//------------------------------//
// The Second Trial 
// Story: The Olden World 
// by Czar_Yoshi 
//------------------------------//

Harshwater's expanding ring of darkness hit Starlight like cold water, breaking and rippling around her as her senses clouded and obscured. Her shadow cloak rose on instinct, the only thing that came when she called for magic she didn't have, and she tried to draw Gerardo's sword. Something was wrong about this, something didn't make sense... but her brain slowed and slowed as she tried to put anything together, and it wasn't like solving a puzzle was going to do anything to stop her attacker.

Her legs gave out as she lost the last bit of control over her senses, blackness covering her vision. She was swimming, drowning, sinking, held in a truly neutral embrace... She was being shaken. "Starlight? Starlight! Snap out of it!"

Immediately, her memories of the encounter felt fuzzy, and Starlight groggily opened her eyes, Gerardo's borrowed sword still clasped in her hooves. Glimmer's concerned face looked over her, waving a hoof to see if she tracked it... She was on her back, and the ceiling was that of the staircase room at the very beginning. She was back where she began. Was she?

Glimmer saw her pupils move and seemed to relax. "This is why I wanted to change you back before coming here," she sighed. "Are you awake?"

"Nngh..." Starlight rubbed her forehead, trying to sit up, and Glimmer helped her. "What happened? Harshwater..."

"You had some sort of nightmare, didn't you?" Glimmer sat there for a moment, looking off into the emptiness of the staircase room. "This cave is heavily steeped in dream magic that manifests in illusions and hallucinations. The communication abilities I loaned you work using the same part of ponies that are used to dream. So you entered here with a major vulnerability you aren't accustomed to using. I've set you back to normal so it shouldn't continue to be a problem, but... you look really shaken."

Starlight frowned. "You think?"

Glimmer folded her ears in apology and stepped away. "You have a cave to explore. I won't keep you." She stayed in Starlight's vision until she blinked, and then she was gone.

Starlight stared at the space where she had been, then at Gerardo's dark sword, worry rising in her gut. That had been a dream? She was back where she started, but... why did she have this?

The door behind her slid open, and her friends poured through.

"Starlight! Yo, what happened?" Valey pored over her with a concerned frown, Maple wrapping her in a concerned hug. "Something definitely grabbed you with telekinesis. Unless you can lift yourself like Shinespark, that means there's another unicorn in here?"

"Stop! Stop, I..." Starlight struggled briefly, the scene playing out perfectly as she remembered it. "How long have I been gone? I think I had a nightmare, but I might be having one right now..."

Gerardo tilted his avian head. "About three minutes. A nightmare, you say? I have to admit, you look surprisingly unaccosted given the circumstances of your-"

"I haven't been replaced!" Starlight hissed, knowing what was coming and fearing it worse than Harshwater's magic. "I'm not a trap! Don't say it! Don't make me doubt you!"

"I wasn't... errr... going to be nearly that direct..." Gerardo drooped. "How did you know what I was going to suggest?"

Valey frowned. "Yeah, what's up with that? Where would you get the idea we were going to think you weren't really you? Don't you trust us? I mean, you could be nervous and have something to hide..." She tapped her chin with a wingtip, a look of worry spreading across her face. "Nah. But wait, Birdo, were you seriously going to ask that?"

Starlight's heart froze, squeezed by icy talons from somewhere deep inside her. "N-No! I trust you, I just dreamed you would! I had a nightmare about this cave! I hope it was a nightmare, at least..."

Now that her friends were back to doubting her, she wasn't sure which reality was even better.

"Starlight, look at me," Maple said, so bright that the prospect she would leave and Starlight wouldn't have her felt like being shredded by grinding rocks. "Are you alright?"

"No. I-I'm not. I hate this cave and I'm s-scared." Starlight buried her face in Maple's chest, wrapping her forelegs as tightly around her neck as she could. "I want to go back..."

At the silence from Valey and Gerardo, she could tell Maple was giving the pair a shut up look. "We can't turn around. We have something important to do, Starlight," she murmured, rubbing Starlight's back with a comforting hoof. "But you don't have to go further. You could stay here if you like."

That was just another thorn in Starlight's battered heart. "I won't leave you. I'm not staying behind."

"Any questions?" Maple asked Valey and Gerardo, her voice low and warning.

