Aces High

by Lupin

Dreams of Fire and Ice

Chapter 5: Dreams of Fire and Ice

Another school day had ended, and most of the student body had fled. Those left inside were either in the depths of detention, or otherwise absorbed in their extracurricular activities, blissfully unaware of their soon-to-be visitor, or the drama waiting to unfold outside.

Sunset rested on the front steps, leaning somewhat uncomfortably against the center handrail, while Rainbow and Twilight sat nearby. Her eyes languidly scanned the empty lawn, stopping at the cracked pedestal that had once supported the Wondercolt statue, the rearing horse that served as the school’s mascot, and which had been destroyed in the chaotic climax of the Friendship Games.

Nothing but ordinary stone. For now.

“You two don’t really have to come, you know,” she said wearily to her companions.

“There’s no way I’m abandoning you,” Rainbow argued fiercely, crossing her arms over her chest. “Besides, I already cleared it with the coach. I’m good to go.”

“And I already called my parents,” said Twilight. “You should have someone there with you.” She paused. “When you cross a dimensional portal.” Her eyes widened. “Which we’ll also be doing. Oh, my stars, I’ll actually be crossing into a parallel universe.” Twilight’s body seemed to vibrate with something between excitement and high anxiety.

“Relax, Sparky,” Sunset told her. “You’ll both be fine.” She recalled her own trips through the portal. “First time’s going to be pretty rough, though, not gonna lie.”

“We can take it,” said Rainbow firmly.

A glimmer of light poked at the corner of her vision. One side of the pedestal began to glow, solid rock taking on the appearance of a mirror struck by sunlight. The luminous surface rippled like water, and then Princess Twilight Sparkle stepped out onto the grass.

Blinking, the young princess looked around, before fixing her eyes on them. “Girls!” She crossed the distance quickly, and whatever greeting she’d had died on her lips, replaced instead by a harsh intake of breath. “Sunset, what happened?!”

Sunset offered a pathetic wave. “Hey, Twi.”

Twilight dropped down onto the steps, sitting up against her. “You said you needed to come as soon as possible, but I didn’t think…you look awful!” she cried.

“She had an episode in class,” explained Sparky. “Nurse Redheart said,” her voice sounded like it was on the verge of cracking, all her nervous energy seemingly gone. “It sounded like a seizure.”

Princess Twilight’s mouth fell open in horror. “A…oh, Celestia! No wonder you messaged me! Princess Luna hasn’t arrived yet, but I sent her a letter. Come on,” she took Sunset’s hand in hers. “Let’s get you to Equestria.”

Sunset allowed herself to be pulled to her feet. Despite resting in the nurse’s office for the rest of the school day, her legs still felt weak. Everything felt weak, really, like the shock in her brain had rebounded through her entire nervous system.

Rainbow and Sparky got up as well, helping hold Sunset upright when Princess Twilight realized just how unstable the redhead was.

“Thanks, girls,” said the princess.

“Actually, Twi,” said Sunset, trying her best to support her own weight because somewhere inside she loathed being carried like this, “they’re coming with us.”

Princess Twilight’s head twisted around to look at the other two girls in surprise, her long purple hair smacking Sunset in the face. It smelled, she noted as she spat a few strands out of her mouth, like apples. Nowhere near as pleasant as Sparky’s lavender shampoo.

“Are you sure you want to?” asked the princess. “It’s not exactly easy changing species across dimensions. Trust me, I remember what it was like the first time I went through the portal.”

Rainbow glared. “You’re trying to talk us out of it, too?”

“I already talked to them about it,” said the former, and also soon-to-be-again, unicorn. “They’re positive.”

“Alright,” said the princess reluctantly. She looked around. “But where are the others?”

“They couldn’t take time away,” explained Sparky.

“And Rarity has my journal,” added Sunset. Which was vitally important, because the journal’s presence in this dimension is what allowed Princess Twilight to open the portal manually, rather than wait the thirty moons in Equestrian time it would otherwise take.

“Yeah, now let’s get going!” said Rainbow impatiently.

With the girls helping support her wobbly legs, Sunset crossed the distance from the stairs to the portal. The doorway home. Her fingers reached out to touch the surface, watching the way the enchanted energies rippled outwards.

“Ready?” said Princess Twilight.

Sunset nodded her head. “Ready.”

Heart beating faster in her chest, Sunset took a deep breath, and put her foot through the portal.

The trip across the dimensions was never an easy ride. Like every time before, Sunset felt her body twist and bend, fingers fusing back into hooves, her spine rearranging itself in a more quadruped formation. She wanted to scream, but it was drowned out by the swirl of light and color that seemed especially painful this time around, prodding at the back of her skull like hot pokers even as she felt the bones warp under her skin.

Sunset landed clumsily in a heap, groaning as her body hit solid stone. “Owwwww,” she groaned.

“Sunset! Are you alright?” She felt the tingle of magic against her coat…yeah, she had a coat again, and the next thing she knew, she was being gently pulled to her hooves by Princess Twilight’s telekinetic grip.

“I’m okay,” she replied. “Nothing broken, I don’t think.” Other than her pride, anyway. The last time she’d crossed the mirror, back when she’d stolen the Element of Magic from Twilight, she’d managed a far more dignified entrance.

But to be fair, back then, she hadn’t felt like she’d been trampled by an entire tribe of angry yaks.

“Hey, Twilight, I—Oh, hi.”

Sunset looked up to see a pink-coated unicorn mare with a pink and purple striped mane staring curiously at her.

“Hi,” repeated the mare. “I’m Starlight. Starlight Glimmer.”

So, this was the pony Twilight had taken on as her first student. “Sunset Shimmer,” she replied politely. With a concerted effort, the redhead managed to stand firmly on her own legs. Although perhaps the fact that she had four of them simply made it easier to support her weight.

“You’re Sunset? The princess said you were coming.” Starlight looked her up and down. “Wow, you look terrible.” She balked. “I’m sorry! That was probably really rude, wasn’t it?”

“Don’t sweat it,” Sunset assured her, waving a hoof. “I’ve been getting that a lot lately.”

A shriek off to the side made Sunset jump, and it was with little more than luck that she didn’t end up crashing back onto her belly.

“Yo, Twilight, get a grip!”

Sunset turned her head. Rainbow Dash, now a cyan-colored pegasus pony, was comforting another very familiar purple pony with glasses.

“How can I get a grip when I don’t have fingers?!” Sparky replied, hyperventilating as she tried to stand on her newly-acquired hooves.

Smirking just a little bit, and momentarily forgetting how wretched she felt, Sunset lit her horn, dark red energy flowing from base to tip. How good it felt to do that again. Carefully, she grabbed Sparky in her magic and propped her up, the same way Princess Twilight did for her.

“Calm down, Sparky,” she said, offering a little smile. “I told you, this is what happens when you cross over.”

Sparky turned to look at her, eyes widening behind her glasses as she took in Sunset’s original form. “…Sunset?”

“Last I checked,” she joked, cutting out her spell as a wave of tiredness washed over her brain. Better to take it easy, she realized.

“Hey, check it out!” declared Rainbow. “I have wings!” She stood in front of a crystal wall, turning this way and that to admire her new form.

“And I’m…a unicorn,” added Sparky. She turned to Sunset, smiling awkwardly. “I guess you were right.”

Sunset returned the smile. “Guess I was.”

She took a moment to observe her surroundings. Princess Twilight had told her that she’d moved into her own castle, but seeing it was a whole other matter. Before her was a library entirely carved from crystal, books stacked tightly on shelves that reached over a dozen feet high.

Turning around, she saw the mirror portal, and more importantly, the device it was now locked into. “So, this is the portal machine you built,” she hummed, sliding a hoof along one of the components.

“Technology’s really advanced while I’ve been gone.” Some of those components reminded her of things from Earth. Nowhere near the digital age, but sophisticated all the same. Princess Twilight had really outdone herself.

Her eyes followed the line of wires and coils to a small lectern atop which a journal rested. Princess Celestia’s journal. The twin to her own. Long ago, the princess had gifted them to her so they could keep in touch over a distance. Now, that same spell was the linchpin for a machine that forced open the gate between universes. Small gifts, big impact.

“Yes, it really has,” the princess answered proudly. “Admittedly, the design was a bit rushed, but once I saw that the transmissions of messages still operated despite the portal being closed, I realized I could apply the theory of…”

Despite her incredible curiosity to know exactly how the machine operated, Sunset’s eyes started to drift back to the mirror.

The mirror…

Small village. Isolated. Something wrong. A stain on the village green. A darkened church. A figure in the doorway. Human, but not. Equine? No. Not that, either. Looked like it…them…but it wasn’t. A fist…hoof…smashing through wood. A fist made of bone and straw and bits of corn.

