Twilight floated over Hvergelmir on her brand new wings. Flying helped her. Magic was her ever-present companion, but flying was new. To have both at once set her apart from all of her sets of memories, save one. But Celestia had gone to great lengths to make sure those memories were set apart, and for that she was grateful.
She opened her eyes and was greeted with a curious double vision. One eye, the one she’d had as a unicorn, still saw the world as it always had. It swept across the rough rock of the cavern and could only barely make out where Spike slept with his scales flush against the wall.
Within her formerly empty eye socket, she could feel a tiny piece of the mantle of the sun that now rested within her. It bestowed a purer sight, one that beheld magic directly in its most natural form. To that vision, Spike’s soulfire burned with the steady lavender light of her own magic.
Looking around, that eye could see the brilliant outpouring of magic from Hvergelmir as a ray of light rising all around her. Wrapped with smothering tightness around that ray, and attempting to push ever closer, was the dark cloak of Sombra’s magic. Hvergelmir was cleansed temporarily due to Twilight’s ascension and reclaiming of the crystal ponies’ memories, but Sombra had the strength of the living and he would soon reclaim it.
A fourth source of magic sprang into being in the cavern. It manifested itself to Twilight’s new vision as a dark swirl of magic. Not dark like the oil slick of Sombra’s magic, but dark like the velvet deepness of the night sky. Luna’s magic and, Celestia’s memories told her, the magic of the Dreaming.
The dark swirl grew and when it reached the height of two ponies it began to disgorge its contents. Rainbow was the first out, rocketing through at high speed, her hooves sparking with gathered energy. Applejack followed close behind with a heavy charge.
In a flash, Twilight realized that the armored pony was too heavy and moving too fast to stop before the edge of the pit. With far less effort than she expected it to require, Twilight reached for her magic and covered over the entire pit with a glimmering layer of magic strong enough to support a pony, even one as heavy as the armored Applejack. Sure enough, Applejack slid over the edge with a yelp, only to let out a relieved sigh as the lavender surface held her weight.
“Thanks Twi,” she shouted without looking up, recognizing the pony responsible from the color of the magic.
Dash, however, did scan the rim of the pit looking for Twilight. When the rim didn’t prove to hold her friend Dash thought to look up. The sight of Twilight hovering there put her back on her guard. Her hooves came up and electricity crackled once more.
“Who are you?” she demanded, seconds from firing off a bolt of lightning.
“I was Twilight Sparkle.” Twilight had expected her voice to croak from long disuse. It had been subjective centuries since she’d last spoken after all. However, all that time had passed in her mind, and her body had been renewed by her transformation besides. Her voice was rich and deep. It echoed as she spoke, as if thousands of voices spoke with her.
Grand as it seemed, it was altogether unsuitable for greeting old friends. Celestia’s memories quickly provided guidance on how to make herself sound normal, and she altered her voice between one sentence and the next.
“I am the alicorn of Twilight,” she continued, speaking only for herself. “Just Twilight now.”
“Wrong answer,” Dash growled. “Like I’d believe Twilight suddenly grew wings.” With a flap of her wings she tried to charge forward for a lightning assisted kick, only to be brought up short by a claw grasping her tail.
“It’s Twilight,” Spike confirmed, having woken up when the portal opened. He pulled Rainbow Dash back down towards the ground, despite her struggles. “I would never mistake her, no matter how she changed.”
Twilight flew down to the others and wrapped her hooves around Spike in a tight hug. “I kept my promises,” she said quietly to him, and only to him. “Both of them. And if you hadn’t asked me to make those promises, I would not be standing here now. For better or for worse.”
“Twilight! What in the hay happened to you, sugarcube?”
“It’s a long story, Applejack, one I don’t think we have time for just now.”
A scream cut through the cavern and Twilight whipped around, magic at the ready. A pony she could only recognize as Pinkie Pie thanks to the poufy, if now golden, mane was hunched over clutching her head. Twilight could see by the absence of the shadow insider her that Pinkie was free of Sombra’s control, but she could also see a thin silver thread running from Pinkie’s head through the portal to the Dreaming.
“It’s gone! It’s gone it’s gone it’s gone it’s gone,” she wailed. Her head snapped up and her eyes fixed on the portal. “I have to go back.”
She darted forward, only to be caught be Rarity. “You can’t, Pinkie. Princess Luna could barely get the portal open the first time. You’ll be trapped if you go back.”
