“Ignis you can’t just run away because you’re embarrassed. Maybe if you were my sisters guard, but if you’re going to be my knight I absolutely will not tolerate that behavior in the future.” Luna stopped me from leaving the castle grounds and is lecturing me as we walk the empty hallways.

“You’re just saying that cause you wanted to watch me suffer.” I pout with my arms cross as I walk next to her.

“.....Perhaps. Regardless you actually can’t leave because I need to open my first session of Night Court. We were holding off on starting up the sessions until I had somepony present to stand guard.” As she says that we walk through a grand set of double doors into the same throne room I found myself in earlier today, only now it’s empty.

It’s a bit surreal to be honest, almost unsettling how large this room is with all this seating and decoration only for it to be empty and dead silent. I realize Luna has stopped walking and promptly also stop and turn to face her. “Alright so what do I need to do here?”

“First I need you to strip.”

I break out into a coughing fit, nearly choking on my own breath from how unprepared I was for her words. “What?!”

“Hm? I need you to remove your cloak. Well I guess I can just do this while you’re wearing it.” Before I can continue to question her she ignites her horn and I’m covered in a bright flash.

When the light settles I look down and realize she’s changed the color of my outfit entirely. My shirt is now a very dark shade of blue-purple, not too dissimilar to Luna’s coat color, with shining white lines in an intricate pattern along the collar, extending from the pattern is the fancy white puffy bit that sits in the middle of my chest.

My half-circle cloak is a deep black but along the outer edges of the entire cape is a similar pattern of white lines. Grabbing the cloak and pulling the back side around into my field of view I see that the entire cloak is littered with small white stars and in the spot that normally covers the middle of my back is a large crescent moon.

“Wow Luna, this is beautiful. Kinda wish you had asked for permission before permanently changing the only set of clothing I had from my homeland, but it’s good enough that I’ll overlook it.” She offers me a sheepish grin and avoids my gaze.

“We are quite pleased you enjoy it. You will find that’s not quite everything though! Wear your hood as well, the exterior of it is the same as the rest of the cloak but pull it up and look at the inside.”

I give her a confused side eye as I raise my eyebrows before flipping the hood up onto my head. Very quickly I realize what she’s done here. For reference, the hood is on the slightly larger side and all of the interior parts that I can see in my field of view look just like the night sky I saw earlier. I even see a comet at the edge of my vision that streaks past quickly. Luna senses my amazement and continues explaining.

“I’ve given it an enchantment to mirror the night sky the same way my mane did when you saw it earlier. Once I’m fully recovered from my banishment it’ll look like that all the time. Back to the point though, every night I try to make the arrangements unique, only keeping a few different constellations consistent, this will always accurately mirror the current night sky. If you run your hoof along the inner edge at the top of the hood it’ll turn off the enchantment if you’re trying to be stealthy. That same motion actually turns off all of the dim white lines and turns your full outfit pitch black. You’ll need a mask if you want to cover your face though. Also, you mentioned this being your only clothing from home. During the day it’ll look how it originally looked. This is just going to be your uniform while on duty.”

“What about the studded leather I wear over the shirt normally? It’s more of a dark brown and the metal studs will stand out as well.”

“Your armor, once equipped, will become invisible. That’s one of the enchantments we ordered to be added to it. A mask will also be part of this uniform as well, we’ll need to get one in the morning when the shops open before we go to sleep. I want it to cover your entire neck and face all the way up to your eyes.” Luna walks past me and ascends the stairs up to the throne before continuing to speak.

“You’ll stand there at the bottom of the steps and face away from me. For the most part you won’t have to do anything, but if a petitioner refuses to leave once I’ve concluded their complaint then you’ll need to verbally order them out and if that fails, escort them. Court will run Monday through Thursday nights from 10 PM to 2 AM with a single 30 minute break somewhere in between. Once the castle's night staff is filled that’ll be when we eat. After court concludes you’ll escort me around for any other duties I need to attend to before sunrise, but typically it’ll just be you keeping watch in my office while I do paperwork or my bedroom while I patrol dreams. Once I lower the moon you’ll be off duty until 7 PM which is when you’ll report to the dining hall.”

I walk over and stand at the bottom of the stairs as directed with my hands behind my back. “When do you typically lower the moon?”

“6 AM.”

“So I have to work an 11 hour shift every day?”

“Well yes and no, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday there’s no court. You’ll still report to the dining hall at 7 like normal, but if there’s nothing officially planned for the night then you’ll likely be offered a night off. This is purely a probationary period though, you’ve taken no oath and haven’t been appointed any title. We’ll use this schedule until a few nights before the summit and see how both of us feel about appointing you officially.”

