Night Terrors

Black.

It was not darkness, nor was it night. Darkness was an embrace of solace and a merciful blessing. It was somewhere to hide away and to keep secrets safe from the light. Darkness was refuge. The night was softness, a cool caress after the heat and sharpness of day, a time of rest and rejuvenation. Peace. This, however, was only black—a cavernous nothing, vacant and lonely. Luna strove against it, magic pulsing the length of her horn like a heartbeat. But the black was so heavy. It suffocated her, denying the starlight cast by her magic, or perhaps devouring it. Each motion was a battle all its own, as if Luna were swimming in quicksand. But there was only black.

“Luna…”

Luna froze. The voice stirred old memories, but she steeled her heart and shoved them down. The Never was trying to needle her, provoke her into believing its ghosts were real. She would not give it such satisfaction. Delving deep within, Luna forced her aura to brighten. The black seemed to lighten, but the relief was fleeting. The black surged around her, somehow even more smothering than before. Her aura wavered, flickering, as the black glutted itself on Luna’s magic.

“Luna, why did you leave?”

Gritting her teeth, Luna shut out the voice. It was an echo of a distant past. It was but a memory, a dream forgotten with the inevitable tilt of the hourglass. There was no voice.

The black warped. Luna’s magic flashed a shade brighter. The Never’s hold on the oppressive black had slipped, just a bit. It was only a tiny crack in the defenses, but Luna seized it. Drawing more magic from the shining sea inside her, she channeled it into the very tip of her horn. The light expanded, gleaming, casting off the black. The great nothing warped again, more violent and jarring this time. Tendrils of black snapped, fraying and tearing like the threads of fabric stretched taut. A sliver of forest canopy peered through the rip at Luna. She pinned her ears, scowling at the black, and slammed the full might of her will against it.

The black unraveled around her. Her aura winked out. Luna tumbled headfirst through clawing branches and whipping leaves. Instinctively, she tucked her wings close to her body, curling into a ball. She imagined her flesh and bones becoming as hard as dragon scales, and the impenetrable hide slithered across her entire form, reinforcing her skeleton. When Luna plowed into the ground, clods of earth and root flew up. She skidded to a stop, raking a scar through the grass and dirt. She still felt the impact, but Luna pushed herself to all four hooves without so much as a scratch or a bruise.

Letting the metallic scales shimmer away, her body regaining its natural form, Luna looked up at the forest canopy. The tattered branches were beginning to mend themselves, but a cocoon spun from midnight silk yet hung among them. Several glistening threads swayed in the soft breeze, frayed where Luna had forced her way out. Through the tear, she could see the gaping nothing that had tried to consume her. She frowned, focusing her thoughts, and willed the cocoon and the black it contained to vanish from existence.

Good riddance, Luna thought, nodding to herself. The Never would have to do better than that if it wanted to best the Princess of the Night.

As if to meet that challenge, a shroud settled over Luna. It was not a physical thing. Neither the forest nor the night itself actually darkened any further, but it felt that way. The air seemed to grow headier, closer. In centuries past, an overwhelming surge of dread had accompanied the sensation. Ever since her fall to Nightmare Moon, however, the dread had ebbed to little more than a distant afterthought. Luna had grown used to the effects of dark magic, but that did not mean she ignored what her instincts were numbly screaming.

With a thought, Luna became part of the forest. Mottled colors rippled across her body to match the bark of the trees and the tangle of the underbrush, camouflaging her from horn to hoof. Even her royal regalia lost their sheen and melded into the murk with the rest of her. Her mane and tail dulled, falling lank and still, the stars in their now-darkling depths going out completely. Luna was nothing more than another shadow among shadows. She blinked foliage-speckled eyes and, willing her hoofsteps to silence, crept through the trees after the slowly mounting dark magic.

This aura was not nearly as powerful as those of the last two nightmares—three, if Luna counted the gargoyle that had ambushed her and Misty Moonrise. The thought made Luna clench her teeth. She should have been on alert after the Never resurrected the umbrum tyrant of her nightmares, but she had been lax, too confident in her abilities. Now one of her pupils had paid the price of Luna’s foolishness. Well, Luna would find Misty Moonrise, fate willing, and she would be whole and unharmed. Safe. Luna refused to accept any other outcome.

