“It’s been the same for the last three nights,” Alex said, staring down at the floor. Jackie’s little corner of their shared room had all the lights covered, and survived only on the glow that came in through the crack in the door.
But the bat seemed true to her name—she hadn’t once bumped into anything or expressed regret about making it so dark. “It doesn’t get any better. I’m always in the same place, I’m always… well, you’d have to see it. But it’s bad, and it’s making it hard to work during the day.”
She yawned exaggeratedly, shaking her tail and staring up towards the bat. Jackie was older than she was, but her gratitude at being saved still carried quite a lot of weight.
“The same nightmare every night?” Jackie repeated, circling around her with an almost clinical expression. But whatever she was looking for, Alex lacked the magic to guess. Her wings had granted her flight, not the magic of bats. “I thought you knew everything, Alex? Just cast a spell. Do what you did for me.”
“There aren’t any spells for it,” Alex said, voice tentative. “I mean… none I know of. It’s not… the sort of problem ponies had to deal with. There are spells for a dreamless sleep, but that screws you up over time. I’d rather… tackle the problem at the source.”
“And you can’t tell me anything solid about this nightmare because… it’s always changing?” Jackie suggested. “It’s changing too fast? I guess that makes as much sense as—”
Alex cut her off, raising a wing. She might not be able to fly or do anything useful with them, but at least they were good for times like this. “You just have to see. I’ve tried all the basic spells I can think of, and nothing helps. I need an oneiromancer.”
Jackie shrugged. “That’s… optimistic language to use for someone who’s only solved their own problems with dream magic, and only with your help.”
“Well… you’ve got the magic,” Alex said. “And you could do more than that. A lot more. The ponies of Equestria never really dug into that magic much, but there’s no reason you have to repeat their mistakes.”
“Tonight,” Jackie said. “I’ll help you. But I’m going to need you to cut it with the vague shit. I know it’s bothering you… I need a lot more than that if you want a solution. Got it?”
“Yeah,” Alex said, looking away. “You’ll recognize it when you see it, trust me.”
Alex didn’t have much free time working in Paradise Crater. Mostly it was engineering—overhauling their reactor prototypes and getting ever-closer by the day to truly sustainable fusion. That moment might not be far away at all, but it took so much of her time that she returned home from work every day drained and weak.
That had saved her from the nightmares at first, but not so much anymore.
They had dinner together as a little family, with Ezri sitting in her lap and eating only the affection she could harvest from the two of them. She was getting big—not as big as Riley, but she wouldn’t ever be a queen.
Ezri went with her to bed—though she didn’t know what was bothering Alex. Hopefully you never do, sweetheart. Jackie’s gonna fix this before I get too exhausted to work.
Jackie appeared beside her bed with a sleeping bag in her mouth and a pillow on her back. She gestured for Alex to move over, then hopped on without invitation. There was plenty of room—Paradise Crater was built entirely for humans, so even pony inhabitants outside the range of the anti-magic had lots of furniture bigger than it needed to be.
Alex blushed a little as Jackie set up her sleeping bag, but they weren’t even remotely close enough to touch. “Right, right.” She rolled over, grinning. “You know the drill about all this. Sweat to protect your dreams, guard against the outsiders… be with you tonight.”
“Of course,” Alex said. “I agree. But does it work when you describe it like that? Doesn’t Luna’s spell have specific words, and ingredients, and…”
“Sure, but whatever.” Jackie flopped onto her back, spreading both her wings so that they covered a good portion of the bed. Alex couldn’t get in without touching her a little. I’m not ready to date another girl, Jackie. This won’t work.
But she wasn’t cruel enough to say that. Her friend was helping her, there was no reason to be cruel.
“It’s not about the words, it’s about intention. I think the spell your princess came up with was really about guiding the ones who do this. I don’t need guidance when I know exactly why I’m going in.”
“Oh.” Alex layed back down, waving the hoof through the air that would shut off the automatic lights. Ezri curled up against her, and Alex settled one hoof on her back.
“Feel better,” the little drone said, her voice pained.
“She’ll be fine,” Jackie said, apparently having heard her. “This will be almost painless. Just… get to sleeping. I’ll see you over there.”
Alex might’ve fought with insomnia in her earlier years, but she’d found a cure for that real quick—work so hard that she wanted to die, and she could always flop into bed and sleep in minutes. She couldn’t have said how long it took, but the next thing she knew she was back in her nightmare.
She was in a castle somewhere, tucked into misty mountains and surrounded by high walls. She sat up in bed, shuddering at the feeling of silk wrapping around her body. Her hands clenched into fists, and she stared out at a full-length mirror.
She was dreaming of being human again, just not in the way she might’ve liked. Alex had been in this body before, even before the nightmares. But now it seemed she could never leave. She groaned, sat up, flung herself sideways out of bed. She was a little unsteady on her feet, but didn’t fall over. She could make it to the window.
