At first I was happy to be breathing fresh air, but that feeling quickly passed as soon as I realised how cold it could become in a damned desert during the night. I had always considered the cameleers to be crazy for marching through the sand during daytime. However, the air was close to freezing during the night. My coat and armor protected me from some of the cold, but my teeth were still chattering as I walked through the sandy steppes. I was happy that this place was more like the American desert around Las Vegas than the Sahara in Egypt. How my family had managed to convince me to go with them there was still beyond me.

My stomach had been rebelling for a while now and didn’t make things any easier to keep trotting. Ponies were like anime figures. If the stomach was empty, the action fell short, but that could have just been me as well. What made things worse was that I had no idea where I was going in the first place. Since Luna had redecorated her night sky, Feng Shui or something, I was unable to make out any constellations for orientation. Was the Ursa Major point towards north here as well? I had planned on asking her that question. The alternative would have been to stay in the changeling den, which would have still been dangerous if the rest had showed up.

“You don’t happen to know the way, do you, Nightmare?” I had no hope that it would give me even the dirt under my hooves, but it was worth a try.

Sure

“Will you tell me?” To ask questions that you knew the answers for was no fun.

Maybe…

“What’s the catch?” I was sure that it wanted something: my body, total control, or something else.

Why was a worm like you looking for me?

Maybe it had not been such a good idea to keep up the connection. It had warned me from the changelings, because its goal, probably my body, had been in danger. That had been my train of thought. However, it could still poke into my thoughts and memories, which I couldn’t do. Maybe it lacked a brain per se or it knew how to block off any access.

“As you know, my world is currently under siege by your kind. You could be the solution for that.” I could hear it laughing.

Do you really think I would tell you the weakness of my people? How stupid are you humans?

“That won’t be necessary. Celestia taught me an old spell that could keep yours away from Equestria. I could change it a bit so it could be used as a weapon, and you would be my first test subject.” I had always wanted to play bad cop. To be honest, I didn’t really have the scruples to really do something like this.

I… offer you a deal.

I was either better at the game than I thought or it was planning something. My suspicion was on the latter.

You don’t kill me and take me with you. In exchange, I will help you.

“What's in it for you?” Being sceptical was not the word I was looking for, but it would do.

I take pleasure in pain and destruction. It’s my sole existence, so I want to see what my people have done to your world.

I did not need to see it to know that it was licking its lips while pulling my face into a wicked grin. That was something that had surprised me. When we were in my spirit, it had looked just like me. Since it had also looked like Luna when she was Nightmare Moon, I had thought nothing of it. At least now that I was thinking about it.

“So you want to gawk?” Honestly, it felt wrong to approve of this, but if there was an entity that knew something about Nightmares, then it would be one of their kin. It would not hurt to have one on my side, even if it had a different goal. “I won’t stand in your way.”

As part of our agreement, I will warn you, but nothing more. If you die, your body is mine.

“I understood that. Now, would you please show me the way?” Did I really just say ‘please’?

You were going the right way all along.

Go figure. Why would it have problems helping me out? Again I heard the creature laughing, which caused a shiver to run down my spine every time. All of a sudden, I got blinded by something out of the sky, and I quickly put a leg in front of my eyes. I tried to see what it was, but it was all too bright, forcing me to stare at the ground. It was almost daylight brightness in a circle around me. I must have been visible for miles.

Trixie had been following Sagittarius for a while now. Asking the stars for help was a kind of magic on its own, and she would thank the princess again for being honoured with this knowledge. The one spell she could really use right then was one to keep her warm. Back then she would have trailed through the steppes during daytime and would retreat into her wagon for the night. However, with her wagon gone, she didn’t have the time to wait till the next day, as the spell would only work at night. She had been galloping towards the pillar of light for a while now, but as soon as she got close, it disappeared again.

“How far do you want to lead Trixie into the desert?” she called to nopony in particular to the skies. She had been on the trail for three hours now and was starting to doubt the orientation of the hunter. Luckily, the next mark was not too far off, and with a heavy sigh, she started moving.

“You gotta be shitting me!” She could hear a familiar voice screaming in the distance, and after a few minutes, she came into the range of her target. Her head shot up, and in the distance she saw a blue coated, white-maned stallion running around in panic, pursued by her pillar of light. “At first I fight for every lux of light I can get, and now it doesn't want to let go of me? Oh come on!” Trixie could not decide if she should scream in delight or collapse from laughing. It was a very humorous display to see Light trying to escape the light. She went with the latter. Light, still irritated by the light, turned towards the laughter. With a bit of effort, he could make her out.

