The Starlit

by Tzelael

Hunters, Hunting and Hunted

Knock knock knock.

A pair of blue eyes on a yellow pony slowly fluttered awake, roused from her sleep by the sound of knocking at her door. Fluttershy’s pink hair flopped to one side as always, though it was slightly unkempt, strands curling out of place. She gently beat her wings, hovering above the ground as her blanket dropped onto her bed. She slowly floated toward the door, throwing it open, her eyelids evidently not yet as awake as the rest of her was right then.

Knock knock knock.

She tossed on a robe and continued to hover down the stairs. She remained silent as she surveyed the ground beneath her. The room wriggled with the bodies of numerous little animals, including many of those who wouldn’t normally be inside her cottage (Namely several of the birds, including the chickens). She reached over for a pile of letters she had written, some of them to Twilight Sparkle and some to Celestia. Next to these was a newspaper with the headline “VISITING COMPOSER DISAPPEARS!” The paper was three days old, but she always figured she’d read it later, given that catching up on local news hasn’t been high on the priority list. Having been gone from Ponyville for a while, she had Applebloom, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo looking over the house and her animal friends while she was gone. She got home yesterday, and while none of the animals were dead or eating each other, she had a lot to catch up on with their personal concerns and exhausted herself the day before with a particularly big problem.

Knock knock knock.

Fluttershy finally managed to rasp a response, though her voice was laden with the sleep she had awakened from only moments ago, still hovering above the writing crowd of animals underneath her.

“Just a minute...” Fluttershy finally opened the door and rubbed her eyes, stifling a yawn. When she did, she raised a brow as a complete stranger was standing in her doorway.

“Are you miss... Fluttershy?” the stallion asked. He wore a tan sport coat and shirt underneath, an overcoat over it and draping across his flank, his cutie mark concealed. He held up a clip board in front of a pair of sunglasses and a hat, though the yellow pegasus caught the glimpse of a ragged scar running down the right eye of the Unicorn in front of her. His fur coat was brown and ratty, clearly never kept very well, with a black mane that flopped lifelessly on either side of his body beneath the hat. She’d never seen the stranger before, but at this point, it’d be rude to tell him to leave.

“Um... Well... Yes.”

“I’m from the Department of Sanitation. You registered a complaint with the Mayor, right?”

Fluttershy jumped for a minute, suddenly awake. Complaint? What complaint? She never remembered delivering one, but Rarity did visit her yesterday... Fluttershy did mention a problem that led her to bringing all the animals inside.

“Well... Um... Now that you mention it, I guess I did... Well, my friend Rarity did, but-”

“So there is a problem here.”

“...Yes.”

“Care to show me what it is?”

Fluttershy nodded slowly and flew outside her cottage. “Okay... Thank you so much for coming, I wasn’t sure what to do... The only person I know who’d be able to deal with this is out of town, she’s doing advanced Unicorn studies and she’s been gone for a few days now... I mean, you’ll do a good job too, but...”

The Sanitation Unicorn simply kept quiet as Fluttershy fumbled with her words to try and string the gentlest explanation possible of why she- or rather, why Rarity convinced her that she needed to call him in. In the midst of the conversation, the two ended up at a hollowed-out tree. He knelt down and took a deep breath, coughing as he realized exactly what the problem was as the scent of rotting flesh invaded his mouth and his nostrils.

“Ungh... Well... This is bad.”

“Yes... There’s some weird... Stuff in the tree that’s causing it.” She pointed inside the hollow, the Sanitation Unicorn peering inside. He wrinkled his left nostril as he got a far more powerful whiff of the foul substance, a gray, thick goo that was almost solid. Reaching in a hoof, he touched the surface of the gooey matter, then pulled it away, a long string of the putrid slime following out of the tree hollow. He tapped the tip of his tongue against it and spat it out, whipping his hoof back and forth to rid himself of the wretched ooze.

Fluttershy gasped as she saw him actually taste the monstrous substance. She leaned in expectedly. “Well...? What do you think?”

“It was a wise precaution to keep your animals inside, Miss Fluttershy. Keep them that way, I’ll need to make preparations for clearing out this substance.”

“Is it... Dangerous?”

“Very. I’ll keep you appraised.”

“Well... Alright. Thank you...” The yellow pegasus hovered back inside her house. Once the Unicorn was certain she was inside, he pulled out a parchment and used his horn to write a something down on a piece of paper, using a stick of charcoal he had in one of his pockets.

