Breach
A cave.
A cage.
Black demon.
White death.
Dusk Shine remembered these things. Bits and pieces and sharp jagged edges that cut his mind as they fell through his senses. He twisted and turned in his sleep, panting and whimpering. There was nobody there to help him. He awoke in a flurry of sweat and tears, seeing he hadn’t left the cave he started in. No, that wasn’t true, he was in another cave entirely. His wall of drawings and insane scribbles was gone, replaced by a gaping corridor that beckoned him to follow it.
He stood up, hooves scraped on rock, fur stuck to frozen ground. He walked, wobbling, teetering, falling along the corridor. His horn lit the way. His precious, unbroken horn. He pulled magic up from deep in a well inside himself, sucking it up like a straw into his horn, where it burned like a candle wick with a pale, violet light. He wanted to cast so many spells but he couldn’t remember any. The darkness had taken everything. Maybe if he chased it away with the light, he’d find something to remember.
He heard voices at the edge of his hearing, muffled echoes and bell-like ringing.
“Hello,” he rasped, “Is somepony there?”
The voices danced just ahead, down the hall, around the corner, squirreling away into darkness just before he reached them.
“Stop,” he pleaded, forcing himself along. “Please.”
The voices moved further away. There were words half-heard and misunderstood, voices deep and comforting and high and alarmed. It was like listening to a distant waterfall and telling it to talk. He picked up the pace, his breaths becoming sobs.
“Come back! I need to hear! I don’t want to be alone anymore!”
The voices faded.
“I need my friends!”
Light.
It was right there at the end of the tunnel. He ran for it, noticing the air get colder, sharper, drier. It was outside air, mountain air, and he remembered a great mountain where mighty Princes once ruled from a shining gold castle, and how they’d fought so bravely against the dark and one of them had been as radiant as the Sun, and then Dusk Shine burst into the sunlight and was enveloped by it. And it was cold.
He skidded to a halt in ankle-deep snow, saw a forest spreading out before him in the distance. Long, perfectly straight trunks reached into the sky. Their branches jutted outward at odd angles like angry thorns, every last one bare and black and dead. He took a few steps forward and saw the rest of the forest fold out from behind the other trees like a turning page, and then it became clear: every last tree was perfectly spaced apart from the others like points on a grid. Dusk Shine lifted his head to the sun, but instead of a warm, comforting ball of radiance there was nothing but a cold disk like some all-seeing, inscrutable eye. There was no heat here, no life, only the cold light of a stark, uncaring world. Dusk turned to find the cave, suddenly wishing dearly to be back in the bosom of stone and hidden away from this strangeness.
But the cave was gone. The entire mountain was gone. He was surrounded by perfectly spaced, perfectly dead trees that spread perfectly straight shadows over the ground, and he was still alone.
Not wanting to stay in the strange forest, he walked. The shadows passed over him as the sunlight flickered through the trees’ branching claws like frames of a film, and he was the subject. Study of a Walking Unicorn, by Dusk Shine.
He heard thunder in the distance. Perhaps it would rain or snow if he wished hard enough. He wondered if he could strip some of the bark from the trees for firewood, but when he put his hoof on their surface, it felt smooth and lacquered.
The trees went on, and so did he.
He pondered what might happen if he never saw another living pony out here. Maybe he'd lose himself, stop even thinking of himself as a living, breathing creature. What was a pony who couldn't make friends? What was Dusk Shine without a world to reach out and touch? He looked back and saw his hoofprints in the snow. It was the only evidence anything had passed this way, and when he was gone this blank world wouldn't care if there were hoofprints or not. He would be the only witness to a victimless crime—that of living in a lifeless world. Without someone else to come along and see, to say to themselves "another pony was here," without the opportunity to write his story on the blank page of another mind, he existed no more than a rock did. He was here, and then he was over there, and everything swirled around him and then when he was dead it would simply stop.
But he wasn't dead yet. He thought that strange. He lived, and then he just sort of stopped living when the world vanished, and then he was here. He felt alive and since nobody was around to tell him differently, he decided he was most definitely alive.
Yet this only made the loneliness that much more intense.
The trees went on, and so did he.
He followed straight lines, counting rows to pass the time. He went diagonal a few times to shake things up. He never once veered off course, but it was hard to say what course he was following in the first place.
He played a game of tic-tac-toe, filling in squares carved out of the snow, using the trees as points for the square corners. He won. Three times in fact.
The trees went on, and so did he.
