Tulpa ex Somnium
The problem with villains with overly grandiose names, Daring Do reflected, was that they tended to be either ludicrously incompetent or ludicrously competent, and it was impossible to say which they were until it was far too late. Take this guy, this cult leader, the Eschaton. The name was Baby’s First Symbolism, so blunt it almost induced eye-rolling every time Daring heard it. And yet, after Daring had initially escaped with her half of the Medallion of Worlds, he hadn’t sent easily defeatable mooks after her to get it back. No, he’d just slipped her a mickey when she was celebrating at a bar and kidnapped her. She didn’t have her half of the Medallion with her — it’d already been safely hidden away — but it’d be easy for him to grill her about it, now that she was bound to a stone slab.
The Eschaton, a unicorn with a white coat and bleached mane and oh-so-clichéd black robes, paced back and forth in front of her. “One last time, Ms. Do,” he said quietly. “You can tell me where your half of the medallion is. Or I can make you tell me.”
“Do I win a prize if I tell you?” Daring asked. It wasn’t the best response, mostly because it was a delaying tactic as she surveyed the dingy stone room one last time. He was the only other pony in the room, and she could handle the cultists that were definitely outside the door; those sorts of robes looked intimidating but (and she knew this from experience) were a pain to fight in. But first, she needed to get out of these bonds, and although the knots were weak, she couldn’t pull her hooves out quickly, not without the Eschaton zapping her in the face.
“A quick and painless death. It is more than you deserve.”
“Weak. I could get a better prize from my cereal box. I think I’ll pass.” Yeah, that was getting changed in the final draft.
The Eschaton clenched his jaw and a vein pulsed in his forehead. Visibly. How close was he to an aneurysm? “Very. Well,” he said, trying and failing to add gravel to his voice. “Then let us. Begin.” He closed his eyes and pointed his horn at Daring; it flashed and the air began thrumming.
“Nice light show,” Daring said, hoping to egg him beyond concentration. “Not like I haven’t seen that a million times before. But, sure, yours is special.” She tugged at the ropes around one of her hooves. Maybe, if she was lucky-
Yet the Eschaton paid her no mind. His horn flashed again and coils of darkness unwound from its whorls. They dove at Daring, driving themselves down her mouth, into her eyes, through her ears. And Daring lost all sensation.
She was adrift on a sea of madness, her mind unmoored and cut loose. Her flesh, like a liquid, had long since sloughed off. Her memories were islands where she could gain some semblance of respite, but whenever she pulled herself ashore, the crows of the Eschaton’s interrogation spell dove and began picking it over. When they found nothing, a tentacle loomed from the sea and smashed the pathetic spit of sand to pieces, and Daring couldn’t pull it up again. She could feel herself nudged, pushed in the direction of today, where she’d hid her half of the Medallion. It was inexorable, inevitable, and the more Daring fought and dredged up irrelevant memories, the more her physical sense of self was stripped away. She was left shivering and drowning beneath a searchlight that watched her every move, waiting for her to either make a single misstep or roll over and die so it could pick over her bones.
Then she was pulled away, no longer exposed. She had the vague feeling that something had been thrown over her before a voice spoke.
“Like, whoa. Talk about bad touch. Hang on a sec, lemme get you out.”
The thrashing in Daring’s mind slowed, then vanished completely. The barbs in her thoughts were delicately withdrawn as the ocean drained. She had a body again, ears and eyes and a tail and wings and everything. She moaned and attempted to rub her head, but she still couldn’t feel her legs.
“Huh. That’s new. Maybe if I- No, no. Why didn’t that work?”
The voice was strange, not exactly a stallion’s or a mare’s, and she couldn’t even place the age. Holding her breath, Daring cracked her eye open.
She was in a plain, featureless white room, yet still tied to the slab. Standing over her was an alicorn with a coat and mane of stars and glowing eyes, chewing on its lip. “Oh! Maybe if I- Daggit. Nope.” It looked Daring in the eye. “Hey. You doing alright, Daring?”
“I’ve been better,” gasped Daring. “Who… Who are you?”
“Moondog,” said the alicorn. “Short version, Princess Luna’s dream assistant, alright? And, hoo boy, do you need a good dream right about now.”
Approximately three million, eight hundred and fifty-two thousand questions (rounding down) exploded violently into Daring’s head and splattered across her thoughts, ranging from how she’d gotten out of that temple to how this (was this person even a pony?) individual knew her name. But she didn’t have the energy to ask any of those questions, so she settled for dropping her head again and moaning.
“Friggernaffy,” growled Moondog. “I was sure that- wait, waaaaiiiit…” It laid a hoof on Daring’s bonds; a pins-and-needles feeling swept up and down her body and she twitched. Moondog grinned. “Ha ha! Yes! Now, this is gonna feel a bit strange, but trust me, that means it’s working.”
