The Moon is Gone.

I am Twilight Sparkle, writing what I can assume is a few hours after the one thousandth summer sun celebration.

For contextualization, the events that preluded this research paper were complex, but here are the important parts: I arrived in Ponyville after unearthing a prophecy of the return of one, "Nightmare Moon." She did return, promising to doom Equestria to night time for eternity. A group of talented mares and I chased down the Alicorn, (As the mare in question was such a creature, with a profile thinner, but similar to that of Princess Celestia) into a forest, the trip was arduous, but relatively unimportant.

In the end, ~~the mar~~ my friends and I confronted Nightmare Moon, and summoned what is referred to as, "The Elements of Harmony." The Elements are supposedly powerful artefacts that function only when particular positive features of Equestrian society are present: Kindness, Honesty, Loyalty, Generosity, and Laughter. When the Elements were used previously on Nightmare Moon by Celestia (I assume, though I have no concrete evidence to verify that claim) Nightmare Moon was sealed in the moon for a thousand years.

When we used the Elements on Nightmare moon, they destroyed her, leaving only fleeting fragments of powerful magic and shards of enchanted metal.

While not what I would consider 'harmonic', it worked, and Equestria was saved, or so we think. Almost immediately after the magic faded, my friends noticed several key changes. We were already in a dark castle, located in the depths of the Everfree Forest, a place called, "The Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters." Pinkie Pie, the bearer of the Element of Laughter, noticed it first. She made a strange series of shuddering motions after the Elements fired, and ran to a window.

There was nothing.

Even now, I don't know exactly how to describe it academically, so I'll have to lean on more esoteric phrases to properly describe what I observed. Outside of the window, there was what I am going to refer to as: "Nothing." To make the distinction between Nothing and nothing, think to the feeling of looking out of a window while a thunderstorm is brewing outside. The lights on the inside of the building cause the dilation of the eye to not adjust to the darkness outside, and the borders of the window are simply shrouded in impassable darkness.

This... Darkness, instead, brought forwards that terrifying feeling of being watched. Like there was something just on the other side of the window that you couldn't see, but it could see you. The sensation was so visceral that Fluttershy, the bearer of the Element of Kindness, became violently ill when observing it. I, myself, having not had anything to eat, merely retched.

It ~~was~~is wrong. The kind of wrongness I've seen described in only a few places throughout modern Equish literature, mostly in reference to Dark Magic, or nightmares.

Me and my friends looked around the entire castle, every exit was blocked by the darkness. Rainbow Dash was ~~screa~~

To understand the context, Rainbow Dash, the bearer of the Element of Loyalty, is a brash, seemingly fearless mare. She is incredibly athletic and I've watched her do several feats of such physicality in conjunction with bravery that I would insist that shaking her is almost impossible. She was the first of us to find an opening to the outside that wasn't sealed off. None of us were willing to try the doors, but in a decaying castle, Rainbow was the first to find a dilapidated section of stonework that was open to the outside.

She screamed when she found it, and ran away from it after slamming the door closed that led to it. We only got her to stop crying an hour ago and she's collected herself since then, but I don't think I've ever seen a pony so scared for their life. I hastily used my magic to tumble down the stone over the doorway once we identified where she had come from, that was when I made another important observation.

Magic was gone.

That is, the ambient magic in the air had dropped to nothing, or at least, so low that I could no longer feel it. This ties back to Applejack's (the bearer of the Element of Honesty) weariness. While searching the structure, she was constantly speaking about how the ground didn't feel right, how the air didn't feel right; she said she was sure something had changed, and now we know what. I can only assume that the structure itself has been cut off from any Ley Lines, and the forest entirely. I want to say that we're still in the Everfree, merely separated by darkness. In truth, as far as our senses can tell us, the rest of the world is gone, or too far away to reach.

The only magic left is that which is left inside us, and the Elements, which had gone dark after we used them.

The good news is that while scouting, we found a library. The texts here date back to events prior to what historians state is the catalyzing point of Equestrian society. There are almanacs here about the Discordian era, and tomes and authors I've never even heard of before. Fluttershy and Rarity are looking for food, Applejack and Rainbow Dash are building fortifications for the library while I try and find something that we can use to help us get out of here.

I worry, about Rainbow. She's gone back to joking, but her confidence has clearly been shattered. She wouldn't fly up to the window to board it up, I had to do it with my magic; to which she thanked me sarcastically to try and throw off the fact that she was too scared to do it. She claims she only saw darkness when she was out in the open.

I don't know why I think she's lying.

This is Twilight Sparkle again, It's almost been a full day.

It's impossible to keep track, conventionally. Rarity, the bearer of the Element of Generosity, knew a time keeping spell that didn't work when she cast it. It took us a moment to figure that out, but the arcane clock magically defaulted to whatever time Rarity thought it was supposed to be. She doesn't know why the spell is doing that, and neither do I, without knowing what exactly she is casting. Applejack apparently had what she thought was a pretty good internal clock, but the strange sensations she feels are making her too nervous to feel tired. Pinkie Pie doesn't seem to be experiencing the same sensation, not that she's told us. She has been expressing her normal cheer when possible. Keeping the metaphorical fire burning.

