//------------------------------// // 8. Negotiations // Story: Trouble at Midnight Castle // by RainbowDoubleDash //------------------------------// Cozy was moving. She knew that, even though she couldn’t see anything through the darkness. The movement felt strange. Half the time her hooves were on stone beneath them, sometimes she was flying and her wings beating, but sometimes there was just a whirl, a feeling like she was being swept by some kind of cold force that carried her along, movement without any actual effort on her part. She wasn’t in control of her own actions; they were just happening. That should have been terrifying…but for some reason it wasn’t. She just plain was not afraid, felt nothing about her predicament other than a sort of detached curiosity which itself invoked curiosity. Why wasn’t she afraid? Why was she so calm? Almost there, the voice, the thing in the darkness at the edges of her vision, intoned. Almost there…! The darkness closed around Cozy with a sort of utter totality, the thing beyond her vision seeming to grow and envelop absolutely everything – and then… Pain. Sheer, utter agony…but not her own. She was aware of it, could feel it and yet somehow wasn’t hurt by it. But the thing in the darkness writhed and screamed and fell away, and Cozy opened her eyes… And panicked. Terror overcame the filly, all the fear she should have been feeling about what had happened descending upon her all at once, and she failed in suppressing the urge to scream as she fell back onto her haunches, then her back. Her hooves scrabbled on the rock beneath her, and she managed to get her legs under her, turned, and fled until she almost collided with a wall. She hunkered down against it, eyes wide as she looked around, trying to get her bearings. She was outside. Somehow in a matter of mere moments she had been able to travel from the depths of Midnight Castle to its entrance, out onto the top of the plinth that Midnight Castle sat atop. The Sun was almost directly overhead, its golden light shining down on her fully and – wait, wasn’t it supposed to be suppressed – all the light of the Sun pushed away from the castle so that it was trapped in perpetual twilight? But instead she stood just as exposed beneath the Sun as she would have been out in the deserts of the Nether Lands. The heat was unbearable, and worse, there was this odd sensation of distant pain throughout her body. The darkness possessing her writhed. Cozy, herself, was hyperventilating, her heart beating at a mile a minute in her chest. She hugged herself, or started too, but one hoof instead planted itself on the ground. She grabbed at it with her other hoof and tried to lift it, but it wouldn’t budge. It burns! The voice inside her head screamed, as Cozy’s rebel leg tried to pull her forward, into the magical darkness of Midnight Castle’s entryway. The light! GET ME OUT OF THE SUN! Cozy almost did due to the sheer force of the words and the very real panic she still felt, but stopped herself. She stopped trying to get her rebellious hoof under control and instead focused simply on staying in place, glancing up at the Sun again. She took in a steadying breath as she pushed all her thoughts aside and focused on just two things, the only things that mattered right now: there was something inside her that could control her actions. However, that thing was suppressed and hurt by sunlight. “Yeah…I don’t think so,” She told the darkness. Erebus. That was what it had called itself. Cozy rallied her senses, focused herself past her terror, focused on the object of her hate and the fact that it was in pain. “You wanna possess me and use me? You can suffer!” PLEASE! I’ll do anything – ANYTHING! “Well right now that anything is shutting up!” Erebus didn’t. Cozy did her best to ignore the screaming of Erebus inside her mind. It was cacophonously loud, but it wasn’t omnipresent. She took in another breath, trying to cool her nerves, trying to find some way to focus past the screaming and the heat and the glare of the Sun and think. Erebus had possessed her, tried to run out of Midnight Castle and to freedom, but the sunlight – the no-longer-suppressed-sunlight – was stopping it from doing that. Must have been some kind of fail-safe, something put in place by Scorpan, or by whoever had defeated Lord Tirac. So that told her a few things. It told her that Erebus had a vulnerability, that it wasn’t all-powerful, it had a weakness: sunlight. It also meant that while it was possessing her, was inside of her mind, it couldn’t exactly read it, or at least it didn’t automatically know everything she did. After all, she’d known that it was still just the afternoon outside, but Erebus hadn’t, had been so focused on its freedom that it hadn’t stopped to consider the daylight. Erebus could make mistakes. On the other hoof, it had known her name without anypony having ever said it, and