Dusk Falls

by NorrisThePony

Consult Your Local Public Library for Chapter Five (V)

i

Dawn arrived swiftly to my mind unwilling to dream, and when my eyes opened to the floral walls of my bedroom the magical tug of the sun willing to be raised was already pulling on my horn. I yawned and stretched, my horn bursting to life as I did. Faint glimmers of sunlight were shooting through my window before I had even left my room.

Luna looked up from a bowl of porridge as my door was opened and I stumbled out. We shared mumbled and lazy greetings and directly after she returned her attention to the food in front of her.

“Dune Shores is dead, Celestia,” she said without any context or warning.

I stopped dead in my tracks and simply stared at her in shock.

“That was the colt’s name, right?” Luna continued on eating her porridge casually, as if she had not noticed my bewilderment. “Or perhaps it was Dune Shade?”

“How did you—!” I began to exclaim, but Luna cut me off instantly.

“I spoke with your guards yesterday while I was waiting for you to return. They filled me in.” Luna answered my unfinished question calmly, as if I had simply asked the weather forecast. “As for how I know he is deceased...I spent all last night searching the Dreamscape for his consciousness. I found nothing. No consciousness, no pony. Also, there’s some leftover porridge for you on the stove if you want.”

Either Luna was amazingly not at all irritated with me, or she was intentionally keeping her anger as hidden as possible for some reason I could not know.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier,” I sighed as I shovelled some of the hot cereal into a bowl. “I wanted to wait because—”

“Because you had no cause for concern,” she waved a hoof dismissively. “Because you had nothing to gain by telling me. Because your promises to keep me informed were simply idle words of encouragement to ease both of our fears. I understand.”

“Luna…I was going to tell you!”

“I know you were! When did I say I thought you weren’t? Why would I even say that to begin with?”

With the quick and direct tone Luna had been speaking with from the first sentence she had muttered upon seeing me, it was difficult to tell when she was being sarcastic and when she was not. She was irritated with me, a fool could see that now, but what surprised me most was how calm and collected her irritation appeared. Furthermore, it would seem she had chosen to act oblivious and unknowing all through last night, showing me that any connection I thought had been remedied was just as severed as it had ever been.

Nevertheless, and despite me greatly expecting and dreading so, Luna did not pursue the issue any further, nor did she say any words of derision to me. I had been expecting her to contentedly tell me that she had “told me so,” but she did nothing of the sort. Instead, she pointed to the same seat by my table that I had been interrogating Morning Glory from the previous day and gave me a forced yet weak smile.

“I said that he was dead to get your attention, by the way,” Luna said. “Although what I said about searching for his consciousness is quite true, not to mention troubling.”

“Is it unusual for such a thing to occur?” I had, and to this day still do have, an embarrassingly sparse knowledge of dream magic. Luna had tried to explain and teach me its intricacies, but it was quickly made quite clear to both of us that it was an art we did not both have the ability to share.

“Indeed it is.” Luna sighed. “Even a mind that’s awake has an active subconscious, although it collapses easily and is damn near impossible to actually enter. Dune Shine had nothing. Not even a trace of a somewhat active subconscious mind.”

“You can pinpoint dreaming ponies like that?” I doubtfully questioned. I understood Luna’s ability to dreamwalk, but she seemed to be claiming it gave her a type of omniscience regarding the present state of mind of every pony in Equestria, even the ones she had not met.

“N...not exactly. It’s complicated. Proximity plays a part; sleeping minds in Dusk Falls are easily accessible to me presently, whereas those at home aren’t.” Luna explained. “Think of it like searching for a specific star in the night sky. Except every star is a mind and the brighter ones are the more active ponies; those engaged in dreams or nightmares. Even the least active daydream would be a pinprick in the night-sky sprawl of the dreamscape.”

Luna shrugged, looking as though she were simply hoping that her convoluted explanation made a bit of sense to me, but unwilling to actually pursue it any further.

“That is all very interesting,” I replied after several seconds. “But how does it relate to Dune?”

“I told you. Were you not listening?” Luna rolled her eyes, “I couldn’t find him. He was neither dreaming nor awake. Or perhaps he was awake with no conscious mind.”

“Like, in a vegetative state?” I guessed.

“Yes. Exactly.”

“Well, that is hardly reassuring.”

“...Celestia, what exactly do you think is going on in this town?” Luna asked. I looked up to meet her eyes but she was staring straight down into her porridge instead. Luna’s expression remained unchanged as she stirred her coffee despite it being black with nothing else in it.

“I don’t know, Luna. But I have a feeling it’s something big.”

