Watch the Title Drop
Blueblood watched as the last door was secured. The Phantasms danced around in the cells, their empty eyes peering out at him. He peered right back.
He swallowed a lump in his throat. “Well, that’s that.”
“Wot’s wot?” Bluebones clomped up beside him and pulled his hood firmly over his head.
“I’m the warden. It is finished.” Blueblood snickered. “In other words: ‘That’ll do, Pig. That’ll do.’”
Luna folded up her wings and sat a short distance away. “It’s not quite over.”
Blueblood sighed. “I’ve seen the Nightmares, I know ‘what lies beneath,’ I’ve taken the oath.” He shrugged. “Whatever could be next, I wonder?”
“First,” Bluebones said, “your duties. You ’ave to check the seal on the cells every day.”
“Done,” Blueblood said.
“You ’ave to understand how to hop between dreams in order to combat any potential escapees.”
“Do—” Blueblood grimaced. “Well, I suppose Luna’s already started my training a bit.”
“And”—Bluebones’ mouth inched open—“there’s one more type of Nightmare.”
“Of course there would be.” Blueblood stretched out his wings and gave them a flap. “Very well, Grandfather. Lead the way. Can’t be wasting any more of our time around here.”
The three of them traversed the dark halls, not in silence, but serenaded by Blueblood’s falsetto-esque voice. “With all the Bêtes Noire, Night Terrors, and Phantasms around, I can only guess at the violent, vicious nature of this new Nightmare. Perhaps they are giant tentacle monsters who deal in soul-sucking horror. May they be a beast to put the fear of darkness into a chimera? How many are there? Perhaps a hundred! Mayhap a thousand!”
“Blueblood,” Luna said, “shut up.”
Bluebones’ cloak ruffled as he shook. “B’sides, there’s only the one.”
Luna’s eyes widened. She bared her teeth as she turned to the skeletal pony. “I thought there were two.”
“One escaped, about four days ago.” Bluebones turned his head so that he could see the princess. “Oi can’t say oi didn’t expect Chastity to check out one of these days.”
Luna frowned. Severely. “Why didn’t you mention her?”
Bluebones stopped at the entrance to the central room. “Oi was a bit busy.”
“No.” Luna pulled around to his front and looked into his deep, pitted eyes. “That’s not busy. That’s neglectful.”
He brushed past her. “Oi s’pect she’ll turn up sooner or later. It won’t be too much trouble to bring her in—”
“Unless she’s possessed a pony,” Luna hissed.
Bluebones froze. “You think she’d do that?”
“Bluebones, the Nightmares are picking their targets very precisely.” Luna glanced at Blueblood, who stood to the side doing rather a lot of listening. “There’s no telling what they'll make her do.”
Bluebones shivered, and the sound of rattling bones filled the mountain. “Oi… s’pose oi didn’t think of that.”
“No…” Luna lifted her head and looked at a specific doorway. “Let’s talk with her sister. Maybe we can get some idea of how Chastity escaped.” She strode forward with purpose. “Maybe we can get some idea as to how any of these Nightmares escaped.”
Blueblood pulled up alongside Luna. “So, this Chastity character… is not a vicious tentacle monster?”
Luna glared at him, and he fell mercifully silent.
For a moment. “There’s an awful lot of empty cells down this corridor.”
Bluebones looked at the bare holes in the walls. “There really weren’t that many Nightmares of this type. They’re, well, they’re a little different than most.”
“They’re ponies,” Luna said.
Blueblood tripped over his hooves. “What!?”
“A pair of sisters whose special talent involved creatin’ and manipulatin’ dreams.” Bluebones tilted his head back, as if studying the ceiling. “We call ’em ‘the Temptations.’”
“We always preferred ‘the Fantasies!’” said a voice that sparkled quite metaphorically. “Hi, Bluebones! Who’s your friends?”
Bluebones trotted up to the only locked cell door on the block. “Hullo, Charity.”
Blueblood looked into the cell. His eyes nearly popped out of his head at the sight that met them.