it had known Rainbow Dash’s and Tirek’s too. Tirek it could have recognized from descriptions of Scorpan, or those statues left by Scorpan, or any number of other reasons connected to the ancient gargoyle…but not her or Rainbow Dash. So Erebus could read minds…but maybe not very deeply? Or at least it had to try, put in effort, know what it was looking for. Cozy’s thoughts could remain her own. But on the third hoof… “Why wasn’t I scared?” Cozy demanded. “You were possessing me – why wasn’t I afraid? You just…just stopped me from being afraid? Switched it off?” Cozy’s possessed hoof was trembling, struggling, trying to pull her forward. Cozy resisted. “Well, sooner or later Tirek is gonna find me up here,” Cozy said. “And Professor Dash and Miss Pose and those cosplayers and Scorpan. And Scorpan will bring the Sun Stone and force you out of me.” Her possessed hoof shot forward again, and she yelped as she was dragged closer to Midnight Castle. She beat her wings and kicked off from the ground, pulling herself backwards, but then there was a shifting feeling inside of her. She regained control of her hoof – but Erebus seized her wings and tried to power her forward. “Nuh-uh!” Cozy exclaimed, reaching back and grabbing one wing, stopping her flight. She fell to the ground and quickly scampered back and away from the entry. Erebus seized her hoof once more, but Cozy managed to hold herself in place – and if anything she was further from the entry than when she’d started. Cozy grinned in spite of the screaming and the heat and the fact that she was already sweating. “Not long before Tirek – ” Erebus moved within her again, but instead of any limbs she felt it moving up to her eyes. She let out a cry of terror, but all Erebus did was use her eyes to glance around, look for the nearest shadow, then retreated back to her hoof and pushed it underneath Cozy’s barrel, into the shadow her body cast – the only one that was close enough to reach. She rolled to try and keep it in the sunlight, but the hoof moved to remain in the shadows. It almost certainly would have looked ridiculous from the outside…but Cozy shunted that aside and focused on making sure that she stayed well away from any shadow that wasn’t her own, and especially any shadow that connected back to Midnight Castle. “You can move between connected shadows, can’t you?” Cozy asked. “I’m not gonna let you!” Her rebellious hoof finally gave up. Erebus let out a strangled cry within her. Listen to me…just put me in a shadow, anyshadow, and let me talk! Hear me out! “No way!” I promise to give you control of your body back if you just listen to me! Cozy couldn’t help but pause at that, but shook her head. “No.” I’ll…I’ll Pinkie promise! Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye! Cozy was genuinely starting to wonder if this was just a bad dream now – no way that the Rainbow of Darkness would ever actually do a Pinkie Promise. Even Tirek never actually gave one, he kept insisting that his word was enough. And just because there were supposedly consequences for breaking one, that didn’t mean that those consequences meant anything to Erebus. It didn’t even have eyes, or a heart. But, then again…it was certainly desperate, so maybe… Cozy glanced around. She saw a rock that was separate from all the other rocks atop the plinth, it shadow a dozen feet away from any other nearby one. She made her way over to it, carefully avoiding any other shadow – and making sure her own shadow avoided them as well – and stopping near the rock’s shadow. “Alright,” she said, holding out a hoof – and not putting it into the shadow, leaving a gap of a full two feet. She dug in her other three hooves and tightly tucked her wings, getting ready for anything Erebus might do. “Get out and I’ll listen.” You’re not in the – “No, I’m not! And I’m not gonna be either and there is nothing you can say or promise that will make me! You either can get out here and now, or we keep fighting until – ” Erebus must have been saving up all of its will and power, because Cozy’s wings snapped open of their own accord even as her hind legs kicked her forward. Before she could even think to do anything, she’d tumbled and fallen into the shadow. Instantly she lost control of every part of her body obscured from the Sun, which all scrabbled to drag her fully into the shade. She heard something in the back of her skull – whatever the psychic equivalent of gasping for breath was, probably, as her body hunkered down in the shadows, and her eyelids closed themselves and her hooves covered her eyes, plunging her world into blackness. Stop it! Cozy screamed in her mind. Let me go! Let me GO! The thing in the darkness, just beyond her vision, shifted. You would do anything to secure you freedom from a prison, Cozy Glow, why are you so surprised that I would do the same? I don’t care that you’re doing the same, I care that you’re doing