So if he wasn't dead, but he wasn't really living, was he immortal? Was this dull, interminable single day that went on forever what it felt like? He remembered a shining prince in golden armor and his dark, simmering brother, the two of them ageless and unceasing right up until the day they died. Was it like being a rock in a stream, he wondered often as a foal and even now, to watch everything eventually pass him by? To never be caught up in the stream of time, to sit and just exist until it started to feel as pointless as this forest stroll—that must have been true torment.
Dusk Shine wondered if the day they died was the most interesting of their lives.
He realized the loneliness was slowly driving him insane.
He wanted to see Twilight Sparkle again. He wanted to see Prince Solaris again. He wanted to see Spines again. He wanted to see anything ever again but these damnable trees, locked forever in supplication or jealousy or whatever had motivated them to grow so tall and gnarled to the sky.
Anything to not feel alone.
Anything.
The trees went on, and so did he.
--------
"Anything," said Twilight, pressing her hooves to her temples. "I'm hungry enough to eat anything. Just... just don't be long."
Spike saluted and hurried off to fetch her breakfast.
Two days had passed since Twilight sent word for the rest of her friends to come to the Crystal Empire. Two awful days of simply waiting, reading the same books over and over in hopes of finding a clue. The anticipation made the world feel listless and uninteresting, like it was all paused until that fateful moment she heard her friends' voices echoing down the hall and she charged out to greet them and realized it wasn't the wind this time.
Then she might actually feel like she was moving toward something instead of sitting in place all day. She'd been doing that a lot even before she got to the Empire, and she self-consciously reached down to rub her flanks. Was it her, or were they a little pudgier than last time she looked? She didn't dare check in the mirror.
Surely they hadn't been delayed? They'd come as quickly as they could. She made sure to write the letter in as urgent yet polite a way as possible. And she'd included the one thing that would bring them running faster than saying Twilight herself was in trouble.
He's still alive, and maybe the rest are too.
Oh, to see Rarity's smile again. To listen to Applejack's voice booming off the walls. To hear the whispery gust of Fluttershy's wings. To hear Pinkie Pie's giggles and giggles in turn like bells chiming in harmony. To listen to Rainbow Dash’s boasting a mile away...
She didn't want to wait. She wanted them to be here, right now.
She wanted breakfast.
Spike swaggered back in proudly, bearing a steaming platter of oatmeal, muffins and toast with jam, daisy sandwiches with avocado spread, flapjacks piled five high, and enough orange juice to make her sweat it.
She smiled widely. One out of two wasn't so bad.
"Let me guess," she said, "it all happened to just be there, fresh and ready to be eaten."
Spike snickered, seizing a muffin for himself. "The cook swore up and down he just got 'inspired' this morning to bake a five-course meal."
Twilight laid out some flapjacks and liberally applied syrup. "I did tell Cadance she didn't have to fuss."
"And now she has plausible deniability! Better Princess material than we thought, huh?" said Spike through a mouthful of muffin.
"Mmm," Twilight said of the buttery-smooth flapjack that melted in her mouth, "if only we could learn to be so crafty."
They enjoyed the meal, having a conversation without words. Snatched glances over big gulps of orange juice, laughing suddenly at how amazing the daisy sandwiches were, clinking their silverware loudly through bowls of oatmeal.
“So what’s the plan today?” Spike asked, his cheeks bulging. Twilight reflexively magicked over a napkin to dab at the oatmeal that ran out of the corner of his mouth.
“Everything,” she said. “We have a lot of ground to cover and I barely know where to start. I suppose we could begin with some preliminary tests, comparing dream journals, performing a few experiments with the dream magic Luna taught me… Test the waters, so to speak.”
“And then what? What if you actually find him again? What if… what if you find all of them again?”
Twilight sighed and looked down at her unfinished, though devastated, breakfast. “I don’t know, Spike. We’re taking this one step at a time, and the first step is to figure out why I suddenly started seeing Dusk here, now, and what could be causing it. I have a few theories on that front.”
“Well, lay ‘em on me,” said Spike, consuming a whole mouthful of pancakes. “Or should we wait for Cadance to get back from her Princessing or whatever she does during the day?”
Twilight smirked. “She does less ‘Princessing’ than you think. She’ll be busy for a while yet, but we’ve got pretty much free reign of the castle. Which reminds me…”
She brought out a checklist. It unfurled. It kept unfurling. It rolled right over Spike’s head and didn’t stop until it hit the door.
“That gives us plenty of time to start our experiments.”
