Vermilion leaned down, bit into fibrous, bitter stem of the carrot, and pulled with all his strength. The muscles in his neck flexed, twisting beneath his coat, and slowly the root gave up its grasp on the earth. The dirt between his hooves cracked and bulged and rose, and then, with a suddenness that never failed to surprise him, it exploded. The carrot came free in a spray of soil and rocks and bugs. He shook it free of the remaining dirt and tossed it into the wagon he hauled behind him.
It was, perhaps, the thousandth such carrot he had uprooted so far that day. He didn’t bother to count. But there were hundreds of carrots in each row of this field, and he was several rows down, now. Dozens more remained. Enough carrots to fill the wagon behind him over and over again, until it overflowed with dirt and leaves and those roots whose taste he had grown to hate. He spat out a bit of hairy leaf and dragged the wagon another step forward.
In the distance, he heard the door to the farmhouse slam, followed by the high chatter of his younger siblings chasing each other through the fields. They were too young yet for this work. They would just get in his way. So their father let them roam.
He envied them.
Hours later, by the edge of the field with two more rows gone, he paused to drink from the water bucket hanging by the wagon’s clevis. It was soiled, dirtied by flying bits of mud and leaf, and hot from the summer sun. But it was water and he was thirsty and so he drank until half the bucket was gone. Soon enough it would be empty and the wagon would be full, and he would haul them both back to the barn to fill the one and empty the other, and it would be time to return again to the fields. Such was this day, as was the last, and would be the next.
A faint rumble in the dirt caught his attention. He heard it more than felt it – a tremor in his bones. He tilted his head, curious, then jumped up onto the wagon for a better view.
There, perhaps a mile away, a column of dust rose from the road to Everfree. Traffic was light on the path – few ponies from the capital bothered to visit Cole’s Ridge, as the maps grandly named the collection of ramshackle, impoverished farms that sweltered here in the valley. And, except on the market days when their produce was in demand, no ponies from Cole’s Ridge ever went to Everfree.
So, this was unusual, and therefore interesting. Vermilion sat on the wagon’s hoofboard and watched as the column grew closer. The rumble in the earth grew with it, growing sharper, until it took on a pronounced cadence. Step. Step. Step. Step.
From the cloud emerged bright points of light. Sunlight reflecting off polished armor. A thousand stars stirred in the dust.
The column moved by quickly. A hundred ponies, perhaps, in two rows. A few turned and looked at him as they passed. Sweat painted dark, vivid trails down their dust-caked coats. He could hear them panting for breath from a dozen yards away.
And yet, for all their exhaustion and filth, they seemed so large. Giants, compared with him. Ponies filled with life and purpose. They were not marching to some carrot field to help with the harvest. They were agents of the crown, on some mission to far-off lands, to enforce the princesses’ will. Even the smallest of them was greater than he.
Vermilion watched until the column vanished into the distance, and only the rising, slowly fading dust commingled with the clouds remained to remind him they had ever passed.
He stared at the carrots in his wagon. Then he jumped back into the mud. It squished beneath his hooves, sucking him down, recognizing the earth pony in him as a kindred sort of soul. Welcome back, the mud said. This is where you belong.
Yeah. Vermilion leaned down and bit into the next carrot. Only a few thousand remained. Then he could haul his wagon back to the barn and—
“Hey,” something whispered. A quiet, sibilant voice. A voice filled with sand and dust. “Down here.”
Vermilion blinked. He spat out the bitter stem and worked his jaws. It took several seconds to remember how to speak.
“Who’s there?” he asked.
“Down here,” it whispered. “See me?”
He pushed his muzzle beneath the leaves. So close to the ground, the rows of carrots became a forest in miniature, tiny trees planted in orderly rows extending beyond sight. He sniffed at the air and frowned. “Where are you?”
“Right here. Look… yes. Hello, Vermilion.”
Perched upside-down beneath one of the frond-like leaves was a spider. Fat, black and ovoid, with legs that doubled and more the length of its body. Just inches away it bobbed in time with the wind.
He gawked at the spider. “What are you?”
