Chapter 8: Confrontation


Blood: it had an unmistakable scent, and Luna had grown used to it when accompanied by the stink of medicinal antiseptics. It was an odour smelled only rarely, and much of that was from the faint scent of it soaked into soiled bandages or clots of shaved fur. Lately, it had come from wandering down corridors of emergency rooms after her night guard got into a tussle, or occasionally visiting one of their subjects recovering to bolster their spirits.

It had been lifetimes ago, but she still remembered the fields of mud, split organs, fecal rot, and above all, blood. There was nothing clean or antiseptic about that stomach churning stench. It struck her now like a thunderbolt as the Lunar Princess stares wide-eyed at the charnel scene presented to her like a macabre art house exhibit.

A long hall of soot stained metal surrounds her, ten paces high and about the same wide, banded in bronze strips and bolts the size of her hoof. Once polished to a mirror shine in the long distant past, the pitted surface was dented by enormous impacts and raked with ragged furrows. But it was the enormous splashes of crimson ribbons and clots of gore that truly set the madness into stark relief. The lunatic artist who'd graced the room had even splattered misty droplets across the ceiling.

Splintered golden shells and their dead occupants lay in discarded heaps. Bisected plates of remarkable thickness were sheared open, revealing their enormous occupants. But she couldn't make out much beyond the ropes of innards, shredded flesh, and emptied cavities laying in tangled heaps at the base of the walls. Luna thought there might have been a half-dozen of the golden giants, but she couldn't be certain. They were smaller than Alpharius, but only just.

The only thing she could be sure of was the clash of noise echoing from further down the halls. Two discordant tunes prick her ears, one a chorus of wolf howls mingling into a single surging melody. The other song, a barbaric guttural chant melded with the droning monotone buzz of throatsinging.

"There."

Luna breaks her self-imposed lull so she could blot out the suppurating corpses and mindless carnage.

The Alicorn redoubles her pace, surging down the hall and bounding over the bodyparts and slick pools. The soft chime of magic thrums from up ahead. Magic. The architects of this nightmare were here. She can hear the distant clank of machines mingled with voices. They were muffled but her hearing had always been excellent, she picked out at least three distinct voices even if she couldn't make out the exact words.

A quavering shimmer wobbles near the end of the hall and Luna nearly balks at the oddity.

'That's not heat haze.'

There was no steam, no warmth, the air was stale and chilly if anything. Her mind registers the omnipresent tang of pooling magic just as she twists sharply to the right behind scorched bulkhead. The temperature drops violently as she turns the corner and she nearly slips on a thin sheet of pink hoarfrost.

By instinct, she throws an arcane shield up in front of her face the moment her breath coalesces into frosty white clouds.

"No further, Princess."

A familiar hissing voice seethes into existence. The hall was identical to the last, every corpse, every splash, everything the same but cloaked in a shroud of white and pink hoarfrost growing in crystalline clumps. At the centre stands a black vaguely pony shape. Its body twists like living oil, dropping and oozing non-reflective black gobs as it spreads a pair of wings from its back. But the face, Luna stares and recalls the impossibly wide grin and flickering eldritch eyes of the abomination.

"Nightmare."

The smile seems to grow, twisting around its lipless mouth showing rows of needle teeth.

In the distance, a strong accented voice calls, "It is lies, brother, all of it!"

The wash of magic and fire could barely penetrate the icy depths of the hall. The Nightmare stares at Luna, but already the princess's ears pick up the sound of shuffling from behind her.

"Do not interfere with this. We will have no mercy this time, little one."

A flush spreads across the Alicorn's cheeks as her eyes narrow.

"Do not speak to me as if I were a foal."

She knew of the creature behind her, she would not make the same mistake again. But part of her didn't feel the threat from the apparition, it had appeared as the seducer in her past, it never could simply overpower her. Once more, she was sure it knew that.

It cocks its head to the side, that unnerving grin waxing as wide as a crescent moon, "Again, Lulu? I thought we'd already talked about this before-"

"Don't you dare use that name like you know me!"

If the creature could blink, it may have. "Deaaaaaar little Lulu, who knows you better than I?"

