Nightmares

by unoservix

Chapter 15: Where Nightmares Dwell

Nightmares
———

Chapter 15: Where Nightmares Dwell

———

So much of Canterlot was gilded, beautiful marble and stone that it was hard to recognize the musty, dilapidated building where Lapis Lazuli escaped. Twilight lit up her horn with an illumination spell and plunged into the darkness, Trixie right behind her—and they both came to a stop at the sight of a yawning hole in the ground, leading down into darkness.

"This looks like the opposite of safe," Trixie said with a look of disgust. "You know, what's it called, 'dangerous.'"

"I've been down there before," Twilight said.

"Oh, very reassuring."

Together they plunged down into the darkness, galloping down a rocky ramp. Up ahead, Lazuli slipped away around a corner; Twilight and Trixie followed. The tunnels wound their way down, getting darker with every turn and forcing Twilight to pour more energy into the illumination spell—until they passed under a crude wooden brace and Trixie stopped short in disbelief at the sparkling walls around them.

"What—where did all this come from?"

"It's from centuries ago," Twilight explained. "It's an old gem quarry that was mined until it was exhausted. I, uh, spent some time down here during my brother's wedding."

"How did you get stuck down here during your brother's wedding?"

"Long story. Let's go!"

They took off again at a gallop after Lazuli as she wove her way through the crystalline caves. Twilight nodded off in another direction as the tunnels forked, and she and Trixie veered off to the left—and as the tunnel sharply turned back right, they rushed out into an open space right in front of Lazuli.

The taller unicorn immediately lunged to the right, over a ledge overlooking a vast open space. The other two ponies followed as she rushed down a winding path towards the cavern floor—and then dove for another tunnel cut into the rock.

"How far down do these blasted tunnels go?" Trixie growled.

"Come on, I have a better idea," whispered Twilight—and they veered off again as Lazuli turned a corner. Twilight led the way through yet another snaking tunnel that deposited them in another open space—and this time they skidded to a halt right behind Lazuli as she came to a dead end.

"Nowhere to go now!" Twilight shouted—only for Lazuli to turn around with a satisfied smirk on her face.

"Is that so?" she laughed—and then her horn lit up and the ground splintered beneath them both. Trixie latched onto Twilight in terror as they all went plunging down; Twilight cast a spell beneath them to levitate them down painlessly to the ground, the echoing crashes of rocks coming down still ringing throughout the chamber. Twilight looked around in panic; now they were in nothing but darkness.

"What the hay was that for?!" Twilight screamed. "Are you trying to bring down this whole mountain?!"

Lazuli only laughed as she backed away—and then a ring of torches came to life and revealed a vast chamber filled with craggy rocks...and bare, musty bones. Twilight and Trixie looked around, terror in their eyes, at a field of skeletons of all kinds all around them.

"Well, well, well," cackled an all-too-familiar voice—and they both snapped their eyes up towards a high ledge overhead, where Nightmare Inferno and his roiling, flaming mane cane into view. "Sure took your sweet time to get here, didn't you? I was starting to get bored."

Twilight dug in her hooves. "Give Trixie back her magic!"

Inferno snorted with laughter. "What, you thought it was going to be that easy? Twilight, dear, don't be naïve!"

"I'm warning you!" Twilight cried, and charged up at a spell at the tip of her horn.

"Oh, are you," Inferno said. "Well, what do you think about that, my friends?"

From the shadows emerged the laughter of multiple ponies, and Twilight felt herself go cold as she recognized the faces all around her—those six, the new ponies, the ones she'd felt that suspicion about, the ones—

"Oh, by the way," laughed Razor Edge, "you can have this back!" He tossed something to Twilight—and her jaw dropped as she realized it was the spare key to the library's back door.

"What—you were the ones who showed up with him at the library!" she cried. "And you tried to kill me in Canterlot too, didn't you?!"

"Ten points to the purple unicorn for deductive prowess!" crowed Inferno. "I never lost faith that you'd figure it out, Twilight Sparkle. I want you to know that."

Trixie stepped forward with a glare. "Are you trying to intimidate us?! You don't scare me, you two-bit storybook villain!"

Silence reigned in the chamber for a moment, before Inferno burst out laughing. "A two-bit storybook villain?!" he cackled. "Me, the clichéd bad guy who ties the helpless damsel to the train tracks? I love it!" He grinned maliciously as the flames began to swirl around himself and his minions. "Well, Miss Hero and Sidekick, if you want to get Trixie's magic back, you're going to have to find me!"

