Tears
by: TCSNxs
Her spherical shield deflected another blast from the beast. It was very early in the morning, though Celestia and the Nightmare had been at it all night. Soon, it would be time to raise the sun in all it’s golden glory, but those inclinations weren’t present as Celestia watched the bolt tear into a stone column near the entrance of the castle She still wore the Crown of Magic and its associated Elements around her neck. She had an intimate understanding of the powers they bore, but they were a last resort that she was hesitant to use. Celestia felt their calling, but she ignored it for another moment as she had the sun’s call.
“Please, Luna! Listen to me,” the Solar Regent cried to the beast atop her sister’s tower, “You can’t do this. Your privations will kill us all unless you lower the moon!”
The beast, calling itself the Nightmare, had threatened to keep the moon high overhead forever. While not overly harmful in any immediate sense, the effects of prolonged darkness were obvious. Starvation, sickness, and death en masse would be the logical course of events if she weren’t stopped. Celestia was powerless to do anything about it while her sister held dominion over the moon.
Celestia had flown back close to the top of the tower, though her wings lacked their usual crisp flap. The Nightmare and Celestia leveled a fair portion of the Everfree and the Castle of the Royal Sisters during their fight throughout the night. Celestia had been far more restrained, trying to keep her shield spell intact while getting her sister to see reason. However, more than once she needed to a violent act of magic to keep her rampaging sister within the area of the Everfree. Sometimes, one needed to prod the bull to keep its attention
The rainstorm scheduled that evening helped to keep the fires in check, though it would be many years before the forest grew back. That castle, long since cleared (what good would the Royal Guard be against a deity?) would likely never recover its former alabaster glory.
“You’re joking, right?” The Nightmare spoke, her voice mocking, “And have ‘our little ponies’ miss the night? You never got it, Tia.” She followed it up with a glob of saliva ejected from her mouth, “and I don’t think you ever will.”
The Nightmare stood in unadulterated defiance as her armor smoldered in places. Though many would think that the Nightmare had gotten the better of alicorn’s exchanges, she wasn’t unscathed. If she were tired, though, she didn’t show it.
Celestia was beyond exhausted in every facet. She was bruised in many places and a foreleg bore a particularly nasty and deep cut that was still bleeding. Her magical reserves, which many ponies thought inexhaustible, were nearly gone. She often needed to drop the shield to reform the magic, and she was vulnerable in those instances. The Nightmare was more focused on the concept of "offense being the best form of defense" and Celestia had hit her more then once.
She let the spit pass through her barrier and hit her cheek as a final condemnation. The Nightmare was right about one thing. Celestia may never fully understand her sister’s frustrations, but as with many things that night, it was irrelevant.
Celestia heard the call of the Elements again. With a final breath, she willed their magic to manifest. The jewels about the white alicorn’s necklace and crown glowed as the Elements of Harmony gathered their strength. The Nightmare’s eyes grew wide in dread. The part of her that was Luna knew what was coming and there was no way to stop it.
The Nightmare tried anyway, letting loose a blast of lightning that could’ve flatten a stone manse. The Elements loosed it’s own magic just then. Their rainbow manifestation absorbed the lightning bolt completely as if it were a puny thing. The magical stream began to encircle the Nightmare and strip the would-be tyrant of any physical existence. A defiant “No!” emanated from the prismatic tornado, echoing across the vast smoldering forest. But it was too late.
“I’m sorry,” Celestia whispered not for the first time that night. Her eyes and horn grew blinding white in a flash which eventually encompassed the entirety of the Everfree. The explosion of light died away a moment later. Smoke rose from the tiles, burned hoofprints marking where the Nightmare once stood. Weakly, Celestia lowered herself to the remains of a balcony.
The sun was nearly begging to be risen from it’s slumber, and she complied. With her sister gone, the dominion of the moon fell to her. Celestia knew it instantly as she closed her eyes and fell into herself. Craning her neck skyward, her horn emanating a golden aura with sparks of silver. Where the traces of the magical paths were once golden in her mind’s eye, others of silver appeared where they weren’t before.
Her mind felt along the celestial ley lines, like gold and silver lines on a 3D map. She grasped both the moon and the sun and coaxed them just a touch. The sun peaked over the eastern horizon while the moon set to slumber in the west. It was the eternal dance governed by the eternal creatures that were the alicorns.
Unicorns once held that balance, but what once took a nation of magical beings, the alicorns could do within two beings. Or one given the circumstances. It was an innate function within them that took as much conscience effort as breathing. As the earth ponies had that affinity for the land and it’s creatures, the had the alicorns had for the heavens.
At the end of those magical tendrils, the celestial bodies that governed the balance of the land were more akin to coherent consciousness then inanimate objects. Whenever Celestia reached out to the sun, it was a feeling akin to embracing an old friend. In her first grasping of the moon that night though, she felt remorse, a complete sadness that was overwhelming. She also felt a call reach beyond her mind and into her spirit. Like a hushed foal’s voice against the wind.
“I’m sorry, Tia.”
Celestia fell prone as her horn grew still. After the night’s expenditures, nopony could blame her. She had informed the evacuating guards to watch for the sunrise to know if she were she successful. Much would need to be rebuilt, but that didn’t matter at the moment. As the dawning light worked to break the stranglehold of the clouds, she cried.
She loved her sister. After millennia of familial and heavenly bonds, she was alone for the first time. Celestia couldn’t comprehend what it meant at that moment, but she cried. She was victorious. She understood she had little choice. She needed to defend her home and her little ponies. She pleaded with her sister-turned-beast to see reason. She had tried everything and history wouldn’t fault her. But if she had done the right thing in every logical sense, then why were her tears falling to the wet stone?
