There were answers out there somewhere, calling to her. Twilight knew it, as much as she tried to ignore them so she could get some much needed sleep. Somewhere in the library downstairs, or maybe in Canterlot, or anywhere within Equestria, was an explanation for what was happening in the world and how she could stop it.
Why was she laying in bed when she could be searching for the truth? Because she needed sleep! She pleaded with herself, rolling this way and that to get comfortable. Twilight counted sheep, she pretended to snore, she held her breath. Nothing could stop the empty feeling inside her.
In fact the yearning in her chest grew. Everything felt confining. She felt like only a wide open sky would be enough space. But at the same time she felt spaced-out, like a whistling wind was passing between her hears, and she had to curl up to make it stop. Nothing she did made the little torments stop.
She heard a wooden creak from outside.
Twilight sat up, letting the covers slide off. She flicked her eyes towards the window above the bed.
Nightmare Moon was on her balcony, crouched own so she could peer into the bedroom. Her swirling purple eyes glowed, and her mane shimmered with the same brilliance as the moon and stars outlining her black body.
Twilight’s heart quickened. “Hi.” She croaked.
Nightmare Moon’s horn glowed faintly, and the latch on the window slid back. With a creek the window swung open. A feint night breeze blew into the room, ruffling Twilight’s fur and upsetting her papers on the nearby desk.
“I got your letter.” Twilight tried to smile but her lips were warbling too hard. “I… I want to thank you for keeping Spike safe. And… His mind too. If he had gotten hurt I don’t know what I would have done.”
Nightmare Moon pushed the window open completely and slunk through like a cat. Twilight scrambled to the headboard of her bed to avoid being stepped on.
Twilight sat silently. Was this going to be a regular occurrence? “But, um, why are you here?”
Nightmare Moon was standing on her bed, acting a mime. Twilight had the feeling that if she knew everything that had happened during the Eternal Night, she would see that this was actually on the downslope of the absurdness curve. Her empty feeling grew: There was so much she didn’t know.
“I came to see if you were stable.” Nightmare Moon spoke softly. She looked around. “Where is Spike?”
Twilight felt a spike of protectiveness, but Nightmare Moon probably wasn’t there to take Spike away again. “Why do you care about us?”
“You’d do well to address me more formally, circumstances notwithstanding, Lady Sparkle.” Moon’s eye narrowed. “So too would do well to answer what I asked. My babbling nonsense and evasion of questions does not give you license to imitate.”
Twilight was confused. Was that a tongue in cheek joke? Who would have guessed. “He’s downstairs on the couch. He insisted, saying something about standing guard. I think the paranoia going around town is getting to him.” Her reservation turned to concern. “Ponies are terrified. Rumors about Celestia’s death are everywhere. Someponies think there’s going to be a civil war.”
“Eh...” Moon rumbled, looked out the window to the full moon. “Probably. Ponies without guidance cannot help but squabbling. They are vermin, always clawing at each other for scraps.” She refocused her attention to Twilight. “How have you felt lately? I heard you passed out the other day?”
Twilight sucked in a breath. Was she being constantly watched? Did Moon have agents in Ponyville? If so, why were they being used to observe her? “I keep hearing these…” She wasn’t sure how much she could confess about her mental state. It felt pervertedly strange to be speaking like she was to Nightmare Moon. This was how she talked with her friends, and Princess Celestia. “I feel these concepts bleating in my head.” It was especially inappropriate since it felt like Celestia was the one shouting into her ear. “Something bad happened me. My memories don’t make sense.”
“Something bad happened? Ha, I don’t recall you having a degree in understatement.” Nightmare Moon giggled darkly. “Oh, you have so badly abused it defies belief. I have to make sure you don’t sour. Break? Snap? Melt? Burst into flame?” She tisked, testing for the right word. “In any case, if I had a precedent I could refer to we could tell if you were going to unravel. Unravel!” She shouted. “Yes, unravel was the word I was looking for.”
