The Cure for Nightmares

by Cosmic Dancer

Rating: teen
Tags: Alternate Universe, Other, Original Character, Trixie, Shining Armor, Slice of Life, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Princess Cadance
Length: 5071

Sunburst, newly appointed wizard of Cadance’s court, fumbles his way through brewing an elixir to help Flurry Heart sleep through the night.

Strange forces are at work in the frozen north. Princess Flurry Heart has been afflicted with unnatural nightmares, and the sorcery that has precipitated them is still a mystery. Luckily, a temporary cure has been found in a potion brewed by the Princess's crystaller, Sunburst. As the newly appointed Court Wizard of The Crystal Empire, the foal's night terrors only compound his problems--especially when he has to prepare a new batch before dusk.

Published 2016-06-24 21:50:01 UTC
Last updated 2016-11-17 22:21:28 UTC

C. Wz. Sunburst

Author's Note

This story takes place in the same universe as all my others.

C. Wz. Sunburst

The Cure for Nightmares

Chapter One

C. Wz. Sunburst,

Despite your and Nurse Citrine’s insinuations that Princess Flurry Heart’s night terrors are predicated on any mundane, non-magical phenomena such as colic and the like, Enchanter Eclipse has confirmed for the second time that they are the result of outside forces. C. Wz. Lulamoon, also an Enchanter, has been sent the report and his own speculations are pending arrival. Until conclusions are reached on the nature of these nightmares, I request that you refrain from opining on their cause. In addition, the nurses have depleted their supply of the potion you brewed to cure these nightmares. Make more of it.

Sincerely,
Midnight Amethyst, Chamberlain

“I told them to make it last…” muttered Sunburst, his nose pressed against the gossamer-thin parchment--he’d misplaced his glasses the night prior, and it was making it difficult to-

“Yes, sir! Will that be all, sir?!” screamed the courier. Sunburst jerked back and the paper ripped in two between his trembling hooves. He couldn’t remember this guard’s name, but he was always doing that. A hulking crystal pony, with bulging eyes and a neck bigger than his head. Sunburst wasn’t sure if the incessant shouting was some joke or if this fellow was just that intense.

“Y-yes! It’s- yes. That will be all, uh... chief,” stammered Sunburst, throwing the halved memo in the wastebasket and brushing off the glimmering dust that peppered him upon its destruction. The armor-clad stallion swiveled around and stamped out of the cluttered study. It was a modest room, even more so than Sunburst’s old house. Thanks to The Prince and Princess’s kindness, he was now allowed to live in the Crystal Empire’s palace, or ‘The Citadel’ as the locals called it. Normally, court wizards were meant to take up residence in a tower, but the innumerable sycophants that made up the officials of the empire had already made their homes in the spires of the citadel, so Sunburst was relegated to a cramped room reclaimed from one of the many secret passages of the place. He’d come here to his study every day to work on whatever the College of Canterlot had sent him, and retire every night to a little closet next to the servant’s quarters. Meanwhile, if the gossiping maids he heard through the walls at night were correct, Court Wizard Lulamoon got to sleep in Princess Twilight’s bed chamber.

But that was of little import right now, what was important was brewing more of Flurry Heart’s elixir. If he didn’t then, somehow, Chamberlain Amethyst would find a way to blame Sunburst and not the nurses who squandered the original supply. Normally, it’d just be a matter of bartering with the quartermaster for the ingredients and sneaking into the apothecary’s lab while he was away, but the potion required a fragment of a changeling’s carapace--and that was even more elusive than the changelings themselves. At any rate, Sunburst thought, it couldn’t hurt to check with the quartermaster anyway. He stood up, straightened his cloak, and nearly tripped over some errant tomes as he walked out of the study.

“Yes, actually, ever since that pegasus raid in the Black Crag--our cup overfloweth with changeling carapace,” said the quartermaster, something-something-garnet, to Sunburst’s happy surprise. If there weren’t any on hoof, he would’ve had to requisition the raw chemicals from Canterlot, and that would take weeks to arrive.

