Snails ran a hoof through his mane, biting his lip as he looked from the clock down to the test.
Five minutes left. The test was six pages. He was still on the first question!
But answering one question would be better than getting a zero. So he buried his muzzle and resolved to get just one!
L times D squared times B divided by D times X squared plus G sin U?
What even was this? When did it ever get taught?
Then the second question was asking him to write an essay about Ambystomatidae?!
Usually, Snails at least remembered what he was supposed to be learning! But now he didn’t even know what he was looking at. If Diamond Tiara weren’t sitting next to him, he’d assume this was the wrong room.
What class was he in again?
A whisper from his left broke his concentration.
“Snails,” Diamond Tiara’s whisper came harsher than usual. “Let me copy off of you.”
Instead of answering, he could only look at Diamond Tiara with a sideways glance. He had to be the last pony in the tenth grade you’d ever want to copy.
Snails looked behind him to see that he was, literally, the last pony in class. The entire room was empty save the two of them and Ms. Cheerilee, asleep at the front desk. That explained it to an extent.
When did the others leave? Did they all finish early?
“I don’t think that’s gonna work, DT,” Snails whispered back.
“I wasn’t asking, Snails.” Diamond Tiara began to snarl and grind her teeth together.
“Whoa! Buddy! You wanna copy a blank sheet of paper go right ahead.” Snails slid it over to her.
“You’re not my buddy, Snails!” Diamond Tiara stood up and flipped his desk over. “You blew your chance! Consider our friendship over!”
Diamond Tiara stood in place, shaking in rage. Veins throbbed in her eyes. Drool dripped from the corner of her mouth. Her lips opened slightly to reveal a row of fangs.
“Uh.” Snails leaned back ever more into his chair while pointing at his teeth. “DT. You got a– You might wanna see a dentist?”
“Prepare to die, Snails!”
And as if that wasn’t enough, Diamond Tiara unhinged her jaw, revealing rows of razor-sharp teeth, and let out a blood-curdling screech.
“Well, that escalated fast.” Snails jumped to his feet as Diamond moved to bite his head off.
Remembering his combat training, Snails rolled back and levitated a chair between the two of them. Diamond Tiara lunged forward, snapping one of the legs off the chairs. She circled him, but the chair was just broad enough to fend her off.
“Ms. Cheerliee!” Snails yelled. “Diamond Tiara’s been possessed again!”
Ms. Cherilee sat up lazily to glance at them.
“Snails. No fighting in class,” she scolded him.
“But Ms. Cherliee!” Snails swung the chair as Diamond tried to bite off another leg. “She’s trying to eat me alive!”
“No making excuses. It takes two to fight. You both get detention.” Then she put her head back down to go to sleep.
“Wuh?”
Diamond Tiara opened her mouth even wider, to a ridiculous enough extent for her to chomp down on the entire chair! Her eyes rolled back into her head as she began to chew it with a loud ‘glarg’ sound between each bite.
This was his one chance! Snails galloped to the door and ran out into the hallway, slamming it behind him as he fled. Down the hall, he heard what sounded like Diamond Tiara trying to eat her way through the closed door.
He had to find Silver Spoon. If anypony in this school could figure out what was happening, it was her.
He skidded to a halt, finding his mark just a short way down the hall. Silver Spoon watched him with a judgmental frown, looking down at him through her glasses.
“Silver Spoon!” Snails let out a sigh of relief. She was the smartest pony in the school, including the teachers. “You gotta help! Diamond Tiara’s been possessed or maybe replaced! You gotta the thing where you’re super smart and figure this out!”
“Oh, I don’t think she’s the one who’s possessed.” Silver Spoon smirked and lowered her muzzle, allowing her glasses to glint in the light.
“What do you mean?” Snails asked.
“Follow me, It’ll be easier if I show you the clue I found.”
She turned, beckoning him to follow with a flick of her tail. Snails followed, shifting his eyes left and right as he went. They really should be running right now, but maybe that was part of Silver Spoon’s brilliant plan.
She stopped in front of an unfamiliar door.
“The evidence is right in here.” Silver Spoon opened it for him, standing aside so he could go first.
Snails gave her one last glance before stepping through the door. Somehow, they’d gotten to the gym and the rest of their class was all waiting there, standing in a circle as though waiting for Snails to arrive.
He got about one easy breath before their smiles became open-mouthed, revealing rows of fangs just like Diamond Tiara’s! One by one, they unhinged their jaws and began a slow trot in his direction.
Eighty-something maws now approached him, slowly closing in.
“Yeah. This is one heck of a clue, dude. But shouldn’t we–?” Snails turned back to Silver Spoon and froze.
She now smiled at him with the same massive fangs as everypony else in class.
“Oh, Snails!” Silver Spoon cackled. “Did you really think our ‘friendship’ was any more than an overly elaborate plot for me to devour your kidneys? I’ve been planning this for the past five years! Wahaha–”
Before she could cackle again, Snails slammed his hoof upwards into her muzzle. That forced her head back, exposing her neck just long enough for Snails to punch it with his other forehoof.
Finally, as she gagged, he bucked her with enough force to throw the filly onto her back. Then he ran just as the other ponies in class began clogging up the door, howling and snarling at him.
“Freaking state-mandated combat training!” Silver Spoon rolled around, holding her bleeding nose as Snails ran past her. “Ruins everything!”
