//------------------------------// // Nightmare // Story: Beyond the Vail // by Kalushar //------------------------------// I gasped loudly as the hot water popped onto me. Standing behind the stove I shook my hand in response to the boiling water hitting it. The store-bought instant noodles were cooking nicely, and I was here all alone in this old house as the sun began to set. I turned off the stove and poured the noodles into a bowl, steam pouring off them in waves. I ate them with a general disinterest, they were as bland as eating actual string. I tiredly washed the bowl and headed to the guest room I had always stayed in. I was not going to sleep in the main bedroom, it just made me uncomfortable thinking about it. As I laid down thinking through the events of the day I set the blue stone from earlier on the bedside table and pushed my head back against the pillow making a crackling noise as I did. I frowned and rolled over in bed, sticking my hand under the pillow, and pulling out a folded piece of paper. It was just a normal sheet of unlined paper other than the fact it seemed to be sealed with wax. I couldn’t tell what the seal was supposed to be, but I cracked it open and read the paper. Jacob, if you are reading this then I have died. I have prepared a long time for this eventuality and I hope you find the monetary compensation sufficient to persuade you into assisting me with my dying wish. My collection must never be sold or seen by anyone other than you, including your family. People will no doubt approach you about selling the house or my collection, I implore you to say no. My collection is only safe in my house and nobody must ever get their hands on it. My private collection vault is locked, the key should be on the key ring. Inside you will find my most precious artifacts. I have attached instructions regarding each one, under no circumstances must you break these rules. My eyes squinted to read the curved text, so I reached behind me and opened the blinds, allowing moonlight to fill the room before looking back at the letter. All that was left was instructions regarding the care and preservation of her most important pieces, I looked down the list until I found the one, I was looking for. 13. Nightmare Moon Statuette Do not ever remove this item from the vault or any part of it ever! Especially not the embedded stone, it should never be removed. If for any reason you must remove the item from the vault, do not do so at night! The item must never be exposed to sunlight ever, doing so would be disastrous for you and the item. If the item is ever broken, then dispose of it in a way to where it will never be found by anyone ever again. There was more written, but I wasn’t interested. My eyes quickly snapped to the gem sitting on my bedside table as a single ray of moonlight fell on it. I jumped at it but stopped and watched in awe as the stone refracted the light around the room, making it look like hundreds of small stars. My eyes went back to the stone when the tiny pin pricks of light disappeared and the stone began to spew what looked like thick black smoke, but it seemed heavier than air. The black fog only rolled along the floor and wasn’t even light enough to rise to the beds level. My hands scrambled to grab the stone and pull it out of the light, but even when I pulled it to my chest and out of the moonlight it still spewed the fog, though this time over the bed and me. My head began to lighten as I tried wrapping my shirt around the stone to stop the black fog, but it only made it more concentrated around me. I desperately pulled off my shirt, still wrapped around the stone, and threw it to the floor. I gasped out as the fog rolled off the bed and my lungs were no longer blocked. The fog seemed to be coalescing in the spot where I’d thrown the stone and my jaw dropped as it rose and shaped itself slowly into the form of a onyx black horse with a mane and tail as blue as the stone had been with small dots of light, not unlike stars, in them. The mane and tail appeared to flow in the air on their own as if there was a breeze, even though the air low in the room was nonexistent. On its rump, or flank, I thought remembering the correct word, it had a marking that looked like a huge splotch of blue with a crescent moon on top in white. But it wasn’t paint I realized, it looked like a tattoo. The horse I also quickly noticed somehow had a horn jutting from its head and wings tucked to its side, it was identical to the horse in the statue. I gasped slightly at the realization and its eyes opened and locked onto me. They were blue, a deep blue, not in the sense that they were dark. In fact they were akin to cyan or teal, but they were the kind of eyes I felt that I might fall into them, as it stared at me I noticed its pupils were not normal either. They were slits, like a cat, not like an equine. For what felt like a millennia I just sat upright in bed locking eyes with it, it only stared back, it didn’t whinny or neigh or make an noise, it just stood silently, the seemingly ethereal wind in its mane the only thing making it move at all. Finally, I made the first move, I pulled the bedspread down off my waist and slowly slid out of the bed, my eyes never leaving the midnight creature. I stepped