Virus Alert: Detection
Space only existed in dreams as much as you let it. It was like ideas: no matter how distant one idea was from the other, you could jump between them more easily than walking across a room. Of course, with the vast majority of sapients existing in space, the collective unconscious was technically space, since that was what they thought of when they thought of a place. But it could be molded if you knew how. And, hooboy, did Moondog know.
The place might’ve been space, but that didn’t mean that space was constant. It was shaped by thoughts; think the right thoughts and the entire country could’ve been within reach. Ponies assumed that Mom had been able to reach most of the country because she was Just That Good. Which, okay, was absolutely true, but the nature of what That Good meant was wrong. Mom wasn’t able to get to so many ponies’ nightmares because she was so fast within them (or not just because of that); she knew dream magic well enough that she could literally line up all the dreams in Equestria from Worst Nightmares to Sweetest Fluff and go down them like a checklist. It was a complicated spell, like playing a brand-new symphony completely alone and blindfolded. It was a demanding spell, reaching across Equestria’s entire dreamscape and sorting the doors based on vague impressions. Most ponies couldn’t live long enough to fully learn it.
Moondog, of course, had mastered it before she’d been self-aware. After Mom had decided to try the abdication thing out, Moondog had gone a step further and turned the spell into reflex.
And so, she exited her latest dream whistling a light and bouncy tune. She had just over the worst six percent of dreams taken care of. Which didn’t sound like much unless you knew that less than three percent of dreams were actual nightmares in need of attention. Now, not only was she knee-deep in mere bad dreams, but those bad dreams were closer to one-off mental misfirings than any actual problems. If she wanted to, she could make a case for just bugging off for the rest of the night. But there wasn’t much night left, and she didn’t want to, anyway.
Moondog idly flicked a probe spell at the next dream on her route to get an impression of it. Even a second to prepare could work wonders. Not that there was much to take care of in this case: just the usual dream of falling. She reached out a hoof for the knob-
The door winked out of existence as the dreamer woke up.
well.booger();
Moondog put her hoof down and huffed to herself. “It’s not that important,” she muttered. “Just a dream of falling. Happens all the time. You can’t help everyone all the time.”
Her thoughts didn’t sound any more convincing when she voiced them aloud. Sure, it was just a dream of falling, nothing too severe, but that didn’t make it any less scary for the pony dreaming it. The more she fell into the trap of “not a big deal”, the bigger the deal would have to be to be a big deal. And, well, it just bugged her. There were ponies she couldn’t help because she couldn’t be ev-
“What are you thinking, Your Highness? You’ve got a minion! She can take care of ponies who slip through the cracks. What’s the point in having a minion if you never foist anything off on them?” She whistled up a quill and parchment.
mailbox.connect(); Working..... Success! message.compose(); >> Dear minion...
Moondog snorted. “Nah, not this time.”
>> Dear Astral...
Princess Twilight had been a scientist, once. (Probably still was, but now it took a back seat to ruling a country and all.) As such, she had experience with scientist stuff, and knew exactly what scientists wanted. Astral was delighted when she entered the lab one day and found, along with a message of thanks-for-helping-Moondog from Twilight, that the room now held an absolutely indispensable bit of machinery, one that would improve her productivity tenfold while simultaneously boosting her morale, the latest and most cutting-edge of science supplies: an automatic drip coffee maker, complete with paper cups.
But the design was slightly different than Astral was used to, and she found herself doing a lot of button-punching (she’d degenerated from mere button-pressing) in an attempt to convince the machine to divulge its caffeinated goodness. She got nothing, not even the rainbow sparks that would tell her she was overloading its arcane circuits. (Perhaps this model had been fortified and purpose-built to withstand abuse from frustrated scientists. Or frustrated earth ponies. Or frustrated scientist earth ponies, which would make it nigh indestructible.) But then, that was machinery for you. Operate it the wrong way and you’d get bad results. Or no results.
Sighing, Astral took a closer look at the machine. It was quite new, with all sorts of buttons and dials and indicator lights and settings for specialty brews and not a single option for Plain Old Coffee, sun blast it. If she couldn’t get it working, she’d have to go down to the kitchens and ask for some, probably get a confused answer because they didn’t keep coffee there, be reduced to boiling water on a stovetop and mixing in the grounds without straining, and choking the resulting mixture down in order to get some caffeine.
But at the very least, she could be sure she’d exhausted every option before doing that.
“Two cups of water,” she muttered as she gazed at the buttons, “two cups two cups two cups…” No button for a specific number of cups. Maybe that just happened naturally as the water boiled. It wasn’t like that was a complicated system. The reservoir had a measurement meter, so she filled that up to two. (Two whats, the meter didn’t say. It was probably cups.) Next dial. “Rich, Strong, Bold… What’s the difference? Where’s Regular?” She settled on “strong”. Next button…
And so it went, Astral picking her way across the confusing array of coffee machine settings — seriously, all the thing needed to do was make coffee. Eventually, she punched the “Brew” button and settled in to wait.
A bell rang softly; the quill for the ethermail system picked itself up in a starry glow and started jotting down words on a piece of parchment. Without much else to do, Astral turned to watch it. Moondog’s penmareship was strange, with a bit too much consistency between letters, but you got used to it.
After not very long, the quill laid itself back down and a gash appeared in the parchment to cut the used portion from the rest. Only two lines had been written, but when things were automatic, sometimes you had to do a lot for a little. Astral snatched up the parchment to see what her princess had to say.
Astral,
When you’ve got the time, step into the dream realm for a sec. I’d like to talk to you about something.