Spike whimpered.
----
Some hours later, a bewildered Spike crawled out of his shared room with Twilight and tore off the mechanical device affixed to his head, slipping it under his arm. They’d spent the better part of the morning performing all kinds of little experiments that hardly counted as such to Spike—dream journals, endless cross-examinations of every possible meaning of every little thing she saw in her last vision of Dusk Shine. And then of course there was the experience of having that so-called ‘Oneirology Cap’ stuck on his head to help Twilight decipher more about the nature of dreams. The instructions were to sit quietly, think clearly, and allow the memories to flow between his and Twilight’s head, somehow. Spike was fairly certain it more over his head than through it, and sitting still during all that was just too much to ask for. He’d asked for a break; he didn’t think Twilight had noticed.
He looked over his shoulder at his keeper, a pencil in her mouth and myriad equations scribbled on the paper she studied. He wasn’t sure how any of this had gotten her closer to figuring anything out, but if she insisted that it was necessary, he knew better than to keep her from it.
He waddled down the hallway, grateful for a chance to stretch his legs and the chance to get away from Twilight’s constant muttering in the background. If he was right, lunch time would be starting soon. Maybe he could nip down to the throne room and catch Cadance before she went to eat and convince her to tell Twilight to lighten up…
Guards and servants passed him by, the former stopping and moving to one side with a snappy salute, the latter with a respectful bow. He still wasn’t sure what to make of that; bungling the anthem had been a humbling experience and Sombra was long gone. But he supposed that any recognition was a good thing. Maybe when they got back to Ponyville he could convince Mayor Mare to erect a statue or two…
“Spike!”
He turned at the sound of Shining Armor’s voice.
“Hey there, bro,” the unicorn said as he trotted up to Spike. “Taking a walk? What’s that thing under your arm?”
Spike smiled and held up the device a little proudly; it made him happy to know things others didn’t. “Hey, Shining! Oh, this? It’s an oneirology cap.”
Shining blinked. “I’m going to have to pretend I know what that is.”
Spike shrugged, hefting the cap as he walked and fiddling with its pointy bits and bobs. “It’s some machine Twilight made to help her study dreams. It looks into your head using, I don’t know, some kinda magic. I don’t pretend it’s not beyond me. I took a walk ‘cuz I just couldn’t take all the obscure terminology!” He blinked and then smacked himself. “Oh, great. All of Twilight’s smart words are rubbing off on me. Where were you going?”
“I was on my way to the throne room. I just came in from a patrol and Cadance is going to want to hear all about it, I’m sure.” He chuckled and rolled his eyes. “She likes to get all the details out of way so we can enjoy lunch together. She absolutely hates doing royal business during lunch. Double if I have to describe every little scratch I get on patrol. She hates hearing it, but she wants to be told regardless.”
“I guess she worries a lot about you, huh?” Spike asked, reaffixing the Oneirology Cap to his head if only for a lack of something else to do.
“She does. I’d say she worries too much, but then I’d be asking her to not be the mare I fell in love with. We all need somepony looking out for us. It’s why I’m so glad Twilight has you and the rest of her friends.”
Spike chuckled. “Yeah, we do our best to keep her out of trouble, but she just keeps falling right back in and dragging us down with her. I mean, I don’t even know what all this dream stuff is about. I didn’t have any like she did, even when she first got them. But I do know she needs us. I mean… really needs us.”
Shining grunted, and was silent the rest of the way to the cavernous throne room, which still made Spike salivate on seeing all the different gemstones that went into its construction. Decorative veins of tourmaline spun through great slabs of agate and diamond, accented by the gentle white-blue sheen coming off the great arched ceiling. The open air construction allowed sunlight to pour in, gathering in pools and lazy rivers on the glassy floor. It all led up to the unmatched glory of the Crystal Throne at the far end, where the twin seats of Shining and Cadance presided over the masses. Cadance occupied one of them, her front hooves hung off one of the throne’s arms and her back hooves were splayed over the other. Spike couldn’t recall ever seeing Celestia or Luna in a pose half as casual as that, yet Cadance wore it like a glove, more of a saucy goddess than a stern empress. Several attendants doted on her, holding up this or that report for reading or potted plant for placing. Cadance seemed to notice Spike and Shining coming in without even looking, as she was already dismissing her servants before she even called to them.
“Oh, hello boys!” Cadance’s musical voice echoed through the open chamber, bouncing off the arched ceiling. “I was just finishing up. Welcome back, Shining… Spike, what is that thing on your head?”
