//------------------------------// // Chapter 8 // Story: Realms Undreamed Of // by Ardashir //------------------------------// Chapter 8 Rainbow Dash arced over the clouds towards Canterlot, wings pumping, airflow roaring in her ears. Behind her, sunlight glimmered off a Pegasus chariot vanishing in the distance. “Yeesh, and you guys wondered why I decided to fly myself here!” the blue pegasus snorted and set her head down, the fairy-tale city set on the side of Mount Epona growing larger with every wingbeat. Banking left, she aimed for the north end of the city, where the Sun Palace shone like its namesake over the waterfalls of Epona’s Tears. Golden roofs flashed in the morning sunlight; banners and pennants flew from every spire. And above and around the riot of marble and alabaster and faience, flocks of armored pegasi. “Wow, gotta be something big if they’ve got Guard patrols out –“ Something flared from the side of one of the palace towers, and its outer wall flew at her in pieces with an eardrum-popping BOOM! Dash dodged aside, going for altitude as the blast of debris passed below her, raining stone down the side of the mountain; Pegasus Day Guards scattered in all directions away from the rain of debris. Okay, she decided. No more wasting time! Dash called on the magic that was still uniquely hers and split the air with a Sonic Rainboom, aiming for the opening behind the roiling dust cloud. The crack and boom of the rainbow raced across the sky behind her as the palace swelled in her vision, growing larger and larger by the second. The shockwave being forced ahead of her split the dust cloud, revealing a ragged hole in the white stone wall. She aimed for it, letting the shockwave clear the opening. Crashing the windows in Twilight’s library was one thing, the Sun Palace was something else again. Yells and whinnies came from inside. Hah! Dash reveled in the thought as she raced through the opening, her wingtips barely brushing its sides. Who says I’m all speed and no grace? I’d like to see any Pegasus do half as well as – “RAINBOW DASH!” Dash pulled back and braked in midair just in time to avoid hitting an ebon-wood shelf of books, shooting up towards the dark-painted ceiling studded with diamonds for the stars of the night sky. Before she collided magic seized her and dragged Dash back down to the floor. She found herself eye to eye with an annoyed Princess Luna, glaring at her. “Rainbow Dash! Dost thou seek to kill thyself?” “Oh, come on,” Dash said. Luna scowled even harder. “I mean, er, beg pardon your majesty. But I was told that Twi was in trouble and – yikes!” She flew over to the weird shiny circle on the floor. Within it lay Twilight. Sweat stained her coat, mane and tail, and so did – buck, was that blood? “Twi!” Dash flew to it. A faint shimmer in the air around Twilight warned her not to try flying directly over it. The rest of the Elements stood around it. None of them so much as glanced at her. Their entire attention was focused on Twilight. “Wh-what’s happening? What’s going on with Twilight?” “Sleepcasting,” Luna and Rarity both said at once. “Huh? What?” Dash flew around the circle. She noticed that the downdraft from her wings stirred Fluttershy’s feathers and everypony’s mane and tail, but nothing within the circle. “You mean like sleep-flying?” “Aye, but more dangerous,” Luna said. Dash went to hover by her, keeping a worried eye on Twilight as Luna explained further. “She is within the Dream Realm, facing something dangerous. Very dangerous. Enough so that she cast a very powerful spell against it.” “Yeah, real powerful,” Applejack said as she looked up at what remained of the outer wall. A massive hole showed in it, with a cloudy sky beyond aswarm with pegasi, their Day Guard barding glinting in the sunlight. Celestia flew among them, giving orders to judge by the way the Guardsponies raced off after speaking with her. “Last time she did anything like that, she was facin’ Tirek.” “WHAT?!?” Dash’s yell made everypony jump. She thrust her hoof at Twilight. “She’s facing someone as bad as TIREK? Wake her up! Get her outta there!” “We would if we could, Rainbow Dash!” Rarity stepped around the circle, the long way around to avoid Twilight’s still sparking horn. She scowled into Dash’s face. “Twilight can’t be awakened, that was tried and it failed! Whatever has her in there, it, well,” Rarity looked at Twilight and her voice softened. “It has her trapped and unable to awaken. Not without hurting or possibly killing her