Dreamstrider

by OkemosBrony

Chapter 22

A huge clap of thunder cracks through the sky, immediately waking me up from my restful sleep. There go any plans I had of sleeping in.

After taking a few minutes to shake off the grogginess of sleep, I get out of bed and start making my way through the castle to the main banquet hall. Once I make it there and open the doors, however, Luna is nowhere to be seen.

“Where’s Princess Luna?” I ask the guard by the door. “She’s usually here by now.”

“She is in a meeting,” he replies. That’s odd. A meeting? Usually she tells me about when she has meetings and such, but she never told me about this one. And it’s probably not an incredibly secret one if a guard is talking to me about it. Oh well, guess all I can do is get started on breakfast without her.

I sit down in my normal spot and start grabbing food, with all these guards just staring at me because I’m the only pony in the room besides them. It’s really awkward, and I almost want to not eat anything with all these eyes on me. But I’m hungry, so I just make sure to go slowly and take small bites, two things mom and dad always told me I need to be mindful of when eating because apparently even the way I eat isn’t lady-like.

Every minute seems to crawl by in this massive, empty room where the only sound is my fork scraping along the plate. Where is she? This is what it must have been like for her before I came along. No wonder her and Princess Celestia enjoy pranks so much. I’d go crazy if I had to deal with this awkward silence every single day for thousands of years. Anything to get my mind off it would be welcome.

Still no sign of Luna even as I’m finishing the last bit of food in front of me, which is strange. She’s had times before where she would be late to breakfast, but not this late. And never before did she hold meetings without at least informing me that she wouldn’t be here.

After a few minutes, the large doors to the hallway slide open and Sveta walks in, her nose in the air. She’s walking with a lot more confidence than normal, and is moving a lot slower than I usually see her, as if she’s putting a great amount of thought into every hoofstep. The other guards are looking at her with some confusion, and it’s clear that there’s some history between her and the pony guards. And it’s not good history.

“Princess Luna has requested your presence,” she tells me when she reaches the table, speaking with more of a high-class tone than any of the bat ponies ever use around me and Luna.

“For what?” I ask back as I move my dishes aside.

“Her Majesty explicitly stated that she will inform you personally upon your arrival.” I get up, and she turns around so I follow her out. Wonder why she’s speaking way more fancy than I’ve heard anypony, even Luna herself, speak. Judging from what I saw today and what I’ve heard from Luna in the past, she’s making a point to the other guards.

We keep walking through the castle, but instead of going to her quarters or the Dreamstriders wing, we’re going down some path that I don’t think I’ve ever been down before. Eventually we enter the shared space of the castle that’s neither Luna’s or Princess Celestia’s and go to a room with a plaque reading General Firefly Reception Room. There’s another bat pony outside the door, but I don’t recognize him.

“Enter,” she demands, stepping aside so I can go in. When I do, I walk into a medium-sized room with some expensive-looking chairs and couches scattered around. Luna is sitting on a couch with what I can only describe as royal posture, and there are a few other unicorns sitting on a couch next to her, and an earth pony in a chair next to that. There’s an open spot on the couch next to Luna, so I go sit down and try to match her posture because something tells me this is a very important meeting.

“This is the student I was informing you about,” she says as I sit down. “Aurora Borealis.”

“Hello,” I say softly with a quick wave of my hoof. These ponies all look pretty important, and they’re all kind of studying me.

“I believe you three would be convey your wishes to her the best,” Luna says. Wait, their wishes? Why do they have wishes, and why am I the one that they’re telling them to? I’m just Luna’s student, I’m not that important.

“We were intrigued by the report you turned into your teacher at Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns,” the earth pony mare speaks up.

“Intrigued by it?” I repeat. “Why?”

“Within it, you reported that you measured an abnormally high concentration of magic in your blood,” she explains. “Is this true?”

“Yeah, though we might have messed it up. The other filly I worked with said it was pretty much impossible to get the number we got for me.”

