CHAPTER 1 – Tantibus Regia
A loud, frustrated groan thundered through the stone corridors of the Royal Palace. It was loud enough that everypony in the entire west wing quickly covered their ears with something, not caring whether they dropped a tray or two in the process. This added considerable amounts of clamor to the noise. Those too unfortunate to be able to get their hooves free in time added their own part to the choir, consisting of high-pitched screams of agony.
Once the immediate danger to the palace staff and its collective sense of hearing was gone, the wing was summarily emptied. Anypony who wasn't deaf, wearing industry-grade ear protection, or somehow had managed to sleep through the vocal assault undisturbed, were outdoors within half a minute. The others didn’t take long to follow.
Such was the way of the world. Broken plates could be replaced a lot easier than broken eardrums. And when the Mare of the Night forgot to turn off her much-intimidating Royal Canterlot Voice – especially indoors – other ponies covered their ears or suffered the consequences. This forgetfulness had gone unremedied for some time now, since the princess in question simply had no energy to listen to anything other than things in the spirit of “Yes, your Majesty”, “No, your Majesty” or “I brought your Coffee, your Majesty”. Even raising the moon was tiring. For the Princess of the Night, that simply would not do.
Princess Luna’s jawbones cracked loudly as she let out a silent yawn. She was not a pony that tired easily. Not at all. She had even gotten a most fierce reputation among the students and professors at the Canterlot University for just that – utter tirelessness, and especially in matters of work. Seeing as those ponies themselves were examples of the very same virtue, that said something of her own case.
This last month, however, that had not been much of a case anymore. The first time, one week after the Summer Sun Celebration, she simply hadn't been able to find rest after lowering the new moon for the seventh time of the year. Once she had fallen asleep, it had been an uneasy one – three hours in, she had woken up, sweating and panting, from a most unsettling nightmare. As the weeks went on, she found herself getting less and less undisturbed sleep – which this last month had been reduced to none at all.
So it had started, like many other unpleasant parts of her long life. In the past, her dreams had always tended to give her some manner of vague premonition of events to come. Unfortunately, this time it had continued as nightmares as well; rather than switching over into some less trivial, more manageable (or at least tangible) problem. Nightmares, and in a much greater magnitude than she could handle.
A peculiar irony indeed, that We would end up so troubled by this phenomenon, Luna mused as she half walked, half stumbled through the palace corridors with a tired gait. She had always considered the dream-visions as a gift of sorts, and in earlier times she had taken great advantages of those few she had managed to decipher, when negotiating with foreign dignitaries, nobles and rebellious (or at least highly displeased) subjects. A few tired nights and uneasy days sleeping had been a small price to pay. This time, though, it was proving more than she could handle.
At first the servants had offered compliments and concern, and later on home-baked goods, to try and help alleviate her troubles. Now, the corridors were emptied of other ponies long before she got there, the arrhythmic clinking of her tired hoofsteps (along with the occasional ear-shattering groan) announcing her presence long before she got close enough to them to be a real threat. She sighed. And here We thought Our days of grieving seclusion from Our little ponies were finally over.
The first few weeks after being cleansed of Nightmare Moon, she’d been haunted by a similar streak of bad dreams. Those Nightmares had, because of her insecurity and mental weakness, utterly terrified her; she had slept with Celestia by her side for all of the first month. All in all, that first year had been something like a second fillyhood – her power and confidence both gradually returning as the horrifying memories and dreams of her possession receded into the past.
That was two years ago, however. This time the problem was quite different – it was hardly an issue of the dreams themselves scaring her, now. While Luna still hadn’t caught up to all the modern world’s newfound quirks of technology, magic, culture and language – and by the stars she was trying hard to learn that last one properly – she had very much regained the regal spirit and strength, mental and physical as well as magical, that she had so much prized before her fall. Fright of dreams was no concern of hers, now.
Nay, the crux of her problems was the heavy disturbances to her sleep cycle – which had always seemed odd to everypony else, nocturnal as she was. After enduring a full month of having her sleeping hours reduced to a multitude of tiny naps, her duties to the Court had suffered. The Court, meanwhile, had suffered her. Either her numbed-down overtired self; or, upon a few occasions, the frightening creature she became after consuming enough caffeine and sweets to cross over from ‘stupidly tired’ to ‘dumb as a brick and on a massive sugar-high’.
She had tried various methods to combat the dreams, but to no avail. Finally, two days ago, she had taken it up with the one pony who might have some answers she didn't; her sister. Upon which Celestia had, in a surprising show of exasperation, dived into parts of the Canterlot Archives that even Luna herself had yet to go through. After raising the sun this morning, she had announced she'd found something that should be able to solve Luna's problems. Luna wasn’t sure of how much hope she dared put into it, though. It seemed a bit too good to be true.