and John.” “John?” Dash blinked. “Wait, that guy with the guitar from a couple years ago? How’s he involved? I don’t even see him.” “He’s not here.” Fluttershy winced when Dash looked at her, but only for a moment. “Princess Luna found him in the Dreamlands, and when she sent word to Ponyville she reached Twilight first and –“ Pinkie cut her off. “And Twilight came here and Princess Luna magiced them both into the Dreamlands like she does every night with ponies and,” she looked at Twilight and her mane and tail partly deflated, “and some meany-pants guys like Thorn chased her out and kept Twilight there and… we don’t know how to help her and John.” “Huh?” Dash blinked. She looked around at her friends and finally faced Luna. “What do they mean ‘can’t help them’? You took Twilight in there to meet John, what about all of us?” “’Tis not that easy, Rainbow Dash,” Luna’s aura set a heavy wooden table back upright, replacing the fallen books on it. Except for one, thick as a volume of the Encyclopedia Equestria, which floated up to the Elements. Dash saw lots of weird circles with funny writing in them that reminded her of Thorn for some weird reason. Two of the circles were big. One had the stylized image of a bipedal muzzle-less, tail-less, earless something in it, while the second bore the familiar image of a pony. “There are indeed ways between our world and thy human friend’s in Dream, and I know them…” “Then let’s get goin’ already!” Dash dropped to the floor and stomped her hoof. Behind her she heard Celestia drop back into the room, ordering the Guards to keep everypony away from this part of the Palace. “And bring some Spellguard close by, but not in the chamber, with orders to prepare binding and shielding spells. So they may be summoned if needed.” A bit of marble crumbled from the shattered wall. Celestia gave a short snort and said ruefully, “Perhaps alerting the palace repairponies that their services will be needed later would also be useful.” Dash returned her attention to Luna as the Moon Princess spoke. “Dash, all of you, LISTEN!” The last word blasted out in the Royal Canterlot Voice. As Dash shook her head to clear her throbbing ears, Luna said, “Twilight and I encountered them in the Dream Realm. A herd of human warlocks like Thorn, working as one – like ye bearing your Elements. I counted thirteen,” The Moon Princess looked towards the blasted-out wall. “They might be fewer now.” Fluttershy eeped; Luna continued. “They walk Dreams almost like myself, and fight upon ground more familiar to them than to me. It gives them an advantage. They,” Luna swallowed, fear passing over her eyes like a mist before clearing. “They almost forced me to resume the form of Nightmare Moon.” “What!” Dash heard her friends echo her, but Fluttershy asked the pertinent question. “Oh, dear! But Princess Luna, shouldn’t that be impossible?” Luna looked at her and Dash saw her friend blush. But Fluttershy didn’t look away or stop talking. “We cured you years ago, and it was Equestrian magic that changed you, so how could these human warlocks do it?” “In Dreams, much that cannot be happens,” Luna continued, seeming even more shadowed. “They conjured a – thing of Nightmare – and cast it upon me. It latched upon my memories of being Her, and forced me to become Her again. By their will, at their command, within Dream and possibly without as well. Like Sombra could command crystals, they would have attempted to command me. As Her.” Luna shook herself, tossing her mane. “I am Princess of the Night, Walker of Dreams. I will not be geased by the command of beings I know not!” “But we still haveta help Twilight!” Dash looked at her friend. Twilight laid still and quiet in the glowing circle, with only the slightest rise and fall of her chest showing signs of life. “You took her along, take us!” “You know not the danger.” Her friends chorused in. “Yore Nightjesty, we gotta save Twi’ an’ John!” “Please, Your Highness, we owe them both so much, and they’re our friends!” “I know I’ll be scared, but we have to help them! And besides, you’ll be there with us.” “I never got to give John my ‘we-saved-the-day’ party! And I already planned Twilight’s next ‘You-saved-Equestria-again’ party! What?” She looked around at her startled friends and Luna. “I can plan ahead, you know.” The dark Alicorn Major looked around at them all. She opened her mouth to make one last argument, and closed it. She nodded once, trotted to a table set against the other wall covered with those