It had been an uneventful day of Apple bucking. I had gotten comfortable flying around the farm and hadn't had a nightmare last night. I landed next to the set of trees I was supposed to harvest next when I got that familiar feeling of somepony watching me.
I looked around but didn't see anyone. I started to buck one of the apple trees when I noticed the moon was out. That was unusual for the daytime, if I recall correctly I was told a Princess Luna controlled when the moon rose and set. Maybe she'd taken a day off?
I continued to buck apple trees never quite shaking the feeling that someone was watching me. I suddenly noticed the sun had set so I quickly headed back inside. Before I walked through the front door of the Apple's house I looked back towards the orchard. Underneath one of the trees was the creature that had been watching me, black as night with a sparkling blue mane.
~*~
I awoke startled, but not screaming which made a nice change of pace. I wrote down in the journal what I had seen. I was disappointed another memory hadn't come back to me, and also happy I hadn't had to witness that night in the caves again. I had an appointment with the therapist today and with any luck we would be able to piece together and recover some more memories.
After grabbing a few apple fritters for breakfast I headed into Ponyville until I was at the office of a unicorn named Sandy. She had a brown coat and grey mane with a small pocket watch on her flank. After a brief wait I was lead into her office by her assistant and took a set on a nearby sofa.
"Hi Comet, it's a pleasure to meet you" the unicorn stated cordially. "Thank you, should I call you Sandy or Doc?" I replied.
"You can call me Sandy, so tell me have you been writing down any memories or dreams you have been having?" She reached for her own notepad with her magic that had a soothing grey glow. "Yes, here is the journal" I responded while reaching into my saddlebag and lifting it out with my teeth.
After glancing through it and holding it aloft with her magic she told me "Alright, we are ready to begin. Now as you may know, the key to memory are the associations between objects. I may associate sitting in this chair with taking notes on a patient, and the need to have a quill and fresh ink. If I walked out of the office to get a new quill, I might get distracted by the receptionist and forget why I had gotten up."
"Ok I'm following you so far Sandy" I responded, patiently following her analogy.
"Now when I return to my office and sit down, I would again associate this chair with taking notes, and thus recall that I needed a new quill. The fragments of memory and dreams in this journal are going to help me guide you through hypnosis. I will be helping you make those connections, and hopefully we will find out what happened to you."
"Are you sure that's such a good idea? I'm usually overwhelmed with a sense of dread when I try to remember anything. Last night is the only night I didn't have vivid nightmares." I waited as she flipped through the journal to the last page.
"Ah it says here you had a dream you were working and that the moon was out, then it got dark and before turning in to bed you saw a black mare with a sparkling blue mane. Was this the same thing that was watching you in the other dreams?" Sandy took several notes while I replied. "No, this was something different. It was watching me, but I didn't feel any fear or dread. I just knew it was analyzing me the whole time."
"Ok then I think we are ready to begin, I'm going to ask you to lay down and clear your head of all thoughts. Focus on the sound of my voice as your eyelids begin to feel heavy..."
~*~
"Where are you now Comet?" Sandy asked.
"I'm back in the hospital bed, when I first came to Ponyville." I looked around and it looked as real as the dreams I had been having, and yet this time I knew it was a dream.
"Now think back to how you ended up in the hospital, do you remember crashing into Twilight's library?" Sandy inquired.
"Yes, I had lost control while I was flying." I felt a sudden chill and shivered a little. "I think something was chasing me"
"Why would you think that? Is that why you were falling?" Sandy asked.
"Yes, I remember pain, and trying to outrun something--" I paused as I could feel that looming sense of dread return. A wick at the back of my mind began to suck up all the happy memories I'd made over the past few days until all I could feel was the dread.
"Comet it's ok, you are still in my office. I need you to take a deep breath, and tell me about that night. Was it cloudy? Did you see anything unusual?" Sandy had a very soothing voice and I was soon back in the air again.
"I flew through the cloud cover... I had a sense of dread and knew something was chasing me, I was nearly at the speed of sound and aiming for the town below when something shot me. I could feel a pain... I think it was in my head but an instant later I had blacked out." I flinched in my dream as I ended up back in the library.
