Act II: Quicklime's Dream
Vermilion opened his eyes to find a bright white room.
Clouds again? No, this whiteness was more pure than the gray stormcloud foundations of Derecho. There was no sky above, no horizon in the distance. Only a white mist that seemed to swallow everything.
He tried to move and found he couldn’t. He worked his jaw and flicked his ears, but everything below his neck seemed to be numb. A thread of unease began to creep up his (unfelt) spine.
With some effort he managed to twist his head and found he wasn’t alone in the mist. There, lying a few feet away, was some unfortunate pony’s body. It was headless, with a rusty dappled coat and wheat-hued tail strikingly similar to his own. Even the corpse’s cutie mark was the same, a merchant’s scales in silhouette.
Oh. Vermilion realized why he couldn’t feel anything beneath his neck.
He should be panicking, but why bother? Little late for panic now, wasn’t it? He wondered how much longer this would last – surely even an earth pony’s stamina would give out soon in the face of such a mortal injury—
“Ah, what is this?” A cool, melodious voice, smooth as silk against his cheek, broke the mist’s silence. “Vermilion! What has happened to you?”
A bright blue glow filled his eyes, and suddenly the world lurched. It twisted, fell away, and he found himself (or, rather, his head) floating several feet in the air. He spun and ended up face to face with Luna.
“Princess,” he croaked. Somehow his disconnected throat found the breath to speak. “I’m sorry, Luna. Things went poorly.”
“So I see.” She sighed. “Really, letting yourself go all to pieces like this. Do you think I’ll always be around to put you back together? Not all your adventures are going to be in my realm, young knight.”
Luna’s horn flashed, and the white mists seemed to darken. Shadows cast by an unseen light swept out from her to wrap around Vermilion’s decapitated form, and his body jerked upright like a marionette at the hooves of a clumsy puppeteer. The corpse stumbled forward and came to a wobbling stop in front of the princess.
“In the future you must take better care of yourself,” she said. She glanced between Vermilion’s head and his corpse, then carefully set the one atop the other in its proper place.
A weird, crawling, wriggling sensation gripped Vermilion’s throat, and in a flood of pain and nausea sensation returned to him. He collapsed at her feet, coughing.
“I’m alive,” he finally whispered. “I’m alive. I thought...”
“You thought if you died in a dream, you would die for real?” Luna sighed. “Why does everypony believe that? Despite the fact that so many of them plunge off cliffs or are consumed by manticores every night in their dreams? There would scarcely be any ponies left in the world if dreams were so fatal.”
“Oh, uh.” A hot blushed filled his face. “I, uh…”
“At ease, Vermilion.” She reached out a hoof to adjust his mane. “I saw your fight with Zephyr. I could hardly blame anypony for believing themselves to be dead after that! Such a warrior she is. You did well in selecting her.”
“She’s better than we are. We… Cloudy and I, we barely know how to fight. We can swing weapons and run around, but we’re not warriors like she is.”
“I think you underestimate yourself. And noble Cloud Fire as well.” She smiled slightly as she pronounced his name. “Truly, I must spend more time getting to know each of you. I hope your unicorn friends are as skilled as the pegasi.”
As skilled as Zephyr? Not many ponies could claim that. But then, it was Quicklime who’d synthesized the moonfire jars they’d used to such terrible effect against the spiders in Hollow Shades, and it was Rose Quartz who’d saved Zephyr’s life. Who was he, an inexperienced grunt, to say who was more skilled? Of their group of five, he was the only one with no special talents.
“You look pensive, my knight.” She leaned forward, close enough that her chest brushed against his. Her touch was like bathing in cool water, washing away his pains. This chill drove out his fears and the lingering terror of fighting the dreamora and his friends.
No… he paused and turned the memory over in his mind. Luna’s frozen touch imparted a clarity to his thoughts, a gentle balm upon his mind that afforded him insight. It was not fear of fighting Zephyr that shook him so – it was the fear of seeing her hurt, or Cloudy too. His own life, his own safety… they hardly troubled him, not now, not in the dreamlike Derecho.
