Since Nightmare Moon is more-or-less accustomed to the new Pony talklingingy, I won't be italicizing them anymore. However, I will be doing that when she, Sunny, or another character speak in her original dialect, but in full italics. If other languages come into effect I'll have to color them. There's only so much that can be done.

Worried this story won't have the same traction as the previous one. Sequels never get much attention :c

Nightmare Moon looked on from the top of the keep, taking in the construction and restoration of her new castle. Three extra walls were being built around her castle, and each would be thicker and better defended than the last, but only the first would be partially hollow, allowing siege defense weaponry to be installed. Much to the alicorn's disappointment, none had been made yet.

"They can make steam pipes but can't carve wood and tie some strings," she grumbled to herself.

The alicorn was haunted by the battle eight months ago against the one that sought to erase her and all of Equestria's past. Her body tensed at the memories. He couldn't hold the magic in his body but he could wield it, and his declarations were cryptic at best. He was just a scapegoat for whatever group existed at the time, so they did something to the other immortals. She contemplated the information and groaned. While the current queen of changelings was receptive to Nightmare Moon's demands, she had no knowledge of the queens of the past beyond two generations. That broken pony couldn't have gone throughout the whole of Equestria on his own despite his immortality. His broken body wouldn't have allowed it, and others would have been quick to catch onto his actions.

"Some are missing a piece to a puzzle they can't solve..." Moon muttered to herself. She grit her teeth. "I'm playing with a ten thousand-piece board and only have seven pieces in the box," she growled angrily.

"Queen Nightmare Moon," a pegasus guard called out.

The alicorn turned to face the armored pony bowing before her and rolled her eyes. "I told you to continue calling me 'princess' when you're in disguise. I need to be rid of the king and queen first before retaking the throne of Equestria and proclaiming my title. I thought I explained it all to you bugs."

The 'guard' bowed their head. "Apologies, Princess. It was my own assumption that--"

"Don't assume," Moon chastised firmly. "Until I say you can change your approach, you keep to the standard." She walked towards the edge of the keep and watched the masons arguing about a blueprint. "What do you want?"

"I am just giving you a weekly report. Queen Hepetia wishes to inform you of the activities of the Equestrian Royal...Of the false royal family."

"Hmmm...What is it? I have things to mull over."

The changeling pulled out a scroll from its saddlebag and unfurled it. "It seems that he and the queen have divided themselves into two. Their campaign to disprove your existence continues, although we learned that they hadn't initiated it." Moon raised a brow and looked at the bug, intrigued. The changeling shrunk under her gaze. "We...We haven't been able to find who suggested it or if even any...pony suggested it at all. The king and queen stay in their chambers for a while then come back out with several sheets of paper. They let no one look at them."

"And the queen is deaf, so there's no point in trying to hear what she has to say," Moon mused.

"We also haven't found any traces of this so-called 'Solar Tyrant' or any other alicorns being born."

Moon nodded. "Thank you, for this information. Now leave."

The changeling nodded. "The queen will be meeting with you this afternoon," it said before leaving.

The alicorn groaned and sat down, taking in her surroundings a little more. The outer two walls had yet to be fully built. The gatehouses covering the new bridges had been finished, sure, but only a few, very small sections were built up. The rest were just the foundations that had been dug out or built with extra stones to even them out with the trenches. Moon contemplated the broken pony again. For some reason that eluded her, even after all this time, he haunted her. His face, his behavior, his past. He was incompetent all the way through, and yet his life felt...familiar. A broken relic of a time long passed. It was worth a ballad of irony.

Moon shook her head. She needed to focus. Now she had the king and queen to contend with, having dared to oppose her vassalization of their family and reclaiming of their kingdom. Perhaps the queen had more news regarding that and her unsavory allies with the griffins. The weird parrot creature that reeked of chaos and the minotaur. The alicorn felt a shock in her brain. 'Neutrality'. Whatever that meant. She mulled over the idea many times, but only after being reminded of the bird did she realize that the magics of Discord and Accord hadn't been destroyed, only the ones that wielded them. The bird was touched by chaos, but she wasn't completely saturated in it.

"I'll have to take some notes..." Moon pondered aloud.

Another guard came by, saluting the mare. "Your highness, Sunny is here. Should I bring him to you or will you join him within the throne room?"

Moon hummed to herself before answering. "I will have him join me in the throne room."

The guard nodded and jumped off the roof to glide down softly. Moon went down the steps leading to the roof and opened up into a small corridor meant to separate her room from the outside. Her room was currently filled with unfinished, wooden furniture. Woodworkers, sculptors, and seamstresses were deciding which wood to use, the color, the type of tissue to employ, and so forth. As long as they adhered to what the alicorn wanted, she didn't care what they did.

The throne room, however, was a different story. It had been fully decorated. While no guards were guarding it yet, not that they had a reason to, everything Moon had wanted was installed. Well, all but the stained glass windows. A long, night blue carpet led all the way from the entrance to her new throne. Its sides were trimmed with silver, and the pathway itself had been decorated with sewn-in scenes of Nightmare Moon's exploits since she had returned, from the day of her awakening to her fight against the 'imposter'. She would commission a new carpet once there was more, and then she would have to think of an alternate way of surrounding herself with her successes. The ceiling was permanently enchanted by the alicorn's magic to always resemble the night sky and display the various moons she was now linked to. They would fade in and out of view as the magic changed itself and would reappear in different places in different positions.

Immense banners had been hung to cover the long windows. Each displayed a single crescent moon on a night-blue background with silver-colored trim. It was simple, and Nightmare Moon wanted to change it, although she wasn't sure to what, yet. They had been woven with glow worm silk that helped illuminate the throne room in a silvery light. The natural glow of the silk plus the spell on the ceiling caused little white sprites to populate all the empty space they could reach, though they could not be interacted with. It was like hundreds of little fireflies chose the keep as their hive. Ironic, considering Moon's new allies.

Nightmare Moon flew towards her throne and admired it briefly before sitting in it. The seat was elongated to allow her to lie down upon it if she so chose, but a backrest was still present to display her flying high and being surrounded by a vortex. It imitated her so-called 'rebirth' into the new era. As with the rest of the motif, the main stones of the throne had been painted a night blue. Several sparkling white dots made from gems were encrusted into the backrest, the sides, and the edges of the throne were made from silver molded into flowing, cloud-shaped patterns.

The alicorn sat upon the blue cushion of her seat and snuggled herself in while sporting a silly smile. Had anyone but Sunny been present she would have executed them for having seen such an expression of joy and serenity.

Moon raised a brow. "Graduated yet?" she asked Sunny.

The unicorn chuckled nervously. "No. I just passed to the next year of my studies. Because of everything I learned from you they gave me bonus credits for next year. I'll only have to do half a year of work now," he said proudly. "A lot of the judges came from outside Snowfege so they didn't believe a lot of my thesis."

Sunny Dimples was met with a confused head shake. "What are these 'credits'? Is it yet another currency I'm unaware of?"

The unicorn was taken aback. "Wh...Didn't you have universities?"

"We had theaters where the philosophers would take their students and whine about life," she said dismissively. "I can accelerate your graduation fr--"

"No!" Sunny shouted. He noticed the alicorn's surprise and cleared his throat. "I would rather do the hard work myself for a sense of accomplishment."

Moon grumbled in response. "Very well. That is a laudable goal. I would rather have one smart pony by my side than a dozen loyal imbeciles." She leaned to the side and trailed one of the floating lights with her eyes. "Your parents should be able to come here in a few months' time. The guest quarters are almost finished," she said. "Being partially responsible for mining operations in that area could prove valuable since everypony knows them already," she thought aloud. The unicorn's nervous fidgeting became annoying. "What is it? Do you need to go to the bathroom? Should I 'give you permission' like you're some kind of foal?" the alicorn bellowed angrily.

"That's not it!" Sunny defended quickly. "I just feel nervous being at your castle again and being surrounded by all this weird magic." He glanced around his shoulders and cleared his throat. "I'm scared the king and queen are going to try and kill us again," the unicorn whispered to the alicorn.

Moon sat upright and laughed. "They have already tried, Sunny!"

Moon's nephew paled. "What? But I never...How? When?"

"When my drones spotted the would-be assassins," a deep and feminine voice explained.

Sunny turned to see giant green eyes looking straight at him. He screamed and rolled away inadvertently from the surprise, leaving the changeling queen to laugh heartily from the unexpected reaction. Nightmare Moon was less impressed and pressed her head against her hoof.

"This is the one you wanted me to help defend?" She puffed at him, doing her best to hold back another laughing fit. "I have no idea what you see in him."

"What is she?!" Sunny spouted.

"She is Queen Hepetia of the changelings. Her hive is in the former castle of the Solar Tyrant," Moon presented. "I suggest you be on your best behavior around my guest and ally."

"I'd rather not learn that he's another evil alicorn come to fight you and kill thousands of my drones in the crossfire because they couldn't escape to the lowest levels in time," the queen mused.

Moon's eyes glowed fiercely. "You know I had no say in the matter."

"What?" Sunny muttered with confusion.

Moon grit her teeth. "I had a fight with a false alicorn next to their hive." She rubbed her forehead. "It got out of hoof and some...destruction followed suit. Landscapes destroyed, mountains melted, and so on."

Sunny blinked several times and narrowed his gaze. "I think you're...I'm missing a lot of context here. Could you explain further?"

The queen cracked her joints in response. "A big fight we weren't expecting, everything warped around us, we fled to the deepest levels of the castle. Many didn't survive and were caught in the crossfire. The end," she stated with contempt towards the young unicorn." She sat down and stared absent-mindedly at the orbs floating around. "We're still trying to fix what's left of the hive. Amusingly, its twisted layout has made it a better place to hide away in." Hepetia waved the anger away. "Water under the bridge. We have already recovered the losses, and then some." The queen paused and began sniffing the air. "It smells...like pine cones and cinnamon?"

Annoyed groans reached the queen's ears. "I was hoping you wouldn't smell anything. The guards thought this place needed a new smell and burned something called 'incense' that comes from the east beyond the sea. I told them not to do it but they had to."

"It's very hard not to notice it," Hepetia mocked. "It stings the nostrils."

Sunny shrugged. "I still think it smells better than the dank, humid stench of rot and mushrooms this place had before."

He shrunk away when the two giants looked at him.

"I am just here to make sure my changelings are performing their tasks of subterfuge correctly," Hepetia explained.

"They have been working efficiently, but some are disrespectful," she growled.

Hepetia shrugged using her wings. "Not every creature is perfect, and I have hundreds of thousands of drones in my hive. I can't know how all of them will behave in any given situation."

Moon exhaled loudly but relented. Even she couldn't argue with that. "As for the reward, it is still as promised, although I could have your kind officially revealed and instead into pony society instead. You wouldn't need to hide anymore and solutions could be found to feed you better."

Sunny was shocked. The terrifying goddess of the moon was actually acting considerate towards somepony else, and they weren't even a pony!

"Thank you but I would rather you refrain from doing that. We could no longer be efficient at our infiltration, and the chances we could properly acquire love is...well, it wouldn't be of the same quality, now would it?" She smiled. "And then individual bugs would become fat, complacent, and selfish, like ponies."

"I would have said griffins," Moon said.

The changeling gestured in agreement. "Although it's not great, sugar is a good substitute."

Moon scratched her chin. "I looked into that. There seem to be several sugar farms south of here in the sea. If I retake and rejoin Equestria, we could do business in that regard." The queen glared at Moon and retook her stoic and proud stance. "I cannot, in good conscience, take the sugar from the hooves of my subjects for some unknowable goal. They would run out of business and you would no longer get any sugar to sustain your hive."

Sunny grimaced. Moon was feigning sympathy just to irritate the changeling. It was strange to see two rulers being passive-aggressive towards each other while still being helpful towards their shared goals. Was this politics? Politics were stupid if this was all it was about. The unicorn sighed internally and wished the mayor were here.

"Then I'll explore your h...city." The Queen was quick to correct herself. "Oh, and do come back to the hive. Your fight broke something beneath the castle. We have no idea what it is or means. Just a bunch of weird shapes melted into the walls and several red symbols scrawled all over." Moon raised a brow. "Then maybe your little friend there would be able to see the aftermath of a fight of a tall pony." She looked at the pony with a disturbing smile. "You can help us find victims. The rotting stench will clue you in," she mused.

The white unicorn nodded nervously. He frowned when she turned to leave. "Hey wait," Sunny realized. "How did you get in here when there's a ton of guards and workers outside? I had to go through five different checkpoints just to get in."

The queen faced Sunny and stared him down without blinking. "Look me in the eyes. No blinking," she said.

"Okay?"

Sunny struggled to keep his eyes open while the changeling stared at him, unflinching, like she was a statue.

"Struggling, pony?" she asked him.

"N-no." He eventually gave up and blinked, making his eyes burn in the process. Unfortunately for him, the changeling queen had vanished. The pony spun around, trying to find a trace of her, but she left nothing behind. "Where did she go?! How did she do that?!" Sunny worried.

