Realms Undreamed Of

by Ardashir

Chapter 16

Twilight ran. Yells and an enraged whinny rose from the Shonokin and Nightmare Moon. She put her head down and ignored them. Dash galloped along beside her, and she saw Mister Manco running as best he could, one leathery brown hand gripping a handful of rainbow mane.

“Head for the woods!” He half panted the words, pointed at the slopes leading down from the trees to Chorazin. “They’ll not chase us far from here!”

Twilight didn't bother to ask how he felt sure of that. Right then she didn't really want to know what their chances were. But the Tantabus, Nightmare Moon, won't be eager to expose herself to sunlight, and the Shonokin aren't likely to let her get out of their sight.

Maybe we have a chance after all.

A strong hand closed on her shoulder. She felt the clawlike nails dig hard into the clothes and the flesh beneath.

“Hey! Leggo!” A glance over her shoulder showed her would-be captor to be the Shonokin from that garage earlier. His lips skinned back to show sharp white teeth as those dragon-eyes shone at her. Past him other Shonokin were closing in, and behind them came Nightmare Moon, looking like she were made of shimmering black smoke trailing behind as she galloped. Those weird plants of the Shonokin tossed more than before, the hand-like leaves clutching at her like plunder vines.

Speaking of galloping, she heard hooves striking the ground. An orange-brown blur flew past her vision, and something collided hard with the Shonokin. He dropped with a scream that sounded like it came from three throats at once and rolled on the ground, clutching his midsection.

“Be glad Ah wasn't able ta give ya a real kick, ya varmint!” Twilight's hands wound in Applejack's mane. AJ wheeled and raced off after Dash and Manco. They were already heading up the slope. Twilight hung on for dear life. She felt like she was being dragged more than carried, but at that moment she didn't care.

“Hold on, sugarcube!” Applejack called as she ran. The muscles surged under the palomino's coat. “Ah ain't ever lost a race yet, and Ah ain't about ta start!”

Twilight almost thanked her. The words died in her throat as she heard Nightmare Moon neighing behind her. Words at once familiar but alien in her Royal Canterlot Voice.

“I MADE MY WISH BEFORE! I MAKE MY WISH NOW!” Twilight gasped to realize what the Shonokin had already taught their new ally. The dark sky overhead seemed to grow more intense as Nightmare Moon finished with, “I NEVER SAW THE NIGHT MY WISH DID NOT COME TRUE! PONIES! BE BLIND!”

Something swept over Twilight’s eyes like a black cloth. On instinct she stuck her fingers into her pocket. They brushed against the small medallion John gave her before leaving his home. She staggered and gasped as the shadow over her eyes faded.

But even as she did Applejack whinnied in sudden shock.

“Mah eyes!” Applejack cried, her voice a near shriek, joined by Rainbow Dash's up ahead. She stopped and reared. Twilight barely avoided a hoof punch to her forehead from the panicked mare. “Ah cain't see! Twi, Mister Manco, help!”

“Applejack!” Twilight reached into her pocket and removed the small piece of worked silver. She glanced back at the Shonokin. They came on more slowly and steadily now. Behind them, Nightmare Moon reared and whinnied a mocking laugh.

“GO AND TAKE THEM, YOU FOALS! ARE YOU AFRAID OF BLIND MARES AND A HUMAN GIRL?” Twilight noticed that for all her boasting Nightmare Moon kept her distance. “THEY HAVE NO POWER TO OPPOSE ME!”

Devoutly hoping to Celestia that the Tantabus was wrong, Twilight took the amulet and put it over Applejack's head. Almost as soon as it slipped over the mare blinked wildly.

“What the hay! Ah can see now. Why did Ah –” She turned and saw the Shonokin, only a couple lengths away and closing. Applejack pinned her ears and snorted at them. As they recoiled she turned and ran, Twilight still clinging to her mane.

They passed more of the weird Shonokin plants, stems and branches reaching out for them like tentacles. One or two of them almost touched them in passing, and Twilight shuddered at the sweaty and snakelike feel of the blossoms. Ponies got on well with plants and animals, with all nature, but right then she'd have gladly burned those plants if she could. Among those strange houses she saw phosphorescent orange lights at what passed for windows. A multitude of wailing cries arose, each reverberating as from multiple throats, filled less with warning and more with anger.