Pinkie writhed in Rarity’s grip with a manic strength. “Let me go. Please!” With a sudden lunge she broke free and hurtled towards the portal.
The moment before she touched it, Shining Armor came tumbling out of it and knocked them both backwards. Pinkie was first to regain her hooves and she dove again at the rapidly closing portal. It snapped shut just as she would have crossed through it, and she landed stomach-first on the hard ground.
“Nooooo,” came her keening cry.
“Princess,” Shining Armor cried, having gotten back to his hooves. “No! What will we do without you?”
“What we have to,” Twilight said, coming up beside him. “I will hear your report in a minute, Captain, but first I need quiet while I comfort Pinkie Pie.”
Captain Armor blinked, but he reflexively snapped a salute and zipped his mouth. Satisfied, Twilight joined Applejack, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash in clustering around the sobbing Pinkie Pie. Applejack in her armor was too hard to offer a comforting hug, so she stood guard while the others nestled close to Pinkie to offer what comfort they could.
“What happened to her?” Twilight asked Rarity in an undertone. “Briefly.”
“She separated from Sombra in the Dreaming, and beat him down,” Rarity said with evident satisfaction. “But she was still hurting. A little while later she and the princess went aside. When they came back her coat was paler than mine, but she seemed more like her old self. Then she somehow healed Dash’s wings.”
“Dash’s wings were hurt? No, never mind. We need to focus on Pinkie now.” Dash nodded in agreement with Twilight’s words.
Twilight looked down at Pinkie, peering more closely with her new sight. She could just make out a skein of silver magic that glowed like moonlight strung through Pinkie’s mind. Even as she watched it faded further and Pinkie trembling grew worse.
“It’s not fair,” she cried. “I was ok. For the first time in so long I felt ok.”
“Sombra’s still gone,” Twilight said gently. “There’s no trace of him in you anymore.”
“Right.” Pinkie sniffed. “Right. He is gone. Even if I’m not ok, he’s not there to hurt me. Even if all the old hurts are still there, he isn’t.”
Slowly, after many soothing words and whispered reassurances, Pinkie’s breathing slowed. Twilight, cloistered among her friends and forced to comfort she who had once been the happiest pony Twilight had even known, couldn’t help but think back on what had happened to the ponies who had followed her north out of friendship.
Rarity, the pony who couldn’t handle stepping in a puddle without a fainting couch, had somehow changed the least amidst all the hardship. She had borne their trials and tribulations with the same grace and elegance that she turned to every task. In fact, as Twilight looked closer, she realized that there were the usual traces of expertly applied mascara and eye liner on that beautiful pony’s face. Just how Rarity had managed to keep her makeup flawless through everything Twilight couldn’t even imagine.
Applejack, truthfully, hadn’t changed much either. She had always been strong and taken pride in that strength. Standing guard over her friends was exactly where she’d have chosen to be before, and where she would choose to be now. But her guard was different now, hidden as her face was in the depths of a helmet so deep that no trace of a living being could be seen from the outside. In ordinary times she never would have donned that monstrous black armor, never become a calamitous titan that shook the earth she’d rather have tilled.
Rainbow Dash, though, that was where the changes began in earnest. Her loyalty had never wavered, but before it had been a light and joyous thing. She had taken pleasure from it, and it had flowed naturally and freely from her inner self. There was no joy in it now. Her loyalty had had been forged in the crucible of that pony’s funeral pyre, and now burned from her eyes with unbridled intensity. It wielded Gilda and Thraxus like tools, set them to watching her back with no more than a flick of her eyes. She was all driven purpose now. Twilight wondered if she even remembered how to fly for pleasure instead of necessity and war.
Twilight too had changed. Like Rainbow Dash, everything she had thought she was had been fed into a crucible, and the pony that had come out was irrevocably different. But then, she knew who she was. She had plenty of time for introspection as she trod the path of memories. No, by thinking of herself now she was merely delaying her thoughts from reaching for the last one, no, last two of her friends.
Pinkie Pie had broken. There was no other word for it. She had been hurt in ways that Twilight, for all her millennia of memories and lives, had no basis for understanding. She had lost the sanctity of her mind and the very color from her coat. It spoke to her strength, not her weakness, that she could even cry. Perhaps she was whole in some other plane, somehow, but Twilight doubted if she could ever laugh again in the real world. It would not have happened if she had not followed Twilight north. She would have been lost to Sombra, yes, but not signaled out torment as she had been.
