Bad Moon Rising

Chapters

Foreword
Blood Moon
Ahab
I See A Darkness
Bad Moon Rising

Foreword

Bad Moon Rising

A Black Sun Expansion

Foreword

“Twilight… open your eyes.”

But Twilight resisted, it felt important. It felt like something was telling her that, no matter anything, she should keep them shut.

“Twilight, there’s nothing to worry about,”

That was it, wasn’t it?

Worry, anxiety, something formless forged to an edge. Against all logic, against all higher knowledge, keep your eyes shut. And maybe it won’t be real.

“Twilight… do it for me?”

No, that was it.

Because it all seemed hopeless in that moment.

Because the owner of that voice knew exactly what buttons in Twilight to push. She always would, Twilight supposed.

And so she did what she always did. Twilight acquiesced, and opened her eyes as she was bid.

The expanse of the castle of the two sisters spread out before her.

It was cold in here, even on a summer’s day, it felt like the lonely winds and hard floors stole the warmth from the world. At least Twilight found herself somewhat comforted by the white mare standing beside her.

“There, isn’t that better?”

“Yes,” Twilight said, turning to reply, “That’s much better. Thanks Princess,”

And Celestia smiled down on Twilight, pride beaming down from her smile, as warm as her sun.

XXX

The peasants from the surrounding village knew it likely wasn’t a good idea to go out into the night. There was something comforting about the dark when you lived most of your life in it. The mages in the capital cities could only manage to lift the sun once every month. This was a world spent in the opaque mystery of blackness, illuminated meagerly by the lonely, isolated flames of candles and sparse fires.

There was nothing that could frighten them all about the night. No fear to be had in the dark places of the world.

Aside from bright, blinding, imperious lights.

Two twin comets had fallen from the heavens, making landfall a few miles from the village. It was nothing more than a humble farming hamlet, pockmarked onto the uncaring landscape, filled with ponies scraping a living from the frozen soil. There were countless villages like theirs, there always would be.

And it would have been so comforting for them to remain in their shielded obscurity. Let the scholars in the cities deal with falling stars. Let them puzzle over the way they helixed around one another as they fell, one made of fire, the other of austere moonlight. Silver and gold, inseminating the world from the infinite void of pitch above them.

Maybe it was riches, maybe it was a piece of the sun and moon, maybe it was a god.

The ponies in the village knew they could have easily just walked home and not gotten involved, but there was something that compelled them. Even as they began to walk over earth that was cracked, then singed, then razed, then scorched into glass.

That was the thing about the ponies of that village, about every single pony in the world. There were so many reasons to not look, to just go back home. To understand that certain things didn’t need to be beheld, shouldn’t be beheld.

And yet they pressed on, the herd of them acting like an organism in its own right.

They just had to see.

“Avert thine eyes!”

But surely it wouldn’t hurt, after all they’d walked. Surely they could just take a small peek.

“AVERT THINE EYES!” screamed a voice from the crater the falling stars had created, resonant and terrifying, booming in the chest of everyone present. Like the voices of every living thing crying out at once.

“AVERT THINE EYES!”

It was, of course, far too late for that.

Blood Moon

Twilight opened her eyes and looked up at the sky, and felt her pupils dilate.

They scoured the canvas above for any of the light she knew should be there, pupils expanding as they adjusted to a vast expanse of black.

“...Why?” was the only word that came to mind.

“I wouldn’t waste my breath attempting to explain to you. You are nothing in all of this.”

“Well… why don’t you try?” Twilight asked, looking into eyes that stared back at her with a terrifying madness that seemed to defy all reason. Like nothing Twilight had ever seen.

But there was something that flashed within them, for just a second. Some twisting moment of a mourning, keening need to be seen. Like there was a pony still living behind the mask of insanity and unrestrained hatred that regarded Twilight.

“Why don’t you just try?” Twilight asked again.

“I… it doesn’t matter. I am not answerable to you, and even were I to be… I don’t think for a single second that you’d see it.”

“You could try though? Right? You could try to make me see?”

And the mask seemed to fracture for just a second. The forehead un-creased, the lips unthinned, the hatred dulled.

And, of course, those pupils dilated.

“I… it’s, I don’t… I can’t quite… remember…”

But it didn’t matter, because it was done.

Twilight had been playing for time, and she was beginning to rise off the ground. Her, five ponies from the village, six worthless, pointless stones from a time long forgotten all rising in magic that filtered and refracted the mad, wild light all pouring from those eyes. Eyes that never broke Twilight’s gaze.

And any glimpse of equinity vanished as Nightmare Moon realised what was happening, her pupils returned to feline slits and her fangs bared as she lit her horn and jerked her neck, and she seemed to try to wrench the moon across the sky.

Where she planned to take it,, Twilight didn’t know. The rainbow of the elements reached the nightmare long before she was able to do much of anything.

And everything was brought roughly back to sanity.

XXX

“Are you sure, princess?”

Luna listened to the little unicorn fret behind the door. She almost certainly didn’t realise that everything she was saying was quite audible. Celestia had done this in their old palace too. Dignitaries and diplomats would conduct a surprising amount of conversation just before heading in for a meeting.

One could glean a tremendous amount from being able to hear their whispers through surprisingly non-soundproofed doors.

Celestia was always one step ahead of most.

“My dear sister, please bring the poor thing in already,” Luna called out.

The hushed conversation stopped abruptly and, after a few seconds of embarrassed pause, the unmaker of the tyrant of the moon poked a decidedly blushing face through the doors.

Luna smiled warmly at her.

“My dear, you do not have to look so out of place, I asked my sister to invite you along to this…” Luna waved a hoof lazily, trying to conjure the right word.

“Debriefing,” finished Celestia, appearing round the door and offering Twilight a friendly yet decisive nudge to take a seat.

“Debriefing! Precisely, thank you my sister.”

Twilight slowly took her seat on the opposite side of the table, regarding Luna with a wariness that she doubtless must have thought she was covering quite well.

“Princess Luna, I must confess… you seem uh…” Twilight began, but seemed to wilt when she realised that two princesses were looking at her, patiently waiting for her to finish her thought, “Actually it doesn’t matter, I’m just here to take notes.,”

“Is that right?” Luna asked, raising an eyebrow at her sister.

“Of course not,” Celestia replied, gently taking Twilight’s quill and parchment in her hooves and prising them from Twilight’s grasp while the little unicorn impotently tried to reclaim them, “Twilight, I’ll handle note taking for this meeting, okay? If you’ve got something to ask Luna, please! She’s only spoken with me and some royal guards these last few days, I’m sure she’s quite ready for some more stimulating conversation.”

Twilight looked over at her reappropriated quill and parchment, trying and failing to suppress the shadow of a pout. It was short lived however, as she was able to turn her attention to Luna.

She still didn’t speak, though.

“Twilight?” Celestia began, “You’ll make Luna impatient, what were you going to ask her,”

“I… I uh,”

“I think she may be nervous, dear sister,” Luna offered, “I probably threatened to kill her more than once when I was, ah, shall we say ‘indisposed’?”

“Do you really think this is the time for making jokes about it, Luna?” Celestia replied tersely.

“Who was joking? Not I. I’m sure your student is wary of me, and I wouldn’t blame her,” Luna countered, before turning her eyes back to Twilight, “Twilight Sparkle, you are under no obligation to say anything and I understand fully your trepidation around me, if you just want to listen and make notes, then that’s fine. I’m sure we can find something to trade with my sister to buy back your stationery. I believe the cooks downstairs have prepared red velvet cake. That should prove a more than satisfactory bargain.”

Celestia rolled her eyes, but Luna wasn’t paying attention. She was more concerned with how a flicker of a smile tugged at the corner of Twilight’s lip. Luna likely would have won herself a small chuckle were it not being held back by the young pony’s suspicion.

“Of course, it may cool your nerves slightly if I were to reveal that it was myself who specifically requested your presence here. I wanted to at least have the chance to say thank you in person.”

Twilight leaned forward slightly, near imperceptibly. She probably wasn’t even aware she’d done it. But it was all Luna needed to see. And, as expected…

“I was going to say that, you seem a bit more… effervescent? That I expected,”

“I think what Luna is trying to-”

“Sister please,” Luna politely, but firmly, interrupted her sister, “I am able to field my own questions. Well, Twilight Sparkle, you raise a good point. I spent my first few days walking around looking as sullen as I could muster, because I felt like it was the way I should be feeling. But, honestly, the truth is I feel good… great even. I spent longer than the lifetimes of you and all your friends combined trapped in that broiling nexus of insanity and, for the first time in a long time. I feel like I can think clearly.

“If I seem happier and lighter than you expected, that’s because I am! And one thing that this experience has taught me, far too late in my life, is that I shouldn’t pretend to feel one way when I don’t feel that way.”

Twilight looked at the princess, seeming to mentally chew over her answer.

It may have been Luna’s favourite moment since she was rid of the nightmare when Twilight’s suspicion seemed to ebb, and she favoured the princess with a small smile.

“You can call me Twilight, Princess Luna, no one calls me Twilight Sparkle really,”

“Well sadly, almost everyone calls me Princess Luna, but my friends call me Luna. So how about you call me that, and I’ll call you Twilight?”

“Luna,” Celestia interrupted, sliding a hoof in front of Twilight, “We still have to get through this debriefing.”

Luna regarded her sister neutrally for a moment.

“That we do. So who’s got the first question?”