A massive city was tucked into the mountains before her, a more Earth-like version of what she remembered from Canterlot. The buildings looked mostly new, but with a style meant to imitate the old. Thousands and thousands of people went about the streets down there, huddled under roofs and awnings to keep away from the blanket of snow.
And in the way of dreams, Alex was somewhere else. She sat at the head of a massive table, so large and imposing that no person got within fifty feet of her. She sat alone surrounded by food—all the human food she’d been missing. A breakfast of thick bacon, steaming sausages, and breakfast burritos assembled from every other breakfast food that ponies could eat.
She wasn’t wearing a nightgown anymore, but an almost comically cute dress in colors vaguely reminiscent of her pony coat. The fabric was soft and silky, but also got in the way whenever she moved. There was no getting around it: she was a princess, with a little crown perched on her head and a castle all her own.
Someone laughed, a strangled sound that quickly exploded into noise that silenced the eating crowd. The guards standing by the walls—with little pins of Alex’s cutie mark on their chests—moved slowly towards the table.
But just like that, they weren’t there. There wasn’t even a puff of smoke, or any sign from the crowd that they’d noticed.
Dream magic.
And there was no mystery about where that magic had come from. A girl had appeared in the empty seat right beside the throne, picking bits of meat off the plates with her bare hands.
It looked like she had made a near-identical copy of Alex’s own outfit, pausing only to tweak the colors and make some holes in the back for the wings she never gave up.
She’d already stained her gloves with syrup, though she didn’t seem to care. “Hmhh… here I was expecting something serious,” Jackie said, tossing an empty plate to the floor beside them. It shattered on the stone, and for a few seconds there were more stares. There were no more guards, but the nobles near them on the table had started to stare at her. Who was this girl who matched their princess so closely?
“I’m trapped here,” Alex muttered, her head slumping forward to the table. “Unicorn magic doesn’t work here for me, so I can’t use that. I’ve tried every way to get out of this damn castle you can think of. I’ve climbed to the roof, I’ve made ropes out of sheets, I’ve explored the dungeon. There’s no way to escape. I’m losing my mind down here!”
“You’re losing your mind,” Jackie repeated. She snatched the crown from Alex’s head, tossing it up and down in her hands. The soft gold reflected the light streaming in through stained glass, but that was it. Taking the crown off didn’t make the nightmare end. “Because you have to pretend to be a princess in a fancy castle. I don’t know what kind of childhood you had, but this was basically every little girl’s dream during their first few years. All these beautiful servants, a never-ending flow of interesting people. The handsome prince.” But then she got up, pushing the chair back so hard that it fell over behind her as she stood up.
“Not me,” Alex said. “I didn’t have that kind of childhood.” She rose as well—the guards usually wouldn’t let her leave until she finished eating, but there weren’t any guards anymore. The poor figments watching her didn’t seem to know what to do. A few rose from their places, bowing awkwardly and pretending not to be annoyed that their breakfast was cut short.
“You can all… enjoy yourself,” she called, her voice quavering in the huge hall. Earth ponies had powerful voices, teenage girls not so much.
Jackie yanked her by the elbow, tugging her toward one of the nearby doors. “You don’t have to talk to them like that, Alex. These aren’t people. They’re not even holodeck characters. They might as well be stuffed animals.”
“They sure do act like people,” Alex muttered, so she could have something to argue about. But Jackie didn’t rise to it, and soon enough they were wandering through the halls.
“So, just to be clear,” Jackie said, walking so fast that Alex nearly fell over in her heels. She had all of no practice walking in these things, and the ones her royal outfit included were not modest. But whenever she wobbled, Jackie was there to keep her from falling. “There’s nothing supernatural at work here. There are no demons trapping you in loops, your mind hasn’t drifted outside the universe. This is completely mundane and not supernatural at all.”
Alex yanked her arm free, pointing at a gigantic mirror behind her. “You think this is normal? Getting stuck in a loop, the same nightmare over and over…”
“First of all…” Jackie settled one hand against her shoulder. “I don’t think you’ve been looking around very closely, because this isn’t a nightmare. Look, there in the mirror. I want you to spin for me.”
Alex raised an eyebrow. “You want me to… what?”
Jackie demonstrated, twirling around in something that might’ve been taken right out of a ballet studio, or maybe a Disney movie. “Like this.”
Do I have to? She didn’t ask, though. She could already see from Jackie’s expression what the answer would be. So she spun. It wasn’t so bad--when she stood in place, she could keep from falling over. But she could feel her face getting redder as the dress lifted around her ankles, up towards her knees. “How’s that?”
“Perfect.” Her guide took her hand again. “So, the first step is to stop being such a bitch about this. You’re beautiful, this castle is perfect, your dress is pretty, stop complaining. About your dream… hard to say all the reasons why it might repeat, different for everyone. There’s some information on it left over from people science, but I don’t believe most of that. That’s all Freud and cigars.”
