Chapter 4: Bad Dreams
Soft curls of sandlerush fluff drift lazily through the fragrant afternoon air as peels of thunder roll across the meadows. There was a wonder to the elements of nature, but there was always something to the Dreamscape that surpassed it.
Luna looks on as the Dream Strider's roiling sensations recognize the prickling discomfort of déjà vu.
Pale grey-green waves rippled across verdant fields as wisps of smoke rise from the cluster of sharp angular habitations partially hidden behind the rise of the hillock.
'It looks like the Unicorn Range, just a little more dull.'
Flitting memories of the nearby grasslands outside Canterlot bubble up, melding with the dreamer and lending the pale grey-green waves a lush and vibrant shine.
The girl sits on the hillock, crosslegged and alone. She sways back and forth in happy reverie with the breeze, long black hair caught up in its playful tussle. Sun kissed skin and freckles reflect a moment of peace. The girl rests her hands on her knees, fingernails digging in to the ribbed leather patches as she draws a breath at the sound of distant thunder.
But the rumble doesn't fade. Instead, the sound swells.
As the first specks of black appear over the horizon, a faint pain lances through Luna's temples. In some juddering moment of sympathy, the girl's outline wavers like smoke as she rubs the side of her own head before shutting her eyes.
The fleeting pain retreats, leaving the girl to open her eyes again and Luna to softly pad up behind her.
"Can you hear me?'
The girls lips move but a double-vision of sorts crosses her face, lips both unmoving and a ghosting image that mouths a response.
" ̴͎͂Yes"
Another lash of pain and faint crackle strikes through her temples. The sensation brought up the image of a whip, a willow thatch, a crop.
The sharp spike of pain is mercifully short.
The girl stands, patting her clothing free of dust before shielding her eyes with a hand. The little black dots were drawing closer now. Luna picks out the rigid geometric shapes that were neither birds nor drakes, but something else.
Airships.
But these were drastically different from the little wind skiffs that dart across the hinterland's canyons and crags. And neither were they the luxurious Canterlotian sky yachts. No, these were bulbous, like bloated seabirds of enormous size. Two of them flew side by side, speeding swiftly over the foothills as they raced over the open landscape. By the time she could see the glint of glass and metal, the pair had parted.
One of the lumbering contraptions circles, approaching where she sat on the hillocks while the other lowers itself on plumes of fire. It settles like a mythic dragon on the rise overlooking the village.
The other lazily arcs high above its perched companion, but she can see it clearly enough. Its side peels open, a skeletal limb juts out ending in a twin barreled cannon that slowly pans back and forth. The airship rolls to its side, displaying a faded yellow eagle painted under its stunted winglets.
A sickly tide rises in her gut, but Luna knew it was symathetic. The girl seizes up, like she's about to dart away. Everything in the dream shimmers and wobbles before collapsing in wisps of smoke. Luna can feel the rapid thump of an omni-present heartbeat. A shatter cityscape forms where the fields were moments before. It's a skeletal ruin surrounded by flickering halos of ghastly green corpusant.
The same airship passes overhead, a shadow soaring so untouchably high through thick smoke. It passes over with a scream of ramjets, the thunderous shudder of rocket swarms shriek by as red-hot metal casings the size of Luna's horn fall like rain. The reeking backwash of burnt chemicals send tendrils of curling corpse smoke billowing through stale air.
'Focus, Strider!' a smooth masculine voice booms through the dreamscape.
Pain lances through the meat of the Alicorn's brain from the base of her skull to her horn. But while Luna grits her teeth, the other entity's shriek echoes through their shared existence for what felt like an eternity. And almost like it never happened, it stops.
The pastoral village wriggles back into focus and the ruined cityscape disappears. The girl wrinkles her nose and coughs against the persistent smell of fuel, but the airship continues its lazy circuit to the north.
It dawns on Luna slowly, looking at the swath cut across the verdant fields, the other ship still remains perched on the rise overlooking the settlement.
She hesitates. A voice of instinctive warning rising up in her core, a voice that wasn't hers. Instead of returning to the village, the girl edges away from the bloated airship and creeps away, following the billowing waves of the rippling prairie grasses tall enough to conceal her from the prying eyes of the far off aerial predator.
Ramps fall from the landed airships underbelly and two rows of grey armoured figures stride down in perfect unison. A figure swathed in gaudy colours proceeds behind them, a billowing black standard emblazoned with that same eagle emblem as was on the ships snapping in the shuttles backwash. After what might have been just a few minutes, three dozen villagers are herded up the ramp.
Luna's eyes pick out the manacles and coffle lines, knowing a slave hunting expedition when she saw it.
That sense of déjà vu returns.
Part of the Alicorn distrusted everything she saw and for good reason. Dreams could often come in the guise of emotion twisted memories, and memories were anything but infallible.
She had tested the boundaries and found it wild, permeable, but contained. And this was most certainly an emotional memory drawn through a fluid dreamscape. But it wasn't quite normal. At least, it didn't flow like a pony's dream aught to. There was definitely a tug of emotion, but that second voice, smooth as oil, definitely male, it had coached her and pain had flicked through her mind to guide it back away from the eddies and turmoils of a true dream.
