Wild Growth sat watching the court below with a mixture of worry and annoyance. The worry came from the fact her best friend had just relived a memory of almost being raped and murdered, and was now crying in the center of the court area. The annoyance came from the fact that she couldn't go down to comfort her friend.
Wild glanced down at the shadowy tendrils that held her in place. She had ceased struggling against them, but Phobia hadn't released them yet. It was just her and Phobia up here in the guest area and Phobia was just casually watching the court below. Tattered Wing had been here for a brief minute earlier after being dismissed as a prosecutor, but Phobia had only asked the other night pony a few quick questions and then sent Tattered to go sit with some friend of hers named Dan.
Wild attempted to tug at her bindings again, and failed yet again. She hadn't believed there was anything that could possibly hold her against her will, not with her strength. She was pretty sure she could have broken out of steel cables if somepony tried to tie her up in them. Things didn't work the same way in the dream realm as in the waking world though; here her earth pony strength meant nothing.
"I'll let you loose if you promise not to try to take off again," Phobia said gently from beside her. "Try it again though and I'll bind you in place for the remainder of the trial."
Wild tried doing another pull at the tendrils, but couldn't budge so much as a muscle in her legs. She lowered her head and sighed. "Okay, you win. I'll sit up here and behave myself."
With no warning the tendrils simply ceased to be. They didn't withdraw or evaporate, they simply didn't exist anymore. She raised a foreleg up and rubbed it with the other.
With her newfound freedom she leaned a little closer to watch the court. Number was still being comforted by Phobia's other self in the center of the court, and Rosetta had joined them. It was a little surreal watching her sister and soon to be sister-in-law comforting Number after everything was said and done. Having shared in the abuse of Swift Strike gave them all something in common though. She just wished she could be comforting Number as well.
At the still occupied table Tonya was crying as well, and Sunset had her held tightly in a hug. Wild didn't know how to feel about Tonya as she watched this. Tonya had looked as horrified as Wild as she had watched the lost part of Number's memory play out. After Number had screamed at the pegasus Tonya had just broken down.
"So...is everything good between you and Number now?" Wild asked Phobia.
"We're good," Phobia said in a quiet voice. "Surviving through the same types of things at the hooves of the same pony gives me empathy for her. He threatened to kill her. I wonder if he was going to try to kill me to if he had been given the time."
While the memory had been playing out Phobia's nightmare avatar atop its pillar had seemed to sit impassively watching, but here Phobia had gone into a full on panic attack of her own. Until then Wild hadn't understood why Phobia had chosen to have her avatar be that horrible black mass, but now she understood it in part. Twisting black masses of darkness didn't have ways of showing their feelings.
Phobia had recovered at close to the same time that Number had in the memory, and didn't have a new episode of panic when Number found she had killed Swift Strike. When the memory was finished, and Number had screamed at Tonya, the twisting black mass had condensed itself down to a shadow form of Phobia and quickly gone to Number's side.
That was also when Wild had tried to hop the edge of her balcony to go join her friend, and had gotten one of the bigger shocks of her life when she was yanked back to her seat by Phobia's nightmare tendrils. Not the biggest shock of her life certainly, but definitely in the top ten. It was interesting to note that that entire top ten list was composed of events in the last two months. She'd think at this point she'd be getting a little numb to shocks.
Well, considering she was sitting in a shared dream with half-a-million night ponies, watching a trial play out with essentially dream demigods as judges--one of whom was going to be marrying her sister--and she accepted this happenstance without so much as a twitch of her tail, then maybe she really was numbed to whatever insanity the universe could produce.
"I guess Number was right. It was self defense," Wild said as she continued to watch Rosetta and Phobia comfort her friend.
"More or less, though there was more going on in that memory than what you might have noticed. There were other elements at work," Phobia replied.
Wild turned to Phobia and flicked an ear. "Like what?"
Phobia turned to her and frowned. "Mixing mind magics has unpredictable results sometimes. What happened here was a little more predictable though."
Wild narrowed her eyes. "And what happened then?"
Phobia flattened her ears. "In a way I'm responsible for both Number resisting Tonya's mind magic and for her being impacted so much by Swift Strike's mind magic."
Her eyes widened. "He had mind magic too?"
Phobia gave her a neutral look. "How do you think he was able to bring her to quaking in fear with just a few threats when she had him at her mercy? He used mind magic to instill fear in her, and because she still had my lingering mind magic in her it just intensified the effect."
Wild hung her head. "So, we don't know anything about what she would have done on her own because we have your magic, his magic, and Tonya's magic all overlaid on her messing with her mind."
"Had," Phobia corrected. "The first thing I did when I went down to comfort her was remove all that. There are no more compulsions driving her...aside from the one she took promising to keep the Dreamwardens secrets."
