The Nightmare's Reign

The golden orb of light began to sink beyond the horizon, but Celestia let it linger a few more moments for the almost silent approach of her beloved sister Luna. Even though they controlled opposing orbiting bodies , Celestia could yet still remember the first time Luna had been there when she’d first lowered the sun. She could still hear her little sister's ‘ooos’ and ‘aahs’ over the arrangement of light on the horizon. The bold and bright oranges and the deep defiant reds should have garishly clashed with the darkening gloom of twilight as deep blues and purples fought over the sky for dominance, but for one reason or another, it worked, and was all the more beautiful because of it. The deviance between day and night coming together in such brilliant, crashing, harmony.

With the touching memory of the past running it’s course, sending echoes of warm nostalgia through her, Celestia couldn’t help but feel a still aching twinge of guilt and sorrow as she looked upon her smiling sibling as she once more rose the moon.

Celestia knew it had to have been done, but it still didn’t make her feel any better. To banish one’s own sibling, not just out of Equestria, that would have been heart aching enough, but completely off world had been almost enough to break her heart entirely. Had it not been for her own love for her beloved little ponies, she never would have been able to raise the sun during all those long years, let alone take care of herself.

None of that mattered, she thought, giving her head a small shake. Her sister was back, the Elements of Harmony were once again active should threats arise, and best of all, no more Nightmares. Not with the care-taker of dreams, her own sister, back and finally able to help the Day Princess banish away the shadows that clung to her subconscious like poisonous webs that had only gotten stronger in her sister’s absence. But now her dreamscape was once again the pristine shining beacon of peace and tranquility that her own glowing orb was to all the inhabitants of Equestria during the day.

As Luna finished bringing the moon into orbit she looked over to her smiling sister and took note of the welling of moisture at the ends of her eyes. That was to say tears, she was still working on talking in the current vernacular of the age, erm, times, but regardless they still troubled her. She knew that Celestia still felt undue amounts of guilt over her exile during her time possessed of the entity that gave rise to the entity Nightmare Moon. She’d spent an entire month destroying the ephemeral demons that plagued her sister Celestia’s mind once she had finally recovered enough of her strength to travel the realm of dreams. And it most certainly had not helped with the recent on course of Discord sending her sister through another rigorous plague of self-doubt as a competent ruler despite the track record of thousands of years of keeping a whole country running whilst keeping the “nobles” in line, without even having to resort to killing them.

Luna gave a smile to her sister, her duty done, for now, her luminescent teeth gleaming ever so slightly in the moon light. Getting up, Luna turning around with more speed than necessary, the tip of her ephemeral tail whispered across her sister’s nose and made her sneeze involuntarily. Beginning to take off down the hallway, at a sedate and princess-ly pace, she turned her head ever so slightly to the left, so that Celestia would not miss it, “We do believe the pâtissier was going to attempt a new recipe tonight. Something regarding a double dark chocolate fudge injected cake covered in a layer of marshmallow fondant.” With that last word Luna then spread her wings, shooting off like a comet down the hallway giggling with unbridled glee from the playful antagonizing of her sister, who now gave chase lest Luna get to lick the spoon for the batter off first, not that Luna could beat her even if she tried. One does not simply get between Celestia and her cakes. And with that, Luna’s two second head start was overcome in, a record breaking, ten seconds as Celestia over took Luna, with an even more childish giggle complimenting the now full on joyful grin stretching to the corners of her face. All dark thoughts were now banished and replaced with the growing scent of warm, gooey, chocolate-y delight and knowing that she would soon be sharing it with her sister.

In the husk’s weakened state it couldn't even send a shiver down the non-existent spine of a paramecium. Exiled from its own realm, it had been changed far too much to ever be truly killed, and despite the deformed skin it habitually chose to dawn, it was, assuredly, no longer human. At this point it no longer even acknowledges it was human either. Not that it matters. The things opinion or its origins. All that mattered was that its dark creators had grown tired of its perpetual failures, and before the thing could even begin to crawl about to hide in the twisted corners of a darkened dream to lick it’s wounds and feed off the hidden violence every sapient stored in its head, it was thrown across the void of dimensions. Never would it be able to come and show its pitiful face again, for not even at its height of power would it ever have been able to begin to fathom the existence of other worlds, let alone have the power to see the divide. The power to cross it under its own power would never be possible.

This was its punishment, to be sent to a world where the idea of a nightmare was not only unthinkable, but not even possible. The closest thing the peaceful, sentient, equines ever truly got to the real thing was snippets of dream-fluff that would have been the back-drop for a peaceful dream back in the twisted things home dimension.

Not that there was no fear to be found. There was occasionally the dream of being chased by one of the, pitifully, few carnivores that lived in this new world, but the husk was constantly rebuffed by the overwhelming kindness and caring that harmonized the dreamscape like snatches of children’s laughter wrapped into a song.

Tonight it was once again over a quaint town that it had visited so many times before. Not that the husk would have been able to tell, it was too far gone to form even a single thought, and all the goodness that pervaded in the air had left it numb, wrapped in a disgustingly warm and fuzzy embrace.

It was here that six particular lights made themselves known. They gave the husk even less of an incorporeal hold than in other towns. Standing as pillars of what could only be described as the husk’s pure and utter opposite that, had the lights been able to sense the horror, that was only a shadow’s echo of what it once was, they might have actually rid the whole of creation of its abominable existence.

But then, as the wave of bliss, directed the princess of the night, were sent on there perspective paths, a small eddy of current caught the husks… attention? The echoes of a word that should have had no meaning in this peaceful world. A word that, by rights, should not have existed in this plain of existence or any of those parallel to it.  A word that sparkled against the innocence of a slumbering aquamarine dreamer, her and brilliant amber dream waves calling out to it.

“…humans.”