Nocturnals

Canterlot

A few days had passed since Luna had met Dagny. Luna and Applejack went back to Ponyville afterwards, and Luna told the Elements to wait until she had decided on what to do next. Before she left, she bought the dress Rarity had given her as a disguise, which enabled her to visit and interrogate the vampires she knew of in Canterlot personally and directly without risking to reveal them.

First on her list for today was Fancy Pants, and so she found herself in a parlour in his manor, sitting on an expensive couch with dark-red padding built from very dark wood, a marble table in front of her. Fancy placed himself on a similar couch on the other side of said table, and said, “I must say, it is truly an honour to welcome you as a guest, Princess Luna, although you didn’t need to go through the troubles of disguising yourself.”

“You aren’t the only one I’m going to visit today,” Luna replied, “and in this form, I won’t cause your kind any trouble by catching attention.”

“We can speak freely in here, Princess Luna, I made sure of that,” Fancy Pants reassured her.

“What does a vampire like you want in such an influential position?”

“My, I just enjoy sophisticated company, and there is no place in Equestria better than Canterlot to find such company. And since Ponyville is nearby, I don’t have to travel far if I’m in the mood for some rustic charm.”

Or the charm of one specific mare, if the rumours are to be believed, Luna thought. But she wasn’t interested in gossip, so she continued her interrogation. He didn’t mention anything she didn’t already know, and he also confirmed the existence of Noctris. As did all other vampires she or her guards had asked the past week.

She visited a few more vampires, but all gave her the same answer, telling her that yes, Noctris exists and has numerous hideouts and multiple cities in Equestria, but refusing to tell her where exactly to find one of them. For various reasons. Some said they didn’t know it themselves, having grown up in Equestria. Others said that they didn’t want to expose their safe harbour to equestrian officials, which Luna chose to respect.

Luna teleported back to the main room of her chambers in the castle. Firstly, she went into the bedroom and took off her disguise, that she then safely stored in a secret compartment of her wardrobe. Not that she didn’t trust the castle staff, but the fewer ponies that knew about it, the better. Then she reversed the ageing spell and put on her normal, royal garb and stepped into the main room again. She looked out of a window. Snow covered Canterlot, and the weather team prepared a snowstorm in the distance.

“If it’s a small one, Tia’s students will run around all day clearing the walkways and streets around her school with their magic.” Luna didn’t bother creating a silence shield, her guards were used to her talking to herself. “It’s rather adorable seeing the little ones so excited. They don’t get the chance to use their magic practically that often.

“The sun is already setting… Well, I guess that’s my cue then.” She concentrated her magic and raised the moon. “That was always the easiest part of my job… and the most boring one.”

Somepony knocked at the door. “Princess, I have today's report. May I enter?” the captain of her guard asked.

Luna let him in with her magic and said, “Just give me a summary.”

The captain nodded. “A Hunter was found entering Canterlot, but escaped into the mountains before we could catch them, so we don’t know which group they belonged to. Apart from that, nothing noteworthy in Canterlot.

“Las Pegasus continued to be Las Pegasus. If anything happened, nopony found out yet. Nothing interesting from West-Equestria, Fillydelphia or Baltimare.

“There was, however, one murder with ritualistic tendencies in Manehattan. Somepony pulled the teeth and cut off the wings of the victim, and the cutie marks were branded over with a ‘V’. One of my lieutenants already started an investigation together with the local EUP, and early research confirmed that the victim was a vampire.”

Luna shook her head in disbelief. “Another one. That makes five victims in two weeks with that method in Manehattan alone… And we still have no lead… Anything else?”

“No, your Highness.”

“Good,” Luna said before grabbing the report with her magic. “You can leave now.”

The captain gave a salute before leaving.

After the door fell into its lock, Luna placed the scroll on her desk. She would read it later, but now, the dream realm was waiting, and with the storm approaching, it promised to be a long night. She teleported into the watchtower and entered the dream realm.

The world around her vanished, and countless spheres filled the void around her. Luna looked into the first sphere, a blue one with a rainbow on it, and examined the dream within it. A group of Changelings, the hole-riddled version, lead by Chrysalis unsuccessfully tried to capture Rainbow Dash. With anypony else, Luna would go in and save the dreamer, but she knew that Rainbow had a blast, so she just left her dream alone.

The next sphere showed her the dream of a young filly cowering under a kitchen-table while monsters howled outside. Luna entered her dream, stepped in front of the table and said, “You can come out, Dinky Doo, the storm won’t bite you.”

