Dream Effects

by B_25

I | Two-Heads and Mage Twilight

~ I ~

Two-Heads and Mage Twilight

First step wasn't to panic.

Failing that.

Second step was to ensure everything was there, a swipe of a tongue across his rows of teeth, feeling everything there, clean and smooth, no changes there. Third dared a foreleg across his chest, taut muscles flexing beneath, a quality remaining the same.

Until his hoof, its edge, traced into a divot. It was a smooth trench composed of different textures on its slope and, daring to the right, felt the complete softness of a chest. Fluff impressed beneath his touch as he stroked around in fear.

"Hey! Who gave you immediate access to there?" Shining glanced up to the towering muzzle of his wife above, glaring. She pouted her lips upward. "Now put your hoof down so I may smack you. We'll both fall forward if I do."

Shining choked. "Then why should I if I know what's going to happen."

"Because we can't stay like this all night," Cadance began. "That, and you deserve it."

Guess I can't fight that logic.

Shining placed his hoof on the ground and closed his eyes, waiting for the attack, feeling the lightest of smacks on his neck... without feeling so much as brushed. Nerves beneath the skin tensed and clenched. But no real pain beyond the faintness that was stimulated.

"That hurt?"

"Barely." Shining blinked his eyes open. "Your back-hoof is usually way stronger than that."

Cadance lowered her head as her gaze swept across the guess, eyes narrow, the immersion of thoughts attained. "That's because I hit myself to see what it'd do. You might have reacted differently if you saw and knew. But it seems like pain I take, you take as well, but, since it's affecting us both... the senses become diminished."

Shining closed an eye and tilted his head right. "I feel like there's a moral in that, somewhere."

"Oh hush."

Silence drifted between them as the rustling of branches danced within the cold breeze. Grass was emerald and slick beneath their hooves. As if of the same sense, they turned their heads, looking down and across their backs. Horrible and perfect synergy of the two made one.

Joined by the combination of their tails.

And how they each retained a flank, one broad and the other slender, a strange sight indeed.

"Cadance."

"Yeah, Shiny?"

"I'm terrified to find out what's between our legs... and I'm not using that as a pick-up line."

"Me too, honey, me too." Cadance exhaled her dread away and stilled her chin straight. "But this isn't permanent... just the effect of a nightmare is all. The sooner we ensure our daughter is safe, the quicker we can leave." She turned and flashed him a smile. "And maybe we won't have out what's down there after all."

Shining nodded back with a smile. "I like how easier you can put my strange fears to rest."

"I dated you for a reason," Cadance teased back with a smirk. "I was worried no other mare was going to take care of you if I didn't."

Shining smirked too. " That's how you get them."

"Shove off!" Cadance giggled. "And I would shove you if the situation was notwithstanding."

They joined in laughter.

And a small voice attempted to speak over it.

"Greetings, u-uh, t-t-thing or things!" Shining stopped in his mirth on hearing the voice float up, given cause to look around. "Singular or plural, whichever you prefer, I am happy to call you!" Something cold and slimy curved up the trek of his snout... until a golden snail rested on the bridge before the stallion's eyes. "You may call me Sunburst the Snail, former caretaker of the young princess, forced to be driven away from the Wicked Giant."

Shining narrowed his eyes intensely on the snail with a wisp of a beard, round glasses over his eyes, and a scared to be gleeful demeanour about him. Raising his hoof, slowly, he prepared the strike—tried on many flies.

"Shiny." Cadance had said the word very slow, very carefully, a voice full of concern. "You're going to crush that snail." She swallowed. "I want you to not do that. It doesn't seem harmful. He's our only source of knowledge in a twisted nightmare. We may not have another chance like this."

"B-But he feels—"

"Yucky. I know. We share sensations."

Shining glared at the snail, who sweated more slime and shivered for the ending of his life. With a sigh, the forehoof was dropped. Sunburst exhaled relief and stroked his forehead as the tendrils shooting from his head slumped forward. "Woo! You have me worried there! Feels like pleading for my life is becoming a common occurrence nowadays."

The crack of a branch echoed from behind, deep within the foliage of bushes rising to the heights of the trees. Another came from the side—two more from the right. Sunburst shivered once more. "It really isn't safe for us to be out here. Come quickly. You may be of some use to the town after all."

Sunburst turned around, slowly, and moved toward the tip of the white snout, slowly.

"Sweetie... S-Sunburst, was it?" Cadance leaned over to bridge her muzzle into Shiny's, allowing slender platform of pink to the little one. "Y-You'll find that we're a bit—not meaning to be rude—faster than you." She smiled on feeling his tiny face gaze up and into the chasm of her own. "Why don't you rest with us and tell us where to go? We can lead the way from there."

