There is a wolf in the forest.
Princess Luna repeated that sentence again and again in her head while she walked through the realm of dreams. This time, she wasn’t searching for a pony to help, a nightmare to dispel with her magic, an inner demon to face, or a fear to banish, but rather she wandered with a weak and slow gait, almost dragging her hooves, to a place that only she knew.
When she arrived, she was greeted with a big double gate with steel gray bars. Covering it with her magic, she managed to open it with ease and enter effortlessly. With a tired gaze, she observed her surroundings to reassure herself that she was in the right place; her mind had already tricked her in the past, given the state she was in.
That corner of the dream world was nothing more than a cemetery, meant for all those ponies that had passed on to a better life while they slept to regain strength, believing they would wake to live another day.
Her ears caught hold of a sound and pointed in different directions, searching for the source. She looked around as her breathing started to pick up but she couldn't let herself be beaten by fear. This was her secret place; nobody but her could find it.
After calming down, she began to walk once more, heading to the back of the cemetery. Everything was covered by a permanent layer of night, illuminated by a full moon and bright stars, organized in such a way that wasn’t capable of instilling fear in her. But since her last encounter with the beast, an inner dread chased her incessantly.
There is a wolf in the forest. How had this beast been born? She didn’t know. It had been less than a year since she had returned from her banishment on the moon. When was it born? She didn’t know either; she speculated with guilt that it had been at some point during her thousand years of absence. The first time she’d heard of the matter was three months ago while she was quickly inspecting the dreams. A piercing scream grabbed her attention but when she arrived, she found nothing and no one, and that place had started to crumble before Luna’s eyes, turning black before it started to break and fall to an infinite void.
That was a clear sign that the pony responsible for the dream had died.
She started to investigate after that, discovering that the unfortunate equine wasn’t the wolf’s first victim. She spoke with widows, widowers, parents without children and the reverse, all describing the same thing. A completely black wolf tormented them in their dreams, chasing its prey for seven consecutive nights and in the last one, killing them, making it so that they stopped breathing in real life. It was rumored that the wolf attacked once a month, without fail.
Thinking of the approximate figure made her shiver, like the first day she made an estimate; a minimum of ten thousand ponies had fallen to its claws.
As she walked through the cemetery, the graves began to present a pattern that Luna recognized perfectly. A small drawing of a blue rose, indicating that they had died because of the wolf. She turned her head; no one had followed her. She had to stop, no one could stalk her in here. She had to gather her wits, make a strategy for her last encounter with the beast. While the exhaustion won her over, she remembered, cursing herself, how she had come to be so helpless and frightened.
After exploring the vast regions of her realm, Luna had found a place she had never seen before. A forest. Those trees had dry leaves that swayed like their autumn counterparts, only these refused to fall from their branches. Their trunks were gray with a hole in the middle, around the height of an average pony’s head. The wind whistled as the princess roamed the place, avoiding touching anything in case it was hexed. The roots of some trees breached the earth, making it harder to walk. Nothing seemed to grab her attention until, in between two trees, she saw how a young tree stood with its thin trunk and new leaves. She found really strange to see a tree like that among so much old wood. Who planted it?
Soon the answer would manifest in the worst way.
“Help!” she heard from afar, followed by a piercing scream.
Luna was about to go to help when suddenly a light that came from the direction of the shout, passed above her and struck the young tree. After a few seconds of intense brightness, that tree took the same shape as the rest, becoming one more piece of that forest with over ten thousand inhabitants. But when she thought it was over, the tree screamed again at full volume, yelling the same word Luna had heard moments earlier. The rest of the trees did the same, joining the first one in a dismal chant of lamentation, weeping, anguish, and screams. Luna was forced to cover her ears until they abruptly stopped their cries, leaving the forest in a sepulchral silence, as if they had seen someone evil, someone or something that, with their sole presence had forced them to keep silent in fear of retaliation.
The sound of a growl forced her to turn around, seeing the beast for the first time. The wolf was completely black, if she could recognize it as one it was only because she had seen others in the past, even its fur, its eyes, and its claws were made of complete darkness. But it was its size what caught her attention to the point she broke a cold sweat, its height was half the size of the trees.
Gathering enough courage, Luna took a few steps and said, “What are you doing tormenting my subjects in their dreams?”
