//------------------------------//
// Chapter 64: Vesper 
// Story: Forbidden Places 
// by Starscribe 
//------------------------------//

What could their little group do while they waited for information? 

Days passed, days spent in miserable friction. Even Vesper could only do so much to keep people focused—Ryan wanted to break into every house in the city if that was what it took to find Kaelynn. Blake, meanwhile, had to threaten to lock him up more than once.

Vesper tried to mitigate the conflict between them. She begged and pleaded for wiser voices to prevail, and it mostly worked. But each day she kept people calm was harder than the last. Soon enough it would just be impossible, and nopony would listen to her anymore.

They could do some things. Ryan and Blake labored for several hours each day in the workshop, making weapons and tools they guessed might be needed to break into the fine mansion of a wealthy pony. Vesper's own preparation came in the form of practicing her dream-magic. She spent at least a few hours each day trying to summon things on command.

Despite how incredible magic felt, there was an order to the way things worked. She could summon things only from dreams she had actually experienced. But she didn't necessarily have to remember experiencing them. Practically speaking, that limit meant things outside Vesper's usual context wouldn't be possible for her.

Unfortunately, she didn't dream about fighting often. So on the third night, she finally managed to track down Pale Light. "Hey!" she said, landing beside him in a windswept ruin. This one was a treehouse, with its glass windows cracked and furniture weathered away. But like each of the other places she'd seen him, this was a library, and books were scattered everywhere.

Pale stiffened through the embrace, but didn't shove her off. "I wasn't sure I'd see you again. After you met with the princess..."

Vesper shrugged her wings, rolling off his back onto the space beside him. "Princess Luna? She was nice I guess. Not sure why that would make me not want to see you again. She didn't teach me anything. Besides, you're my friend."

The bat walked past her, pretending to be focused on his work. He dug through books in various stages of decomposition, shuffling through the pages. But he wasn't really watching them. Vesper didn't need to be a changeling to read his tension. "You can't be friend with somepony who doesn't exist. You only believe you are—like making friends with a mirror."

Vesper rolled her eyes, following him. "I have no idea what you're talking about, Pale. You're right here, in the Dreamlands. I had a dream question for you, actually. Do you think you could help me create a specific dream?"

He rounded on her, dropping the ruined book he was holding. For a few seconds he just looked her over, silent. When he did speak, it was quiet, cautious. "Princess Luna should've told you by now, but if she didn't then I will: I'm a construct. I have no parents, no real life. I was created here in the Dreaming."

Vesper twitched once as he said it, wings opening and closing halfway. Now that he mentioned it, Princess Luna hadn’t said that exactly, but she had said something about assigning someone who had met with her before... "Sorry, I probably would've realized. I've been a little distracted by getting one of my friends kidnapped and everything..." 

She crossed the distance between them in a few steps, looking up at him. "If you say all that's true, then I'll believe you. But I won't know what it means." She walked a slow circle around him, as though searching for... what, a maker's mark? A signature, like he was a portrait? Of course the princess had left nothing like that.

"You're wasting your time with me," he answered, a little too quickly. "You can't be friends with me, I'm not real. Every drop of attention you give helps sustain me, because I'm interacting with a dreamer. You bring connection with the waking world, and I need some to continue to exist. I'm like... an evil changeling, harvesting you. But I can't help it."

"I'm friends with a changeling too. He's a pretty cool guy. Pissed all the time, but that's par for the course with Kaelynn gone." Vesper shoved him lightly with one hoof, enough that he stumbled in the ashy remnants of the tree. "That's enough, Pale. I don't let people talk about my friends that way."

"I can't—"

"You are," she said, speaking over him. "You were here when I landed in Equestria, helping when no one else would. Everything I know about my powers I learned from you. Besides, it's not like I feel drained when I leave. Maybe you do work the same way as changelings. Ryan wore us out with that emotional feeding thing, until we realized what was going on and started interacting with him normally. Since he's been with Kaelynn, he always had enough."

Pale Light stared. She tried to judge his expression, but it was too unfamiliar. Maybe he was about to run, or maybe cry. "I am... confused. You have no reason to rely on me anymore. You are in Canterlot—there are repositories of Dreamwalker lore in the library there. Any question you have can be answered. Every tool I have to examine here is a mere shadow and suggestion of the greater truth you'll find there."