Fluttershy has been helping me read by sorting through the books that are clearly not what we need. Registries and fictional books mostly, she can't read old Ponish, which is what most of these books are written in, neither can any of the others; so it falls to me to find us a way out of this.

Firstly, I need to identify what happened. The magic we used was incredibly powerful, when it struck Nightmare Moon, she cried out in what I can only describe as equal parts: defiance, fear, and pain. Immediately after, the darkness came. While it's not scientifically viable to assume that one happened because of the other with no proof, it is unfortunately the only thing I have to go on. I've been looking for books about the moon, Nightmare Moon, the sky, and anything that has to do with shadowmancy, the Elements of Harmony, or the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters.

So far, I've only seen two books that fit either of those descriptions. One was a constellation chart, while ordinarily pointless, it caught my eye because of what it depicted. There were a total of two recognizable constellations to me present within the fold out pages that depicted the entirety of the night sky. I only dabble in astrology, but the point is, in the depiction, there weren't a few thousand stars, there were millions. They came in colours that the book claimed were indescribable, and in brightness's that outclassed anything we have in modern Equestria's night sky. When Fluttershy eventually found a star chart, the thing was split up into seven volumes, three of them were heavier than Fluttershy herself.

Rarity and Pinkie Pie found the kitchens, and they brought back some surprisingly well preserved grain to the library. In addition, on Rarity's first trip out with Fluttershy, they failed to find food, but returned with linens, which Rarity has fashioned into a circle of sleeping bags for us. ~~Does this count as a slumb~~

She also found several oil lanterns, despite oil lanterns being outdated by only a few years in modern Equestria, these lanterns were clearly centuries old. I don't know how to reconcile the fact that an invention only a few generations old has actually apparently existed since the founding of Equestria. Regardless, the Library is now constantly lit. Rainbow Dash flies to each of the hanging lanterns whenever one of them starts to dim, and tops them up with the spare oil Rarity found along with the Lanterns.

Raw grain isn't exactly healthy, but it's better than nothing.

What we really need is water. Ponies could survive weeks without food. Maybe one without water, and only a few days of functionality without. I expressed as much, and Rainbow has been using her weather magic to gather up the moisture from the castle into a raincloud for me to harvest. She won't go very far from the Library, Fluttershy and Applejack were required for her to be willing to go into the catacombs, where the moisture was at its thickest. She cited that pegasi hated being underground, which is fair, despite my gut telling me there is something wrong with the statement.

The other book I found was a warnings manual for advanced magic. It depicted several... ghastly states a pony could be brought to without the correct precautions when using certain kinds of magic. Runic, blood, emotion, shadow, necro, and elemental. Shadow, of course, was what drew my attention to the book itself, it was difficult for my academic mind to avoid reading the entire book from cover to cover, but I managed somehow.

The good news is that it was a complete dead end. I had incorrectly guessed at the nature of Shadow magic. Apparently, it's more a spell form of summoning than it is esoterical building blocks of larger magics. The book depicted things like, 'falling into your shade' or 'losing control of your summon' while explaining how not to die when using that particular brand of magic. Interestingly enough, unlike modern Equish literature, the book not once simply said: "Don't do shadow magic." It was only ever describing premptive measures to protect against failures or mistakes. There was, of course, nothing vaguely related to how to do anything depicted in the book, but I didn't really want to start playing with Dark Magic anyways.

The reason this is good news, is because that shuts down an avenue of research, eventually, we'll close in on the only thing we need, and it'll make the whole process go much faster.

I'll write more when I find something out.

Twilight, several days after the Summer Sun celebration.

Orniomancy.

The magic associated with dreams. While normally depicted in Equestrian culture as purely from the subconscious, the short primer I discovered on dream magic has yielded an impossibly important fact.

Nightmare Moon was Princess Luna. She's described in the book multiple times, and it's clear they are the same pony.

It's clear to me that dream magic is the key here. The book is impossible to decipher past the facts I've already stated. Everything else seems to be explained with the impression that the pony reading is already an experienced Dreamcrafter. Most of the book references experience or practice that the caster in question would have before doing any of the listed techniques. It's a branch of magic I won't be able to decipher as I have far more important things to be doing, but the history and context presented in the book pointed me towards is the next step in figuring out what happened.

Luna.

Supposedly another Alicorn Princess, sister to Celestia. If this is true, and I'm functioning as if it is for the sake of getting out of here, that means Celestia is related to Nightmare Moon. That means Celestia knew Nightmare Moon was returning.

It means she lied to me.

Or... I guess she never told me I was wrong, but it's still a lie of omission. These books talk about a different history. Equestria in a completely different state of being. Wars and battles for land for the most part paint Equestria's founding very differently from what that hearths warming eve play prop it up as.

I haven't told the girls any of this, but... I'm starting to think... Celestia censored history. A vast majority of it. I don't know why she would have done that, but it all adds up.

~~I don't~~

The girls and I haven't slept for a while. I don't know when I'm supposed to feel tired, but I don't. I guess the sense of duty has kept me going. I'm the only pony who can read any of these books. While I

Applejack has decided she's going to brave the outside.