And then flames whirled up and vanished with a flash—and they were gone, left with only Nightmare Inferno's ceaseless cackling echoing through the caves.

Twilight sighed. "'Two-bit storybook villain?'"

"It was the first thing I thought of," Trixie grumbled.

"Well, come on, we'll find him yet."

———

Applejack was always an early riser. It was just in her nature. When you had mountains of work to do and only so much daylight to do it in, you made every second count, and if that meant waking up before the sun, so be it. Not every pony lived like that, and Applejack could understand that.

What Applejack couldn't understand, though, was where the heck Twilight and Trixie were.

She marched down the hallways towards what she was assured was Twilight's old room, where those two had decided to spend the night. Make everyone wait for breakfast, would she, well she'd hear about it now. Applejack came to a stop at the door and pounded on it with her hooves.

"Twi, it's 9:30 already, get out here!"

Silence answered her.

"If you two're doin' what ah think yer doin' in there..."

More silence.

"That's it." Applejack shoved the door open...

...and blinked in surprise at the sight of nobody there. She made her way through Twilight's old room, finding nothing odd except the fact that nobody but her was in it. She came to a stop at the balcony. There was a black mark on the floor—the kind of black mark that sometimes showed up when Twilight used that teleportation spell.

"Uh oh."

———

"You do realize this is a trap, right?" Trixie asked, as she and Twilight trotted down through the winding torch-lit tunnels, strewn with bones. Trixie cringed as she almost stepped in something's skull. "As in, he couldn't have made it anymore obvious that this is a trap if he'd put up signs saying 'this way to trap'?"

"Yeah, well, he'll have to spring the trap, too," Twilight said. She squinted up ahead, but the firelight didn't extend far enough to see much. "Anyways, he's the one who brought this Nightmare to life. And you do want it gone, right?"

"Of course, but—" Trixie stopped as she almost tripped over another skull. "And for heaven's sake, what are all these bones doing here?!"

Twilight cringed; she'd almost forgotten about that part. "The first residents of Canterlot dug down in here to build an ossuary," she said.

"Ossuary?"

"Catacombs. Crypts. Burial of the dead."

Trixie blanched. "You mean we're walking through a giant cemetery?"

"Yes, and that's where Inferno chose to hang out. Explains a lot about him, huh?" She looked around the tunnel as it wove its way down—and she noticed that though most of these skeletons were of ponies, not all of them were. "They dug these tunnels to build catacombs, but they hit a mother lode of gems and they mined the whole place out. But they kept bringing their dead down here."

"Lovely." Trixie glanced down at another skeleton and grimaced. "Then how come I'm only hearing about this now?"

"They stopped digging down here when the gem quarry went dry. And the quarry went dry because every time they tried to dig deeper, they hit an underground river and impenetrable bedrock." Twilight carefully picked her way past a pegasus skeleton splayed out in the middle of the tunnel. "They figured they were being stopped by the river and by magma that had cooled when the mountain was still an active volcano."

"Wait," Trixie said with a look of disbelief, "you mean they were digging for gems—you mean they built the capital city of Equestria on a volcano?"

"It's been extinct for hundreds of years," Twilight said with a roll of her eyes. "It's perfectly safe."

They both came to a stop at the sound of something rumbling from deep within the mountain—something that sounded unnervingly similar to laughter.

"The mountain would appear to disagree," deadpanned Trixie.

"The mountain doesn't get a say in this!" wailed Twilight. "It hasn't erupted in almost a thousand years! There's no magma supply! It's extinct!"

The amused rumbling continued. "The mountain doesn't seem to be convinced," Trixie said.

"Well whatever," Twilight grumbled, "let's just find Inferno and beat your magic back out of him."

"Awfully confident, Miss Sparkle!" cackled the voice of Nightmare Inferno—and then the tunnel opened up into a vast empty chamber, ringed with torches, with a high vaulted ceiling—and a high ledge in the middle on which sat the black stallion himself, wings regally spread, his minions watching from other nooks and crannies along the wall.

Twilight scowled up at him. "No more games, Inferno! Give Trixie back her magic or else!"

"Or else," chuckled Inferno. "That sounds familiar, doesn't it?"

