Chapter 19: Scattered Thoughts
The act of opening the door to the Golden Oaks library was swift and violent. Twilight entered backwards, scanning for any pursuing ponies. She was twitching uncontrollably.
Harrowing. That was the best way to describe the last two days. Sleep was a distant dream, as Twilight tried desperately to keep her self from slipping into the nightmare's control.
It was not, like a pony might imagine, a voice whispering foul thoughts into her head. No, it was more like a thrum, a melody, winding through harmonious and discordant chords. It evoked beautiful compulsions whenever Twilight thoughts of the terrible things it wanted her to do, and punished her with the mental pain of its screeching when she resisted.
The nightmare did not want to control her necessarily, when she had the power to resist it. She was too wary.
It found it funny to provoke her to evil of her own making. And it wanted her to hunt.
“Twilight you’re back!” Spike exclaimed happily, pausing from his reshelving. “I haven't seen you in the village all day, and honestly I’ve been getting worried.”
Twilight closed the door, but to her dismay it had no latch. “I haven't been feeling well.” She understated. Most of the day had been spend wandering on the right bank of the river, contemplating the Everfree Forest's edge. There had been stretches that she couldn't really remember, but then again she had been hovering at the edge of lucidity since waking up in the hospital.
“Yeah. You’ve been acting really weird.” Spike guffawed.
Twilight nodded. “Umm, yeah... So you'll forgive me when I ask when the last time you saw me was, right?"”
“...” Spike could not hide his concern. "Twilight, are you sure you're alright? I mean you were in the hospital a couple days ago! I saw you faint!"
"Spike, if I was in trouble. I would tell you." Twilight lied. It hurt her to keep a secret from him, but there was nothing he could do and it would only worry him. "I've been stressed, yes, but it's just because I've been working on this fair. You know how important it is."
Spike watched Twilight wedge a lamp against the door. "You have twigs in your mane."
"I- I do?" Twilight shivered. Where had she been where she could have gotten twigs in her mane? She couldn't remember. "Whoops, heh heh. Shows you how busy I've been that I didn't even notice."
If Spike suspected she was deceiving him, he said nothing. With a concerned sigh, he returned to reshelving. "Last time I saw you was, like, yesterday. You told me to do some stuff."
“Stuff.” Twilight said flatly. “Could you elaborate a bit?”
“Well you barged and said you were very hungry. You kept repeating how much you wanted to eat. And I said ‘So go eat’, and you kept looking at me like I was stupid. But then you wanted me to send a letter to Uncle Flux again, so we did that, and before I forget he replied and sent most the books you asked for. Then you told me to reorganize the library and set some other books aside for you, and I did the best I could when you left. Then you said that you needed to go eat Pinkie, and I said sure, ok, because I knew you meant to say that you were going to eat at Pinkie’s, but that’s neither here nor there.” Spike explained droningly. “So now you have almost all the books you asked for. I set them by your bedroom door. And you’re not complaining about being hungry, so I assume you ate between yesterday and now.”
Twilight pressed a hoof against her head to assuage the rising headache. She didn't remember any of that.
Loosing my mind, Twilight thought to herself. No joke, literally loosing parts of my mind.
“Yeah, yesterday was pretty frantic.”
“Frantic. Sure.” Spike mumbled. "Does that mean I don't get a thank you?"
Twilight sighed in disappointment at herself. Was she meant to be thankful for something the nightmare in her head had asked for? That didn't make any sense! "Spike, I appreciate everything you do for me. You meant the world to me."
Spike blushed. "Wasn't expecting that."
Twilight trotted up to her room.
What was her path forward? There felt like there was no hope. Try as she might to weigh the options between researching the ritual, and letting her mind slowly fragment under the nightmare's assaults. Either option meant surrending part of herself. There had to be a path that let her keep her dreams. There just had to be.
She nearly tripped of the pile of books blocking the way into her room. What kind of books had the nightmare requested, she wondered morbidly.
The Art of Disintegration
Torture: Knowing When to Stop
Fighting Fire With Fire
Great Battles of the Pre-Classical Era
The End of the Ancient Alicorns
Black Magic: A Reference Guide
And more titles that shocked Twilight into silence.
“I asked for these specific books?” Twilight called down to Spike.
“Yup.” Spike confirmed. “Though I wondered what you would do with gems like ‘Three Step Dismemberment’.”
“You may laugh now, but you won’t be if that lesson finds itself applied.” Twilight shot back. “Spike... If I ever start asking for strange things like this again, I need you to deny me or not follow through.”
Spike didn't say anything, so Twilight trotted to the banister. Spike was holding his head in his claws.
"Spike?"
"Twilight, are you okay?" Spike turned to her. He was afraid. "Please, tell me the truth!"
"It's..." Twilight swallowed. "It's my experiments, like when I asked you watch me through the night,"
"You've been doing this to yourself?!" Spike was on the verge of tears.
"Yes and no. It has to do with this plague ." Twilight said. "I'm trying to understand it. I think I can solve it."
"It's not hurting anypony. At worst its made ponies pass out. Do you need to suffer for that?!" Spike cried out. "Twilight, you're hurting yourself!"
"Please trust me Spike. I'm trying to heal myself too." Twilight turned away. "I would be suffering anyway. At least like this, ponykind will get some benefit from it."
But she didn't believe her own noble words. There was nothing ponykind could do for her. What responsibility did she have to it? It was natural to feel guilty about causing others pain. But Spike was right: The ponies of Ponyville were at worst falling into comas, while most just felt woozy for a while.
Twilight had the face the loss of her sense of self. A mind-eating parasite was spreading virulently in her dreams. That was not the kind of thing you ignored for the sake of other's comfort.
"I will makes this all better." Twilight promised him. "That's the role of the well born. We protect the ponies under us like Princess Celestia protects ponykind."
But behind her eyes, something else was disagreeing, because it knew that Celestia did not at all protect ponykind.
