Welcome To My Life
Chapter 5: Night-Mare
Stalwart Bastion trudged through the snow on his favourite path between the schoolhouse and his treehome library. The fact that it was the shortest route played heavily into his evaluation. In fact, not many other factors were ever considered. His travels were dominated by thought, deep, silent, and solitary. Since departing from Ground Zero just a minute before, he had already been contemplating a rather important and weighty matter.
Most nights for about the last 3 months, he had had the same recurring dream. Depending on the individual and the dream, this could prove to be a very desirable circumstance. But for Bastion, it was far from it.
This dream ran deep into the territory of nightmares, mixing terror with loneliness, seasoned with helpless voids and topped with insanity. The world around him consisted of a miasm of twisting fogs and shadows of varying dark colours including purples, blues, blacks, and brown. The occasional flash of brighter reds and yellows would normally appear to be a comforting change, but something about them glowed of fear and anger. Although the expanse seemed endless, it also crushed in on him eliciting panic in and of itself.
But he was never alone. At his side was his mother, Twilight. She was worn and dirty, and yet younger. Her form was arched, poised for confrontation and horn glaring ferociously. What confused him the most was that he was the same height as she. She never noticed him; rather her attention was focused directly in front of them.
This is when the fear gripped him in earnest. A dark, winged shadow towered over them. It looked far away, and yet felt as if it was all around them, threatening to smother the life from them with so much as a thought. But the shadow was not all dark, for in the center of a horned head was a pair of burning red eyes. Bastion collapsed under its gaze as it searched his soul, stripping his grasp of reality and his sense of clarity from his very being as a predator tears raw meat from the bones of its prey.
Unable to stand, he would raise his head toward Twilight and cry for help. But at this point, she was much smaller than he and facing him, her vicious expression unchanged. He then would realize that he, too, had become a form of shade, sporting horns, bat-like wings, and radiating dark light; a dragon of darkness. His very twisted form oozed with evil and dripped with death. He would raise a clawed hand to block the increasing light from his mother’s burning horn just as she fired a massive ray of searing power. If the eyes' gaze felt like the rending of skin from bone, this was more alikened to the removal of bones from the body by the use of surgically implanted electric barbed wire.
Under normal circumstances, this is usually when he would awaken drenched in sweat, mouth wrenched open in a voiceless scream. Some nights he would have to run to the bathroom to vomit once he had recovered his bearings. But last week something had changed.
As he had lifted his claws, the light from behind it had died out and was replaced by a light bluish glow. Lowering his appendage, which had returned to the likeness of a hoof, he looked at the source; a tall pony of darkest blue stood over him, sporting large wings, a pointed horn, and a cosmically studded mane and tail which undulated as if caressed by a gentle, intangible wind.
He recognized her as the Mare of the Night, Princess Luna. Around her, the blue radiance subsided, and Bastion noticed that his surroundings had become that of Ponyville at night, silent and comfortable.
Relieved that he had not completed the cycle of the dream and still unable to get up, Bastion lay in the road and sobbed. Princess Luna then knelt down at his side, placing a comforting wing over him.
“Oh, you poor little colt,” Luna cooed softly as she rubbed her muzzle on his neck. “There is no need for your tears; you are safe now. I am here to protect you.”
Bastion sniffled wetly and viewed her with overflowing eyes. “You… you have no idea what you just saved me from… it hurts…it hurts me so much!”
“I saw this very dream yesterday as I scanned the kingdom for bad dreams. I came to you tonight as soon as I could. Did you know most ponies have dozens of dreams every night?”
Bastion sniffed again, shaking his head as he shifted his small frame to lean on her warm side, snuggling closer to his savior and basking in the safety.
Luna tucked her wing in tighter around him. “Well it’s true. Except for you; you only had one dream that whole night. It must be the scariest dream I have seen in a long time.”
No longer needing to sniff, and his eyes well on their way to being dry, he laid his head on her foreleg, closing his eyes in exhaustion although he knew he was still in a dream.
