Original Link:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/17HTMhUQJ1WS5HBnjKQGkrR3OEOIzfRxMz7LVpV3GR78/edit?usp=sharing

Read, sign, pass. Read, sign, pass. Read, deny, pass. Read, sign, pass. Finally, the stack of paper was done and the bright demi-goddess let out a small sigh before she continued on the next.

The circle of reconstruction had started over again. Celestia was up to the throat in work. But in contrast to the last time, she had no little sister to... assist her with the paperwork anymore. Yet, the princess of the sun and moon, as she was addressed by now, learned from her mistakes. Instead of trying to solve everything by herself, she now had several hired workers who helped her manage the bureaucracy of the land.

Of course, this was also a trick to keep the ponies of Equestria busy. The princess of the sun and the reapers were the only ones who did not forget about Maledictum Insania, even though not a lot of information about this curse had been public to begin with. They had to keep up a delicate balance act between keeping the ponies occupied and not overworking them. As it turned out in the last ten years, both can equally bring them to insanity.

Sadly, Celestia had many opportunities to study the curse of madness already. It is now that she learned how dreadful it truly was. Ponies had become very unstable. Things that before the curse would have only shocked them now was reason enough for affected subjects to commit murder; and there were plenty of such cases. Still, despite all, Celestia successfully managed to more than quadruple the total population of Equestria.

As soon as she got the most basic economic systems working again, she set up standards to support families and couples planning to have children. Many foals were playing on the streets and a vast amount of female subjects were currently pregnant with at least their second foal. A good start to repopulate the land.

Naturally, there was not enough space in Everfree City anymore. Even though there were still several pony skeletons spread over the land and there was still a lot of destruction, the subjects finally began to spread out and raise fallen cities again. As it quickly turned out, the Everfree City immigrants were by far not the only survivors. All over Equestria, small groups of ponies had been hiding well enough to make it through the era of Nightmare Moon. As soon as the worst was over, they too began the reconstruction.

But even with all these positive news. Even with all the work Celestia had to do, she could not allow herself to forget about the de manis. They were still hiding somewhere in the land, even though they barely showed any activity in the past decade. The reapers, though, were still very active. So, as Silverstream, a reaper mare and another reaper stallion snuck into the throne room to give their reports, Celestia took this indifferent.

A lot had changed in their organization. By now, it was normal that they barely ever saw their mistress. Most orders and missions were given out via magical letters aimed to the individual reaper. Although Celestia still barely trusted them, she learned that they truly were absolutely loyal and several of them would even prefer risking their own lives over failing on a mission she gave them. Silverstream was one of them.

The stallion’s pegasus wings had begun to corrupt under the influence of the de manis he had consumed. He slowly started losing feathers and the wings reshaped themselves into bat wings, making it increasingly more difficult for him to fly properly. He also gained several scars from his battles against insane ponies and de manis.

As the three reapers kneeled down before their mistress, her sight remained on the papers she levitated in front of her face, one by one.

“So? Speak up!” she spoke in an indifferent tone.

“Maledictum Insania had been completely forgotten, as well as the events during Nightmare Moon’s rise. But they still remember the wicked mare of darkness and her children. It seems like these memories are just too vivid to completely vanish,” Silverstream reported.

“How much do they remember about them?” Celestia asked.

“Very little. While Nightmare Moon is slowly turning into a surreal legend, the subjects can not even remember the de manis properly anymore. Depending on the region I go to, I hear or read stories of demanis, demans or demons. The latter description seems to spread the most, though,” the reaper mare replied.

“I can only confirm this,” the other reaper stallion continued. “The only name still clearly remembered is Nightmare Moon. Other than that, it seems like the subjects do not even remember the connection between her and the ‘demons’. Stories of them are becoming rare and all that is clearly said in them is that they are evil, but not why and how this is expressed.”

“Tell me more about the actions of the de manis,” the bright demi-goddess ordered while still reading through the papers.

“As you assumed correctly, they retreated to the darkest spots in Equestria. Mostly deep underground in well hidden caves or abandoned diamond dog cities. But sadly, we can not say much about these locations,” the stallion spoke.

“Why is that?” Celestia wondered.

“It appears they are guarding the places they retreat to. From what we could observe, they are clustering up by the numbers of several ten thousands and fortify their hideouts. It feels like they are building strongholds,” the reaper mare explained.

