Dreaming up the Mess
Jackie landed in the old library, her hooves settling on the crystal of the roof with a rough clatter. It had been a long time since Jackie had visited this ancient place. Until comparatively recently, this old library near the height of the reachable Dreamlands was a monument to decay: evidence that even the best could be defeated and that virtue was doomed to failure. Why bother trying in a universe that simply didn't care?
She had watched its crystal structure turn chalky gray and start to crumble around the edges, as the glamour of its dreamer, now dead, ran out. It all would have failed long ago, were it not for the pony who lived here.
Pony was a generous term for Mercy, the crystal unicorn Alex created to perpetuate her work beyond her own death. But Archive had not been a bat before, not graced with the skills of dreamwalking or the powers necessary to imbue the figment with life. Jackie had picked up the slack, using her own power to keep Mercy alive when her creator stopped dreaming. Damn you for making me pick up all your broken pieces, Archive.
But not for any longer. Alex hadn't just returned, she'd ascended. Finally. Earth had its human Alicorn after over a thousand years of waiting. But that process had not come easily, which was why she was here in the first place.
The library was no longer falling apart. Though the damage to the crystal remained wherever its structure had failed, the rest of it no longer looked gray and cloudy. Most of the structural materials had gone a deep, emerald green, and were so tough they felt rough on her hooves. The interior of the library looked so bright from below that the whole massive tower seemed to be glowing from within.
Mercy appeared in a flash of gray magic, standing in front of the open doors. Jackie felt the difference in her at once—she wasn't a toy winding down anymore, she wasn't on the edge of survival. Her eyes were bright, the crystal of her body as tough as the crystal that made the tower. Like all of Archive's creations, she had been changed. But just because she looked healthier did not mean she seemed happier. There was worry on her face, and she glanced over her shoulder back towards the door. "Jackie, I'm glad you're here. There are half a dozen ponies inside, and I don't know—"
"I know," Jackie said, walking past her and snapping one hoof against the floor. The doors swung open for her, both opening wide, and more light spilled out. "Let me guess. They show up bloody and injured, and a few minutes later the whole place fixes itself."
Mercy nodded. "Something must've happened in the material world to affect this change. What was it?"
Jackie walked past her through the open doors, knowing Mercy would follow. "If your creator was half as smart as you are, we wouldn't be in half as much shit all the time."
The construct followed closely behind her as she descended the steps. In theory Mercy was the guardian of this place, and could employ the most powerful spells known to the Dreamtime to protect it. In practice they had been resorting increasingly to concealing the library, rather than protecting it. But Mercy showed no sign of wanting to attack her. In some ways, Archive had entrusted the library to her, and its guardian knew that.
"They're hysterical," Mercy said. "This place was never meant to house living ponies. Before the change, I couldn't nourish them effectively."
"I'm sure you managed," Jackie said, making her way down the sweeping spiral staircase. It was strange to think of just how many times she'd visited this old library—some of her earliest experiences dreamwalking had begun here, when Alex had used Equestrian knowledge to teach her the ropes. She'd since grown beyond anything that was taught in the books, grown beyond the abilities of anypony alive. Even Alex's encyclopedic knowledge could not account for all she had learned. Which was part of why she was here.
The other part was, of course, that Alex couldn't dreamwalk anymore. That ability seemed restricted to thestrals, despite the stories from Equestria of their own dreamwalking Alicorn. But that's a mystery for another time.
She wasn't entirely surprised to find the refugees gathered where Alex kept the movies. Their armor was all piled near one of the dark wooden shelves, and their swords and simple firearms rested just beside it. Cushions and blankets used for decoration throughout the library had been piled into a sleeping area, and decorative urns were now being used to store water.
If any of the Hammer had been thestrals, they could've summoned anything they desired to the library—transformed its wings into palatial mansions while they waited for their rescue. But as Jackie had learned during her very first dreamwalk, another kind of pony who traveled into the dream had only their own natural powers when outside of their own dreams. As this dream belonged to Alex, they were forced to follow its rules.
"Hey everybody!" Jackie said, calling through the open door to the viewing room. She didn't recognize the movie they were watching—something in space, the sort of movie she'd never have watched when she'd been human. A nerd movie that wasn't anime. "Come on out. I've got a message for you."
They did. Alex's Hammer were the best trained of the refugees. Most of them had military experience, or at least police. They had shattered the army meant to destroy Estel, and every single one of them had died doing it. Including Alex herself, Jackie supposed.
"News," said Everest, an Earth pony so large even the sturdy crystal of the library shook when he stepped. "Where is our president?"
"What happened?" somepony else asked. "It's been almost a month!"
"It's been a few hours," Jackie corrected. "You're in the Dreamtime, so time is different here. The library's time is stranger than most. If you're lucky it will slow while you're here, but there's no bending it. I gave up trying months ago."
