//------------------------------// // 10/31/1000 // Story: The Unofficial Records of a Mare in Black // by the7Saviors //------------------------------// Tomorrow night marks the start of a major joint operation between the POUT and SMILE agencies as well as a covert team from the Guard. By the Princess' own decree we're supposed to cooperate to take down a Nightmare Cult whose leader managed to get ahold of something he calls the Left Eye of the Nightmare. I've been selected to join in the operation and as such, was given the full rundown of what we know about Nightmare's Left Eye so far. Apparently it's a jewel that resembles an icy blue iris, complete with a slit pupil in the center, much like how Nightmare Moon's eyes were said to look. We questioned a couple of the cultists we'd captured after their last attempted gathering—an incident the media has dubbed the 'Everfree Blunder'. They had quite a few things to say about their Glorious Mistress' return but didn't get much on the Left Eye other than that they've had it in their possession for some time and that they were finally ready to use it. Well, we also learned that it was supposed to make way for Nightmare Moon's return by tearing open an honest to Goddess gate to Tartarus so I guess we did get a decent amount of info. We asked if there was a Right Eye, but none of the cultists said one way or the other. Incidentally, I had to interrogate one of those cultists, a madmare that wasn't interested in making things easy for a rookie. The psycho just laughed at all my questions. As it was my first time interrogating anypony, my anxiety was through the roof—mostly due to the possibility that I'd have to pick her brain if you catch my meaning. To my own credit, I was able to hide it pretty well, but my stomach was twisting up in knots throughout the entire session. In the end, I did have to apply some mental pressure to the mare but thankfully my partner and another agent were there to oversee the questioning and they stepped in before I was forced to do too much damage. It was clear we weren't getting anything else out of the cultist and my partner realized that early on. I still wound up throwing up my entire lunch and dinner later that night. Yeah, I'm not cut out for that kind of thing as it happens. Seriously, if there are any more Nightmare Cultists to be interrogated, count me out—or so I'd like to say, but if they make me do that again I can't really refuse. It sucks, but it's my job, what I signed up to do. My partner and some of the other agents I work with swear up and down that it'll get easier and I don't doubt that, but right now I still feel a bit overwhelmed by a lot of what I have to do. Okay, so I still feel really overwhelmed by a lot of what I have to do. I mean, Nightmare Cultists? Artifacts that could potentially tear open a gate to Tartarus??? That's the last thing I expected to have to deal with, but there it is. Just goes to show how insane and naive I was to take up this kind of work so readily. Oddly enough though, after thinking about it for a good long while, I've decided that I don't regret taking up the boss' offer after all. I can't explain why just yet, but when I really dig deep down inside, those were my true feelings on the matter. Anyway, the Nightmare Cultists. I'd actually heard about the Nightmare Cults back before I joined POUT. I overheard a few students who were into the occult talking about them back in school. Since it was just in passing, I didn't really know much, but apparently there are these nutjobs who go around calling themselves the 'Children of the Night' and have been trying—and failing—for hundreds of years to resurrect their 'Dark Goddess', Nightmare Moon. In reality, they're just psychos in dark cloaks who use illusion magic to make themselves look like the 'Children of the Night' of old. In reality, nopony's seen the real deal in something like 200 years. So here's a little history lesson for the uninitiated. And yes, I know I'm writing this with absolutely no intent to show it to anypony, but it helps if I write as though I am. It's like the journal is a therapist and I'm the patient talking about my problems or something like that. Don't judge me. Anyway, Nightmare Moon is supposedly one of Equestria's greatest villains of all time. She was the very antithesis of our current Princess—the literal shadowy night to her brilliantly shining day. She was an alicorn who, in ages past, attempted to overthrow Princess Celestia and plunge the world into eternal night, or so the stories go. This year actually marks the one-thousandth year since she was slain by the Princess. It's said that the battle between Princess Celestia and Nightmare Moon was such an earth-shatteringly historical event that we started our calendar over and started using 'Anno Tenebrae' and 'Anno Solis' to label the years before and after Nightmare Moon. There's a bit more to it than that though. We refer to the time before Nightmare Moon's death as the Dark Era, not just because of Nightmare Moon herself, but because Equestria was... well, let's just say that in general, our now relatively peaceful country wasn't always quite so peaceful back then. After Nightmare Moon's fall though, things got a lot quieter for Equestria, thanks in large part to the Princess' efforts. It was in thanks for all Celestia had done for Equestria back then that we refer to the current era as the Age of the Sun. And I just realized this history lesson has gone on a bit longer than I meant it to but I'm on a roll so I'm gonna keep going. There were some ponies who wound up falling under Nightmare Moon's sway. They became her loyal pawns during the war preceding the final battle between the evil alicorn and the Solar Princess. The way the history books tell it, Nightmare Moon used her twisted dark magic to transform her follower's into actual 'Children of the Night', or 'thestrals' to use a more modern term. When Nightmare Moon fell, her followers scattered, but it wasn't long before they came crawling back out into the open vowing vengeance against the Solar Tyrant. Well, that and to bring their beloved Nightmare back to life. That is how the Nightmare Cults were born, and for the last several hundred years, it's been their mission to bring down Celestia and resurrect Nightmare Moon. The Princess and her Solar Knights of the past and Royal Guard of the present have always managed to take them down (with a bit of help from us from time to time), but like clockwork, a new Nightmare Cult pops back up again eventually and the process starts all over again. They're like weeds and for some reason, the Princess has never been able to find and tear out the roots. That's a big part of why she created agencies like POUT and SMILE according to some rumors circulating within a few of the agencies. We're the bloodhounds that are meant to sniff out the source of these neverending Nightmare Cults. Here's another