“A friend, Vermilion,” it said. “For years I have kept your crops clean of pests, of insects and aphids and weevils. Your home was my home, and though you never knew me, I knew you, Vermilion. I have watched you for all your years, helping you, serving you. But now I sense something else in you. There is an emptiness there. What troubles you, child?”
He reached out a hoof to the spider. It touched his hoof with a leg, then another and another and another and another and another and another and another, until all its tiny claws grappled with the hairs in his coat, clinging to him. He stood, bringing the little creature into the light, and held it before his muzzle.
“You know who I am?” How could that be? He was nothing, barely more than the mud around them. How could anything know of him? How could it know his name? His breath stirred the tiny, needle hairs growing from the spider’s glossy black abdomen.
“I do. I have watched you, Vermilion. I care about you. So, tell me, why are you so glum?”
Vermilion looked up. The empty sky was blue and pitiless. The sun burned everything beneath it. It hammered the field and the carrots and the mud and most of all it hammered him. With every breath it beat him down into the dirt. Through the merciless sun he was slowly becoming his true self, one of the masses, the endless ranks of earth ponies who lived and farmed and died. He closed his eyes against the light.
“I want to be more than this,” he said. “But I don’t know how.”
“Sweet little pony,” the spider said. “You can be great, if you let go of your doubts, of your fears. Let me drink them from you. Then you will find the courage to leave all of this. Leave, and become what your heart desires.”
Vermilion licked his lips. They tasted of dirt and chlorophyll. “You can do that?”
“I can. Say yes, Vermilion. Say yes.”
Vermilion pulled his gaze away from the spider. Around him, acres of unharvested carrots waited. In the distance, half-hidden by the day’s muggy haze, rose the dark, ramshackle farmhouse where he had slept every night of his life. Where he would sleep tonight, and tomorrow, and every night thereafter until he died. He turned and looked north, where the faint fading column of dust rising from the marching guards drifted across the sky. He could still feel their hoofsteps shaking the ground.
Yes. Yes. A thousand times, yes. Unable to speak, he nodded at the spider.
“Good enough,” it said. And then it lowered its fangs to his hoof, and it drank deeply indeed.
* * *
Vermilion expected the blow from the right. It came from the left instead.
It rattled his head, shaking his teeth and filling his mind with a deafening ring. He spat out something hot and tasting of metal.
“Too slow,” Buckeye said. He stepped back to the edge of the training circle and stood, massive and immobile, a statue armed with a wood baton. “Again.”
“Yes sergeant,” Vermilion said. A dribble of red saliva dotted the packed earth as he picked up his training sabre and settled into a guard stance once again. All his limbs hurt, covered in bruises and welts inflicted by Buckeye’s gentle touch. Spots of blood decorated his coat.
“You know what your problem is, private?” Buckeye asked. It was a feint, or maybe he was just bored. Either way, without waiting for an answer he leaped forward, his baton coming around in a wide arc that could have felled a tree.
Vermilion rolled beneath it and lashed out blindly. The tip of his sabre brushed Buckeye’s side. A touch, enough! He rolled away, covered in dust, panting.
“What’s that, sergeant?”
Buckeye ignored the hit, turned, and began stalking closer. “You’re not fighting like an earth pony. What was that strike? A tickle?”
There was little space for Vermilion to retreat in the tiny sparring ring. He tried to circle around his huge opponent, but Buckeye was too fast. The baton whistled through the air and hammered into Vermilion’s ribs, knocking him clean off his hooves. He skidded several feet through the dust, his breath exploding from his lungs.
“There’s no finesse for us,” Buckeye said. He walked closer, knelt by Vermilion’s side, and carefully ran his hoof along Vermilion’s chest to check for breaks. “We’re not pegasi or unicorns, Vermilion. We can’t use fancy techniques or flashing moves. We move forward and we crush whatever is in our way. When you realize that, you’ll start to be a real warrior. Got it?”
Vermilion wheezed. His stunned diaphragm still refused to draw in air.
“Well, I think that’s enough for one day.” Buckeye stood. “Cloud Fire, help the private back to the barracks. He’s in your team, now.”