“Trixie! So good to see you, now could you switch of the light please!” She needed a moment to collect herself, but then she cut the spell and the light died. “Thanks a lot…” At first they were just standing in front of each other, motionless, but then Trixie threw her hooves around his neck.

“Thank Luna you are alright! How did you survive the fall?” Light hesitated before he answered.

I tried to teleport and ended up in a mine.” Trixie knew that he was bad with magic, so she saw through the excuse. She wanted to get to the bottom of things.

“I know you can’t do that, so what happened?” Light seemed to be oblivious to her and deep in thought. Impatiently, she scanned his aura and almost instantly backed off. “WHAT IS THAT!?” Her screaming got her brother out of his stupor and back into reality.

“What do you mean?” She backed a few steps to get as much distance as possible between herself and the threatening aura.

“Your aura! The dark aura that is streaming from you.” She had never felt something so big and evil before.

“You mean Nightmare?” It seemed to be perfectly normal to him.

“Nightmare? As in Nightmare Moon?” She couldn’t believe what she heard. Was he possessed by that thing? Trixie instantly prepared for an attack, and her horn lit up.

“Whoa there, nelly…” Light raised a hoof in defence. “Since you now know about it, I will tell you everything about this.” He took one long breath while Trixie remained with her magic at the ready, prepared to knock him out at any time. “When I fell off the ship, it was Nightmare who saved me. Not out of charity, I can assure you of that. It teleported me into an abandoned mineshaft, a few clicks in that direction.” He pointed towards the direction he had come from. “It wanted to possess me there, something that doesn’t seem to work with goo. Anyway, it got confused because I was carrying two souls, mine and the essence of Changer. It chose the wrong one and is now basically my prisoner and vice versa. On why you feel the aura… a moment please.” He concentrated, and Trixie regarded his aura carefully, which suddenly vanished. “It’s gone isn’t it?” he asked, and Trixie could only nod. “Great, if I sever the connection, no one will notice.” Trixie dropped her magic.

“Why do you want to keep it a secret?” She couldn’t believe what she had heard. Blue Light had caught one of the most dangerous beings of Equestria all by himself.

“Hey, I’m carrying the one thing that represents all the evil in this world. Do you want a hug?” He remarked sarcastically, causing her to sarcastically roll her eyes.

“Whatever. We should get on our way back. Maybe Shining Armor hasn’t told the princess about your disappearance yet.” Light agreed, and together they started heading for Fillyburg.

“With you, Twilight, we shouldn’t be surprised anymore.” Rarity and the others were sitting in Twilight’s library, drinking tea. I had to be with them since mother wouldn’t let me stroll through the town at this late hour. She had made me help her at the stand all day long, telling others that I was a distant relative. Well, better than letting them in on the time travel thing. Spike had already excused himself and gone to bed, so now I had to put up with Ponyville’s gossip.

“Well, to have my future daughter stand right in front of me… damn, that was something different…” During that, AJ glanced over to me and tried to evade the stares of the others by doing the exact same thing as Fluttershy, hiding behind her mane.

“As I said, AJ, I wouldn’t have done it if there would have been another way,” Twilight assured her. It wasn’t really pleasant to be talked about as if I were invisible, so I decided to honour them by going out of the kitchen.

“Where are you going, sugarcube?” AJ called behind me.

“Reading a book!” I yelled back and took a random book from one of the shelves called ‘Mushrooms and You’ and set myself onto the wide floor of the library. I browsed through the pages, looking at the pictures. There were all different types of mushrooms, from poisonous to rare delicacies. After about ten minutes, I had reached the end, so I started to listen in on what the other six were talking about.

“AJ, you really need to tell us something. He is from a different world and a wholly different being after all.” That surely was Rarity, who wanted to know about my father.

“Nope, Rarity, that's private.” She answered with determination.

“Don’t be like that. This could give some spice to this boring tea party.” Rainbow Dash seemed to be just as bored as I was. At least I wasn’t suffering all alone.

“Come on, AJ, it must be funny and we won’t tell anypony. Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye!” Pinkie and her weird oath. I only had to pledge it once in my life, but I’d really like to know what happened if you broke it.

“Ahhhh… I give up. Won’t quit anyway. He likes it dolphin-style.” Murmuring went through the room, mixed with a dash of giggling.

“Dolphin… you mean face-to-face?” Twilight asked nervously for whatever reason. I was unsure of what they were talking about in the first place. Swimming techniques?

“I had almost kicked him off, but then I realised that it must have been new for him as well.” Kicked off? Dolphin? Face-to-face…

“Hey! I can hear you!” I heard how multiple hooves met their respective muzzles.

