Chapter 1: A Dream is What You Make of it.

The distinct sound of a phone buzzing slowly brought him out of his light sleep. The man opened his eyes and checked the phone that had stirred his slumber. On the screen was an alarm, stating that it was eleven forty-three, with a message.
Go to sleep, ya dummy.

He yawned and took in their surroundings. He had, once again, fallen asleep in front of his PC. On screen was a paused video, episode four of the third season of My Little Pony. He scratched at the scroll wheel till he had found where he last remembered in the video and minimized the tab, then quickly closed the fan wiki tabs that were also open. No need to look at that tomorrow, after all. Content with the state of his computer, he leaned back in his chair and yawned, blinking away some of the sleep from his eyes, stretching in his leather desk chair. "It's not as good the last two seasons so far, but the guys on the site say it gets better. Maybe I should surf through some Fics for a while?"

His random musings were put on hold, however, when his phone began to vibrate again. He glanced down at the phone again, and stared at the screen with apathy. A second alarm had been set for eleven fifty, bearing another message.
I know what you're thinking, and it can wait till morning. Go to bed.

"Well, I guess I can't really argue with that. Good night past-me." He switched off the desktop, and began going up the stairs. He tripped on the way up, falling back to the hallway below.

"Right then, I'll sleep on the couch tonight," he muttered to his empty house, mentally cursing the darkness. Instead, he went over to the living room and flopped down onto the couch. He pulled up the spare blanket. Once comfortable, he opened up his phone and checked through emails for a few minutes. Then, naturally one final alarm went off.
Turn it off and go to sleep, you've got a lot of things to do tomorrow.

"I must be psychic, and it's getting annoying." He sighed and switched off his phone, hooking it up to a nearby charger before setting it down on the coffee table. As he waited for sleep, his eyes slowly shifted to stare up at the moon through the adjacent window. The silvery, crater-covered landscape was the last sight he saw before drifting off to sleep.

▪=//=▪

He shifted on uncomfortable bedding, several small and rigid somethings poking into their stomach and thighs.

'Mmmugh, did I eat pretzels on the couch again?'

Blearily, he opened his eyes and yawned. "Good mor...ning... eh? What in the wo*yawn*~rld? Wow, I have a nice contralto this morning."

Fully awakened by the odd sound of his own voice, he began to look around. The light was strange, strangely silvery and bright; despite the brightness, the walls and ceilings were shadowed, made of bare stone and built to great heights. Shards of metal and stone littered the floor, glinting, and here and there, gaps in the ceiling let in the light of the full moon. He blinked, stunned to see the dilapidated room remain.

"Uhh?" He craned his head back. A midnight-black spire, of such strange geometries as to seem of no specific distance, blocked the sight of the night sky through the hole-riddled roof. "Huh," he said, turning his gaze to a door, and the black spire moved- "Oh, hang on." He peered up at his forehead, and the "black spire" appeared to originate from his skull. Gingerly, he reached up to poke it, and a slender, black, fingerless appendage performed the action. "Well, we're getting more interesting." He looked down to his shoulder, which was a fair distance farther than he remembered it being. Beneath his ruined red shirt was silky black fur. He let his arm drop to the ground, palm down, and was greeted with a muffled *Clop!* noise.

"Horn, hoof, black fur... An interesting direction were going in so far," he mused aloud. He turned his head to look over his back. Sprawled out on the floor was a pair of black feathery wings extending from his spine. "Oookay, so Alicorn. Little pretentious, but it's a dream." He sighed and shook his head. Stars danced at the edges of his vision. He stopped, suddenly, as he realized those stars weren't from a bout of dizziness, but were actually there.

He looked back over his shoulder once more, looking past the twitching wings. Where black fur ended, a cloud of night sky billowed far too dramatically in the barely existent draft.

"Black fur and night sky hair, that can really only be one character, huh?" he got up from their relaxed position and wobbled over to the shattered window. "One step at a time, and I won't fall to the floor..." he muttered, and before he knew it, he had made their way across the room, smacked into the wall, and fell to the ground. "Right, I got long legs," he sighed as he rubbed his nose ineffectively with a hoof. "Mmkay, let's get a look at me."

The window did not do a very good job at reflecting his image. It did, however, pick up on the glowing teal slitted eyes. "I got cat eyes, neat, but freaky. And, that also means I'm Nightmare, shame, I'm really more of an Octavia kinda guy." The dark Alicorn mused. "Wonder if I'm alone in here... Hey, Luna, are you there?"
...
...
"Okay, so I'm probably alone in here, that's good." The mare sighed in relief. "Wait, mare?" he stuck his head between his forelegs, a certain piece of anatomy, present or not, was obscured by their tattered jeans. Balancing carefully on three legs, he felt around manually for something he suspected wasn't there. "Frick... Only in a dream would this crap happen..." Groaning in defeat, she sat down on her haunches, only to feel something sharp and irritating.

She stood back up and flicked heir tail at the irritant. something small and shiny bounced away. "Neat, it works in its own! now, what're you?" She lowered her head to the ground, peering at the tiny sliver of blue metal, less than an inch from her face. She poked it with a hoof. "Metal, Is this a fragment of Nightmare's armor? That could be magic as fuck! Wait! I'm Nightmare, I'm magic as fuck!" She gasped in realization, and excitedly sat back down on her haunches and clapped her forehooves, with her wings flapping happily of their own volition, As a side effect, this finished ripping the poor old shirt off her body."Aww, that was my favourite... I guess it was already ruined. Silver lining, I get to fly in this dream!" Getting back to the task at hand, or hoof, as it were, she looked for a suitable target to magic, found a palm sized rock, and focused on it.

Nothing happened. "Maybe, imagine picking it up with a hand?" The stone refused to move. "Uhh, okay, come at it like a gamer perhaps? Imagine picking it up by holding A?" She mentally pressed the button on the controller. A few useless sparks lit up around the base of her horn. "Ooh? A reaction that time, right track at least." She repeated her actions, but focused harder. Sparks, followed by her horn suddenly being engulfed in dark blue light. The rock was wrapped in a dark blue aura, shook twice, and then just- reduced. Surprised, her concentration broke, and the condensed stone exploded into dust. "A... A bit too much power there..."

The next rock she touched only snapped in half. "Uhh, progress?" The dark Alicorn kept this up until she cold simply hold something, without it exploding. Next, she went for a test of strength. "If I can dustify small rocks, what's the heaviest thing I can pick up?" A collapsed pillar was the target. Surprisingly, she found she was able to lift it, a total of three feet off the ground with no strain, but found it very difficult to move around.

"So then, I'm a powerhouse, but I have no fine control. Now then, back to you." She gently picked up the fragment of metal in their magic. "You are likely super magical, so you're coming with me," she decided. She was then struck by the thought that this might not be the only piece clinging to them. She looked down at her barrel, and the scraps of cloth that hung from it. "Mm, yeah, the clothes have to go, Ponies don't wear clothes anyway." After struggling with her torn jeans, she shook out her ruined apparel, and was rewarded with ten more similarly sized splintered pieces of metal.

She laid out all the pieces she had in a neat line, counting up their meager amount. "This... can't be all of it, can it?" An odd idea passed through their mind, and she went with it. The Alicorn of darkness shook like a wet dog and waited for the sound of the metal dancing across stone. When all was said and done, she had enough of the fragments to fill a twenty ounce bottle. "I hope I can find a use for this stuff, be a shame if I was wasting valuable dream time." She laughed at her own joke, slightly off-put by her change in pitch. "And I should probably get used to the fact that I'll be a mare for the rest of the night. Might as well embrace it for now, it'll make for a funny story in the morning." She piled the fragments on a patch of shirt cloth, and tied it closed, then she put that into the mostly intact pant leg, and tied it around her neck. She found that tying knots without fingers and poor magic skill was hell.

"Now then, what should I do now? I'm kinda curious how this version of Ponyville would greet me... no I'm not, they would definitely run around like headless chickens, since I'm an antagonist... I can't stay here, Ponies come here all the time, despite the Everfree. I guess I could go find a cave?" Finding no better option, she walked out the door, and wandered the long abandoned hallways till she found a suitably sized hole in the wall.

Once she was outside the castle walls, she trotted through the woods, looking for rocky terrain. Like in any dream, when you go looking for something, it either never appears, or it appears in ten seconds. She smiled as the ladder made itself known. "Now then, to find one that is empty... way to jinx yourself." She stopped at the mouth of the cave and sighed.

"Well, I am Nightmare, maybe whatever I find will be afraid of me? That, or I'm sure I can use my Alicorn strength TK to defend myself." She braced herself and entered the lightless cave anyway. The cave wasn't very deep, and had a massive pool at its center. Not suitable to live in, but it did have an assortment of gems embedded in the walls. She grasped one of them in her magic and pulled, but instead of the wall releasing it's prize, it powderized. "Damn, can't magic them out, apparently. What else could I do?"

The mare sat before a wall covered in the valuable stones, tapping her hoof to her chin in thought. She went through her memories, looking through Nightmare Moon's debut for any tricks the fictional character had performed that she might replicate. "Well... she did crush the elements with her hooves, and Alicorns are supposed to be super strong, maybe I can just punch them out? That sounds so stupid..." She looked between her bare hooves and the wall. Several seconds of indecision passed. "Fuck it, it's a dream!" She threw a left hook at the wall and squeezed her eyes shut.
Cra-a-a-ackk!
The alicorn looked at the wall in shock. Her limb had sunk a good three inches into the now spiderweb cracked stone. "I am somewhat amazed that worked... oh well." She shrugged the detail off as dream logic, and threw another punch.

Once she had fully unearthed the stones, she put them between her wings and walked out of the cave.

In the next earthen hole over, all she came across was a flat wall just beyond the mouth of the cave. "That's... not what I was expecting." The next cave yielded similar dead end results. The one after that was inhabited by a family of snakes. "Thank God they’re all asleep," She whispered to herself as she crept back out into the forest.

The seventh cave she came across was similarly inhabited, but by a much larger reptile. And the owner of the cave did not seem too happy to see her, as it glared down at her from atop it's horde. "A-ah, pardon the intrusion, I didn't know anyone lived here, I'll just leave you to your horde... with a gift." she added after the great dragons gaze narrowed. She carefully reached back and grabbed one of the gems in her jaws, then placed it down and rolled it over to him. He nodded at her, and she let out a sigh of relief. Then an idea struck.

"One other thing, a handsome dragon such as yourself must know the area. Would you happen to know of any nearby caves that are, unoccupied?" She asked as she put three more gems down. The dragon scratched his chin in thought then snapped his arm sized fingers. "I do believe I know just such a location..." The dragon was surprisingly well spoken. The reason the cave was currently empty was that it was quite close by to his, and he did not want any creature trying to move into his territory. "But, for a generous Pony such as you, whom had the good manners to apologize for waking me, I believe I can make an exception."

"Why, thank you good sir, you honor me. Might I ask your name?"

"Flint, m'lady."

"Thank you Sir Flint, I promise to try and be a respectful neighbor." She gave him a half bow, which he returned. Just to be kind, she gave away two more crystals before leaving Flint's cave, then allowed herself a little victory jig.

"Okay, new home found. Yay!" It was a good twenty minute walk from Flint's to the abandoned cave that she planned to take up residence in, and by the time she had finally gotten there, the sun was on the rise. She stepped into the cave, and was about to use her horn for light, when she realized she could see perfectly fine. "Oh, right, night vision. Handy!" She went all the way into the back of the L shaped cavern. It was spacious, but only enough so for a single person. Well, one of her size, anyway.

She sighed. "I was hoping for something a bit better, since I paid for it and all. But I'm in a friendly dragons territory, couldn't really ask for better protection, I suppose." She removed her makeshift carrying sling and put it down on the cave floor, and then lay down beside it. She then went back to practicing magic to pass the time.

"This is getting boring..." She thought aloud as she lifted up the rock, and flicked it at the wall for the fortieth time. It clattered off to the side, as she tracked it with her eyes. She picked it up again, rotated it, and launched it once more. "Wonder if I should go out and get some food?"

zip, Clack!

"With the amount of force I can pull off, I'm sure I could fire any pebble or twig like a bullet."

zip, Clack!

"Or maybe I should sneak over to Sweet Apple Acres, try some of the best apples in the world."

zip, Clack!

"Then again, This is a dream, eating and drinking have no value here."

zip...

"Hmm?" She flicked her ears forward, and waited for the sound of the rock hitting the cave floor, but it never came. curious, she picked up another rock, and launched it in the same direction. Zip... Tick,tack,tic-tktc. "That's odd... the cave doesn't go that far." She got to her hooves and approached the cave wall cautiously. She peered at the stone surface with a scrutinizing gaze, searching for any holes that might lead to a second chamber. She found none, but those rocks had to have gone somewhere. Ever so slowly, She poked the wall with a forehoof, And felt some resistance. Not the amount one would expect from a solid stone wall, more like a taut sheet of cloth as it shimmered.

She pushed her limb through the barrier, and fell through the wall as a result. After regaining balance and dusting herself off, she looked up and froze. The cavern around her was covered in patches of hardened black material, around the room was globs of green goo, and broken cocoons affixed to the walls and ceiling.

"This is either an alien hive, or a changeling outpost. Which begs the question, when in the timeline am I?" She wondered aloud as she crept into the main chamber. From the middle of the room she could see seven perfectly round holes, of varying sizes, each presumably leading to a different room, some had degraded changeling resin over them, and one of them was glowing a strangely eerie shade of pink. Deciding to start with the most exciting one, she pressed herself against the wall and peeked around the corner. On the roof were a couple dozen burst pods, their contents now pooled on the chamber floor, creating an enormous pool of liquid love. "Where the hell did he get all of this?!" She gaped as she stepped fully into the chamber and stared out at the picturesque view. She stayed for a few minutes, then turned and left.

She went with the next closest aperture, it was wide enough for three creatures of her size to go through side by side. She was greeted with the sight of a very large cavern, the floor smoothed out with cut stone and hardened changeling resin. Several scars ran across the cavern floors and walls. Some of them appeared to have been carved with heavy swings of weaponry. A few of them were darker, and the surrounding rock surface was slightly melted, likely magical in nature. A few Pony shaped indents in the far wall had a solid mat black substance that seemed to follow basic equine anatomy embedded in them. "Uhh, combat training room? I'll uhh, clean it up later?"

She went across the main chamber, to a hole that clearly was not for one of her stature, as she had to squeeze through. This room contained some sparsely populated shelves of books. She skimmed the titles, which were written in a language strangely identical to English. "A brief history of Ponyville and it's Traditions, Caring for Your Newborn, Local Legends; The Everfree and it's wonders, Pegasus Weather Patrol Guidelines, and Ten Steps to Land the Pony of Your Dreams? Changeling libraries are weird, these aren't even in any kind of order!"

She grabbed one at random, with her mouth, to avoid total destruction, and set it on a raised surface that might be a changeling desk or table. When she pulled away from it to read the title, she winced at the indentations left on the cover. "Sharp teeth, gotta be careful with those... Anyway, Thirteen Signs Your Crush Likes You Back ... no, Im trying again." She grumbled as she kicked the tome aside, and went back to the shelves. "My First Spell, a guide to training your filly or colt in the ways of magic. Why not?"

She carefully manipulated the hard back cover open with a hoof, and began reading. "Why would the changelings even have this?" The first chapter was dedicated to TK, and it's finer control. After struggling through those pages her using hooves, mouth, and her horn as a blunt instrument, she was finally able to use her magic to turn the pages without fear of destroying the book. The one she had brought over before did not care nearly as well when used as practice.

After a little review of the basics, and learning how to properly limit the amount of power she was putting into a spell, she was starting to get bored of the book. But before she closed it, she took notice of all the imperfections in the book. On every other page, scratched in lines littered the margins. She looked closer at them, and recognized a sort of pattern, and how the markings were all in a dark, blue-green ink. "Is this changeling script? Dang dream, way to add in the details."