She waved a dismissive wing. "You don't have to help me, Pale Light. But it would mean a lot to me if you did. My friend was kidnapped, and I'm about to go in and try to get her back. Thanks to you, I've got pretty good at bringing things into the waking world from in here. But I need to have the things to bring in." 

She lowered her voice, grinning mischievously at him. "I need to dream of a specific thing. How do we do that? I remember you saying that was one of the simplest things we could do."

"Yes," he agreed. He still sounded confused, like someone who had just won the lottery on a ticket they'd forgotten they bought. "Get a specific dream, right." He scrunched up his face into a frustrated frown. "You're interrupting my work. I'm upset at how belligerent you are."

Vesper leaned over to him, embracing the bat in an equine hug she'd seen dozens of times before. "Yeah, you big loser. I'm incredibly impatient, and I'm a danger to myself and all those around me. You really should help so I don't mess things up even worse."

He grunted once. "Follow my instructions then, Vesper. Crafting a dream for yourself is the easiest kind. You begin by mapping the emotional resonance you're looking for with the right constellation. Let me draw you a chart..."

She spent the lesson in the timeless dreaming, and couldn't say exactly how long it took. He was right, though—compared to trying to pull objects out of a dream, this seemed simple. And if it wasn't for her other power, there wouldn't be a lot of direct use.

Maybe in hospitals, or to treat people with mental health problems. Jordan used to have problems with nightmares. Not anymore.

She didn't get the chance to properly explore the subject with Pale Light, though. As it often seemed to happen lately, the waking world tore her away.

Someone banged loudly on the door of her cabin. Her ears pressed flat, and for a few seconds she jammed her head under her pillow, waiting for the noise to stop.

Ryan was relentless, however. "Information is here, Vesper. We know where they're holding Kaelynn."

She yawned and stretched, rolling out of bed. "Alright, alright. Give me a... minute. Right there." She shielded her face from the window—even the little crack of sunlight streaming in from out there was painful on her retinas. At a glance, it was probably around noon. Maybe a little later.

She washed her face in a basin near the mirror, brushing back her mane into something that didn't look quite like she'd just rolled out of bed. Nothing as fancy as the mares in Canterlot could get, but... she would learn.

By the time she made it out, the rest of the crew had gathered in the mess. There was no food on the table, but as she walked in Blake offered her something on a tray. She took it in one wing, dragging herself into a seat. She mumbled something that was almost a few different things, barely even recognizing what she was looking at. A few maps, arranged in a way that probably made sense if you were the crazy person who'd sorted them that way.

"I wouldn't want to drag you here normally," Ryan said, at least managing to look a little sheepish. "But we don't have time to wait. Kaelynn doesn't have time to wait."

The tray was just a bowl of the bat-branded morning cereal, in milk. She settled it down on the far side of the table, so she wouldn't spill it all over critical mission notes if she fumbled something. A frequent occurrence when they woke her up too early. "Go ahead. I'll try to listen. But my brain is like a diesel motor in the morning. Might need to repeat a bit.

She hadn't even noticed the stranger in the room. They'd been a pony, until their body dissolved in a flash of green light. Then they were the changeling investigator that had been “underground” searching for Kaelynn.

"Good news is there's no way to hide something this big. If you had six months, I'd say the best solution was just to spin a cocoon and wait a little while. They're so excited about their find they've already started making promises. Adoption contracts, breeding rights, that sort of thing."

Vesper dropped her spoon into the bowl. "What the hell did you just say?"

Ryan's visage suddenly didn't look blurred anymore. He looked up at the changeling, his eyes practically glowing with rage. "They're doing what?"

Blake touched one leg over his shoulder. "Deep breath, Ryan. Let her finish so we can save our friend."

Ryan shook his leg free, but at least it didn't turn into a brawl. 

"It's the Shimmer house," she went on, without missing a beat. "They're one of the oldest families in Equestria, known for their skill at spellcraft. Go back enough generations, and you'll find them leading the Solar Council. Not anymore, though. No children, house is run by an older mare now, last survivor situation. Looks like she's been looking for a way to leave a mark on things when she's gone, you know the type. Lots of money and not a lot of years left to spend it. Really thinks she'll be able to save the seapony race on her own. Asking around, it seemed like lots of ponies didn't agree with her methods. But when the seaponies are extinct, who's gonna argue?"