On the edge of the ring, one of the pegasi groaned. “Aw, c’mon boss, I don’t need an earth—”
“I don’t care what you want, specialist. Help your teammate back to the barracks and get him squared away.”
“But Zephyr—”
“Zephyr can take care of herself. You’ve got a new private who needs help. Want to get on that, or want me to find a new team leader?”
That shut him up. The pegasus snapped to attention. “No sergeant. I’ll help him back to the barracks.”
“Good. Wasn’t that easy?” Buckeye stood and tossed his training baton back to the armorer, then walked off to wherever it was sergeants went when they weren’t tormenting their charges.
Cloud Fire waited until Buckeye was a safe distance away, then relaxed. Some mix of emotions Vermilion couldn’t process flashed across his face, and he sighed and walked up to Vermilion’s prone form.
“Well, you certainly know how to get your ass kicked,” he said. “Any other special talents I should be aware of?”
At last, Vermilion managed to gasp in a breath. He panted, coughed, and slowly managed to push himself back upright.
“I can cook?” he offered.
Cloud Fire snorted. “The company has plenty of cooks. What can you do for my team?”
Uh. What could he do for the team? He glanced over to see a second pegasus, a chestnut brown mare with a light blonde mane and tail, lounging in the shade of the bleachers. She watched them through lidded eyes.
That was Zephyr. He’d seen her sparring – she knew how to fight. The way she danced with a spear left him trembling in awe, and now they were on the same team? What could he possibly offer her?
“I, uh…” He swallowed. “I can carry things?”
Silence. Cloud Fire stared at him.
Finally, Zephyr broke. She snorted, then rolled on her back in a fit of giggles. “Carry stuff! H-he can carry stuff, Cloudy!”
Cloud Fire snorted. “Celestia, carry stuff? That’s the most earth pony answer I’ve ever heard. And now you’re on our team, huh?”
Uh. “Yes, sir?”
“That wasn’t a question, private.” Cloud Fire sighed. “Come on, let’s you to the barracks. Actually, strike that, we’ll go to the first aid station too. You look a little ragged.”
A little ragged? That was better than he felt. Vermilion limped a few steps behind Cloud Fire.
He’d been in the company for a week, now. And he was finally part of a team. A new family, the company liked to call it.
He wasn’t sure, though, that the team felt the same way about him.
That night, in his new bed in Cloud Fire’s room (technically both their rooms, but nothing in the shadowed space felt like his at all), he lay awake.
He ached all over, but that was nothing. There had been injuries on the farm, broken bones as a foal. The playful beating suffered at Buckeye’s hoof was rough but hardly special. Already the swelling was down in his limbs, and the bruises faded beneath his coat. He was, after all, an earth pony, and while that might earn him little more in life than toil and drudgery, and though he was small and unassuming, he was still heir to the strength and toughness of his tribe. Physical pain was like a gentle breeze.
It was not pain that kept him awake.
He replayed, in his mind, Buckeye’s lesson. And each time he lingered on Cloud Fire’s expression, the sneering dismissal on his face. The worthlessness implicit in his membership in the team. And worse, Cloud Fire was right – compared with him or Zephyr or any of the pegasi, he was no warrior. He was just a grunt, baggage that carried itself. He had nothing of value to offer.
He ruminated on that as the long hours of the night progressed. Outside, the moon cast dark shadows that crept across the room.
“Something troubles you, Vermilion,” a voice whispered from the darkness above him
Vermilion rolled onto his back. There, hanging above his pillow, was his friend the spider. It was larger now, larger than any living spider could ever be, as large as a foal. It clung to the wood paneled wall with its sharp claws and loomed above him.
“I can’t do this,” he whispered back.
“You can. You are stronger than you realize,” the spider said. It stepped down onto the bed beside him, its enormous legs stretching across half his body. “You think you are worthless because you are an earth pony, but look at Buckeye. Does he seem worthless to you?”
Vermilion shook his head. ‘He’s enormous. He’s what earth ponies are supposed to be, strong and tough and fearless. I am small and weak.”