“An oneirology cap!” Spike quipped with childlike glee. Far from Shining’s confusion, a look of pleased understanding crossed Cadance’s face.
“Ah, I see!” she said in a grandiose, knowing tone that was uncomfortably reminiscent of Celestia herself. “Twilight has dove right into the exploration of dreams. Is she still in her room?”
“Yeah, I went for a walk and ran into Shining. I just couldn’t take all the hypotheses and theorems and whatever else Twilight was saying! I mean, I wanna help her, but I can only take so many big words and weird philosophies at once, you know?”
Cadance favored him with a kind smile. “Your loyalty is a great boon to her, Spike. I know she appreciates it. Now, come here Shining! I need your daily report, starting with how much you missed me.”
Spike glanced around the throne room, still impressed at how well the Crystal Empire had cleaned up after the depredations of King Sombra. Princess Celestia had chosen wisely when it came to nurturing Cadance for a leadership post. Then again, Spike couldn’t really recall Celestia making something close to a mistake. Except for that whole moon banishment debacle.
He glanced down at the floor, seeing his reflection, and wondered for a moment if the giant hole beneath that hid Sombra’s chambers was still there. He shook his head to dislodge the memories that threatened to well up inside his little brain. It wasn’t worth it to think about what may still be down there. Cadance had it well in hoof. No reason to think about the darkness that dwelled below, the gate of fear that peered into his mind, showed him such horrible, horrible things—
And the next thing he knew, he was on the floor shivering and shaking. Shining and Cadance stood over him, calling his name, and he had such a splitting headache.
“Guys?” he asked, but his words came out in a slurred mumble. “What’s going on? What’s on my head?”
“Get it off him, Shining!” Cadance yelled, sounding far away. Shining tore the oneirologist cap off his head, tossing it away with a loud clatter.
“What happened?” Spike muttered.
“You fell,” said Shining. “Just… fell over, right here, little guy. You were shaking, and we… are you all right? Do you feel ill?”
“I got a headache, I think,” Spike said, touching his forehead.
Then he heard a loud ‘pop’ and Twilight stood there with her own cap still on her head. She was sweating.
“Spike!” she yelled, hurrying to his side and scooping him up in her hooves. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I didn’t know that would happen!”
“Didn’t know what would happen?” Cadance asked, a dangerously suspicious edge to her voice.
Twilight looked up, her face achingly desperate as she cradled Spike. “The cap! The spell! I, I cast a spell, it was so simple, just a spell to try and bridge the gap between minds long-distance, like, like a tether, it was just supposed to help share dreams when we fell asleep! I’m so sorry, Spike, I have no idea what caused that feedback!”
Shining Armor and Cadance shared a look. “Twilight,” said Shining with a heavy sigh, “no more experiments, okay? You’re both gonna get some rest and some food, and then we’re gonna sit quietly until your friends get here.”
“Oh,” said Spike, rubbing his eyes, “so it wasn’t Sombra coming back? Thank goodness.”
Twilight’s frenzied breathing stopped abruptly. Spike saw her eyes widen.
“What did you say?”
“Uhh… Sombra. I was thinking about Sombra when it happened, and I thought... Twilight, are you okay?”
Twilight looked over her shoulder. Right where it was supposed to open up to Sombra’s secret lair, where the awful door was.
“Cadance,” she asked, “what did you do about the Door of Fear after we left?”
“Do we have to talk about that awful thing?” said Cadance, rubbing one hoof with another. Twilight gave her a look that said yes, they very much did have to talk about it. Cadance relented with a sigh. “It was too dangerous to go down and try to destroy it. It showed no signs of activity after Sombra was killed, but my court mages recommended it was better to keep an eye on it. We have wards up and down the staircase in the event that it does activate again. Which, I might add, it has not.”
“Maybe it has,” said Twilight. “Just not in a way we’d think to detect. Or maybe it doesn’t even need to be active.”
“Oh, great,” muttered Shining. “More security problems.”
Twilight handed Spike off to him and trotted to the middle of the throne room. “There’s so much we still don’t understand about dream magic. That Luna hasn’t taught me. It could be Sombra figured something out…”
“There’s nothing that tyrant made that we need, Twilight,” Shining snapped.
“It could be a door in more ways than one,” Twilight said, and Spike recognized the faraway quality to her voice. She wasn’t listening to any pony right now.