“Why?” Celestia said, and the humour seemed to drain from the room.

They had flirted with this a few times over the last week, but each time one of them seemed to break. Sometimes Luna got too upset, sometimes Celestia backed down before Luna could even speak.

She guessed this was something they needed to get out of the way.

“Twilight, why do you think I did all of this?” Luna asked, holding a hoof up to prevent the protest she knew Celestia would have.

Twilight seemed to shrink in her seat, and looked to Celestia for approval. The elder alicorn took a couple of seconds, looking between her sister and student, swapping between reassuring and disapproving looks as appropriate.

In the end, she relented.

“Luna shouldn’t be making you do this, Twilight,” Celestia lectured, the subtleties of the way her voice changed as she flitted between sovereign and teacher weren’t lost on Luna, “She should be more considerate of your feelings, and best interests. But you can answer if you’d like to.”

Luna had to bite her tongue to the point it nearly bled.

“I thought it was because you were feeling underappreciated pri… Luna, I thought that you thought ponies didn’t care about your night.”

Luna looked at her sister, she was so much a statesmare. She’d always been the more gifted of the two of them in the arts of politics and rhetoric by a considerable margin. And then she watched as that mighty hoof that had lived so many countless thousands of years gently stroked Twilight’s back, and Luna saw how it made the unicorn relax. How it soothed her mind.

Luna had always been the more tender one between the two, and yet the table was so large, she would have only been able to lightly brush Twilight’s hoof, and they’d have to be at full stretch.

“And so the story goes,” Luna replied with a sad smile, “Feelings of underappreciation certainly made my situation worse, but I’m not sure that’s the reason why I did what I did. Madness would be a better word, it was like something had been whispering in my ear for so very, very long… and you know, it’s strange. When I was trapped within the nightmare it all made so much sense, and now it’s gone, and the insanity subsided, it’s like something written in a different language. I think that… that I…”

Celestia leant slightly further in, but it was Twilight’s voice that sounded first.

“Yes, Luna?”

“It just felt like I wanted everyone to see the world like I did,” Luna finished, looking squarely at her sister.

The room seemed slightly bigger than it had done when everyone had first arrived. Twilight squirmed in her seat. Luna looked at her, she forgot sometimes how little they were, when she really regarded them. It was something she did far too infrequently. She hated how she was making the poor thing feel.

It brought up unpleasant memories.

So even though she wanted to keep on explaining this, she decided it could wait until she was alone with her sister.

There were more important things than how the two of them felt.

“Twilight, my sister tells me you’re one of her most promising students! I hope that, in some point in the future, I can show you my notes on astronomy,”

Twilight immediately perked up.

“Oh that would be amazing princess… sorry, Luna. I can’t imagine the level of insight you have!”

“Well, one does one’s best,” Luna replied, a practised and effortlessly affected false modesty, perfectly conspicuous, once again making Twilight giggle, “Besides, thanks to you there’s a second alicorn in the world again, you might as well see some benefit from it.”

“Well, three alicorns,” Twilight pointed out.

Her smile told Luna she didn’t think she’d said a single thing out of place.

But, of course, Luna didn’t spend too long looking at Twilight, her head snapped around to look at her sister, feeling her pupils constricting. Celestia looked for all the world there was nothing amiss.

Luna knew her better than that.

“Twilight, my sister and I have a few things we need to discuss, but it’s a lot of boring information about the evolution of tax codes. It would seem that, for my sins, my first work in the new administration will be in revenue and customs, and I wouldn’t dream of burdening you with the same dry knowledge. However, when we’re done, I’d love to show you some of those notes. We can do it in the astronomy tower!”

“Oh I’d love to! I could show you the new telescopes we have and-”

“Twilight,” Celestia gently interrupted, “Aren’t you forgetting we had a lesson planned for this evening?”

Twilight’s ears folded onto her head as dreams of an intense astronomy session crumbled before her, she looked back at Celestia, sad and doe-eyed, pupils stretching out.

Luna couldn’t stand to look at her.

“My sister is right, Twilight, we can do our astronomy work another time, we’ll make a night of it, I’ll get the cooks to make your favourite cake… just give Celestia and I a little bit of time, okay?”

The unicorn nodded effusively, now salved by the knowledge her studies were protected. She gathered her notes and quill and offered her farewells, hastening out of the room with an absentminded clumsiness that seemed diametrically opposed to the cool, calm mare who had faced down an angry god just days prior.

Luna waited until she heard those hoofsteps span the corridor, still keenly aware of how leaky the door was to conversation.

“What did she mean, three alicorns,” Luna hissed at her sister, who rolled her eyes.

“It’s nothing like that, sister,” Celestia replied breezily, a hoof idly waved only served to darken Luna’s mood, “Cadence is… she is not a true alicorn.”

“Explain,” Luna growled.

“She was meant for the Crystal Empire, whenever it should reappear, I would not disadvantage them with a sovereign who will simply die in a generation, they need more stability than that.”

“So you made this alicorn?!” Luna gasped, face a mask of horror.

“She is not a true alicorn!” Celestia whispered harshly, leaning in while shooting a quick, cautious look to the door, “She is a… well more of a winged unicorn, she will live far longer than a normal pony, but she is not an immortal… she’s not like us,”

“For everyone’s sake, I truly hope not,” Luna replied, running a hoof through her mane, “I can’t believe you could be so reckless,”

“Reckless?!” Celestia barked, clearly affronted, “I was the reckless one?! You were away at the time, dear sister, as you had been for a millenia,”

“And you knew I would be back.”

“Are we quite done?” Celestia snapped, rising from her seat, “I have things to which I need to attend.”

“No we are not done,” Luna replied, getting up from her seat and stamping round the table to face her sister more closely, “I can see you are wary of my getting too close to your student, sister, something to hide?”

“What are you implying?” Celestia retorted, eyes narrowed dangerously.

“Inconsiderate of her best interests, eh?” Luna spat, “No, we’re not done because I have one last question for you, sister… where were you?”

“I did my best, Luna, I had no idea of what was happening in your mind.”

“No,” Luna interjected, “No I do not care about a thousand years ago. I meant that night, when I returned… where were you?”

“I… I don’t understand, you were saved?” Celestia’s mouth hung, apparently in a rare millisecond of being caught off guard.

“You could have given Twilight and her friends safe passage through the Everfree, you could have simply kept me busy so she was at less risk. You let her walk through that hellhole without you, and didn’t appear until after the nightmare had been banished. Do you know what the nightmare was going to do, sister? I was going to destroy the sun, not just leave my moon up there forever. I was going to make it so no one could ever raise it again… and you were nowhere to be found.”

“Oh yes?” Celestia replied, eyebrow raised, “And what stopped you?”

“I stopped me, the part of me that remained. I kept it distracted, kept it insane, I shudder to think what it might have done had I not… now, don’t change the subject. I know our subjects think I had you captured, and I decided to not refute the rumour because, to my mind, it’s easier than to explain that you chose to not reveal yourself… why?”

“Twilight is going to be very important for this country, sister,” Celestia countered, steel returning to her eyes, “I knew she had it handled. I would never let her get into any real danger.”

“So you were watching her? That night?”

“Of course I was, Luna, what do you think of me? I didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t want Twilight to feel like she hadn’t done this on her own.”

Luna looked up at Celestia, and felt so very, very tired.

She had spent a millenia hating her sister.

She didn’t want to fight anymore.

“I hope you consider her best interests, and refrain from making any big decisions without me,” Luna said, allowing her weary head to flop down unceremoniously into the warm fur of her sister’s chest, and feeling her breath steady when Celestia’s forehoof wrapped around her.

“We owe them that much, Celestia.”

Ahab

“AVERT THINE EYES,” screamed Luna, trying desperately to cover her own.

She had lived for less than an hour, her and the white one beside her forged in the centre of the heavenly spheres that decorated this planet’s heavens. She would later realise that her sister, as they came to describe themselves, was born a few moments before her. She would call Celestia her elder sister, despite feeling like it was actually quite ridiculous.

They were effectively the same age.

Of course, maybe there was something about putting that responsibility on the shoulders of another that made her feel safer.

In her quieter moments, that thought would terrify and disgust her.

She had just spoken the first words she would ever say, she didn’t even know how she knew the language. It just came out of her automatically. The transcription of the thoughts and feelings, all still so new to her, that were racing through her head and body.

It was the only way she could describe what she wanted, what she needed right now.

Through the crack in her forehooves she caught glimpse of the one who fell to earth with her, as she tried desperately to do the same as Luna. She tried to keep her hooves clamped firmly over her face.

But it was so hard.

It was nearly impossible. Something was spilling out of their eyes.

Something was spilling out of their mouths.

Some force, some magic.

It felt wrong, it felt angry.

“AVERT THINE EYES,” Luna screamed again at the crowds of the local creatures that had come to gawk at the spectacle.

And she didn’t know why the thought even occurred to her, but it suddenly seemed so obvious. She stood on shaky, painfully new legs, on tender, bleeding hooves and tackled the one who’d fallen with her.

And for a moment, they both moved their hooves from their faces and looked at each other’s faces.

And Luna knew then a love that would outshine the sun and moon for the rest of their entire lives.

The only one who’d ever understand her.

It didn’t matter what screaming, boiling energy spilled out of those eyes.

Luna thought they were the most beautiful, innocent things she’d ever see.

She leant down, and pressed her head into that soft, white chest.

“Let’s do it together,” she said, and knew she’d been understood when she felt a face nestle into her mane.

