The door shuts quietly behind me, and I look around the room. Along one purple wall is a four-poster bed with thick covers, with an accompanying side table, next to the door a dresser full of empty drawers, and a few bare shelves. A single window lets in the pale light from outside. It’s well furnished, I think, not that I have much to compare it with.
I set the two things we were able to recover from the ruins of what they tell me was my old home on the shelf; a blue bowl with a crack down the side and a strange silver mask with a broken right eye and filigree like lightning. As I look about, I consider the scale of the chamber. It’s almost larger than the entire charred rubble by the pond, which was my house.
“So… this is home now?” The bed is inviting, especially because my chest still hurts, but my mind runs in circles. Instead I go to the window and look up at the pale circle of light in the sky. “The moon?” That’s right, that’s what it is. All those little pinpoints beside it? Ah, yes… “and the stars.” The window swings open, the latch enveloped by a neon-blue aura which takes me a moment to recognize as my own, and I extend one arm up towards the silvery circle in the sky, as if balancing it on my hoof. “Maybe you know who I am?” The moon has no answers, neither do the stars, but something inexplicable about them is comforting nonetheless.
“She said I could stay here for as long as I need…” She, the pretty purple one, Twilight Sparkle. I don’t know her or any of her multicolored friends. “Why are they helping me? What did I do to deserve this kindness?”
I don’t know.
I don’t know… anything.
Luna stands on the balcony of her chambers, looking out over the city of Canterlot. The decaying lavender throughout the palace has been replaced with fresh flowers, the candles lit, and every pony is asleep. The moon overhead is like an eye, her eye, looking down benevolently upon those below. The sky is quiet, a few scattered clouds drift by. The world is at its very best, it would be a lovely night to walk a moonlit field.
“Not tonight. Duty awaits.” Her eyes close, and she focuses her powers. Her body falls away, or rather, her spirit floats away into another world. The world of dreams. Not hers, not now, everypony else’s.
It’s a void, an endless expanse of darkness, lit only by the glow of millions of tiny drifting orbs. Each one a dream, the minds of the sleeping ponies who depend on her to keep them safe from the terrors of the unconscious realities. It takes her only a quick glance to see them all. Walks through parks alongside loved ones, dancing in the stars, singing atop stages before all the world. The hopes and wishes of the happy.
Not all are quite so peaceful. There are monsters that go bump in the night. Claws on windows, eyes in the dark, strangers in shadows. Ponies shake and shiver with fear as their minds turn down black roads.
“Not tonight, nightmares.” It doesn’t take much effort for her to fix them and restore peace. Claws on glass become trees swaying in the wind, eyes behind bushes become playing rabbits, shadowed figures become close friends with smiles on their faces. The shaking stops, the joy returns. “That’s better.”
She spends her evening walking along a rainbow road through the endless expanse of pinpricks of light, watching for those in need. A pony screams, a voice she knows and hoped not to hear tonight. Her experienced eyes track the shout through the fields of lights to the dreamer, Twilight Sparkle. The dream space parts to allow Luna to approach and view the vision up close.
This is no simple nightmare, no mere shadow in the gloom. This is personal for Twilight in ways that ordinary bad dreams are not. She battles at the bottom of a crater, facing a monster made of black ash and fire. Marks of the battle upon the Princess of friendship show it has not been easy, and the battlefield is littered by spell strikes and shattered steel.
“Fight on, Twilight! I know you can win this.” Her will grants the purple Alicorn strength, allowing her to stand tall against the monster. Or it should. Something interferes, and Sparkle is forced back against a large boulder glowing red with evil runes. Luna frowns, Twilight should be winning this fight easily with her aid. The monster advances, making to violate the helpless pony. Then Luna realizes her mistake. “Oh, no. This isn’t just a dream; it’s a memory!” She dives into the orb, entering Twilight’s mind directly, and suddenly she no longer has the benefit of objective distance to see what her friend fears so.
The monster wears the shape of a pony, body burned black like charcoal, smoke billows from its mane and tail like a great machine, and a bright burning triangular star blazes where its heart should be. Lightning dances across its face in an intricate pattern and its eyes boil volcanically. Atop its brow, a jagged metal spike protrudes in a hideous parody of a unicorn’s horn. In the split on its face where a mouth should be, open and hot like a pit into hell, it takes sick joy in the pain it inflicts on the much smaller Alicorn before it.
“Begone, beast!” Her blast of energy catches the monster square in the face before it can inflict the violation onto Twilight. The creature’s head explodes into a burst of ashes, and the body is flung away, crashing limply upon the bonfire at the center of the crater. “I will not let you harm her!” Luna lands beside Twilight, wings and spells at the ready. “Princess Sparkle, are you alright?” She glances down, the smaller pony is crumpled like a crushed origami swan, shuddering and frail, eyes shut as she tries to brace for the pain to come.
“No, don’t! Stay away!” Terror and despair blind her, giving the nightmare more strength. A voice laughs, a voice Twilight recognizes, although it is foreign to Luna. The dreamwalker shifts her attention back to the monster of ash, pulling itself upright in the flames. Its head renewed, and its power growing. The burning star at the heart of the monster flares and the core of the Alicorn Amulet glows with infernal fire.
It laughs again, whatever reason it once had draining away as it grows ever higher, the terror granted the power to face Luna by the fear it draws from Twilight. Larger and larger, until it dwarfs Luna and Twilight, until it overshadows the crater itself. Dark clouds above gather upon its back and harden to volcanic obsidian, opening like wings of black glass. It’s horn ringed by a black void in the sky she had not seen before she arrived.
Luna blinks, she’s seen red-ringed hole before.
