//------------------------------//
// Ch3: Non Omnis Puella Somnio 
// Story: Regina et Equi Nox 
// by NejinOniwa 
//------------------------------//


Chapter 3 – Non Omnis Puella Somnio




Celestia was not at all sure of where her sister had disappeared to. While sensing things and memories in general was as reasonably straightforward of a process on somepony's astral side as one could get, sensing them was at the least tricky. Somewhere in the middle of looking things up, however, the “aura” that indicated Luna's projection and its location on the astral plane had simply vanished for a few seconds. Then it started reappearing in a flickering dazzle all over the place. Did she do something to the spell, maybe? It was, after all, a piece of magic they knew very little about. Influencing it in any way could have unpredictable, albeit likely not dangerous, outcomes.

Whatever Luna had done, however, seemed to have done its job. The fluttering black spots that had been the sources – or telltale signs, she was not sure which was the symptom and which was the carrier, but it hardly mattered now – of the nightmares she had been having had disappeared only a short while after Luna's aura had. Another day, another disaster averted. Celestia smiled.

There was only one problem. She wasn't quite sure how to get back “out” again. A few minutes here or there scarcely mattered, of course, and the worst she could fare would be her sister assaulting her face with a multitude of colored pens while she dozed. Or whatever it was one's body did while the psyche was inside another. There was lots of strange conjecture involved, in this whole debacle. If it took much longer, however...
Yes, this could be some magnitude of problem in and of itself, Celestia confirmed to herself. She wasn't quite sure what to do. Magic didn't work the same way in here as it usually did – it barely seemed to follow any sort of rules at all. A most frightening memory came upon her, and she tried not to focus too hard on it. Magic without rules...truly the uttermost example of chaos there ever was.

For the moment, however, she had to figure out how she was to get back. And hopefully, do so quick enough to avoid being entirely too humiliated by her sister when she woke.

-/-/-/-/

Kristina wasn't quite sure what was going on anymore. She had heard Caroline say she would go get someone to help, which at the time had seemed unnecessary. Now, she was fairly certain that it had been a good idea. Whatever other things they might do, social servants most certainly did not double as... whatever sort of people one employed to solve this sort of problem. Whatever it was.

Kristina was, all in all, extremely confused. Some half minute or so after the duchess had run off, the sounds of her dream/vision/hallucination-thingy had started to overwhelm the slight input she was still getting from “reality”. Then things had just gone off kilter entirely, and now she wasn't entirely sure of what was, and what wasn't, real. Sure, this place looked even weirder than usual, but something about it told her it wasn't quite a dream. Mainly the fact that she was pretty sure she would never have bothered to dream up something this...this...

She found no appropriate words to describe it. It wasn't a landscape, but that was probably the best word she could put on it – however utterly alien its design was. She was surrounded by a crazy quilt of checkerboard patterns, black and white squares bending in ways that ought to be impossible. She was standing on a rough little hill, on a tiny white square that, despite the utter clarity of its color and shape, was wholly transparent. It simultaneously was and was not. Through it, she could see endless layers of hills, plains and various other more or less realistic shapes constructed out of the same white-black textures, extending below her. For that part, it was largely the same above her as well. There was no sky, she was just squeezed in between a pair of ethereal checkerboard hills. And it was all slowly floating by, as if the world itself was moving, going somewhere.

True, it was most definitely a new experience. It would've been interesting – exciting, adventurous even – had she not been so utterly out of her mind from sleep-deprivation and annoyance. Now, she was simply confused, and even that was steadily approaching the worst thing there was in the world: boredom.

Squatting, she poked the checkerboard ground. It was soft. Almost bouncy. Could've been fun enough to do something with, had she not been so very tired. Certainly soft enough, she thought, to try her luck with getting some sleep on it. She had some doubts that sleeping inside a dream (if it was one) would do much good, but her body was giving her quite clear orders on this point, and she wasn't going to say no. Thus, she promptly lay down on the reasonably bouncy ground and closed her eyes.

