Pushing into the swirling atrocity that was this dream was an experience in and of itself. While normal dreams isolated themselves from the true realm of dreams, this one seemed to desire to become a part of the realm. Perhaps she had been right when she had speculated that dream wanted to subsume the realm into itself. Where Luna would usually expect to meet some resistance when trying to enter the dream, this one almost felt like stepping into a pool of water. This nightmare seemed to want her to enter and was all too happy to make her passage an easy one.

When she had fully entered the dream, the acrid and coppery scent of fresh blood assaulted her. She gagged as the smell traveled into her throat and seemed to cling onto anything it came in contact with along the way. Luna quickly lit her horn and cast a spell to prevent herself from continuing to smell this horrid dream.

Finally collecting herself enough to look around, she was floored by what she saw. She had read that the building that Twilight and her friends had found was reminiscent of the architecture from before her banishment, but she had not been expecting what she was now seeing. All around her were buildings that seemed to take inspiration from that style. If it were not for the stone that seemed to cover many of the structures and the massive lakes of viscera she had seen before entering, she would have thought this to be an equestrian city. But the aspect of the dream that was the most jarring was the amount of detail, it was uncannily similar to reality, something she never saw in dreams. This simple factor was causing her to question if humans had a higher capacity to dream in detail.

As she looked at her surroundings, something else struck her as odd. When she would arrive in a dream, the dreamer would usually not be too far away. While it wasn’t new for this to happen, it was rare. This time, however, all she was met with was silence and tombstones. She was on what appeared to be a bridge built into the side of one of the flows of rock, except surrounding her were dozens of tombstones. Luna could not figure out why the dreamer had conceived of this design or what it might mean.

One thing that did interest her about this bridge though was what appeared to be the corpse of some monster behind her. When she saw it she was horrified, thinking it was waiting to pounce at her, or worse, something more dangerous had killed it, before remembering that this was a dream and no monster could hurt her. Upon closer inspection though, the body appeared to be a simple carving out of the rock. This raised even more questions as to what the mind of this dreamer was like.

She looked over the bridge and out to the Tartarus-scape of this nightmare. Below her was a river of blood, surrounded on both sides by rows of buildings. In the river, she could make out the bloated forms of some unnatural breed of monstrosity. To the left there appeared to be a road leading to the open door of a house. And on that road, she could make out two unmoving creatures. As she examined them, they looked to fit the description of a human according to Twilight's letter.

Luna started her spell to dispel the nightmare. A dreamer might be able to dispel a dream themselves, but she needed to stop this horror before too many nightmares were created from this. When the spell was fully formed, she released it, and with it, the dream would devolve to its most basic form.

Only nothing happened.

Luna tried again, but still, the dream refused to change. Her eyes widened. Occasions like this could sometimes occur when a nightmare has persisted for a great deal of time. The dreamer's mind would stabilize the dream more and more until the only way to end the nightmare was to help the dreamer come to terms with what ailed them. She needed to find the human, and fast.

Luna charged up a spell she used to find a dreamer in occasions such as this when she arrived away from the dreamer. When she released this spell though, instead of the knowledge of their position coming to her mind, or a bright point becoming visible, she was greeted to ribbons of red smoke going every which way. That should not have happened.

“That can't be right, how can my spell not have worked, it can always find…” The answer hit her like a pallet of bricks. The reason her spell was showing floating trails, the reason the dream was so clear and detailed, the reason she had not been able to dispel it wasn't because this was a nightmare that has managed to stabilize in a matter of seconds. It was because this was a memory.

Dreams from one's memory almost never occurred, that was why she had failed to notice sooner, and why she thought that the human's dreams were simply more detailed. A dream from a memory is always more refined and solid. What was worse was that because this was a memory, she could not simply dispel the monsters of this realm as she would normally. If she needed to, they must be fought the same way one would fight a real monster.

What made it worse was that this landscape, this realm of abject horror, was real. The fact this was a memory chilled Luna to her very core. What kind of world had this human come from? She could not imagine a pony being able to live their lives in a place like this without either going insane or giving in to despair.

Luna sighed to herself, resigned to attempting to find the human without her magic. On the bright side, she had seen some humans on the road beneath her, perhaps they might be able to point her towards her target. Luna turned to her left and began her trip along the road she had appeared on. If the letters from Twilight could be trusted, as long as she did he best to come off as non-combative, she should be left alone.

When she made the turn right along the road and down, she could make out greater details of the two humans she had seen from the bridge. They were wearing dark leather coats that seemed to be soaked in filth and blood. They also had hoods on their heads, obscuring their faces and preventing her from seeing just what a human looked like. When she was almost at the cobblestones of the road, the two humans seemed to acknowledge her presence and slowly walk towards her. A third human, wearing a large top hat, a fancier coat with a collar that covered its face, carrying a torch and a large smoking hammer, rounded the corner behind them. It didn't seem to be aware of her presence though.

“Hello there, I am Princess Luna. I have come seeking the individual whose dream this is. Would either of you happen to have seen an individual wearing an outfit that would make him appear to be a raven perchance?

In response, the human that had come the closest to her threw something at her. She responded by grabbing it midair with her magic and levitating it closer to her. It seemed to be a metal cylinder that ticked as the top rotated. She was about to ask what it was and why they had thrown it at her when the cylinder exploded in fire and shrapnel.

Since she had not held the device close to her face when examining it, she was spared any injury, but it shocked her nonetheless. The humans had tried to kill her. What had she done to provoke them? Had she insulted them in some way? Before she could find an answer, the human in the large top hat had noticed her and was now dashing towards her.

Before she could react though, the human had made it to her and now had its hammer raised to strike her.

