Nightmare

by Salty Alty

Chapter 8: Whispers In The Wind

We emerged from the abyss in a familiar, yet still incredibly foreign, forest. Chaotic energies permeated the air around us, toying with the weave of magic that lay just beneath the surface of reality, attempting to spread its vile corruption, to no avail. 

I heard Andromeda breathe out a sigh of relief, and the coiling mass of magic that had surrounded me before was retracted into... somewhere, gently depositing me onto the forest floor below as I shrunk. Without the mist I felt... I felt weak. Every ounce of power I had felt during the transformation was suddenly stripped away, leaving cold, hard reality to take its place. I didn't have a horn. I was nopony special. I was a Thestral, not an Alicorn.

But for those brief moments?

I may as well have been Celestia herself. I had felt the power of a thousand stars coursing through my veins, just begging to be unleashed. I wasn't bound to a frail body of flesh and bone, and had become as close to pure magic as somepony could become. The cosmos had been bound to my whim, eager to spring to my command. For those brief, fleeting moments... I had been a god.

The feeling alone had been addicting.

Setting thoughts of power aside, I observed my surroundings. Dark, gnarled trees twisted and twined their branches together to form a vast canopy of nearly pitch-black leaves. The forest was dead silent, and not even the birds dared to chirp in our presence. Beams of pale moonlight shone through the messy shroud of vegetation and down to the thick, unkempt grass, providing barely enough light to see. Flowers of all shapes and colors surrounded us, from bells and roses to lilies and hollies. I could only describe the grove we were in as the perfect retreat; an area of pure, unadulterated peace and quiet. 

"Where the hay are we?"

Forming herself from the mist, Andromeda's head looked around the small clearing we had appeared in. "The only place I knew we'd be safe. We are currently deep within the Everfree, near one of Luna and I's old havens. The only pony who would dare lay a hoof here is sitting on her throne, stuffing her face full of every sweet imaginable."

"Don't like Princess Celestia then, I take it?" I said, brushing some loose dirt off of my fur and checking my saddlebags. The vial still sat securely within, causing me to breathe out a sigh of relief.

Andromeda growled, the sound reminding me of metal being crushed. "She is a contemptible fool without vision, saved from a much needed lesson in humility by circumstance alone. Equestria has rotted in my absence, evidenced clearly by the insects who struck at us, and the sorry state of the Guard who attempted to prevent our escape. I would love nothing more than to show her the error of her ways... painfully."

I mulled her words over in my head, taking the time to examine my previous wounds, which had vanished during our transformation. "Speaking of the bugs, what the buck were those things?! They looked like a colt bucked a block of moldy swiss cheese!"

Her amused chuckle sent shivers rolling down my spine. "Not the most courteous description, but an apt one nonetheless. They are called Changelings, and they are one of the many cancerous growths upon Equestria that Luna and I sought to eliminate. They feed upon a pony's very emotions until they are naught but mindless drones, ready to be subsumed into the greater swarm. I thought we wiped out the last of the queens, but one must have slipped through the cracks."

By this point she had craned her "neck" around to look me in the eye. "Uh-huh... so they can just... what? Transform into ponies?"

She nodded. "Among other things. Their kind are masters of trickery and subterfuge."

I snorted at that, getting up and pacing. "So a species literally built on lying, that sounds great. Just my kind of bucking pony." 

I could swear she smiled at my snark. "Verily. Come now, I know this location well. If we are to seize power and smite those who have wronged you, we must act quickly. I know for a fact that at least one of my followings has survived the ages, and with luck we will not have to look far."

I felt her tug me towards the north side of the clearing, my legs jerking until I walked that way of my own volition. "Wait, you were serious about all that? I thought you were just saying that to pull my leg."

She looked at me as if I had just insulted her dead grandmother. "Why would you think that? My kind are bound by the deals we make, and failure to abide by those contracts results in a... less than pleasant fate."

I gave her a look out of the corner of my eye, studying her face. "Riiiight... So these 'followings' of yours, they're just cults, right?"

"Cult just sounds bad, dear."

"Gotcha... so they're cults. What exactly do they even do?"

She let out a wistful sigh. "They were Luna's idea originally, but I grew to love them as my own all the same. We took in the poor, the hungry, and the sick. Any who felt they weren't wanted in Celestia's 'perfect' society were welcome in our domain. Mostly, 'twas foals that we took under our wing. I can remember each and every one of them with perfect clarity. I know not what has become of them now, however. I shall not speak of them further."