The Alicorn's ears perk up again, hearing a harsh barking cackle in the distance, "You're still too far away, Magnus. You have no power here!" That earlier choir of wolf howls grows more distant. Like the tick of a metronome, it was a reminder that time was slipping away.

"Step aside," she says while taking a strong step forward.

The Nightmare seethes, eyes popping out across its oily hide in so many angry hives. Each stares in a separate direction, "Not this time, Luna."

The wet gargled noise behind the Alicorn pricked her hackles. And as she turns, it was most definitely not the same as before.

A bulbous mass of wet bloated tissue pulls itself from the golden corpse. It waddles forward, distended belly pulsing as if ready to burst. Each ponderous step causing a little jingle from a tiny bell hanging from a wicked changeling-like horn sprouting from its forehead. A single cyclopian eye stares directly ahead as it opens its fanged maw with a wet belch.

From behind it, more of the corpulent horrors emerge from the wasted flesh of the dead host. The golden guardian's own skin and muscles provide the flesh for the fecund monsters.

Luna senses her mistake, throwing herself to the side while pulling her wings around her in a protective shield.

A bolt of virulent green flame streaks by, crashing into the metal and leaving rapidly cooling slag.

The Nightmare still smirks as the frozen corpses crackle and writhe. Long lithe limbs claw their way through the golden forms, shattering plate armour like brittle pottery.

"Your adoring fans from beyond wish for an audience, little Lulu."

"Ceifador!"

The halberd bursts into existence, scything through the air at the Nightmare's throat. With a flickering pop, the monstrous apparition disappears with the conjured blade a hairsbreadth from its neck. It coalesces back into existence behind the newly emerging forms.

"You are no mistress of these realms, little Luna."

Graceful, slender forms with perfectly set musculature pull themselves from their icy prisons. Their faces were lean bloodless visages, with jet black eyes that seemed to still stare holes into her. A garish display of golden trinkets hang from barbels and ring piercings punched through taut waxy skin. Long crustacean pincers and scything blades end their limbs, and rarely were their forms symmetrical. Some were mareish, with at least a single teat, though high up on their chests, others appeared more stallion-like as she kept her gaze from drifting. They were, however, entirely alien.

That moment of hesitation was too much. The first of the lithe demonic figures darts forward with a bestial screech. It was fast, unnaturally fast.

It scraps its claw along the wall, gouging the metal and pulling itself forward as Luna let her ears flick to the cyclopian beasts to her right.

Charging her horn, she lashes out with a magical lance at the first shrieking terror, punching through its chest leaving a trail of baleful blue flame. The lithe form flickers and dissolves into a puff of perfumed smoke before her eyes.

Even before a second leapt through the haze made by the first, Luna's attention drifted. The bulbous monsters were less graceful and slower than the shrieking terrors, but they could still conjure one surprise.

They were quiet.

Luna came nearly face to face with its rancid face before the pick of Ceifador slams into its temple. She thought she'd put it down as the barb sunk in several inches, but it merely stretches its gangly limbs out to grasp her.

Eyes widening, Luna heaves the halberd forward and down, tugging the creature off balance and sending it crashing to the floor.

But the second darting horror had closed the gap, backing Luna into a corner. It leaps through the air with its scything claws outstretched. And it's all she could manage to use the butt end of the conjured halberd to crack into its sternum and throw it back with a shove of telekenetic effort.

It sprawls across the floor, doubles over, and rights itself on four scrabbling limbs like a spider. A follow up flash of magic turns it into the same lavender smoke.

Five more bloated corpses, four more screaming terrors. In a corner like this, she already knew her chances. With a breath, she throws herself at the swifter creatures. A flash of magic, a hastily thrown up barrier, then a swift sideways chop of her polearm.

The gambit worked as she plunges through the smoke, barely seeing the needle filled maw dissolve into a noxious haze before another creature slams into her barrier and rockets back. The halberd caught something through the mist, and it surrounds her in a noxious, cloying haze that stings her nostrils and tries to dredge up distracting images

"No!" she let her tongue loose, giving voice to her frustration to wriggle free of its toxic fugue.

A shadow glides past the haze, and she felt a vibration through the metal. But tossing her shoulder forward, she plunges through the smoke and emerges face to face with another beast. It slams its claws into her shield, sending spider cracks through the blue arcane veil.

