Twilight let out an exasperated sigh as she slammed her book shut, promptly flinging across her study on to the far wall. Where it hit with a bang and quickly fell to the floor. That was the fourth book she had read on grammar alone, and she was still no closer to understanding the language of ancient Equestria. The rest of the palace was enjoying a beautiful winter afternoon. Either playing in the snow covered garden, or warming themselves in the main hall in the presence of a great fire and the Majesty of Celestial herself. Twilight knew it was wrong, but she was jealous of the ponies that got to play while she had to work. Although she had volunteered to spend her time off from her normal duties keeping the library in order at Ponyville she was envious of the fun everypony but her seemed to be having. When she accepted Celestia's invitation to come and learn more about ancient Equestrian, she had assumed that Celestia would be doing the teaching herself. An assumption she later found to be miss guided.

Celestia explained that she was simply to busy with holiday celebrations to be able to hoof teach the topic to Twilight herself. Of course Twilight understood, but she wished she had known how little she would be able to see Celestia. And how boring learning ancient Equish would be. Not to mention difficult.

How could anypony form a complete sentence in a language without articles? It was madness! The sentences were just jumbles of different nouns and verbs thrown together in a seemingly random order. Some simple sentences such as "canis est in via" she could kind of piece together. Albeit with the sloppy result of "dog is in street". That happened every time! There always seemed to be something missing from the sentence, and it only got worse as the sentences got longer and more complex. Her current task was to translate and understand a poem written in the ancient language, but every time she looked at it the task seemed more and more like it as impossible.

Meus parus equus
Ego mirari quod amicita potui sum adhibui

Meus parus equus
Dum vos omnes estis cum pars partis

Magnus adeventurus

Multus plus plurimum festivus

Pulcher pectus, fidelis et fortis

Pars partis benevolentia
Est facilis negotium

Et magus facio omnes totus

Meus parus equus
Facit vos tenetis meus optimorum amicarum

So far all she could was "my little pony" and there was much more to the poem than that. As her frustration grew, muzzle inventively met wood. Creating an unanticipated thump that echoed through the door and into what Twilight assumed was an unoccupied hallway in the part of the castle reserved for royalty. But that, as it twer, was not the case. For wandering both silently and without aim a certain princess of the night was again lonely and without work.

It had been six months since Luna had returned to Equestria and regained her rightful place as princess of the night. But, try as she might, she had an inability to talk to her subjects. Leading her to become a semi-reclusive figure, making only short appearances at important events and speaking a few words of broken Equish when she was required. Although she would never admit it to her sister, she was depressed, and scared of what the ponies she cared so much about thought of her. Sadly, she could find no good way, in her mind, to converse with her patrons.

So she kept to herself, quietly raising and lowering the moon. Watching over the night and warding off malicious spirits and fighting demons that grow bold during the time of darkness her night brings. While her sister had watched over her night and taken care of her moon in her absence, Celestia had never taken on the full responsibility of that which came with the title "Keeper of Night". For the night Celestia brought was not a true night, but an emulated dimming of the light that permeates her day. Luna's night was pure, while not completely dark, lit only with the soft overhead glow of her moon.

No pony, nor any other being in Equestria, save for some magical creatures, ever saw the difference. Only felt its benefits. The creatures of Equestria and even those beyond its boarders have now, due to Luna's influence, been granted more restful and rejuvenating sleep, all but devoid of nightmares and terrors alike.

Yet Luna grew inward, choosing to be all but an image, an after thought, an all important subroutine performing a critical task that no pony knew or cared about. And she had began to resign herself to that fate. Coming to grips with what she believed would be the sad reality of her life for at least the next century. Where most ponies would be horrified at this prospect, Luna was effected little. As she was used to being alone, and their was plenty for her to do. Many things had changed since she had been banished, and she had a lot of catching up to do.

She took to wandering the many great and grand halls of the castle her sister and she now shared. She found joy in this new past time, as the castle was grand and there was much to be explored. Of course, being a princess, she had near full access to the entire castle (her sister's bathing room excluded, not that she wanted to go there) and was intent on learning every obscure detail of it for future reference.