“We do not believe it is such an impossibility,” the unicorn stallion with glasses adds. “While it is possible that you had made an error, we did read through the report. You two set everything up correctly, and if you followed every step the way it was supposed to be followed, the results you got were legitimate.”

“So what’s that mean?”

“It means we are interested in you,” the earth pony says. “When you two wrote that you thought you being a Dreamstrider could have caused the results you observed, your teacher became intrigued and passed it on to us. There is no scientific research on Dreamstriders, as we hardly know enough about them to even study them and interpret our results in a meaningful way.” For a split second, I swear I can see her shoot a look at Luna. “The Princess has denied our requests to use her in our experiments, though she did mention that she would ask you if you were interested.”

“Do not feel pressured to agree to their requests,” she says. “Besides,” she says to me in Demon while winking, “I am their Princess. If you want, I can tell them to never talk to you again if they bother you, and they have to listen to me.”

“Sure,” I shrug.

“Perfect!” she exclaims. “Now, we’re going to need to contact your parents, because—”

“I give consent to your experiments on her behalf,” Luna interrupts. “I saw to it that I became a legal guardian of hers, and so I am fully capable of giving the same consent that her parents can.”

“I guess we can go right ahead, then,” she says after looking at the other ponies with her to confirm it. “We do not have any of our instruments here in the castle, but CU is not far.”

“We shall wait here for your return,” Luna says as she waves them towards the door. They all get up, bow, and exit the room.

“What will they do for the experiments?” I ask once they’re all gone.

“I imagine they will draw some blood to confirm the results you and your classmate got, and then will keep some for any future experiments they feel they should run. After that, one of the observations they always asked me to take part in was electrode monitoring while Dreamstriding, so I imagine they will do the same with you.”

“What’s electrode monitoring?”

“It is when they put lots of little patches all over your head to measure what your brain is doing. They want to know how our body acts when we are Dreamstriding.”

“Why have you never done any of these tests?”

“Don’t wish to is all,” she giggles. “While I recognize it is much different, the idea of being carefully studied like some rare specimen is a little too close to the extreme caution everypony took with me as a foal due to my status as a Dreamstrider.”

“You could always just give blood like they’re going to do with me. The pony I did my report with even said that we don’t know how much magic is normal for a Dreamstrider, so it could help them figure out what normal even is.”

She shakes her head lightly. “I am a hemophiliac, so it is not so simple. My condition is not so severe that something like that would present any danger to me, but giving blood would cause more frustration and pain for me than it would for anypony else.”

“A hema-what?”

“Hemophiliac,” she repeats. “It means my blood does not clot properly, so when I bleed, it takes much more time and effort on my part to get my body to stop the bleeding.”

“Why does it do that?”

“A simple matter of genetics. My father was a hemophiliac as well and my mother carried the disease, and I was the unlucky one to be stuck with it while Celestia is normal in that regard.” She giggles again. “‘The disease of royalty’, as ponies used to call it. I always told Celestia when we were fillies that having it made me more royal than her. Anything to annoy my sister.”

“She really got annoyed by that?”

“She claims it was just because I was annoying at that age,” she laughs. “I say it is because it is very easy to get under her skin if you know which buttons of hers to press.” After laughing a little again, she gets up off the couch and walks towards the door. “Now, if they are to perform these tests on you, we should prepare your mind; increasing the flow of magic throughout your body will help them get more information.”

---

The researchers are all setting up all sorts of different sciency-looking things in my room, clearly getting ready for some important tests. They haven't really told me anything about what it is they’ll be doing, though. I just have guesses, based on what Luna told me.

Speaking of Luna, I wonder where she is. She had to tell them it was okay to perform these tests on me, but it would seem like she doesn’t need to actually be here when they're performing them on me.

“We’re almost done,” the earth pony says as she walks towards my bed. “If you could just lay down here, we can get started.”