Charity was a bat pony, much like Luna’s guards. She had the requisite membranous wings, fluffy ears, and slit pupils. She was also drop-dead gorgeous.
Her purple mane curled at the bottom, just after it passed her shoulders. Her gray coat was brushed just so, and her tail bobbed to and fro as she swayed. Her smile brightened up the dark room, even if the prominent canine teeth made Blueblood take a cursory inventory of escape routes.
He tried not to stare at her legs and flanks, and then failed utterly.
Luna nudged him from the side. “Focus, Casanova.”
Blueblood snapped his head around to her. “I haven’t the foggiest idea what you—”
“You’re drooling.”
Blueblood wiped the spittle from his mouth. “Yes, well, I am only a pony, you understand.”
Luna snorted. “I’ve seen your dreams. There was never any doubt.”
“Then you know where my heart lies,” Blueblood said. He closed his eyes and lifted his snout into the air.
“I do,” Luna said, “but do you?”
Blueblood sputtered, and opened his mouth to offer a rebuttal, but was stopped by the sound of a clearing throat.
Bluebones tapped a hoof on the ground. “As I would have said, this is Charity. Say hello, Charity.”
“Hi!” Charity hopped on her hooves. “You must be Bluebones’ grandson. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Blueblood blanched, draining the color from his already nearly-colorless face. “From whom, may I ask?”
Charity giggled into her hoof while refusing to look Blueblood in the eye. “Bluebones. I think he heard it from Luna, first.”
Blueblood nodded. “Ah. A glowing review, then.”
“Well…” Charity tipped from side to side. “He did say you were getting better.”
“Oi did,” Bluebones said. “And she did.”
“Indeed.” Luna held back the smile that hid in the corners of her mouth. “I wouldn’t take it back, honest.”
Blueblood blinked the surprise out of his eyes. “Thank you, then.”
He turned to the bat pony, subconsciously smoothing his mane. “Begging your pardon, but you don’t seem the Nightmare type.”
Charity ran a hoof over her foreleg. “Well, it was a long time ago… Four hundred years, did you say, Bluebones?”
“Just about.” Bluebones moved to stand between Blueblood and the door. “And oi think that’s the whole point. She don’t seem dangerous.”
Charity flicked a hoof and gave a tight, toothy grin. “Rawr.”
“But tain’t that sort of danger you need to s’pect from her.” Bluebones looked at her. “Ain’t that roight?”
Charity clicked her tongue. “I told you those days were dead and gone.”
Bluebones held her gaze for a long moment. “Perhaps.”
He gasped, clutching a hoof to his chest. He tumbled to the floor, his cloak wrapping tightly around him. Charity reached a hoof through the bars of her cell, her eyes wide. “Bluebones!”
When her hooves brushed the bars, the metal glowed. She drew back with a hiss.
Luna was by Bluebones’ side in an instant, her hooves running along his body. “Bluebones! Bluebones, can you hear me?”
Blueblood knelt beside his grandfather. “Is… is he—”
“Oi’m not dead, you ijit!” Bluebones roared. He batted Luna aside. “O’ course oi can hear you! You’re screaming in my blinkin’ ear!”
Charity leaned against her wall, her eyes closed and her hoof over her chest. She opened her eyes, and moisture threatened to pour out. “Another cramp?”
“Aye.” Bluebones stood without the aid of Luna, thank you very much. “Aye, it’s… it’s the marrow.”
Luna lifted a hoof in a regal pose. “Perhaps it is time to retire for the day?”
Blueblood rubbed his eyes. “It feel like we just got here, and have also been here for hours. Which is it?”
“Maybe both, in the big scheme of things.” Luna wrapped a wing around Bluebones’ shoulders. “Come, perhaps we can regale each other with tales of derring-do.”
Blueblood narrowed one eye. “Never quite cared for those books.”
“Hush up, you.” Luna pulled the two Bluebloods along, leaving Charity alone.
The bat pony watched them go. Her lips pouted. She walked deeper into her cell and lay upon her cot. Her eyes fell on the empty bed beside her. “Another night alone. I really shouldn’t have let her go.”