'This was rehersed like a play. Is it... trying to commit only certain central parts to memory?'
No, it wasn't just a flashback or some imprinted vision like a photograph. When the airship banked, the flash of golden wings brought the rise of bile to her throat and made her heart race. It evoked dread, like a monster. Unnatural fear had washed over her in ripples of other memories and emotions, vivid and fresh. Luna had been on the verge of stroking the girls mind and putting an end to the dream before the searing flash of pain had re-aligned the memory. It had stopped the drift, it had returned the dream: the method was so appallingly crude but it had worked.
This creature, this bizarre thing, had talent enough to intrude on her domain, albeit in a crass and primitive way. It was not noble or learned, but it was genuine. Luna reflects silently on the female figure she had observed.
From face to mind, it wasn't Equestrian at all. It was alien, but perhaps not beyond comprehension.
"When did you learn this?" Luna asks the void between faded dreams and gets no answer. This being had focused and collapsed the memory.
The Alicorn's distraction sent its mind spiraling. The world dims with just the Alicorn drifting among a flickering set of stars.
A set of images begins to form from the stars pale and nebulous sparks. A panicked series of frames streaks among them, like images from those new moving picture machines. She sees flashes of an unknown night sky, of firelight and wisps of fragrant incense. Aged rituals of paint, and baubles, and chanting rang in secret beneath a bright crescent moon. There's a ripple of thunder that crackles in one's ears like the breaking of a fever that gave rise to a single keening note. The scream started deep and distant before rising until it shook the fabric of the void.
The dark Alicorn had grown accustomed to using senses that weren't there. She wasn't used to these senses being blotted out in a wall of force. Nothing cut like a razor, soothed like a salve, it was as blunt as a hammer. But a steady arrhythmic thump still beat in her breast like a second heart.
'Focus Strider, do not wander.'
That male voice cuts the silence. The images flicker and die, as if chastened by the rebuke. She had tried to answer in a way that perhaps wouldn't draw some other intrusion.
" ̷̐There is more, ̴̞̍ ̷̪̐ Deep liege. There is much more ̵̛̤̲̔ ̴̞̍"
Luna takes in the amorphous figure, and traces out the lines that resembled the girl sitting alone in a field. The Strider that had emerged was both the sickly tendriled being cloaked in deepest oily shadows that had clawed at her the night before, and that same freckled waif seated in the fields.
The squeal of sharp blaring noise heralds in the new reality and wakes the waif of a girl from her rest. She lays on a hard iron cot, so very like the beds in Canterlot's dungeon: dingy and aged. But while Canterlot's dungeons were in disuse, these felt neglected.
She rolls off the hard iron bunk as much by instinct as choice, wincing when her raw hands touch the bunk's metal frame. She wears a tight metal band around her neck. Gone were the leather patched pants in favour of loose fitting shorts and an ugly stained shirt covering just her upper chest exposing a withered and emaciated midriff.
Two other girls sleep in her room now, three bodies crammed into what was evidently meant for one's personal quarters. Luna looked on, having to sidestep and turn. It's so cramped she couldn't even extend her wings. The figures, shaven headed and flecked with grime and soot felt intrinsically familiar.
But there was no wellspring of friendship from the waking girl, the Strider. It was merely recognition. She wanders ungainly towards the shared bathroom, staring in the mirror. The motion and sound of two other waking bodies in the background are only dimly glimpsed as Luna follows, looking in the mirror as well.
The face that looks back contorts in a scowl, cheeks hollow and skin turned ashen pale compared to the bronzed youth that she'd seen. Dark rings around the female's eyes struck Luna in an instant as the same rings of a raccoon. It was both comical and worrisome as the girl pinches her own cheek in disgust.
Luna's visage wavered in the same fiery halo, and for a second, she swore the waif's eyes and hers meet. The girl's eyes widen, and a hitched breath rises in her chest just as she's jostled to the side by another shaven haired figure. A prickling feeling of being watched raises Luna's hackles.
'It's a dream, of course she can see me.'
Luna steps back, and catches the Strider looking in the mirror again, but this time she was out of sight. But it didn't take a detective to notice the prickle of the girl's skin, and the awkward recognition that that was still a memory. She reaches for the faucet, splashing a jet of water onto her face. The jostling of three people in competition for what space should be afforded to one erupts in a ribald string of curses. Luna looks on as the girl is shoved from the tiny closet-sized space in her stained tan shirt and undergarments.
With a sigh, the girl fetches a pair of synth-leather pants and work boots from the end of her bed and awkwardly hops as she puts on the semblance of a uniform. But the boots she eschews with a petulent harumph, and she merely tucks them under an arm. Stopping just long enough to snap up a jangling necklace looped around the metal frame of her bunk, she pops it around her neck and heads out the door.
Even just a sidelong glance reminded Luna of something else. The necklace's metal threads jangle with a single round metal disc etched with writings and markings.
"Wait, they make you wear collars like a common pet?"