She had to be a fake. No way Snails would beat the real Silver Spoon that easily. Also, if Silver Spoon wanted to eat his kidneys she wouldn’t have needed nearly this long to do it.
He had to get out of this place and find help!
He yelled out as he ran down the hallway, but the only ponies that came out had the same wild fangs. They popped out of doors and lockers, jumping at him as he charged through the hallways. Each one shouted about how they always hated Snails before lunging at him with those wicked dental jobs.
The walls, he was sure, were starting to close in on him! It was getting far too narrow to be the real school. The attackers weren’t missing anymore but gave him small scrapes as they came ever closer.
At last, he reached the stairs. He jumped from the top of them without hesitation as the walls slammed together and the lockers crunched behind him.
Looking down, he could see the outside through the glass doors of the school. But he could also see Snips. That pudgy little unicorn was generally the last pony Snails wanted anything to do with these days, but today things had gone to a ridiculous extreme.
He grew larger as Snails came down, his mouth widening and filling with ever more rows of fangs. By the time Snails landed, Snips towered over him, easily three times taller than he normally was. His mouth opened wide enough to swallow Snails whole.
Snips lurched forward, trying to crush Snails with a single bite.
Snails rolled to the side, narrowly avoiding certain death. Snips bit the ground, tearing a chunk out of the floorboards!
Snails found and grabbed the fire extinguisher at the end of the stairs.
“Come on, Snails!” Snips’ voice rumbled as he turned. “It’ll be like old times!”
Like Snails wanted to go back to old times.
Snips moved to take another bite. This time, Snails threw the fire extinguisher into his mouth as he snapped down. It exploded in the massive monster’s mouth, stunning it for just a second.
The door was clear! Snails slid under Snips’ feet and darted towards it as fast as he could!
But then, mere feet from the exit, a terrible pain shot through his right foreleg. A weight more than the pain sent him tumbling to the ground. He thrashed about for seconds before realizing Silver Spoon had returned and clamped down hard on his leg.
He couldn’t shake her off! And Snips was getting back up!
“This is the closest I’ve been in years!” Silver Spoon growled as she dug her fangs deeper. “You are not getting–”
Snails kicked his hind legs to throw both of them forward, using Silver Spoon as a ram to smash through the glass doors. Her eyes widened in pain as she was forced to let go of his foreleg.
When he landed, it was with a bit of a bounce. The pavement wasn’t hard at all! It felt like he’d jumped onto a bunch of pillows!
Then everything went dark! He was trapped in a net or something! Snails thrashed about, trying to get it off. When he finally did, he found himself far from school.
He was in his bed. He was sweating and panting, but he was safe in his room, early in the morning. A glance at the clock showed school hadn’t even started.
“Heh! It was just a dream.” Snails laughed more in relief than anything else, then went to lie back down. “Boy, I never have dreams that intense. Thank goodness I don’t gotta deal with another body-snatcher situation. Let alone that horrible test.”
Though on the other hoof, that meant it was still Friday. In his dream, it would have been the weekend already. So was he any better off?
As he tried to tuck his legs back away, he felt a sharp pain in his right foreleg. He looked down and screamed anew at the sight, falling off the bed.
Silver Spoon and Diamond Tiara sat at the bottom of the stairs leading to the school building. They’d been listening to Snails babble on about some nightmare he had on the walk over.
“And when I woke up?” Snails held his foreleg out to Silver Spoon and Diamond Tiara, pulling back his bandages for a moment. “I had this!”
Exactly as he promised, his body was covered in small nicks and bruises. Most of them were superficial, barely visible through his fur and possibly mistaken for a rash. On his foreleg, however, he bore a series of sizable cuts arranged in perfect imitation of a fanged mouth.
“What does it mean, dude?” Snails wrapped it back up and slipped back on his hoodie, intended to cover up the marks. “What does it mean?!”
“Is it not obvious?” Silver Spoon adjusted her glasses. “You were attacked by the dream demons. You know? Die in the dream, die in real life? Those guys?”
“By the?” Snails shifted his eyes before recognition struck. Only he would forget the most obvious explanation in the world. “Oh, yeah! That makes sense.”
“What time did you wake up?” Silver Spoon asked. “Before or after sunrise?”
“Huh?” Snails went back to drawing blanks. Apparently, he knew nothing but the basics. “Like, I dunno? Morning? The sun was out by then.”
That was perfect!
Silver Spoon turned to Diamond Tiara with a mischievous smile. She caught on a bit quicker.
“Nice!” Diamond Tiara pumped her hoof. “That means the demon is still in his head!”
“And it’s a Friday.” Silver Spoon met her hoof, slapping it with her own.
“Nightmare Night party at my place!” Diamond Tiara shouted for all to hear. “Oh, I always hoped I’d get to go to one of those!”
“I know. My older brother–” Silver Spoon got cut off there.
“Whoa, whoa. Hold up!” Snails waved his forehooves before making an X with them. “You said it was still in my head? I thought the dream demons only got one chance to kill you and then they can never go into your dreams again. You’re saying I gotta go through that a second time? That ain’t fair!”
“It can’t go into your dreams anymore, but you’re still possessed,” Silver Spoon explained.
“Then.” Snails looked back and forth between the two fillies. “That’s bad? Do I go to the SA? The nurse? Gloria?”