The dark magic led her to a small vale, a still pond pooling at its heart. Ferns as tall as Luna herself replaced the underbrush, lining the steep slopes of the hills surrounding the vale. The trees seemed taller here, too, their girths wider than those of their brethren not ten spans back. Stones jutted out of the grassy earth, dotting the vale with uncut statues. One moss-blanketed boulder shadowed a crevasse in the earth, where the dark magic’s aura felt strongest. Careful to avoid the scarlet patches of moonlight, Luna slipped closer to the crevasse. The opening was much too small for Luna to squeeze through. Perhaps if she imagined herself as the size of a foal, she could—

“HELP!”

An orange fore hoof flailed out of the crevasse at the same time the cry rent the night. Luna immediately surrounded the hoof with her magic and hauled the filly attached to it from the crevasse. Hanging midair by her fore hoof, the filly writhed and flapped her tiny wings, trying unsuccessfully to fly away, eyes as wide as they would go. Then she seemed to realize what had happened, and her panicked stare fixed on Luna. The filly’s jaw dropped.

“Scootaloo?” asked Luna.

The filly gasped. “P-P-Princess Luna?”

Suddenly, a fat tentacle soaked in slime—innumerable suckers lining its underside—lashed out of the crevasse. Luna leapt back, wings snapping open and lifting her into the air alongside Scootaloo, who cried out again at the sight of the tentacle. Luna levitated Scootaloo safely behind her, white light beginning to climb the spirals of her horn. The tentacle arched into the shape of an S, its tip swaying from side to side like a snake preparing to strike. An eye blinked open on the tentacle’s tip and somehow managed to scowl at Luna without a brow. More viscous slime oozed from the tentacle’s spongy, porous length, squelching and belching as the mucus wetly plopped onto the ground. Fate have mercy on them! What did the rest of the monster look like?

The tentacle lurched to one side, its single eye glancing past Luna to Scootaloo. Luna darted in the opposite direction, keeping Scootaloo hovering directly behind her. The magic shining like pure moonlight from the spirals of her horn converged at the tip, forming a tiny, white orb. Luna launched the orb at the tentacle’s eye. A curling string of light spun in the orb’s wake. The tentacle pumped out more puddles of slime, dodging the orb. Swerving sharply, the orb wrapped its trailing string all around the length of the tentacle and plunged itself through the center of the eye’s dilating pupil. A jet of white fire seared out the other side of the eye, and the tentacle—or whatever nightmare to which it was attached—began to scream. It twisted in spasms, shrieking fit to wake the dead, and jerked back into the depths of the crevasse whence it had come. The nightmare’s agonized cries echoed for several long seconds, and then ceased.

Releasing her magic, Luna sealed the crevasse in the earth with a thought. Then she alighted at the top of the vale on the far side of the pond, well away from the slime-coated grass, and gently set Scootaloo on the ground before her. The young pegasus was still breathing quickly, but she appeared no worse for wear. She cast a brief glance to where the nightmare had been last, but then shook herself and started brushing a few globs of slime out of her short magenta mane. She kept a close watch on Luna as well, taking a careful step away from her.

“Um, thanks for getting rid of that thing,” Scootaloo said. “Me and the other Crusaders are camping out in the clubhouse, and we sorta got carried away with the scary stories…” She paused, frowning up at Luna. “I think you could give all the made-up monsters in Equestria a run for their bits right now, though, Princess.”

It was Luna’s turn to frown, and she looked down at herself. She still wore the mottled patterns of the forest. Luna began to remove the disguise. Before she had a chance to return a single hair to its proper state, however, the camouflage vanished of its own accord. It did not gradually fade, as it would have at her command, but simply winked out with a tiny flash of light.

Fate! Luna swore silently. The Never has not refused me since… The thought trailed off, a chill trickling down her spine. She smothered the notion, as well as the dark memories it conjured. It was impossible, even in this impossible realm.

“Cool beans!” exclaimed Scootaloo, wings fluttering. “How did you make yourself look all creepy like that, Princess Luna? Can you teach me how to do it, too?”

Luna waved her questions aside with a wing. “You should not be here, Scootaloo. ’Tis unsafe, especially for dreamers such as you.”

The upturned corners of Scootaloo’s mouth dropped, and she bit her lip. “But this is just a dream… isn’t it?”

