Unfinished

by redsquirrel456

Rising Action

Dusk Shine was no stranger to bad days. He’d had plenty of them. Most of them were even his own fault: the parasprites, the time travel fiasco, almost ruining his first Winter Wrap-Up. He’d suffered some of the deepest depths of guilt and frustration a pony could have.

Today had every one of those days beat.

The room was a mess. What little control he’d had over his magic was utterly gone and he didn’t bother trying to reassert it. Every few seconds his magic lashed out at random, turning chairs into lamps, books into potted plants, and a priceless painting into a bidet. Anything that wasn’t nailed down floated in unchanging circuits around the room, hovered in place, or repeatedly smashed themselves into walls. He was fairly certain he’d supersized a spider at one point, and it was currently scratching around in the vanity.

The worst part, though, was himself. He held fast to a pillow around his head, smothering his ears. Maybe if he pulled it down tight enough he would drown out all the crazy voices in his head that just wouldn’t keep quiet. A hundred dissociated voices caterwauled in the confines of his mind. The silent cacophony rang between his ears, betraying his mixed feelings of panic, shock, and bewilderment. All Dusk could do was find a quiet corner in the dark folds of his mind and cower.

His horn sparked wildly, and all around his bed three of those voices were made real, duplicate Dusk Shines that all immediately started arguing with each other. Dusk just pulled the pillow ever tighter around his head and buried his face in his blankets. The pillow tore, but that just gave him the idea to rip it in two and try to stuff both halves into his ears while the three homunculi had their insane discourse.

“I’m telling you, it’s not possible,” said the Dusk on the left. “Just think about the ramifications here, not just for magic, but for every level of existence! If it was real, we’d have known about it before now.”

“She’s real,” said the Dusk on the right. “I saw her with my own eyes! I saw all of them! All of us, but... different!”

“Itay awsay a reamday!” said the Dusk in the middle. “Hinktay ationallyray!”

“One experiment does not a law of nature make!” said the Dusk on the left. “I can’t just accept that this is real at face value!”

“But I saw her face,” right Dusk exclaimed, “and it was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Eautifulbay,” said middle Dusk with a nod of assent. “Tubay rovespay othingnay.”

“Shut up,” the Dusk with the pillow growled. “Shut up!”

“Just think logically, like I’m saying!” said left Dusk. “What possible explanation could there be for this? Clones? Mass hallucinations? I don’t have to jump into this with all four hooves if I don’t want to. I didn’t ask for this.”

Right Dusk stomped his hoof on the floor. “Or I could just accept that it’s all real! She’s real, I know it, I feel it! And I’m just wasting time arguing with myself when I could be looking for her!”

“Anday oday hatway?” chided middle Dusk. “Histay siay ettingay owherenay.”

“I have to see her, talk to her! It’s like this is what we were made for!”

“Be quiet!” Dusk pleaded with himself.

“And if I’m wrong? What if I really am going crazy?” said left Dusk. “What if something’s just wrong with me?”

Dusk hurled both halves of his pillow at two of his copies, who just shimmered in place and kept talking. His hooves ground into his temples.

“If you all don’t shut up I swear I’m going to—!”

A knock on the door.

“Dusk Shine. I need you to come out of there,” came Prince Solaris’ voice.

“No!” all the Dusks shouted back. “This isn’t happening! We’re all fine and everything’s fine and I’m not going crazy!”

“Of course you aren’t crazy, Dusk. Even Artemis admits to seeing what you did.”

“No he didn’t! It’s not possible!”

He heard Solaris sigh, and in an instant his rambling mind staggered to a halt. He remembered that sigh, the one that said the Prince was through with his shenanigans and was going to get serious. But it was all just too crazy to believe! He had all the proof he needed: a true vision of the only mare in the universe that mattered anymore. And every time he tried to conjure up her face he tore his gaze away again and tried to crawl back into the ignorant dark. His mind simply refused to accept that her memory was there now, boarding up its doors only to find her bursting through the windows.

He heard the doorknob turn.

“Wait, don’t!” he pleaded, unwilling to face the truth that was so terrible in its monolithic inevitability. He wasn’t sure if he was begging Solaris or himself. “Please! I’m not ready!”

Solaris pushed the door open, frowning at the mess inside. He eyed the three Dusks surrounding his student’s bed. “Simulacra?” he wondered. “Come now Dusk, you’re too old for these theatrics.” His horn glowed a blinding gold, and when it faded the entire room was back to normal. Dusk’s copies vanished into thin air. Solaris approached his bedside.

Dusk cowered under his mentor’s stern, compassionate gaze. There was an awkward silence that filled the gaping five feet of space that separated them.

“I’m not crazy,” Dusk whimpered.

“No,” said Solaris, “you are not, Dusk.” He levitated the leystone ring and slipped it over Dusk’s horn stump. “This should stop any more outbursts.”

Immediately her face receded from Dusk’s mind. What had once been an image painfully sharp and clear, like a blade so keen it hurt to look at, became dull and tolerable once more. Dusk felt more at ease already, and let his hooves drop from his temples.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and felt Solaris’ wing fold around his quivering body. He turned and buried his face in the alicorn’s chest. “I was scared. I am scared. I’m so very, very scared.”

He heard a smile in Solaris’ voice. “This is a potentially life-changing event, Dusk. I would think you were crazy if you were perfectly all right with it.”

“... Are Mom and Dad okay?”

“They will be, once they’ve heard you’ve calmed down. You gave everypony a terrible fright back there. Screaming fits and locking yourself in your room is not an encouraging sign.”

Dusk pulled back, staring sightlessly at the far wall. “But Solaris, it’s true! It’s all true! I can see her face! It’s so clear I can almost touch it!” He raised a hoof and waggled it in the air, reaching for her image in his mind’s eye. He wondered how soft her cheeks were, if he were actually able to touch them. When she turned and saw him face-to-face, her eyes had hooked him, regarding him with the wide, animal uncertainty of first contact. She had really seen him. Searched him. In her eyes he’d seen a depth of character that made himself feel dull and hollow. How bright and beautiful her eyes must be in the waking world. “And if she’s real, then... then everything is real.”

A rather horrible thought came to him. He looked up at Solaris, who wore his smile wearily.

“Does that mean there’s another of you?”

“Let’s just focus on what we’re sure of,” the Prince replied, “which isn’t much. We know for a fact now that your dream is real, Dusk, and the implications are staggering. We must tread carefully, lest we incur the wrath of some natural law we are unaware of.”

Dusk gulped. He didn’t like it when Solaris sounded unsure. “What do you mean?”

“I mean there are things in this world that supersede the power of even my brother and me. Do not worry, Dusk. This doesn’t mean that we are vulnerable, and if the reports of you and my brother are correct, we might very well be facing an onslaught of nothing more than new friends.”

Dusk wasn’t comforted, but he was quieted. The deep, gaping vastness of this new truth about the world unsettled him. He didn’t know the nature of it, but he was aware that it was somehow deeply entwined with the fact that he and his double saw each other first, and none of the others had been visited by similar visions. Even Artemis was completely unaware of what was happening until he had gone into Dusk’s head.

As he lay against Solaris and took comfort from his presence, Dusk couldn’t help but be troubled by all the clear evidence that he might be the only one capable of understanding what was going on.

“I want to go home,” he whispered.

“To Ponyville,” Solaris said, and he gave Dusk a little squeeze. “I imagine there are some books you’d like to take with you.”

“Several,” said Dusk, pulling away from Solaris and hopping off the bed, glancing up at his shelves. “One especially. I want to give Eventide’s research another look on the train back. I’d use the teleportation sigil you taught me, but... my horn...”

“Do not worry a bit, Dusk,” Solaris said kindly. “All expenses will be paid.”

Dusk cringed. “I feel so useless.”

Solaris approached him and lifted his chin with his wing. “Hardly. You are the key to all of this, my faithful student. You have accomplished so much. There is a reason that you were given this task, to dive into the mystery of another mind, another world. And I know that you are up to this.” Solaris lowered his horn and touched the tip of it to Dusk’s stump. “You always have my blessing, Dusk Shine.”

Dusk closed his eyes and savored the contact. “I’ll do my best. And I’ll keep you up to date on everything I learn.”

“I will be awaiting your reports,” said Solaris. “Meanwhile, my brother and I will try to divine whatever we can about the nature of these... doubles, for lack of a better word.” The Prince’s eyes narrowed, squinted as if he could see something in the few inches between them. “Dusk, I have one last question, and I want you to be very sure of the answer. Was the mare you saw a dream?”

