//------------------------------// // Chapter 4: Master and Servant // Story: The Mistress of Dreams // by McPoodle //------------------------------// The Mistress of Dreams Chapter 4: Master and Servant The purple dragon walked down the hall of the hospital to a sign that read “Monitoring Room”. He passed through a door painted black to enter a room covered floor to ceiling with small glass panels showing scenes in rooms and corridors throughout the hospital. Other screens showed rapidly scrolling displays of text or numbers. Sitting in a small wheeled chair in front of these screens was an undersized griffon, his face lit up by the flickering displays around him. A pair of large black cushions covered his ears, a wire connecting it to a large black box with blinking lights. The griffon used his claws to tap out commands on some sort of multi-keyed typewriter. At least that’s what it looked like to “Spike”. The griffon made no acknowledgement of the dragon’s entrance. In a pen at the back of the room was a small area lined with fireproof rock. In this space were the dragons he had already met. “Pinkie”s dragon walked up to him. “Your gem’ss low,” he noted, tapping it with a claw. Spike picked up the gem. As a dragon, he had a theoretical talent for detecting and channeling magic in gems. As Twilight Sparkle’s creation in this dream, he had whatever abilities he could reasonably believe in. As a result, when Spike held the gem in his claws, he instantly knew that while it had a high capacity to store magic, it was currently very low. He looked around at the gems worn by the other dragons, and saw that they too were magic reservoirs. Now he should not have been able to tell how much ambient magic was in the room—that was a talent possessed by unicorns with magic-related cutie marks. But as an extension of Twilight Sparkle, he felt he was able to fudge matters to a degree, and that was how he knew that the magical level of the room outside of the dragon gems was low to the point of being virtually nonexistent. Back in the hospital room, “Twilight” looked around her in sudden realization. “Where did the magic go?” she asked. “I detect barely any magic in this room.” “Rarity” sighed. “The magic of Equestria faded after Princess Celestia disappeared looking for Princess Luna during the Second Great War a half-millennium ago. You know this, Piflin! Princess Luna destroyed the emperor, but was never able to find her sister, and so, giving into despair, she left our plane of existence.” “Wait, wasn’t Celestia searching for Luna the plot of your dream, ‘Lunesta’?” Pon-3 asked “Pinkie Pie”. “Ah, why don’t we let the nice pony here finish her explanation?” Lunesta replied nervously. Without a word, Piflin left her bed and walked out the door of the room. Florlet nervously followed her, with the other ponies trailing them. DJ Pon-3 relied on her sense of hearing to direct her. She soon noticed that slight motions of the dragon perched on her back also helped to steer her away from running into anything. “Piflin...Piflin please!” the white unicorn exclaimed. “Oh, don’t stop, I’m still listening,” Piflin said, as she entered the Monitoring Room. The ponies other than Florlet froze as they took in the towering wall of monitoring screens. Or in Pon-3’s case, the faint sound of hundreds of different conversations. The griffon took off his ear covers and pivoted the chair around in surprise. “Miss Florlet!” he exclaimed in a high voice. “This is most irregular!” “Is he watching everything?” the pegasus asked. Surreptitiously, she pointed at the ceiling with her tail, thereby referring to an entirely different “he”. “I am Rosig the Griffon,” the monitor said with a small bow from his seat. “It is my duty to impartially monitor the Republic. A world without secrets is a world of perfect equality, after all.” He was so young that he looked barely fledged. Twilight was certain that she had heard that voice before, but not from a griffon. “You were telling us where the magic went?” the purple unicorn prompted Florlet a few seconds later. “Right,” Florlet responded wearily. “The ponies responded to the loss of their princesses by founding the Republic.” “And I...I mean Twilight Sparkle, was the first president,” Piflin said, with some degree of surprise as the memory came to her. “Yes,” said Florlet. “Over the following centuries, ponies found scientific replacements for magic. We have been able to accomplish marvels never dreamed of by our ancestors, we have raised the standard of living for our poor to unprecedented levels, we have a nearly 90% literacy rate! Sure, our technomagical horns and wings are poor substitutes compared the abilities of the historic Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash, and we never were able to figure out how to reproduce any forms of earth pony magic, but for those who can afford them—” “The dragons make up for the difference,” Piflin said, pointing at the group of them huddled around her own dragon. “Because of their ability to channel magic out of gems and into us.” At that very moment, the green dragon with a gem shaped like three balloons was touching her gem to the purple dragon’s starburst gem, causing a visible flow of magic between them. “I hope you don’t mind, Misstressesss,” Lunesta’s dragon said apologetically. “You never sseem to need my help to do all the thingss you do.” “Well, it’s nice to see that some things haven’t changed,” “Pinkamena”, or rather Haphastia 16, remarked with a hint of a smile. “But I don’t get it,” Pon-3 remarked. “If the ponies lost the source of their magic, while dragons retained theirs, why didn’t they take over? After all—” She was unable to finish that sentence, because all of the dragons but one quickly surrounded her. “We