FFMS038

"That is your plan, Feufollet?" The Nightmare stared at me, as if I were… I do not know what. "You realize this does nothing to negate my argument that you're as mad as Obscured Blade, if not moreso? You mad-donkey."

"Please, Mistress. I spotted an opportunity. Or rather, I should say, I overheard the details. It's a perfect chance, a perfect opportunity."

"A perfect ambush, you mean. How is this different from your so-hated 'traitors' and the tricks they get up to?"

"They'll still have their choices."

"Impaired, if you pull it off."

"Still, even."

"Has this been approved by the leadership?"

"By Cherie."

"That's not leadership."

"Better than leadership, Mistress."

"Fine, I'll back your play." Her teeth were each larger than the crescent-moon in the fall evening sky. "Take that string, and play it out, madjenny. I'll be your terror for you, and build you your horrorshows. Only give them always the opportunity to leave, when the time comes."

"Time can last a long time in the dreamworld, Mistress, and I trust you to keep that eventuality, a long, long way off."

"Ha! If you insist."

***

The pub was a dockside dive in a small port across the Lagoon from Coriolanus and Braystown, in a town I'd never heard of called Coltingsburg. The conversation in the booths and tables around us were in a dialect I'd never heard before, all long, lazy vowels and dropped gs. And the locals were all earth ponies. It felt a little bit like the Order, to be honest. They were very similar, these locals, to the rebels, the Westerners. And nothing like the donkeys – and a few ponies – with whom I had come in, to get drunk with.

My compatriots were nothing like my usual acquaintance, but then, neither was I. I was wearing a new semblance, to match those donkeys I was drinking with. My hide had large chunks shaved out of it, with strange markings inked under the skin, wild and crude patterns tattooed under the skin, the black and muddy colours spreading unevenly under the pores. In this, I only echoed those jennies and jacks I was currently engaged in drinking under the table.

Och the barrowlord made him a wifie
The barrowlord rose him a wife
But no matter how deeply he plowed her
Her earth he never could bring ta' afterlife

They'd sung a half-dozen other songs in Prench and Equuish, each one more slurred than the last. But the terror lying under the bluster and the liquor had come closer to the surface with each additional round. Then the dam broke:

"You know they'll break us on the shoals this time, right?" asked Mers Agité. He had been the head of my dromon's war-engine crew, and his chattering with his crew had been my clue as to how to get into the Inner Sea sailor circle, how to trap them into this very situation. I had followed him and his people until I was able to approach them with a new face, and a new "hi, you kinda know me" acquaintance-glamour. He took me as his best friend's friend, or possibly a friend of a friend of a friend, and then I was in. As we met each additional group ,coming up from the quays where our respective ships were docked, each assumed I was part of Mers Agité's crew – or possibly one of the other crews – until I merged into the general collection of anxious, alcohol-craving sails-donkeys.

And now they all were drunker than lords, and their imaginings were breaking down the barriers their bluster and pride had built against them.

"These are the inland rivers, Mers, you foal. They have no shoals. It's all snags and rafts and hidden sawyers, so they tell me," said a jenny named Cours Lisse. "So you tell me, how are we going to navigate these treacherous river-banks with no local pilots, no locals at all? That's what I fear. The not knowing, the sheer ignorance."

"Bugger the ignorance, I'm a-worriet about the luck. The loyalists, they always have hadt the buggerest luck. Comes of following dead things by choice, donnit? Stap me, we'll die for our loyalties, see we won't!" I had not gotten the name of this pony – and it was a pony, rare in this collation of donkeys, salty and tattooed as they were.

"What," I asked, "Would you do to balance your scales against all that? To bring some temperance to our faults, our loyalties? We all of us need something special to hold as ikons against the winds that are blowing our way."

"Bad ennot that they'd be taking us out into the teeth of the Gitchegoobe, she's't come soonish, any days now," grumbled the nameless pony.

"Don' be buying more than we've already contracted for, Jute Bale," slurred Mers Agité. The Gitchegoobe is a witch on the Sea. We're here, hain't we? Inland, blast me, on inland waterways. As bad as they might be, at least the witching wind wilna faller us here!"