A faint vestige of the shroud from before fell over Luna. Another nightmare. She whipped her head in its direction, magic glittering to life. “I shall return you to the waking world, Scootaloo,” Luna said. “However, I must ask a boon of you.”

Scootaloo followed Luna’s gaze, ears drooping somewhat. She inched a little closer to Luna and asked, “W-what is it?”

Locking eyes with the filly, Luna rested a fore hoof on Scootaloo’s shoulder. “’Tis of the utmost importance, Scootaloo. The moment you awaken, you must rouse your friends and make haste to Princess Twilight.”

“But, Princess Luna, it’s the middle of the night. Twilight won’t even be awake.”

“Then you must rouse her also,” Luna pressed, lowering her hoof. “Tell her to wake all of Ponyville, to send word to my sister in Canterlot to do the same there, thither to the Crystal Empire, and thither to all the nations. Awaken every single sleeper across Equestria ere ’tis too late.”

“Wake up all of Equestria?” gasped Scootaloo, gaping. “Why? What’s going on? Princess—”

Luna forced herself not to shout at Scootaloo, the shroud of the dark magic from afar steadily growing. Her magic flared as she prepared the spell to return Scootaloo to where she belonged. “I cannot protect all of you. Please, Scootaloo, go to Twilight Sparkle and help her awaken as many as you can. Not even dreams are safe this night.”

Scootaloo’s brow creased, and she nodded. “You can count on me, Princess.”

“I am in your debt, Scootaloo,” sighed Luna, casting the spell. Small flecks of light began to sparkle around Scootaloo, and her form grew wavy and phantasmal. Then she was gone, safely awakened in reality. Fate willing, I will survive the nightmares long enough to repay that debt, Luna thought, turning away from where Scootaloo had disappeared. With her magic still at the ready and lighting her way, Luna sprang into a gallop. Trees flashed past in a blur, rooted too close together here for Luna to spread her wings, much less fly, but she could weave this course as well as any barrel racer.

The aura of dark magic thickened the farther she ran, until it was so heavy that a lesser pony might have buckled beneath its weight. Luna slowed her pace as she neared the dark magic’s origin, each step silenced by caution. The carpet of grass and pine needles made stealth easier than it should have been without the advantages of manipulating the Never around her. Luna doused her magic and kept to the shadows, creeping closer. She stopped in the cover of a thicket and peered through its leaves.

There was no break in the trees here, no dell or clearing, but there was a wide hole in the canopy. Moonlight spilled through in a bloody brume, staining a patch of the forest floor and the figure seated there. It was another pegasus, this a fully grown mare, but her back was to Luna. She wore a plain, woolen cloak that hid her cutie mark, but Luna did not need to see the crystalline flower to know it was there. There was no mistaking that pale, frosty coat, nor the draping curls of white and ice-blue.

The pegasus folded her ears, shoulders quivering. “Luna…” she said, her breath hitching. She was crying. “Luna, why did you leave?” The voice, like the pegasus herself, was older now, but it was still quiet and sweet. Gentle, like the first snowfall of winter.

Oh, Snowdrop, Luna thought despite herself. There was nothing to be done. This was just another ghost brought to life by the Never. Snowdrop was gone. She had been gone for a long time. Hardening her heart against the past, Luna began to withdraw as silently as she had come.

“I miss you, Luna.”

Luna hesitated, but then pressed on. Snowdrop was in the past, and that was where Luna could no longer exist. She had stepped a thousand years out of time. There was no going back now. I could not be there for you, Snowdrop, Luna thought, but I can still be there for another.

Something rustled to Luna’s left. She whipped around to face it, horn igniting. Her magical shield snapped up just as a midnight sphere hurtled toward her out of the shadows. The sphere shattered against the hemisphere of starlight, onyx shrapnel flying. A pair of glowing eyes—reptilian and streaming shadows—glared at Luna from the darkness behind a shaft of moonlight.

“Did you really think to be rid of me so easily?” came the familiar, rumbling voice. “Did you expect the past to remain buried? Here?”

“I expected better from a creature such as the Never,” Luna replied. She kept her shield firmly in place. “Trapping the helpless outside their dreams, attacking those who are of no threat to you, tormenting we who are so much smaller than you—’tis the savagery of lesser beasts.”

