Out of Context Nightmare

by LordBucket

1 - Eclipse

"In the defense of my little ponies, to keep them safe...I would pay any price."

-- HRH, Princess Celestia

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Luna awoke to a horrible cacophony. A thousand myriad voices screeching telepathically into her mind in unfamiliar languages. Bolting to her hooves, she found herself shrouded in darkness in the midst of a dusty, colorless wasteland.

"..."

Her mouth moved, but no sound came out for there was no air to speak. And yet the relentless screeching continued unabated. Countless conversations and songs, dry commentary and angry debates, all together at once being broadcast into her mind.

Her horn lit up.

"BE SILENT!" She mentally screamed into the magical aether. And yet if any of the mysterious speakers heard her, there was no response besides their continued screechings.

She'd heard voices in her head before, of course. But not like this. The Nightmare had always spoken to her, or occasionally with her. This was more like a thousand unicorns telepathically talking and singing at each other, somehow oblivious to the other conversations.

Conjuring an anti-magic barrier around herself at last brought silence. But still she could not breath. The sensation in her lungs was...unpleasant, but dealing with such a trivial discomfort could wait. Taking in her surroundings, she seemed to be in a vast desert composed of unfamiliar gray soil. A niggling thought began to take root in her mind, telling her that this was not Equestria. After being blasted by the Elements, she had expected to wake up an instant later after having been released from a thousand years as a statue. Perhaps this was Equestria, but after a thousand years without her guardianship, some sort of tragedy had befallen her home. Had her sister failed to raise the moon? Had tidal forces stripped their entire world of breathable air, rendering it a lifeless void while she lay helplessly trapped in stone? For that matter, where was the moon?

Reaching out with her magic, she could not find it.

Luna's face contorted into a snarl at the implication, yet a silent one, for still there was no air to carry the sound of her fury.

It was then that she looked upward to see the silhouette of a planet blocking out the star that lay behind it. And as she watched, it continued its casual journey through space, revealing the blue sheen of water on its surface as the light of the star behind it grew.

It was not her world. And this, that she was standing on, was that world's moon, not her own.

But it was at least some world, and behind it lay at least some star, though not her sister's. And from that planet came the cacophony of voices calling out into the magical aether in their unintelligible languages. There, at least, was life.

Lightly pushing off the ground with her hooves and majestically spreading her wings, she telekinetically grabbed onto the pale blue dot above her and pulled herself into the space between them, towards it.