Chapter 2: Mare Marginis
Twilight bit into the hardtack absently, chewing with loud crunching sounds as she worked the rations down from the consistency of a brick to something more like gravel. She had to drink almost a whole glass of water with every mouthful of biscuit just to get it down, though she wasn't sure if it was expired or if that was just how they were supposed to be even when fresh. Stories from Shining Armor made her suspect the latter.
What actually occupied her attention in the dim light of the library was the book she was reading. She had largely left the section on pseudosciences like homeopathic medicine, acupuncture, and particle physics untouched since she'd started her research on a way to defeat Nightmare Moon, however she had taken a few books on lucid dreaming to try and help with the bad dreams she'd been having.
She'd re-read those, though she doubted she'd get anything new out of them. If nothing else, she had mastered lucid dreaming. After kicking the fragment of Nightmare Moon out of her dream, she had been able to change the dream as she wanted. She'd had so many restless nights after the eternal night had fallen that she just wanted something simple and peaceful. Twilight was a little ashamed to admit that she'd spent the entire dream sitting next to an illusion of Princess Celestia in silence, hoping to take some comfort from it.
The worst part of it was that she couldn't quite remember the finer details of the Princess' features. She could remember exactly how large the sun was in the sky, the exact shape of an idealized oak leaf, the color of the wildflowers in the grass, but not her mentor's face. Twilight had never been good with names or faces, but this one time, not knowing what Celestia looked like well enough to picture it clearly was enough to almost drive her to tears.
It was supposed to be a calming dream, but it had just reminded her of how long it had been since she'd seen the sun.
The book held in her magic was an easy distraction from that. Books had always been able to capture Twilight's attention. She could more easily remember the words on the page of an obscure tome of lore than little things like the names of her classmates or the ponies she'd briefly met in town.
"Dream Constructs! Exactly what I was looking for," she muttered. It was the same thing Nightmare Moon had said. "Good old Professor Somnium. At least somepony had the foresight to write a book that I might actually need."
She coughed and started reading aloud, as was her habit whenever she found something relevant in a book. "It is difficult to say if a dream construct should be considered alive or not. All ponies have the instinctive ability to create them, and they populate dreams and imaginations as the actors around the dreamer.
"The first type of dream construct is just that, merely an actor, little more than a passing thought and living and dying like a mayfly.
"The second type of dream construct is another familiar form, the imaginary friend. Foals are particularly adept at this, actively building up the construct, imagining it fully formed and acting on its own instead of following a script. Most of these dream constructs persist for far longer than the first type."
"What, like Smarty Pants?" Spike asked. Twilight's cheeks turned red.
"That's different! She's a plush toy and a gift with deep sentimental value! She's not an imaginary friend because she's real." She started to get a good pout worked up.
"If you say so, Twilight."
"As I was saying, there is a third type of dream construct. Where the imaginary friend is the rough work of a child, little more than a sketch of a personality, this type of construct is a fully-formed intelligence that is usually the work of great effort and meditation. They exist within the subconscious and often have desires and thoughts that do not belong to their creator, but stem from their own consciousness. Spike, do you know what this means?!"
"That you're taking a dream way too seriously?" Spike asked, yawning.
"No, it means I could have been reading two books at once all along! If I'd known about this I could have doubled my productivity." She paused. "And it means that whatever magic that strange pony used on me, it created a dream construct almost instantly."
Spike stood up, looking at Twilight skeptically. She frowned and pushed the book towards him.
"It's right here in black and white!"
"Twilight, you almost had that section of the library burned for being, and I quote, 'full of lies and nonsense that don't belong in the flawless world of the Dartmoor Decimal System'."
"I might have been overreacting," Twilight muttered darkly. "But I still maintain that there's no such thing as humans."
"Didn't somepony say that to you about Nightmare Moon?"
"The difference, Spike, is that I am a scholar and did my research. And I was clearly right, as you can tell by the endless night!"
"I guess you do have a point there," Spike admitted, shrugging. Twilight smiled at her victory.
"Now, I just need to test a few things..." She closed her eyes and focused. She could feel it inside her, something lurking in the wellspring of magic deep inside her, like her magic wanted to take a shape of its own instead of being formless and free.
Eventide rose out of the long shadow Twilight cast, hovering silently in the library, as ghostly and unreal as it had been in her dream.
That was why Twilight knew it hadn't just been a dream, because she was still there. That or she was going completely crazy. It was definitely a possibility.
"Spike, you're sure you don't see anything? I'm looking right at her." Twilight asked, looking at the masked phantom.
"I see you staring at the wall," Spike noted.