“Savagery?” The nightmare laughed, stepping into the scarlet moonlight. He stood larger than any ordinary unicorn, towering above even Luna herself. Over his stormy coat, he wore the red mantle of royalty and segmented armor of a king at war. His mane spilled down his neck in obsidian waves, and the steely crown upon his head glistened above his crimson, scythe-like horn. He smiled at Luna, lips curling back from white fangs. “Fear makes savages of us all,” said King Sombra. “We are all ‘lesser beasts’ inside. We just pretend we are something greater. But the Mare in the Moon knows all about that, do you not?”

Luna flattened her ears, a blizzard beginning to stir inside her. She held it at bay—for now. “That mare is dead. She died the day I was saved.”

“You lie so smoothly,” Sombra chuckled. “It must be second nature to you, spinning the fables they all wish to hear. Tell me, when the little ones ask if Nightmare Moon will come to blot out the sun and slay their infallible Celestia, and you tell them the Nightmare is nothing but a bad dream, do you think they believe you? You covered all Equestria in night eternal twice. You could do so a third time, should you feel so inclined. Why would they ever trust you again? You certainly do not trust yourself.”

She opened her mouth to deny it, but the words caught in her throat. Luna rustled her wings, tail swishing. “It matters not,” she said at last. “I atone for my sins every eve and day. The past cannot be forgotten, but it has no place in the present.”

“Then why am I here?”

Luna scowled. “Because you stole somepony precious to me,” she said through gritted teeth, “and you think to keep me from her by resurrecting the phantoms of my memories.”

“Is this ‘phantom’ not to your liking?” Black vapors began to swirl around Sombra’s legs, streaming from his mane and tail. His features melted, flesh and armor dripping into a murky puddle at his hooves. A different form emerged as the last of Sombra dribbled to the ground, taller and more slender than Sombra, blacker than midnight and sheathed in cobalt armor. “Perhaps you would prefer this face instead?” said Nightmare Moon. “After all, you see it in the mirror so very often.”

Slivers of ice stabbed at Luna’s heart. She had to stop herself from taking a step back. The shield wavered for an instant. Luna clenched her jaw and poured more magic into the glittering hemisphere, solidifying it.

“You claim I spirited away one of your precious dreamwalkers,” Nightmare Moon went on, “but you always seem to lose those you cherish on your own. You could not even save sweet Snowdrop from time’s cold grave. Why should this new little filly be different? Why should any of your worshippers not find death as well?”

The shield exploded, shivering into jagged fragments. Luna leveled the lethal points of every last shard at Nightmare Moon and sent them streaking for her shriveled heart. Bands of cosmic fire whipped after the shards, scorching the trees, brush, and earth in their path. Nightmare Moon bared her fangs, grinning. As the first shards neared, she splintered, fissures spider-webbing all across her form. Purple shadows poured from the cracks, and Nightmare Moon shattered. Out of the broken pieces of her body writhed smoky, dark blue wisps. They danced around Luna’s shards easily, worms wriggling through the air. When the bands of flame followed the shards, the wisps just squirmed out of their way as well. The airborne fire sizzled out a few spans behind where Nightmare Moon had been standing, but the trail of destruction it had left still smoldered and smoked.

The wisps twisted into another shaft of moonlight, this one much closer to Luna. They expanded, stitching themselves back together. Their haze quickly resolved into Nightmare Moon once more.

“They are not my worshippers,” hissed Luna. “I am no god to be heralded. They are my students. Some are my equals. They are all my friends.”

Nightmare Moon threw back her head and laughed. Some of the nearby leaves quivered with the force of it. “What friends has a Nightmare?”

“I am no Nightmare!”

“You have seen the way they all look at you, the way they should have looked at us all those moons ago,” Nightmare Moon continued over Luna, beginning to walk a slow circle around her. Luna matched every step, circling opposite her. “Even those you claim as equals now gaze upon you in wonder and reverence. You are a god to them, a dark god of night and nightmares. You are just your own greatest heretic.”

The blizzard inside Luna froze into a storm of ice. Stray sparks started to leap from her already blazing horn. “Enough of your poison. What have you done with Misty Moonrise? Where is she?”