The corridors seemed to have multiplied this last month, for she could've sworn it wasn't normally this far between the kitchens and her sister's personal chambers. Oh, stars and galaxies, Our head feels like one of those strange, mushy "pancake" things the cooks serve up. Floppy, flabby, flattened and covered in jam. It was quite accurate, for once, since the amount of sugar and caffeine she used to support her collapsing mind - amounts almost on par with what the Element of Laughter consumed, apparently - made this metaphor not so far-off from the truth as it normally would've been.
It was well past dinner, and she had - with considerable discomfort - woken up, done a (mite sloppy) arrangement of the night sky, and gone down to the kitchens to gorge herself on unhealthy foodstuffs for an hour straight. Having replenished some energy this way she went off to see her sister, fervently wishing that her faint hopes would not end up mercilessly ground to dust this time.
After way too much walking, she finally reached the right corridor. Luna opened the door to her sister's private chambers, and was met with a most unexpected sight.
All unnecessary furniture had been shoved off to the sides of the room, leaving a large, empty space in the middle. Empty, at least, except for her sister's royal flank; as well as two sets of magical circles drawn on the stone floor, using proper high-grade glyphdust rather than ink.
Yes, she'd been expecting something magic-related. But her sister very seldom bothered using spells that needed more than a single circle, or any circles at all. Never, to the best of her knowledge, had Celestia put her horn to a multi-tiered drawn spell.
These circles had four tiers each, each one of the smaller inner rings just as perfectly scribed as the others. Additionally, high-grade glyphdust was essentially unobtainable, as the secrets of its make had been lost with the shattering of the Third Dragonflight four centuries ago. It probably would remain so, unless the dragons managed to overcome their individual differences again for long enough to create a new proper civilization rather than the ramshackle migratory collective they presently were – or at least, a functioning wing of dracomancers.
Celestia was really ‘pulling out all the stops’, as it were. And that wasn't all. The glyphs themselves were ones Luna hadn't seen in millennia – and even then, only as theoretical sketches on scrolls. Besides, it would've taken somepony far closer to an Archmage's level of skill and practice to figure out, nevermind actually doing it and getting it to work. Twilight Sparkle, perhaps – if she had five years and a laboratory, filled with assistants and specialized reference material. Her sister, in the Canterlot Archives, most likely alone, in two days? It'd be madness to even consider the possibility!
All those improbabilities added up to one firm conclusion in Luna’s head. This shouldn’t have been possible to make. Yet here it is. The contradiction made no sense to her sleep-deprived mind, and she sincerely doubted she could possibly have come very far even if her mental condition had been normal. Or anypony else alive.
Then again, the books and equipment lying around the room had probably outlived their creators by a good margin. After all, nopony had, to the best of her extensive knowledge – and that of the archives of research done at the University of Canterlot, lists of which she had committed to memory quite thoroughly – done any dabbling in the ever so useless field of Astral Projection for well over fifteen centuries.
/-/-/-/
I hate waking up. Her eyelids were trying to glue themselves together, and gravity did its best to drag her tired upper body back down again as she raised herself from the pillow and sheets. She resisted the temptation, however. The beds in this stupid castle are uncomfortable, anyway. Taking in her surroundings, her sleepy mind tried to discern exactly what it was that had interrupted her slumber this time. No nightmares. So not that. She slowly turned her head as her eyes moved across the room, landing on a calendar of September 1634. Not likely. They moved on, finding two copies of Machiavelli’s The Prince shoved into a corner. Not unless someone threw them at me. With this in mind, she completed the turn of her head and looked toward the door. Where, of course, she found the perpetrator. Who was having a giggling fit, now that her ears were catching up to reality. Too loud to sleep through, with or without book-throwing, she concluded. I really, really hate waking up.
Kristina sat on her bed, grumbling to herself as she patted her disheveled clothing to some base level of propriety, shuffling her generous mane of golden blonde hair into a sloppy arrangement as she went. She had gotten changed, true, but she had slept twice since then; once right after lunch, after she'd stormed back to her chambers to sulk. She had just woken up from her second nap, not feeling much better for the meager rest it offered her, but she hadn't really had anything else to do with the time between 4 and 6, and these days, napping was a good a pastime as any. The nightmares had started almost three weeks ago. At least, that was what her chambermaids called them.
Ha. Nightmares. I'm not scared of no dreams, or dream-horses, or horse-dreams, or any type of horse for that matter. I love horses! Though stallions are probably better than mares. A warhorse is undeniably the second best mode of transport there is, besides airplanes. And anyone who tells me that's improper - or that I'm too small for anything bigger than a pony - needs a good whipping. Even better, whoever it was that made up the whole "night mare" thing, needs a good whipping. It's a stupid word. I should tell papa that. Then again, they might not be alive. It's a pretty old word, I think. Maybe Axel knows, he's usually good with nerdy stuff like that. If nothing else, he can probably make up a better word.
