Mira felt more than saw the citizens of Chilon surrounding her. There was very little surprise at Sandy's condition, but she should probably expect that from a city in the realm of Bravery. Danger was as fundamental to the land as the loss that inevitably followed.
Mira didn't look away from Sandy. What was she even supposed to be doing here? Imagining her new friend not dying—what did that even mean? Maybe that meant Kallisto would show up behind her and put a knife in her back. She didn't, though. Instead, Mira heard a stranger's voice.
"What happened?" A male voice, young. But that meant very little to her, in a place where aging meant something completely different.
She glanced over her shoulder at the speaker, just long enough to see who it was. A bat, though he was different from any she'd ever seen. His wings had glittering lines connecting them to his back, like someone had set metal wires under the skin. His eyes glowed faintly blue, and his chest was unusually fluffy with fur.
Still a bat otherwise. One of the cousin tribes, maybe?
"They're dying," Mira squeaked, voice pained and feeble. "See? I'm trying to help, but I don't know how!"
"Oh." He circled around until he was beside Sandy's head, then settled onto his haunches. "Moths are fragile, even for figments. Does this one matter to you?"
"Yes!" she shot back, tears streaking her eyes. She wanted to punch him in his stupid face, but didn't act on that desire. He was just asking questions, even if they were incredibly stupid questions that should've been obvious without opening his dumb mouth.
"Can you help me?" she asked instead. "Please. I don't care what it costs, I just can't let them die. They risked so much to come here with me. They said it would get them killed, and it looks like they were right!"
The bat said nothing for a few more seconds. The color seemed to fade from Sandy's body, starting with the wings. They went wrinkled and gray, like something long dead.
"Healing is difficult. It is hard to give so much new power to a figment while leaving the original structure behind. You may change them."
"Changed is better than dead!"
There were at least a dozen creatures surrounding them now, watching their argument from a polite distance. But they still watched, as though they had any business here. If they were going to stare, why couldn't they help?
The bat held something across Sandy's body, out towards Mira. A glittering dagger, handle balanced on his hoof. "Then do as I say. You need a few drops of your blood. Put them here... over each eye, like that. I can see the desire is there, and the power certainly is. Been a long time since I felt so much glamor from one creature."
Mira did what he said. She sliced into her leg, just deep enough to bleed. She felt the pain of it, but it wasn't enough to wake her up. Pain in this dream still felt real, but it didn't drive her into the waking world.
She repeated the words to a strange prayer, with the cat watching her from the ground. It was a spell, the way she'd seen unicorns use in the past. But this one didn't use a horn, since of course she didn't have one. This one relied on her feelings.
"My blood to yours, my life to yours," she said. "What was nameless, now is bound."
She knew when it worked, though she'd never felt anything like it before. A sudden weakness suffused her body, far more intense than the desperate flight to reach this place. She dropped to the ground beside Sandy panting from exhaustion.
Just in time to see Sandy open their eyes and look around. The bat was right, they were different. Sandy's strange, segmented eyes were now a familiar pony shape, with dark amber irises slitted like a bat's. Mira's own eye-color, maybe even an identical copy of her eyes.
"You did it," they said, sounding little better than Mira felt. But then they stood, flexing both wings. They had mended, though where they were torn, the flesh looked different. It was sturdier, like bat skin instead of gossamer silk. The pattern was different too, swirling into a little moon-shape with only one watching eye instead of two.
Not that different from Mira's own cutie mark, now that she thought about it.
"Passable work for a neophyte," the stallion said, picking up his knife from where she'd dropped it, and cleaning the blade on the side of Mira's own saddlebag. "But does your moth still feel like themselves? Did you actually save anything?"
"I... think so." Sandy took a few steps forward, opening and closing both wings. "I am hazy on how we got here, or where here is. I was traveling with you, Mira. You had an important mission. We got... lost?"
Mira stood, shaking herself off. The weakness she felt wasn't tiredness exactly, and didn't just fade. But it also didn’t stay so pressing that she was paralyzed. It was a magical weakness, not a physical one. "Not quite. We just made it to Bravery. I think you called this place Chilon. Is that right?"
The stallion nodded. While the crowd had already started to disperse, he remained to watch the two of them. "Your arrival might be the most interesting change to come to Chilon in the last century. The ignorance, the desperation—you must have quite the cause."
She lowered her voice. Not that she thought her story would keep from spreading if she went recruiting for help. Meridian in Hope already knew, and probably wouldn't keep it secret for her. But did it even matter? Her old teacher wouldn't care enough about sending her out of the Dreaming that she would track her all the way here, would she? "The bat tribes in the waking world are in danger. If somepony doesn't do something, we might go completely extinct. I'm here looking for help."
