Consciousness came to Ender in rolling waves, incrementally bringing his mind out of the deep dark. Opening his eyes, he found himself upside down, hanging from his seat’s restraint harness in the escape pod. The boy instinctively tried to reorient his perspective of down to something more favorable, only to find it impossible to do so because he could actually feel a pull towards the pod’s ceiling.
Has the artificial gravity malfunctioned? Ender was genuinely puzzled – an unusual feeling for him. As his faculties fully returned, he realized with a start that a pod this small didn’t have enough power to generate the required field. Shaking his head, the soldier tried to piece together what had happened. He clearly remembered the launch; an external feed had shown the distressed tug falling away as his pod boosted to a minimum safe distance. Then… then there was a lot more acceleration, more than he would have thought possible from a life boat. That was it – Ender supposed he had blacked out from the g-forces.
He glanced at the few control panels available in the tiny craft. Acceleration couldn’t be causing this force; the only primary thruster is offline, and it’s pointed in the wrong direction. That means…
Small movements confirmed the boy’s suspicion. The pull against his body was far weaker than normal. Ender couldn’t think of another explanation: he was somehow on the moon.
Reaching down, the soldier unclipped the desk from his belt and unrolled the data tablet. After powering it up, it took only a few commands to link into the pod’s control systems and bring up an external feed. Two dorsal cameras were obscured or destroyed, but sure enough, a ventral camera showed him the desolate expanse of the lunar landscape.
How did the ship recover from such an uncontrolled acceleration and manage to land safely? Ender was dumbfounded. Even if it had the power, which he doubted, it would take a quick, not to mention conscious, pilot and some very advanced navigational software to keep the escape pod from making yet another crater on the moon’s face.
That would be a mystery for another time. After running a system diagnostic and checking the surrounding landscape for rocks big or sharp enough to pierce the hull, Ender accessed the flight control program through his desk and directed the ship to right itself. The world seemingly rotated around him as he felt the pod’s maneuvering thrusters fire. After a few seconds of vibration and a disheartening crunching sound from below his seat, Ender unbuckled and began moving toward the main control console at the front of the pod.
As he maneuvered between the double row of seats facing the axis of the cylindrical lifeboat, Ender felt his knees weaken and his legs grow sluggish.
Did I get up too fast? It hasn’t been that long since…
The thought died as Ender tumbled forward into the aisle, collapsing into a deep slumber.
☽
Nightmare Moon imagined herself breathing a sigh of relief as she released the hold on her tenuous power. That had been a close call. In the hours since she had pulled the ember to the surface of her moon, she had tried every means possible to reach it, but the Elements’ bonds were strong as ever. Try as she might, the once-Mistress of the Moon above could not even access its surface. Nightmare had no choice but to remain below, tormented by the possibility of escape just on the other side.
Then, suddenly, the ember awoke and its… container, or whatever it was, had started to move. Fear gripped her core as Nightmare Moon realized that she wouldn’t have the strength to repeat her previous escape attempt, not on this side of the tapestry. Frantically, the alicorn had thrown everything she could conceive at the ember to keep it from leaving. It was a simple sleeping spell that finally did the trick. Thankfully, such low-level magic was weak enough to get through her bonds.
But how long can I keep him asleep?
Glancing at her tapestry, Nightmare Moon came to a realization. Now that the ember was here, the space below had completely vanished, and the weave of stars and fog appeared as it had when she first crafted it. It was the original beacon, the minds of those bugs who had originally intruded upon her domain, which enabled her to see it. The being they touched had shown with their light and had kept the way open to her… but now everything was dark.
The ember was the dreamer; he had been the key.
She considered this, ever mindful of the ticking clock. The ember would try to leave again when he woke up, and she might not be able to stop him a second time.
Wait, Nightmare realized, he’s asleep! How could I be so foalish?
A dream was the answer! Her consciousness had wholly gone through the tapestry before, leaving her prison behind. Why should it be any different now? If she could create a dream, she could enter it and escape through the mind of the dreamer!
Suddenly, the alicorn’s hopes deflated. The ember couldn’t well fly away while he was asleep. Furthermore, how effective would her escape be if she was stuck in the mind of another pony? Or rather, if she was stuck in… whatever he was.
He’s not a colt, damn it, she told her stubborn mind.
Nightmare Moon shuffled through her memories of the arts arcane, looking for another solution. Centuries of preparation for her battle with Celestia made it easy for the alicorn to quickly review every spell available to her, but despite all the choices her knowledge afforded, she couldn’t find of another possibility.
The seal placed on her by the Elements of Harmony was simply too crippling.
A dream it was, then. She would simply have to find a way to escape once she was in the colt’s… in the other being’s mind. Satisfied now that she had a path forward, Nightmare Moon calmed her nerves, delving deep into her center. While she was intellectually familiar with dream magic, it was something she had never personally performed. Rather, she was simply relying on the memories provided by her previous self.
It took a very conscious effort for the alicorn to avoid thinking of that name.
Abruptly, Nightmare Moon’s search for her power over dreams came to a halt as she reached a portion of her mind partitioned by an impenetrable barrier; one she had herself created.
No! Nightmare railed inside her own head. No! I couldn’t have… I didn’t…
A feeling of despair radiated outward from her core as she slowly realized the truth: the part of herself she needed, the piece that could spin and weave the threads of others’ dreams, was locked away inside the one part of her mind she hated most.
It was sealed inside the barrier holding Princess Luna.
☽
Had she been asleep? Was this a dream? She couldn’t tell.
It sure felt like a dream.
She heard a voice, though it was muffled, distant. It was like someone was trying to wake her.
Tia?
The first thing Luna noticed was the lack of anything to notice. There was no sensation, no sense of body, just… her mind, floating in emptiness.
Panic suddenly flooded throughout her being as memories began to roll back in chaotic waves.
A desolate flight over a sleeping Equestria, longing, anger, a desperate wish, awe, as she felt her power blossom exponentially to levels she never thought possible, wonder, at seeing an older version of herself in the mirror image of a lake, terror, as she realized that this new Luna had a mind of its own: her mind, sans mercy and pity, and ever so much more powerful.
Now new memories were hurling themselves against her psyche, demanding attention. She couldn’t process it all; only broad concepts and facts stuck as the rest crashed around her like water through a broken dam.
The other, Nightmare Moon, had fought Celestia and lost. Tia had… her sister had…
She was banished, merely a shell of consciousness trapped with the other in what had once been her moon.
“It’s about time you woke up,” a curt voice enveloped her. “We don’t have all day.”
It was her voice, only deeper, and with an arrogant lilt. Luna cringed, remembering the last time she had heard it.
“W-what happened to me? To… us?” It was all Luna could do to keep her voice from wavering. There was no way to hide your fear when your opponent shared your very mind, but for the young princess it was a matter of pride. She wanted to be able to show some small aspect of self-control in the face of such overwhelming power.
“There’s no use in playing dumb, child,” her other self scoffed. “We both know what your sister did to us. I am merely trying to rectify the situation. Now come along, we have no time to waste.”
“Tia was only trying to-” The princess’ objection was cut short by a sharp magical blow that left her dazed.
Luna felt herself pulled along by the sheer force of the other’s will. She briefly entertained the thought of struggling, but knew that there would be no point. Nightmare had always controlled the vast majority of their divine power. Here, inside the Elements’ barrier, she was as strong as ever.
Higher and higher the pair went, ascending in consciousness to the edge of their prison. To Luna, it felt like emerging from a great watery depth: the pressure gradually lessening as the light increased.
“Why did you unseal me?” she ventured. “I’ve been sleeping for-” Luna gasped mentally as the amount of time finally caught up with her. The world she had known, and the few ponies to which she had grown close, all of it would be…
A prickly crimson wave from her captor washed over her. It was Nightmare’s bitter laughter. “Still want to defend your sister, little one? See what her mercy has wrought.”
As they stopped near Nightmare’s tapestry, Luna felt the full weight of the countless years the other spent here. She staggered at the memories… Nightmare’s time here surpassed even her previous life span and threatened to consume her.
It was like trying to drink from a staggering waterfall. Out of pure survival instinct, the princess discarded all but the brightest of the memories that washed over her. The rage and bitterness of the early years hit first, then the centuries of cold calculation. The latter blurred and meshed with the following period of boredom and stillness; either it was unimportant or Nightmare didn’t want her examining that time too closely. Finally, she saw the beacon, the discovery of another side to her tapestry, and the accidental arrival of this… craft?
A cold fear prickled over Luna as she considered the implications. What if it had worked? What if Nightmare had been able to escape and reach Equestria? What new horrors would she have visited upon it and what would Celestia have been forced to do?
Luna despaired. Now she was needed for some element of the other’s plan, and she had neither the strength to resist nor a place to hide.
The young princess felt some aspect of herself being twisted and pulled, but to no effect, and soon the feeling disappeared. Nightmare seemed frustrated.
“Create a dream for… him,” the dark alicorn highlighted the being she called an ember in Luna’s mind, “and take us both there.”
So that’s what this was about. That feeling… Nightmare was trying to co-opt her power over dreams, but for some reason she couldn’t do it. She needed Luna to escape. This was it – the place to make her stand. Luna gathered herself, resolute in facing the other.
“No. I won’t. YOU got us in here, and I won’t help you get out. Besides, Tia will just beat you again!” Luna didn’t mean to throw in the last barb, and the thought of fighting her sister was saddening, but the princess needed to feel something, anything, backing her up.
Her small amount confidence withered almost immediately as she was enveloped by Nightmare’s wrath. The dark alicorn didn’t even reply with words, rather, she buffeted Luna’s consciousness with pure force of magic. The malevolent wind tore at Luna, leaving her hollow, ephemeral. It was all she could do to remember her name, much less her desire to resist.
“Create the dream… now,” Nightmare commanded.
Luna stumbled forward, weakly drawing upon old knowledge, nearly as innate as her control over the moon itself. Without feeling, she created silver threads that slowly wove together into a fabric. The fabric multiplied once, twice, fourfold, doubling over and over again until it was no longer silver but now countless facets of every color. Before the two alicorns, the weave became a landscape, opening to them, and they stepped through.