"Ok, let's go back a little further. Can you remember where you took off from? Was the moon on your right or your left?" Sandy's voice seemed to have taken on a musical quality that helped me focus.
"I can't remember... in one of my dreams I was in a mine, and on that night I fled the moon was left of me but it was barely shining." I could see the 2 pieces in my mind but couldn't quite connect them. A mine, and the library, and in-between was only the dread and sorrow.
"Good, good. So it sounds like you were flying south. Did you live in a village in the north? How big was the mine?" Sandy asked and continued to guide me through my dream.
"The mine was large, I was in the royal guard at the barracks there. We were slowing down production but still working hard, I think we had just helped build a city--" My mind flashed back to that night deep in the mine, when the darkness had consumed my friend. I wanted to curl up and hide from the thoughts, but I soon heard a soothing voice.
"Your doing great Comet, now you were at a mine in the north near a city. Do you recall any names, or how close you were to the border with the Gryphon kingdom?" Sandy asked.
"No... there wasn't much around the mine I think. There weren't many ponies that far north." I tried but could not remember any more.
"Alright then, I want to go back to your sergeant and the mine. Remember the darkness can't hurt you here, why did you go into the mine?" Sandy questioned.
"Ponies had been disappearing in the mines, at first we thought they were cave-ins. At first a few cave-ins were found, but most of the ponies just vanished in the south-eastern tunnels of the crystal mine. Finally my sergeant had enough, and took our entire platoon down fully armed to explore the deepest reaches of the mine."
"Your doing excellent" Sandy encouraged.
"We were getting near the end of the mine shaft, when we found fresh tunneling. The walls were damp and brown, and lumber had been hastily erected to support the ceiling. We weren't supposed to have any mining operations that deep, so with a sense of dread we set off down the new tunnel..." I had to pause again to try and control the dread. I could feel something scratching at my mind, something that wanted to be remembered. My emotions had become numb and I felt cold, but amidst the fear I also knew determination and duty. Sandy was guiding me, and I was going to figure this out once and for all.
"Comet? Comet can you hear me?" Sandy sounded concerned. "Yeah" I replied, and she responded "you seem to have drifted off, please continue."
"We had brought a few torches but as we got deeper they weren't enough. We ended up in a room that somepony had built deep in the mines. Inside was a sarcophagus that was empty, and suddenly the caves began to shake violently. We were about to flee for fear of a cave in when it stopped, and that's when it appeared." I couldn't stop now, I was so close. I attempted to swallow the lump in my throat and continued.
"At first we thought the torches had gone out, the room was pitch black and nopony could find the entrance. The torch in my hoof was still lit but I could barely see the flames 4 inches away. I bumped into something, and it was the sarcophagus.... only now it wasn't empty. The husk of a black unicorn lay in it, with a red horn and lifeless eyes. The darkness seemed to be coming from him... and then there was nothing."
"What do you mean nothing?" Sandy pondered.
"Well, I had been feeling fear, we all were, but suddenly it's like everything just froze. I couldn't feel or see anything, I wasn't panicked or worried. I just was. I seemed to float there forever and only a second all at the same time. I don't know how long that continued, but the silence was suddenly broken with a scream. Light had returned to the room and something was hovering over the sarcophagus..."
~*~
I jolted up on the sofa, startling the therapist. "Comet what did you see?"
I looked over to her and said "I saw my king, but it wasn't my king it was something evil in his place."
Sandy began levitating books around searching for some way to piece the puzzle together and make sense. As I watched the books dance around in the air the weight of the dread landed on me again and I heard laughter. The room darkened and for the first time the entity stalking me stepped out of the shadows. I could see him clearly, and my entire mind screamed to deny his existence. What ever this was should have stayed buried in that tomb, along with the rest of us.
"You made it so far, almost beyond my grasp and yet you kept poking at the memories until I caught up with you. This time you will never awaken!" The ghastly figure with the head of a unicorn and a smokey body stared straight at me and I felt the pieces of my mind being torn away. I looked out the window behind him hoping for some miracle, but instead all I saw was the crescent moon and a blue flash.