She went back to the shelves, every single book had little notes written in here and there in the foreign script. "Who knows what kinda stuff is written in here?" She thought aloud as she skimmed yet another odd scroll. This one pertained to patrol routes in English, and had circles and arrows drawn all over it, pointing out key details.

As she placed it back, a newer book caught her eye, at the very end of the shelf was a book entitled, "Glamour spells, Cosmetic perfection and an actors best friend." The tome was overstuffed with extra paper, each page filled with blue green ink in an unreadable language. "Oh-ho-ho-ho~ So he were comparing unicorn magic to their own? makes sense, now I really wanna know what this stuff says."

She scanned the room for anything that might be of value, and eventually found what appeared to be a bundle of flat Chitinous plates. Inscribed on them was the English alphabet, and above it, presumably the changeling alphabet. "Jackpot!" She cheered with a hoof pump. Nightmare's replacement giddily bounced back to the desk, and set the bundle down. "I'll save you for later~" She cooed, then walked out of the library. "Gotta make sure I'm actually alone in here."

Finally off of the research tangent she had accidentally indulged in, she snuck over to the next hole. This one had the appearance of an armory, one that had been ransacked anyway. Helmets, swords, and other implements of offence and defence littered the floor. Only one of the pony shaped mannequins actually had armor on it, three legs and a chestplate, the rest was scattered.

"Someone left in a hurry, but the question would be why? Am I passed the wedding?" The empty room said nothing in reply. She picked up a helmet and set it on the display, studying it all the while. It looked like nothing more than a small unicorn guard’s helmet; too small for her. Nothing else was of any particular interest; everything was "one size fits all," and she did not fit that size. There were some tools for maintenance of the equipment, so she arrayed them on a counter for later perusal.

The following chamber also proved devoid of occupants. There was old, decayed changeling goo covering the entrance, and the floor was covered in a soft green moss, but was otherwise empty. Barracks or storage, perhaps.

The next hole she passed through opened up into a long, curving tunnel. She spent a few minutes trotting down the path, following the dark, smooth walls. Every now and then, the uneven structure would shrink, and she would have to lower herself to fit through, but the path then continued on, wide enough for changelings to march two abreast (or four, if some took the ceiling). Eventually, she found a fork in the path. One end was caved in, with cracked, black, chitinous legs littering the ground beneath the collapse.

"I guess I know what happened to the occupants of my new home then." Nightmare mused."I probably shouldn't use that name..." Shrugging to herself, she turned and followed the second path, which began to gradually slope upwards. Eventually, she found herself popping up behind a bush, within the forest once more. "Escape tunnel, cool, I'll have to hide it better later."

She looked around for landmarks, finding an old, grey tree amidst the smooth brown bushes, dead brown leaves and rough brown trees of the forest. And memorizing its location in relation to the hole. "Lets see what's around here the-" A high-pitched, dog deafening scream rang out to her left. She startled, before sighing and turning in the direction of the noise and running.

What she came across, was not quite what she was expecting. A massive green cloud of insects buzzing away over a saddle bag filled with food; what food exactly, she couldn't tell, as it and much of the surrounding area was thick with webbing. She paused at the edge of the presumably massive spider's nest, and watched the swirling cloud of buzzing wings. Her assumptions were then thrown out the window when a single flying insect spat out a glob of spider silk more than ten times it's body mass, covering the hollow of a nearby tree.

"Flying spiders, that swarm… spider bees? WTF dream, that's like, all the badness." Nightmare shook her head to banish her creeping arachnophobia, and searched the small clearing for the source of the noise. On the opposite side of the arachibees' influence was a cave mouth, and if she strained her ears, she could just make out the irritated grumblings of people over the din of thousands of insect wings.

Nightmare sat there on her haunches, at a loss as for what she was supposed to do, until a single flying spider landed on her nose. They were tiny little creatures, green in colour, with red accents and four beady red eyes. The possessed a single pair of insect wings, and it buzzed them agitatedly at her, half a second before sinking it's fangs into her muzzle. The pain was not unlike a bee sting; make that a pair of bee stings. Nightmare let out a surprised whimper, reared back on her hooves and lit her horn. The winged arachnid went from annoying little pest to glob of smashed bug juices in less than a second in her aura.

The buzzing stopped sounding so random, and when she looked up to see why, her eyes shrank to pin pricks. Now instead of flying around their new territory, the swarm was all looking at her. She once again relied on instinct, and her magic flared. The larger mass of the swarm was compressed into a ball of exoskeleton bits and ichor, while the outer fingers of the cloud buzzed with anger. She found herself covered from head to tail an instant later. She squeezed her eyes shut and curled up into a ball, trying to ignore the multitude of angry welts being added to her entire body. Then, there was a pulse from her body, and the buzzing fell silent. She dared to open an eye.

The spiders were still alive, probably, they were simply now lying on the floor, twitching, with a nebulous blue swirling in their eyes.

"Th-the fuck did I do just now?" She whispered. One of the incapacitated creatures twitched from its position on her ear, and she bolted upright. She shook her entire body curiously till she was clean of the little monsters, then hurriedly strutted over to the cave, keeping an eye on the downed swarm. She kicked away the spider ball on her way over. She didn't turn around until she was sagely within the natural shelter.

"P-princess Luna?" The shaky voice of Sweetie Belle asked.

Nightmare jumped, then quickly calmed herself before speaking. "Not quite." She answered, turning her head to look at the fillies. The three of them took a good long look at her bug bite riddled form before beginning to tremble.

"N-N-N-Nigh-!!" The yellow earth filly, Apple bloom, stuttered, looking upon the mare with horror.

"The Shadow Pony?!" The little white unicorn, Sweetie Belle shivered in terror.

"Nightmare Moon!" The orange pegasus filly shouted, standing between Nightmare and her friends, shaking like a leaf.

"Oh none of that! I'm off work right now and I would appreciate it if we didn't act like I was on the clock!" The three of them froze, out of fear and confusion at her statement. Mentally, the mare was going over the words she had just blurted out and screaming in confusion.

Nightmare focused back on the three fillies, who still looked at her with fear, but who now looked equally confused.

"W-What?" Scootaloo croaked.

"You three are acting odd! I mean, the news definitely should have gone around by now, but you're acting like I'm going to eat you." She waved a hoof in the air dismissively.

"E-eat u-us?!"Sweetie bell shivered as she stared at the Alicorn’s mouth.

"Wait, you actually think I do that? Ew, no." Nightmare gagged.

"S-so, your not gonna eat us?" Scootaloo asked carefully.

"That was a joke, so no." The alicorn said with a raised eyebrow. "I am told my sense of humor is dark, I apologize. Now then, what are you doing out here, don't you fillies know it's dangerous?" The Nightmare chastised with a "Tsk, Tsk."

The CMC stared up at her with a mix of confusion, a hint of shame, and a spoonful of fear. "B-but... How are you even here? The Elements should have destroyed you!" Apple bloom came near to shouting.

Nightmare gave a long suffering sigh. "I told you, I'm off work right now." She looked around the edge of the clearing, until spotted Canterlot mountain. "Alright, since I don't trust the forest to simply let you be, I'm going to make sure you three get back to town safely, and avoid you getting turned into a chew toy. You've got two options: ride, or walk," she offered as she laid down next to them.

The three fillies shared a silent conversation, and politely shook their heads. "Th-that's alright, uhh, miss Nightmare, b-but we can make it back on our own."

"Walk it is then." The dark Alicorn noded, standing up and waiting for the fillies to start moving.

"Th-that's... not really what we mean-"

"My presence in this escort is non-negotiable, for everypony's safety. Relax, I'm the least of your problems at the moment, whether you believe me or not." She turned, walked a few steps, looked back at the still motionless ponies, and tilted her head in the direction of town.

▪=//=▪

The crusaders walked in fearful silence, but Nightmare would turn and check to make sure the cmc was still following behind every few steps. The forest was usually safer than everypony gave it credit for; going in was usually perfectly safe. Today, of course, they found everything that they could have been afraid of. Maybe leaving the path had something to do with it. The tension was palpable; even if they tested their luck by scattering, Nightmare would certainly be able to find them, and they had no idea what she wanted. Eventually, something had to break.

"Aahh, Mrs. Nightmare?” Apple Bloom inquired, “What do ya mean you're 'not at work'?"

"Apple bl-!" Scootaloo began, but to her surprise, the Nightmare did not get angry, responding matter-of-factly.

"It means what it means, I'm not at work right now. I was just sitting at home reading before I heard you shouting for help." Technically the truth.

"W-what's your job?" Sweetie Belle asked.

"Ah, well,” she stammered, seemingly embarrassed. “Currently... I'm unemployed... Although I am trying researching ancient and unknown languages," She provided happily.

"Then, what was your last job?" Scootaloo asked.

"..." The Nightmare paused for a moment, tilted her head to the side as she thought about how to word it. "I... haven’t actually been properly employed for years. My last job was as a grocery store clerk, but that was when I was a teenager. After that, I was a computer graphics student, and there weren’t any good jobs in the area, and I didn’t have a car, so I didn’t go further.” Nightmare paused. “I wish I’d gotten one, though, because I had to move back in with my parents, and most employers wanted more work experience.”

No one said anything for a while, after that odd answer. The dark Alicorn turned at the sight a large patch of blue flowers, leading the fillies around it.

"So, what do you like to do?" Sweetie asked after a while.

"I like calligraphy." The Nightmare replied.

"...Huh?"

"That and... umm, don't laugh." The Nightmare pleaded. "Okay I like... Collecting stamps." She admitted with a slight blush.

The CMC gaped at Nightmare. The Nightmare Moon, infamous evil alter ego of Luna, was embarrassed of her hobbies, and had once held normal-sounding jobs.

"That... was not what ah' was expecting." Apple Bloom admitted.

"I-in a good way or a bad way?" The alicorn inquired. The CMC continued to be baffled at the mare, not even being remotely shocked when the edge of the forest came into view.

Nightmare sighed, slowing down and realizing that they weren’t going to answer her question. "This looks like where we part ways, goodbye little fillies." She said, bowing to them respectfully as they came out into the open, while the Nightmare stayed within the treeline.

"Uhh, goodbye miss Nightmare?" Scootaloo offered.

"We, hope you find a job that you're happy with?" Sweetie Belle half asked.

"One where no one gets hurt, and lines up with your interests." Apple Bloom finished.

"Thank you,” Nightmare replied. “It’s refreshing to have a pleasant conversation once in a while. Before you three leave, though, what were you even doing out here?"

"Well, Applejack and everypony went off ta find the writer of the Daring Do books, and that got us thinkin’, so we were tryin' ta find our cutie marks, in exploring..." Apple Bloom looked off to the side, scuffing her hoof on the ground.

"You got lost almost immediately, didn't you?" Nightmare deadpanned.

"N-no, we were exploring! We just uhh, didn't know when the exploration was gonna end!" Scootaloo defended, exuberantly but unsurely.

"Riiiiiiight. Run along now, I'm heading home, and make sure you have a guide next time," Nightmare said, before turning and walking back into the forest.

"Are we... telling our sisters about this, or not?" Sweetie Belle asked her friends.

"Ah' think… ah think that it would be a good idea." Apple Bloom Decided.

"Even though we went into the Everfree, without adult supervision, and nearly got eaten by a swarm of flyders, and then got saved by Nightmare Moon?" Scootaloo asked.

The other two began sweating at the details of the story, but nodded. "We're still going to have to, even if we get grounded for it."

▪=//=▪

"There is no way anyone would believe them, and even if they did, I just have to wake up." Nightmare thought aloud, a habit she might just have to fix one day. "Now then, where was that tree..."

Chapter 2: A Dream is Worth a 1000 Words (If you read them all)

View Online

"I know it was around here somewhere…" Nightmare was poking around in the bushes. She had found her way back to the tree, or at least, she thought she did. It was a tree in a forest, after all. She had taken an indirect path back, fearing that the winged spider things had recovered, and was almost certain she was lost.

"Maybe I should just make my way back to Flint's cave," she thought aloud. She sighed heavily, and walked through the bush, intent on her new goal. "It would probably be easier than trying to find a secret entrance to--" Suddenly, the dirt beneath her hooves gave way, leading her to tumble ungracefully down into the hole she was seeking not moments before. Her fall down the less-than-gentle slope finally came to a halt after multi-meter slide and her face in the dirt.

With an exasperated groan, she pulled her muzzle from the earth, spitting out a goodly amount of loose soil. She scraped her tongue on her teeth to further rid herself of the taste as she ran a hoof through her mane to dislodge any dirt that might have accumulated, but none came. Now, with but a twinge of earthy flavour that she could ignore, she began the walk back to her cave.

"Well, that took a little longer than I thought it would, but I still have a few rooms to check, and I wanna know what they were writing in those books." Nightmare slunk back into the main chamber, with a measure of likely unneeded caution, what with all she found in the tunnel.

Her midnight blue aura gently brushed aside the decayed slime over the next entryway, and she stepped inside. Once past the curtain, she saw a large, weirdly octagonal room. Spread throughout the room on mats in various states of decay, was a seemingly random jumble of items. On one, piled half as high as she was, were hats. Headwear of all kinds, from simple baseball caps to stovepipe tophats, from obnoxiously large and feathery hats that a certain white unicorn would no doubt enjoy, to hoods and bandanas. Next to that one was a pile of kid’s toys, jumbled together with little rhyme or reason, including even deflated balloons. And in the pile next to that, hammers. Just hammers, sledge to ball pin, and one jack hammer leaned against the pile, with a sticky note with a large question mark attached to it.

"Uhh, you and me both buddy… so, this is the room of… stuff? Prop storage? Pony item research?" Nightmare thought aloud as she scanned through a pile of saddlebags, empty of course. She picked out one that was both the least degraded of the bunch, and was able to adjust up to her size. It was a simple set, black dyed faux-leather, with sturdy bindings of the same material. "And now I have pockets."

She wandered the piles, getting a strange sense of being in a convenience store. She then stumbled across a pile that made her gasp. This mound of treasure was separate from the rest, differing in the fact that instead of a mat, it was in a rounded dip in the chamber floor. There was also the fact that it shimmered like gold. That would be because it was gold, gold bits to be exact, and it was easily taller than herself.

"Well, I'm rich. Now if only this was something I could take with me when I wake up, then I'd be living the dream." She sighed. The mountain of equestrian currency stretched back into the recessed wall, and she couldn't gauge the depth. She looked between her newly acquired fortune and her saddle bags floating beside her. "Thats, disappointing." She grumbled, and carefully picked her way back out of the room, careful not to disturb any of the more precarious piles.

"Well, so far so good, what's behind door number seven?"

Husks, two empty husks of changelings, that's what. Their dry carapace had cracked under its own weight, they stood on either side of an actual door, with dull spears that seemed to be made of chitin lying in their hooves. "So this place was obviously important then, and I found the money stash already, so what warrants guards?" Nightmare pressed a hoof up to the aged wood of the door, and pushed gently, the door swung freely on oiled hinges.

Inside was a slightly raised platform with more decayed changeling goo. What once might have been curtains hung like spider silk from the ceiling around it. A full body mirror stood at one end of the room. Another flat surface of shaped chitin desk that she could comfortably sit at. "That, looks suspiciously like a bed, scaled to my size. So, officers quarters? Or maybe royal chambers? Someone big and important stayed here, or it was at least built so they could."

Nightmare walked up to the stone base, and brushed off the rotted remnants of the goo based bed with a pulse of magic. She then turned to stand in front of the large mirror, getting a good look at herself for the first time. Her black muzzle was set in a neutral expression, and her mane, as to be expected, looked like a chunk of the night sky, happily waving in the absent breeze. She dragged a hoof through her mane, marveling at the strange texture of it.

She smiled at her reflection, and winced at the sharp teeth. She tried again without teeth, and found the look to be far less intimidating. "So, first impressions, no teeth, got it."

Once done inspecting her appearance, she skipped back to the library. She scanned the shelves, ignoring the books on dating and other "love" related matters, of which their were quite a few. Eventually she found a promising book entitled "'10 useful everyday spells for unicorns.'"

