Princess Luna did not have a favorite dreamer.
She stood at the wheel of Il Cielo Notturno, a grand, sleek airship that had sprouted from her own imagination to capture the beauty of the night sky for which it was named. It was not the type of ship that you could whip around the bend of a growing stormfront at a ludicrous speed. Luna was doing it anyway.
You can’t avoid being seen in an airship battle—you’re flying enormous balloons around in the sky; stealth isn’t an option. What matters is who can strike first and hardest. That might mean firing your cannons before being in effective range in order to cause panic, or cutting ballast to make you more maneuverable.
This was a “My Ship Might Pull Itself Apart” plan, so Luna was confident that she still had the element of surprise.
She braced herself as she pulled out of the turn. The gondola swung down; she had to spin the wheel to keep herself from completely losing control.
“Avast ye, pirate scum!” Luna boomed. The Royal Canterlot Voice still had some proper uses. “Surrender thyself or prepare to be boarded!”
Someone shouted something from the other ship, The Hyacinthe Crest, but Luna couldn’t make it out. Amateur.
There wasn’t a white flag, of course, so Luna pressed a lever forward to arm the fore cannons.
“We shall give thee to the count of three to lower thine colors!” she yelled. “One!”
She leaned into the wheel, absolutely certain that no surrender was forthcoming.
“Two!”
A figure came into focus on the other deck, doing...something. They certainly weren’t at the wheel.
Luna reached for the lever.
“Three!”
Luna shot the canons. Her aim was perfect.
She missed the other ship completely.
The Crest had split into two pieces.
The gondola was dropping like a rock and the blimp, free from its ballast, was careening straight up. Her ship had nearly reached where the other had been moments before and she yanked on the wheel to slow herself.
Her mistake was made immediately apparent. Ropes—lots of them—waved loose in the sky between the still-rising blimp and the still-falling gondola.
Before she could correct her course or even speed up again to try to power through, they’d tangled in her own rigging. Two sharp jerks came in quick succession. The first down and back, and the second up. Luna was thrown against the wheel and then pitched backwards. She had to spread her wings to keep from tumbling all the way to the aft.
As her hooves scraped along the deck, she heard a jolly laugh and saw a shadow move in a flash of lightning from the nearby dark clouds.
Captain Celaeno, terror of the skies, thudded to the deck with the flap of a coat.
“Haha! Who’s being boarded now, Admiral Luna?”
Luna grimaced and regained her balance, using magic to adjust her hat. “I do not think that is how ships work.”
The beaky grin was infuriatingly charming. “Maybe not out there. But we’re not out there, are we?”
“Do not forget to whom you are speaking.” Luna hunkered down, preparing to engage. She tilted her head to keep a wary eye on Celaeno. “Lest you find yourself in the stocks!” Even as she spoke she dove forward, gripping the hilt of a sword in her teeth to draw and swing it all at once.
Their swords met with a resounding clang.
Luna’s weight was distributed differently than any bipedal creature’s, and she used that to wrench their swords aside and ram her shoulder into Celaeno’s stomach.
But whatever advantage Luna had from years of practice, Celaeno made up for it by just being really good. She was airborne even before Luna realized that her shoulder had whiffed, and she needed to dive and roll out of the way to avoid a talon to the face.
“You are as wily as ever,” Luna said as the sword floated free from her mouth and into position. “But it will take more than that to avoid your fate!”
Even as she spoke, she saw the snap of a wrist and something glinted in the air between them. The breath caught in her throat and she whipped her sword in front of herself. She danced back a step, which gave her enough time to flick her blade and knock the knife wide.
Celaeno had closed the distance already and Luna was wildly out of form. She ducked and swerved long enough to pull her defenses up, but she couldn’t keep them there for long. She needed space. She picked her best opportunity, locked their blades together, and spun the hilt up towards Celaeno’s face. The Captain was finally forced to retreat, but she took a swipe as the defense shifted. Luna was expecting it and ducked out of the way.
