Fire Bolt was now incredibly aware that she was not in her true home. Where she truly was, though, was incomprehensible. Each building that she had explored, even her own home, was frighteningly empty and cold, its residents seeming long gone. She had wandered through Cloudsdale once again, this time knowing where she was going, but the white fluffy clouds had turned to an angry gray, seeming to reject her visit. The night sky had continued to stay frozen as it was, and Bolt was losing hope, quickly.
Silver Strike had left for Los Pegasus this morning and never came back, but that wasn’t as surprising as it should have been. What was really confusing, though, was the fact that Hyacinth was no longer in the home somehow, and Serenade Remix… she was long dead. Fire Bolt couldn’t understand why she was surrounded by isolation and death, and her fur was still stained a darker red in some spots after her sister’s gruesome demise. Was it even worth sticking around? Was this the afterlife, and if it was, what had she done to deserve it?
No matter how hard Bolt tried, her memory could not reach beyond the morning breakfast that she’d brought to her now mangled sister. Anything she could remember before that point was a blurry mush, and she was thoroughly confused as to who she even was before this point – could she even be sure that she knew her own name?
As she sat on the stoop of her abandoned home, something suddenly caught her eye; a flashing light in the distance that wasn’t there before seemed to get brighter with each pulse. Standing to find the source of the light, Bolt decided to take flight despite her fears of the night sky.
She grew closer to the light, or so she thought, as the distance between herself and the flashes never seemed to decrease. Fire Bolt pushed herself even harder, flapping her wings until they ached with the speed she was forcing upon herself, and her determination alone seemed to be the fix as she approached the brightness.
Finally landing when she felt close enough, Bolt discovered the source – a tall flower with magenta petals, beaming from root to leaf with a bright blue light. Something about it made her uneasy. It was a sense of deja vu that crept from her stomach to her throat as she took in the sight, and it was starting to make her head hurt. As she took a single step closer, the light suddenly enveloped her completely, blinding her. It was like a comforting blanket rather than a terrifying sight as the bad feeling dissipated from her body, and her gut told her that this was what death was like.
Assuming this was finally her end, she closed her eyes in acceptance, keeping the memory of her family strong in her mind and hoping to join them elsewhere…
…until she opened them to find herself staring at a fireplace.
“Boltie? Oh god!” Two hooves were flung around her body in a bearhug, and she turned to see the lilac unicorn of her partner behind her.
“Wh… Huh? Where am I? What happened?” Fire Bolt took in her surroundings – a cozy cottage was housing her, and a mysterious blue unicorn sat wide-eyed from a table against the far wall.
“I have… no idea.” The unicorn replied in a whisper as Sonar Moonshadow looked to her for an answer, and Bolt suddenly realized that his eyes weren’t glassy and cold – his gaze met her own, and it was obvious to her that he was truly seeing her for the first time. He looked over her face, her mane, her wings, and then back to her face.
“You’re so… Um, well, Misty, this is Fire Bolt. Fire Bolt, Misty Seeker. How did you get here?” Sonar took a few steps back, allowing Bolt to stretch out her limbs and look around.
“I can’t… I don’t know. I was just at home, I-I was ready for it to be over, and then I was… here,” She wiped away her tears as soon as she realized that they were falling.
“Home? Bolt, you were in the Frozen North. A cave, remember? Can’t you recall our journey?” Sonar Moonshadow was perplexed, and as he spoke, a splitting pain suddenly took over her head, causing her to grip it with her hooves.
“Ah! What in the world-” Another round of shooting pain made her dizzy, forcing her to the ground as her limbs turned to jelly. Her memories of the past several hours were merging with an entirely different reality and it felt like fire in her brain. “Ow, stop!” Bolt wasn’t sure why she said that or who she was yelling at, as she knew her pain was not coming from anyone else. Sonar sympathetically placed a hoof on her back as she writhed.
