//------------------------------// // 10. Nightmares and Night Mares // Story: Shadow in Equestria // by ClankHoof //------------------------------// A Pegasus guard knocked on my door shortly after dinner. I guessed before I reached the door what he was here for. "Her highness Princess Luna requests for you to be accompanied to her chambers." He said with a gruff voice, "Do you wish to fly up or take the stairs?" I thought that was a strange question to ask. "Um, the stairs would be more...fitting way to greet Princess Luna, wouldn't it?" The guard huffed a short laugh as he motioned me in front of him. "You apparently have never met her before." He said no more as we ascended the long staircase. After a while I realized why the guard had suggested flying; it was a ridiculously long way up. I was used to traveling a long way on my hooves, but all uphill takes a toll on anypony. I could even hear the guard trying to hide his heavy breathing behind me. "Alright, if there's a next time, I'll *huff* take your offer," I said apologetically over my shoulder. The guard grunted in response, which I took as an agreement. ~S~ Finally we reached the top of the stairs, and stopped briefly to regain our breath. The door that stood before us was painted a dark shade of blue, with the different major constellations painted along the edges. I spotted mine, Aquarius, as the second from the top. The the guard straightened up and knocked, and spoke with a loose sense of authority "Your highness, Shadow Darkfeather has come at your request." The door opened, surrounded by a blue aura of magic, revealing darkness beyond. A calm, soft voice resonated from within, "Thank you, captain. You may return to your post. And captain?" the voice added as the guard turned to leave, causing him to turn back toward the room. "Yes, ma'am?" he asked. "If you don't want to climb back down the stairs, you might as well take the balcony. And next time, perhaps warn guests about the amount of exercise they'd receive if they take the stairs, as it may get you out of trouble in the near future." The guard saluted. "Yes, ma'am. I'll be sure to keep that in mind." He went into the room and through the billowing curtains that obscured the balcony beyond. "Now, are you going to just stand in the stairwell while we speak, or would you like to come in?" The voice asked. "Oh, um, my apologies, your Highness." I said, stepping into the room. I was trying to pinpoint where the voice was coming from so that I knew where Princess Luna was, but it was difficult, as the room was dark save for the small amount of moonlight glowing from the balcony. This only provided deep shadows scattered across the room, and even with my finely tuned eyes I couldn't make out more than half of the larger pieces of furniture. "Oh, forgive me, I forget that not everyone has as good night vision as myself." And a few lamps were lit around the room, bathing it in flickering candlelight. Instantly I could see everything, from the dark blue wallpaper to the assortment of vials and tubes that covered a small desk to the side of the room. Then there was the Princess of the Night herself. Like her sister, her mane and tail were long and billowing, even when there was no wind, and it looked as though stars were caught within the translucent blue and grey. Her fur was of a blue that may have been the same color as the sky during the hours of dusk. Her cutie mark, a white crescent moon on a backdrop of midnight black splotches. Her eyes, also a shade of blue, reflected many feelings at once, though none I could isolate. "Welcome Shadow, to my tower," Luna said, motioning to the room around her, "and please, simply call me Luna. I'm not fully accustomed to the thousand-year differences, but I have learned through experience that people tend to trust me more when I leave out the common royalties." She gave me a small smile. I was still a little wary of her, and didn't know the stories that may lie behind her words, but I knew that, should anything go awry, I wasn't far off from a battalion of guards and the Elements. Not to mention Princess Celestia herself. Luna pointed toward a padded cushion, and I sat down. She herself was lying off the edge of her bed, which I could tell was an unorthodox way for someone of royal descent to speak before a subject, so I better understood what she meant about 'common royalties'. She looked me over closely before speaking, seeming to take in every detail like I was a specimen on an examination table being prepared for dissection. Without even having to think about it, I knew one of the things that might come up would be about my absence of a cutie mark, though when she glanced at my blank flank the same way Celestia had, I was unsure of the full thought process that went through her mind, as she simply nodded slightly, as if she had confirmed something that was bugging her earlier. "I've heard a lot about you, Shadow. Some things proving more...difficult to comprehend than others." Luna said, briefly making eye contact. I looked away. "Have you had the nightmares about your parents before?" She asked. I looked up, startled. " H-how did you know about those?" She looked out towards the balcony. "I am the Princess of the Night. It is my duty to make sure everypony is safe when my moon drifts through the sky over them. However, I did not interfere with your dreams, only watched them for any explanation to the creature that resides now in the Everfree." She got up from her bed, walking outside. I followed, thinking but not knowing how to respond, so she continued. "My sister has shared what Twilight has learned from you, but I feel as though you may have left out some details. Am I correct in this assumption?" My mouth went dry, and I hesitantly nodded. I did leave a few sections of the story out, but for specific reasons. How much can I hide from someone who can see other's dreams, and how much does she already know? My trust for her was very little, and her talents were straining upon the thin wire. She didn't ask me further about the missing details, and instead asked for the story I had told Twilight. No questions were asked while I spoke, but I could tell that she had some. When I was finished, Luna walked over to her desk and cleared a space off. Then levitated a pen and parchment