In the Company of Night

by Mitch H

The Dream Of Burning Roses

SBMS166

The Nightmare sat in my dream-garden and faced the setting sun among the snow-covered rose-bushes, their impossible blooms weighed down with fresh powder. She bowed her great horn at the celestial fire, guiding it to the horizon of my dream. Behind her, a glorious moon arose, and each bush cast a doubled shadow for a brief instant before the sun's light passed from sight. From each doubled shadow rose the image of a pony, and at her hooves they lay, looking up at the Spirit of the Company.

In front of the black alicorn crouched the Captain and her Lieutenant. Those two turned away from the great and glowing Spirit, facing towards the rest of the gathered officers and specialists of the Company as we each emerged from the moon-shadows. The Nightmare was the most real shadow in the garden. Of the rest of us, some among the gathering held greater reality than the rest. As more and more shadows crept out of the moon-lit rows, the selves they cast appeared less and less the selves which they resembled, until a few towards the back were nothing but equine shapes with the slightest artistic touches of muzzle and ear and snout or griffish-beak to inform the dreamer of the shade of the Company pony standing between the rose-bushes.

As some shadows emerged, the Nightmare became more real; as others appeared, other figures flickered into existence on either side of the reclining Spirit. First there appeared the Princess in all her infinite sadness and kindness, a mere outline, filled in as one or the other shadows emerged into the garden. Then, on the other side of the great and immensely real Nightmare, appeared a small and spritely Filly, her green eyes dancing as her partisans grew out of the earth of the rose-garden which was her gift to me.

With the appearance of the last of the Aspects, the Captain began her address to the dream-assembly. This had not been intended to be a full gathering of the Company, but rather, an open meeting of the officers and specialists to discuss the opportunities and choices that had been laid in front of our brotherhood. And yet, though this was not to be a full assembly, it was increasingly obvious that it would be so in effect, de facto as it were. The shadows kept appearing as the Captain spoke.

"We stand at a cross-roads," began the middle-aged earth pony, as small and intense in my dreams as she was in life. "We've done what we were gonna do down here, we've given the Imperials what they wanted. The Company has outrun itself and what we been told to do by th' Bride. The enemy, their attacks into the east has been beat down, butchered, and hung to cure. We've taken the control of the Housa, even if we don't have a loyal fleet to do anything wi' it yet. We've been puttin' the prisoners and the returnees to fixing what got broke down here in the baronies. Goin' any further now, without any such word from the Bride, that would be the Company makin' its own decisions, its own choices. Goin' rogue ourselves, in other words."

The shade of Broken Sigil piped up, to translate the Captain's speech into bureaucratese: "That is, further advances from this point would require additional orders by a principal not present, or the active choice of the Company, without proper sanction of a duly contracted principal."

"These would, we must emphasize, be true and active choices on the part of the Company," continued the Lieutenant, giving that starchy unicorn's shadow a bit of side-eye for speaking out of turn. "We are presented with rival demands on the part of various representatives and entities claiming to speak for our principal – without, I further note, any warrant or evidence that these representatives possess the ear of the sovereign. Dancing Shadows?"

A much less tangible dream-shadow bearing long ears and a sharp pair of draconic eyes set in the darkness of her dream-self strode forward.

She bowed to the Nightmare, and said, "Besides the half-ordered intentions of the General of our victorious Army of the North, we have also two separate envoys from two rival factions among the bureaucracy and court of Bibelot. One is currently lurking in a tavern in High Earth, and demands we march on the capital and depose a tyrannical vizier who has usurped the authority of the absent Empress. Another representative is sitting in luxurious splendour in the mansion of the Lord Castellan, and is demanding that we, again, march our cohorts upon the capital, and put down a conspiracy of courtiers and junior officers against the duly delegated lord regent, an Imperial Count of somewhat obscure descent whom I've never heard of before this season."

Dancing Shadows bowed again, and stepped back from the presence of the aspects of the Spirit, and the commanders of the Company. While she was speaking, the snow and soil upon which the three Aspects had laid in repose had sprouted low couches, purple-clothed and chased in platinum and silver. From second to second, these modest chaises grew, until the Nightmare was seated in royal fashion, with her lesser aspects sitting likewise in a manner befitting the greater nobility.