I was fully aware of the irony in my words, and how reflective they were of what Luna had said to me before, but she once again surprised me by not mentioning it.

“Hope for the best, plan for the worst, I suppose.” Luna sighed. “What of the ocean? Could the young colt have drowned?”

“I don’t believe it is likely.” I shook my head. I’d been over this enough times that I was now fairly firm with my answer. “Unless there is something additional at play. Superstition in this town carries suspicions of monsters or curses from relics of the past.”

“Which are entirely possible. Things have been too quiet for us for too long.”

Luna and I both shared a light chuckle, the former using a sip of her coffee as an excuse to break her joy off short.

“I don’t think it’s an ordinary ponies doing.” Luna said. “Because its been going on for almost a century.”

I am quite thankful I had chosen that moment to take a bite of my porridge, for my temporary start of surprise was quite unrestrained and uncouth.

“What?!” I exclaimed once the words managed to come to me.

“Exactly that, Celestia. I thought you already knew. My apologies, I would have shared sooner but I wasn’t sure if it would be knowledge that would benefit you.”

I gritted my teeth at her subtle jibe but said nothing.

“Where is the graveyard in Dusk Falls, Celly?” Luna asked, her voice echoed and distorted as she rose the coffee cup skyward in an attempt to scour the last drops of liquid from the bottom.

“Beg pardon?” I rose an eyebrow. Luna seemed quite fond of expressing quick, unexplained statements or questions that morning. “I...I don’t believe I know, Luna. Is it relevant?”

“No, I suppose it isn’t,” came her ambiguous reply. “I wonder if it would perhaps be a more suitable course of action if I moved here too, until this all blows over.”

She shyly ran a hoof down the pattern of the tablecloth, looking up at me from her peripheral to gauge my reaction. She surely would have been disappointed then, as I remained stoic and apathetic.

“I mean, I’m assuming you have thrown the concept of subtlety to the wind anyways,” she added.

“I’m not quite sure, Luna. Let’s at least wait until the Summer Sun Celebration to discuss this.”

“I doubt that distraught mother would like to wait that long for you to figure things out yourself.” Luna mumbled. I wasn’t quite sure whether or not she intended for me to hear her remark, but I did nonetheless.

“And you yourself are so convinced that your knowledge would surpass mine in this field?” I returned with increasing sharpness.

“Yes, I am. But it doesn’t matter,” Luna said. Instead of simply countering my challenge, she twisted the topic completely. “If he did not drown, then he was either killed, or is being kept alive for a reason. And, more than likely, all those other ponies are as well.”

As much as I was irritated by Luna’s snarky, self-confident tone, her words carried nothing but the truth. From the moment she had first spoken that morning, it was clear that further leeway in my investigations would only be provided with her assistance.

Besides, Luna had every right to be angry with me, now that I was enlisting her help with the very matters I had scoffed at her for mentioning three months prior, and yet she seemed to be repressing her justified scorn.

“I think any rash actions would be unwise on both our parts.” I finally said, ensuring my words carried a firm and final tone to them which clearly showed Luna that I was in no mood to be contradicted on the matter. “Until we have even the remotest knowledge about what is going on then we do not—”

“Do not what?!” Luna practically shouted, rising suddenly to her hooves. “Take action to stop it? Celestia, don’t be an idiot! Not this time!”

Instantly, she heard herself, took a deep and long breath, and looked to her hooves sheepishly, eventually sitting back down at the table.

“I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”

I said nothing. Luna had always been known to carry a certain level of distaste towards the heavy focus on order and harmony I carried, whereas she believed in immediate action even if all the answers were not yet known to her. This had always resulted in conflict between us in the past, but never to the point of outright hostility. Luna disagreed with me, but went along regardless out of both friendship and respect. We may both have been alicorn rulers, but I was her older sister and she seemed to understand that.

Her apology was well-meant and earnestly expressed, but its necessity still left me feeling disturbed.

“What’s happening to us, Tia?” she asked, sullen and defeated.

“I confess I do not know,” came my equally somber reply. I met Luna’s eyes, wide open with sadness and fear.

“If you don’t want me to stay here that’s fine,” she said, looking away from me. “Anyways, I brought something that may help our communication be a little more...personal.”

She reached down into a bag stowed beneath the table that I had not noticed her to be carrying until now. From it, she withdrew two books; one with a black, featureless cover and spine, which I recognized as the journal I had gifted her almost a decade ago. My logic had been for Luna to use it as a means to express her feelings of inadequacy and jealousy in a private manner. It had been a terrible mistake; Luna had screamed at me, claiming that I saw her as some form of mad pony and this was attempted therapy.