Hips, Luna mused, were the difference between bipeds and quadrupeds in swordfighting. They were, in many ways, the key to everything. Ponies, when grounded at least, fought like solid oaks. Unicorns and alicorns moreso, since they could hold their swords in fists of magic and didn’t need to reposition to settle their vision. It was hard to see when you were whipping your neck around.
Bipeds like Celaeno, though, were entirely different. Luna had learned over time that their hips gave away their intentions. They were the first thing to shift with their balance, and that motion translated into both arm and leg movement. But as much of a drawback as that would seem, it gave them so many more options in return. They shifted and weaved and bent and flexed in ways that were entrancing, if you looked too close. Trying to strike Captain Celaeno was like trying to stab the air itself.
They traded exploratory strikes, prodding defenses and breaking apart just as quickly. With magic, Luna should have had an absurd reach advantage, but she kept her sword close. Within arm’s reach, really. The very first time she had extended her blade past that, Celaeno had parried once and Luna had found herself completely without a guard as the sword point rested against her throat. She’d never made a mistake that egregious again.
One of their forays stuck, and the blades scraped together as both of them traced circles in the air. Luna decided to play things fast and loose and pressed forward with a thrust, following close behind the handguard of her blade. Her breath nearly stopped when she saw Celaeno’s sword point inches from her eye. They had both had the same idea. She jerked her head to the side, narrowly avoiding being skewered, and saw that Celaeno had bent out of the way as well. Hips.
They danced apart to catch their breaths at the near-misses. Luna felt something trickle down her cheek. Blood. Celaeno was still flawless, not a feather out of place.
“What’s wrong?” The Captain asked, her chest heaving. “You’re getting slow and desperate. Is your age finally catching up to you?”
Luna smirked and wiped the blood away. The cut was already closed. “Hardly. I have simply been caught off guard with how sloppy you have been. What fun is there to be had in besting an opponent too quickly?”
Witty banter though it was, there was an unsettling amount of truth behind it. Something felt...off. The theatricality of their clashes was still there, but only because Luna had missed some completely unexpected opportunities. As Celaeno tossed her head back with a haughty laugh, Luna steeled herself to prove it.
Celaeno’s blade sang through the air as she snapped it forward and she advanced in a rush. She faltered when Luna didn’t — or didn’t appear to — take the form, which made it simple enough to parry and force the Captain back.
Luna stood at an angle, her sword hovering near her shoulder. It was a stance she didn’t think anyone had taken seriously in nearly two millennia. It gave her relative lateral movement that was unmatched in pony circles, but unless she dramatically shifted her footing she would have a hard time advancing or retreating. On top of that, it opened up nearly the entire length of her body to attack. It was said that the progenitor of this style, Brisk Chaser, was the only unicorn to ever invite his opponent to strike his cutie mark.
A smile crawled across Luna’s face as Celaeno tried to work out what was going on. Luna had so many openings she could reinvigorate a ghost town. But unicorn magic meant that, theoretically, her sword could strike and defend from just about any angle. Luna knew what was going on in Celaeno’s head because she’d thought it all before, ages ago. She’d done those calculations. There were a lot of them to do.
But the Captain, clever as she was, was an improviser at her core. She settled her sword, narrowed her eyes, and repeated her rush. Luna met each strike, and she walked. Like a day in the park. Occasionally she would need to stutter her steps or hop forward a little, but each hoof in front of the next forced Celaeno to pivot, to readjust her balance. Strain was starting to show on her face. Her strikes and parries grew more frantic. And then, finally, she made the mistake that every swordsman who ever faced Brisk Chaser made exactly once.
In a whirl of cloth and feathers, Captain Celaeno spun herself behind Luna.
While magic gave perfect reach, blind spots still existed and they were still exploitable. Celaeno lashed her sword towards her flank. To Luna, it was barely a motion in her periphery, but those traitorous hips had given her intentions away. Luna’s blade flashed into position and pressed Celaeno into a clash. Luna crouched, drew in a sharp breath, and with every muscle in her body, she bucked.
Her hooves struck Celaeno’s chest with a solid thud and she was thrown into the air. She landed hard, rolled, and skidded to a stop against the cabin wall. Her sword stopped a few yards away.
