Luna floated above an ocean of doors against the night sky. Each one glowed, as if a star had come down to the world and lingered. The alicorn wore no regalia for this duty. Her wings did not flap, though she drifted among the doors without any true movement. Her eyes stared beyond them, searching.

In the waking world, the Princess of the Night laid atop her bed, wearing her tiara and silver necklace. Her loyal Night Guards stood beside the bed, struggling not to fall asleep and appear as another door. She did not begrudge them this failing; every guard faltered once. Once, and never again. Her mere appearance in their dreams would frighten them awake for the rest of the night.

Luna could smell the strong, bitter coffee Nightshade quietly sipped and passed around the room, even as removed as she was. It served as a tenuous connection to the waking world, her sister’s world. For all of Celestia’s magic and might, she could never rule the Dreamscape. An unkind Pony would say she lacked the imagination, Luna thought. The thought was cruel, but honest. Celestia had always been the stronger sister, but never the cleverest.

Luna’s teeth clenched as she searched. There were nightmares; there were always nightmares, and it tore at her heart to neglect them, but there was a greater duty tonight. She had spent weeks scouring the Dreamscape for the missing, tearing across continents and cleaving the sky from the safety of her bed.

Luna had found a cartographer team stranded in the Yakyakistan mountains, near freezing and dreaming of warmth. She risked a war with Prince Rutherford by appearing in his dreams of smashing apart furniture to have a rescue party dispatched. He only did so once she bested him in a bout of wrestling.

She had also found a shipwrecked mare off a far northern coast, having lived off seaweed and dribbles of freshwater for nearly a year. Her dreams were dark, dreaming on an endless deep where songs called under the sea. A nearby trawler was directed to her rocky island, and Luna spent that night stewing in self-hatred for not finding the mare sooner.

Contrary to her sister’s beliefs, the Dreamscape was not some map that could be charted. It ebbed and flowed like the tide. It could be predictable, but there was always a risk of turning around and not finding one’s way back. Some nights, Luna did nothing but stem nightmares, and some nights she did little but reassure one pony that they still had worth in the world.

She had found nothing in the north.

That was not quite true. The incident with the changeling and dragon had caused a riot and flood of nightmares that ruined her search for weeks, but the Princess Cadance had calmed her subjects enough for it to resume. Luna brushed a hoof against a passing door and felt her sister’s dream. It was a worried dream, carrying far too much weight and grief. Luna extended her hoof to go through the doorway, but hesitated at the last moment.

Celestia had been near inconsolable the day news arrived about the Crystal Empire. She sobbed and stuffed her muzzle with cake, and Luna feared that some great tragedy had occurred. The news was dire to the castle, but not to Luna. Two guards had been slain, and several dozen injured in the resulting panic.

Sister mine, the Flame of the Sun, laid low by two deaths, Luna could not prevent the snort. A dragon had caused the deaths, wielding a strange sword that repelled magic. A changeling stood at his side. They fled together on the southbound train to Rainbow Falls, and from there the trail disappeared. Luna searched for dreams, but found nothing but panicked nightmares of a gargantuan black dragon with a snarling monstrosity atop it. The incident, as it was called in the vaguest possible terms to prevent panic, was unusual.

The dragon’s stature was short and young, and according to the surviving guard he was truly a dragon and not a disguised changeling. Furthermore, he had used a sword instead of flames and claws. The guard, Flash Sentry, admitted that the situation escalated beyond control in his dream. Luna made sure he forgot her questioning; it was no use dwelling on guilt.

The situation sat poorly with Luna. The changelings did not kill their enemies, and the dragon killed far too few if he was truly enraged. A question for Torch, should he still be Dragon Lord. Luna would need to speak with her sister on the matter, once Celestia had ended her binge.

The far more troubling matter was Celestia’s grief, and it cemented that Luna no longer belonged in this Equestria. The guards’ deaths were tragedies, undeniably, and Luna comforted the dreams of their parents. But Luna could not feel the grief as deeply. She remembered comforting many families and losing many guards to wild beasts and warbands. Far too many, and far more than two. Her sister’s expeditions would lose twice that number, and Celestia would weep, toast their memories, then move on. A thousand years, Luna reckoned, and she felt the weight crush her back. My sister is not my sister.

Luna was so occupied in her musings that the raven landed on her back without issue.

She whinnied and flared out her wings, summoning a powerful display of thunder and flash. The raven’s claws dug into her fur and it cawed into her ears, swirling through her starry mane and flapping its own wings to stay attached. Luna tumbled through the Dreamscape, falling past doorways and portals like a shooting star. Atop her bed in Canterlot, Luna snorted and tossed her head. The guards looked over, then resumed sipping their coffee cups.