As it turned out, that was a bad idea.
With a sensation much like sinking through the surface of a bathtub filled with syrup, she fell through the ground. Not quite falling, as there wasn't any of that feeling in her stomach that you always get when you lower your altitude, be it by falling or diving in an airplane. But she was moving down. And there wasn't much she could do about it. To hell with it, she thought after a few moments of consideration (and a few more to remember the phrasing of the up-time saw); too tired to panic, she fell asleep.

And then, she immediately was someplace else. This is definitely a dream, Kristina thought. There's that thing where I can't see my own body, what's it called, disembowelment? Wait, no, that's the thing they kill people with. Well, I suppose I COULD be dead, too, but that wouldn't make much sense. Besides, I am fairly certain the gates of heaven would look a bit more...defined.
She was a hovering, immaterial presence, just sort of hanging in the gray ether. At first there wasn't much of any tangible anything to see, but soon a wide (albeit still colorless) grassy field sort of faded into view, like it had been in the corner of her (invisible) eye all along and she just now decided to look at it. It was an odd feeling, but she'd gotten used to those by now. Today had been a very odd day, so far, and it was hardly looking to get any better on that point.

She looked around for a bit, trying to discern if this was any sort of definable somewhere or anything, or just another random dream-fabricated spot. It did look like the latter, true, but there was a strange feeling in the air – and in her, seeing as she was sort of part of the air as it was – that led her to believe otherwise.

“Hey! Ooh, lookie, I'm back here again! Did I do it? Did we get it? Does that mean we're done? Does it? Does it? Huh? Huh? Huh?”

An intensely high-pitched voice echoed through the space she occupied, and her perspective shifted a bit, as if vibrating. She looked around, but there didn't seem to be anybody around – the field was still just gray grass, a few small hills and a small horse standing in the middle of it for no apparent reason.
A frown creased Kristina's nonexistent forehead. The horse was moving. Strangely. Very strangely. Bouncing, almost. And – when she looked closer – so was its mouth. And the sounds kept coming.
A talking horse.
She had heard about some street frauds or circus acts that involved talking animals, true. They were mostly exotic animals, however. Never, ever a horse. She liked horses fiercely, and having to associate that safe haven of her mind with all this weird stuff that's been going on lately didn't go too well with her. At all.
But there wasn't really much to do about it at them moment. So, she kept watching. And listening. It was definitely a girl's voice, sweet and bubbly. The – mare – was talking to someone. But there's nobody there, who is she-

A bright flash filled the air, and a shape that was undoubtedly a man stood before the mare – half-visible, half shrouded in an even deeper gray than enveloped the rest of wherever she was. Some sort of chains or ropes extended taut from the ground and were wrapped around his chest, legs, neck and arms, but he appeared to be moving freely regardless. His voice was echoed as well, and somewhat airy and nasal; it reminded her of Axel in one of his worst droning moods.

“Yes. Your anchoring made the use of the bridge possible – despite its guardian's absence. How was the experience, by the way? I have always heard him say it was a wonder in itself to make it open.”

The horse tilted her head a bit – it was very strange to see this sort of expressiveness on an equine – and frowned slightly.

“Well, I don't know about 'wonder', really, but I suppose it wasn't too bad. It was sorta iffy and weird, but then it was kinda cool and then it went all like swoosh and then like twang and then I had to shut my eyes real hard because it got all bright! And then I think I was kinda done with it, so it doesn't really seem that impressive to me but I guess it was kinda good now that I think about it, I just don't really know what it was that was good. Huh! That's a new one for me, undefined-unwinded-unpredictable goodnesses! I'll have to write this down in my notebook!”

All this time the horse – undoubtedly a pony, by look of its size, but she didn't really want to think too much of the equine parts of this equation too much – had been bouncing about and gesturing wildly in the air with her hooves, rearing up on her hindlegs and demonstrating a quite disturbing amount of dexterity that no equine possibly could have. Utterly disregarding this crime against logic and the laws of nature and what else, the man simply nodded and walked a few steps toward her, swirling some sort of coat or cape in the air behind him.

