Chapter 1: I Just Couldn't Bother To Care
“There is no use hiding it, Princess,” Tirek said. “You are neither a delusional vision nor apparition, so you might as well as come out now.”
“Impressive,” Luna remarked, stopping right behind him. “How astute of you to notice.”
Tirek sighed, a mild chuckle escaping his lips from the exhaled air. He didn’t bother turning around, his hands crossed behind his back. He was shrouded in dark shadows that clung to him like a second skin. “It was easy to guess. Any other time I see you in my dreams, you’re either dead or very close to it. The lack of injuries on your body and screams leaving your lips was a good enough tip as any.” He pointed to the sky, which was an inky black expanse of nothingness which now had swirls of red, like blood that pulsated as if from a heartbeat drifting through it. “Also, I have a little warning system in case anyone does try to enter my mind. Just in case.”
Luna shrugged. “Then I suppose you’ve also guessed why I am visiting you?”
Tirek snorted. “What’s the point of guessing when you’ll just tell me soon enough? Your kind always does.” Taking a glance over his shoulder, Luna was met with the malnourished face of his devious smirk. “Much as you try to be mysterious, Princess, you’re not much the bluffing type, am I correct?”
“That doesn’t just mean I’ll fold my hand right away.”
Lord Tirek turned to face her, spreading his arms wide to throw back his cloak; Luna could count every rib on his body under his thinly stretched and sallow skin. “Of course not. That would defeat the purpose of the game. Now, why don’t we place in our bets and see where the cards lie on the table?”
Luna looked around. Nothing but a vast wasteland of dust, sand, and ruins scattered throughout that had been reduced to all but rubble—the best estimate of Tirek’s state of mind more than anything else. “I see no table here.”
Tirek’s eyes flicked to his right. “Look again.”
A small wooden table sat at the center of a circle of light, tattered cushions resting on both sides. Tirek waved his hand at the far side of the table before claiming the other for himself, resting his bony elbows on the aged wood, his fingers knotting together as he rested his chin on his clasped hands.
Resting in the plush cushion as she set her hooves on the table, Luna asked, “You seem unperturbed by my presence. Are you not curious as to my purpose here?”
“Not much tends to surprise you when you’re as long-lived as I. Not like you would know that, now would you, Princess?” Tirek taunted, lifting up an open palm and indicating it at her. “Of course I’m curious; a thousand years in this pit, and only now a visitor?” He gave her an oily smile. “But to come to me… now, that one must be consumed by curiosity.”
“I wouldn’t use that word exactly…” Luna tapped her hooves on the table as her eyes wandered aimlessly to her surroundings. Overall, Tirek’s dream was very bland. For something that is supposed to be the collective unconscious of a someone’s mind, Tirek’s was unnaturally plain. “More perplexed, as a matter of fact.”
“And I’m the one who has perplexed you enough to warrant a visit?” Tirek asked, a dry chuckle like an errant breeze escaping his lips. “Why, I’m simply honored about that, Princess. Truly I am.” He pulled out a deck of cards from thin air, shuffling them with practiced ease in his hands while his eyes focused entirely on her. “Does your sister know about this?”
“Celestia doesn’t need to know where I am at all times,” Luna said, the slightest twitch of a frown appearing on her lips. “I am the princess of the night, so it is my royal duty to travel in my subject’s dreams all across Equestria.”
“Ah, but we aren’t in Equestria, are we? And neither am I a subject of yours.” Tirek started setting down cards face up on the table in neat rows, all perfectly symmetrical. “So to visit me would mean you’d have to enter Tartarus, which I’m guessing is a big no-no from miss high and mighty herself?”
“Watch your tongue.”
Tirek smiled. “That’s all the answer I need, Princess.”
Luna scowled, her facade of calm shattering from just the first crack. Tirek hummed nonchalantly to himself, flipping a card from his deck face up as he inspected the rows of card before him.
Finally, Luna shook her head slightly and drew her glare away from him and instead to the cards. “What are you doing?”
“Solitaire.” He flipped another card face up, a hungry smile appearing when he placed it on a row. “That’s typically what you do in solitary confinement. And hey, after the first thousand years or so, you get pretty good at it.” He glanced to her, golden pupils twinkling on the black surface of his eyes like stars in the sky. “So, Princess, what games did you play while locked away?”