I assumed she had not kept it, but it would seem I was wrong.

The other book was much newer, and it looked as though it had been specially crafted from cork-leather, giving it a hard and durable look to it. She passed the second book to me and kept her journal in front of her.

“I’ve enchanted both of these books. Open yours, Celly.”

I did as I was instructed, flipping to the first page. To my amazement, as I stared at the paper, letters suddenly faded into legibility, looking like fresh ink but was entirely dry to the touch of my hoof. I looked up, and saw Luna smiling with a quill hovering over her own black book.

“Two way journals,” she had written, in dark blue ink.

“What we write in our books appears in both,” Luna explained aloud. “I don’t trust the post office here.”

“But we use crystallized dragon fire,” I pointed out. By my desk I had at least four sizable urns of the stuff. It wasn’t actually dragon fire, but rather crystals with magical properties which practically emulated its effect to a tee.

“I wouldn’t trust that, either.”

We fell silent, listening to the sound of the birds outside calling out their triumphant dawn chorus. It came to me that Luna had not known at all of what I was up against in Dusk Falls when she had left, and she had brought these books as a means to communicate more personally even if it did not have any actual significant necessity. It would seem she really was trying hard to mend our troubled relationship after all, even going to the lengths of inventing a whole new type of enchanted item to assist.

“I...I think I should go home,” Luna said suddenly, stabbing through my thoughts with the abrupt and uncertain tone she had stuttered the brief sentence in.

There was no more to be spoken, and no exlamations of protest I could think of for her to stay a short while longer. Luna wordlessly used her magic to levitate her dishes into my kitchen sink and began to walk towards the door. Together, we crossed my porch until we were a dozen feet down the path leading from Pink Sunset. Quite suddenly, Luna stopped, and the air took on a metallic scent as her horn began to grow with the promise of a long-distance-teleportation spell.

Without consent or hesitation, my horn was alight as well, as I focused on matching Luna’s magic frequency to assist with the trying teleportation spell that would bring her home. She did not say anything further, but the slim ghost of a smile she gave me expressed her thanks with more honesty than any words ever could have stated.

With our combined magic rising in intensity, a perfect sphere of light began forming around Luna, casting cold wind in a spiral cutting through the still early morning air.

“See you soon, Celly..." I thought I heard Luna’s voice call out, but it was so consumed by the drone of increasing magic that I half suspected it to be my own imagination.

In one final flash the sphere lit up magnificently and then disappeared, leaving nothing left.

Almost as soon as I turned around to face my porch again, Indigo came dashing through the sky at a speed I had not known she had been able to fly at. She tore over the tall roof of Pink Sunset and came to a near crash-landing some ways down the path.

“Is she gone?!” she gasped, panting for breath.

“I’m afraid you missed my sister by mere seconds.” I said, grinning. Indigo was almost forty-five minutes early for her guard shift.

“Ah drat. The one day I sleep in. Did Her Majesty Princess Luna find anything? She told Miss Morning she would look for her son’s dreaming mind…”

“She told me that she spent all night looking,” I said, not necessarily anticipating the reactions to what came next. “I’m sorry to say she found nothing.”

“Damn it,” the normally soft-spoken young pegasus surprised me by muttering bitterly. “What’s our next course of action, Your Majesty?”

“Ah...allow me a moment to think.” I said. scratching my mane with a forehoof. We walked back to the house in silence, where we sat on the flourescent orange mats that I had decorated the porch with.

Luna had said that she considered the probability of the terror in Dusk Falls being a pony was unlikely, and I was inclined to agree. Certainly even more so after what she had told me about it being an incident which spanned through the century.

In addition, there had been the strange prints in the sand I had seen; I cursed myself internally as I recalled them all too late, for I was quite certain Luna would have loved to hear of them. Upon returning the night previous, I had briefly scoured through my nature guides trying to find an animal that matched the tracks, but none in the region of the Crimson Coast came close to resembling the oddly large and complex shape of the prints.

It was perhaps too little, but the notion of something I presently had no knowledge of was the only lead to follow.

“Indy...you don’t mind if I call you Indy?”

She giggled and shook her head.

“I would greatly appreciate it if you were to scour the town for as many local accounts of strange creatures in this area exclusively.” I said, and then a sudden thought prompted me to make an addition to my orders.

“Also, if you could visit the local library and pick up any and all bestiaries you can find, that would greatly help our cause. If need be, tell them you’re confiscating them for Her Majesty, Princess Celestia. I’m sure that should suffice.” I added, rolling my eyes and garnering another light chuckle from Indigo.

