Jackie had traveled beyond physical space—up above the Dreamlands into the astral, and across distant shores to the supernal. The trip had not made her into one of the semi-divine Alicorns as it transformed so many others who took it, but that didn’t mean she had been unaffected.
As she had done during her trip out to the seapony colony, Jackie could change her form. It was simple enough magic—making herself into different characters was one of the most basic lessons of dreamcrafting. All she really did different was use a little magic to make it stick when she emerged into the physical.
When it came to visiting the breezies, she didn’t have much of a choice about it. Their airship was honeycombed with small spaces, their own floating city, and none of it had room for a visiting normal-sized pony. The breezies did not host visitors.
Her own transformation took only moments—trading her own bat wings for something closer to a dragonfly, squishing and compressing her body into the unusual proportions that breezies occupied. The internal chemistry was harder, and Jackie couldn’t have done it justice. But she was just a dream, so it didn’t really matter. So long as she didn’t try to stay that way for too long.
Unfortunately, she hadn’t decided to take this trip alone. She could’ve left Liz behind—but like Caesar before her, she needed someone to follow behind and remind her that she was only human.
She wasn’t a unicorn, so she couldn’t use transformation magic on Liz the way Alex might’ve. But Jackie was an old bat, and had mastered many tricks in her long life.
She couldn’t teach a fish to take the dreamworld into reality. But she could do something similar. Once they reached the dream of one of the sleeping breezies, she crafted their own small dream, and put Liz to sleep.
Jackie couldn’t change her real body, but she could create a fake one for Liz to puppet around while they were out in the waking world. She tried to use Liz’s same colors, though beyond that she just made an ordinary breezie. Keeping fish features would only have made it more confusing.
“So, just so you know how this works, Liz. Your real self will be in the Dreamlands while we do this. That means you can’t die, but there’s a tiny chance some monster might find where we’re doing this and kidnap you. It’s… a remote chance, probably won’t happen. But it could, so…”
The dream she’d built to keep Liz inside wasn’t very large at all—just a tank of water with a bunch of fancy hookups and controls, something to get her into the mindset that she’d be interfaced with a puppet. It wasn’t necessary, but point of view meant a great deal when it came to dreams.
Liz climbed inside, moving around in the warm water. “Ugh, salty. Tastes strange after the freshwater inside City Hall.” She adjusted herself into the controls anyway, looking up at where Jackie fluttered above the tank. She was already a breezie so Liz would know what to expect. “And we aren’t lying to them, right? We aren’t going to be claiming to be like them? This is just… so we can negotiate better.”
“Yeah,” Jackie answered, focusing on the spell she had in mind. “We aren’t lying. We’d never convince them, anyway. They’re so close to bugs, we could never do a convincing job acting that way. If Ezri couldn’t do it, then neither of us stand a chance. Just don’t make too much of a fool of yourself and we should be okay.”
Jackie stepped sideways into the real world, and her control of reality shrunk back to herself and the fake body she’d brought along.
They were on the edge of something soft and filled with tiny bodies. It only took her a second to see what it was—some kind of communal sleeping area, made with layers and layers of thin silk. And scattered around were two dozen or so sleeping breezies. There were hooks on the wall for vests, hats, jackets, but Jackie passed them by.
The ground hummed quietly, the whole world shaking as the airship drifted in its flight. With her eyes closed, Jackie could feel thousands of tiny bodies moving, maybe more than that. There was a lot of company up here.
“Oh my god, my legs feel wrong,” Liz squeaked, new antennae waving back and forth. “What’s wrong with me? Why am I so squished? There’s no room for all my organs!”
“Shh, you’re waking up the bugs,” Jackie whispered, gesturing towards the doorway. It was on the ceiling instead of the wall… Right, she doesn’t know how to fly. Too bad they didn’t have some kind of matrix-like dream operator to download skills. While in the Dreamlands, bats could imitate skills relevant to the dreams they wanted to create. But out here in the real world, even a master dreamcrafter like Jackie was at a loss.
“Just… think light thoughts,” Jackie said, yanking Liz by one hoof and into the air. Fortunately for them, the body was fake—no reason it couldn’t be weightless too. Jackie’s wings buzzed against her back, but so long as she didn’t think about it too much she could get them up and out. They landed in a transparent glass tube, like something that might be built for rodents.
The shaft had obviously been constructed to give them a view of the airship, and quite a view it was. At this scale, it was a little like being inside a giant flying city. There were some sections with streets, and tiny cubbies on the walls like little buildings. Below them were lots of identical trays filled with leaves, and then a bit of advanced machinery whirring as it manufactured something.
There were thousands and thousands of breezies. They kept to the air, mostly—none walked along the bottom with the two of them, and they were already attracting looks. They were also generally more dressed than they were, even if it was just vests, hats, or the occasional jumpsuit. The air was humid and probably would’ve been swelteringly hot, but to the physiology of this body it felt wonderful. Climate control.
“So, what do we do? Aside from… feel stupid and get everypony to stare at us.”
