//------------------------------//
// Nightmares 
// Story: The Last Pegasus 
// by Tealove 
//------------------------------//

	Candy Pop burst through the front doors of the book shop to find Cheerilee inside. The earth pony was shuffling through the scattered contents of the front desk and looked up quickly when Candy and the others came rushing in. “What are you doing?” Candy demanded, brow wrinkled.
“Candy Pop, I am so sorry about Scribes.”
“What are you doing behind the counter? Only Scribes and I are allowed back there.”
Cheerilee's expression was full of sympathy as she scooted out to stand before the upset unicorn. “I was looking for any hint as to what might have happened to her.”
“Nothing happened to her,” Candy insisted. “You guys don't know Scribes like I do. She's flighty and random if she's in the middle of a project. If she was hit with an idea she more than likely dashed home to get whatever story she has already in progress so she didn't forget her train of thought. That's why her invoice trailed off. You guys are making a big deal out of nothing.”
Clap wasn't convinced and it showed on her face. “But why wouldn't she just grab some random parchment and write it down instead of leaving the shop unattended?”
“Writers have weird quirks.”
The door opened again and the mayor trotted in with Flitter and Bubblecup following. Candy Pop let out a sigh and shook her head. “Mayor Mare, will you tell everypony to calm down? That this isn't anything new when it comes to Scribes?”
The older mare tilted her head to the side in a small shrugging gesture, grimacing. “While I can't disagree with you, Candy Pop, this is not something we can simply dismiss, not with everything that has been happening.”
Thunder Clap huffed. “That's it. I'm flying to Canterlot right now and demanding to talk with the princess. Skies, wanna come with?”
“Now hold on everypony.” The mayor waved a hoof to try and settle the pegasus. “Princess Celestia is aware of what is happening. Going there now would only compound the situation. If there was anything that could be done I am certain it would have happened by now.”
“So what in the hay are we supposed to do in the meantime?” Clap landed on the wooden floor with a light thud and tucked her wings against her side. “Should we just sit around and twiddle our hooves while we wait for more pegasai to disappear? Sorry but I'm not okay with that!”
“What else is there to do?” Moonflower asked. “If you fly to Canterlot and make a scene you'll just get yourself thrown into the dungeon or something.”
“At least I'd be safe there!”
“We will figure this out in the morning,” the mayor promised, slightly flustered. “Candy Pop, is there someplace you can stay tonight?”
Candy made a face. “I'm not leaving. I'm going to stay in my apartment with my friends so I'm here when Scribes gets back. That way I can find you and show everyone how far out of proportion this entire thing has been blown.”
“I'm staying, too,” Clap declared stubbornly.
“As am I,” said Skies.
Moonflower sighed quietly. “Guess I'm staying, too.”
The mayor's expression was unreadable as she stared at Candy Pop. But after a moment she pursed her lips. “Very well. I can't force you to leave your home and if you're all together...” She trailed off with a shake of her head, then looked pointedly at Thunder Clap and Sugarmint Skies. “Please, for everypony's sake, stay inside until morning.”
Skies shifted on her hooves. “I'm on duty tonight.”
“No pegasai will work the night shift until this entire thing has been settled.” The mayor's gaze on Skies was unsettling, as though there were a hint of irritation beneath her otherwise calm demeanor. “Do not leave until morning,” she repeated, then headed for the door with Flitter and Bubblecup. Cheerilee followed but paused to touch Candy Pop's withers with a hoof.
“If there's anything I can do...”
Candy forced a small smile and nodded. “Thanks, Cheerilee. And I'm sorry for earlier.”
The earth pony smiled warmly and shook her head. “Think nothing of it.” She left and quietly closed the door behind her. As silence settled in the air the remaining ponies all looked at Candy Pop as if awaiting something. If Candy had any answers or suggestions she was not ready to share them. Instead she turned and moved behind the counter to tidy up what had been left behind.
“I don't know how she ever finds anything back here.” There were rolled up pieces of parchment, bookmarks, quills, ink wells, and broken wax seals all over the place. And a single blue ribbon. With a mild shake of her head, Candy Pop looked at it all. As the others watched her they saw her resolve begin to crumble. The fierce belief she had that Scribes was really all right and just off writing somewhere was dissolving and fear was taking over. Candy's brow wrinkled and slowly, like she was fighting it with everything in her, tears filled her eyes.
“What if she was taken?”
Her question was so quiet it would have been missed if the others hadn't been paying attention. But they heard her and Clap and Skies rushed to embrace her and offer words of encouragement. Moonflower looked around the bookstore with a small frown on her face, clearly uncomfortable and not sure what to do with herself.
“The princess will do something soon,” said Clap. “She has to.”
Skies stroked a hoof down Candy Pop's back, trying to comfort her. “Come on. Let's all go upstairs and get something warm to drink. Staying here won't do anypony any good.”
