The darkness was suffocating. Rainbow Dash tried to breathe, to cry out, but her breath was stolen at the same time that her body was constricted. She could feel this thing leeching at her, probing her mind for memories and violently extracting what it wanted. She could feel something stirring within her chest, forcing her heart rate to accelerate to such a degree that she was afraid that her heart may try to make a run for it.
“Starlight…” the voice said again. Rainbow shuddered uncontrollably when she realized it sounded like her voice, Twilight’s voice and Luna’s voice, all wrapped together. “...This really scares you, doesn’t it?” it continued on in some twisted version of Twilight’s voice.
Rainbow squirmed, unable to breathe or focus. Her eyes began to roll up into the back of her head, her head growing heavy.
“ENOUGH!” a voice pierced the darkness, followed by a bright blue light which forced the darkness to part around it. Rainbow gasped desperately as the constrictions around her body were released, allowing her to drop back down to the ground in a heap. She shook, not just from the panic, but also the unnatural chill that blanketed the landscape. A freezing gust whipped over her, making her shiver even more before she managed to look up. Luna now stood protectively in front of her, her wings spread out and her horn alight with furiously sparking magic.
“Why…?” the purple cloud of magic asked in a slow drawl made up of at least a dozen different ponies voices, shaking somewhat as if agitated.
Luna’s eyes narrowed dangerously at it, her teeth showing in a snarl. “You’re speaking through memories…” she observed carefully.
“Why?” The cloud asked again, shifting forward slightly, almost tentatively.
“This dream is not yours for the taking, Tantabus!” Luna barked, her horn emitting a spear of pale blue energy at the monster, now identified as Tantabus. The Tantabus morphed around the attack before lifting into the air and undulating.
“Why… not…?” it asked before fading away, the sky beyond remaining dark and empty. Luna slowly folded her wings at her sides before falling to her haunches, shaking. Eventually, she managed to look back to Rainbow Dash, who was gazing back at her with wide, frightened eyes.
“Luna… what the hay was that?” she asked in a shaky voice, scooting a little closer. Luna reached out with a wing and pulled Rainbow to her side, then draping it over Rainbow like a blanket to shield her from the vicious cold around them.
“...A creature of my nightmares. A parasite that creates fear and sorrow then harvests those feelings like a crop for its own consumption.” Luna explained, a small quiver working its way through her words.
Rainbow wilted and scooted closer to Luna’s side, not wanting any more body heat to slip away. “How did it get into my dream if it’s a creature of your nightmares?” she asked, her voice growing tired.
“I… don’t know, for sure. But I do know that I must force it back into my own dreams where it belongs, and spare you the pain it brings.” Luna stated with a new, fiery resolve in her voice. She stood tall and lit her horn once more with magic. In the sky, a full moon slowly phased into existence from the empty sky. Luna winced when the normally pale light of the moon was absent, replaced instead by a maroon glow.
Rainbow got up and looked to Luna with an incredulous expression. “Force it back into your dreams? Aunt Luna, no offense, but that sounds like a dumb idea. That thing needs to be destroyed!” she said bluntly before scanning her eyes over her once beautiful dream. “I mean, seriously! Look at what it did to my dream! This was nice, like, five minutes ago!” she gestured widely.
Indeed, the dream had gone from gorgeous and serene to decrepit and frightening. All of the grass was gone, the dirt below replaced by a brittle, wood-like substance that wrinkled and swirled on itself, crunching and snapping beneath their hooves like dried sticks and twigs. The forest in the distance had lost all of its leaves, the branches now curling up into the sky like claws reaching for a pegasus. The ocean had seemingly evaporated, leaving little more than a flat and massive expanse of emptiness.
Luna sighed at Rainbow’s proclamation before shaking her head. “...I can’t destroy it. As hard as it is to bear, it is a burden I must carry.” she said before unfurling her wings and lifting into the air. Rainbow was quick to follow her, looking unconvinced.
“Well, I hope you don’t mind me saying that I think that statement is complete and utter horse apples,” she said dryly before looking around at her vandalized dream. “Ugh… how do we find this thing?”
“I can hunt it down, but you shouldn’t have to suffer anymore because of me,” Luna replied solemnly, turning to her niece with a guilt that gave Rainbow pause. “Please, I beg of you… stay here. Should you find an opportunity to wake yourself up, I implore you to take it.”
“Luna-”
“The Tantabus is my responsibility. I won’t let the ponies I love get dragged down by it…” Luna cut Rainbow off with a shake of her head. “Please… don’t cause yourself any more pain on my account.”
Rainbow frowned, slowly drifting forward. “Aunt Luna… what are you talking about? What pain? In the nine months I’ve known you, the only pain you’ve caused me wasn’t even your fault. I was just waiting for you to wake up and I hate waiting,” she said before resting a hoof on Luna’s shoulder. “Plus, we’re family. I’m not going to just sit by and do nothing if there’s anything I can do to help you.”
Luna shifted away from Rainbow’s hoof, shaking her head more sharply while her ears fell flat against her head. “What about what I did to you as Nightmare Moon? How can you even look at me after all of that-”
“Luna!” Rainbow suddenly snapped, reaching out with both of her hooves and grabbing her aunt by the face. Luna’s eyes went wide and she gasped in surprise when she found herself peering deep into the eyes of a very unhappy Rainbow Dash. “...That’s your name. Not Nightmare Moon. You are my aunt, Princess Luna, and Nightmare Moon is gone. What that crone did was not your fault!”
Luna’s eyes widened a bit more before she slowly pried the hooves from her face with her own. “...I wish I could share that sentiment, my niece… truly I do.”