“All is well, then. Excellent. In that case, yes, then we are done for the moment. You shall return home and standby as usual. I don't see any particular things that might arise from this, but do be ready if something should come up. Certain conditions for unpredictable events are, after all, in place already. Are we clear?”

The man came up right next to the mare, patting her on the head with his half-visible hand. The mare, in turn, gave an extremely bubbly giggle that made her body bounce about almost as much as her face did.

“Oki, doki, Loki!”

She was fairly certain she could perceive – not quite see, as his face was still very much hidden – a smile on the man's face.

“I always thought that was a very odd way to address me, you know, but you are quite adept at making people like things. That is a good talent, and you should culture it well. Farewell, girl, until we meet again.”

And as he said the last word, her perspective of this strange dreamworld zoomed away, as if her “eyes” were rapidly ascending skyward. The horse and the man quickly became little more than spots on the field of gray, and soon enough not even that. The gray field blended in with others, and were soon one untraceable spot in a little neat patchwork of dark gray and black. They too soon melded together into a dark mass as her eyes rose higher and higher, until she started to see a border of sorts; which revealed itself to be a clean line separating the field of black from another field of clear white. As she rose higher the fields took shape, becoming small, defined squares among a myriad of others like them. Squares in a pattern so chaotic it could not possibly be anything other than-

The ascent stopped, and a small strand of color entered her field of view. Gold and hazy to her vision. It flicked back and forth for a bit, and, curiously, she tried to grasp it. And as she did, a great, light-pink mass came into view.

Her hand.
And the golden strand of color was her hair.
She was back in that strange, strange place she still didn't quite know if it was a dream or not, and all of what she thought had been the “dream” had actually taken place somewhere far, far down in one of those tiny tiny squares of black. It had been a black one, that was all she knew – it was quite impossible to pick one apart from the others.

She had stopped sinking downward, at least. While previously her mind had been sufficiently hampered in its thought by her lack of sleep, she had now somehow gotten some rest. Looking at the chaotic monochrome mess around her, she was starting to feel more than a little sick – nauseous, even (Kristina had always felt that the more complicated words were more powerful, since they were the ones grown-ups used). Her sense of balance was entirely out of commission, logic seemed to have been killed in action, there was not a single speck of color in this entire place except for herself, and most importantly she didn't have a single little smidgen of a clue where “here” even was.

This was the point where most children would've fainted and given up. And most of those who didn't would've at least sat down and cried a good deal.
To be fair, Kristina did reflect on the latter option, but she realized there wasn't really much of a point to it, seeing as all she'd accomplish would be to injure her own pride. Instead, she chose to appeal to the powers that be, and hope that God wouldn't have reception problems just because she was on a different channel. Or something. She wasn't entirely aware of how the radios worked, but from what she had managed to understand of what various operators and technicians had told her, that metaphor ought to have been pretty solid. Not that it mattered to anyone else, but seeing as she was extremely alone at the moment, things that mattered to others were a moot point anyway.
So, she drew a deep breath, and yelled as loud as her 8-year old lungs could manage. Which was fairly loud. She was Vasa, after all.

“Hello! Is anybody there!? Can anyone hear me? Where am I? WHY IS THERE NO COLOR HERE!?” 
Andafter a few moments of reflecting upon recent events, she added, “Can you make the horses stop talking? Or at least make them stop looking like ponies? I find it VERY disturbing, you know!”

-/-/-/-/

I am so very, very bored.
Being bored was one of the most dangerous things in the world – to him, at least – and this time, it was bad. He felt it. It was so bad that he even had stopped making up new ways to refer to it, or even bother sticking uncommon superlatives to the word. Right now he was so bored that he actually referred to his very very bored state of mind as very very bored and that was not good at all. It was a disaster. An utter catastrophe. Certain doom. A total...

