Touching down, golden-sand itching at the corners of my eyes, I began to stumble, my stride shortening as I hobbled from foot to foot, struggling for balance. I’d only manage to hit up twenty-three prisons back there before I… but if this was how I felt now that I was back, then I was getting dangerously low on belief. I neede-… well, maybe things weren’t so bad. My clothes kept pace with me, kinda, my hands no longer reached the end of the sleeve and the shoulders were now almost comically baggy, but everything below the waist was still snug, and I didn’t have to worry about loose boots digging blisters into the back of my heel either.
Clothes, however, could wait. I needed to report my return, but, it would probably be better if I stopped to catch my breath. I’d only been gone on the other side for an hour or two tops, so I couldn’t imagine I’d been gone for too long back here.
Looking around, now that I was feeling a little less light-headed, I was definitely still in Canterlot Castle, but I didn’t recognize the room. It was big, like football stadium big. Ball room? It was nearly dawn actually, if the view from the walls of glass looking over a tiered veranda and gardens beneath were anythi-
Stiffening, I felt it, the siren call. That it pushed away the remainders of my mind-ache with a pleasing wash of excitement was all I could focus on even as I drifted with the push just behind my eyes. Sighing, falling to shadow, I slipped easily into the deep-dark beneath the nearest dust-covered table.
‘God, where’s it com-’ I paused, floating in the dark, lights twinkling in the distance. The knot of fear had just… vanished. ‘Oh God,’ I thought, all too aware of the senseless dark around me, any thoughts of pleasure wilting into guilt as I remembered the last two times this had happened, ‘they died.’
But then, the fear bloomed, again, stronger than before, and so close.
Popping out from the deeps I lunged for the fear, but a bright flash of violet light blinded me, leaving me to grasp at the empty as my lower half sank back to the numbing shadows. I was too late, they was gone. Another death.
Fists clenched, still blinking away the lights in my eyes, I staggered my way out of the shadows, slamming my hands onto the nearby wall and recoiled, pressing the sides of my hands into my stomach. I thought my eyes were still playing tricks on me, but when the deep blue and purple sparkles persisted, I was certain I’d just cut my hands on the crystal tree-house Twilight had won from her fight with Tirek. I was in Ponyville.
Again the fear bloomed, stealing away my thoughts. This was the third time, but, so close, I was certain that whoever it was, it was the same person. ‘There’s still a chance,’ I thought, throwing myself to the shadows, the landscape blurring as I rocketed across the rooves and alleyways only to see that searing violet-light, a gash in the air above the street at the edge of town. Skidding out from a wall, my nightmares billowed beneath me, thrusting me towards the light. I was so close, but a violent gust of wind burst out of the gash, knocking my sand out from beneath me. I landed heavily on my side, stunned, and watched the lights disappear, seemingly stitched shut with a glowing blue-thread.
Coughing, I elbowed myself up, eyes adjusting to the gloom of the early morning, dew from the grass chilling my arms and legs as I stood up. Enough was enough.
Wrapping a ring of sand around my waist, I catapulted into the air, nightmares winging beside me to keep me airborne, stopping as near to the center of town as I could figure. And, I waited. Standing on a small disc of my sand, slowly rotating, I watched, waited for another sign. There had to be another one.
There was.
Even as the pinprick of pinkish light gleamed in the air above the empty street, almost directly below me, I was descending, almost falling but for the disc of sand. It was bigger now than before, nearly twice as long as I was myself. And the fear, it was so tantalizingly close, just beyond the blinding light, more potent than ever before, but it was still the same tantalizing light, only brighter.
Not even waiting to think, I thrust my arm in, hoping that whoever it was, I would pull them out. Something cold, the fear holder, immediately wrapped around my hand and started pulling at my forearm. I heaved, not wanting to find out if the gash would take my arm with it if it collapsed. Digging my heels into the sand, I fell backwards, the sand extending even as I blindly continued to heave at the weight. Then, the crashing sound of shattering glass erupted around us. I saw white even with my eyes shuttered closed, the nightmares cocooning over us from any shards of whatever this was.
When the noise settled down, I slowly lowered us to the ground, blinking away the spots in my eyes. Nothing felt torn, there was only the cool night air until a tower of blue energy towered out somewhere near Twilight’s new… oh who am I kidding, there was no chance that it was coming anywhere but directly from her house, and blazed like the light of day. The resulting force of it threw me from my feet and dust flying into my eyes.
“NNNoooOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!”
‘Oh dear,’ I sighed.
Cupping my hands over my ears, giving up on seeing for the next could of minutes, I gave a jolt as I felt something cold and clammy push into my right ear like wet putty.
“Eeww-” I started.
“Wayde, what have you done?”
I frowned, I thought I recognized the voice, it sounded like Luna, but it also sounded like she was speaking out of a voice modifier, each echo coming back deeper than her original voice.
“Huh?” I said, spots both new and old still in my eyes, and the crackling blue lights streaming out of the princess’s eyes and horn not helping. My shins were starting to hurt, not that it should have been important, but I was still pretty burnt out over what had become of my night, so I wasn’t feeling very… scared. Looking down, I saw the thing that I thought was a tail, or maybe even some sort of tentacle, was actually pulsing plum-colored blob speckled with starlight, still wrapped around my hand, while the rest was scraping at my legs, and still another part was clawing at the dirt, trying to move away from the two of us.