Moondog
Talk about what, the note didn’t say or even hint. Moondog liked to be dramatic. Astral crumpled the note up and tossed it in the trash can. She glanced at the clock. Not even nine yet. No, she did not have time, she was busy waiting for her coffee to finish. And then she’d have to wait for the caffeine to wear off, and then she could take her government-sanctioned nap.
The coffee was already dripping into the carafe. Astral sniffed it. It smelled sufficiently coffee-ish, but she’d have to wait to actually taste it to deem it worthy or not.
For Mom, day had been a time of rest after a busy night’s work because it meant she could sleep (usually — Equestria somehow never got fully around to having important events happen during her waking hours). For Moondog, day was a time of rest after a busy night’s work because it meant she could either breeze through third-shifters’ nightmares easily and spend the rest of the time frolicking in oneiric fluff or get really personalized with her nightmare-squashing.
That day, Moondog had decided to get personal. A stallion was concerned about his late nights working fraying his ties with his family (based on his family’s dreams, nothing of the sort was happening), resulting in a nightmare of him living in a massive mansion with no other signs of life, equine or otherwise. Moondog skipped across rooms when his consciousness wasn’t looking, tweaking small details to be less sterile. A photograph here, a picture on the fridge there, a familiar coat hanging on the pegs there (the same familiar coat as on the last seven sets of pegs, to be precise, but the dreamer wouldn’t notice that). No one thing was much on its own, but it wasn’t long before the stallion’s mind concluded that his family was just out for the day, as was the wont of non-third-shifters, rather than gone. Feelings cascaded from there and Moondog’s work was done. Sometimes, you really needed to know someone before you could help them.
notify(self.getSpellMessages(), sm); readSpellMessage(sm);
I’m ready when you are, Your Nibs. — Astral
self.setLocation(astral.getLocation());
Balancing on Astral’s head, Moondog craned her neck to look her charge in the upside-down eye, only for her charge to immediately ask, “Why do you always sign your messages? I already know it’s you, you’re the only one I get ethermail from.”
“Trying to make it a habit for when I’m writing to more than just you,” said Moondog. “Eventually. No signature makes it a bit too-” She made a clicking sound. “-impersonal.”
Astral just shrugged. “So what do you want from me, Highness?”
Moondog flowed from Astral’s head to the ground in front of her. “What do you think about directly helping me in dream duties?” Astral blinked, but before she could say anything, Moondog continued, “In low-key bad dreams, not nightmares. Just the sorts of people who slip through the cracks and technically aren’t that important but could still use the help.”
“Help you with the dream patrol,” said Astral. “You. Someone who was built to be great at the dream patrol.”
“Technically, built to be great at being the second-in-command of the dream patrol. Then my creator bugged out, leaving me not only on my own, but also fully in command. And I’m still great at it!” Moondog posed and smiled winningly as trumpets blared. “But I’m not perfect-” (The trumpet notes petered out limply.) “-so some scraps fall through.”
“But… dream patrol.”
“Only if you want to, this isn’t a requirement or anything. And there’s no time limit for saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’.”
“Good, because…” Astral ran a hoof through her mane and the dream pulsed as she thought. “Whoof, that’s a big responsibility. I’m… surprised you even trust me that much with my past.”
“Of course I do! You saw Equestria’s usual track record with megalomaniacs, decided taking over the world was more trouble than it’s worth, and turned yourself in for free room and board. Not many ponies are that cultured in the ways of global domination. In fact, between you and me…” Moondog put a hoof to her mouth, and whispered, “I trust you more than a random pony off the street. I know you better than them.”
“Still…” Astral took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. “I’ll… I’ll think about it. It’s…”
“Yeah, I know. Seriously, take your time. I’m in no hurry.”
“Right. I’ll get back to you on that. At some point.” Astral raised a hoof to punch herself in the face to wake up, but put it back down. “Do me a favor and tell Twilight thanks for the coffee maker, will you? It was… well, it was free coffee, once I got it working. Good coffee, too.”
“Will do. Oh, and when you’re making it, don’t keep the coffee on too long. It won’t boil, but it’ll still burn the dissolved coffee and make it taste awful.”
“Thanks, I’ll-” Astral blinked and turned to look at Moondog. “You’ve never drunk coffee, right? How do you know that?”
Moondog raised an eyebrow at Astral.
“…Ponies have nightmares about that?”
“Some ponies make weird connections in dreams, some ponies just abhor bad coffee.”
“Ponies are weird.”
“It’s taken you this long to realize it?”
Astral snorted and-
--Error; NullPointerException e
--Error; the dream could not be read. Rebooting...-Moondog was pitched back into the collective unconscious as Astral woke herself up. Moondog blinked and moved her limbs back into their usual places. “Note to self,” she muttered. “Let Astral know to not wake up when I’m still in her dream.” She rolled her wings up and let them fan out. “Getting forced between planes of reality kinda hurts.”
Only kinda, though.
Late that night, Astral lay in bed, unsure of whether she wanted to sleep or not, stricken with midnight drama.
Dream patrol. Dream patrol. Her. Really? Apparently so. Moondog had never been one for sane decisions. Moondog had never been one for wrong decisions, either. Because her reasoning made sense: Astral had indeed held power over the dream realm, taken one look at who was protecting it, and just given up before an alicorn’s wrath came thundering down on her. Only an idiot would try that again.
And she was one of the best suited ponies for it. Maybe that wasn’t a high bar to clear, but still. If Moondog really needed help, there weren’t many other ponies she could go to. She could train somepony, but Astral was right there, ready to go. Why waste time training someone to be talented in oneiromancy when there was someone already trained with it already working for you?
