She was standing on the edge of a cliff.
She wasn’t exactly sure where the cliff was, which meant she didn’t know where she was either. Curious, she looked around her. Nothing.
She could feel something though, something that made her want to go over the cliff. She took the final step she safely could and peeked over. It took her a while to see anything, but at least there was something to see.
Sort of.
There was a black fog of some kind down there. She could tell that there was something in it, something that was moving. It was probably ponies, and ponies could tell her where she was and how to get home.
The problem was that it was a cliff, and she was an earth pony.
As if bidden by her thought, a glowing staircase appeared, leading down into the fog. Hesitantly, she reached out to step on –
“NO!!!”
Startled, she fell back on her haunches. She whipped her head around, looking for the source of the voice. When she couldn’t find anypony, she turned back to the staircase. This time though, there was a sense of uneasiness. Something made her take a second look at the stairs.
For the rest of her life, she would be grateful that she did.
The stairs weren’t made of light, as they at first seemed to be. The light was wrapped around wooden planks. Wooden planks that she could tell from where she stood had completely rotted away.
There was a hissing sound from below. She took a step back as the hissing turned into a voice. “Do not interfere.”
“You shall not have her.”
Her?
…Her! The voices, they were talking about her! She backpedaled as quickly as she could, stumbling and kicking her own knee at one point in her haste to get away. She might not have known much about these voices, but she knew enough to realize that the hissy one had tried to kill her with that staircase.
She also realized something else. She wasn’t getting very far.
She was backpedaling as fast as she could, but it was like the ground was slipping away under her hooves. At the same time, she could feel the desire to throw herself over the cliff growing stronger, and it scared her. She had to get away, she just had to.
She turned and started into a full gallop. Glancing over her shoulder she realized that she was a little further away, but the ground was acting like that treadmill thing her mother used. She was desperate to get away from that hissing voice, even as she felt the longing grow stronger.
Wait.
As she ran, she felt her mind clear slightly. She wanted to get away and she wanted to jump off that cliff? That didn’t make any sense. She didn’t want to…
She didn’t want to.
She didn’t want to go over that cliff, something else did.
The thought terrified her. Had she known the word, she could have identified that adrenaline was now shooting through her. She ran as if her life depended on it.
She was convinced it did.
She could feel it now, the hunger. Whatever this thing was, it wanted her, and if it got her, it would devour her.
She was a smart filly, and she knew something was completely wrong about all of this. She just couldn’t quite figure out what.
Another glance back to see if she had won even a few inches. She almost collapsed in fear.
There was… something. She didn’t know what it was. What she did know was that it was big, and dark, and it wanted to hurt her. It was some kind of giant, looming over the cliff. It was huge. She couldn’t see any wings, so it must have been standing on the ground at the bottom of the cliff, which meant this thing had to have been over a hundred hooves tall.
And to top it all off, it was reaching for her.
It wasn’t shaped like a pony. It wasn’t shaped like anything really. But she could still tell that that part trying to come closer to her was a claw of some kind.
She was getting tired, but that thing was getting closer. She felt the tears start falling, and she realized that she knew how this would end.
She was going to wear herself out, and then this thing was going to grab her, and then… and then…
Just as it got close enough that she could feel the claws touching her flanks, the first voice shouted again, “Enough!”
There was a flash of deep blue light before everything faded.
And then Diamond Tiara woke up in a cold sweat.
Luna’s head whipped around as she felt the ripple. Leaving the dream she was in, she took flight, racing through the dreamscape even as she felt it fade.
Just like the times she had felt it before, by the time she got there, the bubble was gone, the dreamscape returned to normal. And she could feel nopony’s energy.
The dreamer had either awoken or fallen, and she had no way of finding them.
Diamond sat there shivering as she huddled in her blanket. It was the same again. She had had the dream seven times now, and each time she remembered more. Each time it got more real.
Each time it got that much closer to catching her.
She took another sip of the cocoa she had snuck from the kitchen. She’d learned something this time though. This thing could be fought. When she had rolled to the side at the last minute, it had missed her.