“The only weakness is in your mind, sweet Vermilion.” The spider leaned closer, until its fangs brushed his ears. “Let me drink your weakness. Then you will discover how strong you really are.”
“I… I want to be strong,” Vermilion said. He reached out to touch the spider’s glossy shell. “I want them to accept me.”
“They will. Just say yes, Vermilion. It’s so easy. Give your weakness to me.”
Could it be that easy? Was there strength lurking somewhere in his slight form? Would Cloud Fire and Zephyr accept him, if only he were stronger? He had surrendered to the spider’s entreaties once before, and it let him escape the farm. Could it work again?
What else could he do? Vermilion nodded, slowly, in a trance. “Yes.”
“Good.” The spider pressed its jaw against the side of Vermilion’s head. He felt, briefly, the fangs move as the spider spoke. “Very good. Sleep now, little pony. Sleep and dream and let me eat that which confines you.”
The spider’s kiss hardly hurt at all.
* * *
It was full night when Vermilion finally collapsed against the ice-crusted trunk of a bare aspen. He barely felt the smooth bark against his numb shoulder. Every sense was overwhelmed by the burning pain in his lungs, by the way his throat closed and whistled with each breath and the air felt like sandpaper; by the thick, electric taste of metal that welled up from his chest with each exhalation. He couldn’t see anymore – a long gray tunnel swallowed all but the center of his vision and swam in time with his pulse. The terrible, stabbing pain crushing his head didn’t even deserve mention.
Get up. Get up, get up get up. He spat something hot and red on the snow and pushed himself away from the tree with an anguished groan. The feathery, wet weight on his back shifted, nearly fell, and he twisted to catch Zephyr before she could slide off onto the snowy ground.
The branches rattled above as Cloud Fire crashed through them to a precarious stop, raining little twigs down on him and Zephyr. The pegasus panted with each ragged breath. He’d somehow managed to hold onto his spear, and it dripped onto the snow around them.
“We’re close, I think,” Cloudy said. Just those four words took all the breath out of him, and he gasped in the cold air before continuing. “Maybe half a mile. C-can you keep mov-v-ving?”
A half a mile. Vermilion wanted to weep. Instead he pushed away from the trunk and sucked in a deep lungful of air, forcing himself to hold it. His chest quaked with each beat of his heart.
“Yeah,” he said. His flayed throat melted the words, reducing them to a mournful whisper. He tried again, ignoring the pain, and spoke louder, “Yeah. Let’s go.”
The best he could manage was a slow trot – any faster and his legs would fail, and he would fall into the snow, and Zephyr with him, and that would be the end of their story. Cloud Fire was in no condition to carry either of them through these woods, and with only the sliver of a quarter moon in the sky, there was little chance he could bring help back to find them. The only way out of the forest was to walk out themselves.
Zephyr shifted on his back and groaned quietly. That was a good sign – the dead didn’t groan.
“We’re almost there, Zephyr,” he whispered. “Almost there. Almost there.”
They found the footpath a few minutes later. Not much more than a game trail, but clear of the worst of the undergrowth. For a moment he dared to hope that they were close.
“Okay, I, uh, see something. Maybe torches?” Cloud’s wings beat, and he leapt a dozen feet above the path. “The town’s a bit further past them, I think. I can see the bell tower, and—hide!”
Vermilion moved faster than thought. From the path he dove into the underbrush, squeezing between the trees, trying to make himself one with the roots and snow. He clamped a hoof over Zephyr’s muzzle and prayed that she wouldn’t wake.
Silence returned to the forest. Somewhere in the darkness, fluttering wings heralded an nighthawk taking flight. Dimly, distantly, he imagined he could hear the shouts of the townponies in Hollow Shades.
The seconds stretched out into a minute. He exhaled slowly, a sip at a time, and drew in another breath. Still, nothing broke the silence, and he was readying to crawl out of the brambles when the spider appeared.
It moved with an eerie silence for something so large. As big as a wagon – though not the largest he’d seen that night, that honor went to the one Zephyr nearly died fighting – and supported on eight clawed, spindly legs that barely stirred the leaves with each step. It stank of rotting meat and death and something else foul and alien. He gagged pressed his nose into the snow.
