Nightmare Moon was going to conquer Equestria, and plunge the whole world into eternal night. It was going to happen, and in ways that seemed to matter the most it had already happened. Fear tightened its grip on Twilight Sparkle’s chest, stifling her breathing as she thought about all the terrible things that could happen now.
The journey through the Everfree forest had contained more hazards than even the most fearful of them could have imagined. Rainbow Dash had broken her legs fighting a water dragon that had appeared from nowhere, sacrificing herself to ensure Twilight and her other friends could make it to the Sisters’ Castle. Octavia had performed admirably against the manticore, but miles later through the thick undergrowth her injuries had proved more than she could handle.
The six of them were supposed to be the epitome of friendship, and yet they’d had to leave somepony behind. It couldn’t be helped; recovering the Elements of Harmony was the main thing. But that didn’t make Twilight feel any better about leaving a friend behind, especially when they didn’t know if the Elements would respond, if all six of them weren’t there. She looked at the ponies beside her, wondering if they were feeling the same anxiety. Applejack just nodded, a sign of confidence, and the other two simply remained silent. Four survivors out of six who had set out on this journey. The odds didn’t look good.
More than once, Twilight had found herself wondering if she’d chosen the wrong friends; if a loyal companion less daring than Rainbow Dash might have survived a bit longer, or if Fluttershy’s kindness made her a liability in ways that her famous Stare didn’t quite make up for. And then she got to doubting all of them, not just the pegasus who’d let a manticore close enough to eat her friend. Doubting herself, even. Maybe she was the wrong one, and all the others were right. Maybe this quest would have gone perfectly if they’d had a leader who knew them all better, knew their talents well enough to ensure that each pony was assigned to the task that best suited their element.
That was the most terrible thought: Twilight was the only one who had read the old books, who had thought to get the Driver from Princess Celestia, and had waited for Nightmare Moon to arrive. She’d looked over list after list of the inhabitants of Ponyville, and selected the five friends who best suited the known Elements of Harmony. Okay, maybe Rainbow hadn’t been the best Element of Wind, or Octavia the most suited to bear the Element of Sound. But the others, she’d been entirely certain about. What if it was Twilight herself who was wrong, and if she’d gone out and found a suitable champion to take on the sixth element the world could have been saved.
She couldn’t go down that particular avenue of thought again, though. She’d be starting to leave a metaphorical rut in the thought every time she walked the same route. And now they had reached the Castle, Rainbow Dash falling behind in the last mile. There were no Elements in sight, only six stone pillars engraved with unfamiliar runes, and Nightmare Moon herself waiting for them at the end of the hall.
“You thought you could defeat me?” the evil horse crowed, growing to the size of a house as she spoke, “You could never master the Elements. They were placed here for safekeeping so many years ago, but they will never be a threat to me now. Do you want to see the scale of my superiority to you?” She threw back her head and laughed, and the power of the sound was such that the six pillars of ancient stone shattered in an instant.
“The Elements are in the rubble!” Twilight yelled, but realised as she said it that there was no way she should have known that. It didn’t matter, because behind her she heard the distinctive sound of the levers on three Gaia Memories being pressed. She scooped her own purple Element off the ground, and got ready to complete the sequence. It wouldn’t be the same, having four Elements instead of six, but she could only hope it would be good enough.
“HONESTY!” That would be Fluttershy, she was sure. Twilight had never known anypony as scared to tell a lie, almost to the extent that she was afraid to speak at all. But when she looked around, she saw that it was the Memory in Applejack’s hoof that was glowing brightly.
“KINDNESS!” and this time Twilight guessed right without having to look. Kindness was surely a good match for Fluttershy, though she had thought the name in the ancient texts would have been better translated as ‘generosity’, which she was sure wasn’t quite the same thing.
“MUFFINS!” Twilight blinked in shock. Not only was that Element not on any of the different lists in her books, it started with an ‘M’. That meant that the sixth Element she had claimed for herself couldn’t be ‘magic’ as she’d been expecting, because the pillars had all had different giant letters on them. She glanced down at the one she was holding tight with her magic, and saw the letter ‘J’.
Twilight looked up again, and saw Nightmare Moon throwing her head back in laughter. She was a monster, a villain, and yet on seeing the heroes gathered with the power that could imprison her for another thousand years, she chose only to laugh.
“What’s funny, Nightmare?” Twilight challenged with as much bravado as she could muster, “Do you think we’re not serious?”
“Those Elements…” the giant dark horse tried to suppress a giggle, “I mean, we used the Muffins Memory a few times after we captured it, and I’m sure it made me put on weight. But ‘Honesty’? How can you fight with that?”
“Keep laughing,” Twilight was finding it hard not to laugh herself, “But this is the element that will unite the others, and make them stronger than you can possibly imagine. Celestia alone defeated you last time, and there’s four of us now. You’re going to find out that the power of harmony is no joke!” She squeezed the Memory, and threw it high into the air ready to catch it in her Driver.
“JOKE!” the synthesised voice called out, and Nightmare Moon only laughed louder.
“I’ll beat you!” Twilight realised she was yelling, but she couldn’t stop. Somehow fear of humiliation was driving her now, seeming even more terrifying than the prospect of an eternal night and the end of all civilisation. “Get a load of this! A horse, a mule, and a zebra walk into a bar. The barman says ‘Why the long faces?’”
“You don’t need…” Nightmare Moon gasped, “…don’t need to tell jokes. You are one. Can’t … stop … laughing!”
“Oh yeah? Why did the donkey walk through doors sideways?” Twilight tried to think of a serious way to win this fight, but now she’d put the Driver on it felt like there was a bottomless well of bad jokes in her mind, and she had to relieve the pressure somehow.
“No… This is humiliating for both of us. This kind of challenge is beneath my dignity even to acknowledge. I will fight you when you are worthy of my attention!” and Nightmare Moon vanished.
“She always did stand on pride a little too much,” Princess Celestia muttered, in between squawks of laughter that made her sound more like a crowing cock than a braying pony, “But with these new Elements? And why did you have to bring her along? You really are the most disappointing student I ever had, Twilight Sparkle, and then some. Tonight you have been stupider than I could possibly have imagined.”
Twilight Sparkle awoke with a scream. That was enough to bring Spike running, asking what could be wrong and trying to make himself useful. Of course, there was nothing he could do, and explaining that she’d just had a nightmare was embarrassing in itself. But the young dragon’s constant fussing was enough of a recognisable annoyance to reassure her that this was the real world, and to drive away the last fragments of the dream.
“What could you even have a nightmare about, anyway?” he asked as he came in again, this time bearing a tray with breakfast, “I mean, you’ve fought Nightmare Moon. You’ve tamed an Ursa Minor. You’ve defeated so many dopants I lost count, and they all have terrifying powers. Is there anything left to be scared of?”