The thought didn’t comfort her really. The nightmares were so scary that she hadn’t even talked to her friends about them, so something that small wouldn’t help much. But it did strengthen her. If she could dodge, then she could fight.
Celestia gazed out over Equestria in concern. Her sister had told her of the attacks in the dreamscape, and while she didn’t really understand everything about that place, she understood that her ponies were being threatened.
She found herself wishing more than ever that Midnight Star were here. She hated the idea of Luna having to face down some monster completely alone.
She drew in a sharp breath as she felt the pulse her sister had mentioned. Silently she began weeping bitterly.
Something had just threatened one of her ponies, and she had no way of helping them.
Diamond screamed as a new emotion entered the nightmare for the first time.
Pain.
She had waited too long on the second roll, and the monster’s claw had pierced her leg. She could hear it laughing, and she knew why. Soon its hunger would be fed.
It started picking her up by her hurt leg, and as the claw twisted in her, she let loose another screech of pain.
There was a blue flash, like the one that always woke her up. She didn’t see what happened, but she felt the twisting stop and the thing scream in rage and pain.
“Hold still.”
The voice. The good voice, not the scary hissy one. She heard it so rarely now that she was afraid the monster had managed to hurt it.
She felt the claw sliding out of her leg. There was a moment where it hurt really bad again, then it started to fade.
The blue light showed up again, this time covering everything slowly until blue was all she saw.
Then she woke up.
Cadence stood on her balcony, staring at the south horizon line.
She could sense something from there. Her aunts had told her about the attacks, that there was some nightmare creature loose in Equestria, but it didn’t feel quite like that to her. She sighed. She felt so useless at times like this, but that was just how it was. She couldn’t simply leave her empire to go haring of on some adventure. Besides, she doubted Love could do much of anything anyway.
She sighed again as she turned to go inside. Deep down, she wasn’t sure if she was grateful the nightmares hadn’t made their way into her domain yet.
At least if they did she might be able to help.
Diamond dove aside again. She had started figuring this thing out; it had rules that it had to follow. It could only track her in a straight line, so no matter how many times she dodged, dove, or rolled, it would never see it coming.
She made sure to keep her eyes on the claw that was reaching for her, and as it came down, she started running in a slightly different direction. She had figured that out a few nights back, if she changed directions suddenly, she could get a little further away from the cliff.
She had learned through repetition that there was nothing for her to run into or trip over, so she kept her gaze locked over her shoulder on the claw. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the edge of the cliff, getting just a little further away.
She let out a cry of surprise as she hit something, rolling more out of habit than anything as she bounced off of it. Looking up, she realized that she had bounced out of a second claw as it was trying to grab her.
It opened again, coming closer even as she scrambled to get away. She felt it again, the claw touching her. It was the first time in a week that it had gotten that close.
There was a flash of blue.
As the sun set, Twilight closed her eyes. She reached out with her magic, stretching herself as far as she could. She was watching, searching, waiting. She was trying to sense something – anything – that could tell them more about what was wrong with the dreamscape.
If the last several nights were anything to go by, she was in for a long, fruitless search.
Diamond groaned as she started running. She hoped that someday she would start remembering the previous dreams before the staircase showed up. Maybe it would buy her a little bit of a head start, maybe it would let her escape completely. Either way, it couldn’t be bad to skip that part, right?
She dodged, then almost hurt herself dodging again. That was the new thing last night, the second claw chasing her from the start instead of once she got far enough away.
Nyx reared back, placing a single hoof on the window pane in front of her.
Something was bothering her. She knew what it was too. It was her talent, and because she was an alicorn, her element. Protecting ponies. And somewhere out there right now, she could feel it. There was a pony that needed her, that needed protecting.
And Nyx Sparkle had absolutely no idea how to help them.
Diamond was at full gallop. In her mind she could still hear the voice’s words from the night before.
“Don’t throw your Light away!”
She had almost given up that night. She had been about to jump off the cliff and just get the nightmare over with.
She didn’t know why, but that had changed something. When the voice mentioned light, it was like he was reminding her how scary the Darkness behind her was. The monster had started fighting harder last night too.