A scarecrow? Yes, a scarecrow. Alive and malevolent. More than one. A small army. Stuffed and sewn as much with flesh and blood as straw in a parody of hu…equi…a parody of life. Evil from the very earth itself.

Days’ worth of time hit her all at once, compressed so tightly they felt like solid mass. Running, fighting, screaming. A pit. A silver mirror. He was in there. He’d gotten himself in the thick of it again, and she had to get him out. Always had to watch his back, make sure he didn’t die.

Smash the mirror. Smash the mirror. Get him out of there. Smash…

“Sunset!”

Princess Twilight’s scream brought her back to reality. For a moment, Sunset wondered why her right foreleg was raised. Then, the pain hit her full force, an agony that burned from the back of her skull, and whatever strength she had in her legs gave way again.

Her head fell forward, ready to strike the crystal floor, when she felt herself shoved against a bookcase by a burst of magical energy.

“I-I’m…I’m sorry!” cried Sparky. “I didn’t…I was trying to catch you!” Her voice faded to a point so low that it rivaled Fluttershy. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“You didn’t hurt me,” groaned Sunset, cracking her eyes open. “Trust me, Sparky, that was nothing compared to what I did as a filly.” She turned her throbbing head to face the unicorn, offering her the best smile she could manage in spite of the pain. Then she turned her attention to Sparky’s royal counterpart. “It happened again, didn’t it?”

Princess Twilight nodded slowly, her eyes wide with fear. “Is…is this what’s been happening?”

The pulse of a headache kept Sunset from answering, so Rainbow answered for her. “Yeah. She’s been doing that all week.”

“This is so much worse than before,” said the princess worriedly. “Come on, let’s get you to bed while we wait for Princess Luna.”

Sunset didn’t protest as the princess took her entire weight in her magic and levitated her out into the hall. Twilight’s magical grip really was as light as a breeze. Sunset could just feel the pressure of the energy against her body. It was hardly surprising, though. For a unicorn, now alicorn, of her power, force control was essential, just as it had been for Sunset when Princess Celestia trained her.

A memory flashed through her mind, of days when she’d exhausted herself in magic training, and Princess Celestia had picked her up and carried her to bed. Her magic had been just as soft, but it had a warmth that Twilight’s lacked, like a hand and a radiator all in one.

She missed that, she realized with a pang in her chest. She hadn’t realized how much.

Together, everypony, including Spike and Starlight, went up the stairs to a set of double doors. The room beyond hosted a few bookshelves, a king-sized purple four-poster bed, and a small basket filled with bedding. The afternoon sun streamed through the open balcony window, where a telescope stood ready and waiting.

Twilight’s room, obviously.

“You can use my bed,” said the princess, confirming Sunset’s deductions.

The dark curtains of the bed were pulled aside, and Sunset was levitated onto the mattress. Sunset let out a little sigh of contentment. The thing was like sleeping on a cloud, or what she’d imagine it was like, since she wasn’t a pegasus. It certainly put her own bed back across the mirror to shame.

What made the difference? Was it the altered physiology? The fact that Princess Twilight had a bigger budget? Or was it a difference in materials? Perhaps all three.

“Is there anything you’d like?” asked the alicorn.

Sunset opened her mouth to say no, but her stomach beat her to it, letting out a low roar. “Food would be good,” she laughed. “Hay chips, if you’ve got them.”

“I can get those,” offered Spike.

“I was going to get something to eat, anyway, so I’ll go, too,” said Starlight.

"Me too,” said Rainbow. “I want to stretch these wings some more.” She stopped, casting a glance at Sunset. “I mean, uh…”

“I’ll be fine,” Sunset assured, waving a hoof. Her stomach grumbled again. “Especially with food.”

“I-I’ll go, too,” said Sparky quietly.

Sunset gave her friend a curious glance. Was she still that upset at the use of her magic? But the group was out the door before Sunset could bring it up. Sighing, she put that particular issue at the back of her mind. For now, what she needed was rest. Lots of rest.

And for Princess Luna to get here soon.

---

To say that Twilight Sparkle, aka. Sparky, was overwhelmed would have been the understatement of the century. Possibly the millennium.

First of all, there was her body, and the whole matter of adjusting herself to the motion of four legs, and the complete absence of fingers and toes. Second, there was the fact that she was in an actual parallel universe. Living proof of multiverse theory right in front of her.

But both of those things were secondary to the final issue: the ball of guilt rolling around her rib cage like a pinball.

This was all her fault. She’d promised Sunset they’d find something. She’d promised her friend. Her first real friend outside of her family. Her savior. The girl who’d pulled her from the edge of madness of magical intoxication, stopped her from ripping reality to shreds in a quest for ultimate knowledge.

It was her fault. Her fault for draining all that magic, her fault for giving into the pressure to use it. Her fault for failing the person who’d offered her hand in friendship, who’d been nothing but kind to her ever since.

The events of earlier in the day played out before her eyes. The commotion from down the hall that had disrupted her class. Standing up to see Sunset’s unconscious form carried to the nurse’s office by Mr. Record, her arms hanging limply in the air like a corpse, her skin pale, her breathing ragged.

Her fault. Her fault for what happened at the Friendship Games, for what happened to Sunset. Her fault for knocking her over with magic. Her magic.

Clip-clop, clip-clop went her hooves as she walked…no, trotted down the crystal hallway. Hooves, yes. That’s what Twilight needed to focus on at the moment. Not her emotions. Not the horrible guilt or the…terrible…powerful…magic that was once again at her finger…no, wait, not fingertips. Hoof-tips? Horn-tip? What was the equivalent word in this universe?

Better to focus on things like that. Words, hooves, and her altered physiology. Walking, too. She still hadn’t gotten down the motion of four legs yet. That needed to be fixed. She put her concentration on her legs, moving one leg and then the other, trying to remember the times she’d watched Spike, her Spike, walk around the house.

Up ahead, Rainbow and Starlight were engaged in conversation, the former telling the latter about some recent game. Twilight blotted that out, too. One leg in front of the other. One, two, three, four. Left hind leg, left foreleg, right hind leg, right foreleg. One, two, three, four.

“Hey.” Spike came up beside her. “What’s bothering you?” he asked quietly.

Twilight turned to the baby dragon, because the doppelganger of her now-talking dog was a baby dragon here, because of course he was, in surprise. “What makes you think something’s bothering me?”

Spike shrugged. “You and Twilight might be different ponies, but I still know that face. So, what is it?”

Twilight bit her lip. “This is my fault. I was the one who initiated the plan to find Sunset’s memories. I was the one who failed to find any good leads…”

“You can’t blame yourself,” said Spike. “You did the best you could, right?”

“That’s what the others said, but I…”

Spike nodded, his green eyes softening. “I think the only one who’s disappointed in you is you.”

“But how do I fix it?” Twilight pleaded. “How do I make it right?”

“Dunno,” the dragon admitted. “You’re the only one that can figure it out. But I’m sure you’ll find a way. I did.”

“You did?”

“I had the same sort of problem in the last Equestria Games.”

Twilight didn’t know what the Equestria Games were, but she got what he was trying to say. “Thank you, Spike.” She laughed, just a little, a small chip off the emotional stone in her chest. “I wonder if I’m going to get this kind of advice from my Spike now that he can talk.” Therapy animals taken to a whole new level.

“If he’s as smart as I am, I think so,” said Spike.

Twilight shook her head, picking up her pace to close the gap between her and the rest of the group. She still didn’t feel entirely better, but maybe…no, eventually, she’d find a way to make things up to the girl that saved her.

And maybe, while she was at it, she’d figure out why, as of late, Sunset’s smile made her stomach flutter.

---

Princess Twilight fluffed the pillows. “Are you comfortable?’ she asked.

“I’m good,” Sunset replied. “You really didn’t need to give me your bed.”

“It’s fine,” said Twilight. “And anyway, if it becomes a problem, there are plenty of other beds in the castle. I ordered half a dozen more back when Princess Luna had to deal with the Tantabus.”

Sunset, who had been digging her head into the very soft pillow that made her own feel like a rock, looked up to shoot the princess a look. “What the hay is a Tantabus?”

“A construct designed to create nightmares,” answered the alicorn as she pulled one of the curtains to blot out a window. “Princess Luna had been using it to torment herself after Nightmare Moon,” she added, her face twisting into a grimace. “But it got loose and nearly broke into the real world to turn everything into a nightmare.”

Sunset whistled. “Sounds pretty intense.” A part of her wished she’d been there.