It stopped on the path a few yards away and froze, its front legs lifted to sense the air. Only its jaws never ceased moving, always working in circles, chewing at the empty air. Dark fangs, as long as scythes, flashed in the gloom.
It knows! It knows! A cold panic seized Vermilion’s heart. His legs tensed, and he readied to bolt. Hopefully the spider would chase him and leave Zephyr—
“Hello, Vermilion,” the spider said. Its rumbling voice shook the branches around them. Vermilion’s bones vibrated as it uttered his name.
He couldn’t help the gasp that escaped his throat. “It’s you.”
“Yes.” The monstrous spider stepped closer. Legs the size of spears brushed away the bushes concealing Vermilion’s crouched form. “I could not forget you, sweet Vermilion. I could not abandon you here. Now, at this most desperate hour, you need me more than ever.”
“You…” Vermilion slowly stood. Atop his back, Zephyr moaned. “How can you help us? You’re one of them. One of the monsters.”
“I am a monster, Vermilion. But I can help you, just as I did before, when I drank away your fears and doubts and weaknesses. I did all that for you, my beloved Vermilion, and now I can save you from all this. I can drink away the last things that hold you back, and then you will be complete. You will be free.”
Vermilion took a shaking step back. The deep snow rode up as high as his belly. “What are you talking about? What else do you want?”
The spider followed. It loomed over them, as large as the night itself. He could see nothing but the perfect blackness of the monster’s shell. Its fangs reached for him, but hesitated just inches away. It needed something still – his permission.
“Do you want to live, Vermilion? Of course you do. No pony wants to die out here, hundreds of miles from their home. A forgotten corpse in the snow. No one will remember you, Vermilion. You will die. You are already dying. Let me have it, Vermilion, and you can survive.”
Vermilion stopped. “Have what? What more do you want?”
“Your friends. They are holding you back. Let me drink them, Vermilion, and you will live.”
His friends. He turned his head a few degrees, enough to see Zephyr’s limp form on his back. He barely felt her weight – pegasi, especially pegasus mares, were light as a feather compared with him. But he felt the warmth of her blood running down his side. The terrible wound in her chest had not stopped bleeding since she earned it killing the last great spider.
“But… why?” His mind flashed back to the farm, to the barracks. “You helped me before. Why can’t you help me now? Just leave and let us escape.”
“Help, Vermilion?” The spider tittered. “We helped each other. You fed me then, and you will feed me now, one way or another. She will feed me. I will be sated, Vermilion. Give her to me, and save yourself.”
“I…” He stopped and let out a deep breath. Slowly, he lowered Zephyr onto the snow. Even her blonde mane, normally as bright as sunshine, appeared dark in the moonlight. Her blood melted runnels in the snow.
The spider leaned closer. Its legs shook with anticipation as they reached toward the mare. An overwhelming aura of hunger poured out of it like heat from a stove. An endless, insatiable hunger clawed at Vermilion’s mind. Nothing could fill it. Its very essence was hunger.
“No,” he whispered.
The spider froze. The wellspring of ravenous longing erupting from it flooded his mind. It doubled and doubled again, until all he could think about was the irresistible desire to eat. Nothing sane could withstand such need.
“You must,” the spider said. The hunger twisted its words, warping them. All Vermilion heard was the spider’s endless need, given sound. “You must. You must you must YOU MUST!”
It launched itself forward, fangs reaching toward him. Vermilion roared and reared up, as high as he could. Even so he was still too small, a tiny thing, puny. A foal compared to this monster. But he stood and stepped forward to cover Zephyr with his life.
The spider changed.
Its enormous form evaporated into fog, condensing into something darker somehow than the night itself. It swirled like smoke, dancing around the trees, formless and ever-shifting. But always it bore two hollow eyes and a wide mouth, a mouth eternally open and screaming. Within Vermilion saw a thousand shark’s teeth, row upon row upon endless row descending down its throat. It howled, loud enough to shake the snow from the trees, and dove at Zephyr.
