Circuity

by Steel Hoof

Rating: teen
Tags: Princess Luna, Gore, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Nightmare Moon, Adventure
Length: 6523

Luna finds herself trapped in a labyrinth, and horrors may lie around any turn.

Written for EQD's Nighmare Night 2012 competition.

Luna is sure that she can see in color. However, when she awakens in a greyscale labyrinth, she finds her convictions tested. A voice begins announcing the time, but is it counting up towards morning or down towards midnight? The other ponies wandering the labyrinth have stolen her appearance, and not all are harmless. As the walls begin to close in on her, she must decide what price she is willing to pay for freedom.

Published 2012-11-01 00:00:02 UTC
Last updated 2012-11-01 00:00:02 UTC

Chapter 1

The passage reverberated with the echoes of the last announcement, wrenching the pony standing there from her reverie. She blinked once, then twice, her eyes beginning to focus on her surroundings. The rough granite of the walls suggested they had been hewn from a single piece, and the darker stone of the tiles that made up the floor gave no clue as to its origin. Torches sat ensconced on the walls at regular intervals down either end of the hall. A voice, terse and metallic, cut through their soft sputtering:

“REPEAT. THE TIME IS NOW… ONE O’CLOCK.”

The pony’s ears swiveled to face the source of the sound, and her eyes followed, coming to rest on a brass tube which emerged from the wall and flared out at the end, resembling the business end of a trumpet. Where that tube led, she could not say.

This observation prompted the realization that she had no idea where she was. She breathed in a lungful of musty air. After a moment of silence, she spoke, the words seeming to tumble out thoughtlessly.

“Luna! My name is Luna.” Her voice carried a note of uncertainty as it echoed back to her from the hall. The outburst was initially confusing, but she chided herself for it in any case.

Of course I am. I move the moon. My sister moves the sun. No need to lose the element of surprise by breaking silence like that. There could be anything in here.

She waited. No guards came running to investigate. No drakes slithered around the corner, spitting fire as they came. No diamond dogs burst through the floor. The passage was quiet.

A pity. I haven’t fought a drake in hundreds of years.

Curious, now that it was evident that there was no immediate peril to be found in the vicinity, Luna walked to the end of the passageway, halting where it cleaved into two paths in a t-shaped junction. The tapping of her hooves against the tiles echoed back from deeper within the passage system, strangely hollow in the space. She looked down at her hooves in the light cast by the torches, and a flash of color came to mind. Blue.

Her coat had been blue, once, but the pale torchlight revealed only a dingy grey where it fell on her. Luna turned and proceeded back the way she came, coming to the other end of the passageway. It too, broke into two diverging pathways, lit periodically by those odd torches. Luna considered the possibility that she would be looking at shades of grey for quite some time, if she didn’t find her way out soon.

Neither direction seemed more likely to lead somewhere useful than any of the others, being essentially identical, so Luna proceeded in the opposite direction towards the other end of the passageway, which stretched on for almost 30 feet.

What’s a foot?

She put the strange thought out of her mind continued until the passageway terminated in another junction. The passage continued forward in the same direction, but also intersected another, smaller passage which led on to the left and right. She resolved to follow the left wall, and thereafter taking every leftmost path, reasoning that many mazes could be solved by such a tactic. The intersection fell into silence again as the sound of her hooffalls diminished to nothing.

Hours must have passed. Luna had long since lost count of the number of turns she had followed. The passages widened and narrowed seemingly at random, and the only sounds she heard were made by her own hooves and the flickering of those curious torches. The air smelled no fresher than when she started, and she could find no sign that she had made any progress.