“The poor, frightened little filly… She is the most faithful of your acolytes, you know. You can do no wrong in her eyes. How do you think she will react when she realizes her glorious Princess Luna has broken her promise? When the nightmares close in and you are not there to protect her, do you really believe she will remain loyal, or will she abandon you as you abandoned her?”

“Then she yet lives,” said Luna, smiling. The spirals of her horn gleamed anew, power surging in her veins. Tiny globes of white light blinked into existence all around her and Nightmare Moon, each pulsing with the molten core of a compressed star. Nightmare Moon sneered, eyes flashing across the undulating army of stars. There were hundreds of them already, and hundreds more were materializing—too many to evade even if she splintered into smoke again. Luna spread her wings as wide as she could among the tight-knit trees, locking Nightmare Moon’s demonic gaze with her own. A white glow slid into place over her eyes, shining brighter than the gathering stars.

“You cannot destroy your deepest fears!” Nightmare Moon spat, an oily aura seeping from her horn. “Nightmares always return in the end. I always return! Not even you can escape me!”

Luna’s magic flared. The stars rushed forth in waves. Cracks had barely begun to splinter Nightmare Moon when the stars converged, swirling in a massive, cosmic whirlpool with her at its center. She reared, shrieking. A spear of dark magic shot into the canopy from her horn as the stars swallowed her whole. The black bolt arced around a low-hanging bough, crackling and darting straight for Luna. It hit a passing splash of stars instead.

Lightning and thunder exploded. Luna crashed into a tree and dropped hard to the earth. A shockwave of sweltering heat blasted through her and everything else in sight. Acrid smoke choked the air, turning to sludge in her lungs. Aching, Luna tried to push herself up, but pain clawed up one of her hind legs. One wing hung limp at her side, numb and unresponsive. Ash stained her coat, and the scorched fringes of her mane and tail were still sizzling softly. Nearby, wood groaned, cracking. Luna craned her neck and gasped as the tree behind her—its wide trunk charred and snapping at the base—roared earthward. Her aura sprang up around her horn, and a swirling dome of starlight flashed into being around her. She teleported out of the wildfire, reappearing atop a tree-cloaked hill a good mile or so away.

It took Luna’s eyes a few blinks to adjust to the darkness, but that did not keep her from scanning her new surroundings. The trees were not quite as close together here, and there was almost no underbrush at all. Patches of grass poked from among the lattice of roots patterning the earth. The canopy was thicker here, however, each tree’s branches spreading farther and its leaves sprouting in greater bulk. Luna’s magic cast quivering shadows as she pushed herself up and inspected the hilltop, dragging her injured limbs. She had to block out the pounding of her heart, straining her ears for any sign of another nightmare. Fortunately, it seemed she was alone for now.

Releasing a sigh, Luna slumped against the nearest tree and took stock of herself. Her left wing was dislocated—no wonder, then, that she could not move it. Her right hind leg, however, was broken, somewhere beneath the hock. Drawing upon the nights she had spent in the warfront surgeries during the war against Sombra a millennium gone, Luna assembled a blanket woven of magic, twice as tall as she and several spans wider than her wingspan. Its surface began to shimmer as the spell progressed, rippling gently like silvery water. Once it was finished, she swathed the healing blanket around her. It was cool to the touch, softer than velvet. Then it melded with Luna’s body, chilling the places where she was hurt. The cold was an anesthetic of sorts, for Luna watched as her wing popped back into its socket and her leg straightened, mended, but she could not feel any pain. The small cuts and burns she had acquired also healed, and the scorched strands of her mane and tail regained their silken sheen. When the healing was done, Luna almost felt better than when she had begun the evening. She tested her right hind leg, gingerly shifting her weight onto it. It supported her just as it always had, good as new. Her left wing, too, worked without a twinge. She might as well have never been injured.

Not a moment later, the shroud heralding more dark magic ebbed into her bones yet again. Luna spread her wings and aimed her horn at the dense canopy. Magic blasted forth in a thunderous shockwave, tearing a wide wound in the branches; dislodged leaves fluttered earthward. Digging in her hooves, Luna launched herself almost straight up, molding the still air of the forest with each powerful thrust of her wings. She ascended rapidly, clearing the treetops in only a few strokes and climbing even higher for a better view. From this vantage, she could see the column of black smoke rising from the burning grove she had left. Luna could also see the distant bubbles of dream magic encasing dreamers and their nighttime fancies. However, the landscape beyond was eerily motionless. The Never was a malleable canvas, changeable and willing by nature. It still had not returned the stars to its sky, nor was the full moon yet wiped clean of its bloody stains.