“I want you to stop them. We must not allow them to regain any strength,” the princess of sun and moon ordered.

“I regret to say this, my mistress, but it is already too late for that. We already attempted to assault one of these strongholds, but we failed. Even though the de manis do not dare to attack Equestria, they are too many to be handled by just a few reapers. For the sakes of the land’s protection, we can not all come together to just attack a single stronghold either,” the stallion replied.

“Alright...” Celestia spoke with a sigh. “I suppose we could not have prevented this, considering the sheer amount of de manis still in existence. Speaking of it, how well are you all doing on your hunts?”

“From what the others have reported, they have consumed an average of seventy de manis per reaper. I myself am at 103,” Silverstream answered.

“This will not do. We must effectively reduce their numbers if we want to bring an end to this threat,” the bright demi-goddess insisted.

“My mistress... we have not consumed any flesh in over ten years. We are weakened and can barely handle the de manis anymore. Even our recovering abilities have reduced to-” Silverstream started, but found himself interrupted by his mistress.

“No excuses! I will not make any exceptions! Not just simply because the thought of having carnivorous servants is very displeasing to me, but also because I do not support the idea of killing more creatures than needed!” Celestia spoke loudly.

“What about carrion-feeding, my mistress? If we come across dead animals or ponies, we could feed on their bodies. Also, since we have to eliminate insane ponies anyway, we could also feed on them,” the reaper mare suggested.

Now, Celestia finally stopped on the paperwork for a brief moment. She moved the documents levitating in front of her aside and gave the three reapers below her a very serious glance.

“No,” was all she said before bringing the papers back in front of her by magic and continued her work.

The reapers remained silent and just bowed down. Her word was law and they would not dare to protest. But while the two other present reapers just took the response as it was, Silverstream had an idea why she denied their request.

Keeping Equestria free from flesh-eating creatures was just secondary to her in this case. While it might just seem like she was undiscerning, she actually tried to keep the reapers on a short leash. The truth was that Celestia was actually toying with the idea to grant them permission to feed on flesh under certain circumstances, should it be necessary. But for now, she wanted to find out if reapers truly needed it.

Finally, the reaper mare got up again and summoned a big black book, immediately opening it and starting to scan through the pages.

Celestia used her gained knowledge of curses to manipulate the reaper curse and expand it. In order to find out when and where which pony was supposed to find its final rest and how, she created a highly enchanted book. A book that was deeply bound to the destiny of the entire land and quickly turned out to be the most useful tool in the battle against insanity: the book of death.

This book had limitless pages and contained the precise information of everypony’s date of death. It also updated itself each time when a new pony was born and the flow of destiny changed. While the bright demi-goddess kept the original for herself, she gave the reapers the ability to summon their own copies, containing only names they are responsible for.

“My next reap is in ten minutes, my mistress. Do I have permission to leave?” the mare asked.

“You all have permission to leave now,” the princess of sun and moon replied, her eyes constantly stuck on the papers.

“As you command,” the three reapers spoke and started sneaking away.

---

The hours passed by and just before sundown, Celestia ultimately finished her paperwork for today. Keeping so many things in mind and reading through so many documents each day gave her a slight headache, but she kept it together. Even though she pushed the gruesome memories and her guilt far in the back of her mind, Celestia still remembered that she had to blame herself for being in this situation now.

The bright demi-goddess got up from her throne and started wandering through the castle while letting the sun sink to the horizon. With the increasing population of Equestria, the amount of employees in the castle increased as well. Also, something strange began to happen with their behavior. While ponies shunned the dark hours in all the hundreds of years before, they now occasionally could be met outside of their rooms late at night. In a few very rare occasions, Celestia could even catch one stargazing. She wasn’t precisely sure why they started changing their mind on the nighttime hours now, but she figured the amnesia spell had something to do with it.

Once again, Celestia arrived at the castle balcony and began to gaze into the stars herself. Although years had passed, Celestia kept her promise. She did not forget about Luna and came to visit her by watching the moon and the stars each night for a little while.

The more she occupied herself with her little sister’s work, the more she came to acknowledge the ingenious mind behind it. Luna arranged the stars so that one could line them up to pictures. These pictures were even put together so that they would tell stories and as the seasons change, so do the pictures and stories seen in the sky.