Of course, she would have wanted to help. But more than that, she just…missed the adventure. It was a feeling that had nagged at her more and more since her reform, when she hadn’t had mad schemes and revenge plots to occupy her time.

Not that she was complaining, not too much. School was fine. Not exactly challenging, but fine. She had friends now. Plus, the neighborhood was pretty safe. It wasn’t a bad situation at all. But all the same, looking back on her life in Equestria, there had been that sense of adventure. Magical challenges to meet, mythic creatures to deal with. Clearly not on the scale of Princess Twilight and her friends, but still there, regardless.

A part of her wanted that back. Yearned for it. Which was ridiculous, when she thought about it. After all, her last two adventures had been seriously stressful. And yet, that desire still remained, burning brighter than ever before.

Twilight moved to the side of the bed, standing right in Sunset’s vision. A frown crossed her face. “So…what exactly was going on? When you had the seizure, I mean.”

Seizure. The word sent a wave of fear through her body. “I was in history class,” she answered slowly, doing her best to keep her breathing even. “I was tired, barely paying attention to the lecture…it was on…” She trailed off when she encountered the hole in her memory, deep and jagged, and her skull began to pulse again. “Owww.”

“On the other hoof, maybe it’s best to try and not remember,” the princess added quickly. “It might set it off again.”

Cause another seizure, was what the princess wasn’t saying. Sunset’s chest tightened. She felt like she was back in the nurse’s office, with Nurse Redheart asking if there was a history of disease in her family. “Twi…do you think there’s something wrong with me?”

“Well,” began the princess. “I wouldn’t call amnesia a normal situation.”

“Not just that,” Sunset answered. “I mean…” Her chest began to heave, trying to throw off the feeling attempting to crush her. Sunset drew herself a bit closer together. “I had a seizure, Twi. A seizure. What if I’ve got some sort of brain damage?”

“Sunset, I don’t think you need to go that far. Not yet,” soothed Twilight. “All we can say is that you’re having trouble remembering your past.”

“It’s more complicated than that!” Sunset retorted hotly. Nurse Redheart’s suggestions had fed into anxieties and frustrations she’d already had inside her, and now, they were blossoming. “It doesn’t make sense, Twi! It doesn’t make any sense! Why can’t I remember the nightmares?!”

“Most ponies don’t remember their dreams clearly,” answered Twilight in a lecturing tone. “The dreaming process largely suppresses long-term memory storage, so it’s perfectly normal—”

“These are nightmares,” Sunset interrupted. “The kind that make you scream in your sleep. When’s the last time you saw somepony have a nightmare that strong and not remember a single thing about it when they wake up? ‘Cause that’s me! The very second I’m awake, it’s just…gone. Nothing.”

She sank back down onto the mattress, feeling even more exhausted than before. “All these flashbacks, all these nightmares, and I don’t remember anything. All I ever get are leftover emotions, fragments I can barely hold onto.”

She sighed. “It’s not normal, Twi. Even for amnesia, it can’t be normal. I should have been able to hold onto something solid by now.”

“I know it’s hard, Sunset,” Twilight said, pulling the unicorn into a gentle hug.

Sunset returned the hug, pulling the alicorn tight. “Even if I don’t have brain damage,” she added quietly. “I…there’s no trace of me or Manisha in the human world. It makes me feel like…” her chest squeezed again. “It’s like I don’t exist.”

“Dude, of course you exist!”

Sunset turned her head to see Rainbow and the others entering the room, trays of snacks held by Starlight’s magic.

Rainbow rushed up to her, pulling Sunset and Twilight apart. “How can you say you don’t exist? You’re right here!”

“Our search results beg to differ,” she said morosely. “As far as the human world is concerned, there is no other me.”

“Maybe your counterpart has a different name?” offered Spike. “Or maybe your parents didn’t meet, or they met different ponies. I saw that once in the Filli-Second miniseries.”

“Spike,” cut in Starlight. “That’s a comic book.”

“Doesn’t mean it can’t have happened!” Spike argued back.

“He has a point,” offered Princess Twilight. “Your counterpart’s life could simply be more complicated than we know.”

“I guess,” Sunset conceded, sighing again. While that might be the answer to one of her anxieties, it did nothing for the one closer to home than her place in reality.

She’d always prided herself on her intellect, her ability to learn and solve problems. She valued it as highly as she did her magical ability, and honestly the two went hoof in hoof. But was one of her greatest strengths actually a weakness? Had there been a disease laying dormant this whole time?

What if she just started…forgetting more than just her dreams? Nightmare scenarios of neurological disorders clawed at the back of her imagination.

Her terror was interrupted by a loud growling echoing out from her stomach. She glanced down, her cheeks warming. “Mind passing me the hay chips?” she asked, placing a hoof behind her head. “I’m starving.”

For a while, things were quiet except for the sounds of snacks being eaten. Sweet Celestia, it was good to eat hay again. She downed an entire bag of chips in less than thirty minutes. She hadn’t even realized she was so hungry. But between her half-eaten lunch and how weak she felt, it wasn’t too surprising.

She probably would have eaten them faster, if it weren’t for Rainbow teasing her about the fact that she’d eaten hay as a human, which she’d let slip while stuffing her face. By the end of it, Sunset was laughing as much as eating, and her fears had been, well, not necessarily removed, but definitely muted.

And to think, not too long ago, she hadn’t had any friends at all. What would it have been like, if she’d gone through this without any of them by her side? Probably unbearable, and not worth putting much effort into imagining.

Suddenly, there was a noise from outside. Spike went over to the window. “Princess Luna’s here!” he declared.

Princess Twilight shot to her hooves. “I’d better go meet her.” With a loud pop, she disappeared in a flash of teleportation.

Sunset’s stomach clenched. This was it.

Sparky’s hoof tentatively wrapped around hers, and nearby, Rainbow grinned.

Distant voices echoed down the crystal halls, punctuated by the clip-clop of hooves, Twilight’s, and another, heavier set. A minute later, the door to the bedroom opened, and Sunset felt her jaw go slack.

Perhaps it was because Princess Twilight was still about her own size, but Sunset had forgotten just how large the height disparity was between alicorns and the rest of the population.

Most citizens of Equestria possessed body proportions more or less in-keeping with what Earth would call a pony. But the alicorns, Princess Celestia and Luna, were, Sunset now realized, closer to that of a full-sized horse. Even Princess Cadance, who, as far as she remembered, wasn’t that size, still stood as tall as the average stallion.

Sunset’s gaze traveled upwards from the floor, taking in the whole of the night princess’s appearance. Powerful hooves clad in a set of silver hoofshoes to contrast against Celestia’s gold ones. A broad-shouldered frame hung with a generous amount of muscle that was easily visible beneath her dark blue coat.

Had Celestia been that muscular? Perhaps Luna had more earth pony in her. Or maybe she just worked out more.

Two powerful wings, a slender neck decorated with an onyx-black necklace with a silver crescent moon. An incredibly long mane and tail, dark blue like the vice principal across the mirror, but sparkling with hundreds of tiny stars, making it almost seem less like hair and more like the sky itself, and topped by a black crown.

Cyan met cyan as Sunset reached Luna’s face. The night princess smiled. “Greetings, Sunset Shimmer. My sister has spoken of you.”

A thousand and one possible comments ran through Sunset’s mind, none of them particularly flattering. The princess strode forward, and as she did, Starlight moved out of the way, making herself as unobtrusive as possible.

Oh, yeah, that was encouraging.

The unicorn flinched as Luna’s silver-clad hoof reached out to touch the bags under her eyes. “Twilight Sparkle has already told me of your recent troubles,” she said with a frown. “You look grievously ill.”

Before Sunset could answer, Rainbow Dash flew between them. “Whoa, why are you giant-sized?!” she exclaimed. “Seriously, I’m all compact and stuff and you’re like an actual horse.”

Luna frowned. “Hast your memory failed…” her attention turned to Sparky, and her brows furrowed in an almost comical expression.

“Oh,” said Princess Twilight awkwardly. “I forgot to mention, two of Sunset’s friends came with her.”

“I’m Rainbow Dash,” said Rainbow, holding out a hoof. “Best athlete at Canterlot High.”

“And I’m Twilight Sparkle,” said Sparky. Her cheeks flushed in a way that Sunset found adorable. “W-Well, I suppose you already knew that,” she stammered. “Am I supposed to be bowing? I’m so sorry!” She frantically dropped to her belly.

“Please, do not bow,” said Luna, shifting in clear discomfort. “Such formality is unnecessary.”