Luna leaned over the table, her eyes narrowed to slits. “How do you know that?”
“Oh, just a smidge of information. Discord was so kind to tell me. He’s the gossipy sort, not much to my surprise.” Tirek’s razor-sharp teeth formed a grin, like a shark’s jaws opening up before it consumed its prey. “Guess what else did not surprise me?”
“If you think you can manipulate me that easily, Tirek, then you are a fool,” Luna replied with a curt nod. “I know you’re just trying to get me to divulge information concerning me or my sister.”
Tirek arched a brow. “Manipulate? Me? Why, Princess, what do you take me for?”
Luna frowned.
“Oh, well, now that you mention it, I am a bit on the manipulative side, aren’t I?” He chuckled again, his voice as cracked as the earth in this inhospitable wasteland that was his fantasies. “But in my dreams, I do not lie. Trading falsehood for fantasy can only lead to madness, or something worse than it.” Tirek tapped his pitifully small horns, which were as weak and feeble looking as the rest of him. “Besides, what purpose would it do me to lie to myself?”
“It is not self-deception which concerns me.”
“But how would that serve me?” Tirek asked her, laying down another card on his rows. “I don’t gain anything from tricking you, and neither would I do so in my dreams. Trying to lie using my unconscious mind would be pointless, as you already know.”
“Then what about what you told me before? How you knew I was not a part of your dreams because I was not a bloody pulp?” Luna asked.
Tirek’s eyes glinted, the golden pupils turning a dark amber color for but a moment. “Because, Princess, that isn’t a lie. It’s the truth. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but I promise you, it will become true.” Despite the distance, Luna felt her body shudder miles away in Canterlot as she met Tirek's malevolent gaze. “Lying about it in my dreams would mean I wouldn’t expect it to actually happen.”
“It is true that telling a lie in the dream world is not easily done,” Luna said levelly, staring him down. “But not impossible. Especially not for someone like you, Tirek.”
Tirek held a hand to his chest. “Why, Princess, your praise really knows no bounds, does it?” He laughed while Luna scowled harder. Before she could rise from her seat, Tirek held up his hand and directed her to be seated. “But I think we’re through with formalities now, don’t you agree? I wouldn’t want to keep you waiting.”
“The dream world has no concept of time.”
“Nor does Tartarus. But I suppose you’re not one to remain in either for too long, are you, Princess?”
She stared at Tirek with a disapproving glare that would drill into the souls of mortals, but only made Tirek smile wider.
Luna finally broke her gaze, looking to the sky above, a dead sky where the stars didn’t shine. “I did not come for this. I have a question, and you will answer it for me.”
He waved a hand to her, pulling out a king from his deck. “Well, get on with it then. Solitare isn’t a game for two, after all.” He set his card down and smirked with a self-satisfied grin.
“What brought you to Equestria, so long ago, to steal our magic?”
He paused, finger laid bare atop his deck. Slowly, he withdrew a new card: the joker.
“‘Is he just a monster, a creature of pure evil who cares about no one but himself,’ the Princess wonders?” Tirek laughed, mulling over his choices with his new card.
Luna rolled her eyes. “I assumed something along those lines.”
Tirek gave the merest hint of a shrug. “So, what if it is? You ponies don’t have much of a habit at understanding your enemies. You banish or imprison them. What does it matter what happens to them afterwards?”
“That isn’t—”
“True?” Tirek said, a devilish grin spreading on his lips. “Looks like we have different perspectives of the truth. Already off to a beautiful start, aren’t we, Princess?”
Luns stamped her hoof on the table, causing several of Tirek’s neat rows of cards to become uneven. “Answer me! I did not come here to play cards or debate our actions!”
“But Princess, the truth is all around you.” Tirek held up his hands at either side and spread them wide apart. “You are merely blind to it.”
“What are you prattling on about?”
Tirek crossed his arms over his chest and sighed. “Maybe I’m not being clear enough. When I mean the truth is all around you, I meant that literally.”
Luna blinked, then swiveled her head, taking in her surroundings, searching for what she could be missing in the miles of desolate sand. Glaring back at Tirek, she asked, “Is this supposed to be some type of joke?”
“Depending on your perspective, yes, it could be.” Tirek looked up from reorganizing his neat rows back to Luna, whose glare was becoming more and more hostile. “I’m guessing you don’t understand the meaning of my dream yet, do you?”