How massive must this place be, to have such a labyrinthine construction? The builders must have needed maps to-

Luna halted in her tracks, and cast her gaze downward. Using her magic, she pried one of the floor tiles free, revealing more smooth grey stone underneath. She held it out in front of her, placing a hoof to her chin thoughtfully. Horn-related telekinesis manipulates objects by cradling them in a loose mesh of magic. The connection back to a pony could be likened to a balloon on a tether; there was typically a small bit of ‘slack’ that caused the object to bob out of sync with the pony’s movements. By manipulating the mesh itself, however…

Luna began to focus intently, looking past the glow which enveloped the tile and into the invisible mesh underneath. The only outward sign was a slight narrowing of her eyes. The mesh, which had stretched to accommodate the volume of the shape held within, began to constrict at the point where her gaze fell. Her eyes drifted downward, and the region of hardened mesh followed, scraping flecks of stone free and eventually creating a small, neat compass rose in the corner of the tile. She let go of the breath she was holding. Luna had a map; now all she had to do was fill it in.

The passages lightened with a telekinetic glow as she passed, and Luna felt a rush of confidence as she traced out the tiny map of the path she took through the maze. She had a map! She had a plan. She would finally be able to escape this labyrinth and find her way home. As she walked, she found her thoughts drifting to her sister.

Why do I miss her so much? We were having dinner in the gardens just the other day. She told me a story about one of the visiting diplomats and neither of us cared that there were servants about when we started laughing.

How much time had passed? Hours? Days? Luna couldn’t recall the last time that she had anything to eat or drink, or even slept for that matter. Perhaps there was something magical about the maze that was sustaining her? She observed that there was a huge ambient magical field, but its complexity simply led her around in circles when she attempted to pick apart the individual spells sustaining it.

Luna glared down at the tile, its surface now a spiderweb of lines, connecting and terminating seemingly at random. The lines were hair-thin by necessity, as this tile constituted the eighth such attempt at cartography. She stamped a hoof and the mesh constricted suddenly, pulverizing the tile in a shower of dust. The pieces clattered to the ground around her, and she breathed slowly out through her nose, trying to calm her thoughts. Her ears flicked to attention suddenly as a faint cry rose out of the distance.

She hurried to follow the sound at a trot, her excitement tempered by concern. Whatever was making those sounds was very clearly in pain, and whatever had caused the poor creature injury could still be about. She quickened her pace as it became evident that the cries were coming from a pony. The high, uneven keening made the edges of Luna’s scalp stand on end.

Either a pony or a wounded animal.

She rounded the last corner and beheld before her a vast hall. Its floor formed a circle, with torches evenly spaced upon the walls, and had to have been 50 meters across, its domed ceiling stretching upward into darkness. In the center of the hall, where the floor grew marred by a growing number of scorched and broken tiles, lay an enormous stone, cut roughly into a sphere. As Luna drew closer, she realized that there was a pony trapped beneath the stone, her legs pinned under its bulk.

The pony looked up as Luna approached, and the sight rooted her to the ground where she stood. Beneath layers of caked-on dust, streaked with tears, she beheld her own face on the pony in front of her. Her own eyes looked up at her plaintively, and the sight of herself minus a horn made her flinch. The pony spoke, and the words hissed out as she fought to retain consciousness.

“Help me.”

“What cruel joke is this? Who is this pony that wears my face?” Luna forced herself to maintain eye contact, in spite of her own discomfort. It was one thing to look at oneself in the mirror. It was quite another to see oneself in such pain. A wave of nausea rose in the back of her throat as she considered the sensation of having her legs crushed flat beneath a stone.

“Free me.” The pony propped herself up on her hooves, which wobbled precariously.

“How did you get here? Who has done this to you?”

The pony drew in a long, quivering breath, then screamed fully into Luna’s face:

“KILL ME!”

Luna stumbled backwards, landing on her flank. She stared at the pony in shock. How could anyone ask such a thing? The pony’s legs collapsed under her again, and she lay there limply. A small, high whine rose from her splayed form.