He could have dodged. Instead he met the phantom’s charge with his own. He screamed, loud enough to match the monster’s own howl, and as they crashed together its mouth opened wide, wide enough to swallow him whole. At the last moment before impact he clenched his eyes shut tight.
It struck with the force of a gentle breeze. The smoke wafted over him, stirred, then retreated.
Vermilion stumbled to a stop, confused. Zephyr was gone, and Cloud Fire and the spider. He was alone in the forest. He spun, searching for them, and then he found it lying at his feet.
An eel, he would have called it, or a lamprey perhaps, if lampreys could grow several feet in length. It writhed on the snow, bleeding smoke and shadows. As he watched parts of it broke away and evaporated into the night.
“What…” He reached out a hoof to touch the thing.
“A dreamora,” a voice answered, and he jerked back in shock. But the voice came from behind him, and he spun around to face it.
Luna stood there, towering over him. Huger now than ever in life. She seemed to swell with each beat of his heart, growing and growing, until the earth and the sky and the stars themselves lay prostrate before her. Nothing existed but the god.
He blinked, and she was nothing more than a pony again. Taller than he, far taller, but only what he was used to. His mouth fell open, and he spoke the first thing that sprang to mind.
“What?”
“A dreamora.” Luna stepped around him to inspect the pitiful, wounded thing. “An ancient monster that lives in ponies’ minds. It has no physical form, only what we imagine it to have. They feed on a pony’s psyche, drinking her thoughts, memories and emotions, until she is nothing but a living corpse.”
“Is… is it dead?” Vermilion sidled around until he stood by Luna’s side.
“This one? Almost.” Luna tilted her head to consider it. “Maplebridge must have been invaded by a plague of them. More than I have seen together in a thousand years. They are said to be harbingers, Vermilion. Like windigoes, they appear in times of strife. They invade ponies’ dreams, and normally nothing can root them. But this one? This one made a mistake.”
He looked up at her. “It did?”
“Yes.” Luna’s smile turned into a grin. Her lips curled back, exposing teeth far, far too sharp for any pony, and her jaws opened wide as a tiger’s. Her breath whistled in her throat.
“Yes. Yes!” she shrieked. “It made a mistake, little pony! It made a mistake when it tried to touch your dreams! For the minds of my servants belong to ME!”
She lifted a silver-shod hoof and brought it down with the force of a landslide onto the wretched worm. Something screamed in Vermilion’s mind, the world flashed with a blinding light, and when his vision returned, he stood alone with Luna in the winter forest.
The princess panted. Her wings reached up toward the heavens, every feather trembling. Saliva dripped from her gaping jaws to steam in the snow. But more than these things Vermilion saw the fire in her eyes. Her soul shone through them, and they drew his gaze like iron filings to a magnet. He could not look away.
Her eyes were filled with joy.
* * *
He must have blacked out after that. Or fallen asleep. Or died. Such things were all the same in dreams.
When Vermilion opened his eyes, they were in another place. Bare stone walls stained with water. A sterile, antiseptic tang stung his nose. In the corner of the small room an institutional bed held a thin, plain mattress and rough wool blanket.
Vermilion turned. His hooves clicked on the tile floor. A door led from the room out into a dark hallway. Lacking any other choices, he walked through it.
Luna was waiting for him. She gave him a tiny nod, then started down the hall, gesturing at him with a wing. “Walk with me.”
He hopped to catch up. “Where are we?”
“A hospital, I think.” She turned her head to peer into one of the side rooms as they passed. Shadows welled out from, spilling into the hallway and pooling on the tile floor. “Or, rather, Cloud Fire’s dream of a hospital. The dreamora that attacked him created this place. A prison in which it torments him with memories of weakness and failure. That is how they feed, Vermilion. They are great hunters, the dreamora. I could almost admire them.”
A chill ran up Vermilion’s spine, and he wished for his sabre, a cudgel, anything. His legs shook with desperate energy. It felt like he could tear the stone walls down. “We have to find him, then. We have to save him! Where is he?”
“Calm yourself, Vermilion,” Luna said. The corner of her lip turned up into a half-smile. “You are not the only pony pledged to my service. Cloud Fire’s mind is as protected as yours. The dreamora that crafted this prison is already dead.”