closer to it, its eyes still staring into me. I saw something in its eyes, was it intelligent? No. It was impossible, but the way they considered me was unsettling. I leaned over and peeked at its stomach and underside, a female then. I looked up at it and it seemed to be sneering at me, my eyes widened as it opened its mouth and spoke. “Thou wouldst dare act so unfitting as to stare at our undercarriage so completely blatantly? We are disgusted by this reviling behavior and demand that thou give thee name and titles!” I sputtered out a response somehow despite the utter shock, “I-I’m Jacob. You can t-talk?” “Insolence, of course we can speak, didst thou believe us deaf or dumb perhaps? What gave thou the sheer arrogance as to assume thee could ogle us?” “I-I didn’t know you were intelligent; I was only checking your gender. How can you talk? You’re a horse!” Her eyes narrowed and she snarled at me, showing a row of sharp fangs, “is thou implying that thou could not perceive our gender and thou doth blatantly insult us by comparing us to a horse! We are a pony!” Her horn glowed with a blue light and I felt myself jerked in front of her face by some unnatural force, “we know not what you are, nor how thou could be so ignorant, but even a fool serves a purpose. Where are we? Do not lie to us fool, we will know.” She punctuated her point by using her strange blue… magic you could call it, to pull me inches away from her sharp horn, I swallowed and quickly answered, “you-you’re in my great-aunts house, or well… my house. Listen! I don’t know what or apparently who you are, but you don’t have to hurt me!” She stared into my pleading eyes for a moment, before I felt the strange force holding me let go and I fell to my knees on the floor. I looked up at her imposing form as she stared down at me emotionless. “Thou doth not lie. Thee truly is ignorant to our identity? And this home, where is this?” “Y-yeah I don’t know who you are, and the house is in the town of Tillersville!” “We are not familiar with this place, what nation doth this town belong?” “Uh… the United States of America.” “This place is also unfamiliar to us, where is it in relation to Equestria? And what is your kind?” “Equestria? There’s no place I’ve ever heard of by that name and I’m a human.” “Though bizarre as it sounds, we know thou is still speaking the truth human. Perhaps we were quick and harsh in our judgement, we appear to be lost in thy nation.” She bowed down deeply to me, “we are Nightmare Moon, we are pleased to meet you… Jason. We hope that you will forgive our indiscretion.” “Yeah it’s a pleasure to meet you too and really I should apologize for uh… peeking at you.” I bowed deeply back at her before rising. This day just kept getting weirder and weirder, I was contemplating whether I was simply having a mental breakdown when she spoke again. “Thy speech is particularly strange, we do not mean to insult thee, as we need your assistance. We assure you, that you will be compensated for your help.” “Money? Oh, no I don’t need money!” “Nay? Thou doth no accept our offer?” “Oh, I do! I just don’t want any money.” She sighed and stepped in front of me, “doth thou… seek an alternative form of payment perhaps? We doth understand… if it insures our safe return… despicable creature” “Wait, what? No! No! That’s disgusting to even suggest! Besides you’re a uh… nevertheless, I want to help, I don’t need any form of compensation.” Her eyes widened and she stepped back, “what? Why wouldst thou not wish for payment? We could give thee gold and many honors for thy service.” “I don’t care about any of that, if you need my help then it would just be… wrong for me to just ignore that, Ms. Moon.” She stared at me a moment more, the slits in her eyes narrowing before she laughed, “Ms. Moon? Thou are most humorous! We are Nightmare Moon, princess of the night, and matron of the moon itself!” “Ok… Ms. Nightmare Moon?” The black matron laughed harder still, “my, we have not had such entertaining a conversation in more than a thousand years!” As she said this a strange look passed over her eyes and she stopped laughing, it was the same look you saw in soldiers, a stare that wasn’t seeing anything. “Your highness then? How can I help you?” She turned to me, the look gone, “we would like thou to show us on a map where we are and help us chart a way back to Equestria, we are unsure how we were contained inside that stone or when, but it is imperative that we return, else our gift may never come to fruition.” I could feel the visible confusion on my own face, but I just nodded along and said, “that sounds like a good idea if you’re trying to get home, but would you rather do it in the morning?” “This is our morning, when thou doth lay thy head upon thy pillows, our work doth begin and it doth not stop until the dawn breaks.” My body was tired, and I felt as if I had been thrown around by a magic pony with wings and night owl syndrome. I groaned loudly, before remembering that she stood directly in front of me and I looked up nervously. She had an unreadable face for several seconds before a slight smirk appeared, “thou doth rudely sound excited. Move or we will move thou ourselves and trust us when we say thou doth not want that.” It was going to be a long night.