//------------------------------//
// XIII - The Second Voice 
// Story: Into the Dark 
// by Corejo 
//------------------------------//

What?
 
He stared into the darkness, scarcely believing the voice’s words.  It knew he was going to save the world?  
 
He scanned his surroundings for a way to communicate.  There had to be a rock around here somewhere.
 
“Just trace your words,” the voice—Cadance—said.  A pause, then a giggle, like she just thought of something.
 
Trace?  Like he had with Luna?  You mean this? he tried.
 
“Yeah, that’s perfect.”
 
He blinked at the ground, and a million questions came to him.  Luna wrote about you.  Nightmare caught you.
 
He kept his words brief like with the stone.  These voices seemed capable of understanding his intentions, and it wasn’t wise to mince words, especially in a place like this.  
 
Cadance giggled again.  It sent a warmth rolling through his ribs where she pressed closest.  “I was, but you helped me out there.  I’ve actually been awake for a little bit.  Well…  As awake as I can be in a dream.”
 
He folded his ears back.  What do you mean?
 
“I mean I’ve been coming to for a while now.”  She settled near his heart, where Luna normally rested.  He tensed at the trespass, but made no motion to dismiss her.  “The first thing I remember is looking down.  I was looking down, and you were sleeping on the balcony.  You woke up, and you and Aunt Luna jumped over that wolf thing.”
 
Her voice turned cold toward the end.  She sank downward a little, away from his heart.  “I’m… sorry,” she said.  “About what happened.”
 
He looked aside.  Yeah, he was, too.  He should have stepped back like Luna said, run while he had the chance.  She’d still be alive if he had.
 
“Don’t worry yourself about it, Champion.  She’s still out there.”  She giggled again, and something about it made his heart flutter, like she truly believed her own words.  “You’re already on the right track.”
 
He couldn’t help but lean forward, ears at attention.  What do you mean?
 
“I mean that you’re already down here in the dark, risking your life to save her.  I don’t know many ponies who would do something like that, but I do know there is a very certain kind of pony who always would, no matter what.”
 
Who are they?
 
“Oh, I can’t tell you that.  You have to understand it.”  Cadance flitted up to a higher place in his chest, just below the collarbone.
 
“But I can tell you one thing…” she half whispered.  He looked up again, hopeful.  “It’s why I’m here now.  And it’s why I know you have it in you.”
 
His eyes fell to his non-existent words on the stone.  Nopony could be so sure of that, but he had to try.  He had to believe.
 
“She thinks highly of you, Champion.”  She giggled again.  “And much more than that.”
 
What do you mean?  He was asking that question a lot.  He wasn’t sure how it made him feel.
 
She reached down with a fraction of her warmth to touch his heart, as if with a hoof.  The gesture felt odd, but the warmth it sent to the farthest reaches of his body eased away any concern.  
 
“Well, for starters, she does call you Champion.”
 
His heart sank at the thought.  Luna might have called him Champion, but that still didn’t make him one.  His worries must have shown on his face or something, for how Cadance cuddled up against his collarbone.
 
“Whether you’re a champion or not, you’re her Champion.”
 
He searched the talon scars and pebbles carved into the stone for an answer he couldn’t find.  I don’t understand, he wrote.
 
Cadance laughed, and there was what seemed a deeper warmth resting in the upper reaches of his chest—another reassuring hoof.  “You will eventually.”
 
The not-hoof gave a gentle squeeze.  “Now come on,” she said with a pulse that amounted to a glint in her eye.  “Let’s go win her back.”
 
As close to a plan as he would ever get.  He took a step forward, but paused, realizing what a fool he was for so blindly jumping to action.  
 
How?  I don’t know where we are.
 
Cadance fluttered down and came to a rest just above his heart.  He imagined her sitting atop it, smiling up at him, like a pony would a stone wall, their hind legs dangling out over the edge.  He had no basis for what she looked like, and so substituted his sister, but with wings and a horn, since that’s what Luna had.  It was oddly befitting, those blue eyes and braided brown mane, though he doubted this Cadance looked anything like her.
 
“Do you feel it?”
 
He blinked to.  A moment’s silence, and he nodded—a soft sensation within his heart, like a hoof catching the tail of his scarf.
 
“That gentle tugging, pulling-onward feeling, right here.”  Her warmth gave a gentle squeeze about his heart.  “Listen to it, Champion.  It will never steer you wrong.”
 
He put a hoof to his chest.  It was there, the feeling she spoke of, but nothing more than a faint pulling, yearning thing.  It had no direction, only desire.  The more he lingered on it, the more he thought of Luna, and the stronger it grew.  That was reason enough to take his first stumbling steps, wherever they might lead.
 
The blood on his side had long since crusted over, but the stabbing pain in his ribs stole away any hope of a full breath.  And now that the adrenaline of the moment had passed, his front-left ankle took on a dull throb, heavier when he put weight on it.
 
Wherever he had fallen, it must have been closer to the center of the mountain, judging by the crystals.  Rather than the sparse eye-like gems jutting from stone, these deeper tunnels were practically made of crystal.  They reflected his face back at him in all shapes and sizes, each a distinct shade of blue or purple.
 