The wolf kept quiet for a few moments, understanding the words of the princess. A few seconds later, as the wind seemed to get colder announcing what was about to happen, yellow invaded the beast’s eyes, showing how wide they were actually open, followed by its teeth and claws. Was it magic that she saw? A potion perhaps? She didn’t have time to think about it when the wolf opened its snout and, pronouncing a word for the first time in its life, said:
“P-prey.”
Giving her no time to react, the yellow claws tore through the princess’ body and cleanly cut off her right leg. Before the limb touched the ground, it became a sphere of light that traveled through the forest until it reached the center where it buried itself in the ground and from there, out came a single sprout with a leaf.
Luna woke up suddenly in the real world, almost falling off of the bed. She watched the clock in her nightstand, thirty minutes were left to bring down her satellite and give way to the sun. She couldn’t go back to sleep, not even rest her eyes. For some reason, she felt as if her body was lighter, as if a part of her had vanished after the wolf’s attack, but that was impossible- few were the anomalies in the realm of dreams that had enough power to cause physical harm to its victims.
Luna was determined to face it the next day to end it. But things did not turn out how she expected them to. On the second day, the wolf surprised her from behind and woke her up, on the third one it jumped from a tree and plunged its teeth into her, on the fourth one she set traps to capture it, but it avoided them and she awoke once more, on the fifth one she used her magic to cast powerful spells on it but the beast was immune to her spells and once again, claws and fangs met her body, on the sixth day she faced the wolf in her own dream where she was master of all that happened, but even with that she fell again to that living nightmare.
Every day that her attempts failed to stop the beast, her body got worse; her mind faded, creating and reasoning plans was becoming increasingly difficult, and it was like her mere existence was a complication. She was almost out of energy entirely, the fatigue was intolerable, and she just wanted to sleep.
She locked herself in her room during the seventh day. She investigated for hours on a way to defeat the nightmare with fur, but she didn’t find anything useful. She was surprised to see that her sister had lowered the sun and raised the moon by herself, it was time to sleep for a lot of ponies, including her. Maybe if she visited the graves of the ponies that had died because of the wolf an answer would come.
In front of the grave of the last victim, Luna meditated the situation with her eyes closed. How many times had she failed Equestria? Her subjects? Her sister? Sorrow filled her heart along with a justified self contempt; she wasn’t anything more than a bother, a being that didn’t deserve the crown or the title of princess. Tears fled from her face and wetted the cold headstone. Perhaps if she hadn’t brought about her own exile a thousand years ago then…
A growl was heard behind her back.
When she turned, she saw him once again, standing, tilting forwards, watching her with black eyes. Luna’s legs couldn’t stop shaking, the wolf had infiltrated her private and magically protected place! How was this possible?! Was she vulnerable even in the lands of her own realm?
What really unsettled her nerves and made princess Luna question her mental state was seeing the wolf standing in front of her, much smaller that on their first encounter. Now it had the height of a regular wolf, and still it showed itself to her threatening, looming, fearless before its prey, her titles or powers.
“No…” said Luna giving a few steps back.
She tried to turn on her horn, but she couldn’t. She wanted to fly far away to not return, but didn’t want to find out if the wolf could fly and chase her. The truth was, she was alone. Alone before a powerful being that could hunt her everywhere. How powerful was it really?
A stumble with the grave of that pony and Luna was on the floor, unable to stand up. The wolf’s eyes glowed as yellow as its claws and teeth, ready to deal the last blow.
“No!” exclaimed Luna.
The wolf took that as her last word and jumped, pouncing on her.
Luna woke, startled from bed and fell to the ground; she was drenched in sweat and her breathing was erratic. She turned on the light of her room, desperate to banish the darkness that almost swallowed her, and looked around. She was completely alone this time.
She got up and looked at the clock, there were hours until the sun raised and ended this night, but she couldn’t surrender so easily, she had to plan her next move with caution. With a quick flash of her horn she enchanted herself so she didn’t enter the realm of dreams again, that way gaining a few hours of rest, free of fear, thankful for her ability to wake up at will from her dreams for helping her in that crucial time.
Luna turned off the lights, laid down and closed her eyes once again. The darkness of her room was familiar, one that would never frighten her. She knew every dark corner, even the space between the great wardrobe and the ceiling where sometimes spiderwebs formed.
The spiders fled when, without warning, a pair of yellow eyes opened.
“Prey.”
FIN.