“Yeah,” Twilight looked down at her plate, a moment of sadness again, “I think you wouldn’t understand, though.” She couldn’t say that the nightmare still disturbed her because it felt surprisingly close to the truth. When they’d defeated Nightmare Moon, they hadn’t even had the Driver, and hadn’t known how to use the Elements. The story she’d told Celestia was that Nightmare Moon had fled on seeing that the Elements of Harmony were active again, but now she looked back on it, that might not be true. Maybe the queen of darkness had just found the whole situation comical, and not wanted to tarnish her dignity by fighting them.
The villain had left, and allowed Celestia to rule again, because she was ashamed to be in the presence of such incompetent Champions of Harmony. It couldn’t really be true, could it? It could. If she hadn’t fled, they might have done something as stupid as trying to use the Elements without a Driver. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be a Joker Dopant; didn’t even know if it was possible with the Elements purified and harmonised, but before Nightmare Moon had left, she had to admit to herself that they’d been within minutes of finding out.
“Hey, cheer up!” she looked up to see Spike making the silliest face he could imagine, which at least gave her a reason to smile. “Rarity’s helping you improve the collars today. You should be getting all excited about that! New accessories, right?”
“New spells!” Twilight grinned, and wolfed down the rest of her toast, planning to at least be ready by the time Rarity arrived.
In a different part of Ponyville, Regal Destiny’s mother was also having trouble with bad dreams. She’d rushed into her daughter’s room in response to a scream. But she didn’t know what Regal had been dreaming about, or even what was wrong. Her little princess was lying on her bed, sheets soaked with sweat and mane bedraggled from tossing and turning in her sleep. But her eyes were closed and her breathing deep, it looked almost like she was sleeping normally.
“Are you okay, dear?” Destined Fame had asked, and then withdrawn quietly on seeing her daughter’s faint smile. Now it was morning, hours later, and she’d almost forgotten about the nightmare. Until she saw the state of the bed, sheets tangled and half on the floor from nocturnal thrashing.
“Are you okay, Princess?” this time she spoke normally, not whispering, “Maybe you didn’t sleep well, but it’s time for school.” Her daughter didn’t answer, and she backed away. She explained the situation to her husband, who agreed that if she’d woken in the night, Regal could be afforded half an hour of extra sleep in the morning. It wasn’t until they were both ready to set off for work – Destined Fate having packed her daughter’s books ready for school – that they realised something was really wrong.
“Time to wake up, Regal,” Manifest Destiny rumbled. His low voice was a quirk of his giant physique, and he knew his family wouldn’t be scared by it. But using his daughter’s given name rather than calling her ‘Princess’ was always a sign that she’d done something to make her father concerned. She didn’t stir, and his horn glowed for a moment as he reached out to shake her awake.
No reaction.
It was nearly two hours before the couple appeared at the Golden Oak Library, and Manifest Destiny gave three sharp raps on the door before entering.
“Hello?” Spike jumped up from the desk, the sound giving him just enough time to open his eyes and get his bearings before the customers entered, “Can I help you? Twilight Sparkle is conducting important research now, but if you’re looking for a particular book maybe I can… umm…” he slowly stopped, both because he’d realised that these two didn’t look like they were in search of reading material, and because he’d completely forgotten the lines Twilight had tried to teach him. They were written down on the back of the ‘Chief Receptionist’ sign, but somehow that had ended up on the floor at some point while he was resting his eyelids.
“You’ve got to do something about our daughter!” The unicorn snapped angrily, while beside him a pegasus mare barely as tall as his shoulder nodded meekly.
“I’m sorry?” Spike wasn’t sure what else to say.
“You can wake her up, right?” Unfortunately, when he was worried Manifest Destiny wasn’t the best at conveying an idea clearly. Spike just stared, not knowing where to start, until the pegasus raised her eyes from the floor and mumbled.
“Our daughter, Regal Destiny. We took her to the hospital because she wouldn’t wake up. She had a nightmare last night, and I thought if it’d kept her awake she might be tired now. We thought it might be that disease that’s going round, a mild fever or somesuch. Everypony seems to be complaining of not sleeping soundly the last few weeks. But she wouldn’t wake at all, and we were so worried, we called for a doctor. There’s six of them in the hospital now, school fillies and young mares. They had nightmares and woke screaming in the night, their parents say, and none of them will wake at all.”
“That sounds bad,” Spike couldn’t think of anything else to say, “I can tell Twilight, if there’s anything about it in the books she’ll find it, but I think the doctors probably know all there is to know about every kind of fever. I mean–”
“No,” Manifest Destiny glared at Spike, urging him to silence in a moment. Then the giant unicorn turned to look at his wife again, and gave her a gentle nudge, urging her to explain.
“The doctors say there’s nothing they can do, the kids are just asleep. They’re not sick, no disease, no poison. But they don’t wake no matter how much anyone shakes them. One of the mothers has been distraught waiting there, her daughter’s been asleep for three days. And there’s no disease that does that, the doctors have their own books to consult. But we wondered if it might be another of these monsters that’s been threatening the town, stealing the energy of beautiful young fillies for some nefarious purpose. And, well…”
“My cousin Reef said if you see a monster, you go to the library. So here we are.”
“I’ll go get them.”
There were raised voices coming from the basement when Spike opened the door. As far as he could gather in the first few seconds, the subject of debate was whether to do what it said in a book even though they weren’t dealing with the same kind of magic, or to follow somepony’s instincts. There were, however, secondary concerns such as whether it was ever acceptable to put the piece you were working with on top of a book to keep it level.
“Hey!” Spike called down the stairs. Twilight glanced at him briefly, then decided that making her point was more important, so he tried raising his voice a little more, “Hey! We got a monster!” There was nothing more important to those two than ensuring the safety of Ponyville’s citizens, so the debate died down pretty quickly.
Half an hour later, thanks to the magical communication properties of the Elements of Harmony, all six champions were gathered at the hospital. Destined Fame had come along too, and Spike brought up the rear of the group. One nurse was quite happy to show them to the ward, and indicated a pegasus doctor who she said was in charge of the mysterious sleeping case. He was slightly built, wearing a white coat that almost completely covered his body, and had a golden mane tied tightly back.
“Hello, Doctor?” Twilight addressed him as he walked between the beds of two sleeping patients.
“Greetings,” he turned and smiled broadly, “So you would be the Champions of Harmony I hear so much about? I am Lucky Island, you don’t need to be so formal. However, I think there is little you can do to help these poor fillies. I am an expert on sleep in all its forms, and well versed in the treatment of magical mishaps. While this case is very different from any ‘hundred years’ curse I have encountered, I have no doubt that I will be awakening these particular patients soon.”
“I never heard of an epidemic of nightmares,” Twilight didn’t want to let the mystery go, just in case it did turn out to be a dopant behind it, “I think maybe we’d better investigate. First off, we need to speak to anypony who’s had lots of nightmares lately but woken up again. If they all started around the same time, or if they have something in common, that might give us a lead.” She thought of the dream that had woken her this morning, but she knew that a nightmare that didn’t let the victim wake must be in a whole different league.