Shining returned to glaring on seeing another guy resting on his wife's snout—which would be harder to kiss, due to leftover slime, later tonight.

"G-Good call! Getting out of these woods is quite tricky! It's encased in magic reshaping your view to mistake locations being the same." Sunburst shook his head in a feeling of bravery. "But never to fear! Snails are a master at feeling the slightest pressure of wind. The direction we are going in... is that way!"

His miniature tendril shot forward.

Cadance giggled. "Aye aye, cap'n."

Shining kept silent as the pair stumbled together, learning the sway of the other's leg to move in tandem, some fine-tuning required in the future. Sunburst broke into speech again, which Cadance listened to with perked ears.

The stallion imagined the crunch of a shell beneath a heavy hoof for the rest of the trip.

---

"Left!"

"I am going left!"

"No... right!"

"But you said—"

"And then I said, right!" Cadance grumbled. "But, I see how you must be confused."

"We're going to fall again."

"Not if you go left."

"Left now?"

"Shut up!"

Teaching their daughter to walk, somehow proved, to be easier than learning to walk, together, in this new form. But despite their fighting and snickers, the two had kept to a wobbly pace, a shaking ship to the snail that rode them, their bodies appearing out from the dense foliage of the woods.

And across the winding path, through dark hills of dying grass, to the town looming afar.

"What the..."

The couple stood on the offset of the town as the twisted night lurked in the sky. Painted skies to a moon swirling orange. Bats flew across the sky, keeping them in the eye, for whatever reason, provoked sickness and an urge to vomit.

Cadance narrowed her eyes. "Those bats remind you of anything, dear?"

Shining was already doing the same. "Changelings... but in a different form."

The two nodded at the other—Sunburst clinging tighter to Cadance's muzzle from the contact.

Deciding it was safe enough to make entry into the town, the two did exactly that, the houses and buildings flipped upside-down, the flat bottoms of homes serving as ceilings. Doors stood inside the slanted rooftops. They didn't dare to check what the insides looked like.

It was in the middle of the streets where ponies were flooding the lanes, dashing either in fight or flight, none paying the creature of two heads' attention. Shining and Cadance sauntered deeper into the street. Barbed-wire fences and sandbags littered throughout the streets and placed in alleyways.

A war scene without a war.

"The front line is just up ahead!" Sunburst said. "You can't miss the mage of this town once we're there."

Maybe it was a war, after all.

The duo reached the line where ponies were flooding around on all sides, their horns glowing as unicorns stood in rows, beams blasting the sky, shooting the aerial forces down. Pegasus dashed in formations and took to the skies in flight with their wings, chasing on the tails of the bats, coming close to wrestle and knock them down from the sky.

And the earth ponies were simply beating the shit out of the ground forces.

"Spell conjuration ninety-six! N-I-N-E-T-Y! S-I-X! Who gave the order to fire spells sixty-nine!" the purple mare in the purpler wizard hat spat the words off—to the joint chuckle of the firing platoon. "Not funny! Not funny! The word and number sixty-nine bear no relation to comedy!"

More of the squad members broke into chuckles.

"I'm going to sixty-nine all of you if you keep laughing."

Everything broke into dying laughter.

"Ack! Colts and fillies, the lot of you!" The mare swatted the hat from her head, it crumbled on the ground—forced to endure four hooves stomping on it, over and over, accumulating to the mare repeatedly jumping on it. "Why. Aren't. Ponies. More. Like. Me!"

The mare paused in the air, gasping, seeing the ruined hat. "My hat! My precious hat! No no no no no!" She fell to a step behind it, cradling the token of a mage into her chest, summoning magic from her horn: wisps of violet smoothing out its wrinkles. "T-There you are! All better now." She plopped it back on her head. "You're the most precious thing to me. Never forget that."

The mare then turned around to the couple, the adorable face of Twilight Sparkle appearing, already beaming in cuteness. "My name is Twilight Sparkle... and I forget your names?"

"I'm... Shining Armor." Shining tapped a hoof to his white chest. "And this is my wife Cadance." He drew a hoof to her pink chest—to a playful roll of her eyes. "Even though we're one creature, we'd like to be known as two. If that's alright with you."

Twilight's eyes narrowed and she nodded hesitantly. "I-I suppose I can make that work." She then coughed into her hoof and looked away—Twiliy's way of resting her entrance into a social situation. "I am Master Mage Twilight Sparkle, and this is Ponyville. It uh... er, usually looks better than this."