The warmth flitting about his chest flickered like lantern fire in what passed as her form of a shudder.  “I hated this place the time I was trapped down here.  I never thought it could get any worse.”
 
Truth be told, it easily could.  Sunlight barely reached four lengths out, a far cry from the more favorable six or so in the Moonlight.  It was as if the unknown pressed in on it, that the light itself was afraid of this terrible darkness and wanted to hide within the safety of its iron cage.  The thought raised the hair on his neck and sent goosebumps down his legs.
 
Wait.  She had been down here before?  He quickly traced the question.
 
“It was a while ago.  I-I’d rather not think about it.”
 
But you’ve been here before, he pressed.  You know this place.  
 
Her warmth tilted of a sort, what must have been her equivalent of cocking her head in thought.  “Well, sort of.  I know parts of the real crystal caverns.  But I also know that dreams don’t always make things the same way they are in reality.  You should see some of the dreams I have," she added flippantly.
 
While her offer might have been a nice break from the cave’s oppressive atmosphere, it wouldn’t help them any.  He tapped his hoof to get her back on track.
 
“Err, yeah sorry, that was weird of me.  But yeah, it would be best if we didn’t assume too much about this place.  If I do see something familiar, though, I’ll let you know.  After all, this is Aunt Luna’s dream we’re talking about, and she did help the Guard map out the higher sections.”  What equated to a smirk simmered somewhere between his lungs.  “She said it was the least she could do for sleeping through the entire changeling invasion.  If anything’s true to form, I’d bet the crystal heart it’d be those parts.”
 
Her certainty was a small comfort, at least.  As long as there was a chance she could guide him, then their journey would be that much less perilous.
 
“Champion?” she asked.  “What’s it like where you’re from?”
 
To that, he actually stopped walking.  Isn’t that the sort of thing I should be asking you?
 
“What, I’m not allowed to ask you what it’s like where you’re from?  I don’t know much about this dream.  Besides…”  Her warmth curled in what was probably a shrug.  “It’ll help pass the time.”
 
He continued on, beneath a low-hanging jut of crystal and around a corner.  The silence was worse here.  Down here, the darkness had eyes.
 
Yet part of him felt for the new voice in his chest.  He couldn’t imagine the horrors of waking up from one nightmare into another.  The least he could do was share a few comforting words between steps and bring it up to speed.
 
It’s…  It’s what Luna would have wanted.
 
It’s dark, were the first words he wrote between steps.
 
“You don’t say?” she replied in a tone that seemed less a question than her words suggested.
 
I just did.  Did she want him to talk or not?
 
“Uh…  Oh, right.  You grew up writing everything.  Yeah, I guess sar chasm won’t be the best way to chat.”
 
What’s sar chasm?
 
A pause.  “Wow, did Pinkie Pie get swallowed too or something?”
 
He stopped again.  Who?
 
“Um, I mean, sorry.  Force of habit.  I guess being trapped in a nightmare for almost forever really does a number on your ability to talk like a normal pony.”  She shied away, hovering into the space between his rib and lung.  Silence lingered while he walked another dozen or so paces.  “So it’s always been dark like this?”
 
For as long as anypony can remember.
 
She was rather talkative.  It didn’t make much sense.  They might be questions that would help shape a general sense of this dream world but were pointless to a practical extent.  It was like she wanted to talk simply for its own sake.
 
“What do you guys do for fun?”
 
They came to a ledge overlooking an impossible darkness.  He stared into it longer than was healthy, then turned to follow along it before it spiralled downward with the wall.  
 
We don’t, really, he traced before continuing on.
 
“You don’t have fun?”
 
We don’t really have ti—
 
Something click-clacked around the bend.  He tossed his cape around Sunlight and huddled low to the ground.  Its light still glowed through the tatters in his cape, and he hurried to cover it with Mother’s scarf.  Proper darkness rushed in, and between the heavy beating of his heart the click-clack of claw on stone came closer.
 
A wet nose considered the air, searched for whatever might have been passing this way.  Something that might have been fur shifted just beyond hoofreach, and it lumbered by for the passage behind him.
 
He waited until long after even the memory of those claws on stone faded before unwrapping Sunlight and continuing onward. 
 
We don’t really have time for fun, he traced, picking up where they left off.
 
“There’s gotta be something you do when you’re not not having fun.”
 
He considered her words.  There was one thing.
 
“Oh?  Do tell.”  Her warmth shifted to the forefront of his chest, little nonexistent hooves attentively perched on one of his ribs.  He imagined her resting her head on them, large eyes looking up at him.
 
My sister has a bell.  Little silver thing.  Don’t know how she got it, but sometimes, when nopony else was around, we would ring it.
 
Cadance giggled.  “That’s adorable.  So you and your sister are close?”
 
Close?  What do you mean?  He was answering with a lot of questions lately.  It made him feel small, not knowing what seemed to be such innate things to these princesses.
 
“I mean close.  You know, like, best friends?”
 
He folded his ears back.  Smaller and smaller still.
 
Silence passed, and the hooves perched on his ribs pulled back.  She seemed to be searching for something to say.
 
“Oh…  O-okay.  So, no fun and no friends, huh?  Wow, Pinkie Pie really must have been swallowed.”
 
Who is Pinkie Pie?  And why all the questions?  So specific.
 