“I’m worrying about the wrong things, I think.” He tilted his head up, and just barely managed to brush his cheek against hers. Even with her leaning down, it was a stretch. “Thank you, Luna.”
She smiled. “There is nothing to thank me for, Vermilion. It is thanks to your actions that Zephyr is safely within my grasp, but you still have two more friends yet to save. They are waiting for you.”
He let out a breath. It fogged in the air around Luna, standing out against her dark coat. “Right. Is there… is there another way to beat these dreamoras? Must we fight them every time?”
“They must be defeated,” she said. “As to whether you must fight them, well, I leave that matter to you. A wise soldier looks at all possible solutions. Now, go, Vermilion. Go and carry out my will.”
He nodded and opened his mouth to speak, but an irresistible exhaustion swept over him. The world went dark and swayed around him, and the last thing he saw was the featureless floor rushing up to meet him.
* * *
“Oh, thank Celestia you’re here!” Quicklime blurted. The words spilled out of her in a rush, blending together into a single, high-pitched squeak that assaulted Vermilion’s ears and escaped before he knew what hit him. “We can’t be late! Come on!”
With that she turned and sped down the bright stone corridor, her little hooves beating out a rapid tattoo. Even accounting for the fact that it was Quicklime, who was easily the shortest adult pony he’d ever met, she somehow seemed smaller to Vermilion. Much smaller. Almost foal like, now that he—
“What the hell, Cherry?” came an oddly inflected yet familiar voice beside him. He turned to see a young colt with Cloud Fire’s coat and mane, looking as bewildered as Vermilion felt. “Was that Quicklime? What’s wrong with her? Oh Celestia, what’s wrong with you?!”
“Me?” Vermilion squeaked. His voice sounded an octave higher than it should have, and he reflexively looked down at his chest. The floor was much closer than he remembered, and his legs much smaller, and his pelvis felt oddly out of balance. Stunned, unthinking, he lowered his head and peered between his hind legs.
Everything was there. Things were just smaller than they used to be. He squeezed his eyes shut.
“I think we’re foals again,” he said.
Cloud Fire was silent. After a moment, a bell rang somewhere, filling the hall with a harsh buzz that grated against Vermilion’s ears. At the sound, doors all along the corridor burst open, and a flood of babbling, laughing, screaming, chattering foals flooded out around them. The living current picked them up and carried them, stumbling, in pursuit of Quicklime.
“Where are we?” Vermilion shouted to be heard over the babble.
“It’s a school!”
“What?” Vermilion planted his hooves and managed to come to a stop, forming a rock in the flowing stream of fillies and colts. “Like… a university?”
Cloud Fire maneuvered himself into Vermilion’s lee. “No, a school. Unicorns send their children here to learn to read and do magic and make money. This must be Quicklime’s memory of the place.”
Ah. That actually injected a note of relief into Vermilion’s thoughts. Surely this was like Derecho, some exaggerated figment of Quicklime’s memories. There was no real place where so many foals gathered like soldiers when they should’ve been helping their families’ trades instead. All they had to do was find Quicklime – where had she gone, anyway? – defeat whatever dreamora was tormenting her dreams, and then they could be off to aid Rose Quartz.
“Which way did she go?” he asked.
“Uh, hang on.” Cloud Fire crouched, then jumped, his little wings buzzing like a hummingbird’s. He bobbled in the air, slipping back and forth, the strain of staying airborne written on his face. “Oof, I forgot how hard this was… Okay, I see her.”
Cloudy pointed a hoof, and Vermilion followed it to see Quicklime’s bobbing golden mane vanish into a classroom down the hallway. A stream of pastel unicorn foals followed around her, and the corridor quickly grew empty. The few remaining foals galloped to their destinations, their eyes wide with worry.
“We should hurry,” Vermilion said. He ran toward the classroom. Behind him, he heard Cloud Fire land, followed by the rapid clip clop of little hooves on marble. They barely made it through the door when the buzzer sounded again.
