“C…candy! Give her candy!” Lute cried out to the two foals as he struggled to pick himself up. The Nightmare stood between him and the other two, and it occurred to Lute only belatedly that the two of them might not have had any candy at all on them.
He was wrong, thankfully. Patting himself down quickly, Brawny managed to turn up a collection small gumdrops. He threw them at the Nightmare, who’s smile finally dropped, and eyes widened as she looked down at where they had landed at her hooves. She leaned down, looking at the candy, put a hoof on one of the pieces…
In the mist at their hooves, an image suddenly formed – Brawny and Peach, standing over a small foal and taking all the candy that they wanted from him, then running off. The Nightmare snorted, raised a hoof, and crushed the gumdrops into the streets.
“What?” Lute demanded as the Nightmare started to advance. Brawny and Peach let out cries of fright as Peach threw another piece of candy at the Nightmare. The Nightmare caught it in a blue telekinetic aura, but once again the mist revealed in image, this time of Peach laughing as she held a foal upside-down telekinetically while Brawny helped himself to the candy the foal had gathered.
Another piece of candy. Another tormented foal. Another, and another. Again, and again. Each time they tried to placate the Nightmare with candy, the mist would reveal them tormenting somepony to get that candy, leaving some poor foal crying, ruining their Nightmare Night. Each time, the Nightmare destroyed the candy rather than eat it.
Brawny and Peach had run out of stolen candy. The Nightmare whickered in annoyance, her smile entirely gone by now as Lute fumbled with his saddlebags, shucking them and trying to get to his own candy to save the two.
He was too late. Brawny and Peach turned and ran again. The Nightmare let out a whinny of delight, raising herself high and then bringing her two front hooves crashing down onto the street. A swarm of spiders appeared from nothingness at that, and not the small spiders that Lute occasionally found spinning webs in the park. No, these spiders were easily the size of a small foal, with glowing red eyes. They skittered after the two foals, keeping pace with them easily and nipping at their tails.
Lute’s eyes were wide and his hooves shaking as the two foals ran out of sight, their screams of terror echoing in the night. He glanced down at his saddlebags, finally got them open, then looked back up –
She was there. The Nightmare’s muzzle was all but touching his own, her breath icy-cold on his face, her smile back again. He cried out, stumbling backwards, and she smiled, snakelike tongue flicking out to taste the air, or else his fear.
Lute grabbed at the candy in his saddlebags and held it forward. “P-p-please,” he begged. The Nightmare’s smile once again dropped as her eyes focused on the candy. She picked up a piece with telekinesis, looking at it closely. The mist revealed an image – Lute at a doorstep, getting candy the way one was supposed to, by trick-or-treating. The Nightmare’s smile returned as she prepared to eat the piece of candy.
Then the mist spoke.
“Time is candy.”
The Nightmare froze. The candy shook in her telekinetic grasp, then shattered into dust. Lute let out a cry of fright, shoving more candy forward. The Nightmare grabbed a piece.
“Time is candy.”
The piece shattered. “Time is candy,” the mist said again, and more candy broke apart, was thrown away, broken against a wall. One bust into cold blue flames. Each time, Lute’s own voice echoed what he had been saying all night: “Time is candy. Time is candy. Time is candy.”
“Oh come on!” Lute exclaimed hysterically. “Your legend didn’t say anything about you being a picky eater!”
“Time is candy. Time is candy. Time is candy…”
“Time is candy. Time is candy. Time is candy…”
“Time is candy. Time is candy. Time is candy…”
The Nightmare stood up tall, glaring at Lute. Her mane seemed to rise as though a wind from beneath her was blowing, and she spread her wings wide.
“As a thanks.”
The Nightmare froze then, and looked down. Her hoof was on a wrapped-up gumdrop. The mist at her hooves was showing her an image, not of Lute trick-or-treating, but instead of that pegasus foal giving her some of her hard-earned candy in thanks for getting Brawny and Peach to leave her alone. Gripping it in a telekinetic aura, the Nightmare lifted the piece of candy from the ground and looked at it closely. In the mist, the image of the entire confrontation played out – Lute stopping the bullies, getting them to chase after him, then returning, and the little filly rewarding him.