There were eight of them in all, eight survivors out of the fifty who had charged from Estel. The longer Jackie remained near them, the more of their lethargy she could sense. These ponies had been trapped here so long that they'd already started to wear down. "Estel won," she said. "Thanks to you."
They cheered. The library filled with varied voices, banishing some of their fatigue. The worry on many faces vanished completely, though that could not erase the sadness over their lost friends.
“Alex sent them running. But she lost the power to bring you back. I'm, uh... gonna figure it out in her place. It might be a little tricky, since... technically..." She lowered her voice, looking away. "I think Alex might've accidentally merged you with her dream? Maybe... just a little..." She winced, but none of them reacted. Of course they don't have any idea what that means. "I'm the one assigned to fix it and get you out, but it might take time. You might want to settle in for a little longer."
"We need food," somebody said. "We weren't carrying rations when we left Estel. We've been eating the decorations."
"Sure." Jackie turned back to the spiral staircase. "I'll show you the way. There's, uh... tons of food in here. Just... this way!" She hurried down the stairs, dodging past the crowd as she went.
"No there isn't!" another voice said. "We searched the whole place. We thought about going out and searching, but Mercy said we shouldn't. Apparently it's not safe to fly out and look."
"She's right!" Jackie said hurriedly. "It definitely isn't! This is the dream world, it doesn't follow the rules you're used to. And if you die here, you'll die in real life. The mind makes it real." Actually it was nothing like that. They didn't have bodies anywhere else, so death for them here was final. The fact they had spirits would set them apart from the ordinary residents of the Dreamtime, but it would not make them immune to death.
A not-insignificant number of bats had fled into the Dreamtime to avoid their own deaths over the years. Any who reached the level of power to travel physically into the dream world could do it—just enter the dream world and never come back. There was no age within the dream, so even centuries of time could pass without making the pony older. But there was always a price. Jackie only knew of one such being that had kept its sanity long term. Or came close to keeping its sanity, anyway.
There was no food storage here, but that didn't matter. She was really just taking the ponies down the stairs so they could go somewhere they couldn't see at the time. In the time it took them to walk down a floor, Jackie cast the spell that would create a door that hadn't been there, unmarked and nondescript so as to blend in with the rest of the walls. Almost as though it could've been there all along. The interior of the library followed the ordinary conventions of space where her addition would not, but no magic was perfect.
"This wasn't here," Everest said. "I looked everywhere. Every wall, every shelf, everywhere."
"I dunno what you're talking about," Jackie said, pushing the door open with a hoof. Inside was what looked like the interior of a grocery store, refrigerated shelves and ordinary ones all taken from her memories of the world before. The actual writing on the packaging was nonsensical word salad, but the food would be real. Well, as real as dream-ponies needed. "See? The president's emergency food storage cache. Right where it was supposed to be."
"She had all this..." one of the ponies in the back said. "And we've been eating plain potatoes and hay?"
"It's not real," she said, turning away from them again. The ponies seemed content to let her this time, each one of them staring in wonder at the incongruous transition between the library and the apparent inside of a grocery store. "It's dream magic. You can only eat it because you're here."
"Oh." That answer seemed to satisfy, though the ponies didn't actually go through the door she'd made. They were all still watching her.
"So when do we leave?" somebody asked. "Can't you make a portal and get us out?"
"No," she said. "I wish I could, but the magic doesn't work that way. I'm not really here, I'm just asleep. You all... you're really here. Traveling physically is dangerous, and none of you are bats. Don't worry, though! I'm working on it! I'm an expert at cleaning up Alex's messes!"
* * *
Jackie left the library behind, plummeting through the upper airs of enlightened dreams into the realm of lesser emotions. She didn't fly particularly fast—travel here played strange tricks on time, as with any actions in the dream world. Sometimes it could feel like she spent months on the road in the course of a single night. I can't take my time, not with those other ponies waiting here. Aging away was not the risk to dream-creatures. The ordinary physical risks of the realm could be serious in some areas, but the library was about as safe as any part of the Dreamtime could be. No, the risk to those ponies was in the nature of their own lives.
Jackie had learned that well in the centuries since Alex had died and left them alone to pick up her pieces on a broken world. She had watched more than a few ponies flee here, abandoning their physical bodies in the search for eternal life. Some of those ponies were still alive, but rarely in a form anyone would recognize.
As it turned out, the mind needed a body. The illusion that existed with the Dreamtime was not enough—the sanity required something more. Something to ground and stabilize it, and prevent it from drifting according to every new emotion. Of all the bats she'd known to seek eternal life here, none had remained ponies. They'd become spirits of the dream, beings so alien that only enormous magic could let her still try to talk to them. With each passing year they explored stranger and stranger reaches of the world, parts of the Dreamtime that humans and ponies simply could not reach.
