Black Angel

by Zobeid

12 - Spelunking, Part 1

Nightmare Moon’s mind struggled through the dizziness and the unhinged, rambling thoughts of her hypnagogic state, not dreaming but somewhere in the foggy area between consciousness and oblivion. Her disembodied semi-consciousness stumbled through the haze, catching glimpses of places that didn’t quite manage to coalesce into anything tangible or recognizable. The murky chaos around her was oddly familiar, though, and her addled mind very slowly pieced together bits of knowledge from her long experience with the dream world. These were the borders of the Shifting Zones. She’d been found there, barely alive, after her disastrous encounter with Princess Luna.

She froze, paralyzed for a moment with fear and indecision. She began to remember her capture by the changelings. She’d been cocooned! If she forced her way through this haze, she could emerge where she had before, on the shores of the Nightmare Realm. She could escape from Ling, but she’d almost been destroyed the last time she’d passed through the Shifting Zones. Even if she survived a second passage thereof, she would lose any chance of tracking down her nemesis.

She took a step back. Then, making her decision, she began to wake herself. She stamped her hoof, shook her head, snorted. The gestures were symbolic, lacking physical presence, but they helped focus her mind. She had to reconnect with her real body. No, wait… That wasn’t right. She didn’t have a real body anymore. She shook her head again and squeezed her eyes shut. Her thoughts were trying to ramble again, but she couldn’t allow that. She had to focus. She had to connect with her dream body, still trapped in Ling. She had to awake there. She could do it, if she could just stay focused.

Was this how Morpheus moved around the Dreaming? Did he connect mentally to a new avatar, a new dream image of himself, in whatever part of his vast realm he wished to visit? Nightmare Moon bit her lip, frustrated, trying to stop her thoughts from wandering off track yet again. She thought, “My body! I have to concentrate.”

She tried to stamp again, but this time she felt a tingle. It was different, the hoof of her dream body back in Ling had moved. She forced another twitch. She took a breath, but it felt thick and sluggish. It felt as though something other than air was moving through her nostrils and lungs. The cocoon! She was still in it, still breathing its vile ichor.

She forced her eyes open but could see little, only an indistinct green glow. She was nauseous, chilled and weak, but her thoughts were clearer and no longer at risk of slipping back into the Shifting Zones. She tried focusing on her magic, channeling it into her horn. As before, the magic couldn’t form into a spell while her horn was immersed in the viscous fluid of the cocoon. She did, however, still have some sensations of the flow of etherial energies.

With an inward shudder she realized those energies were flowing out of her. Someone, or something, was drawing them out of her, siphoning her vital essence away. The drain was a trickle, not a flood, but given enough time it would reduce her to a magicless, mindless, emotionless shell of a pony.

She had to escape. Her first impulse was to puncture the cocoon with the sharp tip of her horn. She tossed her head, making a sharp jab at the membrane. She felt it connect and snag on the tough material. She jabbed again. Few things could resist a determined strike from an alicorn, but she was in no position to deliver such a direct blow. She jabbed again.

A sharp blow jolted her shoulder, making her wince and grit her teeth. A large green eye peered into the cocoon, and the same weirdly distorted voice she’d heard before said, “That’s enough, Princess! You’re a stubborn one, but you aren’t going anywhere for a while, so you’d better just settle down.” Nightmare Moon could barely make out the green glow of her captor’s misshapen horn before a spell hit. Her stomach heaved, and a wave of dizziness sent her reeling back to the semi-conscious state that she’d only recently escaped.

She was nearly lost then, but no pony was more wise in the ways of sleeping and waking. With skill and determination she manipulated her thoughts, clinging to a thin thread of consciousness as it wound its way through the hypnagogic swamp, past the many pools where the unwary might slip into the Shifting Zones. Perilous as her situation seemed, she was beginning to get the hang of this, and she once again forced her way back to her dream body in the cocoon and opened her eyes again.

Her vital essence was still leaking away, and a dim, indistinct glow was again visible outside the cocoon. She had to assume she was being watched. She closed her eyes and thought. She was too weak to physically break out of the cocoon. She couldn’t cast spells. She had nothing; even her armor had been taken.

Wait… With her armor gone, her mane had reverted to its physical form: a mass of indigo-blue hair tangled around her in the green goo. Perhaps the item she’d been carrying in her mane might have materialized as well — if only she could reach it. She began working her arm, shifting it within the tight confines of the cocoon. She moved it slowly, an inch at a time, working it upward to her mane. A hoof is a blunt, insensitive instrument, and her attempts to grope around through her own tresses were slow and frustrating work. From time to time she had to stop and rest, while her abused foreleg ached from the position she’d forced it into.

