The wind of the free fall was pressing against my body. The pressure was insanely strong, almost robbing me of my breath, not to mention my ability to scream. So many things went through my mind, but I couldn’t really focus on any of them. I smashed through the next cloud, which collapsed into little pieces afterwards. Now that I was below the cloud level, I could see the desert below me. Cacti, rocks and sand looked at me from below, as did sea that crashed against the rocks. The desert stretched onwards, and no sight could have shown that clearer. How much time did I have left? Thirty, maybe forty seconds? Would Star or Hawk manage to get past the griffons and then catch up with me? Not likely, and if they did, I was probably far too fast already. If someone caught me now, they would have to lift my entire weight and would die themselves. I would die, no matter what.

~Not if I help you.

The voice sounded through my head. It was neither Luna nor Celestia but something else. “Who are you?” I wanted to say, but I could only think it thanks to the wind.

~Your only option if you want to live.

The voice was cold as ice, but I couldn’t figure out who it belonged to, not even if it were male or female. Half of my precious remaining time was over – I could already see the clear shapes of the large rocks and even the first cacti.

~If you want to live, you just have to say it.

I didn’t trust that voice a bit, but did I have a choice? ‘What’s the catch?’ I thought. The voice chuckled.

~You only have to promise to come to me.

That was by far the best deal ever. The catch was doable. “I want to live!” I shouted with all my force against the wind, yet it was still merely a whisper in my ears. The voice chuckled again but said no more. I continued to rush further towards the ground, not slowing down and nothing else happening. ‘Hello?’ I thought again but got no response. The ground was not even fifteen seconds away. I was going to crash, hard. Ten seconds. Now about five and now finally something happened. A gigantic black cloud, more like a shadow, weaved its way through the sandy ground and directly towards the place where I was going to land. How would that stop my fall? How would that save—

I didn’t get any further with my panicked thoughts as I fell into the deep black of the void. It was almost like water, but there was no resistance. I just slid through it, without a single of my bones having to crack, nor was a single hair torn out of my coat.

The rope had just torn, and Trixie was greeted by a griffon who slammed his sword against her armor. She jumped back a step to get out of the griffon’s reach and let herself fall behind Shining Armor and Glimmer. Shooting Star and Night Hawk were busy keeping two of the remaining eight griffons at bay. Since her flames were no longer a surprise, they managed to dodge every attack of the draconic mare, and Star couldn’t even use his spear for anything more than blocking attacks. Glimmer held another griffon from getting close to Shining Armor, who was busy protecting the ship and the balloon. ‘If he just wouldn’t have to protect the ship,’ Trixie thought and got an idea. It was still bright day, so Luna’s magic wouldn’t work, but it was better than nothing. She was about to prepare the spell, but then the griffon from before approached her again, and this time it was too late to dodge. In the last second, a mop hit the head of the feathered lion and threw him overboard. On the other side of the ship stood Captain Finder, a disgruntled look on his face.

“No one damages the Lunar! The princess entrusted me with this ship and I will protect it!” he shouted after the falling griffon, who was no longer to be seen. Satisfied, he snorted and looked for the next suicidal one who dared to enter his ship. Trixie used the newly gained time and prepared her spell. Her horn glowed and a circle of runes formed on the floor around her. She put a bit more magical power into it, and the circle began to glow and spin.

“The night may has passed…” Three of the runes in her circle began to glow and lifted off the ground “…but our enemies are not yet smashed…” More runes began to glow. Night Hawk had managed to fry the wing of one of her attackers, who now desperately clung at his colleague, but he just shook him off coldheartedly. Shooting Star was less lucky and had gotten a few cuts from some unblocked strikes. Just as he would have to take another hit, a bolt hit the attacker in the shoulder, and he sunk lifelessly to a cloud below. Glimmer had shot the griffon, who had just approached her, two bolts directly through the wings, nailing him to the ground. “…don’t let this fight compound…” The remaining runes shone, and the circle was now a completely glowing disc. “…so turn our rivals to the ground!” As the last word was spoken, magical chains, in the bright pink of her magic, flew out of the circle towards the remaining five griffins, pulling them where the circle had just been. Trixie jumped aside just in time, and not half a second later sat five bound griffons, including their commander, in front of her. Shining Armor saw that the immediate danger was under control and dropped the shield that he had cast over the sensitive parts of the ship.

