To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

by Georg

Chap. 4 - Come Little Children

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream Chapter 4
--Georg (Editing by AlicornPriest)

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(Courtesy of Bonaxor Link )
(Edit 10/2015 to link to updated picture)

Come little children
I'll take thee away, into a land
of Enchantment

Come little children
the time's come to play
here in my garden
of Shadows

Follow sweet children
I'll show thee the way
through all the pain and
the Sorrows

John Debney: "Come Little Children"

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An alert observer watching Princess Luna’s face while the Night Guard knelt and awaited her decision might have possibly noticed something beneath the steel-like expression, the cold piercing blue eyes, and the narrowed brow. He might have called it apprehension, or tension, or even concern at the thought of her guards admitting they would be willing to commit treason on her behalf. But the observer would have been wrong.

The Princess turned her back on the guards and looked out into the night. “Follow,” she said in a voice far too small, and floated out the balcony and up into the starry sky, swooping down into the city, then sweeping up into the clouds with powerful strokes of her wings that made the Night Guard struggle to keep up. Only one pony noticed them leave the castle ground, an older Royal Courier out for a bit of night air in the gardens, and he just stood and watched them vanish into the distance without a word.

* * *

Less than an hour later, the Princess swept down from the sky and landed on the top floor of a ruined building, one of several that lay scattered around in the mist amid the scraggly forest and deep crevices of the Everfree Forest. Panting for breath, the rest of the Night Guard landed on the building behind her, exchanging looks of concern and bafflement.

Luna stood and gazed across stones overgrown with a thousand years of vegetation and decay, pausing only to point with one hoof at the edge of the broken roof overlooking the ruins. “STAND HERE. ALL OF YOU.”

The Princess who had once been the creature known as Nightmare Moon turned back from the Night Guard and looked out again across the fallen buildings as if she were looking back in time a thousand years or more. For a long time she stood immobile as the stones in the rubble, staring into the distant mists and strange lights that flickered in the forest. Then she began to speak in a very small voice.

“A millennium ago, Nightmare Moon… I left Canterlot filled with rage and anger at my sister, a rage so great I still feel the tug of it now. We flew here, to this very spot I stand upon tonight. Over a thousand of my followers, along with those who followed me at one time and had forsaken my...guidance were spread out across where you see now. And I spoke to them and told them this was where I was going to build their perfect world. A world with no sorrow, no pain, no grief, no regrets. Right here on the site of the Winter Castle. My home where I was born. The home where I grew up, where my… sister grew. And where my parents died at the end of their natural lives. Immortality can be a terrible curse, to see those around you age and die. Not a single being who lived then, lives now. Except my sister.”

She waved a trembling hoof across the visible landscape. “My followers set to work immediately, following the direction I… Nightmare Moon gave them. We raised a great castle in a single night, using the power which we were able to draw. Foolish power, power drawn from the depths of Equestria far beyond that which should have been. Power to bring about Night Eternal. Celestia....my sister felt the agony of the earth, she flew here to try to convince me of the error of my ways. But I… rejected her. Spurned her. And in the end I even… struck out at her. She fought back. I drew on the power of this place and drove her away."

Luna twisted as if in agony. "No. That is wrong.” The dark alicorn turned to her Night Guard who stood entranced. “Have you ever wondered what became of the rest of your brethren? There were hundreds of earth ponies and unicorns who stood with me, all of whom I had ’blessed’ in the same way as your ancestors. Have you ever wondered what happened to them? Did you think you were alone? DID YOU NOT CARE?”

With no response from the cringing Guard, she turned back to the ruins as if they were her only real audience. “The power I drew from this place came to me through their bodies. The earth ponies were first to sicken and die when my sister returned my blows. Then the unicorns. She flew away. She fled her own sister. Because she was killing them through… my actions.”

She gestured beyond the ruins, to the twisted trees and rocks that surrounded them. “I called to the misunderstood creatures of Equestria when we built the castle, I called them into the lush and verdant forest that was then two score times the size of this twisted and perverted place. I called them to their doom. When I drew upon the power of this place, I drove them mad. With the power that I called up, I destroyed all that was good and pure about this place. My followers. Their children. My home. And the graves of my parents.”

Pumpernickel stuttered, “B-b-but that was a thousand years ago. Now we—”

“A THOUSAND YEARS FOR YOUR KIND, BUT FOR ME IT HAS BEEN BUT A FEW MONTHS!” shouted Luna before falling silent.

“I…” The Night Guard stopped and struggled for a word. “See” would be trite, and nothing else seemed to be appropriate at this time. Finally, the Princess began to speak again.