No, she wasn't scared. Kristina was a princess, and the sole heir to her father's throne. Being scared was for lesser people, be they ignorant peasants (as opposed to informed ones), enemy troops facing down papa's armies (which they seldom did for long) or stupid noblemen (as opposed to sensible ones) who made bad decisions and ended up taking what came for them head first. Or, depending on how the rebels decided to dispose of them, head off.
She was, however, thoroughly annoyed. She hadn't had a single good night's sleep in the past week; every three hours or so she would wake up, sweating and cursing loud enough for her chambermaids to wake up and hover around her anxiously, and bad enough for her ladies-in-waiting to admonish her for her foul language when she finally awoke. While they only spoke German or, in the case of Countess Platzer, English, it wasn’t too hard for them to guess the meaning of the angry gibberish she was yelling in her sleep, despite the absence of her governess Lady Ulrike.
She was very tired, too. Eight year old girls were generally not at all very capable of dealing with severe disruptions in their sleep cycles for any extended period of time. Despite her great prowess in most fields conceivable to her tutors, she was not quite above the limits of her human body. Leastwise, not yet, she thought stubbornly. She was rather certain that there was very few things that could not be overcome in this world – save, possibly, papa and his will, or that of God himself. Admittedly, she had some doubts about the second one.
All this had, ultimately, led her into throwing a quite extreme fit at lunch, earlier today. While there were no Danes in the little clique surrounding her (though she was fairly certain that would change with time, staying at Frederiksborg Castle as she was), she had managed to quite firmly embarrass herself in front of most of the Danish court as well. And while King Christian himself, the sodden drunkard, had been absent from the dining hall, Ulrik had been there. Ulrik, the young hero-prince of the Danes (and her betrothed) who had, using nothing but spar torpedoes, rowboats and his own utter recklessness, managed to sink an ironclad during the defense of Copenhagen. And papa. Who was, well, papa.
She was still visibly sour over her father’s presence, and quite annoyed over the prince’s as well – despite the fact that she still hadn't quite managed to stop thinking of him as the enemy. And even if Christian wasn't here, that doesn't exactly make it any better. Besides, what was he doing instead? Flying. Getting bloody joyrides from his pet Colonel-
She broke off that train of thought. It would not lead to anything productive whatsoever, and she would probably throw another fit the moment the moment she saw the man. Which wouldn't be all too good. Probably. Christian was a strange man. And a sodden bloody drunkard. Even if he's stopped being an enemy.
So Caroline Platzer, the newly raised Imperial Countess of Narnia (a small village west of Lübeck that had been renamed by Kristina herself because she, and all the up-time Americans, thought that “Nütschel” just sounded too ridiculous) had offered Kristina her services. Kristina, after some guffawing and angry muttering to blow some salt off the wounds to her pride (dealings with the countess came at that price, so she was simply working up a surplus in advance), accepted. After which she promptly retreated to her chambers in order to sulk a bit, and nap. No matter how useful the countess could be in staving the nightmares off, she was rather certain that she'd be mad at someone afterward. And Kristina Vasa, Princess of Sweden, was very seldom wrong – especially in matters of being mad at people.
Besides, seeing the Countess stifling yet another fit of laughter at her charge's efforts to make herself presentable five seconds after waking up from yet another restless sleep wasn't really the best way to dampen her anger. Not at all. God, I hate waking up.
/-/-/-/
“So you see,” Celestia continued, “it would seem that this field of research has been abandoned purely due to the fact that none of the three pony species have the aptitude for its usage. The astral-side makeup of an alicorn is, however, similar to the yhmaár described in this document – down to the colors and everything – and thus, quite capable of it. Impressive, wouldn't you agree?”
They were not, as it was, in her sister's chambers, speaking to each other. Not quite. Celestia had listened to her annoyed complaints about pseudoscience and whatnot, and instead of reasoning with her had simply used the spell she had conceived for the purpose. To Luna’s surprise, it had worked. Remarkably well, at that.
They were now inside Luna's mind. Vivid and sprawling, two ponies standing on a ridge of logic, amidst hazy bubbles of memories and thoughts. All fully visible to their eyes. Their “speech” was merely a projection of thoughts, echoed on the “other side” inside her head.
Astral projection had always been a dodgy business, but even in its prime days – if it could be called that – it had never even come close to anything like this. Back then, she had been impressed whenever somepony managed a reasonably logical depiction of how the physical and possible astral parts of the body interacted, or a decent thesis on the correlation between magic and the astral plane; never in her wildest dreams had she thought of something like this. And certainly not from our sister!
That was an oddity in and of itself – Celestia had always spent most of her time on governing, while Luna had tasked herself with long ambassadorial tours to states near and far. Thus, whenever she had been back in Canterlot, Luna had found herself with a great deal of time to spend on her favorite pastime – scientific research and study. While their workloads had been more or less equal, Celestia's had been constant; thus, she had never had the same time to take interest in, nevermind research, any special subject of science or magic. Now, her sister had managed a feat which the wizards of old would've awed at for centuries, and that was far beyond the understanding of the scientists of their current time.
