Prelude - What Doesn't Kill You... Will Only Come Back Later to Try and Kill You Again

Spike wanted everything.

Everything that could be owned in the town he’d just pillaged shone with an irresistible gleam that was too beautiful not to covet. He possessed an insatiable lust for material wealth, and no one was going to stop him from taking; the few ponies that had tried had all been cast down with ease.

Standing atop the mountain where all of his wonderful treasures were stored, he roared in triumph. But even then, the hunger in his mind persisted; it still wasn’t enough. There was nothing else that mattered. He had to have more.

“Oh, be quiet!” the unicorn wrapped up in his tail ordered.

He looked back to her. Somewhere underneath all his greed, a wisp of curiosity seeped into his mind. This pony wasn’t an item, yet he had stolen her anyway. Of all the ponies in the town he had just ransacked, he only took one: this one.

Why?

It didn’t matter too much at the moment. She was busy spouting self-righteous drivel, but since it didn’t have to do with what else he could take, it didn’t concern him. What she was saying didn’t even register. She was speaking a language he recognized, but he could hardly understand the words.

She yammered on whether or not he had a comprehensive grasp of her tongue. She hissed at him in seething indignation as she removed a piece of cloth from around her neck, and that was when he saw it

The pony was wearing an ornate collar of polished gold with a brilliant ruby embedded in the middle. The instant he laid eyes on it, he wanted it… but for once, greed was not at the forefront of his mind. The sight of the gem sparked strange, familiar feelings, but not those of materialism’s thrill. Now perplexed by these alien emotions, he stared at the ruby, like it might absolve his confoundment if he looked at it for long enough.

The unicorn realized he was staring at her jewelry. “Oh, no you don’t! You’re not getting this gemstone!” she threatened, trying to hide it. He still ogled the sight, curiosity for once outweighing desire.

Her voice choked up as she spoke. “This was given to me by dear friend Spikey-Wikey, the kindest, sweetest, most generous dragon ever... and it is too precious to me to give to a greedy old beast like you!”

Something deep within clicked, and his world went black as a flashback took him to the week before. He was smaller then, enough so that the ruby had fit in the palm of his hand. He had been looking forward to eating it, but then this same pony, whom he adored for some reason, had commented on its magnificent luxury.

Now torn between desires, he stood there, conflicted. After some thought he made up his mind, and with a heavy heart, took the pony by her hoof.

“Then you should have it,” a strange voice that he vaguely remembered to be his own spoke, “this beautiful gem was meant to be with you.”

She stared at the gift in shock for a moment, then her eyes began to water. She smiled, voice wavering with the touching gesture.“I don’t know what to say; this is so generous!” She trotted around the room, overcome with joy. “Oh, my little Spikey-Wikey!”

Then his heart all but stopped as she trotted up to him and kissed his cheek, and then he fainted.

The truth suddenly returned to him; the gem was his, but he had given it to this unicorn, Rarity, because he, Spike, loved her more than any material possession.

But now, he was just a “greedy old beast," one that Rarity didn’t even recognize; one that even he didn’t recognize. With that revelation, he hated all this now. None of the petty things he’d taken mattered save for Rarity. But he couldn’t take her; he had to earn her, and there was no way that he could do that if he was still… this.

There was only one solution then; this avarice had to go.

A mental war broke out inside. Spike rebelled against his own dragon heart, leading a crusade into his own mind to purge it of his selfish desires. Threatened by opposition, greed began to dig its claws into his mind. It lashed out in hubris, blunting Spike’s desire for goodness with its egomania.

Spike pushed back, seeing everything he now hated about himself in those dark thoughts. He hammered against it again, loosening the jagged barbs that had dug into his mind and making him flinch in pain. Greed retorted with a crunch from its fangs, its poisonous bite contaminating his mind further, whispering the tempting psalms of more.

Then somewhere, deep within the purest recesses of his conscience, Spike’s own voice spoke to him, shattering the grip of his avarice with its truth:

No... Rarity matters most.

With a heave that his entire good conscience was behind, he ripped the greed from his mind and cast it into a deep pit. He could feel it dragging its claws against the walls of his mind, desperate for a grip, leaving deep mental cuts with a sound like bark being stripped from a tree. Then it was gone.

Now that he had banished those thoughts, with them went the drives that had propelled him to his monstrous size. His muscles convulsed in spasms and his form regressed. In an instant, he was the same dragon as he was before. The transformation had been so rapid that for a moment he and Rarity hung suspended in mid-air.

No longer constricted, Rarity looked back to see why the dragon had released her, only to stare in shock.

“Spike? You’re the rampaging dragon?” she gasped in disbelief before both of them fell screaming towards the ground.

A bittersweet summary of Spike’s life flashed before his eyes: a lifetime of pleasant memories recalled in mere seconds. He treasured them all, from the friends he’d made to all time he spent with them. He wouldn’t trade them for all of Equestria, but the ones about Rarity held a special place in his heart.

But now they were both going to die because he had lost control of himself and had delved into kleptomania. He didn’t want that terrible thought to be his last; he realized he finally had to tell Rarity the truth. There would be no second chances after this.

“Rarity, I need to tell you something, just in case we don’t make it!” He had to yell over the roar of the terminal wind rushing past their ears. His throat became dry and knotted. Even now, the words were still hard to say.

“I’ve always sort of had a cru—”

Rarity cut him off with a hoof over his mouth. Her sincere smile and tearing eyes said her response for her:

I know.

For a moment, the warmth in his heart eased the pain of knowing he only had a few seconds left to live. If this was his time, Spike could at least die a happy dragon.

Spike saw a streaking shape of pink, then felt his momentum shift. Then they were no longer falling, but instead bunched up in a large sheet of fabric. He looked around, bewildered, and looked up to see that they had been saved at the last second by Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash, who were now carrying them safely to the Ponyville Bridge in the fabric torn from Rarity’s cape.

Back on the ground, a overwhelming sense of relief washed over him; he was still amongst the living, with the greatest friends a dragon could hope for.

Now that they were back on the ground, he was now faced with the wake of all the damage his greed had wrought. He climbed up on the side of the bridge to get a better view.

Ponyville was in shambles. Almost every building in the town had sustained some amount of damage, and a few had been destroyed. Looking over it all from his seat on the bridge, he couldn’t help but hang his head in shame. He spied a large footprint still fresh in the dirt. He held up his own hand to the deep impression, and it was miniscule in comparison.

His eyes began to water as the burden of guilt from what he’d done crashed down on him. Even with Rarity accepting how he felt for her, the guilt was enough to drag his heart down from its lofty perch and sink it into cold mud. But what scared him the most was somewhere, deep down, he could sense there was some part of him that even now didn’t care about any of that.

Rarity interrupted his depression. “Spike, I just have to tell you how absolutely proud I am of you.”

“Proud of me?” Spike asked, uncertain.

“Yes; it was you who stopped… well, you, from destroying Ponyville. You are my hero, Spikey-Wikey!” For the second time, Rarity leaned forward to give him a quick kiss on his cheek.

It was fortunate for Spike that he was a little more prepared for her affection this time, otherwise he would have fallen off the bridge right there.

- - - - - -

Spike’s fatigue had begun to catch up to him just as Luna had begun to paint the night across the sky. He faded in and out as he sat on Twilight’s back while she trotted back to the library. When she approached the door, she let out a sigh of relief and turned her head to check up on her passenger.

“Spike, we’re home. Are you still awake?” she asked with tenderness. He didn’t answer; Spike had curled up into a little ball and had fallen asleep. Twilight let out a tired giggle.

She passed by Owloysius and greeted him with a slight grin. Owloysious simply hooted back. She dragged herself up the stairs, eager to lose herself in the embrace of her closest nighttime friend: her bed.

As Twilight entered her bedroom, she levitated Spike over to his bed and pulled his blanket over him. Twilight let herself smile a little, very weary herself but glad to have him back. Then she walked towards her bed.

“Twilight?” Spike muttered through the darkness.

She turned around. “Yes Spike? What is it?” Twilight asked, returning to Spike’s bedside.

He responded in a tired, groggy voice. “I’m really sorry about everything, what I did and the position I’ve put you and everypony in. I shouldn’t have let my greed get to me.” His eyes began to quiver a little bit as he spoke.

“Oh no, it’s not your fault Spike... well, not entirely. It’s just natural instinct for a dragon to covet, but I’m guessing somewhere along the line, you made the choice to turn away from that and do what was right.” She gave him a tired but sincere smile. “I think you’ve learned your lesson, and I’m proud of you Spike, so please don’t worry too much about it.”

That seemed to be just what Spike needed to hear, and he smiled back. ”Thanks, Twilight.” He yawned, then closed his eyes and collapsed into sleep.

Content, Twilight breathed a sigh of relief as she crawled into bed and quickly fell into slumber.

- - - - - -

The next few weeks were long, labored, and tiresome, even with everypony dedicated to the task of rebuilding their town. Damage throughout Ponyville had been immense, but for Spike, the experience was more of a personal recompense; every building rebuilt, personal possession returned and pony whose life he assisted in getting back on track helped heal his own self-inflicted wounds, and every drop of sweat, worn muscle, and aching joint was invested in earning atonement for his iniquities. Hours faded into days and days into weeks as time seemed to lose coherence in the face of the task, but he wasn’t deterred on his mission for redemption.

The work had been by no means easy, but the sacrifices he’d made were more than worth the view on that morning when the town was finally rebuilt. Staring over the pleasant structures standing with pride under a shining sun and cloudless sky from the very same bridge that was once a front row seat to the wake of destruction, Spike couldn’t help but smile and let himself relax as he held his mug of cider, basking in the presence of his friends and at the sight of their quaint little hamlet.

However, Spike felt like he was getting sick. That itself wasn’t too peculiar, except the feeling wasn’t physical; he didn’t have any symptoms like weakness, nausea, upset internal functions, or anything like that. It was more like a sickly headache in his thoughts.

He didn’t have long to think about it before an interruption from the energetic Pinkie Pie pushed it from his attention.

“Oh boy, I’m so happy we fixed up Ponyville!” she blurted. Her hyperactivity had gotten a boost from good spirits and several mugs of cider that Applejack had brought. “Hey, now that everypony has had their schedule freed of the “rebuild Ponyville” point, you know what we should do?”

Fluttershy answered with reservation.“Umm… throw a party?”

“THROW A PARTY!” Pinkie exclaimed. Fluttershy recoiled in surprise from the blast of confetti that came from nowhere.

“A party? For what?” asked Dash. “That we’ve successfully repaired the town for the fifth time, or that Spike is now a part of our unofficial “Wrecked Ponyville Club?””

Dash took a draft from her cider as Spike squirmed in his seat.

“Aw, come on Dashie; it’ll be fun!” Pinkie remarked with a friendly slap to Dash’s back.

Unfortunately, Pinkie’s friendly slap caused Rainbow Dash to do a sudden spit take, knocking her mug out of her hoof and spilling its contents onto the bridge; the golden delicious nectar wasted as it flowed over the stone.

Dash could only stare, mouth agape before the newest cruel joke that left her bereft of cider. She shot a sour leer at Pinkie, who was backing away with a nervous smile and picked up the empty flagon.

“I’ll, uh… just be getting you another cup then…” she said as she backed away, empty mug in hoof. “Alrightythenbye!” Pinkie zipped off towards the cider barrel at the base of the bridge.

Applejack let out a low chuckle as she raised her drink to her lips. “That crazy pony…”

Spike smiled at the ordeal, looking past Applejack from his seat on the bridge to snicker at the perturbed Rainbow Dash.

Past her, he could see Rarity sitting contently on the bridge. He noticed that she was wearing the neckband inlaid with the fire ruby he had given her. Spike couldn’t help but smile again, but this time with an infatuated sigh to boot, losing himself in the sight of her splendor as something else snaked through his mind. Just then Rarity looked to him and their gazes met. She smiled and batted her eyelashes at him, and he almost fell off the bridge.

Rarity giggled, then hopped down from her seat and collected her saddlebags.

“Well, not to disrupt this fine gathering, but I think it best if Spike and I sit down for a little meal before we attend to our arranged business.”

“Business? What business?” Spike asked, not remembering having arranged anything.

Rainbow Dash put on a teasing sing-song voice. “Spike and Rarity, sittin’ in a...”

