A light fog had enveloped the town of Ponyville. Throughout the entire day there had been multiple reports of strange dreams. All of which had the same odd feature.
All of them apparently had a dark, slender being watching them from a distance throughout the dream. Some also reported that their dreams got stranger whenever something seemed to approach the dark being.
The local librarian, Twilight Sparkle, was currently looking through countless books for anything that may have a connection to the being or the sudden strangeness of the dreams. Unfortunately, all of her previous efforts have ended in failure. Twilight sighed in annoyance.
‘Why can’t I find anything about this? This can’t be the first time something like this has happened,’ Twilight thought worriedly, ‘surely the Princesses know what this problem is.’
With that in mind, Twilight began writing a letter to Princess Celestia asking about the strange figure and if anything like this has happened in the past.
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“Rise and shine Luna, it’s about time you wake up and, smell the ashes.”
Luna bolted upright in her bed and stared around the room for the source of the sound.
“You won’t find me in here, Luna,” the voice echoed from the hallway.
“Who are you?” demanded Luna.
The voice chuckled, the sound was distorted by the echoes, “Why, you’ve forgotten me already? I don’t know if I should be insulted or concerned that you’ve forgotten by name.”
Luna’s eyes narrowed as the name of the owner of the voice burned in her mind, “Darkrai, the one who wishes eternal darkness.”
All the shadows across Luna’s room shifted towards the wall Luna was facing and formed the shadow of Darkrai.
“Ah, so you did remember me. Well, now that that’s cleared up, I have a proposal for you,” said Darkrai.
“And that would be?” asked Luna, with slight worry in her voice.
If he had a mouth, Darkrai would be smiling, “My proposal is for you to join me in ruling the eternal nightmare. With no one protecting the dreams of the weak minded ponies the world will be ours for the taking.”
Luna stared at the shadow, unable to respond for a moment. Finally, she gathered her words and responded with a cold, “no.”
Most would be taken slightly aback from such a blunt refusal for such a massive offer. Darkrai however, was no stranger to his offers being refused.
“Very well, Luna,” a hint of mockery was in Darkrai’s voice as he said her name, “I suppose I must do my mission alone. So be it. Just know that if you do in fact, reconsider my offer you will not be given a second chance.”
“I will never turn against my sister. Not now, not ever,” responded Luna coolly.
A brief flicker of darkness causing Luna’s senses to become disoriented for a moment enveloped the room.
“Very well, I see that you have been purified from your inner darkness and have no wishes to fight your sister. After all, who would want to do that after the momentous failure last time,” said Darkrai, “what a shame.”
All the light in the room slowly dimmed and Darkrai phased out of the wall and was face to face with Luna. He grinned darkly as he raised his right arm and a pulsating orb of shadow formed in it.
“I regret doing this to you, Luna. Truly, I do. But, I can’t leave any loose ends to my plan.”
The shadow orb began to pulsate faster and slowly started to spin towards Luna as she charged up her horn to try and defend herself from the incoming attack.
“The night may not have lasted forever, but the nightmare will,” said Darkrai as the orb of shadow launched from Darkrai’s three fingered hand.
Luna fired a short burst of dark blue magic at the shadow orb, making it burst into small, black particles. Darkrai smiled slightly.
“I see you have some fight in you,” Darkrai raised both of his hands and a beam of pure shadow launched from them, “En guard.”
Luna responded with Darkrai’s attack by creating a beam of darkness of her own. The two beams of shadow collided and pitch black sparks flew across the room. Darkrai’s ice blue eye narrowed slightly as he increased the power he was putting into the dark pulse and Luna did the same with her navy blue beam.
After a brief moment Darkrai stopped channeling power to his beam and side stepped to the left to avoid Luna’s.
“Quite impressive I must say,” said Darkrai, “your power may rival the deity of space, most impressive indeed.”
Luna glared at Darkrai as he stood there (despite not having legs) and responded with, “If my power rivals your deity of space, why can’t I crush you where you stand?”
Darkrai snickered slightly before all out laughing his head off. It took him a moment to calm down and told her, “Luna, my dear, go right ahead with that. I honestly couldn’t care less if you struck me down in your own bedroom.”
Luna narrowed her eyes, something wasn’t right. Darkrai should at least show some concern at the possibility of being obliterated.
“Why, exactly do you not care about meeting your end here, Darkrai?”
Darkrai chuckled again, “Why am I not afraid? Well, Luna, it’s because this isn’t real.”
The room flickered for a moment, causing Luna to briefly wonder just how powerful Darkrai was.
“This is all just a dream.”
A brilliant explosion of light enveloped the room along with Darkrai’s quiet chuckle.
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Luna silently walked through the walls of the castle. All morning she had heard the disembodied voice of Darkrai. As hard as she tried, she could not seem to ignore the Bringer of the New moon’s words. She had asked Celestia and the guards why none of them had tried to aid her when Darkrai invaded her quarters. All of them said they heard nothing out of the ordinary. It was Celestia who simply told her that it was just a bad dream.
Luna scowled, it was too coincidental to have a bad dream about the same creature, which she had never heard of before, that gave her a name and spoke of a deity of space. Most importantly was its threat. Luna grimaced as Darkrai’s words filled her head again.
