When I got back to the tower, the sun was already setting and the moon was rising. Luna was awake.
Reaching the bedroom, I looked around, spotting her on the balcony, horn still lit with her power as she worked to raise the moon.
Knowing better than to bother her when she played with her pet rock, I instead jumped onto the bed to wait for her to finish.
I didn’t need to wait long. The light faded from her horn and she lowered her head for a second before returning inside.
Smiling when she spotted me, she made her way over to jump onto the bed next to me, slipping her wing over my back as I leaned against her, giving her a soft nuzzle.
“Good evening, wife.”
“Good evening husband,” she giggled and nuzzle back before she sighed and rested her head against the top of my head, “...How did today go?”
I sighed and told her what had happened.
Luna nodded and nuzzled at my ear, “...I never wish to see war again,” she said softly, “I wish there was a way to avoid it, but the nobles will never accept it. Not when they were personally attacked.”
That made more sense than I liked.
War would be bad. Ponies and those monkey things would be hurt, killed. The ‘lings would be pulled into it too, maybe even the griffons if they wanted to be seen backing us.
We would win, but at what cost?
“...Do you think we could find him?” I asked Luna, “The Storm King, I mean? In the dream realm.”
Luna thought about it for a moment, “Finding somepony who you don’t know, not even their real name is almost impossible.”
“Almost. But if we can reach him, we could convince him to back down,” I suggested, “We should be able to narrow it down.”
Luna looked thoughtful before she nodded, “...Let’s try.”
Leaning against her side, I closed my eyes and slipped into the dream realm. Moments later Luna appeared next to me, looking down at me with a smile, “Any ideas on how to do this, my Page?”
I nodded, “First we need to find the right species.”
“There are some in Canterlot,” Luna said, “We could narrow it down that way… or we could just go there. I recognize the species.”
“Oh. That saves time. Lead the way.”
Luna shifted plane and I quickly followed her to the plane of the ape people. It was less populated than Ponies or Griffins, but still many, many thousands.
A impulse from me sorted them by physical location.
Luna looked around and shifted her wings, “Now is the difficult task of finding the right one.”
I slowly began tapping my hoof against the not ground, half of them shifting away into a grouping to the side, “He is male, that removes half. From when I saw him in Fizzlepop Berrytwist's dream, he was fully adult,” I then added with another tap, “All males below that and the old go with them, leaving us with just under ten thousand.”
Luna slowly nodded before shifting us to the gathering in their realm away from Canterlot, “He was not with the forces in Canterlot, we can disregard them.”
Frowning to myself, I moved over and entered the closest dream, drifting some questions to the owner before exiting again, looking towards Luna, “He lives in a castle towards the south of the Kingdom. It has a small village by the base of it.”
“A southern gathering of them,” Luna said and we shifted around again, “Down to a thousand.”
I nodded and shifted the inhabitants of the village to the side too, “Three hundred.”
Luna looked thoughtful, “He seems like he would have an ego about him. He wouldn’t live in the lower sections.”
“Top tower,” I agreed, looking up towards the highest of the silvery portals before shifting it down to us before I turned to Luna, “...Let’s have a look?”
She nodded once and entered it with me.
Oh, this gonna be interesting. About what can Storm King dream right now? "Poor" bastard, inteligence is always most important in war and Page and Luna will get all of it with proper work directly from his head.
Given the Storm King's nature, and the fact that he was three days out from Canterlot at the time Tempest Shadow secured the Equestrian capitol, he's more likely to be aboard one of his larger airships with his main battle force rather than back home.
Granted, that world's airships travel faster than those of our world ever did, so... maybe?
Either way, I wouldn't count on him being dissuaded from continuing his attack on Equestria, as he has successfully conquered at least two sovereign nations (Abyssinia and Orinthia) and driven another into hiding (Seaquestria). All for a war intended solely to feed his ego.
9906632
Probably you are right, unfortunally. Storm King is megalomaniac warlord, who will treat Canterlot defeat as little setback and mark at his pride, that he need to wash up.
And in Storm Land live only 10 thousends male adult Storm Creatures. That mean, that there is 30-50 thousends of them at all. This world is pretty small, if such small population can go for world conqest.
Time for some Dream Espionage....
That felt like a CSI scene. Searching for the criminal in a database.
Nightmare (human) Page? pls
They must save a fortune on Guess Who games.
9906654
That's just it - The Storm King isn't going for world conquest. At least not in any sustainable manner. This is a war intended purely to fuel his massive ego, and he has no interest in actually ruling any of the territory he claims. Not with any amount of civic responsibility anyway. He deliberately left the kingdoms of Abyssinia and Orinthia destitute and unable to support themselves for the foreseeable future by literally gutting their economies, and when the king of Abyssinia asked the Storm King how his people were expected to survive with their economy ruined, the Storm King basically said "so what?"