Dinky looked up from under the table and said, “Pr… Princess Luna? But why are you here?”

“It is my duty to guard the dreams of the foals of Equestria, and so I came to aid you in your nightmare,” Luna answered with a caring voice.

“I’m dreaming?” Dinky, “but the monsters…”

“Are nothing but wind, little one.” Luna stepped to the side and gestured the filly to look out of a window. Still afraid, she took step after step towards it, and when she finally reached it and saw nothing but rustling trees outside, she sighed from relief and started giggling.

“It was just the wind,” Dinky hugged Luna and said, “Thank you, Princess Luna!”

“You’re welcome, little filly.” Seeing that her job was done, Luna added, “I will leave now, little one. Hopefully, I won’t need to visit you again. Goodbye.”

Dinky lowered her head and pawed with her hooves. “Did I bother you?”

“Of course not,” Luna said, “Why would you think that?”

“Because you said you don’t want to see me again.”

“I should have worded it better, then. I only ever visit dreams if there’s something wrong, so what I meant to say is that I hope you won’t be plagued by nightmares anymore.”

“Oh, ok, got it… thanks, Princess. Feel free to visit, nightmare or not.”

“Much appreciated, but I now need to go. Goodbye, Dinky.”

“Goodbye, Princess,” Dinky called after her as she left the dream.

The next dozen dreams all were peaceful, but then came a sphere that glowed and continuously changed colour. Luna looked at the dream in it. The dream took place in Ponyville, but a version that would even make Discord proud.

The sun bore a big smiling face and danced around the sky. The stars flew over the sky, formed constellations, broke away again to form new constellations in a never ending cycle.

Pink and yellow and blue clouds hovered everywhere, showering whatever was underneath them either in chocolate, vanilla or strawberry milk.

Candy apples hung from the trees, cotton candy sheep ran around, flowers sang songs, houses were built from rock candy. Colourful liquorice bushes grew beside the streets, live-sized gummy bears roamed the fields, and black liquorice bats flew all over the place.

Luna had seen a lot of chaotic dreams, but this one took the cake… Literally, since the town hall was a cake. A Black Forest gâteau, to be exact.

And hopping around, giggling, and eating as much as she could, was the chaotic, pink party pony of Ponyville herself.

Luna had tried to understand Pinkie Pie’s dreams in the past, but at some point had to give up. Her mind rivalled Discord’s with the amount of chaos it contained, so even on a normal night, deciphering one of her dreams could take hours. And this one was exceptionally chaotic even for her. So Luna just turned around and let Pinkie have her dream. She seemed to enjoy herself anyway.

The next dream led Luna into the centre of the ruin of a castle. Black clouds covered the sky and ashes covered the ground. A single, dead tree stood in the centre of the courtyard. A skeleton hung from a rope on it. Even though the sky was completely covered, it was still noticeably daytime in the dream.

This was going to be a complicated matter, Luna was sure of that. A normal dream or nightmare only consisted of a few rooms at most, or maybe a small patch of land at a time. It was fairly easy to find the dreamer as well as the problem. But every so often, Luna had to deal with this kind of nightmare, too.

The first thing she had to do is to find the dreamer, then the reason for the nightmare. Luna looked around. There was one door in front of her, one to the left and one to the right, or at least those were the ones still intact. There were more entries, but they had fallen in. The gatehouse stood behind her and lead down a narrow path into a misty forest. She decided to go through the door across the courtyard first.

A throne room lied behind it, as desolate as the rest of the castle. The windows were smashed in, from the four pillows once holding the roof over the throne, only one was still standing. The others fell over long ago. A pile of rotten wood splitters was everything that remained from what supposedly was once a throne. Luna walked to the window behind the throne, her steps dampened by the ash covering the ground. From her vantage point, Luna saw that the castle stood on top of a small hill. The surrounding area was hidden in thick fog, so there was no telling on how far the dreamscape went on. Luna let her view wander over the room again, but couldn’t find a trace of the dreamer.

The next door revealed a staircase and a hallway. Luna chose to follow the descending stairs. She needed some sort of system for searching for the dreamer, and going from bottom to top has proven itself to be the most efficient option in past dreams. As long as the dream didn’t randomly change itself…

No torches light the way, so soon after starting her descend, Luna had to light her horn with magic to see the way. Eventually, she found a small room at the end of the stairs, a cell on the other side. In it, Luna found the dreamer. The dark gray stallion lied on the ground, looked confused at Luna and said, “Who are you?”

“I am Princess Luna, and I’m here to help you with your nightmare.”

“I’m dreaming? But why should I dream something like this?”

