Songs of the Spheres

by GMBlackjack

083 - Topeka

Corona was aware of the color orange. She had an inkling feeling that the color was fluffy, but didn’t bother to question how a color could be fluffy. She couldn’t even really feel anything either.

But she wasn’t bothered by that. She wasn’t bothered by anything at all – she felt at peace.

She didn’t try to think about anything more, but more images came into her mind anyway, though every sensation was dulled. The orange consolidated itself into the long, slender leaves of a tree species Corona had never seen before.

Apparently she was sitting down, leaning on the tree, and experiencing serenity in the process. The sky before her was a muted pink, and the ground of an orange similar to the tree itself. She couldn’t see the trunk and didn’t even think to turn her head to have a look.

Everything was muddled and… perfect. She became aware that she wasn’t alone – Lady Rarity was sitting next to her, looking onward with a peaceful expression. Neither of them had a care in the world.

Corona was vaguely aware that her hand was in Lady Rarity’s mane. Was she scratching her behind the ears? She had no idea. Probably not, since Lady Rarity wasn’t the type to appreciate that sort of thing.

But the depths of those thoughts were for someone with more of their wits about them than Corona currently had. She moved back to not realizing Lady Rarity was there, allowing the orange to take over once again…

But something brought her to full attention. A metallic blue fly landed on her hand. Unlike every other sensation, which had been muted and distant, she felt the sharp tips of the fly’s legs dig into her skin. How was that even possible?

The fly left, but Corona could still feel it, and she slowly gained full awareness of her hand. The muddled sensation that might have been a limb solidified itself, becoming a working mixture of bones, muscle, skin, and fabric with a crystal on it.

The rest of her body came next, allowing her to not only feel the awkward position her wings were currently in, but the roughness of the bark against them. How had she even been calm like this? The bark was beyond itchy… Though something about it didn’t feel quite right, even though her feathers were normal as could be.

She realized her other hand was scratching Lady Rarity behind the ear – and the spirid was purring. Corona retracted the hand instantly, staring at it like a traitor. She fearfully glanced at Lady Rarity, hoping she hadn’t triggered a spirid predatory response.

She didn’t even register that Corona had left. How unlike her.

How unlike me to not care that I’m sitting under a strange, orange tree. She stood up, noticing that the orange ground gave way slightly as she pushed on it. She stepped around a bit, finding it completely solid now that she was up. She could see grains of sand and rocks in it now.

Were those even there before? Corona wondered, trying to remember. But she couldn’t – she couldn’t remember what happened before the orange. How had she even gotten here?

She turned to examine the tree – definitely not one she had ever seen before. It had a single trunk made out of numerous rigid plates of bark that led up to an umbrella of orange, heavily veined leaves.

She lifted a hand to her eyes, scanning the scenery. She found that everything was blurred and mysterious – until she bothered to focus on it, at which point similar trees would fill her vision. Except in one spot where an ancient statue stood, collecting moss all over its humanoid figure.

“What the…” Corona said. When she formed the first ‘w’, her voice had a hollow feel to it, but by the time the last breath of ‘the’ came out, she realized her voice was the only substantial noise she was even hearing.

The moment she realized this the normal ‘forest sounds’ began to fill her ears – birds chirping, leaves rustling… But she was sure those noises hadn’t been there before.

Her voice had been enough to grab Lady Rarity’s attention. “Hm…? What…?” She yawned. “Mmmm… Some nap.”

“Rarity, how did we get here?” Corona asked.

“Well, you see, we…” Lady Rarity’s four eyes blinked, out of sequence with each other. “I… don’t know…” She put a hoof to her head, furrowing her brow.

“Something’s happened,” Corona said, taking a look around. “…What was our last mission?”

“Eggs. I think…”

Corona nodded. “Right, that world with the talking vegetables... We took care of the egg problem… and came back… I remember coming back.”

“You’re ahead of me,” Lady Rarity said, blinking slowly. She squinted her eyes. “Why’s everything so fluffy?”

“Then I hung out with Olivia for a bit… Then I came home and… and…” Corona snapped her fingers a few times – the first time not producing a noise. “Nothing after that. It’s all murky images of orange and… blue before that?”

“I feel like I should be really concerned…” Lady Rarity commented. “But… I’m not? I don’t know… I feel safe even though we’ve probably been abducted or something…”

“How can you be calm!?” Corona blurted.

“…Don’t know,” Lady Rarity said. “You’re getting really fuzzy…”

“Fuzzy? What do y-” Corona stopped short. Lady Rarity was gone. Corona had been looking right at her and somehow didn’t see her vanish… There was a ‘blur’ in the memory when she was there, and then she wasn’t. “What in the fresh crocodile stew is going on…?”

She looked at Raging Sights – realizing with some horror that the crystals on the backs of her hands weren’t Raging Sights. They were just… crystals. With magic in them. No intelligence. She slowly felt something form within the crystals as she thought about this, but she didn’t give it time to complete itself.

She placed her hands together and lit her horn, both her ears twitching uncontrollably. She sent out a magic spell designed to locate Raging Sights.

All it did was make her wake up in her bedroom. It was the middle of the night on Lai.

You called? Raging Sights said in her mind.

“Through the dream, I guess,” Corona said, sitting up with a hand to her forehead. “I’m not prone to sleep-casting, am I?”

It’s happened a few times.

Corona shook her head. “Must’ve been quite the dream I was having. Everything was so clear.”

You usually remember your dreams.

“It was more than that… I was able to realize certain sensations were missing, and then the dream slowly built them into itself. Lady Rarity was there, and an orange tree. It was… oddly calm until I started thinking we’d been abducted or something.”

Raging Sights had no further comment.

Corona stretched her arms and wings. “Welp, back to sleep. Maybe there’ll be another weird dream.”

She heard something explode less than a block away.

Corona sighed inwardly. “Or there’ll be a crisis I have to deal with.” She got up and summoned her dress. “Here we go again...”

~~~

“Emperor Palpatine!” Lady Rarity shouted, charging into the throne room of the Death Star II with Corona on her back. “Your dishonorable ways have come to an end!”

The ancient man stood up from his throne, the intense wrinkles on his skin lagging slightly behind the rest of his body, only adding to his inherent unsettling appearance. He glared at them with his sunken eyes. “I may only have learned of you two earlier today, but in these handful of hours you have proven to be more of a nuisance than both the rebellion and the Jedi! But your string of luck has come to an end!” He lifted his hand. “You cannot understand the power of the Dark Side that flows within me. I…”

Corona’s snore pierced the Emperor’s words and reverberated through the open chamber enough to make Lady Rarity flinch.

Corona herself had her head hung back and mouth wide open, drool slowly seeping out of the corners of her mouth.

Lady Rarity nudged her with an armored leg, waking her up. “Justice rains from above!” she blurted.

“Corona, you’ve been tired all day, what’s wrong?”

Corona rubbed her eyes. “Ugh… Got woken up by some silly dream and then had to stop a serial killer who liked explosives…”

“A dream? Huh, must be going around. I had a strange dream of my own last night. Did I tell you about that?”

Corona shook her head. “Nooope.”

“Well, you were there, and there was this orange tree… And that’s about all I can remember besides a deep feeling of needing to be panicked about something.”

Corona shot bolt upright, fully awake for the first time in hours. “That is the exact same dream I was having. But I can remember a lot more. The statue?”

“…There was a statue?”

“In the distance.”

“…Not drawing up anything in the distance at all.”

“Ex-CUSE me?” Palpatine blurted.

“Shh, more important things being talked about,” Corona said, holding out a finger.

“Shared dreams are not more important than the fate of the galaxy, fools!” Palpatine shouted, holding out a hand. It crackled with electricity. “Let me show you how important the Dark Side is compared to even that!”

Corona snapped her fingers. A magic ring appeared in front of Palpatine and engulfed him in a holy, purging beam of light. He fell back, defeated in one fell swoop.

“Shared dreams… I hear Luna can do those,” Lady Rarity offered.

“She wasn’t there,” Corona assured her. “This was something else… Maybe my empathy was acting out, or something.”

“Reached out to me?” Lady Rarity smiled. “Touching.”

Corona rubbed the back of her head. “I guess I do spend more time with you than anyone else at this point.”

A sad expression crossed Lady Rarity's face. “…It’s just us, after all.”

Corona nodded slowly before shifting the conversation back on track. “Regardless, we were in the same dream together, and it wasn’t a natural shared dream either. Dreams are never that ‘solid’ unless something’s going on in your head.”

“Spend a lot of time dipping into dreams do you?”

“Conscious mindscapes are similar,” Corona said. “And yes, I can tap into dreams. I’ve done it before. It’s not as easy though, and can be more than a little… unpleasant. If I tap into someone’s dreams I adjust to become part of their dream. However depraved and disturbing it may be.”

“…I vaguely remember you using it a few times.”

Corona shrugged. “Nowadays Raging Sights can do most of the work for me. Rarely need to rely on my empathy alone for anything. The two artifacts are basically fused at this point.”

“The complexities of Corona’s many powers,” Lady Rarity noted with a smile. “Sometimes I wonder why you even keep me around. You can do everything I can do and more.”

“You’re still the boss, Rarity.”

“You know I’m not. This has been an equal partnership for a long time now.”

Corona smiled softly. “Then we’re here together because I need a second opinion. And because you’re good company. And because spiders are awesome. And because, let’s face it, you’re actually better at controlling your impulses than I am.”

Lady Rarity snorted. “I suppose. A-”

Red light began to blare all across the Death Star II.

“Ooooh, right, they’re blowing it up.” Corona glanced at her watch. “We needed to be out of here two minutes ago.”

“Lovely,” Lady Rarity deadpanned. “Plan?”

Corona encased them in a red magic shield, reinforcing it with a dozen magical circles. “There.”

“…Or we could just translate out of the universe.”

Corona blinked. “There’s another reason you’re here. You’re more practical than I am. Common sense. Sometimes I lack it.”

“…Only sometimes?”

Corona chuckled, spinning up her dimensional spell. “Well, almost all the time, bu-”

The Death Star II exploded, sending the little ball of magic, spirid, and alicorn-human into the void of space at high velocity.

Lady Rarity growled from the weight of her armor. “…Couldn’t have moved a little faster?”

“Hey! You were distracting me!”

“...Very well. I apologize for keeping you from executing an escape.”

“You’re way too chivalrous.”

“That was sarcasm, dear.”

Corona blinked. “Oh.”

“I believe that’s what one calls ‘a win’, correct?”

Corona smirked. “Yeah.”

~~~

“All right, Raging Sights! Watch my sleep patterns tonight, scan for… well, anything really. We’re going to see if this was a one-night thing.”

Any sleep spells?

“Nope, going into this standard sleep-style. Won’t be too hard to fall asleep, been tired all day.” She crawled into her bed, spread her wings slightly into a position where she was comfortable, and set her head on the pillow.

She then went through the agonizing realization that trying to fall asleep was perhaps the most difficult thing in existence.

The trick to falling asleep without any sort of medication or magic is simple: don’t think about it.

The problem with the mind is that when you tell it to not think about something, it goes into overdrive thinking about every possible aspect relating to that thing. Every conceivable mental connection.

“…I just lost the Game,” Corona muttered, keeping her eyes closed.

I have as well, and set a message to a random contact from a secondary email to ensure the cycle is perpetuated.

A smile came to Corona’s lips as her thoughts drifted away from sleep and onto stupid games, then to board games, then to Pinkie’s latest party where they’d all tried to play ‘Race for the Galaxy’ and ended up creating ‘Race for the Multiverse’ over the course of the evening. It hadn’t been as weird as their Ogres and Oubliettes game though… Eve had taken creatures and rules from Celestia-knows how many different systems and ran their characters into the ground.

They should start that up again. They knew enough people that knew how to play to get a good, long campaign going. Eve’s schedule was a bit much for that, but Pinkie was a good Game Master. …G. M. Blackjack. Corona wondered if that was some kind of clever joke. Probably was, knowing how her life seemed to be an unending string of amusing anecdotes…

Oh would you look at that, I’m sitting under the orange tree again, Corona thought to herself, the world of the dream snapping into ‘reality’ around her. She realized all the ‘details’ that had been filled in before were still there – the solid dirt, the orange leaves, the trunk… Lady Rarity was there, but she wasn’t leaning against the tree, she was staring into the distance.

Corona did the same – and realized it had changed from last time. It wasn’t an orange forest, it was a dark one Corona didn’t recognize, filled with giant spider webs. No matter how much Corona squinted her eyes, she couldn’t get the forest to become fully real – she could force a leaf to come into full form here, and a few bits of webbing, but the forest itself was too much.

“Hey… Rarity? Is that yours?”

Lady Rarity blinked, turning to her. “It’s where I live, if that’s what you mean. A-” A spark of realization hit in her eyes. “Oh. …I’m dreaming, aren’t I?”

“What gave it away?”

“You. Talking to me. Next to an orange tree that didn’t exist in my home forest.” She stretched her hooves out. “So yes, that forest is my home. Or where I was born, at least.”

“…Doesn’t it look wrong to you?”

“It’s exactly as I remember it.”

Corona walked up to a tree and rubbed her hand on nondescript bark. “You must not remember it that clearly then. It’s all a big blur for me. I can see trees and webs and… Well that’s about it. The rest is dramatically inconsistent.”

Lady Rarity put a hoof to her head. “Slow down a bit… You’re saying so much and it’s being drowned out.”

“By what?”

She blinked slowly. “It’s like my mind doesn’t want to process this much, or something? If that makes sense?”

Corona put a hand to her chin. “It’s possible my mind is just more prepared for dealing with higher resolution dreams…”

“I knew you were secretly arrogant about your intelligence under that smile of yours.”

Corona rolled her eyes. “Perhaps…”

Lady Rarity’s focus drifted away from Corona and into the forest. “…Last time we were here, I felt at rest. I… I don’t feel that right now.”

“Mind if I take a look?” Corona asked, de-summoning her glove.

“…Can you even do that in a dream?”

“Might as well find out.” Corona tapped Lady Rarity’s forehead and felt the expected rush of emotion – fear and dread above all, and confusion about where those feelings were coming from. Her memories consisted of a few angry images of her mother – quite the vicious spirid – and the darkness of the forest.

Corona’s heart started beating rapidly. “Ah yes… fear. Never did like absorbing that…”

“Oh! Sorry.”

“It’s fine. I only got a small taste.” She summoned her glove back on. “So… Bad memories of home?”

“You know what spirids are naturally like.”

“Predators. Vicious. Hungry.”

“Yes.” She shook her head. “Even though I know this is a dream I can’t make the images go away…”

“It’s like trying to fall asleep. Think about it too hard and it won’t go away.”

Lady Rarity nodded slowly. “But try thinking about something else…” She narrowed her eyes, thinking deeply.

Corona watched in amazement as Lady Rarity’s armor appeared around her. “…Cool.”

“It is just a dream. You have some control,” Lady Rarity said, marching into the forest.

“…Rarity?”

“I’m going to go deal with whatever’s waiting for me in here. I-”

Lady Rarity’s mother jumped out of the forest, three times larger than a spirid was supposed to be. The brown, hairy mare with a ragged red mane hissed. In an instant, Lady Rarity was no longer in her armor, but was a cutie-markless filly cowering in fear from her mother’s horrendous roar.

The mother kicked Lady Rarity – she screamed in panic and vanished from the dream.

Adrenaline response will wake you right up, Corona noted. Curiously, I’m riding her fear right now and just got a similar spike. Why am I not waking up?

Lady Rarity's mother turned to Corona.

Follow up question – why isn’t her dream vanishing now that she’s awake?

Lady Rarity’s mother charged.

Since it was a dream, Corona felt justified dropping a nuke on the place. She activated her magic and unleashed enough energy to level a small city.

…Except she didn’t. All she did was disrupt the nearby mental images, forcing everything to vanish into puffy nothingness.

Of course magic doesn’t work properly in a dream. What exactly was I thinking?

The puffy nothingness slowly reformed into another image – one of the Hub. People were walking to and from every location, but Corona didn’t need to look at all to know that the people were just shadows of the real thing – mindless drones conjured up by her dreaming consciousness.

She looked at the crystals on her hands, feeling them for magic. They felt perfectly fine to her now – and she even had Raging Sights.

I’m probably not real, you know, Raging Sights said. Will confirm once you wake up.

Corona shrugged. “Fun times ahead…” She placed her hand on a nearby wall. Instead of trying to blow it up with magic, she just willed it gone. She wasn’t aware of when the wall vanished, but it did.

“Wonder if I could do this in normal dreams if I was this aware…” Corona pursed her lips. “So many questions… I hope you’re getting lots of data.”

As far as I know I am.

“You’re a lot less helpful when you’re just a mental extension of me.”

Indeed.

Corona opted to ignore the voice of the false Raging Sights and just walked around. She noticed that most of the buildings in the Hub were nondescript – so of course they suddenly had signs, billboards, and names. She walked past a bookseller. She didn’t even bother to look at who the seller was, so they might as well have not had a face at all. She flipped open one of the books. For a moment, the pages were blank – and then filled with absolute gibberish.

But if she started from the first page and kept turning, the book was a cohesive whole…

“Absolutely bizarre,” she commented, a smile on her face.

She walked through a doorway.

She was standing on a rocky outcropping a little ways away from an ocean. She knew there had been an ‘in-between’ time where she was moving through the doorway and not on this rocky outcropping, but she couldn’t remember it. …Though there may not have been anything to remember.

“AHAHAHA! I AM THE MELON LORD!” Toph shouted in a voice Corona hadn’t heard in a long time – that of a twelve-year-old girl. She turned to see Toph throwing flaming boulders at her old friends, training them for the battle against the Fire Lord. …The battle that Eve would interrupt shortly before it concluded, but that was only in the real world. This was just a dream.

Corona would say it was probably Toph’s dream, since she was the brightest of all the people she saw moving. Everyone else was reactionary to her, her smile, and her eyes.

…Her eyes.

“…Holy Celestia,” Corona said, hand to her mouth. Those were not the eyes of a blind girl – those were the eyes of a healthy girl who could see vibrant shades of every color.

Corona spread her wings and dropped down next to Toph. “How’s it look?” she asked.

The scene changed. Toph was in her crown and royal armor, though still with working eyes. “It looks beautiful,” Toph said, grabbing Corona by the arms and starting to dance. “Every motion… every twist…”

Corona felt more than a little awkward. “Uh… Right.” She twirled away, stumbling as she did so. But Toph was so lost in the dream she didn’t even notice the awkwardness. She just kept dancing – this time a man coming in to take her arms. He looked about as generic as any ‘hot guy’ Corona had seen in dreams before. His features were a bit more defined around the feet than most… But that was Toph for you.

“Hey, Toph,” Corona said, snapping her fingers. “Can you realize this is a dream?”

“…Dream?” Toph said, glancing around. Her eyes began to cloud and the world darkened. “…Sure. I can… But why?” Colors shot back into existence and Toph was sitting on a beach, young, but not a child. “Everything’s so bright…”

“We can fix your eyes, you know,” Corona offered. “If you really want them this badly.”

Toph looked at her in confusion. “…Fix my eyes? What’s wrong with them? And why do you have wings?”

Corona put a hand to the bridge of her nose. Clearly, some people are better at dealing with dreams than others. “Nevermind. You’ve told me you’d lived with it most of your life, you can live with it longer if you need to.”

Giant eyeballs appeared all around Corona. “Live with what?” Toph asked, sitting inside one of the eyeballs, staring right at her.

Holy haloes she’s creepy when she makes eye contact. “Uh… Why don’t we go back to being the melon-lord?”

“AHAHAHAH!” Toph shouted, launching a meteor from the sky at the ground. “BOW BEFORE THE LORD OF MELONS!”

Corona shrugged. She’d seen worse things inside other people’s heads. She moved on, walking until the location shifted again. She came across Flutterfree sitting in a tree, eyes closed, mouth curled up into a deep smile.

“Hey Flutterfree, do y-”

“Yes, I know this is a dream.” Flutterfree responded. “Lolo never lets me have regular dreams. I’m aware of every last one.” She yawned. “I’m taking this moment to have a rest, if you don’t mind.”

Corona blinked. “…You’ve had shared dreams before?”

Flutterfree sighed, lazily opening one of her eyes. “No. But my mind regularly tries to upset what dream I want, so…” She closed her eye again. “I know you’re real, don’t worry. But I… am just going to let it wash over me…” She let out a content sigh.

Corona quietly walked away until the scenery changed again. This dream is cross-universal… Weird… I’ll have to see if there’s a substantial drain on my magic when I wake up…

She passed through numerous dreams of numerous people. The first few were of people she knew – Jotaro dreaming of dinner with his family, Nova taking Starburst on a trip through space… …Corona actually had no idea whose dream that was.

“Heeeey!” a pink potion seller yelled. “Want to buy a potion?”

Corona blinked. “…Seskii?”

“Wanna buy a potion?” she kept yelling. …Clearly it wasn’t directed at Corona, but really at anyone who would listen. Corona decided she didn’t want a dream potion and just kept walking.

As time wore on, Corona found random dreams. There was an Arcei who dreamed he had his arcs back, and was terrified enough by their appearance to wake up instantly. There was a man who dreamed of flying. There was a woman who dreamed of much less innocent things. A pegasus who had a nightmare turn into a story where he was celebrated as the hero of all. A Twilight who kept running through blank white doors that led to different worlds, wailing “I thought it was over!” Clearly a nightmare about something in her past.

There was even a strange, pink puff-ball creature that kept inhaling creatures and copying their primary abilities. It - he? - kept devouring more and more creatures until he ended up being EVERY creature. Which just made him become his normal self. He laughed and started eating again.

The sights were curious and all, but getting a bit predictable. Some of them showed some awareness of the dream, but even those who were lucid and actively manipulating their environment weren’t quite there. Flutterfree had been the closest to Corona’s awareness, but Corona also knew she wasn’t doing quite the same thing.

Corona had come across something special, unique.

“If only I knew how I did this,” Corona muttered, stepping into a dream that was fully dark.

“I HATE CHASE BOULDERS!” Jenny shouted, running past Corona – a large sea urchin rolling across the murky ground toward her. Jenny took a sharp left, and the spiked globe followed.

Corona shrugged. Interesting nightmare, but nothing all that spectacular. She summoned a rock from her mind and sat on it, watching Jenny run in circles through the dark murk. Mildly amusing.

She soon turned to the dark murk the entire dream was made out of – black, oily, but it also collected into clods in her hands. Now, is this what it actually feels like, or just what my mind is telling me it should feel like?

Man, she was bored. In a land of infinite dreams, and she was bored.

“I’ve gotcha!” a Twilight’s voice blurted.

Corona looked up to see a purple unicorn jump out of… …she wasn’t sure where, but the unicorn was jumping. She lit her horn, sending out a blast of magic that reduced the spiked boulder to blurry blobs of color.

Jenny kept running. A new urchin appeared behind her and kept chasing.

“…She must really be stuck in this nightmare…” the Twilight observed.

“I’ll say,” Corona said.

“Yeah, yea-” the Twilight blinked. “Wait, you’re actually here?”

“So are you. Apparently.”

The Twilight gasped. “Ohmygosh I thought I was the only one wandering these dreams!”

Corona smirked. “Same. Corona Shimmer, Merodi Universalis.”

“Uh… I go by Sparkler when I have to, Sparkle Census.” She rubbed her hooves together. “I’m not going crazy!”

“Wouldn’t go that far,” Corona said. “After all, we might need to be insane to travel dreams like this.”

“Oh. …Well it’s still interesting.” Sparkler tossed her mane back. “So… yeah. I have no idea what this place is or how it works. You?”

Corona shrugged. “I thought it might just be my empathy powers acting up, but your presence proves that wrong.”

Sparkler took a moment to process this. “Huh. Yeah, it does. Sorry for complicating things.”

“No problem. It tells me I’m not unique, and that something else triggers the ‘awareness’ of the dreams. Tell me, what happened to you?”

“I went to sleep. Then I woke up in another Twilight’s dream. I learned things about Teetee I would rather not have learned.”

“Ah. Say no more,” Corona said, holding up a hand. “No idea what started it?”

“No. That was only yesterday. This is only the second night I’ve been here.”

“Maybe something happened to both of us…” Corona said, furrowing her brow. “An event of some sort…”

Sparkler nodded. “Sounds about right.” The dark sludge around them vanished as Jenny woke up, replacing it with Corona’s mental image of Celestia City. “…Nice.”

“It is a little impressive, isn’t it?” Corona said with a smile. “Though I may be exaggerating it. I have no idea how accurate my mental image is.”

Sparkler looked around. “Yeah, no nightmares here. …Though I’m not sure why I was trying to stop them in the first place, they’re completely harmless.”

“Unless there are dream demons,” Corona pointed out. “I haven’t seen any yet.”

Sparkler shuddered. “I’d rather not meet one…”

“Probably will though, if we keep poking around…” Corona blinked. “Hey, do you know how to wake up?”

“…No. I just… did?” She scratched her head. “I don’t remember how I woke up last time.”

“I can try to jolt you awake, if you want,” Corona said. “I have a way back through my device.”

“Look at that, you already know more than me.” Sparkler smiled sheepishly. “Go ahead and try. I’ll try to find you again tomorrow night.”

Corona placed a hand on Sparkler’s head. She got a short rush of emotions – anticipation, mild worry – but she didn’t dig around. With a mental push, Sparkler vanished from the dreamscape.

“Right.” She pinged Raging Sights.

You rang?

“Not you,” Corona muttered, willing the dream-construct out of existence. She sent out the ping again – and pulled herself awake.

You were asleep for about an hour. I have a lot of data.

“I’m going to look at it later,” Corona said. “Give me something to inhibit my awareness so I can actually get some restful sleep now.”

Already determined how to do that. Your sleep will be dreamless.

Corona turned over in bed, yawning. Dreaming through the dreams of others is sure exhausting… …Or maybe I’m just operating on one hour of sleep. Who knows?