He lost steam and stopped that train of thought. He had even stopped actually visualizing those – a few cycles back this place had been very lively, with every new little idea springing up on an invisible railroad track and going all choo-choo across the psychedelic magenta hills and the little islands of dirt floating in the air, taking twists and turns and tunnels and loops here and there just to make the distance it went a bit longer.
Not anymore. There was precious little fun left in this world of his now, and what of it there was seemed tired and dry to his eyes. Not even revenge made him go all wild anymore. He'd achieved that already the first time he'd broken free – and then his glory had been ruptured by the fact that he'd been stupid enough to underestimate those placed as his gatekeepers. The Traitor was gone, and only the prison she'd built remained. And Harmony, of course, but he'd never really been able to think of the ponies as enemies. Not really. Not even after they'd sided with the Traitor. They were much too colorful for him to actually dislike them on any larger scale. And now, they'd taken all the color for themselves, and started the party on their own. Without even inviting him. Or sending him any cake as an apology.

He materialized himself on a whim, putting down his tail on a mat of marshmallow needles, standing on it like a stilt. He felt like monologuing. Or at least saying something. So, with a grumpy, annoyed tone in his voice, he did. “Why did they have to take all of it? They're not the greedy kind, so why? Why didn't they leave any color for me? Why is there no color... here...?”
The last sentence trailed off into the air, as he felt something. Something strong, something big. Something he vaguely recognized from somewhere, but more importantly, something else than himself. Someone else. An echo, bouncing across the space outside his little bubble like little stoutbunnies on pink grass. And so he listened, and repeated, his tone somewhat incredulous. “Can you make... the horses stop talking? Or at least make them stop looking like horses?” Well, this is odd, he thought, amused. Odd was good. Very good. “I find it very disturbing, you know!” he finished loudly, exclaiming his joy to no one in particular as he felt the sound of his own voice reverberate with the echo from the directional. And he smiled, his single fang glistening in the strange light. It seems like a very unexpected storm of chaos is due...right now. A quiet chuckle escaped his lips as part of the edge of his bubble was torn to shreds, and a vivid rainbow bridge splattered chromatic goo across the hills of his revitalized prison-world.

This was going to be a very good day.

-/-/-/-/

Kristina stumbled a bit – wherever she'd arrived, she seemed to have had a pretty rough landing. She couldn't see a thing, though – some slimy something or other was covering her eyes, and colors were floating across her field of vision like she'd dived headfirst into a painter's color palette. The goo was evaporating, but not fast enough – she tripped over something and fell flat on her face.

It wasn't painful, though. Something extremely fluffy cushioned her fall, and filled her nose with an almost sickeningly sweet smell. It was mesmerizing. She drew a breath or two, before giving in to her instincts and opening her mouth wide, chewing down like a starved wolf. She was fairly hungry, after all.
It was possibly the most delicious thing she had ever eaten. A hypnotically soft fluff of pure sugary goodness, with not a single ounce of weight to it – but when she crushed the tiny bubbles of it between her teeth, they burst out into drops of flowing, juicy chocolate. She just stood laid there dumbstruck for a while, savoring the sweetness – ignoring the fact that some of the chocolate was dripping out of her mouth like some twisted kind of drool – and feeling the energy flow straight into her blood, revitalizing her tired limbs one by one. She opened her eyes to get a look, and saw a mass of pink. She rubbed her nose in it, and felt fantastic. Wherever this was, this was truly a world of dreams – the kind worth dreaming, that was.

“I take it you appreciate the cotton candy clouds, then?”

She twitched violently, trying to get back up on her feet and look around. It was fairly easy, seeing as she just bounced up off the pink fluffy mass beneath her. She all but fell down again when she ended up bouncing into the owner of the voice – in all its alien glory.
In the years before the Ring of Fire, “mysterious technology” had, among other things, included the various works of those who called themselves alchemists. Once, when she was very little, one of her tutors had let her read through a book he'd found on the subject, to teach her of the dangers of something or other – she wasn't really sure what the point of that lesson had been, and the man had been executed shortly afterward, so she hadn't had opportunity to ask. Among the images she'd seen in the book was one labeled Chimera, with a simple description – an artificial creature made by fusing parts of different animals together into one body. With some modification, it was the spitting image of what was standing before her.

