//------------------------------//
// cH.3 BeYoNd ThE UnFaThOmAbLe VaLe (Bad Dogs Should Fade) 
// Story: The Moon Presence at Twilight 
// by Arcanum -Phantasy 
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Twilight sighed as she sat in her office at the School of Friendship. In the past twenty-four hours her life had taken a turn for the absolute worst. As to be expected, the stress of the situation she found herself in greatly effected how she prepared for the day, leaving her primly pressed white dress-shirt wrinkled and her navy dress skirt and blazer haphazardly clinging to her frame with little care as she entered the school. She hadn't even bothered to brush her mane or wear a tie like she usually did.  Not only did she release some ancient cosmic entity upon the world, but she was his wife to boot! 
What am I going to do? she thought with a groan as she rested her head on her desk. If what he said is true, I'm stuck with him until one of us dies! And if my hunch is correct, that isn't going to be anytime soon for either of us! Of course, that only holds true if he's telling the truth. 
Raising her head, she cast a quick glance around the finely decorated room before locking the door. With a sigh, she reached into a hidden compartment in her desk. When her hand came out it was with a silver hip flask gripped loosely in it. With a dejected sigh, she uncapped the flask and took a long gulp of the strong cider within. She didn't usually resort to drinking to deal with her problems, but given her circumstances, nopony could blame her for her choice to indulge.
I wonder how many swigs it would take for me to forget my problems, she thought idly as she stared at the drink in her hand. No sooner had the thought passed her mind did the world seem to change. Suddenly, she wasn't in her office anymore. Instead, she was in a room made of crystal, rays of unnamed colors cascading around her in an alien aurora. With a literal blink, she then found herself in a forest full of bone-white trees that looked like they were made of cloth with hand-shaped leaves made of butterflies. But before she could see anything else, she blinked and found herself back in the confines of her office. After a few cautious blinks in which nothing happened, she stared at the flask still held in her hand. with wide eyes, she capped it, placed it on her desk, and slowly pushed it away from herself.
I need new vices, she thought, unlocking the door and bracing herself for what was looking to be a very taxing day for her.



***



A tense silence filled the room, its two inhabitants locked in two different emotional states.
"Let me get this strait," Pinkie sighed as she looked over the contract in Nyarlethotep's Necronomicon. "You tricked Twilight into reading a marriage contract with you, and thought it would be a good idea to appear as a lake of blood then turned into a mass of liquid darkness to impress her?"
"I don't know about tricked," he said, brow raised. "She wouldn't've seen the contract if she wasn't in love with me in some form. And yes, I did all of that. I read somewhere that if you are going to impress the one you love, you need to make a good and lasting first impression. I highly doubt anyone could've made as much of an impact as I did last night."
Pinkie deadpanned, then pinched the bridge of her muzzle.
"Well, you got one thing right; you made a lasting impression. Good? Not so much."
"Huh?" 
"For starters," she glowered. "Most mortals don't like the sight of blood. Like, at all. Second, anything that even looks like dark magic is a taboo here, so your shadow form was a huge step back with a rule freak like Twilight. Finally, YOU DON'T JUST DUMP A WEDDING CONTRACT ON A DEMIMORTAL YOU HAVN'T EVEN TALKED TO!!!"
The last point she made shook the castle, but merely earned an annoyed glare from the target of her ire.
"Noted. Noted. And as I said, Droom, if she didn't have feelings for me the contract wouldn't've been visible to her. Oblivion, the damn thing wasn't even written in her native language until she came across it!"
With a groan, Pinkie had to admit he had a point. Even with her eyes forced to view the world in the third dimension she could read the page with perfect clarity. With another sigh, she swiped her hand across the paper and the words changed. They were still in Equish, but instead of showing the incantation that freed and bounded the Outer God to her friend, it showed a list of changes set between the two of them. As she skimmed through the list, a relieved smile started to creep across her muzzle.
"Looks like you at least made the transition easy for her," she smirked, giving him half-lidded eyes.
"O-Of course," he stammered, a light blush coloring his muzzle. "I'm not a total idiot, you know. It takes a very powerful mind to handle the infinite void of the cosmos and its only natural that I would provide some training wheels for her."
"Uh-huh," Pinkie smirked. "Whatever you say lover boy."
He leveled an annoyed glare at her before he turned his head away in a pout. 
"Anyway," he coughed. "Do you have any advice on how I can fix this? I don't fancy my wife fearing me for all time."
"Not much to do at this point," she shrugged. "As far as I can tell, this ship's sunk. You could try doing some things with her that she likes, but even that's a gamble."
With a grimace, Nyarlethotep mulled over his options. He was no stranger to patients, being a timeless entity made that a prerequisite with most things. But just being in the same room with Twilight made him antsy. He wanted to hold her, to make her laugh and smile. Not tremble in fear at the very sight of him. Eager to make things right, he thought about what he knew about the mare to try and fix this.
It was at that moment that the two cosmic gods felt a faint ripple in space, the location of which filled one of them with dread. 
"Dro- Pinkie, has Twilight done anything involving time travel recently?"
"Yep. About a year ago. Why?"
"FUCK!!!" he roared before disappearing in a shimmer of distortion.
After a moment Pinkie came to the same realization that he did and disappeared as well, a certain light purple Unicorn and Dragon in mind.