“That’s great! If I can get into the lab, I could whip this up before nightfall… Uh, hey,” Sunburst reared up and rested his elbows on the counter, Quartermaster Garnet disappearing into a supply closet bigger than Sunburst’s bedroom. “You wouldn’t happen to know if, uh, what’s-his-name? The apothecary? If he’ll be away sometime today?”

Scraping could be heard in the supply closet before Garnet’s voice echoed out, “Burning Sunset? Yeah, he’s a Canterlot unicorn, too-”

“I’m not from Canterlot, I’m fr-”

“Yes, yes, that’s fine--whatever you say. Anyway, back to what Iwas saying… Canterlot unicorn, looks very similar to you. He has his lunch at thirty past two, weekdays. So in an-”

“Hour and thirty minutes,” interjected Sunburst before an annoyed looking Garnet emerged from the closet with grey husks in hoof. The crystal pony sat them on the counter next Sunburst and he levitated them into his modest knapsack. “And what will you be wanting in return, this time?”

“I’m just happy to be rid of the things. They’ve been peeling on my model airship sets,” said Garnet, grabbing a rag from the shelf under the counter and wiping the carapace flakes away with it.

“Uh… O-okay… Is that all, then?” Sunburst took his forelegs off the counter and stepped back.

“Mhm, I suppose… Say, how’s it coming with the Princess’s nightmares? Flurry Heart, I mean,” said Garnet, glancing up from the counter.

“Oh, don’t worry--she’ll be fine, I’m sure. They’ve got our court’s enchanter, Strange Eclipse, collaborating with Princess Twilight Sparkle’s court wizard. He’s also an enchanter, y’know.” Sunburst explained, smirking at his privileged information.

“Yeah, yeah… Oh, what’s his name?” implored Garnet, closing his eyes and looking up in thought. “Something lullabye, right? Oh, I should know this!”

“It’s Lulamoon… He’s from one of those old noble families, y’know, so he has one of those archaic names…” explained Sunburst, his tone falling and becoming less energetic as he looked down. Then his head shot back up and, with a smirk, he said,” But, heh, his first name is Beatrix and, heh, that’s a… filly’s name… Or it was, back when everypony had names like that…” Sunburst, upon seeing that Garnet was unmoved by the information, looked back down in defeat.

“Do you… not like him, or something? Court Wizard Sunburst?” Garnet reared up and leaned on the counter himself.

“Well, we both went to Celestia’s School together and--I was a little older than him, but--he and the other colts would pick on me, sometimes. Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, I guess they were all more gifted than I was, and… plus, they were all from Canterlot and I was from Sun Village, so…” Sunburst said, shifting his weight from hoof to hoof. He thought he heard somepony make some noise outside the Quartermaster’s office.

“Mhm, well… To be honest, I can see why somepony would want to pick on you,” Garnet rubbed his chin. “But why did he start, in the first place?”

“Well, it… Promise you won’t laugh?” Sunburst glanced up and saw Garnet nodding. “He and the other colts were talking about how they’d want to die, like in a war or a fire or something, and they came up and asked me… and I... I said that I wanted to die of old age in my mother’s arms-”

“HAHAHA!”

“Oh, you--come on! I was only a colt, I didn’t know what to say!” Shouted Sunburst, seeing the tears streaming down Garnet’s face as the crystal pony hacked out more laughter. Hearing even more chuckling emanating from behind, he swung around to see none other than Prince Shining Armor and the captain of his royal guard laughing. “It’s not funny!”

“I-I’m sorry Sssss- Hahahaha-” Shining Armor put a hoof on the wizard’s shoulder. “Heh, It’s just that--I, heh, I heard you and Garnet talking about Trixie and--Court Wizard Lulamoon, I mean, and I heard you tell that ridiculous story. Don’t worry, Captain Quartz and I won’t tell anypony--will we, Captain?”

The crystal stallion, who had sauntered up to the counter chortling, threw back an incredulous look and asked, “Would your grandma be there, too?”