Wild grimaced. She had to agree to that same compulsion being done to her before she'd been allowed to view this trial. She didn't like the idea of her head being messed with or being forced to comply to a demand. She had the choice to refuse the compulsion, but if she had she wouldn't be present here to see all of this.
She looked back at the court and to Tonya. "What does this all mean for Tonya? Number didn't do murder by her command, so does that mean she's off the hook, case closed?"
Phobia shook her head. "No, it does not. Tonya definitely used mind magic that was meant to compel Number to commit murder. It was only my magic interfering with it that caused it to not work. Number would never have been in the position she was without Tonya's compulsions driving Number to help Tonya set him free for questioning. It got that much out of her, it just failed with the follow through. Freeing him at all made no sense if she intended to just haul him back. The mix of compulsions made her behave irrationally."
"She may have had intent, but it failed. That must mean something for her," Wild asserted.
Phobia looked out at Tonya. "This is far from over. We actually haven't established that she had intent. We only know for sure she did try it. Whether she did it on purpose or not we'll find out in due time. We haven't even established that Number didn't do something subconscious to make sure Swift Strike died, or if the compulsion fooled her into thinking he was dead and then she ripped him to shreds when he was only asleep. That shall be the next major bit of evidence we shall review."
Wild stomped a hoof. "You can't be serious. After all Number just went through you're about to tell her she might have inadvertently killed him on purpose!"
Phobia gave her a hard look. "We have to establish that our judgement is the right one. Because Tonya is not a night pony we have to take extra care when dealing with her. All she does is in the waking world and she does it primarily at times night ponies would be asleep. That makes it harder to track her activities. Further, because we are judging a day pony we want to display to others that we took every action to get a full picture of what happened."
Wild pointed a hoof out at the court. "Are you going to subject Number to more of this then?"
Phobia shook her head. "No, if Number chooses not to prosecute after seeing what was in her memory then her role in the trial is done and we'll send her here to watch the remainder of the trial. In any case, she won't have her mind touched any more."
Wild allowed herself to be mollified as she went back to watching Number. "So, I guess you're going to pull up Tonya's memories next to verify whether she intended to brainwash Number or not?"
"No, we have a different set of memories we're going to observe that are pertinent to this case," Phobia replied. "We'll get to Tonya's eventually, but not yet."
Wild turned and raised an eyebrow at the night pony. "Whose memories then? Sunset's?"
Phobia shook her head.
"Yours? Rosetta's? Tattered's?" Wild asked, naming off every pony she could possibly think of that could at all be involved in this.
"None of those."
"Whose then?" Wild asked again. She couldn't think of anypony else pertinent. The only other possibility for pertinent memories was Swift Strike, and unless the Dreamwardens had some way of pulling those from beyond the grave that wasn't happening.
Just to exhaust the possibility she asked. "Is it Swift Strike's?"
"No. The dead are dead, and beyond our reach," Phobia replied with a shake of her head. "You'll see shortly. I have already seen this evidence. Rosetta isn't going to take this well, I know it. I've known about this evidence since the day I became Dreamwarden, but haven't told her about it. You might want to come visit after we all wake up. She'll need some comfort, and I have a feeling she'll be angry at me for keeping this from her and will be in no mood to speak to me for a few hours. She'll calm down though."
"What could possibly piss Rosetta off at you," Wild asked in confusion. "She's more protective of you than anypony."
"You'll see."
Phobia's refusal to give answers while dropping hints was annoying. It was useless talking to Phobia if she didn't want to answer. Her cryptic hints only increased Wild's frustrations.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Phobia's shadow form return to its pillar and resumed being a large formless black mass.
As Wild turned to look at what was happening the Warden of Death began speaking. "Rosetta Stone please return to your seat. You need to begin discussing with Sunset Blessing and Tonya Middleton what was seen in Number Crunch's memory and plan your defense accordingly."
Rosetta looked up at the Warden of Death, nodded, then gave Number one last hug before returning to her seat.
The Warden of Death looked down at Number. "You have seen the truth. Now you have the choice to walk away with just this knowledge or to prosecute. Which do you choose?"
Number turned and looked at Tonya and sat silent for a few seconds, then turned and looked back at the Warden of Death.
"There's been enough hurting and death. I'm not prosecuting," Number said.
"Very well," the skeletal pony replied. "We shall take a few more minutes for the defense to get themselves together. You shall now go to the audience."
The Warden of Death raised a wing and Number vanished from the court floor and reappeared next to Wild.
Wild instantly grabbed her friend and hugged her. "Number!"
"Wild...grip...tight..."Number wheezed.
Wild instantly released her grip. "Sorry! I didn't think my strength carried over here. It was useless against Phobia's tendril things. I'm just glad you're alright."