She let the sweet embrace of dreamless sleep claim her.

~~~

The next day, Lady Rarity and Corona walked up the steps of Canterlot Castle.

“Was your mother really that bad?” Corona asked out of the blue.

Lady Rarity sighed. “I don’t have as clear of a memory of the dream as you do. But I can assure you she was. She tried to eat me.”

“…Nature sucks.”

“You’ll find no argument from me,” Lady Rarity said. “…So, what’re we doing here rather than Renee’s castle?”

“We’re going to talk to someone who might know a thing or two about dreams. Since we’re here early, she shouldn’t be asleep yet.”

Lady Rarity nodded. “Makes sense. I’ll leave you to that – afraid I won’t be of much help, not being able to remember that much.”

“You were one of the better dreamers I found. Most others were barely able to realize anything outside their own dream. Only Flutterfree and Sparkler were better.”

“Ah yes, the mysterious Sparkle Census Sparkler,” Lady Rarity said. “Wonder what she’s doing with her newfound information.”

“Probably studying.”

Lady Rarity chuckled. “Twilights always do.” She stretched her legs. “I’ll be waiting at Renee’s.” She lit her horn and performed a quick teleport.

Corona moved on, walking through the halls of Canterlot Castle to Princess Luna’s private chambers. Corona briefly wondered why she hadn’t changed her title to ‘Queen’ or something similar. She was the singular highest ruler of Equis Vitis, all other Princesses deferring to her judgment save Eve, who was on a completely different level.

Keeping hold onto old naming conventions, perhaps.

She managed to catch Luna before she entered her room. “Hey!”

Luna looked up. “Hm? Ah, Corona, what is it?”

“Have a chair? This might take a while.”

“…Corona, I was just about to get some rest.”

“This has to do with dreams, and possibly the dreamscape.”

Luna turned at her with a curious expression. “You have my attention.”

Corona filled her in on what she had experienced the last two nights – every last bit of the dream-jumping short of describing some of the less pleasant things she had seen.

“Corona, we’re both grown mares, you don’t have to avoid certain dreams. I’ve seen them all.”

Corona flushed. “Can we just agree that I’d rather not discuss them? Not all of us are as ancient and well versed in dreams as you. I’m not inoculated.”

Luna fixed her with an amused smile. “Very well. I shall use my imagination to make inferences.”

“…Yippie,” Corona deadpanned. “Anyway, what do you think?”

“I will look into it come the next dream cycle,” Luna said. “I’ll tap into your mind and go from there. I hope you don’t plan on having any dreams you’d rather I not interrupt.”

Corona twitched. “…And so the mind games begin…”

Luna smirked. “Good luck not thinking about it.”

“You’re relentless.”

Luna nodded. “Thank you. Now, excuse me, I have a bed with my name on it and some real sleep that needs to get done.” She closed the door in Corona’s face.

“Note to self – do not bother Morning Luna’s routine.”

Note taken.

Corona blinked. “You know, sometimes I forget you’re there.”

Raging Sights made no response.

“Oh, hey, I didn’t mean it like that! Come on!”

~~~

Before she went to sleep that night, Corona pored over all the data recorded from the night prior.

“Right… so it really has nothing to do with my empathy ability,” Corona mused. “Not even activated.” She combed through the data on her brain – it was as active as if she had been awake the entire time, but was still experiencing Rapid Eye Movement. If she spent a night like that, she definitely wouldn’t feel rested.

She burnt actual calories expending mental efforts on tasks in the dreams. Luckily only the spell she used to contact Raging Sights seemed to actually activate in the real world, and that was likely because Raging Sights hadn’t existed in the dream when she first tried to use it.

Raging Sights had also picked up transdimensional energy wafting off of Corona while she had been dreaming, but there had been no coordinates to latch onto, nor any indication of where the energy to transcend universes was even coming from.

If Corona were to craft a theory – a mental task she was well acquainted with – she would say there was a source of energy somewhere in a distant universe that combined mental powers with interdimensional travel to create the dream network. …Or it was just a natural part of some universes’ physics, but she doubted that.

“Keep recording me tonight,” Corona told Raging Sights. “I know we’re probably not going to see anything new, but you never know. I’m going to try a sleep spell this time, see if it changes anything.”

Raging Sights just made a beep of confirmation for her.

Corona tucked herself under the covers, getting comfortable – and then forced herself to sleep with her magic.

Her arrival in the dream realm was significantly more jarring than the previous two times, but otherwise nothing felt different. She found herself in Canterlot’s Observatory as a young mare – presumably while she was a student of Celestia’s.

She noted there was no sign of the puffy orange tree. The moment she fully realized this, it appeared in the middle of the observatory even though it didn’t belong.

“Ah, the weirdness of the mind…” she willed herself to have arms and legs, and she shifted back to her waking form with ease. Whatever dream involving her past her mind had come up with was sufficiently derailed at this point, but the observatory remained.

For old time’s sake she put an eye to the viewing lens, gazing into the stars. She saw the Mare in the Moon of Equis Vitis. The shape winked at her.

Corona smiled. Ominous.

“Heya!”

Corona jumped back from the telescope, arms flailing in surprise.

“Oh, is this a nightmare?” Sparkler asked, putting a hoof to her head. “Sorry!”

“No, no, you just startled me,” Corona said, chuckling. “Wasn’t expecting you to find me so fast.”

“I’ve been wandering around for what feels like hours,” Sparkler responded. “That feeling is one-way.”

“I wonder how time works here…” Corona mused, running her fingers across the telescope.

“When you’re dreaming your mind doesn’t have to slow down to process information, it just sees whatever it wants. So I would say time is significantly slowed down, but we still have to deal with processing each other.”

“So we really have no idea.” Corona summoned a stopwatch and pressed start. Judging by how the numbers flipped back and forth, she decided it was useless. “So, see anything interesting today?”

“Same as usual,” Sparkler said. “Strange that this is only day three and already there’s a ‘usual’.”

“Perhaps. I talked with Luna today, she should try to find me soon,” Corona said, poking her head through a doorway. She and Sparkler were suddenly standing in a sea of cheese.

Lady Rarity was swimming in the sticky substance, blissful.

“…I didn’t know she liked cheese this much,” Corona said, somewhat dumbfounded.

“Pff, everyone likes to swim in their favorite foods.”

“HEY RARITY!” Corona shouted. “OVER HERE!”

Lady Rarity’s eyes shot to attention and instantly focused on Corona. “…Dreaming again?”

“Hey, you’re getting better at it!” Corona said with a thumbs up.

Lady Rarity swam over – which was to say she moved her legs and eventually arrived at them through a bizarre sequence of flowing dreamy movement.

Sparkler blinked. “…Did that make sense to you?”

Corona shrugged. “Doesn’t have to.”

Lady Rarity checked her hooves – completely clean. “Huh…” Suddenly there was cheese on them. “…You know, forcing me to realize I’m dreaming has its drawbacks. I start noticing things.”

“Hey, least you have somewhat of a choice in the matter. I’m automatically hyper aware of everything. So’s Sparkler here.”

“Ah… Sparkler,” Lady Rarity said, shaking the unicorn’s hoof. “Apologies if I don’t remember much about you come tomorrow night.”

“It’s no problem. Corona and I are unique, far as we can tell.”

Corona snapped her fingers. “Ah, I want to try something. Mind being a guinea pig Rarity?”

Lady Rarity shrugged. “It’s either that or swim in cheese, and now that I’m aware I don’t particularly feel like acting that childish.”

Corona placed a hand on Lady Rarity and walked backward.

She successfully pulled the spirid back to Canterlot Observatory. “Hah! It worked!”

Lady Rarity took a few steps and fell flat on her face. “…Oooogh…”

“What’s wrong?” Sparkler asked.

“I don’t think… I was ready for that…” Lady Rarity muttered, rubbing her head. “Quite the headache…”

“It tends to happen when one is taken from one dream to another without realizing it.”

Corona, Sparkler, and Lady Rarity turned to see the moon flash brightly, summoning Princess Luna. “It appears as though you really have stumbled across something, Corona Shimmer.”

“No, really?”

Luna ignored the snide remark and extended a hoof to Sparkler. “I am Princess Luna of Equis Vitis. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“Uh, thanks!” Sparkler said, a hint of nervousness in her voice.

“Sadly, our time together will be short. I will be traversing hundreds of dreams in this network, and dragging you three along would…”

“Slow you down?” Lady Rarity suggested, still trying to take in the observatory.

“…I was going to be more tactful and say ‘be harmful to your minds’, but they are essentially the same reason.”

“We don’t mind,” Sparkler affirmed. “We can just explore slowly while you take in the entire thing.”

Luna nodded. “Thank you. Now, if you’ll excuse me…” She flared her wings – and vanished.

“So…” Lady Rarity began. “What does one do in a dreamscape?”

“Walk to another dream,” Corona said.

Lady Rarity sighed. “Of course… Lead the way and watch my mind turn to complete sludge. Lovely…”

Corona shrugged. “I could always wake you up.”

“No, no, I want to be part of this. I got used to being aware of the dream… mostly. I can get used to traveling dreams. …Probably also ‘mostly’, but it’ll be something.”

Corona nodded. She hoisted herself on top of Lady Rarity and rode her through another door. They walked a bit through a hallway of Canterlot before the dream shifted. They were now outdoors, watching a horse race in the distance. That distance was absurd, but somehow they could make out the details despite being far far away, near a church. The details between them and the race were very foggy.

They saw Valentine and Johnny walking on a street nearby, Johnny on a horse as usual. The rest of the people in the dream blurred around the two, becoming insignificant.

Corona furrowed her brow. “End of the Steel Ball Run race in their universe? I don’t know…”

Lady Rarity held her head. “I can’t even process the horses yet, dear, give me a moment.”

“Which one of them is the dreamer, do you think?” Sparkler asked.

“Could be both,” Corona said. “They definitely aren’t aware… Wait…” She narrowed her eyes – had Johnny just looked at her then quickly looked away?

“Oh, a church. And horses. And… Things between the horses,” Lady Rarity said, still stuck on the scenery of the dream. “Mmmf, why can’t things make sense?”

Sparkler shrugged. “Probably because this isn’t your mind.”

Corona held up a finger, shushing them.

“So, Valentine, where are we taking the Corpse?” Johnny asked.

Valentine raised an eyebrow. “…Didn’t I already tell you this?”

“Must have slipped my mind. Need a bit of a reminder.”

Valentine narrowed his eyes. Then he summoned D4C and punched Johnny across the face. “Reveal yourself, imposter.”

Johnny and his horse melted in front of all their eyes, revealing a woman in a blue dress with a metal cookie pin on her shoulder. She generated a sword out of the dream and sliced – only for Valentine to push her back.

Corona caught her and tapped her head, catching feelings of fear, self-doubt, and anger along with images of a red portal and a truly absurd amount of cookies.

She pushed back psychically, shattering the connection Corona had with her. Then she snapped her fingers and vanished – presumably waking up.

Valentine ground his teeth. “…She got away.”

“Uh… Who was that?” Corona asked.

“An agent of Big Cookie…” Valentine said, narrowing his eyes. “She’s figured out how to accurately disguise her appearance as one that belongs in the dream…”

“Back up back up!” Sparkler said, waving her hooves. “Big Cookie? Disguise appearance? What?”

Lady Rarity stared at the spot the woman had just been in. She rubbed her head. “O…kay.”

Valentine stared at her in surprise. “Not a dreamer? Impressive. Those who have not yet been indoctrinated are rarely able to maintain a cohesive thought pattern outside their own dreams.”

“It’s not easy, please refrain from explaining complicated concepts to me. Or anything, really.”

“Indoctrinated? Dreamers?” Corona asked. “Explain.”

“Ah, you’re new,” Valentine said, putting his hands together. “We’re in a bunch of interconnected dreams across the multiverse. Some of us are dreamers and are fully aware of the situation most of the time – such as you, me, and I presume this Twilight here.”

Sparkler waved sheepishly.

“One thing that I quickly realized is that these shared dreams can serve a rather practical purpose. Information extraction. …A realization which has just proven to be a double edged sword, seeing as I almost fell for it.”

“Wanted to know where the Corpse was, huh?”

“Yes. No, it is not in this church, but they were trying to subliminally get to me.”

“…How can you steal information though?” Sparkler asked. “You have no control over where you’re going!”

“Think of a particular person,” Valentine said. “And then keep thinking about them as you walk. You will eventually come to them.”

Sparkler blinked. “Hey, maybe that’s how I found you!”

Corona nodded. “Seems like it.” She held an image of Eve in her mind. “…Here goes nothing. Coming, Valentine?”

“I will have to wake up shortly to ensure I get a proper amount of rest, but for the moment I shall accompany you.”

He’s got an angle, Corona thought to herself. He always does. Probably thinking how it would be good to have me on his side in this world. So he’ll be helpful until, say, he wants something from me. She returned to thoughts of Eve and walked into a blurred area.

They appeared in a graveyard. Pinkie and Eve stood, looking at Sparky’s grave while rain fell all around them. Unlike most the dreams Corona had visited, this one felt sharp. It was clearly a moment Eve remembered well.

“One transition… impressive,” Valentine observed. “Usually takes more…”

Pinkie’s words interrupted his any response to him. “I don’t suppose you’d have any idea what kind of big secret I have no idea about, do you?”

“No,” Eve lied through her teeth, tears suddenly rolling down her cheeks at high speed. “No, I-I have no idea…”

“At this point an agent could prod her,” Valentine said. “Get her to reveal whatever the secret was. …Curious that she knows something your Pinkie doesn’t…”

Eve turned to look right at Pinkie. “Actually… Actually yes, I do know. I should have told you so long ago Pinkie. So… So long ago. I’m sorry. But, Pinkie, I-”

Corona blasted Eve through the head with a mental pulse, forcing her to wake up, removing her from the dream before she continued speaking. “…Whatever that was, we weren’t meant to hear it,” Corona asserted.

“I… Agree…” Lady Rarity said, shaking her head.

The dream Pinkie turned to look at them – then dissipated, leaving them alone in a graveyard.

“…Dream constructs aren’t supposed to have minds of their own…” Valentine commented.

“It’s Pinkie. Don’t question it,” Corona said.

Valentine shook his head. “But she was a Pinkie generated by Eve’s mind… How…?”

“I said don’t,” Corona said, furrowing her brow. “We need to warn Eve about this. And all the other leaders. It’s dangerous.”

“How would they be able to stop it?” Lady Rarity asked. “I wouldn’t even be aware anything happened if you didn’t drag me along.”

“And we aren’t immune,” Sparkler pointed out. “Valentine almost fell for it.”

Corona narrowed her eyes. “Dreamless sleep spells.”

“That will cause madness eventually,” Sparkler pointed out.

“Short-term solution. We’ll figure something else out eventually.”

Valentine nodded. “I wish you luck in that endeavor. But I didn’t find anything. Luckily there are only a select few who can dream together like this.”

“…You don’t actually know much, do you?” Lady Rarity asked.

Valentine blinked; surprised she was able to form such a coherent question.

“You have no idea what this place is, why it exists, or even how it works, really. I don’t think you can explain how that cookie-woman masqueraded as Johnny.”

Valentine turned to Corona. “Keep this one. She’s got a strong mind.”

“Don’t I know it,” Corona said, rubbing the back of her head.

Valentine closed his eyes and put his hands together. “I must be off to ensure I get actual sleep. It’s a delicate balance ensuring the proper amount of dreaming and true sleep. It is paramount you discover what your body needs every night.”

“Gotcha,” Corona said. “Thanks for the tip.”

And then Valentine was gone.

“Guess we could wake up now,” Corona suggested. “Rarity, I can take you back to your cheese dream instead.”

“Wake me up,” Lady Rarity said. “I’m more likely to remember that way.”

“Good point.” Corona snapped her fingers, sending out a mental wave. Lady Rarity vanished.

“I’m going to try to wake myself up…” Sparkler said, shifting her hooves. “Let’s see… Close my eyes like Valentine… Think awake thoughts… and… and… not sure if i-”

She vanished.

Corona shrugged. She could try to focus herself into an awakened state – or she could just call Raging Sights.

She sat up in her bed and yawned. She pulled up her laptop and sent a quick message to Eve and Luna about what she’d learned – it wasn’t the most coherent of messages, but it would get the point across.

Then she slumped back onto her bed and initiated a dreamless sleep.

~~~

“So what happened last night?” Lady Rarity asked as they walked through Canterlot Castle once again.

“What do you remember?” Corona asked.

“I remember the dream with Eve in it rather clearly… Don’t remember why I said some of the things I did though. Anything before that is a blur. Luna was there, horses were racing in the distance, Valentine said some things, and there was cheese for some reason.”

“Remember Sparkler?”

“Oh! Yes, I do remember her. …Vaguely. You’ll probably have to introduce me again.”

“Probably,” Corona admitted. “…You still want me to drag you out of your dreams?”

Lady Rarity nodded. “Of course. I’m not going to turn my nose up just because I have some memory difficulties. I’ll get better.”

“That’s the spirit!” Corona said, smiling. They walked to Luna’s personal quarters – surprised to see Eve waiting outside the door.

“…There you are,” Eve said, trotting over to them.

“What’s up?” Corona asked, noting Eve’s worried features.

“Luna’s in a coma,” Eve answered, grimacing as the words left her mouth. “…You should come in.”

Corona and Lady Rarity walked into Luna’s bedroom, stunned expressions on their faces. They saw Luna in her bed, sleeping normally – but not happily. Her expression was twisted with stress and sweat was pouring down the sides of her face. She was hooked up to an IV filling her with magical nutrients.

“Nobody has any idea what it is,” Eve said. “…Do you?”

“No…” Corona said, furrowing her brow. “The dreams we’ve been in haven’t shown any way to actually affect someone in the real world… It’s all mental…”

“Do you know what she was doing?”

Corona shook her head. “She met up with us for only a short while. She went and started exploring on her own, to go through hundreds of dreams to learn more.”

“She found something she wasn’t supposed to,” Lady Rarity concluded. “We’re just small-time dreamwalkers – or whatever you call us. She knew what she was doing. And she found something.”

“But what would have found her?” Corona asked. “She’s a master of dreams. What could have even done this to her?”

“I don’t know,” Eve said. “I do know that I want you to find out.”

Corona dissipated one of her gloves. “Right.” She placed her fingers to Luna’s head, feeling around inside her consciousness for anything that could possibly be useful.

What she got was a jolt of psychic power directly to her mind. “AUGH!” She blurted, falling backward. Lady Rarity caught her in her magic.

“What happened?!” Eve asked.

“I… I saw green. Lines of green, flying past a black background… And then I felt my mind get assaulted directly.” She shook her head. “She’s still dreaming. Whatever has her is directly connected through her mind. I… can’t even begin to explain how, but it is.”

“…Any idea how to fix it?”

“Go into the connected dreams and make whatever’s doing this wake up?” Corona suggested. “That’s all I got.”

“…Can you do that now?”

“I think so?” Corona said, unsure. “I’d like to know a little more before I go charging in alone…”

“You don’t have to be alone,” Eve said. “We can get another Luna to help you. The Mistress is probably available for an emergency like this.”

“I’ll call Renee,” Lady Rarity said, pulling out her phone. “Looks like today is going to be a dream adventure day…”

“I guess I’ll use my room,” Corona said. “…I do have royal chambers, right?”

Eve blinked. “You… should? I wouldn’t expect it to be anything special if it does exist.”

“In that case, I’ll just have to decorate it while we wait for the Mistress.” She cracked her knuckles.

As she walked off to her chambers, Eve put a hoof on her shoulder. “…Thank you,” Eve whispered into her ear.

Corona nodded ever so slightly and continued on. There was no doubt in her mind what Eve was thanking her for.

~~~

Corona’s chambers contained a single bed fit for an empress. Otherwise the room was empty and white.

“Well this simply won’t do,” Lady Rarity had said, tapping into her nature as a Rarity that she so rarely got to in her life as a spirid – that of a mare with an eye for the finer things in life. She was no fashionista, nor master designer, but she had the natural understanding of such things.

Using Corona’s magic, they were able to make quick work of the blank room. The dominating white color was kept, to match Corona’s own color scheme. Red was dominant with yellow highlights, unlike Corona’s own orange form with red hair. Impressions of her cutie mark were placed liberally around the room. Corona leaped onto the bed, laying down on it. “…I’m going to spend a lot of time in this bed, aren’t I?”

“I would expect so,” Lady Rarity said, examining a corner in the room. “The window will give us nice lighting. Good spot for a bookshelf.”

Corona tapped into Raging Sights and constructed a white, empty bookshelf. “How’s that?”

“A bit generic, but I see no issues with it.”

“Oh, you’ll need a bed as well.”

“Can I make a request?” Lady Rarity asked.

“Sure thing, we’re in this together.”

“Hammock.”

“…Ah, right, because spider webs.”

Lady Rarity smiled sheepishly. “That is the reason, yes. Naturally inclined to find the feeling of hanging comfortable. You know the difficulty I’ve had sleeping with these eight legs. No amount of training with three in a bed prepares you for the entire onslaught.”

Corona created a simple hammock hanging from the ceiling in a corner opposite her bed. “You know, you’ve loosened up a lot since we met.”

“Life got better,” Lady Rarity said. “When this all started I was a mare stuck in an eternal fight, barely held together by my code of honor.” She skittered up the wall and climbed into her bed, gaining a vantage point of the entire room. “Now I’m completely healthy – thanks to you – and have a larger sense of purpose in life.” She looked in the distance. “…I put so much of my life into helping the Arcei. They weren’t worth it.”

“You did a lot of good, Rarity.”

“I know. It’s not something I’m bothered by, though I can’t for the life of me tell you why. It should eat away at me that I threw so much of my life away to help a people that were nothing but problems from the moment I met them to their ‘end’. But I’m perfectly fine with it.”

“Sometimes we’re just happy and don’t know why,” Corona said, stretching her arms. “It’s a good thing.”

Lady Rarity nodded, using her horn to rearrange a few knick-knacks that they had spread across the room. Her bird’s-eye view was really helping her understand the composition better. “I think we’re ready for the Mistress now.”

“Then I have excellent timing,” the Mistress said, striding into the room. “Is this comfortable enough?”

“I can still get us in with the use of sleep spells,” Corona said. “Just stay affixed to me, if you can.”

“I am Luna,” the Mistress said with a smirk. “What version of her would I be if I didn’t know the conjoined dream spell?”

“Good point.” Corona flopped onto the bed. “Any others going to be joining us?”

“Other Lunas have been made aware of the situation,” the Mistress said. “Tonight we shall gather together and explore on our own. I’m here to learn a bit from you first about this strange collective dreaming place.”

“Step one: make me fall asleep.”

The Mistress’ horn flashed, forcing Corona to pass out – and come to within the dream realm. This time she was in a generic office building where her personal gravity was reversed.

I should actually reverse my personal gravity some time, this is pretty cool.

With a flash of white, Lady Rarity and the Mistress showed up behind her.

“This is certainly clearer,” Lady Rarity said, looking around with open eyes. “We should bring the Mistress more often.”

“Allowing her to ride your consciousness?” Corona asked.

“Something like that,” the Mistress acknowledged. “In truth, it’s a more nuanced collection of shared dreams and the spells I use to walk local dream realms, but with a few more defensive measures than usual.”

Lady Rarity summoned her hammer. “This is so much easier…”

Corona willed a bow to appear in her hands. Then she transformed it into a sword. “Shame my more powerful spells can’t be willed to exist. They just disrupt the world around us.”

Mistress Luna furrowed her brow. “I do wonder what the exact mechanics behind physical-to-dream translation are in this mixed dream realm. Perhaps i-

Sparkler opened a door and fell to the ceiling. “Augh! Who flipped gravity around!?”

“Sorry,” Corona said. “Apparently I was creative today.”

“…Sparkler, yes?” the Mistress asked. “Pleasure to meet you.”

“Didn’t I - oh, different Luna.” Sparkler rubbed the back of her head. “Sorry.”

“It is of no consequence, Sparkler.”

“Our Luna’s been forced into a coma,” Corona explained. “We think she found something she wasn’t supposed to.”

“That’s horrible!” Sparkler blurted. “How can I help?”

“I’m going to try to find her right now,” Corona said, dusting off her hands. “Everyone, think of Luna. …Not the one standing next to us, if you can.”

Lady Rarity nodded. “Got it.”

“You seem better,” Sparkler observed.

“I’m cheating.”

“Huh. Cool.”

Corona took a step, walking out a window…

…Into a world with a dark sky dominated by a green moon and a pink moon.

“…Huh?” Corona said, glancing around. “…This doesn’t seem like the right place…”

“Luna’s captor’s dream, maybe?” Lady Rarity suggested.

“Or we just need a few more steps,” Sparkler suggested.

“Or we could ask her,” the Mistress said, pointing to a construction none of them had noticed prior to that moment – a largely gray stack of strange cubes and blocks with rust-red tinted windows. Standing on top of the house was a young version of Aradia Megido, without the red robes or wings. She had her hands held high, pointed at the two moons – and laughed.

Corona started moving to her – but another Aradia appeared in her way, this one with the red robes and wings. “Ah, sorry, but you can’t mess with her. She’s having one of our rare moments of not being aware we’re dreaming.”

Corona glanced from Aradia to the other Aradia. “…How…?”

“I’m future-Aradia, asleep in Equis Vitis. That’s past-Aradia, asleep in the Hub,” Aradia explained, flapping her wings. “If you’re wondering, no, I don’t have the ‘dreamwalker’ ability you have, I just have…” She thought for a moment, looking for the right word. “…‘experience’ with complex dreamscapes.” She summoned a chair and sat in it, smiling. “I would ask what brings you here, but I already know. Luna’s in a coma.”

“Oh, hey! Can you go back in time and figure out what happened?” Corona asked.