“No. That’s good,” said Silver Spoon. “You seriously don’t know what a nightmare night party is?”
Snails shook his head.
“We figured out how this worked ages ago. At midnight tonight, it will jump from you to the nearest sleeping pony.”
“And that’s going to be the two of us!” Diamond Tiara put a foreleg around Silver Spoon’s back, holding the two of them close together.
“Wait. You want to have a nightmare where it tries to kill you?” Snails asked. “I’m telling you now it wasn’t very fun!”
“No, but we’re going to get attacked by a dream demon eventually,” said Silver Spoon. “Eighty percent of ponies will get pulled into the nightmare realm at some point. It’s better to get it when you’re young and don’t have to worry about heart attacks. Plus, if you know it’s coming you can make preparations that bring the risk of death to borderline zero. It’s like getting a vaccine but more intense.”
“Yeah! And now that we know all the rules, the dream demons are a joke,” Diamond Tiara added. “We can easily beat that sucker up, mess with his head, and turn his stupid nightmare into our playground. They say it’s so much fun to play around in the nightmares once the demon’s been beaten to a bloody pulp!”
“Isn’t that kind of mean?” Snails asked.
“Snails, it tried to murder you two hours ago,” Silver pointed out. “And it’s attempted murder every night for the past five thousand years.”
“Oh yeah.” Snails nodded. “You know. Maybe it is okay to beat him up. I’m down with this.”
Now that Snails was on board, Silver Spoon trotted forward, planning everything out in her head.
“If we set things up just right, we can daisy chain the nightmares together. If I’m not mistaken, the limit before it gets too weak to jump is fourteen, so we’ll have a party of twelve,” said Silver Spoon. “Me and DT, plus ten more can all be inoculated. We might as well let some of our classmates in on it.”
“And one of them has to be Gloria Gloom, yeah?” Diamond guessed.
Silver Spoon nodded. To do a proper nightmare night, you needed an esper. And the only esper in the tenth grade was Gloria.
“We’ll see her in CT.”
They entered Ponyville High just in time for their military march of an anthem to begin playing.
Because combat training was considered the most important class in school, the gym got half the funding. As a result, it took up a quarter of the school by volume and came up with all kinds of training equipment. They even had a wave pool. In this relatively small town!
In today’s combat training, they’d be running some obstacle courses. Silver Spoon went first, having the highest current score on a physical-only run.
A trio of leashed zombies mulled about behind her while she put on the training gear and hoisted her musket with an attached bayonet.
Pony zombies had no more interest in meat than regular ponies. They didn’t normally run, either. But with a jar of spider honey in your saddle bag and a small infusion of dark magic into their systems.
Silver opened her jar of honey after the teacher’s aid enchanted the zombies. The three undead behind Silver Spoon raged and repeatedly tried to lunge forward, only to be held back by their chain collars.
“Ready?!” Mr. Snowflake, their beefy, white, pegasus CT teacher called out to her, ready to break the zombies loose. “Begin!”
His whistle blew. The chains on the zombies snapped off. Silver Spoon began running down the course.
Getting ahead of the zombies wouldn’t normally be hard but jumping between large tires gave them time to catch up. By the time she got to the rock wall, they were hot on her heels. But Silver Spoon climbed up barely slowing down.
The zombies were below her now, but a raised wall to her left allowed her to bypass them by running sideways across it. She landed on a balance beam, ran across that, and parkoured across a second wall before landing back on the ground with a roll.
Now she stood at the edge of the wave pool. Wooden platforms floated perilously on top of the troubled water. Her only option to get to the other side in a reasonable time was to jump from platform to platform before the zombies went around it all first.
She had to time it just right, as she’d been taught, landing on each one as a wave crested towards it. Balancing speed and footing, she managed to get to the other side without slowing too much.
The final obstacle was a straight dash with only a few hurdles for her to jump over. And the last hurdle was a wall too high to jump over. Instead, Silver Spoon slid under it.
On the other side, she found one more zombie waiting, still chained up. She thrust her bayonet up and stabbed the heart of the zombie at the end of the course.
“Time!” Snowflake called out. “Nice! One minute, twenty-two seconds! Silver Spoon has got what it takes to survive! Snails, you’re up next.”
The teacher’s assistant grabbed the zombies with his telekinesis and dragged them off to be chained back up. Those hadn’t even made it close to her. Silver Spoon trotted back towards Diamond Tiara, letting someone else take their turn next.
“The yearly ‘run for your life’ marathon is next week!” He said to the class at once. “I expect every single one of you to complete it in under four hours! No excuses. There’s no telling when you’ll need to run your little plots all the way to the next town. The trams ain’t gonna do the running for you when massive subterranean mole ponies destroy the power station!”
That last bit was a favorite line of his. Silver Spoon heard that twice a week for the past year and a half. And she still had over two years of hearing it left.
The state-mandated 7,000 hours of combat training for all citizens. Until then, Silver Spoon couldn’t legally drop out of school.
She looked up at the board. The current score for physical-only runs had Silver Spoon at the top. Gloria Gloom was second, just four seconds behind her, then Aurora.
CT was the one class she had an A in, as it was the only one where there wasn’t any homework for her to skip. She supposed it was the only one that taught anything of practical value so she put a bit more effort in.