And for some reason, as sure as the energy had once felt unstoppable, pouring through them, it suddenly felt like something they could overcome, something manageable. It hadn’t disappeared, Luna faintly wondered if it ever would. But at the very least, it could be suppressed. It felt like they could deal with it.

And it felt like it was angry at them.

The noises subsided, the pain seemed to ebb. The pushing stopped, the boundary resealed, the seams between places became sturdy once again.

“Open your eyes,” came a whisper from above, and Luna obeyed.

She looked up to see that beautiful face, looking down on her with such a maternal expression of reassurance and understanding that she may have cried, were her eyes not so dry.

But the silence was short lived. Because then the snarling began.

The animalistic, carnivorous snarling and gnashing of teeth, all backdropped against a soundtrack of the most sickening chorus of laughter imaginable.

The two fledgling gods looked up, and over their crater, and onto the fields around them.

And they saw countless hundreds of faces. All smiling, all weeping, infected with that terrible, churning magic. Eyes wide, pupils stretched to create infinite voids in their skulls, irises nigh invisible.

And there was only a split second of calm before they all fell on each other, an orgy of madness and insanity and violence. They tore each other apart, and shrieked and wailed. And then that magic began to clamber through them as well, spreading in lazy tendrils through the black holes in their eye sockets.

When Luna had spoken, she had done it on instinct. Just as she had when she’d wandered over to her new sister.

Just as she had when she’d known she’d love this pony like no other for the rest of their never ending lives.

Luna thought this pony felt the same too.

She could see it in her healing eyes.

They both could see it, how they had come to the same conclusion just now.

The same horrible, terrible conclusion.

Because, all on instinct, the two of them knew there was only one thing they could do to stop this from spreading.

And they would do it together, and be haunted by it forever.

They could bear that, if needed.

The sound of the explosion could be heard all the way to the capital cities and beyond.

XXX

Luna ground her teeth, she had never been as gifted as her elder sister at the art of statesmanship, that was true. But another thing she had never, ever been, was stupid. She knew exactly what her sister was doing right now, she was delaying this meeting as much as possible in the hopes that Luna would simply get bored and decide to put it off.

Maybe forget about it all together.

It was not a smart play to try with someone who had once held a grudge for a millenia, possessed or not.

She got up and wandered over to the new stained glass window that was being installed. It seemed this room was currently doomed to never being able to be completed. The second one window was installed, Twilight and her friends would perform some new incredible feat, and parliament would see within a chance to drum up some always useful, non-controversial goodwill with the public, and the motion for another window would pass unopposed.

The worksman gave her the appropriate differential bows as she approached them, and she briskly motioned for them to get back on with their work. The idea they had to bow to her at all was never something that sat completely right with her or Celestia, but the idea they had to do it multiple times an hour, whenever the fancy took her to entertain herself with taking in the window art, was absurd.

Still, she knew why they had to keep up the whole thing.

By the angelic representation of Twilight, hovering in mid-air with an expression of serenity that would have never graced the real pony’s anxious face, were an array of adornments and decorations. Representations of the elements, smaller forms for her friends, and, of course, by her hooves, a sun and moon.

Luna raised a hoof to look at the small moons on her regalia, and sure enough the design matched perfectly. Part of royal life involved the establishment of an effective brand after all.

And, of course, the sun looked glorious.

She reached out, her regaled hoof moving closer and closer, until the two spheres seemed to touch. She supposed it fit them well, Celestia’s sun here in the window, fulfilling an appropriate political need. And the moon that was kissing a star, laughably diminutive in comparison, adorning a hoof, the mind and the body.

Was that what they were? Luna liked to think there was more to both of them.

The disc of glass slipped from the window frame with the slightest bit of pressure, and Luna watched as her hoof pushed through it, leaving only a gaping hole in place. The stained glass fell to one of the lower roofs and shattered, thankfully there was no one working on there today.

Luna watched the shards pool on the walkways, mesmerised and horrified in turn. If someone had been beneath them, they could have been killed. She slowly pulled her hoof back, the small emblem of a moon coming closer to her.

“Princess Luna!”

She snapped out of the trance.

“Oh my goodness, I am sorry, I didn’t realise it wasn’t fixed yet, do you need any hel-”

“We’re so sorry Princess, a thousand pardons, are you okay, do you need us to fetch the palace doctors?” cried the assorted craftponies, falling in to bow before her in prostrate apology.

“Why… why are you apologising to me?” Luna asked, prompting one of them to meekly raise his head.

“Your majesty,” he asked, audibly confused.

“Why are you apologising to me?” she repeated, “I was the one who destroyed your work, if I had just kept my hooves to myself none of this would have happened.”

Maybe he’d get the courage to tell her off. She thought she’d enjoy that.

“But your majesty we should have… we could have…”

She watched him as he babbled nervously, hoping against hope he’d produce some sort of universal truth that would calm her.

“You’re… you’re the princess,” he finally said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Luna sighed, she supposed she was, wasn’t she?

And that didn’t always come with the role of being relatable, or loved, or even liked.

The emotion washed from her face, as it so often had to.

“Please arrange the glass below to be cleaned so it doesn’t hurt anyone. I will see to it personally that each of your wages are doubled to make up for my mistake. Good day.”

She gave them a nod, and then promptly turned in the direction of the meeting room her sister was currently cocooned in. It was a short journey, she supposed her concerns had prevented her from straying too far. As soon as she arrived, the guardsponies saluted.

“Your majesty, unfortunately your sister is still-”

“Dismissed.”

“... a thousand pardons your majesty, but-”

“Dismissed,” she repeated, her tone not brooking the slightest notion of argument.

“Your majesty, a thousand pardons, but-”

They stammered, they were in an impossible situation, and Luna hated it.

But she was the princess.

And they weren’t the priority now, neither was her guilt.

“I will not tell any of you again, now vacate this post, and speak of this to no one.”

Her tone was low, it didn’t need to be any greater. Notions of the royal Canterlot voice were outdated and ineffective, she understood that now. The guards cringed at each other, but realised they truly had no alternative. Either choice meant disobeying a princess, this one at least meant disobeying one that wasn’t currently staring them down.

They scuttled away, and Luna pushed through the doors, ignoring their hurried bows as they retreated.

Everyone in the room was already looking at her, doubtlessly they heard everything that had just happened. The throng of nobles looked at her as one, their uneasy balance of power that underpinned the kingdom laid bare in microcosm. They had the presence of mind, or arrogance, to appear offended at the interruption, and normally Luna would have had the presence of mind, or time, to appear apologetic.

And then they’d perform their insipid little ritual of appeasement, and the exact same thing would happen as it always does. They’d fall in line.

Because she was the princess.

And today, she hadn’t the time.

“Leave,” she said, and stood sentinel as they parted around her in their hurry to be somewhere they could continue their pretences.

When the last one filtered out, Luna’s horn flared as she shut the doors and soundproofed them for good measure. No politically-opportune leaking this time, this was too important.

She took her seat at the table, across from her elder sister, regarded Celestia with a neutral look, and spoke.

“Have you lost your mind?”

“You interrupt a meeting with the nobility that has been on the books for months, embarrass the throne in front of them, and ask me if I’ve lost my mind, sister. I could very well ask you the same-”

“Enough politicking, Celestia, we need to talk,”

“And you could have very well waited as I would have done for you!” Celestia replied, before breaking eye contact to leaf through her notes.

Luna hadn’t the time.

“Fucking look at me, Celestia,”

That certainly made the sun princess look up and take notice.

“An alicorn? You made her into an alicorn?” Luna began, her temper quickly coming to a boil, “Without even speaking to anyone, without speaking to me?! You made her into a blasted alicorn?!”

“I didn’t make her into anything!” Celestia snapped, “She completed Starswirl’s spell!”

“Your royal sorcerer was working on ascendency magic?! And you did nothing?! How did he even create magic like that?! That shouldn’t be accessible to anyone other than…”

Celestia wheeled around and gave Luna a look of such offence and panic that even in her current state, Luna bit her tongue.

“No one should be able to do that,” Luna said, deciding that line of discussion was easier, “You shouldn’t have let it get to this point.”

“Twilight completed the spell because she is brilliant, Luna. I didn’t even realise it was something she was doing, she just did it! Because that’s what she does!”

“Because you push her!” Luna shouted, raising an accusatory hoof in Celestia’s direction, “The poor girl lives and dies on what you tell her. How many years have I been back now, and not one single night in that observatory tower with me, because every time I arrange something, something always comes up. Some mission, some trip, some important lesson.”

“So this is what this is about?” Celestia spat, laughing humourlessly, “Annoyed that you can’t have a sleepover in the observatory tower with the most brilliant pony alive,”

“I am furious that I can’t have a sleepover in the observatory tower with the most brilliant pony alive. Because that is all it would be with me. A sleepover. No lessons, no missions, just gazing at stars and eating some cake.

“Would that be so wrong, sister? For her to have some rest? For her to have some time that is only about her? I am not mad at you for keeping her at a distance from me because of how I feel, I’m mad at you for doing it because I have her best interests in mind, do you?”

Celestia’s mouth formed a thin, harsh line as she visibly chewed on her bottom lip, face a mask of rage. She pushed her papers to one side and rubbed her temples with her forehooves. Luna took a moment to catch her breath, but found she was unable to restrain herself for very long.