The Nightmare smiled then – and not the horrifying, too-wide grin of moments ago. She popped the gumdrop into her mouth, wrapper and all, and chewed on it with her eyes closed as she plopped back onto her haunches, looking almost...content.
Lute realized he wasn’t breathing, and started again with a deliberate act of will. When the Nightmare looked back to him, he automatically hurled another of the gumdrops that the foal had given him at her. She moved easily, almost dog-like, to catch it in her mouth and swallow it, wrapper and all. Then she trotted forward easily, stuck her head in Lute’s saddlebags, and began grazing, apparently no longer finding the rest of his candy offensive. As before, her eyes were closed, a content smile on her face as she did.
“Uh…umm…” Lute stammered, scooting away from the Nightmare. “Um…o-okay, you c-can just, uh…t-t-take the whole thing…”
The Nightmare’s eyes opened at that, and she stopped eating. Lute froze in place, wings wide, eyes wide, legs wide apart. Every limb of his felt like it was on fire, every vein in his body coursing with blood and adrenaline. He could hear his heartbeat in his own ears, even as his stomach felt like it had drained to the bottom of his hooves.
The Nightmare stood up fully, tucking her wings against her barrel. After a moment, she picked up his saddlebags in her telekinesis, and moved them over to Lute, placing them down on his back and strapping it around his barrel snuggly, but not too tightly. They were backwards, but she didn’t seem to notice, and Lute didn’t quite feel like raising the point as the Nightmare pranced up to him, appraising him for a moment. She then began to trot on past him, paying him no more mind.
Lute almost thought that he was in the clear, that she was going to let him go, but then a blue telekinetic field wrapped around him. He let out a cry of fright as he was lifted into the air, even as the Nightmare herself spread her wings and took to the sky herself.
“W-wait!” Lute exclaimed, as they soared over the warehouses of the seventh tier of Canterlot. “Where are you taking me?”
The Nightmare glanced at him, and put a hoof to her lips, then smiled playfully. He opened his mouth again to demand an answer, but the Nightmare only rolled her eyes, and pointed down. Lute looked, and saw a pair of foals – Peach and Brawny, he realized. The two were huddled at an alley near the entrance of the seventh tier. There was no sign of their spider pursuers, and they appeared unharmed, but the two looked no less terrified.
“Serves them right,” Lute said. After a moment, he realized that it was aloud. He glanced to the Nightmare, but she only closed her eyes and gave a very firm nod in agreement as the two soared down, settling on top of a warehouse and looking down at Peach and Brawny. Lute’s ears strained to hear what they were saying.
“…that didn’t happen,” Peach was insisting. “No way. No how. Nuh-uh. Th-the Nightmare, she’s just an old pony’s tale. R-right?”
“Yah-huh,” Brawny agreed, though he looked decidedly unsure. “P…probably just somepony…somepony dressed like her. You saw that show! With the witch! Probably just her.”
“Wh…what about Lute? E…even if it is that witch…m-maybe she’s some kinda’ psycho!”
Peach and Brawny looked between each other, no doubt imagining all the terrible things that the Nightmare might have been doing to Lute. “W-we should go get the city guard,” Peach decided after a moment.
“Y-yeah,” Brawny agreed, as both stood cautiously, advancing towards the alley’s exit together.
Lute felt eyes on him, and turned to look. The Nightmare was looking at him pointedly, and after a moment jerked her head towards the two foals beneath them – rather further than a head should have been able to jerk, but by now Lute was becoming used to the idea that the Nightmare apparently wasn’t really constrained by the natural limits of the pony body.
