The Cure for Nightmares

by Cosmic Dancer

C. Wz. Sunburst

Author's Note:

This story takes place in the same universe as all my others.

The Cure for Nightmares

Chapter One

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C. Wz. Sunburst,

Despite your and Nurse Citrine’s insinuations that Princess Flurry Heart’s night terrors are predicated on any mundane, non-magical phenomena such as colic and the like, Enchanter Eclipse has confirmed for the second time that they are the result of outside forces. C. Wz. Lulamoon, also an Enchanter, has been sent the report and his own speculations are pending arrival. Until conclusions are reached on the nature of these nightmares, I request that you refrain from opining on their cause. In addition, the nurses have depleted their supply of the potion you brewed to cure these nightmares. Make more of it.

Sincerely,
Midnight Amethyst, Chamberlain

---

“I told them to make it last…” muttered Sunburst, his nose pressed against the gossamer-thin parchment--he’d misplaced his glasses the night prior, and it was making it difficult to-

“Yes, sir! Will that be all, sir?!” screamed the courier. Sunburst jerked back and the paper ripped in two between his trembling hooves. He couldn’t remember this guard’s name, but he was always doing that. A hulking crystal pony, with bulging eyes and a neck bigger than his head. Sunburst wasn’t sure if the incessant shouting was some joke or if this fellow was just that intense.

“Y-yes! It’s- yes. That will be all, uh... chief,” stammered Sunburst, throwing the halved memo in the wastebasket and brushing off the glimmering dust that peppered him upon its destruction. The armor-clad stallion swiveled around and stamped out of the cluttered study. It was a modest room, even more so than Sunburst’s old house. Thanks to The Prince and Princess’s kindness, he was now allowed to live in the Crystal Empire’s palace, or ‘The Citadel’ as the locals called it. Normally, court wizards were meant to take up residence in a tower, but the innumerable sycophants that made up the officials of the empire had already made their homes in the spires of the citadel, so Sunburst was relegated to a cramped room reclaimed from one of the many secret passages of the place. He’d come here to his study every day to work on whatever the College of Canterlot had sent him, and retire every night to a little closet next to the servant’s quarters. Meanwhile, if the gossiping maids he heard through the walls at night were correct, Court Wizard Lulamoon got to sleep in Princess Twilight’s bed chamber.

But that was of little import right now, what was important was brewing more of Flurry Heart’s elixir. If he didn’t then, somehow, Chamberlain Amethyst would find a way to blame Sunburst and not the nurses who squandered the original supply. Normally, it’d just be a matter of bartering with the quartermaster for the ingredients and sneaking into the apothecary’s lab while he was away, but the potion required a fragment of a changeling’s carapace--and that was even more elusive than the changelings themselves. At any rate, Sunburst thought, it couldn’t hurt to check with the quartermaster anyway. He stood up, straightened his cloak, and nearly tripped over some errant tomes as he walked out of the study.

---

“Yes, actually, ever since that pegasus raid in the Black Crag--our cup overfloweth with changeling carapace,” said the quartermaster, something-something-garnet, to Sunburst’s happy surprise. If there weren’t any on hoof, he would’ve had to requisition the raw chemicals from Canterlot, and that would take weeks to arrive.

“That’s great! If I can get into the lab, I could whip this up before nightfall… Uh, hey,” Sunburst reared up and rested his elbows on the counter, Quartermaster Garnet disappearing into a supply closet bigger than Sunburst’s bedroom. “You wouldn’t happen to know if, uh, what’s-his-name? The apothecary? If he’ll be away sometime today?”

Scraping could be heard in the supply closet before Garnet’s voice echoed out, “Burning Sunset? Yeah, he’s a Canterlot unicorn, too-”

“I’m not from Canterlot, I’m fr-”

“Yes, yes, that’s fine--whatever you say. Anyway, back to what I was saying… Canterlot unicorn, looks very similar to you. He has his lunch at thirty past two, weekdays. So in an-”

“Hour and thirty minutes,” interjected Sunburst before an annoyed looking Garnet emerged from the closet with grey husks in hoof. The crystal pony sat them on the counter next Sunburst and he levitated them into his modest knapsack. “And what will you be wanting in return, this time?”