Sunset raised an eyebrow at that. Celestia, as she remembered, had been far more formal in their interactions. Oh, perhaps not as much when she’d been very young, and even as a teenager, the princess took her on picnics occasionally. But still, there had been that formal air.

Luna turned back to her. “I am ready to examine your dreams, if you are ready.”

“I’m ready,” she answered. Or as ready as she’d ever be. She settled herself back on the mattress. “So, is there a sleeping potion I need to take, or…?”

“I will cast a spell to put you to sleep,” replied Luna. Her horn glowed, and the unicorn felt the magic wash over her, cool, but soothing. Her eyelids grew heavy.

The last thing she knew before she slipped into her dreams was the tightening of Sparky’s hoof around hers, and a whispered “Sleep well.”

---

Luna breathed deep as she felt her magic connect with Sunset’s mind. It was a strange sensation, going directly into a pony’s dream without first locating it in The Dreaming, the astral plane upon which she accessed the dreams of everypony in Equestria. In fact, the last time she’d done such a thing was in this very room, in her battle against the Tantabus.

Foreign or not, however, it did nothing to hinder her progress. Her own consciousness shot forward, projecting down the bridge of energy, and passing into Sunset’s sleeping mind. As her form swirled into existence, the princess found herself wincing as noise assaulted her on all sides.

Around her was the city of Manehattan, ponies busily going to and fro. The blue alicorn glanced around. This didn’t seem like a nightmare. She scanned the crowds, before homing in on a distinctive mix of red and gold.

There, in the distance, was Sunset Shimmer, and trotting beside her, head darting everywhere, was Twilight Sparkle.

No, she corrected herself, recognizing the empty sides and dark-framed glasses. The human Twilight. The two unicorns were walking along, laughing and smiling as they moved from store to store, sight to sight. Twilight pressed her neck to Sunset’s in a more-than-platonic nuzzle, and Sunset returned it in kind.

A smile tugged at her lips. Young love, it seemed, was blooming in Sunset’s heart. The two of them hadn’t seemed that close before. Was it not reciprocated, or simply not confessed?

Luna shook her head. This was more Cadance’s realm than hers.

For another minute, she watched the pair amble through the streets, before her smile inverted to a deep frown. Here was something Sunset needed: peaceful slumber. But it was not, sadly, what Luna needed.

“For Mother’s sake,” she muttered irritably. “What miserable fortune is this, that I must rip away a dream instead of a nightmare?” A wave of guilt passed through her. “Forgive me, young Sunset, for what I am about to do.”

Turning her attention to the sky, she called out, in the full force of the Royal Canterlot Voice. “Show me Manisha!”

Luna had anticipated an immediate response. Her post-hypnotic suggestions, commands made to the dream itself, usually resulted in such. A pony’s sleeping mind was often quite willing to let her make the rules. What she had not anticipated, however, was the violence of the response.

The princess of the night was flung from the ground, her form scattering into mist as the dreamscape of Manehattan, with its smiles and joy, was blasted into oblivion. Her ears rang like bells as she tumbled end over end, fighting to regain control. When she finally managed to stop, she found herself face to face with a true nightmare.

A house stood before her, transformed into a fireball. Figures darted around, fighting valiantly to contain it. Their forms, Luna noted, were fluid and unstable, equine one moment, and some bipedal form the next.

Were these the humans Twilight had spoken of on the other side of the mirror? How strange they were.

“MANISHA!”

And there, at the very back of the crowd, was Sunset.

Even in the haze of the fire, her colors were impossible to miss. So, too, was it impossible not to hear her screams.

Luna’s first instincts were to go to her, to probe the unicorn’s dream self for information, or for comfort, as she did so often with the ponies of her realm. She began to descend, meaning to land beside the dreamer, only for her eyes to be drawn inexorably back to the fire, the very heart of the nightmare itself, when another scream rose into the night air.

There, near the house, were two mares, both dark-coated and dark-maned. Softly, Luna glided down to land a few feet away from the pair, observing them both. One was older, lying unconscious on a stretcher, her body caked by smoke and ash, but otherwise not hurt.

The other, a young mare, stood nearer the blaze, eyes transfixed upon it. She was draped in fabrics of green and gold in a style that Luna recognized from Maneipuri, and which were singed at the edges. A mixture of tears and cosmetics poured down her cheeks.

The princess of the night focused on the younger of the two. Was this Manisha? She was significantly older than Sunset would have been, but that did not mean she couldn’t have been a friend. How much of this was memory, and how much was distorted by the surreal nature of dreams? It was not always so easy to tell.

Suddenly, the mare let out an anguished wail. The firefighters emerged from the building, carrying somepony on a stretcher. As they passed, Luna’s breath caught in her throat.

The paw that slipped limply off the side of the stretcher was unnaturally red, patches of white and yellow where the burns were deeper. Blisters dotted the skin like a spotted coat. The face was a ruin, the muzzle ringed with burns, the scalp a bubbling, blistered mess. A hoofful of long black strands, once a mane, still clung to the ruined skin, their ends charred and ragged.

The constant changes between pony and human only seemed to magnify the grotesque horror of the injuries. But what struck Luna’s heart the strongest was that, despite the instability, despite the carnage to the flesh, the night alicorn could still tell that the being before her was a child. A filly, barely into her teens.

The mare in green and gold was at the filly’s side in an instant, forcing herself through Luna’s dream form, speaking hurriedly in a language Luna did not comprehend. She touched her paw to the filly’s ruined face, sobbing deeply, as if her tears could somehow soothe the horrible burns.

“Oh, Behna,” she choked.

“Nisha?” came the soft, stunned whisper behind her.

Luna turned again. Sunset was standing behind her, free from the barricade of firefighters. Luna had not been able to tell from her lofty vantage point before, but Sunset’s form was even more unstable than every other being here. Her body shifted not only from equine to human, but also in age, from a teenage mare on the cusp of adulthood, to a filly in the early years of puberty, all the way down to a child.

In all her years exploring the realm of dreams, Luna had never seen its like. Perhaps Sunset’s time across the mirror had confused her mind, her very sense of self-perception, as well as her perception of all those around her.

Sunset’s eyes were pricked with tears. A trembling paw reached up, grasping at air. “Nisha?” she repeated. Her voice was distorted, the sounds of child, teenager, and adult blended together. But even through the echo, she sounded completely lost.

Luna followed the unicorn’s gaze. It wasn’t on the young mare, but on the one in the stretcher. Her eyes moved back and forth between dreamer and dreamed, and the alicorn’s heart broke as she grasped the full tragedy before her.

This was Manisha. Not the crying mare, but the filly. A child. Burned and broken.

Manisha’s eyes, which had been fixed to the sky above, turned to them now, and both Sunset and Luna took a step back. Deep brown and ringed red from smoke, they met the world with a look of utter hatred and outraged judgment, silently hurling accusations that stung Luna to her core.

Luna opened her mouth, almost compelled to defend herself against the dream child, when she was stopped cold by a vibration passing through the world. Low and steady, it shook every atom of the nightmare. The night princess’s head darted around. It couldn’t be, but it was. The fabric of the dream was unraveling. Was Sunset regaining consciousness? Luna had barely been in her dreams at all.

Or perhaps, whispered a little voice at the back of her mind that sounded suspiciously like Nightmare Moon, her interference caused Sunset to be thrown awake by the raw pain she’d inflicted.

Guilt stabbed at her again, even as the sensation around her grew. Something was indeed terribly wrong with the fabric of the dream. It was dissolving around her, buildings and people disintegrating like dry sand.

No! Luna needed answers! She would not allow herself to return to the waking world with only pain as her offering.

“Sunset.” The unicorn didn’t seem to hear her. “Sunset,” she called again, but again to no avail. Usually she’d be able to contact them in dreams. Or was Sunset too lost in her confusion? “Please, you must tell me, where was this? What happened?”

Sunset merely continued to stare at her friend. Her chest heaved up and down in hyperventilation.

Luna pressed a hoof to Sunset’s shoulder, putting herself between Sunset and Manisha. Beneath her, the ground was sliding away, structure dissolving faster and faster, and the very air thundered as the sky itself seemed to crack apart.

“Sunset, please!” Luna begged. “I am sorry to have brought this agony back upon you, but you must tell me. What caused this tragedy? What happened to your friend?”

Above the din of it all, a new voice echoed.

“I’m sorry, honey, but your friend…she died earlier today.”

The unicorn howled with rage and grief, a bellowing sound that shook the already fragile reality to the point of no return. Her cries mixed with Luna’s as the princess was sent tumbling in the shards of a shattered dream.

---

When Luna regained her senses, she found herself surrounded by darkness.