Lute looked back to the bullies. Yeah, they were huge bullies. Yeah, they had tormented foals. And yeah, they were even going to beat him up here in the seventh tier…
“Wait, why would I want to let them know I’m okay?” Lute asked. “They deserve to get in trouble for getting the guard for nothing!”
The Nightmare rolled her eyes, and pointed at Lute. He looked down at himself. Without noticing, his costume had changed – purple where it had been blue, red where it had been yellow, and with sharper, more jagged edges to its lightning bolts, as well as covered in stitch marks. Glancing at his wings, he saw that they, too, had changed, becoming bat-like, while his goggles were red. And his entire form was covered with a pale red, almost see-through mist. He didn’t feel any different, however, and guessed that whatever the Nightmare had done to him was probably just some kind of illusion.
“Oh…” Lute said as he realized. The Nightmare nodded fervently, a too-wide grin spreading on her face again as she took Lute’s saddlebags from him and made shooing motions with her hooves. Lute paused one more time, considering if he really wanted to do this.
He decided that yes. Yes he did.
The colt took off at a gallop along the warehouse above, looking down at the bullies below. The sound of his hooves alerted the two to his presence, and they looked up. Brawny let out a cry of fright, while Peach’s horn lit up with a bright green color in instinct. He must have looked quite terrifying, a red-mist covered bat-pony. The colt leaped from the roof, wings spread wide, and glided down to in front of the two other foals.
“You left me!” he exclaimed. “You left me to the Nightmare! Look what she did!”
“L-L-Lute?” Brawny demanded.
“…I used to be!” Lute said, making things up as he went along. “Now I’m a…vampire!” His eyes locked onto Peach, who was dressed as such for Nightmare Night. “A real vampire…”
Peach’s eyes widened as she glanced around, while Lute began stalking up to his ‘prey.’ Brawny looked like he was on the verge of passing out, while Peach let out a cry of success and dashed over to one side of the alley, picked something up in her hooves, and threw it at Lute. In the dim light of the night, he couldn’t quite make out what it was, but from the sound of things and the feel of a few small pieces of rock hitting him, it must have been gravel.
“Ha!” Peach exclaimed.
Lute froze. “What?”
“Gravel!” she said. “O-or sand, or grains of rice…don’t matter, really! Vampires have to stop and count it!”
Lute blinked a few times. “I’ve never heard of that.”
“Yeah, well, I have!”
“How am I supposed to count anything right now? It’s dark!”
Peach rolled her eyes. “That’s the point, nimrod!”
“I’m not going to stand here and count up whatever rocks you threw at me! I’m a vampire! I’m going to drink your blood and stuff!”
Peals of laughter from all around interrupted them before the argument could continue. Peach and Brawny both let out shrieks of fright when, behind Lute, the Nightmare appeared in a swirl of mist even as the disguise around Lute disappeared, and his saddlebags reappeared on his back. The Nightmare was on her back, hind hooves kicking as her front hooves were wrapped around her barrel, laughing her tail off. Even with her right behind Lute, her laughter seemed to echo and come from everywhere at once, rather than from her directly.
Brawny’s eyes narrowed. “What the hay is going on?!” he demanded, stomping a hoof.
Lute looked down at the Nightmare, who’s laughter had subsided and who had now rolled over onto her barrel, sitting comfortably as she watched the three foals. “I had candy for the Nightmare that wasn’t stolen,” he said. “So she likes me now, I guess.”
The Nightmare nodded.
Peach and Brawny stood close to one another. Maybe she really was the Nightmare, they were probably thinking, and maybe she wasn’t. Either way, she had powerful unicorn magic and appeared completely insane. “S-so what are you gonna do to us?” Peach asked. The Nightmare, at that, scooted closer to Lute, eagerly awaiting his answer.
Lute looked at the two of them. The two had chased him down and were gonna beat him up in an alley. And, they had spent their night robbing little colts and fillies of their hard-earned candy, ruining their nights…
Lute looked to his saddlebags. Despite spilling some, and letting the Nightmare graze on more of it, there was still a huge haul there. It was supposed to be his haul…but then again, right now, maybe it could be put to better use than just giving him cavities.