As the Spirit's manifestation grew increasingly imperial, Dancing Shadows' presentation was followed by those of the cohort commanders, each of which describing a different battle-plan floated by General Knochehart or one of her aides. They generally followed either a riverine advance via a somewhat-imaginary loyalist fleet, or a general advance down the Mounds inland route, mostly varying in the increasingly imaginative logistical details that might somehow negate the shortcomings of this approach.

As the expanding garden continued to fill with Company-shadows, I grew distracted from the arguing officers, having taken a rough head-count of our shadow-assembly and realizing that there were more here in spirit than were actually in the field. Further towards the back of the dream-garden were faceless pony outlines, and I drifted towards them, pulled by curiosity and a sort of floating, detached alarm. One of the reasons we had chosen this venue rather than an argument in person had been this dream-detachment and objectivity; the Captain had become a late convert to the idea that dream-logic and objective subjectivity gave us a creative and imaginative edge that our previous, more mundane processes had lacked - but once she had been so convinced, she took to the idea with vigour and enthusiasm.

And so it was, that my consciousness floated through my soul-scape, touching this armspony and that one, connecting to each, slightly, as I brushed past. Some shadows were from this cohort or that; a few Company carters and support-ponies here, one or two of Angus's bull-calves there, a few of the newly knifed-in recruits… and then I touched a pony who wasn't in the south at all.

Walking among the dream-shadows in the further reaches of my garden, I found ponies who had retired, invalided, to the colony in Hydromel, and then, I encountered ponies who had never been active members of the Company at all, foals, craftsponies, 'uncles' and 'aunts', the hangers-on and simple towns-ponies who surrounded the hidden colony in a cloud of loose Company association. I might have seen the shadow of a long-eared roan figure with two tiny yearling-shade upon that jenny's back, listening intently. But only out of the corner of my eye, and I refused to turn and see what I did not want to see.

My dream-detachment kept me from panicking at this evident fraying of the distinction between Company and Company-adjacent. Time enough to indulge in the appropriate panic attack once the assembly had come to its now-inevitable, calamitous end. In the meantime, I drifted around in a circle, realizing that if the hidden colony and other souls associated with the Company had drifted into our dream-assembly, then that meant that…

"How is it, that the Company's worthless commanders call a full assembly and we, your most loyal and puissant devotees, have been left out of the distribution, Your Majesty?" asked the burning terror whose sharp horn and long-tufted beard marked it as the forsworn traitor, Obscured Blade. "Choices to be made, your Company to be directed, and our ideas have not been solicited!" the necromancer bellowed across the garden, snow rapidly melting away before the hooves of his followers.

I charged towards the interruption, but was too late to stop the dream-shade of Feufollet as she lashed at the burning shadow of the arch-traitor, the shadow of a stream of blood whipping around the flaming throat of the burning unicorn and severing his head from his shoulders.

The decapitated shadow blew away in a wind of sparks and ashes.

There was a pause, as the crowd of lesser burning-shadows stopped in their tracks. And then, from their midst, strode the re-kindled, greater fire of Obscured Blade, intact, grinning savagely.

"Oh, apprentice, I see you've new tricks to play on your teacher! But foolish child, we are naught but shadows upon this cavern wall! What good is it to tear away at my cast shadows, that have nothing of myself in them but a bit of fire and fury? Surely you've not put so much of yourself in yours, that one could hurt you by doing – this?"

The burning shadow flung a bit of itself at my nonplussed understudy, and the flaming soul-stuff lit her dream-shadowed-shoulder alight. She began screaming in agony, until Cherie reached her and did that thing she does with dream-stuff, extinguishing the blaze. Feufollet's shadow laid down, curled up and sobbing, and Cherie turned in fury at the corrupted bokor.

I reached the both of them at that moment, and restrained the enraged thestral with one dream-hoof, whispering to her, "Not now, wait." I turned to the traitor, and said more loudly, "No, please, go on, Sir Blade! Tell us what mad starts brings you here, in the company of those your ego and your lunacy betrayed. We deserve to know your mind in this!"

