There are very few things that make a guardian fear for their life. There is no weapon that can kill them, not truly. No foe that can best them, never entirely. A guardian is, in most cases, invincible, but that doesn't mean they are without fear.
Everyone fears something. Some fear insects, others heights, tight spaces, large crowds. Fear is the great unifier of life, for without fear, you are vulnerable. The mouse is scared of the cat because the cat poses a threat to the mouses survival. Fear and survival are intrinsic to one another. Survival is impossible without fear, so fear should be impossible without the need to survive. Oh how wrong we were.
Fear never goes away, it, like energy, can only be transferred. If a being can't die then the only thing it has left to fear is life itself. A guardian doesn't fear dying, they fear living in conditions they can't escape. They fear their own heads becoming a prison, where they can only sit and wait for the end of time itself.
So when Mathew sensed an unknown entity apperceive his mind, the one place he fears most, horrified doesn't even cover what he felt.
He and his new friends were in the middle of discussing the political architecture of Equestria when strange sensation took hold within his subconscious, it felt like someone leafing through pages of a book in his head, browsing for something. It only lasted for a second before the odd feeling was replaced with one of extreme pain. His brain felt like it was being ripped apart from the inside. Memories flashed before his eyes, none of them pleasant. After what felt like an eternity the feelings passed, and he was left shaking, clutching his head in his hands. Luna was in front of him, yelling something incomprehendable. He could hear his ghost talking over the transponder, his voice floating in the baseless wind. Who was he? Where was he? What was he doing? Simple questions felt like complex mathematical equations, he struggled to form words out of a vocabulary that he didn't know. The only thing he did know, however, was that the dynamic of the room had changed.
Mathew saw the projectile of light launch from across the room, to fast for any normal person to clock. He felt his bow form within his grasp, he felt himself release an arrow and the world slowed down around him. The projectile was intercepted and the arrow flew on to hit the floor near the assailant. It was then that his mind caught up with his actions. The purple unicorns eyes widened as the tether made contact with her horn, and she instantly sank to her knees, before collapsing onto her side, out cold.
"TWILIGHT!" Yelled Celestia, her words a mixture of anger and grief.
Mathew keeled over, clutching his head. He could hear whispers, voices from the beyond, a chattering symphony of various emotions. Some he swore he recognised, others were beyond even his understanding.
"Where is the great machine?!"
"What fun is there in making sense?!"
"The night, will last, FOREVER!"
"You are a dead thing made from a dead power..."
"This ring, is MINE!"
Then there was silence, and only echos remained. He swore, in the final moments, he could hear a child's cries, a slow drawn out scream of pure agony. His eyes fluttered open and closed as his ghost hovered just out of view. Luna was up close, tears running down her cheeks, she spoke to him, but he didn't understand. There was a ring in his ears as his hearing began recover. Slowly he sat up, still clutching his head.
"Mathew..."
"Can you hear us Mathew?"
Mathew could just about make out what they were saying, but he couldn't quite form the words for an answer. It was then that he heard one final whisper, so quiet that it was on the verg of not being comprehensible at all.
"I am a monument, to all your sins..."
What?
"Mathew, please, please answer us..."
Mathews head snapped up right, facing the sobbing mare in front of him.
"It's okay I'm here, I'm here."
Luna hugged him tightly, the warm sensation of feathers and fur spread around his body.
"Mathew, what happened? Asked his ghost. "Your neurological activity was off the charts, you haven't had anything like this before..."
"I heard voices, whispers. They were talking about stuff I didn't understand..."
Luna looked into his eyes. "What 'stuff' Mathew?"
Mathew scrunched up his face as he tried to fight the pain.
"I don't know, I... I think I heard Exuberant, and there were others as well. One said something about a night 'lasting forever', does that mean anything."
Luna's caring smile was replaced by a look of shock, his ghost turned to her.
"Impossible, she's supposed to be gone, I... Did she say anything else Mathew, I implore you, I must know!"
"I'm sorry, I don't know... I promise I'll... Uh, tell you if I remember." Said Mathew. He would have asked about the significance of the voice but he was to tired to care. He could see Celestia of in the far corner of the room, casting some sort of spell on the unicorn from earlier. Why did she just attack like that? What did Luna ever do to her?
Celestia finished her ritual and carried the unicorn back towards the throne, where she lay down it's sleeping body. Tears formed in the sun princesses eye's as she looked at Mathew, who was still sprawled on the floor.
"Is she going to be alright, I'm not sure what affects the light will have on your bodies."
Celestia sighed. "She'll be fine, it's only light magic fatigue."
Luna stared at her sister, a small frown etched apon her muzzle. "Then why are you crying?"
"I'm crying because my own prize student just tried to murder my sister, and for that, there must be consequences."
Mathew stared at her in disbelief, there's no way that tiny blast could have been fatal. It wasn't even a fraction of what he had responded with, if that arrow had been slightly more accurate said 'prize student' would be splattered all over the opposite wall. Then again these ponies abilities where rather different from his, and he didn't know enough about this 'magic' to make a tactical judgement, but there was just something about the way she launched the attack. The mad look in her eyes, the utter lack of any hesitation or forethought. The way her pupils contracted in fear as she realised what she was doing.
"Celestia if I might say, I'm not entirely sure it was deliberate, it seemed as though she was acting in self defence."
Celestia looked at her student, silently weighing up the odds in her head. Twilight was always odd, but never aggressive. She may have been over enthusiastic in the past, but it was always innocent things, like stealing samples from the Canterlot archives or trying to create dangerous chemicals from basic household goods. Assassination wasn't one of her many known hobbies, sadly that list was exhaustive at studying and pillaging the castle desert cabinet. Twilight was no murderer.
"That may be so, but I will need to conduct an investigation into why she lashed out like that. I can't have her hurting anypony."
Mathew nodded, though his neck strongly objected to the notion. He moved to stand but his legs crumpled beneath him, planting him firmly on the smooth marble of the throne room floor. He looked at the worried expressions displayed on his companions faces, like he was going to explode any second. His ghost narrowed his single eye at Mathew, as if raising a brow.
His next attempt was remarkably more successful, and he was able to stand straight again, though running was still out of the question. The small pony before him stirred in her sleep, her head squirming on silk laden cushion at the thrones center. It was quite remarkable that all this stuff seemed to be real, unicorns, pegasi and... What do you call them? He looked at the princesses behind him. Pegacorn? Unisi-
Suddenly a switch flipped in his brain, he had seen them before.
"Ghost, can you display the strange symbol we saw when we first boarded the Long Far Gone, the one we couldn't place."
His ghost blinked as the image of the shield emblem was projected onto the nearby wall, the swirling pattern clearly visible in the morning sun. His ghost gasped, as did the princesses. There before them was the same symbol that was plastered all over the castle, the symbol that he had completely overlooked in his excitement. What was going on here?
"That's the royal shield, the sun of the two sisters. It's the Equestrian flag..." Said Celestia, staring agape at the wall.
"What was it doing aboard the ship? I thought Exuberant said she had never seen a pony before." His ghost flickered frantically, processing the variables to their situation.
Mathew thought back to something Exuberant had said to him right after she met them, all those hundreds of years ago.
"You were lucky to retain the same prowess for discovery the first time, unlike your four legged allies..."
He picked up his helmet and sealed it back on his head, the locks clamped shut around his neck.
"I guess the plot just keeps on thickening."