At his side, Lazuli smirked. "It's what they all say—or at least, it's what the ones who want to look brave before they die all say."

"Indeed!" Inferno said, and levitated the creaky skeleton of an earth pony up next to him, flapping its jaws with delight. "'I'm not afraid of you, just come down here and I'll prove it!'" He tossed the skeleton away with a laugh. "Never get tired of it, though!"

Twilight fell into a defensive stance. "What's this all about, Inferno?! I know you're up to something!"

"Ooh! She knows we're up to something!" crowed Comet with an eager flap of her wings.

Castor and Pollux both laughed. "Ha!" roared the green unicorn. "Bet you can't even figure out our plan!"

"And even if you do," added Pollux with a grin, "you won't live to tell anyone else!"

"But you won't anyways," Castor spoke up.

"But it doesn't matter—" Pollux shot back.

"Oh, like they won't figure out that our plan is to—"

Both of them fell silent as a couple of rocks slammed into their heads and sent them sprawling. Twilight glared back at Inferno, who merely shrugged.

"Not gonna be that easy, Sparkly One," he chuckled.

"You think it'll be that simple just to kill us?" Twilight shot back. "I survived Nightmare Storm twice, I got away from you twice, and you're a fool if you underestimate my power! So back off and give Trixie back—"

"Oh, for heaven's sake, have some creativity, kid," Inferno sighed, and waved a hoof dismissively. "Let's spice things up, shall we?"

His horn sparked to life, the chamber pulsed with red light—and then the ground began to rumble. Twilight and Trixie backed away in fright as the rock began to splinter beneath their hooves.

"You see, I just had this thing lying around and figured, why not put it to some use," Inferno said—

And then the ground split open, an ear-shattering roar sliced through the air, and a towering, clawed, skeleton hand burst up from the shadows. Twilight and Trixie backed away towards the wall as something from far underground pried itself up out of the darkness.

"After all," cackled Inferno, "waste not, want not!"

Twilight and Trixie shrunk down in fear as they fell into the shadow of a gigantic gleaming dragon skeleton. The long wings, the bony spikes, the serrated teeth—and a pulsating orb of flames in the back of its skull, just inside the jaws...Twilight gulped at the sight of the monster.

"Well girls," sighed Inferno, "if you can get by this thing, I'll be truly impressed." He waved to the dragon skeleton. "Get 'em!"

The dragon roared and lunged forward with its clawed fist; Twilight and Trixie shrieked, Twilight shoved Trixie away and darted to her right, and the claws came down to smash open the sealed-off tunnel. Twilight leapt back and fired a bolt of magic up into the skeleton's shoulder; the monster jerked back with a furious roar as its entire arm clattered to the ground.

"Well!" scoffed Trixie. "That wasn't very impressive!"

The dragon snorted a puff of fire out its nostrils—and then an orange glow surrounded its empty shoulder, the fallen arm lifted into the air, and snapped back into place with a crunch.

The two ponies shared a look and immediately rushed into the opening. The dragon reached after them, ripped the tunnel open, and plunged on into the darkness.

———

Princess Celestia felt her heart stop the moment Twilight Sparkle's panicking friends said she and Trixie were missing. Shining Armor had warned her that they'd lost track of Nightmare Inferno again; Luna had offered to stand watch; Twilight said she had Nightmare Storm under control, and that was how it had seemed when she visited the library herself—but still—

She forced herself to be calm and gathered Luna up from her chamber in the castle. "There's no trace of them in the city," Celestia explained as they marched down the hallways, "but no one has checked the catacombs yet."

Luna grimaced at the mere thought. "The catacombs are far too extensive for us to search now—"

"That's where Inferno made his hideout," Celestia cut her off, "and I'm sure you'll understand if I don't like the thought of Twilight Sparkle trapped underground with two Nightmares."

"O-Of course..." Luna cleared her throat. "So, um, what shall we do?"

"You gather up Twilight's friends and meet me at the waterfall at the base of the mountain," Celestia said, as they approached a wide balcony. "There is a cavern down there that wasn't sealed off when the quarry ran dry. No one knows about it but me." She frowned. "I hope."

Luna nodded and disappeared in a flash of white light; Celestia took to the air and soared over Canterlot, then went into a long dive towards the base of the mountain and its roaring waterfalls. She swept down towards the back of the waterfall, where the white waters hid the entrance to a cave that would lead her into the catacombs.