Spike hung his head, reluctantly accepting Twilight's word. "Please stay safe."
"I will." Twilight nodded.
By the gods, she would find the way to survive her predicament with her dreams intact. She entered her room and closed the door behind her.
"By the gods... Which ones should I worship, to solve this? Oh holy sun..." She looked out her window. The twilight hours were giving way to night. Yellow was giving way to red, red to purples, and purple to the blues and blacks of night. The stars were coming alight and the moon was rising.
The lunar pattern of craters in the silhouette of a pony's profile, there as always, was taking its nightly place above the world. "Moon... Are you looking down at me? How do you feel about my struggle?"
Twilight bared her teeth. It wasn't fair. Celestia's sister had been at the crux of the greatest conflict of the last thousand years when she submerged herself in the nightmare's Dark power. Twilight, on the other hoof, had been bumbling around planning a fair. Fate hadn't even seen fit to give her a great obstacle to truly test her mettle.
"My life can't end like this." She felt like breaking something, taking her anger out on the pillows on her bed or the mirror or any number of things. Throwing a tantrum wouldn't help, but it would feel good. "Damn it... DAMN IT! How could you do this to me, Celestia!"
She didn't owe ponykind anything. In fact, ponykind owed her. She was bearing the burden of the Dark's incursion because Celestia wasn't doing her job protecting ponykind.
Twilight thought about how disappointing it was. Her whole life had led to this moment, and now it was drawing to a limping, anticlimactic end. Dim, dim, dimmer...
All things ended with accepting death, but Twilght's heart burned to think about it. It wasn't right.
"It could have any of the ponies in this village who took this curse, had I not been here. Why me? Why ME?! This... This is..." She swallowed .
"T- They deserve..." She trailed off, the blaze inside her heart growing and growing. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair. It-
Without another word she ignited her horn and teleported away.
Rarity sat on the edge of her bed. She silently considered the horseshoe in her hooves: It was made of a heavy metal, pale blue in color, and very large. Not even the largest of earth ponies could have worn the thing.
It was a family heirloom, of a sort. There had always been a kind of unspoken reverence for the thing, and what it represented.
Did Twilight realize why she had sought it out in her fugue?
Maybe, against all odds, Twilight really was in Ponyville to organize the fair. The fact that Rarity wasn't being carted off to Canterlot for a trail meant the little noble unicorn hadn't come to sniff out disturbances.
But that didn't mean the viscountess's presence wasn't of significance. Things things had spiraled downhill in the last several months, leading up to, including, and after Twilight arrival. If her divine Ladyship was receiving her faithful's prayers, she had a very odd way of responding to them.
With Sparkle and the mysterious 'plague', ponies were getting wary of visiting. Especially Fluttershy, who was usually so diligent. Rarity wished her parents would get back from Baltimare already. They were much better versed in the discrete diversion of suspicion.
The horseshoe vibrated. It did that sometimes, calling out for its companions. But with a growing sense of unease Rarity began to get the impression that this time was different. A light began to shine into Rarity's room from around the edges of her door. It was a strange, sparkling light that popped like bubbles after a few moments. Then a small pop sounded out from the other side.
Twilight Sparkle had arrived.
Rarity considered leaping out her window or fighting back, but knew it would be pointless. She closed her eyes and waited until her door creaked open.
"Come to send me back to the tower?" Rarity asked.
"I still don't know what you mean by that." Twilight said quietly. She didn't sound happy to be there."Is that a euphemism, or a philosophical allusion?"
Rarity faced the trespasser. In the fleeting light of the dying candle, Twilight looked like a specter come to reap her soul. Not far from the truth, Rarity mused. "I don't know. It's an idea. I can't explain it, but I feel it in me, like a weight on my heart. The weight of sin, I suppose."
"I won't pretend to understand." Twilight said emotionlessly. "You know why I'm here. I'm... yearning. I'm sorry, but if this was a problem I could solve on my own I wouldn't be here. Are you going to fight it?"
Rarity shook her head. "Even if I were able to..." She swallowed. "Don't hurt Sweetie Belle."
"I have no desire to be cruel." Twilight promised. She slowly advanced to Rarity. They stared at each other wordlessly. The reflection of the candle danced and wobbled in Rarity's eyes. They were beautiful, but filled with seething resentment. "Mis Rarity, are you going to seek retribution?"
Rarity lowered her head and let her ears droop, signs of submission. "Not while you're stronger than me."
"Strange sentiment for a pony who acts as civilized as you do." Twilight called up her magic and mentally ran through the patterns of the hunting spell. Her eyes wandered down to the blue steel horseshoe. "But maybe the barbarity of this provincial town teaches you what I'm just starting to learn: The strong and well born can't protect the weak unconditionally."
The sound of Twilight's breathing was the only sound in the room, until Rarity's limp body fell back on the bed.
One of the peculiarities of living for almost a thousand years in a world as monotone and drab as the moon was that one sought figments of beauty wherever it could be found.
Sitting in the endless trackless flatlands of the Mare Incognitum, the Nightmare of the Moon was filled with serenity. Everything around her, everything she could possibly touch, was an extension of herself, and she was an extension of it. The title of nightmare of the moon was no mere poetry- The moon was a dream, and she was the manifestation of its darkness.
When there was nothing to rage again, nothing to channel the tempestuous Dark against, there was peace. Though it flowed and swirled in chaotic ways, it was soothing like the roll of a ship in swelling seas.
But it was so empty. Empty of life, empty of meaning, empty of... Empty of the adversity that let the Dark truely come to life.
There was no sin without propriety. There was no pain without pleasure to judge it against. There was no Dark without Light.
Nightmare Moon wondered, as she had many times before, if the mortals of the Bright World were suffering from the same problem, but in reverse. In the absence of nightmares and the Dark Lady, had ponykind begun to yearn for the pain they instinctually knew should have been there?