☽
Ender opened his eyes and rolled over, trying to clear a muddled head. Everything seemed off, and he had to find out why.
It was fresh air. That was it. Years in space will make even the smallest breath of unfiltered air seem like another world entirely. Hints of pine and dry earth reached his nostrils and for a moment, Ender was a child again on an Earth lost long ago.
As his vision cleared, the sight of blue sky confirmed what his nose was telling him. But how was this happening? As far as Ender knew, he was in an escape pod, settled impossibly on the moon’s surface.
The boy rose shakily to his feet, blinking in the bright sunlight and fighting off the slight vertigo caused by such an open sky above him. Ender was thankful for the moderately dense forest surrounding him; waking up on an open plain would have left him reeling for a good few minutes, clutching the earth around him as his eyes cast about, desperately wanting some part of the land to curve up.
Wait, he thought, a thrill of fear running through him, this forest, it’s…
Ender could hear the sound of a nearby stream. A clear path wound through the sparse underbrush, covered in pine needles. Sure enough, he could barely make out the ladder of a playground slide through a tiny gap in the trees ahead.
He stared, wide-eyed and unmoving. This was Fairyland. Or at least that’s what the Fantasy Game had called it so long ago. To Ender, it was the place of countless nightmares.
And now it felt real.
☽
Two alicorns stepped out onto a broad, grassy plain. Rolling hills, brilliantly green in morning sunlight, were only broken occasionally by a clutches of broad trees that promised comfortable shade and perhaps a sweet fruit or two. A light breeze brought the smell of clover. To any equine, it was heaven – a place of food, peace, and rest.
Nightmare Moon took a long while to simply relish the feeling of again having a body, even if it was only a dream. Clad in armor, the larger alicorn’s obsidian coat stood in stark contrast to the bright world around her. The sunlight seemed to disappear as it touched her, the black of her coat being not a true pigment, but rather the very absence of light.
Beside her, Luna was dismayed to find that she appeared younger than she remembered. Her midnight blue coat was lighter, and gone was the ethereal starry mane of which she had been so proud. Instead, the light blue curls of her childhood fell past her eyes as she shook her head, trying to get them to float as they once did. She glanced up at her other, older self.
Must she take everything from me?
It was with a visible effort that Nightmare Moon dragged herself back to the situation at hand.
“So, where is he?” she demanded of the princess.
Luna was glad that she was able to retain a measure of defiance in her voice.
“You wanted a dream, I gave you a dream. This is my simplest weave – a basic place of relaxation for ponies needing it,” Luna paused, adding as much of an edge as she could. “It was all I could do. You should be happy I could still weave at all after what you did to me.”
Nightmare snorted, not even turning back as she replied, “That’s nothing compared to what I would have done had you kept refusing. Again, where is he?”
“I don’t know,” Luna lied through her teeth. “I just create the dream; the dreamer has to come on their own.”
The princess sensed her other self was still too preoccupied with having a body and the sensations that came with it to notice her deception. Nightmare was trying to make up for centuries of incorporeal existence in only a few minutes. Meanwhile, Luna was desperately trying to sort through what new memories she could in an effort to figure out the other alicorn’s plan.
Segmenting the weave, creating one for herself while pushing the ember into a natural dream, had been a last-second insight, and for now it was working. Nightmare didn’t know how dreams worked, and Luna had realized she could use that to her advantage.
Suddenly, every fiber in her being froze in horror as Luna decrypted enough of Nightmare’s memories to understand the basic intent of her plan.
She was going to kill Celestia, and worse, she had worked out how to do it. Wide-eyed, Luna stared at her dark half. Before her emotions could betray her through their shared mental link, the princess clamped down on them, driving her focus elsewhere.
I can’t fight her on equal footing, and the longer I am with her, the sooner she will simply force me to do her bidding, she reasoned. She needs me somehow, so to thwart her, at least for the time being, I need to run.
But where could she run? There was only one answer.
Before the dark alicorn could collect herself and make any move to react, Luna breached the boundaries of her weave, diving into the ember’s own dream.
☽
The playground was empty, thank goodness. No wolf-children, or bugger-children, or shadows of his past were waiting to torment him today. In fact, the forest reminded Ender of the time when he reached the room at the End of the World, and the rest of the game lost its lethality everywhere else.
In fact, this whole experience seemed more like the game than any sort of dream Ender could remember. In his dreams, his sensations were always fuzzy, and his actions plodded forward on an inexorable course. Things happened because they were supposed to happen. Though he always felt as if he were making choices in his dreams, he never actually did.
So if this was in fact the game, Ender reasoned, he had better start remembering how to play it. Maybe then he could figure out what was going on, and how to get back to reality.
The Fantasy Game was one part of his training Ender made sure to investigate once he was promoted and received all the security clearances that came with his new rank. While the doctors and officers who designed and ran the Battle School program were loathe to divulge their secrets to so recent a graduate, they couldn’t deny a flag officer. It was then Ender learned the truth about one of the many games he had played.
While the game played in the Battle Room formed the core of the Battle School training program, the Fantasy Game was no less integral. Everyone played it, and unlike many of the simple games designed for Launchies and the younger kids, nearly everyone kept playing it right up until graduation.
But no one ever talked about it. It was something you did in your downtime, on your own desk. Sometimes Launchies would compare notes, but soon they noticed that their game became different from their friends’ experiences, and eventually they wouldn’t want to talk about it anymore.
When he was finally given access to the Battle School records, Ender became frustrated because he could find no mention of the Fantasy Game anywhere. He was about to accuse his sources of falsifying records, when he realized that it was simply known to the adults by another name: the Mind Game.
One of the largest problems that plagued early Battle School classes was a myriad of developmental disorders that popped up among the students. Brilliant though they were, the program was simply too stressful and grueling for even the brightest of humanity’s minds. Therapists and experimental psychologists were brought in to support the students, but the workload was simply too great and the problems too numerous.
Then, one of the teams selected to correct the problem noticed how attached most of the students were to the basic cognitive development games designed for Launchies. They were simple things: guiding a mouse through a maze while avoiding cats, getting a cartoon bear through a dangerous forest, all designed to teach advanced concepts like threat mitigation and three-dimensional spatial orientation to young minds. But many Battle School students at the time created a greater narrative connecting the games, even when no link was written in the basic storyline or software. They even attached small superstitions to the games. Save the bear a certain number of times and you’ll be harder to hit in the Battle Room. If you can make it through the maze without even being seen by the cats, you get put on a secret list that’ll get you promoted early. Things like that.
Seeing an opportunity, the psych team spent months crafting an AI that could procedurally create many games in one program, and then tailor the program to the needs of each individual student based on everything the school knew about them. Considering the amount of resources poured into the selection of Battle School candidates, there was little the International Fleet did NOT know.
The Mind Game was a resounding success. By starting with simple games and then building new experiences based on the student’s profile and active feedback, the AI could do what a team of psychologists could not. Overnight, it became the children’s mentor, therapist, teacher, confessor, coach… and tormentor. Unlike any human counselor, the program had no qualms with forcing a student to confront their deepest fears early and often, if that’s what was required. The program directors may have quavered when they first saw the AI’s methods, but they couldn’t argue with the results. Developmental disorders almost completely vanished within the Battle School, and the AI program ran for decades without any substantial change.
Until Ender Wiggin arrived, and changed the game.
The Giant’s Drink was one of the common features to all students. A simple guessing game with no right answer, it was designed to teach resilience in the face of an impossible situation, and gauge how long a student would continue playing a game when the correct answer was not to play.
During his investigations, Ender had learned that he was only one of two students who had refused to stop playing, and the other one had killed himself.
Until Ender Wiggin arrived, poor Pinual had been the school’s only fatality.
The only difference between the two of them was that instead of lashing out at himself, Ender had vented his frustration at the game, breaking it and forcing the AI to invent a new program on the fly to accommodate him. The result was Fairyland, the very place where he was now standing.
He had not known it then, but Ender later learned that everything he saw after the Giant was the result of the computer “winging it.” Some of the basic programming was there, after all “Fairyland” was referenced in some other parts of the game as an incentive to get children to play, but no players had ever succeeded in finding it.
Knowing this did not fill Ender with confidence. In his dreams, Fairyland was never this real, just the shadowed memory of the game he had once played combined with his deepest fears. In the game, he always had the benefit of his desk as a filter between reality and the game; “he” was never more than a holographic character running through a generated landscape above his desk. Now he could smell the pine of the forest and feel the pitted metal of the playground equipment. Was this just another psychological experiment of the Fleet, a last-ditch effort to heal him after his breakdown on Eros? Everyone of importance knew about the night terrors he had suffered since the end of the war. Had the trip from Command School really happened, or was this somehow all in his head?
Well, whatever this was, the first order of business was to determine the rules of the game, and that meant testing its limits. In his dreams and in the game itself, Ender had always moved forward, towards the room at the End of the World. He knew what awaited him there and had no desire to see it again. What if he went backwards this time? Could he reach those simple early games? It would certainly be safer, and would hopefully signal those running this place that he wasn’t interested in playing.
☽
Luna knew she was jumping blindly into a dream of a creature she didn’t understand, yet it was her only option. As much as she feared arriving in a place or reality completely alien to her, she feared the wrath of her other self even more. Even so, it was to her great relief that she arrived not only as herself, but in a setting she could comprehend.
Well, comprehend to an extent, anyway.
The young alicorn gazed around at a perfectly flat plain of checkered red-and-white squares. She marveled at its uniformity, until a sense of scale and the feel of fabric beneath her hooves told her what it actually was. She was standing on an impossibly massive tablecloth. Towering before her was a giant loaf of bread, easily the size of Canterlot’s main gates. A bowl of jelly to her left gave off the tantalizing smell of strawberries. She could have easily swam in it had she wanted to. Awestruck, Luna trotted between massive platters of food, each one more improbable than the last. The salad bowl featured carrots bigger than even her sister. The water pitcher alone could supply a small town for days. It wasn’t until she saw the roasted and glazed carcass of some giant bird that she began to feel alarmed. If the food was this big, how large was the diner? Was this dreamer a giant compared to ponies?
