Project Gaia : The arrival of humanity

Chapter 6 : Nightmare

"Conquering oneself is a greater task than conquering others."

-Genghis Khan

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Canterlot, Equestria, March 28th 2038, 2230 hours.

Night had fallen over Canterlot, the shining city upon the hill, and the streets were alive with an air of opulence and festivity. The grand spires of the castle glittered like silver under the moonlight, while the sprawling avenues below bustled with life. Nobles in richly embroidered gowns and finely tailored suits strolled through the market squares, where merchants hawked rare spices from distant lands, luxurious fabrics, and perfumes whose scents seemed to dance on the cool night breeze. Laughter and chatter flowed through the city, blending with the melodies played by street musicians who entertained the well-to-do.

In the grand salons and candlelit restaurants, the elites of Equestria dined on the finest fare-imported Griffonian wines, delicate sweets from Saddle Arabia, and the freshest produce from the fertile valleys below. Foals ran about in the parks, their laughter echoing like bells in the night as their families gathered beneath the twinkling sky to share in the evening's joy. Canterlot was a city of beauty, prosperity, and harmony-a realm that basked in the glow of a thousand years of peace.

High above the city, at the peak of Canterlot Castle, Princess Luna stood on the balcony of one of the tallest towers. The night was her domain, and from here, she could see her capital in all its glory. Her heart swelled with pride at the sight, for her sister had crafted a city of magnificent splendor, a beacon of light and civilization for all of Equestria. It was not merely the beauty of the architecture that moved her, but the peace and happiness of the ponies below. This was what they had fought for, so long ago-this harmony, this precious way of life.

Yet, while her subjects reveled beneath the starry canopy, Princess Luna's duty beckoned her elsewhere. It was time to traverse the dream realm, where she would watch over the sleep of all creatures, guiding them away from nightmares and soothing their restless minds. Closing her eyes, Luna's horn glowed with an ethereal light, and her consciousness slipped from the waking world into the dreamscape.

The dream realm stretched out before her, a vast and shifting landscape filled with countless doorways. Each door represented a dream, leading to the subconscious of a sleeping soul. Familiar doors greeted her: the dreams of foals, filled with innocent adventures and wondrous fantasies; the aspirations of artists, crafting visions of beauty in their slumber; and even the anxieties of the nobles, fretting over courtly affairs and fortunes. Luna moved from one to the next, casting away fears and lending comfort to her beloved subjects.

But tonight was different. As she ventured deeper, she found herself surrounded by a cluster of unfamiliar doors. Each was dark, cold, and strange-marked with symbols she did not recognize, written in a script unlike any Equestrian tongue. Luna's curiosity was piqued; she had never seen these dreams before. She approached one, the dark wood of its frame looming ominously before her, and with a gentle push of her magic, she opened it.

The moment she stepped through, Luna was assailed by a bitter wind. The dream was a wasteland of white, a dead and frozen steppe where the snow lay heavy and endless. The sky above was as gray and barren as the land below, and all around were the remnants of a terrible conflict. Craters marred the ground, and bodies lay scattered across the snow, like broken dolls left behind in the aftermath of a storm.

And there, in the midst of this desolation, was the dreamer. He was a creature like none she had ever seen before-tall, hairless, clad in a strange uniform of green and brown that blended with the frozen landscape. He held a weapon in his hands, a terrible device that roared with fire and spat metal into the air, cutting down shapes that emerged from the swirling snow. His eyes, wide and desperate, were filled with something Luna knew all too well-fear. The fear of a warrior standing alone against an onslaught, the fear that no matter how hard one fought, the darkness would swallow all.

Luna watched as the battle raged around him, the cries of the fallen piercing the air, the ground quaking beneath the thunder of explosions. She could feel the dreamer's terror, his anguish-his will to survive and yet his longing for an end to it all. It was not a vision she had expected to find, not in this age of peace and harmony. War had not touched Equestria in millennia, and yet here it was, playing out before her eyes with a brutality that chilled her very soul.

She felt the weight of the scene settle over her like a shroud, and in that moment, she realized something terrible: this was not merely a nightmare. It was a memory. A memory of war so vivid and raw that it bled into the dreamer's sleep like an open wound. Luna recoiled, pulling herself from the dream, her heart pounding in her chest as the vision faded. She emerged back into the dream realm, her breath coming in sharp gasps. The horror of what she had witnessed lingered in her mind-a war fought by creatures unknown to Equestria, wielding weapons and machinery beyond anything she could comprehend.

Without a moment's hesitation, Luna withdrew entirely from the dreamscape and returned to the waking world. She stood atop the castle tower once more, her eyes wide with a dawning dread. She had to warn Celestia. Whatever these creatures were, whatever world they came from, they were not visitors bearing peace. They carried the specter of war upon their shoulders, and if they were here-if they had come to Equestria-then the harmony of their realm was in grave peril.

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Meanwhile, hundreds of kilometers from Canterlot, in a makeshift barrack near the newly established FOB, Corporal Nikolayev Mili awoke with a start. He bolted upright, his breath ragged and his body drenched in cold sweat. His heart hammered in his chest, and for a moment, he was still in that forsaken steppe, with the snow whipping around him and the echoes of gunfire ringing in his ears.

"Another nightmare..." he muttered, his voice thick with exhaustion.

Nikolayev had lived through war. He had seen his comrades fall one by one in the bitter cold of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, had felt the hopelessness of a fight that seemed destined never to end. The trauma of those battles had carved itself deep into his soul, and even now, in this new world far removed from the blood-soaked fields of his past, the nightmares followed him. He could never escape them, no matter how many miles lay between him and those dark memories.

Unbeknownst to Nikolayev, he had been visited. His mind had been glimpsed by a being from a realm he could not understand, a being who had looked upon the horrors that shaped him. And though he did not know it, the echoes of his suffering had stirred something ancient and forgotten, setting into motion a chain of events that would shake the very foundations of Equestria.

For his nightmare was not merely a figment of his past-it was a portent of the future. And as the dawn approached, bringing with it the first light of a day that would change everything, the winds of war began to stir. Equestria, so long a bastion of peace, was about to remember the true cost of conflict. And once again, the drums of war would sound in a land that had forgotten their terrible cadence.