. The only thing she really noticed was the smell. The city had always smelled like a garbage pail with the factories by the edge only making it worse. The skies had been obscured quite often and the rain was poisonous. Now there was this smell of sweets and cotton candy overshadowing the old. Something she, strangely enough, did not find to be good. Her tummy was as sensitive as the rest of her body and the smell only made it hurt.

She turned her head to Derpy, whose eyes each looked into a different direction, one up, one down. The pony seemed to have lots of strength left,  now that she thought about it. What had happened to her on the run? She sported a cut on her cheek and it had bled, even though most of the red liquid had been washed off by the rain. Twilight didn't inquire.

The road was covered with rocks and in the corner of her eyes she thought to spot some ponies lying around. Despite all her curiosity, she thought better of it and didn't look and the others did not, too. She knew why those ponies weren't calling out, weren't moving.

Hopefully Raindrops and Octavia had managed to help those ponies they had met. If something good would come out of this whole mess, maybe it was worth the trouble in the end. Her heart was beating furiously but it wasn't hurting yet. She knew that the walk to Canterlot would hurt much and she knew there was nothing she could do about it. Her condition was one that would never go away and she actually felt a bit weaker than long before, she didn't know why. The last time she had been near that Magia-thing she had been unconscious for a long time. Was it because she had used magic?

With that thought her head turned to Lyra, who was walking on her other side, probably to aid when necessary. She let her words go through the mind again. Lyra had said that she had found something.

"What did you find?", she asked, but her voice was weak and she already breathing heavily.

There was a moment of silence before Lyra noticed that Twilight was talking to her. "What?"

"Your horn grew back and your coat is different. What if those things are influenced by magic," Twilight figured.

There was the smile Lyra sported now, the warm grin that, given the right circumstances could easily sway any mood to a good one. "Sure it does. I just thought about what Octavia once told me, that there's magic in music." Lyra looked like she was reflecting on something. "I never believed in magic, you know, not until I met you. I guess I realized that it exists and that with it we can do something, even fix the damage already done. I just want to bring a smile to everypony's face in the end. Even if this Magia is set free in the world, I now know we can defeat it. We've got each other and we can trust in that," then she laughed and looked bright as a sun, "We can earn ourselves a happy ending."

Twilight smiled but she didn't ask how Lyra had come to this conclusion. She knew that the easiest way to describe the situation was as utterly ‘mad’, but for some strange reason, with every step closer to the castle she felt a bit more confident. She wasn't getting stronger, in fact, she felt getting weaker. She felt the weight of her own body, the exhaustion from her long run and whatever had happened to her afterwards. Yet she still felt glad, as if she had done something right. She had ponies to trust in her and ponies she could trust in.

And she didn't notice that the distance between them and Trixie widened and Derpy looked awkwardly to the ground, not knowing what to say and keeping herself from tripping over her own hooves.

With that, they continued on, the sun sinking slowly behind them. Soon after they reached the steps. There they met Octavia, who had a grim expression about her. She looked at the four for a moment. Her cold glance wandering from one to the next, quietly noticing the injuries and the expressions they bore on their faces.

She looked at Trixie. . . and then smiled, "You're fine. Celestia be thanked."

Trixie didn't say anything but instead made to go past her. What could have been her giving the other filly the cold shoulder was ruined the instant Octavia grabbed the piebald unicorn and hugged her tightly. The other three just watched in silence, Twilight wondering what was going on, but Derpy looked understanding.

"We should go up," she then said.

"Why?" asked Raindrops. The ponies turned around. She looked like somepony had beaten her heavily her face was swollen but determined.

Twilight answered immediately: "Magia is a Nightmare."

"This whole mess is a nightmare."

The answer came suddenly and from Derpy's side and even though it was but a whisper, everypony seemed to agree with it. Twilight even nodded, "I know but that's not what I mean. Magia is a real Night Terror."

    "A what?" Lyra asked, trying to sound interested but she seemed to have the vaguest of notion that something called a 'Terror' and having just wrecked the capital of the Republic was something to be scared of.

"I'll tell you on the way up." Twilight said. She was smart, she had read those things and so she shared what she had found in the books her father had given to her. "The Night Terrors were creatures that infested the dreams of the ponies long before they first found magic to defend themselves. They were creatures of pure evil who sought nothing more than destroy the peace and harmony that ruled the land. Some stories," not for fillies, Shining had said, "even called them the 'Harbingers of the Long Silence', the end of the world."

She herself had never quite gotten into her head what exactly the end of the world meant. A world wasn't a pony that could just lie down and sleep forever, it was huge with land and water and skies and clouds. How something like that could end was well beyond her, but it did sound very bad. The others didn't answer her, so they probably thought that, too. Either that or Twilight was just so smart that she was the only one who got anything out of it.

She wasn't quite sure what she should hope for but either way, as the last rays of light vanished beyond the horizon they stood between the statues once more but this time the light of a full moon shone down upon them, revealing a hole in the middle of the small stone plaza.

And that was when Twilight realized what they would need to do and what had happened. The moon's light was bidding them farewell and the warm voice of a mentor she never had carried through the wind, telling her that she could do it.

There wasn't any time to reflect, she understood that. They needed to do this or they would all actually realize what kind of situation they were in. She could deal with it. Why? She did not know, maybe because she only thought she did. Maybe because her father had left her for good and she had last seen Shining a thousand years ago.

"Let's take a dive," Twilight Sparkle declared as she walked towards the hole in the ground, all on her own. She smiled, looking at the others and they all nodded, each stepping forward. One last time she looked at the sky and the laughing face of the beast called Magia stared back while the screeching and breaking of bones became the faintest background noise. This night would be the first Nightmare Night and even though the moon shone brightly, every pony who'd sleep would be haunted by night terrors.

Twilight took a deep breath and then she was the first to jump into the darkness, but she heard Lyra yelling: "CADENZA!" while jumping down. They were still all together and their journey towards the Lunarium had only just begun.