Although she found herself commonly coming back to the halls that had there walls inscribed with murals depicting the last thousand years of her country's history. While this had to have the fifth or sixth time she had read and looked over the walls and the story they had to tell, she could not help but marvel at just how boring her sister had managed to make the past thousand years. No major wars, genocides, famines, or natural disasters to report. While she agreed that the new Equestria was safe, clean, tolerant, and prosperous; she could not figure out her sister's reason for the drastic change in the way the country, and indeed the entire world, operated and interacted with each other.

Luna began to hover as she readied herself to continue her quest to understand her new home when she heard an exasperated sigh followed quickly by a bang. She cocked her head in concentration while she waited for another noise she could use to locate the position of the disturbance. No more than fifteen minutes later, she heard the distinct sound of muzzle to desk contact.

Curious as to who would be alone in a secluded part of the castle during the wondrous winter day she had worked so hard to create, she set out towards the location of the pony in question. Who happened to be at the end of the very hall she occupied, in her sister's study.

Luna began to hover, silently approaching the room at the far end of the hall and the room that contained the mysterious pony. While being a creature of the night and a god tier magician she liked to challenge herself to keep her skill in the art of sneaking high, should the need for being quiet with out the aid of magic arise. When she came to the door way she proceeded to cautiously peer through the door. Luna froze when she saw the pony that occupied the room.

Nightmare soared through the air laughing maniacally, relishing her new found freedom. She looked down at the gathering of ponies that filled the small town's square. 'Fools'. She thought maliciously. 'They will soon know their new ruler.'

She circled around waiting for the opportune time to make her appearance. She began to hear a small commotion and assumed it was her cue to make her entrance. The Nightmare swooped down to onto the balcony above the crowd. She look onto the crowd with a lunatic smile adorning her muzzle as she scanned the crowd. 'Does no pony remember me? Has no pony here heard my tale?'

'I know who you are!' Nightmare's ears perked up at this and she scanned the crowd looking for the pony who claimed to know of her past. Her eyes soon fell on a small lavender colored unicorn mare. 'Your Nightmare Moon!' Ah, so somepony does remember me. Good. 'Then you know what I plan to do?' Nightmare asked innocently. 'You, you want.... bring eternal night.....' The Nightmare was pleased that at least this pony had the decency to know her story. Nightmare affirmed the young mare's fears and again flew off into the night. Laughing as she left the ponies that occupied the square speechless and without hope. 'All to easy, maybe I should humor these ponies a little longer. Oh how I do love crushing their hopes.

Nightmare flew off in the direction of the Everfree Forrest, where she planned to restore the palace there to its former glory as the new seat of power. After setting up a few surprises for the would be heroes, she lay in the castle waiting for her usurpers to arrive.

It did not take them long, they seemed to be more proficient than she had expected. But, no it mattered not, for they would soon be slaves in her Maredom of night. She walked into the atrium to find the lavender unicorn working furiously, trying to get what she later found out were the elements of harmony to work for her. Oh goodie. Thought Nightmare, Now I get to have some fun.

Nightmare morphed into a cloud of purple smoke and began to spin around Twilight and the elements. Teleporting them to another tower within the palace. The unicorn was lay on the ground dazed. When she came to, she got up and got into a fighting stance. 'Your kidding, right?' The unicorn mare just clopped her forehoofs on the ground, making ready to charge. I suppose I could humor her and play along, she thought. Not like she has any chance anyway.

Nightmare began to charge the unicorn, as the other mare did likewise. But right as they were about to collide the other mare teleported! Nightmare looked around in confusion, wondering where she had teleported to. Finally she looked behind herself, seeing the unicorn attempting to ignite the elements. 'NO!' Shouted Nightmare, sprinting to intervene before any damage could be done. Nightmare shoved the unicorn out of the pentagram that the elements had formed, magic still sparking from stone to stone.

The unicorn grinned in triumph, looking up at Nightmare believing she had won. That fool, If only she knew, she could never defeat me. Nightmare grinned as she raised up on her hind legs in order to smash her forelegs down onto the elements, shattering them. 'Fool, did you really think you could defeat me? Did you honestly think you could kill a god?

