The sight of Nightmare Moon descending from the storm nearly sent me back into the fire. What did she mean, ‘either of you’? This was her dream; she and I had to be the only real individuals here! I had been certain ‘Luna,’ this blameless-yet-endlessly-abused version of herself, was just as phantasmal as the smaller ponies who hated her. No real being could be this much of a patsy, could she?
The pony in question gasped and fell into a defensive stance with her glowing horn pointed toward the invader. “Arroint thee, fiend!” she cried. “How darest thou trespass upon this peaceful land?”
Nightmare Moon chuckled and rolled one of the inert ponies over with her hoof. “Oh yes, quite peaceful here, thanks to you. It’s just too bad they’ll wake up eventually.” She placed her hoof on the sleeping pony’s neck. “I could help you with that.”
Luna lunged with her horn, and, to my astonishment, Nightmare Moon yielded, stepping quickly backward and leaving the senseless pony unharmed.
“Thou art a fool to come here,” Luna spat, “We will not fail to rout thee, as we have thrice before.”
(Thrice? How long had this farce been going on in her head before Nightmare Moon dragged me in?)
Luna glanced over at me and nodded grimly. “Your power crumbles, fiend. Behold: even now, thy prisoners fly to us to betray thee.”
The larger pony spared me a knowing look. “Oh, him? He can’t betray me; I sent him here. He didn’t believe your beloved subjects were such massive twits and objected to me killing them all.”
I remarked that I still did not believe such, and refused to sanction their murder.
The larger pony ignored me and continued. “…And your victories over me? Those were my gifts to you. I let you play the heroine, the only one who could save them from me, the only one who could break the power of my spells. They survive my raids only because of you, and how do they treat you in return?”
Luna chewed her lip and said nothing, still holding the larger pony at horn-point.
“Oh, you’ve forgotten? Let me remind you,” Nightmare Moon said with a flick of her own horn.
All around the room, the unconscious ponies raised their heads and turned toward Luna, though their eyes remained shut and their features slack in slumber. The princess’s eyes widened and she shied to one side and then to another in alarm. It was a familiar motion; exactly how Nightmare Moon had reacted when the statues began attacking on the way back from the crater the night we first met.
Nightmare Moon bent down and stroked the cheek of the nearest sleeping pony. “Tell me, fool, what do you think of your princess of the night?” she stage-whispered into his ear.
“She… she’s dangerous,” the pony said in a slurred voice. “Always trouble whenever she’s around. If she cared about us… she’d stay away. But she doesn’t.”
“THAT IS NOT SO!” Luna argued, looking deeply hurt. “WE DEFEND THEE! WE FACE DANGERS, YES, BUT TO SAVE THEE AND THINE!”
“Just nepotism,” another pony said from across the room. “Her sister’s the one who really runs things. The other one just goes around trying to make herself seem important. I bet she’s jealous.”
“WE ARE NOT! WE CARE NOT FOR HONORS OR POWER, ONLY—”
“It’s pathetic,” another sleep-talker murmured, interrupting her. “She wants us to pretend that she’s just one of us when she’s immortal and royal and could crush us like gnats whenever she felt like it. Just throwin’ it in our faces, all the time.”
“THAT… THAT DOTH NOT EVEN MAKE SENSE…” Luna said, starting to deflate in despair once again.
“And the screaming, always with the screaming. Why can’t she talk in a voice that doesn’t make my foals cry?”
“BUT THE ROY—the Royal Canterlot Voice is the proper way to address our subjects since time immemorial,” Luna pleaded, belying her words by lowering her voice to a whisper. “We use it to show our respect for thee and the laws and traditions of our great…” Luna snorted and sulkily pawed the floor, apparently forgetting about her standoff with Nightmare Moon. “Oh, what’s the use? If thou heedest not our words when thou art wakeful, ought thou to be more attentive asleep?”
Up until now, believing this all a fantasy, I had played the part of the passive observer to the extent circumstances would permit, but I just couldn’t stand by and watch this any more. Sure, it must have been unreal, or even doubly unreal if I was just hallucinating it all, but really, it was too much; too obvious! Who was Nightmare Moon trying to fool with this sob story of endless petty persecution?
I trundled away from the fire on still-numbed limbs, picking my way over the fallen ponies and shouting above their insulting and accusing voices. This whole scenario was a farce, a fiction, a puppet-show put on by Nightmare Moon! I was not fooled!
The accused merely chuckled at me with a bemused shake of her head, and Luna looked embarrassed on my behalf.
I continued undaunted. Not only were all these voices lies, all the treatment Luna had received by these fake ponies had been a lie as well, I said. That was the secret knowledge I had defected to impart. This whole snowy town was nothing but a dream conjured up by Nightmare Moon. If the same was Luna’s enemy, she should not bother believing anything she had heard or seen here. Her nemesis and I were the only real things here, and I was quite certain Nightmare Moon was fabricating these events.