She heard the din of metal on stone, of vocalized orders yelling to “Find the Princess!” and the crackle of embers raging against the dying of their light. But a single thought echoed in her mind, a whisper in a marbled hall.
“I’m sorry, Tia.”
“I’m sorry, Lulu.” she choked as she fought to regain her composure. The guards had broken through the thick wooden door, “I’m sorry.” She rose and put on a stoic face.
~(0)~
Celestia strode through the empty halls of Canterlot Castle. The moon was high overhead. She wore that practiced expression, born of many years of thorough boredom and needing to maintain a perceived objectivity in all things. The tall alicorn listened to her hooffalls echo through the moonlit halls as she moved to her private abode.
Anypony would be forgiven for thinking her existence was a normally placid affair. The Royal Guards certainly did as she approached. They bowed their heads with differential reverence and opened the doors for the Co-Ruler of Equestria as she strode into her private bedroom, her private sanctuary.
Made within a tall tower atop Canterlot Castle, her bedroom was lavish by any standard in Equestria. A golden framed bed with sheets emblazoned with her Cutie Mark hoofstiched into the center. The room was circular in construction. A large roll top desk occupied one spot. A doorway to a bathroom off to one side while a fireplace occupied it’s opposite place. A balcony faced north and was opened to the sky. Bookshelves and paintings occupied a fair portion of the remaining space along the wall.
The bedroom was relatively secure thanks to the plethora of guards and the highly defensible position the castle occupied. No, there would be no intruders. Not that any would dare to intrude upon her private abode. A tall and strong pony, she had a plethora of destructive spells to call upon. Fire, lightning, the very heavens were her’s to command. Such power kept her land of Equestria safe for longer than she cared to remember.
The power had it’s price though. Her subjects, or her little ponies as she affectionately called them, were always kept at a distance from either respect or fear. Such abject distance from her subjects inevitable worried her. She wanted their respect, but never their fear. Luckily, there were a few ponies over her long life that grew close and she fought hard against the languishing effects of of time remember them.
One of those ponies whom she grew close to was Twilight Sparkle. The lavender unicorn had studied for years under Celestia’s wing. Those years bred familiarity and trust. Though Twilight always saw Celestia as a mentor, Celestia saw the mare as a friend.
The time for the return of Nightmare Moon, as the Nightmare was now called, was approaching. Celestia readied herself for the fight she didn’t want to have and she wouldn’t have her prized student, her friend, anywhere closer the forthcoming clash then need be. Twilight saw differently though.
“Princess, why are you sending me going to Ponyville? Didn’t you read my letter about Nightmare Moon’s return? We have to prepare!”
“I did, Twilight Sparkle, but you can’t always take words in a book at face value. You know that, my faithful student.”
Twilight gave a slightly defiant “hurumph.” Celestia found it endearing in a lot of ways, but the alicorn needed her out of the way. Twilight always found a way to get what she wanted unless she were occupied with something else, “This is why I’m sending you to Ponyville to oversee the preparations for the festival. I need sompony I can trust to make sure everything happens without a hitch. Got it?”
Twilight let out a defeated sigh, “Of course, Princess. But one question.”
Yes?”
“Am I your personal student or your party planner?”
Celestia glanced to the moon. Twilight had been gone for a day now and, without contact from her, she assumed that Twilight was occupied. When she said that she needed somepony she could trust, she wasn’t lying. Should she fall, somepony needed to watch out for Ponyville and Equestria. Twilight was ever resourceful and perhaps she could free Equestria from the Nightmare’s tyranny in time.
Celestia moved to the balcony and shook her head to clear those thoughts. She needed confidence now. Celestia shrugged her shoulders and stretched her neck, trying to get the last vestiges of anxiety out.
The solar alicorn comforted herself with one fact. Twilight was the shining star of her generation and among the most powerful ponies she ever met. She never let Twilight know that though. No reason to feed an ego that should develop naturally. But if the worst should happen...
She took flight and headed in the direction of the Everfree. Celestia left the inert Elements there. The alicorn didn’t have the countenance to use them again and the Elements, which drew their power from the spirits of the ponies that wielded them, wouldn’t respond to her anyway. The forest had become something different then what she knew after that night. She speculated that so much magic had be loosed that it morphed the location forever and into something apart from that of greater Equestria. The beasts that roamed it and the reputation it garnered after that night had cause her to move the capital to Canterlot. She figured also that the Elements, spent and inert, would be of little use to anypony lucky (or dumb) enough to find them.
Besides, her memories were too deep, her emotional scars too, to wield with any sense of justice that the Elements demanded.
Doubts forever clouded her mind after that night, though she learned to keep her expressions placid. She tried to do the right thing. She defeated Discord with her sister at one time and put an end to the Nightmare before it ever began. She always tried to what was best for everypony. In the end though, without clear senses, what was right and wrong? What was mercy and what was tyranny? If she tried to what was right, then why didn’t she try harder with her sister? Nagging doubts were always the antithesis of clear judgment. Though she was sure in a lot of matters, what confidence she had was always tinged with doubt.
Celestia looked to the moon one more time as the wind blew past her. She heard the same voice that haunted her for near a millenium now anytime she raised and lowered the moon. Her little sister meant the world to her. In times long since past, everyone knew of her as Princess Luna. Now they just knew of the concept of Nightmare Moon. That whisper echoed within her mind again.
“I’m sorry, Tia.”
“I’m sorry to, Lulu,” her wings picked up the pace with strong flaps, “I only hope you are still there, little sister. Somewhere.”
