The Last Nightguard
Nightmares in the Shadows
“Sick leave for serving guard members is to be treated with respect. Guards should not report for duty if they are ill, but to the infirmary for examination. A doctor will determine your fitness for duty and either pass on notification of your incapacitation to the Officer of the Day or see you returned to duty.”
—Manual of the Royal Guard, Volume Two
Ebon Tide was the dead name of a pony gone for the last thousand years. His family, dead. His companions, dead. Everypony he had ever known, dead, dead, dead. Dead not by his actions, but by the loathsome beast that Princess Luna had become once, and would become again. Proof of her intent began at the various potions which the doctors had pumped into his veins. They were useless as dishwater against the fel magic rampaging through his ailing body. All the clash of medicine and magic did was make his nerves itch and faintly dampen the raging heartbeat of his new form.
He had seen membranous wings like these on his transformed fellow Nightguards so many years ago, and yet it seemed just like yesterday. Nightmare Moon’s magic filled them into more powerful limbs than his featherless and fragile pegasus wings, but now he was as weak as a foal, barely able to lift his foreleg and the encompassing thick cast which his exertions had necessitated. A clean break would normally take weeks to heal, but he could feel a practical fizzing under the skin as the bones knit, making him want to tear the cast off with his teeth and gnaw the cursed limb until it could be torn free.
He never was one to suffer inactivity well. With Luna’s infernal magic inside him, he had the patience and tranquility of a toddler hopped up on bits of sugar beet. Every click and rattle in the dark hospital was like a hoof on a chalkboard to his nerves. The feelings of new teeth beginning to cut upward in his gums likewise. Hunger drove him like a feral beast. He growled at the nurses who brought his pasty gruel, but he ate to the bottoms of the small bowls and licked them clean, trying to find something to chew on in order to quench the blazing itches in his gums.
It had been days since Princess Celestia had visited, time cut into bloody fragments by the hands of the lying clock on the wall and reassembled one tiny slice at a time in his scrambled mind. There had been time to plot and scheme his escape and attack on the Nightmare, despite his total lack of any outside information sources and his twisted body that certainly would be spotted as the abomination it was if he managed to set one hoof outside the hospital room.
Luna had to die. That was the only clear thought that he could cling to, holding it close to keep his focus, blocking out the endless expanse of emotionless stars and surviving for the moment. A thousand years of Nightmare screaming in his ears, and the only pillar of sanity he had been able to keep was his determination to kill the traitor. Or perhaps this was his mind finally snapping after being trapped in the moon for so long, and the Nightmare was cackling in the corner, giving him just enough slack to think he was free before yanking him back into the swirling chaos of her madness.
No. This had to be real. His imagination was not fertile enough to dream the things the doctors had done, the words they said when they thought he could not hear. He was doomed to live his short life as a bat-winged freak, a decorative puppet that Luna would trot out to show to the pony populace as an example of her power.
Or at least until he ripped out her throat as she deserved.
Something surged up his spine at the faint sounds he could barely hear from the hallways, a low ‘whuff’ of gentle wingbeats and the slightest of scratching noises that he never could have sensed in his old body, even during his prime. At first, he thought it was another timorous nurse with his loathsome gruel, but after a short time, he could tell there were several sneaking ponies, and doing so in a way that any Nightguard would find… unprofessional.
“Are you sure he’s here?” whispered one young voice.
“I told you a thousand times, Peanut.” The rest of the words were unintelligible, but the youth of the whispering ponies was obvious, and Ebon Tide’s jaw clenched with suppressed rage.
Am I so insignificant that she sends children to slay me?
He wanted to spring from his bed and leap onto the intruders, teeth bared and striking. In his current toothless and feeble state, Eb did not think he could even stand up, let alone ‘leap’ anywhere, even to fight foals. He was still determined to go down fighting, so he hunched against his rough mattress and watched the door to his room from between narrowed eyelids.
It took an interminable time before the door cracked open and the faint glow of golden eyes could be seen peering inside. There were a lot of eyes for the limited space, much like the observers were stacked on top of each other, and they moved frequently as their owners shifted positions.
“I don’t see him,” whispered the first voice again, the one who had been called Peanut. It seemed an odd name for a pony, neither a pea nor a nut. Perhaps he had been named after a cross between the two vegetables, much like an Everfree spiderbear. In any event, a killer with a name like Peanut would not have an easy time around his fellows.
“Over there in the bed,” whispered a different voice, sounding deeper and older. “Rip, you go in and see if he’s sleeping. You’re the quietest one of us.”
“I’m not going in there,” said a very small voice, who had to be Rip. “He’s not moving. What if he’s… dead?”
There was an exceedingly long period of pure silence, broken only by the faint rustling of the three small ponies.
“We could go home,” suggested the deeper and older voice.