“They're calling for help!” She called into Applejack's ear as she was almost dragged along.

“They can call for whatever they want! Ah ain't waitin' ta see what shows up!” Applejack responded as they left the bounds of Chorazin behind. Neither dared to slow even when they were among the trees. Twilight froze to hear a low sort of chanting or singing. She unfroze to see Mister Manco doing something with Rainbow Dash's eyes that involved him rubbing something that looked like little green needles over her face as he chanted under his breath. Whatever it was smelled sharp and clean, nothing like the overripe meat smell of the Shonokin forest around them.

“Cedar,” he explained upon seeing her. “It's bad medicine for Shonokin and other ansigina, which makes it good medicine for us.” He pointed at a small sort of evergreen nearby, more a shrub than a tree. He nodded at Applejack. “You come here too. John's gift helped, I see, but this will help more.”

“Alright,” Applejack walked over to him. She shivered when he began doing to her what he'd done to Dash, who was blinking her eyes as though someone had just flashed a bright light into them. “But shouldn't we be headin' for the hills right 'bout now?”

“No need,” Mister Manco said. He took the time to point away down the hill at Chorazin. “Look.”

Twilight did so, half expecting to see a small army of Shonokin pounding up the hill at them. Instead she saw a dozen or so of them standing at the edge of the town, several hundred feet away but still under the dark clouds covering it. Past them Nightmare Moon yelled something at them. They either didn't understand or simply didn't obey. One of them seemed to yell something back at her and point towards Twilight, Mister Manco, and her friends. The Nightmare shook her head, but she stayed where she was.

“They're afraid of us?” She shook her head. “Why?”

Mister Manco took her firmly by the shoulder and shoved her down along the trail. Applejack stayed beside her, stomping one forehoof against the dirt.

“Let's hope they stay scared,” she said, trotting alongside Twilight. “C'mon, Twi, let's get out o' here.”

“Your palomino friend is right. Explanations later.” Manco hurried along himself, his breathing sounding a little ragged. “Ugh! Running like this ceases to be fun when you reach my age, but given the choice between out of breath and out of this world – young lady, what are you doing?”

Wondering, Twilight looked back. Rainbow Dash stood rearing up at the edge of the woods, hooves at her mouth and sticking her tongue out at the Shonokin and Nightmare Moon.

“Dash! Get over here!”

“Doggone it, Rainbow stop showin' off!”

“HAY, YOU DRAGON-EYED CREEPS!” Rainbow Dash ignored them both and blew a raspberry. Twilight ran back to grab her. Downhill more of the Shonokin were joining the group standing about a hundred feet away; these bore those long prodless crossbow tillers – no, rifles – like they’d done in the Dream Realm. Others stood by the Nightmare; from the way they gestured with their arms, they were arguing with her. Twilight tugged at Dash's mane but the cyan pegasus ignored her. “HAY, BLACK SNOOTY! DID YOU EVER BECOME A LOSER! YOU USED TO BE BAD ALL BY YOURSELF, NOW YOU HAVE TO HIDE BEHIND THESE GUYS!”

Twilight's breath caught in her throat as she saw Nightmare Moon jerk her head up. She glared, and then lowered her horn. Magic sparkled and flared along it as Twilight grabbed at Rainbow.

“Dash, run!”

Even as she yelled a directional magic blast lashed out from Nightmare Moon's horn. Or more wobbled. It looked pale and weak, the kind of a spell Twilight would have been ashamed to cast before she left Celestia's school. The blast reached only a third of the distance to them and fell apart, dissipating into sparkling lights.

“Hah!” Dash turned and whipped her tail up in derision. She finally began to leave. Twilight gratefully followed her.

“The Tantabus doesn't have all of Luna's magic,” Twilight said, relieved. They caught up with Mister Manco and Applejack. “Plus the magic here is so different from Equestria. Dash, how did you know that would happen?”

“Huh? What?” Dash blinked. “I didn't know. I just wanted to tell those creeps off before I left.”

Twilight stared at her.

“You WHAT? How could you be that reckless –”

Then several loud bangs she’d last heard in the Red Lands echoed over the hillside. What sounded like the loudest and angriest bees she'd ever heard buzzed by her and Dash. Dash flicked one ear and yelled.

“Ow! Something bit my ear!” Before she could yell anything else Mister Manco grabbed her by the mane and shoved her along.