Looking back up, Luna, now panting, looked comically tired. Black bags hung under her eyes, made even starker by the lights still coming out from above them, her star-y mane flowed in conflicting directions, tumbling and knotting into each other, and her flared wings showed more than a few feathers that looked like they were just about to fall out.
“Please, you must let me destroy the tantabus before it turns all of Equestria into a living nightmare.” Luna said, even as the sound of hooves began to echo through the empty street.
“Whu-”
“Princess Luna!” the shrill cry interrupted, revealing Twilight Sparkle as she rounded the edge of the street, half a block away, closely tailed by her fellow Elements of Harmony.
“Who the hay is this weirdo,” Rainbow Dash glared at me, stopping just short of crashing into Luna, as the rest of her friends came to a stop, coughing as the dust-trail of Dash’s wake caught up with them.
“This is Wayde,” Princess Luna stated loudly, her gaze unmoving, “he is the one you were sent to look for in Saddle Arabia.”
“Yyyy-aahh” Dash yawned, “you mean the jerk who caused all those nightmares is now teamed up with another nightmare? Great,” she deadpanned.
‘Nightmare?’ I thought, ignoring Dash’s glare to look back down. ‘It feels, well, I guess I can feel it, but does that mean?’
“So this,” I asked, raising my arm, still wrapped in… ‘tantabulous?’, “is some sort dream?”
“It is,” Luna stated gravely, “now please, before it hurts anypony eh-… el-”
Her words failed her, not that I blame her. I couldn’t quite believe I was eating the thing myself, but it felt so… natural.
‘Ambrosia,’ I thought, losing myself to the singular focus of eating more. Inhaling really, even by my standards, and I could only silently thanked God for the divine inspiration I'd been given in between sighs of pleasure. I couldn’t believe anything could taste so good, so sweet, that it could make the edges of your vision go black.
“Hoooooo boyy,” I sighed, my hands now free, feeling a little twitchy, and smiled, “got any more?”
***
Sitting at, surprisingly, a wooden dining table, I did my best not to gag on the overpowering stench of coffee as the “Mane Six” and Princess Luna continued to drink their sixth and seventh cups of coffee, save Ms. Pie, who had been given a mug of hot cocoa and a stern warning not to drink from anypony else’s mug but her own. It was several minutes before anyone was properly able to speak without yawning, giving me plenty of time to look around, not that there was much to see. The whole room was pretty sparse outside of the padded chairs and decorative edging on the table. There were no banners in the room, or even a chandelier hanging in the shadows of the high ceiling. It was all just random clumps of nearly sheer crystals, all different shades of pastel blue, pink, and purple and a few crystal facsimile torches that glowed white at the tips.
But architecture never really got me going, the best of it back on Earth only ever managed to get an intrigued ‘hmm’ before my focus returned to who I was there for, or, as was normally the case, I moved on to the next picture on imgur and completely forgot about it in the seconds that followed. The ponies sitting on the other side of the table were another matter. It just felt too… personal, the way the knowledge of their fears flowed into me, but that didn’t stop me from observing them.
Rainbow Dash, her frazzled prismic-mane looking more like a lop-sided Mohawk, was busy giving me a stern look, but her lidded gaze continued to betray her, and each time she started to nod off she’d take another sip of her coffee out of the side of her mouth so she wouldn’t lose sight of me.
Fluttershy, still hiding beneath and stroking her long, flowing pink hair, looked closer to the other side of half-asleep, especially from the way she kept on swaying, and always away from the morning sunlight streaming in from the window above.
Rarity, who had only stopped fussing with her hair to take dainty sips from her tea-cup, something even Princess Luna had forgone for a full on mug, gave the occasional nudge to Fluttershy, and continued making a point to look like she wasn’t starring at my clothes. But for the life of me I couldn’t see why. It looked perfect, as far as over-stylized hair went. If anything, she should have been trying to smooth the scuffed looking patch of hair just along the left side of her chest’s profile, whatever it was called.
Twilight, however, had been keeping busy, and was proving to be quite the artist if the sketches of me she managed to squeeze in-between the walls of text she was slowly, but determinedly writing was any indication.
Applejack, sitting at the other end of the seven, just chugged her coffee and continued to stare at me. With how tired everyone looked, herself included, her focus was a little unnerving.
And then there was Pinkamena Diane Pie. Sitting between Twilight and Applejack, she actually managed to surprise me in having a mane that seemed even more curly than what I had seen on the show. Someone who stuck their hand in there was liable to never see it again by the looks of it. And she just sat there, wearing a small smile, compared to what I had expected. Her, now, twelfth mug of cocoa was long finished, but what drew her so fully into my attention was, unlike the others, her fear. While certainly it was… educating to learn how much she really did fear loneliness, it was how it reached me that made it so special. It was almost like hearing someone over an old radio, the words were plain as day, but there was a low hush, a static that blurred them as they reached out to me. In fact, I’d let myself stare for so long that I almost fell from my seat when Princess Luna calmly asked, “Wayde, do you understand what you have done this night?”