If so, then it was no wonder that they were beginning to turn on each other.
Moon rose from her little nest of lunar dust and gave her wings a little shake to get it off. She looked up.
The blue world above (or below considering the perspective) was always wreathed in a halo of light from the sun behind it. The two sister celestial bodies never strayed from their paths on opposite sides of the Bright World. But within the last few days, the sun had err from its inflexible orbit, changing it's daily speed by minutes.
The stability that Celestia and her sun had rigorously upheld for a thousand years was breaking down. It was almost like they were getting closer. In the dead of the night, ponykind's dreams, fears, and screams were becoming more tangible. Moon lifted her hoof and let it rest under that distant planet, as if she were holding or caressing it.
"I'm coming back." Moon whispered to the stars in the endless black sky above.
That declaration drew no answer.
Moon let her hoof drop. It was very silent.
The slow movement of the cosmos advanced the nighttime darkness across the continent of Equestria. The Dneighper River Valley and the Everfree Forest, mere specs of green, were slowly consumed. Moon felt the Dark effluence from ponykind's suffering dream jump in intensity. In her ear there begin to slowly grow the sound of voices from a million different mouths.
Ponykind was calling out... TO HER.
Soon, she promised. First she had a call from Twilight Sparkle to answer.
"Welcome back." The voice of Twilight Sparkle taunted. "Welcome, to the tower."
"Welcome, to the tower." A dozen identical voices echoed.
Rarity bore the Manifestations' abuses. There was a limit to how much they could spew.
"You're getting higher than we thought possible for a mortal. Above here, nopony has ever come back mortal." The primary Manifestation continued. "We are very excited to see how this shakes out."
"This place isn't real. As far as I know, it is all in my head. How could anypony else have climbed it?" Rarity said.
"Once upon a time, this tower existed in your world too, but it was destroyed by the gods. now only memories and dreams of it remain, but they are no less real. Only it isn't real in a way you could have appreciated, until you were reduced to what you are now." The manifestation cackled. "You're a dreamer cast adrift, because your dream is being chewed up and digested by the nightmare host. If you think about it, this is that, but how you experience it."
"So much nonsense." Rarity rose to her hooves.
The level of the tower she found herself on was uncomplicated, and the stair up was right beside her. The void was filled with fewer manifestation than before, but that was because there were less mirage ponies caught in still frames of agony scattered around the tower. Few sinners, fewer devils to torture them.
"I act not for the experience, but for the goal."
"As in life, you end up with the experience if you want it or not." The Manifestation fell into place floating slightly behind her. "That's what I am, among other things."
"What you represent? Pretentious drivel. You are what you are. To me, you are an annoyance." Rarity took the stairs at a quick trot.
"Say what you want, you silly mare. I have one purpose, and I do it well. When you look at me, you may not react, but I can feel how it makes you suffer. The conflict in your head could not be more loud." The Manifestation said. When Rarity did not retort it gleefully continued. "That's why you climb. You don't particularly care what's at the top. The journey hurts, but it's far better than what you would face if you ever stopped.
"ME. What you've done. You sins. All the accumulated pain and punishment deferred. If you let yourself look too deeply into my depths, even for a moment, I would destroy you. Oh, you came very close the other night with Applejack by your side. You almost opened yourself up to it. But you turned away, and chose survival over facing justice."
"I said it once I'll say it again. There is no justice here." Rarity spat.
"Nor will there ever be." The Manifestation said. "Until you embrace me."
The dream of Everfree Castle seemed particularly vivid. The edges of shadow and the soft moonlight was sharp, like an uncrossable boundary had been carved into the dirty stone floor.
“Nightmare Moon! I know you can hear me!” Twilight knocked a hoof against the altar. The dreamscape at once carried and echoed her words. “Come on answer me.”
The crackling-glass voice of Nightmare Moon fractured what would have been a purr. “I'm curious weather it is Twilight Sparkle, or her nightmare speaking to me. I’ve been most curious what you have to say to me after the altercation with my lesser half the other night.”
“Lesser half? Why is nopony making sense today?” Twilight huffed. “Okay okay. Which would you prefer?"
“Either the struggle of a mortal against the inevitable, or the strain of a puny nightmare to keep the pony underneath suppressed? I'm amused either way. ” Nightmare chuckled darkly. “Tell me, Twilight or nightmare, what do you want? Want to exchange cutie mark stories?””
Twilight seemed about to yell again, but stopped herself, and instead smiled. “You know, it's kinda funny, but I'm not so sure myself."
"That is funny to you?" Nightmare asked.
"Near the end of this evening, running on no sleep for the last fifty odd hours, the distinctness of my ego began to blur." She frowned. "I saw and felt things the ponies shouldn't. I understood that all in all, there's no great difference between us. We are both creatures with a will to survive, though one was born in a body and the other was formed from a fragment of the Dark." Twilight shrugged. "Our perspectives, as best could be described, aligned."
"Mortal and divine can not exist in harmony. It's fully against their natures." Nightmare said. Either Twilight Sparkle was hilariously deluded about the whole thing, or the nightmare was making a very convincing mimicry of her.
"Harmony? Eh... We are at the stage of tolerance, and that has only been managed because of mutual fascination for what the future might bring." Twilight explained. "The more we consider the ritual, the more we are titillated by it. There is no reason to destroy each other when there are other avenues of expressing the angst inherent in our union."
Nightmare Moon looked disgusted. "Of all mortals, I should have expected that the hunt for knowledge would descend into the perverse for you, Twilight Sparkle. But the nightmare does not chase deeper ways of understanding. It is a destructive parasite. It feeds, grows, and that is all. Letting you live is against it's nature."
"Then this will be a fight against our natures." Twilight said smugly.
"You are insufferable. Do you think less of me for being unified with the nightmare in my own being? What impudence." Nightmare hissed. Thankfully through the distortion of the altar, Twilight could not tell how uncomfortable the conversation made her. "Enough of this! You managed to put this off for a day, but now we are both here. Do you want a pact or no?"