No one was around to enjoy the table’s fare, however. The only setting was empty; no chair loomed above the lawn-sized placemat. Instead, two short glasses stood upside down on the blue cloth. Walking to the edge, she saw a series of hills, forming a vast and strange shape along the plains far below. Was that a village she spied in the distance? If so, it was impossibly small compared to the table on which she stood. Strange… were there ponies or other beings of her size in this land of giants? Now that she looked, she thought she could see a cluster of ponies grouped together far in the distance.
Seeing no obvious way down from the table, she thought about flying off, but instead cast about with her magic, examining the elements of the dream around her. Perhaps she could discern the purpose of the table, or maybe find the dreamer himself. Instead, she found a memory – a chain of memories, actually. A soft glow permeated the air around her horn as Luna conjured them up, hoping to learn something about her surroundings.
Wispy, silvery figures appeared over the landscape in front of her. One was the giant she had feared before, now sitting at a massive chair in front of the table’s one place setting. The other ran out from behind the bread, moving on a course straight for the giant.
As the memory cleared, Luna noticed that while the giant grew more detailed, the smaller figure did not. Both were tall, long-limbed creatures that shared the same basic body structure. The giant had a broad brow, bulbous features and was devoid of hair. The runner was lithe, and moved about on only two limbs. Even though it was far smaller than the giant, something about it left her with the impression that it was small, even for its own kind, like a child. While the giant grew more and more detailed – Luna could make out individual pores in his skin and she noted the crookedness of his teeth – the runner remained vaguely defined. Featureless… that was the best way to think of it. Even the runner’s face was utterly unremarkable.
“I think I’ll bite your head off,” the giant boomed. Luna wondered at her ability to understand the creature, and then quickly realized that her mind was directly interpreting a dream; language was unimportant when meaning was the actual medium for communication. She just interpreted that meaning in her own language.
All the same, it was sort of funny to hear Equine coming from such improbably shaped lips.
The runner was unimpressed by the giant’s threats. He ran up and kicked at the giant’s chin. Instead of chomping the smaller creature as Luna expected he would, the giant just rolled out a massive tongue, knocking the runner back.
“How about a guessing game?” he asked. That was a strange response to a kick in the face, the alicorn thought. The runner only waited, not responding.
“One is poison and one is not,” the giant said, setting out two glasses filled with liquid before the runner. Luna noted they were the same ones she had seen before starting the memory. “Guess right and I’ll take you into Fairyland.”
The young princess examined the contents of the two glasses… one was a vile green mixture, like a potion. It bubbled and emitted a noxious odor. The other one was a thick creamy white, like milk. Well, that was a fairly obvious choice.
The runner did not move, not even inclining his head either way. After long seconds of consideration, he approached one of the glasses, the one filled with white liquid. Luna wondered how he was supposed to drink; the glass was nearly as tall as he was.
The figure leaned his head over the rim of the glass and began to drink. Suddenly, his body began to inflate grotesquely, like a balloon. Soon he floated up and away, eventually popping high in the air. The giant laughed grotesquely. The alicorn was shocked at the apparent murder, and even more appalled at the giant’s casual laughter. What kind of creature killed for sport, for a game?
Surprisingly, the memory did not end. If the runner died, Luna wondered, how did the memory continue? Was it the giant’s?
After a few minutes, the runner emerged again from behind the bread, and the same events repeated, minus the kick to the giant’s face. This time, a gray liquid became solid around the runner’s head, holding him in place while the giant withdrew massive utensils and flayed him alive, eating pieces as he went.
Luna had to look away, and it was all she could do not to run off the table in a wild panic. It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not real. It can’t be real, she repeated to herself, over and over, until her ears told her it was finished. The runner was returning.
She was glad the giant was only a memory.
The events repeated themselves, and this time, the two glasses held red foam and a blue liquid moving in perpetual waves. Again, the runner waited without moving. Luna dreaded what his death might be, until she remembered that he might be able to win this time. After all, statistically speaking, he had to guess correctly at some point, right?
The small figure had strange appendages at the end of his forelimbs, similar to a dragon’s talons. Luna noticed that he had them tightly clenched and as she looked closer, the princess noted that he was shaking. Whether it was in anger or fear, she couldn’t tell, but either would have been appropriate.
Suddenly, the runner kicked over one glass, then the other before running towards the giant.
“Cheater, cheater!” the giant shouted as he tried to smash the figure with his carriage-sized… hands, she realized, as her mind supplied the word. A dragon term adapted to Equine, it seemed, but Luna pushed the thought out of her mind. She’d worry about that later. The runner was unfazed, and nimbly dodged the blows, eventually jumping up to land over the giant’s lips. To the alicorn’s amazement, he survived his assault on the massive creature. To her horror, the figure began burrowing into the giant’s eye, causing him to emit gut-wrenching screams as the runner went deeper and deeper, despite the giant’s attempts to dislodge him.
The giant stood bolt upright in pain, knocking over his chair. Then with one last strained gasp, he keeled over backwards, dying. Seeing where he fell, Luna realized that the strange hills in the plain were actually the long-reclaimed remnants of his body, covered with dirt and grass.
Though she could no longer see the runner, she could hear, as if over the wind, words that he must have heard.
“How did you get here? Nobody ever comes here.” If he replied, Luna couldn’t hear it. Then, over the wind: “Welcome to Fairyland.”
The memory ended. The princess could only stand there, paralyzed in shock.
Suddenly, a voice jolted her out of her reverie. It was clear and lucid, not part of the memory, but part of the current dream.
“What are you doing here?”
☽
Nightmare Moon raged impotently over the annoyingly placid plain. That little wretch! The fact that she could be so easily tricked made everything worse. Here, inside her mind where she had access and control over her full power, Nightmare could easily dominate that sniveling filly, but no, she had let herself be distracted, and now she was trapped. The alicorn could sense her other half, as well as the ember, out in the distance somewhere, yet no matter how fast she flew, there was nothing more than this endless plain.
Now Nightmare well and truly regretted never learning this particular part of her abilities. She could sense other layers, other portions of the dream out there, but she had no idea of how to get to them.
Only one option remained: brute force. No matter what else happened, Nightmare knew she was more powerful than the princess. Summoning every last bit of her aura, she focused on the spark she knew to be Luna, far off in the distance. Like she pulled herself towards the ember, she would do the same to her other half, relying on her power to punch through whatever stood between them. Nightmare Moon’s armor began to glow and spark with her horn as she gathered her magic about her. As she focused, the very plain around her began to warp and waver, buckling under the assault.
Soon…
☽
Ender noted that the climb up the table was far harder than the climb down had been. Fighting gravity was tough enough, but there was a big difference between commanding an on-screen avatar to find hand and footholds and doing it yourself. If he remembered correctly, he had been able to use the Giant’s overturned chair as well. This time, it was nowhere to be found.
Reaching the top, the boy was surprised to find a figure waiting, staring out over the plain where the Giant had fallen. It was… a pony? Ender struggled to remember if he had seen them before in the Fantasy Game. After a moment, he vaguely recalled there being a herd kept by the dwarves who had built their village amidst the Giant’s corpse. Candy-colored and cute, he had ignored them because they looked just like every other background component of the Fantasy Game. So what was one doing up here?
“What are you doing here?” he ventured, half expecting it to turn and stare at him dumbly. After all, not all the animals in the game could speak.
It turned, regarding him with wide eyes and a surprised gasp. She, if the timber of her voice was any indication, fumbled for words, shock showing on her strangely expressive face.
Ender had not seen many animals in his lifetime, but he knew a real pony looked nothing like this simulacrum. At the same time, though, something about this one simply struck him as… off. Most of the characters in the Fantasy Game were cartoonish; it was a game for children after all. This one, though, looked like she came from a different design. She certainly seemed tangible enough, as real as the trees he had seen earlier. Her midnight coat had a similar texture to that of the one horse he had seen as a child, and her cerulean blue mane lifted in the slight breeze. As she raised her head, a long spiral horn separated itself from the rest of her profile, resting proudly on her forehead. Ah, she was a unicorn then. Ender chided himself for being surprised; this was Fairyland after all.
Or, perhaps she wasn’t. Further examination answered Ender’s question as to how she got to the top of the Giant’s table when he spied a pair of wings adorning her back. Was she a… what was the word… pegasus then? The Battle School’s curriculum barely touched on mythology.
“You’re… you’re the dreamer,” she blurted, eyes never leaving his face.
Okay, that was not what I expected to hear, Ender thought. Is this the start of some IF psyche program?
He decided to play along. “Am I? I had come to the conclusion that this wasn’t a dream.”
She stared, apparently not the only one to hear something unexpected.
“Why not?” the pony asked slowly, her words seemingly catching up to her thoughts. Her ears rotated fully forward, focusing on his reply.
Ender knelt, pinching the tablecloth between thumb and forefinger. “Well, to begin with,” he said, looking up at her, “I generally don’t remember feeling things in my dreams. Sights and sounds, yes, but never touch.” He noticed that she had large emerald eyes. They seemed to consider his words.
Some psych program, he thought.
“The same goes with smell. The bread over there smells good enough to eat, and that’s definitely never happened to me in a dream before.” Ender tilted his head towards the massive loaf behind them as he stood.
The creature was silent for a long minute, regarding him with an inscrutable expression. Small shifts in her weight between fore and back legs spoke of indecision, or at the very least deep thought.
If this is a simulation, it’s a damned good one. The body language is incredibly lifelike. Ender noted. Even so, I wish it would hurry up.
“Um…” he prompted, leaning forward and raising his eyebrows. Hopefully this program would take the hint and start talking. Perhaps there was a human operator behind it?
She shook her head. “Forgive me,” she replied, fixing him with an earnest, almost pleading gaze. “I’m trying to decide whether I should wake you or not, you see…”
Ender suppressed a laugh. Ha! They already don’t know what to do with me. Did they honestly expect me to think this was all a dream? Aren’t they even going to try to play it off?
“…my other, well, let’s just say someone else put you to sleep when you tried to leave. She wants to use your craft to escape. You’re in great danger the longer you stay asleep, but if you wake up, I’m going to be right back where I started, trapped with her.”