I was torn away from writing by the arguing, which turned to shouting when I arrived. Rainbow and Applejack were in the middle of a heated discussion about going outside. Applejack wanted to give it a shot, Rainbow dash was vehemently against it. They apologized to me, after noticing how sick and tired I looked. I embarrassingly didn't realize how unkempt I had become, but I suppose it didn't really matter.

Applejack presented a fairly good argument. We can't keep time well, but we can count. Applejack proposed that we build a sort of two sided door, after arguing with Rainbow Dash a little more. What she suggested was that I could lift stones over a chamber with an exit to the outside, creating a seal around the door with Applejack inside. Then, she would open the door, and walk outside for exactly sixty seconds before returning and closing the door. Once she was back inside, we'd remove the rocks and let her back in.

It was a surprisingly viable idea, and very scientific. It covered the moving parts and the extra variables. I don't know why I opposed it. We took a vote. Four to two in favour. Rainbow and I voted against it. The other four felt awful, they wanted to try and explain. They all had family out there, they didn't want to wait around, I understood, of course. Spike was out there.

There's no telling how far reaching the magic surrounding the castle is. It may just be the castle, the forest, ponyville, or the whole word, for as far as we know. I wouldn't want Spike trapped like this, all alone. Though, we had food and water for another few days. There wasn't a reason to stretch our boundaries.

Applejack swore up and down that she wouldn't make me do anything, but I had subjected myself to the vote, I was going to do what I said I was going to do.

For now, we're all helping ourselves to some wet grain, then we'll sleep, and prepare the experiment tomorrow.

~~I don't know why I did that~~

~~I shouldn't've let them convince me~~

Tears stain a large section of empty space on the page

Applejack didn't come back. We're not even sure if she left. Rarity and I arranged the structure, Pinkie Pie found us piles and piles of loose stone to assemble into the chamber around a side door, that supposedly led out to an enclosed garden open to the sky. We could still lightly hear the sound from inside even with all the stones in place. There was a short conversation we shared, but Applejack steeled herself and gave us a countdown.

All of us heard the door open, then silence for sixty seconds, and on.

I started to cry, I'm not even slightly embarrassed to say. So did the rest of them, when they came to the same conclusions I had. Applejack was gone, and she wasn't coming back. I can only hope she's still alive. We have no idea what going outside does to you, but it apparently makes it so that you cannot return.

I didn't read anymore books today.

Twilight. It's been two more days. Probably.

Applejack still isn't back. None of us have gone back to that stone structure we built. Something is wrong with it. Pinkie told us so, she said that it wasn't perfect, that we had opened the door and now the darkness was inside. It shook us all, and we stayed far away from it. It was secluded in a side hallway with more doors, so I wasn't concerned about whatever Pinkie had terrifyingly explained to us spreading to any of the other rooms.

We have reason to trust Pinkie. Rarity, Fluttershy, and Rainbow Dash all vehemently supported Pinkie's premonitions with evidence of seeing it constantly work, I was too tired to argue.

I picked through a few more books today. I was able to summon the willpower to do so, instead of resting on the floor with my friends. The sleeping bag circle isn't really a circle anymore, more like just a cluster of blankets we all clamber into to keep warm.

That's another thing.

The temperature has been dropping steadily over the last couple of days, the air has gotten slightly drier and drier as we pulled moisture from it, but Rainbow says the air was already unusually dry when she started the process.

Regardless, I found another book about Luna.

It was more about her history as a General, and depicts her very clearly as, "The Warrior Princess." The battles are unimportant, but it alludes to her duties as a monster hunter several times, and within those allusions are hints of what I'm looking for. Dream magic, nightmares and demons. The book talks about how Luna could draw nightmares onto the minds of enemy armies, and how she protected her own and kept morale high with good dreams.

While normally just a feature of Orniomancy, the important part is this: The book talks about how Luna slayed several of what are called 'Void' monsters, or 'Dream deamons' or 'Outsiders.' The features that these creatures have are vast, but the most important fact I found was the description of their physical effects on ponies. The creatures cause the same sensations as Nothing does when I look outside the window. The verbal description in the book is exact and very clinically identical to the symptoms. Only, they tend to be described as intentionally done by a particular creature.

Once we knew what we were looking for, Fluttershy pulled out a bestiary that she had set aside due to it not meeting our search parameters. It was a list of monsters left over during the Discordian era, a journal penned by a mare named 'Island Song.' All of the creatures therein weren't exactly what we were looking for, but there were several warnings about, "The Void," and "The Realm of Dreams," referred to as, "The Skein" and most of the warnings were 'stay away' or 'do not interact with.'

The creatures that the bestiary described could intentionally afflict ponies with strange pains were almost exclusively from those places. Doing things like making a pony age faster, to driving them insane, or otherwise corrupting or killing them outright through some strange esoteric danger that only they could pose. There was a massive warning about "The Throne" which is generally where the journal ends, albeit, with insane ramblings of the author, having seemingly lost their mind.

To summarize, the most important detail was this: Luna had direct access to the dream realm, and the nightmares, and the void therein. It's entirely possible that when the Elements fired, she cast a spell to draw a nightmare from the dream realms into the real world. Some kind of living nightmare to defend herself. It didn't work, but it's clear whatever she did is still active.