It wasn’t the kind of hit you got up from, but Luna nonetheless hastened her approach and held her sword over the Captain’s groaning form. Celaeno looked up at her, winced, and subtly moved a hand to signal her defeat.
Luna’s mane waved in spite of the wind that blew through Celaeno’s feathers. They both sat at the port side of the Admiral’s ship, Luna leaning against the railing and Celaeno letting her legs dangle into the open air. Before them, the uncanny stormfront churned in place, its clouds shifting and merging and crackling in an intoxicating controlled chaos.
“Are you ready to talk?” Luna asked, turning her gaze toward her friend. Celaeno’s expression snapped away from the distant silence she’d fallen into and she gave a wink that could’ve conquered the skies.
“There’s nothing to talk about. You beat me fair and square, Princess.”
She wasn’t fooling anyone, least of all Luna. “When I travel the dreamscape, I do not choose whose dream to enter by chance and guesswork. I can sense distress and turbulence in dreams. That is why I first visited you all those nights ago.” She lowered her chin and raised her eyebrows, trying to make sure the truth of the matter hit home as hard as she could make it. “And while I cherish our time together, they have not quieted since.”
Celaeno sniffed and shrugged. “Does this look turbulent to you?”
Luna’s eyes flicked to the roiling, lightning-traced clouds before them. Then back to the Captain.
“It’s set dressing,” she insisted. “You know. What makes a sky battle better than a huge storm in the backdrop!”
“Then banish it. Give us some clear skies to sail in.”
They sat in silence for nearly a minute. Celaeno stared down the storm. Her hand tightened on the railing, and she was trying to hide the tension that was building with her efforts. Finally, she relaxed and let out a sigh, but only for an instant. She was back on the defensive almost immediately.
“I am not afraid of him.”
A particularly bright flash illuminated the cloud from within, and the familiar symbol of the Storm King lingered in its fading light. Luna watched it disperse before she responded.
“There is no shame in being afraid of a fearsome foe, especially when they have hurt us. That is what makes them fearsome.”
“He’s gone. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
Luna chuckled. “That is what they always expect me to say. Knowing that the threat has passed but still feeling strong emotion about it creates two competing sets of beliefs that cause significant internal...”
Celaeno was rolling her eyes. “Thanks for the pep talk, and the fight.” She reached her hand out and caught one of the ropes that hung between the two halves of her ship. “But, I’m sure you’re a busy princess, so I’ll let you get back to saving the restless dreamers.” She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes.
As Celaeno dropped out of sight, Luna pursed her lips. She’d be pretty bad at her job if she took the direction of every creature that told her, in so many words, to take a hike. But she was also a master of the realm of dreams, so instead of trying to slide down a rope and potentially embarrassing herself she just hopped up on the railing and stepped out onto the deck of The Crest.
Celaeno landed a second later and nearly lost her footing when she saw Luna. “Uh, excuse me, what are you doing?”
“Claiming my right,” Luna chirped, because the honest answer wouldn’t be taken especially well. “I won the duel, so I’d like to at least look at my prize.”
Judging by the look on Celaeno’s face, that answer wasn’t the right one either. “You really can’t be here.”
Before Luna could make a quip about technically owning the ship now, a voice boomed from the aft cabin.
“SWABBIE!” Luna drew up as Celaeno flinched back. “What do you think you’re doing?”
The door to the cabin burst open and a sharp wind nearly knocked the hat off of Luna’s head. She held it steady with a hoof and hunkered against the gale, then glared up at…
Celaeno.
Captain Celaeno stood proud and stern. She held a book in one hand, and had the other firmly on her hip. Far from her flashy armor and pauldrons, she wore a one-piece jumpsuit and a dull bandanna. “Now what’ve we got here?” She flipped a page in the book with her thumb. “The rules say no guests.”
Luna stood firm, but shot a glance back to the other Celaeno. The real one. She had retreated to the rail and was sitting, partly curled, head bowed. “Yes, Captain.”
“That means anyone who ain’t cargo or crew is a stowaway.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“And what do the rules say about stowaways?”