“How do you know if it’s a weird dream, or just a regular bad dream?” Fluttershy murmured, “I mean, a lot of ponies won’t come forward because they’ll think it was just a natural thing, maybe they won’t want to admit it unless they know it was really a monster.”
“Did your bad dreams stop yet?” Applejack asked, as blunt as ever.
“Well, I’m not so sure that –”
“Wait, Fluttershy’s been having nightmares too?” Spike interrupted, “Twilight had a big one last night, I thought she was going to wake up half the town with screaming!”
“Spike!” Twilight hissed angrily, but he couldn’t take back the words he’d already said.
“Wow, me too!” Pinkie Pie bounced excitably, “I thought it was just one of those things that happens, but if you’re all having the same then maybe it’s something we need to do something about!”
“All of us?” Twilight asked tentatively, and looked around her friends for any sign of disagreement. They all stood in silence or just nodded slightly. “You mean we’ve all been having nightmares, and not one of you thought to check if they were magical in nature?” She hoped nopony would mention that she hadn’t raised an alarm herself.
“For so many who know each other,” Lucky Island spoke thoughtfully, “I suppose it’s possible there could be some unknown environmental cause for a sleep disorder. But I would still be reluctant to blame a dopant for what is more likely to be a disease, or even a natural fluctuation in the fabric of dream space.”
“What would you suggest in that case, Doctor?” Twilight asked. She wasn’t expecting much help from his answer, and she certainly wasn’t expecting the answer he gave.
“I have an experimental machine designed to monitor the fluctuations in spiritual energy during a normal sleep cycle,” he proudly brandished a bridle bristling with wires, “If it works correctly then I could enter your dreams when you next sleep, and say for each of you whether or not your dream is normal.”
“That could be useful,” Twilight hazarded, not quite sure how she was supposed to feel about such a strange idea, “But how do you know what’s normal for us? Aren’t dreams a highly individual phenomenon?”
“Why don’t we go in each other’s dreams?” Pinkie perked up, “We all know each other well, know the ways we think, so we could spot anything that’s out of order. And with six of us together, those nightmares don’t stand a chance!”
Of course, Lucky Island had to disagree with that. He said that they weren’t experts in his field. He said that it could be dangerous. He said that they didn’t even know how to operate the dream immersion engine properly, though as he said that last one he couldn’t help noticing that Twilight Sparkle was already two thirds of the way through the manual.
“We’re the Champions of Harmony,” Twilight told him, “Even if there’s just a chance of a dopant being involved, we have to investigate. And we’ve all been having nightmares lately, so you’d likely collect some useful data in any case.” When she put it like that, there was no reason for him to disagree.
Not the next night, because the device needed some upgrading before it could be used on multiple subjects. But the night after that, Lucky Island led them to a quiet room near the back of hospital, where four beds were arranged around a pedestal with a massive number of complex-looking technological protrusions. It was more complex than even Twilight had expected, but the purpose of four bridles on the end of long cables was obvious.
“You wear these, which can sense the activity in your brain, and when you’re all deeply enough asleep I can activate the device.”
“Only four?” Pinkie Pie came closer and picked one up, looking curiously at the complex arrangement of wire spirals and cups that it would hold against the wearer’s head. “There’s six of us, you know?”
“Yes,” Lucky smiled briefly, “But there is a limit to the resources I have access to, and even numbers seem to somehow be key to the linkage between minds. I’m not entirely sure about the explanation, but I think that if you and… umm…” he looked down at his notes for a moment, “Rainbow Dash – as you haven’t suffered nightmares of the same intensity as the others – would be willing to sit out for the first night’s experiment, I think four Champions should be enough to defeat any dream monsters you find, shouldn’t it?”
“I guess,” Rainbow Dash looked doubtful, but the others knew her well enough to wonder if she wasn’t just grumpy about being left out. As much as she wanted to protect the weak and to help everypony, a lot of her motivation came from wanting to show off.
“Don’t worry, Dash,” Applejack reassured her, “If we find there’s a monster causing all these nightmares, we might have to get a message to you and Pinkie, then you two can take it out.”
“I’m not so sure about this,” Twilight spoke slowly, hoping that by the time she reached the end of the sentence she’d have time to fully think out all the options, “Now maybe Rainbow Dash might have a bad dream because she’s worried with the Young Flyers Contest coming up, but to me the mysterious stranger in Pinkie’s library sounds like the strongest candidate for being a dopant’s influence. But we don’t know yet if we’ll actually have to fight this thing inside a dream –”
“If there is even a dopant, and not just some medical conundrum I could better solve,” the Doctor cut in.
“– and if we do,” Twilight continued where she’d left off as soon as he finished speaking, “somepony who’s never been under his influence might have an advantage for that battle. So Rainbow Dash should be dreaming. Not to mention, if we’re going to be dealing with each other’s nightmares, I think Dash would be best at fighting dream monsters, and Fluttershy at talking us through dreams of unrealistic humiliation. And of course, Pinkie’s naturally a lucid dreamer. She can control what happens in her dreams, and imagine whatever she needs. Even if she can’t make the nightmare disappear, she could dream up weapons to fight it with, which makes her a real heavy hitter this time, and I’ve previously managed to enter her dreams using the Driver to connect our minds, which we don’t know will work with anypony else. Gives us an extra pony in the dream world if we need to. And of course,” with a glance across at Lucky Island, “there aren’t many ponies who can dream like that, so even if we don’t find anything I think this device might record some data that will be useful for your research.”
“Thank you,” he nodded and even gave a faint smile, but it was clear he was still a little irritated that they hadn’t just gone with the plan he suggested.
“So we need me, Fluttershy, and Dash on the dream team,” Pinkie Pie grinned at the choice of words, just in case anypony else had missed it, “Who else?”
“I’ll stay awake,” Rarity answered, “If Fluttershy and Pinkie are both asleep and we need to fight a dopant in the real world, then I’ll have to be here.” Applejack and Twilight looked at each other for a moment, both weighing up the pros and cons.
“Rarity and I have been working on an improvement to the collars,” Twilight spoke first, “So if it’s the two of us awake, we can make some more progress on that. You got any urgent work that needs doing, AJ?”
“No, the harvest’s all brought in. We’re going to do this tonight anyhow, ain’t we? I don’t work at night most times.”
“I guess so. Rarity and I will probably be too exhausted to work tomorrow, because we’ll be staying awake to watch the readouts with Lucky Island, and fight a dopant if one appears. But you four should hopefully sleep as well as ever. That’s settled then!”
Without any further debate, except a little argument about who got the bed closest to the door, the four members of the ‘dream team’ settled down and did their best to get to sleep.
Lucky Island led Twilight and Rarity into the adjoining room, which was jam packed with scientific apparatus. There were dials and levers, coils of wire, all kinds of crystals (many of them magical), and protrusions that the two unicorns didn’t even know the name of. The doctor’s eyes went wide as he took a first look at some of the readouts.