Rainbow grunted in mild frustration before shaking her head. “Oi… okay, fine, be mopey if you want. But you are not tackling this Tantabus thing alone, you hear me? Let me help you,” she said before her features softened a bit. She drifted around to meet Luna’s gaze again. “You know I won’t take ‘no’ for an answer willingly, so please… don’t shut me out.”
Luna looked away and shuddered again before nodding. “...Very well. But I insist you don’t take any unnecessary risks.”
Rainbow grinned. “Me? Unnecessary risks? Puh-lease!” she dismissed with an exaggerated gesture.
Luna shot her a look. “...I’m going to ignore that, for now,” she muttered dryly before closing her eyes.
Rainbow’s own expression grew serious as well. “So, how do we find it?”
Luna’s horn lit up with a glow at the very tip, gently pulsing with a steady rhythm. “The Tantabus isn’t very powerful right now. But if it is permitted to fester within your dream for too long, it will start to cultivate your deepest and darkest fears, allowing it to gain more power. This will be represented in your dream by it steadily growing larger and more resilient to our efforts to contain or remove it. As of now, it is small and easy to miss. Like the parasite it is, it may prove difficult to locate and extract it before it is too late.”
Rainbow faltered slightly, her expression growing anxious. “Okay, uh… what do you mean by ‘too late’? What’s gonna happen to me if we can’t stop it?”
Luna cringed and hesitated. “...Then you will suffer the same nightmare every night, each time just as horrific and demoralizing as the last, with the Tantabus magnifying those feelings and feeding off of them.” she finally explained.
“Oh… yeah, I’d like that to not happen.” Rainbow said simply, her ears drooping a bit while her eyes started shifting slightly at every single distant movement.
“As it is, the Tantabus is probably studying you and your psyche, trying to determine the best fears to try and cultivate. If you can recreate your worst fear, we may be able to lure it out into the open,” Luna explained before the pulsing of her horn stopped. “Right now, it is too small for me to locate it conventionally. Your mind is not mine, Rainbow Dash. I don’t have as deep a familiarity with it as I do my own.”
Rainbow nodded slowly before looking around. “Right… my worst fear, huh…?” she said uneasily, a tremor in her voice. She closed her eyes for a moment, thinking. When she opened them again, Starlight Glimmer stood before her in the air, flickering slightly. Rainbow was expecting her heart rate to spike, to hear that ominous laugh in her ears again, to see the world crumble and fade away into an endless white void as time was rewritten all over again…
But all she got was a feeling of mild discomfort. With a grunt, she let go of the thought of Starlight, and the recreation faded away. “...Twilight’s gone and killed that fear. Ugh… what else…?” she thought aloud, tapping a hoof to her head in thought.
“Twilight Sparkle?” Luna asked with a raised eyebrow. A thought occurred to her, then. “Didn’t you two practically grow up together?”
Rainbow nodded. “Yeah. When I got adopted, she and I were best friends within my first month. She… she really helped me, you know?” she explained, a small, fond smile appearing on her face. “And she’s helped me a lot more recently, too. Between coming to rescue me from Nightmare Moon, to saving me from Discord’s control and, most recently, helping me out with my, er, trip away from Ponyville…”
“She must be very important to you,” Luna noted slowly, looking back down to the plateau upon which Rainbow and a dreamt up version of Twilight had been playing when she had first arrived.
“She is… she really is.” Rainbow agreed absently, zoning out a little.
Luna felt a small tug of guilt for what she was about to do. “...Do you fear to lose her?”
Rainbow went stiff when a depiction of Twilight appeared in front of her, smiling widely. Rainbow turned her eyes back to Luna, seeing that her horn was lit up with magic. “I… I think so? I dunno...” she looked back to the depiction of Twilight and began to think. She thought back to when she and Twilight had just been enjoying each other’s embrace before falling asleep, and she remembered how, just before then, she had reached out to Twilight’s hoof, grabbing it.
She remembered how she had felt, then. She had felt a spike of fear, worried that Twilight would suddenly jerk her hoof away and walk away in a huff, leaving Rainbow alone in that room. She remembered worrying that she might have done something wrong just then, even though she knew that she hadn’t. And, of course, she remembered what she had said after letting go.
“N-no! ...I-I mean… I’m liking this. Can you, you know, s-stay? Just a little longer?”
And she had been scared of Twilight saying no.
Rainbow gasped when the look on the dream Twilight’s face soured into an angry glare. She huffed bitterly before turning her back on Rainbow and beginning to trot away. “W-wait! Come back!” Rainbow found herself pleading out before she could stop herself. She lunged forward, reaching out to Twilight, only for the mare to disappear in her hooves, fading into thin air.
“I do believe we have found your fear, my niece…” Luna commented seriously, prompting Rainbow to turn around and look at Luna. The lunar princess’s eyes were turned skyward. Rainbow followed her gaze and gasped at what she saw. There it was, again, the Tantabus, looming over them and shaking in anticipation.
“Fear… alone.” it cooed out in several voices, it’s formless body emitting an ominous pulse, the world around Rainbow quivering and rippling. Rainbow felt a heavy weight inside her body, forcing her to put all of her focus on her wings to stay aloft.
“Tantabus!” Luna barked, once more positioning herself between Rainbow and the cloud of magic. “It’s time for you to go home!”
The Tantabus recoiled slightly as if struck. Then, it pulsed again. With the pulse came a deep, otherworldly howl that sent a chill down Luna’s spine.
“Luna… Mom... Stay… just a little longer.” it said with Rainbow’s voice before swirling and launching forwards, reaching for Luna and the pegasus she guarded with tendrils of darkness, ready to make a meal of their worst fears.