Sky turned crimson
Twilight started out of a nightmarish sleep to find herself sleeping on something that could not be described in any way cloud-like. It was warm, for one, sort of like a hot water bottle. It rocked gently and went ‘gloop’ when she moved around.
Opening her eyes, she was met with the back of a changeling queen in one eye and a close up view of her current bed in the other. Groggily, Twilight began to recall about the bed--or hammock, as it were.
The mere memory gripped her heart like an icy phantom.
Twilight wasn't the slightest bit worried about sleeping in a Changeling goop hammock. It was unsettling to see Naudia excrete the goop from her mouth, horn glowing, but the hammock was comfortable enough that Twilight got over that rather quickly. Naudia insisted calling it “ichor,” but Twilight still thought of it as “goop.”
What she didn't get over quickly were the nightmares. Twilight had had nightmares before. magic kindergarten, Discord's reign, those nightmares came and went. Even the next night after Discord's chaotic reign, all she had to do was wake up and remind herself that Discord was a statue. Or to look up at her graduation certificate, from magic kindergarten, which she still had on her wall.
These dreams were much, much worse.
Twilight awoke from the hounding shadows of formerly friendly faces, only to be reminded that it wasn't all a dream. It had happened, and, indeed, would still be happening, if it hadn’t been for Naudia. Because in all those other dreams, there was always hope, always a way out: the elements of harmony (even if they didn't work), or graduation.
But there... there, in the intricately detailed dream prison, there was nothing. Only false friends to comfort her, false comforts dotted the room in a futile attempt to distract her from her hopelessness. It was not just the magic suppressor on her horn, nor the bars on her window that kept her from escaping. It was the crushing knowledge that there was nowhere to escape to. No friends to offer her shelter, and nopony willing to believe her long enough to get her out of this crushing purgatory.
Twilight's thoughts spiraled ever downward at this point, festering and feeding upon themselves. Because, in her heart, she was certain that even if she managed to escape that, no hole, no crevice, no fresh hell was out of Celestia's reach. It was only a matter of time.
The only way she had gotten any sleep at all was by crawling into Naudia's bed and hugging her like a teddy bear.
“You seem frightened, Twilight.” Naudia said.
It was an odd phrasing, considering what she meant, but Twilight had asked her not to use “taste” in the same context ever again.
“Just nightmares...”
Naudia wormed her way around to face Twilight.
“And what kind of 'just nightmares' could convince you to sleep in the same bed as me? After all, it was your idea to sleep separately in the first place.”
“The guidebook said that it was not proper for ponies to sleep with each other until after marriage.”
Naudia gave her a deadpan expression.
“I'm not sure if that’s exactly what they were talking about.” Naudia took a deep breath and let the other shoe drop. “Another problem I can see with that is… I don't think we could get officially married now, even if we tried.”
“I... suppose it was a little bit silly to be worried about something like that at a time like this.” Twilight mumbled shyly.
“It was cute, mind you, but until we can find you a steady source of food, things that don’t poison you or turn your horn floppy, worries like marriage will have to wait.”
“Well, its just that this whole situation has me really confused, and I'm trying not to think about a lot of things right now.”
"My teacher always told me 'bottling it up never helped anybody,' and while I know emotions aren't the same for ponies and changelings, I think that still holds true here. I don’t think ponies could put emotions into physical bottles, anyway."
Twilight got up from the hammock to pace around and think before speaking.
"Am I wrong to side with you?"
"I think you're going to have to explain that one to me a little bit further."
"All my friends, even Celestia, are against us right now. Heck, probably even Shining and my parents at this point, and..." Twilight deflated a bit. "And I can't help but wonder if we're in the wrong here."
"I cannot think for you, Twilight, but I can tell you what I think. The world isn't all black and white. Consider for the moment: What do your friends know? What did they see you do since you've come back?"
Twilight sat down for a moment and thought hard about the last few days.
"Almost nothing..."
"And that's mostly my fault. I misjudged Celestia in my plan to keep you out of all this as much as possible. That's mostly why I came to get you first." Naudia tried to slip the word “mostly” past Twilight unnoticed.
It didn't work.
"Mostly? You mean you had another reason to come rescue me?"
"Well, not exactly... Kinda..."
Twilight did not look amused.
"I kinda had to make a deal with… something. In order to break out, and break you out."
“Something?” Twilight was on the alert now.
Naudia, hoping to cushion the blow with as much honesty as possible, dropped the third shoe heavy, unwashed and smelling of feet.
“In order to get out of the Canterlot dungeon, I had to make a deal with something that, by my estimation, was the most evil creature I've ever laid my eyes on.”
“And?” Twilight narrowed her eyes at Naudia.
“And its only stipulation for breaking me out was that it wanted your services at a later time.”
“AND?”
“...And I haven't the faintest clue what it wanted you for, or what it was.”
“Is there anything you DO know?”
“We wouldn't have made it out of that dungeon without its help. It made that very clear.”
“SO let me get this straight, Naudia: You made a deal with some sort of… unnatural demon monster? Worse than anything you’ve seen out in the Badlands. In order to rescue me. Now, you’ve got me signed up to work for said demon monster, and you didn’t think to ask what I thought about it?”