Dusk felt a shiver run through him, of fright or desire he didn’t know. “If she is a dream, then I don’t want to wake up again.”

He didn’t know why he said it. But something passed over Solaris’ unfathomable gaze that made him shiver again, and this time it was certainly out of fear.

“I have to meet her,” he said.

“I know,” said Solaris. “Fare thee well, my faithful student. Know that we are always with you.”

--------------------

Dusk mulled over Solaris’ words on the train back to Ponyville. Spines was with him, curled up on the bed of the private car they’d been given. Even though the ride was just a few short hours, Solaris had seen how affected Dusk was by all of this. Though Dusk knew his horn was still susceptible to random outbursts, as long as the ring stayed on there should be no trouble. That and he was certain Solaris had assigned a team of unicorns to watch from afar, just in case. He didn’t feel embittered, just guilty. Watching the countryside fly by, he felt another pang of guilt for the way his parents had to see him go so soon after he arrived. It had taken hours just to keep Mother from clinging to him and insisting that he needed more vegetable soup and tender loving care before leaving.

He pulled out Eventide’s journal and flipped it to the most pertinent chapter: that of Eventide’s personal experiences with the dream realm. Solaris had given him several of the notes that accompanied her work that never made it into the books—often at Solaris’ personal behest. Though it had been magically preserved like most books that went into the Royal Archives,

Dusk started reading where he had left off:

The nature of a dream is that of the dreamer. When a dream is observed, one requires a deep understanding of the nature of the dreamer to penetrate that dream and collect more than a superficial summary of the dreamer’s mind. For everypony is unique, and there is no way to tell the exact thoughts of another living soul. According to the word of Prince Solaris himself, there is no known power that can directly delve into and influence the mind of a dreamer. The true magic of dreams is that they are a reflection of who and what a pony is deep inside: a wondrous and vast exploration of a pony’s inner being. When we dream, our bodies and minds generate magical fields unique to every pony that we can detect whenever a pony sleeps. Like all magical emanations they have a certain quality that talented magic users can attune themselves to, though only the most powerful of unicorns can use these emanations to vicariously experience some of the feelings and thoughts a dreamer has.

These emanations are inextricably connected to the currents of magic that flow through and around every being. Those mysterious anchors and tethers of magical power we know as leylines. A thorough study in the nature of leylines has led to extensive debate over the question of how connected we ponies are to the leyline network that spans our world. Though they undoubtedly exist and wherever they intersect great fonts of power may be found, it remains to be seen whether we ponies are indeed a part of the leyline network ourselves, or somehow developed independently of it. One of the greatest conundrums of our age is that the specific magical emanations of many leylines match those generated by dreaming ponies. The moment they awake, these emanations cease, and are unable to be replicated in a conscious state.

Many leylines are known to head in strange and often nonsensical directions, or branch off at random points. This has given rise to the belief that leylines are also connected to destinations that we are unaware of, and indeed, may never even discover.

Dusk lowered the book and looked out the window once more. He knew the concept of leylines had been around for as long as the study of magic, and in fact they were one of the reasons accurate teleportation was possible: the unicorn created a leyline of his own and pulled himself along it after creating a small magical anchor at the point of his manifestation.

He went back to the notes Solaris had given him from Eventide’s personal library, wondering what secrets they held that were too controversial to publish. He started at the beginning, watching Eventide’s life unfold before him, perfunctory and scattered though the details were across her research notes. Only one in particular stood out.

Year 683 of the Golden Age

I am uncertain what kind of results the latest tests will bring. It’s not a matter of how many spells I know, but how much power I can directly apply to the problem. And, unfortunately, every unicorn is limited in that capacity. Short of taking the Elements of Harmony for myself I’ll never be able to concentrate enough energy to cast myself into the dream realm and directly affect events within. But I have been uncovering hints of the nature of dreams: most pertinently, how interconnected they all are. A pony’s dreams are their subconscious, and their subconscious is how their mind processes the world around them. In a sense, we all create our own little worlds inside our heads. Our minds are a blank canvas when we are born, and imagination is infinite. There is no way we can know every corner of a pony’s mind; how can we? We store everything we know within, and populate the rest of the blank spaces with our wishes, our hopes, and our fears. In this manner many dreams share similar elements, and we have the phenomenon we call the Spirit of the Times: that collective pool of subconscious knowledge that impels whole societies.

That is why my latest experiment has awakened such anxiety within me. I have not yet attuned myself to a pony suffering from night terrors. I can only hope it will advance our knowledge and bring succor to the afflicted. What effect it will have on me I do not enjoy theorizing about. The Prince has expressed misgivings with my line of work. I try to see it as concern for my safety—but his manner is much too guarded for that.

Before Dusk could go on, he heard the train whistle ring. Next stop: Ponyville.

Home.

---------------

Home.

Twilight had come home. After a long and thankfully uneventful walk (barring a few trees being aged back to saplings by her errant magic), she crested a hill where the forest came to an abrupt end and beheld the whole expanse of Ponyville spreading out below. The happy white brick and rustic thatch roofs, nestled against the Everfree and clustered around the sparkling river that ran through their center, had never been prettier. She should’ve known her seemingly random teleport would bring her here. She’d wanted to go somewhere safe, where she wouldn’t be hunted or judged or looked harshly upon. Where else would she feel all that but in the place where her dearest friends lived?

It wouldn’t be long before Celestia came to the same conclusion and sent ponies to collect her. Really, it was obvious she’d come here sooner or later. She laughed at the bitter irony that swelled up like bile from her stomach and pressed on, skirting the edge of the forest. If that was Ponyville, she’d ended up in Whitetail Wood, and she couldn’t risk wandering into the middle of town. Not with a broken horn that could go wild at the slightest provocation. Daisy, Rose and Lily would have their requisite hysterical fits. The Mayor would scold her for all the paperwork. Her friends would come running to her aid.

Tired, she thought. So tired. I didn’t teleport here. I landed here. That explains the twinge in my leg. And my everything else. Are those burns I feel on my face? I think I sprained something. If I just went to the hospital...

No. She couldn’t have attention, even the kind she craved most right now. She needed to lay low, get her books, and leave. Celestia would put that thing on her horn again. She’d shove her student into a cage, like some pitiful object to be gawked at from a safe distance.

There was only one real solution, one destination she could be sure she could lay low until she was well enough to move on. A place that sang to her battered psyche and led her on an invisible tether once her mind grabbed hold of the idea.

She veered toward the Everfree, dodging the Ponyville park and all the foals that played there, taking special caution to keep watch for Applejack as she dodged under the cool shade of Sweet Apple Acres’ apple trees. The dappled sunlight danced over a carpet of green, calling out to Twilight’s sore head and muscles to sit down and sleep. The Acres’ harvesting days were near. The sound of the wind rustling through the trees in full bloom made her long to stay, to fall into the hospitality of the Apple family’s waiting hooves and pretend all her problems were gone. The desire was washed away with the very next breeze. Twilight spat on the ground, ignoring the sacrilege; this wasn’t the Equestria she knew anymore.

A small part of her begged her to reconsider, that tiny little rational worm crawling around at the edges of her conscious mind who remembered long days in Canterlot under the wing of the Princess, nestled in some quiet corner of the library with only Celestia to come and bother her. She stepped on it and walked on. Once, she thought she heard the sound of a pony bucking a tree and stopped to listen, ears perked and straining. The wind shifted and the sound did not come again.

Past Sweet Apple Acres, she crossed a small creek and into another patch of woodland, wilder and more disorganized than Applejack’s neat rows. Here and there she spotted holes in the ground leading under trees and bushes, and further on she spotted birdhouses crafted with loving hooves, painted gentle pinks and whites and blues. Curious animals became a veritable crowd of onlookers who peered at the scowling unicorn as she tramped through their flower-laden shelter, heedless of who or what she almost stepped on. A hummingbird fluttered closer to investigate, chased off by a loud crack and a spark from Twilight’s horn stump. Thorns and a few low hanging branches got in her way, dragging through her mane and fur coat, but every new irritation fueled her anger and made her even more determined to simply shove her way through. A bunny rabbit squeaked indignantly at her, but she thrust it away with a hoof that felt like a lead weight. She was exhausted after her confrontation with the Princesses and her ceaseless walk over uneven ground, and cursed her procrastination over asking Rainbow to coach her.