“Well done, Trixie,” he said, exhausted. Trixie wasn’t waiting for his praise, but instead jumped towards the edge of the ship to search for signs of Light. Armor, who seemed to have realized what she was looking for, shouted at his two pegasi to start searching immediately, and with a salute, they were gone.

Now I could check off another box from my cliché list. I slowly regained consciousness and tried to inspect my surroundings, but it was too dark. I waited for a while until my eyes had adapted to the darkness, but it was of no use. At first I didn’t think of it at all, but my magic could create some light. In my mind, I searched for a light spell and immediately my surroundings were bathed in a bright, white light. Apparently I was in a large cave. The rock was dark blue, and every couple of metres were pillars that kept the ceiling where it belonged. So it was a mine, not a cave. I was wondering why a mine would be in the middle of the desert, but then I remembered the briefing. Fillyburg was a mining town, so I must have somehow fallen through the black shadow and landed here. But how was that possible? The town was still a day away. I stood up and looked for anything that could give me a clue to finding the exit, but nothing was here. No rails for mine carts, no tools, and no signs of any work being done here recently. Either I was deep down in an abandoned mine shaft or in a completely abandoned mine.

I couldn’t stay here forever, so with the help of a nursery rhyme, I decided which way to go: left. I shouted into the shaft a few times but got no response. The voice wanted me to look for it, so it was only logical that that was the reason it sent me here. Still, it was somewhat puzzling as to why I didn’t get a response. The shaft led up into a larger cave, which clearly identified this place as a mine now. In this large hall, around ten metres high, were various smaller shafts that branched off into every direction. In the middle was a large pulley which could transport something down into the hole that it was situated next to. Burnt out lanterns hung at various points. I didn’t think that anyone would mind if one of them went missing. There was still a bit of liquid in it, whatever was used for as fuel here, and so I reignited it. The light of the lantern was as bright as my artificial one, so I cut off my magic. There was no reason to waste power now. Again I shouted for help, but it remained silent except for my echo. A few rocks crumbled here and there, and I realized that it wasn’t the best idea to keep on shouting down here. If this mine really was abandoned, the wooden pillars couldn’t be trusted anymore. I again had to decide which shaft to go down. Just as I was about take the first one to my right, I remembered something. If I had learned one thing from Minecraft, it was how fast you could get lost in tunnels. With my horn, I cut a ‘X’ in front of the entrance I came from and a ‘one’ in front of the one I was about to take.

“Someone tell me now how video games are useless.” I laughed at my own joke. I would have taken anything to not having to think about this depressing situation. Somehow it was ironic to be catapulted from the highest heights of the open sky to the depths of a mine. I would never ask to be somewhere else again, even if it felt unpleasant. I took a deep breath and took the first step into the new shaft. Just as I was deep enough into it that I could no longer see the entrance, I arrived at the end, a dead end. I turned on my heels, cut the symbol of a dead end next to the ‘one’ at the entrance, and went over to the next one. Just as I wanted to mark it with ‘two’, I noticed a blue light coming out of a shaft behind me.

