Twilight was alone in the darkness, standing on nothing that she could see, but not floating. There something beneath her… but she had no idea about any other barriers.

“Princess, it’s so… dark.” Her voice echoed through… wherever this was, seeming to linger on forever in the quiet void. She’d read once, when assigned a report on this particular spell, that entering into another’s mind was usually overwhelming to the unprepared. The books had described whirlwinds of thoughts and images and powerful emotions, but never something like this.

[I can feel the thoughts that swirl in thy head, Twilight. It is not what thou anticipated of my mind. Perhaps the Element of Laughter was in the right to refer to me in terms of night and dark. Maybe all my mind is such.] Her quiet voice in Twilight’s ear was deafening. It was everywhere, but still soft, filling everything that existed in this environment. Twilight could feel it in her bones and she grimaced at this strange invasion. [We- I am sorry, my friend. I jest and I know this is unpleasant for th-you. I am trying to hold back my memories from you. There is so much in my mind, and I fear for you if it was all released due to my in inexperience. I will try to begin… I will be unable to talk to you or answer any questions unless I take you out of my memory.]

There was light ahead of her now, bright and white and growing quickly. Wind from the darkness pushed at her, blowing her mane back and making her eyes tear up. The blowing wind grew harsh, wild, sharp. As she opened her mouth to cry out in pain, the light swallowed her up and—

She was Starry Skies, a Pegasus, and she bucking loved the sky.

She loved it, loved the feel of the wind against her blue mane and the rush of energy that flooded her as she dove or climbed. Order and Chaos, the view of the mountains! She could almost see home from here, back down the long road.

If it were up to this filly, she would never leave the sky, day or night. Her father, Cloudy Skies, had been teaching her to manipulate the clouds recently, and when he was back home on the ground she would sometimes try to make blocks and shapes out of cloudstuff. She never had to leave, not really-

“Starry, will thou not wait for me? I am not quite as fast as thou are!” cried a voice from below and behind. The Pegasus filly turned around and raced back towards the source of the voice.

Her sister, Sunny Skies, had not made good progress on the ground below. At least, Starry reflected sheepishly, the unicorn had not made good progress by Starry’s standards. She landed in front of her, folded her wings up, and grinned sheepishly. “Forgive me, sister, I forget myself in the skies.”

“It is nothing between us, Starry. Come, sister, fly beside me and we’ll away—“

She was Twilight again and looking out the eyes of what she realized was a much younger Luna. Shock flooded her, and if she had anything besides just her consciousness, she would’ve been gaping. Luna— or Starry Skies— had no horn. Sunny… Celestia had no wings. What was going on here?

Starry (she’d managed to divorce her thoughts from the younger Luna’s enough to hear both trains of thought.) and her sister continued to make their way on the mountain road towards their eventual destination of… somewhere. Starry wasn’t focused on it, nor named the place, so Twilight had no idea where the sisters were headed.

Time passed faster now, the two sisters making better progress as the road led them into a valley that Twilight recognized. This was the valley Ponyville inhabited, she was sure of it! There, far off in the distance, she could see evidence of cloudhomes in what must have been the beginnings of Cloudsdale and on the side of the mountains on the other end of the valley she could see the much smaller and far uglier Canterlot Fortress, mountain stronghold of the Unicorn monarchs of ancient Equestria.

Twilight watched through Starry’s eyes as she and Sunny came down from the mountains to visit the town below, as they would do again over the years. This town held a special place in their hearts: she saw how they met the first ponies outside of their family here. She felt the quiet delight of a shared treat after a long day of walking and shopping, shared warm cider in the winter, inquiring adults who treated them kindly. It was a town of Earth ponies who found the presence of both a Unicorn and a Pegasus together to be a diverting oddity, and the two young mares were always welcome. Oftentimes, Sunny changed their appearances, using illusion magic to change their manes and coloring and cutie marks, hiding her own sun and Starry’s moon. Even though the town didn’t truly know them, they felt like they knew the town, and they loved it.

The town was named Ponyville.

Twilight was shocked to discover this. Ponyville, she knew, was by no means an ancient town. It was only a few generations old, with the Apple family’s business attracting other settlers during the Royal Settlement Act. Faintly, she could almost hear the knowledge worming its way into her head, supplied by Luna’s mind. The original Ponyville had been destroyed during the long fight with Discord, swept away when the dam above the town was destroyed.

