2nd day of Sun's Height
455 Years after the Defeat of Discord by the Sisters

“You said you’d have a harvest ready by now,” Luna said, looking down at the papers spread out before her, scattered across the surface of what had once been a carpenter’s work table and had been pressed into service as part of her new office.

“I’m sorry, your highness,” Pear Necessities mumbled.

“Don’t apologize,” Luna said, looking up to the distraught pony. “I’m not blaming you. I just want to know if there’s anything we can do to help.”

“The land here has no life to it,” Pear said. “We’re doing well just to get anything growing at all. I could get you a harvest in a week, but it’s going to exhaust every earth pony we have.”

“What about unicorn magic or alchemy?” Luna turned to look at Silver Tongue. The unicorn’s robes were stained with dirt and sand, making them the same brownish-grey as everything else seemed to slowly be turning.

“Alchemy is out of the question,” Silver Tongue shrugged. “There are some potions that will allow rapid plant growth, but they rely on good soil and alchemical ingredients we don’t have.”

“But.. on the other hoof, our supplies will last a while,” Wind Dancer said. “We could send word back to Equestria, request aid from Celestia…”

“After the storm Zephyranthes created, I’m afraid it’s too much of a risk,” Luna said. “I would not wish to put lives on the line, and we can’t abandon the ponies and griffons of this city.” She got up and walked over to a window, the glass long since broken and gone, leaving only an empty frame.

“Out there,” Luna said, “Thousands are suffering, and it is worse than I could have imagined. The curse over this land has clouded my sight and hidden their dreams from me, else I would have come sooner to free them.”

12th day of Rising Sun
455 Years after the Defeat of Discord by the Sisters

“Lower the sails!” Luna shouted, using the royal voice to be heard over the raging storm. “The winds will tear them apart!”

“Princess! The waves are forcing the ships together!” shouted a sailor. Luna turned to see two ships crash against each other, hulls shattering in the collision. Ponies were thrown into the water, vanishing among the dark waves.

“We’re going to lose the whole fleet at this rate!” Luna hissed. She looked up to where Zephyranthes flew, his wings spread as wide as the ship’s mast was long. “Captain! Send up flares and order the fleet to break formation! The further apart from each other we are, the safer we’ll be!”

With that, Luna took to the air, a gust of wind nearly knocking her right back to the deck. While she’d once been a pegasus herself, the griffon above her was the wind incarnate, and even getting into the sky meant testing her power against his while giving him every advantage.

Tornado-force gusts pressed against her as she tried to ascend to where the Emperor flew, tearing feathers from her wings. Luna’s horn flared, and a magical shield pushed out around her, shoving the wind away but bending in the force of the primal surge of air, the energy trailing behind her like the tail of a comet.

Luna’s blue form bled away to the ebon coat of Nightmare Moon as she called upon all of her power, firing blasts of force at the Emperor. The beams deflected from their target, exploding like flak around his distant form.

“So a direct attack in this situation is impossible,” Nightmare Moon noted. “How unusual. Zephyranthes always used to prefer direct confrontation…” It was an odd change in behavior, something quite unusual to see in an immortal. In the past, he would have met them as they landed and fought with blade and spell, instead of trying to scatter the fleet with a storm.

It was a mystery that would have to be solved later, if Nightmare Moon was to salvage the situation.

“Come down and fight me!” Nightmare Moon shouted, the force of her voice causing a visible shockwave in the falling rain.

Zephyranthes flapped his huge wings, and hailstones the size of cannonballs surged down around the dark Princess. She countered with a wave of heat, melting them into raindrops before they could crash down into the ships below.

In a flash of lightning, Nightmare Moon saw something below that gave her pause. A reef, the wind and waves driving the fleet right towards it.

“So that’s your plan,” Nightmare Moon hissed. “Two can play at this game!” She froze in midair, a bubble of magic supporting her against the heavy weather, and her horn lit with the full illumination of the moon.

The Nightmare strained, doing something that she knew would send her sister into fits of screaming rage.

The Moon edged closer, and the tide surged up to greet it,water covering the exposed reef. The first of the fleet edged over the barrier, the ship’s bottom scraping against it. Nightmare Moon roared, pulling the Moon even closer, the silver light shining through the clouds overhead. The storm started to abate as Zephyranthes gave pause, the celestial display of power forcing him to stay his talon.

The fleet surged past the reef and into the clear water beyond. Nightmare Moon released her grip on the moon, allowing it to fall back to its normal distance.