The Storm King is a raider, striking deep into foreign lands to ravage and pillage as he sees fit, and purposely leaving his fallen opponents too weakend to even consider striking back. He's out for power, yes, but more to fuel his own ego rather than in any actual interest in ruling anything, and he does not care about the ruin he leaves in his wake other than to be able to say that he caused it.
One wonders if the final timeline shown in Starlight Glimmer's time war against Twilight Sparkle, the one where the world is dead and grey, might have been the result of the Storm King keeping the power he stole from the alicorns and accidentally dooming the world as he played with the sun and moon like a spoiled brat flaunting a stolen toy.
9906679
You could argue that the entire war against the ponies was to enrich himself with gold, slaves, as well as a morale boost to his armies. Since the Ponies are the superpower of this planet, it'd effectively cower the other races into giving them tribute. The war would pay for itself even if no land was taken.
9906674
If he will get nightmare mod it would be probably because someone got hurt, like Luna.
Also, I think that being human in origin , soul, and mind will make it harder for him to succumb to his darker side and will be like half dark and light
example:
i1.ytimg.com/vi/fg0z6RQLUrs/maxresdefault.jpg
And for alicorn nightmare, maybe something like that but different colors ,etc?
derpicdn.net/img/view/2016/3/12/1107565.png
I mean alpha and beta
derpicdn.net/img/view/2013/10/2/440130.png
That's a nice bit of detective work, but it seems to conflict a bit with Luna's statement that finding him would be "almost impossible".
9906832
I disagree. Page and Luna used a process of elimination as you noted, but the key word with Luna's statement is 'almost', meaning the probability of looking for a specific individual unknown to you without a name is on the very low end of the spectrum. However, what you said about the detective work is how Page and Luna overcame that limitation to look for that small statistic.
9906832
I think what she was referencing would be that it'd be almost impossible to find an average joe if all you had was the species.
i wonder how Storm King would like night terrors for the rest of his life?
Is it wrong that I want them to go to war? For story purposes?
Fighting a war against somepony that can pull a Fred Kruger as you sleep is a really bad idea, no mater how you look at it.
9906832
9906866
"Impossible" was what the Poles had when they finally broke some of the German Enigma cyphers. "Almost impossible" was what the Brits had when the Poles were forced to evacuate to the UK, and together they built Bombe to be able to read the German messages nearly as fast as the Germans were reading them.
Can't see how this end peaceful He was willing to invade and you don't do it without reserves to spare But Nighttime terror might lower his effectiveness and buy the ponies and allies time for troops to prepare...
9906991
Yeah, it could be used a lot more than it is in many stories, but there's often an oath trained dreamwalkers take that forbids them from doing it. Luckily no oath or responsibility to do that here.
"Enough of these mind games. I say war. Now."
Flexes muscles .
images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/aa0a519d-55d1-4a53-a6f2-1a165c1f1aa2/ddhvzku-31943383-718a-429c-869e-53ddf61ebe49.png/v1/fill/w_713,h_1120,q_70,strp/gift__kitsumi_nova_by_mykegreywolf_ddhvzku-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MjM3NSIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2FhMGE1MTlkLTU1ZDEtNGE1My1hNmYyLTFhMTY1YzFmMWFhMlwvZGRodnprdS0zMTk0MzM4My03MThhLTQyOWMtODY5ZS01M2RkZjYxZWJlNDkucG5nIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTE1MTMifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.cl-r38yVDfbNEuwuX_AsvwDAtbFcAMRPdjoLMF7LSL8
Gift: Kitsumi Nova by MykeGreywolf
They found you little monkey
9907718
Yeah... Fuck that path when you cross me.
9906632
Leave him a vegetable. You got mind powers abuse them.
Heh.
Heh-heh.
Skip to 0:40
I didn't expect to use that so soon.
Mental warfare has a new world of Implications if Dreammagic is added...
Incoming conversation!
Page:
"Stop bothering us!"
Yeti King:
"No."
Luna:
"You ruined my wedding, apologize!"
Storm king:
"No."
Luna&Page:
"Ok."
Storm King:
camo.fimfiction.net/a043oQ7o9_70QfEhxjT3Z_N1vG6sWLbMq3o1-7Amwh8?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2Foriginals%2F61%2F67%2F3b%2F61673b03ff44618a42b19f6cdd90f5e0.jpg
They fr doxxed him
What are the world population of any race?
Ponies?
Griffons?
Changelings?
Diamond Dog?
Seaponies?
Sphinx?
Abesinian?
Dragon?
Minatours?
Yeti seem to be ten if thousands of not hundred of thousands, but under a million seem really low...
Said the human who us used to know his species has currently 8,1 billion members world wide.
9906866
Just make a prisoners remember his king and the idiots is identified.
After that it's a little detective work
9906632
Sleep depravity will make him a mental and physical wreck. In time he dies, problems solved if he stays uncooperative.