Looking up, she could see it over her. She couldn’t see a face, but she assumed that was its head right there. It was leaning out over the edge of the cliff, trying to get more reach so that it could grab her.
Luckily it seemed like it had a hard time doing that and whatever was keeping her close to the edge at the same time. She didn’t have to change direction as much, or as far to either side.
So she ran. The same way she had been running every night for a month. Then she gasped as she saw something new. There was something in front of her, something there that she was running towards. Hope flared in her chest as she realized that it must be the end of the nightmare. She poured everything she had into her full tilt charge at her way out.
And then she reached it. And felt something inside her shatter.
It was a wall.
Nothing else, just a wall.
The monster started laughing. “Nowhere to run.” She had learned a while ago that it was the hissy voice she had heard on the first night.
She turned to one side as its claw crashed down a few yards away. Shrugging, she turned to run the other way, only for the crash to be repeated with the other claw. It was only then that she realized what was going on.
She was trapped in a giant triangle. The monster’s arms were two of the sides, and the wall was the third. She felt herself start crying as the fear came back, more intense than it had ever been.
The creature started dragging its arms in towards her, breaking the ground as it did. She didn’t even bother to run or fight, just collapsing as she gave up. Briefly as she felt her tears soaking her hooves, she wondered if it was possible to cry yourself awake.
Then she felt them. The claws were sharp, she knew from experience, but they didn’t cut her as they picked her up.
Weakly, she turned her eyes on the monster holding her. She finally knew why she couldn’t ever see its face, it didn’t have one. Probably because it didn’t need one, given that this was a dream.
It was funny, she knew that this was a dream, but she still felt like the fight was real. Like she had really been running for the past month. Like this thing had really caught her. Like what was about to happen would have an effect on the real world.
At this point she had so little energy left that wondering if she was really about to die was a mostly idle thought.
The monster opened its mouth – a jagged thing that she realized didn’t exist until it had opened – and raised her towards it. She sighed and tried to prepare herself to be eaten as well as she could.
And then there was a familiar flash of deep blue light.
It was the first time since the night she had hurt her leg that she had seen the light without waking up. Instead, she found herself floating in a ball of light as the claws holding her disappeared.
The monster reared back screaming in pain and rage.
“You shall not have her.” Diamond found herself amazed by the voice. It wasn’t screaming, it wasn’t defiant, it was calm. It was simply stating a fact. As the filly felt her energy returning, she realized that despite being in a never ending nightmare, she had never felt so safe in her life.
The light set her down gently, then rocketed forward, slamming into the monster. It lashed out in response, a dozen dark tentacles racing for her. A shield appeared in front of her, a blue six pointed star blocking three of them as the rest slammed into the ground and wall around and behind her.
“You cannot take her back! She belongs to the Darkness!”
“She hasn’t crossed the boundary yet, and I can sure as Tartarus keep you from dragging her over it!”
“You defy the rules Hope!”
“Actually? Not so much. You see, you screwed up, choosing to go after her. She’s been able to fight you on her own, so I’ve been able to sit back and let the imbalances build up. When you injured her, when you erased her memories of previous nights, when you touched ground forbidden to you, and now, to cap it all off, you just crossed the boundary of Day with that last little stunt. So now I’m allowed to do a lot of rule breaking before the balance will give you anything for it.”
“She belongs to the Darkness and the Darkness will have her.”
“She is claimed by the Night, and here she will stay!”
A blue wall of light rose from the edge of the cliff, forcing the monster back. As it did, Diamond saw a pony step out of the symbol in front of her. She realized that he was the voice when he slammed a hoof on the ground and roared, “You are banished from her dreams! Begone!”
The blue wall bent, forcing the monster down below the cliff. The light changed, growing thicker until she couldn’t see through it anymore. Then it shattered, revealing that the monster was gone.
The stallion snorted, then turned to her. There was a strange look in his eyes as she met them. He sighed, his hard expression softening as he did so. “I’m so very, very sorry Diamond Tiara. I’m so sorry.” He paused for a moment, and Diamond thought she might have seen a tear roll down his cheek. “We need to talk,” He finally said.
“My name is Midnight Star.”