Bad Moon Rising

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.