The Cure for Nightmares

by Cosmic Dancer

A Letter from Lulamoon

Chapter Two

After ascending the spiral staircase of the third spire, Sunburst poked his head into the ostensibly vacant laboratory of Strange Eclipse. Enchanters were a weirder sort than specialists of other schools of magic, and their private spaces oft reflected this truth. This laboratory, Sunburst found, was no exception to the rule. Jars of octopus and squid specimens in murky formaldehyde occupied shelf spaces alongside ominous green orbs twice girded with bands of gold, and any number of singular rarities and every imagining of a sorcerer’s curios. Court Wizard Sunburst fumbled in with his ingredients just as clumsily as he had up the stairs, and paced around looking for an alchemical station. He eventually found one, and commenced to unload his pack of reagents and components.

An assortment of alembics and beakers and tall, twisting exotic glassware occupied the specially made table, cut so that the various tubes and cylinders of the alchemy pieces could run through it. Once Sunburst had set in on his brewing the potion, it quickly transformed into a psychedelic display of variegated liquids and billowing vapors, and he thought to open a window. Sunburst spun around, and began to step toward the large bay window of the laboratory, only to find a white cloud had moved onto the spire and totally covered the window.

“I must’ve climbed higher than I thought,” he said, and turned back around to find Strange Eclipse’s dead stare glaring at him through the glasses of the alchemy station. “Oh Celestia!” exclaimed Sunburst, hopping back. “Oh, you… you scared me,” he continued, Strange Eclipse sauntering around to speak with him face-to-face. “We need to put a bell on you.”

“Why are you in my laboratory, Starburst?” said Eclipse, in his monotone but intense voice.

“Uh, it’s Sunburst,” said Sunburst, adjusting his glasses and affecting a smile.

Eclipse was quiet for a couple seconds. “I see… and this ‘Sunburst’ sent you?”

“No, I’m Sunburst-”

“I don’t have time for riddles, Starburst; just tell me why you’re here,” interrupted Eclipse.

“Uh, Well, Prince Shining Armor told me that I could come here to make Princess Flurry Heart’s dream elixir,” explained Sunburst, and Eclipse finally blinked and nodded his head.

“Very well, Starburst. Make it quick, but do it right,” said Eclipse, meandering toward a set of shelves by the window to peruse some tomes. Around sixteen minutes passed with only silence between the two unicorns, only broken by the occasional sound of Sunburst clinking glass together or Eclipse flipping through one of his books.

“So… Have you heard from Court Wizard Lulamoon yet?” asked Sunburst, when the quiet became unbearable. Eclipse raised his eyes from the book and turned toward Sunburst, straightening his back.

“I fail to see why you should know, Starburst--just because you make the baby’s sleeping potion doesn’t make you privy to the ideas of enchanters such as Beatrix and I,” said Eclipse, almost with emotion. Only in saying beatrix did his tone change, as if he took pleasure in it.

Sunburst, despite the robotic intonation of the enchanter, took it as a severe dressing down and became very nervous. Eclipse returned to his book, and Sunburst’s weak constitution couldn’t take the prospect of an even more uncomfortable silence, and he blurted out, “You know Beatrix and Twilight are sleeping t-”

Quick knocking came from the door to the laboratory, and Cadance stepped in immediately after, one hoof wrapped around the fussing Flurry Heart. “Enchanter Eclipse, I think the baby’s had another one,” she said, walking the incensed infant over to the enchanter. “She was just napping like she always does and woke up screaming--hello, Sunburst--like she’d had one of those nightmares.”

Eclipse, who had sat down and was levitating several esoteric apparatuses out of a nearby chest, received the baby and held her up with two hooves, examining her and contemplating deeply. Other than her being an alicorn, she displayed no substantial differences to any other upset foal--of course, enchanters have special gifts when it comes to discerning subtle things in the minds of ponies. Flurry Heart just hanged there and whined while he went down the list of touching his horn to her horn, forehead, and chin before pressing her stomach to the side of his face. Eventually he was satisfied in the pursuit of this mystical physical, sat her on one knee and stared into her eyes. He used one hoof to hold her up and commenced to advance and retract the other in her direction, like the encroachment of the tides on the shore. A few moments later, her whining gradually lessened and came to an end. She then began to look more intensely on the enchanter’s eyes, herself.

“It wasn’t one of those nightmares, but I’d imagine it might have something to do with them,” started Eclipse, never breaking the hypnosis. “I mean, she might have just remembered a fragment of one she had, while she was sleeping, and it frightened her. But this should help her feel better, and maybe get back to sleep. Just a few moments longer, Princess.”

Cadance, who had until now been intently focused on her child, relaxed, took a deep breath, and smiled. “Thank you, Eclipse,” she said, and turned to her court wizard. “What are you making there, Sunburst? Flurry’s elixir?” she asked, much more cheerful than when she arrived.

“Yes ma’am--Princess, I mean. Yes, Princess,” Sunburst replied in his endearingly (to Cadance, at least) meek fashion, and she gave him a friendly mocking look before turning back to Eclipse.