bottles and little whatevers that Twilight used in her lab, and raised one of them filled with something colored the pearly yellow-white of rich cream. “Sister,” Luna turned to Celestia. “Aid me in preparing another, stronger containment circle.” She looked at the Elements. “One large enough for six ponies, with wards strong enough to give Tirek pause. We go as soon as it is done.” She shook the funny-shaped bottle in her aura and the contents sloshed. Dash pumped her hoof. We’re gonna save Twi and John! Her smile faded as Luna said one more thing. “And prepare lest only one pony returns, and she a Nightmare.” # # # I reckon I woke myself up with the worst headache I air did know. Maybe a second or so long I nair knew where I was or what I’d been about, and then it all came a-crashing back down on me. “John!” said one voice I knew right alongside me, and another I knew said right after, “Evadare, be careful right now. The way he was tossing and behaving, something bad could have happened. A stroke, or –” My love Evadare, for she’d been the first to speak, didn’t pay any heed to what wise old Reuben Manco was a-telling her. She just threw her arms round me tight like she thought something was coming to yank me right out of the room. She might could have been right, now that I mind me. Past her I saw the sun slanting down more along the wood and stone of the wall then afore Manco put me under. A pot hung on the stove, one of Evadare’s half-done quilts was on the loom and two more hung on the wall aside it, and I felt the bite in the air from late winter up here in the mountains even through the quilt and blankets atop me and the warmth from the fire. And my old guitar, its strings gleaming, hanging right on the wall. It all felt right good and real to me then after the things I’d been a-seeing. For all I knew I needed to be helping Twilight whereair she was, I just took a moment and loved the sight of Evadare and my own home place. “John,” Evadare said again, “are you alright? You were a-talking and a-acting strange there for howair long you were under Mister Manco’s spell…” “A little over two hours, or so my watch says,” Manco showed me that big fancy watch he’d used to put me under. I must have goggled at him. He smiled and nodded me back. “I relish seeing you awake and with your wits about you, my brother. I half wondered if I’d sent you to your death by what I did.” “Not me, though not for those Shonokin’s lack of trying,” I responded him. Evadare looked confused, but Manco stiffened right up. “But there’s someone else back there, and she’s in bad trouble, killing bad trouble, unless I get back and help her.” I was nair so tired right then that I didn’t notice how Manco and Evadare looked at each other. “John,” Manco said, making his voice calm and steady, “what you saw was a dream. I know how intense your dreams can be and what kind of messages they can convey, but whoever and whatever you saw was nothing but a fantasy.” “No, Chief,” I shook my head at him, “You’re pure down wrong for once.” He frowned at me. I don’t like disagreeing with friends, but right then I needed to. “The things I saw and felt, they were real in there to me, and if you saw them you’d know they were real. And there’s someone I have to be a-helping, right now.” “John,” Evadare said like she half-wanted to argue. I reckon the look on my face must have told her this was me being stubborn again. She just nodded and said, “I’ll fetch us all something hot to drink. Then you tell us what you saw and who you have to help.” “And,” Manco said as Evadare fetched us all some coffee and three tin cups to drink it from, “about the Shonokin. What little I know of them from what my mentor told me and from men like yourself and John Thunstone makes me glad I never fought them.” I waited for the coffee Evadare fetched from the pot on the stove. It was the way we both liked it, black and stout and strong enough to float an axe-blade on. I took a good strong drink and let the warmth from it go right through me from my mouth down to my toes, and then I started to speak. “You both recollect what I told you about a couple years or so ago, when I went missing those three days?” I saw them a-giving me those funny looks again, but I made myself go on. “When I was with those little horse-folk.” “We both do,” Manco said. He smiled short and quick. “It’s not a story you soon forget. But you were talking now, John.” I told them swift and true as I could what I recollected from the dream Manco sent me in