“Wait, I-”

The human cut her off by slamming his hammer into her side. The impact was accompanied by a great explosion, singeing her fur and sending her flying. She was slammed into a grouping of tombstones with a force she had not felt since fighting Sombra. She could feel that several ribs had broken where the hammer had stuck her. She had never dealt with dreams where she could be hurt before. Dread filled her heart. It seemed that it was entirely possible that she could be killed in this dream.

She barely had time to process what had just happened when she saw the human that had just attacked her push its attack. This human meant to kill her and would not give up. She jumped out of the way, simultaneously casting a healing spell on herself to fix her broken ribs, strangely though, this spell was accompanied by the sound of a small bell. The hammer came down right where she had been, sending out a large burst of flame when it contacted the ground.

When her hooves touched the ground, she noticed both the hooded humans toss explosive canisters at her, along with the hammer-wielding human round on her after pulling on the back of the hammer, reigniting it to press his attack. Luna took off back up the road. She needed to put some distance between her and these psychotic humans. The hooded humans she could deal with to some extent, but this other human. It came after her with a bloodlust she thought no beast could possess. Was this what the human's world was like?

When she arrived back where she had come into the dream she spun around, only to see the top-hatted human run onto the bridge, right at her. She charged up a powerful paralysis spell and attempted to fire it at the human when it was within a few lengths of her. However, something was wrong and her spell almost seemed to die as she attempted to cast it. Luna didn't have time to ponder what was going on though as the human just kept coming at her. She quickly teleported several lengths behind the human to avoid the hammer that was aimed at her skull. However, this teleport didn't feel right. Instead of simply disappearing, she felt like she had been wrapped in smoke and had dashed to the position that she wanted to be at.

When she reappeared, she barely had time to think as the human was able to find where she had gone within seconds of failing to land its hit. As it came at her she panicked. She had no idea what she could do to stop this thing. She had tried to paralyze it but her spell had failed to even form. In her trepidation, she gathered and released her mana in an unformed blast, she didn't have the time to form a proper spell. She needed to do anything she could do to keep this thing away.

The only thing was, when she released her magic, it didn't come out as a shot of unformed mana. When she released the mana, a large, blue, glowing rock, composed of solidified mana, erupted from her horn and collided with her assailant mid-stride, knocking it back. Before she could get her mind around what had just happened, the human had returned to its feet and was coming at her again, although this time, its attack betrayed the damage she had done. She jumped back to give herself some distance between her and it to hopefully fight back.

Without thinking, she tried to cast the same spell she had just used, only for the way she had done it to escape her memory. The spell hadn't been something she had thought about, it was almost as if she knew how to cast the spell instinctually. Only, the spell was not cast as a normal spell. If she were to describe it, the spell hadn't been cast, only that she had called for the power to stop the human, and some dark force had answered. Luna could not properly convey how uncomfortable this made her feel.

The human pulled back the hammer’s back, causing the embers in the head to reignite. It charged at her with the same reckless abandon it had shown since it had noticed her existence. Luna decided she would stop trying to fight this human as she had been doing, and instead, just act on instinct. The human was almost on her, and she didn't want that.

Luna grasped at the power she had just learned to use. It felt cold and distant, like she was trying to draw mana from somewhere across the boundless sea. But she needed to use that power to fight this human. She wanted it to go away. With that thought, something clicked in her head. It felt like the force she was trying to draw from had told her it would help, to just release it. The concept rattled Luna’s very bones. She had never felt mana that was… sentient, it just wasn't right.

Despite her misgivings, Luna grasped at the mana and just pushed it, not even bothering to try shaping it. The human had jumped into the air, attempting to use its mass and the hammer to break her spine, but was met with at least a dozen tentacles that had just come from Luna's horn to bore into its flesh. The human was knocked back by the sudden impact of the tentacles and was thrown several lengths onto its back. As it tried to return to the fight, it was slammed by another rock to its chest. This time, the rock had embedded itself into the human's body.

Luna had acted without thought when she saw that the human was trying to get back up. She wished to end the fight now and had thrown another of those mana rocks at it before she could even realize what she was doing. When she saw the human slump back dead, a part of her felt remorse for having killed something, but when she remembered it was a dream her remorse seemed to abate. This reminder was mostly triggered by the corpse of the human starting to vanish into smoke.

She watched as the body of the bloodthirsty human evaporated into nothingness. It had been a foe she had not thought she could best, its ferocity and speed were something she had not seen before. And losing her access to mana, the primary way she fought, did not help. A dark thought crossed her mind, was the human Twilight was housing just like the one she had just bested, or worse yet, even more dangerous?

Luna now understood why Twilight's first letter had been so urgent in its wording to have her and Celestia come to help as soon as possible. If Twilight had witnessed this kind of brutality and need to kill from the human she now wished to find, she could hardly blame her for what had been in the letter.

As Luna was calming down, she assessed just how she should go about tracking down the human. Her usual methods for finding him would not work, so she would need to look for him the old-fashioned way. Looking back at the road she had just traveled down, the thought of doing that again was out of the question. She may be powerful, but she did not have a death wish. All it would take would be running into a human more powerful than the one she had bested and that would be it for her. So spreading out her wings, she decided she would take her chances with whatever beasts of the sky might exist here.

The only problem was that when she began flapping her wings, nothing happened. She increased her wing beats as much as she could, but was only rewarded with a small increase of elevation. She landed and felt for the magic that would normally run through her wings and help her flight. Only, it wasn't there.