"Don' be a foal," sighed Cours Lisse. "The Gitche she covers all of these lands. All it means, to be on an inland river, is that we have no running-room if she blows when we're on the river. She'll smash us into shore with all the velocity she can find on the way. With luck, she'll catch us square, and we'll be onland with nothing but broken oars and broken oar-ponies. Without it, we'll go smash on something that will survive the smashing better than we."

Another round bought by yours truly, and they were a few more flags to the wind, sagging a bit deeper into their chairs.

"Ikons, you said?" asked Cour Lisse. "What by the damned name of Grogar means that?"

"Ikons!" declaimed Mers Agité. "Those bloody things the priests keep in their holies. Or rather, all around 'em. Sacred imagoes, and prayful hopes and dreams in the textuals about 'em. Wishes and dreams, wishes and dreams." He petered out. "Wait, what was I talking about?"

"Imagoes," prompted the earth pony – Jute Bale, rubbing at a short-shorn section of his coat, over his left withers, the ink still bleeding into his fur as it grew back. "Those sacret imagoes that they princes o' the temple put upont their damnable walls, damn dem."

"Damn dis, damn dat – and ye wondert why you draw downt the debbil-winds upont ye," cussed another jack at the ones who had spent the longest swearing into the night. "Sweart ye not against yer holit jacks, ye foals and fuls. Respect tha clot, whatever weret thit. The clot's what maketh tha bleedin' holit jack. Respect tha clot, ye clods!"

"Clot, clot – ya worrter against the faith-botherers! Bah, Grande Voile , worrt na us against yer obsess'n with the clot!" bawled Jute Bale. "Dey're ponies liket de rest ob us. Damned and ful of the worst impulses, yah, indid. Feh, feh. Priests!"

"Foal! Feart ye yer imagoes, ant na those that put 'em upon yer walls? Faugh!"

And so and forsooth, the drunken foals yelled at each other in increasingly impenetrable cant, yammering harder and fiercer as the booze squeezed all thought out of their gourds. I gave them the time to yell themselves out, and then I returned to the subject.

"And even then, would you buy into the hope of something better, my worthies?"

"Worthies y'll find nawt, youngt jenny. Why art thee saw jung, youngt jenny? Nawt ought be so jung, und be'et amongst us, damn us all't," bawled one of the semi-coherent donkeys. The ponies were still stronger with their strength and sensibility, their native earth-pony natures holding back the effect of the alcohol, the same way that my blood-witchery had kept my poisons from my main-vein, and the liver behind it.

"So, still. Better, pony! Though yer so damned and all, would you hold fast to something that'd keep you from this damnation you've courted, you've been backed into?" I asked.

"Haugh! Sowit, so yay, ant everypony and burro in thas damnable dunghole, t'truth!"

"Here, a sharp and strong blade, she'd cut you clean, cut you in the frog, cut you in the soul. Cut away the hold of the dead, damning world. Would you embrace it?" I offered forth the ritual blade, and prepared the sacred words.

"Fagh, faugh! Blades we feart naugh, jung jenny you! The future't, thaas we feart! Feart with all ov' aur burdtened sawls! Gib meh this bleeding blade!" And he grabbed my ritual-blade with both frogs, and cut them deep, the both, before I was ready.

I muttered the sacred, cult words over his over-bleeding frogs, and hoped the ritual was satisfied, as he faded and keeled over, shocked by the power of the ritual-words.

I turned from the prone pony, to his donkey friends, so much drunker than their earth-pony friends, and prompted each as I offered the blade. They, drunker than Jute Bale, still each and every grabbed for the blade, and bled into the words. One after the other, again and again, until I, half-drunk with all of my witchcraft, had to hold them up off the floor of that filthy tavern, surrounded by my many Order-ponies, who had cleared out all of the common drunkard-ponies, and held the barkeep, the waitresses, and the slatterns at blade-length as I recruited each and every one of the mad-drunk crew-ponies and donkeys In the depths of their amazing drunkenness.

In the end, all twenty-three of the drinking party, addled by the blood I'd added to their grog and their gin, and knocked out of their right reason by the combination of my witchery and the hard liquor, accepted the ritual blade and my blandishments, and my squad of Order ponies dragged them out of the tavern, and stuffed the mouths of the employees of that establishment fat with deniers and threats.