I do as she says, and she starts pulling out some things from a small box next to her. “Can I ask you a question?” I say while she’s looking through everything.

“Sure.” She pulls out a small bag of cotton balls and starts taking a few out.

“How come you’re an earth pony but seem to know a lot about magic? Not to be mean, but I’m from a town of earth ponies and none of them there know anything about magic.”

“Turn your head that way,” she says, pointing towards the other side of the room. When I look away from her like she says, I can feel a cotton ball with what smells like rubbing alcohol on it going up and down my neck. “And I know a lot about magic because I studied it. Only unicorns can cast magic, but that doesn’t mean other types of ponies can’t learn it.”

Guess that makes sense. She finishes with the cotton ball, and before long, she’s gently poking at my neck with her hoof.

“What are you doing?”

She pokes it a little harder. “Looking for a vein to draw blood from. Have you ever had to have blood drawn before?”

“Not really, no. I had to get a little for the project I did for class, but that was just a tiny bit. Why do you have to get it from my neck?”

“There’s a vein called your jugular in your neck that’s very big, and so we use it because we know we will be able to get enough blood from it without taking too much away from where it needs to be.” The poking stops, and I can feel her hovering over me now. “I’m about to insert the needle. It won’t hurt a lot, but there will be a little bit of pain and you’ll need to remember to stay very still or you could hurt yourself. Are you ready?”

I grab a little wad of my sheets in my hoof. “Ready.” When I can feel the needle go into my neck, I grab the wad tighter. I usually hold mom or dad’s hoof when I’m getting a shot at the doctor’s, so it’s hard doing this without them. But I’m not a little filly anymore, so I shouldn’t need them.

“All done,” she says after much less time that I thought she would need. I can still feel a hoof on my forehead keeping me from moving around, but it moves after somepony puts a cotton ball on my neck and covers it what looks almost like a mix between tape and a bandage.

Once I can turn my head, I see the unicorn with glasses carrying a small test tube of dark red liquid over to my desk, where they have some small box that he puts it in before closing it. The other unicorn, an older stallion with a gray mane and tail, starts pulling out a box that has a ton of wires attached to it.

“What are those?” I ask.

“Electrodes,” he says in a heavy accent that I have no idea where it could be from. “We will put them on you and have you Dreamstride so we may observe what happens to your body.”

The other two ponies are already putting a few all around my head, so I just try and get into a position that I won’t mind being in while I’m Dreamstriding. Once they’re done putting a ton of the tiny little patches attached to wires all over my head, horn, and a few near my heart, they all step back.

“What do you need to do to Dreamstride?” the earth pony asks. “Is there anything we can help you with?”

“You want me to start?” They all nod, so I give them a little nod back. “Okay, I’ll do it.”

It’s pretty easy to get into my dream because Luna did help me prepare for this with tea and what I now know is in fact meditation, and once I’m there I figure I should jump into the dream world and look around. I’ve never actually been inside the dream world during the day, so it’ll be interesting to see if it’s different than it is at night. At the very least, there will be a lot fewer dreams. Most of the dream world will probably belong to babies who are down for naps, because I don’t know who else would be sleeping in the middle of the day on a weekend.

When I get into the Canterlot Cave, I can see that I was right about there not being that many dreams. There are just a few, and they’re not clustered together like it is at night when there are a lot of ponies dreaming.

“Glad to see you decided to come join me,” I can hear Luna’s voice come from the mouth of the cave.

“How’d you know I’d come here?” I ask as I turn towards her.

“I figured they would want to monitor your body while you Dreamstride. After they came and started setting up their equipment, I retired to my room and started waiting here for you.”

“What do they hope to find with this?”

“I do not even know if they have something they wish to find,” she shrugs. “I believe that they are simply excited by the prospect of studying you. The three ponies studying you are seemingly the only ones interested in observing us, and they have hounded me since my return from the moon to work with them.”