"Of course I do. It's a meaningful one too, wrapped up what I'm feeling right now. It's going to be simple." Twilight said. " Tell me what you desire most."
"Ha!" Nightmare laughed sharply. "I can tell without a pact, for it's no secret I desire freedom above all else."
Twilight tisked. "That wasn't the pact. I was just asking a question."
"Why?"
"Because I want you to the answer from me for the same question. When the pact is fulfilled, we will both know for certain what I want." Twilight explained with a grin. "Then, we will include promises to each other within the framework of the pact, to see each other's dream's realized."
Nightmare was shocked into silence. Clever, using the mechanism of imprisonment like that. It was complicated, and Moon wasn't even sure if the ambiguous rules of the altar allowed multi-part pacts. But was Twilight really promising to help set her free?
A full minute passed before she spoke. "Pact accepted."
"Phrase it properly."
"Twilight Sparkle, will you tell me what you desire most, if I truly commit myself to seeing you satisfied?"
"You said it like that on purpose." Twilight accused with a giggle. "I will, if you do the same for me."
Nightmare Moon's translucent form materialized before the altar. "Twilight Sparkle, have you lost touch with what I am? I am the corporealization of Dark, a concept banned from Equestria for a thousand years. I have killed, and am unrepentant."
"I know exactly what you are. You're a mare after a kingdom. The Nightmare Pretender is the very first of the names I saw for you." Twilight nodded. "And I sympathize. Maybe not with desiring dominion of mortalkind, but with wanting something so badly it drives you mad. I think you deserve more than what you have."
Nightmare Moon nearly leapt on Twilight, and this time it was not out of aggression.
"Tell me more of kingdoms and what I deserve. It warms me. Tell me of rulership." She bound Twilight up in her mane. "Let's never speak of anything less shallow. I want to hear about how great it will be, once I'm free."
Twilight averted her eyes.
"Because that did sound like what you were proposing through the pact. Yes, I see it now! You set me free, and then I, with all my divine might, liberate you from the pains of not having everything in the world." Nightmare continued, her tone nothing less than a purr. "Yes! It's so close I can almost see it! You will use the ritual and transform yourself into a Star! Then, as the prophesies foretell, you break the moon's insatiable hold over me. I will return, yes! I w- will." She began to giggle. "I will feel the grass and dirt under my hoof. I can almost remember it... Cool and damp. It's smells... So earthy. A- And..." She looked up at the sky. "I will never have to lift my eyes to the heavens and see this world again, lost to me forever. Instead I will see my prison, who will never again constrict my wings. I... I want to soar, Twilight Sparkle."
She looked down at the little unicorn. "There is no air on the moon. I can pretend with magic though. Have you ever done that?"
Twilight looked like she was choking back tears. "No." She whispered.
Nightmare Moon noticed this and her elation faded. "You're crying." She said with concern. "What is wrong?"
"Moon... You talking reminded me of a detail." Twilight sniffled. "We have to face an... uncomfortable reality here. For what you want to be fulfilled, I'd have to destroy my mortality. I'd have to become as a Star. You were not sparing on what a horrible state of being that is."
"Do you doubt that the anguish of your existance can be soothed with earthly pleasures? Even the alicorns, hungry and covetous beings by nature, are mollified by decadence. Why Celestia had whole floors of treasures that she swooned over. She would bid me sit among them and call me a treasure too. Ha ha!" She laughed at her own non-joke. "Besides, mortality has not treated you fairly. Do you not wish to live forever?"
She set Twilight down. "Once I am loose on the world I can give you temporal power like you could only dream of. Duchies, cities, mountains, fortresses that touch the clouds! Spells lost to time! Slaves of every tribe and species! Concubines beyond counting! There is no fear of overdosing when you are incapable of death."
Twilight said nothing for a long while. "Moon... I'm sorry. I really, really am. But what I want is more... esoteric."
Nightmare backed a few steps to give Twilight her personal space. "Is it knowledge you want? I should have guessed that infected by nightmare as you are, you would still seek the highest of truths. Light and Dark, the nature of the entities of this universe... I am not the most well versed in these things. But as you have said, I gave you enough for you to pursue those yourself. I'm not a fount. My lessons are anecdotal, not ultimate."
"Not knowledge. What I want is not something becoming a Star can't give me." Twilight began to tear up. "Becoming a Star would prevent it. Moon, I- I just want my dreams back."
Moon pursed her lips. "Ahh... Now that is-" She shivered. "problematic."
"We want to help you. We really do!" Twilight promised tearfully. "B- But the paths to our deepest desires can't work together."
"Then the pact can't be fulfilled." Nightmare said. Behind her even tone, all the joy and excitement began to turn toxic in the depths of her disappointment.
How foolish she had been to think they two, Twilight and Nightmare Moon, could have existed in harmony. They were not two, but one and one. At the end of it all only one of their dreams was going to be fulfilled. "Then you will have to be released from here the old fashion way."
“Whu- What?” Twilight shook away the sleepy haze weighing down her mind. Her sense of continuity was mangled, no sense of when or where.
“Thank you for being so quick, I said. This is one of the worse.”
She was in the hospital, standing on one side of a bed, with an unfamiliar pony on the other. He was a tan unicorn with an oaky brown mane. Twilight looked closer at him, and was surprised to realize that he was the same doctor who had been wearing the raven-shaped plague mask the other day.
“Um... No problem." Twilight looked out the window. It was early early morning. She didn't remember waking up or arriving at the hospital at all. "Could I have your name again?”
“Horse, Doctor.” Doctor Horse said. “I’m usually in trauma, but Redheart collapsed into a fit of seizures, so I’m playing neural diagnostician today.” He cleared his throat. "Ah, who am I kidding! I'm the only licensed doctor in town. I do everything except the more magical stuff."
