Chapter 3: Method Master
"Did you make contact, Strider?"
The master of the Effrit asks as smoothly as silk. He easily maneuvers his pistol, adjusting the angle before the high pitched squeal of the disruptor beam mingles with the garbled roar of pain. Whatever had just turned the corner disappeared in a puff of incandescent sparks.
She catches the movement from the corner of her eye, though it feels distant and impersonal. Trails of objects swim in her vision as she lulls her head, feeling a cheek brush against the cold marble. Her senses swim back just long enough to register that she's splayed on the floor, hand barely tracing along a bronze rim of the mirror. The young woman draws a breath after recognizing that she had been called; a poor choice given the small unnoticed pool of bile, blood, and acid by her lips.
The spluttering fit melds her retching with a hacking cough.
"S-ssssir."
Amidst the wheezing breathes, she clears her throat and wipes away the pink foam gathering at the corners of her mouth with the back of her hand. She weakly rises to all fours, trying to shake her head and fight back the throb of pain in the base of her skull.
"Yes, lord."
Her reedy voice trembles as she rocks back and forth on scraped knees.
"What did the farseer say, Strider?"
Even with his back turned, Sabinus reflexively tenses and leans away from him.
"I-I don't think it was an Aeldari voice, my lord."
A half glance over his shoulder turns her blood to ice. The master of the Effrit lowers his voice, the rasp of a razor blade over granite.
"Then what manner of creature did you contact?"
She swallows hard and staggers to her feet. "I saw, no, I felt a Dream Strider that pushed back. It-" she hacks and coughs, red spittle dotting her lips. Sabinus pushes past the pain and sweeps the back of her hand across her mouth. "It was powerful, and it was from somewhere beyond the Unseen Boarder, but not a daemon. It wanted nothing and it offered nothing. Sir, It could have been a void angel."
The astartes warrior, perhaps satisfied and perhaps not, turns his gaze back to the doorway. One of his Effrit lay in pieces behind the castellax, and the rattle of situation reports and requests came in a staggering non-stop torrent echoing from the helmet clamped to his waist. But his voice returned to its brazen inflection at her suggestion.
"Such a thing doesn't exist, Strider. There are no gods, certainly no angels, and no masters here to help us. What we do here, we do alone. While I do not doubt your sincerity, perhaps it was merely a sorcerer."
She would have laughed had the sentence been uttered at any other time and almost any other person. A hundred attenuated souls couldn't produce something so clear and potent that it would press through the fabric of reality without brute force, and she knew it.
"Forgive me, lord, but it wasn't. I... know you brought me for my talents. My talent says that this is what you wanted to find. And you knew what we were searching for. It wasn't a Aeldari bone caster, was it?"
And for a time, her enormous guardian remains silent. Another pistol crack and Sabinus catches the faintest glimmer of a grin in the dark.
"Hmmm, and you are certain it was no Farseer? No avian Star Shaper?"
Sabinus scrunches her nose in defiant certainty.
"No, lord, I'm positive."
"Tell me, would you stake your life on this?"
Sabinus took a long moment to think, searching her feelings.
She had been a tribal Dream Strider, she'd woven the dream catchers that protected her people for eight years until the arrival of the Star Walkers. She had felt the screams of other Dream Striders in the days before the Soulless had arrived and cast into the black ships.
"I think I already have staked my life on it. I am a Dream Strider, and I would bet my soul that was one as well, lord."
Fully satisfied, the astartes draws a level breath. "It will require you do nothing less than exactly that. Can you contact them again?"
"Yes."
There was no hesitation this time. The young woman heard the astartes take a few steps towards her, practically back to back.
"Then do it. I need to speak with them. You shall be my emissary and I, your guardian."
"Y-yes. Lord, I didn't mean to sound assuming, I was-"
"I know."
She sighs, body quivering both with effort and anticipation. It had been so long, and she felt a coolness the moment her palms press against the sheer metal. Her mind wanders, and slowly the world dissolves.
The kitchens were thankfully empty when Luna had slipped from the library and through the royal palace's halls. The chefs and cooks had left moments before, their voices echoing off the cold stone as the slow cooked vegetable stocks and broths simmered in enormous iron cauldrons. The kindled arcane flames still flickered beneath them in their well swept hearths.
Luna looks over the long trestle table, seeing everything on it but paying no attention. The sound of her munching some corn nuts compete with the crackling embers for dominance in the empty room. The plates had been set out but her elaborate plans had amounted to little more than a sandwich and pouring snacks into two ramekins. It was easier than making something, despite her initial grand ideas.
The kitchen staff would be back soon but the relative peace and homely quiet was momentarily more appealing than being shoved to the end of the enormous refectory table in the dining hall... alone, awaiting breakfast in the hollow echoing chamber. The ambient glow of the fire in a smaller more cozy room seemed comparatively pleasant.
