It had been exactly two days, seven hours, thirteen minutes, and nineteen seconds since they had arrived in Equestria.
But who was doing the counting?
Ty sighed, rolling over on his bed. It had been a long and exhausting day, full of reading, reading, a stupidly boring break,and more reading.
The only entertaining part had been watching Ant and Jason fight each other, and even then, it was kind of insane.
It was weird watching Ant lose control like that. Normally, he seemed like such a rational, calm, mature guy. But he guessed that everyone had their limits.
Speaking of which, I wonder what Jason did to make Ant ticked off at him like that, Ty thought, shoving his head under his pillow. It was probably something I didn't know about. Which I don't know about a lot of things, considering that I'm...
He let the his thoughts trail off as he took his head out of from under the pillow. He looked outside, and saw Princess Luna on a balcony, using a telescope to keep watch through the night.
Hmm....Ty thought, getting up from his bed. Maybe I should join her. I mean, it's not like I can fall asleep anyway.
Thinking about this, Ty decided to join Luna in her nightwatching. It had to be more entertaining than just laying there for hours on end and thinking about reasons why Ant and Jason could hate each other so much.
As he snuck outside into the hallway, Ty saw a flickering light coming from inside of Jordan's room.
Huh. Typical. The bookworm is probably doing some late night reading.
The rest of the rooms, however, were pitch black and quiet. Ty shivered, feeling like something was crawling across his back.
Canterlot Castle was scary at night. There was almost no light, other than the candles faintly illuminating the hallways, casting eerie shadows on everything. There were pony suits of armor in the hallways, making everything even more unsettling than it already was.
And of course, Ty didn't know the layout of the castle, so he had a high chance of getting himself lost.
As he rounded a corner, Ty saw one of the pegasus guards walking by. Not sure of what the punishment would be if he was caught snooping around the hallways alone, Ty quickly jumped behind a suit of armor. For once, his small size helped him, as the guard didn't even notice him, passing him by completely.
Ty let out a sigh of relief. He then continued on in his trek to find Princess Luna.
When he finally got to the balcony that she was standing on, nopony was there. The telescope sat there, abandoned and unused.
Ty didn't have time to wonder where the heck Princess Luna could have gone.
"STATE THY PURPOSE, YOU CUR, OR WE SHALL SHOW YOU THE TRUE POWER OF THE PRINCESS OF THE NIGHT-Oh, it's just thou, Ty," Luna shouted, shooting towards him but stopping when she saw who it was.
Not before she woke up half the castle, though.
"LUNA! HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU NOT TO GO CHARGING IN WHEN YOU SEE SOMETHING SUSPICIOUS ON WATCH?!" bellowed Celestia from her room, her mane and tail in curlers and-
Wait. Princess Celestia wore curlers?
Luna seemed completely oblivious to that fact. Either that, or she had gotten used to it. "DEAL WITH IT, SISTER!!" she bellowed back, looking highly amused. "PERHAPS WE SHALL LEARN IN ANOTHER THOUSAND YEARS OR SO!!!"
You gotta love Luna,the sisterly troll.
"Ah, so thou cannot sleep as well?" Luna asked Ty, watching everything through the telescope. Fortunately, nothing was happening, so she took her eyes off of it for a few moments.
Ty nodded. "I don't know why...maybe it's because I always took the night shift back in Minecraftia, but after the war, I thought my body had readjusted. Is Equestrian time different from Minecraftian time or something?" he asked, more to himself than Luna.
Luna shrugged. "We do not know. We have never been to the world thou calls home. And even if we did, we would not remember it. We spent one-fifth of our lives on the moon."
"Oh...yeah...right," Ty said, just remembering the legend of Nightmare Moon. He decided not to ask his question, as it involved sleeping through her night and that was the whole reason she had become possessed in the first place.
"I know what you were going to ask," Luna sighed, avoiding eye contact with Ty and flushing red. Ty noticed something strange, but decided not to point it out. "We are not as naive as you judge us to be, Ty Collins." There, she did it aga- wait, how does she know my name?!
Luna smiled. "My dreamwalking ability is not limited to just Equestria, you know," she answered. "It extends as far as I want it to go. Did you ever wonder why, right before something terrible was going to happen, one of the members in your army would have a dream about it?"
"Hang on, now that you mention it, it does seem like that....wait, that was you?!"
"No, but there are many dreamwalkers in your world. There is at least one in every world, and they are born with the ability to manipulate dreams."
"Oh, cool! That seems like a nifty talent."
"It is. The talent to manipulate dreams is a rare and powerful one at that, because when you manipulate a dream, you are not merely manipulating somepony's subconscious. The place our minds go when we sleep is not just in our minds. It is a whole other world. Therefore, being able to manipulate somepony's dreams also means being able to manipulate the chaotic dreamworld," Luna explained.
Ty blinked. "Wow, that seems....cool," he said. "Sure gives you a lot of power over somepony."
Luna puffed out her chest with pride and seemed stand up taller. "Yes, well, it certainly is a useful talent to have, especially in a war. Would you agree?" she asked, her face widening in a smile.
Ty nodded, imagining the things he could do if he had that talent: Give the enemies nightmares, and peaceful, relaxing dreams to your allies. It could also send messages long distances.
"You can."
Ty jumped. "Huh? What?"
Luna smiled down at him. "You could. A unicorn, if he or she has strong enough magic, can temporarily walk in somepony's dream. However, true dream walkers can be anypony, pegasus, unicorn, or earth pony alike. The thing that sets them apart is their tactical thinking, their tendency to stay away from large crowds of ponies, and the way that they're most active during the night. You seem like that type of pony to me."
Ty frowned uncertainly, wondering if he could. Maybe not. Actually, maybe so. Actually, no. Definitely not. But still, maybe. But it's not a very high chance.
But you fit all of the things that Luna mentioned! A small voice in his head argued.
His common sense replied, Don't you think that you would have known about your talent before Luna explained all of this to you if you really did have it?
Luna seemed greatly amused by the way the voices in Ty's head were constantly arguing. Maybe it was just buried too deep for me to unleash it. But you should have known about it when you went through that phase to see if you were magic so that you could enchant your dad's dinner to eat him. But I didn't read about this ability, so maybe I wouldn't have been able to unleash it.
Ty looked up at Luna. "What are other signs of a dreamwalker-" he began, but was cut off by Luna.
"Too late! It's almost dawn; we'll have to continue this some other time!" she sang gleefully, waving her hoof at the sky, which was fading from royal blue to a bright pink. Celestia was getting up, looking outside her window and then walking back inside.
She was preparing to raise the sun.
"But I did enjoy our nighttime conversation. Come back tomorrow, okay?" she called after Ty as he walked away.
Ty looked back. Luna was nowhere to be seen. Most likely, she had teleported back to her room to sleep through the day.
Ty half-smiled as he did the same.