“Wait you said Redheart's been hit?” Twilight gasped. “Is she going to be ok? Is there anypony else helping you?”
“She peachy, physically speaking. She has however developed that trait persistent of all the infected of being very sullen and withdrawn. She's around somewhere.” Doctor Horse droned. “But let’s talk about mis Pie here.”
“What?” Twilight had somehow missed that the bed between them carried the burden of a certain pink earth pony. “Oh no oh no OH NO!”
“Lady Sparkle please.” Doctor Horse tried to reach across the bed to give a reassuring hoof, then thought better. “Try to recollect some of that stoicism you had when you brought her in, why don’t you.”
“I brought her in.” Twilight changed her inflection at the last moment to avoid a questioning tone. She did bring Pinkie in. Yes, she remembered bringing Pinkie in. She had carried the earth pony out of her bakery with her magic. Had Pinkie still been awake when she'd done that?
“I must warn you, Lady Sparkle, that by continuing to expose yourself to patients like this you increase your own peril.” Doctor Horse was saying. “I’m no virologist, but I’ll offer my complete conjecture that you’re risking something very bad.”
“I’m immune, or something.” Twilight muttered. “Don’t worry about me, I just want to help.”
“If you truly believe that I suppose you have nothing to fear.” The doctor shrugged.
Twilight sighed. “If belief equaled fact.”
Twilight withdrew to the waiting room.
She tried to remember the night's dream. She could not.
"Did I go after Pinkie Pie?" Twilight muttered to herself, horrified. "Why did I do that? I..." She gulped. "I'm not in control."
Fifteen minutes previous.
“Pinkie!” Twilight bashed open the door to Ponyville’s quaint bakery. “Pinkie Pie! I know you’re in there! You little tease. I know you were watching last night.”
Twilight poked through every room on the first floor, and found them empty. She smiled, and stalked to the foot of the stairs.
“Did you like watching? Rarity and I had a great time! You should have joined in. You still can. Just submit yourself quietly I will be gentle with you, promise!” Twilight declared, taking each step purposefully.
Once she reached the top, a soft voice could be heard. It was panicked, desperate, fearful. Twilight inhaled the radiating emotion, and she smiled as though it had been the aroma of fresh bread. Appropriate for a bakery.
Slowly, Twilight advanced up the hall, until she was just outside of where Pinkie was hiding. Pinkie was speaking, pleading in a hushed whimper.
“Phyte please! Can you hear me? This is urgent! Phyte please, respond!”
Twilight turned and bucked the door. It splintered under a force such a little mare should not have had. Pinkie screamed, and Twilight laughed.
“There you are!” Twilight loomed in the door frame. “You've been missing out. We can't have that. You are all about fun, after all.”
Pinkie scattered to the opposite end of her room, knocking over furniture and tossing aside what she had been speaking into. “Gaaaaaa aaaaaa! Bad touch! Bad touch!”
Twilight took a step. “Pinkie really. Shouldn’t a baker like you be the most concerned for a good’s friend’s starvation?” She took another deep breath. “Ahhhh. Intoxicating. Pinkie, how did you feel watching me hunt Rarity? Did it entice you? Did I make your heart quiver, like it is now?” She bared her teeth. "Did it make you realize that you are the prey species?"
Pinkie was pressing herself against the wall forcefully, tears beginning to form at the edges of her eyes. “I- I know that isn’t really Twilight! Rarity said it was the thing! Th- The Manifestation, using your voice! You’re not really Twilight!”
“Whatever helps you sleep at night. Oh, right. You'll not be getting much of that. Hee hee.” Twilight snickered, she took another step forward and bumped against the thing Pinkie has tossed aside. It was a miniature birdcage, no larger than a hoof.
Twilight picked up the little cage with her magic, inadvertently causing it to ignite. “Fascinating. Somepony’s enchanted this with dragonfire.” She crushed it flat. “Clearly, they failed to mention the method of it’s operation. You can’t burn speech.”
Pinkie cracked a halfhearted smile. “Really? Because I have some great yo-momma jokes, and I’ve sent some stallions to the hospital with them.”
Twilight’s morbid mirth evaporated. “My lesser half is willfully ignorant of how you spent your time in Canterlot. I'm more intrigued than anything. Unlike Rarity you might put up a fight.” Twilight charged her horn, and flashed her last crocodile smile. “Let's get it on.”
After two-hundred or so levels, the Manifestation had run out of things to say, letting Rarity climb with one less source of wailing and screeching around her. But the sum of what it had said in those two-hundred levels... It was enough to say that it was what Rarity was climbing to get away from.
Rarity was beginning to tire out. Her hoof had gotten chipped where she dragged it over the hard black stone. She could only be thankful that the damage she sustained in the dream did not follow her into the real world.
"If you turn around, and start descending the tower, that could have the same effect. You would have gravity on your side too. In fact, you wouldn't have to work at all." The Manifestation spoke its first words for an hour.
"Ha. I throw myself off. Funny. High comedy." Rarity laughed mirthlessly.
"What's funny is that the fall would wake you up. Out in the waking world are struggles with far more consequences than this one, so you're doing well prolonging your time here." The Manifestation said. "You would have to throw yourself off twice to have the impact you're after."
"Well it is a moot point. I appreciate the symbolism of climbing rather than descending."
"Aren't you the same mare that called me pretentious, for stating the fact that I am the manifestation of an amalgam of concepts? Do I detect a bit of hypocrisy? It wouldn't be your first time, nor the worst example from you."
Rarity tried to ignore it.
"That makes me think. Did you ever check in on Applejack once she awoke? Do you think she remembers what you did to her?"
"I did nothing to her!" Rarity snapped, wheeling around on the Manifestation. "It was you things!"
"You sacrificed her, left her to cruel fate. If it had been the real world, you would have happily done it there too. Doesn't that make you wonder if there is that much of a difference and Twilight Sparkle?"