Row after row of ordered desks filled the room, arrayed like soldiers in formation. Vermilion skidded to a stop and stared at them, gawking. Each was already filled with a foal busily unloading books or pencils. The glow of dozens of little horns levitating papers and erasers dazzled him. He’d never seen so many unicorns in one place at a time.
“Hey!” Quicklime’s distinctive squeak caught his ears. He glanced over to see her waving a hoof for their attention. On either side of her was an empty desk. “Over here, come on! I need help!”
They edged their way down the aisles between desks to Quicklime. She had a mound of books and loose papers spread out on her little desk. A great number of them seemed to be on fire, or had been on fire in the recent past. Charred hoofprints decorated them. Smoke still rose from the bindings. Quicklime batted at a few loose flames frantically, trying to swat them out.
“Uh,” from Cloud Fire.
“What’s going on?” Vermilion managed to complete the thought. None of the foals around them seemed to feel there was anything at all unusual about this; they just went about their business, setting out papers and taking their seats.
“I don’t know!” Quicklime wailed. “Everything I touch catches on fire! My homework’s already burned to ashes!”
“Okay,” Vermilion said. He noticed that everyfoal else in the room besides him and Cloud Fire were seated at their desks, and he quickly piled into the empty one on Quicklime’s left. Cloudy took the one to her right. “Is that bad?”
“Is that bad?!” Quicklime’s voice rose another octave, and was quickly reaching a range where only bats would be able to hear it. “It’s terrible! We need to turn it in first thing! Can I copy off of yours?”
“Um.” The only other foal with a completely empty desk was Cloud Fire. They exchanged a helpless glance. “I… forgot mine?”
“Forgot?!” Quicklime’s horn glowed, and a pencil lifted from the tray on her desk. It immediately smouldered, the yellow paint blackening, and an acrid smoke rose from the eraser tip. She passed it over to Vermilion just as it ignited. “Quick, copy somepony else’s!”
Vermilion let the burning pencil fall onto his desk. It rolled down the sloped surface and fell to the floor, just barely missing his lap. “I don’t think there’s time for that,” he said.
“No! No!! We need homework!” Quicklime pushed half the contents of her desk to the side, somehow managing to pluck a single blank page from the mess. She quickly set to scribbling at it with a burning pencil. Little flames licked at the page, and she patted them out, mumbling all the while, “No, no, stop burning, please stop burning, just a little bit, please.”
“I don’t think she’s going to be much help, man,” Cloud Fire said. “I think we’re on our own.”
“I figured that. Where, uh, where do you think the dreamoras are?”
“The students, maybe?” Cloudy dropped his voice to a whisper. “There’s, uh, a lot of them, though. I don’t think we can—”
The door burst open, killing the quiet buzz of conversation. Into the classroom slouched a massive creature, a giant, a twisted amalgamation of flesh and sinew and bones that rattled with each step. It was far taller than any pony Vermilion had seen, even the princesses, and it towered over the foals. Its legs were thin, almost like twigs, though each footfall shook the classroom. Bare skin stretched taut like the head of a drum across its ribs. From its chest, where a pony’s neck would rise, grew the torso of a minotaur, complete with corded arms that ended in bony extensions as sharp as a knife. Whatever nightmare of a face it had was blessedly concealed beneath its only scrap of clothing, a dark cowl from out which shone a pair of baleful lights.
“Good morning, students,” it rasped. Its voice was a rockslide, loud and terrible and painful to hear. It strode toward the desk and swept a contemptuous hand across the top, scattering books and papers everywhere. “I hope everypony is prepared for today’s lesson.”
“Okay, I think we found the dreamora,” Cloud Fire said. He shrank down in his seat, lowering his head to the lip of his desk.
“That…” Vermilion stared at the horror as the monster shredded a few more books with its claws, filling the air with confetti. “We can’t fight that, Cloudy. We’re foals!”
“Shh!” Quicklime hissed at them. “Teacher will hear you! We’ll get detention!”