Zephyranthes’ massive wings flapped, and he flashed away at a speed too great for Luna to pursue.

“The first victory is to me,” Nightmare Moon grinned, fangs gleaming in the light as the storm overhead started to clear.

13th day of Rising Sun
455 Years after the Defeat of Discord by the Sisters

“Is there any sign from the city?” Luna asked, having resumed her less intimidating form to avoid upsetting any of the civilians. The fleet, only two-thirds as large as it had been when they left Equestria, had taken shelter in a protected bay, holding position well away from a seemingly-lifeless city set into and above the cliffs on one edge of the calm water.

“None,” Silver Tongue frowned. “We’ve tried both flares and semaphore. It’s possible that there isn’t anyone in the city to reply to us.”

Luna shook her head. “I find that extremely unlikely. Some of the scouting wing made a few passes outside of bow range, and reported movement in the shadows.”

“Could be animals. Worse, it could be troops lying in wait.” Silver Tongue looked up into the gray, cloudless sky. “Zephyranthes knew where we were, and he could have sent a division to repel us.”

“It is… possible,” Luna admitted. “The wind forced us to tack towards the south, away from the capital. His attack might have been intended to force our hooves and enter this bay.”

“We could leave and try to find another port,” Silver Tongue suggested.

“No,” Luna sighed. “If he is truly watching us, he will be able to move his troops more quickly than we can get the fleet safely away from the reef and back at sea, assuming he doesn’t attack us while we are vulnerable. I do not wish to have to play with the tides again. Queen Plessie always gets annoyed, and we have little to gain in angering the seaponies and sirens.”

“So what, we land and hope for the best?” Silver Tongue snorted.

“I will go with the remaining Dragoons to evaluate the situation,” Luna said.

“There are less than a dozen left,” Silver Tongue frowned. “And half of those can’t fly.”

“I am aware,” Luna sighed. “Six perished when their ships were destroyed. Another five are unaccounted for. I can sense they have not died, but little else. The sole good news is that all those assigned as guardians for my student are still alive, though I dearly wish I could see her dreams.”

“If you’re going to go, be careful,” Silver Tongue said. “You might be immortal, but that doesn’t make you invincible.”

Nightmare Moon landed silently at the edge of the cliff, looking across the land beyond. Remnants of vineyards and orchards of scraggly, almost dead trees dotted the landscape. Rubble that had once been a tower lay at her hooves, four others having collapsed in the same way, leaving only a single beacon behind.

Streets pushed up all the way to the edge of the cliff, where a low wall was all that separated the road from the sharp drop into the bay. Buildings in various states of disrepair lined the road, the city itself shaped like a fan.

“It looks like this was mostly used by ponies,” one of the Dragoons noted. He pulled a lost horseshoe from where it had been left in the dirt and tossed it aside to clatter against the cobblestones.

“The griffons must have lived in the dwellings carved into the cliff face below,” Nightmare Moon guessed. “The fall would be far less dangerous to them, and it would be no more difficult to navigate than the streets here.”

“Why is everything so… dry and dusty?” the Dragoon asked.

“An excellent question,” Nightmare Moon muttered.

Before she could start to guess at the reasons, a cry went up from the half-ruined buildings of the city. Ponies and griffons poured out of the empty shops, a motley army of the malnourished and starving.

The Dragoons formed a barricade around Nightmare Moon, raising their weapons, the half-dozen ponies more than enough to slaughter them all.

“Wait,” Nightmare Moon said, stepping past them. “These are victims as much as the ponies we saved in Equestria.”

She cleared her throat as the surge slowed, the sight of the vastly superior warriors giving the stampede pause.

“Stand down!” Nightmare Moon ordered, her voice booming like thunder. “We have not come here for your lives but we will take them if forced!”

Weapons were lowered as the mob began to lose its nerve.

“If you wish to survive, kneel down and pledge loyalty to me,” Nightmare Moon demanded. “Those who do will be given rations and medical care. Those who do not are no longer welcome here.”

There was a moment of uncertainty, before a mare swallowed her pride and dropped to her knees. The action sent a ripple through the crowd, the tension breaking as they bowed before their new ruler.

“What happened?” Luna asked, leading Pear Necessities through what had once been an orchard. She stopped to scrape at the soil, which was little more than sand and stones here. She’d taken him aside while the ships were unloaded at the docks at the base of the cliffs.

“A curse? Poor weather management? It pains me to say, but I know little about farming.”