They watched in helpless silence as Twilight’s eyes glowed green and her horn swirled with ichorous black magic, striking the twin thrones and setting them ablaze with sickly strands of shadow. The ancient power lanced out and burned away the floor just as it had so many months ago, revealing the stairwell that fell into darkness, to a door that knew how to dissect minds and peel open their most painful parts. Spike felt himself reflexively recoil into Shining’s grip.
“Twilight, stop!” Shining called. “What are you doing?!”
“The feedback from my spell wasn’t my doing,” said Twilight, walking as if in a daze to the edge of the stairs. “Right before it happened, I felt something tug on my magic. Maybe it wanted my attention. Maybe it was trying to pull me somewhere. But the connection broke because there was something powerful that tore at the middle of the tether between me and Spike. Like a cable under too much tension it snapped back and struck us both. It could be the Door of Fear, trying to get a hold of whatever it can.”
She puffed out her chest.
“I’m going down there.”
“Like hayseeds you are!” Shining said. “You’re not touching anything that monster made. It can’t help us.”
“But it can! Or it might, I don’t know! But what if that door is part of the reason I had another dream about Dusk? What if it’s part of the reason all of this is happening? What if it’s really that easy? I could learn so much about the dream realm if I know how it studied my head, how it reached out like I want to reach out. If it can get inside a pony’s head, maybe I can use it to find someone else’s! Dusk’s!”
“It wouldn’t be worth it, Twilight,” said Shining in a calm, measured voice. “You know that. Even going near something Sombra made is dangerous. Just shut the floor up again, and we’ll be rid of it soon.”
Cadance watched the argument from the sidelines, her eyes flicking between all of them.
“Twi,” Spike croaked. “Please. Come on back. You’re scaring me again.”
She locked gazes with him, and he wasn’t much comforted.
“It’s okay, Spike,” she said, ears drooping, the picture of defeat. “Nopony has to go down there if they don’t want to.”
There was a pregnant pause.
“But I need to.”
And with a puff of smoke and another ‘pop’, she was gone.
--------
Twilight almost felt guilty about leaving them behind. Almost. But something pulled at her. Tugged, like the interference between herself and Spike. It was like a string had been attached to her horn and was drawing her in. She appeared at the bottom of the steps in a puff of purple smoke, directly in front of the Door of Fear.
It wasn’t as big as she remembered. Back then it had been massive, imposing, a dark and hideous perversion on the world that gaped hideously at her, ready to swallow her up. Now, bereft of King Sombra’s dark magics animating it, it seemed quite small, as if its size had diminished along with its presence. She let magical feelers poke and prod the icy, black-blue frame, then dared to touch the door itself. Her sensory spells bounced and slid off the glassy, black onyx surface like oil on a pan. Twilight trotted forward and waited for the inevitable attack on her mind, but it never came. Yet if it was just a simple door now, how could it have interfered with her mind-working earlier?
She took a deep breath, ignoring the distant, echoing calls of her brother and Spike from far above, getting closer every second.
She prepared to unleash the dark magic on the door herself when the sound of flapping wings and hooves touching hard stone alerted her.
“Cadance,” she said. “I’m sorry. But… but this is something I have to do. I’m not the kind of pony to leave stones unturned.”
“I know,” Cadance replied. “But Twilight, you mustn’t do this alone. You said so yourself. You shouldn’t have run off like that.”
“I know,” Twilight said. “It’s just… it feels like there’s something inside me, Cadance. Something that needs to come out, worming around and eating me up. It’s awful. And I get the feeling that if I can just touch this thing, this portal, or whatever it could be, I might finally get some relief.”
“What makes you think the door will lead you to Dusk Shine?”
“It won’t. It’s just a regular door albeit warded against most of my spells. If I open it up, there’ll be nothing there but a blank wall. Either that or the weird null-space I was almost trapped in when he almost took over last time. But… if I can turn it to my purposes…”
“Then Sombra’s influence could still reach out and grab you. Twilight, why don’t we just ask Princess Luna to—”
“No!” Twilight barked. Her voice bounced back to her, ricocheting like ball bearings back and forth in the small space. She winced at how long the echoes went on, hiding beneath her wing. “I mean… no. Princess Luna would want to destroy this door immediately, like Shining. And I know, I know it would be to protect me, but trying to protect me is what got us into this mess! It’s what kept me from meeting Dusk Shine sooner and being able to save him! Do you understand that, Cadance? If the Princesses had just trusted me, if I was just allowed to trust myself, I could have saved him!”