But one being was different—and that being might now be the only hope of the ponies Alex had trapped here. She was even older than Jackie, older than Alex herself if one ignored all the years she'd spent dead. She was also a pony Jackie avoided with great judiciousness. She took no small measure of pride in being able to avoid her. With all her power, bat-Alex hadn't ever come close to that dexterity. And now she never will. Jackie might not be an Alicorn, but she was the best. Even her target could not evade her search.
She traveled for days, until she reached the very edge of the Dreamtime. Just as the Earth's crust had areas where it stretched and areas where old crust was swallowed by the planet, so too did the Dreamtime have its areas of creation and destruction. Here, on the very edge of the ream dreaming minds could reach, whole sections of land crumbled away, cascading away into pure glamour and joining with the universal aether. It looked almost like the edge of an iceberg, except with vague lines suggesting trees, and plants, and other things. It had been so long since another dreamer had been here that the land had nothing more definitive, though the longer she remained the healthier it would look.
A pony could fly off this cliff and continue on forever without ever meeting another soul. Or they might step two feet off before getting devoured by some demon. There was no way to know what waited beyond the edge. Equestria was out there somewhere, and who knew how many other universes besides. All minds shared the infinite Dreamtime, but the island that formed sanity for humans and ponies was miniscule in that sea.
Here was the pony named Artifice. She still looked like a bat—hadn't grown extra wings or arms or heads in her centuries of time. She stood on the edge of the cliff, near an object that was like a massive telescope, save that it was built from crystals, wires, and advanced spells. It was also made of real matter, an island of stability that solidified the ground it stood upon, preventing it from crumbling away into the void. It was already a little peninsula, extending fifty feet over the crushing waves of the aether.
Artifice stared off into the void, wearing her stupid hat and her stupidly smug expression.
"Hey!" Jackie shouted from the cliff. "I need to talk to you!"
The bat jerked forward in surprise, smashing her face against the eyepiece of her telescope. She still looked surprised as she turned around, though she seemed to be trying to hide it. "O-oh, it's you," she said. "I was expecting you to—"
"I don't have time for your shit!" Jackie shouted. "Could you ditch the act and come over here, please?"
The bat was suddenly beside her, without the motion of an intervening teleport. She didn't have a horn. "Jeez, what's with the hostility? I was hoping you came here to have a chat, but..." She trailed off into a sigh. "No. This is about Archive, isn't it? It always is. That shockwave may as well been signed by her."
"Sorta," Jackie said, though she couldn't take her eyes from the telescope. "What are you doing out here? There's nothing to see—I've gone out there. Ezri and I tried to get to Equestria once. Thought we'd never find our way back."
"Getting to the far lands is easier," Artifice answered, her smug expression fully returned. "Just because everyone has failed to navigate it so far doesn't mean nobody can. It's just a matter of finding the right people for the job. Writing the right spells. Getting the most determined—"
"Okay, stop." Jackie raised one hoof. "Waste your time staring into the void, fine. I just..." She took a deep breath, looking away. She spoke very slowly, each word coming out with difficulty. "I think I... might... or Alex... she... might kinda... need your help."
Artifice gave Jackie an unamused look. "If Alex needs my help why didn't she come with you?"
“Because she’s cleaning up from an invasion. If the army unloading from our island notices our Alicorn is gone, they might decide to come back.” If Jackie had been a lesser pony, she might've had a hard time resisting the urge to punch her in the face. But Jackie was a civilized pony, and would never resolve a personal grudge with violence. Particularly when the pony she disliked was almost certainly the only one who could help the victims of Alex's “rescue.”
At least she didn't send them to the Supernal like she did with us. It could've been worse. "You were right, Archive got her crown. It was big, and special, and there was fanfare and a petting zoo and everything. But before that there was a war, and we almost lost. To save some ponies, Alex sent them here."
"So send them back," Artifice suggested. "Don't you do that all the time Dreamknife? Popping in and out of here is something I never bothered getting good at myself, but I—"
"Don't even." Jackie glowered. "You have your own fake religious names, we don't have to play that game today." She paused, taking a deep breath. "She didn't just move them here. She changed them... all of them. They read just like any of the other denizens of Dreamtime, only... they still have their spirits. They don't have bodies anymore."
"She what?" All of her amusement was gone now. "Why did she do that?"
"Accident, probably," Jackie admitted. "There was a ton of magic going around at the time. You know how it is with her—being tied to civilization or whatever, and she'd made a whole city we were defending... Look, I just knew you were experimenting with converting things back and forth, and I wondered if you might know any way to help them. I don't want to be the one to tell them they'll never get to go home."