I did NOT scream, she told herself promptly. That was a yelp. Not long enough for a scream. Still, red spots grew on her cheeks as the echo of her surprise bounced around in the air, and the chimera opened its vaguely equine mouth and fell into a fit of laughter, squirming on the pink grass that covered the ground. Why does everything have to be horses? Kristina felt duped. She had asked specifically to make the horses stop talking or stop looking like horses, and instead she'd gotten something that while it clearly wasn't a horse, yet reminded her of one in the entirely wrong way. She crossed her arms and puffed herself up, cresting her forehead with a fierce frown. Feeling it was time to get some answers out of someone, she unleashed her best Royal Angry Voice (with accompanying Stare) upon the creature before her.

“You! Chimera! Inform me this instant where in god's name I am! And if you stop looking like a god-damned horse right now, we might be able to have some semblance of a conversation seeing as I'm rather starved for company right now and thus, in my royal grace, willing to give you a second chance. So! Have I made myself clear enough?”

The chimera gave her a confused look, before frowning slightly and standing up. On its head. Kristina was no geek like some of the more science-proficient Americans called themselves, but the physics of this place still gave her a headache. 
“Well, well. Don't you have a fair bit of spunk in you. Fair enough,” it finished, and with a soft popping noise it vanished into a puff of smoke. A second later, the smoke rearranged itself into a tall man with a goatee, sporting a head of hair that was unevenly split between black and white, and a suit of clothing just as crazy as his original appearance had been – silk mixed with corduroy, pinstripes and checkerboard patterns blending together with a myriad of colorful dots, all somehow on the same fabric – and an ebony cane. He tugged his beard and gave a thin smile, revealing a single, glistening fang in the corner of his mouth. 

“Welcome to my humble world, dear assumed unintentional traveler of the directional realm. I made this place some time ago and now I've gotten stuck, but your appearance would suggest the problem has been solved. Fantastic! Unfortunately I can give you no information whatsoever as to where you are, as the directional is utterly whimsical when it comes to things like regard for common sense – and besides, common sense makes everything boring, so trust me, you're better off this way.”
He took a few steps closer to her, and looked her in the eyes. Hard. Kristina shivered slightly.
“I can tell you, however, that wherever you started, you're not likely to be heading back. Forward momentum and all that, which you still have plenty of, by the way, so expect bouncing off again in a few minutes or so. Too bad, but really, there's not much point to developing attachments to places anyway. May I, Aspect, receive the honor of knowing your name? I mean, I could just rummage through your brain for that, but since you're a visitor, I figure I might as well be a bit, hm, courteous for once. Besides, I figure I owe you something, with the break and all that.”

Kristina stood dumbstruck again, as she tried to make sense of the creature's monologue. The most important part clicked into place rather quickly, however, and her frown deepened considerably. I'm not likely to come back home? She shook her head fiercely. The vagueness aside, it didn't brighten her prospects in the least. The rest of the speech made about as much sense as one of lieutenant Cantrell, well, the Imperial Count of Wismar's, rants on that Sye-Fye stuff he was such a sucker for. Though admittedly some experience in that direction might've helped her in this situation, if she'd interpreted it right. She made a mental note to thoroughly interrogate the lieutenant on the subject when she got home, and read as much of the stuff she could get her hands on. She could probably pass it off as English studies for her mentors, if anyone complained.

Before that could be done, however, she needed a way back home. “Aspect, you said you were?” Strange name for a strange fellow, Kristina thought when the man gave a short nod. Well, I have weirder things to worry about. “I am Kristina Vasa, crown princess of Sweden. And how do you think I can get back home, if that's not where I'm headed? Why is this happening? It seems like you have some grasp on the situation.” 
The echo of her voice carried disturbingly well through the air, bouncing around from a dozen different directions at the same time. Stranger still was the sound of it. It was definitely not Swedish – which was what she thought she'd been speaking – nor was it, as far as she could tell, any other language she knew or recognized. She decided to ask about this, as well. Intelligence oft comes coupled with curiosity, and Kristina was a very intelligent girl. “Are you doing something to my voice? Or my words, rather?”

