//------------------------------//
// Verse 46 
// Story: The Nightmare Knights Become A Band 
// by SwordTune 
//------------------------------//

Though the world changed, the dream stayed the same. More or less. Luna reached out with her horn, testing the currents of magic which ran through all dreaming creatures, from ponies to dragons, and felt the same familiar pull she felt on every night. Dream magic was entirely different from anything else in the waking world. Without a unicorn, a spell would not cast itself. 
But dreams were manifestations of will. They were the product of the natural magic in nearly all living things, directed and controlled by the fired signals of millions of brain cells in a single body, all convulsing and pulsing at an unimaginable pace. And they directed those energies into uncontrolled lines of power. For Luna, reaching out through the dreams was like dipping her hoof in a stream to test its current, or raising her head to the wind to feel its gust in her mane. She could feel the pull of the magic. It bound to her, recognizing its own, and beckoned her to follow its path. 
The realm of dreams was itself an empty void, filled only by thoughts, or images of thoughts. Luna could see them, every fear and hope and memory that was being played through the minds of the sleeping was at the tip of her hooves. But she needed only a few of them.
Their names were familiar, but not their minds. They were different creatures altogether, new villains with their own goals and motivations. 
“The first one is a gargoyle named Scorpan,” Daybreaker had told her before she set out for the dream. “Then, there’s a clever little filly among them, Cosy Glow.”
“I am familiar,” Luna had replied.
“They are both dangerous, but still not the biggest threat. Beware of Queen Chrysalis. We’ve fought before, back when I was still under the control of Eris. She’s the most unhinged of them all.”
Luna wondered what she would find in the mind of Queen Chrysalis. Even if she was a different version, it was impossible not to imagine what kind of dreams a crazy hive queen had.
“Brother!” 
A cry echoed through the dreams, cutting through the dozens of others that pulled on Luna. Its power was incredible, the kind that only a genuine night terror could produce. The draw of other dreams were streams and creeks, gently nudging her along like a lazy river raft. The echoed voice was a raging torrent.
“Where is Daybreaker?” Luna looked around. The tyrant had insisted on linking to the dream to make sure there was no betrayal. Luna didn’t mind, but now her alternate sister was nowhere to be found in the dream. “She’s going to have to take my word for it.” Because there was no time to wait. The dreaming void melted into dirt, grass, trees, and crumbled stone bricks in an instant.
“Take my hand, Tirek, before she comes back!”
Luna spun her head around, searching for the voice. It was closer now, calling from above. A tall castle loomed high above the forest’s trees, casting a wide shadow by moonlight that seemed to swallow up the earth. At its highest tower, she could barely make out the silhouettes of the villain.
She recognized Scorpan, he was no different from the version in her world. And on his perch atop the tower, he reached out to his centaur brother dangling off a ledge.
“We came to accomplish a mission, Scorpan,” Tirek yelled, struggling. “We had planned to take this land together.”
“I know, this is my fault, so let me make it right!”
The brothers nearly clasped their hands, before an orange flame banished the shadows and blinded them both. It swept up from behind the tower, like a comet given wings and sent down from the heavens. Luna didn’t need to guess what it was.
Daybreaker, or the dream version of her, crashed into Tirek, knocking the burly red centaur from his final hold on life. 
“Brother!” Scorpan throat tore as he screamed. After a moment of shock, his head spun on a swivel.
Luna followed his red, wet glare down to the base of the tower where Daybreaker stood. Behind her, the Lady of Chaos, the one who enslaved the sun itself, stepped from behind the shadows of a tree.
Eris sneered up at the enraged Scorpan. “I told you both that Equestria was mine. Its ponies are mine. Their magic is mine. Go home, you stupid beast. Not even your brother could stand against my weapon. But you? You’re not even worth the time.”
As the final word left Eris’s mouth, the dream began to warp, the ground shifting around as Tirek’s corpse tumbled and rolled back up through the air. The nightmare was beginning all over again.
“Take my hand, Tirek, before she comes back!” Scorpan shouted all over again.
Luna stared, transfixed by the scene, and almost missed the feeling of someone else entering the dream.
“Oh, I remember this one,” Daybreaker said, walking up behind Luna. “So he’s still mad about this?”
Luna scrunched her face at Daybreaker. “Where have you been?”