Which means we have a solution. One of the only places in the castle with magic still left in it was the room we used the Elements in. If I can trace the magical signature of the spell she cast and reverse engineer it, I can potentially banish whatever she summoned, and get us out of here.

Me and the girls are huddled in the library right now.

I don't care that they're reading what I'm writing, honestly, I need this, and at least it's something for them to focus on.

Applejack is back

But it isn't Applejack. There's no way that could be Applejack. She's been gone for days, and she wouldn't've come back without help if she got lost for that long. There's no point in rationalizing it, it isn't her. Rarity was scouting down the castle corridors, and she had the bravery to

Rarity doesn't want me to describe what happened because she soiled herself.

She is upset that I wrote that, but we're all past the point of caring. She summoned the bravery to go check on the stone, as she tells it, when she reached forwards to open the door into the corridor, a pony on the other side knocked. She swears it was a hoof, and nothing else, but she ran instantly. We went back to check, I held out hope that it was Applejack, that she'd returned with help, and we'd be saved.

But help wouldn't've stayed behind an unlocked door.

After investigating, I knocked back, and Applejack's voice called through the door.

She promised us things, she begged for us to let her inside. We were all too stunned to respond, to do anything. I was too tired to even cry, until now. It isn't Applejack. ~~Whatever happened to he~~

If what I read is right, and my theory is anywhere close to correct, whatever is outside took Applejack the second she opened that door. I don't want to describe the things I read in the journal unless my friends look away. Which I don't want. I don't want to have to think about it, I don't want to have to write about it.

I want to go home.

Applejack

I'm so sorry

Twilight writing, it's been another few days.

~~I don't kno~~

The girls and I made a string of lanterns all the way to the throne room where we fought Nightmare Moon. All of us are afraid of the dark now. We've boarded up every single window between the library and there. It's been getting harder to do, even when the windows are in my periphery, it feels like the Nothing is trying to claw it's way into my vision, I swear I can see it move, but it's Nothing. Nothing can't move.

~~It can't~~ not ~~move either. Nothing being anything makes it not Nothing anymore. It can't be still, just as much as it can't move.~~

But we have a path there, now. We all travel in a group there and back whenever we need to go, or whenever we need to rest. None of us suggested moving the sleeping bags into the throne room. There are too many windows, despite them being covered in cloth and wood. ~~It isn't eno~~

There is magic left here. I just need time to draft a spell. I know a few scanning spells, the problem is, if I can't get enough information the first try, there's no telling what my magic will disturb. The latent spell craft is delicate, and isn't being propagated by any ambient mana, I haven't even been using levitation nearby, for worry that I might disperse our only clue.

That means that when I scan it, I need it to be fully spectramized, I need a dictation enchantment to write down what I see and hear and feel so I can't forget. That's already seven spells, there's not a full deep scan spell I know about, so I'm going to have to make it from scratch. Fluttershy has picked up some Old Ponish, enough that she can read the dictionary and find more books with 'moon' or 'void' or any of our other search parameters.

~~If the Elements weren't broken~~

Fluttershy has been so strong. I don't know how she's doing it. She's been quiet the whole time, of course, barely a squeak, but she hasn't faltered once, or even cried; now that I think about it. She's been my rock. ~~I've been snuggling closer to her more in our sleeping pi~~

Rainbow and Rarity are holding on. Pinkie has slowly become more somber. She's tried to keep joking, but she knows it's only making us more tired. So she's been giving us hugs, and trying to fashion anything interesting out of wet grains.

Rainbow suggested trying to help Applejack. She did it slowly, intentionally, and avoided the snap responses of all of us with her phrasing. It was suspicious how well thought through what she said was.

She had initially asked me about what I thought I would need to reverse the spell, under the guise of offering whatever help she could. Then, she randomly hinted towards the idea that if we could figure out how to undo Nightmare Moon's spell, then we could undo what was done to Applejack by talking about fighting nightmares and monsters to help ponies. Then, she broached the topic as a whole. She said if there's a chance we can help Applejack, we have to take it.

In the end, we all agreed that there's nothing we could do right now. Something which I didn't think would satisfy Rainbow, but it did. It seemed like that was where she was steering the conversation to begin with, I have no idea why. ~~I just~~

I just went back to trying to stay focused. That's when the details hit me.

Applejack had been exposed to the Nothing for less than an instant before we lost any sign of her. Why didn't she call out? When she opened the door? She could have spoken to us through the stone the moment she opened the door and saw outside, or whatever she would have seen, but she didn't. Whatever was out there had gotten to her instantly.

Rainbow was exposed for far longer. Except she escaped, supposedly. She ran away, she didn't fly, she ran. She closed the door, but how long was the castle opened to Nothing? We haven't gone back to those hallways, but there wasn't really a reason to do so to begin with.

~~I~~

~~I haven't been willing to touch her while we sleep. I think that makes me a bad friend.~~

Twilight Sparkle, an undefined amount of time after the Summer Sun Celebration.