Despite the alien, layered look of the mindscape, she was quite able to grasp the structure of her astral body. She was not quite floating free – although the lack of any semblance of gravity surely made this possible. They were standing on the surface of one of the many layers of her own internal logic that the framework of her astral body was composed of. Beneath them spread wide the still recesses of her subconscious, and at the peaks of the space visible above her was the sputtering cauldron of activity that was her very thoughts. She could reach out, with a part of herself, to that very peak – listen to her own consciousness. She only tried that once, however. It became quite dull rather quickly, and besides, the odd stereo made her uncomfortable.
The rest of the space was an odd spiral of mismatched colors in motion, intensifying the higher up it was; at the mid-level where they were currently standing, the swirling was gentle yet swift, like the meandering flow of a countryside river. The colors seemed to be related to emotional states, but following much more complex rules than that, if what the document said held any value here. Besides, that was an issue much unrelated to her current mission.
Nay, she had rather more immediate worries at hand. For one, to find the source of her nightmares – that was what they were here for, after all. But the more pressing concern to her right now was a different question. Where, when, how had her sister managed to find this “document”? Who had written it, in the first place? And it surely said nothing of alicorns, either. Or any kind of pony, for that matter. Where was it from?
She had read the thing herself, before confronting her sister and being bounced off to this imaginary realm inside her head. It was a fragment, to be sure, and the thought of whoever had written it must have been in quite a fragmented state as well. It read like the mental journal of some half-mad scientist who had been trapped in a dark room for years. Or on the moon, came a whisper from somewhere. Dark, muddy bubbles whirled up from below, swiftly traversing to the peaks of her consciousness – and a spiral of colorful shapes dropped down past her, sinking like a school of fish, swimming downward.
There was no name on it anywhere, either. The closest it came was a number of references to one “E. E.”, and she was fairly certain that was someone other than the author. It was disconcerting.
So, she asked. “Sister,” she called as she drifted downward through the layers, to meet Celestia on the little platform she was standing on. “We must wonder of the circumstances that placed this document in thy possession. Fairly certain, We were, that no research even close to this magnitude of progress had been done before Our Incident, and the university archives tell of none whatsoever since then. Tell Us, sister – how didst thou acquire it?”
Celestia pawed at the invisible ground with her hoof, and looked upward, as if trying to remember. “It was some 400 years ago, I believe. I was returning from the late court one night, and when I entered the private parts of the palace I got this... feeling. Tugging me. I just opened the door right next to me – it was a storage room for cleaning equipment, quite recently built. And yet, one part of the floor was covered in dust. A perfect circle. That was the shape of the original document, as well; I reprinted it once I finished translating it. It was a calm midwinter when I found it, so there was not particularly much to do for a month or two – but soon I had to put the project on hold. The text took me well over a year to understand, and even now there are some discrepancies. It is mainly the letters themselves – it was written phonetically, in a strange script – the language is rather understandable, with some discrepancies. The workings of this spell was not included in the text, but there was a lot of references to its function and principles; enough that I could construct a working version of it some ten years later. It took me a lot of time...”
Celestia went on about the research she had done through the course of four centuries, sparse trial and error and overbearing amounts of reasoning for every step forward she made. But Luna had gotten what she had asked for. A feeling. And a mysterious circular document, covered by a pile of dust. In a newly built cleaning room. Most every alarm bell in her mind was going off at this point – she knew a plot when she saw one, and this had all the signs of an ambitious noble’s machinations.
There wasn't much she could do about it, however. Hardly would any harm come to her from this, and hardly would there be much use for the spell outside this peculiar opportunity. Unless Luna got her sister to teach it to her. And Luna really, really wanted to learn the history of how the various cadet branches and noble houses of the realm came to be. With a very explicit first-hand account of all the events, and not a single fleshy detail left out. Her face reddened slightly, but that was more from the fact that the ‘sky’ was burning bright crimson, rather than any amount color on her projection’s face. That was a moot point, however, seeing as what she’d just done was the mental equivalent of a full-body blush.
She shook her head, dismissing the thought. No, there wouldn't be much use of this spell later, and certainly few dangerous ones – even if it got out to common unicorns for use. It mattered little if its procurement was the result of some unicorn plot four centuries ago or not; better to now focus on the matter at hand, so she finally could get some decent sleep.
“We understand,” she said out loud. “Now that We have a better grasp of the situation, we should make effort to investigate Our, hrm, nightmare problem. Shall we?” With a look at Celestia, she glided down further into the subconscious parts of the astral body. Since she was actually manipulating her own awareness of her mental states in doing so, an uncomfortable sensation slowly crept up the limbs of her projected body and up into her head; before proceeding to spread throughout the mindscape as winding carpets of murky green thread. The sinking feeling was strange, to be sure, but there were worse things than feelings to be worrying about now. Besides, she would be running out of caffeine soon enough – and stars help her, if she managed to fall asleep while still inside her own mind. If nothing else, Celestia would be absolutely insufferable for at least a decade afterward.