“I don’t have time for this,” she grumbled.

Breaking free of the treeline, she looked up to see the blossoming font of life that was Fluttershy’s cottage. The serene sight of milling animals and singing birds brought chills down Twilight’s spine, the emotions connected to Fluttershy running strong. Her gentle touch, the sound of her kind voice, the everpresent glow of Kindness that surrounded her. Here she would find peace. Her horn made a disagreeable snap as it sparked with more magic, shooting a bolt up that transmogrified a nearby blossom into an orange.

“Shoot,” she hissed, and resisted the urge to go closer. Fluttershy would be put in danger by Twilight’s errant horn, but what else could she do? Hide in Fluttershy’s garden and eat the leftovers of her pets’ meals? She couldn’t do that. She might set the whole place ablaze. She might harm someone or somepony else, but she couldn’t hide out in the woods forever, either. What logical parts of her mind were left insisted that she had to try and trust her friends, to believe that they were willing to put themselves on the line for her, even if the danger came from Twilight herself.

She marched out of the forest and made a beeline for the cottage, ears perking as she heard Fluttershy’s voice, then saw the pegasus herself arise like a guardian angel from among her chicken coops. She was singing, and her voice was beautiful after the suffering Twilight had endured so far. Twilight felt her stamina eroding with every step and everything else peeled away until only Fluttershy’s voice was left. It rose and fell, bounced and lilted. Twilight closed her eyes as she hobbled towards her friend, trying to grab on to the flowery tunes and be lifted weightlessly away with them.

She didn’t stop until she crashed into the chicken pen. With a yelp she pitched forward over the wire mesh fence, and a blast of magic erupted from her horn, smashed into the coop, and upended it. A whirlwind of angry, panicked chickens came flooding out, and from her face-down position in the dirt, Twilight heard the siren sound of Fluttershy’s singing turn to shrieking.

“What?! Twilight! Elizbeak! Florence! Calm down, please!”

“I’m calm,” Twilight said, struggling to her hooves. She watched Fluttershy’s eyes change from concern to shock and even a hint of terror, realizing she must have looked a mess: scratched, exhausted, and a little singed from her explosive landing. Her legs wobbled to hold her weight as she finally allowed herself to realize how tired she was. This close to safety, her mind was simply shutting down, giving up control to the first kind soul that passed by.

Fluttershy was at her side in an instant, enveloping her in a blanket of soft feathers and tender hooves. Twilight squeezed her eyes shut and very nearly collapsed then and there as Fluttershy fussed over her. “Oh, no! Twilight, what happened? No, don’t talk. Hurry, come over here. Oh, please calm down, little chickens! It’s just Twilight!”

“M’sorry,” Twilight mumbled, crawling over the wire mesh onto the soft dirt of Fluttershy’s lawn. But as she stood up, her vision went black and a wave of dizziness washed over her. She took only two steps before dropping again, and didn’t get back up.

The last thing she heard was Fluttershy’s voice, telling her everything would be all right.

Her eyes snapped open at the sound of a train whistle.

She leapt from her cushioned seat and packed away the books she’d taken for the trip, getting a good glance at one in particular: Eventide’s Treatise on the Dream Realm. Her stare lingered on it for reasons she didn’t quite realize at the time, and she decided to head left once she—

No, she went right instead.

“Spines!” she called, and a baby dragon hustled to catch up. She didn’t mean to call Spines, but the little dragon came anyway. Such a diligent helper.

She passed the train conductor, wondering when he shaved his mustache. And lost several pounds. But she did catch the way his eyes lingered on what was left of her horn, and it bothered her.

“Good to be home,” she said, trying to stop and take a breath of Ponyville’s fresh air after the cloistered, dusty atmosphere in Canterlot. But she didn’t do that at all. Instead, she kept going. But that was all right. She was too tired to think of anything but rest.

And then a voice called out to her, terrifyingly familiar.

“Dusk!”

She stopped, though she knew it wasn’t her name. Something about the voice made her want to turn and reply. It wasn’t that she knew the voice, for it was a stallion’s and she didn’t know many of those in Ponyville, certainly none who would wait at a train station for her. It was the way the name came off the tongue of her caller, the meaning packed into that one short syllable. A voice that said they hadn’t met in a long time and spent much of it worrying. A voice of relief and happiness. The voice of a good friend.

She turned with a smile that wasn’t her own and saw the floral patterned curtains of Fluttershy’s bedroom window. A downy pillow that supported her head and neck without being too firm hugged the contours of her face, and two blankets that just might have been the softest things she’d ever touched rested atop her. She was nestled and warm, and the smell of tea wafted up through a crack in the door, along with heady tingle of magic resting heavily on the room. Twilight looked up and around, hoping nothing had been destroyed in her sleep, or worse, that Fluttershy had been harmed.

A purplish glow saturated the room, drowning out all sound save that of an ethereal chime, doubtless some kind of side effect of her broken horn. As she watched, the glow faded before her eyes. Apparently, Fluttershy hadn’t noticed the strange lights, because she didn’t come up even as normal sound and color returned to the room. Twilight watched a patch of sunlight crawl over the floor, too tired to think about sleep and too tired to move. Instead of calling out, she waited, and she pondered.

Dusk.

Something about the name made her shiver, and she pulled the blankets more tightly around her, nuzzling her cheek into the pillow while she listened to the animals moving about in the walls and scuttling over the floor. It didn’t bother her, neither did the sound of Fluttershy moving through the house. All her thoughts were on the strange dream.

No, not a dream... not anymore. Reality. A new reality. Dusk... Is that his name? Was I seeing what he saw?

She closed her eyes and tried to get him back, but it was much too late. The memory of the dream remained, but not whatever she had done to establish the connection. She hadn’t felt like she was actually there, more an observer than a participant. But it was clear by now that something had changed. A single variable—Luna’s memory block—was gone, and she was more connected to him than ever before.

And he was in Ponyville.

She heard timid hoofsteps at the door and looked up to see Fluttershy bearing a tray of steaming tea and biscuits on one wing.

“Um, hello Twilight,” she whispered. “I brought you some tea.”

Twilight didn’t answer. Fluttershy stammered and walked to the bedside, setting the tray down on the lampstand. “You were a mess, Twilight. Scratches and burns all over. I bandaged what I could. I hope you don’t mind.”

More silence.

Fluttershy scuffed a hoof on the floor. “If you like, you can stay here while you—”

“He’s here,” said Twilight.

Fluttershy’s eyes widened. “Oh. Him? Him who?”

“The one from my dreams.” Twilight closed her eyes and smiled serenely. “I know it. He’s in Ponyville, like me. I really do know who he is.”

Fluttershy gulped.

“His name is Dusk,” whispered Twilight. “Something magical just happened. I saw the world through his eyes. It was like he was wearing me. We were so close... but still so far away. It took so much energy it made the whole room glow.”

Twilight opened her eyes again and saw Fluttershy biting her lower lip.

“Oh,” she gasped, “that must have been that itchy feeling I got in my wings.”

Twilight nodded, and the world swam around her. “Pegasi conduct magic through their wings. Only natural a high concentration is felt there. My horn...” She crossed her eyes and looked up. “Now that it’s broken, it’s out of control. It’s like my magic is calling to him now, and I can’t stop it.” She sighed. “And I don’t even want to.”

Fluttershy hid her face behind her mane. “Then it’s all real? I really did see it?”

Twilight blinked. “See what?”

Fluttershy let out a tiny puff of breath, like a foal gearing up to reveal a big secret. Her eyes rose to meet Twilight’s gaze, wide and pleading, quivering with emotion. She looked excited and terrified. She looked expectant, knowing and fearing what came next.

“Oh, Twilight,” she said in a quaking whisper, “I saw everything.”

A chill came over Twilight, but Fluttershy suddenly couldn’t stop, wouldn’t stop. A growing knot of painful pressure grew at the base of Twilight’s horn and slowly wound its way up through the jagged edges that remained at the top, pulsing with every word from Fluttershy.

“We were standing in that nasty hallway, with you and Luna there, and there was that big black curtain, drawn over the world, it seemed like. And you and Luna were arguing, and I’m really really sorry, but I was trying not to get involved. The Elements were...” fluttershy furrowed her brow, staring vacantly downward. “... They were trying to say something, and I felt like listening to them instead of what you and Luna were saying. It was like a sound of silence, when you know something should be there but isn’t and you’re more aware of it not being there instead of... well, it was bad, whatever it was. And then you turned to that awful wall and pointed your horn at it. And it just kind of... lifted.”