What?
“What?” he asked incredulously.
She shook her head again, closing her eyes. “I knew you wouldn’t understand. I don’t either, not all of it.” The pony stepped closer, ruffling her wings slightly as she looked up into his eyes. The movement spoke of earnestness. “I think she wants to possess your body, but I don’t even know if that can be done. I just can’t think of any other way for her to escape. You can’t very well fly that craft of yours while you’re asleep.”
She spoke as if everything leading up to his current circumstances had actually happened. Ender had been operating under the assumption that at least some of it had been a part of this admittedly realistic simulation.
Ender considered his options. While he felt like challenging her, playing along would probably yield more results and perhaps show him a way out. As therapy, this scenario didn’t make a lot of sense, though nothing in the Fantasy Game ever did, at least not in an obvious way.
“Alright,” he responded levelly, “so it’s a catch-22.” The pony stared at him blankly.
“A what?” She blinked, looking genuinely confused.
It took a second for Ender to realize what it was she didn’t understand. Interesting, a human operator, or any decent program, should recognize that idiom. Shaking his head, he opted to not try and explain it.
“Nevermind, if neither choice is good, then maybe we can make another one. Just who is this ‘she’ you’re-“
Ender was interrupted by a massive shudder that resounded not only through the ground, but seemingly through the air and his very body. A harsh voice tore around them, turning both heads towards a spot high above the table.
“A-ha! Thought I was helpless, didn’t you?! You’re about to find out exactly what ‘helpless’ feels like, child.”
Another unicorn’s head, this one much larger and dark beyond the color black, marked the center of a fissure ripped seemingly from the air itself. It struggled, and concentric ripples emanated outward, as if something were pushing through an invisible wall. The world shuddered again, as the second unicorn uttered a feral cry.
Turning back to his companion, all Ender could see were the whites of her eyes. Her pupils had shrunk, and her ears lay back in fear. She was frozen momentarily, then she remembered herself and looked at him.
“Run!”
The soldier didn’t need to be told twice. He flung himself over the edge, grabbing for the first handholds on the table leg, intent on climbing down. Suddenly, the unicorn-pegasus-whatever name he couldn’t remember was hovering behind him.
“That’s too slow! You’ll never make it – climb onto my back!”
Ender looked dubiously at her wings. Forgetting that a horse was not aerodynamic to begin with, they didn’t seem large enough to support her weight, let alone his. Even so, she was flying, and knew the threat better than he did.
He reached out as she came closer. With one great leap, he pushed off the table leg, and swung onto her back. At first, the pony made a sickening spiral as she struggled with the additional weight that had arrived off-balance. Ender caught on and righted himself, swinging both legs to rest under her wing roots and dropping his body as close to her frame as possible to minimize the change in her center of gravity. It must have helped, because she soon leveled out and began a slow descending flight towards the forest below.
“Are you OK?!” the boy shouted over the rushing air.
“You’re… heavier… than I thought,” his mount replied, gasping for air as she beat her wings mightily. “I can’t keep flying… but… I’ll take us as far… as I can go!”
Ender considered their options. “Can the other one fly as well?” he asked.
“Yes!” They were losing about a foot of altitude for every three they were going forward. All told, they weren’t going to get far by air.
“Then head for the forest! It’ll at least provide some top cover. Will you be able to run after we land?”
Though Ender couldn’t see it, the pony’s jaw set in a grim expression. “I’ll have to!” she shouted over the wind.
☽
Nightmare Moon paid no attention to her quarry as the pair disappeared over the edge of the improbably-colored plain. Noting only which direction they went, she returned her focus to breaking through the barrier between dreams. There was nothing to worry about: not only could she see the ember in her mind, she could follow the mental link to her other self.
They wouldn’t get far.
In the meantime, Nightmare had to contend with this barrier. Had she known only her head would fit through on that final push, she would have waited and weakened it further. By getting stuck part-way, she had warned her quarry of her presence.
Oh well, the alicorn sighed mentally as she gathered the rest of her magical reserves to renew her assault on the barrier, remembering the brief vision she had of the ember in his natural form. After all this time, it was nice to satisfy her curiosity. Soon enough, she’d be able to study him in detail as she worked out how to take over his body and finally escape her prison.
☽
They touched down in a small clearing in the seemingly endless woods. Winded as she was, it took a while for Luna to recognize the strange metal structures around them as childhood play equipment. The slide, swings, and merry-go-round looked familiar – the purpose of the other objects wasn’t immediately clear to the princess.
“Take a moment and catch your breath. There’s no point in ruining yourself now if we have a long run ahead.” Luna’s new companion guided her to the forest edge, glancing up to make sure their pursuer was not imminently approaching. She didn’t have the wind to tell him that they’d both feel it the second Nightmare fully broke through, so the alicorn simply let herself be led.
All she could hear was the sound of her own panting. What a foal! I could have levitated him instead of exhausting myself like this! Luna chastised herself. Well, nothing to be done about it now. Perhaps it’s better that I save my magic – who knows if she can sense me using it, and cut off the source of my power.
The alicorn considered that for a moment. Of course she can’t cut off everything – otherwise the dream will collapse. I wonder if she knows how much power I need to maintain it… probably not.
She looked at the dreamer. He paced, head down with eyes unfocused, staring off into the far distance. It was remarkable how familiar his body language was, despite his form being completely different.
As Luna felt her heart rate slow and her lungs cease their burning, she ventured a question.
“What am I to call you? ‘Dreamer’ sounds impersonal and I don’t want to use her word for you.”
He glanced up, his thoughts obviously interrupted. “What did she call – never mind, it’s not important.” He motioned with a hand, indicating that they should start moving.
“My name is Ender,” he said, falling into a quick but steady pace. Luna found that a standard trot matched nicely, two of her hoofclips matching each of his strides. Hopefully they could maintain this for quite some time.
“Ender? Finisher?” Luna wasn’t sure if the Equine she heard matched correctly. ‘Finisher,’ it seemed an odd name, but not too different from the many ponies whose names matched their talent and eventual cutie mark. She wondered briefly if he had one, and what it would look like.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a faint smile, then he shook his head, suddenly serious again and intent on maintaining his pace. “It’s a nickname, actually, and you’re not the first to say that – long story. What is your name?”
“Luna,” she replied. He balked for a moment as she wondered if there was a similar translation problem as their minds exchanged meaning instead of words.
“So I’m guessing it’s no accident that I landed on the moon?” The princess tried to follow his logic, wondering if he knew about her other self’s actions until she realized that her name was also another term for the moon, if an archaic one.
“No, actually, it’s not at all. But that’s also a long story.”
He nodded. “Alright, let’s focus on surviving for now. Story time can come later. That other unicorn back there… you said she wants me for something, right?”
Luna was feeling her lungs start to burn again, especially when trying to talk and trot, but she pressed on with their pace. “Alicorn, actually. But yes, I think she wants to possess you.”
Hmm, Luna pondered, he knows what a unicorn is, but he doesn’t recognize an alicorn. In spite of the urgency of their situation, a part of her mind catalogued the fact for later review. She was sure she could come up with many more questions, but they were unimportant now.
“And where do you come in?” he asked.
“She can’t create dreams – that’s what she needed me for. She forced me to weave one, thinking to trap you in it, but I made a separate fabric for us while I put you into one of your natural dreams. Then I tried to escape, but as you can see, she followed me here.” Luna paused, cringing at her role in all this. “I’m sorry; I didn’t think she could do that. To push through with brute force would require more power than I ever had. I didn’t think she could manage it.”
The trees passed by as the princess turned to watch her companion. He opened and closed his mouth a few times to reply, but apparently thought better of it and stopped.
“There is a LOT of this that doesn’t make sense and a lot more that I doubt, but let’s say I believe you. It’s either you wake me up and you’re back where you started, or I stay in this dream and we get chased until she catches us, right?”
“Yes, again I’m so-“
“-sorry, I know,” he interrupted. “Can you fight her?”
Luna’s eyes widened as she shook her head. The princess stumbled a bit as she missed an errant tree root. Ender stopped momentarily, but when it was clear she was fine, they both continued.
“I’ll take that as a no.”
“In here, she’s immensely powerful. I might be able to cast a few spells and delay her, but she would just overwhelm me. Then she would turn on you.” Luna wondered why they were even running. It would only be a matter of time before they were found.
“Spells? Oh, right… unicorn. I forgot the horns were supposed to be magic. I guess anything goes in the Fantasy Game.”
The alicorn was about to correct him on his terminology again when the rest of the sentence registered in her mind. Fantasy Game? Does he not believe this is a dream?
Before she could ask, he had moved on. “What about a trap? Would we be able to take her by surprise?”
Luna considered that, finding it harder and harder to think as her legs continued to tire and her lungs started to become more insistent that she stop and take a rest. “She would have to be very distracted and surprised, and even then, I don’t know if I have the power.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the hint of a smile on his features. There was an idea forming. “What if it wasn’t you?”
“Are there dangers in this dream? What do you have…?” Luna stopped herself.
How could I be so foalish?! We share a mind! Who knows what she could pick up? “Wait, stop. Don’t tell me!” Ender glanced at her, a puzzled expression on his face.
How am I supposed to explain this to him?
“Again, it’s a… long story. Let’s just say she and I are… intimately familiar. We’re linked, if you will. She might be able to know what I’m thinking.”
Why am I even bothering? How do I even have a chance at stopping her? This was supposed to be my escape, and she was able to follow me even here.
Luna gave up. She planted her hooves and skidded to a stop in a small clearing. It took a few strides for Ender to realize he was alone and double back. While she waited, the young alicorn noticed an old stone well with a weathered rope hanging from a pulley.
“Look, I’m sorry. Just stay there and I’ll wake you up. At least you’ll be safe. Promise me you’ll leave as fast as you can, and do whatever you can to stay awake. As soon as we’re both back… where we were, she’ll probably try to stop you again.” Luna approached her companion, horn glowing.
“Hold up,” Ender raised a hand, fingers spreading out as if to ward her away. The alicorn had never before seen the gesture, but it made a strange sort of sense. “You said you know her well. Tell me, what distracts her? What is she afraid of?”
