Luna pointed her horn towards Twilight, her eyes lingering over the livery collar emblazoned with her cutie mark. She had never permitted anypony else the privilege of wearing this sacred vestment before, and as out of place as it looked, it provided her a stark reminder how much she trusted this young alicorn; the Princess of Friendship and the Bearer of the Element of Magic.
Her aura reached out to Twilight and covered her in a blue glow as she prepared her as best she could for what lay ahead.
"You now not only have as much protection as I can summon, but are also gifted with the power to communicate with those whose dreams you enter; you are a fully appointed dream walker. It was not my intention to provide all of this to you at this time, but once you go in, I will have no way of being able to help you. You will be on your own, Twilight Sparkle."
Twilight nodded her thanks to Luna and took a deep breath, steeling herself as she faced the glowing maelstrom and allowing herself one final tentative look back over her shoulder at the self-possessed Princess of the Night. Then, she turned back to face her destiny with as much confidence as she could muster, gritted her teeth tightly and walked into the spiralling mass.
The brightly coloured entity felt like molasses, sticking to every part of her; grabbing at her legs, her wings and every part of her body, impeding her progress and slowing her movements. She was moving forwards, but there was no denying that it was getting harder to make any headway and she began to feel like a housefly caught on flypaper, every move getting her more and more stuck.
Ahead of her she could see the brightly coloured lights fading to reveal an image of Nyx, her beloved Nyx, happily playing chase with her friends. As she watched, one by one of her four closest friends began to morph into more demonic looking forms; sprouting extended claws and fangs more suited to the most fearsome meat-eating monsters that dwelt in the deepest recesses of the Everfree rather than the friendly little fillies she knew.
As Nyx became aware of the danger, she tried to run away but the four monsters ran around her in a circle, corralling her away from any cover she may have been hoping to reach. Now they got closer, she could see the cannibalistic blood lust leering out through their beady eyes, their intentions frighteningly clear. Nyx was encircled with no escape and cried out in panic for her Mom to come and rescue her.
"I'm coming!" screamed Twilight, desperately surging against the sticky mass that seemed to be hardening around her.
The monsters had Nyx in their grasp now and Twilight watched helplessly as they pulled her daughters’ wings cruelly, taunting and teasing as they all took turns to slash flesh wounds into her defenceless body. Twilight tried to use her magic, but found that every spell and enchantment failed to make the leap from her mind to her horn which refused stubbornly to light. With magic denied to her, Twilight redoubled her efforts to forge on through the stiffening morass, stretching every sinew and forcing every muscle beyond any maximum level of exertion she had ever known.
The four malevolent monsters in deceptively innocent pastel shades; one white, one orange, one yellow and one beige were now twisting Nyx's wings to grotesquely unnatural positions and pulling harder as they threatened to tear them off her body. Eventually, horrifying sounds of ripping wing cartilage mixed with her continued cries for her Mom, desperate for the nightmare to end. Twilight wept hot tears of anguish and screamed back that she was coming, but it was now becoming horrifically clear that she would not be able to save her daughter from the relentless savagery unfolding before her.
She physically could not struggle any harder and although she had got far enough through the binding constraint of the enveloping morass around her to see such horrors in disgusting clarity, the sensation of being encased in setting glue was stopping her breaking through the last few feet.
Satisfied with their gruesome work in having now broken both of the alicorn's wings, the pastel monsters set about amusing themselves by proceeding to systematically break each of her legs, the snapping and tearing sounds amplified in Twilights’ ears as she watched on, powerless. She screamed in her impotent rage and strained against her increasingly indelible bonds, as still her daughter's pitiful cries for help rang out unanswered over the relentless barbarism.
As if in response to the lilac alicorn’s anguish, the savagery of the torture increased as the now completely immobile Twilight could only watch in despair as her daughter's innocent light faded from whatever hellish reality she found herself in. As she felt her prison finally solidify around her exhausted form, she let out a scream of the most heartfelt anguish and then to her horror, the bloodied corpse of her daughter turned its head to look towards her Mom through sightless eyes as the last life ebbed away.
Twilight sobbed uncontrollably at her failure to protect her beloved daughter, and as she watched, the scene before her wound back to the beginning again. There was Nyx playing happily with Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo, Apple Bloom and Twist. Twilight cried out with her voice and also through the magic that Luna had given her to communicate with those who were in the dream state, but nothing seemed to catch the attention of the naive little Nyx, and she was forced to watch the entire horror play out before her once more. She felt physically sick and forced down her rising bile as she felt her heart break all over again.
She lost count of how many times the horrendous nightmare played out until suddenly the scene and her captivity both melted away. She was back on the ethereal plane once more. Everyponys' dreams were all around her and there was the comforting midnight blue form of Princess Luna. Twilight ran over, grateful beyond measure to be free of her nightmare to give Luna a nuzzle of relief and a hug of gratitude.
Luna did not respond. Twilight looked more closely and saw that Luna held something aloft in her magic. She stopped dead in her tracks; it was the Wand of Fulfilment.
Luna had bought her release with an evil magic that would eventually come to claim her soul.