Of course, when she looked at the ‘unlimited’ run on the course, where you could use any supernatural powers you possessed, she was only number six. Snips clocked in first place there, a time of only fifteen seconds. He was followed by the other two major psychics in their class – Twist at thirty seconds and Gloria at just under one minute.
There was just no way to compete with ponies who had actual superpowers. Unsurprisingly, out of eighty-six students, Snips, Gloria and Twist ranked one, two, and three respectively.
Meanwhile, Silver Spoon’s trio was the bottom three. Granted, for two of them, it was merely a lack of effort.
“Where is Gloria, anyway?” Silver looked around the gym.
It seemed she was a little late, today.
Snails had just finished his obstacle course when the gym door opened and Gloria trotted in. He made good time, but that stab at the end made Silver cringe. He hit the rib and needed a second stab to get the heart.
“Snails! Are you seriously still hitting the rib in the tenth grade?!” Silver scolded him before the teacher got the chance. Most ponies stopped doing that around age eleven! If they were hanging out, she needed him to meet a certain threshold of competence.
Snails came sulking back just in time to collide with Gloria’s entrance.
Gloria Gold, or Gloria Gloom as she preferred to be called, was a unicorn and an esper who wanted everypony to believe she was gray head to hoof. It was all a dye job, of course. She was actually a pinkette, the roots of her fur and mane betraying her by adding a small tinge of pink.
Still, she wore her mane drearily to one side and had a little newsboy hat on to complete the look. The way she conducted herself was no different. When she wasn’t reciting poems about death, she was always floating about on her hooves, closing her eyes and making mystical little motions, talking about the unseen.
To be fair, she did truly have extra sensory perception on a level higher than most psychics, even. That was exactly what made her an esper and why they were talking to her today.
Gloria took one look at Snails and knew. She could see demons as plainly as a normal pony could see a squirrel.
“Snails,” said Gloria. “Did you come to school possessed by a demon? You’re a real superspreader, you know that?”
“It’s just a dream demon!” Snails assured her. “I already talked to Ms. Cheerilee. She says I don’t get the day off for that.”
“A dream demon you say?” Gloria smiled and came closer, inspecting Snails for wounds. “Did it bring you to the brink of death, by any chance? Did your heart stop? Did you get to taste the coldness beyond the brief glimpse of light we call life?”
“No.” Silver pushed Snails aside before Gloria could make him any more uncomfortable. “But we wanted to talk to you. We’re having a nightmare night party. Can you dreamwalk for us?”
It was possible to pull multiple ponies into the same dream, but only if you had a pony like Gloria to initiate it. It’d be both safer and more fun if they could convince her to go.
“Hm.” Gloria closed her eyes drearily, as though already trying it. “Well at psychic camp they said dreamwalking is one of the hardest things for a psychic to do. But under these very specific circumstances, when I’ve never been to the nightmare plane and the dream demon is already doing most of the work. They say it’s easy to get on your first try.”
“So you’ll do it?” Diamond Tiara asked. “We’re having a nightmare night party. You’re invited. You’ll get a chance to become immune!”
“I’ll go. But. You have to invite Twist.” Gloria opened her eyes. “I know you won’t unless I make you.”
DT and Silver looked at each other. She was right, of course.
“Acceptable,” said Silver Spoon.
“And one other thing I should warn you about,” Gloria smirked, as though about to go into a scary story. Sometimes she did just that. “The order we go in will be very important, as there will be one less filly each time. One of us will have to face our nightmare alone.”
Gloria shuffled her way towards Silver Spoon, knowing full well in advance who that would be.
“It won’t be me, though I’ll have to be second to last. I won’t be able to dreamwalk as easily once I’ve faced my nightmare.”
“I’ll volunteer to go last.” Silver Spoon raised her hoof before DT could have the chance.
“You face death with too much confidence.” Gloria offered her a slim smile.
“I’m hardly facing death,” said Silver Spoon. “It’ll be too weak from eleven nightmares to hurt me by then.”
“Ah.” Gloria sat, then leaned back, holding her forelegs out wide. “Your blindness is your courage. If only you saw the things I can. The black winds that blow ever toward Crater Cemetery. The madness beyond the veil between us and the outer realm. What awaits us in death.”
“The endless depths of bad poetry,” Silver added one more. “I’ll be fine.”
“Gloria!” Mr. Snowflakes called to her. “There’s no time for chatting when the ground is spewing for mutated mole rats! You’re next!
“We’ll see.” Gloria held up a hoof before drifting off to the obstacle course. “It’s a nightmare. It’s okay to be afraid.”
“Alright.” Aurora closed her eyes and drew one of the straws from the cup. “Come on!”
The yellow pegasus opened her eyes to find she’d gotten the shortest one. She would have the first dream and the shortest nightmare night. Ostensibly the least fun.
As she fell onto her back, kicking her legs and cursing, the other fillies giggled at her before determining their order.
The order of the last four had already been decided, so Silver Spoon didn’t need to participate. After her and Gloria, DT insisted on being third to last as it was ‘her’ party. Then Twist was fourth. As another psychic, she would be useful if anything went wrong and could easily cheat at drawing straws besides.
By the time nightfall had rolled in, they’d gathered a decent-sized group. They had twelve fillies, plus Snails, DT’s father, and her butler, all gathered in Diamond Tiara’s huge bedroom.