She landed with a clack of hooves on stone—and her heart sank as she stared down the massive boulders that had fallen down and sealed the cavern entrance.

Twilight...please be okay.

———

Far down below, the only sound that could compete with the thunderous footfalls of a furious dragon skeleton was the screaming coming from Twilight Sparkle and Trixie as they raced through the shattering tunnels.

"Twilight Sparkle, this is the worst idea you've ever had!" shrieked Trixie.

"Hey, you don't know what all the ideas I've ever had were!" Twilight shot back.

"I don't have to! If you've ever had a worse idea than this, you'd be dead!"

Twilight frowned. "Oh, well, I guess I can't argue with that..."

Not to be forgotten, the dragon behind them ripped open the tunnel ceiling above them and reared back its head, flames curling out from its jaws. Twilight and Trixie squeaked in terror; the dragon launched a blistering jet of fire after them; the two ponies ducked to the side and wound up tumbling down an incline...just as the dragon brought down a hail of rocks to block their path back towards the surface.

"Oh no, it's cutting off all our paths back up!" Twilight gasped. "We have to keep going down further!"

"Well if that thing isn't down there I'd say that's a pretty good deal for us!" Trixie wailed.

The two unicorns jumped back to their feet and plunged down another cave as the dragon came after them with a roar. It filled the cavern behind them with fire; Twilight scooped Trixie up in a levitation spell and leapt down into another opening that sent them both rolling down into the shadows. The vent deposited them into yet another tunnel; they both scrambled back to their hooves and took off again; the dragon came after them with a bone-rattling crash.

"Okay, how can that thing crash through solid rock without snapping into a million pieces?!" Twilight snapped. "There has to be a weakness on that thing!"

Trixie ducked underneath a swipe of the dragon's claws. "It's a fire-breathing zombie dragon skeleton! It doesn't have weaknesses!"

Up ahead appeared a fork in the tunnel, with one branch seeming to lead upward—but the dragon launched a fireball into the ceiling that blocked it and left open only the one that led downward. Twilight and Trixie dove through the opening and the dragon pursued with a roar.

"It's leading us somewhere," Twilight started—and then threw herself against Trixie as the dragon fired another blast of flame at them. They took off again as the flames died down—and yet nothing stopped the dragon's furious pursuit. "It's pushing us deeper into the mountain...!"

"You are correct, ma'am!"

Twilight and Trixie both looked up in shock to find themselves in another wide-open chamber, with Nightmare Inferno gleefully watching from a ledge up above. The dragon crashed in behind them and came to a stop, growling as flames licked out from between its teeth.

"I will admit, you've gotten a lot further than most other ponies do once I sic the dragon on them," he chuckled, "but none of them has ever made it out of here."

Twilight scowled up at the cackling shade—and then whirled around, put herself between the dragon and Trixie, and charged a spell at the tip of her horn. Inferno stopped his cackling and stared down in surprise.

"What are you—"

"If I can't outrun this bloody thing, I'll fight it!" Twilight declared.

Trixie went white. "Okay, I take it back! This is your worst idea ever!"

"Wow, this should be entertaining!" crowed Inferno, and he sat back to watch.

Twilight ground her teeth as she sent power gushing into the spell. "Twilight, seriously," Trixie stammered, "if this is supposed to be some kind of insane declaration of love or something—"

"Stand back!" cried Twilight—

The chamber flooded with pink light as Twilight launched a pulsing column of magic up towards the dragon—but at the last second she ticked her head back and sent the beam slamming into the chamber ceiling. The rock shattered like glass at the blow and began to rain down—and one of the broken rocks slammed down on the dragon's spine and snapped its skull off. The whole skeleton collapsed with a lifeless rattle.

"What in the name of everything was that?!" shrieked Nightmare Inferno. "Since when could you do that!? No fair! I want a do-over—"

He fell silent as the mountain shuddered again—and the rocks kept falling. Down below, Twilight cringed. "Maybe that was a little too strong," she whimpered.

Trixie scowled back. "That 'School for Gifted Unicorns' education really pays for itself, I see."