“He could be in respiteatory distress,” said Peanut. “If he’s not breathing, we can call the doctors, and they can resissessitate him, and Princess Luna will thank us. We could even get a medal.”
The chance of the intruders being murderous assassins was dropping by the word, and the probability of them being mere children here to gawk at the bat-winged monstrosity was rising as fast as his ire. There should have been Nightguards in the corridor, ready to restrain a dangerous himself or to prevent foolish intruders from reaching this far. In his day, he would have dropped on a security failure like this with all four hooves, and driven out whatever slacker had let it happen. Whips would be involved for certain.
He was so caught up in his thoughts of righteous indignation over the current state of his former responsibility that he completely ignored the three little pests who ever so slowly eased their way into the room. They clung together in the shadows, using their own proximity to each other as a substitute for confidence, and eased their way closer to his bed one tiny hoof at a time, until they began to peek up over the edge.
And three sets of golden nightmarish eyes peered into his.
Sheer terror froze him in place, turning his blood into ice and leaving his muscles unable to move or allow him to scream at the sight. They were not pony eyes, but the slit-pupils of Nightmare’s monsters in the faces of tiny foals, with tufted ears and the tips of tiny fangs sticking out from their open mouths.
“He looks nakie without any hair,” said Peanut, leaning forward and giving him a sniff with her wrinkled-up tiny nose. “He smells funny too.”
“It’s the medicine,” pronounced Rip quite authoritatively despite his smaller size. “That’s why his eyes are open and he isn’t blinking.”
The third little monstrosity did not say anything, but kept looking over his shoulder and around the room like a proper alert Guard.
Despite the shock, Eb’s heart kept hammering away, but slowed after a few moments when imminent bloodshed did not result from his tiny invasion. It was humiliating how these three little monsters were treating him as some sort of fascinating insect they had discovered on the floor instead of a monster in pony form, but since they were so much like himself, and he could see small membranous wings on their backs…
It required a lot of thought which he was not able to think. The rage still boiled through his veins, doubled at the thought of Nightmare’s hellish magic used to corrupt such young souls.
“He blinked,” announced Peanut. “So he’s not dead.”
“Are we in trouble?” asked the third little pony who vanished from sight, only to reappear with a glass of water held in the crook of its fetlock. “You’re not going to tell on us, are you?” it added.
It was a fair question for monsters to ask in normal circumstances, although Eb was feeling anything but normal. The water helped dampen his wordless rage, and by the time he reached the bottom of the glass, he had one question that he really needed an answer to before he went even more insane.
“What… I mean who are you?”
Three little nightmarish faces all perked up and smiled with an overabundance of sharp teeth, and the smallest of them jumped on the conversational suggestion like a kitten on a mouse.
“I’m Riptide,” he announced with a nod to the larger child of nightmares. “And this is my cousin Gravel, who really is Pea Gravel but he hates that name. And my big sister Peanut, who is a pest.”
“I am not!” protested the other small monster. She straightened up and jabbed Riptide in the shoulder with the tip of one hoof. “I’m smarter than both of you colts.”
“No, I mean who are you?” snarled Eb quickly before an obviously habitual fight could get started between the three of them. His own two children could go off against each other at the slightest hint, and Calla could never get them to stop until he put his hoof down.
No, it did no good to think of his family. They were dead now. Dead and turned to dust for centuries. That single thought only tore his heart open again and let the rage flow through every memory that had been stolen from him by the monster Nightmare Moon. Still, in the presence of the three tiny monsters, he just could not maintain quite the degree of raw fury that he had been holding before.
“He means our Clan and House,” said Riptide. “Gravel is from House Moonglow, Clan Honor. The nut and I are from House Glory, Clan Silverfish.”
“Silversmith,” said Peanut before sticking out her orange tongue. “My uncle Radiant says you’re a thousand years old, and that Princess Luna brought you with her from the moon, and that you’re her coltfriend, and that you almost died protecting her from Nightmare Moon, and you are probably going to be her next Captain of the Guard instead of Shining Armor who is really cool and dating— Oh, we’re not supposed to know that,” she ended quickly.
“Are we in trouble, mister?” asked Gravel. “Because I can chase these two back home if you want.”
“I didn’t get to ask him any questions!” blurted out Peanut with a rolled-up lower lip and blinking her golden eyes. “Nopony in the House will tell us anything, and they won’t let us see Princess Luna!”
At that name, all of the darkness boiled up inside Ebon Tide’s mind again, and he heaved himself over to face the wall, letting his cast-wrapped foreleg lay on top of his chest like an anchor dragging him down into the inky depths of his anger. “Go!” he managed to growl. “Leave me!”
There was a clattering of small hooves on hospital tile, and Ebon Tide was alone in the room again.
Alone except for his dark thoughts.