-/-/-/-/
“So, about the nightmares. Do you remember them? What are they about?”
Kristina had to admit - Caroline Platzer had some experience in the field of providing counsel. She had been one of those providing the service to the fresh army recruits down in Magdeburg, many of whom had quite terrible mental scars from the decade-and-a-half of insane war that had swept though the Germanies. Additionally there were those who had gotten the close end of the accidents that the booming industrial towns of the USE, and in particular its capital Magdeburg, produced from time to time - such as Thorsten Engler, her betrothed. She didn't want to admit it, but Caroline supposedly knew quite well what she was doing, and seemed well understood with the workings of the mind. The mind of her patients. She didn't want to be a patient. Caroline had some other word for it in English, true, but the meaning was still the same to Kristina. So she would sulk. Later. Now, though, was a time for her to get rid of this annoying sleep-deprivation. Quite well past time, even. So she blew a little raspberry before sliding off her bedside and, in the fashion of worried grown-ups, started pacing about the room.
“I...remember most of them, yes, but patchily. It's hard to make any sense of it – though I suppose that's rather natural, nightmares and all, no?” She cleared her throat and shook her head a bit – she was becoming a wee bit dozy. Later! she admonished her tired mind, and blinked a few times before continuing. “I think it's some sort of 'future me' that I'm seeing, though. I'm...older. Taller. And queen, I think. But there is so much chaos around me, and every time I sleep I see someone I know...die. Killed, usually. Once mama and papa fell off a cliff riding a horse. The same horse. Which doesn't make sense, there's no horse that big. Or at least, papa wouldn't ride it like that. I think. It was a dream, though, and dream-horses probably work a bit different. But anyway. It almost always ends, for some odd reason, with me stabbing someone to death, or getting stabbed to death, or both. Usually it's Axel, or Christian, or even that hothead Torstensson. Once it ended with all four of us stabbing each other. Another time, I even took an axe to my head!” The way she was recalling this so clearly – so many variations of horrible deaths, ranging from frighteningly realistic to utterly silly – made her feel somewhat detached. Her voice kept its usual, cheery tone despite the murkiness of the subject.
Caroline Platzer, for her part, had never once encountered a child (or anyone else for that matter) who made cheerful remarks about getting axe-murdered in her dreams. Or anything to that effect. She was of course well aware of the princess' prodigal intelligence, true, but she hadn’t expected Kristina to be this... jaded on the subject of dreams. Cynical, even. Impressive girl, she thought briefly. You'd think at least she'd have a concept of fear worth speaking of, but I suppose that's what you get for being the kid of that crazy goddam emperor of ours. Bloody madman probably up and wrote it out of his DNA or something! She was certainly an interesting girl, even as a patient. Of course, the princess wouldn't like that term one bit. She had yet refrained from using it to refer to her directly, but sooner or later it'd pop up. In her journals, if nothing else.
Despite the many irregularities of the situation, there was little else than she could do than keep up her usual counseling regime. “And? Where do you suppose these dreams could spring from? As you might know, dreams are generally accepted to stem from various parts of our memory, old and new. Normally, recurring nightmares are a result of some sort of trauma, but it may also be caused by a subconscious recollection of old events triggered by something current.” It could also be an entirely unrelated figment of your imagination that's running amok for no particular reason, which I can do nothing at all about – which is probably the most likely explanation what with you being A: a kid, and B: way too smart for your own good, her inner voice added, but she had a distinct feeling that the princess wouldn't take kindly to information of that kind. Kristina was quite capable of royal temper tantrums – a trait that certainly ran in the family. She nurtured a faint hope that insane cavalry charges did not, for the sake of the girl's own safety, but it was a faint one at best, what with her combined love of all things war, horse, warhorse or related. Very, very faint indeed.
The rest of her hopes – most of all those related to her being able to solve this nightmare problem in any logical way – were also quite quickly being ground into dust. She was almost so busy being confounded by the situation that the princess' surprised exclamation didn't register in her brain. Almost. But, then again, it was sort of hard to miss.
“Whooah.”
Caroline looked up. Kristina had stopped pacing, and was half-sitting on the headboard. The tone in her voice had sounded a bit too much like that of a crack addict describing his first high for her to be comfortable with it. And while the princess certainly wasn't smoking any kind of narcotic substance at the moment, her eyes did have the same sort of glassy look to them as is commonly associated with a far-gone pothead.
Caroline's reaction to this was a rather subdued widening of her eyes, a slight opening of her mouth, and a quite oppressive feeling of being absolutely fucked over.
