//------------------------------// // Chapter 9 // Story: Stories of a Shade // by ConfettiColored //------------------------------// The day went as normal, wake up, eat breakfast, work, grab lunch get to the castle (which is looking pretty good since I finished repairs last week) and Dreamwalk. Rinse and repeat. Sure, I'll occasionally find a timberwolf or two hanging out in the backyard (if you wanna call it that), or Artemis practicing archery, even though she's already deadly accurate with that thing, but that's the general gist of most of my days. Tonight, though, something of great interest happened. I went into a dream, but instead of the cheery nature kid's dreams tend to have, I found myself in what could only be the Everfree Forest. I could tell by the pack of Timberwolves, Manticores, Golems, and Cragadiles chasing Silver Spoon, the filly from the clubhouse. Instinct drove me to help the filly out, but I stopped myself. I hated seeing her in pain, sure, but I also knew revealing my true form could be very bad for the whole "secrecy" thing. As I debated internally about what to do, Silver ran straight into a cliff face. She got up, shook her head (which had become disheveled after running through the trees), and turned around to see the whole pack staring her in the eyes for a brief moment, before letting out a roar that made my hair stand on end. At this point, my moral standards overruled the logical part of my brain, and I leapt into action, cursing myself for not just walking away. I leapt between the ensemble of monsters before the reality hit me: I was facing Timberwolves, Golems, Manticores, and Cragadiles all at once, and it looked like there was fifty each. I was a very strong mage, sure, but that many targets would swarm me before I could take them all out. I tried to manipulate the dream into something nicer, but failed. I could change my own dreams just fine, but doing it to someone else's dream was harder. Well, this whole scenario wasn't real anyways, so I might as well get as much fun out of this fight as I could before I was torn to shreds. I charged into the pack, claws ablaze with dark magic, and began cutting down monsters one by one. I was doing a pretty good job of not dying, before I felt a powerful magic spell charging up from above me. I jumped away from the jaws of Manticore and summoned a shield around me, just as a dark blue flash tore through the air, engulfing every single monster in sight. When the light died down, I saw none other than the Princess of Dreams, Luna walking over to Silver to comfort her about the whole thing. She clearly hadn't seen me yet, as when I hopped away, I did so into the trees, obscured from view. My shield had stood up to the blast, but just barely. I planned on getting out of this dream as soon as I possibly could, but before I could, my shield collapsed in on itself from the force it had taken earlier. Apparently it tanked so much damage that a light breeze was enough to completely shatter it. Regardless of what caused it, Luna heard the glass-like sound, and fired a laser in my direction. I teleported in front of her, hoping we would be able to solve this diplomatically like the mature, civilized beings we were. HA! Oh, sorry, I just make myself laugh sometimes, it's just... me, mature? I don't think so. "Hey, calm down. I can explain," I started, but she replied by grabbing me in her magic grasp and hurling me into the cliff face. "Silver, wake up," Luna commanded, not taking her glaring eyes off me. The rich young filly did, disappearing in a flash of white light. "Well, that went better than expected," I said sarcastically, and attempted to wake up myself, but found I couldn't escape the dream world; Luna was obviously keeping me from doing that. "Have at thee, foul demon!" she yelled in the Royal Canterlot voice in a futile attempt to scare me. I returned the favor by sticking my tongue out at her, to which she growled in anger and charged me with a lance that she summoned. I proceeded to sidestep and summoned a geyser of fire underneath her. Hey, it was a dream, so no one would get hurt. At least, that's what I thought before she crawled out of the fire and got a small cut on my left arm. I may have been in the Dreamscape, but I felt that cut appear on my real body, and Luna kept preventing me from waking up. I muttered some unflattering things about the Princess under my breath. I needed now more than ever to either wake up, or figure out how to control other people's dreams. I tried the former option first, but as expected, she was still blocking me. I didn't even bother with the other option, as I knew I wasn't going to master such a hard technique like that on the fly. I clawed my way underground to give myself more time to think about what I could do to win if my enemy held the home-field advantage. Playing the waiting game was the first thing that came to mind, she would exhaust herself with those powerful spells eventually, at least in the real world she would. I wasn't sure if that would happen in a dream. Wait... dream... that's it! Luna was keeping me from going to the real world, but maybe I could hop over to my dream, where I could manipulate it just as well as she could. It wasn't the most strategic plan ever conceived, but it was the best I had. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I rely on Roam to make plans, because mine almost always suck. And when I say that, I mean it is literally the one and only plan I've made that's worked before or since. Anyways, I used a spell to create a flash of light, temporarily blinding and distracting Luna, before trying my best to go to my dream, which surprisingly worked. I grinned in satisfaction, now the Princess and I were on an even playing field. It was at this point that she recovered from the flash-bang, and tried striking me with lightning, which I caught in my hand. She stared at me with a shocked look on her face. "You can manipulate dreams?" she asked, still keeping a defensive posture. "I can manipulate mine. Now that we've reached a stalemate, why not let me wake up?" I already knew what the answer was, but I just wanted to confirm what I already knew. "No! You'll try to kill everyone in sight!" She exclaimed. "So you're going to stay in this dream with me until the end of time?" I asked with a smug smirk on my face. "If I have to, I will," She said firmly. "Jeez, you're persistent. Okay, how about this?" I said, transporting ourselves back to someone else's dream and raising my hands in the air to represent a surrender. "Now you have more power than I. Will you hear me out now?" I asked, the exasperation clear in my voice. Now she looked even more shocked than before. "Umm... alright," she said, and I sighed in relief. Now I was free to tell her everything, which I did. I told her about moving to Ponyville, making new friends, etc. When I was done, she had one question. "How do I know you're not lying?" She asked suspiciously. "Ask Twilight if she knows a pony named Vortex that she helped out with a horn ache," I shrugged. "...Alright. I'll go ask Twilight about what you said. Don't worry, I'll keep out the fact that you're a Shade. Stay in you're dream until I get back. If you leave I'll hunt you down." "Yes, mother." "Never call me that again." "Yes, miss." And with that, she left. Saturday was a day off for me, so I didn't have to worry about her coming back before I got to work. So I just summoned a copy of Banjo-Kazooie to play while waiting for her to come back. I got so immersed in the game that I didn't realize when she came back. She looked over my shoulder while I was playing. "You have that game?" she asked, startling me. "Sweet Palutana, don't sneak up on me like that!" "Sorry," she said. "I've never played that game," "WHAT!? You can't call yourself a gamer if you've never played that game! Here!" I exclaimed, shoving the controller in her hands. "Hang on, first things first. Twilight said she knows you, so unless you do anything stupid, I'll leave you and your siblings alone." "You still have to come over and play Banjo-Kazooie," I said. "Don't worry, Roam and Artemis aren't big gamers, they won't come into the game room," "Alright, I don't have any work during the day. I'll come tomorrow at noon," She, smiling said after a brief hesitation. "Let's get you awake," And with that, I made a new friend.