The Alicorn's magic sputters as she tried to grab another mouthful of the baked treats, only to find they'd vanished. Only the crusts remained on her plate, and she momentarily stares at the husks in stunned silence. The meal had betrayed her, disappeared.
Traitors... humph, Oh well.
The princess lowers her chin to the table and closes her eyes with a lengthy sigh. The long morning of research after her duties had been fruitless. For every half-decent idea, other worries and conditions had cropped up. Sleep remained elusive, chased from her mind long ago. It was going to be another sleepless day in Equestria for her.
Opening one eye, she stares out the narrow window at the sunlit morning. Golden light spills across the Unicorn Range, bathing it in gilded glory. Each shimmer of radiance was still beautiful as she stars enraptured at the sight. The night fell like silver, but there was always something about that golden dawn creeping across the hills that... well, it was infuriating in a way. A smile slips across Luna's muzzle, even as her eyes glaze when sleep slowly envelops the princess of the night.
She had been wrong after all.
A screeching, jarring crash jolts Luna to wakefulness at once. Her heart beats painfully in her breast, breath raggedly torn from suddenly parched lips. Her eyes roll, shooting glances back and forth, flickering over the room, drinking in every last detail to search for something out of place.
"Celestia?!" she calls with a rasping crackle, louder than she'd ever meant too. Luna fights to draw breath in ragged uncontrolled gasps, feeling a rising pressure in her chest pressing from the inside outward against her ribs. Her forehoof twitches on its own. Feeling the trembling shudder down her limb, she reaches up to paw at her throat, grazing her hoof against the pristine platinum torc. The cool chill of the metal calms her as the frog of her hoof rests against the metal plate emblazoned with her cutie mark.
No, this was no prank of the elder Alicorn.
Something buzzed in her mind and she'd awoken. Her body was still tired, she sat on the brink of exhaustion, but something worms its way into the edge of her consciousness. A wayward thought crosses the princess' mind.
'Stars above, I better not be getting sick. Wait, did I leave my other journal in the old castle? Ooooooh, please don't be some evil sorcerer who found that diar- uh, journal.'
The thought passes. An Alicorn could be sick, but she would almost certainly know about any illness plaguing the palace staff. And if her journal was found... well, that might be something.
'No, I'm tired. I'm just tired, that's it.'
Luna closes her eyes again and tries to draw back something, anything. Thoughts of a foalhood and gallivanting around the old palace flit back like a photograph before her minds eye. She smiles, an inadvertent memory of an easier, earlier time. Thoughts of deeds and conquests for her ponies, for the fledgling Equestria. Her own memories fade, and the faint background noise of the dreamscape reaches her once again.
The quiet melody of a world awake mixes with a few pulses. Like the sound of a heartbeat or whisk of a breeze, the ponies that slumbered in the mid-morning were few and required far less attention than at night.
Thoughts and visions of greatness and the cheering sound of a name even made Luna grin. She'd long since attuned herself to the dreams and wishes of her sister's pupil and the element bearers. Loyalty's dreams thread past her like silk, a quiet and transient dream from a shallow rest.
And like an earthquake, the clamour of noise slams into her again. Luna's hooves scrabble at the tabletop, but they skip over the wooden surface as she careens awkwardly to the floor with a sudden loud crack. Pain blossoms through the back of her skull, and the taste of copper floods her mouth. But worst of all, that howling rings in her ears and blots out everything from the outside world, leaving her deaf.
Her heart thunders in her chest, she'd been attuned to the quiet when something blindsided her. The rogue dream arose from nowhere like a gale. It was no random noise, it was screaming: a single undulating rhythm propelled by a torrent of emotions so fearful, so distraught, so unthinkably tormented that the dreamscape shook with its touch.
Luna chokes back the rising bile in her throat. It was almost familiar but there was still a hope that she was wrong. As she lays against the cold stone, her mind torn from her, a whisper passes her lips in both realms.
"Be still."
Authority, comfort, she breathes life into her words as if it would stem the tide. There is no starry cloak she can use to comfort her subjects or bring relief. This wasn't a dreamer she knows, neither was it a dreamer in her realm. Luna's conscience flits across the nebulous expanse in the realm of dreams but the waterfall had dried up. The shrill cry rang from the depths of the abyss like a voice in a cave. The bands of twinkling stars and quiet lights in the darkness were no more, washed away into a bleak and featureless void.
"What's wrong?"
Luna's voice reaches out when nothing but silence meets her. With a ghostly breath, she spots what almost appears to be a sunken corner in the dark.
"Ȩ̵̖̤̈̌͛ḛ̸̲̣̃̉eeverything."
A whisper, a mind reaching out across the silent astral landscape. It steals her breath. Luna glimpses lithe limbs reaching like tendrils from the black blot, writhing and contorting as it struggles for breath.