Her smile warmed the space between his heart and lungs.  “Even for a pony who’s never talked before, you’re pretty perceptive.
 
“If you really wanna know, somepony has to be the optimist here, and you’re definitely not filling that role.”  She ended her statement with a warm flicker that could only equate to a wink.
 
What does that have to do with all these questions?
 
“Well, if we’re going where we’re going, we’ll need Twilight.”
 
The fourth princess?  But what does that have to do with talking to you?  Not that I don’t mind, he added.
 
“Because,” she said, “she’s my sister-in-law.  And, more practically, we’ll need her help getting out of here once we save your damsel in distress.”
 
Sister-in-law.  Was that another one of those “love” things?  It didn’t sound like any sort of practical relationship.  And what was a damsel?
 
He shook his head.  But how will we “release” her?  She doesn’t have a brazier.  There are only Sun and Moon braziers.
 
Cadance flitted from one rib to another, leaving a trail of warmth to radiate outward and match the one against his chest.  “Just tell me more about yourself.  You and Luna released me, and knowing that, I have a hunch.”
 
That didn’t make much sense.  Me and Luna released you?  How?
 
Cadance laughed.  “Like I said, Champion, I can’t spoil that.  You have to understand it.  As for Twilight, just trust me on this one.”
 
He drooped an ear and frowned in dismay, but kept his thoughts to himself.  Maybe it was better not to question her, if she was going to be cryptic like that.  The last time he forced anypony to be that open he almost let the world die away.
 
Hunches were hunches, and without one himself he had no reason to argue.  It’d help pass the time and make navigating this place a little less terrifying.  Things finally seemed to be coming together.
 
He told her about his village, the Elders, and their call for silence.  He traced his description of the Devourer between cycles spent in silent darkness as other creatures stumbled by.  She seemed aware of his movements even without light, as if she were one with him, especially when tracing memories of Luna and the dreams they shared.
 
She perched her little hooves on his ribs now and again, and the gentle weight of her head pressed their warmth into his bones.  There was something about her, in the same way Luna stirred up unknown feelings, something that pulled at his emotions and made him genuinely wonder what life was like on the other side.
 
Luna instilled in him a thirst for the sights and sounds of the real world, but this Cadance, this young, chatty princess, fashioned curiosities of the ponies that inhabited it.
 
Of course, he flirted with the fantasies of their daily lives—the houses, the laughter through the streets, the bright smiles sent his way—but only that.  The ponies, what they felt, what they thought—their desires, aspirations, worries, fears, joys, dreams.  This mare, this Cadance, drew up unknown but thirsted-after waters from a well he had only drunk from after meeting Luna.  
 
It all came back to her.  Somehow, someway.
 
“Tell me what you think of her,” Cadance said on their second cycle down in the dark.  He almost bumped his head on a low-hanging spear of crystal for how suddenly she had asked.
 
He looked down at his chest where she waited for an answer, felt a heat rise to his cheeks that didn’t seem to come from her.
 
“Come ooon, you can tell me.”  She buried a particularly roguish grin between her perched hooves, eyes gazing up to meet his.
 
What about? he quickly traced.
 
“You know what about,” she half said, half giggled.  “Luna.  You’ve told me what you two have gone through.  I want to hear what you think of her.”
 
He looked around as if the darkness held the answer.  He shrugged, his eyes falling back to his hooves.  The heat reached higher in his cheeks, and it definitely wasn’t Cadance sneaking up to take a peek at his thoughts, thankfully.
 
“What about her do you like, then, if you’re so shy all of a sudden?”
 
Well, that was easy enough.  Brave, smart, courageous, conscious of her responsibilities.  He traced each word for her, but as each came to mind…  How she stood in the meadow at their first meeting, her starlit mane drifting on the slightest breeze, her tall, stately poise that bespoke her authority, and yet those eyes.  Those shining blue eyes that he could stare into for cycles on end.
 
That smile.  By the light of life, that smile.  There were no words for the feelings it brought, feelings that never existed until she came to be part of him.
 
“Champion?”
 
He shook his head, and she laughed.
 
“I thought I lost you there.  You stopped walking and started staring off into space.”  A big, warm grin stretched from one side of his heart to the other.  “And you got this silly smile on your face.”
 
He blushed and couldn’t help pawing at the ground in embarrassment.  Even Sunlight seemed to flicker in its own form of laughter.
 
“Don’t worry, Champion.  There’s nothing wrong with that.  It’s the most natural thing, in fact.”
 
It?
 
Cadance giggled as she drifted lazily between lung and ribcage.  “That feeling in your chest—uh, the one that’s not me floating around all over the place because I don’t know what to do with myself right now.  Seriously, you have no idea how weird it is being a disembodied voice inside another pony.”
 
Again with the cryptic messages and weird tangents.  And why are you so certain of that?  Of this feeling, that is.
 
“Because I sometimes like to think it’s my special talent.”  Her warmth flickered in that shrugging manner of hers, but a hotter radiance belied a clear grin.
 
He rolled his eyes.  This was that “sar chasm” thing again, wasn’t it?  What was the point of it?  Luna didn’t use this sar chasm.
 