“Where in Equestria am I?” she questioned aloud. Reaching out with her magic, she scanned her surroundings. To her great surprise, she found herself still within Sunset’s sleeping mind. One devoid of any dream.

Not that ponies didn’t have dreamless nights. Many did. But the fact that she was standing in a dreamless mind was…well, to be quite frank it was impossible. If a pony wasn’t dreaming, she was unable to enter their mind at all, not unless she induced a dream.

If Sunset had woken up, Luna’s connection should have been fully broken. Therefore, the unicorn was still asleep. And yet, Luna was still here, standing in the void.

Why had the nightmare ended so abruptly? That was odd in and of itself, as was the manner in which it had ended. It hadn’t dissipated in the way dreams or nightmares usually did. Instead, it had dissolved, like something had forcibly broken it down.

Curiouser and curiouser, to coin a phrase.

Still, Luna could not leave yet. Her heart still ached for the pain she’d inflicted, and her gains were too few and too heavy to bring back. She had to do more.

“Perhaps it is time, then,” she said aloud, to nopony other than herself, “to dig deeper.”

Lighting her horn, she brought her magic down on the darkness. A glowing portal appeared on the floor. Gingerly, Luna stepped down into it, traveling into the depths of Sunset’s mind.

In a certain sense, dreams were like a wetland. The soil of a dream was nourished by three sources of water—the memory; the subconscious; and the imagination. The last of these was akin to a raincloud, feeding the environment, but too abstract to be a fixed place in the mind.

The first two, however, were more like rivers, and as a pony who walked in dreams, Luna had the ability to sail them both, if she chose.

It was not, however, a choice she made often. Entering the dream of another was already a violation of privacy, even if it was to help. Entering deeper than that, even more so. Thus, Luna reserved such drastic action only for situations where no other recourse was available.

This, she decided, counted as one of them.

Memory came first, laying as it did closest to the dreaming part of the mind. A long and winding hall greeted the princess upon her arrival, lined with door upon door. It was not unlike The Dreaming itself, if only on a smaller scale.

Luna trotted along the hall, searching for signs of the elusive nightmare. It would do little good to waste her time probing every inch of Sunset’s mind, not to mention how intrusive it was. And if the nightmare she witnessed was made of repressed memories, there should be some sign. Some portion that was blocked or simply different.

The first thing that caught her attention was not a door, but the walls. Dark blue within the mindscape, they were threaded with pulsing lines. The lines weren’t odd in and of themselves. She’d seen that before in the rare occasions she’d traversed the memory. In fact, thanks to her studies of the modern world, she knew now that they were representations of nerve cells.

No, what caught her attention was that they were an aggravated shade of red.

Luna touched one, and pulled her hoof away when the surface came back exceedingly warm. She glanced down to the floor. More red nerve cells. More warmth. Her eyebrows drew together. Sunset hadn’t mentioned anything about a fever, nor had she seemed in the grip of one, haggard as she was.

So, why were the nerves so warm?

The princess broke into a gallop, keeping her eyes open for anything that stood out. She wasn’t entirely sure what the red glow meant, but she didn’t like it. Not one bit. The only thing she knew for certain was that she needed to find Sunset’s lost memories as soon as possible.

---

Twilight watched her counterpart pace slowly around the room, anxiously watching Sunset as the unicorn languidly turned in the bed.

It was, she decided, a strange experience, observing what was physiologically her younger self from an outside perspective. Even stranger was the experience of seeing her familiar face hidden behind a pair of glasses.

It was only the four of them left in the room now, minus Luna and Sunset. After Luna had initiated the spell, Starlight had quickly made herself scarce, claiming she had things to move in her room.

Twilight was pretty sure the pink unicorn just didn’t want to be around Luna. Given her past actions, it wasn’t really surprising that she’d feel nervous around one of Equestria’s two main rulers. Twilight made a mental note to add “dealing with guilt” and “fear of punishment” to the potential lessons.

Under the confines of the blankets, Sunset rolled onto one side. “Nisha…” she moaned, a broken quality to her voice that twisted the purple alicorn’s insides. What the hay had transpired to separate Sunset from her friend, or from her memories? Before all this, Twilight had often considered being separated from her friends to be unimaginably horrible.

Now, she had to wonder. What was worse, physical separation, or being robbed of the knowledge that you had a friend at all? It was a cruel sort of question that she decided she never wanted the answer to.

Beside the bed, the other Twilight…Sparky, the princess mentally corrected, bit her lip.

“Don’t worry,” said Spike to her anxious counterpart. “Everything will be okay. Princess Luna’s pretty awesome.”

Sparky said nothing.

After a pause, the dragon spoke again. “In fact, she and I once solved a mystery in Fillydelphia.”

That caught the unicorn’s attention. “…Really?” she asked curiously.

Rainbow, who had been floating above, still relishing in the power of her wings, looked down at the dragon in confusion. “I thought she was a princess, not a detective.”

“She is, but she decided to investigate,” Spike clarified. “It was happening in Dragon Town, see. That’s a dragon neighborhood, the only one in Equestria. The unicorn police thought that a dragon was involved, and Princess Luna asked me…”

The anxious unicorn was drawn completely into the tale, all of her worries silenced. Twilight smiled. While the two of them might be different ponies, or people, as the case may be, Spike had clearly picked up a few similarities, and he was using that to help the human girl by distracting her with Twilight’s greatest love: Learning.

And in truth, Twilight was listening, too. She’d heard this story before. Spike had told her about it after he’d gotten back. But it never stopped being interesting. She’d had no idea there was a dragon population in Fillydelphia.

Perhaps she and Spike could visit there together? Dragon culture was such a blank spot, and she had so many questions. Plus, it would probably be good for Spike to be around other dragons, or at least ones that weren’t the migratory, unfriendly kind.

“…Then me and all the other dragons helped get everybody out of the building and put out the fire,” Spike finished.

“You ran into a burning building?” Rainbow Dash whistled, having also been pulled into the story. “Dude…”

“It was nothing, really,” Spike replied, and Twilight couldn’t help but notice a blush creeping its way onto his cheeks. “I’m fireproof.”

“It’s still very brave,” Twilight offered. “Fireproof or not.” She tried to hide her smile as Spike’s blush deepened.

“And all this was caused by a…what did you call it? A Fire Snail?” asked Sparky.

“Uh-huh,” nodded Spike. “Cute little guys. Princess Luna and the Fillydelphia police rounded them up from the sewers and took them somewhere safe where they wouldn’t hurt anypony, or blame any dragons for anymore fires.”

On the bed nearby, Sunset twisted in her sleep, hind legs kicking at the blankets.

“What’s up with her?” asked Rainbow.

“I don’t know,” answered the alicorn.

“Dragon…” moaned the fire-maned pony. “Dragon…fire…”

---

Luna raced through the hall, searching for a sign. Nothing stood out. But her search was hardly done. Ahead of her was darkness, memories shadowed by time, and holding the promise of answers.

“Dragon…fire…” Sunset’s sleepy voice rang out, echoing down from above her. Luna barely registered the words before the hallway sprung to horrible life. The red, pulsing veins of the nerve cells glowed like fire, and pulsed with a radiant heat so high that Luna was forced to take to the air to avoid burning her hooves.

“What in Equestria is this?” cried the princess, watching as the nerve cells arched with lightning, and the floor began to rumble with the ever-increasing power of an oncoming train. Luna formed a protective shield around herself as the nerves continued to scream, fearing she’d be seared by the heat alone.

The floor shattered with a thunderous roar, and a blast of bright light burst forth, sweeping Luna away.

The princess landed on something hard. Groaning in pain, she got to her hooves, shaking the metaphorical stars from her vision. Truly, Sunset Shimmer’s mind was giving her more trouble than she’d had in many a moon.

“What’ll you be having?” came a gruff voice beside her.

Luna opened her eyes, and found herself in some kind of eatery. Around her, patrons shifted and changed from one form to another. Human, equine, and other creatures so strange that Luna couldn’t imagine where on Terra they came from.

All around her, Luna could feel the essence of a freshly woven dream. Whatever the cause, she’d evidently been shoved back up to the highest part of Sunset’s mind. She turned a glance to the stallion who had spoken, a very gruff-looking barkeep, but ignored him in favor of a sign that read “Iceworld Diner.”

Luna’s eyebrow shot up. She’d studied Terra’s political geography (among many other things) after returning from her thousand-year exile, but she’d never heard of a place by that name. Was it on Earth, perhaps?

The blue alicorn swung her gaze around, taking in the rest of the diner, the walls that looked like ice, the strange machinery, and the even stranger patrons. Moving toward the front, her attention fell on one table in particular, where a group of four sat huddled in conversation, including Sunset’s dream self.