“Sing one more syllable and I’ll buck you right off this bridge, Applejack style, ” Rarity interrupted with an annoyed tone, but Spike could’ve sworn he heard something playful under that.

Dash said nothing more and instead shrugged, then flew towards the cider barrel. “Why’s that refill taking so long, Pinkie?”

Rarity smiled over her frustrated friend, then continued talking to Spike. “We had scheduled another day to venture out and gather gemstones again as soon as the reconstruction of Ponyville was complete. Don’t you remember?”

Spike didn’t remember. “We did? I mean, yeah, of course!” he replied, trying to play off his confusion.

“Well? You don’t intend to keep a lady waiting, do you?” Rarity asked. “Is something wrong?”

“No, everything’s fine,” Spike said, brushing away the concerns. “Wait, you want to head out now?”

Rarity looked at him with a “that’s the point” look. “Well, of course. I figured it would be best to get in a good meal before the day’s activities.”

“Alright, then. I’ll see you later today at the library, okay Twilight?”

“Sounds like a plan,” Twilight said. “Have fun!”

They were off the bridge and making their way into town when Rarity turned to look at Spike again.

“There is something else; I have, well… a surprise for you.”

“Really? What is it?”

“Come now, Spike,” Rarity tilted her head at him before adopting a playful tone with a bounce-as-you-trot hop usually expressed by Pinkie. “I can’t tell you, silly; that would spoil the surprise!”

Spike chuckled over her behavior. Just then, both of them stopped in their tracks and turned, looking back at the bridge off in the distance as they heard Rainbow Dash holler, “WHAT DO YOU MEAN, “EMPTY?!””

The two looked back to each other, began to snicker, and then broke out into laughter as they resumed their walk to Carousel Boutique.

- - - - - -

“Just have a seat at the table, and I’ll have everything ready in a just a moment,” Rarity said. Spike pulled up his chair, but stopped himself before climbing into his seat.

“Would you like some help setting up?” he asked.

Rarity smiled at him. “That’s so thoughtful of you, Spike, but allow me. You are my guest, after all.” She turned and opened the refrigerator, unloading several of its contents along with a large covered platter. “Such a gentlecolt… or dragon, as t’were…” she said to herself.

Perhaps it’s better I do sit down, Spike thought. Whatever ailment he was afflicted with was starting to bring on a slight headache. It wasn’t too bad right now, but it was gaining strength. He’d have to take a nap later, or ask if Twilight knew a cure spell.

However, it did give him the opportunity to sit back and watch Rarity at work, trotting back and forth in the kitchen, humming some nameless tune as she prepared their meals. He sighed and propped up his head in his hands, letting his eyes follow her. He didn’t mean to stare, but then, he wouldn’t call it staring. He was admiring her, with her white coat of cleanliness and purity; regal purple mane so perfectly mimicking the perfection of feminine curvatures; those gorgeous eyes like the sea after a storm; and an essence that radiated a passionate endeavor to make the world a wonderful, elegant place for the ponies who lived in it.

Spike let himself sigh again he watched her levitate the kitchenware to the table, setting down some fine china along with some silverware upon a folded silk napkin for good measure.

Rarity trotted over and began to set up the table. “Now Spike, I know that you know it’s not polite to stare.”

That snapped him right out of his love-laced stupor. He looked away, cheeks flushed with embarrassment.

“I… I wouldn’t... call i-it…” he stammered at the floor. Realizing he had been caught, he decided that he might as well face the choir. He looked back up towards her.

“Has anypony ever told you that you’re absolutely beautiful? Because you are, both on the outside and on the inside.” He started to turn away again, his words becoming more directed towards the linoleum. “At least, I… think so…” Marshmallows could’ve been roasted over his cheeks.

Rarity’s lips parted in a huge smile. “Aw! And has anypony ever told you what an adorable little charmer you are?”

Spike could have sworn that he felt his heart thump against his sternum.

What he did feel was the evil sickness pound against his skull like a caged beast.

All the physical symptoms he hadn’t been feeling seized him in an instant. Cold shivers ran through him as every muscle cramped up at once. Ants crawled down his nerves. Spike keeled over, groaning in agony as his bones suddenly felt incorrect and his innards twisted themselves into knots. He thought he heard Rarity voice some rapt concern, but he couldn’t make it out over the ear-splitting pounding in his head. He whimpered as he held his head in his hands. Whatever was hurting him pounded against his skull with unrelenting voracity.

A moment later, he felt more stirrings from within, but the kind of his body repudiating what was happening to it. He could feel the tension ease away as his immune system focused against the entity wracking his brain. He felt it squirm again, but this time out of desperation. Spike could almost hear it scratching his skull as it was sucked from his mind. For the briefest moment, he felt the oddest sense of déjà vu.

That moment ended as soon as he felt something slimy and putrescent slide from his skull into the back of his throat. It hit his tongue, and nausea hit him like an avalanche. Spike hunched over in convulsion and reflexively grabbed the napkin in front of him, coughing wet, sick hacks into it like he was trying to cough up one of his own lungs. He heaved like he was about to vomit and felt a wet, slimy blob smack into his covered hand as he fell over the side of his chair.

Spike winced as he hit the ground. He lay there for a second, nearly relaxing as he could feel normalcy return.

Rarity was eye-level with him an instant later, her face contorted with worry and concern.

“Spike! Can you hear me? Are you going to be alright?” Her horn became aglow and she lifted Spike off the ground. “Hold on, I’m taking you to Ponyville General!”

“No…” Spike weazed. “No, I’m fine.” He coughed. “Whatever that was, I just needed to get it out of my system.” He slowly looked down at the soiled napkin he still had clutched in his claws. ”I’m feeling a lot better now. I…” He saw just what it was that he’d spat out. “AGHHH!!!”

It looked like a neuron he’d once seen in a book Twilight owned about neuroscience, but what he held before him was almost enough to make him throw up again. It had a translucent appearance and had a texture like snot. The majority of it was laced with a slick black sheen like crude oil. The features that resembled axons and dendrites were malformed and twisted in such disgusting ways that it hurt his eyes just to look at them, and what looked like the myelin sheath appeared to be sick with infected growths. What most curious was the nucleus. It wasn’t just black; it looked like a void, as if somehow it was an embodiment of nothingness that was trying to steal away the very light around it.

As repulsed as he thought he could get by looking at that disgusting thing, it went up another notch when he could’ve sworn that he thought he saw it move.

“Uh, where’s your trash can?” Spike asked.

Rarity gave a small sigh of relief over his apparent speedy recovery. “There’s one underneath the sink. But are you sure you’re alright? You looked positively deathly just a moment ago.”

“Don’t worry Rarity, I’m fine,” Spike reassured her as he walked to the sink, hoping that the squirming he felt in his hands was just the blob molding around as he folded the napkin and disposed of it. “Just fine…” he said, realizing he could smell his own breath, and it was bad… even worse than usual. “Though, I could use some mouthwash.”

Rarity smiled at him. “I should have some in the lavatory,” she said as she pointed a hoof in its direction. “Now go wash up and we’ll carry on as usual, hopefully without any other unprecedented events stalling our schedule.” She ruffled his crest as he passed, making him blush.

- - - - - -

The mouthwash stung as Spike tilted his head back to gargle. While he was glad to finally spit it out, it was far better to have the pungent aftertaste of intense spearmint on his tongue than… whatever that thing was. Now that his fetid breath was at least passable, he looked up, only to stare at his reflection in the mirror for a few seconds as he mulled everything over. The inexplicable sickness, that thing he coughed up, and the level of affection in Rarity’s behavior. Not that he minded her attention in the slightest, but he thought it was certainly a little... odd.

“Ah, whatever,” he muttered as he hopped down from the sink and made his way back to the dining room.

Rarity greeted him as he walked back into the dining room. “Nice to see you’re still up and about.” She had finished setting up while Spike was in the bathroom. Rarity had made herself a small grass salad with at modest topping of lily petals, but Spike’s meal remained hidden under a decorative silver lid. “I hope your previous tizzy hasn’t robbed you of your appetite.”

“I’m fine, don’t worry,” Spike said again as he pulled himself back up into his seat. Then the smell of whatever was hidden on that platter hit him; the unmistakable aroma of sapphire was evident, but the gentle wafts of something he couldn’t place were there too.

Rarity smiled she saw the look on Spike’s face change when the smell of his food reached his nostrils. “Well then,” she said as her horn began to glow, telekinetically lifting the cover away from the plate. “Bon appétit.”

Spike’s eyes went wide as he saw what Rarity had prepared for him. He had gotten the scent of the sapphire right, but the gems looked professionally prepared and appeared to have been aged several weeks and friction polished. The smell of what he couldn’t place was what they were embedded in: small cut circles of richly colored glass.

”Whoa…” Spike muttered in awe, “stained glass sliders!”

“Glasswork isn’t necessarily my forte, nor cooking for dragons for that matter,” Rarity commented. “But even you wouldn’t believe the kinds of subjects Twilight owns books about. I just pray that my occasional errs didn’t muddy the end results to much, and I’ll admit that sometimes I had to… fabricate the next step. Regardless, I do hope you find them satisfying.”

Spike beamed at her. “Thanks, Rarity!” Then he plowed into the first slider.

“Well, how are they?” Rarity asked.

Spike swallowed to save himself the indignity of taking with his mouth full. “They’re great! Thanks again, Rarity!” he said before shoving another into his mouth.

There weren’t that many sliders to begin with, but he still finished them all in a hurry. Looking down at an empty plate, he felt a little embarrassed now, thinking of how improper it must’ve looked for him to wolf down his food like that.

Daring to look up, he got his answer. Rarity had propped her head up on her forehooves and was staring at him with rapt attention through half-open eyes with an infatuated smile on her face. It was the same expression he’d only seen once before, when she told him what she thought about the fire ruby she now wore around her neck. He couldn’t help but notice that her salad looked as complete as it was when she’d set in on the table. She hadn’t even touched her fork.

At first he was surprised to see her composure in the face of his recent table manners, but then a devilish smile crept onto his face. “You know,” Spike said with a smirk, “this one total knock-out, bombshell of a unicorn once told me that it’s impolite to stare.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t call it staring…” the bombshell responded. “I’m glad to see you enjoyed your meal. If it so pleases you, I’ve got plenty more chilling in the refrigerator for when we return from business today. And the sooner we return, the sooner we can get to our other matter of business. You are still interested in your surprise, yes?”

Spike’s face lit up. “Oh yeah, sure!”

Rarity unseated herself and made a step towards the door, but then paused in contemplation before turning back towards Spike.

“And in case you were wondering,” she spoke as she approached the dragon, then gave a husky whisper right into his ear, “I’d call it admiring.”

Spike seized up, frozen like he had been when she first kissed him. He almost fainted again as she turned back towards the door and let her tail brush up against him as she passed.

Somewhere off in the distance, he heard Rarity giggle, then realized she was already at the door. Quickly pulling himself out of his stupor, he hopped down from his chair and scampered off to follow her.

As the door to the dining room swung closed, there was a delicate thump against the door to the cabinet below the sink. It slowly opened, and with a disgusting splat, the blob fell onto the floor. It tumbled over itself as it used its tendrils to pull itself across the kitchen, making its way to the refrigerator, and with some effort opened the door. It hoisted itself up to the shelf where the rest of the stained glass sliders lay and pushed the cover aside. With the disposition of a pony lost in the desert stumbling onto an oasis, it collapsed onto the closest slider and wrapped the silicate in its tendrils. The slider began to dissolve, and as it did the mysterious being grew in correlation, black innards pulsing.

- - - - - -

The sun was low on the horizon when Spike and Rarity returned with her fresh supply of gems. He sighed with contentment, both in the satisfaction of a hard day’s work and the anticipation of more admiration from Rarity. It felt invigorating to finally have the Ponyville he knew and loved back, but the thing he wanted to do the most now was relax: pull up a seat around the fireplaced or maybe, if he played his cards right, snuggle up on a sofa with her. Or get a snack; he could really go for a few more of those sliders.

“I had a wonderful time with you today, Spike.” Rarity smiled at him as she unhitched herself from the wagons she was pulling.

Spike looked to her as he dropped the ropes from the wagons he had commandeered. “Me too… you say it like we just went on a date,” he said with a chuckle.

“Really now?” Rarity responded with a coy tone. “You don’t say... Now then, I still have one more arrangement planned: your surprise.”

“Oh?” Spike had almost forgotten about that.