My spell was perfect, I had used it on a table a few times to be sure. Every time, a quill expressed the tangential spell form, state of mass, shape, visual interpretation, and outstanding features as I would have seen them onto a sheet of paper. I created a low light glowing enchantment, something roughly the same magical thaumic strength of the spell traces in the throne room and scanned that with the same results.

Except it's a dead end.

It's not even a spell. It's just... lingering traces of the soul of an Alicorn, it didn't disperse, like I had feared. It lingered in place, and swallowed a bit of my mana. I don't really have a good basis to define a soul, much less one of an Alicorn; though it seems that the Elements failed to destroy the entirety of Nightmare Moon, having found something to leave untouched, or there was something within powerful enough to resist the affects of the Elements.

That means that whatever's out there wasn't summoned by Nightmare Moon. That means everything we thought we knew so far is wrong.

But that's okay, that's science. There's plenty avenues of research left.

Fluttershy is helping me stay focused. She's like a regular Spike. Rainbow, Rarity and Pinkie are sprucing up the library. There's not much for them to be doing while I study, and Pinkie can't sit still long enough to learn any Old Ponish.

I've gone through fifty books today, still nothing useful.

Rainbow Dash left while we were sleeping.

She must not have known I was awake.

She just got up and left.

She walked straight to the door, she turned around when she got there and looked back at us.

I don't know if she saw my eyes glinting in the dark. Our oil has been running low, so we've had to conserve the light when we're sleeping. My eyes could have reflected the light, I swear to Celestia she stared right at me when she turned around.

Then she left without a word. She just walked out of the library.

I'm so scared. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what to do. I want to go home. I want my brother. I want Spike.

I'm losing it. I'm scribbling in the pitch black, I can't even see what I'm writing, and now I feel like a puppet, mindlessly writing out how I feel just to get it out of my head. This was supposed to be a research document, ~~is this what going insane is lik~~

Twilight Sparkle

A lot has happened.

I pulled myself together.

Rainbow Dash came back that night, she didn't say anything. When I pretended to wake up, so did she. Fluttershy woke up when I did, probably because I was practically wrapped around her. Pinkie was up next, Rarity, ironically, slept like a rock.

After I was sure Rainbow Dash wasn't going to say anything about leaving, I confronted her.

I've never been so glad to have done anything so far, throughout this entire debacle.

She tried to play it off at first, said I was starting to see things, but apparently Pinkie knew too. She'd watched Rainbow leave several times over the past few days, and just hadn't said anything.

Rainbow broke down. She told us what she was doing.

She had been visiting Applejack. Going to the door and talking to her, asking her questions, trying to figure out what to do.

Rainbow blamed herself for losing Applejack. She cried about having stood idly by while we did it.

I started to cry too, because of how happy I was she didn't blame me, like I did. I wouldn't've known what to do if she lashed out. I don't know how to reconcile what that means about me, but as this goes on, I need to be more aware of my mental state and my emotions. A strong will is required to resist the dangerous attacks of the creatures depicted in the books I've read, and I need to stay focused for my magic.

Rainbow told us all about what Applejack was saying, making it only clearer that it was something else just using Applejack's voice to try and trick us into opening the door. That in it of itself gave us important information. There was a reason we weren't all dead yet. Whatever was outside couldn't get in here unless we let it in. It's some kind of retrospective magic, walls and doors keep things out, the hastily constructed barrier only kept it out for a little while. That means we have a way to defend ourselves. Rarity has been constructing tighter barricades using her keen eye, and Pinkie has been using the mold in the kitchen to cover our already existing barricades in living sheets of fungus, it's the grossest thing I've ever seen. Seeing Earth Pony magic used like that, but it's way better than the dark.

I apologized to Rainbow for being suspicious of her, we hugged.

She was colder than she should have been.

Twilight Sparkle

We have a new lead.

I found a book about portal magic, and slip teleportation. The book described both as incredibly dangerous, and I haven't even heard of what the book calls 'slipping.' The spell craft doesn't matter, what does matter is what the 'slipping' technique describes.

It's essentially a low cost, risky form of teleportation. You pick a destination, and the book describes that you require a tether, and an magical anchor, then you go down. I don't know why the book describes the spell repeatedly as going 'down' it may just be that I'm a little rustier with my Old Ponish than I think, but regardless, the book briefly describes the sensation of being 'in slipspace'.

And the features match exactly what's going on outside. The book roughly and mostly fails to translate into modern Ponish, but from what little I can glean, slipping used to be used to quickly go from one space to another almost seamlessly. Mostly done to skip between rooms that were right next to each other, allowing for fortifications to completely forgo having entrances and exits. Historically, the spell isn't safe; roughly said in the book, "Everyone one in twelve hundred castings, a pony will go missing."

A lot of things stand out in just that quote alone. Particularly the strange placement of 'everyone' and the wording of the specific, but still vague number of twelve hundred. It may be due to a older, and different base number when it comes to math and counting than our base ten, but equally so, back in the era of Old Ponish, 'pony' was exclusively used when describing our broad species. In Old Ponish, earth ponies, pegasi and unicorns have distinct names, the use of 'pony' here instead of 'unicorn' implies that slipping is a technique that all ponies are capable of, yet, the spell is specifically described with arcane spell form, something only unicorns are capable of.

