Luna stood on a moonlit shore, cold waves lapping around her hooves, peering into an impenetrable fog. She could sense the presence of another, but could not see them. She began slowly walking away from the shoreline, toward a dark, looming shape in the distance.
She found a disturbed patch of sand with hoofprints leading away, and followed them, as they, too, seemed to lead toward the distant silhouette. She noted with some confusion that the prints changed from hoof-shaped to something else, something narrow and elongated, as she followed them.
Luna stopped at the foot of the steps leading up to the lighthouse that now emerged from the fog. She heard the sound of something impacting above her, and suddenly a body of some sort plummeted down the cracked stone steps, and landed with a heavy thud in the sand at her hooves.
The body was not that of a pony, but it seemed familiar, even bereft of its coat, with no hooves, and no discernable muzzle. Luna recognized that the bleeding, dying figure must be Reaper.
Before she could fully process this image, her eye was caught by Nightmare Moon slowly descending the stairs, changing shape with each step. She, too, lost her coat, and hooves, standing erect, limbs contorting and changing shape.
“Why art thou here, Harbinger?” Luna heard her alter ego ask the stricken Reaper.
“I--I don’t know,” he gasped.
Nightmare Moon circled around to Reaper’s left side: “Thou art powerless now, except for…”
“Except for what? What power do I still possess?”
Luna shuddered as Nightmare Moon knelt next to Reaper and lapped at the blood coursing from his wound.
“Thou must unlock the power in thy blood, again,” Nightmare Moon said quietly. “Thou shouldst not have this blood--it is thy prison!”
Luna furrowed her brow and looked at the glowing glyphs embedded in the sand, drinking up Reaper’s blood.
Reaper’s eyes began to lose focus and glaze over: “I don’t understand.”
“Thou didst once. Seek again thy end--summon a new beginning!”
Luna leaned in close to watch Reaper pull Nightmare Moon’s face from his neck, and press his mouth passionately against hers. Nightmare Moon’s shining, red-tipped horn fell off. Luna tasted blood.
Luna stood up and prepared for the dream to dissolve, but heard Nightmare Moon speak instead: “Greetings, True Sister! Have you come to divine our friend’s dream?”
Luna stepped back, startled: “How is this possible? This dream is done, and I have mastery over the dreamscape!”
Nightmare Moon leaned back down to return Reaper’s kiss, her long, glossy black hair spilling over his tan face: “Mastery you may have, but this dream is not done.”
Luna squinted at the fog and saw the shape of a cloaked stallion hovering silently nearby.
“So he yet dreams,” Luna said, watching her shape-shifted alter ego working her mouth down Reaper’s chest.
Nightmare Moon stopped and met Luna’s gaze: “Indeed he does. But he no longer controls it--I do. Let us see if we can finish what Aloe began…”
Luna stepped forward, seeking to pull Nightmare Moon away: “He would not wish that.”
Nightmare Moon pulled aside Reaper’s tattered loincloth, and laid her head in his lap, tongue flickering along the inside of his thighs: “You know that to be false, True Sister!”
Luna furrowed her brow: “Yes. But still, I shall honor his request.” Her horn began to glow.
Nightmare Moon frowned, leaned forward, and pointed toward the shape emerging from the fog: “Why do you not ask him yourself? Better yet, take the opportunity to slake your own repressed desires!”
Luna turned away from other Reaper toward pony Reaper: “You must master yourself, Reaper. This is still your dream. Nightmare Moon seeks to twist it to her own ends.”
Reaper looked down at his other self lying in the sand, now alive, with his fingers entwined through Nightmare Moon’s hair as her head rested on his thigh.
“Why are you here?” he asked Luna.
“I cast you into a sudden sleep in an effort to plumb the depths of your recent dreams. It seems I found your dream from yesterday morning.”
“How can both you and Nightmare Moon be here, and have control? Isn’t she you?”
Luna looked away, embarrassed: “I confess, I have never encountered a dream state such as this. When Grey Thorn sent me into a dream, it was merely Nightmare Moon and me, talking to, well, myself, as it were. In that case I was able to finally exert ultimate control. This is different…”
Reaper looked down at Nightmare Moon and his other self: “This body is familiar, but I don’t recognize the location. There’s something not right about this lighthouse.”
Nightmare Moon ran her fingernails up and down other Reaper’s chest: “Really? Out of all you see, it is the lighthouse that strikes you as most incongruous?”
Reaper raised an eyebrow: “Clearly you don't belong here, though you have taken the correct form, I’ll give you that.”
“And yet you and my True Sister pretend that this form displeases you. Fine. Let us find a shape more suited to this situation.”
Nightmare Moon pressed her dark, slate-colored hands against other Reaper’s hips and pushed up, arching her back and vigorously shaking her long, glittering, blue-black hair, obscuring her face.
The dark hair cleared away, revealing shoulder-length, sky-blue hair, held back by a white headband, framing a pale, round face.
Luna raised an eyebrow: “Have you now recast Aloe in this world’s form?”
Nightmare Moon/Aloe smirked, and lowered her face back between other Reaper’s legs, taking his member into her mouth.
Pony Reaper suddenly shuddered, and pricked up his ears: “I can feel that! How’s that possible?”
Luna tipped her head sideways and looked beneath pony Reaper’s belly: “An interesting question, since in this dream, you are not a true stallion. You have retaken your proper form.”
Reaper glared at Nightmare Moon/Aloe, then turned to Luna: “End this! The very entangling I feared is happening, and I don’t have control of this dream!”
Luna tipped her head down and pointed her glowing horn at the forms sprawled on the sand: “Enough! I began this, and I will end it!”
Suddenly, the body covering other Reaper’s lower half became a pale violet pony. Twilight pulled her mouth away from other Reaper’s shaft and ran the back of a hoof across her mouth with a grin.
Dream Twilight slid her body up the length of other Reaper’s legs and torso, grinding her pelvis against his groin and arching her now-winged back, before straddling him mid-chest, and standing erect on her hind legs.
“No,” she said, spreading her wings, “let me end it!”
Reaper’s sword suddenly fell from under dream Twilight’s left wing. She caught it between her front hooves, and with a single stroke, drove the blade through other Reaper’s chest, pinning him to the ground.
Pony Reaper staggered sideways and fell amid the glyphs, which were glowing again, brighter than before. His eyes rolled up in his head, and he dissolved away like a mist, leaving Luna alone with his impaled otherworldly form.
She sighed heavily and forced herself awake.