Night Terrors

by Will-Owl-the-Wisp

Rating: everyone
Tags: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Princess Luna, Original Character, Adventure
Length: 18847

Not everypony wakes up. The dream world is a dangerous place, but never more so than now. Dreamwalkers and dreamers alike must tread carefully, lest they lose themselves to the very real nightmares of the Never.

Nightmares are coming alive all across the dreamscape, entrapping unsuspecting dreamers in the perilous world where imagination reigns and memory haunts. Even dreamwalkers—the masters of dream and nightmare—find themselves confronted by the monsters of their own minds and fears. Dreamwalkers and dreamers alike must tread carefully, lest they lose themselves to the very real nightmares of the Never.

Finalized 26 June, 2016

This story takes place before the events in S5, Ep. 13: Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?

The Shadowmancer Saga is written in collaboration with The Wandering Bard.

Published 2015-05-18 21:20:01 UTC
Last updated 2016-06-26 14:47:39 UTC

Chapter 1: A Scarlet Moon

This was a dream.

The town sprawling upon the mountainside was real enough, laden with snow—a white bed beneath a midnight sky. Icicles clung to the eaves of quiet buildings and the barren boughs of trees. Powder dusted front doorsteps and lintels. The glass casements atop the lampposts were fogged by the heat of the flames they contained. The cobblestones were slick with ice, cold and solid under the grey unicorn’s hooves. A frigid breeze ruffled her trailing mane and tail, chilling her through her fur and stinging her sapphire eyes. Each breath misted in front of her. Winter usually descended heavily upon this part of the Unicorn Range. Brumbyburg always had a white Hearth’s Warming.

But this was not Brumbyburg, not truly. It was just a dream, constructed from Misty Moonrise’s memories. Except for the cloudless, starry dome above, the stage was set just as it had been the night her life had changed. There were few ponies on the streets, but carriages drawn by impeccably dressed chauffeurs rattled up the thoroughfare every now and then. The ponies seated in those carriages were all young mares and stallions, each draped in glittering finery fit for a ball. The Premier Gala was the town’s highlight of the year, the party for all the “eligible youth of Brumbyburg” to be introduced to one another. Some called it the Matchmaker’s Masquerade, but only behind closed doors and in nothing louder than conspiratorial whispers. Misty found the latter name far more fitting. Brumbyburg was the city of masks, of pretense and pretending, of following tradition simply because that was how it had always been done. It was just the way things were.

How many times had she herself recited that mantra? How many times had she leaned on the crutch Brumbyburg had conditioned her to use? Even now, almost two years after leaving her hometown, Misty could not completely shake off the mask she had been taught to wear. She still caught herself pretending sometimes, though it was not nearly as often these days. The Brumby in her remained, but Misty could never really bring herself to let it go. It was a part of who she was; she had accepted that.

Her hoof struck a patch of ice. Misty toppled headfirst, cracking her jaw against the cobblestones. She bit her tongue on a curse as the initial flare of pain began to spread throughout the rest of her jowl. Subduing a groan, Misty raised her head and lifted a fore hoof to her aching cheek. To say that it stung would be a gross understatement. At least she was asleep. Had she been physically in the dream world and not in her own dreams, she would have awoken with one ugly bruise on half of her face. With a thought, Misty erased both the imaginary bruise and the pain.

“Are you okay?”

Misty looked up to find a pegasus foal standing before her. His flank was bare, and he still needed to grow into his ears. His sepia hair helped with that a little, but not much. His coat was the same mahogany she knew, though, as were his leaf-green eyes. Her old foalhood friend Steel Shield may be a foal in this dream, but that did not make him any less her Steel.

“I’ll be fine,” Misty replied. Standing, she shed the snow from her fur and hair with a tendril of magic. “What are you doing out this late?”

Steel grinned, and an impish glint flashed in his eye. “I’m tracking a monster. It tried to scare me by hiding under the bed, but I chased it off. You wanna help me find it again?”

One of the streetlamps flickered out farther down the road. Somepony must not have shuttered it properly. Misty stepped around the ice patch and lightly tapped the tip of Steel’s muzzle with a fore hoof. His nose was beginning to turn red from the cold. “I think you should go inside where it’s warm.”

“Aw, c’mon,” Steel pleaded. He hopped into flight, tiny wings buzzing as he hovered in front of her. “Just imagine us some scarves and hats, and it won’t matter that it’s cold. Please?”

Misty took a small step back, quirking an eyebrow. Dreamwalkers could manipulate the Never—as they called the dream world—with their thoughts, it was true, but a figment of her unconscious should not know that. “How do you…?”

“Or are ya too chicken?”

Perhaps it was just a fluke, thought Misty. Strange things happened in dreams after all. “That isn’t going to work this time, Steel,” she said, continuing her stroll up the thoroughfare. It was a little dimmer than before; another streetlamp must have gone out. “You should get home before your parents start to worry.”

Steel snorted and darted into her path again. “When did you get so boring, Misty? C’mon, it’ll be fun!”

“Since when did wandering the town at night, in winter, while tracking down a monster become ‘fun’?”

“If we don’t catch the monster, it’ll try to scare somepony else.”

Misty rolled her eyes. “I doubt that. The monsters under the bed and in the closet are just old pony’s tales meant to frighten mischievous foals like you into behaving. It’s not as if they’re real. Now, go home, Steel, and get out of the cold. I have things to do tonight and—” She paused, halting. The swift buzz of Steel’s wings had stopped. She turned.

Steel Shield was gone.

“Steel?” Misty called, searching the empty thoroughfare. A few more streetlamps had lost their flames, creating more patches of pitch-black. “Steel, where—?” she began, but then gasped at the sound of her voice—a child’s voice. She looked down at herself and discovered she had shrunk to the size of a small foal. Her veiled moon cutie mark had disappeared. She was a filly.

Laughter echoed from nearby. A foal’s laughter. Misty whirled, trying to place its origin. It seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. “S-Steel, this isn’t funny!” she stammered. “W-where are you?”

A streetlamp two posts away went dark.

Little filly told a lie,

But what else could she do?

The stars will all fade and die

Now lies are all that’s true.

It was Steel’s voice, eerily singsong as he recited the old nursery rhyme. But where was he? More streetlamps were going out up and down the thoroughfare, one by one. Misty edged into the nearest pool of light, ears folded, heart pounding. Steel’s laughter rang through the street again, making the fur along Misty’s spine stand on end.

“This isn’t real,” Misty whispered to herself. “This isn’t real. This isn’t real…”

“What’s the matter?” Steel asked, closer now. “Scared?”

“N-no…” The streetlamp across the way from her darkened. Misty’s lamppost was the only one still alight.

“Liar!” Steel shouted. “Liar, liar, mane on fire!” Then his voice began to drop, morphing into a low, basso rumble—no longer the voice of a foal. No longer Steel.

Little filly, scared inside,

But where now can she go?

Wherever she tries to hide,

Her lies always follow.

Misty’s streetlamp flickered out. The black rushed in, devouring everything. Misty clenched her teeth against a cry and reached for her magic. But she was just a filly. She could only manage a spark, which leapt from the tip of her horn and fell, sputtering, to the ground. She tried again, but the results were no better. Her breathing sharpened, shallow and quick. It was too dark. Monsters hid in the dark. Monsters that liked the taste of foals.

No, I’m not a filly… I’m not a filly!

Magic burst from her horn. Sapphire light chased away the gloom in a small bubble around Misty Moonrise. She was herself once more, a fully grown mare with her cutie mark and her magic. Asleep. “It’s just a dream,” she sighed. “It isn’t real.”

“Liar…” came the disembodied croon. It was even closer than last time.