Nightmare Moon shrugged. "Now that that is out of the way, what should I start with?" she mused to herself. "Attacking anypony now would be pointless." She grimaced. "I'll annex the forest of the thestrals since they're loyal to me, and get my chef in the process. Hmm...preferably without poison in the food this time."

"But...there's their hive and that strange thing hidden underneath it," Sunny said. "The thestrals aren't going anywhere."

Moon gave Sunny a glance. "You're just saying that because you want to see their hive."

"...Maybe, but I want to help them too."

The two exchanged looks for a moment before Nightmare Moon gave in. "Fine!" she complained. "The portal is deep in the dungeons below, so nopony but I and the changelings can use it. We'll go now, so hurry up."

Nightmare Moon grumbled as she moved the stones to the dungeon away, revealing a hole in the floor.

"There's no stairs?" Sunny asked.

"There are. This is just quicker."

The dungeon had been mostly cleaned compared to when Sunny had first seen it when Nightmare Moon imprisoned that loud noble. There was no longer algae and slime sloughing off the walls. The metal bars of the prisons were no longer rusted. They were now brand new bars of black metal that stank of paint and heat for some odd reason.

"It should be over here," Moon said.

The two went down another set of stairs and past a metal door that Moon opened with her magic. It was still empty, telling Sunny that nothing was even remotely ready at the castle yet. The alicorn repeated the same action with the stones of her throne room's floor with one of the walls and revealed the gray portal made by the changelings.

"That's the portal?" Sunny asked. He leaned forward from behind the alicorn. "Is it safe? It doesn't look...right."

"You chose to postpone my annexation of the thestrals, you don't get to question anything. In you go," she ordered.

The mare booted Sunny into the portal and followed in after the screaming unicorn.

"I can't see!" Sunny complained. "Where are we?" Doing his best to try and see through the blinding light, he could just barely make out a mountain. "I heard...what is that, clicking?" he wondered aloud. "Can you see anything?" he asked. He received no answer, however. "P-princess? Princess?!" he called out in panic.

"I'm here, stop yelling." Moon puffed. "Looks like they were about to eat you," she mused.

"Wh-who was what?"

"Here."

The light gradually faded to a more tolerable -albeit still bright- level. Letting his eyes adjust, the stallion jumped back when he saw the thousands of black, insect-like equines bordering the platform the portal was situated. More could be seen staring at him from the surface of the mountain and the inside of the castle itself. Sunny gulped nervously and felt his legs give way under the fear.

"There...there were so many already waiting..." Sunny trembled in fear. "I...uh...d-do we have to go there?" he asked nervously.

"Yes," Moon said with annoyance.

Sunny took a deep breath and forced himself up. He thought that he would be used to this sort of thing by now, but every time he went anywhere with the alicorn, weird things that he never expected always ended up occurring. Things that make him terrified. Things that could kill him in seconds if he wasn't vigilant.

"Through...the changelings?"

"Yes!" Moon shouted angrily. "Now stop your whinging and hurry up."

The bugs moved away when Nightmare Moon strut forward, although some still hissed and snapped at her and Sunny. One jumped out from the now-crooked mountain to the duo and bowed their head.

"What do we owe the honor of this visit?" the changeling asked.

"Your queen mentioned something you discovered beneath your hive during my...confrontation with the false alicorn."

The bug pondered a moment then raised their wings in realization. "Oh, of course! That thing..." It cleared its throat and gestured to the ponies to follow it. "Strangest thing I have ever seen, and I have infiltrated minotaur lands far to the east. Obsessed with weaponry, those ones. Kept in check by the griffins. Kinda fun to pit them against each other when we're bored."

Sunny was not doing well at the sight of this massive construct. The doorway had been snapped in several places and held together by a strange, sticky green goop that looked very organic. The interior wasn't faring much better and was filled with webbing and goop all over the place. The only locations he couldn't spot any were on the floor.

"I see you haven't had time to fix any of this," Moon commented.

The changeling heaved a tired sigh. "The damage was quite extensive, Princess. Not to mention that the work put into all of this is beyond any kind of masonry work we know. Techniques were used that have been lost to time."

"No doubt a result of those imbeciles the broken pony was part of," Moon complained.

The young unicorn found himself spinning around as he tried to take in the architecture around him and the few statues left that hadn't been torn apart. "So you made your hive in an old castle?" he asked. "Must be very old if you don't know the architecture."

"It's the castle of your many times great grandmother," Moon explained. She looked at Sunny. "Congratulations. By right this belongs to you and your family. You have your own castle."

"Y-you mean the Solar Tyrant?" Sunny stammered.

The alicorn bobbed her head left and right. "It's fifty-fifty whether it was the Solar Tyrant or my sister." She thought back to the charred diary she recovered from Canterlot's buried remains and frowned. "Although I have a pretty good idea of who had it made." She dragged a hoof across the weakened stone and checked the dust left on her. "It is an old place, but far younger than Canterlot."

"Belongs to him by right?!" the changeling shouted. Their outburst brought the attention of other drones working about the castle ruins. "You can't do that! We found this place first! You can't just st--"

Moon blocked their mouth with a hoof. "Relax. I have no intention of taking your home. I'm only interested in seeing what was buried beneath that you had yet to notice during the...many...long time you were," she muttered.

"O-oh. Okay." The changeling cleared their throat and ruffled their wings. "I see. I'm sorry. We just..."

"It's fine. I don't need your life story." She pointed beyond it. "Just lead me to the 'secret chamber'."

"Right. Let's continue."

Sunny cringed when his ears became filled with loud buzzing all around him. He had been so engrossed in nearly dying and being witness to an old castle he had never seen nor heard about that his brain had completely tuned out the noise.

The trio continued deep into the castle and passed over some debris that changelings were busy clearing out. The unicorn put a hoof to his mouth when he saw them dragging out their own from beneath the debris. The sight was too gruesome for the young pony to handle, so he quickly turned away and followed after the alicorn and changeling. They went through an open doorway to stairs leading down, deep within the castle grounds. The air became more humid, more rank. Everything seemed to become hotter. The ponies soon learned why: Breeding grounds. The walls had been dug out out by the changelings to incorporate many hatching chambers where several hundreds of grubs were waddling about, fighting with each other and being tended to by the larger changelings.

The guide looked over their shoulder. "Stay close to me, ponies. The grubs may look cute, but they're vicious at that age," they warned the two.

The bug stopped, annoying Nightmare Moon. "Why are we stopping?" she asked with her fangs bared.

The bug didn't answer, preferring to simply stare behind her. Moon's angry face quickly disappeared when she saw what had been so 'interesting' to her guide. Sunny became engrossed in one of the chubby grubs waddling about. Its gross body was pockmarked with specks of black and white, and it had very tiny forelegs. Several of the large changelings could be seen watching through an entryway to see what might happen.

"Princess, look! They're adorable! They're cute, small, and squishy!" Sunny said while gently squeezing the one he held. "It likes it!"

The grub he was holding was giggling with every squeeze, making the stallion love it more. He lost any adoration when it bared many rows of sharp teeth at him and hissed loudly. Sunny screamed and threw the grub over his shoulder and started running around in a panic while Moon and the guide watched with bored expressions. The white unicorn used his magic to encase it in a cube prison and hide behind Nightmare Moon.

"Look at that slavering beast!" the unicorn shouted. "It's licking the spell!"

"If you could just remove the spell, then the caretakers can grab it and calm it down," the guide requested patiently.

Sunny glared at him. "Fine," he agreed reluctantly.

The moment he let the spell dissipate, the grub immediately started crawling back at him furiously.

"Oh no, not this time!" the unicorn declared. "This time I'm prepared!"

"Punt," Moon spurted.

She casually kicked the grub away, sending it flying through the air in a fit of terrified squeaks and growls. The caretakers panicked and jumped to grab it. Two accidentally collided in the air, but the third was successful in the endeavor.

"Stop patronizing the infants of our allies, Sunny," Moon sighed.

"Well, at least now he'll know better next time," the Guide added.

The annoyed stallion followed the two deeper into the hatching grounds, and Sunny noticed that there were a few chambers that had caved in from the fight before. Everything had become uneven and misshapen the further in they went. Several teams of changelings were trying to dig out a chamber that had apparently almost folded in on itself at several angles. A few grubs had been saved, but it confused Sunny as to how they managed to survive several months without food or water. He got his answer further in past a chamber made for the caretakers to rest. A few of them were perched atop giant stones and mounds of dirt still attached to the ceiling and...puking a pink liquid into the cracks and crevices leading into what he assumed to be pockets of still-living grubs. They were being aided by some of the caretakers holding up extra bright, luminescent mushrooms they had plucked from the walls to shine directly into the gaps.

There were worker drones discussing with the caretakers on how best to proceed. When one of the drones tried to remove a large stone, several of the ones surrounding it as well as the ceiling started trembling, prompting the others to screech in a panic. Sunny found it fascinating that these insects communicated through screeches and chittering noises. He would have to catalog the changeling language if they allowed him to.

"It's here," the guide announced.

They went into a hatchling cave where eggs and newborn grubs were being evacuated by the caretakers, although a few of the small creatures were still waddling about. Several tried to garner Moon's attention, but when they realized she didn't even acknowledge their existence, they puffed up their faces angrily and moved away towards the next pony they noticed was present. Sunny glared at them, surprising the grubs. They bared their fangs at him, hissed, and quickly turned away.

"Stupid worms..." the pony muttered under his breath.

"What a bizarre creation," Moon noted.

Although it had been slightly bent in the middle from the land shifting, the door was still holding. It was a massive, black door made from what Moon assumed to be steel. Several metal torsion bars and clamps crossed the frame and buried themselves beyond the rock where they couldn't be seen or reached.

The guide made several noises of discomfort and started looking greatly worried. "We have tried to enter it, but after a few attempts we felt there was a toxic miasma exuding from whatever was on the other side," they explained.

Moon dragged her hoof across the door and quickly retracted it when a tiny red spark shocked her. "I don't know this kind of magic," she noted with surprise. "This...doesn't feel like something my..." Moon took an audible gulp to wash away the sickness rising up. "sister would do," she wheezed. "This is something else entirely." She shot a small spark of her own magic at the door and noticed that nothing had occurred. "If I knew what kind of magic this was then I would have an easier time identifying it."

"So...you can't get through?" Sunny asked.

Nightmare laughed. "I said I can't identify it. I didn't say I had no way to get through it." She dragged her hoof across the door once and frowned. "This is an extremely powerful spell. One that seems to have been reinforced many, many times in the past, but it feels like each one was different. A different type of reinforcement, incompatible with whatever magic this is."

Sunny hummed and thought back to his lessons at his university. "The more you reheat a metal to repair it, the frailer it becomes. You can only reheat it so many times before it either becomes useless or you have to melt it," he thought aloud.

"You can only repair something for so long," Moon agreed. "While I can't undo the magic, I can force it apart," she added.

The mare gathered magic in her horn, and it seemed like a corona of darkness pulled in all the light from the surroundings into the alicorn. She pointed her horn at the door and dozens of red marks appeared on its surface. Most were circular in shape with symbols written into the rings they formed. They were sharp and jagged and perplexed even Nightmare Moon. She grunted in pain as she continued to try forcing her way through.

"Princess, maybe you should refrain from pushing," the changeling suggested with genuine worry. "We were about twenty trying to force through it, and we--"

"You weren't an alicorn!" the alicorn grunted through clenched teeth.

Sunny stepped forward, his eyes darting between Moon's horn and the door. "But princess, he's right! If you keep trying you're going to hurt yourself!"

"Grrrrraaaa-I've had worse to deal with!"

"But--"

The two onlookers became silent when they heard the definite sound of metal crying under pressure. a recognizable 'crrrk' noise! The interwoven spells on the door were starting to tremble, and as time went on the symbols started dissipating and cracks grew along the many interweaving half-rings and circles. It took an hour to get through all the decayed magic, and the shattering of the spells caused an explosion that threw everyone and the grubs back against the opposite wall.

"There!" Moon groaned. "It's broken," she strained.

Her horn sputtered with magic and light returned to the chamber. She ignored Sunny and the guide's attempts to get her to rest, but Moon pressed on. She wanted to know what exactly was beyond a door that not only sported such physical strength but also needed magic spells of such a caliber. And unknown magic, on top of that.

With another bit of effort, she drunkenly tore the door out of the wall and stumbled forward into the room to a strange sight resplendent with sickness and magic.

Moon leaned against the open door, causing it to creak under her added weight. Being inside of this room made her feel...disgusting, like something was slathering her soul in toxic substances. Anyone entering the newly-opened chamber felt the same, like they were being dragged down into a morass of remorse and fury. Of decay and longevity.

The stale air that had been stuck within was finally free to mingle with the outside and refresh itself among the plant life lurking beyond the stone. Moon peered at the contents of the room through lidded, tired eyes and felt discomfort.