and began writing something down, stopping briefly to think something over before continuing. When she was done, she looked it over one more time, then gave it to me. "The creature -Slendermane, as you called it- is an unnatural being, brought to life perhaps by darkness itself. As you have already discovered, there is little written about it. That is because it was nothing but an old maid's tale told to young ones to get them to quit being naughty. I use the term 'was' loosely," Luna's face we very serious, "Slendermane was an experiment gone wrong. I know, because I was the one who created him." ~S~ My jaw dropped, and my heart began to beat faster. Her face softened. "Don't look at me like that. This was over a thousand years ago, when I first became Nightmare Moon. I was having very conflicting feelings about..well, everything. My sister's gloating about her days, everypony ignoring my nights, among other things." She went over to a wall, which opened up with her magic. On the other side was a few shelves filled with different dark colored pieces of armor. A rather familiar looking helmet was sitting in a glass case, resting on a cushion. It was Nightmare Moon's signature helmet. Luna glanced at this regretfully before pushing it aside and pushing a hidden button behind. Another wall moved, revealing a chest, caked with dust. There were arcane symbols along the seal, and I knew it was locked with more than just a key. A single round hole sat in the middle. Luna stuck her horn into the hole, and both her horn and the chest glowed blue. Then there was a click, and the chest opened. Inside were mostly papers, stuffed haphazardly with small half-filled vials and other odds and ends. Luna pulled out most of the papers using her magic, and glanced over each one until she found what she was looking for. She sent three papers my way. "While I wasn't fully myself, I had some of the wildest ideas go through my head. One in particular that I pursued were the attempts at creating a new sub-species of pony. There was already the pegasi, unicorns, and earth ponies, along with alicorns and even the elusive changelings, which are a lesser known relation to the pony bloodline. But there wasn't a type that was nocturnal by nature, so I thought that if I could introduce a new species of pony that enjoyed the night, I could quell my thirst for infinite night. Most were unsuccessful, and others were too dangerous to be let loose into Equestria. “Slendermane was one of these, but I didn't know it at the time. I had a private section of the forest, protected by my magic, that would prevent my experiments from hurting anypony. Slendermane seemed promising, and I spent a little extra time trying to correct the mistakes of the spells I used, including his face, when he tried to attack me. I quickly subdued him, but he didn't just attack me physically; he attacked my mind as well. I had guessed it was the same spell that prevented him from having a face that made him somewhat psychic. My magical wards barely saved me. I quarantined the area, then had it completely destroyed. Somehow, it seems he survived." The papers documented a few of the experiments she'd done on him, along with an illustration that mirrored what I've seen on multiple occasions now. There was also an area on what she did to make him, but someone had blacked it out, making it illegible. I asked her about this. "I did that for the experiments that were too dangerous to ever be replicated, so no one else would attempt to make another one." She took the papers back from me, placing into the chest and closing the lid. "Even my sister doesn't even know the horrors I created those weeks in the Everfree. Some of the lesser experiments, of which I deemed safe and beneficial to the forest, I let to instead of destroying, though I admit now that no one has liked my idea of Parasprites." She added sheepishly. "Wait, you were behind the Parasprites too?" I asked, a bit less shocked compared to the other things I'd learned, but my feathers were a bit ruffled nonetheless as I recalled the many times those ‘harmless’ pests ruined a good harvest for farmers. "Well, they just seemed like cute, fuzzy, flying creatures. How was I to know that they were bottomless pits when it came to food, and the more they ate, the more they could self-reproduce?" She laughed a bit at this. I let this new information sink in. It fit many different pieces together more securely, but there were still rising questions, and having the pony behind my years of suffering in the same room as me was bending my mind towards breaking point. "If Slendermane was created so long ago, why is it only now showing up? And why is it seeming to hunt me? Why did it destroy my village, and take my parents?" I couldn't stop tears from coming to my eyes, and I glared at Luna angrily. "This is all your fault! If you made it, you should know how to destroy it! This thing has ruined my life, years I'll never get back! I-...I can't even get my cutie mark, because this thing did something to me that-...that I can't even fully explain." I threw myself down on the floor and yelled into the cushion. It was a rather childish thing to do, and I much more I wanted to scream about, but I didn't want to attract outside attention, or risk the wrath of the Lunar goddess. Also, I almost began to blurt out what I haven't told anyone else. Luna probably would've been the best person to tell it to, but I didn't think now was the time to reveal one o my closest guarded secrets. ~S~ Luna let me lie like this for a while, drifting through my own thoughts and every once in a while screaming unheard obscenities into the cushion. After a while, I felt a strange soothing sensation edging its way through my body, relaxing my joints and calming my nerves. I looked up to see Luna had surrounded me in her magic, and it was her spell that was calming me down. I took a few deep breaths before thanking her. Then we both just sat quietly for a minute. "So, what do we do now?" I asked. She looked at me. "I think that if you're ready, we should open this discussion to everyone else who is now involved, after the dinner tomorrow. Both the Elements of Harmony and, dare I say it, my sister, Celestia." I nodded. "No more secrets?" We gave each other the same look. "No more secrets."