Violet was gone before Fluttershy or Twilight woke up that morning, the only trace being a simple picture of her crash site, and the image of the sun setting stuck to the door with a small smear of wax. Twilight had awoken first, rising with the sun as she had for years. She noticed the note first, and then decided to wake Fluttershy so they could perhaps get breakfast together. When her pegasus friend didn't answer, Twilight cautiously entered. Upon finding Fluttershy not in her room she began to panic, talking to herself about what the worst-case scenario would look like, gradually getting louder until even Spike woke up because of her. This, in turn, woke Fluttershy, who quickly came up from the basement to assure Twilight of her safety. And as soon as Twilight was calmed down, the questions began to flow.

"Fluttershy?" Twilight asked softly. "Why were you in the basement?"

Meekly, the pegasus answered, "I heard Violet crying, and I just... went to comfort her."

Twilight stared in stunned silence, urging Fluttershy to explain.

"I couldn't sleep last night," she began. "It was probably around midnight when I heard Violet come up from her room and use the bathroom. When she went back down, it was quiet for a bit..."

The echo of Violet's song echoed in her mind for a moment. The haunting melody she could only understand the emotions of replayed once more, and a shiver ran down her spine, making her feathers puff outwards. "Twilight, Violet had a harmony moment last night..."

"What‽" Twilight blurted, nearly leaping out of her seat. "What was it like? What language did she sing in?"

Fluttershy frowned. "I-it... It was very sad... I couldn't understand the words... but it was definitely sad and lonely. I-I had to comfort her..."

A knock at the door interrupted their moment. Twilight opened the door with her magic, allowing Applejack and Rainbow to enter.

"Twilight, Violet had a harmony moment last night," Rainbow announced as the door closed behind them.

"I know," the alicorn replied. "Fluttershy was just telling me about it. But how did you know?"

"Couldn't sleep, so I took a midnight flight around town. When I heard singing coming from your place I stopped to listen," Rainbow answered casually.

"More to the point of why we're here, I think she's plannin' on runnin' away from us," Applejack said.

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Luna stood once more in the forest where she arrived. Sunrise was yet a little ways off, but would inevitably come. In the dirt, she saw the bloodstain she'd left in the dirt from the Light Sacrifice. The shape it made in the dirt reminded her of the face of Riven, as though marking this place as hers. She turned away when she thought she saw it blink at her.

"So, what brings us all the way back out here?" her Ghost asked.

"First thing's first, I'm checking to see if the ship's long-range scanner is still usable," Luna said as she slid down the side of the crater and broke into a jog at the bottom. "Trying to scan for Glimmer deposits would be rough with your effective range of only one mile, and our current lack of a Sparrow."

"And what do we do if it's shot?" the Ghost followed.

"We improvise and break apart a weapon to make the bits we need for one," Luna said.

She couldn't help but see the ship that once was when she hopped up onto its mangled hull. The nose was impacted so far back that there was essentially no cockpit anymore, and she was certain there was a bloodstain in there. The engines' turbine caps were shattered and they too were crushed at the front end. The only thing that had survived was the cargo bay, and she was lucky for that much. But just in front of the cargo bay was a panel with the long-range scanner hiding within.

She sighed, "Ghost? I need the plasma cutter and my welding mask. In the mean time, could you set up the fabricator?"

A wicked looking tool with three prongs converging from the sides of a cylinder to the middle at a point materialized with the requested mask. Silently, she began her work. The hiss of the plasma cutter and a sound like tearing paper filled the clearing as the sun peeked over the horizon. Bit by bit, Luna cut away small pieces of the hull, eventually making a hole in the hull large enough for her to fit through. She tore away the panel of hull with her knife, then started cutting her way through the more complicated internal bits of the ship.

The process took a few hours, but nothing interrupted her work. Bits of piping and thick cables were cut away in the slow process of melting through the tungsten-alloy bits of the ship. Once she finally broke through to the hull, Luna hopped down into the cramped space. Her Ghost followed, projecting light at her goal. She opened the panel, finding its condition to be one of heavy damage. Several key components were either corroded or broken.

"Yeah, sounds about right," Luna sighed, yanking the device from the panel. A few of the broken bits fell off, clattering noisily on the metal floor. "Welp. We're gonna need to tear a weapon apart for the repair."

With that, she gathered the broken bits and jumped back out of the wreckage. From there, she stepped over to a large, boxy device. The glass sides allowed one to see its inner workings: a circuitboard platform with a few robotic arms ending in needle-like points. She unfolded the built-in table of the device, and laid out a few of her weapons on it. One sniper rifle, Raze Lighter, and the broken rocket launcher.

"Which one are we going to scrap?" her Ghost asked solemnly.