Misty stiffened. Her heart skipped a few beats, and then raced all the harder. She drew upon more magic, widening the perimeter of her circle of light. The cobblestones and familiar structures of Brumbyburg had been replaced by the polished tile and majestic architecture of the Canterlot Royal Palace. Her magic illumined silken banners of white bearing a blazing sun, others of blue embroidered with a silver crescent. Marble statues and busts of long-dead heroes glared upon the world from shadowed sockets. Draping curtains of velvet framed towering windows, beyond which the city slept beneath a full moon.

Something shifted off to one side. The same rumbling voice from before grated out of the shadows. “Oh, how bright you shine… like a star in winter. But every star burns out in the end.”

Misty backpedaled. “What—?” She had to swallow before her voice would work. “What do you mean?”

“Hmm, your magic… it sings so sweetly. You could have hidden in the dark, but you cling to your light like the frightened filly you are.”

“I’m not—!”

“But you are! You’re terrified. A poor little filly so far from home…”

Misty retreated several more steps despite herself. Stars above, where was the creature? It had fallen silent. Had it left? The only noise now was that of Misty’s unsteady breathing. Her heart drummed in her breast, a hammer beating upon an anvil. A chill seeped into Misty, slowly clawing its way up her body from her hooves. Each exhale created puffs of silvery vapor. The back of her neck began to prickle, as if somepony were watching her.

Hot breath gusted through her mane from behind her. Misty froze.

“Little filly, run away,” the creature murmured in her ear. “This is where the monsters play.”

She did not think—she just dug in her hooves and ran. Misty kept her horn glowing as she galloped down the corridor. Shadows twisted and tangled at the edges of her vision. Was it a trick of the light, or were they yet more monsters like the one she had left behind? Was that creature still following her? She could hear nothing past the thunder in her ears. Was that her heart or her hooves? She could not tell. There was only the invasive cold freezing the very marrow of her bones. She needed to get away, to hide.

“I will find you, Misty,” the creature taunted, its oily voice echoing through the castle hall. “You can’t run forever…”

The corridor abruptly ended. An impassable wall cloaked in a tapestry depicting a rampant Nightmare Moon blocked Misty’s path. She skidded to a stop just short of colliding, eyes darting all around for an escape. There were two doors, one to either side, identical but for their knockers. One was in the shape of a lion’s head, and the other was in that of a gargoyle. The lion’s head had been cast in bronze, buffed until it gleamed, and it had a pair of diamonds for eyes. The gargoyle knocker was weathered wrought iron, and its eyes were two blood-red rubies.

“Your magic smells so… delicious,” said the creature. “And I’m so hungry…”

Misty dashed to the door with the lion knocker, twisting the knob with a hurried wisp of magic.

The door would not open.

Ears drooping, she cast a spell to unlock the door. When that did not work, Misty threw her shoulder against it, but the door held fast.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are…”

It was so close. She could hear it lumbering after her, enormous hooves ringing against the tile. Misty abandoned the lion knocker and instead bolted for the gargoyle. She shoved all her weight against the door, frantically jangling the knob. However, her attempts yielded no better results. Neither door would open, and there was nowhere to hide. She was trapped.

Misty pressed herself against the wall, cringing. She squeezed her eyes shut, but she could still hear the creature coming. It was almost upon her! There was nowhere to run, but she had to run. She had to escape!

Her magic flared, crackling. A whirlwind suddenly filled the passage, tearing at the tapestry, whipping Misty’s mane and tail into a frenzy. She opened her eyes; stardust swirled all around her. Power hummed in the air. A flash of radiance, a flurry of silver flecks—and Misty teleported out of the dead-end corridor. She reappeared on a tower balcony high above the sleeping Canterlot. But there was something wrong with the sky. There was not a single star to be seen anywhere. The night was empty. Empty but for the moon.

Without warning, a cord of shadow snagged her hind leg. Misty screamed, wheeling around as more and more black cords ensnared her. Behind her loomed a gigantic creature wreathed in grey smoke. Its shape was murky, indistinct, but there was something decidedly wrong about it. It was somehow disfigured, not in appearance, but in being. It was as if it should not even exist. There was something hidden in those depths, tall and muscular in build, with four cloven hooves and twin infernos for eyes. Every cord of shadow binding Misty was tethered to the center of the smoke creature, where a black light pulsed in time with some terrible heart.

Misty grasped her magic, unleashing spinning spheres of sapphire. The attacks splashed against the smoke creature and began to dissolve, harmless and ineffective. By the Princesses, it was absorbing her magic! Misty’s heart leapt into her throat. Her blood turned to ice in her veins. She strained against her bonds, but her strength was failing—no, her magic was failing, withering away. The smoke creature was sucking her dry, draining her of her magic. Without her magic, Misty would be only a vacant shell, powerless, vulnerable. Her magic was her link to the dream world. Dreamwalkers were nothing without their magic. She was nothing without her magic.

The smoke creature chuckled. “Little filly, say goodbye,” it growled. “Now it is your turn to die.”

Every motion became increasingly sluggish. Misty tried to fight the fatigue, but her thoughts were growing muddled. The black cords binding her began to glow, and the smoke creature laughed. Misty watched as her magic rushed in gleaming rivers from her to the smoke creature along the cords. Her cutie mark grew hazy and vanished. Then her entire body paled, fading to nothing. She fell, limp, to the cold balcony floor. One of her forelegs lay in her field of vision—the whole limb was nearly transparent. Breathing was a struggle, one that she was losing. Misty rolled her eyes skyward. The stars were still gone, but at least she could see the moon.

For the barest instant, the moon flashed deep scarlet. Then Misty blinked, and the moon was the same ghostly white it had always been. No, not quite the same. There was a face there now, a phantom face. A familiar face. The face of Princess Luna.

This was a dream.

Latching on to that, Misty shoved aside the emptiness and the cold. She pushed herself up, ears pinned and teeth gritted. Color began to ebb back into her body. Her cutie mark returned in a shower of sparks. Life flooded her veins. Misty reached for her stolen magic—and seized it. Every fiber of her being burned with power. Stardust erupted from the cords of shadow, shooting into the air and encircling both Misty and the smoke creature.

The smoke creature balked. Some of its vapors were shredded by the vicious storm, revealing glimpses of its previously concealed form. “What is this?” it snarled.

Starlight coalesced around Misty’s horn as the last vestiges of the nightmare’s cloak were ripped away. She could finally see the face of her nightmare. Some part of her had known who it was all along, but she had buried it so deep within herself that she could pretend she had forgotten.

Misty scowled, not at her nightmare, but at herself. She was still pretending. Even in her dreams, she wore the mask she thought she had left behind.

Her nightmare chuckled. “What’s wrong, little filly? Finish it!”

Misty met his gaze. In the real world, that was something she could almost never bring herself to do. But this was the Never, the dreamscape. This was home. She could do anything here.

His eyebrows rose, and a smile twisted his lips. “You enjoy this, don’t you? The power over dream and nightmare, confronting the monsters in the dark—you thirst for it.”

“You’re wrong,” Misty snapped.

“Am I?” Her nightmare threw back his head in a thunderous laugh. “We are not so different as you’d like to believe, dreamwalker.”

Misty blinked. It was just like before, with Steel. How had Steel known her by that name, and how did this nightmare know? She was asleep! This was just a dream! If Misty had been dreamwalking, it would be a different matter entirely, but these were her dreams. They should not be able to tell she was anything but another character in their play.

“Ah, she sees…” He chuckled again, his smokescreen gathering. His eyes smoldered like embers through the fog. “But you’re still just a filly inside.” He charged, flinging forth more cords of shadow.