In the end, the tangent yielded nothing of value, me and Fluttershy a

There's a ink stroke driving off the edge of the page, where the paper is torn as if the writer scraped the quill tip against the paper.

~~Applejack is screaming.~~

Applejack's voice is screaming. It's quiet, from this far away. It must be incredibly loud, if we were up close, for us to hear it all the way over here. She just started screaming, and hasn't stopped. Unbroken, it's been going on for minutes now, I think, time is getting foggier there's no

The sun.

Of course, how could I have been so stupid.

It's getting colder because the sun hasn't risen yet. Even if there is something behind the endless black, the sky would still be dark, unless Celestia returned. She must still be trapped somewhere.

That means we're on a timer. I don't know how far out this Nothing spreads, but even if it's just the castle, everypony in Equestria is going to freeze if we don't do something. We're the only ponies that know what happened to Nightmare Moon, we have critical information they need. It won't matter in a month if we escape, even if we're still alive. We don't have nearly that much wet grain left.

Equestria will freeze.

She's still screaming. I only realized just now that it's probably because Rainbow stopped visiting her.

Twilight Sparkle, guesstimating twenty one sleep cycles since the Summer Sun Celebration

Applejack still hasn't stopped screaming. It's been another few days, since she started, probably. We've been sleeping more, as our bodies degrade from the lack of proper nutrients.

Rarity found another bag of food. It's rice, barely any calories from chewing raw rice, but it gives me something to do with my mouth while I read book after book. I don't feel hungry anymore. My body has gone into a spiral of survival, I'll need medical treatment ~~if~~when we escape.

I found something penned by Starswirl, it's his own personal journal, and it's infuriatingly almost everything we need. His horn writing is atrocious, but I figured out what is outside.

It's not a void monster, it's The Void itself.

His work briefly describes a portal, something tied directly to the moon. It briefly referred to a series of information that allowed me to conclude a series of inferences about our world.

First and foremost, the stars aren't stars. It took me a while to figure out what exactly Starswirl was speaking about, but his frankness is what gave me the answer. Our universe isn't infinite, like some have speculated, it has a dimensional border, near the edge called the Skein. The same place described as 'where ponies go when they dream.' The stars are other universes, shining through the space between reality. Apparently the multiverse theory is correct. I couldn't find any place for excitement or surprise for the discovery though.

The portal he talks about making is too complex for me to understand. He goes on about dimensional folding, and there's math in here with too many variables and too little explanation for me to reverse engineer. He only ever exclusively talks about staying away from the void. Going around it. Theoretically speaking, the space in-between universes is infinite, and impassable. Starswirl's journal doesn't mention anything about how to fight the void, or what's in it. Only complaints about how impossible it is, and advanced magical enchantments to keep it out, things that I'll never be able to cast.

The Void itself isn't even the dangerous part. That's the scary part. Because, with the math I've done in the margins of his journal, if a pony was completely submerged in the void, the best case scenario is that they die instantly as they stop existing. That's not the dangerous part.

The void is filled with creatures on the opposite spectrum of the fabric of existence. All of them function on the impossible plane of Nothing. Some of them are intelligent, some of them are just animals, some are something as simple as diseases, or things that watch.

All of them will kill you. ~~Why couldn't Applejack have just waited f~~

There's plenty more information in his journal, but nothing that is useful to the current situation. There's all sorts of spells in here, going from the simplest light canceling telekinesis spells to magic that is described to be able to alter the courses of destiny itself. Starswirl seems to have been getting old, because as the journal goes on, his writing becomes more erratic and esoteric. He personifies the laws of physics and magic like they're alive, and coming after him for something. ~~I stopped reading because it made too much sense to m~~

The only thing I can connect to is the moon. Starswirl mentions how the moon is a requirement for his portal spell to breech the infinite barrier of the void safely, but doesn't extrapolate why, or otherwise explain it's component in the spell. It's unfished, so I can guess he either never wrote it in, or just assumed that anypony reading it would easily understand why the moon was important. It's the only thing connecting to Nightmare Moon, and Luna.

It's our last hope, unless we find someway to fight the void. In the descriptions of battle Luna did with them, normal ponies fell in droves. Only Luna had the strength of will or magic to fight them directly and

Of course.

There's scribbled math all over the next few sections, curling up and around the pages, thaumic math detailing the magical pressure requirements of pony souls, and ambient magic.

Luna is the only reason we're still alive.

When the Elements destroyed her, they left only a sliver of what I can only guess is what made her an Alicorn.

That fleeting magic is keeping the Nothing out.

The void is described to be 'corrosive to reality'. Without Luna, the void would have just deconfined the matter that made up the blocks of stone and swallowed us in an instant. Maybe Nightmare Moon could have fought off the monsters, ~~I'm sorry.~~

~~I didn't want them to do that.~~

I need to sleep. I suggested to the girls that we move into the throne room, but they're worried about the windows. Fungus, wood and repurposed rug is only so thick. I agreed with them, really. Despite what I understood about the magic, the library had protected us so far, and the little nook Pinkie found at the back was small, enclosed, and comfortable to sleep in. It needed one lantern to light, and had a single door to shut over the front when we all slept together.

