Before Stellar knew what was going on, she was now in front of the door to her house. There was nothing around her house but white space with a golden outline. She wished she could just get out of here and gallop back to Click Clock. She really did, but now it was too late. Looking at the door, her heart began to race, cold beads of sweat began to pearl upon her skin, and she could feel something gripping her neck. The night of her escape began to rush towards her, the still images flashing before her eyes. Unfortunately, it was too late to back away now, so the mare hesitantly stretched her foreleg forward towards the door handle. She never felt so stressed before.
Without her noticing, Stellar found herself back in her house which was filled with a golden light.
"H-huh? How did I get in here? I didn't even open the door," she said as she looked behind her.
"Is someone there? Please, come in. I'm just cleaning the living room."
Stellar didn't how to feel right now. She was very stressed and very uncertain how to feel about all this despite what was taken to reach this point. That wasn't the weirdest in the mare's mind, for some incomprehensible reason. Each step she took applied more and more pressure on the mare's body. It was as if she was being pulled down by some stronger force that didn't want her to see what she wanted to see. Maybe she wasn't supposed to? No! She had to see her mother.
Stepping into the living room, Stellar felt at ease in this place. The coffee table, couches, and shelves were still in the same place, and the couch was still underneath the window where the mare's father would often read her stories and tell her tales about her mother. A few tears swelled up in the pony's eyes, but she pushed them back down and continued with her observations. There was a mare cleaning the shelves with a feather brush. Her coat was a cinnamon-vanilla and her mane and tail, both stylized to look like curly cream, were vanilla colored. This pony turned to look at Stellar with a smile, revealing the banana-yellow of her eyes. Her cutie mark was that of a freshly cut lily, just recently opened and letting several long stems out into the sunny sky.
The mare was smiling when she turned, although this changed to fright when she dropped her feather broom on the floor, followed by her rear.
"S-S-S-Sombra?! Wh-wh-what are you doing here?!" she stuttered.
"I...I'm not..."
"Tell me! Why are you here? What do you want?!"
Stellar's vision began to tear up and she just ended up crying. She never cried so much before in her life. After her injury, it took a lot more pain to make her even react. No matter the situation, she would never cry, but here...it was another story. Today, the tears just kept coming.
"I'm not Sombra!" she wailed.
Stellar's mother was taken aback by this sudden reaction. This was definitely Sombra. It had to be. Yet...this one was a mare...and a young one at that. Stranger still, was that she was still surrounded by light given by the sun outside. Sombra had a tendency to block it out with his darkness and crystals. This one did no such things. Even though she was confused, the mare slowly approached the crying one and, after a brief hesitation, wrapped her forelegs around the crying pony and cooed her with soft words.
"There, there. It's okay."
"I'm tired of everypony calling me Sombra! Ever since I was little I've been attacked and pushed away because of it. Princess Cadance and General Shining Armor told me who he was, and I'm not him! I don't want to be him!"
"What?"
Stellar didn't say much after that, but it was enough for Click Clock to sigh in irritation. She needed to intervene somehow. Lucid dreaming was always the best method, so she signaled one of the serpents to wrap themselves around the source of the dream to allow lucid perception. After a few seconds of constricting the base, Stellar's mother started to look around in curiosity, then looked back at the crying mare. She backed away slightly, then rubbed her swollen stomach.
"Oh. This is a dream?"
"Huh?" Stellar wiped her eyes. "Oh. Yes. It is."
"Then who are you?"
"I'm Stellar Shadowrette."
"Stellar Shadowrette? That sounds like...a funny name. I like it a lot."
Stellar chuckled slightly.
"Say, what are you doing in my dreams?"
"W-well...You're my mom."
Stellar braced herself for a loud yell, although it never came. All she saw was her moher looking at her with widened eyes and a tilted head. They weren't even angry eyes. They were more eyes of curiosity than anything else.
"So I give birth to a corrupt pony?"
"I...We're called Shadow Ponies now."
"Oh?"
"Yeah. Princess Cadance and General Shining Armor instilled that term."
"They know? How did that happen?"
"Well, I kind of...caused a jailbreak with other ponies of my kind that were locked below the Crystal Tower," Stellar chuckled nervously.