“Well, perhaps it would be more appropriate to call it a gift,” she said, still keeping eye contact with him as she trotted up the stairs towards her bedroom. “Come now, I still have one more present for my little Spikey-Wikey.”

Spike smiled and hurried up the stairs. Rarity closed the door behind them.

Down in the kitchen, the refrigerator door swung open and a whole mess of its contents clattered to the floor, including the large, amorphous, black, sickly blob. Hoisting itself up on appendages that resembled legs, it turned as the scent of precious stones caught its attention. It stumbled out onto the main shop floor and spotted four whole wagons stuffed to the brim with gems. With an insatiable hunger, it lurched towards the carts.

- - - - - -

“I just so happened to find one of these recently,” Rarity said as she fished a small box from one of her dresser drawers. “And for all that you’ve done, both for me and for Ponyville, I can hardly think of anypony more deserving of this than you.

“You’re certainly allowed to do whatever you well please with this, even eat it,” she continued as she trotted over to Spike, then opened the little box to show him its contents. “Though I do sincerely hope you decide to keep it. That way, we’ll both have one.”

Spike’s heart skipped a beat, then turned into a flock of butterflies. Before him, shining brilliantly, was a heart-shaped fire ruby, just like the one he’d given Rarity.

Lifting the ruby out from the case, Rarity took Spike by his claws with her hoof, and gently lowered the ruby into it.

“Sincerely, to Spike: from Rarity,” she stated.

Spike could only stare in awe at the ruby for a moment, too touched for words. He looked back to Rarity, tears of joy welling up in his eyes. Before she could react, Spike wrapped his arms around her neck, pulling her into the most heartfelt embrace he could give.

He held her for a moment, awash in his own joy and emotions, words unable to be spoken properly through his choked-up throat. When he regained his voice, he finally found the strength to say it:

“I love you, Rarity.”

She stood there for a second, stunned herself by this chain of events. Then she smiled, wrapped a foreleg around Spike in return, and tilted her head down to nuzzle him.

“I love you too, Spike.”

Heart, meet sternum. Sternum, this is heart.

Spike couldn’t think of another time when he’d felt this happy. He’d finally earned what he had strived so long for. Now, everything seemed right in Equestria.

That illusion was shattered as suddenly as the glass being smashed downstairs. They broke from their embrace, now alert. They both rushed to the bedroom door and looked outside into the shop. Rarity gasped and Spike’s blood ran cold.

Rummaging around in one of the gem-filled wagons and devouring its bounty relentlessly was the form of a relatively small, wingless, pitch-black dragon. Its texture was entirely wrong; instead of scales, it appeared slimey and transparent, revealing its churning black innards and its core of consuming nothingness.

The dragon turned to look at them, revealing stark white eyes devoid of pupils and irises. Spike knew it was staring at him because he could feel its cold gaze pierce him to his very soul.

The dragon was slightly bigger than he was. Its otherwise circular features all ended in cruel angles, its snout was pointed like a spear, and a jagged, saw-like frill adorned its head. Though what a sent chill down his spine was when he realized just how much this terrible thing looked like him.

The dragon furrowed its brow and glared at them like a predator. It opened its mouth, letting out a foul wheeze followed by a hissing inhalation, like it was trying to steal back its own words as it spoke:

“MINE…”

That was their only warning before the dragon launched itself up the stairs at them, roaring with a blood-curdling screech like talons on a chalkboard, making Spike freeze in terror. The dragon collided with him with staggering force, slamming him into the wall and knocking the wind out of him.

Spike only saw blurry streaks when he looked back up in time to take a dizzying right hook to his face, knocking him to the floor. The dragon reared up to strike again when a bright blue flash blasted it away and into a wall.

Spike’s vision cleared as he got back up to his feet, and tried to shake off the pain. Rarity was standing beside him with a defensive stance, her glowing horn pointed towards the enemy.

“Stay away from him, you monster!” she screamed.

The dragon pulled itself from the crater in the wall, taking a stance itself before getting a good look at Rarity. “You…” it hissed, sounding almost surprised.

“I remember…” it spoke as it tensed up again, sinister voice becoming a growl.

“I WANT!” the dragon roared as it pounced for her.

Spike pushed Rarity out of the way before the dragon collided with him again. The momentum of the tackle carried them both across the bedroom, through the window, and into the street. Spike crashed into the ground and skidded some distance with the dragon still on him.

The black dragon pulled back for another knockout punch. Spike inhaled and blasted the dragon’s face with a breath of green fire. It howled in pain and clutched its eyes. Spike kicked the dragon off him and got back on his feet, looking back up at the new hole in Rarity’s home.

“Aw, I just fixed that window!” Spike yelled. He yelped in surprise as the dragon picked him up, glared at him, and then threw him back towards the boutique.

Spike crashed into the wall with a sickening thud. He ducked out of the way from its fist slamming into the wall right where his head was. Spike dropped down and kicked one of its knees. It roared and countered with a swing of its tail. Spike dodged the attack with a jump. The black dragon grabbed Spike out of mid-air and slammed him several times into the wall. Spike took a few hits before he caught himself, bracing with his arms and legs against the wall.

The dragon flung Spike by his tail towards another building. Spike twisted as he soared through the air and caught the impact with his legs. Knees strained with exertion, he launched himself off the wall back towards his enemy.

The dragon readied to punch Spike out of the air. Spike deflected the punch to collide with his target, making them tumble over each other from the force of the impact. Spike’s momentum carried over from the upset, putting some distance between them. He righted himself and faced the black dragon with another offensive stance. A moment passed; the two dragons glared intensely at each other, waiting for the other to make a move.

“Hey!” Rarity shouted from the side as a gem shard whizzed towards the black dragon’s head. It embedded halfway into its transparent skull with a sound like it had been cast into deep mud.

Spike felt a chill go through him. All the dragon did was cock an eyebrow in curiosity and look in the direction from where it came, like getting shot in the head hardly even fazed it. The gem was pulled the rest of the way into its cranium, where it seemed to dissolve.

Spike looked in the same direction to see Rarity, hitched back up to one of the gem wagons.

“Would you rather get bogged down in an inglorious tussle,” she asked the black dragon, “or would you rather have this cart full of delicious gems and this gorgeous unicorn mare?”

Spike felt like he was being stabbed by something cold as the other dragon turned to face her.

“Rarity, what are you doing?!”

She smiled with devious intent as the dragon readied to pounce her. Rarity gave Spike a “trust me” look, then turned and galloped off at full speed. The black dragon took chase like a lion after a gazelle, snorting and growling with a ragged breath and a vicious hunger. Spike only stared for a moment, dumbfounded.

“Do try and keep up, dear!” Rarity called back to him.

With that, he took off after them.

Keeping up wasn’t easy. Spike was the smallest of the three, so staying with them was hard enough even without their lead on him. He ran long enough to realize that Rarity was leading them to the quarries where the two of them would gem hunt, but the longer he made chase, the farther away they got from him.

“If only my wings had started growing by now!” Spike cursed his youth. He knew he wasn’t going to catch them running on his little legs.

Along the path he spotted a tree with a low-hanging branch and he got an idea. He turned his attention to one of the branches, bent the curiously elastic limb as far back as he could, then pushed at a downward angle as he braced himself against it.

“If it worked for Applejack...” he said, and released his hold on the branch. It flung him through the air like a catapult. He soared through the air for a few seconds and caught sight of them again.

Spike smashed into the other dragon with enough force to shatter bones, sparking concern in the back of his mind when he didn’t hear any cracks upon collision.

Lack of fractures or not, Spike knew the creature wasn’t invincible by the way it shrieked when his impact hammered it into the ground. He hopped off the crumpled heap and turned to give it a swift kick in the face. It countered with a tackle, catching Spike and pinning him to the ground again. It pulled back its free arm for a slash, ready to burrow its sharp claws into his face.

Spike used his unpinned arm to redirect the attack into the ground, embedding its claws in the dirt. Spike hammered off the arm holding him, freed himself, then hit it with a downward punch to the back of the head that jammed its pointed snout into the thick dirt.

“Spike!” Rarity called to him, “lead the dragon over here!”

Spike turned and ran towards Rarity, only to stop out of bewilderment.

She stood before a large, gaping opening of a deep chasm located inside the base of a mountain. What was especially odd was that the cave opening was marked by a thick, reinforced threshold and a set of incredibly large doors with multiple locking mechanisms that resembled clockwork mechanics. They were evidently extremely heavy as well; Rarity was visibly exerting herself to open them.

“How in the hay did those get there?” Spike couldn’t help but ask aloud.

He heard a disgruntled growl from behind him. Spike looked back at the dragon as it finally pulled itself out of the ground. It glared at him, then crouched down. Spike witnessed, to his dismay, leathery wings sprouting from the foe's back. It propelled itself into the air and charged at him, flying low to the ground as vicious red flames erupted from its mouth.

Spike turned and ran, but he knew he couldn’t run for long. It had an aerial advantage over him, and it was getting closer by the second. He spotted a hole he’d dug earlier that day and got an idea.

This might work, but even if it does, it‘s still going to hurt.

“Why can every dragon in Equestria fly but me?” Spike grumbled as he jumped into the pit and braced himself. This would have to be timed perfectly, and all he could do was guess when that moment would be. At least he would have a signal: pain.

It came in the form of scorching fire, searing even his heat-resistant scales. Spike choked as the air around him became heated death and gnawed at him like another monster.

Spike launched himself out of the pit. He collided into the dragon as it flew over, tackling it out of mid-air and knocking the wind out of it. They fell in a lop-sided arc to the ground and crashed with a heavy thud. Spike broke away as quickly as he could and took an offensive stance that put the dragon between him and Rarity. Hopefully, he’d be able to drive it back to the cave this way.

The dragon wasn’t content to fight on the ground, and instead turned towards Rarity, spreading its wings to take flight again.

“No you don’t!” Spike yelled, and shot a fireball towards one of its wings.

His intent was to just injure it, but instead the fire incinerated the wing completely, spouting a foul smoke that made Spike gag. The dragon howled then whipped around to face him, unfathomable rage burning in its blank eyes.

It hit him before he could react. It seized his tail and swing him over its head like a flail towards the ground. Spike saw the impact coming and braced himself, palms stinging as they smacked into the dirt.

What he couldn’t see was the downward punch to the back of his head. Ears ringing and vision blurred, Spike was too disoriented to stop the brutal kick to his gut. It hit him so hard that he was thrown off the ground by it. He heard cracks from his rib cage.

Tears dribbled out of his eyes as he soared through the air, trying to coddle his pulverized innards. He felt a dulled, creeping dread come upon him, wondering how much worse off he’d be when he hit the ground.

A familiar magic enveloped him. His flight slowed, and he landed as gentle as a feather. Rarity looked over him, face torn with anxiety and worry.

“Spike!” she cried. “Oh, Celestia… are you going to be alight? Please, please be alright!”

He smiled in spite of his pain with a wince. “I’ll be okay, yeah…” He turned his head to cough and sprayed the ground with a mist of blood. “Okay, maybe…”

The black dragon was charging full speed at them. To his utter dismay, he could see its ruined wing slowly beginning to regenerate.

“Now that just isn’t fair!” he whined, but then allowed himself a weak, painful chuckle. “Well... at least I got him over here... you’re welcome!”

Rarity’s looked up, and her expression hardened. She took up a defensive position over Spike and put one of her hind legs up against the gem cart.

“You want these bloody gems so much?” she spat. The dragon pounced towards Rarity. She kicked the cart into the abyss. “Go get them!”

Unfortunately, it wasn’t the gems that the black dragon was interested in.

It caught Rarity with an outstretched arm, knocking her away from Spike and onto her back. The dragon put her in a choke-hold and dragged her over to the pit.

“Thanks for the lair,” the dragon mocked her with a panting hiss. “Do you know what I want?”

Muscles trembling, organs damaged and nerves screaming in agony, Spike pulled himself back onto his feet and charged the dragon with exertion that pumped acid through his veins.

“Get away from her, you beast!” Spike bellowed and slammed into the dragon. The force knocked Rarity out of its grip and they both tumbled into the abyss.

“Spike!” Rarity cried out after him. Her horn lit and she tried to pull him out of free-fall, but it was too late; he was already too far away and moving too fast to catch.