“We throw ‘em overboard, Captain.”
“Aye, now let’s make sure you’re not as useless as you are stupid.”
The dream was trying to change. Luna felt the familiar tugging as Celaeno’s mind tried to skip the transition, to force her into a new position. She resisted, but it took effort. An ache was already growing in her side.
She hastened to find the right words to speak, the encouragement to assure her friend that she could overcome her fear of the now-sealed Storm King. She sought her answers in the figure of the nightmare—for that is what it was—before her. A hole, a crack in the armor, a hidden memory to hold close and use as a weapon against the formerly overwhelming foe.
Then she saw it.
Or rather, she didn’t see it. On each sleeve, where there would have been the sigils of the Storm King, there was just static. The book, too. The cover was blurred and smeared, with no defined features to match the example they’d stowed in the castle library.
Luna cursed herself for her ignorance and hubris. If anyone understood Celaeno’s fears, it was Celaeno herself. If she said she wasn’t afraid of the Storm King, then she wasn’t. She took a deep breath, and released her hold.
The world jerked into a new position. Luna stood at the end of a short plank. Her wings had been yanked up and tied together none too gently. A sword point hovered at her throat.
“See there, Swabbie?” the nightmare said, waving the tip of the blade dangerously close to Luna’s windpipe. “This is what happens when we don’t follow the rules.”
Luna ignored her and moved her head to spot Celaeno standing far back, holding her arm and looking away. She felt the sword draw a bead of blood, but didn’t budge. “This isn’t you, and you know it.”
Celaeno looked up, something between anger and sorrow causing her beak to crinkle. “Maybe for now. Who says it won’t be again?”
“You do.” Luna looked at the nightmare. She’d become sluggish while Celaeno’s mind was focused elsewhere, but her foot was inching towards the plank to send it—and Luna—plummeting into the clouds below. “Sometimes, we all fear what we may become, and what we may do. And while we can’t let that fear control us, we must hold it close, and use it to motivate us into vigilance so that we never act that way again.”
Celaeno gave a short, solemn laugh. “And what would you know about that?” She looked up and met Luna’s eye. Her half-lidded, sardonic eye. “Oh,” she said. “Okay. That was a stupid question.”
“Yes,” Luna said with a smile. “It was a very stupid ques—”
She let out a yelp as the board came loose and she dropped.
Her first instinct was to spread her wings, but a sharp pinch in her back reminded her that they were tied together. Leave it to a pirate to tie a perfect knot in her dreams.
There were a few reasons she wasn’t overly worried. First, this was a dream and she was Princess Luna. She had half a dozen ways to toss herself back into safety. Second, there wasn’t actually any ground beneath them. Even if she were somehow trapped here, Celaeno would eventually wake up and Luna would be booted back out into the real world. Third, she trusted her friend.
Proving once again that Luna could be a good judge of character when she wanted to be, a figure leapt off the deck of the Crest and shot through the air like a dart. Celaeno cleared the distance between them in no time at all. A dagger flashed in her hand, and as their bodies collided with a bit less grace than either of them would admit to later, she cut clean through the bonds with a single slash.
She slung an arm around Luna’s neck, and Luna in turn tucked her hoof under the Captain’s arm. With a flare of her wings, they both slowed and she allowed the weight to turn them in a wide circle.
“If I could make the decision again,” Celaeno said, voice raised above the rushing air, “I’d do the same thing. Join the Storm King.”
Luna gave a few good flaps to gain them some altitude, then resumed her glide. “Do you think that it was the right decision, then?”
“What else was I going to do? I’m good, but not take-on-an-entire-army good.” Celaeno mused on that for a time. “I’d become like her again. If it meant protecting my crew.”
A trace of lightning arced along the slope of the storm. Luna spoke slowly, chose her words carefully. “When we think of mistakes we have made, we often limit our imaginations to the one moment that most obviously marked our error, particularly those we had little control over, and we wonder ‘What if?’” She increased the angle of her bank and readjusted her grip. “But those choices are not made in isolation. Our lives are a constant flow, and the worst decision we make is not the one that starts us on our path.” She glanced down at Celaeno hanging from her side. She looked pensive.