Luna paused, amazed that he wanted to continue when his own safety was assured. Blinking, it took her a few moments to register his question.
“Not what: who. She’s afraid of our sister… that’s who put us in this situation to begin with.” She saw the wheels turning in his head, eyes alight with an idea.
He seems so confident… could we actually have a chance?
“So you’re saying she fears a sibling? That’s perfect.”
Luna couldn’t comprehend any of this, but perhaps that was a good thing. If she was clueless, than her dark half would be as well. She had to ask one thing, though.
“How is that perfect?” Now he grinned in earnest, nodding his head towards the well in the clearing.
“I do too, and this is my dream.”
☽
Nightmare Moon gave a cry of triumph as she pulled the last part of her body through the invisible barrier between dream worlds. The little annoyance did good work, she noted begrudgingly. The weave had contracted each time she pushed through it, making every curve of her body another obstacle to her progress.
The alicorn flapped her wings, luxuriating in the feeling of flight now that she could again move freely. Hovering over the strange landscape at a higher altitude, she could now make out the strange plain below. It was… a table? Her sense of scale tilted wildly as she made out rolling hills below, surrounding a tiny village. Shaking her head, she ignored the comparative insanity of the dream world and focused on the ember and her sister in her mind.
There they were… father than she would have expected, but nothing worrisome.
In fact, Nightmare grinned wickedly, a little chase might make the capture all the sweeter.
Black wings furled as she dove towards the ground, gaining momentum. It would be a fine chase indeed.
☽
The well, according to her companion, was actually the entrance to an underground cavern, Luna looked at the rope dubiously, but this was his dream after all. Judging by how he moved, he had been here before.
As she watched Ender deftly vault the rim of the well, catch the rope, and begin lowering himself down, Luna couldn’t help but admire how agile and dexterous he was. His was a body, it seemed, designed for climbing, jumping, hanging, and otherwise negotiating vertical obstacles. As Luna catalogued yet another fact about him in her mind, she suddenly wondered what label to use, not for him in particular, but for his species.
Leaning over the well, she realized that it was not wide enough to accommodate her wingspan. She couldn’t very well hold onto the rope as he was doing. Luna sighed, realizing she would have to risk a levitation spell. She could teleport, but she couldn’t see the bottom of the well, and didn’t want to risk appearing in mid-air, still too far from the ground to safely land.
Floating next to Ender as he descended, Luna took the opportunity to ask the question on her mind.
“What do you call yourself? I mean,” she added, getting a confused look from the dreamer, “as a common name. What does your kind call itself?”
Apparently, the question was odd enough that he actually stopped climbing, and hung on to the rope for a moment while looking at her strangely. Apparently not seeing the reaction he wanted, Ender turned and kept climbing without a word.
The young alicorn hurried after him, using her magic to catch up. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to offend you. I just don’t know what to call you other than ‘Ender.’”
He fixed her with an unbelieving stare. “You really don’t know?”
“Why would I ask if I did?” Something didn’t quite add up regarding his reactions, and it was confusing Luna. He must believe I am a figment of his imagination, she reasoned, and now that I consider it, can I really blame him? We’re in one of his dreams, after all. She couldn’t imagine what this entire experience seemed like to him; maybe his disbelief was just a way of coping?
At least he was not only being cooperative, but actively helping her. He could have given up when she offered to wake him.
Ender continued his descent, stepping off the rope and onto the damp stone floor of the well. Reaching up to guide her to the bottom, he replied, “Human is the word you’re looking for. Man for male, woman for female.”
Luna heard stallion and mare, and knew they weren’t right, but apparently the Equine terms translated directly. It was another interesting fact to note. She touched the fabric of the dream momentarily, forcing out those details. Man and woman were rendered in her mind the same way hand was earlier.
She opened her eyes to see the human – she liked using the new word – looking at her cautiously.
“I just felt something when your horn lit up. What did you do?”
Before she could answer the entire world shook again. Luna felt her heart race as adrenaline shot through her system. She looked at Ender, eyes conveying her alarm.
“She’s broken free. We need to move… I’ll tell you on the way.” Luna did her best to keep her voice calm; panicking would help neither of them.
Nodding, Ender turned and started to jog again through the broad stone corridor. Luna fell in next to him, trying her best not to slip on the damp floor.
“In dreams,” the princess explained, “we don’t exactly speak. We perceive it that way, but our minds are sharing meaning, not words. I was only trying to discern the actual words you used; all I heard were my own translations.”
Ender only nodded, his eyebrows furrowed. He remained silent for quite a while as they moved quickly through the cavern.
I must have given him a lot to think about, or else challenged his viewpoint of what’s going on. Luna hoped he would come to understand the reality of the situation and not pass it off as a mere dream or fantasy. Well, a normal dream anyway.
The flagstones soon gave way to natural rock as the pair traveled through the long cavern. Piles of gems, cut jewels, and other treasures lay in open vaults. They passed rooms featuring tables with more jewels or heaping piles of food amidst fancy china and gleaming golden utensils. As they passed, Luna noticed eyes peering out from behind the gems and other treasures.
A chill went down her spine as the princess wondered what happened to anyone who approached the vaults.
Ahead, a myriad of cages hung from the ceiling, each containing a different, friendly-looking animal. It was a menagerie worthy of the Royal Gardens, and Luna was sorely tempted to examine all the new species up close. She had to remind herself of their dire circumstances to keep her hooves moving forward.
For his part, Ender paid no attention to the temptations on either side as he single-mindedly moved through the cave system. Eventually, he led the alicorn to a broad stone door at the end of the corridor, seemingly hewn from the very rock of the cavern. Brilliant glowing emeralds were embedded into the door, forming shapes that Luna soon realized were letters. It took a moment for her mind to receive the meaning, but before long the words were clear:
The End of the World
The alicorn balked, wondering exactly what the creature beside her had in mind for this trap. He did plan on keeping the two of them safe, right?
Maybe waking him up would have been the better option.
Ender didn’t hesitate and walked right up to the door. In spite of its massive size, it moved easily, opening into brighter light beyond. Luna blinked and hurried after him, not wanting to be left behind regardless of her misgivings.
The sight that greeted her was the last thing she expected: the mouth of the cavern opened into the side of a mountain. The alicorn stood with her human companion atop a high cliff overlooking a broad pastoral landscape bathed in rich autumn light. Forests and fields blended in a patchwork quilt of green, brown, and gold that stretched from the base of the mountain to the far horizon. In the distance a castle loomed that reminded her greatly of Canterlot. Taller than it was wide, the citadel had so many towers and spires that the princess had a difficult time making an accurate count.
How could we be on the side of a mountain after traveling underground for so long? Luna wondered. If anything, their path had been level, and it certainly had not gone up. Granted, she of all ponies knew that dreams didn’t necessarily have to conform to natural law, but they usually made some kind of sense.
Looking up, she found the answer to her question, and it was even stranger than their improbable elevation. Above the landscape and castle was not open sky but the immense ceiling of an even bigger cavern. Countless gems sparkled high above, providing the late-afternoon sunlight to the world below. Some were too bright to directly observe, others were much like her stars, though these gems shone with every color of the rainbow. Luna knew of no artifacts, magic or otherwise, that could provide so much light for so large an area. The spectacle was breathtaking.
The human barely paid attention to the landscape; she guessed he had been here many times before. Instead, Luna watched has he walked right up to the cliff’s ledge and looked over. It was an unusually confident act for a creature without wings.
“Alright, Luna,” he said, turning back and looking her directly in the eyes. His use of her name drew the princess’ attention. It seemed he wanted her complete focus. “I need you to trust me on this. We both need to jump off this ledge, and don’t worry,” he held up his hands when he saw her reaction, “there is a cloud that catches us and takes us where we need to go. I don’t know how the dream would work if you were to fly – I don’t have wings, after all, but I don’t want us to get separated. Do you think you can jump and let yourself fall?”
The princess shrugged; confident that even should absolutely nothing happen, she could stop her descent with levitation. It would be unpleasant, but not dangerous. In response, she nodded and walked up to the edge.
On second thought, the rocks below seemed awfully far away.
Luna didn’t get the chance to rethink her decision as Ender threw himself off the ledge, rotating his body in midair so that he was face up, staring at her and the gems above. Even though she knew what was supposed to happen, Luna couldn’t suppress her shock, and instinctively dived after him, tucking her wings in to gain speed.
In the blink of an eye, a cloud flew out of nowhere and caught the two of them. Luna rolled over in the soft material to see the human laughing as the cloud carried them over the landscape.
“That’s always fun, no matter how many times I do it!” His face suddenly grew somber. She thought he had merely remembered the nature of their situation until he remarked, “It’s the one good part of this dream.”
Not knowing what to make of that, the alicorn could only voice the other thought in her mind. “Do you normally walk on clouds? Usually that’s a talent limited to creatures with wings. How did your kind develop the skill?”
Ender raised an eyebrow. “We can’t, normally. I thought it was just a dream thing. Are you saying you can?” Luna noted the surprise in his voice. It was one more piece of information to file away.
“Well, yes.” Luna wanted to describe the basics of pegasi magic, but she noticed that they were quickly drawing near the castle’s tallest tower. Lifting her head towards their apparent destination, she asked, “Is that where we’re going?”
Ender turned his head, and she instantly heard a drop of pitch in his voice. It was the tone of deep dread. “Yes, yes it is.”
☽
Nightmare Moon landed between the trees and immediately began to cast about for her quarry. Though she succeeded in scaring a few birds who warbled angrily and took to the sky, the alicorn found no sign of her other half or the troublesome ember.
How could this be? She had them fixed solidly in her mind, and from the air, it had seemed like they were directly below. Closing her eyes and reaching out with her inner senses, Nightmare found them again, but they were still far away, farther than she expected. They were right… below…
The truth hit her like a cold wave. They’re underground! Frustrated though she was, Nightmare had to give credit to the foal. It was the perfect way to avoid pursuit, given her method of tracking. At another time, she might actually have been proud of the princess.
