Marshmallow Dreams

by Halira

Chapter 105: Back into The Well

Roger got right in my face. "What does she mean my mother was hunting you two?!"

"Miss Riddle! We had everything well in hoof!" Rarity fussed.

Applejack wandered over, a little unsteady on her hooves after taking what should have been a bone-shattering blow to the face from Bursa's dragon tail. "Ya sure about that? Aye feel like Big Mac just tap danced on my head. What's this about Roger's ma huntin' ya?"

I backed up to get some space from Roger. "There was this big shadow alicorn thing down there! I was scouting in my projected form and found Bursa running for her life. It nearly caught her, but I distracted it and then found out it could still hit me."

"What does that have to do with my mother?" Roger asked.

Rarity looked grim. "If Bursa was telling the truth, I think that means your mother is that thing. She must have given in to the shadows and let them possess her."

Roger gaped. "Why would she do that? She's a good mare."

Rarity gave him a sympathetic look. "A good mare who felt powerless and scared. A good mare who didn't see a way out of her situation. Ponies do many things they normally wouldn't when they are scared. It doesn't make them bad. They are only reacting to their fears."

"You took that explanation from Phobia Remedy," Jonathan commented.

"Perhaps, but it is true," Rarity asserted.

Applejack frowned as she looked at the well. "Reckon we might need to use the Elements on her if that's the case. Sorta like Luna, when she turned into Nightmare Moon. She ain't rightfully in control of her actions, so we gotta purge the darkness from her."

"That requires us all to be together, darling," Rarity replied as she looked at the well. "That means we need to join our friends, but what of these three? We can't leave them here alone, and Roger may be important if we are to cure his mother."

Applejack sighed. "S'pose your right. We'll have to bring y'all with us. Just stick close and stay behind us. It's for your own good."

Jonathan walked over to the well and looked down it, shaking his head. "Here we go again with me following Blanche into some insane place filled with danger. I thought I was done with that. Believe me; I know how to stay back and let others do their thing."

"Good, just keep those other two back as well," Applejack instructed. "Rarity, gettin' us back down there is your thing. Try not to drop us on the ground this time."

"I rarely do that! Teleporting is not as easy as it looks, especially with groups!" Rarity fumed. She looked at all of us. "I should probably do it in two trips. I will take you and Jonathan, then come back and get Rebecca and Roger."

"Is this because I'm fat?" I asked.

"We use more gentile words than that, darling. In my line of work, I prefer to say rotund. Fat is such an ugly and insulting word, meant to shame, but, yes, it is because of your weight," Rarity answered. "I can only teleport so much at a time, and it is easier if I more evenly distribute the weight between trips, so I do not have to recalibrate my spell as much, and you weigh more than what our human friend does. I figure Applejack's muscular physique factored in this is close to an even distribution."

I blinked. "So, what you're saying is, Roger is skinny and needs to gain more weight. Got it."

"This isn't the time for humor, Rebecca," Roger snapped.

I gave my wings a little flap. "Sorry, I just spent several minutes running away from and dodging your mom, who seemed very interested in ending my life, and now I'm heading right back to her with my much slower, clumsy, and breakable body. If she hits me like she did down there, she'll reveal my jelly-filled center, so I'm nervous, and I don't have so much as a cookie to eat. I'm relieving stress the best I can."

"We'll protect you, Miss Riddle. Don't you worry," Rarity assured her with a smile. She looked at Jonathan and Applejack. "Get close together. We want to make this quick. We still don't know how Bursa got past our friends."

"It's a maze of tunnels down there. She could have taken a different path than them," I informed them. "Um…quick warning for Jonathan and Roger, there's a lot of dead bodies down there, a lot. They've been sitting out for a thousand plus years, so they're all bones, but it's a little gruesome."

"I don't care. I just want to save my mom," Roger growled.

Jonathan shrugged but didn't say anything.

"Let's be off then," Rarity said as she walked over to Jonathan and Applejack. A second later, she lit her horn, and the trio vanished.

"Dang nabbit, Rarity! Aye told ya not to drop us on the ground!"

It looked like I had another crash coming, but that didn't bother me. I was used to hitting the ground. I was more concerned about going in and facing that monster in person. Still, this was Roger's mom, and he deserved our solidarity.

I still wished I had some fudge to snack on.

---

I might have been dragging up the rear, but it was still up to me to point where we needed to go. It was easy enough. I could still feel where Roger's mom was and was shocked the others couldn't. It was a little puzzling why it was only me who could feel her, maybe because I was more in touch with the dream realm than the others, and this thing existed at least partially there, but we didn't have time to sit down and figure it out. We had stopped briefly to see if I could get in contact with Luna. She might be able to fight this thing from the dream realm, but she must have been awake at the time. My projection period was very brief this time around, and we were back to walking…well, they walked; I decided to fly. I might be a poor flyer, but I didn't want to walk among the bones. I was unsteady, but I was willing to put the extra effort in.