"She's right there, though, and there's a lot of magical potential stored inside her. Maybe..." Twilight bit her lip. "Maybe only I can see her after all. It's going to make it a lot harder to convince other ponies I have a plan to defeat Nightmare Moon."
"Twilight, you don't really have a plan. You have a checklist and one of the items is 'make a plan to defeat Nightmare Moon.' You have like, ten percent of a plan at most." He left unsaid that it was give or take twenty percent, depending on how crazy Twilight was. That she might have a negative amount of planning done was a worry she couldn't deal with right now.
"The important thing is I have a method. Once I figure out how to apply-" Twilight was cut off by a quiet knock at the window.
"What's that?" Spike asked, curious. He started walking towards it.
"No, stop!" Twilight grabbed him with magic, pulling him to her and jumping on him to hold him down. "Don't move! I was told that the Nightmare was going to start coming after me! That could be her out there!"
"...You think that an evil tyrant with incredible dark magic powers is outside," Spike asked, quietly.
Twilight nodded quickly. "Of course she is! I'm clearly the most important thing she'd have to deal with right now!"
"And you think she's out there, knocking politely at the window?"
"I-" Twilight stopped. "Well... she has fangs. Maybe she's a-" Twilight gasped. "Of course! She wants eternal night! The fangs! The evil powers! It all makes sense! Nightmare Moon must be-"
"Twilight you told me years ago that vamponies don't exist."
Twilight frowned. "It's possible!"
"You're being extra crazy today, Twilight. It's probably a bird or something." Spike squirmed out from under Twilight and walked over to the window. Twilight squeaked in panic and ducked behind a bulwark of books, trusting that the Complete Unabridged Dictionary of Modern Equestrian (with the new three-volume set on Ancient Equestrian and the seven-volume expansion on the history of the language) would be able to protect her against any attack. She knew for a fact that it could survive even a stray lightning spell cast by a very powerful unicorn filly who was experimenting with combat magic against the orders of her mentor.
Spike opened the window, and looked outside into the gloom. It took a moment for him to spot the one who had knocked.
"Um, excuse me... I apologize for being so rude..." The butter-yellow pegasus was slumped outside the window, looking up anxiously. "C-could I come inside?"
"Oh, um..." Spike looked back at where Twilight was (very poorly) hidden, her tail up in the air as she cowered. "Yeah, sure. Come on in."
Fluttershy almost-silently flew inside, barely staying in the air. She was rail-thin, not just lean like the average pegasus, but just skin and bones.
"Twilight, it's not Nightmare Moon," Spike said, as the pegasus landed heavily, dropping the last few inches to the ground and breathing heavily.
"It's not?" Twilight stood up, surprised. "Oh, it's, um... Butterflies?" She glanced at the mare's cutie mark. That seemed right. Names almost always matched cutie marks.
"Fluttershy," the mare corrected. Twilight winced. Still, close enough.
"Right, sorry. Did you need to borrow a book?" Twilight winced again. "Stupid question. Of course you needed to borrow a book! That's why ponies come to libraries!" She laughed awkwardly.
"Um... no, I was just..." Fluttershy pawed at the ground with a hoof. "I guess I could use something to read. I don't have a lot of time for it, but..." she trailed off, not sure how to continue.
"Not a lot of time?" Twilight tilted her head. "Why not? Everypony should make time for books."
"I just have to spend a lot of time looking for food for the animals," Fluttershy explained quietly. "I used to be able to just go into the forest and get acorns and tree bark, but it's getting too dangerous."
"You know I have a few books on edible wild plants," Twilight said, tossing a stack aside - carefully - as she looked for it. "Sorry things are such a mess. I wasn't expecting anypony to come over. I forgot this is really a public building."
"It's fine," Fluttershy said, walking unsteadily over to one of the tables and sitting. Twilight tried not to let her eyes twitch as the pegasus sat on Magical Beasts and How To Cook Them: A Griffon Guide to Barbeque. It wasn't a first edition, after all. Princess Celestia wouldn't be happy, wherever she was, if Twilight caused a pony to combust because they damaged a book. Again.
“Do you want any tea or...” Twilight grimaced as she looked at her food. She had plenty, she just didn't want to eat any of it. “Hardtack?”
“Some of both would be lovely,” Fluttershy said, smiling.
“Spike, put a kettle on the fire,” Twilight yelled, unnecessarily. The young dragon had already filled it and hung it where the flames would heat it. Spike and Fluttershy shared a look, Spike rolling his eyes and Fluttershy smiling gently and holding back a laugh.
“He seems very helpful,” Fluttershy sighed, wistfully. “I wish...”
