Dreamstrider

by OkemosBrony

Chapter 27

“Aurora,” Dew Drop elbows me, bringing me out of the half-sleep state I was dozing off into on Snowy’s couch. It takes me a few seconds to really snap back awake, and even then I’m pretty light-headed. It’s almost one in the morning, and I can’t remember the last time, if ever, I stayed up this late.

“Yeah?” I rub my eyes and stretch a little to try and not feel like I’m about to fall asleep right here and now.

“Turn the music up a little. I can hardly hear it.”

“No,” Snowy yawns from her bed. “Turn it off. I’m pretty tired, I had to be up for my 8 A.M. today and am just exhausted. Probably going to head to bed now.”

“It’s not even that late!” Dew Drop groans.

“Not saying you can’t stay up, but I’m heading to bed. And from the looks of it, Aurora is too.”

“Where will I sleep, by the way?” I ask. We haven’t figured that out yet, and I’d prefer to sleep somewhere that’s not on the floor.

Snowy looks over me a little bit. “You’re still pretty small,” she notes. “You don’t thrash in your sleep or take up a bunch of room, right?”

“Not that I know of. Why?”

“We should both be able to fit in my bed,” she says, scooting to the edge of her bed, up against the wall it touches. “Dew Drop can have the couch, and we all have a comfortable place to sleep. Sound good?”

“I don’t have to share, so I’m happy,” Dew Drop smiles. “I always had to share with Snowy when we were little and traveled anywhere and there weren’t enough beds. And I’ll warn you now, she’s a blanket hog.”

“I’ve gotten better!” she defends.

“Should I ask Beetroot from high school if you’ve changed?” she teases. “Never knew what you saw in him. Looked like a sack of bricks, and about as smart and well-spoken as one, too.”

“Very funny,” she snips back, but I swear I can see her blushing a little. “And he had his qualities. He was very nice.”

“...in bed,” she adds. “Snowy, just admit you were only in it for the sex. We’re all allowed to make mistakes like him at some point in life. You just apparently chose to start early.”

“I’m not commenting on it any further,” she says, closing her eyes and shaking her head. “I’ll remember this when you date somepony like that.”

Dew Drop puts a hoof on her chin. “Didn’t he get arrested last summer for assaulting a firefighter?”

“Just turn the music off,” she sighs. “There’s a lamp on the desk you can turn on if you want, but I’m turning off the overhead light. Aurora, if you want to sleep in my bed, there’s room.”

She reaches out and flicks off the light switch, and I use my magic to turn her lamp on. Dew Drop reaches across me and turns off Snowy’s record player, then goes back to her book. I never really realized before now how little my sisters use their magic.

I’m tired, but I have to practice my demon, so I go and get my journal and a pencil off Snowy’s desk. I flip through to find a blank page, and then record what happened today. I think I see Dew Drop shoot a glance my way a few times, then look away when I look back at her. She looks confused, probably because I don’t think she’s ever seen demon before.

After writing a short paragraph, I decide to wrap it up and get to bed because I really am super tired. I place my notebook and the pencil back on the desk, then get off the couch and climb in bed with Snowy. Given how she’s breathing and the magic coming off of her, she’s already asleep. She always could fall asleep instantly, and because she said she was tired, she probably started dreaming the second her head hit the pillow. Carefully so I don’t wake her, I take some of the blanket from her and put it over myself, then put my own head on the pillow. I want to fall asleep, but I need to go Dreamstride. Duties are duties, after all.

Soon enough, I’m in the dream world, surrounded by almost an ocean of gray mist with just hardly enough room between them to walk around in. I realize I’ve never been to Manehattan in the dream world before, because nothing around me looks familiar. The area I’m in is flat, but behind me and in front of me are the slopes of a mountain. It’s a small mountain and I’m only about halfway up, but I can still see pretty far. The forest that starts near Canterlot Cave isn’t very far away, and I think I can see the clearing Ponyville is in way off in the distance. There’s a small path down to my left, and it doesn’t look like there’s any way up from here. I’ll just go around these dreams a little bit and look for anything bad, then head back to the awakened world and go to sleep.

As I walk further away from my dream, the magic gets more and more tense. Great, that means there’s a malevolent demon here. I can’t tell what type from just feeling its presence, though, so I’m going to have to go into a dream.

I close my eyes and take a few deep breaths. There’s a ton of dreams here, way more than I’ve ever had to deal with before, so there are going to be a lot of benevolent and neutral demons here that create basically background noise for finding malevolent demons.

The feeling of the malevolent demon is slightly stronger on my right, so I walk over there carefully. Sure enough, the feeling is getting stronger. Once it’s really strong, I open my eyes and look down. This dream must be it. I put a hoof in, followed by another, and then my whole head and the rest of my body.

I land in the dream, and it’s clear that the demon has already done its work. There’s a huge blizzard raging, and there are just two stallions yelling at each other. One of them is in a graduation cap and gown, and the other is covered in snow and frost with a wicked smile on his face. As soon as my hooves hit the ground, the frost-covered one snaps his head to me and begins glaring at me.