Sniffling, Candy nodded. She levitated the blue ribbon from the counter top, taking it with her as the group headed upstairs to her apartment.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Everything was dark. It was like she was walking with her eyes closed and her ears plugged up. There was no way to tell if she was alone or if she was surrounded and that was what scared her the most. At any moment she could be attacked and there would be no way to know it was happening until it was too late. She should have kept her mouth shut. This was all her fault. All her fault. All her fault.
A light sparked up ahead and she lifted a hoof to shield her eyes. It really wasn't that bright for too long, soon dimming to nothing more than the flickering at the tip of a candle. She dropped her hoof and watched it from a safe distance, somehow more afraid of this light than the surrounding darkness. Her name echoed all around her, a sinister deep rumble that bounced off invisible walls and multiplied until it felt like she was hearing “Skies” in her very core.
“Please,” she whimpered, staring at the flickering light. “I want to go home.”
“You are home,” the voice said. Though the tone was gentle there was no mistaking the threat lying just beneath his words. 
“This isn't home. Ponyville is my home.”
The voice laughed, softly in a chuckle at first but it grew in decibel and turned her blood to ice. “Ponyville?” the voice scoffed. “Ponyville is not your home. This is your home. This is where you belong.” It was all around her, this terrible malicious presence. Skies sank onto the black floor beneath her hooves, trembling. The presence drew back slightly and she could feel the change in the air. “My dear Skies,” he crooned. “Stay. Stay here with me.”
“Stay?”
“Be my queen once more. We can have everything we ever wanted.”
She knew this voice. It suddenly hit her that she knew this voice almost as well as her own. So why could she not see in her mind who the voice belonged to? “W-who are you?”
“Return to my side and we will rule over all of Equestria. Together we will raise up our people, our army, and we will be unstoppable.”
“Army?”
The darkness she'd been drowning in began a slow fade. Shapes came into vision with slim, defining lines of contrast from the ever flickering light. The shapes moved and as the darkness continued to lift she began to understand, to realize she had not been alone after all. There were hundreds of pegasus ponies sharing the nothingness with her, all of them walking aimlessly. A light brown stallion passed close to where she huddled. He turned to her and she gasped. His eyes! Where black pupils should have been was nothing more than a slightly darker shade of the brown of his irises. They were almost like her own. “Stay,” he whispered. As soon as the word passed his lips others around them repeated it, then more still until it became a whispered chant all around her.
“They are your servants,” the faceless voice purred darkly. “This is your army. Command them.”
Skies shied away from the stallion, backpedaling and running into another pony. She wheeled and cried out in horror. The mare she collided with had a sky blue coat and a teal mane and tail. Her blue eyes were blank as she looked at Skies, but Skies recognized Medley immediately. She reached out to take the pony by the withers and shake her. “Medley? Medley, it's Sugarmint Skies. Do you remember me? I just arrived in Ponyville a few weeks ago. You know Thunder Clap. Medley? Medley!”
The voice laughed and all the pegasai, Medley included, laughed as well. Skies let her go and backed up several paces. “Medley, Medley!” he teased. “Medley, Medley!” they all copied, the various voices mixing together like music at a twisted carnival. “She cannot hear you, my love. None of them can hear you until you choose to be their leader. Stay with me.”
“No!” Skies looked up into a fathomless black nothing above her, eyes ablaze in anger. “I will not stay with you!”
“Very well.” Any hint of tenderness the voice held for Skies was gone, replaced by a sharp coldness. “Some day you will thank me for what I must now do. Goodbye.”
Every single pony turned in her direction. Though their eyes and faces were still blank she knew something terrible was about to happen. They were converging on her and she had nowhere to go. “No,” she cried, looking for a way of escape. “No, please!” A pony tapped her from behind and Skies whipped around. “Scribes?”
The familiar icy blue pegasus with the tri-colored mane and bows in her hair stood right before her. Though her eyes were different like all the rest, she smiled. And then she lunged for Skies.

~*~*~*~*~*~

“Skies!”
She sat up with a sharp gasp and would have screamed it if wasn't for Moonflower grasping her by her withers. “Hey, it's okay! You were having another nightmare.”
“No, it's not okay. Nothing is okay.” She felt like crying, like screaming, like tearing at her mane. Moonflower's grip on her tightened and she looked into her friend's face, light from the fire making odd shadows dance across her concerned expression. “Moonflower...”
“What happened?” the unicorn asked quietly.
Pulling herself free of her friend's grip, Skies got to her hooves and shook her head. She needed to slow her breathing, stop her racing heart before she could explain. And then what? What was she willing to share? She looked around the bedroom to find Candy Pop still asleep in her own bed. Thunder Clap had long since passed out on the couch and was laying on her back, spread eagle and snoring with one back leg over the back of the couch and her head hanging so low off the front that her spiky mane touched the floor. The sight off her was amusing enough to give Skies something else to think about for a minute and she let go of a long sigh.