The first chapter of the book focused on TK, but at a higher reading level, and went into finer uses for the spell, such as manipulation of multiple objects at the same time. "Heh, Mul-TK-tasking~ I can feel the groans." She chuckled to herself briefly, then turned the page and delved back into the book.

▪=//=▪

Applejack was a hard-working pony, always has been. That's why she went straight into the orchards and began bucking trees to make up for the day she spent with her friends, tracking down an author that Twilight and Rainbow were just crazy about. So far, she was making good progress, with twenty-trees cleared in the first five minutes. But at some point she caught sight of her sister with her friends slowly walking away from the treeline of the wicked Everfree forest. Every three steps, the fillies would glance back at the forest, talking quietly amongst themselves.

She shrugged it off, figuring that they were just coming back from a visit to Zecora's, and turned to the next tree that needed harvesting.

Another five trees down. "Hey, uhh, sis?" Apple Bloom suddenly asked from behind her. Applejack turned around and gave the three of them a smile, and winced slightly at the sight of them. Now that she could get a closer look, she could see the multitude of bites that were slowly fading.

"Heya Apple Bloom, girls, did a swarm of flyders move into the path to Zecora's? Is she okay?"

"No, not on the path, we kinda… went on an adventure?" Scootaloo hesitantly informed.

"Ya mean yall have been wanderin around the forest by yourselves? What if yall got lost?" She gave the group a stern look, and the fillies looked anywhere but her eyes.

"We did, for a while, but then somepony came and found us, shooed away the flyders, and brought us back to town," Sweetie Belle said, but AJ couldn't help but feel that she was leaving out a few details.

"Well,there's gonna be consequences for goin out there alone, but I'm glad y'all made it home safe, where is this pony? They deserve a thankin."

"That's the thing…" Scootaloo began.

"Apparently they live in the forest too, so she went home?" Apple Bloom finished when Scootaloo trailed off.

Applejack pondered this for a second. "Zecora got a neighbor? Well, couldja give me their name then, so I can thank em when they come into town next time?"

"It was… uhh...somepony you've met before." Sweetie Belle laughed awkwardly.

"We think it was, well, maybe, possibly, Nightmare Moon?"

"I still think it was the shadow pony." Scootaloo added.

The farm mare narrowed her eyes. "Girls, it ain't kind to go 'round callin Princess Luna, Nightmare."

"But it wasn't her! It really was Nightmare Moon, honest! But she was, nice?"

Applejack looked at the three nodding fillies. "Ah'm, gonna go talk ta Twi'."

▪=//=▪

"Okay, now I just think about placing it on my shelf and…" slowly, the test book Nightmare had been using, turned into little white flakes and pulled together before disappearing. In her mind's eye, what she imagined to be a computer file management system, an item was added to the first slot. With a minor application of magic, the item disappeared and reappeared on the table in front of her. Gently, she picked it up in one hoof, something she had figured out at some point, and held it underneath her wing. Once more, it disappeared, with far fewer special effects.

"Hammer space pocket, check! And if I use 'the motions of putting something away' there is no horn flash." She quickly pumped a hoof into the air, and turned back to the spell book she was reading from. "Lets see, 'the size of one's hammer space pocket is proportionate to ones magic pool,' so, because I'm am alicorn I can probably hold a small house, or a large house." In the next two minutes, Nightmare cleared shelf after shelf of books, papers, tablets, and scrolls, leaving the library empty. "And I still don't feel like I'm straining, guess I estimated about right then! Now I can, oh. Ohoh, ohohohahahaha!" She zipped out of the barren library with a mad gleam in her eyes, making a bee line for the room she had mentally labeled "the stuff room." Various items disappeared from the piles as she passed by, seeking her true goal. With a dim glow from her horn the gleaming mountain of coins began dissolving from top to bottom, she didn't leave a bit behind.

The walking bank cackled with glee, staring into the middle distance while looking at the number displayed in her head. "Five thousand, six hundred and eighty nine bits, and I feel none of the weight! Screw saddlebags, I can lift school busses and keep freight trains in my pockets!" She giggled with manic glee, her horn glowing brighter as the piles of items disappeared from the world.

Gradually, she reeled in her emotions, although a jittery giggle escaped her lips every so often. She wandered back out into the main chamber with a spring in her step. Her eyes were glazed over as she managed the influx of items, labeling some with importance, and filing away others as trash.

She poked her head back through the illusory wall of her cave, spotting her improvised carrying bundle. With a flick of her horn The binding was undone, the metal glinted in the glow of her magic. The shards floated gently over to her, coming to rest in an open jar, before being sealed. She taped a label to its lid before gently moving it into her subspace pocket.

▪=//=▪

A gentle hum carried through the cave, setting the pool of emotion in an adjacent room spinning in response to the positive emotions the sound carried. The Nightmare's starry mane swirled happily around her as her head bobbed to the music she made. Arrayed randomly on her bed of downy blankets, were books. Most of them were books on magic, a few were story books, and the one resting on her forelegs was the time on glamor spells. The section was currently open to coat color alterations. She ran the tip of her hoof along the lines and nodded to herself, finishing up her happy tune. The mirror on the far side of the room gently floated from the wall before her, and with a little concentration, her hoof shifted from black to a deep blue in a shimmering style. She waved her limb before the mirror, watching as sparkles of magic fell from the partial illusion.

"So, unicorn illusions aren't convincing in the least if they're in motion, according to this, as the image lags behind if you move too quickly. Further, partial coat alterations lose magic, due to the spell not being 'closed.'" She dropped the spell, and it drifted away like so many small stars. Satisfied with her progress in the section she flipped a few pages ahead. She hummed thoughtfully as she read the title. "'Aura colors, a unicorns light.' what're you~?"

"A unicorns aura color is a key identifying detail, virtually unchangeable..."

said the introduction. Noticing a bookmark later in, she flipped to it.

"but after much research, award winning actor, Golden Globe discovered a way to take glamor magic a step further. With the help of magical researcher, Gleaming Prism, he stumbled upon a deeper understanding of the Magical Light Spectrum, or MLS. With a simple understanding of MLS, he was able to alter the color of his aura from white to a dazzling blue, enabling him to really become the character he played in the drama 'Luna Bay Police.'"

She skimmed through the rest of the backstory, Gleaning all the necessary info. "Hm, hmm hmm, okay, so, it's a sorcery type of illusion. Well, those are rare here, so I can have my aura be any color in the visible spectrum? Cool!" She glanced over the page again, grinning, and then lifted the mirror once more in her midnight blue aura. In her mind she pulled up a simple color wheel, and dragged it from blue to orange. Her smile grew as she watched the glow developing the mirrors’ frame turn to a nice sunset hue. She put the mirror away and looked back down to the book on her arm. She flicked it closed in a green glow and put it away. With a smirk she closed the rest of the books, using every color in the rainbow, before shifting them into her hammerspace. "That's fun, for a party trick I guess."

She sighed and rolled her head around, her neck giving satisfying pops and clicks as she rose from her bed. "So, I've done magic, reading, playing at the role of a 'hero,' next on the list should be--" she glanced at her back and unfurled her wings, stretching them out to their full length. "--Flying, flying is always fun in dreams."

She sat in the main chamber of her humble abode, looming between the exit tunnel and the door to the training room. She sighed as she weighed her options. "On one hoof," she waved the appendage, smiling at the novelty the phrase currently held. "It would be amazing to fly around outside, feel the wind in my feathers while I got 'em. But on the other hoof, ponies know what I look like; it probably wouldn’t be that hard to see a patch of night sky flying around during the day, so it would probably be safer to stick to the high ceilings in the gym." She looked between her left and right forehooves, as if the decision could actually be weighed.

After some deliberation, she walked through the gymnasium entrance, and took up position in the middle. "Preflight checklist; wings," she stretched them out and found a comfortable position to hold them in. "Check. Forty eight pillows for the inevitable crash landing, ready to deploy. Workout music, sadly lacking. Stretches, I couldn't find a book on them, so skip!"

She widened her stance in anticipation, her wings raised and readied herself. "We're just gonna start with one, nice and even flap." She took in a deep breath, and brought her wings down.

▪=//=▪

Somewhere in Ponyville, a mare was tending to her garden. Three blocks away, Pinkie Pie was starting up a heart song, which would reach her in about half a minute. But all activity in the town ground to a halt when a distant boom rang out from the Everfree. Birds scattered, dogs barked, and Spike sent half a table to Canterlot.

In the following moment, ponies and dragons alike had one question: "What the buck was that?"

And throughout the town, ponies and one dragon were admonished for using such harsh language.

▪=//=▪

The cavern's ceiling was replete with cracks, large chunks of stone falling to the floor, where they then ruptured and covered to floor in gravel. Nightmare hung there, her wings and forelimbs drooping. The rest of her was embedded in the stone, where she coughed twice and sighed. She pressed her hooves into the stone and extracted her head, her coat was caked in dust, and her feathers were far from orderly, but other than that she was fine. Looking about her now thoroughly trashed practice area, she groaned in disappointment.

"Well, coulda been worse, if I was outside, I mighta hit escape velocity." She joked halfheartedly. "Now, what was the title of that book on magical repair, and the one on landscaping?"

▪=//=▪

Nightmare was standing in the one spot that was clean in the room, two books floating in a midnight blue aura around her. Orbiting further away, bits and pieces of rocks of all sizes came together and were then slotted into where they came from, seamlessly repairing small sections of ceiling.

When she had gotten the one third of the room clear, she grew frustrated with how slow the process was. She began roughly packing various stones into holes, and summoned a third book. She flipped through the pages rapidly ‘till she found a suitable spell. She then cast a beam at one of the patched holes, welding the stone together. Now the cavern was stable, so she flipped back to the book on landscaping, and cast again. Shaving away excess stone in the walls to a smooth finish, she used the extra rock to fill in a few of the scars on the floor.

"Okay, finally fixed. That's not something I want to have to do again… and right now I don't think I could." She looked back at her disheveled wings, Her coat and feathers had been rendered a dull grey with all the rock dust they held. "Bath time?" She thought aloud as she exited the room. As she made her way to the exit tunnel, intent on finding a river, her eyes drifted to the glowing pink entrance of another room. She hesitated. "No, bad brain, I'm not going to go bathe in love, that's a stupid idea. Besides, who knows what that stuff does to ponies." She shook her head violently to rid herself of the thoughts.

She walked right out the entrance of the cave, following the gentle decline of the land in search of a river. She had a book in front of her, one on stealth spells. "I can’t keep making such a racket, I am not ready to deal with kill squads running around the forest for me yet," She mumbled to herself as she flipped through page after page of noise suppression charms.

The sound of running water caught her ears around the time she was nose deep in magic concealment enchantments. She flicked the book closed and approached the noise, finding a river that went up to her elbows, or knees of her forelegs. "Fore-knees?" She murmured. Nightmare shook away the questions on equine anatomy, and focused back on task, bathing.

The water looked clear enough, and flowed fast enough for it to not carry anything she might worry about. With a minor grumble she waded into the cool water and layed down. The water was cold, understandably, but that didn't stop her from disliking it. Minor discomfort aside, it was pleasant enough, and it was satisfying to watch all the grime wash away downstream. After acclimating to the water, she noticed that the flow of water was no longer sufficient. With a brief flare of her horn, a bubble of water floated out of the larger mass, she released the blob over her head. Her mane struggled to remain weightless in nature. Reaching into her mane, she withdrew a brush. "Yay, it worked!" She cheered quietly, then set about removing the remaining dirt from her body.

"goodness, Mrs. Bluejay, I hope we find you a good nesting tree soon, we've been out here for an awfully-" something eeep!-ed quietly from the bank of the river.

Nightmare paused, and slowly turned her head. Staring at her, shaking like a leaf, was a butter yellow pegasus, hiding her face behind her long pink mane. Nightmare tensed up immediately. Four trains of thought ran simultaneously through her head while she stared back at the shy pegasus.

'Crap, kids are one thing, but if a full grown adult says they saw Nightmare Moon, I really will be the subject of a witch hunt.'

'Is that Fluttershy? Oh no, an Element Bearer saying they saw Nightmare will get the rest of the bearers organized, and I do not want to find out what it feels like to be zapped by the elements.'

'Oh. My. God! She is so cute! I wanna give her a hug!"

'EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE'

The Nightmare voiced none of these. Very slowly, she backed out of the river, never letting the pegasus leave her sight. She kept low to the ground, backing away from the mare till she was on the other side of the river. "Terribly sorry," Fluttershy jumped and shook harder. "Didn't mean to scare you, sorry, sorry. I'll just leave you to your business, pretend like I wasn't here or anything." She spoke softly and in what were hopefully soothing tones till she was sagely behind a copse of trees. She then resummoned the book on stealth spells, and cast as many as she could.

▪=//=▪

"Applejack, are you sure that your sister is telling the truth?" Twilight asked. Applejack had shown up around fifteen minutes prior.

"Are ya calling us liars?"

"No, I'm not, but are you sure she's sure she saw Nightmare Moon? What if it was just a dark coated unicorn?"

"Who's as tall as the Princess?" The farm mare quirked an eyebrow.

"They were scared, they might not even remember what they saw correctly."

"Well, I suppose you could be right, the way she was talkin about 'em don't sound anything like the Nightmare we dealt with."

Twilight gave her friend a sympathetic smile. She really didn't want to have to send a letter to the princess right now, not after having to apologize for the table landing in the middle of her afternoon tea. Besides, she had a research project she wanted to get back to. She always had time for her friends, but sometimes, a mare just has to push the bounds of science and-

"You guys!" Rainbow Dash suddenly landed at the door.

"Dash? What's the-"

"It's Fluttershy!" She cried, eliciting a round of gasps from the room. "She came barreling out of the Everfree, scared out of her mind. She says Luna's gone crazy again!"

"What?"

"I told ya Apple Bloom saw her!"

"Rainbow dash, gather the girls, I'll write Princess Celestia and find out what's going on. Spike!"

"Ready!" The dragon was standing by, parchment and quill at the ready.

▪=//=▪

Chapter 3: A Dream Can Feel This Realistic, Right?

View Online

Princess Luna was restless in her sleep. After staying up all morning to finish up some of the paperwork that overflowed from night court that had, for once, been busy, she had a relaxing talk with her sister and was looking forward to spending the evening catching up on sleep.

She was having a nightmare.

She never stopped her own nightmares, seeing them as punishment for what she did when carrying the name, but today, she wanted to. It had been close to three years, and she still plagued her dreams. Tonight's dream was slightly different. Instead of being forced to watch as the Nightmare, possessing her once again, destroyed everything she held dear, Luna was in chains, separate. The Nightmare had no further need of her, she was free, free to watch, begging from within cage as the thing defeated each of the Elements of Harmony, one by one.

She was forced to watch, bound to the throne, as the Nightmare and her dear sister did battle in the skies above Canterlot castle.

The Nightmare cackled as it ripped the sun from the sky, and put up its twisted mockery of Luna's moon.

Princess Luna woke with a shout, cold sweat clinging to her frame. It had been a while since she had, had a nightmare that, intense. She decided that she could go without sleep for the rest of the cycle, it was time to go to the Royal kitchens and get a mug of coffee, maybe go and have another chat with her sister, day court was supposed to end at about this time.

▪=//=▪

"I'm so boned," Nightmare said for the thirtieth time. She was frantically emptying the armory, searching for her book on glamor spells. "Where did I put the damn thing? Why didn't I find somewhere else to clean up? Why didn't I just find a spell for it? How long till the main six come busting through my front door? I am so boned!"

She kicked a rock in her frustration, creating a sizeable dent in the cave wall. Taking a deep breath to calm her nerves, she began to pace.

"Okay, calm down, calm down,” she said to herself. “Everything is fine, you've been nothing but nice to ponies since you showed up, maybe they'll just want to talk?" She looked towards the pony mannequin, hoping for support. "Not looking like this, if bunnies panic them… Where the hell did I put that book? I need a good disguise if I'm gonna make it out of this." She threw open the doors to her bedroom, slamming them into the walls, and tore into her pile of blankets in search of the book. All of the effort was to no avail, as it was as though the book simply vanished.