“Yes, a bullet!” He really ran then. Twilight followed, remembering that snow-swept battlefield where she’d first encountered the Shonokin, trying to keep the trees between her and them. She heard more shots. One of those bullets smacked into a tree only hoof-widths from her face. Bark sprayed, missing her eyes but stinging and gouging her face. Twilight just put her head down and ran.

One last wavering cry came from Chorazin, and then no more noises from the town. But there were still sounds. The panting breaths of Twilight and her friends, the sound of hooves and feet striking the dirt and leaves and loam underhoof, and Dash's grumbling over her ear.

“Never mind your fool ear, Dash!” Applejack hurried along beside Twilight. Once or twice she went to Mister Manco's side to check on him. “'If ya hadn't acted like a mule, ya wouldn't have got bit!”

“Yeah, okay, okay!” Dash snorted back at her. Then she suddenly lifted her head and looked around, all wariness. “Wait, did anypony hear that?”

Twilight was about to ask what. Then she heard it too. Something, many somethings, scrabbling through the dirt in their direction. Wondering what it was, she looked to Mister Manco.

“Too big to be a possum or the like,” he said, scowling. “Maybe not man-size either. Whatever it is, right now we'd do best to avoid it.”

Twilight gulped and stepped a little faster, trying to keep her eyes on the trail and around her as well. She noticed that Applejack was staying beside her while Dash kept beside Mister Manco. She couldn't be sure, but she thought she heard him softly chanting something under his breath as they went. For her part, she just reminded herself that her friends back at John's cabin needed her and the others, and kept one hand on that medal in her pocket. Those noises kept close by, but they drew off as they got nearer to the truck.

Mister Manco quickly got them into the truck. Twilight got into the passenger seat even as Applejack and Dash dove into the back. The engine started with a groan and a vroom like before, and the truck leaped down the road before she could close the door.

“Well, we wanted to know if Nightmare Moon was there,” Twilight said as they raced off, jolting like a wagon across a washboard and trailing a smokescreen of dust. “Looks like she is.”

“That she is,” Mister Manco said back to her over the engine roar and rattling. “We might have ended up there permanently ourselves, if not for your blue pegasus friend. When we get back to John's house I'll have to see what he has for medicine and bandages to take care of that ear, though it looked to me like she just lost a little piece of it.” He looked at her, his face grim. “And then we think on how we can stop her and the Shonokin before they figure out how to use all her magic here.”

“Yes,” Twilight said, and then with a shudder. “Why didn't the Shonokin use those weapons more? Or chase us?”

“As for the guns, if some of us were killed, people would come looking, John if no one else. They found me or you dead as you are now, there'd be questions asked and the law getting involved. I doubt either the Shonokin or Nightmare Moon would be pleased with that. As for the rest?” Mister Manco looked thoughtful. “I wonder if maybe the Nightmare doesn't trust her new allies much when they're out of sight, and vice versa. Bad men can't put too much faith in each other. Maybe bad ponies can't either.”

“Nightmare Moon is Luna's dark side, her anger and arrogance and loneliness,” Twilight rubbed her chin as she thought more about it. “I read some of the old records of the time, and learned more from talking with Luna. In her madness she despised non-ponies as being inferior, and maybe she remembers what you say that sorcerer Dee and man Kane did to her. I think she's pretty scared under all her bragging right now.”

Mister Manco nodded.

“You speak wisely, young lady,” he said. “Let's hope she stays scared then, and has a reason to be. More scared then us.”

Twilight nodded him back and glanced into the side mirror. Above the swirling dust of their wake she could see that dark cloudbank hanging above Chorazin, shrinking in the distance. And hoped that the Nightmare stayed right where she was.

# # #

I reckon it was maybe four or five hours after they left that Twilight and Chief Manco and Applejack and Rainbow Dash came driving back up into the yard. The ponies had gone scurrying for cover when they heard the truck coming, either in the house or in the trees and with Pinkie somehow diving right out of sight under the porch where I nair thought even a cat could fit. But when the truck stopped they all came out, and airy pony there a-started asking questions all at the once. I just went to Chief Manco, and felt right glad to see him and them all well.

“Chief, I was getting right worried about you and these others here,” I said as I walked up to him. I saw Applejack and Rainbow Dash jumping down from the truck bed behind him. I noticed something else too. Blood trickled the least little bit from Dash's right ear down the side of her face to drip on the ground. I felt the other ponies pressing up behind me. “Wait, Dash, how bad are you hurt?”

