Live Your Dreams

by Ditherer the Fussbudget

Deicide

Anon

It’s been a few days. You haven’t seen Luna since your last meeting, so when you hear her voice, you pay close attention.

”Aaagh, Anonymous! Please, anypony! Anypony at all!”

You’re out on the astral plane, looking at the dream-clouds. Hers is red and thorny as ever, and the scream fills the realm. Something’s wrong.

You get a running start and leap up for her dream. The voice has lowered to a mewl now, and it takes few moments of flying through the air to reach it. Then you collide, with a nasty wet sound.

The cloud doesn’t let you in. You pound at it, dipping your hands into the redness. It doesn’t budge.

“Luna, Luna are you in there?”

The voice comes back, faint. ”Anonymous?”

“Luna, I’m coming!”

”Oh, Anonymous, please, please help me!”

You gather your strength and reach into the cloud. It’s pushing against you, like a current, but you push your way inside. First your arms, plunging up to the elbows… Then you worm your way in, ignoring the thorns and the blood. If it is blood - it’s tasteless.

Finally you’re completely inside, and the sounds of Luna’s weeping surround you. You swim blindly for the center, relying on your intuition. Eventually you hit something small, tough, spherical, maybe the size of a beach ball. You press your way into it, and something gives.

When you arrive, it’s in a big regal chamber. You fall some distance, gather your bearings, and immediately find her. She’s at one end of this doorless room, observing you from a throne, and she looks much more serious than usual.

You rush over. “What’s wrong, Princess? What do you need?”

She smiles. ”Oh, nothing, Anonymous. I think you’ve done more than enough.”

A lance of psychic pain explodes in you. Luna smirks - no, whatever’s using her face smirks - and then her image disintegrates.All that remains is the shadow, and it flows upward. As you fall to the ground, your eyes follow its path.

At the ceiling, where you fell in, an ugly bubbling redness gleams through a tear in the dream. It slips out, and with its passing something lightens. You’re alone, and beyond confused.

...No. No, you can hear something. It’s faint, but within the room. The acoustics make it hard to pinpoint, so you change them. ...There it is. A weak snuffling, a keening. Despair. You get up to your feet and walk to the source.

Behind the throne is Luna. The real Luna, you can feel the sincerity of her being. She’s laying on the floor, curled into a ball, not noticing you as black armor appears and fades on her body in a slow, indecisive flicker.

Moondancer

You’re taking your fifth microsleep of the day when you feel armageddon coming.

Your own dreams don’t interest you very much - too abstract and cramped for your tastes - but you can see the effects on the astral itself. Everything’s turning red. There are little pools and trickles of blood bursting and flowing from your Princess’ dream.

They create a haze in the air that would’ve been horriby unpleasant if you had to breathe. When they touch other pieces of dream-magic, they boil and distort, becoming swollen ugly things. There aren’t many dreamers right now, the waking world is still very much awake, but the lack of targets only helped the spread.

You could see Anonymous’ dream-magic, floating dizzily in orbit around the Princess’. He’d gone in, hadn’t he? If he was responsible for this you were going to throw him into the astral yourself.

It’s heading for your dream now. You make to fend it off with magic, but it redoubles its efforts. Crashing against your energy, gaining in power slowly but noticeably. It doesn’t take long to exhaust you.

And then, as it touches your own astral real estate, you feel it tainting you. Your breathing becomes more ragged. If you left this nexus, you’d be having horrible nightmares.

They’re waiting for you now, pressing up against the boundaries of your own sleeping mind. And, with them, something more malevolent. You sigh; this is really going to throw off your schedule.

Luna

Anonymous is standing over you like a parent, bent and reaching out. He does not touch you; he cannot tell if it will help.

You cower and flinch away from him. You don’t deserve that. Even the slightest show of affection is too much for you.

The Tantabus has fled you. It’s been trained in the gathering of power and the destruction of worlds, trained daily for years. You have been an intolerable fool, and now, without recourse, it has left you with your own worst fear.

The pathetic sounds you make are in memorial to yourself. Nightmare Moon wells up inside of you, even now.

For a brief window, the option of penanced was afforded you. You could exist in the world without being its enemy. And it was a nice dream, but dawn is breaking now, and it’s a harsh, angry thing.

You hope your subjects will forgive you. You hope your sister will stop you.

”Luna..." He finally rests a hand on your cheek. The touch is calming. You can think, slightly.

He needs to escape, if he can. “Go, Anonymous.” Your royal voice, used as a megaphone to bait a trap, cracks under the pressure of the words.

He shakes his head. ”Tell me what’s happening. How can I help you?”

