Extraordinary League of Equestrian Gentlemen and Assorted Nettling Travesties

by BlasserundTeurer

The Odyssey begins

Chapter VIII

The Odyssey begins

John groaned in frustration. “I’ve told you, I don’t remember anything else!”, he yelled, agitated at the lavender alicorn’s insistence that there must be something they were missing about the entire situation.

Twilight Sparkle had arrived only two hours ago, and after getting over the fact that a member of an entirely foreign species was standing right in front of her, introducing herself, and listening to John’s retelling of his story, had bombarded him with a barrage of questions to make sure that they didn’t miss a single detail that could later on help them solve this mystery.

John found Twilight to be entirely sympathetic, but her repeated questioning regarding every single part of his story, save one or two, was not only starting affect him emotionally, but also ground on his nerves.

She didn’t seem to have heard him, as she kept pacing around the room they were in, mumbling to herself. “Think, Twilight, think. There must be some way to explain all of this.”

Celestia and Luna had left them some time after Twilight’s arrival. Celestia to go to bed in preparation for the next day, and Luna to belatedly open Night Court and to keep watch over her night. This left John alone with Twilight, who was now treading a hole into the stone tiled floor of the common study. They had relocated there after the other princesses had bid them farewell.

John pinched the bridge of his nose with his right thumb and index finger. “Well if there is, then you’re not going to find it by asking me the same questions over and over again.”, he said, clearly annoyed.

He wanted to help, really, but this was pointless. If there was anything else to remember, anything at all, he surely would have done so by now.

“Come on, John, are you sure there’s nothing else? something that might seem entirely inconsequential, unusual or the like? A weird itch maybe?”, Twilight asked again, trying to elicit a useful response from John. She was at the end of her rope and was basically grasping at straws now.

John sighed, and prepared to give the same speech he gave her half an hour ago. “I’ll say this one more time. I’ve told you everything that I remember, there is absolutely nothing else that I-”, John cut himself off. There was one thing, something that he had completely forgotten about.

“Actually...” He began, feeling a bit embarrassed for forgetting, and bad for lashing out at Twilight earlier, after all she was only trying to help him.

“Yes?”, Twilight basically snapped to attention, a dim hope of yet being able to find the solution having been lit inside of her mind.

“Well, I think I had a dream after the… the incident that happened before I arrived here.”, he told her.

Not even a full second after he had finished the sentence, Twilight was already sprinting out of the room, eager to find a certain alicorn of the night. Maybe Luna could shed some light on the matter.

John mentally shrugged and waited for Twilight to return, which she did five seconds later.

“What are you waiting for?!”, she almost shouted the question. John was flabbergasted.

“What?”, he asked, now thoroughly confused.

“We have to find Luna! Come on!”, she declared, not offering any further explanation.

This time, John physically shrugged and went after the royal lavender blur that was now dashing through the castle’s halls at relativistic speeds.
Well, maybe not that fast.

****

Night Court had closed early after being in session for an hour. Not many ponies had come to present their cases and requests, and those few who did either made ridiculous demands that would have never even been heard in Day Court, or simply wished to use the night princess as a means to further their schemes. Luna didn’t feel the need to subject herself or her guards to the boredom of remaining in the throne room for the remainder of that night’s session, so she had released them from their duties for the night. Afterwards, she found herself wandering aimlessly through the inner halls of Canterlot Castle, eventually deciding to head towards the Royal Gardens.

She walked past the great hall and had almost reached the inner courtyard that lead to the gardens, when she turned a corner and was suddenly faced with an excellent practical demonstration of Neighton’s Third Law of Motion; As Twilight Sparkle experienced sudden deceleration upon contact with the Princess of the Night, Luna, in turn, received a boost of momentum in the exact opposite direction that Twilight arrived from.
“Oof”, Luna astutely observed as air was forcibly expelled from her lungs due to the force of Twilight’s impact. Both mares were knocked off their hooves and slid across the floor before coming to a sudden stop as Luna’s back met the wall.

Luna blinked a few times to clear her vision and attempted to stand up, only to be greeted by a blurry lavender apparition in her immediate field of view. She nictated a few more times, and when the splash of lavender finally took on a more recognizable shape, namely that of Twilight Sparkle, she failed to resist the urge to let loose a witty comment pertaining to the current situation.

“Ah, well met Twilight Sparkle, We take it thou were looking for a particular blue maned pony?
We can see how thou might have mistaken us for someone else. Perhaps a particular stallion of the royal guard?”

Twilight was confused for a moment, but eventually understood what Luna had meant, and decided to ignore the remark. After all, It wasn’t her fault that the halls in her new castle were so reflective. Collisions due to temporarily impeded eyesight were somewhat unavoidable after all.

“Ah, Uhm…”, Twilight skillfully replied instead. She had obviously not forgotten what she had originally wanted to ask of Luna, and was merely preparing herself mentally.

Before the silence could drag on for too long, John arrived from around the corner, and due to his inexperience with equine collisions, displayed a remarkable example of utter confusion and complete inaction as a reaction to the sight before him.

Just in that moment, Twilight finished her mental preparations. After righting herself and helping up Luna, she presented her request to the night princess.