“Dreamstrider…” he says in a voice that I can only describe as what it would sound like if ice could talk. “You think yourself clever? Congratulations: you have found me.” He laughs. “Let us see if you can do it again.”

As soon as he’s done speaking, there’s huge explosion of ice and snow centered on him that knocks me down. Thankfully I was able to distance myself from this dreamer’s dream so I’m not cold, but the demon was still able to hit me so hard that I couldn’t keep my eyes on him. When I look back where he was before, there’s nothing, not even any more snow.

I ignore the other stallion’s cries for an explanation while I scramble to my feet and jump out of the dream, hoping to catch this demon before it can escape. But once I’m back in the dream world, I can see that it’s too late: the demon has already gone into another dream.

Guess I have to figure out what this thing is, before I go and catch it. I’ve never seen it before, but I definitely have read of demons like it. It was really fast and escaped instead of trying to fight or intimidate me, so I can rule out a lot of malevolent demons. The dreamer was angry, and was arguing with the demon. Given the fact that the form the demon took looked kind of like the dreamer, this is probably a filial demon, one that preys on the disharmony between somepony and their siblings, intensifying it and getting energy from it.

Which means it’s absolutely perfect that there happens to be a filial demon during siblings’ weekend.

While I know the spell I’d need to use to kill a filial demon, they’re extremely fast and very good at escaping from Dreamstriders. I need to trap it, but unfortunately, trapping filial demons isn’t something I’ve learned yet. They’re really rare, so I pushed them down on the list of demons I need to know how to deal with. Why can’t this be a preying demon, or something simple? I’ve gotten really good at those.

Now I have to think about how to deal with this thing. I didn’t bring my grimoire with me because I didn’t think I’d need, which turned out to be a big fat lie. Never leaving Canterlot ever again without that thing.

Snowy did say there was something about Dreamstriders in the library here, and from the sound of it, it was written in demon. But it’s in the restricted section, and I doubt they’d let a ten-year-old into the restricted section, no matter how urgent she says it is. Even if she’s the second-most knowledgeable pony in the world in that field, too.

I’m sure I can think of something, so I go back to my dream and back to the awakened world. Maybe I wrote something about it in my journal. Probably not, but it’s the best lead I have so far.

“You look worried,” Dew Drop says quietly. “Everything alright?”

“Sorta.” I grab my journal in my magic and bring it over to me, then open it and start reading.

“Why are you reading through that journal?”

“Looking for something.”

“Aurora,” she says in a stern tone that makes her sound exactly like mom. “You’re worried. What about?”

“There’s…” I sigh. “There’s something wrong in the dream world.”

“What is it?”

“There’s a creature there that I don’t know how to defeat, and I don’t have any of my notes or books here with me. The only possible lead I’d have is the library here, because Snowy said there’s a book in there that’s about Dreamstriders and I think it’s in the language of dream creatures, which I know enough of to use to get useful information from books. Problem is, it’s in the restricted section, so I don’t know how to get into it.”

“I do,” she says without missing a beat. “Come on, let’s go. And quietly, we don’t want to wake her.”

“How do you know how to get into the restricted section here?” I whisper as I get out of bed.

“Just trust me,” she answers vaguely as she gets up from the couch and walks to the door. “So? You coming or not?”

I don’t really have much of a choice, so I follow her. Once we’re in the hallway, she closes the door behind her and starts moving towards the stairwell.

“Will you tell me now how to get into the restricted section?” I ask once we’re out of the dorm and walking towards the library.

“We’re going to have to sneak in,” she says quietly. “I noticed there was somepony at the desk leading in, so they’re probably checking IDs. I’ll find a way to get them to leave, and then you go in and do what you need to.”

“What if we get caught?”

“Then it gets not so fun,” she replies after a few moments. “How much trouble I get in will probably depend on what I say to get the pony to leave, but you should be able to avoid any trouble. You can pretend to be cute, right?”

“I...what?” I don’t even know how to respond to that question, honestly. “Sure, I guess. Why?”

“When it comes down to it, you’re a ten-year-old filly,” she points out. “They catch you in the restricted section, you just say you’re lost and you’re looking for your big sister or something like that. Ponies like to think foals are incapable of lying or anything like that, so they’ll believe you if you just act all cute about it.”

“And what if I’m reading the book?”

“You were staying put until I found you and you got bored, I don’t know,” she shrugs. “You’re going to have to think of something. Can you do that?”

“Yeah,” I nod.

We walk the rest of the way to the library in silence. There are still a few ponies out, surprisingly. Some of the are dressed really nice and in big groups, and others are alone and look really tired. The temperature has dropped from earlier, moving it from cool to cold. Whenever we pass under a streetlight, I can just barely see my breath escape from my nostrils.

Before long, we come to the Manehattan University main library. The lights are still on and ponies are still coming in and out of it, so it’s clearly open. Who goes to the library at one in the morning, though? Regardless, I’m glad it’s open. If it wasn’t, I’d have to let that demon roam free until tomorrow morning at the very least.