She was confused as to how this could be, but now that she had the time to think about how she had bested the human, she felt a pit open up in her stomach. While dreams tended to hold their own logic, allowing earth ponies to fly and pegasi to use magic, never before had the dream realm been able to negate or fundamentally change her magic. What was it about this human's memory that gave his dream this power?

With a sense of dread she had never been subject to before, she walked back down the road. She would need to be careful while traveling so as to avoid any more humans like the one she had just killed. When Luna reached the base of the descent, she noticed that the hooded humans had returned to where they had been when she had first seen them. When she reached the bottom, just like last time, the humans began to slowly approach her.

However, this time instead of trying to reason with them, she went straight to the offensive option. While she would usually never resort to violence as her first action, two things made this different; one, these humans had attacked her first, and two, this was a dream, and these humans weren't real. With little thought, she fired one of her new mana rocks at each of them. What surprised her was that when the humans were struck, they were sent back from the impact, dead.

This development was disconcerting. While these humans had not been as aggressive as the one with the hammer, she at least thought that these humans were going to be just as hard to kill as the first one had been. Was there something different about the first one? Had the first one been an ‘alpha human’? If that was the case, just how many alphas were there?

She walked forward and past the position that the humans had occupied earlier, only to be greeted by another one. Like the last two, this one was bested by a single mana rock being sent into its chest. Luna approached the building with the open door and was greeted to darkness and wooden floors.

Seeing as this building was the only way forward, judging by the fact that there was only one mist trail and it was leading her this way, it seemed the most logical way to go. Walking in, she heard the wooden floorboards creak. While the building seemed to be in decent repair, there was no denying it had seen better days. She looked right and saw a set of stairs with two more of the weaker humans ascending. However, in the dim light, she thought she could make out swords in their hands.

While she could easily best these creatures with the mana rocks she had been able to summon, her grip on the mana that was giving her this power seemed to be waning. Luna quickly walked away from the humans and the stairs and towards the other side of the room. She was horrified when she realized the humans were following her and had turned towards her when they had reached the top of the stairs.

Thinking quickly, Luna looked around for a way to avoid a fight. She noticed that the side of the room she had run to had a balcony that looked down on the first floor. Without thinking, she jumped from over the balcony and feverishly began to beat her wings to try to slow her fall. She landed harder than she would have liked, but it was nowhere near as bad as it could have been if she didn't have her wings.

Luna had barely collected herself after having landed when the scream of another human resounded behind her. Without thinking, Luna jumped to her left, narrowly avoiding the pony length sword that had been directed it her spine. Luna looked around and saw that she had jumped toward an open door. She didn't need to be told twice that she needed to leave this human infested murder house. So with as much speed as she could muster, she sprinted through the door.

When she sprinted through the door, she was greeted to the sight of stairs leading up and to the right. Luna quickly devised a plan of attack and ran up to the first landing and turned around, charging her magic to kill the first thing to walk through the door.

Only, nothing came.

Luna watched the door for several seconds, but it appeared that she was not being followed. Taking this as the first good sign of the night, she calmed her magic and decided to asses her current situation. Looking around, she could see the ribbons showing the path that the human had taken inside the house and going out the opposite side of the house. She was about to head back in and run through it to the other side when a thought occurred to her.

Since she had followed the ribbons, she had been met with half a dozen humans that had each tried to kill her, one of them almost succeeding. If she kept following the mist, she might either be killed before she reached the human she was looking for, or take the longest possible route. The stairs she was on could be a shortcut that would lead her to her target.

Walking carefully up the stairs, she was doing her best to avoid finding another human. At the top of the stairs, she found an open iron gate. The placement seemed a bit odd, but seeing how aggressive the residents of this world were, she would not be surprised that there would be those that wished to protect themselves with whatever they could. When she looked at what was beyond the gate, she noticed a human standing at the other side of what looked like a courtyard.

She was about to run back towards the house when she noticed this human looked different from the ones she had seen before. This one was only wearing what looked like a pair of pants and was carrying what looked like some sticks in its hands. This wasn’t the look she had come to associate with the insane humans, if anything, this might just be a human she could talk to.

She calmly began walking towards the human with her head held high, doing her best to hide how uncomfortable and powerless she currently felt. When she passed the gate, she began to introduce herself.

“Hello, I am Princess Luna. Please don't be alarmed by my form, I am-”

An ear-piercing scream was released from the human in front of her before its body began growing long matted hair from all of its exposed skin. She had been wrong, there were no peaceful humans in this world. Every single one of them was a bloodthirsty monster. And she had just walked into its territory.

Before she knew what was happening, the human had jumped into the air and looked to be pouncing towards her. She did not have time to properly react to the human's attack, so when it collided with her chest, she felt like a runaway carriage had slammed into her. For the second time in this dream, she felt her ribs break. The human raised up one of its hands, now looking more like the claw of a beast, to strike her. In desperation, Luna summoned the spell she had recently learned that had knocked the first human down.

The tentacles were, fortunately, able to hit the human before it could land its blow on her, sending it flying back. When she looked at her opponent's condition, it did not look any worse for wear, she had only pushed it back. Luna felt like crying, she had come to this world to help the human and her subjects that were being affected by the dream, only to not only fail, but to fail in a way that would cost her her life.

When she felt like there was nothing left that she could do, a faint pull seemed to call out to her. It wasn't really a voice, but a tug that communicated thoughts without words. It was the strange mana that had given her these new powers. It felt like it was guiding her to a secret it held that would let her survive this encounter. Without seeing a better option, Luna cleared her mind and channeled the strange mana in the way it wished.