it to me! Get out! Erebus shifted once more. Perhaps if we moved this to a more comfortable setting… Cozy wondered a moment what that was supposed to mean, when the darkness seemed to fade away like a fog. All around her she was suddenly able to see things that hadn’t been there before…a small room, with a pair of writing desks and a bunk bed. The lower bunk had posters of various pony singers and performers, while the upper bunk had a half-dozen books on its end. One wall featured a bookcase that was stuffed full to bursting, and a window in another wall let the sun shine in. Cozy’s eyes widened. This…this was her room at the School of Friendship. An exact replica – right down to the lower bunk that had been used by her roommate. There was a knock on the door to the room. Cozy whirled – wait, how did that work, she wasn’t here, she was at Midnight Castle – and saw the handle to the door turn. She made to leap for it, to hold it closed, but she was too late and it opened up… And Cozy’s heart missed a beat, because she was looking at Gallus – the griffon who attended the School of Friendship, one of the six creatures who had foiled all her plans to take over Equestria…the one she hated most. The same blue-and-yellow feathers, the same broad and strong wings, the same downy feathers across his chest, the same slight arch to one brow born from a lifetime of sarcastic appraisal of everything around him… “W-wait, no,” Cozy said, shaking her head and backing up a step. “You’re not Gallus – you can’t be Gallus.” “Nope,” Gallus – Erebus, it had to be Erebus – said as he let himself in. He looked down at himself, flexing his talons, flicking his tail, spreading his wings and stretching before planting himself into a setting position. “But I don’t really have a face. It’s kind of a drag, makes reaching out to people hard. So, I thought I’d adopt something a little…eh, friendly, I guess?” He shrugged. “Look, we met under the worst circumstances, I get it, you don’t trust me. I wouldn’t trust me either.” Cozy backed away again, and felt herself backing into her desk. She shook her head. He even sounded like Gallus. Not just the voice, but the way he was speaking. His movements, too – he settled down onto his stomach, tail flicking behind him as he looked at Cozy, talons of one paw tapping out rhythmically on the ground while he leaned his head on his other paw. “Fortunately,” Erebus said, waving a claw idly around at the room, “as long as we’re like this, we’re interacting at the speed of thought. We’ve got time to talk, take a breather. Relax.” He pointed behind her, at the window and the sunlight streaming in. “Also, since this is all in your head? It’s harmless for both of us. There’s no reason not to just calm down.” Cozy shook her head, closing her eyes. Well…this threw a lot of what she’d been thinking about Erebus out the window. She hadn’t been thinking of Gallus at all, but he’d reached into her mind and grabbed him and the School of Friendship straight from her brain, was trying to appeal to her… “Get out of my head!”: She screamed. “I mean, that’s literally impossible,” Erebus said, still using Gallus’ voice. She peeked out of one eye, and saw him still sitting there wearing Gallus’ body. “I’m a part of you. I’m a part of everything. I’m darkness, Cozy. Before the oldest thing you can think of was, I am.” Cozy opened both her eyes. “That’s a lie. You’re just some…some kind of monster, just like Nightmare Moon or King Sombra or the Pony of Shadows.” “Yeah I have no clue what those are.” Erebus shrugged again, then got up and went over to the bookcase. “I’ve kind of been stuck in a castle with no one but a crazy gargoyle for company for more than a thousand years.” He ran a talon across the spines, before selecting one book and opening it up, paging through it. “Although, hmm…I gotta say I’m kinda’ impressed by what’s in here about them. Not bad.” Cozy’s eyes widened. She leaped forward and snatched the book from Gallus, slamming it shut. “Don’t read – don’t look at my memories! Stay out of my head!” “Why?” Erebus asked. He flicked his crest of feathers. “Look, if you’re worried about privacy, I won’t tell any creature. I’m just trying to get up-to-date on what’s going on in the world. Like I said, I’ve been stuck for a long time, I’m out of the loop.” Cozy forced herself to try and focus. Erebus-as-Gallus watched her intently as she did, as she hugged the book – the book that apparently represented her memories – close to her. Or did it? He could read her mind casually without this weird inner world, after all… She flinched when Erebus reached out, but it was only to gently lay his hand on her withers. “Look,” he said, “let’s start over. Okay? Let’s start from the beginning. My name is Erebus. You’re Cozy Glow. You want to rule Equestria.” His head tilted to the side. “And you came to Midnight Castle looking for me so I could help