to. If they didn’t believe they showed no disbelief. I wondered myself if maybe I’d just dreamed it, was so pure-down sick and tired of my dreams about Korea I made myself dream of a friend. But that made no sense. I’d nair want to see a friend in the sort of trouble Twilight and I went through. “She screamed and made a blast of light,” I told them both, “and when airything cleared I found myself here again, and awake. Now she’s back there with those low-flung Shonokin, and I nair want to think what they might be a-doing to her.” “The way you speak of this young lady, she sounds able to be defending herself,” Manco said back to me. He finished his coffee and gave a shiver. “Were it not for this, I might wonder if I were dreaming right now. I know the stories of my own folk and many others, both New World and Old, and like both of you I’ve seen things that you won’t learn about in a Dartmouth classroom, but John, if any other soul living told me about this, I’d call him a madman to his face.” “John’s not crazy,” Evadare said, maybe the least bit nettled. She shook her head to say it, and her golden hair tossed like Twilight’s mane right then. “And he’s no liar. If he says he met this Twilight girl, and that all those things happened, then they rightly did.” She set her cup down and looked at me. “But you said about a-helping her. Howair can you do that, with you awake and her back in whatair dreams you were a-having?” “There’s just the one way I can be seeing,” I told her and Chief Manco back. I could see they knew what I was about to be a-saying. Too, that nair of them liked it the least it more than I did. “Chief Manco here has to be sending me back into those dreams, to find her and face the Shonokin down afore they kill her dead.” # # # “You!” Twilight backed away from the Shonokin as he stared at her. She tried calling on her magic, and felt something respond, but not nearly as much as she wanted or felt she needed. Still, her horn glowed fiercely. Maybe she could bluff her way out? “Young woman,” the Shonokin said. She stiffened as he raised one hand. She noticed the velvet glove on it, that third finger longer than the others. “Young woman,” he said again, his voice politer than when she’d heard it last, “Miss… Twilight, is it not? Please do sit down, and do not try your magic again here.” He waved his hand around grandly. “This may be only a place of dreams without physical reality, but it is one formed from memories of my home. I would prefer not seeing it idly destroyed.” Twilight kept one eye on her captor and gave the room a quick once-over. As she’d noticed, it was a log cabin like those in Whitetail Woods, the beams old and dark and looking iron-hard. Wooden shelving set against the walls, many of them containing books with titles in scripts unknown to her. On others sat small statues, many of them with the dull yellow shine of rough-worked gold. The windows were closed and shuttered; the only natural light came from above via a smokehole in the roof. A stone chimney sat against one wall, massive and squat, the coals low and sullen red. A Memory Palace! Twilight had read of these, once used among scholars when literacy was a rare skill. They assigned images to memories, sometimes hundreds of pages’ worth from a book, or entire songs and ballads, images that recalled the entire work to their mind when they needed it. She’d wondered if humans needed the skill given their easy access to books. Maybe not humans, but Shonokins definitely did. “You admire my home,” the Shonokin said, a faint tone of pride in his voice. She looked back at him, noticed the dark suit that looked made to fit him and white shirt underneath made from some unknown material with a faint sheen to it. Certainly not cloth. “You should,” he said again, his hand rising to stroke a ruby amulet hanging against his chest from a golden chain. “It contains my treasures, the treasures of the Shonokin people.” His voice hardened. “Such treasures as our enemies have left us.” “Your enemies?” Twilight said. She sat down at the table, found it set at the right height for her to eat and drink from comfortably. “What enemies? John and me? I never even knew of you before today, and I can’t see John as a pony, er, man who enjoys making enemies.” “He may not enjoy making them,” the Shonokin said, his voice still hard, cutting out the words as though with a knife. “But he has made them of us. Leaders of our people have died at his hands, or at the hands of others who he helped.” His