Silver radiated silverish light, trying to borrow from his gained affinity for the stars and moon, but his connection was scarcely that of Luna's, and it faltered and died before the darkness that threatened to consume him. Eyes opened in the darkness. A new form appeared before him, tall and wicked and laughing in a way that he recognized. Nightmare Moon. "Dear stallion, will you bow at my hooves?"
Intense pressure pushed at him and he began to sink before her. It wasn't so bad. She was strong and in charge. She loved him in her wicked way, and would protect him. She would... His eyes sharpened as he threw off the fog and could see the festering and bleeding sores that ran across her legs and the vicious cuts that formed shreds along her leathery wings.
Silver lunged forward, stabbing into her chest with his long horn. She grunted with a muted pain before kicking him back. "Fool! There's only one force strong enough to banish me, and they were set aside. You think you have a chance?"
He spread his wings, and so did she. They both took to the sky that hadn't been there before and began to crash against one another. Teeth tore and hooves thudded against soft bodies, leaving both torn and bruised as they fought without end. Despite the injuries, Nightmare Moon didn't slow, but Silver did, being overtaken by the injuries, even when he could dimly remind himself that this was the dreamworld, they refused to simply be banished away.
Silver drew up short and threw a shaft of light into the ground far below. The Elements of Harmony burst free and orbited him faithfully. "Begone!" Their light destroyed her, but the nightmare remained.
Silver was David again, crawling along the ground. Why had he drank that water? No amount of thirst was worth the pain searing through him at that moment. He was dying. Wait, was that a pony?
He looked up to see a pony with fishing tackle. The pony peered at him a moment before walking up to him casually. He put a hoof to David's head and pressed it to the ground and crushed it as if it were just a rock in the way.
Silver awoke with a start. There was nothing. He was back in the void, and he was losing, badly, and he knew it. He was dreaming in a dream, and the creature seemed to have enough mastery to make his tricks feel like the feeble flailing of a toddler's hands.
But... "There is one thing you haven't accounted for."
A great eyeball appeared and stared at Silver. The thoughts of it brushed against Silver's mind in a foul wave, corrupted and impossible to discern at first. "What?" That word, that one word among the soul jarring noise made sense.
Silver shuddered and recoiled, then waved back. "I am not alone, no matter how much you try to make me feel that way." He threw open the dream gate to Luna and she emerged, surprised for a moment, but it quickly turned to fury. Luna's wings spread wide and the darkness was obliterated under a suddenly rising moon.
"Foul creature! I should have banished you the first time we met. Prepare yourself!" She crashed against the thing, which had become Nightmare Moon again, and they began to fight with a force that made the dreamworld itself boil and quiver with the fury of their power. Every meeting of their hooves. Every clash of their teeth. Every impact sent ripples of silvery corruption as the two forces wrestled for dominance.
Silver landed on the bare ground and spread his wings despite the pain that seared through them. "I am not alone!" With the cry he summoned forth Celestia's door. The door opened, but Celestia was not inside. Her mind-stallion was, and he emerged, chiseled and perfect.
"I will assist you," he promised, saluting Silver with a hoof before taking off on lofty wings he hadn't had a moment before. He joined the battle alongside Luna. He didn't have the personal power of Luna or the corrupt being, but he had physical power, and distracted it from Luna's blows.
Silver wasn't done. Though the agony grew with every movement and magic, he brought his wings up to touch the tips together. "I am... not alone!" A portal opened up in the space, reaching through the water and across the wide distance, reaching for his wives. Elsewhere, they collapsed where they were, suddenly called to the dream world.
Night Watch appeared first. "What? Silver? Luna?" She put the pieces together quickly, as Silver knew she would. "I'm on it!" She ascended into the sky to join the battle, with Fast Change springing out only moments behind and darting after Night as she took on the form of a great and terrible dragon.
Twilight appeared last. She gasped with alarm at the sight of Silver. He was covered in terrible lesions and bloody wounds. He had suffered the beatings of his dreams and the corruption of the presence of the foul being. Twilight saw this, and she flared with a bright magic before launching into the battle.
With his summoning complete, the urge to collapse was becoming overwhelming, but the job wasn't yet done. The creature remained and he wasn't safe. Silver rose to his full height, then planted his hooves in the ground. He could feel the corrupted earth beneath them. While his mares battled for the sky, he began to filter that corruption, battling against the wrongness there and turning it back with his developing earth-pony affinity. The ocean floor was the true resting place, where the zombies came from, and this horror.