Luna held still for a few moments, then her ears drooped down slightly and she nodded. “A dream is the thoughts, the memories, the visions of the unconscious mind, but yours is naught but a wasteland. There is nothing here to be seen.”
Tirek barked out a laugh. “Then you obviously need to brush up on your history, Princess. How could you not recognize this place?”
“The deserts of this world interest me little.”
Tirek slapped a hand against his forehead. “Oh, my mistake! I forgot, of course you wouldn’t recognize these lands, Princess. It was before your time, after all.”
Luna rubbed a hoof against her muzzle, groaning through gritted teeth while Tirek snapped in realization and placed a new card in a row.
“Before my time, Tirek? Not many things are before my time. So what could you possibly mean by that?”
“Just look for yourself, Princess,” Tirek whispered. He slammed another card on his row, already halfway through with his game.
Luna glanced down, noticing snowflakes falling one by one on the tabletop. Looking about, she saw how snow now covered what was once the wasteland. Blizzards so powerful they could flay the skin off raged all around her. The world was naught but ice and darkness, the coldest pit of existence in this world or any other. Even though she couldn’t feel the cold herself, Luna still shivered. It was like she was in the heart of a violent, icy force unlike any other, that only wished to freeze all sources of warmth in this world.
“Welcome to your homeland, Princess. The ponylands of old.”
Just as suddenly as the first time, the icy plane of a hellish experience disappeared, replaced with the desert from before.
“This… this can’t be all that’s left of it, can it?” Luna whispered.
Tirek snorted under his breath. “Oh, it is, Princess. It is. When the warring pony tribes originally left their homeland, they did so because of the Windigo threat. Their collective hatred and spite for one another drew the malevolent spirits of ice here, and when the ponies left, they took all the remaining magic of these lands with it. Without magic and left to the will of the Windigos, these lands decayed and turned to ruin, becoming the wasteland you see today.” He chuckled bitterly, glaring at his card rather than Luna. “A wasteland I used to call home, just as your ancestors before you did.”
Luna returned her attention to Tirek. “This was your home?”
“Not just my home. It was my kingdom. I ruled over the outcasts, the exiles, the ones the ponies deemed to be too hideous or ugly to fit into their xenophobic society. They drew to me, and in turn, I took care of them.” Tirek pursed his lips, tapping his chin for several seconds before shrugging and placing his card on another row. “Of course, they’re all dead now.”
“Dead? How could they possibly be dead?” Luna asked.
Tirek arched a brow at her. “Freezing to death, starving, being lost in wilds only to be consumed by many a hungry beasts when they tried to enter Equestria but were instead driven back by the xenophobic pony settlements. Oh, I could go on, but I’m sure you would get bored if I only listed things that killed a thousand of my subjects.”
Luna shook her head. “But… but… ponies would never do such a thing. We’re not like that.”
“Says the species that were close to collectively dying off when three races couldn’t get along. If it took so long just for your kind to not hate each other, try to imagine how long it would take them to not hate other people who are nothing like themselves.”
Luna rose. “I refuse to believe that. Certainly, ponies have had their problems before when it comes to relations with other races, but I cannot accept the fact we let an entire kingdom die off because they were different.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Tirek muttered, already back to the game at hand.
“What was that?”
“Well, from a certain troublesome draconequus, I learned about a little spectacle that happened during a big wedding day. The invasion of Canterlot, was it?” Tirek held up a card, chuckled, then laid it alone on the table: a queen. “Changelings tried to take over, I presume? Their queen needed your nation’s love supply to feed her people?”
“Yes, and she was driven out and exiled from Equestria to the Badlands for her crimes,” Luna said.
“Ah, but what became of her, I wonder?” Tirek asked, crossing his arms while a deviously smug grin appeared on his cheeks as he leaned back. “Changelings need love to survive. If she attacked Equestria, the most powerful nation in the world, she must have been desperate indeed. I wonder how much love there is in the wasteland?” Tirek leaned forward, a gleam in his eye. “They starved to death, Princess. Every single last one of them.”
“You can’t know that.”
“No, I suppose I don’t.” Tirek shrugged, reaching for the next card in his deck and revealing it to Luna: an ace. “Besides, it is much easier to tell yourself you did the right thing when you don’t have to see the bodies, isn’t it?” He smiled wickedly, the dimness of his dream world flashing a brilliant red for but a second.
