Destroying the griffon airship was easy. Destroying it without killing any of the griffons actually on it was far, far more difficult. It had managed however, using its magic to lower it to the ground after everyone on it was asleep. It had crawled parts of itself inside and deactivated every single mechanism it could find and now the airship was little more than a shelter of wood and metal for griffons trapped in nightmare.

The last of the griffons were in hiding, having scattered into small caves in the hopes of one day forming an organized resistance to its efforts. That wasn't going to happen. For one thing the Griffon Kingdom was still under a nightmare shield so nobody was going in or out, and second of all a duplicate nightmare shield was slowly shrinking and it would force them to evacuate their holes. If that weren't enough, it had ripped enough terrain knowledge from them that it knew of every hiding place. Such as this one, Claw's Crevice, containing a force of about a thousand griffons. It swept its left arm, leaving shimmering energy behind it. That power rocketed down into the caves, filling it to the brim with nightmare magic and every single griffon inside was no longer free. In four days, no griffon would be.

There was also the matter of Creator. She had awoken a third. That was enough, clearly she was intent on disrupting its operations and that couldn't be allowed. The moment it was finished with the griffons it was going to Canterlot. But it could do something to her before that. As it finished setting up its most recent batch of nightmares, the Tantabus raised its arms up over its head and lifted a leg. Then it stomped, and sent a surge of its power outward to all those it had put to sleep. It diverted a fair amount of its seemingly boundless magic to the nightmares, strengthening them beyond Creator's ability a dozen times over.

She needed to understand that there was nothing she could do to stop it.

.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........

Luna

Days passed.

She, Celestia, and him made use of Canterlot Castle's amenities to exercise as best they could. With her and her sister's magic to heal muscles after strain, and the various supplements they'd recovered, working off the months or years of atrophy went by far quicker than it normally would have. Which wasn't to say they were at full ability, but...

"Twenty-one," Luna said, pushing herself up again. "Twenty-two... twenty-three... guh." Her arms gave out and she fell down, breathing heavily. "I think that's enough for me today." She got to her hooves and stumbled over to where a bottle of water - with magical and chemical supplements in it - awaited her, guzzling it down as quick as possible.

"Certainly improvement, I think we're all recovered enough to be able to move about," Dainn said from where he had appeared in the doorway. Luna shrieked and whirled around, almost blasting him to pieces in fright. "Your sister wants to meet you in your private dining chambers about something."

"And you?" she snarled, using her magic to vaporize the sweat from her coat.

"I have something else to set up. Just think it'd be useful to see what's going on in Equestria as a whole, not just Canterlot. Maybe even find where the Tantabus has gone."

A shiver went down her spine. The location of the Tantabus. That was indeed a problem. They couldn't stop the Tantabus if they didn't know where it is. In truth Luna doubted it would keep itself hidden from them for much longer, but if Dainn could help them get an idea as to what had happened in Equestria while they'd been sleeping, all the better. As long as whatever he did stayed far away from her.

"Then finish that up. Let's meet up in the barracks when we're all done," she said, lightning up her horn. She didn't miss the panicked stumble from Dainn at the sight of her magic, and Luna couldn't stop herself from feeling satisfied about it. Her magic finished coalescing and she whisked herself through space and time into the private dining hall she shared with her sister.

Lunch was the same thing as it had been for the past three days. Canned vegetables, with water bottles. Hardly a meal fit for a princess, but it was a vast, vast improvement over what she'd been eating in the nightmare and after the months in that horrid world even simple carrots were like banquets.

Celestia was already in the tall-roofed room, with a mountain of dusty tomes from the castle library piled next to her. Luna sat across from her and took a spoon to her can of food. "Greetings sister, he said you wanted to speak with me?"

"I do," Celestia said. "There is something that has been sorely bothering me about this situation we find ourselves in."

"There are many 'bothering' things going on in the world right now Tia." Because of me, she thought. "Is there anything in particular?"

"The sun and moon," she said simply.

Oh. Right.