Both ponies squeaked in terror as the mountain interrupted them with a loud rumble—and immediately they took off into the tunnels again as the ceiling began to come down. Twilight lit up her horn as bright as she could to lead the way, but with the tunnels collapsing around them and the paths back up blocked, they could only wind their way further down, further into the mountain, and further under the millions of tons of earth coming down above them.

"If this is a volcano, isn't there a crater we can reach to get out?!" Trixie cried.

"It must have been blocked," Twilight answered—and then they both darted apart as a boulder slammed down between them, and kept going through the rattling caves. "But as long as we can get back up to the quarry—"

A crash from up above cut her off—and Trixie dove into Twilight and knocked her aside just as another boulder came down right in the spot where she'd just been. The two ponies tumbled down an incline and came to a stop in another small chamber—and the rocks slammed down behind them, hemming them in.

"Oh, great, we're trapped!" Trixie gasped, eyes darting around the room. Twilight pressed herself up against Trixie and lit up her horn again—and this time a pink translucent barrier materialized around them both as the rocks pelted them from above.

"This should hold for a little while," Twilight panted.

"You can't hold this thing up forever!"

"I know, but, long enough to think," she shook her head, "there's gotta be a way—"

An unnervingly large chunk of the ceiling slammed down and shattered on Twilight's barrier; Twilight herself winced under the blow.

"L-Look, Trixie, if we don't get out of here—"

Trixie promptly swatted her upside the head. "No! No if-we-don't-make-it speech! I have absolutely no intention of dying down here!"

"B-But—"

"You're the one with the crazy magic powers, you get us out!"

Twilight cringed and looked around the room. How would they get out—

One of the rocks came down with a crash by the wall—and it smashed through another rock near the chamber floor. And as that rock crumbled away, Twilight saw a flash of something in the darkness. She pushed Trixie aside and fired a bolt of magic into the wall to widen the opening—and there amid the falling rocks and shadows was a stream of rushing water.

"Of course!" she cried. "The underground river! It feeds into the falls on the side of the mountain! We can get out that way!"

Trixie stared back in horror. "Wait, how do you know—"

"You'll just have to trust me," Twilight said, and looked over imploringly at the blue unicorn.

Another large rock came down, and the blow made Twilight grimace and the shield flicker. Trixie gulped. "Point taken. Let's go."

Together they plunged into the opening, dove into the water, leapt into each other's arms, and screamed bloody murder under the light of Twilight's horn as the rushing waters carried them through the caverns.

"A-Are you sure this was a good idea?!" screamed Trixie.

Twilight cringed and decided not to answer, because no, she was not. Instead she looked ahead frantically as far as she could under the roiling water. The rocks were still coming down in this underground stream, and it shouldn't have been moving this quickly, but if it got them out—

Twilight yelped in surprise and yanked Trixie to the left, just in time to avoid a huge pillar of rock as it slammed down into the water. As long as this thing got them out—

"Wait, is that light?" Trixie asked, and pointed up ahead. Twilight squinted through the twisting caves—and for a brief moment she could see the blinding light of the sun peeking through an opening somewhere up ahead.

"It is! We're almost out! We're—"

The river rushed by and sent them hurtling out a cavern mouth—and suddenly, instead of being in the water, they were in midair, awfully far above the base of the mountain.

"—saved?"

And then they plunged back to earth with a mutual scream. Twilight's heart sped up; her horn flashed to life, encasing them both in a shimmering pink glow; Trixie and Twilight squeezed their eyes shut and tightened their hold on each other as the ground came hurtling up at them at assuredly fatal speed—

...and nothing happened. They blinked in surprise and looked around...and Twilight blushed as she remembered the levitation spell, gently setting them both down on the grass just beside the river.

They both looked up at the mountain, still trembling, soaking wet, hearts racing, wrapped up in each other's arms. The mountain finally stopped rumbling; a cloud of dust burst out of the cave that had just sent Twilight and Trixie hurtling to near-doom. Twilight broke into a smile.

"We survived," she murmured, and her smile began to grow. "We survived! We're still alive! Trixie!"

"Wha—how—in—what—but—I—"

"We're still alive!" Twilight dragged Trixie close and planted a smothering kiss on her lips.

Both of their eyes slammed open at the sound of a faint giggle. They parted and whirled around in surprise—which rapidly turned into horror at the sight of Princess Celestia, Princess Luna, and Twilight's friends all standing on the grass, with expressions that bespoke a mix of relief, bemusement, and a little embarrassment.