“She’s asleep already?” he pointed a hoof at a dancing needle on one of four identical panels.
“That’ll be Pinkie,” Twilight shrugged off the question, “She’s asleep as soon as she closes her eyes, don’t worry about it.”
“Well, I’ll keep an eye on the readings, so we should know right away if they’re becoming distressed. But it’ll probably be a while before we see anything meaningful. You don’t normally dream in the first half hour of sleep, and I expect that most of our subjects will take a while to nod off in such unfamiliar surroundings. I hope you’ve got something to keep you occupied; myself and my colleagues sometimes call this hour the waiting hell, and more than once we’ve needed to repeat part of a study because the observer got bored sitting here.”
“Well, I was thinking we might discuss some of the ideas we’ve had for improving these collars. But I see you’ve got a well-stocked toolbox here, would you mind terribly if I brought a few things over, so we could test out a few ideas?”
“That’s fine, the action won’t start soon in any case. From what I’ve seen, we might even have to try this over three or four nights before we find a nightmare at all, so it’s in your best interests to have something you can work on.”
“Thanks,” Twilight and Rarity spoke together, and hurried out. They exchanged a few words and went their separate ways, both promising to be back within a half hour with the materials they thought might be useful.
Back in his cluttered observation room, Lucky Island looked through the window to the sleep lab. The subjects were starting to drift off already. Two of them holding a murmured conversation about some comic book series while they waited for sleep to arrive. The doctor was sure it wouldn’t take long. Once one subject was in a dreaming state, the connection between their minds meant that the others would follow quite quickly. And though the pink pony’s lucid dreaming was producing reading quite unlike anything Lucky Island had seen before, it seemed to be having the desired effect on at least one of her friends.
Lucky Island smiled, and wondered how long it would be until they were ready for a nightmare. He really hoped he wouldn’t be waiting here alone for a whole hour. Still, he could find something to amuse himself in the meantime, and make sure he was ready for whatever came later on tonight. He knew those ponies would be giving it everything they had, so it was only fair he should as well.
And with that thought, a new idea came to mind. He didn’t know if it would help or not, but he could always try it and see. He turned away from the viewing window and rummaged through a box of unsorted electrodes and crystals, coils and sensors, until he found the one he was looking for.
Rainbow Dash opened her eyes, and took just a few moments to realise where she was. For all the time she’d lived in Ponyville, Cloudsdale felt like home again the moment she was back. She didn’t have time to doze off now; the crowd was waiting for her. She had thought she was ready to give the pegasi the show of their lives, but every minute standing in the queue, waiting for her chance to show them her stuff,was making her less and less certain.
She kept turning towards the wall that she could hear the crowd from the far side of. She knew her friends were supposed to be helping her here, but she hadn’t seen them yet. They’d promised; Fluttershy, and Pinkie, and even Applejack. They were the most reliable friends she could imagine, so it was unthinkable that they weren’t here to cheer her on when she really needed them. And yet, they weren’t here. She told herself they were outside somewhere, exhorting the audience to cheer more as soon as Rainbow Dash stepped out, but she couldn’t hear their voices.
The announcer was talking about her now, telling the crowd that she would soon show off with a display of acrobatics and then the fabled Sonic Rainboom. There were some cheers, but a lot of hisses and boos as well. Nobody believed she could do it on her own, even after they’d seen her perform the same stunt with the aid of the Driver so many times.
“And now, our final competitor,” the announcer boomed jovially. Dash blinked and looked towards the huge doors. The crowds had gone, and she was alone in the waiting room now. Was it finally her turn to show everypony what she could do? “If you can even call her a competitor. But everypony loves a good laugh, so let’s give a hearty Cloudsdale cheer for… Rainbow Crash!”
Dash wanted to spit back some spiteful barb even though nobody would hear, but she couldn’t think of anything. Was the announcer’s writing so bad that he couldn’t even read her name from the list, or was that really what everyone thought of her? She couldn’t afford to stay and panic, though. This was her last chance to excel in the Young Flyers’ Competition, next year she’d be too old and she’d not get another chance to impress the Wonderbolts. She saw the heavy double doors start to open, and rushed out to greet her public.
She wasn’t expecting one door to suddenly swing back closed just as she reached it, bruising her left wing. She wasn’t expecting gales of laughter from the crowd as she stumbled, and she certainly wasn’t expecting the doors to open so close to the edge of the stadium, a single misstep sending her plummeting towards the Equestrian fields below.
The first bank of clouds ahead of her burst apart as she hit them, barely doing anything to check her speed. She didn’t know how far she had to fall, another row of too-soft cloud blocking her view, but she knew it was coming up way too fast. She was an expert flyer, she would normally have turned easily in the air. But the feathersoft impacts of a dozen clouds were enough to keep her off balance, and the wind whistling past spun her end over end as she fell. Rainbow Dash liked to think she was pretty tough, but she knew that the ground would be nothing like as soft as those clouds. For a moment, she even started to wonder if the Young Flyers’ Competition handed out a ribbon for the biggest crater. She could imagine them pinning it onto her tombstone, or even erecting a monument to her folly at the site of the crash. There was no way any pegasus could stop tumbling and right herself at this kind of speed.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself!” Pinkie Pie grinned. Rainbow Dash glanced to one side and saw her favourite earth pony friend lounging comfortably on a small stratocumulus cloud that was somehow keeping up with the breakneck speed of her fall.
“Pinkie! Help!” They were probably the last words Rainbow Dash had ever expected to hear herself say; she was the fastest and most talented pegasus, there was no way she would need assistance from her friends.
“You don’t need help,” Pinkie shrugged and stepped off her cloud, unfolding brilliant butterfly-like wings to soar effortlessly alongside Rainbow, “You can sort this out. Thinking too much about this competition has got you all worried, and because you never talk things over with your friends, those worries have turned into nightmares.”
“Don’t analyse me!” Rainbow Dash gasped, “Help me! I’m not having nightmares, I was as fresh as a daisy this morning, I don’t need to worry about any competition. I didn’t have a problem at all until some jerk hit me with a door, and now my wing’s bruised and I can’t turn sharp enough to avoid the ground.”
“Don’t you think the ground’s been an awfully long time coming?” Pinkie asked as they burst through yet another layer of cloud. Dash paused and looked around for a moment, taking in the speed with which they were tearing through the fluffy white layers. Up above, it was like a corridor of neatly lined-up holes. The stadium’s crowds were impossibly distant now, but she could still hear them booing and laughing as if she was right in front of them. “We’ve been falling for like two minutes here, and the ground’s not even close. That’s because you’re dreaming, this is a nightmare.”
“Oh… that kind of makes sense,” Rainbow Dash admitted. And as she said it, they burst through one final layer of cloud and saw the actual ground rising up ahead of them. “So what do I do? If this is a dream I’m not really hurt, I should be able to just pull out of this dive and wow them, but there’s no time!”
