Chapter XXIII: What I Miss Most

As I lay on the ground with my eyes closed, I faintly make out the sound of Nightmare Moon breathing somewhere off in the distance. Sound somehow works out here in space, but only when one of us causes it. I numbly open my eyes to see a gray expanse on a star-speckled, black background of the surface of the moon, stretching out into the distance with barely any disturbance.

I lay on my side, motionless: Trying to allow myself to be absorbed in the empty, cold, thoughtlessness of the world around me. Because if I move, I will be acknowledging my physical form, as well as the conflict I’m still in.

For a time, I manage to do just that. But eventually, my body brings that to an end with just a small twitch of one of my hind claws. A small scrape of my claw across gray dust practically echoes out all across the moon for all present to hear.

I hear Nightmare Moon slowly rolling herself over to get her legs beneath herself. I do the same myself to get up. When I manage to stand, I turn to look at her, my face an impassive mask.

A hundred meters away, on the other side of an equally wide crater, stands the black alicorn mare that I’ve been trapped on the moon with for the past several centuries. I can tell her own face is equally impassive as she stares at me from across the expanse.

And then I’m flying straight at her, with Nightmare responding in kind, our wings blasting air behind us to send us both careening towards the space above the center of the crater. We collide with our forelimbs cracking against each other, a burst of wind billows out from our impact and disturbs the dust at the bottom of the crater.

We break apart from each other and rapidly start flying in a tight circle around each other. I feel turbulence under my wings and so I tuck my wings in and dive downward before a hollow boom echoes out from where I was. I angle myself to pull up and bank to the side before throwing my own blast of air upwards at Nightmare. She rolls out of the way, I’m thrown to the side from another explosion of wind catching me off guard, and then another blasts me towards her and I see the air distorting in a horizontal line along the length of her extended wing. I use my wings to vault myself over the blade of air at the last second.

This leaves me in a prime position to be hit by a blast of wind, I manage to erect a shield of ice in front of myself, but the attack throws me away from Nightmare Moon.

I slash an “X” into the chunk, and it shatters into thousands of shards, which then swiftly interlock over my body to form a coat of ice scales over my skin. Cold wind whirls around me as more ice shards form and fly in an increasingly wide radius around me.

Nightmare Moon’s mane and tail expand and encompass her body, and then splits into three, then nine, then eighty-one clouds of blackness and stars. The clouds solidify into copies of Nightmare Moon, and they start rushing at me with their horns glowing with magic.

The ice shards fly into them. Some of them are hit in the horn, disrupting their spells, which is then followed by them being eviscerated by the blizzard of flying ice, others shift back into dark clouds to avoid damage, still others manage to erect barriers, and some are just flat out killed from dozens of ice shards embedding themselves into their skulls, throats, and other parts of their bodies. I continue expanding my blizzard while forming more ice to send flying in every direction. The shielded clones keep their barriers up, but I can see cracks forming from the onslaught, tipping me off that Nightmare didn’t put much magic into each individual. The clones that reverted to smoke retreat outside the extent of my blizzard to re-form themselves away from the flying shards.

A shock of killing-intent spikes from my back and I erect an ice barrier behind me while simultaneously shifting my weight away from my previous place in the air. A bolt of lightning shatters the hovering shield and grazes my side underneath my left wing, ripping away the ice-scales from my side and catalyzing a chain-reaction with the ones left that causes them to explode into powdery snow. But I avoided all damage from the attack. That’s what matters.

I twist around and catch another bolt of lightning on the tips of my claws, and fire it back in the direction it came from. It kills a Nightmare Clone, causing it to burst into magic. But the distraction caused by it is enough to get my blizzard of blades to disappear, the energy used to create the ice disappearing into the air.

The remaining clones converge on me, their wings and horns crackling with electricity. I close my eyes for a moment to draw in a breath, before my eyes snap open, and lightning sparks across my claws. Whips of lightning spark into life in my grips, and with a flick from each hand, the whips flash into motion, causing the air around me hums as I focus. The electrical currents wrap themselves around me, stray bolts bleeding off of the whips as they spin. Almost a second later, my entire body is covered in white, flashing, spastic electrical energy. Another pair of whips flash into being in my claws and I charge through the air at the nearest clone.