The flaming figure of a pony laughed, delighted. "Why, is it not obvious? How can you not know! Next year! In Equestria! We are due and over-due for our appointment with the obliteration with our great mistress's captor, and eternal enemy!" He bowed in reverence before the Nightmare's imperial seat, which now was a full-sized throne, the focus of all the shadows watching within the garden. The snow had mostly sublimated by this point, leaving the roses to open in fullest bloom. The Nightmare's lips parted in a snarling smile, her terrible sharp teeth bared at the mention of her true-self's imprisonment.

"Mad fool!" yelled a shadow of intense blue and red from the side-lines, as the baker-spy strode forward, an orange shadow trying to restrain his lady-love from her outburst. "Do you not know what happened the last time your ancestors trampled upon Equestrian soil? Do you not know how close we all came to extinction? Destruction and corruption that took centuries to undo! Seven years of darkness and horror!"

Gibblets joined Carrot Cake in pushing the infuriated Equestrian back out of the circle of debate, and turned towards his once-fellow warlock. "Better it be said by one who was there, you damned burnt-horn oath-breaker! Seven years of darkness, yes, and seven worlds-potential destroyed, each year another world-that-might-have-been, consumed by that endless night of civil war. The terrible cold, banished only by the diversion of the deep magic of the cap-world, the wild magic poured upon the surface of tortured Equestria from the ever-present moon, corrupting every square inch of her precious soil!"

"I loved my Princess more than life," said the frog-goblin, bowing to his sad-eyed Luna, "but I could not join her catastrophic rebellion. I knew what it would do to the world she loved so much, and saw what it did to her corrupted self! Nightmare! You are my own beloved princess, somewhere in your core, but you are warped and demented, not your true self. To return to our home like this, would twist you into something even Tartarus would not be able to encompass. Don't do this!"

"BE SILENT, AMPHIBIAN!" commanded the Nightmare, irate at being addressed so. She slapped Gibblets back into the huddle of witch-shadows standing behind him. Then she turned to her adoring, fanatic warlock, and said, "Go on, Acolyte Blade. How do you propose this invasion, given your utter lack of support within Our duly constituted Company, and your negligible store of stolen power. What you've gathered is impressive in a solitary warlock and his gang of lackeys and followers, but hardly empire-crumbling strength. What power do you offer me to betray my sacred agreements with these ponies, who stand against your self-aggrandizing and self-willed rampages? We do, after all, have a proper set of contracts and oaths that constrain the behaviour of this our Company, a mercenary company in the final analysis."

"The Company that sells its lances to the first-bidden, or even the highest bidder, is not the true Company, Your Majesty. This is not your Company, but rather the semblance which held your traditions and your ideals in suspension, a sort of store of virtue, carried forward in the hollow and empty shell of a merely mercenary Company. This was the vessel which carried the essence, and that vessel should, and ought to be, discarded now that the time for the return to your holy land is at hoof."

He turned around, glaring at my dream-garden, drying out in his flaming presence, the buds and flowers of the rose-bushes wilting and browning as he approached each bush.

"Look at this effete foolishness! This meaningless effusion of flowers and greenery, this pointless dream of worthless, organic display! This is not the purpose of the Company, this gross floral excess! The Company exists to destroy the dross of a hundred worlds, to gather the kindling, the tinder, the fuel for the fire which is to come!"

The burning dream of a pony rose up on his hind legs, and gestured to the shining heavens above, the distant flaring stars echoed in the manes and tails of all the aspects of the Spirit. "See above us, and below, the fires of the Company which came before us! This is the purpose of the Company, to gather the fuel until the day of our most furious deaths, so that we, grown great with our accumulations, burn mightily into your endless night!"

"The only purpose of this, these lesser worlds, these shadows upon the walls of creation which have been cast by the one true world – their only purpose is to provide us the materials to build ourselves a great and all-consuming brand, to burn away your chains, and to light your true self out of the celestial cavern within which you have been sealed!"