Vermilion wasn’t entirely clear what detention was, but he figured it probably involved some sort of punishment from this teacher, and therefore was a thing to be avoided at all costs. He froze in his seat, hooves folded on the desk in imitation of the pose unicorns always seemed to adopt when sitting.
Cloud Fire wasn’t so cautious. “Quicklime, this isn’t real, okay? It’s a dream. We need to get out of here and find some way to kill the teacher. Do you, uh, do you have any weapons?”
Quicklime gawked at him. One of her papers, still burning, lifted into the air and floated across the classroom, leaving a trail of smoke and drifting embers behind.
“Everypony get your homework out,” the teacher said. As it spoke, it smashed its clawed hands into the surface of the desk and heaved, tearing the thick wood apart and breaking the entire thing into pieces, which it promptly scattered about the front of the room. Apparently satisfied with its destruction, it lumbered up to the front row and loomed over the foals there. “But first! We have a very special surprise! Our first pop quiz of the year!”
A chorus of groans rose from the students. Quicklime seized, her entire body jerking upright, and her hoof shot into the air. “Professor! We didn’t know we had to study! What’s the subject?”
“I’m glad you asked, little one!” The teacher’s voice carried a smile. It turned, strode over to the classroom wall opposite the entrance, and pushed against the stones with all its weight. The mortar cracked and filled the air with little puffs of powder, and with a terrible crash the wall collapsed, opening the classroom to the empty air outside. A massive, yawning void dropped off into darkness outside, as though their classroom were perched on the very edge of the world’s highest mountain. A cold, keening wind tore through the classroom, picking up papers and carrying them out into the empty air.
“The subject is everything!” the teacher cried, raising its hands in joy. It had to shout to be heard over the whipping winds. “I hope you know everything, little ones! Or out you go!”
It’s just a dream. It’s just a dream. Vermilion stared out the open classroom wall to the horizon beyond. Clouds drifted below them, just at the edge of his vision. It’s just a dream. Unicorn schools aren’t really like this.
“I didn’t study everything!” Quicklime’s voice shook, and she tapped her hooves rapidly on the desk. “I can’t do this!”
“Quicklime, listen!” Cloud Fire scooched his desk closer to hers, until their edges touched. “Think, think, okay? You’re in a unicorn school, so why are Cherry and I here? We didn’t even know you as foals! It’s all just a dream!”
“I can’t be dreaming. If I’m dreaming, why is it morning?” Quicklime snatched up a pencil and started chewing on it. It smouldered in her mouth, and she spat it out onto the desk. “There’s never a quiz for mornings. That wouldn’t make any sense. That doesn’t make any sense, Cloudy!”
“What? No, it’s morning because, uh…” Cloud Fire looked out at the horizon, where indeed the sun was just beginning to rise above the cloudscape. “Well, look, I don’t know why it’s morning, but this is just a dream so it doesn’t matter, and right now we—”
“First question!” the instructor cried. It pointed a bony claw at one of the foals in the first row. “You! The delicious pink one! In what year did Commander Hurricane lead the forces of Pegasopolis against the griffon warchief Ironbeak?”
“Uh,” the filly said. She bit her lip. “Was it in the year—”
“Time’s up!” The instructor leaped forward, quick as a viper, and snatched the filly up in his claws. Before the rest of the class could scream or cry out or even think of stopping him, he raced to the fallen wall and flung her out over the edge. Her tiny, high pitched scream dwindled rapidly and was soon lost to the wind.
“Next question!” He pointed at an amber colt in the front row. “What is the volume of a cube with sides of length x?”
Quicklime gasped at the question. She leaned forward and hissed, sotte voce, “X cubed! It’s x cubed!”
The colt must not have heard her. He tapped his hooves together and glanced around for support. None came. “Um… Three?”
“Only if x is the cube root of three! Which it may or may not be!” The teacher clapped his bony hands together with glee, then plucked the colt out of his seat and pitched him off the edge of the cliff as well. “Who’s next?”