Normally, Daring might’ve said something along the lines of, How reassuring, but with a maybe-princess coming to her rescue, she wasn’t going to push her luck. She held her breath as her entire body was poked with a billion pins. Feeling leaked back into her limbs and, to her surprise, it didn’t hurt. She wiggled her legs and wings, but they were still tied. A start, at least.
“Working on it,” said Moondog, preempting her question. “This spell is pretty clever-” The ropes suddenly unravelled, fraying at the ends into nothingness. “-but! Definitely not clever enough! Bada boom!”
Daring rolled off the slab. The moment her hooves touched the ground, the rock turned to water, fell upward to the ceiling, and drained through a grate that Daring was sure hadn’t been there five seconds before.
“And there we go!” Moondog said, sounding quite pleased with itself. “You. Are welcome.” It flared its wings and bowed.
“Um. Thanks, I… guess.” Still unsure as to what the heck was going on, Daring rubbed at the floor. It didn’t seem to have a texture and was instead just sort of there, a thing to stand on because she needed a thing to stand on. And how had she gotten into the room in the first place? There wasn’t a door and she hadn’t felt like she’d been teleported.
“You know, I’ll never get tired of those ‘deep in thought’ expressions.”
Daring twitched and pulled herself back to reality. Moondog was slouching over an invisible surface, its head propped up on a hoof, surveying Daring like she was a subject in some experiment. “You’re all like ‘whoa, I’m being painted’ or something, and suddenly you look off into the distance all dramatic-like so-” It framed its face with its hooves. “-your portrait looks nice. And to be fair, it does.”
Desperate to say something, Daring asked, “How did you know my name?” Even though an awful lot of ponies in Equestria would recognize her, what with her iconically spiffy outfit. Hence why she normally worked outside Equestria.
Moondog pointed at Daring’s chest. “Name tag.”
What? Daring looked down. She had, of all things, a sticker tag stuck to her jacket: HELLO, MY NAME IS Daring Do. More confused than ever, she pulled it off, only to reveal another one beneath it. HELLO, MY NAME IS A. K. Yearling. She hastily ripped that one off. HELLO, MY NAME IS Ineighgo Manetoya. Luckily, that one was the last one. But what was up with-
Short version, Princess Luna’s dream assistant, alright?
All at once, most of the pieces fell into place. Daring looked at Moondog again. “This is all a dream, right? And you just pulled me out of the Eschaton’s mental probe.”
“Um.” Moondog scratched its head. “It’s technically a dream, I guess?” It sounded like it was giving an oral report it hadn’t prepared for. “Your, uh, ‘interrogation’ was almost completely mental already, and once you were unconscious, that sent ripples into the dream realm, and those sorts of things hurt, y’know? So I just pushed in a little energy to bring it all the way in so I could work with it, and…” It rubbed the back of its neck. “It’s complicated. But, yeah, totally saved you from that guy. Anyway, I…” Moondog laid a hoof to its chest and began speaking in a dramatic voice. “…am an arcane construct par excellence, given life by Princess Luna herself, to-”
Daring raised a hoof. “I hate to interrupt-” -and she did; everyone loved a good speech. It was why real villains monologued and writers still had their own villains monologue even as they criticized that same thing- “-but if this is a dream, I should probably find a way to wake up. I was kind of in the middle of something, and- I can wake up, right?”
“Now that I redirected the spell, you can,” said Moondog. “Actually, if you’re in a hurry, let’s do that now!” And suddenly it was winding up with a warhammer the size of a train car. How it fit in the room was anypony’s guess. “Don’t worry, this won’t hurt a bit.”
“Whoa, whoa, wait,” said Daring, taking a step back and flaring her wings as her heart sped up, “I’m sure there’s-”
Moondog smashed Daring in the face and she woke up on the slab, panting as if she’d flown a marathon or ten, her clothes pinned to her body by cold sweat. On reflex, she tested all six of her limbs; they seemed to be working, even if she was still bound. But the Eschaton’s eyes were closed and he was still muttering to himself as if his spell was still running. Nopony else had entered the room in the meantime. On a whim, Daring bit her tongue. It hurt. Whatever was up with Moondog, at least the results seemed to be good.
Daring lightly tugged at her bonds. Their loose knots hadn’t been tightened at all. Focusing on her right front hoof, she carefully pulled, rotating it back and forth inside the coils of rope until-
Something gave and Daring’s hoof slipped straight out. Thank heavens for small favors. She reached over and slowly, quietly pulled her other hoof from its loop. Yeah, these were pretty much the worst knots in history. What kind of genius knew mental entrapment spells but couldn’t tie a knot to save his life? The same kind of genius who thought calling himself “the Eschaton” was nice and dramatic, apparently.
With both front hooves free, untying her rear legs was so simple that she could’ve done it in her sleep. Unable to resist, she tapped the Eschaton on the nose. His eyes snapped open and he twitched so hard it looked like he was having a seizure. “How-?” he gaped.
“Hi!” said Daring. Punch.