The astral mirror of herself hesitates for only a moment before edging towards the abyssal pit.
What creature would emerge from utter darkness? She prepares herself, weaving an array of enchanted wards and incantations to safeguard her. If this was the Nightmare, it was different.
"How so?"
Did the being know it slumbered? Luna consciously slows her approach, now on the lookout for other signs of manipulation.
'Th̴͖̩͈̉̒̽̕ings are e̴̮̯͒͐̓nding, things have ended. The son of h̸ope is dead. T̵͛̓͒he son of l̷̡̋ight̵̢̛̊͜ is gone. Are you a power of the Ḓ̸̘͔̫̀͠e̶͆̈́ep?"
The voice queries, its very essence reeks of of the bitterness of desperation hidden behind a creaking facade of formality. She knew their type. Luna lets the imperceptible moments pass. One question needed to be answered first.
"What are you?"
The reply is instantaneous. "I am a Dream Strid̵̼͒̀̀e̵r."
Another creature who stalked the dreamscape? No, she knew it intimately, she nurtured it, she knew all of its pathways like she knew the castle gardens. Better, actually. Luna scowls, stamping her projected hoof down in a peel of thunder.
"Is that so? Truly? You are unknown to us."
The voice responds without hesitation, its tone clearing slightly, hiccuped rasps affecting it only now and then like a skipping vinyl record.
"We be̷͇̘͆́̾g forgiveness. This method, it is taxing. We require aid of one in the ̶͘Deep."
Luna searches the hazy figure, trying to figure out what it was. It was almost certainly some form of nightmare, its effects on the whole unwaking world couldn't be more profound. But at this distance, she felt all the malign powers as little more than background noise. It swathed the other creature, enfolded it, but it was not them.
"You search for one who wields power. For what reason?"
The being whispers again, its form flickering, its incorporeal shiver seemingly occupying two spaces at once. "For the purposes of my lord: to mend what is b̶̙͕̀roken, to restore the lig̵̀͝ht."
The road to Tartarus was paved with good intentions, and this creature had already hurled itself screaming from the void in a fit of anguish. As Luna looked on the form she saw something alien: it was slender, gangly, upright, with emaciated limbs wreathed in wisps of deepest darkness like the coils of a vast serpent.
"At what cost?"
"Do ̶̬̲̘̝̃͘y̴ou... do you ask for a sac̵rifice? We..." a shiver wracks its form, sending roiling spasms across the amorphous mass. Its featureless face tilts up to stare at Luna, "We will comply. We will provide. We only ask that you hear our plea, then you may name your ̶̬̲̘̝̃͘price."
Luna's eyes widen at the suggestion. A thousand thoughts rush through her mind, but she settles on one single statement as she grasps for more time.
"Continue."
The apparition begins without pause. " ̶̃͘W̵̆͝e know not what realm you belong to, what worlds you have seen, but the Empire of S̵ol is crumbling. Their k̶̤̯͗ing is slain, the lord of arms dead by his hand, uncountable sons of the immortal host butchered on fields across the stars. N̸̛͑̕ightmare̶͒̈͑s stalk the waking realm and the Dream Striders are hunted. The peoples of the Sol Empire die in countless multitudes every day. Numbers as vast as the stars are erased by the war machine and their worlds turned to ash."
It waits, but Luna finds herself with little to say. So she makes a little rolling gesture with her hoof to proceed, which the creature seems to understand.
"My lord is one of the immortal host, one of the one-and-twenty, and he seeks to right this wrong. ̶͘ He seeks to save countless trillions of lives from the furnace. We can not, we have done all, and are at the end. I do not know if this translates to you, liege in the Deep, but I have been allowed to provide proof if you accept it."
Trillions. The number was meaningless, utterly meaningless. Luna's mind quickly fumbles with the numbers. For thousands of years Equestria had gone on in its cycle of life, teaming tens of millions had been born and lived out their lives under her sister's reign. Luna swiftly came to one conclusion.
'That's it, this thing is nuttier than a fruitbat.'
Part of her mind said that bats didn't eat nuts, another insists she had seen them do so, and the last casually mentions that the whole thing fit the crazed creature anyway.
But even madness often held a speck of truth, albeit oft twisted beyond recognition.
"Trillions, is that so? Tell me no lie, speak no half-truth, or I'll know."
"I can show you what I have seen. If you accept this, my lord wishes for an audience, through me. Is this agreeable?"
A moment of truth, a moment of hesitation. If it was a lie, it was a danger to her and to Equestria as she could sense no malice. But this creature couldn't possibly be speaking truth. It couldn't, it was a figment of its tortured imagination. Part of her is happy that she has something so strange and new to do in an otherwise boring day, something unheard of. Another tugs at her fetlocks with one question:
'What if it's not lying?'
She ignores the dissent in her own mind and confidently tilts her chin up.
"Then show me."