“It’s a dream,” Pinkie shrugged, and dived ahead, “You can do whatever you want!” And as she hit it, the ground burst just like the many layers of clouds. They plunged down through the surface, a vortex spinning ahead of the two ponies, shovelling aside the dirt like it was as light and easily workable as evening mist.
Rainbow Dash got the speed of her fall under control as they circled around still underground. She knew it had to be a dream now, this couldn’t possibly be for real, but she still needed to prove to all the imaginary ponies who had doubted her that she really did have what it took to win the competition.
“There’s a reason I’m dreaming, isn’t there?” She asked, trying to find the memory of what was going on here. She didn’t quite remember, but as soon as she’d started thinking about it she knew there was something here to be remembered. “I knew there was something odd about it. The ponies in my dreams don’t usually tell me that it’s a dream. Do I need to wake up, are you shaking me in the real world or something? Oh hay, I’m late for the real contest aren’t I?”
“No, no! Don’t panic. We’re supposed to be fighting a dopant that can invade other ponies’ dreams, there’s four of us ready to fight it. We thought that if we all get into the same dream then we’ll be able to defeat the nightmares. So don’t wake up yet, just envision a way to travel to Fluttershy’s dreams.”
“Oh, right. So I’ve been having nightmares because of a monster! That makes more sense, then, I thought I should be too confident to be bothered by things like that. Let’s go kick this thing’s tail!” And with that the two of them burst out of the ground, right in the centre of the arena that Rainbow Dash had fallen from a few minutes before. As she soared out of the ground huge chunks of dirt and rock fell down towards the crowd, and everypony who had ever doubted Dash’s flying proficiency changed from jeering to screaming in an instant.
She wasn’t going to let them be hurt, though, even if they were part of a nightmare. They looked too much like ponies she knew, and some she would have liked to be on better terms with. Rainbow Dash soared out of the ground as quickly as she’d ever flown before, and then swooped down so suddenly that even the air itself wasn’t fast enough to clear a path for her. Pockets of solid wind were trapped in her wake with the reversal, and released their intrinsic magical energy as the sudden turn jostled them. Rainbow Dash told herself she didn’t really understand the physics behind her flying, but that was just because she didn’t want to think of herself as an egghead. In a dream she understood it perfectly, she could see the hyperfine oscillations colliding, and surely that must mean the knowledge was in her mind somewhere. There wasn’t time for introspection now, though. She pushed herself even harder and faster, and then made a perfect landing exactly as she hit the speed of sound, and more importantly the speed of magic. Rings of rainbow light spread out all around her with a thunderous boom, knocking the heavy rocks out of the air and reducing them to dust. Nopony doubted her now, there wasn’t a single second thought in the audience as the Master of Ceremonies stepped forward to offer her a crown.
“Sorry Spitfire,” Dash threw a dramatically casual salute that made her look like the coolest pony ever, “We’ve got bigger business today.” She leapt into the air and soared upwards, and out of all the stallions racing forward to try and impress her, there was nopony not left behind in the distance. Only Pinkie Pie could possibly keep up with her at this speed.
“So how do we do this?” Dash asked as soon as they were out of earshot of all the potential suitors, “Are they the monster, or just something it created? We don’t have to fight them, do we? That just seems wrong.”
“I don’t think so. I can’t sense a dopant here, I think this might just be a normal bad dream. Or a good one now, I guess. Did you really have to make all your fans fall in love with you?”
“I’m still getting used to being able to change my dreams,” Dash shrugged without sacrificing any speed, “I just thought that if they all liked me instead of hating me, that turns the dream on its head, and it might bring the monster out of hiding. I didn’t expect it to be so effective, but it is kind of nice. I wish guys would admit they like me, instead of hiding it all the time, you know?”
“Anyway,” Pinkie smiled diplomatically, “I don’t think the dopant’s here, so we should check on the others. What would a portal to another dream look like in your mind? Where would you find it?”
“I don’t know. Like going to another world, maybe?” Rainbow Dash thought for a second and then put all her strength into flying even faster. She didn’t know where the idea had come from, but she just knew it made sense here: “Follow me!”
Lucky Island carefully manipulated the fusion of technological and magical components that composed the sleep energy transmuter. When he was younger, he’d wished that he could have been born a unicorn; manipulating such delicate components looked so much easier using magic. It certainly had been in his dreams, and maybe that was one of the foundations underpinning his lifelong fascination with the dream world. But he had learned to handle small pieces as delicately as he needed to through a lifetime of skill and effort, and he liked to think that all his diligent practice had made him a better stallion along the way.
Now there wasn’t too much to do. Among the tangle of copper and gold, pieces of glass and magicite, was a single crystal tuned to the natural resonant frequency of the primary host mind’s dreamscape. It didn’t power the whole device, it wasn’t the core. The system would work without it, even, but this one piece of technology made the construction of the rest of the device somewhat easier. It was somewhat galling to Lucky Island that he’d had to buy this one part from an expert in mental magic, while most of the room was filled with his own creations. But he knew that every genius could only travel so far by standing on the shoulders of giants. As long as it worked, he would be happy to have one device he didn’t fully understand sitting somewhere near the heart of his invention.
Or in this case, being gingerly removed from near the heart of the machine. It was connected by a dozen wires of finely drawn gold, connecting it to all the other components, but to test his theory he would need the crystal within reach. He held it up and applied firm pressure to the contacts, gritting his teeth as he realised that there would inevitably be pain involved in the experiment he wished to carry out.
Rainbow Dash flew at a speed she knew she would only ever be able to achieve in her dreams. The thrill of wind rushing through her mane was exhilarating, and she knew that despite the impossibility she would give it her all to feel this for real. In just minutes they had left Equestria entirely, and arrived in a completely different world. A strange world, and one that seemed quite alien to her.
It was a library.
She’d known it was going to be a library, because Pinkie had said her nightmare always appeared in one. But if she hadn’t known, she wasn’t sure what she would have thought it was. There were no walls, and there was no floor. There were no desks and no shelves. The only things in sight were books, that rushed in as if their invisible shelves were on the back of a train to fill the space on every side of Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie as soon as they had arrived. Rainbow Dash thought the whole place was weird, but Pinkie seemed entirely at home with this, walking between the moving shelves as if this were perfectly normal to her. Though based on some of Pinkie’s previous antics, there were a vast number of things that could seem comparatively normal.
The ground wasn’t wood or stone, it wasn’t anything. It wasn’t even black or white, it was the complete absence of colour. In every direction there were row upon row of books, but between the books there was a complete lack of anything to see, a void that seemed to suck at Dash’s eyeballs as if begging for something to fill it.
“What is this?” she asked in the end, “This is the kind of place you have in your dreams?”
“Of course. The books are hard enough to imagine, there’s so many of them. I wouldn’t waste time imagining anything else in here.”
