Twilight shuddered, sweat dripping all about her, her teeth clenching down tightly as she backed away. Less and less space came between her and the wall that packed her up to closely to the approaching force, black spiky vines wiggling and crawling closer to her. Desperately, her friends flailed around while buried in the swirling and squirming mass, futilely trying to swim their way out. “Twilight! Help!” Rainbow Dash shouted, her wings clapping down against the mess of vines, her cyan face beginning to be pulled down by one of the dark tentacles.
Twilight looked around in a panic. “What can I do…my friends….” Her breathing began to spike, eyes taking a spark of panic. Rarity, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Applejack, all the ponies she held so dear were being consumed by this monstrous gathering of squirming evil. Quickly, Twilight attempted every spell that she could think of on a moment’s notice. Separation, destruction, purification, shrinking, growing, none were effective, as the mass of vines only absorbed the violet blasts, as if Twilight was performing no magic at all. Her fear rose, staring into her friends eyes as each began to draw sharper and more restricted breaths. She had no way to save her friends. Her friends were being taken away from her right before her eyes, and she had nothing she could do. She backed completely against the wall, feeble shaking legs falling to the ground. She curled up, in a sweating, defeated ball, and watched the spiky tentacles crawl closer. As Twilight’s view quickly transformed into nothing but the black mass, her thoughts were only that the powerful jewels that once guided her and her friends to so many victories over the most impossible of forces could save her from her fate. “If only we had the elements….then I could save them…If only we had the elements….then I could save them….” She repeated this chant in her loud sobbing whimpers. A vine grabbed leg, roughly dragging her to join her friends in her wiggling casket. She let out a final desperate cry as the swirling evil consumed her entire body.
***
Twilight awoke in a startle, sweat dripping from all over her. She sat up, looking around the room. It was hers, not the evil mass she dreamt herself into, her comfortable library shrouded in darkness. Not a darkness of evil, but a gentle, caring darkness, the darkness that only Luna’s brilliant night could supply. Twilight laid back down on her bed, head tilting to the side as her wings stretched out in an attempt to relax herself. She sighed. “Another nightmare….”
Her head looked toward a golden crown that sat on her bedside table. Once placed in the middle of that crown was a beautiful purple gem, a gem that had the power to save Equestria, and on many occasions, did so. But those days were now over. In an effort to save Equestria from a threat that not even the elements could halt, she and her friends returned the gem and its sister crystals to their home in the Tree of Harmony, where by returning the fruit that it had been missing for thousands of years, the mother tree gained the power it needed to stop chaos from dominating the world.
Twilight sighed again. For two months, ever since returning the elements to their rightful home, nightmares like this one haunted her mind endlessly. Most nights it ended with her death, where should would wake up much like she had tonight. Other nights, she was held up to watched as the mass consumed all of Ponyville, sometimes all of Equestria, where she would not be treated to the gentle mercy of execution until after the vines completed their task of destroying everything she loved. Some nights it wasn’t even the vines of chaos that she had most recently done combat with. Some nights she viewed all her friends captured in the emerald green cocoons that housed changelings, as they’re bodies gradually morphed into black and hole filled monsters, while her herself was already among those creatures, and other nights she envisioned a world consumed by a dark shroud, a tall black Alicorn cackling loudly over the misery and fear of an entire world. She only dreamed of things that she believed could be prevented with use of the Elements of Harmony, but the Elements of Harmony were no longer in their possession, and now all she could do is fear what could happen without them.
Twilight closed her eyes. Perhaps now that the nightmare was over, she could finally get some sleep. She shifted her head in her pillow, the baggage of her fears joining her on her trip back to her dreamscape.
***
Morning came too early for Twilight, after receiving only about 2 hours of a semi peaceful sleep. She groggily walked from place to place. She eventually reached her goal for today: The Carousel Boutique.
“Twilight dear!” Rarity greeted happily as her exhausted friend came through the door. “Thank you so much for coming, you have no idea how much this means to me.”
Twilight looks at her with tired bags underneath her eyes, and forced a smile onto her face. “Of course Rarity. I wouldn’t forget how much you needed…..” Twilight drew a blank. Her tired eyes drooped, as she moved her head all around in awkward forgetfulness. “…um…what did you need me to do today?”
Rarity laughed. “Oh Twilight, who says you never have sense of humor about things. Its okay you forgot dear, I’ll simply remind you.” She rolled over a rack of dresses, each glimmering with beauty. “I’ve made a few of what I do believe are my best dresses yet, and I’d like no pony else but a true royal to be the first to try them one, so that we can see just how regal these outfits serve to be.” Rarity adjusted the red glasses on her face, excited by the prospect of Twilight helping with her friend’s fitting.