To ensure the dream demon moved in the exact order they wanted, the fillies would be sleeping in a straight line, one next to the other. To that end, Mr. Rich had rolled out a long line of foam across the room.
When you added twenty sleeping bags and fifty pillows, it became good enough. It was there Silver Spoon sat, sipping a big mug of warm milk as she went over their strategy one last time with Gloria.
The waking half couldn’t amount to much of a party. It was best to go into these nightmares on an empty stomach. Overeating in real life could leave you bloated or prone to vomiting in the dreams.
So there weren’t any snacks. No music or anything that might keep them up too late. The only drink they had was some warm milk to help them fall asleep faster. Every one of them needed to be asleep when the clock struck midnight.
Yet none of them complained. The real party wouldn’t start until they were in the dream world.
Because you could take certain items with you into the dream world, they’d gathered what they could on short notice and arranged it around the bed.
Silver was a powerful weapon against any demon. Tonight they had a crossbow with silver-tipped bolts, a silver knife from downstairs, and a heavy silver boot that Silver Spoon would wear to bed. Mirrors, too, were powerful weapons as the dream demons couldn’t stand looking at themselves.
Next was a lantern at the far end of the bedroll. In the dreams, it would never go out even underwater. Such a thing was immeasurably useful in the nightmare world.
There were a few other items like that, but they didn’t bother or couldn’t find most of them. Most notable of those was that if you fell asleep with a beloved toy from your childhood, it would protect you in your dream. This one was enough to keep them from slaughtering very young ponies, especially now that the government issued state-funded teddy bears. But it worked less well the older you got.
But they did get the most overpowered item of all. The white cloak. How the crow somepony figured this one out for the first time was beyond Silver Spoon, but if done just right this one made you invincible even in your own nightmare.
You had to have a cloak made of mixed fabrics, embroidered with the sun cutie mark of Equestria’s founder sown on by a parent with love. This only worked if your parents truly loved you, of course, so occasionally it led to an awkward conversation the following morning.
In this case, Mr. Rich had acquired both items and was stitching the symbol on as best he could for Diamond Tiara. Though DT would be the one to wear the cloak, it could be passed on to anypony so long as she was in the dream.
“Oh, I remember when the dream demons tried to kill me.” Mr. Rich chuckled. “They gave me a nightmare that the entire economy collapsed, hoping I’d jump out the window of my high rise. Guess they didn’t know about my little friend the ‘short sale’, eh?”
Diamond Tiara and her father were the only two to laugh at that joke.
He finished putting the emblem onto the cloak and passed it to Diamond Tiara.
“If they wanted me to kill myself, they should have had me wake up next to your mom and an empty bottle of boozes,” he went on, miming a shiver.
“Whoa,” said Snails. “Should you really be talking about DT’s mom in front of her like that?”
“Oh, it’s okay.” Diamond hugged her father. “I hate my mom, too. I’d also kill myself in that situation.”
Then father and daughter nuzzled each other as Snails looked on dumbfounded.
“Oh. Well that’s, uh, lovely?” Snails quickly retreated to his chair and the medical supplies in it.
There was a chance somepony would get injured, so they had all the basics. On top of that, as a final resort was an ‘adrenaline pack’. Injecting that into a pony would wake her up right away in an emergency. But it could also cause a heart attack so that was the last resort.
“Well everything’s ready on my end, dude.” Snails saluted Silver Spoon.
Everything seemed in order. Diamond finished getting the white robe on and moved in next to Gloria. Twist was next after her.
Twist was one of the other three psychics in class. Specifically, she was a precog with only weak ESP. Then Snips had the power of psychokinesis. If you combined all three of them and multiplied their skill by ten, you’d have half a Pinkie Pie.
Getting psychic powers meant going through a near-death experience. While Gloria’s sickness had left her only a bit stunted, Twist had significant scars all along her neck. She typically wore a scarf or some other article of clothing to cover the worst of it.
However, they came up to the right side of her jaw and you could tell at a glance something was wrong with one side. Silver Spoon heard, but never confirmed, that Twist had lost the right jaw bone entirely and a doctor replaced it with a rib bone.
At any rate, it left her with a speech impediment that clothes couldn’t cover up.
She seemed a little quick to get under the covers when next to DT.
“Looks like lights out, kids.” Mr. Rich turned out the lights. “If you need anything, just start screaming.”
Then he closed the door. Only Snails remained awake and would have to do so until midnight.
Silver Spoon couldn’t place the moment when she entered the dream world. She was certain it took her a minute or two to realize the jump had even happened, but she managed.
So she already knew where she was by the time she figured out this was a dream. Silver Spoon stood in a bright, clean mall, the sun pouring in from the sky windows. The dream demon lost nightmare points for that one.
It wasn’t the Crystal Mall, which was the closest to where they all lived, but a generic mall she’d never seen before. She was on the second floor with an enormous staircase leading down to the first. Stores stretched off too far in either direction for her to see the end.
Nearby were Diamond Tiara and Gloria, Twist a bit farther. Diamond had the cloak and Twist the crossbow. Silver checked to see her silver boot was still on.
Their physical locations here corresponded to that in real life. It stood to reason Aurora would be some distance from Silver Spoon.
“Hey, I did it!” Gloria looked down at herself. “Operation Nightmare Night is a success.”
“This is so cool!” Diamond Tiara ran down the hall. “We get an entire dream mall to play around in? It’s a good thing Aurora’s greatest fear was capitalism.”