Twilight narrowed her eyes as Fluttershy cringed, hiding her eyes behind her mane again and lifting a wing to take shelter against something.

“It was awful, Twilight. Like you finally realized something that you should have a long time ago, and you think about all the time that was wasted up until then. Like... like when I attended that silly assertiveness conference and didn’t know I was driving everypony away until it was too late, except a hundred thousand times worse! I almost started crying right then and there! But then it lifted away and I looked closer, and... and I...”

Fluttershy turned away, shuddering, and dropped her flanks to the floor. She seemed smaller to Twilight, hunched and miserable, her voluminous tail coiled around her haunches as she curled up and hugged herself. Like something horrible had happened.

Like a good friend left her.

“What did you see?” she prodded.

Fluttershy shivered.

“You saw him, didn’t you?”

Fluttershy looked over her shoulder at Twilight, who was shocked by the pain in her eyes. Her voice was as brittle as an autumn leaf.

“I saw me.”

Twilight gulped.

Fluttershy rubbed her shoulders and sighed. “Only, it wasn’t me. It—he—was another kind of me. A part of me I didn’t know I’d been missing but now that I do... oh, Twilight. I wish I’d never seen him! But at the same time I’m so glad I did! It was like finally hearing somepony say they love you. And it hurts that it took so long, but you’re so happy it finally happened! Oh, I read too many of Rarity’s books...”

The pressure at the base of Twilight’s horn couldn’t be held back any longer. A white-hot lance of energy surged through her body, unstoppable, abrupt and painful. Twilight cried out and her back arched to the breaking point as a spasm wracked her body.. She thrashed and pushed her hoof into the door, opening it gently and peeking inside.

“Home sweet home,” she said, looking up at shelves upon shelves of books. The library waited for her, and she turned to Spines and smiled at her. “I’m... going to sit down for a while. I don’t feel so good.”

She reached up and touched her broken horn, feeling the leystone ring that she knew wasn’t there. “Stupid thing must not be working right. My head hurts.”

“Should I go get the others?” Spines asked.

“... Yeah. Yeah, you should. If the memory came back for all of us... we got some talking to do.”

She tramped up the stairs, letting the saddlebags slough off her sides, and sat at her desk. She reached up to her face and pressed her hooves against her temples as hard as they would go. The pain got worse, increasing in intensity until she fell over with a loud thud. Spines—no, Fluttershy was screaming her name in the background of the maelstrom of magic that surrounded her, whipping a flowerpot and several pictures of Angel Bunny around at hurricane velocities.

“Stop it,” she growled at herself, and her voice was so thick with emotion the words felt like fudge coming up from her throat. “Stop it now. This is Fluttershy’s house! Stop it!”

It stopped. The flowerpot, the pictures, and herself fell with a crash. Twilight realized she’d been floating, and saw the purple glow from before surrounding her body. It pulsated and shimmered, ceaselessly changing and chaotic, but always beautiful. She turned towards the sound of crying and saw Fluttershy huddled in the corner, immersed in a gentle yellow light. Unlike Twilight’s bombastic corona, Fluttershy’s aura was like it had been in the dream realm: steady and muted, delicate enough that it seemed a puff of wind would blow it away. But it clung to her regardless like a stubbornly caring mother figure, and gradually, the tears streaming down Fluttershy’s cheeks stopped. She opened her eyes and looked at Twilight.

Twilight flinched away. There was fear in her friend’s eyes.

“I heard it again,” Fluttershy whimpered, “just like the dream. The Elements were talking to us.”

“The library,” said Twilight, “we have to go there. I have to get there, Fluttershy.”

“What? But why—”

“Because he’s there. And if that’s where he is, that’s where I have to go. There’s some books I need to read.”

She tossed the covers away, looking at the mess she’d made of Fluttershy’s room. Tea and biscuits were scattered everywhere.

“I’m so sorry... I’ll try to help clean this.” Her horn sparked and fizzled out the moment she tried to levitate the shattered flowerpot. Fluttershy stood up and hurried to her side.

“No, please don’t strain yourself! I’ll clean it, really.”

“But Fluttershy—”

“You’re my friend, Twilight,” said Fluttershy, leaning closer, her eyes alive with compassion and concern. “You need to rest. Don’t worry. Just sit down now, and we’ll get your books in a little bit, okay?”

Twilight tried to break free again, but another wave of dizziness overtook her, flashes of another life intruding on her vision. She was guided by Fluttershy to fall back on the bed, groaning.

“I’ll... I’ll try. But we don’t have much time. The Princesses...”

She stopped, her breath hitching in her throat. Everything began to press down on her all at once. The revelations, the memories, the pain of her beloved mentor turning against her had become too much. Her horn went to her sweaty forehead as Fluttershy tended to her, tucking her back in.

“The Princesses what, Twilight?”

“They’re coming,” Twilight gasped. “Coming for me. And probably all of you, too. Luna never meant for us to see what we did. Something went horribly wrong when I got my memories back.”

Twilight smiled viciously. “Or something went terribly right.”

Fluttershy’s gaze was confused and pitying. Twilight shook her head.

“They’re going to try and stop us. We can’t let that happen. Fluttershy, did the rest of the girls talk about what we saw?”

Fluttershy ducked her head down. “No, Twilight. It happened just yesterday, after all. I was just puttering around in the living room, helping the squirrels with their game of ‘hide the acorn,’ when all of a sudden, I just had the strangest feeling, and then it all just came rushing back out of nowhere. It hit me like an updraft! I was bedridden for the rest of the day, and I was much too scared to try and confront any of the other girls about it.”

Twilight reached out and touched her shoulder. “It’s all right, Fluttershy. It was supposed to happen. It must have coincided with my memories being unlocked too.”

“You don’t know how it happened?” said Fluttershy, aghast.

Twilight smiled. “No. But I have some ideas. Oh, Fluttershy, I really don’t think we’re alone in this. I think they’re trying to find us too, whoever they are. The other us. We need to help them, we need to find each other, and then we’ll finally be able to figure out what’s going on.”

Fluttershy tapped her hoof on the floor, cowering behind her mane again. “I’d like that,” she said in the barest hint of a whisper. “And I think... I think I’d like to meet him. The way you want to meet him.”

Twilight blinked. “Him? Not me... oh. You. That must have been something.”

Fluttershy nodded, and the ghost of a smile played at the corners of her mouth.

“I only got the shortest glimpse. But he seemed... nice.”

Twilight collapsed back onto the bed.

“My library is the most important thing right now. That, and gathering the rest of the Elements together. If the Princesses come for me again I don’t know what I’ll do. I hope they don’t.”

“But aren’t they trying to help?” Fluttershy murmured. “Twilight, what happened up there?”

“It’s a long story,” Twilight whispered, turning over and curling up under the blankets again. She suddenly felt so very tired. “Right now all I want are my books.”

Fluttershy nodded, and the look in her eyes said that she was too kind to press the issue. “All right, Twilight. All right. We’ll go.”

When the sun finally set, they did.

Twilight wrapped herself in a cloak when it was dark and headed into Ponyville, telling Fluttershy to go and fetch the others as soon as possible. She kept her head down and didn’t look a single pony in the eye as she made a beeline for her home, the pull of her other getting stronger with each passing step, overriding the nerve-wracking fear she felt whenever she heard a pony’s hooves get too close. Every time she felt her magic act up her heart skipped a beat, but there wasn’t anything else that could be done. She’d left the leystone ring in Canterlot, and there was no way she was putting it back on now. She passed by Sugarcube Corner, and for once Pinkie Pie didn’t come bursting out of the door. Twilight couldn’t help but wonder if she remembered the dream too and was as subdued as Fluttershy.

She reached the door to her library without any incident and the thought passed over her that maybe she needn’t be so paranoid. Then she remembered who she was dealing with.

Heck, going to sleep might be dangerous now. Luna’s probably watching for my dreams. I’m not exactly being subtle here, either, but if it means getting at my old books...

How long would it be before she was found out by them? Another day? Another hour? She had to be quick. And poor Spike... poor Mom and Dad! They were probably all worried sick. Twilight promised herself she’d explain everything once this was over and done with. But who knew how long that would be?

She put a hoof to the door, feeling a strange kind of power emanate from it. It wasn’t an enchantment. It was just the wonderful knowledge that she was finally coming home.

