Two Nightmares
Not fire nor flood, but rather, the ice this time.
An empty moon hung over a frozen world. No comforting dark shadowed memory of their mother, no unicorn silhouette to remind all who gazed upon it of a promised return of the rightful Queen of the Night. Only the dead, boney whiteness, inequine, strange and blank.
The stars failed to twinkle, their light steady and still in the airless chill. Something felt wrong with the air, the windlessness of it, the lack of - flavor, taste, anything, really. If he had lungs to take breath, would he have been able to draw one? Or would it have ripped the moisture out of his flesh, lung, throat and tongue, flash-frozen him like these frozen dead that littered the forest floor all around him, leaves long since blasted off the limbs, undergrowth as dead as everything else?
From time to time, between the branches of the dead trees above, he could glimpse white spectral things, floating high above. On what, with the wind frozen and dead on the ground, in drifts of snow bough-deep, he did not know.
Spite? Terror? Fear?
His attention, drawn by objects moving in this motionless world, flew upwards on wings of thought. Higher, higher through the void, where winged shapes with horses-heads hung on winds he could not feel.
More like clouds given form than creatures of flesh, they drifted, empty-eyed and unknowing. Whatever had birthed these things had long since ceased, leaving them to continue on their paths through the upper regions, in motion because they had movement, in flight because nothing acted to bring them down. Gravity had no purchase on these ghosts.
Windigoes? This was nothing like the daywalkers' tales. Was this what they were, when Equestria nearly died in the cradle? Would this be what they would have become, if they'd drunk every pint of strife, eaten every ounce of hate, drained the land and the ponies as dry as the husks in those snow-drifts?
There, one drifted downwards, looking itself drained, wasted. The bits of cloud-stuff that made up the maybe-windigo were crumbling, and it left a spectral trail behind it as it slowly fell out of formation.
Is this their fate, in turn? To have consumed the last bit of what killed this world, and to fade away once their plunder was spent?
His attention was drawn by a great ice fortress, far below, towards which the dying windigo was circling. Spires of black ice, overlying lesser stone ones, jutted into the darkness, glittering darkness for darkness.
Within the fortress, deep within, past dead thestral guards, dead pony servants, dead prisoners for all he knew, dead rebels perhaps, or just refugees from the frozen, half-burned hamlets and villages that lurked in the buried lands outside the fortress gate… all dead.
Further, further, through the hall, through the great door which gaped open, half-smashed in, surrounded by more dead guards, dead ponies with spears in their hooves, shields dropped where they fell.
And a great throne, in a great receiving chamber, covered in ice. Embedded deep within the ice, entombed in ice, encased.
And deep within that great block of ice, perched on her last throne, sat the alicorn.
Eyes burning, flaring within the ice. Still alive, still furious, still raging against the dying of the night. Burning blue, in a dark-featured face, slit-pupiled, under a helm of mithril, her mane frozen in the ice like the rest of her.
The dying windigo floated through the ice, struggling to reach the throne, reaching for that aura of hatred and fury.
It got too close, and something struck at it, slashing out of the heart of that icy imprisonment.
The windigo exploded in a cloud of cloud-stuff, and was gone.
The Mother of Dreams sat on her icy chair, and hated.
The hate was all that was left.
Ping shook himself in the antechamber, and began the ritual that would open the seven and seventy locks that kept anything from passing from inside, out into the greater world beyond the door. He shivered from the memory of the Mother's dream. No, not a dream, not a prophecy, but… a possibility. So many possibilities, there at the tap-root, the heart of the dream. And they were never exactly the same, each time he passed through this door.
But so many are like that one, hopeless, horrible and final.
Would the elders be so eager for the return of the mother of dreams, if they knew what she dreamed of, in her moonlight exile? What the Last Night looked like, in that bitterest possible fulmination of the dream? When Ping considered that this was what She dreamed of, when She dreamed Her revenge… what did Her fears look like?