“Okay,” Lute said. “You two, I want you to just get out of here. Go home. And you guys better not tell anypony what happened here, or my new best friend will take it personally. Won’t you?” The Nightmare gave yet another of her too-wide, toothy grins as her head snapped to look at the foals. They each jumped in fright. “And,” Lute continued, “next Nightmare Night, I want you two to spend the whole day at home, giving out candy to foals. And if you leave your homes…”
The Nightmare’s grin somehow grew wider still, and she snapped at them again. “Okay, okay!” Brawny said. “We get it!”
“Good. Now get going!” Lute ordered. The two foals needed no encouragement, taking off at a gallop, running full speed out of the alley and the seventh tier.
The Nightmare and Lute watched them go, then the Nightmare turned to look at Lute. Despite still having a mouth full of sharp teeth, despite the batlike wings, despite being more than twice his height standing and despite scaring the living starlight out of him just a few minutes ago…right now, with the look on her face, she didn’t look frightening at all. If anything, she looked like an eager puppy.
“Okay,” Lute said, looking again to his candy. He sort of regretted what he was about to do, but…well, it was for a good cause. “Can you help me with this?”
The Nightmare grinned – not a frightening grin, but one of her more subdued ones. She nodded.
---
The foal was named Zephyr, and she was still drying her eyes from how she’d been crying at having her candy stolen by two mean older foals and having her Nightmare Night ruined. Her parents had tried to cheer her up with promises that next year would be better, that they’d look into finding out which foals had stolen from her, but it hadn’t really worked. She’d just gone to her room and cried.
She’d been about to go to sleep, when there was a tapping at her window. Zephyr looked at it, but didn’t see anything. She clambered over to her bed, but the tapping came again, then a third time.
“Wh…who’s there?” she asked, standing in her bed and looking at the window. She didn’t see anything, despite the fact that the tapping came a fourth time. Then it seemed to sparkle for a moment…and it opened.
Zephyr let out a squeal of fright, diving under the covers of her bed, scrambling to hide as best she could. Who was at her window? What was coming through? She opened her mouth to scream for her mommy and daddy.
“What the heck are you doing?” A voice outside her window asked. The voice sounded like it belonged to a foal, a colt, older than her but still definitely a colt. “You can’t just open up the window and let yourself in! You’ll scare the poor filly!”
There was a moment of silence, as Zephyr listened closely.
“Yeah, I know that’s kind of your thing, but not for tonight, right? We’re trying to fix what Peach and Brawny did. So tone things down.”
Another moment of silence.
“And don’t smile like that! It’s creepy! Ugh, hang on, I can fly up there and maybe hover…whoa!”
There was the shimmering sound of unicorn magic. Zephyr huddled closer under her sheets, reaching out and grabbing Mister Manticore and holding him close. Mister Manticore helped her be brave when she needed to be brave. Even though Mister Manticore was, himself, a big scardy-monster.
“Right, unicorn magic, forgot you could just hold me up here…” the colt’s voice said. “Um…hello?”
Zephyr whimpered slightly.
“Look, I know you’re probably scared right now. I’m sorry about that,” the colt continued. “But…um…it’s Nightmare Night. You’re supposed to be scared, right?”
Zephyr hugged Mister Manticore tighter.
“Yeah, probably scared a little too much tonight. That’s fair. Those two older foals stole all your candy and ruined your night.”
Zephyr froze. How…how did this colt know about that? How could he possibly have known about that? “G…go away!” Zephyr cried out. “Go away or I’ll scream for my mommy and daddy!”
“Yikes, they must have got you hard…” The shimmering sound got slightly louder. “Hey, wait, no, hang on, you’ll just scare her more – ”
Zephyr’s room was suddenly filled with a pale blue glow, penetrating her bedsheets. She saw, silhouetted in the light, the shape of an adult pony, with both wings and a long horn. The adult pony didn’t move, but music began to accompany the light – a soft, steady hum, a low lullaby with words that Zephyr didn’t understand, but somehow penetrated her fear, made their way past her terror and settled into her heart and soul and assured her that nothing bad was going to happen to her, not from the colt, and not from the one singing the lullaby.