The room was far from being small. It was large enough to be considered a living room or a workshop of some sort. There were several old, wooden desks that had collapsed from age. Some still hung on as tightly as possible despite their age, but it was obvious from a glance that just a slight gust of wind would make them collapse into mulch and take everything with them. Books and parchments were strewn about like someone was digging frantically through the contents, and many of them there were. Moon counted at least twenty bookshelves with six levels. The books and parchments were shoved aggressively atop each other and several were just inches away from falling down. Candles that had long since burned out had their solidified wax pooled on the floors or partially dripping off the still-solid tables. Ink wells had been shattered against the walls and floor while hundreds more lay strewn about in piles where dried ink had gathered. Several had tipped over the tables or just sat in place with feathers still resting in them.

The guide and Sunny decided to explore silently whilst watching their steps, as everything felt...wrong in this place. Sunny carefully wiped away some debris that had fallen from the low ceiling and looked at the parchments, books, and free pieces of cloth that had been used to write on.

"I don't understand. What is this place?" He grabbed a parchment in his magic and unfurled it as carefully as he could manage. "Nothing written here makes any sense. It's just random words and letters..." he frowned. "This looks like a lot of different versions of ponyish crammed together angrily."

"You say that, but the amount of magic coming off of them is insane," the guide said. "My wings are fluttering from the power."

Moon forced herself off of the door and wandered in, taking in everything around her. "Hmmm..." she growled.

"Something wrong, Princess?" the young unicorn asked.

"There's something hiding here," she said whilst looking around.

The guide followed her gaze and dropped a book that disintegrated when it touched the ground, much to Sunny's horror. "Oops," he muttered. "I'm not sure how anything could be hiding in here. It's still in pretty good shape after your fight, and nothing could have gone through that seal."

"I agree," Moon said. "The seal spreads throughout this whole chamber, but there's more. Layer on top of layer of different spells, like some cursing, muttering to itself and trying to decipher its own words without it making sense."

"A riddle?" Sunny asked.

"No no," Moon disagreed. "Like they're asking themselves a multitude of questions and getting answers that are both wrong and right."

"That's what I said: A riddle."

Moon cast a despondent glare at the stallion who smiled and turned back around to tend to the discovery.

"I can't break it or do anything about it," the alicorn grunted. "But I can at least reveal it."

Nightmare Moon focused her magic through her hooves, causing them to glow white. With a single stomp of her fore hooves her magic pulsed across the surface of the room before terminating directly above her on the ceiling. After several seconds, symbols almost identical to the ones on the door appeared all over the room, all of them a vibrant red.

"What the..."

"My sister's magic reeks in here," Moon grumbled. "Was another fragment of hers in this room?" she wondered. "Or is it just leftover magic?"

"W-well, considering it's her castle, and this is where the Solar Tyrant supposedly was defeated, one can assume this is all hers?" Sunny supposed.

"I'll have to report this to the queen as soon as possible," the guide said.

Moon grimaced. She wanted to keep all of this for her own studying, but the changelings inhabited this place, and there was no way to keep it a secret even if she killed him. The alicorn would have to accept that it was something the changelings would be able to look deeper into, and that worried her.

"This...looks like protective and summoning patterns," Sunny noted. "I saw this during our history lessons. I don't recognize the entirety of the patterns nor the symbols, but the general shape of this one looks like what I just mentioned." He sat and tapped his chin pensively. "But what were they for?"

Moon sighed internally. Leave it to Sunny to blurt out what she didn't want spoken, but she would be delaying the inevitable, so best to remove the poultice quickly.

"How are you sure that they're for that if you recognize nearly nothing?" she asked him.

He pointed to sharp corners shared between the two spells painted on the wall. "Summoning circles are sharp, while protection spells tend to be rounder."

Moon nodded in agreement. "There are circles with sharp corners but they're harder to make, and thus stronger," she muttered to herself.

"Then what kind of spell would this be?" the guide asked them.

Painted on the floor and broken by a disintegrated pile of furniture was a spell comprised of interweaving loops and words strung between each inner-most bend like rope holding them together. Sunny bounced in place, trying to dig through his knowledge of what the spell could be but started grunting in frustration.

"I have no idea! We would need to find an expert on magic!"

"I am an expert," Moon said. "And I can assure you that there are no spells like this, at least not in Equestrian magic."

"Then what?" the changeling asked. "These are fake spells?"

Moon shook her head. "They're too potent for that..." She frowned. "And they feel vaguely like the magic the false alicorn was using," she thought to herself.

He knew how to reach the castle. He had magic that could reach into a creature's mind and take it over. Moon could not trace his magic at all. She furrowed her brows, deep in thought.

"What have you figured out?" Sunny asked.

"The spells were last tended to at least six thousand years ago," Moon noted. "Meaning that there was more than enough time to study what was within."

"And you said that the spells that came after were just pale imitations, right?" Sunny asked.

Moon nodded. "The thestrals never mentioned when my sister was cast down, only that she was a long time ago."

The pair was distracted by the changeling trying to scrape away the glowing runes and bearing his teeth in frustration when he failed. "So they came across this after killing the 'Solar Tyrant' or whatever that is."

Moon snickered. "I thought the changelings would know about the stories the thestrals mention."

She was met with a hurt ego. "Not all changelings are infiltrators, and not all of us go to the same places. I wasn't assigned to the thestrals so I don't know anything about them," he explained. The guide huffed at Moon.

Regardless, there wasn't much that could be deciphered on the runes, only speculated.

"The ones responsible for destroying Equestria's past likely tried learning this magic, but without my sister they couldn't learn what they wanted," the alicorn said.

"So they just tried copying what they saw drawn all over the place?" Sunny realized. "Huh. I wouldn't try that at all. That's stupid!"

"Put yourself in the place of these foals with self-esteem issues: They take down an alicorn at the height of her rage-induced power and go to loot all her magic artifacts -artifacts which I still need to find- and discover this chamber. Why wouldn't they try to copy it and become powerful like alicorns?"

Her pupils shrunk in horrified realization. The broken pony was a false alicorn and, in his delirium mentioned being chosen as the 'hero'. She started to pace about the room, looking at all the interwoven and likely incomplete spells. He didn't mention how he became an alicorn. Moon almost felt stress encompass her but deflated quickly. They had no reason in making more alicorns outside of a pretty, living statue to bring the others towards and to worship for guidance. The alicorn took another glance at the spells and followed them to the ceiling. Somewhere in here was a way to make an alicorn, but the result meant that it was either an incomplete spell or the idiots only managed to decipher a portion of it.

"I can see you wracking your brain, princess," the guide said. "Did you decipher something?"

Moon looked around once again and started to notice patterns the harder she looked. It was obvious that there were thousands of incomplete spells scrawled in different sizes and patterns. She took one of the books and slowly turned the pages as carefully as she could before it crumbled. Every page was scrawled on with the red symbols and ink. She set it down then grabbed another. Several notes in a language she did not understand, and then blank pages, but the next book was filled with red symbols.

"The books are filled with these on a much smaller degree, and there are several journals as well, some incomplete," she noted.

She sat on her haunch and covered her muzzle with a foreleg while she turned the gears in her mind. Once more she had to look around and found herself growing annoyed at the time this was taking and the repetition she needed to do to solve the mystery. Her leg and jaw dropped when she finally saw it: There were thousands of tinier looking runes that had been angrily rubbed out or drawn over with several lines to 'erase' them. More of them seemed to bend and twist then stop immediately. Others were not even filled out yet, remaining as hollow traces or simple rings.

"She was experimenting," Moon realized. "She was trying to make some kind of new magic."

"But the chamber was sealed with increasingly worse copies of whatever could be understood and then buried entirely," Sunny added. He scratched his head, ruffling his mane. "I don't get it."

"Much to my annoyance, I don't either. Something must have happened with the magic they were using that made them want to seal it away," Moon said. She groaned loudly. "With them having destroyed Equestria's history, there's nothing else we can pull from this except for mere speculation, and I hate speculating on important matters."

"I can't find anything else of importance," the changeling said. "Nothing aside from what you mentioned already." He wiped the dust off of his chitin as he walked towards the two ponies. "Couldn't find any hidden secret passages or anything of the like, either," he added.

"Then there is not much else we can do here," Moon lamented. "I still have a chef to recruit for my castle's kitchen."

"Nothing else?" the changeling asked.

"No. We are at an impasse and must convene on the matter. I will have you inform your queen if I find anything." She stepped forward and jabbed the bug in the chest with her hoof, baring her fangs and glowing, white eyes. "And I would like the same done for me," she said through clenched teeth.

"Of course! Of course," the changeling nodded frantically.

"Good."

Moon kept quiet on the return trip and suggested Sunny do the same. Beyond a few greetings by the bugs, Sunny remained mostly silent. Back in the dungeons, Moon sealed the door behind them and exhaled loudly through her nostrils now that they were free of prying ears.

"I'm starting to wonder if they didn't seal it away because the magic they were using started to decay their false alicorn," Moon said.

"What?" Sunny said.

"He...fell apart before my eyes. He was incomplete, broken, in more ways than one, and he was filled with so much magic that it accelerated the process." She looked Sunny in the eyes. "What if that started happening in front of every pony and they partially sealed him away in the panic?"

"I mean...I guess that makes sense?"

Moon became despondent. "They resealed the room my sister was experimenting in with terrible versions of those spells, so they must have tried using it in public, and everything started to fail at the same time..." She scoffed. "Instability is fun with magic," she mused.

Time to employ the new writing technique, unless you want me to try and get a few more chaps out in one day like this.

A loud bell rang outside. The king's eyes shot open. He felt like he hadn't slept at all for so long...ever since that alicorn had arrived. That accursed goddess of the night. A groan escaped him when he dragged his hooves across his face. He couldn't remember his dreams, but he had the distinct impression that she regularly visited him just to harass him and taunt him nonstop, knowing full well he couldn't do anything about it.

He rolled his head to the side to see his queen sharing the same expression of fatigue. They both whinnied and rolled out of their immense bed and fell limply onto the floor, alerting their guards who burst through the wooden door to check in on them in a panic.

"Your highnesses, are you okay?!" one of them shouted.

"Bppth...Yes, guard. We just slid out of bed. Go away," the king grumbled.

"A-are you sure? Should I get the physician? Y-you don't look so--"

"Yes!" the king interrupted angrily. "Just get out!" The guards obeyed with the same hurry as they did when entering. "I can't take this anymore. How does a single pony ruin everything in just a few months?!"

Majesty pulled the immense purple curtains apart exposing their tremendous room to the light outside. The king stomped over the tiled floor towards a mirror to check himself and frowned further from seeing the bags under his eyes. Annoyed, he turned to his wife drinking water from an imported amphora sitting on one of their many hand-carved, gold-trimmed, minotaur dressers.

"What is it?" Majesty asked with her wings.

The king groaned and let his head drop. "I don't feel like wearing any 'royal outfits' today.

"Me neither. Let us simply wear our crowns and be done with it. A...light day?" she asked.

The king nodded. "Yes. A light day. That would be significantly better, and the peasants never know the difference when we pull something out like that just to make our days more convenient," he strained as he stretched.

Annoyed and with heads held low, the two rulers trotted out of their room, narrowly missing the guards when the doors swung open. A proud and haughty butler rushed over to them with several documents. They were held by a wooden board held in front of the earth pony by a telescopic arm coming from the left of their vest.

"What is it today?" the king sighed.

"Well, all your assassins were countered, our spies were flushed out, and there's no mangoes this year thanks to a disease ravaging the farmlands."

The king screamed in despair. "On top of all that I can't even have a mango-raspberry slurry!"

Giving him time to recover himself, the guards eventually let in the first few groups for their audience with the royal family and explain their woes or try and barter their way into the king's good graces. Too upset to continue past a dozen such sessions, the king stopped 'out of nowhere' to the visitors and left in a huff amidst the uproar of complaining.

"What am I meant to do at this point?" he muttered to himself through the halls. "I've tried everything..."

"Perhaps I could help?" one of the maids suggested.

The king raised a brow to her. There was a strange color coming from her eyes. "What, am I meant to believe you are some kind of 'super spy' meant to watch me and somesuch trash?" he mocked derisively.

The maid produced a throaty chuckle. "No. Nothing so extravagant."

Then king raised a brow and leaned in closer. "And what is wrong with your eyes?"

The maid cleared her throat. "I am using her body temporarily because I have a proposal for you." Gallant slow-blinked. "Is there any way for me to prove my words?"

The king sighed. He preferred to have his wife present to argue these sorts of things with, but he was having a really crummy few weeks. "I don't know," he forced out.

The maid looked at herself and grimaced at the outfit she was wearing. "At least Celestia and Luna let their servants wear proper clothing. Hideous frills..." The king's brow furrowed. "Regardless, I fought the alicorn that escaped the moon."

Gallant let out a single 'ha'. "Of course you did. I believe you. that's why you're here now!"

The maid groaned. "To think I would have to use the old magic again." She took a deep breath and straightened herself up. "Then I'll show you the past and let you know why her arrival and our fight will spell doom for the world."