you. That’s not mind reading, that’s just a logical conclusion, there’s no other reason to go to Midnight Castle.” “I don’t want your help,” Cozy said. “You did when you thought I was just some kind of magical laser or something.” “I did when I thought that I’d be in charge.” Cozy shook her head. “I’m not gonna help you take over Equestria!” Erebus chuckled, withdrawing his claws and ruffling his wings. “Well then you’re in luck, Cozy. Because I have no interest whatsoever in ruling anything.” Cozy’s mouth was open, but no sound came out. Partially this had to do with the fact that her mouth wasn’t open and there wouldn’t have been sound anyway – this was all in her head. Cozy hadn’t forgotten that. But mostly, because she was taken aback by Erebus’ statement. “What?” She finally managed. Erebus nodded. He gently took the book from Cozy’s grasp, but set it back in the shelf where he’d gotten it from. “It’s true. Ruling things? That is so not my style.” He moved alongside her, stretched out a wing and lay it over her as he started walking, herding her towards the door. “Come on, let’s go get something to eat, I’m starving.” “How would that even – ” “It’s just nice to talk over food. No, of course we won’t actually be eating, but like I said, I want you to be comfortable.” Cozy let Erebus-as-Gallus herd her along, following the faux griffon as they walked out the door and into the empty School of Friendship beyond. Cozy’s hooves echoed through the hallways as they made their way through, passing by room after empty room…except one. The library. The door to it was open, and Cozy saw movement within. She leapt away from Erebus-as-Gallus, diving into the library. “I said stay out of my head!” She exclaimed at whatever was inside. Ocellus – Erebus-as-Ocellus – was hovering in the air, a book in her hooves. She turned her head so that her compound eyes could see Cozy clearly, while still keeping the book and its pages in her field of vision. “I’m not looking at anything personal!” Ocellus – Erebus, Cozy insisted to herself – said. In Ocellus’ voice. She flew down to the floor and held up the book in her hooves. “See? This is just history! I’m learning all sorts of new things about Tirek and the Pillars of Equestria and Celestia and Luna and the Elements of Harmony, and I haven’t even gotten to Nightmare Moon yet!” Cozy snatched away the book, glaring at Erebus-as-Ocellus. “I don’t care. We’re in my head, everything in here is mine! So you just stay out!” She glanced over her shoulder and saw Gallus – Erebus! – at the library door, leaning against it and looking uninterested. Erebus, the one that looked like Ocellus, pawed at the ground with on hoof, casting her head down. “I’m…I’m sorry. I am making this hard, aren’t I? There’s just so much that I want to do, so much that I want to know. It’s always fun to learn new things! You agree with that, right?” “I do,” Gallus said. Cozy ground her teeth together, spinning around. “You are the same creature as her!” She exclaimed, jabbing a hoof at Ocellus. She turned back around, and found that Ocellus had already turned to look at the books again. “And you – I mean, just you, I mean…gah! You’re coming with me and the other you to the cafeteria.” She grabbed Ocellus by one hoof, taking off, beating her wings as she dragged the changeling out. Ocellus dug in her hooves. “Just one book, please?” “No! These aren’t books, they’re my memories!” “And I could access them whenever I wanted!” Ocellus said. Blue changeling fire washed over her and she turned into a snake – losing the limb that Cozy had been holding in the process, getting Cozy to let go of her. But she swiftly returned to her true form. “You already put that together. I pulled Gallus and Ocellus and all of this from your head. If I wanted to just grab your memories, I could.” “Definitely,” Gallus agreed. Ocellus turned her face away, rubbing one leg with her other hoof. “But…but instead, I’m presenting them as books, books you can keep away from me. And I had the door to the library open. I let you see me, I didn’t have to. I know this is your head, this is your stuff. But I want things too. I’ve been stuck in one place for so long…” Gallus came up behind Cozy. “Look, I want to work with you. Establish a good relationship. But that’ll require give-and-take, right?” Cozy glanced between Gallus and Ocellus – between Erebus and Erebus. “You haven’t given me anything but a headache!” The two facsimilies of her former classmates looked between each other. “You know…” Ocellus finally said, “…that’s fair. You’re right.” “Good!” “But we should go to the cafeteria,” Ocellus said, licking her lips as she followed Gallus, who was already leaving. “I’m starving.” Cozy watched them go. She had no idea what the consequences would be for staying behind, or for following them…she decided to fly out the library after her two blue former classmates. As she did, however, she