“I was only twelve!”

“You were twelve when you said that?! Ha!” The captain turned back to Garnet, who was standing up and wiping away a tear. As the two began to converse, Shining Armor led Sunburst away to a corner.

“So, you said Trixie bullied you--in school?” Shining asked with a smirk. “Where was Twilight when he was doing this?”

“He never did it whenever Twi- Princess Twilight was around,” Sunburst explained, still shaken from the humiliation.

“Yeah, that sounds like Trixie,” Shining nodded, taking his hoof off Sunburst’s shoulder and glancing over at the captain and quartermaster. “I asked because that didn’t really match everything I’ve heard about Trixie’s time at magic school.”

There was a short pause and Sunburst tugged at his goatee, not sure what to say but feeling obliged to entertain the prince’s conversation. “I’ve, uh--He and Enchanter Eclipse are supposed to be collaborating on finding out what’s causing Princess Flurry Heart’s nightmares.”

Shining Armor’s smirk didn’t falter, but his eyes grew a little soft. “Yeah, I know. Trixie’s a smart pony, between him and Twilight… They’ll figure it out… Trixie knows a lot about curses and other dark magic, so that’s why Cadance suggested getting him involved...” The prince looked over to his captain, who was still speaking with the quartermaster, then returned his gaze to Sunburst with a renewed smile. “So, Twily never caught him making fun of you, huh?”

Sunburst adjusted his cloak, calming down. “She called me a liar when I tried to tell a teacher-”

“Pfft. Ha!” Shining Armor chuckled, Quartz glancing back with a grin. “She’s still that way with him, to this day!” It wasn’t so strange for them to be talking about Trixie; beyond the affairs of their own monarchy and kingdom, Twilight’s court and the Elements of Harmony were a favorite topic of conversation for the higher echelons of the citadel--Court Wizard Lulamoon being the most popular with the officers of the royal guard for all of the strange and morally questionable antics he got up to in Ponyville. “Now, don’t misunderstand--I love Trixie, I really do; he’s like a brother to me, I watched him grow up… But he has this way of convincing mares that he can do no wrong. Twily, Cadance, our mother, I don’t know how he does it-”

“I heard that Celestia likes him now too, even after what he did in Canterlot with that amulet,” Captain Quartz strolled up to the two stallions, a hulking mass of crystalline musculature joining in the gossip like a school filly. He was balancing some medical kit on his back, evidently having gotten it from the quartermaster.

“What do you mean?” asked Shining Armor.

“Well, I heard Eclipse talking about how Princess Celestia had asked Beatrix to be Canterlot’s Royal Enchanter.”

“Really?” Shining Armor and Quartz strolled out of the quartermaster’s room and down the hall, Sunburst walking behind them. “Well… I would think that I’d have heard about that if it were true, but I’ll have Cadance ask Twily about it.”

“Yeah, I suppose… And you know how Eclipse can get about that kind of thing, always exaggerating…” affirmed Quartz, leaning slightly to balance the kit on his back.

“But, you know, I’d believe it. Trixie--Beatrix, I mean--Is a very gifted enchanter. I think that’s what he specialized in after he graduated from Celestia’s, in fact,” said Shining Armor. Sunburst never understood their fascination with Trixie, he’d always heard that he was just a pompous stage magician. He decided to keep quiet until a more pleasant subject came up.

“I thought he was an illusionist?”

“He’s also really proficient in Illusion, but Enchantment is his best school. That’s my understanding of it, at least,” Shining craned his neck around and it made a popping sound.

“He doesn’t really seem like the type to be an enchanter,” said Quartz.

“Don’t let him fool you, behind all that bravado he’s really jus-... Wait, have you ever even met Trixie?” Shining Armor raised an eyebrow at the captain.

“No, but I’ve heard of the stuff he does.”

“Mhm… Hey, Sunburst?” Shining looked back at the trailing wizard. “What did you need from the quartermaster, anyway? Or were you just there to talk about how much you love your mom?” he snickered.