"I see...It's really...I never really thought much of the...What did you call yourself again?"
"Shadow ponies."
"Right. I never thought much of them. I figured everypony else just mistreated them because they're all deathly afraid of Sombra."
The mare offered Stellar to sit on the yellow couch with her, which Shadowrette gladly accepted.
"How are you here, anyways?"
"I'm not allowed to tell."
"Right. Why did you come to see me, anyways?"
"Because..." Stellar trailed off. Her mother understood perfectly, however.
"I see. Well, that's how life is. You take a rental and, eventually, you need to bring it back. By the way, my name is Lilyanne."
"Really? Dad never really called you by name."
"Huh. I guess he would be more affected than you. However, I see that you've grown into a fine young mare. I bet that, now that the royal couple knows about you, you're being assaulted by every stallion, huh?" Lilyanne nudged her daughter.
Stellar blushed strongly and stuttered: "N-no!"
"Haha! You're so cute when you blush!" Lilyanne laughed.
Stellar pouted and crossed her forelegs. "It's not funny."
"I'm just teasing. So. Tell me. What happened to you during all these years."
"Well-"
While Stellar explained her life to her mother while avoiding the tale of her father's sudden insanity and later encounter, Click Clock just watched the events unfolding in front of her with a smile. Crystal wasn't as emotional, but she did feel a similar sentiment deep below her exterior.
"So, is this going to go on for long?" Crystal asked.
"Only as long as the dreamer still dreams."
"And how long can that take?"
"Who knows? Dreams do not follow the basic form of time. It could be years in here before she wakes up then."
"Really? Say, are the dreams and moments of everypony all here?"
"You're wondering about the alicorn sisters?"
"Kinda." Crystal's gaze rolled to the side.
Click Clock just laughed. "Yes. You can see them when they were tiny fillies."
The dragoness chuckled mischievously to herself, but her evil grin faded away when she looked up to see a black serpent twitching around violently and painfully in random positions as if it were teleporting.
"Hey, what's that serpent doing?"
"What serpent?"
Crystal pointed towards the twitching serpent. It twitched right next to the white serpents keeping the dream open and ripped them off of it before wrapping itself all around the dream itself. Almost immediately, the golden light began to fade to darkness with a thunder storm erupting outside the house. Small black crystals started to grow all over the walls and floor, scaring Stellar and Lilyanne.
"Wait, that's an unexpected nightmare. It's not meant to be there! I'll need to destroy it immediately!"
Click Clock was about to jump out of the bubble when Crystal put a hoof on her shoulder and prevented her from moving.
"Not without me," the dragoness exclaimed.
Click Clock nodded and and grabbed her before jumping out of the bubble while Stellar and her mother were looking around in fear.
"Wh-what's going on?!" Lilyanne yelled.
"I don't know! This wasn't supposed to happen! And what's with all these crystals?"
A banging came on the door before a loud cracking noise erupted from it. Several wooden shards, small and big, bounced off the wall opposite the entrance, leaving quite the mess everywhere. Stellar gulped painfully in the silence that came with the door being destroyed. The only thing that could now be heard was the clipping and clopping of hooves hitting the hard tiles on the floor. Every step applied an increasing amount of pressure onto both mares, and the black crystals around reacted by growing bigger and bigger with every passing millisecond. Then, the sounds stopped when a figure started to turn around the corner.
"I-i-i-i-it's K-K-King Sombra!" Lilyanne stuttered.
"Wh-what?!"
The 'mighty' King chuckled and stepped forward with a devilish grin etched upon his face. Black smog emanated from his royal cape as he approached the two mares without hesitation.
"Yes. I am your King. Submit, subject!" he ordered.
Lilyanne was about to give in when Stellar stepped in front of him, cutting off the stallion's view of the vanilla mare.
"No. I have had it with you and your bad deeds being thrown onto me! won't have you hurt my own mother, either!" Stellar said with a hoof stomp.
