To the Moon

"NO!" she screamed.

"Mark my words Celestia" she spat the words like poison.

"I WILL return, and you WILL pay" her words were fading into the roar of magic.

The black beams of magic surrounded Nightmare in a mock rainbow, shades of black fading to grey spiralling around her armoured form. "This is just a setback for me, you cannot hope to defeat the darkness, after all, there will always be night and where there is night, there is Nightmare Moon!.

Celestia had to strain her ears to hear these last words from the monster that was once her sister. The star of her night turned black by anger and hate. Tears streamed down her face as she tore out here emotions both mentally and physically, using them to fuel The Elements.

As the castle around her crumbled, she stood staring up into the twilight sky, the moon and sun battled for dominance over the sky for but a moment longer, then the moon started to retreat back to its proper place among the stars in umbra*. She had won.

But if it was a victory, why did it feel like she lost?

"-mare Moon!"

Luna stopped screaming.

Not because she was finished, but because she now lacked a mouth to scream with and she was only yelling at herself now anyway. The moons presence filled her mind, much more than was normal and her awareness seemed to only consist of the grey-white rock.

"That bitch!" Luna flinched at the outburst, or she would have, had she a face.

"This is pathetic! You’re pathetic!"

Luna could not clearly remember the last time Nightmare had been a voice in her head, recently it had been the other way around. Being trapped in your own mind while another took control and destroyed everything around you was not a thing she would wish upon anypony, not even Discord.

"Shut up worm!" Nightmare screeched attempting to regain possession of 'her' body.

Luna decided that she wanted Nightmare gone, out, dead. "GET OT OF MY MIND." Luna's scream shattered the blocks on her mind, the careful editing that Nightmare had done to her memories and the feelings of resentment were gone. The years of slow decay as Nightmare took control destroyed, like a pile of dust in a storm.

"What are you doing? Noooooooo" Nightmare's outcry was short, Luna's wrath at being deceived and manipulated quickly tearing her into nothing but a collection of foul memories, effectively wiping her from Luna's mind.

The backlash from such powerful instinctual magic was great, the waves of power emanating from the moon could be felt by all as the very face of the moon was bent and distorted, shaped into the outline of a once great pony, engraved for all time on the moon.

A long time later

Luna awoke with a start, her mind being jolted awake by her sister's incessant shoving of the moon.

"Thou art impatient sister" she spoke, or more correctly, thought as she had not created a body for herself yet. She relaxed her control of the moon, letting her sister move it without much resistance. Four hundred and fifty years had taught her how to control her moon better than even Celestia and her sun, but Celestia rarely gave her the opportunity to do so on her own. She was not even certain that Celestia new she still had control over the moon.

Tonight was going to be the night that she finally gave herself a body. Luna's excitement was great enough to bleed through the chains surrounding her moon, creating a vista of northern lights flowing through the sky. She had been preparing for this night since the very week of her imprisonment, creating matter from nothing was considered a foals errand for most and even the great powers of Luna condensed on the moon could only create a few pounds of matter at a time.

Since she did not know the extent her powers would be when she transferred herself from the non-living moon into an actual body, she had slowly turned a small area of the moon (the eye crater of the Mare in the moon outline) into a habitable environment.

The changes she had made where tiny, insubstantial in of themselves, but over the course of the past near half millennium, she had managed to create a bubble of air, surrounding the crater and a small pond filled with fresh water in the centre.

Luna could not create anything more detailed as she had no eyes or hooves to inspect her work and focusing the awareness of the moon into anything smaller than an area around twenty kilometres was nearly imposable. Luna did know that she would not need sustenance as her body would be fuelled by magic anyway, she was safe in the knowledge that she could not truly die while her mind was connected to the moon in any way.

Cutting off her thoughts, Luna started concentrating on the spell. If you've ever tried to do anything while in a dream that requires a single minded concentration, you will understand how difficult it was for Luna to cast any sort of spell.

What she was currently doing was draining so much power from her reserves that the moon stopped in its movement across the sky. Down on the surface of the moon a small pile of dust started moving around, swirling upwards into the vague shape of a pony and then started solidifying from the base upwards.

As the spell neared completion, what seemed like an eternity to Luna, she noticed that her new body was missing something.

Despair flooded through her mind as she tried desperately looking for anything that could match what she was missing, she realized what she needed.

"The spark of life!"

If she had eyes, they would be weeping. Unlike her sister's sun, the moon did not promote new growth, there was nowhere for her to get any life essence. Defeat welled up inside her, 'glancing' her awareness around she expanded it away from where her new body was standing, nothing but a statue of flesh, and screamed to herself.

Luna could feel a presence.

Thinking it to be Nightmare returning, she lashed out mentally at it and felt her mind contact something, Luna was unsure what it was, but she started to pull on it. Distantly, she felt the vibrations of an explosion, giving her a prickling sensation in her mind. The harder she pulled, the more she felt the presence, as though it was getting closer.

It felt unfamiliar, not like anything she had felt before, even before she was trapped on the moon. It was alive, but too different for her use; her hopes fell as fast as they had risen. Luna's body would not survive without a fully active brain for much longer; she needed to find that spark and finish the spell, or be stuck as just an awareness in the moon until she had gathered the needed matter to create it again.

Her patience was at its end, she needed a spark, this thing had one, so she was going to make it compatible with her!

Acting quickly, she started on another spell, in her overtaxed state she would not be able to control it very well. Gritting her imaginary teeth she gathered the power needed, even going so far as to attempt to borrow power from her sister's spell. Luna was surprised that The Elements yielded to her need, granting her the power required.

Pushing the questions this brought up from her mind, she willed all her power, her being and her very soul into the spell and flooded the strange presence with her magic.

The changes she needed to make were a lot less major than she thought.

This soul was almost identical to hers, the differences were mainly basic things such as physical form, Gender, species, instinct, genetics and thought processes.

Luna had already started to change all of these when she thought of the consequences this would have on whatever being this was. It coming closer to her than any had since she was imprisoned, so she instead took a small amount of life force from it leaving most of the changes incomplete and probably causing severe problems for this creature that could travel space. But not destroying it.

Instead she took a small spark from it and patched the gap left behind with a small portion of her soul, being one with the moon had its perks, like having a large enough soul for several hundred ponies. That fact alone was letting her focus on so many things while casting multiple spells as well as she could when focusing on only one.

Hurriedly placing the spark inside her new crafted body, she forced the rest of her soul into it, firmly attaching herself to the mind of her creation.

She felt a rushing sensation as her moon awareness faded to its usual subconscious self and she opened her eyes.