“What specifically should I focus on?” Indigo asked.

“I do not know,” I said, internally picturing the footprints in the sand. They had been infrequently placed, and it was difficult to know for certain the specific manner in which their creator would have been walking.

There seemed to be something distinctly foreign about their nature, something clear that I was somehow not realizing. I cursed out loud and brought a hoof to my temples.

What was I missing?

“Princess? Are you alright?”

“Yes, Indigo.” I straightened myself swiftly, trading my peevish grimace for a thin and weary smile. “I’m simply frustrated.”

“I’m sorry, Princess…”

“Don’t be. I never said I was frustrated with you,” I said. “Now, I don’t mean to come across as overly commanding, but where is Deepsy?”

“Ah...I’m pretty sure he’s been standing guard for Morning Glory since six.”

“Good. Tell him to continue doing so.”

“Your Majesty...what exactly is going on?”

“I...do not know,” I replied after a pause of several seconds. “And until I do know, I wish to practice utmost caution. What I do presently know is that this town does not feel safe.”

“What Deepsy said about monsters and cults…”

“My sister shares his prediction,” I said, cutting her sentence short for I needed not hear the rest of it. “And her experience in the field leads me to trust her judgement, even if it contradicts what I had been hoping for.”

“Alright. Well, I’d better be off, Princess. Are you sure you don't want one of us to remain close to you for safety?”

“Quite sure. I mean no offense, but I doubt there is anything you can do that I cannot do myself.”

“Probably better, at that." Indigo unfurled her wings and gave me a single, determined nod. “I’ll pass on your orders to Deepsy.”

“Much obliged,” I said. “Actually, maybe the three of us can discuss matters over lunch on the boardwalk later today. Perhaps at one?”

“Sure thing, Princess. See you then!”

With humorous enthusiasm, Indigo nodded vigorously, and took off into the sky.

Finally alone again, I turned and resumed my return to Pink Sunset, although it would be brief, for I had other matters to attend to.

ii

When I left my home, my living room was abandoned in a state of utter disarray, but it didn’t matter for I had found what I had been looking for and my hooves were already itching with anticipation to be moving again. I could always tidy up my bookshelves later on.

It was still quite early as I streaked past the trees and sand below, and a quick glance to my right showed me that the boardwalk was almost deserted at the hour. I passed it in moments and was soon back at the cove where I had discovered the footprints the day prior.

The beach, however, was not the focus of my visit that day. Wielding an old spellbook which reeked of sand, dust, and that odd, indescribable smell seemingly exclusive only to ancient books, I stood as tall and proud as I could muster. Placing the book down in the sand in front of me, I pointed my horn skywards, using my left forehoof to flip the book to the specific page required. The title, Bending Water, was the only thing written in proper Equish, the rest was a mess of runes and characters foreign to most ponies without a specialty in advanced magic.

On the other hoof, I myself whispered them with the same casual tone as somepony might as they instinctively read the morning paper aloud. Within seconds the book and my horn alike were glowing with electrical energy, and although I could not know it myself my eyes were glowing with brilliant white light.

The spell for bending water was in actuality quite simple in principle. I imagined it must have been common in advanced schools of magic, where young unicorns perhaps practiced disrupting the flow of water from their kitchen sinks. Intensified to the immense magnitude of the focused energy of an alicorn, however, it was more than enough to start parting the ocean around the immediate area of the cove, although maintaining it for any length of time would be quite difficult.

Feeling slight sympathy for the boats in the pier by the boardwalk, I grunted in concentration as I began to walk while casting the rather tiring spell. After some time the blinding force of the energy swirling around me lessened enough for me to see beyond, and I continued walking until I was off the beach and now standing on the damp sand where the ocean had once been.

Not knowing quite what I was looking for, I trudged on across the extended beach, with twenty-foot walls of stationary water surrounding me in a half-circle. My horn was still alight with magic and my vision was largely clouded by the energy I was dispersing, but I carried on.

The sight must have been impressive, a lone alicorn standing encased in her barriers of frozen waves, although I imagine the serenity of the scene would have been lessened by my stumbling about half-blinded like a drunken fool. My hooves sunk far into sand, and even with the water parted my fetlocks were still wading through the salt water. I had parted most of the ocean in that small area, but the inevitable foot of water still remained.