“So you can really decide everything in your dream? It’s exactly how you want it?”
“Pretty much. Twilight helped me make some of the things in here, like the Index. Now I can do a lookup and find a book on whoever is the current dopant. It’s amazing how easy it is, I would never have thought of putting all the little facts I know about ponies together like that.”
“So you’re here when you do that ‘lookup’ thing? I’d kind of like to see that.”
“Maybe later, once we know what we’re looking for,” Pinkie offered, “I mean, if we know somepony’s causing this, we might need to find out where they’re doing it from. But we need to find some clues first, so we got something to look up.”
“But if you control everything here, how is there a nightmare? i mean, you could make mine turn good easy enough, couldn’t you do that your… self…?” Rainbow Dash trailed off as she saw something else that wasn’t a book. A pony, dressed in black, walking a distant aisle between the rows of books. Slow and patient, not even looking towards them, but somehow the silhouette still managed to seem hostile. And angry, so very angry.
“I think we…” Dash stuttered, but she couldn’t even shape words without making a tremendous effort, “We need to…”
“I think she’s an imaginary friend from when I was a filly,” Pinkie whispered, “Angry that I’ve forgotten her. I can’t banish her because she’s a part of me, or something. There’s no way I can get rid of her.”
“But we can…” Dash tried again to suggest a plan, but sheer terror meant she couldn’t even think clearly.
“We need to leave. While we still can,” Pinkie whispered, and then changed to a more commanding voice that seemed quite out of character to say: “Look up: Applejack.” She reached out with one hoof and a book flew into it. She opened it, and Dash could see that the pages were all blank, but this wasn’t the time for any more questions.
The mysterious night-dark mare turned to look towards them through the shifting rows of books. After just a second her anger seemed to double, and she charged closer. Books moved in their courses, and a whole section turned aside as if the unseen shelf was on hinges to let her past. She was coming right towards them.
“Uhh… Pinkie?”
“Still awake. She needs to improve her diet, she doesn’t get nearly enough healthy cookies. Okay, Look up: Fluttershy!” Another book came flying closer. Rainbow Dash noticed that the previous one had gone, though she hadn’t seen Pinkie put it down. The silhouetted figure was even closer now, charging between the books. Close enough to see that beneath black and midnight purple silk veils she had a coat almost the same shade. Her eyes were filled with an incomprehensible rage, and now she was close enough for perspective to have any meaning they could see that she had the giant form of a horse, or a dopant. But before the dark horse could close the last few feet between them, the books whirled away and they were flying again, towards an entirely different dream.
“So, what?” Rainbow Dash asked once she was calm enough to speak, “If that’s the kind of dream these kids have been having, I can maybe understand them being too terrified to wake up. I mean, I’ve had bad dreams before but that was something else. Has she been in your dreams all week?”
“As long as I can remember,” Pinkie shrugged, “If I spend too long in the library, she gets slowly closer. But this week she seems angry, and I don’t know why. She won’t talk to me, I don’t think she can even understand me until I realise who she is.”
“I hope the others aren't so scary. If that’s what a dopant nightmare is like, we’ve got no chance.”
Pinkie would have tried to offer reassurance, but then they arrived in what Fluttershy saw as a nightmare.
The grass was green underhoof, the sky was blue overhead. It looked like the outskirts of Ponyville, but there was something subtly wrong with the whole scene. Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie looked around for a moment, but couldn’t quite see what was wrong. It was an insidious feeling of terror that crept over them, that there was something out of place, something watching them from just out of sight.
“I don’t like this,” Dash said it out loud, though it didn’t really need saying, “We need to find Flutters and see if she knows where the monster is.”
“Let’s ask the bunny,” Pinkie said, gesturing towards a lone animal hopping nervously across the green. She didn’t think she recognised the creature, but it was a cute little ball of fuzz so there was a good chance it knew Fluttershy. But as she got closer, the whole world seemed to go into slow motion. The rabbit turned its head in surprise, ears swinging around, and Pinkie did her best to change direction. But the air was thick like treacle, and she could only watch helplessly as each elongated moment brought her closer and closer to the creature.
The rabbit roared, opening its mouth to reveal row upon row of serrated teeth along the edge of an opening large enough to swallow a pony whole. The sheer volume of the sound was enough to pick Pinkie up and throw her through the air, to collide with Rainbow Dash. Both ponies were sent tumbling, and by the time they righted themselves there was no sign of the terrifying bunny.
“Come on!” Fluttershy whispered, and the two turned to see her hiding behind a bush. It seemed like she was trying to be quiet this time, afraid that someone (or something) might hear, “We need to get out of here before the–” she didn’t get to finish the warning, though. There was another bunny right behind her, and she twitched and dived away as soon as she heard a blade of grass snap under its paws. She was too late, and this rabbit revealed a shark-toothed maw even more terrifying than the first. Its roar smashed into the three ponies like a hammer, and left them falling dazed and bruised over the edge of the cliff.
Only Pinkie was alert enough to realise that they hadn’t been anywhere near a cliff a few moments before, and only Rainbow Dash was quick enough to slow their descent by grabbing onto some daisies that were growing from crevices in the vertical rockface. The plants stretched, but eventually their roots held. Pinkie and Fluttershy grabbed onto Rainbow Dash’s wings, which left a single daisy root supporting the weight of three full grown ponies. Still, it seemed strong enough to meet the challenge, and they could take a breath.
“Are you okay?” Fluttershy asked, but didn’t wait for a response before reaching around Rainbow Dash and clinging terrified to the cliff, “We need to move. You upset a bunny, what were you thinking? We’ve got minutes at most before the CuteKaiser gets here, and I don’t want to be hanging around when–”
“Stop,” Rainbow interrupted, doing her best to sound commanding, “There is no CuteKaiser, and bunnies don’t act like that. You’re dreaming, and whatever’s going on in this dream, we’re here to rescue you. We can deal with it.”
“It… might not be that simple,” Pinkie sounded anxious, though there was nothing immediately threatening in the area. Rainbow Dash tried to guess what might be going on as she struggled to haul herself up the cliff.
“What isn’t? It’s only a cliff, and you showed me before that the ground can’t hurt us here.”
“You’re climbing, Rainbow Dash. Why aren’t you flying?”
“Don’t be silly, I…” it seemed like such a strange question to ask, and Dash would have laughed if anypony even asked it. But then she came to reply, and realised she didn’t even know why she hadn’t tried flying to the cliff top. She tried to stretch out her wings, and realised she couldn’t remember how. She knew she had wings, she was as sure of it as she’d ever been, but just in that moment she couldn’t move them or feel them, and she realised she didn’t have the first idea how to fly. “I… can’t fly?”
“Yeah,” Pinkie nodded, “Fluttershy doesn’t have wings, and yours are tiny, like that orange kid you’ve been hanging around with lately. My wings have gone too, and I can’t get them back. I think somehow it’s not possible to fly in this dream. But I can’t find a way to bend that rule, and I’ve never found something like that before. I think it might be the dopant this time.”