The pained loss in Rarity's voice agonized Spike. He swore in his heart that he wasn’t going to leave her there, stricken with grief. He was going to get out of this pit if he had to climb all the way back up.

With that, he focused his energy on his adversary, trading multiple punches and kicks with the black dragon as they tumbled into the dark abyss in locked combat, falling through the openings of numerous open doors as thick and heavy as the one at the entrance.

Onward they fell into the pit, the smacks of fists and heels colliding with scales and slime lost to the roar of the wind rushing through their ears; still their descent into the nothing continued until the shadows consumed them both.

- - - - - -

Slowly, the darkness cleared away for the light, and the world seemed to materialize before his eyes.

Spike was running as fast as his injures would let him through the twisted passages of a labyrinthine catacomb constructed of large chambers lit with gentle glows, connected by non-linear tunnels that branched off in all directions. Occasionally one would light up with a pulse of energy that ebbed back and forth between each connected chamber. As he ran through each room, he could feel his mood and thoughts ever so slightly shift towards one direction or another, as if each chamber was emitting some sort of palpable emotion. For instance, despite his apparent panic over something or other, this cavity made him somehow feel posh. And—

Wait, Spike thought, confused. What is this place? How did I get here? What am I running from?

The soft, electric blue lighting of the tunnel adopted a backlit glow of angry red. He turned and saw the black dragon flying towards him with a fireball in its mouth. Flames dribbled like spittle through its teeth.

Oh, yeah…

Spike hoisted himself over a rock and made it into another chamber just before the fireball whizzed past him. It struck the wall with explosive force as it bathed the room in an angry light. Even though it missed him completely, Spike felt hurt by it, like a twinge of pain in the back of his mind.

The feeling of this room was stronger than the others. Spike felt remorse, penitence even, as if he had stumbled onto something he was ashamed of. The dragon flew into the chamber with him, circling like a vulture, and the feeling of guilt increased.

“You strain the limits of my patience,” the dragon growled as it landed in front of him.

Spike tried to scramble away, but this time failed to escape another grab.

“And now you’ve broken them!” it yelled as it caught him by the tail and threw him at one of the dark, deep pits near one of the edges of the room.

Spike hit the ground and slid across it, wincing again over the newest abuse to his injuries. He went over the edge and dug into the rocks for grip. The rocks protested with an ear-splitting screech that felt like it was scratching his skull.

Seeping up from the pit like heavy, poisoned air was an essence of something wicked and vile that filled him with fear and dread. He struggled to pull himself out, but fatigue had finally started to catch up to him. Spike was beaten, bruised, injured, and without any more options. To make matters worse, the dragon standing triumphantly over him could fly and regenerate. He couldn’t win… but he had to keep fighting. He’d already sworn to himself he wouldn’t be ended down here: sworn for her sake…

“Farewell, lesser,” it sneered with a cocky tone and lit another fireball.

Spike scrambled to claw his way out of the pit. He pulled himself over the edge and attempted to grab the dragon. It flapped its wings and took to the air out of Spike’s reach, shooting its raging projectile at him just as Spike pulled himself out of the hole and leaped for the dragon.

The fireball whizzed past Spike and hit the ground with explosive force where he’d been standing. It detonated with such power that it felt like it had just punched his brain. The shockwave added thrust to Spike’s flight, smacking him straight into the other dragon. The impact knocked it out of flight and caused them to careen into another pit.

They locked into combat again, trading fire and fist as they tumbled in freefall through the catacombs. They fell into another chamber, and the emotions of regret replaced with a drive for atonement.

The dragon spread its wings in an attempt to stabilize itself and take the aerial advantage again. Spike responded with an angry whip of fire to its face. They both went for a punch and ended up grappling with each other. The enemy dragon hit him squarely on the nose with a headbutt that knocked them both through another passageway into a new chamber. Spike painfully collided against several rocks along the way, still fiercely clinging to the black dragon. He was fortunate the blows weren’t strong enough to cripple, though they still hurt like getting beaten by the gates of Tartarus.

The next chamber they fell into felt more inviting, freeing; it carried the air of those first moments when liberated from shackles that bind. Spike was suddenly inspired by an idea. He charged a fireball and shot it in the opposite direction of his adversary. The recoil from his shot changed their trajectory enough to smash the enemy dragon into the edge of another passage.

The force of the attack was brutal enough that it left the dragon weakened. That allowed Spike to steer their fall into every rock in the tunnel on the way down, absolutely pulverizing the dragon by the time it hit the ground of the final chamber, pinned underneath Spike.

The last room the fell into was a sight to behold; every surface was covered by a network of dazzling, smooth gemstones encased and connected by veils of polished crystal. Bursts of fantastic red lights pulsed from the nuclei of each cluster, dancing along the linked paths before reaching another gem and exploding like fireworks at dusk.

For a second, Spike completely forget about the fight as a feeling of blessed peace came over him: a peace that came with the unmitigated joy of forgiveness, with harmony rekindled amongst friends… with Rarity.

The echoing of a rockslide jarred Spike from his trance. He looked up, felt a chill, then dodged out of the way just as several large boulders came crashing down on the spot where he’d just been standing.

The other dragon wasn’t so lucky. Still dazed from the crash landing, it couldn’t do more than watch as the massive stones rained down upon it.

Spike coughed and cleared away the dust cloud formed by the rock slide. The dragon was trapped with both its legs and left arm buried under the rubble. It still persisted, using its free right arm try and move away the rocks.

“Sweet Celestia, this thing just won’t stay down!” Spike remarked to himself and darted towards his nemesis. He grabbed the dragon’s free arm and twisted it, preventing movement. The dragon turned his head to breathe fire on him, but Spike kicked it in the face. Its head spun and smacked into the ground, pointing in the opposite direction from Spike. Then he stomped down on its face and pinned it with his foot, rendering the beast incapable of a counter-attack.

“Alright then, who are you? What do you want?” Spike demanded to know.

The dragon bore a look of surprise for a second, then a wicked smile broke out on its face and it began to laugh in a way that gave Spike a sudden sense of foreboding.

“What do I want?” it hissed through its chuckles. “What do I want?”

Spike got the nasty feeling that he had stumbled into a cruel joke.

“Do you know what I want?” Its voice became an aggressive growl. “I… want… EVERYTHING!”

Spike’s only warning was a sudden lurch and a nauseating sound of flesh being torn asunder before he saw whip-like tendrils sprouting from the stump of its left forearm coming straight at him.

That thing just ripped off its own arm! was the only thing Spike had time to think before the tendrils struck his head, wrapped around his skull, and stuck to his cranium with some disgusting adhesive. Then Spike felt something touch his mind, and he collapsed in an instant as every muscle in his body twitched and buckled. The enclosure fell to shadow as the gems turned dark. He felt his thoughts warp and distort; felt an alien entity saturating every thought and feeling until only one thing remained:

Greed.

It all came back to him with the tact of a tsunami; an illustrious sheen on material wealth; an indomitable drive to possess; a gluttony for more.

Spike wanted everything.

He wrenched himself from its grip in a stricken fear. The avarice disappeared from his mind as soon as he was free of the sickening tendrils, leaving only room for cold terror.

“You… you’re… no!” Spike stammered in horror.

The dragon pulled itself out from under the stones, crippled and mangled limbs already beginning to heal.

“You tried to kill me off…” Spike’s evil reflection spoke, allowing itself an evil laugh as it threw its arms outward in a self-promoting display. “Well, surprise; I remain!”

Spike’s mind was spinning wheels that suddenly didn’t want to work. He thought had banished this from his head and his heart, and yet it was staring back at him, cold-blooded murder in its eyes.

The dragon spoke with a smiling sneer. “You know what they say. What doesn’t kill you... will only come back later to try and kill you again.”

Spike was still reeling from the revelation. I already banished this! Why is it here? What is this place even? What am I supposed to do? Seal it away down here? How?

Malice crept into the other dragon’s voice. “I’m taking our mind back. I hope you enjoyed your last day in control.”

“No,” Spike spoke with certainty, though still scared. “I’ve already dealt with you: condemned you, refuted you! I’ve already sealed you away!”

They broke eye contact with each other as the entire cave shook. The cusp of the passage seemed to implode as a great metal threshold with a massive set of double doors materialized in between the two of them, then began to swing shut.

“No…” the dragon roared as it charged. “No you don’t!”

The doors slammed shut right before the dragon reached them. The last thing Spike saw on its face was a furious hatred. The sound of metallic clicks filled the cave as internal gears spun, deadlocks slid into place, and tumblers fell. Even over the loud orchestra of mechanical function, Spike could hear the monster banging against the door, roaring its spine-chilling spite.

Spike turned and ran like he’d never ran before. He ran until his lungs filled with fire and his legs pumped with battery acid. Then he ran some more.

More doors materialized behind him and swung shut. The heavy clashing of the great metal constructs rung throughout the catacombs until the noise was deafening. But in his mind, he could still hear it screaming: still feel it pounding.

Spike wheezed as his injured body raged in protest, but still he ran. He already knew where he was running, and from what, but how to get there and how much further to get away remained uncertain. He just kept running, even as hazy shadows crept into his eyes and everything faded to black.

- - - - - -

One claw above the other, get a grip, then pull with that arm and push with the legs. Then get a grip with the other free arm, readjust footing, then repeat. One claw above the other…

The climb up the abyss was slow and painstaking, even more so with his injuries. Spike winced as the open door he’d just climbed through slammed shut with a booming clash. He thought for a moment about climbing back down and curling up for a nap right there on the cold steel, if just to alleviate the grogginess that was peeling away his vision, but he couldn’t do that; he’d already sworn to Celestia…

He briefly saw his own weak shadow flash up against the wall. He turned slowly to spot the source of the illumination. Two beams of light cut through the darkness, looking over the walls as they glided downwards. One passed over him, hesitated, then whipped back. He shielded his eyes from the bright glow.

“I found him!” the light gasped. “Rainbow, I found him!”

The second beam targeted him, then both swooped down to meet him.

Relief washed over Spike as the two pegasi come into view. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy were both equipped with saddlebags and wearing hard-hats with large spotlights built onto them.

“Hang in there, Spike, you’re safe now!” Dash called to him as she flew in close. “We’re gonna—whoa!” she exclaimed as she got a better view him. “Oh my gosh, what happened to you?”

Fluttershy gasped again as she saw him; he looked like roadkill.

“Oh, no! We’ve got to get you some help, Spike! Rainbow, help me…” Fluttershy said as she flew right next to the dragon, pulled him off the wall, and cradled him in her forelegs with Dash.

“Let’s get you home, Spike.”

Spike let himself hang limp in their grasp, and focused on his struggle to stay conscious. His senses were numbed to the point that even the slams of each great door that they passed through sounded muffled and distant. Their prolonged flight felt like it was taking place in slow motion, and his vision was dazed and unfocused. The warm glow of the setting sun illuminated the mouth of the cave.

“Spike? Spike?!” Twilight called to him through the darkness. Her voice sounded quiet and far away, but at the same time it was clear and ambient, undeterred by even his shot hearing. He couldn’t measure how joyous it was to hear her again.

He suddenly felt enveloped by a magical field of energy and was almost blinded by a flash of bright light. In an instant, the three were no longer flying up the cave. Twilight had teleported all of them up to the surface.

Spike heard everypony else gasp as they all saw how disheveled and defeated he looked, circling around him in their concern.

“Stand back, everypony, give him some room!” Fluttershy ordered. She began to pull supplies out of her saddle bags as Rainbow lay Spike down on padded roll-out bedding.

Fluttershy carefully looked over his wounds with gentle prods. Spike winced in pain as Fluttershy touched his broken ribs, and a deep frown formed on her face.

“Oh my…” Fluttershy’s voice fell with concern, then she put on what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “It’s okay; I know how to fix this,” she said as she pulled a syringe from her bags. She spoke empathetically as she took the cap off the needle, and stuck it into Spike. “I hope this doesn’t hurt too much, but this will keep it from hurting for long if it does.”

As numb as Spike already was, he felt alien in his own scales as the anesthetic coursed through his veins.

“Twilight, if you could help, please?”

Fluttershy’s voice sounded even more muffled now. He heard a faint sound of whirring spellcraft as Fluttershy’s forehooves lit up with the magenta glow of Twilight’s magic. Spike was dully aware of his broken ribs moving back into place and the fractures knitting shut. Something obscured his vision, and he focused on it.

