“So, young one, why have you come to my domain?”

The young Luna stared at the horrific mess before her. A unicorn, her horn twisted, her hooves full of holes. Insect wings jutted out of her shoulders, and green eyes shone behind wispy gray hair. Sharp teeth jutted out of her dirty mouth, and her breath desperately needed a good brushing.

“I said, young alicorn, why do you come here?” said Queen Chrysalis.

“I-I-I...” stuttered Luna. “I wish t-to...”

“Have revenge?”

“...”

“Of course. I should have known this from the start. You have fled your sister. You want revenge on her for overshadowing your night. You want...you want... you what the dark to reign forever.

“Y-yes... I-I do.”

“Well then! Come, young one. The Shapeshifter Queen knows all sort of evil things, perfect for extracting revenge on one so cruel as your sister.”

Chrysalis disappeared into the marsh. beckoning for Luna to follower her. The princess of the Night carefully stepped through the swamp, her silver shoes covered in mud, the stanky air frizzing her blue hair. She stepped over massive branches and tried to ignore the putrid stank that hung around constantly. Hundreds of thousands of bright green sacs lay scattered around them, and countless changelings, with their contorted black skin and pupiless eyes tended to them. Luna watched the beast lather mud on the bags of fluid. One burst, releasing a tiny changeling that fell into the hands of two waiting drones. Chrysalis said nothing as her brood came into life. She simply ignored the two drones as they carried the spawn away.

Finally, they reached a clearing, the massive jungle trees exposing a stone circle to the night sky. Six small torches burned in the blackness, the purple flame illuminating the stone structure. Long lines were carved in the rock, and they connected the torches to each other, forming a large hexagram. A small circle stood in the middle of the star, connecting the flat inner parts together. Chrysalis stepped onto the stone pedestal, her horn lighting up as she summoned a small blue light, fully brightening the clearing. Behind her, the sordid shape of the Princess of the Night crawled out of the swamps.  Luna was covered in mud, and her hair stank of weeds and pond scum. He was on the verge of vomiting, and her face glowed a sickly green as she tried to hold in her bile. Chrysalis laughed as she turned to look at the alicorn princess, her light blue eyes dancing in the purple flames..

“We have arrived, sweet child. Stand in that circle, and I will begin the ritual.” said the Queen. “You will have your revenge yet.” When Luna stared at the circle worryingly, the shapeshifter queen snorted and said “Well, go on then. Don’t you want pure, sweet revenge?”

“I-I do.”

“Then stand in the inner circle! You aren’t getting anywhere chattering in your regal hooves, are you?”

Luna slowly stepped out of the mud. She shook violently, sweat forming on her forehead, her whole body shaking as adrenaline flowed through her veins. Cautiously she stepped into the hexagram, and with trembling hooves made her way to the central circle, where she stood nervously, glancing around as if something might jump out of the woods and attack.

“Haha, So it begins.”

The Queen’s twisted horn glowed a sickly green. The purple flames burst out of the torches, igniting the hexagram with arcane fire. Luna watched as crystals slowly burst out of the ground, rising out of the grooves in the stone. The flames leapt onto the crystals, burning them with power. When Luna touched one, she immediately recoiled back, for the purple fire was not hot, but as cold as the grave. The crystals rose higher out of the ground, until they made a barrier around Luna, preventing any means of escape. Luna felt her magic being neutralized as the purple flames burned around her, sapping away her strength and crushing her resolve.

“My son, the dark one. Hear my plea! A young one has come home to their mother. She wants nothing more than her brother’s dark power. Bring it to your sister!” shouted Chrysalis.

Luna watched as the crystals started to move. The circle started to get smaller. Black shadows floated in the crystal, flickering in and out of view. Luna paced about her hooves pressing against the green crystals, her magic refusing to comply, her power draining.

“No! I don’t want this! Please! Let me out!”

“HAHAHA! Too late, Princess of the Night. The darkness will find you yet. Come forth, my son. Give your power to your poor sister.”

Luna saw the shadows exit the crystals. A black cloud of darkness floated in front of Luna, her crystal prison growing smaller and smaller by the second. She galloped as far away from the cloud as she could, screaming and crying, pushing back against the crystal walls, ignoring the burning cold of the flame. She whimpered as the cloud danced around her nostrils, and she could not prevent herself from inhaling them. She screamed as the dark gas flowed down her windpipe, burning her insides with unbearable cold.

“Dear son, please. Gift your poor and abused sister with power beyond her imagination! Your other sister forgot to give her a Heart’s Warming Eve present, and she wants payback! See to it that she gets what she deserves!”

...

The crystals closed on Luna.

...

Shadow gas entered Luna’s lungs.

...

Black dots appeared on her eyes.

...

Luna screamed.

“So be it.”

The Reaper raised his ashen hand to the skies as a bolt of lightning hit the hexagonal crystal pyramid.

Inside, something was changing. Luna had gone dark. Chrysalis could still see the silhouette of the Princess of the Night contained within the crystals, but her shining radiance had been blotted out. No more was she as bright as the moon...