Twilight was frozen by that terrible diagnosis. “I’m going to unravel?” She whispered, the tightness in her chest spreading to her throat.
She felt dizzy, so dizzy. Nothing felt right.
“It may be inevitable, or you may last a thousand years. I don’t know.” Moon shrugged. “What can a researcher do for an unprecedented case except watch and take notes? But then again you are the researcher, not I.”
Twilight scooted to the edge of the bed and slid to her hooves. She had it in her head to walk to her dresser and straighten her hair, or some other small task to calm her racing mind. But her knees buckled and she fell forward on her face. She tried getting up but her muscles would not listen. She could feel her heartbeat in her ears, and bile burning in her throat. It felt like she was ‘unraveling’ already.
“What a mess. They should have kept you in the hospital.” Nightmare Moon shook her head in sympathy for her pitiful little daughter. “Please roll over Lady Sparkle. On your back, so I have access to your face.”
Twilight remained inert. She could not summon the motivation to do anything. Celestia was dead. She herself was going to die soon. Equestria was on the precipice of disaster. She couldn’t even sleep through it with consuming thoughts beating in her head and dread nightmares tapping at her window.
Moon grimaced, listening to Twilight mumble meaningless into into the floor. What a mockery of the proud and eminently capable pony Twilight Sparkle this was. New Twilight was just abysmal. Celestia’s tampering had resulted in a deeply flawed dreamer, and Moon had to admit the changes she had made had only complicated the matter. Twilight’s soul was a tangled mess of contrived, rewritten, and erased memory.
“Lady Sparkle, I asked you to roll over.” Moon said, less asking now and more demanding. She stepped off the bed and pushed Twilight’s rump out of the air, then tilted her face upward with magic.
Twilight was gurgling her spittle, eyes half lidded, pupils completely dilated. Little spasms jerked her limbs. Moon sighed. Little Twilight was suffering from a sort of dream withdrawal. Her body and soul could not produce the dreams she needed to survive. Had she even slept since leaving the hospital? Pitiful, just pitiful.
“Thank you, Celestia, for leaving me yet another burden in the wake of your passing.” Nightmare Moon grumbled, levitating Twilight back onto the bed. “The original Nightmare Moon didn’t have to deal with this. I was a powerful rival, a dangerous adversary, calling her down to earth for a challenge every night. This Twilight will be lucky not to end up braindead.”
It was a cruel thing to say but not inaccurate. Without dreams, Twilight Sparkle’s brain would die.
Nightmare would have to do what she had done while Twilight was still comatose in the hospital, and feed her dreams.
“Lucky I’m around. Nopony else in the world could do this.” Moon smirked weakly, mentally preparing herself. “A shame that Pinkamina Pie isn’t here again. I love showing off.”
How many dreamer’s dreams did Ancepanox have within herself now? There was her own the library cathedral, the Moon, Luna’s mind, Celestia’s mind, sordid fragments of the nightmare not yet assimilated, and some bits and pieces of the dozens of ponies she’d consumed in Glori Sabonord’s camp. She felt a dark stirring at the memory of that last one. Good times.
All her souls churned inside her head, spawning millions of hours of dreams yearning to be slept through, experienced, enjoyed or suffered. A horrible synthesis resulted, and that synthesis was everything that was Ancepanox. It didn’t make sense, and it wasn’t the dreams of a healthy mind, but it they were the dreams Ancepanox dreamed now.
She sat on the bed beside Twilight, and after a deep breath allowed herself to slump a bit. “You poor poor child.” She sighed. “I can’t dream my dreams for the both of us forever? Why can’t your dream work how it needs to? Isn’t it what got us into this mess? I had a tower in my head that yearned to escape, and now that you’re out you can’t reach up to the sky like you yearned to do.”
Twilight’s spasms stopped and her breathing became steady, but her eyes remained unseeing, her ears unhearing.