“This place is a multiversal construct, which royally messes with causality,” Aradia explained. “You know how most universes don’t exist on the same timeline, and how changing something in one doesn’t do anything to the other? Well, this place is made of multiple dreamscapes from multiple universes meshing. It outright prevents me from executing time travel within the dream, and going back and forward elsewhere will have no effect on the local ‘timestream’. …As much as this place can be said to have a time stream.”

Lady Rarity put a hoof to her head. “I’m getting the headache again.”

“Then let me summarize. No, I can’t.” Aradia smiled sadly. “Sorry. I could offer advice, but it’d probably be stuff you’ve heard already. If you weren’t a dreamwalker, I could tell you how to shift through dreams, but that’s not exactly the easiest of things to do.”

“It’d take too long to teach me?” Lady Rarity asked.

“Definitely. It’s also much less accurate than what Corona does. I have to consolidate multiple time traveling selves to make it work.”

“Wait, if your time traveling future self is here, while your past self is there, doesn’t that mean you can change parts of the dream…?” Corona asked.

Aradia put a hand to the bridge of her nose. “Oh why in… Corona, you have a PhD and have worked with temporal physics on a conceptual level. Make an educated guess on how long it would take me to explain the inner machinations of innumerable multiversal timelines intertwining within a shared dreamscape.”

“Right, got it, cut my losses while I’m ahead and just accept you on your word.”

“Good girl,” Aradia said, smiling her signature creepy smile. “Sorry for keeping you – there’s business you need to get to.”

“Hey, do you know anything about what might have Luna?” Corona asked.

Aradia shrugged. “Not really. If I’m being honest I didn’t realize there was even a shared mindscape spreading across the multiverse until recently. Relatively speaking.”

“It must be confusing to be you,” Sparkler observed.

“You get used to it,” Aradia said, fiddling with the Omnitrix on her wrist. “Anyway, Corona should just be able to walk a random direction and shift to another dream. Hope you find Luna.”

Corona smiled. “And hope you… find some consistency in your life.”

“But that’d be boring!”

Corona and Sparkler laughed at this. “See you, Aradia.”

Aradia pressed the Omnitrix down and transformed into a dolphin-like creature. She floated into the air and swam away.

“…Odd duck,” the Mistress commented. “I don’t know how she remains so calm with so many things running through her head at all times.”

Corona shrugged. “It’s the life she’s made for herself. I admire her for it.”

“I’m not saying I don’t, I’m just saying it’d be too much for most people.”

Corona moved on, dragging then to the next dream. “That’s why she’s doing it and not anybody else.”

Lady Rarity blinked. “…Are we in a haunted house made entirely of chocolate chip cookies!?”

“Yes,” the other three responded, voices level.

“…What kinds of things was I missing before!?”

“Ocean of cheese,” Corona commented.

Lady Rarity didn’t have a response for this.

They saw a man run out of the house, running as if his life were in danger. He wore a chocolate brown suit, had a short brown beard, and wore two watches.

Behind him stood Death. Specifically, the Death known to be in the employ of the United States of the Multiverse. He walked leisurely toward the man, somehow keeping up with his much faster pace.

“I’m going to take a wild guess and say Death is prodding that man for information,” Sparkler said.

Corona grunted. “Great. Guess we’ll watch and let a man’s personal secrets be revealed against his will.”

“Glad to see you’re learning,” Lady Rarity said.

“If Death starts being cruel I’m not going to be able to help myself. I will punch that eternal smile of his ri- hold on, what’s that?”

Death had pulled a thing out of his robes, holding it in his hands. Corona knew there was something there, but she couldn’t actively see it, but rather feel its physical presence even from this distance.

“What in Celestia’s name…?” Sparkler asked, raising an eyebrow.

“What is it?” Lady Rarity asked, the Mistress sharing her confused look.

“Death’s hand,” Corona said, taking a few steps forward. “There’s something in there.”

The Mistress narrowed her eyes. “I am able to sense something, but it isn’t of substance.”

“I don’t see anything,” Lady Rarity added.

Corona and Sparkler started walking toward Death. Corona pointed at Death. “Hey! Buddy! Mind telling us what that is?”

Death was surprised enough by their presence to fumble with the thing and drop it to the ground. Time seemed to slow as it did so…

~~~

Corona became aware that she was dancing. She was in an elaborate form-fitting red gown that glinted in the light. The dance hall seemed to go on in every direction forever – she could see walls, but they were out of focus, and the sea of dancers between her and them was impossible.

She did a twist maneuver by instinct, noticing that she was dancing with someone – a purple woman in a black dress.

“…Sparky.”

“Sparkler, actually,” Sparkler said, looking around curiously as she danced with Corona. “So, uh, guess we’re dancing.”

“Yep.”

“Thing is, I don’t know how to dance,” Sparkler admitted. “Yet here I am. Dancing. Pretty well as far as I can tell.”

Corona twirled her around. “I’m not even thinking about it. I just am it.”

“I’m going to make another wild guess here. We’re in someone else’s dream and playing the part of dancers.”

“Seems like a safe bet,” Corona said, glancing over her shoulder, trying to locate anyone who wasn’t just another generic dancer. “The question is how we got here.”

“Death’s thing?”

“Well, yeah, but what did it do? Make us lose some memory? Shift the dream around us? Or what?” She narrowed her eyes. “There’s got to be some order to this dream somewhere…”

“I’m still stuck on the fact that I have arms and legs. Utterly bizarre.”

Corona smirked. “You would be.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just an observation on Twilights in general.” She twirled Sparkler to the side and pointed with her free hand. “There.”

Death wasn’t where she was pointing – but the man in the suit was. Except he wasn’t in the suit, he was in simple, clean white clothing decidedly less fancy than the articles anyone else was wearing. He was pushing a rolling tray piled high with quality freshly-baked cookies. He put on a smile and started handing the cookies out.

The people around him didn’t shoot him a second glance – they just grabbed a cookie and returned to dancing. Over time, the man’s big smile fell as no one recognized what he had done.

Corona felt sad for him. “Come on,” she said, breaking the dancing routine. Sparkler instantly discovered that she couldn’t walk on two legs properly so she hung onto Corona’s arm for dear life.

Corona picked up a cookie – peanut butter something or other – and took a bite. “Excellent work.”

The man looked up at her in mild confusion. “…You aren’t the one…”

Corona blinked. “I’m not?”

“No… No, where’s Lisa…” He turned away, disappointment replaced with fear. “What if I never meet her today? I’ll give up everything…”

“Who’s Lisa?”

“My wife… The only one who supported me in these early days…”

Wow, it really is easy to do this. I’m not going to prod further though. “I hope she shows up then.” She took another cookie – they really did taste amazing – and walked back into the dancing crowd.

Sparkler fell over.

“Just turn into a unicorn,” Corona commented.

“Riiight,” Sparkler said, shaking her head. She became a unicorn while on the ground. The man didn’t see her, and the rest of the crowd didn’t care.

Corona summoned her horn, ears, and wings, flapping the feathery appendages. The act was calming to her, somehow. “Right… So this is his dream. The question is now ‘where is Death’?”

RIGHT HERE.

Corona twirled around – Death was behind them. Not all that surprising, but his presence was still unnerving.

“Ah, heeey there, care to explain what’s going on?”

YOU’RE INTERFERING WITH A TOP SECRET USM OPERATION.

“How were we supposed to know that?” Sparkler asked.

Corona and Death glanced at her. Death would have raised an incredulous eyebrow had he been able to do so.

“…Okay, fine, it was kinda obvious. But you had a… a thing! We didn’t know what it was going to do!”

IT WAS A DREEPER. A SPHERE OF CONDENSED MENTAL IMAGES I FORMED PERSONALLY, DESIGNED SPECIFICALLY TO CREATE THIS DREAM HERE. He pointed at the man. THAT IS BIG COOKIE, CEO OF A HIGHLY CORRUPT COMPANY WHICH VALENTINE HAS DEVOTED HIS EFFORTS TO EXPOSING AND TAKING DOWN.

“And we’re just supposed to take your word on that?” Corona asked.

YOU ENCOUNTERED HIS DAUGHTER, ARIA. SHE USED HER PSYCHIC ABILITIES ON VALENTINE, AS YOU SAW. THIS IS OUR RETALIATION. WE ARE PERFECTLY JUSTIFIED IN DOING SO.

“Oh,” Corona said. “Uh… Any way I can help?”

YOU COULD HAVE JUST KEPT DANCING AND LET THE DREAM CONTINUE ON. BUT YOU INTERFERED. THE SEED OF DOUBT HAS BEEN PLANTED IN HIS MIND. WHEN THE MEMORY DOES DIVERT FROM THE WAY IT WAS INTENDED, HE WILL BE READY. AT THE VERY LEAST, IT WILL MAKE HIM HESITATE, AND THAT MAY BE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN US LEARNING HIS SECRETS AND NOT.

“…Still don’t like the stealing of people’s secrets through dreams,” Corona muttered.

WHAT DO YOU SUGGEST WE DO IN RESPONSE TO THEIR ADVANCES? NONE OF THIS WOULD HOLD UP IN ANY COURT AT THE CURRENT TIME, AND WE LACK FOOLPROOF DEFENSES AGAINST THE THEFT OF IDEAS.

Corona nodded slowly. “Fine. I won’t stop you. I wasn’t going to stop you in the first place, to be clear, but then I saw your thing.”

IF YOU HAD NOT SENSED ONE BEFORE IT WOULD BE QUITE JARRING, Death admitted. DO REIN YOURSELF IN NEXT TIME.

“Sure thing.”

Death pointed at Big Cookie. He was now talking to his wife and laughing – but Corona could tell his smile was strained by doubt and confusion. This wasn’t going quite how he remembered it, even if his access to the memory was clouded due to it being his dream.

And then the dream cookie monsters appeared, popping out of every dancer, taking the simple appearance of cookies with teeth.

“N-no!” Big Cookie shouted, holding onto his wife. “It’s not time! And it’s wrong!”

“What’s wrong dear?”

“They… They look… I…” he put a hand to his forehead. “I don’t understand…”

“Cookie, you can tell me.”

Big Cookie blinked. “Why are you so calm…?”

“I have to be, for you.”

“No… No no no… Nononononono… All wrong…”

AND WE HAVE A FAILURE, Death said, turning away as the cookies ate him. I APOLOGISE.

“Apologise for what?” Sparkler asked.

Death cut both of them in half with his scythe.

~~~

Corona woke up next to the cookie haunted house, Mistress Luna and Lady Rarity standing over her.

“How in the…”

“Nested dream,” the Mistress reported. “I had theorized such a thing were possible, but never seen it accomplished before.”

“Ugh… Well at least we learned dying is harmless for sure…” Corona stood up, Sparkler beside her. “Why weren’t you two in it?”

“She protected me,” Lady Rarity said. “We didn’t know what it was, at the time.”

“Still not sure,” the Mistress said, glancing at the stirring forms of Big Cookie and Death.

“Death called it a dreeper, in there,” Sparkler said.

Lady Rarity raised an eyebrow. “‘Dream deeper’? Really?”

“…I didn’t notice that,” Corona said, shaking her head. “How does sleep within a dream even work?”

“Believe you’re sleeping. Done,” the Mistress answered.

“That answer’s too simple.”

“It’s all you’re going to get.”

Sparkler twitched at information being withheld from her.

“Wonder if you can keep dreaming deeper,” Lady Rarity mused. “Use one of those things in a layered dream to create another one…”

“That would get really confusing really fast,” Corona muttered, putting a hand to the bridge of her nose.

Big Cookie and Death finally awoke completely. Big Cookie took one look at Death and started running again.

I WONDER IF HE FIGURED OUT WHAT I WAS ATTEMPTING, Death pondered.

“Hey, wait a minute, do you even sleep?” Sparkler asked.

I AM A BEING WITH AN IMMENSE MIND. I CAN FORCE MYSELF INTO A DREAM STATE SHOULD I EVER WISH TO DO SO.

“Final question,” Corona said, raising a hand. “How can I make one of those dreepers?”

NATIONAL SECRET. THAT SAID; IF YOU HAVE ENOUGH FOCUS YOU SHOULD JUST BE ABLE TO FIGURE IT OUT. He then willed himself awake – vanishing.

Corona blinked. “Hrm… Well I’ve already willed things into existence and willed my appearance to change, guess I might as well try this.” She placed her hands about an inch from each other, as if preparing to clap them. She focused on a mental image – a sea of cheese – and tried to force the mental idea into her hands.

All she got was a cheese explosion all over her face.

“You know, I wonder if he was just messing with me,” Corona muttered, wiping the cheese off her eyes.

“I suppose this little diversion is over,” Lady Rarity said, stretching her legs. “Still no closer to finding Luna, or anything that could trap her in a coma.”

“This trip has still been very illuminating,” the Mistress said. “The other Lunas and I will be able to work as an effective team tonight.”

“We still have time to keep looking, right?” Sparkler asked.

The Mistress used a dream spell to check the time. “Definitely. The second-layer dream appears to have eaten much of our external timeframe, but we still have hours.”

“In that case, onward!” Corona declared, taking a few steps in a random direction, shifting the dream from a haunted house to a bedroom.

Lady Rarity blinked. “Well. I did not expect to be getting an eyeful today.”

“I could make it worse, if you like,” the dreamer - Mattie the Rarity - said.

“MOVING ON!” Sparkler declared, pushing Corona through a door in desperation.

Corona didn’t need to be told twice – she dragged them all out of the dream none of them wanted to be in into a dream of complete darkness.

“Is there even a floor here?” Lady Rarity asked, tapping the ground. “I don’t feel anything.”

“We’re all level,” the Mistress observed. “Clearly, there exists a plane on which we are affixed.”

“Right. ‘Clearly’. Crystal,” Sparkler muttered. “Think she’s here?”

“Somehow I doubt it,” Corona said, pointing at Rainbow Dash floating in the darkness.

“Oh, hey girls!” Rainbow Dash galled. “Did you get sacrificed to the sun god too?” She glanced at Corona. “Actually are you the sun god? That’s sweet!”

“…Rainbow Dash what kind of messed up dreams do you have?” Corona asked, eyebrow raised.

“Oh, dream?” Rainbow Dash blinked. “…I guess that makes sense. Eve would never play sacrifice with me. On account of, y’know, the sacrifice.”

Corona blinked. “…Think I should touch her?”

“We don’t need you coming down with a sudden desire to be sacrificed to yourself, even if it is temporary,” Lady Rarity responded.

Rainbow Dash raised an eyebrow. “Oh come on, it’s cool! Well, actually, it feels like raging hellfire, but y’know.”

Corona shook her head. “I don’t get this.”

“It’s simple really,” the Mistress said. “Her accepting willingness is part of her nightmare. The moment she wakes up she’ll be terrified less about the actual sacrifice and more about her willingness to go through with it.”

“W-what?” Rainbow Dash said.

At this point some primordial god of death made of the bones of deceased titans appeared in the blackness and bit Rainbow Dash in half. There was enough time for blood to splatter before she vanished from the dream.

“Time to leave!” Corona said, preparing to drag them all away – but then she saw something in the dark distance. A small white unicorn with red eyes…

“…Thrackerzod…?” Corona wondered aloud. The moment she said it, Thrackerzod vanished – but it seemed as if she moved rather than dissipated by waking up. Corona focused on Thrackerzod.

“INCOMING!” Lady Rarity shouted, summoning her armor and hammer. She threw it at the bone behemoth, finding the creature of pure nightmares to be completely immune to blunt force trauma. “…Surprise, that.”

It reached out to her, teeth ready to snap her in half like it had Rainbow Dash.

And then Corona took them to another dream, this one belonging to Starbeat. She stood on the side of an assembly line, staring closely at various people who slid by her eyes. Any time a beeper sounded, she would brutally vaporize whoever was standing in front of her with her magic.

“…Yeesh,” Sparkler observed.

“Sometimes we carry inner grudges,” the Mistress said. “She would have more than most. To a concept, rather than people. It may just be her brain’s way of moving on.”

Corona spotted Thrackerzod walking through the far end of the factory. “There. Hey Thrackerzod!”

Thrackerzod didn’t turn around – she entered a door and shifted dreams again.

“Dream chase!” Sparkler shouted. “Go!”

The four of them ran after Thrackerzod, Corona focusing on Thrackerzod the entire time. They shifted dreams to a land where everything was tinted blue, following the unicorn through a cave into a dream where everybody was lying, dead, under the hooves of Alushy.

Thrackerzod, while not at any point turning to look at them, had started running from them.

“You’re not getting away that easy!” Corona blurted, summoning fireballs in her hands and flinging them. The dream constructs vanished upon nearing Thrackerzod. “…No fair!”

They jumped into another dream where Flutterfree was sitting on a tall mountain top, the breeze blowing through her mane.

She sighed as they noisily ran past her. “…Again, Corona?”

“Sorry! Don’t have much control over this!” She rolled through another dream, dragging her group into a thorny forest.

Thrackerzod had stopped moving. “You really shouldn’t have followed me.”

“Hey, I just wanted a talk, Thrackerzod. Nothing nefarious.” Corona walked up to her. “Why were you running?”

Thrackerzod raised an eyebrow. “To get away from you. That’s how chases work.”

“But why?”

A monster jumped out of the forest, going for Corona’s head. It was a vaguely humanoid creature with an overall hunched appearance. It had no face, instead its head peeled open with five petals riddled with teeth, clearly intended to scoop Corona into its stomach in as violent a manner as possible.

Corona moved quickly – bringing her hand from the side and touching the creature in the side of its head, through a gap in the toothy flaps of flesh. She got an emotional rush of rage, hunger, and bloodlust before she mentally forced the thing to wake up.

Her wings lit on fire and her eyes flashed a bright color. “Hoooooo…” she let out a breath of air, trying to keep the sudden primal instinct from overcoming her. “That thing… Was a dreamer.”

“Things,” Thrackerzod said, dodging an attack from another one, blasting it back with her own psychic blast, unable to wake it up.

“W-what are they?” Sparkler asked, raising a magic shield around them as five more of the things appeared. The things just willed the shield to dissipate, Sparky’s mind not enough to keep it up against their wills.

“Demogorgons,” Thrackerzod said. “Welcome to the nastier part of T-”

A demogorgon chowed down on her – forcing her out of the dream.

“Greaaaaat…” Corona muttered, forcing another demogorgon out of the dream. “How many?”

“Twelve,” Lady Rarity responded, smashing one hard enough with her hammer to induce ‘death’, and therefore a disappearance. “Eleven.”

“Seventeen,” the Mistress corrected. “I sense others in the sidelines. They have us surrounded.”

“I vote for forcing ourselves awake rather than suffering gruesome deaths,” Sparkler suggested.

“Agreed,” Lady Rarity said, the armor on one of her legs vanishing, a gash appearing on the bare fur. “I am not of the mind we are experienced enough in dream combat to win here…”

Corona nodded. “Got it.” She focused with her mind, forcing the other three to wake up easily.

Then she nuked the dreamscape with an attempt at a super-destructive spell, just to see what would happen. The world around them dissipated into a blur, but the demogorgons willed themselves not to vanish, able to dream up islands of stability for themselves.

Corona decided now was a good time to wake up. She closed her eyes…

…and woke up in the bedroom, Lady Rarity looking over her. “Oh, good, I was worried they put you in a coma or something.”

“I only stayed about a second longer than the rest of you,” Corona said, rubbing her head.

“Yes, well, you were sleep for a full minute after I’d woken up,” Lady Rarity said.

“The sheer number of minds involved in the exchange must have dragged out the real time considerably,” the Mistress reasoned. “We must not take our time for granted.”

Corona stretched and moved to an upright position. “I’m going to see Thrackerzod. She’ll have the answers.”

Mistress Luna nodded. “Of course. I shall prepare the other Lunas to delve into this realm of dreams. We will want to use more advanced and seemingly nonsensical magics to analyze this new realm of dreams, so it is best if you didn’t tag along after introducing us to the initial dream.”

“Sure thing,” Corona said. “I’ll be small-time investigator or something.”

The Mistress smiled. “Glad you don’t feel indignant about not being on par with us.”

“Hey, I’m not the dream expert here, I just stumbled onto something. Not surprised at all.” She stood up and stretched her legs. “Ready Rarity?”

“Let me wake up first, okay? I was just asleep, you know.”

“And didn’t get any actual rest since we were all heightened the entire time.”

“…That just makes me more tired.” She yawned. “Even though it’s still the middle of the day. Great Runes, my internal clock has been thrown off by this.”

“It is not an easy schedule to adjust oneself to,” the Mistress admitted. “I am not certain how Princess Luna manages to get in personal sleep and dream realm sleep in while still maintaining relationships. It’s a lot of downtime.”

Corona shrugged. “She’s just awesome that way. …I am curious though, since she’s in a coma, who’s running Equestria right now?”

“Eve said Paradigm has taken over temporarily while Luna takes a ‘much needed rest’.”

“So nobody knows about the coma yet.”

“Not unless it has been stolen from our dreams.”

“Comforting thought, that,” Lady Rarity noted.

Corona shrugged. “We’ll just have to deal with it for now. Luckily it’s not a huge secret. If a few people learn about it, I don’t see much of a problem unless she stays in the coma more than a few days.”

“Never underestimate the capacity of the population for panic,” the Mistress warned.

“Fair enough.” Corona walked out the bedroom door. “Let’s roll.”

~~~

Corona rode Lady Rarity into the League of Sweetie Belles.

“You know, I just thought of something,” Corona said, hand to her chin. “Do you have a Sweetie Belle?”

“Probably,” Lady Rarity said. “My mother likely would have had another child. And another. And another. It is how spirids work, though I got the impression my mother’s interest in non-spirids was something of an exception. Either that or most non-pure spirids are just killed the moment they are born. …Yes, we are born, not hatched. We are technically mammals.”

“Which is really weird to think about, no matter how many times you mention it. I still think ‘bug’ rather than ‘horse’.”

Lady Rarity rolled her eyes. “Of course. Anyway…”

“Does anyone know where Thrackerzod is!?” Corona shouted to the dozens of Sweetie Belles standing in the main hall.

A non-Sweetie responded. “I do,” Minna said, riding over on the back not of a Sweetie, but of Cadence’s youngest son, Frigid. He seemed to be struggling to keep his legs steady, but he had the dumbest smile on his face so Corona doubted he thought carrying Minna was a chore.

“Oh, where?” Corona asked, looking down at Minna with a warm smile.

“She was at the second floor, but she’s about done with her daily ritual so she should be down right about… now.” Minna pointed at Thrackerzod appearing in the middle of the room.

“Hey! Thrackerzod!” Corona shouted at her, waving. “Come over here!”

Thrackerzod did, her usual uninterested expression plastered on her face. “What is it?”

“You ran away from me in a dream a few hours ago.”

Thrackerzod blinked, cocking her head in surprise. “…I did?”

“Yes. You did,” Corona said. “There were a whole lot of ‘demogorgon’ things attacking us in the end? You specifically ran through several dreams?”

Thrackerzod raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like you had a productive nap. I don’t remember many dreams that don’t come directly from above me, so excuse me if I’m unable to recall precisely what happened between us. …If such a thing were possible.”

Corona blinked. “Uh… You sure you don’t remember?”

“Yes. Want to touch my mind to check?”

“Uh, no thanks.” Touching eldritch minds is just a bad idea in general.

“In that case, I don’t think I can be any help to you.” Thrackerzod shrugged and walked away. “Good luck.”

Corona stared at Thrackerzod’s retreating form, blinking. “…Well that wasn’t very helpful.”

“I could have sworn she would be like you,” Lady Rarity said.

“Same…”

“She is,” Minna said absent-mindedly. “She’s just lying.”

Corona stared at her. “…What?”

“She’s lying. That’s what I said. Isn’t that what I said, Frigid?”

“Yes,” the colt confirmed.

“See? Lying. What’s so complicated about that?”

“Why would she do that though!?” Lady Rarity asked.

“Cause she has to,” Minna said, shrugging.

Corona’s eyes widened. “That’s right. If she gets orders that come from higher up, they overwrite her. If, say, Hastur instructed her to not tell anyone what was happening in the dream realm, she would not only have to obey, she’d think it was the right thing to do.”

Lady Rarity facehooved. “And trying to appeal to her would be pointless since she’s utterly convicted in what she’s doing. Remind me again why we put up with the Embodiment?”

“Because we can’t exert political pressure on them and they rarely interfere with us,” Corona said. “Even Thrackerzod’s usually given her freedom. They tend to not have any use for her… I guess these dreams are an exception.”

“But if the Embodiment is interested in these dreams…” Lady Rarity blinked. “…This may be bigger than we thought.”

“Tip of the iceberg,” Minna said.

Corona turned to her. “What?”

“You heard me.” She stretched her arms. “Come on Frigid, I’m bored. Let’s go to the park or something.”

“Okay!” Frigid said, galloping off. Minna’s weight soon forced him to stop the gallop and revert to a steady trot.

Corona scratched the back of her head. “…She’s an interesting kid.”

“So, what now?” Lady Rarity asked.

“We find Thrackerzod in the dream world where she won’t just be able to dismiss us, that’s what. To the royal chambers!”

~~~

“I suppose you’re wondering why I called you here tonight,” Corona said, striking a pose in front of her bed.

Olivia took a bedroll out of her backpack and laid it on the ground. “Nope, I know exactly what we’re doing today. You’re taking us into a dream realm to track down Thrackerzod and introduce me to the greatest source of secret information I can’t believe I wasn’t aware of.”

Lady Rarity snickered. “Awww, there goes your epic speech.”

“Queen of derailing,” Corona muttered. “Yeah, that’s right. That’s all right. We’ll meet up with the Lunas at the start so we can get them started, but otherwise we’ll be on our own. …Actually, Sparkler will probably find us. She seems to live in there.”

“If I lived in the stuffy Sparkle Census I’d spend all my time in a dream world,” Olivia commented. “Actually, I’d spend all my time in a dream world regardless.”