She could feel all the strange mana inside her begin to coalesce in her horn. When she looked up, she saw what looked like the night sky surrounding her horn. The human had returned to its feet and was coming back to finish the job it had started. Seeing this, Luna released the energy she had gathered in her horn and was met with the sight of the stars that had made up the personal night sky blast off in every direction. However, several of the stars seemed to change their direction mid-flight, in the direction of the human.

Before the human could react, it was slammed with at least seven of the stars she had formed, and was sent flying into a nearby wall. Luna was afraid the attack would only serve to aggravate the human more, making it more aggressive while she was left defenseless. When she looked at the human, she could see it evaporating like the other human that had almost killed her. She had won.

Luna took a minute to calm herself and recollect her thoughts. After deciding to take a path that the human of the dream had not taken, she had been attacked and almost killed. By following the human's trail, she had been attacked and almost killed. It seemed like no matter where she would go something would try to kill her. She figured she might as well get closer to the dreaming human while she was being attacked.

Luna cast a healing spell with what little of her mana she felt she could use in this world. When she stood back up, she felt something shift on her neck along with something tapping her chest. She lifted her hoof up to touch what it was she had felt. When she grabbed it and pulled it to where she could see what it was, she saw that it was a necklace with some kind of charm hanging from it.

While a necklace suddenly appearing on her neck for seemingly no reason was disconcerting, of all the things to happen so far, this was the most normal. Besides, there was the faint possibility, no matter how unlikely, that the charm could ward off the humans. Right now she needed any little piece of hope she could muster.

Releasing the charm from her grasp, she felt it fall down and knock against her chest before settling. She looked around the courtyard she walked into and found that it was a dead end. Turning back, she began to descend the stairs. When she reached the base of them she was once again greeted by the sight of the dark house filled with the vile humans.

Thinking, Luna figured that in the house she had not been dealing with any alpha humans. The alphas appeared to want to hunt her to the end of the world if they caught sight of her, while the non-alphas seemed to only want to protect one area. If this was right, she figured that if she was just fast enough, she could run past the humans in the house and not need to fight them. That would be especially good given she had just utilized all of that strange mana fighting that last alpha.

Pumping herself up, Luna prepared to run as fast as she could through the building. Thinking back on how the humans had positioned themselves in the house, she figured that the safest plan would be to run along the left wall, seeing as there would be two humans on the stairs and one human standing near a pillar that would be on her right as she ran through the house. With her route planned, Luna dashed forward as fast as she could.

When Luna entered the house, she found that her assumption had been correct. She noticed that the humans had returned to the positions she had initially found them in. At the sound of her hoof falls, all three of them turned towards her, raising their weapons in the hope of striking her as she ran past. Luna was grateful that the humans in the house were slow and imprecise in their actions and could easily be avoided.

When she exited the other side of the house, Luna ran down to the shore of the horrid sanguine river before turning back towards the house to assure herself that the humans had not followed her. Just like last time, the humans seemed content to remain in their house and leave her be as long as she did not remain in their territory.

Looking around, she could finally see the nightmarish river of blood that apparently signified progress toward finding the dreaming human, judging by the ribbons that danced both upstream and downstream. Looking both ways, she figured that the best way to proceed would be to head upstream. While she could see several quadrupedal monsters with engorged red stomachs under a bridge in that direction, looking downstream, she could make out the bridge she had arrived on, and the thought of moving back in the direction she just came from didn't seem like progress. And besides, wouldn't it be just her luck that the human she was looking for was going to be found in the deepest and most dangerous location.

As she slowly walked up the banks of the river, she noticed that the dozens of headstones were still littering this nightmare like a persistently morbid fungus. What was new though were the several piles of charred human corpses that sat either in the river of blood or along the shores. When Luna returned to the waking world, she was going to need to interrogate this human and possibly have him visit with a psychologist to help him with the damage his world had caused him. Heck, after tonight, she was going to need to see a psychologist.

Walking forward she began to feel a magical pull from the bridge. She could feel a kind of resonance emanating from the top of the stairs that lead up to the bridge. This resonance was special though, it was the resonance of the strange mana that this world held. Without a second thought, Luna began dashing towards the stairs. She knew that doing so was unwise and would likely lead to her putting herself in a worse position, but that thought was being overruled by the immense sense of powerlessness she was feeling at the moment.

When she crested the top of the stairs, she was greeted to the sight of an upturned carriage to her right and a scrawny human in a top hat wielding a strange sword and an even stranger stick, a stick he soon leveled at her. Out of some perverse instinct, instead of trying to avoid the stick or turn around, Luna pushed forward even harder and spun around in front of the human, before bucking him as hard as she could.

The human was sent backward from the tremendous force of the princess’s buck and wound up flipping over the iron railing that was behind him. When Luna came to after the shock of seeing another human before her, she could barely believe what she had just done. Without thinking, she had attacked the human.

The part of her brain that she was used to using was yelling at her, telling her she was better than these humans, that she was above resorting to violence first. But the baser, more animalistic part of her felt so right. It was telling her that this was the first time she hadn't been injured in this awful place, that by attacking first, she had saved herself more pain. These two thoughts were warring in Luna's head, the more civilized part of her demanding she keep the high ground, against the baser parts of herself saying the only way to survive was to kill them first. Luna was starting to understand exactly why the hunter had acted the way that he did.

Luna didn’t have much time to think this over though, because not too long after she had bucked the human off the bridge, a loud explosion rang out to her right. There were apparently more humans on the bridge, and they didn’t seem to like that she had killed one of their own. She quickly began looking around for the source of the strange magic, eventually figuring out that the mana was coming from a pouch on the belt of a corpse where the human she had sent over the edge had been standing. She grabbed the pouch containing the strange mana in her magic and ripped it from the human's belt with all the care of an angry Ursa.