“Well, if that isn’t an invitation…” I assigned the glowing shaft to the new number two. Keeping my mood with a bit of soliloquizing was a habit I hadn’t picked up for a while, as I was almost never alone since I came to Equestria. When I was younger, I used to lock myself in my room so that I could get some peace. Today I ran around naked and as a pony. Let me hear those who said that people never changed. Second lesson for today. Cautiously, I went around the large hole around the pulley. I wasn’t going to risk a second fall today. As I went closer, the light disappeared further into the shaft, obviously to lure me towards it. And it would succeed, because where there was light, there had to be other things as well, friendly or not. If it was a wild animal, it had to know an exit to get food from time to time. If it was friendly, it would surely show me. It was at least better than to aimlessly wander around the shafts. And there was still the possibility that it was the voice. If it brought me here, then it was probably not too far away. It wanted me to find it after all. I could only hope that it wasn’t some predator that didn’t want to have sand in his meal. I followed the shaft, not with placing the mark. As expected, the light went deeper down into the mine, showing me the way I had to follow. The shaft went smaller and tighter so that a pony could just barely fit through it. Celestia would have to duck to get through here. I let the lantern fly ahead as I seemed to get closer, since the light became brighter and brighter. It went around a corner and was so bright that I could barely see anything, but I kept on moving. That quickly proved to be a mistake, as I suddenly no longer felt ground in front of me and fell down a few metres before I landed in water. During the short free fall, I had lost my lamp, and the lack of light made it hard for me to see the surface at first. To my surprise, I saw the blue light again, and it no longer seemed to be alone. I paddled upwards, like a dog, and greeted the fresh air with a deep breath. I had fell into an underground lake, and the many small, blue lights made the surface glow. It was a beautiful sight, but the water was cold as ice, so I headed towards the shore. I climbed out of the water and tried to shake myself dry, but the armour mostly hindered me in doing so.

”Welcome!” Again there was the voice, but this time it sounded through the cave, not my head. I looked around. Behind me was the lake, and directly above it was the low hole that I had fallen through. Many of the lights were floating further back over the lake and now slowly came towards me. The ceiling above me went almost straight up, making room for a giant bulge. Below the dome-shaped ceiling gathered many of these small blue lights, illuminating what was in front of me. The room was filled by stalagmites, and their wet surface reflected the light that leaked in into every direction so that a play of shadows was in front of me. I walked between a few of them, almost as it was a path.

“Hello? Who are you?” It seemed like I was dealing with a powerful and magical creature here, so I shouldn’t give it any reason to attack.

“A friend…” Something about the voice sounded especially cold as it spoke these words. “… your friend.” The voice seemed to be near me, and I looked around. A dark, blue eye stared at me from the shadow that one of the stalagmites cast. Startled, I took a step back. I landed against another of the small stony pillars, which lost its top and fell to the ground with a loud clank. Panicked, I looked around and again saw the eye, this time from another shadow to my left. “Or your worst nightmare.”

I was scared and seriously not in the mood for a game of hide-and-seek in the shadows, so I used the same light spell from earlier. Immediately, the shadows were gone from my view, and a dark creature rushed over the ground, the eye still locked on me. “Show yourself! Who or what are you?!” It disappeared in the remaining shadows, deeper in the cave, and laughed maliciously.

“Has your mother not told you tales about me? The Shadow that will shroud the world, the Tormentor of Souls, the Bringer of Sorrow?” I quickly summarized the information. “But the most well-known name that was given me in this world was…”

“Nightmare Moon…” Again it laughed maliciously, confirming my thought. These lights were the same lights that gave the night in the moonshine, probably the remains of Luna’s magic in this creature. I had found what I wasn’t hoping to find until I had a way to capture it, but here I was, unprepared and without many options.

Trixie went up and down the deck of the Lunar, waiting for the return of the two pegasi. They had been gone for quarter of an hour now and hadn’t reported back yet. Either they hadn’t found Light’s body or there was none. She was hoping so much that nothing had happened to him. It had been him who had given her a second chance, her brother.

“Pegasi approaching!” shouted the shrill voice of Night Hawk, and in the next moment, the two searchers landed on deck.

“And?” Shining Armor asked distantly.

“Nothing to find, sir. We followed his track through the clouds but couldn’t find a crash site or anything like that. No landing side either.” Shining Armor sighed as Night Hawk finished her report.