And then there was the hole in the world. The body that should have been there. The warm voice that would have known just how to comfort Pinkie, that could have doused the burning intensity in Rainbow’s eyes, that could have extricated Applejack from her armored shell. Even after all the subjective time Twilight had spent dwelling in others memories and dealing with her own, it still hurt to think of her.
What a sad and sorry lot the Elements of Harmony had become.
Twilight spared a moment’s thought for the physical Elements of Harmony as a solution to their problems. If only they could summon that beautiful rainbow and let it blast away Sombra and all the pain his malice has wrought. But the necklaces and crown had been lost somewhere along the way, and the five could not have wielded them anyway, not as they were. No, it was by their own strength or not at all that they would win the day.
To that end, now that Pinkie’s crying had dwindled to the occasional shuddering breath, Twilight gently pulled herself apart and stood. Her eyes drifted to where Iolite and Spike stood together, talking animatedly. He caught Twilight’s glance and nodded to her. She was relieved to find herself simply happy for their reunion. At the moment there were few enough causes for joy in the world, and she would not want to begrudge her brother one out of some misplaced sense of jealousy.
Captain Armor and Sim came to stand beside her, both looking nervously around the cavern. Though it felt like much longer, scarcely ten minutes had passed since they’d come through the portal, and they clearly feared Somba’s response.
“Captain, report,” Twilight said with a brusqueness she knew would comfort Shining Armor’s soldier’s heart.
He drew himself up. “Yes sir. When our army realized that our reinforcements had been co-opted, Princess Luna fled with us into another realm that she called the Dreaming.”
Twilight nodded. “I am familiar with the Dreaming. Continue.”
“We returned here to launch an ambush on Sombra and incapacitate or kill his original body, if possible. Princess Luna had difficulty opening the portal and proved unable to hold it open long enough for her to pass through. I attempted to convince her to precede me through the portal, but,” he paused and dropped his gaze, “I was unsuccessful”
“Now that I am here it may be that her remaining in the Dreaming was for the best,” she said, causing Shining Armor to raise his head again. “Did she have a plan for after the ambush?”
“She believed that after he was subdued she would be able to fight Sombra from the Dreaming and together cause him some manner of permanent harm. I don’t think she had any firm plans though.”
“Hmm.” Twilight weighed her options. On the whole, she thought an ambush sounded like as good a plan as any. Even as an immortal she didn’t like her odds against Sombra one-on-one. However, with the element of surprise as well as Rainbow Dash and the dragons they had enough heavy hitters to potentially break through the defenses of a Sombra’s original body. “Right, then the ambush is what we’ll do,” she said aloud.
“There’s one small problem with that,” a cheery and high-pitched voice said.
Twilight spun at the unfamiliar voice and found a small white filly standing next to her clump of friends. The filly waved enthusiastically.
“Hiya Twilight! It’s been a while.”
“Sweetie Bell! What are you doing here?” Rarity gazed uncomprehendingly over at her sister, panic writ plain on her face. “You should be safe in Ponyville.”
“Oh, there’s no place safe. Not from King Sombra.” Sweetie’s voice was still cheery, contrasting terribly with the fear on the faces of all the ponies present.
“Ah’m here too big sister!”
“Applebloom,” was Applejack’s stricken reply. Her little sister tapped on her black armor and giggled as it rang like a bell.
“And me! I know I’m not your sister, but I am your number one fan Rainbow Dash!”
“Squirt? He got you too?” Rainbow Dash’s expression was heartbreaking to see, though only Gilda, Thraxus, and Twilight had the presence of mind to keep an eye on her. It was the expression of a pony who thought they’d long since lost everything there was to lose. Only to find that the universe takes that kind of despair as incentive to get creative. She did not break, though. Say this for Rainbow Dash, she never lacked in courage.
“Tell me, kid, would you rather be dead than enslaved?” Her voice cracked as she spoke. Instead of explaining further she raised a hoof and let the lightning crackling there speak for her. There was a terrible desolate emptiness in her face. That this should be all she could offer to somepony she cared about was very nearly more than she could bear. It was more than she should have had to bear, but she accepted it because it was the only display of loyalty left to her. “I’ll do it if you just say the word.”
“What are you crazy?” Scootaloo eyed the hoof nervously. “No thank you. I know exactly how much it hurts to get hit with that, and I’d really rather if you didn’t.”
“Enough of this farce, Sombra.” Unsure of which crusader to speak to, Twilight spoke to all three. “You have the crusaders, there’s no need to torture them so.”