“Hm?” Twilight asked, standing up with three books clutched in her magic. Her mane was definitely coming undone now, stray locks giving it a frazzled appearance.
“Oh, nothing,” Fluttershy whispered. Twilight grunted and put the books on the table.
“These books should help. They have information on just about every edible plant from here to the Griffon Kingdoms.” Twilight sighed and sat across from Fluttershy, grabbing her book and getting back to it, trying to ignore the distraction at the other end of the table. Not that a round table had ends.
The library was almost silent for a while. Spike politely poured Fluttershy's tea when Twilight completely forgot to do it. She dipped the hardtack into the tea to avoid shattering her teeth on the tough cracker. The only sound for a time was Twilight turning pages in her book. As she got to the past page, searching the bibliography for a sign of what she should turn to next for help.
Twilight sighed and put the finished book down. There was a pony sitting across from her. It took her a few moments of confusion to remember that she'd already dealt with her. She still had a teacup, though it was empty, and was paging through a book slowly.
Twilight frowned. Usually when she had to deal with someone bothering her at the library she just had to appease them with some basic politeness, then get back to what she was doing, and when she finished they'd have gone to do whatever it was that less well-read ponies did with their time.
“You're still here,” Twilight blurted out, her mouth moving faster than her brain.
“Oh, I was, um... caught up reading this.” Fluttershy looked away from the book she had been reading.
“You can take it home,” Twilight pointed out, gesturing at the book. “There's no real library card system or anything as far as I can tell. Just sign the ledger on the way out so I know you have them.” She muttered the next part. “If the world doesn't end maybe I'll remind you to return them at some point.”
“The truth is...” Fluttershy shivered, her wings shifting on her back uneasily. “I'm sort of... afraid to go home.”
“Afraid.” Twilight repeated, her tone flat.
“I live out near Whitetail Woods and... ever since the- the night happened, it's been getting more dangerous. Sometimes I hear things prowling around and all I can do is hide inside until they go away!” Fluttershy looked up with tears in her eyes. “I tried talking to them but I don't think they can understand me!”
“Animals... usually don't,” Twilight said, slowly, like she was speaking to a foal.
“My special talent is talking to animals,” Fluttershy said, more firmly. “It's why I care for- try to care for them.” She looked down. “I just want them to be happy.”
Twilight looked around. This was getting awkward. “What if I... walked you home? These books are pretty heavy anyway, so I'm sure it'd be easier to share the load.” She'd rather get back to doing research, but she'd never manage that unless she got the pegasus out of her mane first.
“You'd do that?” Fluttershy smiled, her eyes wide. “T-that would be very nice of you.”
“Sure, why not. Spike keeps saying I need to get some fresh air.” He was of course wrong. The freshest air of all was the scent of an old, well-preserved tome, that precious old book smell that always managed to remind Twilight of being back home in Canterlot.
***
A few miles down the road, and Twilight was grumbling under her breath and considering telling the mare she was close enough and teleporting back to the library. Why did she live so far out of town? Actually, that was a good question.
“Why do you live so far out of town?” Twilight asked, as she shifted the saddlebags on her back. She'd offered to carry the books herself after realizing the pegasus would only slow her down. The tea and food had revived her a little, but she was still out of sorts.
“I have to,” Fluttershy said, quietly. She was watching the edges of the path, where trees loomed here and there in the dim light of the stars and crescent moon. Ironically, since the Endless Night had started with a full moon, it was slowly waning even as Nightmare Moon's power seemed to grow. “A lot of animals who need help won't come close to town, and... I like being alone, sometimes.”
“Not that you're really alone with all of those animal friends, right?” Twilight smiled a little.
“Wait!” Fluttershy hissed, grabbing Twilight's shoulder. “Did you hear that?” She hid behind the unicorn. Twilight's ears flattened as she looked around at the gloom.
“I think it was just the wind,” Twilight whispered. The leaves rustled again, and she felt her coat start to stand on end. It wasn't the wind. A twig snapped.
Twilight screamed and fired a bolt of wild magical energy into the dark. It bounced from a tree trunk, sending a spray of bark into the air and illuminating a shadowy shape for a moment, something shapeless and awful, like a rubbery sheet of darkness stretched over something with unnatural proportions, the only thing clearly visible in that instant an empty, toothless grin.
Surprisingly, Twilight found that she could, in fact, scream louder. She had the presence of mind to grab Fluttershy with her magic, though part of her considered just leaving the pegasus behind to keep the monster busy. She'd feel awful about it, of course, but she'd feel even more awful if she was being digested by some kind of horrible monster in the woods.