“While we’re on the subject, Eclipse, have you gotten any word back from Trixie? Court Wizard Lulamoon, I mean,” she asked, and Eclipse finished entrancing the baby before turning to Cadance.

“Why yes, Princess, I have--and Beatrix and I are close to isolating the cause of these night terrors so that we might put a stop to them,” droned Eclipse, his flat delivery almost evincing real pride in himself. He handed Flurry back to her mother and stood up.

“May I see your correspondence with him?” asked Cadance. Eclipse nodded calmly and darted out of the laboratory. Cadance took the enchanter’s seat, settling herself and her baby into the high backed armchair. After shifting around a few seconds for a comfortable position with Flurry, she looked up at Sunburst. “Eclipse is a good stallion, he just has trouble around other ponies.”

Sunburst faltered for a moment, thinking hard on what to reply, eventually settling on: “A lot of enchanters are like that. Weird types, I mean.” Sunburst braced himself upon uttering the end of the sentence, but was relieved to hear Cadance chuckle.

“Yes, they are,” she began, over Flurry’s cooing. “Trixie’s an enchanter, you know, and he’s… you know, he’s out there,” said Cadance lifting the baby up to her face. “But we love him, don’t we?” Cadance said, nuzzling Flurry Heart and making her giggle.

“Yes, we do--I mean, uh, yeah. He’s great,” stammered Sunburst, trying to comprehend where Cadance stopped talking to him and started talking to the baby. When Cadance looked over at him he tried to change the subject, but he could only think to say, “You know, I’ve heard that he and Princess Twilight are getting pretty close.”

“Oh, I know they are--believe me,” chuckled Cadance, juggling the baby back into her lap. “They’ve always loved each other, ever since they were just little ponies. Really, even back then, I could tell. The first thing I thought when I heard Trixie was living with Twilight, even given the circumstances, was ‘It’s only a matter of time.’ And it might seem strange to ponies on the outside looking in, their relationship that is, but it works. They’re perfect for each other--and they’re both so smart… Whenever the family gets together, and we play board games and things like that, we have a rule that Twilight and Trixie can’t be on the same team, because they’d win every time,” explained Cadance, who was the Princess of Love and was known to go off on tangents whenever the subject of intimacy came up.

Sunburst only nodded with a smirk plastered on his face, trying not to be rude. When Cadance said even given the circumstances she was referring to one of Beatrix’s greatest performances, when he was allegedly driven mad by an amulet and attempted to violently seize power in Canterlot, long before Twilight became a Princess. He was sentenced to death, but Twilight used her special relationship with Celestia to give him an alternative punishment: living as Twilight’s ward, his magic permanently under her control via an extremely powerful ring affixed to his horn.

“Some punishment,” thought Sunburst, sardonically “having to cuddle up next to a princess for the rest of your life.” It always confounded him that an entire nation could just forgive somepony like Beatrix for high treason.

“We’ve been trying to get Flurry to call him ‘Uncle Trixie’-” Cadance began, but Eclipse burst through the door and interrupted her, holding a letter from the great stallion himself. Eclipse brought the two sheets of paper before Cadance, and she began to read them.

Dear Enctr. Strange Eclipse, C.E.

I am obliged to thank you for informing me of Flurry Heart’s affliction with such objectivity, and without the obfuscating emotion with which so many might embellish a report on a suffering foal. So, thank you. However, I wish you had taken greater care to keep the sinister nature of little Flurry’s affliction between the two of us until it was absolutely necessary to go galavanting around shouting it from the rooftops. You know (or maybe you don’t, who cares) that Twilight can very easily get worked up and worried when she hears of things like this, and it’s beginning to interfere with her responsibilities to me. I don’t imagine you’d care, but Winter is one of our favorite times here in Chateau de Sparkle; and it’s very difficult for me to get any [...] anything done, with her incessant prodding and questioning and fretting over our darling niece. I mean, I’m also worried. If anypony were to ask, tell them I’m also worried.

Beyond the digression on my domestic problems, I’ve been thinking about the curious nature of these particular nightmares. As you know, even the most ancient Unicorn enchantments and illusions which affect dreams affect them no matter what time the subject sleeps--day or night. Flurry Heart’s nightmares, unless something has changed since your initial observations, are solely nocturnal. And, being a baby, she must have several intervals of deep sleep, nocturnal and diurnal; so I can’t question your observations.

Anyway, I’ll look further into it. How’s Sunburst doing as your new Court Wizard? Ask him how his mother is doing, for me.Keep your head warm,

C. Wz. Beatrix Lulamoon, K.T.

P.S. If you really want to mess with Sunburst, call him “Starburst”. He used to cry when we did that in Celestia’s School.

“Aw,” Cadance looked up from the unusually short letter, “He remembers you, Sunburst.” She looked back down at the two sheets of paper, and said, “Trixie’s always had bad hoofwriting… Look at how sloppy the letter is… Usually he has Twilight write for him. I wonder why he didn’t have her write this one out?” and her expression became a little bemused. “How odd. Well… It looks like you two are getting closer to figuring this out, Eclipse,” she said, handing the letter back to the enchanter.

