The moon shone across the clearing, turning the dew covered grass and trees glint like silver. The sky was clear and the air slightly cool like a summer's night.
But Luna's side was warm against mine.
Sighing softly, I leaned against her, looking up at the stars and moon high above, the stars sparkling, not a cloud in the skies, the sky perfectly clear. It was the perfect night.
Chuckling, I flicked my ears at her insistent nuzzles, her wing pulling me closer to her side. There was a sudden crack in the forest behind us, causing us both to freeze.
Turning my head, I looked back into the darkness, “...Hello?”
Silence.
The wind picked up slightly, the woods starting to creek all around us and the light slowly shifted. The shadows growing longer and darker, sharper as the moon far above seemed to tint red.
Things moved in the forest and Luna shifted next to me, causing me to turn back to her with a growing feeling of dread.
What I saw, was not Luna. It was like a mix of Luna and Chrysalis if they had been dead for five years. Shining chitin and rotting flesh, sharp teeth with half the lower jaw missing. Her wing across my back was nothing but bone.
I stared at her for a long moment before I sighed and rolled my eyes, “Finally. Took you long enough, I thought I would need to wait all night.”
An application of will and I teleported out from under the wing before stomping my hoof against the ground. Waves of white light radiated out from where my hoof hit the ground and where they touched, things dissolved away, leaving nothing but white behind.
Reality melted and faded away into a brightly lit room, perhaps ten meters across in all directions. Pure white walls, ceiling and floor. Other than myself and one more thing, the room was empty.
Before me, across the room there was a floating cloud of dark smoke, constantly shifting shape. I could see things in it. Ponies in pain, Xenomorphs, other horrible things I remember having seen in movies, games, real life.
It hissed at me, turning into a kind of pony/changeling/tiger hybrid.
Rolling my eyes again, I willed at it and the creature was bound in chains and shackles of pure bright light.
“Stop that. Couldn't you have come a bit earlier? Now I overslept. But I figured I would give you another twenty minutes or so.”
It was a Night Terror. Or at least that was the name Luna had given them. Basically they were primitive spirit creatures formed by the fear and worry of ponies. They lived in the dream world, feeding off fear and terror they caused by entering happy dreams and turning them into nightmares. Not all nightmares were caused by them. But ever had a happy dream that turned into a nightmare halfway through? That was a Night Terror.
They were not dangerous. Not beyond causing some lack of sleep or possibly traumatizing some particularly sensitive pony. But they were annoying so Luna hunted them down and cleared them out whenever she could.
Since Luna started to teach me dream magic, I found that there was actually a branch of magic I was really good at. It was more willpower and imagination than anything else, at least as long as you stayed in your own head.
I couldn't leap from dream to dream all night like Luna, it was simply too draining. But in here? In my head?
In here I was god.
Luna could override me, but she had to really, really work to do it and she cheated by simply throwing more power at it.
I suspected it had something to do with my special talent. Stories... what were dreams if not stories?
The Night Terror struggles and growled, hissing and shifting from shape to shape. I could feel it trying to change the dream.
I didn't let it.
I couldn't chase them down like Luna could. It simply took to much energy to move to another dream for it to be practical for me.
...So instead I put up a trap. When I was hunting, I crafted a dream that just radiated happiness through the dreamworld. It was like bait, these things loved to change dreams into horrors. The happier dream the better as it got a stronger reaction they could feed off.
I half closed my eyes and took a slow deep breath before lighting my horn up. It was all mnemonics of course, I wasn't actually casting magic in here. The beam of light speared the spirit creature and it dissolved, turning into sparkles before flowing into me.
Like every other time, I suddenly felt like I just gulped down half a liter of energy drink.
Bloody hell, that had been a big one!
...Those things gathered up energy when they fed. Emotions turned into magic. All that had to go somewhere when the creature is destroyed, you couldn't simply destroy energy, even magical energy had to go somewhere.
Luna just grounded it into herself, she didn't even notice the boost. I did.
Oh, it didn't actually make me any more powerful, well, not in the long run. It was usually used up before lunch simply doing normal things like telekinesis. One decent combat spell would burn through it all at once.
This one was unusually big though, might last til mid afternoon. No, wait, we were going into the Everfree Forest today. That will likely be quite a drain.
Looking around the empty white room, I then shrugged. Might as well wake up.
The light faded away into nothing and I opened my eyes to reveal Twilight Sparkles' guestroom. The sun was already beaming in through the window, revealing that I had been right about the time. It was mid morning. Stretching with a groan, I yawned before rolling off the bed onto my hooves.
“Good Morning, Skitter.” I grumbled, rubbing my eyes. Bloody hell, even with that energy boost, I hate mornings. I need some tea.
Silence. No answer.
Huh.
Bending down I looked beneath the bed to find the Changeling missing. Damn, I really must have overslept if even Skitter got tired of waiting for me to wake up.
Shaking my head I trotted over to the door and headed down stairs in search of food.