"But it can’t be gone, because it's not in storage! It was here before I went to try my wings. What was I doing before that?" She tapped a hoof to her temple to help jog her memory. "Eye colour changes… Coat colour alterations… Aura colour changes…" her ears flicked at the words, so she focused harder on remembering that passage in the book. "MLS, what did that stand for… Magical Light Spectrum? That sounds right, now why is it important?" She flared her horn, dragging her mirror over to rest before her. She fixed her eyes on the reflected magic, and, after a moment to remember how, shifted her aura from blue to orange.

"Yeah, I remember that much, and then going for a test flight… what happened in between?" She flashed her horn and put away the mirror, then propped herself up on the cold raised stone of her bed. She tapped her back hoof impatiently as she ran through theories on where her missing book had gone.

"Well, I at least have the changeling script translator, right?" She flared her horn to bring out the object in question. It popped into existence and dropped onto the stone in front of her, no worse for wear. "Well, that's good, at least. What about the one on wardings and magical shields?" Her horn flared once more, but the desired book failed to appear. "Fuck! I know I had that thing! I know I put it away, do things stop existing if I go over some unspecified limit? No, that can't be it, can it?" She withdrew the book she had gotten the spell from in the first place, skimming through the pages three times. "No, it is proportional to my magic pool, it doesn't say anything about excess items being lost, just that you start to feel strained if your exceeding your limit, so where…"

Another book popped into existence, this one a school textbook, referencing magical frequency and tracking. She scanned through the pages, looking for relevant spells. "'Starswirl's Arcane Perception,' that sounds right." Light trailed up the fluting of her horn, and her vision blurred. She blinked rapidly to clear the spots from her vision. When the room came back into focus, tiny wisps of colour flirted around the room. The majority of the Magical remnants were blue, but if she could just make out a thin trail of orange leading to the wall, right where the mirror once stood. She followed it backwards, finding a larger ball of orange tinted blue just in front of her. A thin trail of colour flowed from the spot to her.

She looked back over her shoulder, and had to squint at the brightness of her magic. Her entire body glowed a dark blue, but nestled right above the small of her back, was a glowing ball of swirling magic, what the book stated was an active spell if she was reading it correctly. Looking closer she could just make out traces of other colours, tinier orbs of magic orbiting around and passing through the main one. "That, would be my hammerspace pocket, I think? Weird, what're the tiny ones then? Wait…" her horn changed colour, tinting to a forest green, as she looked into her files once more. This time, only one item was found, she summoned it with a pop. The book of glamor spells.

"So then, different colour spells are separate from each other, even if the caster and the spell are the same? That's interesting, mildly aggravating, but might have its purposes." Her horn flared brightly, casting the room in rainbow hues as she emptied and collapsed her redundant storage spells, then piled them all into her main pocket again.

"I suppose I could use that to sort my things, keeping my library separate from my wallet, maybe I--" She looked toward the doors of the room and had to squeeze her eyes shut, lest she go blind. She let a bit of power go from the spell so she could see again. Blinking away the spots from her eyes, she cautiously looked back to the entrance. A massive glowing ball, that was still uncomfortable to look at, of magic blazed like a star come to earth. "Fucking hell, is that the gym? What the fuck!?" She swore as a realization came to her, and she pulled out the book on stealth magic once more. "Gotta clean this up before people see the giant neon sign pointing at me."

Three books later, she found the spell she was looking for in a book on magical fallout and safe casting procedures.

"Large amounts of magic left to sit for extended periods of time can turn wild, lashing out dangerously and even make the weather unpredictable. To avoid such catastrophes, all high concentrations of magic should be cleaned up within accordance to the Royal Proclamation 336. 'See magical safety laws, by HRH, Princess Celestia.'
"There are two main ways of clearing up magical fallout; the clean dispersal of magic, or concentration."

Nightmare decided to skip to the second method.

"...Concentrating The Magic is the recommended option when the fallout is within a high population area, so that it might be safely dealt with elsewhere, but that is not it's only purpose. The reclaimed magic can be used to power long lasting enchantments."

"Sold." She skimmed through the listed concentration spells, and gathered the necessary items from her storage space. Once she was sure she had committed the spell to memory, she snapped the book shut and went over to the dripping-with-magic gym.

Using careful applications of TK and a precise cutting spell, she removed a thin slab of stone from the chamber floor, and carved a hole in its center. She placed a glass jar in the two inch depression, then set about carefully carving runes into the tablet. She cut off the excess stone and placed it carefully on the open jar. She pushed a trickle of magic into the setup to get it running. The runes of the stone ring thrummed to life, and a steady glow of lighter blue gathered in the center. Concentrated liquid magic began to drip into the open jar. It was lighter than her natural colour.

She carefully applied the magic sight spell, at the minimum power, and looked about the room, so far the glow of the room hadn't changed much, but then again, there was a lot of magic in the air. "This is gonna take a minute, hopefully I'm removed from the visible spectrum before Twilight or any unicorn decide to glance my way." Nightmare paused on her way out of the gym, pondering over her words. "Visible spectrum, I wonder…"

▪=//=▪

The Nightmare sat in the main chamber, staring down at her unfortunate test book, Thirteen Signs Your Crush Likes You Back.' She lit up her horn and pulled up the image of a colour wheel in her mind's eye, and discarded it. Instead, she searched through her memories of ninth grade physics class, a fuzzy picture forming in her mind. "Wavelengths in the range of… zero point O' one to ten-ish nanometers, Frequency should be about thirty petahertz, I think…" She watched as the glow of her horn faded down to nothing.

"Now then, here's hoping magic works similar to the Electromagnetic Spectrum, and not just the visible spectrum." Pushing more magic into her horn, she focused her energies on the book on the floor. She squinted, and stuck her tongue out as she concentrated. Shakily, the book floated up off the floor, seemingly of its own accord. "It works, yes! Now then to test the other part of this…"

Splitting her concentration, her horn glowed blue around the base, her eyes swam for a second before clearing. Positioning herself facing firmly away from her magic-rich gym, she put more power into the spell, looking intently at the still floating book. Her brow began to collect sweat as she continued to ramp up the power, but the only magic traces she saw were the notes of blue that were drifting off her horn, that were dragged away behind her to be filtered into the collection jar.

She let both spells go with a gasp of air. Her posture sagged as she landed lightly, the beginnings of a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. "That two of two. It really works...." After a moment, she powered up her horn again, filing the frequency once more into the x-ray part of the spectrum, and brought her vision into focus on magic again. It wasn't quite visible, more of a feeling, but she could perceive the traces of something unseen.

She wore a toothy grin as she focused on her subspace pocket, the colour draining from the spell ‘till she couldn't see it anymore, but she could still see it, in the invisible spectrum. A book fell into existence, and flipped open before her, snapping open to the section on perception blocking spells. Her horn flared with unseen light, and a massive dome surrounded her home, hiding it from prying enchanted eyes.

Not that she really needed it, since she wanted to meet the ponies at some point, but- just in case.

▪=//=▪

Princess Luna entered the Royal dining room with a mug of her favourite brew in her aura. "Fair evening, sister," she greeted, upon seeing Princess Celestia at the table. As was usual with the Solar Diarch, she had brought her work with her to her meals. She always had just a few too many papers to sign, reports to go over, laws that needed review.

That was one part of her princessly duties that she was thankful not to have taken back yet; talking with her sister was already difficult enough with one looking over papers.

Today was a little different, though, as this scroll bore the gilded seal that always accompanied a letter from her sister's student. "A missive from Twilight! Is the week over already? We could have sworn she sent in her last report but a few days past."

"You're slipping, Luna." Celestia teased, taking her eyes off the letter for but a moment. "No, this one would appear to be of a less formal design. She was inquiring about you, actually."

Luna was glad she wasn't taking a sip from her coffee in that moment, as she would have done a perfect spit take. "T-Twilight was asking about me? Pray tell, what did she want to know?"

Celestia let the matter drop, adopting a more thoughtful expression. "She wanted to know if you were around Ponyville this morning."

"Sister, you and I both know that I haven't left the castle today." The lunar princess raised a skeptical eyebrow.

"Hmm, that is most troubling, then. A group of fillies were lost in the Everfree earlier today, but were escorted back to town by a pony with a starry mane, I only know one who would fit that description, so if it wasn't you, then wh-"

The mug that had been calmly flouting beside Luna began to boil, before shattering under the strength of her grip.

▪=//=▪

Twilight and her friends stood at the edge of the Everfree forest. They bore looks of determination, and poorly masked fear, with even Pinkie being serious.

"Alright girls, remember the plan. Applejack will be watching our backs for an ambush, Rainbow will be up above in lookout, Fluttershy is going to take us to where Nightmare was last sighted."

"What do we do if we find her?" Rarity asked, adjusting her bright pink camouflage hat.

"We kick her flank, that's what!" Rainbow Dash buffed a hoof on her chest.

"But isn't she like, suuuper duper strong?" Pinkie Pie inquired, checking the payload in her party cannon.

"I thought of that, spike should be here in a second with a solution." As she spoke, the baby dragon came running up the hill with a decorative box in tow.

"Sorry it took so long, these things didn't want to send over dragon fire. I had to run them over myself," he explained as he fiddled with the latch on the front. He flipped the lid off, resting inside on a bed of velvet, were five jewels necklaces and one crown.

Apple Jack picked up her necklace and gave it a skeptically raised brow. "No offence Twi', but the Elements didn't exactly stop her last time, if she's here now."

"I think that was because the Elements were more focused on freeing Luna than destroying the Nightmare. This time, she doesn't have a host to hide behind, so she'll either be turned to stone, like Discord, or beaten once and for all." Twilight levitated her crown in place, having grown used to the weight of the artifact from repeated use.

The remaining Elements were donned by their Bearers, and they shared a look before marching into the forest.

Just in case. After all, if Nightmare had been genuine in helping the Crusaders, then they wouldn’t be needed.

▪=//=▪

Nightmare was standing at the entrance to her home, right behind the illusory barrier. Her eyes were alight with magic as she examined every facet of the spell dividing the natural cave from the rest of the caved-out space. Beside her floated the changeling script cypher, a book on illusion spells, and a piece of parchment. She finished examining the spell, and write down her findings, then went to the book on illusions. She struggled with the grammar of the foreign script, but eventually had enough of the passage translated to attempt a cast.

"Now, if I'm reading this right, this is the Changeling equivalent of a false wall spell, and unlike the standard version, it's got a bit of suggestion magic mixed in, passively telling an observer's brain that 'yes, this is indeed a solid wall, no need to test it.' The only flaw is that it shows up faintly on magic vision." Nightmare's horn glowed briefly before fading to nothing. "Now then, let's see if invisible magic can still make viable illusions."

She pierced the core of the spell, unravelling the old illusion. Then, sparks of dark blue flitted around the edges of the hole, before the energy filled the empty space. She poked her head through, glancing back at the wall her neck phased through. "Success! Now I'll just go ahead and add a one way noise filter just to be safe...."

▪=//=▪

"S-sister, I'm afraid I might be able to offer some insight on this matter." Princess Luna held a hoof to her chest as she measured her breath, keeping her voice as even as she could.

Princess Celestia was out of her seat in a second, wrapping a comforting wing over her sisters back. "What do you mean, Sister, you're shaking. Is everything alright?"

"I am afraid not," She paused for breath. "I have reason to believe that my shadow has returned. The timing of Twilight's letter pertaining to a mare bearing my resemblance, and what I have seen in my last dream- nay, vision, a vision of what she will do, should we fail to act."

A blank scroll and quill were brought into the room with a pulse of golden light. "Tell me everything, Lulu."

Luna leaned into her sister, then began to recount her experience, hoping that the letter would reach the bearers in time.

▪=//=▪

To the outside observer, one might think Twilight Sparkle was staring at the ground. They would be partly correct, but she was actually staring at something floating just above the ground, which she could only see because of the spell tinting her vision. Just beyond the bank of the river, hidden poorly by some trees, was the arcane residue of a heavy casting session. From what she could tell, somepony had used just about every spell in the book-- literally.

The false trail spells, the signature dampener, trail scatterer, they were all an exact copy from 'Swift Silence's book of Sneaky Silent Spells,' component for component, as if they were reading straight from the text with no thought to calibrate any of the spells to be even marginally convincing.

Twilight, being Twilight, had read the book cover to cover when she was twelve, and had made no less than eight different work-arounds to track a pony using any combination of those spells, but in this case, she almost didn't even need to. The spells were so unoriginal, she could simply follow the broken mana trail by mathematical prediction alone.

Still, somepony was trying their hardest to hide something; they just weren’t doing a very good job of it.

Applejack was right next to her, following a different trail left by the same pony. "Well, the hoofprints ain't deep, probably because of one of those fancy spells ya mentioned, but who ever came runnin' through here weren't tryin ta be real careful. There's broken branches and trampled flowers all along here," the tracker of the group explained. She pointed at a broken tree limb overhead. "And only two types of ponies could hit somethin’ that high up and still leave a trail on the ground, a Clydesdalian or an Alicorn." Considering the letter that Spike had received, right when he was leaving, there was only one pony whom it could be.

The two shared a look and filled the trail at a trot, Twilight with a spell ready, and Applejack prepared to whip around and show any would be attacker why you don't mess with somepony who bucks trees for a living.

Just up the path, Fluttershy was speaking to a family of squirrels, who were kind enough to point in the direction they saw the crazy black Alicorn run.

▪=//=▪

Nightmare was in the once-barren library, now adapted into somewhat of a strategy room. She had come up with a simple plan to try and throw the ponies that were undoubtedly seeking her off the trail. Now all she had to do was find out if it was possible.

She had been tinkering with Starswirl's Arcane Perception spell, and through a bit of trial and error, and no small amount of brute forcing, she had managed to expand the range of the spell without intensifying the light levels of the magic. It took some doing, and many references to other perception spells, but she had managed to cut the spell's dependency on her eyes, moving it to a new sense all its own. That was only step one in her plan.

She grit her teeth in concentration, her eyes closed as she watched the flow of magic around her. In her grasp she held a hammer, the object held above ground as if by an invisible thread, this was not what she wanted. In her mind she placed a filter on the hammer, a translator, it's purpose was to scale the frequency back up into the visible spectrum, without the trail, and her horn, following suit.

From what she could tell, she had managed to tune it down to UV light, but beyond that, the spell took more and more energy than it should have. She cracked open an eye to check her progress. The hammerhead held perfectly steady in what appeared to be a weak and flickering violet, the cheapest viable shade she could manage. "This is getting nowhere fast. I'll just have to deal with the losses. My total mana pool will barely notice the extra drain anyway, I think."

She gently placed the hammer back on the desk, and pushed more power into her perception enchantment. In her mind, she got an overhead view of the surrounding forest, she could see the traces of magic running through the everfree, almost like a topographical map. The forests natural magic was a sickly brown, with hints of green. She pushed the spell further, and saw a bright spot on the map, a deep pink aura that stood out on the backdrop of the forest. If she focused more she could just make out a smaller light blue aura, and twinkling orange, yellow, pink, and one prismatic light surrounding it. "Well, that's probably the main six, and from the looks of it, their heading my way. I thought I was hidden? Nevermind, let's see if I can do this remote casting plan."

In her brow knit together in concentration, she brought up the form of a spell, a simple shield dome. She laced an invisible anti tampering charm into the weave, then drew up a copy of the spell, this one with multiple stealth charms added in to hide it from plain view, but it would still be visible in one's magic sense, if they knew how to look for it.

"And judging by the fact that I'm dealing with Twilight Sparkle, magical prodigy, she knows."

Nightmare frowned as a thought struck her. "Does Twilight know how to look for actually-invisible magic?" She drew up another copy of the spell, this one without the conversion filter. All that was left to do was cast the spells and hope for the best. She felt a headache coming on as she pushed the spells to the edges of her reach, her horn was starting to become uncomfortable as well. Channeling four spells, with three of them at the very limits of your influence was apparently no easy feat, even for an alicorn.

She took in a sharp breath, and let the spells activate.

