Nightmare Dove Arc

Dove traced her hooves along the Manehattan shoreline, her nerves somehow unphased by the freezing water lapping at her ankles. She looked to her left; the entirety of Manehattan's splendor cutting through the darkness. The bellowing night winds whirred through the city's troubled streets, sending everypony's coats from Time Square to Central Park to the bridgewalk bristling. They blew through the carts and pedestrians making their way out to the city's more natural outskirts, leaving behind the level concrete for uneven grass and dirt. The tiny green blades swayed and parted as the winds flew down the leftmost slope, leading them down to Dove and the open shore. Loose grains of sand scattered about her as they approached, yet when they met her own cold, sullen body, she felt nothing. She sighed, and continued on.

A cave lay just a few meters ahead, situated below a rocky overpass and denoted by a pair of glistening crevices. Dove glanced back at the dancing tides, too busy to cast a proper reflection, then entered the glossy rock cavern. It echoed her every hoofstep, periodically interrupting with a water droplet of its own. A series of corroding stalactites lined the dwelling's walls. Dove regarded each of them with solemn familiarity, then returned her view in front of her as she neared a shallow descent. The floor's grainy texture provided fair stability in spite of its damp coating, though the descent itself began ebbing into a mangled, twisting mess of a tunnel, spiraling sporadically downward before declining to a shallow, then level gradient. The circular ceiling ceased just a few paces ahead, and she emerged, halfheartedly, and looked round. Thin falls of water draped the cavern walls, seeping through from the small fissures in the roof before splashing down and feeding into narrow cracks. Faded moonlight reflected across them, draping the cavern in a pale luminescence, only occasionally cut by the blue glow of fungi persisting atop the mossy rocks.

Dove entered. She shivered as her hooves remembered the cracks and clefts permeating the ground. It had been nearly two months since they last knew them, and over seven years since they'd first met. She lifted her head. Before her a vivid, watery reflection returned her sorrow, and the two met eyes. They simply watched each-other, then, suddenly, the reflection broke. The stream had parted, sending splashes echoing throughout the cavern and revealing a long segment of cavern wall. It housed many deep abrasions, faded from the months and years past. A new mark lay atop them now--followed by another--and another. The water repeatedly converged and separated as Dove's horn met the cold stone beneath. The ache in her horn was growing stronger. Dove began stabbing faster.

Faster, and faster, until it broke.

...It broke.

Dove removed her head from the water it rested between and looked down. To her far left, the upper half of her horn laid lifelessly at the foggy end of a mushroom's sapphire glow. Her eyes darted up. Her irises climbed, high as they could go. She could see no horrible white protrusion, though the bottom half always remained. She cringed as the pain became conscious of her. It wrapped around her every nerve and squeezed tight as a brace. She held her head a short second, then, reopening her eyes, returned her gaze down to the broken horn.

It had broken again, finally. But she could not smile. Dove's subtle frown retained the same shape it had when she'd entered. After closing her eyes a moment, she lowered her head and walked past it, returning to the cavern's entrance. She traced the same damp flooring she had upon entering, finding her way through memory and the brief, blue light of the mushrooms. She had stepped over one of the glowing caps, when a sudden cracking noise sounded behind her. She jolted her head back. There, in the edges of the blue glow, her horn lay divided; fractured into numerous pieces. She stared. Beneath it, a shadow seemed to distort itself from the darker reaches of the cavern, and the chunks gradually dissolved into it.

Dove breathed silently. She remained still, watching the shadow slink back to the surrounding darkness. As it did so, Dove began slowly treading backward toward the entrance. Carefully, she placed each hoof down, but stopped suddenly. The pale light in the room was fading, dissolving into harsh shadows which swam beyond the reach of the mushroom's gleam. Dove careened her neck back, but could no longer see the entrance. Fog, dense and dark, had overtaken it, and was now wafting its way into the cave. It wrapped around rocks and swelled into crevices. It dipped into the mushrooms' realm, seemingly undeterred by the light they cast. Dove began creeping back to the center, then breathed. Against her back, a sizable mound of wet rock coated in fungus cast ample light against her. She looked back to the fog, now smothering over a quarter of the room, then lifted her hooves.

The rock's surface was smooth, and Dove struggled as she scraped her hind legs against it and her front attempted to grip at whatever grooves she could find. The blue light visible to her along the cave walls began lessening and lessening from muted fades to nothingness. She shut her eyes and pulled, her legs spastically kicking away beneath her, until she was up. Her coat was swamped in cold sweat and her breathing was erratic, but she was up. She raised a hoof to her chest, attempting to slow her breathing to a calmer rate, but found all her breath stolen from her as she gazed upon her surroundings. The whole room was drowned in fog. She checked from each edge of the rock, but found only dark grey ocean beneath. The only source of light left was that directly below her. And even then, Dove realized as she studied the fog's movements, it would not be around much longer. All about her, the fog drifted. It encircled the rock, rotating around it as it ascended, occasional whiffs spouting from the turbid tides.

Dove gritted her teeth together. As the fog neared the summit, she shut her eyes before rearing onto her hind legs and slamming down on two mushrooms, both of which exploded into a blinding flash of white light and sent a cascade of luminous orange spores floating like a fireworks display. The fog reeled back, falling to the bottom of the slope. Dove reattained her breathing as she leaned fiercely down at the recoiling mass.