Her form remained unstable, but her age, for whatever reason, seemed to veer toward that of a teenager. She was dressed in what appeared to be a waitresses’ uniform, white apron tied firmly around her waist, and the name tag torn completely off.

This, clearly, couldn’t be a pure memory. Sunset had been seven when she was found, far too young to be a waitress, even if this “Iceworld” existed on Earth. Although…for a brief moment, she wondered if Sunset had been the victim of an age spell, but dismissed it just as quickly. Such magic was impossibly difficult for wizards before her banishment, and remained so now.

Still, Luna was content to study this dream, if only for a few minutes. It was possible, under the layers of imagination, that it contained traces of true memory, things she could bring back to Sunset in the waking world.

Besides, after being thrown back up through the mind, she could use a brief respite.

The other occupants of the table consisted of one mare and two stallions. The mare was young, probably in her twenties, and was of an especially petite build. She wore some kind of bright pink shirt, and her mane was composed of long, wild red curls. A relative of Sunset’s, perhaps?

One of the stallions was dressed in some kind of strange garb. Was that…no, it couldn’t be leather. Nopony would wear leather. He was well-muscled, but middle-aged. Somewhere close to fifty, if she had to guess, with a heavy, dark beard, and, to Luna’s eye, seemed to emanate the air of a scoundrel.

Then there was the other stallion. Not quite as old, perhaps his forties. Short in stature with a head of dark brown curls, he was dressed in a hat, scarf, and sweater covered in…question marks? By his side was the strangest umbrella Luna had ever seen, black with a shiny red handle, also in the shape of a question mark.

His eyes, gray-blue and incredibly sharp, peered over some sort of ancient-looking parchment that had been spread across the table. Inching closer, Luna observed that it was some kind of map.

“Fascinating. Absolutely fascinating,” purred the stallion in a Trottish brogue. “It appears to show the lower levels of Iceworld.”

The redheaded mare looked at the map with a mixture of burning skepticism and irritation. “You don’t want to believe anything you get from…” Her voice was high, her accent…Eaglish? Yes, definitely Eaglish. “He probably bought two-hundred of them in a job lot.”

Luna tilted her head. There had been a word missing. Lips had moved, but no sound came out. How very interesting.

“Here, there’s nothing snide about this document,” protested the scoundrel, the apparent source of the map. Evidently, the other mare had picked up the same thing Luna had, that he, whoever he was, was not to be trusted.

Sunset glared at the map. “It looks like something from a jumble sale,” she said witheringly, her voice also ringing with an Eaglish accent.

Luna raised an eyebrow. Yet another point of interest. Though it was not unheard of, in her experience, for dreamers to take on different accents in dreams, particularly when they placed themselves inside the tales of books. Perhaps that was what this was, in part. Or perhaps Sunset was, in fact, Eaglish in origin. Perhaps that was why her family had not been found, separated as they were by miles and miles of ocean.

Truth or falsehood? That was the question, wasn’t it?

Deciding that the time for observation was over, Luna approached the table. “Sunset,” she called, tapping her hoof to the teen’s shoulder. “Sunset Shimmer, it is I, Princess Luna.”

Sunset turned slowly toward the alicorn; her eyes glazed over, just as they had been at the site of the fire. “There’s supposed to be a terrifying dragon living in the ice passages below Iceworld,” she said in the same Eaglish accent.

Across the table, the little stallion beamed. “All right, join the party!”

“I do not wish to partake of this dream,” the princess insisted. “I need you to show me where your lost memories are. I must find them.”

Sunset’s face brightened. “And can we search for the treasure, too?”

“Treasure?” asked the Trottish stallion.

“Yeah, the dragon’s supposed to be guarding a fabulous treasure.”

“Sunset,” Luna pleaded. “I know you are confused, but you must help me.”

For a moment, a look of comprehension flickered across Sunset’s face. “Down,” she said, still not breaking character. “You…need to go…down.”

Luna nodded. “Yes, I already went down into your memories before I was caught in this dream. But can you show me where they are?”

“Down,” Sunset repeated, sounding like she was in a trance.

Luna grit her teeth. “I need more than that. Please—”

“The dragon…guarding the treasure…below,” answered the unicorn slowly, as if she were trying to reform her dream dialogue. “Ice…p-passages…” Her face twisted in concentration. “No…no…sun. Permanent…d-dark side.”

“No sun?” Perhaps she was helping her after all? Luna tapped a hoof against her chin. No sun…darkness. A place untouched by light. Hidden. Could that mean…yes! When she’d been pushed back up from the memory into the dreaming part of the mind, something had come up from the floor.

“Your memories are in your subconscious,” uttered the alicorn in breathless realization.

“Ice passages,” was Sunset’s only answer. “The dragon.”

“The Ice Gardens,” added the Trottish stallion. “The Singing Trees.”

“The Lake of Oblivion,” added the scoundrel. “The Death of Eternal Darkness. Dragonfire. I should stop at home if I were you.”

“You want to see a dragon, don’t you?” said the redheaded mare.

“I want to find her memories,” retorted Luna sharply, before remembering that these figures weren’t actually real. She turned back to Sunset. “Thank you.”

“Ice passages,” Sunset repeated.

The diner’s floor shuddered, and Luna took a step back as the concrete split open to reveal a shaft punched deep into the earth. Frozen air rose up from within, playing with strands of Luna’s starry mane.

Beside her, Sunset’s face contorted in pain. “H-Help…me…”

Luna’s eyes met hers. “I will, Sunset Shimmer.” Unfolding her wings, she descended into the subconscious.

The passage below was dark as pitch, the rocky walls threaded with black ice. Here and there, pieces of steel had been worked in, ramps and stairs, an effort to utilize the cave structure. As she reached the bottom, however, the darkness was shattered by light slipping in through cracks in the ice.

The night princess landed softly, blinking hard as the sudden influx of light played havoc with her vision. The ceiling high above her was decorated with strings of ice, swaying in the wind and creating a haunting sound that echoed off the walls. Those same walls were covered in ice, but the pattern was unnatural, perfectly-formed shapes mixed with metal and rock.

There were multiple passages out from the cave, each wreathed in their own shadows. Luna ignited her horn, but none of the passages looked any more promising than any other. Ultimately, she chose one at random, hoping they would all lead to the same goal.

She never expected the attack.

A jet of flame sailed by her, singeing the tips of her feathers. Luna jumped, shifting her magic from illumination to defense, and conjuring a shield around her body.

“Show yourself!” she commanded.

From out of the shadows lumbered a fearsome dragon equal to her own size, eyes red with rage. It roared, spitting out a blast of white-hot fire that slammed into her defenses. Luna dug in her hooves, forcing more power into her shield to block the searing heat, and cursing herself for letting her guard down.

It should have been obvious. The subconscious had taken the form of the ice passages Sunset had mentioned, so naturally, the dragon had materialized as well, ready and willing to guard the treasure, which was undoubtedly Sunset’s memories.

Unfortunately for the dragon, this was far from her first battle with monsters.

“I shall slay you where you stand, creature of dream!” Luna cried, firing a bolt of magic directly at the great beast.

The dragon, for all of its lumbering movement, managed to maneuver out of the way, moving behind an outcropping of rock and ice, before reemerging to counterattack.

Luna dodged, jumping to the side to avoid the flames. She circled around, keeping herself a moving target even as fire continued to sail around her, searching for a weak point. With dragons, there was usually…there! A gap in the scales, right on the stomach. Dodging another shot of searing flame, Luna took careful aim, and struck the monster right where it was most vulnerable.

It staggered backwards, clutching at the outcropping to steady itself, before undergoing a strange metamorphosis. Like the other creatures in Sunset’s dream world, its form rippled. But it did not change into a dog, as Twilight had described had happened to Spike. Neither did it become human. Instead, it changed into…Luna wasn’t sure what it was.

The beast was still tall, but the rippling muscles had vanished, leaving only a skeleton barely covered by…something neither skin nor scales. A filmy substance stretched itself across the frame, one that alternated between grayish-white in some lighting, but purple in others.

The enormous skull turned, searching for her, and the…no, they weren’t whiskers. Two black…pipes…went from the place where the mouth would have been, and anchored themselves to the skull.

Luna’s jaw went slack, her shield dissipating with her loss of concentration. “What in Mother’s name are you?”

The dragon, if one could still call it that, regained its bearings. Its enormous head swung around, its dull white eyes locking onto her, before glowing with an intense red light. The power built and built, before firing outwards. The beams sailed high, shattering the rocks above Luna’s head, pelting the alicorn with half-melted stones.