shut the library’s doors behind her. Maybe it would do something, maybe it wouldn’t, but it wouldn’t hurt to try. Then she was off. She wasn’t surprised in the least that by the time she got to the cafeteria, another former classmate of hers had joined Gallus and Ocellus. Silverstream was behind the counter of the cafeteria, stirring, mixing, frying, baking, the pink hippogriff moving like a blur and cooking up a storm, complete with a white chef’s hat and apron. “Just a second!” Erebus-as-Silverstream said. “I have to get the taste of all this just right! It’s been more than a thousand years since I’ve gotten to taste anything! Ooh, and I think you’ll really like this, I didn’t get to learn what you like but there’s this old Centaur desert with honey and almonds and bananas that I’m trying to make that – ” “Stop,” Cozy said. Silverstream did, mid-stir. She looked to Cozy, ruffling her wings. “I mean, okay, sure, but I need to take the bread out of the oven in a few seconds or else it’s gonna burn. Although maybe that’ll go good with – ” “I know what you’re doing!” Cozy interrupted, landing on top of a table and jabbing a hoof at Erebus, at just Erebus. “I’m not stupid! You’re trying to trip me up with my memories of these three. You’re using their different voices and personalities to make it seem like there’s a bunch of creatures who are all making the same point. Trying to basically use peer pressure. And you’re trying to distract me with food that isn’t even real and a school that’s just a figment of my imagination. Well it’s not gonna work!” The three looked at one another. “Okay,” Silverstream said, setting down her utensils, switching off the oven, and coming out from behind the counter, doffing all her chef’s accountments. “So…what will work?” She brushed her mane to one side of her head, and smiled down at Cozy. “How about you start,” Cozy said, “by explaining what the hay you meant by not wanting to rule anything?” “Oh, that? Pshhh.” Silverstream waved one claw and tittered. “I mean exactly what I said: I don’t want to rule anything.” “Then explain what you did to Tirac. What you did to Scorpan – what you’re doing to me!” “Ah.” Silverstream tapped her beak. “Right, Scorpan…he does kind of make me look bad, doesn’t he? Yeah I can see where you’re coming from.” Silverstream drummed her claws together. “Okay, it’s like this. I’m darkness, like I said. I’m primordial shadow and stuff. But I do kind of, y’know, like to eat.” “Eat?” Cozy asked, wings flaring and leaning away. Silverstream’s eyes widened, and she laughed. “Oh! Pfahahaha! You thought I meant ponies! No! No, no, no, nothing like that!” Ocellus came over, patting Silverstream while she giggled. “Darkness, Cozy. I feed on darkness. Which, yes, I said I am darkness. It’s really very complicated, it’s not really eating but think of it as eating. The long and short off it is that the more darkness there is the world – the more ponies who embrace it, are empowered by it, believe in it – the stronger I become. And then that strength becomes your strength, so that you can spread darkness ever further.” Cozy glanced between the two forms of Erebus. “So why don’t you want to rule anything, then? Why not spread darkness yourself?” “I can’t do anything by myself,” was Gallus’ morose reply. “It sucks. I’m the most powerful being in the world, but I can only do anything if I have a host, some creature I’m part of – and my true power only comes out if they want to work with me, if they agree to it. Otherwise, I’m limited to little parlor tricks. If my host is constantly fighting me I’m not much better than a typical pony.” “Scorpan wanted power,” Ocellus said. “I gave it to him and we worked together for years. But then he just, ugh, grew a conscience. Decided that spreading darkness was a bad thing. Fought me, tricked me into the Sun, weakened me enough that he could use the Sun Stone to drive me from him. Took him a long time, but he pulled it off.” “Not like Tirac,” Silverstream said. She clasped her talons together beside her face and stared upwards and was – blushing? Why was she blushing? “Ooh, now he was a dream come true…for me. A nightmare for every other creature. Also, his voice, you should have heard it! It was so deep and smooth!” She cleared her throat, then looked at Cozy, eyes narrow and spoke in a completely different, masculine voice. “Quiet, my friend…your time will come.” Cozy was unimpressed – none of this was real and Erebus could easily have made the sound up on the spot. “So what exactly is ‘darkness’, then?” Ocellus tapped a hoot to her mouth. “Difficult to explain, exactly…by darkness I don’t mean an absence of light, I don’t mean just a poorly lit room – but you know that. It’s more like…a state of mind. A certain feeling. Let’s just say, you and Tirek, you’re brimming with darkness. So were Nightmare Moon and King Sombra and the Pony of Shadows.” She