Fortunately for Fluttershy, they left the crashing sounds in the woods far behind them in short order thanks to Twilight's amazing ability to sprint while terrified. Even more fortunately, it was only then, as they were out of danger, that the pragmatic part of Twilight's mind finished fully justifying leaving Fluttershy behind to get eaten. Of course now it was too late to leave her, and Twilight wasn't going to go back just to try and find the monster so she could do the logical thing and have it eat the stranger so she could get away. It would have been counter-productive.
“I think maybe I see why you were afraid to come out here alone,” Twilight admitted.
“I-it's getting really dangerous,” Fluttershy admitted, shaking with fear. “I- you saved my life!” She grabbed Twilight and hugged her. Twilight froze. She had never, ever, been good with physical contact. Where was she supposed to put her hooves? Worse, Fluttershy was a pegasus. Unicorns had customs about touching horns (which a polite lady did not do in public) – did pegasai have something similar about their wings? What if she accidentally sexually harassed her? What if that was what the mare wanted? Twilight wasn't even sure if she liked mares and wasn't particularly interested in finding out now.
“It was no big deal,” Twilight said, gently stepping away from the hug. “Is your home close?”
Fluttershy pointed further along the path. Twilight turned up the power on her light spell, shining it ahead to where the dark, looming trees thinned out to a clearing.
Fluttershy's home had probably been beautiful once. Now, though, the windows were boarded up, the once-beautiful garden was stripped of anything edible and the rest left to die, and a pallor hung over the place. A scent like rotting fruit hung over the cabin, giving the desolate place an aura of decay and disrepair.
"Have you thought about maybe moving into town?" Twilight asked, quietly. "It's too dangerous out here. That thing in the woods-" she shuddered.
"Rainbow asked me that too," Fluttershy whispered, looking down. "She even offered to let me move in with her. But most of the animals I take care of can't fly. I'd have to abandon them, and I just can't do that."
"I guess I understand," Twilight offered. "I mean, if something happened I couldn't just leave Spike." As she helped Fluttershy to her home, she tripped on something lying in the road.
"Be careful," Fluttershy muttered. "If you get hurt it would be even harder to get away from here."
"I definitely don't want to end up with a broken leg," Twilight agreed. "But who just leaves a..." she picked it up with her magic. "A shovel just lying in the road?"
"I guess I forgot to put it away. I meant to do it before I left, but... I wasn't thinking clearly," Fluttershy whispered. Twilight looked past the road and to the garden, where a row of neat holes had been dug and filled in.
"I- are these...?" Twilight paled.
"I've been doing everything I can," Fluttershy said, an edge to her voice. "Some of them just get so depressed they stop eating, or they can't survive on what little I have for them, or one of the things in the woods gets to them..." She stomped a hoof. "I can't even- I try to respect them and as soon as I turn my back, something digs them up and- and-" Fluttershy shivered, wiping her eyes.
"That's really... awful," Twilight said, biting her lip, looking around. An abandoned chicken coop, the fencing torn apart. Birdhouses that were empty or broken. And all those little holes in the ground with recently overturned earth and the faint scent of rot on the night air.
"I'm sorry for troubling you," Fluttershy said, hesitating at the door. First she'd been afraid to leave, now she almost seemed afraid to go inside.
"Is... there anything else I can do?" Twilight hesitated, not sure if she should leave or not.
"No," Fluttershy mumbled. "I'm sorry for dragging you out here. I don't want to be a burden."
"Oh no, it's nothing," Twilight laughed nervously. "If you do need anything, um, the library is always open."
Fluttershy turned to look at Twilight, with an expression like she was just about to say something. Twilight watched as she lost her nerve and looked down, nodding silently. The pegasus pushed the door open, an empty cage that had been propped up against the door falling over. Without another word, she walked inside, shutting the door softly, the loudest sound in the little grove a series of clicks as locks fell into place.
***
Twilight frowned and turned the book she was holding sideways. A panel folded out of the page, and the unicorn's face turned bright red as she realized what she was looking at.
There was a knock at the window, rapid and strong. Twilight made a squeaking sound and threw the book to the side.
"I wasn't looking at anything!" She screamed, her face turning the same pink as her magic.
"Wow, overreacting much?" Spike asked. He walked over to pick up the book she'd thrown, opening it to the fold-out page.
"No, Spike! That's not for foals!"
"...Twilight, this is a diagram of how to draw magical seals,"
“And they're very dangerous! So foals shouldn't do it!” Twilight snapped, grabbing the book with her magic and slamming it shut, before carefully putting it in her private reading pile to look at after Spike had gone to sleep.