Number noticed Phobia then and looked back and forth between Phobia sitting with them and the black mass that was sitting out on the pillar. "That isn't you?"
"I can be in more than one place at the same time here, fully aware and in control of both avatars. I really was giving you a hug just a few moments ago. I was also here watching with Wild as I did it," Phobia explained calmly.
Number blinked and looked back at the black mass and when Wild looked at it as well she could see the black mass's eyes glowing deep within, staring at them across the distance. She shivered, that version of Phobia was just creepy, creepier than the Warden of Death's form. If you stared at Phobia's nightmare for too long you started seeing things in the darkness, horrible things. It was best only to look at it for a moment or so, that way the nightmares couldn't stare back at you.
"Just go with the flow and nod when it comes to the Dreamwardens. If you try to get too many explanations you'll end up getting a headache," Wild grumbled.
"I would like her to try to explain all the same how she mentally is able to do that," Number said. Wild sighed, she'd warned her.
Phobia raised an eyebrow at her and smirked as she turned to face them. "Okay, let me try to explain it." Phobia raised a hoof and a little speck of light appeared. "Here is some little thought or instinct from you. I'm not exactly sure which one, I just kind of pulled one up at random." Phobia gestured again and another appeared. "Here is another." She kept making gestures and they kept appearing. She eventually spread her wings and there was just one larger ball of light. "This is all of them together, you can't really make out which one is which when it's like this, but they're all here. I could destroy this right now and you'd be dead, or just start removing random parts of it and who knows what it would do to you."
Number looked at the ball of light warily. "Okay, so that's my mind. I hope you aren't planning on doing anything to it, but what does that have to do with anything?"
Phobia gestured at it. "All of this works together to make your processing power, like a computer." She made another gesture and another ball of light appeared next to it. "Here is Wild's mind. It's made up much the same way yours is. There's different instincts, thoughts, and memories of course, but it's still a lot of these tiny little lights making up one big whole."
"Okay..." Number said slowly.
Phobia shrank the balls of light down and then started making more balls of light appear. Finally there was one great ball of light again, though it had a slight twinkle to it. "This is all the minds that encompass all the ponies sleeping right now. The twinkling is because minds are constantly going in and out of it."
"Okay, so is that you?" Wild asked.
Phobia shook her head. "It's missing something. Look up."
Wild and Number both looked up. They didn't see anything.
"What are we supposed to be looking at?" Wild asked. "All I see the night sky with stars."
"This isn't the waking world and those aren't stars, those are minds. The same ones in my little ball of light here. What's different between those up there and these down here?" Phobia questioned.
"They're more spread out," Number said with a shrug. "Not really sure other than that."
Phobia nodded. "Perception does make it seem that way, this might work better with the hallway perception with the doors that we sometimes use. But there's something there other than the lights. There's the darkness between that they are stationed within. That's what I am."
"That example doesn't work. Darkness isn't anything, it's the absence of anything," Wild protested. "And isn't darkness associated with evil? I'm not sure you would want to compare yourself to that."
"You're thinking in waking world concepts," Phobia scolded. "As I said, the hallway example might work better. In that one each mind is a door, and I'm the structure of the hallway--the floors, the walls, the ceiling. The Dreamwardens are the order that gives all this shape so it isn't confused chaos. Magic doesn't typically like chaos...unless it's chaos magic, but that's a whole other mess. You're all part of us and we're that order."
Number looked at Phobia. "That's all well in good, I suppose, but what does that have to do with my original question."
Phobia made her ball of light vanish. "Well, your minds when sleeping are all in a sense part of the Dreamwardens, and while we don't know each and every thought that comes from all those minds--unless we focus on them and override the mind--we can borrow on their processing power while in the dream realm. This lets us split our consciousness technically as many times as there are minds. It causes physical strain on our physical minds to do it too much, and our physical minds will shut down if we go too far, but technically I can split my consciousness as many times as there are minds if I'm not concerned about whether my physical body is going to die."
"Why would it kill you, and if it's dangerous why are you doing it?" Wild asked with concern.
Phobia pointed a hoof at her head. "My physical brain tries to mirror what my dream realm brain is doing. At a certain point it gets to where it's firing off so many commands at once it would destroy itself. It wouldn't impact me here, other than not having to worry about limiting myself anymore, but it would effectively kill my body in the waking world. As long as I don't overextend myself too far at once my body is safe."
"I guess that answers the question," Number said with a grunt.
"I hope so," Phobia said with a hint of amusement. Then her ears flattened. "I'll leave you two alone for now. I'd rather not have any pony see my reaction to what comes next in this trial."
Wild wanted to question Phobia about what came next again, but knew she'd get nowhere with it. Thankfully Number didn't seem inclined to asking any more questions at the moment either.
Phobia turned and vanished, leaving them waiting to see what came next in the trial.