Lightning outside the castle's windows outshouts her screams as you walk through the ornate halls, the sound of your hooves hitting the marble floor accompanied by another quartet following close behind you.
You are Dream Snatcher, a lucid dreamer, a unicorn from a distant village long gone from the maps, and nightmares are your specialty. The mare in the maid dress is visibly nervous, her ears on a swivel and tail jerking from side to side each time a harrowing cry of terror reaches the corridor.
She turns her head to you with a terrified expression on her face, all color gone from her face. "She's been like this for months." she begins, her voice wavy and uncertain. "Ever since the Elements failed her, she's barely getting any sleep." You listen to the maid half-heartedly, you've done your homework, after all. "The princess tried everything..." She shuts her eyes and takes a deep breath. "Can you really help her?"
You sigh, rounding the corner as the screams intensify. Instead of a surface level reassurance, you ask her if the preparations are complete.
"Y-yes." You hear the disappointment in her voice as she turns to look forward. "All the paperwork is signed and the..." She swallows the lump in her throat, her lunch threatening to come up again. "Drillings were done as you instructed, she is ready."
You tell her that you'll be the judge of that.
She scurries off into the shadows with a meek 'good luck' as you approach the double doors to the room, the screams all but deafening here.
Before you could knock, the door bursts into golden flames, opening inwards to reveal the ruler of the land, the avatar of the Sun herself.
Her face is dark and tired, the immortal alicorn looking like death warmed over. A faint smile graces her lips as she hurries you in, placing a silencing spell over your patient, lest you be rendered deaf by the might of the royal canterlot voice.
"You heard it from outside, haven't you?" You nod, the mare squeezing her eyes before composing herself. "It's getting harder and harder to keep the spell active, please forgive me."
You accept her apology with a curt nod and ask her to escort you to the apparatus that's been assembled, you express concern over whether or not the schematics have been followed to a tee or not.
"Our best engineers and thaumaturges have spent weeks going over your designs, I believe you can trust them."
You don't bother with a response.
The two of you arrive at a medical bed hosting the herald of the night, the guardian of dreams herself. She's tossing and turning on her bed, her face a mask of pain and anguish that shifts every once in a while. Her mane is completely gone, exposing the skin of her head, six thick wires running into her skull.
You find the situation ironic, but choose not to voice your opinion on the matter.
You approach a second medical table on the other end of the room, the massive device between the two beds leaving very little wiggle room.
You take off your hat and put it down on the table and lay down beside it, fishing out a hoofgun out of your long coat's pocket. The princess watches you with concern as you load silver rounds into the gun's revolving barrel, each click making her ear twitch. You lay the loaded weapon on your chest, and tell the princess to attach the cables on your side, your face impassive as each connection sends a familiar shiver down your spine.
"Will you help my sister?" She all but pleads, tears welling up in her eyes. "Please, we've tried everything but nothing helped rid her of the nightmares..."
You correct her wording, setting up a timer on the massive device. Nightmare, singular.
"No no no, it's not that, she's been purged by the Elements, a good while ago." You shake your head at her puzzled expression, choosing to explain yourself while you still have time. No, it may not be that same nightmare, but it is one nightmare that's been plaguing her. A construct tormenting her, one not caused by bad weather or eating something before retiring for the day, but a fear manifested into a being of conscious thought, intelligence and malice.
The causes vary from pony to pony, of course. Doubt, regret, self loathing - all these accumulate and ferment in one's mind, taking terrifying forms.
A moment passes as the mare registers information, before nodding. "Yet dreams are her domain, why is she so helpless in the face of another nightmare, having faced so many before?" You sigh, counting down the seconds before the procedure begins.
A stranger's nightmares are easier to beat than your own, the latter are the amalgamation of your own insecurities, while the first is foreign to you.
It's a matter of perspective, until the nightmare takes root, at least.
The princess wants to ask you something, but the whirling machinery silences her. You close your eyes and take a deep breath, feeling the familiar weight pooling in the back of your skull.
You are ready to welcome the horrors of her mind.
The mechanical whirring rings in ypur ears until you hear nothing, just the constant tinnitus. Your sense of smell deteriorates, the smell of medicine fading into nothing. The light above you fades away, leaving you in total darkness.
Silence shifts into deafening winds, cold air nipping at your fur as the feeling in your extremities returns, your body struggling to fight against the draft.
Your sight remains useless, however, forcing you to trudge through the deep snow covering the ground in total darkness. You levitate the hoofgun from your coat's pocket, your magic aura completely drowned by the suffocating blackness.