▪=//=▪

Rainbow Dash was hovering just above the forest canopy, a hoof held over her brow to block out the sun as she peered around the forest looking for any trace of Nightmare Moon. As she glanced back the way the group jade come, something beneath the canopy lit up brilliantly, and a dark blue dome shield slammed down on a chunk of the forest. "TWILIGHT!! She's behind us!" Rainbow Dash called, pointing with a hoof before taking off in the direction in a streak of her namesake.

Four of the remaining group galloped off after the brash mare, but Twilight hesitated. "C'mon Sugarcube, we can't let her get away with whatever her plan is!"

"Wait! It's too obvious, the Nightmare we fought was clever, employing dirty tricks and playing to our weaknesses. She wouldn't just drop a barrier in the middle of the forest for no reason." Twilight tapped her chin in thought, then powered up her magic vision spell once more, adding certain elements to filter out the noise the everfree naturally put out, and to look for smaller thaumic traces. She slowly scanned the underbrush, looking for the tiniest flicker of magic. A snippet of blue flicked in the corner of her vision. "There! To the left! Applejack, get the girls, I'll head her off!"

"Be careful!"

▪=//=▪

Nightmare sighed in relief as the brightest light peeled off from the rest of the group and went after the bait. "Ooh, so they are able to track spells with concealment, but not ones outside of the visible spectrum! Good to know." Nightmare watched as the brightest light peeled off from the rest of the group and went after the bait. "With my little remote casting trick, I could lead them around the forest for hours! Ah but, it is dangerous out here, I don't want them splitting up and getting hurt." The rainbow light suddenly grew a bit brighter, and sped off towards Twilight's signature. "Oh, nevermind, they seem smart enough not to thin out their numbers too much."

Nightmare's eyes flung open as she remembered something. "Speaking of bright lights and 'too much'." Nightmare stepped away from her desk, storing away papers as she went to check on the condensation of magical residue.

She wouldn’t want this game to stop, after all. Heck, it was better than anything he’d bought from Steam within the past year. Better yet, it was free, provided right by her subconscious!

Still, it was a Friendship is Magic game, so she should probably be keeping the ‘make friends’ avenue open. Just make sure that the mares didn’t hurt her, first- she did look like Nightmare Moon, after all, and a winning smile may not do the trick. Especially since Discord also had a winning smile. She’d hate to be woken up by an orbital friendship beam, after all.

Though that seemed increasingly unlikely. She’d been asleep for quite a while now….

Something to ponder another time. Hopefully, she wouldn't wake up anytime soon.

▪=//=▪

Chapter 4: A Dream, This is Not.

View Online

Twilight stood at the edge of a clearing, her eyes narrowed at the dim dark blue light emanating from an old hollow tree at its center. She reached out with a hoof, the invisible barrier revealing itself and glowing ominously to cease her from pressing forward.

"Twilight, what the hay!? Nightmare Moon is right over there and-- what are you doing?" Rainbow Dash looked on in confusion as Twilight fired a beam into the air, only to have it blocked by the barrier. "Woah, can you break it?"

"Not directly," twilight lit her horn again, this time, the light flowed out in gentle, sweeping bands. The spell settled in on the surface of the shield, the barrier lighting up underneath her magic. Her magic grew like a plant's roots, spreading and probing for weaknesses, relaying information. The shield was brimming with about ten times as much power as it needed, and was still getting a constant supply from the caster at its center, Nightmare Moon.

Suddenly, all at once, she felt her spell freeze, and then be pushed back from the barrier. She gasped as the barrier shoved her back, her magic forced away and broken down. "But, how? The spell’s core isn't even protected!"

"Twilight! Are you okay?" Rainbow Dash hovered over the prone mare worriedly.

"Relax, Dash, after everything we've been through, I’m a bit more durable than that."

"If you say so. So, if we can't bust are way in, and you can't unravel it or whatever, what do we do?"

Twilight "hmm,"ed in thought, lighting her horn and sending out a much gentler probing spell. "Well, from what I can see, it's not warded against teleportation, but I didn't see anything about its anti-tampering charms either; actually I still can't. I can add a few safety net measures to my teleport, and try to take it down from the inside."

"I'm going with you."

"What? Rainbow no! Teleporting is dangerous, especially when multiple ponies are involved!" Twilight stomped.

"So is going in there alone! What if this is what she wants, split us up? Remember how bad it went last time you and her were in a room alone together?"

"It won't be like last time, you know that."

"I don't care, I'm not letting you take that risk alone! Either take me with you, or you're not going."

"Rainbow, this is important! She's putting a lot of magic into this spell! If I can take it down, she will be too weak to stop us from using the elements." At some point, the rest of their friends had arrived. Applejack was running an appraising hoof over the shield’s shimmering surface, Pinkie was diving in and out of bushes near it( though still intently listening to the conversation), and Rarity and Fluttershy were both looking between the bickering friends with a look of discomfort.

"Um, I'm sorry, I don't mean to interrupt…" Fluttershy began, in an all too hushed voice for them to hear.

"I must say I agree with Rainbow, darling. We can't have you risk going in there alone." Rarity lay a supporting hoof over Twilight's withers, looking her dead in the eye. "You have to have a better plan than that."

Applejack bucked the barrier for all she was worth, sending to bowing inward and cracking, but it quickly repaired and flung her into a bed of bushes.

"Can I just say something?" The shy pegasus said again, slightly louder. "I'm sorry for shouting, but, uhm, Pinkie is trying to say something." She pointed with a wingtip towards the barrier. Pinkie Pie had somehow gotten inside the dome, and was waving frantically to catch the attention of her friends.

"Pinkie!? How did you get in there?" Twilight shouted, to which the party pony pointed to her ear and shook her head.

Once she had everypony's attention, she reached into her mane, and pulled out a lot lightbulb, while pointing at the center of the spell. Then she fished around in her mane again, pulling out a picture and a stamp. She pressed the stamp into the picture's surface and slapped it to the inside of the spell. The picture was of Nightmare Moon, the first time they had all seen her, back at the thousandth Summer Sun Celebration, and it had a massive red "X" over it.

"..."

"... She's not here?" Twilight asked. Pinkie nodded enthusiastically.

"Well if she isn't here, and she isn't at that other one, where is she?"

"Something tells me we're going to need help, I'll pop on over to Ponyville and have Spike send a letter right away."

▪=//=▪

"Uuuhm…" Nightmare stared nervously into the gym from the doorway. "Maybeee… I should have checked the math on how much distilled magic setting of this size would make… or used a bigger jar…" A bright blue puddle of viscus sparkling goo had long since spilled over the edge of the container, staining the stone that it touched. "Maybe a barrel." From the way the puddle was still creeping outward, she could tell that it was still condensing the magic in the room.

"This could be a problem…" Nightmare removed a jar from her inventory, and slowly edging closer. She placed the jar near the edge of this spill. She gingerly poked a hoof into the substance. It sent tingles up her arm, and caused the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. "Woah, this stuff is-- energizing? Weird." She stepped back and shook her hoof clean, the liquid sizzling and burning when it struck the ground.

"So, it's reactive, great." She hissed as she ducked back around the edge of the door way. Thinking for a moment, she began wrapping heavy blankets and coats around herself. Once she deemed herself sufficiently bundled, she wrapped a shield around the gym, and wove a protection charm onto her layers. Her horn lit up with the gentlest of lights, as she prepared to transfer the spill into the first of many containers, frowning all the while.

This was supposed to be fun!

▪=//=▪

Spike was in the library, quickly scratching a quill over the parchment in front of him. When Twilight came back asking him to deliver a letter to the princess, he was hoping that they had taken care of the problem. This was not the case. Instead he was trying to write down all of Twilight's theories on what Nightmare Moon could be planning.

Then, the windows rattled, the ground shook, and an earth shattering BOOM! rang out through town. Ponies were in a panic. Some screaming about the end of the world. Some were shouting about "the horror" of the situation, and then fainting.

In his surprise, Spike knocked over the inkwell, rendering much of the four page letter unreadable. While Twilight sped over to the windows to watch the massive dust cloud rise above the Everfree forest, Spike found the cleanest corner of the page and quickly scribbled down the important bits.

Nightmare Moon
Explosion
Hurry!!

He sealed the letter with a length of purple ribbon and lit the scroll. The cloud of magical smoke flew out the window in the direction of Canterlot. By the time Spike had turned back around, Twilight was already gone.

Galloping away from Ponyville, Twilight charged a shield spell and used it to plow through the Everfree, running to the last place she saw her friends.

▪=//=▪

Luna, using all of her strength, teleported directly above her old castle. She’d fallen to the Nightmare, so she’d use all of her strength to find her other as quickly as possible, then alert ‘Tia and the element bearers to her location, so that they could get there at full strength. However, she still had the whole forest to search, and if she disguised the explosion site at all….

...Or it could be right in the old castle, gaping and unprotected, with a seriously-ruffled Nightmare in the hole.

She grinned. This was going to be fun!

▪=//=▪

Nightmare was sitting in a wall, wearing nothing but her natural coat and a layer of soot and dust. She was staring at the crater that was left behind by the strangely-unstable material. She looked to her left. The doorway was about three times larger than she remembered. She turned her gaze to the roof, or rather, what was left of it. Because of the shield she had in place, and the structurally compromised state of the cavern, the majority of the blast had traveled upwards, leaving the majority of her home intact. Hopefully.

She coughed twice, producing a cloud of smoke with each exhalation. With that out of the way, it seemed as if a switch was flipped. Her entire body felt numb and tingly, her ears rang, and her eyes watered. She stumbled backward into the main chamber, and aside from the large black stain on the wall opposite the door, everything appeared fine, more or less.

As she waited for her body to sort itself out, she summoned up a book and skimmed the fine print. "'Concentrated magic is extremely reactive to spells, under no circumstances should an untrained individual be allowed to handle the material, be it in liquid, crystal, or otherwise.' I should probably read these things through more thoroughly…" she gave a sigh that devolved into a sputtering cough. "Ugh, this dream can't get any worse…"

Her ears twitched, and a steady, high pitched whistle slowly got louder, until it stopped with a crash. The wall behind her exploded into rubble, and standing in the new hole to the outside, was an incensed Lunar Alicorn, a scythe hovered behind her, wrapped in a dark blue, a few shades lighter than her own, and matching the glow originating from the princesses horn.

"Foul demon!" The words shook the air and caused the stones scattered about the floor to jump.

"I was wrong…" the nightmare spoke in conversational volume, more to herself than the mare before her. "It would appear that it can most definitely get worse."

"Thine wicked blight on our fair country shall be no more! We shall permit thee to harm our ponies NO LONGER!!" The scythe was brought before her and placed in her hooves as she raised it threateningly, her wings spread out behind her to allow for her to rest up into a bipedal stance and glare at Nightmare.

Nightmare felt the sweat begin to accumulate on her brow as she looked at the blade pointing in the sunlight. "U-um… I--" she began, raising her hooves in what she saw as a gesture of peace. The princess of the night must have seen it as something else, as the scythe swung, catching Nightmares right hoof. She felt as her skin was split and muscle was divided. Blood vessels cut open, the blade dug into the bone, sending vibrations up her arm as metal slid against osseous matter.

Nightmare jerked away, leaving the cut a little less clean. She wanted to scream, her nerves were screaming all along her foreleg in pain. Instead, she watched in shock as rivulets of blood, her blood, dripped down the edge of the weapon. Her vision grew shakey as she looked down at her injured hoof. "I-I felt that…" she murmured, barely audible. "I-it h-h-hurts… oh god, this is real?..." She cradled her injured limb against her chest, her breaths quickening. She looked up at the mare, those eyes held no compassion, no mercy, for her anyway.

She felt a lump form in her throat and her eyes watered, she began to shake her wings twitched in anticipation of fleeing, but how could she get away, the Lunar Diarch stood before her and the cave entrance. Luna brought the blade up above her head, and Nightmare cringed, shuffling back against the far wall.

▪=//=▪

Luna felt a hint of confusion enter her features as she looked upon her most hated shadow. The Nightmare was always confident, cunning, insulting, and she had prepared for the inevitable fight. But this Nightmare, was cowering before her, it was terrified of her. 'As it should be.' the thought echoed through her mind, banishing her doubts. Her expression hardening, she took on step forward, she brought the scythe to her side and her horn lit up, preparing for anything the dark Alicorn might try. It raised its hooves, slower this time, Luna tensed her stance, ready for it to pounce. She was momentarily surprised as the Nightmare vanished. Staring back at her now was an exact copy of herself, wearing the same surprised expression.

Luna was not ready for the full body mirror that got thrown at her in the following moment.

▪=//=▪

The Nightmare scrabbled away towards the exit tunnel. She heard the surprised yelp and subsequent crash as the mirror shattered on the cave floor. Too scared to think straight enough to summon a proper spell, she discharged a destructive beam of light into the tunnel ceiling, causing it to rumble. She didn't wait for it to start having in before running as far down its length. Every so often she would send up another blast, destabilizing the corridor further. Her mind barely registered the pain from her hoof anymore, likely due to adrenalin. Once she was halfway down the path, she stopped bringing it down behind her and slowed to a limp.

Nightmare gasped for breath, leaning against the wall. She looked down at her leg, blinking away pained tears. The bleeding had slowed considerably, but she still left a trail of red hoof prints behind her. Now that she had a moment to think, the pain was starting to catch up to her, but was still distant enough for her to form a plan. Reaching into her storage pocket, she brought out a clean scarf, and wrapped it tight around her cut, wincing and choking back a sob as the flesh was bound.

"D-Don't know what's going on, but ap-parently it's all real, and hurts, ss-so, gotta get outa here." She slowly walked down the tunnel, struggling with her damaged hoof.

▪=//=▪

The Nightmare limped out of the tunnel on three legs. She leaned against a tree as she gathered her bearings.making sure her horn was set to "sneak" mode, she powered up the magic sight spell. She looked back at the rumbling cave she came from, and watched as a thick beam extended from a bright blue sphere farther back. 'So, Luna is making short work of my cave-in strategy, got it. Time to move'

A rainbow streak flashed through the canopy above her, causing her to drop to her belly. "Shit…" she swore quietly. "Rainbow is here? Of course she is, she can probably make the fly between the old castle and Ponyville in thirty seconds. I'm boned if she spots me… or if anyone spots me, really." She crawled away into the woods on her belly, every few steps she would raise her head to keep an eye on the magical signatures around her.

She froze every time a twig snapped or a bush rustled, even though the auras showed that it wasn't one of her pursuers, her paranoia mounting with every passing moment. She was sweating as she skimmed along the forest floor; whether it was her nerves or because of the sun bearing down on her, she couldn't tell. She snaked farther and farther away from the seven lights, with no real plan other than to put as much distance between her and them as she could.

She was suddenly stopped as she smashed the back of her head into something large and unyielding. Her head whipped around in fear, only to find she had run into an old hollow tree. She scrambled inside, thankful that it was big enough for her to squeeze into. With a quick application of magic, she seized hold of a stone buried in the earth below herself, and brought it up to the surface, blocking off the entrance.

Taking a momentary respite, she flashed away the scarf to get a look at her injury. She was surprised to find that the wound had almost completely healed, the skin had fully closed and a peach fuzz layer of hair was growing in to cover it. It was still a little sore, but since she had nearly lost the hoof altogether she couldn't find a reason to complain. "Thank God go Alicorn healing factor." She sighed in relief. "Now then, planning time."

Before she could get a cohesive idea together, muffled voices slowly grew in volume.

▪=//=▪

"I'm telling you, I saw her coming this way!" The Technicolour maned pegasus said.

"I believe ya, that mare has no idea how to hide a trail!we've got feathers, bits of fur, hoofprints, an-" Applejack stopped cold, staring at the ground.

"AJ?"

"Whatever is the matter, darling?"

Twilight was the first to follow the farm mare's eyes to the point of the ground she was fixated on. "Is that, blood?"

Everypony froze, and exchanged glances, before bolting down the path.