interesting tidbit. Shortly after Nightmare Moon's death, Star Swirl the Bearded transcribed a prophecy foretelling her resurrection and her intent to drag herself back from the deepest pits of Tartarus to seek her revenge on Celestia and the rest of Equestria. According to the prophecy, Nightmare Moon is supposed to return right as the Summer Solstice hits on the thousandth year following her death at the hooves of Celestia—a prophecy that was obviously a load of horseapples because the Summer Solstice has long since come and gone this year. And then there's the Everfree Blunder. A bunch of Nightmare Cultists attempted to gather at the Old Castle deep in the Everfree Forest to await Nightmare Moon's return because that's where it was supposed to happen. I say 'attempted' because the idiots just waltzed right into the Everfree at night without considering how dangerous the place is. Well, it would be more accurate to say they underestimated the forest. Based on the reports, several members were mauled and/or eaten by the timberwolves and manticores whose nests they disturbed in their mindless fervor. The rest of them barely managed to make it out alive only to be met by the contingent of Royal Guards waiting just outside the forest. The story hit the papers and went public a couple of days later and the Nightmare Cults essentially became a laughingstock overnight. I didn't really pay attention to the news back then so I wasn't aware, but now that I've looked into it I have to say, they deserved every bit of misfortune they got. Not because they were cultists, but because they were dumb enough to think they could trek through a deadly forest like it was their own backyard. Now that I'm jotting all this down though, I have to admit that there are a couple of things that are bugging me. So in this operation I was recruited to be an observer—somepony who's not part of the actual operation itself, but is sent with the operatives to observe, document, and report the results of the operation should the worst come to pass and nopony else makes it out. Since the whole point of me being there is to make sure somepony 'lives to tell the tale' as it were, I won't be in the thick of it, thank Celestia. That's said, it's still a rather depressing job to have been saddled with. I was present for the initial briefing of the mission, and it was during that briefing that the boss revealed that the Nightmare Cult—which had rebuilt itself again after the Everfree Blunder—was attempting to gather and enact their resurrection ritual in the Old Castle. Again. I'd like to say they don't learn, but the boss informed us that they came prepared this time. We know that, we know when they're going to gather, and we know that they're looking for something in the Old Castle. Unfortunately, that's all we know for the moment. Some of us suspect they're trying to find the Right Eye. Some suspect that they already have it and that there's some kind of apparatus hidden beneath the Old Castle that will activate once they use both jewels. Others suspect there is no Right Eye and that the Left Eye is a red herring meant to distract us from their real objective. One thing we all agree on is that we don't have enough information and that's part of a slightly larger list of things that are bugging me. For one thing, I'm worried about the disturbances in the thaumic field. I mentioned something about a weird shift in the thaumic field around Rainbow Falls in my last entry, but that wasn't the first or the last time the thaumic field had acted strangely, nor was it isolated to just Rainbow Falls. Believe it or not, it was Sunset Shimmer that first noticed the odd thaumic phenomenon near Ponyville. Evidently, she'd gone out to the podunk village at the behest of the Princess to scout the place as a potential candidate for the annual Summer Solstice Festival. While she was there she felt some odd changes in the thaumic field in certain areas, particularly near the Everfree Forest. When she returned to the Castle and told the Princess, the Princess somehow found the time to do some investigating of her own. She was the one who discovered that, while the thaumic disturbances were the strongest near the forest, they were happening all over Equestria, and there was no real rhyme or reason to it either. The disturbances in the field would more often than not settle just as quickly as they started. As far as we know, the thaumic shifts haven't had any adverse effects on anything. Still, the Princess warned all citizens to avoid these thaumic shifts at any and all costs as we didn't—and still don't—know much about them. Unofficially though, she had a few agencies, including POUT and a few of the brainier members of RIDES (the Royal Interdimensional Expedition Squads), look into the matter privately and report any additional abnormalities to her. She does a good job of hiding her worry, but I've had a few more chances to talk with Sunset and I got her to open up a bit about Princess Celestia. From what she tells me, the Princess has been on edge ever since she was told about the thaumic anomalies—anomalies, mind you, that are still being reported even now. Then she revealed that the Princess had just up and vanished the night before the Solstice. The Festival had been rescheduled due to the Everfree Blunder, but the Princess still appeared after all was said and done to raise the sun. If what Sunset says is true though, Princess Celestia had been gone for most of the night during the situation in the Everfree Forest and hadn't told her student where she'd been before she showed up at the Festival. When she asked about it, the Princess told her she'd just been out for an evening stroll. It goes without saying that neither of us believes that for a moment. But it's not like there's anything I can do. I can't confront the Princess about it, and I don't know if telling the boss or even my partner is a good idea so I feel kind of stuck in the middle. The thaumic anomalies. The Nightmare Cult's activities and the use and origin of the Left Eye. Princess Celestia's sudden disappearance before the Solstice. I don't what's going on or what it all means, but I'm starting to get the feeling everything is connected somehow and that this operation isn't going to go so smoothly. We're effectively going in blind, but it's by Princess Celestia's orders so what can we do? If anypony were to ask me, I'd say the Princess is hiding something and I'm sure Sunset would agree. The last I heard from her, she said she was going to try and find out what her teacher knows. I wish her luck because right now, there's a lot of things that aren't adding up. The operation is set to take place tomorrow night just before midnight and I don't really want to admit this but I'm scared out of my mind about what'll end up happening once that operation begins. Well, the only thing I can do for now is hope for the best and expect the worst.