Now however, Nightmare had to catch up, and quickly. The dream weave that comprised the physical world here was just as tough as the boundary between dreams had been. While the alicorn could have easily blasted through a few hundred feet of earth in the real world, she would have as much trouble doing it here as she did when she originally broke through the barrier of the ember’s dream. She couldn’t afford to delay; each second took her quarry farther and farther away.
What are they hoping to accomplish, anyway? Even if the dreamer wakes up, we’re just back to where we began. Running only delays the inevitable.
Nightmare knew she had to find the entrance to whatever underground passage they were using, and she had a good idea where to start. The only breaks in the long forest behind her had been two clearings. The first one she recognized as the playground from one of the ember’s earlier dreams; the alicorn had been relieved to find no demon fillies playing there after her previous experience. The second hadn’t held much to draw her attention, but she was willing to bet that was where her prey had gone to ground.
She couldn’t remember the second clearing well enough to teleport there, but she could certainly remember the first. Figuring it would be faster to jump to the playground instead of trying to scry the second clearing, Nightmare took to the air, and prepared the requisite spell. In the blink of an eye, she popped into the sky above the playground, wind whipping the swings into motion below. She wheeled around in the air, making all possible haste to the second clearing.
Within minutes, Nightmare thudded down next to the well that was the meadow’s only feature. This was it, she was certain. She could sense the shape of the weave forming a long tunnel below. Now to get down there…
The alicorn snorted in annoyance, kicking the side of the well as she realized the passage was too small for her. Again, tearing it open would be an easy feat in reality, but Luna’s weave was simply too strong to destroy in a timely manner. Again, Nightmare had to give credit to her adversary’s ability. Either she simply made everything in her dreams this strongly, or she was specifically strengthening the weave behind her as she traveled. Regardless, she was effectively thwarting the dark alicorn, and Nightmare had to respect her for that.
Being thwarted was not the same as being stopped, however. Nightmare Moon could sense that the passage below was large enough to accommodate her. She would simply have to scry the bottom of the well in sufficient detail for her to teleport down. Touching her horn to the well, the alicorn began the necessary spells.
Soon, she could continue her pursuit.
☽
The cloud brought them to a lone window at the top of the citadel’s tallest tower. Far below, Luna could perceive the staggeringly complex architecture that comprised the castle. Staircases, archways, and bridges seemed to intertwine as they connected the various spires. None, however, led to their tower. As far as she could see, this window was the only entrance. Seeing no other option, she moved to the edge of the cloud and extended a foreleg to step over the windowsill.
“No!” Ender shouted, roughly grabbing her tail and pulling her back. As she turned and faced him with a severe expression, he let go immediately, raising his hands in what she now recognized as a common gesture of apology or self-defense. “I’m sorry; it’s just that you don’t want to go in there.”
Her anger faded instantly as Luna scolded herself for blindly going forward. “I’m assuming that is the trap, then?” Ender nodded. “Well, what are we going to do? We can’t very well stay here. She’ll have no reason to enter if we’re just sitting on a cloud outside this window.”
“I have an idea,” the human began, motioning to the conical red roof atop the tower. “Think you can fly us up there?”
He was still heavy, but it was only a few hoof-lengths up to reach the roof. In a matter of seconds, the alicorn and her companion were lying flat against the slick tiles. It was not a comfortable position to be sure; Luna felt as if they were in perpetual danger of sliding off the steep incline, but their position placed the room and the window between them and Nightmare’s avenue of approach.
She still was not sure how exactly this was going to work. “She can sense us, you know.” Luna turned her head to regard the human. Both of them lay completely flat against the roof, pressing their cheeks against the tile in a desperate attempt to stay in place without sliding down and over the lip below. “What’s to stop her from simply flying around the building and taking us from above?”
“That’s where you come in,” he replied. “You said she could share your thoughts, at least partially, right?”
The princess nodded, or rather, moved her head vertically along the tile.
“I’m going to describe to you what is in that room below, and I want you to think of nothing other than that. Believe that we are hiding inside, hoping she won’t find us there. All we need to do is get her in the window, the dream will do the rest.”
“What makes you think I can fool her by just misdirecting my thoughts? That would have to be a pretty convincing lie… besides, it’s all I can do right now to not slide off this roof, how am I going to ignore that?!” This plan, she thought, wasn’t as solid as she hoped.
“You tricked her before, right? After all, you got into my dream while trapping her in the one you made. How did you do that without alerting her?”
He has a fair point, the princess noted.
“She was distracted then. Now, she’s anything but.”
“So distract her.”
Luna remained silent, considering how she might be able to do this. Ender must have taken her silence for agreement, continuing after a few quiet moments.
“I’d better start describing what’s below us. I imagine your mental image will need to be perfect.”
The alicorn turned back to him, grinning against the roof’s tiles. “I can do you one better. I weave dreams, remember?”
Suddenly the tile softened, becoming stringy and pliant. Where before a slick surface threatened to spill them over the edge at any moment, now it grabbed at them and sunk every so slightly, providing a slight hollow in which the pair could rest. At the same time, the new material became translucent, allowing the pair to see into the room below.
Ender looked up in surprise, his body visibly relaxing now that he didn’t have to work so hard to stay attached to the roof.
“That’s amazing, but won’t she be able to see us now?” he asked.
“I made it one-way. All she’ll see is the ceiling.”
“Again – amazing. Glad you’re on my side.”
Luna smiled in response, and then turned her head to examine the room below. It was a simple bedroom, decorated like any of the hundreds in Canterlot castle. The furniture dimensions were different, sure, but it still reminded the princess of home. Strangely, though, no door seemed to connect to the room, even though it was clearly designed for occupancy. There was a bed, a nightstand, a table with a few place settings, a bureau and dresser with a chair, a porcelain water basin, and a wardrobe on the far side. Some items in the room, however, just seemed to draw Luna’s eyes. In front of the room’s only window lay a resplendent crimson rug woven with fine gold inlay. A massive mirror, framed in ornate golden leaves, hung on the wall on the far side of the room. The princess wondered if a door was behind the mirror – the placement seemed correct and the furnishing was certainly large enough to conceal one.
“What happens here?” she asked her companion.
In her peripheral vision, she saw Ender shake his head. “I think it’s better if I don’t tell you. I don’t want you to accidentally give it away.”
It was a fair enough point. She returned her focus to the room, memorizing every detail. Luna pictured herself crouching behind the bed and motioning Ender to hide in the wardrobe. ‘Stay inside,’ she imagined herself saying, ‘if she comes in, I’ll try to hold her off. If it happens, don’t try to help, just RUN!’ Luna didn’t know if her other self would notice the lack of an escape route, but it was the best scenario she could think of on short notice. She repeated the scenario in her mind over and over, trying to accept it as truth and believe she was actually down there hiding.
They waited, hoping.
☽
Once the teleportation had worked, Nightmare Moon wasted no time in charging after her quarry. The cavern was wide enough for her to spread her wings, and spread them she did. Charging down the path, the alicorn barely noticed the treasures along the way and only barely missed knocking down the various cages of the menagerie. Before long, she faced the door at the end of the cave. Without even waiting to read the words inscribed in jewels, she blasted it open with her magic and charged through.
The drop came as a surprise, but Nightmare merely extended her wings and took off, heading for the image of her other self and the ember as they were fixed in her mind. As she grew near, she was pleased to feel the fear in the princess’ thoughts as they became clearer with closer proximity.
They’re hiding! Nightmare thought with a laugh. What, did she think I would simply lose track of her?
Had she really stopped to think about it, the move wouldn’t have made sense, not from an adversary who had so far seemed resourceful and cunning. But the dark alicorn was reaching the end of a frustrating chase, and the smell of fear was goading her onwards. Besides, she dwarfed her rival in power – what threat could she possibly present?
A castle’s tall tower emerged in the distance, and Nightmare knew it to be her destination.
☽
“She’s coming!” Luna uttered through a strained jaw. She tried not to think of anything other than hiding in the room below, but the alicorn thought it prudent to spare a brief moment of warning for her companion. She hoped he knew what he was doing.
Wisely, the human didn’t respond. He had been quiet ever since she began her efforts and seemed to realize how difficult the process of faking her thoughts was. The princess was grateful for the consideration.
Before long, Nightmare’s massive black figure occupied the window. At first, she couldn’t quite negotiate the passage – every time she furled her wings to fit through, she dropped too far in elevation to reach the sill. With an enraged snarl, she simply popped in, the short teleport ruffling the bed’s sheets.
This is it, Luna thought with a gasp. Whatever was going to happen would happen.
She didn’t have to wait long. As soon as Nightmare’s silver-shod hooves touched the stone floor of the room, the beautifully ornate rug jerked as if alive. It impossibly raised itself upright, winding, unraveling and re-spinning itself into the shape of a snake, a massive crimson python. It opened its mouth, and long white fangs extended below glittering orange eyes. Whipping around, it regarded the black alicorn.
“I am your only escape,” it hissed, a voice full of echoes and gravel. “Death is your only escape.” With that, the snake lunged, intent on sinking hoof-long fangs into Nightmare’s neck.
There was a bright crack and the acrid smell of ozone. When her vision cleared, she saw Nightmare’s hoof on the smoldering body of the snake, grinding it into the stone floor. With a stamp that shot sparks against the stone, Nightmare Moon decapitated the snake. The part below the head unraveled to form the rug, now devoid of its golden thread.
The dark alicorn laughed. “Was that it, filly? Did you hope a little serpent would take care of me?” Her voice resounded throughout the small room below.
Luna looked over at the human in a panic. “Was that it?! What do we do now?” she whispered. Thinking fast, she reasoned that if worst came to worst, she could still wake Ender up before her other self discovered their location.
His eyes were fixed below. He seemed calm, unworried.
“No, just wait – focus on us hiding below,” he replied.
Luna struggled to focus but it was difficult. She was afraid, and it was interfering with her ability to project a false perspective to Nightmare. Figuring that might actually work better, Luna instead focused on her fear, transmitting that, and only that, to her adversary.
Below, Nightmare Moon stalked around the room, horn flickering menacingly.
“Where are you, little one? Come out, come out... I promise I won’t be… too harsh.” She seemed to pick up on Luna’s general location and started walking toward the far side of the room. Noticing the mirror, the dark alicorn approached it, seemingly unable to resist the urge to examine her features.