And then, just as quickly as it started, it stopped. She took a few deep breaths in preparation for the next round of searing pain in her skull, but it never came. Bolt lay heaving on the ground for several minutes before forcing herself to move and sat on the chair across from the blue unicorn, noticing playing cards scattered all over the table between them. “Misty?” The unicorn nodded expectantly. “Where are we?”
“The three of us are on the top layer of the Interstellar Rift Planes. It seems you have somehow joined us from a lower layer.” Fire Bolt blinked at the response, hoping that a sudden burst of knowledge would make her understand. “Your partner here used the Nebulith Etherbloom to get himself here with my guidance, but I’m unfortunately out of answers when it comes to how you got here. Unless…” Misty recapped.
“Unless what?” Sonar Moonshadow raised his eyebrows at her expectantly, and Misty was deep in thought for a few moments.
“Soul ties! You two could have a soul tie. Even with that, though, it takes very strong magic to cross dimensions through a tie. There’s no way for it to just be… an accident,” Misty stood and paced as she pondered for answers, so Sonar took her seat at the table. “Oh, how rude of me!” A third chair materialized at the table, making Fire Bolt jump in surprise, but Sonar just smiled reassuringly at her. “Tell me what you remember.”
The statement was suddenly incredibly difficult to think about, but Fire Bolt tried her best. “Um… Woke up in bed as a teenager again, got breakfast from my mom, said goodbye to my dad-”
“Your dad?” Sonar exclaimed, ignoring Misty’s annoyance at the quick interruption.
“Yeah, he was there. It was like I just… went back in time and forgot all about my real life,” Bolt couldn’t help but let disappointment seep into her voice, and Sonar was well aware of how frequently she wished for the impossible task to go home to her parents and sister. “Everything was okay again. I took breakfast to Mixie, gave her the medication-” Horrifying memories suddenly flooded back alongside the pleasant ones, the sensation of spiders on her hoof making her shiver. “Uhh… went to Cloudsdale and spent some time with Marshmallow Creme, and something happened there, I just can’t quite remember what, though.”
“The lower layers are dangerous. I think I might be able to figure out what happened, can you remember anything past that?” Misty asked as her pacing quickened.
“Unfortunately,” Fire Bolt gulped nervously. “Well, my older sister died. In real life, that is. I was just a kid and I thought she was sleeping; it was peaceful for her,” She broke eye contact with Sonar as grief filled her stomach and threatened to burst from her throat. “In the… lower layer thing, I went back home, and she was already dying. My mom was so mad at me, so mad, I just…” Tears began to fall freely despite her embarrassment. “I didn’t know what to do. I went to her room, and there was this freaky spell going on, I mean, it looked paranormal. She died suffering, and her blood got everywhere. It was so different than how she really passed. There were these eyes, and the horns-”
“Sonar Moonshadow, we need to wrap things up quickly. I’m sorry to say this, but you two must leave me immediately,” Misty Seeker had stopped pacing at the mention of blood. “Fire Bolt, you were living in a… how can I explain it? A recreation of both your dreams and your worst nightmares. A stage was made to make you think that you were home.”
“A stage? So it was all fake? But… who was making a fake world for me to live in?” Bolt questioned, watching as Misty and Sonar shared a tense look.
As if to answer her question, a dark red magic began to illuminate Misty’s horn, seemingly to her own surprise. “Oh, no. This is not good. This is not good at all. Your friends are in danger. He is showing his form in Equestria as we speak.”
Sonar suddenly lept to his hooves, Fire Bolt’s confusion turning to fear at the reactions in front of her.
“Listen very carefully, as we do not have much time left. The Nebulith Etherbloom you used will be dead when you return, and you will not be able to use it again. You may find another if you wish to visit me again, but for now-” She lifted a suddenly conjured necklace to lay on Sonar Moonshadow’s neck. “This talisman will let me speak to you in your dreams. I’ve never used it before, but I’ve read about it.”
