A Forgotten Trooper

by TheIronPone035

Chapter 34: A Strange Door

Princess Luna sat upright in her royal queen sized bed, rotating the strange cylindrical object in her light blue aura a couple hoof-lengths from her face. She still wasn't quite sure why she'd taken it with her, but it felt important to her for some reason, like an old trinket long forgotten in her closet that she'd once held dear to herself hundreds of years ago. She'd tried to clean off some of the dust and grime from its chrome body, but it remained glued to the object despite her best efforts. She'd fiddled with the switches a few times, but nothing seemed to have happened, not even a creak from within its metal body. All that was left to push, was the lone yellow button.

Luna concentrated her magic on the button, and pressed down on it with force. Suddenly, a large stick of neon green light shot from one end of object, immediately extinguishing the darkness around itself. A low humming noise rang through the object now, making it feel more like a newly activated mechanism than a mere trinket.

Luna's eyes widened to the size of dinner plates at the sight before her, completely caught off guard at what she was seeing. Her levitation spell on it nearly shattered, her concentration more scrambled than the set of scrambled eggs she'd tried making a couple days ago. She wasn't allowed near the stove anymore by royal decree. The neon green light hadn't added any weight to the device, nor did the cylindrical body seem any different than it had prior to its activation.

The lunar princess immediately scanned the device for any sources of magic, yet her own magic came back with nothing. That couldn't be possible, sure she'd been gone for a thousand years, but she'd poured through hundreds of books ever since she'd arrived at her new home. And through all the information she'd both read about and been told by her sister and guards, she'd never heard of anything like this in the slightest. Yet before her was what seemed to be a concentrated blade of pure green light, a feat impressive of it's own let alone with such a small object.

As Princess Luna waved the device around in her magic, the beam of light made a slight whirring sound as it danced through the air. It acted somewhat like a sword that were sometimes used by the Royal Guard, each having a sharp blade and a sturdy guard.

"Hmm, if this is truly a sword, then what happens if-" Luna got out of her bed and pointed the green beam of light at the floor of her room, before slowly poking a single wooden floorboard.

Much to Luna's surprise, the beam of light went right through the floorboard, leaving a hole in the wood when she retracted the device.

Luna knelt down to the floorboard, eyeing the hole in disbelief. How in Equus could a beam of light cut through a solid plank of wood?

With curiosity now flowing through her mind, Luna stood back up on her hooves and trotted over to the balcony doors. She pushed the glass doors open, allowing a faint gust of cool air to blow into the room. She then looked at the wall that separated her room and the outside world.

The castle walls were made out of solid white concrete and were as tough as boulders, although she was sure the old castle's walls were ten times sturdier. Even with the downgrade, the only thing that could break these walls were strong magical blasts or heavy objects like cannon balls. And even those have to take a few tries before a wall would crumble.

Luna stood in the doorway between her room and the balcony, watching closely as her magic slowly inched the green beam towards the wall from her room. Once the beam made contact with the wall, a loud hissing noise began to fill her ears.

The more the lunar princess pushed the blade into the wall, the louder the hissing and amount of steam radiated from the hole. But surely this blade couldn't break through the entire wall, right?

But the more she pushed the blade, the further and further it went into the wall. It surprised her that she almost felt zero force when pushing the blade through the wall. Then, after giving the blade one final shove, the beam of light broke through the wall and emerged from the other side of it.

It didn't take long before the entire beam of light was through the wall and out the other side, leaving only the silver device on the inside of the room. Luna retracted the beam from the wall and looked at it in dismay. This thing cut through the castle walls like a knife through butter.

"Very impressive, we shalt see to it that this is thoroughly examined." Luna stated to herself, pressing the yellow button again, which caused the green beam to vanish back into itself.

Luna trotted back over towards her bed and opened up one of her nightstands drawers. She set the device down inside and shut the drawer, casting a strong locking charm on it just in-case. As she double and triple checked the charm to see if it was working properly, her eyes drifted towards the top of the nightstand. She didn't have much in her room to begin with, what with all her old belongings either destroyed or left forgotten in the old castle, so the nightstand naturally held plenty of spare room.

She had a reading lamp fully charged with lightning bugs, a copy of 'Understanding The Speech Of A Pony', an old beaten up abacus, and an apparently seriously outdated alarm clock. Apparently there were machines now that could activate music to wake ponies up now instead of the classic amplified bell chime. But the built in alarm enchantment wasn't the main thing to focus on with the clock, that lied with the hour and minute hands that were currently positioned at a near perfect ninety degree angle.

"Nine thirty nine?! Oh we should halve started work hours ago!" Luna said, mentally scoulding herself for getting so entranced with the device.

The lunar princess wasted zero time getting into bed, feeling the comfy feather stuffed pillow under her head as she shut her eyes and ignited her horn, ready to hop into the dream realm. Her thoughts on the device faded into the back of her mind, filed away for later usage. She still had her duties to attend to, and her subjects were far more important than a strange laser sword.

---

Luna lifted her eyelids once again, revealing the familiar sight of a starlit path aligned with thousands upon thousands of doors. Some of these doors had unique designs on them, whilst others were completely plain and failed to stick out at all.

The night princess levitated a small clipboard out of seemingly nowhere with a blank sheet of paper on it as well as a freshly dipped quill. Being the ruler of the dream realm came with quite a few perks, but the job never seemed to get any easier sometimes.