He then folded the paper and put it in his coat pocket, giving Fluttershy a polite inclination of his head. “Good day to you, Miss Fluttershy.” He immediately walked off toward the river, where a black, windowless carriage was waiting for him, a nondescript Earth Pony Stallion standing in its binds, with a yellow coat and a brown mane, his cutie mark also concealed by a rather massive set of saddlebags draped over his body. He pulled out a the paper he wrote on earlier and used his magic to hand it over to the Stallion.

The brown Unicorn lowered his voice as he spoke to the stallion in front of the black carriage, leaning his mouth toward his ear. “Get this back to base camp and give it to Onyx. Oh, and... Take your time.”

The Earth Pony Stallion nodded in comprehension, confirming his orders before heading across the bridge.

“At once, Underhoof.”

* * * *

4 days was plenty of time for Twilight to have familiarized herself with virtually any set of literature, although this collection puzzled her from time to time. Constantly lost in the books she was reading, she found it difficult to register the time of day, especially so deep in the forest, the passage of time only becoming more indistinct with the strenuous effort she put forth to decipher the information she was being given. She was frequently held up by esoteric symbolism that wasn’t often used in any other tomes she studied before. Half of the time spent was cross-referencing to find other books that would reveal the meaning of a particular use of words or images.

This time, however, Twilight was asked to do a rather straightforward bit of research, namely checking up on folklore about a monster called “The Sleepless Dreamer.” Most of the information was scant and spread out, coming mostly from tales that were over a thousand years old. Any mention of the creature after that occurred in reports of sightings in newsprint of varying types, and even those didn’t provide much information aside from where it was sighted and a basic description of the creature.

Even stranger in her time here was the fact that the only pony that she actually had a sustained conversation with was the Pegasus who led her here. Twilight had attempted to chat it up with some of the other Starlit, but never even got so much as their pseudonym when they were asked questions. Listening in to other conversations, everypony else seeming completely absorbed in their work, stopping only to talk about the progress they’ve made and ask for things they need to keep going with their work. Twilight was tempted to call them standoffish workaholics, but she stopped herself. After all, before Princess Celestia sent her to Ponyville, she wasn’t all that different from anyone there... Well, aside from the fact that they lived in a shantytown in the middle of the forest.

”Come to think of it... A few years ago, I would have fit right in here...” Twilight stared at the book of folklore she was reading blankly, seeming to concentrate on the blank space in between the words rather than the content of the book itself, her mind wandering off for just a moment.

The sound of hoofsteps suddenly broke her train of thought, her head shooting up from her books and turning around to find Onyx standing there. The dark blue Pegasus smirked down at her, Twilight dreading what would happen after the mare’s lips parted and words escaped her mouth.

“Hey kid! How’s your research on the Dreamer going?” Twilight was greeted with a heavy slap to her back with Onyx’s hoof. Being smacked in the back of the head for no reason had become a common occurrence, though Twilight had grown used to Onyx’s physical assaults. She actually reminded Twilight a lot of Rainbow Dash in her brusque, blunt approach to social interaction, though with not nearly as much decorum and a lot more minor personal injury.

After rubbing the back of her head for a few seconds and finally loosing a nervous chuckle, Twilight looked up at the Pegasus and cleared her throat. “Well... There isn’t a lot of concrete information on this thing.”

“Just tell me what you know and what you can deduce from what you found.”

Suddenly, Twilight’s brain went into overdrive after Onyx made that command. It was a test! She knew what to do during a test. Almost as if a lever was pulled in her brain to recall as much relevant information as possible, Twilight snapped into action and started pouring out everything she learned about the Sleepless Dreamer.

“The Sleepless Dreamer was a legend that began to be spread out during the reign of Princesses Celestia and Luna, a superstition about a monster that stalked the night. Origin stories about the creature point to some sort of magical accident that occurred during Discord’s Reign of Chaos that changed a Royal Guard into a creature that can only appear at night. Some legends say that the creature is capable of some illusionary magic, though it’s never stated enough times to be validated by other sources. One universal trait in all stories, however, is that the creature is able to stretch its mouth to ridiculous lengths to devour a pony whole.”

Onyx nodded slowly, smirking as she leaned by the wagon. “Alright, good. What about descriptions of its appearance?”

“Well, apparently it always looks like a gray Earth Pony Stallion with no face on its head. There’s variation on a lot of factors, like some say that it has faces in weird places, not to mention the description of its size ranges from that of a normal Earth Pony to easily larger than a Manticore.”

