The Olden World

by Czar_Yoshi

Storming The Nightmare

Starlight strode out into the ravine room, Gerardo's sword clasped purposefully in her mouth. The new Nightmare Modules in the back of her mind weren't her only change; she felt physically stronger, and was realizing an unexpected upside of being lighter: it was that much easier to move around.

As she walked, she parsed through what she had gained, determined not to use them once she escaped the cave but not about to turn down the keys this dungeon had been designed around when her friends were in danger. Anti-Generosity? That one made moon glass. Probably useless, though it gave her a good idea exactly how the fateful meteor originated.

Anti-Honesty? Her shadow cloak. That one she already had, and it twisted up around her as she set hoof on the bridge, the winds ignoring her magically-vanished form. Anti-Laughter? That one was a real shield. She remembered Chauncey showing it off in the hospital basement. It had been strong enough to block a laser from Stanza with apparent ease. That would be her favorite the moment she got in a fight.

Anti-Kindness was the memory erasure spell she remembered Dorable possessing in Ironridge. How he had used a Nightmare Module when Valey was the only batpony in Ironridge, she didn't know, and it didn't really matter. She could use them just fine on her own, and wasn't fond of the idea of forgetting anything. Though if she could make someone who would otherwise be friendly forget why they were fighting her, it could be very strong...

She stepped off the bridge, facing down the barred door to the seal room. This was its last chance to get out of her way. Anti-Loyalty was another useless one; all it would do was show her a memory, and she didn't need to lose any time daydreaming. But Anti-Spark... Starlight tensed. Here was what she needed.

The module activated, and her mane began to melt, elongating slightly and flowing together into a prehensile, starry mist. Moving in accordance to her wishes, the material coiled around the hilt of her sword, freeing it from her mouth. Her horn still didn't work, but this was a suitable replacement.

"Yanavaaan!" Schwiiinng! Starlight yelled as she slashed, the dark blade parting the locked doorway with no more difficulty than air. She slashed again. "Give me back my friends!"

Another hairline incision appeared in the rock. Just another thing she hadn't thought of earlier, like using the shadow cloak to cross the bridge... but now she was done with silly oversights. Starlight lashed out with her hind legs, the door severed from its roots, and her enhanced strength knocked it clean out of its flush frame, sending a slab of stone into the room with a rocky crunch. She jumped in after it, landing on the fallen door with the sword readied and a snarl bared in her teeth.

The room was almost as she remembered it, with a sigil on the floor projected by a rod from the ceiling and stars painted all around the walls... only now it was almost three times as large, stretching expansively from end to end. Her friends, she could see, were all against the far wall, and all of them looked half-conscious. Nobody else was there.

Powerfully, Starlight strode toward them, taking the most direct route... but something warned her before she stepped past the projection in the center. She jumped backwards, amazed at how far her legs carried her, and the room answered with a crack of breaking rock, the curved, cavernous boulder that formed the ceiling splitting around the spike at the center.

Starlight fell back on her haunches and stared as cracks spiderwebbed out from the rod... then retracted, petals of rock interleaving themselves by deliberate design, like the roof held some sort of massive door. The rod fell, followed by a ton and a half more twisted metal, rocking the ground and making her stumble as it landed in a sparking, eldritch mass.

She could only stare as the thing jerkily began to move, rotating in snaps and bursts, rising up and growing into something equally unknowable, but far more threatening. Four or five times the height of a full-grown mare, the metal eidolon seemed to have legs, though she couldn't tell if there were two or three. It definitely had a front, and plasmatic tail and a head with glowing eyes... and that was as long as she had to study, because it roared toward her without walking, a burst of energy propelling it from behind.

"Aaaaaaah!" Starlight screamed as the thing collided, unable to follow her instincts and teleport... though by a new, deeper instinct, her new shield rose to guard her instead. With an almighty clang, metal struck transparent hexagons, and Starlight felt herself slide backwards until it pushed her into the wall. But her shield held perfectly, the reverberation of the impact shaking even her bones but not even denting the wall surrounding her.

Warning, her Nightmare Module voice said, back to its emotionless self yet still belonging to the second alicorn from the altar, not the first. Pavise-class soul arscrkkkkkkkkkkk!

Starlight winced from the sudden static in her mind as the metal thing leered at her, pressing against the shield with a curved metal limb and forcing her to maintain the shield. Her sword could cut anything, but she couldn't use it without dropping her barrier...

Something like this was too impossible, too alien to exist. It couldn't exist. "You can't exist!" she yelled, wheels slowly turning in its alien architecture in response. "This is still a nightmare! Go away and let me wake up! I want out of this stupid cave!"

The giant machine continued to inspect her, not letting up its assault.

"Nnngh... Go away...!" Starlight twisted beneath her shield, trying fruitlessly to find a way out.