“So let’s fight it,” Rainbow Dash wasn’t afraid now, “So we can’t fly? I can think of worse things. Not many, but I can think of them. We can still change other things, we can imagine this cliff smaller I bet, and then we kick this CuteKaiser out of Fluttershy’s mind. It’s a dream anyway, so what’s the worst that could happen?”
“We might not wake up?” Pinkie said, but kept her voice low. She knew they’d have to fight this thing in any case, so there really was no reason to focus on the negative. Now more than ever, it was confidence they needed.
Twilight and Rarity weren’t hurrying. They both returned to the hospital at the same time, and chatted a little as they walked down the white corridors. It was a bit of a deviation from their normal routine, to have time to wait while there was possibly a dopant rampaging somewhere in Ponyville. Normally they felt they were panicking, but this time there was nothing they could do except wait.
When they got back to the lab, their casual chatter stopped immediately. Lucky Island was running back and forth across the observation room, checking instruments.
“Something’s wrong!” He gasped, as if that much wasn’t obvious. Then stopped to feverishly adjust some piece of equipment before explaining, “I think somepony’s having a nightmare. The activity spikes are all over the place for two of them. But your pink friend’s theta and lambda rhythms are completely off the charts, I don’t understand it at all, and that’s stopping me narrowing it down any further. I think one of them’s going to end up in a persistent sleep state if we don’t do something, but I don’t know what to pull because there are readings I just can’t explain on top of everything else. I can’t even go in to see if I can wake them up, because the door’s jammed somehow and I don’t have time to go all the way around to the other corridor, I’ve got to check…” he waved one hoof in the air as if trying to indicate the masses of electronics, pipes, crystals and wires around the room, “… everything!”
“We can go and try waking them,” Twilight was suddenly alert and ready to fight. She hadn’t been expecting anything to happen tonight, especially not so early, but now it had she wasn’t going to admit how tired she was.
“You should,” the doctor nodded quickly, not even looking away from the particular piece of machinery he was working with, “I can’t believe these readings, though. I thought I’d isolated a unique sequence of brainwaves, characteristic of whatever was causing those beautiful young fillies to become trapped in sleep. And your friends are showing the same thing, but one of them was the same almost as soon as she was asleep. Maybe what I’m seeing is just indicative of lucid dreaming, and there isn’t a sequence of waves that implies a dopant’s involvement after all? Or could your friend’s dream walking ability be something similar?”
“Are you saying Pinkie’s the dopant?” Twilight furrowed her brow in confusion.
“No, I mean, I don’t know. Those crystals you’re carrying on your collars look a lot like Gaia Memories, so it could be your powers and theirs have the same kind of analytical signature? I don’t know anything about that field, but it seems a conceivable explanation for the signals being roughly the same.”
“I can’t even believe you said that!” Rarity stomped a hoof angrily. While she was often the first to become irritated with Pinkie’s behaviour, she wouldn’t tolerate an outsider making such slanderous comments about her friend.
“The Elements are Memories,” Twilight managed to keep a slightly more level head, “So it’s possible the magics from them would be hard to distinguish. But we can talk about that later, right now we have to save them.” And without a backward glance, Twilight and Rarity took off down the hospital corridors. To get to the ward where their friends were dreaming without using the connecting door, thy had to go all the way back to the building’s main waiting room and then back along the corridor at the back of the building. It only took them a minute, dodging one nurse as they gallopped past, and then they were in the room. Rarity tried shaking Fluttershy, while Twilight went to get Applejack’s attention. Nothing they could think to try had any kind of effect, though.
“Right!” Twilight produced the Driver. She slung the collar around her neck, and the cloth and leather bands around the accessory held it close against her breast. “Let’s see if she can catch this.”
“JOKER!” The belt sang out, and identical-looking belts appeared around Fluttershy, Pinkie, and Rarity’s necks as Twilight Sparkle slammed her Memory into the slot. Fluttershy was moving fitfully now, as if she was contending with something in her sleep. Pinkie was more energetic, but her movements were more deliberate.
Rarity stepped closer to Fluttershy, and prised the Element of Kindness free from the collar about her neck. With no better ideas, she pushed it into the driver and then watched in surprise as the remaining ponies all seemed to become more comfortable in an instant.
“KINDNESSᏔJOKER!” Fluttertwi blinked, but didn’t hesitate for long enough to get them all killed. It was a close cut thing, and it was obvious the only reason they survived was that the CuteKaiser was already injured. It must have fought somepony else before they got here.
Fluttertwi dashed forward without explanation, raining blows down on the monster faster than anypony could even have followed. The creature was at least knocked back, struggling to raise its defences fast enough every time the flurry of kicks forced it back away. They weren’t hurting it, though.
“What is this thing?” Twilight asked out loud rather than using her telepathic connection with Fluttershy, as she thought the others were just as likely to have a helpful answer.
“Don’t know if it’s a dopant,” Pinkie shrugged, delivering a firm kick to the giant fluffy bunny’s rear as Fluttertwi knocked it in her direction, “Doesn’t feel like one to me. But it’s a nightmare anyway, so I thought we’re best dealing with it while we can. I think it’s just a monster that’s pure violence, a cute creature that’s so evil it can’t be talked or reasoned with. Kind of a scary thing to think of.” And as she spoke, Twilight could feel just how uncomfortable that idea made Fluttershy feel. Her whole life was centred around trying to make other ponies happy, and she believed with all her heart that the creatures of the Everfree were sometimes misunderstood, but never actually bad. The presence of something that would hurt ponies for fun was terrible to her even if it hadn’t been attacking everypony. It attacked her values by its very existence.
“Well, we can beat it. If it’s just a normal dream then no harm done. Let’s show this oversized bunny our Maximum Drive!”
Twilight twitched slightly, curled up on the floor at one side of the lab. She’d fallen asleep the moment Rarity pushed Fluttershy’s memory into the Driver. She looked comfortable enough, but it was clear that her dream included some kind of vigorous activity.
“Is that normal?” Lucky Island asked, seeming a little confused now there were five rather than four mares sleeping in his lab.
“Well, it’s only Twilight and Pinkie who have attempted to dream together before. But I think this is just the– Wait, did you manage to open the door?”
“That’s the thing with dreams,” the Doctor grinned, holding onto a long bundle of wires that trailed out from one of his machines, “You can’t ever be sure that what you see is for real.” He tugged on the piece of technology in his hooves, making sure there was enough slack in the wires, and then reared up on his hind legs. For a second Rarity was torn between asking what he was trying to reach, and working out what he meant by his last sentence. But then she saw the heavy white lab coat fall aside, and all other questions fled to the back of her mind. She looked again at the artifact he was holding, and now she was looking for it there was no mistaking the crystal at the heart of this collection of wires and terminals.
“DREAM!”
