Bad Moon Rising

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.