Nightmare's End

My name is Duskwing, and though my story does not count as exciting as most other ponies of my kind, it may be quite the adventure for others. But, I suppose I should explain about my ponies...the tribe that I belong with. At least, what we were taught in school about ourselves and where we came from. I suppose that's an adequate start.

A long time ago, our beloved princess, Luna, had tried to betray her sister to cast eternal night upon Equestria. It is unknown still to this day as to why she had done so, but we try not to question the past, the present gives us enough trouble. Upon the rise of Nightmare Moon, a dark magic seeped into Equestria...and had serious side effects that nopony could have ever suspected to happen. Even though Nightmare Moon's exposure to the world was short, the darkness was able to linger and snake around...it has a tendency to do stuff like that.

What happened due to the powers that ebbed off of Nightmare Moon, which increased more and more as she fought Celestia and continued to leak into the world from her moon prison, was that some unfortunate ponies underwent some...transformations and mutations. Unicorns had lost their horns and grew wings, Earth Ponies grew wings, and Pegasi had their wings molt their wings and become more leathery. Their eyes had changed into a more cat like shape in order to see in the dark. And their ears grew and mutated to ear sounds more acutely than your average pony.

And along with these physical changes, there were also mental changes. These new ponies of black and purple fur only had one goal in mind; to plague all of Equestria with nightmares none had ever seen before. The old Nightmares, or "Bat Ponies" as I understand we are called nowadays, were mindless fear mongers that only cared for carrying out their dark queen's ambitions. They stopped at nothing to feed off of and induce some of the worst nightmares anypony could imagine, and many more unable to. They were chased out of every city, town, and village and into the mountains...and even there they met conflict with the griffons that had made their nests in the ranges, along with various other creatures that lived there. But they had traveled deep into the caves of a particular mountain that seemed uninhabited. They dug deeper into the caves and formed a serious of network tunnels to form houses, eventually making a city. Despite popular belief, we can't manipulate clouds like the other flying ponies. We're more like Griffons in that department, we can rest on clouds and walk on them, but we can't make them into whatever we want. Besides, every cloud we touch becomes inky and stormy.

The city that arose from such an effort went without a name for the longest time. Also for the longest time, we were content on causing and feasting from the ponies' nightmares. But, over the course of centuries, Nightmare Moon's darkness lost its grasp on the old Nightmares, colt by colt and filly by filly our hunger for nightmares and fear had dwindled. After half of the thousand years of Luna's imprisonment, everypony had stopped turning into Nightmares, and we had stabilized. We still depended on everypony's fear and nightmares to live, but we had controlled our hunger.

And that's when the problems started...

Since we had controlled ourselves from our gluttony, we had tried to wean ourselves off of feasting off other ponies' nightmares. The old Nightmares had regained their senses, remembered who their parents and grandparents were before the transformation. They were sickened at themselves and their ancestors, the monsters that they had become. But alas, for too long have we relied on the fears of others to live, we could only limit how much we would have to eat a day to live...but we would never be independent from it. What they had not realized, is that when we do not feast on the dark energies of everypony's nightmares and fears, it all goes somewhere else and festers. An unforeseen side effect for the atrocities we had caused to the ponies of Equestria, and we were the first to reap what we had sowed.

It seemed that not only do clouds become seemingly endless with their storms, but they become a figurative dream catcher. The nightmares that we didn't devour congealed in the skies above Equestria. We had not known what this could mean; hay, we never even known about the buildup of dark magic. It took us by surprise when the inevitable had happened.

Our ancestors lived in peace by themselves in the mountain. Though we still depended on the nightmares and fears of the innocent ponies below us, we tried our best to not overdue what we needed. Sadly this gave the nightmares a chance to manifest into beings. We simply call them the Dark Ones. They are so vile and maleficent, we cannot devour them; they were fear incarnate. And they were not too happy about their potential building materials being used as food by anypony. And thus, the shadow wars had begun.

For centuries, we Nightmares had spent our time fighting the Dark Ones. But it wasn't just for our survival, we also knew that it was the only way for us to finally make it up for the poor ponies we had to torment. The Dark Ones would not rest until they had covered the world in shadows and gave everypony eternal nightmares. And though we too depended on nightmares and fears, we did not hold the ambitions and ill intent that the Dark Ones had. And we were the only ones who had the ability to fight them, both in the skies over Equestria and in the dreams of ponies.

Things went like that for awhile, us against them. Nopony ever found us, none of them were eager to try to search for us. And our mountain was far too ominous and scary for any Griffon or other flyers to want to come to us, it was far too dangerous. It was even a surprise that Celestia had not bothered to try and find us. Maybe after our first appearance in Equestria she didn't want to bother with us, despite the fear we had caused and the nightmares we had induced...and the Dark Ones being our making. But she is a wise ruler and knew that we weren't ourselves, and how we would be useful to everypony. But we were happy, though the war was a struggle; we knew that it is what we must do. It was our place.

We had stopped our worship of Nightmare Moon, though we still depended on her dark powers to survive and do our jobs. Without her, we could not have our powers and influence over dreams. It was an evil necessity, and dark magic was hard to resist with exposure and use...but we had kept our sanity this time, thanks to the meditations we do during the day. Sleep isn't as important to us, though we still needed our rest. During the day when Celestia's harsh sun light was up, we meditated to help cull our hunger, even our young must take part of these exercises. It was during the night, with Luna's brilliant moon high in the sky that we awake from our slumber and carry out our daily lives. Though, most of our stallions joined in the guard, fighting against the Dark Ones. It too was an evil necessity.

Despite our efforts, some of the Dark Ones were still able to get away with a few nightmares, the poor ponies often having some of the worst nightmares they could ever imagine. And for the longest time, they had blamed us...remembering us oh so long ago. We did nothing to stop their accusations, they didn't know where we were and them knowing that we were their defenders was not necessary. Though, as it pains me to see it this way, the more nightmares that the Dark Ones had claimed, the less we had to eat. We had kept collateral to a minimum, and every time we had got our filling from a pony's nightmare, we let the dark magic trickle out of their mind. With that, we collect a few more stray essence of shadow to store for later, for both our meal and as materials used to make weapons to fight the Dark Ones, and it would also allow the pony to end their sleep with a nice, beautiful dream.

I suppose Celestia knew what we were doing, that was the reason why she didn't come after us. Though I'm sure at that time, not many ponies would go to the wise and powerful princess of Equestria just to complain about nightmares. It would be kind of silly, now that I think about it. But things almost went down south centuries after we had started our war against the Dark Ones. For our former mistress had returned...Nightmare Moon.