“I needed some changeling carapace, to make more of the elixir of resist fear that the nurses give Princess Flurry each night,” explained Sunburst, trotting a little faster to walk beside the prince instead of behind him.

“Oh.”

“Now I just need to wait for the apothecary, I forget his name, to eat lunch so I can use his lab.”

“What’s the point of having an apothecary if the court wizard has to make the elixir?” Quartz interjected.

“I was thinking that, myself,” Shining Armor turned back to Sunburst. “Just use Eclipse’s laboratory, tell him I sent you.” Only at this suggestion did it occur to Sunburst that Enchanter Eclipse had all the same alchemical apparatuses as the court’s chemist, for whatever reason. “You know which spire he lives in, don’t you?”

Sunburst nodded. “I know it, Prince Shining Armor. I’ll do that.”

A Letter from Lulamoon

Chapter Two

After ascending the spiral staircase of the third spire, Sunburst poked his head into the ostensibly vacant laboratory of Strange Eclipse. Enchanters were a weirder sort than specialists of other schools of magic, and their private spaces oft reflected this truth. This laboratory, Sunburst found, was no exception to the rule. Jars of octopus and squid specimens in murky formaldehyde occupied shelf spaces alongside ominous green orbs twice girded with bands of gold, and any number of singular rarities and every imagining of a sorcerer’s curios. Court Wizard Sunburst fumbled in with his ingredients just as clumsily as he had up the stairs, and paced around looking for an alchemical station. He eventually found one, and commenced to unload his pack of reagents and components.

An assortment of alembics and beakers and tall, twisting exotic glassware occupied the specially made table, cut so that the various tubes and cylinders of the alchemy pieces could run through it. Once Sunburst had set in on his brewing the potion, it quickly transformed into a psychedelic display of variegated liquids and billowing vapors, and he thought to open a window. Sunburst spun around, and began to step toward the large bay window of the laboratory, only to find a white cloud had moved onto the spire and totally covered the window.

“I must’ve climbed higher than I thought,” he said, and turned back around to find Strange Eclipse’s dead stare glaring at him through the glasses of the alchemy station. “Oh Celestia!” exclaimed Sunburst, hopping back. “Oh, you… you scared me,” he continued, Strange Eclipse sauntering around to speak with him face-to-face. “We need to put a bell on you.”

“Why are you in my laboratory, Starburst?” said Eclipse, in his monotone but intense voice.

“Uh, it’s Sunburst,” said Sunburst, adjusting his glasses and affecting a smile.

Eclipse was quiet for a couple seconds. “I see… and this ‘Sunburst’ sent you?”

“No, I’m Sunburst-”

“I don’t have time for riddles, Starburst; just tell me why you’re here,” interrupted Eclipse.

“Uh, Well, Prince Shining Armor told me that I could come here to make Princess Flurry Heart’s dream elixir,” explained Sunburst, and Eclipse finally blinked and nodded his head.

“Very well, Starburst. Make it quick, but do it right,” said Eclipse, meandering toward a set of shelves by the window to peruse some tomes. Around sixteen minutes passed with only silence between the two unicorns, only broken by the occasional sound of Sunburst clinking glass together or Eclipse flipping through one of his books.

“So… Have you heard from Court Wizard Lulamoon yet?” asked Sunburst, when the quiet became unbearable. Eclipse raised his eyes from the book and turned toward Sunburst, straightening his back.

“I fail to see why you should know, Starburst--just because you make the baby’s sleeping potion doesn’t make you privy to the ideas of enchanters such as Beatrix and I,” said Eclipse, almost with emotion. Only in saying beatrix did his tone change, as if he took pleasure in it.

Sunburst, despite the robotic intonation of the enchanter, took it as a severe dressing down and became very nervous. Eclipse returned to his book, and Sunburst’s weak constitution couldn’t take the prospect of an even more uncomfortable silence, and he blurted out, “You know Beatrix and Twilight are sleeping t-”

Quick knocking came from the door to the laboratory, and Cadance stepped in immediately after, one hoof wrapped around the fussing Flurry Heart. “Enchanter Eclipse, I think the baby’s had another one,” she said, walking the incensed infant over to the enchanter. “She was just napping like she always does and woke up screaming--hello, Sunburst--like she’d had one of those nightmares.”