Although time and gravity had no meaning in the Dreamscape, Luna quickly righted herself and craned her neck around to glare at the intruder. “Thou—” she cut herself off at the sight of the small bedraggled bird. A charlatan might call it a crow, but Luna knew better. The raven was young, with sleek black feathers and two red eyes. It turned its small beak up to her and cawed. Luna felt the magic swirling off it; the raven had a strange sheen in its feathers. The magic was old and powerful, but the caster was young.

“Fair raven,” Luna began, calmer. “This is no place for thee.”

The raven cawed and flapped its wings. Unlike Luna, it—he—seemed to need the assistance. The raven inspected the floating portals and flew around the floating alicorn, eyeing the doorways warily. Luna frowned and studied him. Things were not as they seemed in the Dreamscape, but the raven moved deftly and naturally with swift wings.

“What art thou?” Luna queried.

The raven cawed again in response, still circling her head.

Of course, Luna snorted. Too easy. Luna folded her forelegs and huffed. “Mine duties are many, fair raven, and my time grows short.” She began to float past more dreams. The raven followed her, then abruptly stopped before a silvery portal. Luna extended her senses. The edges of the doorway rippled strangely, leaking liquid silver into the Dreamscape to dissipate. The magic that held the dream together was foreign and strange.

Not the dream of a pony, Luna concluded, but she could gather nothing else without entering it. “Doth thou expect me to enter?” the alicorn chuckled. The raven shrugged his wings and vanished, diving into the silver like it was water. Ripples spread across the surface.

Luna floated before the portal, scowling. The raven extended his head through the portal and cawed at her, high and mocking, then vanished again. Luna’s horn sparked and she gathered herself before leaping through.

There were very few forces in the known world that could breach the Dreamscape and attack her, but Luna was wary about the unknown forces. The young raven certainly qualified. She extended a tether beyond the dream, back into the waking world, like a diver might attach a lifeline. Wispy blue thread spooled from her horn as the dream solidified around her.

Luna found herself diving through clouds and the brief pull of gravity forced her to flap her wings. The raven circled below, cawing rapidly and flapping in a wide arc. Luna descended warily, extending her senses of the dreamer. The raven glowed blood red in her mind’s eye.

“You are the dreamer?” Luna asked, taken aback. The raven settled on one of her outstretched hooves and bobbed his head. To dream implied permanence, far beyond a creature of magic. It implied an existence in reality. The raven is real.

Luna’s wariness abruptly crashed into pure excitement. “Oh, most joyous occasion!” she belted out and clapped her hooves together. The raven was forced to flap its wings and squawk. “Tell me, dear raven, what is thy name?” Luna asked, giddy. “I believed the Dreamscape was a lost art!”

The raven cawed again.

Luna frowned. “Can you speak?”

Another caw, slightly higher.

“Yet you understand me?”

The raven curved a wing through the dream. Luna squinted and saw faint wisps of magic brushing between the feathers. The alicorn tapped a hoof to her chin. Understanding the intent of the words, but not the words themselves. He does not know our language. “You must be far beyond Equestria.”

The raven bobbed his head in a nod.

“At least we have that in common,” Luna chuckled. “Why am I here, fair raven? I am delighted to see another dreamer, true, but my duties keep me busy.”

The raven abruptly dove through the clouds. Luna followed, more sedate, letting the wind blow through her feathers and following the downdraft. She tasted salt on her lips and smelled the sea before the clouds broke. A talented dreamer to remember such details. The raven spun towards a castle set upon the rocks in a large bay. A vast continent spiraled out to the west, stretching as far as the alicorn could see.

Luna paused for a moment. The world was still uncharted, true, but not everything was a mystery. A landmass of this size would have been spotted long ago. A dream, she reminded herself and pursued the descending raven. “Fair raven, I am much to busy for flights of fancy,” Luna reminded her young companion. “I confess that your skill is impeccable.”

The raven cawed again. Despite the distance between them, it sounded right between her ears and radiated annoyance. Luna suppressed a smile and decided that it did not harm to indulge for a moment. Her horn still spiraled blue thread to the outside. The raven had clearly seen the thread, but not taken any action against it.

The raven circled the great stone mount in the bay. Black water lapped against the shoreline, and the castle stood tall against the waves, rearing up out of the sea. At first, Luna thought dragons laid upon the fortress, but soon realized that the fortress itself was carved from black rock in the shapes of laying dragons. The raven flew straight and true, diving into the maw of a stone dragon and out of sight. Luna followed.

A period of blackness abruptly ended in a large round room. Windows extended from every wall, allowing the sound of crashing waves to pour through the light. A long, intricately carved painted table took up most of the space in the room, roughly in the shape of the continent Luna saw from above. A high seat was placed in the center, where the fortress stood in the bay.