We spend the next few hours in relative silence, sometimes one of us has a random question and we talk for 20 minutes. However, the first official Night Court had 0 petitioners. I pull my hood down and follow Luna out of the throne room. While we’re walking I can tell she seems somewhat down about the lack of ponies for her night court so I decide to speak up, “Was it even advertised that there would be a night court tonight?”

She stops walking and looks at me, “Should we have spread word? I thought it’d be obvious that night court would resume now that I’ve returned.”

We stare at each other for like 15 seconds in pure silence, I’m utterly astonished. I think this might be the dumbest thing she’s said since I met her. “Luna, there are 2 major problems with your thought process here. One, no one currently alive in this country even knew that there used to be a night court aside from your sister. Which by extension means they couldn’t know that it would resume. Two, you yourself said right before court that you had decided to delay court until you had a guard. We just made that agreement a few hours before court. How could anyone have found out?”

She drops down onto her barrel and puts her forehooves on her muzzle, covering her eyes. “Oh I’m so stupid.” Well now I just feel bad. I mean she did waste both of our time tonight, but this is just pitiful. At least she isn’t crying, I think she’s just embarrassed like I was earlier. She didn’t give me any shit for being embarrassed so I’ll return the favor.

I crouch down and speak softly, “It’s definitely a mistake, but I don’t think you’re stupid. We can just say it was a practice run. By the way, if someone walks around the corner and see’s this, which one of us is more negatively affected by it? Because, if it’s me then I need you to get up Princess.”

“Just don’t tell my sister, please? She’d never let me live this down.”

“I had no intention of doing so, c’mon now, up up.” I hold out my hand and help her rise back up.

Luna coughs and looks around for a second before speaking quietly, “Well, let me show you where my office is.”

“Do you actually have paperwork to do yet? I was actually hoping to learn more about your dream walking.”

“Nay, but it’ll still be good for you to know where the office is. I might need to summon you during your off hours at some point. Unfortunately, dream walking is something I’m entirely unable to do without my full capabilities. Essentially, if my mane doesn’t look the way it did during the raising of the moon then I’m not in my peak condition. I was only able to observe your dream previously because it’s a different type of magic entirely to observe a dream from a creature that’s right in front of me versus the ancient magic I use to traverse the dreamscape. Plus, in the dreamscape I can interact with and change the contents of the dream while conversing with the dreamer, but the spell I used for you was just an observation spell.”

“Hm…. then how about we do some sparring after you show me the office? I’m pretty familiar with how Nightmare fights, but I haven’t gotten a chance to see you in action yet. I know you’re not at 100%, but I think you’re in good enough shape to still beat me, easily.”

Luna actually hums in thought at my suggestion, I expected her to say no without giving it a second thought. “That sounds acceptable. I need to get back in shape, and your form could use some coaching.”

After a quick stop by the office, which is just a few turns away from her bedroom, we find ourselves in the same field where I fought Shining Armor. I’m pretty excited to get into this, I’m not sure why but her saying that my form could use some coaching has irritated me more than I thought it would. I wonder if that’s the repressed Ignis who trained for decades getting upset?

Luna ignites her horn in aura as she calls out to me, “Unlike your bout with Shining Armor this is just a light spar, so don’t use that shadow blade. I’m going to conjure us some wooden swords as well.”

Should I use real time combat for this? If I’m getting free coaching from a warrior that’s over 2000 years old, maybe it’d be beneficial for me to actually learn something instead of leaning on the system as a crutch. Yeah fuck it. “Enable real time combat.” I internally think the command in my head.

Two wooden swords pop into existence in front of Luna and she floats one over to me. “I’ll let you have the first blow, Ignis, just come at me when you’re ready.”

“Just so you know Luna, I’m planning to take full advantage of your willingness to train me. I’m not going to use any of my weird metaphysical powers I explained to you, your sister, and Shining earlier. So, this will be my real swordsmanship and not the muscle memory built into this body based on the roll of a dice.”

“I’m still not entirely sure I understand what you mean by that, but you’re essentially telling me that you cheated versus Shining and are not going to cheat now.”

“That’s…. Close enough. Once you get your full dream walking powers back can you come into a dream and make the dreamer lucid? If you can do that I can use the dream to show you what my powers look like from my point of view when I’m fighting.”

“I can do that, a wonderful idea. Now let’s do this!”

I stand there for a few seconds waiting on the “Roll for initiative” to pop up until I realize that I’m using real time combat right now. Once I make the realization I decide to start this spar with misty step. I quietly whisper the incantation as I take 1 step forward and finish the spell right as my foot hits the ground, teleporting behind Luna. As soon as I appear behind her I start swinging my wooden sword towards the back of her neck, only to be caught by her own wooden sword as it swiftly floats into the path of my swing.

She looks back at me with a smirk, “Too obvious, plus you used that same idea versus Nightmare. Something like that won’t work on anypony that’s seen you do it before.”