Before she could stop it, her magic reacted. Her covering cloak was ripped off by a burst of purple light and disintegrated into a flurry of cloth butterflies, fluttering disjointedly away on the evening air. Twilight stood completely exposed on her own doorstep.

“Hey,” she heard a pony who had yet to close his fruit stall, “isn’t that—”

She swung inside and slammed the door shut. A cold sweat rushed over her as she turned around to see her beloved books, still lined up in neat rows undisturbed. She leaned in and tried to force a spell from her broken horn, but all that came out was a fizz of raw magic. Still, nothing reacted to it as it bounced over the floor and then exploded into vanishing sparks. Celestia hadn’t been here, then. Not yet, anyway.

She hurried to the nearest shelf and began her search. Eventide was not a name that was familiar to her, but perhaps there were other things she hadn’t considered. Talking about alternate realities meant anything and everything could be connected, in ways both logical and abstract. She had to think outside the box now. A shiver ran down her spine as she considered the neat little rows. She’d seen him come home to Ponyville. Was her home his own, too? She imagined him taking her steps just as she’d taken his, touching the same floor, breathing the same air. Her horn stub fizzled agreeably. This was where she wanted to be, among her—their?—books. But which one did she need?

Are you here? she wondered. Reading the same titles? Perusing the same shelves? Are we looking for the same thing? For each other? Will I find what you’re looking for, if I just...

She reached out and put her hoof on a certain book, tracing her hoof over the gilded lettering of the title. She closed her eyes and spoke it aloud, with the preciseness of an incantation.

“Tinker Tailor’s Scientific Journal Collection...”

--------------

“... Volume One,” Dusk read as he brushed his hoof over the granulated binding. “No, that won’t have what I need. It has to be here somewhere! Spines, did you find anything?”

“Nope!” the little dragoness replied. “Are you sure it’s not back in Canterlot?”

“I looked,” replied Dusk, “twice. Eventide had more books to her name than even what Canterlot had, and I know I kept at least a few of them here. Ugh, if only Solaris hadn’t tried to keep a tight lid on all this!”

“Why do you think he didn’t want this kinda research done, anyway?” Spines asked from her perch atop one of the browsing ladders, running her claw over title after title. “You don’t think he knows something, do you?”

“He was as surprised as I was about... whatever this all is,” Dusk insisted, hating having to manually yank his precious books from their comfortable alcoves, watching his dirty hooves scatter granules of Solaris-knew-what over their fragile bindings. How he wished he could use his magic to give them the delicate touch they needed! “I don’t think he’s in the know. Or if he is, keeping the art of dreamseeing secret had to be for a good reason. Maybe there just wasn’t a good or safe way to do it until Artemis came back. It is his magic, after all.”

He grumbled and grunted his way through the shelves, wishing he’d organized the last reshelving better. This headache wasn’t helping things, either. It was like something was trying to get into his head from the outside. But he couldn’t risk removing the ring and annihilating all his books with one misfired spell.

“Did you find anything?” he asked Spines.

Spines shrugged. “Just the sudden realization we should check the basement. We got all your old books stored there, right?”

--------------

“Yeah, it’s that door on the left—”

Twilight turned her head.

Nothing but the door leading to her basement.

Twilight shivered, but kept her eyes focused on the blank space in front of her. She was certain she’d heard a voice calling to her—no, not her, to him. Maybe the fatigue was getting to her.

No, that’s silly. You know you can’t rely on totally mundane explanations anymore.

A month ago she would’ve passed it off as an auditory hallucination. But now she knew better.

She pushed the door open and turned on the lights, taking each step down the stairs with deliberate pauses, waiting for any other sign of the other world to leak into hers. Her lab equipment surrounded her, and in the dreary light the dusty machines looked more intimidating than usual. like she was a simple filly intruding on some other mad scientist’s basement. She knew she owned it, but it wasn’t all hers anymore. Somewhere, it also belonged to him.

She made a beeline for her book storage, opening the door and peering into the magically moderated room. Dusk was looking for Eventide, a pony who had researched dreams centuries ago. She didn’t know any authors here that might match the description of anypony like that, but if he was looking down here, then she must too. Another sharp pain exploded from her horn as she followed Spines into the cramped space, looking over her shoulder as they went down the only aisle, stopping when the dragon did. Her claw reached up and hooked a single volume.

“Eventide’s old research,” she said, needing both hands to hold the hefty book up to Twilight’s face. ‘The Collected Works of Eventide’ was emblazoned on the cover in gold lettering. “The unabridged addition, heh. If anything’s gonna help, it’ll be in here.”

Twilight blinked and found herself five steps forward from where she’d just been standing. The little dragon had been standing right in front of her, holding a book up to her face. She knelt down level with the place Spines had snatched the tome from, and saw only a thin, worn little manuscript. It had no title and no distinguishing marks save its age. It was covered in plain brown binding, old and cracked, and the pages were yellowed. With as much gentleness as her hooves could manage, she pulled the book from its alcove and set it down on the floor, peeling back the cover. The old binding crackled like an old pony’s limbs.

Morningtide. The name stood out like a beacon on the rough, ill-kept paper. This was her world’s Eventide. She remembered vague references, research that had gone nowhere. An old researcher from before her time, seeking the night even as Celestia’s Sun stood supreme over the land. Books that Celestia said were useless, but hadn’t begrudged her taking a few for her private study. Probably thought she’d never read all of them, or would never recognize their significance. Certainly, if Celestia was as secretive as Twilight suspected, even this ancient copy of Morningtide’s writings would be censored and incomplete. But she had to start somewhere.

She watched as Morningtide’s life blossomed before her.

Year 687 of the Golden Age

To Whomever It May Concern,

What a silly name, this “golden age.” To think that ponies have worshiped Celestia as the sole cause for everything we have accomplished. She is not as all-knowing as we have been led to believe; but then, we ponies led ourselves to that conclusion. Though Celestia is a beacon of hope and love for us all, we put the hooks in our mouths and gave the leads into her hooves. She did not stop us, but she did not encourage us either. Perhaps she believes that inaction will somehow prove that we follow her purely out of love and not fear of the unknown.

It was into the unknown that I delved at her behest. Now I am forced to watch my work be sealed away, or worse, burned in the manner the griffons do away with their heretics. These thin pages contain everything I was able to salvage purely from my own memory, and Celestia has not left me with much of that either. In here I saved the truth. Not just about Celestia, but about me.

Celestia may say she regrets what happened, but in the end she was to blame. Somehow I remember that much, for she left me with nothing. She left me powerless and broken with a pat on the head like some senile old goat. I’ve been given a healthy pension and a small house in the fields beneath Canterlot, with a lock placed upon my mind as effective as any gag order. But I cannot remember why I cannot remember. I remember the path that led here, but the details elude me. I know Celestia did it; she told me so herself. But why? Why must every morning now be filled with so much emptiness? I know I am missing something. Every night I have a dream, a dream so important and meaningful to me alone that I must remember it, but I cannot.

My passion, my reason for being, started with a dream, and it ended with one. They were separated by years, but their immediacy, their importance in my lifetime, puts them right next to each other in my mind—except one is now gone. The only one left is the only one I could hide from Celestia, because she took the other. She couldn’t take the first, the one that set me on this path, the one that gave me my cutie mark. I remember it clear as day, because it brought me here, inevitably, lovingly, like a foal is pulled from the womb. Although the thought of it still strikes me with terror, know that it was, in the end, a good dream.

I am in a field. A wide, lovely, gently rolling field. Behind me is my house and the forest it sat on the edge of, and I can see the silhouette of my mother in the window, bustling with something or other. I frolick as any child would, feeling as if nothing in the world could hurt me. There are sunflowers, red flowers, blue, along with the deep green grass.

I come to the top of a hill, and I can look over my shoulder and see all the details of my house, the forest, and the field. Even the sky is rendered in such perfect definition that I can make out the tiniest wisps of cloud, close enough to touch. And I do touch them, drawing the clouds down and laughing because I know I’m not a pegasus, and this is so silly but it’s fun, and I do not think about what it could mean.

I tear down a cloud from the sky and push it about on the ground, then leap into it, enjoying the way the lightning inside strikes me back. I push and push deeper into the fog, until I find a face. It is my face, and yet, not my face. It is like a mirror image with only some of the slightest adjustments. My snout is narrower, my eyes bigger, my body smaller. A brush of silvery-gray in the mane where mine is a solid white. It is a filly’s face, but that does not strike me as bothersome. Something about it strikes a chord in me and I think it is supposed to be frightful, but I’m having too much fun to think. I smile and the other me smiles right when I do, and we start to play. But we never quite come together. We race back and forth along an invisible line, dance around an unseen axis, mirroring each other’s every move. How silly, I think, that my playmate only does what I do, but does it in such a different way. We turn and run and dance together, laughing, and then we realize it is suddenly late and we must go home.