The raven landed on the table in the north and cawed at Luna. He shuffled his feet atop rivers and ridges. Luna landed beside the table and looked around the room. “A volcanic mountain,” she spoke aloud. “I assume dormant. Art thou a dragon?”

The stone doors at the end of the chamber opened. Luna spun around as three armored black dragons entered, deep in some argument. They were short and young, for dragons, and still walked on two legs. Their claws rested on the pommels of swords sheathed by their sides. Luna stepped to the side and lowered her horn, but the dragons did not register her presence.

The one in the middle, a male with strong, fiery red eyes and horns, flung a piece of parchment onto the table, growling deeply. The two on either side, females in black cuirasses, swung their tails and flapped their wings with added agitation. The one of the left was golden-horned and her scales shone brightly; the one on the right was white-horned with a scowl on her muzzle. Despite their physical differences, it was obvious they were of the same clutch.

“Siblings,” Luna spoke aloud, testing to see if the dragons looked at her. They did not, but the raven bobbed his head and scurried across the table towards the alicorn. The brother snarled something down at the parchment, only for the golden-horned sister to cup his muzzle with a claw and kiss him deeply. The white-horned one sighed jealously, but ran a claw down his red spines.

Luna looked down at the raven with a raised brow. “Siblings?” she said dryly.

The raven flapped his wings, as if shrugging.

“Art thou old enough to be dreaming of this?”

The dragons broke their engagements and drew their blades. Luna stepped back on reflex, but the siblings only crossed their swords over the table, speaking in unison. Something about the blades sparked her memory; the metal rippled with color. The brother swept his blade up and down the entire continent with a wide, smiling snarl. The white-horned sister laughed. Luna knew that laugh; it reminded the alicorn of her own sister in times past.

“War,” Luna said aloud.

The raven cawed in agreement.

The room melted away, and Luna stood on a battlefield. Scores of armored deer rushed through a torrential downpour and thunder crashed in the distance. The raven flapped his wings and landed on her back, shielding himself with a wing. Luna summoned a shield to keep the stinging rain out.

“What am I meant to see?” Luna asked.

A long, low roar came without the accompanying flash of lightning, and a great shape swirled over the charging deer. The largest dragon that Luna had ever seen breathed fire down on the army, and the stags died in one great scream. Luna felt the heat roil over her shield and she flinched away. The surviving stags bowed before the great black dragon, and the dragon shifted to resemble the brother from the painted table. He smiled and embraced one stag amidst the carnage, lifting him back to his hooves.

The raven cawed, and the scene vanished in the flames. Another battlefield greeted her when the fires dissipated. Seaponies clashed on land with hippogriffs, striking them down with wicked tridents and axes. Luna turned her head back to the raven. “Seaponies cannot fight on land,” she said bluntly. “Why do you show me this grisly sight?”

A great stone castle rose up on the banks of a lake, far larger than any palace should be. A seapony stood on the tallest tower, mocking the hippogriffs working below. Metaphor, Luna snorted. They stand in for something else, but what? The roar of a dragon sounded from the clouds, and the castle melted in a jet of flame that was closer to a solar flare than dragon’s breath.

The brother and sisters descended from the sky, and the hippogriffs knelt before them in thanks. The few surviving seaponies threw down their axes in anger, but made no sudden movements. Not that they could. Luna eyed their fins and tails, then the mangled and melted corpses with a queasy grimace. “A grisly sight, fair raven.”

The dream blurred, and a great army of earth ponies marched through a low valley, joined by a host of armored lions. “Griffons?” Luna asked the raven on her back. The raven cawed lowly and shook his head. A lion in golden armor stood beside a broad earth pony, watching the army progress. Luna counted the numbers idly beside them. A mighty army. The sky above them roared and flames descended. But not enough to match a dragon. The sky opened with two more pillars of fire. All three, it seems.

Luna shut her eyes as the earth ponies were blasted into ash, but the golden lion leapt through the flames with a pained roar. When the fires receded, the burnt and ash-covered lion laid a golden sword before the black dragon in submission. The dragon beckoned the lion to rise with a claw as he stood proud beside his sisters. “That is exactly why earth ponies do not fight dragons,” Luna commented. She grinded her teeth. “My patience thins.”

The raven flapped his wings, and the falling ashes became snow. Luna watched as an army of wolves emerged from a snowbank. A great grey wolf stood bipedally, closer to a diamond dog, and clasped a two-handed sword in his paws. The wolf wore an iron crown, heavy and unadorned. He narrowed flinty eyes, staring behind Luna. She turned and witnessed an army of hippogriffs and deer headed by the black, red-horned dragon. The dragon drew his own dappled blade and approached. The raven circled around the wolf, cawing wildly, then landed atop his head. The wolf did not notice, only watching the dragon with a muzzle that turned white at the end.