“I can’t believe you let someone in your court work on this sort of filthy magic under your nose, your royal mage and closest confidant no less. I wonder what other dark secrets Starswirl’s diaries contain, not that it matters, of course. Now that I know this, I’ll be ordering them all to be burned.”

“You can’t!” Celestia cried, but Luna was past caring.

“Down to the last piece of parchment…I could accept you giving a horn to our niece, I could accept it when it was just that. But Twilight has been made into an immortal!”

“How would you even know that for sure?” Celestia groaned, pushing away from the table walking over to the windows. But Luna wouldn’t relent, she followed her sister, until they were muzzle to muzzle.

“Because I can smell it on her, from the second she ascended. The magic is unmistakable, don’t even pretend you can’t sense it as well.”

“You want to know why I’ve been hiding from you since Twilight ascended?! Because I knew you’d react this way,” Celestia retorted, pushing back against Luna’s snout, “All scorched earth and doomsaying and blame and bile. I didn’t even know Starswirl was working on this, I don’t keep watch on everyone every second of their lives, Luna. And what would you have had me do if I had found out? Hm?”

“What’s one more?” Luna said, a tremble in her voice betraying the agony, still fresh after millenia, “You should have rendered him incapable of continuing with the spell, however you saw fit.”

“And that’s what ruling is to you, is it?” Celestia replied, despondent, “That’s how you suggest we solve problems?”

“Of course not,” Luna said, her face twitching, “Of course I don’t want anyone to get hurt, but you should have stopped him, you shouldn’t have let him,”

“I was alone Luna, thanks in no small part to you. I did my best while you were away, maybe next time don’t make me send you away for so long,”

“I don’t care,” Luna said, turning away from Celestia and walking over to the adjoining wall, she suddenly felt quite unable to remain on her hooves, “I don’t care about what you did in those thousand years, this was the single most important thing, making sure this exact thing didn’t happen.”

Luna slumped against the wall, sliding down it until she landed unceremoniously at the bottom. Her head fell into her forehooves.

“What the hell are we going to do?” she asked her sister, herself, the walls, anything.

“About what?” Celestia said, breaking into an astonished laugh, “Why are we even arguing about this? Twilight has been an alicorn for over a week and nothing has happened! Do you not think that maybe you’re worried about nothing?”

Luna looked up at her sister, a smile on her face that screamed at a trillion decibels Celestia’s need for Luna to just let this one go. To let things go back to how they had been. To not mention…

“How many thousands of years have we lived? And we’ve talked about it… what? Once, twice?”

Celestia turned away.

“Talked about what?”

“Don’t do that, don’t,” Luna said, shaking her head, “Are you really going to make me say it?”

Celestia didn’t say anything, and didn’t turn back.

“Fine, if you’re going to play this game, I’ll play it too… why have we essentially never talked about when we came into this world, about what created us… would you call it our mother? Our father? Is it both our parents? Is it neither?”

“I don’t think this is productive, I think that we should-”

But Luna didn’t have the time.

“I am worried, Celestia, because you know as well as me that the last time alicorns came into this world, we had to blow up hundreds of innocent ponies to stop them spreading whatever madness we brought with us, what if that same thing is going to happen now, with Twilight?!”

“WHAT CHOICE DID WE HAVE?!” Celestia screamed.

She raised her voice so infrequently that it stunned even Luna when it did happen.

“None, I don’t think,” Luna admitted, and Celestia faltered, “What? Did you think I was coming in here to make you feel bad about that? You’ll feel bad about it whatever I say, just like I will. Ultimately it was a choice between letting those ponies spread the madness and stymying it there and then. I think we did all we could.”

“I wouldn’t call it our parent,” Celestia replied, moving over to sit next to her sister. Luna watched her go, and felt like, for the first time in a long time, the sun princess looked every single one of her countless years.

“I don’t know what I’d call it,” Celestia continued, “I certainly don’t think it cares for us… Do you think that’s what made you… what created the nightmare? You talked about feeling like something had been whispering to you from the dark, creeping into your mind for years. Do you think it was what made us?”

Luna definitely did. Luna felt like being trapped in the nightmare was the closest she’d come, and hopefully would ever come, to knowing what those ponies in that field felt. Luna wondered if she was only able to last because of how slowly it snuck into her mind, maybe she was too strong.

Or maybe it was too weak.

Luna was in no doubt, though, that her maker had been behind the nightmare. She just didn’t want to burden her sister with the knowledge.

“I couldn’t say for sure,” Luna lied.

“What did it feel like, to you?” Celestia asked.

“You’ve never asked me that before, never. You got mad at me once when I tried to tell you.”

Celestia didn’t address the point, and simply stared at Luna, who relented with a sigh.

“I couldn’t feel anything in my actual physical eyes, it felt so separate to my body. It was on a different plane altogether. It felt like something, like some thing was trying to push out of the idea of me into the real world, and thought my eyes were the most convenient ways to do it.”

“They say eyes are windows to the soul,” Celestia offered.

“Quite. And more than that, it felt like it hated me, like I was just there to be a doorway for it to breach into the same space as my body. It felt like trying to hold back the sea.

“I sometimes wish all those peasants wouldn’t have found us, that they hadn’t had to… well, anyway. But, oddly, sometimes I’m glad they did… I don’t know whether I would have resisted, had I not seen them, the effect it was having on them. Back then I was just… working on instinct. It felt like I shouldn’t let it through, it felt like I should try to save them, to help you… I just did what I felt was right… what did it feel like to you?”

Celestia didn’t answer, but the shudder she exuded as she stared at the floor told Luna it probably felt exactly the same.

“I don’t think there’s been a moment in my life where I’m not aware of it, sister, where I can’t feel it still, waiting to push through the moment I let my guard down. I think I’ll feel it forever, that knowledge that I was born of something truly evil, and that it’ll always be watching me from wherever it hides. I just need to try to be smarter than it.”

Celestia listened, before scrunching her eyes closed and shaking her head.

“It’s not going to happen again,” Celestia said, getting up and heading back to the table, “Not with Twilight.”

“How do you know that? It happened the last time alicorns were born.,”

“I just know,” Celestia replied tersely.

“We were only able to overcome it because we had each other, because we worked together, because we loved each other… who does she have, sister?”

“How could you even say that?” Celestia spat, aghast, “She has more ponies with her than we had back then!”

“Will they be enough?”

“She loves them, sister,” Celestia implored, performatively attempting to look over the notes that Luna was certain she’d not read a single word of.

“As much as we love each other?”

“She loves her friends, her parents, her ward,” Celestia rattled off her list, but Luna was still unmoved.

“As much as we love each other?” she repeated.

Celestia faltered, her politicking dying in the face of an immutable truth even she wasn’t greater than.

“She loves me,” Celestia asserted through gritted teeth.

“Oh believe me, I know… and sometimes, that terrifies me,”

Celestia muttered something inaudible under her breath, and tried to get back to her notes. Luna gave her a token couple of extra seconds.

“What worries me is that the world is so much smaller now, so much denser,” Luna began, deciding her sister’s break had been lengthy enough given the circumstances, “You don’t get neat little villages of ponies isolated from everyone, what if what happened to us happens to Twilight in the middle of Ponyville, what if it happens in the middle of Canterlot? You think we can stop it from spreading again?”

“How negligent do you think I am,” Celestia groaned, shaking her head, “You don’t think I’m keeping an eye on her?”

“Where is she right now?” Luna countered.

“Asleep,”

“Where is she exactly, Celestia?”

“Why?” the elder alicorn replied neutrally, raising an eyebrow at her sister.

Luna opened her mouth, but closed it without saying anything.

It was a good question, why she wanted to go up to speak to Twilight.

“You want to rush up there, shake her awake and tell her your theory? Hmm? That she might kill the entire world? You want that on her right now?”

Maybe it wasn’t the right idea.

Maybe the right idea would have been to go up there and put the poor girl out of her misery, for her own sake as much as everyone else’s.

But of course, Luna couldn’t do that.

Not to Twilight.

She’d always been the more tender of the two princesses.

“That’s what I thought,” Celestia said, “Leave her be, the poor thing is exhausted.”

“I’m not surprised,” Luna interjected, only to be ignored by Celestia.

“Spike is watching her and if she feels even a bit odd he’ll message me right away. Perks of having a drake with communicative magic. Is that enough due diligence for you, little sister?”

“You keep using terms like that, ‘perks’,” Luna said despondently.

“I’m a princess, Luna, I don’t have the luxury of talking any other way.”

And Luna laughed, for what felt like the first time in a lifetime. It seemed that finally, Celestia had stumbled onto a point on which they agreed. She got up on hooves that felt exactly the same as they had in that crater, like those of a newborn foal, tentative and weak, unable to properly hold her aloft.

Luna began to make her way to the door, unsure that she had the mental energy to continue this fight right now. However, as she got close to leaving the room, a thought occurred to her. She turned back, and looked at her elder sister.

Celestia was wearing her half moon glasses that Luna knew full well she didn’t need, squinting at notes that Luna knew full well she had committed indelibly to memory the second they were written.

She hadn’t sympathised with Celestia as much as she did in that exact moment for a long, long time.

“Do you think we’re doing a good thing, Celestia?”

“We’re giving Twilight the best help we can,” she replied, like an absentminded parent listening to their child babble. It made Luna feel so, so tired.

“Celestia, look at me, I’m not talking about Twilight. I’m talking about this,” Luna said, gesturing to the walls around them, “Do you think we’re doing a good thing?”