In her mind, Twilight groaned. She was far too exhausted to want to deal with fittings and Rarity’s unbelievable detail in the construction of her dresses and outfits. But she again forced a smile- she made the decision to help her friend, and now she had to live with it. “I’m ready to start when you are Rarity”.
Hours passed as Twilight changed from dress to dress, tiredly shifting between the gaudy outfits as Rarity looked at every meticulous detail of the clothing, writing down planned adjustments and changes that she saw had to be made. Twilight sighed, attention drifting all around the room to help contest with the tedium. However, her eyes stopped when they fixed themselves up a golden necklace, with an empty slot for a gem placed in the middle. That is once where Rarity’s element of harmony stayed, but like Twilight’s crown, no more did it. “Your element necklace…” Twilight said, thoughts beginning to phase into those that inspired her dark nightmares.
Rarity looked at her in questioning. She looked at the necklace as well. “Oh yes, that old thing…I’ve been keeping it around to see if there’s anything I could do with it. But I suppose…”she smiled with a sense of sad contentment “I suppose nothing will ever look quite as good as my element did.”
Twilight’s head hung, a short sigh coming from her mouth. “..Rarity, did we do the right thing?”
“Whatever do you mean darling?” Rarity asked, beginning to bring her focus back to her original task.
“Did we….” Twilight sighed. No, she had to take responsibility for this. It was her decision, at her direction that this path was taken. “…Did I make the right choice by giving up the Elements of Harmony?”
“Why my dear Twilight” she said, taking a measurement with her tape measure. “Of course WE did.” Rarity reminded her they all made the choice with her playful enunciation. “We did what had to be done to save the princesses from those seeds of Chaos that dastardly Discord planted all those millennia ago.”
“But Rarity…there’s so much that the elements did….so many horrors they helped put a stop to.” Twilight retorted. “They stopped Nightmare Moon, they stopped Discord, they restored everything back to normal during that cutie mark conundrum! What if we need them again, but we don’t have them? Equestria could be doomed….because of my decision…”
Rarity’s head stooped a bit, beginning to find Twilight’s worries actually troubling. “…well, to be fair, they weren’t much of a help when we fought those changelings. Or when we freed The Crystal Empire from that foul Sombra. We had to find other ways to stop those….” Rarity began to strut around confidently again. “That’s right dear, we had to find other ways, and we came out alright. And that’s just what we’ll have to do from now on.” Rarity smiled.
“…thanks Rarity.” Twilight said warmly. She forced a smile onto her face. Rarity was right, that was what they had to do. But all Twilight could really think was “What if we can’t?”
***
Again, Twilight cried and quivered as she was pulled into the black wriggling mess. In reality, she groaned and whimpered, shifting and spinning all around her seemingly war torn bed. In the dream, she was pulled in more and more, her legs feeling the tight, thorny grasp of the ever spreading vines. Twilight closed her eyes tight, knowing the deep, piercing pain that was coming, hoping dearly that this was one of the dreams where she died quickly.
Suddenly, a serene silence filled the room. Twilight opened her eyes, no longer able to hear the desperate cries of her friends or the grinding squirming of the group of tentacle like vines. Time was slowing, the vision of her vine consumed room being broken apart by an angelic white light. It pierced through the images, breaking it down until nothing but the light remained, filling Twilight’s vision in place of the now absent room. The serene light began to fade into yet another serene scene, the greenest of fields, the sun shining beautifully and brightly.
Twilight looked around in a silent confusion, trying to make sense of the situation. She hadn’t seen a place of such glorious beauty in her dreams over her two months of nightmares. Why now? What could have caused this?
Twilight Sparkle, my dearest student. Please come to me.” Twilight heard the familiar voice from behind her. The voice had a powerful tone attached to it, but was angelic in its rich beauty. Twilight ran to where she heard the noises from. Sitting at a marble table was a pony rather larger than herself, coat a pure bright white, and her mane a mix of shimmering blues and greens and pinks, with a wondrous golden crown placed around her horn.
“Twilight.” The pony said, a warm smile upon her face. “Come.” Her wide white wings spread out, and motioned Twilight over.
Twilight slowly came over, nervous in the alicorn’s presence. “Hello Princess….”
“Call me Celestia now Twilight. You and I are upon more level grounds.” She picked up a cup with an aura of magic, taking a sip. A plate of tan, sugar coated cookies sat upon the marble table, a teapot standing next to it.
Twilight sat across from her mentor, looking up at her the shining goddess like a child would look up and the sun, hoping that some kind of abridging of her view would keep her from going blind from her radiance. “Princes..Celestia” Twilight corrected herself, the words nearly melting together”…am I still dreaming? Are you really here?”
Celestia took another sip of tea. “Please Twilight. Take a drink. Relax. We shall discuss your troubles when you have finally reached the peace this setting was meant to bring you.”