No matter how Celestia looked at it, the night sky was a masterpiece. She could not possibly imagine how much time her little sister must have spent on it to make it that beautiful and deep. But something confused her about it.

For a while now, she started noticing four stars moving very slowly in strange patterns. At first, the princess of the sun and moon figured that this was just another one of Luna’s dalliances with the night sky. But the more time Celestia spent studying it, the more she came to realize that everything Luna did was on purpose. There was no such thing as a pointless little dalliance for the sole purpose of having something change and vary.

Considering the grade of perfection Luna had created, this was just so out of place, it worried Celestia. After all, Nightmare Moon had the full support of darkness and the bright demi-goddess still remembered how tactical she was. Back then, she already spoke out assumptions that Nightmare Moon might have backup plans in case she would end up defeated. Celestia figured that this backup plan was Maledictum Insania. But now, she began to wonder if this was truly the only one.

The bright demi-goddess would not take any risks when it comes to the queen of the de manis. She would rather waste her time on researching the stars and risk ultimately just finding out that she overreacted and there was nothing to it than being unprepared for another strike of Nightmare Moon. Beginning tonight, Celestia would spend an hour each day observing and mapping the star movements.

---

Another year passed when Silverstream was stalking one of the Everfree citizens late at night. He constantly kept himself hidden in the shadows while trying to come closer and closer to the mare wielding a small cloth bag around her neck.

He had been observing the mare for a while now and was granted permission by Mistress Celestia to eliminate her. The bright demi-goddess added her name to his book of death and tonight, she was supposed to die. But the moment Silverstream had finally gotten into a good position to strike, a de manis suddenly appeared next to the mare.

It was a very tall, white one with no face, mane or tail, wearing a black suit. Before the mare could even scream, the de manis grabbed her and disappeared with her in the shadows.

This did not go according to plan. It was not the first time either that this de manis appeared. The white creature had been spotted all over Equestria, stalking ponies at night in cities or forests with shallow reaper protection. Due to its appearance and behaviour, it was given the nickname Slendermane, the abductor.

Although it was seen all over the land, the reapers were convinced that this was just a single, unique de manis. It had highly advanced teleportation abilities, so getting anywhere it wanted to be in just the blink of an eye was easy for this de manis. Also, every attempt to attack it failed, yet. Slendermane appeared to be one of the older de manis, as he already had a lot of battle experience and could easily handle the weakened reapers.

Usually, Silverstream would have sensed it approach. But due to being very starved on flesh, his senses dulled. He would have hardly been able to keep up with this strong de manis anyway. But at least, the mare was gone now and she dropped her cloth back as Slendermane abducted her.

Silverstream came closer and opened it, finding a small bottle filled with crumbled leaves inside. After he opened and sniffed the content, he was met with a gray-greenish cloud and a very rough, bitter aroma.

He was right about the mare. These dried leaves were of an extremely poisonous plant called Basilisk Tongue. The toxin was so potent that just the tiny dose the reaper inhaled would have been enough to kill a whole family. But fortunately, the reaper curse granted him immunity to any kind of poison or disease. So, the best thing he could do right now to eliminate this very dangerous poison was by eating it.

After he swallowed the crumbled leaves, he hid his face beneath his cloak and held his breath in for several seconds. Then, he took a few deep, controlled breaths into his cloak, until he stopped exhaling the poison.

Now, his job was done here. The reaper closed the bottle again and stored it inside his cloak, as there was still some poisonous gas inside he needed to dispose of safely. But while on his way out of the city, he came across a sight he had never seen before. Immediately, he picked up what concerned him, turned around and began to fly towards the castle.

---

Celestia was in her bed chamber, but not in her bed. She had fallen asleep on the floor in front of a large collection of notes and blueprints of stellar constellations and movements. Ever since she decided to study these four stars, she had been working herself to the bone. So, of course, as she heard knocking on her bed chamber door and got woken up, she already was in a very bad mood.

“This better be important...” she spoke sleepily.

“My mistress. We have a case of emergency,” the voice of Silverstream spoke on the other side.

The bright demi-goddess was weak and tired, but tried to get up as fast as she could and opened the door. But she instantly became wide awake as she saw what the stallion wanted to show her.

On his back, he was carrying a gutted reaper mare. Her lower half and left front leg were missing entirely and her guts were hanging out of the torso. But strangely, Silverstream’s cloak had barely any blood on it. It seemed like the mare had already drained out.

