//------------------------------// // Chapter 7 // Story: Trixie Lulamoon of the Dreamguard // by Hoopy McGee //------------------------------// Guard well, dreamwalker. Guard your thoughts and your actions. More than all else, guard your mind and your heart, for these are the core of you. Take care where you set your hooves, for even the most solid ground beneath you can betray you at a moment’s step. Never forget who you are, never forget where you’re from. For it is these thoughts of self and memories of home that can see yourself through many a peril in the Realm of Dreams. Traversing the Realm of Shadows and Mist by Lady Luna Noctis, Domina Somnia, Guardian of the Night, revised translated edition, 351 A.F. Trixie ran through the unnaturally still forest. She’d already tried every trick Princess Luna had taught her to force herself to wakefulness, and none of them had worked. Puka was keeping her trapped, somehow. There has to be a way out, Trixie thought as she ran. “Trixie, where are you running? There is nowhere to go.” The calm and reasonable tone made her coat ruffle. She shot a withering glance over her shoulder towards Puka, who was floating along behind her. “Every place has a way out,” she countered. “Not this place. I know this. I am the one who made it.” Trixie snorted and increased her speed. It didn’t help at all that her exhaustion was hitting her in wave after wave of leaden oppression, slowing her thoughts and dulling her mind. Her body, too, felt worn down to the bone, which she thought was decidedly unfair. If she was dreaming, why did her body hurt? The cliff edge surrounding Draumweyr—or, rather, the imitation of Draumweyr that Puka had created within Trixie’s dream—rose up before her. She stopped, regarding the steep climb with some dismay. Then she let out a near-hysterical giggle when she remembered that in dreams, gravity was optional. With a leap, she shot into the air. The cliff wall around her sped past, and for the first time in what felt like an eternity, Trixie felt a glimmering of excitement and hope. She’d finally see what was over the top of the cliff! The giddy joy lasted until Trixie rammed head-first into the sky, knocking herself out of the air like a bird with a broken wing. The sky was rock, came the dazed thought as she fell. Blue, glowing rock that looked like the sky. Her first impression was right: this place really was a perfect sphere with a forest inside. That realization did her little good as she crashed back onto the ridge of rock below with a pained cry, curling up into a fetal position as agony pulsed through every nerve. “I know it hurts, Trixie,” Puka said, landing next to her. “I’m sorry. But you can’t get out that way, either.” A low growl rumbled its way up Trixie’s throat as she pushed herself back up on her hooves. “I won’t give up,” she snarled. “I will get out!” “Why? Do you think I enjoy hurting you? Just give in, and we can be together.” “I… am Trixie. The Great and Powerful,” Trixie said as she drew herself up to her full height. “I’m not some puppet for you to play with!” Puka’s eyes narrowed. “I know you’re in pain. I know you’re frightened—I can feel it, Trixie. Just accept me, and it will all go away.” A look of worry and pain crossed Puka’s features. “Please… I don’t want to hurt you. You’re my friend!” Trixie pulled her head back. “Friend?” she shouted back, incredulous. “Friend?! Friends don’t lock their friends up, trapping them in dreams! I want out, Puka. I want to go back to my life! If you care at all about me, you’ll let me go!” “‘If I care about you’?” Puka repeated, her voice strangely soft. “Everything I’ve done has been for you! I have helped you, guided you, empowered you! I’ve taught you things that even your precious Draumwarden Princess wouldn’t teach you! And you repay me by trying to leave me all alone!” Trixie shook her head. “You took your payment, didn’t you? You took my emotions, leaving me feeling wrung out and half-dead.” “I took what you gave me!” Puka countered. “I took the anger, I took the fear, the frustration. I took what was in your way!” “You took those emotions and used the power they gave you in order to build my prison!” Trixie shot back, stomping her hoof on the rock. “But you know what? I bet that all of this,” she waved a hoof at the forested valley below, “is taking an awful lot of energy to maintain, not to mention whatever it is you’re doing to keep me from waking up. How long before you run out, I wonder? After all, I’m not going to be giving you any more of my emotions after all this.” Puka didn’t reply at first, breathing heavily and staring towards Trixie. After what felt like a significant fraction of eternity, she spoke. “I know you, Trixie. You speak large, but your heart is small. You fill yourself with pride, but your pride is a fragile thing and easily broken, because the core of it is fear. Fear that you now claim you