voice turned warmer or at least politer. “I do admit that we behaved wrongly with you and your friend, young miss. I would rather that we made amends for our reaction to your friend’s aggression.” He offered her a cup on a dish such as he drank from. “Do take this,” he commanded more than offered. She accepted it warily. He chuckled. “It is no cursed potion, I assure you. Merely a few herbs that we Shonokin know of, brewed and steeped until their potency is brought forth. It sharpens the wits and refreshes the body, even here.” “Uhh, thank you,” Twilight said as she took the drink. It looked like any cup of tea she’d shared with Rarity, but the smell was sharper, like that Yerba Mate from the south she drank once. Only once. She’d gone without sleeping for three days afterwards. She sipped lightly, very lightly, and set it aside. “Why did you attack Princess Luna and myself? We were only searching for our friend John in the middle of that nightmare.” “We thought you were allies he conjured to aid him against us,” the Shonokin replied. He drank lightly and said, “By the time we knew the truth, we were forced to strike against your ally. We used her fears against her and she fled, and you ran.” He smiled in a way that made her hackles rise. “You ran very swiftly.” “I was being shot at,” Twilight responded. “That makes most ponies run very swiftly.” She waited for him to drink and said, “You ran too when John killed the Shonokin who was trying to kill me.” The Shonokin’s eyes shot wide and he surged to his feet, towering over her like Thorn had towered over the herd that night at Ponyville Town Hall. “He did not kill one of us!” He spat, face darkening in fury. He raised his hands, those long fingers held out and crooked like claws, ready to tear. A beast ready to kill towered over Twilight. “Our, our kinsman was – hurt, and fell down. Yes,” he sat back down, his face clearing and voice calming. “He – fell down, and has not moved again since. He was foolish and he suffered for his foolishness. When he moves again, he will remember, and be better for it.” Okay, no questions about funeral arrangements, Twilight told herself. “I apologize for hurting your friend,” she bowed her head to the Shonokin. “I’m sorry he – fell down. Wait, what is your name, anyway?” At his sudden wary look, she said, “I don’t like thinking of you as just ‘the Shonokin’.” Again he stroked the amulet on his chest; it sparkled like a fire ruby. “We do not trust you quite so much yet as to give you our names,” he answered, smoothing his clothes from his outburst. “Names have power. They should be kept safe.” The Shonokin smiled again; his teeth were that of a carnivore. Twilight twitched; that smile reminded her too much of Queen Chrysalis, or Thorn, or Discord. The Shonokin said, “Perhaps once you have proved your trustworthiness to us, you can be allowed to know my name. For now simply know that I am a – leader, among my folk. I command, and they obey.” “Okay,” That bit about names – like Thorn’s incantations, calling out the names of Nightmares and Windigos. John said in his world’s magic – the parasitic kind – sorcerers use proper names to command and control others. She swept her hoof to take in the room. “You were saying something about the treasures your ‘enemies’ left you? What enemies?” “Humanity,” he said, making the word a curse. He looked up at the bookshelves, stroked his amulet; a heavy tome floated off the shelf and set itself down before her. He opened the book, Twilight an old decorated map. Odd creatures danced in the margins, a dog-headed thing there peering out from a tomb with something in its moldering paws she strongly suspected to be a body, a thing like a man-fish here with an ornate golden crown on its head. But the land mass in the map was mostly familiar, vaguely similar to Equestria with its Frozen North extending far to the south and a sort of bridge connecting it to another landmass at the upper left, where the northernmost Griffin lands would be in Equestria. She looked at the Shonokin. “This is where John comes from?” She tried to remember his name for the continent. “’North America’?” “That is the name given it by the thieves who inhabit it now,” the Shonokin said. He stabbed one long gloved finger at it. “We Shonokin gave it another name, when we first came here from – elsewhere, when we used our wits and our – knowledge, what some would call sorcery or witchcraft, to slay the mighty beasts that lived here. Once we ruled all of this,” he almost