She looked up with tears in her eyes. “Did I tell you what it was like when I finally saw his world through his eyes? It was dark, Cadance. Nothing but blackness and emptiness everywhere. Dusk Shine died that day, I know it. If I had been able to do something, anything at all, I could have helped. I could be talking to him right now! I wouldn’t be feeling like half of me is just missing.”
She sighed, spent, and sank to her knees. “I don’t know if I can be trusted to do the right thing right now. But I know that sitting here and doing nothing hasn’t helped anyone. I don’t want my friends to get here and meet a shell of a pony who went insane because she didn’t check every avenue. I want them to meet a pony who showed herself that she could finally take control of her life again… even over something as dangerous as this.”
Silence reigned, save for the very distant clip-clop of Shining’s hooves on the stairwell. Twilight looked up and saw Cadance’s gaze boring into her, regarding her with cool, calculating intent. There was little enough pity and warmth, but Twilight felt those things too. It wasn’t the gaze of a friend. It was the gaze of a Princess, wracking her mind to see how best to fix a problem without endangering her ponies. She had to make a decision, even if there were terrible consequences. It was a look that was far too grown-up, and made Twilight realize how far her old foal-sitter had come in life.
At last, Cadance closed her eyes, and with the tiniest, gentlest, quietest of movements, gave Twilight a nod.
Twilight stood up, wiped her eyes, and turned to face the door. She wasted no time summoning the dark spell Celestia herself had taught her, powering it with her rage and fear. The inky black shapes gathered, not just on her horn but in their shadows and in every little crevice of the room. They squiggled and squirmed like living things, aching to reach into the light and withdrawing the moment they touched it.
Then, Twilight scooped them all up in her spell and launched them at the door. It would be a Door no more, but a corridor between minds, between dreams and worlds. Twilight reached deep down inside herself, summoning the will of Magic. Every story apart from hers was spun into existence by her mere being, as Magic had said. It was time to reopen the book on Dusk Shine’s world and start writing.
The magic shot from her horn and collided with the dark crystal atop the door. The twisted fragment slurped up the magic like a sponge. The shadows scuttled into it, disappearing within its infinitely complex angles, and then there was silence.
Twilight blinked. Cadance stood still behind her, holding her breath.
“I can feel a breeze,” one of them whispered, but Twilight couldn’t be sure which.
They waited and waited while nothing happened at all. Twilight sighed.
“I suppose it was too much to hope for,” she whispered, feeling very thin and frail all of a sudden. “Maybe it just takes time.”
The walk back up the steps was slow and solemn. She met Shining and Spike halfway and endured their berating until Cadance stepped in and tried explaining to them what Twilight had explained to her. It didn’t come across quite as well, but at the very least it stopped them from yelling at her.
When she reached the top of the stairs, she went to one of the windows and looked out over the Empire.
“I’m sorry, you guys,” she said quietly. “It’s just… I need to be able to do this. Even if my ideas seem crazy. This whole situation is crazy. If I can just tap back into what Magic was trying to tell me, maybe then…” She sighed and bowed her head. “If my friends were just here…”
“Well sheesh, Twi, I was flying as fast as I could!”
Twilight jerked back from the window with a yelp, falling over on her backside. Rainbow Dash fluttered before her, a devil-may-care grin on her face.
“Ha ha! Got ya good, huh? The train’s gonna get here in a couple more hours, but I just had to stretch my wings, and then, well, your letter made it seem like you really needed company so I figured I’d just fly on ahead! Say, you don’t have anything to eat around here, do you?”
-------
In a forest at the bottom of the universe, Dusk Shine’s ears quivered. He lifted his head and looked over his shoulder, down the rows and rows of elegantly spaced trees, peering between them. Nothing stirred and nothing breathed. But he knew what he had felt, and he spoke it aloud if only to hear the sound of his own voice.
“There’s something in the woods,” he said, and his voice was swallowed by the snow.
He stood up and started walking again, trying to find a path that would take him away from the strange presence worming around the back of his mind. He didn’t want to know what kind of crawling horror he’d encounter in a world like this, but it couldn’t be any good.
The forest grew thicker as he walked, hemming him in on all sides. Their trunks adopted curves and bends. The branches became more irregular, and he saw the indentations of roots beneath the snow. At the very least they had lost some of that surreal perfection and smoothness.
Perhaps, if he kept going, he might find a place where the trees became even more like actual trees. Would the next part of the forest have leaves and real wood? If he kept walking long enough, it was entirely possible he’d make it back to something resembling reality, if not his home.