Sweetie Bell rolled her eyes. “So dramatic, we’re hardly being tortured. Just possessed a little bit. You all get why we’re here, right?”
Twilight stepped forward and faced the filly that spoke for her foe. “We understand. What do you want from us so badly that you’d take our loved ones to get it?”
Sweetie Bell’s mouth yawned bone creakingly wide, and Sombra’s deep voice issued from the comically mismatched throat. “I just want to talk. Face-to-face. Especially with you, Twilight. I think you can satisfy my curiosity on one or two minor points. Congratulations on your ascension, by the way. Now, the three little ones will lead you to me. I am not far.”
“Alright, we’ll come. We wanted planned to come to you anyway.” Twilight turned to the still crackling Rainbow Dash. “Patience, Dash. Hold that anger tight. You need control now, not just raw fury.”
“I’ve learned control. Watch,” Dash said flatly. Her hooves had not stopped moving, gathering electricity and she was crackling with power and radiating enmity as she spoke. Then she closed her eyes and brought her hooves close together. As they touched she closed her eyes and, Twilight could see Dash’s magic guiding the electricity to within her skin.
Dash opened her eyes and the only trace of the electricity she was storing was in the glowing of her eyes and the occasional discharges from the tips of her mane. Staring at Scootaloo as if she could glare right through to Sombra, Dash slowly lowered herself and let her hooves touch the ground without discharging.
Scootaloo clapped with apparently genuine enthusiasm. “Wow! Rainbow Dash, that was soooooo cool!”
Twilight could hear Dash’s teeth grinding, but the tempestuous pony held her peace. Looking at her other companions, Twilight saw no fear. Even Pinkie seemed more despairing than afraid, though that was hardly better. There was resolve aplenty to be found as they met her questioning gaze, and so there was no reason to delay.
“Lead on, crusaders,” she said.
“CUTIE MARK CRUSADERS HOSTAGES YAY!”
***
Luna had grown to hate the Dreaming’s version of the cavern that housed Sombra. Still, it was familiar and she’d found herself drawn back to it. This was where the others were fighting, she knew, and Luna couldn’t help but feel as if she was offering some form of moral support just by being in the same place, even if she couldn’t make her way there herself.
That was a lie, of course, as Nightmare Moon was so eager to remind her. There was no help she could offer from the Dreaming, not as she was. That was the crux of the matter.
“You are out of options,” Nightmare said flatly. “Your friends have gone to face Sombra alone and the only way you can help them is by reclaiming the Dreaming. You’ve started to already. You cleared those walls while chasing the mantle of the sun with barely a thought after all. Why do you hesitate now?”
“I’m not hesitating,” Luna snapped.
“Oh you’re hanging out here for fun, then?” came the biting retort.
“I’m not!”
“Then prove it!”
They were inches apart, screaming in one another’s face. With her last shout Nightmare Moon held out her hoof. “Claim me. Rule the Dreaming as you are meant to.”
Luna slapped the hoof aside and turned away. “It’s not right. I can feel it. Something within me is shouting that claiming the Dreaming will do nothing.”
“Well while you sit here having that feeling your friends are facing death. Or worse. So you want to try again, Princess? What’s really stopping you?”
“You want the truth? Fine, I’ll tell you the truth.” Luna stalked back and forth across the cavern floor like it had wronged her personally, every step a sharp crack of hoof on stone. “I don’t want to rule. Not the Dreaming, not the real world. I don’t want any of this and I’m not sure I should have it in any case.”
“What are you talking about?” Nightmare asked, genuinely baffled. “You created me out of a desire to rule. You revolted against Celestia for the same reason. You’ve been fighting with Twilight for control for the past six months. What do you mean you don’t want this?”
“It’s been building for a long time, but I think I finally realized it when I felt what a relief it was to be relieved of the burden of the mantle of the sun.” Luna sighed and looked down. “It was like I could breathe again for the first time since Celestia disappeared. I don’t want to be the pony everypony looks to and, frankly, I did a pretty poor job of it when I was.”
“Luna, that’s not really true.” It was quietly hilarious to see Nightmare looking awkward and pitying but Luna was in no mood to enjoy the other pony’s discomfort.
“It was my temper tantrum that led Celestia to disappear. My poorly constructed magic that set Sombra free. My misguided leadership of the nobles and poor attempt at a new form of government that gave him an opening to begin possessing ponies.”