Slowly, with a cry of grinding metal, the thing's back split open, plates spreading like lightning rods and insect wings. It knelt down, keeping its limb against her and its glowing eyes on her from below as it showed her the aperture. A cradle was exposed inside, rising and tilting to face her, and Starlight saw a stallion, his forelegs and the lower half of his body dissolving into an expansive ether that seemed to flow into the machine itself. His eyes were slitted, and leathery wings sat limp against his sides. "Yanavan."

"Dreams are a powerful canvas, indeed, to one who controls them," he said, voice slow and methodical from his perch in the metal nightmare. "This one is my dream. And I'm very interested to know what a unicorn filly is doing imagining themselves with a spell like that one."

"Which spell?" Starlight gritted her teeth, feeling over the modules in her mind and realizing the moon glass one could function quite like her crystals if she needed it to. "This one!?"

Her horn swirled with dark energy, and she twisted her neck over her shoulder and fired. The moon glass was slightly more sluggish than her usual geometric gems, forming itself roundly like honey being poured into a jar, but it did its job with enough speed to catch the behemoth off guard. Into the crater where she was being forced into the wall, black glass flowed, morphing into a pillar that pushed her into Yanavan's monstrosity and forcing them both back toward the center of the room. Starlight snapped her head forward again and fired, a feeling of drowning and need welling up in her heart as sickly black energy coalesced into its arm.

The glass encasing the limb that pinned her lasted for less than a second before it shattered, but that half-second was enough. Starlight dropped her shield, falling to the floor and landing with grace afforded only by Valey's combat practice. Gerardo's sword already in her starry, midnight mane, she rushed forward, taking aim at the base of one of its round, armored legs.

Covered in treads and talons, the appendage shouldn't have been swift enough to move if Yanavan had tried. But it stayed put as she leapt, presenting a perfect target... until Gerardo's sword clinked harmlessly off the metal, failing even to scratch its paint.

"Really?" Yanavan's monster leered down at her, twitching menacingly. "You intend to fight with tools I have mastered in an arena I am? You must be like the rest of them. Coming here thinking you can take my Nightmare Modules into the waking world? I am the anathema to those with delusions of godhood. Princess Luna's sacred power does not belong to you or the Night Mother or anyone else who thinks they can inspire the sarosian race into self-destructive-"

Starlight wasn't in the mood for a conversation. Coiling her legs, she sprung, trusting in her weightlessness and not finding herself wanting. She rose even faster than she had anticipated, using her mane like she had possessed it all her life and hooking herself atop one of the behemoth's armor-plated arms. Hooves finding easy purchase on its uneven construction, she raced towards its open back... until a tiny tingle gave her warning.

She realized what was about to happen as the sparks around its drill-like tail increased and stabbed the sword in between two mechanical joints. Gerardo's sword may not have been able to pierce this nightmare, but it also couldn't break, and as Yanavan accelerated to throw her off, she clung to the hilt with everything she had, staying fixed to the thing's back as it rocketed across the room.

"Get off me," Yanavan growled, the plates that concealed him within the thing's back beginning to retract.

Time seemed to slow for Starlight as they approached the far wall, and she knew the impact wouldn't be pleasant. But there was someone she could make it even less pleasant for... She drew the sword, standing on the machine's moving arm, waiting for it to be forced to a stop against the wall. "NO!"

The wall hit. The metal nightmare stopped, and inertia carried Starlight forward, sword outstretched and pointing forward. Yanavan was straight in her path.

The world went white.

---

Starlight came to far quicker than recovering from unconsciousness usually went. Water lapped in her ears, and she saw an ocean tunnel leading out from her room, the sea covering half the floor. Behind her was the first door, the one through which Glimmer had pulled her, and around her were her friends, including Harshwater, all in various states of grogginess. But the door looked different... It was painted, not real. None of the cave was there anymore.

There had been an altar, too, life-sized and shaped like a bowing pony. In its place was Yanavan, the only pony a moon glassed sarosian stallion could be, looking dazed and holding his chest where she had impaled him, face ashen. Gerardo's sword was still at her side.

Without giving anyone time to recover, Starlight shoved him roughly, and he fell prone. She took the sword in her mouth, knowing the Nightmare Modules were still there but not about to use them now that things were finally finished. "It's ober," she growled around the sword, holding its point to his throat. "I wim."

Comments

[Mira Starlight]

There’s something hilariously adorable about Starlight delivering a badass one-liner while her voice is muffled by a sword.

[Mini-Joe]

i know that the chapter was tense, but imagining little starlight with a sword in her mouth saying those last two lines is adorable

[Boopers]

Yay, she has wom!

[RoboRed]

...But at what cost?...

[ReFro]

"Yanavaaan!" Schwiiinng!

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