Graves. Hundreds upon thousands of them, as far as the eye can see. Some sat, half-sunken in the ground; others rose up, towering over them like trees of stone. Here and there, the stone was carved, but the names were long since lost, claimed by wind and sand and rain.
Crows drifted in the air, flying down to dig at the countless graves for the departed occupants under the dirt. They cawed, hungry for the dead flesh of the untold thousands. As their talons carved through the stone on many of the graves’ headstones, Luna shuddered, the cacophony of the rock grinding and calls for scavenged flesh filling her ears, driving her to the ground.
“Make them go away,” she whispered.
“Sorry, can’t hear you, Princess,” Tirek said, grinning toothily as the columns of cards shrank, his game nearly won. “Might want to speak up louder.”
Luna flipped Tirek’s table out of the way, cards fluttering in the air like leaves from a breeze hitting a tree. She moved right to Tirek’s face, his nose ring nearly touching her muzzle due to their close proximity. “I have done you no wrong! And neither did my sister! I did not come here to be witness of your self-pity!”
“Then what, pray tell, did you come here for, Princess?” Tirek asked, grimacing while baring his fangs at her. “Because if it’s the truth you seek, you have heard it. If it’s the answers you yearn for, I have given them to you. If this is about some type of vindication to assure yourself that your own crimes are nothing like mine, then good luck, Princess, because you’ll never get that answer from me.”
She shuddered, lifting a hoof before deliberately placing it back down onto the sand. Slowly, she took one step back, then another. “No matter what Discord told you about what happened to me, my crimes are nothing compared to yours.”
“And the pot called the kettle black,” Tirek replied, waving his hand in the air. “Nightmare Moon, Lord Tirek, they’re all just titles and names, Princess, and nothing more. The same force drives each of them forward, and this force knows the true reason for their actions.”
“And that would be?”
Tirek bent down slightly so that he could glare into her eyes, his hand clenching into a tightly held fist in front of her face. “Justice. That’s all either of us wanted, wasn’t it, Princess? Evil has purpose, and if that purpose is to enact justice for what they feel they have been wronged of, then so be it. You didn’t come here to figure out the reason for why I did what I did. You already knew that well enough for yourself. Now you’re just wondering why I’m trapped in this perpetual plane of exile while you yourself are free.”
Luna’s expression turned to one of wide open eyes and taught set lip at Tirek’s words.
Tirek arched a brow. “Hit the hammer on the nail now, did I?”
Luna felt her stomach sinking, coldness spreading all across her body. Her original plan to arrive in Tirek’s dreams while he slumbered to assure herself she wasn’t as bad as him had gone terribly awry. In fact, he had the tables turned on her from the very get go. He even made a physical representation of it, and she was blind to it all. Now he was trying to turn her own questions back against her, grinning smugly all the while. It sickened her to see such self-satisfaction come from such a wicked face.
“The only nail you’ve been striking a hammer upon is the sound knowledge that you truly are a despicable creature, Tirek.” Luna sneered, her eyes traveling up his frail form. “Just look at you. Reduced to nothing but skin and bone, yet you’re still so cocky and egotistical. You truly have earned your place in Tartarus; I can’t even imagine someone who deserves to be here more than you.”
“You ever tried looking in a mirror before?” Tirek asked, a teasing smirk encroaching on his lips.
“You ever tried being decent for once in your life?” Luna replied sharply.
“Yeah, I did. Brother betrayed me, all my people turned up dead, my homeland was destroyed, and I was trapped in the very definition of gloom for well over a thousand years,” Tirek said, his tone bored as he soon lost attention even staring at Luna. “So sorry I haven’t taken too kindly to trying that out again for another riveting experience.”
“Your brother didn’t betray you. In fact, he tried to save you by showing you the magic of friendship and harmony. In the end, it was you who betrayed him, not the other way around.”
“Oh, is that so?” Tirek asked, arching a brow. He walked behind her and then circled back around, towering over her a good foot even in his weakened state. “Oh, Discord must have been mistaken then. Clearly, when your sister spoke to you of sunshine and rainbows, you never felt betrayed?”
The question made Luna stagger as if she was struck.
“Not so different after all, are we, Princess?” he asked her, snickering at her open -jawed expression. “But you already knew that, didn’t you?”