One of the constructed alicorns flies at me from my side, hoping to cleave through me with her lightning-coated wings. But as soon as it gets within five meters of me, the lightning coursing over my body strikes out without warning and blasts a hole through the clone without giving it a chance to react. Two more attempt to pull out of similar flanking maneuvers, but they too get too close and meet the same fate. The rest that manage to pull out of their reckless charge are cut in twain by my flying whips.

The electricity that covers my body covers a much wider area than just the few centimeters of brightness that is visible over my skin. I have an invisible field of charged lightning flowing in a wide sphere around me to prevent anything living from getting too close.

I fly into the fray, throwing lighting out at the clones that are skirting the edge of my field’s edge and killing them as I see them. Several charge in at me with lighting surging off of their wings again, as if they didn’t learn their lesson from the others that were killed by my field. They meet the same fate and dissolve back into magic. Several others launch bolts of lightning at me from a range, but my field absorbs them and fires them back automatically. Lightning doesn’t work on me while I’m like this.

A jerking motion courses from my chest up and I gasp, waking up from the nightmare of my past.

Except… I still hear the sounds of that battle raging. Lightning arcs and crackles through the air alongside blazing magic.

I open my eyes and I blink in surprise.

Dozens of Nightmare Moon clones engaged in intense combat with… me...

And I’m watching it from outside myself.

I look down at my claws and notice that I still can feel myself, yet I’m also observing the nightmare I was having from a sort of… outside perspective.

A beam of magic scorches the ground in front of me, kicking up rocks and dust and sending it flying at me. I cover my face with a wing but… I don’t feel anything touch me. Pulling my wing back slightly, rocks still fall down around me, and gray dust is still floating around me, but I can’t feel any of it, and I think a rock just fell through my slightly outstretched wing like it isn’t there.

Or like… I’m not really here.

I’m pulled out of my musings by the sound of wings and a soft landing on the dirt near me. I turn to my right and see a very familiar face.

“Hello… Baelor.” Princess Luna says to me with a slightly saddened inflection to her voice.

I take a deep breath and let it out. “Hey Luna.” I respond.

I don’t panic. Actually, I don’t really feel anything in particular. I just feel… curious. Why is she here?

“I believe you are… wondering what is going on right now.” Luna says hesitantly.

I shrug. “Not really. I’m dreaming and you’re just manipulating it so that we can talk.” I state.

Luna just nods. “Yes.”

I tilt my head slightly, thinking. Then I right my head again when I decide on my response. “Alright then. What do you want to talk about?” I ask her.

She looks at me in confusion. “That is it? No anger? No fear? You are just willing to talk, just like that?” She asks me.

“It’s better than the alternative.” I say.

“And that is…?” She prompts, not understanding.

I sit down on my haunches. “We both just sleep and are stuck feeling what those two are feeling for the rest of the night.” I say, pointing up at the battling figures of Luna and I.

Luna looks up to where I’m pointing and winces. “I suppose that is true.” She admits. Then she quietly sits down next to me.

We sit quietly for a few moments before I speak again.

“Do you have them too?” I ask her. “These nightmares… memories…”

“Yes… they always seem to happen on the worst nights.” Luna murmurs.

“The ones right after the best days… the ones where you feel like things are finally getting better?” I offer sadly.

“Exactly those kinds.”

The quiet returns. The battle above seems close, but its noise doesn’t seem to impede on the quietness unless one of us wants it to.

Luna speaks first this time. “It is not quite as bad to watch it happening from this perspective.” She says, looking up at our battling forms. The dream-me has managed to carve his way through all of the clones and is assaulting a shielded dream-Luna with whips of lightning.

I snort. “No kidding.” I answer.

More silence.

“It’s… rather surprising actually.” Luna says with a thoughtful inflection.

“What is?” I ask.