Celestia continued after taking a sip of water from her own bottle. "I can't feel my bond to the sun any more. I don't know the time, I can't access its material to bolster my arsenal of spells, and I can't use its light to search the world."

"Yes, I too have been cut off from the night. And you suspect the Tantabus?"

The white alicorn nodded. "It would certainly make sense. Something is moving the sun and moon just like it did in the... ugh, nightmare," she said with a shudder. "Only here, we can't just explain it away as being just a dream. I think the Tantabus stole our connection to the cosmic bodies and is using them. And if it has such power on its own, then... "

"... it may be able to manipulate the bonds with far greater power than we ever could," Luna finished. "So how do we go about taking the bonds back?"

"That's what I'm trying to figure out," Celestia said as she raised an arm to pat one of the books next to her. "I was hoping you could provide a second opinion?"

"Well, I am mostly recovered from atrophy any way, so I certainly don't have anything else to be doing. But did Dainn mention to you what he's doing?"

Her sister wordlessly shook her head, eating another spoonful of vegetables.

"He's been working on setting up some scouting spell, we're meeting up with him in the barracks once he's done setting it up." She shook her head. "Focus. How can we get our bonds to the sun and moon back?"

"Well, we'd need to find a tether point. So we can either go to the moon and then to the sun itself or we can go to the Tantabus and undo the links there." Celestia shivered at her own suggestion. "Honestly, I'd rather fly into my own sun, but that isn't going to happen so we'll have to get at the Tantabus somehow."

"Somehow. We don't know where it is, but I get the feeling it'll rectify that problem soon enough. We need to set up a trap for it in that time. Any artifacts we can use?"

"There's the Sunstone and Moonstone in the archives, we can use those like we did after Discord. I'm thinking we set up a crystallization positive feedback array in the castle, lure the Tantabus into it, and then teleport away once we have our links back."

"In the grand atrium or in my chambers?" She ate another few spoonfulls of vegetables, relishing in the flavor.

"Grand atrium, the added space will help us get away once it's in the trap. I don't hope to be able to destroy it, but if we can weaken it and strengthen ourselves..."

"I see what you mean. Anyway, we should head on over to the barracks. Wouldn't want to keep that fucker - I mean, Dainn, waiting." She shook her head to clear the red from her vision and unclenched her fists. It had only been three days, she couldn't be expected to get over it so soon. But damn it she had to. For better or worse she and the caribou king were allies now and for the love of Equestria she needed to get that through her head!

"Let's walk," Celestia suggested as she got up from the table and circled around it, leaving the books there. She and Celestia both left the chambers, walking through the castle. After a few days spent awake, they'd managed to push most of the enthralled servants and guards to the wall and out of the way, in positions at least somewhat comfortable for when they were eventually awoken.

And they would eventually awaken. Luna would ensure it.

They found Dainn in the barracks, just like he'd said. However, he had cleaned it out tremendously. Desks had been uprooted and tossed aside, racks and shelves out of the window, and soldiers lined up against the wall outside. He had converted the interior of the building into a simply empty marble room, dimly lit by torches.

Dainn himself had drawn what looked like a spell array in the middle with white chalk. It was a dizzying picture, but Luna could make out a few general structures. Its main component was a hollow circle, with a smaller circle inside presumably for the spellcaster to stand in. Lines dribbled outwards from it to the edge which was actually two circles, one smaller than the other, closer together. At the front and back, the 'gap' between the twisting, intricate rings was cut off with a line. Outside of the main circle were five smaller structures connecting to it, which Luna couldn't make heads or tails of. Four of them reminded her vaguely of the runes she'd occasionally seen caribou use in her dream, arranged in a square. At the front however, a line trailed out from the circle and formed a narrow, long rectangle tangent to the circle itself.

The caribou bull was currently adding a few fixtures to the final rectangle when he noticed them approach. He grunted, then looked back down and drew a few more lines with a nub of chalk before pocketing it and standing. "Right on time, sisters. Punctual as ever."

"Let's not waste time on insults," Celestia said, stepping closer to the array. "What is this?"

