//------------------------------// // Chapter 18 - Look into the Abyss // Story: The Adventures of the New Nightmare // by hmaf43 //------------------------------// The warm ray of the sun cast a dim glow through the dense canopy of the Everfree Forest as the air filled with an eerie silence, which soon will be disrupted. A resounding ”wink” echoed through the stillness, and the forest trembled as its peace was shattered by the resonating sound of a teleportation spell. The air crackled with energy as an equine figure materialized from thin air. It was an imposing Nightmare Moon, whose wind of fate had brought her to this forest of dread. Nightmare Moon collapsed onto the forest floor, panting heavily. The alicorn's coat was marred by dried blood and the shimmering glow of the night alicorn's starry mane dimmed as she lay there, the weight of her injuries bearing down upon her. The forest of Everfree whispered around her, its eerie ambiance adding to the gravity of the situation, and the alicorn of the night reflected on what transpired. I healed Rainbow Dash. Nightmare Moon sighted out in defeat. "In the end, I still help her." The alicorn of night chuckled out darkly, as she tried and failed to position her damaged body to the most comfortable position possible. She did promise to herself to not followed the path of her precursor, did she not? To get back what she lost, and to not only just lived her life in this alien world, but thrived while doing so. Then why did she help that pony? Why did she care about any of them at all? They will be no longer of her concern when she got back home. Emotional attachment will only hurt both sides when it's time to say farewell. Dehumanized them is by far the best course she should have taken. To a certain extent, she tried. For her to have this level of sentimental, and willing to help them even at her expense... Nightmare Moon never thought she would resort to using that dammed piece of work of a spell, but the circumstances had left her to think this is the best choice she can make. Two birds in one stone, or this case, two ponies in one spell. Nightmare Moon chuckled to herself at her own dried joke. She was sure that when her future self come back to do introspection, to make a self-reflection to see why her life had gone so wrong. She would be aghast at such a horrendous joke that made light of this event and would wonder why this insane gender-bend human-turned-pony soaked in her own blood laughed at herself. But then again, maybe not. That little joke is comparable to a small and insignificant piece of microplastic in the great Pacific garbage patch. There are so uncountable mistakes or decisions that she has done throughout her life, many more plus-sized screwed up she should be focused on, and many more she had done today. For one, that said spell itself. "What I am thinking....." Nightmare Moon trailed off, frown plastered upon her muzzle. Now it was at the forefront of her mind, possibly the biggest offender out of everything that had gone wrong today. Somehow, using that spell to solve this was the first idea that her brain came up with, and she thought it was a good idea and committed with it. The spell she had cast was a creation of one of Luna's tormentors, with the help of another bastard who is also the one that manipulated Luna into using it. It was a spell that allowed the caster to transfer injuries from one pony to another, to heal a target by absorbing their injuries, and vice versa. Nightmare Moon couldn't help but curse those bastards that had molded Luna to become the kind of person she was. In her mind, she could still hear the chilling words that had been whispered to her body's previous owner, taunting her with the fate of innocent people. "If you don't use it... then fine, we'll let a spare suffer in your stead." The memory-filled Nightmare Moon with a surge of anger. "Fucking monsters" she muttered, anger seeping into her words, before quickly shaking her head to regain her composure. Now was not the time for emotions—she needed to be level-headed. She began her assessment of the situation. Carefully inspecting her injuries, Nightmare Moon assessed the damage to her damaged wings. Her majestic, bird of prey-looking wings, the symbol of her power, a big crucial part of her divine waifu grace, the once fluffy appendages now reduced to twisted remnants of their former glory, mangled and torn, causing immense pain to shoot up her spine when they were touched. She let out a weary sigh. "At least I got Luna's pain tolerance" She muttered, grateful that at the fact that this one dreadful question has been answered, and she can accounted for it in her future endeavour if needed, arise. "Hopefully not, forever." She's not a masochist who enjoyed getting her body beaten up for fun, after all. And even then, masochists definitely not enjoyed getting their bones broken off and their muscles ripped apart, because, at the very least, their survival instinct wouldn't allow them to go that far. She hopes with all her heart that's the case. Please let that statement be the truth. Nightmare Moon’s slitted eyes gazed into distance for awhile, before she shook her head and let out a sight. "Why did it turn out like this..." She muttered out in defeat, as she gaze down at the petrel she wore. The steel armament continues to sing the neverending orchestra alongside its companions, the hoof guards and the helmet. The quiet song that only she could feel by sense of magic, as slowly drain her magic to power its internal circuitry. It likely won't be able to completely block that attack, but it sure as hell wouldn't turn the attacker into a pasted on the wall like a swatted fly. And she didn't have a chance or any intention of telling the bookhorse about one of her protection, but with how perceptive she was…. shouldn’t she already know? "Well, what's done is done." Nightmare Moon muttered in defeat, letting out a sigh, subconsciously shifting her broken wings from