It was the last thing he remembered. He couldn't say how long he stood there, struggling and hurting.
The next thing he remembered was being back in that bubble. Celestia had him. Her hoof was gently rubbing over his cheek. She was saying something, but he couldn't hear it. She was calm, and it made him calm. They were safe. He smiled gently at her, and she leaned in for a kiss before her face deformed abruptly into moist tentacles, reaching to engulf him.
He awoke with a start, still standing in that corrupted field. The ground was consuming him. Tendrils of dirt and sinew ran up along his legs, pulling him down into itself and pulsing in irregular beats. Silver pulled and struggled. He tried to kick, but his legs were caught fast. A loud explosion turned his eyes upwards where Twilight was firing an intense beam of purple along the side of the then-formless mass of the beast.
The light was a riot of action, with many of the mares he loved fighting against the formless beast, but were they having any effect?
Night Watch landed suddenly beside Silver and attacked the earthy-feelers with lashing hooves and sharp teeth. "What's the plan? Do you have one?" She could see that he did not quickly. "Tell me what you know."
Silver wrenched himself free of the ground and flapped into the air before coming down on a relatively clean patch of dirt. "It is a manifestation of corruption. It doesn't belong here, or anywhere I can think of. It has no physical body. It has complete control over the mind and psychology and dreams."
Night nodded quickly. "That explains why we don't seem to be getting much of anywhere. I remember something you said, a long time ago. We have a magic that's stronger than us, that can put things right."
Silver perked an ear at her, wondering what his cleverest of wives was thinking of, then it came to him. "Can we make it happen?"
Night nudged him with a hoof. "You're the one that has to do it. You're the halfway point, caught up, but outside of it. Make it happen."
Make it happen... Make it happen... Silver took a deep breath, then another, then the song began to come.
"I'm trapped in the darkness with all my family. We're struggling to avoid calamity. It made me think I was all alone--"
Celestia's voice rose loud and clear. "But he's not alone, he's not alo~ne!" A deep bass began to accompany as the princesses around the thing sang against it, swept up in the powerful song magic that swelled with every note that came from their unified snouts. Their strikes began to occur at the beats of the song, and its motions were forced to obey it, lashing out when the song demanded, only to miss the musically enchanted ponies.
"I can use my magic and use my wit, we'll work together to put an end to it," sang out Twilight as she wrapped a glittering net of violet around it. Every word they sang seemed to constrict it, forcing it smaller and smaller.
"Compared to my own nightmares, you are barely a thing. Compared to my nightmares, Victory I'll easily bring!" Luna spread her wings as silver light shone down on the netted creature and it screeched in formless pain, crying out in a multitude of tongues, but its corrupt speech was muffled, almost silenced beneath the power of the song.
"We've only just met," came the song of Nefertari as she emerged from the darkness. "But already we're close. I don't understand you, but I will defeat it, already in its death throes." She launched herself at the beast, joining the fray with wild abandon.
David appeared, baffled and confused. "Where am I?" He didn't sing in tune to the song. The song seemed to casually ignore him.
"I am the tool to your hoof. The seal to your roof. I'll fit into every hole, and see us all through to the goal!" Fast Change became a huge Tirek-like centaur and grabbed the netted shadow, holding it steady.
Celestia flew over the whole thing. "No matter how terribly large you are, you're only going to get so far. He's not alone, he's not alone. You can't defeat us all. He's not alone, he's not alone." It didn't entirely rhyme, but it was song with a strong sense of purpose and rhythm, and it seemed to fit.
It seemed to conjure Shei from the shadow who locked gazes with one of its many eyes. "He brought me from that place, wiped my tears and banished the disgrace. For him I will fight you. For him I will stay true. He's not mine to keep, but into battle I will leap." She sprang from the ground, her hooves and legs glowing with alien magic as she crashed into it along with the others. Everyone, except David and Silver, struck it at once as they all sang together.
Everything was gone.
Silver stepped quietly in the void. There was only him, and nothing. Then there was something. Words appeared in the void.
Why can't I belong?
Silver felt fury well in him a moment, then confusion and pity. "Was that... you?"
I understand its position well enough.
Silver frowned and sat on his haunches. "You could belong. You choose not to. I have reached out a hoof in friendship, a few times. You've even shown a sign of returning it, just for a moment. We don't have to be enemies."
You can't be friends with words.
The words faded away slowly, and his perception of the universe with it.