***



Twilight was not having a good day. Whatever it was that somepony put in her flask either hadn't worn off or recent events had finally destroyed what little sanity she had left after her many years of life or death struggles. Off and on, the world would appear to change at random points each time she blinked. Some of the things she saw weren't that bad. She especially enjoyed the land of endless bookshelves and the giant void of infinite colors was beautiful. But for each pleasant thing she saw, at least five terrifying worlds would flash before her eyes. Cities made of moving flesh, towers of fire, and black pits full of melted skeletons greeted her with such frequency that she was afraid to open her eyes.The land of candy she saw at one point wasn't too bad at first, but then a pack of candy ponies began eating each other while singing the Nightmare Night song and she decided that opening her eyes was a really bad idea. At one point, she considered gouging them out, but killed that train of thought just as fast as it took shape. Instead, she sat at her desk with her hands pressed hard over her eyes, refusing to open them unless it was absolutely necessary. 
"It's okay Twilight," she muttered to herself, a slight tremble coloring her tone. "Their just hallucinations. Their not real!"
She repeated this for what felt like hours, until her nerves started to settle. Eventually, she was able to pull herself together and with more than a little courage, brought her hands away from her eyes. When she opened them, she was relieved to be greeted by her normal boring office. With a sigh of relief, she leaned back in her chair, more than willing to enjoy the normalcy around her for however long it lasted.
Then she noticed the smoke.
"What now?" she groaned as a small plume of smoke leaked out of the corners of her office.
Seconds later, drops of blue slime started to fallow the smoke, covering the floor with thick azure sludge. What came next made Twilight scream. Long, alligator-like jaws attached to round eyeless heads covered with dense moss green scales slithered out of the corners of the room with muscular serpentine bodies. Each creature had a pair of long bony arms that ended in a set of sharp three-fingered claws. All eight monsters faced the scared Alicorn, blue slime dripping from their blade-lined maws.
Just as one of the monsters lunged at her, Twilight put up a barrier to intercept it. Her heart sank as she watched it shatter under the creature's assault. Another set of jaws closed in on her only to catch thin air as she teleported away, only managing to get to the center of the room due to a lack of focus. They slithered around the only door out of the room, both challenging her to take the chance and make it easer for them to catch her. She tried to teleport again only for one of the monsters to spit a glob of blue slime at her horn. The second the slime made contact, she lost all access to her magic. Now truly cornered, Twilight watched as the eight monsters slowly closed in on her. As their dripping jaws moved closer to her, visions of those she cared about flashed before her eyes; her friends, her family, everypony. She was never going to see them again. This was the end. She was going to die.
Suddenly, a faint ripple passed through the room. It was subtle at first, like a faint breeze drifting through a cave. But then it turned into a wild hurricane of distortions, the walls and ceiling seeming to bend and twist as eldritch magic surged through them. Then, with a roar of pure power, Nyarlethotep shimmered into existence, his normally playful smile replaced by a glare of contemptuous rage. 
"Worthless hounds," he snarled. "You dare bare your fangs at my wife?"
As he said that he slowly raised a hand, a ring of shimmering magic gathered around it like planets around a sun.
"Die."
With that, the magic pulsed though the room. The monsters let out a pained shriek before they all popped like grotesque leathery balloons. With a wave of his hand, the monster's bodies and the blue slime they left behind vanished, returning the room to its previous state of order. 
"That takes care of that," he sighed, tuning to face Twilight. "Are you okay?"
"I-I-I think so," she stammered, still shaking. "What were those things?"
"Hounds of Tindalos," he spat. "Monsters that live in the angles of time and space. They normally stay hidden in the void between time, but if someone interferes with the natural flow of time, they come to kill them. It's because of them that time magic is so dangerous."
Twilight's face shifted from intrigue to terror as Nyarlethotep's words brought new fears to the front of her mind.
"Spike! Starlight! We need to-"
"Don't worry, someone is already taking steps to protect them," he said, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder. "In fact," he smirked. "I feel kind of sorry for the Hounds that cross her path."
She let out a sigh of relief before she turned and walked back to her desk.
"Why is this happening to me?" she whined, tears starting to creep down her face. "The whole day I've been seeing things. Horrible things," she whimpered as she fell back into her chair. "And then a pack of monsters come to kill me for something that happened a year ago. I want to go back to how things were. I want to go back!"
Nyarlethotep cringed as he watched her weep, not entirely sure what he was supposed to do. Desperate, he thought back to what Pinkie and he talked about earlier.
I need to do something to help her relax, but HOW?!
He ran through what he knew about the mare. More specifically, he ran through what he knew she liked. He knew books weren't going to do any good right now. It wasn't as if he could get her to calm down by shoving an encyclopedia into her face. Magic wasn't going to do any good either since she was scared of his. As he struggled to come up with something, his eyes were drawn to a framed picture of the night sky on the wall to his left. 
That's it!
"Twilight," he smirked. "Have you ever seen the Andromeda Galaxy?"
"Huh?" she sniffled, turning to face him. "What's that?"
Still smiling, he channeled a small portion of his magic and said, "Let me show you."
With that, he waved his hand through the air. The room was instantly filled with magic and turned pitch black. The only exception was the ceiling. When Twilight looked up, her mouth went slack and eyes turned wide with wonder. Stars, millions of stars and clouds of cosmic dust filled the room with a variable explosion of color that not even the most extreme of firework displays could match.
"Do you like it?" he asked, a soft smile gracing his muzzle. "You could see more if you wanted."
That comment pulled her gaze away from the cosmic work of art to him, fear replaced with shock.
"You said you saw things today. That's not too surprising considering the nature of our contract. As my bride, you have gained a few new abilities. One of these are the power to see beyond the mortal vale. You now can see things that most mortals can't. Distant lands, other worlds, different realities, all of it are free for you to view."
"No way," she gaped, a small smile spreading across her muzzle. "I have that kind of power?"
"And many others," he chuckled. "Once you've learned to control them at least. For now though, let's focus on learning to turn your Sight on and off."
"Y-Yes," she cringed, a shiver running down her spine as less then pleasant memories from the past couple hours ran through her mind. "Let's focus on that."