Silver Spoon went ahead a few paces, reading the strange names of the stores.
‘Gunpowder and Gasoline’ was the first, an exceptionally derpy-looking dragon was painted on its window. Right next to that was an ‘Explosions. Why Not?’, and then a ‘Straw and Giant Fans’. The last of which was already blowing large clumps of hay out into the mall.
“It’d be fun fighting a bunch of zombies in a mall,” said Silver Spoon, “but I don’t think this nightmare is a critique of consumer culture.”
She gestured to that row of outlets and the others picked up. Half the visible shops either sold wooden crafts or explosives of some kind. Even the pretzel stands exclusively sold pretzels with hot sauce.
Only question was which store Aurora was in.
Gloria went to work. She closed her eyes and waved her hoof about in the air with far too much mystic bravado.
“There.” She opened her eyes and pointed to the Gunpowder and Gasoline.
DT called out for anypony who could hear them to follow. Soon their gang was converging on the store.
The interior was exactly what Silver Spoon had expected. The shelves were so numerous and overstocked with gasoline canisters and kegs of gunpowder that one could barely move around.
Worse was Aurora standing in the middle of it all, wearing a goofy mascot costume – the same derp-eyed dragon that was on the front of the store. Not only was she wearing a bulky costume, but one with candles all along the edges of it, to give it the look of a flaming dragon.
There was a pink mare with a beehive-esque mane filing her hoof behind the counter. Silver didn’t know her name but recognized this as the pony Aurora worked for at her part-time job.
“Your Crackle the dragon costume looks amazing! Come here so I can make sure you put the zipper on right.” The beehive lady called out to the filly. She snarled a bit when Aurora didn’t step forward. “Get over here right now, Aurora, or you’ll never work in this town again!”
“Uh.” Aurora looked at the candles by her side, then at the stacks of flammables inches away from her. “Is this safe?”
“I keep telling you, Aurora, all those ‘safety regulations’ are just getting in the way of businesses doing–”
Beehive lady dropped her file as Silver Spoon, then the rest of their party marched into the store. They blew out the candles and helped Aurora out of her ridiculous getup.
“Oh no!” Beehive stood up and shook her head. “No, no! Not this again!”
What was obviously the dream demon itself took out a lighter and desperately tried to click it on. By then, DT had already put Aurora into the white robe. None of them could be killed now and the dream demon knew it.
It looked over the group, afraid itself.
“Stay back!” It got the lighter working. “Or I’ll blow this whole place sky high!”
“It’s not going to work.” Silver Spoon warned. Behind her, Twist pointed the crossbow and DT held the hand mirror in her mouth.
It glanced to the side, then tried to go through with it anyway.
Twist took the shot. The demon howled in pain as the bolt dug into its shoulder. It fell back and dropped the lighter.
Silver Spoon jumped over the counter. Interestingly, the fire appeared unable to spread. Silver Spoon stamped it out anyway and dragged the dream demon out by the tail.
By the time it pulled the bolt out, Silver Spoon had already dragged it out of the store. With the help of the others, she threw it off the balcony and onto the first floor. A minute later, it was in the middle of a wide hall, far away from its death-trap stores, surrounded by twelve ponies.
The dream demon pushed itself back with a hoof, holding the other out to steady the mob.
“Wait! This is all a misunderstanding!” It nodded rapidly. “Yes! I’m not that bad. You just misunderstand my culture!”
“You literally kill ponies for a living.” Diamond Tiara scoffed.
“Come on, guys!” The demon looked around the crowd, trying its best to smile. “I haven’t killed a single pony in eight hundred years! Hasn’t my guilt expired by now? Statute of limitations and all! I’m innocent.”
“Oh?” Silver Spoon raised an eyebrow. “So you weren’t trying to burn Aurora to death?”
“Well.” It looked up towards Gunpowder and Gasoline, then back to Silver. “Technically she would have died from asphyxiation. So no.”
“Get her.” Silver Spoon flicked her muzzle in the demon’s direction.
Everypony but Silver and Aurora charged forward and tackled the dream demon. The demon threw off the first two fillies before taking a punch to the face. Soon they were pilling onto it, kicking and stomping on the demon. One of them stabbed it with the silver knife, drawing out a howl of pain.
It tried fighting back for some reason. It warped its body into all manner of fangs and claws, often stabbing the other fillies, but to no end. They were perfectly fine no matter what it did.
Then it rained spiders down from the ceiling. Spiked tentacles and vines thrashed out from the floor. Silver Spoon let them whip into her just to see what it was like. She felt the thorns stabbing into her, but it was muted. Calling the sensation ‘pain’ would be an overstatement. Even that slap was closer to a massage than a whipping.
It felt like getting hurt in your dreams, like the memory of getting pricked.
On some level, Silver Spoon had to admire its determination. Despite centuries of ceaseless and unmitigated failure, it never stopped doing what it loved. If only that wasn’t murder.
Finally, Diamond Tiara put an end to the struggles by taking out the mirror. Gloria and Twist held the dream demon down while she shoved the mirror in its face. It let out a painful hiss, slobbering all over the floor.