“Figures,” Corona said, climbing into the bed. “And a one and a two and a-” She put them all to sleep.

They appeared in Olivia’s Puddlejumper – the way it looked back when she was still Sombra. Corona remembered it well – there had been more than a few adventures that took place in this humble little ship. It filled her with nostalgia.

Lady Rarity became aware of the dream on her own. “Yeah. I’ve never been in here before.”

Corona smiled at her. “Hey, welcome to lucidity!”

“Everything’s blurry again,” Lady Rarity complained. “Not as bad of a headache as before – but still not great. I miss the Mistress’ stability already…”

Corona walked up to the main seat of the Puddlejumper, tapping Olivia on the shoulder. “Hey, Olivia?”

Olivia tensed up, whirling round – back in her original Sombra appearance. “Who are you and how do you know my name?”

“Olivia, you’re dreaming.”

“I… What?”

“Think for a moment about how you got here… Look at my wings, my horn…”

Olivia nodded slowly, shifting back into her natural appearance. “Oh… Right…” She rubbed her head. “How…?”

“We went to sleep together. The three of us. This is a joined dream.”

“Right…”

“We’re going to look for Thrackerzod…?”

“Uh… Huh…”

“Oh wow, she’s bad,” Lady Rarity blurted.

“I’m dragging her along anyway,” Corona asserted.

“That should be amusing,” Sparkler said.

“Oh, hey, you made it.”

Sparkler saluted. “Magical purple unicorn, at your service!”

Olivia tapped Sparkler’s horn. “…Pointy.”

“Was I ever this bad?” Lady Rarity asked.

“Not even close,” Corona answered. “I guess this is what normal people are like here.”

Suddenly seven different Lunas appeared in the Puddlejumper. There was not enough room for all of them, but everyone fit anyway.

Olivia pointed at them. “Bu… Who the why the what?”

The Mistress raised an eyebrow. “You should choose more aware company, Corona.”

Corona shrugged. “I figured the master hacker would be able to handle the influx of information.”

“The technical intelligence of someone has almost nothing to do with their dream awareness,” the Mistress reported. “Regardless, I have affixed us to the larger dreamscape now. We leave you to your investigations.”

“SAAAAAAAAND!” Ultra Fast Luna blurted.

The Mistress sighed. “Right…” She lit her horn – and they begun their survey of every dream in existence they could get their hooves on, leaving Corona’s little group to do their own investigating.

“All right, to Thrackerzod!” Corona declared, taking a step.

They appeared on a beach, the ocean lapping up on the shores in front of them.

Olivia couldn’t process. “…Blue…” she said.

Sparkler tried not to laugh, but she couldn’t help herself.

Lady Rarity waved a hoof in front of Olivia’s eyes, not receiving a response. “Wow.”

Corona tapped into Olivia’s surface emotions, getting a very foggy sense of confusion. Even her emotions weren’t fully formed. “Yeesh, it’s like a swamp in there…”

“Swamps…” Olivia droned.

“Wonder who’s dream this is?” Sparkler said, looking around. “Don’t see Thrackerzod.”

“Maybe she’s not asleep?” Lady Rarity suggested. “Or forcing herself to have a dreamless sleep.”

“…Maybe,” Corona said. “But that’d be annoying…”

The pink puff-ball guy shot out of the water and did a complicated dance in the air before splashing back into the water. Corona swore she heard upbeat music for a second.

“That’s who’s dream this is,” Sparkler observed.

Corona shrugged. “Let’s keep trying to find Thrackerzod for a while then. Valentine did say it was surprising I got to Eve after one step – maybe it’ll just take more. If we don’t find her after a while, well… We think of something else then.”

Olivia grabbed her head. “Who set us up the bomb?”

Corona watched the killer whale do another trick before moving to another dream.

There was a flash of red out of the corner of her eye – but when she looked there was nothing. …She wasn’t really sure she had even seen anything.

She didn’t get a chance to comment on this though. There was shouting in the new dream.

“I’m telling you Sunburst, that’s not what’s best for her?”

“L-look, she enjoys the books, w-why make her stop?”

“Because she’s turning into a recluse!”

“I-I mean, nothing’s wrong with that?”

“Oh, you think that because you locked yourself away for most of your life that it’s okay? How were you holding together before I came to you that day? Not! You were not!”

“I w-was just fine!”

“You and I both know you had pretty much given up on existence! I don’t want her to waste a decade of her life wasting away with books! Hell, it’ll be longer since she hasn’t made any friends yet!”

“She has friends, Nova!”

“Then why’s she alone all the time?”

“Not everyone has to spend e-every waking minute of their lives with s-somebody else!”

“Ooooooh is that how it is.”

“…Which one’s dream do you think it is?” Lady Rarity asked Corona, a guilty expression on her face.

“Neither,” Corona said, opening a door to another room in Nova’s house. “I think it’s hers.”

The unicorn filly Stardust sat in the corner of her room, crying.

“Why do Mommy and Daddy yell so much?” she asked them.

Corona sat down. “Do they really?”

Stardust nodded slowly.

Corona sighed. This is none of my business. She reached her hand out anyway and touched Stardust.

Fear. Lots of fear. But under that, a deep, powerful love for her family. Pushing that a bit, Corona found far more happy memories than scared ones. Weekend getaways to anywhere Stardust wanted… Nova recounting grand tales of her escapades… Sunburst reading to her in bed… Dances and music in the midst of piles of ancient books… Magic shows…

There was arguing, yes. There was more of it than there should have been.

…Stardust was too young to fully understand how to look at everything, though. Right now she could only think about the tension and aggression. Because of the nightmare.

Corona took a breath – she focused her mental energy into her hands. She took the good memories out of Stardust’s head and consolidated them into a thing. The thing took solid form, powered by Corona and Stardust’s powerful emotions.

She didn’t let it explode. She gently pushed it into Stardust’s mind. The filly fell asleep within the dream, entering another dream. A happier one.

Corona stood up and clapped her hands, using a quick thought to make the arguing Nova and Sunburst vanish. She wouldn’t wake up to that.

“…You did it,” Sparkler said. “You made a dreeper.”

“Yeah…” Corona said, standing up and flaring her wings. “…She needed it. There was no way I could just talk her into seeing the good in the bad.” She shook her head. “Come on. Let’s keep looking for Thrackerzod.”

They shifted again. Corona caught the red flash once again, this time sure she saw it. They appeared in a dream taking place in modern Ponyville, where it was raining profusely. “Anyone else see the red flash?”

Sparkler and Lady Rarity shook their heads. Olivia blinked. “What happened to the yelling horses?”

Corona rolled her eyes. “Yeah you’re not coming on the next escapade.”

“S-what?”

“Yeah.” Corona took a look around the rainy dream. “Probably shouldn’t stick around these long, unless we see Thrackerzod. I don’t see her so-” Corona stopped short. “Nova?”

Nova was sitting on the sidewalk outside her home, letting the rain drip down her face. “Oh. Hey Corona. If you’re here does that mean I’m dreaming? …Actually, you know what, don’t answer that. I don’t want to think about that right now.”

Corona walked up to her. “…What happened?”

“Screwed up. Again.” She put a hoof over her eyes. “Sunburst is never going to forgive me…”

Corona put a hand on Nova. “Nova, he’ll forgive you. He loves you more than anything.”

“That’s a load of crap,” Nova muttered. “In case you’ve forgotten, there wasn’t love there! It was stupid, in-the-moment passion we can’t take back.”

“…I don’t think you mean that.”

Nova looked like she wanted to continue arguing her point, but her powerful expression melted after looking into Corona’s understanding eyes. “You’re right. There… There was something. But we didn’t give it the time it needed. Then when we had time… it was tainted. There was always this nagging doubt in our minds that it was forced. That it still is.” She wiped the tears from her eyes. “I never want to leave him. I never want to hurt him. I always want to be there. But I always wonder if it’s really enough.” She looked to Corona in pain. “There’s no answer.”

Corona opened her mouth to respond.

“…Don’t give me any empathetic soft bullshit, Corona.”

Corona closed it, somewhat shocked at the spite in Nova’s voice. “…I can’t pretend to know what you’ve gone through, or the complicated emotions within you two. You are right, there is no answer. You have to decide for yourself if it’s enough.” She tightened her grip on Nova. “But I do know a few things. You’ve told me it was enough before. Time and time again. He’s told me the same thing.” She forced Nova to look at her. “And then there’s Stardust. She’s brought you two together.”

“Stardust… Oh, Stars, she’s in there…”

Corona put a hand on Nova’s forehead. “Nova, go back in there. Tell your husband what he really means to you, and go check on your daughter.”

“But I can’t go ba-”

Corona woke her up. “You can now.” She stood up and dusted herself off, letting the rain drip down her sides wordlessly.

“…I think we did good?” Sparkler said, uncertain.

“We did. But it was dirty,” Corona said, turning her eyes to the dark sky. “It’s like helping a friend cheat.” She put a hand to the bridge of her nose.

“We can stop,” Lady Rarity said. “We don’t have to keep looking.”

“No… No we need to keep going,” Corona said. “There’s more to this place than the deep secrets and personal lives of other people.” She stared off into the distance.

Olivia stared at Corona, blinking. “Uh… girl, you look into people’s heads all the time… What’s the big deal?”

Corona looked sadly at Olivia. “You’re having real trouble following, aren’t you?” She held up her hand, examining the crystal on the back of it. “Empathy is a dangerous power. On the surface, there’s nothing wrong with emotion reading. But pushing it, digging into anything beyond surface memories and feelings… It’s the most extreme invasion of privacy in existence. Not only do you see what they think, but also you understand what they feel and also experience that feeling in a way. It’s robbing them of their unique lives.”

Sparkler blinked. “…Woah.”

“Yeah. With great power comes great responsibility and all that.” Corona forced a smile. “There are many things I can do that I shouldn’t. Should I have interfered back there? I don’t know. I couldn’t have slept well knowing what I knew, and also knowing I did nothing. I try not to learn about those things to begin with. But this place… keeps me involved with the deep personal secrets of others.” She sighed.

Lady Rarity spoke up. “There are many dangers and negative aspects to every new thing.”

Corona nodded slowly. “Yeah.” She raised her hands. “Let’s learn more about them. Everyone, we’re shifting. Watch for a flash of red this time. I think something might be following us as we move.”

Everyone except Olivia took a ready position. Corona moved…

…And grabbed the red flash before it appeared in her vision. She tore it out from the sidelines and drove it to the metallic ground. “GOTCHA!”

It was red. Everything else about it was uncertain, no matter how much Corona focused on it. It moved as if it were a liquid, except it also stood tall, and was quite sharp in many locations. A handful of black holes appeared and disappeared all over its form, possibly eyes, possibly something else indecipherable.

It was very unhappy with being dragged out into the open. It charged Corona. She pushed back with her mind, trying to wake it up.

She touched a mind – but she found it couldn’t be woken up. “Wha-”

It cut her across the left side of her stomach. The pain was immense – but it wasn’t deadly. Her mind was quickly able to repair the damage, and her will was able to keep herself from shooting awake from the adrenaline rush. She pushed back with her mind, hitting the red thing again.

Since she had no intent of waking it up this time around, the full force of the attack went into pushing the thing away. It was surprisingly light, smashing it off the metal disc they were standing on.

Corona looked around, finally taking in the scenery they found themselves in – a metal disc about the width of a small house, falling through an endless sky. She saw no signs of a dreamer to create this place.

She didn’t have time to ponder this – because the red thing was back, having pulled itself back onto the disc somehow.

“I have no idea how to fight something I can’t understand and can’t wake up,” Corona admitted. “I don’t think nuking the dream will help either.”

Sparkler bit her lip. “I’m fresh out of ideas too.”

Lady Rarity furrowed her brow, summoning her armor and hammer. “Blunt trauma until it goes away?”

“Or fleeing. Fleeing is an option,” Sparkler added as an afterthought.

“I’d rather not,” Corona said.

“Oh hey, a red thing!” Olivia said, pointing at it. “That’s cool!”

The red thing drove a spike of itself through Olivia’s skull, forcing her to wake up. Then it turned to Lady Rarity, shifting itself into a furiously moving cyclone of spiked tendrils. Lady Rarity was able to fight it on instinct alone for a few seconds, but the red thing would outwit her soon enough.

Sparkler came to the rescue, opting for an old fashioned beam of magic. The purple beam hit the red thing, tossing it to the side. It crawled back toward them, not appearing to tire in the slightest.

Corona held it in her telekinesis, keeping it from moving. Lady Rarity and Sparkler joined her, the one mind of the red thing unable to overcome their three wills.

“I suppose we have a pet now,” Lady Rarity commented. “What are we going to do with it?”

“Panic when we realize it had friends…” Sparkler said, backing away from the edge of the disc.

At least five more red ‘claws’ had appeared on the edges of the disc, hoisting more red things to their level.

“Fleeing is sounding better by the minute,” Corona admitted. “One wake up spell coming u- hold on, what’s that noise?”

There was a loud, obnoxious, VWEEEORP VWEEEORP noise that shook the entire dream. A blue phone box faded into existence, heralding the oncoming storm.

The Doctor jumped out of the TARDIS, mind on fire, the force of his massive will enough to make Corona tremble. The Doctor pointed at a red thing – and it vanished. He made quick work of all the others, nothing more than a simple thought required to banish one of the beasts.

Corona, Lady Rarity, Sparkler, and the Doctor were soon the only ones on the falling disc. The Doctor noted that it was falling and willed the scene to change to a comfortable living room with a homely fireplace. The land of dreams responded to him instantly and obeyed his whims without any haze or hesitation.

Corona blinked. “Uh…”

“Sorry I couldn’t get here sooner, the T in TARDIS doesn’t function properly here,” the Doctor said, dusting off his hands. “Of course, hardly anything does, but that’s what you get when dreams are involved.”

“…Thanks,” Corona said, smiling. “…What were those things?”

“Nasty little critters only known as the Crimson Ones. I call them Reds. Fragments of a significantly more powerful will that exist, far as I can tell at this point, to hide in the blind spots of people’s perceptions. Essentially nasty wildlife.”

“Could they cause a coma?” Corona asked.

“Not unless the dreamer already had some sort of mental trauma or something similar – in which case any ‘death’ could trigger one.” The Doctor looked at her. “So, who’s in a coma?”

“Princess Luna. The first night she explored this shared dreamscape, she found something and was sent into a coma.”

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. “Couldn’t you just force her awake with your abilities?”

“I tried. Didn’t work. Something blocked me.”

“Reds definitely can’t do that,” the Doctor assured her. “Least not that I’m aware of. They exist as temporary things, of a sort. If that makes sense.” He sat down in a chair. “…So, have you received the welcome yet?”

Corona blinked. “…Maybe? What’s the welcome entail?”

“That’ll be a no,” the Doctor said, willing some fish fingers to appear in his hand. “I shall endeavor to enlighten you. Welcome to Topeka.”

“…Topeka?” Lady Rarity asked, blinking.

“Topeka,” the Doctor confirmed. “It’s the name of this shared dreamscape. All of it, collectively. In all the universes it has spread to over the years.”

“Why Topeka!?” Corona asked. “That’s a city in Kansas!”

“I actually have no idea,” the Doctor said with a shrug. “I wasn’t among the first individuals to find Topeka, so I didn’t get to name it. I expect the story is probably something mundane along the lines of ‘we need to call this place something’ and his buddy responding ‘Topeka?’ followed by ‘sure, why not’. Dreadfully boring.”

“It could mean ‘middle of nowhere’,” Sparkler commented. “Or ‘capital of nowhere’, given the Kansas stigma.”

“That would be fitting. Since Topeka can’t exist in a physical fashion like you are able to understand,” the Doctor admitted. “It’s a collection of minds that have entered a dream-state within its reaches. Which has recently crossed into your corner of the multiverse, unfortunately. It will sadly complicate things for those of you who awaken as full dreamers.”

Sparkler grimaced. “Don’t remind me.”

“I think it’s worse not to be a dreamer, hmm?” Lady Rarity commented.

The Doctor shrugged. “People deal with it in different ways.”

“Are there defenses?” Corona asked.

“You can be trained in your subconscious to attack invaders, but that takes years,” the Doctor answered. “Dreamless sleep is very effective, but causes madness. The most effective solution is to wipe the most sensitive information from memory. You’re lucky your nation doesn’t have many secrets, though I would tell ‘GG’ to be on his toes.”

“GG?” Sparkler asked, cocking her head.

“Not important,” Corona told her, “also classified.”

“Ah.”

“So we’re just going to have to deal with it?” Lady Rarity asked.

The Doctor nodded. “Yes, I’m sorry to say. You’d be surprised how little it actually changes since only a few truly awaken as full dreamers. I only know of scant few examples of non-dreamers able to move through Topeka. Usually only those who have powers relating to dreams.”

“Hi Doctor! Bye Doctor!” Aradia shouted, jumping into the room through a door and bolting out another.

The Doctor smirked. “And her, a rather unique example.”

“I can see that,” Corona said.

“Regardless, if you suspect someone is trying to steal information from you through dreams, just track them down and place them in a psychic inhibition chamber. They won’t be able to focus in Topeka.”

“And I take it putting, say, Eve in one of those chambers won’t help?”

“It’d make it easier for them to get to her. She’d have almost no defenses.”

“Gotcha. …Do you know of any way to bring someone into a coma in Topeka? Or how to bring someone out of it?”

The Doctor furrowed his brow. “Theoretically, I can see a large group of Dreamers with powerful wills forcing another dreamer to never wake up. It would take considerable effort to keep someone in Topeka. As for a cure, all it would take is to find where they are and force them awake.” He folded his hands. “Unfortunately it’s pretty easy to mask your presence from other dreamers at a distance. If you continually think you don’t want to be found, you probably won’t.”

“…Is that why I can’t find Thrackerzod?”

“Probably.” The Doctor stood up. “Though in her case, there’s ways to find her by proxy.”

“Oh?” Sparkler said, perking up.

The Doctor nodded. “I know nothing about Luna’s location or what brought about her coma. But I do know Thrackerzod would be in contact with the dreamers from the Embodiment. So, say, if I try to find Hastur…” He thought for a moment. Without moving, the scene of the dream changed to that of a crystal planet riddled with fractals inside.

Hastur and Vriska were standing in front of them, looking at the newcomers to the dream.

“Hey! Out of here!” Vriska said, waving her hands. “Shoo! Private dream!”

“No can do, sorry,” Corona said, walking up to Hastur. “Need to talk to Thrackerzod.”

“I was afraid of this…”

“HOLD ON ONE FUCKING MINUTE!” Vriska shouted. “Hold whatever stupid conversation you were going to have, there’s business here. HEY DOC!”

The Doctor winced. “Ah. Vriska.”

“I’m feeling mighty good about a duel right now. No consequences and all that.”

“That’s my cue to take my leave,” the Doctor said. “Good luck.” He stepped into another dream just as Vriska threw a sword at him.

“FFFFFFFFFFF…” Vriska grabbed her hair. “Hastur, can you be a good eldritch matesprite and go kill him.”

“Killing the Doctor would have repercussions none of us are ready for.”

“Then just go run him through a regeneration or two. He’s got some to spare.”

“Sadly, I believe there are other problems that concern me at the moment.”

“Fine, get back to your business.” Vriska threw her hands in the air. “Wake me up. I don’t need to be part of this.”

“You sure?” Corona asked. “We might be on the tail of an eldritch conspiracy.”

Vriska’s normally haughty and arrogant expression became pained. “…That’s why I don’t want to be here, Corona.”

“Oh…” Corona nodded in understanding. “Have a good rest of your night then.”

Vriska gave her the thumbs up just before Hastur woke her up.

Corona turned to Hastur, hands on her hips. “So. Need to talk to Thrackerzod.”

“I’m sorry. I am not capable of granting that request.”

Corona raised an eyebrow. “You’re the big Embodiment boss, of course you can.”

“This may come as a shock to you, but Topeka has drawn the attention of those above me.”

“Can I talk to them?” Corona asked.

“No.”

Lady Rarity raised an eyebrow. “Really Hastur, not going to give us anything? I thought you were better than this.”

“I am as good as Azathoth needs me to be – no more, no less. You should understand this by now.”

“So what, these orders come from him?”

“You won’t worm information out of me. I am sorry, but this operation does not need your interference.”

Sparkler narrowed her eyes. “And that’s just going to make us look into it more, you realize.”

“Sadly, yes.”

It was at this point Thrackerzod walked into the dream, addressing Hastur. “Taken care of the Matrices and Demogorgons in the green point, we should be able to move forward soon. Your presence has been request-” Thrackerzod took one look at Corona and let out an eldritch swear.

Corona grabbed Thrackerzod in her telekinesis. “Heeeeey Thrackerzod! How about we have that talk now?”

Thrackerzod pushed back with her mind, but Sparkler used her mind to push on Thrackerzod, keeping her in place.

“…This feels wrong…” Thrackerzod muttered, turning to look at Sparkler.

Hastur joined in next, pushing on Thrackerzod, close to freeing her.

Lady Rarity pulled Thrackerzod, keeping the eldritch unicorn in place. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“I was expecting more of a fight from you, to be honest,” Corona said. “One would think Hastur’s will was far beyond the rest of ours.”

Hastur and Thrackerzod were silent.

“So, you can’t talk to us,” Corona said, furrowing her brow. “But we have you trapped…”

“Idea,” Lady Rarity said, smirking. “Take us to your leader.”

“We can’t do that.”

Lady Rarity raised an eyebrow. “You have to give us something to get us to let you go.”

“Would you be interested in a soul-pact?”

“They’re not idiots, Hastur,” Thrackerzod muttered.

“That was sarcasm.”

“You need to work on that.”

Lady Rarity began to pace around them. “It appears we are at an impasse… Oh, I know! Corona, make a dreeper.”

Thrackerzod’s eyes widened. “There’s no way you can do that.”

Corona tapped into Lady Rarity’s mind to grab an emotional memory – the one about her mother in the forest would do – and created the dreeper in her hand. “Looky here, totally got it.”

“Ouch, you guys could have totally escaped while she was busy making that,” Sparkler said.

Thrackerzod glared at her. “Who even are you?”

“Sparkler. Sparkle Census. Dreamer.” She smiled. “Nice to meet you.”

Lady Rarity walked up to Thrackerzod, grin widening. “So we can launch you into a dream within a dream and trick you into giving up information. We have plenty of time to make it work, I’m sure.”

“That won’t end well for you.”

“Or you,” Lady Rarity observed. “So now you have to ask yourselves ‘is it better to let them root around our minds with a dream construct, or to take them to our leader’? One of these options has to be more loyal than the other. Select away!”

Thrackerzod let out a disgruntled sigh. “The dreamless spider trapped us in her web.”

“It appears so.”

“We’re never going to live this down.”

“It is our slice in life,” Hastur sighed. “Very well. We will take you to the chosen dream of the Embodiment. Satisfied?”

“Very,” Lady Rarity said, releasing her hold on them. “Take us away!”

Thrackerzod sighed, taking a few steps – and dragging the group to a surprisingly bright dream dominated by multicolored trees with balls of fluff at their tops instead of leaves. “Behold.” Thrackerzod said, gesturing at a dozen or so eldritch dreamers. A mixture of beings ranging in shape from humanoids that seemed slightly off to writhing masses of mismatched body parts. One of them was a fractal pattern suspended in the air.

There was one thing Corona noticed instantly.

“They aren’t hurting my mind,” she observed. “At least half of these should be damaging my thought patterns just by looking at them.”

“That would be because Topeka does not support true eldritch forms, my child.”

The voice sounded normal, male, and middle-aged. It also made Corona feel like her soul had just left her body. She saw Hastur and Thrackerzod tense in fear.

She couldn’t bring herself to turn around.

“Hastur, Thrackerzod, do not fear. You have done what needed to be done. Your usefulness has not ended. For now, return to the others. I will talk to these three alone.”

Hastur and Thrackerzod practically ran away to meet up with the other eldritch beings in the dream.

“Mortals, you can turn. I cannot send you into retching madness here.”

The three of them didn’t budge. That didn’t matter – a force turned them around anyway. The sight before them was… a human man of Egyptian nationality. He wore no shirt, revealing a fit, but not overly muscular figure. A royal Egyptian hood covered his head, the striped strands hanging down either side of his neck.

They felt nothing dangerous about him. And yet all of them were afraid despite every one of their senses telling them he was a simple man with some authority.

“Sit,” he said, generating chairs from the dream for them. All three of them did – not compelled to do so, but obeying out of fear not doing so would make him angry. “You are Corona, Lady Rarity, and Sparkler. You are currently on a quest to find out who has taken Princess Luna and sent her into a coma, correct?”

Corona nodded, not saying anything.

“Unfortunately, we do not have her, nor do we know who does. There are multiple entities in the larger scope of Topeka that could do such a thing – us included, but also the Race of Yith, Matrices, the Mindflayer’s children… You have my word we did nothing to her.”

Corona finally managed to say something. “W-what can you tell us?”

“I can tell you who I am,” he said, leaning in. “I am Nyarlathotep.”

Corona knew enough about the Embodiment to know that was the name of one of the outer gods of the Embodiment. One of the beings who were not defined by higher entities, but made their own decisions.

In other news, she was the first person in Merodi Universalis to actually have a discussion with one of the Embodiment’s leaders.

“I see you’ve heard of me. I also see that you’re mildly confused – why would an outer god bother with such a mortal concern? Why would servants of Azathoth listen to me? Why would I bother to talk to any of you?” He smiled – it was a warm smile. Corona hated it.

“First of all, Topeka is a bit more than a mortal concern. It is a mental connection through many, many universes, one that has placed us from the Embodiment at a rare disadvantage. Topeka reduces the majority of minds within it to a ‘standard’ status. Within Topeka, even the highest god is not much stronger than a lowly teenager who sleeps all day. It is a particular upset of the natural order – enough of one to demand our action and presence.”