Naudia looked sheepishly at the floor.
“Celestia said she was going through with the trial. I had to do something. Believe me, I looked at every possible way out of there at least twice except for…”
“What could POSSIBLY be worse than putting somebody else in service of something that bad?”
“Well… there was some hope that I could maintain control of my corrupted self long enough to break you out. You know, if I just let myself be consumed...”
Twilight almost spoke without thinking, and then her brain interrupted her with what Naudia just said.
Twilight froze up.
There was a long pause before Twilight got up and walked out of the cave, mumbling only:
“I… I need some time to think.”
Naudia attempted to busy herself inside the cave and give Twilight some space. However there wasn’t much, if anything she could do at the moment.
All the generously labeled “furnishings” were was good as she could make them with crudely cut wood and changeling ichor alone, which meant that they weren’t very good.
The box, into which they’d put everything salvaged from Twilight’s library, only held together with uncured ichor because they’d stayed up too late last night strategically jamming it into a corner and attempting to prop up the edges with sticks. It now resembled a box with a lean to add on for small rodents.
The “writing desk” Twilight had insisted on for reading wobbled, and would periodically fall over due to, once again, uncured ichor.
Naudia wished she had a kiln right now so she could do something useful with it. Twilight had said she could approximate one with magic, but not easily. Sure, the rubbery uncured stuff was great if you needed to hold somebody down or make a hammock, but it couldn’t hold a table together until you fired it and then charged it with magic to sort of weld it down.
After fidgeting around for a long time, with nothing to do but watch fungus grow at the back of the cave, Naudia finally gave up on doing anything useful or productive. She fashioned a crude ball out of changeling ichor and began to bounce it against the back wall of the cave. It was misshapen, but then again, so was the cave, so it worked out, more or less.
Naudia shrugged herself down and prepared for a long wait.
----------------
Outside, Twilight found herself in an entirely different predicament. As Celestia’s personal student, she had made more of a study of the Sun and Moon than most scholars had. And with Celestia’s direct help, she had figured out many things that astronomers had never been able to find the answer to, mostly owing to them considering asking Celestia to be “cheating,” such as how the upper atmosphere of Equestria acted as a magically charged lens, and how Luna did not control or create the stars--she only made them visible through the otherwise obscuring atmosphere.
It wasn’t considered cheating when sailors asked, or if something particularly important came up (a fairly rare occurrence when you had a goddess managing the skies above). It was still considered “bad taste” to ask, however, and was right up there with “asking for directions” in the list of things the astronomers would not do. In reality, the astronomers’ guild had a long and proud history of being prideful, and, in recent times, abusing the skills of younger and more driven ponies to circumvent their eternal stalemate with Celestia--and, in the past few years, Luna.
Twilight suspected the entire guild was attempting to bash down Celestia’s door at the moment to ask for an explanation as to why in Tartarus the moon was out during the day, stark blood red.
She could only guess at why it was happening. Was it because of her? Did Luna have some sort of searching magic tied to the moon itself? Was Luna hurt?
Any of those seemed unlikely. Twilight was unaware of any threat beyond the changelings themselves, and they were... well, they were taken care of, for the moment. So Luna couldn’t be hurt. Twilight sincerely doubted Celestia could convince Luna to perform magical sweeps with the moon, simply because of how tedious it would be to search with it, as doing all that work by herself overstepped any kind of sisterly coercion. That left her only one terrible conclusion: something else had taken control over the moon.
Simply standing outside in its reddish light made her uneasy. It was unnatural, unpleasant, and as unsettling as if somepony was standing directly behind her.
She decided to return to the cave, having made up her mind about at least one thing.
Twilight found Naudia sitting at the back of the cave, bouncing an ichor ball against a wall.
"Naudia..."
Twilight waited for Naudia to notice her, but she seemed to be in another time and place. Finally, Twilight cleared her throat in a conspicuous manner. Naudia woke up from her stupor, and the ichor ball bounced off her head.
"Wha?"
"You were miles away there, Naudia."
"Oh, sorry... I was remembering something from my childhood. Nothing important, just something I haven't done in a long time."
"I wanted to tell you that I think you did the right thing, and I’m sorry for snapping at you back there.”
“We’re all under a lot of stress Twilight. I’m still worried about...” Naudia went back to being miles away.
“If something’s bothering you, we should talk about it. It’s the least I can do after earlier.”
There was a pause as Naudia attempted to collect herself, breathing deep a couple times.
“How often do ponies have nightmares, Twilight?”
“That’s an odd question, but since Luna got back, I would say no more than once a month or so. Why, are you having nightmares as well?”
“I’m not used to nightmares, Twilight. Changelings may not have a complete hive mind like you would think, but there is a... connection between us. I can’t communicate with my brothers and sisters over it, but it’s what I remember falling asleep to every night as a foal.”
“But recently, I haven’t been able to hear them. It was only last night that I had my first Nightmare in a long, long time. Well, until you crawled into the hammock with me.”
“What was the nightmare about?” Twilight asked.
“I dreamt that Celestia turned evil and held the changelings in Canterlot hostage, demanding I return to face execution.”