"Woah. Calm down." Valey paced closer. "Look, this place is putting me on edge too, okay? And... sorry if I said the wrong thing." She tried to meet Starlight's eyes. "For what it's worth, she doesn't feel all that dangerous... Well, not more than usual with being moon glassed and having that sword of hers."

Starlight glanced from the sword to Gerardo. He wasn't even looking at it. "Of mine?"

"Well, yeah." Valey shrugged. "It's yours, isn't it?"

Starlight watched them all with a blank expression, mouth slightly ajar. She glanced back to the sword. "No it's not. It's Gerardo's."

Gerardo chuckled nervously. "Well, you certainly lend it to me a lot, seeing as my talons are more suited to swordfighting, particularly since that hilt isn't shaped for a mouth! But I'd hardly say right of time investment makes it mine, unless you're trying to pawn it off on me. And even then, perhaps that's a discussion for later?"

"I... Okay..." Starlight swallowed. This wasn't right at all.

"Yeah, I'm kinda in favor of finding Harshwater and getting out, too," Valey added. "This place is weird and this staircase looks long. Everyone who's with me, let's go."

As Maple and Gerardo followed her in her descent, Starlight folded her ears and came too. Gerardo was still wearing the sheathe for the sword, she saw, yet its black metal felt eerily familiar sitting bare against her side.





"Bananas, that staircase was long," Valey complained on reaching the bottom. It was just as long as Starlight remembered, and the next door would lead to the chapel of murals, assuming the cave was the same as she had seen before.

"Umm." Starlight cleared her throat. "I really did dream about this cave... I think... so I might know what's ahead."

Everyone turned to her expectantly, and Gerardo raised a curious eyebrow.

"It's a room with painted walls," Starlight began. "The floor is tiles... Some of them are moon glass. So be careful, Valey."

"Moon glass in the floor?" Valey's face twisted. "Well, that's rude. Let's see." She stepped up to the stone door, and it automatically slid open.

Inside, the chapel room was there, and just as Starlight remembered it, but Valey took a few steps in and frowned. "Kiddo, my cutie mark is pretty good at detecting moon glass. The absolute unbreakable rule of being a batpony is that you never, ever mess with this stuff. And if it's in the floor, I'd know. But my butt's not really giving me much of anything right now..."

Starlight swallowed. "I'll go forward and test?"

No one stopped her, and she zigzagged across the room, stepping on as many tiles as possible and waiting for that thin-ice feeling of yawning darkness below. It never came. After reaching the far side and back and there again, she inspected the doorway, the one thing she knew for sure to be obsidian. It still had a handle, but was made of perfectly ordinary stone.

"Looks like there are just no traps here?" Valey shrugged. "I mean, fine by me."

"But I remember this room!" Starlight squeaked. "I mean... sorry. I don't know why it's the same room, but different." She folded her ears. "There really was moon glass the first time..."

Gerardo gave her a strange look as Maple and Valey carefully marched to the far door. "You know, there's a very strange other possibility at play... What if this nightmare you seem to have had somehow was a trap itself, and is designed to give you knowledge that will lure us into something we would have, if blind, avoided? Perhaps it conditions us to you being wrong, so we fail to heed a warning, or you believe an area to be safe that is in fact deadly?"

Starlight swallowed. The fact that everyone thought the sword was hers aside, it was actually a good idea, and she automatically hated it because it made her less trustworthy and more dangerous to her friends... friends she needed to protect, no matter what. They were her brightness. They were her light.

"Let's... keep going," she murmured as Valey opened the next door. "And just don't listen to me..."

Starlight came in last in the procession to leave the chapel room, unlike the time before when she had taken the lead. No one was staying behind this time. That was good, right? But this time, she was the liability. She was the danger, and she couldn't keep the vague fear out of her mind that her friends would come to a modified trap where she was forced to be the one to stay behind.

Her reluctant gaze traced the murals one last time, wishing she could forestall how bad she was presently feeling. There was the adjacent room, with its pews and altar and small congregation of bowing ponies. She could see them even more clearly than the last two visits; there was no doubt that they were her friends. But unlike the times before, the altar pedestal wasn't empty.

A mare stood before them, twice the height of any adult, the same shade of black as any moon glass. With both wings and a horn, her slender form was clad in ornamented breastplate armor, and her mane and tail held the shape of clouds. Starlight's gaze lingered a second longer before she followed her friends and tore it away, but there was something comforting about the figure, even though she had never seen it before. She had a deep-seated feeling she would be safe there.