And-
Sun blast it, why was she arguing for taking on this responsibility?
Astral sighed. This was the sort of thing you were supposed to sleep on, but sleeping on it was the problem. Moondog probably wouldn’t pop into her dreams to badger her about it the second she was in slumberland, but… Well. Moondog. Still, since she was the one of the pair who wasn’t a tireless automaton, Astral would, eventually, need to get some sleep in, so she might as well get it over with.
She let sleep claim her and she slipped into a dream of a Canterlot rainforest. She clenched her teeth, waiting for a certain someone to pop out of the aether and-
…that someone didn’t pop out.
Astral waited. Nothing.
…Still nothing.
Huh. Maybe Moondog was learning some pa- Astral immediately knew she was tempting fate and tucked her head down. Nothing persisted.
…Nothing was wrong with Moondog, right? Astral tentatively sent out her spell-
A puddle of mud gathered itself up and coalesced into Moondog. “Hey!” she said. She wiped some mud from her crown and licked it from her hoof. “Need anything?”
Moondog was learning. “Not really,” said Astral vaguely. “I was just- thinking about… what you said-”
“It’s your decision, I’m not gonna push you.”
Astral wasn’t sure Moondog could read minds, but she wasn’t sure she couldn’t, either. But the thought gave Astral a brainwave: “And I was- wondering if I had permission to go into other ponies’ dreams and, y’know, see what it was like. I’ve never actually done it like that before.”
“Yeah, cult leaders aren’t exactly known for having flexible minds, are they?” (A snort escaped Astral and ran for the hills.) “Sure, that’s fine. Want to tag along with me? Or for me to hover around you like an overprotective mother? Or for you to just go it alone?”
“I-” Astral scratched her head. “I guess the last one, if you trust me that much.”
“Dreams are hardier than you think, if you’re not deliberately making them nightmares. Which you won’t.” Moondog smiled fangily and Astral couldn’t suppress a twitch. “Right?”
“Nope! No nightmares. Noooooo nightmares.”
And suddenly Moondog’s teeth were flat again. “Of course! Never doubted you for a second. Just be careful and don’t break things that aren’t supposed to be broken. If the dreamer wants it broken, break it however you want. And, actually-”
The ground beneath Astral suddenly liquefied and she plummeted down. When she managed to blink her way back into coherence, she was standing in the starry void of the collective unconscious in front of a row of doors. Moondog was lounging on the frame of the door right in front of her. Without missing a beat, Moondog gestured up and down the row and continued, “-these are some of the happiest, fluffiest dreams in Equestria. Break something and it’ll probably fix itself before the dreamer’s aware of it.”
Once she reorientated herself, Astral put a hoof on the door right in front of her. Immediately, good vibes washed over her like water in a shower. If that wasn’t a good dream, she wasn’t sure what was. “Thanks.”
“Sure thing. Just give me a whistle if you run into anything.” Moondog reached into the starscape, pulled a star open like it was a hole in an elastic sheet, and wiggled her way through and away. Astral rolled her eyes and pushed open the door.
Honestly, there wasn’t a whole lot different from other ponies’ dreams compared to her own, Astral found. What they liked and disliked varied from pony to pony — there were a few “good” dreams that Astral immediately noped right out of — but when it came to actually working with them, she didn’t need to exert herself nearly as much as she thought. A dream was a dream, it seemed, it seemed.
But while it was all easy, it never felt right. For no reason Astral could put her hoof on, she struggled to muster up any sort of enthusiasm for it. Good dreams were… bleh. Uninteresting. Good for the dreamer. Bad for her. But she wasn’t going to be working with good dreams, was she? She was going to be working with bad ones, which would be harder to sculpt. Those, infested with nocnice and churning with the dreamer’s turmoil, might actually hold some challenge. (In other words, Astral was throwing another work-avoiding excuse down the toilet.)
Astral slammed the door to her latest dream and brushed some bubbles out of her mane. She could probably bow out now and get to bad dreams tomorrow night, but she was already in the depth of things, and there was no point in delaying it. She reached out with her magic-
The dreamworld flexed.
Astral had never felt anything like it, even working with Moondog. When Moondog manipulated dreams, it felt… proper. Like that was the way it was supposed to go. Smooth as a river. This was… Nothing was breaking, but Astral felt like she ought to hear some metal groaning or wood creaking at the very least.
But just as soon as it started, it was gone. Although it had left something behind; Astral could feel it in the fabric of dreamspace. It was near, relatively speaking. Holding her breath, operating on what she knew, and praying she wasn’t making a fool of herself, she slowly rotated in place, trying to look for she didn’t know what in a space that technically didn’t exist. Such a good idea.
Apparently so, because Astral spotted something in just a few seconds. It was a ways away (whatever that meant in here) and didn’t seem to have noticed her. Although it was small, it wasn’t like any oneiric monster Astral knew of; at least, not the ones that sometimes tried to intrude on her little bubble of consciousness. Or any that had been described to her, for that matter. It was too defined, clearly an actual (if somewhat vague) shape rather than an idea of a monster. In fact, it…
It looked like Moondog.
Loosely. It was a silhouette, with no unique features of any kind, not even a face. Its edges seemed to ripple like wind-tossed smoke. It was a unicorn. But it was Moondog. Or- some other version of her. It had the same hole-in-space appearance.
Then Astral knew the thing couldn’t be Moondog, because it didn’t move right. When it walked a few steps to a door, its steps didn’t seem to have any relation to its forward motion, like it was being badly puppeteered. The second it reached the door, it dissolved and slipped through the cracks.