The irked Nightmare interrupted the corrupted unicorn's flaring rant, bellowing, "YES, BUT BY WHAT METHOD?"

"But only this! I propose to make of the Company a vast and terrible fire, to scourge the eternal enemy from her fastnesses! Let me gather up these burnables, which fate has left so close to hoof here on this vile and death-haunted world of dross and filth! Even now, I stand ready to seize another one of these disgusting liches, to dedicate to your glory! Here! I give him to you!"

And with that, the burning ponies in our midst exploded with terrible fury, setting many of their neighboring shadows alight, and catching the rose-bushes on fire, the browned and blown blossoms burning like lamp-wicks.

"See? See? See it now!" ranted the flame in the shape of a pony. "The fool thought to hide in his tumble-down castle guarded by nothing but ghouls and the undead! A blind fool, guarded by the blind dead! A mere week of creeping through his crowded corridors, and a simple spell-blade through his dead heart, and ours! Ours! Hahahaha!"

And then Cherie, who had been beating upon my restraining fore-arm rhythmically with each beat of the mad bokor's diatribe, leaned forward and whispered in my ear, "Now?"

I nodded yes.

And Cherie breathed in the whirling fire of the conflagration, drawing away the flame which scorched the shadows of loyal Company armsponies. Then she blew out, and Obscured Blade's cackling, flaming shadow went with it, out like a snuffed candle. The shades of all of his followers were snuffed out in the same breath. All that remained was the burning roses, their light throwing our shadows across the garden.

The Captain turned to her gathered cohort commanders, and began barking out orders. The context of the banished traitor's speech, and the detonation of spiritual energy through the dream-connection, made the situation clear. In short order, hundreds of shadows from Fuller Falchion's Second Cohort dropped out of the assembly, to mobilize the regimentals in the siege-camp before the Shambles. If Uncle Blade and the renegades had just taken out the Beau, either a thousand ghouls had just fallen into their control, or they'd released them from all control. Either way, Braystown and the Shambles would be overrun with the undead.

My deniers were on 'uncontrolled horde'. The new-minted necromancer had not shown any previous capacity for individual command and control over such large numbers. Even if he tried to seize the Beau's store of the undead, his numbed hooves would let them slip through his frogs.

While the Captain coordinated the reaction to the immediate threat, The Lieutenant turned to the Spirit and the witches, to discuss the forsworn unicorn stallion's insinuations about his access to 'burnables'. A rampage? Some collection of liches we were unaware of? An attack westward against our undead employer?

Cherie interrupted this little conclave, addressing the Nightmare. "Mistress, before we were interrupted, I had my own proposal for the Company's further course of action. One which offers a better way than Oncle Blade's scheme for slaughter and mystical theft."

The great Nightmare, still bemused by the wild rantings of the banished shade of Obscured Blade, looked down at the little thestral. "What do you suggest, to improve upon his most tempting and glorious offers?"

"Mistress, it was not glorious, but rather a poisoned cup. He worships his own ego, and calls it by your name. He offers you power, joyless, flaming power, the power to destroy those that refuse you your proper adoration and respect. I would offer you instead love – the love of a vast and devoted nation, now groaning under the yoke of malignant fate. That is, after all, what you truly desire, is it not – to be loved for what you truly are? Not dominion, not conquest, not destruction – but the love of adoring subjects?"

"I do not see how it is in your hoof to offer me any such thing, child of ambition."

"Let me explain, Mistress…"

And as the thestral mare spoke, and the Spirit and the shades of the Company listened, the living roses of my dream-garden burned on through the night with the wildfire of purest magic. They burned with all the colours of the rainbow. And their flames drowned out the starlight and even the moon herself under the darkened skies of my borderless dreams.

Author's Note:

A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

Comments

[TheStratovarian]

Huh, interesting little point. And certainly a tad too late for his dreams to come to fruition, in the way he wants. And Love the way of the ephemeral here. Those old, and infirm, in choice and distance.

[The_Skraeling]

He might just get to know his kids after all.

[FanOfMostEverything]

Protip: Do not attempt to out-burn the sun. Best case scenario, you've set off an H-bomb.