Luna turned her attention to the stone. At this distance she could see that it stood at least twice as tall as she, and roughly that length across. It seemed immovable, but she had done heavy lifting before. She tried to hold it with her telekinesis, but found her grip slipping with each attempt. The sounds coming out of the pony weren’t helping her concentration. The stone loomed over her impassively. She tried to shift it by pushing against it with a shoulder, but the stone remained immovable. She spread her wings to-

I don’t have any wings.

She craned her neck around to examine her back. She half expected to see a pair of wings there, but only bare flesh greeted her.

What a strange thought. Of course I don’t have wings. Why would I have wings? That earthpony that looks like me doesn’t have wings either.

“Honesty.”

Luna leaned around the stone to fix the pony with a quizzical look.

“What was that?”

“Call me Honesty. It’s the closest thing to the truth that exists in here.” The pony spoke flatly, drained of emotion.

“What is this place?”

“I don’t know. I can’t know. Knowing means pain, and I don’t think I could stand any more at the moment. The other ones didn’t stop to talk like you did. I couldn’t ask them.”

Luna leaned closer.

“Ask them what?”

“What I must ask of you. Kill me. This burden cannot be moved by hoof or horn, and I will not die from thirst. The pain is blunted by your presence, somewhat, but when you go again it’s going to start hurting again. When it hurts, I can’t think. No thoughts fit in past the pain. It’s like I stop existing.” A single tear escaped Honesty’s earnest eye, carving a new streak in the grime on her cheek. Aside from that, her face betrayed little more emotion than the stone.

“I…” Luna contemplated the possibility, but the idea of ending another pony’s life filled her with revulsion. Even if it were to be a kindness in the end, she could not bring herself to do it. “I’m sorry.” She finished, wretchedly. Her gaze fell shamefully to the tiles.

“No. No, you have to do it! I can’t bear to feel it again! It will come and wash me away and there won’t be anything left!” Honesty’s voice rose to a howl. “Please!” Luna began backing away, then turned and galloped from the hall. As she fled, Honesty’s incoherent wails grew into to a high, shattered scream.

“THE TIME IS NOW… SIX O’CLOCK.”

Luna halted. The voice had spoken again, the sound escaping in a rush of air from another of the strange brass tubes which emerged from wall of the passage. She frowned.

Whoever is on the other side of those tubes needs to get a new timepiece. I’m sure it’s been longer than five hours since the last announcement.

Luna turned another corner, at this point not really caring where she went as long as she didn’t have to hear that scream ever again. She looked down the hall and her legs locked midstride, her mouth hanging open in surprise. At the far end of the hall, another pony loomed.

She was tall and sleek, her black coat contrasting with her mane, which billowed as though blown by an intangible wind. It looked almost like the night sky, and even at this distance Luna thought she could see individual stars. Two eyes, slitted like a cat’s, burned with wrath. A pair of lips parted in a snarl, revealing a set of teeth that had no business being in the mouth of a creature which was ostensibly a herbivore. Everything about this pony was composed of hard angles. It looked sharp. It looked deadly. In short, a Nightmare.

Luna took a step back. The Nightmare took a step forward. Its foot came down with a sound like a hammer blow, and the torches on the far side of the room flickered into darkness. At this, Luna turned and galloped off, heedless of direction. Behind her, torches guttered and faded, and the pounding of her pursuer’s hooves resonated in her chest. Each breath she drew was shallow, and she grunted with the exertion of the full gallop. She turned her head slightly to look behind her, and the pit of her stomach seemed to drop out as she watched a torch not a meter behind her gutter and die.

She whipped her head back around with a whine to look where she was going. Here, the passage was low, and seemed much older than the rest. Cracks ran all through the walls, and some paths were completely obstructed by cave-ins. A torch just to the right of her winked out, momentarily casting her in shadow. The hoofbeats were unbearably loud now, thudding into her skull without having the decency to enter her ears first. Luna cast her gaze upward, spying a wide crack marring the surface of the stone ceiling. She drove her telekinesis into it like a wedge, watching as more cracks traced their way across the surface. The air temperature seemed to drop a few degrees. Luna’s fractured thoughts began to contemplate just what the Nightmare might do with those teeth.