"SHUT UP!" Rarity demanded. "She's hollow! She knows nothing about me or my faith."
"Faith informs your actions? Then why are our Dark Lady's messengers hounding you we are? Why, Rarity?" The Manifestation's many mouths broke into wide grins. "Is that attitude just another bandage around your fracturing sanity? So desperate to preserve a sense of righteousness are you, that you would disgrace her ladyship through your empty play at worship? You accuse Twilight of being hollow, when it is you who could not be more hollow."
Rarity turned away and resumed climbing.
"Just as I thought." The Manifestation said smugly.
An indeterminate amount of time latter, and Rarity began to hear a voice from higher on the tower. In amongst the indistinct wails and cries of the manifestations and mirage ponies, she could almost recognize who was speaking.
"Another pony." Rarity mulled.
"Going to hurt her?" The Manifestation asked.
Rarity climbed in silence under she arrived at the level where she heard the voice. It was shaped like an roofed amphitheater with the columns supporting the tower above spread an and amongst rings of seats carved into the stone of the tower.
"Exquisite architecture." She whispered. "Do you monsters even appreciate it?"
"Not in any decent way."
One of the strangest aspects of the tower was how widely it varied in width between layers. One would be twenty hooves across, some fifty, and some even reaching two hundred hooves across. Rarity figured that for an infinitely tall tower, differences of a hundred hooves or so didn't count for much.
The level she had arrived at seemed to be in the range of eighty hooves across, but a thick dark fog like had surrounded Applejack kept her from seeing across it to the other side.
"Take a guess as to who it could be. You have good odds on being right." The Manifestation goaded. "Or, you could keep climbing. There is no reason to stop, unless watching other ponies suffer is something you like."
Rarity waited at the edge of the fog. The pony she had heard had stopped speaking. She ponderously reached into the dark cloud, making sure there were no obstacles she could collide with.
She she pushed into the obscuring darkness, she noticed the floor was sloping. The center, that all the stone seats were oriented towards, was likely the lowest point. That had also been from were the ponies voice had come.
"You're uncertain. You can't see the way between them and you." The Manifestation whispered in her ear. "But once you see them, you'll begin to know."
The slope flattened out again, meaning Rarity had arrived at the center. Also meaning the other pony couldn't have been more than a dozen hooves away. It was very silent in the fog, as though it was muting the cacophonous woes of entities outside.
"Hello?" Rarity called out. "Who's there?"
A rush of air could be heard to her right. The pony did not want to meet her.
"Are you okay? Is there..." Rarity wondered if the pony even knew about the horrors of the tower if they had stayed in the fog since arriving in the dream. "Is there anything wrong?"
Still there was only silence. It was frightening.
"You stay here then." Rarity snorted in an unladylike fashion. "I will be higher on the tower."
She turned heel and trotted the way she'd come, up the slope, around the stone seats, and out of the fog. The sounds and sights of the tower retuned to her.
"Somepony didn't want to reach out to you." The Manifestation cooed. "Doesn't that make you wonder now?"
It did make Rarity wonder.
The tower represented, at its core, the sin of the dreamers it hosted. With a little mental gymnastics, Rarity began to dig into behaviors for deeper answers.
Applejack, crying and withering under the abuse of dozens of manifestations, was reacting with shame to her actions. She wanted to put it behind her, and clung desperately on anypony who could make her feel free of that past.
Rarity, for what her introspection was worth, had forged ahead. She did not acknowledge or address the manifestation of her sins, ignoring it whenever she could. Yet it had become a kind of companion to her. Even now it's horrible grin from many mouths was one equal parts dark glee and camaraderie.
So the pony in the silent fog was... Hiding. She did not speak of it, but neither was there anything there to remind her of that she'd done. She was on a darkened stage after the show had ended. Nopony was coming to see her preform.
Pinkie Pie.
"Even in a dream, she's trying to pry up my secrets." Rarity muttered. Somewhere in the fog behind her, there was surely a pair of cyan wyes watching her. "There is no point engaging with her."
"If that is what you decide." The Manifestation said.
Pushing away hesitation, Rarity resumed her climb.
It struck her that even if there was nothing and no one at the top waiting for her, it would be alright, because then she would be the one at the top, with all the sin and pain below.
But then again, there wouldn't be anywhere else to climb to get away from it.
Twilight was galloping back to the library.
When had she left the hospital? It was moments ago, she struggled to recall. The purpose behind her departure?
Horror, mostly.
Twilight dug her hooves into the ground and came to a sudden stop. This madness and nightmare was entirely out of hoof. Dancing around the problem like she had with Spike was only going to make things worse. It was necessary to take a stand!
"Cooperate with me, damn it! Do you want to have the ritual or not?!" She swore to herself. The nightmare was listening. "You want to kill me, take my body, wreak havoc. Fine! But imagine..."
At the thought of havoc, she remembered why she was going to the library.
The books Spike had laid aside from her were from the depths of Canterlot Castle, detailing all kinds of forbidden thing. She wanted to pour over each and every one of those books. She was going to provide herself with skill to do exquisitely horrible things like only a unicorn could.
"W- Wait what?" Twilight faltered. "I don't want to hurt anypony!"
Even as she said those words, she knew them to be lies. Had the last night's hunt against Rarity been anything other than sadism?
Twilight shook her head clear. No going to the library. Not until she cleared her mind. Who knew when that would be. She was loosing her grip over herself more by the second.
What could she do, and where could she go? Maybe somepony else's home? Maybe... Maybe...
Twilight shook her head again, to no avail. A heavy cloud had settled over Twilight's mind once more. It refused to go away, unless...
"I'm just hungry." Twilight pronounced foggily. "I need to find, ugh, a pony to eat, uh, with."
Children's laughter pierced the air. Twilight peered around the corner, and saw that somepony was holding a party outside the bakery. Her mouth watered.