The scholar in Twilight loved it, and the young mare took in and committed as much to memory as she could. Starry loved it as well, and when she and her sister returned to their parents and their cottage up in the mountains, she dreamed of living in Ponyville below, helping control the wild, Chaos-torn weather and making new friends of the fillies and colts she had only been able to speak with for a short time or see from a distance. If Sunny was attached to the hamlet to such a degree, she didn’t show it. Starry simply couldn’t understand her older sibling’s preference for study and contemplation. They had all the time in the world, didn’t they?

—Twilight stumbled out of the light, gasping. Once again, she was in the void, this time accompanied by Luna, who sat quietly before her. In the darkness, it was hard to make her out, and Twilight focused on those soulful, watchful eyes. “Twilight Sparkle, you have seen us as we once were.”

“So the theories that you became Alicorns later are true… I saw, yes. You were different then, Princess.” It was perhaps not her most polite moment, but the difference was shocking. In the time she’d shared the younger mind’s thoughts and feelings, it had been like living inside of Rainbow Dash’s head.

“We changed, Element of Magic. Our trials began when I finally reached true marehood, and my sister and I set off south to find the Blasted Peak. When we found a week later, my wings were bruised and half useless, we’d lost most of our food, and my sister’s magic was becoming strained. Discord ruled firmly then, establishing himself in areas for a year or more to hold his vile court, spreading chaos as Equestria’s legitimate monarch. Through his devilish trickery he secured that throne… our throne. My sister and I were the true heirs to the throne, last minute additions to the dying King’s will as he forgave a wayward daughter who’d run off with a dashing Pegasus buck. His change of heart was too late for Equestria in some ways, but the good he wished for came to pass regardless. Without us there, the loose but still obscure Discord became regent as the unicorn Evanescent Image.”

“What trials, Princess?” Twilight sat before her, enthralled. This is more than she had ever dared to hear about her mentor and her mentor’s beloved sister. She felt a warm happiness inside, despite the grim news of the day and the somewhat unhappy subject matter: Luna trusted her enough to tell her things which she had told no other pony in a long time.

Twilight was suddenly Starry again as white light swallowed up her sight and feeling—

Every part of her ached. Her stomach was empty and complaining bitterly. The wings folded against her side had cramped up and been useless the last few times she’d tried to fly up to get a better perspective. Everything, generally, was terrible.

But that all began to fade away as they came at last to the long stairway carved into the rough stone of the mountain. Sunny stopped before them, her breath catching as she looked up the long winding stairs that would lead up to the sanctuary. “Sister… at last. Soon this shall all be over. Are you not excited, my bestarréd sky?” The light pink mare grinned wide and laughed. Her voice was a little ragged, and the fatigue of travel had obviously taken its toll on her. Fleeing a Snow troll two days before and fighting off a young dragon hadn’t helped either.

“I am… I suppose. Not as ready for this, surely, as thou seem to be.” Starry’s reply was delivered with a smile, but it was nonetheless guarded. She didn’t look forward to this, not at all. She hadn’t prepared, she wasn’t ready! She knew little about the magic that her older sister commanded with such finesse. Age had mellowed her, but not given her the propensity for study and contemplation she wished for so fervently. Only in hindsight had the inattention of her fillyhood seemed a bad decision. Years later, a young court bard would tell her with sad smile that that was how things always seemed to be going. He had been such a nice young stallion…

Twilight would’ve said something if she could have, but she no mouth in this dreamlike memory. If she had been able to, she would’ve called out that the princess needed to focus and stay in the present…er, the past-present.

Stair by stair, they closed the gap between themselves and the ancient Sanctuary of Order. Starry could feel every pulse of her heart in her throat, hear every tiny noise of hooves tapping against stone like it was right against her ear. Her wings itched to fly, almost begging her to fly off and leave this place.

But she didn’t leave. Her sister going ahead, the two young mares entered the sanctuary. The large chamber inside was dimly lit by four torches, with two on either wall. Sunny whispered something about magic and stepped further into the completely empty chamber. Starry held back, apprehensive still. She’d been expecting… ruins, perhaps? Artifacts? The room was too empty, too simple. At the other end was a large wooden door and between the sets of torches on either side of the large square room were two smaller doors. It made her nervous, the lack of, well, anything, and she said so bluntly.

“Sister, be not frightened. Verily, if thou will be for me brave just another moment, I’ll show thee—“ The light pink unicorn had trotted ahead, helping the dim magical torches with a new light of her own. Something snapped and the floor between them gave way. The walls faded and were replaced by intense light. From the new void between them shone more light. Both mares screamed and called for each other, but it was to no avail. Starry spread her wings and jumped.

And Twilight was curled up on her side, aching. “Princess… what was that?”