Cadance was quite a different princess than the formal and stately quality Luna gave the title.  This Cadance spoke with a more playful attitude, seemed to make light of their bad situation.  Not that she didn’t understand its gravity.  She simply chose to look at the brighter side of things despite it.  The contrast in personalities was immense, yet both seemed to possess the tendency to ask questions beyond the practical, especially Cadance.
 
She questioned to the point of exhaustion, but she truly seemed to care about the things she asked.  It wasn’t caring in the same sense as he understood it all his life.  There was no practicality to it, just a simple, courteous curiosity.
 
“Wait,” Cadance said, urgent.  “Champion, I know this spot.”
 
He perked up his ears before raising Sunlight from its bandolier.  The better lighting revealed himself surrounded by monolithic crystals.  They reflected his face back at him, massive, curious.  How they reached up, up, up into the darkness that even here couldn’t fend off the reflection of lantern light, like a grand brazier all its own.  And still farther they reached.
 
“Turn around, Champion, that way.”  She pressed against his left rib, directing him.  
 
His careful walk turned to hurried canter.  A miniature iron railroad appeared from the dark, like that of the tunnel so long ago.
 
“Follow the mine shaft.  It’ll take us deeper into the caverns where your Devourer is waiting.  I’m sure of it.”
 
It led to a downward, slope, far into the heart of the mountain.  The jagged crystals consuming the walls grew darker, more chaotic in pattern until all semblance of shape became little more than his harried face mirrored back at him a million times over.  Half of them looked more like eyes than they had any right to, and he put swift distance between them.
 
The railway spiraled down a shaft to a long, narrow tunnel unnervingly devoid of crystal.  The bare rock shimmered with a wetness better left unquestioned, and the air turned cold.  His breath plumed from his nostrils.
 
The tunnel opened up to a room too wide and tall to see its walls, and only sparingly was there the glint of crystal beyond sight.  He stepped carefully into the cavern.
 
“Is this the place?”  She hid deep in his breast, poking her head out from behind his heart.
 
It looked enough like it.  Maybe, he traced, never taking his eyes off the darkness ahead.
 
It almost seemed alive, as if the darkness itself breathed across his skin and held its ground against Sunlight.  Down here, the lantern light hardly reached two lengths ahead of him.  He bunched his scarf up around his neck, eyes alert for movement.
 
Was it the Devourer?  Stronger now that it had taken Luna?  Angry, perhaps, that Cadance escaped.  Maybe both.  He kept his chin down to cover the sensitive skin of his throat, the teeth of innumerable once-ponies playing shadowed tricks in the corners of his mind.
 
The tugging in his heart pulled him silently onward, and it took what seemed a quarter cycle to realize it was not Cadance.  Somewhere beyond the darkness, Luna called out to him.  
 
He passed into what seemed to be another chamber, and the chill in the air crystallized on his fur.  Sunlight barely reached a length away, and for all that Luna pulled him onward, there was an ever present feeling that something trailed closely behind.
 
The feeling stuck with him until he reached another chamber.  Crystals spired from the bare rock almost like flower heads to stare at him as he passed.  One particular rosette grew beside one of the many stone-teeth, and he knew this was it.  
 
He took another step forward, and the ledge came into view, its transition from black rock to empty air nearly seamless.  The darkness seemed to reach out to him like the curls of little tendrils beckoning him closer, tugging him downward into its open, waiting mouth.  It would swallow him again, and this time it was either victory or death.
 
“It’s…  Are you ready?”
 
After a short pause, he nodded.  The fall would be brief without Luna’s wings to slow him, and the impact would no doubt be painful.  But it was the burning, not the plunge, he feared most.  
 
Cadance flitted about his chest, her little warm hooves touching here and there against his ribs, as if seeking a better view, or perhaps a way out of this herself.  But the weight of her voice shattered any such notion when she spoke.
 
“Let’s get going.  I don’t like this place.”
 
Neither did he, but he had the unfortunate knowledge of what lay ahead.  He placed his hooves on the ledge, and a small pebble chipped off to tumble into the darkness.  
 
Part of him wanted nothing to do with this, to simply return to the village and save himself the pain and suffering, much less the risk of failure.  But that was a fool’s wish, a coward’s wish.  Luna needed him, and nothing in this world or the other would keep him from laying it all on the line.
 
He nodded despite the racket of his heart and took a deep breath.  He let it plume slow and steady from his nostrils, and he let his body tip forward.
 
The wind whipped through his mane, its roar like that of the Devourer crashing down on his dreams.  It was only fitting that he now returned the favor—he the one crashing downward to destroy what awaited him below.
 
All too quickly, he plunged headlong into the firewater, and it felt like his body had been set ablaze.  He seized up at the pain, the individual hairs of his coat curling at their tips.
 
“Focus, Champion!” Cadance shouted.  “Swim!”  She pressed against his sternum, directing him onward.
 
Her voice brought a surge of vivid clarity, and he found the wits to put one hoof in front of the other for the surface.  He breached the water, gasping for breath.  The air stank of burning hair and his mane lay matted against his face, but he pressed forward.  There he dragged himself into the shore, and when the worst of the burning subsided, he put a tender hoof to his side.  The firewater had eaten through the scabbing, and the wound was slick and seeping pus.
 
“It’s okay, Champion.  We made it.”
 
