Projected Nightmares

by bearcat

Rainbow Dash -- Waking World

The day was done, and Dash could find someplace to run from her fears now. Unfortunately the blue mare always used napping to run, but now it seemed her naps were cursed.

She remembered that when the possessed sergal had magically reattached her wings, he'd needed to find a place away from "the god-king's realms" and it was on the totally off chance this was some elaborate prank from Princess Luna that she was flying straight into the Everfree.

Dropping into the canopy she was whipped by evergreen fronds and deciduous branches well on the way to losing their leaves naturally. She had intended to find Zecora's hut and beg her indulgence but the clearing before held no hut.

Instead there was a flat yard of no vegetation, but evenly spaced, completely round stones that were almost half exposed, and quite evenly disbursed across a semicircle perhaps eleven or twelve meters across. At the flat half, was a cave with a very heavy metal door latched shut.

Jack!

It was 6:30 and this time of the winter it would be getting dark soon. Dash didn't trust herself right now to get home without some kind of mishap. Not least of which is being home right now sounds like a mishap in itself. She knew there were several "tame" sergals that had agreed to live as proper Equestrians rather than risk death during that war.

Looking around, she didn't see any, but when she desperately pounded on the steel door it was a deep blue, very skinny female that answered the door. Feathered legs like a gryphon's back half, she had coarse fur that faded to white along her chest and belly, but her hands, ending in five of the sharpest hooves Dash had ever been on the wrong side of, were the deep blue of Luna's coat of fine hair. Too bad they don't any of them have her personality.

In Rainbow's nervousness she had let her wings sort of stick out akimbo, but these things took offense to wings, she too-painfully remembered. Folding her wings tightly against her side, Dash cleared her throat. "Hey? I'm looking for Prince Jack. Was hoping to talk to him or something is he home?" and what do I do when the butler tells me to get lost?

The sergal turned and barked and coughed loudly. Rainbow wasn't sure how many sergals had stayed but she had yet to meet a natural born gryphon-dog that could speak any English. But at the rumbling barks that came back up from the stairs that dropped down from the steel door, the servant stepped back, her tall frame and long legs high enough that Dash could almost have stepped through between her legs without anypony stretching to make room.

Inside the temperature dropped another 5 degrees and colder still air was coming up from that dark stairwell. The antechamber was only two meters across, with a single kerosene lantern illuminating the only way forward: down those stairs.

The midnight blue biped waved at the descent into deep earth, and Rainbow stepped down the rough cobblestone stairs. The last time she had met Prince Jack, he was burying the opposing army by causing an earthquake with his mind – and "accidentally" elevated himself to royalty. Presumably he had created this cave as his palace since he was Regent of the Rocks Beneath Your Feet. Dash had never been here before and indeed had seen Jack only once or twice in the months since the end of the invasion.

Her wings itched, the memory of having her "offensive" limbs ripped off and hung to dry as a macabre fetish to please the invading chief still too recent despite that it was by all appearance a sergal that put them back on.

And here she had opted to surround herself with these things in order to sleep more peacefully. Brilliant, RD.

Ahead were torches, and as the stone stairs curved, there was a platform of smooth, almost polished granite, and a doorless passage to her right, as the stairwell continued down to her left. From downstairs came a rumbling voice calling "Down this way, Rainbow Dash; I am at the next platform six meters directly below the surface."

Nothing unusual about a pegasus taking a nap six meters under ground. Nope. Dash chided herself. Hey Prince! Can I crash on your couch right now? Great! Thanks buddy!

But she dropped the asked flight of stairs, and as it curved around there was another doorless entry to her right, but to her left were two magically illuminated globes about two thirds of the way to the ceiling and between them was a narrow, tall bench, or perhaps it would be best called a chair though a pony could not set comfortably in something the way the blue feathered and gray furred sergal reclining it in now could.

Dash hadn't seen this form of Jack's very long, but the pale robin's egg legs, and constantly shifting forms of black and white covering his upper half were clearly the same as she remembered.

There was a stone table to his left, with a steaming cup of something on that. The Sergal looked up from his book, and called to Rainbow Dash by her full name using a voice that could best be compared to heavy machinery being torn apart by too-large rocks being poured into the works. Yep; it's Jack.

"Rainbow Dash, welcome to my completed system of caves. I will offer you tea or coffee but I fear foods your are comfortable with are in short supply in this tunnel. How are you today?" His triangle of a face barely moved, the piercing yellow eyes locked onto her own reddish-purple orbs.

There was only the one chair and it wasn't really a big room so she just sat on the floor across from the sergal. "Hey Jack. Long time no see. In fact I thought you wore your pony outfit all the time now? And don't worry about the tea I probably won't stay long I guess." The stone was colder even than the air. And as Dash remembered things Jack was still..."

"As the regent of the rocks? I have partially renounced that title, Rainbow Dash. Even wearing the 'pony suit' as you call it, exhausted my supply of imported magic with which I operate this body. And it made the princesses concerned that there might be a civil war with a prince who was not pony-born gathering subjects. So I have fewer than a dozen subjects now." He levitated the coffee cup into the air, where he deftly grabbed it with his many-fingered right hand, so he could sip daintily.