The man smiled briefly, baring his fang, at her last question. “Observant little thing. You are quite right. Like I said, this is my world. While I am quite able to understand your words as they are, rummaging of minds and all that, the echo translates it for me anyway. But that's complicated and boring, so let's not get into that.”
He clapped his hands slightly, and they made a tiny clicking sound as they struck together. “Now, your original question, how to get back home? I have no idea! I don't do this stuff anymore, and I am frankly quite behind on the times, shut-in and all. Hopping between worlds was never a very straightforward business, and business being business, it's changed quite considerably since when I was on the market. But since you seem to have no idea what's going on either, I'd say you should try asking when you arrive at your final destination, wherever that may be. Since the place you come from doesn't have any grasp on the concept, the instigators are probably on the other side, which means they hopefully have some idea of what they're doing and not just a stupid old wagonload of luck with bashing the directionality equivalent of sticks and stones against each other.”

He took a step forward and, to Kristina's utter embarrassment, patted her on the head – even squeezing it a bit, which made her very uncomfortable. “But don't worry! I'm sure you'll be just fine. But you should probably stock up on some provisions while you're here – never know where you might end up, after all. Might be a desert! Or a forest full of angry badgers! Or an oversized beehive! Every world is full of strange possibilities like that, so you'd best be well prepared. Care for some chocolate milk, fresh squeezed from the cloud? Or some puffle fluff? Popcorn? Whiskaramel and catnip? Or a poohoo?” A table appeared out of nowhere, which immediately started littering itself with an enormous variety of objects.

It took a few minutes of suspicious questioning for her to discern what, of all the goods that Aspect procured, was actually edible and what was decidedly not so – or, in the case of whiskaramel, edible but so saturated with alcohol it'd make her blind drunk from a single sip. Once she was done with that, however, she happily threw herself into the veritable feast that Aspect had laid on the table for her. She was utterly starved, and strange as most of the things might be, they tasted reasonably good. There was even a haphazardly shaped backpack lying in the midst of it all, and she filled it up with some of the less surreal varieties of food she found. Which was just as well, because just as she started buttoning its lid, spots of color started invading the corner of her eyesight again, just like they had before she arrived here. She slung the backpack over her shoulders – it fit reasonably well and wasn't too heavy, and there weren't any ladies-in-waiting to complain about the way it wrinkled and messed up her clothes, so screw them – and took Aspect's hand, shaking it briefly before letting go again. “I'm very grateful for your help, Aspect. You have done a great service to me, and my realm, today. If our paths cross again, I shall be sure to reward you as best I can. I shall make sure to give your name to the Magdeburg and Stockholm courts, as well. Vasa shall remember your name, Aspect of Humble World!” She finished her last line just as the rainbow sludge started forming over her body. The last thing she saw of Aspect's world was an island of earth and rock, floating in the air like a balloon – then everything went chromatic, and the sensation she'd now come to recognize as leaving the world enveloped her.

-/-/-/-/

He was dumbstruck. It was utterly amazing. He, master of monologues, dumbstruck! This day was really putting on a good show. Eventually a few choice words appeared in his mouth, and he savored them for a bit before speaking them out loud. “Aspect of Humble World? Really? That's a new one. She even got part of it all right. Spunk indeed! She even ate the poohoo!” He chuckled lightly, but saved the sputtering laugh for later. “Not the time.” No, now wasn't the time for sheer enjoyment. He could do plenty of that later, when he'd figured out what all of this actually meant.
He was quite certain his prison was broken. Not quite shattered, like last time, but there was definitely a leak. Two, even – the rainbow smudges were gone now, but there were two big rips in the fabric of the world around him, one on each side. One in each direction. One for each world.
He had possibilities, here. But he was not going to repeat his past mistakes. This time, he was going to plan ahead. And take his time doing it. And most importantly, make sure not underestimate anything.
A crooked smile took form on his face, before he dematerialized in a roar of cackling laughter that shook the world to its bones.