want.” Puka rose up higher and higher, the blue of her coat radiating yellow, painfully bright. Trixie took a few uncertain steps back, her heart thudding madly in her chest. “If it’s fear you want, then I shall give yours back to you!” Puka cried out. The yellow of Puka’s coat streamed out in a flash and hit Trixie, who screamed in sudden terror as all of the fear she’d fed to Puka returned to her full-force. She fell to the ground, whimpering and covering her eyes as the world seemed to cave in on her. Her breath left her as her lungs locked up, and her heart cramped in her chest, unwilling to even beat. Dream or no, Trixie was certain she was about to die. The absolute terror began to recede, and her heart gave a pained lurch before beating like a timpani drum. Her lungs loosed enough that she was able to drag in a huge, gasping breath, though a cramp along her ribs brought tears to her eyes. She wasn’t sure how long it was before she was able to raise her head again, but when she did she saw Puka floating before her with red-tinged fur. “You have your fear, Trixie,” Puka snarled, and the red pulsed bright enough to outshine her typical blue. “Do you like it? Is it all you ever wanted? Do you feel oh-so great and powerful, now?” She was still afraid—oh, so afraid, like she’d never been before in her life. But the tone of sneering contempt worked like a bucket of ice-water to the face, driving Trixie’s terror back a pace or two and giving herself some small amount of control over herself. With her heart still racing, she managed to pull herself up on trembling legs, which drove the fear back even further. Still shaking, she turned to face the creature hovering before her. “I’m… I’m not afraid of you,” Trixie managed to say, though it took every ounce of her acting skill to say it. Puka howled and shot off with a sudden blast of noise like a cannon-shot. Trixie flinched away, bringing a foreleg up to protect her face. Once the reverberations of the blast faded away, she lowered her leg and looked up, her jaw dropping open in bewildered amazement. The weather of the false Draumweyr was changing. Dark clouds roiled across the sky, which was rapidly darkening to a near-black. Lightning etched its way in silver branches through the clouds, followed shortly thereafter by a clap of thunder that set the ground dancing beneath Trixie’s hooves. The dead air moved, then gusted to gale-force, blowing Trixie’s mane back from her stunned face. And through it all, Puka rose like a shining blue star, shooting off into the distance, her voice shaking the whole world. “I know you, Trixie, and I have seen your nightmares!” The blue light winked out. Trixie’s head whipped around, trying in panicked desperation to find the creature before she did something even more horrible than she’d already done. And then a section of the valley directly across from her mounded up, tall as a mountain and wreathed in shadow. Horror crawled down Trixie’s coat as she saw some thing rise up on two legs, its head brushing the top of the stormy sky. Lightning flashed all around it like a crown, and Trixie recognized it with a sinking despair. Back when Trixie had still had her wagon, she’d loved to tell the story of how she’d vanquished a legendary Ursa Major. It was a story made of whole-cloth, of course—the creature was legendary because nopony in living memory had actually seen one—but it had thrilled audiences. So she told the tale over and over again, embellishing a little more each time. Until Ponyville. Until two dimwitted colts had actually found one of the things and brought it back to town for the express purpose of having Trixie display her amazing skills. Not only had she utterly failed to banish the thing, but Twilight Sparkle—who did manage to get rid of it—had told her that the Ursa had, in fact, been a Minor. A mere baby. Her mind had latched onto that idea, wondering with fascinated horror what an actual Ursa Major would look like. What her imagination had come up with—an image that had haunted her dreams for over a year—was a bear the size of a small mountain, made of dark shadows and with eyes of bright starlight. And it was this creature that was now charging towards her across the valley of Draumweyr, scattering trees before it like toothpicks. The ground was vibrating like the head of a drum under the Ursa’s paws. It roared in challenge as it lumbered forward, starlight pouring from its eyes and mouth. Trixie braced her legs wide apart to stop from falling and stared at the doom rushing towards her. She wanted to run. She wanted to curl up and cry, and just wait for it all to be over. She wanted… Trixie blinked. She was angry, she was amazed to realize. Fear still flooded her, oh yes. She could practically taste it, a bitterness on her tongue that made her want to retch. But rising up from behind that was a cold fury. She wouldn’t run. She wouldn’t cry, she wouldn’t