The king suddenly found himself floating high above the world, witnessing Equestria as it was so long ago, in a time erased from history. Hundreds of thousands of different ponies dotted the landscape in immense cities that had long since vanished. Cities he didn't even know existed. One such city was growing out of the mountain like a white flower filled with an uncountable amount of ponies, all attending a castle draped in the purest white he had ever seen. The images zoomed in, scaring him. Bracing for impact, the king realized that he had phased through the wall and was now in the unmistakable presence of a throne room...and the same, terrifying sensation he had when Nightmare Moon revealed herself.

The ponies here looked...odd. Angular and...childish? It was almost like somepony was drawing everyone and redefining reality with flat figures baring innocent smiles and wide eyes.

"What is this?! What's going on?!" Gallant cried out. "What have you done to me?!"

A serpent of black storm clouds emerged from the ceiling and twirled around the king. They coalesced into the vague shape of a pony with the same child-friendly depiction of a smile as the rest of the figures below.

I'm just revealing the history of Equestria
It's a lovely tale of highs and lows
With nopony here to tell of the horrible blows
Brought about by the magic of fell and the cultish Alicorns

"Now you're signing?! That didn't even rhyme!"

The smile never changed, giving the king a sense of comfort...which brought unease.

Not all tales rhyme. Songs are strung and woven like silk
But in this tale you'll see the alicorn's ilk
And why you must destroy Nightmare Moon as fast as possible
Behold below the alicorn of the sun, sister of the one you fear

The king looked below to see a supposedly generous pony mumbling some sort of gibberish and transforming the drawings' faces from frowns, anger, and despair, into smiles of varying levels.

She intended good upon the ponies
A lovely sentiment, it is true
But she was cruel and vindictive
To those who strayed from the path with which they were presented

She herself cursed her sister to become one with the moon
And she waited a thousand years for her return
Feigning pain and strife behind closed doors
But when the Moon did not return, her sorrow was great

The scene changed to a dark room with a pony whose luster had vanished. Her mane and coat were unkempt messes, and dark bags hung below her eyes. Whatever used to be her room was now a decrepit pile of destroyed furniture and furnishings. The king noticed a tiny figure hiding in the corner, peeking at the disheveled goddess from a barely open door, and grimaced.

Her sister would destroy the world
But we prevented her return
When she learned of our actions, rage engulfed her mind and magic
So we went to war

A war most foul
A war just dire
Filled with the blood-drenched tears of a sibling in ire
For a sister she banished to return to her side was her only desire

So her truth was revealed
Not just as something she would require
Since reality would fend and snap
At every bit of magic she cast out

Gallant bore witness to scene swap after scene swap of the world gradually going from a lush green to a charred black. The sun began to snap and twist at everything below it, zapping away at the tremendous armies charging towards a very changed alicorn. He had seen something like it before. In the very, very old archives his grandfather had shown him before age destroyed them. A pony flying up into the sky, with only its underside revealed and wings spread out within a circle of white light. Here, the light was a furious group of rings that went from white, to yellow, to orange, then red.

The king found himself growing annoyed at this...thing's lack of rhyming skill, but even he had to admit to finding something fascinating about learning of the world-that-was, even if he felt there was bias in the story.

The tyrant was cast down and banished
And the ponies who witnessed our deeds cherished
That they would live another day and fix all they had lost
For the sun was now furious but left adrift
To turn around the world as the curse of a 'daily' shift

The entity snickered.

But I was cursed as well
With the form and magic of an alicorn
Left with nary a memory of my prior form
But the others found it to be swell
And to no other the truth would they tell

And so time passed
Equestria healed and not much occurred
Until one day a cry was heard
And a mare was born with wings and horn
Much to an adoration that should have instead been scorn

A house flipped open to reveal a mare holding a child whose back was turned to the viewers. The king leaned in to get a better look. The pony's feathers and horn were black with strange, glowing blue patterns.

"A pony of the night?"

Of the moon, that's right!
And she was endowed with tremendous might!
In the night sky came a new body bright and low
To the peace and autonomy we created, this was a mighty blow

We let her be, just to see
What she would make in this new reality
But we were wrong, just like a repeated song
With tricks and verses most foul,
She began destroying all

A gigantic moon in the sky falling to Equestria immediately assailed the king's senses. He had never borne witness to such an immense body before, and it horrified him. The lands below were engulfed in living shadows rising to the skies with looks and cries of misery and pain.

Every time an alicorn was born
We were tasked with taking them away
All their being and magic from them were torn
And so inside of me they would stay

No more alicorns
No more catastrophes
No more repetitive plays
Of ponies being swayed, tricked, and dismayed.

Gallant saw Equestria being flipped and spun around like it was a picture book with protruding figures and grimaced again. He wasn't a foal anymore. This entity was mocking him...Or was it? He raised a brow at the strange cloud and pondered in-between its verses. Was the water mill equipped with paddles or was the water just going through an empty frame?

And now we arrive at the present
Where the moon freed its prisoner
And I attempted to stop her
For nothing, I'm afraid to say

"Are you done?" the king lambasted. "I've had enough of your 'singing'."

The serpent harumphed in response. "I haven't heard song in millennia. I'm rusty."

"More like you've been eaten clean through."

"Regardless, let us stop this since it's not mixing with your 'palate', philistine."

The castle hallway came back into view and the king sighed in relief when he saw his hooves touching solid ground again. He flinched in horror when he saw the state the maid was in. It looked like she was melting away.

"What have you done?!" the king cried out.

The maid looked at her fur sloughing off and shrugged. "Sacrifices of the few to serve the many," she lamented. "But now you know what will happen if you leave her out there." She leaned forward. "And I trust you know now that I'm no liar."

"Fine!" the king shouted. "Then what do you want with me?!"

The maid smiled, shaking her flesh free and revealing her gums and jaw bones. "In the last battle my cursed body couldn't hold out, and my physical body was destroyed."

"So you're a ghost now?"

The maid shook her head. "No. This has happened before, but under such...extraneous circumstances. I've lost my grip on the magic I was meant to hold onto."

Gallant looked around vaguely and shrugged. "So?"

"I need your help to stop that alicorn before her own magic causes the free alicorn magic that was lost to coalesce because of her and cause a few, if not maybe a dozen or more, new alicorns to pop up." She looked outside the frame window to see several more sections of the king's castle and frowned. "Bluh. Terrible view."

"If you were defeated by her once, why should I believe you're capable of stopping her now?" the king asked.

The maid didn't take her eyes away from the window and looked up at the sun. "Because I have been defeated in the past, but I had aid with me those times. Now I'm all alone in here. Gather information on her and I'll help you by teaching you all I know on the old magics. Together, we'll be able to stop the alicorn threat."

"Fine," the king agreed reluctantly. "Not like I have any other options at the moment, now return the maid to normal."

His demand was met with raucous laughter. "If my body turned alicorn can't handle such magic, how would a regular pony?"

The lights faded from her eyes, and the mare collapsed onto the floor, trembling. Gallant dove down to hold her head up, his face wracked with guilt and sadness.

"M-my king...what...I wasn't...It hurts! It hurts so much!"

"Guards!" the king bellowed. "Guaaards! Bring me the unicorns and the infirmaries! Guaaaaaards!"

I'm mocking my inability to write lyrics and rhyme, but honestly, in cases like this I wish I knew how to write lyrics.

I loathe musicals (Ironic, innit?), but that doesn't mean the characters I make also hate them...blugh.

Under the guidance of Sunny, the two ponies found themselves approaching the forest of the thestrals once again, and once more Moon could see the immense tree bigger than any castle she ever saw stretching high above the treeline. It almost seemed like it was holding onto the stars in the night sky or that its branches were stretching so far up that they had turned into stars. Moon thought back to the day she had. Strange runes left behind by her sister and what was unmistakably Celestia's presence. She let the day go by, waiting for night to fall, letting her look around the castle and see the progress of its defensive capabilities against both air and ground. She mused that, even if an air force came to attack her castle from above, that they would have no way to get any needed resources in place. They would have to fight a protracted battle, and that would never work. The mare had learned her lesson from her first attempt at having a fort built.

During the trip, she reminisced of when Mond and another ghost came to visit her right before her departure.

She had received a visit in her room by Mond, her unofficial successor, followed by some kind of behemoth of a pony that stood two heads taller than the Mare-in-the-Moon and was built like a fortress. It didn't help that it looked like whatever armor she wore had melted into her body and most of her lips were missing, exposing oddly shaped teeth that curved inwards like scimitars.

"You brought a guest, Mond?" Moon noted.

The first successor looked to the giant and nodded. "Yes. Mellow was able to manifest since her moon was the first you managed to link with consciously."

Moon rubbed her chin, intrigued. "Yet you were the first to come to me."

Mond shrugged. "We honestly don't know how it works. We already barely knew how our own powers worked. There's not supposed to be more than one alicorn of a specific thing, after all." She looked towards the giant who reciprocated the action. "Maybe the other alicorns would have known what to do?" she wondered.

"So what you said was a lie," Moon stated.

Mond shrugged. "I was just trying to be helpful."

Moon shook her head and groaned in disappointment. "Don't make assumptions about how our magic works if you have no idea what is happening with it."

"Well, sorry. It's not like you've been trapped in the moon for ten millennia." Mond glanced at Mellow a moment. "How did you wrangle the shades that you summon from her moon?"

"How do I what?" Moon asked.

The giant looked stunned. "You have to beat them into submission before you can unsummon them," Mellow explained as she took a step forward. Her voice was oddly loud but passive. "That's how I became as I did," she stated whilst flexing a foreleg.

"I haven't needed to do anything," Moon rebutted. "I simply felt a pull, and then the power came." She ran a hoof through her flowing mane and grunted. "Although every moon seems to drain me every time I use their powers."

Mellow stomped around, but being a ghost meant she couldn't damage anything, much to Moon's delight. "That isn't fair! They just obey you?! I had to fight them back every time I summoned them!" She slammed her hooves against the ground harmlessly and dragged them across her own face afterward. "This isn't fair! I want to be alive again to destroy things, but I'm stuck here!" Her eyes widened and she bolted in front of Moon, disgusting the living mare.

"Instead of lamenting your current situation, perhaps your coming is more fortuitous for the both of us." The mare pulled several parchment dregs she hid above her room and showed them to the ghosts. "I tried to redraw them from memory, but my...artistic talents are lacking."

The two leaned forward to have a better look. Moon noticed their expressions turning dour.

"This looks like what those tiny idiots used against my shades," Mellow stated. "That magic was dangerous."

"But it never worked right," Mond added. "There was always something going wrong with it. The user collapsing, the magic blowing back and sparking their horn."

"The caster imploding, them and everything around them being turned into fragile, black ash," Mellow counted. "So many things always went wrong, even when the casting was successful."

"So it's as I expected," Moon realized. "What in Equestria was my sister up to?" The two visitors shrugged, leading Moon to roll her eyes. "You just came here to tell me that another one has been able to manifest?" she asked Mond.

The aforementioned looked at Mellow and cleared her throat. "Uuuh...Yes? You're trying to find answers to the past so I thought it would be a good idea."

Nightmare sighed but nodded slowly. "True. Thhhhank you," she forced out. The pony shivered. "That doesn't feel right to say that."

Mellow laughed loudly. "I never had to say thank you either! It's an awful sensation!" her voice boomed.

As loud as she was abnormally huge.

"Woah!" Sunny blurted.

He was getting used to Moon dropping him like a rock after their flights, but she never did it from the same height and still didn't warn him when she was going to do it. At least she didn't drop him so high that he would get hurt. As he nursed his aching limbs, a thestral jumped out of the trees and bowed to Nightmare Moon.

"Princess!" he chirped eagerly. "We never expected another visit!"

"Take me back to your village. I have something to announce a pony to recruit."

The thestral tilted his head, perplexed. "Recruit? For what?"

"I need a chef for my royal kitchens when they have been completed."

The bat pony scratched his head. "...And you came all the way here for that? Couldn't you have just sent a missive?"

Moon shot him a dark look. "I don't know the precise location of your village yet, and ponies don't exactly know where you live precisely. When I asked my guards they said that you don't have addresses or any real landmarks." She pointed towards the immense tree. "Aside from that."

"Well, I'll take you to our village. Maybe you will be able to remember it this time." He scratched the side of his neck. "And those three will probably stop bragging about having met you first."

"Those three?" Moon repeated quizzically.

"You don't remember the thestrals that found you in that mountain city and brought you back?!"

Moon tried remembering as best as she could. Only the vaguest memory reached through of annoying, young thestrals that were singing her praises nonstop.

"I have a vague idea of who you might be talking about," she noted with a hint of disgust.

"Follow me, your highness," the thestral said.

Moon barely took a step that she collapsed to the ground, her horn aflame. She clenched her teeth and tried her best to formulate a spell to relieve her of the crushing sensation around her horn. The thestral and Sunny had both become fluid like everything around the alicorn.

Scritching.

Scratching.

Something was digging at the recesses of the mare's mind. Something disturbing. Revolting. It felt familiar, but she wasn't sure what it was. Within all the noise, there was a whisper, but Nightmare Moon could not make out the words.

Then nothing.

She stood up with her eyes wide and shook her head. "It's alright," she reassured the ponies. "A brief lapse. I will figure it out."