“There are parts of our battles that stand out the clearest in my memory, and they’re almost always the ones where we both moved the slowest. Yet, watching it like this… those moments seem to be the fastest occurring.” She says.

I blink as I scour my memories of this particular battle, and when it comes up I discover… she’s right. I remember this part of the fight as having crawled its way along.

My fore claw came up, pointed at her, and I caught an arcing bolt of lightning fired from Nightmare Moon. Then my wings rocketed me towards her as I twisted the energy into another whip, which I twirled the grip in my fingers to build up its momentum without a wrist movement, and I slashed her across the chest as I passed her.

But watching it happen, watching my dream-self, I barely caught my wings flick backwards before I was already past Nightmare Moon in the air. And not only that, but I noticed that Nightmare managed to successfully block the length of the lightning whip on the very tip of her lightning charged wing-tip. I always thought she just managed to shrug the attack off, but she actually managed to counter the attack before it hit her. Imagine that.

“We were processing things in the heat of the moment that we aren’t right now.” I mutter with understanding.

“It would seem so.” Luna answers.

“We’ve both come a long way from just playing catch with thunderheads.” I comment.

“Yes… we have.”

And we continue to watch ourselves fight each other.

I give a mirthless chuckle. “This reminds me of an old saying that I once heard.” I say.

“What is it?” Luna asks.

“Iron sharpens iron.” I say. “That entire time we were on the moon, we were sharpening ourselves… growing stronger off of each other. It’s weird that I’m only just realizing this now, but if either of us went up against the people we were before we were banished, we would utterly crush them.” I say ruefully.

“I suppose we would. It is a strange thought.” Luna admits.

“Well, this is a strange dream.” I respond.

“True.”

The silence between us returns again.

For some reason, my mind decides to remember my decision about becoming a Knight yesterday. I didn’t think about it, I just decided to accept it and save myself the worry of thinking about it some more. Or at least, that’s what it seemed like to me at the time. But…

I turn my gaze to Luna beside me. I remember Celestia’s words on what being a Knight means. She said it meant being her friend. To keep her from falling and succumbing to darkness. But no one is restricted to having just one friend. If I’m going to be Celestia’s friend and keep her head above water, then that means I’ll be keeping my other friends above it as well.

If I can make one impulsive decision without thought, I can make another.

“I’m kinda sick of this, to be honest.” I say aloud, looking back up at the battle.

Luna looks at me. “What?” She asks, not understanding.

I sigh. “I’m sick of all this brooding and procrastinating we’ve both been doing. Can we just forget all that and be friends again Luna?” I ask her.

Luna looks at me as if I’d just said the moon is made of cheese. “I-Baelor, it’s just not that simple.” She says sadly.

“I think the only reason it’s not that simple is because we’re not letting it be. We’re letting our fear get the better of us when instead we should be spending time with each other and helping each other get over our issues as they crop up.” I say.

“What makes you think that that’s how we should be handling it?” She asks me with a frown.

I look her in the eyes. “Because that’s what friends do. We help each other when we need it.” I say.

For a moment, she looks at me in bewilderment. Then she turns her gaze away from mine to look down at the ground. “You would be better off with getting help from your other friends. They did manage to save you from myself, after all.” She murmurs.

“But they can’t help me with this. No one but you can.” I tell her.

Luna looks up sharply. “How? How can I, the one who put you through so much, be the only one who can help you?!” Luna demands.

“Because you’re the only one that truly understands how much you put me through.” I say with certainty. Then I slump downwards in depression. “And how much I put you through as well.” I add.

Luna doesn’t respond so I continue. “No one around me gets it. They hear me say that I fought you for a thousand years, but they don’t seem to understand that I don’t hate you for it. They don’t know why I can be afraid of you, yet want to set things right. They don’t understand just how horrible what I did to you was. They listen to what I say and think that what we did was bad, but they don’t have any frame of reference for what we felt, what we experienced, or even how unbelievable it is that either one of us is still sane after everything is said and done.”

“And more than anything else… I miss you Luna. I miss our friendship.” I finish a sorrowful expression directed at Luna.