Twilight stared aghast.
"Luna, what have you done?" she asked. Her tone was going to be a demand, but the blue alicorn’s frozen demeanour pointed to something being wrong, badly wrong.
Luna stared into nothingness, unblinking.
"It started growing in size and power" she said quietly "It must have been feeding off you. As custodian of the dream realm it was my responsibility to stop it. It did not respond to any of my magic, so I had no choice but to summon something that would vanquish it."
"No Luna, no!" cried Twilight "I am not more important than Equestria! You knew that! You should have left me!"
Luna shook her head sadly.
"This is my realm. It is mine to protect. I had no choice."
"But Luna, if you are lost to Equestria, then there will be no dream walker to protect ponies in their sleep!"
"Another will take my place. You forget what you wear, Twilight Sparkle."
Twilight felt the livery collar around her neck. It had suddenly become very heavy with the realisation that Luna could be grooming her to take on her duties.
"No Luna! No, no, no!"
"It is funny really" she continued "All the times I sought its power for selfish gain, it remained out of my reach, but when I needed it to protect others, it was there. I believe this is called irony."
"But it will claim you - the book said so!" cried Twilight.
"Yes, but not at the first use. I have time yet, but only if we can find a way of defeating this foe."
"You don't think it's coming back, do you?" gasped Twilight, shocked.
"Almost certainly, Twilight Sparkle, and we must be better prepared next time."
They exited the dream realm together and returned to the reality that was the Royal Castle in Canterlot. Once behind closed doors, Luna asked Twilight what had happened to her to make her give over her strength and her magic to the swirling entity. She sat impassive as Twilight explained in harrowing detail what she had experienced.
"I do not think it is coincidence that the imagery became more graphic the further you progressed; it wanted to incentivise you to struggle more so that it could extract as much as it could from you. No matter how hard you had pushed, it would have still held you. No, we will have to be cleverer, much cleverer in how we deal with it."
Twilight began to shake with the delayed shock of what she had been through. She couldn't help it, but she felt so weak and unworthy next to the calm and composed presence beside her. Luna sensed the emotional overload her friend had experienced and spread a wing over her, drawing her in close to her warmth. Twilight tried to resist, doing her best to maintain a controlled facade and managed to hold back her feelings for no more than a few short seconds before burying her muzzle into Luna’s midnight blue coat and starting to sob. A lump rose in her throat and although she did her best to hold it back, it broke and released a floodgate of raw emotion that she didn't think could be possible. Luna was ready for it and mothered her as the gentle strangled sobs turned into a deluge of full throated cries and Twilight clung to her like a scared filly to her mother.
***
The next morning, Nyx bounced happily into breakfast to give big hugs to her Mom and Spike, proudly announcing that her run of nightmares had stopped. Twilight returned her hug and playfully ruffled her mane in a display of maternal affection. The news of the nightmares was not unexpected and provided confirmation of what she had seen in the dream realm, but she was glad that Nyx had no recall of the other aspects of her dreams.
Once breakfast was finished, Twilight enquired what plans Nyx had for the day and took a sharp intake of breath when she heard her daughter say that she intended to play out with her friends. She rationalised that what she had seen in the dream realm was nothing but that - a dream, and there really wasn't anything to worry about. However, she resolved to swing by once or twice just to check that everything was alright; just in case.
Twilight found the promise she had made to herself increasingly difficult to keep as the answers to the problems facing Nyx in the dream realm did not lie in her own library but moreover in Luna's secret library in the Castle of the Two Sisters. At least the journey was not far and did not entail going all the way to Canterlot, but it was still absorbing a lot of her time; Princess Business as she informed Spike and Owlowiscious on an increasingly frequent basis.
She threw herself wholeheartedly into her research, but always now felt the need to keep an eye on the time so she could go back to check on Nyx; the nightmare had frightened her to the core. Back at the Golden Oak library, Spike was delighted that he hadn't had to reorganise the books for a whole fortnight now, a feat unparalleled in recorded history. He spent his time quite happily reading comics and paying lip service to everything else that Twilight had put on his agenda.
Progress was slow. There was so much new material for Twilight to absorb that she kept drilling down into minutiae that appeared to be of little more than academic interest, but keeping her librarian's insatiable instinct for cross-referencing satisfied.
If one feeling trumped her increasingly protective maternal instinct it was her growing awareness that as the Bearer of the Element of Magic, how little magic she had actually known. Access to Luna's library had allowed her knowledge to increase exponentially and she was trawling voraciously through the collected magical writings, taking her understanding to new heights that she had never foreseen. For once it was not her love of learning that motivated her, more the sense of urgency she felt to protect Nyx and Luna now she knew how much they were relying on her. If Luna's suspicions were right, then this thing, this dreadful being that fed on magic and nightmares would be back and she had to be ready.
She now knew the answer to Luna's question; whilst she did place Nyx above the safety of Equestria, she also placed Luna's safety above her own and knew she would allow herself to face eternal torment within this remorseless parasite rather than allow Luna to use the Wand again.
She got back to her work.