The worst thing about being in a dark cell was the boredom. I had been in the cell for what felt like hours, and I already walked the entire length of all the walls, felt out every stretch of the floor for grates, felt out each wall for any vents or anything else. I tried knocking on the walls and putting my head up to them to listen for anyone who would tap back. I tried to shout as loudly as I could everywhere, from the door to each corner, hoping someone would answer. I tried to do anything at all with my magic, but I had gotten a whole lot of nothing.
The walls were made of granite, but I only knew that because the earth pony prisoners had informed me in my dreams last night when I was questioning them. I had no way of identifying what rock the walls were made out of on my own. I couldn't even see the walls, only feel them, and one rock felt like another rock to me. The door was solid steel, another fact I had gotten from the earth ponies the night before. Nothing I knew about this cell was anything I hadn't already heard from the already existing prisoners.
It would have been nice if our jailers had at least installed a single light bulb in each cell, not that there would be much to look at. Maybe install a tiny window, even if it was a small window at the top of the door—something to let in at least some light. The darkness was maddening; I could not hear anything but my movements and voice, and it was maddening; this entire experience was maddening. I wasn't in a cell. It felt like I was in an oubliette, minus the entrance being a trap door above me. It was a dungeon of perpetual darkness.
The temperature seemed alright enough, but ponies' poor sense of temperature meant we struggled to tell the difference between something in the high-fifties and the mid-eighties on the Fahrenheit scale, so who the hell knew if the cells were cold or hot? Maybe I could dupe one of our human captors into telling me if it was at least what they considered cool or warm. They might not think it important enough to keep from me. Most humans didn't realize how poor a pony's sense of temperature was. That required me to get them to talk to me, which was a tall order.
I hoped they were not subjecting Qīng Yǔ to this. The tiny filly was already without her mother; throwing her in the dark just felt needlessly cruel. These people might feel no remorse for what they did to adults, but they had to have some common decency when dealing with foals, right? Qīng Yǔ was far too young to even understand anything that was happening around her and incapable of even trying to understand the whys of it. She was just a scared little filly that wanted her mama.
So, I sat, I laid down, I rolled over on my back. I tried just counting out loud as some method of tracking time, but I needed to stop and rest my mouth somewhere around the four thousand mark the first time doing it. I wasn't sure how long it was before I tried counting the seconds again, but I got up to just under six thousand the second time trying it. I tried instead counting in my head as I tapped my hoof on the ground to count seconds, but this got tiring surprisingly fast, and I only got to about four hundred, which wasn't even the ten-minute mark.
At long last, I grew tired enough to sleep and was grateful for the release.
I did not end up in Tonya's temple this time. My surroundings were scattered groves of trees, bushes, ponds, tiny streams, and regular picturesque countryside. Nor was I alone; all the prisoners were here with me, including Qīng Yǔ—who was busy closely following a frog with a tiny foal's fascination. Tonya, Yinyu, and Ghadab were here as well. The former two were in their Dreamwarden forms, while the latter was in his regular pony form.
"My sisters have some announcements, but first, I require you all to give me consent to transmit your details about what you have seen, felt, and heard today," Ghadab said in a voice that carried over the entire area without seeming to be shouting or high volume.
Everyone started stating their consent, myself included. The lone exception to this was Qīng Yǔ, who was distracted by his voice briefly, but quickly resumed her examination of her hopping companion.
Ghadab nodded. "Thank you for your continued cooperation. I turn this dream over to my sisters." The Warden of Anger then promptly vanished. It only occurred to me that while he was rather abrupt each time since my capture, he didn't show his distinctive brand of rudeness towards me or any of the prisoners.
Arbiter stepped forward and looked around at us. "I have several announcements. The first is that Sunset Blessing is joining you now not to ask questions like she did last night, but as a fellow prisoner."
There were gasps of dismay from many of the others, and many of them looked at me and started saying their sympathies all at once. Others seemed in complete disbelief, as if I was incapable of being captured.
"You shall have time to speak with her shortly, as she has seen slightly more than the rest of you. I have further announcements," Arbiter said, again with the voice that traveled rather than boomed. Everyone turned their attention back to her.
She looked around. "We have decided to extend dreamwalking powers to all of you for the duration. When this is all over, you can choose to keep the abilities, or you may choose to have the abilities go away. This allows us to let you stay in this shared dream for the entire night and have each other's company, and not be tired the next day. For those who wish to venture out into the dream realm proper, we will give lessons, but the realm rules can be strict, and we expect you to fully understand those before we take you out beyond this dream. The same offer will be extended to any of your loved ones who are eager for your safe return. Anyone who does not want this gift has only to tell us they refuse it. Nothing shall be forced upon you. Offering this is outside our normal policy of waiting for people to ask us for the ability. We had been hoping and waiting, but none of you seemed to consider it, and this ordeal is dragging on. We felt something must be proactively done to help you keep your sanity as the situation may soon worsen."
"My granddaughter will be left out of the dreamwalking. She is too young to give consent," Yinyu said as she flew over Qīng Yǔ.