It was probably best to contact Moondog, Astral knew. Get the person created specifically to vanquish nightmare beasts to come and vanquish the nightmare beast. But… it might be a good idea to see how she would fare against an actual monster, right? Hay, maybe she’d like it. And if she got in trouble, she could either call on Moondog or wake herself up.
And so, after a second to psych herself up, Astral followed the whatever through the door.
At first, the dream didn’t feel any different from the ones she’d already stepped into. Giant dandelions were scattered across rolling hills, with the horizon impossibly far away. The dandelions were seeding and a pony that Astral assumed was the dreamer was hanging from one of those airborne seeds, swinging back and forth without a care in the world. Astral quickly spun around, looking for-
There it was. The silhouette was sitting out of the way, observing the dreamer. Maybe. Whatever it was thinking, if anything, it was hard to tell. If it had noticed Astral — or cared — it gave no indication.
Astral frowned. If there was one thing that united most nightmare monsters, it was… Well, really it was that any shape they had was forced on them through the collective impressions of the minds of physical sophonts. But if there was another thing, it was that they were impulsive. They didn’t wait. They didn’t watch. They immediately changed what they could, gobbled up any bad feelings ASAP, and were on to the next dream. So what was up with this thing?
Astral waited. So did the silhouette. With every second that passed, Astral found herself getting more unnerved. Why wasn’t it moving? What was it doing? If anything? Did she risk trying to get its attention? What even was it? She glanced up at the dreamer. Maybe it would be better if-
The silhouette collapsed into a shapeless mass. One tendril flicked across the ground; immediately, the grass stiffened and became metallic. Another brushed the blue of the sky away to reveal gray rain clouds. Thunder rolled and the rain came pouring down as the silhouette reformed to watch.
Almost immediately, the dreamer began slipping from the seed. The entire dream rocked psychologically with the dreamer’s emotional shift from carefree to terrified and she wrapped her legs tightly around the slick stalk. She started to slip. Almost reflexively, Astral reached out with her mind to brush the clouds away-
-and stopped. The silhouette was still there, still watching, still unknown. It had changed the dream easily; what else could it do? It would notice if Astral tweaked anything. …Right? How much was it aware of? If anyth-
Astral heard a scream and her head snapped up. The dreamer had slipped off the seed and was plummeting towards the ground, legs flailing. Astral’s mind began racing. What would be the best way to save her? What would be the best way to avoid attracting the attention of the silhouette? Give her wings? Tweak its lucidity? Soften the ground? Make the changes small? Or-
In the half-idea before the dreamer hit the ground, Astral panicked and shoved herself out of the dream. She didn’t know what it was like to be in somepony else’s dream when they woke up and she wasn’t about to find out. Indeed, the door to the dream winked out of existence pretty much the second she saw it.
But the silhouette remained behind. It didn’t seem damaged at all. Its movements hadn’t changed in the slightest. And it still paid no attention to Astral as it moved to the next dream.
Astral clenched her teeth as she followed it. Whatever the thing was, she knew this: if she woke up, she was out of the dream realm. And she knew how to wake herself up. She’d do her best to save whatever dreamer came next. If the silhouette tried to attack her, a quick sword to the chest would do to wake her up.
Next dream: an orchard in a city, all the boughs hanging low with magnificent oranges. The dreamer was moseying on through, picking oranges at her leisure. (She didn’t actually seem to be putting them anywhere, just picking them and moving on.) The silhouette was there, watching the dreamer soundlessly. Astral immediately began running through possible ways the dream could be corrupted: rot, making the oranges hungry for equine flesh, earthquakes and fissures, drought-
The dreamer approached another tree; the silhouette immediately poked it with a pseudopod, and amid a hazy glow, the tree was twisted into some ugly monster. Knots contorted into eyes, roots ripped themselves from the ground, and the bark split into multiple fanged maws. The dreamer screamed and tried to run, but one of the roots whiplashed around her, holding her tight, and dragged her towards one of the tree’s mouths.
Still the silhouette didn’t do anything more than observe. Astral, however, knew just what to do. A quick twist of the dream, and suddenly the dreamer was dismembering the tree with a chainsaw. First the root that had captured her, then the other roots, then the trunk… Chips and sap flew, and what had once been a nightmare rapidly ceased to be.
That finally got the silhouette’s attention. It turned to face Astral, at least as much as could be done without a face. Some ponies might find it creepy, but Astral had seen far more bizarre things in dreams than a faceless pony and didn’t flinch as she looked back. Considering how little she knew about this thing, Astral figured it might be for the best to let it make the first move. Or that might be a terrible idea, but hey. She was learning.
The silhouette looked at Astral.
Astral looked at the silhouette.
Suddenly, the silhouette wobbled and something started dancing across Astral’s mind, trying to worm its way in. Astral instinctively flinched back and started mentally scrabbling for old lessons. Back when the Eschaton had still been a thing, he’d taught her some basic spells for mental protection. Even working for the Princess of Dreams hadn’t gotten Astral to dust off those skills, but she managed to pull them back into her memory and throw up what little defense she could.
That little defense proved to be enough. The magical probe skipped off Astral’s meager shields like they were steel walls. Astral found herself grinning. “Try harder,” she said.
The silhouette didn’t move. But its magic stabbed.
There were certain spells you could use in dreams to get a feel for a dreamer’s subconscious — the mind was more open in dreams, after all. But the only ones Astral knew and the only ones Moondog used were gentle, the sort of spells that would only get the most basic desires but wouldn’t disturb the dreamer at all.