“Whatever,” Spike sighed. “I'm going to get the window.”
“It's probably Buttershy again,” Twilight said, opening a new tome. “I guess she was smart and took my advice about getting away from that shack of hers. It was really run down.”
“Her name is Fluttershy,” said an obviously annoyed pony with a scratchy voice. Twilight turned to look. “You know about magic, right?!”
“I'm Princess Celestia's personal student and-”
“Great! I don't have time to explain! There's magic stuff and I need a magic pony!” Rainbow Dash glanced back at the window. “Sorry about this. Just hang on tight.”
“Hang on to whaaaaAAAAAAAAA!!!” Twilight screamed as Dash flew over and grabbed her, speeding out of the window at a velocity usually reserved for projectile weapons, rumors, and grad students researching Nazca's Arcane Explosion Array. If Twilight was lucky she wouldn't end up like the grad students, who usually discovered amazingly novel ways to get a solid to energetically turn into a gas.
***
Twilight groaned as she was deposited face-first into the ground at was was thankfully a rather low speed. She barely had a concussion at all. She'd stopped screaming halfway over, too. Not because she'd calmed down, but because she'd run out of breath and the rushing ice-cold wind made it hard to breathe. When the unicorn finally managed the strength to look up, she saw she was somewhere very familiar. Well, not very familiar. But she recognized it.
“This is Flutterbye's house,” Twilight said, looking around and getting the pegasus' name wrong yet again. “I was just here a little while ago. I read two books, average five hundred pages each... about four hours ago.”
“Yeah, well, was it like this when you were here?!” Rainbow Dash landed next to her, gesturing grandly at the abandoned-looking building.
“...Like she's trying to keep zomponies out and isn't terribly good at taking care of animals?” Twilight asked, sarcasm dripping from her voice. “Because yes, this is what it looked like!”
“She's great at taking care of animals!” Dash shouted. “And you're not even looking! Go ahead and tell me this is normal!” The blue pegasus flew over to the door and pulled it open, grunting with effort.
“If this is-” Twilight rolled her eyes and walked over, expecting to find, well, not what she found, and as she looked, exactly what she had expected to find left her mind so quickly that it achieved escape velocity and might be the first thing Equestrians manage to send to another star. Her jaw dropped. “What is this?!”
“It's bigger on the inside,” Dash said, quietly, as she stayed away from the door. Twilight crept closer carefully to look. The cabin was small, probably no more than a few rooms. But when she looked in now, she saw a vast empty space stretching in all directions, a maze of cages, all of them empty. The whole scene wavered as Twilight looked at it, like she was viewing it through a sheet of water.
“I can see why you needed somepony good with magic,” Twilight said, not raising her voice above a whisper, as if something would hear her. “I take back all the things I said and thought. This is... if it wasn't terrifying it would be amazing.”
“I think Fluttershy is in there somewhere,” Dash said. “I heard her but... is it real, or some kind of illusion?”
“It's no illusion,” Twilight said, raising a hoof and carefully touching the boundary. There was only a slight sense of resistance. Pulling her hoof back, she cast a few quick analysis spells. “From what I can tell, it's some kind of dimensional pocket. There are some theories that large amounts of dark magic can cause this kind of effect in a localized area, but I can't think of anywhere that much dark magic could come from-” her eyes went wide. “Except...”
“Woah, woah,” Dash said, waving her hooves. “Are you saying Nightmare Moon is doing something to Fluttershy?! Why?! She would never hurt anypony!”
“It's possible,” Twilight said, but for the life of her, she couldn't figure out why Nightmare Moon would go after this pony. She hardly mattered.
“Well I'm not waiting around for her to be gobbled up!” Rainbow Dash pushed Twilight out of the way and braced herself. “I'm coming for you, Fluttershy!” She jumped in, the air distorting with ripples like a pond after a rock had been thrown into it.
“No! It could be dangerous!” Twilight ran after her, her mind filled with the idea that she had to explain why just running in would be a bad idea.
About two seconds later, that idea caught up with what she was doing, and Twilight managed to feel really, really stupid for a moment. Then she ran face-first into Dash's flank, which was only marginally softer than the ground she'd recently attacked with her snout.
“I don't even know where to start,” Dash muttered, looking around at the empty cages.
“Why did you jump in like that? You didn't even give me a chance to explain!” Twilight snapped. “Do you even know what the physics of this place are like?”
“Well- no! But it doesn't matter! Fluttershy is one of my best friends, not that you'd understand that.”