Shakily, Twilight took a drink of tea. Silence passed between the two alicorns, Twilight still shaking as she drank while Celestia began to chew upon one of the cookies, the smell of the sugary dough beginning to fill Twilight’s nostrils. Celestia swallowed the bits of crunchy crumbs gracefully, like one would expect from royalty. Then, she finally spoke. “Yes, and Yes.”
Twilight shook her head quickly in confusion. “What?” she asked, forgetting her question from earlier.
Celestia gave a soft chuckle, smiling at the purple mare. “Yes, this is a dream, and yes, I am actually here.”
Twilight knew what this implied, but the explanation only rose more questions for her. “But I thought only Luna could go into a pony’s dreams…” Twilight said, beginning to ponder just how any of this was occurring.
Celestia took another happy drink from her cup. “My sister assisted me in doing this for you Twilight. She’s seen the terrors you’ve been faced with every night, and as I have just witnessed for myself. And we decided that it would be in the best interest of everypony if you and I got to the bottom of these nightmares.” The white alicorn smiled at her, now taking the much needed role of the purple mare’s therapist.
Twilight took another sip from her cup of tea. She looked at her teacher, eyes full of shame. “Princess…” Twilight said, letting her mentor’s preferred name slip past her thoughts. “…ever since we gave up the elements of Harmony…I’ve been so unsure of myself” she sighed. ”….have I doomed Equestria? …have I gotten rid of the only chance of survival we have in the worst of situations?” Twilight shamed eyes began to fill with tears, her head stooping a bit as she began to whimper. “If something attacks, it’ll all be my fault if Equestria falls!”
There was a dense silence between the two alicorns following Twilight’s wailing screech. Celestia calmly looked at her, sipping her drink all the more. She took another cookie, and stuff it into her mouth. Gradually, she chewed the snack, only the most subtle of crunches being heard. “Twilight….I’ve don’t believe I’ve ever told you the all the details of when I banished my sister to the moon….”
Twilight had seen the banishment before in a vision, a vision that eventually helped her realize she had to return the elements of harmony to the tree of harmony. But she shook her head. Celestia herself had never explained it. Plus, there was far more about that day that Twilight had to know about, things that an isolated and quick viewing of the incident would never give her. She needed perspective and understanding.
“The day after I banished Luna, I realized how terrible an act it was that I had just committed. I had exiled my sister, the one pony who had always been with me. The only pony I could care about as a true equal was now gone, and for all I knew she would be gone forever. “ Celestia picked up another cookie, eating it with a touch more ferocity, crunches becoming more clear and defined. “In my mind I relived that moment a million times, each time as horrifying as when it actually happened.”
Twilight watched as her mentor’s expression became flushed with anger and horror. “But that wasn’t even all of it…” Celestia said, taking a sip of her tea to wash down the food. “the political decision of it all was just as traumatizing. Even if the ponies didn’t know the importance of the moonlight, I did. I knew that this world would die if I wasn’t powerful enough to bring both the day and night. And what if I couldn’t defend Equestria myself?” Celestia took another good, violently biting at it and swallowing it, the antithesis of the grace the princess had shown earlier. “ I was alone to face what I had thought then was the worst decision I had ever made. I wanted to curl up and hide away in shame.” The princess seemed angry with herself, her voice grinding as she finished her story. “….But I couldn’t. I had to move on. Do you know why?” Celestia’s grace returned to her voice. Twilight, confused and mortified, shook her head no. “Because I had to accept my decision and work with it.”
Twilight wanted to think on that for a bit, but suddenly, Celestia stood. “My student, I must leave. Morning is on its way.” She took one last cookie, and again ate it with the tact and grace one would expect from the great ruler of Equestria. Afterward, she pushed the plate towards the purple alicorn. “Here, you’ll need these.”
Twilight looked up at the princess in confusion. “Princess…why do I need cookies?”
Celestia gave a confident smile toward the nervous violet mare. As genuine and truthfully as anyone could ever imagine, the snow white royal revealed to her this to the confused pony: “Because these cookies are delicious.”
***
Twilight awoke as the sounds of morning buzzed around and as the light of day began to shine throughout her home. She thought on the dream she had just had. “Can I really just move past it like that? I mean….Celestia is the most powerful pony in all of Equestria…I’m not like her….will everything really be fine when I’ve taken such a gigantic risk?”
A sugary smell began to fill Twilight’s nostrils. She sat up, and saw the cookies from her dream right at her bedside table. She stayed motionless for a bit, unsure what to think. After a few minutes of shock, she reached for a cookie, and nibbled at it. An expression of joy filled she chewed at the treat. She was overcome with a great happiness and comfort that she hadn’t known over the course of her two month period of night terrors. Celestia certainly was right: these cookies were delicious.
