//------------------------------// // 25- Dreamscape! At long last! // Story: Still No Signal // by Axel Azabash //------------------------------// That filly sure was a hand… hoof-full to han… to hoofle? WHATEVER! I mean, that filly was a bully, that’s for sure, and now I have to gather some supplies and go after her. The poor girl, she was kid… foalnap… STOP! I mean, she took her away! Poor little Cheerilee, now I have to go rescue her, I’m not going to let her get away with it. We were just playing in the sand pit, Cheerilee and me, building a sand castle, when suddenly, that dark filly with a blue helmet appeared… “Hahahahaha… fear me! For I am Princess Selena, the sovereign of the night!” A dark blue cloud of smoke exploded out of nowhere and out came the unicorn filly in question. She had black coat and a pointier than usual horn and pointier than usual teeth. “Eeeep!” The poor Cheerilee fell on her back “Uhh… can I help you?” “Show some respect to your sovereign, my little subject, for I am the princess of the night!” “It’s like… lunch time… around… twelve o clock, you know?” I said and pointed at the perfectly lit blue sky. The sun even had a smiley face on it and it didn’t hurt to look at, because if it did, we wouldn’t be able to see such face. “Yeah? Okay, but don’t tell me I didn’t warn you! BEHOLD!” She said in the most villainous of tones but with an almost ultrasonic squeaky voice that cracked a little bit at the end of the sentence. The sun was pulled out of the sky and the moon came up, turning the whole scene into nighttime. “Wow… that was kind of cool.” I pointed at the moon. “She is the evil princess, Smarty, be careful!” Cheerilee said while hiding behind the sand castle. “Oh, I see… so, are you evil?” I asked Selena. “Yup.” She answered, puffing out her chest fluff. “Wanna play?” “I…” “You can be like… the Princess or something, you see. We are building castles after all; we just might need a princess for it. We can build towers and walls and stuff and you can be all protected and be the sovereign of whatever you want. We can even draw your banners on the sand.” “Oh… I might very much like… uh… WAIT.” She seemed to hesitate a little bit as I offered her a plastic trowel. “Such disrespect will not go unnoticed! A curse will fall upon this town…” “Aren’t we inside the schoolhouse playground?” I interrupted. “TOWN! It goes better with the plot…” “Ah, okay.” We were now in a town in the middle of the forest inhabited by foals, so instead of markets and monuments, we had playgrounds and sandpits. The houses were adorably small. When the foals noticed that the day had just been turned into night, they started to panic and flee to their homes. “As I was saying, a curse will fall upon this town, and I, Princess Selena, will take HER as a tribute to your almighty sovereign!” She used her magic to levitate Cheerilee off of the ground. “Hey! That’s not nice, put her down, I said I would play with you! What’s going on!?” I protested, but she laughed and disappeared in a flash of light, taking Cheerilee with her. What a pickle… she had to come and stop our fun together, even when I offered her to play with us! The nerve of fillies these times I swear… So, that’s how I ended up wandering the little town, not really sure about what to do. Ponies seemed to be kind of shocked now, and I went asking about what had just happened, but all of them told me that Princess Selena had taken Cheerilee with her and that a curse had befallen upon all of us. When I asked about what kind of curse, they told me that we would all turn into zombies. How did they know how the curse worked? Because it was the only curse that would exist in this kind of situations, and all of them seemed to agree, so who was I to question them. To add insult to injury, it started to rain. An ominous storm had formed and I was fighting against the elements as I gathered the supplies for my adventure. Where did I have to go? Well, even I knew that, it was obvious in this kind of situations. The gloomy castle on top of that mountain that was there for some reason, the whole time, since the beginning, I swear. It didn’t appear just now or anything. Well, maybe if you looked away from it and you turned back fast enough you could sometimes catch a glimpse of said castle rendering, but that probably had to do with the connection to the server. They say life is what you make out of it, so I would set on something like… an epic mountain climbing full of challenges rather than an arduous task walking on all fours on a muddy trail, fighting against rain and wind. Halfway through I found the path was blocked by a fallen tree, its trunk as wide as I was tall. Looking to the left I found the almost vertical wall of the mountain, eroded by some water torrents that had formed, flooding the path and turning the mud into puddles before falling from the cliff on the right side, and said cliff was almost vertical too, and the trunk stood out of the path, cutting it completely. Getting over it was the only way… I prepared for a jump, wiggled my butt for good measure and jumped, only for my rear legs to slip on the mud. That made me unable to gain enough momentum, and I ended up crashing into the wood. As I sprawled on the floor, the slippery mud took me a few meters down the slope, and a crappy music started to play. “Oof, you lost a lot of progress. That’s a deep frustration, a real punch in the… CLICK” “SHUT UP!” I squeaked in my now high-pitched voice as I turned off the volume of the dialogues. I took a few calming breaths, coughed a little bit because some rain water managed to get into my mouth, and assessed my situation. Welp, I had to climb it then. Using the wall of the mountain for support and the roots that were still sticking out of the trunk I managed to climb it and fall unceremoniously on the other side. It was ungainly, undignified and slightly painful, but effective nonetheless. After an indeterminate amount of time walking up the slope, fighting against the elements, I finally arrived in the castle. It was