“Over the years,” she began, “I have taken up the art of dream interpretation. Would you like me to try to interpret your dream, little one?”
“Yes please, Princess Luna.”
“Recurring dreams of this clarity have often, in the past, been very important in the discovery of great things, either of something, or of oneself. But I shall start at the beginning. First off, you are frightened of something or someone of great power or importance of your life. This same one, through his watchful gaze, will help you gain great power or influence of your own and unlock your hidden potential, which in itself scares you. But the one beside you, Twilight Sparkle, is also someone you hold to, and she neither approves of the one in front of you, or of what you become because of him. She’s the principal at your school, isn’t she?”
Bastion absorbed the information and totally did not even hear the question, wondering to himself who this powerful being was that frightened him. And why would his mother disprove of whatever it was that he became?
His eyes opened wide. His mother was using a spell to hide his other form! She did not approve of it, and therefore the powerful stranger must be the one who will teach him to control it! As of yet, it only arose when wholly unbidden during conflict and flared tempers, wedging its way through the cracks in a seemingly seamless spell woven by his mother. Her controlling of his power was metaphorically tearing him apart!
Luna noticed the sudden jerk and sharp inhalation of realization in the young colt. She smiled. “What is it? Did you solve the mystery?”
Bastion looked up at her with a happy and determined grin. He nodded his head confidently. “I think I did! Er, part of it at least. Thank you, Princess Luna!”
“Please,” she said as she got up gracefully, “call me Luna, at least in the confines of your dream, that is. And you are?”
“Bastion, Stalwart Bastion. But everypony calls me Bastion.”
“Well Bastion,” Luna said as she took off into the dreamy night air, “I am glad to have met you. And do not fear, I shall watch your dreams more carefully in the future.”
She turned back to him, hovering about two dozen feet in the air. “My advice: seek your hidden potential, and do not be afraid of it. But be wary; ever be the master of yourself, lest it consume you.”
And that’s where the dream had whited out. During the last week, he had had dreams that began the same way, but he had gained control of both his fears and his mobility, and run to the side of the darkened being, who seemed to grow lighter, smaller, and overall less scary that it ever had been. Once or twice, he had caught a glimpse of a star-studded mane in the distance, deep in the surrounding fogs, but never more. It made him smile.
Before bed each night, he would try to focus, attempting to conjure up the stowed power within him. Twice he had caught a fleeting tail of the draconic energies. The first time it had scared him when his hoof flashed into a clawed hand, and he had let go almost instantly. That had been enough for one night. The second time had been last night. His claw had not changed, but rather his wings. They had grown somewhat, and he had flown for the first time there in his downstairs room. He had bumped a table over and dented the floor, but because his room had been the den of a certain growing dragon before he had moved away, dents and scratches were not uncommon throughout the room.
The thought of Spike came into his mind. He had always liked Spike, but now he was gone; moved away one day, travelling to be with other dragons beyond the Everfree Forest. Or in the forest, Spike had never been clear, just saying that some sort of dragonsense had a hold of him, and he had to follow.
“Bastion! Wait up!”
Instinctively, Bastion dove for the alley behind the old Carousel Boutique. There was nothing in the alley other than snow, as the store had not seen use since Rarity’s divorce a few years ago.
The snow in the alley was piled high. So high, in fact, that when he had leapt in, he had gotten stuck in the drift, his red tail and purple posterior hanging in the street.
Unsure of who was coming, he waggled his legs and flicked his tail in a pitiful defense. As if to prove its uselessness, a set of teeth grasped the end of his tail and yanked him free of the cold, dark prison. Tumbling out into the light, he became tangled with the small form of his pursuer turned rescuer.
Opening his eyes, he recognized Arcana’s red coat and light blue and white mane immediately. But something was different about her. They extricated themselves from each other with some small difficulty. Dusting himself off, he noticed she was looking at him and giggling. She pointed at his mane. Looking up, Bastion caught a glimpse of blue sticking out.
“Mind if I have my glasses back?”