Luna wondered how long it had been since she had seen them.
What Nightmare saw must have been unsettling, because the alicorn’s entire countenance completely changed to show utter shock. Forgotten was her quarry and the chase; the alicorn focused completely on the mirror.
The princess felt Ender shift uncomfortably beside her. This was his plan, apparently. She leaned forward trying to see what her other persona saw in the glass.
It was Celestia, a perfect rendition of their sister. She had something in her mouth, but Luna couldn’t make out what it was. To her surprise, it wasn’t just a static image. The reflection moved along with Nightmare, as if it was her own.
The effect on the dark alicorn was profound. A low, guttural sound emanated from her throat as she paced back and forth, intent upon the mirror.
“No…. no…. no…. NONONONONOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!” she cried, voice escalating from a whimper to a piercing shout that vibrated the very roof where Luna hid. With a level of anger in her eyes beyond anything Luna had ever seen, Nightmare reared up, and crashed both front hooves through the mirror, shattering it into countless pieces.
Instantly, a red liquid poured forth from the hole behind the mirror. To her horror, Luna realized that it wasn’t liquid at all, but countless snakes, writhing from the space behind the broken glass. Nightmare Moon thrashed as they swarmed over her, but there were far too many. Despite dozens being burned by blasts of magic or thrown off by the alicorn’s constant bucking, the snakes soon overwhelmed her, and Nightmare’s frantic cries were slowly muffled as their venom took effect.
It was over in less than a minute. The alicorn vanished, and the snakes dissolved into ash, blown away by breeze from the window.
Luna could scarcely breathe. The horror of the events below muted any relief she felt from no longer being pursued.
Ender gently prodded a wing. “She’s gone. Do you know what happens now?”
The princess struggled to focus, Nightmare’s last screams echoing in her mind.
“She’s presumably back inside our prison. She can’t get out, not without me to weave another dream, but she can still affect you as she did earlier. I should wake you up, to let you escape before she recovers.”
“Won’t that just put you back with her? You know, the whole reason we were running in the first place?” The human fixed her with a concerned gaze.
Luna had been considering this. Her experience with dream magic was limited to crafting simple dreams for her subjects. There had never been any need to stay with them after they woke up. The alicorn had always assumed that the weave would simply disappear once the dreamer became conscious, but had never actually tested it.
“Honestly,” she sighed, “I don’t know. That’s what I always believed would happen, but maybe I can try something different.” Luna considered the possibilities. “Do you think you could keep me visualized in your head, the same way I was imagining us hiding in that room?”
Ender nodded, though a wistful smile said he didn’t quite believe all of this.
At the very least, Luna thought, if this works he’ll know for sure I’m not a figment of his imagination… unless of course he believes he’s starting to go crazy.
“Well, no time like the present… the longer we wait, the more she will recover.”
The princess sat up, reaching out with her hooves. Taking the hint, Ender took her forelegs in his hands. Leaning forward, she touched her horn to his forehead.
“Focus. On. Me,” the alicorn intoned. “Remember me. Take my image with you.”
She hoped it would work; otherwise, the next voice she heard was going to be that of a very-enraged Nightmare Moon.
“I’m ready,” the human whispered.
Luna’s horn flashed, and all was white.
☽
Ender’s face felt like it was pressed against a cheese grater. Opening his eyes, he realized that wasn’t far from the truth – there were small holes in the escape pod’s metal decking.
Any notion that this was all part of an elaborate simulation was banished from Ender’s mind with the arrival of a pounding headache. There was no way this wasn’t real. Dreams didn’t hurt this much.
So what was all that, then? Was his mind just that far gone? Was he so bent from months of night terrors that his brain was running itself through the Fantasy Game now? Everything had felt so real, though, and what about all those new…
Luna. She had said to remember her.
He almost laughed, dismissing the thought out of hand, but a small fear in the pit of his stomach made him wonder what would happen to her if he did. In the infinitesimally small chance that a magical talking uni… er, alicorn had been responsible for all this, could he really live with himself if he abandoned her?
Ender sighed. This is crazy.
He pictured the midnight blue pony, envisioning her as he had first seen her on the Giant’s Table.
That’s strange; I normally don’t remember dreams with such clarity, even my nightmares.
“Luna?” he asked aloud, feeling infinitely foolish.
Yes! I’m here! Can you hear me? I’ve been trying to break through ever since you woke up!
Ender Wiggin fell back into the aisle, flat on his backside. He was shocked, but not too shocked to notice the headache recede immediately.
“No… this, this can’t be real.” He looked wildly about the pod, trying to discern if the voice was coming from some sort of speaker, or perhaps from his desk.
He jumped again when he realized the words came from inside his own head.
It worked! Her voice was filled with joy, giving it a lilting bounce. I’m free!
The young admiral had been many things in his life. Speechless was never one of them. What did you say to a situation like this?
Luna had no problem filling in the gap. First, we need to get out of here before my other self recovers. Knowing her, she’s going to lash out at the first opportunity she gets, no matter if she hurts herself in the process.
“Wait a minute, other self? That other… alicorn,” he paused, the word unfamiliar on his tongue, “is you?”
Ender felt Luna admonish herself, apparently surprised at how the meaning of her thoughts had bled through. Come to think of it, he really didn’t notice her words now that he thought of it; rather, that’s how he was just interpreting her thoughts.
We don’t have the time for me to explain, but since you’re apparently hearing my thoughts…
A broad image, many memories and thoughts consolidated into one burst made itself known in Ender’s mind. Nightmare was the result of a wish Luna had made out of a desire to be respected. The wish, powered by her own magic, which she couldn’t fully control, answered itself by creating Nightmare, a far more powerful and assertive version of Luna herself. The new consciousness wanted nothing to do with the old, and after seizing the majority of their combined power, had sealed the original away.
Ender staggered under the combined memories and experiences, grateful that his own psychological issues couldn’t become self-aware. He was pretty sure what his ‘Nightmare’ would be like. The world had its collective hands full with his older brother; it didn’t need a duplicate.
So you understand? Luna asked.
“I do, more or less. Let’s get going then – I assume you want to be taken somewhere?”
Ender moved quickly up to the control console at the head of the escape pod. Powering up the display, he quickly initiated diagnostics and a basic engine start-up sequence. The soldier had no desire to repeat his last experience in dreamland, especially if this ‘Nightmare’ could put him to sleep at will.
My sister will be able to help. The alicorn’s thoughts and memories of her sister’s location clashed instantly with Ender’s own mental image.
“Um, Luna, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this place where you think your sister lives, that’s…” he brought up a camera feed of the lunar horizon. The navigation program had now fully spun up and was indicating that Earth would be rising just above them. With as certain as Luna was of her home’s location, he felt he needed visual proof.
“…Earth?”
Try as he might to deny what he was seeing, Ender could not reconcile what he knew of Earth with the planet he saw before him. The continents were simply too different.
Earth? Luna inquired. That’s Equestria… my sister is there, and if anyone can help us, it will be------
All thoughts of the planet before him were cut off as he sensed a violent tear in his mind, as if someone had reached into his skull and was attempting to remove its contents by force. He bore down on the pain, focusing on the pod, his surroundings, the cloth of his uniform, anything to keep himself in the here and now.
She’s… pulling me back, Ender. I can’t… I can’t…
The boy felt anguish as his passenger tried to hold on. Then, a simple plea:
Help.
Ender remembered all the times he was at the mercy of his older brother. Seeing the worst aspects of his own personality given life and power over him made the torment that much worse. He could only imagine what it felt like for his recent ally… knowing that her adversary actually was herself.
Calming his mind as best he could, he reached out to the other consciousness in his head. You came first, right?
Y-yes.
Responding aloud, to help take his mind off the sensation, Ender continued.
“Then why is she stronger? You created her.”
Frustration. She holds most of my power! She’s always been stronger than me! Ender, help, I can’t hang on…
He channeled what strength he had, forcing her mind to focus.
“You still came first. No matter how strong she is, she’s still a shadow of you.”
What does that matter, she’s still--- Pain. Anguish.
Now completely oblivious to the outside world, Ender focused inwards trying to illustrate the concepts in his mind as he spoke them.
“There existed a time when it was only you. Focus on that, dwell there. Remember the time before you wished for her. Use that to deny her power. Remember that she was created because you wanted her. Without you, she is nothing.”
Nothing. Luna was silent, and for a few heartbeats, Ender was afraid he had lost her. Then, slowly, ever so slowly, he felt the pull in his mind subside. Soon, he heard her again.
I… that… she… thank you. Luna’s “voice” wavered. I don’t know how that worked, but it did. I just thought of life before her, and her strength weakened. It still hurt, and I still had to struggle, but she didn’t overpower me like she always does.
Ender felt drained, even though he had not been the one fighting. Wearily, he dragged himself up to the control console, falling into the seat. He wanted nothing more than to sleep, but that could be more dangerous now than trying to fly tired. Ignoring the strangeness of the planet on the display, he continued the previously interrupted start-up sequence.
There was a significant amount of damage to some of the maneuvering thrusters. In order to get the proper angle to boost away and reach escape velocity, he would have to do some fancy programming to roll the craft on its initial ascent so as to point the working thrusters “downward.” It took quite some time to make the necessary changes. Each second passed with greater and greater tension. Neither of them knew when the next attack would come from Nightmare.
Suddenly, Luna seemed much more awake from her perch “behind” his eyes. She didn’t have to ask, he felt her desire to look back at the screen, then pan a lateral camera to observe some of the stars in the field of view.
Her perception of the stars was vastly different from his own, but by looking at a top-level display on the navigational computer, his mind was able to discern which ones she wanted to see. Ender didn’t stop to inquire, he could feel the level of importance she placed on this information, and decided to just go with it. In a matter of minutes, he had all four of the surviving external cameras trained on different stars. They seemed to be moving fast enough for the naked eye to see, and in a highly irregular pattern.
Ender felt the alicorn’s fear, and it drove his own heart into the pit of his stomach, though he didn’t understand why.
Oh, no… what did it have to be NOW? We were so close.