“No, Luna-“ Nightmare tried to break in, but Luna was off in her own world.
“Then I hid for six months and left everything to Twilight and, when I finally took over again, I led my army straight into a trap.”
“LUNA!” Nightmare shouted, breaking through the other pony’s litany of failure. Luna looked up, almost surprised at the presence of Nightmare. “Luna, you have had your successes as well. No leader can dwell overmuch on their failures. Your sister certainly had her fair share, but she did not let it slow her.”
“You’re right,” Luna said slowly. “I did do some things right.”
“Exactly,” said Nightmare, sounding relieved. “Now, would you please—“
“Hush,” Luna said absently, wandering away. “I need to think.”
Nightmare flared her wings in exasperation. “Fine. It’s not my friends that are dying.”
Luna ignored Nightmare’s grumbling and tried to catch hold of the idea she could sense fluttering just out of sight, sparked by Nightmare’s comments about her successes.
She had had some success, it was true. Finding a way out of the Dreaming for the others had been her accomplishment, albeit one highly dependent on luck. And there had been other moments Luna remembered with pride over these past few months. The peace talks with the dragons, as badly as it had gone awry, was still a source of pride with regards to how she had handled it.
Those peace talks had also enabled her to play the hero. To arrive at the last moment and save the day for her army. Luna still felt the warm glow from that one moment when she’d saved them all, brighter and hotter than the magma that had surrounded her.
Unbidden, familiar notes came to her. The Anthem of the Lunar Republic. Perhaps the moment when she had been happiest in recent memory, the moment when she felt most like herself. Or, more precisely, she felt most like the pony she wanted to be.
What did all these moments have in common, Luna asked herself. They had been unexpected. Impromptu demonstrations of her compassion and care for her little ponies.
For she did care, Luna reaffirmed. Her heart ached for every pony she’d brought north who would never go home. Even now it beat with terror for the ponies she’d practically delivered into Sombra’s lap. She did care and she could lead when she had to. The anthem proved that more than anything else. So why did she deny Nightmare’s demand that she retake dominion over the Dreaming?
Because dominion was not her role.
Luna did not want to give orders, she wanted to give of herself. She had bared her most private soul to her soldiers and they had responded by following her into an act of creation of the greatest beauty she’d known.
What would that mean, then? To give up her role in the Dreaming entirely and trust in serendipity to guide her to the part she should play? No. A conscious repudiation of control would not yield the end she sought. She did not want to give up, she wanted to give to, but she was alone.
Or was she? Those few simple notes of the Anthem of the Lunar Republic, hummed by a pony that had more faith in her than she deserved, still floated to her ears. There she was. Sunlit Rooms. It was so easy to forget she was there, to slip into routines in which she fit seamlessly. She had silently followed Luna back to the cavern and held her peace, not wanting to intrude while Luna argued with Nightmare Moon. Now, when she knew Luna needed her, she spoke up.
“You looked like you could use a reminder of better times,” Sunlit said, smiling gently.
“I did, thank you,” Luna said, smiling back. “You’ve stood by me for far longer that I deserved.” Luna laughed. “To think you started as my secretary!”
Sunlit Rooms looked away, suddenly discomfited. “I had to stay with you. This is all my fault. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for everything. I have to tell you. I’ve wanted to for so long, but I just couldn’t. But it’s so late now. And it might matter. So I have to speak.”
Luna was taken aback at the torrent of words. “Easy, Sunlit. I don’t know where this sudden confession comes from, but I assure you that it is not your fault. And even if it was, after everything you’ve done for me, there is very little you could do that I could not forgive. If it bothers you so, it can wait till this is ended. One way or another.”
“No.” Sunlit Rooms took a shuddering breath and drew herself up. “No, I need to tell you now. It’s tied in with everything else, and you might need to know. I just don’t know how to start.”
“At the beginning,” Luna offered. She couldn’t have said where Sunlit Rooms was going with her impromptu need to speak, but it felt like a continuation of her previous thoughts, rather than a tangent. She had wanted to give to somepony and now at the very least she could offer Sunlit Rooms a sympathetic ear.
“Right, at the beginning. Okay.” She nodded to herself. “Do you remember the story I told you about how I got my cutie mark?”
“I’d hardly forget a story like that,” Luna said, smiling. “You burned down the Cloudsdale town hall as I recall.”