“Huh?” She blinked and shook her head. A few more drops of red flew. She grinned and waved one hoof like some folks will their hand to make out something doesn't bother them. “Aw, not bad. I've bled more'n this in hoof-fighting and aerobatics practice with the Wonderbolts.”

Dash flapped her wings hard and rose off the ground. But just a moment, and then she dropped back to the ground with a snort. Dash didn't like having to be on the ground any more than she could help. “Yeesh, we were worse off when Jackie and me were blinded by Nightmare Moon, and you fixed that.” She might have said the more but right then every pony a-started talking all at the once.

“Oh! Oh, Dash, she hurt you?” Fluttershy ran up to nuzzle Dash, and Pinkie was right aside her.

“Dashie! Are ya okay?” She waved her hoof right afore Dash's eyes. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Umm,” Dash blinked. “None?”

“Really?” Pinkie looked at her hoof. “Wow, you're right! You can see!”

“Rainbow Dash! Applejack!” Rarity went right to Applejack, and she sounded right worried the way air would would be to hear a friend was in bad trouble. “You weren't hurt any more, were you?”

“Yeesh, Rares,” Applejack turned sideways and showed her body. “Do Ah look about ready ta drop?”

She looked ready to say more afore Chief Manco set his hand on Dash’s withers.

“However little this bothers you, time to get it seen to, Miss Dash.” He nodded to me and said, “John, I seem to recall you have some medical supplies. Though I think a little blockade for pain and infection and some cleaning will do her just fine.”

“I know right where those are,” Evadare said. “John, I reckon you'll need to be asking them some questions. I'll see to Miss Dash.” She turned and led the blue pony into the cabin. Or tried to; Dash dug in all four of her hooves like a donkey.

“I tell ya, I'm fine!”

Fluttershy got behind her and pushed while Evadare pulled, saying “I have an aid kit in my saddlebags…”

While they got Dash inside, I saw Luna go to Twilight and Chief Manco. I went to join them both and I heard what they were saying.

“You say my, my other self was casting spells, and she did blind fair Applejack and Rainbow Dash?” Luna didn't sound the least bit happy to say it, and neither did she look happy, with worry in her eyes and scraping the ground with one forehoof. “Tis unpleasant news. I had hoped she would require more time, even with guidance, to learn such magics.”

“We saw what she did with the Moon last night,” Chief Manco said, raising one eyebrow. “Blinding a pair of people seems less impressive than controlling the moon.”

“Nay.” Luna shook her head at him. “Such is my, our, birthright and gift. Know this, Sage Manco: in Equestria, I am the Moon, and it is me. And while I feel not the connection with thy moon that I do back home, I still do feel it.” I saw how Chief Manco nodded and Twilight's eyes went wider as Luna said, “To control it, even slightly, taxes us less than casting many another spell in this realm. And speaking of which…”

As she spoke, Rainbow Dash yelled from inside the cabin. “I tell ya, I’m fine! What are you doing? OW! That burns!”

Luna looked at the open door, gave a little snort, and turned back to Twilight.

“Twilight, I think it best that thou re-cast the speaking spell now. True, we have some few hours left before it fades, but best it be taken care of now before ye become too busy to attend to it.” She smiled. “'Twould not aid us if we lost the ability to even speak to each other.”

Twilight slapped her forehead.

“That's right, I didn't even think of it! Princess? Girls?” She called to her friends. “Come over here! I have to re-cast Universal Translator.”

“I shall see to the other two,” Luna said, then she turned and went inside herself.

I watched right careful as those three ponies gathered around Twilight. She knelt with them facing her, and cupped her hand close to her breast like she held a spark from a fire. And like a spark light gathered in her hand as she began saying something I'd heard three years afore, like horse noises made long and fancy and turned into speech.

Aside me Chief Manco watched just as careful as me. He harked the way I did as Twilight said her words and that fool’s fire-light spread to her mouth and ears. She reached out and touched Applejack’s forehead.

Applejack dropped to her fetlocks like a steer in a slaughterhouse, teeth clenched and grimacing. I remembered me how it hurt like a solid punch in the forehead when it’d been cast on me. From inside the cabin, Dash screamed out a whinny like a horse that’s been shot, then Fluttershy let out this loud EEP and started a-whimpering to break your heart.

