Chapter 5: To Move Heaven and Earth

Chapter 5

To Move Heaven and Earth

Celestia's verbal assault continued, and now she stepped down from her throne and advanced towards the comparatively tiny and cripplingly shamed unicorn.

“Look at little Twilight, the child prodigy. Prodigy who couldn't master basic telekinesis.”

“You always said I had an intuitive grasp of tele...”

“I lied,” Celestia cut short Twilight's shaky defense.

The little unicorn backed slowly away from the princess, and her hoof found empty space where the stairs to the throne terminated at the platform. She fumbled to find the step, but in the grips of the panic brought on by the Princess' slow, menacing approach, she tripped backwards, rolling down the stairs.

Celestia laughed, and as Twilight looked up at her from the bottom of the staircase, the white horse's horn began to glow with a wicked, black light.

“That's enough.” It was Luna's voice. Still lying on her side, Twilight turned her head, and saw Luna standing in the doorway to the throne room.

Celestia's horn ceased to glow, and she lifted her head to take in a full view of this new intruder.

“Twilight, that is not my sister. Get away from her.” As Luna spoke, Twilight Sparkle noticed something she had not seen before: Celestia's eyes were not the right color, and now their pupils narrowed into slits.

The throne room, already rife with seemingly centuries of decrepitude, crumbled into dust, and the thing that was not Celestia faded from white to black, metamorphosing slightly in shape as it did so. It was Nightmare Moon, her helmet absent from her sable face and head. She wore in its place an ornate circlet of fire-blued steel, inset with onyx and sapphires.

“Well, well,” the black horse chuckled. “You made it.”

“It was not particularly difficult,” Luna sneered, “but thank you for the warmup.”

Twilight scrambled to her hooves, and ran to join Luna. Feeling safer alongside the little Alicorn, she took a moment to examine her surroundings. The three of them were standing atop a tower of polished black iron in the middle of a gray, cratered landscape. The throne still remained, but it was black, and wreathed at its top by elegant, weapon-like protrusions, arranged around a central disk so that they darkly parodied the beams of a stylized sun.

The throne room itself was round, its floor being made of carefully set blocks of polished black marble. An ornate iron bannister ringed the tower's roof, and its posts arced upward to meet in a vaulted, skeletal dome woven together in ornate, curvilinear patterns. There were no walls, affording Twilight a view of the surrounding desolation, which itself was barely visible in the all-pervasive darkness that seemed to stretch out forever. The only light came from numerous iron braziers, one at every support post of the dome, and two long lines of them which marked the path from the entrance to the base of the throne. They all glowed with steady, green flames having no apparent physical fuel.

Twilight looked over the edge of the railing, and saw that the tower beneath her was nothing but a single iron column, tapering inward towards its middle to once again expand outward into this platform. It fanned out into rib-like projections that came upward to form the support columns of the dome, so that the throne room itself was mounted inside an ornate, iron cage. The staircase spiraled closely around this column, weaving in amongst the bottom of the cage, so that it never protruded outside the tower's elegant black curvature.

Far below, dimly illuminated by more of the iron braziers, which ringed the stairwell and the tower's base, Twilight saw the gored, burned and dismembered bodies of at least a dozen enormous black unicorn stallions clad in armor of blued steel. Only then did she notice that Luna's fur and feathers appeared out of sorts, that her chest was heaving, and that her horn glistened red with blood. Now, she understood what Luna had meant by "warmup."

“Where are we? Are we on the moon?” asked Twilight.

“Yes,” said Luna, “but also no. This is some kind of dream world that Nightmare Moon has been constructing in my own subconscious.”

“A Nightmare,” the black mare grinned.

“I'm not even sure if this place has a physical manifestation,” said Luna.

“Oh, we're all quite real here, I assure you.” Nightmare Moon's voice deepened with menace as she spoke. “It's the only way I could properly murder you.”

“But what about our bodies back on Earth?” Twilight asked Luna.

Nightmare Moon looked upward through the ornate lacework of iron that formed the dome, “Oh, don't worry; they're still there.”

Twilight looked upward and saw the planet, the sun's glow radiating from around it.

“I don't even know how created such all this,” said Luna, her voice low but determined.

