Princess Luna awoke screaming. Face flushed and sweat dripping down her brow she flailed her hooves in a blind panic before crashing down onto the marble floor of her room. Her eyes rolled in her sockets and she drew in great heaving breaths even as her form shook wildly, still locked in the adrenaline rush that surged through her form.
Panicked voices and cries sounded, muffled but definite, from the other side of her bedroom door. As she rose, unsteadily to her hooves and made her way over to the door it was wrenched open by a flash white shimmering magic. A squadron of Night guards stormed into the room, spears, hoof and wing blades at the ready. Offensive spells, fizzing as they crackled at the end of staffs and horns cast a glow into the darkness of the Princesses bedroom. Orders were yelled out as they surround Luna in a tight formation and marched her out of the room into the corridor as scanning spells were cast to determine the location or trace of any would be assailants.
"BY THE MAKERS. ENOUGH!" Cried Luna, the full force of the Royal Canterlot voice blasting the ear drums of any within earshot and the ruffling feathers and fur of the guards unlucky enough to be caught in the vicinity of this assault of the auditory senses. Once the shout had stopped reverberating off of the marble walls of the corridor and the ringing in the ears of the guards had mostly stopped, all eyes were on Luna.
Panting and twitchy, still reeling from whatever had happened in her room, Luna begins to speak.
"My most capable Guardsponies, as always your performance has been exemplary. A quick response time, an effective perimeter established and my quarters cleared with record efficiency. It sets my mind at ease to know my soldiers are as ready and able as you. For that, you have my thanks."
The Nightguards shuffled in their armor, glancing at one another as they assembled into their ranks before filing out of the Princesses room and out into the corridors. Blades were sheathed, wings tucked in and offensive spells faded into nothing on the tips of the casters horns. Saluting as one, the Nightguards turned on their hooves and made their way back to their various positions around the palace, lines from the squadron leading off through various passages as they marched down the corridor and into the night.
Luna, now very much alone, turned and headed back into her room, the hinges of the door popping and creaking as an aura of her magic corrected the damage the guards had done when they had forced their way through.
Making her way over to her bed, Luna lit several candles around her room and threw open the thick blue curtains she had closed before entering the dreamscape that night. Stepping out onto her balcony, she took a deep breath of cool night air and gazed at her moon in the sky.
Turning her head, she could just about make out the indistinct mass of Ponyville in the distance. Beyond that, the great foreboding mass that was the Everfree forest. Even now a great storm was building and boiling above those twisted canopies, dark grey and angry against the calm night sky she worked so hard to maintain.
Luna thought back to what had caused her to awake so suddenly, and in such a panic. She had born witness to thousands of nightmares, even more terrible memories from generations of terror stricken subjects. It was her job, her birthright to Shepard those who walk her night and guard them from the aspects of fear that made themselves present when they slip into unconsciousness whilst ultimately trying to help them better themselves, to over come their fear, doubts and apprehensions. But to experience the fear of her subjects from a different abstract point of view dulls the fear, more so when you've born witness to ever horror conceivable by a pony mind and triumphed over all of them.
This made her question all the more frightening. What was capable of making a goddess scream and panic just from an insight into its mind? Luna shuddered at the glimpses of what she could remember. Vicious, snapping mouths, teeth within teeth, barbed tails and pitch black, armored shells. A point of view, a process of thought so brutally efficient and mind numblingly awful that, had a lesser pony born witness to but a fraction of what she had seen, they would have been driven quite mad.
Luna did not know what she had seen within the Dreamscape but she had an awful feeling that something was stirring beneath the kingdom that her and her sister had nurtured for so long. Something dark and awful.
And it was stirring beneath the hellish place known as the Everfree forest.