Sleep came to me slowly that evening. I knew it would. By the time I’d gotten to my room, the warmth of the mana flowing through me had reached all the way through my body. I was so full of energy that it was difficult to even lie down for a few minutes, let alone fall asleep. I’d actually done it. I’d reached the door. I was going to learn magic.
That thought alone was enough to make me get up several times and just pace across the room. I knew my training started tomorrow, but what would we start with? Nothing fancy, of course. I tried not to let my mind wander too far. Getting overexcited would only make it more difficult to sleep. Not that that helped me much. It’s hard to calm yourself down, knowing something major is going to happen the next day.
But eventually - finally - I found my eyes growing heavy. A small yawn left my mouth, and I turned back towards the bed. Maybe now I could get some sleep. The warmth of the mana still enveloped me, and I found as I laid down that the blanket was hot. Oppressive. I instead elected to simply throw the blanket off, allowing the cool night air to cover me instead. I forced myself to stop thinking about the lessons the next day and closed my eyes.
I don’t know how long I laid there. It couldn’t have been too long before I felt something soft prod my shoulder. I opened one eye and turned my head towards the source of the prodding. “Queen Serenity,” I half-yawned in greeting, sitting up and stretching my arms.
“Chris,” Serenity nodded in response. She backed away from the bed and sat down in a chair that materialized behind her as I turned to face her more fully. “I hope the rest of your evening went well.”
“It did,” I replied with a smile. I flicked my wrist as the map I had been using the night before burst into existence. “I managed to reach the door.”
Serenity cocked her head to one side. “The door?”
“In my mind,” I tried to clarify. To little avail, if the look of confusion on her face was any indication. “I unlocked my ability to use magic.”
“Ah,” Serenity smiled, nodding slowly. “I see. Well done, Chris, well done indeed. I assume your actual training begins tomorrow, then?”
“Yep.”
“Best of luck to you. Oh, and two words of warning.” Serenity sat up straighter and locked eyes with me. “First, do not expect magic to be as simple in the waking world as you find it here. The dreamscape is far more malleable than our own world. And second, do not overexert yourself. Now that you are open to the flow of mana, draining yourself of that mana by using magic too recklessly can have severe consequences.”
“Noted.” Not that I ever intended to find out firsthand what those consequences were…
“Now, on to the matter at hand.” Serenity rose back to her hooves, the chair fading from existence as she did so. “We’re going to pick back up where we left off last night, tracking down this other Human whose echoes are scattered across this Dreamworld. But I’m afraid we will be slower tonight. I am experienced at Dreamwalking, but my ability to detect the strength of an echo is not as tightly tuned as Starswirl’s. It will take time for me to determine an echo’s strength.”
“Considering the direction in which the echoes indicated our mystery Human was moving, I would suggest we start here, in the palace grounds. It appears they were headed in this direction, and I can certainly sense echoes of their presence nearby. Any questions?”
“Yes, actually,” I began, pushing myself from the bed to my feet. “What’s the plan if the Nightmare shows back up?”
“I wake you up. And pray that your connection to this dream ends before the Nightmare consumes us.”
“Brilliant,” I deadpanned. But if Serenity heard me, she chose to ignore it. Instead, she turned away and moved towards the window. Rather than opening it, however, she simply walked into and through it, floating in the air on the other side. I made sure I had the map with me before following behind her. Together, we turned and began to glide away, around the outer walls of the castle and towards the main entrance.
As we approached the door, Serenity veered off to the left, angling towards a tree that loomed over the path leading up to the castle. My feet touched the cobblestone seconds behind Serenity, and I stood back as she knelt underneath the tree. For a few moments, she remained there, eyes closed. Silence descended.
Finally, she stood back up. “The other Human was here,” she announced. She motioned for the map, and I handed it over to her. The scroll unfurled, and she poked the map with her finger. From my vantage point, I could see another mark appear near the entrance to the castle - A darker mark than any that had come before. “We’re on the right track,” Serenity continued, handing the scroll back to me. “And from here, I can sense plenty of echoes within the castle itself.” With that, the two of us rose off the ground and towards the main door.
As we passed through the front entrance, Serenity dropped back to the ground. Her head flicked this way and that, back and forth, she took a step to the left, but quickly stepped back. This process repeated several times before she let out a large sigh. She turned her head and stretched her hand out towards me. “Let me see that map for a moment.”
