A Newbie Alicorn

Nox stood in the middle of a great arena, one big enough to comfortably hold an entire elephant herd. The air was cool and a full moon shone down and illuminated the white marble columns, round, decorated walls, and the dull yellow sand floor. It was rather fascinating to her how such a narrow mountain could hold such great structures, but then again, many wonders could be summed up with "magic". Nox wondered from time to time what would happen to the world if the magic ever faded, or outright disappeared. It was a thought she dreaded and thus often banished from her head.

Nox was dressed in a black sports bra, with a plain white t-shirt over it, and some simple shorts. However, she lacked her Bag of Holding around her neck. Her mane was also ethereal and flowed irregularly, somewhat reminiscent of Nightmare Moon except no light reflected off of it and no stars twinkled in it; it was pure black.

Despite her casual attire, she was focused and alert and stood tall.

Materializing out of nothing, Princess Luna appeared several paces from Nox, dressed similarly except for her shirt, which was blue. She carried no weapons, and calmly observed her partner for the evening for a few moments. Then, rubbing her hands together for a moment, dark purple lightning crackling between them, she turned them outwards and fired a wide arc of electrical blasts at Nox before completely vanishing from sight.

If Nox was startled from Luna's sudden appearance, she didn't show it, although she was clearly curious as she immediately asked her, "How did you do that?"

She didn't get an answer, but she recognized what Luna was doing, how she was looking at her. Jumping right into it, then. She shifted a hoof behind her slightly and watched Luna form lightning between her hands. Suddenly, she launched the bolts at her. Nox immediately formed a shadow in front of herself and a shadow right in front of Luna, and opened a link between the two, shadow-teleporting the bolts back towards Luna... or where she had just been, rather.

What?! Dammit, where is she? Nox was tempted to close her eyes and let her other senses guide her, but in all likelihood Luna, being an alicorn very similar to herself, was as silent as she could be invisible. Nox would need every advantage she could get. She listened hard to what her ears heard, what her hooves felt in the sand, what her wings and skin felt from the air, and the energy around her. However, she wasn't using her sight nearly so carefully.

"Poor neophyte..." Luna though to herself, hovering invisibly in the air around a hundred feet above Nox. Twirling her finger around in a circle, she worked more magic.

"Nox..." a voice behind Nox whispered.
"Over here..." A voice whispered in front of her.
"Listen..." a voice to her side said.
"Surrender..."
"Its too much..."
"Die..."
"Suffer..."

The voices surrounded Nox, continuing to whisper at her from every direction whilst Luna opened her other hand and raised it towards the moon, the light emanating from it beginning to drastically increase in intensity, drowning out the shadows in the area, obscuring Luna in the sky even as she dropped her invisibility.

"Nox..."

Nox gasped and immediately whirled around and sent a magical wave of force in the direction of the voice.

"Over here..." she heard behind her immediately after. Nox sent a bolt of lightning that way. It struck nothing.

"Listen..." another disembodied voice told her.

Wait... aw damn it! Disembodied! Luna wasn't here! This was a classic evil sorceress trick, how had she fallen for it?!

So where was Luna...?

"It's too much..."

"Die..."

"Suffer..."

Jeez Luna, isn't that a bit much? But it only escalated, to Nox's discomfort. What was the point of this? What was Luna's intention here? Perhaps to see how she handled a disembodied verbal assault. Well, this was far from her first experience of it, and there wasn't even any magical influence in those words; they were completely harmless.

Merely a distra- what's happening to the moon? Nox looked up, only to cover her eyes from the now-blinding moonlight. Luna was blinding her, and getting rid of every shadow in the arena... she was going to strike! Nox countered Luna's flooding the arena with moonlight and put the entire arena under a dome of absolute, pitch-black darkness. She then flew to the far end of the arena.

"Seems I frightened the poor dear. Oh well, time to smoke the young one out from her hole." Luna mused, feeling empowered under the light of her divine focus. Raising her hand up in front of her, she focused inwards, and pulled out a fragment of her alter ego, a purple flame appearing and swelling in her hand, two eyes appearing in it. "Tantabus... find her..." she commanded, and the Tantabus obeyed, flying from her hand and into the darkness, continuing to swell and grow in size as it searched for its victim hiding in the dark. Luna watched from above, ready to act.

Nox saw a malevolent energy flitting about in her shadow, one that sent a dreadful chill down her spine. It was clear to her that she didn't want this thing anywhere near her. She watched it carefully, ready to test whether this thing was made of darkness; if it was, this would be very easy to handle.

The Tantabus easily felt the presence of the other alicorn, her thoughts and fears, and surged towards Nox, swelling to a greater size as it honed in on her, extending a tendril of energy forward towards Nox's head, for some unknown but certainly hostile intention.

Nox formed a shield around herself, uncertain if that would actually do anything but best to try. Then she attempted to dispel the shadow the creature was possibly made of.

The Tantabus stopped when it encountered the barrier, but was a creation of Luna's dream magic, not a creature of darkness. Luna fed it more magic, and it swelled and engulfed Nox within its body, compressing inwards with great pressure, probing for weaknesses in her shield, Luna continuing to funnel ever increasing amounts of energy in it.

Nox's shield began to crack under all the pressure, and would soon break despite Nox's reinforcing it repeatedly, increasingly panicked as the Tantabus appeared to be winning.

Luna closed her eyes, and clenched her fist, pouring all her energy at once into the Tantabus, its essence beginning to seep through her shield through each crack the pressure made, which was now at maximum force as the Tantabus sought to overwhelm and assimilate into Nox.