are your sservantss!” they chanted loudly enough to drown her out. “We are your sservantss!” “With the ponies powerless to stop them—” Pon-3 tried in vain to continue. “We are your sservantss! We are your sservantss!” “Surely their greed—” “We are your sservantss! We are your sservantss!” “That is enough,” Florlet ordered them quietly. The dragons stopped their chanting, and shuffled back to their place at the back of the room. “As you can see, they have all been conditioned to obey, and if necessary utter that particular catchphrase, rather than allow seditious thoughts to enter their minds. It really is when all things are considered, the best of all possible wor—” “Where’s Fluttershy?” Applesauce interrupted, her first words since waking up. Her voice sounded uncharacteristically soft to Rainbow Dash’s ears. “Rarity 15 has rejected the game, as she has rejected most of modern society,” the white unicorn replied with an exasperated shake of the head. “She’s one of the leading Conservationists, and has wasted most of her family’s considerable fortune on the twin lost causes of depriving ponies of their technology, and ‘liberating’ the dragons to conquer the—” “We are your sservantss!” “Yes, yes I know!” Florlet exclaimed, shutting the dragons up. “Can we go? You all have jobs to get back to.” With a bright electric glow from her artificial horn, the door opened. “Dragons...” At the prompt, the dragons leapt up upon the backs of their pony mistresses, with “Twilight”s lagging behind by a few moments. “Just take the elevator up to the flight deck,” the white unicorn instructed them. “Your transports await you.” “Alright, I guess we’ll take a look around, Florlet,” Piflin said cautiously. “But we still have much to discuss.” “Oh I’m sure you do,” Florlet said with a thin smile. She used her telekinesis to tap on Pon-3’s shoulder. “Ah, you do remember that you agreed to be my apprentice, right?” “Of...of course,” Pon-3 said. She listened for the sound of “Rarity” walking past her out of the room, and followed that sound down a corridor in the opposite direction to the one that the other ponies had taken. “I have some ideas on what went wrong with the simulation,” Florlet told her. “Starting with the matter of the Dragon Emperor’s scales...” The rest of the ponies and dragons entered the small chamber labeled “Elevator”. Applesauce reached for the “Flight Deck” button, but couldn’t quite make it without toppling the dragon on her back. “Allow me, Mistress,” that very dragon said, reaching up to press the desired button. “Rainbow Dash” spotted the observation device on the roof and sighed. “I don’t suppose we’re ever going to find a place to talk without being spied on, are we?” she asked wearily. “Well not anywhere around here,” “Pinkamena” said cautiously. “However, there might be some places that are different.” “OK, I think you two are the best for that task,” “Twilight” said to the two pink ponies. “Meanwhile Spike and I will investigate how this world works, both magically and technologically. I’ve got a feeling that that will be really important.” “I cannot shake the feeling that I’m missing out on something,” Applesauce said. “But nevertheless, I’m ‘in’ on whatever adventure you have planned.” She looked at Jalpek 7. “What exactly do you have planned?” “Fixing your accent, for one thing,” “Rainbow” said with a grin. “After that, we’ll wing it.” “I do not have an accent!” Applesauce exclaimed. “Exactly,” said “Rainbow”. “I’ve got a question,” “Pinkamena” added. “Who’s in charge?” “The President runss Equesstria,” “Rainbow”s dragon piped in. “Her power balanced by that of the Hundred and the High Court.” “But everypony knowss that the Mistresss of Dreamss is the true ruler of this here utopia,” said Applesauce’s dragon. “She’ss the only pony on thiss planet whose talentss are truly irreplaceable.” “The Mistress of Dreams ?” “Twilight” asked. “Who’s that?” “Florlet 17,” Applesauce’s dragon replied. “I don’t get it,” “Rainbow Dash” said in reply. “What does she do that is so important?” “Pinkie Pie” looked around her at the cramped confines of the elevator car. “‘I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a queen of infinite space,’” she proclaimed, “‘were it not that I have bad dreams.’” “She’s this world’s Princess Luna!” exclaimed “Spike”. Back in the Monitoring Room, Rosig Rache the griffon watched and listened as Florlet and Pon-3 entered a room labelled “Dream Control Room”. He turned up the volume so he could listen in on their conversation. “Miss Florlet,” Pon-3 asked, “forgive what might seem a dumb question, but I guess I haven’t recovered all of my memories yet. If everypony else has a different true name than their Bearer aliases in the simulation, why am I Pon-3? Am I her descendant?” Florlet laughed. “Oh, Pon-3,” she said, “you don’t actually think that a common disk jockey assisted the Bearers in their quest, do you?” Pon-3 laughed weakly. “So I was there to...” “To monitor the simulation from the inside, of course,” Florlet filled in. “And to gain practice in experiencing sight in the dream world. If you truly hope to become my apprentice, you’ll have to be able to interact and shape whatever sensory inputs you may encounter, and that includes sight. Later we’ll work on getting you acquainted with magic vision, which unicorns used to possess, and dragons still do. Of course, dragon dreams are a coarse and uncomfortable subject, but needs must. Dream monitoring is the most efficient means for determining the loyalty level of the dragon workforce. As I hope I’ve made clear, keeping the dragons in line is essential to keeping the whole of pony civilization intact.” “Soon...” the watcher whispered to himself. “The wicked ponies’ day of reckoning will be soon...”