Straightening back up to a snort from Ms. Dash and a giggle from Ms. Pie, not sure what else to say, I licked my lips and said, “I ate, a dream?”
“True,” Princess Luna said, “but,” she paused, taking a breath, “that was not just any dream. It was the tantabus, something I was using to punish myself for my crimes as Nightmare Moon. It escaped me, infesting the dreams of the Elements of Harmony and then the whole of Ponyville, growing in strength from their collective fears. From this surge in power it then attempted to escape into the waking world, and no doubt these disturbances are what so caught your attention.”
I nodded.
“Yes, well,” Luna frowned, looking into her empty mug, “in truth, the tantabus was rightly about to escape on its own before you pulled it through. And, with that said," she paused, taking a breath, regaining a more regal posture, "I wanted to make sure you heard me say, thank you. You have saved many lives this morning Wayde Molan. Now, if you will excuse me,” she grunted softly, rising to her feet, “my nightly duties have left me quite drained and I mm-,” she yawned into her wing, a teal light beginning to glow up her horn, “-uust make for bed. I leave you in the Elements’ capable hooves,” and teleported from the room.
‘What just happened?’ I thought, staring wide-eyed at the empty space where Luna had been standing, hadn’t she just implied how close to dooming her country I’d come, then, more importantly, ‘Why did she do that?’
Blinking, hard, I did my best to push the ripples of thought back before they started devolving. Looking over to The Elements, they seemed to be stuck in a sort of daze too. ‘First impressions, and say something smart,’ I thought, straightening my posture before politely grunting to get their attention.
“Hello,” I said, nodding toward Twilight, “my name is Wayde Molan.”
“o-Oh, yes, hello Wayde, I, am Twilight Sparkle,” the violet alicorn of magic smiled, “and these are my friends, Rainbow Dash, you’ve already met Fluttershy, Rarity, Pinkie Pie, and last, and certainly not least, Applejack.”
The noncommittal, grunts, Charmed, and Howdy’s however, were lost by the sudden, piercing gasp of Pinkamena, her pupils dilating, reflecting the stars from the stained glass perfectly, “Do you know what this means?” she beamed.
“Ah’m just gunna save us a lotta time and say: no we don’t Pinkie, but if y’ah care to tell us we will,” Applejack smirked, shaking her head.
‘It meanssss SLUMBER PARTY!” Pinkamena cheered, leaping into the air, clapping her hooves as confetti shook from her mane.
“Aaannhhhn,” Rarity yawned, “oh, excuse me. And how exactly is that dear?”
“Weeeeellll,” Pinkamena grinned, “for one, we’re all sss-ooo-per tired from all that dream-warrior business,” she said, stretching out the bags under her eyes, “Princess Luna left Wayde over here in our capable hooves,” pointing over in my direction, “And what better way to introduce our new friend to Ponyville than with a party? I mean heck, he’s already wearing a robe, amiright?”
I didn’t know what exactly I was supposed to say as she rounded on me, but when no one said anything either, Pinkie, much to her, and my own, surprise, looked around to the others and found them fast asleep.
Shrugging, she grinned, and, walking across the table whisper-yelled, “We’ll give them a couple hours, come on,” she motioned with her head to the left, her main curl pointedly following suit, “we can get the supplies for your party while they snooze.”
“Actually,” I whispered, causing Pinkamena to stop, mid-bounce, in the air. So she really can do those sorts of things. “I have a bit of thinking to do, and really,” I said, already sinking to shadows in the floor, “you don’t need to put yourself to all that trouble.”
“Well,” she hopped after me, still whisper-yelling, “do you think you could think while you help me pick out snacks for the party? I’ll even let you borrow my Xtreme-walking-and-chewing-bubblegum-at-the-same-time helmet if you want.”
Years of living suggested it would be better to simply turn her down and get out of her and everyone else’s way, but. But. But Cat had said I was weak. And, she wasn’t sure how I was supposed to change that. And, I wasn’t going to change anything if I made the decision to go off and do things like I’ve let myself ever since, well, since before college if I was going to be honest with myself.
‘tokens… sent wherever we may call upon or be called upon for help. In a nutshell, tokens are our way of sticking together.’ Cat had said. But Help? There were people out there that needed my help? That seemed more than just farfetched, and yet, and yet I was in a living, breathing world I’d thought could only ever be a television show.
“Maybe I should,” I said, surfacing slowly. When Pinkamena started going back towards her chair I amended, “and no, the helmet won’t be necessary.”
“Alrighty then,” she cheered quietly, closing her eyes as she hopped her way out of the room and down the hall. And, once we had turned a sufficient number of corners, of which I thought should have left us about to come upon the dining room again but for the change of the crystal to a more pleasant shade of plum, she looked back to me and asked, “Say, what’s your favorite kind of cake?”
“Hmm,” I said, shaking my head from thoughts of mapping out the trek before her words could register, and shrugged, “oh, I don’t really like cake.”
"WHAT!?!"