Made it, indeed.  But the worst of it was yet to come.  That… that thing still waited for them at the brazier.  He felt Luna calling to him, pulling him onward, and so he got up and marched on.
 
Over the course of that cycle, he felt her calls grow stronger.  She felt his presence as he did hers, and the tugging at his heart gave lightness to his steps.
 
Her smile played across the darkness, clearer than in his dreams, and the warmth in his chest blossomed like the millions of flowers in the meadow.  She wasn’t far.
 
Quickly enough, he came to a stop.  She was there, just beyond the rim of light.  But that meant—
 
A tendril of slime shot out from the darkness.  He leapt aside, the slightest bit catching his shoulder before it slopped to the ground and slithered back into the darkness.
 
He heard a low bassy gurgle like the rumbling of a hungry stomach, and that thing—that mass of hollow, wailing faces—rolled into the rim of Sunlight.  His heart thundered in his chest at the sight of it.
 
“Focus, Champion,” Cadance said.  She tried to sound bold, but as it advanced on him, even she struggled to hold fast.  “I don’t have the magic Luna did when she spared you from this thing.  We won’t get a second chance here.”
 
The thing rose above him, its predominant face yawning wide like a cresting wave.  It took him in with hollow eyes, and those moments of utter silence sucked at his soul, whispering in his ear that he should simply lie down and die.  But he couldn’t.  Luna was down here somewhere.  She was counting on him.
 
He rolled sideways in time to avoid the full brunt of its attack, but its amorphous body splashed across the ground and up his right side.  It burned through his coat and deep into his skin as he scrambled backward.  When he brushed it off, it peeled away his coat and the top layer of skin.
 
The creature was slow to reform, and he used those precious moments to blink away the tears and focus his thoughts.  He needed to get past this thing, find Luna, and get away.
 
He sidestepped a slime trail creeping for his hooves and made to dash around the far side of the creature, but something within its roiling mass caught his eye, and he stumbled.
 
Amidst the crowd of wailing faces, there was a longer one, more graceful, with ghostly eyes that seemed to recognize him.  It mouthed as if in a trance,
 
“Champion…”
 
A massive air bubble burst from its side in a gurgle of slime, and out spewed a noxious plume of gas that rose into the air like some miasma seeking to choke out the sky.  The creature swelled up overtop him again, but this time he tripped over his own hooves when he tried to dodge.
 
He scrambled away on his belly, but not quickly enough to avoid the splash as it got him along the back of his legs.  He grit his teeth to the liquid fire seeping into his already blistering skin.  It smelled like a mixture of burning hair and vomit.  He scrambled to get his hooves under him before it could drag him in, and he collapsed a dozen meters away.  He bit back a scream for how the ground felt like daggers tearing at his exposed and bleeding skin.
 
“Champion!  Are you alright?”  Cadance, for all her previous hesitation, pressed herself against his right rib cage where the pain was greatest.  But her warmth, however welcome, did little to ease the pain.  She rose up to the space between his collarbone and shoulder blade, a gentle urge that he stand.  “Was… was that her in there?” 
 
He nodded, struggling to his hooves.  He clenched Sunlight tight against his chest to feel the heat in his bones.  It was all he could do to forget the pain.
 
All those faces inside the creature.  Those weren’t the monster.  Those were dreambound ponies, and now Luna was one of them.
 
The realization sent a terrifying certainty resounding in the pits of his heart: there was no avoiding this monster.  If he were to save Luna, he had to defeat it.
 
But this thing was immune to his buck knife and had swallowed Sunlight the last time as if it was nothing.  He couldn’t leave her here, but it seemed there was no way to get to her.
 
“It’s smaller, Champion,” Cadance said, quietly, likely recollecting her wits, searching for some way to help.  “After it attacked you.  It got a little smaller.”
 
He glanced at the glob stuck to his side.  Though his entire right side was painfully raw and seeping, the slime itself hardly burned anymore.  He brushed it away, and it fell lifelessly to the stone.  It seemed whatever magic gave it the touch of fire vanished if it stayed separated long enough.  
 
Maybe that was it.  Just bait it out, destroy it bit by bit.  He could do this.
 
The distant sound of wailing ponies emanated from the monster in harrowing chorus.  He could hear them now, as if that intimate pain had attuned him to their cries and their many faces churning beneath its surface.  Only one face seemed to watch in silence.
 
The creature shot out a tendril of slime while he was still processing his thoughts.  He almost didn’t see it.
 
He sidestepped it just in time to feel the swish of wind against his cheek.  His heart racketed in his chest, and his brain stalled out at the realization.  That would have killed him had he not moved.
 
The slime trail slopped to the ground and slithered back toward its mass, but he brought Sunlight down on top of it.  This time, unstuck within the creature’s pustulent mass, Sunlight exacted a vengeance worthy of the Sun.  The inferno unleashed from its simple frame could have incinerated half the village.  
 
The sight brought a momentary worry to the forefront of his mind, one of how Sunlight dimmed with every burst of flame it let loose.  But Sunlight knew their triumph lay on the other side of this monster, and it held nothing back.  The tendril writhed to the squeal of steam before curling in on itself, and Sunlight blazed all the brighter in the rush of battle.
 
He grinned for the small victory, but nearly missed the mass of ponies mindlessly hurling its entire weight at him.
 