With a desperate cry, she wrenched it open. The crack was directly above now, and Luna leapt as she passed underneath, rolling in an attempt to soften the fall. She felt, more than heard, the first stone whisk past just behind her, parting the air in the same way an iceberg might part the sea. More rubble followed in its wake, and Luna’s diving roll narrowly saved her from several boulders which bounced off of the mound. She looked behind her towards the cave-in, heart still racing. No light showed from the other side, obviously, but she couldn’t see any pony-sized holes in the obstruction.

The roof and walls shook alarmingly, and small avalanches of dust cascaded down the cave-in as the Nightmare bellowed its rage. With a hundred tons of stone between her and the sound, Luna felt less as though her teeth were going to shake loose from her skull. She waited, taking long, deep breaths. Seconds passed, turning into minutes, which came and went in total silence, save for the ever-present flickering of torches. Luna let herself collapse back to the floor, her lungs deflating in a weary sigh. As her mind was loosened from the grip that blind terror had placed on it, she closed her eyes, knowing that any attempt at sleep would be in vein.

This is insane. What was that? Why did it chase me? How did it get in here? I’m glad that it’s on that side of the cave-in, I doubt that even it could plough through so much rock.

Luna opened her eyes again, and narrowed them at the jumble of stones. She drew hooves in and picked herself up, sizing up how comfortable she was with a mere two meters of stone between herself and the beast beyond.

Probably.

She made an executive decision to keep moving, and began to proceed down the passage. After all, the Nightmare could be digging away the obstruction at that very moment.

Or it’s finding a way around.

Luna found her pace move into a brisk trot.

The halls in this part of the labyrinth were low and broad, and the distances between the torches grew until the floors began to disappear under long pools of darkness. This, combined with the steadily increasing mustiness to the air, gave the impression of descending in a mineshaft. Luna called a small point of light into being at the tip of her horn. She glanced down at her hooves, and was reassured when she saw two familiar blue appendages standing on the dark grey tiles. The light from the torches had seemed to wash out everything it illuminated, but her magic seemed to have no such effect.

I never realized how much I could miss seeing color.

She proceeded onward, the light of her horn dispelling the shadows as she passed. Soon, however, only the intersections were lit, and the space between was cast in almost total darkness. Luna squinted down one path at the faint mote of light at the end.

There’s no way this is the right way out of this maze. I should turn around.

Nodding to herself, Luna turned in place and began retracing her hoofsteps. The light at the end of the path behind her winked out, then back as it was momentarily eclipsed.

As Luna passed into this intersection, her unnerved confusion ratcheted a bit of tension into the knot between her shoulderblades. None of the possible paths had light at the end, and it had been quite some time since she had seen a torch. She was sure that she had retraced her steps faithfully, but the ceiling had only come further down in that time. At this point, she had to stoop to avoid scraping her horn. She stamped a hoof, and the sound echoed back hollowly. The flickering of the torches had been monotonous, but even that would have been better than the total silence that now pressed down on all sides.

Luna crossed her eyes, squinting at the sudden brightness, to look up at her horn. The light was just as strong as it had been when she first conjured it, but the pool of light it cast had seemed to shrink steadily, barely extending halfway down the passage now. As for the passage itself, the labyrinth had begun to look older, and in disrepair. Luna stumbled as her hoof clipped the edge of one of the many tiles which were canted upward by the various undulations of the floor beneath.

As Luna continued, the height of the ceiling continued to drop, until finally she was forced to crawl in order to proceed. The first time this happened, she turned around in the broad, low passage and tried another path. This path too, was low, although it was wide enough that four could have proceeded abreast if they didn’t mind going on hoofs and knees. The path continued onward for a much greater length than any prior passage had, and the height of the ceiling stabilized to one meter.