Her words only served to worry the ponies more, but they knew better than to argue with the future Queen of Equestria. The village was there to greet her once again, excited to meet their alicorn of the night and Sunny. Before the ponies could even approach her and shower her with praises or propose a celebration, Moon elevated the ground beneath her with her magic, creating a small podium of dirt that tore away the roots of the plants around it.

"Thestrals of Equestria!" Moon bellowed. She hadn't used the Royal Voice in so long for a proper decree. It tickled her vocal cords to not use it to yell as loudly as possible for intimidation. "I was planning to wait for the other tribes to arrive, but I believe the announcement should come to those who were the first to meet me and accept me with open minds! I am vassalizing the thestralian territories! You will become the first part of restoring Equestria to its former glory! Rejoice!"

Nightmare's only response was silence. The ponies weren't sure how to react.

"Are you sure about this?" one of the thestrals asked her. "We're more than happy to have you return to us, but going so far? The king won't let it slide, and, with all due respect, you don't have an army."

Moon's eyes started glowing with rage. "I have an army."

"You have guards, your highness," Sunny corrected. He tapped the ground nervously. "You only have the guards you recruited from the base next to Snowfege. That isn't enough for a proper army."

The alicorn reluctantly agreed. She didn't want to deal with such a hassle, but the coming of the other thestral tribes could prove beneficial.

"Then would instilling military training help?" She faced the bat ponies. "Would anypony be willing to undergo training to become a soldier?" Most hesitated and shifted nervously in place, giving in to tics like clearing their throats or rubbing their leg.

"The thing is," the same thestral responded. "We have lived mostly peacefully this whole time, even if we refuse to acknowledge the will of the king and queen."

"Mostly?!" one of the younger thestrals shouted. It was the younger mare with the cut ear that lauded Moon's return at the city. "We're forced to pay exorbitant tributes to the royal family so they ignore our rightful stance!" she said angrily. The fury she held was palpable, and Moon grinned internally.

"Those tributes stock up the emergency stores of Equestria!" the older thestrals rebutted. "Without those, what would we have to eat during poor harvests?!"

"They never gave us any food! My brother almost died if braver thestrals hadn't gone out to steal from the storage!"

"They were fools! They almost brought the wrath of the royal army upon us!"

Moon watched as the village visibly started to divide itself slowly, but silently. The bickering between the two started getting on her nerves, so she decided to step in by stomping so powerfully that even the squishy ground of the forest couldn't help but cave in.

"Enough!" she bellowed. The two bickering thestrals fell onto their backs and shrunk away. "Military training is not mandatory, and with the coming of the other villages, we will know who will be willing to join my forces. Know this first: I am attempting to gather as many territories to my banner through diplomacy as I can." She ground her teeth in irritation. "Despite simply wanting to take back what was rightfully mine from my sister, I find myself forced to do this instead."

"Perhaps you could have them train in secret?" Sunny suggested. "Like the two we met in the griffin city were doing?"

Moon pondered the concept. Training them with wooden and stone weaponry was all they would be able to do at the moment. Those resources were obviously plentiful in a forest, but she had no smithy outside of the small, private one for her personal guards. the further along she went with her plan, the more complicated things became. She would need to ask the thestrals and the acting mayor twins about any mines. If there were any orichalcum or, preferable, calchinium mines, then even she would be able to contribute to the production of equipment. Preferably high quality, finely crafted armors and swords she would reserve as rewards for her hardest working troops, and even some sort of...elite royal guard? She salivated internally at the thought. Her own army and kingdom, both inspiring fear in her enemies.

"We can discuss that with the other tribes when they arrive." She looked around grimaced. "Where's the chef that aided me when I was poisoned?!" she bellowed in the royal voice.

"Here I am!" a large thestral shouted from above. He was positively gleaming in delight. "You want another feast, your highness?"

"No," Moon blurted immediately.

The light faded almost instantly from the thestral. "Wh-what? B-but...I...I don't understand, then."

She pointed her hoof at him. "You...will be serving me and my guests in my castle at Snowfege."

The chef gasped deeply. "A royal chef?!" He couldn't muster the words to express his joy and bounced about randomly. "A dream come true!"

"I'll have some of my guards come by and escort you to Snowfege," Moon explained. "Gather whatever you believe is necessary for the cooking." She leaned towards him, her eyes glowing and fangs gleaming in the light filtering through the leaves. "The kitchen is ill-equipped, so you won't be making master level dishes. You'll be responsible with choosing and ordering everything needed to make it worthy of me and my home." She stood back up, looming over the thestral. "Am I understood?"

"Absolutely!" the chef bellowed.

"They're coming!" a voice announced from the trees.

"I still have those ghosts to speak to after all this," Moon thought to herself.

The alicorn winced in pain for just the briefest moment. The scratching came back, and it was a searing sensation etching itself onto her skull, trying to burrow through. Moon looked around to find the source, but there was nothing. Even the sunlight still seemed as peaceful as the day she killed that false alicorn. Odd and uncomfortably familiar. She felt a knot form in her stomach from worry.

Moon ran the scenario of her meeting with the other tribes through her head, doing her best to try and remember every minute detail and uniqueness of each thestral group. While they were all still physically identical, only the one the alicorn knew directly was mostly aloof to the goings on with the world. They were also the more passive of them all, but they weren't disrespected, as she had expected. In remembrance of her, they kept close ties with each other and shared what knowledge they had either discovered or rediscovered. Only the one Moon knew directly had developed their culinary skills, but the detoxification through food came from another. Her fat chef simply experimented with the concept.

The alicorn was briefly torn from her thoughts when Sunny yawned loudly. He had become too comfortable riding with Nightmare Moon carrying him, but it made the trips easier since he wasn't fighting her through fear, not that he did beforehoof. The mare grit her teeth. There were only five that had presented themselves, but there were at least twenty-six different tribes. Some felt threatened by neighbors and preferred to stand guard, implying that there were some militaristic thestrals still around. She'd have to see if they were modernized, per her understanding of her current guards.

Moon had trouble containing the excitement every time she saw her budding castle. When everything was finished, she would be able to use it as a foundation to make a truly glorious castle over the practical design it currently had. Something caught her attention, however. There seemed to be a small cohort of griffin soldiers standing on the drawbridge, unable to pass the gatehouse leading to the larger yard Nightmare Moon extended with magic. She snickered to herself at the sight. A small town could be built in there now, although it required the reconstruction of the walls facing away from the city. Material wasn't in short supply nearby at the very least.

But...that feeling couldn't get rid of the bitterness she felt with the thestrals. She expected loud cheering and another of their strange celebrations for being invited under her wing as the first ponies to be part of her soon-to-be queendom. That they were so apprehensive ripped the air out of her lungs, so to speak.

Approaching the walls, the alicorn noticed that one of the griffins was wearing an ornate robe and standing in front of what she could now only assume to be an escort. His robe was a mixture of red, white, and gold trimmings. Said trimmings line the edges of the cloth and created no real pattern. The designer just wanted to make a bunch of criss-crossing lines and curves. The red and white were divided into top and bottom respectively, but what Nightmare Moon couldn't figure out was how the colors were meshing together. Starting from the back and stopping at the middle were divided waves that grew increasingly tall until it looked like the 'string' separating the colors snapped and just mixed together wildly into a mess of paint dropped into water. The golden trims followed suite and gradually 'dissolved' the closer it got to the griffin's torso.

Moon landed onto the walls with a thud, startling the guards focused on the soldiers at the gate. Sunny landed with a loud thump and grumbled at himself for still being unable to handle that kind of landing yet. Moon ignored the guards and leaned over the walls. The battlements had not yet been fully implemented, and while the alicorn would normally curse at such a defensive position being forgotten, she found herself being thankful this time, but only this time.

The eccentric griffin wore a silver crown with three horns curving and wrapping over their red and white head feathers. It seemed that the feathers they bore matched their outfit superficially. The alicorn could already hear the murmurs of the soldiers upon seeing her and felt pride well up within her. The enemy feared her. Good.

Nightmare Moon stood tall, letting the magic swirling around her swell in size to almost engulf everything around her. Only her eyes and fangs were fully visible through the miasma. "Who are you who would stand so brazenly at the gates of my fortress?" she declared.

"I am Prince Melcluf Rorkfeather, seventh of the Rorkfeather lineage. Who is it I am speaking to?" he asked loudly.

"A prince?" the alicorn scoffed quietly to herself. "I am Nightmare Moon, alicorn of the Eternal Night," she declared once more. "Did your father send a prince here expecting some sort of 'arranged marriage' with what he thinks is some princess having a temper tantrum?"

"Wh-what?! No!"

Moon smirked. "Why have you come here with a contingent of troops, then?"

Melcluf took a moment to recompose himself before resuming talks. He looked behind and shrugged his wings. "I came because, a few months ago, there was word that an 'army' of ponies attacked one of our cities." The griffin huffed. "From my own agents, I learned that it was just two, and one was a giant pony, and you're the only one who fit that description."

"So?"

"To be honest, I thought that the tales of an 'alicorn' were just that. Consider my surprise when I learned that the stories my subjects shared of one wandering about in Snowfege during one of its festivals turned out to not be a costume!"

The miasma receded all at once when Moon dragged a hoof across her face and groaned. "And what do I have to do with this story?" she asked.

Melcluf seemed stunned. "Wh-Reparations! Do you know how much damage you caused to my people's city?! And you come here brazenly, to a former nest of my people, and take it for yourself?"

Moon had tuned out the prince and his screeching. One of the guards noticed the visible anguish she was feeling and decided to step up.

"I can tell him off, if you so choose, your highness," he proposed.

"Hm? Really? And why would you do that?"

"Because I'm bored and I already hate that colorful chicken."

Moon slowly rolled her eyes to the side and shrugged. "Fine. I need some distractions for not getting the outcome I wanted with the thestrals."

Sunny couldn't form proper words and kept sputtering when he tried to stop them. "Are you crazy?" he finally managed to get out. "That could start a war!"

Moon waved him off. "Oh, a good war wouldn't hurt anypony, and besides." She leaned forward. "They aren't in any position to conduct another full war yet."

The guard cleared his throat and leaned over the wall. "Stop your whinging!" he shouted. "What do you want?!"

"Wh-e-ghgdd-Who is this?!" the prince bellowed.

"He's my..." Moon turned around briefly. "Diplomatic Associate. He is very fair and fluent in his words," the alicorn stated with a straight face.

Sunny noticed the guards around stifling their laughter as best they could. Many dropped the visors of their helmets.

"I'm not interested in talking to a peasant!" the prince bellowed.

"You probably need to if you wear clothing like that! I thought a foal dropped their water colors all over some kind of giant chicken!"

"Wh-Giant chicken?!"

"You can't fly over the walls so I'd say it fits!" the guard continued.

"We didn't fly over them as a courtesy! It's a case of diplomatic nicet--"

The guard lied down back first on the wall and let his forelegs and head dangle over the edge. "Dem's too many wurdz fer us simple peasant-folk, yer fowlness." He noticed the prince starting to turn red through his feathers. "Oh hey, he's turning red. Camouflage, perhaps?" he whispered to Moon. He made sure it was just loud enough for the prince to hear. "Hey! Don't turn red! You won't blend into the environment any better that way!"

"That's it!" Melcluf gestured to the soldiers. "We're flying over the walls!"

"Try it," Moon said calmly.

The griffin gulped at the sight of the alicorn's glowing eyes looking down at him from what felt like a mountain peak. He gestured at the others behind him with a claw and took to the skies. However, as soon as they reached the same height as the wall peaks, every griffin suddenly found themselves swatted back down onto the ground.

"What...is this magic?" Prince Melcluf stood back up and looked at Moon, shocked. "Our armor is supposed to be antimagic!"

"Aaaah, we already tried that!" the mocking guard said. "Doesn't work with her." He trotted up to the alicorn and patted her left shoulder, causing the other guards around to go pale. "Too much magic. It's like trying to soak up the ocean with a single sponge." He smiled. "So, yeaaaah, sorryyyyyy, but noooooo. Yeaaaaah. Nooooo. Doesn't work like thaaaaaaaaaat."

At this point, Moon decided to completely ignore the griffin yelling at her while his soldiers recovered from their sudden cranial trauma and made it as visible as possible that she wasn't paying any attention to him.

"Hey!" Melcluf shouted. His voice was starting to pitch higher the more frustrated he got. "I'm talking to you!"

At least he was able to notice quite quickly when he was being ignored.

"I am Prince Melcluf of the griffins and I will be heard!"

"You are being heard," Moon corrected. "Just not listened to." The alicorn watched the prince start to puff up. "You come to my castle, in my territory, and expect me to listen to you when you come to my door with soldiers and no appointment? You didn't even try to contact anypony here. That is incredibly disrespectful to my authority," the mare growled. "If you want to have a proper meeting and discussion, then submit your request to the mayor of Snowfege who will transfer it to me." She waved a hoof. "Now leave."

"You...You can't do this! My father will hear about this! You have insulted my people not once, but twice!" Melcluf bellowed.