We enter, and Dew Drop puts out a hoof to stop me right as we walk in. “Wait here,” she says. “Probably don’t want to be seen together, even if you don’t choose the ‘I’m lost and looking for my sister’ route.” She looks back down at me. "You ready?"

“Yeah,” I nod. She gives me a quick nod back, then walks into the library itself. I can’t help but peek around the corner and try to see what she’s doing. When she walks up to the pony at the desk in front of the restricted section, she starts talking to him. I’m far away so I can’t hear anything, but she’s doing a lot of pointing around. I hope this works. My stomach is jumping all around my body, as is my heart. It’s nerve-wracking to have so much rely on Dew Drop. I love her to death, but she’s not the most reliable pony I know. She also doesn’t really have a way with words, so lying to somepony to get them to leave their post is a pretty steep job for her.

A few minutes pass, and the pony behind the desk doesn’t look like she’s believing her story at all. That’s not good. And she’s getting nervous, too. After a little more of her clearly stumbling over words trying to think of something to say, her horn lights up and she starts running. The stallion yells at her, and I can see him start running after her, trying to grab a book she has in her magic. I guess that’s my opportunity? I want to go find Dew Drop and get her to stop so nothing happens to her, but this is probably the one chance I’ll get to get into the section and find the book I need.

After making sure the stallion chasing Dew Drop isn’t around, I canter over to the restricted section and push open the huge, heavy wooden door before entering. It’s a lot quieter in here than in the main section of the library, and the main section is quiet enough as it is. There are a few short bookcases lining the walls of the room that’s not that much larger than my room at the castle, and a few display cases in the middle of the room with plaques showing what each book in there is. I have no idea where to start, so I just go to the bookcase closest to me on the left and start looking through it. It’s not in here, but thankfully the bookcases are all pretty small, so it doesn’t take me long to look through them. There’s a book in demon on the back wall with the title Shooting Star’s Codex of Malevolent Demons, so I assume that’s it. In demon about demons, what else could possibly have everything I need?

I take the book off the shelf and go to one of the display cases, sitting down and using it to prop my back up. There’s a table of contents, so I find the entry for filial demons and flip to the page. A lot of the the demon is written too advanced for me, but I can understand the overall message. I keep flipping page after page, until I get to a page with some diagrams. Some of them I recognize as spells commonly used for malevolent demons that are adapted for use against filial demons, but one that's labeled as a trap looks like more like a charm than the others. Charms still aren’t my strong suit, but I might be able to do it all if I can just memorize the runes that go into it. And the one thing Luna taught me about charms that really stuck was repeating it all the time until it’s cemented in your mind. So I start. “Clairvoyance, cleansing, locomotion, life, refinement, steadfastness…”

I repeat the list of charms a few more times to make sure it’s in my head. The door opens, however, so I start whispering to make sure they can’t hear me. The hoofsteps are getting closer, so I get even quieter. At this point I know they’ll hear me, but remembering this trap is more important than staying away from them.

“Hey,” a stallion wearing a police uniform voice says. “What are you doing here?”

I don’t know what to say, so I look down at the book. I don’t really know if I know how to act like a cute filly, so I should probably just say as little as possible. “Reading.”

“This your sister?” he asks, putting a hoof around Dew Drop’s shoulder and pulling her next to him. She looks pretty upset, almost as if she’s holding back tears.

“Yeah,” I nod. “I couldn’t find her, so I just came in here and read.”

“Time to get you two back to where you belong,” he says, grabbing the book from me. He goes to put it back, but double takes when he sees that none of it is in Equestrian. I can tell he wants to say something, but probably can’t. Once he puts the book on the display shelf, he extends a hoof to me and helps me get on my hooves. “Where do you two live?”

“We’re here with our sister, Snowy Jade,” Dew Drop says weakly. “We’re from out of town. She goes to school here, room 331 at Aquamarine Estate.”

“Come on,” he says, putting his hoof around Dew Drop again and leading her out of the room. I follow him, and before we know it, we’re in front of her door. He knocks on it, and a few moments later, she opens it. At first she looks really tired, but as soon as her eyes meet the cop’s, they grow huge.

“Oh my god,” is all she says before putting a hoof on her forehead.

“Miss Snowy Jade?” the cop asks.

“Yes,” she sighs while giving a nod. “Those are my sisters. What did they do?”

“She took somepony’s book in the library,” he says, pointing at Dew Drop. He doesn’t say anything about me, so it looks like he doesn’t believe I was a part of it. “She didn’t seem to be trying to steal it, just trying to make some trouble.”

She groans. “And the younger one?”

“She was just brought along,” he says. “Was sitting and reading when we found her. I don’t even think she knew what was going on.”

“Thank you for bringing them back,” she says through clenched teeth. “Dew Drop, Aurora, would you both please come into my room so I may have a word with you?”

“Consider yourself lucky,” he says as Dew Drop walks into Snowy’s room. “You’re just getting a warning tonight, but if I see you causing trouble again, I won’t be so lenient.”

Almost as soon as I walk in, Snowy engulfs the door in her magic and slams the door shut super hard.

“Both of you on the bed,” she says, anger clearly dripping off her words. “We need to have a talk.”