For she would be as dark as the night.

The crystals shattered as the Nightmare Force found a new master. The power of Chaos swelled within the broken body of Luna merging her spirit with the Force, twisting her Life Thread into strange and awkward angles.

What stepped out of the crystal pyramid still looked like Luna. She had her appearance, wore the same jewlery, had the same face. Her mane rippled with magic as it used to, and mud still clung to her skin.

But her eyes. Her eyes had changed greatly. For instead of her normal bright blue pupils, there lay only a pure black iris, with a small white crescent moon superimposed on the darkness.

The Nightmare Force was in her now. And nothing would stop her from attaining her vengeance.

The Night would reign forever. Nightmare Moon hath decreed it so.

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The Battle to last a century... happens on YouTube.

(Try and omit Twilight from that scene.)

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It was a horrendous millenium on the moon. Luna was forced to survive 1000 years of thirst and starvation, and wished for death each and every day. But no darkness would take her. No Reaper would come for her. She was beyond their reach, in a world countless miles away. No gravity held her down, no enemies stood in her way. There was nothing on the moon that could stop her. There was nothing that could server her Life Thread early. Her Marcherhood kept her breathing, despite the lack of oxygen, and the Nightmare Force fueled her desire for vengeance. No amount of meditation, relaxation, or pacification could stop the Mare in the Moon, and she raged on her own, letting loose her anger in violent meteor showers that burned through Equestria’s atmosphere. Never did any cosmic rocks go through, for the atmosphere was too thick, and the heat of the thermosphere too hot.

She had been banished. There was enough time to think. 1000 years is plenty of time to contemplate and to recover. But Luna would have none of it. She let her anger thrive for 999 years, and on the dawn of the 1000th she was fuming with pure, unspent rage. So when a ghost of a pony woke her up on the lunar sunrise of the first day of the year, Luna was ready for a good pounding. She grabbed asteroids from the skies nearby, and smashed them onto the mysterious pony. She blasted him with azure energy beams from her horn. She tore open the rock beneath his feet, and buried him in a mountain of stone. And yet, when it was all said and done, the spectre stood unharmed, his translucent blue body surrounded by a glowing energy shield.

“You should try harder to damage a spirit. Especially if that spirit is your great-great grandfather Sarvis Sparkle.” said the ghost. “A master of magic am I, and the power that I wield shadows yours in comparison.”

Luna was taken aback by the pony’s statement. She remembered her mother, Candice, telling her about her great-great-grandfather Sarvis, and about how he was buried on the moon, but she never anticipated the stories would be true.

“I see now that your sister has banished you. It was...late on my part. However, I am more than willing to aid you in your return. You see, in order to have true harmony there must always be a little chaos. A bit of discord to balance out the order. No one likes a perfectly structured society, as does nopony enjoys total anarchy. But if you combine the two...” he waved his hoof, and two meteors collided with each other in midair. “You get perfect balance.” The rubble from the crash reformed itself into a set of scales.

Luna was amazed. In all her years on the moon she had never made two asteroids collide, much less reconfigure their shape. Sarvis’s little display of power made her instantly trust him. His eyes locked with hers, and the tiny pink star in their pupils reflected off each other.

“And now, we begin our first lesson...”

Her lessons look six months. Six long months of pain and torture, of endless cramming and ceaseless practice. Sarvis pushed both Luna and the Nightmare Force to their very limits, unlocking secret powers she didn’t even know she had. She gained the ability to dreamwalk, the power to make herself invisible at will, the knowledge to create illusions of herself. Yet, those were petty achievements compared to her ultimate one. The strength to shed her pony body and become something totally different.

Just like the Reaper and his Pure Death transformation, Luna mastered the inner workings of her Marcherhood, turning into a fearsome warrior with the power to march between worlds. Her face became obscured, hidden behind a mask of pure darkness. Tattered robes hung from her body, and heavy, shapeless armor covered her torso. She stood on two legs, and wielded a long staff in her two hands. Coils of pure shadow surrounded the Dark Form, blackening everything that came close. Finally, after a millennia of rage and anger, Luna was ready to take revenge. On the day of the summer solstice, Sarvis decided she was ready. The moon was to move over the sun, causing a partial eclipse in certain areas of Equestria. Using his powers, Sarvis would turn that into a full lunar eclipse that covered all of Equestria, perfect for Luna to dive down to the world and extant her vengeance.

Of course, not all perfect plans go well. As the shadow of the eclipse covered the land, Luna’s Dark Form plunged back to earth from the rocky satellite. She created a force shield when the atmosphere began to burn her humanoid body, but the shield did not hold as long as Sarvis expected. The heat of the atmosphere burned up her Dark Form, but thankfully her pony form was released unscathed into the troposphere. With her magic reserves full, she searched for Celestia’s presence.

Ponyville. A small, backcountry town close to Canterlot. That was where Celestia hid. They were having the annual Summer Sun celebration. Pity that their sun had been smothered by the moon.

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Please, watch the first episode (dailymotion)

(There was no YouTube link, sorry.)