Red Wood kept falling in his dream, it had started with him falling from his dream bed, but now it was as if there was no floor to hit. Above him his bed was stretching away from him against a field of empty dark. Terror locked his mind, he couldn't even think. A monster had replaced his Gentle Breeze, and it was watching him fall away. The dark blue Alicorn peered over the bedside at Red Wood with a cool concerned expression, before flaring her wings and flying after the falling unicorn. Red Wood flailed, kicked, bucked and twisted, but he couldn't do anything to stop the approaching monster. His mind unhinged could only manage one shaking thought, “Nightmare Moon!”
In a moment she had caught him, as her hoofs encircled his barrow, he suddenly stopped falling. It wasn't like he had landed, no, the transition from falling, to standing on solid ground was instantaneous and jarring. Both Red Wood and the Alicorn in front of him was standing on a dark dimly lit plane of black grass, the full moon shining brightly over the Alicorn’s shoulder. Red Wood swayed as he regained his balance, then drawn by an instinct deep in the hearts of all ponies, he fell to the ground, covering his head and shaking in respectful fear.
For a second the Alicorn seemed taken aback, then with a roll of her eyes and an angry stomp of her hoofs she spoke in a loud and frustrated tone. “Oh come on!” then taking a calming breath she continued in a quieter voice, “Come my faithful subject, thy fear is unfounded, We have been free of the evil taint of Nightmare Moon for two years now, certainly your home village is not so isolated as to have not heard of our return.”
Red Wood looked up, and saw the stern look on the Princesses face slowly morph into a shy smile. “Princess … Luna?” he asked in a shaky voice.
“Yes indeed our good gentile colt. It is we ahh?, yes, I mean I, excused me. I fall back to the old ways of royal speech when upset. Come stand with me, I do not wish to scare you out of this dream before we can converse.”
It took a moment for Red Wood to find his legs but then slowly stood, uncertain how a simple craftpony as himself should talk to a princess. “Dream” he asked, “This is a dream?”
Luna nodded with a bit of a proud smile, “Yes, we are in the space of dreams now, it is, or was, one of my special talents, a right and privilege of my office, to visit other ponies in their dreams to aid and guide them. It was a skill I used frequently before my fall to evil, lost then and now I'm slowly recovering the art. I used to use this skill to seek out and aid fillies and colts troubled by nightmares and will do so again when my power waxes, but for tonight I’m using this skill to reach out just to you.”
“But why?” Red Wood asked, “What is going on, and why me?”
Luna sighed, “I had not yet returned when the events known as the 'Coltsdale tragedy’ occurred. New information has brought this sad event back to the attention of the court and my sister has informed me of all they she had learned from the initial investigation. The terrible things that happened that night, where but the surface effects of a much deeper evil, one that my sister has attempted to suppress knowledge of.”
“Suppress? I don’t understand. Was the monster that …” Red Woods voice failed him.
“We have limited time, I've asked the Pegasus guards to fly through the night to reach you, and they should arrive in about three hours. You will need to awaken soon and pack.” Luna looked side to side as if concerned she said something wrong.
“Please I know there were things hidden from me ten year ago, you have to tell me the truth, I have to know!” Red Wood begged.
Luna sighed, “I can’t tell you everything, we wouldn't have time, even if I had all night. No, but understand this, the beast that attacked your home, was but the pet of a cult, a group dedicated only to their own betterment and glorification. They call themselves the Followers of the Stone Heart, my sister and I have dealt with them before, a most unpleasant group that has caused much evil though the land for more than a thousand years.”
Red Wood angrily asked, “Why would some random cult attack my family? We have nothing they could want! If they've been around so long, why haven’t you princesses stopped them?”
Luna shook her head, her star filled mane sparking with streaking meteors in her anger. “No this cult is different than other evils we have fought. Evils like King Sombra and Discord are single targets, you can fight them, beat them, but this cult is based around a book, a book that has been copied many times and hides in plain sight under different titles. We stop a group of cultists in one place and time, then the evil just re-sprouts elsewhere. Its a battle we will probably never truly win, we can only mitigate, suppress and defend ourselves when they resurface and show their true nature.”