Nopony wanted to be next, apparently. All the foals in the front row promptly abandoned their seats and surged toward the back of the classroom. The second row, now the first, quickly followed suit, and soon the entire student body huddled in a pile at the back of the classroom, shaking and crying. Up front the instructor chortled and pointed out another foal, who quickly followed the first two off the edge of the cliff.
“Okay, so, I know this is a dream, but unicorns must have really messed up schools,” Cloud Fire whispered.
“He’s going to choose us!” Quicklime tried to squeeze herself behind Vermilion’s body. Her voice, already high, shook with terror. “He’s going to choose us and we’re not going to know the answer and then we’re going to get tossed off the cliff!”
“No, listen, it doesn’t matter if we die here,” Vermilion said. He closed his eyes and pictured Princess Luna as he had seen her in the dream. Tall, dark and majestic, utterly at home in the dreamworld. “Luna said that dying in a dream doesn’t make you die in real life. We just have to find a way to defeat that dreamora.”
“I don’t think that’s an option here,” Cloudy said. They all paused as the instructor grabbed two more foals and flipped them both over the cliff’s edge into the void below. “We’re foals! How are we supposed to kill something like that!”
“You can’t kill the instructor!” Quicklime sounded more aghast at Cloudy’s suggestion than the possibility of being tossed by that same instructor to her doom. “That’s against the rules!”
The instructor made quick work of the room. Foal after foal cartwheeled out the broken wall at his hands, spinning head over hooves into oblivion. Not a single one got their answer correct. Soon, the classroom was empty but for the three of them. The monster loomed over them, chortling.
“Now then, who’s next? Perhaps the one with the wings?” He reached down and wrapped his bony claws around Cloud Fire’s barrel, picking up with ease. “You’ll fly nicely, I suspect.”
No! Vermilion’s little heart leapt into his little throat. A quick glance at Quicklime revealed she had no help to offer – she was huddled on the floor, shaking, her hooves clasped over her eyes. It was up to him to save the day again. Mustering the fragments of his courage, he charged the monster, spun at the last moment, and lashed out with his hooves, striking the instructor square in his right leg. The impact jarred Vermilion’s teeth and knocked him to the floor.
The instructor looked down at the colt. “What’s this? Roughhousing? That’s detention for you!” He drew back his leg and then slammed it into Vermilion’s ribs, sending him skidding across the floor in a heap.
“Cherry!” Cloud Fire shouted. “Just run! Get Quicklime and run!”
“Oh, there’s no running here,” the instructor said. He walked over to the edge and dangled Cloud Fire over the precipice. “There’s nowhere in this dream I cannot chase her. We will stay here forever, her and I, until I have drunk the last of her fears, and then I will let her die. But I do not need you here for that, little interloper! Be gone!” The instructor hurtled Cloud Fire out over the abyss, and not even the colt’s tiny wings could keep him from plummeting into the darkness below.
Crap! Vermilion pushed himself up onto his hooves and stumbled over to Quicklime, who was still sobbing in a ball on the floor. “C’mon, get up! Quicklime, you need to get up now!”
“I can’t!” She pushed away from him, scooting across the floor to hide beneath a student’s abandoned desk. “I’m scared!”
“I know! I’m really scared too!” Vermilion jumped away from the instructor’s claws. They snagged in the long hairs of his tail, tearing several of them free. He raced across the room and took shelter behind one of the larger fragments of the teacher’s desk. It would only shelter him for a few seconds, he knew. “Listen! Quicklime, I need you to listen to me, okay? This is a dream! It’s a dream!”
“It can’t be a dream! Desks aren’t flat in dreams!”
What? Vermilion only had a moment to ponder the non-sequitur before the instructor was upon him again. He dodged, kicking away the grasping claws, and galloped over to Quicklime’s side. She didn’t resist as he grabbed her around the barrel and pulled her up onto her hooves.
“Listen!” He looked up to see the instructor walking over to them, slowly, casually. He was in no rush. “Quicklime, do you trust me?”
“Uh… yes? I think?”