Rarity’s face was wrecked with anxiety, concern, worry, fear, pain, and sadness. Slowly, relief began to spread across her expression like rays of sunlight breaking through the lingering clouds of a terrible storm.

“Spike... oh, Spike…”

Spike said nothing, but smiled and reached up to put a clawed hand ever so gently on her cheek. Rarity returned his grin in kind as she held his hand with a hoof. Neither bothered to hide the tears of joy welling up in their eyes.

“Spike!” Twilight encroached into his view. Her voice was still crystal clear, and increasing with volume. “I need you!”

Her tone and expression didn’t seem fitting in a wake of seeing a close friend so brutally beaten. If anything, she sounded bustling, almost impatient.

Spike vision went black, but Twilight’s authoritative voice became even more permeating and pungent.

“Ponyville needs you!”

- - - - - -

Spike couldn’t see anything, but his sense of hearing was still slightly active. The distant sounds of heavy materials shifting and tools beating upon them tapped his ears.

“Come on, we’re already running late!”

His eyes snapped open.

Spike looked around. He found himself at the edge of town, but the layout looked different. Several of the buildings he remembered being there weren’t, and in the place of others were different ones. Some were under construction. All of the others were damaged. Multiple ponies were busy with the project of building the structures while others moved materials to and from their destinations.

“No…”

“Really, Spike; come on!” Twilight spoke from behind him, but her voice was the very air itself.

He looked back to her. Twilight’s face was carrying that expression she wore whenever they had someplace to be or somepony to meet and he was dragging his feet. Behind her, way off in the distance, he saw an all too familiar set of large doors built into the side of a mountain.

“We’re scheduled to start the reconstruction of Ponyville today, remember?”

“Oh no…”

His blood chilled with terrible realization.

“Wake up, Spike!”

- - - - - -

Darkness was all he saw. It was the only thing to see. Spike didn’t bother to get up and look for anything else; that would require him to haul his heavy body out from this cocoon of cloth he’d wrapped himself up in, or at the very least open his eyelids, which felt like lead.

Then came the bitter recognition of where he was, following by a twitchy unease. Spike let out an early morning moan and shifted uncomfortably in his bed, reluctantly pulling himself together as he dared open his crusty eyes.

Twilight exhaled with a half-exasperated sigh while she was tapping her hoof impatiently. “Finally! I know you have a tendency to sleep in, especially after a day like yesterday would’ve taken it out of you, but come on!”

Spike grimaced as his vision came into focus. The library was a complete mess. Books and random items were strewn about the entire room, along with scattered debris of splinters and chunks of wood. Twilight was casually organizing several books into piles while she trotted about the library, getting ready for a busy day.

She lightened up a bit. “Since you decided to be such a sleepyhead today, I let Owloysious make breakfast for you.” She gave him a slight smile. “Prench toast, extra crispy with a side of butter and syrup, just the way you like it. You should go eat it before it gets too cold, because we’ve got a long day ahead of us.”

“Twilight?” Spike asked, crestfallen; he already knew the answer. “What day is it today?”

“It’s Sunday.” She sighed. “Hay of a way to start it, with a township-wide reconstruction project.”

Spike grumbled as he made his way into the kitchen. His breakfast was still warm, and for what it was worth, smelled delicious. It tasted delicious too, but he could not have been less enticed by it.

Spike gloomily poured over all the things he just went through that he’d never went through. He’d yet to spend his time and energy on the grueling reconstruction of Ponyville. He wasn’t on the bridge with his friends after they finished the project they hadn’t started. He’d never—

“Well, not to disrupt this fine gathering, but I think it best if Spike and I sit down for a little meal before we attend to our arranged business.”

He felt his heart sink to the coldest, darkest, most crushing depths of the Mareianna Trench.

“I have, well… a surprise for you.”

“Has anypony ever told you what an adorable little charmer you are?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t call it staring… I’d call in admiring.”

It had never been real.

“I love you too, Spike.”

It was nothing but self-deception.

The only thing he could be thankful for was that Twilight wasn’t in the dining room with him, so she wasn’t there to see him struggle as he tried to keep himself from crying.

- - - - - -

Spike sifted through a few piles of scattered books as he made his way through the library. He picked up a green, hardcover book with the title written in gold-leaf.

It wasn’t anything special; he’d seen it plenty of times before. However, now it appealed to him somehow. It was something of valuable worth, and that, to some extent, made it pretty in a way he’d never noticed before. For that reason, perhaps for a few more he couldn’t put his claw on, he coveted it for himself now.

He dropped the book as a terrifying chill swept through him. He backed away from it, staring at it like it was an angry, poisonous snake, trying to retake control of his ragged breathing.

“I’m taking our mind back.”

“What doesn’t kill you…”

“I… want… EVERYTHING!”

I refuted that! Condemned it! Banished it! It couldn’t! I—

“Spike, are you okay?” Twilight asked, looking at him with concern.

Spike tried to wipe away any shred of worry and woe from his face as quickly as he could. “Yeah, I’m fine.” He replied, blinking rapidly. “Just… thinking about a bad dream, that’s all…” Spike started to walk past her, picking the book back up and handing it to her as he passed.

“Oh…” she replied, but her tone said still wasn’t convinced. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“I…” Spike started to say.

“MINE...”

“I love you too, Spike.”

"No," he muttered, off-put, as he walked out of the room. “Let’s just go.”

Twilight frowned. She respected Spike enough to not want him to feel as if she was invading his privacy if she pressed the issue, but it still bothered her that he’d hide something that was clearly upsetting him.

Is he afraid I’d take it the wrong way or judge him for it? Twilight thought. But he knows I wouldn’t do that. Isn’t compassionate and unbiased support what friends were for?

Oh well. If he doesn’t bring it up again, maybe it doesn’t matter. I hope not; the next few weeks will be very busy. I’ll need to do some serious studying to relax after all is said and done... but, what could I study?

She looked down at the book that she held with her magic. The ornate, inlaid gold stamped onto the cover was very forthcoming with its title: Theoretical Psychology.

Twilight stared at the book for a moment. Pieces of immediately superseding events, driven by capricious inspiration began to move into place, forming one simple yet devilishly captivating idea.

“Dreams... now that would be an interesting subject…”

Chapter One - What If...

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“Consciousness.”

“Even with the recent breakthroughs and advancements in our understanding of neuroscience, we are still no closer to finding the consciousness than we are to finding the soul. Perhaps this is no coincidence, but I digress.”

In these cool hours of the night, the world around Ponyville was calm and motionless. Nothing seemed to be happening in the little town. Not a single pony was to be seen in the streets; they were all taking solace in peaceful slumber that only a beautiful night like tonight could offer… all of them but one.

“Despite its elusive nature, we know intelligent consciousness exists, for we have seen definitive and conclusive physical evidence of its existence through observing chosen cells, glands, and transmitters. Even if consciousness is somehow metaphysical, invisible, like the soul, its physical connections are still abundantly clear.”

Twilight sat at the foot of her desk in the main study of the library, unblinking eyes darting to each new word on the page she read from. She was so immersed in the passages she was reciting that she paid no mind to the heaping mess of scrolls and spell diagrams that surrounded her. The library was placid and motionless; utterly still save for the flickering candle on the desk. The otherwise perfect silence was broken only by her words.

“And therein lays a weakness of mortal consciousness. Perception is not reality, but the only reality we know is the one our minds perceive through our senses. If what we perceive as reality is what we can see, what we can hear or touch, then reality is nothing more than chemical signals firing in the brain. So if we can better understand those chemicals; how to alter, control, or manipulate them, would we inherently be able to indirectly command consciousness itself?”

As many times as she’d read that passage, on this night, she allowed herself a slight pause to let the weight of those words sink in before she got to the topic that the essay was building up to.

“As heinous as this concept is, it’s all but alien to us. We subject ourselves to this manner of self-deception so often that we don’t even realize that our minds are presenting us with false realities when they are… because they do so on an almost nightly basis.

“I speak, of course, of dreams.”

Twilight took another pause; this part always got her.

“All that we are is accessible when we slumber in the fabricated worlds made by our subconscious. Despite their illegitimacy, dreams feel real while we're in them. It's only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange.

“So what if we could take control of our own dreams? What would we find; what could we do? Could we shape our own realities? Build our own worlds? Could we find our own consciousness or our soul?

“What if we could share these dreams? What if we could create dreams for others? What if we could we gain access to all they are? What if...”

“What if…” Twilight repeated those words. The speech always ended just as it was getting good, but some other event had clearly interrupted the author, preventing its completion. Fortunately, it was not alone.

Twilight moved the loose-leafed cover page away with her hoof to look over the other pages in the ensemble. Notes, hypotheses, diagrams, and equations for theoretical spells so complicated they made even her head spin.

Their discovery had been a most serendipitous find. Twilight had pursued her initial concept to begin looking into understanding the nuts and bolts of how dreams worked and the potential implications they possessed when she found the packet of notes that now lay before her. They had been hidden ever-so cleverly in one of the books she’d borrowed from the Canterlot archives. How exactly they got there and who hid them there still eluded her, but their writer remained no mystery to her. Even with every page initialed by the author, Twilight recognized the style of writing anywhere.

She flipped back to the ‘about the author’ page of the book that she had discovered the original notes in and came face-to-face with the portrait of a handsome unicorn stallion. His beige coat juxtaposed nicely with his formal black-and-white dress shirt and overcoat. He bore a wide, circular face with slicked-back, golden brown hair, and his prominent eyebrows, faint goatee, ever-so-slightly crooked smile, and vibrant blue eyes gave him a palpable coltish charm, like a dashing bachelor with a touch of con-artist, giving the stallion a romantic sense of danger about him.

“Dominus Cob,” Twilight spoke his name with an admiration bordering on reverence. He was a highly respected unicorn among those that took the study of magic seriously and an esteemed professor who had taught more advanced studies at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. Cob’s work had dealt mostly with theoretical spellcraft and the fundamental connections between magic and ponies. His multiple essays and research endeavors into the matter was what had given him recognition as one of the most outstanding practitioners of magic in the modern era... and oddly enough, he was also a fairly accomplished and very talented architect, too.

Twilight had even met Cob and his wife Mal once several years ago with her brother when she was still a young mare at a Summer Sun Celebration in Canterlot. To this day, she still couldn’t help but smile as she remembered how unable she was to contain her fan-girlish excitement around him and how she was geeking out when she asked Cob for his autograph... and how she almost fainted when Cob in return asked Twilight for her autograph.

At least that was the legacy he’d left behind. Several years ago, shortly following Mal’s sudden death, Dominus disappeared without a trace, along with just about every spare scrap of work he was involved in that hadn’t already been published. Academic speculators liked to gossip that everything else of his had been confiscated by the Royal Guard.

That was what made the sheets of paper in front of her so valuable. Not only were they research notes of the famous Dominus Cob, but research notes of perhaps what could have been the most important spell of his career: perhaps one of the most important spells of the century.

Dominus had started down the path to complete one of the most radical spells ever devised. And on this evening, Twilight had finished it.

The spell’s exact manner of operation was as fiendishly complicated as it was difficult to cast and maintain, but the premise of its design was simple enough. It acted as a multi-functional spell that sedated any number of targets, opened psychic pathways between each mind that the spell was being cast on, and generated a dream in a single mind through electrostatic matrices of near unfathomable complexity that manually intercepted neurotransmitter functions, creating a malleable dream world that each adjoining consciousness would enter into. All of which could be operated on a subconscious level, meaning the caster could enter the dream as well.

Simple enough indeed.

At least that was how it was supposed to work. Twilight had yet to actually cast the spell, but based on all the work she had done, she was certain it would work. She had meticulously composed every single conceivable function of the spell’s formula based off Cob’s projections, filled in the blanks where needed and finished everything he hadn’t. Then it was with unmerciful scrutiny that she’d double-checked every possible aspect that she could think of no less than twelve times. This spell would work… she hoped.

Twilight allowed herself a glance at the heaping piles of scrolls that surrounded her, each providing witness to the months of obsessive research, study, planning, calculation, and documentation that had gone into a spell she hadn’t even lit her horn for yet.

“What if…” Twilight wondered aloud. “What if this actually works?”

Twilight rose from where she sat and cleared a pathway through the forest of paper with her magic. She trotted upstairs and retrieved a pillow from her bed, then returned to her sanctuary of study and lay down. She nestled her head into the pillow as she reviewed the diagram she’d written with the final version of the spell one last time.