Artifice looked thoughtful, turning away to stare off into the void. She stayed that way for some minutes, apparently deep in thought. But Jackie was used to that—everyone who lived in Dreamtime had a somewhat blase attitude about time eventually. There was so much of it that most ponies didn't bother to conserve. "There is a spell that might help," she eventually said. "It's not easy. Also not one I'm eager to let go for free and have it become useless as trade fodder later. But I still owe Alex and no one should end up living in the dreamlands without wanting to."
"Fine!" Jackie said, relieved. "Whatever it is, I'm sure it's fine! Alex is real broken up about this. I'm sure she'd do whatever to get these ponies back with their loved ones."
"Sure," Artifice said, reaching one hoof into the open air beside her. It vanished, though she pulled it out a moment later clutching a scroll, which she tossed to Jackie. "Short version? You can't. Long version? Cheat. Thestral magic is just magic, fundamentally. We can bring dreams into the material, so why not turn that spell into a rune?"
Jackie opened up the scroll, and sure enough she found an advanced spell diagram, dozens of exhausting-looking dream spells that would condense into a piece of jewelry when complete.
"Making someone into glamour, that's easy. Bringing them back... still working on that one. But you can give them those—might hold them over. So long as you've got a way of keeping the spells charged, and they stay away from the dream world, they'll be alright. Well... alright adjacent." She shrugged one shoulder. "They'll never sleep, never age, and die instantly if they remove the bracelet outside of Dreamtime. But on the plus side, they won't mutate in the Material and will have way more company then I do."
Jackie tucked the scroll away into her own little pocket of Otherspace, vanishing it from sight. She would have to do the casting on the spell it described, not Alex. That would be an exhausting process. "Do you think there's any way to change them back? Properly?"
"Absolutely," Artifice said, her smug grin returning. "There's always a way. I just don't know what it is yet." She flicked one wing towards her telescope. "I've been distracted lately. Equestria told us there was nothing out there, but they're wrong. There's everything out there."
"Alright, I'm done." Jackie took off, her wings only beating once every few seconds. Gravity was more of a suggestion this far from more realistic dreams. "Thanks for your help. I'll... pass this on to Alex or whatever."
The other bat nodded once. "Sounds good. Tell her she can expect a visit. Someone needs to talk to her about the responsible use of dream magic." Artifice paused and gave an oddly soft look towards Jackie. "Also, could you drop by when matters of life and death are not going on? I would like to just 'talk' with you for once."
She left without another word, lifting off into the air and letting the natural motions of Dreamtime swallow her. She took a particularly circuitous route between different dreams, so she wouldn't be followed. A dreamer like Artifice, who had survived centuries in Dreamtime, would probably know about the library and know it was the first place Alex would send anyone. Dodging around was probably a waste of time.
She did it anyway. Anything to delay her arrival a little longer. Alex had screwed up bigtime with these ponies. In some ways, she'd killed them. And in some others, she saved them. I guess I should probably learn their names. They might be sticking around.
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Moar pls.
Kthxbai
Strange things are happening in the supernatural realm. Time to fire up the heavy core.
I designed this system to learn how to learn how to improve itself.
So now I havent a clue what its doing, or how its doing it.
Which is what your offspring is supposed to do.
Don't let your dreams be dreams!
I'm sorry I had to.
I hadn't really even picked up on loose ends, but nothing's ever resolved easily in this universe.
Jackie can be a troll sometimes.
You're tying loose ends, but I didn't even realise this end was loose.
So... they're all going to become Tidus and Jecht from FFX.
Totally thought she was gonna go talk to Luna...
Be careful with that telescope, Artifice, for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you...
I had wondered what happened with Mercy and her project. Looks like she'll be able to get back on track now anyway.
The number of immortal or semi-immortal ponies is really starting to pile up as well.
Yup, Jackie does clean up his messes.
I feel bad for having forgotten these loose ends. However it was GREAT to read all this! <3
8244685
I've been bugging Star for Mercy since around the time he posted the first Chip chapter. But I'm not a patreon so I can wait patiently. Star's going to write the interesting stuff anyways, you just got to give him time.
Equestrian Magic seems to get stranger and stranger
Wait, is Artifice a new character or am I missing something? This universe is so vast and detailed that it can be hard to remember everyone :P
8254689
She has only appeared one time before, so I don't blame you for not remembering Right after Archive returned from the dead for the last time, when she found the world all ruined.
Yay dream world stuff, my favorite! I had been wondering what had happened to those guys. That cheaty solution doesnt sound all that great... but its better then nothing i guess.
oh, i just remembered a fan-comic where Luna was a Thestral before she became an alicorn...
https://www.deviantart.com/vavacung/art/To-Love-Alicorn-Part-34-560988791