▪=//=▪

Celestia was perched upon a cloud, using her heavenly body to scan the entirety of the greater Ponyville area. It had been some time since her sister had acted so impulsively, but given the nature of the letter they had gotten not too long ago, coupled with the explosion that they heard all the way in canterlot, she could hardly blame her.

The Solar Diarch had already pinpointed the location of her student, as well as the rest of the element bearers; however, she had yet to locate her sister. Based off of the amount of lunar magic in the air, she knew Luna was still in the area, she just didn't know exactly where.

▪=//=▪

Suddenly a chunk of the forest floor erupted with a dark blue aura, the beam persisted for two seconds before being cut off. An incensed Alicorn rocketed out of the hole, the atmosphere resisting her momentarily before the air gave out a mighty Boom!
A ring of the night sky expanded in her wake, stripping the trees around her bare. The words that followed rendered the earlier blasts of the day mild shouts by comparison.

"Where hast thee fled to, thou vile whorse!?"

The greater Ponyville population ran to a traveling merchant that had just pulled up in town, selling noise cancelling headphones.

▪=//=▪

Where hast thee fled to, thou vile whorse!?

'Oh, there she is.' the solar alicorn thought, unfolding her wings to hold herself aloft as the resulting wave of night obliterated the cloud she was resting on.

▪=//=▪

Where hast thou fled to, thou vile whorse!?

Applejack had to hold a hoof to her hat to keep it from being blown away. "What'n tarnation? Was that the princess? What's she hollerin' about?"

"Holy hay, was that a sonic…" Rainbow trailed off.

"I wasn't expecting the princesses to get here so quickly." Twilight admitted, her gaze drifting skyward to the lunar princess.

"Did that tree just squeak in unbridled terror?" Pinkie asked, pointing a hoof at an older specimen that was in the process of shaking off the last of its leaves a couple months early.

▪=//=▪

Nightmare's ears were ringing. For whatever confounded reason, Luna's RCV shout bounced around the inside of the tree like a gunshot on a tank. She was hyperventilating again, but she hardly noticed, as she was currently pawing at the ground through ordinary and magical means, trying to bury herself within the earth. She didn't stop until the aged wood began to glow purple. To her horror, the entire tree was uprooted and lifted away.

▪=//=▪

The bearers of the Elements expressions shifted from determination to confusion as they laid eyes on a bug-eyed, dirt covered nightmare moon. She had a red stained cloth about her left foreleg, and many a twig, leaf, and rock had found their home within her mane and tail. In short, she looked terrible, and a far-cry from the would-be bringer of eternal night.

Remembering just who they were dealing with, and how clever she had been with illusions in the past, the group of mares shrugged off their surprise, and their respective elements began to glow.

The slits of nightmare's eyes shank further to the point of it being a valid question as to whether or not she could even see. She stood, spread her wings, and sucked in a breath. Her horn lit up, encompassing her hooves in a dark blue hue.

"No," She stated simply, like one would when offered a glass of water in a fancy restaurant. With her piece said, she tensed her muscles and jumped. The ground compressed under the might of her alicorn strength, and she was propelled into the air at subsonic speeds, with her body straight as an arrow facing directly upwards. With a single flap of her powerful, but disheveled wings, her trajectory changed by ninety degrees, launching her in the opposite direction of the bearers.

▪=//=▪

"Okay, so, today has not gone to plan, like I had one to begin with…" Nightmare fumbled as the wind whistled by. Using her magic, she turned herself around, so that she could see just where it was she had thrown herself. She opened her wings for an easy glide, intent on using the arcane arts to fill in for her lack of experience in the air.

For the third time that day, a loud boom filled the air, followed by a ring of night sky for the second. Nightmare risked a glance over her shoulder, and regretted it. Luna was swiftly catching up mouthing words that caught up to her ears a second "Thou shalt not escape thy rightful punishment, foul witch!"

"Oh for the love of all that is sacred, So Much Nope!" Nightmare shouted back in comparatively conversational tones. She closed her wings and wrapped a shield around her body. She dropped into the forest below, where with another quick application of magic, she ground to a sudden halt and let the barrier roll through the forest without her. She saw the streak of Luna go after the distraction, turned one hundred and thirty five degrees and booked it as fast as her legs could carry her.

She tried to rein in her reeling mind to get together a sound escape plan, but was unable to do so before skidding to a halt in a clearing. A flicker of shade passed over her vision. She looked up and felt her heart stop for a few beats. The alabaster alicorn with the ethereal mane and tail floated gently and gracefully above the ground before her. The horn on the head of the solar Diarch was doing it's best imitation of the celestial body it guided.

Nightmare regained enough of her wits to realize that she should try to either dodge or block, but not fast enough for it to matter. A mote of what she could only think to describe as solar fire erupted from the larger mare's horn, hitting her square in the chest and sending her flying back the way she came.

▪=//=▪

Luna internally seethed when she finally caught up to what she thought was the Nightmare, only to find an empty shell of magic embedded in the ground.

In a fit, she tore apart the construct with her blade, and turned around to seek the object of her wrath. It was at this moment that something large, black, and smoking came screaming out of the brush. Luna was too surprised to attempt a block or dodge, and felt the object slam bodily into her. The two tumbled through the forest at high speeds, collecting cuts and bruises on the occasional rock or particularly sturdy tree.

▪=//=▪

Nightmare groaned internally as she came too. She could feel all the little nicks and dents she had picked up In between bouts of consciousness, and winced at the stabbing, tingly pain that had nestled into her chest and throat. She opened her eyes, noting that one of them was starting to swell, and took stock of her surroundings. Directly behind her was a moss covered, stone brick wall, sporting a new hole. A quick look around confirmed her suspicions: she was in the courtyard of the old castle. Further observation revealed the groaning form below her. She shot off the Lunar Princess like a rocket, opening her mouth to gasp. No sound escaped her lips; in its stead, a long tongue of smoke wound away from her own open jaws.

She watched the trail of dark smoke continue to stretch away from her with wide, unblinking eyes. that… that can not be healthy… she thought, letting her mouth hang open as she continued to vent the foul smelling substance like a chimney.

Getting back to what was hopefully the more important matter, she turned her attention to Luna. The alicorn had seen better days, or nights, as she would likely prefer. Her entire body was covered in thin red cuts, and bruises that were rather well hidden within her blue coat. One wing was laying limply at the mare's side, dislocated from its socket, and her horn had a shallow crack around it's end.

Glancing up at her own horn, she found it-- somehow-- to be no worse for wear, which was a good thing. One of her wings seemed broken, but her leg injuries weren’t exacerbated by her flight through the forest, though she was still losing blood. Still, she wasn’t much worse for wear.

Without further thought, she summoned up a pile of clean, white cloth, and began wrapping the Lunar mare's injuries. Once she had the majority of the cuts bound, she pulled out a quill and pen, and began considering the kind of message she should leave behind.

▪=//=▪

Luna's eyes slowly fluttered open, and she rubbed a hoof to her temple with a wince. She took stock of her surroundings while she tried to remember what happened.

She remembered chasing after the Nightmare, and the flight over the forest, and…

Her train of thought was derailed as she laid eyes on the mare lying across from her. The dark Alicorn was looking down on her, it's cyan draconian eyes holding no expression. A dark cloud wafted from its open fanged jaws as it's horn lit up with the glow of magic.

Had Luna not been so experienced in dealing with the horrors that the mind throws at young dreamers, she would have screamed at the sight of one such as this in the waking world. She nearly did, but succeeded in holding her voice back to nothing more than a strangled whimper.

The Nightmare's eyes flicked up to meet her own, to scared to look away. The Nightmare lifted a hoof, and Luna tensed, bringing her wings up to-- pain!

Luna threw her gaze back over her shoulder, ignoring the stinging cuts objecting to sudden movement. She stared in horror at her wings. Her left was up in the air, ready to follow her command and take her high into the sky and away from the monster of her past, the right, however, was still lying on the flagstone, flaring in pain as her muscles refused to work with the injured limb.

'She grounded me!' came her panicked thoughts.

Her pegasus side failing her, she readied a teleport spell, only to wince as another stab of pain landed through her skull. Luna focused her eyes on, her horn, and the pit in her stomach deepened. Magic filled uselessly through the crack in her horn. The lunar alicorn felt tears welling up in her eyes as the gravity of the situation started to settle in.

She felt the Icey needles of fear dance over her skin as the sound of hooves against stone reached her ears. She leveled a disdainful glare at the Nightmare, whom was gently tapping a hoof to the ground in an attempt to get her attention. Once the black alicorn saw she had her attention, the mare offered a small, toothless smile, though, the gesture was ruined by the smoke wafting from her nostrils as she breathed. She nosed a length of parchment between Luna's hooves, and was quick to duck back under the skeptic scowl the princess leveled at her.

Luna looked between the paper and her dark side warily. Once she was semi-certain that the mare opposite her wasn't about to rip out her throat, she looked down to the missive, never letting the Nightmare leave her sight.

Sorry--

Luna snapped her focus back to the dark Alicorn after the first word, staring incredulously at the writer.

The Nightmare rubbed a hoof on the back of her neck nervously with a wince, pulling back the appendage and squinting her eyes at the line of blood it had picked up. The Nightmare shook her head a bit and gestured to the scroll with a nod.

Luna let her glare linger for a moment linger, before returning to the paper.

Sorry about the crash, your sister packs quite a punch.

She gave the Nightmare a quizzical look, who just motioned with a hoof for her to keep reading, then went back to writing on another piece of paper.

From What I could tell, you weren't too badly hurt. I bandaged up the majority of the damage with all the clean cloth I had. Most notable injuries would be your wing and horn, sorry I couldn't do anything about those, but I don't know any healing spells, or how to make a sling for a wing.
Based on how quickly the smaller cuts were closing, I'm guessing you should be mostly fine in about twenty minutes, although I don't know how quickly horns repair themselves, alicorn or otherwise. Hopefully the next time we meet, you won't try and take my leg off on sight.

Luna looked up from the note with genuine confusion. ' The Nightmare helped me?' Glancing at her hooves revealed that she was indeed covered in strips of cloth, how she hadn't noticed before she wasn't sure. Another roll of paper was slipped between her hooves, and after a quick glance at the mare, she unrolled it.

To clarify, I was supposed to already be gone when you woke up.

"Err, why aren't thou… aren't you talking?" Luna asked, having a hard time connecting the thing in front of her to the Nightmare she was familiar with.

The Nightmare rubbed a hoof on her throat and blew a long plume of smoke to the side. When Luna didn't seem to understand what this was supposed to mean, she summoned another piece of paper from nowhere, and scribbled a message onto its surface quickly.

Celly hit me with a beam of solar magic stuff, I think it burned out my vocal cords, hoping those grow back.
--side note, I think my lungs are on fire.

Another note was shoved under her nose before she could even look up.

I'm gonna get outta here before your sister or anyone shows up.
Best wishes!

The princess snapped her head back up, just in time to see a shaky Nightmare getting to her hooves, a weak telekinetic field enveloping the mare's barrel. Before the mare could get more than a hoofful of steps away, however, the form of Celestia landed before her, hard enough to crack the flagstone.

The solar Diarch took one look at her sister's less than ideal condition, and her face bore a concerned frown, before tuning it to a scowl for the Nightmare.

Nightmare glanced between the exit she had been walking towards, and the angry goddess of the sun standing in the way. She mouthed an "Oh," and sighed heavily to the side, expelling another black cloud, before dropping to the ground. She rested her head between her forelimbs and raised her hooves into the air by her elbows in surrender.

▪=//=▪

"Would you stop that?" Celestia asked in a commanding tone, clearly annoyed.

Nightmare shook her head, and continued to hold her mouth open, taking deep breaths, and expelling foul smelling smoke. It was one of the few things she could do at the moment, breathing that is. A golden arc of magic around her barrel held her wings to her sides and her body to the floor. They hadn't bothered to restrict her magic, but she didn't feel stupid enough to try any magic when the embodiment of the sun had a good firm grip on her.

"I must say, sister, fair Twilight should have been here by no-oww!" Luna squeaked as her wing was put back into its socket. She rolled the joint to make sure everything was in order, and nuzzled her sister with a quiet "Thank thee."

"Patience sister, Twilight will arrive in but a moment, and we can take care of this problem." Celestia said, giving the Nightmare a pointed glare as she said the last word.

Nightmare rolled her eyes, and tried to hum. She had been doing so to check and see if her voice had healed yet every few minutes, since most of her external injuries had closed by this point, it was safe to assume that particular facet of her biology wouldn't be far behind.

"Princess!" Came the call through the great hole in the wall. Celestia turned to great her faithful student, and they exchanged a brief nuzzle, before Twilight's eyes landed on Luna. She gasped, and began to fret over every single healing cut and fading bruise. When she caught sight of the Lunar princess' horn, she cast a glare in the nightmares direction. Nightmare responded by pointing a hoof at herself and shaking her head in a 'Don't look at me!' Gesture, before pointing emphatically at a nearby pile of discarded papers.

Her pleas were ignored, again, and she sighed animatedly, tracing circles on her forehead with her hooves. When she looked up again, a sea of pink, with two blue pools filled her field of view. "What's got ya down, Black Snooty?" Pinkie Pie asked.

Nightmare snorted, twin trails of soot blowing away as she pointed at her throat.

"Can't talk?" She nodded. "Why?" Nightmare pointed at her throat again, then at the smog she exhaled again. "Are you a…" Nightmare did not like the mirthful gleam in the pink mare's eye. "Little horse?"

'So, this is what my life has become, the butt end of a lame joke…' she thought while smiling good naturedly at the pony who had once again disregarded her personal space, her face centimeters from her own, probably waiting for a laugh that wouldn't come. Nightmare simply pointed at her neck again and tried to hum in thought. Pinkie sagged slightly before bouncing away to the group of huddled ponies that were decidedly out of her range of hearing.

Knowing that she wouldn't be able to contribute to the conversation, even if she could talk, she went about what had become her second favourite pass time while immobile, playing with her mane. From her brief experiments with it, she knew it had to have some physical hair in there somewhere, but when it was dry, it acted very much like an intangible object, or one that had no mass, she didn't know, she flunked highschool physics. That all was beside the point anyway, the point was that it flowed like water around her hooves, no matter where she poked it, and she liked watching the stars swim around in it.

▪=//=▪

Celestia, Luna, and the Element Bearers sat in a circle, discussing the fate of one of Equestria's oldest enemies.

"Well, what are we waiting for? The Princess is even holding her still, let's turn on the rainbow lasers and blast her!" Rainbow puffed out her chest to draw attention to the Element of Loyalty. Most of the group agreed with this idea.

Luna bowed her head in thought, drawing the attention of the elder alicorn. "Luna, what's the matter?"

The lunar alicorn bit her cheek before speaking. "'Tia, we- no, I, am uncertain if we should simply 'blast them' as Dame Rainbow put it."

Celestia let worry enter her features. "Luna, what are you talking about, that creature there is the one responsible for tearing our family apart!" The princess of the sun readied a spell to cleanse her sister of any mental influences. The Nightmare had gotten to her before, perhaps it left behind something so it could do so again more easily.

"I know sister, I have more reason to despise them than anypony else, but just look at her." She waved a hoof, directing the group's attention to a positively bored Nightmare Moon, who was ripping up grass and weaving it together. "At the very least, she seems greatly--, subdued."

"Perhaps she simply knows when she is beaten?" Celestia supplied.

"'Tia, we shared a headspace with the Nightmare. The one we knew never would have done this," she gestured to the multitude of makeshift bandages covering her body. "For another over herself, especially since she knew of how quickly Alicorns regenerate. Furthermore, she cared for mine injuries before tending to her own! The selfish entity we knew would never do that. She doesn't even have the same hoof writing!"

"You got a look at her hoof writing? When?" Twilight inquired.

Luna pointed to the nearby pile of scrolls. "When we were on the moon, we had little to do, so the Nightmare and I took turns writing stories upon the grey sands. Her script took much after my own, as she likely drew from my memories on how to write. This new Nightmare, however, her writing is scratchy, inelegant, and she writes as if she is not used to a quill."