He'd never found another pony who had been as far inside the heart of the dream as he. Not as deeply as he'd just gone. Some had, he knew, but rumor held that none that had were still sane. To the Plain of Jars they were sent when they returned, wild and screaming. All matrons and elders had to dip their hooves into the inner mysteries, but shallowly, shallowly. They splashed quickly through the edge, the margin of the Mother's dream, scooping up power and insight, and swiftly fled for the relative safeties to be found outside these black walls. The great black fortress Selenemeer was not for the faint of heart.
Ping thought about what he'd seen this time, and wondered if the maddened matrons, the ones who had been sent to the Plain of Jars to await the return of their queen, had, like he, seen that particular, frozen tableau in the heart of the dream, or something like it, and despaired.
He wasn't quite sure why he was spared that madness, but that resilience gave him power and authority. He could walk through the heart of the dream, and not be crushed by it. That gave him respect and authority, it was true, but it also gave power, true power within the dream.
And to gift that power, in turn. No meditating for long daylight hours before the great portal, lapping at the whispering mist that trickled from underneath the safely sealed doors. No rushed unlocking of the portal, and a pell-mell charge through the corridors within, while the guards held the gate perilously open for the matron who hurtled back with her prize. Not for Ping, or the ponies for whom he served as a water-carrier.
On the other side of the door were the ever-guard, two spear-stallions, and two shield-maidens. Waiting with them were in addition, two elders, three matrons, and one of Ping's own ponies. The matrons stood stone-faced as he opened his dream-wings wide, and released that thing for which they were waiting.
Behind him, the spear-stallions and shield-maidens hastily slammed close the great dream-doors, spinning the tumblers and closing the locks.
The three matrons, their eyes glowing with power, turned on their hooves, leaving wordlessly. The older of the two elders looked Ping in the eye, and sneered.
"It seems as if your faithless participation in an alien ritual failed to result in your demolition within the dream, nephew," said one of the elders. "You live to return, as you have in the past. What news from our true princess?"
Ping tried not to react to the jab. He hadn't been any more sure than the elders that he'd compromised himself by cooperating with the giddy hippogriff, but Ping had to, in the end, put his faith in his own purpose, and the virtue inherent in respect for the Mother's fellow-spirits of the darkness. What Fish Eye had said of her own ‘auntie' had resonated with Ping's own feelings about his people's dread patroness.
He wasn't sure what it must be like, for your demon goddess to be free and coherent, and walking the darker ways of the world. He'd not had more than the slightest twinge of feeling from the hippogriff mare's rather silly ceremony; whatever was her link with the goddess of salt and rot, it didn't carry much beyond her, not even to her ritual-partner. What little feeling he had felt, seemed to signify that the feral goddess of the sea had no interest in thestrals.
Ping was leaving the elders hanging. Right.
"She was not lucid this time. The dream was larger, and emptier. No real sign of activity, aside from the destruction of something that might have been a figment, or perhaps a captured and half-dissolved nocnice."
"You think she's subsiding into another long coma?" asked the elder. "That the prophecies will not be fulfilled?"
"I… can't be sure. I suspect she's husbanding her resources. I saw her eyes. She's not moving, but she's also not gone away."
"Hrm. Curious." The elder looked pensive. "Your ship is on course?"
"Yes, auntie. We are on schedule."
"You realize that you are still in a great deal of trouble. Ambushing your fellow dream-warriors is not something that the college will soon forget."
"I stand by my actions, auntie. Those two were behaving irrationally, and they were reckless. I am not happy about how much of our intentions were revealed, however unintentionally, by them trying to force their way into the expedition. My choice made it something alien and external, an incursion. Made it something we helped repel. Made us the protectors of the regiment, and not the betrayers of our fellows."
The silent elder snorted behind the one who'd done all the talking.
"You are not helping your case, Spear Stallion. If I were you, I'd talk less, and deliver more," continued the one who'd done all the talking so far. "You buy a great deal of tolerance with your skills and your efficiency. But the treasury of your merit is not inexhaustible."
She narrowed her eyes, and sniffed.
"Until The End of Days, Ping."
"Until The Last Night, Auntie," Ping said, trying not to smile in bitter irony.
The elders left, going off wherever ancient mistresses of conspiracy and cultic mysteries go when they're not dressing down their minions. The portal-guard stood stonefaced. Their enchantments rendered them deaf while they were on post.