Jonathan and Roger held up pretty well to the surroundings, as did Applejack. Rarity was another story.

"This place is the worst possible thing!"

Yeah, someone disliked the skellies even more than me.

Applejack sighed and looked back at her friend. "Rarity, can ya hush? Ah'm trying' to focus on track' and you cryin' about stuff is very distractin'."

"We could gag her," Jonathan suggested in his customary monotone.

Rarity scoffed. "You shall do no such thing!"

"Aye won't let them gag ya, but ya need to be quiet," Applejack said calmly. "Rebecca, How close are we getting to Roger's ma?"

I pointed at a wall. "Close, in that direction. Almost on the other side of that wall."

"We're a passage or two away, and we still haven't found the others. If what Rebecca says is true, we don't want to run into it without them," Jonathan said.

"Unless they are already confronting her," Roger said.

I shook my head. "I don't think so. With how close we are, we would hear the battle."

"Unless it has already defeated them," Jonathan said grimly.

Applejack shook her head no. "Pinkie and Fluttershy might not be much of a fight by themselves, but aye don't think Twilight, Dash, and Wild Growth would go down so easily, or the wardens' bodyguards."

"Blanche would at least escape," Jonathan added in.

"No love for Sunflower?" I asked. "She'd at least fly away."

"Let's assume they haven't encountered her yet," Rarity asserted, ignoring my quip about my friend. "How do we avoid running into her in the meantime?"

Applejack shrugged. "Hope the tracks go off in a different direction. If not, we need to find a detour."

"No need, the rest of us are two rooms over."

I did a startled jump as Blanche carefully crept into our area from the next doorway. She looked over her shoulder and quickly put more room between her and the door, joining us.

"What's going on? Why are ya here?" Applejack asked.

Blanche pointed back. "The next room is circular with several passages leading in different directions. One of those passages has Twilight, Sunflower, and the others, but one of those passages leads straight to that thing. We need to keep to the wall when we get in to avoid being directly in its sight. We aren't sure what it is doing, but it is staying put, for now."

"Is everypony safe?" Rarity asked worriedly.

Blanche nodded. "Fluttershy is on pins and needles. She can feel where that thing is for some reason, and it is making her anxiety spike. Twilight decided to have the group sit put and have me find you. Pinkie and I are the best at sneaking, but she would struggle to get out of the well on her own. There are benefits to being human."

"Rebecca can feel it too, and her anxiety is at a heightened level as well," Jonathan said, pointing at me. "Maybe it is a pegasus thing?"

Blanche shook her head. "No, not if Sunflower and Rainbow Dash can't feel it. Twilight can, but not at Fluttershy's level. She has to focus to feel where it is. Fluttershy is practically a compass who can point where it is at any time. We can figure that out later. We need to focus on getting to the others. We can make a plan once we are all together. Follow me, and hug the wall."

I shivered as I looked at the wall where I knew the thing waited beyond. Yeah, I knew exactly where it was, and I did not like being this close. The feeling was much worse than when I was projecting. It was a nearly overwhelming sense of dread and fear. I needed happy thoughts– chocolate cake and cookies, Bob Dylan music playing on the computer, the Skytree monument, my parents throwing me a birthday party, my bathroommates joking around, Miss Seapony enjoying my dreams with me, me and Maggie hanging out, Russell holding me and complimenting my stripes and spots, all things that happened to be very far away at the moment.

I landed, and we all followed Blanche out of the room at a practical crawl. I would have brought up the rear, but Applejack and Rarity had wordlessly decided to sandwich me between them. Maybe they were afraid I would bolt. It wasn't an unreasonable suspicion; I was terrified. I actually wished I could project at the moment because I felt much safer and braver in my projected form. It made me feel ashamed, even though I knew that there must have been some magic at work impacting both me and Fluttershy. The fact that I knew it wasn't just me and that there was something more than my normal fear at work gave me a little confidence to keep moving, but it was itty-bitty.

The next room was indeed circular and had five doors. The door to our immediate left was the one where the sensation was coming from and the only door that didn't have a door directly across the room from it. There were lines drawn on the floor going from each entry to the doors that were not to the immediate left or right of them, and additional designs drawn in sections of the floor at the intersections of the main lines. I was glad Blanche was leading our group to the right. I hadn't been through this room earlier, and the walls between the doors were covered in painted murals. I was only partially aware of them in my current state. I just knew they looked old, even for this place. The entire room seemed somewhat ceremonial, and the door that led to where Roger's mother was had a large door with scenes not drawn but carved into the stone arch surrounding it. Yeah, there was probably a reason she had camped out in that room. At least this room was bone free.