“Explanations for these variations?”

“Either exaggerated accounts of witnesses, failure to notice certain parts, hallucinations, or the fact that this creature could very well grow over time, especially considering that each successive description of the Sleepless Dreamer makes it bigger.”

Onyx nodded slowly, clapping her hooves together. “Well done, Nightfall. You’re getting the hang of this fast. Any questions?”

“Well... Yes, I do have one. It’s about something mentioned in a few of the origin stories... The Sisterhood of the Night. I was wondering-”

Twilight was suddenly interrupted by the sound of a carriage being pulled into the shanty-town, the same black carriage that Twilight came to the town in. The stallion unhitched himself from the cart, trotting over toward Onyx, reaching into his saddlebag and producing a letter.

“Letter to you from Underhoof,” the stallion declared after Onyx took the paper out of his hands. She nodded and waved her hoof, dismissing the carriage stallion for now. After opening the letter, Onyx scanned it very quickly. A smile suddenly appeared on her face, her body convulsing for a few moments, then falling over while rolling side to side, hysterical laughter bursting out of her throat.

“AHAHAHAHA! I WAS RIGHT! I TOLD THAT OLD BASTARD, I WAS RIGHT!”

Twilight raised a brow and held up a hoof. “What did Underhoof say?”

Onyx stopped laughing abruptly, realizing that Twilight had no idea what she was talking about. She cleared her throat and walked over toward the violet unicorn, holding the letter in her mouth and tossing it her way. “Today’s your lucky day, kid. You’ve got your first mission, and it just so happens to be about the Dreamer.”

Twilight utilized her magic to catch the letter in an ephemeral cloud of magic, pulling it toward her. She examined it herself, quietly reading it to herself...

“Onyx,

You were right about Ponyville lead. Found its hiding spot. Send in Nightfall, it’s about time for her first real mission. Arrive at midnight and no sooner.

-Underhoof”

Twilight widened her eyes in shock as they ran down the very, very brief letter. “Ponyville?! This thing was in PONYVILLE?!”

Onyx remained largely oblivious to Twilight’s staring in shock at the paper, flying about in a circle while babbling to no one in particular. “IknewitIknewitIknewitIknewit!”

Twilight finally tore herself away from her thoughts about the danger her friends were very likely in. She turned her attention to her mentor flying back and forth while gloating over a perceived victory. “Um... Okay, how did you know that this thing was in Ponyville?”

“Remember from your research, Nightfall, that sightings of the Dreamer are almost always accompanied by a mysterious disappearance?”

“Yeah?”

Onyx pulled out a newspaper and tossed it in Twilight’s direction. It was the Ponyville Express, the article itself was three days old. The headline burst out at the Unicorn, “VISITING COMPOSER DISAPPEARS!”, her eyes drawn to the photograph next to it, the grayscale picture showing an Earth Pony stallion with a soft smile on his face wearing a suit. The caption beneath it read, “MELODIOUS SCORE, CANTERLOT COMPOSER.” Twilight figured that this was worth a closer look, especially if she wanted to make any headway on this excursion.

“Mind if I keep this for the trip?”

“That‘s what I gave it to you for. Now, if you’re ready, I’ll get you a carriage for Ponyville.”

Twilight nodded slowly. “Ready when you are.”

Onyx whistled, the Carriage-Stallion from earlier hitching himself up with the black carriage riding over to the two mares and kicking the side of the wagon. The door flung open for Twilight and Onyx to enter. Twilight gulped after Onyx stepped inside, her thoughts weighed down heavily by the thought that her friends might be in danger.

She wouldn’t be taking any chances on this trip. As Celestia is her witness, her first mission will be a success, no matter what it took to get it done.

* * * *

Onyx and Twilight sat together in the carriage ride to Ponyville, the room inside absolutely silent save for the occasional rustling of the newspaper or Onyx adjusting her saddlebags (which were, curiously enough, already in the carriage). Twilight took this time to familiarize herself with the details of what was going on, absorbed so deeply in thought that she forgot there was anyone else in the carriage with her.

“According to the article, Melodious Score was on vacation in Ponyville when he disappeared... Investigation teams lost his trail around the outskirts of the town, near where Fluttershy lives. She wasn't there at the time, though, she had Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo and Applebloom looking over the house for her, and they said they didn't notice anything. Still, Onyx said that she and Underhoof already have a decent lead.”