Vesper cleared her throat, looking up from her mostly empty bowl. The strange savory crunch of its contents did a decent job waking her up. She didn't know what she was eating, nor did she much want to know. "Fancy unicorn whoever is full of shit, anyway. Seaponies aren't gone. Princess Luna told me—they're still dreaming, somewhere. Means they lived through whatever that Storm King tried to do."

"Really?" Blake asked. He was the only one that seemed interested.

Ryan grunted once. "I don't think we'll be able to tell the unicorns that to convince them to let her go."

"Unfortunately not," Aerial agreed. "Even if we had proof, that would only reveal their hypocrisy. Deep down all the upper-crust ponies know they're full of it. They just don't usually have anyone brave enough to tell it to their face." 

Vesper was awake enough to lean forward and investigate the table's contents. It was a Canterlot map, or at least a map of something called the "upper city." Lots of fine looking houses and streets named after fancy dead ponies, with the castle and its walls located in the center. Beside it was a dense scroll, bound with twine. As she watched, Aerial unrolled that scroll onto the table.

"I had to get persuasive with the planning office to get a copy of this. And I can only borrow it for a few more minutes, so you should study quickly."

"I'll get a camera," Blake muttered, walking out without another word.

Vesper moved her empty bowl aside, making more room for the map.

There wasn't anything terribly surprising about the blueprint. It looked about what she expected the layout of an incredibly expensive property to be. Except that it didn't just go up into the air—it had many floors underground, delving deep into the rock.

"I asked around about her—covertly. We could always dig up more, but it's a balancing act. Get too curious about something, and next thing you know they're layering another meter of slime to keep us out." She pointed towards the front. "Manor has walls, obviously. Two private guards at all times, Royal Guard veterans. Those lower windows aren't glass either, they're thaumalite—hard as steel, and tougher to break by magic."

"This is very useful," Ryan said. He remained up on the table, staring down at the blueprint. "Seriously, Aerial. This is incredible stuff. I'm not sure what we'd do without you."

"Not find your mate," she answered, without a second's hesitation. "Whatever questions you have, ask them quickly. I will need to go to ground when I depart. If you are caught, the Embassy will have no record of my presence there, or my decision to help you." Her wings buzzed for a second, but Vesper couldn't have said what the gesture was meant to be. A shrug, maybe? "This is why we keep no records of anything. Very hard to prove anything happened. The ponies just think we are absent-minded."

Blake returned a few moments later. Not with one of their high-quality cameras, but a phone. The decision was obvious enough that no one asked why he was doing it—a phone would have the biggest screen. He waved it over the map for a few seconds. "Done."

"Two questions, then you can go," Ryan said. "First; what other defenses would you expect the Shimmer house to keep hidden. Even if you couldn't confirm it?"

"If there are two guards outside, there are at least ten on their staff," she said. Her eyes lingered on the phone, but then she noticed them watching her, and looked away again. "The main defenses of an old house like this won't be swords and armor, though. They're unicorns, they use magic. Whatever magic they're using will be... subtle. A house as old as they are could not possibly remain in power if all they could do is blast spells around."

She tapped one hoof on the edge of the map, expression grim. "Please don't take this the wrong way, but the defenses around this place will be out of your league. There is no chance of you getting in there without setting off the alarm. That leaves you with two hard questions: what do you do to the creatures who try and stop you? And how do you get out again, with half the Canterlot Royal Guard breaking down the doors behind you? Answer those before you go in. A well-planned mission is a mission you survive."

"I think—" 

She shoved a hoof in Ryan's mouth, silencing him. "I think that I need to be gone before you plan anything. I don't know anything." She pulled her leg free, then went to work rolling up the map. She left the city-scale map behind, spread across the table. "Anything else?"

"One more question," Ryan said. "If this was your mission, and you had to get your friend out, how would you do it?"

She packed the map carefully into her saddlebag, then... changed. She became a young, willowy pegasus girl, wearing a tight uniform. "Fet-Ex delivery services." No way a name like that was a coincidence.

When she spoke, her voice had completely changed. Even her diction was changed—nervous, halting, her eyes darting between them like she'd suddenly become frightened to be near them. "I, uh... I'd decide if saving my friend was worth losing my freedom. And if the answer was, uh... if the answer was yes, I'd have a way out of the city."

She glanced down the open hallway, then back to Ryan. "If you, uh... if you do this. Even if you get away, you'll... make a powerful enemy. Morningtide will make you pay for robbing from her. So wear a good disguise, so she doesn't know who you are! That's what I'd do."