Once this moment of paralyzed despair had passed over into frantic panic, she stumbled to her feet. “What's happening, Kristina?” Her voice was a bit too shrill than she would've liked – she did have professional image to keep up – but there was scarce little territory left for such thoughts in her mind right now, most of it being occupied by the forces of Panic and Despair, with the republic of DO SOMETHING staunchly holding onto its last forts by any means available.
“Uh. I'm having a nightmare, I think. Except I am still awake. How does that work? And where are you? I can't see anything. Or, well, I can. But it's mostly blood and gore and a train, and I don't think any of that would be able to get here without making any noise. Besides, I can still feel the chair. Bed. Whatever it is I'm sitting on. Wow, this is really weird. It feels like I'm- hey, what was that sound?”
The very same question was going through Caroline's head as well, but at the moment it was a far subordinate of the question Caroline had managed to leave unspoken. Namely:
Oh god, why is the princess turning into a rainbow?
It was quite a sight, really – chromatic bands of light were playing across the princess' body, almost like a showing of the famous aurora borealis. Except it was on her skin, not safely tucked away on the night sky some thirty thousand feet above them. If not for the panic, she would most definitely have awed at the sight of it. At the moment, however, panic had prevalence. So she did what most sensible people did in a panic: run for help.
“Listen, Kristina. Stay where you are. I'll go get someone who can help us with this. Don't go anywhere, and I'll be back in a minute. Okay?” Not waiting for a response, she did a swift 180 and strode over to the door, opened it, and stepped outside, forcing it shut with a firm hand.
Then, she started running for her patient's father, while loudly cursing whoever thought it would be a good idea to have the two rooms separated by almost half a mile of palace corridors.
-/-/-/-/
Things were not going as planned for Luna.
They had been making some progress in discerning the source of her nightmares, drifting up and down through the various levels of her subconscious mindscape. Some conspicuous black clots of mind-matter (or whatever they were supposed to be made out of) were floating around in a loose formation, swirling slowly about themselves in a little whirlwind-like shape as they roved the mindscape. Analyzing them and their surrounding area, she had indeed discerned that they ought to be the source of the nightmares. Images and sounds, vivid as yesterday's memories and just as horrific as the dreams that had been haunting her sleep, were left as clear, dark bubbles in their wake as they made their progress across the inside of her head. It was strange to watch; a foreign force, exerting its power to manipulate her very mind. Strange, disconcerting, and frighteningly familiar. “What could possibly have such power?” she had asked Celestia, dreading the obvious answers to that question. Her sister had no response to offer, and they had split up to get to the task of expediting its removal.
She’d done a few bouts of probing the mysterious darkness with magic, thoughts and what else she could come up with that wouldn't cause her to come into actual ‘contact’ with the substance. Without luck. So, she decided to throw caution off and down the cliff face, and – squinting her eyes somewhat – plunged her hoof into it.
As one might imagine, that wasn't exactly Luna's brightest idea ever.
The darkness was slimy and thick, and quite promptly turned to a massive orb of chromatic goo. Then, it exploded, enveloping her in its cold, wet grasp. A spray of color enveloped her eyesight for a moment, before she felt a frighteningly familiar sensation: that of being whisked off to somewhere far, far off.
A few moments later, she touched down hard. She felt her forehooves dig several inches into the ground from the force of her landing, and she struggled to keep her balance for a few moments before she could get her hindlegs in their proper place. At first all she could see was a vivid mass of color, but the world around her gradually became visible as the blinding rainbow sludge evaporated. With a single look, she concluded one thing – which, at least, put to rest her fears that she had somehow managed to recreate her own banishment. This was most definitely not the moon.
On the other hand, she was quite certain that there was no physical place that could ever sustain this much breaking of its natural laws and systems. The hill she was standing on was covered in purple grass, and small isles of detached rocks and dirt hovered in the air. There was no horizon in sight; instead, the landscape curved upward as she followed the lines of the earth in the distance A swift look to the sky confirmed that there was no sky in place at all, merely – she had to strain her eyes a bit – more oddly colored vegetation and various natural formations in decidedly unnatural formation, perched far, far above her in effortless defiance of gravity, hanging upside-down as they were. From her perspective, at least. And in the middle of it all, the obvious giveaway. She drew a faint breath, feeling her blood rush to her head in fear.
Candy cotton clouds, hovering pink in the approximate middle point between the up-ground and down-ground. Stars, confound that creature and his misdirecting grip on reality, she cursed silently.
That made her sit down on her haunches and think for a moment. So, what does this mean? Are We in his, mindscape? Astral whatnot? She shuddered at the implications of this – the inside of a chaos god's mind was most definitely not someplace that she'd rate as likely to have a therapeutic effect on her sleeping troubles. Quite the opposite. And besides, where is he? What will he do when he-
“Well, well. If it isn't, a, visitor to my humble, abode. The second in such a short time, even. Tell me, dear, has the Directional Monopoly board started packing “Go Visit Jail” cards in multum besides the usual decks, now, or am I due for my third turn already? Indulge me, for I am ever, so, blandly, distastefully, explicitly bored.”