Luna considered it for a moment, then asked Twilight: “Thou would want us to look into a past dream of his?” Twilight nodded. “That might not be as easy as thou might think. Especially seeing as how he is from an entirely different species, it might not work at all.”, Luna explained and looked over to John. “Art thou sure that thou wants to do this?”

“What other choice do I have?”, John replied, pulled out of his stupor by Luna’s question. “I want to know what happened just as much as you do, and if this is how to get the answers we need, I couldn’t very well say no, now could I?”

The lunar diarch nodded, seemingly satisfied with John’s answer. She thought for a moment on how to approach the problem. Entering a pony’s mind in their sleep to watch over their dreams was simple enough. Forcing a recollection of a past dream, however, was not so simple. It required absolute relaxation and openness on the dreamer’s part, and immense concentration and willpower on Luna’s. The only previous example of such a recollection working, however briefly, had been long ago, before Luna’s banishment. She had been experimenting with her abilities some time after Celestia and her were coronated.
Luna, wishing to do well by her subjects, decided to stand guard over her ponies’ dreams, so that they might enjoy a restful slumber, undisturbed by the worries of the real world.

Her sister aided her in this endeavour by posing as a test subject of sorts, so that Luna might hone her skills further.
It was during one of those sessions that Luna decided to try and see if she could enter a past dream of a pony. Not all dreams and nightmares were recurring, and should a pony want help understanding a dream, or have trouble processing a past nightmare, being able to actually see the dream in question could come in very handy.

Needles to say, forcing a particular dream on a sleeping mind was hard enough, doing so without the explicit consent and aid of the dreamer, was nigh on impossible.
In the end, after countless failed attempts, and a single, minutes long success, Luna abandoned the idea, instead focusing on helping as many ponies as she could during their short periods of sleep.

Forcing her conscious back into the here and now, Luna finally noticed Twilight waving a hoof back and forth in front of her eyes. She briefly wondered how long she had zoned out before clearing her throat and speaking.

“Forgive me, ‘twould seem our mind wandered a bit.”, a small lopsided grin played its way across her face for a moment, before it was gone. She faced John, looked into his eyes and continued. “Art thou ready, John?”

John didn’t hesitate and nodded at the question. “As ready as I can be.”, he said, closed his eyes and let out a long, drawn out breath.
“Splendid”, said Luna. “Let us begin then.”

She turned around and beckoned John and Twilight to follow her with a nod of her head.

The walk went by quietly for the most part, the only intrusion to the stillness being a question asked by John after a thought had occurred to him.

“Where are we going?”, he asked Luna. Apprehension had grown within him since he had agreed to have the princess of the night poke around in his head. The possibility of an explanation, or even a solution, to his predicament was an obvious, if theoretical, beneficial outcome of Twilights proposal, and far be it from him to deny them and himself that opportunity, but still, he was worried.

He wasn’t worried about potential dangers, real, imagined, or otherwise. But rather, he was worried about the very real possibility of failure, failure to come up with some kind of answer or reason to his being here. To him, being stuck in this inexplicable here and now, not knowing why or how, was chilling. The alternative of this all being an abstract conjuration of a comatose mind still stuck in a dying body lying in a desert or somewhere else seemed more preferable, if only a little.

“Usually…”, Luna began and snapped John out of his reverie, the quiet once more having been broken.

The night princess cleared her throat and continued.

“Usually we retreat to the confines of our own quarters when we watch over the dreams of our subjects.”, Luna turned her head a touch to look at John properly. “And in thine case it is even more important to achieve complete ataraxis. So that is where we art heading to.”, she explained.

Twilight nodded slightly at this, having followed the conversation, while John had a slightly confused look on his face. “Ataraxis?”, he inquired.

Before Luna could even so much as think of replying, Twilight had already analyzed the question, prepared a response, and fired said response off in the space of a few milliseconds.

“Serenity, peace of mind, heartsease.” John raised a brow at that, and Twilight took that as a sign of further explanation being required. “She needs you to relax, John.”, she said happily.

His eyebrow continued to elevate itself along John’s facial features. “I got that, thanks Google.”, John quipped in response.

Now it was Twilight’s turn to look more than slightly confused. “My name isn’t Google, it’s Twilight.”

As her confusion slowly started to transform into a ,quite frankly, very adorable but also potentially lethal pout, John tried to quickly diffuse the situation. “I know, don’t worry, it was a compliment.”, he said. Seeing as the transformation had halted, but refused to revert back to it’s normal state, John quickly followed his statement up with a promise. “And yes, I will explain what that word means later.”

The promise of knowledge pacified Twilight and all seemed right with the world for a moment.

At least, until they reached the doors to Luna’s chambers and John reminded himself once more that this just might not work at all, which
brought his fears back, and they were stronger than ever.

“Well then, I’m ready”, John lied. “Lets do this.”

Author's Note:

I'm sorry that it took me this long to put out another chapter.
I feel even more awful that it's only a short 2000 word one, but alas, I've been very busy recently,
and when the opportunity arose to write some more for this story, I just couldn't bring myself to do so.

Obviously that's not something you readers like to hear, so I can only promise to try harder to get you
more content, since apparently there are actually people reading my dreadful stuff.

And yes, yes the story will begin eventually. I have diabolical things planned, DIABOLICAL I TELL YOU.
So until next time, adieu my dear readers!