Misty clenched her jaw and raised a shield of sapphire light. The shield flashed upon her nightmare’s impact, and he recoiled with a snarl. Whenever one of his magic-sapping cords touched her, it melted into puddles of bubbling oil. Misty clawed her nightmare’s smoke aside with a thought.

“I am a dreamwalker,” she whispered, “and you—you are nothing but a bad dream.”

“I am your greatest fears!” he raged.

“You are not real.”

He sneered. “Deny me, and you deny yourself.”

Misty’s scowl deepened. She released her magic. But the storm of stardust remained, held together by her will. “You are nothing.”

The nightmare unraveled. The creature hiding behind his smoke, the balcony, all of Canterlot—everything warped and skewed in a blur of color. Soft grass appeared under Misty’s hooves, speckled with wildflowers. A mountain range painted blue by distance resolved out of the horizon, while rolling hills swept the land. Stars glittered in the night sky above, and the full moon hovered among them. The ephemeral face of Princess Luna still gazed upon Misty’s dreams from the white orb.

A sigh slipped past Misty’s lips. It was over. Finally.

“Misty Moonrise,” said the phantom image of Princess Luna, “come.” And then she was gone.

Chapter 2: Shadow and Smoke

Magic flickering to life, Misty prepared the spell that would allow her to exit her dreams. As the spell gathered strength, she glanced back. Dreams were unpredictable things, and nightmares did not discriminate between dreamer and dreamwalker. She half-expected her nightmare to be standing behind her again. But her suspicions were hollow. He was not there. He would return some other night, in some other form, Misty was sure. But not this night, not in her dreams.

She put all that out of her mind and focused instead on her departure. The air before her shimmered, flecks of light twinkling like hundreds of tiny fireflies. Misty walked through the invisible curtain. Cold energy crackled through her as she crossed the Veil into the world of dreams. When she looked back, she saw only a shining dome of dream magic. Without its dreamer to sustain it, the bubble of imagination sank into the earth and collapsed silently upon itself.

Ahead and all around Misty, the Never spread in an ever-changing mosaic. More dreams encased by the Never’s magic expanded in every direction. The worlds each dreamer had created for the night were indistinct from this side of the barriers, but Misty could discern faint patterns of trees or sky, mountains or cityscapes. The undulating silhouette of a sea filled one dream, with shadowy creatures of the deep navigating its currents. Another dream seemed to contain the ruins of pyramids all but swallowed by a jungle. Fractured echoes of voices and sounds issued, muffled, from behind the shining curtains whenever Misty drew close, but she ignored them and anything else she glimpsed of others’ dreams. Only the presence of a nightmare would have allowed her to interfere. Anything less was an invasion of the dreamer’s privacy and forbidden by the laws of dreamwalkers.

Misty willed a path of grass to grow underhoof as she wandered the quiet narrows between dreams. The ground around her path was constantly shifting, reflecting the whims of nearby dreamers. Swampy marshlands encroached from one side briefly, but then they were replaced by desert sands, the ferns and shrubs of forest undergrowth, the white sand and lapping waves of a shoreline. On her other side, the rocky slope of a mountain rose, then a flat plain, the frozen face of a glacier, a blasted wasteland. The Never could have maintained a single environment if it wished, but it had always chosen to let dreamers control its land, or so Misty had read. But the sky remained the same out here—a starry night with a full moon. The Never allowed its dreamers to imagine their own skies, of course, but they were regulated to those dreams. Outside, in the Never itself, the sky was unchanging, had been ever since the very first dreamwalkers’ time, if the ancient scholars were to be believed.

A shadow glided across the land, drawing Misty’s gaze skyward. A familiar silhouette hovered before the moon. Princess Luna waited only a moment, backlit by the moonlight, and then she flew into the distance, to where a mountain was rising from the earth. It pierced the night, jagged and lonely, taller than any of the surrounding dreams.

Misty closed her eyes, fixing the mountain in her mind, and willed herself there. Wind and magic tugged at her. Frigid shocks of energy blasted through her as she passed into and out of the dreams in her path. The roar in her ears blocked all other sounds. Then solid rock formed under her hooves, and the whirl of motion stilled. Misty opened her eyes again. She now stood upon an outcrop near the peak of the mountain. The whole of the Never seemed to be laid before her—a patchwork, forever shifting. At the base of the mountain, a vast, dense forest was still in the process of forming. Visualizations on such a large scale always took more time to be fully realized than smaller constructs.

As she stepped away from the edge—the immense drop was starting to make her dizzy and to conjure more than a small tremble in her legs—Misty searched the sky. Princess Luna could have willed herself to the mountain just as Misty had, but she seemed to favor flying this night. Misty did not have long to wait, though. Soon, Princess Luna soared into view and spiraled gently toward the outcrop. She alighted with only a soft whisper of feathers. In the hoary glow of the moon, her deep blue coat and flowing, starry hair were lent an ethereal sheen quite becoming of the regal alicorn. Her onyx and silver regalia all but sparkled in the night.

Misty bowed as Princess Luna approached. “Princess,” she said, straightening, “something strange happened in my dreams. My nightmare knew I was a dreamwalker, and so did another pony in the dream. And the moon—”

Princess Luna held up a fore hoof. She did not speak, but neither did she give any hint of emotion besides her usual serenity and decorum. It was always so difficult to read Princess Luna, and Misty had trouble reading normal ponies. To Misty, Princess Luna was an enigma, one Misty was confident she would never solve. But the Princess was a good teacher, and Misty was eternally thankful for the night she had accidentally stumbled into Princess Luna’s dreams—the first time Misty had ever dreamwalked. If not for that, it was quite doubtful Princess Luna would have offered Misty a place among her students, or so Misty felt. So, when her mentor and sovereign requested silence, Misty respectfully closed her mouth.

She’s the greatest dreamwalker alive, thought Misty. She probably already knows what happened in my dreams.

After an interminable interval, Princess Luna shifted her cool stare away from Misty, turning instead to the landscape beyond the mountain and forest she had created. “Why did you surrender to the nightmare, Misty Moonrise?” asked Princess Luna at last. There was no judgment in her voice. It was simply a question, with no apparent strings attached. Of course, not all strings were easy to see.

“I don’t…” Misty hesitated. Brumbies did not make excuses—that bit of Brumbyburg mantra, at least, was a valid tenet. “I lost control, Princess,” she admitted, lowering her gaze to her hooves.

“Why was that?”

Misty started to respond, but then frowned. Why had she lost control? She was usually so careful to maintain a strong influence while she slept, to keep her dreams from running away with her. If Misty had ever given in to a dream, it had been because she chose to do so. This time, however…

When the silence began to stretch, Princess Luna said, “To lose oneself in a good dream is one thing, but to lose oneself in a nightmare is not only foolish, ’tis unacceptable for dreamwalkers. We must be the masters of dreams and nightmares, and that begins with the mastery of our own dreams and nightmares. The Never is too treacherous a realm for us to neglect the foundations of our order.”

“It won’t happen again, Princess,” said Misty. She shuffled her hooves on the granite, ears drooping.

Princess Luna glanced back at her. “Forgive me,” she said, some of her frosty exterior warming. “’Twas not mine intention to lecture you so, Misty Moonrise.”

“I disappointed you, Princess. A lecture is the least I deserve.”

“Disappoint me?” Princess Luna shook her head and offered Misty a soft smile. “Nay. No sincere student could truly disappoint her teacher.”

Misty looked up at that, the tightness in her breast easing somewhat.

“However, mistakes are tools that should not be wasted. Your mistake this night has shown me that I have neglected a crucial, if distasteful, element of your studies.”