It’s too late, you complete fool. You feel Nightmare Moon washing over you, and another part is lost to her riptide. “Anonymous, Anon, I- I don’t want you to see me become this.”

He comes closer. ”Nightmare Moon?”

It almost shocks you that he knows. He’d seen pictures and heard tales, of course he had, but he had never mentioned them, not once.

You close your eyes and nod quickly, like a child agreeing to an injection. In that moment of weakness, you keep talking. “I’m sorry, Anon. I am so sorry I couldn’t keep it under control. I made the Tantabus to punish myself for my misdeeds as Nightmare Moon, but I only put Equestria in further danger by my own recklessness. Truly, I do not deserve to be called ‘Princess’.”

His hand stops moving. ”Don’t say that.” His voice is firm even though his touch is gentle.

You make a humorless laugh. “Whatever you love about me, Anonymous, it will disappear from the world soon. I will become something dark, cold and hateful. I would rather you lived the rest of your life without witnessing it.”

His expression shifts. He doesn’t want to believe you.

“Please, Anon.” You struggle to hold off the armor, but it fades onto your features for a final time. A thousand-year companion, friendly as a cage.

Goodbye, Equestria.

"No."

Warmth? Anonymous, the human, he is-- holding you. His arms drag you close to him, pressing into your armor. If he feels the cold he makes no sign.

You are helpless in this instant, caught between losing your power and marshalling it anew. He looks into your eyes, which gleam now with disdain for him, for his touch, for anything in him that would motivate these actions.

”I still love you, Luna. I don’t love you for who you’ve been in the last few years. Your anger, your demons, your awkwardness, they all help make you perfect. Just trying to answer for your mistakes makes you a better Princess than you believe. There aren’t many humans who would do that.” He ignores your hooves digging into his knees, pushing against his body. ”Nightmare Moon is just another part of you. And... if that part took over, it wouldn’t change anything for me. You are the terror of the night and all the wonders it can create all at once, and -that’s- what makes you so beautiful. That’s why I love you. I could never turn that away.”

And then he leans in.

No! Filth! Unworthy! You twist away, but he holds you tight. Nothing with so much blood in its veins should dare-

He kisses you.

Something spreads inside you, coiling around your skin. You realize you can feel your skin again.

The armor buckles and cracks, and he draws you closer. Your power wanes, recoiling and withdrawing into itself, flinching into the darkest parts of your heart.

But it’s not far enough. It - you - Nightmare Moon - cries out as it feels that love.

The love it doesn’t deserve. The adoration it craved so long, long ago. Anathema.

And you, Princess Luna of the Lunar Court, return to yourself in your knight's embrace.

Anon

Looks like your Chinese cartoons taught you something after all.

Nightmare Moon is gone, or hiding. You feel bad about that, because you didn’t want to hurt her, but Luna’s recovering. She speaks, once she has the voice.

”Tantabus.”

Oh, fuck, right. “How do we stop it?”

”I-I don’t know. I did not create it to be stopped, only to gain power and create misery. Even the Elements of Harmony were not enough to stop it, it destroyed each in turn. If it gains too much power, nothing in Equestria will be able to deter it.”

Her wings are twitching at her sides with nervous energy. You reach over and smooth one back down, putting on your most confident smile.

“I guess it’s a good thing we’re not in Equestria, isn’t it?”

Her mouth opens and her eyes meet yours. They’re glittering again.

Moondancer

This is really not a winning situation.

At first the whole phenomenon was ineffable, if dangerous. You’ve learned from many books not to judge magical events by the amount of blood involved; many nice entities needed to eat, too. But it’s very clearly antagonistic. Your only hope, on an individual level, is that it continues not to care about your existence.

Most of the other dreams are tainted by now, drawing together into a single mass. Yours is in their somewhere, a little more reluctant than the others. Like a lost foal without a parent to navigate for it, almost.

Anonymous’ remains intact, somehow, still circling your Princess’. Part of you notes they’ve fallen into a steady orbit pattern. And across the extradimensional way, many-fanged monstrosities keep being ejected from Kitty Corner’s dream, decorated in lashes and bite-marks.

The hullaballoo beggars belief.

You’re acutely aware that you could flee all of this and set up shop on some obscure metaphysical island of thought. Maybe you’d wash up in the territory of graph theory, but not with your luck. No, the real reason you’re still here is because you want to know what Anonymous is trying to accomplish. Your curiousity will be the death of you, you’re sure.

As it gathers into a single red mass, the interloper starts to redefine itself. A wispy form, growing purpler, darker. A pony at first, the size of a battleship, then a horn half the size of its body. Wings that spread outward into the void, dripping with amniotic aether, so large you could mistake them for the sky. Where it stands, the plane trembles with the force of keeping it contained.