Those words seem to strike Luna through the heart. Her lips close together tightly, her ears fold back, and her eyes waver from moisture building up behind them. “I… I miss it too.” She croaks out.

My expression turns sympathetic and I smile slightly at the sight. Luna’s always been prideful. Even after she learned to real it in, the fact that she’s almost on the verge of tears right now makes me realize just how much she’s been hurting from everything. Probably even more than I was.

“So… does that mean you’re willing to give it a chance again?” I ask her with a comforting smile.

Luna sniffs and, to my surprise, allows her head droop down to rest her face on my side, her horn resting along the back of my neck.

Uh…

Luna… is crying on my shoulder.

… this is new.

I mean, I know this is a big emotional moment for her, and for me too, but her positioning is just plain awkward and I’m not sure how I’m supposed to react. I’ve never had a girl cry on me before!

Wait, this is sounding like one of those clichéd, comforting someone sad, shipping moments from bad fanfics. Is she falling for me? Am I falling for her?!

…

…

…

Nope, definitely not that. I don’t feel anything different. No fluttering in my chest or anything like that. No butterflies in my stomach or any of those sappy “budding romance” signs I’m expecting. I’m just caught off guard at the situation is all.

So… I guess I’ll just act as normal then.

And act as normal I do, and I sit there next to Luna, allowing her to let out what she’s been building up inside herself.

She’s not sobbing or anything. She’s just sort of… resting her head on me with tears flowing down my shoulder scales. But even so, I remain quiet, and let her let it all out for as long as she wants. I even sort of half-embrace her with my wing.

I can tell she needs it; some kind of gesture to say I’m okay with her, I mean.

After a bit, she lifts herself back off of me, looking down at her hooves. “I’m sorry.” She apologizes, having cried herself out.

I smile comfortingly. “Don’t be. We all need to let it out at some point. Friends are good substitutes for pillows when there aren’t any around.” I joke.

Luna smiles at and looks up to the horizon ahead of her. “I… didn’t think that I would be doing and saying these things when I came into your dream tonight.” She says.

“Do you regret coming in here since you have though?” I ask.

Luna sighs. “No, but I did come in here to talk to you about something specific. But it seems that the moment stole my attention away from it temporarily.” She says.

I nod. “Yeah, that’s definitely one thing that happened, at the very least.” I comment. “So what did you come in here to talk to me about?” I ask.

“I thought it prudent to tell you that Tia plans on asking you to accompany Captain Shining Armor on a sort of mission in a few days time.” Luna says.

I blink. “Oh-kaaaaaay… why?” I ask her, mildly confused.

Luna tilts her head. “Why am I telling you this, or why is my sister asking you to go on this mission?” She asks me back.

I shrug. “Both, I guess.” I answer.

Luna sighs again. “I suppose they are fairly closely linked. I recently learned about a special… group, and Tia has told me that you are joining the group as well.” She says.

I perk upwards, now more alert. “You mean the Awen Knights?” I ask.

“Yes, that sounds like the name she told me. Anyways, I believe she wants you to go with the Captain on his rather mundane mission as some sort of test. I am not quite sure of the exact reason though, I did not ask her.” Luna admits.

I take a moment to think before responding. “Is the mission going to be dangerous?” I ask her.

“I do not know. Neither does Celestia nor the Captain.” Luna answers.

I frown at this. “That doesn’t seem encouraging. Shouldn’t they know what they’re getting into before getting into it?” I wonder aloud.

“That seems to be the main purpose of the mission. To investigate and gather information.” Luna says.

I shake my head slightly. “Sorry, I’m having a hard time piecing this together in my head. I need the bigger picture explained to me. What exactly is the mission that Celestia wants me to go on?” I finally ask.

And so, Luna relays the conversation she heard Celestia and Shining Armor have. The report given by the mayor, the statistics Shining listed that gave rise to his suspicions, Celestia’s approval of his plan of action, and her own hope that I will be participating in the operation.

After she finishes telling me everything, I lean backwards to look slightly upwards in thought. “Huh…” I say simply.

“What is it?” Luna asks me.