Rainbow Dash has been far quieter than usual. When I asked her about it she said that she just didn't have anything to say. Rarity has been ignoring me and eating more and more. She's just been working. She accidentally sewed a dress instead of a cloth sheet for another barricade by accident. Fluttershy has stopped talking, she'll only nod now. I don't blame her, hearing my own voice and how hoarse and damaged my body is feels so wrong.

It feels like it's been weeks, and we're all slowly dying. Pinkie Pie is doing the best of us on that, but I honestly can't really tell for certain whether or not she's just putting on a brave face for us.

Twilight Sparkle, twenty five sleep cycles

We won't be getting anymore water

We have plenty of dry rice, but Rainbow can't get anything from the air anymore. She's too tired to do the weather magic required. All we have left is a few days worth of water to ration into weeks between us. My reading has become more frantic. Fluttershy has been working harder and harder, even with reading more, she still stacks up the books faster than I can go through them. I've read through hundreds, she's skimming through thousands.

I don't know what I'd do if she wasn't here. I don't know what I'd do without my friends.

I probably would have just died. ~~Like Appl~~

Speaking of reading, I should probably get back to it.

Twilight Sparkle, thirty sleep cycles

Fluttershy found a secret chamber. I wasn't sure how, at first, but she led me to a fake book with a lever attached to it within the wall. Inside the chamber was a book made of stone and covered in spikes and strange glyphs. That's what we could see from the bottom of the staircase, behind a barred door made of some kind of vaguely coal like black metal.

I could have unlocked the door with magic, but the room beyond was filled with Dark Magic, and several traps. After using my scanning spell, I could see that the floor was designed to collapse, and the room was supposed to seal itself after the book was moved. A surprisingly Daring Doo style trap.

Rainbow offered, very eagerly, to fly up and grab the book.

I wasn't certain, Dark Magic would only serve to get us deeper into trouble, that's what Dark Magic always did. I knew that.

Though, not everything I knew was as it seemed.

Eventually, as the only voice against the idea, and as none of us were willing to put it to a vote, I relented. We'd only do it if all of us agreed, and I did. Though, we planned first. None of us were willing to repeat our mistakes in any way, so we thought harder about his, far harder.

The first problem was that the room was rigged to collapse. If it did, it may open up the library to the void. So we arranged nets, and surfaces over the shelves and walls. If one of them fell inwards, we'd supposedly have time to get out before the void got inside, like with the stone structure we made for Applejack.

~~She's still screaming. It's background noise to me now. I've even been able to sleep to it. I don't know how far my mind will stretch before it snaps.~~

The second thing we did was cover the wall in magic. I prepped a shield and Rarity and Pinkie built up piles and piles of stone ready to collapse over the opening the second Rainbow was through.

I opened the door with magic, and Rainbow flew up and grabbed the book, and then flew down.

There was a rumbling of the traps triggering, and we didn't wait. I lit my shield, despite the energy nearly causing me to black out. Rarity and Pinkie collapsed the stone over top of it, and then spent the next few minutes of rumbling closing up the gaps while Rainbow watched the walls and ceiling for any cracks.

The entire plan went off without a hitch.

Except the book was worthless.

Inspiration manifestation. It used insanity driven emotions to transform magic into solid matter along a spell theorem that only could have been devised by somepony truly insane.

All of my friends wanted to try it anyways. Rarity offered to cast it herself, instead of me, since I was the more important caster of the two of us. That's what she said, not me. ~~I didn't~~

I put my hoof down. Even if our fraying minds could handle the spell, anything it created wouldn't be edible. We might have been able to construct something useful, like a water purifier, but there wasn't any water to purify. While me and Rarity were arguing, Fluttershy spoke, and brought up an excellent point, since now I had the ability to ignore the sounds of her dying voice, I could focus on that, instead of bawling my eyes out.

We didn't have any water, but we did have books, that, and we were running out of warm air. We could use the spell to create a furnace, and I could use a simple heat spell to light the books aflame. The only problem was the smoke, if we didn't vent it anywhere, we would choke, so Rarity and Pinkie Pie went to cordon off one of the hallways, make it airtight on one side so we could pump the smoke into the room.

Then Rarity cast the spell.

It didn't do anything, at first, until rarity tried to create the furnace and succeeded. Right up against the wall, with a smoke exhaust going exactly where we needed it to. She wavered in place, almost passing out from the magic it cost her, but aside from the sickly green magic slinking its way into her soul, she was fine.

She tried creating food despite my warning. It turned back into magic in her mouth, and she broke.

She just... stopped.

Her eyes went dull, and she sat down and stopped.

Nopony said anything.

Nopony did anything.

After a few minutes, I levitated some books into the furnace and started a fire. Fluttershy moved Rarity over to it, Rarity had to be dragged. Fluttershy laid Rarity on her side in front of the fire where she didn't move or speak, ~~or do any of the quiet humming she'd been doing for weeks that I miss so much now that it's gone.~~

When we tried to bring her into the nook to sleep, she didn't move.

We didn't sleep without her. We brought out the blankets and pillows she'd made out of carpet and book pages and slept around her, in front of the fire.

I forced myself not to cry. I needed the water.

Pinkie Pie left.