This is wrong, thought Luna. The Never is not meant to be so still. If what once was is again… No. She would not consider the possibility. It simply could not be. Luna turned midair until she was facing the newest source of dark magic and soared toward it. The past had no place in the present, and the present was too fraught with living nightmares for that ghost to return.

A clearing opened up beneath Luna as she flew. Without the trees to block the moonlight, the earth seemed to bleed. A small figure stood in the center of the wound, darting first one way, then another, as if being chased, though Luna could see no pursuers. Frowning, she tilted her wings and banked into a descending spiral. As she drew closer, what sounded like shrill chittering reached her ears. Luna had never heard it before, but something about the noise made the fur on the back of her neck stand on end. Her skin tried to crawl right off her body when she angled herself for a landing. The chittering jumped in volume, piercing, once Luna was on the ground. Needles stabbed at her brain, harder with each passing second. Fate, but that noise was maddening. No wonder this trapped dreamer was trying to run away.

Pinning her ears and pushing through the growing ache in her head, Luna strode through the burnished grass toward the dreamer. Only the tips of the foal’s ears peeked over the tall grass. Then the ears dropped out of sight; the foal stopped running. Luna quickened her pace—and nearly tripped over the foal. With a flutter of her wings, Luna caught her balance and backpedaled a step. The dreamer was a zebra colt, his stiff, striped mane cropped short, a golden bangle hanging from one ear. He lay curled on the ground, trembling, hooves over his eyes. He seemed to be mumbling something, but Luna could not make it out over the ceaseless chittering.

“Be at ease, little one,” said Luna, horn beginning to glow as she prepared the spell to return the zebra to the waking world. When he did not even flick an ear toward her, she laid a fore hoof on his shoulder.

The colt grew still. The chittering stopped, plunging the clearing into complete silence. Luna’s eyes flickered across the grass and ring of trees. She almost wished the insane chittering would start again. Her pulse quickened. She could still feel the nightmare manifesting, stronger now that she was here, but there was only this patch of savannah and vague shadows beneath the trees. If the chittering had been part of the zebra colt’s nightmare, why had it stopped?

The colt stirred, making Luna start. She swallowed a curse, shaking her head. This was no time to be jumping at shadows. She gently shook the colt and leaned closer, saying, “Fear not, little one. The nightmare is done.”

“The shrieking demons of the sands,” the colt whispered, “they come here from their distant lands. They come to drive us all insane, so they may feast on our remains! I just wanted to watch them roam—I didn’t mean to lead them home!”

“Dwell not upon bad dreams.” Luna encircled the colt in her aura, casting the spell. The zebra, muttering in a language Luna could not understand, grew hazy and slowly faded from sight. The moment he disappeared, the mounting dark magic dispersed as well. Whatever more the Never had been conjuring to torment the zebra alongside the “shrieking demons” no longer had the fuel to manifest. At least the laws of magic in the Never still applied. The last thing Luna needed tonight was for the magic here to start running wild.

The nightmares began to blur together after that. Each time Luna detected dark magic, she pursued it to its origin. She found ponies of all kinds, donkeys, mules, griffons, dragons, minotaurs, deer, yaks, even some creatures to which Luna could put no name—they all had been snatched from their dreams by the Never and were being assaulted by their worst nightmares. A rare few found the courage to stand against their nightmares alongside Luna, but most were overwhelmed, some catatonic with terror. Sometimes Luna arrived early enough to return a dreamer to the waking world and disrupt the nightmare’s manifestation, but she was forced to fight more often than not. Sometimes she was too late, and a dreamer had already succumbed to the nightmare, never to awaken.

It was at one of these Never graves that something new interrupted the whirl of nightmares and battle. Luna watched in mournful silence as the still body of a young wolf sparkled and faded, returned to the waking world in eternal slumber. His pack would howl for him when he did not wake, she knew. Then she turned away, aura winking out, and spread her wings to take flight. She could not feel any new nightmares forming yet. If fate was with her, Luna would be able to locate Misty Moonrise this time, before more dreamers became entrapped in the Never.