The Eschaton’s head snapped to one side and he staggered away. He hadn’t even stopped moving before Daring charged him with the rope. In only seconds, she tied him up with the practiced ease of somepony who’d restrained others probably a bit too often. Not even wiggling in his shock, the Eschaton could only blink at her. “You should not- be- awake!” he gasped. “Escaping that spell is- is impossible!”
The one-liner-writing portion of Daring’s brain finally engaged properly as she grinned. “Dream on, chump.” She blew through the door, and after a few solid jabs to knock out the guards, she was dashing through the corridors of the temple; nopony had a hope of catching her.
Several weeks later, Daring was sitting in her house, spending the evening punching away at a typewriter in her front room. Its constant tack tack tack and the fire crackling in the fireplace lulled her into a state of easy contentment. It was a strange sort of catharsis, getting her adventures out on paper, even though they always seemed to end swimmingly. It was like she was writing the book specifically so she could close it.
The Eschaton finally stopped his pacing. “One last time, Dr. Do,” he said quietly. “You can tell me where your half of the medallion is. Or I can make you tell me.”
In a last delaying tactic, Daring asked, “Do I win a prize if I tell you?” But her situation didn’t deign to improve.
NOTE TO ED: I’m open to one-liner suggestions. Brain fart.
Tack tack tack. She changed some things in the transition from reality to page, obviously. Small things, mostly. Making travelling go quicker, rephrasing conversations, upping or downing the drama level of a scene at any given moment, tweaking personalities, that sort of thing. The specifics varied from book to book. For Daring Do and the Working Titles of Fate, she made the Eschaton a little bit more menacing, something she’d never needed to do before. Sure, the guy was effective at times, but at others, he was downright laughable. Anything to make the book flow better.
The Eschaton’s eyes narrowed, and Daring immediately knew she’d made a mistake. Yeah, snarking at the guy who was holding you captive, real smart. “Very well,” he said in a voice like the beginning of an avalanche. “Then let us begin.”
Tack tack tack. But for the most part, she kept at least the gist of events. It needed to feel right, and reality tended to feel right, at least when Daring was writing. Part of her wondered if she was really just a hack author who happened to live an interesting life, but she suspected she just wasn’t that creative. She could get the descriptions and prose down, make it flow and twist and dance, but when it came to actual plots, she was a blank. Reality provided for her, though, and it had that certain zing to it.
…waiting for her to either make a single misstep or roll over and die so it could pick over her bones.
NOTE TO ED: Too dark? Let me know if I need to change it.
Tack tack tack. Of course, the nice bonus about basing her books on true stories was that the setup was always there, so she didn’t have to worry too much about plot holes. Everything had to logically follow from what had come before or else it wouldn’t have happened in the first place.
Standing over her was an alicorn with a coat and mane of stars and glowing eyes, che
Tack tack- Except now.
Daring stopped typing and frowned at the sentence fragment she’d written. Right. Like her readers would accept a… dream-based tulpa conveniently appearing at exactly the right time to free her. Sure. She might as well just have a meteor plummet through the ceiling, take out the three floors above them, go straight through the Eschaton’s head, and leave her unharmed. Oh, and the shrapnel from the meteor conveniently severing her bonds.
But he’d used that spell before, and it’d been inescapable then. The scene in the cage with Mandrel had established that much. (Thank goodness she’d make a full recovery.) There was no way she was going to have herself be strong-willed enough to resist the spell; that was too easy. And nopony else was around to help her out.
So here she was, ready to start the avalanche of the climax, and lacked a rock to set it off.
Okay, so she could skip that part for now. Write the bit after she got saved and go from there. That would work, as long as she kept this bit in the back of her mind, right? Right. She set aside the page she was on and inserted a new one. Tack tack tack.
With both front hooves free, untying her rear legs was so simple that she could’ve done it in her sleep. But what little noise she was making attracted the Eschaton’s attention. His eyes snapped open; the second he realized Daring was free, the nature of his spell change.
Tack tack tack. Time drifted easily by, Daring smoothed out her escape from the temple, and that gap in her writing nagged at her like a mental wound. She thought, hurled her mind this way and that, but nothing came up, or at least nothing that wouldn’t require a massive reworking of the earlier chapters. Which, true, she could do, but it would take so much work, both in plotting and in typing. Stupid inability to go back and easily edit already-typed stuff.
As the river carried Daring away, the structure finally gave. The temple collapsed in on itself, walls and stairs crumbling as each level caved into the one below it. The colonnade at the top was the last to go; by the time they could fall no more, the pillars practically shattered with the force of the impact. A colossal plume of dust bloomed fifty feet into the air. When it eventually cleared, all that remained of that haven of evil was a dirty pile of rubble.
Tack tack TACK. Daring hit the period to end the penultimate chapter with perhaps a bit more vigor than she intended, but the issue of “getting out” still gnawed at her like a toothless dog and its bone. She unfolded her wings with a groan and leaned over the back of her chair to stretch her spine out. She glanced out the window. The sun had gone down a long time ago and the stars twinkled at her.
