A Do-Over

by Pip232

2: Nightmare Moon’s plight

In the depths of Luna’s mind, beneath her conscious thoughts, an ancient evil dwelled. This evil was known by many names: The Dark One, The Demon in the Dark, The Devil from the Moon, but the most well-known of these names was Nightmare Moon. She had always liked that one, the name had a certain elegance to it.

Her situation however was far from elegant. She was stuck within Luna and having to survive on whatever scraps of her magic she dared take. They had to be small enough that Luna wouldn’t notice, but just large enough to help her gradually rebuild her power. She thought it should be beneath her, scrounging for scraps like a rat. Of course, there was no real death when she didn’t have a body, but she needed that magic to help hold herself together. If she grew too weak, her own consciousness would be dismantled and reabsorbed by Luna’s mind.

She could see and hear everything Luna did and found herself bored during the day, but got very excited during the night. She was excited about the dreams Luna had been visiting, or more specifically the nightmares. Nightmare Moon would follow Luna into their dreams, staying out of sight. While Luna dispelled nightmares, she instead gained power from being in them. She could draw power from the monsters and horrors dwelling there and make herself stronger, but once more she had to be careful.

If Luna noticed even one time she would learn Nightmare Moon still existed, she'd undoubtedly find a way to undo all her work and leave her right back at square one. If she didn’t destroy her outright. So with the care of a mare walking on eggshells, she nibbled on the nightmares, taking very small amounts of power from them.

The slow pace with which she was rebuilding her strength may have been maddening to many ponies, but not her. She had infinite patience from being on the moon and while her patience would let her do this forever, her situation did not. Sooner or later she was bound to make a mistake and get caught.

But her strategy did have its rewards. Her nibbles had added up, and Nightmare Moon had absorbed almost enough power to get out of Luna’s head, but at the moment that wasn’t her biggest issue. There was also the issue that if she got out she had nowhere to go, and she didn’t want to find out what would happen if she was outside a body too long. Ideally, she would just escape, enter another pony and then be free to feed all she liked until she could make her triumphant return. But this had its own difficulties.

There’d be no way to escape without Luna’s notice, and doing that would take a vast amount of her strength. Also, should she enter another pony they’d likewise notice her entrance, and should they be examined close enough she could be discovered. She shuddered to think of what would happen if that situation arose, and if it did, she’d be too weak to flee again if she couldn’t feed first.

Nightmare Moon immediately knew her future host would have to meet some criteria. They needed to be willing to host her first and foremost or her plan was ruined from the start. Second, they needed to not have other ponies around them often to minimize the risk of detection.

She internally groaned at her checklist and the knowledge she was only going to get one shot at this. So she did what she did best, and continued to wait for the opportunity to present itself.

Author's Note:

While this chapter is indeed short, others won’t be. Feel free to give constructive criticism please

Comments

[tsaukpaetra]

Interesting, so Nightmare is her own full consciousness. Wonder how she arrived that way...

[wesmess]

Let me guess. Nightmare Scootaloo?