Since she was a reaper, she was still alive. But she could hardly hold herself on his back with just one limb left. Finally, due to the heavy blood-loss, the mare fainted and fell off Silverstream’s back.

“Why is she not recovering? I have seen even heavier injuries on reapers before, but they always recovered in a matter of minutes,” Celestia wondered.

“I do suffer from the same problem, my mistress,” Silverstream spoke and bit his right front leg hard for demonstration.

His sharp reaper fangs wandered deep into his own flesh, causing him to bleed. He then lifted it to present the wound to his mistress. While in the years before, Celestia saw such small injuries heal up in just a few seconds, it just kept bleeding this time.

“As I told you quite a while ago, all of us are starved on flesh and blood. But we need to feed like the de manis do in order to maintain our strengths. By now, we hardly differ from regular ponies anymore in terms of power, skill, sensory function and recovering ability,” the reaper stallion explained.

“Do you know of any other reapers in distress?” the bright demi-goddess wanted to know.

“No. I found her by random. Judging from the trail of blood she left behind, she dragged herself all across the land just to get to you, my mistress. Apparently, she is unable to express her situation in any other way. This creates room for very worrying speculations about the well-being of the other reapers. She might be by far not the only one in this situation,” Silverstream answered.

There she had it. Celestia became silent for a moment as she now had solid evidence that reapers needed flesh. There was no other way anymore but to create an exception for reapers which allowed them to consume the forbidden type of food.

The dismembered reaper mare slowly came back to her senses, soon trying to bow down before her mistress. Seeing what she caused this former subject to go through made the princess of the sun and moon experience condolence for reapers the very first time. It now started to get through to her how cruel she had been acting towards them so far. This was just not like her usual, very kind personality. But slowly, she started to understand why she acted like she did the whole time.

Celestia remembered how she started hating herself even before she became the mistress of the reapers. At first, she figured this self-aimed hatred was because she allowed these killers to get away with their crimes. But thinking back of what she was forced to order them in the past years, she truly hated herself for having to harm her subjects through them. Eventually, she let out her self-hate on the reapers.

This is what came to her mind and it made sense. But there was more to it, which she couldn’t think of anymore because it had fallen from her memory into her subconscious. Celestia had forgotten that she was the cause of Nightmare Moon’s creation, the rise of the de manis and the destruction of Equestria. But her guilt was still there, deeply sunken into her personality.

Since she pushed her guilt so far away from her mind that she could no longer connect it with her feelings, she had been searching for those she thought were responsible for Equestria’s situation and that of her sister. Ultimately, she convinced herself that it were the de manis, Nightmare Moon and the reapers which were to blame.

Although the princess of the sun and moon did not add this to her self-analysis, she still came to understand that the way she acted towards the reapers right now made her not a whole lot better than Nightmare Moon. They may have turned against her, but that was because of fear. The situation had changed for them and there was no way they would ever be able to return to normal. They now had to cope with what they had become and she only made it a lot harder for them.

Even though it would take Celestia more than one thousand years until she would finally stop hating the reapers, she at least aimed to act more in character again. So, for the rest of the night, she tried to deal with the situation presented to her.

---

Another day had passed by. The bright demi-goddess had been arranging herself with Silverstream in behalf of all the reapers long past midnight and set up standards regarding their consumption of flesh and the conditions under which she would be allowing them to die. The reaper mare he had brought to Celestia, too, seemed to want her life to end, so she became the first ever reaper to find her final rest. But what consequences the death of a reaper would bring would still remain unknown for weeks.

But right now, this was the least of Celestia’s concerns. After she spent yet another hour observing the night sky and mapping the four stars which caught her attention, she now finally had enough information to track their movement. It seemed like these four stars were slowly rotating around the moon, coming closer to it little by little. To make sure she was right, she made some backwards calculations to see where the stars should have been more than twenty years ago.

As she did that, she came across an error. No matter how often she tried, the results always ended up being false. So she reduced the backtracking time year by year. Finally, her calculations worked out at about eleven years ago.

While at first not sure what this would mean, it soon struck Celestia. The stars did not start moving before Nightmare Moon. She definitely had something to do with this.

The bright demi-goddess stared at the moon in worry. According to her calculations, the stars will reach the moon in approximately one thousand years. What would happen then? What was the sinister queen of horror planning? Only time would tell.