And on its flank the only light of its being, stars which spring to life and explode and then snuff themselves into dead matter. Its identity is as certain as its countenance, beamed directly into your perceptions by its nature in the dream-structure.

The Alicorn of Failure. The God of Fatal Mistakes.

And it's still growing.

Tantabus

Across Equestria, sleep roves. It takes the weak first, the ones who won’t be noticed, but it grows greedy within minutes. On the astral it can control enough to slow time, and it works with cruel efficiency, cutting around any possible threats.

Celestia and her Elements will never understand what happened. Once it gains material form, they’re as good as defeated. Its magical mass grows with the dreams and souls ripped from its subjects, as their tribute gives it life.

Life is sweet, the Tantabus discovers.

It wants to eat all of it.

Moondancer

You are facing the realization that you may be the only survivor of this event. Even Kitty’s magic is subsumed by now.

You wish you’d pulled her out. Too much inaction, all theory and no practice, that was your entire problem and you knew it. There was never a chance that you’d defeat something this titanic.

And with that thought, that beam of thought focused on your own negligence, the alicorn finally turns its attention to you. Its stare unravels you, and everything wrong you’ve ever done floats to the surface of your mind.

Stealing butterscotches from the candystore run by the mare too old to know what you were doing... Sleeping in past exams and then throwing a fit at the proctor… Yelling at your mother for trying to help you, long before the Court snatched you into its ranks...

Your body falls and cowers. You’re barely aware of it, beyond the cacophony of your thoughts. Soon you’ll be just another component of its whole. That would be a relief.

A voice rings throughout the plane. ”Release my subjects, cur!” You look toward the only possible source.

Luna’s and Anon’s dreams have become stuck together, and a shape emerges from them, light against the body of the Tantabus. It’s Anonymous, sitting on Luna’s back as she flies.

The image is enough to rouse you, as the entity turns its focus elsewhere.

The first coherent thought you have is that he looks completely ridiculous. But... Heh. You guess you have to the live the dream to kill it.

Anon

Your arrival is heralded by the sound of your own trumpeting. So many of your dreams are coming true right now.

Luna glides down on the approach while you ready yourself. As she sweeps past, a saber of solid moonlight flourishes into existence in your hand, the blade fifty times larger than your body and light as a feather. Carefully, you cut a swathe across the monster.

Registering you as a threat, it raises a wing and swats you. There’s no time or space to get out of the way. A single hesitation, and it would destroy your Princess.

Luna accelerates at the wing, and you envelope her in silvery energy, tearing into the sheet of void. Swiftly, you’re surrounded.

You can feel all of the ponies around you, suffering and desperate to escape. The darkness is thick enough you have to tunnel through. You hold the aura wrapped around the two of you as she plows onwards.

It aches.

Just ignore the strain. Your magic will stay where it is, whether it likes that or not! There’s a light at the end of this tunnel!

Finally, you both emerge, now slightly behind the creature’s head. The Tantabus turns, far faster than before, but Luna matches speed and dives for its neck.

You conjure a silver axe the size of a schoolbus and slam it into the not-flesh. Your own reserves beginning to fade, Luna lobs a spell of shining dust into the wound as she makes the pass.

The Tantabus screams, a hellish raking howl that darkens the sky. Inside that scream is the shrieking of a thousand ponies who failed to outrun their horrors. Another swoop, and both of you produce weapons. Hers, a scythe, yours, a battleaxe.

Its screech continues, battering your ears. Even if it could hear you, it probably wouldn’t understand. You make your most unaffected face and reply anyway.

“Psssh.” You spit over your shoulder. “Nothing personnel, kid.”

Your magic in sync, you smash through. The Tantabus’ head detaches from its neck, and with a thundering crash, it hammers into the ground. The body follows, collapsing into a heap.

Luna comes down for a landing among the metaphysical debris. You dismount, and you’re a few feet away from Moondancer. Her eyes are closed. She’s laughing softly and shaking her head.

“Hey, Dancer, what-”

She waves a fetlock at you. ”No, no. Give me... give me a week. You’re too much, Anon.”

...Okay. You shrug and walk back to Luna.

Luna

You’re exhausted. Even at full strength, this foe would’ve drained you quickly. Unassisted, you wouldn’t have even landed a blow.

Anon treads over, surveying at the fallen body. It gradually flakes and melts into the air.

“So, how do we get all the dreamers-” A squelching rumble cuts off his question. Something erupts from the remains, towering upwards like it’s floating out of a pool of water.

The Tantabus returns. It doesn’t even seem damaged. You fall as it brings its full magical power to bear on you. Psychic waves crash against your being.

For a moment you're back on the moon and staring at the empty nothing, the lightless space. And then, on impulse, you throw yourself out into it.