“The trials. I cannot show you exactly what took place. It is not only private, but also not completely mine to share. Higher powers refuse me permission to speak of it except to a sister.” Something in that word made her pause and she sighed. “But I can tell you what I learned. The sanctuary or temple, whichever, has only one purpose: to imbue ponies with the Elements of Harmony. That is exactly what it did for us: I received the elements of Magic, Honesty, and Kindness. My sister was entrusted with Laughter, Loyalty, and Generosity. We both received exactly what we needed, I think.” The darkly colored alicorn didn’t seem to want to elaborate any further and she fidgeted. Finally, she spoke again.

“Twilight Sparkle, Element of Magic, I have a story to tell you. It is… long, but I think I can shorten it to fit the constraints of time upon us. If it is not told you, then the next few months and years will be very confusing. I fear that the only good time to tell you is now, when thou and I are here where there is no time to be used up or wasted. Do you understand?”

“Not really, no.” Twilight stretched, feeling the phantom pains of cramped wings. She shook herself and tried to contain her irritation and listen calmly. “Look, Princess Luna, I would love to hear this, but I’m worried about my friends and Equestria. Can’t you simply tell me what needs to be done, or boil all this down to a quick point? I promise, I’ll come back and—“

“Equestria isn’t in any danger at all, Twilight. Not yet.”

The unicorn simply stopped, confused. She stared at the younger of the two royal alicorns and tried to piece together a sentence. “No danger at all.” Her voice was flat.

“None. Twilight, what are my duties as Princess? What am I patroness of, specifically?”

“I… well, the night. The moon, the stars… I’ve got nothing, Princess. I don’t understand where you’re going with this, exactly. I mean, the problems seem to mostly be happening on the ground and I would hope you would know about the Nightmares, because they came out at night and that was decidedly dangerous,” Twilight babbled on.

“Dreams,” Luna answered simply. “Twilight, have you not felt bewildered by how all this happened seemingly out of nowhere? I know what’s wrong, Twilight, because the source of all of our problems is a single dream. Did you have a strange dream last night?” the Princess’s voice was soft, but Twilight lost any attitude she may have had as she heard the rough edge underneath that quiet exterior.

“Yes.”

The single syllable hung on the nothingness between and around them. It reverberated, wandered, twisted in ways that Twilight could not explain.

“So did my sister. When a God has a dream, Twilight, things are… different. So I am going to tell th-you a story, and I will be brief and when we awake thou and I will have a conversation with an emotional, distressed, and grieving Goddess.” Twilight nodded, suddenly more aware than ever before that Luna was just as much of a Goddess figure as her sister. The darkness they inhabited together here swirled as the Patronness of the Night began her tale.

“I had to tell most of my tale to my sister after we awoke with the Elements, for my affinity with the moon was what gave me the right to hear and see it all.” The lunar surface appeared all around them, but Twilight noticed that it was different. It was closer to desert, with small shrubs and dry trees dotting the landscape. In the distance, she could almost catch the telltale signs of cooking fires’ smoke against the star-filled night.

“Ponies originally inhabited the moon above us, Twilight Sparkle. Thy research will have not told ye-you of it, but it is the truth. In those ancient days, Order and Chaos strove against each other in the background, but not with the force of later confrontations. Think of it as… if you put your hoof up against mine and we just leaned against each other, lazily...”

The moon’s surface was not barren, but it provided only after much work. The ponies who lived here and farmed these rocky lands were alicorns, colored grey and white and black, darker combinations of colors but not unlovely ones. They thanked Order for their prosperity when it came and when it didn’t they were slow to blame Chaos, the tiny niggling fear of the dreaded force lying in the core of their hearts. But there was little to fear.

As time went on, the struggle of Order and Chaos became more intense. Gradually, it evolved away from the pull of tides and forming of the swirling planet below into a more personal form: battle by champion. For Order, a stallion would be born with a destiny mark on either flank, the image of a white cross. The village of his birth would know his destiny immediately: no others were born with such pictures adorning them. When he was old enough, his foe would once again rise from long sleep and Discord, the avatar of Chaos, would begin his assault.

Well, perhaps assault was too harsh a word.

Always, it was the struggle of Stallion and foal. The Champion of Order would be fully grown and brave and filled with righteousness and knowledge and the child-avatar of Chaos, Discord, would be simply a pony or other animal given voice who was ignorant of the world. His games and tricks were rarely disastrous at first, and often in those early ages vanquishing him was similar to punishing a child, albeit one with extraordinary wild magic.