Celestia put her notes down and glanced over at Luna, head tilted slightly to the side. It always prompted an involuntary note of satisfaction in Luna, when she took her big sister off guard.

“Well… of course I do? I would hardly be doing it otherwise. Things aren’t perfect, granted, but imagine the world had we not assumed the thrones. So much less progress, less order, less prosperity.”

“And imagine we’d simply burned up in the atmosphere, there’d be several hundred ponies who lived long, happy lives with their families.”

“I keep telling you, we didn’t have a choice,” Celestia said tensely.

“I know, and I agree, I more meant that… ponies bow to us, throw roses at us on the solstices, come to our parades and fawn over us. They all seem to think that Alicorns are a blessing, and that they need thank us.

“Sometimes I think it’s quite the opposite, sometimes I think, even though we never had a choice, that alicorns are a blight on this world, and that everything we do here, the governance, the guidance, the raising the spheres… that this is our penance.”

“Well, that’s a very cynical view of it, Luna,” Celestia offered, before continuing with her notes.

And Luna agreed with her.

She would have loved to feel some affection for her own existence, feel some pride in what she did.

She would have loved to have simply felt that the things she wanted were okay, purely because she wanted them, and that made them worthy.

But Luna was a princess.

She didn’t have a luxury.

I See A Darkness

“I think I know that look.”

Twilight wheeled around as soon as Luna spoke, and the moon princess found her heart ache for the little alicorn. Her pupils were wide, wild, her breathing shallow. What had started as a little celebration had become something more like a grand ball, hosted in the derelict castle of the two sisters.

It had been decorated by Rarity and a small team of like- minded designers, but Celestia had asked that the weathered charm of the locale be emphasised, not covered up.

Luna had watched Twilight the entire day, seeing her greet dignitary after dignitary after politician after self-interested noble. All she could think was how much more suited the poor thing was to a library, instead of nervously sweating through her dress, twitching ill-fitting wings in panic.

Not wanting to let anyone down.

“Princess Luna!” Twilight exclaimed, visibly trying to make herself smile.

Luna tilted her head.

“When did you stop calling me Luna, Twilight? I thought we had an agreement,” she teased, before leaning in to whisper in Twilight’s ear, “Why don’t you come walk with me, just for a little while,”

“Oh! But Celestia said I should mingle, get to know my new… new subjects,” Twilight replied, cringing as she repeated her mentor’s words.

“Ah yes, fascinating commentary from my elder sister,” Luna said, taking a small drink from her wine glass to prevent her mouth from involuntarily screaming some profanity, “Tell me, where has she gotten off to?”

“She told me there was something she needed to attend to in the old tower you two used to share,”

“Well, in her stead, I’ll take the role of your party coordinator, and this particular princess thinks that the guest of honour doesn’t need to do anything other than what they want… so tell me, do you want to stay here, greeting more ponies. Or do you want to come with me, someplace quiet, and talk,”

“Talk about what?” Twilight said, sounding short of breath.

Luna could have cried for her, and would have, were she not so concerned with Twilight’s feelings.

“We can talk about whatever you want, Twilight,”

Equestria’s newest princess took a few seconds to think, muttering inaudibly under her breath, before nodding towards Luna. It was all the encouragement needed. This wasn’t Twilight’s sort of event. It wasn’t Luna’s either, and she had staunchly argued with Celestia about it.

Given the stakes, given what happened last time alicorns came to Equestria, Luna didn’t want to risk stressing Twilight out, not to mention the obvious moral issues of making an already anxious pony even more worried.

Celestia had insisted it would be good for Twilight, to get her into the world a bit more. Celestia had claimed Twilight was a bit isolated as of late.

Luna had told Celestia that it was no wonder Twilight was feeling isolated.

Twilight followed her into the main hall. The food had been laid out, ready for all the guests to come in, and Luna watched as Twilight regarded it with undisguised dread and discomfort, doubtless picturing the throngs of ponies that would soon follow them.

“One benefit of being an alicorn, I suppose, is there’s always the option to fly away from places like this,” Luna said, pointing at the sky flowing in from where the roof once was.

“Oh, I can’t fly yet, I’ve been meaning to get Rainbow to teach me,” Twilight laughed frantically, grasping at the excuse to try to turn something into a joke, “These things are pretty useless at the moment.”

Luna levitated a couple of chairs over to them both. She could have tried to console Twilight about her wings, but she figured a break from talking about anything alicorn related would do Twilight some good.

“So, what do you want to talk about?” Luna asked, favouring Twilight with a kind, patient smile.

“Well, I guess it would be good to find out from you what duties I should expect now that I’m-”

“Twilight,” Luna interrupted, frustration battling against the want to soothe, “Is that… is that what you want to talk about? Or just what you think you should talk about?”

A wobble in the lip betrayed the answer.

“I really did want to spend more time with you, I hope you know that,” Twilight babbled, her voice tearful, “I wanted to spend a night with you in the astronomy tower, I just found myself so busy all the time.”

“Twilight,” Luna began, moving her chair closer so she could wrap a forehoof around the panicking new alicorn, “You didn’t do anything wrong, okay? I know how busy you are, don’t worry.”

“I really wish I’d made more time, you’ve always been so kind with me,” she continued, breathing shaky.

“Twilight, why are you speaking like you can’t still do those things? I’m not going anywhere,”

“But now I’ve got these,” Twilight exclaimed, gesturing to the wings on her back which weakly flapped out of sync, “And I feel really weird all the time since this ascension and I’m not going to have any time to do those things because there will be all these events and political things I need to do and I’m worried I’ll have to move away from Ponyville and-”

Luna listened to her rattle of an increasing list of her worries, her fears of a life slipping away from her, stolen of pleasure and ease by the station foist upon her head and the wings upon her back. And as the words fell from her, and her cadence spiralled into staccato rattling, Luna could feel herself getting more and more furious with her sister.

Where was she? Why hadn’t she stopped any of this?

But Luna wasn’t Celestia, and she couldn’t answer those questions.

What she was, was the princess who had always been worse at politicking, at manipulation, at the subtle arts of running the state.

But she had also always been the more tender of the two.

She’d always have that.

Luna leant forward and captured Twilight in a hug, rubbing her back with one hoof and stroking her hair with the other. The babbling drew to a sudden, stunned close. And when she could feel the breathing finally calm, Luna pulled back and looked into Twilight’s eyes.

“Listen to me, Twilight, I will die before I let that happen, okay? I promise you, I swear to you, I will not let that happen. You can live in Ponyville for as long as you want, and you can be with your friends. I won’t let anyone take you away from them, because you’ve more than earned it. And you don’t have to come to any more of these stupid, stupid parties, not a single one for the rest of your life if you don’t want.

“And, listen to me, I swear to you that we will have that night in the observatory, no lessons, no tests, nothing to prove. You can just tell me all you want about the stars and I’ll listen to you all night, and I’ll get the cook to make the most ridiculous cake that you or me or anyone has ever seen.”

Twilight’s lip wobbled as she took in Luna’s words. For a moment, it looked like Luna was going to earn a smile, but the worry was fast to return as Twilight uttered two words that made her blood boil.

“But Celestia-”

“Don’t you worry for a moment about Celestia, okay? She-” has been pushing you too hard your entire life and if she’d left you be for even a small instance you wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t have needed to complete Starswirl’s accursed spell because you could have just relaxed and enjoyed some time with your friends without being so anxious about earning my sister’s approval that you are forced to turn every single aspect of your life into something to be graded. You don’t need to be graded, Twilight, you’re good enough already.

Luna would have sorely loved to have told Twilight that.

But she was a princess, so she didn’t have that luxury.

“She loves you, but I think she might have gotten so caught up in your brilliance that she’s forgotten you need some time to relax. In fact, I’m going to speak to her right now, and straighten this out.”

“Oh you don’t have to-” Twilight tried to cry out, before Luna gently shushed her.

“Twilight, stop worrying so much about controlling what other ponies do, what goes on between myself and Celestia isn’t your issue to worry about. If you want to do something for me… just try to rest, okay?”

And once Twilight had agreed, and the world seemed a bit calmer, Luna turned around to head to the old tower she and her sister shared, and she was going to tell the sun princess that this had gone on too far, and that she was stepping in, for everyone’s own good.

Like Celestia had done for Luna, over a thousand years ago.

But as she started walking, it finally clicked. The thing she’d missed, the thing that Celestia doubtlessly would have picked up on instantly. And Luna would have dearly loved to have just kept walking, to try to put it out of her mind like it seemed every other pony in the world was able to, to live her life in the peaceful refuge of simply refusing to be concerned.

But Luna was a princess.

And so, predictably, interminably, eternally, she didn’t have that luxury.

So she turned back to Twilight, and spoke.

“Twilight, what did you mean when you said you feel weird all the time ever since you ascended?”

Bad Moon Rising

“Open your eyes, Twilight,”

Twilight wasn’t even aware she’d closed them again, probably just a force of habit. She complied, and allowed herself to take in the pitch black wasteland they found themselves in.

“I’m sorry, Rarity.”

She kept her vision focused on the ruin of Sweet Apple Acres around them, it was too upsetting still to look at what her friend had been reduced to.

“That’s okay dearie, I mean you don’t have to keep your eyes open if you don’t want to. But it’s such a beautiful night, I’d hate for you to miss it. Maybe we’ll find Rainbow, asleep on one of the clouds about the orchard. She always loves to nap there. Or maybe Applejack will come and sit with us. I know she always has to work early, but I love it when she allows herself to sleep in so she can spend some time with us all.