“That’s what I told you, and that’s what I remembered. But it never happened.” Sunlit Rooms stood and started to pace. “There was no record of the town hall ever burning down, but it was still referenced in my letter of acceptance as a court secretary.”
“That makes no sense,” Luna said, frowning.
“That’s what I thought too, so I dug deeper and once I did everything fell apart. I’m paid from an escrow account that was set aside decades ago and not touched until recently, rather than the royal payroll.”
“Odd, but not damningly strange,” Luna objected, but Sunlit Rooms continued as if she hadn’t heard.
“My apartment was owned by the crown through a number of shell companies, but again hadn’t been inhabited until recently. Do you see what I’m getting at, Princess?”
“I’m starting to,” Luna said slowly. She was, but she didn’t like the picture it was painting. “Why don’t you say what you need to say?”
Sunlit Rooms stopped her pacing and sank knees before Luna in a posture of unwitting supplication. “I sent letters to my family members. The ones to my parents, ponies I remembered raising me, were returned because no such address or ponies existed. My letter to my little sister was forwarded through a long and overly complicated chain, before finally being delivered to the royal castle.” She looked up, eyes pleading or praying.
“I am Celestia.”
Though she had started to understand partway through Sunlit Rooms’ explanation, the words still hit Luna with all the force of a thunderbolt. She rocked back and sank to her knees as well.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
Sunlit Rooms shook her head. “I can’t be sure. I don’t remember anything; I swear I don’t! But in light of what you and Twilight told me had happened to her it all makes sense. She planned to live as me, she just didn’t plan on losing herself in the process.”
It did make sense. Luna had wondered at the extreme loyalty of this one strange bureaucrat. Now she had her answer. Loyalty compelled by family bonds with a built in restriction to keep from spilling the beans. The mantle of the sun had left her which meant that either Celestia had a new body, or the mantle of the sun now belonged to another. In either case, the restriction would no longer hold and Sunlit Rooms was finally able to share what she had figured out. Yes, it all fit together rather neatly.
The world seemed to splinter before Luna and she saw two paths stretching out from the present. In one, the news made her angry. She saw it as another way her sister had intruded into her life. She raged against Sunlit Rooms, blamed her for Celestia’s deception, and sent the little pony scurrying away in fear. And then she sat alone with her Nightmare until the shadows came alive and devoured the Dreaming.
And down the other path…
For a single crystalline moment, the world froze, teetering on the edge of a knife.
Luna smiled. Not a daring grin, nor a joyous celebration. This was a small and mischievous smile. The smile of a filly placing a frog in her sisters bed. The world resumed as she pulled Sunlit Rooms to her hooves and wrapped her in a hug.
“It must have been hard to keep that to yourself, and hard to tell me too. For what it’s worth, I have come to care for you as an individual, not as some twisted reflection of my sister.”
Sunlit Rooms looked up at her through tear-filled eyes. “Really?”
“One way or another, you and Celestia are completely separated now. You are your own pony and no one else.”
Luna’s voiced dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “And if you happen to be annoyed at how Celestia treated you, I happen to have an excellent way you can get back at her.”
It was purest relief that spawned Sunlit’s smile as she broke the hug. “You know, I would like the chance to stick it to the old mare, if you’ll pardon my prench. What did you have in mind?”
“Celestia never dreamed. Not once. The Dreaming was mine and she was not permitted to even visit the outskirts the way ordinary ponies do. The simple fact that you’re here,” Luna gestured grandly to their surroundings, “sets you apart from her. Why don’t we compound that difference? How would you like a direct connection to the Dreaming?”
Sunlit Rooms gasped. “Can you do that? Should you do that?”
“She should not!” Nightmare Moon snapped.
“You asked me to take control, Nightmare. Well, giving is the manner in which I choose to take control,” Luna said firmly.
“Giving? Ha!” Nightmare snorted derisively. “What good will it do to scatter your power over the Dreaming among ponies like Pinkie Pie or Sunlit Rooms? How does this help us at all?”
“I don’t know, exactly,” Luna admitted. She’d been playing it by ear, following an impulse to give she didn’t fully understand. Pinkie had proved that a connection to the Dreaming could be taken by ordinary ponies, and if it could be taken then she was confident she could give it. She now knew she could spread her power to a number of ponies, at least in some capacity. But what could she do with more ponies connected to the Dreaming?
Put another way the question became this: what did she need? She needed to find a way to attack the tendrils Sombra’s connections had stabbed through the Dreaming. Luna had been able to hold back a single one at a time, but she’d lacked the focus to do anything more than that. With more ponies though, perhaps there was a way it could work.