Sometimes things whispered through the locked door. There had been… incidents, before they'd rendered the guard deaf while on watch.
"That was… are you sure I should be here?" asked Fruits Basket, looking in the direction the dignitaries had disappeared into the gloaming. "I shouldn't be here. This is above my pay grade."
Ping looked at her. The guards ensign didn't have the deafening enchantment that the usual guard wore. More's the pity.
"This is above their pay grade, let alone ours, ensign," Ping sighed. "Here, this should suffice for the week's work. Pass it along to the others." He repeated the ‘blessing', opening his wings in benediction.
"Thank you, Lord Pumpernickel," she said, bowing, her eyes alight with the same dreamstuff that the mares of the Night Shift had carried off.
"Don't call me that, ensign. It is not my name."
"It isn't. It is your rank. I can't believe we had a Pumpernickel within the EUP all this time, and nopony knew!"
"It is imbecility, is what it is. I'm not Pumpernickel. Nopony remembers him, the real stallion. They just remember the damned stories."
"You might as well say that we don't remember the Mother of Dreams, either. Is… is she in there?"
Ping hesitated, afraid to encourage her, but even more afraid to draw the rage of the aunties on this mare if he poured even a dram of the ugliness behind that door into her virgin ears.
"Don't start, ensign. It isn't safe. It is the absolute opposite of safe. I don't know why I can walk within that gate and not be torn to mindless pieces by what's inside there, but nopony else does, not the way I do, not in this generation."
"Not for centuries! How did they keep this secret?"
"They're the aunties. Secrets is what they do. You've been trusted with this, ensign. Be wary. More than one mare has gone to the Plain of Jars because they couldn't keep themselves from sticking their curious muzzle too far inside that door, or opened the mouth under that muzzle and spread around the aunties' secrets."
"My lips are sealed! I'm an ensign of the guard, not a spook!"
"You're a shield-maiden, ensign. Don't forget that. We are our dream-selves while we dream, and our day-selves when we wake. Mixing the two always leads to tears. What's on tonight's schedule?"
"Lulamoon patrol. As always."
"Good, good. I'll be taking the major, and the other officers. The other maidens will handle the troops?"
"Yes, sir. There were more monsters last night."
"There'll be more tonight. We're getting downdream from old Griffonia. Lots of psychic poison in the soil up that way, things get up and walk in the nightscape."
"You've bought us plenty of power, Lord Pumpernickel! No baku or nocnice will break our lines with this to hold the perimeter!"
"Ensign, please…"
"But sir…" she gave him those puppy-eyes, which from the slit-pupiled gaze of a full-grown thestral mare, could be nothing but risible.
Ping glared.
"Spear-Stallion Two Pings, sir."
Ping nodded, satisfied, and went off to look in on the major's dreams.
The battlefield was swept with smoke and stink and the weeping of the wounded.
Bodies laid along the line of advance, and many wore the faces of ponies Ping knew. Gwaine, one-winged and shivering, as a pony held a compress against the terrible wound. A pile of bloodied pink feathers that must have been Fish Eye, unmoving. A winrow of thestrals crumpled where something terrible had passed through their ranks.
Sergeant Gilda, half her head gone, staring accusing at him from one remaining dead eye.
There she was, standing among the spiked guns. A corporal's guard surrounded the bloodied dreamer, screaming her rage at the fleeing enemy, and beating at a blue unicorn mare who wouldn't get up from where she had dropped, catatonic. The dream of the artillerymare was lost to the dreamer, unresponsive. Their surviving artillery ponies shuffled around stupidly, as subordinates do in anxiety-dreams, never doing what they're supposed to do, never getting it right, never working.
In the near distance, guards, griffon and pony, fought and died, and were overrun by shadows, half-seen enemies, or trampled the enemy in turn.
And here came an officer, a tall, faceless brigadier.
"Very good work, Twilight. Top marks! Lovely pattern. You did so very well! Now gather your troops, and do it again!"
"General! We can't! There's nopony left, we can't…"
"Nonsense! You were the top of your class! You have the very best we can give you! Look how well you did!
"Now do it again."
And the filly fell on her haunches, and screamed at the brigadier wearing her own face.