The end of the hall faded into view as Luna drew close, and at this junction there were only two paths. The right path ended in a sheer stone surface, and Luna realized that the ceiling had fallen as one block, completely obstructing the passage. She turned her head to the left to look down the other path. The glittering black bulk of a pony loomed out of the darkness, ready to leap.

With a yelp, Luna recoiled, and her head the ceiling with a thud. The jarring effect was enough to break her concentration, and the light at the tip of her horn winked out in an instant. She shimmied back down the way she came as points of light danced in front of her eyes. She pressed herself tightly against the wall and waited for the Nightmare.

No teeth sunk into her neck. No claws raked across her belly. Only silence and darkness. The lack of other input allowed her to focus entirely on the throbbing in her skull and the ringing in her ears. She opened her eyes, then blinked to be sure she had actually opened them. Here, the darkness was absolute.

When she had relit her horn, Luna cautiously peeked around the corner. There again, was the black figure of a pony. Its muscled bunched and its mouth was opened in a feral snarl, but it lay still. Luna approached the statue, examining its basalt form curiously. It had been sculpted to scale, and the surface had been polished, causing it to shimmer wetly in the soft light of Luna’s horn. The sculptor had been a master of her craft; individual veins seemed to bulge out from the surface, and the mane and tail were detailed to the point that individual strands of hair were visible.

Surprising, yes. Impressive to look at, yes. Dangerous? Not unless it were to fall on me.

Luna inched her way around the statue, and upon casting her gaze down the hall was greeted with a scene from a reveler’s nightmare. Other statues lined the walls, their poses capturing an eclectic mixture of emotions. One figure cowered on its back, raising one hoof in a plaintive gesture, while another raised its hooves to strike the first one down. Opposite these two, a pair of lovers arched their backs in each other’s embrace, the stone blanket wrapped around them saving the piece from total indecency. Fascinated, Luna continued her crawl. The light from her horn set the statues’ shadows dancing on the walls. A long-maned stallion held his helmet in a hoof contemplatively. A pegasus balanced gracefully on her rear hooves, her lips parted as though in song. Two fillies held an amphora between them, and seemed in a hurry to their destination.

The hall stretched onwards, with no end to the peculiar statuary in sight. The style began to shift, becoming rougher and less rigidly defined as Luna went on. A half-dozen swirls in one block suggested the shape of a reclining unicorn. A mare in a long toga was captured in the middle of a gallop, though the face was left smooth and blank. Another mare, this one in an elaborate headdress, held her eight hooves outward, balancing on one in the midst of a dance.

Luna looked down the passageway. The pool of light cast by her horn was very small now, and seemed to cut off suddenly after eight meters, as though she were looking out over a precipice.

Has it always been this cold?

An itching at the base of Luna’s scalp caused her to shiver. She felt as though she was being watched. She tried to turn in place but found that the statues had begun to take up most of the space in the passage. With no way to turn around and a cold feeling prickling her spine as she thought about crawling backward with no way of knowing where she was going, she began inching forward. As she did so, the temperature began to drop further, and the darkness pressed in. Luna began to scramble forward, fighting to keep her eyes locked on the path in front of her.

A pony of muscular build held his own flayed skin in front of him, the black basalt mass hanging limply from his hooves. Three skeletal ponies looked down into a dry reflecting pool. One seemed to be laughing, and gestured with a hoof. The others had their shoulders slumped, and one held a pair of scissors loosely in its hooves. A pony clutched at the spear planted in his gut, lips parted in a silent scream. Still the space grew colder. Luna could barely see two meters in front of her now, and wormed her way between the statues, trying to avoid touching them.

Finally, the passage ended in a thick iron door. Its circular profile looked as though it would stand any battering ram.

But how do I open it?

Luna felt her breath catch as something flicked past her leg. She wrapped her hooves around the bar in the center and strained to turn it, pushing against the floor and ceiling with a breathless grunt. It turned, opening silently on its hinges, and she tumbled forward.