looked directly at Cozy, her compound eyes seeming to flash a little. “The more ponies – the more any creature – there is like that in the world, the more I can feed on them, the stronger I am. The more I can do.” “The more you can do,” Gallus added. “My power is your power, if you’d only let me give it to you.” The three creatures smiled, stepping away from Cozy. “Teleportation,” Silverstream said. Her hind hoof touched a shadow cast by a table, and she disappeared – and reappeared instantly on the other side of the room, shadows bleeding off of her. “You think Professor Rainbow Dash is fast because she can move faster than sound? Darkness is faster than sound. Darkness is faster than light. Light has to travel – darkness is already there.” “Speaking of,” Ocellus said, reaching out to another shadow, placing her hoof on it, then drawing it back – and taking the shadow with it. She drew up the shadow of the table like it was cloth, spun it around herself like a dark cape that settled easily on her withers. She grinned, taking the shadow off and stretching it out into a long spear – which she then stabbed into the ground a few times, creating actual holes. “Shadow-sculpting,” she said, “but real. Any darkness I touch becomes mine. I can – you could – shape it however you wanted, make the shadows do whatever you want. And, just so you know…it doesn’t have to be small. Grow me enough in power and I can work the shadows of a mountain. Or more…you should see what I can do during an eclipse.” “But then of course there’s what I bet will be your personal favorite,” Gallus said, snapping two talons. Cozy heard noise from behind her and turned to look, and saw – unsurprisingly – the other three students who had foiled her plans. Yona, Smolder, and Sandbar all waved at her as they entered the cafeteria. Sandbar waved at her. “Hey, Cozy…you totally uncool little half-windigo,” Cozy’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped. Had Sandbar just – had Erebus just… “Failed to take anything over today?” Smolder taunted, hands on her hips and leaning forward. “You’re not half as cute as you think you are.” Yona stomped a hoof as Cozy’s wings flared wide. “Yona agree! Cozy-pony’s plan to take over Equestria full of holes so big even yak could fit through!” Cozy was about to lay into the three, and into Erebus, when Gallus appeared from behind them and stretched out his arm so that the shadows of his talons touched the shadows of each of the three, and then pulled. They all let out yelps as they fell over, their shadows stretching unnaturally towards Gallus. He smiled back at Cozy, jerking one thumb at Sandbar. The earth pony rose up on his hind hooves and started dancing around, eyes wide and visibly trying to struggle against it, to no avail. Yona rose up next, struggling but failing to stop herself as she kicked Smolder across the floor. Smolder rolled to the foot of the table that Cozy stood on, then was forced to her feet and dragged backwards. She tried to dig her claws into the floor tiles for a moment, but Gallus blinked and her arms were pulled behind her back, then she was turned around and made to grab Yona by the horns and throw her over her back. Yona fell with a crash onto a table, shattering it. She was up again in a moment and charged straight at Sandbar, not slowing down as she collided head-first with the pony, her horns narrowly missing his barrel and sending him flying into a far wall. Even after falling, though, Sandbar just was dragged right back up and back to dancing and flailing against his will. Gallus took flight and landed next to Cozy’s table, sitting down at it and drumming his claws on its surface. “I can control things through their shadows. Puppet them. Not as totally as I was controlling you, I can only be in one creature at a time. Which is a total drag, if I could I’d be making this offer to every creature I could.” “I’m a giver,” Ocellus said, joining Gallus, even as the destruction and chaos being wrought by Yona, Sandbar, and Smolder continued. “I don’t want to rule anything. I want to give every creature the power to rule themselves, with nothing in the way of their desires…” “But forget about that! Think about what this means for you,” Silverstream insisted, as she also sat down at the table, head in her hands as she looked up at Cozy. “No more being stymied by some old pony just ‘cause he won’t help you climb a stupid mountain.” Cozy’s eyes widened. On the one hoof, Erebus had gone into her mind again…not that it was surprising to learn that he had. And Cozy’s mind, working a mile a minute, took her back to Mount Everhoof, to the pony guarding the way up the mountain to the Bewitching Bell. How he had said he’d love to be her friend, but then wouldn’t even help her climb the mountain. “No more having to work through others,” Ocellus added. Behind them, the trio of other creatures stopped their chaotic