Nox kept reinforcing her shield, but what was the point if the creature had already broken in? Well, it wasn't getting in all at once, which bought her time... even if it was only seconds.

She needed to get out of there. Now. But how-

...

...

Duh... Nox teleported out of the shield bubble, out of the shadow she had cast over the arena, and over Luna... whom she promptly sent a ball of lightning at, which would explode violently upon contact with the lunar princess.

The Tantabus vanished as Nox teleported, Luna satisfied with Nox's escape, even if her escape route and counterattack were obvious. She turned to face Nox as she hurled her sphere of lightning at her, and teleported past it, directly within reach, poking Nox in the nose before teleporting 50 yards to the side of her in a reclined position, an apparent bored expression on her face. "Is that all you have, young one?"

Nox scowled. She'd surprise her here, somehow. Maybe if she shadow stepped behi- no, that was even more obvious. Hm...

Nox enveloped Luna in shadow and teleported her back over to herself, and tried the explosive lightning ball again.

Nox would be quite disappointed as Luna slid out of her grasp of shadow with a bemused smile on her face, her form surrounded by a silvery glow that quickly dissipated "You're not the only mare of darkness, Nox." she commented, teleporting past the blast of lightning to within her reach again, but this time lingering for just a brief moment before teleporting again, leaving a very life like illusory double as she vanished and re-appeared behind Nox, reaching out to lay her hand on her head, said hand now engulfed with the same purple electricity from before, which would continuously electrocute Nox as long as Luna held her by the head.

Argh! Nox huffed. Alright, let's face the facts: Luna probably knows, and has mastered, every shadow trick out there. And she'll see every long-range attack coming from a mile away. I'm going to need another strategy.

When Luna appeared in front of Nox, she expected her to poke her muzzle mockingly again. Instead, she vanished, and Nox received an entire storm's worth of lightning to the head. She shrieked, and fell to the ground gracelessly.

Luna waved her hand as Nox fell to the ground, a silvery glow engulfing her and slowing her descent until she landed on the ground, Luna dropping down a few paces away from. "When you can stand, do so. The night is still quite young, like yourself." Twirling her finger around in a circle, a strange eldritch symbol appeared on the ground, and as Luna drew a circle in the air, a silver circle etched itself into the earth around them, creating a dome of force around them that blocked teleportation.

It took Nox a little bit to recover from the shock. The first time she tried to get up her limbs failed and her head felt as if it would split open. Second time went better, although she was still shaky and in pain. She was... quite embarrassed. She thought she was a decent fighter and she'd just had her plot handed to her! And it wasn't even because Luna was the more powerful alicorn! What had happened to all the spells she'd learned? What had happened to her strate- well... actually, now that she thought about it, she didn't have that many strategies. 'If shadows don't work, throw something at them or hit them like a train' had generally always worked for her. Now, though...

Nox looked at the silvery dome around her. She didn't recognize the rune.

"There is no shame in being defeated by me, there is only the chance to learn." Luna opened both of her palms, shadows condensing in the form of two short curved blades, which she grasped. "There will be no teleportation or flight in this field. We will fight this round on the ground." She then spun and threw both the blades at Nox, the two edges circling in arcs aimed at both sides of her neck as Luna broke into a sprint at Nox, both hands glowing silver along with the blades she threw at Nox.

Nox materialized a pair of crossed shadow swords, which she thought better of and turned into a body-sized shield just in time for the blades to meet them. She formed shadow armor on her person, including spiked gauntlets, and formed the shadow swords in her own hands.

Fight fire with fire, after all. she thought, holding the blades ready.

The two blades deflected off of Nox's shadow shield, leaving considerable gashes in the shield before flying around the sides and behind Nox, Luna's silver glowing hands producing an exact identical pair of swords, which she slashed at Nox from both sides, the blades that deflected behind Nox in the silver glow circling around, a spell of attraction compelling them to return, their slashing arc of return conveniently blocked by Nox's body, which was now caught between 4 attacks all at once.

Theswordsbouncedoffandnowthey'rereturning-Luna'sgotnewswordswhicharegoingtoslicemeopeninasecondorless-theswordsarecomingbackandaregoingtostabmefrombehind-fourswordsatonce-notenoughtimetochargeafulldeflection-holycrapLuna'sscary-GETOUTOFTHEIRPATH! Nox ducked, even though she was certain this would do no good. She magically grabbed hold of a disk-shaped portion of sand beneath Luna and jerked it upwards, intending to send her backwards head-over-hooves. Surely she'd recover from that swiftly, so Nox moved the sand beneath where Luna would land backward, like a treadmill gone haywire. That'd do something, hopefully.

As Nox ducked, Luna opened her hands and dropped the blades, catching the returning pair and slashing down...

Or she would have slashed down, had she not been curiously launched into the air. She extended her wings and flapped to stay afloat, looking down at Nox from a few meters above, her face holding straight for a moment before laughter slipped out of it, a brief moment of mirth betraying her composed nature. "I must say, I didn't think of that. A good start, Nox, but you didn't seize the advantage while you had it." A spear made of shadow appeared in Luna's hand, which she then hurled at Nox from above.

"Noted!" Nox shouted to her, forming another shadow shield and, while it blocked the spear's path, it rushed up to both the spear and Luna. At the same time, she formed another shadow shield behind Luna and launched it at her as well, intending to get her from the back first and then squish her with the front. And then slam her into the ground.