With the spell eating away at my magic, I knew I did not have all day, and did not have a very long time before my magic gave out and the waves came crashing back into their right place. Knowing this, I swiftly increased my pace as I searched in vain for something out of the ordinary amongst the sand. Every time I allowed myself a glance backwards, I saw the beach growing further and further away while the line of the coast gradually worked its way into a steeper curvature. Directly in front of me, the towering monolith of water was quite a disorienting and unnatural sight. Pretty, certainly, with the bright morning sun sparkling through the frozen baby blue water, but carrying with it a freakish level of unnatural alienness that even a pony well versed in most fields of unicorn magic would have found a little distressing.

After almost half an hour of searching through the sand, I finally saw something abnormal enough to warrant me giving it attention. Or, perhaps more accurately, I did not initially see it, but rather I heard it. The steady sloshing of my hooves travelling through the dirt was suddenly replaced by a loud, pronounced clop, as my hooves struck down against something hard. Looking down in surprise, I realized I was no longer walking on sand, but on stone. It was a grey patch of stone with hardly any imperfections, stretching in a near perfect rectangle for around thirty square feet.

Fully aware of the spell wavering and threatening to give way, I leaned downwards to take a better look at the stone I was standing on. I would not have been too surprised to find small patches of sandstone on the beach, but this was not sandstone at all. Its grey colour quite clearly showed that.

Instead, it seemed to be an actual slab of stone, no doubt immensely heavy given its dimensions. Upon closer examination, I realized that it was actually not imperfect; the salt and waves had actually weathered rough, fascinating looking shapes and patterns across its surface. My search for some sort of actual pony-made marking, however, proved fruitless. Disappointed, I dug my hooves into the sand and the edge and began digging. It was, however, rather counter-productive, as any pony who has ever attempted digging underwater would tell you. Progress was impossible, especially with two thirds of my focus still resting on keeping myself from being hit by a couple thousand gallons of seawater suspended around me precariously.

Still I clawed at the sand in vain, and found that the slab of stone seemed to always be present as far down as my hoof went. It surely must have been incredibly heavy at the dimensions I could see, but even at that I had no way of knowing how much deeper it went. The minutes spent by the stone slab gradually crept into hours as I walked its perimeter, which after enough time were further evidenced by crevices a foot or two deep that I had dug with my hooves. Even with the apparent weathering of decades of the tides ebb and flow, its corners and sides were clearly pronounced, and too bizarrely straight to be anything natural forming.

For every foot downwards I was able to make with my hooves, another leaped upwards and the shallow water pushed the sand back into place. With my magic diverted on keeping the slab accessible in the first place, it was clear there wasn’t anything else that could be done.

Defeated, and with my horn throbbing and humming out an audible, strained whine, I waded back to the beach and ended the flow of magic as gradually as I could. However, even despite my best efforts the massive amount of water came crashing down at once, creating a sound that would make a thunderclap sound like a pin-drop. A massive wave followed, rippling out to sea and flowing clear past me even as I was standing with my two hind-hooves resting on the grass of the rising sand dunes.

It would wreak further havoc with the pier, and perhaps even the distant boardwalk, but nonetheless I felt quite pleased that I had decided to indeed return to the cove, even if it had only brought about further mysteries and answered no questions. I was looking forwards to coming back with Luna; perhaps together, the two of us could find some way of moving the great stone from its nonsensical berth in the sand.

The moment my magic ended, I fell in a heap onto the ground, partly out of exhaustion but mostly because the grass and sand looked immensely comfortable any my hooves were quite sore and scratched from having spent so much time clawing at rock and sand. A glance up at the sun in the sky provided me with the surprising knowledge that I had spent shy of two and a half hours at the cove, even though it felt like mere moments since I had first arrived.

Along with the spellbook, I had also brought in my saddlebag the cork-leather journal, and I withdrew it and began taking notes. It would be an easier way of relaying information to Luna, already exposing its usefulness in mere hours of being in my possession.

I sketched a brief depiction of the underwater monolith, but as I stated earlier, I am no artist. Underneath I wrote a brief summary of events in shorthoof. Not only was it a quick and efficient strategy inherited through centuries of running Equestria, but it was a nearly indecipherable mess of strange lines and shapes to any malevolent demon being which I had my doubts carried bureaucratic knowledge. Luna’s suspicions of both Dusk Falls’ postal service, and the risk of somepony intercepting dragonfire messages was indeed more prominent then one might imagine. It had been quite a risk during the war against King Sombra, so much so that Luna and I had entire ciphers and codes invented specifically for that battle.

Of course, if one were expecting an instantaneous response to the writing scrawled onto the journal, they would be quite disappointed. I certainly was as I stared at the blank page next to my notes, waiting for Luna’s remarks. I swiftly realized that they would not come until she actually checked, and she was was probably quite busy with work to pay any attention to the journal at the moment.