OK, that's enough of that, reset! Ping thought.
And the dream popped like a bubble, leaving the dreamer's psyche trembling. A little anxiety was good for a pony, but despair was probably the wrong lesson to take away.
Probably.
Ping concentrated, and tried to conjure something cheerful and happy.
He wasn't sure what it had evoked in his charge, but the dream-bubble was nicely pinkish, trending towards a blushing red.
None of his business, so long as it didn't develop those black-green-purple streaks again. Ping couldn't be certain that these nasty little dreams were the result of psychic proximity to the nightmare-prone Trixie Lulamoon, but it seemed likely. The two mares were more alike than the major would care to know.
And then suddenly the new dream-bubble popped, and with it, his charge, fallen right out of the dreaming.
Huh. Someone woke the major. Wonder why?
"Come on, Gleaming, you were whimpering."
"I don't know what you're talking about, Gilda. I don't remember anything."
"I know a bad dream when I see one. Twitching hooves, tossing head, sweating."
"I swear, I don't remember anything. Well, nothing much. You were there. And then there you are! Shouldn't you be in your own bunk?"
"Still not sure we should be letting you sleep the whole night through. How's your head?"
"My head's fine, Gilda. It was barely a concussion at all. Where are we, anyways? What time is it?"
"One bell about ten minutes ago, so we're into the middle watch. Which should put us near Maresailles. Or thereabouts. You sure we don't want to put in there?"
"Just for fresh fruit? I wouldn't think so. We need to make better time, Gilda. We're on schedule for Perroneus in three days."
"It's not an allied port. I'm not thrilled about the idea."
"Oh, come on, Gilda. Haven't you ever wanted to look at the Kokonipolis?"
"I'm a winged creature, Gleaming. I don't do well in tight spaces."
"Well, I won't make you come."
"Wait, why are you suddenly blushing?"
"Never you mind! Now go away, and let me sleep. We have a long day tomorrow."
"Yes, ma'am, Major."
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There is not enough <Gasp> in the world.
10372607 I think that comment was meant for Mitch, not me, but he's already caught it.
Like I said last chapter, I was really missing this story, it's conspiracy, mystery and world building. Another good chapter and I hope it motivated you to pick up the pen again.
Did you mean mithril?
Is this a double word like he couldn't decide if it was a tap or a root? Or that it's both at the same time.
On top of being half insane and delusional, they are REALLY salty that a male can do what never achieved.
Pumpernickel (loke the bread?)... is a male rank within the whatever the conspiracy the threstal made (does it have a name? I don't remember. Anyway, I am curious about the stories of the original that managed to leave it's mark in their history.
And they need the power leaking from Luna to be able to perform Dream magic? Or dream magic strong enough to fight and win in dreamland? That... sounds strange. Their own inherent magic isn't enough? Or strong threstal are rare? Anyway, that sound really dangerous and remind me of Warhammer 40K Warp craft that corrupt and drive insane it's user.
And we have two dream monsters named here. Baku was named in a previous chapter but Nocnice are new. I guess we will see many different type of dream monster out of various mythologies make their appearance in the story.
Yeesh... how bad would it be if there wasn't any patrol? And for her to get her very own named patrol... it must not be a nice job.
Oh come on, why are you teasing us like this.
YEEEESSSSS
10372798
Argh! Fixed, thanks.
See: Taproot. It's the reverse equivalent of a trunk. Dandelions and other weeds tend to have really sturdy taproots; the carrot and the parsnip have edible taproots.
The idea of a batpony heritage of masculine heroism tied to the name 'Pumpernickel' is lifted from Georg's lovely stories, although, of course, Two Pings is definitely not Georg's Pumpernickel. For one thing, he's about half the size of Pumpernickel.
'Nocnice' is from Rambling Writer's Moondog stories, particularly How The Tantabus Parses Sleep. I think I may have mentioned them in Wicker Princesses, too? Either way, they come from Rambling Writer. You'd have to ask them where they got it from. But I suspect it's a reference to the Slavic dream-monsters also known as nocnitsa.
10372824
Strange, google didn't give me anything for the word taproot when I searched it the first time.