actions, came on up to the table and sat down at it as well as though it had never happened. Because it hadn’t, Cozy reminded herself. “No more having to work overtime to keep up with Tirek and Chrysalis,” Smolder said, her wings spread wide, her claws digging into the table beneath her. “No more worrying that you’re just some mascot. Power, real power, at your hooftips.” “The power to take what you want,” Sandbar said, and then tapped his head. “And no longer being held back from having access to magic just ‘cause you weren’t born with a horn.” “Cozy-pony get power to make,” Yona said, lifting a hoof and dragging shadows with her and sculpting them into a pony-like shape. Yona grinned “And Cozy-pony also get power to break.” She brought her hooves down on the shadows and crushed them, split the pony-shape in half. Gallus stood, leaning up so her could be eye level with Cozy, which due to the angles meant he had to get close to her, close enough that Cozy could almost feel his breath. “C’mon, kid. You want to rule Equestria. You thought you could do with the power of friendship…and I’m here to tell you that you can.” He put a claw on her withers and leaned in even closer, right up to her ear as his voice dropped almost to a whisper. “My friendship. My power. And all I’m asking in return is that you use it. Nothing else. No strings. Just spread darkness. Spread me and use me and make others embrace me and use me too. Show them how wonderful you are. How powerful you are.” Cozy could feel the warmth of Gallus’ cheek practically touching her own, Her wings were flared wide, yet she felt no desire to use them to fly away as Gallus’ – as Erebus’ – words flowed through her head. And it was tempting…if it was real. Cozy shrugged Gallus’ claws off her withers, flapping her wings and flying backwards, but only so that she could land and look across the table at the six faces Erebus was wearing. She took a seat herself, pressing her hooves together as she turned over the offer in her mind, weighed what Erebus was offering. “Talk,” she said finally. Gallus’ head tilted to the side as he sat down himself amongst his friends. “Talk, talk, talk. I’m not hearing or seeing anything real. This is all in my head! You can look through my mind, you can shut off my emotions if you want…how can I actually trust you? Friendships are built on trust, you know.” The six looked between each other. Gallus finally snapped his claws, and the other five disappeared, leaving only him. “You’re right,” he agreed. “So…how about a practical demonstration?” Cozy blinked, and in the bare moment of her eyelids fluttering…she was back, back on the plinth of Midnight Castle, back in the heat and the glaring brightness all around save for the shadow that she was hunkered down in, hooves over her eyes. Those eyes widened and she stood up, wings spread wide. As her head came into the direct sunlight of the afternoon, she heard a hiss of pain in her mind, and let out a yelp as she suddenly lost control of her legs and she was dragged back down into the shadow. “Please keep me out of direct sunlight when you can,” Erebus said, using Cozy’s mouth. “Oh, by the way, I figured you wouldn’t like to hear my real voice in your head, I know it’s not a very nice voice. Plus, this way we can’t interrupt each other!” “I don’t like hearing your voice in my head,” Cozy said. She brought her hooves to her jaw, feeling at it. It was so weird. “But I’m not sure if I like this better…I’ll sound like a crazy pony, talking to myself!” “Who cares?” Erebus asked. “It’s not really you! Anyway, I promise that I won’t do anything to control you at all for the next few minutes, except talking. Just inside Midnight Castle there’s a few ponies, I think three. They must’ve come in with Professor Rainbow Dash. I teleported right past them ‘cause I wanted my freedom, but how about you go back in and test out all my powers on them? It’s not like I can escape across the desert while the Sun is still up so we might as well have some fun!” Cozy considered, looking at her hooves and flexing them, then fluttering her wings and flicking her tail. She looked to Midnight Castle’s entrance – and the fact that there were no shadows between the rock she was hiding behind and the castle. “Won’t this hurt you?” Cozy asked. “A lot,” Erebus confirmed. “But if it helps make us friends, then it’s worth it!” “Really?” Cozy asked. She gathered herself up, crouching down, spreading her wings, getting ready to pounce like Chrysalis had taught her to. “Because I’m about to go sunbathing!” “I…know. But I have to risk that you’ll change your mind!” Cozy blinked, then whickered, tensed, and leapt out into direct sunlight. Once again, she felt a dull, distant pain that wasn’t her own and didn’t really hurt, even though it should have. In her mind, she heard…she wasn’t exactly sure what. Whatever taking in a breath and trying to hold it to