Nightmare Moon caught him off. "And what, I'll rue this day? I'll regret my actions?" She pursed her lips and looked up, thinking hard on the outcomes. "Something something destroy everything I hold dear, yadda yadda?"

"You'll be less antagonizing when war comes to your city, duchess," the griffin said stiffly.

He and the other griffins left quietly, letting their feathers chase away the freezing mountain air surrounding them. Sunny stared at Nightmare Moon, a look of pure and utter shock taking over his features.

"You have a talent in taunting others," Moon told the guard while following the griffins with her eyes.

Said guard snorted and started smiling with too much pride. He leaned against the queen, his grin still present. "Yeah, well, when you grow up where I did, you don't have the luxury of politeness, you know?"

"Hmmm."

The guard Moon was praising let out a blood-curdling scream that continued unabated while the alicorn of the night loomed over him. She was twisting and bending his limbs in unnatural directions. "I let you put a hoof on me during your little show because it was amusing to see the reactions of the griffins and would have ruined the illusion, but that time is over. Your play has ended. Never touch me so casually in the future, understood?!" she bellowed.

"Y-yes! I! I won't again! Your highness!" the guard forced out between screams of pain.

"Good." Moon pointed to a horrified guard. "You. Get a doctor to treat this pony. Now. I won't have a corpse rotting away the new walls of my fortress."

"Medic!" the appointed guard managed to get out.

Nightmare Moon huffed and sat down while staring at the increasingly smaller forms of the griffins in the distance. "Sunny, do you know if there are other villages like this where those new pony tribes are located?" The unicorn shook his head. He couldn't help but gulp and look at the ponies putting the agonizing guard onto a stretcher. "Focus, Sunny," Moon said.

"I-No. I just knew where the thestrals lived, but I didn't know where their villages were." He rubbed the back of his neck, brushing his mane back and forth with a hoof. "We would need to find ponies of those tribes and ask them to see if any know."

Moon nodded. "Then I suppose we'll have to go back to Snowden and look around."

The alicorn would have her army and her Equestria. She didn't care who got in her way. Even the griffins were just an inconvenience to her. At least she felt some amusement today, and still managed to contact and unofficially vassalize the thestrals. It was a start, and she would have to continue slowly building herself up. Being trapped for ten thousand years let her think and experiment in her own mind, after all. She could easily conquer what was left of her homeland, but what would be left afterwards? One cannot be a sovereign of dust and ash.

Nightmare Moon looked towards the sun and squinted. Everything was progressing, at the very least, so why did it feel like she was forgetting something important? Or, rather, why did it feel like she hadn't finished a battle?

Eckret looked over the documents of the newest ruling from the royal family that affected his town. The dullahan was visibly disgusted as he looked over the documents in his office. Like most gan ceann he preferred to work in the dark and had his windows boarded up and used glowing crystals to light up his workspace. Purple crystals. They always made the old tribes uneasy.

"Sir!" a voice called out from behind the door. Grunting following as whomever was on the other side struggled to push said door open. "Ugh! I thought you were going to get rid of all the boxes of files."

It was Jellybean, the pegasus. Her coat and feathers were a hot pink whilst the tips of her wing feathers, mane, and tail all sported a bombastic yellow that blinded any who stared at it too long. She thought getting an orange streak through her mane would help, but Eckret still found himself squinting at her from the side even in this lighting. The only thing about her that didn't blind an onlooker was her cutie mark, that looked like some kind of hellish town seal. None of the shapes were recognizable nor were the letters on the trim readable. Just random assortments of bronze, green, yellow, and red. No pony could figure out what it was and Jellybean refused to compound upon it.

"How the Hades am I supposed to store them elsewhere?" Eckret bellowed angrily as he slammed his hooves on the marble table. He noticed Jellybean reflexively pull away from the sight of his limbs floating about in the dim, purple light. "We almost lost all of this when the store building caught fire!" The stallion passed a hoof through his mane. "How does a brick building catch fire? I thought it was designed without any flammable substances in it!" He slammed his head onto the table, making Jellybean squeak in horror. "The council is expecting everypony to find a solution to this decree that the king and queen sent out, but it doesn't even make sense!"

He pushed himself away from the table and angrily kicked away boxes in his way, stopping at a wall with a map of Equestria.

"That's...what I was here to talk to you about. The council needs you with them to resume the debate. Apparently, the decree is more important than we thought. It might be a solution to the sun, too."

The dullahan looked at her, his eyes wide with pleasant and hopeful surprise. He felt a warmth well up within him but was quick to douse it. Hope had no place in the real world. "The royal family have been hiding strange events happening around old Equestria and suddenly they have a solution for the sun?! I'm not buying it." Eckret looked back to the flag and focused his attention. "Wine made from the rumor vine says that everything has been going belly-up since some event up north."

Jellybean witnessed the mayor's body slowly stretch apart from itself before snapping back into place. She knew it was just the ambient magic around them causing it, but she still couldn't get over it. A dissociation of body and mind. Didn't matter how long she trained her mind to get used to that.

"So, what now?" she asked him.

Eckret groaned and turned to the mare. "I'll get the paperwork and the decree," he groaned. "Tell them I'll be there in a few minutes."

The stallion gathered his wits about him and stepped outside of his office, taking the door that led directly outside. The town had grown exponentially in the last decade. What were once just a few houses and a plethora of trees became several multi-purpose buildings...and a plethora of trees. Had he not been there, Eckret would have believed the town to have grown. A hundred and twenty-five inhabitants explodes into well over ten thousand. Oddly enough, only pony tribes had decided to come live here, causing a variety of architectural types to come about. The old tribes still worked with wood and stone, but the 'newer' ones had more extravagant material. The dullahan worked with rough stone material and crystals, producing rough stone shapes that could very well have just been made from a bored-through boulder that they brought. That, or they made their homes underground, something they shared with the Eckhan Crue and Crancan. The crancan preferred to decorate their homes to remind them of the sea, replete with fake sea foliage, shells, and coral. It caused a major disconnect to any observer when seen next to the half of forest that the city was built next to and the various giant trees growing around the streets.

It was a weird, disjointed little village where anypony could live in the calmest way possible with little-to-no stress.

"SO WHY IS THE SUN ATTACKING US NONSTOP?!" Eckret shouted in his mind.

Over the past few weeks the sun had started seething with a fury no pony had witnessed before and was attacking the buildings and trees. The ground was scorched and a lot of the trees had been turned into burnt matchsticks. Most of the wooden homes had been burned away, and the underwater tunnels the Crancan had dug for themselves had all but dried up. Hundreds were in hospitals and makeshift homes in underground homes to protect the victims from the sun. The dullahan wasn't one to cower before a bit of light. That wasn't the nature of his tribe. He calmly walked over to the stone trap door where the council was currently residing and went down the steps to an open, semi-circular chamber where eight other ponies were waiting for Eckret.

Torches were held upon sconces all around the room. It was hard not to trip on the uneven rock floor, but that could be dealt with using simple chiseling tools. The dullahan saluted his fellows and sat in the middle of the crescent moon 'table' made from hastily chiseled stone.

"Now what?" Eckret asked as he dropped the documents on the table. "We ask the king for help weeks ago, and now he answers with this." He held up a bunch of paper. "I trust you all received your own copies."

The unicorn furthest to the left nodded. "I can't believe it, either. He ignores us unless it's to gather royal taxes, but when we need help it's too much?"

"He wants us to send our youngest to the capital to train to become soldiers!" the eckan crue to Eckret's left stated. "Why? Because some 'war' is about to happen? Against who?" She groaned and slumped in her chair.

To Eckret's right was another dullahan and shared in the stallion's temperament. "I'd tell him to piss off, really. supposedly he's too busy dealing with something at home to care about the 'little ponies'."

"Alright, enough with the debating about the king's personal life!" Eckret interjected. "Can we focus on the decree? Wanting us to prepare for war, gather stockpiles of wood for the reserves...We can't do any of this, not with the sun the way it is."

The whole chamber shook violently, and screaming followed soon after.

"What is it now? Did the sun come down to punch somepony in the face repeatedly?" the other dullahan said with exasperation. "Can't even have a discussion anymore."

The nine went to see the commotion, expecting another building to have collapsed, but the reality was much worse. The sky was engulfed in a golden light coming from the sun that had somehow bloated to five times its size and looked like a furious ball of fire ready to consume everything below it. Strange white flames were igniting all over the place and setting fire to what normally couldn't be set alight. To the council's horror, they could see ponies screaming and galloping around as their bodies were consumed by flames of various colors. The council ducked reflexively when a beam of light shot out of the sun and created a streak along the ground, destroying the taller buildings and melting the smaller ones outright. Another shot through the remains of the archival building, tearing the five-story building in half.

"We have to split up and find survivors," Eckret announced. "Go! I'll look around here."

The other eight nodded and split apart into the flaming mass of the town. Eckret hurried over to what used to be a group of stores and a wagon maker. He called out to any survivors, but the structures had already collapsed on themselves and fire blocked any path inside. In a way, he felt a twinge of regret at seeing all the tools and merchandise consumed by the gluttonous white flames. The childish expectation of survivors having nothing left after the fires went out took over his rational mind briefly. The Dullahan hurried along the line of burning buildings and charred ground and continued calling out for survivors when he noticed a group of ponies were trying to push away collapsed wooden debris with a plank of wood.

"What's going on?" he was quick to ask.

A mare rushed to him. "It's my husband and children. They got trapped in our house!" she shouted.

The dullahan cursed under his breath. That was right. Even children could suffer tragedies like this. Why wasn't he able to think straight? He looked at the five stallions and mares pushing down on a large plank of wood to clear the rubble that was once the doorway. Eckret jumped on the plank, pushing it high enough to destabilize the flaming rubble and allow the others to rescue the father and two foals. They were suffering from smoke inhalation and severe burns.

"You need to take them to one of the underground hospitals or simply flee deeper into the forest," the dullahan said. "This isn't a time to fumble about, so get going! The rest of you who aren't wounded are with me. We need to save as many ponies as we can."

Eckret quickly met up with the second dullahan council member after what felt like hours of work in a clearing far from the burning buildings.

"I'm exhausted," Eckret complained. "What about you? How have you fared?"

The other dullahan coughed. "I've been at this for as long as you have. It never ends."

The two looked at the exhausted ponies around them, all of them suffering from varying degrees of burn wounds. Many were slumped, taking the brief moment to rest as much as they could.

"We've rescued hundreds," Eckret said. "How about you?"

The dullahan rubbed his forehead. "Probably the same as you." He looked around and his brown furrowed further. "We can't keep doing this. We have nothing to stop the flames and no pony trained in this kind of event..."

Eckret cursed under his breath. "You're right, but leaving the others behind? It doesn't sit right with me."

The dullahan put a foreleg on his fellow's shoulder. "You must be able to help yourself before you can help others. You'll be another part of the casualties if you stay behind."

Despite the internal struggle to accept what dullahan had said, Eckret resigned. He looked up to see the sky consumed with embers and smoke, and the sun in it shone brightly through the wall of black and gray. It was like a snowstorm from the underworld shaded by the light of the burning town.

"Fine. We must flee to the forest. We'll come back when the flames have settled," Eckret lamented. "I...I don't know if I can live with myself afterwards."

"It's okay. It's something we will all share, now we must leave and think of that another day as living ponies."

The two were blinded by a bright flash of light that tore the smoke away. Something was coming from the sun and flying towards them.

"What is that?" one of the ponies wondered aloud.

"Did the king send help?"

"That's just a pegasus!"

"Then how did the smoke clear?"

Another galloped forward and waved her tired forelegs. "Over here! Hey!"

"Something isn't right," Eckret said. When he noticed a white light forming at the head of the pegasus, his eyes widened. "Get away from there!" he called to the mare.

It was too late. She was engulfed in white fire. Eckret deafened himself to the screams as best he could. The incoming figure slammed so hard into the ground that it cracked and caused the already weak buildings around to collapse. It didn't matter who was in or around them. The ponies themselves had fallen to the ground and panicked when they saw the cracks fill with a burning, orange light.

"What is this?! Who are you?" Eckret bellowed.

"No pony leaves!" The figure shouted so powerfully that the smoke was blown away and the fires around were extinguished instantly. "You all stay!"

"What?!" the other dullahan shouted. "You think you can terrorize us and--"

He, too, was consumed by fires, but these were yellow in color, and he simply fell silently onto the ground as the fires raged on. Eckret could only stare weakly in horror as his fellow fell in an instant. The stallion looked back to the intruder.

They were enormous! He had never seen a pony that big before. They were easily three ponies high! Or at least, that's how he measured it. The stallion could see a horn and wings beyond the glaring white light engulfing their body and nothing more.

"Can't see me?!" the figure taunted.

The light vanished, leaving the pony for all to see. Many gasped, whether from horror, amazement, or some other emotion was outside Eckret's reach. Their body looked like it was made of molten lava. A blackened coat that turned white under various angles, orange veins running along their flesh that leaked magma around them but solidified around their body and regressed it. Small bouts of fire erupted from the cracks at irregular intervals. They were simple sparks compared to the veritable storms of fire serving as the pony's mane and tail. They engulfed the air above and behind them by several feet each and continued to spiral around wildly, lashing out at everything around them randomly, as fire was wont to do.