"I basically never use sniper rifles, but if I scrap Raze Lighter, I'll get the material needed to both make the scanner and repair Gjallarhorn. But it would also reduce my effectiveness should I come across another situation where I need it, like with the Taken Mutae," Luna thought out loud. "I could scrap Gjallarhorn and not reduce my combat effectiveness, but that was a gift from Saladin."

"I think Raze Lighter is the play. Gjallarhorn has reduced many of our enemies into cinders and bloodstains," her Ghost suggested. "If we can repair it, I think we should."

"Fair reasoning," Luna said. "Let's do it."

The other two weapons were transmatted away, leaving only the sword on the table. From there, Luna began disassembling the weapon, starting from the battery in the pommel, then to the crystal in the cross guard, and finally the blade. Her Ghost then began firing a beam of light at the components, converting them into small, luminous blue cubes.

Luna smiled as she thought about ~Twilight's~ possible reaction to seeing Glimmer for the first time. The pony would no doubt be floored by the transmutable matter, and would demand to learn everything about it. But to Luna, it was mundane. It was the main currency of the City, and a valuable material for making armor, weapons, and munitions. It was important, but it wasn't really special either.

Luna then opened the door into the fabricator's main chamber, placing the small pile of Glimmer on the circuit board before closing it again. She then began carefully disassembling the scanner down to the core, and finding a microchip hiding within. She smiled and inserted the chip into a small slot on the fabricator's controls. The display showed a small pop-up asking if she wanted to make the item listed in the chip's data, prompting her to hit the 'yes' button. The machine whirred to life, the mechanical arms moving about and poking the cubes of Glimmer and zapping them with electricity. Slowly, the new scanner began to take shape.

"So," her Ghost murmured, as though unsure what he wanted to say.

"Sew buttons," Luna said in reply. "What's on your mind?"

"Ahamkara, huh?" he asked.

Luna frowned a little. "Yeah... Ahamkara..."

"So that... what did you call it...?" Her Ghost paused to think. "That 'Light Sacrifice'... was that...?"

"I made a wish," Luna said curtly. "The Ahamkara granted it."

"And the Taken Mutae was also caused by a wish?" he inquired.

"Yeah," she said.

"Then what happened with Riven?" he asked.

"I don't remember," she growled harshly. "I don't want to remember."

Her Ghost looked at her sternly. "Guardian, you know I'm always here for you, right? No matter what happens, now or then. The Dreaming City wasn't your fault. It won't happen again here!"

"Yes, it was, and yes it will!" Luna snapped, glaring daggers at her Ghost. "I just need to find somewhere that no one will look for me. I can't hurt anyone else if there's no one around to hurt. That's why I'm getting the scanner. I need enough Glimmer to build a new ship, and I have the means to acquire it. The longer I'm here, the more danger these ponies are in. You saw that Taken thing!"

"Luna, that's not—"

"Not gonna work? I'll make it work!" Luna hissed. "These ponies have been nothing but kind to me. They healed me and fed me and gave my Light back after the Ahamkara took it from me. I want to protect them from me. I will protect them from me."

Her Ghost remained silent. No, Guardian... That's not it...

Luna checked the fabricator and found the scanner finished and ready to go. Upon picking the device from the fabrication chamber, she remembered a key detail about most pieces of technology: batteries. Unfortunately for her, the scanner's battery would need to be charged before it was any use to her. Normally, she'd just ask Mae to charge it, since her attunement with Arc Light made her essentially a giant walking battery herself. Alas, her Titan friend was not here, so she'd have to figure out how to charge the scanner on her own.

"I'd kill to have even a little bit of Arc Light right now," she grumbled to herself as she stared at the broken fragments of the old scanner.

——————————

(Recommended Listening)

Luna sat upon her balcony once more, watching the moon. The air was beginning to chill, the last remnants of the winter's cold relegated to the later nights of mid-spring before summer thawed it all away. Her thoughts were once again back in the Everfree, on the Being who'd arrived there just shy of a month ago. Yes, once again Violet was on her mind. Each new night brought Luna an unusual anxiety because of her. Would she be able to see Violet's dreams? If she did, what would she see? Would she see more of her trauma? Would she finally see a happy memory?

The clock in her room struck twelve. Like clockwork, she stood and turned back into her room. She hopped up onto her bed, settling in for her nightly duty as she stepped otherways.

Immediately she could feel that everything was wrong. The dark of the Dreamscape seemed darker than normal, the light of the dreams seemed to be drowning in it, suffocating in it, like a candle approaching the end of its wick. She could feel each and every dream pulling at her, calling out for help, the ponies within begging for safety. The blackened star of Violet's dreams had begun affecting the entire Dreamscape, just as Luna had feared.

