Bellesmith sat on her haunches, her forelimbs curled up to her chest as she stared at a dense wall of partially chiseled rock. A lone manatorch was all that illuminated that particular niche, a spot within the subterranean reaches of Blue Shelf where the concrete corridors stopped dead against craggy earth. Her breaths were long, even, and melancholy. A perpetual curve alighted the mare's vulnerable eyes, glistening in the manalight.
From behind, Dalton shuffled up, his gray features forming a slight sheen from the nearby torch. He took one look at Bellesmith, mustered up his strength, and quietly approached her. "You know, two days ago, Professor Garnet told me that you 'needed time to think.' I didn't expect that meant seeing you here, brooding by your lonesome within Black Level, like it was a cemetery."
Belle didn't look at him. After a slight shiver, she said, "There were hundreds of slaves in this place, Dalton, droves of rams, buffalo, deer, and mules. Between here and the door to the machine world, they labored in sweaty huddles, banging away at rock and starving by the dozens. Garnet was here. Felicity and Placid were here. The place reeked of spilled blood and smoke. I can still smell the decay; I can still hear the pained moans and the banging of metal pickaxes."
Dalton trotted over and quietly sat down beside her. "Black Level... was named glibly because when the Ledomaritans who built this place dug their way to this part of the mountain, they deemed the rock ahead to be too unstable, and thus it was not worth risking the lives of the Council's workers to trudge ahead. We've since not had the funding to patch this area up with concrete. So, to keep it off limits, we've entitled it 'Black Level.'" His mustached muzzle smiled. "Perhaps it was a silly attempt to make the place sound somewhat foreboding. Spark knows what that must have done to your imagination."
"And just k-kind of an imagination is that, Dalton?" Belle finally looked at him with a grimacing expression. "I have never dealt with hardships before I met Professor Garnet and—" She winced even harder, sighed, and ran a hoof over her face. "I have never dealt with hardships before." She gulped. "True, I never got along too well with my family, and the zeppelin crash at Mountfainfall changed a lot of things, but I've always had an easy lot in life. No pain. No suffering."
"Agony is relative, as far as I'm concerned," Dalton said with a consoling smile. "The scientist within you is aware of your well-to-do lot in life. It takes a great deal more to convince your heart of that as well."
"Where was the scientist when I was sequencing? Huh?" Belle frowned. "Being a fugitive on the run?! Befriending slaves, turncoats, and traitors?! Being chased and pursued as property?! How could I have dreamed all those things up?!"
Dalton nodded as he breathily said, "Your dreamscape did have... a lot of common themes; that's for certain. Perhaps you are a great deal more cynical than you wish to believe, darling."
"In what way?"
"Well, now, we all know that the Confederacy isn't perfect. Ponies like Garnet will hang posters of the Queen left and right, but that doesn't wipe the slate clean, now does it? Hmm?" He smiled wearily. "Non-pony citizens have dealt with prejudice and unequal representation for years. Decades, even. It's very difficult for... say... a ram or a mule to get a high paying job in service to Her Majesty. These rules aren't written anywhere, but no single citizen of Ledomare can grow up and somehow deny it without turning red in the face. For some, they simply choose to ignore it. For others—those with a caring, compassionate heart—they struggle with the guilt and the confusion that comes with acknowledging life's imbalance."
Belle stared into the craggy, black wall. "I... I-I can't say that I have ever... been at peace with the things I have learned about Ledomare..."
"And in your dreams, when you were cast loose from the spheres of the subject, you had no predominating consciousness to control what you felt or perceived," Dalton said. "You were a victim to your desires and fears, darling. Things came at you and you had no ability to guard against them."
"How... w-would I possibly desire such terrible things to happen to such innocent equines?" Belle murmured, her voice wavering a bit. She sniffed and rubbed a hoof across her golden cheek. "It frightens me to think that my mind has the ability to create such... such darkness..."