“Friend or not, you're going to end up getting yourself killed!” Twilight looked around. “Listen, I have a vague idea of what this place is going to be like. If my suspicions are correct, this subspace will run on dream logic. No, not just that, nightmare logic. It's going to be like if a bad dream was real!” Twilight took a deep breath. “I'm thinking it's a subtype called the Philemon-Rozen Fractal Subspace, which-”
“That's a stupid name. If it's dangerous, we should just call it a danger zo-”
“No. We're not calling it that.”
Dash huffed. “Fine! Call it whatever you want! But we need to find Fluttershy, like, now! She can't take care of herself!”
“There should be some way to track her,” Twilight said. “Dreams are usually symbolic, so let's start looking for something like a door or a sign. And we need to stay together. If something does happen, I can't protect you if you're too far away.”
“Pfft. As if I need protecting.” Dash smirked. “I don't think you know who you're talking to.”
Before Twilight could respond with a remark so scathing that Rainbow Dash would have to be rushed to a burn ward, there was a rattling of steel on steel, and both ponies froze in place. Then, from deep within the labyrinth, there was the sound of metal falling onto concrete. Twilight flinched at the loud noise.
"We should get out of here," Twilight said. "The door should be-" she looked back to where they had come from. "The door shouldn't be gone! Why is the door gone?!"
"It doesn't matter. I won't leave until I find Fluttershy," Dash said stubbornly. "You just stay there and try to figure out this magic stuff, I'll search from the air."
Rainbow Dash flew up, briefly. It was like she hit an invisible ceiling only a dozen paces up. Most of the walls of stacked crates were higher yet, trapping her in the maze.
"Purple Smart, I can't get up!"
"That sounds like a personal pegasus problem," Twilight said, rolling her eyes. "And I'm not Purple Smart! I'm Twilight Sparkle! You could at least try to remember it!"
"You're one to talk," Rainbow Dash muttered, landing next to her. She looked over at the cages. "What's with all of this? Why would Fluttershy be dreaming of this place?"
"It's coming from her subconscious. It's probably her greatest fear or something." Twilight's speculation was cut short as something else crashed to the ground, much closer.
"Is this whole place falling apart?" Dash asked quietly.
"I think... something's getting closer." Twilight backed away as another crash boomed through the maze of twisty passages, all alike. She caught sight of something moving in the corner of her eye, though it was gone when she turned to look.
"Well let 'em come! Maybe we can beat them up and make them lead us to Flutters!" Dash smirked, though the expression was wiped from her face as a giant birdcage fell towards her. She shoved Twilight out of the way before moving herself, barely getting clear in time as the cage landed with enough force to bend the metal bars.
"That could have killed us!" Twilight said, starting to panic.
"Um, Twilight..." Dash pointed up where the cage had come from. Another cage was shoved away as something scrabbled to get over the wall of mismatched cages. "What in the hay is that thing?!"
It looked almost like a translucent red rubber sheet stretched over an overly large dog, though the head was little more than an oblong sphere with a wide, toothless gap where the mouth should have been.
"I saw that in the woods!" Twilight gasped. "But how can it be-" She shivered. "Does that mean that it's a real thing that came here, or something from here that got out into the real world?"
"This isn't the time to ask questions! It's time for action!" Dash readied herself. "Just stay back and I'll take care of this thing in ten seconds flat!"
"Wait!" Twilight yelled, too late. Dash took off, flying into the rubbery thing with a mighty kick that would have done a lot of damage to a normal animal, maybe even stunned a monster. But as Dash hit, it just deformed and stretched, her force wasted as she bounced away.
"What in Tartarus?!" Dash flew back to get clear as it snapped at her with that lipless mouth, opening it so wide that she could see that there was nothing inside, just empty space where a beast conspicuously wasn't.
"Just say away, Dash! Fighting and magic don't work correctly here!" Something tickled at Twilight's attention. "But I have just the thing!"
"Then stop talking and do something, egghead! This thing wants a piece of my tail and I don't mean the fun way!!" Dash dodged another swipe from the empty shape.
"Eventide!" Twilight called, her dream construct appearing at her side like it was just stepping out of the shadows and had been there all along.
"What are you- woah!" Dash blinked, as Eventide appeared in front of her, intercepting the monster's attack with a magical shield. Dash looked down to where Twilight was concentrating, then back at Eventide. "There are two of you! And one of you has wings!"
"You can see her?" Twilight asked, smiling. "I knew it! I was right all along and not crazy at all!"
"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," Dash muttered.
"Just get away from that thing! I think I can beat it, but I can't beat it and protect you at the same time!"