“Dangit.”
Blueblood started at the exclamation that came from Luna’s mouth. “Begging your pardon?”
“I was going to ask her how her sister escaped,” Luna said. She lay on her stomach and glared at the middle distance. “But then…”
“Yeah, yeah. The deadbeat.” Bluebones snorted. “Sorry, oi can’t quite help it.”
“It’s not your fault, Bluebones.” Luna sighed through her nose. “I’m not too thick to understand that, at least.”
“Thick is probably the last word I would use to describe you, Aunt Luna,” Blueblood said. “Save perhaps during that one dream I had when you first returned from exile.”
Luna looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “How was I supposed to know that drowning in a mountain of ice cream was a good thing?”
“Maybe the stupid grin on my face?” Blueblood asked. “Perhaps the giggles of foalish delight? The utter zeal with which I took your advice: ‘You must face your fears’?”
“Celestia always blamed me for the ice cream shortage of aught-three.” Luna smiled. “I guess she was right.”
“Oh come now,” Blueblood said. “The amount I indulged in was most emphatically not proportionate to the shortage.”
“Mint chip was an especially rare commodity at the time, I recall.”
“Coincidence,” Blueblood said. “Sheer, happenstantial coincidence.”
Bluebones clicked a hoof against the floor idly. “Oi miss ice cream.”
Blueblood brought a pillow to himself with a flash of telekinesis. “My stars, you must not have had a smidge in… four hundred years.”
The central room was lit by the torches, but the light never really brightened the cavern much. Bluebones’ cloak hid his face in the shadows as he lay. “That’s ’bout roight, boy.”
Blueblood undid the tie around his neck and laid it gently beside himself. “What do you miss most, Grandfather?”
Bluebones sat still. “Bein’ honest, your great grandmother.” He crossed his bony forelegs. “She left just after your grandfather, Bluehooves, was born. She weren’t long for the world.” He shook his head. “Was long b’fore oi was sent here, though.”
A sound similar to a sigh, but lacking the rush of air that usually accompanied it, came from the animated skeleton. “Second would be snow. Any weather would be noice, but you could do so much with the snow. Move it, pack it, eat it, play with it…”
Blueblood rested his head in his forelegs. “Can’t say I appreciate it the same way you do. Too cold.”
“That’s wot wrappin’ up is for, boy.” He pointed a gnarled hoof. “You don’t go prancin’ about in the nude.”
Luna chuckled. “Your grandson is never seen nude. Needn’t worry about that.”
Blueblood made a “humph” sound. “Seeing as how both you and Aunt Celestia are also rarely seen without adornments, I shall take that as a compliment.”
“We’re not as religious about wearing tuxedos as you are, though.” She waved a hoof in his direction. “Like so.”
Blueblood snorted as he unbuttoned his shirt collar. “I, at the least, do not sleep in it.”
“At the very least,” Luna agreed.
Silence descended upon the three ponies in the dark. Bluebones stared at the others as they lay motionless, his teeth clicking. He looked over Luna’s body to see the hallway that led to the bat pony. He turned to his hooves.
Blueblood snored uproariously.
A snowflake descended. It landed in front of him, and made a magical tingling sound as it touched his foreleg. He stared until it melted. He turned to the princess that sat a few meters away.
Luna smiled at him through the bags under her eyes and the lines at the corners of her mouth. “For what it’s worth.”
A few more flakes fell before the glow around her horn faded. He nodded at her. “Thank you, Your Majesty.”
“Just call me Luna, Bluebones.” She turned her head away. “I don’t deserve honorifics from you.”
Bluebones shuffled his legs. “This ain’t your fault, Luna.”
“How can it not be?” she asked. “The Nightmares turned to me for help.”
“And these are a whole ’nother set than the ones wot turned you into Nightmare Moon.” He stomped a hoof quietly, so as not to wake his grandson. “Even then, far as oi’m concerned, that Shadowfright bloke was t’ blame.”
“It wasn’t that simple,” Luna said.