The unicorn looked down, dejected. Until she heard the sound of friends approaching. 'No, you haven't won.' The unicorn continued to speak of the value of friend ship and how strong the bond between her and her friends was when Nightmare began to become bored. 'Yes, yes, but you still don't have the sixth element' She said, still confident she had won. Nightmare again tuned out as the unicorn launched into another speech about friendship and its magic. Pathetic.

Then something began to happen, the unicorn and her friends began to float and glow with an ethereal light. What is this? How is this possible?! I Destroyed the elements! Nightmare cried out as the unicorn opened her eyes and unleashed a spectra of multicolored magic that descended upon her.

The pain.

The pain was unbearable. A thousand years of emotion being ripped forcefully from her mind. As the spell began to take its full effect, Luna's body began to shrink. Her bones being shrunk. Muscles shrinking faster than the rest of her body, with some being ripped of off their ligiments, quickly healing only to be abused again when something else changed. Her body spasemed on the floor. Looking for some comfortable position that might just ease the pain she was experiencing.

Unfortunately she felt little physical pain. As her mind as overloaded with a stark feeling of nothingness. No happiness. No laughter. Only pain, sorrow, and regret.

She finally awoke to find her body cosiderablely smaller and her sister conversing with the group of ponies that had done this to her. Luna did her best to go unnoticed, laying still and hiding her face in her mane. But her sister came to approach her. 'Can you forgive me sister?' Celestia asked, looking at Luna's broken form laying prone on the ground.

What could Luna do? There was no conceivable way she could refuse without being subjected to that torture again. Even though she truly wanted to flat out accept, her fear kept her from doing so. 'But if I dont quickly say yes she may suspect some thing is wrong'. Luna's heart nearly stopped at the thought, and she quickly looked up into her sister's eyes and accepted the offering.

When Luna snapped out of her terrible flashback of the events that led to her current situation, she looked at the unicorn and had a desperate urge to bolt down the hallway and leave, but a still lingering fear gripped her in claws of icy iron that refused to budge. Twilight Sparkle, most powerful unicorn in Equestria, and the one that put her through an eternity of agony while maliciously removing a part of Luna's personality.

Luna still had all of her power, all of her memories, and her intelligence. But she no longer had any will or sense of self worth. Her conscious was broken. A shell of it's former glory. With all of her anger extinguished, Luna was left without the ability to challenge what the horrible things that the ponies she protected thought of her. In many of the minds she protect the monster she fought... Was herself. The ponies cursed and fled from her in the world they create in their unconscious state. A normal pony would refute these claims and rationalize the actions of the misinformed ponies. But without her sense of self worth backed by the will provided by anger of being criticized. She listened, and accepted, everything those ponies said.

Luna was left with an enlarged sense of fear in the place her anger had once occupied. She was not afraid of the dark or monsters, but of acceptance. Oh how she yearned for the acceptance of her by her subjects, but again and again she was rejected and scorned. With no ability to protect herself. It had come to the point where Luna, who was normally protected from the terrors of the mind the plagued normal ponies, was reliving the moment of her downfall every time she set her head to rest. She would awake to raise the moon shaking and covered in sweat, with only her devotion to her sacred duty persuading her to leave the safety of her protected sleeping chambers.

That fateful day, light became the very essence of everything that was wrong with her. She could still feel the light around her, burning her skin and searing her mind until it relinquished its grip on the part of herself that contained the evil that threatened Equestria. However, the magic contained by the elements and amplified through the spark was much more powerful than anticipated. The spell did not stop when it had completed its task of expelling the evil in Luna, it continued on and started to eat at her other traits. Painfully eating through the anger and self worth. When it was finally over, Luna would have said anything to Celestia to keep that from happening again. Not that she wasn't really sorry once the evil was gone, but in her mind, anything and everything had to be done to avoid such an occurrence again.