"Don't step on that!" he warned as Celestia's hoof came too close to a line. "It's a scrying circle. It should let us figure out what's the situation with most of Equestria, and if it's within range, where the Tantabus is." Gingerly avoiding the lines, he walked towards the middle ring and stood in its very center. "That," he said, pointing to the rectangle he'd been finishing. ", is where the screen will appear. So without further ado, let's see if I did this right. A little rusty, after all."

He didn't know if he did it right?! she thought incredulously, suppressing a nervous twitch when a sky blue aura coated the cervine's antlers.

Immediately, the circle came to life. The chalk began to glow, and a magical duplicate of the runes he'd drawn hovered up. But just as soon as it started it stopped, since Dainn cut off his magic.

"Hmm," he said with a frown. "That's odd. The magic's very... good here. Won't need these." He lit his antlers again, this time as mundane telekinesis. Four of the five fixtures around the main circle were erased away, leaving only the rings and the rectangle.

"What do you mean 'good'?" Luna asked.

"The leylines aren't tangled... at all really. I thought there was something odd about how easily my telekinesis came, but... huh. Normally scrying arrays need those four deknotting runes in order to work, but they're useless here since there's no problems to begin with. It'll really boost this thing's range, maybe even to worldwide."

"Hold on," Celestia said. "The leylines aren't tangled in most of the world. How bad was it in your homeland?"

For a few moments, Dainn didn't answer and looked at the ground. "I assume in your nightmares, we arrived fleeing from some catastrophe to conquer you? Part of that's true, there was a tragedy. Our high seer foresaw a calamitous magical rupture where the leylines beneath our hooves snapped upwards, so we made to escape as quick as we could. We... could only fit a fraction of our population onto the ships we could make in time, and of those half were too slow to escape the disaster."

"Wait," Luna said. "I actually do remember something. A few weeks before my memory lapse, seismographs and thaumagraphs both detected a class nine magiquake from far north, it broke all records." Heavens, a class nine magiquake, in the middle of an inhabited area? "You mean to tell me that area was populated?" she asked, bile rising in her throat.

"It was," he growled. "Anyway, I didn't bring you here to talk about the natural disaster that rendered us endangered. We're here to scry Equestria." His antlers lit up again and he faced towards the rectangle. Like before, the chalk runes illuminated themselves and sent magical replicas of themselves up, until they hovered at around the caribou's waist. He held his arms out slightly to the sides and, in the little gap in the outer most rings, two blue lights formed on opposite ends from each other.

The rectangle in front lit up and grew upwards, forming an azure screen the size of a pony that showed the wall behind it. Then Dainn moved his left arm, and the picture moved. It went dark for a moment, and then the screen showed the view of a floating observer in Canterlot, looking over the damaged Equestrian landscape. At the same time, the little blue light on his left moved forward a minuscule amount.

"I will admit, that is fairly useful," Celestia admitted. "Try and go to Ponyville first, specifically the castle."

Dainn nodded and made a few subtle hand motions, the light bars jostling as he did. The window 'moved' forward, past the craters and towards Ponyville. Then it lowered to the ground level and drifted into Ponyville. The town was in much the same state as Canterlot, however there was a major difference beyond the standard decay and disrepair.

Almost nopony was in the streets at all. Even for such a small town, for there to be so few ponies out and about when disaster struck was baffling. There was an earth pony there, a pegasus laying face down there, but that was about it. The homes and business all had their doors shut, locked. As Dainn moved the window's view slowly through the streets, Luna and Celestia shared an uneasy look.

"Maybe the Tantabus struck them in the middle of night?" Celestia suggested. "If we were trying to awaken when it struck us down, then perhaps it originated in Ponyville and put them under right away."

"Possibly," Luna replied. "Dainn, take a left here, that should bring us towards Twilight Sparkle's castle."