She felt her hoof bump something, a lump. She prodded it, worried it, feeling the lump tug at her hair. A sparkly fleck came into view, settling slowly through the green ichor in which she was suspended. Yes! She jostled the bag again with her hoof, and more grains of dream sand filtered down. They swirled, caught up in the flow of magical energy that was being drawn from her. She watched as grains drifted out of the cocoon, its tough membrane no obstacle at all.

The leaching flow of energy faltered, then stopped, and the dim glow vanished with it. She could only guess what was happening outside the cocoon. She tossed her head as she had earlier, jabbing again at the cocoon’s walls with her horn. She jabbed again and again. She could feel when something started to give. She jammed her front hooves against the membrane and ripped at it with the tip of her horn. The green goo was already flowing, oozing past her and spilling out through the rips she’d made. She got a hoof through and used her arm to pry the opening wider.

It ripped open and dumped her out onto a cold, stone floor. She coughed up a frightful amount of green slime from her lungs, wiped it from her eyes with the side of her pastern, and crawled out from under the still-dripping remnants of the cocoon. Then she stood up and gave herself a thorough shake, sending gobs of slime flying in all directions.

Now that she was breathing air again, she nearly gagged on its acrid stench. A few scattered green glows, perhaps from phosphorescent fungi, dimly illuminated the cavern, and dozens of cocoons hung from its ceiling with a pony suspended in each. Slumped on the floor nearby was the changeling queen. Nightmare Moon stumbled over to get a closer look. The queen was similar in size to herself, but deep charcoal gray, her horn grotesquely twisted, and behind it sprouted a crest of fleshy tendrils that together formed a loathsome mockery of a crown. Her eyes were closed in slumber.

As Nightmare watched, the queen twitched the tell-tale impulse of a dreamer. A snake-like forked tongue flitted out for an instant, then a smile formed between her protruding fangs, and she muttered in her sleep, “This day is going to be perfect”.

Nightmare scowled and considered taking retribution on her foe, but pity stayed her hoof. “It’s a pity I’m so weakened and surrounded by possibly hundreds of other changelings,” she thought to herself. “Even if I could defeat their queen, they’d pursue me to the ends of the Dreaming for harming her.”

Her thoughts turned to escape. She chose a random direction and worked her way through the cavern. She noticed a cocoon with a thin stream of mist flowing down from it, down to a dark lump on the rocky floor of the cavern. She belatedly recognized the lump as a changeling huddled with its eyes closed and wings folded flat but its mouth gaping open as it sucked in the mist. It was feeding upon the vital essence of a pony just as the queen must have fed from her. She moved on, but she soon saw more of the feeding changelings. Luckily, they seemed barely aware of their surroundings while they fed, and Nightmare Moon was able to slip past them in the shadows.

She couldn’t tell if she was moving towards an exit or deeper into the caverns. The walls were riddled with rough openings, some with packed soil trod by many feet, others appearing only as disused crevices. She chose a well-travelled passage, reasoning that the way out of the caverns must be one such.

A faint glow of magic was enough to see her way. The tunnels had been smoothed somewhat by their insectile inhabitants, but they were sized for a normal changeling, not for the comfort of a pony with Nightmare Moon’s stature. She crouched awkwardly and kept her head low, lest her lengthy horn hit the ceiling. After banging it against an outcrop of rock for the fifth time, she uttered most un-ladylike words. Moreover, the floor and walls of the tunnel were filthy with black manganese deposits, a slippery substance that adhered to everything, and very soon she was filthy as well.

After some distance she heard strange sounds echoing from somewhere ahead, buzzing and grinding. She moved cautiously to where the tunnel opened up, and there found herself on a ledge overlooking a lower chamber. The walls below were smooth and white as bleached bone, and several changelings were busy cleaning them, scraping away some sort of fungus and collecting it in baskets. Nightmare Moon killed the glow from her horn, but not quickly enough. One of the creatures stopped its work and sat up, peering toward the dark opening into which she had retreated. It squinted and sniffed. Then one of its comrades thumped its shoulder and chittered, and it shrugged and returned to the task.

She looked across the chamber to the opposite opening. The ledge led straight to it, and the path was dark. If she could stay in the shadows and avoid sudden moves, she might make it across without raising alarm. Indeed, lacking her armor and covered with manganese, her mane and tail matted down with dried slime, from a distance she didn’t actually look that much different from a changeling. Holding her breath, looking straight ahead, she walked across. There was no alarm, only continued buzzing from the workers below. Nightmare Moon breathed a sigh of relief, re-lit her horn, and continued through the tunnel.