“Then we have no other choice. Light is now MIA. Either he made it and is somewhere down there or more griffons came and took him. Either way, we can’t interrupt our mission.

“Has the questioning of the prisoners given anything?” Night Hawk turned towards Glimmer, who just shook her head.

“You could pull out their feathers one by one and they wouldn’t talk,” she said and went back to cleaning her crossbow.

“Does that mean we are leaving Light to his fate?” Trixie shouted angrily at the troops.

“Exactly. As soon as reach Fillyburg, I will send a message to the Princess. She will surely send out a searching party.”

“And you want to leave Light just down there in the desert for so long? Shining Armor, that is insane! He is your family, my family!” she shouted and snorted loudly.

“Do you think I wouldn’t know that, Trixie?” He loomed in front of her. “But the mission must go on. I have orders as well, and if a soldiers is MIA, the mission still continues. A mission is too important to be postponed for an unknown time because of the well-being of one soldier.” This time it was Shining Armor who made his point with a strong stomp on the ground.

“But—”

“No buts! He is a prince but not an active regent, and he knew what he was getting into. Dismissed!” And with that, he had countered Trixie’s last argument as well, without even letting her speaking it out, and ended the discussion. Angrily, she went past and disappeared in the Captain’s cabin.

“Don’t worry, Trixie, if the Prince can’t take care of himself, the Captain would have never taken him in the first place. I bet he’s lying at some oasis right now and enjoying the sun,” Hawk assured her with an encouraging smile.

“Or he is goo that is buried underneath a pile of sand,” Glimmer noted from the side. Both Trixie and Hawk angrily glared at her. “What? Can’t you handle the truth?”

I could hear how Nightmare was changing its position again and again, as it sounded like a hissing snake each time it dashed from shadow to shadow.

“I am not afraid of you! Show yourself!” That was a bold lie. My shaking legs, which was mostly from the cold and the water, and the flickering light from my horn, were clear signs of that. Again came the laughter from the darkness, which didn’t made the situation any more comfortable.

“I can smell your desperation, your worry, your FEAR!” The shadow loomed in front of me, three times my size. Thousands of blue eyes were staring at me, and the wall of shadows around me began to rotate slowly. “But I can be the solution to all these problems…” The wall leaned over and the darkness engulfed me in a small dome. All eyes were on me as my light finally died. I had never been a fan of horror movies, but this was worse than anything I had ever seen before I was really glad that I hadn’t drunk anything lately.

“W…What d-do you want?” I couldn’t help myself; my voice was trembling.

“You have something that I want; I have something you need. Let me in and we will solve both of our problems.” I took me a few second to realize what it wanted: my body. Nightmare needed a body – just like the other Nightmares, it couldn’t survive in the sun. If it wanted to get out, it would need a creature that it could possess, just like it had done once to Luna. Was that really a solution? I needed that creature’s knowledge to fight the Nightmares, but the price right here and now was too high. Twilight and the others could free me – they had done so before. Could that be a good idea?

Apparently it didn’t need more than this slight hesitation, this thought, to use as an opening, and the dome transformed into a dark mist that invaded me through my mouth, nose, and ears. The pain was unbearable, but I couldn’t tell if I was screaming or not. A nauseous feeling overcame me, just as though my heart was trying to jump out of my chest. It felt as though my brain was trying to burst through my skull to escape, then I mercifully lost consciousness.

Author's Notes:

Well, Nightmare Rarity all over again. only that this is older than every comic. I'm freaking hipster!
To be serious for at least a moment, Shining did like he was trained to do. You don't abort a mission or pause it because a VIP, who isn't important to the mission, goes missing. (MIA = missing in action. KIA = killed in action.) Prince Harry served is time a while ago, if I remember correctly. You think they would stop an entire operation because his location was unknown? The know Light is alive. No impact and all that. That has to be enough for now.

Thanks to Tripl3M and Gron for translating this chapter.
Special thanks to JBL for proofreading and editing.

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