The Night before the Ceremony
The Realm of Dreams looked peaceful that night. We walked amongst the thousands of dreams we art to protect every night. Though, that night shan’t be a routine one. That night, we were to meet somepony in the realm. One who had specifically asked us to meet them.
We wandered further, searching for a sign of his dreams. It wasn’t long that we found it. It sent out an aura, which made it seem like it didn’t belong there, yet wouldn’t have been more fitting anywhere else. We stepped into the speck and it sent us into a long hallway, which on both sides was covered in doors, mere inches from one another. Each door had an individual color and color pattern and over each one hung a brass sign with words etched into them. As we tried to read them, though, we found that they were written in a language we did not know.
We turned back to the door we were standing before and looked at the sign above. It read:
“Erinnerungen”
We tried to push it open, however we could not seem to move it open for even an inch. We put our whole body into it, but to no avail. That was, when we noticed a sign hanging from the door, reading
“please knock before entering”
Knowing the almost absurd rules of the Realm of Dreams, We did as the sign asked and, as we did so, the door slowly pushed open. Behind it lay an enormous Library, filled with shelves so high that they faded from view. The shelves were organized into sections, stretching out to both, our left and our right, as well as further back into the room. All three sections stretched further into their respective directions, than our eye could perceive and it seemed impossible for a room this large to be placed here, given the tight arrangement of the doors outside. Yet, again, this was the realm of dreams. This was a realm dominated by the thoughts and fantasies of ponies and not their rationality.
Directly behind the door, there was a small reading area, to which each of the shelves seemed to point. It was this reading area that held the most interesting thing of this night. It was a bipedal creature with no hair on most of his body, clad in clothes with a seemingly random pattern of colors printed onto them. He was currently bowed over a book as we entered.
“Ah, Luna, please come in!” Markus said, as we made our first step into the Library. It startled us a little and we found ourselves unable to move for a moment.
Markus chuckled slightly. “Is it really such an impressive sight?”
We regained our composure and paced towards the reading area. “Neigh, we were just a little startled that thou could sense us. Normally we aren’t noticed until we reveal ourselves.”
Markus smiled and shook his head. “Oh dear Luna, this may be your realm, but it’s my plane within it. Most Ponies don’t seem to realize it’s possible, but I’ve taken control over it and can now actively manipulate what happens. On that note, may I ask you to drop that accent of yours? There is no need for this when we’re in private.”
“I’m sorry, but I cannot do that, you know? This is the roy–“ We held a hoof before our mouth as we noticed what we were saying.
“What did you do? And how did you do that?” We asked, as we regained ourselves.
Markus chuckled yet again. “Oh please, Luna. You should know that the Realm of Dreams doesn’t depict the actual, but rather just intentions. Thus, as the one in control I can, while unable to change the meaning behind them, manipulate how your words are perceived.”
We sighed in defeat and gave a smile. “Well, I have to admit that I am impressed. Though, that likely is not why you’ve asked me here, so what did you want to talk about?”
Markus gave a smile and gestured us to a chair he just spawned. We sat down on it and he began to talk.
“As you know, I have been here for slightly more than a month, by now.”
We nodded.
“You also know, that during that time, I have shown my capabilities in combat multiple times.”
“Well, twice as far as I know.” We responded.
“Indeed. You see: that is incorrect.”
Our eyes widened shortly, but we managed to regain our calm rather quickly.
“I have actually been in combat four times by now, ignoring my hunting and the occasional Everfree-monstrosity. Two of which, you don’t know of, because they happened outside of your sphere of influence.”
“You have left Equestria during your time here? I didn’t know of that.” We stated, while taking a sip from a cup of tea, which Markus had spawned.
Markus chuckled and shook his head. “No, I haven’t been out of country yet… Well, technically I have, but that was during the Minotaur Incident when I aligned my run, so it doesn’t really count. No, I have been here in Equestria all – ALMOST all of the time.”
We looked at him and raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.
He proceeded to tell us about how he and Rainbow Dash both were involved not only in the rescue of Fluttershy, but also in a successful raid against a Gang of loan sharks. We sat quietly and listened closely as he told us what we didn’t know yet, amazed by his very apparent urge to serve and protect.
“As you can see, my princess, there is quite a bit going on without your knowledge and even though you have the royal guard, as well as your two special forces, that doesn’t seem to be enough.”
We tilted our head to the side and looked in wonder.
“You see: I have the strong suspicion that the royal guard, while mostly loyal, has some corrupt members, or even spies among them.”