Moon hovered over the much smaller mare, face to iron-marred face. She let her dreams expand to fill her consciousness, and trembling from the sudden onslaught of emotion, she embraced Twilight in a wide kiss. Both ponies stiffened as Moon felt a trickle of dreams diffuse out of her mind to her dream-starved twin.
The trickle exploded into a flood. Moon could feel viscous dreams coursing out of her mouth into Twilight’s. Light and sound filled the room: Screams and shrieks of the damned bounced off the wall, accompanies the the wails of millions of burning violins, and a sound so terrible it defied description, all rising and falling to differing psychotic tempos. Strange and unnatural light came from every corner of the room, battling each other to bathe the ponies in a hue, before with wavering brilliance the light changed again.
Moon closed her eyes. She saw enough dreams while asleep. She did not want to see them manifesting in the waking world.
The sensory torment faded as quickly as it appeared, withdrawing back into the dreamscape. Moon felt the dreams settle down, both within herself and Twilight, and took it as a sign they had reached an equilibrium.
“How ironic would it be if I was suffering the opposite problem as you and simply not realized it.” Moon was tired after the dream transfer, and she lay in the bed beside Twilight, vowing she would only rest for a second. “Too many dreams for me, too few for you… Once again we’re co-dependant and parasitic.” She let out a contented breath. “Which one of us was the original consciousness, and which the parasite? I always forget.”
The nightmare alicorn fell asleep.
An hour later, Twilight came to her senses.
She kept her eyes closed, trying to figure out what had happened. She was in a panic and then… Then what had happened? She’d passed out again. Great. She felt the dried spittle around her mouth, and when she swallowed her throat was incredibly sore.
But for the first time in days her head felt clear. The indescribable yearning that had been strangling her had been alleviated. She could breath, move, and think freely.
“What a relief.” Twilight giggle-cried. “I can get some real rest now.”
She tried tugging on her bedcovers but they refused to come untucked. Reluctantly Twilight opened her eyes and realized she was the little spoon to the slumbering Nightmare Moon.
“Sleeping above the covers? Barbaric moon dweller.” Twilight scrunched her nose. “If you were going to commit such heresy at least have the decency to do it in your own home.”
She paused. That was kind of funny. Why was her mind making jokes at such a stressful time?
“Unraveling is a euphemism from going insane. Yup. I’m going insane.”
Twilight gingerly leapt over Moon, muting the impact of her hooves against the wood floor with magic. She quickly cantered out the bedroom, throwing a quickly look at the monster on her bed. “But it really felt like I was coming apart at the seams. Did she do something to me?”
She closed the door behind her and locked it telekinetically. It wasn’t too sturdy but it would deter Spike from peeking in and seeing the unwelcome guest.
Twilight wandered down to the kitchen and started heating the kettle to make tea. She didn’t feel too tired, but she was very thirsty and hoped a hot drink would soothe her throat.
“What am I going to do for the rest of the night? I’m not going to get my bed back.” Twilight watched the water reach the exact point it was boiling then dialed back her spell. She put the hot water and tea leaves in a teapot. “I mean, I never given up my bed to a princess before but it’s not as endearing as I imagined. Probably because of which princess I wanted and which I’ve ended up with.” She scruntched her nose. “Is Nightmare Moon a princess? She was a ruler of the Principality of Everfree for a while. Did she ever renounce that title?”
She briefly considered waking Moon up to ask, but decided against it. Even if she offered tea, Nightmare Moon was probably going to be grumpy. Or not. It was nighttime after all. Twilight assumed Moon’s circadian rhythm made nighttime her most active part of the day.
Alone with her thoughts, Twilight gave serious consideration about what she was going to do with her life. The fear and uncertainty she felt must have been felt all across the empire of Equestria as the commoners contemplated with dread what the nobles were going to do without Celestia reigning them in. War, serfdom, brutal taxes, and tribal segregation didn’t seem out of the picture.