“Some of the wise old men of the Tsalagi would be unhappy with this,” Chief Manco said. He pulled his chin and frowned like he thought deep on it. “To them this would be witchery, calling on power from the gods without acknowledging their part in it.”

“There's no evil in what Twilight or her folk do, Chief,” I said him back. Now Applejack got back on her feet and shook her head clear as Rarity dropped and moaned. “This is a natural thing to them in their place, like running or singing or planting and harvesting a crop.” He just nodded at that.

“True, but something natural and even good in one place can become a deadly danger in another, even with no intent of it happening. We've both seen that before, John. Like rabbits in Australia or European wild boars brought over to these mountains and turned loose. With the Voths and the Man in the Oak on Wolter Mountain.” While he said that, Rarity got back up while Pinkie stood her turn; she didn’t drop to her fetlocks, just jerked up in the air about a foot with her mane and tail all frizzled out straight and dropped back shaking her head like her mane was coming off until it was all back in place. Then the light from Twilight's element, I guess, faded and the ponies began talking to her with Applejack again asking to know whatair happened in Chorazin.

“But having spoken with these young ladies, I agree. They mean no evil of any sort.” Chief Manco fingered that little stone mammoth hanging around his neck. “I wonder if it might have gone better between us and the other tribes when we first met your ancestors, John, if there was a way as simple as this to speak to each other and be understood?”

“But would that really have helped, Chief?” Evadare spoke up from the cabin doorway, her voice soft like she was in a church after she watched that spellcasting, I guess you'd call it, though there'd been something like a prayer to it as well. Chief Manco looked at her as she said, “I've seen two people a-talking to each other for years, and nair once understood what the other said, even when they used the same speech.”

Chief Manco laughed and nodded to her. His teeth showed white in his seamed brown face as he did.

“John, let me say again, I'm glad you married a woman as wise and smart as yourself.” He looked back at the ponies as they were walking up to us with Twilight in the lead. “But then, from what you told me they told you, John, these ponies seem less aggressive than humans. So I can hope they avoided the problems we've had with our history, red man and white alike.”

“I wish we did,” Twilight said, looking just the least embarrassed. “But ponies fought and abused each other, back in the time of the Three Tribes,” I heard how she made it important in her words, “and later before Celestia and Luna we fought with other races in what became Equestria, the deer and buffalo and more.”

“And after as well,” Luna said as she came out the door past Evadare, and she sounded grim to say it. “I oft led ponies to war in the time before my madness, 'gainst such as Sombra and raiding griffons and dragons and Diamond Dogs. Sometimes I wonder if my fury against ponykind's enemies aided in the creation of the Nightmare.”

“A-speaking of that Nightmare,” I reminded them all, “you were a-saying afore how dangerous it was that she knew how to do the sort of magic we have around here? Why should that make her airy more dangerous than airy one that can already use that magic?” Luna just shook her head like I didn't understand. And she was right, I didn't. Nor did either Evadare or Chief Manco or the other ponies, from the way they looked curious on her. Even Dash and Fluttershy, in the doorway behind Evadare.

“Twilight understands,” Luna said, looking grim when she saw Twilight's eyes go wide. “Do you not? As with Thorne, in our world?”

“It means she's becoming part of this world,” Twilight spread one hand out to take in the house and trees about it and all else. “When she was still, well, still an outsider her power was limited.”

“But we saw that lunar eclipse,” Chief Manco interrupted. His voice got deeper, the way it did when he thought or worried about things. “You mean to say that was Nightmare Moon when she was weak?”

“Aye,” Luna responded. “It is a small thing for me to do back in Equestria, though I control myself that I may not ruin the new calendars they now use.” She sighed like someone missing an old home they loved. “'Twas easier in the older days, even if few seemed to care to see my artistry with the night sky – anyway, as her power waxes, the Nightmare will gain more control over thy world's sky.”

“She could make the Night that Never Ends,” Twilight shuddered to say it, and maybe I did a bit to hear it. “Like she tried to do back home.”

“I doubt the Shonokin would permit it,” Chief Manco said. “For now at least, they still have some control due to their conjuring her. I doubt she enjoys it, but from everything I've ever read about ritual magic and conjurings from Levi to Crowley to Mathers, she has to obey them to some extent.”