The appropriate room was the next one over, and we thankfully didn't have to pass in front of that important room's line of sight. This new room seemed like it might have been a library at some point, a big one, with every wall covered to the ceiling with shelves. Most of the things on the shelves were scrolls, but there were some books. Everything was covered in dust, and most of the items looked like they would fall apart if anyone so much as touched them. Actually, Twilight was standing next to a shelf, looking at it in horror, and she had a pile of dust and scraps at her hooves. Pinkie and Sunflower were trying to comfort Fluttershy, who was sitting on the floor with her wongs tightly wrapped around herself as she rocked back and forth. Wild Growth and Rainbow Dash were walking around the room, tapping on shelves and examining everything closely.

Wild Growth noticed us come in first. "You found them fast. You just left," she said in a hushed voice.

"They were almost here. They must have been searching for us, and Rebecca can track that thing too," Blanche informed Wild.

That got Twilight's immediate attention. "Really? That confirms my theory that those that have used mind magic are more sensitive to the presence of the collective night pony consciousness."

"Pony of Shadows," Pinkie corrected.

Twilight's face twisted in disgust. "That's just an old mare's tale, Pinkie. This is the collective-"

"It's easier to call her the Pony of Shadows," Dash cut in.

I looked around. "Where are Crystal and Ulysses? Weren't they with you?"

The group looked down at the ground, not meeting their eyes.

Fluttershy whimpered. "Crystal got gunked in place by Bursa when she ran by us, and we had to leave her when the Pony of Shadows came, and we found out we couldn't fight her. We don't know what happened to her after that."

"Ulysses stayed behind to fight that thing and buy us time. Not sure what happened to him either," Rainbow Dash said.

"Now it is in that room across the way and just sitting, gathering power," Pinkie said.

"Well, Bursa got away," Applejack informed them. "She did tell us that that thing in the other room is Roger's ma before she left. Now that we are all here, we can try giving her an element blast to see if we can un-shadowfy her."

Rainbow Dash did a flip in the air. "Oh, yeahhh! Pony of Shadows isn't going to know what hit her!"

"Keep your voice down, Rainbow!" Twilight hissed. "We don't know if she is sleeping or what she is capable of."

"Why is she just sitting still?" I asked. "She seemed like she was on a mission to kill Bursa when she first came out, then I distracted her, so Bursa didn't die, then she was on a mission to try put a donut hole in me. I don't know if she could put a hole through my projection, but she was blasting left and right and was about to bring the place down."

"You caused a diversion? And you kept her occupied?" Blanche asked in disbelief.

I shuffled my hooves nervously. "I can be very annoying when I want to be, and I thought I was mostly safe when I was projecting myself…until she knocked me through a wall with her wing. That's when I found out she could hit me. I still tried to keep her busy for a while, but she seemed to realize what I was doing and lost interest in me. That's when I stopped projecting and woke up to find Applejack and Rarity fighting with Bursa."

Blanche gave a little nod. "You stuck it out after you realized you could be in danger. I didn't think you had it in you."

"I couldn't let her kill Bursa," I asserted with a little hop. "The crazy bug lady just wants to go home. I don't think that makes her evil. She doesn't deserve to die. Have you seen this place? Enough people have died down here to last a hundred lifetimes. We don't need any more."

She grunted. "Well, let's hope that Bursa didn't end up inadvertently killing Crystal by gunking her in place to be an easy meal."

"And that Ulysses is okay, too," Sunflower added in.

Both Blanche and Jonathan gave Sunflower unreadable looks. Dang, no love was lost between them and the crazy older man. After this was all over, I should take the time to find out exactly what kind of adventure the trio had been sent on by Discord, but I was afraid to find out. Blanche was so much more intense now and aggressive. Jonathan was harder to read, but he was changed too. I seriously reconsidered supporting Discord being able to visit Earth's dream realm. He might have saved a world, but he had scarred my friends for life in the process. Urgh! Why did stuff like that have to be balanced against each other for pros and cons? Who has to make choices like that?

The answer was obvious– a Dreamwarden judging whether Discord could safely be permitted in the dream realm.

"We think she is gathering power," Twilight answered my question. "If whatever is possessing her is bent on revenge against the ponies of Equestria, she likely wants to be strong enough to be sure she can overcome an army. On the plus side, I think she is disabled from using her full power. The night ponies of old conducted half their operations in dreams, but she may fear Luna after what happened a thousand years ago. She won't risk confronting her in the dream realm…although she may target Luna first to attack in the physical world. She's strong enough to be a threat to an alicorn."

"Which is why we need to Element-up and kick her shadowy flank now!" Rainbow Dash insisted.

Twilight nodded. "Yes, let's do this."

Comments

[badninja]

Well it looks as if this arc is coming to a prismatic end. I hope Rebecca is going to be ready for all that follows.