Daring looked at the ceiling for a moment, then grunted and rolled from the chair. She wasn’t going to work out any issues with the plot tonight. Almost completing the first draft of her book had wiped her out more completely than a balefire bomb. She dragged herself to her bedroom. Hopefully, sleeping on the issue would help.
Daring typed feverishly, beating out a steady drumroll across the typewriter’s carriage. As soon as the typewriter’s arm swung away, the letter drifted from the page to the ceiling. The mass of letters up there was already dense and cluttered. Daring ripped the blank page from the typewriter, laid it on a pile of equally-blank pages, and continued typing. Nothing would stick and ideas refused to coalesce in her head. She just kept typing and vainly hoping something would come.
She glanced up at the clock. Her deadline was approaching, as inevitable as tax season and even less welcome. The clock refused to move while she was looking at it, yet whenever she looked away, she could hear the hands whizzing around. Her fans needed, demanded her next book, and if she couldn’t get it to them soon… She wiped her forehead down and kept typing.
Then, suddenly, the letters started sticking. Daring typed out a full line before she noticed, then she read that line eagerly.
Bvyi fa fi bfiv ivx nkrt jfrg ivyi gkxar’i hxi fi pxyg aicqq fr y gpxyj? Cacyhht, F jxyr. Yi hxyai fi hxia jx vfgx axupxi jxaaymxa qkp hycmva. Yrtbyt, hkkz cn. F’j dxvfrg tkc.
…Truly, some of her finest work. Daring sighed, advanced a line down, and reset the carriage. She random punched a few keys in frustration, typing out “SURPR”. That prompted a frown; she definitely hadn’t hit any of those letters. Hesitantly, Daring poked at the M key. The letter that was typed was “I”. She hit the L. “S”. She hit the P. “E”.
“In my professional opinion, it would appear that your hierarchy of needs is like totally outta whack.”
Daring looked up and froze. That starry alicorn was staring down at her, perched on the back of her chair and looming as ominously as a bird of prey or (even worse) her publisher. “I mean, no offense,” it said casually, “but after getting kidnapped and nearly having your mind ripped apart by a cult, the thing that gets your goat to the point of nightmares is writing?” It cocked its head. “Seriously. You ponies are weird.”
“Um, hey,” said Daring. “Moondog, right?”
“That’s my name, don’t wear it out!”
“Could you cool it with the vulture act?” Daring said exasperatedly.
Moondog blinked. Suddenly, a vulture was perched on the back of Daring’s chair. “No.”
Daring sighed and rubbed her forehead. “Hold still, will you?” She took the typewriter in her hooves, whirled around, and brought it down as hard as she could on Moondog’s head, crushing it flat into a glittery smear on the floor.
A hoof poked up declaratively from the smear. “I’m sensing some hostility, here,” Moondog proclaimed sagely. “Juuuust a little.”
“The last time we met, you hit me in the face with the mother of all sledgehammers!” yelled Daring. She crushed the hoof.
Moondog’s head formed from the smear. “Yeah. And then you woke up. Like you wanted.”
Crunch. “It’s the principle of the thing!”
“Oh, come on!” the smear protested. The stars winked angrily at Daring. “It didn’t even hurt!”
Wham. “So?”
“Oh, whatever.” Moondog popped up from the floor. Daring swung again, only for the typewriter to pass straight through Moondog and vanish from her hooves in the process. “Now, look,” Moondog said sternly. “Normally, I’d just do my thing and bug out and you’d never even notice me. But somehow, I’m the cause of your nightmares, so I’d like to get this sorted out personally.” Its slightly angry demeanor dropped into a slightly sheepish one as it looked away, twisting its mane around a hoof. “I… don’t wanna be making bad dreams by accident.”
“You could start by not hitting ponies in the face with hammers.”
“Hey!” Moondog flared its wings and jabbed Daring in the chest. “You needed to wake up, and my options for that are crap! I did the best I could!”
Daring had more than a few responses to that, but instead she batted Moondog’s hoof aside and said, “Fine, fine. So, what, you just want to talk?”
“Right. See, I thought your encounter with Mr. Mind Probe might scar you for life, but you were like super casual about it. I kept checking up on you every few nights, just in case, and you were fine. Then you start writing about me, and suddenly we get…” Moondog gestured at the letters scattered across the ceiling. “…abstract nightmares, of all things.” It pulled up the smooshy orange armchair next to the fire and collapsed into it. (That, more than anything, reminded Daring this was a dream; it was impossible to find that chair comfortable.) “And since I’m made to destroy nightmares, somehow being the cause of one is kind of a bummer,” it finished in the same kind of voice of a farmer saying that their grain silo exploding was kind of a bummer.