There's no answer this time, but the figure does pause as she scratches the chaffed skin and whines like a dog. Rolling her neck and nodding, it was hard to tell if that was meant for her or just stretching. The girl straightens her back, then heads out into the hall in her bare feet, the Alicorn trotting a few paces behind.
The girl grumbles as she scratches the raw flesh at the back of her neck. The dimly lit hab block stinks with manufacturing fumes, the stale air dead and cloying to her senses. Luna sees bald creatures passing by, much the same as the girl but broader in frame and face, far taller. They wear the grey garments that look like some clergy, and part of Luna's mind feels the jab of a telepathic prod from the Strider.
"Offworlders."
The soft clarifying note melds perfectly with the girl's wrinkled nose and a mouthed phrase that matched it. This time, the booming voice said nothing, like it had missed the faint flicker of duality.
Each narrow hall led to another prefab labyrinth functionally identical to the last, from the bare grey walls to the brass grating and steel conduits running the length of the ceiling. The dim hum of the lumin orbs pool what dingy orange light could be had every couple meters, leaving the edges of her vision swimming in shadows. The darkness settles in empty alcoves that now and then lead to access panels or caged lifts.
A work crew emerges from one of the shrouded alcoves, prompting the slight girl to spin and wedge herself against the wall to avoid being trampled by the thick exo-suit crews that trudge from it. Their footfalls disappear, as did the stink of fyceline vapour and heady lho smoke.
She looks around, takes a breath, then darts into the lift as the steel cage closes. Luna follows immediately. With a single push of a large glowing rune, it judders and slowly descends further into the heart of the hab block. The girl rubs her eyes and waits for the lift to stop.
"Is this normal for you?"
Luna queries, and gets no reply save for a weary sigh.
The rhythmic click of mechanical actuators rouses her, and she blinks the sleep from her eyes as the blurry form of half-dead men step numbly forward. The two grey-fleshed creatures stare forward with dead milky eyes, their mechanical limbs making them barely recognizable as the same species as the girl. She darts out, barely avoiding the dull plod of feet as she skitters down the hallway, still carrying her boots in hand.
Loud hailers blare on the lower levels of the block, voices filtering in through open doorways lead into nondescript industrial runs which spill into the open communal hab chambers. The Strider turns quickly, emerging into the upper gantries of the mustering hall. But instead of the steady stream of workers and hab dwellers hustling through the congested room, Luna sees a sea of people staring up at the churning images on grainy pict displays. Every single one was the same.
A dread stillness engulfs the room.
The girl takes a few more steps, but even on the gantries, people lean out and watch in unnatural silence. And then she sees it; a burning eye, flickers of light around a dusty charcoal rock. But Luna knew a planet when she saw it.
In a far off system halfway across the empire, there had been an 'incident'.
Istvaan, the name rings in the deep of the creature's mind as the world bleeds back into the nebulous black void specked with pale stars.
The very word felt imbued with wrongness: from its sibilant cadence to its harsh accent, it was a word that had yet to pass from Equine lips. It felt wrong to do so. Its very being unleashed a mythic understanding of some knowledge of good and evil; once said and heard, it could never be forgotten.
Like a rising dawn, Luna knew what was coming. But the question forms regardless, "What happened there?"
The Strider's strained voice replies honestly, with only the faintest hint of hesitation, "The beginning of the end. My lord has memories if... you need to see, and to understand. He knows much. Will you entreat with him?"
Luna thinks for a moment, though it was barely a fleeting lull for most ponies. "He was the voice in your head, wasn't it?"
A pause of silence, but the stars flicker and glow.
"Tell me, why are you asking on behalf of somepony else? You could be pleading for sanctuary, Stars above know you deserve it. But instead you're here requesting help for somepony else."
For a moment, and just a moment, Luna thought she saw the glimpse of a monstrous serpent outlined in the dark. It was a flash of twisted coils and glittering fangs that disappear like smoke.
"This one repays a debt. This one.. hopes. This one is not of the one-and-twenty, or part of the immortal host. But even so, maybe it... I, yes, maybe I can make a difference."
There was a skip in the heartbeat, a steel in the being's resolve that caused the stars to burn more brightly in the endless expanse.
"I can do what even they can't."
Luna's mind sifts through the information as the creature danced around its true request. She draws a breath, steadying herself for whatever would follow. The Alicorn tests each of her enchanted wards, and one after another, finds that the arcane devices remain unchallenged.
"Well, then I'll listen to what your master has to say."
With a shiver, the dreamscape writhes. Wisps of a nebulous grey void rolls in like mist on a morning lake and Luna's hackles raise as she recognizes it for the sensation of a shared dream. But it wasn't one of hers, this space was imprecisely constructed. But it did create what amounted to a slurry of potential.
For the first time, she wasn't the architect of such an occurrence.
A pulse runs through her hooves, an arrhythmic vibration Luna recognizes as the heartbeat that so pervaded her conscience earlier. But more to the point, she sees her hooves, she senses her body even if it was just a manifestation. She willed it to be and it gained substance compared to the wisps of fleeting shade that this girl created.
'Calm yourself, Luna. They probably don't have the same experience or clarity of mind to manifest themselves in their dreams.'
That thought dies in a heartbeat.