As she spoke, they reached the end of the hallway, where a plain double door waited. Luna pushed it open and strode through. Beyond, the hall opened into a larger room, filled with dozens of tables and benches, all flipped and tossed about like a foal’s toys. Fragments of furniture lay all around, shattered into pieces, and in the center of the destruction lay Cloud Fire. He sprawled out on the tile floor.
“Cloudy!” Vermilion rushed forward, kicking bits of broken wood out of his way. He sank to his knees beside his friend and pulled him close.
The pegasus seemed uninjured. He was not bleeding. His chest rose and fell with smooth, full breaths. A few feet away lay the smoking, shrivelled remains of a dreamora.
“I chose my champions well, it seems.” Luna knelt beside him, brushing splinters out of Cloud Fire’s coat with her wings. Her side rubbed against Vermilion’s, and though he felt the same unearthly cold as always emanating from her coat, it failed to chill him. If anything, it was soothing, like the waters of a spring-fed lake at the height of summer. He could never freeze in her embrace.
“He’s not waking up,” Vermilion said. “Did… did it hurt him?”
“No, he is just exhausted from his battle. I would let him rest, but unfortunately we need him right now. So, wake, noble Cloud Fire.” So saying, Luna lowered her head and gave him a kiss.
Not the kind of kiss a mother gives her foal, with closed lips on the forehead or cheek. Nor the chaste kiss of young lovers, given to expressing in public for the first time their affections with quick, eager pecks on the lips. No, this was not that kind of kiss. This was a conquering kiss, unashamed, eager, as much a devouring of her partner as a show of love. This was lust. Luna pressed her mouth against Cloud Fire’s and kept going.
Vermilion briefly saw her tongue.
If the intent was to wake Cloud Fire, it worked. The pegasus jerked in her grasp, his eyes bolting open. But he made no move to escape, and only when Luna pulled away did the kiss break.
“Um,” Vermilion said.
“There.” Luna smiled. “Hello, Cloud Fire.”
Cloudy blinked at her. Long seconds passed before he spoke.
“Am I still dreaming?
“In a sense, yes.” Luna stretched her wings and stood. The sudden return of the stale, dry air against Vermilion’s side was hot and unpleasant. “I’ll let Vermilion explain what the thing you killed was. But unfortunately I cannot linger, and I have another urgent task for you.”
Vermilion pushed himself back up, and offered a hoof to Cloudy, who still seemed a bit dazed, though whether it was because of his fight with the dreamora or Luna’s kiss, Vermilion couldn’t say. “What must we do?”
Luna tilt her head, pointing her horn at the wall, and the dream shifted. Reality bent, twisted and popped back into place with a flash, and when Vermilion could see again a new door stood against the wall. It flowed as he watched, its dark gray colors dripping around each other. It barely seemed to have a border. More mist than wood.
That was it – not a door, but a cloud. Or, a door made from clouds. Vermilion gawked at it.
“You two were able to defeat the dreamoras in your minds because of my touch,” Luna said. “Your friends, however, have not yet pledged themselves to me, something that we must change the next time you are in Everfree. They are still locked in their dreams, tormented, slowly being eaten. If they are to escape, it must be with your aid.”
Vermilion nodded. He could guess what Luna wanted. “That door leads to their dreams?”
She nodded. “You grasp it already, Vermilion. Yes, you two will do something that no living pony has done in centuries. With my aid, you will enter the dreams of another, and there you will slay the monsters that haunt them. Go, now, and destroy my enemies.”
Vermilion nodded. “Okay. How will we know if… er.” He turned and stumbled to a stop.
Luna was gone. Only Cloud Fire remained. A very confused looking Cloud Fire.
“Cherry?” he asked.
“Yeah?”
“What the hell is going on?”
Vermilion turned back to the cloud-door-thing. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Dream though this might be, his body still ached from the memory of the forest and his fight with the spider-that-was-not-a-spider.
“Long story,” he said. “I’ll explain on the way.”
With that he pushed open the cloud, and walked into another dream.