“The night may not have lasted forever, but the nightmare will.”
This stuck Luna as odd, how can one have a nightmare without it being nighttime? ‘Maybe I am thinking too much into this,’ thought Luna, ‘Darkrai could simply be an obscure memory of Nightmare Moon.’
“Oh I assure you, Luna, that I am not a twisted manifestation of you hatred and jealousy. In fact, I think you might be a twisted version of me.”
Luna froze and slowly looked out of the window. The sun was shining outside.
A menacing chuckle echoed through the hallway, “I may be a creature of the night, but that doesn’t mean I can’t come out during the day.”
Darkrai emerged from the wall and faced Luna.
“Hello again, I see that your sister has doubts about my existence.”
“Don’t you tell me what my sister does and doesn’t believe,” Luna said darkly.
Darkrai floated over to Luna, the smoke like substance being omitted out of his head billowing in the non-existent breeze.
“I can say whatever I want. You should learn to respect your elders,” said Darkrai.
Luna laughed sarcastically, “Do you think I will believe that you are older than me? I’ve never heard of you in all my three thousand years of life.”
Darkrai laughed, “I wouldn’t be doing my job properly if you’d heard of me. Only four others truly know about my existence.”
Luna’s eyes narrowed, “And who, may I ask, are these other four?”
Darkrai turned away in disgust, “I will not tell you the names of the two fools who bested me in the Dark Crater. I will, however, inform you of the pathetic being known as Cresselia, the banisher of nightmares.”
There was a tone of pure hatred at the mention of this ‘Cresselia’ but Luna asked who the fourth and final being was.
Darkrai smiled, “The final being is nothing short of a god,” he put emphasis on god, “I not only tricked her, but I also managed to trap the deity of space herself, Palkia, in my eternal nightmare a mere four weeks go.”
Luna’s expression became slightly worried. Of course, Darkrai may be lying about imprisoning this Palkia, if she even existed, but, there was also a chance he was being truthful. And that was something had to take seriously.
“How, exactly, did you imprison Palkia in you nightmare,” asked Luna, fearing what the answer might be.
“Ah, Palkia was tricky. She was much more resistant to the nightmare than her brother, Dialga. It took much longer than normal to trap her and I could only do it then after she was defeated by the two fools,” said Darkrai, “I tricked her into thinking the fools were causing a space distortion that was out of her control. After a few days of her failing to fix the distortion, I put two thoughts in her mind. The thoughts were the names of the two who prevented the collapse of the tower of time, my first attempt at ruling.”
“This is not you first attempt at this?” asked Luna.
Darkrai’s face turned angry, “The first time it was a fluke. The only two who could stop me had ‘heroically’ sacrificed themselves to the destruction of their time and thus, saving the current one. Unfortunately, Dialga saw fit to return one of them to the saved timeline and the other to the newly recovered temporal paralysis timeline. If not for that, I would be siting upon my throne atop the destroyed remains of Temporal Tower, watching Dialga slowly decent into madness.”
Luna slowly began to back away as the shadows slithered across the floor and walls towards Darkrai, who was slowly becoming more and more frantic.
“But I can’t rule atop my throne of darkness because of those blasted chosen ones! Now I’m stuck here in a land of mutant Ponyta*s and there is nothing I can do about it unless I can reopen the dimensional gate*!”
The room was almost entirely engulfed in darkness as al but Darkrai’s chilling blue eye was visible. Luna tried to teleport out of the room but she suddenly felt magically drained. She stared at Darkrai as his deep panting echoed throughout the room.
“Did you think you could just run away?” his voice was flat and monotone, which Luna found even worse than his frantic raving. “I have plans for Luna. Very good plans with no chosen ones anywhere,” Darkrai’s eye flicked across the room as if it was looking for something.
“What do you want?” asked Luna fearfully. Darkrai wasn’t mentally sound, who knows what is going on inside that small black head of his.
Darkrai suddenly became completely visible, “What do I want? I’ve already told you Princess Luna.
“I want to engulf the world in an eternal nightmare. And there is nothing you can do to stop me.”
With that, Luna suddenly felt the feeling of falling. Just as she tried to try and fly, she felt a strong shock go through her body and she awoke in her room. She stared in the room in disbelief as she kept on asking herself if it was a dream or if it was real. A cool voice whispered in Luna’s mind.
“It was just a dream, Luna. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t real.
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Twilight sparkle groaned in annoyance as she tossed another history book into a growing pile on the library floor. This was the fifth history book she had read from start to finish and there was nothing about an entire town having strange dreams with a dark figure observing from the distance.
Twilight sighed, ‘Maybe this was the first time anything like this has happened,’ she thought to herself as she looked out of a window. Suddenly, she bolted upright as she saw something on top of a rooftop.
The figure was entirely black with a blank white face and something that looked like a red tie. Its two stilt like legs made caused twilight to wonder how it kept its balance. It’s two arms with what looked like black smoke drifting off of them gave it the illusion that it had at least four arms, two coming out of its shoulders and another two out of its back. Twilight stared at the creature before turned its head in her direction, causing her to duck down out of sight. After a moment, Twilight looked out of the window again only to find that there was nothing on top of the rooftop.
Twilight blinked in surprise, ‘Where’d it go? And more importantly, what in Equestria was that thing?’