Black tendrils of umbral flame began to darken a particular set of dreams, as though Violet were reaching out in her sleep for them. Luna glided over to the dreams, taking care to not touch the darkfire. With the power of Violet's magic, combined with her ability to kick her from the Dreamscape, Luna didn't want to find out what touching it would do. As she approached, she felt the familiar sensation of the Elements.

"Luna!" called the un-panicked voice of Twilight.

That was enough to convince Luna to enter the dream.

Within the dream, she found Twilight's library ablaze. The entire tree was up in black flames, and Twilight was standing by with surprising calm. A dream copy of Fluttershy, Spike, and her owl were outside with her. But perhaps most curiously, so was a crate that looked to belong to Violet. Upon noticing Luna enter, Twilight turned to her with an expression with gravity to rival her sister's.

"Luna, I would have written you, but things are a bit hectic," the younger alicorn said. "With how much magic is around us, I don't know how long I can stay asleep."

"What information do you have for us, young Twilight?" Luna asked quickly.

Twilight winced as she lit her horn, levitating a small stack of papers up to Luna. "Yesterday after Violet's battle with the Carnivorous Mutae, she showed us these, in addition to a recorded video of her in combat. I still find it hard to believe, but Violet can return from death, and has done so many times."

Luna looked over the stacks of images, seeing for the first time what Violet was willing to say but couldn't. She recognized the metal being with the horn, drawn as an Ace of Spades, and the black-haired male, and the dragon. She looked the stack over multiple times, just to make sure she remembered the details.

"We're out of time," Twilight grunted as she clutched her horn in pain. "Go to Fluttershy's dream... She has more to say..."

With that, Luna felt the dream collapse in on itself, fading away like the afterimage of the sun on the back of one's eyelids. For the briefest moment, the sound of Twilight screaming echoed in the Dreamscape, and the darkness thickened. Immediately following was a rush of cold dread that made the feathers on her wings puff up. Luna felt her heart pounding at her chest and her breath catch in her throat. The magic of the dragonoid Violet was running unfettered through the Dreamscape.

Knowing there was no time to waste, Luna hopped into the dream that radiated with Kindness.

She found herself in the Everfree Bog, where the young pegasus Fluttershy stood crying. The water of the bog ran black with the umbral flames of Violet's curse magic, and the bodies of scores of animals were left to bleed in the blight. The corpses were all coated in holes that looked out into the Dreamscape, and the world of the dream was already close to collapse. She could see a dream copy of Twilight comforting her, but the pegasus was beside herself with grief.

"Young Fluttershy, fret not! This is but a malicious dream!" Luna called as she touched down in the grass.

Fluttershy spun around, wiping the tears from her eyes. "I know, but we're out of time. Listen!"

The dream twitched as the sound of Violet's song began to play through the dreamscape. Luna looked up as she listened, seeing a shower of flaming debris coming down from the sky over Ponyville. In the distance, the entirety of Canterlot was enveloped in a sphere of black, and more like it were forming everywhere she looked. The world began to scream in pain, and the dream cut out before the song could finish.

Once more, the Dreamscape echoed with the sound of Fluttershy's scream as the dream imploded. As she turned to hop into another dream, she saw all four remaining dreams of the Elements engulfed in the black flames of Violet's curse. Before she could hop in and try to salvage at least one, all four burnt to cinders, the screams of the four Element Bearers filling the Dreamscape. Luna cursed as Violet's curse magic only grew stronger and thrashed out into the dark, reaching for more dreams.

"Help!"

There was no mistaking that voice. Violet was calling out into the dark, praying for a miracle to save her. Her nightmare was beyond her ability to control, but she could still offer that final piece of defiance. Luna flared her magic and dove headlong into the blighted dream.

The world was different. She could see the city from Violet's drawings in Twilight's dream. A pale sphere hung low over the city, as though protecting it from some ancient evil beyond the walls. Around her, she could see she was in a courtyard of some kind. The sun was just beginning to set here, and the shadow of the sphere enveloped everything around her. Off to her right, she saw Violet with two others of her kind. Both she'd seen in Violet's drawings.

All three were out of their armor. One of them was barely wearing clothing, much of her pale peach skin was left exposed. Only her bust, groin, and lower face were covered by anything, and the cloth there seemed especially thin. Her eyes weren't luminous as Violet's, but they still seemed to shine like arcane fire. A black mark much like a Cutie Mark was etched into her skin just between her breasts: a simple rose. On her arm, just below her shoulder, was a similar black mark, this one a fox.