When a second explosion rang out from the other side of the carriage, Luna knew she needed to move. Looking out over the iron fence, she could make out what looked to be a cave along the left wall of what appeared to be an alcove. It seemed to be the safest option at the moment, seeing as to her right were who knows how many more humans, and behind her was in all likelihood just a dead end going by her luck so far. So without a second thought, Luna jumped from the bridge with her wings extended and glided over to the entrance to the cave.

As she was gliding towards the cave, she noticed several of the large creatures with engorged red stomachs huddled around something she couldn't quite make out. Resolving herself to not provoke them, Luna lowered her flight and began to trot in the bloody river so that she wouldn’t land so suddenly and cause a large sound. This effort was in vain though.

When she finally reached the entrance to the cave, she turned her head to look inside, only to be met with the sight of one of the strange creatures rearing up and preparing to strike her. Without thinking, Luna sent out a blast of unrefined magic at the creature as it was coming down at her. When the magic impacted the creature, it was sent flying backward into one of the walls before sliding down onto its back.

Luna would have loved to have taken the time to recollect her senses, but both the startled squeal she had made when she had been met by a hostile creature and the subsequent noise the magic had made had attracted the attention of the other creatures near the cave. Hearing the sound of scuttling coming from her right, and seeing the thrashing of limbs from the creature in front of her as it attempted to right itself, Luna was already running into the cave before a second thought could cross her mind.

Fortunately for her, the cave was actually a tunnel. The other side opening to another part of the city. When she came out the other side of the tunnel, Luna looked around frantically for where to run next. Her magic wasn’t working right, she couldn’t fly, and the only reason she was still alive was simply due to luck and seemingly being able to run faster than everything here. For all intents and purposes, running was probably the best thing she could do. In front of her was a massive iron gate, to her right was a mass of rubble and stone, and to her left, the only way forward. So with her path figured out, she began her sprint onward.

Immediately after she began her dash deeper into the dream however, two large dogs came running out from behind what appeared to be a small fallen tower embedded in the blood-soaked ground. However, these dogs, just like the rest of the dream, were nightmarish. They lacked any fur and were so malnourished that not only could she count the poor thing's ribs, she could make them out with perfect clarity, as well as their hips and spines. And to top it off, these dogs were rushing at her with the same intent all animals in their state would.

The grip of fear these dogs gave her sent her dashing towards the toppled tower. Fortunately for her, the tower formed a sort of ramp due to the angle that it was at, unfortunately, this meant that the dogs were just as capable of running up it as she was. So when she reached the top of the tower, with the dogs right on her tail, she made a desperate jump off of it and to the right, flaring her wings to get as far away from the dogs as she could.

When she finally landed, she was barely given a second to reestablish her bearings when a horrid sound rang out from behind her. She turned around, and just in time, as she just narrowly avoided a massive crow, almost as big as she was, violently flapping its wings and coming towards her with murderous intent. She jumped back and began quickly backing up in a panic, only to be confronted with yet another horror.

A loud explosion rang out to her left, causing her to turn her head to see what else she had to contend with. What she saw caused her heart to fall right into the pit of her stomach, Yet another alpha human. It was carrying a massive stick of metal as long as the axle on a chariot but as thick as a young foal. The human wasted no time in running towards her after seeing her look at it, raising its weapon in preparation to strike. She jumped back yet again, hoping to get out of its range. Unfortunately, as the human swung its massive club, it began to come apart and extend its reach.

Luna unconsciously dropped to the ground as the whip-like club came hurtling at where her head used to be. When she had fully dropped to the ground, she felt a significant quake as the weapon slammed into the ground, sending bits of blood, viscera, and dirt onto her. As always, nothing in this foul city permitted her a single moment to collect herself, as no sooner had the weapon unsuccessfully managed to liberate her from this world than the human was preparing for another attack.

In a matter of seconds, Luna went from laying on the ground to behind the human with a single leap to the humans right. And just in time, seeing as she had just narrowly avoided the club as it came screaming back at her. Getting her bearings, Luna realized she had trapped herself, a large slab of stone blocked her path forward, and she was now between two walls of brick with a murder of giant, ground-bound crows around her, and yet another powerful human behind her.

Along the left wall, however, was a metal ladder. This meant that if she could make it to the top, she might have a chance at properly defending herself, seeing as she wouldn’t need to contend with having to fight both the crows and the human. She was, however, not too confident that she would be able to climb the ladder unopposed, because as soon as she would try, the human would simply rush her, and it would all be over.

Looking up, she noticed that the edge at the top of that wall was lined with a metal fence, except for one area. If she could just fly, she would be able to escape this predicament she had worked herself into. Seeing no other options, Luna flared out her wings and dug deep, looking for any ounce of equestrian magic within herself that might allow her to fly, if only for a second. She found a weak and insignificant wisp of the magic she was so used to buried in the deepest recesses of where she would usually find her abundant stores of mana. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do.

Luna kicked off the ground and beat her wings with all her strength, gaining a great deal of height. This, however, was not enough for her to land with all hooves on top of the wall, it was barely enough to allow her to get her front two hooves over the edge. Luna grabbed onto the edge of the wall and clung there for dear life. Looking down, Luna saw that the human and the crows were moving towards the spot on the ground where, if she slipped or let go, she would fall.

Panicking at what she was seeing, Luna desperately began clambering to make it on top of the wall. It wasn’t pretty, nor was it graceful, seeing as she didn't exactly try to climb over the edge of buildings or walls without the aid of her magic or wings on a regular basis, especially with the threat of death looming over her. But she did make it, hurling herself over the edge with all of her strength.

