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// Chss Dyebis 
// Story: Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot 
// by Equimorto 
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"I know it's a dream, but if I don't play along I can't move." She could have thought that, but thinking was hard when her brain was dreaming up everything else. So talking became thinking and thinking became the whole world around her, and she danced in it like a puppet on strings. She could only, at most, put up some resistance, but all that did was grind things to a halt. There was no breaking out. Not yet.
Something was wrong. "Something else is controlling the dream." Speaking let her get her thoughts straight. It helped her make progress. "It looks like a regular dream, but it's not. It's still my dream, it's still happening in me, but it's directed by some external force." Stalling things didn't strain her, or at least it didn't feel like it. She could hold it as long as she wanted. It was just a little uncomfortable, unnerving even. Watching reality frozen around her, incapable of moving her own body.
She'd noticed things were off almost immediately. Not immediately, but almost immediately. Of course, dream time being malleable meant it could have been upwards of a couple hours outside of it. "Things could still be slowed down here. The sooner I get out the better." She wanted that out there, pinned and crystallised. Not immediately, but months of training had done their job. She'd noticed small details being off, and the more she'd pushed the more she'd found things were deeply wrong. Recognising a dream wasn't hard for her at that point.
"If anyone else is going through this, they'll have no idea." And that was particularly bad. Of course it was. "I need to figure out what's causing this." Thinking was getting hard. "First I need to get out." How to do that?
Rainbow looked around. It was all she could really do. The dream hadn't been different from the kind she used to have when she still had dreams, regular ones at least. "It can see inside my head. It could when it first created this." It had been intense. Meant to be distracting. Not enough for her. "It might not know about me. It doesn't seem to be doing anything differently. It might not have noticed. I don't know if it can notice, or how much it can see from outside. I don't know if it is outside or here, but it would make more sense for it to be outside."
She stared at the immobile changeling in front of her, its size easily thrice her own if not more, its shape that of a much more aggressive and predatory creature yet still distinctly a changeling. "Or maybe I just know it's a changeling because I do. I'm not able to see through things that clearly. I think..." Rainbow saw something reflected in the creature's eyes.
Rainbow ducked, in time to avoid the changeling brute's swipe. "Too slow!" she mocked, shooting up to the ceiling to avoid its next attack too.