The mountainous monster attacks, a wave of volcanic force and fury and molten rock pours from its jagged mouth. Luna shields them both against the blast, surprised at the power the nightmare can bring to bear against her. No nightmare short of the Tantabus has ever been a match for her, but the creature here is drawn not of dream imagery, but of violence and pain Twilight remembers. The broken ground shakes as the volcano steps closer. In that instant, Luna knows she can’t beat it alone.
“Twilight! Listen to me!” The force pressing down on her shield intensifies, nearly driving Luna to her knees. The broken Alicorn on the ground wraps herself tightly with her one functional wing, drowning in her own terror. “Stand, Twilight! I know you are stronger than this!” Twilight twitches, daring to open one eye to see why the monster hasn’t violated her.
“Luna? What are you doing here? Doesn’t the curse affect you?”
“This is a dream, not a memory! You’ve already faced this and won!” Twilight looks down at her side, at her cutie-mark, and her eyes go wide. She looks back up at the midnight blue Alicorn, and a golden spark flashes in her eyes. The force of the advancing volcanic monster eases as Twilight stands, whole and healthy. The Princess of friendship takes her place beside the Princess of the night and nods once.
Light flashes, not the blazing burst of fire from the monster, but golden and glorious. Between them and the monster, a mystic shield forms, heart-shaped, with broad spread wings of lightning. At the core of the golden shield blooms the six-pointed star on Twilight’s flank. Although Luna has never seen the image before, it gives her friend hope. With the flames held at bay, Luna can focus all her power again and become the goddess she is in the realm of dreams.
“Enough of this!” Her voice booms down at the monster beneath her. If the monster is a mountain, Luna is the sky, and one cannot compare with the other. Wings spread wide over the horizon, blowing away all the smoke and ash. It shrinks away, too small to fight back now. “You are nothing!” Luna’s hoof comes down on it like a meteor. Dust rises from the impact site, a crater within a crater. Luna blows a gentle wind to clear the air around them and let the sun shine down on the former battlefield.
“Is it really over?” Twilight looks up at her as she returns to a scale comprehensible to mortal minds.
“Yes, this was only a nightmare. You are in no danger anymore.” Luna surveys the remains of the monster at the side of the other Alicorn. “This is what you feared?” In the crater lies a defeated and dead stallion, fur like blacked charcoal, ashen of mane and tail. Burned across his face are marks in the same pattern of the monster’s lightning scars. On his chest, the Alicorn Amulet has been shattered, split in two by the impact of a unicorn’s horn right through the middle. “He doesn’t seem quite so threatening now, does he?”
“That monster… that wasn’t a dream. That really happened.” Twilight glances around the crater, looking for something in the dust.
“What?!” At first, Twilight doesn’t respond to Luna’s outburst, sifting some of the ash away. The purple Alicorn finds what she is looking for, a block of stone, and cradles it with her wing as she brings it over for Luna to see. Discord’s eyes stare up at her from the granite, begging for help.
“He stole Discord’s magic, killed him, and then…” She points up at the sky, where the black pit ringed by fire had been.
“All this really happened? It wasn’t just your terrified mind making things worse?” Luna shudders, a monster like that is not a terribly rare thing in nightmares, but in reality? That would be a whole new level of terror. Twilight glances around again, shading her eyes against the sunlight.
“Some of the details are a little different, but yes. We faced him together, but we weren’t enough.” Twilight’s eyes fall upon the body of the defeated pony.
“You had an ally?” Luna looks around, there is no sign of another pony here.
“I don’t want to be here anymore, please…” such pain in her voice. “Take us away.” Tears start to roll off the small Alicorn’s face from beneath shut eyes.
“As you wish.” To where should she bring them? Somewhere safe and comforting. She knows just the place. An instant later and they are standing together in a grotto she knows, not far from Canterlot. A small waterfall pours down into a clear pool, surrounded by willows and high cliffs. The moon overhead glows between two peaks. “You can relax here, there is no danger in this place.”
“Thank you.” Tears stain her arm as she cleans her face. “This is much nicer, thank you.” Twilight settles down by the water, clearly still troubled. Luna considers leaving her here, to rest and recover, alone. But the dark blur from her own dream and the outstretched hoof flash once again in her mind.
“What did he do to you?”
“In reality? He stole my magic, and…” She looks back at her flank. “I’ve had my cutie-mark taken before. When Tirek drained my magic, and then again when Starlight took it. But this was different…” The sky darkens as Twilight starts to crumple again. The echo of a vile laughter drifts in on the wind. “Those times were quick and painless, it wasn’t personal. He… he wanted me to hurt, to lose something special, and know there wasn’t anything I could do about it…” An ember red eye opens under the water’s surface, filling the pool. The reflection of a monster starts to walk towards them on the water, a jagged white arc splitting its obsidian face in a cruel smile.
“Twilight, you are safe now.” The purple Alicorn blinks, and everything is back to normal before the monster can make another move. “You don’t have to fear him, he can’t hurt you anymore.”
“Yes, you’re right, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.” Luna sits down beside her and sets one hoof on her friend’s arm. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“I know. But… I still feel responsible for what happened to him.” Somehow, Luna is sure the subject of the conversation has shifted. Exactly why Twilight would do so, she doesn’t have any clue.
“Your ally? I did not see any other pony at the battle.”
“You didn’t?” Twilight blinks, utterly confused. “But… he was there!”
“Who?”
“Sable S-” Luna finds herself standing on her balcony, alone, ejected from the dream. Twilight had awoken without warning, the shock sending the Princess of the night back into the real world. After a moment to gather herself, she dives back into the dream realm, searching for Twilight again. The star-field of dreams is devoid of the battle or of a purple Alicorn by the grotto. Luna sighs, at least Twilight’s night terror was banished.
“Rest well, my friend, if you can. I will be here if you need me.”