Zephyr stared at the silhouette. It looked familiar…gripping Mister Manticore tightly in one hoof, she slowly crept forward, to the edge of her bedsheets, and chanced a peek out.
The colt, sitting at her windowsill, looked like just a regular colt – purple mane and coat, dressed like a Wonderbolt, with saddlebags laden with candy over his back. The adult, meanwhile…she looked like the Nightmare, like the terrifying pony that the witch had warned her and all the other foals about earlier in the night. Same wings, same horn, same coat…and yet, somehow, she looked completely different. There was a soft and gentle smile on her face, and her eyes, though the same color as before, were somehow…different. In a good way.
The Nightmare looked to the colt, nodding her head towards Zephyr gently. “O-oh, right,” he said, climbing into Zephyr’s room. “Um, hi. My name is Lute. And she’s, uh…she’s the Nightmare.” He shrugged a little. “She doesn’t talk much.
Zephyr hugged Mister Manticore close to her as she regarded the colt, putting the toy between her and him. Mister Manticore would protect her if he had to, she knew, even if he was a scardy-monster. “What do you want?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Lute said. “Well, at least, we don’t want anything from you. Instead…” he reached back with a wing and opened up one of his saddlebags, then leaned over a little and poured out some of the candy contained within it. “There we go. Me and the Nightmare just wanted to make up for all the candy that those two older foals stole from you.”
Zephyr stared a moment at the candy on her floor. Slowly, cautiously, gripping Mister Manticore in her teeth, she got out of bed and trotted up to the candy, as the Nightmare and Lute both backed away from it slightly, giving her room. “R…really?” she asked, looking between the two other ponies.
Lute nodded. “Really,” he said.
The Nightmare nodded as well, much more fervently. Zephyr giggled at the sight of a supposed monster acting so animatedly and…well, foalishly. The Nightmare giggled as well – a strange sound that seemed to come from everywhere except the Nightmare.
“Th-thank you!” Zephyr exclaimed, dashing over to her discarded Nightmare Night bag – made of cloth and shaped and colored like a pumpkin – then returning to the candy. She began piling it in, pausing when she had only two pieces left, both jawbreakers. Remembering the story of Nightmare Night, she used her muzzle to push one forward, to the Nightmare. “For you,” she insisted, then turned to Lute and pushed the other towards him. “A-and for you, too.”
Lute looked surprised, but mumbled thanks as he took back the offered candy. The Nightmare was not nearly so subdued, eagerly picking the candy up off the ground with her mouth and crunching down on the jawbreaker, paying no mind to its wrapper as she chewed and swallowed, a wide grin on her face.
“Okay,” Lute said, trotting towards the window and hopping back up onto the sill, the Nightmare following, “well, we’ve got a bunch of other houses to hit up tonight. But I promise you, those bullies who bothered you tonight? They won’t bother you or anypony else, ever again. Me and the Nightmare saw to that.”
Once again the Nightmare nodded fervently as she approached the window sill. After Lute leaped out, the Nightmare turned around to look at Zephyr again. She offered one more smile, winked at the filly, then broke apart into star-filled, bluish mist that seeped out Zephyr’s window and fell to the ground below before reforming into the Nightmare at the bottom.
Zephyr watched her and Lute trot off, then closed her window and looked to her pile of candy. “Best Nightmare Night ever, Mister Manticore,” she told her toy, as the two sat down together to feast.
