//------------------------------//
// Chapter 40 
// Story: Beyond the Veil of Sleep 
// by Starscribe 
//------------------------------//

It wasn't easy to save a princess and her people at the same time. But Mira, fortunately, was not alone. 
The bats of Legacy were not all equally united in their labor, but they were at least on the same side. There was no fear of an Equestrian army crushing them with the Astral Sea swirling and Equestria bereft of skilled dreamwalkers of its own. The unicorn imitation could get them only so close.
The resources available to Mira's mission ebbed and flowed as the years passed. Greater sometimes, when the bats were motivated, and the mage's instructions were simpler. Lesser at others, when the Astral Sea turned tempestuous, and the food grew lean.
Some flows were stronger than others. A few months after their arrival, a great fleet crossed the horizon, a motley assortment of a hundred ships of different styles and strengths. Some were like the Diaspora, a great vessel of hammered metal with weapons that defied her understanding. Many more were wooden vessels, with dark sails and half-moon flags flying over their masts. 
All were packed with bats, as diverse in their histories and cultures as the ships that carried them. Yet all had come for the same reason.
When they first arrived, it was only a tiny pleasure ship of elegant wood and many flags hanging from the mast. Even so, it still attracted a crowd of dozens to meet them on the dock, with many others watching from the sky or the treetops. 
Mira waved the guards back, gliding out over the bay with only Pixie and Kallisto as her company. She floated over to the deck, scanning for potential danger.
She wasn't immortal here anymore, not without a body in the waking world. But the bats aboard weren't hostile. Some had weapons, spears and blades of variously kinds, but none drew them on her.
"Welcome to Legacy!" she called, dropping carefully onto the prow. "I hope this is where you wanted to be. Getting through the sea isn't exactly safe."
They looked at each other, before an older stallion with a little gray in his mane and an oversized cap stepped forward. "We have heard," he said. "Of a place of rest for the weary. Safety for the children of the moon."
"Where the sun is warm and the nights are long," said another. Their accents were strange, yet all comprehensible to her. Within the Dreaming all tongues were equal.
"You must be other survivors," said the stallion. "Survived the evacuation? To whatever meaning survival holds in this place."
Mira nodded. "A few of us came from Erebus, once. Others are modern survivors who fled into the Dreaming from Celestia's army."
"We've sailed far." The stallion removed his cap, holding it in front of him. "Many did not make it. Changed along the way, forgetting who they were. But when we heard of Legacy, we had to sail anyway, even through the Astral Sea."
"Please don't send us away!" somepony else added. "We won't make it back. The ship is barely floating! Half the size as when we left..."
She took off again. "You're welcome to join us, ponies. We need all the help we can get." 
What began as a trickle soon became a flood, ships packed with bats, with no food and little water. Within a few years, they were no longer struggling to find uses for their empty homes, but instead building new ones. They expanded below the island, and up into the trees. Not quite the towers that Erebus had once erected, but almost as tall.
Many who came to their island wanted nothing to do with dangers in the waking world, but still felt indebted to Princess Luna. Others saw things almost the reverse, with sympathy for Equestria's bats but rage at the way Princess Luna had “abandoned” their city to destruction.
Many skilled bats were still lost, scattered across the dreaming and beyond. But many were not, and they gathered in strength by the day. 
Mira no longer blindly trusted them just because they were the same tribe—a knife in her back now would make for her final end.
She couldn't learn everything of course. Starswirl's artifice was beyond her skill and had to be adapted to the magic available in the Dreaming. While others focused on that craft, she could instead learn what she'd forgotten. Eventually she started using it, visiting the dreams of sleeping bats and leaving them with instructions in her magic.
Some efforts were more successful than others. Uniting enough talent among the former residents of Understory to bring them all back to Equestria—that proved elusive. Many talented bats learned to travel, yet always found their way back before too long. Equestria was too dangerous, its bats too suspicious of their magic after word of Understory's destruction escaped. 
Without the bats to be their own voice, Equestria claimed their village had been completely destroyed, a warning to all who might walk the rebellious path behind them. Some accepted their claims to the contrary—many were too frightened to listen long enough to hear them. 
In the end, all their meaningful recruits came from dreams—bats who continued their waking lives yet joined the fight in the Dreaming. Instead of learning the most dramatic powers to use in Equestria, they focused on abilities that would not mark them as lunar rebels. They could pass information about Equestrian movements or teach forgotten crafts—but not manifest weapons and creatures of dream in the waking world. These would draw the sun's baleful gaze.
Mira was one of the few who spent time in the waking world—but even she couldn't make it her home. Every day she slept there made her older and made her vulnerable to Princess Celestia's magic. Like so many others, it was only a place to visit.
Until one day, Mira emerged into a dreamer's bedroom and felt something strange—like a faint acid brushing against her coat, tugging her back into the place she'd come. She could resist for the length of a mission, perhaps a few days at most—but no longer could she stay.
In the end, Kallisto was right from the first—learning dreamcraft had killed her. Like all of Understory's citizens who chose to stay, she was a Morphean.
That only renewed her determination. She would never have foals in Equestria anymore—that meant the other bats would need to carry on in her place.
