Luna stood up top the cliff, the very tips of her front hooves already over the precipice’s edge. She turned and walked along the edge and watched the dirt loosened by her steps fall into open air and disappear in the night’s dark below. The armor she wore was heavy, cumbersome, uncomfortable. She wore it not for protection, but so those who fell beneath her hooves would do so knowing the full power and stature of the Mistress of the Night.

Before her, far below the cliff, a city twinkled and shone in the dark of long night. The largest city to have ever been built, spires tall and domes fat, lit by magical lanterns of all colors. Luna had helped lay its foundations in a time forgotten by all, even her sister. Forgotten by all but Luna herself.

At the city’s center stood the Castle of the Two Sisters, its walls and towers high above all else, nearly matching even Luna’s cliff in height. Celestia wasn’t in the castle. She was out searching for Luna in the night. But Celestia wouldn’t find her.

With Celestia gone, the castle and its city were unprotected. Only the city’s guard remained.

Luna allowed herself the smallest of smiles.

The city’s streets were wide, clean, trailing around resplendent gardens where lazy ponies could roll about low-cut grass and sweet-smelling flowers. But no ponies could be seen in any of the streets or gardens now. The windows of every home had been closed and shuttered, and all was quiet. The city was tense and restless and scared, because even though its ponies did not know when or how, they knew their punishment was coming and coming soon and swift. And there was only one just punishment for disloyalty and treason.

Behind Luna, in the dark boughs of the trees and the swirling storm clouds overhead, watchful and anxious and waiting, were her pegasi. The few pegasi still loyal to her and to Equestria. No unicorn or earth pony had heeded her banner’s call. Those few pegasi were all that were left to her. But they would be enough, for they were of the oldest pegasus families in the kingdom, descendants of the pegasus warriors who had thrown the gryphons from the cliff sides of their ancient mountain eyries and driven the wily, secretive deerfolk wizards from their hidden forest villages with raging wildfires and spilled blood. They few understood the beauty and power of the night, and so they few had come when she declared an end to the sun’s tyranny.

Now they waited. They waited for her in the shadows of the Everfree Forest, unseen and ready, unknown to those below. Their wingblades were sharp, their armor light, so they could easily sweep down the cliff, through the city streets, into windows, and draw out the blood of the traitorous and the cowardly. A storm of their own making grew around them, to be thrown down over the city with the first charge. Fierce winds bent the trees and pulled at their manes and tails and wings, and her pegasi waited and were calm.

She looked up, past the swirling clouds, and she saw them. The stars. They were still there. Pointed lights, painted in her own mind and given life in the sky to give hope and light to those lost in darkness. Denied, rejected, ignored. They still lingered in the sky.

Luna looked to the east and stopped pacing and waited and watched.

No red or orange or pink haze appeared behind the mountains, but still Luna waited, because she knew Celestia’s tricks and she knew Celestia would love nothing more than to allow her some fleeting, worthless hope, only to take it away for herself as she had taken from Luna everything else.

Luna waited and watched, and the sun never rose and the morning never came.

Luna looked up at her stars, and they still shone and forever would.

She turned back to the city and stamped her hoof a single time. She spread her wings wide and threw herself over the edge of the cliff. Behind her, with a great rustle of feathers, the pegasi hurtled by the dozens down into the dark with their storm.

Luna and her pegasi and the torrents of blinding, pounding rain and the lashing, feverish wind and the blistering, quick, bright lightning descended upon the city. Only the howling of the wind and the crackle of the thunder announced their arrival.