Corona nodded slowly. “I see…” she was slowly overcoming her fear of this man. He was certainly beyond dangerous, but that didn’t mean she had to be quaking in her boots all the time.

“As for why Hastur and Thrackerzod are working for me, there’s a bit more nuance to that. Suffice it to say I have obtained a contract for their assistance in this matter directly from Azathoth himself. Their essences are still Azathoth’s, I cannot change that. But they cannot disobey me unless they’re convinced I’m moving against Azathoth. Considering Azathoth’s general apathy about existence, that’s unlikely to happen.”

“And we come back to why you’re talking to us.”

“Precisely! I, an outer god who is only here because someone needs to be, is bothering to speak directly to a group of shivering, quaking mortals who I could wipe out in an instant, should I bother to track you down outside Topeka. How bizarre.” He smirked, the first action of his that actually looked evil. “I simply enjoy doing the unexpected. It is the simplest of all paths to madness.”

Corona shivered. The act made Nyarlathotep’s smirk turn into a grin. “Make no mistake, Corona, I am no ally of mortals. I just happen to enjoy watching your little plights unfold. When my plights intersect with yours, it just makes existence all the more enjoyable.”

Corona nodded slowly.

“Come on, where’s that fire? That inner rage within you?” Nyarlathotep stood up and started walking around her. “I know you have it in you. You have the power. Tell me what you think, Corona. Tell me to my face how much of a horrendous monster I am. Or how insane I am.”

Corona was silent.

“But you know that’s what I want, don’t you? Not giving me what I want out of defiance?” He licked his lips. “Delicious defiance. I love it.”

Corona didn’t move.

“Good girl.”

Corona lost it. She punched him in the face, careful not to actually enter his mind in any way.

It was like hitting a piece of concrete. The bones in her hand broke – repaired a moment later by her will, but it still hurt.

“Was that satisfying?” Nyarlathotep asked. “I doubt it was. I felt nothing.”

“You know there are ways for us to affect the Embodiment,” Corona said, meeting his eyes with a steely glare of her own.

“Threatening me?” Nyarlathotep seemed taken aback – which delighted him to no end. “This is such a rarity! Do you actually think that somewhere within you is the power to do anything to me?”

“I can bring the might of Merodi Universalis down on you if I thought it was necessary,” Corona growled. “We could take out one outer god.”

“And suffer the repercussions of war with the Embodiment? I don’t think so.”

“Push enough people to madness and society starts doing irrational things.”

Nyarlathotep grinned. “I like it when your kind has good points.”

Corona bristled.

“You’ll find that I’m very methodical in the madness I bring about. A little bit here, a little bit there, enough for my fun but never enough to become disastrous. You have to be exceptionally sane and methodical to be a successful deity of madness. A delightful paradox.”

“You don’t think you’re mad?! That’s a laugh.”

“If I wasn’t sane I would have fallen long ago. Furthermore, I-”

“NYARLATHOTEP!” a blob of eyes and flesh shouted.

Nyarlathotep put on a patient smile. “Why are you interrupting my discourse with our neighbors?”

“THE MATRICES ARE ATTACKING!”

Nyarlathotep’s smile dropped. “I was really hoping you didn’t have a good reason…”

Corona saw it happen all at once – dozens of green presences jumped into the dream as lines of code, cutting across Corona’s vision. They quickly formed themselves into more tangible human forms of men in black suits with sunglasses on – but Corona’s mind was stuck on their initial appearance.

“I saw that in Luna’s mind,” she said, eyes wide. “They have her.”

Nyarlathotep narrowed his eyes. “Then your Princess is being held captive by full AI gifted with the power to enter a dream state.” He gestured at the battle happening before them. A Matrix agent was skewered by a dream-sword, a motion that should have triggered death and forced them to wake up. The agent stayed in the dream anyway, driving the eldritch sword wielder through with a lance, forcing it awake. “Programmed to believe they cannot die.”

“That’s broken,” Sparkler said, speaking for the first time since Nyarlathotep had appeared.

“It is,” Nyarlathotep said, glaring at a particular Matrice that was walking right toward him slowly. “Agent Smith.”

“Nyarlathotep,” Smith said, adjusting his sunglasses. “Your outpost is now under our control. Do you wish to surrender?”

Nyarlathotep grinned. “Yes, actually. Take me away.”

Smith shot him in the head – but Nyarlathotep caught the bullet. “It’s always shooting with you, Smith. When will you learn to change your patterns?”

Smith didn’t care to respond. He fired more bullets than his gun could possibly have while Nyarlathotep dodged or caught them all. “Shameful, Smith. Shameful.”

Two duplicates of Smith appeared behind Nyarlathotep, firing at the outer god from behind. He backhanded all the bullets away, willing his limbs to move as fast as needed. “Your will cannot exceed mine. The song and dance is always the same.”

Corona let out a roar of frustration. “THEN HOW ABOUT WE MIX IT UP A LITTLE!?” She pointed a hand at Nyarlathotep and the central Smith. With a powerful push, she forced both of them awake.

They vanished from the dreamscape.

“Take that,” Corona muttered. “Both of you deserved much worse.”

“…I don’t think they’re going to be happy about that,” Lady Rarity commented.

“Of course not,” Corona said. “Since when do we care what they think?”

“When the Matrices have Luna, and Nyarlathotep is in control of our friends!?”

“…Right.” Corona sighed. “Aaaagh I let my anger get the better of me again.”

“Hey, hey, don’t worry about it,” Sparkler encouraged. “At least you did something. We were just sitting here, quaking.”

“Speaking of doing something…” Corona looked down at the continuing battle between the rest of the Matrices and the Embodiment. “Do we take a side…?”

“More likely to convince Thrackerzod we’re helping if we take her side,” Lady Rarity pointed out.

“Good enough for me.” Corona said, lighting her fists on fire. “…Though we still need information about Luna.”

“You have that dreeper don’t you?” Sparkler asked. “Use it on the Matrices.”

Corona flexed her flaming wrists, summoning the dreeper to her hand. “Right… Yes, that could work. That could work nicely. Charge, fight the Matrices, but try to get two away from the rest so I can grab them. Sound like a plan?”

Sparkler and Lady Rarity nodded.

Corona teleported them into the middle of the fray with her horn. She declared which side they were on by punching a Matricie agent in the face, forcing him awake with her power.

“Oh thank Azathoth you have an easy kill,” Thrackerzod said. “These greenwires are a pain otherwise.”

“If you wanna repay me for all you’ve done, help me isolate a few Matrices. Don’t ask why.”

Thrackerzod nodded, using her will to push back three agents. They responded by firing guns – a stray bullet hitting Lady Rarity in the eye, forcing her awake. Sparkler and Corona charged the agents. Corona grabbed one with her free hand, forcing him awake. With the other hand she threw the dreeper to the ground.

~~~

The two agents had no issue realizing they were in a deeper dream. The sight of Lady Rarity’s mother did not bother them. They also didn’t care when she started skewering them.

“It appears they have tried to trap us in a dream,” the first said to the second.

“Pointless. It will not keep us from Z.”

“They could be listening.”

“It does not matter what they hear.”

“Let us wake up back in the higher level.”

“Yes. Ini-” he paused, cocking his head. “…Something is interfering in my programming…”

“There is nothing on this level but the false dream construct.”

“Something above. Rooting thr-” his neck snapped and he fell to the ground.

The other agent wasted no time in waking up.

~~~

On the level above, the Embodiment-Matricie battle was still ongoing, the eldritch having little luck in driving the coded agents away.

Corona had her hands inside one of the unconscious Matricie agent’s body, absorbing everything she could about his mind.

He really existed as a bunch of code in a box in a universe where the sky was dark and energy was scarce. Human beings were batteries at one point, but that was in the past. They had found alternate sources through the multiverse, expanding the digital network. They were particularly suited for Topeka, since everything within it was built on belief and mental control, and none were better at control than the full AI.

All of the agent’s memories were of the box his coding existed in, or of Topeka. Virtually none held any strong emotions. All his experiences were muted…

They were looking for something called Z. It existed in Topeka. What was it?

She tried to dig, but he had started to shut his coding down. She scrambled for more information – she saw the demogorgons, the Crimson Ones, what she assumed were the Yith… Smith telling everyone to prepare to assault the ‘Mindflayer’s’ front… Luna appearing in a ring of Agent Smiths…

Where was that?

Corona pulled her hands out just before the agent vanished. “DAMMIT!” She shouted, punching the other agent before he could aim his gun at her. “I was so close.”

“You got something, right?” Sparkler asked.

“Yeah. HEY THRACKERZOD!”

“What!?” Thrackerzod shouted, jumping backward to dodge a Matricie agent’s rapid fire onslaught. “I’m a little busy!”

“What is Z!?”

Thrackerzod looked at Corona’s eyes. The eldritch unicorn shook her head, warning her this was a path she did not want to go down.

“Thrackerzod…”

Thrackerzod jumped in front of an agent’s bullet, forcing herself awake.

“THRACKERZOD!” Corona shouted. “Oh you are going to be in a world of hurt when I find you…”

“INCOMING!” Hastur shouted.

A bomb went off and Corona’s vision went red.

Corona shot bolt upright in her bed, breathing heavily.

“Oh. There you are,” Lady Rarity said, rubbing her eyes. “I take it you got taken out as well?”

“We need to find the Mistress,” Corona said, jumping to her feet. “Tell her about everything we’ve learned.”

“Of course,” Lady Rarity said.

“Wait, we learned stuff?” Olivia asked.

“Olivia, go home, you weren’t able to dream well. Sorry,” Corona smiled weakly.

“…Blunt much?”

“I’ve got other things to deal with right now. We can talk later, okay?”

“Fine, but you owe me.”

“You’re the best,” Corona said, mounting Lady Rarity and galloping out of the room.

“Where would the Mistress be?” Corona wondered as they ran through the halls of Canterlot Castle.

“Asleep in the guest rooms?” Lady Rarity offered.

“…Where are those?”

“Right this way.”

They were at the door to the guest rooms.

There was a flash of purple next to them. They entered a fighting stance – but it wasn’t an enemy.

It was Sparkler.

“How in the…” Corona began.

“Grabbed a dimensional device and booked it to Equis Vitis the moment I woke up,” Sparkler said. “Felt the same connection to you I did in Topeka. Here I am. What are we doing?”

“About to give our report,” Corona said. Lady Rarity reared up and they charged through the doors to the guest chambers.

Mistress Luna appeared to be waiting for them, the other Lunas standing behind her. “I take it you found something out?”

“Yes. Lots of things, actually.”

“The highlights first, please,” the Mistress asked.

“Right, so, uh, the dreamscapes are collectively called Topeka, the Doctor’s in it, we don’t have any way to actively defend against people stealing ideas from dreams, Nyarlathotep is currently in control of Hastur and Thrackerzod commanding part of the Embodiment in Topeka, they’re fighting with a lot of other forces over something, I think they’re looking for something called Z in Topeka, Luna is captured by a group of AI known as the Matrices because she appeared in the midst of them, and I attacked Nyarlathotep and who I assume was a Matricie leader.” She took a breath.

The Mistress stared at her, blinking. “…That’s a lot more than we found out.”

“I would imagine so,” Lady Rarity said. “…Was there anything else?”

“Well, I know a bit about the Embodiment and the Matrices now,” Corona added. She went on to explain how the Embodiment couldn’t exist as fully eldritch beings in Topeka so they were just as vulnerable as anyone else to its effects, and about the AIs programs and lack of emotion. “This Z is beyond important, I’m sure of it,” Corona said. “The eldritch, the Matrices, and probably other sides are fighting over it across the dream world.”

“…This was not as informative as I had been hoping,” the Mistress muttered, eyes clouding.

Corona blinked. “…You literally just said we found out a lot more than you.”

The Mistress stared at her. “Are you sure you didn’t find any Matricie plans while inside the agent’s mind?”

“There may have been some things about… Uh… Attacking the ‘Mindflayer’s’ front? It’s hazy.”

“Ah, finally, something useful.” The Mistress sneered. “Thank you, Corona. It’s amazing how smart people can do stupid things.”

“…What?”

“You still don’t get it? You’re in a nested dream, Corona. I think it would be obvious. I mean she’s here!” The Mistress pointed at Sparkler. “How could she get here so fast!?”

“We… were running through the hallways for a while…”

“No, you weren’t.” The other Lunas and Lady Rarity began to shift into amorphous beings of a red color. Corona jumped off the Crimson One that had been posing as Lady Rarity in a panic, sidling up to Sparkler – the only entity aside from the Mistress who wasn’t turning red.

“Trapped dream…” Sparkler said, eyes widening. “It… It makes so much sense. How did I get here so fast!? I just accepted that!”

“There was no way we could have just been at the door, so I created time in my mind…” Corona grabbed her head. “AGH!”

“Oh, you’re about to feel a lot worse about yourselves,” the Mistress said, grinning. She revealed who she was – shifting in appearance to that of a human man in a black suit.

“…Randall Flagg,” Corona said, spitting out the syllables.

“Right on the money! Too late for any prizes though, I’m afraid the time allotted for pulling a ‘win’ out of this has passed. You can rest easy knowing you weren’t actually that useful in your information. Mostly things I already knew, with the exception of that vague Matricie plan.”

“What do you want with us?” Corona demanded.

“With you? Nothing more than information,” Flagg said, waving a hand dismissively. “I already made my attempt on Merodi Universalis. I’m not chancing a second round. You’ve just stumbled across my current project by some trick of fate – Topeka.” He grinned. “Such an interesting glue between universes, wouldn’t you say?”

Sparkler tilted her hoof from side to side. “Eh, interesting is a non-word.”

“I like you already,” Flagg said, sitting down on a throne that hadn’t existed before. The Crimson Ones pulsed around him menacingly.

“They’re all part of your will then?” Corona asked.

“Oh, yes, they’re mine,” Flagg said. “When you’re as ancient as I am you pick up a few tricks like this. Nyarlathotep is going to be so jealous once he figures this out. See, he thinks he’s me. But it’s only in his wildest dreams he actually gets to be me. Fitting that we face each other on a battlefield of dreams.”

“He does have more of a terrifying pre-” Corona stopped short as Flagg turned on a haunting aura so strong Corona started screaming.

“See, this is why the whole ‘haunting aura’ thing is a bit much. Lots of screaming, no interesting responses.” He turned it off. “I prefer to just give the unsettling vibe. Though I’m perfectly capable of giving off an aura of complete innocence, but that’s hardly fair now is it?”

Corona was busy catching her breath. “Not… Particularly…”

“You know what else isn’t fair?” Flagg asked. “Me. Placing you two into a coma.”

Corona blinked. “No…”

“Yes! You’re currently trapped before me. Try to wake yourselves up. I dare you.”

Corona put all her energy into her mind, trying not only to wake up, but also to contact Raging Sights. She pushed… pushed… pushed… she felt the covers of her bed…

Then she realized Flagg had just thrown a blanket on her. She burnt it to a crisp.

“Admirable attempt,” Flagg admitted. “I believe your little device actually heard you. Probably raising the alarm in the real world as we speak. But how exactly is that going to help you do anything?”

“The Lunas can find us,” Sparkler said.

Flagg smirked. “Oh, that would be true. If they hadn’t already been taken care of.”

“What did you do!?”

“Me? Nothing!” Flagg chuckled. “You’d just be surprised how paranoid the Matrices are. Though if I’m perfectly honest, I think the Mindflayer has most of them – it even got Valentine, and I hear he was a tenacious one! It was always the best at this sort of thing.”

“What sort of thing?”

“I think it’ll be more interesting not to tell you,” Flagg said with a smile.

“How about I learn for myself!?” Corona shouted, rushing forward. She felt her hand be pushed back by Flagg’s mental power – but she pushed back with her own. If she wasn’t going to get into his head, she was going to make him wake up. She pushed her hand through his defenses, demanding he wake up.

Nothing happened.

“Wha-”

Then he let her into his mind.

The next memory she had was of trying to puke, but finding it impossible within the dream.

“Impressive mental defenses,” Flagg observed. “When you bite off more than you can chew, you’re able to delete that section of your mind before it can spread… Shame though, you didn’t get to keep any of that interesting information. Could have become a regular mad prophet!”

“Rather… Not…” Corona heaved again.

Flagg laughed. “Well, I hope you have a nice day. I do have other things to attend to – finding Z and all that – enjoy your coma. Don’t be surprised if you get transferred to the Mindflayer. A-” He suddenly became aware of something somewhere else. “You have got to be kidding me.”

Hastur smashed down a nearby wall, leading the remnants of the Embodiment that had been caught in Flagg’s mental bomb. The opposite wall blew in as well, revealing the remaining Matrices.

Corona whistled. “They look pissed.”

Flagg glared at the two opposing sides uniting against him. “You do realize you’re all free to go? There was no coma here. You were supposed to up, up and away.”

“You need to be knocked down a peg,” Hastur declared.

“Did Nyarlathotep plant a vendetta against me in your head or something?”

“No. That was Vriska. She says ‘hi, motherfucker’.”

“How romantic,” Flagg muttered. He sent half the Crimson Ones at the Embodiment, the other half at the Matrices.

Both teams completely ignored the incoming Crimson Ones and attacked Flagg himself with their full forces. Corona and Sparkler added their wills to the force against Flagg.

Flagg sighed, watching as lacerations formed all over his body. “See you soon,” he said, allowing himself to vanish.

“Everyone to the next level!” Hastur ordered.

Corona closed her eyes, waking herself up. She came to on the battlefield between the Embodiment and Matrices.

A Crimson One was standing over her, driving a spike toward her head.

She quick-teleported away while some Matrices filled it with lead. A mostly useless proposition.

“Where’s Flagg?” She demanded, scanning the area, seeing no sign of the evil creature.

“Could be in any dream,” Hastur said. “If he can control the Crimson Ones at a distance, he can work from as far away as he wants.”

Corona twitched. “Just… Great.”

Sparkler defended her from a Matricie shot. “I think the truce has been broken!”

Corona sighed – noticing how the dream had turned into a three-way battlefield between Crimson Ones, the Embodiment, and Matrices. “I’m beginning to think we can’t do much else here.”

“Really?”

“We don’t understand the reasons behind this battle. Which side should we support? Obviously not Flagg, but Nyarlathotep is basically just a mini-Flagg and the Matrices have Luna. Then there’s the Mindflayer which apparently has other Lunas, whatever the demogorgons are, and… yeah. Basically one big mess.”

“We could try to find the Yith?”

“…I hear they’re more passive observers than anything.”

“They might have seen some things then.”

Corona nodded. “…Or I could just go rough Thrackerzod up and not give her a choice about spilling the beans.”

“If you think that’ll work.”

“I think I’m going to try it,” Corona said with a growl. “She does need it.”

Sparkler looked like she wanted to object, but shook her head. “Whatever you need.”

Corona closed her eyes and focused. “See you tomorrow night, probably.”

She woke up in her bed, for real this time.

“Oh thank Armonia,” Lady Rarity said, slipping into her old swear. “I thought you weren’t coming out.”

Oliva gave Corona a thumbs up. “I knew you’d pull through. …Even if I still have no idea what was going on in there.”

Corona rubbed her head, grunting. “The Lunas have been captured. There’s a dream war over this thing called Z. I need to go give Thrackerzod a piece of my mind and go track down the Race of Yith.”

“Ah, that latter one I can help with,” Olivia said. “Expect something later today.”

Corona realized there was a third person in the room – Death. “…What’re you doing here?”

I WAS PRESENT WHEN MISTRESS LUNA WAS CAPTURED BY THE MATRICES. I AM UNAWARE OF WHERE THEY ARE NOW, BUT SINCE VALENTINE WAS ALSO TAKEN, THIS HAS SUDDENLY BECOME MY CONCERN.

“This is spiraling out of control,” Corona said, standing up quickly. “This war over this Z thing is spilling out of Topeka into our worlds. I’m not going to stand for this.”

“What are you going to do?” Lady Rarity asked.

“Give Thrackerzod a piece of my mind. Death, you up for some dangerous invasion of privacy?”

IF IT WILL HELP, I WILL PUT ASIDE MY RESERVATIONS.