“I doubt for long,” Luna warned us all there, her eyes dark. “When she, I, was called forth by the magus Dee, I was on the verge of freeing myself from his commands when the man Kane defeated me. And she is clever at manipulating others when she must, though she prefers to command and threaten.” She shook herself. “We have this advantage. So long as I yet live, the power is divided between us. She cannot claim it all, not so long as --” She stopped talking and shivered. I reckon I knew what she was a-getting at. That Nightmare wouldn't have what it wanted while Luna lived, so she needed to be killing her for it.

I began to wonder myself how we'd stop all this, stop something that might could be the end of the whole world if we didn't. I remembered some mighty bad men I'd met afore. The Voths and their Man in the Oak on Wolter Mountain who wanted power enough to do whatair they wanted with the world, or Rowley Thorne when these little ponies first summoned me into their land three years gone, or Ruel Harpe and his Judas Gospel on Cry Mountain, and all the monsters he called up to serve him there. Afore this I'd thought and hoped me he'd be the baddest bad man I air did have to face. But now here we all were, and a-going to have to face something even worse.

“But it's not that bad, right?” Pinkie Pie hopped herself over by us. She gave Luna a quick nuzzle like to comfort, and pointed her hoof first at her friends and Twilight and then at me. “We have the Elements in us now. All we have to do is go and face Nightmare Moon again, and John can play one of his magic songs to keep the Shonokin away. Then the Tantabus realizes how wrong it is and goes back to Luna.” She smiled and jumped and made a little blast of what they call confetti shoot up someway. Evadare's eyes went a little wide, but not much; she'd had most of a day to get used to Pinkie Pie. Pinkie said, “And then I throw my we-won-the-day party and we all go back home, right?”

“It won't be so easy, Pinkie,” I told her. She kept on looking hopeful while I said, “Remember what happened, or near happened, to Rainbow and Applejack? The Shonokin don't just have magic, they have guns and they're right ready to use them if they see us.”

Rarity spoke up next. “But John, they're not the Sunny Towners! They could kill ponies by touching them and we dealt with them just fine.”

“Speak for y'self, Rarity,” Applejack winced like she remembered some old hurt and shook her foreleg. “But leastways they ain't got Spike or the fillies for hostages, or any other pony or person.”

“But we stopped Nightmare Moon before,” Fluttershy said from the doorway, just loud enough to be heard.

“Luna helped us,” Twilight went to Luna and lightly touched her right up high along her back. “Isn't that right?”

“Aye,” Luna nodded. “Even as her, I was still lucid to some degree. But I felt thy intent to stop me, and saw all through a madmare’s eyes. I thought Rarity an assassin, and Fluttershy likely to send her beasts after me.” Fluttershy looked just plain embarrassed then, and Rarity made to be dignified, but her ears were pinned back. Luna smiled and said, “Still, enough of me remained lucid to prevent her, me, from simply slaying them all.”

That made me wonder something.

“Then why hasn't she just come and killed air pony here, since you're not there to be stopping her now? Why is she so happy to be a-taking orders from the Shonokin?”

“Several reasons,” Luna said. “First, my darker self is still weak now. Stronger than myself, but not as strong as she was. She also remembers that she visited this world once before and was defeated here. For all the Nightmare's vanity, she learned fear then, and it cautions her now.”

“There's also the fact that the Shonokin have probably been telling her about the advances humanity has made since then,” Chief Manco pointed at his old truck. “Even if she doesn't care about things like guided missiles and bombs and long-range hunting rifles, they do. And if she remembers what Miss Luna saw when they were together in the Red Lands, she saw enough to make her cautious.” He frowned and nodded. “Yuh. My people, most of the tribes and nations of old America, had great magic and great bravery, but it didn't avail us in the end against foreign diseases and technology and enemies who refused to quit.”

“Thy people,” Luna said quietly, “most likely did not think that bringing down an asteroid large enough to bring a century of darkness down upon the planet was wise. The Nightmare will not have that problem. She can return to Equestria, and take what she likes with her.” She nuzzled first Twilight, and then looked at Applejack and Rarity and the rest. “Also, she knows that these ponies defeated her before, before they even knew what the Elements could truly do. She needs to regain the rest of her power first.” She looked on us all, and I felt the least bit of a chill when I saw how a shadow seemed to go over her and turn her coat black as the deepest tunnels in a coal mine. “But once she does, she will be as mighty here as she would be in Equestria, an Alicorn Major of moon and night.”