“Maybe she’ll bring Pinkie and Fluttershy and little Spike with her too, maybe they’ll all come find us. You don’t have to keep your eyes open if you don’t want to, Twilight. I’d just hate for you to miss all of that.”

“I’m not… I’m not saying sorry about that,” Twilight said, sniffling even in the absence of any tears, “That’s not what I’m saying sorry for,”

“Well,” Rarity began, “Then whyever are you apologising to me, Twilight?”

“I’m not… not apologising to you,” Twilight said, struggling to keep her voice even as sobs and retching threatened to derail her entirely, “I’m… I’m apologising to Rarity,”

“Darling… How many times do I have to tell you? I am Rar-”

Twilight wheeled around on her friend, forcing herself to stare into those nightmarish eyes. She cut a sorry sight in the black mirror of Rarity’s pupils, a tearful, useless little alicorn, unable to help, unable to change anything, unable to even cry.

She was at least able to push Rarity onto her back and loom over her, looking directly into her eyes, so that at least any vestige of her friend remaining imprisoned might hear what she said.

“I’m sorry, Rarity… if you can hear me, I’m so, so sorry.”

“Darling… why are… you… I’m Rarity and… don’t need… we’re wasting such a beautiful day with all this fussing and… say sorry… lets just look back at the moon, wouldn’t you like that Twilight… done nothing wrong… if you don’t come with me, and keep your eyes open, there’s no hope for the others… all still love you…”

Twilight found her body wasn’t quite out of moisture just yet. She was able to still release a few tears as she heard the dying embers of her friend, spat out in gnarled, choking gasps between honeyed words of insanity, trying to reassure her while slipping into eternal sleep.

Twilight didn’t have anything left.

She buried her face into Rarity’s chest and wept as much as her tired, damaged body was able. Twilight wept for a dying world, for a dead sun, for every single one of her friends.

Every one of them.

A weak hoof, seemingly fighting against itself the whole time, placed itself onto Twilight’s head, and stroked her hair like her mum had done when she was just a foal, struggling to get to sleep. She’d told Rarity once that she still missed that.

And that made her cry more.

“Rarity do… do you… do you think that… Luna… Luna is okay?” Twilight babbled out through child-like weeping.

“...No.”

Twilight noticed the hoof had stopped rubbing her head. It felt limp, dead, a limb of a puppet with cut strings.

“Wha-”

Rarity was quick, quicker than Twilight could have ever expected.

All the others that she’d seen had been far more violent than Rarity had ever been, when she’d braved the chance to peek out of the castle of the two sisters, hearing noises of ponies who’d found their way through the forest.

When she’d watched them tear each other apart.

And maybe, just maybe, it had only been the vestiges of Rarity left in this husk that had stopped her behaving in the same way.

Twilight faintly wondered, as Rarity pounced, what would happen when those vestiges fully, finally died.

Rarity flipped them over in an instant, pinning all of Twilight’s limbs down and staring down into her face.

“I don’t think Luna is even alive, I don’t think anyone is anymore, I think it’s just me and you now, Twilight. And I think that it is all, your, fault,” Rarity spat, grinning insanely, eyes impossibly bright for how dark they were, “I think the entire world is dead and buried and that it wouldn’t have happened if someone had done the decent thing and smothered you in your cot. Tell me, how does that make you feel, little alicorn? What would Luna tell you, if she was still alive?”

Twilight stared into those eyes, and felt her pupils begin to dilate.

XXX

“I think it’s just tiredness, or my body adjusting to all the new magic,”

“I think it probably is too,” offered Luna with a strained smile, “But I need you to describe exactly how you’ve been feeling to me.”

“I explained to Celestia and she told me it wasn’t anything to worry about,”

“Twilight!” Luna snapped, before composing herself, “Just… just tell me, okay? It’s very important,”

“Well, sure if it’s important,” Twilight replied, while Luna smiled and tried to stop her hoof from tapping a nervous rhythm on the cold stone floor.

“It’s just felt like there’s… too much in me? I’d describe it like that I guess. I’ve just felt sort of uncomfortable, like the space I occupy is wrong,”

“...like something is trying to get out of you?” Luna muttered, her tone haunted.

“In a way, yeah, that’s a good way of putting it. It’s like there’s all this weird energy that’s trying to come out-”

“Of your eyes?”

“Yeah, out my eyes,” Twilight said, looking at Luna confusedly, “Why, is that bad?”

XXX

Luna looked out onto the field that she and the white pony had destroyed, so much power released at once that there weren’t even corpses of all the gathered peasants. The entire world rendered into glass.

She turned to stare at this being that had fallen to earth with her, and had killed villages of ponies with her, and had helped her stop the flow of the maddening energy from her eyes, and had been helped in turn.

Luna hoped she’d always feel the love for this pony that she did now.

XXX

“Close your eyes, Twilight.”

“I don’t understand!” Twilight cried back, but Luna couldn’t be soothing anymore.

“I said close them! Keep them closed, and do not open them once, okay. It doesn’t matter what anyone says!”

“But Celestia said I should keep exercising my eyes, and it would make me feel better!” Twilight wailed, clearly terrified.

“Celestia is wrong!” Luna bellowed, forcing Twilight’s forehooves up to her face, “Keep those covering your eyes, and don’t move them, not if I tell you to, not if your friends tell you to, not if Celestia tells you to, okay?!”

Once she had gotten a shaky nod from Twilight, she frantically looked around the room, scanning for someone to help her.

“Where is Spike?!” Luna screamed, frantically trying to rack her brains for the last time she’d seen him at the party and drawing blank after disappointing blank, “Where is he Twilight?! He needs to sit with you and message me if you start to feel more strange.”

“Spike’s away, princess,” Twilight sniffled meekly, “He had to go on urgent business to the Dragonlands,”

Luna turned, regarding Twilight with horror.

“He’s what… since when?”

“Since just after I became an alicorn, he didn’t want to go but…”

XXX

“I’m Celestia,” the white pony told her.

“I’m Luna,” Luna replied. Until now she hadn’t even known what to call herself, but the name came to her as quickly as trusting this pony in front of her did.

She was just acting on instinct.

XXX

“...Celestia insisted.”

Luna felt her stomach drop from within her. She felt excavated. She felt like every single piece of goodness within her body and mind and soul had been scraped away, leaving nothing but a dull, listless, imitation.

Luna just wanted to sit down, and let the world pass by her. She wanted the soil to bury her body, for the grass to grow over her. She wanted the dull percussion of hoofsteps above to fade until she was eventually left in nothing but dark and silence.

Luna didn’t remember how old she was, but she knew it was a very, very long time ago that she fell to earth with her sister, the pony for whom the word love would never describe her feelings. Luna didn’t know how many countless thousands of years had drifted away around them, eroding the lives of everyone they spoke to like a river reclaiming the earth around it, leaving only those two.

Luna had lived effectively forever, but this was the first time in her life she could remember truly wanting to die…

But, as was so often the case, the princess of the moon didn’t have that luxury.

Because this wasn’t about her, this was about everyone else.

At the very least, she could remember her tenderness.

“Twilight, my dear,” Luna called back to the little alicorn, shivering in her dress, drenched in sweat, covering her eyes, “You’re going to be okay, yeah? Everything is going to be just fine, but only if you keep your eyes shut. Can you do that for me? Can you keep them closed, no matter what? Even if Celestia tells you to open them?”

“If Celestia tells me?” Twilight asked, the thought of disobeying her mentor clearly making her start to panic.

“I know it’s scary, Twilight, but please do this for me. I’ll never ask you to do another thing, not as long as we both live. But please do this for me.”

Twilight kept her hooves over her eyes, and took a few minutes to finally be able to say.

“Okay, Luna, I’ll do that for you.”

Luna allowed herself a small smile in Twilight’s direction, before she lit her horn, and teleported out of the main hall.

In an instant, Luna snapped back into physical space. A thousand years away couldn’t dull the keen senses she had for this old castle, where she’d spent the vast majority of her life. She knew it perfectly, she supposed she always would.

But then, it was best to not assume, Luna reminded herself. She looked at the door to their shared quarters. The place Celestia had apparently hidden herself today. She’d often gone to think there, in those last few years, as Luna grew more distant and everything just got… harder.

Still… it wasn’t good to assume too much.

Even the oldest things could change.

Luna pushed the door open and Celestia was indeed inside, staring out of the window onto the courtyard below. It almost felt like an anticlimax, Luna had been unable to shake the expectation that her sister would have vanished entirely, or that there was going to be some horrible trap waiting in the room.

But here she was, right there with them all.

Where she’d always been.

“You weren’t watching her when she came to save me that night, were you? You were hoping the nightmare would succeed? This is just the backup plan.” Luna called out, struggling to keep her voice even, “You’ve not had Spike watching her, you’ve been telling her that what she feels is completely normal, that she shouldn’t close her eyes,”

Celestia didn’t reply.

“You haven’t ever cared about the poor girl, have you?”

“Of course I care about her,” Celestia bit back, finally succumbing to the provocation, “I love her.”

“No, don’t do that, Celestia,”

“And,” her voice pregnant with the ghost of tears, “I love you too, I hope you know that.”