We choked on the sip of tea we were just taking and started to cough frantically as he uttered those words. “That’s impossible!” We protested, “Our guards are loyal to the bone! They are thoroughly tested before even getting to the assessment!”
Markus shook his head and smiled to the ground. “Oh dear Luna, just because you don’t know about something doesn’t mean it’s impossible, but just that you don’t know. Unfortunately, going from my experience, most things that one does not know about tend to be Malevolent to one’s cause.”
We stroked our Muzzle with a hoof, aiding ourselves in thinking harder. We were certain that we could trust Markus, as he was the one who saved our life. However, the unpredictability he showcased during his time here had us worried about what he was playing at.
“But don’t worry, Luna: I have a plan to fix this.” He started pacing around the reading area, as he began talking. “Shining Armor and I are going to make everyone believe that we absolutely despise each other. With such an obvious weakness in the guard, one of us should soon be contacted by one of the cults beside the Bloodmoon and be given opportunities to sabotage the other in exchange for cooperation. By utilizing this, we may be able to find their Hideout and get rid of them very soon.”
We nodded in agreement. His plan sounded reasonable to us, yet there was something that bothered us.
“Are you sure, you are willing to sacrifice not only part of your social status, but also the trust of Celestia, Cadence and Twilight to accomplish this? And most importantly: It seems that your plan works better the less know of it, so why did you choose to let me in on this?”
“Well, we will need someone to supply us with information and since I can be sure of your trust, you are the first choice. Twilight also knows about this, as she helped me in convincing Shining Armor and she will be aiding us in any way she can, however since she doesn’t have as much of a political presence as you do, we still need you. Your ability to walk the Realm of Dreams is also a welcome asset.” He said, as he came to a stop beside his chair again and placed a hand on its backrest. “As for my social status: I think the safety of Equestria easily outweighs this sacrifice and as long as I am able to protect, I don’t really care either.”
We stood up from our chair and paced towards Markus, until we stood directly in front of him.
“Why is it that you go to such lengths to protect a country, which you only live in for a month?” We asked.
“I think I’ve told you already. I am a soldier and it is my dut-“ He wanted to repeat what he told me during the kidnapping, but I cut him off.
“I don’t think that your only reason is your purpose as a soldier. I have seen many soldier’s dreams by now and none had such a strong desire to serve and protect as you have, so what lies beyond this mask, Markus?” We said.
Markus turned around and sighed. He paced a little back and forth, before looking at us again.
“Very well. I will show you some of my memories, but please promise me that whatever I am going to show you, it is something only you and I may ever know about, okay?”
We nodded and Markus proceeded with swiping his arm. In doing so, the Library, we were in, vanished and was replaced by what seemed like an ordinary road, but made out of some black material and with a single, white, dashed line in the middle and two full lines on the sides. Along the sides of the road stood a set of white, triangular posts, which were placed in regular intervals on both sides. Around us there were hills and fields filled with grass and one could spy the occasional patch of forestry in the distance. On said road, there were carriages, which had four wheels and nopony seemed to pull them. We could see humans sitting inside them, though.
Another of those carriages passed us and time slowed down. This time, we got a good look of the inside of the carriage. It had two seats in the front and five in the back. In front of the front-left seat there was a large circle hanging from the front part of the cabin. The two frontal seats each had a human sitting inside. The one on the left, we had quickly determined to be Markus, though much younger, with longer hair and a less-developed mustache. The one on the right, we didn’t know, but it seemed to be female.
“Did you know that I had a sister, Luna?” Markus asked. We were so concentrated in examining our surroundings that we nearly jumped when he said that.
“No, I didn’t know that… Is this your sister?” We gestured toward the female in the carriage and Markus nodded.
“A very intelligent girl, very eager and diligent.” He said, as time began moving again and the carriage pulled us along.
“You as a younger sibling might not fully understand this, but being the older sibling comes with some sort of an urge… an urge to protect your younger siblings, no matter the cost. The reason Celestia banished you to the moon wasn’t that she wanted to punish you, but that she wanted to protect you from yourself.”
Our thoughts wandered off to said day. The rebellion, the banishment, the ever-apparent hatred towards my sister. Yet, to this day, we don’t know why we hated her so much. Was it because of us becoming Nighmare Moon? Was it the black magic that transformed us?
We were pulled out of our thoughts by a giant, white carriage suddenly appearing around a corner to the left. It entered the road and made a large turning motion to the right, crossing the dashed line in the middle by a good bit. Markus’s carriage meanwhile was heading straight for that giant.