So Luna dream is spreading in dreamland like that, many roots spreading literally from the main one. I don’t know if it mean it's insane, sick or simply it mean the mind is some form of a superior one. This raise many more questions:
How much of these roots are from Luna originally and how much from the thing possessing her, transforming her in Nightmare Moon?
Do these "roots" have any effect on the dream world? They seem to be contained but are they like roots, digging into something? Or it's just a way to represent the shape of Luna mind?
Will there be a journey down to where those path leads?
Poor Ping. I think it was Goethe who said, "There is nothing worse for a man of mind than to be dependant on a dolt."
So after all that crafty dancing around the subject and clever indirect hinting at it...we're going to come out and just say it now, eh?
Okay. I can run with that.
...I'm still not totally convinced that was really all it was. Probably influenced it, yes, but not the sole cause.
Still...Ping here would clearly know better than I would.
If I didn't know better, I'd say these guys are trying (or at least hoping) to bump off Ping. Or maybe I do know better and just don't know it yet.
Yeah, which leaves me wondering, as usual, just what it is the darn thestrals want out of this. I keep getting impressions it could go both ways, even for Ping himself.
Darn it, Gilda, even in death you just gotta keep holding a grudge, don't you?
Also, darn you and your ship teases, Mitch H. I'm not even for the ship yet even I can still say that.
? Oh, updates. Hrmmm
I have the distinct impression that this situation has been allowed to develop for a long time with inadequate supervision. Like, I understand that there's some sort of inquisition that's supposed to govern the dream realm... but the whole affair is layered in secrecy and crisis and things run amok. No one seems to have a plan that's really doing what they want it to do, or even a full understanding of events.
Like this! The elders don't seem to be aware of the possible consequences of their actions. No one is. Everyone's running off some blend of wishful thinking, deliberate misinformation and I don't know what else! It's a promising setup.
And what is Ping's whole deal that he has access to all this? Is he some kinda Chosen One?
One thing seems clear to me. Fruits Basket sees herself as a protector of the military unit she is in. She is also supportive of some concept of Luna. Ping is considerably more sour, and sees Luna's return to the waking world as a possible disaster, and I'm not sure exactly what he's going along with and why. What does he even hope to accomplish?
Fruits Basket sees herself basically as a protector of dreams and a soldier of the equestrian army, the former being her day role and the latter her night role. However she sees Luna it is somehow compatible with this...
That's quite the anxiety-dream. Sounds about right for the pony and the situation...
Man, Gleaming is both the senior officer, in charge of a ship and a company or two of soldiers, and also, what, early 20s-ish? And Gilda is her best friend and does double duty as her XO/senior NCO. Like, it looks shippy to me because they're a pair of young people, best friends, supporting each other through a difficult situation. But also they're supposed to be the senior, responsible ones...
10374130
Yeah, the whole situation with Gleaming and Gilda in charge feels strange because of the lack of oversight and experience in the whole outfit. The lack of both may be their undoing or the reason they succeed.
They are very new and lack the infrastructure that supports the other Guards regiments.
Immortality, of a sort.
Lots of good stuff here. Who would have thought pumpernickel was a rank, lol.
10375252
ponygrad knows his references.
For those of you who aren't big Glen Cook fans, that's a bit from the big introductory set-piece descriptions of the Glittering Plain, from the Black Company novels. Which yeah, this is more than a slight homage towards. As is the Plain of Jars.
Mmmmm.... Shipping.
Why is that dream bubble bouncing up and down?
Shipping. Air Fedex.
...and of course even if Ping told the Matrons just how bad things could get, they would just assume he was lying and disloyal. It's not like they can go far in enough to confirm what he saw.
Damn Bat ponies know they're going to unleash a demon, but don't care. They just want their mad vengeance even if it destroys everything, for they're in utter denial that their desires could be anything less than perfection.
Such is the way of ideological cults... like wokeness!
Fools, you're either perfect, or you're not me.
Weird dreams.
Wow.... in both jobs Ping is the hyper competent expert taken for granted and abused by his superiors. And it seems to be the bat Ponies that treat him the worst.
Still eager to see what happens when NMM gets zapped back to Luna and how the thestrals take it.