//------------------------------//
// Chapter 35 
// Story: Beyond the Veil of Sleep 
// by Starscribe 
//------------------------------//

It was not some vague magical impression that warned Mira she had nearly reached her destination. It was, rather, a distant pony, muttering quietly to himself. The speaker was a stallion, and quite old by the timbre of his voice. Not a bat either, as their voices had a distinct quality she could identify easily. 
Given the situation, she imagined an old unicorn with a sharply groomed beard, perhaps wearing a fancy robe. His words were meaningless at first but became clearer as she crept closer.
Strangely, she found no traps—no active spells at all, other than the one at the center of this underground maze. Or it was probably underground originally, anyway. Her flight felt mostly upward, through vertical shafts that a non-winged pony would be helpless to ascend. At their peak, who was to say what might be waiting.
A handful of vaults and security doors once blocked the way, but the shifting rock had rendered most of those as useless protection now. Metal crumbled and bent or left openings wide enough for Mira to squeeze through.
Until at last she reached a doorway and covered her spotlight to peer inside. 
The workshop was almost as large as the observatory overhead, with expansive shelves of books and many magical worktables. Some of them floated in the air, chalkboards and sheets of magic that rearranged themselves over time, always shifting to present the most useful information towards the center.
No golems armed with spears to protect the place, or dream demons. But there was a pony—a unicorn, just as she imagined. 
He resembled the dream itself—gray and colorless, like something slightly out of focus. His voice was a little distant too, as though echoing through many tunnels and caverns. If she listened closely, she could pick out spellcasting words—concerns about the stability of the spell's pattern, the right runes and mudras and amount of magical power to invest.
He's talking about the prison.
The pony obviously meant his spell to contain something, given how much power he had involved in the process. Mira already knew what, of course. This was the dream of the architect of Luna's prison. 
"He looks like a dreamer," whispered Pixie, poking out of the saddlebags and peering through the workshop. "Dreaming about this spell you want to fight. But how can he be here? It's a dead dream."
"Dead and not dead," she answered. "It's here in the sea of dead dreams, but it's intact. And it has a dreamer in it."
She could summon a weapon, maybe try to attack the dreamer. But if he was here at all, that might explain why the dream had stability. The presence of a sleeping mind linked them to the physical and provided reinforcement against the chaos of the Astral Sea.
"Do you know anything about dreamwalking? I don't think I got the parts about dealing with sleepers."
Pixie hopped down to the sideways floor. Aside from an unusually high edge to get in, the bookshelves would make for a decent walkway into the workshop. No immediate falls to her death, anyway.
"We're already in the dream, I think. Usually there's a bubble, but this is... something weird. If it gets too unstable, dreamer wakes up. If we look out of place, they might ignore us. Their whole world revolves around the dream, so things that don't belong will just fall out." 
"You think we have to make ourselves part of the dream?"
The cat bounded away from her, hopping into the room. "No idea. Dreams aren't supposed to work this way. Dead unicorn... who knows what he dreams about. I hope other corpses don't dream too. One life is enough for me." She vanished into the rubble, leaving Mira to herself.
Of course, the cat might come back if she got into trouble—but she also might leave her to face the threat on her own. There would be no way to know until the danger arrived. 
Mira sighed, then imagined the fanciest set of court robes she could. She'd seen illustrations of the high court, even if they weren't terribly detailed. She covered her wings, though they were still there under the cloth. More advanced dream magic could change how she looked in here if she really wanted to. But given all the other pressures outside this room, speed felt more important than a little extra stealth.
Finally, she stepped forward, advancing boldly into the workshop. She made no attempt at staying concealed, instead scattering little papers and debris in front of her as she went. "Are we close? Princess Celestia says we need the spell. We're running out of time."
The result was instantaneous. The unicorn stopped his muttering, lowering the quill he levitated in his magical grip. His eyes narrowed, focusing intently on Mira. But even when he spoke from right beside her, his voice came through distant and out of focus. It took intense concentration to understand the words.
"I know the danger. Her army... getting closer. Freezing village after village. Dead filling the streets. If you've come to lecture me, or gloat about my hubris, I've heard it all already. I know. I am working as quickly as I can. You will have your solution when it is finished."
He gestured at the table in front of him, filled with dense pages of magical notes. At a glance, they were far more detailed than any single spell she'd ever encountered. Diagrams interconnected in delicate lattices of silvery letters, others formed dense layers atop each other, building together towards a coherent whole.
This made Mira's anchor look like a child's toy by comparison. This stallion is a genius. Or a mad pony—but given the princess remained trapped on the moon, she suspected the former. 
"Perhaps it would be... helpful for you to have somepony to talk to," she said. "To work through the problem."
One of his eyebrows went up. A few diagrams drifted out of the air, fluttering down to the bookshelf that formed the floor. But the dreamer didn't notice the tilted room, any more than he seemed to realize there was anything strange about Mira's fluffy ears and fangs. 
"You think a messenger would make some thaumaturgical insight Starswirl himself could not?"
"No!" she exclaimed, a little too quickly. "Nothing like that. But explaining the problem to another pony... it might help you think about it, even if nothing I say is very smart. I know what it's like to get too focused on just one problem. Eventually it all starts to blur together, and you can miss obvious answers that might be sitting right in front of you."