“But what about my nightmare? The moon turned red, and—”

The corners of Princess Luna’s mouth fell, and she flicked her ears back. “Nightmares are the focus of this unscheduled lesson, Misty Moonrise. If you had permitted me to finish speaking, you would have discovered this for yourself. May I continue?”

Though her questions still itched for answers, Misty bit her tongue. It was not her place to interrupt the Princess of the Night.

With a quiet rustle of her wings, Princess Luna went on, “As you know, nightmares, like all dreams, are the product of a dreamer’s imagination. However, in order for the Never to manifest a nightmare, it must draw upon dark magic. Within the dreams of dreamers, nightmares are harmless; the dark magic binding them together is of little consequence. But dreamwalkers are not dreamers. When we sleep, we walk a tenuous thread, and anything we create walks that same thread. Should we lose control and succumb to a nightmare, our belief brings the nightmare to life, as well as the dark magic the Never used to conjure it. Fortunately, the Never sends us signs to remind us when we misstep, mainly through changes in the sky. ’Tis our choice whether or not to heed these warnings.”

A shiver Misty could not quite subdue crawled down her spine. She had read of dreamwalkers who had ignored the Never’s messages. They had never woken up.

“But there are other means by which we dreamwalkers may defend ourselves, without relying on the Never. We may learn how to sense the aura of dark magic ere the nightmare amasses enough strength to overwhelm us. To accomplish this, we must ourselves embrace dark magic.”

What?! Misty’s eyes widened, and she had to stifle a gasp. Surely Princess Luna was not being serious. It was madness! Dark magic was the harbinger of nightmares for a reason. It was terror and darkness, death and horror compressed into a terrible power that, once tasted, beckoned its conjuror to wield it again and again, until there was no escape. It had claimed even the greatest of heroes and kings, not just those with wickedness in their hearts. It had claimed Princess Luna once. And she wanted Misty to summon it?

Princess Luna watched Misty in silence for a few moments. What did she see in Misty? Her gaze seemed to pierce every layer, every forgotten façade. Then Princess Luna’s features softened, and she said, “’Tis not a lesson I enjoy teaching. There is ever the chance that those I instruct will be lost to the malign lure of dark magic. Such is why I forestall the inevitable until the very last. Only when one of my students loses control to a lethal nightmare do I resort to these means. But I assure you, Misty Moonrise, ’tis for the best.”

“Isn’t there another way?” asked Misty. “I won’t lose control again, Princess, I promise.”

“’Tis unwise to make such a promise. After a time, nightmares can become too strong to escape. If you can learn to recognize dark magic when ’tis weakest, you can disband the nightmare ere its strength waxes too great. Even then, you cannot swear truly to nevermore lose control.”

“But—”

Princess Luna flared her wings, brow creasing. “You are a dreamwalker, Misty Moonrise. You are one of the few fate has gifted with such an ability. However, there is much you still have to learn, and you will never progress if you refuse to learn the skills you must know in order to survive in the Never.” She sighed, moderating her tone, though her ears remained tilted back. “If there were a better means by which to do this than by exposing you to dark magic, I would welcome it gladly, but there simply is not.”

Misty averted her gaze. The memory of the smoke creature—of the creature behind the smoke—ebbed out of the shadows of her mind. Dark magic had taken him, too. Misty looked up and, in a small voice, said, “I know what dark magic looks like when somepony’s using it, Princess. Isn’t that enough?”

Features hardening, Princess Luna shook her head once. “Your eyes are too easily deceived. You must be able to feel its effect ere it can take root. Now,” she said, forgoing further argument, “each reacts differently to dark magic: a sense of dread, physical illness, extreme anxiety, depression, even pain in this or that part of the body. Those who react well to dark magic—or those who do not react at all—are soon lost and must be… dealt with.” She paused, eyes glazing over for a moment. What was she seeing? Remembering? Then Princess Luna blinked and continued, as if the distraction had never happened, “However you react, Misty Moonrise, rest assured that the first onslaught will not be overwhelming. Prolonged exposure to and use of dark magic over the course of many years can worsen the effects, but you should not need to conjure it more than a few times this night to learn how to sense it.”

Misty hesitated, biting her lip. Then she exhaled quietly and asked, “How do I conjure dark magic?” Just naming it left a foul taste in her mouth. Stars above… I can’t believe I’m doing this.

“The same way you conjure your natural magic,” answered Princess Luna. The iron edge to her voice seemed to soften, the tension leaving her shoulders. “Look inside.”

“But that means…” Misty did not even want to think about it, but she pushed on. Her words came out in little more than a whisper. “That means everyone has dark magic. How is that possible? How can we still be sane with… that… inside us?”

“We have a choice.”

Misty squeezed her eyes shut against a dizzy spell that had nothing to do with how high up they were. Once it passed, she opened her eyes again and asked, “But if there’s dark magic inside us, Princess, we might as well be lost already.”

“Am I lost?” The steel had returned to Princess Luna’s voice.

Misty’s eyes widened. “N-no, Princess! I didn’t mean—!”

Princess Luna raised a fore hoof, silencing her. “There is always a choice, Misty Moonrise. From the moment we first draw breath to the moment we breathe our last, we have a choice. Sometimes the choice is difficult and sometimes ’tis simple, but ’tis a choice nonetheless, and it must be made. Now, choose. Choose to prepare yourself and make yourself stronger, or choose to leave yourself defenseless and risk losing yourself to a nightmare from which you may never wake.”

Half-formed retaliations turned to dust on Misty’s tongue. She stared at the granite beneath her hooves. Wind whispered through her mane and tail, the only sound in the otherwise still Never night. Then Misty closed her eyes and looked inside.

Magic glimmered in the void. It was a steady river, warm and bright. Willing. It was ready for her, as patient as a mountain waiting for time to weather it to nothing. But Misty turned away from it, reaching into the darkness she had never before known nor had cause to search. Magic lurked there, too, but this was a polluted river. Tainted. It languished in the crevices and canyons of the void, a predator driven mad by unfulfilled desires. It hungered to be free, and it knew she was reaching for it. It surged, railing against its banks. Thirsting. Yearning.

Misty’s eyes snapped open, sweat trickling down her face. She smothered the terrible magic, ignored it, banished it. She denied it was even there—it did not exist, not inside her, not inside anypony. Anything was better than drowning in those awful rapids. “I can’t,” she breathed, quivering.

Princess Luna scowled. “You must. Try again.”

Misty shook her head, taking a step back. “I can’t…”

“Let not your fear best you, Misty Moonrise,” Princess Luna pressed, voice resonating across the mountain. “Try again!”

“I won’t!”

Without warning, a midnight aura ensnared Princess Luna’s horn. Sickly shadows streamed from her eyes. Darkness encircled her in oily waves, wrapping around and around Princess Luna until nothing more could be seen of her. When the gloom receded, a black alicorn in cobalt armor stood in place of the Moon Princess. The waxing crescent moon that had nestled in the black splash on her flank was replaced by a waning crescent amid roiling purple clouds. Her once-kind eyes were now cold and cruel, and her mane and tail had become wild cascades of unbound power.

Misty ducked her head, pupils shrinking to pinpoints. Cringing, she retreated until one hind hoof slipped off the edge of the outcrop. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Misty knew this was only an illusion cast by Princess Luna, but that neither thawed her frozen blood nor stilled her racing heart.

