Celestia found herself in a desert. Well, she called it a desert, but it only resembled the desert’s of Equss she had come to know.

The sand was gray and grainy, and surprisingly sharp on her frogs as she walked forward. It didn’t roll into smooth dunes, but it sat, as if undisturbed since the primordial forces had first deposited it there. The air, if it could even be called that, was still, and tasted truly lifeless on her tongue as she breathed.

And the sky…

The sky was black.

So black that Celestia could’ve sworn it was a puddle of wet ink. The only solace she could take, was that it wasn’t ink where the tiny specks of distant stars speckled the sky.

But they seemed to follow Celestia as she trekked across this alien desert, like the eyes of paintings that were far too lifelike to merely be crushed dyes on canvas.

Despite the relative darkness, Celestia found she could see just as clearly as if her Sun was high in the sky. It felt strange, she could see her own shadow, but there seemed to be no source of light that cast it.

The alien landscape seemed to grate on her as she walked. Truly, there was nothing but the gray lifeless sand, and the stars that glinted like moist eyes...

That was until she crested a particularly large hill.

Celestia gasped in awe.

She must’ve crested a small mountain, because below lay a set of buildings eerily similar to ones she had seen in Abyssia. ‘Obelisks’ if she recalled correctly. And a single ‘pyramid’.

Celestia was certain of that at least. There could be no mistaking the truly impressive structure below. Whereas the Abyssian pyramid had been built by stacking blocks of limestone, this strange structure seemed to have been polished to a perfectly smooth sheen. From this distance, it seemed to Celestia that the pyramid below had been carved from a single, titanic rock.

It was so out of place in this lifeless desert, that she felt her stomach do small cartwheels in her belly. Something about the structure just felt… Wrong.

Despite her misgivings however, Celestia found her hooves moving down the gray grainy slope before she could turn around and walk away.

The obelisks, Celestia noted as she approached, were arrayed neatly. Three on each side, so they led directly to the base of the pyramid. As she neared the closest one, she confirmed to herself that the structures truly were polished smooth.

The fact that the Abyssian obelisks were typically covered in hieroglyphics made itself known in her mind, but she pushed the thought away. The craftponyship of the obelisks was truly something to behold, and yet… They felt like merely an invitation to Celestia.

An invitation to walk towards the pyramid.

But strangely, Celestia could see no distinguishing feature on the pyramid that would suggest an entrace.

By now, she walked past and between the two outermost obelisks. In her mind’s eye, she could almost see a resplendent courtyard between the towers. A path that wasn’t so much hard packed by the weight of constant traffic, as purposefully leveled and kept clear by a strange people.

But the almost-vision was gone in an eyeblink.

If it was a vision of the past, or her own imagination, Celestia had a feeling she would never know.

So she continued.

As she walked down the path between the obelisks she realized with a start that the Moon was high overhead, directly above the tallest point of the pyramid.

Except it wasn’t the Moon.

Or at least, it wasn’t the Moon she was familiar with.

The orb that sat imperiously high in the inky black was mottled with a vibrant blue and verdant green, with a splash of brown along one chunk of green, and a single portion of gleaming white.

Celestia found it strange, she did not recall seeing the odd moon before she crested the hill, and yet it seemed startlingly familiar to her. But she could not recall where she would’ve seen such a moon before. Where could’ve-

Memories of countless nights, pouring over maps by candle and bonfire light. Maps of the North, of Griffinstone and her territories, of the Dragon Lands.

Of Equestria.

A sense of vertigo crashed into Celestia, threatening to push her into the lifeless gray sand below.

The Moon…

She was on the Moon…

That meant…

All at once, she saw the moon, or rather, her world, high above. The only obelisks she could see from this angle flanked the gigantic structure like ancient sentinels from a long forgotten era.

And the pyramid?

The pyramid now had a dark opening, centered perfectly both on the pyramid itself, and between the obelisks.

If she was on the Moon… then…

Her heartbeat roared in her ears as darkness began to creep along the edges of her vision. In the distance, she heard the cruel laughter of a silver mare.

If the maw of the pyramid were a pony, Celestia would’ve sworn it was beckoning.

“Come.” it all but seemed to say.

She wanted to scream, to shout, to turn around and run away. Give anything, do anything to not go inside.

And yet…

She wanted to enter, very dearly. She would’ve given anything, do anything to see the pony that most assuredly was inside.

It wasn’t even any magical effect; Celestia could literally feel her mind naturally turning on itself as it wrestled with the wants and desires that conflicted so harshly.

Was it possible to want something so badly, and yet dread the very thing she wanted?

Yes, she discovered. It was very possible.

Her hooves grew minds of their own against her will, and started walking towards the dark opening. As she approached, her mind wrestled with itself.

Go back.

Keep going.

Go back.

Keep going.

Go BACK.

Keep GOING.

Go BACK.

Keep GOING.

All too soon, and yet not nearly long enough, Celestia stood directly at the base of the pyramid. It's dark opening, square and perfectly angled, just like the pyramid itself. She finally forced her hooves to stop as she stared into the pyramid’s dark depths. The inky black sky above, with its stars that glinted a bit too much like an eye moving in its socket, seemed tame compared to what lay inside.

The darkness seemed absolute, totally and utterly. It felt to Celestia that she could shine a ray of sunlight down into it and still not pierce its secrets. Even worse, occasionally she thought she saw the darkness twitch somehow out of the corner of her eye, making the darkness seem alive somehow in a way that Celestia found she didn’t quite have the words to describe.

The almost imperceptible silhouette of a dark Alicorn mare silently turned away from the square entrance.

Celestia almost didn’t see her. Yet she couldn’t have been more than one or two standard pony lengths away… The darkness had just been that thick.

“Wait no! Luna!” Celestia cried out as she dove into the darkness, heedless of her own inhibitions mere seconds ago.