She gestured out the window, down at the village far below. Thousands of people flowing like water as snow poured down on them from above. Then just like that, they were down there. They stood in a brilliantly-lit city square, with a choir of singers performing familiar carols in the background. Thousands of people went about their days—until they saw her. All activity in the marketplace stopped. Street-merchants stopped shouting about their wares, beggars stopped begging, the choir stopped playing. They all stared at her.
Alex felt herself blushing, wrapping her arms around her chest, trying to look smaller. Being a pony had insulated her from feeling this way. She was not supposed to be a female human.
“I can tell you what I think,” Jackie went on, as though there had been no interruption. The crowd dutifully remained silent, like the extras in a movie. “Ponies are magic, and just a trickle of that magic gets into your dreams. It moves you through the dream world… towards good stuff and bad. I got into some of that myself.”
“But I’m not a bat pony,” Alex protested. “I don’t have any dream magic.”
“No!” Jackie was suddenly beside her. She reached up with one hand, pushing Alex’s mouth closed. “Don’t interrupt me.”
She waited, maybe to see if Alex was going to try and cut her off again. Only when she didn’t did she finally continue.
“Magic isn’t in your horn, it isn’t in your wings. It’s in here.” She tapped against her head with two fingers. “Humans dream here too, you know. We could visit them if we wanted, and be no danger to their sleeping bodies. I think… well, nobody knows. Luna didn’t tell us. But I think you’re causing your own pain. You aren’t trapped by a demon, you’re trapped by yourself.” She took Alex’s hand, running forward into the crowd so fast that Alex almost fell over. She wasn’t very good at walking around on two legs anymore, and certainly not with heels.
It’s no fair, you had two legs more recently than I did. And I bet you knew how to wear these stupid shoes.
“Here.” Jackie stopped right in front of a section of the crowd—a merchant with his cart, surrounded by children who had been there to buy candy. “Who rules these people?”
“I-I…” Alex stammered, pulled her hand free, but couldn’t come up with an answer. Or at least, couldn’t make herself say the words. “I think that… maybe…”
“Excuse me, sir,” Jackie said. “Who is the ruler of this city?”
“H-her,” the merchant said, nodding respectfully towards Alex.
Alex’s skin went pale.
“And what kind of ruler has she been?” Jackie continued, either not noticing how much she’d stiffened, or not caring. “Go on, it’s okay. She wants your candid opinion.”
“Why… the best!” he said. It was all simple phrases—always was, with “extras” like these. “We’ve never known such peace, such prosperity. The Archive is the best ruler we’ve ever had.”
“Thank you.” Jackie turned her back on him with the same disregard she’d had for the nobles up in the castle. “You draw this to you, Alex. Attraction theory might be bullshit out in the real world, but here everything is a product of the mind. You call, the Dreamlands answers. There’s spooky shit out there, Alex. Go out with me sometime—or ask Ezri, she’s come with me. I think there are… I think there might be gods out there…”
She took Alex’s hand again, and suddenly they were on the castle walls. Alex immediately jerked herself away, clutching against the stone and lowering her head, trying to catch her breath.
“You’re afraid of being in charge,” Jackie said. “I don’t have to be a genius to see that. But it doesn’t look like you’re afraid for the same reason as most people. You’re not afraid of being bad… you’re afraid of being good. And I can’t understand why.”
“Because it doesn’t last,” Alex spurted, wiping her eyes with the back of her arm. As she spoke, the dream behind her changed. Fire swept across the city, consuming it all and leaving only stone corpses behind. “Everything looks perfect, then it isn’t. If all the ancient knowledge of humanity made me perfect at this job, then all the perfect humans would still be ruling too. But they aren’t, and I’m not. Los Angeles still burns. Motherlode still enslaves. Charybdis rises from the deep one day, and everything still dies.”
“Ah.” Jackie was quiet for a long time. Ash drifted through the air in front of her instead of snow, burying some of the ruins. It was like watching thousands of years pass in seconds, until the castle walls were at ground level.
Then Alex felt an arm wrap around her shoulder. “Course you can’t be perfect. Nobody gets to control everything. But you should talk to the people of Motherlode before you think you did a bad job. Wait, I’m right here, you were excellent. I don’t know about Los Angeles, but I’m sure that wasn’t your fault either. And demons… who the fuck is going to fight them better than you? Equestria left us for dead, Alex. Those pretty pony princesses won’t come back. We have to make our own.”
She reached up, straightening the crown on Alex’s head. “How about it, huh? This ‘nightmare’ isn’t going away until you get used to it. I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather be wearing it.” Her own vanished as she said it, though her silly outfit remained. “Now how about we go see some really interesting nightmares together.” She put out her hand. “We could go on an adventure, like old times? That stupid computer can’t keep us from having fun in here.”
“Sure,” Alex answered. She wasn’t sure it would make a difference—wasn’t sure if Jackie was right. But it was worth a try.