“Oh, I didn't make this place, little Luna." Nightmare Moon slowly grinned. "You did; remember? It's been here all along, as have I.”

Twilight felt her skin crawling all over her body. “Well, where is Celestia? Wasn't she supposed to be here, too?”

Nightmare Moon looked at Twilight. “Small wonder you're so insecure about that squalid little mind of yours; Where do you think she is, you twit?”

Twilight did her best to ignore Nightmare Moon's insults. “She's in the sun, isn't she?”

“Yes," said Luna. "Why do you think she locked the moon into a total eclipse? We can't draw Celestia to ourselves as long as the moon lies in the shadow of the earth."

Twilight almost shouted in Luna's face. “Then move it!”

“I can't,” Luna spoke through gritted teeth, her eyes locked on Nightmare Moon. “I've been trying this whole time. Her will – and her magic – is just as powerful as my own, here. Maybe stronger.”

“Which should make this easy, on account of the fact that I'm also bigger than you!” Nightmare Moon leapt into flight as she finished her sentence, her horn coruscating with blue lightning. Propelled by her black wings, she dove headlong toward the smaller alicorn, head lowered, meaning to plunge the electrified weapon into Luna's chest.

Luna saw the attack coming and rolled hard into Twilight with her shoulder, pushing the little pony aside. Nightmare Moon landed in the spot where they had both been standing, and released the gathered energy in a blast of lightning that blew polished, black stones from the floor, and sent Luna and Twilight sailing.

Twilight hit the floor hard and rolled to a stop near the tower's edge, striking the base of the iron railing with the back of her head. Her vision blurred, but she willed herself to maintain consciousness. She felt Luna laying on top of her for a moment, then felt her spring to her hooves. The world came into focus as she whipped her head left and right, looking frantically for the black goddess of darkness. It dawned on her she should raise a defense, and her horn glowed briefly, projecting a transparent, purple force field that fixed itself in front of her body. She could see neither Nightmare Moon nor Luna.

Scanning her surroundings, she saw the hole in the floor that Nightmare Moon's attack had created. A low, chilling laugh came from within it, and Nightmare Moon slowly rose upward from within it on her black wings. She noticed Twilight immediately.

“A force field?” Nightmare moon grinned once more. "How banal an inelegant, but I suppose it will do."

The enormous mare's horn seemed to suck the light from the space around it, turning blacker than night. Then, Twilight's own shield began to slowly move backwards towards her. She made to move around it, and it grew outward to touch the railing behind her, first on one side, then the next. She was trapped. As the shield continued to close in toward her, Twilight glanced back over the railing, desperate for a way out.

“Go ahead and jump, little pony,” Nightmare Moon whispered just loudly enough for the sound to reach Twilight's ears.

Briefly, the unicorn considered attempting to jump the contracting purple shield, but it was far too close for her to get the necessary running start, and she dared not levitate herself over its top, either. She could do so only slowly, and Nightmare Moon would certainly take the opportunity to blast her into oblivion. She pinned herself against the railing, and racked her brain for a way out of her predicament.

Then, it hit her: Anywhere she could see, she could teleport.

She shut her eyes and disappeared in a flash, meaning to reappear at the base of the tower and make a mad sprint for safety, but when she opened her eyes again, she gasped in horror. Her teleportation spell, completely against her own will, had brought her directly in front of the Nightmare Queen, herself. Nightmare Moon slowly lowered her face to bring her eyes level with Twilight's own. The little unicorn was mesmerized by fear, barely able to think; much less move.

Nightmare Moon's face was so close that Twilight could see the glint of saliva on her ivory fangs, and could even feel and smell her breath. It was a strange aroma, like the scent of spiced wine, but underneath that scent hung a faint note of something like rotten meat mixed with the metallic tang of coagulated blood. It would have been less terrible if Nightmare Moon had struck her in the face or taunted her in some way, but she only continued to grin.

Then, a faint and very tiny pinprick of light began to glow at the tip of the huge alicorn's horn. Twilight could have sworn that her snake-like irises shone blood red for a moment, and as they did so, the tip of Twilight's own horn began to glow with a similar tiny, white pinprick. Nightmare Moon began to slowly, carefully lower her horn, staring upward at its tip, obviously meaning to touch the two tiny sparks together. Twilight's senses returned to her, and she tried to run. Her guts twisted into knots as she realized that no matter how much she tensed her muscles, her body was locked in place by the grip of some dark magic.