A low snort sounded not far behind her. Despite the exhaustion starting to weigh on her, Luna spun, horn igniting. She balked when she saw who it was, barely restraining her magic in time. A great, hulking bison stood there, his coppery fur dappled with red by what moonlight managed to pierce the forest canopy. The long primary feathers of burrowing and screech owls had been tied behind one ear, and three braids fell down the other side of his face, each woven with beads of turquoise, tortoise shell, porcupine quills, and painted wood. Two arrows were painted on his shoulder, heads above and fletching below—the Crossed Arrows of friendship, if Luna remembered correctly. The bison had large eyes, deeper and darker than the night itself, and on the broad brow between them was painted a symbol more telling than the Crossed Arrows: two diamonds turned on their sides, with the smaller inside the other and a dot in their center, like an eye—the Medicine Bull’s Eye of wisdom and watchfulness. Luna only knew one bison who bore that mark, the bison who had come to her to finish his dreamwalking studies. That had been many moons ago, only a short time after Luna had been redeemed and Nightmare Moon destroyed for good. The medicine bull was older now, in the prime of his life, but the kindness in his eyes was the same.

“I see you, Princess Luna,” said the bison, approaching.

“And I you, Great Nightsinger,” replied Luna. She dipped her head to him as he stopped before her, though they had known each other long enough by now to have no need of such courtesies. Still, even when the Never had gone mad and nightmares were coming alive, it never hurt to be respectful.

Nightsinger snorted again. “I am unworthy of such a title, especially here. In this realm, Luna, we are equals.”

Even those you claim as equals now gaze upon you in wonder and reverence… The words echoed distantly in Luna’s mind; she pushed them aside. “The Never is unsafe this night, Nightsinger,” Luna said. “You must awaken and rouse your tribe ere the Never traps your loved ones as well.”

“I have already done so. You have not been the only dreamwalker busy tonight.” Nightsinger glanced toward where the slain wolf had lain. “We have all been too late more than once since the moon was painted red and the stars died. Evil spirits haunt the Dream, but the Great Spirit has no answers for me or anyone else.”

“You have found other dreamwalkers, then?”

Nightsinger nodded, beads clicking softly.

Hope washed away some of Luna’s weariness. “Have you encountered one called Misty Moonrise?”

“The name is unknown to me,” said Nightsinger, shaking his head.

“You would not know her—she is among the newest dreamwalkers apprenticed to me. She is a unicorn, grey with white hair, somewhat smaller than most ponies.” Luna raised a fore hoof to the height at which Misty Moonrise stood. “Has anyone else you have met described such a mare?”

Nightsinger fell quiet with thought for a moment, but then shook his head again. “I am sorry, Luna.”

The hope in Luna dimmed a little, but she refused to give up now. Just because none of the other dreamwalkers had seen Misty Moonrise did not mean she was not still alive somewhere in the Never. “What of the other dreamwalkers?” Luna asked instead. “How do they fare?”

“I have sent the inexperienced back to the waking world to spread the word and rouse the land. Those who can hold their own I have sent to hunt down the nightmares before they claim their dreamers. I myself was following the aura of the wolf pup’s nightmare, but you arrived sooner than I.”

“Not soon enough,” whispered Luna, starting off through the trees. Nightsinger kept pace beside her. “Too many innocents have died this night. I begin to wonder whether the Never realizes what ’tis doing at all. Wanton killing is not in its nature.”

“Perhaps it cannot see who is friend and who is foe,” Nightsinger suggested.

Luna paused. Among the bison tribes, to “see” someone was to know them, to see the soul behind the flesh and understand it. If the Never could not distinguish dreamers and dreamwalkers from whatever—or whoever—had unsettled it, the only way it would be able to defend itself would be to attack every single creature who was not of the Never. The Never had been cornered by some predator, and, as any creature would in such a situation, it was lashing out.

Fear makes savages of us all, her nightmare had said.

“’Tis not the savagery of lesser beasts,” Luna breathed, eyes widening. “’Tis the savagery of fear. The Never is afraid.”

Nightsinger regarded her quietly for a moment, and then said, “The Dream is a mighty and powerful creature. Surely there is nothing it fears so much.”