“I have an idea, but to test it Sunlit Rooms needs a connection to the Dreaming.” Luna looked from Nightmare Moon to Sunlit Rooms. “Are you willing to give it a try, Sunlit? If it goes awry I can always take it back.”
“If you think it best,” Sunlit said. “I am yours to command.”
Luna shook her head. “No, not like that. This can’t be something I order you to do. Like with Pinkie, it can happen only if you want it to.”
“I do want it,” Sunlit insisted. “I want to be useful and I want to fight Sombra.” She gave a brilliant smile. “And I had wondered why I so enjoyed the dreams I’ve had of late. I’m more than happy to embrace the Dreaming and push away Celestia.”
“That should be enough,” Luna said. “Now focus on that wanting and reach out to me.” Sunlit Rooms closed her eyes and did as she was bidden. Nightmare Moon huffed, but she held her peace. That left Luna to figure out exactly how to give away a piece of the Dreaming.
It had been easy when Pinkie had taken a piece. Then all she’d had to do was allow the other pony to pull away what she needed. Here Luna had to be proactive in surrendering a part of her and, despite her recent epiphany, it didn’t come naturally.
She looked at Sunlit Rooms, with her eyes squeezed shut and her face scrunched up in concentration. Instead of thinking of it as a transfer of power, she tried to embrace a feeling of generosity. Luna set her thoughts to dwelling on all that the other pony had done for her; she let her care for Sunlit Rooms well up inside and overflow.
A silver connection formed, her heart to Sunlit’s. Simple as that, the Dreaming flowed from her and slotted neatly into Sunlit. She didn’t change the way Pinkie had, nor did her mind undergo the same dramatic transformation. Presumably it was because she didn’t want to change herself as desperately as Pinkie had.
Sunlit opened her eyes. “Was that it? I thought I felt something.”
“That was it,” Luna confirmed.
“It certainly was,” Nightmare groused. The other two looked over at her, and found her just a little bit smaller and a shade lighter than she had been. “Congratulations, you’ve taken another part of me.”
“That’s what you’re for, isn’t it?” Luna asked without sympathy. “Now come on Sunlit, let’s see if my idea pans out. Casting an eye around, she led Sunlit Rooms and Nightmare Moon over to a particularly dark thread of Sombra’s control. Luna held her hooves above and below it. “Can you see anything between my hooves?”
“No,” Sunlit Rooms answered. “But this room feels worse, somehow, than it did before. Sticky maybe, like when oil gets in your coat and mucks everything up. And that spot between your hooves feels especially sticky.”
Luna nodded. “That’s sensation should be what I was talking about. Now, focus as hard as you can on the space between my hooves. Imagine the oily feeling being cleaned away. Scrub the space in your mind until the air itself sparkles.” Sunlit bent herself to the task and Luna kept up an encouraging murmur. “That’s it. The rest of the room may be sullied but you will make this spot clean. Remember the disinfecting power of Sunlit and bureaucracy.” Her voice was hypnotic and she could see the effect it was having on Sunlit Rooms.
The pegasus clenched her teeth, glaring at the thread she couldn’t see. “Come on,” she muttered to himself. “I can feel it fighting me. I can feel him fighting me. But I’m not going to let him win.”
Without thinking, Luna began to hum her anthem. Sunlit Rooms took up the melody and as she did so surprise crossed her face. She connected with Luna, in some small way, and as she did so she found the appropriate state of mind. Her will suddenly sheered through Sombra’s thread like a hot knife through butter.
“I did it!” Sunlit squealed in joy. “It was just for a second, but I felt something give way!”
“Perfect Sunlit! Well done. Perhaps we have a chance after all.” Luna noticed that the second Sunlit’s concentration had lapsed the thread had reknit itself. Still, that momentary cut was enough to prove that her idea was sound.
“Ha!” She crowed in triumph and rounded on Nightmare Moon. “You see? If I can get enough ponies working together in the Dreaming, we can completely cut Sombra off from his network. I couldn’t do it alone because even if my connection to the Dreaming was strong enough, my will wasn’t. But with the Dreaming distributed among many different wills we’ll have a chance of success.”
“Too bad there’s no pony else here,” Nightmare sneered.
“There is!” Sunlit Rooms was still riding the wave of excitement at her success. “The anthem reminded me. All of the soldiers from the army went through the portal into the Dreaming with us. Surely they’re here somewhere. Can’t you call them?”