Luna blushed, a feat she would have thought impossible in the dreaming world. “I won’t be degraded and insulted by being compared to someone like you, Tirek. Think of me what you like, but Nightmare Moon and I were completely different ponies, while you stayed the same all the way through, even now.”
“Whatever makes you sleep better at night,” Tirek laughed. “As for me, I barely wake up, so you can probably already guess how guilt-free my conscience is.”
“Or perhaps you just don’t want to be reminded of how truly awful your living conditions are and will remain for the next couple of centuries,” Luna said. A warm feeling of pride returned to her and caused her chest to swell up when she noticed Tirek’s smile break like a window and reveal what was truly within his doors. Just rage and annoyance, all directed at her, built up from centuries of loathing and hatred for her and her sister. But beneath it all was a sense of loss that created a hole, so big not even all the magic in Equestria consumed would fill it.
“At least I know where I stand, Princess,” Tirek said, his eyes regarding her with a cold fury. “But you? Too proud to call yourself Celestia’s lapdog, but too much of a whelp to stand up to her without going back like the dog you are.”
“The only dog I see here is you, Tirek. Stuck in your cage like the mutt you are,” Luna snarled.
“At least I know of my prison, Princess. But you?” He snorted, Luna’s looking down to see an iron cuff clasp around her hoof. The chains led up to a dark figure that stood menacingly behind Luna, large and intimidating while Luna was stuck in its shadow. “You can’t even accept how deep the chains hold you back, Princess.”
The cuff, chains, and figure dissipated to dust. Luna huffed out a breath, then another, all the while gritting her teeth as her knees shook.
“Why do you never use my name?” Luna asked, the question both simple yet more complex than she first intended. “You only refer to me by ‘Princess’.”
“Because that’s all you are to me. A title. An object. An empty throne. A pretty little tiara. All these things and more are what you are made up of, Princess. But the pony behind that title?” Tirek leaned forward, his golden eyes glinting like two coins slowly falling towards the bottom of an abyss. “That pony is more worthless than the dust beneath my hooves.”
“I’d rather be worthless than a fool!” Luna replied.
“Me, the fool?” Tirek asked, his laughter booming and echoing in the confines of the dream world which caused it to shake and buckle. Wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, Tirek said, “Yes, yes, I suppose you can see me as that. There’s many a foolish thing I’ve done in my lifetime. Such as thinking you ponies would allow mercy on my people and me and allow some magic to be returned back to our lands so that we may survive.” Tirek frowned. “But I, at least, learned.”
The two stood silent, titans in the field of endlessness they abided in. Time was infinite, the dream world containing the possibilities of the boundless, and the power between the two in this place unlimited. But neither made a single move. They just stared at the other, Tirek's face twisted into a smirk, while Luna’s may as well have been carved from stone.
“So, Princess, I suppose you have what you came here for,” Tirek spoke up, after what seemed like countless hours having passed by. “The truth. Well, at least mine. If that matters to you is yet to be seen.”
“There’s still one thing I don’t get,” Luna said. Tirek didn’t respond except with his lips spreading out further into a fiendish grin. “If I am truly worthless to you as you say, then why tell me any of this at all? The truth, that is? If what you say actually holds true, then what is the point in telling me?”
Tirek’s fangs were noticeably poking out from between his lips, his devilish features positively giddy. “Because it drives a wedge between you and your sister. You begin to question Celestia’s motives, her actions, and whether what she did was truly just or not. And as the questions begin to pry at your conscience, they gnaw at your mind until it’s nothing more than a nub of paranoia.” Tirek blinked, his expression turning to one of nonchalance. “Or you don’t accept what I told you as true, because you can’t handle the truth. You pat yourself on the back for a job well done, comforted in the knowledge you are better than me, and that my evil was truly unjust while your’s was fair. Then you return to the mediocrity of your life, another pawn of your sister’s, having no qualms about being used like you currently have been for the past thousand years or so.” He shrugged, turning his back to her while crossing his hands behind himself. “In the end, I just couldn’t bother to care, one way or the other. It doesn’t matter to me.”
“So, that is your answer then?” Luna asked.
Tirek glanced over his shoulders, Luna’s face reflected in the blackness of his eyes while his pupils glowed like twin suns above her head. “What you should really be asking, what shall be your own answer when the time comes, Princess?”