“So, what is?”
“We fail when we decide that compromise requires that we sacrifice all of one thing for all of another.” She tilted her head back and closed her eyes, feeling the surreal air currents ripple her feathers and fur. “I decided that I must sacrifice my relationship with my sister to gain the recognition I desired.”
Celaeno stared up at the ship, which was slowly growing closer as Luna gained altitude. “I guess that means for me, I decided to sacrifice my crew’s freedom and happiness to save their lives.”
Luna nodded. “The correct path is not to deal in such absolutes. We do what we must to live with ourselves, and then we struggle to keep at least a little of everything we want.”
“Are you saying I should have lied to the Storm King and then rebelled later without needing a bunch of ponies to sing at me about it?”
“No,” Luna said with a slight smile. “I’m saying that you’ll do that next time.”
They flew in silent contemplation, each thinking their own thoughts, right up until Celaeno looked up at her and, perhaps, realized that flying with a passenger, even in a dream, really wasn’t an easy thing to do.
“Sorry,” Celaeno said. She still held the dagger in one hand. It dangled loose in her fingers, but never dropped. “That you have to deal with my issues.”
“Some of us have real jobs,” Luna said. “This just so happens to be mine.”
They made a full circuit in silence, wind whipping past their ears. Then they both burst into a fit of uncontrolled laughter, which stuttered to a stop only when Luna nearly dropped her burden. Then it picked up again for a few more seconds.
“Hey.” Celaeno wiped her eye with the hand that held the dagger. “Wanna go kick my butt again?”
Captain “Nightmare” Celaeno, bane of receiving departments the world over, finally gave up waiting. She snapped her book closed and turned on her heel. Her peg thudded particularly hard against the wood of the deck as she headed for the aft.
At the door to the cabin, she paused. Her chest rose as she breathed in the thin air. Her shoulders dropped back. Her body relaxed, and she heaved a heavy sigh. She flung herself to the side just as a dagger planted itself in the door.
Luna careened out of the sky, Celaeno hanging from her hoof. She spread her wings to pull up a yard from the deck of The Crest, and at the bottom of her arc she whipped her arm forward and threw Celaeno.
The nightmare barely unsheathed her saber fast enough to block. The sheer force pushed her back a step, but she managed to guide Celaeno to the side and stagger away. Celaeno used the momentum to twist her feet against the cabin wall. She pushed off with her talon and, before the nightmare could properly turn to face her, swung her crystal peg into her shoulder. The nightmare was thrown back and only just managed to keep her feet as Celaeno and Luna thudded to the deck on either side.
She glanced between the two of them, then stood straighter and ran her hand over her bandanna. “So. It’s mutiny, then.” She shifted her shoulder where she’d been hit, then reached across her body and held that wrist. With a passive tilt of her head and only the slightest wince of discomfort, she lifted the arm up and tugged. There was a quiet pop that sent a shudder down Luna’s spine, and then the nightmare was flexing her arm and flicking her sword to the side.
“Get off my ship!” Celaeno moved first, closing the distance and throwing a series of quick swipes. The nightmare flicked each blow aside as if she were putting a rowdy student in their place. She never moved her feet until she twisted around a stab, sank to a crouch and spun into a backhand so savage that even through a block, Celaeno was lifted off the ground and pushed away.
Luna was already on her way in as Celaeno stumbled to a stop. She’d nearly taken the risk of leading her sword, but she decided on caution instead. She advanced with her guard up and struck while her back was turned; the nightmare didn’t even need to look to block the first swing. By the third, she’d turned around, and as the fourth clash rang her hand flashed between the blades and closed on Luna’s snout. She gasped and pulled herself free, backing away on instinct.
The nightmare wrenched Luna’s sword aside and drove its point into the deck. Then she was inside her guard, which was now large enough for a fully grown Ornithian, for example, to swing a sword in. The breath caught in her throat.
“Luna!”