"I highly doubt a change in writing should earn her amnesty for her crimes." Celestia replied with the barest hint of an edge in her tone.

A gentle tune filled the air, drawing everypony's attention back to Nightmare, whom had begun whistling as she continued to weave grass into a shapes. So far she had all ready made three "paper" sailboats, and was in the process of trying to make some form of quadruped. The smoke she produced had lightened in colour considerably, and was starting to reduce in volume as well.

It was odd to see the villain doing something so… mundane. Twilight was the first to snap out of it. "Well, also, a mare matching her description did allegedly escort Applebloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo out of the forest." She supplied lamely, the scrolls floating beside her as she continued to stare at the Nightmare with the rest of them.

"How do we know she didn't make up that whole story, and brainwash them to trick us?" Rainbow Dash asked, ever the skeptic.

"Why don't we just ask her?" All eyes looked to Pinkie. "What?"

"Pinkie darling, how would we know if she was telling the truth?"

"Duh." The baker crawled atop Applejack's back, and pointed at her new seat, as if that made sense.

"Dame Applejack does bear Honesty…" Luna agreed. "She should be able to tell the truth from lies while it is equipped."

"Ah' can what now?"

▪=//=▪

Nightmare was almost done with the neck, just a little more time and a little more plant matter, and the head would be done. Weaving grass dolls was considerably harder using hooves and her mouth instead of hands, but she was somehow making due.

A purple beam of energy zapped Nightmare in the throat, giving her a vicious coughing fit. Her latest attempt at forging a grass pony dropped to the ground, scattering completely. "Aw man, I almost ha-- oh?" She hummed and rubbed her sore throat. She looked up to the ponies that had now gathered in a semi circle around her. She locked eyes with the sole purple one of the group and nodded. "Thanks for that." She croaked, smacking her tongue at the foul of ash, her mouth pulled into a grimace as she did her best to ignore it.

"Uhh, no problem?"

"Speak Nightmare, and speak honest, for we shall know if you lie." Celestia slightly scowled down at her.

"Huh? You got a polygraph or-- oh, fancy lie detector spell, got it." She nodded amiably. "Alright, what's the first question?"

Twilight seemed to have realized something, and a stack of notecards flashed into Existence beside her, along with a quill, and she began organizing her questions.

"Did you do anything to harm my sister or her friends?" Rarity was the first to ask.

"No, I just found them hiding from a swarm flying spiders." She shivered at the memory. "As if regular spiders weren't bad enough."

Everyone looked at Applejack, who simply shrugged in response. "You didn't send send those flyders after 'em?"

Nightmare mouthed "flyders" and shook her head. "No, I did not."

"Question two: How is it you survived being hit by the Elements of Harmony?" Twilight asked, reading from the notecard in front of her nose.

Nightmare attempted to shrug and made the universal "I don't know" noise. The librarian seemed less than pleased with her response, and threw the slip of paper over her shoulder, and began sifting through the hovering stack for her next question.

"Question 3: How is it you've gained your own body? From what I've researched, you were either a parasitic consciousness that had latched onto Princess Luna at her weakest, dark magic, a separate personality generated by her negative feelings, or a combination of the three."

"Uhh, don't know that either? Oh, while we are on the subject, I am alone in here, right? I'm pretty sure it's just me in here, but you know more about magic than I do." The eight exchanged glances before a purple and gold aura enveloped her head, a tingling sensation developed at the center of her skull, and she made a face.

"Yes, it would appear that you only possess one consciousness and one soul." Twilight informed. "Question four: It has been years since you were defeated, where were you all that time?"

"Um, sorry, couldn't tell ya." The lavender mare's brow knit in annoyance at the lack of answers Nightmare was giving. "I can tell you that I, woke up would be the most fitting term, in the castle in the middle of the night last night."

"Okay, question five: What is the last thing you remember before 'waking up'?"

"The Last, last thing I remember would be lookin' up at the moon." A pink hoof waved back and forth in the air, like one would do when trying to get the teachers attention. "Uhh, Pinkie?" Nightmare called on her, wondering if this was still an interrogation or not.

"Do you prefer chocolate or vanilla, lemon or raspberry. Maple or frosting, butterscotch or cinnamon?"

"Wait, what? What's that have to do with--"

"Just answer the question Snooty." Pinkie cut her off.

"Oookay? Uhm, chocolate, lemon I guess, and… butterscotch? I dunno, I've never had anything with the last two in it."

Everyone looked at the pink mare like she had a second head as she scribbled down the information on a notepad before stuffing it back into her mane. "Okie dokie!"

Rainbow Dash was the next one with a question, getting within inches of her face. "What are you planning, huh? What secret evil stuff are you gonna do to Equestria?"

Nightmare reared her head back as far as she could, but the pegasus kept the distance close. "I... don't have any plans right now? Honestly I was gonna be content to sit at home and read for a while, catch up on the goings on in the world."

She relaxed slightly when Applejack dragged the hovering antagonistic mare away by the tail. The disgruntled Rainbow was deposited next to Twilight, who kept the pegasus from advancing again with an outstretched wing--

"What the--" nightmare recoiled in surprise, biting her tongue in the process. She moaned in pain as she held her snout in her hooves against the ground. "Thun of a bith…" she grumbled. "I ha'e thethe teeth, tho muth…" blood dribbled from her lips onto the grass.

"Are you… alright?" Fluttershy asked from twenty feet away, surprising everyone.

"I bit my 'ongue, gimme a thecond…" she said into the ground, waving a placating outstretched hoof in the general direction the voice came from. She waited for the majority of the stabbing pain to subside before voicing her question. "When di' you ge' wingth? Thinth when ith th'ee an Ali'orn?"

"Umm, about a week ago?" Twilight supplied, tilting her hoof side to side in a "give or take" motion.

"That's not important right now. Why did you… blow up a chunk of the mountain over there?" Celestia waved a hoof in the direction of the distant location, a cloud of dust could still be seen rising from the hole in her home.

"Tha' wath a clean up acthiden', levi'athion and condenthed magic don' mith." Nightmare supplied. Everyone looked at her look she was insane with the revelation. A gilded zap of magic to the mouth followed, and she found the hole in her tongue gone. "Thanks."

"Why do you want to bring about eternal night?" Everyone looked to Luna, whom had locked eyes with Nightmare.

'Here's an important one.' Nightmare swallowed. "I don't?" Wide eyes met her statement, and everyone's attention immediately shot to the farm mare, who looked just as surprised.

"I mean…" she continued, gaining everyone's attention again. "As vastly more beautiful the night sky is, eternal night would just kinda, kill the whole planet. I suppose the argument could be made that you could just use magic to keep everything from freezing and keep crops growing, but that would require massive amounts of power on a constant basis, like, Alicorn exhausting levels of power. And then that would leave the strongest defender of the nation at a fraction of their strength. And that Would just invite hostile forces to attack Equestria, so it's all around a bad idea."

"Besides," the gathered ponies seemed surprised she had more to add still, following her logical argument. "As much as I hate hot, sweaty summer days like this, it makes the night more special, 'cause it's not the only thing in the sky, y'know? Does that make sense?"

"It's… not really all that hot out, though." Twilight said.

"Yeah, it's actually super duper nice out today!" Pinkie added. The rest of the main six nodded in agreement.

"Oh, then I'm gonna blame my dark coat then, absorbs heat a little too well, could we move this to the shade?" She tilted her head towards a freestanding wall. The rest of the structure had long since fallen, but it supplied ample shade from the afternoon sun.

The group exchanged looks before Luna spoke up. "We suppose that would be alright." The golden aura that had been holding her down was replaced with a blue one, and she was dragged through the air to the spot.

Nightmare sighed contentedly as she was laid down on the cool shaded grass, and stretched her body to be in contact with as much of it as possible, she would have laid her wings down as well, had they been free. "Thank you~" They seemed only slightly off-put at her continued usage of proper manners, but she didn't notice, as she had her eyes closed and was enjoying the shade.

"I hope you don't think we shall just let you go now that you've realized your mistake, you still forced me to banish my sister to the moon for one thousand years."

"Uhh, okay, this is going to sound like a lie, but I never thought eternal night would be a good idea."

"D-do you… Dost thou aim to place all the blame upon me!?" Luna shouted, sub RVC, incredulously with a pointed glare. The magic wrapped around her barrel began tightening to the point of discomfort.

"Wait, no! That came out wrong! I meant that… how to explain this… okay, Nightmare Moon wanted to bring about eternal night, but I never did." She spoke quickly, but measured her words.

"Explain." Celestia spoke, and it was not a request.

Nightmare measured her words before speaking, making sure what she said would be the truth, without giving away too much. "Mmokay, so, I don't think I'm the Nightmare… like, I am, appearance wise, but I'm not. When I got here I didn't know what was going on. The only reason I know who I'm supposed to be is cause I match the depiction of a villain in a story I saw." An idea popped into her head and she quickly removed a familiar book from her mane. The cover bore the stylized golden bust of a unicorn with an aquamarine gemstone as an eye. She flipped it open till she came to a picture of Nightmare Moon. "This one, kinda hard to mistake the eyes if nothing else."

"So, you are claiming to have lost your memories, then?"

"My theory is that the elements stripped all the evil out of Nightmare Moon, and what was left was, me, apparently." She expertly dodged the question, and hoped that her idea would suffice as an answer.

"You're saying that the elements gave you a second chance?" Twilight asked, looking up at the crown above her horn.

"Well, they're kinda benevolent things aren't they? They don't kill, so it would make sense for them to purify things and give out second chances to things that aren't pure evil."'please let that make sense, please let that make sense, please let that make sense…'

"I… guess that makes sense."

YES!

Everyone looked to Applejack for confirmation again. After a moment, she sighed. "It don't sound like she's lyin' but I've never done this before, so Ah' don't exactly know what ta look out fer. Nothing she's said feels off, if that means anythin'."

AJ's The lie detector? Oh Honesty, that makes sense.' "So," Nightmare coughed. "What happens now?"

The royal sisters shared a nod, and herded the rest away a small distance. A golden barrier surrounded the group. "Wait here, we shall discuss the matter," Luna said before the noise shield closed fully.

Nightmare looked around, then down at the magic still holding her to the ground. The band had shrank in length, coming to an end right above her wing joints, but would still manage to keep her from going anywhere. 'Could try dispel it,' she thought, stretching her wings out to their limits and resting them on the grass. If I was an idiot, much more skilled magic user I'd be trying to take by surprise.'

She sprawled out on the ground and relaxed with a contented sigh, letting all the tension she had accumulated in her shoulders slowly seep out. 'Time to run inventory.'

▪=//=▪

Nightmare opened an eye when she heard a magical pop. The barrier was down, and everyone was facing her again. "We have come to a decision." Celestia stated.

"Sounds final."

"It is." Luna nodded. "You have two options. The first, is that we, that is Celestia and I, take you back to Canterlot with us, you will be placed in an anti-magic cell until we can prove whether or not you claims hold truth."

"Would I at least get books?" At the nod of both Diarchs, she bowed her head in thought. "I could live with that, but what's the other option?"

Twilight picked up the conversation. "We fit you with a magic suppressor, and set you up in Ponyville under a glamour and a new name." Twilight then nodded to the Solar Diarch.

"You would be closely watched by the Element Bearers, and they would seal you away the moment your lie came to light."

"No magic either way huh? I could live with that, too, plus, with that one I would at least get to stretch my legs though. Do you have the suppressor with you?"

Celestia nodded to her student, who disappeared in a flash of light. "Twilight shall return with a blank momentarily."

"Alright then."

Minutes passed by awkwardly. It would seem the fire of hatred had been taken out of the conversation, but no one knew how to think of Nightmare any other way, so no one said anything. All present breathed a sigh of relief when the purple Alicorn returned.

"Okay, this inhibitor ring--" she held up a simple grey ring, large enough to slip over one's horn. "--has been enchanted to read and lock onto your magical signature, and will block any attempt to light your horn. It will also dispel any active magical effects you have going. Anything we should know about before I slip this on?"

"Will that block my healing factor? If so, I'm pretty sure my lungs combusted at some point, and I only survived 'cause of my alicorn magic, can we make sure I won't expire upon losing my magic?"

"It won't block your basic functions, it will just limit your ability to cast. Are you ready?"

"Yeah, sure go ahead." Nightmare complied, tilting her head forward and presenting her horn. Twilight nodded and slid the metallic ring down to the base of her horn. There was a brief spark, and then nothing, she felt as a part of her was wrapped up and sealed away from her being. She held a hoof to her forehead to steadier herself.

"Well, that's disorienting." She thought aloud, blinking away the spots in her eyes. When she looked back to the world, a curtain of bright pink, split down the middle, greeted her. "Uhh…" she brushed it away from her eyes, and gave it an experimental tug. Her head tilted as the offending fibers rooted in her skull refused to budge. She pushed the mass out of her field of view and looked back over her shoulder. She noted how her personal sea of stars had disappeared, and with increasing worry, gave her tail a flick. A wave of pink rolled out behind her. "It's pink." She said lamely.

"...So It is." Celestia nodded.

"My hair is pink." Nightmare said again, her voice trailing off with a titter.

"Are you okay?" Twilight asked.

"Not just pink, but PINK. The absolute brightest shade imaginable." A hysteric grin spread across her face, showing off her too sharp teeth before she broke out into full bellied laughter. "He-here's Nightmare moon, big bad Alicorn of edgy eternal darkness, and wh-wh-when she's deciding how to present herself to the world, she decides. 'Ah yes, all dark colors and shark teeth, now, what sh-should I make my hair colour, I know!'" She barked out increasingly loud laughs. "I'll make it th-the most bliiindingly bright shade of pink known to the Universe! It's not like anyone will ev-ev-ev~'" She completely broke down before she could finish.

Pinkie and Rainbow laughed openly, one with her and the other pointing a hoof at her in a slightly mocking manor. Rarity was hiding her giggles behind a hoof in a more dignified manner. Fluttershy wasn't laughing, but she did smile from behind her mane with eyes full of mirth. Applejack gave a few unrepressed chuckles, but got over the whole thing quickly enough. Princess Celestia had thousands of years of practice in controlling her emotions, and wore her normal serene smile mask. Luna was staring off into the distance muttering, "We dids't not know she had done that…" quietly enough that it got mostly swallowed up by the gales of laughter.

"I don't get it, what's so funny?" Twilight asked after the amusement began to die down. This, of course set Nightmare off again and the rest quickly joined in, stumping the poor mare as to what the joke she missed was.

▪=//=▪

Chapter 5: A Dream doesn't come with Free Realistate

View Online

The majority of the ponies left, having to get back home for work or various other reasons. The three remaining were royalty, and since Nightmare was still technically a national threat, they could get away from the office for a few more hours. At least that's what Nightmare thought, no one had really told her anything. Or maybe they had and she simply hadn’t understood, she wouldn't know, she was still reeling in her giggles at the time.

"Nightmare?" Twilight asked cautiously.

Nightmare lifted her head to look up at the newest addition to royalty. It was at that moment she realized how truly insane she must have looked. She was sitting on her rump, hunched over completely, with her wings wrapped around her rear hooves, something they must have done automatically. She was also rubbing a single lock of her mane between her forehooves, and was giggling at it like a child.

Nightmare's wings shot back up to her sides, and she rolled forward onto her haunches into a much more normal sitting position for an equine. She coughed into the crook of her forelimb awkwardly. "S-sorry, yes? You have more questions?"

“No." Celestia cut in, and from the disappointed look on Twilight's face, that was a lie. "Would you please accept a glamour spell, so that you don’t cause ponies to panic every time you go get groceries?” Celestia asked. “It might also help you do other things as well, such as-”

"Oh, yeah, sure. But are you sure that will work? I did a bit of reading on glamours, and the ones I tried weren't exactly, convincing."

"What you likely used were basic, low tier illusions,” Luna answered. “Twilight told me that it looked like you were using spells directly from the books, with no modifications at all. What we are going to employ is a spell that mine sister and I have worked on over the ages. It is the same spell we use for our own disguises when we want to walk amongst our ponies without our royal presence to colour their actions." Luna lit her horn, and in a flash she had been replaced by a baby-blue pegasus mare. She had a silver mane, green eyes, and a full moon for a cutie mark. "’Tis quite effective." She said in Luna's voice.