"I'm finally freed from the horrors I was subjected to, and I see everything gone! All that hard work! They did! They took her from me and now this is what I get to return to?!"

She leaned in closer to the dullahan, letting him better see her face. Her eyes looked like a six-armed sun on a dark-red background. Eckret could barely make out the veins of lava going through them. He also noticed several purple gems covering her immense horn.

"Why are you doing this?" he asked her.

"Because you're all traitors and you'll help me to get her back!"

The pony's horn swelled with magic as fires sparked along its surface. The tips of their mane and tail changed colors when they licked at the air when magic surged throughout the newcomer's body.

"I am Solar Flare, and I will have what's most precious to me returned!" she bellowed as she pointed her horn at Eckret.

Several ponies were in the keep, demonstrating a large assortment of different colored tissues in the hopes that the alicorn might adopt one for her castle. As she had no true funds yet, everything came from the fear the ponies had for the mare and the increased tourism brought on by the moon pony's appearance in Snowfege.

"I think a silver double trim for the banners would be splendid," one suggested as he passed a night blue cloth along his forelegs. "A thinner line would run parallel of the thicker outer lining."

"No, no! That's cliché!" another seamstress complained. She pushed the pony aside and brought out some yellow ribbons from her box. "Let us go with yellow instead! The moon and night are always black and silver, or at least a very dark blue."

"I agree!" a third chimed in. "You need bombastic colors to tell the world that you are here!" The mare's bravado quickly extinguished when she remembered whom she was speaking to. She quickly shrunk away. "Y-your majesty."

Moon grumbled. They had been at this for half an hour now, and even she was nowhere close to a final decision on anything. "I need something to stick by. I'm tempted to use my old colors, but this is a new era. One in which I am not welcome, but shall impose myself within all the same."

One of the many designers clapped his hooves, bringing the attention of the others toward him. "How inspiring!" he cheered. He hopped forward, through the crowd.

"A dullahan?" Moon noted. "Is that the name of your tribe?" the mare asked.

The pony nodded enthusiastically, causing his limbs to wobble like a sail in a storm. His black coat shimmered in the light coming from outside. Had it not been for a large gash on the right side of his torso and the vibrant, neon green pupils, Nightmare Moon believed that it would become incredibly difficult to discern these creatures from one another. A thought crossed her mind at that moment: How did animals differentiate from each other?

"Yes, your highness!"

The alicorn was briefly disturbed by the strange enthusiasm demonstrated by this designer. Was this what Celestia had to deal with on a regular basis?

"I thought your kind didn't like coming to immense cities like this one," Moon noted.

The pony waved a hoof. "Oh it isn't that big," he said dismissively.

"And you're here to offer your services to me, but you stand out with your...volume," Moon said.

Chuckles escaped the dullahan. "Yes. I was told to be as loud as possible when coming here. Apparently, royalty likes to be loud so you have to be louder?"

Moon jerked her jaw left and right. "I suppose that's the case for other...ponies beneath me."

"Your highness," a guard called out.

He was met with a tired glare by the alicorn. "What is it now? I'm busy."

The guard looked behind himself briefly. "Well, there's a group of thestrals that just appeared outside the castle walls."

"And they aren't flying inside?" The guard shook his head. "Hmmm. I will resume our talks later. Come up with concrete plans on my return," she ordered the artisans.

Following the guard, the alicorn flew atop the wall and looked down on a respectable contingent of black ponies. The mare noted that each of them were wearing an assortment of ragged armor. Poorly sewn together leather that was cracked and rough, unpolished and poorly tempered steel plates, and some gambeson with multi-colored patches. Their 'weapons', to Nightmare Moon's judgmental gaze, were in just as shabby a state. Swords, spears, pitchforks, hoes, shovels, and two scythes. Only the farming tools were in any acceptable state. Behind the group were five open, wooden wagons carrying an odd assortment of unknown items. Everything had been wrapped in clothing.

One of the thestrals stepped forward when she saw Moon arrive. "Your highness, we heard that you came to our forest in search of an army! We aren't much of an army, but you can be assured of our loyalty and eagerness to learn!"

"Uh huh..." Moon mumbled. "How many are you?"

The pony turned to her fellows and started talking to each other. "We are fifty-three strong!" she shouted proudly. The others imitated her.

"It's better than nothing," one of the guards said to the alicorn.

She was loathe to admit it and fought against every fiber of her being demanding she intimidate the pony down a peg, but it was true. He stated what she refused to admit to herself. Moon wanted an immense thestral army to cement her rule in the territories she would recover, and then integrate the others. It was a constant repetition to herself that never really led anywhere.

"Fine. Open the gates. Let them into the courtyard," Moon ordered as she flew down.

The thestrals looked in awe at the black, polished stone comprising the castle and chatted with each other casually, commenting on what they were seeing. Masons occupied with measuring and calculating the size of the stones needed to continue expanding and repairing the castle grumbled when they saw the ponies arrive. The thestrals' eyes widened when they saw the alicorn of the night towering before them and quickly went silent. However, the moment the gates closed behind them, they all shrank in fear.

"You aren't here as tourists or visitors!" she bellowed at the top of her lungs. She stomped around the group as they gradually backed into each other. "You came here to act as the first of my soldiers! Your training will be far different than what you learn at your homes, and what my personal guards here around have learned as well!" The alicorn's eyes started to grow and the sky above started flickering between day and night, with the many moons appearing separately from each other. "There's no more easy life for you." The magic lessened and she raised a brow. "However," she started with a calmer voice. "My main concern is where you are going to live." Moon looked around the castle to see its many future extensions being built and designed. "The barracks are occupied. There is no room for the rest of you."

One of the thestrals wearily stepped forward and raised a wing. "We thought you wouldn't let us live in the castle so we had brought tents and wood to make fire."

Surprised, Moon nodded. "Planning in advance?" She rubbed her chin. "Yes. That could work. I think you just created a new tradition for my future troops," she stated gleefully. "Pegasus!" she bellowed. One of the pegasi halted above her.

"Yes, your highness?"

"Find a suitable location for my new recruits to set up camp. Return to me when it is done and I will go and check upon them." The guard nodded and flew to the thestrals, ordering them to follow him. Their wagons were left behind in the castle grounds for the time being. "If they can return to the villages after becoming proper soldiers, then they can sway the ponies there to follow me. Conscription never works..." She looked around with a narrowed gaze. "Although it's not completely off the table," she muttered slyly to herself.

The alicorn returned to the decorators in the keep and was pleased to find them arguing about colors, albeit constructively bouncing upon one another. She approached the excitable dullahan and asked for his name. He was named Caerlmàn, and he was there to bring great praise to his family at the same time as following his dream. Moon took note of his behavior for the future. Whether he would be an asset or not was left to be seen. If he proved himself he might become her 'royal decorator' or whatever title she felt like making up on the spot.

No progress had been made by the time night was starting to fall, and the ponies left with many plans and designs ready for their next visit. The alicorn pondered the best places to start her expansion to eventually corner the king and make him pay for killing her first vassal when she was so agreeable to leave him everything but his title.

"Y-your highness?" a familiar and sheepish voice called out.

"Ah, Sunny. Come in. You just missed the decorators," the alicorn said.

The nervous stallion was carrying saddle bags again and dropped them on the floor with a click. He removed the latches with his teeth and shook out several scrolls and parchments.

Moon watched over him with curiosity. "What is this?"

Sunny cursed to himself when he dropped a parchment and it rolled open. "I-it's all the nearby duchies, baronies, and so on that would be loyal to you just by you appearing. Then I found a list of regions where you would likely have to negotiate their loyalties, places that might try to remain neutral, and the ones that you would be forced to..." Sunny gulped and felt his blood ice over. "Go to war against."

The alicorn raised the many, many parchments and maps and looked them over. Sunny had circled many locations and added a plethora of notes to everything.

"Impressive, Sunny." Moon looked more closely at some of the maps. "A few of the loyals are close to this city, but a lot are scattered about Equestria." She hummed pensively to herself. "And what are these regions you colored black? The ones I must conquer?"

Sunny did his best to gather himself before responding. "N-no. They're areas that are ruled by non-ponies, like that region we went to with the griffins and that weird, two-legged bird lady."

Moon nodded. "Right. Calostell. The one that reeks of chaos magic." A frown grew across the pony's face. "I still cannot understand how the literal embodiments of chaos and order were taken out by those fanatics." She unfurled a few more maps before resuming. "And what of those idiots who claimed they were related to me?"

"They're part of these territories, but many lost their lands to the hippogriffs and griffins in wars not too long ago." He passed a hoof through his mane. "They're considered lost, like how Snowfege is pony territory that the griffins lost a century ago."

The alicorn grit her teeth. "Will the idiot night nobles offer resources to me immediately?" Moon asked.

"Well, you saw how they acted when you showed yourself to them. Most likely they will if it means getting more clout in their horrific and disgusting world."

Sunny was met with a chuckle by his great aunt. "It's a world that ponies like me can manipulate with ease, especially considering their blind adoration of me." Moon laid the parchments and maps down and looked at her nephew directly in his eyes. "Whom do you recommend we send a message of a future visit to first?" She looked briefly at the exit of her keep and the carpenters taking measurements of the entryway. "I have future soldiers to train myself."

Calostell had her legs propped up against a riggedy, slapped-together table in the underground city she ruled over. An oil lamp hung precariously above her on a rusty hook that looked like it would give way at any moment. She looked on at the activity of her home and the lives being made there. She smiled when she heard someone falling in through one of the many trap doors, accompanied by the loud jingling of loot. The bird shivered with excitement. Loot was the best thing the strange creature adored more than anything.

Normally, she would be theorizing what the loot was before going to greet the ne'er-do-wells just to see for curiosity's sake, but lately, she had been feeling...lax? Tired? Bored? There wasn't really a logical term for what she felt. She grabbed a beat-up, metallic mug sitting next to her clawed toes and rotated it around. Nothing was in it, its content having been drunk a while back, but it didn't hurt to just do that movement.

That is, until it filled up with a murky red-purple gooey substance that rose up to look at the anthropomorphic bird and reveal a gloopy, hollow mouth.

Calostell screamed in shock and threw the mug away while falling on the rotted wood floor of the house she rested in front of. The mug had become empty when she let go of it. She peered at her hands and at the empty vessel, trying her best to calm her panicked heart. Clenched fists were the only thing that came to fruition. Weird occurrences around her had been becoming more and more frequent, like a flood of pink cockroaches made of bubblegum coming out of the stone and mud walls or orange juice replacing the trickling water. Luckily it wasn't drunk since it reminded the people of the underground city of tainted water. The less 'fun' ones were literal bodies growing from the walls with their ribcages jutting outwards and the bones sharpened to a fine point. The victim reached out towards the bird with sharpened talons and hollow eyes decorated by a tiny, almost imperceptible white dot.

Without Bombastic's interventions, these more horrific apparitions would have likely become far worse. Calostell didn't want to remember them. She was taken out of what was to be a panic attack by something grabbing the mug and looking inside it. It was a pony covered in a black cloak.

"I see you have powers you can't control," they commented.

"What?" Calostell responded aggressively.

"I can help you learn how to use them." They shook a covered hoof. "But not control them. That part is up to you."

"And who are you that comes out of nowhere into my h...How did you get here? Who invited you?"

The pony shrugged. The jostling of their cloak momentarily revealed a white body underneath, but it seemed too uneven and pale, even for a white-coated pony.

"A purveyor of unique talents in need of work and training. Your unique magic called me here," they mused. The mug refilled with the living slime, stunning Calostell. "I can show you what these powers of yours can do, if you let me.

The bird looked to the mug, then the pony, then back, several times over. "I could...give it a shot, I suppose, but not alone."

"Just trying is more than enough."

Calostell noticed a strange shadow under the cloak, like an immense, toothless smile had just formed, and beady white dots were peering at her. She would need everyone to watch her back and that of this creature, too. Just having the horrific events stop was more than enough to give it a chance.

If that last part feels out-of-place then I'll delete it. To me it feels odd, but I had an idea for it. A sort of callback to a very old series of mine and its characters I only ever use one of anymore.

The buildings continued to burn despite nothing being left to catch fire. The ponies engulfed in the flames had emerged, infused with fire that cracked skin and bone. Their very beings had been consumed by the burning light that shone intensely above, turning them into little more than snarling beasts that burned everything they touched.

Solar Flare looked at her work with satisfaction and gazed upon the survivors of her wrath that consumed her very body. Her body pulsed as the magma within her flew through the exposed veins of her flesh. The survivors trembled in her presence while the sun in the sky expanded throughout its entirety as if celebrating the return of its master.

Solar Flare grinned, exposing the sharpened obsidian dripping with magma serving as teeth. "Oh yes, I missed you, too. Did you miss me during these few years that I was away?" she coo'd at the celestial body. She pointed a hoof at the terrified mayor. "Where are the 'heroes' that imprisoned me? I would have their heads and those of their family and hometowns." The veins along her body glowed intensely when she noticed the mayor staring at her blankly. "I asked you a question!" Her hoof started to glow white and a heat haze formed around it from the heat.