awkwardness mixed with embarrassment and wincing from pain. The only thing that could be considered good news in this situation is that she had used the spell on a pegasus rather than a unicorn. Otherwise, her broken wing might have been a shattered horn instead, which would be absolutely and fabulously bad in her current situation. Her wings, unlike her horn, are pretty useless at the moment even if they are not damaged. Nightmare Moon didn't have a way to properly trained herself on the moon. This contrast with unicorn magic which only relies on a single factor, and the caster can just drop in a compensation logic at the beginning of the spell. The wings of a pony pegasus also rely on many different factors other than magic. Air density, Gravity, Particle composition, and a few others. The flier must utilize pegasus magic to balance everything in order to make it work. Not only that, the magic tied closely with the wing's muscles instead of the direct link to the brain like the unicorn's magic. It had lower bandwidth, and more nerve latency, and was used in more time-critical tasks like flying. This means there is not as much wiggle room as casting a unicorn spell. One has to get everything right quickly and fast. Too many moving parts. Just like driving a car or riding a bicycle, everything pretty much relies more on the proficiency—muscle memory of the flier than the knowledge. This is the proficiency she didn't have, flying on the moon is as similar to flying here as scuba diving in an oil tank compare to water. Her moon-optimized muscle memory would be either under-compensated or overcompensated for everything. The fact that she's not a particularly good flier did not help either. And no one would be insane enough to do such ridiculous mental calculations that are required for flight, on-the-fly, in real time. No pun intended. "But I wouldn't put it past her." Nightmare Moon chuckled to herself, thinking about the only unicorn with a tendency to turn everything into soul-sucking operation manuals. She would even bet a limp. And that brings her to another messed up part of her body. Her legs, although not unscathed, were in better condition. Only one of the hindlegs was broken, with a bone visibly poking through the torn flesh. The skin around the white protrusion is visibly stitching itself back together. Nightmare Moon shudder and sigh "Luna's memory really didn't do it justice." She theorized that this is the first leg that rainbow butt landed on the wall. Thankfully, her internal organs remained intact, and all intricate complex sensory organs survive unscathed, giving her confidence that her formidable alicorn healing factor would ensure a swift full recovery within a week, perhaps even less. Now, to the latest and hopefully will also be the final fucked up she made today, the location. "Of all possible places, just why...." As she pondered her situation, Nightmare Moon couldn't help but wonder why she had been teleported to near the ruined castle of the Everfree Forest instead of her intended destination: her room in the Golden Oak Library, a safe place for her to lay down, relatively speaking. The unexpected deviation puzzled her, she was sure the spell worked perfectly fine. With a heavy heart, Nightmare Moon contemplated her situation. Alone, injured, and far from the safe room she had hoped to return to, she couldn't help but feel a sense of melancholy. The weight of everything that had happened had taken a toll on her. It's just too much and too quickly, their magnitude resonating deep within her aching soul. Maybe, just maybe, she should give it all up, forget everything and let the elements blast her to pieces. "But that's not even a choice now, isn't it." A sorrowful smile upon her muzzle as she chuckled sadly to herself. Gazing into the distance, a soft glow casting past the thick forest, causing an ethereal light upon the untamed forest, Nightmare Moon closed her eyes. She would endure, she would heal, and she would forge her future—one where she could get back what she lose, and maybe more. One's gotta dream big, after all. As Nightmare Moon lay there for a while, the weight of her injuries pressing down on her, her mind pondered. "But still, why was I teleported to here of all places? There should be a good explanation...." As Nightmare Moon glanced back at the castle, The once great fortress's impenetrable wall, and noticed a hole— a giant puncture. The clean, lichen free on the cracked surface told her it was new. A sudden realization struck her bolt of lightning right there and then. "Wait a minute," the alicorn contemplated, her mind racing to analyze the situation. It was clear that she needed to think this through logically before taking any further action. Unlike the teleportation spells portrayed in TV shows that Twilight used, Nightmare Moon's teleportation spell was an ancient, relic from a thousand years ago. It was a cutting-edge spell of its time, aimed at providing a more efficient means of quick transportation method when compared to the more traditional power-consuming and cumbersome portal spells. However, being a bleeding edge spell from thousand years ago meant it was an unoptimized mess in comparison to the version that Twilight had mastered. Nightmare Moon's spell required nearly a minute to activate, and that was in the best-case scenario, which realistically translated to the bullshit of snake oil. The real average activation time for most situations is around four to five minutes. It's clear that such a long time the spell took meant that the spell was not suitable for emergency situations that required quick action. Like running away from the potential equestrian imperial solar inquisitors if this Equestria happened to be ruled by militaristic sunbutt, the Daybreaker timeline, for example. Other than that plus-sized hellscape of a timeline that was mentioned above, there is also another horrible candidate, like Changeling's the matrix ripoff pony-powered love