As Nightmare Moon leaned her head in closer, Twilight watched the reflection of those two dim lights growing ever closer in her huge, jade-green eyes. The unicorn began to hyperventilate, whimpering with every sudden, fractious breath. As much as she wished she could run away, she wished even more that she only knew what was going to happen when those two tiny points of luminescence met. Two massive tears began to well at the corner of Twilight's eyes. She wanted desperately to shut those tearful, trembling eyes, but she could not, for not even her own eyelids would bend to her will.

Whatever was about to happen, Nightmare Moon was going to make her watch.

Finally, when it seemed that mere moments would bring the two lights in contact with one another, a black-blue-violet streak shot in from the darkness and plowed into the enormous mare from her right flank, sending her sprawling. Luna now stood where Nightmare Moon had been, her heavy breathing casting steam into the chill air that all good sense said shouldn't even exist on the Lunar surface.

“Sorry, but I needed bait,” she said.

Luna's crown had been twisted and half-shattered by the impact, so she quickly reached upward with a hoof and pushed it off of her head.

Twilight found that she could move again, and not a second later she felt a wave of vertigo sweep over her body, already rocking with violent tremors born of sheer terror and adrenaline. She thought for a moment that she might faint, but as she began to fall, she spread out her forelegs to steady herself. Quickly, she gathered the presence of mind to locate the terrible threat still somewhere nearby. Her eyes found it quickly, and her heart fluttered and skipped several beats when she realized that Nightmare Moon was already getting to her hooves.

The black horse slowly turned her head toward Twilight and Luna, revealing a trickle of blood beneath her left nostril, which she wiped clean with a foreleg. “Well, that was just nasty, little Luuunaa.” She punctuated her taunt by launching a bolt of black energy from her horn.

Luna was somehow able to erect a magical shield in the brief moment of the bolt's flight, but it's impact still slid her backwards the length of her own body. The ensuing blast of pressure swept Twilight off her hooves, rolling her once again dangerously close to the tower's edge. She stood quickly, fueled now by raw adrenaline, but the sight she saw filled her with cold dread.

Nightmare Moon was wounded, limping on her right hind leg, but somehow, that made her steady, determined advance toward her smaller counterpart even more terrifying. She launched another bolt, but Luna had time to brace herself against this one. Its impact did not upset her footing this time, but the effort spent in resisting it prevented her from launching a counterattack.

Nightmare Moon continued to move towards Luna, hammering her with shot after shot of dark energy, her psychotic laughter growing more gleeful and animalistic with each impact. Luna was bearing up under the attacks, but it was all she could do.

Twilight levitated three of the heavy marble blocks Nightmare Moon's initial attack had dislodged from the floor, and sent them hurtling towards the mare. Nightmare Moon snapped her head toward the unicorn, and the three blocks glowed for a moment, then simply shattered, their momentum pelting the black horse with tiny pebbles.

Luna used the moments' respite to charge her aggressor. It was a risky move. In physical combat, Nightmare Moon had greater size, strength, and reach.

The black horse whipped her head back to meet Luna's charge, and their horns scraped down one another until their foreheads collided with a dense thwack. Several deep blue beams burst from the tip of Luna's horn, but the Nightmare horse's greater strength had already allowed her to push Luna's head far enough back that every shot went wide and high, two of them cleanly severing long pieces of the woven iron dome, which fell to the floor, clanging loudly.

Nightmare Moon kicked Luna sharply in the chest with her left forehoof, and then whipped her head around to trip her with her horn. Luna's shoulder crashed downward, and she was forced to roll quickly away to avoid being skewered in the throat by Nightmare Moon's horn.

Twilight looked on, racking her brain for any way that she might effectively turn the tide. “Luna, what can I do!?”

Luna couldn't even hear Twilight's question. She was on her hooves again, and had cast a spell that brought the glowing likeness of a sword's blade into being around her horn. It was half again as long as the little alicorn's horn, and she was doing all she could to run it through any part of Nightmare Moon's body. The black horse seemed markedly unthreatened by this, however, evidenced by her continual laughter.