a hastily made structure, made out of reeds and wood chunks, like put together in a hurry or by a team of foals, maybe both. “Princess Selena! I have come to rescue Cheerilee!” I opened the door and came in. Cheerilee was sitting in a corner of the castle, on top of a circle drawn on the floor with a sign reading ‘Dungeon, don’t step out’. Selena was in front of me, blocking the way to Cheerilee. “Oh, you fool! You have come to your doom!” She said as she charged a spell. “Welp, joke’s on you, I’m immune to…ARGH!” I screamed in surprise as I felt like I was hit by something and crashed on the floor a meter away from where I was standing. “You can’t defeat me, you weakling! Thou… I mean… you have no magic!” She cackled as thunders struck the area for added dramatism. “Then… I… cast… TACKLE!” I launched myself against her, taking her by surprise. We both fell to the floor and struggled for a little bit. I managed to hit her horn every time she tried to cast something, dispelling the spells. “Smarty, you came for me…” Cheerilee called from the ‘dungeon’. “There is no time, Cheerilee, run! I will distract her and then we will go back!” “I mean… Smarty, I’m the mare! I should be the one rescuing you!” “Does AUCH! not…” I replied, as I got a hoof to the face while Selena and I struggled. “Does so!” “Does NOT!” “You both are going to go to the dungeon!” Selena intervened. “Does SO!” I also blew a raspberry to Selena for good measure. “Ewww… gross.” She said. “Come on! Run away, I’ll catch up!” “Nope, I’ll help you defeat Selena.” And so, Cheerilee also charged against us, pushing the three of us against a reed wall. The roof was leaky and the floor became muddy, so our hooves were all slipping around and making a general mess of ourselves. On a particularly violent shove, the floor gave up under us, and a chunk of the mountain fell down the cliff, taking part of the castle with it. Selena also fell for the surprise of Cheerilee and me. “You have defeated me! Curse yoooooouuuu…” And she disappeared down the abyss in a very Disney-like death. The rain and wind stopped, and the sun came back up, lighting up the day again. “Oh my god, she just fell!” Was my reaction, as I cautiously approached the collapsed border. “Oh no! Dear goodness, the poor thing!” Cheerilee was suddenly on the verge of tears. “We… need to get help, she’s just a filly…” “She was a bully, but… but… she didn’t deserve that! I don’t want her to get hurt.” We were suddenly startled by a gentle giggle behind us. “Oh, I assure you she is perfectly okay, my little ponies.” “GASP! Princess Luna!” Cheerilee immediately bowed at her. “Uh… and… Oh, you must be an important pony.” I gave her a court reverence. Before us was what I could describe as a giant, dark blue and ethereal purplesmart, or something like that, she had both horn and wings and was kind of tall, specially taking into account our actual height right now. The breeze of the mountain did weird light tricks to her mane, that looked like it was as light as a cloud of smoke, but blue and not actually going away in the wind. There were also sparkly dots that resembled stars, quite the show to watch indeed. “But… we need to help that little filly, Miss Luna, she just fell, we need to find her!” I urged the adult pony to help us. “Oh, she is perfectly okay, don’t worry. Um…” “Smarty Pants, this is Princess Luna, your Highness, this is Smarty Pants, the alien.” Cheerilee realized the awkwardness and made the introductions, such an attentive sweetheart. “It is a pleasure to finally meet you, Mister Pants, you look adorable as a colt.” The real princess introduced herself. “Oh… that name is such a pain… Well, anyways, the pleasure is mine, your…” I hesitated with the title for a moment, so Cheerilee whispered it at me. “Oh, yeah, your Highness. AND I am not a colt, actually I’m not a pony at all, as you may see…” I showed her my han… hoof? “Oh, Smarty, you do indeed look adorable like that! Look at that rich blue coat and that fiery orange mane! Quite the charmer…” I could almost see the stars twinkling in the eyes of a suddenly too-close-for-comfort filly Cheerilee. I sat on the floor and looked at my hooves. Huh… hooves indeed. I looked back and saw my indeed fiery orange tail twitching nervously. I went cross eyed and could see the blue tip of my muzzle. “I have been looking for you lately, Mister Pants. My sister, Princess Celestia is… well, interested in knowing more about you, she instructed me to look for you in the dreamscape, but after many nights of fruitless search, this opportunity rose.” Luna explained. “This opportunity?” I asked. “I couldn’t find you in the dreamscape at all… It might have something to do with what Twilight Sparkle reported about you. Resistance to magic and magical interactions. But then I found a shared dream between two ponies, one of them without a magical signal in the dreamscape, I got my suspicions of what it could be, I took a look and I found you two! Shared dreams are quite rare, a very strong bond is usually needed, you two must be very close to each other.” “Oh, so you wanted to talk with me?” I was growing uncomfortable as I was finding more body parts that resembled a pony the more I looked at myself. “More or less, yes. I wanted to learn more about you first hoof.” “Then why didn’t you just tell us?” Cheerilee asked. “Well… there are some things that cannot be asked, only tested instead, and well… My sister insisted on… um… I mean, I had a lot of fun playing with you two! And I believe I learned everything I needed to know.” She giggled. “HAD I BEEN A COLT THIS WHOLE TIME!?” I panicked as the situation really got to me and I suddenly woke up in my room. I looked around and checked my hands, my lack of a tail and went cross eyed to see my regular human nose. I sighed in relief and collapsed back on the bed. Lot of weird things happen in dreams and you don’t really question them, and let me tell you, this was a REALLY weird one. Okay, calm down, don’t think too much about it… I checked my body one more time, still human.