It is a cool, calm, peaceful night in Equestria. The moonlight cascades off the castle city of Canterlot, creating a dazzling effect off it's walls. The air is silent and the city below and beyond rests from it's day activities by living fantastical impossible lives that the day could not bring. Princess Luna stands alone in the high tower overlooking the city keeping a vigilant watch over the land. She scans the far horizon from her telescope. Although this method is not a proper way to search for any sign of alarm, as her elder sister has explained dozens of times, the guardian of the night disregards it for the reason that the device gives her a better view of her night.

The moons glow suddenly dims. The princess looked up from her spyglass and soon found the source of it. A drifting cloud most likely from the Everfree forest. Luna exhaled a small breath of relief. A false alarm was all it was. She took this royal task very seriously. For some reason, ponies liked to abscond in the night with ill intentions. Clearly much had changed in the last ten centuries, but she never imagined anyone doing such wrongful deeds. Theft, muggings, assault... Too much of this had been going on in her night-- in her domain, and she was not about to let anyone else get away with it. She went back to her telescope and continued to survey, determined to right the wrong.

Meanwhile, the cloud swirled. It swirled and stretched. A thin dark tendril snaked downward towards the unaware princess. The appendage swirled around on the platform gathering into a black miasma. Then, a black liquid stretched out from the base of the gaseous mass and expanded on the ground beneath Luna, engulfing her thin outline of a shadow. From there, smaller tendrils silently wrapped around her legs.

Luna felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. She backed her head away and paused. She could feel something watching her. At first, she found it ironic. The idea of someone watching her while she watched over the ponies. She tried to shrug the feeling off in a chuckle of amusement...

... but it persisted. She could feel it in the pit of her stomach. Something was definitely amiss. She attempted to move, but found herself rooted to the spot. She panicked briefly and whipped her head around.

She shrieked, but it never was heard as the darkness swallowed her head.

Deep within the castle, a sleeping form of Celestia slumbered deeply after a long, tiresome day. She had put up with so many nobles complaining about how their lives were so horrible. "The commoners were disrespectful, we need more money, the chambermaid refuses to sleep with me!" If they only knew how hard she had it back when she was their age. Heck, if only they knew what she had to deal with now. Even her normally flowing mane of many colors had fallen limp, dull and lifeless upon the soft mattress.

In the halls outside, the occasional royal guard, both night and day, patrolled silently attempting not to awake the empress of the sun. Lanterns shone brightly, hanging from their armor on a silver band. Each guard kept their eyes to the front as they walked, while they're ears rotating and focused methodically. They could hear a pegasus taking off in Canterlot Square if they concentrated hard enough. Now however, the effort was being directed elsewhere, scanning for any sign of disturbance. They were not like the guard who patrolled the Star-Swirl wing of the library, nor were they the guard that patrolled the gardens either. These guard were determined not to let anything, pony or gnat enter these inner hallways.

Silently, in the dark, a figure strode past their defenses and perfected personal radar, exploiting every blind spot of the guards, getting closer and closer to the intended target. The stealthy shadow finally stopped in front of a large pair of velvet red doors emblazoned with a golden sun.

Celestia shifted in her sleep as the door slid open. The figure froze momentarily. It waited for the tell-tale exhale of deep sleep before continuing through the threshold. Dark shapes swirled around the trespasser as he stepped to the edge of the bed. The shapes reached out to the sleeping form and gently lifted the blankets off the princess. She inhaled sharply as the cold air contacted her skin. The darkness then began encompassing the princess' body. Her eyes fluttered open at the last moment before she was completely swallowed. She lazily glanced up to a pair of large, menacing red orbs glowing in the dark.

She had no chance to scream.

A unicorn guard turned a corner making his lantern-light sway about. the spotlight finally rested upon the open corridor. He continued down the hallway and his tired gaze noticed something odd about a threshold to his side-- more specifically, the private chambers of the dawn-bringer and herald of the day. One of the double-doors was slightly ajar. He paused briefly. He stretched a hoof to close it as silently as he could, when a curiosity overwhelmed him. He had never seen the inner chambers of the princess. He imagined it to be quite extravagant and spacious, but then he soon doubted that vision. It could've easily been a messy room, filled with document upon document and mountains of paper he had heard the servants and maintenance members of the castle gossiping about. He shook his head and magically doused the light at his side. He held his breath as pushed the door open.

To his surprise, it was spacious and quite empty. It was neither extravagant nor cluttered with deskwork. The only odd things about it were the balcony doorway, which was wide open causing a chilling draft to fly in and make the drapes flap about, and the distinct lack of Princess Celestia. At first, the guard quickly panicked until he remembered that her majesty did like her midnight snacks and the extreme privacy about the matter. He reached out with his magic to close the balcony doors without moving, feeling guilty about breaching this amount of personal space. His head leaned forward subconsciously as his horn sparked to life. It was then he noticed something on the bed in the open moonlight. It looked like a note. He contemplated whether or not to breach even further into the already intruded personal space. Suddenly, he became cognizant of the time. It was no where near midnight!  He grasped the object with his magic and proceeded to read the note. His well-practiced look of complete neutrality was broken as it contorted into a visage of complete horror and panic. The note was dropped as he galloped down the hall quickly, earning a lot of attention from his peers.

He earned even more attention as he shouted, "THE PRINCESS HAS BEEN KIDNAPPED!!! LOCK DOWN THE PALACE!!! PRINCESS CELESTIA HAS BEEN KIDNAPPED!!!"

The note drifted slowly downward until coming to a complete rest on the ground.

Sorry, but your princess is in another castle...