We found a note, in the morning. Whatever constitutes morning.

She was going to take one for the team. She wouldn't drink any more of our water, or eat any more of our dry rice. She wasn't going to go outside, she simply told us not to go into the catacombs, because we wouldn't find her.

She did it for us.

I am getting out of here. For you, Pinkie.

I AM GETTING OUT OF HERE

Applejack stopped screaming an hour ago.

That could only mean a few things. The monsters out in the void have lost interest in us, or they're trying to sneak up on us.

I told Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash that we were moving to the throne room. It didn't matter that we had heat here, we'd die of dehydration before we froze. There were only so many books left, we could make trips to bring them, and we could make a sled out of the table to bring the books. We're here now, in the throne room, with as much as we could carry, our last week of water, and our bag of rice.

and Rarity.

Fluttershy is sorting through the books that we brought, and I'm watching Rainbow Dash check the barricades as I write.

It's not fair that I'm still suspicious of her. Is it strange that she didn't argue to go back to see Applejack like she was after she realized Pinkie would always catch her? Is it a coincidence that after Pinkie was gone, Applejack had stopped screaming? Was I being paranoid? Or was paranoia the right response?

I have no idea, but she's checking the barricades like she's always done. The fungus is going to wither without Pinkie to keep it going, it's not like we can water it, that and we can't eat it either. Plants won't survive without resources as soon as the earth pony magic stops coming.

I don't know if I want the void to take me, or if I want to starve to death. I probably shouldn't be thinking about either.

I promise I'm going to make it out of here for you Pinkie. I swear on everything I am.

Twilight

We're out of water.

But I found it. I found the answer.

We ran out of water yesterday. Which is just what we've been calling 'before we slept last'. Today, Fluttershy found the book with the answers.

It was a classification of immortal creatures by their powers, written by somepony named Dusk Swirl. It was short, and to the point. Princess Luna wasn't the princess of the night, and now the constellations make sense to me. In each of those star charts, before Princess Luna was supposedly born, never once was there a mention of the moon. Yet, Starswirl referred to it constantly in his spell form. The Moon isn't a thing.

The Moon is Luna.

She created it thousands of years ago, it's how she ascended. She brought The Moon, the barrier between the infinite void, and the infinite folded space of our universe out of the Skein and into existence to guard the realm of dreams from the monsters that used to prey on creatures of our world. The Moon isn't just a rock, floating up in space, it's a representation of Luna's power to protect the dream realm.

Her Alicorn nature is described in the book as: "The Alicorn of The Border."

We destroyed it.

We destroyed the border.

The Elements severed Luna's connection to the majority of her power, and the snap back tore The Moon out of the sky. It tore a hole in our universe, and the void came rushing in. The fear and pain she expressed wasn't in being defeated. She knew what was about to happen and desperately tried to stop it. That's why what's left of her is protecting the castle, like a phantasm of magic carrying out the last act its bearer was attempting.

Equestria isn't in danger.

Equestria is gone.

Everything out of range of the last vestiges of Luna's remnants have been swallowed by the void.

We're going to die in here.

I just said that the book didn't have what we needed, and I put it down near the other ones. I won't be telling Fluttershy or Rainbow Dash.

How could I tell somepony something like that.

The page is smeared with blood that won't dry.

I should be dead.

It should be me, instead of Pinkie. I'm evil. We all are. If I can get my friends out of this somehow...

I won't be coming with them. I don't deserve it.

It's been another few days.

Fluttershy noticed that I've given up actually reading the books.

That's when Rainbow Dash suggested Starswirl's portal spell.

SHE. KNOWS.

She wouldn't have suggested going to a new dimension if she thought Equestria was still standing.

HOWDOESSHEKNOWIDIDN'TTELLHER

She was jarringly companionable about it, she offered to help me learn the math.

ITHASHERITHASTOHAVEHASTOHAVEGOTTENHERGOTTENHAS

She looks healthier than she should be. Her breath doesn't fog in the cold when she exhales.

I ran.

I cast my scanning spell on Rainbow Dash. She was dead. Is dead. A corpse.

She killed Fluttershy the second I cast the spell. I only realized what had happened after I was sprayed with blood. There wasn't any sound, just a blur. Then the only one left alive was me. I teleported on instinct. There wasn't anything left of me to be scared, I just did it.

Now I'm here. I blacked out after I teleported. I'm in the reading nook. Dying slowly from exhaustion.

They're all outside. I can hear their voices saying things on the other side of the door.

They can't fool me though. I know what it wants. It wants me to open the gate. That's why it didn't kill us the first chance it had. Whatever got Rainbow is different from whatever got Applejack. It knows what I know, somehow. It knows I can learn how to open the way to other universes. It wants the sky. It wants all of it.

They think offering me food will do it.

Heh, I'm never going to eat anything again. Not after Rarity.

I don't even think I could manage it.

I'm insane enough that I wrote out 'heh' because I don't have the strength to dry chuckle anymore.

I promised Pinkie I was going to make it out of here.

That's what I'm going to do.

They don't want me to. They think that it's a bad idea. They want to talk to me first. Face to face.

Yeah right, except I'm not stupid.

I'm Twilight Sparkle.