---
Seeking out the foals that Peach and Brawny had stolen from took surprisingly little time with the Nightmare as Lute’s guide. All in all, they had to essentially break into a dozen homes. Most of the time the colt or filly inside was asleep, so Zephyr and the Nightmare simply left a pile of candy at their windowsill. When they were awake they tended to have a repeat of their performance with the first filly – each time, the Nightmare sang the same sweet, soft lullaby that would convince the foal that there was nothing to be afraid of. Lute’s biggest fear – that the parents might barge in and start asking some rather pointed questions – also didn’t manifest. He somehow had the feeling that that had something to do with the Nightmare, too.
As they left the last home, Lute’s saddlebags now basically empty except for a spare gumdrop or piece of chocolate, he looked to the Nightmare as the two trotted through the street, with the Nightmare looking back at him, each studying the other. Somehow, they had ended up in the first tier of Canterlot, the high-end district where many of the estates of the nobility were, as well as Canterlot Castle itself. This area was supposed to be patrolled fairly heavily by the city guard, but for some reason, none were in sight.
“So,” Lute said after a moment. “Tonight was…eventful.”
The Nightmare nodded.
“I nearly got beaten up by a pair of bullies. But I guess that won’t be a problem anytime soon.”
The Nightmare giggled, the sound echoing through the street.
“And I saved the Nightmare Night for a lot of little colts and fillies.”
The Nightmare sighed contentedly.
“And I learned that a thing that I thought was just an old pony’s tale was, actually, real. And also not as mean she’s made out to be.”
The Nightmare crooned at that. She pranced ahead of Lute a few steps, and then set herself down on her haunches, staring at him pointedly.
“What?” he asked.
The Nightmare waved a hoof, a keep going motion.
“What else did I learn?”
The Nightmare nodded.
Lute thought. He looked at his saddlebags, now empty of candy…but he didn’t regret that. Not even a little. “Candy isn’t everything?” He asked. “I’m…supposed to be having fun on Nightmare Night. Not just seeing it just as a chance for lots of free candy.”
The Nightmare nodded, standing and stretching, flapping her wings a little.
“Although it is a chance for free candy,” Lute said.
The Nightmare rolled over onto her back, contentedly patting her stomach. She paused a moment, looking up at a particular noble estate nearby, then grinning widely as she rolled back onto her hooves, horn glowing. With a flash-pop, a large number of rolls of…toilet paper? – appeared in her telekinetic aura, and she threw them, one right after another, over the fence of the estate and weaved them with her magic around the trees, the fence, and the house itself. Turning around, she did the same to another estate, and then another.
Lute raised an eyebrow. “Not a fan of the nobility?”
The Nightmare blew a raspberry even as she continued. By the time she was done, half the tier, it seemed, was covered in toilet paper streamers, making the area look like a giant two-ply spider web. She then turned to Lute, considered a moment, and set her horn glowing once more.
“Oof!” Lute exclaimed, at the sudden change in weight on his back. He looked over his shoulder, and saw that his saddlebags were now brimming with candy – and not the small gumdrops and individual jawbreakers and other tiny kinds typically given out on Nightmare Night. No, it was now full of large, alicorn-sized candy bars, whole packets of jawbreakers, and other kinds of candy that his parents didn’t let him eat all at once.
“Nice…” he said, before looking back to his surprise benefactor. “Thanks, um…Miss Nightmare. Oh!” He turned around, picked a candy bar and random, and held it out in his hoof. “Gotta keep up the tradition.”
The Nightmare apparently wholeheartedly agreed, biting down on the thing and swallowing it like an owl that had captured a mouse. Lute chuckled. “With how little you chew, at least you probably don’t have to worry about your teeth…”
The Nightmare paused and grimaced, an if only look on her face appearing. Lute raised an eyebrow, but the Nightmare didn’t explain any further, instead only looking up at the night sky a moment, then back to Lute. She held out a hoof.
Lute, much to his own surprise, didn’t hesitate in reach out and tapping his own hoof against hers. “Nice meeting you,” he said.
The Nightmare nodded, then broke apart once more into mist. She swirled around Lute a few times before shooting off into the night. Lute watched her go, then nodded himself, turned around and trotted home.