Twilight wondered about herself. Without Celestia she’d lost about 80% of her life, realistically. She had been Celestia’s protege, her Élève Premier, friend, and client. Celestia had given her the Chateau la Garde du Celestia, her assignment in Ponyville, and so many more little things that defied quantitating. What was Twilight without Celestia? A minor noble daughter with only a townhouse to her family’s name. Maybe she could find a place in a new regime, but Twilight felt no desire to serve anyone who was not Celestia.
And then there were the market rumors about what was happening in Canterlot: A revolutionary conspiracy had massacred the Estates, her great-uncle Foaly Flux included, and now a mysterious new empress ruled through by proxy. Twilight had even overheard a whispers about ‘Velvet’. Could her own mother really be involved? Yes she feared terribly for the fate of her family, but Twilight imagined them sheltering in the family townhouse or Chateau la Garde, not getting mixed up in things. She feared most for Shining Armor. He’d been utterly loyal to Celestia and a new regime may not like that, but she took solace that somepony trying to get rid of all the soldiers who’d loved Celestia was as impossible as it was foalish.
Satisfied that the tea had steeped, Twilight poured herself a cup. She smelled it. “Hmm…” She blew on it and took a tiny sip. “More bitter than I like. Spike must have bought the wrong kind.”
Cup in her telekinetic grasp, she trotted to the front door. She had to be careful not to trip over the piles of books cluttering the floor. Making too much noise would wake Spike up.
She didn’t know where she wanted to go, but she just had to get out, go for a walk, and clear her head. She opened the front door just enough to slip out and shut it behind her.
The full moon was halfway to the horizon, keeping most of the village streets in dark shadow. Twilight trotted around the Golden Oak towards the riverside, but noticed that one of the houses still had a light inside: Rarity’s tailory/home.
She paused. Had Rarity and Applejack returned?
She decided to find out. Only the upstairs room had light coming out and she couldn’t see anything at her angle, so Twilight knocked on the door.
The window where she saw the light opened and Rarity poked her head out. “L- Lady Sparkle?”
“Hi Mis Rarity.” Twilight gave a little wave. “It’s, um, good to see you. I’m happy to see you safe.”
Rarity stared at her, taking a while to formulate a reply. “It’s… good to see you too. Let me get the door.” She drew back and shut the window behind her.
Twilight waited patiently for about a minute before the door unlocked and opened.
Up close she could see that Rarity was in a poor state. Her mane lacked its glossiness and its mild curliness, and it lay flat against the back of her neck. Her eyes were red and her lips were very dry. It looked like she’d been through an ordeal.
“Oh dear.” Twilight ghasped. “Rarity, are you okay?”
“Hmm, I haven’t slept well lately, but I assure you I am perfectly fine.” Rarity said. She took a step back and let Twilight pass inside. “Can I offer you some- Oh, I see you already have some tea.”
“Yeah.” Twilight said, taking a sip. “I’m not sure I really like it that much. It’s a bit bitter. Spike or I must have bought the wrong kind.”
“Maybe your tastes changed.” Rarity offered. She led them to her couch and set her firefly lamp on the adjacent table. “Speaking of Spike, is he well? How is he taking the news.”
“I guess it depends on which news you mean.” Twilight snorted mirthlessly. “I mean, he’s been out of it. He apparently slept through the entire Eternal Night. It’s been a bit weird for me too.” She was reminded about Moon’s joke about having a degree in understatement. “I have a hard time remembering what I did. There are things I can’t be sure are real panging in my head. I…” How much could she tell other ponies? If word got out about Nightmare Moon there was no telling what could happen; But it would definitely cause more harm than good. “I heard Princess Celestia is dead.”