It caught him by his hindleg, and he fell in a halfhearted attempt to dive out of the way.  The fire burned deep into his ankle bones like little white-hot teeth clamping down and refusing to let go.  
 
He screamed as it dragged him in, his hooves scraping an unholy sound on the stone, the fear in his heart already thrumming with the terrors of what happened the last time.
 
It lifted him up by the ankle as if to dangle him over its open mouth, but he tucked inward and swung Sunlight, its flames severing the tendril clean like the sharpest of blades.  He landed hard on his back and for a moment saw stars, but he willed himself to roll onto his hooves.
 
The creature oozed forward.  Where it left a path of slime, the stone looked brighter, eaten away by the acid bubbling from its pustulent surface.  The stench of his burning hair grew pungent and drew his thoughts to the blistering skin along his sides.  He took a weak step backward.
 
“Don’t give up, Champion,” Cadance said.  She had found her courage at the forefront of his chest, and it spoke true in the calmness of her voice.  “She needs you.”
 
He looked Luna’s shapeless face in the eye, saw in it her hopes and dreams—a quiet moment among the meadow flowers with him at her side, and nothing more.
 
Cadance put a hoof against his heart, and a warm radiance spread through him.  “You can do it.  Do you trust me?”
 
Luna seemed to reach out with a formless hoof as the monstrosity split in two to encircle him.  Something sparked within his chest, a certainty that believed every word Cadance said, and he held tight to that spark.  He could do this.
 
He gritted his teeth and charged left, swinging Sunlight like a sword to tear through its enveloping arm.  The severed end splattered to the ground, speckling him with droplets like boiling oil that left a dappled pattern on his legs and chest.
 
He spun about, eyes locked with the predominant wailing face.  It slid out a tendril to reunite with its lost limb, but he blasted that into steam with another downward stroke.  
 
The creature shuddered, and the half that had tried encircling him from the right melded back with its body.  Noxious bubbles burst from its backside as if in anger, but it seemed to finally consider him a threat and waited on his next move.
 
“I don’t think it liked that, Champion,” Cadance said.  
 
No, it sure didn’t.  He could see the faces within condense at its center, as if it meant to hide them away, protect its food from this newfound danger.  The lifeless slime beside his hoof still held one of these wailing faces, and he stomped on it for good measure, destroying the face.
 
Up sprayed a noxious plume of burning gas that belied its seeming inertness.  It smelled of sulfur and bile, and it burned all the way into the back of his sinuses to leave him sputtering and gagging.  Not his brightest idea in hindsight, but he knew it worked the instant the creature let out a gurgling, pained roar.
 
Meanwhile, a sizeable warmth travelled up his foreleg.  It worked up from his knee and into his chest, where it bounced around in a frenzy.  A new voice screamed incoherently between his ears, loud enough that he winced and instinctively flattened his ears.
 
“Calm down!” Cadance shouted at the new voice.  Her warmth melded with it in a hug of sorts.  “Shh…  It’s okay.  You’re safe now.” 
 
The new voice receded to heavy panting.  It jerked about like it was trying to see everything for the first time.  When it spoke, its voice sounded deeper, distinctly non-feminine.  Was it a stallion?  
 
“What’s going on?” it shouted.  “Where am I?  What is that thing?”
 
He was able to look up through the snot and tears as the creature drew back on itself, the remaining faces swirling and concentrating toward the right side of its body.  They bubbled outward from the surface as a singular, gelatinous arm that curled back to strike.  
 
It swung wide, and he barely had the chance to duck.  Stray splatters of slime hissed all along his back and made steam of the hairs between his shoulder blades.
 
He scrambled away, still half blind, tears and snot pouring down his face.  Jamming his buck knife up his nose would have been less painful than breathing in those fumes.  
 
The thing slid forward angrily, and despite being half blind, he could hear every gurgling, bursting, slithering sound it made, and used that to keep his distance while clearing his head.  
 
It was noticeably smaller now, he could tell after the tears relented long enough to see.  Where it had once towered over him at least three times his size, it now loomed a little less than two.  It was working.  He was winning this fight. He would win this fight.
 
He locked eyes with Luna still at the center of it all and stepped forward.
 
“What are you doing!?” the new voice yelled.  “Get us out of here!”
 
He closed the distance, sidestepped a slow cascade of slime, and charged in to carve out another face from the crowd.  Sunlight struck home as a cloud of toxic gas blasted him in the face, but he heard the gurgle in its belly too late to dodge.
 
It caught him in the chest with a burst of slime to throw him backwards off his hooves, and he slammed hard into the ground.  Dazed and heaving for breath, he rolled over to stare up at the cresting tide.
 
This was how it ended last time: dragged in, kicking and screaming until every last trace of him dissolved away.  Through the snot and tears, he watched its massive, moaning face tower above, building itself up for a final crash.
 
The newfound heat in his chest crashed about, crying and whimpering incoherently.  This… this was a pony.  This was another pony inside him, one of the innumerable souls Luna sought to set free from the nightmares.  Not just Cadance, not even Luna.  He was saving somepony.  
 
He was saving everypony.
 
With Sunlight clenched in hoof, he gritted his teeth and let courage stand tall.
 