Still on edge, Luna wasted no time at getting back on her hooves and peering over the edge of the wall to see if the human was going to follow her up and take the ladder. Luna couldn't resist releasing a breath she didn’t realize she was holding when she noticed that the human and crows seemed to have forgotten about her and were returning to what they had presumably been doing before she had arrived.

Without the imminent threat of death enveloping her like a blanket made of lead, Luna noticed both her heart slamming against her ribcage in an attempt to break out and find its own way to safety and the burning in her lungs. The effects of the adrenaline coursing through her system were quite apparent seeing as she could not be any more awake at the moment. Every nerve in her body was firing in a cacophony of noise to keep her aware of her surroundings.

Luna looked across the section of the city she had just escaped and noticed the still barking dogs on top of the slanted tower. She felt a pang of sorrow for the poor things, they weren’t just starving, they were at death's door. She started to light up her horn in an attempt to summon some food for the poor things, before she remembered that the city was doing something strange to her magic. And now that she had used the last of her native magic, even if she could summon some food, she wouldn’t be able to. As she was letting the magic die from her horn, her head suddenly jerked back at a realization. She had just tried to feed imaginary dogs in a dream. She had forgotten that this was all an illusion and had felt actual sympathy for creatures that were no more real than the Power Ponies.

With the experiences she was having here, Luna was becoming concerned about why this nightmare had such soft borders in the dream realm. Something was causing this dream to become more real than any dream had a right to be, and rather than isolating itself from the chaos of the dream realm, it seemed to be attempting to take it over.

Before Luna could start to mull over what any of this meant, the sound of both a large bell and two explosions, similar to those of a firework, sounded from behind her. Looking back, she saw a dirt path that had been trampled into existence that lead up and over a minor hill. And as if she had not yet been through enough, Luna saw one of the red ribbons of mist going in that direction. She hadn’t been focusing on the ribbons for quite some time due to the constant threat of death, but she didn't know if she should be happy or not seeing as it was a ribbon going in the direction of the noise.

Seeing no other options, Luna got to her hooves and slowly crept her way to the top of the hill, carefully listening for any sounds that might be another human wanting to kill her. As she crested the top of the hill, she was met with an all too familiar sight for this nightmare, a ground covered in an unsettling amount of blood. This time though, two huge monsters, large enough that they could use a yak as a hoofball, one with a large ax and the other with what looked like a larger version of the strange sticks the humans tended to carry, were fighting what appeared to be an alpha human.

What made the sight so strange though was the fact that the human was not only winning, but in under a minute of her catching sight of the fight, the human landed a devastating strike on the giant with the strange weapon, causing it to fall to its knees and slump forward, dead. From there the fight only went worse for the remaining giant. Without its friend to distract the human, the human made short work of it, avoiding every attack from the giant and cutting into it with a giant scythe, not unlike what one would expect to see on the grim reaper.

When the human landed the final blow against the giant, the thought crossed Luna’s mind that turned her blood to ice and caused every hair on her body to stand on end. The human had been able to take down two monsters with ease and seemed to have a sense of self-preservation. What was she going to do if the human caught sight of her, or worse yet, if it came after her with the intention to kill her?

As Luna was working herself into a panic at this development, she noticed something about this human that changed things. The human had a trail of red mist following them. Luna was overcome with joy at finally having found the human whos nightmare this was. But that joy was immediately taken away as she saw the human take off to the left and behind the half-sunken form of what looked to be a church.

This was not good. If she couldn't catch back up to the human and attempt to convince them that this was all in their head, she doubted that the residents of ponyville would make it through the night without all of their dreams becoming tainted. Luna flared open her wings and jumped off the top of the hill and started gliding towards where the human had disappeared.

When Luna landed, she immediately began dashing after the ribbon of mist that had just been laid. After running up yet another hill, she found the ribbon leading into a cave, a cave with horrid shrieks coming from within as well tremors that shook her bones. Every cell in her body was screaming at her to leave the human to his fate, to not risk her life trying to fight something that might be just as dangerous if not more so than the human.

But she knew that she couldn't live with herself if she were to do that. To abandon another to be tormented by their own mind because of her own fears was unacceptable. Reaffirming her convictions, Luna trotted forward into the cave and towards the source of what was causing her to question her presence here.

The cave was just like the rest of the nightmare. The ground had some tall grass near the left side of the entrance but quickly became covered in the corpses of at least a hundred humans. Near the back of the cave, there was a stone hallway built with a great deal of expertise and skill. It actually reminded her of the hallways in the old castle, if the halls were dark and lightless. At the end of the hallway there looked to be a massive hall, about as large as the one she and her sister used to hold court.

Another shriek echoed out from the dark hallway followed by another quake. This time Luna could make out the shape of some huge monstrosity with what looked to be the human fighting it. Whatever the thing was, it looked to both tower over the human and poses the ferocity of a rabid beast. Even with all the skill that the human had shown in dispatching the two beasts she had seen previously, the one he was fighting now not only looked to be matching him but actually seemed to be winning. Fearing for the human’s safety, Luna rushed forward into the hallway and towards the fight.

When Luna arrived in the hall, her conviction of helping the human began to waver. The floor of the hall was soaked in blood, so much so that the last few centimeters of her hooves were soaking in it. The side of the hall was lined with hundreds of naked humans, some dead while others were just barely clinging onto life, all piled on top of each other. But worst of all was the beast that the human was fighting.

The monster seemed to be a horrid mockery of a pony. Its face resembled that of a pony, or at least something equine, and it did have hooves, but that is where the similarities stopped. It had far too many limbs, two arms with clawed appendages served as this thing’s forelegs followed by four hooved legs that it was using to move while at least two legs flailed along its back in spastic twitches. And to top it off, the beast was deformed in ways that could hardly be described to any creature without sounding as if one had lost their mind.