She held out her hooves to catch herself, but found nothing but empty space to greet her. Her hooves flailed wildly, and she had the sense of turning end over end, but she was unable to make out the floor, walls, or anything else in the gloom. She noted absently that the cool, moist air, which carried the heavy scent of a charnel house, billowed gently past, rather than whipping at her face, as she would have expected.

Luna remembered her light, which had gone out again. It was the work of a moment to restore it, though the wan glimmer was a far cry from the beacon that lit her way before. A pinpoint turned into a rapidly-growing circle of light, revealing the floor below.

This is it. I probably have two seconds before impact. I hope it doesn’t hurt.

Tap.

Luna dropped her head to stare slack-jawed at her hooves, which had gently touched down. She squinted upward, straining to see how far she might have fallen, but all that greeted her was a solid dome of darkness. She turned her attention back to her current situation, noting that her view had expanded to roughly eight meters again. She tapped a hoof experimentally. The space seemed to devour the sound, and she could only guess at its size.

There.

A pair of azure gemstones glinted in the darkness just outside the meager pool of light. They blinked. The sound of hoofsteps carried over the distance, and they disappeared as the Nightmare turned its head. They reappeared moments later slightly to Luna’s right, and she turned her head to bring the light to bear, backing away slowly. More hoofsteps were lost in the vast space, their only echoes resounding off the tiles in the floor. Luna felt a cold bead of sweat drip down her side as she turned in place to follow the sound.

There again.

The Nightmare’s eyes shone with reflected light for an instant before disappearing again. Silence endured, leaving Luna alone with her quickening breath. Then, as quickly as it had gone the sound grew in intensity, rising from a trot to a full gallop. Luna whipped around to face the oncoming terror and was greeted by only blackness.

What-

A low, deadly hiss reached her ears, and she craned her neck to glance directly above to where the sound originated. Those same eyes seethed with malice as they bore into hers. It was dropping from above much too quickly for her to have any hope of flight. A reflexive action brought her telekinesis upward, its mesh shimmering with tension an instant before the Nightmare struck it. She watched its head snap backward, but still it continued onward, barreling into her. The air was crushed from lungs in a single sigh.

Darkness reigned.

Luna’s eyes flicked open to blinding brightness. She shut them again almost immediately, drawing a hoof in front of her face. She lay there for a moment before a small self-conscious cough made her ears flick up. She rose to a sitting position and forced one eye open, blinking back tears as she fought to bring the vague grey blobs before her into focus. A breathless grunt escaped her as her broken ribs shifted position. Each scrape and bruise began to make itself known, from where she struck her head to the knees she had thoroughly skinned in her flight from the hall of statues. She sat with one hoof clutched to her side and the other still shading her eyes as one of the darker blobs resolved into a pegasus.

“You’ve had quite a terrible time, haven’t you?” The pegasus spoke with Luna’s voice. “With Honesty and Magic, I’ll be able to face the Nightmare.” The pegasus tossed a mane identical to Luna’s, and Luna could see her cutie mark upon the other’s flank.

“Who…” Luna began, still dazed.

“Loyalty. Honesty’s here too, but she was never terribly dominant, was she?” Loyalty replied with a smirk which belied her calculating stare. Their eyes met, and Luna beheld a hostile avarice so intense that she would have backed away if she were standing. Loyalty stalked forward, the carefree smile still fixed upon her face.

“Wait!“ Luna managed to gather her legs underneath her, and held out a placating hoof. She blinked, and suddenly the pegasus was upon her. Loyalty batted Luna’s hoof out of the air and drove a kick into her ribs, causing an explosion of pain as Luna dropped to the ground. Another blow brought Luna’s head suddenly to the side, and her vision momentarily went dark. She tried to draw in a breath, but her lungs felt as though hooks had been driven through them. A warm trickle ran from her nose and down the side of her face.