caressed the page with one gloved hand, his voice remorseful, his amulet sparkling. “We raised our stone cities and forts to the sky, delved deep into the Earth. We studied the ways of the seasons and stars, the patterns of life and death.” He looked over at another part of the wall. Twilight’s gaze followed his, and she shuddered at what it landed on. An ancient painting like paleo-Griffin cave art, of almost-human beings with clawed hands and long spears, standing around a pair of ponies – no, ‘horses’, that was what her Canterlot High friends called them – that both bled freely from dozens of wounds. “We lived, we hunted, we learned, we defended our lands,” the Shonokin said, as solemn as a pony reciting a hymn to Celestia. His gaze shifted and so did Twilight’s. She gulped to see the next piece of cave art showing the clawed hunters from before driving their spears into another pair of animals. Only these animals stood upright. One had a long mane, and both tried shielding each other. The short-haired one lay dead and bleeding in the next picture as it was butchered, and the long-maned one was being dragged away on a lead. Twilight wondered if she heard echoes of screams and mocking laughter. “I imagine we lived much as your people do.” “With some differences, of course,” Twilight said in a nervous tone. As the Shonokin frowned at her, she said, “Heh, so when did these ‘enemies’ come in?” “Across the great land bridge,” he said, and another piece of art appeared on the table – a sort of carving, looking to be of old and well-kept ivory by the smooth cream color. On one end were images of the clawed beings, the Shonokin, half raising short throwing spears and the other half dipping the points into small jaws they held. Facing them were other men, ones without clawed hands but using odd sticks to help throw their spears. One or two of them had those short Shonokin spears in their legs; they lay flat on the ground, as though dead. From such small wounds? Twilight wondered, poison, maybe? “They bore new weapons. They reproduced more swiftly than we could, like rats, like thronging vermin. They cast down our towers and destroyed our knowledge.” “John’s people?” “Others,” Another book floated off the shelf, set itself before her. The author and title were in some alien alphabetic script she remembered from Thorn’s grimoire. The Shonokin leaned forward, setting one hand on the book; the other fingered his amulet. “The title is ‘Myths of the Cherokee’. It speaks in there of us, or of what the first savages learned of us,” the Shonokin said, his voice once more going harsh. “The names they gave us – the Night Goers, the Moon-Eyed People, witches and sorcerers who killed with witchcraft and poison and who bore women away.” He sniffed and spoke in bitter tones. “What else did they think they deserved, those thieves and robbers? For every ill thing we did to them, I but wish we had done a thousand more.” He looked at her. “Have your folk ever been robbed, been forced to hide, been driven from all that was theirs by right, when all they asked of their inferiors was a few lives now and then?” “We’ve had our enemies,” Twilight said, wary. Some of his words sounded true, but others reminded Twilight a little of some few pegasi and Earth ponies and even unicorns when they spoke of the ‘better days’ before the coming of Discord and the Princesses, before even leaving the First Land and coming to Equestria. Back when they didn’t need to share anything with anypony. “I and my, my friends helped to defeat some, and we made friends with as many as we could.” She looked at him. “Can your folk try that? I’ve met John, and not all humans are evil.” “It is not their being ‘evil’ or ‘good’,” the Shonokin leader said. He tapped the book with his hand and it vanished. From the corner of her eye Twilight saw it reappear on the shelf. He looked at her and smiled, his eyes cold above those bared carnivore teeth. “We Shonokin have no use for such terms, invented by other and lesser creatures. What is good is what serves our ends; what is evil is what opposes them. As for making friends?” He laughed then, and his soft laughter mocked her as words never could. “What use would that be? The humans are less than we are. We want nothing to do with them. They have no right to live where once our folk did. When we regain what is rightfully ours –” His other hand clenched his amulet; Twilight backed away from the table, uncertain. He looked at her. “But I am a bad host. I speak too much