With all the pieces set up in her mind, Twilight focused on every single function she was supposed to achieve with the spell, then finally lit her horn as she began to carefully expend massive amounts of magic.

Twilight began to feel light headed as the magic enveloped her. She puzzled herself with how her thoughts could feel both energized and sluggish, like how she felt whenever she came down from a sugar high after partying a little too hard at any event hosted by Pinkie. Even as she fell into slumber, Twilight couldn’t help but feel a sense of exhilaration as at least part of the spell was apparently working. The last thing she saw as the world faded to black was the orange light of the candle glow brighter and hotter.

- - - - - -

Twilight found herself standing in one of the hallways in the west section of the Canterlot archives. She looked around at the shelves and the hundreds of thousands of books organized on them, and breathed in the smell of bookbinding and old paper with a contented sigh.

Twilight felt giddy with excitement, and couldn’t help but give a triumphant giggle as she did a little prance in place.

The spell worked! Just like my duodecuplthe check had said it would!

“So then,” Twilight said, regaining her composure, “this is what a dream world looks like.”

She began to trot down the long, extensive wings of the archives, looking around and taking in all the details of the labyrinth of knowledge, from the multitudes of books stored in the massive shelves that towered over her to the fine architecture of the library itself. Everything looked exactly as she remembered it. Twilight thought for a second about Dominus’ words about “building our own worlds,” and wondered for a moment what that idea could mean. That would have to wait though; this was just a test run.

“Let’s have a better look, shall we?” Twilight spoke and looked down the aisles.

She realized she was in a particular favorite section of hers: one dedicated entirely to documentation, records, personal journalism, and checklists. Excitement now mixed with curiosity as she approached the end of one of the shelves and picked out a personal favorite.

“The Art of the To-Do List,” Twilight commented with fondness. She opened the cover and flipped through the pages. It looked just as she remembered: an exact copy of the real world duplicate.

“The spell must be generating projections based off my memories,” she thought aloud.

A sharp noise that sounded like a crack reverberating through stone whispered through the air, breaking her concentration. She looked up from the book and looked around, but saw nothing. Not a single pony, no movement, not a stir. The library remained still and motionless as the one she was sleeping in. She shrugged and returned to her observations.

Twilight put The Art of the To-Do list back in its place and looked at the book next to it, Assembly of Order: How to Organize Your Life. She’d remembered seeing it before but had never read it. Curiosity took hold, and she took the book in her magic and opened it.

Twilight frowned as she flipped through the pages. They were all blank, devoid of any shred of information.

It must not be generating anything for lack of memories as a template, Twilight thought.

She heard another crack, but it echoed throughout the entire room as loud as if somepony had cracked a whip right next to her ear. Twilight put down the book and looked around, trying to locate where the noises were coming from. They sounded like they were coming from the north wall of the section, and she set off at a brisk trot in its direction.

Twilight came to the final row of bookshelves, rounded the corner, and saw a network of deep, ugly cracks that were forming in the wall near the floor, branching out in multiple directions.

An ominous feeling come over her, but it was secondary to her mounting curiosity. This event was utterly unprecedented, and had to be a result of an error in her calculations or some underlying component she either didn't or couldn’t have planned for. Either way, it bore the need to be investigated.

The spread of the cracks slowed as Twilight approached them. She moved in for a closer look as stone dust fell from the openings. She continued to peer at the cracks until she was mere inches from them and tentatively put forth a hoof to touch them.

She withdrew her hoof in an instant. The wall had been scorching hot, like she’d touched the hot plate on a stove. Concern became worry as she backed away from the breaking wall. The violent cracking resumed, branching out across the walls and towards the ceiling.

Twilight backed away, eyes narrow and her breath still, staring in fear as they violently ripped their way up the wall. She lit her horn and tried to magically seal the stone back together. The stone failed to yield and the cracks continued to spread. Whatever was causing the sudden failure of structural integrity, it wasn’t natural.

Twilight dispelled her magic and stared at the tree of cracks branching outward across the wall. If they reached the ceiling, the whole library could come down.

Just as the cracks neared the ceiling, they stopped. Twilight froze, uncertain. Moments passed, but the cracks remained as unmoving as her. Twilight allowed herself a sigh of relief.

The ear-splitting sound of shattering stone reverberated throughout the entire library. She snapped her head towards the new direction of the noise, but it was coming from everywhere. Her heart rate shot up, and a new wave of fear washed over her. She realized there was one thing she had overlooked when planning the test-run for the spell; with all her preparation to ensure everything went right, she hasn’t come up with a failsafe for what to do if it all went wrong.

Now, the first step of an exit strategy was obvious: get the hay out of the library. Twilight turned and took off at a full gallop.

An odd, strained sound rose over the cacophony of splintering wood and crumbling stone that came from the initial crack. Twilight stopped to look back at the jagged fractures on the wall and ceiling. Just as Twilight could’ve sworn she saw them glow an angry hue, the wall exploded and the ceiling began to fall, rock and rubble dissolving into flame.

“The dream is collapsing?!”

Twilight lit her horn and threw up a shield spell around her just in time to keep from eating a facefull of fire.

The shield held back the initial blast, but the force of the explosion knocked her back from the blast and into a pillar abutting the exit into the library’s main hallway. The shield popped with the impact, and Twilight smacked into it with a crunch. She shrieked in pain and fell to a crumpled heap on the floor.

Adrenaline now surging and panic threatening to set in, she tried to get up to keep galloping. She could still move well enough, but to do so was to stab daggers into her spine. Her back wasn’t broken, just riddled with hairline fractures in several places.

Dominus’ words came back to her. Dreams feel real while we’re in them.

Now that she was in a self-destructing dream world and in so much pain that merely standing caused her to tremble with exertion, the thought came with a cruel sense of irony.

She knew she was in a dream world, though. Now that the world around her was violently burning into nothing, that realization and sense was all the more prevalent, and became all the more prevailing with each passing second.

The thought that it was all just a dream was the only thing she could hold to as the consuming blaze charged for her, and everything faded into blinding light.

- - - - - -

Twilight opened her eyes as she fell back into consciousness from her dream. Her head shot off the pillow as she looked around her.

Her library was on fire.

Her species’ natural fear of fire gripped her with a death hold. Her logical mind spun on stripped gears, unable to form a plan as instinct and panic prevented her from concentrating. Then one thought pierced her mind and muscled past all her fear.

“Spike! Owloysius!” she cried out. Neither of them called back.

With fear beginning to choke her, she took off at a gallop in search for her friends. Spike was nowhere to be found in the library, nor Owloysius. All his favorite perches remained unoccupied by the owl, and all the windows were still closed. Had he even stopped by for the night?

Hoping her owl wasn’t in the library, Twilight turned and ran up the burning stairs. The planks threatened to collapse under her hooves as she galloped up them, fighting back her own increasing urges to turn tail and escape the blazing tree by herself.

Twilight bucked the door to her bedroom open.

“Spike!” Twilight yelled through the clouds of smoke.

From within the dark haze, she heard a cough.

“Spike!” she called to him again. Twilight got low to the ground and tried to hold as much of her breath as possible, prowling through her smoke filled bedroom. Her eyes watered from the acrid smoke.

A hoof collided with something on the ground. She gasped.

“Spike!”

His response came with raspy coughs. “Twi—” another cough, “Twilight... help...”

“Don’t worry Spike, I will!” she said as she used her magic to hoist him up on her back. “Let’s get out of here!”

Twilight took off for the front door as fast as her hooves could carry her, all but flying down the stairs. One of the planks gave way as she ran down them. She lost her balance and tumbled down the rest of the stairs, hitting the floor with a heavy thud. Spike still clung to her, face buried into her mane with fear. She moaned in pain over her bruises as she got back up on her hooves and continued for the door. All that mattered now was getting out of the burning building.

A crack came from above her head as a large piece of the ceiling broke away and swung down, colliding with the side of her face hard enough to knock her off her hooves, send Spike flying off her back, and slam her onto her side.

Twilight was almost knocked unconscious as she hit the floor. Her vision blurred and her ears rung, senses numbed by a burst of adrenaline. As her focus returned, she became aware of Spike frantically shaking her, that she couldn’t see out of her right eye, and that she was screaming in pain.

“Twilight! Are you okay? Please get up, we need to get out of here!” Spike said, fearful.

She tried to hold a hoof to her newest injury, but withdrew it immediately as another wave of pain hit her. The lids of her right eye had swelled shut, and the bones around the socket had been shattered.

“I’ll live,” she winced through the pain. “Come on, let’s go!”

More desperate than ever now, Twilight got back up on her hooves and stumbled towards the door, coughing as the smoke began to fill her lungs and more pieces of burning debris fell around her.

Another loud crack sounded from above as another large part of the library roof fell inwards, blocking the exit.

“Forget this!” she yelled in exacerbation and pointed her horn towards the door. It lit with an aggressive glow of magic. Twilight released some of her pent-up anxiety with a powerful concussive blast, blowing a large hole in the library.

Wait: backdraft...

Fire exploded outward into the night, fueled by fresh oxygen. Twilight just barely hobbled out the new door with Spike, frantically stomping out the places where her tail had caught fire and brushing the flames off her coat. She looked around at the town and gasped.

Ponyville was on fire.

“What the hay?” Spike muttered, bewildered.”How did this happen?!”

Twilight stood motionless for a moment, overwhelmed by what she was seeing. Her home, her livelihood, and the homes and livelihoods of all the ponies she cared about and loved were dying all at once before her, murdered by the fires that consumed them. Then one thought took precedence over all others.

My friends...

“Our friends could still be in danger, Spike!” Fighting off her woe with steely resolve, Twilight galloped further into town.

She ran first to Sugarcube Corner since it was on the way to Carousel Boutique from the library. Twilight was hoping that at least Sweet Apple Acres and Fluttershy’s cottage were a safe enough distance from the town to not be caught up in the blaze, and she didn’t figure Rainbow’s residence was in too much trouble since clouds weren’t combustible.

Ponies everywhere were screaming in panic and galloping about incoherently. Teams of pegasi were flying clouds over as many of the buildings as they could, desperately attempting to douse the flames, but the fires blazed on, unrestrained.

Twilight rounded the edge of the street to the lane where Sugarcube Corner was. The sweet shop was already ablaze, licks of flame pouring through the windows and out the chimney, shingles from the roof falling as the building creaked and moaned.

Through the fiery portal, she saw the first of the shop’s occupants exiting into the night.

“Mr. and Mrs. Cake! Oh Celestia, is everypony okay?” Twilight called out to the family.

“We’re fine...” Cupcake coughed. “Twilight, you’ve got to help; Pinkie is—”

Sugarcube Corner exploded.

The store and everypony within twenty feet of it disappeared with a deafening boom and a flash of blinding, white light. The blast ripped through the air with a shockwave that seemed to warp reality itself.

Twilight stared, frozen in place. The world slowed as all the panic and anxiety finally caught up to her.

They’re gone...

Gears spun hopelessly in her mind, incapable of cognition.

I just saw ponies die...

All of her senses failed. Whatever registered could not be processed.

Pinkie Pie...

She was only vaguely aware of somepony screaming indecipherably in her ear.

Pinkie Pie is dead!

“TWILIGHT!” Spike yelled at the top of his lungs.

Twilight was jarred back to Equestria.

“We’ve got to do something!” Spike cried.

The blinding blast was still expanding. It reached out to the surrounding burning buildings, and they too exploded, dissolving into flame, cutting off access to downtown..

“We... I can’t...”.

“But—”

“THERE’S NOTHING I CAN DO!” Twilight screamed.

Ponyville was rocked by another explosion. The blasts consumed every pony they touched with a blinding flash, and the two of them stood in the path of destruction.

With no other options, Twilight turned around and ran, tears dripping from her eyes and her breathing ragged. Her galloping was impeded by her burdened heart; it was so heavy that it felt like it might break through her ribs and fall right out of her chest.

She ran past her burning library and had to turn and look away, the sight too painful to look at. Twilight ran up several more streets and past more burning buildings until they reached the edge of town, and she saw the countryside.

No way... it’s not possible...

“No... it’s not possible!” Spike echoed.

Equestria was on fire.