This spell wasn’t like that.
Astral’s thoughts and memories spilled past her in a nauseating stream, over and over and over again. Knowledge and sensation congealed and bled, remelted and mixed. Astral felt her mind get picked apart with abandon, casually analyzed down to its depths by something that-
Her eyes shot open as she lay on her bed, panting, her coat drenched with cold sweat. Almost on instinct, she bit her tongue. Pain. Real life.
Immediately, she rolled out of her bed and stagger-fell to the bathroom, where she grabbed a towel and dried herself off. Funnily enough, this didn’t answer a thing. It told Astral what the silhouette wasn’t, but not what it was. No nightmare monster Astral knew of behaved like, nor did they have magic that… potent. Probably. But then what was it? Something new? The only one who went around creating new creatures for the dream realm was Luna and Moondog was a one-off thing. Somepony else couldn’t be creating something like Moondog, could they?
Whatever the case, Astral had a plan: get back to sleep and let Moondog know. And questions she might have would be better answered in dreams. If, for whatever reason, Astral couldn’t contact her, ethermail would have to do. If that didn’t work, well… She’d have to find out where Luna was living, because things would be heading downhill fast.
Astral just dropped the towel rather than hanging it back up. She pulled open a drawer and bumbled about inside for some sleeping potion. She downed a dose, returned slouching to her bed, and collapsed back to slumberland. She found herself in a misty city, buildings and lines dripping against each other. She gathered her magic, readying the spell to contact Moondog.
Her magic was disrupted as something suddenly tugged at her being-
“Hello.”
Astral twitched at the voice that sounded like it’d only just learned to speak. She spun around. The thing leaning against the flagpole wore Moondog’s shape, but it looked like her the same way a ventriloquist’s dummy looked like a pony: off in all the wrong ways. The stars in its body looked flat, its eyes weren’t glowing properly, its movements were stiff and rigid. It all made Astral’s skin crawl and the dream writhe.
“Astral Mind,” it said in a voice of pareidolic white noise that sent Astral’s eardrums buzzing. “Tell me, what do you hope to accomplish?” The intonation was off-putting and stilted and its mouth didn’t quite match what it was saying.
Astral took a breath to steel her nerves. In all likelihood, this was still that silhouette thing. “Honestly? I don’t know, I’m making it up as I go along.”
“Which explains your lack of ambition.”
The statement threw Astral so hard it took her a few seconds to reorient herself. She stared at not-Moondog. “…What?”
“Look at yourself.” The thing gestured at her. “You have the ear of royalty. You have skills in dream magic most ponies couldn’t even imagine. You are in a prime position to make a name for yourself that will echo down through the ages… and you waste it on nothing.”
Astral pulled her head up and took a step back. Memories of feeling worthless in prison, of being useless before the mailbox, came flooding back to her. The listlessness. The lack of self-confidence. The sheer… dullness of her life. She’d only done those at Moondog’s prodding, and now that Moondog wasn’t prodding her, was she already falling back into-
…Why was she thinking about that now? Just because this thing was talking about it? No. Astral set her jaw and forced her worries down and said, “So? What’s it to you?” A meal, probably.
The thing’s smile was shiny and hollow and crooked in some way Astral couldn’t place a hoof on. “I’m just curious, is all. Why you’re wasting your opportunities like this. Looking for excuses to avoid ambition.”
“I’m still thinking it through.” Astral still couldn’t stop herself from thinking about that, but at least now she was prepared. And it didn’t feel like her thoughts were being magically pulled in one direction or another.
“Well, you’d better think faster. I’m still waiting for an answer. Coward.”
The word briefly stung before Astral pushed it aside with a snort. Maybe that was true, but that also wasn’t important at the moment. The time for depressed self-reflection was later. “An answer for what?”
“You know. The question of your employment. Whether you’ll take on the role of second-in-command to me, or-”
“Wait, wait, hold on,” Astral said, holding up her hooves. The silhouette stopped talking but its expression didn’t budge, like it was amused by something. “Second-in-command to you? Seriously?”
The silhouette flexed its wings, as if it was proud of something. “Of course. Who else?”
“…Am I somehow supposed to think you’re Moondog?” Astral blinked a few times, then burst out laughing. “You- You’re trying to be Moondog? Sweet Celestia, that’s pathetic! You look more like her evil knockoff than her!”
The thing kept smiling. It was like it had forgotten how to change its expression.
“I mean… Heh, look at you.” Astral gestured at the silhouette. “I could draw Moondog better than you look like her, and it’s been ages since I’ve drawn anything. Oh, and she doesn’t put me down, but if she did, at least she would make it amusing. Not that… feigned friendly malarkey.”
Still with the smile, still with the lack of motion.
Inwardly, Astral frowned. That ought to have gotten some reaction out of it, if only a twitch. This was… literally nothing. Like there was nothing going on inside its head (or whatever). But she kept in mind the primary rule of onieroturgy — to never let them see you sweat — and hid it. “So, really,” she said, “who are you and what are you doing in ponies’ heads? At least I have an excuse.”
Immediately, the thing held its head high and spread its wings wide. Its coat darkened as stars winked out. “I am nothing you’ve seen before,” it rumbled, its teeth sharpening. “Nothing you can hope to imagine. Nothing you can stop. You can call me… the Nightmare Prophet.”
Part of Astral wanted to laugh in its face. She’d heard this sort of melodrama before. Been on the receiving end of it plenty of times. This was the sort of thing Moondog set up to make fun of. And… “Nightmare Prophet”? Please. Everything about this thing — this Prophet — was laughable.