“Nightmares have always been,” declared Nightmare Moon, fangs gleaming in the moonlight, “but they are paltry echoes beside me. When the tyrant Sombra enslaved the crystal ponies, not even the great Sun Princess could withstand his darkness—but I could, for I am darkness. When the Lord of Chaos thought to make sport of ponies’ lives, I was the bane of his stone slumber. When the ungrateful foals dishonored and ignored the wonders of my night, I taught them the error of their ways. Celestia may have banished me to the moon, but the Nightmare remained in the twilight of every little pony’s dreams. Throughout the ages, I survived!”

Then a soft blue light washed over Nightmare Moon. Pieces of her melted away, pooling on the rock beneath her hooves. Her armor dissolved into wisps of smoke. The drudge underhoof grew translucent, wavering like a mirage. As the last vestiges of the illusion faded, Princess Luna approached her pupil and smoothed Misty’s snowy mane out of her eyes.

“I did not realize the monster I was becoming,” she said gently, “and it frightens me still how easily I fell. ’Twas mine own impatience and anger which blinded me to the dark magic cast upon me in the battle against Sombra. I wish no such blindness upon you, Misty Moonrise. Now, try again.”

Though not quite able to quell the slight tremble that remained in her limbs, Misty straightened. She could not bring herself to meet Princess Luna’s gaze this time, not even here in the Never. Princess Luna had never told her how the seed of Nightmare Moon had been spawned. To confide such a secret was no light decision, but, more than that, to live with the truth of it, to face one’s innermost demons and the pain they had wrought every waking—and likely sleeping—hour… Misty could not imagine what all Princess Luna had been through, what she was still going through, but she would not insult her teacher with further refusal.

Closing her eyes, Misty once more sought out the dark magic slumbering within her. It responded just as it had before, churning and raging. She balked, heart squirming. Everything inside Misty screamed for her stop, to bury the dark magic so deep within that it would never be found again. Gritting her teeth, Misty shoved past the fear and plunged into the abyss.

It was nothing like her natural magic. That came as naturally to her as dreamwalking or breathing. It filled her with light and life, illuminating her from within. This dark magic, however, was suffocating and vile. It oozed through the fissures of her mind. Misty felt the ugly aura seeping from her horn contort and grow the deeper she immersed herself in the dread waves. Cold sweat iced her brow. Nausea sickened her stomach; she tasted bile. She could feel the smoky shadows begin to curl from the corners of her burning eyes.

A sudden roar shattered Misty’s concentration. The dark magic evaporated, slithering beyond her reach, back to the recesses of the void. Misty released a relieved breath once it had gone, shivering and feeling startlingly weak, as if she had neither slept nor eaten for days. But the weakness soon passed. Rubbing the lingering dregs of shadow from her eyes, Misty searched for the source of the disturbance.

Her heart stopped. For a moment, she was certain that the smoke creature from her nightmare had returned, larger than the mountain upon which Misty and Princess Luna stood. Then, however, she realized this monster was wreathed in black smoke. No hidden form bled through these opaque vapors, but from their depths glared an enormous pair of eyes leaking purple shadow. The pupils were reptilian slits, the irises as red as garnets, and what should have been white sclera glowed a ghastly shade of green.

Misty had never seen this monster before; it was not of her dreams. Not of anypony’s dreams, as far as she knew, though Misty did not visit the nightmares of every single dreamer. She and the handful of other dreamwalkers studying under Princess Luna generally dealt with the more minor nightmares. Princess Luna handled the greater, more dangerous ones. Was that what this monster was—a nightmare of such magnitude that, under normal circumstances, only Princess Luna would rise to dispel it? How could one pony, even an alicorn, face such a horror by herself?

But Princess Luna was not alone now. Pinning her ears, Misty seized her magic—her real magic—in a flare of sapphire sparks and assembled an oscillating sphere of silver and blue. Before she had a chance to launch it, however, Princess Luna leapt between Misty and the monster, horn afire and wings flared wide. The monster’s eyes narrowed, and it rushed forth in a tidal surge of shadow and smoke. A half-dome of glittering cobalt blazed into existence around Princess Luna and Misty, humming and flashing when the monster struck it. The monster reeled back with a guttural growl, and then shot like an arrow straight for the shield.

This time, when the monster hit the shield, it did not recoil. It kept pushing, driving against the light. Princess Luna’s face contorted, teeth gritted and upper lip curled in a silent snarl. Her hooves scraped the outcrop’s surface as the sheer force of the monster slid the magic hemisphere backward a few inches. Sweat glistening on her forehead, Princess Luna took a defiant step forward. The magic whirling around her horn began to shine even brighter, casting off stray globs of blue flame. She blinked, and her eyes were suddenly gleaming and white with power. With a roar not unlike the monster’s own, Princess Luna reared upon her hind legs, magic crackling. The shield expanded in a torrential blur of light and motion, igniting the monster’s smoke and searing it to ashes. The monster’s agonized howl rent the night as the flames ate at every wisp of its colossal body.

The eyes were the last to be devoured by the magic fire. Fixed on Princess Luna, they smoldered with an inferno of their own. It was deeper than mere hatred, purer and more volatile than loathing or vengeance. Even when that wicked glare was but flakes of ash, the untempered heat of it lingered like the afterimage burned into the retinas by fireworks.

Chapter 3: Empty Night

The magic sphere Misty had conjured disappeared in a sprinkle of stardust, unused. Her magic faded with it. It had all happened so fast; she still could not believe her eyes. Misty had never seen Princess Luna battle such a nightmare in the Never. She had watched the Princess unravel the nightmares of dreamers, true, but this was different. Out here, where dreams winked in and out of existence in utter silence, if a nightmare of any strength manifested, it posed as grave a threat as it would in the waking world. And Princess Luna had just burned possibly the most powerful manifestation Misty had ever witnessed to a cinder.

Princess Luna’s magic took longer to dissipate. The white veil evaporated from her eyes first, and then her aura began to dwindle. She returned to all four hooves, wings sagging at her heaving sides. A visible tremor shook her legs for a few seconds. As the last spark of magic on her horn finally flickered out, Princess Luna straightened. Composure settled upon her like a mantle, smoothing the strain from her body and the emotion from her face. Folding her wings, Princess Luna turned to Misty, for all the world as if the lesson had not been interrupted.

“That was a fair first attempt,” she said. “However, ’tis not enough. Again.”

How could Princess Luna be so calm? “How did you do that?” Misty asked.

“Time and experience are better teachers than any scholar or mentor.”

“But… how? I’ve never seen you use that kind of magic before, Princess.”

Princess Luna sighed, but she was smiling now. No masks of royalty or mystery. “That is a lesson for another night, Misty Moonrise. You are not yet ready for such advanced magic.”

“But what if the Never conjures another nightmare like that one?” Misty pressed. “What if I don’t sense the dark magic in time, and the nightmare gets too strong? I didn’t sense that one at all! What if—?”

Sweeping a wing around Misty, Princess Luna drew her close and said, “We failed to sense this nightmare’s dark magic because you were yourself summoning dark magic. The presence of one overwhelms the presence of another. And should you ever encounter such a nightmare within the bounds of this realm, I will be there. I swear it.”

The embrace was short-lived, but the somewhat rare gesture from her teacher allayed most of Misty’s worries. Most. “Why did the Never conjure it in the first place?” she asked as Princess Luna withdrew.

Princess Luna regarded Misty quietly for a time, faint creases lining her forehead. Then she averted her gaze and turned away, stepping up to the edge of the outcrop. A breeze whispered around the mountain. It ruffled Misty’s mane and tail, though it was hard to tell whether the breeze touched Princess Luna’s ever-flowing hair. “’Twas a nightmare,” she said at last, not looking at Misty. “The Never creates what it will; it hardly requires a reason.”