Eclipse, who had sat down and was levitating several esoteric apparatuses out of a nearby chest, received the baby and held her up with two hooves, examining her and contemplating deeply. Other than her being an alicorn, she displayed no substantial differences to any other upset foal--of course, enchanters have special gifts when it comes to discerning subtle things in the minds of ponies. Flurry Heart just hanged there and whined while he went down the list of touching his horn to her horn, forehead, and chin before pressing her stomach to the side of his face. Eventually he was satisfied in the pursuit of this mystical physical, sat her on one knee and stared into her eyes. He used one hoof to hold her up and commenced to advance and retract the other in her direction, like the encroachment of the tides on the shore. A few moments later, her whining gradually lessened and came to an end. She then began to look more intensely on the enchanter’s eyes, herself.

“It wasn’t one of those nightmares, but I’d imagine it might have something to do with them,” started Eclipse, never breaking the hypnosis. “I mean, she might have just remembered a fragment of one she had, while she was sleeping, and it frightened her. But this should help her feel better, and maybe get back to sleep. Just a few moments longer, Princess.”

Cadance, who had until now been intently focused on her child, relaxed, took a deep breath, and smiled. “Thank you, Eclipse,” she said, and turned to her court wizard. “What are you making there, Sunburst? Flurry’s elixir?” she asked, much more cheerful than when she arrived.

“Yes ma’am--Princess, I mean. Yes, Princess,” Sunburst replied in his endearingly (to Cadance, at least) meek fashion, and she gave him a friendly mocking look before turning back to Eclipse.

“While we’re on the subject, Eclipse, have you gotten any word back from Trixie? Court Wizard Lulamoon, I mean,” she asked, and Eclipse finished entrancing the baby before turning to Cadance.

“Why yes, Princess, I have--and Beatrix and I are close to isolating the cause of these night terrors so that we might put a stop to them,” droned Eclipse, his flat delivery almost evincing real pride in himself. He handed Flurry back to her mother and stood up.

“May I see your correspondence with him?” asked Cadance. Eclipse nodded calmly and darted out of the laboratory. Cadance took the enchanter’s seat, settling herself and her baby into the high backed armchair. After shifting around a few seconds for a comfortable position with Flurry, she looked up at Sunburst. “Eclipse is a good stallion, he just has trouble around other ponies.”

Sunburst faltered for a moment, thinking hard on what to reply, eventually settling on: “A lot of enchanters are like that. Weird types, I mean.” Sunburst braced himself upon uttering the end of the sentence, but was relieved to hear Cadance chuckle.

“Yes, they are,” she began, over Flurry’s cooing. “Trixie’s an enchanter, you know, and he’s… you know, he’s out there,” said Cadance lifting the baby up to her face. “But we love him, don’t we?” Cadance said, nuzzling Flurry Heart and making her giggle.

“Yes, we do--I mean, uh, yeah. He’s great,” stammered Sunburst, trying to comprehend where Cadance stopped talking to him and started talking to the baby. When Cadance looked over at him he tried to change the subject, but he could only think to say, “You know, I’ve heard that he and Princess Twilight are getting pretty close.”

“Oh, I know they are--believe me,” chuckled Cadance, juggling the baby back into her lap. “They’ve always loved each other, ever since they were just little ponies. Really, even back then, I could tell. The first thing I thought when I heard Trixie was living with Twilight, even given the circumstances, was ‘It’s only a matter of time.’ And it might seem strange to ponies on the outside looking in, their relationship that is, but it works. They’re perfect for each other--and they’re both so smart… Whenever the family gets together, and we play board games and things like that, we have a rule that Twilight and Trixie can’t be on the same team, because they’d win every time,” explained Cadance, who was the Princess of Love and was known to go off on tangents whenever the subject of intimacy came up.