The filly looked up at Yinyu and giggled. "Grandma!" I was at first shocked it wasn't Mandarin, but then remembered that there were no language barriers in the dream. The dream was a natural translator.
"Can we dreamwalk to the ponies holding us and tell them to let us go?" an earth pony mare asked.
Arbiter shook her head. "That will be off-limits. The rules of the dream realm are clear. You can't use dreamwalking to harass others, even people you think deserve it. I can say, because they gave permission for me to do so, that your captors refuse to speak to you here. We attempted to negotiate for you to speak to them, but that came up empty. It might seem unfair, but dreams must remain a safe zone for everyone. The same goes for them; they cannot torment you here. I wish they would try because then we could directly take action, rather than trying to assist you in all these roundabout ways, but they aren't stupid enough to try that."
"Everyone has limitations; ours are how tightly bound to our rules we are. We can't deliberately break them unless there is an irreconcilable conflict of rules, and we regularly search for loopholes to give us some freedom," Yinyu said in a sad tone. She looked over at Arbiter. "Some of us more than others. Know that we are doing all we can, and if we can find any loophole, we will take advantage of it."
"If there is anyone who refuses our offer to grant you dreamwalking, speak up now," Arbiter said as she surveyed the group. She was met with silence, and she smiled. "It is done then. We shall begin more formal lessons for those who wish it tomorrow, always praying that we don't need to go to tomorrow. For now, enjoy each other's company until you wake. Remember, Sunset Blessing has news for you, and please be courteous to her as she gives it to you. Today has been a challenging day for her."
With that said, the Dreamwardens vanished. Qīng Yǔ disappeared as well, and I could only assume that meant Yinyu had tucked her granddaughter into a regular dream.
All eyes turned to me, and the group began to assemble around me, patiently waiting for me to speak.
Okay, where to start.
"Today, one of our captors made a raid into my home, foalnapping Yinyu's infant granddaughter," I began. Some gasped at this, but most just nodded in understanding. "I gave chase and can identify the foalnapper, Christina Fain, a human woman with magical powers that disrupt magic and cause pain at her touch. Is anyone here familiar with the woman? I was told many of you, like myself, are former Shimmerists, and Fain is a very ardent Shimmerist."
A pegasus stallion raised a wing. "I know her. We sheltered her a few years ago. We felt sorry for her since the government did all those horrible things to her and forced her to rehumanize rather than complete her transformation. She was a very troubled woman. We had to eventually put her out because she got too hostile and combative with everypony. We didn't blame her for being the way she was, but we didn't feel safe with her in our home anymore. I would never imagine she would do this to us. She was angry, but she always seemed grateful for our kindness and understood that we weren't putting her out because we hated her or anything. I thought we parted on mostly good terms."
"She may have become more radicalized as time has gone by," I replied. "She may not have been capable of such actions back then."
Silvia raised her hoof. "I never met her, but I remember reading her case files while studying human magic. I thought to myself back then that it must be so horrible not to be able to touch somepony without causing them pain. Things like that can warp a person, make them angry at the world, and that isn't even getting into the things that had been done to her while she was in captivity."
Wallace, the lone teenaged colt and our odd pony that didn't fit the profile of the other victims, sat and sneered. "I don't want to hear the sob story of some freaky human that is holding us in a cage. She's holding us against our wills; there's no sympathy for that. If I could touch her safely, I would kick her skull in."
"I understand that feeling," I said with a grunt. "Anyway, I chased her, and she went through an odd means of teleporting using a portal."
"Mid Rift!" a unicorn mare gasped. We all turned to stare at her. She looked around at us before gathering herself to explain. "Mid Rift is a unicorn that was in my Shimmerist commune before I left it. He didn't do teleports the normal way; he did them like that. He figured them out early on after ETS when he was trying to figure out how to teleport, and he never bothered to learn the regular way. He tried teaching some of the rest of us, but it was so exhausting to even try! Nopony could get it, and since we all had access to learning the normal way, nopony really gave learning it much effort. It even exhausted him. He always had to take a nap after he did it."
I looked up at the clear blue sky. I was feeling a hint of exhilaration. I was finding information. I wasn't just sitting useless in a cell, hoping someone would do all the work of finding and rescuing us. "Ghadab? Are you still listening?"
"I am always listening," his voice answered back. "Do all present give permission for any information uncovered in your talks to be transmitted to the authorities?"
There was a loud clamoring of yes's to this, including me. I was pretty confident no one objected.
"It shall be done. Carry on, and I shall continue to listen," Ghadab's voice replied.
I looked back to the mare. "Okay, what's your name again?"
"It's Low Grass, Miss Blessing," the mare replied, bowing her head slightly.
I nodded back to her. "Well, Low Grass, how long ago was it that you left that commune?"
"About three weeks ago," she answered quickly. "My husband and I had been questioning some things for a while, ever since your speech on television last year, but we had stayed with our commune. They were our friends that we had been with for years, our community and the place we felt we belonged, it was home, and it was hard to let go of that, even if we were starting to think Shimmerism might be wrong."