I pull my blade back and prepare to swing again, but before I even finish pulling my sword all the way back Luna has already spun around and her floating wooden sword is moving straight for my throat.

I duck down and to the left and decide to do several quick swings in succession, curious if the speed of her telekinesis can keep up with a barrage. I swing for the left side of her head, only to get deflected sending my hand towards the ground. Using the momentum of the sword heading towards the dirt I flip my wrist around and swing straight towards her chin. I’m half a second away from hitting her jaw when I realize her sword is up against my own throat.

“You’ll have to be much faster than that if you think you can swing at me after being deflected. It was good to retain and shift the momentum of your sword, but you didn’t consider that after deflecting your blade my sword was already headed in your direction. There was no need for me to shift or turn. It was one fluid motion for me, so you either just didn’t consider the position and momentum of your opponent's blade or you naively thought you could shift and completely flip your own momentum faster than my blade that needed no shifting at all. I’m not sure which is worse. Back to where you started last time and let’s go again.”

And so we continued, for the next 4 hours we sparred again and again. Neither of us realizing just how fast time was passing by. Before either of us knew it, it was time to lower the moon.

“Well Ignis, you only lost to me 190 times in 4 hours. That’s not the worst result I’ve ever seen! For this last spar though I want you to use whatever cheat power thing you mentioned before. Still no bladesong or shadow blade though.”

“H-how are you not, out of breath? I’m pretty sure even in my original life I never fought for 4 hours straight.” I’m panting as I respond. “Fine, last one, I’ll use everything I’ve got this time. I need to win at least one time for my pride.”

“Disable real time combat.”

Roll For Initiative.

9, +5. 14.

“I’ll allow you to have the first blow again, Ignis.”

“Gee, thanks for your infinite mercy my liege. Provolo!” I cast Haste.

Luna can tell I’ve casted a somewhat powerful spell this time, I think, cause after I cast haste I see her slightly squint her eyes at me and her stance widens a bit.

Then I misty step again, but this time I aim the teleportation to land directly in front of her. This time I also start swinging my sword before the spell even finishes. This way as soon as I appear directly in front of her my sword is already 70% of the way through its swing.

19, +8. 27. Hit.

Somehow Luna gets her wooden sword in the perfect position to block me again, but this time both of us are suddenly shocked as the sword and my arm shift in an impossible direction. I was originally swinging from over my head down towards her head but now with the unnatural shift I’m suddenly swinging at her neck from the side as if I had started my swing from my waist in a horizontal movement. There’s nowhere near enough time for her to react to the completely different nature of the strike and right before she can move to block me again the wooden sword slams into her neck.

2, +5. 7 Bludgeoning Damage.

Once I make contact I just leave the sword pressed up against her neck as she stares at me in shock. “Well hey would you look at that I finally won one. 1 for 190 baby, woo!”

Luna looks at me with an expression I can’t quite figure out and responds, “I think I see the difference now. When you’re using your power it’s almost like there are small gaps, less than a second, where you move at impossible speeds. I don’t mean that weird thing you did with your sword just now, I mean like even before you Blinked towards me it was like you were standing there in your starting position and then in a fraction of second your entire body shifted forward and your arm moved like a blur into the position you take right before you swing, then you moved normally for a second. Then, you Blinked and instead of you moving unnaturally fast it felt like for 10 milliseconds, maybe less, I was unable to move. I know how fast my sword takes to respond to my telekinetic will and it was like my entire being was suddenly paused for an instant. You indeed have a strange power, before I go to sleep this morning I’ll focus on stabilizing my mana pool so I can dream walk.”

“I was always curious what it looked like from someone else's point of view whenever time stopped for my dice to roll. Now that I know how big of a gap there is in our sword techniques I realize just how insane it is that once my dice roll says I hit you, I WILL hit you. This is a strange power indeed…”

“I know I said you don’t have to report until 7 PM at the dining hall, but I’d like for you to meet me at my bedroom at noon so we can go get your armor from the enchanter. Perhaps we can get breakfast after?”

“Sure, that sounds nice. You gotta go though, it’s 6:02 AM and I’m not sure how big of a deal it is if you’re late lowering the moon? I’ll see you in a few hours….. Lulu.”

For once I finally get to see her blush as she stops and turns to face me with a completely red face. She blinks her eyes fast a few times and then yells out so loudly the force of her voice causes my hair to be pushed backwards, “YOU DARE INVOKE MINE WRATH, YE KNAVE? THOU SHALT KNOW TRUE PAIN!”

She then immediately puts a forehoof on her muzzle, shutting it closed in regret before lighting her horn and teleporting away. Wow, so ye olden english is her default accent when she's upset. I’m so dead the next time I see her.

Worth it.

Author's Note

Decided to flesh out some more concrete details on how the D&D Power works, also some good old fashioned character development :D

Thanks for reading