Twilight could only stare dumbfounded at the plane of fire that stretched from one end of the horizon to the other. The trauma had put her into a state of shock. She was so overwhelmed that she temporarily lost the ability to process either thoughts or emotions. She couldn’t hold on; it was all too much to take in.

The library exploded behind her, opening great cracks of blinding light in the ground. The advancing, violent cracks passed around her, snaking over the countryside and onwards onto the edges of the horizon.

The bright tears in the ground reached the border where the sky and the ground met, and then shot upwards, traveling across the night sky. They moved unmitigated across the night and in between the stars until the entire sky was a web of fractures.

Twilight stared in disbelief at the spectacle. No spell or branch of magic was capable of tearing reality asunder like this. Why, the only thing she’d seen that was remotely like this, where an entire world had been spontaneously collapsing was…

A high-pitched, very familiar voice came from behind Twilight. “Oooo, now this is neat-o!”

The two whipped around to look behind them. Pinkie Pie sat behind them, oooing and awing at the scene before them, unfazed that reality itself was falling apart. Nor did she seem any more concerned when the entire atmosphere rumbled, and pieces of the night sky began to fall, revealing massive chunks of white nothingness as they fell to the ground and shattered.

“Oh, look! Everything is coming undone!” Pinkie exclaimed through her giggles.

Twilight’s mind was shattered by incomprehension.

“What?” Pinkie asked innocently. “Did you want a song or something?”

Twilight still stared, mind so blown away that she didn’t look up when the very moon fell from the sky, rushing downwards at the two, accompanied by a blinding light.

Twilight opened her eyes.

She lay on the floor in the middle of her study, head propped up by a pillow and surrounded by her extensive piles of notes.

She remembered everything at once: self destructing archives, burning libraries, broken bones, dead friends, reality tearing into pieces. Her head shot off the pillow, heart suddenly pounding as she looked around and checked herself.

Twilight found that she was perfectly fine. She was bereft of bruises and broken bones. Her breathing was regular, she could see out of both her eyes, and it didn’t hurt to move.

Further investigation revealed everything was as it should be. The library, for one, was not on fire. The nearest open window framed the deep blue skies and shining stars of the early night. There were no fires raging outside, and there were no other events of unfathomable magic to crack the sky. Owloysius was perched over on the writing desk, watching over her as he jotted down notes on something or other. Her pulse picked up again as she heard what sounded like fire coming from the kitchen, but then the smell hit her and it became immediately evident that it was just Spike making dinner, cooking an eggplant lasagna with his dragon fire if she placed the aroma correctly.

Twilight turned her head away from Owloysius and came nose to nose with a smiling Pinkie Pie.

“Hi!” she chirped.

“AH!” Twilight screamed in surprise, backing away and hitting her head on the table in the middle of the room.

Pinkie giggled. “Boy Twily, that sure is some spell you’ve got there. And the way you just tore that whole thing down, so awesome!” She squealed as she pressed her hooves against her cheeks.

Twilight rubbed where she’d hit her head tenderly with a hoof. “Only Shining Armor gets to call me “Twily,”” she said with a bit of a grumble. “Hey, wait; how did you know what that spell was? For that matter, how in the hay did you get into the dream?”

Pinkie adopted a look on her face like she’d just been asked “what color is your coat?”

“I just read your notes,” she said, motioning to them with a hoof. “Duh!”

“Oh…” Twilight responded, feeling suddenly stupid.

“As for how I got myself into the spell without a fancy horn or magic,” Pinkie breathed in and continued rapidly. “Since your research and thesisis clearly states that the magic works through mental ties by way of velcro-static matrixacesess that at the same time can be subconscioussesesly maintained, I figured that not only could somepony get in with some electricity of their own, but that the magic would hold up so long as any new added variable wasn’t disruptive enough to dismantle the operation.” Pinkie snapped her head to one side and inhaled sharply, having gone through that entire sentence without once stopping for air, giving Twilight a chance to stop wincing inside at her mispronunciations.

“So…” she whipped out a shag rug from behind her back to demonstrate. “I just got some carpet, shuffled my hooves across it, and opened a hole in the magic field surrounding your head by shocking it. Then I just wiggled my way in! Hee-hee!”

Twilight stared at Pinkie, agape. “That’s... one way to test a theory...”

Pinkie playfully touched her hoof to Twilight’s nose, shocking her with a jolt of static. Twilight shot her a quick look of annoyance as she rubbed her nose, but brushed it off.

“So what brings you here at this time of night?” Twilight asked, changing the subject. “I know you didn’t come all the way here just because you’re interested in my studies. I’d have thought you’d be busy making dessert for your dinner tonight.”

“Precisely!” Pinkie proclaimed. “I was feeling extra creative, so I was going to make a super-duper-extra-special-awesome triple-layered chocolate cupcake cake! But to bake something so complicated, I figured it’d be best to consult some professional direction. But when I looked through the cupboard with all the cookbooks for the one I needed, it wasn’t there!”

Twilight was having trouble keeping up. “A chocolate cupcake… cake?”

“A cake made out of cupcakes,” Pinkie explained. “Anyway, I looked everywhere for that book, but I couldn’t find it! Mr. and Mrs. Cake hadn’t seen or used it, it wasn’t in any of the places Pound will hide things when he’s being a mischievous little rascal, Pumpkin wasn’t off goobering on it, and I would never misplace a cookbook as important as one with a cupcake cake recipe, but it was still nowhere to be seen!

“But that’s not the only thing that was missing. As I sniffed around the sweet shop, seeking to solve this stumping stupor, I noticed that lots of other stuff was missing! Not only was the book gone, but so were several utensils, the pilot light in the oven, the clock in the store front, Pumpkin’s favorite squeaky toy, half of Mrs. Cake’s jewelry collection, several planks from the stairs and everypony’s left horseshoe!

“Why, with all those things gone missing, there’s only one explanation,” Pinkie stated and got right up in Twilight’s face, bearing a dead serious expression. “There’s a thief on the loose!”

“That’s… okay, that’s actually not that far-fetched a concept. Mrs. Cake’s jewelry I understand, but stair steps and left horseshoes? Why would anypony want those things?”

Pinkie gave out a playful little huff. “I don’t know, silly; I’m not the thief! But what if I was… oh, but what if I really was the thief, but I wasn’t the thief because the real thief is actually my evil twin?“

“Okay, now that’s just absurd,” Twilight said. “As pressing a matter as that may be, what does this have to do with you being here right now?”

“Oh, right!” Pinkie giggled. “So, since I’ve yet to catch the crook, I was wondering if you might have a copy of the same cookbook here that I could borrow, at least until I track down the thief and take my book back from her.”

“Hmm, we might. Owloysius, could you help Pinkie Pie find her book please?”

“Hoo,” the owl responded as he flew from his perch and over to a bookshelf. Pinkie trotted off to help find the book, leaving Twilight to look over her notes. Her eyes caught the freshest note, the wet ink still glistening in the fading light.

Month five, day twenty-two, entry four-hundred and seventy-nine.

After almost six months of obsessive research and study I believe I, Twilight Sparkle, have finally completed the dream spell first hypothesized by Dominus Cob so many years ago.

At least, I think I have. This monumental task has been by no means easy, nor the conclusions I’ve come to along the way by any means absolutely certain… hence why magic like this is called “theoretical.” Though if anypony had come closer to getting this right, it probably would’ve been Dominus, and unfortunately nopony has seen or heard from him in years. So as it stands, the most feasible, if not only writings out there on how this spell might work are probably mine.

I don’t think I’ve ever doudecuple-checked anything before ever in my life. I’m pretty sure I know what will happen when I cast this, but what I’ll admit is a little unnerving is that I don’t precisely know what will happen.

No more; the time has come to stop trotting around it.

To whomever may read this; if something malfunctions or I get trapped in a dream world or something else happens that I perhaps better not think about right now, you have my notes and Dominus’ to try and figure out where I went wrong.

But what if this actually works?”

Twilight sat in silence as she read those last words on the page.

“I found it!” Pinkie called from the other room, causing Twilight to jump. Pinkie trotted back happily from the other room. She turned to Twilight with a smile, revealing the book shoved halfway into her mane.

“Thanks, Twilight! I’d love to stay, but I’ve got a cupcake cake so chocolatey that you could call it murder to bake. Oh! But you should totally show me more of that spell later!”

“Maybe…”

Pinkie gasped with excitement. “You promise?”

“I didn’t say…”

“Pinkie promise!”

Twilight sighed. How do I get roped into things like this? Whatever, it’s just Pinkie Pie, she thought.

Twilight began to recite the promise with the customary movements. “Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my…” Twilight froze as she moved a hoof towards her right eye. She didn’t have the best experience when it came to the hoof-in-the-eye part, but last time she touched a hoof to her right eye, she had been greeted with stabbing pain as bone shards got lodged into her eyeball.

“Come on, you’ve got to finish it!” Pinkie insisted.

“In my eye.” Twilight finished, tentatively touching her hoof to her closed eye. There was no pain, but she still withdrew her hoof quickly, just out of reflex.

Pinkie looked to Twilight quizzically, then lit up with a smile. “That’ll do. See you later, Twilight!” she chirped and bounced out the door.

Twilight looked back to her notes, troubled by what she had just read. She pondered the information, trying to piece everything together, then levitated a quill over a new piece of parchment and began to write.

“Month five, day twenty-two, entry four-hundred and eighty.

She wrote a quick log documenting her experiences using the spell for the first time: that it did indeed work, that the dream could be shared with multiple ponies, and that Dominus wasn’t kidding about “dreams feeling real.” She speculated about dreams being built from memory and occurring during R.E.M sleep, hence why she didn’t remember casting it and ending up in a dream in the first place.

She theorized that it’s collapse could have been attributed to either Pinkie’s intrusion, or when she tried to enter another dream when her mind was already hosting one.

That piece of information was the most fascinating new discovery; that the Dreamscape Spell couldn’t just make dreams, it could create dreams within dreams.

Twilight looked over the paper. She allowed herself a moment of contentment as she let the sight sink in; all the time, research, study and number-crunching had finally paid off. Feeling exceptionally accomplished, Twilight fetched a fresh roll of parchment and began to write, eager to share her triumph with somepony she knew would appreciate it.

Dear Princess Celestia,

Several months ago, I by chance found some lost research papers written by none other than Dominus Cob, hypothesizing the beginnings of a spell that would allow somepony to delve into the subconscious through magically generated dreams. Tonight, I’m proud to report that not only have I finished that spell, but I’ve tested it, and it works! I’m still working out the finite details, but it has been confirmed that this is no longer a theoretical magic.

Can you begin to imagine the possibilities? Dominus himself speculated that we might be able to explore the ties everypony has to magic and the very foundations of what makes us who we are, perhaps even find our own consciousness, maybe even our own soul this way.

This could be one of the single most important revolutions in magic of generations to come, perhaps second only to the reactivation of the Elements of Harmony. As a spell with such a magnitude of importance, I wish to arrange a time that we could meet and discuss all my research on this topic face to face. I just know you’d love to hear all about it.

If only somepony knew where to find Dominus so I could tell him about it, too.

Your Faithful Student,

Twilight Sparkle

She set her quill aside and capped the ink bottle, then rolled up the letter and sealed it as she called out to the kitchen.

“Spike, I have a note to send to the Princess. Could you send it to her when you have a moment?”

“Sure thing, Twi,” Spike answered. “Just let me finish setting up everything for dinner, okay?”

He sounded like his normal self, going about business as usual, but just to hear him for real brought a very warming sense of relief to Twilight.

“That’s alright,” Twilight responded as she placed the note on the table and looked over all her notes, the accumulation of almost six months of grueling, pain-staking research.

Pinkie’s words about a thief in Ponyville came back to her. She just attributed it to Pinkie being her usual self, but if she was right, that could be bad for these notes, especially if there was indeed a thief on the loose who knew the value of information and knowledge. What dire consequences would come if they got their hooves on this kind of information? Was there a black market for something like this?

As she looked over the shores of paper, she decided to err on the side of caution. She shuffled her notes into one organized stack and put Dominus’ notes back into the book that she had found them in, then carried them all upstairs to her room where she locked them in her heavy trunk. If that kind of power could be abused in such a way in the wrong hooves, then it was best to keep it under wraps until she could discuss it with Celestia.

Twilight went down the stairs. Spike was standing by the main desk, staring at his claw and the note gone from the table.

“Thanks for sending that off to the Princess,” Twilight commented.