Many bats fell as the years passed—to accident, carelessness, or battles with Equestria's dreamwalking unicorns. They knew about her city—they knew from the way bat colonies could avoid detection and discover the means to feed and care for themselves when other tribes were forbidden to aid them. 
A few disguised themselves as members of refugee caravans, or bribed bats who could bring violence to Legacy on their behalf. Some died—and so they founded an army.
Mira's friends weathered the years better than some. Her teacher got a little older, growing into the role of professor for the younger bats. At long last, she had the attentive audience she deserved, and a receptive population of bats to worship their ancient princess.
Meridian looked a little more like Sandy each day, until eventually there were two moths on the island, and not one. Then there were three, and ten, and a whole enclave of the hopeful insects. Hope had a natural home in such a realm, where it drove the actions of so many. 
Some deaths hurt more than others, when they came. Her feline companion continued to travel freely between worlds, until Pixie grew old and gray and slept.
"You'll stay with me when you die," Mira pled, crouched beside the fireplace in her treetop apartment. "This is the Dreaming. Nothing really dies here."
The cat yawned, looking in her general direction with creamy, sightless eyes. "If I wanted. But I would end up like you eventually. I was already a bat for a while—I'd never get the smell out." 
Mira held a little saucer of water towards her, pleading. "If you can stay, stay! A little magic and you're young again!"
"You do not need a familiar, Mira." The feline shook her head faintly. "You were... everything I could want," she said. "Bury me somewhere with a view. Somewhere... warm."
Thanks to the dream of an Equestrian explorer lost in the jungle, she did. Mira buried the cat near to where Understory had once been, on a hill so tall that she would be able to look out for miles around. "Don't know where cats go..." she whispered, settling the little stone monument over the grave. "But maybe one day I'll visit."
Pixie was wrong about one thing, though—she did need a familiar. A weasel first, who could scurry through equestrian libraries and fortresses to sneak away objects of power. Then an owl, to watch the stars in the world outside and measure as Starswirl's craft finally built to a crescendo.
Mira hardly thought of herself as old then, though some part of her knew it was true. She had come to the dreams of many, and watched them grow old, then visited their children in turn. With age came strength, and wisdom. Though she would never be the equal of an Alicorn, eventually she came to know as much of dream walking as any bat. 
Thus, she was the natural choice when the day finally came to execute their daring plan.
The streets of Legacy were filled with bats that night. Most were just there to watch, holding their ceremonial lanterns and wearing their lunar robes. What pony wouldn't want to be there to see off such an important mission?
Not all who attended were ponies, of course. A number of moths had come for the occasion, lining the sky with their pale wings and glowing body-paint. One even came with her.
Not Meridian. They had a new home now, and a new purpose. They didn't have to spend their time delivering hope. But someone else could. Sandy had a magical jumpsuit for the occasion, just like Mira. Their wings were even wrapped in shimmering metal fabric, covered with Starswirl's own runes.
Kallisto did not come—her role as a teacher was far too sacred to put her at risk.
For the other two members of her team, Mira brought two other bats. One was Abe, long since retired from his post aboard the Diaspora. Then there was a new bat, one of the many survivors of Erebus who had found their way to Legacy. Ivy could be a bit hard to talk to—but she was also among the most powerful dream walkers in the city, an expert from an earlier age.
Starswirl's machine took up a full third of the city, or at least its land area. A vast projector of crystal, that sapped on the power of the magical prison like a greedy mosquito. That magic powered centuries of rebellion against Equestria—she supposed they would need to conserve magic now, instead of burning it as fast as possible.
We won't need to fight a secret war anymore. Princess Luna will see to that.
Or maybe Nightmare Moon would end the world. They couldn't know until they found her.
At the very center of the structure stood a lens of perfect crystal, pointed now at the moon. No bat or other pony got close, or else risked getting drawn into its power. Only those with the strength to manifest in the waking world could walk this path—and all might not return.
Starswirl himself—or at least his dream-reflection, waited by the threshold. He still looked like a bat in here, or she suspected this version of him just was a bat at this point. After so many years of his own life and purpose, he'd grown into more than a figment. He gestured for her to turn in place, checking her magically protected suit from every angle. Finally, he nodded his approval, and gestured for her to step back.
He checked the other three with the same efficiency, making a few marks on his clipboard. Even after all these years, no one seemed to care that those objects just floated around him when he wanted them to. "You look as ready as you can be," he said. "The alignment is perfect. You will not get a better opportunity. Any longer, and the prison might collapse over centuries instead of an instant, strangling her to death. We must finish what we began."
"We'll free her," Sandy said. "This far we've come—now we do what Mira promised. It will soon be for the princess to preserve the bats who live."
"She'll do it," Mira said. "She has to."
"Princess Luna already preserved our kind once," Abe said. "She will do so again. And then the last survivors will rest at last."
"Step forward below the lens," Starswirl instructed. "I do not know how the spell will manifest on this side. But it should not be very difficult. Only the prison's central structure remains. It should fall quickly to your blows."
"And if it doesn't..." Ivy said. "It's too late to turn back now."