Except when it wasn’t. Everything about it that wasn’t trying too hard was… awkward and uncanny. Its movements were rigid. Its voice was forced. Why was it speaking now and not earlier, for that matter? It soured dreams easily, but for no purpose Astral could see. And that spell it had used to look into her mind… That was nightmare-inducing on its own. Something like the Prophet should not be wandering freely around the dreamscape.
But, laughable or troubling, there was an easy fix. Taking a chance, Astral nodded and said, “Sure. I’ll make sure Moondog knows that.” She gathered her magic-
Again, the Prophet’s spell stabbed. Astral tried to brace, but it barely helped at all. Artificial emotions washed through her as her memories were twisted. She couldn’t manage the focus to muster the slightest bit of defense. One thought kept running through her mind, over and over and over: she was prey, she was prey, she was-
-awake in bed, thrashing and twisted in the sheets. As the spell bled away, Astral bit her tongue again. Pain. Real. That was something.
She was breathing heavily and her heart was pounding, but as she sat up, Astral noticed that she wasn’t sweating. She’d been ready, and simple awareness of what the Prophet could do had blunted some of its impact.
Some. Astral’s knees still knocked as she stood up.
But she had work to do and she couldn’t afford to wait. Even though she felt like she couldn’t get enough air, she pulled on a coat. Even though her heart strained, she fished in a basket for her keys to the lab. Maybe having something to do would distract her.
Indeed, by the time she walked out the door, her steps were steady.
The dream realm was a realm of vibes. Feelings stretched between people and across emotional connections, affecting everything they passed. The specifics changed from night to night, minute to minute, but there was an average “feel” to Equestria’s terra somnium. Barring world-shaking events of the sort that followed Twilight around, Moondog knew the dreamscape’s vibes.
So she didn’t need to do any active searching that night to know that Something was Up.
It was quiet and it was slow, but it was building. An unease percolating through the thoughts of Equestria. It was the sort of thing that normally happened after a tragedy, except that nopony was dreaming of a tragedy. And when Moondog started examining nightmares more thoroughly, formerly-fine dreams started shuffling towards the front of the line with new nightmares. More than could be accounted for with nocnice, too. Hmm.
It wasn’t anything Moondog couldn’t handle, but it was strange. If it kept up-
notify(ethermail.getMessages(), em); readSpellMessage(em);
your highness I need to talk to you in the lab asap --astral
The message’s hornwriting was off-kilter and scrawled, like it’d been done in a hurry. And what was Astral doing in the lab, of all places, sending ethermail? Well, that’d probably be answered once Moondog actually asked her about it.
Moondog slipped into physical Canterlot through the dream of an off-duty guard, then twisted space so she was standing in the lab. Astral was pacing back and forth, staring at the floor, breathing deeply.
Moondog cleared her lack of a throat. “Hey.”
Astral looked up. She had bags under her eyes, but she wasn’t twitchy and seemed alert. Immediately, she said quickly, “There’s something in the dreamscape that I don’t know what it is.”
“That could be a lot of things-” Moondog began.
“This was different,” Astral said, shaking her head. “It didn’t… feel right.”
Hmm. Feeling right was a pretty big part of dreams. Moondog frowned.
Astral kept talking and talking fast, dropping onto her rump to gesture. “I was swinging through dreams, just like you said, and then this… shape just came out of nowhere. And yes, it did have a shape, it wasn’t just nightmare ideation. It looked like… a unicorn, sort of… It was a hole in space, kinda like you, but it didn’t have a face or anything, it was more like a silhouette, and its outline was hazy-”
Wait… She couldn’t be talking about… Could she?
“Anyway, it went straight to one of the good dreams and just watched the dreamer for a while, it wasn’t like a nocnica or anything. Then it turned the dream into a nightmare, and- Okay, look, I didn’t do anything right then, I’m sorry, but I had no idea what was going on, so- It turned the dream into a nightmare and it still just watched, it didn’t do anything-”
Panic (dpu 0 caller 0x6d6e6467) -- Invalid memory“-and once the dreamer woke up, the thing just went to the next dream. I followed it and- And…” Astral blinked as her voice trailed off. “Hello? Your Nibs?” She waved a hoof before Moondog’s face. “Are you… still here? Or-”
E:\Equestria\Canterlot\Canterlot Castle\Dream Lab> Reboot-Self
Moondog coughed and shook her head. “Sorry. I was- thinking.”
Astral’s ears went back. “Of what?” she asked quietly.
“I’ll tell you-”
“Look, you were frozen, I think-”
“-when you’re done telling me,” said Moondog. “I want to be sure I’m right before I worry you.”
“Well, you’ve already failed, because I’m already worried.”
“Astral. Keep talking.”
Her tail quivering, Astral opened her mouth, paused, and said, “I followed the thing into the next dream. It turned that one into a nightmare, too, but I was able to turn it back no problem. But that got the thing’s attention, and it…” She shivered and her voice dropped. “It did this… really invasive spell,” she said, almost reluctantly. “On my mind. And it- I… woke up from the shock and I was sweating. I took some sleeping potion, but the thing was waiting for me. Except it looked like you, now.” She gestured up and down Moondog. “Wings, face, all that. It wasn’t right, I’d never mistake it for you, but it was trying to be you. It tried to put me down with a speech — I forgot to mention, it never said anything before — and it called itself the Nightmare Prophet. I tried to contact you, but it did that spell again and I woke up again, so this is the only way I could talk to you.”
Moondog nodded, turning the information over in her head. Just when she thought she’d gotten a handle on things, Astral had-
“So what was up with you just now?”