“No! Am I really that hideous?! Make it stop!” It clenched its teeth and pulled back as far as it was able. Yet closing its eyes didn’t appear possible. Though it winced, trying hard to shut them, it couldn’t get past a squint. “I’ll do whatever you want! Just walk outside of the mall and the nightmare will end. This can all be over in just a few minutes. Please let me go!”
“Yes, you really are that disgusting.” Silver Spoon trotted over to the demon, making sure her silver boot clopped heavily with each step. “Stay there and we won’t hurt you any more than necessary.”
Silver Spoon knelt down next to it, raising her boot, threatening to slap them. It hesitated, clenching its teeth. But in the end, it nodded. DT pulled the mirror away. The dream demon collapsed backward in the relief of total defeat.
“And now we have a whole dream mall to ourselves!” Diamond Tiara jumped up on his back. “We can do whatever we want here!”
Everypony cheered and ran off while the dream demon was left on the floor twitching in pain. They tied it to the pretzel cart before dispersing.
That’s when the party really began. There were plenty of stores besides the death traps to explore.
They raided the food court first, finding you could indeed eat any of the stuff here. The flavor was a bit muted, the ‘inferno’ hot sauces were mild at best, but you could eat as much as you wanted without ever getting full. Downing twelve hay burgers without getting stuffed and bloated was an interesting experience.
True to what Silver heard, there were no mirrors in the bathroom, just pieces of plywood with an ‘out of order’ sign on them. The whole place went out of its way to make sure no surface was overly reflective. The equipment inside the fast food places was all rusted up despite the rest of them being so new and sterile.
Diamond Tiara led the two of them to an arcade they found next. They smashed the token machine with baseball bats to get the coins out. Then they had unlimited pinball and skeeball. Silver Spoon never understood DT’s fascination with the later. It didn’t take long to notice all the pinball machines were fire themed, ranging from volcanoes to burning houses.
They ended their trip to that place by throwing the arcade machines down the stairs.
Fillies racing down the halls with roller skates and skateboards (with flame decos) whizzed past them. One of them went tumbling straight down the stairs, laughing the whole way as the ‘pain’ was easy enough to ignore.
So of course they had to try that themselves a few times. They spent a while trying to get into a near-perpetual fall down the up escalator. Twist was the one who finally managed to do it, though she cheated given her precognition.
Silver Spoon eventually volunteered to have a few arrows and bullets from the sporting goods store fired at her. DT couldn’t go through with it, so instead Gloria emptied some rounds into Silver. Even one going right through her heart felt like nothing.
It was great! And they had plenty of time.
But after a few perceived hours, they started running out of ideas.
Silver Spoon sipped on her slurpy while reading the most pathetic name she’d seen yet. The outlet in question was named ‘Just a Big Pile of Coal.’ True to its claim, it was a room packed with coal to the ceiling, leaving just enough room to step a few feet inside.
They happened to be next to the dream demon, still strapped to the pretzel stand when they passed it.
“Did you seriously name one of the dream stores ‘Just a Big Pile of Coal.’?” Silver flicked her eyes in its direction.
“I made seventy-three of these shops!” It complained in its nasal voice. “It’s very unlikely anypony was going to come down here to–”
“No!” DT jabbed her hoof against its muzzle. “You’ve had centuries to come up with pun stores. Do better.”
Silver tossed her slurpy on the ground.
“Alright. Has everypony gotten this one out of their system?” Silver called out to the rest of the party.
They all gathered around her in short order and agreed to move on to the next nightmare.
“Good.” Silver turned back to the dream demon. “Then I say we throw the dream demon into the ‘Just a Big Pile of Coal’ and light this place up.”
All the fillies cheered and pushed the pretzel stand into the store. All the while, the dream demon begged them to stop.
“No complaining.” Silver watched it as it flew into the pile of coal. “This was your own idea.”
By now, they knew where the exit was. They poured out a trail of gasoline leaning from the exit to Just a Big Pile of Coal as well as Explosions. Why not?
Silver Spoon had made a prediction back when the demon threatened them with the lighter, that only Aurora could start a fire here. She tried putting a match to the gasoline but it wouldn’t take.
Instead, she handed the matches to Aurora and asked her to do the same. This time, a stream of flames shot forth. Soon enough, a raging fire erupted from their target, pouring out into the large hall.
The fillies cheered as the shops exploded violently one at a time, drawing closer to them each time. Soon, their temporary playground had been converted into a raging inferno. Shortly after, their view of the burning mall became obscured by all the smoke.
“This is a lot of smoke.” Diamond Tiara gagged on it. “Maybe we should go?”
Aurora grumbled and kicked her hoof but took off the white cloak and passed it to Lilly Longsocks so it would carry on to the next dream.
“I just wish I could have seen the rest,” Aurora complained. “Stupid short straw.”
“We’ll tell you about the rest.” Lilly hugged her.
Aurora waved them goodbye and stepped through the exit.
With little warning, the scene changed.
Now they stood in a foggy forest with no path in sight. Probably a dream about getting lost. But thankfully they had the compass for that.
Snails sat awake, waiting for the fillies to finish their nightmares. He knew he had his own just last night, but couldn’t help but feel he was missing out. His had to suck, but from the sound of the ones waking up, they were having a great time.
For a while, they lay side by side in a long row. There were enough of them that at least one ear was twitching about at any given time. That was about all the entertainment he got. You’d think going to an all-girls sleepover would have been way more exciting.