Rarity bit her lip nervously. “Indeed… That is looking more and more true every day. Fire and shafts of light reigned down from the heavens, then the Eternal Night fell. No sign since. I don’t know how much that will effect Ponyville, as we a are technically a free city, but-”
“You’re kidding, right? The effects are going to be, well, catastrophic!” Twilight lept up, incised. “Do you have any idea how well Princess Celestia kept a lid on the problems in this empire? Without her there’d just be hundreds of small kingdoms perpetually warring each other, and now that she’s gone it’s going to end up like that sooner or later. Nopony had her gravitas, her wisdom, and her strength. I mean, just the idea of Celestia kept everypony in line. Can you think of anyone else who can do that? Do you have a princess up your sleeve that you would like to share with everypony?”
“I… I...” Rarity stuttered for a bit before falling silent. After a moment of thought she started over. “I’m sorry Lady Twilight. I know you were the Princess’s student. Even if you weren’t on the best terms I understand she meant a lot to you.”
“What do you mean, ‘weren’t on the best terms’? What did I do to give that impression.” Twilight was getting worked up, but she took an angry sip of her tea and let herself calm down. She settled back onto the couch. “Sure, we disagreed from time to time. Sure, I took a break from her tutelage for a while, but that was only so I could study at the university. I did that at her insistence anyway. So yes, she meant a lot to me. Pah, now you’re the one with a degree in understatement.”
Rarity blinked. “I’m sorry I don’t quite follow.”
“Never mind.” Twilight sighed. Why was she getting so angry, so sassy? “I’m sorry for barking at you like that, Mis Rarity. You can tell I have been stressed, but that’s no excuse I know. You’ve must have been through a lot lately too.”
“You heard that Applejack and I had gone missing?” Rarity said. “It was an unfortunate thing, as our sisters went missing and we got lost in the Everfree forest searching for them. Thankfully we all got back safe and sound. If you would though please, be gentle around the fillies. They had a traumatizing time in the forest. In fact it might be better if you avoided them.”
As rarity implying she couldn't be delicate? Twilight narrowed her eyes, but decided to let that slip. “Yes, you just returned and you need time to rest. I passed by your house on the way home from the hospital and it didn’t look like anypony was home. I tried asking Fluttershy but she was acting strange.”
“The poor darling has had a lot on her plate since the Eternal Night ended.” Rarity sighed. “If we can, we should all convene and make sure we are all on the same page.”
Twilight pursed her lips. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
Rarity hesitated. “I simply meant that the little group you put together, with Fluttershy, Applejack, Pinkie Pie, and myself, should convene again to… You know, catch up and things of that nature.”
Rarity frowned, her expression worried. “You understand what I’m asking, right? We need to make sure we are all okay.”
Twilight felt a pang of annoyance. What was Rarity trying to pull. “You mean if I’m okay. You want safety in numbers incase I’m unhinged, incase I unravel!”
“Lady Sparkle, I meant nothing of the sort. You are putting words in my mouth.” Rarity protested.
Twilight jumped off the couch and trotted to the door. “If you’re not comfortable being around me alone then I shall take my leave and let you get the sleep you obviously desperately need.” She said haughtily. “Come by tomorrow morning. With friends, should it please you.” She paused at the front door, taking a deep breath. Something had set her off again. Why? She was having a hard time examining her own actions. Oh well. She had already made a scene and she couldn’t go back with an apology without looking like more of a jackass. “Mis Rarity, I know you must be tired and not thinking straight. Just try to phrase things more delicately in the future.”
Rarity stayed on the couch, looking confused and troubled. “Lady Sparkle I don’t usually apologize unnecessarily, but I hope you will forgive my verbal clumsiness. At times I forget who I am speaking to.” She leaned forward, opening the door with her magic. “Have a nice night, your grace.”
Twilight took a sip of her tea. “You too, Mis Rarity. Pleasant dreams.” The door almost hit her on the way out. “Yeesh. I fussed that a bit.”
She continued towards the river, thinking about what had just happened. She had been awfully aggressive and irritable lately. She was never so curt with friendly ponies. It was horrible to contemplate, but had to consider the possibility that Nightmare Moon was influencing her mind somehow.