"No way, I can totally take this thing! I used to kick apart timberwolves when they came out of the Everfree!" Dash flew in a tight loop, going around Eventide to kick the monster in the side again. The thing's entire body twisted, like the space the thin skin was wrapped around rotated around Dash until it was facing her, grabbing her hoof in its toothless maw and tossing her into a cage, the pegasus bouncing away from it and off of the wall, one wing twisted at an awkward angle.
Twilight maneuvered Eventide around, keeping it at bay and pawing at the shield, trying to find a way past it. She caught Dash with her magic at the last moment, breaking her fall before the fall broke her.
"Hey you know what? Maybe I'll just let you handle this one," Dash said, wincing as she stretched her wing out and something popped back into place.
"I wonder if this thing is what's creating the dreamspace," Twilight whispered. "It's just slightly real, enough that we were able to see it in the woods." She watched as it clawed at the shield, not taking any offensive action on it yet.
"If it's making the dreamspace, what happens if you kill it?" Dash asked. "Is it dangerous?"
"Worst-case scenario? This place collapses, we get ejected into realspace, and the dreamer ends up in a permanent coma because of a full ego failure."
"A permanent coma?!"
"It's not very likely," Twilight quickly added. "More likely, she wakes up and just doesn't remember any of this... and probably never manages to dream again, and goes insane from REM sleep deprivation."
"Insane?!"
"Stop just repeating the worst parts of what I'm saying!" Twilight snapped.
"Well they're pretty bad and- watch out!" In the moment of distraction, the beast jumped at Eventide. Twilight gasped with sudden pain as claws tore at the construct's neck, welts raising on Twilight's skin. There was a burst of light as the construct teleported away, the rubbery monster falling to the ground.
"Maybe we can trap it somehow," Twilight panted. "If we got one of the cages then we could-"
"Um, we're gonna need a lot of cages," Dash said, looking the other direction and motioning for the unicorn to follow her gaze. Twilight looked to see half a dozen more of the creatures, each with that same oblong head, but with different bodies, enclosing the empty space where a cat obviously wasn't, or a rabbit, or a bird, or a snake.
"Well that's good news," Twilight said, backing away as the things crept closer.
"How is being surrounded by monsters good news?"
"It means they're a product of the dream. A space like this has only two nodes, the dreamer and the entity stretching the dream outside of the dreamer. It's kind of like the foci of an ellipse, where the second focus distorts it away from a perfect circle and-"
"This isn't time for a geography lesson!"
"Geometry," Twilight corrected.
"Whatever! Just do something!"
"Here goes nothing," Twilight muttered. Eventide appeared in front of her. "I really need to read up on combat magic after this." Twilight focused, and a spark appeared among the empty monsters, motes of magic surging inwards towards it before it collapsed and exploded outwards in a detonation of arcane force.
The snake-shape was torn apart in the blast, the rubber skin rupturing from the shock and falling away as it deflated like a balloon.
"That's one down!" Twilight smirked.
"You're too slow!" Dash yelled, as the bird monster took off with a screech, rushing towards them. Twilight tried the same spell again, but before the magic could accumulate, it was out of the area of effect, grabbing Eventide and throwing the construct into the bars of a cage with enough force to bend the steel. Twilight fell back with it as if struck herself, coughing as the breath was driven from her lungs.
"I think I need a new plan," Twilight gasped.
"Fire your unicorn death beams!" Dash ordered. Twilight gave her a look.
"Unicorns don't have death beams!"
"What?! But Lyra told me you guys totally did!"
"Well she lied!" Twilight snapped. The bird came around for another pass, screeching with a sound like compressed air screaming through a crack in a valve. Twilight stumbled back and raised a hoof, Eventide appearing next to her with one of the broken iron bars of the cage.
As it got closer, the bar flashed with magenta light, the metal twisting into a slim blade. Eventide held it steady, slicing through the skin stretched over the nothingness of the monster, sending it fluttering to the ground in two inert scraps of rubber.
"Woah! That was awesome!" Dash crowed.
"I don't even know how I did that!" Twilight gasped. The implications of what that meant about Eventide would have to wait, as the rest of the monsters closed in on her, circling like sharks.
Eventide took up a fighting stance, almost like the classic horn-fencing postures that Twilight had briefly studied before deciding that they were useless, as they neither helped with spellcasting nor were duels even permitted in the modern era except in sport (which, to Twilight, was almost as useless a pursuit as comedy).
Two jumped at once, Eventide lunging at one and spearing it before teleporting out of the way of the second, allowing it to crash into the deflating form of the first.
"When this is over, you are totally going to be my new best friend," Dash said, watching in awe.
"I don't need friends, I need time to study!" Twilight snapped. She scrambled out of the way as the catlike monster fell where she was standing, tangled in the remains of its fellow beast.