If she hadn’t been so used to making things up as she went along, Daring supposed she would’ve been more lost than an earth pony in Cloudsdale. But she got the general gist of things and hoped she could wing it. She took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said, pacing back and forth. “So. I’m writing a novel. Based on… what I was doing then.”
“Uh-huh. Marketed as fiction, yeah. My lips are sealed.”
Daring added yet another question to the list. “Then I got to the point where you saved me from the villain’s clutches — thanks for that, by the way — and, well, you hadn’t appeared before then, and you vanished and didn’t appear later. It’s like I invented you just to get me out of that jam. A real deus ex machina.”
Moondog blinked. “A… deus ex- I already exist!” it yelled, jumping out of the chair. “And somehow my showing up at the right time would be a literary crime? Readers are bullcrap! Coincidences like that happen in the physical world all the dang time! Or was Rainbow Dash showing up to help you that first time also something you pulled from your butt?”
Part of Daring wondered what would happen if Moondog stopped managing dreams for Luna and instead managed Equestria’s intelligence agencies. The rest of her said, “Reality doesn’t have to make sense or avoid strange coincidences. Fiction does. You can make ponies accept the impossible, but not the improbable. It’s…” She waved her hooves around each other vaguely. “Readers want me to get out of problems on my own, not have someone who’s never been in the story before do it for me. It makes the ending that much better. It’s the same reason everypony loves an underdog.”
“But, what, me doing my frigging job is bad writing?” Moondog snorted. “I guess waiters bringing you food is bad writing, too.”
“Let’s put it this way. A story where all the hero’s problems are solved by her suddenly finding a random briefcase full of bits is very different from a story where all the hero’s problems are caused by her suddenly finding a random briefcase full of bits.”
“So I guess this, with you and me-” Moondog pointed between the two of them. “-is a story where all your problems are caused by me saving your life.”
“I guess,” Daring said with a shrug.
“…I was kidding!”
“That’s what it is!”
“Oh, sure.” Moondog rolled its eyes. “What kind of angst-ridden story has somepony’s life being saved as the driving conflict?”
Daring scratched her head. Even though she knew this was real life (for a given value of “real”), she’d been bitten by the analysis bug and was determined to run with it to scratch that itch. “That depends on whether you’re the protagonist or I am. Although the other would probably be the deuteragonist, which-”
“Look, let’s get back on track, can we? Okay. At least I’m not the main cause of your nightmares,” Moondog muttered. “So we need either an earlier reason for me to be looking out for you or you to get yourself out via heroic spirit or something.”
“Not the second one,” Daring said immediately. “It’d be really stupid if I broke out of a black magic interrogation spell just by being, grrrr, really determined.”
“Definitely,” Moondog said with a nod. “Those sorts of spells just get right inside your head, and…” It stuffed its hoof into its ear far deeper than a hoof had a right to go. “Blalgh. You don’t want to know the state your mind was almost in.”
Daring’s thoughts almost got away from her. To distract herself, she walked back and forth, staring at the floor. The whorls in the wood, she noticed, repeated themselves from board to board. “But if you were following me,” she said to herself, “you needed to start following me. You just hanging around because you thought I was interesting is weak and plot-device-y, since obviously you’d only be there to save my haycon in the climax. So why did you come to me?”
“Because I sent you after that guy in the first place!”
Daring looked up. Moondog was lounging across the armrests of its chair, looking very pleased with itself. “It goes like this,” it said, making big gestures. “I was like, ‘Hey, Daring, there’s these guys who’ve been dreaming about doing something bad, but I can’t enter the real world, could you check it out for me since you have experience with this sort of thing?’ And you were all-” Its voice became an exact copy of Daring’s. “‘Sure thing!’ And I checked up on you every night or so just in case, so I was watching you anyway, and I was able to help you help me!” It smiled and rubbed its hooves together. “Neat, easy, an invocation of… Sheckle’s… Something-or-Other-”
“Chekon’s Rune.”
“Right, that! It’s perfect!” Moondog’s smile was positively stuffed with self-satisfaction. Outside the window, a choir began singing.
It almost was. It gave Daring a reason to go out obtaining rare antiquities beyond the usual, the impromptu dream meetings could help the pacing and maybe provide some levity, and it’d bring the plot full circle in the end. Almost perfect. The problem was- “Yeah, no offense, but I don’t think you’re the best person for that.” Hopefully, Moondog would get it.
The chair collapsed and the choir went silent. After getting to its feet, Moondog lowered an ear, looking mildly surprised at best. “Really? Why not?”
“Because we need someone who doesn’t wake ponies up by hitting them in the face with warhammers,” Daring said flatly.
“Fair enough,” Moondog said with a shrug. “What about Mom, then? She’s the kind of pony you’re looking for. Ooo, and working for a princess raises the narrative stakes nicely, too! …It does, right?”
“Mom?” Daring’s thought processes did a double backflip in shock, but at least they stuck the landing. “You mean- Princess Luna?”