curl up in a ball and give in. Defiance stiffened her legs and brought her head up. “You think you can scare me?” Trixie shouted into the storm as the enormous bear charged forward. “This is my dream, my nightmare! How dare you? How dare you try to use my own mind against me?” The bear roared its own rage right back, the sheer pressure of the sound whipping Trixie’s tail and mane back. “You think this can make me give up? I’ve had this dream every night for months! I didn’t give up then, and I sure as Tartarus won’t give up now!” Breathing heavily, she glared at the beast that had now reached the bottom of the ridge that Trixie was standing on. A head the size of of a large mansion lowered, glowing white eyes staring directly into Trixie’s own. “You’re right. I am afraid. I’ve always been afraid, my whole life! But that’s nothing new to me. I’ve lived with fear my whole life. I fight my fear, every single day. And every day I win! I’ll find some way to beat you too!” The roar struck Trixie like a physical thing, knocking her off of her hooves, sending her rolling across the rock. She lay in a crumpled heap for a moment before slowly, painfully pushing herself back up to her hooves. She turned to face her nightmare. The storm stopped and the lightning froze in place as the two of them stared at each other. Into the still air, Trixie spoke. “I won’t give you any more emotions, even if you kill me.” A look of anguish crossed the bear’s face before being eclipsed by one of fury. A pained howl from the beast caused Trixie to fold her ears back and tuck her chin against her chest. Trixie watched as one gigantic paw, tipped with claws longer than her body, rose up into the air, preparing for a final blow. Oddly enough, Trixie felt at peace. She was about to die, but she was facing it on her own terms, as her own mare. How many ponies could claim the same? It was then that her wards came under a more frantic attack than any she’d felt before. Whatever was trying to break into her dream had redoubled its already-considerable efforts. Realization hit her like a bolt of lightning. Her muzzle stretched into a grin of grim defiance as she realized that there was one option left to her, one last risk she could take. So she took it, reaching out with her mind even as the bear’s paw began its fatal descent, to tug at one of strings of aether that kept her whole dream ward together. The ward shattered like spun glass. The sky broke open with a crack she could feel in her bones, and a wind as cold as a winter night howled through the valley. Through the broken sky flew a figure of terrible beauty and darkness, her mane alight with stars and the night sky flowing in behind her. Into the dream, a voice rang out like the call of a thousand trumpets: ”Trixie Lulamoon, thou must AWAKEN!” The dream broke at last. Fragmented and scattered, the pieces dwindled away like melting ice. The enormous bear vanished, leaving only Puka in its place, tiny and powerless. With a look of unspeakable sorrow on her features, she said in a voice just barely above a whisper, “I only wanted a friend.” Trixie woke. ~~*~~ Every joint ached as if she were an old mare. Even her coat felt painful. Her eyes burned, dry in their sockets like super-heated marbles. Still, she opened them. She was in her bedroom, she noted. Same dull walls, same decent-but-not-extravagant furniture… the Princess standing over her bed was new, though. Luna looked down on her, the expression of worry on her regal features quickly giving way to one of relief and hope. “Trixie Lulamoon, thou art well?” Trixie tried to reply, but only managed a raspy croak. Luna’s horn glowed, and a glass of water found its way to Trixie’s muzzle. “Sip, do not gulp,” Luna instructed, cradling Trixie’s head in a foreleg as her magic tilted the glass enough for Trixie to do just that. The first sip was delicious, but cut like glass as it went down her throat. The second was better, with hardly any pain at all. It took almost a full minute, but finally Trixie finished the last drop. Without a word, Luna refilled the glass and Trixie drank that one down as well. “Eventually, I shall wish to know what happened,” Luna said as Trixie sipped her water. “For now, however, I am simply pleased to see you awake.” Trixie shook her head and immediately regretted it when the room started spinning around her. “H-how long?” she managed to croak out. Luna sighed. “You were in an ensorcelled sleep for two days. Nothing I could do would wake you.” “Only two?” Trixie started to chuckle, but had to stop. It hurt too much. “Yes, ‘only’ two. I take it that it felt longer?” Trixie nodded, not trusting her voice as of yet. “I… I am sorry, Trixie,” Luna said, which was not something that Trixie was expecting to hear. “Something took you. I am not sure what, as of yet, but the fault is mine. I should have been watching more closely.” Trixie blinked her dry eyes