“The city that Celestia wants me to go to, Clipago. It sounds a lot like my old home. A large city called Chicago.” I tell her.

Luna looks surprised. “Truly? That is very strange. What are the chances that two different worlds would have similar names for similar cities?” She wonders aloud.

“A lot bigger than you’d think. I’ve heard that nowadays, Equestria has cities named Manehattan and Fillydelphia. And back on my world we had cities named Manhattan and Philadelphia. If you take out the equine puns in the names, we’d have cities named exactly the same as each other.” I tell her.

“But,” I pause to relax my weight forward a bit. “That’s not exactly relevant to what we were talking about.” I say.

“It was definitely an interesting observation though.” Luna says with a smirk.

I smile right back at her. “Thanks.” I reply. Then I think a little more deeply. “Alright then. I’m in. When should I be ready to leave and from where?” I ask her.

Luna blinks. “You mean for the mission to Clipago? I have no idea. I merely wished to alert you to what my sister wished to tell you. Tia should send you all the necessary information within a day or two though.” She answers.

“So you basically just wanted to beat her to the bit then.” I state dryly.

She shrugs. “I suppose that is one way to put it.” She answers with no shame whatsoever. I roll my eyes. I guess sisterly rivalries never die, even after a thousand years.

“Speaking of my sister, would you mind helping me with something?” Luna asks me suddenly.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Since she hasn’t informed you of the mission yet, and since she does not know I have told you. Would you mind telling her, before she gets the chance to ask, that you accept? I believe her reaction will be very humorous.” Luna says with a smile.

I shrug. “Sure.” I say.

Then… I slowly grin as her plan sparks some inspiration in me. “Although, I don’t think it’ll be quite enough to get a reaction out of her. And she might just assume you told me anyway, since the timing is a little too convenient.” I tell her.

She blinks in confusion. “Then what else should we do?” She asks me.

My grin widens. “Dear Luna, how well do you think you know your sister, and do you think you could predict her bad habits during the day?” I ask her sweetly.

And then Luna’s devious grin matches mine.

The Next Day

The day after the Best Young Flyer’s Competition, Princess Celestia has just managed to raise the sun for the day. And already her mind is contemplating how to word her letter to Baelor to ask him if he would be able to go to Clipago for a brief period of time.

‘Let’s see…” Celestia muses in her thoughts. “obviously, I’m going to have to decide on a way to ask Twilight and Spike to not read it. But should I leave Baelor’s letter separate, with a label saying ‘To Baelor’ or should I include a letter to Twilight as well?”

Celestia walks to her desk, and smirks as a mischievous thought enters her mind. “Or perhaps I should just start a single letter with ‘Dear Baelor, Twilight, if you are reading this letter past this point, then I will be sorely disappointed in you. You should know better than to read another pony’s, or in this case dragon’s, mail without permission. Since you have obviously never learned this lesson before, then I hereby assign you a one-thousand word research essay detailing the implementation of-‘”

Celestia’s thoughts are interrupted by a whoosh of dragonflame delivering some mail for herself, to her surprise. She spares only a curious tilt of her head before picking it up and opening it up to read its contents.

Dear Princess Celestia,

I wanted to let you know that you should be ashamed of yourself! It is improper manners to scratch the undersides of your wings with a fork during mealtimes. I fully understand that sometimes, it’s just too much to bear, and I don’t begrudge you your ingenuity in how you handle the problem. And I’m fine with you using an illusion charm to conceal when you do it. No one has a problem if they don’t see it happen. But what I’m not okay with is the fact that you put the fork back on the table when you’re done with it. If it was your fork it’d still be fine, but nope, you use other ponies’ forks. I know that there’s a saying “for the love of Celestia” but nopony wants your feather dander in their mouths for the love of you!

Another thing is, you need to stop eating so many cakes, they’re going straight to your flanks, and they leave you in food comas for so long that I’m surprised the nobility hasn’t managed to catch on to this fact for one thousand years and tried to take your entire kingdom out from under you while you’re in these legendary food comas.