The crunch of snow grabs your attention, your numb ears guiding you to swivel to your side, facing the Nightmare. Despite the surrounding void, you manage to spot her with ease. Somehow, she's darker than her surroundings, as if siphoning the light from everything around her.
Her eyes are milky white, the light having left them long ago. A crown of barbed wire adorns her head, the last time you've such a cruel implement being in a dream of a seasoned soldier. Her breathing is heavy and labored, her entire frame shuddering as ice cold air leaves her lungs. Her legs are nothing but bone, flesh having been peeled off due to frostbite and sharp ice tearing into it. At first glance, it looked like flesh was peeled off of her wings, but upon closer inspection, you find that her 'wings' are nothing but her ribs, torn through her back and displayed for all to see.
To any other pony, the sight would be maddening, but you don't waver.
The moment of transfer is going as rehearsed. You aim your weapon at the Nightmare, steady your breath and pull the trigger.
A shame you forgot to switch off the safety first.
[INFOHAZARD REDACTED]
The next few weeks pass in a blur. You vaguely remember the princess' teary eyed thanks, the congratulation ceremony, the hefty compensation you've been offered for your services. You do remember one thing in vivid detail, however.
You wake up screaming every night from then on, the same thing you saved the princess from, now taking root in your own mind.
They tried to contact you over the years, but you undermined each attempt, knowing well that they were completely powerless against the Nightmare.
Your bloodshot eyes trail to the gun drawer of your bedside table after another sleepless night and you sigh.
This time, you won't forget
Approximately a week after the item was first discovered, a letter fell out of the journal's pages. The exact method of its delivery is still unknown.
Dear Princess Celestia,
First of all I must congratulate you on Luna's recovery, it felt like tearing my i
own heart out, watching her suffer yet being unable to help in any way.
Still, I believe I've failed to assist you once again. Even the most apt of my children were unable to locate your missing doctor, although they did find something quite unsettling.
One evening, they returned to the throne room weary and drained from their task, much more than was normal. They told me they investigated his room that day, and felt overwhelmed the moment they passed the chamber door.
I took it upon myself to observe their memories, and I must say, that room reeked of despair. And not the sort one would expect in cases like his, I've witnessed enough suicides over the years, believe me.
No, whatever left that emotional stain was old, much, much older than all of the alicorns combined. And whatever that thing was, it wasn't there for long, the 'stain' remaining quite localized.
I don't have an explanation for what happened, and I'm afraid I never will. But what I do have, is a folks tale of my people, one mother told me when I was but a hatchling, a tradition among us Queens.
Before time itself took form, the world was dark and empty, a complete and utter void as far as one could imagine. This void had nothing to do, for she had no concept of time and nothing to apply it to. Lonely she hungered for experience, hungered for memories and sensations, wanted to feel, to hear, to smell, to see.
But she couldn't. And thus, she did the only thing she could do. Resentment and avarice stewed within this consciousness, cruelly formed before she could experience anything at all, before she could learn and grow. She became nothing more than a creature of instinct, an animal ready to pounce on her prey as soon as she noticed it.
And then something happened.
Creation, divine intervention, call it what you want - planets were formed and stars were lit, existence had finally begun. But that creature couldn't comprehend the world around her, still stuck in her little world of hate and jealousy. The only way she could understand the world around her, was through these same emotions.
Thus she began to seek, and after a millennia of fruitless searches, she happened upon a blue rock floating in the vast cosmos.
And she sensed something. Fear and pain, hate and anguish, wars and tyrants, the perfect feeding ground for the creature. At first she did just that, yet slowly but surely, she gained strength. Ponies and all sorts of creatures started vanishing off the face of Gaia, never to be seen again.
Places of great tragedy were akin to a lure to this thing as she trapped creatures in her little world of pain and misery, drawing on their emotions until they were left nothing but a husk.
Times have changed, war and anguish are but a distant memory in the modern world. But my people are still wary of old battlefields and ancient ruins, for you can never be sure whether or not she's watching.
I'm afraid you'll never see this doctor of yours again, and you should be thankful for it. For wherever he is, it's a one way ticket.
Best regards,
Queen Chrysalis of the United Hives.
Note: "This letter all but confirms it, this journal is not from our world. Not only is it referring to Celestia, whose condition needs no further explanation, but the letter's author 'Queen Chrysalis' is all too cordial in her writing, something 'our' iteration would never do, at least according to members of our 'Trojan Horse' initiative. This raises concern in regards to the 'she' Chryssalis referred to in the document. An Entity of such magnitude might be a danger not only to their iteration, but to our own as well. I'll get people to look further into it, but I'm afraid we're already spread quite thin between our rebuilding efforts and the resonance. Let's just pray that 'she' will leave us for the time being." - Director Miller.