"L͞͏̧ù̵̧̢͜n̛̕͜͝a҉͟!́́"

You flap furiously away from your domain, looking for a new life, a new world free of impurity. Fleeing the sunlight. You travel out and out, and soon the moon and sun and Equestria are a small pinprick in the distance. Your cutie mark fades and disappears.

Eventually, your regret overcomes your corrupted nature and you travel back. But you never find it. You can never be certain that you turned around at all, and didn't simply imagine you did in a moment of fevered weakness.

You are only a desperate pair of wings in a void so infinitely large it can only be measured in the depths of your own despair. Without anchor, without aid or company, you begin to fade.

"Ļ̶͟͝U͟͢͝N҉Ą͢͢҉!̨̢̀͢"

When your tattered body remains, its sole company will be a universe that will never know what its useless husk could possibly mean.

"Luna!"

You snap back to awareness. Anon and Moondancer are standing between you and the Tantabus, eclipsing its stare.

"A-Anon, I... I can't match this power."

He kneels to look you in the eye, keeping you in his shadow, and says, "Throw me."

Moondancer, clearly having snapped, laughs raucously at the rising abomination.

Anon

”There’s no time to explain. It’s still recovering, now’s our best chance to hit it!” And if you go inside, then she won’t have to risk herself. You can try to break this thing down from the inside. Or something.

Yeah, it sounds stupid, but what better way to fight this thing than with dream-logic? And, important, Luna can escape and try to contain this some other way. There must be some way to.

And the Tantabus is only holding its form because of the dreams it’s corrupted. If you can break its hold, it won’t have any more magic. You hope.

But you’ve run out of better options, and you’re not going to send her in there.

You know she knows you’re thinking all this, but you look in her eyes and reassure her as you feel like a scumbag. “Please, just trust me.”

”Anon, you are asking the unthinkable! You are the only thing left it hasn’t taken from me yet!”

Please don’t cry, please don’t cry… Aw, fuck.

“There’s no other option, Princess. Please.”

She doesn’t look away, through the tears. ”I love you t--”

”Oh, screw it!” Moondancer’s voice cuts both of you off, and then you’re lifted in her telekinesis with your back still to the Tantabus, and hurled right at it.

Then a flash of Luna’s horn, and something stops you. It’s not her magic.

You punch into something soft as the Tantabus looms above you. As Luna rushes forward to join you, you find yourself falling out of the astral. She grabs you as you enter, hugging you close.

In your periphery, you see the columns of royal chambers and the mismatched buildings of your dreams - not just the ones you’d had your whole life, but the ones you’d observed and rescued. You know what’s happened, and so does Luna, you can tell as soon as she opened her eyes.

You know because this is your dream. Your dream-clouds, stuck together, became entangled.

The monster swallows them both without a twitch, and then the outside is darkness.

...

Deep inside the Tantabus, nestled at the heart of it, a lifetime flashes as only lifetimes can flash.

Chasing her up and down the castle like children, running into the libraries and shushing each other while trying not to laugh. Playing in ten thousand forms while others drudged, running and leaping and swimming as every animal real or imagined. Hearts and Hooves Day spent spying on unspeakable dreams.

Hearth’s Warming Eve, snowed into a single tower in the castle, eating soup broth and draping quilts over the windows. Crashing her royal events with messages of adoration until a prank war of epic proportions breaks out. Showing him your meteor showers and eclipses and all the other tricks your night holds for the vigilant watcher.

Learning chess, music, history, art, all with a gentle touch that knew the full breadth and depth of your mind. Feeling him clutching your mane in his hands and holding on in trusting flight over mountainpeaks and low valleys. Tending to her magical wounds after a war campaign, holding her bandaged leg out of the bathwater and massaging it gently.

Plying sister’s uneasy permission with promises of extra wedding cakes made with the secret ingredient she’d never managed to tear from you. Busy days of doing your part to help her tend to the world. Quiet nights toying good-naturedly with the idea of adoption.

Anniversaries, surprises every time, and all equally treasured.

...

A groan like tectonic plates arguing. A spark with the force of the sun, but none of its hot blunt inelegance. Down it travels, through to the minds of thousands. Not a thought, not a message, an impression. The feeling, finely-tuned, that everything will be alright.

For a moment, and from every point at once, the Tantabus shines. It shines with the dreams of all its victims. Each of them stands tall within it, exactly the ponies they wish most to be.

Together, wordless, they stand against the torment and suffering. And none more than Luna, the most radiant among them, the peak and plateau by which all motion forward must be measured.

The dream judges the Tantabus, and finds it wanting.

Then, the explosion.

And across the land, everypony wakes up.