Luna stood up and brandished her horn in the direction of the voice. Which was everywhere at once, of course, on par with the draconequus' normal fashion. “Discord,” she uttered silently.
In the distance – no, on the very wall of the space she was, an enormous eye opened. An eye turned inside-out, looking backwards. At her. His taste really is utterly macabre, she mused. A second later, the comical yet fearsome creature materialized with a zoom in front of her. “Why, now! I dare say we have a little reunion of the perished here, miss Moon. And here I thought dear Celly-welly would never dare touch her little precious sister again for fear she would break.” Discord sputtered a laugh, flopping over on his back in the air, letting a couch materialize underneath his twisting form. “And yet here you are again, in the very same spot as Yours Truly. What did you do this time, hm? Experiment on somepony you shouldn't have, perhaps?”
As the seconds went by, the laugh became a smile that crept downward as Discord's thoughts began to collect themselves into something resembling logic. “Speaking of experimenting, I am fairly certain that last time I checked you ponies hadn't managed to figure out that the Directional even existed. At least, not beyond the notion of 'where we send the big baddies to rot'. Certainly not enough to navigate it with any accuracy. So how is it that you, of all ponies, are here? Randomly being banished here is an utter impossibility. Simply isn't done, doesn't work that way, the passageways being as they are.” Luna, stunned at Discord's words and sudden appearance as she was, simply gaped. Discord, being Discord, stepped forward, claw raised. And poked her flank. “I asked you a question, loony. How. Are. You. Here.”
Luna, now instead stunned at her old nemesis' curious activity, reacted meagerly. She blinked, once per poke. Discord kept poking. And poking. Suddenly a gleeful smile entered his mien, and with his paw – conveniently enlarged for the purpose – he took hold of her midsection and squeezed.
The resulting tickling battle (as decidedly one-sided as it was) went on for at least ten minutes. Somewhere amidst all the frantic laughter and halfhearted attempts to fight off the appendages administering the offense, Luna started babbling incoherently about the nightmares, and how she'd gotten here. At least, it would've been incomprehensible to her, but apparently Discord made enough sense out of it to suddenly cease his attacks when she mentioned astral space. When, gasping and babbling a bit further, she mentioned the strange E.E from the document, Discord's eyebrows dismounted from his face and climbed a pair of stairs upward. It looked absolutely silly, and Luna had another fit of giggles. It was cut very short when he promptly dropped her on the ground, however, giving her his best interrogation stare. “So you have discovered the Directional, after all. With outside influence, even. Oh, you ponies. I mean, I could hold a long, boring speech now on how you're breaking the rules, being goddesses and all, but, alas, spirit of chaos and disharmony here, don't exactly give those much thrift.” He scratched his goatee with a claw, continuing. “But what I most definitely don't get, is what it is that caused the initial breakthrough. Something like that doesn't simply pop up. Besides, the other one mentioned nightmares too, so it's probably part of the same occurrence. But how? Breakthroughs take a lot more sheer force than either of you ponies could manage, and frankly, you definitely don't have magic for it either, as it is. So how...?” His eyebrows climbed back down into a bored frown again, fixating his eyes to hers again. Without much reason, seemingly, monologuing as he was. “Though I do suppose it could be another of those garbage-tossers again. Or a poohoo. Or either of the interdirectionally advanced conglomerates currently in conceptual probability. Oh, Equestria, why don't you ever get to have any real fun? Always so, very, boring.” He blew a raspberry, and sat down in the air, sulking – drinking from a summoned candy cloud with a glassy straw.
Luna hadn't caught much of what he'd said. She was much used to holding monologues of her own, but to actually listen to one – and even more, one from someone like Discord, what with the utterly nonsensical terms he was using all the time – and comprehend it to any degree was utterly impossible. But one term she had caught, and remembered from the very first words the draconequus had uttered as she had come here.
“We heard you say, another one? A second visitor? Here?”
Discord raised an eyebrow at her words, then nonchalantly started sharpening his talons with a muffin-shaped grindstone, spinning in the air in an impossible orbit that kept its surface level. “Why, certainly. Another princess, in fact. She was going the other way, though. Might end up in your place, though the chances of that are utterly dismally small. Which, of course, by the way directionality works, means that it's practically guaranteed she will. And by the same ill logic, you should probably be ending up in hers. She was quite bouncy, I give. Not quite as squeezable as you, I suppose. Speaking of which, it does seem like it's time for you to go, don't you think?”
So it seemed. A swirl of dark pearls were swirling around her body – astral or physical, she wasn't too sure at this point, really – and again the chromatic spiel ravaged her eyesight with its seizure-inducing light-and-goo.
This was not her day.