At least he wouldn’t have to wait long. They started waking up in quick succession after about a half hour.
From there, in the span of twenty-five minutes, the first six had woken up with a start. At least it was fun to watch them all bolting upright like that.
Talking to them, the time perception seemed seriously skewed. The twenty-five minutes in real life had been several hours in the dream world!
The latest two got up at almost the same time. They sat up and looked at one another, surprised.
“Whoa! Is it getting faster?” The first asked. “What did I miss?”
“Barely anything.” The second rolled her eyes. “My dream was a falling airship. We were there for all of two minutes. Guess my Nightmare Night’s over.”
“Not yet!” Aurora, the first, got a smirk on her face. She had the phone in her mouth. “I still have a way we can have fun.”
“What do you mean?”
Aurora put the phone next to Twist’s head.
“They say if you do this just right, you can mess with the pony who’s asleep,” said Aurora.
Snails did remember that from the briefing. If somepony you had a close enough bond with was nearby, then holding or calling out to the nightmare’s target could still allow you to help them in the dream.
And truth be told, Snails did want to have just a little fun tonight. He decided not to stop this.
“Twist! Rumble called for you!” Aurora cleared her throat, then spoke as deeply as her voice would go. “Hey, Twist! It’s me, Rumble! I totally want to make out with you and stuff!”
The night drew on as they visited all kinds of fun locations. Forests, the school, caverns, a falling airship, and a farm of all places.
Now they were in the second ‘drowning’ type of dream of the night. This one they were by a foggy river bank deep in the woods. The water flowed at a violent clip and it was fun to let the water carry you at such great speeds. There were some kelp monsters below the water, but it was easy enough to cut your way free from their grip.
Silver Spoon looked up at the sky. In the mall, the sun had been directly overhead judging by the angle. With each passing dream, the sun lowered. Now it threatened sunset.
“Is it just me or are the dreams getting worse?” Silver Spoon asked.
“Oh, I dunno.” Diamond Tiara poked her head out of the water. “This drowning one is kind of fun. We can stay underwater as long as we want.”
“I think we’re just getting tired.” Gloria yawned, sitting by the river bank. “It feels like we’ve been here for eight or nine hours. Long day.”
“No, I mean increasingly dangerous and morose. The first one was in the middle of the day with only static threats. Now it’s close to sunset and it’s begun to create additional monsters besides itself.”
Silver Spoon looked at the defeated demon, laying splayed out on its back, covered in kelp. It had put up zero resistance since they first overpowered it.
“So?” Diamond asked. “Even if it summons a billion monsters, it can’t hurt any of us.”
“It’s just that it should be getting weaker each time, not stronger. Something is wrong.”
“I’m not picking up on anything dangerous,” Twist commented.
“You might not be able to tell if there’s real danger in the next dream, though.” Silver adjusted her glasses. “I think we should hurry through the last few. There’s not much left anyway.”
“Fine by me.” Gloria lay down and closed her eyes. “I’m about ready to go to bed for real. I vote we just run through the rest of them.”
Diamond Tiara looked so dejected at the idea of her partying ending a bit early. She ran up to Silver Spoon and grabbed her in desperation.
“Okay! How about if it’s another forest or something lame we run, but otherwise we stay?” Diamond suggested. “We still have Twist to sense danger so we’ll know before things get bad.”
Silver Spoon supposed she had a point. She nodded her consent for the compromise. Though maybe she was too eager to give her friend what she wanted.
“Wait.” Gloria stood up. “I’m sensing an intrusion.”
Everypony shot her curious looks.
“There.” Gloria pointed to a tree with deathly seriousness.
The group trotted over, finding a phone connected directly to the tree itself.
“A phone? In the middle of the woods?” Silver Spoon asked the dream demon.
“It’s not me!” It kicked its legs pathetically in the air.
Silver Spoon kept narrow eyes on him as she picked up the phone.
“Hello?” She asked.
“Hey, Twist,” came Rumble’s voice. “It’s me, Rumble! I think you’re so hot and wanna make out with you and stuff.”
“This is Silver Spoon.”
“Oh! Well, can you tell Twist what I just said?”
The others were staring at Silver Spoon, expecting an explanation. She shrugged and gave them one.
“It’s Rumble,” she said to Twist. “He says he totally wants to make out with you and stuff.”
Twist gapped and stepped back, blushing heavily. It seemed every girl in their grade wanted to date Rumble, yet he was completely oblivious to all of this. It was enough that Silver wondered if he was gay.
“Oh.” Gloria made an ‘o’ with her mouth and rustled Twist’s mane. “And stuff. Lucky girl.”
“Oh my goths!” Twist began to stammer. “He doth?”
“It’s not really him.” Silver spoon hung up the phone. “I think the rest of the party is playing a prank on us.”
“I could tell.” Gloria snicked. “I think it was Aurora.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Twist’s ears deflated. She still blushed, but for a different reason.
“If you like Rumble, you should just say so,” said Gloria. “Death is imminent. We all have the terminal illness known as age. You might as well accept that you’re dying and let nothing go to waste.”
“I’d like to not think like that,” said Twist.
“Well I’m the only one with a coltfriend,” Gloria chided. “Just saying.”
“Whatever!” Diamond Tiara pushed Sunny Daze, whose nightmare this was, to the bridge. “Just give Twist the cloak and we can move on to the next one before every boy in school calls.”