"Left, got it," he said, making subtle adjustments with his arms. The window turned, and sure enough there was Princess Twilight's castle. Luna hadn't seen it in a long while, since the nightmare's setting was prior to Tirek's rampage, and it was good to see it again. The massive spire of cool crystals, reaching proudly for the sun as they blossomed out into a cross between a castle and a standard tree, dotted with images of Twilight's cutie mark. Even through the magic window Princess Luna was forced to squint at its radiance.

"I assume that's it?" When they confirmed the caribou's question, he nodded resolutely. "I'll check in there first." The magic window moved forward and seamlessly passed through the walls, revealing the pitch black room inside. "Hmm, give me a second..." The teal magic around Dainn's antlers flared for a moment, and the window now revealed the castle's foyer, though it was in grainy greyscale. Slowly but surely, Dainn navigated through the castle. It took some time, but eventually they found that... Twilight wasn't there.

"She must be elsewhere, maybe even in Canterlot." Luna sighed, and continued. "Twilight can wait. Rise from the castle, okay, now turn ninety degrees to the left. See that speck on the horizon?"

"I do," Dainn confirmed.

"That's Manehattan, it's right at the borders next to the ocean. We should check on it in case a hurricane did any damage." Equestria managed its own weather, but that reach did not extend to the ocean and hurricanes blew in now and again. Though... the grass outside didn't appear parched of water. What had the Tantabus done to her country?

Dainn deactivated the night vision of his window and moved his left arm forward. The magic window zoomed forward, grass and tracks rushing by, until the window arrived at Manehattan.

It was the same story as Canterlot. Ponies littered the ground everywhere, shrouded by silver specks that indicated the power of the Tantabus. Dust and disrepair as far as the eye could see. To make matters worse, at least one of the towering skyscrapers had collapsed, doubtlessly killing hundreds. The sky was piercing blue and the sun glared out of the corner of the window, but something seemed... off.

"I'll scan around," Dainn said, moving the window. "Shout if you see anything peculiar." They went up and down streets, flew up buildings, but the only revelation they came across was when Dainn brought the window near the ocean.

"There's something in the ocean," Celestia said. "Look, do you see it? Some sort of gray... screen."

"I see it too," Luna said.

"As do I," the caribou said. "Let me take a closer look." The screen moved forward until it was over the ocean, waves sloshing and churning in perfect clarity beneath them. The gray screen Celestia mentioned loomed before them. It'd been hard to see at a distance, but as they came to within maybe an arm's length of it there was no mistaking it. There was some gray... wall. Dainn moved the screen underwater for a moment, revealing that it stretched downwards as well.

"Can you make the window look up?" Luna asked when he resurfaced.

"Give me a moment," he said, tilting his hands. Slowly but surely, the magic window leaned back to show the sky. Then, the full size of the barrier was revealed.

"Mother of me," Celestia whispered. "It must encompass all of Equestria!"

"Do you think the Tantabus made it solid, or if it just does something horrible to those who touch it?"

"Let's find out," Dainn said, moving his window closer. Luna's eyes went wide - but if he wants to hurt himself who am I to stop him - but made no motion to stop him. The gray barrier engulfed the screen, turning thicker as they grew closer, until the window tapped the shield.

Instantly the caribou king gasped in fright and threw his arms all the way back. The window flew away from Manehattan, filling itself with a nondescript blur of greens and blues before it stopped in the middle of a grassy plain. "What... alright, I take back what I said. I will not have global range with this spell so long as that barrier persists." He shook himself. "Let's see how big it is."

They spent the next hour doing quick check ups on Equestria's larger cities, only to find the same depressing story wherever they went. Afterwards they checked to see how large the smoky barrier containing Equestria was. As it turned out, it not only stretched around Equestria, but below as well. It was not a perfect sphere either, as heightwise it only went up to the edge of the atmosphere. Luna could only imagine why the Tantabus had created such a thing. To keep ponies inside? Others out? Both? She certainly couldn't ask it.

Once their final measurements were done, King Dainn's antlers went out and he stumbled for a moment, breathing heavily. The brilliant lines of runic magic flickered into nothingness, and the window slammed shut.

"We're trapped," he muttered. "Trapped like rats."