“And that will be Katy bar the door, John, as your folk put it.” Chief Manco didn't smile the least bit to say those words. “But Miss Luna, how will she regain all her power?”

“'Tis simple,” Luna said, looking from Chief Manco to Evadare and me and then to Twilight and the ponies. She sounded air bit as grim as the Chief when she said, “By draining it from me, as Tirek attempted with all Equestria. Draining all the magic that remains within me, killing me in the process.” I saw how the ponies pitied her with their eyes. Luna snorted and turned away. “She at least will have her wish. There will be no more Princess Luna, only Nightmare Moon.”

“We won't let her hurt you, Princess Luna!” Fluttershy said it the first, but the rest followed right on her words. They went to her and nuzzled her like any horse will do when it comforts another. “Not the Nightmare or those big meanies, the Shonokin.”

“If it were but my life, I might not see it as such a price,” Luna spoke like someone eyeing a rope or maybe a gun and wondering how quick it'd be. “I did bring the Tantabus here, to threaten these folk. And I sought to aid both Twilight and thou, goodman John,” she looked first at Twilight where she shook her head, and then at me. “And all I did was to bring more evil upon you both.”

“Don't you say such a thing, ma'am,” I responded her. “Those Shonokin would like as not have killed me dead afore now if not for you and Twilight helping me. And after that, who knows what they'd do, both to my friends and to other folks? If airy one here needs to be apologizing to you all, it should be me.”

Luna looked first at me, and then at the others, and she smiled the least bit. She looked the better when she did.

“You need offer no apologies, Goodman John.” She looked off in the direction of Chorazin, pinned her ears and said in the angriest voice I'd yet heard from her, “They are such as should apologize; and if they will not cease to hurt those who are my friends, then they have made themselves my enemy.” She said that last like she pure down meant it, like how I once saw Old Devlins, Captain Anderson Hatfield, talk to a man who threatened his grandson's son. Just like then, I felt right glad I wasn't the one either of them felt so killing mad at.

“John, that reminds me,” Chief Manco looked grim to be saying his words. “There was something else I saw in that Shonokin town that we need to worry about.” I wondered how there could be more yet to be fearing while he said, “I saw a tower there, a topless tower that I've heard tell of from my old friend Thunstone who once saw one like it, some thirty years ago. It was in another Shonokin town called Araby in upstate New York, and he saw the Shonokin summon a pair of, well, what I suppose we must call either gods or demons from it. They nearly killed a young man who was also investigating the town before Thunstone slew one of the Shonokin leaders and saved him. He said the Shonokin spirits, gods or whatever, seem to have been destroyed in it.”

I wondered me at his words and I saw that Twilight did too.

“And when we were there,” he continued, “Miss Twilight noticed some sort of ritual-working pattern in the layout of Chorazin.”

We all looked at Twilight then, and she gopped.

“Aaah – I forgot!” she said, then “From what I could see, the streets and houses there – at least those “gardinels” the Shonokin built or grew – were arranged in a way that resemble a magical resonance pattern. I could only see a portion of it from where we were, but…”

She squatted down and started drawing some sort of diagram in the dirt. Luna came over to watch whatair she was drawing along with us. It didn’t look at all familiar to me, all circles and parts of circles and criss-crossed lines and angles.

“...In Equestria, a resonance pattern like this would concentrate and amplify ambient magical energy through constructive interference, transferring that built-up energy onto a focal point which should be at or near that tower. Like starting a fire with a magnifying lens. That is, assuming that the part I could see was representative of…”

“’Tis more than ‘a part’, Twilight Sparkle,” Luna bespoke, then drew what looked like the rest of the pattern with her forehoof. “That pattern resembles what I remember of Dee’s summoning circles and containment wards, mixed with Equestrian resonance patterns. If she is becoming part of this world, the rules of Equestrian magic like also come into effect.”

I heard a clip-clop from the cabin and looked up. Rainbow Dash was stepping off the porch and trotting over to us. Pinkie Pie just stood still, looking across the road into the treeline, twitching like any horse that’s being bitten by flies.