I stuffed my books into my saddlebag, along with my sunhat which I had to crumble a little to get to fit. In its place atop my head I withdrew my crown and wore that instead. If whatever cult or monster was residing in Dusk Falls thought I was yet another sunhat toting tourist, then I certainly hoped the golden, rune inscribed regal headwear bade them to think twice.

Although I suppose my alicorn stature would have sufficed in this regard.

With my crown on, I spread my wings and flew back to the boardwalk as swiftly as I could, agressive waves still beating the shore as a direct result of the small tidal wave I had caused. The boardwalk itself was thankfully high enough above the water that the tallest of the waves had seemingly still been too short to soak the wood. It was ten to one o’clock when I landed amidst a flurry of surprise and joy from the ponies on the boardwalk. It had been quite sometime since many of them had seen me in public, especially with my newfound lust for secrecy and tradition of travelling in the rain when the streets, beaches, and boardwalk were all relatively deserted of their typical bustling life.

I was keen on having no attention diverted towards me, however, and my firm expression solidified the thoughts I needed not vocally express to the ponies on the boardwalk. Instead, I strode forwards purposefully in the direction of a small looking coffeeshop cafe with its large glass windows directly facing the sea.

iii

“...and it was just lying there in the sand?”

“Yes, Deepsy.” I said, daintily picking away at a salad. The cafe shop we were eating in had a distinctly maritime motif, with anchors, sextons, oars, and other ancient ship parts lining the walls. The sort of tacky charm characteristic of these little beach towns. “I have no idea what it is or how it’s there. How about you two? How is Morning Glory, Deepsy?”

“She’s fine. I’m afraid I still don’t understand why my guard duties suddenly lie with her, though.”

I was tempted to tell him that they laid with her because I said so, but I instead told him precisely what I had told Indigo earlier that morning; I didn’t know, and until I did, I’d prefer if innocent ponies were not at risk of being hurt.

“And you, Indigo?” she looked up from her own fruit salad as I addressed her. “What have you found?”

“From the residents, nothing. They either don’t know anything, or are really good at acting like they don’t,” she sighed. “And the library contained nothing. Nothing at all...”

“Damn,” I said, picking at my salad irritably. Who else could we possibly press for information? Unless…

“Uhh...Princess?” Indigo said uneasily. I looked up and realized that she hadn’t finished before. I had cut her off, and then fell silent, leaving her swamped for how to continue the conversation. I chuckled awkwardly and nodded at her to continue.

“I couldn’t find anything in the Dusk Falls Public Library...but I did end up finding a bestiary for the Crimson Coast. And I do mean ‘a bestiary,’ as in, the only one. And it isn’t even complete. There’s pages torn out of it.”

“Really?” I said in surprise. “If not the library, then where did you find this?”

“You’re gonna love this,” she grinned. “I stole it from the Mayor.”

“What?!” Deepsy and I exclaimed in comical near-unison.

“I payed him a visit this morning to ask a few questions, like you asked,” she explained, trying her best to suppress a grin and failing. “When he left to get me some tea, I had a look around, and saw that. It stuck out, especially amongst all the books about finance and taxes.”

“Indy, I could hug you.” I gleefully grabbed the book and began flipping through it.

It was an encyclopedia of sorts, but an incredibly extensive one that appeared to have been written by a writer who was as much an adventurer and explorer as he was an author. It was extensively covered in personal notes and observations regarding a great multitude of dangerous creatures. The potential threats of monsters were all clearly identified, but disturbingly enough so were explanations on how they could be exploited. An entire section of the book was devoted to using parasprites as means of controlled destruction.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that no several pages had been torn out, as Indigo had claimed, but rather an entire chapter of the book was gone. I felt a trickle of anger as I realized this; the one and only bit of research that could assist me and it was vandalized beyond usefulness. At every turn I was provided with more and more unknowns while dozens of questions remained unanswered. I was making no progress.

“Chapter Five is missing entirely.” I slid the book back across the table to Indigo. “Have you any idea what it contained?"

"No, sorry," she said. "The whole thing is gone?"

"Yes, that's what I said," I said with barely detectable irritability. "I want you to find out what it covered, please. This is deliberate, not haphazard vandalism. This means these pages are being kept somewhere, by somepony who apparently is not the mayor. I doubt he even knows the chapter is missing. Obviously he doesn't care much for it if you stole it with ease."

"But—" Deepsy began in uncertain protest. Evidently my logic must have looked quite hypocritically presumptuous, but I hadn't the time to care for appearances.