prevent yourself from screaming would sound like if you had no lungs and no breath and no vocal cords. Cozy glanced at the Sun, then her hooves. She pranced in place a few times, and turned to face the Sun directly, walking well away from any shadows. She squinted against the glare and in the darkness of her eyelids she could see Erebus writhing around. “Okay. So now I just wait for Tirek.” If…you must, Erebus ‘gasped’ out in her mind. The pain really came through in its voice. “Really? Not gonna fight back?” No…it’s…hours to sundown…hours until…shadows are long enough…no hope of escape…without you. Erebus finally let out a long and low wail of pain, but quicky got itself under control. I need you…I need you, Cozy! I need you to believe me, to help me! Cozy shifted. Please – you’re my only hope! My only…friend… She tapped her hoof to her mouth. Erebus really didn’t have any other choice…and he was offering her a lot of power…and she had come all this way across the deserts of the Nether Lands…and it was a lot of power if it wasn’t lying…and it didn’t have to give Cozy control of her body back, it could have kept her in the shadows of the rocks, or tried to make a break for Midnight Castle… …and it did want to be her friend… “Okay,” Cozy said, turning away from the Sun. She trotted back over to the shadow she had emerged from and ducked down into it again, and heard a relieved sob from Erebus. “Okay, fine. So how do I actually use your powers, then?” “Your powers,” Erebus responded. “And you just…I dunno…use them. Trust me, it just works.” “It ‘just’ works,” Cozy echoed, tapping a hoof on the rock beneath her. “So what, I just want to pick up a shadow and…” Her voice trailed off as she looked at her hoof, squinting. There was…it was like black silk, stretching from the tip of her hoof down into and disappearing as part of the shadow she was in. She lifted her hoof more, and watched as she continued to pull up the blackness like it was a sheet she was holding. Reaching out with her other hoof, she plucked at it, and it bent. It was there, she could touch it. It was real. “How…?” Cozy asked, putting her hoof down and lifting it without wanting to take shadow with it. Then she lifted it with shadow, then without. She pulled up the strand as high as she could, noticing out of the corner of her eye that the shadow she sat on shrank a little as she did. “Heehee!” Erebus giggled. “Pretty cool, huh?” Cozy’s eyes were wide. She pulled back as much of the shadow-sheet as she could. The light bent unnaturally to fill where it had been – even though there should have been no way for the sun’s light to move past the rock. But when she released the shadow, it fell back into place seamlessly. “Oh my Celestia,” Cozy intoned. She lifted the shadow again, considered it, then imagined it as being hard, like metal, instead of like a sheet. And quite suddenly, it was. She rapped a hoof against it and felt its solidness. “This…this is cool!” Cozy said. “Wait, I have an idea…” She pulled up the shadows like cloth, then threw them over herself, covering everything but her eyes. Then she stepped out into the sunlight…and found that the shadows became an opaque, black cloak around her, shielding her body. “Ha! You figured it out!” Erebus said. “Yup. I’m not completely defenseless against sunlight. I can wrap shadows around my host to protect myself…oh.” She said the last as the cape started to sizzle. “But they don’t hold up too well. A few minutes.” Cozy looked at her all-black-at-the-moment body, the sizzling of shadowstuff across it. “Wait,” she said. “This means…this means that you could have run back into Midnight Castle at any time. The moment I was back in a shadow, couldn’t you have just done this to escape?” “Uh-huh.” “Then why didn’t you?” “Because it’s like I said, Cozy. I want to help you. Empower you. I want to be your friend. I want you to rule Equestria, I want you to show Celestia and Twilight and Gallus and Starlight Glimmer and everypony else what you can do.” Erebus smiled with Cozy’s mouth. “I want them all to look at you sitting on the throne and realize that they were wrong to oppose you, to see how mistaken they were. You want to be Empress of Friendship and that what I want for you.” Cozy shifted. “You’re serious.” “Yup! Actually, I think it’s pretty cool. You’re so young but you’ve already figured out pretty much everything, including how to win a real victory. How to really beat your enemies. It isn’t by just defeating them. It isn’t just by standing over them, or taking what they have…” “It’s…” Cozy said, and grinned. “It’s by making them realize that they were wrong to ever oppose you in the first place.” Erebus widened Cozy’s grin. “Golly! You got it in one! Now…wanna go test out everything else you can do with me by your side?” Cozy looked to Midnight Castle. Inside was Tirek, her friend…surrounded by enemies. Cozy’s enemies. “I sure do!”