"Monstruosité odieuse! (Abhorrent monstrosity!)" Dove cried. "Keep your distance! I've enough experience with these mushrooms from my shows to know that they emit high frequency light when properly pressured. You cannot pass this light, and you will not pass over me! Now leave! Return to whatever home you have and leave me be!"

To this, the fog seemed to pause, then recede somewhat, uncovering some of the mushrooms and allowing their light stretch across the cavern. Dove observed this with a discerning eye, a single hoof raised cautiously. She scanned the room, taking note of the still darkened entryway and the shifts and sways of the fog, then stopped. Distorted across the far wall was Dove's shadow, its horn still intact. Dove moved her head, but the shadow stared on, unmoving. A voice began to echo throughout the cavern.

"Dove..." it began.

Dove remained still. The voice was strange in its sincerity. It continued.

"We followed you... All this time..."

The shadow turned itself left and began walking, treading across the rough surface. It disappeared into the unlit segments of wall, Dove attempting to track it all the while. She found it, or at least what seemed to be it, in the glow of the right wall. It was smaller now; the size of a maturing filly.

"You discarded us..." spoke a tiny voice. "But you were right to do so... Unicorn magic is a blight... All it does is hurt..."

Dove noticed the fog rising closer. She slammed down on another mushroom, dispersing it and sending it scattering to the bottom. She shot her eyes back up, just catching the shadow filly's tail before it entered the next segment of darkness. Scattered lines of light from partially covered fungi detailed its image in fragments as it continued onward, only displaying a few moving appendages at a time. From what could be seen, it seemed to be shrinking with each pass. It entered the wide glow of a few uncovered mushrooms along the far right wall, now the size of a young filly.

"...We can stop it... End it all... We can take them away..."

Dove slammed down again, pushing the fog back. A large bead of sweat rolled down her face before suddenly flying off as she lifted her head. The shadow filly was no where in sight. Dove span about, checking each of the surrounding surfaces. Finally, she stopped on the far back wall, modestly lit about a single waterfall. A hoof had reached into the glow, followed by the rest of the filly, even smaller now. It halted at the falls, then turned to face her. The fog about it calmed. The water began to part. A pitch black horn reached out from beyond the falls, slowly followed by a head and a set of hooves. Another bead rolled down Dove's head. The shadow filly exited the wall, returning the stream its consistent flow. It continued stepping forward, the fog parting about it as it did so. It slowed its approach, halting at the bottom of the rock. In the immediate sapphire glow, Dove could determine its features, or rather, its lack thereof. The filly tilted its head up to her, revealing the small indents it had in place of eyes.

"We can help... Let us help..."

The filly remained still. The fog remained still. Dove remained still. She looked down at the shadow filly, a genuine, caring smile across its clear face. Dove frowned, and wearily shook her head. "Je suis désolée, (I am sorry,)" she whispered, and pressed down once more. When she reopened her eyes, the shadow filly was gone, though the fog persisted. Dove stared at the point the filly once stood, water streaming from her eyes. "Je suis désolée," she repeated. She collapsed to her stomach, letting the tears bleed out. "Je suis désolée," she repeated, on and on again. "Je suis désolée!"

A hoof rested on her shoulder. "C'est d'accord. (It's okay.)"

Dove turned her head round. Behind her, her shadow, still forming from the shadowy tendrils extending from the ceiling and walls, smiled gently and stared into her eyes as its tail finished materializing. "You don't have to cry anymore. No one has to. Not anymore."

The shadow's hoof began seeping into Dove, coating her shoulder in a dark tinge. She attempted to pull away, but the reflection grabbed her head and stared deeper. She felt the darkness surround her as she stared down the shade, it becoming less and less as it covered her more and more. Soon, only the eyes remained. They gazed at her, and she gazed back, and then, they were upon her.

The bridge to Manehattan was quieter than usual that night. Taxi carts and plentiful amounts of pedestrians still roamed, yet the calming late night scenery combined with the natural fatigue of the day brought everypony to a mutually agreed relative silence. The crescent moon shone overhead, thin like a tempered scythe. A unicorn couple made their way across with the rest of the crowd, their shared smiles and laughter staving away the numbing cold. As the mare laughed at the stallion's newest joke, a stream of dark, opaque fog rolled over them, and his image succumbed to a blinding stream of darkness. The mare cried out, attempting to leap toward him, but the fog was dense, and draining. She shook her head all about, shouting for help, but the sounds simply echoed around her, bouncing off the fog and reverberating back again and again. In the midst of her struggle, her eyes met pure white. Above her, a set of sharp, glistening teeth grinned, and a pair of deep violet irises gazed down. The body attached to them was so dark it was near indistinguishable from the fog, only noticeable thanks to its contrast against an endlessly flowing white stream which flew from the wearer's chest like a formless cape. Atop it all, a lovely crown of indigo and azure hair greeted her; a sprinkling of vibrant stars seemingly shining along the visible interior.

The mare gaped at the figure, not noticing the dark, foggy tendrils warping their way around her horn. The figure stared down at her, and the two locked eyes. A swell of tears rounded the ducts of the violet orbs, but the smile remained.

A crack and a shrill cry broke through the fog, and the tall figure stepped forward over the mare's limp form. It shifted its eyes upward to the towering monoliths in the distance, and the fog rolled on.