"At what point did I say I wished for this to be a topic of argument?" I said sternly. My typical outward cheerfulness and positive appearance was hardly unaffected by the stress that my own regretful obliviousness was created, even if at a multitude of times it was no more than a veil in the first place.

Silence fell swiftly between us. I felt a little guilty for how I had snapped at my guards, but frankly I don’t believe they were weak enough to be offended by it. During the conversation’s long lull, I withdrew my journal and flipped to the page I had written on earlier. My drawing and brief description had since been circled in blue ink, as Luna's hoofwriting stated the obvious below:

"Not natural."

v

I was standing by the beach in front of Pink Sunset, with the inky tapestry of black waves unfurled before me. It was the dead of night, and yet I couldn’t remember lowering the sun or why I was standing by the beach in the cold with my housecoat fluttering wildly in the wind wafting across the ocean. I couldn’t even remember walking down to the beach, to my knowledge the last thing I had done was lay my head on my pillow and letting sleep overtake me. So why then was I standing with my slippers sinking into the cold sand?

Do you know that sensation one gets when they feel something very large is out of place, and yet you cannot for the life of you find out what exactly is amiss? I had that feeling as I looked behind me at the still, tall form of Pink Sunset, nary a torch or magic light burning to illuminate the dark house, and back to the lapping waves ahead of me.

There were no hoofprints in the sand to explain my current presence by the beach, it was as if I had simply vanished from my warm bed into the cool night. Before I could even begin to make sense of what was happening, I caught movement in my peripheral, and whipped around to see some...thing advancing towards me.

It was...vaguely alicorn in shape, with a coat so black it blended with the starless night almost inconspicuously. But, to call its coat fur would be a compliment, it looked more like something had skinned a pony and was now wearing it over itself. Its colour was unnatural, perhaps in some form it was blue, but it was grotesque and rotting in many places, and without any confirmation I knew that if I were to come in contact with this thing’s coat, my own pearl white fur would be stained with whatever substance it was made from.

Simply put, it looked...false. Like a changeling's pathetic attempts at shapeshifting when it did not have enough energy to do so.

Despite its freakish appearance and alicorn nature, its dark blue mane had no ethereal qualities about it whatsoever, a sure sign that it was not an alicorn through birth nor ascension, but by some other means entirely.

“Nice evening, isn’t it, Your Majesty?” she spoke, in a voice distinctly female and sounding of both youthful arrogance and age-old wisdom. As she spoke, her mouth twisted into an ominous, bloodthirsty smile, and she licked her razor sharp fangs, an action which surely would cut a thick gash in an ordinary ponies tongue.

“What are you?” I said, keeping my ground and refusing to let fear overtake me. Whatever this creature was, I was ready for it.

“Is that seriously how you’re going to greet me?” It cackled, and then its voice shifted to a deliberately mocking shrill, “What are you?!”

It hung it’s head and laughed some more, while I glowered and stared on.

“Oh, I like that! What am I. Hilarious! Whatever happened to the Royal Princess Celestia’s sweet little manners?”

“What. Are. You?” I growled, deliberately punctuating each world as I bared my own teeth, a pathetic answer to this thing’s cannibalistic fangs.

“What a way to greet a complete stranger. With hostility.”

“What is it you want from me? What manner of demon are you?”

"Certainly, I'm not an alicorn, if that's what you mean. If you chose to dream of one then that's your prerogative. I'm no Goddess of Destruction or anything, either, before you start thinking that. What is it you called me? The terror of Dusk Falls? I suppose I'm that, although death, fear, and destruction are hardly my intention. "

I said nothing, but still I kept my glaring gaze locked at the creature in front of me.

“Oh, Princess, relax. I mean you no harm. At least not for the time being. I’m simply reaching out, getting a good look at my...for lack of a better word, opposition.”

The dark parody of an alicorn never once broke her mad grin, instead somehow managing to further enhance its piercing, patronizing intensity. It saw my anger, confusion, and fear, and I could tell that it was enjoying every last moment of it. Still, I refused to break my own intimidating expression, wishing I was standing in anything but a pink housecoat and fluffy slippers soaked with water and sand.

“If you so much as lay a hoof on my subjects—”

“Don’t worry, I would never even dream of hurting them. Not yet. Anyways, I think I’ve overstayed my welcome here, Princess Celestia.”

Suddenly, the creature started walking past me, her hooves trodding into the sand and leaving no trace to betray her presence. As she walked, the blackness covering her form started fading into the dark night around her, so that palm trees and waves could faintly be seen clear through her body.