“How am I going to stop her if she is? She could erase me with a flick of her horn! I’m still alive because she wants me to be, because...” She trailed off.
Why was she still alive? Nightmare Moon’s motivation for keeping her nemesis’s protege around didn’t make any sense. If the Dark princess was going to make a play at power, it would make the most sense to eliminate any figures who could provide a rallying point for a resistance effort. The sooner the better, before Twilight got any recognition so killing her wouldn’t make her a martyr.
“Am I being toyed with?” Twilight gulped. “Am I being kept around to amuse her?”
Twilight Sparkle had a limited number of choices.
One: Run away, maybe as soon as that very night when she knew Nightmare was asleep and not watching her. If she got away without leaving a trace maybe Moon wouldn’t be able to track her. Twilight could find someplace to live quietly and in anonymity. Yes she would not be able to live as a noble and scholar anymore, but it was a small price to pay for not being kept under the hoof of a malicious Nightmare.
Two: Pretend nothing was wrong. She could go about her life with the knowledge of Nightmare Moon pushed to the edge of her mind. That would become more difficult if Nightmare revealed herself, but if Twilight made an effort to out of her way perhaps the princess would eventually forget about her.
Three: Try and work with Moon. Like it or not, her sun princess had been replaced. Whatever Twilight could offer to the new Equestria regime, she could offer to Nightmare. Especially if Nightmare was the new Equestrian regime. Yes, she would be betraying Princess Celestia's memory, but survival called for callousness sometimes. Nightmare Moon might even reinstate her to her administrative position of Élève Premier, or make her the royal protegee. If she was loyal and did a good job, an Empress Moon might make her more rich and powerful than she could dream of.
Four: Try to kill Moon. If she was going to fight the nightmare there would be no half measures. Moon was in her bed, asleep and vulnerable. Twilight could go in with a kitchen knife and-
Twilight gagged. She couldn’t bring herself to image killing anypony, not even the evil nightmare who had killed Princess Celestia.
“Woe is me. None of those choices are good at all.” Twilight moaned. Choices one and four just wouldn’t work out. “What would Celestia want me to do?”
As she passed the bridge, she heard a distant howl. She looked east across the river, to the vast unconquered Everfree Forest. Celestia lay somewhere within. What had Moon done to the Princess’s body? Had she been given a proper burial?
“Celestia would want me to live and thrive. The question is whether or not she would accept me working for an evil pony to do so.” Twilight sighed again. There were no easy answers, and so many questions.
She carefully descended the slope of the riverbank to the edge of the water. She was on the spot where she’d had the heart-to-heart with Fluttershy, on her third day in Ponyville. It felt like forever ago. At the time had just been a student trying to do her job and put together a fair, and Ponyville had seemed like an unassuming village. That had all turned out to be a deceiving veneer. Village and student were fated for terrible things.
“I should put on that fair anyway. With all this uncertainty, a day of unabashed enjoyment would do us all good.” She sat on the riverbank, looking at the moon’s reflection on the river surface. “Yes… A belated Summer Sun Celebration, here in the Free City of Ponyville where the Empress decreed it be. That is my responsibility, my charge, my raison d’etre!”
Twilight lay her head down. She knew it realistically did no good, but as long as she had that task to focus on she might be able to keep her sanity. There were no doubts or distractions when it came to her assignments from Princess Celestia of Equestria.
“And right here…” She mumbled. She suddenly felt very tired again. She finished off her tea but darkness was creeping into her vision anyway. “This’ll be where the altar to Celestia will go, facing the…” She was facing east. She frowned, letting out a disappointed neigh. “Facing the setting sun…”
She drifted off to sleep. Her teacup, liberated from her magical hold, fell into the grass and rolled into the water with a plop. It sunk to the gravelly riverbed, where it startled a sleeping fish.