Twilight’s train of thought was interrupted by the sudden stop of the cart and the knocking on the top of it. She put the newspaper down and looked up at Onyx. The Pegasus mare simply stood up and pushed the door open.

“We’re here,” Onyx crooned in a sing-song voice that almost made Twilight forget they were chasing a creature out of folklore and instead about to attend a picnic. The two stepped out of the cart. They were quite clearly on the outskirts of town, the night deep and reaching its peak. In front of them stood Underhoof, lowering a hat he had been wearing earlier and revealing his scarred face and black mane, the pale eye staring straight at the two mares who left the carriage. He looked up at the sky to assess the time, then back down at them and nodded.

“Right on time. I’ll get straight to the point and waste no time. The Sleepless Dreamer is here, I found it in the cottage over there in a... Gelatinous state. There’s no mistaking it though, it’s here.”

Onyx, too, didn’t feel like wasting any time when she replied. “Where is it now?”

“It’s close. Take a sniff.”

Twilight decided to obey the order, taking a deep smell of the midnight air. She gagged, smacking her tongue against the roof of her mouth, a putrid taste having tainted her taste buds. “Ugh... Smells like...”

“Rotting flesh,” Onyx added matter-of-factly. Twilight shuddered for a moment, both at the realization of the smell she just took in, and at the fact that Onyx knew exactly what it smelled like right away. “Makes sense. Devours bodies whole and leaves no evidence that it ever took them. The corpses have to deteriorate eventually.”

“Efficient and disgusting. Makes me miss Spike...” Twilight didn’t much relish the thought that she just took in the smell of a corpse, but at least she knew it meant they were on the right track.

“Do you think this means Melodious Score is... Dead?” Twilight asked, her voice shaken a bit toward the end of the sentence.

“Probably. We aren’t sure this thing kills its victims immediately. Nightfall, Onyx, we’ll split up and try to surround the area. The Dreamer probably hid in the forest. I want you both to find it and draw it out, if at all possible.” Underhoof gave shifting glances between Twilight and Onyx, clarifying his point by tilting his head in either direction.

Twilight and Onyx answered almost in unison. “Understood.”

With that, Onyx and Underhoof galloped off into the forest. Twilight, however, stood behind and took another sniff... That awful odor was enough to make her choke, though she did have an idea of how to use it to her advantage. She employed a rather simple spell after concentrating magic from her horn, using the spell to illuminate the trail of the foul stench. A faint, violet haze snaked before her, though didn’t enter the forest. She ran alongside the trail of the luminescent smell, even going so far as to match each of the twists and turns. It was slinking its way around the Ponyville, keeping to the outskirts of town but still remaining relatively close.

Suddenly, while following the trail, she saw the silhouette of a massive Earth Pony Stallion standing by a tree. There was no mistaking it, the stench led straight to the figure in the distance. It seemed only reasonable that this was the Sleepless Dreamer, but what puzzled Twilight was why it was standing out in the open when Underhoof assumed it would have been hiding in the Everfree Forest... Unless...

“It might be trying to lure somepony out!” Twilight immediately concluded. “It’d make sense... Just stay close enough to the town to be seen, but far enough away that it can take somepony who gets too curious out of sight...” The Unicorn shuddered to consider what would immediately happen afterwards, but she steeled her nerves. She was going after the monstrosity and it wasn’t going to eat anyone else, certainly not any of the townsfolk she came to know and love, and none of her friends. She broke into a gallop, though decided now would be a good time to let her comrades know she found something. She released a simple bolt of her magical energy toward the Sleepless Dreamer’s location. As it was, this magic was really just for show, not too different from the fireworks that showhorse Trixie used when she came to town. Twilight loathed the idea of using a trick that such a loudmouth mare employed, but it would get Underhoof and Onyx’s attention.

Unfortunately, it got the attention of the creature, too. It turned to face Twilight, the magic illuminating it. The descriptions she read of it didn’t do the Dreamer any justice; its head was a round, gray shape, devoid of a coat as the light from Twilight’s Magic and the moonlight simply shimmered down its flesh. The only evidence that there were ever eyes on the creature was a slight bump on either side of its head, the rest of it a completely solid mass of the lustrous surface.

It suddenly broke into a gallop, charging at Twilight, absolutely silent as it approached her. Twilight jerked backward, her eyes widening. “It... It can actually see me! Or at least it knows I’m here!” She had to think fast; she didn’t dwell on the fact that it didn't have any eyes, and she didn't plan on being eaten just yet. Concentrating more of her magic, she closed her eyes, a flash of purple light bursting before the creature. The Sleepless Dreamer stopped in its tracks when Twilight reappeared behind it in another flash of light.