He dragged her toward the broken wall. Just feet away the floor dropped away into nothingness. The raging winds teased at his coat, beckoning him over the edge. “Look, it doesn’t matter if we die here, alright? It’s just a dream! If you’ve ever believed anything I told you, Quicklime, believe this! We’re in a dream!”
“He’s lying to you, Quicklime.” The instructor picked his way across the ruined classroom toward them, knocking aside fallen desks and bits of rubble. “Can you hear the wind? The chill? Can you smell the smoke, and feel the grit beneath your hooves? How can this not be real?”
“Quicklime, think!” He grabbed her mane and pulled her face up against his, muzzle-to-muzzle. “You’ve never set your homework on fire! Your teacher has never tossed foals off of a cliff! And you never knew Cloudy and I as foals! All this is a dream! It is just a dream!”
“Enough!” The instructor swooped down, snatching Vermilion up in his claws. Their sharp edges bit into his coat. “She belongs to me, not you or your princess! Go back and tell her you failed!”
The room spun as the monster drew his arm back, and then gravity went away. The sky and the dark clouds chased each other in circles, and time seemed to slow. He saw the classroom and the instructor and Quicklime receding away as he flew out over the edge of the cliff. Below him, far below, a whirling maw of clouds opened up to receive him.
I’m sorry, Quicklime. He reached out a hoof toward her. She was much too far away to reach, but he wanted her to see the gesture. To know that he tried.
Quicklime’s eyes tracked his fall. She raised a hoof, as if to wave goodbye. For what felt like an eternity they stared at each other as Vermilion fell away. She looked at the instructor, then back to him.
And then she jumped.
She caught up to him, somehow. Though her tiny body weighed far less and should have been tossed to and fro by the winds, they found themselves plummeting through the dark clouds together. She drifted close enough to grasp his hoof with hers, and she smiled.
The fear in Vermilion’s heart faded. The sensation of falling dissipated, along with the winds and the clouds and the Quicklime too. Only the spark in her eyes remained, and then she was gone, and Vermilion fell the rest of the way into the darkness.
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Magic Kindergarten: Fueling Nightmares for over a Millennium.
"Please, sir. May I have more?"
Nice!
Relevant:
imgs.xkcd.com/comics/students.png
Not sure if Quicklime's nonseq about desks is relevant or just the kind of nonsense that sometimes gets bandied about in dreams. I liked this chapter; seems like the dreamora was just going to threaten poor Quicklime over and over and never actually follow through with the "punishment" which in reality was the way out of the dream. Hm. Actually, that seems to be a weakness in its plan; how long could it keep up the facade of imminent punishment if it never actually followed through? Or was it merely counting on Quicklime being sharp enough to answer all the questions correctly?
lmao. Now we know why Twilight didn't want to go back.
Aww.
You write foals really well!
I am a horrible person. Your description of those poor foals cartwheeling off into space gave me a terrible, guilty laugh at first.
This was a great insight for the others into the angst unicorn foals go through, where the pressure to perform in school at such an early age is almost traumatic.
Some kinda like it...
... but they're weird.
I can't wait for Rose Quartzs chapter. I expect it will be intense.
Hmm. Merchant's scales. At least, that's how Vermillion understands them.
I love the cultural disconnects in this chapter as Vermillion tries to fathom the unicorn education system. And the juxtaposition of the nightmarish horror and its cheery attitude were fantastic, as was the climax. Even the opening was fun in its own odd way. All told, a wonderfully entertaining chapter.
Now there's the matter of Rose's dream...
8367439
That's assuming being thrown off the cliff is the same as jumping off.
8375712
Fair enough.
And now Twilight's freak outs about being sent back to magic kindergarten all make sense.
Cherry has become the headless horse
man.Everyone is a foal, hopefully that'll mean less decapitations.
Hey, it was long time ago, unicorn schools might be a little mean and scary. Though with this teacher, maybe decapitations are still a possibility.
This feels like probably the right move. At the very least it gets her away from the dreamora.