Red Wood couldn't understand this, “A Book? A book killed my wife!”
“Books can have greater power than a army. This book is partly a spell book, but its mostly a treaty on philosophy. The original authors probably didn't mean any evil, but their ideas were seductive, sounded to the unlearned as reasonable and are full of heartfelt anger and terrible beauty. Ponies who read this book and fall victim to its seduction, find in its pages justification for anger, pettiness, greed and find excuses to engage in the most horrendous crimes against their fellow ponies. In its pages are the most dangerous ideas about property, slavery and the ‘proper place’ for the inferior tribes.”
“What ponies would believe that! That is just evil!”
“Too many ponies can fall into that trap, you think the great Windigo war of the classical age was the only times the three tribes have fought? Harmony between the tribes is a continuous struggle. To make it worse, the book also contains some of the most dangerous and blackest magic spells, and not all of them are limited to unicorns. It describes potions and magic tokens that all three tribes can use. It was one of these spells that led them to your house. We think, we hope, in error but that is cold comfort.”
Red Wood just stood there, some cult had killed his wife? He could barely comprehend that, but was Luna saying they did it, BY MISTAKE! It was too much to take, his anger was boiling in ways that threatened to knock him out of this dream, or nightmare.
Luna sighed, “We’re not sure, only a few days ago, my sister decided to forward the remains that had been recovered to her student, Twilight Sparkle, in hope her growing magic skills would find a new insight on what carvings meant.”
Red Wood had no idea what Luna was talking about, “Carvings? What carvings?” He started to pace in a circle around the Alicorn, unable to keep his body still any longer.
“Did you not see them, they were etched deep into Gentle Breeze’s horn, I thought you…”
“HORN!” Red Wood interrupted the Night Princess. “They found her Horn?! They never said what they found. Was she still alive when it was, oh goddesses! Please did they cut it off why she was able to feel it!” Even imagining the pain of his precious Gentle Breeze made him fall to his hunches shivering. To a unicorn, their horn was so much a part of them, you could gouge out their eyes, rip off their limbs, stab them a hundred times, and that all would be less painful than having their horn cut off. It was too much to think about, Red Wood was back on the ground, hoofs over his head shivering.
Luna seemed surprised “You didn't know? I so sorry! I did not mean to be the bearer of such news.” Then Luna took a breath, she had gone this far, she owed it to Red Wood to finish. “Twilight Sparkle was able to detect the remains of a series of divination spells, some cast before they had the horn, and other cast with it. The spells seem to have revealed to the cult a danger to them, one that has to do with you or your family. They apparently attacked your wife both to secure her horn to clarify the spell, and to remove the perceived threat. In other words, the cult attacked your house because they were paranoid about threat they didn't even understand. But such is a hallmark of this cult, they are violent and dangerous.”
“It been ten years, why are you warning me now?”
“Ten years ago, my sister was still the sole ruler of the land and her resources where thin, when there were no further attacks near Coltsdale she judged that the danger had passed. It was only chance that she asked her student to review the old evidence. Twilight Sparkle is very skilled in her specialty, in some ways she exceeds my sister and I in this matter, she of course would not stoop as low as the cultists and attempt to recast such an evil spell, but she had her own powers to draw on. Twilight Sparkle cast her own version of the divination spell, and …” Luna sudden stopped talking, she looked over her shoulder at the dreamscapes full moon. Another light started glowing from the adjacent horizon. Rapidly an orange yellow globe rose up and split the sky, half day and half night.
“Sister?” Luna asked the light, clearly confused.
Red Wood eyes followed Luna’s to stare at the dreamscape sun, out the light flew Celestia. The ageless Alicorn panted as if she had raced from a great distance. “Luna! Red Wood! You have to wake now! Twilight and I triangulated the power surge, our first measurement was wrong! They aren't fifty miles outside of Coltsdale as we believed, they are already across the border. There’s no way the guards will arrive in time! Red Wood wake and flee! wake and flee for your life!”