She chose a door at random to begin her normal rounds whilst her magic searched for nightmares, but stopped in her tracks when she noticed another door a quarter mile down she didn't recognise. It was common for new doors to appear and old ones to fade away as new life was born and old life moved on, but this door seemed, strange, compared to the others.

The door itself seemed to be made out of solid white steel metal, with an assortment of scorch marks scattered around it randomly. In the place where a doorknob should of been, was a rectangular looking object with a set of numbers on certain buttons. Plastered in the middle of the door was a strange black symbol that looked like a wheel of some sorts.

Luna set the clipboard down on the door she was originally going to enter as a bookmark to remember which one, before trotting over to the door. She gave the new door a once over, looking for any sort of doorknob or handle to grab. When she found no such thing, her gaze locked onto the strange rectangle with the number buttons. She tried pressing a few in a pattern, but the door didn't open. All she got was a red block of light from the top of the rectangle and an annoying beep.

"Strange..." Luna thought, having only run across locked doors in the dream realm on a couple rare occasions.

Luna tried loosening the door up with some magic, fishing around for some sort of weakness to exploit. Yet her searching came back with nothing. Once again reaching a dead end involving a mysterious object, Luna felt her temper rising as a result.

She gave the door a fierce glare, and stopped her hooves down authoritatively on the starlit path.

"THOU DOOR SHALT LET US PASS FOR WE ARE THE PRINCESS OF THE NIGHT AND PROTECTOR OF DREAMS!!" Luna bellowed, her voice so loud that a few other dream doors were blown open.

Luna glared at the door for a few more seconds, before sighing. She looked around the area at all the open doors. A few objects or creatures from each ponies dream began to exit into the hall. She quickly used her magic to put the objects and creatures back into their respected dreams, shutting the doors after them.

Once each door was shut, she looked back at the strange door in defeat. She had other things to do then just play around with a single door for the entire night, she'd already gotten a late start.

However, when Luna glanced at the strange rectangle again, she noticed that the bar that would turn red now glowed yellow. Suddenly, the metal door slowly slid to the left, letting a crack of light from the dream leak out into the hall.

Luna went over to the door and tried to use her magic to open it the rest of the way, but the door remained solid like a boulder. So instead, she just peeked through the crack into the dream world beyond.

---

Luna's eyes adjusted to the light from within the dream, revealing a swamp-like area with several crates and machines set up.

It didn't take long before a set of movement caught Luna's eyes. She looked over at the source of the movement, expecting a pony to emerge from the swamp. However, to her shock, a bipedal homo-sapient creature wearing white armor and holding a strange black device emerged from the underbrush.

Luna spotted several other homo-sapiens wearing similar white armor and holding other strange black devices. The group went over to an area that was surrounded by monitors and began fiddling with them.

"Is that bombing strike ready yet? Those droids are getting to close." One said, rotating the object they were holding.

"Not yet Strider. They can't bomb their spot and ours at the same time. We have to hold this line, at all costs." Another said to the one they called Strider.

"Alright then, set up a defensive perimeter around the area. Those tanks are gonna be quite difficult to keep at bay" Strider exclaimed.

The others took off around the area, vanishing from view from where Princess Luna was standing. Strider went over to a large glowing box of some sorts and began fiddling with it, causing some colors to flash across it. He continued doing this for a couple minutes, before he suddenly glanced over in the direction the door Luna was looking from was.

The two found themselves locked in a stare down between each other, both waiting for the other to make the first move. It took awhile, but Luna eventually found the will to make the first move. She rose a hoof and opened her mouth to talk, only to have the door slam shut right on her muzzle.

The lunar princess rubbed her aching muzzle a couple times, before glaring at the door. How dare it shut her out of a dream, the very princess of the night and guardian of dreams!

"OPEN THY DOOR AT ONCE! WE ARE NOT FINISHED WITH THIY WORK!" Luna shouted in the royal canterlot voice at the door, trying her best to mimic what she'd done previously that had caused it to open. But unlike before, the door remained shut, no yellow bar appearing on the side panel.

Luna snarled at the door, before turning around to face the other doors. Fine, if this dream wanted to keep her out, then so be it. She had plenty other dreams to check up on, and she'd already wasted enough time just because of curiosity.

She did give the door an angry buck though in spite, before trotting over to the door she had left the clipboard on.

Comments

[SuperPinkBrony12]

Seems like Strider's mental defenses are a tough nut to crack.

[RDDash]

Odd, but this is your chance to talk to the princess Strider. I am pretty sure she is going to try to pry that door with the laser sword.

[Edguy0009]

Princess Luna snarled at the door, before turning around to face the other doors. She was done with that for now and she had plenty other things to do. But she did give the door an angry buck, before trotting over to the door she had set the clipboard on.

Well that wasn't very princess like and it amused me.

[Ranun]

Resilient against force mind tricks I see.
People with personality have that quality.

[Armageden]

Well Luna has anger issues.

[Miskr]

"THOU DOOR SHALT LET US PASS FOR WE ARE THE PRINCESS OF THE NIGHT AND PROTECTOR OF DREAMS!!" Luna bellowed, her voice so loud that a few other dream doors were blown open.

Door: YOU SHALL NOT PASS!!!