Twilight took a few steps towards the duel, and was rewarded by an almost flippant telekinetic push from Nightmare Moon. It rolled her over backwards, and very nearly sent her over the edge of the tower. As she clambered to her hooves, she looked upward towards the planet, racking her brain for a way to make some kind of meaningful difference in the struggle.

Her heart leapt inside her chest. Without her noticing, five rays of light had at some point converged directly overhead. She knew somehow that it must mean her friends were coming, but Twilight's heart sank as quickly as it had risen.

She knew they would be too late. Her mind continued to race.

“If only there was something I could do to give them more time. If only Celestia was here. If only I could move the goddamned...” Her eyes widened.

“Moon,” she said, and her horn began to glow.

“What, exactly, are you trying, this time, you little fool?” The sable goddess didn't even bother to turn her head. “Give me your best shot. Pour every ounce of energy you have into me. It will bounce off like another one of your cute, little pebbles.”

“She's right!” Luna locked horns with Nightmare Moon, and turned her eyes towards Twilight. “Run if you can! There's nothing you can do alone!”

“Oh, now that's not true at all,” said Nightmare Moon, actually allowing her head to give a little against Luna's, and then thrusting her neck outward to pitch Luna away from her. “She can watch me kill you alone, and then she can die alone. The two of you can rot together.” She stepped toward Luna, who responded to her advance with another thrust of her horn. Nightmare moon deftly parried the attack, and resumed her onslaught. She wasted no more attention on the purple unicorn pony.

The glow around Twilight's horn intensified. It felt as if it was moving backward and digging into her brain, but Twilight continued to focus on the enormous body that floated overhead, dim and silhouetted by the sun beyond it. She began to whimper and wince with every breath, but still she focused. She collapsed to her knees, and looking up with white, glowing eyes, she saw the planet begin to wax at its edge as the moon slowly orbited to bring the sun from behind it. She found that focusing her gaze on the sun's brightening glow helped to channel her magic and eased somewhat the burden on her mind. Whether it was her greater ability to perceive the relationship of the sun, earth, and moon, or whether it might be Celestia herself in some way reaching out across that cosmic gulf to amplify her abilities, she did not know. Whatever the case, she focused with all her mind and heart on the creeping glow that seemed so slowly to intensify at the edge of the dark, mottled orb overhead.

Nightmare Moon paid her no mind, but continued to lay into Luna with her impressive strength. Despite the magical blade still glowing around Luna's horn, her strength was no match for Nightmare Moon's, and a single slip of her hoof gave the big, black horse a deadly opening. Luna was gored once through the shoulder, then again in the flank as she reeled backwards from the first wound.

The sable mare unleashed a bolt of black energy on the smaller alicorn, which struck her full in her folded left wing. Twilight heard the snap of bones breaking, mingled with a scream so loud that it caused the tower itself to vibrate beneath her hooves. Unable to pull her eyes away from her task, she heard rather than saw the motion of Luna's body as it rolled across the stone.

Nightmare Moon walked slowly toward her crumpled foe, favoring her wounded hip and emitting a low, hissing, snicker. Within seconds, she stood over Luna's half-conscious form.

By sheer chance it was just then that Twilight Sparkle first beheld the sun itself, moving around the edge of the planet. It burned her eyes, and she tried to shut them, but as she did, she lost her focus, and within her mind, she felt the moon slipping backwards along the path through which she had been moving it. Given no alternative, she opened her eyes and stared into the sun.

Twilight Sparkle screeched like something from beyond her own blackest dreams at the searing pain. Even Nightmare Moon was startled by this sudden outburst, and Luna, brought back to her senses by the piercing cry, attempted to stand. Her legs buckled, however, and collapsed once more. The wound to her shoulder had separated the joint almost completely. It seemed certain that Nightmare Moon, once her attention was restored fully to the smaller horse, would deliver her death blow. It was however, at that moment, that a sliver of light began to illuminate the stones on the opposite side of the throne room. Seeing this, Nightmare Moon finally realized what was happening.

“You conniving little cunt!”