He heard a crack.
He stopped walking.
It stopped walking too.
Dusk held his breath, ears straight up like spear tips.
“Hello?” he called, his echo swallowed by the snow. “Is someone there?”
No answer, not that he expected one. He continued forward, trying to find places where the trees were less thick so he could turn and get a look at his pursuer. But every time he turned around, he couldn’t be sure if he actually saw something. Either his vision was completely untrustworthy, or he was seeing black shadows flit behind the trees, trees that by anyone’s reckoning were too thin to hide behind.
“I see you,” he said, but not loud enough for his voice to carry. He doubted whatever it was cared that he knew it was there anymore.
He turned and kept walking, mind racing for ways to defend himself. He couldn’t cast any spells that he knew of. He likely wasn’t strong enough to snap any of the branches, and it may attack him while he was busy finding out if he was.
The only real option was to run and hope it gave up easily.
He kept walking in any case, and the feeling of being stalked only grow more and more insistent. He heard the thing’s footsteps, gently crunching in the snow almost perfectly in time with his own, but just enough out of synch that he noticed. Thousands of years of instinct screamed at him to bolt, but he had to pick the time. He wouldn’t be ruled by fear. Not after seeing what the Nightmare had done. He wouldn’t be ruled by fear. He wouldn’t—
A gentle whisper of wind. A shadow very briefly obscuring the sun.
He looked up and held his breath, and it seemed the world followed suit. He had thought, just for the barest moment, that he’d seen wings and a tail, and—
And then he heard the pounding of something heavy behind him and a glass-like crash, too close for comfort. His muscles moved on their own, hurling him to the right, and he felt the brush of something big as it touched his tail and then hit the ground hard. He lifted his head from the snow and glimpsed powerful, stocky limbs lifting two giant hands that tore up the snow and crushed a tree that shattered like glass, spraying him with sharp, stinging shards. The creature the limbs were attached to was bipedal, thrice his size even with its ape-like hunch. It turned to face Dusk, but all he could see was its sheer size. Its whole body shimmered like a mirage, like it was constantly about to wink out of existence if he blinked. But when Dusk blinked, it was still there. He ran.
The thing gave chase without a roar or a growl, or even the hot, eager panting of a predator about to grab a meal. Dusk heard it crushing trees and carving divots in the snow with its sheer bulk. Dusk tore through snow drifts and ducked low-hanging branches, but the shadowy creature crushed everything in its way without even slowing down. Claws that weren’t all there groped for him, a mouth he couldn’t see released clouds of steam as it breathed in a steady cadence.
He didn’t know what it would do if it caught him, but he did know that couldn’t happen.
In the distance he spied some kind of castle, taller than any mountain, reaching up like a spire and shining brightly as if covered in icy frost. It was too far away to offer safety. He ran for it regardless, feeling something deep down competing for space with the fear. A compulsion, a searing enigma of a thought that left him reeling. He recognized that place from somewhere long ago, or maybe something inside or about it, some indefinable quality that illuminated fragments of memory.
But the thing behind him was upon him before he could even wonder about what he would have found in there. A talon as cold as the snow snatched his leg and yanked straight upwards. Dusk’s world spun as he flipped head over tail and landed in a heap in front of one of the trees.
Acting on instinct he rolled away just as a massive fist punched the ground where he lay, leaving a crater. The ethereal arm it was attached to swung round and obliterated a tree trunk just above ear level, showering Dusk with shards as he scrambled for cover knowing there wasn’t any.
He found he wasn’t scared, not really. Or maybe he was too terrified to feel scared. Only one thought had room in his head: I can’t die like this. But he was certainly going to anyway. Ironic that he’d be going back to the dark so soon after his resurrection. Maybe he’d have better luck the next time around.
He closed his eyes.
A great hand swept down and scooped him up, nearly cracking his ribs. It smelled of sweat and fear and felt like a shaggy carpet. His hooves left the ground and he was aware he was flying. Hitting the snow was surprisingly painless, though, it didn’t even hurt. Whatever grabbed him released him gently and set him down. Maybe the creature wanted to toy with him before it landed the killing blow.
But the stomping was less insistent now, more cautious. He opened his eyes again.
A pony stood between him and the mirage monster, having just set him down after lifting him away from the creature’s reach. A stallion by the look of his thick build, and a pegasus by the wings stretched out aggressively at his sides. He wore heavy clothes much better suited for the frigid landscape, all furs piled on furs with a hood up over his ears and thick goggles over his eyes. He clutched a long spear in one hoof, its grim, thick head pointed towards the beast, which hopped nervously from one limb to the other.
