We Go Bump in the Night
By: Quisky
The rattling of items in your closet? The shadows upon your wall that flicker to life? The scratching just outside your window? Yes, it may just be something dark and sinister, ready to do you harm. But what about when you look up? It is gone, merely a figment of your imagination. Tell yourself that to make you feel safe, it's much better that way.
The truth is much more terrifying. Everything evil, every beast and baddie and horrible thing you can imagine exists, oh, they are all too real, hiding in the shadows, lurking from the prying eyes of light to never be found until it is too late. They will prey upon you, they will hunt you down until you are least expecting it, the comfiest and coziest place will be your grave. The night belongs to them.
That is what we like them to think. They truly believe that shadows and darkness is where their realm lies. No, it is ours. They wrongfully claim it, for it truly belongs to the Princess of the Night, it belongs to her Lunar Guards. We will not stand to share our place with such wicked beings that wish harm upon Equestria. The night is merely a counterpart to the day, and we shall protect it.
Her royal majesty of the lunar side declares that we defend it to our last breath. We can travel through the shadows, under moonlit light to defeat the usurpers. None will be safe from us until every last creature that claims the night to be theirs is eradicated. So demands our Moon Goddess, so demands the order of the Lunar Guard.
The order is a fairly simple code of laws and instructions to follow and carry out. Once inscripted into the Lunar Guard, it is a lifetime of servitude, a weight one is to carry until our Princess declares you worthy of release. Normally, old age or death warrants a release. Our order is to protect the night, and we carry this out in more ways than just switching off guard duty at night.
We seek the shadows for the impure and deceitful, for the beasts and monsters that would wish to steal the precious night. We follow them into their homes, whether it be a den in the Everfree Forest or underneath a child's bed. While our Princess protects the night through the dream world, and occasionally physically, we scour Equestria come sunfall, and make sure to fight back the dark within the darkness.
It is normally an easy task. A route is set up across the land, our pegasi of batwings taking to the skies while earth and unicorn the ground or even deeper than that. Our numbers are very few in comparison to the vast army of the Solar Guard, but we are surely a force to be reckoned with, trained and blessed by Princess Luna herself. No swarm of harpies have passed into Equestrian skies in quite some time, and the industrious weremole dare not show its ugly snout for fear of a Lunar Guard to meet it.
We have a more unique way of travel, much less common by hoof or flight. A simple spell casted by the unicorns can make us living shadow itself, easily able to slip through any crack and physically manifest ourselves to do battle with any terrible beast that might be plaguing the inside of your closet or even within your toychest, though some do prefer to haunt the attic or basement for nostlagia factor.
The scratching upon the outside of your window whilst you slept so soundly? A Lunar Guard frightening away whatever specter tried to get inside. The rumble in your attic just above your head, sending a spray of dust down below? Obviously a guard doing battle with whatever had nested up their. We apologize for whatever damage may have been done to your valuables in the meantime. You can take up your problem to our gracious Princess Luna during Night Court, she's almost always free.
The growling in your closet, shocking you awake from the most pleasant of dreams? Of course a guard has managed to squeeze their way in, and what resided within was trying to scare them off. It normally doesn't work that way, we've seen horrors that you cannot imagine. A mere closet-dwelling ghoul would hardly frighten any of our members. The ensuing screech of terror, sometimes mistaken for a screech of horror to scare you, is just the Lunar Guard dealing with the beastie. You may find shredded clothes and a hole in your wall come the following morning.
The horrible, horrible sounds coming from underneath your bed? We've either opened a portal to the underworld to send the demon back where it came from, or you're just imagining things. The dark does tend to play tricks on the mind. And the eyes. And the ears. And pretty much all of the senses. You should see a therapist about that. Oh, and please do ignore the leftover ectoplasmic goo from the exorcism flooding your room. We'll have a cleanup crew on that right away.
All in all, the Lunar Guard is a fighting force meant for the protection of the night and the ponies that sleep peacefully within it. If you should ever have a sudden night terror or fear that there is something suspiciously large and scaly in the corner of your bedroom, do not fear. Merely close your eyes and fall back asleep, for it will be gone soon. The Lunar Guard shall soon have it vanquished.
We will always protect alongside our fair Princess of the Night, we have and shall. Do not fear, for we are always watching to protect you. Always watching the corners of your house, always watching the surroundings, always watching you as you asleep, always watching your dreams. We will always watch.
We do not fear what lies in the dark, for we are the dark. We are the ones who go bump in the night.