Luna shrieked, bringing back her shield just in time to block another blast of energy. The dragon…for now it was alternating between the bizarre monstrosity and a dragon, continued to attack, pouring blast after blast, aiming at her as much as the surroundings.

Luna jumped to the right as a pile of ice crashed down from below, grunting with effort as her shield took another direct strike from her opponent, once more in proper dragon form.

“Dragon or not,” Luna muttered, adding more magic to her defenses at the first hint of heat melting its way through. “This creature is no laughing matter.”

Something tickled the back of her mind, a stirring in the fabric of the dream. Sunset was beginning to wake. Luna bit back a curse. The battle within the unicorn’s subconscious was working against the effects of her sleep spell.

The dragon, however, was unperturbed by this fact, continuing to attack with the ferocity that would have made any guardian proud. Truly, it was not, as the modern ponies would say, “her style,” to leave an opponent in a fight. But this was only hindering her real mission, to find the lost memories.

Creating a bubble of magic around herself, as strong as she could, Luna leapt into the air, up and over the dragon’s bulbous head. She spread her wings, thankful the beast did not have any of its own, and took off down one of the tunnels.

She had to close her wings not too far in, the ceiling too low to fly, breaking into a gallop, and doing her best to avoid the slippery patches of ice that dotted the floor. Behind her, she could hear the roar of the dragon, followed by footsteps.

“That’s not a dragon!”

Luna skidded to a stop, nearly losing her balance on a patch of ice. “Sunset Shimmer?!” she called. That had definitely been her voice, or at least, the version of her from up above. Had Sunset manifested herself in her own subconscious? “Sunset Shimmer, are you there?”

“Did you hear that?” echoed back the disembodied voice, low enough to be a whisper.

The sound of heavy hooffalls materialized into being. Luna swiveled her ears, trying to pinpoint the source of the sound. Something else was in these tunnels, something other than the dragon.

“Your treasure is most well-guarded,” Luna whispered.

From out of the shadows emerged a stallion. His face, no, his entire body, was coated in a layer of frost. He advanced on her, slow but steady, reaching out with his paws toward her throat.

“I have no reason to harm you,” she warned. “Stay where you are and let me pass.” Despite her warnings, the stallion didn’t stop moving, his expression completely dead to the world.

Something cold brushed against her flank. Instinct took over, and her hind legs lashed out, followed by the sound of flesh colliding with rock. Luna turned her head briefly to see a mare collapsed on the floor, her body also covered in frost.

To her amazement, despite being dealt a blow that would have incapacitated any normal pony, the mare simply opened her dead, emotionless eyes, and got back up again, as if nothing had happened.

Luna maneuvered away from them, putting space between herself and her new attackers, even as three more came into view, three more frozen stallions.

She fired bolts of magic at the newcomers, but as with the mare, the frozen ponies never stopped, seemingly oblivious to pain. A paw grabbed her throat from behind, pulling the air out of her lungs in a vice-like grip. The first pony had gotten too close. He was trying to break her neck.

Struggling for air, Luna transformed into mist, slipping out of the hold and rematerializing several feet away. As the horde of monsters advanced, now all from one side, the sensation of a waking consciousness poked at Luna’s senses. She didn’t have much time.

Luna charged her horn, readying a blast of lethal power that would slay these creatures once and for all, only for her magic to fizzle out as a paw grabbed tightly at her already bruised throat.

It was like being dumped into the Frozen North, the intensely cold touch of her attacker spreading through her entire body, solidifying the very blood in her veins. Another humanoid twisted into her vision, pale skinned and dark-maned. He wasn’t covered in ice like the others, but the cold was internal.

The stallion in the white military uniform smiled at her, a cold, empty smile that matched his dead black eyes. Luna struggled to fight, but the cold was numbing her responses.

The human’s body twisted and transformed, becoming a mass of ice and snow, the image of a Windigo.

“Bring me the Dragonfire!” he commanded, his voice roaring like a winter gale.

Then, as if in answer to his summons, the dragon rounded the corner. Letting out a roar of its own, its flame belched forth, striking the humanoid in the chest. He screamed, releasing Luna in his agony.

Gasping for breath and shivering at the bone-chilling cold, she watched as the human-turned Windigo continued to scream, his skin and flesh melting away to nothing, until all that was left was the empty white uniform laying on the tunnel floor.

The dragon’s flames flew around her, striking down the frozen ponies one by one, scorching their flesh. Every shot seemed to shake the unseen fabric of the dream, pressing the consciousness further and further toward the surface. There were only precious minutes left, if that.

With the last of the monsters vanquished, only Luna and the dragon remained. The dragon, now in the form of the strange abomination, leveled its gaze with her, its eyes glowing red. Weakened as she was by the cold, and feeling the now paper-thin fabric of the dream, Luna did the only thing she could.

As one last tongue of flame hurtled toward her, Luna let go, and returned to the waking world, the dragon roaring after her.

---

Sunset awoke with a start, her head throbbing yet again. At this rate, the pain was becoming pretty much omnipresent. The clock nearby indicated that she’d only been out an hour.

“Sunset?” asked Sparky, coming up beside her. “Are you okay?”

“Head hurts,” she grumbled. Her gaze turned to Princess Luna, and saw that the alicorn was breathing heavily, her knees buckling. “Are you okay?”

“Dude,” asked Rainbow, observing the heaving princess. “What happened in there?”

“I…” Luna heaved, “had quite the battle.”

“You look like you went ten rounds with Saddle Rager,” commented Spike. It took Sunset a minute to recall the reference, the comic superhero who turned into an angry, destructive giant. Considering how worn out Luna looked, the unicorn was forced to agree with the comparison.

“I’ve rarely ever seen you this exhausted,” said Princess Twilight with surprise. “Do you need some water?”

“It would be welcome, yes,” answered the night alicorn. Twilight levitated over a pitcher and glass, and Luna drank greedily. “Your dreams were most strange, and most challenging.” she said once she’d finished. “But not without interest.”

Right, her dreams. Forcing back the pain in her skull, Sunset asked the question that had raced to the front of her mind. “Did you find Manisha?”

Luna’s expression tightened. “I…”

Dread settled over the unicorn’s heart. “What happened?” she demanded sharply. “What happened to Manisha?”

“Your nightmare was of a house fire,” explained the princess quietly. “You were but a child, watching from the outside, but your friend…she was inside.” Her gaze drifted to the floor. “She did not survive.”

Sunset fell backwards against the pillows from the gut-punch of Luna’s words, barely noticing the collective intake of breath around the room. “Nisha’s…” she stopped herself for a half-second, absorbing the nickname that had slipped off her tongue from a place she couldn’t reach, before the weight of the revelation came back all over again. “Nisha’s dead?”

“I am sorry,” was all Luna could offer.

Sunset’s heart wrenched with the same horrible intensity as the night of the sleepover, except this time, she knew why. That was why it hurt so much. It wasn’t just the grief of physical separation, the thing she’d hoped against hope for, but the ultimate separation. The great divide that no being came back from. Her best friend was…was gone.

Somewhere in the numb shock of it, she managed to find her voice again, or a voice, at least. The sound that reverberated from her vocal cords was hollow. “Did you learn anything else? Did…did she have any family?”

“She did, but I do not know where they are,” Luna answered glumly. “Nor was I able to glean any other pertinent details.”

Something inside her snapped. “Why the hell not?!” Sunset roared. “You were in my head for an hour and that’s all you’ve got to give me? My best friend burned to death?!” She glared at the night princess. “Some help you are!”

Luna looked like she’d been bucked in the face. “I…”

“Sunset, that’s not fair,” chastised Twilight. “I’m sure Luna’s doing her best.”

Sunset froze, red haze fading from her vision. “I’m sorry,” she sighed, feeling once again like the bully of Canterlot High. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m just…”

“You’re tired,” offered Sparky, wrapping a hoof around hers.

Sunset scoffed. “Understatement.”

“You are…forgiven, Sunset Shimmer,” answered Luna slowly, still looking stricken. “And I apologize for my limited findings. Your dream self appeared most confused, and the nightmare ended prematurely.”

“And that nightmare is what wore you out?” asked Sparky.

Luna shook her head. “No, it was not. Once the nightmare ended, I found myself still inside your mind, Sunset Shimmer, even though you were not dreaming.”

Twilight gawked. “But…but that’s impossible! From what you told me of your Dreamwalking Spell, it should have terminated.”

“I agree,” said Luna. “Twas most odd.”

“So, there is something wrong with my brain?” Sunset asked morosely.