"I don't understand a thing you're saying!" the mayor stammered.

The alicorn raised a brow and looked at the crowd, causing them all to scream in terror. Solar Flare grit her teeth together, causing sparks to fly everywhere. "Just my luck. I reform outside of Equestria," the mare grumbled angrily as she took the surroundings in. She looked back up at the sun and smiled, letting eddies of lava spill from beneath her sharp, blackened teeth and burn the ground.

The survivors were surprised to see her lie down on the ground and close her eyes while the sun itself started to calm down and return to its smaller size and gentle white light.

"What is this thing?!" a mare screamed in horror. Her face was soaked with tears, both from the smoke irritating them and seeing her city and loved ones burn.

"This creature turned the Peanuts into burned monstrosities!" a stallion said angrily. "They're there!"

A once elderly mare and stallion stomped through the seemingly eternally burning ruins. Their eyes and mouth had been hollowed out, leaving a bright yellow light filling in the empty spaces. Their faces were trapped in a permanent rictus as the flames ravaged and charred their bodies to apparently no painful effect. Their bodies appeared similar to Solar Flare's, although most had simple, glowing red patterns along their blackened bodies. It was like they had been transformed into something else. Something Equestria was never meant to see. Several of the older pony survivors' muscles clenched upon seeing the display.

"it has...two wings...and a horn," an elderly mare with the right side of her face burned said. "Is...is she that supposing goddess from the north?"

"Goddess?" a stallion repeated quizzically.

"I heard that there was a pony with wings and a horn that suddenly appeared up north..." She patted the side of her face and flinched in pain. "I haven't heard much else than that, but I know that they're called alicorns and were considered goddesses in the past."

The mayor looked at the flaming monstrosity before him and furrowed his brow. "I would call those baseless rumors, but seeing that thing?" He grumbled. "I'm inclined to believe you."

The alicorn stomped before them. "I will return," she growled.

The ponies audibly gulped as she took off. They thought themselves safe, but flames grew around them, trapping them within the confines of a small patch of forest and the city.

"I should cover myself with a cloaking spell. I don't want to deal with those traitors and monsters," Solar Flare grumbled to herself. The sun glowed brightly, as though it had been reinvigorated by the return of its master, but that wasn't very conducive to stealth. "Calm yourself," the alicorn told it. "You risk my life."

The sun acquiesced almost instantly, returning to its calm state and left the newly reborn alicorn to gaze at the lands around her place of rebirth. A grimace burst from her charred skin, letting droplets of magma to seep through before it healed itself.

"That's...odd. I left Canterlot behind, but I should be able to see the mountain, from here," Solar mumbled to herself. "I have things to recover there. She should be more than willing to let me into my old home."

Calling upon the sun's memory, Solar Flare was guided through Equestria, although the alicorn felt great discomfort at the sights. The land was misshapen. The cities and villages she knew had vanished. There were statues of her and Luna that used to be placed everywhere, and now there was no trace of them. In fact, there was no trace of anything anywhere, really. Solar furrowed her brows, cracking the surface of her body and letting droplets of magma slip out.

When a series of immense glass towers started coming into view, Solar Flare knew that something was very, very off. "I told you to guide me to Canterlot, not this...what even are these? They built all of this in a few years?" The alicorn looked to the sun. "Well?" She paused while the memories of her star flooded into her. The images were wild and burnt, but they got the point across. Solar Flare felt her fury starting to build up again.

Rather than wait or destroy everything, she dashed towards the closest tower and shorn clean through the glass and steel keeping it up. Pipes that had melted along with the glass and steel let out all the steam and condensation they held. Several griffins were fatally charred and the rest several burned as the sudden wave of extreme heat burned through everything in a wave. Chairs and desks had been turned to ash and slag. Was it a business? Solar Flare didn't care.

She grabbed the nearest griffin crawling away by his left wing and pulled his burnt face close to hers. "What is this place? Where is Canterlot?"

"Wha--"

The alicorn shook him violently. "The mountain! There was a mountain here!"

"Who-Wha--"

He was casually thrown aside and through a weakened wall, leaving Solar Flare to stomp towards the opposite of the building and glare downwards. Since when was there a city of griffins in Equestria? There were visitors, but they never came here of their own volition. She wiped her muzzle with the tip of a feather and peered into the distance. The ground and position of the glass buildings were odd. The alicorn was too enraged to think clearly, but if her castle was destroyed, then there was a chance that the storage below was still intact. It had been built very very deep into the mountain, after all.

The mare pressed a hoof to the windows and watched them melt instantly, leaving an immense, gaping hole that she let herself fall through. It wasn't as 'casual' for the city and its inhabitants when they witnessed a living mass of molten rock fall down vertically and both instantly melt any material it almost came into with and turn to ash any living thing that got too close.

With a loud 'thump', the pony had reached the bottom of the city and left behind a pool of boiling mud and rock behind. Solar Flare knew that her powers would destroy everything if she let them be, so she did her best to keep them under control. Her secret was wide enough and had enough residual magic coming off it that she would at least know which direction to go towards if she missed it somehow, and if she felt nothing? Her face cracked into a sinister rictus.

The wind was suddenly pushed out of the alicorn's lungs when she suddenly found herself in a small opening and hitting a sturdy object. There wasn't much space, however, so the alicorn bounced against the rocky cavern walls from the surprise impact. The light coming off of her was the only true illumination the caverns had seen in millennia.

"Too early..." Solar grumbled as she rubbed her head. "Should have at least a few..." Her eyes widened when she saw what she stumbled upon.

Silently, she climbed along the rock wall and jumped into a gaping hole leading into the castle. It was her castle. Her old castle. Solar looked around silently, ignoring the crunching her hooves produced on the dirt and parchment fragments scattered about the floor. Everything had become decrepit, but more importantly.

"Why is Canterlot underground?" she murmured. Panic started filling her. "They couldn't have. Not her. Not another!"

The alicorn bolted through the castle, noticing the deathly silence that followed her everywhere she went. She bolted towards her old room, gasping for breath. There was nothing left except a rotting bed in tatters and a vanity mirror shattered on the ground. Well, from what she could tell. The room had long since caved in from the pressure outside. The magma within Solar Flare spiked in brightness and the air around her started heating up, producing a haze.

"They take my beloved sister away from me, and my own daughter?!" the alicorn bellowed at the top of her voice.

She felt a chill along her spine from something wandering the halls. Taking her leave, she was met with a transparent mass of writhing shapes floating in front of her. She could barely make out any defining traits, but on occasion, a stretched-out face with no eyes would surface briefly and the moaning the entity produced would grow louder.

The mare snorted. "Some kind of amalgam of treacherous souls," she mocked. "Are we meant to have some kind of battle where you torment me with my past? Am I meant to end myself?" Solar Flare cackled. She looked to her right hoof and focused. A crimson-red spark ran along it briefly. "A perfect moment to test this new magic on a subject..." She looked up at the mass and raised a brow. "Undead is still technically living."

Her whole body coursed with reddish magic, turning her magma pure red. She leaped at the mass and swiped at it with her hooves. In response, it unleashed an ear-splitting howl that almost deafened her, but now the red was spreading throughout the mass that gradually became visible whilst floating, immobile, in the dirty air.

Solar Flare looked at herself and frowned as the magic dissolved and she recovered her normal colors. "Red and black...fantastic... It's still incomplete, even after all those years of research." The alicorn hummed to herself. "I can barely channel any of it. With some luck, I'll be able to use my whole body as a channel for it." She looked over her shoulder towards the mass. It was changing thanks to the magic.

Solar Flare continued through the halls, disturbed by the state of decay. She found herself at the entrance that had caved in and stared at what was once the entrance. Everything filled with the light of her sun, the floors and walls immaculate and clean. Guards everywhere, guests commenting on the work of her gardeners. The alicorn clenched her forehead. The memories brought about a sickly pain. She fought through the feeling as best she could and sighed in relief when it finally went away.

The mare scanned the room, lamenting the state it was in then noticed the entrance to her secret was open. Did they find it?! She hopped down and analyzed everything she could. The dust and dirt had only recently been disturbed, and there were signs of large hoof prints around it. Perhaps the culprits were still around. She dove down the abyss and slammed hard enough into the ground that the walls shook in response. Solar Flare noticed that everything here was changed as well. The entry shaft went deeper into the mountain than it used to, and the entrance to her archives was far bigger as well. Flanking the entrance were two immense statues. The mare wasn't sure what they were exactly and chose to ignore them until the heads turned instantly to look at her. Brandishing spears, they moved from their pedestals and aimed at the alicorn in an attempt to stab.

She put up a shield in front of her that did little to stem the momentum that crashed into it and launched her all the way back to the bottom of the shaft.

"I never made those!" Solar Flare shouted in surprise.

Furious, she charged at them, her wing tips dragging along the ground. A trail of widening rivers of lava followed the alicorn until she skid to a halt. With a flick of her wings, the rivers erupted forward and engulfed both statues. With Solar's magic, the lava hardened almost instantly, but the statues were trying to free themselves regardless.

"Tenacious little constructs, aren't you?" Her horn started glowing. "But not tenacious enough."

A small sun came off the tip of the alicorn's horn like a bubble. It floated gently in the air and stopped between both struggling statues. Its surfaces waved and boiled until it burst open and dozens of beams of light shot out all at once. The statues had been cut to pieces and were no longer moving.

"Bleugh." The alicorn leaned towards one of the statues and raised a brow. "Interesting. I don't recognize this magic."

The archives seemed more or less intact, but there was no light. Solar Flare remedied that with her own magic, illuminating the entirety of the chamber. It was entirely clean, much to her shock, but her magma simmered. There was a foreign magic she didn't recognize in immense quantities lingering around, and they weren't related to the statues. That said, they were old, but Solar Flare couldn't figure out how long ago. Regardless, they were still strong enough that the remnants couldn't have been more than a year old.

"Whoever was here didn't destroy anything, and I don't see anything stolen..." Solar Flare rubbed her chin with a wing. She flew up above one of the bookshelves and shoved her hooves and horn into the wall. The stones shifted around her body, locked in, then pulled away with the alicorn let out just a drop of her own magic, revealing a room hidden within an already hidden location. "Ha ha, they didn't find it," she mused.

Her magic had already illuminated this room. Glass orbs floated silently in the air, awaiting somepony to relieve them of their charge. Their occupants reflected off the uneven and somewhat sharp floor and walls made from glass. Fortunately, they couldn't harm Solar Flare, but the mare still noticed black spots of dried blood dotted sparingly around.

"Did she finish my research?" the mare wondered.

Solar Flare used her magic to bring one of the orbs to her and went rummaging through the parchments until her hoof hit something solid. She pulled it out eagerly and smiled widely when she saw the cover. On the brown, peeling cover was written 'Monster Tracking' with a silver inlay. The alicorn pulled the book open gently with a hoof and started going through the pages until she found a footnote holding one of the pages open. With age it had flattened and broken apart, but its dregs were present enough in the pages that they garnered the readers' attention. At the top of the page were written in big letters: Locations of Vesuvius Vulcans. An asterisk next to it had been added by far worse hoof writing, and said author's name was in the middle of the page.

The alicorn dragged a hoof across the page melancholically. She turned it and the following pages until her eyes fell upon a page that had the distinctive scrunching and ink dirtying caused by tears.

"To my dear mother. I find myself wishing I could have done something for you, to alleviate your pain, but you are gone now. Even though I know your heart was consumed by grief and fury, and you harmed all those ponies because of it, I still love you. So, I decided to finish your research into finding a gigantis vesuvius vulcan, that I may cast a spell on it to make it slumber.

They're much like you: A force of nature, but they don't intend to do harm. They simply exist, and really, how could anypony truly harm either of you?"

The rest of the page was illegible save for a few letters, then a single line at the bottom that had mostly been spared was filled in by its reader.

"I wish I could have met Aunt Luna. Now I'm all alone."

Solar Flare's heart clamped in her chest, but she pushed on. Those words were going to haunt her for a long time to come, at least until she found her daughter...so why did it feel like she was gone forever. The mare pushed her paranoia away and turned the page.

There it was. The location of a gigantis vesuvius vulcan. She would finally get her revenge on all those traitors, and all she had to do was wake it up and nothing more. Solar Flare held the book in her magic as she looked around. Her actual artifacts would serve her better in pony than if they remained here. She shrunk them down and hid them within her mane, at least until she returned to the village. Looking back at her archives, the alicorn could feel something engulfing her heart with grief, but she couldn't figure out why.

The older 'artifacts' weren't of any use to her. If somepony had taken them, it didn't matter. She didn't even notice the melted doors when she left. Instead, she returned to the amalgam of angry souls and smiled when she saw her work completed.

"It worked! Amazing!" she cheered.

"I serve the Queen of the Sun with all my souls," a voice responded.

Those of you who know of my oldest works might recognize the Vesuvius Vulcans. Those who don't? Well, you'll find out :>