“No,” Luna snapped, she didn’t have that luxury now, “No, you don’t get to do this. Not now, it’s not fair,”

“But I do, Luna, of course I love you,”

“And I love you, Celestia… but so what? We both know that’s not what’s important right now,”

“What else matters?” replied the sun princess, “I wouldn’t be doing any of this if I didn’t love you both, more than anything… because if I do it… neither you nor Twilight have to”

Celestia still continued to stare out of the window, watching her subjects below, before continuing.

“It needs us, Luna. Alicorns are half in the world of the flesh, half in the world of aether. We are the interstice through which our creator can rejoin us, we straddle two worlds, like a bridge. And once it gets into other ponies, it can use them to get into more, and more… but it has to start from us, do you understand?

“But back in the crater, when we managed to beat it back. It was a mistake, it was never meant to go like that, it was meant to be over that night. There’s something wrong with us now. Even if we can always feel it, it can’t get through us anymore, not like it could back then… it needed someone new… It’s been waiting for so long, Luna. It nearly expended itself making us, creating something physical was such a burden… it needed some help for this next alicorn.”

“Why would you ever want to help it?!” Luna barked, chewing over her revulsion for her elder sister, “You felt what I felt, how wrong it was, how evil it is. What would ever possess you to offer up your student, as close to you as a daughter, as some sacrificial lamb for the phantasm that made us?!”

Celestia remained silent.

“Tell me why!” Luna shouted.

“Because I was alone, for a thousand years… I didn’t have you with me, sister.”

And suddenly Luna understood everything.

Because whatever manifestation of their creator’s malice the Nightmare had been, it had been weak. Luna had been able to keep it distracted, even as she lay dormant… now that she really thought of it, the Nightmare had been suspiciously weak.

The royal sisters both knew, from the moment they came screaming into this world, falling stars born from the machinations of some far off, incomprehensible being, Luna and Celestia had known right from that moment that they’d beaten it back.

They’d only overcome it back then because they had each other, because they loved each other…

And Celestia had had to live in the world without her loved one for a very, very long time.

Luna guessed that after all this time, after racking her brains wondering what would happen next, it had been much simpler than she’d imagined.

Because if the nightmare failed, as she had, then it had the easiest, most effective backup plan in the world.

It had played for time.

“It came to me, whispered to me, for so many years… I tried, I… I tried my best but there was no one to help me,” Celestia rambled, an occasional sniffle giving Luna the cruellest, remotest hope that maybe her sister was still in there somewhere, “I couldn’t make it stop I… I had to listen and in the end… it… it made me see, it got me to see, Luna, and, my God…”

“I’m sorry,” Luna said, shambling over to her elder sister and slumping against her back. She wrapped her hooves around Celestia’s gently shaking chest and buried her face into that soft white fur and tried to pretend they were somewhere other than here, all the while repeating her apologies, they were all she could offer now.

“It made me see and once I’d seen… once it had shown me how I should see the world, I knew I had to make everyone else see too… it’s beautiful, Luna, I love you so much and I just want you to see it as well… Starswirl saw it, he resisted but he eventually saw it, everyone always does, in the end. And once he had, he got to work… he made the spell so we can all see it too, I can finally show you…”

Luna's tears wet Celestia’s back as she kept saying, over and over, that she was sorry, that she should have been there for her. But after a short moment’s respite, of pretence, the real world came calling once more, and Luna felt Celestia began to shift.

She pulled back as her elder sister turned around to face her, and when their eyes met, Luna’s mouth fell open in horror.

Celestia’s beautiful eyes were reddened, and pouring with oily, shimmering tears. Where there had once been a beautiful magenta, the shade of the sky at sunrise reserved for the most beautiful summer’s days, there was now only inky voids of infinite black. Her pupils stretched to fill her entire eyes, and her face twitched nervously, barely able to contain its own insanity.

“I just want you to see what I see,”

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Luna said, and she really meant it.

Because she hadn’t been there for Celestia, she couldn’t stop it from destroying her elder sister’s precious mind. She wondered if any of the conversations she’d had with Celestia since returning had actually been with the sun princess, or whether she’d been conversing with her maker the whole time, using the body like a puppet.

She supposed she’d never find out,

Because it didn’t really matter now.

Luna had to do what she’d always done. Put aside what she wanted, what she needed, and do what a princess had to.

Winged unicorns in the North, broken goddesses in a tower, none of it mattered. There was only one alicorn in the entire world that was a worthy prize now. And Luna needed to get to her first.

So, Luna was truly, bitterly sorry.

But, to that end…

She seized the mirror on the far end of the room with her magic and smashed it into Celestia’s face. And then, for good measure, she seized every other piece of furniture and buried her sister, smashing the wood down on top of her as hard as she possibly could. And then she lit the wood on fire as she darted for the door.

But, of course, alicorns were made of sterner stuff than most.

The sun princess had been barely slowed.

Celestia extracted herself from the burning pile with one beat of her immense wings and crossed the distance to Luna, grabbing her younger sister’s head on the way and crunching it between her hooves and the cold stone of the walls.

The two of them fell in a gnawing, slashing, biting heap down the stairs, breaking bones that would heal in seconds along with every possible wound they could inflict on each other.

XXX

Luna held onto this white pony for dear life, the comfort of her warm body being the only thing that allowed her to fight back the madness pouring from her eyes.

They grappled and held each other like it was the only thing that mattered in the whole world

XXX

Luna held onto her sister for dear life, dragging her back as the insatiable elder alicorn trudged ever onwards towards the main hall, towards Twilight.

“Twili-” Celestia tried to call out, before Luna wrenched the larger alicorn from her hooves and held Celestia aloft. She squeezed as hard as she was able, waiting until she could feel the telltale pop of a shattering spine. And then she dropped her sister before stamping on her neck.

It made a sound like a gunshot.

Luna pumped her wings to get to the end of the corridor, that would have probably bought her a small bit of time.

Hopefully.

“Twilight!” Luna screamed when the purple alicorn was finally in view, “You have to keep your eyes closed, no matter what!”

Right on schedule, the sovereign of the sun arrived. Kicking both hindlegs into Luna’s side and rupturing countless organs.

Luna fell, needing precious seconds to let the damage heal.

And predictably, interminably, Celestia had always been the more skilled pony in politicking, in manipulation. With the benefit of hindsight, it all made perfect sense. Even back to those veiled snipes in the debriefing, the first time Luna and Twilight had ever met.

She’d been planning for this since before Luna returned, probably since long before Twilight was even born.

Celestia wasn’t one to leave things to chance.

Because for all the promises that Luna had made Twilight make, what chance did she have against a simple command from Celestia, Twilight’s mentor, her second mother? What chance did the moon princess stand when she’d been kept at arm’s length from Twilight, no chance to bond in the observatory tower?

No sleepovers, no rest, no respite from the testing and the grading and the pride. Reassurance drip fed over a whole life, conditioning like a hard drug. No chance for Luna’s trite, earnest, honest promises, her pathetic tenderness, in the face of what Twilight had been born for.

The smartest, most brilliant being that would ever live had had so long to make sure that the moment she called, Twilight would answer.

The truth was, it was over as soon as Celestia cried out.

“Twilight, open your eyes!”

Twilight faltered, and hesitated.

But eventually, inevitably, she lowered her hooves, because she could sooner hold her breath until she died as she could disobey the sun princess.

So Twilight did what she had been made for.

She did as she was told.

As if she’d ever had the chance to do anything different.

In the instance her eyelids parted, her head snapped back as that familiar, horrifying sludge of aberrant power poured out of Twilight’s head and into the physical world.

Luna could only watch helplessly as it happened, her organs and bones healing in what felt like slow motion. The doors to the courtyard opened and the throngs of sycophantic guests came filtering through the corridor to see what all the commotion was.

No matter how much Luna shrieked, choking on spat blood, none of them even looked at her. Just like those peasants in that field, so many countless thousands of years ago.

None of them stood a chance, there was something about it that compelled everything to look. Something that screamed at them to peek, to let it crawl through their eyes into their mind.

Why did they all look at accidents, stare at houses as they fell, even as someone was crushed beneath? Why did all of them fiddle with loose strings on parachutes? Why did they look, even when they could see there was something wrong, when one of their rulers lay broken on the floor, gurgling pleas for them to flee this place.

Because it was simply in their nature.

And Luna supposed it was in hers too.

Because unlike that time, so long ago, in that field, this time Luna was on the outside looking in.

And that was the word, wasn’t it? Looking, Luna could feel it crawling into her head from Twilight’s eyes, could feel herself being rendered into drooling, insane cattle. Luna knew it was already over, that maybe she could slow the progress if she just looked away…

And yet… she was ultimately just like the rest of them.

And only now did Luna fully appreciate the beauty of the plan, last time it had only gotten peasants. But this time? This time it had gotten an alicorn, in the form of Celestia, holding onto the now healed Luna and stroking her mane, laughing insanely, crying with happiness.

Luna’s vision felt fogged, her mind unfocused. It was a beautiful plan, because this time it had gotten an alicorn, and would soon have a second.

And Twilight? That was probably the masterstroke… the only way they’d been able to beat it last time was by stooping to its level. That was probably their maker's greatest mistake. It didn’t make them morally good enough.

But Twilight? Twilight didn’t have the edge that Luna and Celestia did. Even if she was given time to develop it, Luna didn’t think it would ever take in her. The truth was that Twilight wasn’t capable of killing them all, as Luna found herself praying she would.

It didn’t last long, not nearly as long as it had in the crater, it didn’t need to. Twilight fell to the ground, thoroughly spent, the short burst of energy had been enough. Celestia cackled next to Luna, in much the same tone as the assembled hundreds, spilling out from the great hall into the courtyard.