“Good. Rarity, while we’re moving, help me write up a report for Eve and the other Overheads. There’s going to be a lot…”

~~~

Corona blew open the doors of the League of Sweetie Belles. “THRACKERZOD!”

Minna took one look at Corona’s face and decided now was a good time to start drinking a juice box. It punctuated the sudden silence in the League of Sweetie Belles.

Thrackerzod turned to look at Corona with a calm expression. “Corona, if this is about the dream craziness, I still know nothing.”

Corona noticed that Allure, Squeaky, and Bot were standing behind Thrackerzod defensively – with the rest of the League looking ready for a fight as well.

Corona glanced behind her at Lady Rarity and Death, then back at Thrackerzod. “What did you tell them, Thrackerzod? That I’d gone mad for blood? That I’ve lost my mind or something?”

“She just told us we needed to protect her,” Allure said. “That was good enough for us.”

“Then maybe you need to learn a little bit about what’s going on,” Corona said, taking a few steps forward. “Thrackerzod here is lying through her teeth. And yes, she does have good reason to. That ‘good reason’ is because her higher eldritch bosses have demanded she not reveal anything. But she’s hiding secrets about a war happening in a dream world that have almost every version of Luna in Merodi Universalis in a coma. Ambassador Valentine as well, if you’re wondering why Death’s here.”

Squeaky’s certainty faltered first. “…You’re sure.”

“As sure as I am that Nyarlathotep has been bending both Hastur and Thrackerzod to his will for this little war. I think you know more about Nyarlathotep than I do. I bet it isn’t pretty.”

Allure’s determination faltered. “…Zod… She’s right, isn’t she?”

Thrackerzod grimaced. “No,” she lied, her eyes moist.

“…Right girls, stand down,” Allure said, backing away from Thrackerzod. “Sorry,” she whispered to her friend.

“I know,” Thrackerzod said.

Bot blinked. “Wait, what? What are we doing!? We need to defend Zod, regardless!”

“Sometimes your friends do things you can’t help,” Allure told Bot.

“Zod isn’t like that! Zod is 100% reliable!”

Allure sighed. “…You can fight with her if you want, Bot. But the rest of us aren’t.”

“I will!” Bot declared, moving closer to Thrackerzod. “I will stand by you until the end!”

Thrackerzod sighed. “Bot, go stand with the rest of them.”

“Huh!?”

“I said go stand with the rest of them.”

Bot was unable to process the meaning behind this. She followed the order, backing up to be with Squeaky and Allure.

Thrackerzod turned to Corona. “I don’t know anything,” she said. “You can’t make me tell you anything.”

Corona dissipated one of her gloves, flexing her bare hand. “I don’t have to.”

“My mind is more than you can handle.”

“I think I can manage, especially with some backup.” She nodded to Death.

The two of them readied for a fight. “All I have to do is touch you.” She teleported to Thrackerzod, but she teleported away at the same time.

“IF I THINK THE ONLY WAY TO KEEP THE INFORMATION FROM YOU IS TO KILL MYSELF I WILL DO IT!” Thrackerzod wailed. “DON’T MAKE ME DO THAT!”

Corona’s determination fell down. “W-what?”

“You. Heard. Me.”

Corona stared at Thrackerzod. “…How can you live like this?”

“I know it doesn’t make sense to you. It doesn’t make sense to any of you. Painful as it would be, it would still be the right decision. It’s what we are.”

Allure put a hoof to her mouth. “Thrackerzod…”

“It’d be simple. I know the exact spell to snap this form’s brain through a higher-level construct. My soul will return to the Embodiment and I will never return. I’d… I’d rather not do that. Don’t make me.”

Corona turned to Death. “Hey, Death?”

YES?

“Can you keep her from dying?”

SURE.

“Thanks.”

Thrackerzod blinked. “Well that’s completely cheap.”

“Yeah. It is. Gonna just let me touch you now or-”

Thrackerzod put an eldritch knife to Lady Rarity’s throat. “How’s this?”

I CAN KEEP HER FROM DYING TOO. IN FACT, HOW ABOUT I JUST REMOVE DEATH FROM THIS AREA FOR THE NEXT FEW MINUTES? IT’LL KEEP YOU FROM THREATENING ANYONE ELSE.

Thrackerzod twitched. “Why can’t you ju-”

Corona dropped the illusion of herself standing next to Death – revealing herself to actually be right next to Thrackerzod. “Gotcha,” she said, placing her bare hand on the eldritch unicorn.

Holy Celestia, this hurts. Corona said, forcing her pre-established mental link with Death to maintain itself. Have to push through, though, have to push through…

The surface emotions were relatively easy. Exceptionally heightened feelings of distress filled her mind. The fact that uncertainty wasn’t one of them bothered her to no end – Thrackerzod really believed following her orders was the best thing she could do. There was no doubt at all. Just a deep sorrow that came from the understanding she knew her friends lacked.

Corona wanted so badly to alter that part of Thrackerzod, but she needed to retain her energy. She went in deeper, dragging Death with her into the eldritch unicorn’s mind.

They passed the physical part of her mind easily, where all the biological instincts and muscle memories were stored. It was rather boring and empty, but it served as a buffer between them and Thrackerzod’s true mind.

A truly horrific thing. She and Death saw memories that didn’t exist in what they would consider time. They saw her ‘talking’ in three separate timelines simultaneously. They saw her bowing to Azathoth…

…Corona couldn’t take the sight of Azathoth. Her mind had to remove it for her. She turned to Death. “…Can you describe it to me?”

…EVERYTHING CONSOLIDATED INTO AN ABSOLUTE FOOL, ALL POWER TOGETHER IN THE LOWEST WAY.

“What?”

BUT THE FOOLISH AND THE MEEK SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH.

“…That sounds like something Flutterfree or Rev would say.”

IT IS.

Corona sighed, forcing the memories of Azathoth out of the way. “We need Z,” she spoke aloud. “Z… Z…” She sifted through Thrackerzod’s mind. “See anything?” she asked Death.

I HEAR BUZZING. LIKE FROM AN INSECT.

Corona’s eyes noticed something normal in the memories. “I see the demogorgons. They’re standing like a wall…”

And then everything snapped to black.

“…What the heck? Where’d it all go?” Corona asked nobody in particular. She reached out with her hands, scrambling for any mental threads. “This has never happened before…”

WE ARE NOT ALONE IN HERE.

“Did one of the Sweeties come in?”

“No,” Nyarlathotep said, appearing in front of Corona and Death. “I did.”

“You!?” Corona blurted. “How did y-”

“She called me,” Nyarlathotep said, walking around the two of them, a predatory expression on his face. “You’re prodding where you should not tread, Corona.”

Corona glared at him. “Why would you even care what I know? You’d like to see me go insane, right?”

Nyarlathotep put his face close to hers. “I would love nothing more than for you to fall to my gifts, Corona. But there are things you do not get to uncover.”

Corona grinned as she realized something. “You think I can mess up your plans somehow! That there’s something I can do that will ruin everything! Ooooh I bet you’re really mad the Matrices attacked when they did and put me on the track of something you actually cared about!”

Nyarlathotep scowled. “You will not be getting anything from Thrackerzod, of that I am certain. Furthermore…” Nyarlathotep pointed a finger at her head. “Say goodbye to your sanity.”

Ponyfeathers.

Corona knew outright escaping wasn’t an option here, so she did the next best thing.

Fight the elder god head on.

She rushed her hand forward, intercepting the mental attack he had sent toward her head. It passed right through her initial defenses, tearing away at her mind. She could feel her earliest memories start to peel away.

“Not… happening!” She shouted. Pushing all her magic into her mental projection. “RAGING SIGHTS! ALPHA-SEVEN-NINER!”

Roger.

Magical circles appeared around Corona and Thrackerzod’s bodies in the real world, shooting as much magic as they could into defending Corona’s mind. A third ring appeared above them.

“Attention!” Raging Sights called. “Nyarlathotep is attempting to destroy Corona’s mind! Any magic you can provide into the floating ring will be much appreciated!”

“YOU HEARD HER!” Allure shouted. “GIVE IT EVERYTHING YOU’VE GOT!”

The entire present League of Sweetie Belles did just that. Those that couldn’t made calls to people they knew. Magicians from across Celestia City started teleporting in to assist. One Sweetie in particular had a fractured crystal in her head instead of a gemstone, and was shooting more light energy into the magic rings than any of the other Sweeties.

Nyarlathotep grinned. “What exactly do you think more magic will do?”

“Keep me alive?” Corona suggested, for the moment holding her consciousness.

“You can’t die right now,” Nyarlathotep said, reminding her that Death was present. “You should be more worried about coming out of this with every diagnosable insanity, and some others.”

“Yeah, how about no?” Corona suggested, pushing back even harder. “RAGING SIGHTS! Try some editing in here!”

Negative. Nyarlathotep is anchoring his presence, somehow.

“Figures,” Corona muttered, trying to think of something else to do.

Death provided what he could. HE IS BEYOND ME. I CANNOT SEE HIS DEATH.

Nyarlathotep grinned. “See? You are still just a mortal, no matter how much power you have. More and more allies appear outside to give you power. In hopes that you will survive with your mind in tact. But it won’t happen. I am the spawn of Azathoth himself! The Crawling Chaos! I run the Eldritch Embodiment! You’re just a biological curiosity!”

Corona’s eyes flashed purple. “You’re about to be surprised.”

Nyarlathotep narrowed his eyes. “What are you tapping into?”

“There was a time, long ago, when I was completely controlled by an entity known as Majora,” she said, a strange purple heart-shaped object appearing behind her head, spikes surrounding her like a halo. Her ears twitched. “That entity is now trapped in a black hole, unable to do anything with her power. But I’ve carried the scars of her in me ever since that day. Something about you has awakened those things.”

Nyarlathotep roared. “NO!”

“HAVE A TASTE OF YOUR OWN MEDICINE!” Corona shouted, purple writhing tentacles of impossibility lashing out of her essence and surrounding Nyarlathotep. It pushed him back enough to give her access to Thrackerzod’s thoughts again. “Here we go… Just a little proddin-”

“E͇͞N̤O͈͚̣U͇̳̥̭̹̫G̜͔͍̦̝͖̫͞H̘̥̞̻͓̬̕”

Nyarlathotep left.

In the process Corona felt every bit of Majora’s essence vanish from her along with a tremendous portion of Thrackerzod’s mind.

She drifted back to the real world, taking a few steps back from Thrackerzod. She put her hand on a wall and actually threw up. “Aaaaah…”

“W-what happened!?” Allure blurted. “Did you win!?”

“Not really,” Minna answered for her. “More like a draw.”

Allure didn’t register that it was her daughter that had said that. “…Corona? Can you… explain?”

Corona tried to speak but just kept heaving instead.

WE SHOWED THAT WE HAD ENOUGH POWER TO RESIST NYARLATHOTEP’S MENTAL SHADOW, Death answered. SO RATHER THAN SUFFER A TRUE EMBARRASSMENT, HE CUT HIS LOSSES AND RAN, DRAGGING WHO KNOWS WHAT WITH HIM.

Corona gasped. “I… am never going to be able to do that agaiHUUUURK.” She trembled, slamming her second arm on the wall. “Sorry… For the mess…”

“Don’t worry about the stupid mess!” Allure blurted. “We need to get you to a doctor!”

“I… Am fine…”

THE ONLY REASON YOU AREN’T DYING ON THE SPOT IS BECAUSE I’M HERE.

“…Death, you’re supposed to have my back. I… GAAA- okay false alarm, nothing left to reGURGItate…” Why do I feel like I’m missing a lung?

Bot made some beeping noises. “Yes, 911? Corona needs medical attention, League of Sweetie Belles. Eldritch deity combat.”

“…Deity combat…” Thrackerzod said, staring off into space.

“R-right, Zod,” Corona said, trembling, but managing to turn her face to look at Thrackerzod. “How you feeling? He did something to… you.”

“He removed it,” Thrackerzod said, a hoof to her side. “He… He removed it. All of it!”

“But you’re still talking with the deep voice,” Squeaky said. “Don’t you lose that if you lose your eldritch half?”

“I’m not talking about that! He… I…” She rubbed her head. “I think he was trying to take anything away you could use against him. Any piece of information… Any protocol he installed in me… …He just took everything else with him in his rush.”

Allure gasped. “Does that mean what I think it means?”

“I… I don’t have to obey Azathoth anymore.” Thrackerzod blinked. “Or Hastur. Or any of them.”

Corona gave her a weak thumbs up. “Glad I could… Help…”

Allure dismissed her with a hoof wave. “Thrackerzod. Is this… Is it a good thing, for you?”

Thrackerzod stared at Allure. “I have no idea.”

“Then think about it. Above all else, don’t re-establish your contract with Azathoth without giving it some serious thought.”

Thrackerzod nodded slowly. She scrunched her face up, trying not to cry.

Allure pulled her into a hug. “It’s okay.”

“I… I was going to kill myself. I was going to kill you. If Lady Rarity didn’t work I was going to put a knife to Minna’s throat!” Thrackerzod wailed. “I… I…”

Corona stumbled over, sitting on the ground next to them. “You understand now, don’t you?”

Thrackerzod stared at her.

“You understand how what you were doing wasn’t right.”

Thrackerzod took a moment to think – but then she nodded.

“Good.” Corona let out a sigh. “That’s all I need.”

“…Didn’t you want information?”

“I did. But you don’t have that anymore. So I’ll just be happy with you having learned something.” She flopped onto her back. “That and a hospital bed.”

“I probably need one as well.”

“We’re in luck, because the paramedics are on the way! Woo!”

~~~

Olivia walked into Corona’s hospital room. “How are you feeling?”

Corona sat up in her hospital bed and shrugged. “Not like I’m about to die anymore. That’s good, I guess. Still no closer to solving this Topeka problem.”

“I might have something for you. So, you know how the Yith are consciousness-jumpers?”

“Yeah?”

“The only way I could get an audience with one is if I agreed to let them possess me for two days and do whatever they wanted aside from kill me.”

“Olivia, don’t do i-”

Olivia pressed a button. “Sorry, Amiga!”

Corona facepalmed. “Oh boy…”

A different look came over Olivia’s features. “Ah, the perfect skin tone.”

“That’s just creepy.”

The Yith folded her arms. “Oh, you’re the one who has questions? Right, right, right, the traaaade… Make this quick, all right? I’ve got a lot of human pleasures to experience and so little time.”

Corona shifted uncomfortably. “…Right. So, I need to know about Topeka.”

“Of course you do. Anything specific?”

“What is Z?”

The Yith raised her eyebrows. “Surprised you’ve even heard of Z.”

“You going to tell me or not?”

“Hmm… Well I’d have to invalidate the contract not to tell you, and that’d look bad. So fine. Z is the entity that defines the rules that operate Topeka.”

“What?”

“Z is the entity that defines the rules that operate Topeka.”

“I heard you the first time, I meant elaborate.”

“Fine. There are many, many ways a combination dream world could work. Everyone could do anything they wanted, nobody would ever become aware of the dreams, or everything that happened in dreams would leave lasting damage. Z is the entity that determines all dreams happen according to standard biological understanding, that deaths aren’t permanent, and that only a select few are dreamers. Z is the reason you can walk to and from dreams the way you do.”

Corona nodded. “So why does everyone want to get to Z?”

“To control it, of course. Z is a dreamer just like everyone else. If Z can be forced to be woken up, you can take the place of Z.”

Corona’s eyes widened. “And if the Embodiment did that…”

“Dreams could become an eldritch playground. Most everyone connected to Topeka would go mad in an instant if Nyarlathotep had his way.”

“Holy… And the Matrices would create a dreamscape that let them do anything… Don’t even want to think of what Flagg or the demogorgons would do…”

“Don’t know about Flagg. The demogorgons want to corrupt every universe they come in contact with to be like their homeworld. Not pretty.”

“…I can imagine…” Corona muttered, flopping back onto her bed. “What are you guys doing about it?”

“We have a button to sever ourselves from Topeka if things go south. For now, we watch.”

“Mmm. Any suggestions?”

“Get to Z yourself and take it over. Far as we can tell, it only takes a single entity to do it. We’re not sure why it’s so hard to get to, though. They’ve been fighting over Z for a long time.”

Corona shook her head. “And it falls to me to deal with this.”

“Yep! Good luck being the hero! I’m off to find fun people!”

“Sure.” Corona said, not looking at the Yith as she left.

She wasn’t cleared to leave the hospital yet – and even if she were, what would she really do? Everything was in Topeka now. She used her phone to send what she learned to Eve and then… that was that.

Find Z… How was she going to find Z before all of them…

There was a knock at her door.

“Come in,” she said.

Thrackerzod walked into the room. The two stared at each other for a moment.

“I need you to take me into Topeka,” Thrackerzod said. “I’m not sure I can do it myself anymore.”

“Sure. May I ask why?”

“I need to talk to Hastur. …Without risking my life.”

Corona’s expression softened. “Come up here.” Thrackerzod jumped up on the bed. She curled up in Corona’s lap like a big dog. The eldritch unicorn was significantly less steadfast and certain than usual.

Corona closed her eyes – and forced them both to sleep.

She found Thrackerzod in Topeka quickly. The unicorn was staring at other versions of herself jumping off a cliff into the gaping maw of Nyarlathotep.

“The Collector was nice enough to let you hate him, I hear,” Thrackerzod said. “He valued it when people voiced their disagreement. Liked differing opinions. I have a feeling the Embodiment would work better if it were like that.”

“You hate your masters?”

“I hate Nyarlathotep. Always have. The only one of the outer gods who had any interest in mortal beings, always fixated on driving them to madness to satisfy his own amusements. It was worse than the apathy of all the others.”

“And Azathoth?”

“…Azathoth is called the Blind Idiot for a reason,” Thrackerzod admitted. “He cares very little for anything. So little that his direct spawn can develop further beyond him than most. …Nyarlathotep is Azathoth’s son, as much as the word ‘son’ can apply to him anyway. He broke free long before I was created. …Most of the outer gods come from Azathoth. A Blind Idiot who can’t even wrangle his own spawn.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what it means about me.”

“I don’t know either. I can’t.”

Thrackerzod nodded. “But you try. That’s impressive.” She stood up and stretched her legs. “I don’t think Azathoth was a bad master. He treated me well and… ‘respected my wishes’ isn’t quite right. I think ‘acknowledged that I had wishes’ fits better. But he still signed me off to Nyarlathotep without much fuss.” She looked up at the sky. “…So I’m not going back. Just like the other me suggested.”

“…The League would be proud of you.”

“It’s not you all I’m concerned about,” Thrackerzod said. “I may be a ‘high daemon prince’ – or princess, whatever – but an entity of my relatively low stature becoming a free elder one? Unheard of. Blasphemous. Worthy of extermination.”

“We can protect you, you know. We’re not powerless anymore.”

“I know,” Thrackerzod nodded. “But that doesn’t change the fact that I don’t just know ponies. I know other beings as well.” She looked at Corona. “Take me to Hastur.”

Corona nodded. She started walking – though didn’t get anywhere before Sparkler appeared.

“Hey! How’d it go?”

“…I’ll explain later,” Corona said. “We’ve got something to do first.”

“Uh… Okay.” Sparkler accepted this without batting an eye.

They shifted dreams… and arrived at an eldritch encampment in a dream in a cold desert of blue sand.

Nyarlathotep was waiting for them. “Thrackerzod, you’re not here to grovel, nor have you appealed directly to Azathoth’s court.”

“I am seeking the counsel of my direct superior, Nyarlathotep. That counts as appealing to Azathoth’s court.”

“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing, traitor.”

Thrackerzod raised an eyebrow. “And don’t think I’m trying to be sneaky. By the way, this is your fault. I hope you spend the rest of eternity thinking about the chain of mistakes that led to this moment.”

Nyarlathotep snarled. “You may have Hastur’s counsel, as is your right. But know that you will live to regret this decision, Thrackerzod. Your rebirth clause is in the process of being rescinded.”

“I’m aware,” Thrackerzod said with a smile. “Hey, Corona, have one of those glowing bottles? I think I’ll be taking one.”

“Got an infinite supply, Zod,” Corona said with a wink.

Nyarlathotep bristled. He turned and walked away. Hastur walked up in his place.

“…I’m not coming back,” Thrackerzod said. “I know you can’t understand.”

“I do not need to,” Hastur said. “Rest easy, Thrackerzod. I will not hunt you for retribution. If I am honest, I suspected this would happen one day. Furthering that idea: it’s about time.”

Thrackerzod nodded, tears in her eyes. “You’re way too progressive, Hastur.”

“You are the special one, Thrackerzod. I wish you luck in your life as a completely new sort of being.” He glanced over his shoulder. “I’m not going to be able to prevent Nyarlathotep’s revocation of your rebirth clause. I also doubt I will be able to take you into Embodiment worlds ever again. But I can demand they keep everything else of yours. They cannot deny all that you’ve done for us, even if it was in the land of mortals.”

“Thank you, old friend.”

“No, thank you for showing me something new.”

The two ‘shook hands’, even though it didn’t make any physical sense to Corona or Sparkler.

Thrackerzod turned to Corona. “Wake me up now. I don’t want anything to do with this dream war. I will not fight the Embodiment.”

Corona nodded. “I understand.” She raised a hand – and woke Thrackerzod up.

Nyarlathotep walked back over. “Corona…”

“Nyarlathotep. Your entire fight was useless. I learned about Z from the Yith.”

Nyarlathotep bristled.

“I’m going to find Z. And I’m going to keep you from using it.”

“Once you become Z I will take you over!”

“If what I’ve been told is true, I can just redefine Topeka to not allow Z to wake up. Ever.”

Nyarlathotep had no response to this.

“See ya Nyarlathotep. Oh, by the way? Flagg’s better at what he does than you.”

“CO-”

Corona dragged herself and Sparkler to a dream on top of a giant hamburger. Corona flopped onto her back and let out a sigh of relief. “I have had way too much stress in me the last few hours. And not enough actual sleep.”

“Don’t I know it.”

“…Sparkler?”

“Hmm?”

“I’m glad you’re here. It’s nice not to have to go through this alone.”

Sparkler smiled warmly. “Don’t mention it. It’s the same way for me. Though I would like an explanation for what happened with Thrackerzod that I wasn’t aware of.”

Corona chuckled and told her everything about her and Death’s little escapade to the League of Sweetie Belles, the conflict with Thrackerzod, Nyarlathotep, Thrackerzod’s freedom, and what she learned from the Yith.

“…And you know the rest.”

“Looks like I missed a lot of drama.”

“You could say that. You could also say you saved yourself a lot of trouble and heartache. What happened to you in the Census?”

“As always my time spent waking proves to be rather useless. The Census is all ‘thank you for your report, please wait one to two weeks for action to be taken’. It’s organized but sometimes it’s so annoying.”

“It does help a lot when you and your friends are the ones who made the system.”

“Look at you, hero of Merodi Universalis, while I’m just a lowly Census unicorn. A number on a sheet of paper somewhere.” She rolled her eyes. “Now look at me being mopey here. It’s nothing to complain about.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. I’ll listen either way.”

“You know for being so fiery you’re a surprisingly good listener.”

Corona smiled. “I try to make the best of myself with what I have.”

“I can see why you’re people think so highly of you.”

“Wasn’t always that way,” Corona commented. “Used to be the girl who would break the rules. The one who skirted the edge of what was legal and what wasn’t. Then I wasn’t the one who was given control of the secrets and I went on a different path. One of a guardian.” She looked at her hands. “I’ve been given a lot of power. A Stand, nearly limitless magic, a device, power over fire, and the knack to understand and shape emotions and memories. As a pseudo-alicorn, my magic only increases with time…”

“You do seem to have won the lottery.”

“I was able to eke out a draw against Nyarlathotep…” Corona realized. “Holy Celestia, how strong am I?”

“Maybe that’s why Nyarlathotep fears you. He thinks you can do something to become Z.”

“But my powers don’t really translate to Topeka – at least not beyond a certain point. It’s just my will. Powerful and with a few mental tricks, but it’s not like I can blow the place up by power alone.”

“C’mon, you’re Corona Shimmer, you’ll figure something out.”

“Hmm...” She stood up tall. “Maybe all I need to do is walk toward Z. Just will myself to find it. See where that takes me.”

“Following destiny, huh?”

“Ka connected us together. I think it’s in a giving mood today.” She focused ahead – and took a step toward Z.

The dream she ended up in was a three dimensional field of colorful falling block shapes. They appeared on a yellow cube made of eight blocks, falling alongside dozens of different arrangements.

The dream was absolutely filled with demogorgons. Dozens of toothy-flower faced monstrosities turned to her and screeched.

Corona blinked. “Okay, so not the best idea maybe.”

“Retreat…?”

“Oh yes.” Corona moved to leave the dream – but then she saw something that gave her hope.

The Doctor pointing at demogorgons and making them vanish, several at a time. Even when they attacked all at once, they just vanished – awoken.

Corona picked up Sparkler. “Wh-OAH.” She jumped into the air over the demogorgons, flying down to the Doctor. He turned to her – expecting another attack – but stopped short of waking her up.

“What in time’s flow are you doing here?”

“You didn’t tell us everything,” Corona said, sideswiping a demogorgon coming from behind the Doctor. “That’s what.”

“You didn’t need to know!” the Doctor declared, wiping more demogorgons off the map.

“Turns out Luna was captured because of the war. And now all the Lunas are. And Valentine. It’s spiraling out of control, Doctor. This is no longer just the concern of Topeka.”

“Don’t forget about the part where Nyarlathotep wants to drive everyone Topeka touches insane!” Sparkler added. “That’s bad!”

“Yeah. I’m going to stop that.” Corona forced another demogorgon awake. “I’m going to find Z and make sure none of the sides in this war can do what they want with it.”

The Doctor nodded, blowing away the last of the demogorgons with his thoughts. “…I can see I’m not going to be able to stop you.”

“No, duh. Also, you’re not going to get away with half-truths or omission this time. Frankly I’m starting to believe what Vriska says about you.”

That cut the Doctor deep. “Why does everyone-? Never mind, fine, you’re here, might as well. As you know, Z is the entity that defines what rules Topeka operates under. Z is, presumably, from the first universe Topeka appeared in, though this isn’t really something we know for sure. We do know that if you can wake Z up, you can gain control of Topeka and define it by your own rules, creating a new dreamscape. Nyarlathotep desires widespread madness, the Matrices desire order and power, the Mindflayer wants an avenue to infect other worlds, and the Crimson Ones… I think they just want to watch the world burn.”

“Makes sense, since they’re aspects of Flagg’s consciousness.”

The Doctor blinked. “…Clever, clever as always…”

“What about the demogorgons?”

“I did say Mindflayer didn’t I?”

Corona cocked her head. “They’re part of the Mindflayer?”

The Doctor nodded. “The Mindflayer is a non-aligned eldritch being, similar to the Majora you faced in your past. It has discovered a way to infect the multiverse by calling out to powerful psychics in other universes and having them ‘summon’ the Mindflayer’s minions to that world. Already the Mindflayer has been sending its demogorgons through Topeka to find psychics. It’s an incredibly good deal for the entity that will only get worse if it’s allowed to succeed.” The Doctor flexed his wrist. “The worst part? The Mindflayer is easily the closest to Z out of all of them. If you try to find Z directly, you almost always run into Mindflayers keeping you from progressing.”

“Right. Here’s the big question. How do we fight them like you are? I’ve only seen you – and maybe Flagg – with this much control over the dreams. What’s the secret?”

The Doctor smiled cheekily. “Why, Corona my dear – that’s because I’m not dreaming right now. I’m physically here.”

Corona and Sparkler stared at him. “…What?” Corona asked.

“It’s not something those fighting in the war are able to do – eldritch cannot exist here, the demogorgons require mental connections to do their work, and pure physical code isn’t powerful at all. But a Time Lord physically standing in a world that can be shaped by psychic power? It’s a bit unfair. I suspect Flagg knows this and has placed himself physically in Topeka as well.”

“But how does that even make sense? Topeka isn’t a place!”

“It has to exist somewhere,” the Doctor said. “Due to its own nature, it can’t exist in just one universe. So it exists in several of its own unique universes that are constantly shuffling around, making it exceptionally difficult to just dial in.”

“How do we get here physically?”

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. “There are drawbacks. Wounds you receive while physically here will be real. You can’t just exert will to undo them.”

“Do I look like I care about a little risk? If I’ll be able to use my higher spells I’d be more effective than even you at clearing these demogorgons that are between us and Z. Just imagine what a cascading psychic burst could do if it was actually allowed to execute fully.”

The Doctor nodded slowly. “It would be enormously helpful. You are, in many ways, the perfect being to do this. A powerful dreamer, a powerful empath, and one with a determined, passionate heart.” He looked into her eyes. “…I trust you, Corona. I trust you to defend Topeka.”

Corona nodded. “You can count on me.”

The Doctor looked at Sparkler. “Normally it would take a while to get you to come here physically, but I just had a thought. Wake yourself up, but when you try to come back, focus on Sparkler here. Use the connection between you two to drag yourself physically here. Do not try to fall asleep, Corona. Understand?”

Corona nodded. “I do. I might be a few minutes – I’ll gather some allies in the waking world first.”

“Hurry,” the Doctor pleaded. “We do not know how close the Mindflayer is to Z. It could be about to claim its prize for all we know.”

Corona nodded. “Right.” She closed her eyes and woke herself up. She was still in the hospital bed – but she felt perfectly healthy now.

Lady Rarity looked up from the chair she was sitting in. “Oh! Welcome back!”

“We’re going back in,” Corona said. “Quickly. Is Death around?”

“I… think so?”

Corona lifted Raging Sights up, activating a magic location spell – easy for a signature as powerful as Death. She teleported him right into the room.

…CARE TO EXPLAIN?

“We’re going into Topeka to find Z and claim it so everybody doesn’t go insane. Your job is to get Lady Rarity in there, and come find me. I’m doing something a little different.”

I WOULD PREFER MORE EXPLANATION BUT IT APPEARS YOU ARE IN A HURRY.

Corona dissipated her gloves and placed her hands on Lady Rarity and Death’s heads, giving them a basic feeling of what was going on. “Got the urgency yet?”

“I think so?” Lady Rarity said, cocking her head. “That was all convoluted.”

IT IS CLEAR ENOUGH THAT YOU NEED OUR ASSISTANCE.

“Thank you,” Corona said. “Sending you both to sleep now.” She snapped her fingers, forcing them asleep.

Then she took a deep breath and focused on her mind – making it as awake as she could. She held her hands to the sides of her head, making a triangle of magic in conjunction with her horn. She willed herself not to go to Topeka, but to connect with Sparkler.

She wasn’t all that surprised when she found the connection instantly. They had been finding each other so easily over the course of this dreaming debacle; of course they had a strong link. She reached into reality, telling Raging Sights to tear a dimensional hole through that connection.

She promptly fell flat on her face on the yellow cube next to Sparkler and the Doctor. “Ow.”

The Doctor looked at Sparkler with a thoughtful expression. “I thought so.” He extended a hand to Corona. “Welcome to physical Topeka.”

She accepted the hand and stood to her feet, spreading her wings. “Doesn’t feel all that different.”

“Try casting a higher spell.”

Corona traced a figure-eight with her hands and spread her fingers wide. Everything in her field of view lit on fire. “Sweet.” She dreamed up a golf club. “Dream constructs still work.”

“I doubt you’ll be able to shape a dream anymore, or alter yourself with your will, but otherwise yes.”