of myself.” He sat back and smiled; Twilight felt his eyes on her the way she’d once looked on a dead frog to be dissected. “Tell me of your home and yourself.” He waved his free hand and a new book appeared before him, metal clasps on a leather cover, the pages colored a creamy yellow, parchment or vellum. A pen hovered over it with a bird’s claw at the end. “Of your folk and their enemies who you have made friends with.” Mockery there at the end, and maybe just the slightest emphasis? His amulet flashed as he fiddled with it; Twilight felt her eyes drawn to the crimson sparkles. “Well, okay, I guess.” Twilight wondered if this was how John felt when she’d asked him about his world. Part of her wondered how much she should say; the Shonokin had already shown themselves to be enemies to John. But so was Nightmare Moon, and we cured her. She looked at him, hopeful now, and drew herself up. You are the Princess of Friendship, remember? Maybe I’m going to make these Shonokin realize how wrong they’ve been about humans like John, and they’ll make peace with them! “Well, it all started with me researching an old legend about Nightmare Moon…” Twilight couldn’t remember how long she spoke, but she gave a good basic idea of both Equestria, the Princesses, and her friends and what they’d done. She downplayed some of it; she didn’t want to be a braggart. The Shonokin listened, and if he didn’t believe, he showed no sign of it. She did feel a little uneasy a few times. When it came to their defeat by Discord, he asked many pointed questions. “So he defeated you, at first? And changed your world into – something else, and later brought someone from our world to aid him against you?” The Shonokin’s pen scratched wildly across the vellum, like claws. “But in the end, you defeated him, did you not?” “Eventually.” More talk and questions, with the amulet ever-sparkling. Queen Chrysalis, King Sombra, Tirek, the other nameless horrors yet locked away in Tartarus. The Shonokin leader leaned forward, his dark eyes glittering, as Twilight spoke of Sombra’s sending the Crystal Ponies away off into some timeless limbo and so filling them with fear that even after their return they shuddered in terror of him. “A great mind there, yes, one who understood how to deal with one’s enemies. A power great enough to be served if he granted us his gifts. A pity it is not possible to speak with him. Perhaps in the future if we learn more of your world?” “Maybe, but I doubt Sombra would be willing to chat.” Twilight tried to imagine Sombra discussing black magic and warlockry with someone like the Shonokin, and shuddered at how easily the thought did rise. He’d been dangerous enough. “Besides, he’s dead, and Queen Chrysalis is in hiding. Tirek’s drained of power and locked under even stronger wards in Tartarus than before.” Twilight raised one hoof to her chin, stared at the crimson amulet. It fascinated her so, the way it shined and shimmered. “And Nightmare Moon, well, Luna’s still around but after what happened the first time we met,” she shuddered to remember that battlefield, “I doubt she’ll be very happy to see you again. Not that she’d be, be violent, or anything like that!” Twilight reassured him. “Once I explain everything to her, I’m sure she’ll understand and forgive.” “Yes, you creatures forgive even the worst of your enemies, don’t you?” The Shonokin said, the mockery back in his voice now. “Even when they betray you and prove your trust was misplaced in the first place.” He looked thoughtful. “I suppose you would even forgive us for what we have done to you and your Princess Luna.” “We can, yes, if you show any remorse or regret for what you did.” Twilight said. She indicated the wall paintings of the humans being slain by the Shonokin. “We’d be willing to intercede for you with humanity, or grant you someplace to live in if that was impossible. We could learn from each other.” The Shonokin tucked his amulet inside his shirt and smiled at her. Then his grin turned to a sneer. “Learn what? How to forgive insult and injury, again and again? How to let our enemies profit by their stolen victory and keep what was never theirs?” He rose from the table, thrust one long finger at her, accusing. “You creatures can afford to forgive and forget. You lost nothing to invaders. Not yet, anyway.” “Not yet?” Twilight stepped back, shaking a sudden fog from her head. Did they listen to anything I said? ”What do you mean, not yet? We’ll help you, I promise we will!” “You would show