Something glinted in the corner of her eye. She didn’t think. She snatched it out of the air and yanked it in front of herself just in time to keep her head. It took a moment for her to recognize Celaeno’s sword. She gritted her teeth and shifted her telekinetic grip down to the hilt.
Celaeno herself sprinted across the deck, empty hand outstretched. Luna only barely caught a glance of her around the nightmare’s body, but it was enough to get the hint. She released her hold on her own sword to focus on keeping herself in one piece, and Celaeno hit it running. She ripped the blade free of the boards and shouted with the effort of a massive swing.
The nightmare reached down to her empty sheath, gripped at nothing, and pulled a second saber out of thin air.
She met Celaeno’s attack not with a simple guard or parry, but with a full on battering. The Captain’s guard flew open, and before she could reassert it, the nightmare jabbed her in the sternum with her wooden peg leg, lifted her up, and threw her straight at Luna, who had just started to renew her attack.
Luna faltered and moved her sword aside so as not to impale Celaeno, but they crashed together hard enough to send them both sprawling across the deck.
They groaned as Celaeno rolled off of her and struggled up to one knee. Panting, they watched the nightmare readjust her stance for the second sword.
“You have a very active imagination,” Luna muttered.
Celaeno forced a chuckle. “Comes with the whole pirate thing.” They swapped their swords back, but Luna held both for a moment as Celaeno rubbed her wrist. “So, do I win a prize for this? Most creative dream to ever try to kill you?”
A gust of wind rocked the gondola. Luna pushed herself to her hooves. “Almost,” she said. “Pinkie Pie has nightmares, too.”
It took a second for that to settle in, but Celaeno winced. “Fair enough. I’m going to do something stupid.”
“We are out of good ideas so I suppose yours will have to suffice. What do you need from me?”
“Don’t die and follow my lead.”
“Very well.”
Celaeno grabbed her sword and skipped forward to meet the nightmare. They hung at the outside of their range for a moment, but by some trigger Luna couldn’t see they jolted forward to meet each other.
Luna had never seen a swordfight quite like this. Far from classical Ornithian sparring, they were throwing in suckerpunches and kicks, and their footwork was a cross between positioning and trying to stomp on each other’s talons.
Luna hung back, eyes tracing the flow of the movements. Now that Celaeno was between them, she could range her weapon further out, sweeping it in to close a hole in her defenses or take an opportune strike to throw off the nightmare’s guard. In return, the Captain held her ground, punishing any effort on the nightmare’s part to disengage and charge Luna down.
The Equestrian Swordfighting League would need to be revived after this. Luna felt rusty, barely able to follow the writhing tangle of limbs and steel enough to keep Celaeno alive.
The nightmare crossed her swords to block one of Celaeno’s blows and twisted her wrist, holding the guard with one hand and flicking the other out for a killing blow. Luna jabbed her sword up between the two to catch the attack, but a sudden shift in the balance had the nightmare staving off both of them with one sword. The other whipped out and down.
Blood hit the deck.
A long, nasty-looking gash ran up Celaeno’s sword arm. She was still fighting, but her grip was shaky and her movements slowed.
The nightmare redoubled her assault, and Luna found herself less and less able to keep up. Feints now littered the exchange. Stabs that Luna couldn’t do much about came with more frequency. Celaeno was forced to twist and bend around more and more, but Luna pressed harder on the attack to minimize the danger. Her every foray was parried without a thought.
Each push knocked Celaeno’s sword further. She blocked one strike with both hands on the hilt, then switched to exclusively fighting left-handed, clutching the right near her chest. Luna bit her lip. She wasn’t sure what the Captain’s plan was, but she wondered if it was just ‘Let’s figure this out as we go.’ That seemed right about up her alley, but it wouldn’t bode well for the rest of this fight.
She was yanked from her thoughts when Celaeno’s sword was flung from her hand, high into the air. Luna managed to stave off two killing strikes, but the nightmare crashed an elbow into Celaeno’s beak hard enough to turn her head.
Then she flanked right, into what was now a blind spot.
Luna felt a pang of recognition. There was Captain Celaeno. Defenseless. Barely able to even see who she was fighting. Out of position. She smiled.