I turn around and see my house, but it is not my house. It is the same and yet it is not. The window is on the wrong side. The shadow within does not look like my mother. The forest itself is alien to me. How can it be my home and yet all the feelings of familiarity be stripped away?

I turn and come face-to-face with my other. We grin at each other for our silliness, because we had gotten turned around in our playtime and were about to go to each other’s homes. But would that be so bad, I wonder?

We stand in the exact same place as when we met, moving with such precision it is like watching it all in reverse. And then I turn and troop right back to my home.

I never had that dream again. But when I awoke, I found myself with my cutie mark: a pony slumbering in a blanket of stars. My talent is wrapped up as snugly with the dream realm as a foal with their blanket. The one dream that led me on this path so long ago, the very one that gave me my mark, is the one dream I can remember, and the one dream that I wish I could forget. It has given and taken away so much of my life, yet it led to this: puttering away until the day I die.

I feel miserable and tired all the time, not just because my years of research are gone. I feel the keenest sense of longing. I want to see that strange otherworld in my cutie mark dream again. I want to go there. I want to finish my research. I want so many things. But I can’t have them. I feel like a painting that needs just one more brushstroke, one more daub, and I will be complete. But it seems I will go to the grave never knowing that bliss. Whoever comes after me, whoever finds this next, use what is in these pages. Do not let my work go unfinished. For all that Celestia burned, she can’t take away what brought me here. She cannot stop me from doing what I must. Some say a cutie mark is a pony’s destiny. If so, then it seems my destiny is to preserve that dream, and let it be passed on to you. My dream is yours now, because one other thing I can remember is that no dreamer dreams alone.

------

Dusk Shine’s eyes flew over the pages. Ensconced in the alcove between shelves in his book storage, he refused to come out until he had finished Eventide’s entire text.

The Prince does not know how it happened. Neither do I, but I know my research led to it. It led me to that dark place where I found something, something hidden and deep and full of lies, and then I was dragged back... by the Prince? By something else? By truth itself? Perhaps it is the nature of the world to keep its own secrets. Magic is as inscrutable as it is amazing. Many ponies would say that it’s a sign I should give up. They can all see it: the bags under my eyes, the way I snap at anypony who gets too close. I lost something, yes. But I hope that in recording what happened, those who come after me will avoid the mistakes that I did.

To start, many ponies believe that our dreams are somehow separate from what we do during the day.

I know better. I know all about the leylines, the emanations that come from a sleeping pony, and the loss of such intangible magic when we wake. But to know where the so-called Terminal Leylines actually go—for they must go somewhere, as no magical energy simply ceases to be—I had reach into places that nopony has thought to seek out before. I had to try something that only legends of a lost Prince and dark secrets speak of.

I had to immerse myself in the magical emanations of the dream realm itself. I remember my cutie mark dream as though it were yesterday, where I met myself and so started along the path to dream research. But now it all seems so far away. This is an account of what I have done in my attempt to understand what my dream and so many others meant, and how in chasing after what gave me meaning, I let it slip out of my grasp.

Dusk hurriedly flipped through the pages to where Eventide’s research began.

April the Twenty-Second

I have confirmed my first theory: the magical emanations of leylines are indeed connected to dreaming, not simply similar. To attune oneself to the magic of the world is to tap into a vast reservoir of creative energy. This energy resonates through all the ages of the world and is naturally drawn to living creatures. When we dream, we automatically attune ourselves to the emanations of the leylines, the lifeblood of some great work of art completed long ago. To look at the world as scientifically and objectively as one might regard the blueprints of a house is a mistake that I have at last rectified over many nights of sleeping and pondering. My books have already discussed the nature of dreams: how they are a peek at a pony’s inner being, at how a pony reacts to, desires to impose their will upon, and lives in objective reality.

Dreams are not a blueprint of our mind. They are a painting. And paintings can be unclear, abstract. We do not all see the world in the same way, nor do our desires always match. Every dream is a brushstroke on an infinite canvas randomly determined by everypony’s unique nature. Uniqueness is essential to creativity, and I would put forward that creation itself is a kind of magic.

Consider this. When a pony dreams, and I attune myself to their magical emanations, it is the same kind of activity a unicorn would use to cast a spell, or an earth pony that wishes to knock down a wall without injury, or a pegasus uses to alight upon a cloud without it vanishing under their hooves. So then, one can only be led to the conclusion that dreams, intrinsically connected as they are to leylines and thus the magical energy of the world, are a kind of spell that we cast in our sleep. Dreams, therefore, are a glimpse into a pony’s purest creative impulses. When we see a dream, we are seeing a pony’s nature in its rawest, most natural form.

I have seen a great many dreams in my time. Ponies by the hundreds have described them to me. I have stacks of dream journals that describe landscapes impossible in the real world, and feats of strength and agility even the most powerful ponies fail to imagine. But is this something that comes from within us, or is it something that magic inflicts upon us?

Magic itself is an Element of Harmony. What kind of implications does this have, if dreams are so deeply connected to the very magic that binds our world together? It is time for more research. I have decided to use the following thaumaturgic pathways to increase my output and attune myself more closely to the dreams I witness. Hopefully, it will let me glean more than glimpses and base emotions. Soon I hope to acquire a full viewing of a dream.

May the Fifth

Prince Solaris himself visited me today. We talked at length about the nature of my research and how it is coming along. In truth, it is progressing faster than even I anticipated. The mystery is not how to attune oneself to a dreamer’s emanations anymore; having discovered it is as simple as casting a spell, the trouble now comes from discerning the nature of what I see and feel once the spell is complete.

Like I and many other researchers have put forward, in spite of dreams being as unique as snowflakes, they share common themes, just as snowflakes are all made of water and have their origins in the same clouds. Hopes, desires, great loves, ambitions; all find a comfortable niche in everypony’s mind, no matter how eccentric or removed from the world.

In this way, I believe dreams are connected to each other as well.

As my understanding increases, so too does the width and breadth of my vision in the dream realm. I have seen the Equestria that resides in the minds of its citizens, separate from us yet straddling objective reality in ways we will never know. Even dreamers in their infinite wanderings have seen only a fraction of what ponies have created within the landscapes of their minds. I told the Prince everything I could, in what words a scientist like me can conjure. How could I describe in the plain, dry language of research what monstrous beauty resides in a pony’s mind? I was frightened by what I saw, but also enamored, ready and eager to move forward. I begged the Prince to give me more power, access to higher level spells usually reserved for a time of crisis. I grew a bit flustered during the conversation and I believe he noticed, for he did not grant me access to the secure wings of the Royal Archives. More than that, he warned me that going too deep into magic that was ‘not my own’ could be dangerous.

I asked what he meant by that, and then he looked at me very queerly, tilting his head as if to divine something only he could sense.

“There is a pony I know who is periodically afflicted with night terrors,” he said, and the words chilled me to the bone. “Look into her dreams next and report to me what you will find.”

And so I will.

May the Sixteenth

Journal, how do I describe a living nightmare? How do I tell you what my own eyes have seen, what it’s like to be wearing the body of another pony as they suffer through the most insidious tortures they can inflict upon themselves? I am in hardly any state to write, but I must for the sake of my research. A nightmare is still a dream, after all, and I cannot be put off by jitters in the dark.

I have experienced nightmares before of course, vicariously through various test subjects. I’ve been covered in spiders, hunted by wolves, and assaulted by caricatures of childhood bullies. I’ve been burned, squashed, mangled and tortured, drowned, lost, abandoned and hopeless. But always I knew it was not my dream, for my cutie mark assured me the weak, instinctive fears of the mind held no power over me. The terror of a nightmare is limited by what we can imagine, and while that is quite a lot, I have never been unsure that I could end my fear with a simple application of my prodigious willpower, if you will excuse some flattery. I need it after that hideous night.