“So why did you not?” I ask. “I understand not giving them blood, but why not let them put those things on your body and have you Dreamstride? Is it really that uncomfortable for you?”

“Yes, although now that I have given it a little more thought, I suppose that it is not entirely because I do not like drawing attention to my abilities. It truly is a matter of privacy, and I just do not enjoy the idea of being observed in such a manner. I was overwhelmed and recovering from a millennium on the moon, and so I told them no. I enjoyed having the dream world be my place to escape to, and I felt that if I let them experiment on me, it would somehow taint that.”

“Was it really that hard to come back to Equestria?”

“Of course,” she nods. “Equestria is a much different place from when I was banished, so imagine you waking up tomorrow and being a thousand years in the future. It was very overwhelming, and finding out that my beloved Dreamstriders had devolved into a myth simply added to the suffering I felt. I retreated to the dream world not only to think and process arriving in a world that was foreign to me, but to mourn the memories of those with whom I felt the closest to. I had felt your birth even on the moon, and so I decided to simply wait until you were old enough to join me before bringing any attention to our presence.”

“Why wait for me, though?”

“Less confusion. Then they could see for themselves that it is not just a talent I have, but one that is shared amongst unicorns across Equestria.”

“Will the other Dreamstriders that are younger than me be doing this, too?”

“If they wish. I shall give them the same choice that I gave you, and if they do not want to do it, I shall not make them.”

“How long do they even need me to Dreamstride? They didn’t tell me.”

“As long as you are comfortable.” She pauses for a moment, then her ears prick up a little bit. “Actually, I feel this would be the perfect opportunity to do some learning.”

“About what?”

“You are becoming more and more proficient in dream magic with each passing day, and I feel this will be a good opportunity to do some learning inside the dream world itself.”

“Yeah, I got that. What am I learning about?”

“Come with me,” she says, waving me towards the mouth of the cave. Once I’m there, she leads me outside and into the small forest nearby. After a few minutes of walking, we come to a small clearing where the moon is shining through.

“Sit in the moonlight,” she instructs, moving off to the side. I do as she says, and she then takes a deep breath. “Now, close your eyes.”

I close my eyes like she says. Something’s missing, though: I can’t feel the pulling in my mind. That’s weird. I don’t think I’ve ever closed my eyes for longer than a few seconds in here, so I’ve never noticed it before.

“Stop thinking,” she says softly. Man, she’s good. I don’t even know how she could know that I was thinking, but I guess all I can do is try to stop thinking. Easier said than done.

Before long, I can feel my thoughts die down and the magic in me get stronger. My magic feels...different, too. The moonlight is refreshing, and pain and tiredness I never even knew I had feels almost like it’s being washed off me.

“What do you feel?” she asks.

“I feel clean,” I respond in Demon without even thinking about it. For some reason it’s hard for me to try and remember things now, but it feels like this is the easiest it’s ever been for me to speak Demon.

“For whatever reason, the moon in this world intensifies our magic to levels impossible elsewhere. Therefore, when I felt a Dreamstrider was ready to stop being a student and start being a member of our organization, I would bring them here so they could feel their full potential.” There’s a pause, and I swear I can feel the magic around us get brighter. “Aurora Borealis, although you have only been with me for a little over a year, I feel you are ready for this responsibility. What do you say?”

“I’ll do it,” I say again, but it now feels not like I’m not thinking about it, but more like I can’t control it. Like, I can think about whatever I want, but when I try to say something, it doesn’t work. Almost as if my mind and my body are now two separate things, each working without the other.

“Perfect.” I can hear some hooves moving towards the edge of the clearing we’re in. “Now Aurora, your mind and body are independent of each other right now, are they not?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Come find me in the castle when you reconnect them and return to the awakened world.”

“What do you mean?” my body asks, but it’s pretty clear what she means.

There’s no answer, just the faint rustling of the leaves and the feeling of little blades of grass gently touching my body.

Got to admit, I don’t really know what I’m supposed to do here.