Many of the ponies in the group nodded along, and I could tell by their faces that many of them likely shared similar stories.
"You never spoke up and questioned it over the last year?" I asked.
Low Grass looked down at the grass next to her hooves. "We tried to feel out if it would be okay. Little comments here and there, but it became clear early on that such talk wouldn't go over well. We didn't want our friends mad at us. So we just kept our mouths shut and went through the motions when actual Shimmerist stuff came up. I mean, most of our life there didn't revolve around being Shimmerists; we felt like it was okay."
"So, what changed?" I asked. I had a bad feeling that I knew already what it was.
"Arbiter came to us in our dreams," Low Grass replied. "I was having nightmares about the others finding out I wasn't as on board as I used to be and turning on me. Arbiter came and talked to me about my nightmares. She did the same with my husband, High Grass. We decided we didn't want our foals brought up being fed Shimmerist ideas, and one night, after everypony had gone to bed, we just up and left without even saying goodbye. We left a note saying how we felt, but I'm not sure how well it went over."
Low Grass frowned and sighed. "Considering where I'm in a dark cell, I'm guessing it didn't go over well at all. I'm living my nightmares now."
I had to tell these ponies that the nightmare was about to get worse. I didn't want to frighten them more than they already were, and I didn't want to let them know they were in this situation just so our captors could force information out of me, but I owed it to them not to keep that information from them.
"Unfortunately, I don't have any comfort for you," I said in a sad tone. "I can tell you that you aren't here just because you turned your backs on Shimmerism. You're here because our captors want information out of me, and your continued health is part of the ransom to get it."
"They want the secrets of ETS," another stallion said knowingly. The others looked at him, then at me, and nodded.
"How did you know?" I asked. It was probably a stupid question. I was linked to two things outside my history with the Shimmerists, the Cataclysm and transformation magic.
"You're the one and only Sunset Blessing! That's why!" a young pegasus mare exclaimed as she stepped forward. "Do you remember me? I was there in Pony Hope when those Shimmerists tried to hurt you. I asked you if it was true you could bring magic to the humans. Don't you remember me? I asked if we could call you Sunny just like we call Sunrise Storm."
I blinked. "I do remember you now. I told you I was done with doing such magic, that it had only brought me misery. I also told you no on the nickname, and I still stand by that."
She nodded along happily. "Yes! But we still know what you can do! We still believe in what you stood for when you released your final manifesto and when you spoke to the world from in front of the White House! We believe magic is the right of all sentient beings. We believe that humans and ponies are equal in the eyes of God and neither more deserving than the other of happiness, and neither truly superior in any way. We believe that our species should be ours to decide. If I want to be human again, I should not be condemned, nor my brother for wanting to have magic without having to be a pony. We believe magic is something we should treat with care since it can do great good, but it can also be used for great evil. We should always move forward with our understanding of it, but never recklessly without understanding what we are doing. We are the Blessingists, and whether some of us ascribe divinity to you or just think of you a wise but regular mare, we all think you are right."
A unicorn stallion stepped forward and raised his head proudly. "Our beliefs are not complicated; they are straightforward and few in number. We don't think that they should be anything anypony should disagree with. It seems like just good common sense to us."
The young mare who had just recited the beliefs hung her head low. "But that common sense isn't there with the Shimmerists, ponies and humans that many of us used to call friends; they won't let go. They hate us; they hate everything we stand for. They want to silence us, silence you."
I looked at each of them in turn. I saw the commitment in their eyes and the fear. What was I supposed to say to all that? They were looking for a leader. If they were looking for the great leader of the Blessingists, then they were fools. I was not qualified to lead such a thing. I was no great sage; I was a foolish mare who had to have her face rubbed in the mud to realize I was up to my shoulders in filth.
I took a deep breath. "I cannot lead the overall movement; that is up to each and every one of you to do with your lives. You don't need me to guide you. You know what you stand for." I licked my lips. "However, even though I am just as much a prisoner as you, I'm going to do everything I can to help get us out of this. I'm warning you now, they intend to torture us physically, and they will, but they cannot force us into defeat. I once told my Shimmerist congregations that you could not silence the truth, all while I yelled loudly into the wind trying to do so, but truth won out in the end. It will again here."
There was a round of cheers from almost everyone present, even Malcomb and Silvia. The only one who abstained was Wallace, who rolled his eyes.
Low Grass stopped cheering and cringed down low. "What was that about torture?"
That sapped the spirit out of the crowd.
I gave them all a serious look; then, I looked up at the sky again. "Can one of the Dreamwardens give me an assist? I need to show these ponies my memories from my capture and torture session. They need to know the truth, and maybe some of them can help identify speakers that I didn't know."
"Of course, Sunset. Let me know when you are ready," Tonya's voice echoed back.
I looked at the ponies. "We are all in this together, along with the police and the FBI. I need your help to identify who was in that room. Every scrap of information gets us one step closer to being free. Are you ready to help some more with our liberation?"
This time I was greeted with a complete unanimous set of yes's with no one abstaining.
I looked up at the sky. "We're ready to begin."