I don't even know if she made it out of Erebus. Mira banished that grim thought. Her words had the desired effect, at least on this stallion. This wasn't Hope—no bat would come to live here without being a little brave themselves.
"That sounds like... a lot." He extended one hoof toward her. "I'm Cassini. Come home with me, and you can share everything you know. You'll feel better once you have something in your stomach."
She didn't have the energy to reject the offer, not after everything else she'd been through today. He had just helped her save Sandy's life. "I'm Mira," she said. "I guess... yeah. I wouldn't mind that. Guess we still need to eat here."
"Young dreamers do," he responded, leading her through the crowd. The strange dome-shaped homes here were hard to tell apart—his was tucked in a street over, near the cliffside. But Sandy followed along behind her, and even the cat didn't complain. That had to be a good sign. "If you still believe you need to eat, than you will. You can get over the reflex with practice.
"Your real body still has all the same needs, though. Still need to eat, drink, and move. Otherwise it will die right out from under you, and you'll be trapped here. Won't even know it happened, until you try to wake up and there's nowhere to wake up to."
Even the doors were strange, metal disks that rotated open for them, and sealed with several heavy bars on the other side. Despite seeming large on the outside, the interior was quite a bit more cramped then she was expecting.
The dome was as thick as a whole pony's body, with sturdy support pillars anchored deep into the rock. The windows were narrow slits, packed with thick glass and surrounded with something black and soft-looking.
The bat had decorated the space otherwise, or at least tried to. There were woven cloth carpets on the floor, and vivid paintings hanging on the walls. A few crystals hung from the top of the dome, clustered together to form a crescent-moon shape. But they weren't quite the same colors and shape, so the illusion didn't survive.
The interior was a single room, with a hatch leading into the rock at their hooves. More strange metal devices sat in the bat's kitchen, including a box mysteriously trapping the cold inside. He flung it open, withdrawing several strange fruits to the table and dicing them. "Explain what you meant about the bats in the Phenomenal. You're in danger?"
She sat on a little cushion beside the counter, with Sandy lingering not far away, and the cat off exploring the little house somewhere. She told the same story she'd given Meridian, right down to the destruction of Erebus, and her teacher trying to kill her.
"So my plan is to get to Nightmare Moon," she finished, at about the same time Cassini settled a plate down in front of her. "Free her from the moon, so she can return to Equestria and protect the bat tribes again. Otherwise, Celestia will keep pushing us to the fringes. In a thousand years, ponies won't even remember we exist. Not if nopony does anything to stop this."
"For your friend." Cassini put down another plate, before taking one for himself. He'd pierced the little bits of fruit with a stick, then cooked them over a little fire that appeared only when he pressed a few buttons to demand it.
It looked like unicorn magic, but she never sensed any. The dream bats had strange powers.
"It's an important mission," she continued, prodding at the strangely cooked fruit. It smelled good, which would usually be more than enough for Mira. But back home she'd only ever eaten certain bugs cooked. It just wasn't worth it for other things. "I just don't know if I'm strong enough to do it. Apparently being a living dreamer helps, but I don't have any experience. I barely know how my own magic works, as you saw. And if I wake up, I won't know how to get back in here."
Had she been in the Dreamlands long enough that she was getting picky about food? She forced herself to try a bite, and soon discovered just how delicious it really was.
Strange to waste perfectly good fuel on food that didn't need cooking. But here in the dreamlands, her tribe were still powerful.
Cassini ate just across from her. He didn't seem like he was in any kind of terrible hurry, and she soon discovered why.
A terrible storm struck the building, wind whipping about outside, rain pounding on the roof, and thunder shaking the ground under their hooves. The incredible strength of the construction suddenly made perfect sense.
Sandy moved closer to her, less than a hoof's breadth away from her. The cat was less subtle about her fear, and just jumped headfirst into her saddlebags.
"You've got a long way to go, too long to walk. And you're right, it wouldn't be proper to go it alone. But the path you describe—it could mean madness for you, even if you manage to reach the center. Are you sure there's no other way? There could be other allies for our tribe in the waking world, better able to undertake this journey."
"There are none," she whispered. "Our ponies are all enslaved. There are no monasteries even teaching dream travel anymore. They execute any creature who shares the old-ways."
Cassini sighed, chewing thoughtfully on a length of cooked fruit. Thunder rumbled outside, growing louder. Were they in the center of the storm?
"I'll make your case to the Explorer’s Guild when the storm eases. Bravery has a few skyships, we could take one of them as far as the sea. But understand, bravery is not suicide. They will not enter the madness, not with a dreamer like you."
"Closer is good. If that's the best we'll get, then I'll take their help. And I wouldn't say no to learning about magic along the way. Were you a monk?"
"No, but I was murdered by one."