Blow after blow rains into the forcefield, sending sympathetic shivers back through her as it pistons its claws in a flurry of near-instantaneous blows. A sweep of her wing buffets it to the side before she hurdles the creature completely. It's needle teeth snaps at her belly, and it gets a hind-hoof to the face for the effort.

But the bloated creatures had caught up those mere moments, their ponderous bulks visible through the haze as Luna tears forward and throws another demon from her back. Plowing through them, she dismisses Ceifador and sprints to the end of the frozen hall.

The Nightmare grins, walking leisurely to the right and out of sight. She was about to protest, but more voices reach her ears in the lull bought by the destruction of at least three of the shrieking terrors.

"Horus, the Serpent Lodge and its priestesses have sent me to offer this chance to save you!" A sibilant voice echoes from further down the corridor.

She was getting closer now, and taking the corner with a skid, she confronts what lies beyond.

And again, it was another identical corridor. The same six golden bodies lay in a state of ruined repose. Blood spatters the walls like a sick paintbrush. But here, shadows and lights glint off the pitted metal like unseen torches as they filter down through the hall.

And at the end, the Nightmare still grins and stares.

"Luuuuna, you best go home now. Or I might just start to get upset."

The six bodies burst apart in gobbets of liquid metal and specks of vaporized tissue. Slick, fleshy horrors pulled themselves free, amorphous shapes oozing free of the broken shells. Massive maws snap open and shut in jibbering blurts of psychotic laughter. Tangles of hands and feet erupt from around the plump body.

But Luna was already sending a lance of magic towards the Nightmare.

It dissolves into oily smoke and slinks further down the corridor before disappearing behind another bend to the right.

Luna's ears flick. She didn't need to be an architect to know she was in an endless square. She brushes it off and throws herself forward. The voices were getting louder, that in itself was progress.

The shrieking terrors were almost on her, and these new figures merely hop-skip back and forth like excitable foals. That was before the first opens its mouth and vomits a scorching ray of blue energy at her.

Part of her was aghast as she sees her own arcane barrier curling inwards at the edges like a slip of parchment.

"You've figured it out, silly little pony." the Nightmare's booming voice echoes with its mirthless laugh. "You're in the warp, you're playing in my castle now, little princess-"

Luna backs herself to the corner, a grin spreading across her face as she concentrates, feeling the presence of the dreamer so far but so remarkably close.

A shiver of discomfort rolls down her spine, remembering the Nightmare's presence perfectly well. Another shiver like an earthquake rocks the room, and the wolf howls once before disappearing.

From further in the dreamscape, as if cast through rusted pipes and ancient vents, she hears a far more determined shout that had no direction. It was everywhere and nowhere.

"I am Horus Lupercal, and I have made my decision!"

The Nightmare stops, andthe demonic beasts seem to hiss and writhe, not in agony but some approximation of pleasure. It rolls its head back in an almost drunken haze, "-maybe I'll wear your skin again."

"You say this is your castle. That you command it." Luna smirks, "But this is also a dream. So, I own your castle!"

Luna throws herself at the inside wall, pulling the structure closer to her, manipulating the dream as only one such as herself could. The wall stretches and the structure folds to her will. As she sends a lancing beam through into the metal she throws every ounce of her strength into her shoulder. Beating her wings, she winces against the inevitable impact.

There's nary a sound as she strikes the wall, and it explodes into ragged scraps of metal and stone. The lingering stink of corpses and corruption gives way to the still pungent waft of foundry dregs. She stumbles for a moment, righting herself as a hoof bumps into a steel railway spar. But as the Alicorn emerges from the rain of debris and dust, she stops cold.

Not five steps in front of her, towering over her seemingly diminutive form, was a living god.

He was more than twice her height and carried himself with the bearing of one beyond the ken of any other in existence. Clad in jet black plate armour and swathed in a crimson cloak draped in wolf furs, he was every inch the warrior lord that other rulers would aspire. Part of her mind threw the image of Sombra front and center, but to compare the Unicorn King of Shadows to this being felt insulting. But it wasn't his raiment that held her attention, rather, she slowly found herself captured by an unnatural radiance in his stern face.