"That's dangerous." Twilight hissed. "Don't they know there's a plague on the loose? They're just asking to get infected. They're just asking for it!"
Was it night already? Twilight couldn't believe she was in the throne room so soon. She felt like she'd only just departed.
She swiped her hoof along the hard stone floor, feeling out the bumps, clefts, and lichens underhoof. How much effort would it take to restore the throne room to its original state? Hundreds of hours to clean and hundreds more to reconstruct. That means tens of dozens of nights in the dream. And for what? Who would reign and take audience in a changable figment of the dreamscape?
She looked around. There were spots of blackened stone from the nights when Nightmare Moon had attacked with her magic. Twilight counted the locations where she remembered dying in various ways. Nearly, what, twenty-five times? Two months, and fulfilling the pact about half of the time.
That was a lot of death for just one pony. It was a lot even for an alicorn. Twilight wondered if the two of them had become desensitized to the act.
She trotted the length of the throne room. "Nightmare Moon." She said softly. "Are you there?"
“Ah! Twilight! It’s always a pleasure.” Nightmare Moon’s voice would have been smooth and soothing if not for the distorting effect of the altar.
“I want to talk about our feelings."
"How darling. How absolutely darling." Nightmare Moon tittered. "Amongst nightmares, any expression of emotion is a show of weakness that can be capitalized on. Among Dark creatures, the urge to dominate are strong. Yet you come and act as though we should expose our necks to each other?"
"I'm still a pony. Gods willing I will still be after this is all over." Twilight said. "I can't sympathize at all with your attitude. If we're friends, we should trust each other with our feelings."
"Friends, you say? I was wounded by last night's hoarse dismissal of my desires, Twilight. You were very rude."
"I apologized already. I won't prostrate myself any more for you." Twilight said. "Because according to my rough calculations, we one hundred percent equal in terms of our reliance on each other to see our desire fulfilled."
"Rash words, little pony." Nightmare sounded like she wanted to be mad, but she didn't put energy behind it. "Offer me another pact and see if I don't accept it simply so I may come to humble you."
"My first one stands, Moon. Will you tell me about your feelings?"
"If you tell me of yours." The natural response came.
Twilight tapped her hoof to an imaginary rhythm as the ethereal tether connected the altar to the heavenly moon. The lunar alicorn came into being shortly thereafter. "You majesty."
“You seem different.” Nightmare Moon said, checking Twilight over. "How was your day?"
“Odd. It's been a struggle to keep a hold of my mind, but overall things are going alright.” Twilight smiled. “I feel better than last night for sure. I've had time to think. The positive mental energy is having a good effect on me.”
“That logic is pure folly.” Nightmare scowled. “You can’t change yourself on feeling.”
“Well ok, maybe not entirely.” Twilight admitted playfully. “I'm wondering, last night you spoke of your lesser half. As this nightmare in my head evolves, will I similarly dissociate from my normal self?”
Nightmare Moon glowered. "That question strikes deep at the relationship between the pony and alicorn nature."
"Well explain it then. I don't know much about alicorns, and what I do what seems contradictory." Twilight said, but Nightmare Moon's depending frown made her reconsider. "Ehh, unless you'd rather not."
"I will not." Moon agreed roughly.
"Because I'd use it again you?"
"Because it is inexplicable. You ponies arose from the soil, figuratively yes, but still you are children of this world and are products of its ways." Nightmare Moon said. "Alicorns are not. The heavens are our home. That is why hybrids of alicorn and mortal, the so called elder siblings, are so abhorrent. They were not meant to exist."
"Fine." Twilight sighed. "It would be enough if you told me about the nightmare, unless that's inexplicable too."
"The nightmare is not in and of itself divine, but more a side effect of it on mortals. It is, shall I say, the shadow of the dark divine, on you mortals. By nature the divine do not have dreams, and our souls are instead driven by one of the two aspects, Light and Dark. The Dark and the magic dreams overlap to a great degree, yet there are still some incompatibilities. When the raw stuff of the Dark from the very depth of heaven touch a dream, a nightmare may arise.
"Nightmares are divine, yet they can not live as alicorns or the more ancient entities do. They are parasites, and their hosts must be a creature with a dream. As you are experiencing. In a normal host, the nightmare immediately seizes the host's body snd eats their dream.
"But clearly you are not the normal host. As best as I can tell, you are satiating the nightmare by feeding it the dreams of other ponies through hunting. I am not sure how you are doing that, but it should be impossible. I wonder if it is because I was the who who infected you, and I am myself a very odd case."
"I'm not getting away completely unscathed." Twilight admitted. "There's been, um, bleed through. The nightmare's impulses are overwhelming me."
"Since you should by all rights be dead." Moon agreed.
Twilight found it very fascinating. If she had a nightmare pony besides herself to study, she imagined she could break new ground on the study of dreams and the Dark. She would have to hide the research though, since tampering with dreams was illegal, and dallying with the Dark was very illegal. "You, who was once an alicorn, describes yourself as the nightmare of the moon. How does that work?"
"The moon is a dream and dreamer both. The greatest of all dreamers, in fact." Nightmare Moon said reverently. "She is the gateway between the physical world and the cosmos, just as she is the gate between the dreamscape and the Dark regions of heaven. She is whole, a united realm of both physical and dream. I am but a fragment of her."
"Okay, but..."
"Alicorns usually can not enter the physical world, due to our lack of dreams. Those did before us crafted dreams from their magic. But Celestia and I, descending as we did to walk amongst you mortals, were made to have our patron celestial orbs as our dreams."
"How is that even possible, metaphysically?" Twilight wondered.
"It just is, yet it is not. We are a paradox." Moon said. "Being myself of a dark nature, I suffered particularly badly. Was was filled with a surfeit of Dark magic, and the shadow it cast on my dream was long indeed. Nightmares filled my, but they could not possible dominate a dreamer so great as the moon, so they sat. I purged them often, but there was no end to them.