“Finding the answer to that question is what I’m here to help you with.” Luna offered him a hoof and helped the dreamer back on his hooves. “So tell me, what could it be that causes you to lock yourself away?”

“I… I have honestly no idea,” he said frustrated. They continued talking as they left the dungeon. “I woke up in here some time ago, and before that, I don’t remember anything.”

“What about your name?”

“Sorry Princess, I don’t remember.”

“That is… strange.” Luna tried to remember if she ever encountered a dream where the dreamer didn’t know who or where they were, but couldn’t. She looked at him and saw the insecurity in his gaze, so in order to soothe him, she asked, “And how should I call you then, dreamer?”

“Dreamer actually sounds nice, I think.”

Luna gave him her best smile she could without it looking forced and said, “Dreamer it is then.”

They reached the ground floor again, and Luna decided to let Dreamer wander around and follow him until they found something helpful. Instead of leaving for the courtyard, Dreamer walked down the corridor. A painting, too timeworn to recognize the motive, caught Dreamers attention. He looked at it, his eyebrows narrowed, concentrated as hard as he could, but the painting still didn’t reveal anything. Whatever memory his subconscious tried to show him was buried too deep in his memories to surface. Dreamer turned away from it and continued on, Luna silently following him.

They came to a hole in the wall, and Dreamer saw the skeleton on the tree. He stopped dead in his track and kept staring at it motionlessly.

“Do you remember something?” Luna asked, but she received no answer.

Dreamer climbed through the hole and walked towards the tree with eyes wide from horror. He opened his mouth to say something but couldn’t even utter a single word, so Luna asked again if he began to remember something.

“I… I think I do… no… NO!” He held his head with a hoof and stumbled around. “I… I don’t want to remember… It HURTS!”

The ground started to shake. The air was filled with the sound of the castle crumbling. Luna tried to stabilize the dream with her magic, but it was no use. How is that possible? My powers never failed me in the dream realm like that… except when… Except when the Tantabus was haunting my dreams.

And sure enough, Luna noticed a dark cloud hovering over Dreamer. She shot a magical attack at it and managed to sever its connection to its victim. It crashed into the throne room. Dreamer fell to one hoof and Luna jumped to his side and helped him up.

“What… was that?” Dreamer asked.

“A Tantabus, a demon that feeds off pony’s nightmares. I was able to buy us some time, but it will soon return. You have to come to terms with whatever causes your nightmares if we want to get rid of it.

“Aren’t you the Princess of Dreams? Can’t you just kill it?” he asked crudely.

Luna bit her lip to ignore his tone and said, “Even for me, this is an extremely powerful opponent. I only had to deal with one once, and it nearly overpowered me and destroyed all of Equestria.”

The wall of the throne room exploded and a completely black dog twice the size of Luna stalked towards them. Luna tried to shoot it again with her magic, but the Tantabus dodged all her attacks, eyeing them cautiously. She managed to keep it at a distance, but the growls of the Tantabus made Luna nervous. “And it would be good if you remembered it soon,” she told Dreamer.

“But how?” Dreamer said, “I don’t know how.”

The Tantabus leapt forward, and Luna managed to shoot it with enough magic to fling it back into a wall, but it immediately came back to its feet and growled at them again. “If we can’t win the battle, we have to run for now,” Luna said before pushing Dreamer with her magic and running through the castle gate. The two ponies could fit through, but the Tantabus got stuck.

“Really, that’s your plan?” Dreamer complained while both galloped into the misty forest, “Running away from the dream-demon? What kind of princess are you?”

“The kind that’s currently trying to save thy ungrateful backside. And Now keep galloping, or I’ll drag you with me.”

Just when they disappeared between the trees, the Tantabus broke through the gatehouse. The sound of it chasing after them was enough to motivate Dreamer to keep galloping.

Luna heard the Tantabus panting behind them, but she didn’t dare to look back. The fog would have hidden it from her view anyway. And thanks to the moss covering the ground, neither Luna’s nor Dreamer’s hooves trampling over the ground could be heard. The drawback was, neither could the Tantabus’. She could only estimate its position from the cracking branches the Tantabus broke off in its pursuit.

And it slowly closed the gap between them.

They needed a plan to escape it, and they needed it soon, but Luna was too occupied with not running into a tree. Look ahead. Don’t stop. Stop and you die, so don’t. Just keep going and...

“JUMP,” Dreamer shouted beside her before flinging himself forward as far as possible. Luna didn’t know why, but it was his dream, not hers, so she did the same. And not a second early, since she only narrowly passed over a creek. The Tantabus didn’t have the same luck. It tripped and fell back again.