us charity,” the Shonokin spat, “out of the pity of your hearts. Us! The First Folk! You give nothing, but we will take what we need from you.” “Like what?” Twilight looked around the room. There didn’t seem to be anypony or thing nearby, but if they were still in the Dream Realm it didn’t matter. He could send anything at her in his own little corner of it. “You can’t reach Equestria except through dreams, and Luna will never permit you to enter our world.” “Luna, yes,” the Shonokin lightly drew his fingers along that long chin as he towered over her. “The one with you? The blue winged horse?” His voice turned gleeful and cruel. “The one we drove away by showing her visions of herself she did not enjoy?” He picked up a small carved figurine from the table of a saddled and bridled horse. “What if we could make those visions true again and restore the Nightmare?” “You can’t!” Twilight flew towards him. He raised those hands as though to claw at her, and she hovered just back out of reach. “Luna would never let that happen, she hates what she was! She loves her people and Equestria too much to let that happen.” “She hates the Nightmare, yes,” the Shonokin nodded. “Hates it enough to give that image of herself life in her own mind. A life as strong as hers. We Shonokin understand Hate. Hate is Strength, Hate is Power. Love is weakness. Love can but plead, while Hate commands. And…” He snapped his long fingers, like Discord casting Chaos magic. Another book appeared before him. Older than the first, leather bound with metal hasps on the cover. It flipped open to show her the picture of an equine figure rising within a containment-ward circle. Two robed humans faced Nightmare Moon from within another circle. “I thought that I read of her before,” the Shonokin leader almost purred. “She was called to our world once long ago. John Dee’s books were almost completely lost when his library at Mortlake burned, but some were spared,” he gently caressed the cover, “and this eventually made it to us. We shall summon her to us. The Nightmare will serve us as our gods once did, and she will slay our enemies.” “She’d as soon kill you,” Twilight said, pleading. She pointed at the book. An illustration on the next page showed the Nightmare with one of the robed men, the bearded one, confronting a man in royal raiment. He was being forced to his knees before her. Outside the window, a full moon shone in the sky with a skull-like face on it. “She’s – Nightmare Moon was Luna’s dark side, her envy and resentment of Celestia given form! She didn’t care about anything but forcing everypony to adore her Endless Night! Don’t you know what that would do to your world?” “I care little what it would do to what was once our world,” the Shonokin leader said. He walked over towards the wall. Twilight blinked to see a door where none stood before, set at impossible angles. “I care what she would do to our enemies. She will aid us if we aid her in her revenge, especially if we bind her the way Dee was able to. She must obey us then.” Twilight felt cold sweat along her flanks. Nightmare Moon returned, a weapon in the hands of these beings? Even if it was all happening to another world, how long before the Nightmare showed them how to cross the worldstreams? That man Dee was able to summon her in the first place. She remembered the mirror gate and those other unused mirrors, that led into still more worlds. What if John’s lay behind one of them? The image went through her mind: a vast and bloated moon rising above a ruined Canterlot. No more ponies in it or Equestria, only silent and shadowed figures with slit-pupil eyes that used poison and warlockry to slay for sport. “I won’t let you,” she said. Twilight took a breath so her voice quavered less. “I won’t let you do that to Luna, or John’s world, or mine.” “ANIMAL!” the Shonokin set one clawed hand on that massive door, “what makes you think you can stop us? You were foolish enough to tell us of your world, your memories,” Twilight gulped. That amulet! A geas! Like Sombra’s mind traps! “We will use them to defeat you in your dreams as we will Silver John. You will die here by our Will, both of you, and none of your worthless friends will be able to save you.” He began to open the door. “You will die as easily as this.” Twilight flew at him, desperate to stop him, to say something, to make him realize that he didn’t need to do this. The heavy door flung open, sucking her out into the Void. And the world about her fell apart. Again.