And so we began our trek through the underbrush. The silence of the forest was almost deafening, and even with my superior hearing I couldn't hear anything but the crunch of dead leaves and twigs under my hoof. It was the sort of silence that made every hair on the back of your neck stand on end, as if you expected some monstrous horror to pop out at any moment. 

"Y'know, I really should be freaking out a lot more than I am."

I felt much warmer all of a sudden. "Mostly my doing, I will admit. You are of no use as a host if you are catatonic or mentally broken."

My face went deadpan. "Well that's just lovely. I assume you can do a whole lot more than that?"

"Correct."

We lapsed into somewhat of an awkward silence after that. It was a little spooky to know that she could just fiddle with my emotions like that, and I had the feeling I'd be a little bit more outspoken about this if I wasn't being forcefully calmed down by whatever magic she was using. 

So I just kept walking, doing my best not to think about the life I had just left behind, or the bug ponies that had just tried to kill me, or the weird spirit... wraith... thing that I'd apparently picked up like a flea. I just focused on following the invisible trail that lay ahead of me, dragging my hooves through the undergrowth and paying half-attention to my surroundings. 

It felt good to not think about any of that. 

Snap. Snap. Crack. 

I just kept plodding along, humming to myself, trying to stay focused on walking. Soon enough, Andromeda joined me, her own tune following my own. 

I yawned, breaking my song. "So. This place we're going to. What is it?"

"A small fortress, one used by my most devout worshippers in days long since gone. It is the fortress wherein Luna and I bound ourselves together; an act that is of increasing rarity among my kind. She was... likely the best host I have ever encountered."

I cracked my neck, now intrigued. "Sounds like you miss her."

"I long for her company, even after all the time that has passed."

"Think you'll bother trying to reconnect with her once this is all over?" I saw a broken stone road ahead of us, which lead further into the woods. from what I could tell. 

Andromeda went silent for a moment. "Perhaps. If I do, our reunification shall be engineered so that not even her sister, nor her ragtag group of commoners, could interfere."

She forced me to pick up the pace, and I was now sprinting at full speed down the path. Strangely, I didn't feel any strain from the act. It felt like I was sitting in a train cart. "Reasonable enough, I suppo—watch out for that tree!—suppose. So, what even are you? I've always assumed that Nightmare Moon happened because of Luna's jealousy and what-not, but you're tellin' a different story."

"A story for another time. We have arrived." And indeed we had, for far in the distance, there sat a small castle. Not too terribly extravagant or haughty for being a castle, but still a castle nonetheless.

"Nice lil' rinky dink place you've got there. I assume it's small for a reason?" I walked towards the stone structure with a pep in my step. Two castles in a month was a record, right? 

"One of Luna's many cunning ploys, and one that worked. All of our larger citadels were targeted during the Rebellion, while the smaller ones were able to remain hidden or were deemed irrelevant by the Solar Army. To help mitigate the lack of space on the surface, we personally terraformed many of these locations, carving out vast spaces from the earth. The largest of these underground cities was constructed near the town you know as 'Hollow Shades.'"

That caused me to stop in my tracks. "You mean to tell me... that there's a large city, buried beneath the earth, right next to my hometown?" 

"Indeed. Give me a moment, there are a few security measures we must bypass," she said, wrapping my whole body in the mist and transforming us into the large form of an alicorn as we approached the door. A large crystal sat in its center, lighting up as we grew closer to it. The center of the crystal emitted a bright light that shot towards us, scanning every inch of our body, before it glowed a bright green and disappeared from sight. Satisfied, Andromeda brought one of my hooves up and pushed the door open. 

"The hay was that?" I asked her as we strode into the halls of the abandoned fortress. The interior itself wasn't anything too shocking or grotesque, it was just... empty. Like a bunch of crooks had come in and taken everything that wasn't bolted down. There was no finery, no pictures, nothing. Not even a single piece of furniture. 

"Never mind that, this doesn't bode well. Only those with the proper artefacts should be able to enter these halls. Where has everything gone?"

We split apart into a cloud as she quickly dragged us to what appeared to be a war room. "By the stars! "Sweet Celestia!"

I don't think either of us expected what we saw.

There, on the back wall behind a throne, a guard had each of his hooves nailed to the wall, and many deep cuts marred his body. He had a bit in his mouth, and his eyes were missing. Foreign script was written around him in his blood, and the area around each individual rune was writhing with shadowy tentacles, but I was able to interpret their meaning through Andromeda's thoughts.

If spirits could heave, I think Andromeda would have.