“O’ course not!” Bluebones shifted his cloak to cover his rear legs. “But those're the bare bones of it.”
He dipped his nose towards the floor. “After Blueblood's been the warden for a while, this whole thing’ll quiet down.”
Luna bit her lip. “I hope so, for his sake.”
Bluebones looked at his grandson. “His mum named him ‘Blue Eyes,’ didn’t she?”
Luna looked as well. “He’s never gone by that name, as long as I’ve known him.”
Blueblood’s snore rose an octave. He exhaled in a whine.
“Oi don’t s’pect he would.” Bluebones pointed his horn at Luna. “You best get some rest. It don’t come often to the likes of us.”
Luna closed her eyes. “You’re right about that, Bluebones. Thank you.”
“Moi pleasure.”
Another flake touched the tip of his nose before she finally succumbed to the pull of the realm of dreams.
Bluebones walked quietly through the corridors, his hooves making nary a sound. He passed row after row of empty cells, seeking the one in particular with an occupant. He came upon the cell itself, and called out to the pony within in a small voice. “Ch-Charity…”
A gasp, a clatter of hooves, and a smile greeted him. “Bluebones, I was afraid you wouldn’t come.”
Bluebones rocked on his bony legs. “Oi wasn’t gonna… but… oi can’t—”
Charity covered her mouth with a hoof. “You poor dear. Come here.”
Bluebones hesitated.
He touched the door with his horn. It flared briefly, and then slid aside with the subtle squeak of a well-oiled hinge. Charity rushed forward and wrapped her forelegs around Bluebones’ neck. She placed a small kiss on his forehead and brought his cheek to her chest.
He placed a hoof on her back and drew her closer. “Oi wish oi could feel your fur.”
“It’s the thought that counts,” she whispered into his ear. “Right?”
He thought about it for a moment, then laughed. “Oi thought so. But—”
She placed a hoof against his mouth. “Shh.”
She kissed his forehead, then his nose, and then paused before placing her lips against his forever-bared teeth. She cupped his head in her hooves and looked into the dark holes that were his eyes.
“We could make the thought really count,” she said.
“No,” he said quickly. “No, it’s too dangerous with Luna here.”
She pouted. “It might be the last chance we ever get.” She blinked a tear away. “It’d be worth it if we can dream together just one more time.”
“Oi don’t want you hurt,” Bluebones choked.
She placed her hoof under his chin. “She’d understand, wouldn’t she? I mean, even alicorns have dreams.”
Bluebones hung his head. “It… It’s just—”
“Hay,” Charity said. She held his hoof and pulled him into the cell. “Come dream with me.”
He lay down on the cot, his cloak fluttering down across him. She sat beside him and put her hoof on his head.
“Just rest,” Charity said. “Think up a lovely dream. I’ll be there soon.”
Bluebones sighed.
Life filled his legs.
He looked down and saw white hair. It sat on his chest, hiding the muscles beneath. It grew upon his legs, warming him down to his bones. A hoof touched the side of his face and felt the skin that lay across it. He blinked and felt the lids cover his wet eyes.
He smelled flowers and grass and dirt. He leaned down to smell further, and his blond mane fell across his eyes. He brushed it out of the way with a hoof.
A leathery wing wrapped around his middle. “Oh, Bluebones. You look so happy.”
He turned towards a vision of dark beauty. Her canine teeth glinted in the light of a warm sun. Her slit eyes sparkled with delight. Her feathery ears twitched towards him, hoping to scoop up any words he decided to spill forth.
“Oi love you,” he said.
In return, she gave him a kiss. Their lips met in the space between them, a space that was rapidly filled by an embrace. They sat amongst the flowers, and the grass, and the falling leaves.
Charity opened one eye and saw a Night Terror slip through the dream. She shut both eyes tight and focused on the kiss.
A snowflake touched his nose with a magical tingling sound. His eyes shot open, and a smile grabbed his mouth. “Oi feel… cold.” He looked deep into Charity’s eyes. “Did oi dream up a snow day?”