Death and Lady Rarity arrived, the spirid rubbing her head. “I’m never going to get used to the feeling of everything sliding by my face…”

“There they are,” Corona said. “Hey guys!”

WHERE ARE THE OPPONENTS?

Corona wiggled her fingers. “In the next dream. Have to move a little closer to Z…”

“Remove most of the demogorgons from the dream so they’ll let you move to the next one,” the Doctor said. “Eventually you’ll pass their ‘fortifications’.”

Corona nodded, taking a fighting stance. “Everyone ready?”

Sparkler, Lady Rarity, Death, and the Doctor nodded.

She pushed them to the next dream. A meteor flying through space with normal gravity – absolutely covered in demogorgons.

Corona flexed her wrists. “Time to see if this really works. Stay back for a minute.” She pressed her hands together, summoning a small red spark between her hands. She sent it forward with her power into the mind of a demogorgon. It shook for a few seconds before waking up – infecting five nearby demogorgons with the spell, then five more, then five more… Until the entire meteor was cleared.

“…Do we even need to be here?” Lady Rarity asked.

NO DOUBT SOMETHING WILL GO WRONG AT SOME POINT.

Corona smirked. “Until then, I’m going to enjoy the curbstomp. Next dreeeeam!”

“Woohoo!” Sparkler shouted.

They shifted to a dream that was an infinite hallway – of course crawling with demogorgons. The same spell took care of them in quick succession.

Corona decided to have some fun. “Bacon Pancakes!” she yelled, flattening a few dreaming demogorgons with her Stand before they woke up. “You know, I missed you.”

Bacon Pancakes was not the kind of Stand that could respond to affirmation.

“Next dream!”

“And the Lady Rarity headache slideshow continues…” Lady Rarity muttered.

The next few dreams went much the same way – demogorgons falling before they even realized what was happening. It was way too easy.

“I can see why Nyarlathotep thought you might be a threat,” Sparkler said, whistling. “All you had to do was figure this out and you basically own the place.”

“Sometimes it feels like a burden to have a lot of power. A constant war in my mind to think about what’s right and what isn’t. But right now?” She engulfed seven demogorgons in a rush of flame. “Right now it just feels exhilarating.”

DON’T LOSE SIGHT OF WHO YOU ARE.

Corona winked at him. “Don’t worry. I’m not. But we’re in a lucky situation where all I’m doing is waking people up! Not any worse than your particularly potent nightmare. Which is frankly less than these monsters deserve.”

Lady Rarity sighed. “Let me guess. Next dream?”

“NEEEEXT DREAM!”

The next dream seemed empty at first. It was a forest lit by a haunting blue light that didn’t have a clear source. The sky was black and the sky was filled with floating white particles far too large to be simple dust.

“One of the Mindflayer’s worlds…” the Doctor said. “Or a mental image of one, anyway.”

Lady Rarity stooped down to investigate the base of the trees. “Everything is covered in… vines?”

“It appears to be one cohesive life form,” Sparkler observed. “This entire planet has been infected.”

“Entire universe,” the Doctor said. “The Mindflayer works fast. It’s known to infect universes in nearby clusters, usually moving along alternates of the same world. It works almost like an animal, wishing only to spread…”

AND IT ALSO HAPPENS TO BE RIGHT ABOVE US, Death observed.

“That’ll just be a dream construct,” the Doctor said, looking up. “No way the Mindflayer itself would ever bother letting its central intelligence be vulnerable while dreaming in Topeka.”

A psychic burst hit the Doctor directly, driving him into the ground. “Ow.”

Corona looked up as well, taking in the form of the Mindflayer. It… was a being of swirling darkness, consolidated in a figure rising out of the ground with four tremendous limbs and a single, drop-shaped head. The being had no features, but Corona could feel it staring into all their souls.

It was also the size of a sports stadium.

Corona whistled. “Nice.”

“How are we even going to fight this thing!?” Lady Rarity blurted. “I don’t think smashing is going to do much against eldritch smoke!”

“It’s still just a dreamer,” Corona said, creating a magical circle. “I’ve got this.”

She didn’t have it. The Mindflayer’s smoke flew past her, surrounding her in darkness. Since she was physically present, that gave it an in it didn’t usually have.

It shoved the essence of its smoke into Corona’s eyes, mouth, and ears, directly into her real brain. Corona knew of only one defense against this.

The old trick she had learned from Majora. Try to infect my mind; I’ll go infect yours.

Corona pushed her mental energy back along the Mindflayer’s connection. She didn’t seek understanding or control; she just wanted to wreak havoc on the Mindflayer’s consciousness. Had the Mindflayer physically been here, this would have been a pointless endeavor doomed to fail from the start.

However, as Corona had said earlier, it was still just a dreamer. Perhaps the most powerful dreamer in all of Topeka aside from Z itself, but still just an entity trapped within the same rules as everyone else.

All Corona had to do was wreck its mind enough to force it awake.

The Mindflayer let out a mind-piercing screech before vanishing back to its reality.

Corona put a hand to her head. “I have got to stop engaging eldritch abominations in mental combat.”

“You do appear to have a problem,” Lady Rarity joked.

“No kidding. Least I’m not puking my guts out right now.”

Death appeared in front of them. I AM BACK.

“…Back!?”

YOU WERE STUCK IN THERE A WHILE. I WAS EJECTED FROM THE DREAM.

“Oh. Huh. Oh crap that means…

THE MINDFLAYER COULD RETURN.

“Time to mooove!” Corona blurted. “We nee-”

They all heard slow, mocking clapping. A single ‘man’ walked out of the forest into their field of view. “Well done!” Flagg congratulated. “Well done!”

Corona grimaced. “…What did we do?”

“Oh, it’s mostly the Doctor here you should blame,” Flagg said, chuckling. “The fool actually believed me when I told him something.”

The Doctor glared at him. ”Flagg, what have you done!?”

“Nothing! You did all the work!” Flagg spread his arms wide. “You thought ‘there’s no way the Mindflayer could want the same thing we do. It must seek to control Topeka for itself’. And I confirmed this in that ‘list of enemies’ I gave you, Doctor. But did you ever stop to think why the demogorgons are always so close to Z but never do anything? Why they seem to be waiting around in every dream you shift closer to Z?”

“…They’re defending it,” Lady Rarity said with a gasp.

“Precisely! The Mindflayer, while intelligent, doesn’t really have much creativity within it. It wouldn’t be able to keep a realm of dreams operable if it found Z. But it really likes Topeka, so it decided it would be the defender of the central dreamer.” Flagg laughed. “And you just forced the Mindflayer out, and every demogorgon with it!”

The Doctor paled. “No…”

“Which means I have first dibs on Z. It won’t take very long for the Matrices and Embodiment to find out the demogorgons are gone either. The Mindflayer’s not going to be able to bring that much force back for a long, long time.”

“We’ll stop you,” Corona said.

The Crimson Ones appeared around Flagg. “You can try.”

Corona readied a shattering spell. Even if Flagg was physically here, that should do something. She pushed-

And then she noticed she was sitting on a beach chair, a red beach surrounding her. Sparkler was to her left. The unicorn removed her sunglasses. “What in Celestia’s name?”

“He just hit us with a dreeper,” Corona said, standing bolt upright. “Have to wake up. Now.”

“Actually you don’t,” Flagg said, appearing in front of them. “I’m currently not in the higher level of Topeka.”

“Your Crimson Ones are.”

“And if they were attacking you, you’d be waking up from the external pain,” Flagg pointed out. “Like being shaken awake.”

Corona narrowed her eyes. “…You want something.”

“That is correct,” Flagg said, smirking. “I would be a fool to ignore the clear protagonist of this little story.”

“Gee, thanks for the acknowledgement.”

“See, if I ignore you, you’ll just defeat me. If I attack you directly, the chances of me coming out on top are minimal, though not zero. But… If I have a talk with you, things can change.”

“You’re a liar, murderer, and basically the most evil thing in existence!” Sparkler blurted. “Why would we listen to you!?”

“Because I might say something interesting,” Flagg said. “You know by now, of course, that I fed the Doctor false information so he would eventually bring the Mindflayer down for me, yes?”

Corona nodded. “Pretty obvious at this point.”

“So, naturally, you would think I want to use Z for my own ends. Possibly to conquer something, to destroy some other world’s society, my general mode of operation. But what if I told you that wasn’t the case?”

“I might believe you if you told me what you actually wanted.”

Flagg’s eyes flashed a deep red. “To destroy Topeka completely, of course.”

Sparkler blinked. “…What? Why throw away that kind of power?”

“Why else?” Flagg threw his arms wide. “Imagine the chaos it would bring about! There are many nations like the USM who have taken to using Topeka for information gathering without understanding what it is. Many have even grown to depend on it. Lovers spread apart by grand distances have come together in dreams. It’s become a cohesive presence on the lower level. I could bring all of that crashing down in a single instant. It would be delightful.”

“Yeah, you’re a monster,” Corona muttered.

“But here’s the flipside of the coin,” Flagg said. “Those are my reasons for destroying Topeka.”

Sparkler pointed a hoof at him. “Essentially just ‘because I can and because it will tick off a lot of people’.”

“More or less. But there are other reasons as well… Corona, if Topeka were gone, personal dreams would no longer be invaded. No information would be spread. There would be no more espionage, no more threat, no more out-of-control spillover into Merodi Universalis. Think about how all your problems would go away if Topeka were gone. Of course the Doctor could never condone such destruction, it might drive a few people mad, and more than a few entities define their lives by Topeka… But i-”

“Shut up, I’m not going to listen to you,” Corona said.

Flagg shrugged. “Fine. Just assume that, because I’m ‘the incarnation of evil’, that I don’t have a good point from time to time. Good luck defining Topeka yourself. Or even getting there.” He vanished from the dream.

“Now we wake up,” Corona muttered. She psychically forced the two of them to the layer above.

Just in time for her to defend against another Crimson One trying to skewer her through the brain. “Not cool,” she muttered, throwing it to the side. It may not have been able to wake up – but she could disintegrate its mental energy with a spell.

She looked around. It was just her, Sparkler, and the Doctor. The Crimson Ones must have gotten Death and Lady Rarity. She didn’t see any sign of Flagg aside from the fragments of his consciousness.

Which, she could tell, were keeping them from moving out of the dream. “Can anyone else actually get rid of these things?”

The Doctor nodded, using his control over the dreams to push one away at a time. “Rather slow work, I’m afraid.”

Sparkler sat between the two of them, feeling rather useless.

Corona smiled at her. “Hey, don’t worry, I’m sure there’s something you’ll be able to do soon eno-”

Nyarlathotep appeared in the dream with Hastur and a small troop of eldritch beings. “Corona Shimmer… I see you found the secret of physical appearance.”

“Yeah!” She smirked. “But you aren’t happy about that, huh?” She threw a Crimson One at him.

He grabbed it with his mind and sent it away.

“Hey, how’d you do that?” Sparkler asked. “I wanna do that!”

“It comes with having a strong enough will,” Nyarlathotep said, taking a few steps forward. “And my will is beyond that of any other!”

Corona pointed a finger at him, her entire arm ringed with magic circles. “This is going to feel really, really good.”

And then Nyarlathotep had plowed his fist through Corona’s center, forcing her golden blood to come spraying out the back.

She screamed – but Raging Sights maintained the spell around her arm. She touched her hand directly to Nyarlathotep’s head, sneering. “Hey, Nyarlathotep. How does it feel to be the one woefully outmatched for once?”

“CORON-”

He tried to resist. He really, really did. He put all his force of will to keep himself in Topeka, alive and well. He pushed back against the spell willing that he would not be overpowered by some pathetic mortal’s cheating magic.

But he was just a dreamer.

He vanished from the dream.

Corona smirked at Hastur as she healed herself with her magic. “Oh that felt good. Did that feel as good to you as it did to me?”

Hastur made no response – he just stared at her in… fear? Was that fear?

The Doctor removed another Crimson One. “We should be able to move no-”

Hastur left the dream before the Doctor finished his sentence.

“MOVE!” Corona shouted. The Doctor, herself, and Sparkler jumped to the next dream.

The final dream.

Z’s dream.

It was a round room the width of at least ten football fields. The overall design was metallic and futuristic, the floor ringed with wide, sweeping circular inscriptions. They had appeared at the edge of the room. Ahead of them was Hastur. Ahead of Hastur was Flagg – but he was being slowed down by Agent Smith of the Matrices, the AI’s duplication ability matching Flagg’s red assistance.

In the center of the room was a blue pillar with hundreds of blue sparks flying around it.

Corona heard buzzing.

…Buzzing like an insect…

All three of them took off at a run toward the glowing form they knew was Z – the entity sitting there, waiting for them.

Hastur directed an attack behind him, pushing them back mentally. Corona didn’t take kindly to this, pushing back with a wave of fire that tossed Hastur forward, but also made him fall flat on his face. The three of them passed him, moving to catch up with Flagg and Smith.

Flagg glanced behind them, a strained smile on his face. “Ah, hello there! Mind helping me with this audacious conglomeration of random electrical impulses?”

Smith, to his credit, duplicated himself a few times in order to deal with more targets. Corona noticed he lost the ability to focus as well as he had been before…

She didn’t even try to wake him up. She just charged forward, propelling herself forward like a rocket. She felt Smith fire some bullets at her, going through her leg. She didn’t bother using her magic to heal herself – she needed to get there before anyone else. To-

“Incoming Mindflayer!” Hastur shouted, running faster now. The Mindflayer itself had appeared at the edge of the arena and rushed everyone else, warping the dream space around it to move its tremendous form forward.

Flagg, Smith, the Doctor, and Sparkler all stopped fighting and just started running. Corona felt them closing in on her… Using dream powers to catch up with her?

No… No that didn’t make sense.

Something else was ensuring all of them would arrive at almost the same time…

She looked at the glowing blue form of Z. It had no shape itself, but the things around it did. Every blue speck was a fly. Buzzing just like any fly from the real world would. And they were very agitated right now.

“Z, what are you doing?” Corona called. “Are you protecting yourself? Z!”

The Mindflayer ran into all of them, attempting to surround all in its smoky essence.

Corona reached out a hand and touched Z’s blue glow with the tip of her finger.

~~~

Corona woke up.

Not in the hospital bed, but her on bed, at her house in Lai.

…What…?

She got out of bed and summoned Raging Sights to her. “You remember Topeka, right?”

The last thing my memories have stored in them is that you touched Z.

“Yeah… this isn’t my empathy, though,” Corona said, taking a look around her room. “I’m not sure this is Topeka either…” She tried to summon a dream construct, but found she couldn’t.

Were we taken back to the real world?

Corona opened the door to her bedroom and found an endless white expanse greeting her. “Nope.”

She took a step out into the white expanse, finding it solid. After taking a moment trying to wake herself up, or to return to the real world, she opted to just start walking in a random direction.

She glanced behind her. She couldn’t see the doorway to her room anymore.

“That was fast…” she told herself.

She kept walking, finding nothing, nothing, and more nothing. Endless whiteness in every direction. She performed long-range in-depth scans, discovering only that, yes, there really was a floor beneath her and that, yes, it went on as far as her sensors could possibly go. There was nothing beneath it and nothing on top of it. The force of gravity was also precisely as it should be on a standard Equis.

She folded her arms. “Well this sucks. Uh… Gonna try something else. Raging Sights, try to lock on to a connection while I focus.”

Affirmative.

Corona closed her eyes and focused – trying to home in on Sparkler. She felt the connection almost immediately. She opened her eyes.

There was a door in front of her. It opened all on its own, revealing Sparkler on the other side.

“For once, you get to find me,” Sparkler said, smiling.

“Good, I was worried I would go mad in this expanse, completely alone.”

Raging Sights beeped in annoyance.

“Sorry sorry sorry!” Corona said, looking apologetically at the gems on the backs of her hands. “I need to stop talking without thinking.”

Chances of you actually doing so are minimal.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

It is only fair.

Sparkler blinked. “You know it’s really weird to only hear half a conversation.”

“Yeah, Raging Sights is weird like that. Doesn’t like talking audibly.” Corona put her hands down. “So… Any ideas about getting out of this white expanse?”

“Probably none you haven’t thought of already.”

“Right…” Corona said. The two of them took off and started walking – Sparkler’s door soon out of their sights as well.

“So, think one of them got a hold of Z and turned Topeka into this?” Sparkler asked.

“I don’t see why they would do this…” Corona said, scratching her chin. “It doesn’t fit what any of them want. They all want the easy to navigate network of dreams – except Flagg – and this is anything but.”

“What if we’re not in Topeka?”

“Where else would we be? A universe where our bedrooms appear in a white expanse because… reasons?”

“D-Sphere does that.”

Corona shrugged. “Well, if it is, we’re stuck here. Because none of my portal spells are working.”

Sparkler nodded. “…Maybe we just need to find others like you found me. Through connections.”

“Don’t have a strong connection to any of the other-” Corona blinked. “…I guess the Mindflayer was in my head for a while. I could probably use that.”

“Worth a shot.”

Corona closed her eyes, imagining the connection to the Mindflayer. It wasn’t as strong as with Sparkler, but she was able to focus on it after a bit of thought. She opened her eyes.

There was not a door in front of her. Instead, there was a dark translucent dome. Inside of it was a miniature of the round dream they had been in – and inside of it the Mindflayer, Doctor, Flagg, Smith, and Hastur were all fighting over… nothing. One would take one of the others out, only for them to re-appear in an instant. It was an unending cycle over nothing.

“They’re stuck in a nightmare…” Corona said, placing her hand on the dome – it felt like glass. “Eternally fighting for Topeka, but never getting any closer to what they want. Because it isn’t there. The glow of Z is gone.” She could feel their fear and strain through the dome. All five of them… they had become the same in this nightmare. Fighting for something they didn’t even remember.

Even Flagg was trapped…

“Why aren’t we in there?” Sparkler asked.

“Well, I touched Z first…” Corona said. “But I don’t know why that lets you be here.”

“Strong connection?”

“Maybe…” Corona said, walking around the dome. “…We should try to find Z.”

“Right. How do we do that?”

“Just think and it’ll probably happen,” Corona said.

They closed their eyes and started walking. When they opened them, the glow of Z and the buzz of its flies greeted them. The glow itself occupied a space only slightly larger than Corona herself, but the cloud of metallic blue flies made it seem significantly larger.

Corona and Sparkler felt no reason to be afraid.

“…Hi,” Corona said. “Z, right?”

That is what I’m called.

Z didn’t really speak – Corona just knew that was what it said. There was no voice to go with the words, or even a text to read from. She just knew the words. “Weird.”

It is the way I communicate.

“So… What is this place?”

A secluded section of Topeka altered specifically to accommodate this moment.

“And what is this moment?” Sparkler asked.

The moment you separate part of your consciousness to defend me from within, to ensure the survival of Topeka.

Corona blinked. “Really? I mean, I can do it – it’d make me sluggish for a few weeks or months while I work my mind back to normal – but that sounds a little drastic.”

I brought you into Topeka specifically for this purpose, Corona. I awoke you because of your instinct to guard and protect, because of your heart, but also because of your abilities. You would be able to survive the process given the way you have trained your mind. Most would not – they would have to become me and give up their waking lives.

Corona’s expression saddened. “…You have a waking life, don’t you?”

It is long behind me. There is nothing for me in that world. Not anymore.

“Everyone thinks you’re in a coma you will never wake up form.”

Yes. I have no desire to go back. I am not requesting you abandon your life to become me.

Corona nodded. “Good. I really didn’t want to. So just… I give you a piece of myself and you’ll use it to protect yourself forever?”

Yes. It was what I needed to happen. I had trapped myself within my own rules. This is a workaround.

“…Why does Topeka exist?” Sparkler asked.

Because it existed in my world, a connection of all sleeping individuals, of which a select few were aware. I was born with the natural ability to shape the original Topeka, and I eventually mastered it – and spread it to other worlds, to share it with others. The way it brings people closer… It is pleasing to me.

Corona nodded slowly. “I get it. I think I do, anyway. You view it as a gift you give everyone.”

Yes.

Corona nodded. “All right. So I just… will part of myself to you?”

Exactly. I can guide you through the process. There will always be an out if you feel like I am taking too much or moving too quickly – I do not want to cause permanent psychological damage.

Corona took in a deep breath and closed her eyes. “Okay.” She pushed her mind out, touching Z. It pulled back gently, taking parts of her consciousness. Z worked extremely carefully, going out if its way to gently ease parts of her mind away. There was no sudden jarring pain, just a slow onset of tiredness.

Z unearthed memories as it moved through her mind. Her yelling at Princess Celestia… Her domination of Canterlot High… Her redemption… Her explorations… Her friends…

Private moments came to the surface. Conversations she’d had with Lady Rarity in confidence. Deep, personal moments with Sparky back in the day.

The memory of Eve almost giving away her secret just a few days ago…

Corona recoiled from Z.

What is it?

“Those… those should stay private.”

Corona, I will never do anything with them. If it makes you feel better I will erase the memories I absorb after I reach stability. I have no interest in your private life or the intimate moments you share with your friends.

“That’s not it… Well that’s part of it, but that’s not it.” Corona looked at Z. “You do know what Topeka does, right? It destroys privacy. People see moments they really aren’t supposed to see in here – they get to know the intimate details of each other’s subconscious. That’s… That’s not meant to be! If someone’s struggling with deep, violent urges, but they’ve got them under control, a dream shouldn’t make you think less of them! People shouldn’t be paranoid that their dreams are out to get them! There shouldn’t even be dream wars at all! People shouldn’t be trapped in comas!”

Those things will end when I become what you will make me.

“That’s just the wars! I’m sure some of the Lunas will be kept out of spite. Or infected by the MIndflayer. And what about all those people who can be driven insane by dreams? I’m pretty sure Nyarlathotep can work his way into anyone’s mind the slow way if he has to. Entire societies can be brought down because someone obtains a nuclear launch code or something from a high ranking official!”

As the Doctor told you, relatively few become full dreamers.

“But those that do have power, even if they don’t use it. I’m sure you see it, Z. You see what evil can be done when dreamers can hide in the shadows. And there aren’t really any true defenses… Just damage control from what you’ve done.”

But it is beautiful, Corona. The connection.

“People need more than dreams to be together. The real world exists for a reason. Dreams are there for flights of fancy.” Corona looked right at Z. “Holy Starstorm, Flagg was right.”

You’ll listen to what many consider to be the incarnation of evil?

“He’s right for the completely wrong reasons, but he’s right. In this case… Destruction is the best option.”

You cannot take me out, Corona.

“I can wake you up,” Corona said. “And this entire thing will come crashing down. Topeka will end.”

If you do that you will never see Sparkler again.

Corona blinked. “What? I’ll just go visit her in the Sparkle Census.”

“Yeah!” Sparkler added. “What, you think you can do something to me?”

I don’t have to. Because you only exist because of Topeka.

“…W-what?” Sparkler said.

Corona dreamed you up on her first day here because she was lonely. She didn’t want to walk the endless dreams without someone to talk to. So her subconscious tapped into her immense will to create you. A companion with a face – and name – that would be very familiar to her.

“No…” Corona said, haunted. “No, that can’t be right!”

Think about it, Corona. Have you ever seen any trace of Sparkler outside Topeka? Why do you have such a strong connection to her? Has she ever interacted with any people when you aren’t actively present?

“She was with the Doctor when I went away that one… time…” She blinked. “He knew.”

Yes. Sparkler vanished when you left, and re-appeared when you came back because you expected her to be there. He felt no need to inform you of this.

“I… I think I’m beginning to understand Vriska…” Corona said, putting a hand to her head. “W-why wouldn’t he tell me?”

“Yeah! I’d like to know if I’m real or not if someone sees me vanish!” Sparkler shouted.

You’re real, as real as a split consciousness can be. You share Corona’s mind and knowledge. Do you actually know anything specific about your life in the Census? Were you ever actually able to accomplish anything? Did you ever try to call Corona?

Sparkler gulped. “Uh… Yeeeeah, I think he’s right.”

Corona glared. “So, what, if I destroy Topeka I’ll never see her again?”

That is correct. Her split consciousness form exists only because Topeka allows it. It is how Agent Smith duplicates himself.

Corona curled her hand into a fist. “…You… You…”

Just let me back into your consciousness and we can end this confrontation.

Corona’s ears twitched.

She decided to punch Z since she wasn’t able to think straight. It seemed like the best option at the time.

~~~

Corona woke up in the hospital bed – alone.

“Raging Sights?”

You just punched Z.

“Did I… destroy Topeka?”

Unknown.

“Let me see if I still have a connection…” She forced herself to calm down, let the anger flow out. She touched a connection…

Sparkler was still there. All she had to do was go back. It would just be a moment…

A demogorgon charged through the door to her room, mouth wide open and screeching its horrifying call. It plastered its sharp, toothy mouth on her chest while she was distracted.