Luna desperately looked around, feeling herself slipping, feeling the first motes of change start to infect her mind. Her legs felt weak, shaky as a foal fresh from the womb, and she decided to try to kill as many of the braying throng around her as she could, if only to spare them the agony of continuing to exist like this.

A flash of magic here, a ruined body there. A flailed hoof, breaking a skull or snapping a neck. It was dirty, base work. Not becoming of a princess. Luna wondered if anything she’d had to do from the second she’d put this crown on her head had ever felt like it matched the supposed dignity of her station.

Her crown fell, and she tried her best to continue, creating corpse after corpse as Celestia babbled something about how relieved she was, how proud she felt. But for every one of the gathered masses Luna was able to dispatch, ten more would take their place, looking in sickening wonderment at a new world with such new eyes, deep and dark and neverending, pregnant with madness.

It didn’t matter what Luna did… there were so many…

Celestia lit her horn and moved the sun to the apex of the sky, so close, beating down on all of them.

Luna stumbled, her limbs seemingly not listening to her mind anymore.

It was a truly beautiful plan.

Luna’s pupils ate her sclera, a black moon eclipsing a white winter sky.

There wasn’t much time left.

And then, finally, it occurred to her. Luna had never been as good at noticing the small things, not like Celestia was.

But she always got there, in the end.

Twilight stood on shaky hooves, rubbing her eyes.

Like Luna and Celestia, back in that crater, it had used her to breach the world.

But it hadn’t taken her.

Not yet.

“Avert thine eyes,” Luna mumbled, struggling to keep herself focused. A newly born god amongst frightened peasants from a dark, dark world.

Twilight looked around, realising what was happening around her in terror.

“Close your eyes, Twilight!” Luna cried out, a diarch amid her subjects, bereft of luxury.

And the youngest alicorn looked up, locking eyes with the moon princess. Not with the crowds, not with her mentor, Twilight finally looked at Luna.

“TWILIGHT, CLOSE YOUR EYES, AND DON’T OPEN THEM FOR ANYONE!” Luna screamed, and Twilight finally listened.

She watched with as much relief as she was still able to feel as Twilight screwed her eyes shut, and put her hooves over them for good measure.

A little alicorn, without ruling experience, without even the ability to fly, but one of the most brilliant ponies to ever live.

At least with her, they had something approaching hope.

Maybe all that life lived between crashing to earth and this very moment was simply an intermission. Maybe Luna didn’t need to do anything more than save someone better than her. She’d failed to save her sister, but she could still do this, in her last few seconds of being her.

Because she didn’t think for a second, not really, that Twilight was simply born to allow their creator into the world… she knew for a fact that someone as special as her was going to do more… she had to believe that.

Maybe Luna had never been made to rule, maybe raising the moon had just been her dayjob for a while, her regalia a simple uniform while they all waited for their true purpose. Maybe Luna’s part to play was making sure Twilight got out of this safe, and nothing else.

She’d wasted so much time wanting people to see the moon.

Now the thought of being forgotten brought her an odd sort of peace.

If that was all indeed the case, if this is what it had all been leading to, she’d do it as best she could.

Once Twilight’s eyes were screwed shut, Luna lit her horn and threw Twilight into one of the adjoining rooms. She wasn’t in full control of herself, though, and likely had thrown the poor girl with enough force to break several bones.

And Twilight wasn’t nearly as strong as Luna or Celestia, so those bones would take a long time to heal… but they would, she would get strong again.

Because alicorns were made of sterner stuff than most.

One last spell, one last time. Luna grabbed onto the brickwork and pulled, burying Twilight under the rubble.

She’d probably suffocate in there, countless times.

But she’d come back, each time she would come back and move a little bit more of the stones. And she’d get out of here.

And maybe, the pony who figured out Starswirl’s final spell, the only pony in the entire world who could, maybe that pony could figure out how to reverse all of this.

Luna was not like her sister, she would have dearly loved to have helped Twilight, she would never send her on a mission like this alone if she could help it.

She’d always been the more tender of the two.

But this was all she could do now.

She hoped it was enough.

Luna blinked, one last time.

And when her eyelids opened, orbs of infinite black beheld a world so beautiful it nearly made her weep.

Celestia was sat on the floor in a sweaty, dishevelled heap, laughing distantly as she looked at her hooves, covered in someone else’s blood. She must have known she was being looked at, because she flicked her eyes over to Luna, and the two of them smiled.

Luna was sorry for so many things.

Most of all, though, was she for trying to stop her sister, because the truth was that Celestia had been right the whole time, she was always right… it truly was beautiful.

Oily tendrils of their maker’s energy seeped out of the eyes of the revolting cattle around them, laughing and snickering, dulled mortal senses perceiving the world no better than children, than livestock, than bacteria. Nothing like Luna or her sister.

They could see the real beauty of this world.

And finally, after all those years spent in the nightmare, some pathetic approximation of what Luna felt now, the insanity seemed to clear. And Luna finally understood what she had been meant to do, all of these years.

What she had been born for.

Her horn lit, and she dragged the moon from the opposite side of the world. It was lazily at first but then she picked up speed.

Celestia seemed to know what was about to happen, and so she wandered up to her sister, and stared directly into the sun above them.

Once the moon came into view over the horizon, it was moving fast enough to cross the distance in less than a second.

There was no sound, sound couldn’t travel through the void.

But there was light… Oh yes, there was light.

The moon and sun collided with each other with a force that this universe had never seen.

Anyone who didn’t look away, who didn’t avert their eyes from the sky above was instantly blinded. It happened over and over again to Celestia and Luna as they stared directly into it, mouths agape, drooling in rapturous admiration.

Retinas scorched and healed over and over and over and over again, blindness dancing with vision in alicorn eyes that were the only ones that could truly comprehend what was happening. Blood fell in tears down their cheeks and Luna extended her tongue to taste it.

And then she smiled.

And then she screamed with laughter, just like her sister.

It had been right all this time, their creator. They should have listened, instead of living in such trite, ineffectual rebellion.

When it was done, there were no more heavenly spheres, decorating the sky. One could call it a kind of sun, the royal sisters supposed, but they knew the truth. It was simply a void, a permanent bridge between their world and the other. No need for finicky, delicate little alicorns now.

Their creator’s force began to leak through, languid beams of light creeping out in a lazy spiral from the centre of the void, to ensnare the whole world, to take over everyone who didn’t shut their eyes to it. It didn’t need to be fast.

Their creator had all the time in the world now.

And as Luna stared, she faintly wondered if there was something in the other room she should attend to.

But the thought quickly dissipated, stolen as it was by the tear jerking majesty of the scene above, or some far off remnant of her old self, doing the best she could with whatever dwindling time she had left.

XXX

Twilight’s pupils began to widen as she looked into those eyes, and considered the question, as Rarity repeated it in a shrieked cackle.

“What would Luna tell you now?!”

What would Luna have told her to do?

It was a good question, it seemed so far away now.

And funnily enough, as Rarity got closer, and whatever sparse ambient light around them was further blocked out, Twilight’s vision seemed to get better, instead of worse.

And Twilight turned her head to the side, to look up at the hole in the sky, its gaze locked on maybe the only two left in the dead world it ruled. Twilight felt like they were looking directly into each other’s eyes.

How long had she been with Rarity? How long had she had her eyes open? How much time spent looking at her friend’s eyes, at the glittering tendrils of something so wrong and so from a different place snaking from the great hole in the sky?

She found she hadn’t been tracking it.

Which was madness, really.

Suddenly something clicked, and Twilight blinked, for maybe the last time.

When her eyelids reopened, tiny pinprick pupils in a field of angry purple looked back at Rarity.

Twilight kicked out, striking Rarity and throwing her backwards. For her part, Rarity crumpled to an unkempt heap on the ground. The former seamstress rolled around in dead, dry earth, laughing insanely.

She listened to Rarity’s laughter, and thought about all the terrible things she said.

A part of her felt like laughing too.

Maybe she was also insane, she felt like being so was unavoidable in the world they now inhabited.

She stood, legs finally starting to feel a bit stronger after so much time.

“To keep my eyes shut… that’s what she’d tell me,” Twilight said, breathlessly, reaching for her cloth and re-affixing it over her face.

Maybe Celestia was dead, maybe Luna was dead. Maybe Rarity was actually right, and everyone in the entire world was gone, save for these last two ponies in a dead field.

But alicorns were made of sterner stuff than most.

Twilight had often thought she had been born to be one of the elements, to be Celestia’s protégé, for a while she’d worried she’d been born to kill the entire world.

But maybe all those things she’d done in the middle of her life had been an intermission, just killing time. Maybe she was born to try to do Luna’s memory some justice, whatever that might look like. Even if the moon princess was dead and gone, even if she couldn’t be brought back in some form.

But Twilight could at least try, regardless of how hopeless it seemed. Because as much as Twilight felt like it was hopeless now, and that she’d never have a chance to repay how Luna saved her, had been the only one to try, Twilight was also the princess.

Even if she had never wanted it.

Even if she hated it.

Even if it felt like a curse.

Twilight was the last princess last left in Equestria.

So she didn’t have the luxury of giving in to hopelessness.

Not while she could still walk. Not while she could still try. Because Luna hadn’t given up until her last second, so the least Twilight could do was return the favour.

At least, that’s how she saw things.