The nightmare swung one sword at her throat. Luna put everything she had into a parry. The second sword arced up from even further in Celaeno’s periphery, tracing a deadly line that would open her belly. Luna wouldn’t be able to stop it.
Somewhere from beyond the grave, Brisk Chaser laughed. Celaeno leaned back, took a deep breath, and pulled her knee all the way up to her chest.
A dull clank split the silence as the nightmare’s blade struck Celaeno’s gemstone leg. The nightmare glared, but Celaeno was drawing her bloodied arm away from her chest. The dagger that she had planted in the door earlier glinted in the muted light. She twisted her body and thrust it forward, and the nightmare bent to the side. Celaeno spun the dagger a quarter turn, tensed her arm, and ripped it up across the nightmare’s body.
The grip on the sword Luna had locked into place slackened and she took the opportunity to flick it away. The nightmare fell back, her suit torn, but Celaeno pursued and lifted her good arm to the sky, talons splayed. Luna, desperately hoping she was reading the situation right, flipped her sword around and into the open hand.
Celaeno gripped the hilt, planted her feet, and brought her arm down with everything she had.
The storm exploded.
Wisps of dark clouds evaporated into sparkling sunlight. The nightmare stared at a point neither of them could see, somewhere far off in the distance. She staggered back and bumped into the railing. Neither Luna nor Celaeno lowered their guard until she sat and let the remaining sword clatter to the ground. She frowned and closed her eyes.
“I kept them safe,” she said. Her voice cracked and warbled with an emotion that hadn’t been present before. “Didn’t I do the right thing?”
“Yeah,” Celaeno said, sliding the dagger into its sheath and releasing Luna’s sword back to her control. “Your job’s done, now.”
The nightmare shook her head and a sniffle escaped the stony face she still tried to wear. Celaeno crossed the deck and sat next to her. They stayed that way for a second before the nightmare spoke again. “I want to stay.”
Celaeno watched her, curiosity and empathy battling for supremacy on her face. Luna sat some distance away, the thrill of battle draining from her body, leaving her legs wobbly and her head aching. She was done here, but she didn’t want to leave yet. Not until it was really over.
“I’ll remember you.” Celaeno took the nightmare’s hand in her own. “Not that I could forget a face as pretty as yours.”
The nightmare laughed, but winced. She grew somber. “You promise?”
Captain Celaeno squeezed her hand and, in place of an answer, she tilted her head back and started an old shanty that Luna was surprised to recognize.
“So fill up your glasses for those who were kind.”
The nightmare hung her head, nodding, and filled in the chorus. “Goodbye, fare thee well. Goodbye, fare thee well.”
“And drink to the laddies we’re leavin’ behind.”
“Hoorah, me boys, we’re homeward bound.”
They swayed together. The wind carried their song through the sky. It soaked into the boards of the ship, filled the void where the stormfront used to be. It spread up and out, tangled with the ropes, circled around Il Cielo. It swept down through the clouds below, out into that mysterious nowhere of Celaeno’s mind.
Yes, Luna decided. She would remember this for the rest of her days.
“Our anchor we'll weigh, our sails we will set.”
“Goodbye, fare thee well. Goodbye, fare thee well.”
“The friends we are leaving we'll never forget.”
The nightmare’s hand slipped away. She leaned back. Her form blurred. Her body relaxed. She heaved one last, heavy sigh, and let herself fall off the edge of the ship.
The song ended there. The last response went unsung, and no matter how much Luna ached to finish it, she knew it wasn’t her place. Instead, she stood and walked over to Celaeno’s side, tearing a piece of her coat and wrapping it around the cut on her arm.
“Are you alright?”
Celaeno frowned, perhaps looking for that same far-off point the nightmare had seen at the end. “I think,” she said, and then stopped. She closed her eyes and took in a deep, steadying breath. “I think I just watched myself die, so maybe...gimme a few minutes to, y’know, deal with that.”
Luna nodded. She tied off her makeshift bandage and sat down again. She stretched a wing out, and Celaeno, after a glance, shimmied over against her side.
The sky was so incredibly, vibrantly blue.