Sunburst only nodded with a smirk plastered on his face, trying not to be rude. When Cadance said even given the circumstances she was referring to one of Beatrix’s greatest performances, when he was allegedly driven mad by an amulet and attempted to violently seize power in Canterlot, long before Twilight became a Princess. He was sentenced to death, but Twilight used her special relationship with Celestia to give him an alternative punishment: living as Twilight’s ward, his magic permanently under her control via an extremely powerful ring affixed to his horn.

“Some punishment,” thought Sunburst, sardonically “having to cuddle up next to a princess for the rest of your life.” It always confounded him that an entire nation could just forgive somepony like Beatrix for high treason.

“We’ve been trying to get Flurry to call him ‘Uncle Trixie’-” Cadance began, but Eclipse burst through the door and interrupted her, holding a letter from the great stallion himself. Eclipse brought the two sheets of paper before Cadance, and she began to read them.

Dear Enctr. Strange Eclipse, C.E.

I am obliged to thank you for informing me of Flurry Heart’s affliction with such objectivity, and without the obfuscating emotion with which so many might embellish a report on a suffering foal. So, thank you. However, I wish you had taken greater care to keep the sinister nature of little Flurry’s affliction between the two of us until it was absolutely necessary to go galavanting around shouting it from the rooftops. You know (or maybe you don’t, who cares) that Twilight can very easily get worked up and worried when she hears of things like this, and it’s beginning to interfere with her responsibilities to me. I don’t imagine you’d care, but Winter is one of our favorite times here in Chateau de Sparkle; and it’s very difficult for me to get any [...] anything done, with her incessant prodding and questioning and fretting over our darling niece. I mean, I’m also worried. If anypony were to ask, tell them I’m also worried.

Beyond the digression on my domestic problems, I’ve been thinking about the curious nature of these particular nightmares. As you know, even the most ancient Unicorn enchantments and illusions which affect dreams affect them no matter what time the subject sleeps--day or night. Flurry Heart’s nightmares, unless something has changed since your initial observations, are solely nocturnal. And, being a baby, she must have several intervals of deep sleep, nocturnal and diurnal; so I can’t question your observations.

Anyway, I’ll look further into it. How’s Sunburst doing as your new Court Wizard? Ask him how his mother is doing, for me.Keep your head warm,

C. Wz. Beatrix Lulamoon, K.T.

P.S. If you really want to mess with Sunburst, call him “Starburst”. He used to cry when we did that in Celestia’s School.

“Aw,” Cadance looked up from the unusually short letter, “He remembers you, Sunburst.” She looked back down at the two sheets of paper, and said, “Trixie’s always had bad hoofwriting… Look at how sloppy the letter is… Usually he has Twilight write for him. I wonder why he didn’t have her write this one out?” and her expression became a little bemused. “How odd. Well… It looks like you two are getting closer to figuring this out, Eclipse,” she said, handing the letter back to the enchanter.

“Oh, yes. Closer than you’d think, Princess,” said Strange Eclipse, and Cadance smiled at him before standing up.

“I suppose I should leave the two of you to your magic talk,” said Cadance, holding the nodding baby in one arm. “And you, Sunburst, you can give the elixir to Nurse Sapphire when you’re finished making it. Alright, you two, don’t have too much fun together,” she continued, walking out as the two magi said Yes, Princess in unison.

The day continued without much trouble for Sunburst, besides the uncomfortable silence between he and Eclipse after Cadance left. Sunburst spent several more hours brewing and refining the elixir, and sat around his cramped study while it’s time-sensitive ingredients fermented. It got awfully tense once the sun began to set and he still hadn’t finished the elixir, but he was miraculously able to finish it only twenty minutes before Flurry’s regular bed-time. Fifteen of those precious minutes were spent clambering up the staircase to her bedroom before he triumphantly opened the door, proclaiming, “I have it!”