Luna’s expression was dour. “It…is possible,” she conceded, causing Sunset’s insides to twist. “I have concerns,” the princess continued, “but I will not claim any certainty at the moment. Once the nightmare ended, I went down to search your memory, only to soon find myself caught in another dream…”

From there, Luna told the tale of the second dream, of a place called “Iceworld,” with a diner full of strange creatures, where her dream self was a waitress being pulled into a hunt for lost treasure, and how in the passages deep below, where the dream had shaped the subconscious, the night alicorn had fought a horde of monsters. Frozen people, a man with a freezing touch, and a fearsome dragon that was not a dragon.

“It had laser eyes?” said Rainbow. She turned to Sunset. “Dude, you’ve got some seriously cool dreams.”

Sparky rubbed her chin with a hoof. “This ‘dragon’ sounds more like some kind of alien species.” She turned her attention back to Sunset. “I had no idea you were into science fiction.”

“I’m not, at least not super into it,” she conceded. “Thing must have come out of some old movie.” On more than one night, when she’d been bored, or needed something on in the background while she worked, she’d switched the television to one of the movie channels.

Science fiction had definitely been among their fare. She recalled one particular week where she’d been knee-deep in schemes as much as school work. She’d spent the night scribbling plans and problems alike, all while the distant sounds of ray gun fire and UFOs in flight had passed over her hearing like so much white noise.

For the life of her, though, she couldn’t recall something as bizarre as her dream. Alien dragons living in passages below a diner? A ragtag group of treasure hunters, including a waitress? Ice people in military uniforms? Frozen zombie ponies? If that had all been one movie, somebody had a seriously weird imagination.

Either that, or her brain had stitched it together from an assortment of films like Frankensteed’s monster, and perhaps she ought to seriously think about trying her hoof at creative writing.

Still, something about it tickled the back of her brain in a way that went beyond trying to recognize a movie she’d half-watched. It was almost like…nostalgia. “Tell me more about the people I was talking to.”

Luna spoke about them one at a time. The mention of the redhead made her warm, distantly, like someone you didn’t know very well, but liked anyway. The one with the beard made her feel the way you did when you found a live insect in your food. And finally…

“And there was one other with you,” Luna was saying. “Another stallion. Small, with an umbrella with the oddest handle.”

An umbrella…

Sunset screamed as her brain was once again under siege.

Images of days gone by came crashing down on her. Days, months, years, who could even count the time? There was no real day or night onboard the…the something. Home? Not home? Everything was so jumbled. The emotions were so jumbled. Positive and negative, love, hate, pride, hurt, anger, joy, laughter, sorrow…

“Love and hate. Frightening feelings. Especially if trapped, struggling beneath the surface…Don’t be frightened of the water.”

Under the surface. Everything was under the surface. She was standing on the shore, staring down into the roiling, cold water, diving into it. Or had the water come to her? The confusion was part of the cold torrents swirling around her. Memories of him.

The mornings they’d shared. Nearly choking in laughter.

“…how many times do I have to tell you not to talk with your mouth full?”

A battle in a junkyard, in days before she’d ever been born. Explosions ringing in her ears.

“You said ten seconds.”

“Nobody’s perfect.”

A close call at a school the day after. Pain in her leg. Crash of glass. Screams of monsters in armor.

“When I say stay put, I mean stay put, not take on an entire Dalek assault squad single-handed.”

The little village on the shore. The day he’d broken her heart.

“I’d have done anything not to hurt you…”

“Full marks for teenage psychology!”

The night in the basement full of monsters and cave art done in oil paint.

“That’s my girl!”

The house above the basement, full of rage.

“You tricked me!”

Her birthday, celebrated on a moon of Pluto.

“You baked me a cake?”

“I did. Happy eighteenth…”

Another morning, and a fruitless search.

“You’ve bunged it down the waste disposal, haven’t you…”?

“Now…would I do a sly, underhanded thing like that?”

“You would if you thought it’d keep me out of trouble.”

An afternoon of music, bitterly interrupted.

“I could listen to them all afternoon.”

“And so, we shall.”

Him and her, together. Always together. Adventure and danger and injustice and cold tea. Dodging bullets and lasers and things beyond time. Her with her jacket, and him with his question marks. Question mark umbrella. Question mark pullover.

Question mark brain, more like, a part of her cut in. An enigma that seemed to enjoy being an enigma. He’d defined so much of her life. Defined it. Shaped it.

Manipulated it, echoed the angry hiss from somewhere deep, somewhere…was it young or old? How far down did the undercurrents travel? Controlled it. Just a pawn in the end. Always a pawn.

He’d been her friend, her comrade in arms, her mentor, her…another word. A nickname of some kind. He’d meant so much to her. She had to protect him. Watch his back. Protect the person she’d come to love in all the universe…the…

Who? Who was he? So many emotions, so many questions and question marks, and no answers. Where was she? When was she? Who was with her…and who was she?

“Who are you, really?”

Sunset found herself once again caught in a magical field, barely stopped from sliding off the bed. Her vision swam.

“Sunset Shimmer, what did you see?” asked the princess, propping the unicorn back into a sitting position. “Was that stallion familiar to you?”

The unicorn swallowed hard. Whatever had torn through her head was, as usual, gone, and all she was left with was a collection of feelings she didn’t know how to sort out. It was like a particularly bittersweet pill, and she held onto its taste as long as she could, willing it to stay.

What did they mean, these feelings?

An idea came forward, one she wasn’t sure of, couldn’t be sure of. But…based on what she’d gathered from the others…maybe…maybe he was…?

“I think…” she whispered, feeling a sort of desperate hope she hadn’t felt for years. “I think…he might be my dad.”

Luna frowned. “Are you certain?”

“Not entirely,” Sunset admitted. “I can’t remember anything specific. But the way it felt…” She shook her head again. “He had to be real, at any rate.” She locked eyes with the princess. “What was he like? Did he look like me?” Her questions came out in a rush, driven by what could have just been nothing more than a filly’s dream, a desperate desire to simply know her father, but she didn’t care.

“I do not think he looked like you,” answered Luna thoughtfully. “But it was difficult to tell. He was small, with a curly, dark brown mane. His eyes were blue-gray.”

Immediately, Sunset cataloged the details, searching for connections. Small, just like she was, and his eyes had blue in them. Blue-gray versus the blue-green of cyan. Not the same color, but still possessing something of him, at least.

She glanced down at her mane, touching her hoof to her curls, wondering if they too were a gift from her father. “Anything else?”

“He was Trottish.”

“What’s Trottish?” asked Sparky.

“Scottish,” Sunset answered, drifting back to her mane and separating out a few red strands. “Maybe that’s where it came from,” she muttered.

“You can’t be Scottish,” interjected Rainbow. “You don’t have an accent.”

“I couldn’t talk when I was found.” Sunset turned to Princess Twilight. “Sorry, I kind of glossed over that in my letter. But anyway, Princess Celestia had to teach me, so if I had an accent, I could have lost it.”

"It is possible,” agreed Luna. “For now, I believe what we both need is rest. I must recover from my battle, and you would do well to find sleep free of my interference.”

Part of Sunset wanted to protest, that they should continue now that Luna knew where to look, but she was still so overwhelmed by what they had found, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Then she started yawning, and she knew the argument was finished.

“I guess you’re right,” she conceded.

In short order, she pulled the blankets back over her, while Twilight closed the windows, filling the room with darkness. Her friends quietly shuffled outside, Sparky offering an almost inaudible “goodnight,” and then, Sunset was alone.

Sunset turned on her side, letting her brain stew while she waited for exhaustion to overtake her body. It was a tougher fight than it really should have been. Likewise, hope and despair fought hard in the confines of her mind.

Manisha was gone. Really gone. Her best friend was gone and she couldn’t even remember her. And she had a father. For well over a decade, she’d wished for her parents, and now, she knew he was there, buried in her memory.

Sunset only hoped that he wasn’t dead, too.

Just as she was on the edge of sleep, a small flash of light drew her back to consciousness, reflecting off the crystal walls. Eyes still firmly shut; Sunset rolled over. “I’m fine, Twilight. Just let me sleep,” she groaned.

“…Sunset?”

That voice…she knew that voice. The unicorn’s eyes shot open. Standing there, not ten feet away, gazing at her with eyes full of shock, was the one pony she’d wanted to avoid.

Princess Celestia.

Comments

[EchoWing]

I am so glad that this story is continuing. I just feel terrible that I took so long to finish this chapter. In any case, the cracks are getting bigger. Something's gonna break, and likely sooner rather than later.

[Carol Heart]

Very well done. Can't wait to see more.

[AngelaCA]

Thank you for the update 🙏🥰 this was worth the wait I love how you portrayed the confusion in her memories and nightmares😁