“We went to visit our grand-parents that day.” Markus started to speak again. “We were on our way home, when some fuckwit in a Truck…“ He motioned towards that giant carriage in the middle of the road, “ignored all rules of caution and entered the road without looking for traffic.”
Red lights began to glow on Markus’s carriage and it began to sway, causing it to now slide sideways towards the >>Truck<<, as Markus called it.
“I tried to evade, or at least make it so only I get hurt, but fate had other plans.”
The rear of the carriage hit the Truck, causing it to bend. Markus stayed unharmed, however, the bend caused the other side, his sister’s side, to slowly be squashed.
We had to turn around, as Markus’s memory clearly depicted the slow and suffering death of his sister. We could hear the metal bending and her bones and flesh be slowly torn, squashed and broken.
As the carriage stopped sliding, a door on Markus’s side opened and he fell out. He was mostly unharmed, safe for a few scratches and bruises.
We slowly dared ourselves to look to where his sister was, but in hindsight, we better had not. What once was a young human female, was now reduced to a red mush of rags, blood and gore. We had to fight the urge to vomit and quickly turned ourselves back to Markus.
Both, the real Markus and the one from the Memory were looking towards his sister. Both had tears in their eyes, but only the real one kept a straight face. The other one just sat there, eyes wide and unblinking, arms limb and mouth agape.
“I tried what I could to save her, but in the end only managed to kill her. Needless to say, it pushed me close to insanity.”
The countryside faded and we were now in a house. We were looking at the entrance door and had a small stairwell to our right.
“My father left us when I was only eight years old, so when my grand-parents died only four months after my sister, my mother and I were the only ones left.”
The door opened and Markus stepped inside.
“Though even that wouldn’t last long.”
“Mama, ich bin zu Hause!” (mom, I’m home!)
The Markus from the memory was clad in a thick coat now and held two large bags in his hands. He put the bags down and removed the coat, before he began to ascend the stairs.
“It was a week after my nineteenth birthday. My mother had an accident at work, which had her lose her ability to walk. Though, treatment worked and soon she was slowly learning to walk again.”
We followed the memory upstairs and were now standing in a very tight corridor with four doors. Markus explained, that directly in front of us was his mother’s room and to the right of it was his sister’s room. To our right, there was Markus’s room and directly to our left was the bathroom.
“Mama?” (mom?) Markus’s memory asked as it entered the bathroom and we followed after it.
We could hear water running and, as we entered, saw a chubby, naked female human bent over the edge of what looked like a bathtub. We went closer to it and recoiled, as we saw, that her neck was bent at an odd angle. Her mouth and eyes were wide open and her head from her nose upwards was dangling under water.
We heard a thud behind us and turned around. There, in the doorway, was Markus’s memory, down on all fours and tears streaming off his face. He wasn’t crying yet, but his fast and heavy breaths signaled that he was only barely holding on.
“Apparently my mother took a bath and got too eager due to her recent successes in her treatment. She tried to walk without her walking aid, slipped on the wet tiles, causing her to fall backwards, and hit the edge of the bathtub. Her neck broke upon impact.”
We watched on, as the memory slowly descended further and further into insanity. That was, when a beam of yellow light shone through the keyhole of Markus’s room’s door and directly into the memory’s eyes. He was startled for a moment and got up. He started walking towards the door. We entered Markus’s room together with the memory and, upon entry, saw a large, golden book with a human on a cross stamped into its cover, directly opposite of the door. The sunlight reflected of the metal cover directly toward the door.
The memory slowly walked towards it and began to read in it.
“That’s the bible.” Markus said beside us. “The holy tome of our religion. This may seem a little… stereotypical or even far-fetched, seen from a sane standpoint, but… I lost my whole family within just half a year, so it shouldn’t be hard to believe, when I say…” He turned his head towards us and looked us directly into the eyes, “at that point, I was beyond insanity.”
The memory closed the book and leaned himself against a wall. He sat down, crossed his legs and put his hands to his feet while keeping his back steady. He closed his eyes and stayed like this, completely unmoving.
“I started to meditate over what had happened. I tried to come to terms with myself and to see reason in what I assumed was god’s doing. You see: our religion says that god has a plan and it’s best to follow it. I thought harder and harder and finally reached a conclusion: If anyone knew, what loss truly meant, it was me. God had created one, who knew the hardships of true loss, yet was strong enough to stay reasonably sane. I concluded that god himself has chosen me, to become the one to prevent loss. I shall become one, to protect and save. Originally I wanted to become a doctor. I already had begun to fill my head with medical knowledge, but seeing as doctors only save, but can’t protect, I figured that that wasn’t enough anymore. Thus, the only option that came to mind was the Army.”