“Oh, good! I was getting worried,” said Cadance, her tone devoid of it’s customary humor and vivacity. Flurry Heart was laying in her large and regal crib, gurgling cheerfully and eyeing her mother and the crystal pony nurse stood next to her. The baby’s nursery, besides the cleanly baroque architecture of the palace, appeared no different than any upper middle-class Canterlot nursery. Colorful posters of the alphabet and the rudiments of arithmetic adorned the wall. Shelves of children’s books, some for education and others for entertainment, lined the walls--with a few books littering the floor next to them. Big round toys could be seen in every corner, and smaller plushes were all around the place, an empty bin for them next to the bookshelves. One of those weird little foam puzzle rugs laid on the floor. A model of the solar system hung down from the ceiling and over the crib, a gift from Aunt Twilight, and on the wall next to Flurry’s favorite playset was a grandiose poster for The Great and Powerful Trixie’s Magnificent Magic Show.

“Here, Nurse Sapphire, the ordinary dosage ought to do the trick,” said Sunburst, and the nurse snatched the bottle from him. The three of them gathered round the crib, and watched the nurse drop the tonic into the baby’s mouth. Moments later, Sunburst was contentedly (and wearily) walking down the dark halls of the crystal palace, listening to Cadance lovingly sing the lilting notes of Flurry Heart’s favorite lullaby.

Hours later, in the dead of night, Strange Eclipse sat at his desk--the flickering light of a single candle the only testament to his existence in the gloomy study. He was looking over Court Wizard Lulamoon’s letter to him. He muttered to himself, and rubbed his neck before reaching down to a locked drawer of his desk. From it, he produced a third page and slid it between the other two. He looked up at his door, then the clock, then flipped to the second page and looked it over. It read as follows.

This leaves us with two possibilities, excluding that which would presume these are not supernatural nightmares (which has already been debunked by the intrinsically magical alchemical properties that work on Flurry Heart when she’s given one of these potions).

The first possibility is that some lingering shadow magic from that imbecile Sombra’s last asinine attack on the Crystal Empire has been giving the filly these terrors. I find this to be exceedingly improbable, chiefly because shadow magic is much too sporadic and unwieldy to target a single foal and nopony else. At the very least, other children would be having these dreams--and they aren’t (assuming my research on the matter is correct). Perhaps you could look further into the other children of the Crystal Empire; their dreams, I mean.

I’ll never understand why the Princesses let Sombra go free after his second assault on your city, over there. Between you and I, Twilight agrees with me that he should’ve been punished--even if his mind was altered at the time. I don’t know how your crystal ponies over there feel about it. Anyway, I’ll go on to the second (and more likely) possibility.

Around seven years ago, my old master had me on a journey (which I won’t go into) that led me into an incident with some pyromantic goats that lived in the hinterlands of the Griffon country. You might ask, “How can goats be pyromancers, O Great Master Wizard Lulamoon?” Well, these were goats, to whom, my master had taught the old magic in the previous aeon. They don’t exist anymore, but before I was finished with them I noticed that their chieftains and and holy men used a kind of old magic beyond pyromancy. Something a little like shadow magic but more sophisticated--I won’t try to explain it in this short letter. Now, there are certain hexes in the old magics that have a great deal to do with the moon and night-time, and which affect the mind in similar ways to enchantment. These goats could have done such a thing--performed such a spell, I’d wager, and I imagine that more than one illegal mage might have learned their ways before they [...] disappeared.

What I mean to say is that a warlock, who could’ve learned this old curse from those goats (or somepony else who knew the old magic), might be targeting Flurry Heart and casting such a spell on her. However, this leaves us with more questions than answers. And it’ll be much more difficult to stop these so-called dreams, if I’m correct.

As terrifying as the prospect is, that somepony could be attacking a helpless foal with the old magic, I find it the most probable possibility, given our understanding of the issue. Our first question ought to be, “Why?”

Author's Note

There you have it, the first story in an arc I've been ruminating on for quite some time. Once I finish up Hailstorms and Helping Hooves, I'll get started on the next story in the arc.