Sunlit Rooms was right, Luna realized, and her enthusiasm was infectious. The soldiers of her army were physically here in the Dreaming, though they themselves were lost to sleep. She couldn’t wake them all. That would strain the Dreaming beyond its limits and even Luna couldn’t say what would happen if it snapped.
However, ponies often found their way to the Dreaming through their ordinary dreams. If she could induce lucid dreaming and pull them from their ordinary dreams into the Dreaming, that might be enough to let her assemble an army.
“It could work,” Luna said slowly. She expanded her senses, paying attention to the froth at the edges of the Dreaming which was the border between her realm and the individual dreams of ponies.
“What are you doing?” Nightmare asked, having noticed the change in Luna’s focus. “You’re attempting this already?”
“I’ve got a plan and an army just waiting to be called,” Luna said. “There is no reason to delay.”
Luna let her focus drift, looking for the dreams of a pony she knew. A sense of grit and grey caught her attention. Barrel, the quartermaster from whom she’d requisitioned the paints for her self-portraits, who’d listened when she’d needed a sympathetic ear. For all that he was a pegasus, his dreams were as stable as the foundations of the earth. Love of his family mixed with pride in his work and a determination that no pony should suffer privation on his watch. He was a perfect test case.
Reaching out with her sense of the Dreaming, Luna cupped the bubble of his dream. She tried to gently meld it was the Dreaming itself, but the two worlds repelled one another. She needed a mediator, something to allow a dream to enter the Dreaming.
There was an obvious solution, one that killed two birds with one stone. Luna reached inside, not to her magic, but to the part of her being that was connected to the Dreaming. It was harder to find than usual. Traces of it mixed with her ordinary magic, her immortal magic, the mantle of the moon, and the small remains of the mantle of the sun. Almost, it seemed as though it was consciously fleeing from her grasp, as if it knew and feared that purpose she had in mind.
Still, it existed within her and Luna was master of herself. Her eyes narrowed and she grasped the Dreaming tightly. Distantly she heard a pained gasp from Nightmare Moon, but she was already portioning off a small piece of her control and using it to surround the bubble of Barrel’s dream.
It was easy. Dreaming and dream were so similar that coating one with a connection to the other was an easy task. The second the coating was complete Barrel’s dream merged immediately with the Dreaming.
Beside Luna the grey and grizzled pegasus stood. He looked around, confused, but his expression calmed upon seeing her.
“Princess?” Barrel asked.
“Tell me, Barrel,” Luna said gently, “what’s the last thing you remember?”
“I was just putting away the last of the day’s supplies when the order came to form up. No exceptions.” He scratched his chin. “Come to think of it, that was pretty strange. Then Captain Armor had us walk through that portal you were holding open. I’d have probably told him to go stuff himself if it had just been him, but I figured if you were making that portal then there must have been a good reason.”
Humbled, Luna nodded. “Thank you for your trust. We were about to be ambushed and putting you to sleep was the only way I could think of to keep you all alive.”
“I knew there had to be a good reason,” he said, sounding satisfied. “But why’s it only me and your secretary here, princess? And where are we anyway?”
“You are actually partly still asleep. This is a place known as the Dreaming. Thanks to Sunlit Rooms, I have found a way to strike at Sombra from here. I intend to summon as many soldiers as this place can bear for the effort. I won’t pretend that this is safe, or a conventional attack, and I won’t order you to do this.” Luna held out a hoof. “So, will you fight at my side?”
“I will serve, princess,” Barrel said, saluting proudly. With a look of wonder, he took her hoof and shook it as she smiled at his response.
Nightmare watched with a strange expression on her face. “So it seems this is the cause for which I am to die. I’d thought you’d kill me, not that you’d break me into pieces and feed me to others. I suppose that is the point of dominion; that you can do with me as you wish. But are you sure this is the dominion you desire?”
“Yes,” Luna answered firmly. “As I said this is the type of control I choose. This feels right in a way that ruling never did, for all that I thought I wanted it. You were an ideal I never should have had and the Dreaming made a mistake in sending its plea to me in the form of you.” Luna rested a wing on each of Barrel and Sunlit Rooms’ shoulders. He looked simultaneously proud and unsettled by the closeness, while Sunlit Rooms just looked content. “I choose to give what I am and what I should be to my little ponies. Now come, we have many more to awaken before we are ready for the final battle with Sombra.”