The dragon is younger than thee, Luna thought, and commands twice the army. Folly, fair wolf. As if hearing her opinion, the wolf knelt in the snow. He laid his iron crown before the dragon. The black dragon smiled and beckoned the wolf to stand again.

The raven cawed, and the scene changed to a fretting griffon on a high mountaintop, kneeling before the golden-horned sister. The sister laughed and smiled, bouncing a young griffon cub on her tail. Her sword remained sheathed, but a claw rested near the pommel.

The mountains abruptly collapsed into sand before Luna could respond, and naga swirled their tails through the desert, burrowing away from the heat and the fire of flying dragons. The alicorn scowled and spun rapidly, forcing the raven to take flight. She pointed a hoof at nearest naga, an orange scaled mare with red diamonds. “You are using my memories!” she accused the raven. “The naga have been gone for centuries. Do you claim to know them?”

The raven landed in the sand, then lowered his head and wings in submission. Trying to make it familiar to me, but why? Luna checked the blue thread. It still spun from her horn and grounded her in the waking world. A roar of pain from behind made the alicorn turn back around. The golden-horned dragon fell from the sky, trailing a bloody wing. She plowed heavily into the sand, and did not rise again. The naga moved towards her, swirling through the sand with knives in their hooves. Luna closed her eyes. “I do not wish to see this.”

The raven cawed sadly, and Luna felt the dream shift. Her hooves landed on a stone floor. Luna opened her eyes, finding herself standing in a crowd of hippogriffs, ponies, deer, lions, griffons, and wolves. A high hall of pillars and red brick surrounded the crowd. They stood before a twisted heap of swords and axes, adding their own to the pile. The raven flew above her and landed atop her head. The brother stood beside the surviving sister with hard red eyes, then turned his muzzle to the pile of weapons. He inhaled and fire poured forth, burning and melting and mangling the metal until a great, hideous shape emerged.

Luna craned her neck to look up at a throne made of swords, robust and monstrous. The steps were made of melted blades, but the dragon strode up them and sat down without discomfort. The swords radiated out from the throne, projecting power and menace. A steel crown was nestled under his horns. The crowd knelt, leaving Luna and the raven the only creatures standing in the great hall. The dragon and his sister stared past them, frozen in time.

Luna surveyed the crowd. “Six peoples,” she observed. “Seven, counting the seaponies. Eight with the naga. A tale of war and woe. A brutal story, young raven. If you were a pony, I would have words with your parents.” The raven cawed angrily and dug his talons into her fur. He leaned down atop her head, scowling upside down at the alicorn. Luna met his red-eyed stare evenly with her own cyan eyes. “What do you wish to tell me?” she snorted. “Your skills in dreamcrafting are impeccable, but violent.”

The raven cocked his head, and a third eye opened on his brow. “Snow.”

Luna was so stunned that she tugged on the thread by reflex.

In her bedroom, the Princess of the Night snorted awake and kicked a mug of coffee out of Nightshade’s hooves with a flailing rear leg. The Night Guards snapped to attention and fanned out, scattering their drinks across the carpeting. They leveled their spears and drew their hoofblades. “Princess!” Nightshade recovered and approached the side of the bed. “Are you okay?”

Luna sputtered her mouth. Her tiara was askew and her horn sparked. She glanced around her bedroom with wild eyes. In her moment of panic, a modern swear came to the alicorn. “What the fuck was that!?”

“Princess!” Nightshade whinnied, horrified.

Luna caught herself and stilled her breathing. “We apologize,” she said on reflex. “We wert most surprised by a dream.” The alicorn adjusted her tiara back to the center of her head and kneaded a pillow between her forelegs.

“I…see,” Nightshade offered with pinned ears and a blush.

Luna blinked and gathered her thoughts. Why show me such violence? A warning? She frowned and thought of the dragons. Young, black-scaled dragons waging conquest, yet the raven did not fear them. She levitated over a parchment, ink pot, and quill from her desk. It would be dawn soon, and her sister would wake to raise the sun. Luna needed to get her thoughts in order.

“Princess?” Nightshade asked.

Luna looked up to the worried guards. She opened her mouth to reassure them, then reconsidered her words. “Something is wrong,” she said instead. “I scoured the Dreamscape for answers, and have only found more questions. Inform me the moment my sister awakens.” Two of her guards saluted and left the room.

Luna grinded her teeth. She was missing something and wracked her memories. Ink dripped from the quill onto her parchment and she levitated a scrap of paper over from her desk, accidentally knocking over several folders. The case file from the Crystal Empire fell open onto the floor, and the realization hit Luna like a blast of dragonflame.

The dragon called himself Snow.

Author's Note

If you have no idea what the dream was about, check the blog:

The Abridged History of Westeros, Part One!