Luna froze as she bore witness to the insult to everything natural that was in front of her. It should not exist, yet something about it was calling out to her, like she was seeing an old friend that she had long since lost contact with. Her mind was trying so hard to come to grips with what she was seeing that she didn’t notice that the monster was charging straight at her. It wasn’t until something collided into her left side with the force of an enraged yak and sent her crashing into the crimson fluid and a pile of corpses that she was brought back to her senses.

“You're gonna get yourself killed.” The voice was tired but even, neither angry nor sympathetic. The statement was delivered as if it was a matter of fact.

Looking up, Luna received her first look at the human she had been searching for, and he looked exactly like the reports Twilight had sent had described him. He was relatively small in comparison to the average minotaur and was dressed in a way that made him look like an overgrown crow. He was facing the direction of the monster so she couldn't see his face, but by the looks of what he was wearing on his head, he had one of his eyes covered. Judging by the way he had just talked to her, the reports of his personality were likely just as accurate.

“I came here to help you. You're in a nightmare.” Luna wanted to talk to him more, but the beast had recovered from its last attack and was about to make a second attempt at killing them. Both she and the human jumped out of the way as the monster made a leap at them, attempting to swipe them with its claw when it was within range.

“I know. Now help me kill him or run away.”

Luna didn't know how she was supposed to help, seeing as she didn’t have access to her magic. The best she could do was to try her hoof at controlling the new magic this world had given her.

Calming herself, Luna began dashing away from the human as best she could, doing her best to get some distance from him so as to divide the monster's attention. Unfortunately, it still seemed to be interested in killing her. As it made a leap at her, Luna dove into the blood coving the floor, narrowly avoiding the thing's claws as they passed overhead. When she finally came to a stop, she jumped back onto her hooves and used her new magic to fire off one of the mana rocks.

The rock slammed into the side of the monster with a significant enough force to cause the beast to topple onto its side and something on its back to be flung into the air. Seeing that the beast did not look to be getting back up, Luna turned to the human with an uneasy smile on her muzzle, relieved that she had not only been able to help but had landed the finishing blow. But as she caught sight of the human, her relief vanished.

The human had changed his weapon, no longer wielding the scythe, instead, holding a short blade in each hand. Now that she was staring at the human straight on she could see that the human indeed had a single unnerving red eye exposed while the other was behind a cloth strip. But rather than looking at her, his gaze was entirely focused on the beast she had just attacked.

Turning around, Luna watched as the beast began rising from the ground, this time grasping a glowing green sword so large that she wouldn't doubt that it would easily be able to bisect Tirek in his largest form.

“Here.”

Luna barely had enough time to turn back and catch an item in her magic that the human had tossed at her. The item was a small bag made of what looked to be leather. As she was about to ask why he had given it to her, she felt the unmistakable pulse of this dream’s strange mana. The human was giving her all the magic she would need to continue to help.

And not a moment too soon, as the monster, now moving only using its back legs as it welded the sword with its forearms, was coming at them. Luna and the human had to immediately react, both of them narrowly avoiding the massive sword as it came careening towards them.

Lighting up her horn, Luna fired another mana rock at the beast when she finished her dodge of its attack. But unlike last time, when the rock slammed into the side of it, there was hardly a reaction, the rock had barely done any damage, if it had done any in the first place. The only response that she seemed to have provoked was causing the creature to slash its sword at her, this time sending an arc of mana at her.

Luna tried to avoid the attack, but since she hadn’t put enough distance between her and her attacker, the attack clipped her back right leg as she made a jump to avoid it. The mana that cut into her felt like her skin had been peeled off and covered in embers. It took all of her willpower to not scream out in pain.

The human for his part seemed to recognize how outclassed she was in regard to dealing with this monster and had dashed up behind it and was laying into its hind legs, ripping into its flesh and adding more of the monster's blood to the crimson pool covering the floor.

Unfortunately, this only seemed to make the situation worse. The monster turned to face the human before leaping back. As the human was about to press forward and continue his assault, the beast raised its sword in front of it, with the flat of the blade pointed towards and away from itself. This action caused the human to hesitate for a moment, not moving a muscle but looking like a spring about to be released.

An explosion of magic came from the sword before Luna could feel a massive drawing in of mana centered at the sword. The human wasted no time in dashing forward after the explosion of mana. But rather than beginning to attack it, the human continued running, making sure to stay to its side. And in a matter of seconds, the monster brought down its sword, and all Tartarus broke loose.

A massive wave of pure, uncontrolled mana was sent forward from the blade. There was so much mana and its energy so raw that if she or the human were to have been in its path, there was little doubt that the energy would have ripped them to pieces in a matter of seconds. Luna knew that this beast needed to be killed quickly before it could use that attack again, and this time with one or both of them in its way path.

Luna desperately wanted to help bring this beast down, but after the failure that was her second attack on it, she had no idea what she could possibly do to damage this thing. Just then, she remembered the spell she had used against the human she had killed before the strange pendant appeared around her neck. She didn't know how effective it might be against this monster, but seeing as the mana rocks no longer seemed to be affecting it, and she wasn't brave enough to try to use the tentacle spell, that spell seemed to be her best option.

Drawing the mana from the bag that the human had tossed to her, Luna began to gather the mana to cast the spell. As she expected, a miniature night sky began to form around her, with several stars of mana coalescing. When Luna felt like she could no longer hold the spell in check, she released it. The stars shot off and immediately a large majority of them turned towards the monster.