“Hard to say for sure,” Pear put a hoof on one of the dead trees. “This looks like an olive tree. They’re pretty darn tolerant of almost everything. One of the easiest things to grow. And the grapevines back there do pretty well in poor soil, too.”

“Good crops for such a harsh land,” Luna noted.

“Too harsh,” Pear said. “I can’t feel the soil at all. There’s no life in it at all. Never felt anything like it.”

“The sky is the same way,” Luna muttered. “I have felt this only once before. It is as though the clock has been turned back to the time after Discord’s reign, when the elements of the world were thrown out of their natural order and needed shepherds to rein them back in.”

Date Unknown
5 Years after the Defeat of Discord by the Sisters

“We cannot possibly agree to this request,” Celestia whispered, looking at the broad seaweed strands that had been given to them, letters tattooed into them with squid ink. They were almost like scrolls, though their composition made them almost immune to damage from water, which made sense, considering their author.

“It is what I demand if I am to undertake this suicide mission,” the siren said, glaring at where Celestia and Luna stood, their magic forming a bubble around them that allowed them to breathe and speak normally here, at the bottom of the sea. It took alicorn magic to withstand the strain of the water above, so far from the surface that they were plunged into an eternal night.

“It isn’t a suicide mission, Plessie,” Luna said, smiling at the mare as she swam around them, parts of the siren’s body glowing with bio-luminescence. “It is where the heart of the sea lies, the nexus of the leylines for all water in the world.”

“Do you know how deep the water is there?” Plessie demanded. “I could be crushed into jelly!”

“You won’t be,” Luna said. “It is your destiny.”

“Destiny or not, I don’t want my people starving,” Plessie growled. “It’s the only reason I agreed to meet with you in the first place. A message in a bottle? That’s awfully rude.”

“We weren’t sure of another way to contact you,” Celestia admitted. “The seaponies are difficult to reach at the best of times.”
“And this is hardly the best of times,” Luna said. “Sea currents have all but stopped. Reefs are dying all over the world.”

“I know,” Plessie snapped. “We can barely even breathe now. Without the waves and currents, the water is stale. There are places where nothing lives now, vast reaches of dead space where you slowly suffocate.”

“You can fix that,” Celestia said, quietly.

“It’s dangerous,” Plessie said. “And I won’t agree unless you sign the agreement.”

“It’s one thing to claim the salvage from a shipwreck, it is quite another to claim the sailors as well.” Celestia frowned.

“As I said, I don’t want my people to starve.” Plessie smiled, showing a mouth full of fangs.

13th day of Rising Sun
455 Years after the Defeat of Discord by the Sisters

“It was a different world,” Luna said, sighing. “In some way, things were simpler. We were worried about our immediate survival, and everything else had to be set aside for that.”

“It’s gonna be a stretch getting things growing here again,” Pear Necessities said. “But…” He put a hoof on one of the bare olive trees and closed his eyes to focus. Luna could feel the magic flowing through him, out of him, and into the soil.

“I see. So you’re going to replace the deadened leylines of the land with your own,” Luna muttered.

“Old farming trick,” Pear said, as a single leaf grew at supernatural speed on one of the olive tree’s branches. “It’ll work better with plants that aren’t already almost entirely dead.”

“That is good news,” Luna smiled. “I intend to fortify this area, and having some ability to grow our own food will be necessary.”

“We’ll need every able-bodied earth pony to chip in,” Pear said. “That includes any soldiers you can spare. On top of that, we need to take it slow. The more you force a plant to grow, the harder it is on the farmer.”

“I suspect it’s similar to unicorn magic,” Luna said, nodding. “A small expenditure of magical power is replaced very quickly, but the deeper a unicorn digs into her well of power, the longer it takes to recover. If totally exhausted, it can take days to recover any magical strength at all.”

“Something like that,” Pear shrugged. “It might be a help if pegasai were able to do something about the weather. There’s no cloud cover at all, and carrying water by hoof is gonna be a burden.”

“That will be impossible.” Luna spread her wings, feathers feeling the air. “Clouds will not form naturally here, and I fear they will break apart without raining no matter how much pegasai intervene. In Equestria we would use a thunderstorm to clear the air of the ambient haze of weather magic, but here…” She shook her head.

“What about that Emperor?” Pear frowned. “He made one heck of a storm trying to sink us.”

“That is an excellent question,” Luna agreed. “He should be able to do something about… all of this.” She waved a hoof around vaguely. “Of course, he also went to war with Equestria, so it is possible his judgement is in question in more ways than one.” She paused, something familiar bothering her. “Even so… it is a mystery we will have to solve later.”