"Hahaha! What is this? A female version of me? How amusing! And this pony is your mother?" The stallion's smile twisted into some sort of monstrous shape. His lips took on the appearance of a fanged mouth, but his teeth could not be seen behind them. "She gives birth to a reincarnated version of me. Haha! Excellent! Then you will carry out the deeds that I tell you to do! If it is my will, it is your will! And YOU!" he pointed to the vanilla mare. "You will be good and take proper care of your, shall we say, 'queen'. You are just meant to bare me and take care of me during my youth. Then; you will be sent to construction duty to build statues of my being," he said as he proudly put a hoof to his chest.
"No! She will do no such thing, and neither will I!" Stellar shouted.
"Oh really now? What do you say of this scenario?"
Stellar was now wearing Sombra's cape and armor and was standing over a corrupt Crystal Kingdom. There were statues of her everywhere as well as pillars of black crystals. One of the statues showed her ending the lives of a horrified and beaten Cadance and Shining Armor while Stellar's mother was strapped to a wall behind her and covered with whip marks. Sombra walked to Lilyanne and said:
"You see what will happen if she is allowed to live? To be born? You must remove her from your womb immediately, or else she will come to be and destroy everything you love. You won't even be treated with love yourself."
"I...I..."
Lilyanne didn't know what to say of this situation. She had never had to deal with such stress. Was this really a dream? Was this a nightmare? She didn't truly know, but a bright light broke through the thick storm clouds above and shouted
"Enough! This is a dream meant to reunite mother and daughter! It is not one for you to destroy!"
Crystal Clarity dropped from the sky and landed perfectly on the balcony, only to turn her head and belch white fire at the Sombra standing next to LIlyanne. The dragoness immediately broke Stellar's mother out of her cuffs and pulled her away from the nightmare. Sombra coughed and stood up with some difficulty.
"You...You thing you can stop the inevitable? Every possibility co,verges to this point. You can't stop it!"
"That's not how time works, nightmare," spoke a being floating down from the sky.
It looked as clear and beautiful as the Dream World, although it actually had a shape. It had no legs. Instead, these looked like a small, spiraling assembly of smoky threads evaporating when they would reach their end. The top portion was thin at the bottom but large at the top, somewhat resembling an upside down triangle with inconsistent sizes. The being possessed four large and long arms with three fingers each. Two were placed on each side. The head itself was not properly viewable, although Stellar thought she could see it as being somewhat 'aerodynamic'. The face, possessing four eyes with a uniform color of white smoke, seemed small but the top of the head rounded back towards a thread of smoke similar to the base of the body.
It punched Sombra through the wall and started to pummel him into everything around it while letting beams of light erupt from its hands and strike it into the chest several times. After a few minutes of this, the whole dream returned to its golden hue in Stellar's home. Everyone was there in the living room, although two gazes were directed towards the smoky being.
"It's Click Clock," Crystal sighed and frowned.
"Wow. You truly have outdone yourself. You have many friends, two of them being here. One is a dragon-pony hybrid, and the other is a...a...a thing..." Lilyanne's hoof lowered.
"You aren't disturbed by what you just saw?"
"I know this is a dream, so that was only fear trying to take hold of me. I'm not stupid."
"So what now?"
"Well, I might wake up, but I'll wake up know the little foal I make will become great things. You shouldn't cry about what you want through, Stellar. You just need to know that everything you went through made you stronger and made you what you are today. You should be proud of your accomplishments."
"I never got to see you in pony let alone know how I would have lived if I grew up with you and...dad."
"Stellar," Lilyanne scolded. "as the cliché goes, I've always been with you, and I could never be prouder. Your actions standing against something even I feared showed that you have become a very strong mare. Plus, you have friends that will back you up and help you no matter what happens."
"Thanks, mom," Stellar said as she embraced her mother in a big hug.
"She's going to wake up, Stellar. It's time to go. I'll make sure she doesn't forget any of this," Click Clock said.
"Don't forget Stellar; I'm watching you. I bet you already have a stallion that you like," Lilyanne giggled.
"Mooooom!" Stellar groaned.
The last thing Stellar got to see was her mother waving goodbye as she gradually moved farther and farther from the dream before it eventually faded away. Click Clock was still in her strange form, although she was focused on directing the bubble. Stellar cleared her throat and looked at the creature with a smile.
"Thanks for this, Click Clock I never thought you could be such a good friend."
The once-pony looked at Stellar from the corner of her eyes and smiled in return. Today was a good day.