A series of short memories flashed by. One, where Markus sat before two other humans, apparently having an interview, one where a dozen or so of other humans in uniform were doing a parkour, one where he sat in a library, studying tomes, of which the titles we could not read and finally one, where Markus stood at a ceremony with a few other humans, in what seemed like a ceremonial uniform, and was officially taken into the Army.
“I got into the Luftwaffe and was proud to aid our allies, by supporting and protecting them from the skies. Then, the medical exam came and I was brought to the ground forces and became commander of a company of mechanized infantry. That was, when I finally learned, what war was actually like.”
A new memory materialized around us and we immediately had to close our eyes. Around us, there were bodies, some scorched, some dismembered, some completely blown apart. We could hear some whizzing sound around us and, as we slowly opened our eyes, we saw another memory-Markus, lying down behind a rock and shouting into a strange device that was attached to his shoulder via a chord.
“It wasn’t the bodies or the constant danger of being killed that made me wake, no, I was prepared for those two. What I wasn’t prepared for, however, were the other officers. Our mission was to keep the local population safe, to eradicate the terrorist militia that had nested down in this area and was now keeping a few hostages. I saw many opportunities to make a dash for it and save them, however, every time I got called back and ordered to stay in place. My superiors and most other officers weren’t really interested in our mission. They wanted attention, they wanted medals and they wanted their pay and pension. They did everything to stand out. They even held little competitions over who would kill more terrorists or who destroyed more of their hideouts and soon, our original goal of saving the hostages and keeping the people save became nothing more than a tertiary objective.
The only ones who ever really shared my perspective, were my second in command and my two lieutenants. We regularly sat down together and made plans to propose to high command, which would essentially end this whole affair in one fell swoop. However, none of them were ever approved. Then, finally, one day we went out on yet another mission to save hostages from a small town. This time, it was a joint operation between our forces and the British forces. The British commander was a lieutenant colonel and therefore my superior.
Yet, when I saw an opening, I rallied my men and asked for permission to go in. Unfortunately, I was ordered to >>stand down<<. I decided to ignore said order and led my troops deep into the town, directly to their headquarters.”
As he told this story, a memory came into view, which showed him boarding a beast of metal, which gave off a loud, roaring sound. As soon as we were inside, the sound was muffled and we could hear it begin to move. Markus’s Memory was giving orders through that apparatus on his shoulder and after a while, we stopped in front of a large building. As soon as the doors opened, the soldiers stormed out and took cover. Every soldier had the same uniform, Markus had when he saved us, only in another color pattern, as well as the same weapon in different variations. Combat began and the metal beasts we were riding in started to spout flames and thunder and every time they did so, one could hear an explosion somewhere in front of us.
We followed the memory, as he and the other soldiers stormed the building, whose inhabitants were visibly surprised, as they offered little resistance. We came to a room, where many humans were tied down and the soldiers took those with us. We then boarded the beasts again and went back.
“We got in, rescued them and got out, before anyone noticed. The mission was a resounding success and as a reward, I got a medal, the British soldiers started calling me >>Excalibur<<, and… I was court-martialed for insubordination. Luckily, with the help of the testimony of my second-in-command, I was able to convince the judge, that I simply just mistook the order to >>stand down<< for an >>into town<<.
Yet, while after another month or so, >>Excalibur<< became my official, permanent Callsign with the NATO-forces, something that only ONE other had been given – someone of the navy, called the Leviathan of the Baltic sea, Callsign Leviathan -, almost all the missions NATO gave me, were recon or support roles. I was very dissatisfied with the way the Army went about my exploits and as such, when I got here, I felt relief. A world, which is not dominated by egocentrism and corruption. A world, in which I could actually do what I wanted to do and protect, serve and save those I care about.”
He looked over to us, with dried tears now covering his cheeks. We felt our own eyes slowly begin to water and – without thinking – we… we got up to our hind legs and… embraced him in a deep hug. He hesitated at first, but soon returned it.
“I know now, how you feel, Markus.” We said, “I will help you with your plan and I… - Thank you, for saving me.”
Markus suddenly started to stroke our mane, which startled us slightly.
“To serve and protect, my princess.” He said, as he smiled at us.
“I hope you are prepared for tomorrow, Markus. I’m looking forward to the ceremony.” We said, as we broke the hug and made our way out of the dream.
“Not as much as I do.” Came the reply. We chuckled and left the dream.
We re-emerged into the realm of the living in the early morning hours. Celestia just entered the throne room as we came back and we let her take our place, as we went straight into bed.