"Well, shoot," sighed Applejack, "if ah'd just survived free fall outta a collapsin' mountain ah'd probably want a smooch too."

"Yeah," added Rainbow Dash, "the only thing you were missing there is an explosion."

"H-How long were you there?" squeaked Twilight.

"First and foremost," said Celestia, relief palpable in her voice, "are you two hurt?" They both shook their heads. "Good. Now what happened? The whole mountain was shaking."

Twilight hung her head and quickly recounted their pursuit of Lapis Lazuli, which turned into being pursued by a dragon skeleton, and then blasting and lucking their way out of the collapsing caves.

Princess Celestia looked down sternly at her student once she was done. "Chasing this unicorn was unwise, Twilight Sparkle. You know I brought you both to Canterlot specifically to deal with restoring Trixie's magic."

"I know, princess. I'm sorry."

Luna frowned thoughtfully up at the settling mountain. "On the other hoof, there may be an advantage to be gained from all this. If all this seismic chaos has buried Nightmare Inferno..."

"Then again, if Twilight and Trixie could escape, so could he," Celestia said grimly. "The security will remain." She looked back down at Twilight and Trixie, and allowed herself a tender smile. "But in any case, what's done is done, and no harm has come. So let's return to the castle."

———

Silence hung like the unsettled dust in the ruined chamber of Canterlot's catacombs. Nightmare Inferno watched with spread wings and an unreadable expression as his minions picked through the rubble. Barbell fidgeted at his side.

"Uh, boss," the brawny earth pony spoke up, "are you okay?"

"Me?" Inferno asked with a terrifyingly sunny countenance. "Oh, I'm just peachy, thanks for asking, everything is just super duper, how about you?"

Barbell shuffled his hooves. "Um...are you mad?"

"Mad? Me? Oh, no no no, not me, whatever gave you that idea," Inferno chuckled, "no, I'm not mad, far from it, I'm just," his fiery mane swirled up around Barbell and made the earth pony gasp in fear, "absolutely livid," the flames settled back down and Inferno's bright expression returned, "but you know, that's okay, we're okay, everything is okay, because I'm an optimist, and I know there's a glass half full somewhere around here, and the reason I know that is that you, all of you," he gestured to the rest of the ponies with a sweep of his wings, "all of you will find me a reason to be optimistic! And I know that because if you don't, I will incinerate every last one of you worthless maggots, so," his smile disappeared and he sent Barbell a glower that might have killed, "get to work."

Barbell scuttled off into the ruins and left Inferno back on his wrecked ledge to sulk—until, a moment later, Lazuli stepped up next to him sullenly.

"Figures, doesn't it," he snorted. "You know, I dragged her down here hoping she would fight that dragon skeleton and do enough damage at the stress points to break through where I couldn't—and then conveniently die, of course. Instead she buries the whole bloody thing and escapes to boot. Probably should've seen this coming." He sniffed in disgust. "That's the third time some stupid twist of fate has saved her skin."

"A-Actually," Lazuli said, pawing at the ground nervously, "I think I've found something—"

Inferno turned in a moment. "Go on."

Lazuli nodded for him to follow and he did, winding through a broken tunnel into a smaller chamber just off the main one. She motioned to a crack in the ground. Inferno stepped up to its edge and peered down into it—and the voice in the back of his mind rose in an angry crescendo, as far below he could see and feel the warm orange glow of roiling, molten lava.

A smile crossed his lips and he began to chuckle. "Lazuli! It's perfect! It worked after all!" He swept her up in his wings and planted a heart-stopping kiss on her lips, and then dropped her unceremoniously in a shocked heap on the floor. "It's beautiful! It worked! It worked!"

And with that, he threw his head back and the mountain shuddered at his laughter.

———

Comments

[ForSpite]

Nightmare Inferno is amazingly jovial for an incarnation of hate and rage. It makes him fun to read.

[Reisentanith]

Wow he is aptly named for his possible plan.

[RTStephens]

I'm seeing a dash of DBZ Abridged Freiza in Nightmare Inferno.

I approve!

Trixie was just full of snarky one-liners in this one. Much better than being mopey all the time, that's for sure.

You would think that Twilight would know better than to jump willy-nilly into semi-unknown territory without getting her friends first. She's smart but not always bright.

I feel the big reveal is coming up. Looking forward to it!