"There's more," Celestia said. "While you were setting this up I made another discovery. Mine and Luna's link to the sun and moon have been severed. They still rise and fall, so that means the Tantabus must have wrested control of the heavens from us."

He raised an eyebrow. "I hardly see the problem. So it moves the sky for you, it seems as though it would be a benefit for it to waste its time on that."

Celestia shook her head. "The link allowed us to do more than move them faster than physics would allow. It gave us access to some of their power as well. The more magic we funneled into the links, the greater the boon our respective object could grant us. And if the Tantabus funnels its magic into the link..."

The caribou's face paled. "How bad of a situation are we talking?" he asked.

Luna sighed. "We do not know precisely how much magic the Tantabus has. It also appears reluctant to actually kill anypony, corpses don't have nightmares... but if it as powerful as we fear it could cripple weather patterns with snow using mine, or wipe entire cities from existence using the sun. And anything less than that is also possible. I could use it to generate spikes of cold, enough to change a rainstorm to a blizzard, and Celestia could channel a very, very narrow beam of plasma. It can almost certainly manage that much."

He swore something in his native language. "The library," he said.

Celestia nodded. "That was the plan. Find something to strip it of the links, and give them back to us. We're going to set a trap."

.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........

"So."

"So."

"So."

Dainn looked at the two of them. "Any idea where to start? The only times I ever saw this library was during... that."

"You're the expert on dream magic Luna," Celestia said. "Any suggestions?"

She considered it for a moment, tapping her chin with a finger. "Hmm... alright. Wing 32-C should be a good starting point, it's that way." Luna pointed in the correct direction and took point, leading the other two. Her wings tingled and she swore Dainn was drilling holes into her back with his eyes, but she forced herself not to show any weakness. Within minutes of passing through the dusty, silent library halls, they arrived in the correct wing.

Luna pointed at the shelves. "There are tomes of dream magic that myself and scholars of the past have written. We can begin there. The books about dream creatures should be at the bottom of that shelf. I'll go two rows over and look for anything relevant on extrafaceted positive feedback circles." She walked away, eager to put as much distance between herself and the monster as possible. Two rows over her magic reached out and grabbed a few books. Luna flipped them open and, with them floating in front of her, made her way back to the others. They found a table and set around it, stacks of books around them.

For a few hours they flipped through, using scrap paper and pencils to write down their notes. At least for that long, Luna could forget the horrors she'd been subjected to, forget that the monster's doppelganger was sitting there arm's length away. She could relax and breath easy while helping design the trap ritual.

"We'll use a crystallization feedback array. The Sunstone and Moonstone should be put here and here..." Celestia said.

"There'll be a lot of stray magic flying around with this design, I'll put some antimagic wards in these locations, it should reduce the bleed to within the limits," Dainn added.

"The Tantabus has an extremely complex magical interior, but it's vulnerable to a wavelength of eighteen-point-five millithaums," Luna mentioned, using her own knowledge from when she'd created the damned monster.

Celestia got them lunch. Then she got them dinner. It was late into the night when they finished up their studying, and yawns filled the air. Luna had her head in both hands, eyes scanning over the schematics for the array. Celestia had rested her head and on the table alongside an outstretched arm, and Dainn - no doubt eager to be away from them - had gone to place the books back. He was probably going to put them back in the wrong order but honestly who cared?

"We should wake up early tomorrow," Luna said. "No telling when the Tantabus will come to get us." She yawned again. "Get the trap set up as soon as possible."

"Good idea. I'll set an alarm." Her sister stood from the table. "Let's go and - "

"No!" Dainn shouted a few rows over.

Luna's eyes widened and she shot up from the table. The two of them ran over to where they heard the shout and found Dainn one hall away from where Luna had grabbed the books. She should've looked down the hallway earlier, because at a table in the middle of it was Twilight Sparkle.