“No,” Moondog said with a sigh. “Ahuizotl. Yes Princess Luna! Who else do you think?”
“No, I mean- She’s a princess. I know other ponies have done it, but I don’t feel right writing her into my story.” Not something based this closely on reality, anyway. ”I want to be sure she’s okay with it, and it’s not like I can just talk to her.” Did the Princesses even know her double life? Assuming they read her books, it wouldn’t surprise her, if only because they seemed to know everything at times. But what kind of princess would read her books? Okay, Princess Twilight, but-
“Sure you can. She can spare a minute or two. Hang on, lemme get her.” Moondog pulled open a hole in the air and jumped in.
“Wait!” yelled Daring, jumping after it. “You can’t just-” She hit the hole’s empty space like a rubber wall; it flexed, cushioning what otherwise would’ve been a nasty hit (at least in the real world), and deposited her lightly on the floor again. Grumbling, Daring flattened her mane down and looked up to see a note taped to the hole.
Sorry, but you can’t follow me. Taking somepony like you into the collective unconscious takes more complicated magic than I can do.
Once Daring had read it, the note folded itself into an origami bird and fluttered out the window, straight through the glass, and Daring’s disbelief quota ran out. “You know,” Daring said wistfully to herself as she stared outside, “just once, I wouldn’t mind an expedition that was just me walking around a town, asking ponies questions about the artifact of the week. Someplace on the waterfront, nice and small and quiet. And Bitalian.”
Luna clambered out of the hole, quickly followed by Moondog. Daring didn’t bother being surprised. “What Bitalian towns would you recommend for a vacation, Princess?” she asked idly.
“Anything in Tuscaneigh,” Luna replied. “The history, wine, and culture there are all equally rich.”
“Mmhmm.” That was what Daring had been thinking, anyway. “Moondog, you’re not just making a dream copy of Luna to make me feel better, are you?”
Moondog bristled and took a breath, but Luna quickly held up a hoof in front of its mouth. “I assure you, it is not. If you so desire, I can send you a letter tomorrow confirming this meeting.”
“Sure.” Wings crossed.
“Now, Moondog has informed me of your plight and the proposed solution.” (Of course she knew. Why wouldn’t she?) “I have no qualms against my presence in your book, on two conditions. First of all, that you send the Court all information you have on whoever imprisoned you in the first place. Such mental magics are illegal, and I would hate to have such a criminal wholly evade detection.”
“Oh, absolutely. I can do that.” Daring decided not to mention that she’d been doing that since book 3 and the lack of response meant her letters had probably gotten lost in the bureaucracy every time. Not a good idea to criticize the Court in front of one of its heads.
“Second…” Luna looked Daring in the eye. “Might I ask for an autographed copy of your book upon publication?”
“Your Highness, after what your- daughter did for me, you can have autographed copies of all my books, past and future.”
Luna blinked, then grinned. “Huzzah!” she bellowed, pumping a hoof in the air. “Tia will be so jealous!”
“Moooooom…” Moondog mumbled. It looked away and shielded its face with a wing. “Stop embarrassing me in front of the famous author.”
“ ’Tis my parental right! You know not how pleased this makes me!” Luna smiled proudly at nothing, slowly unfolding and folding her wings. Daring coughed and shuffled from hoof to hoof. Moondog stared resolutely at a knot in the wall as its mane defied gravity and rose up to further block its already wing-shielded face.
Luna soon came down from her high. “If there are no more questions-”
“No, Your Highness,” said Daring.
“-then I must be off. And you,” she said to Moondog, “must not dally too long here. There is still much to do tonight.”
Moondog didn’t look away from the wall. “Don’t worry, Mom, I won’t.”
Luna tutted at it, inclined her head to Daring, then leapt gracefully back through the hole in the air.
“Oh, auntiiiieeees,” Moondog groaned, throwing its head back. “I swear, you get her excited, and she turns into a kid in a candy store, only with less dignity.” It dragged a hoof down its face. “She can be so embarrassing.”
Daring couldn’t help but grin. “Heh. Yeah. Parents are like that.”
“Anyway…” Moondog bowed dramatically to Daring. “Pleased to have helped you sort this out. I still can’t say I get why this was so important, but that’s none of my business.”
“Doesn’t surprise me,” said Daring. “You’ve never actually written anything. I mean book-written,” she added hastily. “You just make dreams, and half the point of dreams is that they don’t have to make sense.”
“Eh. True,” Moondog admitted. “A genius is only a genius in the field they’re a genius in, and I probably know less about books than you know about nocnice.”
“What’s nocnice?”
“Exactly. Anyway, like Mom said, I gotta get going soon, but before I do…” Moondog tossed an indistinct blob at Daring; by the time she’d caught it, it’d come into focus as a large baseball bat. “Tit for tat, y’know? Trust me, it’ll hurt me just as little as I hurt you.”
Daring looked at the bat. At Moondog. She shrugged and wound up. “If you insist.”