“But the Never doesn’t create nightmares just ‘because.’ There must be a reason…” There was always a reason, even if it was not immediately apparent. Misty frowned down at the granite, ears flicking back in thought. Could the Never have felt threatened by something? Had it been her meddling with dark magic? But dreamwalkers were so small compared to the Never. How could it feel threatened by something that was no danger to it? The breeze strengthened into a wind, tugging at Misty’s mane. She glanced skyward—watching the moon always helped her think—and froze.

There were no stars. The night was empty. Empty but for a blood-red moon.

Misty backed away, though there was nowhere she could hide from that sky. Her ears drooped, and her heart staggered into a flat-out gallop. She was supposed to be in the Never. How could her nightmare follow her here, out of her dreams? Or had she even left her dreams?

No, don’t fall apart, Misty, she told herself. This is the Never. Home. You’re in control. Still, Misty’s mouth had gone as dry as old parchment. She managed to keep the tremble out of her voice, though only just. “Princess Luna.”

Princess Luna finally turned. The wind had become a gale at some point, making even Princess Luna’s hair writhe and snap about her. She quirked an ear sideways when she saw Misty standing at the far edge of the outcrop. “What is it? Why do you—?”

“The sky…”

Looking up, Princess Luna’s eyes widened. She shook her head, as if the empty night might be some illusion or hallucination. “Impossible,” she breathed.

“Why is the moon red?” asked Misty. “What does it mean?”

“Something is gravely amiss. We must—”

Before Princess Luna could finish, razor claws ensnared Misty and dragged her from the outcrop. An unbidden scream was ripped from her as Misty scrambled to hold on to the ledge, but the stone crumbled under her flailing hooves. Princess Luna lunged to catch Misty’s hoof. A whiplash tail of iron swept around from the creature that had snagged Misty, clubbing Princess Luna hard in the ribs and casting her to the other side of the outcrop. She rolled over the edge and beyond Misty’s sight. A guttural roar sounded above Misty, and then the air howled past. The mountain seemed to shrink the farther Misty was carried. Even the great forest looked little more than a dark blanket swaddling the earth.

Stars above, the ground! It was so far away! She was too high up. She needed to be on the ground. What if she fell? What if her captor decided to drop her? Mind reeling, heart pounding painfully in her breast, Misty clung to the claws clutching her. The metal was cold against her skin, but it kept the world from spinning. Looking up, however, twisted Misty’s gut into a sickening knot all over again. The grotesque features of a gargoyle glared back at her, but not just any gargoyle—its face was the same as the door knocker from her nightmare. It was even made of the same black and weathered wrought iron! The rubies of the gargoyle’s eyes flared, and its hammered lips curled into a fearsome rictus. Venom dripped from its rusted fangs, foaming in the wind. When a fleck blew onto Misty’s cheek, it sliced through fur and flesh like acid.

As Misty rushed to rub the venom from the fresh cut on her face, she heard a voice through the blaring gales, coming from behind. Don’t look down, she thought. Just look back. Not down. Steeling herself, Misty glanced over her shoulder, toward the mountain.

Princess Luna streaked through the air after Misty and the gargoyle. Magic swirled and flashed around her horn, sparks flying. Her ears were pinned flat against the back of her head, her face distorted by some inner fire and darkness that no nightmare could have matched. Princess Luna was shouting something, but she was too far away, the rush of wind too loud for Misty to make anything out.

Misty looked up at the gargoyle again. Despite being all of metal, it was fast. Princess Luna might not be able to close the distance between them. Seizing her own magic, Misty once more wove a sphere of sapphire light and hurled it at the gargoyle’s face. The orb exploded upon impact, stardust spraying in dense clouds. The gargoyle hissed, but it did not slow down. Its claws clenched tighter around Misty, digging into her flesh, threatening to snap her ribs. Misty inhaled sharply, but she gritted her teeth against the pain and began to assemble a second magic sphere.

A shadow fell over the blood moon, deepening the already abysmal Never night. Misty whipped her head around just in time to glimpse an indistinct shape plummet out of the sky. It sailed through the darkness, straight for Princess Luna.

“Princess—!”

Too late. The figure crashed into Princess Luna. A cackle to make the skin crawl rose in the night. Princess Luna was falling, entangled with the nightmare, tumbling inexorably toward the ground. Within seconds, they were too far off for Misty to see. Even the light of Princess Luna’s magic vanished, swallowed by distance and darkness.

Fire such as Misty had never felt surged inside her. It flooded every inch of her, igniting her veins, boiling her blood. Ears pinned flat, a scowl shadowing her features, Misty rounded blazing eyes on the gargoyle. A sapphire inferno erupted from the tip of her horn, scorching the gargoyle’s hideous face and wrenching an even more hideous scream from its throat. Misty poured all her willpower into the cascade, making it burn brighter, hotter. The blue flames morphed to white, searing the wrought iron gargoyle from black to glowing red-orange. The gargoyle writhed, staggering midair, but it did not release Misty. It just squeezed her all the tighter. Gasping, Misty fought for breath as the crushing pressure strained her bones to the breaking point. But still she fed the magic. The nightmares could do what they wanted to Misty, but they would not hurt her Princess!

The fringes of Misty’s vision began to blur. Her strength was waning, not from the drain of the magic, but from the lack of air. She could feel her heartbeat begin to slow, her lungs aching and empty. But the fire was not hot enough yet. She tried to imagine the fire’s temperature growing, burning, searing. Her thoughts unraveled, distorted; a fog seemed to have settled over her mind. Misty was slipping. The torrent of white flame began to weaken, cooling back to blue. It was as if the river of magic inside her were drying up.

Then something within her bled out of the void. Its presence was a stench of decay and death, but it raged as strongly as it had before. Bile coating her throat, Misty latched on to the vile source and opened the floodgates. Dark magic roared through her, the black aura oozing from her horn alongside her natural magic. Her eyes burned. Smoky shadows curled from their corners. She smothered the rising urge to retch. A single jet of darkness shot through the center of the blue fire, and then the flames blazed whiter than a midwinter moon. A wave of heat rolled through the air, broiling. Sweat dampened Misty’s fur. The gargoyle’s strident shriek sounded faint in Misty’s ears, as from afar. Light exploded, blinding, radiant.

Blackness.

Misty inhaled, air rushing and howling all around her. The dark magic was gone, back in the shadows where it belonged. Her real magic had left as well. When had she released either of them? No matter. She could breathe now. The gargoyle’s claws were no longer crushing her. Misty could not even feel their grasp anymore. She pried her eyes open, though her eyelids felt heavier than lead.

Misshapen, steaming globules of yellow-white metal plummeted toward her from above. The wrought iron gargoyle was gone—melted. And Misty was falling.

She had no idea how close she was to the ground, but she knew what she needed to do. The fog had lifted from her mind; Misty focused her thoughts. She imagined herself floating, not falling, and willed it to be so. Her descent slowed, and then stopped completely. Just as the molten remains of the gargoyle drew near, Misty raised a shield of sapphire light above her. She sloped the natural curves of the shield instead into a wedge, and the fiery slag was sliced to either side. The shield flared with each impact, but the slag slid harmlessly past and onward to the earth below. Only when the last embers had gone did Misty release her magic. The shield evaporated.

Turning midair, Misty found that she was hovering a bare few yards above the treetops. If she had blacked out for just a few seconds longer, she would have broken more than those branches—waking up with shattered bones was far from desirable, if she woke up at all. Smoke rose from several holes in the canopy where the gargoyle’s remains had burned through the boughs. Misty suppressed a shudder at the thought of what might have happened if she had not conjured that shield.

