ACT FOUR
Twilight and Luna gawked at each other in astounding shock. They were both certain that Pager had awoken.
Meanwhile, the mysterious writer pulled his completed work from the typewriter, snickering sinisterly at. “…A true masterpiece.”
He threw it to the floor and then loaded the typewriter again to type out another story.
Suddenly, there was another dream, of The Publisher and Sandy Beam.
“What’s going on now?” wondered Twilight.
Father and daughter’s dream turned out to be just as horrific as the last dream.
There they were, walking along a riverbank on a beautiful day, when suddenly they came to a rickety bridge with no other way across.
The Publisher and Sandy carefully treaded across the rotted boards over the flowing river, but no surprises, the bridge couldn’t hold their weight, and it collapsed.
The Publisher managed to hang on tightly, but Sandy fell into the rushing waters bellow, screaming for her father to help, but she was heading straight for a waterfall… and she went over.
Both she and her father screamed, and their dream ended…
…The two of them woke up, at home and in bed and in sheer fright.
More and more nightmares followed, and just as Twilight suspected, it was all the ponies she and her friends had interviewed that day.
Each dream was as frightening and deathly as the last, and yet Twilight and Princess Luna were powerless to stop the dreams, or even enter them!
The librarian was being tortured again! She dreamed about running through a dark forest, and all the trees and rocks and other things, they all seemed to come to life as creepy monsters they kept trying to grab for her.
The school teacher was dreaming too! A Parents Teachers Conference, voted her out over her ways of teaching, and rather than just throw her out of the building, they tied her up, and prepared to burn her at the stake like old-fashioned savages.
“What is all this?” Twilight wondered “What did these ponies do to deserve all this?!”
Luna was just as upset as she was, and then she saw another dream that turned her blood cold.
“Celestia!” she cried.
Twilight saw too…!
Celestia was minding her own business, sniffing the flowers in the royal garden, when suddenly she was ambushed by her own palace guards. They chained her up, gagged her mouth, and clamped an anti-magic manacle so she couldn’t use any magic and was unaffected by other magic. Also, an anti-lift patch was placed on one of her wings, making it impossible for her to fly.
Then, and cold and shadowy figure stood before her, obviously in kahoots with the guards, and was looking down on her hissing, “I’m afraid your reign has come to an end, Princess.”
Celestia struggled and fussed to break free, but the shadow instructed the guards, “…Make sure she’s never found.”
Before long, Celestia was tied to a pole on a makeshift raft, and cast adrift over the raging sea.
She managed to struggle so to get the gag off her face, but she still couldn’t break free of the chains, and to make matters worse, she was heading straight for shark infested waters!!
Those big brutes began to chomp away at the wood of the raft, and then… the large tentacles of an enormous octopus ensnared her and began to pull her down into the water where she would drown… as the sharks came straight for her ready to bite!
“…SISTER!!” cried Luna.
The dream had already ended, and Celestia woke up gasping in fright.
Twilight felt her stomach turn. She never expected Celestia would be a target for the nightmares.
“This doesn’t make any sense. She’s the ruler of Equestria. That hardly connects her strictly to books and publishing.”
Suddenly, there was one final dream, concerning Starlight and Rarity.
“No! Them too?” cried Twilight.
The writer had just typed the title of his final short for the night.
“The Last Dance”
“It was a magical night at the Grand Galloping Gala; the sort of night when anything could happen, and it was about to!
Rarity, Starlight Glimmer, and Twilight Sparkle were all at the Gala.”
Twilight could then see herself in the dream. “What? Why am I in that dream?”
In truth, she didn’t wish to know.
She then quickly realized that the dream was going escalate into something horrific, and she didn’t want her friends to wake up in a fright.
She realized, “I have to wake them up!” and she turned to Princess Luna “Please, can you send me back to the palace.”
“I’ll send us both back!” agreed Luna.
In a puff of smoke, they both were back on the terrace at the palace, and they both teleported off.
“Three dashing stallions approached the three mares and offered their hoofs, asking them to dance, to which the three ladies swooned.”
Rarity sighed heavenly in bed and began murmuring the dance, “One-two-three… One-two-three… twirl… dip…”
She felt like a princess as she danced with the handsome stallion.
It was beginning to look as if pure romance would bloom for her as the male leaned in seemingly to kiss her…
“Rarity…!” Twilight called, and the dream began to shake away as she slowly awoke to find Twilight shaking her in her bed. “Rarity, wake up!”
Rarity snapped awake to find Twilight, Luna, and Starlight there next to her bed. “What is the meaning of this?!” groaned Rarity, and she checked the clock on the table, it was nearly 3 A.M, and before she could complain any further, Starlight quickly said “…It was the nightmares! We were being infected.”
“What?” Rarity was most flabbergasted “But how can that be? Why, I was having the most delightful of dreams…”
Starlight cut in, “Being at the ball, and dancing with those handsome stallions…?”
Rarity blinked twice and nodded. “But how do you--”
“I was having that exact same dream, and Twilight was there too.”
Twilight found it astounding herself, since she wasn’t even asleep. “If I was asleep, I would have shared the nightmare too… and believe me, it would become just so.”
Rarity shuddered, now finally understanding the full seriousness of this.
Luna then realized, “… Celestia! I must go and check on my sister too.” and she teleported off.
As for the writer, he had finished his story, pulled it from the typewriter, and snickered at it. “How lovely… a pure work of genius. I dare say it’s the best one I’ve ever made.”
He decided to keep it as a personal keepsake, rather than toss it to the floor with the rest of the discarded stories, which were all over the place.