We dragged them to a nearby squat, purchased for the night by another Order armspony, anonymously. All of my victims were dumped upon that even-filthier floor, and I joined them all in the drugged sleep they had fallen into, my own senses taken away by the milk of poppy I drank down.

I still needed to buy from them their true acceptance of what I'd offered them.

***

Coming up out of the poppy, and into the dream, the wooziness of the drug followed me, trailed like a streak of thoughtlessness. The walls of the dream were stone, clean-cut, but dank, foul, lit by foul wall-sconces, and there were strong locks on the heavy, closed doors. All around me were the recumbent, senseless shadows of my would-be recruits, crowded in the small space.

A cell. A prison-cell.

The heavy prison-cell door boomed open, and a great, grinning head stared in at me, grinning madly, the heavy, greasy flames lighting up her black muzzle and sharp-toothed sneer.

The true Nightmare, not in her Cherie-semblance, or White-Rosiness. Her hot, stinking breath rolled out over us, and all around me, bodies stirred. They rose upon their forearms, those several dozen donkeys and a few ponies, bumping into each other, discovering the close quarters they had been locked into, with me.

And then they saw the great head of the Nightmare, as tall as a short donkey, her tartarus-eyes staring hugely into the crowded cell. And the screams began, as they crowded the back walls of the filthy dream-cell.

"Ah, my new ponies, awakened and to your senses, are you all? Welcome, you fools, you foals! You have done what you ought not to have done, drunk with whom you should not have partook, sworn in your cups what you should not have sworn! All of you, a cavalcade of poor decisions, bad ideas, and alcohol indulged at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons, in the wrong hour and season. FOOLS!"

Her hot breath filled that small room with its rotten-meat stench, and the new recruits shivered in the presence of the great predator, that had them at bay. With me in their midst.

"Well, now, what will you do, foals, quivering, broken fools that you are? Your enemy has delivered you into my hooves, and you are mine, now! Do you have any idea what it means to be in my hooves? Like a nasty, biting spider wandered into a drinking-hall, and found, crawling among the plates of the feast! Taken by the lord of the manor, and taken up, to be played with, or plunged into the fires of the candles lighting the feast. You are that spider, in the hooves of an irate land-lord. How will you plead for your paltry lives?"

She frowned, thoughtful.

"And yet, I have no need for the souls of terrified, wicked ponies. Of dissolute fools, drinking away their knowledge that their deaths are on-coming, are apparent, are soon to come. I have, in point of fact, no need for you. My servant brought you into my parlor for no reason whatsoever."

"But I have reason to humour her mad starts, and she says she has reason to save you from your fates. Oh, yes, we know how doomed you feel. You're not complete fools in that manner. You know that there's something twitching in the darkness beyond the door, the darkness beyond the doorway."

"Know you, I am that thing in the darkness, I am your doom. Will you embrace me, or will you align yourself against me? I know you all now, I know how you were fooled into my parlor, how you were tricked. And trust me when I say this, your betrayer will have cause to regret her actions. My service is not such that it can be filled with the unwilling, the tricked, the drugged, the drunken. When this night ends, those who have refused the call will be set loose, those who do not care to pledge their love to me will be put forth into the sun's brutal glare, to find your way among the ponies of the day. I will not begrudge you your freedom, since it was offered up in a false trade by a sly jenny too fond of her tricks to be honest with you dishonest rogues. I am, in truth, an honest villain. I will not enslave ponies to my will. My service is only for true volunteers."

"Feufollet, I name you by your true name! Drop thee thy semblance!"

And with that, my dream-image crumbled and collapsed, and the false imago I had built of a sea-burro washed away in the hot breath of my furious Mistress. I panicked, quavering, cringing down upon my hooves and haunches, exposed, all my magics torn away.

"Fool, to use me as if I were a public convenience! I am the Nightmare! The Mistress of the Endless Night, the Inconstant Moon! I will not be used to trick and to lure and to bind by such as you! Show you me this: that you are worth of these stolen souls you would smuggle into my service without their love and allegiance! The rest of you. This is your betrayer, this is your problem. If you would align you with the Night, align you with the life that lives in darkness – make your peace with this, my wayward servant. Or not, it truly is your choice."