“Lost,” Daybreaker snarled at her. “You said you’d link me to the dream, you didn’t say I’d have to find the way on my own.”
“Aw, do you need a map?”
“Shut up.” Daybreaker gestured to Scorpan. “There are bigger problems.”
“I don’t know why you sound surprised that he’s mad. You killed his brother. If it were me, wouldn’t you be…” she paused, realizing she forgot who she was talking to.
“No, I wouldn’t,” Daybreaker answered anyway. “And I don’t see what I had to do with this. I killed Tirek eight or nine hundred years ago. I was still under the control of that damned collar. Eris used me as a weapon. She is responsible for Tirek’s death. Scorpan should be grateful I overthrew that monster.” 
“Anger doesn’t work like that,” Luna said.
“We’re getting off-topic,” Daybreaker snapped. “Can you find out where they’re hiding?” 
“Not this one, no,” Luna shook her head and pointed to the trees around them. The branches began to twist and bend in impossible arcs as the dream reset again.”
Again, Scorpan’s dry scream echoed through the forest. “Take my hand, Tirek, before she comes back!”
Daybreaker covered her ears. “Why does he keep saying that?”
“It’s a night terror, formed out of a traumatic memory. He’s locked in, and even I can’t change the dream until the trauma subsides.”
“How long will that take?”
Luna shrugged. “Most likely a few days. My guess is he’s probably having this dream every night.” 
“I’m not waiting around that long.”
“Neither am I. The concert’s in a couple of weeks, I gotta get back home or else my producer is going to be very cross.”
Daybreaker again flared her temper at Luna’s obsession, her fiery mane brightening as she pumped magic through her body as fuel. But she could sense no fear in Luna. Indeed, she had tolerated much from the Princess of the Night. And so long as she had something to offer, she could tolerate much more.
And Luna knew it.
“Get us out of here, then,” Daybreaker said, and then looked up to Scorpan. “This snivelling wretch is starting to make me sick.”





It was a brightly lit dream that Luna walked into this time. A chandelier dangled in the air, slowly growing the walls and ceiling around it. The empty void space of the dream realm slowly melted into a soft carpet reached up and tickled her hooves. The bedroom had that new house smell, along with the aroma of hot tea and fresh cookies. Colourful pink pillows and blankets were tossed about the room. 
“I want to go back to the other dream,” Daybreaker hissed, recoiling from the teddy bears watching from the bedside drawer. Though she had no power over dreams themselves, she was linked to Luna and could still decide how far she wanted to step in or out of it. Slowly, Daybreaker retreated from the dream until her presence could only faintly be felt watching from the sidelines.
Luna veiled herself in the corner of the bedroom as she let Cosy Glow’s dream play out. Applebloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo played her simultaneously in chess, yet each game was over in a few minutes. Luna wondered if it was just the girl’s pride, or was Cosy Glow that calculating? If this filly was anything like the version in her world, Luna considered it could be a mix of both.
“How long are you going to stand there?” Cosy finally asked. As if possessed by a spell, her three friends paused their game of chess and went limp, their heads and limbs hanging down like ragdolls propped up against a wall and barely standing.
“You can see me?” Luna stepped forward, and the three fillies melted down into the carpet, vanishing from the dream, just to make space for her at the table. Cosy Glow waved her hoof and the three chess boards in front of her folded together into one, and all the pieces rearranged themselves into their neat rows. 
“I figured out lucid dreaming when I was four years old,” she told Luna. “Learned how to sense other sources of magic when I got this.” She pointed to her horn with one of her wings. 
“You found Grogar’s bell?”
Cosy nodded, her eyes already inspecting the chessboard. “And Nightmare Moon is dead in this world, meaning you must have come from another one. One where a version of myself tried and failed to take over the world.”
“How do you know you failed?” Luna asked.
Cosy raised a curious brow. “Would you be here if I had succeeded?” She looked back to the board and started with the King’s Pawn opening. 
“I suppose not,” Luna replied, moving her king’s pawn up one square. The last time chess was in fashion in Equestria, she hadn’t been sent to the moon yet. Though, that hardly mattered. She wasn’t interested in playing, she only needed to keep Cosy Glow talking.
“Really? The Griffonstone Defence?” She moved the pawn on her rook’s side up to King’s Rook Four, signalling more pressure on Luna’s king’s side. 