Luna gave me a pained look I could have sworn I’d been on the receiving end of sometime before. “Pangolin, hush. We know what is going on.”
“You see how foolish he is?” Nightmare Moon asked, unfazed by my outburst. “He doesn’t know what you are; not like we know. Yes, I may have condensed a bit to make a point, but you’ve heard all of their words before, haven’t you; in whispers, in memory, in the brutal honesty of their dreams…? Do you understand yet? That story he read was the big lie. Your love and kindness are not going to be requited by anypony. They just attract those who’d abuse and take advantage of you. That’s how things work in the real world. That’s why you need to stop listening to him and let me do for you what I promised.”
Luna took a step backward, not able to look at either of us. “We…” she began, “we do not know what to believe.”
Nightmare Moon wrinkled her nose. “What? Don’t tell me you actually trust this idiot. He has never been to Equestria! He hasn’t even seen a pony besides us. He’s just saying what he thinks you want to hear! All this happened before, and it’ll all happen again unless you quit listening to Pangolin and his ilk and let me handle things.”
The younger-looking princess stuck out her lower lip. “We have harkened to thee for so long, yet a stranger appears and denies everything thou hast told us. Why did we trust thee before, save that we had nopony else to which to turn? Thou ask me for nothing save power and control. If all are as base as thou sayest, is this too not suspect?”
I thought then that I understood why Nightmare Moon was bothering with this drama. This dreamscape was not created for my sake, nor was ‘Luna’ merely another imaginary character of the dream.
Earlier, outside her strange arena, she had told me how magical power left her and took forms that reflected her feelings or memories. Was Luna the original for which the little statue was a copy? The height was certainly off, but much of her mannerisms and attitude seemed to fit. I shouted this query to her rather bluntly, with a follow-up question about why she let Nightmare Moon dominate her like this.
“We do not grasp thy meaning, Pangolin,” she said, evading my eyes. “We are clearly not a statue. And matters are not so simple as thou doth imagine. Nightmare Moon is a wicked monster, none can gainsay, but she stands in the gap between us and every other evildoer. Thy story showed a world we dearly hope to be real, but it runs contrary to our every experience! What if it is false, as she attesteth? What wouldst thou have us do?”
Did she think I was a monster, as the puppet-ponies did, I asked. I told her I was grateful for her aid and kindness throughout our adventure and was trying to help her in return. How could I, a random stranger, be the only one?
Luna still couldn’t look at me, but she stamped and shook her wings in a way that spoke of a raging conflict within.
“Come now,” the larger pony said, “You’re going off-script, Luna. Must you fall for the same trick again? They play on your kindness and goodwill only to betray you and hurt you anew. This alien is claiming that the other ponies can’t be as bad as we know they are. He doesn’t know. He only speaks out of a displaced need to believe the same of his own kind, now that the finality of his parting from them has gone from a symbolic tantrum to a cold, hard reality.”
I winced at this interpretation, yet found myself without a ready refutation.
She smiled apologetically. “I protect, Luna. It’s all I know. I even protect monsters like him when I need to. You do enjoy his company, don’t you? You’d never have even met him tonight if I didn’t cast that enchanted shield over him. Your subjects would have got to him first and made an end of him. Do you know why I did that?”
The other princess said nothing, still deep in thought.
“I was sure you would be able to see through him. I hoped you were getting stronger.” Nightmare Moon waved a hoof at the room full of sleeping ponies. “This shameful episode only shows how badly you still need me. You wouldn’t last a day back in Equestria on your own.”
“No,” the smaller pony finally replied. “We see now the nature of the protection thou offerest. This shield stopped their spears, verily, but also cut this miserable soul off from every help. Even our spells to warm him were rebuffed. But for our aid, thy gift would have been naught but a slower, more agonizing execution.”
Nightmare Moon’s eyes narrowed.
Luna’s own rose to meet them, shining with defiance. “And now, when he offers me hope, you do everything in your power to extinguish it. We wonder if this frigid fate might not be a fitting symbol for all thy so-called ‘help.’ ”
The sleeping ponies flopped back to the floor like marionettes with their strings cut. Nightmare Moon gasped and drew herself up even taller, looking shocked and offended. “You ungrateful, weak-minded pushover!” she hissed. “You’re really going to put us through all this again? You’re going to turn on me now, after all I’ve done for you; after all I’ve sacrificed?!”
Instead of speaking further, the smaller pony snorted and pawed the floor, leveling her horn.
Her counterpart gave me the briefest glare. “After I deal with this mutiny, we’re going to have a chat about your mischief, Pangolin.”
But she didn’t sound as confident as usual.