Twilight had her arms folded over the table and her head rested in it, as if she'd gone to sleep peacefully, but the murmurs and twitches proved that was no longer the case. Stacked up high on the table was a mountain of books on economics, which had tipped over at some point in the past and covered the table, as well as the surrounding floor, with open literature. To Luna's surprise Twilight wasn't the only one sitting at the table. The other person had tipped over in their chair at some point, but to her immense surprise it was a caribou cow.

She'd seen them in the nightmare from time to time. Demure, sniveling little wretches with their antlers cut short, gleefully participating in Luna's 'punishments'. This one however was slightly different. For starters she was wearing clothes. Nothing fancy, just a gray top and pants over similarly smoky fur. They weren't very well taken care of, but given the circumstances Luna wasn't surprised. Like the cows in her dream her antlers were short nubs, but unlike them there was a pair of fully grown antlers on the ground not far from her.

Dainn had lifted her in his arms looking at her almost... worriedly. He held her head up and looked carefully at her eyes, trying to brush the dust off her. Seeing the figure of her nightmares being so... kind to a cow was so paradoxical, it had Luna's stomach swimming with nausea just looking at it.

While Luna looked at the touching scene, Celestia raced forward and grabbed Princess Twilight. "Twilight!" She laid the younger pony on the ground. "Oh Twilight, oh my precious student... "

Luna stepped forward, eyes cast down. When was the last time she'd looked at somepony the way these two looked at the figures in their arms? She couldn't remember and that thought made her eyes burn. She stepped forward towards Twilight, ready to awaken the young pony, but Dainn caught her eyes first.

"I know how long we were asleep, mostly," he said. "Her and I both had one pair of shed antlers, but Hevra's haven't grown back so it was recent and that means it's summer right now. Anywhere from half a year to just shy of a whole year. Wake her up."

Luna frowned, looking from Dainn to the enthralled cow in his arms, and took a shaky breath. "After Twilight. I have to bring her back first - "

With sudden ferocity the bull leaped to his hooves, levitating Hevra to rest comfortably against a shelf. "Oh, of course you do! I see how it is!" Despite herself she jerked back and couldn't stop the feelings of disgusting and unclean from surfacing in her mind. Even Celestia, still fussing over Twilight, jumped. "Why should you bother saving Hevra from being tortured? She's not one of your precious, precious ponies after all!" His antlers began to glow brighter and brighter, and then there was a subtle deadening in the air.

Luna got a hold of herself. "Is Hevra princess of an entire nation?!" she demanded. "Is she one of the most powerful wizards in history? Does Hevra embody one of the Elements of Harmony, our only shot at destroying the Tantabus?!" When Dainn didn't answer, she huffed. "I didn't think so. Do not take me for some callous witch. If we can spare the magic I won't leave her to suffer, but our priority has to be the destruction of the Tantabus. Millions out there are going through what we did. We can't go around waking up everyone we see just because we feel bad for them!"

She left him behind and walked over to Twilight. Her magic flared to her horn and pushed itself into Twilight, preparing to shatter the nightmare spell but...

... something was wrong. She inspected the spell closely. As far as she could tell the design was the same infinitely complex mesh as before, but there was so much more power behind it. Far beyond her ability. Far beyond her and Celestia's ability together. Maybe even beyond Discord's ability, wherever he was. She pulled her magic out and turned a horrified look towards Celestia. "I can't," she said numbly. "I can't. The spell's too strong on her. It wasn't this strong with the others. It wasn't this strong with you."

"Do you think the Tantabus made it stronger recently?"

"Only one way to find out," she said, turning to Hevra. She pushed her magic into the cow next, analyzing the nightmare spell. It was the same story as with Twilight. It was completely ironclad. She needed to test it on others to be certain, but Luna had a sinking feeling that they weren't going to be waking anypony else anytime soon. Luna retracted her magic and shook her head. "I have no doubt this is a new development. The Tantabus has made its move against us, now we need to make our move against it." She took a deep breath.

"Sleep can wait! Let's set this trap up now."

Author's Note

Thanks to thtiger for editing.

Much to my disappointment, I don't own MLP. That honor goes to Hasbro.

Love it or hate it, please do leave a comment.