The pony that Solaris referred to in my last entry was in fact one of the Court Wizards, a pre-eminent wizard by the name of Daisy Dew. I welcomed her into my office once a night for well over a week, always careful to express my gratitude that she would sacrifice her time tending to her duties to come to me. Of course it was by Solaris’ direct orders, but it never hurts to be courteous. She was taller than I thought she would be, slender of limb and of a lime-green coloration, with a bountiful mane of bright pink. Her cutie mark was an astronomer’s telescope, and her chief duty is to chart the movements of the stars across the sky. I wondered at how grand and enlightening such a thing might be, but she gave me a curious smile and said only that no matter how bright the lights in the sky are, there are always dark spaces between them.

The nocturnal life is no stranger to me, and I was forced to stay up all night and watch for any signs of the night terrors Daisy Dew was afflicted with. Fortunately, it took only three nights for the first and only one that I could bear to present itself.

Oh, how can I even put it into words? I thought I’d seen the worst ponykind had to offer, dear Journal, but this was nothing that came from ponykind.

The first sign that something was wrong were her own emanations when the dreamstate began. Before, it never mattered what the pony’s position or personality. When a pony dreamed, their emanations would take on always different yet recognizable and organized patterns, as unique as snowflakes but beautiful in their orderliness. Strong lines and blooming arches, particles that swirl around you once you train your horn to sense them. But this was like looking into a great space full of nothing but silence. It pounded and pulsated in my ears the moment my magic came into contact with it and I instinctively jerked away, my composure almost instantly undone. Oh, Journal, it was like the most horrible symphony I have ever heard: a blank space in sound and sight, a gap in existence itself, a place where there is truly Nothing.

But when I tried to pull away, the darkness reeled me back in.

You will find in my other works the necessary precautions to undertaking feats like dreamseeing, and I assure I’d taken them all: I’d gotten plenty of rest, gone through the requisite meditations and cast the fail-safes that would yank me out of any precarious position. They had never failed me before when a dream became too much to bear. But this was something different, something Other that plucked my defenses and tossed them away as if they were nothing. I was out of control and knew it, but there was no way to stop or awaken Daisy Dew; I was a prisoner inside my own mind. Something otherworldly had taken hold of my magic, tantamount to something seizing control of my very spirit. I couldn’t even call for help as it pulled me into a deep well of what can only be described as pure loneliness.

I found myself in utter darkness, unable to move or scream or breathe. I couldn’t recognize my own senses, as if I was part of the Nothingness, a deep and yawning blackness full of spite and hate for the light that tried to fill it, and it sought to devour me too. It spoke to me in a wordless tongue, gibbering yet purposeful, afraid yet full of anger.

This was a darkness that did not stem from the creative impulses of ponies. It had come from a deep, old place, the primordial abyss that is the antithesis of creation itself.

I had reached the very heart of nightmares, which were only a pale reflection of the true, overarching fear that haunted the very heart of the universe and wormed its way into all living beings: that of being utterly and completely alone.

Lacking form, voice, or senses beyond my mind’s eye, I could only imagine my ability to struggle, and could only watch as something indescribable came from the dark to swallow me whole, laughing at my pathetic attempts to resist.

I did not wake up. Daisy Dew cast me from the vision and looked at me very sadly for what felt like eternity before she simply left.

When I asked Solaris what had happened, he explained that the duties of those who watch the sky runs deeper than he had time to explain. I raged at him for his lack of trust and left without another word. The next morning, I received two old books from the secured section of the Royal Archives and was told I had permission to read them.

My hooves are still shaking and it has been a week since the incident. I feel as if I am only now coming out of a deep, dark cave, and my eyes are still adjusting to the light. Except the light is frightful now, because I know what lurks in the shadows of everypony who stands in it, carrying their own little bit of darkness with them.

June the Twenty-first

My hiatus is over. In spite of everything, I know I must continue, and Solaris himself appealed to me after I had calmed down enough to not blame him for what almost happened. Instead, I opened the books he gave me and began to read.

At last I am beginning to understand what Solaris has entrusted me with, and I fear what the consequences of this knowledge might be.

Not so long ago, I would’ve laughed at myself for the melodramatic tripe I’m currently writing, but the sheer enormity of what I’m reading has disturbing implications. We all know the story of the Interregnum: the time when Prince Artemis became corrupted and the Elements of Harmony were used to defeat him. Many have begun to pass off this tale as a cautionary myth, but a few like myself understand that it is all too real.

The creature that Prince Artemis became was not called Nightterror for nothing. These books tell the truth of the lost Prince’s power: He could invade and affect the events of a dream from the inside! For all my practice even I have only ever been able to observe dreams from a distance.. I will never match the power of an alicorn in anything, let alone something as powerful as dreamwalking. What did Solaris hope that I would take away from this tale? Was it only to let me know that these abilities are possible? Am I connected in some way to the realm of dreams that a lost Prince once presided over?

And if the Prince became the Nightterror, then to what dark place is my research leading me? Why was Daisy Dew so afflicted by such horrible visions? Were there others like her? Solaris would not say, but explained to me that certain things must only be known by certain ponies, and that he was proud of the progress I had made and decided I was strong enough to be aware of some of those forbidden things.

I can only trust my instincts and those of the Prince. My cutie mark dream seems so far off now, but I still remember it clear as day: a colt’s face superimposed over my body, a strange forest and a house that was mine and yet was not. It was me in that dream, no doubt about it, telling me that dreams were my destiny.

What have I gotten myself into?

July the Third

Today I had a revelation. It began, of course, with a dream.

I stood in a dark place, a place of emptiness so cold and lonesome that it seemed this was a void beyond the reach of the stars themselves. A place of utter darkness surrounded me. Within that darkness, I heard a voice crying out to me, but I couldn’t understand the words. Much like my experience with interpreting the emotions and feelings of a dream rather than seeing it myself I felt more than heard the intent of the speaker, who seemed to be somepony in need of help. I felt a presence, reaching out from a very great distance towards me. I didn’t feel threatened, but I did feel exposed and unsafe.

I saw myself then, just like I did so many years ago. The other me, the one that gave me my cutie mark. I was going towards a castle on the peak of a great hill in the midst of a green and beautiful forest. Equestrian banners were caught in the breeze atop its ramparts and I could see what might have been the distant silhouette of Canterlot far in the distance. I tried to follow my other self inside the castle in the forest, but I could not.

Having had a full day to ponder these events and recall with startling clarity what I witnessed, I spoke to Solaris about what had happened.

He merely gave me a sad, distant look, and abruptly told me that I was to mention this to nopony else. He then walked away, leaving me with no answers. I immediately began poring over the royal archives, looking for any and all clues to the identity of this strange structure. I must admit, my magic is a little shaky even now; not only is this the second time I have seen my strange dream self since I was a little filly, but it was once again a dream with some clear meaning, which is a stark contrast to nearly every other I have observed. So many dreams are, for all their wonders, impulsive flights of fancy, acting out base desires or childish whims. But this dream was trying to tell me something, I know it.

After many hours of research, gauging the position of the Sun, the direction of Canterlot, and the description of the general area, I came to one conclusion. It is, in fact, the site of the Castle of Two Brothers, within the region now identified as the Everfree Forest. This place was once the very seat of Equestrian government when Artemis and Solaris ruled jointly, and is known as the site where the terrific battle that sundered the kingdom was fought, unleashing such wild magic that it rent the very landscape and forever barred ponies from being able to tame the forest again.

Is it there I will find the connection between my dream powers and that of the late Prince? Why else would I be pointed there, and why would Solaris not discourage me? I have gone too long without an answer. I will find him and announce my intentions on the morrow.

July the Eighteenth

I have just entered the edge of the Everfree Forest, with considerable armed escort. By Solaris’ explicit instructions they will follow me to the entrance of the old castle and no further, whatever they might hear or see. I asked why this was so, but he would not answer me. They will not disobey orders under any circumstances, which makes me believe that my safety my in fact be in peril once I go inside the gates of that ancient place. I wondered if it might be hard to locate after almost seven hundred years of isolation and overgrowth, but as expected, the Prince knew exactly where to look. He did use to live there, after all.

As we draw closer to the castle I feel a sense of quiet dread settling over me, and not just because of the wild magic present in this wood. I feel it clawing at me like the animals the guards defends me from, but something deeper than that demands my attention. I am afraid of what I might find, but Solaris gave no indication that it was dangerous there. I asked him myself if I was being led to my doom.

The ruler of the Sun stared me down and said that if I was not meant to survive what might come next, I would not be here.

This is where my cutie mark has led. Where my other self who resides deep within me, a personification of my destiny perhaps, has led me. Will I find nothing but the endless horror I saw in Daisy Dew’s vision? Or will I finally know why I was gifted with these powers of dreamsight when only Prince Artemis once wielded them for the good of ponykind?