“How did you notice that?” Luna asked without slowing down.

“I’m starting to remember things,” he answered, “nothing personal, but I must have been in this forest a lot in the past”—the Tantabus’ howls told them that it had recovered and chased them again—“and I think I know how we can get some room. But you have to be quiet.”

“And what is your plan?”

Instead of answering, Dreamer rammed her. Both fell into a trench. Luna held her breath. Was he trying to get them both killed?

She heard the Tantabus coming closer… and running past them. They waited for a few minutes until they couldn’t hear it anymore, then they climbed out of the trench.

“So, now that we got some time, what do you remember?” Luna asked.

“There’s… something out here that’s important… In that direction.” He pointed into the forest and started walking.

Since Dreamer had no memories and Luna wasn’t of the talkative kind, the two of them silently wandered side by side.

After what seemed like hours of wandering aimlessly through the forest, they found a young ash tree, just as tall as Luna was. A spatha with a black hilt was attached to it with string.

“No, that's not right,” Dreamer said confused, “That’s not supposed to be there. I can remember the ash, but not that.”

But Luna could remember it, and because of that, figuring this dream out would get a lot more complicated. Her own memories started to affect the dreamscape. She remembered the sword, but couldn’t quite grasp from where.

And something told her that she didn’t want to find out, that it would be better to forget… Some memories were just too painful, and it was easier to simply let them go, to not hold on to them. Ignorance is bliss, right? She could just leave those memories behind and live a happy life without them. The thought of just forgetting everything clouded her mind. It would have been so easy. She just had to accept it, and all her worries would go away…

No, that’s the Tantabus manipulating me, she shouted mentally at herself, it wants me to forget the same way it did with Dreamer. And if it doesn’t want me to have the spatha, that’s exactly what I need. She levitated the sword out of its sheath. The blade was surprisingly white. Not the reflective grey steal normally had, but white as the moon. ‘Night Guard’ was engraved in purple letters. Luna extended her hoof, and as soon as she touched the blade, memories resurfaced.

She herself had forged the blade out of a fallen star, while Shaded had provided the hilt of tartarian steal.

She also remembered that the Tantabus she faced last year was by far not the first one she ever had dealt with. And now she knew once more how to deal with them.

Freed from the trance the Tantabus put her in, she turned to Dreamer and saw that a tendril of purple mist had slung itself around him, putting him into the same kind of trance Luna had been in. She cut it with Night Guard and Dreamer snapped out of it. Luna took the sheath from the tree and, while putting it on, said to Dreamer, “My friend, the time has come for us to face the demon that’s haunting you.”

Before Dreamer could respond, the Tantabus crashed through the trees towards them. Luna took a defensive stance, her sword levitating beside her head. Dreamer took cover behind her.

The Tantabus built up speed, running faster and faster towards them. A few moments before it could leap at them, Luna sent her sword out. The Tantabus tried to dodge it, but she adjusted the trajectory of her sword, scratching the right hind leg of the demon. The wound immediately started to give off a white glow, and the demon stopped its attack. Luna called her sword back to herself, looking the demon in its eyes.

It’s gaze changed. When they faced each other in the desolate castle, it had anger and hunger in its eyes. It wanted to consume them, to feed off their powers, to grow stronger and escape into another dream.

But now there was something unexpected. Fear. The Tantabus feared Luna, and Luna knew that it had all reason to do so.

She sent out her sword close over the ground with the intention to stab it in its belly, but the Tantabus jumped backwards and avoided it narrowly. But it crashed into a tree and fell to the ground. Luna saw her chance. The sword shot forward and cut off the already wounded leg before returning to Luna’s side. The Tantabus scrambled back up and started limping away.

Luna summoned a magical lasso and caught one of the Tantabus’ other legs with it and started to pull. The Tantabus tried to keep on running but wasn’t able to overcome Luna’s strength. Night Guard shot forward again, digging deep into the Tantabus chest. Without leaving a trace, it vanished, and with it the fog around them.

“Is it over?” Dreamer asked from behind her.

“It is, the Tantabus is destroyed.” She put her sword into its sheath on her back and turned around. “So, do you remember anything now?”

“Some things, yes. My name’s Rudolf, for example.”

“Interesting name,” Luna said. She wanted to continue, but her necklace started to blink, telling her that she was needed in the waking world immediately. “I’m afraid that you will have to go on alone, for now, Rudolf. I will check on you in a few days.”

“Alright, Princess. Goodbye.”