She turned her great head to the side, canted with thought and humour, her lips pursed. "But keep you in your mind – anything you inflict upon my jenny, shall be returned unto you threefold. And naught in this world will truly have any affect excepting that which it inflicts upon your trembling soul."

And with that, the filthy walls exploded away from us in every direction, racing for suddenly open horizons, the cell blossoming into a darkened plain. The Nightmare stretched upwards over us, her great and terrible wings spread overhead, the plain drawing down onto itself a quickened mist, the exploded weight of the ceiling above replaced in its rushing demolition by the merciless, twinkling stars of the heavens. She looked back down upon us, still trembling upon our hooves and haunches and chins, cringing from the shock of her display – first squeezed in a tight little hole, then flung into the open under the judging stars.

"Know that you are seen, and judged. Know that what you do, makes the world around you. This is not your workaday, amoral existence – that mere physical world that mindlessly moves forward, whatever you do, whatever you do to each other." She gestured, and to the left, sprung up a horde of faceless shadows, armed. And they sprung against each other, striking each other down, wrestling, knifing, killing, dying. On our other side, sat shadows in the light of burning torches – or, no, rather, burning roses upon darkened rose-bushes, and they bowed their heads against each other, nodding, talking, speaking such that you could hear the murmur, even over the clash and clang of the fighting on the other side.

"What you do, here, makes where you are. You have eternity this night, foals. You can make of eternity a paradise, and work with each other, work with your betrayer, work to find how to find your way into mere day. Or you can make a Tartarus of your night in eternity. Beat each other, scream and rant, torment this fool of a jenny who thought to steal your allegiance with trickery and fakery, drugs and alcohol. You are here to learn from yourselves, and to find yourselves. I will give you eternity for a night, if you wish it."

She sat back on her haunches, and looked down at the wild-eyed sailors, who stared up at her great horn and her long teeth, mesmerized and frozen still. "And you still do not understand. That is fine. We have a very long time together, for I will give all the time in this infinity of a dream to you. Time to educate yourselves from all the libraries left me by my followers in their dream-donations, all the classrooms ever built for a veteran looking to learn from example and display, every training-room ever imagined by my many, many ponies over a very long existence."

The darkness bloomed on all sides with open doors, beckoning shadows highlighted by the glare of strong lighting in the chambers beyond. I recognized several nearby as rooms and chambers drawn from other Order or Company training-sessions in the dreamworld. The recruits looked around themselves, still surprised by the mutability of this world into which they had found themselves stolen away into.

"Foals, I tell you this: all that was promised you in your cups, was true. We are a way towards salvation. We are a solution to your dilemma. We are the way, the torch in the night, and we are the life, the growth in the hedge. But we are also… I." She grinned, again, sharp-toothed. "We are the fangs in the darkness, we are the blade in the black. We are death to the dead, doom to the doomed, vengeance for those who have courted vengeance. We are the rebel, and the sword against the rebellious. We are the fierce defender, and the underminer of false rulers, we are tradition and we are the uprising. We will break you down, and we will build you up. You will be our choosers and our killers, if you agree to love us, love the horror in the night who would only ask to love you. Only trust this – you can be loved by us, and we offer you that love. For we want your love, my little foals."

She stood once again, looming like mountain-ranges. "Oh, my foals. I swear to you this: Until you say stay, hold, I will give you time, all of time if necessary. I swear to you, this night?"

"It will last forever, if you wish it. Stay with me this night, my ponies, and swear love to me, or cry hold, cease, enough. And until you do, this night? It will last forever."

"Well, bedamn me," cussed Jute Bale, talking over his hooves, his muzzle still pressed into the pavement below us. "Tha beint a fairnt unt clarver hapeal thant 'alf tha salesn piches hi've beint gaven hin my day. Or naight, aws hit may beint."

The Nightmare sat up on her haunches, perplexed.

"Did anypony," she appealed to the crowd, "Understand enough of that gibberish to interpret for an old abomination? It was too thick for my ear."

"I think, yer horrorfulness," essayed Cour Lisse, with her eyes still squeezed shut and her muzzle still half-muted by the floor she spoke through, "Old Bale sayt he's your huckleberry."

She muttered something I didn't quite hear, but it might have been, "He always was a sucker for a fool's pitch, the old bastard."

The night didn't last forever. But sometimes it felt like it did.