"I do not believe desire has anything to do with it, Belle," Dalton said. "If I recall from your sequencing accounts, however frantically relayed, you were quite often the subject of intense persecution and punishment at the hooves of those more powerful and more entitled than you. If nothing else, I would venture to guess that your guilt and misgivings in real life produced a relatively... masochistic experience within the fantasy."
"You mean..." Belle's lip quivered. "I was p-punishing myself?"
"Think of it as a way of desperately trying to empathize with those you've otherwise only read about or heard about," he said.
She hung her head, frozen in thought. After a while, she eventually said, "And those visions I had... of Rainbow Dash... of her life..." She bit her lip. "So much suffering. So much loneliness. Did... did I create those too?"
"Darkness is something that's found in all of us, even if what we most desire is the spark of life. Tell me, was this 'Rainbow Dash' character somepony who embodied cruelty? Was she a spreader of the darkness?"
Belle looked at him and emphatically shook her head.
Dalton smiled. "Seems like, in spite of all your vision's nightmarish qualities, you still held onto hope. That's quite nice to think about, isn't it?"
"Rainbow Dash... always peservered... in spite of all adversity..."
"Much like yourself, I would venture to guess."
Belle ran a hoof over her bangs and sighed. "I couldn't ever be compared to that mare..."
"But that didn't stop you from taking her place from time to time," Dalton said. "And, being most familiar with your own work, your mind used the nature of our scientific practices here in Blue Shelf to create that bridge between you and the model mare you always wanted to be. Eliminate that bridge, and what do you have? One pony, split into two different beings, unaware that she has the strength and potential to be both identities at once. If only you could embrace that other side..."
"Maybe..." Belle gulped. "Maybe I kind of did..."
"Maybe indeed," Dalton said, nodding.
Belle sighed. She gazed into the black rock and muttered, "Is it... is it that I've been depressed? That I've been so gloomy for so long?"
"What makes you say that, darling?"
"Because... I-I just can't get over how..." She shrugged her shoulders. "How wonderfully tranquil Blue Shelf actually is. I feel like I was gone for weeks, and all that time I was exposed to so much evil and cruelty within the heart of Ledomare." She turned and gazed up at Dalton. "I even... I even dreamed that Mildred was dead and that they had your grandfoals held hostage..."
Dalton's smile left him slightly. Nevertheless, he breathed evenly as he said, "I am pleased to assure you that my grandfoals are safe. As for Mildred, my beloved, well... she did indeed pass away several years ago."
Belle's lips pursed. "Oh, Dalton. I'm... I-I'm so sorry..."
He waved a hoof gently. "Now now, nothing to be sorry about. You've been through a lot. Undoubtedly you forgot that I told you shortly before your last sequencing."
"No, I... I remembered it," she said gently, looking back at the walls of Black Level. "Perhaps I didn't want to, which is why my mind weaved a bizarre tale around it, but I remembered..."
"Listen to me, Bellesmith." Dalton placed a hoof on her shoulder. "Life may be a lot better in the real world than it was in your delusional state, but it is still not perfect. There are many roads that need to be paved... many barricades that need to be erected against what's ugly and dangerous on this continent. We may not have established Her Majesty's utopia yet, but we are working on it, like good and honest souls. If there's anything that your visions have taught me—and I hope they can reinforce the truth in you as well—it's that you are more than willing to pursue happiness in all its forms, and that makes you the most benevolent kind of citizen this land could ask for. You should be proud of what this experience has taught you, and not be overwrought with confusion and dismay."
"But... it's just so hard..." Belle gripped her head in two hooves and seethed. "There's so much... so very much to comprehend..."
"Well, if you must know, I came here to deliver a message," Dalton said. "Garnet has made true to his promise for giving you a reprieve. He'd like you to venture to the surface for no less than two weeks."
"Two... weeks...?"
"Go, Bellesmith," Dalton said. "Collect yourself, darling. Take time to meditate, to relax. And, most of all, spend some quality time with Pilate."
Belle froze. Slowly, her head tilted up, and her eyes moistened. "B-Beloved...?"