at the princess, feeling something akin to wonder as she took in Luna’s drooping ears and downcast expression. The princess felt ashamed, she realized with a dawning wonder. Not only that, but her star-filled mane was a mess, and her coat was rumpled as if she hadn’t brushed it in days. Yeah, probably two days, Trixie thought. She missed Puka desperately right then because, at that moment, she wanted nothing more than to be able to wrap up the shame she felt and give it away. “No, Princess,” Trixie croaked, then began coughing. She licked her lips and tried again. “My… my fault… didn’t listen…” Luna nodded and sighed. “Perhaps blame can be apportioned to both of us. However, I am the teacher. It was my duty to keep you safe, and I failed.” “Saved me,” Trixie managed to rasp out. “You shouldn’t have needed saving.” Luna lay Trixie’s head back down on her bed. She sighed and straightened up. “For now, we must get some food into you.” Her horn lit up, and Trixie noticed that there was a silver bowl on her nightstand. “Vegetable soup. Cold, I’m afraid, though it will be but the work of a moment to re-heat it.” It wasn't the oddest moment of her life so far, being spoon-fed reheated vegetable soup by Princess Luna, but it sure came close. Luna steadfastly refused to even hear Trixie’s mumbled protests. And it wasn’t like she could refuse—trying to turn her head away had caused Luna to take Trixie’s head with her magic and turn it right back to where the spoon was waiting for her. As surreal and humiliating as the situation was, the hot soup inside her managed to not only soothe her throat, but it also quieted her stomach and dulled some of the more dreadful of the aches she felt in her bones. It was a large bowl, and it took a long time before Luna was finished feeding it to her. Finally, the princess set the empty bowl back down on the night stand. “Was that enough for now, Trixie?.” “Yes,” she mumbled. She took a deep breath and winced. Sweet stars, I reek. “I think I could use a shower, too.” Luna chuckled at that. “I think we could all use one.” All? Trixie wondered as Luna opened the door. Smidgen was curled up outside of the door to her room, fast asleep, with a brown woolen blanket draped over her. “She refused to leave your doorway for longer than a few minutes at a time all the while you were ensorcelled,” Luna said, adding a fresh note of guilt to the symphony already playing in Trixie’s heart. “I am afraid bathing shall have to wait for now. First, you must sleep to recover your strength.” A spike of terror drove through Trixie’s heart at the thought of sleeping. “I think I’ve slept enough, Princess,” she said, trying to hide her terror by making a joke of it. “Besides, I feel fine. Really.” Judging by the look on Luna’s face, she wasn’t buying it. “That was not sleep. Your mind was partially conscious the entire time, and you were exhausted to begin with. What you need now, more than anything, is actual, honest sleep.” Luna’s hoof reached out, brushing Trixie’s tangled mane away from her eyes. For the first time, Trixie noticed that Luna wasn’t wearing her usual silver slippers. “Fear not, Cadet Lulamoon. I shall keep watch over you myself. No one and no thing will interfere with you this night.” As comforting as that was, there was still a thrill of terror making Trixie’s heart race at the thought of slipping from consciousness. Not that there was much she could do about it. Between her bone-weary exhaustion, full stomach and the comfort of her bed, her eyes grew increasingly heavy until, finally, she could keep them open no longer. Giving in with one last, grumbling sigh, Trixie slipped off into sleep. ~~*~~ Darkness enveloped her as she stood, shaking, upon a ridge of rock. Lightning lit up the blackened sky, followed shortly thereafter by the clap of thunder. In the distance, a titanic bear roared, shaking Trixie’s very bones. “I should be more afraid than I am,” Trixie said. She tilted her head, contemplating the bear that was now charging towards her. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’m terrified, alright. But not as much as it feels like I should be when faced with a bear large enough to swallow a small town in one bite.” “Facing a fear is the first step towards mastering it,” Luna’s voice said next to her. Trixie nodded. “Makes sense.” The bear was still rushing towards her, covering vast distances while simultaneously not coming any nearer. There was definitely something odd about that. “So, I won’t have to worry about this anymore?” “I said it was the first step, Trixie Lulamoon. Not the final one. But I believe you’ve taken enough steps, recently.” Moonlight flared in the sky, driving away the storm, the bear, and the forest below, leaving only the rock beneath Trixie’s hooves. “For tonight, you have earned your rest.” Trixie would have replied, but her sleeping mind was already on its way to her next dream.