“Are you okay?” Moonflower ask eventually.
“I think so.” Sitting on her bedroll on the floor, Skies looked at the unicorn. “I'm sorry if I woke you.”
“You didn't, I was up.”
“Can't you sleep?”
Moonflower glanced with meaning at Clap. “Not with that racket going on.” With genuine concern on her face, she focused once more on Skies. “Looks like it's a good thing I was up though.” She frowned. “Same nightmare?”
“Same nightmare.”
Moonflower's frown deepened. “This has been happening every night for how long now?”
Skies rubbed a hoof over her face. “I think it started when you tried to wake me up the first time in the hospital. Each time something is added. Like Medley being there last week, Scribes being there for two nights now.”
“What was different this time?”
The pegasus looked down, thinking, replaying everything in her mind. Nothing seemed new or changed. It was the exact same dream from last night and the night before. There were no new ponies that she could recall. Had the words been different? She knew them all by heart now, she'd heard them so many times. When she realized the difference her head jerked up. “He said something.”
“What?”
“He said someday I would thank him for what he must now do.”
Moonflower blinked. “What in the hay does that mean?”
“I don't know.” Once more Skies rose to her hooves. She paced to the window, restless, and pressed her forehead against the cool glass. Night was still heavy upon them and the outside world was silent and deceivingly peaceful. The feeling had been growing, gnawing at her that maybe the whispers she had been hearing were true; maybe it really was her fault that the pegasai were disappearing. After this latest dream the reality of it settled on her like an impossible weight. “I can't stay here,” she said, staring into her transparent reflected eyes. “You know that, right?”
“You can't leave.” Moonflower drew up beside her, brow wrinkled. “You have to tell them, Skies. Candy, Clap, Pinwheel...you have to tell them. We can help you figure this out. Just...don't leave.”
Skies looked at the unicorn. “Why not?”
“Because.” Moonflower glanced down in embarrassment. “You're my first real friend here. I don't want to lose that.”
“Moonflower...” Skies nuzzled her gently. “If I'm the reason all of these ponies are disappearing I can't stay. It's not safe for anypony.”
“Then I'll come with you. You need somepony to watch your back and I'm not a pegasus so I'm not in danger.”
“I don't think you can come with me.”
Moonflower blinked and was silent long enough to draw meaning from her friend's words. “You're not...seriously thinking about giving in to him, are you? About staying?”
Skies shrugged. “I don't know if there is any other option. Maybe if I go he'll release all the other ponies. At the very least I'll be there to try and figure out some way to get them home.” Moonflower opened her mouth to object but Skies shook her head. “If I can save them, Moonflower, I have to. This whole mess is my fault to begin with. Besides, you have the others now. They're your friends, too.”
“Skies, you can't!”
She looked out the window once more. “I have to. Before anypony else goes missing like Clap or Pinwheel...” Her brow wrinkled, attention caught by something outside. She narrowed her eyes and pressed her face closer to the glass.
“What is it?” Moonflower asked.
Realizing what she was seeing, Skies swallowed a sharp intake of breath. “Pinwheel!” She didn't care about being quiet now. As she turned and ran for the door, Moonflower right behind, the clamoring of their hooves on the wooden floor woke up the other two. Candy Pop opened her eyes in time to see the door swing closed and Thunder Clap reach up to wipe drool from the corner of her mouth.
“What's going on?” the pegasus asked sleepily.
“I don't know,” Candy replied with a yawn. “We'd better go see, though.”
Outside Moonflower and Skies raced around to the other side of the bookstore. Skies skidded to a halt so quickly that Moonflower almost ran right into her backside. “Oh no.” She saw now what Skies had spotted from upstairs. “Pinwheel's necklace.”
Scooping the little silver bell on a black ribbon up in her hoof, Skies shook her head. “No, it's my necklace. I remember it now.” She remembered a lot of things now. Too many things.
“Are you guys okay?” Candy and Clap came around the corner, Clap trotting instead of flying for once, with a blanket wrapped around her like a cloak to ward off the cold night air. 
“It's Pinwheel,” Moonflower answered. Skies held up the necklace and the other two gasped.
Clap threw off her blanket and flapped her wings, darting into the night sky. “Pinwheel! Pinwheel!” She looked left and right, cupping her hooves over her mouth to amplify her voice. Turning toward the center of Ponyville, she dropped her hooves and gulped. “Um, guys?” The three down below looked up at her and she pointed. Skies took to the air as well to get a better view and nearly stopped flapping at what she saw.
It looked like every pony left in town was headed their way with torches and lights. Even from so far away it was easy to tell they were not coming for a social visit. “It's my fault,” Skies said quietly. “They've finally realized it, and they're coming for me.”