“I guess I should gather them all up.”
He let out a huge yawn, feeling extremely tired as he had been working for hours. “…I’ll do it later. I’ve done enough for tonight.
He got up and proceeded to the stairs, but turned back to look at his typewriter one last time, “…And we’ll have even more to do the next time.”
He turned out the light and headed back to bed while cackling softly.
Later on, when the sun came up, Stone Heart leapt out of bed, feeling a bit tired a groggy.
“What a night.” he groaned “But so worth it.”
He reached over to his nightstand and held up a single story, entitled, “The Last Dance”
Indeed, it was Stone all along who had written it and all the other nightmare stories that terrorized the ponies of Canterlot, and all of Canterlot still had not even the slightest idea.
“A marvellous story…” he hissed softly “Perhaps now they’ll get off my case.”
Nevertheless, he had a quick breakfast, and then dressed in his uniform for another round of garbage collecting, but before he left he found he still had a little time to clean up that mess in the cellar.
He pulled the carpet away and retreated downstairs to where his type write was, and using his magic he, picked up all the papers that were scatted across the floor into one big stack.
“These are proud masterpieces.” he sighed “I guess I really can’t keep them all. Might as well take them out back and burn them.”
He placed all the papers in a box and took them all to his backyard, planning to put them on his bonfire, and just as he was about to blast them all to bits with his magic, he could see over the yard fence, a royal courier coming up to his house, and knocking at the door calling, “Open in the name of the princess!”
Stone groaned, “What now?”
He still walked through the gate and met with the courier, who handed him a letter. “…An urgent calling from Princess Celestia.” the pony said, and then he walked off.
Stone sighed irritably, and he read the letter, which stated that Celestia requested an audience with him again at the palace at noon.
As usual, Stone did not take kindly to it, but was obligated to answer the call. “What does she want from me now?”
Suddenly, a strong wind began to billow up, and it tipped over the box on the bonfire spilling all the papers out.
“Oh, no!” he shouted as he quickly dashed back to gather them all up, but some of the pages flew up, up into the air and were carried along the wind.
“Perfect! Just perfect!” he grumbled, but before anything else happened, he quickly burned all the remaining ones he had away, and then prepared to leave for work as well as his meeting at the palace.
Then he realized he still had one of the stories on him-- the one about The Dance, and Twilight and her friends. He was already pushed for time, and decided to just pocket it and then stow it someplace safe later to keep it.
Later at the palace… all the friends were gathered at the table for breakfast, which Celestia had prepared for them, but Rarity, Starlight, and Twilight looked exhausted and baggy-eyed.
Twilight was only tired because her pep pills had worn off, and as expected, she was weary from not having slept at all in the night.
Rarity let out a huge yawn, “I was so worried about the nightmare recurring I didn’t dare fall asleep again.”
“That makes two of us.” said Starlight.
Celestia only felt slightly tired, due to her nightmare having woken her up in the middle of the night. “I managed to get back to sleep after Princess Luna checked on me. My nightmare didn’t reoccur, but I must say it was frightening… it felt so real.”
“Oh, you poor things,” said Fluttershy.” She and the others all felt concerned for their friends. “We didn’t have any nightmares at all.” said Rainbow, and the others shook their heads.
“Well, I did have a dream.” said Pinkie “I dreamt that I baked the biggest birthday cake anyone ever saw, and well…” she stopped when everyone else gave her a look. “Sorry.”
Twilight, though weary, delivered her report to Celestia, and the others.
“I was right… all the ponies we interviewed experienced nightmares, and just as Princess Luna promised, she couldn’t stop the nightmares herself, nor could we enter the dreams.”
Celestia felt most concerned.
“But wait a minute.” said Spike, and he looked at Celestia and the other weary ponies. “How come all of you have nightmares? I thought only those connected to books and stories were the prime victims?”
Twilight tried to figure out, but her weariness began to overtake her. She yawned and rubbed her eyes. So did Rarity and Starlight.
Celestia wasn’t as tired as they were, but she could see they were in no condition to be working. “I’m ordering you three to get back to bed and get some rest for a while.”
The trio gawked at her, but she wouldn’t hear any arguments.
The others agreed with her. “You should get some sleep.” said Applejack “We all can take over the investigation today.”
Twilight opened her mouth to protest, but it came out as another yawn, forcing her to agree, and before long, she, Starlight, and Rarity were in bed and sleeping soundly in a guest suite, and they were left quietly be.
“Well, what are we waiting for?” asked Pinkie, and she acted like a real determined solider about to go off into battle “…Let’s get out there and stop those nightmares once and for all!”
Rainbow then shot down her enthusiasm by saying, “Yeah… and just where do you want to start looking?”
Pinkie opened her mouth wide and bravely, but said sheepishly, “…I have no idea.”
Rainbow groaned.
Applejack then suggested, “We better re-think some things here, like how Twilight and the others fit into all this.”
“That’s a good idea.” said Fluttershy.
“Agreed,” added Celestia.
They all sat together in the conference room going over their notes and experiences.
“Okay, here’s what we’ve got so far…” said Spike “We know that all the victims involved had something to do with books, publishing, or writing of some sort, but that doesn’t explain why Twilight and the others were struck as well.”
The others pondered, and Pinkie puffed on a bubble pipe while wearing a detective cap. “It helps me think better.” she claimed.
Celestia then suggested, “Obviously there must be some other connection; something that I and the others will have with the victims you interviewed.”
“Yes… but what?” asked Fluttershy.
Everyone thought it over greatly, but they were drawing a blank.