This time, he didn't kick and scream, he didn’t thrash like an animal trying to escape.  He let the little tendrils snake along his body and lick away his fur in little spurts and hisses of smoke.  He waited as its massive face reared up over him, and just as it came crashing down, swung Sunlight to catch it in the jaw.
 
For the briefest instant, he saw the flames curl out the sides of the lantern, and everything went gold in a deafening boom that rocked the very stone beneath him.  It blasted the creature apart, ablating even the fumes that squealed their release from its mass.  
 
He rolled to his hooves, Sunlight ready to smite it again, but the creature had fallen backward and melted into a puddle that seemed as if struggling to reform.  All around him, little clumps of wailing faces lay in other puddles trying to coalesce and retreat back to the main body.  He stomped on them one by one, and their warmth seeped into his bones. 
 
Each face brought with it a frightened cry to join the chorus in his head, and Cadance danced between their wild flares, drawing them down from fear and into a semblance of order.  The dozen warmths collected in his chest lent him courage as he had never known it.  But there was one still missing from its special place beside his heart, and it drew his eyes toward the monster.
 
The slime creature cowered beneath his gaze and burbled out a pathetic haze of acid.  Pressed against its bulging belly was Luna’s distorted face, eyes wide and reaching out to him, her voice ever-present in his ears.  At his advance, the creature slunk toward the firewater in an attempt to escape.  If it got away, he would never see her again.
 
He stumbled forward, his hooves weak and head still foggy, but he locked his eyes with Luna, and he would not be denied.  He dove on top of the monster with Sunlight already coming down to carve away its pustulent mass.  Fire blanketed every inch of the monstrosity’s body and doused the cave in unwavering Sunlight.  Every strike brought her face closer to the surface, her eyes clearer and filled with disbelief.
 
Just as it slumped into the firewater, he plunged headlong into its mass, the hair on his face and hooves dissolving away.  The pain was unbearable, but he felt the cold chill of her face against his, and nothing else mattered.  All he saw was her smile, the smell of her wing draped over his back, the gentle rise and fall of her chest as they gazed into the Sunset.  He held that sensation close, and with all his strength, he wrapped his hooves around her and pulled.
 
Like a hoof yanked free from the sucking mud, he tore her from the monster’s belly and tumbled over backward.  Through the pain, he held her amoebic form against his chest, never to let go, as the squelching and slithering sounds receded into the lapping of water and only his ragged breathing filled the silence.
 
She couldn’t see, her shapeless head resting in the crook of his neck, but he traced the words into the stone all the same:
 
Ive got you
 
He wrote them over and over, all the while her ghostly form pulling itself tighter against him, a tendril of a hoof wrapping around his neck to hold him close.
 
Ive got you  Ive got you  Ive got you
 
The sounds she made could be nothing other than crying—not of fear or sadness, but a mixture of joy and disbelief.  A warmth spread through him.  It radiated in his chest, a growing sense of… of something.  Something needed, that he was needed and that he in turn needed to feel.
 
Cadance fluttered close to his heart, placed a gentle hoof upon it.
 
“There,” she said.  “That feeling right there.  That’s not you, that’s not me or the others in here.  That’s not even her.”  She giggled, softly.  “Well…  It is her.  But it’s not her her.”
 
He stared at the imaginary words he had traced, processing what she said.  What do you mean?
 
She gave his heart a gentle squeeze.  “That, Champion, is love.”
 
As she said the word, he felt the sensation expand to encompass his chest as if feeling it for the first time.  If this was love, then it was all he ever wanted.
 
Luna’s amoebic form absorbed into him, and her wings sprouted from his sides anew.  They held tight against him, tight enough that it hurt where the slime had left his sides raw and seeping, but he couldn’t have cared less.
 
Her flame found its special place beside his heart and made no hesitation of pressing against it.  The other ponies inside watched on in reverent silence.
 
“I did not want you to,” Luna whispered, “but I knew you would return.  And I am glad you did, for our subjects within your breast would not know freedom as they do now.  I cannot thank you enough for your bravery, or foolhardiness as some might see it.”
 
Bravery or foolhardiness, it didn’t matter.  He needed this as much as they did.  He needed to see and feel her within and at his sides as before.  Life would have been little more than existence without her.  He curled his forehooves in toward his chest.  It was the closest he could get to holding her.
 
She pressed herself against his ribs to return the gesture, let silence beget silence.  A moment passed before she turned to the others.
 
“You have all suffered long for my mistakes,” she said.  “Words cannot convey how sorry I am for what I have done.  I only ask that in time you might find it in your hearts to forgive me.
 
“But as much as I wish to hear such words, there is much yet to do, and I must ask a favor of you all.  Spread the word: dawn is coming.  The nightmare is at an end.
 
“Go, my little ponies.  Be at peace.  Awake.”
 
What little magic she possessed coalesced as a windswept chill in his veins.  It gathered up the ponies’ warmths in its current, and bellowed into his lungs.
 
On his exhale, they drifted up his chest, and out his mouth trailed little wisps of smoke that danced upward, out of sight.  From somewhere above, yet also inside, whispered words met his ears: 
 
“Thank you, Champion.”
 
His gaze lingered on the darkness above.  The ponies thanked him.  They thanked him!  His was not a thankless task.  Somepony other than the princesses would remember him.
 