The mix of rage and fear in her enemy's voice told Twilight that she was found out, but she could not allow her concentration to break, even for a moment. Nightmare Moon turned fully to face Twilight, and the air began to crackle around her horn as she charged it with a tremendous bolt of magical lightning, meaning to snuff out the unicorn's life in a single blast.

It was a disastrous mistake, for she now stood very, very close to a Princess Luna who was not quite wholly incapacitated. Seeing that her opponent's attentions were elsewhere directed, Luna put her good foreleg beneath her, and used it and her undamaged right wing to catapult herself upward. Having heard the sounds of Luna moving, Nightmare Moon glanced back just in time to see the wounded alicorn's horn being buried in her own ribcage, all the way up to the forehead.

"For the sake of argument," said Luna, "what if she was just a conniving little bitch?" Luna drew a ragged breath, and spoke again, through a snarl. "Like me?"

As her lung collapsed, Nightmare Moon made a low, sucking, whinnying sound, and lost control of tremendous charge gathered in her horn, which burst outward in all directions, electrocuting both Luna and herself. Luna, growling with rage and pain, did not remove her horn from the horse's side. Instead, she gritted her teeth, and mustered every ounce of magical energy she could summon up from within herself. The veins of her neck stood out beneath her fur, and she ground her teeth against one another as she focused each and every fiber of her being into one, desperate charge.

Then, she released it.

A violent shock rocked Luna's body as she unleashed the gathered force directly into the demonic goddess' body. There was a crashing roar louder than anything Twilight had ever heard in her entire life, and in that same instant, Nightmare Moon and Luna both hurtled in opposite directions, their acceleration so sudden that they seemed almost to disappear. Stones were thrown from the floor, and a hole was blown outward through the top of the dome. Several of the closest of the iron columns that supported the dome and the floor were either blasted completely apart or so badly warped that the entire throne room shifted perceptibly downward on that side.

Twilight was thrown aloft once more, and this time she flew totally clear of the platform. She fell several stories before she could gather her wits and cast a teleportation spell. She vanished in a shower of purple sparks, and reappeared above the marble floor of the throne room. The inertia of her fall, still present, slammed her onto the floor, flat on her belly. Her ribcage made a hollow crunching sound as she impacted.

She moaned as she slowly levered herself upward, discovering as she did so that her left shoulder had been badly dislocated. It was agonizing to place even the least bit of weight on it. Her ears rang from the blast, and her body ached from the impact. The expansion and contraction of her lungs beneath her fractured ribs and sternum made every breath painful. Her eyes burned from staring into the sun, and her head felt as if it would split in two at her horn from the strain of manipulating such a gargantuan cosmic body.

Somehow, however, she forced herself to gaze once again into the sun's brilliance, and to focus.

* * *

Fluttershy could see her destination, and could even dimly see faint lights glittering intermittently from atop the gleaming black tower towards which she flew. Suddenly, a white light shone from amidst them, and in a perfect circle, moving outwards from it, a ring of dust flew upward from the ground. There was a crash that set her ears ringing, and as the cloud of dust whipped past her, she was rolled over in midair. She tumbled backwards and downwards, struggling to tell up from down. Finally, she managed to right herself, and continued forward. Whatever was going on, she knew she needed to be there – now.

Applejack felt the shockwave of whatever had created the enormous blast she had heard only moments before. She whinnied as it actually picked her forelegs up from the ground, and set her stumbling backwards for a moment. She only let it fuel her adrenaline rush. She could see where the blast had originated, and now she was certain that it had come from where she was headed. Nopony was faster on her hooves than Applejack, and it was time for her to prove it.

Pinkie Pie and Rarity somersaulted backward under the murderous impact of the blast from the strange tower in the distance. They didn't stop to consider what could have caused it. Instead, they got to their hooves, and wordlessly dashed forward.

Rainbow Dash, now flying over the barren moonscape, heard a roar in the distance like some kind of massive explosion. A wave of force buffeted her in the sky, and she fluttered her wings slightly to restabilize herself as it passed. Fear seized her heart, but she beat it down beneath her determination.

“When it comes right down to it, I live for this kinda thing.” She sucked in a deep breath.

“Let's see if these really are my wings.”