Rainbow was impressed he had learned to drink without spilling; that pointy face and small lips didn't seem built for drinking daintily. Rainbow sighed. Hafta say something soon, don't I? But it's an ice-box down here! Out loud she said "Glad you're trying to get along with the princesses. I can't say really if I find your current form more or less intimidating than when you looked like an alicorn that needed a bath." She looked away, down the mostly dark corridor to her right. There was a clattering of somebody manipulating dishes down that way. "Hay can I ask something weird? I sorta want a really different place" but I hate sounding weak. Like, really a lot. Making herself look directly at those yellow eyes she noticed they were so bright it was like looking into a fire. "Different place to sleep. I've been having nightmares of Pinkie cutting me up into pieces and I can't stand drugging myself to sleep through them and without drugs I miss out on half my sleep every night." There. Rainbow lowered her head subconsciously, and looked pleadingly to the meat eating monster that had saved her from hell.

Jack looked briefly at her, then at his coffee cup. She saw his claws glow a pale off-white this time, as the coffee cup floated back to the table. "Yes, Rainbow Dash, an odd request. Why, do you believe, are you dreaming of being dismembered? And by a friend. By this friend? There are more monstrous friends you have, that would do the job if you thought yourself worthy of dismemberment. Is it not so?"

Just then, from down the corridor came striding a sergal with white limbs and chest, carrying a plate in one hand and a sandwich dripping blood onto the plate, in the other hand. Ketchup. Just a lot of Rainbow Dash looked back at the way she came, feeling sick.

Jack called out to the red-backed newcomer in their incomprehensible language, and she called back, pointing with her sandwich at the doorless corridor just next to the stairwell, and saying a number of words. She seemed to be snickering as she replied to Jack. The no-longer-prince waved the newcomer on, and called now to Dash.

Still using her full name with careful diction. Nearly as annoying as some of Luna's old-timey speech patterns but tarnation close.

"Rainbow Dash. You may sleep here, there will be a bed down that hall in a moment. But I want to hear why your are plagued with such bad dreams as to drive you to the people who made an earth pony of you."

At this he stood, his long feet putting his ankles nearly as high as her back. But he didn't look like he was ducking under what for a biped was a low ceiling. Waving his left hand for Rainbow to follow, he barked out in his tongue quite loudly. Mumbled responses came back, and as they reached the corridor's entrance a pair of sergal, looking sheepish if RD had any ability to read their expressions, came rushing out. The shorter was a female with back and lower limbs a bright red, while the taller male had the clay red fur of miss bloody-sandwich. The female ducked her head low and tried to sneak past Jack and Rainbow, while the male ran upstairs.

Into the corridor, again lit with kerosene lamps, and the first door on the left was a small alcove, circular and just under three meters across. It was poorly lit by a bit-sized circle of magical light in the ceiling and light spilling in from the hallway outside. There was a fur blanket sitting on top of something soft underneath it, on one side and a table and a small bookshelf to Rainbow's left.

Jack motioned to the blanket, and spoke. "Their parents don't approve of the developing relationship, but there are few neighbors to choose from of course. They know better than to fornicate so perhaps that is not why they chose to hide in here, but they did not bring a light as you see. So the bed is likely warm but if it needs cleaning, tell me now and I shall attend to the matter of their indiscretion."

At this Jack walked to the curving wall next to the bookshelf and touched one corner, which began to glow brightly enough to recognize all the titles were written in a script she couldn't have read.

Fortunately the bed was not only dry, but unwrinkled. Slightly warm but Dash didn't think she was really laying on anypony's snuggle cooties of any sort. But what to tell Jack? "Thanks a heap prince. Or whatever you are now. I don't know anything about dreams, alright? I can make clouds out of wet air but this might maybe be Twilight's area." She pulled the fur over her hair coat, and tried not to think about why this animal had parted with his hide. Natural death. They eat carrion as happily as I eat plain hay so … yeah. Natural death.

Jack leaned against the cold stone, and leveled his yellow gaze on her again. "Truly? Do you feel your life is crumbling? Has the pink pony wounded your self esteem? Any reason at all?"

Too late Rainbow realized she didn't have anything resembling a pillow. Trying to find an especially soft spot on the still-warm bedding she replied as well as she could. "No, Jack. I like Pinkie and I hate these dreams. She would never do those things but I'm wounding her by running like this. Every time I see her now I remember things she never did." Suddenly she yanked her head up to meet his concerned gaze of eye-fire. "I remember the pain as clearly as I remember when your adopted people ripped my wings off, but they used blunt force, and my nightmare uses sharp implements. A different feel but I know what it feels like precisely to have a splitting maul remove my wings."

Dash closed her eyes tightly against the memory, tears dribbling over her face as she laid her head back down. As she let her fatigue claim her, she spoke her thanks. "Jack, if this doesn't work I'm sorry I bothered you. But if it works you probably won't see the end of me. It means a lot that you let me just drop in un" She yawned, and lost her train of thought.

Jack's rumbling reply only partially registered. "You are a friend of Twilight, and a warrior mare worthy of my respect as well. I will make what accommodations I must."

For ten long, wonderful minutes, Rainbow Dash drifted at the lower edge of dreams. Normal, safe dreams that ended as she dropped lower, below REM sleep. Dreams that made no sense, but had no violence either. Just dreams.

Outside, Jack watched as Rainbow Dash's limbs, all six of them, began to twitch in short, sharp motions, one limb at a time.