Moondog nearly made something up, then she nearly made an excuse. She’d been built to keep secrets, after all, and this was one of Mom’s personal issues, besides; stick those together, and Moondog couldn’t help feeling guilty. But Astral needed to know. Moondog flexed her wings. “Okay. So. You know where I came from. Sort of.”
“Just that Luna made you.”
“Good enough. But, see, the thing is… I’m not her first dream automaton.”
“Wait, so there’s another one of you running around?”
“No! No, nothing like that. Both in that it’s not running around anymore and that it wasn’t anything like me in the first place. For a while, Mom never got over the whole Nightmare Moon thing, so she made this… punishment. She made sure that every night, she’d have a nightmare of turning back into Nightmare Moon so she’d never forget what she’d done and wouldn’t just move on.”
“…That’s stupid.”
“And if you say that to Mom’s face now, she’ll agree with you one hundred percent. But when a guilt complex and dream magic love each other very much…” She was stalling. “The thing is, the thing that enacted this punishment was a dream automaton. Like me. It was called the Tantabus.”
Astral’s brow furrowed. “Tanta… bus… Wait, that’s what the Eschaton called you.”
Moondog nodded. “Mom built me from its design, so technically speaking, I’m the Tantabus, Mark II. What you saw, I think that was the original. The Mark I. Now-” She held up a hoof, forestalling Astral’s question (her mouth was already open). “-that’s a problem, because Mom got rid of the first one. It doesn’t exist anymore. Or at least it shouldn’t.”
“But…” Astral pawed at the floor. “If it’s a machine, could somepony else have made one?”
“Twilight Sparkle herself could barely understand it.”
“That’s a ‘no’, then.”
“Although when Mom was using the first one, it kinda tried to enter the real world and turn everything into a living nightmare when it got out of control. Nearly managed it, too, Mom had to enlist Twilight and her friends to stop it, as per usual.”
“Could it have done that? If it was only dream magic…”
“Honestly?” Moondog shrugged. “I don’t know. The Tantabus was almost able to breach the dream realm on its own, but I could only come out here after Discord did some stuff to me. Either way, I don’t want to figure out if this one can do the same. We’ll need to hunt it down, corral it, and… I don’t know. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. But first, we need to find it.”
“…I’m gonna need to be bait, aren’t I?” Astral said flatly.
“If you don’t mind,” Moondog said, grinning nervously. “We kinda do need to find the Tantabus first and it already came after you…”
Astral snorted. “Ain’t like it’s hurt me yet, at least,” she muttered. “Let’s start a streak going. Just get into my head quickly, alright? It was there practically the second I was asleep.”
The lab still had the mattress and a stock of sleeping potion. Astral gulped a bottle down and collapsed onto the bed.
E:\Equestria\Canterlot\Canterlot Castle\Dream Lab> DreamJump.spll -EntryDreamer "Astral Mind.pny" Locating dream.. Success! Engaging worldshift.... run();
Astral’s dream had Canterlot overgrown with iridescent purple trees. Perfectly normal. Moondog was perched on a rooftop while Astral was lounging in a café at street level. Moondog quickly began scanning the dream, looking for-
She couldn’t have missed it. Dreamspace opened up and something that could’ve only been the Tantabus slipped out. Not exactly smoothly; its manipulation of dreams was a bit crude. Odd. If you were making a dreamhopper, you’d want its dreamhopping to be top-notch. It looked something like her; maybe it was discarding the details of that shape now that Astral knew.
“Your spell didn’t work,” the Tantabus said. Its voice was metallic, a bit indistinct. The sort of voice you used if you knew what a voice sounded like but didn’t know how to make it. “You’re here alone. Are you ready to face your fate?”
Astral looked ready to respond, but Moondog was already flowing down to street level. Might as well get this over with. First, rattle it to reduce its morale and its power. “Hi there!” Moondog said. “You’re interfering with my job.”
The Tantabus turned around to face Moondog. It didn’t say anything, just looked at her. Astral hadn’t mentioned just how blank its eyes were.
Quietly, Moondog began reinforcing the ideas behind Astral’s dream, making them more resistant to outside interference. It was the only way to keep something like the Tantabus restrained. Below the surface, she felt Astral notice what she was doing and join in. She kept her eyes on the Tantabus. “Listen,” she said, “I don’t know what you think-”
--Error; OutsideInterferenceException e mndg.getMemo abort(); --Error; OutsideInterferenceException e mndg.getMemori abort(); memories.clos --Error; OutsideInterferenceException e mndg.getMemories(); abort(); memories.close();
The spell slammed into Moondog like a bad trip, ripping her thoughts open and rifling through her memories like they were papers in a filing cabinet. She attempted to put up a shield, the sort of shield that had easily fended off everything before, but the Tantabus bulled through that with ease. By the time she was able to force it out, the Tantabus had been able to read… a lot. Moondog was left reeling, her senses bleeding into each other, the dream equivalent of being on your knees and panting after running a marathon.
self.reco --Error; OutsideInterferenceException e abort(); self.recohe --Error; OutsideInterferenceException e abort();
But as she tried to pull herself together, another spell wormed its way down her being and disrupted her efforts. She fought back against it, pushing with all her will, but her progress was painfully slow. The Tantabus had next to no finesse, but it had power to spare.
“Moondog,” the Tantabus said softly. Its features slowly dissolved as it morphed back into the foggy silhouette that had nearly broken free of the dream realm. “Princess only because you were the only one to fill the void. One who has coasted by on skills literally impr-”
Astral broke a chair over the Tantabus’s head.