“Maximum Drive!” Fluttertwi yelled, hoping that calling a dramatic name for her attack would help their confidence somewhat, “Master Mage Stare!”
Her magic lifted the house-sized monstrous bunny CuteKaiser, flipping it over while still maintaining eye contact with the bizarre creature. The dual pony charged headlong into its flanks. There was a burst of energy, and a moment later the nightmare was gone.
“We did it,” Pinkie gasped, exhausted. They’d all been fighting the monster this time, reassured by the thought that as long as it was defeated, they couldn’t suffer any real injury. Though Fluttertwi had delivered the final blow, a great part of the battle had been the others darting around it, attacking and being knocked back one by one in order to create a situation where the killing blow could actually land without being deflected by that terrible, earth splitting roar.
“What now?” Rainbow Dash picked herself out of a tree without too much effort, “That can’t be the end of it, right?”
“We beat the monster,” Fluttershy mumbled, but Twilight quickly took over their shared mouth to correct her.
“We defeated this ‘CuteKaiser’, but we don’t know if that’s the dopant. I don’t see a broken Memory here, but I guess that beating it in a dream might make the Memory break in the real world.”
“We should check,” Pinkie Pie shrugged, “If those girls have woken up, then this was probably the easiest dopant we’ve ever taken on. Uhh…”
“Is something wrong?” Twilight didn’t even need to ask, she knew her friend well enough now that she could recognise the troubled half-smile that didn’t quite reach Pinkie’s eyes.
“I can’t wake up.”
“You don’t know how much I envy you,” a shadowy figure growled. He was standing in the shade of a tree, and nopony could make out any detail. He wasn’t another of the monsters of this nightmare, though, and his raw hostility made it clear that he wasn’t any part of Fluttershy’s subconscious. “You sleep so easily, and I can’t. Dreams are my life, the thing I care for more than anything else. I asked for a way to examine dreams in more detail, and those miners gave it to me. But they never told me dopants can’t sleep. Did you know that? I never wanted to hurt anypony, I’m no monster. But the only way I can experience a dream is to enter somepony else’s. If you’d deny me that, then you are the monsters. But it doesn’t matter, because there is nothing you can do. You can fight the monsters all you like, it will keep you safe from the nightmares but it won’t get you back to the real world.”
“Why?” Pinkie gasped, “You’re torturing fillies with their greatest fears, why?”
“I told you. It’s the only way I can dream. I never intended them to be nightmares, but that’s all I have. You can fight the nightmares, and make good dreams for me to explore maybe. I’d be endlessly grateful for that. But now I know a dopant has learned to dream, somehow, I know hope isn’t lost. Maybe if I can understand how you do it, then I won’t need to keep others in my grip, and I can live my dream without bringing harm to anypony else.”
“You have to stop!” Fluttershy was the first to react, “Maybe there’s an answer, you need to wait until you find it, or look harder! You can’t go trapping somepony in a nightmare just because you can’t –”
“Wait, you called us dopants?” Twilight interrupted, her confusion building to the point she couldn’t let Fluttershy continue once she realised just how long this speech could be, “There’s a completely different set of rules for the Elements of Harmony. Maybe if you really don’t want to hurt anyone, we could examine the Driver and find some property that might help you. But this is no way to ask for our help.”
“You really have no idea, do you?” the figure sneered, “Well, maybe that just makes it easier for me. It doesn’t matter if you know or not. But I’m not asking. I can examine you and your Driver as much as I want from this vantage point, and if the answer is in there rest assured I will find it. But I think that right now, I can only laugh at you. I will allow you to travel to the other dreams I have captured, at least. You can free those fillies from the grips of the nightmare, and allow them to have good dreams. That’s what a champion should do, right? But rest assured, there is nothing real in any of their worlds, and there is nothing you could find that would possibly assist you with leaving my domain.”
“Maximum Dri–” Fluttertwi was already leaping forward, hoping that striking the dopant while he was still here would break whatever power was keeping them from waking. But it was too late, the figure turned into smoke and vanished before their eyes.
“What do we do now?” Rainbow Dash said what they were all thinking. All their powers would be no use if they couldn’t get to their enemy.
“First,” Twilight forced herself to be practical, “we need to find Applejack. She’s still in a dream somewhere, and if she’s still trapped she might not know what’s going on yet.”
“Right. We can get there through Pinkie’s library,” Dash commented, “We need to be careful, though, the nightmare there seemed a lot tougher than this one.”
“Won’t they all have the same power?” Twilight suggested, “They’re powered by the same dopant, so if we can beat this nightmare we could take all of them. Maybe it just seems tougher than it is? Perspective seems to be a big thing in dreams.”
“And Rarity too,” Fluttershy added, “She’s awake so we need to let her know what’s going on.”
“I think she’ll know more than we do,” Twilight smiled, her confidence returning, “She’s been working on the collars, which are specifically designed to monitor the connection between our souls through the Elements. Every time we move from one dream to another, I’m sure Rarity will be able to tell. She knows us, she knows the Elements of Harmony, and Lucky Island knows dreams. Every time we go to a different dream, we’re giving those two more data points, and after a while maybe they’ll find a way to get messages to us here.”
“Right!” Dash announced, “Let’s get to AJ’s dream. We’ll fight the nightmare, and I know Rarity will find a way to drag us out of bed.”
Rarity opened one eye and looked around her. She wasn’t in her own bed, that was for sure. The ceiling was cracked plaster, and there was a faint smell of mould. There was a small bookcase on the far wall, but the few volumes on it were haphazardly piled and hanging over the edge. She wanted to go and straighten them, and see if the pages that had been gnawed by some vermin could at least be hidden so that the room was presentable. But she quickly realised that there were more important things to deal with. Her whole body was bruised, and even raising her head took a considerable effort.
Rarity didn’t know for sure where she was. Now she thought about it, she didn’t have the faintest idea. Her recent memories were a little shaken up, and it was hard to think about anything but the pain. Answers would come in time, though. For now, the best thing she could do was try to make this place a little tidier, and then look what was outside. She tried to stand, and found her body not responding to her commands at all. She couldn’t stand, let alone sweep away the cobwebs above her. It was then she realised that above the bruising and fatigue, there was something else to keep her from standing.
She pushed again, and felt a sharp pain around her legs. Rope, or thin cord. Tied tightly enough that the slightest movement made it bite into her tender skin. Rarity couldn’t stop herself from yelping as she felt the cords tighten, and settled back to let her magic help. Her horn flickered fitfully, but she was simply too fatigued to concentrate, and her bonds were tied with knots too tight and too complex to be untangled right away.
She didn’t have her collar on. In this predicament, she couldn’t even call for her friends. It must be a dream, she was sure of that now. A disheveled room she couldn’t clean, and nopony she could call on for help, this scenario was the kind of thing that fuelled Rarity’s nightmares. Well, she knew who the dopant was, at least, but all she could do for now was hope that the others found her soon.