“We are all of us frightened of something, Nightsinger, even the Never.”

“Is this why the moon bleeds and the night is empty?”

Luna nodded, folding her ears. “Indeed, and I have been as foolish as a foal to ignore it.”

“Not even you can know all, Luna.”

“I blinded myself because I did not wish to see the truth.” She shook her head. “The Never has faced its greatest fears once before, so very, very long ago. I could not bring myself to accept it ere this moment, but ’tis happening again. Fate have mercy on us, he should never have been found…”

Nightsinger frowned, brow furrowing sharply. He started to question her further, but then stopped and snapped his head toward the right. Luna felt the shroud settle over her a second later, but she felt it coming from the left. Two nightmares. She glanced toward Nightsinger. The painted Crossed Arrows on his shoulder had been replaced by a pair of red arrows pointing toward one another, a black circle between their heads—the bison tribes’ mark for warding off evil spirits. When he turned to look at Luna, she saw that more war paint had appeared on his face, lines of red and white underscoring his eyes. Apparently, the Never did not care about such small things being created. Well, Luna had no need of the full-body camouflage now, though, considering the rapidly mounting strength of the nightmares to either side of them, she would not have minded being able to armor herself with dragon scales again.

“We must part ways here,” said Luna. “Should you come across Misty Moonrise before I, please wake her. The Never is too dangerous for her this night.”

Nightsinger nodded. “The Dream is too dangerous tonight for us all, Luna, but I will do as you ask. May the Great Spirit watch over you.”

“May fate have mercy on you as well.” Fate have mercy on us all.

Then they delved into the trees at a gallop, each in the opposite direction. Luna soon lost track of Nightsinger’s thundering hoofsteps amid her own. She lit her horn as the shroud of dark magic thickened, weighing upon her shoulders and back heavily enough that she stumbled. But Luna righted herself and pushed on. Her magic shined brighter the farther she ran, flashing across the blurred trees and casting shadows that flickered at the edges of her vision.

The trees ended, and Luna skidded to a halt at their threshold. The shroud made the air here feel heady, as if she stood in the heart of a rainforest. In the near distance, the solitary mountain loomed, a great rock face that clawed at the black night sky. A meadow stretched before Luna in a long swath of grass fringed on all sides by the forest. The grass had been flattened in a perfect circle at the center of the meadow, and in that circle stood two figures. The larger was a creature all of grey smoke, with some titanic form barely concealed within the vapors. A black light pulsed steadily like a heart amid the smoke. The other, smaller figure was a grey unicorn with ivory hair, her back to Luna.

Luna’s eyes widened. The fatigue aching in her bones vanished, forgotten. She spread her wings and shot into the air, globs of silver fire flying from her horn. Black cords rose from the smoke creature, whipping toward Misty Moonrise. Luna unleashed a beam of searing magic toward the nearest cords, burning them to ashes in the blink of an eye. Banking sharply, she dodged a flailing cord of shadow and hurled another magic beam at the heart of the smoke creature. The nightmare reeled back with a roar, twin pools of fire rising to glower at Luna. She knew those eyes; they only spurred her on. She summoned six spheres, each as bright as and burning hotter than dwarf stars. Luna conjured two shields simultaneously, protecting herself and Misty Moonrise from the blistering heat. Then she sent the stars sweeping into a circle around the smoke creature and launched them. The smoke creature roared again, but its cry was cut off abruptly as the stars collided.

The explosion knocked Luna several yards back, but her shield took the brunt of it and she managed to stay airborne. Tiny filaments of flame and stardust fluttered toward the ground where the nightmare had stood, but the smoke creature itself was no more. Luna dispelled the shields and alighted. Her aura extinguished as her hooves touched earth. She folded her wings, commanding her racing heart to calm. She could not restrain the relief and elation at having found Misty Moonrise, though. Smiling, Luna hurried to join her student, who still stood with her back to Luna.

“Fate is merciful indeed! Misty Moonrise,” said Luna, breathless, “I…” She paused when Misty Moonrise did not react. Had she been injured? Frowning, Luna laid a fore hoof on the unicorn’s shoulder and gently turned her around.

Eyes as red as the blood moon latched onto Luna’s. Fangs flashed. Before Luna even had a chance to scream, a face wreathed in shadow rushed forth.