Their game had no timer, so after a few more moves when Luna was out of ideas on what to do next, she stood up and began pacing around the dream, inspecting the four corners of the bedroom. Everything in a dream came from something in the physical world, and usually, it was all jumbled together. A different picture in a picture frame, an unusual drawing on the wall, she looked for those kinds of subtle hints. Villains were, generally, prideful. And Cosy Glow was winning the game. Luna hoped that was enough to make her feel safer and lower her mental guard.
“When was the last time you played?” Cosy said, her smirk transferring into the tone of her voice. 
“Used to play a lot with my sister,” Luna answered. “Until she took a millennium of my life away by trapping me in the moon.”
“So a long time, then.” The clack of a chess piece told Luna that Cosy Glow had made her move. “And you’ve changed, haven’t you? You’ve become good, or else you’d be back on the moon right now.” Luna said nothing, waiting instead to see where Cosy Glow was going with her point. “You know how evil Daybreaker is, so why are you helping her?”
“Who says I am?” Luna asked.
“Every cat, rat, and scum-dwelling villain in the city saw you two marching together, and news like that travels fast. But what I don’t know yet is why. What do you get out of it?”
“Don’t bother acting like you’re any better,” Luna smirked. “I’ve seen what you can do in my world. With enough time and resources, you could rule the world no differently than Daybreaker. So I side with the demon I know. Besides, you won’t win. Not against her.”
“I think we will,” Cosy said, “we have to.”
“You have to?” Luna returned to the board and finally responded to Cosy Glow’s move by moving her rook forward, trying to get it out onto the board. “Why?”
“Because that’s what I do.” Cosy Glow attacked across the board with her queen to take the knight Luna had just exposed. “I take things. I’m the adorable little filly that everyone underestimates because I’m just so loveable. I had everything a girl could want in Ponyville. My friends played all the games I liked and the adults gave me everything I ever asked for.”
“Ah, so you’re just a pampered princess who’s mad she lost her toys,” Luna mocked as she developed her knight, trying to put more threat into the middle of the board.
“A princess?” she hissed back. “Please, I’m a fucking queen. I protect my pieces. I win the game. That’s what I do. What does Daybreaker do? She turned every unicorn in Ponyville into her mindless guards, sending them out to hunt down every last problem. They’re nothing but pawns.” Cosy Glow slammed her hooves on the table, knocking over the board and its pieces. “This world doesn’t need more pawns, it needs bishops and knights. And I am going to be their Queen.”
“You talk about protecting pieces, but you’re hiding out in the forest with no one but yourselves. Even if you win, who’s going to follow you? You’ll be nothing more than the same tyrant with a different name.”
Cosy Glow smirked and finally rose from her cushioned seat of pillows. She stared down at the scattered chess pieces and sneered. “I’m a steel trap up in here, Princess,” she said and tapped her forehead. “You can stall all you want.”
Her horn started to glow, and suddenly she spun her head around and aimed her magic at the wall. “But you are not getting a word out of me!”  The pastel blue and pink wallpaper melted as rope-like tendrils unfurled and reached through them. Like pulling out a hoof stuck in deep mud, Daybreaker’s head popped into the dream, her neck entangled by the tendrils. 
Luna jumped immediately and dispelled the ropes, but not before Cosy tossed Daybreaker on the ground with a jerking pull. 
“You won’t do that again,” Daybreaker coughed and struggled to her hooves.
“I will if I want to. I am the future Queen of Equestria,” Cosy Glow yelled at them as they both sank through the floors. “And I want you out of my head!”
The dream lurched and they both stumbled, feeling the floor of the bedroom breaking into splinters as Cosy began to eject them. Daybreaker teetered from side to side, clutching onto Luna as she tripped over pillows and stuffed animals.
“Luna!” she barked. “What’s going on? Use your magic already!”
But Luna didn’t even try. They were caught in the current of magic again. Whoever this version of Cosy Glow was, whatever life she had gone through under Daybreaker’s rule, it really had sharpened her will. Luna could enter and leave dreams at will, but a mind that refused to dream was as closed off to her as it was for any other pony.
“If you want answers, try Chrysalis,” Cosy said, smirking at both of them as they fell. “That is, if you can that psycho’s nightmares.”