Through the stars crowding her vision, Loyalty’s face lurched forward, and another cold wave of pain radiated from Luna’s side. Kneeling on Luna’s chest, Loyalty pressed her forehooves against Luna’s windpipe. Luna felt her eyes bulging as darkness began to eat away at the corners of her vision. A red haze filled what little she could see, and Loyalty’s same cold stare brought a single thought to what passed for Luna’s consciousness.

NO.

Luna drew in a rattling gasp, echoing Loyalty as she brought a hammer blow of telekinesis swinging in a wide arc. Loyalty reeled back, narrowly avoiding the attack, and now stood a wingspan away. Luna swung the hardened mesh in a vertical arc, forcing Loyalty to sidestep. Dust and rock fragments fountained outward as the tiles where she had been standing were obliterated. With a few pumps of her wings, Loyalty took to the air.

Luna could feel a terrible black rage building within her, forcing away the cold feeling in her gut. She felt beads of hot sweat roll down her face and sides, stinging where it mingled with her blood. Ignoring the pain it caused, she drew in a deep breath, feeling it burn in her chest. Loyalty dove, intending to crush her opponent beneath her hooves. When Loyalty was close enough to see the individual cuts and bruises on Luna’s tired body, Luna brought her gaze hurtling upward. A massive gout of oily black smoke obscured the two, muffling Loyalty’s cry of surprise.

The outpouring reversed, seeming to adhere to Luna’s flesh and staining it a solid black. Her mane and tail ignited and were consumed in an instant. In their place, a fluid field of stars billowed in an invisible breeze. The breath she had held escaped her in a bellow that shook the hall to its foundations. At this, Loyalty, who lay pinned beneath Luna’s hooves, began to worm away.

“You weren’t supposed to beat the Nightmare! No no no no!”

Luna fixed the pegasus with a baleful stare. She reared up, lifting her hooves into the air, then brought them down.

…no.

The sound of the first blow brought a wave of nausea rising in Luna’s throat.

No.

The hot spray of the next blows made Luna shut her eyes.

“NO!” Luna cried out. She brought her hooves back down to the tiles with exaggerated care. Her quick gasps shook as she exhaled, and her vision blurred. She lurched to the side and collapsed, leaving a dark smear where she slid. The last few moments flooded into her.

She felt her nose break and her windpipe collapse. She felt the next blows bring cold agony to her face and hooves, which she had brought up to shield herself. She felt her lungs surge with blood and her pulse slow. She heard her heart stop.

“THE TIME IS NOW… ELEVEN O’CLOCK.”

After a moment, Luna rose, folding her wings at her sides. She surveyed her surroundings with a careful and precarious calm. She stood again in the circular hall, and fragments of the rock at the center were strewn about haphazardly. She picked one up with her telekinesis and turned it over. A tiny figure fell from a hole in the side. She caught the figure and brought it in front of her eyes. It was incredibly detailed, depicting a pair of fillies holding an amphora between them. Luna forced her face to remain impassive as she set the basalt sculpture on the ground with a small click.

Luna swept her gaze around and upward, careful to avoid the region of floor which she would not look upon, as well as the ruin which lay there. At the center of the dome was an oculus, perfectly circular, the light of which illuminated the rest of the ceiling. A few delicate flaps of her matte-black wings brought Luna up, though as she drew close she realized her wingspan would not clear the aperture. She grasped the ledge and hauled herself upward, eyes moving rapidly to take in the familiar surroundings.

She was in the Grand Hall of the castle. The hole through which she had climbed occupied the space on the floor where the Seal of Sun and Moon should have sat. Her mind filled in the color of the banners which now hung limply between the columns at the sides. The gold and silver-inlaid doors at the far end of the hall sat bolted and barred. The tall, narrow windows in the alcoves at the sides looked out upon the night sky. Finally, Luna turned her gaze upon the dais at the near end of the hall. The two thrones sat just where she remembered. The one belonging to her sister-

Don’t think about it.