Her eyes floated up to a pegasus in the sky, catching a changeling bat in his hold and, locking themselves together, nose-diving to the ground. Their blip winked into the distance until crashing beneath the density of the distant trees. Seconds later, black smoke rose from the place, an impossibility... somehow possible.

"Don't get me wrong," Twilight started upon turning away from the rising wisp of black smoke, "there's always a new problem every week. Once a year or so, there's one threatening the world or something close. But it's never war."

Her eye clenched in thought upon that last statement. "Okay, it's usually war—but it never usually lasts this long."

Flurry Heart has nightmares about all the problems Twilight endures? I wonder what her dreamscape looks like. Or... maybe I don't.

Shining felt Cadance's gaze, her one eye set on him, eyebrow slightly raised. He decided not to pay it much mind as he looked to the front line. In the distance on the inclining lands, an ebony cocoon towered like a towering and polished spire. Neon patches were scattered across its shape, a dim glow resonated, slow rhythm of pulsation.

"The Changeling Bats are led in orders from their queen, Chrysalis." Twilight pointed to the object of interest in the distance. "It's inside of there she's connected to a portable hive acting as their camp. She both controls and guides all the bats around us. Severing that connection will destroy their synchronization.”

Shining stepped forward with a nod, Cadance sensed to do the same, the first balanced step they took, together. "Changelings rely on their innate connection of senses and consciousness to wage battle. But they lack actual training and communications. Never saw the need for it, all things considering."

Something from behind Twilight spoke. "Looks like this guy might be useful after all."

The two-headed creature leaned back from the voice, earning a roll of the eyes from Twilight, who shook her head and thus her hat. The latter was aglow in spots, five different colours, each bearing familiarity.

Dots pulled from the fabric and became glowing spheres of light, settling in a curve above Twilight's back, each speaking in voices bringing smiles to the couple. Even here, Twilight's friends were here for her. Though in a means of boosting her power and herself, what they could do for her, here, without their individuality.

Is that how Flurry views Twilight's friends in relation to Twilight?

"I've been fighting for weeks to lead a charge in and make the final strike," Twilight continued as the glowing of her friends floated around her. "But I can't risk the damage and the hurt coming to the town in my absence." She stroked her chin before pointing that hoof at them. "But you two seem made of stronger stuff! Maybe you could lead the assault as I lock-down the fort here?"

Shining thought about it for a moment. These sweepings lands were the manifestation of Flurry's psyche, right? That means everything quelled or resolved or beaten and defeated would soothe a portion of their daughter's soul.

And laying the beat-down, on those scaring his daughter, was his specialty.

Shining glanced at his wife. "What do you say, hon? Wanna pay some retribution to an old friend?"

Cadance grinned back. "Indeed." She lifted a foreleg and examined it. "My back-hoof is needing some practice, after all."

Comments

[Mystic Sunrise]

Okay. Yeah. I can't like this. FUCK OFF to Sombrero, and just have this be Flurry's nightmares, would make this 100% better.

That cover art is perfect though.

[NBQ]

It promises to be interesting. Keep going!

[overthemaginot]

10126040
Have to disagree. King Sombra raises the stakes and provides a reason for the nightmares to even exist in the first place, as well as the whole premise.

[reflective vagrant]

That image on the cover... It reminds me of an old idea I had for a video. At the post wedding celebration, Twilight starts to sing "two hearts, becoming one! A bond that cannot be undone!"

Granted, I imagined it being an accidental spell from twilight with her horn flaring up at an inopportune time, and only the heart fusing, outside both of them, and not being able to be separated again due to the wording of the spell, forcing an awkward and terrifying dilemma on how to proceed etc, but this would be a possible outcome too.

As much as I try to keep things out of the Mature rating with my works... I can't help but be reminded of that old lingering idea that I never managed to put into anything.

[Mystic Sunrise]

10126192
There are plenty of other reasons for Flurry to have nightmares that don't involve that hack of a character. Stories don't always need a doomsday scenario to work.

Seeing as how Cadance and Shining were at it in the begining, the fusion would still work. But now it's mostly to make them to work their own issues.

[B_25]

10126664
Play nice, now, or else the bed bugs will bite.

[Alicon Glactistar]

10128038
No problem bud.

[overthemaginot]

10126664
They aren't just nightmares, they're her literally being trapped. If you don't like the story, nobody is forcing you to read it.

[BlackieKat1248]

10126664
if you don't like it, then don't read it. Simple as that.