"When I rebelled against my sister, I tried at length to avoid tapping into my own Dark magic. I allied pony warlords, malevolent beasts, and the Stars to wear at Everfree Castle, to no avail. When did decide to take the plunge and accept my Dark magic, I knew that there was no chaste way of going about it.
"And so I was clever. I called forth all my magic and joined the last assault on Everfree Castle. The slaughter was tremendous. It had the desired effect: My sister Celestia, driven my hatred and grief, was roused from her depression to face me. Such ignoble emotions, perfectly attuned to my Dark magic, and so the sun's light began to sicken! With all of my magic, I amplified that light. My moon became the lens, not for the light itself, but its absence. I brought forth eclipse, and a shadow of unrivaled depth settled onto me. And what effect does the dark have on the dream?"
She thumped her chest with a forehoof. "The nightmare happens. I became a parasite to my mother moon. I became an even more intimate part of her, who subsisted purely on the power of her dream. And what a powerful dream it was. I outclassed Celestia handedly, and would have been the victor if not for the Star's treachery."
"And you already told me how Celestia redirected the power of their ritual against you." Twilight nodded. She was getting a clearer picture. The rules of dreams and nightmares weren't set in stone, it seemed. "And now I have to use the ritual to save myself."
"So you've submitted to necessity?!" Nightmare perked up. "You will become a Star and liberate me?"
"You will be freed." Twilight nodded.
"T- This is joyous! I will be free! A part of me laments for your loss though."
"I'll have a long time to mourn." Twilight said with a smile. "I have to beleive what I'm doing is for the best."
"Oh is it! A hundred castles for you, Twilight Sparkle, for what you are doing for me." Nightmare Moon pulled her into a quick embrace. "Not by coercion or enslavement have I ever found an ally so loyal."
They both laughed amicably.
"Yes..." Twilight said. "I kinda was coerced though. If you hadn't infected me, we wouldn't be having this discussion."
The levity died.
"And you have been very sparing on regret for that act. Only when I was discussing with your 'lesser half' right afterwards did I ever get the impression you cared what you did to me." Twilight pressed. Staring eye to eye with Nightmare Moon, she saw very clearly she was venturing into risky territory. "It really makes me wonder."
"When you were infected it weakened my more nightmarish aspects." Nightmare said tensely.
"Because the nightmare in my head is a fragment of you, right? Is it that easy to spread? Doesn't seem right." Twilight narrowed her eyes. "So right now I'm a little wary. I have a lot of reasons to think you did it on purpose."
"Wary?" Nightmare Moon grunted. "That is how you feel, is it?"
"I will go forward with all this because I have no choice." Twilight agreed.
Moon gave a short laugh. "Then it is fair by the terms of tonights to tell you how I feel. Thus I say I am amused that you should feel so weary."
With that being said, the dream began to fade.
Twilight scowled. "I'll get an answer out of you, Nightmare Moon. You're going to discover why its a mistake to tick off a pony you give the secret of immortality to."
"Do the ritual and free me, and I will give you answers by the thousands." Moon said with a wry twist. The black closed in around them, but not so soon that it erased her last words of the night. "You deserve them, Twilight."
It was a catastrophy. Thirteen ponies, half of them foals, now lying paralyzed in Ponyville's clinic. The apothecary ran out of medicine for them all, and several were in deterioration condition.
When Rarity, stumbling and woozy from a miserable night's sleep, had been told, she'd ran faster than she had in her life. Stumbling and gasping for air, she entered the urgent care room.
Then she had wept.
She didn't notice when Twilight Sparkle enerted. She'd looked up from her sister and seen the little purple unicorn there, misolated and silent, sitting in the corner with a thousand mile stare.
Loathing filled the white unicorn, and a good measure of pure hatred. Rarity hated herself too, for ever being jealous of that disgusting monstrosity. What she saw was no noble, but a monster.
Twilight would pay for what she did to Sweetie Belle. Rarity swore it. If she thought she could so much as scratch Twilight she would have stormed her then and there, but no, Twilight was too powerful.
Rarity looked over at the bed the comatose Pinkie Pie lay in. She vainly preyed that the pony would break out of her layer on the tower and help Sweetie Belle,
A preemptive strike, Rarity thought, as she swept out of the hospital. When the nightmares end, everypony will be thankful and forgive the murder. A preemptive strike, to cut off the head of the abominable plague rat.
Twilight wasn't sure when she'd returned to the library. She wasn't sure when she'd eaten, but she felt very full and pleasant. She wasn't sure where Spike had gone off to.
Most of all, she wasn't sure what to think of herself.
She sat among a pile of books, with descriptive titles promising tortures and death within. She'd read them, committed them to memory, and made them as much a part of herself as levitation and teleportation.
"Why have I done this to myself." She whispered.
She'd poured over the steps to a dozen different types of shocking, burning, and frostbite spells. She knew how to crush a heart inside a body, like Nightmare Moon had done inside one of the dreams. She knew how to cause pain, and how to end pain.
If any other pony in Equestria was so well equipped to perpetrate death, she would have been uneasy from the other side of the continent. But the threat was inside her own body, her own mind, and had proven its willingness to hurt ponies.
The nightmare was immensely pleased
Twilight screamed. She kicked the books away, and backed against the wall. She imagined it was how Pinkie had felt, hemmed in by an inevitable fate. Only this enemy was knowledge, the kind Twilight had never wanted to know. She tried to fling the closest book away with her magic, but instead a magical stake whisked out of her horn and impaled itself through the book and the floor.
Ironic, since that spell had come from the book she'd speared. Twilight, usually so obsessive, about the maintenance of books, wished that she had the energy to do the same to the rest of the horrible books.
There was no winning. There was no way to unknown such deadly or depraved things. Twilight collapsed to the floor, and let her tears soak into the wooden floor.
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Blindfolds, Twilight and some very, very heavy iron chains. It's the recommended route.