“No! Wait! I command you to tell me who you are and what you want!”

Amazingly, the creature stopped in her tracks and turned a little to face me through her peripheral, still wearing a smug and self-satisfied grin.

“What do I want? Simply...freedom. And...who am I?”

She turned and kept walking, until her form had vanished completely and I was seemingly left alone.

“You'll have to wait a little to find out, Your Majesty.”

The voice was carried as if by the silent wind, fading away to the sounds of the waves against the shore.

Suddenly, I was leaping upwards with a shocked shout of surprise and fear, throwing my bed covers violently across the room and realizing I was laying in my bed and drenched in my own sweat. My housecoat was hanging by my bed delicately, my slippers carefully placed at their usual spot at the foot of my bed, free of any traces of sand, dirt, or water.

Nightmare. It had been no more than a nightmare.

Certainly, the word rang true. Indeed, it rang so true that I actually spoke the word out loud as I lay in my bed.

“Nightmare….nightmare…”

As I said it, I suddenly let out a laugh, a fearful sob, and a final, panicked chuckle.

“All just a...just a nightmare...a dream. Just a dream.”

But, something told me it wasn’t. That nagging feeling. The one that tells you something is most certainly amiss, something large, something glaring you in the face whilst breathing its icy breath down your obliviously fearful neck. Something was wrong, and it wasn’t something a little more chamomile tea before bed could fix.

That was much more than just a dream.

It was well past midnight, but any chance of me ever getting any sleep was a ridiculous thought I may have laughed at if I were in a less panicked state. Instead, I rolled from my bed, lit a torch with my magic, and carried it with me as I left my room and traversed the short, floral hallway into the heart of Pink Sunset.

From the towering windows, I could see that the night looked precisely the same as it had in my dream, the same starless sky, and the same frighteningly empty ocean being battered by the silent summer wind. I stumbled my way to the study area, resting my candle onto the desk and collapsing with my head in my hooves.

I’m not much of a superstitious mare.. I don’t put too much stock in dreams or prophecies, I don’t truly believe that the ramblings of our barely functional sleeping minds are anything more than a stream of random images generated by our consciousness when we aren’t around to dictate them into any manner of decent organization. Sometimes, a nightmare is simply a nightmare. But this wasn’t a simple nightmare, this was one that had felt too natural, to deliberate, making me feel as though I had just been revealed as an actor in a play I had no knowledge of acting in.

I sat with my head buried in my hooves, thinking, a quill idly levitating above a piece of parchment with nothing more than the words ‘Dear Luna’ scrawled on and looking quite childish even by the relative darkness I had written them by.

There I lay as the traces of dawn slowly crept forwards over the hours past midnight, with nary more than those two words jotted down in a letter I might never send. What was I to write? “Dear Luna, last night I dreamt of a vision in which some malevolent creature appeared, who taunted and insulted me and then left.” What would her response be? Probably something along the lines of: “Dear Celestia, do I need to recommend some better nighttime teas to help you with your nightmares?”

No, I wouldn’t end up sending the letter. It would become tinder for a fire on some colder night, and the memory of my dream probably wouldn’t last much longer than the morning.

Groggily, I rose from my position with my muzzle resting comfortably on the wooden desk, let out a wide and prehistoric yawn, and strode out onto the porch in anticipation of a new day.

Comments

[Rune Soldier Dan]

Tia, Tia... classic mistake of the rookie occultist. Witness an evil, prophetic dream, and tell no one. Joe Diamond is disappoint.

The pieces are hardly falling into place, but at least they're making themselves known...

(Oh - have you tried making an EQD bid? This is well written and a far enough cry from the norm that I think you'd have a shot.)

[NorrisThePony]

6255427 Ah, the big EQD. I've certainly considered it, but have never actually done it, for reasons I truly don't know. I guess there's nothing to lose, and no harm in trying.

Thanks for your suggestion, I very well might.

[kooarbiter]

I’m not much of a superstitious mare.. I don’t put too much stock in dreams or prophecies

except that one episode where she woke up with a future vision or something

[Danger Beans]

Well things are shaping up. Although I'm fairly certain that the mayor seriously needs a trip to the nearest torture interrogation room.

Seeing as how an entire chapter of a bestiary is missing, I'm gonna go off on a guess and say that the villain is some kind of eldritch horror that eats children, and there's a cult in town that worships and feeds it. Just my initial guess.

[Ice Star]

CHASE YOUR DREAMS, DAMMIT!

[Muggonny]

Holy shit, I just spent 3 weeks reading a 7,000 word chapter.

Loved it though.