The Witch King Rises Again

"Don't forget...some things must never be forgotten. The shadows hunting me...I must hurry. My name is Luna, I live in Equestria at... at... Canterlot Castle. What have I done? This is insanity! Don't forget, don't forget. I must get out of here, focus! My name is... is... I am Luna." Luna was talking to herself, reassuring her as she stumbled through the cursed forest. Her voice sounded odd, like there were more voices behind it, she payed it no mind as she simply wanted to leave.

She had her fair share of nightmares and helped others through them, this was beyond her control. She could tell it was a dream, and she usually was able to decide when she would wake. Something was keeping her from her own abilities, and that terrified her.

She had barely escaped the spiders with only one major wound, in her side, there was a gash where a spider had tried to bite her. Many smaller wounds were bleeding through her coat, but none of them hurt like the gash. She assumed it was the venom from the beasts. She wondered why they would do that to her. She likes spiders, spiders are under appreciated, spiders eat bugs. Spiders are nice, right? That's why she turned the bowl of fake-spiders into real-spiders! Everyone should like spiders! Spiders don't grow big, except for that one time she was bored. Spiders don't try to eat ponies like her, except for that one time when the mosquitoes were bad and she was bored. Spiders don't have that potent venom, except for that one time she was in charge of military testing...and she was bored. She could hear them screeching behind her, finally catching up to the wounded princess. Luna heard a branch break and she fell over unconscious. She wondered if you could even fall unconscious in a dream. Apparently so.

She 'woke' with her head pounding. Luna could feel many of the cuts she had were no longer there, but the big one wasn't gone, along with a few of the more severe. She groaned as she moved her head around, trying to get even slightly comfortable on the stone floor.

'Wait, floor?' Luna thought as she opened her eye, ignoring the pain in her head.

She looked around the room and recognized it, mostly anyway. The walls were grey stone blocks with a red carpet going through the center of it. Walls she could have sworn were white. She looked down the large room and saw cracked and broken windows with rain outside. Windows she could have sworn were stained glass murals. The ceiling had holes in it that were letting the rain in and the only light came from the lightning outside and what little light came from the moon.

Realization came to her as she looked closely at one end of the room, three thrones sat at the end. The one in the middle was cold iron with a menacing design, the one to it's left was ruined gold the previous shine gone, cushion torn and tattered and the back had a massive hole, the one to it's right had the back cut on an angle going up towards the iron one and was made of silver, the cushion was blue and on it sat a dark tiara, much like the one she wore. Luna tried to remember what it meant, but it escaped her, she simply knew she had to leave, now, before whatever brought her here came back. She hoped to her sister that it wasn't the spiders.

She looked to the other side of the room to see two large double doors. One of them was completely blown off of it's hinges while the other was barely hanging onto it's last. She limped to the doors and peered through them. Spider webs littered the ceiling of the long hallway. The walls were made of the same material as the throne room, but the walls seemed closer together. She stepped fully through the doors and saw that the walls were closer together, which didn't make sense considering the doors were the same size as the throne room. She looked back to the doors and immediately backpedaled, much to her side's dismay.

The massive doors had changed to a single large wood and iron door. Here eyes went wide and her pupils went to pinpricks, she could hear shuffling and growling behind her. She turned slowly and nearly vomited at what she saw. There was an alicorn behind her, at least six meters away. It was as tall as Celestia, it's coat was a dirty tan, it had bands of some kind of material tightly around it's body, where it should have had a mane and tail there were scorch marks telling her that they had been burned off, one of it's front hooves had three long claws coming from beneath the flesh and making the hoof bleed where it stood. What disturbed her however was the face, well, half, of the face. The top half was (mostly) intact and looked disturbingly like Celestia. It's eyes were held open by black stitches, and the jaw was completely gone, the skin pulled back and attached to the neck.

She stared at it and it stared back for what seemed like eternity, her vision flickering and her brain drawing more and more paranoid conclusions as she looked at it. It suddenly started running at her, filling her mind with a terrifying noise that she would never forget. As it got a mere foot away and it's claw getting ready to strike her...it vanished. Poofed into dust...Just...Poof. She looked down at the floor, tears welling up in her eyes, where the alicorn used to be, and where the dust was now seeping into the cracks between the bricks in the floor.

Luna was ready to break down and run when a cold wind blew through the hallway, making her jump as it blew open a door. Luna looked down the hallway to the end door which was now open.  She slowly made her way to the door, watching the floor as she contemplated what she had done to deserve this.

The door seemed to move to meet her as she walked by some trick of her mind. She held her breath as she nudged the door open. She was beyond relieved to be back outside, not a spider in sight.

It looked like the castle hedge maze, but the walls looked like they were leaning towards her, trying to watch her as she stood. She limped forward into the entrance. When inside the maze, a hedge closed behind her.

She could only go forward now, so she did. She couldn't tell what was happening, she was making turns here and there, she was making stupid observations about the murder of crows that was perching itself atop the hedge walls, taunting her with their freedom. She was even hallucinating! Thinking there was a large, blue, glowing, cup-shaped trophy on a pedestal down one of the mazes ways. So when she felt her back left leg unable to move, she froze from fear.