The stallion glanced around the destroyed workshop, as though looking for someone who wasn't there. There was no other sign—no magic that didn't come from this dreamer. "I suppose. A few minutes would not go entirely amiss. But if the dark army arrives during our conversation, the evil princess gets to kill you first. Agreed?"
"She's not—" Mira choked back her objection. "Agreed. I'll step right out in front of her and ask for it. Now, tell me about this magic you're doing. I see some runecraft on the first page. That's what holds the spell together? Did somepony have to fly up and put those on the moon?"
He answered in the way Mira knew best from stuffy, proud unicorns: mocking laughter. "Fly to the moon? Impossible. You are right about the requirement for significant stability—but no flight could reach the moon. Even if there was air to breathe, it would be a trip many times further than crossing the planet. Only an Alicorn's magic could reach so far. But that is not the difficulty. Celestia has already managed those parts of this spell. That is not what troubles me."
Mira remained silent for a few seconds, watching for the pony to resume gloating again. Most unicorns she'd met loved giving other ponies’ long lectures. They needed you to know how much better they were, after all.
Strangely, this one didn't. "The problem here is responding to the target. The most powerful being who ever set hoof on Equestria must be contained inside that spell. She is intelligent, her powers are versatile, and her hatred is insatiable. She will have many lifetimes to try every manner of escape. It must also preclude the transmission between realms. Before her corruption, Princess Luna was the most skilled oneiromancer alive. The Nightmare inherited all those powers, so long as it wears her."
Mira had an important mission. Outside these walls, the strange engines of an ancient ship struggled against the storm. If it got washed away, every friend she had made in the Dreaming would die. But she had to ask—something drove her.
"You aren't the first pony to tell me the princess was... corrupted, somehow. Princess Luna was good, but Nightmare Moon is bad. What does that even mean? I thought Nightmare Moon was a title. She claimed more power once she decided she wouldn't let her sister rule alone anymore. She's not a different pony."
Something pressed down on her shoulder—the pony's leg, as cold and lifeless as stone. If he was that strong, he could just as easily crush her bones. What kind of unicorn was that strong? Maybe something to do with the dream—he was the dreamer, even if he was dead. Or maybe not all the way dead?
"I saw it, messenger. Her reasons are not important. Her hopes may've been noble, or they might be vile, but they do not matter. She gave place for an Outsider in her spirit. It grew and festered there like a cancer, until it took her body and soul. She is not the pony we all once loved. It is not clear if any of that pony survives anymore. If she does, she must be in agony, watching the horrors Nightmare Moon inflicts on Equestria, helpless to stop them."
Even a bat was willing to kill me when it found out about Nightmare Moon. That bat probably wasn't the only one who would. "If that's true, why imprison her at all? Is it kind to let a pony live in pain like that?"
The unicorn released her shoulder. "Her sister refuses to abandon hope. The rest of us must remain her faithful servants, even if her path leads off a precipice. So we imprison her, and leave treatment for the ponies who come after. It will not be our problem. I will not live... long enough to see my failure unmade. I suspect you will not either."
You're right about one thing. I don't think you're alive anymore.
His words might not be a trap, but she felt the same danger from him. He had no reason to lie to Mira, unlike almost everypony she'd ever met. The sleeping mind told its deepest truths. But still he insisted, repeating all the dangers that Nightmare Moon supposedly represented.
"Okay, well... weaknesses. Why don't we take another angle? I can't understand spellcasting like you do, so more basic. It needs to be strong from the inside. What about the other direction? What happens if someone breaks one of the anchors on the moon?"
The unicorn laughed again. He was less bitter than the last time, instead just sounding sad. "That cannot happen. No one could travel there except Princess Celestia. It's safe to say she will not lose command of herself and perform such a serious error."
"The protections you put in place—reinforce it from the Dreaming? Nightmare Moon can't dream walk out."
He nodded, looking exasperated. "Inside the prison, the Dreaming does not exist. It is no longer a valid state of matter, closed orbital."
But she could send a message, once. "From the outside—could a pony dreamwalk there? Or is the whole moon... blocked from that kind of magic?"
"Would that I had such powers," he said. "You're worried over nothing, messenger. To exit the dreaming, an oneiromancer must have a sleeping soul in the physical world. The princess herself is unreachable—so there is no path. Only an Alicorn could get there."
"So it's perfect," Mira said, slumping onto her haunches. "Sounds like you already succeeded. There's no way for anypony to help her. Once she's up there, she's trapped forever."
"From the outside, yes. But if a sliver of magical essence reaches through the barricade, she could claw her own way out. Right now—I do not think a perfect barrier is possible. Probability is our best gamble. Perhaps an eternal prison is not required. If it works long enough, Princess Celestia could use that time to devise some cure—or gather the strength to end her life. The longer I work, the more confident I become. We do not need an infinity of years, only a great many."
Finally Mira's ears perked up again, attention focused directly at the unicorn. "How many?"
"Many centuries. One thousand is a magically powerful number—reaching it may be possible with the time I have left. Beyond that, every day is a gamble. Once enough magic leaks through, she will free herself. It is inevitable."