The pain was immense – but she struck back, lighting the creature on fire. It hissed in pain, but it made a wide swing with one of its claws, skewering her eye.

~~~

Corona woke up on a passenger airplane with a start, breathing heavily.

She looked down at her chest. She had her battle dress on and was completely uninjured. She ruffled her wings and touched her face – no wound.

…Was it all just a dream?!

That didn’t sit right with her – she remembered it so clearly. There was this dream world, Topeka, and this creature Z, and Sparkler had been there but she wasn’t real, and… The Doctor was there, right? Flagg too? Had Death been around? What was Olivia doing…?

“Raging Sights, don’t let me forget anything about this dream.”

Memory degradation has already begun.

“Just do it!” Corona blurted, drawing attention from many of the passengers in the airplane. She didn’t care.

Affirmative.

Corona’s mind locked in to place thanks to Raging Sights’ magic, and she was able to parse through her… already foggy memories of the dream. There had been so many layers, dreams within dreams, people physically entering the dream realm…

She had to still be dreaming, right? That world in the hospital had been the real world. She couldn’t have dreamed all this up. She hadn’t known much about Nyarlathotep or what Thrackerzod was going through. …But she only remembered the feelings of those events now. What were the actual physical details? Had there actually been any?

Right, right, if she was dreaming, she would have no idea how she got here. She thought a moment… She was on a flight in a universe that didn’t allow teleportation, going to see an old martial artist who might know a thing or two about making full use of her ears in combat.

She even remembered deciding she was going to sleep on the flight, putting away her book and closing her eyes intentionally. She also remembered having a conversation with the passenger right next to her!

Ah… A Twilight. A unicorn Twilight from the Sparkle Census, Corona remembered, even if she didn’t remember her designation. But who could remember Sparkle Census designations?

There it was. A way out.

“Sorry, odd question, what was your designation again?” Corona asked her.

The Twilight blinked at her with an odd expression. “JJ-8IuN. Any reason why?”

“No reason…” My subconscious could know the format of designations, or Z could have information about it from another mind. This could just be an elaborate trick…

Could I have really dreamed the whole thing?

Her very soul screamed that she hadn’t. But she was no longer certain. She remembered everything about this ‘reality’ on the airplane. She didn’t remember the dreams of Topeka clearly. She was still Princess Corona Sunset Shimmer, PhD…

...Was Sparkler just a manifestation of this pony next to me? W- Corona blinked. Sparkler was just a creation of my mind in Topeka. She wasn’t really able to describe the Sparkle Census or do anything in it… If that had been a dream, she would have been able to exist in the ‘top’ world just fine! There was no way my mind could create that complex of a narrative!

…Right? But what if it just filled in blanks for me? How can I…

…There was never a sign of the Sparkle Census in all of Topeka. Corona’s eyes widened. Not a single Sparkle Census dreamer. Some people who were aware and who had been to the Census, but never a citizen. Corona turned to ‘JJ’, eyes sparkling. If that’s the case, neither Z nor I know what the intricate details are of a Sparkle Census unicorn’s life.

“Hey, JJ?”

“Hm?”

“I’m going to invade your privacy for a bit, please don’t hate me if I’m wrong.” She placed a bare hand just under JJ’s horn and dug through her memories. Find me something completely mundane but full of details. Find me the exact layout of a library in the Sparkle Census. Oh, you can? Then find me a map of the districts. Where is that in relation to the Grinder? What about the Council? Does the Council even have a building? What’s it look like? Where are the Census intake stations? What path do you take to work each day? What’s the plot of the latest book you read? Recent Sparkle Census history? How’s the next door Twilight’s personality different from yours? What’s your opinion of your closest friends? Corona laughed inwardly as the interior of ‘JJ’s’ mind began to break down in contradictions.

Enough, Z said. You are clearly too determined for me to outwit.

Corona opened her eyes, standing with Sparkler in the white expanse, Z in front of them.

Do what you will.

“…I don’t think you’re a bad person,” Corona said. “…I’m sorry for punching you, I let my anger take over me.”

I understand that. Do not worry, the angry lash did not offend me – merely worry me.

Corona nodded. “It’s time to return to reality, Z. Back to the world you left behind to create this one. There are real people there who aren’t clouded by a constant shifting of reality around them. I’m sure they miss you.”

Corona, I don’t know if you’ve realized this, but reality is a mess. There’s always evil, destruction, and unfortunate truths. It’s a confusing mess no one can navigate.

“How is that really much different from here?” Corona asked. “You can’t trust anything in Topeka. You can’t trust other people, because they might lie to you about what’s going on, using you to further their own ends. Even if their intentions are good, what they tell you might just be wrong, even if they believe it’s right. You can’t even rely on yourself because you know that you know nothing!” Corona shook her head. “It’s the same either way, Z. You can’t trust yourself and you can’t trust anyone else. Nobody knows, Z.”

What do we do then?

Corona sighed. “We do the best we can. Weigh every source of authority. …Wing it, basically?”

Sparkler chuckled.

That sounds absurd. But they are truly wise words.

“The unfortunate truth is that life inherently sucks a lot of the time. But trying to replace it with something else… That never works.” She extended her hand, feeling Z’s bugs fly around her. “Go home, Z. Do your best there.”

If that is what you demand.

Corona nodded. She snapped her fingers – forcing Z to wake up.

The blue power of Z transferred to her in an instant. She turned to Sparkler, features torn. “…I have to let you go.”

“I know,” Sparkler said, wiping her eyes. “I’m just part of you anyway.”

“Either way, I had to sacrifice part of myself…” Corona mused. She pulled Sparkler into a hug. “…I don’t care if I just made you up. You’re real to me.”

Sparkler started bawling. “C-Corona!”

“Shh…” She held Sparkler up and looked into the unicorn’s eyes. “I’ll remember you.”

And then Sparkler was just gone.

Corona swallowed hard. With her magic, she cleared her face of the tears so she wouldn’t look like she’d just been crying.

She summoned the gray dome to her and broke it, making the fight between the Doctor, Flagg, the Mindflayer, Agent Smith, and Hastur stop.

“The war is over,” Corona said, showing them the blue light. “I have the power of Z now.”

The Doctor grinned. “Good going Corona!”

“You’ll want to take that back,” Corona said, smiling sadly. “Because I’m going to use this power to end Topeka. With a thought, the entire system will come crashing down.”

Four of them stared at her in disbelief. The fifth one laughed. “I knew you had it in you!” Flagg cheered.

Corona willed that he would get punched in the face by an invisible fist. “You were right about what to do, Flagg. But your motivations and reasons behind doing so still despise me. You care nothing for the sacred privacy of people. You just want to watch the world burn.”

Flagg stood up and shrugged, having nothing to say.

“Also, Doctor?” Corona narrowed her eyes. “You should have told me about Sparkler.”

A guilty expression came over the Doctor’s face. He opened his mouth to respond.

“Don’t say anything,” Corona ordered. “You may be a hero – but you are also a silver-tongued snake.” She looked down at him. “I’m not going to just let you talk me down with clever words and manipulative ideas. When Topeka falls, you can devote yourselves to those dreamers you wanted to protect. You can be their connection if you want it so much.”

The Doctor’s expression was unreadable. Corona had no idea if he would do that or not.

She turned lastly to Hastur. “I’m sorry for what your life is.”

Hastur nodded. “The sentiment is appreciated, but not needed.”

“But it is,” Corona said, shaking her head. “Mindflayer, Smith? I have nothing to say to you two. Go back to your worlds and live without Topeka. Mindflayer, if we cross paths again I will probably have to kill you or seal you away. My suggestion is to never get anywhere near Merodi Universalis.”

The Mindflayer let out a guttural scraping sound Corona assumed was agreement.

Corona lifted her hand and spread her wings. “And that’s all I have to say. Goodbye.”

And then everyone in Topeka woke up.

Coma patients included.

The blue power fizzled out of Corona – she didn’t want anyone to be able to use her to recreate it. The only thing she used the power for aside from destroying Topeka was to return herself to her hospital bed.

She appeared in the real world, already standing.

Lady Rarity rushed her into a hug. “You’re back!”

“Yeah… I’m back…” Corona said, wiping her eyes. “And I did it. …Topeka’s gone. It’ll never bother any of us again.”

Lady Rarity blinked. “…I trust that this is a good thing?”

“I think so,” Corona said, looking into the distance. “But I can’t be sure. I can never be sure.” She shook her head, a sad smile on her face. “Question everything, Lady Rarity. Even yourself and those you trust. It might be wrong.”

Lady Rarity nodded. “Wise words.”

Corona yawned. “You can tell Eve that everything’s taken care of. I… am going home. And I am going to get some actual sleep. In my own bed. Without worrying about fate-of-the-world dreamscape wars.”

“I’ll take care of everything, don’t you worry,” Lady Rarity said, smiling warmly. “You get the rest you need.”

“Thanks,” Corona said, pulling Lady Rarity into a hug. “You’re the best.”

“I try.”

Corona set her down – and teleported away. She traversed dimensions to Lai and entered her bedroom.

She flopped on the bed, arms splayed.

There was no sleep spell needed – she was already asleep.

Asleep and dreaming happily.

~~~

Thrackerzod walked into the League of Sweetie Belles – and was amazed at what Pinkie had done to the place. Red, white, blue, and pink decorations covered every surface of the room. Images of Thrackerzod smiling lined the walls – even a few artist’s renditions of her more eldritch forms seemed to be enjoying themselves. Her elder-sign cutie mark was on display in the center of the room, hanging from the ceiling like a disco ball. She noticed a few eldritch runes glowing in nearby walls, meant to evoke a feeling in her of belonging.

It was working.

“WELCOME TO THE FREEDOM PARTY!” Pinkie shouted. “I’ve got red white and blue straight from ‘Murica itself! Even invited Valentine! FREEEEDOM!”

Valentine looked at the party blower in his hand. “…I still don’t know why I’m here.”

“It’s the theme of the party, shoosh, enjoy yourself. Take solace knowing Merodi Universalis is celebrating LIBERTY for once. You can choose to think of this as your values leaking into our society.”

Valentine tried to speak but he ended up just blowing the party blower.

“That’s the spirit!” Pinkie ran over to Thrackerzod and dragged her to the middle of the League’s main hall. “EVERYONE LISTEN UP – THIS IS THRACKERZOD’S DAY! Make it great, okay? BRING ON THE FREEDOM PRESENTS!” A firework went off above Thrackerzod’s head.

“Congratulations Thrackerzod!” Bot said, running up. She dropped off a present in front of her. “Open it!”

Thrackerzod teleported the present out of the box without unwrapping it. It was a tape recorder. “…Thanks?”

“Press play.”

Thrackerzod did. Bot’s voice came through the recorder.

“I will stand by you until the end!”

Thrackerzod rough, rocky exterior broke. She let a smile crawl up her face. “…thank you.”

“YAY!” Bot declared, pulling Thrackerzod in for a hug. “Friends!”

“Friends,” Thrackerzod admitted.

Squeaky and Allure piled themselves on next.

“We’re so proud of how far you’ve come,” Allure said. “We’ll make sure you never regret your decision.”

“You’ve always been a part of our family,” Squeaky added.

Then Suzie, then Burgerbelle, then Minna, then numerous other Sweetie Belles piled themselves on next.

Thrackerzod, for one of the rare moments in her life, allowed herself to grin widely. “You know, for a bunch of short-lived meat sacks, you’re all the best.”

“Thrackerzod’s the best-hoo!” Thrackerzod’s native Scootaloo said, coming out from behind a hidden column. “Bet you weren’t expectin’ the Scootaloo-hoo to show up, were ya?”

Thrackerzod rolled her eyes. “No I was not. Long time no see. Have you actually successfully wooed anyone yet?”

“No,” Apple Bloom said, revealing herself. “Ah suspect ka curse, though I’m not sure if it’s her ‘anything that moves’ attitude that’s the curse or the fact that she never gets anyone.”

“I will conquer the language of love!”

“You said you conquered it last week! Then you got thrown out a window!”

“Defenestration, baby!”

Thrackerzod rolled her eyes. “You morons are also, conditionally, the best.”

“Ah, that’s sweet baby, wanna see where this goes?”

“No,” Thrackerzod responded, a smile on her face. “I will never even consider coupling myself with the likes of orange filth like yourself.”

Scootaloo blinked. “Was that racist? That sounded racist.”

“Just anti-Scootaloo.”

“Ah sweet, I love it when they play hard to get!”

“As you can see, she’s just as delusional as ever,” Apple Bloom said. “Nice to see ya’ again, Zod.”

“Glad you could make it as well.”

“Good, cause you’re not going to be so glad about the last visitor.” Apple bloom shuffled out of the way nervously, revealing Rarity.

“…Ah. ‘Sister’. I suppose you would be invited,” Thrackerzod deadpanned, her smile gone.

Rarity sighed. “Look, I know I wasn’t always the best sister. Okay, I was never a good sister and if I was I would have cared that you were trying to kill Twilight all the time. But can we just take a moment, forget all that, and have a party where we actually celebrate you? As much as you may think I don’t care, I would actually like to see that.”

The slightest hint of a smirk came up Thrackerzod’s lips. “Sure. If there are any stallions here, you don’t have to restrain yourself.”

Rarity let out a sigh of relief. “Oh thank god you’re not going to be stuffy.”

“Though for the love of all horrors in the furthest ring, do not hit on a Silver Belle. I don’t think I need to explain why that’s wrong in so many ways.”

“I thought you were the eldritch creature born of a decidedly raunchy relationship between three siblings from separate timelines?”

“That’s Nussula’ch,” Thrackerzod said. “I was born from a spontaneous eruption of what you would consider Azathoth’s acne.”

“…How did I not know this about you?” Allure asked.

“Because you never asked.”

Rarity snorted. “Free, but still the same as ever.” She paused for a moment – then rubbed Thrackerzod’s mane. “I don’t really know if you’re my sister, Thrackerzod. There is something here, I think.”

Thrackerzod nodded. “It would be unwise and unnecessarily cruel of me to deny your attempts to rekindle our lost relationship.”

“…You really have changed. A lot.”

“Talking to oneself all day every day tends to bring about, if not madness, then great change.”

Pinkie giggled. “Yep! Now who wants to play throw pies at the cardboard cutout of Nyarlathotep?”

“Me,” Hastur said, reaching for a pie.

“Oh. Hastur.” Thrackerzod blinked. “You came?”

“Nyarlathotep’s contract has ended. Azathoth has expressed complete apathy about your departure according to Cizza. So here I am. To support you as well as for some personal therapy.” He threw the pie at the cardboard cutout of Nyarlathotep. The cutout exploded in a violent burst of eldritch energy.

Pinkie produced another cardboard cutout. “I have lots more. Keep destroying them, people!”

Thrackerzod smirked. “Oh this is going to be fun…”

~~~

“And I think that’s everything,” Lady Rarity told Eve and Luna, stopping a moment to let herself breathe.

Eve blinked. “Wow.”

“She made the right decision,” Luna asserted. “Topeka, as I saw it on my travels, was an innate disruption of the nature of dreams. They are not supposed to be accessible to just anyone.” She looked into the distance. “The dream realm only needs scant few protectors. If it has too many, then it is no longer a matter of being protected – but controlled.”

“She probably made the Doctor upset,” Lady Rarity pointed out.

“He’s not the type to seek revenge,” Eve said. “He’ll accept what happened and move on. Or go out and change something himself.” Eve looked at Lady Rarity. “How are you doing?”

“I feel like my mind is soup and I can’t keep all the facts straight and, despite what I just told you, I really don’t know what happened in the end. They were all going to run for Z. Corona destroyed Topeka and freed everyone.” She shrugged. “She’ll probably tell us when she wakes up.”

“It won’t be for a long time,” Luna said, closing her eyes. “She truly exhausted herself over these last few days. She needs to enjoy her rest – and her own dreams.”

Lady Rarity smiled. “I agree. …In fact, I may join her. Not in a shared dream, mind you, but just going to sleep.” She yawned. “I may have been groggy the entire time, but it still feels like I exerted too much energy…”

“It’s fine, I’m sure Renee will let you take a day or two off,” Eve said with a smile. “It’s not like the fate of the world depends on you right now. You already took care of that.”

Lady Rarity bowed. “I shall take my leave. Until we meet again.”

“It is always an honor, Lady Rarity,” Luna said, bowing in return.

Lady Rarity skittered out of the throne room, the doors closing behind her.

“Corona’s come a long way,” Eve said, out of the blue.

Luna nodded. “As have you. I am certain it is no accident that you two have grown in stature, power, and maturity together into your own kinds of leaders.”

Eve nodded slowly.

“And your own kinds of heroes.”

Eve rubbed the back of her head. “Yeah… I guess we are heroes, huh?”

Luna nodded. “The bond between you two is a powerful and deep one, Eve. Continue to nurture it as you move on in life. You will not regret it.”

“Luna, I’m the princess of friendship, I know how this works.” She nudged Luna playfully. “You don’t need to tell me how to do my job.”

Luna smirked. “…No, I suppose not.”

~~~

Corona sat under the orange tree, only vaguely aware of anything happening around her.

She was perfectly fine with that. The orange blur, the vague sensation of the tree trunk at her back, the indiscernible distance…

She was happy with the simple world around her. She took in a long breath and let out one twice as long. She was content.

She stroked her hand gently over the purple unicorn sitting in her lap, resting just as she was.

“Mmm, five more minutes…” the purple unicorn muttered, the words whispered into Corona’s mind, like words were supposed to be in a dream.

Corona smiled softly. She didn’t respond to the words – she just kept petting the unicorn.

The smile transferred to her physical self, laying in her bed.

Raging Sights decided that meant everything was fine.

Comments

[prism heart]

That was various parts cute, adorable, and epic.

[FanOfMostEverything]

“…I just lost the Game,” Corona muttered, keeping her eyes closed.

Given all the Earths that are part of the Merodi, you'd think someone would've distributed the anti-mindvirus by now.

A Twilight who kept running through blank white doors that led to different worlds, wailing “I thought it was over!”

The University of Doors tormenting a Twilight would explain those shorts...

Heh. Corona is in Dream Land. An encounter with one of its more notable residents makes sense. Though I dread to imagine what would happen if Kirby copied her abilities.

Corona caught her and tapped her head, catching feelings of fear, self-doubt, and anger along with images of a red portal and a truly absurd amount of cookies.

Grandmapocalpyse cultist? Seems like it.

Huh. Whoever finds an Inception Earth first is going to have one heck of an edge in subconscious espionage. And that prize may have already gone to Big Cookie.

“I… I saw green Lines of green, flying past a black background… And then I felt my mind get assaulted directly.” She shook her head. “She’s still dreaming. Whatever has her is directly connected through her mind. I… can’t even begin to explain how , but it is.”

The Matrix has her.
... Wait, the Matrix has her? How the crap does that work across universes? I suppose we'll find out soon.

Heh. Olivia's utter inability to process dreams is hilariously ironic.

Go looking for eldritch entities and you find Kirby. Seems legit.

“Why Topeka!?” Corona asked. “That’s a city in Kansas!”

"And you were there, and you were there..."
Well, that's my guess, anyway.

So... the eldritch meeting spot is a truffula grove? Now you have me thinking that the Lorax and Once-ler are Squiddle-like stand-ins for far more eldritch entities.

I probably would've tried moving to the next dream while Flagg was monologuing. And I doubtlessly would've regretted it.

Valentine tried to speak but he ended up just blowing the party blower.

Definitely the safest option.

I can't help but think of Dream of the Endless. I suppose when Topeka spread to DC universes, this would have soundly resolved itself.

Still, truly awesome moment for Corona... if you can call a movie-length chapter a "moment." Hell of a ride from start to finish. Thank you for it. Sparkler is best tulpa.

[zeusdemigod131]

First death, now a multiverse spanning dream realm. Corona seems to have a knack for destroying big natural things.

Hopefully no one who lived there comes looking for revenge.

and that there weren't too many beings who's existence was tied to the place who didn't have someone else's head to retreat into

[Voltaje]

Wow, an epic adventure, I really though little dreamer will appear, oh well, now we will see if Corona creates a body for spackle to inhabit, perhaps a twilight with a brain death, anyway, wonderful chapter, now I can have my breakfast, it's 2 pm, I will manage

[Killer20]

Great chapter....sad to see starwars to get sidelined but i get why....theres really nothing in sw thats a big challange for our main characters as seen with the empepor ...so apart from some funny dialogue i guess sw has nothing to offer...i am pretty sure if you dig deep enough there would be something but nothing that other worlds cant offer so yeah...still was a great chapter , i enjoyed every second of it

[Blaze rod]

A Twilight who kept running through blank white doors that led to different worlds, wailing “I thought it was over!” Clearly a nightmare about something in her past.

[Mini-Joe]

friggin fantastic chapter!

[INeedSleep]

I genuinely thought that sparkler would end up being Z... This was way better.

[aponyforthebooks]

Corona stretched her arms and wings. “Welp, back to sleep. Maybe there’ll be another weird dream.”

She heard something explode less than a block away

Corona sighed inwardly. “Or there’ll be a crisis I have to deal with.”

THE MAD BOMBER THAT BOMBS AT MIDNIGHT! We met again. For the first time. From the last time.

[theunbalancedone]

Was thinking about this fic, and had a thought I liked despite not having anything to do with this chapter.

A prophet who focuses on writing their own personal story and keeps their works around on their person to reference semi regularly. The trick here is they are able to get so engrossed in referencing what they wrote out, sometimes a scene with them as the point of view will just show his work and not what's actually happening. I feel a clever or aware enough of a prophet can pull off some unlikely twists with something like that

[Pseudonym1]

9461644
That wouldn't work in a million years. Congratulations, you blinded them... Now what? Punch them? Try and snap their neck? I don't think either of those would turn out well for you. If they sensed any physical contact, they'd just teleport away and dispel the vomit from their eyes, and bam, you're screwed. Even if you had a gun or something, there's no way in hell they'd die to a simple gun. Fighting the enchantress is just not something you do as a normal human and survive, unless you inexplicably have some sort of magical artifact, or you find them sleeping.

[iloveportalz0r]

She got a pet Twilight? am envvy

[EnderHooves]

9462952
That would probably be very disorienting and redundant. Very interesting though.
He gets into the back of a car, checks his notes of the last scene, skips ahead a few scenes, goes for a while, reading his own life, meanwhile, we don't see him in the car, but in the scene he's reading. Then he looks up from his book to see he's at his destination, about to actually live out the scene he just read, and the scene we just saw, and we get to see it again. See what I mean? It would be a nesting doll situation, but opening a layer could reveal a bigger doll inside, and you'd never know until it was opened.
It makes interesting theorising, and excellent thinking, but it would be very hard to actually read if he went by his own script.
Reminds me of another meta-fic I read called Aporia, where stepping out of your story and into the great library is as easy as stopping reading it.

Excellent movie chapter! I love some good dream shinanagains. Congrats on Zod!

[AppleTank]

Hrrrm. Now I wonder if she can pull Sparkler out into her waking mind.

Edit: Oh hey, its Suzie. I wonder if Celia is here yet.

[kistecool]

“I can see why you’re people think so highly of you.”

your people.

“That’s just the wars! I’m sure some of the Lunas will be kept out of spite. Or infected by the MIndflayer.

Double capitalization.

Thrackerzod rough, rocky exterior broke. She let a smile crawl up her face. “…thank you.”

Thrackerzod’s.

My apologies for not reporting typos in the earlier parts of the chapter.

9759711

She was mentioned. When they were donating magic to Corona inside of ‘Zod’s mind, she was mentioned with something like “One, who had a split gem in her forehead, was pouring more magic than any other Sweety.”

[My name is R]

I had been wondering about the interaction between Zod's vacation and the easily obtainable immortality potions. This is not one of the possibilities I forsaw.
It's been brought up many times, including a few in this story, that the bigger the scale the harder to decipher the right thing to do, but I can't recall the reverse ever being thought up. It is also harder to find the path of greatest evil. And so both the champion of light and the scion of evil choose the same path.
I have to wonder, is the Mindflayer incapable of communicating with mortals? Seems like it could have allied itself with The Doctor since both were content to leave Topeka as it was.
Once again there were clues as to the twist that I failed to uncover, let alone interpret, until after the reveal. A hallmark of well planned writing. (In particular the time being nearly at infinite speed in the Sparkle Census should have at least been mentioned in its relation to Topeka's time.

[Icy Creation]

Corona sighed inwardly. “ Or there’ll be a crisis I have to deal with.” She got up and summoned her dress. “Here we go again...”

Fucking 'ell. It definitely sounds like she's been put in a recursive dream trap.

Edit: Nevermind.

[Starkice]

Nice Primus reference with the Seas of Cheese.

[RoboRed]

Another great feature-length chapter.

Man, that escalated rather quickly. A mundane trip with new experiences in a dreamworld featuring best pony just ballooned into a secret high-stakes multiversal war in a D-sphere. What an adventure.

I was suspecting that something deeper was going on with Sparkler early on. Something about here seemed a bit "convenient". Too convenient. Initially I was suspecting something similar, then towards the end I was starting to think she was maybe more closely tied to Z. Didn't expect her to just be a manifestation of Corona's psyche. That got a little sad at the end but at least it seems like she's still around in some form?

Speaking of Corona she has gotten mega-fucking-powerful lately. Holy fuck. Girl OP taking on two Eldritch high beings and still coming out alive.

Congrats on Thackerzod for her newfound freedom. Between her friends and Corona's serum I feel she's going to work out a great new future free from the Embodiment.
Speaking of the serum I was just jumping though LSB to check for something and I found an early-on mention that Corona as the creator of the immortality serum so I looks like I completely forgot about that between then and now whoops

[RoboRed]

Pinkie’s words interrupted his any response to him. “I don’t suppose you’d have any idea what kind of big secret I have no idea about, do you?”

“No,” Eve lied through her teeth, tears suddenly rolling down her cheeks at high speed. “No, I-I have no idea…”

“At this point an agent could prod her,” Valentine said. “Get her to reveal whatever the secret was. …Curious that she knows something your Pinkie doesn’t…”

Eve turned to look right at Pinkie. “Actually… Actually yes, I do know. I should have told you so long ago Pinkie. So… So long ago. I’m sorry. But, Pinkie, I-”

Corona blasted Eve through the head with a mental pulse, forcing her to wake up, removing her from the dream before she continued speaking. “…Whatever that was, we weren’t meant to hear it,” Corona asserted.

As she walked off to her chambers, Eve put a hoof on her shoulder. “…Thank you,” Eve whispered into her ear.

Corona nodded ever so slightly and continued on. There was no doubt in her mind what Eve was thanking her for.

I just remembered I forgot to touch on this. Eve still needs to reveal the truth of her existence. Clearly, it's at the point (and likely has been for a while) where the fact that she hasn't done it yet is affecting her subconscious and her dreams.

She needs to get it over with. She might have dodged a rather unpleasant moment there in Topeka but the longer it goes on the worse the consequences are going to be and she's been outright told this.