“You know... For an ancient, unspeakable horror, you sure are gullible!” Twilight quickly regretted those words as the creature turned around and tilted its head in a slow, fluid motion. As it did so, Twilight took the time to look around the creature. At this time, Twilight could plainly see that, even from a distance, this creature stood as tall as Princess Celestia, maybe even a bit taller. She even noticed some of the more seldom-mentioned features, including seeing a pair of faces on either side of its torso, both of which appeared to be awake with black pits for eyes wide open, small dents for nostrils, a longer, peg-like jaw and smiling mouths with flat-tipped teeth at the forefront. She also caught a glimpse of another face, this one on the back-left flank of the Sleepless Dreamer, where its Cutie Mark would normally be. This face, however, appeared to be sleeping.

The Sleepless Dreamer reared up on its hind legs. Twilight saw one of the two torso-faces suddenly widen its eyes, its mouth opening and releasing a deafening shriek! The scream reached a higher pitch than even Rarity or Fluttershy could ever manage and several times louder, not unlike what would happen if somepony decided to drag a jagged rock across Miss Cheerilee’s Chalkboard. Combined with the fact that there were two voices doing this at once sent Twilight cringing in pain, grunting as the shriek brought her down to her knees.

Once she regained her composure, Twilight darted her head around, though ran to the side as the monster charged at her. She heard more galloping in the distance, though she wasn’t sure if her allies had arrived yet. “They’ll know what to do. It’s already out in the open, so I just need to keep it busy...” Twilight quickly absorbed her surroundings, looking for anything she might be able to use. A tree near the pathway caught her eye, one of the branches loose. She performed a teleportation spell to appear just behind the tree.

“HEY! MR. SLEEPLESS DREAMER THING! OVER HERE!” Twilight shouted at the monster as loudly as possible, waving her hooves up in the air. The Dreamer charged toward her, already at a consistent gallop. As it approached, Twilight charged her magic from her horn, producing only a small amount for the part of the tree branch that already seemed fragile. As the Dreamer closed in on her, she finally ripped the branch off of the tree and released her magical hold on it, causing the branch to slam on top of the dreamer!

Breathing a sigh of relief, Twilight slowly backed off from where the Sleepless Dreamer stood. She finally caught a glimpse of Underhoof and Onyx galloping onward from the Forest. Twilight’s face beamed with a smirk as she realized that she just crushed an ancient evil under a tree branch! She looked down to inspect her handiwork, only to jump back in surprise to see what was happening.

The Dreamer was crawling out of the bottom of the tree, its body flattening and rippling like some sort of living, gray taffy. Its featureless head peeled its way out of the branch, half of its body coming out with it. Twilight stared as the creature seemed to be able to recover so quickly from such a blow.

She stared at the Sleepless Dreamer while backing away slowly, the monster’s forelegs regaining solidity, the rear evidently having remained absolutely stable while the front was crushed, and once it reformed, the tree branch fell off of its back. The creature towered far above Twilight, most of its body completely solid, but its face seemed to be melting still, massive chunks of it oozing slowly downward like clumps of honey revealing a wide, black space underneath. Twilight couldn’t find the words adequate enough to describe what she was saying, her face just wrenching to one side as the smell of rotten flesh overpowered her. When the creature’s “Jaw” dropped completely to the ground, she peered into the cavernous depths, her eyes widened as her pupils shrunk, staring in disbelief at what she saw inside the creature’s “Mouth,” if it could be called that.

“That’s... That’s impossible...” She could vaguely hear Underhoof calling her newly-given name, but paid no heed to him. Staring into the maw of the beast, she saw a golden Tiara with a six-pointed star atop it, a violet color not unlike the one on her Cutie Mark.

“The Element of Magic... But how?” Twilight felt herself pulled toward it, attempting to use her horn to grab it from the creature. As she did though, ambient sounds around her, even the crickets and the wind, became fuzzy and blended in with each other, her surroundings becoming hazy and indistinct, blurring her vision. Her eyelids slowly grew heavier, her body wobbling back and forth as it slowly became numb all over. She couldn’t hold herself up anymore, collapsing onto the ground as everything went black...

Author's Note: Yeah, I lied. Enjoy chapter 3 early!