“I’m just happy to be rid of the things. They’ve been peeling on my model airship sets,” said Garnet, grabbing a rag from the shelf under the counter and wiping the carapace flakes away with it.

“Uh… O-okay… Is that all, then?” Sunburst took his forelegs off the counter and stepped back.

“Mhm, I suppose… Say, how’s it coming with the Princess’s nightmares? Flurry Heart, I mean,” said Garnet, glancing up from the counter.

“Oh, don’t worry--she’ll be fine, I’m sure. They’ve got our court’s enchanter, Strange Eclipse, collaborating with Princess Twilight Sparkle’s court wizard. He’s also an enchanter, y’know.” Sunburst explained, smirking at his privileged information.

“Yeah, yeah… Oh, what’s his name?” implored Garnet, closing his eyes and looking up in thought. “Something lullabye, right? Oh, I should know this!”

“It’s Lulamoon… He’s from one of those old noble families, y’know, so he has one of those archaic names…” explained Sunburst, his tone falling and becoming less energetic as he looked down. Then his head shot back up and, with a smirk, he said,” But, heh, his first name is Beatrix and, heh, that’s a… filly’s name… Or it was, back when everypony had names like that…” Sunburst, upon seeing that Garnet was unmoved by the information, looked back down in defeat.

“Do you… not like him, or something? Court Wizard Sunburst?” Garnet reared up and leaned on the counter himself.

“Well, we both went to Celestia’s School together and--I was a little older than him, but--he and the other colts would pick on me, sometimes. Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, I guess they were all more gifted than I was, and… plus, they were all from Canterlot and I was from Sun Village, so…” Sunburst said, shifting his weight from hoof to hoof. He thought he heard somepony make some noise outside the Quartermaster’s office.

“Mhm, well… To be honest, I can see why somepony would want to pick on you,” Garnet rubbed his chin. “But why did he start, in the first place?”

“Well, it… Promise you won’t laugh?” Sunburst glanced up and saw Garnet nodding. “He and the other colts were talking about how they’d want to die, like in a war or a fire or something, and they came up and asked me… and I... I said that I wanted to die of old age in my mother’s arms-”

“HAHAHA!”

“Oh, you--come on! I was only a colt, I didn’t know what to say!” Shouted Sunburst, seeing the tears streaming down Garnet’s face as the crystal pony hacked out more laughter. Hearing even more chuckling emanating from behind, he swung around to see none other than Prince Shining Armor and the captain of his royal guard laughing. “It’s not funny!”

“I-I’m sorry Sssss- Hahahaha-” Shining Armor put a hoof on the wizard’s shoulder. “Heh, It’s just that--I, heh, I heard you and Garnet talking about Trixie and--Court Wizard Lulamoon, I mean, and I heard you tell that ridiculous story. Don’t worry, Captain Quartz and I won’t tell anypony--will we, Captain?”

The crystal stallion, who had sauntered up to the counter chortling, threw back an incredulous look and asked, “Would your grandma be there, too?”

“I was only twelve!”

“You were twelve when you said that?! Ha!” The captain turned back to Garnet, who was standing up and wiping away a tear. As the two began to converse, Shining Armor led Sunburst away to a corner.

“So, you said Trixie bullied you--in school?” Shining asked with a smirk. “Where was Twilight when he was doing this?”

“He never did it whenever Twi- Princess Twilight was around,” Sunburst explained, still shaken from the humiliation.

“Yeah, that sounds like Trixie,” Shining nodded, taking his hoof off Sunburst’s shoulder and glancing over at the captain and quartermaster. “I asked because that didn’t really match everything I’ve heard about Trixie’s time at magic school.”

There was a short pause and Sunburst tugged at his goatee, not sure what to say but feeling obliged to entertain the prince’s conversation. “I’ve, uh--He and Enchanter Eclipse are supposed to be collaborating on finding out what’s causing Princess Flurry Heart’s nightmares.”