Also-

Celestia continues to read the extensive list of her smallest faults with a growing sense of bamboozlement. For all its offensive qualities though, she can’t seem to find herself able to feel insulted by being critiqued on her bad habits.

Well… actually, make that only mildly insulted.

After reading the letter for a solid ten minutes, she comes to the final line in the letter:

-And finally, I would like to say that I humbly accept your offer to go on that mission to Clipago with Captain Shining Armor of the Royal Guard. And I hope you have a pleasant day your Highness.

Sincerely, Baelor

Princess Celestia stares at the letter, not quite sure what to think at first.

Then she feels disappointed that she wouldn’t get to prank her student with her letter to Baelor.

Is it bad that she can’t get her mind off of pranks at the moment?

That line of thought is promptly ignored and replaced with a new idea for mischief. Celestia smiles with a barely restrained giggle at the idea this letter has just provided her.

The first thing she does, is to use a quick ink-cleansing spell to erase the last line on Baelor’s letter about his acceptance of the mission.

Then, after that, she pulls out some old grading supplies from a drawer in her desk. With a quick dab of a quill into her inkwell, Celestia then quickly scribes a small “10/10” at the top of the letter, circles it, and then pulls out a golden star sticker to stick on it, and right next to it, she scrawls the grade of “A+” onto the paper.

Celestia takes a moment to admire her work, before she rolls the letter back up again, and sends it back the way it came through Spike’s dragonflame delivery spell.

‘I’ll admit, you may have put me in check with that Baelor, and I don’t know how you did it. But with this, I call, “check-mate”. She thinks giddily while imagining her student reading his letter in horrific shock.

Oh, if only she could be there to see it herself.

Author's Notes:

BOOM! Another chapter done!

"Wowie! That was fast!"

Part of the reason for that was because I had an old fight scene lying around that I got inspired to write up to a certain point. I got Writer's block at the point it abruptly ends and since it was so much, I just saved it and kept it around filed under "Fight Scene(s) for Later" on my desktop. And then I just decided, "eh, screw it, I'll use this" and then just added in Luna and Bael's big sit down with each other. So a good chunk of this chapter was already done by the time I started it.

And now, I need to sit down for a bit.

"Okie dokey!"

...

"... Um, Falxy, are you going to actually si-"

*Whump!*

"-it down-nope! He's on the floor now."

"*huff-huff* Okay, I searched for as long as I could but I couldn't find Sombra anywhere out in north-east section of @#^%$%^@$LWE@%U%$@$... Oh, hey, Pinkie. What's up?"

"Hi Ictus! What was that word you just said?"

"Which word? Oh, you mean @#^%$%^@$LWE@%U%$@$? That's just what I call the uninterpretable nega-space of non-area outside this room."

"Oh, okay then. How is it out there by the way?"

"I have absolutely no clue."

"Huh?"

"That place makes no sense whatsoever. You know how Discord has his Chaos Realm thing where his house is? Yeah, that's got nothing on @#^%$%^@$LWE@%U%$@$. You can at least tell the general shape and texture of whatever you encounter in Discord's place. Out there though, it literally makes no sense in any way that my mind can comprehend. Hence, why I have no clue how it is out there, despite having already gone out there."

"Ohhhhhhhhh, so like Cthulhu an other Lovecraftian stuff."

"Yep, except it's stuff that's so incomprehensive that it can't be interpreted by our brains as tentacles and stuff, like with Cthulhu."

"Okay! By the way, are you still feeling okay? Still sane?"

"Pfft! As if I ever was!"

"Good!"

"By the way, why's Falx on the ground?"

"I think he tuckered himself out carrying Sombra back through the @#^%$%^@$LWE@%U%$@$ while bashing out another chapter. He's sleeping on the floor now."

"Oh sweet! That means I don't need to go back out there!"

"So where's Aevum?"

"Uhhhhhh... she's not back yet?"

"No."

"That's strange. Hmmmm... Eh I'm sure she's fine."

"Ictus..."

"Alright alright, fine. I'll go look for her in the @#^%$%^@$LWE@%U%$@$."