"Watch out!" Dash grabbed her just before a giant rat could bite into her, Eventide arriving a moment too late as it swung the blade through the monster's neck.
"Thanks," Twilight muttered. Her pride was a little hurt at being saved about two seconds after she said she didn't need a friend.
"That's three down and four to go," Dash commented, looking around. "Think you can handle the rest?"
"Of course I can," Twilight said. "Just watch." She focused, and Eventide seemed to slow for a moment. The dog-beast grabbed its hoof with those empty jaws, making Twilight gasp with pain. The other three closed in, the catlike one jumping high into the air, pouncing towards Eventide.
"Getting eaten is a terrible plan!" Dash yelled.
"J-just watch!" Twilight repeated, smirking. Just as the monsters converged, Eventide teleported away, leaving a mote of light. Just as before, a wide sphere of stars appeared around it, shooting inwards and exploding in a burst of force. This time, they didn't have time to react to it, popping like soap bubbles from the pressure.
"Woah," Dash whispered, eyes sparkling. "That was awesome!"
"Yeah, it only really hurt a lot," Twilight muttered, rubbing her hoof. She could already see a bruise forming.
"What is that thing?" Dash asked, pointing at Eventide. "It kinda looks like you, except wingier."
"Wingier isn't a word."
"Whatever. You know what I mean."
Twilight sighed. "It's a thought construct. A very powerful one. I didn't exactly make it myself, but it's like if you pretended there was somepony there and kept reinforcing the idea by thinking and meditating on it until you could interact with them-"
"...It's an imaginary friend? You have an imaginary friend? And it's you, but with wings and armor?" A wide smirk started to fill Dash's face.
"No! It's a- it's a much more advanced construct than that and I didn't make it and I don't have imaginary friends!" Anymore. Not for at least two years now. Celestia had gotten worried after overhearing Twilight talking to herself. It wasn't her fault there was no real pony who could carry a good conversation with her. Twilight nodded to Eventide, and the construct faded into invisibility, the sword it had created dropping to the ground and ringing like a bell.
"Whatever. It's pretty cool anyway, and totally kicked their flanks." Dash flew over to where the sword had fallen and picked it up. “This would look awesome hanging in my house. Scoots would-” She stopped herself. “I mean, it might come in handy if there are more monsters.
Twilight blushed at the compliment about Eventide being 'cool' and nodded. "Now we just need to find Fluttershy. Since these monsters aren't one of the foci for the dreamspace, our best bet for getting out of here safely is to get her to collapse it on her own. That way she doesn't, you know. End up having a bad time. Permanently."
"So where should we start?" Dash asked. Her question was answered not by Twilight but by a wailing scream from further inside the labyrinth. She'd recognize it anywhere. "Fluttershy!"
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However might be better in this sentence but though still technically works, however I believe helps it flow a bit better
The context feels a bit off here, makes it almost seem like the restless nights were after she kicked out Nightmare Moon, I suggest "after all those/the weeks of restless nights~" instead to provide the right context.
The more really isn't needed here, it makes the entire sentence a bit awkward to read.
I think it's fairly obvious but wrong "right" there, it's write
Adding before in where I've shown would provide a bit more context, its not really needed there but I believe it helps the sentence a bit.
Switching "also it" would make the sentence flow a bit better
Unless this is a ponyism I am unaware of I believe the proper term is the Dewey Decimal System
This is more a personal thing but the double use of "like" after a comma is really unnecessary, if you remove the first like the sentence still works fairly well.
It feels like there's missing dialogue here because Twilights sentence feels like she is responding to a statement that isn't there, if you add in something like twilight saying about Eventide being there, then spike responds about not seeing her then Twilights statement will make more sense.
The bolded part of the sentence is my editing, you can decide which you like more.
There's nothing wrong with this I just wanted to point how well written this part is.
I'm confused why twilight blushes here, nothing embarrassing is really said about either party.
Ok I might have missed some myself but I believe I got the majority of them, i hope this was helpful and good luck on the next chapter!
-Acarcion
With the fear of night, we stand to fight, with will of sorrow we find the morro. In a battle of fear, we fight for whats most dear. A cold heart will still beat, evwn though i will never meet. A being of shadow will dawn the new day, but with our greatst fear we win the old true way. A being of night shall fall in our fight but the being of the moon will rise again soon.
anyone hava any idea what any of this means? I probably just went insane, but a second oppinyon wild be much apreceated. Great chapter though.
Yes, comedy really is useless when you manage to be hilarious entirely on accident.
Twilight's antisocial antics are both funny and facepalm-worthy.