Twilight, who had been in the same position in excess of five minutes, began to lift her head. She let out another sigh and turned to retrieve the book the had flung across the room. When she turned to locate the book in question, she was surprised to find princess Luna standing in a statuesque manner out side of her door.

"Oh, hi princess!" said Twilight flustered and confused as to why Luna was even here. "How are you?" she asked hoping to start a friendly conversation. Luna just continued to stare with a look of terror on her face. "Is everything alright princess?" At this Luna snapped back to reality and bolted down the hallway charging her horn and crashing through a dark rift of swirling energy at the end of the hallway, leaving behind nothing but frost and ice as a byproduct of her hasty use of such a complicated spell.

"Oooookkkkkaayyy, that wasn't completely weird at all" Twilight shaking her head and rubbing her eyes with her hoofs to make certain that she had indeed seen what she believed she saw. Looking back to her work she had left the book, and then turning her head to look at the desk of covered in scrolls and books alike, she decided that it was indeed time for a break from her current task. She placed the books back on their respective shelves and rolled up the scrolls, placing them to in their proper place in boxes along the wall behind the desk.

Giving the room a final inspection, she left through the doorway and allowed her thoughts to wander. Often they landed on the events that had convinced her it was time for a break. What would cause Luna to act that way? Was it something I said? Was I too forward when I addressed her? Twilight shook her head yet again in another vain attempt to clear her head and forget about what had happened. Maybe I should just go see Celestia, she could distract her from her current thoughts.

Her mind made up she proceeded towards the Grand Atrium of the castle which is where she was most likely to find her long time mentor and friend. As she walked the castle walkways became more crowded, a sure sign that she was approaching her desired location. Her instincts were correct, as within the span of a minute she had made it to her destination. She preformed a quick scan of the room to check and see if her mentor was present. To her disappointment, she was there, but Celestia was also surrounded by an ever present swarm of nobleponies and aristocrats.

Normally this was reason enough for her to give up and find something else to do, but today she was determined to spend time with Celestia. Slowly, Twilight began to gingerly push her way through the crowd closer to her prize. When she was close to ten feet away from the princess, she caught sight of the pony that was occupying her mentors attention... and the source of a near infinite string of boring and irrelevant information, Prince Blueblood.

Luna blasted out of a dark rift of swirling energy with a crack of endothermic lightning. She fell to the ground, sides heaving. Her eyes squeezed shut in hopes to hid them from the light of destruction that was the object of her terror. Her mind was filled with flashes of scenes from her downfall. She could feel the pain like it was happening again. She was afraid.

After what felt like days, Luna opened one eye, and then another and began to survey her surroundings. From her prone position she could see an ornate fireplace with a pair of gilded cushions in front. One of the cushions was white with regal gold trim and adorned in such a way that it resembled rays of sunlight falling down upon the ground. The other was a deep obsidian color, with silver trim and a dark platinum crescent moon adorning its side. Upon seeing this she began to lift her head, and later her whole body. Stretching out her cramped muscles, she proceeded to look around.

She had arrived in a room her sister had shown to her on her first day back. 'I had this room built to be inaccessible by means other than teleportation, or flight; and only with the express consent of an one of us' Celestia informed Luna. 'When I need to think without interruption, I come here' Celestia walked over to a balcony overlooking the palace and beyond could be seen Canterlot proper. 'Luna I trust you fully, and never want anything like what happened one thousand years ago to happen between us again. I love you sister, and will always be there to help you'. Luna shifted in the background, uneasy and unsure of whether or not to tell her sister how she truly felt. Should I tell her what happened? Would she even care? Oh no, what if it was her plan all along? Luna's mind reeled with possibilities, her sister seemed sincere enough, but whats to say this wasn't part of her punishment?

Celestia was puzzled by her sister's silence, she had planed that speech for 200 years and agonized over it in order to make sure it was perfect. She looked back to see her sister staring intently at the ground. Celestia sighed mentally and walked over to Luna, still in her small, foalish form. She stopped in front of Luna and looked down at her, using her mane to draw Luna's head gently upward. Celestia thought she saw her sister flinch at the contact, but the movement was so quick that she had to have imagined it.