-/-/-/-/
As it was, Discord did not manage to hit home with either of his guesses, however well informed they were. Oh, the initial breakthrough on one end of the passageway he was right about, at least partly, but the incident currently in motion was in fact almost nothing but a well-mismanaged spillover from prison breaks, general mayhem and combat that had – unwittingly to its actors – flung off quite large pieces of conceptual momentum into the interdirectional, all compressed into a single timeframe's worth of data. Or, as researchers of the subject called it, a freak accident / your average day at work (yes, they were hypocrites, it was in the job description).
However, none of it would have ever taken place, had not the initial breakthroughs been in place, and been as firmly so as they were. As one scientist of the Great and Bountiful Fourth Human Empire described it in a frustrated letter to his colleagues:
Walls are built for a reason, and that's to keep things from passing through. If they take a beating, they can be repaired – and though that might take a while, it'll still be functional in the meantime. When broken down, on the other hand, walls provide absolutely no protection whatsoever – and walls are quite notorious for taking a long time to build, not to mention rebuild. And if you have a wall that's supposed to hold for the lifetime of any given worldline's entire chron – well, you get the picture.
His colleagues had, interestingly, gotten the note, and promptly fired him for explaining it in a way they could understand. Hypocrites, indeed. That was their job, after all.
-/-/-/-/
His royal majesty the Emperor-High King of the Swedes, Goths, Vandals, Finns, Lapps, and the assorted motley of Germans under his banners, was not, alas, to be found in his chambers. Gustavus Adolphus Vasa was in the throne room, meeting with the recently flown in Prime Minister, among other notables. Thankfully, the rooms were next to each other, so Caroline Platzer was spared another bout of Very Running. Panting heavily from exertion, she bashed open the massive double doors with a body slam – thus utterly ruining any semblance of propriety her dress might've had until now. This was the least of her concerns now, however, what with the whole rainbows thing, alongside the fact that she had just barged into the presence of what amounted to pretty much northern Europe's entire chain of command. And they were all giving her the exact same look; that half-offended, half-incredulous stare that more important people gave other, less important people when they were doing something they most definitely shouldn't and certainly weren't authorized to.
Mike Stearns, prime minister of the United States of Europe, threw the first line, unshakable as he was. “What the hell are you all worked up for?” A general mumble of agreement and confused annoyance at the situation (and her presence) rose through the small crowd gathered around the Big Old Stone Table – which for once actually was a big old stone table, candles and everything. Caroline, having absolutely no idea what else to do, decided she had to act fast. And promptly started babbling. “It's- princess Kristina. She's- I don't know what's happening. She's- got nightmares and I'm trying to fix and- she's turning into, literally turning into a goddam rainbow and I don't know what-”
It took a few minutes of explaining what all the fuss was about to guards, generals, admiral Simpson, Stearns, and most importantly Gustavus himself, before she got her point across. At which moment two of the biggest shots in Europe simultaneously decided to start very running – and Caroline once again had to struggle to keep up her pace.
Gustavus was, despite his massive size, very well-conditioned indeed, King of War and what else. Stearns had been a coal miner up-time and, before that, a goddam pro boxer, before his entry into down-time politicking. Caroline, while certainly no sloth herself, was a social servant, now and then. No part of that line of work included any sort of physical training – possibly apart from her recent efforts to keep up with the princess' escapades. And the run was long. She fell behind, whimpering slightly as her eyes for the first time really processed the sight of the two absolute authorities way above her taking fancy-carpeted palace corridor corners like dragracing bikers, skidding and all. How they managed that with their fashion of boots, she had no idea.
She was probably a minute or so behind when she finally arrived at the scene of the crime. And alas, she had once again been much too late to be able to get anything done. Gustavus and Stearns were standing in the doorway to Kristina's chambers like a wall of flesh, and it took much prodding and poking and polite nudging before they noticed her presence. And when they did, the King threw her a gaze that she most definitely did not want to understand the meaning of.
Gustavus Adolphus blew his mustaches. “You said my daughter had a... nightmare problem.” By now, Stearns had turned around to look at her as well, mouthing some equivalent of you have got to be fucking kidding me at her. “Barring this being a very clever ruse from your part, I do think I have to either find myself out of somebody else's nightmare, or, by god, start up a bloody witch process right here and now.” Her Prime Minister summed up the situation at hand quite perfectly, as he stepped to the side and pointed at the inside of the room. “What the hell is that thing!?”
It was horse-shaped. It was dark blue. Its mane was not a mane, it was a flowing bloody night sky, stars and all. It was royally dressed up, crown and all. It had a crescent moon emblazoned on its flank. And going by what she knew of horses – and plain old gut feeling – it was most definitely not a stallion. A horse. A dark horse. That felt wrong. She tried again. A horse. A mare. A night mare. She got the joke, and wondered who the hell was responsible for the existence of such terrible humor. “Who ordered this!?” she cried out in exasperation, before collapsing into a sobbing heap on the velvet floor. This was not her fucking day. Not at all.