“No, Bluebones Blueblood,” said Luna, Princess of Dreams. “No, you did not.”
The flowers died, and the grass grew brown as snow fell around them. Luna stood tall, towering above the two ponies as she rarely did in reality. She glared at Bluebones, and then turned her gaze to Charity. “Where was that Nightmare going?”
Charity’s lips trembled. “I-I-I don’t know.”
“Cha-Charity,” Bluebones said. “Charity, wot Nightmare? Wot’s she talkin’ about?”
“It’s how the Nightmares have been escaping, Bluebones,” Luna said. “This isn’t the first time you’ve dreamed together, is it?”
Bluebones’ blond mane fell before his face as he bowed his head. “N-no.”
Luna gripped Charity in a bubble of magic. The bat pony gasped as she struggled against the shield. “She’s been luring you into dreams to give the Nightmares a doorway to the outside. She’s been tricking you into emptying Tartarus.”
“That ain’t true!” Bluebones said. “Tell her it ain’t true, Charity!”
“I didn’t mean to trick him!” Charity cried. She wiped her eyes with a wing. “I love him!”
“Then it’s a selfish love, isn’t it!?” Luna screamed. “How long has this been going on? A year? Two? A hundred? How long have your been serving Scorpan’s whim?”
She turned her fiery gaze on Bluebones. “How long ago did you release the Nightmare that killed Blueblood’s mother?”
She dropped Charity to the ground. “This dream is hereby disbanded. Return to the waking world.”
Bluebones shot upright. His body flinched, wracked with pain from the inside. He bumped his knee against the floor in his rush to stand, but it didn’t hurt. It didn’t anything.
He looked around the empty cell, searching for Charity. He found her in a cell across the hall, with a new lock holding it fast. Luna stood beside the door, her face stony.
“Bluebones Blueblood,” she said, “you are relieved of all duties as Warden of Tartarus.” She turned her nose up. “Wait here, I shall follow yon villainous Night Terror and run it to the ground before damage may be done.”
Luna's eyes closed, and she fell asleep where she stood. Soft snores came from her, which competed with those uttered by her nephew down the hall.
Bluebones stood outside Charity’s cell door.
“Bluebones,” she gasped, “they made me do it! I didn’t know what they were planning! I knew it was wrong, but I needed to see y—”
Bluebones held up a hoof, and she fell silent. He turned and walked to the center room slowly.
“Oi was a fool.”
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Yikes, well that puts a few pieces together. Honestly, that's probably what they get for shoehorning a pony with mortal needs and desires into a role where he was forever denied them. It's pretty clear that the exploitable weakness in this prison was simply the pony in charge.
4209640
Indeed. It's about time the answers started to catch up with the questions.
Ah, ponies. The cause of, and the solution to, all the world's problems.
which I took you advice
which I took your advice
Curse those exotic, seductive bat ponies! I should've known...
Guess we damn sure know how that other sister escaped now.
Dream PO-leece breakin' down da door, wreckin' yo shit! U can't hide dat contra-band from Officer Loon.
4252604
I could have sworn I pressed that particular "R" key. Drat my skinny fingers! Thank you for pointing it out.
Darned sure indeed! It's mystery solved amidst a multitude.
Luna’s
4860135
Thanks for pointing out the error.
Fixed!
For some reason,
completely failed to register with any significance in my mind, so I was tootling merrily along, expecting them to have a pretty good conversation with lots of delicious exposition, when suddenly
Needless to say, my brain jumped the rails and fell into a ravine at this point.
Other than that, the chapter flowed nicely.
It certainly cleared a few things up, as well as deepening the shadows around others.
5055660
I gotta bite, who's best?
In other words, the story flows good if you read it right?
I kid, I kid.
All good chapters deepen the plot, I've found.
Heh.
I peg her as Affably Evil, still evil, but that's no reason not to be polite and civil.
Or not so evil.
Oh dear.
Then why did you let the Nightmares escape?
Be that as it may, you ARE a Temptation, it's hard to think you're truthful, besides, they made me do it is an age old excuse.