The other had pale blue skin much like Violet, but radiated a completely different vibe. Her purple hair, despite being in the same style as Violet's, seemed almost stuck there by static electricity. The being seemed to have the same aura as a lightning storm. She wore what was likely a designer dress, judging by how luxurious the wine-red fabric was and how it accentuated her natural curves. On her arm, in the same place as her comrades, was a black fox mark.

And then there was Violet, who looked drop-dead gorgeous in her own right. She wore a stunning midnight-blue dress of her own that hugged her curves in a way that would make Generosity green with envy, and sparkled as though it contained the stars. Though the dress covered her entire body, some of the fabric was translucent, allowing her to see the natural shimmer of the auroras on her skin. The sleeves of the dress also played into the illusion, making it appear as though Violet were wearing elbow-length gloves when the whole thing was a single article of clothing.

Luna found herself completely stunned, unable to form words, or even thoughts. This being, even though she didn't know her species' name, had her utterly captivated. She found herself tempted to call Violet a siren because of her impossible beauty, but that would give sirens far more credit than they deserved.

Only after a few moments of staring star-struck did she manage to shake herself free. Only then did Luna see that beneath the dress, and even through the dress, Violet was developing scales. Violet looked up to her comrades, pleading for help, but both of them were growing scales too, and neither seemed bothered. Instead, both simply smiled unnaturally wide, sinister smiles as they began to transform into the same dragonoid form Violet took. Violet screamed in horror and backed away, looking up to Luna as she finally noticed her.

Luna reached out and pulled Violet into her embrace, lighting her horn to dispel the dream...

Only the dream refused.

The dragonoid without the rose mark lunged forwards, lashing out with its stingers. Luna cast a barrier, on both herself and Violet. Violet, in turn, called upon her magic and placed the sphere of blinding purple light around them. The dragonoid bounced off the bubble as an arrow would a stone wall. In response it growled and charged itself with lightning and launched itself at the bubble again. The bubble deflected the creature again.

The rose-marked dragonoid caught fire and rained down tiny sparks that turned into miniature suns. Though they were stopped by the bubble, the heat seemed to be enough to damage it, and small cracks began to form in the sphere. In response, both of the dragonoids charged forwards to attack and tear down the sphere.

Luna charged her horn and cast black lightning on the two of them, but found that they were both immune. The lightning channeled through them, doing no harm to either one. Fear began to cloud Luna's mind as she tried to search her memory for a spell that could defeat them, or at least do something.

Violet stood once more, shedding the protection of her wings. Her body began to rapidly transform, scales growing in and tearing through the fabric of her dress. Her magic was flaring to a level akin to when she'd used her curse. She spoke in Equestrian: "You are safe here. I will protect you."

The dream glitched onto a harsh desert planet, where the sand-dunes had been melted into glass by intense heat. The dragonoid with the rose mark shot forwards, shattering the bubble with a flaming hammer and stabbed her with a stinger. Though the venom began to work immediately, Luna cast a spell on herself to slow her heart to slow the venom. She had to remain here in this nightmare to help Violet. If she could help Violet overcome the dragon, the Dreamscape would heal; Violet would heal.

The last thing she saw before the hallucinogen began to take effect was Violet with the shield, screaming in her language in a voice not her own, the same as the first time. The curse immediately took its tribute, the shield disappearing, and dozens of wounds opening up and spraying blood everywhere on the glass. A moment later, everything was enveloped in blinding purple light.

Then the venom truly kicked in. Her nethers heated up, and her vision began to swim as it had in the previous dream. Another sting from the other dragonoid only quickened the process. She could feel herself dripping against the glass, unable to feel anything but the growing heat between her legs. Immediately her mind conjured images of Violet beginning to massage her wings, ruffling her feathers in a way that made her moan. She tried to spread her legs, to signal that she was ready to be taken, but Violet's own legs kept her clamped painfully shut.

Luna woke once more, covered in sweat and painfully aware of what just happened. Again she found herself reaching for her notebook, writing down the details of what she saw, from the descriptions of her friends to the fact that they, too, transformed into the murderous dragonoids. But one detail stuck in her mind: when the other two stung her, she still saw Violet. She didn't see the other two in their original forms as she had when she fought Violet's corrupted form. No, she only saw Violet.

It seems the venom of these dragonoids cannot induce desire, and can instead only inflame that which is already present, she wrote. After this exploration of Violet's dreams, I can be fairly certain that my feelings for her are my own, and have merely been roused by my experiences within those dreams. There is yet room for doubt, but that possibility can only be explored with Violet by my side.

She set the notebook down and got up from her bed. She set out candles again, and began the process of drawing up a bath. The whole time, one question remained at the forefront of her mind:

What are you, Violet?

Author's Note

A reference image for the dragonoid forms of Luna and her fireteam
Artist can be found here.