Shaking her head to dispel the red haze which had fallen across her vision, Luna turned to face the other throne, and its occupant.

Long ago, she had commissioned the huge work of mahogany from the most skilled carpenter in all of Everfree, an earthpony by the name of Dovetail. The same day she delivered the piece, she closed her workshop and took the East road with her gold in the wagon which followed her out. Luna recalled sadly that it would be months before word came back that the craftspony had been slain by a group of drakes upon the road. Luna had been furious with regret. Two years later, drakes were all but extinct in Equestria.

Luna recognized the alicorn in front of her: It was herself as she had been all those years ago. Her grey mane hinted at a blue color, but it was still as normal as any other pony’s. She did not turn to face Luna, and instead leaned over to speak into the flared end of a brass tube which extended up from the floor.

“Midnight.” The alicorn said with a sad smile.

“Must we fight?” Luna implored. “I never wanted to hurt anyone.” She looked down at her ink-black hooves. She didn’t remember wiping the blood from them.

“No,” The alicorn replied, adding, “it was not our intent, but many ponies suffered.”

“Why have you been announcing the time? I think your watch is broken, by the way.” Luna smiled hopefully, exposing a row of glistening fangs. The alicorn’s expression did not change.

“You will know when I am dead.”

Luna shook her head.

“I’m not going to kill you. I’ve had enough of death.”

“Now, why would that be the first thing on your mind?” The alicorn’s smile grew mirthful at Luna’s reaction. Luna worked her mouth trying to come up with some reply, finally shutting it with a small huff. The alicorn went on soberly, “There’s never enough. Not for a thousand years, nor for ten-thousand. You’re going to kill me, as you did last time, and the time before that. Maybe tonight you’ll finally escape. Maybe the stars will help you this time.”

Luna’s gaze was drawn out the window, where it came to rest on a light more dazzling than any of the other stars in the sky. The star Arcturus shone down upon the scene impassively. The presence of the three others became known to her, far across the void: Sirius. Canopus. Kentaurus. She could feel their attention upon her.

Luna’s focus snapped back to the comparatively small space of the throne room. She was now standing over the alicorn, who lay supine on the dais. Her hooves had begun to move, and with a cry she realized that they had come to rest on the alicorn’s neck. She tried to pull the limbs back. Instead, she found herself leaning forward. She could feel the alicorn’s pulse begin to quicken. Their eyes met, and Luna’s began to water as she fought to blink. The alicorn’s lips moved silently, and the smile took on another aspect. It was not a smile of resignation, nor of amusement. It was the smile that belonged to Hope.

Luna could feel hot tears dripping down her face, but still she could not pull away. She felt Hope’s heartbeat slow, then stop. A sob escaped her lips as her limbs went limp, releasing their hold on Hope. She cradled the body in her hooves and rocked back and forth gently as tears continued to flow, dripping unheeded on the face of Hope.

Luna could feel the hooves press against her neck, but she did not struggle. A wave of calm washed around her as she felt the emotion through the eyes of Hope. She tried to say something, but the air couldn’t escape. In the present, her lips parted in a whisper.

“I’m sorry.”

She drew in another quivering breath before continuing.

“I’m sorry. I finally understand. No more lies, no more echoes. I know what I did.” Her voice began to rise in pitch. “I know what I did and I’d do it all again! Oh, sister, I would do it all again because that moment of uncertainty on your face was worth the cost!”

Her head dropped down. She finished in a defeated tone.

“Damn me, but it was worth the cost.”

Luna did not know how long she sat motionless. The stars moved on, weaving their deathless dance, as they would for all time. After a time, she rose silently. She turned to face the throne. Like the shadow of a cloud moving in front of the moon, she crossed the distance and sat down. She leaned over and spoke.

“The time is now one o’clock.”

After all, there was always Hope.

Somewhere far away, a small grey pegasus with a crescent moon on her flank awoke.