She slowly turned her head to look at what had stopped her 'progress' and let out a sigh of relief when she saw it. It was just a root that had gotten snagged around her hoof. She lifted her hoof from the root and continued walking, not noticing the sounds of it slithering back.

A moment later, more popped out from the hedges. Tons of long roots started snaring her, slowly dragging her closer to the ground. Her mind went into a panic and she tried to get away. She would get a leg out, then ten more would grab her and hold her tightly. She tried to use her magic again, but it still wouldn't respond. Her wings flared out when she panicked, and got wrapped up as well. He body went rigid as her stomach hit the ground, her mind trying to guess as to what was going to happen to her. More of the roots took hold of her, going around her body and neck, forcing her chin to the ground. She looked up and was able to see a single root poise like a snake in front of her. She looked behind her and saw two more doing the same.

She had a pretty good idea of what was happening now.

Luna tried struggling again, but the roots were keeping her in place. She opened her mouth to scream, and that's when they struck.

Luna jolted from the floor, and drove her nose straight into a wall with a loud clang.

She slowly slid down the wall and back to the floor, groaning the entire way. When her stomach felt the cool metal beneath it, she dare look up. The room she was in was rounded, the walls made of metal and a solid white substance Luna couldn't identify.

'Celestia said something about a material like this.... What was it? Plastic I think.' She thought.

The room had a white table in the middle with chairs. Her head was still spinning and she was still mulling over what the roots would have done to her should this 'dream' of hers continued for a few moments longer, so she didn't notice the spilled food or large red patch on the table.

When she finally did, she backed away into a wall. That's when she knew her torment wasn't finished yet. She heard the faint sound of many legs coming closer to her. She looked around and her ears swiveled. She found the noises coming from one of the doors in the room. She backed away from it, placing the table between her and her new heart condition.

The noise continued and she started hearing some all-too-familiar screeching. Her breath picked up as she looked around frantically for an escape.

She tried one of the other doors in the room. It was stuck.

The sounds got louder.

She tried using her magic again. It wouldn't respond.

Louder, it now sounded like it was only a few meters away behind the door.

She mustered all of what was left of her strength and bucked the door. It dented, but was nowhere near large enough to try again.

She was trapped.

Again, the horrid screeching and growling got closer and she could tell it was just outside the door. Luna's last hope was that the door would be as sturdy and secure as the others were.

Sadly, it was not.

The door slid open and in came a massive spider. It was different from the rest though. This one was solid black and had chitin instead of brown and hairy. It didn't have any eyes she could see, the head was smooth and seemed to stretch back like a crest.

It moved its' fangs away from its' mouth, showing its' snarl and screeched again at her.

She fainted when a smaller mouth came out from the main one, she barely registered the weight on her face, or the slimy sensation snaking down her throat.

When she 'woke' again, her surroundings were very different. The walls were covered in a black substance that resembled the chitin on the last one she encountered. She couldn't seen anything in the room, no doors, no oddities, nothing other than the patterns on the chitin.

She stood up weakly and her hoof brushed something.

Luna jumped back and looked at the only other thing in the room. A pale spider-esk thing with a tail was on the ground, completely still. She walked closer to it and lightly poked it with her hoof.

Dead.

She only got as far as to breathe a sigh of relief before a massive pain erupted from her barrel. She collapsed to the ground panting. The pain came again, this time pushing outwards. She could feel her ribs bend from the pressure, but they held.

The pain came and went over the course of a few seconds, but they felt like eons to Luna, each time getting more and more painful to the point of her bawling on the floor. Finally she was given some respite by the pressure increasing to her breaking point.

Literally.

She looked down to her chest as blood poured from a wound in her barrel and a screech was heard.

A spider, the same colour as the one that she found dead, was covered in her blood as it tried to crawl out of her. She could feel it scramble around in her chest, but couldn't bring herself to move, she was frozen at the sight of the creature.

Its' eyeless head turned to her and it stared. There contest ended when it wailed again, and brought its' second mouth into view.

That was all she could take.

Luna woke with a scream. She looked around, holding her slightly-wet-from-tears pillow tightly to her chest, and noticed she was back in her room.

She wasn't going to take any chances though. She tried her magic, and found she was in fact awake. She sniffled and had to fight to not let tears run down her face and vowed never to try going into Angmar's dreams again.

She replaced her pillow and settled back down, noticing the uncomfortable wet patch just a little further down the bed. Her face flushed with embarrassment and she quickly got out of bed and she proceeded to burn her entire bedspread, she didn't need Celestia knowing she'd wet her bed.

When the ashes were cleaned she went to her bathroom. Luna looked herself over in the mirror. She had tears in her eyes and evidence that they had already fallen from them, her mane was hanging limp by her side and her coat was matted from sweating. All in all, she had to admit it was a fitting look for what had just happened.

She was about to walk back into her room when something descended into the view of the mirror. It was as large as her head, had eight legs, too many eyes, large fangs, was hairy, and was right behind her.

Never before had she screamed so loudly, and never before had Celestia woken up from a large explosion from that particular hallway, and never before had Angmar laughed his ass off.

Celestia ran into the hallway and saw her sister stamping at a large red smear on the floor, crying her eyes out. Celestia noted the large hole in the wall leading to Luna's bathroom, but decided her sister needed more attention than the wall.

"Luna! What's wrong?! Why, are you crushing what I think may have been something?"