Without warning, she started to fall again. Misty’s eyes widened, thoughts scrabbling to bring her back into a hover. It did not work. Before she could raise a second shield, she crashed through the canopy. Branches clawed at her body and hair, beating and whipping her as she tumbled downward. Eyes squeezed shut against the thrashing wood and splinters, Misty reached blindly into the tangle of boughs. Her foreleg caught on a stout limb, and she jerked to a halt. Panting, she wrapped her other foreleg around the branch and hauled herself up enough to hook her chin over it. Bits of twigs plopped onto her head for a few moments more. Then all was still.

Misty glanced down. The ground was only a span or two beneath her, though there was no sign of the gargoyle’s remains—the Never must have swallowed them. Gritting her teeth, Misty released her bough and dropped to the earth. Her legs threatened to buckle upon impact, but she managed to stay upright with only a small stumble. Her heart was still racing, but it was beginning to slow to a normal speed. The groan of straining wood, as trees in a storm, drew Misty’s gaze up again. The broken branches were mending themselves, some stretching and weaving together to close the gaps Misty and the slag had made. At least she would not have to look at that unnerving blood moon now.

Silence reigned. That was not uncommon in the Never, but, after all that commotion, it felt eerie. There were no dreams nearby to distort the scenery of forest and mountain that Princess Luna had created. The fact that the landscape had not changed was a comfort, though. If Princess Luna had been unconscious—or worse—this relatively small area upon which she had imposed her will would have shifted to the whims of the Never. And if Princess Luna was alive, all Misty needed to do was find her again, and they could straighten out whatever was unsettling the Never. Misty had not seen where Princess Luna had gone to ground, but she had to start somewhere. The mountain would be the best place to get her bearings, and the height would give her the best view of the Never. Closing her eyes, Misty fixed the solitary mount in her mind and willed herself to its location.

Nothing happened.

Forcing herself to remain calm, Misty tried again. Once more, she remained exactly where she was. Her pulse began to quicken, disordered thoughts threatening to overthrow her concentration. Misty shoved her fears aside, opened her eyes, and strained to change the trees, the undergrowth, the pine needles on the ground, the grass underhoof—but the Never retained its current shape. Pausing, Misty took a deep breath to steady herself and switched tactics. Instead of trying to change a part of her environment, she imagined something new, something small. In a flicker of light, a moth appeared out of thin air. It hovered before her muzzle, its fuzzy antennae brushing her fur, and then fluttered off into the trees.

This doesn’t make any sense. What’s happening? Misty wondered, raising her gaze to the canopy. It was as if the Never had suddenly decided to… ignore her, or perhaps refuse her. But why? Such a thing had never occurred before, as far as Misty knew.

Princess Luna had been right. Something was amiss in the Never, but what?

A wave of nausea abruptly assaulted Misty. It was so strong that she had to lean against a nearby tree to keep from collapsing and becoming sick. Once it passed, she felt as if she had been slicked in oil, soiled and dirtied beyond cleansing. At the back of her throat, she tasted bile. Dark magic. Was this how it would always be when Misty sensed it? At least the sickness did not last very long, though she could still feel the aura itself.

Lighting the tip of her horn to illuminate her path, Misty ventured, by hoof, in the direction from which the dark magic originated. Somewhere ahead, a nightmare was forming, and she did not intend to let this one sneak up on her like the gargoyle had. Though she had not paid the strengthening wind around the mountain much notice before, Misty thought back now and wondered whether the Never had conjured the gargoyle farther off, where neither she nor Princess Luna could sense its conception, and then used that wind to lend the gargoyle speed to help spring the ambush. Misty knew the Never was an intelligent being and very much alive, but the way it learned so quickly was enough to make anypony shiver.

Misty had not far to travel before two distinct voices reached her ears. The first was silken and soothing, but confusion tinged the second.

“… and I have come to take you away, if you are ready.”

“Take me… But where? What is this place?”

“Do you not know? Do you not remember?”

Misty stepped into a small clearing wreathed in fog. The blood moon bathed the silvery vapors and the two ponies ahead in its scarlet film. The white alicorn was especially painted by the ghoulish moonlight, lending her golden eyes a sinister gleam and streaking her flaxen hair with bands of crimson. Before the alicorn stood a creamy earth pony in a travel-worn cloak, with earthy eyes, forest-striped hair as green as meadow grass, and freckles flecking her face and legs.

Is this… a dream? Misty thought, frowning. If this scene did belong to a dreamer, there should have been a dome of dream magic, like all the other dreams. Misty had never seen somepony dream without that barrier to contain the dreamer’s imagination.

“I remember we were fighting,” the earth pony said to the alicorn. “Or rather, my friends were fighting…”

What if it was not a dreamer? Had another dreamwalker, one with less experience, stumbled out of her dreams into the Never without realizing it? That was easily just as dangerous as succumbing to a nightmare, if not more so. Misty glanced between the two ponies in the clearing. Which was the source of the dark magic? They stood so closely, it was difficult to discern which might be the nightmare. Unless this was a trap, and both ponies were part of the nightmare.

“No, no, I can’t be dead! I can’t!” exclaimed the earth pony suddenly. Her eyes grew round and wide, and she clapped her fore hooves over her ears as if to muffle her own words. “There’s still so much I have to do, that I want to do! How can I be…?”

The alicorn’s gaze grew cold, a scowl furrowing her beautiful brow. Shadows began to gather around her. “There is no place for one such as you among the living,” she sneered, flaring her wings. “You are a thief and a poor excuse for a comrade. I doubt anyone will even mourn your passing, much less remember such a worthless wordmonger as you.”

The earth pony cringed, backpedaling. “No, wait! This isn’t right! It can’t be!”

“Why, you could not even save your friends,” the alicorn continued. Black light seeped from her horn as she advanced. “Grayscale, Pan Handle, Bassbolt, Starchaser—they are all dead because of you.”

Trap or not, Misty could not abandon that earth pony, especially not out here in the Never. Magic shimmering to life, she assembled a sparkling sphere and sent it hurtling into the alicorn. The globe of starlight seared away the alicorn’s shadows, throwing her to the far side of the clearing. Misty darted into the open, swiftly placing herself between the earth pony and the alicorn. A second magic orb swirled together in the air beside Misty.

“What have you done?!” the earth pony gasped.

“She isn’t who you think she is,” Misty said, eyes still fixed on where the alicorn had disappeared into the fog. “None of this is what it seems—remember that.”

“Then… I am not dead? My friends yet live?”

Misty glanced back, her magic sphere winking out. If this earth pony was another dreamwalker, the only way she could still think all this was real would be if this was the first time she had set hoof in the Never. Unfortunately, dreamwalkers were few and far between, which meant this mare was more likely a dreamer, and most dreamers never even realized they were dreaming. But what was a dreamer doing out in the Never?

“Listen to me,” Misty said, locking eyes with the earth pony. “You need to wake up.”

The earth pony blinked. “Wake up? But I’m—”

Stars above, she can’t be a dreamer! Not here! “You’re asleep! This is a dream, and you need to wake up right n—!”

Solid shadows rocketed into Misty with the force of a stampeding bison, choking off her words and sending her careening through the air. Before she was crushed into the ground, she wove the teleportation spell and vanished in a burst of stardust. In the blink of an eye, Misty reappeared right back where she had stood beside the earth pony, though the leftover momentum threw her hard enough into the grass that she was winded. Gasping for breath, she struggled to pick herself up before the Never summoned a second attack.

The earth pony helped Misty to stand. “How can you know if this is a dream?” she demanded. “Who are you?”

“There isn’t… time… for this,” Misty wheezed, scanning the opaque fog. “Just… wake up!”

“I do not think I can.”

“What?!”