“Oh, yes. Closer than you’d think, Princess,” said Strange Eclipse, and Cadance smiled at him before standing up.

“I suppose I should leave the two of you to your magic talk,” said Cadance, holding the nodding baby in one arm. “And you, Sunburst, you can give the elixir to Nurse Sapphire when you’re finished making it. Alright, you two, don’t have too much fun together,” she continued, walking out as the two magi said Yes, Princess in unison.

The day continued without much trouble for Sunburst, besides the uncomfortable silence between he and Eclipse after Cadance left. Sunburst spent several more hours brewing and refining the elixir, and sat around his cramped study while it’s time-sensitive ingredients fermented. It got awfully tense once the sun began to set and he still hadn’t finished the elixir, but he was miraculously able to finish it only twenty minutes before Flurry’s regular bed-time. Fifteen of those precious minutes were spent clambering up the staircase to her bedroom before he triumphantly opened the door, proclaiming, “I have it!”

“Oh, good! I was getting worried,” said Cadance, her tone devoid of it’s customary humor and vivacity. Flurry Heart was laying in her large and regal crib, gurgling cheerfully and eyeing her mother and the crystal pony nurse stood next to her. The baby’s nursery, besides the cleanly baroque architecture of the palace, appeared no different than any upper middle-class Canterlot nursery. Colorful posters of the alphabet and the rudiments of arithmetic adorned the wall. Shelves of children’s books, some for education and others for entertainment, lined the walls--with a few books littering the floor next to them. Big round toys could be seen in every corner, and smaller plushes were all around the place, an empty bin for them next to the bookshelves. One of those weird little foam puzzle rugs laid on the floor. A model of the solar system hung down from the ceiling and over the crib, a gift from Aunt Twilight, and on the wall next to Flurry’s favorite playset was a grandiose poster for The Great and Powerful Trixie’s Magnificent Magic Show.

“Here, Nurse Sapphire, the ordinary dosage ought to do the trick,” said Sunburst, and the nurse snatched the bottle from him. The three of them gathered round the crib, and watched the nurse drop the tonic into the baby’s mouth. Moments later, Sunburst was contentedly (and wearily) walking down the dark halls of the crystal palace, listening to Cadance lovingly sing the lilting notes of Flurry Heart’s favorite lullaby.

Hours later, in the dead of night, Strange Eclipse sat at his desk--the flickering light of a single candle the only testament to his existence in the gloomy study. He was looking over Court Wizard Lulamoon’s letter to him. He muttered to himself, and rubbed his neck before reaching down to a locked drawer of his desk. From it, he produced a third page and slid it between the other two. He looked up at his door, then the clock, then flipped to the second page and looked it over. It read as follows.

This leaves us with two possibilities, excluding that which would presume these are not supernatural nightmares (which has already been debunked by the intrinsically magical alchemical properties that work on Flurry Heart when she’s given one of these potions).

The first possibility is that some lingering shadow magic from that imbecile Sombra’s last asinine attack on the Crystal Empire has been giving the filly these terrors. I find this to be exceedingly improbable, chiefly because shadow magic is much too sporadic and unwieldy to target a single foal and nopony else. At the very least, other children would be having these dreams--and they aren’t (assuming my research on the matter is correct). Perhaps you could look further into the other children of the Crystal Empire; their dreams, I mean.

I’ll never understand why the Princesses let Sombra go free after his second assault on your city, over there. Between you and I, Twilight agrees with me that he should’ve been punished--even if his mind was altered at the time. I don’t know how your crystal ponies over there feel about it. Anyway, I’ll go on to the second (and more likely) possibility.

Around seven years ago, my old master had me on a journey (which I won’t go into) that led me into an incident with some pyromantic goats that lived in the hinterlands of the Griffon country. You might ask, “How can goats be pyromancers, O Great Master Wizard Lulamoon?” Well, these were goats, to whom, my master had taught the old magic in the previous aeon. They don’t exist anymore, but before I was finished with them I noticed that their chieftains and and holy men used a kind of old magic beyond pyromancy. Something a little like shadow magic but more sophisticated--I won’t try to explain it in this short letter. Now, there are certain hexes in the old magics that have a great deal to do with the moon and night-time, and which affect the mind in similar ways to enchantment. These goats could have done such a thing--performed such a spell, I’d wager, and I imagine that more than one illegal mage might have learned their ways before they [...] disappeared.

What I mean to say is that a warlock, who could’ve learned this old curse from those goats (or somepony else who knew the old magic), might be targeting Flurry Heart and casting such a spell on her. However, this leaves us with more questions than answers. And it’ll be much more difficult to stop these so-called dreams, if I’m correct.

As terrifying as the prospect is, that somepony could be attacking a helpless foal with the old magic, I find it the most probable possibility, given our understanding of the issue. Our first question ought to be, “Why?”

Author's Note:

There you have it, the first story in an arc I've been ruminating on for quite some time. Once I finish up Hailstorms and Helping Hooves, I'll get started on the next story in the arc.

Comments

[Starlight Nova]

especially when he has to prepare a new batch before dusk.

Friendly word of advice, say what it's a batch of.