“What’s going…” before he could finish, Ender felt her presence suddenly vanish.
☽
Nightmare Moon stood on the surface of her namesake, exultant. Her stars, her loyal stars, had finally rescued her from the Elements’ seal. Her mane again drifted in the ethereal void, and her body felt real. Above, the glowing orb of Equestria hung like a massive jewel in the sky.
It had been such a very long time. Revenge had waited… she checked the relative position of her stars… a thousand years.
She looked at a metal cylinder resting in the distance. …and it shall wait a few minutes more.
As her new body retrieved the last of her power, the last vestiges of her trapped consciousness from inside the moon, the final portion returned and found itself locked in a newly designed cage, created to immobilize but enable a full view of everything Nightmare did.
Welcome back, princess.
Nightmare Moon laughed into the silence of the moonscape.
☽
Luna was terrified. This was far worse than the oblivion from before. Now she could see and feel everything Nightmare did, but was helpless to stop any of it. She could feel the cold wrath that flowed through the dark alicorn. Nightmare was beyond enraged for what had been done to her in Ender’s dream, and her revenge would be slow and methodical, starting with Ender himself.
Luna screamed in her mind as she felt her hooves move of their own volition towards the human’s craft. She felt Nightmare savor her anguish as she charged her horn, intent upon cracking the metal shell and letting him suffocate to death.
Worse yet, Luna knew her dark half was going to make sure she saw the corpse before they left. Nightmare wanted to punish her other half with an image that would torment her for the rest of her immortal life.
Ender! she screamed into the void, hoping against hope that some remnant of their connection remained. Run! She’s going to kill you!
Nightmare only laughed.
Step by step, they approached, one mind gleefully triumphant, the other fighting every motion helplessly. The alicorn charged her spell, ready to land the killing blow, when a white-hot torch suddenly erupted from the tail of the craft.
Instantly blinded, Luna and Nightmare both cried out in pain as the sensitive skin of her lips and nose began to boil away before she could raise a protective spell. The craft shot away, but not before leaving the alicorn’s face a gleaming death’s head, singed to the bone.
Their scream was silenced by the airless moon, but it was felt by the planet below them as the rock itself vibrated with its mistress’ anguish.
It took a lot of time for the alicorn to channel her divine power, but the pain slowly vanished as Nightmare Moon reconstructed her damaged face. Within minutes, she looked as if nothing had happened, but the memory of the pain had enraged her to a point she had never before experienced.
Luna’s consciousness was still reeling as the alicorn pushed off the moon, shooting like a comet towards her intended target.
☽
They were over halfway to Equestria before Luna spied the human craft. She couldn’t understand how something so small could move so quickly, but she hoped he could go faster, because her dark half was quickly catching up.
The princess tried to send out another warning, but was roughly silenced by Nightmare. This time, she was helpless to do anything but watch.
Luna started to plead for his life, but Nightmare’s consciousness wasn’t even paying attention. Instead, she was focused fully outside, wary of another trick from her prey. On their first pass, Nightmare lanced a beam of pure energy through the metal fittings that had burned her the first time around. A brilliant plume of fire exploded, then immediately vanished into the airless void. Suddenly a trail of liquid flame, burning within some unknown substance, appeared behind the craft. The alicorn had to swerve violently to avoid being hit.
Circling in a wide arc around the now tumbling capsule, Luna felt Nightmare briefly touch her mind, taking joy in her anguish as she watched. She felt herself grin perversely as she saw the atmosphere of her home loom ever closer. The dark alicorn had an idea, remembering the friction of the high air from Luna’s early days of flying beyond the skies.
Matching the craft’s movements, she found herself looking into one of the cameras, its position, function and perspective gleaned by Nightmare straight from Luna’s memories. She wanted the human to see her face as she sent him to his death.
With a seemingly errant hoof, Nightmare Moon pushed the craft into a flat spin, its angle taking it down a descent gradient too steep to survive the heat from the atmosphere’s friction. She wanted to burn him alive.
The alicorn stopped suddenly and hovered, making sure to watch the long plume of fire as the craft became a torch; the mysterious burning fluid mixed with parts of the craft as they broke off, making a comet’s tail as beautiful as it was tragic.
Look carefully, child. You WILL remember this.
Luna could only cry in anguish.
☽
The cool, still air of the throne room was a welcome relief to Nightmare Moon after her own descent through the atmosphere. True, she could have teleported, but she wanted to make a grand entrance. Let Celestia see her approach and despair.
Surprisingly, the throne room was empty of guards and courtiers when she arrived. The Sun Princess was the room’s only occupant. Nightmare had expected to feel something more as she broke through one of her sister’s prized stained glass windows, but at this point, she was only looking forward to finishing what she came here to do.
The white alicorn raised her eyes.
“Welcome home, sister.”
There was no rage as Nightmare Moon enacted her plan. That was to come later. For now, she had to focus on her objective. There was good reason she had practiced this countless times over the centuries.
Even without the elements, her sister was immensely powerful. Instantly, both alicorns locked each other in a fierce contest of wills. The very air of the courtroom cracked and hummed with their combined energy.
Maybe that’s why she excused her guards. Her prized little ponies would be vaporized if they so much as stepped in the wrong spot between us.
Despite their difference in age, the two alicorns were roughly equal in power – that was one of the many reasons why Celestia had to utilize to the Elements during their last fight. The upside and downside of the stalemate was that neither side could maintain the upper hand for long. This time, Nightmare didn’t fight to win; instead, she fought to pin her sister, to make it impossible for her to move or do anything other than resisting the onslaught.
It was clear that Celestia had not expected this. So focused was she on trying to push back her sister, she didn’t even see the runes appearing around her until Nightmare had all but finished them.
Now, her eyes widened in fear as she realized the dark alicorn’s plan. Now, Nightmare could let her rage through, and thoroughly enjoy it.
The beautiful part about runes was that they had a power all their own, and when properly crafted, nopony, not even an alicorn, could resist them. Nightmare Moon had spent those countless centuries not on developing her own spells, but in perfecting the art of double casting – using one spell secretly behind another. By fighting her sister to a standstill instead of trying to win, she had conserved enough power to engrave a very simple but very powerful runic circle around her throne.
“Yes,” Nightmare allowed herself a small laugh as she witnessed her sister’s realization and panic, “say goodbye, Celestia.”
Celestia narrowed her eyes, composing her face in a mask of defiance, right to the end. “This… isn’t… over… Nightmare!” she strained each word between labored gasps.
Nightmare Moon didn’t bother with a response. No fancy words this time, no attempt to rub it in her sister’s face. Overconfidence was her undoing before, and Nightmare was not going to repeat that mistake. With no delay, she executed the rune.
The white alicorn disappeared in a blaze of fire.
Funny… Nightmare Moon had never seen a death rune activated before, but she hadn’t expected it to look like that.
She took a long breath, weary from the effort. Flopping herself on Celestia’s throne, Nightmare cast about her mind, looking for Luna. She was anxious to feel the princess’ sweet anguish from watching her beloved sister die.
The filly was exactly where she had left her, but instead of crying morosely she was feeling… victorious?
You should check your spelling, Nightmare, both with your horn and your writing.
Nightmare felt dread at her alternate’s confidence. She couldn’t have sabotaged the spell, could she? Looking down, she glanced over the circle, looking for anything out of place.
An initial examination revealed nothing wrong. Nightmare was about to rebuke her other half when she saw it, a single character changed… a very critical single character.
“Banishment,” she uttered aloud in disbelief.
The thing about double casting is that it requires you to split your mind, and when a mind is already split, it’s very easy for someone else to come in and change something, especially when your focus is elsewhere, such as listening to your opponent.
Celestia’s last words of defiance suddenly took on new meaning. Had Luna somehow signaled her?
“IT IS OF NO MATTER, CHILD!” Nightmare Moon shouted in the voice of old. All but one remaining window in the throne room shattered from the force. Ponies would definitely come running now.
Calming herself, she scolded her other half. It doesn’t matter how you got out of your cage and performed that meaningless little change. It will be a simple manner to undo the banishment, and then I will simply kill her as I originally planned. You accomplished nothing, foal.
I defied you once, Luna shot back harshly, I can do it again. He showed me how. The life you so callously sacrificed will be your downfall. Tell me, how can you undo a spell you did not cast?
Nightmare Moon scoffed. Of course she cast the rune, how could she… not? Looking at it another way, she had the horrifying realization that technically, since she did not finish the rune, she did not cast it. Luna did.
Now you see it… nag. Even with her newfound confidence, she was hesitant with name-calling. Nightmare would have found it cute had she not been so angry.
The only time I will undo that spell is after your defeat. Celestia will survive on her sun the same way you survived on our moon.
“Then your efforts will be in vain, and you will be responsible for the banishment of your sister, for I will never be defeated.”
So you say. I know my sister; she always has a contingency plan. And I would rather banish my sister than kill her. She did the same for me.
Nightmare stood and lashed out, a single kick cracked Celestia’s throne.
“We shall see.”
With that, she took to the air, breaking through the last intact window in the throne room as a rush of guard ponies entered.
☽
It was a short flight to the Everfree. Nightmare Moon didn’t know if her sister had rebuilt the old palace after their original battle, but she sensed the power of the Elements coming from within. If her sister had a backup plan, the Elements would surely be involved. First, she had to secure her power. Conquest could wait, as could her revenge on Luna.
In the distance, she spied a quaint town on the edge of the forest. Had ponies built here since her banishment? She couldn’t imagine why… the forest was the one wild and dangerous place left in the world. Nightmare was about to pass the town by when she noticed hundreds of gaily flying banners, all bearing a familiar sun sigil.
The Summer Sun Celebration… of course it was today. Nightmare had chosen it symbolically for her day of conquest all those years ago.
And this happened to be the town where it was going to be celebrated this year.
Maybe it’s time to indulge a little. The Elements aren’t going anywhere. Wouldn’t this be a perfect time to arrive and announce my victory?
She imagined it, and grinned wickedly at the spectacle. Nightmare Moon, standing triumphant when all around expected her sister.
Yes, she thought, the Elements can indeed wait.