“I don’t think I can wake up,” the earth pony repeated. “I want to wake up, I’m trying to wake up, but I am still here—wherever ‘here’ is.”

Something rustled off to one side. This place was far from safe; they needed to leave now. “Do you trust me?” asked Misty.

The earth pony paused, gazing thoughtfully at Misty for a moment. “Yes.”

“Stay close,” Misty said. As the earth pony stepped nearer, flecks of starlight began to fly all around them, growing denser and denser, until there was not even a glimpse left of the outside world. A flash of sapphire light, an explosion of stardust—and both mares teleported from the clearing to an empty forest dell.

The earth pony reeled, eyes flashing every which way. “W-what just happened? Where are we now?”

Misty barely heard her, focused on their surroundings. The quiet was so absolute that the air itself seemed to hum. It was too dark to see anything beyond the nearest trees, and even those were more silhouette than substance. Another nightmare could be lurking ten spans away, and they would be none the wiser until it was too late. Misty would not be able to sense it either, not with the last nightmare’s aura lingering like the drudge of a cesspool on the edge of her consciousness.

“What is going on?” pressed the earth pony, stepping in front of Misty. “Why—?”

Misty raised a fore hoof to her lips, silencing the earth pony. Then she formed a few magical teardrops of soft blue light and floated them out into the gloom. The darkness evaporated beneath the illumination, revealing sparse forest undergrowth and seemingly endless successions of trees, but no nightmares. Satisfied that they were neither being watched nor in immediate danger, Misty stationed the glowing teardrops in fixed, hovering posts around them and faced the earth pony.

“I already told you,” she finally answered. “You’re asleep, in a dream. Or you’re supposed to be, at least.”

The earth pony shook her head. “This makes no sense! First, I was dead, and then I was dreaming, but now I’m not dreaming? Please don’t think me ungrateful for your help back there,” she added quickly, “but I just do not understand. If I am not dead and this is a dream, why are you here? If this isn’t a dream, where in Equestria are we?”

“I think you were in a dream, but you’ve somehow crossed out of your dreams into the Never, and I don’t know why. The Never shouldn’t be—”

“The Never?”

“The dream world,” clarified Misty. “When ponies sleep, their thoughts touch this place, the Never, and their imaginations manipulate a small portion of it, creating—”

“Creating dreams,” the earth pony finished with her, making Misty’s eyebrows shoot up. The earth pony smiled sheepishly and explained, “I read Star Swirl’s Compendium of Magical History when I was in Canterlot for the last literary festival. He wrote very little about the possible origins of dreaming, but I found his theories enthralling.”

“Star Swirl the Bearded was one of the first recorded dreamwalkers. Although he wasn’t especially skilled, he was able to determine how the Never works.”

“I do not recall Star Swirl ever calling the dream world ‘the Never,’ though,” said the earth pony, tapping her chin with a fore hoof. “If memory serves, he only described it as ‘dreaming’ or ‘the realm of dreams.’”

Misty nodded. “Princess Luna came up with the name a few years after Star Swirl’s work. It’s a living pocket universe—a world between worlds, if you will—but it never existed in our reality. It’s a place where what could never occur in the waking world could come to be, with a little imagination.”

“Really?” The earth pony’s eyes brightened, and a grin spread across her face. “How wonderful! I must remember to write all this down once I awaken,” she said. “Think of all the stories I could find, perhaps even a few I already know that may allude to this place!”

Stories? What in the world is she talking about? Misty thought, flicking an ear sideways. “What are you?” she asked, looking the earth pony up and down. “You’re not a nightmare. Have you ever stepped into someone else’s dreams before? Are you a dreamwalker?”

“Not likely,” said the earth pony. She nosed one corner of her cloak over her croup, revealing a lute cutie mark. “My name is Lyric. I’m a teller of tales—a traveling bard, to be more precise.”

Not a dreamwalker, thought Misty, which only complicates things. How does a dreamer become trapped in the Never? It just isn’t possible! Oh, Princess Luna would know… She was so consumed by her contemplations that it took her a moment to realize Lyric was watching her, waiting for an introduction. “Misty Moonrise,” she responded belatedly.

“It’s wonderful to meet you, Misty Moonrise,” said Lyric, extending a fore hoof. When Misty hesitated to shake it, Lyric just smiled again, a knowing twinkle in her eyes. She withdrew the offer and proceeded to examine the closest glowing teardrop. “From how you handled yourself back there, I take it you are a dreamwalker, yes?”

“I was studying with Princess Luna, but the Never started acting… strange. We were separated.”

“A princess’s apprentice—you must have quite a few stories of your own, then.”

Misty shuffled her hooves in the dirt, gaze averted. “I… wouldn’t say that. It’s not as if I’m Princess Luna’s only student after all. There are plenty of others who probably have better stories than I.”

“Nevertheless, my supposition stands.” Lyric turned back to Misty. “Well, let’s not wait around for trouble to find us. Which road is ours?”

Her enthusiasm took Misty by surprise, but Misty was not about to refuse help so willingly given. Besides, until Princess Luna was found, it was probably best that Lyric stay with Misty. There was no telling what the Never would concoct for them next. Casting a spell that would allow the teardrop lanterns to follow in a wide circle around them, Misty began to walk. Then she paused, ears folding. How would they find Princess Luna when the Never refused to bend to their will?

“Is something the matter?” asked Lyric.

Should she tell Lyric? Dreamwalkers were supposed to be in control while in the Never; they were supposed to have the answers. Only, Misty had no answers to give. Raising her eyes to the canopy, Misty sighed quietly to herself. The branches were not so thick here, and shards of the blood moon gleamed through the wood and leaves. The empty night melded seamlessly with the rest of the shadows.

“Misty?”

This was no time for secrets and false hope. “I don’t know where Princess Luna is,” Misty admitted. “Normally, that wouldn’t be a problem, but the Never isn’t acting as it normally does.”

Lyric tilted her head slightly. “Well, what does the Never do, normally?” She emphasized the last word with a small smile, and that knowing twinkle appeared in her eyes again.

“The Never is shaped by imagination—thoughts. On any other night, all we’d have to do is focus our thoughts, and the Never would rearrange according to them. But now it won’t do anything on a larger scale, though it doesn’t seem to care about little things being created.”

“Little things?”

With a thought, Misty made a blue-capped mushroom sprout from the earth before her. “Like this. If I had imagined the mushroom unnaturally large, nothing would have happened.”

“Fascinating…” Lyric paused, closing her eyes briefly. When she reopened them, a lute blinked into existence in the air before her. It was old and worn, with its varnish rubbed away and scratched in places, but Lyric beamed at the sight of it. She took it in her fore hooves and strummed a short, impromptu melody. “I’m rather starting to like this place,” she said. “Bogeymares and deceptively perilous magic aside, of course.”

“Are you sure you’re not a dreamwalker?” Misty asked, though it was more of a good-natured tease than a serious query.

Lyric chuckled. “Quite sure. I am just a simple storyteller and minstrel. Imagination is part and parcel for a wandering bard.” She slipped the lute’s strap over her head and settled the instrument on her back for travel. “Now, I believe the best way to begin any journey is to put your best hoof forward. Let’s be off!” And she strode into the trees.

“But we don’t know where we’re going,” Misty protested, hastening to catch up. “For all we know, we could be walking in the wrong direction entirely.”

Lyric grinned and winked. “Exactly! What fun is there in knowing where you’re going? Now that I think about it, all this rather reminds me of a story…”

Chapter 4: The Savagery of Lesser Beasts

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.

Chapter 5: An Old Lullaby

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Chapter 6: The Face in the Mirror

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Chapter 7: Home

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