He lowered his head, eyes closed.  There, beside his heart, Luna’s cold flame gently pulsed, right where it belonged.
 
He had Cadance to thank for that.  She was his guiding spirit when the world seemed at its bleakest, instilled in him the courage to fight for the one that needed him most—the one he needed most.  She gave him this feeling, this love he felt in his heart.
 
But not quite that, even.  It was already there, that feeling.  That ever-reaching yearning need to be with Luna, to see no harm come to her and to right the wrongs befallen her.
 
Still, she brought it to the forefront of his mind, made it possible through steadfast encouragement, for no other reason than to help.  She cared for him, just like Luna, in a way wholly different but no less valuable.
 
Cadance, he traced.  Thank you.  His heart raced as she sidled up to his ribs.
 
“Anything for a friend,” she said, rather knowingly.
 
There was another presence, the spark from before—the one that had ignited in his chest when Cadance gave him that gentle encouragement and he believed.  It floated close beside Cadance, a bit to the side as if peeking out from behind her legs.
 
“Go on…” Cadance said, her smirk clear in the warmth tickling his ribs.
 
What? he wrote.
 
She laughed a high and happy laugh that warmed even the tips of his hooves.  “Not you, Champion.”
 
A moment of silence followed, then, “What, me?”  It was a new voice, somewhat frightened.  Feminine and young like Cadance, but much less certain of itself.  “I-I don’t know what to say.  There was that thing he was fighting and then he won right before saving Princess Luna and then they were having a moment and I didn’t want to interrupt and I’m so sorry.”
 
Cadance’s warmth melded with the spark in a gentle hug.  “Twilight, it’s fine.  Why don’t you introduce yourself?”
 
The spark pulled away from Cadance.  “Oh, right!” she said before somehow clearing her throat.  “Hello, my name is Twilight Sparkle.  It’s nice to finally meet you, Champion.”
 
He smiled at the ground and traced, You too.
 
“That was…  That was terrifying.”  Twilight fizzled out, becoming little more than the faintest thrum of energy in his chest.  “You finally pulled me free, and then you had that… thing.  How did you even get me out, anyway?”
 
“He believed me,” Cadance said.  She tapped his rib in some passing form of an elbow nudge.  “I told him Luna needed him and that he could do it.  All he needed was to believe it himself.”
 
“But how did him believing you get me out of there?”
 
“You should know more than anypony, Twilight.  He made a friend.  As for you…”  She nuzzled into Twilight’s spark and made some weird windy-sounding noise.  
 
Twilight giggled, her spark flickering as she struggled to unmeld from Cadance.  “No, Cadance, stop!”
 
“Twilight, just because you don’t have a pony belly to raspberry doesn’t mean I can’t give my best sister-in-law a best sister-in-law belly raspberry she’s long overdue for.”
 
“No, Cadance!  Wait!” Twilight shouted as she whizzed circles around his chest, keeping away from Cadance.
 
He lay on his stomach, smiling at the ground between his forehooves.  Twilight and Cadance shared an odd relationship, one full of the laughter that Luna had talked about in cycles past.  They shared something on a deeper level he had yet to understand, this love.  Though, they didn’t seem to have the same love as he did for Luna.  Theirs was love in the truest sense as he understood it.  Their banter and racing about inside his chest couldn’t be anything but, yet there remained a distinction he had yet to figure out.
 
He looked a little further down, closer toward his chest, feeling for Luna’s flame still pressing against his heart.  Since releasing the other ponies from the nightmare, she hadn’t said a word.
 
“Luna?” Cadance said.
 
“Hmm?” Luna said, pulled away from deeper thoughts.  Apparently he wasn’t the only one that noticed.
 
“What’re you thinking about?” Cadance asked.
 
“Nothing.”  She paused.  “We…  We must be off.”
 
He nodded.  They were close to the brazier.  Their quest was almost complete.  He struggled to raise himself on limbs that could barely support him.
 
“Maybe you should rest before we go any farther,” Cadance said.  “We might not be far from Aunt Celestia’s brazier, but we have no idea what will happen when we light it.”
 
That was true.  His legs quivered beneath him just standing there.  If there was another monster lying in wait, or if the Devourer reacted to the brazier, there was no way he would be ready.
 
And he wanted to see Luna again.  She hovered close to his heart, closer than the other two, pressed ever so gently against it.
 
He more collapsed than laid down, and before the sensation of sleep overcame him, he already lay in the meadow.
 
A gentle fog covered the distant night-shrouded valley.  It swept in around him, yet for all its thickness didn’t conceal the faraway lights of Ponyville or the cloudless night sky.  The stars reflected off the lake beneath Canterlot Mountain, and the air smelled sweet with the wetness that collected on the grass beneath his hooves.
 
Here he had no injuries, knew no aches or pains of the outside world.  His coat, though its usual dull grey, was whole, and Luna pressed herself against his side, wing draped over his back to pull him close.
 
Twilight and Cadance were somewhere in his dream, too, but they were elsewhere, enjoying their own rests from the nightmares.
 
Within the fog, the sounds of the outside world fell silent, his and Luna’s breaths all that filled the still night air.  Luna placed a hoof on his.
 
He looked at her, she looked at him, and all was as it should be.