At the time, the monster was preparing itself for an attack against the human, but this attack was quickly stopped as at least a dozen stars came crashing into the beasts torso and legs. The damage was significant as it was forced to the ground, using its sword to keep itself from falling down. The joy Luna felt at bringing the beast low was short lived as the human rushed forward and did something Luna could not have imagined him capable of doing.

The human, when he reached the front of the beast, dropped the blade in his right hand and pulled it back. He then proceeded to drive his hand forward, right into what seemed to be the gut on the beast. The force that the human had when doing this not only caused his hand to break through the skin but to also stagger the beast. Then, in a horrifying shower of viscera and gore, the human ripped his arm back with the beast’s intestines in his grip, bring with it chunks of flesh and a massive spray of blood.

Luna watched in horror as the human disemboweled the beast in one vicious move. She was paralyzed at the brutality this human was displaying at doing this. She watched as the beast rolled onto its side, dead from the pain and blood loss.

With not even a sign of seeming to care about what he had done, the human simply picked up his dropped blade and proceeded to attach his two blades together before placing it on his belt and walking over her.

“Thanks.” The human proceeded to rub the top of her head before stopping and walking towards the stairs near the back of the hall.

Luna didn't know what she should do. She had just watched as this human had ripped the guts out of a massive monster and then go about as if nothing had happened. She rounded on him as he sat down on one of the stairs near the top.

“How... how can you be so calm? You were almost killed.”

The human simply took out two small metal box, one slightly larger than the other, from within his jacket. “Well, I wasn’t.” He opened the larger box, removed what could only be a cigarette, flipped open the smaller box, and used a mechanism to create a flame which he then used to light the cigaret in his mouth.

Luna’s face was the perfect image of absolute shock at how casual he was at almost dying. This face was quickly changed to one of anger as she remembered how he had dispatched the monster.

“Why did you have to kill it the way you did? Of all the ways, you could have at least given it a less terrible death.”

The human removed the cigarette from his mouth and released a cloud of smoke. “If I did that, we might not be here.” His tone was as casual and matter of fact as it had been when she had met him. It was getting infuriating. If this was what Twilight was having to deal with she did not envy her.

Luna was about to respond, yelling at him that he was wrong until she remembered why she was here in the first place. “Mr. Hunter, my name is Luna, one of the princesses of Equestria. I am here as I noticed you were having a nightmare, and as the princess of the night, it is my responsibility to banish all nightmares.”

“That won't be possible. This realm is far above your powers.” This time there was something else in the human's voice. Something sounding almost like defeat. Luna didn't know if she was just hearing things or if she had actually picked up on something. She would have loved to see if there was something there, but remembering how this nightmare was affecting the other dreams, she needed to end this as soon as possible.

“Be that as it may, if you would allow me, I would like to take you out of here.” Luna extended her left hoof out to the human.

The human simply responded by taking one last drag of his cigarette before flicking it away and taking her hoof in one of his bandaged hand. When Luna felt that he would be ready, she closed her eyes and did her best to channel her magic to allow them both to slip out of this dream. Fortunately, she hadn't fully lost all of her magic and was able to cause the two of them to pass out of the dream.

When she had fully exited the dream, Luna was slammed with a massive impulse of magic, It wasn't as if the magic had come flooding back into her from her environment, but from within her, as if her magic had been a dying coal that had suddenly been covered in a mountain of dried leaves. This rush of magic confirmed to Luna that the dream of the human somehow possessed the power to stifle her magic, something inconceivable until now.

However, as the two of them exited the nightmare, something else became evident, the human was the source of the corrupting influence on the dream realm. As they exited the dream, the darkness surrounding and attempting to invade the other dreams did not abate, it actually seemed to become worse.

Luna turned to the human in a panic at seeing this. “I need to wake you up! Your presence is infecting other dreams and turning them into nightmares.”

“Alright.” the human was looking around at the dream bubbles around them with a face that could only be described as an apathetic curiosity.

Lighting up her horn, Luna didn't waste a single second on casting a spell of her own creation designed to wake a pony. When the spell came in contact with the human, she was glad to see that it worked just as well on him as it did on ponies, causing him to instantly pop out of existence.

Luna looked around with joy at seeing the darkness instantly abate and return to the dark fog it had been when she had first found it. While Luna was in no way happy that the human's mere existence was enough to taint the dream realm, she was at least happy to see the threat return to a mild issue rather than the danger it had just been.

Unfortunately for her, as she was examining the surrounding dreams, Luna found something that should not exist. The nightmare that Luna had just exited was still floating in the dream realm, as firm and stable as any other dream. Any dream that lost the dreamer should collapse and return to the chaos of the dream realm. For a dream to not only fail to collapse, but stabilize to the point of becoming a permanent aspect of the dream realm chilled Luna to her core.

But watching the dream, there seemed to be nothing wrong with it. Well yes, it was still resonating the same way a nightmare always did, but its borders were no longer fuzzy nor was it radiating the horrid darkness that corrupted dreams. For all intents and purposes, it was just another nightmare mixed in among the dreams. Perhaps tomorrow night she would look into why this dream was behaving differently from the others, but for now, she had other things to worry about.

All around her, dreams had become nightmares and were calling out for her help, several of which had gotten so bad in the short time that she had been within the nightmare that they had started to resemble the very nightmare that had been responsible for corrupting them.

Tonight was going to be a long and stressful night.

Author's Notes:

Well, since five of you followed me because you liked this story, and a further fifteen of you added this story to your favorites in the last three months, I figured I would finish this chapter up and start up the next one. Hopefully I finish that one quickly and this one isn't too much of a dumpster fire.