She’d hardly gone any distance when a skittering noise came from ahead. She tried to back up, but it was no use as a changeling came scurrying and skidded to a halt, almost colliding with her. It gave a startled squawk while she shuffled backward as quickly as she could in the cramped confines of the tunnel.

The changeling opened its mouth and shrieked while also pulsing its wings rapidly, the two sounds combining into a warbling alarm as piercing as a cicada’s call. Answering calls came echoing up the tunnel from the workroom behind Nightmare Moon. In panic she cast a spell, one that was second nature to her and required little energy, attempting to put the changeling ahead of her to sleep. The changeling’s alarm call faltered, and it slumped, groggy but still conscious.

The sounds from behind grew louder. Nightmare Moon charged forward, trying to squeeze past the slow and sleepy changeling, but she hung up in the narrow tunnel. She grunted with effort while the changeling squealed and wriggled. For a moment it seemed they’d both be jammed solidly in place, until a few strong kicks broke her loose. Then she raced forward down the tunnel hardly noticing the bumps and scrapes she picked up along the way.

The penetrating, high-pitched buzz of alarm seemed to echo from all directions, as though the entire hive was picking it up. She tumbled into a chamber occupied by two shrieking changelings. She tried to cast her favored weapon, lightning bolts, but the resulting sparks were hardly worthy of the name. Startled and stung, the changelings yelped and tried an uncoordinated charge. Tossing her head she knocked them aside, and she dove into another tunnel entrance.

She cursed inwardly as she raced through the larger tunnel, for it led downward. A buzz from behind signaled pursuit, but sounds of changelings echoed all around. She ducked into a side passage, which quickly narrowed, and she found herself squeezing through the entrance of a rough, natural chamber, empty save for rocky rubble and some worn-out baskets, bones, and other refuse that had been tossed in a heap near the entrance. Nightmare Moon explored the irregular chamber as quickly as she could, picking her way over the treacherous piles of rocks, looking for more passages. She found only crevices that neither she nor the changelings could possibly squeeze through.

She could hear buzzing and sounds of movement echoing weirdly through the cave passages, but they didn’t seem to be coming closer. Perhaps her turn down the side passage had bought her a few moments respite. She closed her eyes for a moment and tried to think. Alone, unarmed, pursued by hostile changelings, with no idea which way was out and unable to cast more than the simplest spells, what could she do?

No. That wasn’t right. She wasn’t limited to simple spells, only weak ones. She still had all her knowledge of the art, plus something extra. Her horn glowed as she carefully teased apart the matted and tangled horsehair of her mane and plucked out the bag that had been stuck there ever since she broke out of the cocoon. She tilted the bag and scattered some dream sand on a small area of the cave’s floor. This was a gamble, and she could only hope a certain friend of hers was asleep, perchance to dream. If he was…

Her deep blue aura came to life, and a cloud of blue smoke erupted from the floor of the cavern. When it cleared, the burly figure of a minotaur stood there, armored and clutching a heavy mace in one hand. He looked around, blinking in the darkness. “Where am I? How did I get here?”

“I summoned you,” she told him, drawing his startled gaze as she increased the light from her horn.

His eyes wandered over her naked form, her scraped knees, her hide and matted mane plastered with dried slime, and a coating of black manganese grime. He exclaimed, “Nightmare Moon! What’s happened to you?”

She held her head high, maintaining regal bearing. “I am in desperate straits, and I need your aid. I defeated you in battle before, Dominus Tusk. Will you fight at my side now?”

It took a few seconds, but a grin grew upon his countenance, and he answered, “Never let it be said that Dominus Tusk shuns the fray!” He knelt before her, hands upon the pommel of his mace. “To champion you is my honor, Princess.”

The buzzing and skittering sounds echoed through the caves more loudly. Nightmare Moon lowered her head, dipped her slender horn to touch Tusk’s shoulder, and then said, “Rise, my champion, and ready yourself! They’re coming!”

Comments

[Sky Wishes 7266]

Congrats on making it to the front page!!!!! fc02.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2013/001/7/e/clapping_pony_icon___nightmare_moon_by_taritoons-d5prx8v.gif

[Admiral Stoic Rum]

thanks for the story, I see the goings on as ground work leading up to penstroke's work past sins. I can only nod my head a little as it gives the story direction, and overall the journey has been compelling.

[Zobeid]

4096452

Hehee! I, um... haven't actually read either of those.

When I first introduced the nightgaunts in this story, I only knew of them from flipping through S. Peterson's Field Guide to Cthulhu Monsters. Sometime after that (at a friend's urging) I read The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, which is awesome of course, and that's what inspired this recent diversion through hideous Ling.