Bad Moon Rising

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.