"Oh, okay, neat." Nightmare complemented the disguised alicorn, looking over the illusion for flaws. "So, what am I gonna look like?"

"We don't actually know, this spell creates an entirely new disguise based off of the user, so we won't know until we cast it."

"Any side effects I should know about?"

"None worth noting, stand please."

Nightmare complied, not reassured in the slightest by Celestia's words. The elder alicorn bent down and touched her horn to Nightmare's. 'Wasn't Nightmare as tall as Celestia in the show? Now I feel short.'

There was a shimmer, and the world twisted, but when Nightmare opened her eyes, the world looked… exactly the same. She looked down at her hooves, and failed to see anything changed. Same black coat, same pink hair that dragged on the ground. She looked over her shoulder and spread her wings, then tapped a hoof to the horn still on her forehead. She looked down at the purple and disguised Alicorns. "Uhh, I don't think it worked, I look the same."

Twilight pulled out a mirror from under her wing--

'How long was that there, and did she get that when she went to get the ring?' wondered Nightmare.

-- and held it a little above eye level for her. She dragged it down a little bit and looked into the reflective surface. A dark mare looked back at her, with big, round bluish green eyes. Not slitted, regular pony eyes. "Wait, what?" She grabbed the small mirror with both hooves. Nightmare stared down at her reflection, her mouth open in a halted gasp, which allowed her to see the flat teeth in the mouth of the mare in the reflection. She began to notice the smaller details, such as her much shorter horn and her lighter coat, now a dark grey-blue.

A brief flash of light alerted her to the disappearance of Celestia and the arrival of a slightly taller-than-average pegasus mare. She had a coat of white and wore a long, but considerably more manageable than her own, pink mane. Her cutie mark was identical to Celestia's own, save for the sunglasses laid over it. The "new" mare had also brought with her a full body mirror, and was gesturing to with a wing.

What nightmare saw was an average-looking, dark-coloured unicorn mare. Her pink mane was long and unkempt, and her short summer coat was in need of a good brushing. Her cutie mark hadn't changed much; the aqua moon was still visible over a splash of dark purple, but now the moon was being dunked into a superimposed coffee mug. Her coat was actually lighter than the patch, providing a different contrast. Speaking of coats and colour patches, she was dappled, covered from hoof to tail in dark purple spots along her back and down her legs.

"Well, that's interesting. I look like my own illegitimate child." Luna barely suppressed a laugh behind her forehooves at Nightmare's casual remark.

"This spell is a high grade illusion that we crafted ourselves. It also has perception and scale translation charms mixed in,” Celestia explained. Man, it was odd hearing her voice coming from such a small, by comparison, pony. "That means ponies will look you in the eye and not stare intently at your chest, and should you come into physical contact with one, for say, a hug, they won't be trying to strangle your legs."

"Okay, but why doesn't it change how I see myself?"

"Mostly so you know when to duck through doorways."

"Oh… that makes sense. So, what's my alias?" Nightmare asked casually, experimentally waving a hoof, and watching the mare in the mirror copy the action.

"You don't have any ideas?" Twilight asked.

"Uhh, no. How about you, what are the names of your disguises?" She asked, pointing to the incognito alicorns.

"When I take this appearance, I go by the name Sunny Days." The renamed pegasus said, holding a hoof over her chest.

"I go by Moonlight in this form."

"Okay, so normal names are Sunny Days, Moonlight, Twilight, Pinkie…" Nightmare muttered to herself, of course she knew what a normal pony name sounded like, but she had a story to keep up, and therefore, an act to put on. "I like the 'Night' part of my name, so how does 'Night Star,' 'Night Sky,' or 'Nightingale' sound?"

"The first is alright, the second would be more apt for a pegasus, and the third is the name of one of our lieutenants of the nightguard." Luna shot down all three.

"Alright… how about 'Nightfall?'"

"That one is… a little cliche for a dark coloured pony, and is a stallion's name."

"Nightlight?"

"That would be my father's name," Twilight objected.

"Really? Huh, okay, well, what about… Night…" She scanned her reflection for inspiration, her eyes settling on her altered cutie mark. "...Cup, Nightcap? No no, that one sounds wrong. What about Night… Shift? That one doesn't sound too bad, what do you think?"

"That will suffice." Luna nodded.

▪=//=▪

Nightmare was being escorted through the forest, in the relatively silent company of one disguised Lunar Princess. Neither of them had said a word since they had left the castle. Nightmare shifted her hidden wings uncomfortably, the mare had done an excellent job of making the walk through the world's most interesting forest uncomfortable, this left her seeking a distraction.

She couldn't find one. Every time she found an interesting flower or tree to look at, it either snapped at her, was reduced to ash by luna, or flew away. It also didn't help that between these times, the forest was deathly quiet, leaving her attention to drift to the disproportionately heavy hoof-falls of the stoic pegasus in front of her.

Nightmare blew out a nervous breath and cast her eyes skyward as she tried to think of a topic to break the silence. Nothing was forthcoming, so she just watched as the forest canopy scrolled past her. She stared upward at her horn, and felt her mind wander to the ring on it, hidden from view with the rest of herself. "Huh."

"Hmm?"

"Oh, just I, uhm, how am I…"

"Speak your mind, 'Night Shift,' what is your concern." Nightmare's gaze fell back to the mare, she met her eyes, and sighed.

"Alright, so my disguise is a unicorn."

"Aye."

Nightmare paused at the images of Luna dressed as a pirate that brought up, then shook her head and continued. "And I'm wearing a magic suppressor, preventing me from casting, well, anything."

"That is true." The pegasus 'Moonlight' nodded.

"And my disguise is a unicorn." Nightmare tried to lead the mare to her conclusion, to see if her concern was valid.

"You've already said this." She gave Nightmare a sceptical look.

"I'm going to be a unicorn who can't cast magic. At all, won't that be odd?" Nightmare waved a hoof in a circular motion as she talked.

"Ah, yes, we can see how that might be seen as strange." Luna nodded, she held a hoof to her chin in thought, without breaking stride. "Well, I am confident that you shall be able to create an acceptable story, should the need arise. Ponyville is a largely earth pony settlement, so nopony should particularly mind if you appear to be a more hooves-on mare." She finished in a casual and dismissive manner, that was absolutely no help whatsoever.

▪=//=▪

'Moonlight' and 'Night Shift' had to stop at the edge of town for the moon to be raised, and with it, came a feeling of safety that washed over the dark Alicorn. She watched the display with wonder, as the silvery lunar body ascended into the heavens, the stars exploding from the horizon to take up their nightly vigil. The speed at which day switched to night was amazing, and slightly terrifying, but once everything stopped shifting, it was beautiful.

The night sky on earth was pretty, when one could bear witness to it, light pollution and a nigh constant cloud bank constantly hid the stars, but even on a rare crystal clear night, the sky back home could not compare to Equestria's. Every facet, every twinkling star, even the placement of the moon had been made by hoof – or rather, horn – to dazzle any that would but cast their eyes skywards. The fact that the whole of ancient Equestria apparently couldn't be bothered to spare passing glances at the masterpiece she now beheld seemed so… unlikely, no impossible!

“You enjoying this, Night Shift?” ‘Moonlight’ asked.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Night replied.

“I can imagine,” ‘Moonlight’ said, grinning. “You never did have my artistry with the sky, especially with the liminal times.” She shook her head, still grinning all the while.

For her part, ‘Night Shift’ gave Moonlight a befuddled look. "Uhh, yeah." She felt like asking several questions, especially about what Equestria's past was like, but she didn't want to bring up potentially painful memories, she was already on thin ice.

She also didn't want to look like an idiot by asking what 'liminal' meant.

And so she remained quiet, and looked back up at the beautifully crafted night sky. Once the moon was overhead, Luna's missing horn stopped glowing and they began the march to Ponyville once more. Of all the houses they passed, not a single one had their lights on. Nopony had decided to stay up after sundown, apparently, not a single one of them thought to watch the moonrise. This irked the Nightmare. 'Not a single pony thought it might be nice to look up at the stars? Really? Oh, nevermind, there's one.' as they passed the library, Nightmare could see Twilight on the balcony, three telescopes at her disposal. Sure, she was failing to hide the nervous glances down at the nocturnally inclined Alicorns, but at least she was still awake to enjoy the night.

Soon after the library was out of sight, the pair stopped at a seemingly random house. It was a simple two - possibly three, given the standard height of a pony - story affair, plainly painted off-white walls, sectioned off by exposed wooden beams. The roof was thatch, and the door was stained a dull green.

Nightmare gave the building an appraising look, before turning back to the 'pegasus,' who had also stopped to look at the building. "Is this the place?"

"Aye, this will be thi- your dwelling for the foreseeable future." Luna nodded. "Do you not approve?" The disguised princess inquired with a raised brow.

"No, I do, how can I not? It's not like I could have gone house hunting, considering my non-existent --" Nightmare paused, remembering that she technically did have money, a lot of it, infact, but had no way of accessing it with her magic sealed. "No, that's correct, I'm one-hundred percent broke." 'probably best I don't mention the small fortune I have, at least until I know how much it's actually worth. And can get to it.'
'…'
'I'm going to need to get a job, aren't I?'

Luna didn't look entirely convinced with Nightmare's claim, but made no further attempts to pursue the conversation. "Yes, well, this is your domicile, furnishings aside from a bed, table, and dining cushions shall be arriving some time tomorrow, I would recommend spending some time creating a cover while you wait. You are a clever mare, or you used to be. I have full confidence you can blend in here in Ponyville." With her piece said, she abruptly ended the conversation by taking off, before Nightmare could call out to her, she disappeared in a flash of silver light.

Nightmare sighed as she looked back down at the building she had just been given. It was a nice house, probably the nicest house she had ever owned, and she did own it. The entire situation still seemed entirely surreal, especially now that she had a moment to herself. The fact that she was somehow actually in Equestria was baffling, and made her wonder, for example, what other shows were real. Nightmare pressed on the door as she pondered.
thunk

Nightmare blinked, she pushed again. The door shook slightly, but didn't swing. She jiggled the handle, and got the expected response. Nightmare sighed. "Locked out of my house, yep, that's far too realistic for this to be some coma fantasy… I wonder if Twilight would mind porting me in there?" Nightmare's head slumped as she let loose a moan of irritation. With the quiet tinkling of metal a small object swung into view; apparently, the Princess of the Moon thought it would be funny to hang the house key from Nightmare's horn.

Nightmare sighed once more, this time in relief, as she channeled her magic- "oh, right. No biggie." She shrugged her wings, then moved one such feathery appendage in front of her. 'Pegasi use their wings like hands all the time on the show, how hard can it be?'

▪=//=▪

As it would turn out, it could be just the slightest bit difficult. Feathers. Specifically, the primaries, can be bent and manipulated, but not like good old fingers. but the real problem lay in the fact that they weren't her arms, they were a third set of limbs, and this made rerouting hand knowledge a right pain in the ass. When she finally got the jerky limbs to do what she wanted, she discovered another interesting tidbit about her body, specifically her horn. Now, a standard equine horn is not just some bone sticking out of their forehead like a magical party hat filled with calcium- it's actually covered in velvet, which helps explain why the horn of a pony can match their coat colour. Well, better than it just being a cartoon, since that notion was thrown to the timberwolves.

Velvet, for those who aren't aware, is the fuzzy skin that covers antlers as they grow. It's densely concentrated with blood vessels and nerves. It is very sensitive and nourishes antlers for about five months. On pony horns, it's apparently a permanent fixture, due to 'magic vessels' being in the mix. One doesn't technically need velvet to cast spells, as there is a central line within the horn itself, but it makes it way easier, and offers fine control for long duration spells, such as levitation, or aiming magical death rays.

The key word in this is sensitive. When you run something against extremely sensitive tissue, you get one of two things; pain or pleasure. And seeing how the something was 'supremely soft feathers' it definitely wasn't the former. Add to this still being clumsy with their wings movements, and Nightmare quickly had to stop before she made a mess of her front yard, or worse, woke the neighbors.

Deciding perhaps that removing the key in this manner would be unfavorable, and so she took to trying to make it fall off. "This… probably looks weird." She realized, from her current position of a handstand with her hind legs against the door frame. "Aaand, the key is stuck behind the suppressor… joy."

Nightmare lowered herself to the ground in a slightly less than graceful way. Nightmare dragged her curtain of pink out of the way and spat out a mouthful of grass. As it turns out, being a horse, does not make grass tasty, in fact, it was still quite unpalatable. Nightmare clicked her tongue in annoyance. "Maybe… there's an open window or something I can crawl in?" She guessed as she got to her hooves, going around the left side of the house.

There wasn't.

Back to square one with the key conundrum, Nightmare tried to get the implement as close to the lock as she could. This involved grinding her muzzle against the green stained surface.

It didn't work. If she was actually the pony she appeared to be in her reflection, with the comparatively short muzzle and horn, this plan might have worked, sadly, she was Luna sized. Nightmare lamented the fact that she didn't have magic, it turns out that being able to manipulate objects with one's mind was indeed quite necessary in a unicorn's everyday life.

The dappled mare slumped against the barrier and groaned. "'One of Equestria's greatest villains,' defeated by a simple door… hah." She rubbed a hoof against the frame. "I could just… break it down… but then I have to get it fixed." Nightmare vainly tried to light her horn, and felt the metaphysical dam holding back the flood. Not even a spark got through. Nightmare halfheartedly banged the side of her head into the door. "...This sucks."

▪=//=▪

"Luna!" Celestia cheered upon the younger sister's arrival. "Are you okay? They didn't hurt you, did they? Did they try something once you were alone? I swear, if that parasite tries to take you away from me again, I'll-!"

Luna pushed hard against the bulk of her elder sister to escape the crushing hug she was suffering from. "We art fine! thine- your worry is appreciated, sister, but I am capable of defending myself! In one on one combat, I could have easily bested her, had she not been… changed, as she is. In her current state, I believe even Twilight's nobility-obsessed friend could best her."

"I know you know her name is Rarity, you were bragging nonstop about all your new friends after Nightmare Night. Regardless, I hardly expected you to be the first pony to jump to her defense, Fluttershy perhaps, after her success with Discord."

"I am not…" Luna sighed, rubbing a hoof over her muzzle. "Look, nopony has more reason to hate the Nightmare than me, not even you. But, that pony, I'm not sure. She looks like them, she sounds like them, she even has an identical aura!"

"But… She acts nothing like them." Celestia nodded.

"She does not act like me either, for that matter."

"Lulu…"

"Do not 'Lulu' me, we both know that the Nightmare was nothing more than me at my worst."

"No, we don't. In fact, we now have evidence to support that the Nightmare is - or at least, was - something entirely separate from you."

"Nay, I cannot pin the blame on unknowns, t’was our own doing that brought about Nightmare Moon, and I won't entertain this particular ghost of the past any longer."

Celestia let the discussion drop, albeit reluctantly. "... I still don't trust her."

"Neither do I. But I would be remiss if I were to deny the mare a chance to earn that trust." Luna briefly glanced out the window, before returning her gaze to her sister. "Now then, it is getting late, and you should get some sleep, I shall watch over the night, as is my duty and pleasure."

Celestia offered a wan smile. "You're right, goodnight, Lulu."

"Goodnight Tia, I'll see you at dawn." Luna threw one wing over her sister's withers and gave her a squeeze, before turning and heading for the throne room.

Celestia watched her leave for a moment, before starting for her chambers. "She really has matured these past two years."

▪=//=▪

Time & a Half, What a Nightmare

by Carmine Craft

Chapter 1: A Dream is What You Make of it.

Chapter 2: A Dream is Worth a 1000 Words (If you read them all)

Chapter 3: A Dream Can Feel This Realistic, Right?

Chapter 4: A Dream, This is Not.

Chapter 5: A Dream doesn't come with Free Realistate