“I don’t insist,” said Moondog. “Just keeping the option open if you-”
And that was when Daring clubbed its head off, out through the window. She watched it sail into the distance and her heart got a little bit lighter.
Moondog peeled away the empty space above its neck as if were a balaclava, revealing a new head from nowhere. It looked out the window. “Ooo, two hundred feet. Not bad.” It smirked at Daring. “Betcha can’t get three.”
“You’re on.”
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Great as usual.
Ohhh! Title ref to "Deus Ex Machina"!
Hmm... Daring's letters to the palace... I guess even if they were given to the spy agency, she should've gotten a reply, so I guess they were ignored.
This makes me wondering about Daring's parents now.
It's okay. All good parents are like this.
Man, this just keeps getting better and better.
The ending made me happy
Perhaps Daring ought to send her letters to Twilight and have her forward them via Spike?
Magnificent. Daring Do for Smash.
At least she isn't getting threats from the lawyers for vigilantism the way grey hats sometimes get put through the wringer after very nicely notifying owners of exploits and deficiencies they notice.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/03/yelp-but-for-maga-turns-red-over-security-disclosure-threatens-researcher/
Okay, that was just perfect!
Maybe the reason her letters get lost in the shuffle is because they're sent under the name Daring Do - which is officially a fictional character - in order to keep events like that from being officially traced back to A.K. Yearling?
Daring Do and the Working Titles of Fate is a pretty fantastic placeholder.
I can't help but feel that telling Luna that criminal information is getting lost in the shuffle would be a very good idea. There's no shame in criticizing the system when the system isn't working.
In any case, fantastic and unexpected bit of friendshipping. Though I can't help but suspect that Celestia will personally assign Daring a mission just to shut up Luna.
How amusing.
Honestly, Moondog is at the hub of the best intelligence network you could get short of actual 24/7 telepathy. Though it must get really depressing/rage inducing with some possible situations. Unless Luna installed a parental/violence filter somewhere.
It wasn't that bad
Clearly not
And Vamponies
(okay so i realize that Tuscany is a real place in Italy, but the first thing that came to my mind was Toussaint from The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine)
To be fair eschaton is a pretty obscure term. Rare does one need to reference a religion’s end event without just naming the event itself, unless discussing the similarities or differences of said events.
Another amazing chapter, as usual.:D
Oh, that was glorious. You never disappoint with Moondog. Also:
Rather appropriate, since two royals appear in this dream. (Wouldn't Moondog technically also be a prince/princess/whatever if it's Luna's child?)
9667947
This... yeah, this would not surprise me in the slightest.
-I think you want a second "as" between "inevitable" and "tax".
-Is it copying a voice? If so consider clarifying. If not, you might want "tone of" before "voice". ...but what I originally quote for (and didn't notice the above problem until I was editing the quote down to size) was that this is the first mention I have heard from someone else to grain silo explosions*. When I bring it up it is usually in relation to explaining how Fuel Air Explosives** work. Anyway, kudos on knowing this point of trivia. Not to mention your vocabulary. FiM is "stealth education" and I strongly approve of its fanfic being so as well.
*To the uninitiated: These are an actual design and procedural concern in real life. They are a subset of dust explosions.
**Just learned that "Daisy Cutter"s AREN'T this.
9668223
I would tend to agree. If it was the Tantabus talking then I could see it given its love of obscure words biasing it, so it might think the name lacked subtlety. Daring Doo on the second hoof doesn't talk like that in either of her identities. On the third hoof, I guess it could be seen as being because she is a writer? On the fourth, a good writer knows when they can get away with stuff like that because they are writing to whatever their audience is, rather than their peers. On the fifth hoof (first wing?), an artist is often their own worst critic even when they don't need to be, and that could extend to their art as a whole.
-Hmmm... I'm not sure this quite applies to Moondog. Firstly, it's existence has been argued in a newspaper, and then concluded to be true. It is less well-known than its mother, but still probably falls under 'common knowledge'. Is something a Deus Ex Machina if that something logically follows from real-life rules with a reasonable degree of probability? To use a parallel situation without Ponies or magic in it, if someone gets kidnapped by a stalker and the plot is mostly about them resisting the efforts of their captor to mentally break them, and the way they get out of that is that the police bust in and arrest the villain, then AFAIK that is a deus-ex-machina right up until you explain that a missing-persons report had been filed, and <insert perfectly reasonable police work based on facts that you DID already establish in the story, although you never mention the investigation because you are using first-person or third-person-limited POV>. Given the nature of the spell and the fact that Daring Doo held out long enough for it to drive her far enough into unconsciousness for it to show up on Moondog's "radar", it isn't an unlikely coincidence. It even leaves Daring Doo as an active force in her own rescue in that a lesser pony wouldn't have held out long enough against the spell long enough for said necessary trigger for the rescue to continue.