I handed the map over to Serenity. She unfurled the scroll and closed her eyes. One finger reached out and touched the center of the map. The ink on the map began to rearrange itself, twisting and turning in on itself, until the map itself had fundamentally changed. No longer was it a map of the entire city, but instead a more detailed map of the castle.
But it appeared that she wasn’t quite finished. As Serenity touched the bottom of the map, the map changed again, with the interior of the building rearranging slightly. It took me only a moment to realize that that touch had changed the level of the castle that the map was displaying. “Very nice,” I murmured.
Serenity nodded towards me in acknowledgement. “Hopefully this will do,” she began. “I can sense multiple echoes nearby. This new map will allow us to more accurately track their locations throughout the castle.”
The next couple of hours were spent floating through the halls (and the walls and floors and ceilings) of the castle. I couldn’t see or sense what we were looking for, of course, but Serenity clearly could. Every so often, we’d stop and float for a moment next to a particular spot. Usually just some random spot - in the middle of the hall, up against the wall of a room, on the fifth step up on the second staircase in the library. When we stopped, Serenity would unroll the map and flip to the floor we were on. She would then close her eyes for a couple of minutes before marking the location on the map. Once she had finished, we were off again, floating towards the next unknown point.
I’ll admit, it was more than a little boring for me, just floating along behind while Serenity did all the work. But I had remembered Serenity’s warning from the first time we had wandered through this Dreamworld - that I should stay close to her if I was going to be manipulating the Dreamworld at all. And no-clipping through the castle, phasing through walls and floors and flying through the air - I had a sneaking suspicion that would be considered manipulation of the Dreamworld.
But that didn’t make it any less boring. Just floating there. Waiting. Watching, while Serenity did all the hard work. It didn’t help that Serenity was so focused on her task that she didn’t seem interested in speaking.
So, by the time we’d reached the fourth echo - or at least, where we stopped for the fourth time - I’d had just about enough of the boredom. So, to pass the time, I willed an item into existence. A small tablet, along with a set of earbuds. With Netflix, of course. Except this Netflix happened to have Game of Thrones available.
Hey, my Dreamworld. I can do what I want.
And so, I spent most of the rest of the evening with one earbud in, rewatching the first couple of episodes of the first season. I know. All the things I could have done during that time, and I decided to watch a TV show. I can’t tell you why I chose that, or why that show in particular. All I know is that I was bored, a little homesick, and needing a reminder of what it was like to look at and listen to another Human speaking. Even if that was just a TV show… it was something. I just had to make sure the screen was pointing away from Serenity during a few… select scenes...
It wasn’t until near the end of the third episode that Serenity spoke to me. We had entered the throne room a couple of moments before, but I had been too busy with the tablet to give it too much thought. I heard Serenity’s voice, though I couldn’t understand what she had said past the noise from the earbud. I wrenched my gaze away from the tablet, allowing it and the earbud to fade from existence. “I’m sorry, what?” I asked.
“Distracted, were we?” Serenity chuckled. “No matter. I apologize that tonight may not have been the most… engaging night for you. But to answer your question…” Serenity’s gaze flickered from me, towards the thrones atop the stairs at the back of the room. “... I said that I have a feeling our search has only just begun… and at the same time, may be drawing to a close.”
I raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
“There is one more echo in this room,” Serenity explained. She turned away from me and began floating towards the thrones. “And if this particular echo is as strong as I suspect it will be…”
I turned to follow Serenity, gliding through the air beside her. As we reached the top of the stairs, both of us came to a sudden stop. A rush of cold wind washed over me, sending chills down my spine and causing the hairs on the back of my neck to stand on end. I glanced towards Serenity to see that she was looking back at me. “You feel it as well?” she asked.
I nodded in response. A small knot had formed in the pit of my stomach. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this…” I murmured.
“As do I,” Serenity agreed. “Be on your guard.”
The two of us crept behind the thrones, towards the back wall. I knew what lay behind that wall. The secret entrance into the cave system underneath Everfree. It seemed, however, that we would be remaining above ground for now. Serenity knelt next to the back of the thrones and closed her eyes. For several moments, she remained almost completely motionless.