“But an Equestrian resonance pattern taps ambient background magic; you need to have a magical energy flux for the initial source, and this world has none…”

Luna snorted, tossed her mane like any annoyed horse. “They have a source. Or will have. All the power of an Alicorn Major, Princess and Nightmare.”

Twilight got real quiet and just stared at what she’d drawn in the dirt.

“Mister Manco, I don't get it.” She shook her head. “You say the Shonokin gods were destroyed there, so why would they be...” She looked on Princess Luna then, and her eyes went wide. I reckon mine did too when I caught what Chief Manco was aiming at.

“Chief,” I asked him, “do I reckon wrongly, or do you mean to say that you think these Shonokin mean to be using Luna's Tantabus to make their gods be alive again?” I looked at Luna. “Could she be doing that, somehow? And would she?”

“If they were in truth creatures of Nightmares, then aye, she could.” Luna shook her head. “Yet why she should I do not know. It would gain her nothing to so aid them, and she desires no rivals. Not of her own will would she do it.”

“Not by her choice,” I interrupted her, not my politest I admit, but I saw what the Shonokin must be meaning to do. “But if they can still control her the way that Doctor Dee could for just a little while?” The eyes of ponies and human folks alike went the wider as I said, “And might could it be than when they have their own gods back, they could be forcing the Nightmare to do whatair they want?”

“Or expend her after me,” Luna said in a voice that sounded as dead as a Sunny Town pony’s. “Both empower whatever-it-is they summon and eliminate a rival.”

“Oh, this is the! Worst! Possible! Thing!” Rarity said that, and she stood up on her hind legs to do it. I wondered me if maybe she and the ponies expected something to come out behind her, the way they looked, but when nothing did she dropped back down and shook her head. “Darlings, I hate to say it, but the simplest and quickest solution to this problem seems to be for us to go to that Show-whatever town and restore Luna with the Elements!”

Chief Manco nodded at her, and Rarity tilted her head back proudly while I helped Twilight back on her feet.

“John, that's the only real option we have. Get these ponies in close to Chorazin and let them use their Elements on the Tantabus. And soon,” he looked at the horizon. I followed his gaze and saw the sun down behind the western ridges, turning the sky pink and red. Up high the first bright stars were showing. And the moon too, with the faintest outline on it of what we'd seen last night. “Before the Shonokin and their new ally decide to come at us again.”

It was like those very words called them.

“Luna,” a voice called from the treeline, hard and demanding. We all spun and saw that Nightmare standing there, maybe twenty or thirty feet away, shining blacker than black against the trees and with her eyes pale green like the glow off something rotting under old leaves. Luna fell back, her ears pinned, as the Nightmare came on a few hoofsteps, swirling like she were made of black smoke. Behind her I saw more of those Shonokin, their faces like some nasty pale fungus in the Nightmare's darkness and with the last daylight glinting off the rifle barrels in their hands. “Luna, come to me. I am the greater part of you. You know this. Come and become whole again. Come and become Me again.”

“NO!” No idea who called that, but it didn't matter. Pinkie shot for the cabin porch, scooping up Rarity and Evadare and getting them and Fluttershy out of the doorway and behind its thick log walls as Rainbow and Applejack charged past her. I made to grab Twilight and pull her back, quick-saying some words from the Long-Lost Friend as I did, a charm against bullets: “The peace of Our Lord Christ be with us, that the blade may not cut, that the dog may not bite, that the gun may not fire –!”

Then I heard those rifles going off, and the bullets buzzing past me like the angriest hornets. Those good words helped, but just not enough. Chief Manco yelled and dropped right nearby like I’d seen all too many in Korea, and I heard one or two of the ponies give a short sharp whinny like they'd been hurt. But over it all Luna cried out, near as loud as the Nightmare's laugh.

I ran towards her, Twilight right aside me and Applejack and Dash close behind, Dash dragging one bloody wing and limping with her teeth gritted. There was something like a glowing blue whirlwind all about her filled with sparks. Luna saw us and reached, whinnied her fear with her eyes wide. Twilight almost took her hoof before something threw her back against me and we both fell down.

One last wild laugh, full of mocking pride, and that sparkling whirlwind snatched Luna and the Shonokin up and swept them all away.

Comments

[PaintedPony]

Uh oh.

[redmar]

I forgot to post a comment at the last chapter so here it comes anyway. That ending wasn't good but Luna is smart enough to further undermine what little trust her enemies have in each other.