The Tantabus didn’t flinch. It idly turned around towards Astral, who was already hefting a table to throw, staring it down fearlessly. “What did you think would happen?” the Tantabus asked. “Don’t you know what I am?”
Astral pulled the table further back for the windup.
The Tantabus’s voice grew deeper and more resonant. “I am the Night Terror, the punishment for all your hubris.” Around them, the city’s buildings decayed and the trees twisted into rotten loops. “The two of you think the Dream Realm is yours.” Cracks spread across the ground, cracks pulsing with a sickly blue glow. “I am here to correct that error.”
The table dropped slightly as Astral frowned and her grip on it wavered. “Wait-”
self.recohere();
tantabus.dele
--Error; OutsideInterferenceException e
abort();Astral’s attack with the chair hadn’t actually done anything to the Tantabus. Naturally. Physicality barely meant anything in dreams. It had, however, distracted it. And focus meant everything.
The moment the Tantabus’s attention had wavered, Moondog could get her head on straight and stop the world reeling. Then she simply pulled together her magic and yanked a chunk of energy straight from the Tantabus. No clever tricks, no grace, just grabbing, ripping, and tearing. Anything to reduce its energy reserve.
The Tantabus didn’t scream or rage or make grandiose declarations. The second Moondog had pulled its energy away, it fled, vanishing from the dream entirely. The changes it was enacting reversed themselves. All pressure on Moondog vanished. And she was left with a hunk of energy and no captured Tantabus.
Astral was still talking. “-last time, you…” She flinched back at the Tantabus’s sudden disappearance, even looking around out of reflex. “Um. We didn’t get it, did we?”
“Unfortunately, no.”
store(tntbsEng); createDreamPortal(); portal.open();
Moondog pulled open a hole in space back to the collective unconscious. “I took away some of its energy, so it won’t be as strong, but it’s still dangerous. We’ve got to catch it before it does any more damage.”
Flicking her tail, Astral looked at the portal. “Soooo… Monster running loose. Fate of Equestria at stake. Up to us.” She glanced at Moondog. “This is what Twilight feels like, isn’t it?”
“Probably.”
“Swell.”
They plunged in.
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Excellent beginning to a new arc in the story.
"Let me guess, we're about to go over a huge waterfall"
"Yup"
"Sharp rocks at the bottom?"
"Most likely"
"... bring it on"
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and given strange aeons even death may die.
Oh boy, stakes.
WELL then. That's, unsettling. The Tantabus Mark I, which, by all accounts should not exist anymore, exists again and appears to be sapient and have a sense of individuality, and is evi. That's bad.
11612867
I got that reference!
media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lusj4u1CEU1qli79d.gif
. . . i hate you for doing the not actual end open end cliff hanger thing <.<
May your pillows forever be clumpy and warm no matter how much you turn them!
Hey, Moondog's the one who wished not to be left out of the next world-shaking crisis...
Now all we need is a debugger. Attach process, halt all threads, edit main thread, disable event loop. An inferior version should not be more clever.
Problem is, it just gained a lot of data...
....I'm thinking after this adventure, they are majorly going to have a talk with Twilight, just to relate to her on how rough it is to stop threats like this. XD
11612960
Right place, wrong movie.
Nobody has made the obvious comment on the title. I am here to correct that error. Weird Al is eternal.
So...this is a puppet creation, right? The way Astral talked about it, and the way the code works seems to say to me that this is a construct. Something someone managed to experiment with and find a way to make work. Still, there's a real sense of dread in this chapter. something that wasn't really there for a lot of moondog's stuff. It's something new, and I like that.
Yay, I have something to listen to at work tomorrow.
For a second, I thought the evil Tantabus was gonna be Moondog putting on a show to try and train Astral. If the original is back for real...that's definitely not good.
Oh
.
Really hoping that this is one of those multi-chapter adventures where the subsequent chapter drops next week.
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11613177
Given the directly prior chapter and its lack of real resolution, this is possibly Trixie's fault.
This is an interesting development. I wonder how the original Tantabus coud have survived.
I don't follow the fandom all that much anymore, but every time a new chapter of this pops up, I get a big smile and I know I'm in for a fun read.
Really looking forward to seeing where this goes.
Hey Luna, someone almost killed Moondog.
"They shall feel my wrath!"
This chapter was creepier than the rest of the chapters in the story IMO. For some reason, it reminded me of the MLP fangame, "Fluttershy's Bunny Rescue." The game has you control Fluttershy and have her explore the Everfree Forest in the middle of a rainy evening to rescue all of the bunnies that have escaped Fluttershy's Cottage. If you play the game past midnight, you'll run into a creepy easter egg where you'll encounter a creepy version of Fluttershy (nicknamed Slendershy) that has a darker color scheme, static-y apperance, and no face. The Tantabus in the story reminded of Slendershy from the Bunny Rescue fangame.
So not only are you making yourself look like a poorly made evil knockoff Moondog.
But you're also naming yourself like a poorly thought out evil knockoff version of Luna.......
Indeed
Are you the original? Have my silent pleadings been heard?
A virus, you say? Perhaps, a Trojan Horse?
I wonder if this has anything to do with the automaton that Trixie was trying for in the last chapter?
11614580
Eyyyyyyy
Casual/ hesitant heroism, one of my favorite tropes.
Oh, the original Tantabus? This is going to be very interesting. I wonder how it survived, exactly.
Also, it called itself the "Nightmare Prophet", and then the "Night Terror". Is it just going through different names/titles until it settles on one that it likes?