I sighed with relief as the town came into view. The Lunar was to the side, being a big contrast to the surrounding landscape due to its lighting. One could easily miss the place if the townsfolk decided to switch off their lights.

“So the town is secure?” I asked Trixie for the second time.

“Yes, no changelings. But the townsfolk are behaving strangely, and for a place full of workers, it’s pretty run down, almost as if…”

“As if it was put up in haste?” Trixie agreed to my completion that I based upon the view. The houses looked more like patchwork, and I could even dare to say that my self-built treehouses looked more stable. We stepped between two houses and got onto the main street that ran along the entirety of the town. Trixie went ahead to the only two-storey building from which also had a sign labelled ‘Saloon’. I followed her through the typical western-style double swinging doors, something I always wanted to do, but I was missing the colts. Also, why was I thinking about the ‘Superperforator Song’?

A beefy stallion with a shaven mane was standing behind the bar, cleaning the glasses. It was strange in that there was no one else around who would have wanted a drink. Why clean something that was already clean? Trixie gave him a short nod and then disappeared in short hallway past a flight of stairs in the back of the room. This hallway led to different rooms that were all located in the added second floor of the building. She went straight for the first door and knocked.

“Shining Armor, I found Light,” she whispered, and almost immediately a purple aura, probably belonging to the occupant, opened the door. She quickly headed inside, and I followed suit. Once inside, the door snapped shut and was surrounded by a barrier.

“Light! Good to see you. You came through in one piece?” Armor came up to me, and much to my surprise, gave me a hug before releasing me.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. I somehow survived. Anyway, what’s going on here? Why all this secrecy?” His happy look turned sour, and he glanced over to Trixie.

“Something’s not right in town. All buildings are on the verge of collapse, its history is full of holes, and the residents behave strangely.” He went to the window that was looking at the street.

“I see what you mean. Musclepony down here is cleaning glasses even though no one is around to drink.” He indicated for me to come to the window and take a look at the street that was only illuminated by the surrounding houses. Shining Armor pointed at a moving shadow down there.

“That resident has been moving along the same path for hours now, almost as if he had no idea what else to do.” Trixie joined us, and we observed the pony until he disappeared from our view.

“I know that things are a bit weird but couldn’t he be part of that militia?” Trixie asked. Armor shook his head.

“He isn’t looking into any lanes and isn’t controlling anything at all. Also, others must have been around as well. He is the only one out there.” This was creepy alright. On that thought, something else came into my mind.

“Now that I think of it, I believe I found the changeling den.”

“What?” Shining Armor whipped around. “Where?” His horn lit up, and a map was unrolled on the floor. I studied it for a bit but couldn’t find anything I would have recognised. Everything looked different from above. Also, in a desert, every corner looks the same.

“Trixie, can you roughly say where you found me?” She nodded and pointed at the right spot. I could only stare in disbelief.

“What? I’ve been around a lot. I should be able to read a map!” She seemed somewhat offended.

“I’m just not used to have family members being able to read a map, that’s all.” My family had a really bad sense of orientation. Mum and I were at the top of it. Have you ever been on the road to a trip to Switzerland and ended up in Italy? I looked onto the spot that Trixie had pointed and scanned the nearby area for anything that could have been my starting location.

“There, where you marked something. That is an old mine, and I found hundreds of cocoons near the exit on the ceiling. That part goes many meters into the mountain before it reaches the mineshaft and is about fifteen meters high.” Shining Armor snorted angrily.

“Just a shadow….” He went silent and started pacing up and the down the room. “The residents are to be seen as not trustworthy. They have lied to us, and everything seems to be way too suspicious, along with the fact that we have hundreds of changelings running around. They would never ignore an opportunity like this town.” His logic was sound. I felt how Nightmare tried to get into contact with me, but I couldn’t let it out near the others so I blocked it. Trixie yawned and moved towards the door.

“I think they will still be suspicious tomorrow, but I’m going to lay down. The spell to find Light took out the best of me.” Shining Armor nodded and lowered the barrier around the door.

“Light, you need to sleep here. There are no more rooms available.” While Trixie closed the door, I took a blanket and threw it on the ground and started to make myself a bed like a dog. Shining Armor prepared his shield spell, but this time with more power so it would stay active while we slept, and fired it. “G’night,” he said before yawning loudly.

“G’night,” I replied and looked at the clock over the door. It was almost three o’clock in the morning. There would not be much sleeping tonight.

Author's Notes:

You know the feeling of seeing old pictures of yourself and it's total embarrassing?
Yeah, now you know how I feel reading this again. But hey, I at least know I advanced at lot since then ^^

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

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