Finally, she stood back up and opened her eyes. “As I suspected,” she muttered, touching the map with her index finger. As she removed her finger, the map rolled up and faded away into nothingness. “This is the strongest echo we’ve found yet. And even this one has to be at least a week old…”
“So… what does that mean?” I asked, already knowing the answer to come.
“That our mystery dreamer, at least in this Dreamworld, went down into the tunnels”
“And… let me guess,” I sighed. “We’re gonna have to go in there.”
“Correct.”
“I have a bad feeling about this,” I repeated as Serenity moved closer towards the back wall.
“Then I would suggest you be ready to run.” Serenity placed her hand upon the wall, and her horn lit up. A second later, the wall where her hand was touching began to glow. The stones that made up the wall began to fade, much like the items that I had summoned in the Dreamworld whenever I willed them away, only slower. Still, it wasn’t long before the wall had faded, revealing the tunnel on the other side. Serenity’s horn lit up again, and an orb of light appeared in her outstretched hand.
My eyes opened wide, and I pressed my back against the back of the thrones behind me. Serenity scrambled backwards as the entrance to the tunnel was revealed. Or at least, where the entrance should have been. A few feet into the tunnel, the stone had disappeared, leaving only darkness in its place. A pitch-black void, swirling around itself like a storm just before a tornado would descend to ravage the ground below. The ground and walls leading from the vortex, up to where the wall had been, were absolutely choked by a black and red fibrous growth, almost ivy-like except for its density.
Staring at the scene before me, I’d almost expected the growth to start rapidly expanding outwards. But it didn’t. It remained almost perfectly still, save for a faint pulse that could be seen as the ivy thickened and thinned ever so slightly. Almost like the growth was breathing…
“This is bad,” I heard Serenity mutter just before she grabbed my wrist. She forcibly dragged me away from the tunnel, around the throne, down the stairs, and out of the throne room, all the while muttering under her breath, just loudly enough that I could hear her speaking but softly enough that I couldn’t understand her.
As soon as the throne room doors had been shut, Serenity turned to face me. “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you the source of that… stuff.”
“The Nightmare?”
“Precisely.” Serenity sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “And from the looks of it, the Nightmare’s influence spreads all the way down into those tunnels. How deep? I cannot say. Perhaps it has not spread very far. Perhaps the entire tunnel system is overrun. We cannot tell, and I dare not venture down there.”
“But… But they’re down there!” I protested. “The other Human! Or at the very least, they went down there...”
“I know, Chris,” Serenity muttered. Her lips pursed and she looked up towards the ceiling, letting out a long, deep breath. “I know. But I’m afraid there’s nothing else we can do here. Nothing we can do without putting our own lives in danger.”
“Surely there’s something we can do…”
“Nothing here in the Dreamworld,” Serenity shook her head. “And I think it would be best if we did not return here, for a while anyway. There is little else we can gleam from this place, and the Nightmare already has a strong grip on this individual’s dream. The only way to break its hold is to force them to wake up. And with the Nightmare infecting this dream… No, we cannot wake them from this side. We will have to find them in the waking world, and attempt to wake them there.”
“But where -”
“I don’t know,” Serenity cut me off. “Not for certain, anyway. But the presence of the Nightmare in those tunnels… perhaps the other Human is within the tunnels in the waking world as well as in the Dreamworld… I’ll make sure a search team begins combing through the tunnels in search of this mystery dreamer, or at least something we can use to track them down.”
“And… what about this place?” I asked. “I mean, I keep coming back to this dream every night…”
“I can sever the connection between your soul and theirs,” Serenity explained. “A little trick Dreamwalkers learned early on, for situations such as this where two souls were stuck in the same dream being taken over by the Nightmare. This would wake you immediately, but the next time you fall asleep, you would not be drawn here. And don’t worry,” she continued as I opened my mouth to protest. “The severing is painless and harmless, save for the fact that it drags you back to the waking world. And if necessary, there are ways to return here.”
I hesitated for a moment before nodding slowly. “Alright,” I conceded. I didn’t like it. It didn’t feel right, just giving up our pursuit like this. But much as I hated to admit it, Serenity was right. I had no power against the Nightmare, and Serenity and Starswirl together had both fled from it the night before. “Alright,” I repeated. “Separate us.”
“Very well.” Serenity reached out and placed her hand on my forehead. She closed her eyes, and her horn lit up. The last thing I remember was her saying “Now, hold very still…” and a brilliant flash of violet light...