The Nightmare's Reign

Nights had passed into weeks as the husk drew enough snippets of dream to form the barest of holds upon the amber light of the aquamarine dreamer. Still not capable of anything besides merely existing, it did not truly feed upon the dreams. The husk remained, however, like a moth drawn to a candle's flame, wanting more, but had the dreams not rebuffed his presence with the newly reinforced protective spheres of the Princess of the Night, the husk would have found more light than it could have handled in its current state.

In the end the husk could only wait, but found itself is no longer alone, as the new companion of agitation creeped upon it as. It craved for more but could only glean the snippets of expended dreams.

***

Lyra awoke, much like she had for most of her life, refreshed, and ready to spend another day with her friends. Most notably Bonbon, who owned and worked her own candy store, Sweat Treats, and would frequently have Lyra play upon her favored instrument, the lyre, as customers came in to buy and enjoy their purchases in a relaxed and comfortable environment. This was indeed much opposed to the more notable Sugarcube Corner, run by the Cakes and their assistant Pinkie Pie. They were great at what they did, but Pinkie’s high octane antics could frequently leave those around her wishing for a bit of peace.

But unlike most mornings Lyra felt something… off. Almost like a mosquito buzzing in her ear, but it felt like it was behind her, staying out of hearing range but still… watching? She tried to place the right word but as with most dreams the snatches of reason she tried to apply to it only made it vanish all the quicker as the aquamarine pony rolled out of her bed, gave a tremendous yawn as she stretched out her back, much like a cat, then rubbed her bleary eyes with a forehoof as she trotted her way to the shower, and prepared to manage her cyan mane and the white streak that ran through it. She’d have to style her mane more than simply brushing it clean and letting it begin to come over her head today. It was Nightmare Night, and that meant she’d have to put some effort into looking more bewitching.

Stepping into the shower she began to hum a few bars of the themed music she had planned with Bonbon to use today in an attempt to get the older ponies to get into the spirit of things as they came to stock up for the trick-or-treaters for later in tonight.

***

“I think the current Elements of Loyalty and Laughter have rubbed off a little too strongly upon you my dear sister,” Celestia said in a pensive, though equally joking tone.

“TIS A GLORIOUS PLAN!” Luna replied in her Royal-Canterlot-Voice. Though she had long since learned to use more common vernacular and a proper inside-voice, especially since the previous Nightmare Night’s… experience two years pasted, she was equally jovial in her perspective tone.

It was a night for nightmares after all, and what better way to do so then to not only deactivate the enhanced dream shields she had worked to restore through nearly the whole of Equestria and then turn off said shields for those in her now favorite town, though unofficially so as a proper princess had to remain impartial to her subjects, once she had come and made a truly frightful appearance. Just a simple scare really. Nopony would actually be hurt by this. Besides, the griffins did well enough without dream shields, so it would do her little ponies some good to rough it, as it were, for a single night. A foal-proof plan.

***

Lyra had just put away her costume, a business suit with a thing she called hands. They were like gloves, but had digits at the end of them, longer than a diamond dogs, seemingly made for finely tuned working. She had had endless loads of fun by giving a hoofshake to unsuspecting ponies, and even more when they had pulled her funny shaped glove off and found a red stump beneath, well, her hoof painted red. But the reactions had been hilarious. Though, if she were being completely honest with herself, she had kinda creeped herself out a little too. But, on the other hoof, that also meant she really had done a good job of her costume this year.

Thinking on to earlier in the night, before the fun games and dances had gone into full swing, Luna had come to their town again, and had instituted a town wide scare off. None too surprisingly the local pegasus speedster, and general prankster, Rainbow Dash had won that, followed closely behind Twilight Sparkle, who had used a whole cavalcade of illusions to do what Rainbow had done with crafted clouds and the moonlight casting shadows from above.

So, drawing the curtains closed in her cozy room, she closed her door and crawled into bed, the lights staying on. Though, had anypony asked Lyra would have assured them she had simply been too tired to turn them off. She had stayed up pretty late after all.

***

The husk reeled with sensation, and was knocked from his loose tether from the aquamarine dreamer. So a flush with emotions that were normally kept in check by an overwhelming presence of peace and kindness, which was now gone, left in its wake the screams, the whinnies, and cries of countless nightmares, bad-dreams, and dark fantasies that the husk was unable to process the tsunami of fear that now clawed into it’s very being. The barrier that kept it in a perpetual state of unthinking coldness from the overwhelming warmth of family and friendship was blasted away as the pain of waking was forced into the husk’s pitiful malformed existence.

Still it wasn’t enough to bring the husk fully back. The cries of a beautiful pony with a missing head, and an old crone whining of missing hoof-wear were not the things that inscribed deep psyche scarring ordeals into ones psyche. But the husk soon grew to an acclimated state, having no concept of overeating, not that it could had it yet been sentient, but through the haze of spectral screams, a dark corner flashed in the dreamscape as the sound of wooden howls drew the husk like fly to the pungent rot of a decaying corpse.

The fragmented coloration of mingled dreams bled together, creating a murky and muddled light, held the singular screams of ponies running for their very lives as howls seemed to sound directly in their ears. Great wooden hounds bounded eagerly behind them as noxious green gas seethed out their sharpened maws. Their eyes glowed with deep reds, yellows, and in one case a soft lilac, as each dreamer found their way blocked by a great chasm, rock enclave, or great wall of spiked vines as the timbered wolves gave another eerie howl. The pony would then look frantically around as their imminent demise became clear. But it was only when they thought that they were alone that the pack would descended upon them, truly out of nowhere, as their dream bodies were then wracked with the pain of torn flesh as they then popped out of existence and back into the waking world, the echoes of pain following after them as supposed bite marks tingled with sympathy.

The husk felt … energized, and it would have stayed in the blood soaked fear that permeated this twisted mess of nightmares in the dreamscape, but it’s… attention, was drawn away, it swayed along the tides of unfiltered emotion that now poured out, unrestrained, from the inhabitants of Ponyville, as the amber waves of the aquamarine dreamer once again drew it’s attention.

While the dream was mostly benign, it stood apart from the others as it depicted a strange bipedal race, though echoes of the dreamer’s memory gave them enough shape that they directly resonated with ponies she knew from her life. The aquamarine dreamer had taken a form much like the others around her, but she couldn’t help but feel like she didn’t quite belong, But it wasn’t the feeling of depressed animosity from the imagined creatures within the dream, or the disconnected feeling of attachment the dreamer imposed upon herself, but a single street sign that the husk now fixated upon. The dreamer passed it with no mind, it was a simple marker of address she had brought along with her from the waking world and her memories, but they still resonated with the husk as the wretched excuse for its attention was brought to bear upon the words:

Elm Street