The stallion’s tail flicked behind him, and with it, all the colors of the rainbow.
“No,” Dusk mumbled through a mouth thick with phlegm. “It can’t be.”
The stallion turned and lifted his goggles, exposing cerise eyes that burned like sunset.
“You died,” Dusk rasped.
Rainbow Blitz shook his head. “Loyalty never dies.”
The beast charged and Rainbow rose to meet it. He moved faster than Dusk’s eyes could follow, faster than any pony he’d ever seen, leaping above a swiping claw as it ripped a meter wide furrow in the earth. The spear flicked out like a serpent’s tongue and caught the beast on its shoulder, tearing away a wisp of its smoky body. Now the monster roared. It sounded like a foghorn, ominous and artificial, but Dusk felt its rage nonetheless. Massive tree-trunk limbs swept out and annihilated three trees in one circle as it chased the pegasus clumsily; Rainbow darted in and out of its reach like one possessed, leaving a rainbow contrail as he went, tearing pieces off the monster with each pass.
Enraged, the creature dug its claws into the earth, flinging dirt and snow into Rainbow’s face. He spun to avoid the worst of it, but too close the thing’s hand, which caught his tail in mid-air. With a triumphant roar it whipped him around and hurled him straight through a thick tangle of branches. Rainbow rolled in mid-air amidst the falling shards and hit a solid trunk with his back legs, then launched off it again right back at the creature, his spear couched under one arm.
The creature recoiled, holding up one hand as if to shield itself. The spear tip slid straight through into its skull, and Rainbow kept going, colliding with it face-first in a tremendous crash of feathers and muscle. The monster toppled, but Rainbow hung on gamely to the spear as they went down in a spray of snow, ending up flopped over its head. The creature melted away like smoke in the wind, leaving him splayed out in a crater of tree fragments and patches of acrid smelling ooze.
For a while, Dusk just listened to their breathing until it came down from its terror-induced high. He mustered his courage and crawled over to the lip of the crater, peering down at Rainbow.
The other stallion tilted his head towards Dusk.
“Hey,” Rainbow said. “What are you doing here, Dusk?”
Dusk shook his head. “I’m not sure.”
Rainbow grinned and looked back up at the pale sky. “Oh, good. Me neither.”
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- McPoodle · 37k words · 79 2 · 1.9k views
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Well, shoot. Now I really don't know where this is going.
Great chapter, thanks for posting it.
Excellent chapter, I was a bit worried that the story was abandoned.
Ohhhhhhh. I get it. Dusk Shine is traveling through a crystal forest in an icy wasteland, and Twilight is in the Crystal Empire and freaking out. She's mentally in an icy wasteland, and he's physically in one.
Dichotomy. Nice.
Nitpickery: you constantly flip back and forth between "Cadance" and "Cadence" and it is very, very jarring. You might want to pick one or the other.
5901793
Fixed. Thank you for noticing my silly metaphors!
Hang on, Rainbow blitz appeared where Dusk is when Rainbow dash arrived in the Empire where Twilight is..... Then that means.....
Mirrors. That seems to be the entire motif going on here. I fear that Dusk isn't really in some wasteland, but maybe... trapped in Twilight's mind? Like, maybe she sucked in a portion of his being at the end of the first story, and now it's trying to get out? And since Twilight apparently is God-tier, and can make or break realities as she pleases, she needs to recreate Dusk's world? But what would happen if Twi tried to tap into that kind of power again?
Squirrel, you better not make us wait another 22 dayum weeks for the next chapter...
Yeah, this was a really good chapter. Some great imagery you painted.
i.imgur.com/Z0OufMj.gif
[Endless astonishment]
When did this happen?
Bump
is this story abandoned cause it would be a dam shame im rly liking this sequel
No! This story can't end like this. I loved the original and I'm loving this one so far. Please make it continue.
7104013
Now that prince of dust is over, I hope to get time to work on this.
7104119
Thank you for replying. I will be looking forward to it.
I really like your writing style. And both parts of this story (It's not often I go back to re-read segments right after I finish reading a story but you have fantastic way of putting some of these scenes to words). If you're serious about finishing this tale then I'll be really looking forward to it.
Why must I start reading stories before finding out if the sequels are finished?!!!
Hope this one day receives an update.
Hello, are you still there? It’s been three years!