But the child grew up and with every incarnation he changed from the alicorn colt he had been in the beginning, almost treated with amusement. Finally, Chaos dumped him into the world as a mixed up monster, gangly and mismatched as he would later be, and the duel of the champions began again. Discord was excited, wanting this competition to be the best yet, to be the one that would make inevitably losing worth it. Winning was never something he contemplated. He assumed he would always lose, and he only cared that he had fun in the meantime.

So when the Champion of Order entered Discord’s rough-hewn mountain temple only to die in one of the many traps, the Chaotic being had no idea what to do. He stared, he tried to rouse his adversary, he even cried at one point. He didn’t understand what happened now. He had no purpose, nothing to strive for, his only goal taken away… until he heard the frightened whispers of the ponies below. He heard and felt and smelt their fear and something in him loved it. He grinned a wide, predatory grin and he flew out of the cave cackling madly, telling them all what had happened. There was chaos as ponies scattered in tears in all directions.

Dark times came, and Discord made the Moon’s rough landscape even harsher. Creatures, twisted from the natural livestock, spread and devoured. Ponies prayed for another Champion and looked up at Earth, hoping beyond hope for something in that planet they could hardly name. All of their prayers were answered.

Six friends came to the temple where lay the body of Champion, his body preserved on a whim by the magic of Discord, and they fell into a deep mystic sleep, sharing the same dream. They were told by a quiet voice that the Moon was to be no longer their home, and that they had a terrible task to take up that would cost them all. When they awoke, the body of Champion, that brave pony, glowed and broke down into light, dividing into six parts. These six parts were the Elements of Harmony, the six characteristics that shone most brightly in that last of Champions. The cost extracted was that each of them lost something. They were the first earth ponies, pegasi, and unicorns.

“You can guess the rest. From there, they imprisoned Discord in the Lunar Aether, the sea of mystic mist underneath the moon’s surface. It is the land of dreams, as it were, Twilight Sparkle, and it is where all of the missing are, sleeping and safe. But before they locked him away, they stole much of his power and used it to escape their dying world to come here. Each pony who left the moon became one of the three modern tribes of ponies and gained a cutie mark in time. What they failed to realize was that using Discord’s power had given him a way out, if only a chancy way. The magic was still personalized, still connected to him, and he used it like one might use a rope or a bridge.

“Celestia and I were several generations later, the new bearers of the Elements, prophesied to save the new land of Equestria from the fifty year reign of Discord. We defeated him, but his magic was still in the air. It never leaves, not completely, though it is usually harmless. Even now, with Discord in stone, his power lingers on the land. It attached itself to the great Net my sister and I weaved in the first year of our reign.”

“The Net?” Twilight was almost numb with shock. What she’d heard— what she had seen— No pony in a thousand years had any idea about any of this except for two immortal sisters. Twilight was learning things that she could never, ever have imagined and despite herself her heart beat fast with the excitement of the moment.

“She will explain that part. It is the last piece of the large puzzle. You need only know, now, that Discord’s magic is everywhere, lying dormant and useless in the mountains and plains and orchards of Equestria. It is also deep in the core of the elements, though we never speak of that. Recall you that the body was preserved through the magic of Discord? In the heart of your Element, Twilight Sparkle, is a tiny seed of Chaos. The true secret of Harmony is… well, you’ll learn it one day. Just know that the magic is widespread.”

Twilight and Luna sat alone on the now empty lunar plain. There was no wind to blow over the empty surface, and no sound of hoof or speech. The atmosphere had given way to the cold of space months after the great Exodus, and she’d watched it all in fast motion around her. A question formed on Twilight’s tongue, and she spoke it aloud. “Princess, this is where you lived out your… sentence?”

Luna shook her head. “No, I slept and dreamed in the aether. My pool was deep below the great Temple of Order. Do you see it?” she gestured to a crumbling stone ruin on the face of one of the mountains. “Most of it I spent asleep. When I awoke, little had changed in me. The wild magic emanating from those tiny seeds of chaos that I had twisted to outright evil still had control over my mind. It was… terribly lonely.”

“I’ve always been glad that we were able to free you completely, Pr… Luna. Celestia told me later that she had thought freeing you that way would be beyond us.”

“I am glad as well, Twilight Sparkle.” Luna smiled softly and trotted closer, nuzzling the smaller unicorn shyly. “Thank you.” The alicorn coughed, embarrassed, and moved to stand beside Twilight. “When this is over, I would like to get to know you better. I suspect that thou and I will be seeing much of each other in the coming months. Few have seen what true isolation in a place such as this is like. Are you ready to see my sister? Your friend Fluttershy is trying to wake us.”

Twilight nodded, and the moon disappeared.

Next Chapter: Chapter 6 Estimated time remaining: 28 Minutes