“Wait, but what are our next steps? What do we do to stop this?” He asked, looking down at the inscribed jewelry lying on his chest. “We didn’t even get to figure out what I can do!”
“Fire Bolt, you need to find this mare you knew, Marshmallow Creme, yes? Is she living?” Bolt nodded frantically as Misty spoke quickly with fervor. “There must be eight of you. I will help you find the remaining ponies. Sonar, you need to get absolutely everypony out of that cave. It doesn’t matter how, just don’t get an enclosed space with that thing. Got it?” Sonar nodded, and Misty now spoke with a softer tone. “I… will miss you. It was very nice to spend this time with you.”
“I’ll miss you too, Misty. Thank you for your help.” The two of them touched hooves for a moment, and Fire Bolt awkwardly watched. Sonar then turned to her, his horn illuminating with a bright light as he drew her close to him. A flash of magic filled the room, and then… they were gone.
“Goodbye,” Misty whispered to the nothingness in front of her, returning to her infinite solitude with a heavy heart.
Jelly Splash knew that at this point, she was going to die. The creature was inches from her face, and she still couldn’t move. His jaw was opened wide, and the two ponies could see the never-ending black void within.
Out of the corner of her eye, there was light. She could move again, just barely. Slowly wiggling her ears to start, she noticed Sapphire was also beginning to twitch their wings, and the creature suddenly snapped its mouth shut and retreated by a few inches. She froze again, terrified that her slight movements had angered the beast.
“Jesterbones.” It didn’t move any further, but the sound of what Jelly Splash assumed to be its name caused his expression to falter. Finally able to turn her head just the slightest bit, she saw Sonar Moonshadow standing firmly in front of the now wilted flower, and Fire Bolt just behind him, albeit quivering with nausea. “Leave them alone.”
“Ah, you know of me. And who do I have the pleasure of speaking with?” The creature, Jesterbones, spoke in an amused tone, finally turning his head to see the other two ponies.
“You need not to know of my name, only of my power. Isn’t that what you said?” Sonar was getting closer with a determined walk, a kind of annoyance in his voice and his horn lit with a glow that Sapphire had never seen on a unicorn before.
“You are rude. I do not like rudeness from-” Jesterbones started, but stopped as the glowing inscriptions on the cave walls formed into one beam of magic, guided by Sonar’s horn. The ball of light suddenly hit the far wall opposite the cave entrance, creating what looked like a magical tunnel with a loud blast.
“Sap, Jelly, out! Now!” Fire Bolt ordered, and they were quick to listen. The two of them raced to the magical opening in the wall with a newfound ability to move and lept inside. It was colorful and strange, and the two ponies floated through the air, never once looking back as they were thrown towards a bright light.
It felt like both seconds and days had passed before the two of them were firmly planted on the cobblestone floor of the Crystal Empire, and Sapphire looked back to see the swirling magic close behind them. “Wait!” They ran towards the shrinking tunnel – Fire Bolt and Sonar Moonshadow were still in the cave.
Before they could panic further, the light suddenly opened again, throwing the two remaining ponies to the ground roughly, and the scabbed injury on Fire Bolt’s chin was reopened with the force of hitting the ground. Sonar stood and turned around, pushing the magical tunnel shut for good before anything could follow them.
Sapphire embraced the two of them suddenly with a grip that made Sonar huff out a breath, and Jelly Splash soon joined them in an embrace. “We thought you guys were cooked!”
“I did not think I was going to make it out of there alive,” Jelly added, her voice muffled against Bolt’s mane. “And I was positive that you guys wouldn’t.”
Fire Bolt pulled away from the massive embrace after a moment, shaking out her mane and limbs as she tried to get used to the amount of realities that she had been tossed around. “I hate to break the moment, but we’ve got to get moving again.”
Sonar nodded, seemingly unaffected by the fact that he was blind again as he started in the direction of the abandoned train tracks that they had started from. “Cloudsdale. Everyone’s going to need a weapon.”