...for all I know, they will have an "Ah ha!" moment before the end of the story taking it along this path, but I like to give my reactions as I read. If not, well, you could work it into a future chapter, or just say that A.K. Yearling missed it due to the unusual nature of the event (Moondog generally helps out people she HASN'T spoken to much before, because her "beat" covers such a large number of individuals), and Moondog missed it because she is still inexperienced.
-Perhaps she will get that as a lead from one of them at the end of things? Also it was at this point that it occured to me to wonder if the bit where Daring goes "Mom?" and her mind does a backflip implied that she didn't know enough about Moondog prior to this to know that Luna created her. Looking back a bit we have:
-Which implies that Moondog ISN'T well enough known that Daring Doo can assume her audience already knows of its existence. Still, since it IS real, Daring Doo might not have to have MET it, merely introduced it by, say, having two characters discuss it, or having Daring Doo bored waiting to talk to a professor or medical doctor, or stuck on a long train ride, and reading about Moondog.
-And here we have reason for the ending to work out the way I hypothesized, if only in a Moondog-provided dream.
-Always good to have a character use inhuman aspects to remind the reader. I mean the dream-shaping is nice, but somehow this feels... more. Maybe because it is a trait Moondog shares with the corporeal Luna, and thus underlines "demi-god" and "Pony" more-so than "we are in a dream". Of course, I don't think Luna has ever used her mane in such a highly dexterous way once she was cured of being NMM, but Ponies do stuff like that anyway, so one should probably default to the assumption that she could if she wished.
-The first episode of FiM has Celestia telling Twilight to "make some friends" rather than focus on saving the world. Admittedly this was because focusing on it to much would be counterproductive to actual success, but the thematic element is present. In addition, the last time we knew, Luna was struggling with her creation NOT having a problem with being assigned certain duties. "Offscreen inertia"* would then have her still feeling that way. So "don't play with your new friend too long, you still have work to do" seems a bit off. I mean, it is logical, if only because "don't bug the celebrity, because I know I am having to resist that temptation", and the fact that she may have scheduled herself such that she is actually relying on Moondog to do part of the work, but still... maybe include something about "If Daring Doo doesn't mind, you can, of course, drop in on her on a slow night." with the implication that this ISN'T an especially slow night.
*Caution: Browse TVTropes responsibly. Loss of time may result due to chain-reading of linked pages.
-Since what I said about Moondog being "real life person with a JOB that puts her in place to do this" rather than "random event" crosses over their two specialties... you could definitely work that realization into a sequel if it strikes you strongly enough, because you now have foreshadowing. Note that I'm not saying that you should, just that if my idea puts a burr under your saddle to "fix" the "problem" I pointed out or if it otherwise seems a good thing to include, you could.
-As for the ending, it seems like Moondog is "Giving the customer what they want.". Which means it isn't fan-beinging on her.
-General comment: This is the most fluid used of "writing about the process of writing" I have seen. You recognized a valuable resource for that in A.K. Yearling. Insightful.
9667902
However, I believe a typewriter made an improper warhammer.
Stuff getting lost in the bureaucracy would explain how Caballeron continues to operate unimpeded...
This was a great chapter and Daring is probably right in suspecting that her eraders would not accpet her being rescued by Moondog. Darings should also try to do something about her letters being lost in the bureaucracy, I bet Twilight wuld be more than willing to help in a bureaucratic reorganization.
Yessss
Secret Agent Daring Do!
Nkrt jfrga cacyhht uyr'i pxyg ivfrma fr gpxyja? Bvyi zfrg kq vkppfdhx rfmvijypxa jcai Ibfhfmvi Anypzhx vyox?
Hilarious.
How will she react to the Pillars?
Gotta love the ending of the chapter.
9671374
Rki rfmvijypxa, dci pxhyixg: qfjqfuifkr.rxi/aikpt/29373
Exciting first part. The rest was quite amusing.
Where to start when decrypting that code?
9765063
Right here.
9765221
oh thank you that would have drove me batty
Pretty please, make sure they are not a thing that exist in this version of Equestria. With a cherry on top. They are awful.
The good thing about dreams is that characters can be nonsensical and use physical violence as comedy without pain or consequences XD
Lyel this is why Writers need editors
Best line so far.
Wrong universe.
Unless you mean to imply that Fallout: Equestria is a fictional story within Equestria. Then maybe it could work. But I'm not sure Daring would be into that sort of thing.
9682219
Translation for anyone curious
I'd have gone with a rival cultist try to assassinate Eschaton just before he cast the spell instead of trying to work Moondog in somewhere. "If you've written yourself into a corner, have a man brandishing a gun kick the door down."
Final Destination?
Would be kinda nice if Daring apologised for antagonizing Moondog for SAVING her LIFE. Everything else is fine, and I don't care that Doggy didn't feel a thing. Daring basically said "it's your fault that I have problems writing, after you saved my very life". Kinda piss poor broken priorities here.
Best Tulpa Ever