“I can only guess what happened after she returned with the Elements of Harmony and trapped my disembodied form in the moon. Time did not pass as you experience it. Oh, I felt the passage of the years, but only as a flicker. And yet...” She paused and looked up at the moon, high in the night sky. “Somehow I could still feel my sister. The part of me that was Nightmare Moon raged in incoherent fury, but deep inside in a small corner of my heart I was...glad.”

She turned on the Night Guard with cold rage. “The blood of the innocent is on my hooves! I do not deserve your oath of loyalty, AND I SHALL NEVER BE YOUR QUEEN!” Echoes of the Royal Canterlot Voice echoed through the ruins, the wisps of fog among the stones giving an eerie sensation of ghosts murmuring in the darkness. The Princess turned back to the ruins with a sniff and hung her head.

“Your loyalty shall always be to my sister, for she alone is worthy, and I… am a fool.” She silently laid down on the edge of the building and turned to look away from the Night Guards.

“Go. Return to Canterlot. I shall be along shortly.”

Pumpernickel started to turn back to the rest of the guard and paused. There was something he had seen in her eyes, something that scratched at the back of his mind and would not go away. And then realization hit him like a brick. The trembling Night Guard looked back at the rest of his companions, then turned back to the Princess.

“No.”

“No?” Luna turned on Pumpernickel in a fury. “HOW DARE YOU REFUSE A ROYAL ORDER! GO! NOW!” Half of the guard were blown off the edge of the roof with the volume, and chose to hover rather than land again while Pumpernickel leaned into the Voice and planted his hooves.

“No,” said Pumpernickel, gaining volume and swallowing hard. “Since you will not accept our exclusive loyalty, we are still bound by oath to Princess Celestia. And to you. As such, it would be a failure of our oath to leave you here. By yourself.” It took great presence of mind for Pumpernickel to not look down the side of the building at the fog-strewn rocky gorge below, a fall that certainly would prove fatal if he were to pull in his wings and drop into it. Or if she did.

It took every speck of courage he had to look back into the eyes of Princess Luna, to meet her steely blue gaze with his yellow oval eyes. It seemed as if for that moment that a thousand ghosts long dead were standing behind him, feeding him their strength, giving him the will he needed to stare her down and prevent the Princess from making a terrible choice. Then the Princess’s ears drooped down and her head fell. Even her celestial mane seemed to fall listlessly as if the invisible wind had ceased to blow.

“Fine.”

It was hours later that the sorry procession slowly flapped over the castle walls and to Princess Luna’s room. A careful observer would have noticed the number of Night Guards on duty outside her room that night had seemingly doubled, and how they seemed less worried about outside threats attacking than their charge fleeing. A very careful observer would have noted the light from Luna’s room was not turned off for the rest of the night. But there were no observers out in the gardens, not even a unicorn just out for the night air.

Comments

[Georg]

AlicornPriest is helping me edit. I've posted the updated first chapter. Very much improved.

[Bad Horse]

I thought Luna's guard had some plan in mind when they offered to swear loyalty to her. (I was confused that they wouldn't have already, but that's a different matter.) It had seemed like Pumpernickel had a plan, and had talked people into it, and it didn't work; but we never learned what the plan was.

[BenRG]

Probably the best fanon explanation for the origins of the bat-wing Pegasi and the events that led to the destruction of the old castle. It might also be the best explanation yet for Luna's guilt - for she betrayed more than her sister, she slaughtered her own followers for her own convenience. That's a lot of blood for one pony to carry on her conscience. Sometimes I wonder if she had tried to take her own life more than once in the first few months.

[WezaQ]

I'm fairly certain (& so is much of the internet) that "Come Little Children" was written by Edgar Allen Poe.

[TwistedPretzel]

Everypony needs to see this:

[Georg]

5654330 It's what I based the Week 13 EqD flashfiction chapter Luna's Children of the Night on.

[Nyerguds]

It seems I misplaced my review for this chapter... It's on a usb drive I forgot at work. I shall post it later!

That aside, though... the image at the top is broken. And, the entry seems to be atually removed from deviantart. Do you still have it somewhere, so you could uploads it on imgur imgbox?

[edit]

Oh. Got it after all. Will add more if my other piece has more.

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“No,” said Pumpernickel, gaining volume and swallowing hard. “Since you will not accept our exclusive loyalty, we are still bound by oath to Princess Celestia. And to you. As such, it would be a failure of our oath to leave you here. By yourself.”

Pumpernickel is Best Batpony. But I already knew that from the glimpses of the future I got before I decided to read all this Nocturne stuff from the beginning

Remarks and corrections
> the normal Night Guard compliment on guard outside her room
fairly sure that should be "complement".

[Inertial]

Image is broken.

[Georg]

6542782 Linked to the new picture. Box shuffled some pictures around.

[RoyalBardofCanterlot]

The implication of what Luna was about to do was painful. Luna is in so much pain.