“We find the fanciest place in town,” Jackie supplied. “Or if we can’t do that, the fanciest bar. I don’t know how good their security will be, but maybe they’ll find us. Then I can explain why we’re here to whoever’s in charge and make our proposal.”
“You think they’ll listen?”
Jackie shrugged. “It’s not a matter of if, but how much it will cost. Think about what it would be like for you if you were a few inches tall. There’d be so little you could do, and even tiny jobs would take ages. Having pony allies makes sense for them.” Her eyes lingered on a passing flock of what seemed almost like university students. Maybe a cheerleading team? Let no one say these breezies didn’t use their tiny bodies for all they were worth.
The ground had many, many openings, which made the walk through town a little more time consuming than it needed to be. The rooms were completely dark except for the light that came in from above, which seemed to Jackie to be artificial. I wonder what this airship uses for power. Can’t be nuclear, or we couldn’t have teleported in. It reminded her a little of something the HPI might’ve built, if it had been completely overwhelmed with an adorable infestation of pony-shaped bugs.
The next hour or so was fairly uneventful—they followed the flow of traffic until they found themselves in something like a row of shops, where Jackie could watch the locals as they bought and sold. Or… maybe not exactly. There was no money anywhere that she could see, no lists or computers or credit cards.
So they went to a bar, and Jackie found herself some locals she could schmooze. At this point, she wasn’t particular about how they looked—so long as they seemed important.
It only took a few minutes of conversation to learn the basics. The locals didn’t have an economy exactly, but they did understand trade, accomplishment, and debt. Their behavior did seem close enough to pony that they could probably be convinced, and some of them had been human.
Not very many, though. Talking to a few different fairies, and it seemed the original settlers of this place had numbered in the double digits of humans. From just a few of them had come whole crowds, in repeated explanations that invoked the name of the Night Matron and someone called Janus in ways that made no sense to Jackie.
But she didn’t need to understand everything about where they’d come from to find their leader. She was apparently a malformed breezie named Avery, who could cast unicorn magic and eat solid food, and who had birthed a whole line of strange children with similar abilities.
“Wait, hold on,” Jackie stopped after her second spiked nectar, though she kept her glass filled with water so her partner would keep getting herself drunk. “You’re saying she’s the same person? And this city was founded…”
“Almost a thousand years ago…” The breezie was bright yellow, though she had reddish patches near her hooves and underbelly. The highlights looked flattering, or at least they had until then. “Are you fresh out of the jungle? Why would she not be in charge?”
So they don’t age like ponies, okay. This wasn’t the first time she’d heard there was something strange about them. “Is there a palace or something? Like… what if I want to have a meeting with this Avery pony. Can I do that?”
“Uh… I guess so.” Ilene lowered her voice to a whisper, and watched Jackie like she’d just asked if she could rip off her own arm. “Not all the ones who go in there come back. Or… not the same way. Her magic does strange things to you. Just find your place and enjoy it. Don’t lose yourself like our ancestors did.”
But Jackie wasn’t about to give up, no matter how dangerous the locals said it was. A few more drinks and she managed to get directions to the palace for herself and her “sister” Liz, and they set off back through the labyrinthine tunnels.
“I’m not looking forward to the report they’ll make us write when we get done here,” Liz muttered, as they left the bar behind. “Sat in a corner and watched the governor flirt with girls for a few hours. It got harder and harder to turn down the requests for drinks. Am I crazy if I think these bugs don’t look like bugs anymore?”
“No,” Jackie answered. “But you might want to take a few deep breaths before you do anything. You’re dreaming, Liz. Your inhibitions can get really screwy when you’re asleep. If you do anything that your subconscious thinks is too weird, you’ll wake up and that body will puff away like mist. So… if there’s some freaky orgy at this palace, maybe hang out in back while I find the queen.”
“It’s always a queen though, isn’t it?” she asked, mostly to herself. “Just one time it couldn’t be some moderate electorate with simple rules and an appreciation for visitors.”
She shrugged. “You’d have loved the stuff I did with my wife. When Ezri was still alive, we… we saw some shit. Went undercover for years at a time. Guess you might be able to relate, eventually. When you know you’ve got as many years as you want, you start some really crazy shit.”
“Seems like it would be the opposite to me,” Liz said, not sounding argumentative so much as matter-of-fact. “The longer I’m alive, the longer it seems like I’ll keep going. Every day I think I’m gonna wake up and be older, that eventually I’ll start getting old and tired. But the longer that doesn’t happen, the more I look forward to the next.”
They didn’t have much more time to speak. The palace was just ahead, separated from something like a massive indoor terrarium filled with fairies. It looked a little like a control room, covered with runes etched into the walls. Dozens of transparent tubes ran into it, though not a single fairy braved them to explore it.
They would be the exception. The further they went, the more the locals stared. Jackie had to take hold of Liz’s hoof again, as the tubes curved up and vertical towards the end. Not that it was much trouble—there was enough room in here for a dozen breezies to fly at the same time and never hit each other. In a way, they were using the city’s central highway.
“Let’s do some recruiting,” she muttered, and together they passed into the bright light obscuring whatever was beyond.