I do not know what will happen, but it seems I have no other choice but to follow.

Dusk stared dumbly at the next page as he turned to it.

It was blank. He turned to the next, and it too showed him nothing but a great expanse of creamy yellow paper.

“No,” he whispered, “no, no, it can’t stop there! That can’t happen! What?!”

He flipped all the way to the end of the book. None of the remaining pages had anything in them whatsoever, not even errant ink blotches! He set to work thinking of every spell he could remember that would enchant a book and render its pages invisible. He hurried to the nearest lab table and threw together solutions that would reveal invisible ink, magical residues, anything at all.

None of it worked. The pages remained infuriatingly blank. He cast the book aside in frustration, feeling another headache coming on.

“Dusk?” Spines said from the stairway door. “What’s all the noise? Are you all right?”

“No!” Dusk snapped. “I’m not! This book... it’s useless! It stopped right when it was going to tell me everything! Just like...” His eyes widened. “Just like when my memories were taken.”

He threw the book on his back and rushed up the stairs, nearly bowling Spines over and nearly crashed right into Rainbow Blitz.

“Gah!” Rainbow exclaimed, leaping back to hover a foot off the floor. “Where’s the fire, dude?”

“Rainbow Blitz! Again?” Dusk gaped. Rainbow shrugged.

“You gotta start locking your doors, buddy. Anyway, you were really spacing when we all met you at the train station. I figured I should drop by.”

Dusk huffed. “At—” he glanced at his clock on the wall, “—three o’clock in the morning.”

“Yeah, okay, I keep weird hours, we’ve established that. Anyway, what’s the matter?”

Dusk ignored him as his headache throbbed, trying to get his attention. He turned to Spines.

“Get a letter to the Princes, now! Something’s interfering again, and it’s even worse this time!”

“What do you mean?” Spines asked, rubbing her claws together. “How can it get any worse than this?”

Dusk’s headache spiked. He put a hoof to his temple and thumped his hoof on the table in the main room to fight off the pain, making the sculpture on it wobble precariously. Eventide’s journal fell from his back to the floor, where Rainbow picked it up curiously and flipped through the pages as Dusk continued ranting. “I mean it’s affecting the real world! It took away whatever was in that book that would have told me what’s happening! The words that should be in that book are just... gone! It was getting right to where Morningtide was about to—”

“You mean Eventide,” Blitz murmured, flipping back to the cover, “right?”

Dusk blinked and sat up with a start. “I... yes. Yes, I meant Eventide. Who’s...?”

“Well, you’re not crazy Dusk,” Blitz said with a sigh. “I don’t see anything too. Hey, why’s it so damp?”

“I ran it under a few solutions—owww!” Dusk was cut off by another wall of pain smashing him to the floor. Spines ran to his side.

“Dusk! Are you okay?”

“No,” Dusk growled. “This is impossible. It’s too easy. It’s too cheap. It’s like...” Another bolt of pain slashed through his skull. He pressed his forehead to the floor and gritted his teeth.

“Like Derring Do and the Mystery of Haliflank Manor,” Rainbow muttered.

Dusk rolled onto his stomach and looked up. “What did you say?”

Rainbow shrugged. “Yeah, it wasn’t the best one of the series. Anyway, you know that part where Derring gets into the secret compartment behind the fireplace? And he finds that journal that tells him all about that conspiracy to steal the property and take the buried treasure in the pirate cove? But of course the last few pages are torn out ‘cause the bad guy got there first. Lame.”

Dusk’s eye twitched as an uncomfortable silence fell over them all. Gradually, Rainbow’s expression shifted from boredom to dawning realization.

“Uh-oh.”

“It’s not possible,” Dusk whispered. “It can’t be that easy.” He turned to Spines. “Letter to the Princes. Tell them we need to go to the Castle of the Two Brothers as soon as possible. Whatever’s going on is bleeding into our world and taking things away. Just like it took Eventide’s memory, her journal, her life. My memories! It’s trying to stop us!” He looked up at Rainbow. “Get everypony else together right now. We’re not wasting any more time.”

-----------

Twilight slammed the journal’s thin cover shut. She jogged back upstairs, stuffing the journal into a saddlebag she slung over her withers and looked out her window to the distant Everfree Forest.

“Neither am I,” she whispered.

Comments

[Thespurgin]

Nightmares are serious business. My gosh I want more of this sooo badly...

[BlockBreaker911]

It's finally coming! The moment where they meet themselves! And there's gonna be nightmares, too, aren't there? And an epic boss battle, to boot, I hope! I'm looking forward to this!

[TheStratovarian]

An interesting end, a very interesting end.

[I Am Known As Sketchpad]

........

SO AWESOME

[Lainofthewired]

I'm gigglin with giddyness here, it's really coming to a head

[DarthMaul22]

DUDE.
This is intense!

[i_am_the_jam]

I hope Nightmare Moon/Nightterror isn't still alive...

[that1dude]

So intense! What's going to happen when they finally meet? Augh, I need to know!

[StarShimmer]

I bet it's Luna who is erasing things and memories from everything in the alternate world. I'm confused as to why Celestia and Luna have been so crushingly oppressive with the Mane Six's experiences while Solaris and Artemis have been relatively helpful and supportive.

CONSPIRACY IS AFOOT!

[Miki]

Moar please.

[Pirate Cadance]

I knew following this story was a good idea, only down side is I'm so into it right now but there is no more to read. Your writing style is fantastic for this kind of story and how the two worlds are starting to bleed into each other, just fantastic.

[zakman]

Just spotted this on EqD and read all five chapters in one sitting. This is good stuff! I can't wait to see where you take it next.

[Chaotic Mind]

WOW. That is all.

I have an idea as to why the rulers of our known version of pony reality are trying to stop this while the reverse reality is pushing forward.

Potential spoiler below.

I believe that the reality with our mare Mane 6 is the true one while the alternate is kind of a bleeding edge. If the 2 realities were to meet up the results would be disastrous. Not to mention the speak of how nightmares and terrors can shape our view of reality. If the 2 beings that are the controllers of this were to ever meet up, whatever were to happen could destroy the very fabric of reality on all fronts.

[Semblance]

This story is beginning to take on a somewhat Lovecraftian tone.

[Ringcaat]

This chapter was somewhat confusing. I was totally expecting Twilight to have teleported herself clear to the other world, and for her to run into the wrong Applejack, or Butterscotch. But the reality was much more complicated than that. I only kind of understand the thing where she experiences what Dusk Shine is going through. And the end...? I don't get the conclusion Dusk and Rainbow came to, or how it fits in.

The journals were very nicely weighty and portentous. It makes me respect Twilight's library of books all the more.

[Csquared08]

I'm not feeling what appears to be incarnation of Tyrantlestia. It seems so very off, and I don't like it

However, the story itself still has me thoroughly hooked. I'm sad there's only one more chapter until I get caught up...

[Keratin]

You pull off tone shifts incredibly well. From the solid slice-of-life of the first two chapters, to the sudden tragedy and wrongness of the next two, to the mysterious journal entries here, it seems you can do pretty much anything. The journals kind of remind me of the Alabaster bits from Background Pony, only smoothly integrated into the rest of the work instead of being a massive stylistic detour.

[AppleTank]

Book is blank? No worries, your male twin has a better copy. Read it from there.

[Alondro]

I understood everything once I read this: >>>then, one can only be led to the conclusion that dreams, intrinsically connected as they are to leylines and thus the magical energy of the world, are a kind of spell that we cast in our sleep.>>>

At that point I knew they were so utterly screwed that me shooting them all through the head would be merciful.

Dear lord, who would make a world function in such a horrific, dangerous, intrinsically unstable way? *looks at the author* Oh... right.

[the other sans]

we know asleylines
She eft me powerless and broken

1. Forgot your spacing.
2. Left.

[MustacheMerlin]

I think its kind of strange that everyone's excepted 'Artemis' as male Luna's name. It's strange because Artemis is the greek goddess of the hunt, who leads a band of man hating maidens. Each and every one of them --including Artemis herself-- swore never to have anything to do with men ever again. So the idea that gender-swapped Luna is named Artemis is really funny to me.

[mr lovecolt]

This story is so amazing, but so dense with information. It's definitely not a story you can read in one sitting. It's as though every chapter has to be read, set down, and pondered over for a while.