batteries array, Sombra's slave empire, or outright world war ripoff, the Equestria at War timeline..... and many more. Just any kind of Equestria that she needs to runway in general. There are more than a few transmigration stories out there where the protagonist got flung out to a different version of the 'otherworld' that is different from what they knew about, and it's always good to prepare for this. But she wasn't smart enough to just comprehend and made up a whole new superior spell on the moon, with only Luna's memories to reference to like some kind of Starfleet's spandex science boys. To circumvent that technical limitation, she had devised a clever workaround. By utilizing teleportation markers placed at the intended destination. The marker acted as a sensor, collecting and relaying relevant data of the destination, back to the spell matrix, which would originally have to be manually computed with only information collected from the starting point, a very slow process. But with the aid of the teleportation markers, the process was significantly sped up and effectively reduced the wasted computational time. Her homemade teleportation markers operated on a simple principle. They would respond back, sending out a signal when they caught a specific radio wave signal in the air that had their unique ID, a serial number that is encoded into it, and only included this specific piece of data in the response message when the condition is right. The horn-side spell of her modified teleportation was designed to look for the value that's basically treated as a boolean, yes or no, true or false. She dubbed it as the "safe to land" flag, and it's always encoded inside the message, to indicate that the location was ready, safe, and secure for arrival. The spell on the caster's side, will only continue its operation and execute the teleportation only if the response said “Yes, it's safe to teleport here" Otherwise, the spell will just stop dead in the water and fizzled out of reality. But this time, she had used an emergency teleportation spell, a spell that is no different than her normal spell, only the secret sauce is the ID number it's calling. Alongside the main, unique ID number, there also existed in every marker, a secondary, common ID number. Calling the marker using the secondary ID will work exactly the same as the normal one. The only difference is that this ID is not s unique identification for each marker. the same set of numbers is used in every teleportation marker. This means that the spell she uses is calling out to not one, but all teleportation markers in the vicinity, and it will latch onto the first marker that responded back and provided a response message that also said the location is safe to land. The marker's blueprint had been purposefully designed to accommodate easy reconfigurable and expandable parts, with activation of the "safe to land" flag as one of the primary considerations to add this pain-in-the-ass flexibility requirement into its design. The flag could be rigged to only triggered when readings from add-on sensors fell within valid ranges, may it be temperature, humidity, or Geiger meter, trap detector, and more. The sky's is the limit, really. "Clipping in an object..... or another person will definitely be painful." Nightmare Moon shuddered, as she thought back on one of the currently deployed markers. The one in her room is rigged to an obstruction sensor because it's possible that when she teleported in, she would risk stuck into the wall like an NPC from a badly made video game. Ah... Now she remembered! it was all coming back to her now. Nightmare Moon's recollection sharpened as she pieced together the missing puzzle. It all became clear to her now. A memory resurfaced. There was another marker—an experimental unit she had created for testing purposes. It had been programmed to provide the fastest response because it lacked any safety mechanism at all! Instead, It was hardwired to always replied back with, the response "Yes, this location is safe to land" immediately, the moment it was invoked by other parts of the spell matrix. And the last known location of that experimental marker was within the depths of the Everfree Forest, the very place Nightmare Moon found herself standing upon her return on that day, and the very place she had unexpectedly arrived in currently. When Nightmare Moon returned on that fateful day, she believed that one to be destroyed during her confrontation with sunbutt, but that was just pure assumption and unconfirmed theory. She realized she had never actually confirmed his fate A spark of curiosity ignited within her, urging her to seek the truth. Her horn shimmered with magical energy as she activated a partially-completed spell, calling out into the world, and reaching for answers. She waited, her anticipation mounting with each passing moment. Then, a tingling sensation coursed through her horn as it received a response from the marker—a glimmer of hope in the darkness. The implication of teleporting to a marker without safety logic was completely lost to her as a newfound sense of purpose brewed within, fueled by pure hope, she gathered what strength remained in her wounded body, rising to her hooves and fixing her gaze on the depths of the great abyss. Sight out with a heavy heart, Nightmare Moon gazed at the towering trees of the Everfree Forest, their branches reaching toward heaven and darkening the sky with their presence alone. With her current condition, it would definitely be an arduous journey, but she was determined to reclaim the one she had believed was lost forever. "I am coming for you, partner," she whispered, her voice laced with determination. Step by step, the alicorn of night ventured into the depths of the wild, ancient, untamed realm. The path ahead may be shrouded in uncertainty, but Nightmare Moon would face it, her wounded body is a testament to her commitment as it was slowly dragged into the deep forest by its owner.