Shining Armor’s smirk didn’t falter, but his eyes grew a little soft. “Yeah, I know. Trixie’s a smart pony, between him and Twilight… They’ll figure it out… Trixie knows a lot about curses and other dark magic, so that’s why Cadance suggested getting him involved...” The prince looked over to his captain, who was still speaking with the quartermaster, then returned his gaze to Sunburst with a renewed smile. “So, Twily never caught him making fun of you, huh?”

Sunburst adjusted his cloak, calming down. “She called me a liar when I tried to tell a teacher-”

“Pfft. Ha!” Shining Armor chuckled, Quartz glancing back with a grin. “She’s still that way with him, to this day!” It wasn’t so strange for them to be talking about Trixie; beyond the affairs of their own monarchy and kingdom, Twilight’s court and the Elements of Harmony were a favorite topic of conversation for the higher echelons of the citadel--Court Wizard Lulamoon being the most popular with the officers of the royal guard for all of the strange and morally questionable antics he got up to in Ponyville. “Now, don’t misunderstand--I love Trixie, I really do; he’s like a brother to me, I watched him grow up… But he has this way of convincing mares that he can do no wrong. Twily, Cadance, our mother, I don’t know how he does it-”

“I heard that Celestia likes him now too, even after what he did in Canterlot with that amulet,” Captain Quartz strolled up to the two stallions, a hulking mass of crystalline musculature joining in the gossip like a school filly. He was balancing some medical kit on his back, evidently having gotten it from the quartermaster.

“What do you mean?” asked Shining Armor.

“Well, I heard Eclipse talking about how Princess Celestia had asked Beatrix to be Canterlot’s Royal Enchanter.”

“Really?” Shining Armor and Quartz strolled out of the quartermaster’s room and down the hall, Sunburst walking behind them. “Well… I would think that I’d have heard about that if it were true, but I’ll have Cadance ask Twily about it.”

“Yeah, I suppose… And you know how Eclipse can get about that kind of thing, always exaggerating…” affirmed Quartz, leaning slightly to balance the kit on his back.

“But, you know, I’d believe it. Trixie--Beatrix, I mean--Is a very gifted enchanter. I think that’s what he specialized in after he graduated from Celestia’s, in fact,” said Shining Armor. Sunburst never understood their fascination with Trixie, he’d always heard that he was just a pompous stage magician. He decided to keep quiet until a more pleasant subject came up.

“I thought he was an illusionist?”

“He’s also really proficient in Illusion, but Enchantment is his best school. That’s my understanding of it, at least,” Shining craned his neck around and it made a popping sound.

“He doesn’t really seem like the type to be an enchanter,” said Quartz.

“Don’t let him fool you, behind all that bravado he’s really jus-... Wait, have you ever even met Trixie?” Shining Armor raised an eyebrow at the captain.

“No, but I’ve heard of the stuff he does.”

“Mhm… Hey, Sunburst?” Shining looked back at the trailing wizard. “What did you need from the quartermaster, anyway? Or were you just there to talk about how much you love your mom?” he snickered.

“I needed some changeling carapace, to make more of the elixir of resist fear that the nurses give Princess Flurry each night,” explained Sunburst, trotting a little faster to walk beside the prince instead of behind him.

“Oh.”

“Now I just need to wait for the apothecary, I forget his name, to eat lunch so I can use his lab.”

“What’s the point of having an apothecary if the court wizard has to make the elixir?” Quartz interjected.

“I was thinking that, myself,” Shining Armor turned back to Sunburst. “Just use Eclipse’s laboratory, tell him I sent you.” Only at this suggestion did it occur to Sunburst that Enchanter Eclipse had all the same alchemical apparatuses as the court’s chemist, for whatever reason. “You know which spire he lives in, don’t you?”

Sunburst nodded. “I know it, Prince Shining Armor. I’ll do that.”

Comments

[Starlight Nova]

If Flurry Heart was voiced, what would she sound like?

[Cosmic Dancer]

7335062 It's open to interpretation, I guess. She'd probably adopt the same dialect as her parents, but I can't think of any real world analogue for a Canterlot accent beyond what we've heard in the show.