He tilts his chin up, angular, powerful but not wrathful. Even with the little twitch, a hesitation forms on his lips as if it were totally alien to his being. He had no lines, no wrinkles, but a bald pate and smooth brow uncreased by the passage of time. It left her searching his face until her eyes lock with his. More than Alpharius, more than any creature, these piercing golden eyes demand answers.

For the first time in ages, the Alicorn was speechless.

'What magic is this?!'

She shivers for a second, before her tongue seems to act of its own accord, "Sweet Eveningstar..." A soft gasp hiccups from her throat before she straightens up and puffs out her chest tuft in what would have been an impressive pony display of dominance.

The being beside the warrior king had escaped notice entirely until that moment. Clad in grey plate, bronze skin etched in sickly runes and eyes of liquid amethyst, the imposing figure all but faded to complete insignificance next to the demigod. But still he took a step forward as if to shield a prize with his far smaller bulk.

"Erebus?" The warrior king asks the unspoken question without taking his eyes off Luna.

The smaller man's hand rises up, digits twisting in some arcane pattern that trace through the air. Layers of dark arcane power converge upon his figure, unseen to the naked eye. They fortify the creature, offering a wellspring of nightmare magic to be tapped at his will.

"It's filthy xeno trickery, my lord!"

There he was, she could feel the malice in that sharp gaze that stares utter hatred at her. This was the architect, shrouded by whatever facets of power pulsed through this half-dream. But at its core, this space was still just a type of dream.

It's hardly a moment of concentration this close, a flicker of power in her horn and she slips through the folds.

Teleportation was no simple trick, and in an active dream such as this, it could have consequences. But this close, it wasn't nearly as dangerous to one versed in its nuances. But as she tore the imperceptible rift open, she saw something for a moment.

It was a maze. A labyrinth of incredible size hovers in front of her. Nine layers deep, and wreathed in arcane configurations, the unfathomable structure turns on its axis, guarded by seething tides of minions.

It was a lock, a device to keep others out. Though she saw red wolves... she sensed them in the maze as it spins and twists like a rubric in front of her. To step in would be to willfully step into a trap formed around this dream.

Something wanted to keep others out, others in. Teleportation wasn't an option, even this close.

'Maybe I should have tried that earlier, after all.' she mumbles.

"Be gone, I banish thee, creature of the warp!" Erebus stretches out a hand with a malevolent smirk. A violent bolt of scarlet hurtles towards her, scarcely allowing the Alicorn time to manifest a barrier in front of herself.

Her shield shatters like a plate hit by a hammer. The bolt arcs straight through and slams into her breast, hurling her across the room and slamming into the base of the wall. Smoke rises from the black miasma of scorched fur on her chest.

The Alicorn stands shaily as the tide of demons pours in from just a few steps away. Simple arcane might wouldn't be enough as the creature, Erebus, takes a few steps forward.

No, instead, the Alicorn draws a steadying breath and pushes herself back another step as the shrieking terrors ready their pounce.

With a thought and faint breath to the dreamscape, the floor beneath Erebus and the demons crumbles while the ground beneath her erupts in a single arching pillar.

Erebus was quick, jumping and clasping the edge to haul himself up while the demonic creatures fell away into a yawning red-lit abyss. The Alicorn unsteadily slides to the edge of her bowing pillar of metal and stone as it races skyward, right until she could slide down and kick off the plinth to reach the solitary figure below.

She leaps, up and over Erebus, directly at the confused face of Horus Lupercal.

"Witch!" Erebus spat the words as harshly as possible, and despite his efforts, the ledge cracked further leaving him hanging from the edge of the sinkhole.

Even as the Warmaster knits his brow in confusion, he merely sways to the side, avoiding the Alicorn's decent. He clenches a mailed fist, readying it for a single crushing hammerblow.

It never lands. Instead, as soon as the Alicorn clears Erebus, the dreamscape ripples and shimmers in lancing tines of white lightning. In a sudden blinding flash, both princess and demigod disappear from the sorcery crafted dreamscape into a unfathomable white cube.

And the demons of hell howl as their prize slips away.