//------------------------------// // 14. Praise the Eternal Sun (BlazzingInferno) // Story: Dream A Little Dream Of Me // by horizon //------------------------------// Golyat Dear Princess Celestia, Praise the Eternal Sun. Forgive me for this protocol breach, but in light of Myinnkyun… I feel I must inform you directly of what I found and… who. A Nightmare’s job is to sift through dreams, ignoring the chaff, in search of the pure grain: the one whole truth. The truth I found within Myinnkyun’s dreamers is one, I fear, belongs in your hooves more than those of my superiors who still bear the scars of the Nocturne uprising. My humble apologies on behalf of my tribe. Sincerely, Golyat, thirty-third level Nightmare and your faithful servant: Death came for Myinnkyun for the second time as it did the first: all for want of love. What hope had they for love when friendship was beyond their grasp? Ponies, Minotaurs, Sirens All drowning in their self-proclaimed superiority. Save the one Predator Locust Parasite. Who existed before them all. Who, I fear, outlived them all. Once, a minotaur village sated her. Peace and love in abundance ruined by poppy-draughts. Drugged beings being emotionless husks. Worthless. Then the ponies were charmed into their watery graves. And the poppies destroyed. All by her. We ponies should have stayed away. Or kept better track of who arrived on our boats, and who didn’t. Palei Hantu. Littlemoth. One being bearing names and faces without number. One being who, I fear, still haunts distant shores undetected unknown unnamed until now. As for the villagers… too concerned with taxes, tribes, and Nocturnes, too busy building themselves a nicer cage, to notice the parasite on their backs who, because of their bickering, was growing hungry and fearful that her natural enemy was on the horizon: minstrel of distrust antitheses of love sower of hate siren. The banishment of Princess Luna surely heralded the inevitable; the sea change from tension to all out conflict. Not two weeks later, as night fell, not even lust over her dancing not even her own infatuated and infuriatingly chaste Dawn Patrol could quell her hunger anymore. None had room in their hearts for love. And then minotaurs U Low Kene severed her double life, her alternate food source: her old home with the minotaurs. And then Peridot saw her change back into Littlemoth. After unknown centuries of secretive feeding, after barely escaping a raging minotaur, and the spear of a lame drunkard, an old pony on a midnight walk found her out. A pony named for a gemstone with an appetite for money. A parasite named for a bug with an appetite for hearts. Why did she not drain Peridot of the love she craved? Was the old pony truly as unfeeling as the dreams of others suggest? Press as I might, particularly on one Shooting Star… I know not. No matter. Peridot escaped a loveless death in favor of a peaceful one by way of the parasite’s magic, a hypnosis trick shared with her siren foes. But what to do with a body In a time when trade ships and dock workers make the sea too shallow a grave? What to do two days after stashing the body in its former residence? What to do when panic subsides just enough for hunger to take over? Leave Peridot’s door open and return her to the sea, Feast on Moonstruck for want of what Dawn Patrol won’t give, And blame the siren that Sailcloth conveniently provided. She meant to turn pony against siren and kill the mounting fear she assumed was a siren’s doing alone. In all her years, had she never encountered a race such as ours? A race that needs no help breeding fear and distrust? How the sirens and buzzards must have feasted on the war. And yet she did not perish! Her dreams haunt me still, and make me fear for the safety of Equestria. Death came for Myinnkyun for lack of friendship and want of love. Palei Hantu is dead. Littlemoth is dead. Peridot is dead. But, I fear, the parasite, Chrysalis, lives. And she is hungry.