is a My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfiction by Guesswork.One morning like any other, a few years in the setting's future, Celestia wakes up to find that the Nightmare has taken over her mind. A series of swift moves and a failed counter-coup swiftly end up with the self-styled "Nightmare Sun" in control of the Equestrian government, Luna grievously injured and near death, and the Element Bearers branded as traitors and forced to go on the run. The main characters find themselves forced to fight a desperate battle to save their country and their Princess, all the while hounded like criminals by their own former allies and fleeing from a merciless monster wearing the body and power of the mightiest of the alicorns.
The story was published and completed over October 2012.
This work contains examples of:
- Anti-Magic: Magic dampeners are small spheres that suppress and nullify magic cast in their vicinity. They build exponentially off of each other when nearby, allowing them to subdue even the most powerful beings. Historically, most were destroyed by fearful unicorns; Twilight speculates that the six currently in the government's possession are likely the only ones left in existence.
- Cessation of Existence: According to the Nightmare, no part of the soul survives the death of the body — instead, all consciousness, memory and being simply cease the moment the physical self does. This is her primary reason for wanting to live forever.
- Demonic Possession:
- The story is set off by the Nightmare possessing Celestia, and the remaining characters then having to deal with thing wearing Celestia's skin. The Nightmare can only possess willing targets, as it needs the "key of their heart", a set of abstract passes that can only be given freely by their owner.
- The Night Guard can feed vampirically on others to keep them drained of magical strength. However, overuse of this to keep the corrupted Celestia contained results in enough of the Nightmare's essence entering their leader Cinnamon Oatmeal for him to be taken over by a second instance of the Nightmare.
- In the ending, it is revealed that Discord has been possessing the body of Celestia's doctor for several years.
- Healing Factor: Alicorns can regenerate injuries extremely quickly. While in Celestia's body, the Nightmare takes only a few seconds to recover from having most of her flesh burned away by dragonfire. At the climax, the characters need to put absolutely everything that they can find into pummeling her down not because they expect it to achieve anything in the long term, but because doing this outpaces her healing just barely enough to give time for the Elements of Harmony to be retrieved and used.
- Heroic Sacrifice:
- In the climax, Shield Banner is fatally injured while shielding an injured Fluttershy from a fall off of Canterlot's mountain.
- Shortly afterwards, the unnamed government agent and the Night Guard Chyornyj Slon keep the Nightmare-possessed Celestia incapacitated long enough for her to be caught in an explosion strong enough to demolish a large chunk of the royal castle; the agent gets better; Slon doesn't."What are you doing?" she screamed at them. "You're going to die too!"
"Fair trade," said the agent.
- Immortality Seeker: The Nightmare is motivated chiefly by her desire to live forever, and thus avoid the Cessation of Existence that comes with death.
- Knight Templar: Captain Shield Banner is unwavering in his loyalty, unshaken in his moral conviction, and grimly determined to oppose traitors and criminals even when these were formerly his allies. He is also living proof that there is too much of a good thing; his unwavering loyalty makes him blindly follow orders even when these conflict starkly with his ruler's previous conduct, his absolute moral conviction makes him blind to his own mistakes and the immorality of his actual deeds, and his starkly black-and-white view of loyalty leads him to immediately assume the worst of anyone formally declared a traitor.
- Magma Man: Nightmare Sun can spontaneously create and control molten rock, such as by making balls of lava to throw at her foes or fighting with whips of molten rock.
- Our Dragons Are Different: Several types of dragons exist, differentiated by color. Reds and greens, such as those seen in the show, are winged firebreathers. Purple dragons, such as Spike, are wingless, but are very agile swimmers and can use the green fans at the base of their cheeks as gills.
- Redemption Equals Death: Towards the climax, after Princess Luna recovers from her injuries and retakes command, Shield Banner realizes how thoroughly he was made the Nightmare's stooge, how many ethical lines he crossed based on flawed information, and that this was ultimately all due to his own ethical failures. It is also stated that he will not be keeping command of the Guard and that Celestia will be furious with him once they get the Nightmare out of her mind. Shortly thereafter, after a few in-universe hours of stewing over his actions, he dies in a Heroic Sacrifice to save Fluttershy's life.
- Revive Kills Zombie: The Lunar guards are technically undead, and as such healing potions burn them and cause their flesh to crumble into ashes.
- Russian Reversal: When Cinnamon Oatmeal questions the sanity of a plan proposed by another character, Pinkie cracks a joke about how "In Soviet Equestria, Oatmeal asks if you're crazy." Another character, not getting the joke, asks her in surprise if she's ever been to Stalliongrad.
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Shield Banner serves as a deconstruction of this trope. He is earnestly dedicated to protecting and serving the Princesses and to safeguarding Equestria, and plainly states that, if laws get in the way of rescuing Princess Celestia after her apparent kidnapping, then the laws must be broken. While this sounds good in theory, in this specific instance he is using this to justify torturing a civilian suspect for information and doing so over Spitfire's protests that Celestia wouldn't want laws broken for her sake anyway — and, moreover, his willingness to ignore regulations and legal codes based on what he personally feels to be morally right makes him a very useful minion for the demon currently wearing Celestia's body.
- Stable Time Loop: At the end of the story, Discord convinces Twilight and Celestia to retrieve the crystal where Celestia stores the Nightmare's soul, give it the "keys" of Celestia's mind, and send it back in time to the story's beginning to possess Celestia and be defeated as part of a convoluted plan to destroy it for good and avert a prophecy that it would destroy the world.
- Taken for Granite: At the end of the story, after the Nightmare is ejected from Celestia's body and turned back into a mortal pony, Luna deals with her by turning her to stone and smashing her to pieces with a mace.
- Time Abyss: The Nightmare is an Immortality Seeker who has been around for a very long time, predating Equestria, the Princesses, Discord and the original Three Tribes.
- Time Skip: The story is set about eight years after the show's second season, which had been airing when it was written. As such, the characters are all aged up and have progressed through their lives to various degrees, such Twilight having gotten a grant to build a university in Ponyville, Fluttershy going through med school and working as a doctor's assistant, Rainbow Dash having gone through a relationship and bad breakup with Spitfire, and Spike having matured into a teenaged dragon and training in the Guard.
- Was Once a Man: The Nightmare was once a mortal pony, long ago before the time of the Princesses or Discord or the Three Tribes, but her desperate obsession with living forever turned her into something evil and demonic.