Twilight tensed up and Naudia noticed.
“Is something wrong?” Naudia said, as dread crept up through her hooves.
“The moon is still up, and it’s blood red. I’m assuming something is wrong with Luna.”
“But, all my people are in Canterlot, Twilight!”
“Well we can... Uhh...”
“I hate to ask you this, Twilight, but would you be willing to come with me back to Canterlot? I have to know if my family is all right.”
“But... what if we get captured again, I couldn’t stand to lose you!”
“We aren’t going in unprepared this time. I have an idea.”
----------------
“PAPER armor? Are you serious? Please tell me I didn't waste that much magic for this.” Twilight said, exasperated at the small mountain of scrolls Naudia had gathered up.
“Not just paper, Twilight, laminated ichor armor!”
“That’s even worse!”
“You just get that magic kiln you told me about started and I’ll do the rest, and if it makes you feel any better, I’ll make a test sample for you to abuse.”
It took quite some time, and some parchment fashioned into a crude measuring tape, but eventually Naudia was ready to start treating paper and turning it into armor. With a bonus Twilight Sparkle hovering over her shoulder, attempting to figure out how skeptical she should be right now.
“OK, so I’ve covered the sheets you asked me to in the unfired ichor. What now?” Twilight asked.
“Now I’m going to manaweld the surface with the fired ichor and begin layering them together.”
“How do you know so much about this, anyway?”
“Mom was really hard on me. I had to learn about every aspect of changeling life.” Naudia had a bit of a guilty look about her.
“Yeah, but smithing? Seriously?”
“I did kinda ask her to teach it to me.” Naudia said sullenly.
Several seconds passed.
“OK, OK, I begged her to let somebody teach me, because I was a big O&O fan back in the day.”
“I didn’t say anything.” Twilight said with a bit of a smirk.
There were several more seconds where Naudia got to work uninterrupted.
“I do have one question though. No, two. Why didn’t we get any of this armor back at your hive? And… how do you know about Ogres and Oubliettes?”
“To answer the easier question first, we rarely took money from ponies we captured--after all, it was worthless in the hive--but we did take books. Quite a few changelings had jobs simply copying out any pony books we picked up off explorers. I was fortunate enough to get the original third edition O&O book when I was ten.
“As to why we didn’t pick up any armor there, well, we either recycled it back into love or took it with us. At that point, the hive was pretty well stripped down of anything edible to us that wasn't embedded into walls. I don’t think Mother actually planned ahead long enough to think about coming back.”
“She actually let you study pony things?”
“Well, yes. I was generally the first to get the originals after a couple decent copies were made.” Naudia said as she plastered another layer onto the armor.
“But you told me she hated ponies. Why would she let you have anything from us?”
“She hated them, yes. But you were necessary to her plans. Anything she could do to subvert, control or defeat Equestria was on the table.” Naudia took the first and smallest sheet off the line where she was hanging it. “All right. That’s your test sample. Wait about five minutes then give it some abuse.”
As Twilight walked away, Naudia noticed something she couldn't quite place.
"Hold on a second. Twilight, could you come here for a minute."
"What is it?" Twilight was weirded out by the way Naudia was trying to look behind her head.
"Just turn your head to the right for a moment." Naudia had her eyes fixed on the... indescribable something that was floating behind Twilight's head.
Tentatively, she reached a hoof out to touch it, but her hoof went right through like it wasn't there.
Then she tried grasping it with her magic.
It felt like an electric shock directly to her brain.
----------------
All Twilight knew was there had been a light, and then Naudia had passed out on the ground. Still breathing, but, as Twilight lugged her into the hammock, having a very restless sleep.
Twilight couldn't explain what had just happened, nor could she think of anything to do for Naudia but wait.
And wait she did. Unable to keep still, Twilight resorted to nervously abusing the piece of test armor Naudia gave her.
Twenty minutes later, when Naudia woke up, Twilight was frowning at the sheet in the middle of the floor. It was worse for wear, that was apparent, but nothing you couldn't have listed beyond "minor damage" if you were trying to sell it.
"I wasn't joking about paper armor Twilight. I take it that it’s passed your test?"
"NAUDIA! You're awake! How long have you been up?!"
"Since right around the time you placed it on top of a rock and started jumping on it."
"What happened to you anyway? One minute you were acting strange, and then you were on the ground."
"I have an idea, but first I need to confirm it. Twilight, you said you had a nightmare last night, right? Could you describe it to me?"
"Well, it’s kinda hard to remember so late in the day, but I remember being chased by my friends and Celestia and... they weren't my friends, and they wanted to change me. I... I couldn't get away because there was nowhere to get away to..." Twilight lapsed into silence.
"Well, I know what happened now, but I can't explain why. Hanging out behind your head was a nightmare; the actual nightmare you had last night."
"How do you know that?"
"I just lived, well, slept, through it myself. Somehow your nightmare has manifested itself."
"I've never heard of ANYTHING like that before, and I've even researched the Nightmare Moon incident as far as anybody has been able to. The connotations of nightmares having any kind of physical component are immense!"
"That’s not the worst part though. The worst part was that before I touched it, it was staring at me."