“Yeah…” Spike replied, voice somehow uncertain. He changed topics before Twilight could call him on it. “So, are you hungry for dinner?”

Twilight’s response was spoken for her by her growling stomach. Spike chuckled as Twilight gave a slight smile of embarrassment, following him into the kitchen.

The wonderful smell of the food was even more whetting to the appetite in the dining room. Twilight breathed it in until it filled her nostrils before pulling up her chair.

As much as she was compelled to dig in, Twilight took a moment to watch her friends. Owloysius stood on his table perch, woodenly pecking at some nuts and a fish he’d caught earlier. Spike stood in his chair, hovering over his food as he wolfed it down at a pace that would make Rarity flinch in offense at such etiquette.

Twilight smiled sincerely, warmth filling her heart. Owloysius, Spike, Pinkie, all her friends… they were all okay. She cherished them all, but felt especially grateful for them tonight, when she felt the harrowing pain of what it might be like to lose them.

She closed her eyes and bowed her head, and said a solemn prayer in her heart to Celestia, offering her gratitude for being blessed with such wonderful friends that she cared so much about and who truly made her own life worthwhile.

Twilight finished her prayer with a hope that she’d never have to endure what she went through in her self-inflicted nightmare ever again.

Chapter Two - Chaos Lives in Everything

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Twilight stared in horror at the most offending blasphemy against the natural workings of Equestria that she could have ever witnessed.

She stood on the sweeping hills outside Ponyville, looking up into the afternoon sky at the sun and the moon. They were in the same sky: at the same time: moving into the same place.

An affront to Equestria like this was nigh unfathomable. Twilight didn’t think that even Discord was twisted and cackling mad enough to conceive an iniquity against harmony as egregious as this.

The moon blacked out the sun, and the heavenly bodies merged to become a single form that paralyzed Twilight in fear; a black sphere as dark and wretched as the gates of Tartarus, its edges burning with a light that turned the sky red. This light did not warm, however; the air chilled like winter beneath the abomination's gaze.

It was so terrifying that she couldn’t tear her eyes away from it, even after the sight began to make her eyes burn. The entire world shook in fear along with her when the monstrosity uttered a guttural roar that shook her to the ground, and the with a sound of a plane-shattering pop it summoned a torrent of howling winds. Pieces of the discolored sky began to rip away and were sucked into its bottomless maw.

“Oh... I see what just happened.”

Twilight sighed as the world was sucked up into blackness.

- - - - - -

Twilight was sitting on her haunches in a large art gallery in Canterlot, judging by the architecture and the pretentious looks of the ponies around her.

Looking around, she saw the paintings of dynamic pastels were all very surreal. They all featured an extremely scrawny, hairless, anemic-colored pony dressed in dilapidated, heavily stained denim jeans and a faded yellow shirt that had a symbol of a red, four-point diamond with two acute triangles protruding out from both sides of its upper half. However, its head resembled that of a horned owls’, covered in black down with a ghostly pale face of gray skin, utterly devoid of feathers, and it had a needle-thin beak and hauntingly hollow eyes.

Each painting showed the pony thing in a labyrinth, where it was either moving about in exploration or avoiding masses of tentacles sprouting up from holes in the floor.

The perspectives of the paintings began to shift. The thing-pony and the tentacle pits withdrew back into the painting, behind the frames, until all she could see from her seat was the walls of the labyrinth, like each painting had become a portal into the maze. One of the bewildered viewers in the gallery even stuck their head through one, looking around as though they were peering out of an open window into another world.

Twilight looked to her right to see another painting. Here, the thing-pony was looking down a long hallway towards a circular door adorned with tooth-like spikes protruding from the threshold. Between the thing-pony and the door was another deep pit from which several vivid, malformed, horribly garish tentacles with twisted mouths filled with sharp teeth were emerging from.

The thing-pony became animate and looked back to her, then emerged from the borders of its painting to point a hoof towards the painting on the opposite wall, to her left.

Twilight looked in the direction the thing-pony pointed her, and saw not another painting but very large canvas that had words written in her own hoof.

Dear Twilight Sparkle,

CAST A

SHIELD SPELL.

NOW.

Sincerely,

Twilight Sparkle.

Twilight had to resist the urge to facehoof. “How did I forget I put that there?” she muttered to herself as she lit her horn and encased herself in a shield. “Oh yeah., I know why… stupid sun-moon-hybrid abomination.”

Just as her sphere-shield reached its full power, the tentacles snapped to life and began to pour out of the painting as a multitude more erupted from the pit. They whipped about in all directions, devouring the crowds of panicking ponies, the paintings, and the world alike: ripping away existence to beams of blinding light with each gluttonous bite.

Twilight looked at the pandemonium all around. Her gaze returned to the scrawny thing-pony, now standing up on it hind legs on what was left of the gallery floor. It stared at her with a blank, expressionless gaze.

“Hay of a way for a subconscious to dismantle its own imagined realities, huh?” Twilight asked the thing-pony.

The thing-pony just shrugged.

- - - - - -

Twilight groaned as she came to, greeted by the soft whirs of the machinery in her basement laboratory. She sighed and rubbed her forehooves against her temple from under the steel contraption strapped to her head.

Twilight got to her hooves and made her way to the machine that the helmet was hooked up to. She turned it off and looked over the charts flowing outwards from the apparatus, looking to see if the results further backed up her hypotheses and speculations about how the spell interacted with brain waves.

It was as she expected. The squiggly beta waves indicated when she was awake, then descended briefly into the more calm alpha waves: those showed her entering a relaxed state as the spell sedated her. The frames in the timeline where she was asleep and dreaming were marked by loose theta waves. There was a change in their amplitude about half way through, marking when she entered a 2nd level dream. Then the waves were marked by spikes of activity as the dreams failed and she fell through them back into consciousness. However, there was a stark contrast in what Twilight had expected to see and what she actually saw inked onto the paper.

“That can’t be right…”.

For one, the wavelengths while she was asleep were extremely dense, as if her brain’s activity was increasing at the exact same time that it was decreasing, and drastically so: like all the activity of a conscious state of mind was merely being condensed. The second was that the timeline was drastically off. Twilight estimated the entire trip took about three to four minutes. However, the charts were saying she’d only been asleep for…

“Seven seconds?”

There was accommodation for margins of error, and then there was screwing up. She double checked, but sure enough, everything appeared normal except for the anomaly. She checked the machine, too, but found everything was in working order.

Twilight’s first thought was that the spell might not be sedating as much as it was subduing the mind into slumber by condensing brain activity into lower amplitudes, and that the exponential increase in activity was the result of those frequencies being crammed into such smaller waves. She checked that theory with a little math, and it initially looked promising, but the concentration of brain activity wasn’t explaining the time difference. There was some other variable she wasn’t accounting for.

Looking back to the diagram, she was still perplexed by just how short a period the dream took up. Then a thought hit her.

“Factor for time…”

Twilight attacked the problem once more, accommodating for how much time she thought the dream lasted in comparison to how long the readings said it lasted. She punched all the numbers in, and to her liking found they were a little closer to what she expected to see..

Dipping her quill into an ink bottle again, Twilight produced a new scroll and began to further document her findings.

“Month five, day twenty-three, entry four hundred and eighty-one...”

Twilight wrote down a quick log about what she’d learned, both on how the mind hosting one dream couldn’t enter into another level of a dream, the time difference, and how the spell affected brain wave activity.

I wonder if it’s possible to create a dream within a dream if somepony else’s mind hosts the second level dream.

She jotted down her speculation to close the entry, along with a note on her own reservation to keep her testing in single level dreams only for a while. Hopefully, those wouldn’t be so weird.

One last thought occurred to her, and she jotted down a quick postscript.

“PS: Don’t eat anything extraordinarily spicy before entering into a dream… anything like, say, a jalapeño and habanero pepper-jack omelet served with extra hot sauce. Weird things will happen if you do.

“PPS: Don’t let any of your so-called friends convince you to eat a jalapeño and habanero pepper-jack omelet, especially when said omelet is served with extra hot sauce.

Twilight set the quill down and put a hoof to her mouth. Everything still burned from that sadistically spicy plate of sin that Spike had made the both of them for breakfast, and her fur was still damp from when she galloped screaming to the sink and dunked her head in without a second thought.

Speaking of second thoughts, she didn’t even think to touch what the dragon had whipped up for a beverage; a shot glass filled with what looked like rainbow water that had been muddied from what she had suspected was even more spices. He said it was a special recipe Pinkie had shared with him: something she called “Wake-Up Juice.”

Twilight looked back to the charts, poring over the jagged waves and extremely dense blocks of spikes.

“Factor for time…”

Twilight reactivated the machine and laid her head back down on her pillow. Concentrating on a location and fueling as much of her energy towards her magic that she could spare, she closed her eyes and lit her horn again.

- - - - - -

The sound of water crashing down over rocks was ambient even from this distance. The air around Canterlot always had at least a pleasant level of humidity thanks to the network of waterfalls and shining pools that surrounded it. Out here on the balcony of her old library, overlooking the trees and the rolling purple mountainside, the cool temperature and gentle breeze felt wonderful. She breathed in deep until the crisp air filled her lungs and she smiled, content with the scene.

These dreams can be quite placid when they’re not falling to pieces.

It was still morning back in the conscious world, but here in Twilight’s place of serenity, the sun had already dipped below the horizon, painting the lingering, puffy clouds in lively, passionate vermilion, which juxtaposed beautifully against the indigo evening sky. Off in the eastern horizon, the very first stars began to shine like diamonds strewn across a violet cape, heralding the coming passage of the moon.

She knew a lot of it had to do with her namesake, but sitting back and watching the cascading crepuscular tones of the noble dusk hours was Twilight’s absolute favorite time of day.

She would’ve loved nothing more than to curl up with a good book or twelve and study until midnight came and passed, but she knew as lovely as a thought that was, it would be trivial in this state of mind. Glancing towards the clock tower in the center of the city, she glimpsed the time: six-thirty in the evening.

Knowing she would only be here for a limited time, Twilight opted to enjoy her moment of solace and bask under the marvelous splendor of the beautiful sky that stretched to the ends of the horizon. She summoned a pillow from her old bed and laid down on her back.

The luminous sky filled her vision, and Twilight couldn’t help but crack another smile in the face of the breathtaking vista. She relaxed as she beheld it all, her spirit sighing like a lover.

Twilight lay there in peace, watching the color of the burning clouds became more tinted from the vanishing light as the sun exited the atmospheric stage for the moon. As the sky dimmed, more of the stars became visible, but as no more than tiny specks of light.

For the first time since entering the dream, Twilight let out a little frown. She loved the spectrums as the evening blended into the night, but she also adored star-gazing. She didn’t know how much longer the dream would last, but it would still feel like a bit of a lost potential to have such a serene moment without getting to bask in the glory of the constellations.

Suddenly, the words of Dominus came back to her.

“Could we shape our own realities? Build our own worlds?”

Twilight got an idea. A simple little thought really, but one that spread through her mind like wildfire, permeating it until there was nigh but this idea: this one, almost maddeningly inspiring idea.

Twilight magically pulled her old star charts up to the balcony. Laying back down and lifting them above her head, she looked through them until she found the chart that matched the time and season.

Looking back to the purple sky with the chart as reference, Twilight cast a quick compass spell to help her spot where Polaris should’ve appeared in the sky. She promptly located its proper place, right in the center of an opening in the cloud cover.

Twilight thought for a moment, trying to reason how she was going to accomplish what she had in mind. Her natural idea was to use magic, but then realized didn’t have a spell for it, dream world or not.

But I’m already casting a spell, Twilight thought.

Reaching out with her mind, Twilight attempted to grasp the confines of the dream world. She hit them abruptly, then gasped as she felt an inexplicable wave of terror sweep through her. She was still safe and the dream still functioning, but to reach the end of the world as she perceived it, a limit to her reality beyond which there was nothing, was unnerving to say in the least.

But this isn’t the end of everything. There’s still the real world beyond this dream.

Calmed down by the thought, she opened her mind and started searching through the dream matrix again for the codes that were generating the sky. She discovered them, then pinpointed the hole in the cloud cover, and willed that the star appear in its spectral seat.

Before her eyes, a bright star flashed into being in the violet sky: a shining sparkle amongst the twilight.

The unicorn lay on her back, looking up at the sky and at her first ever creation within a dream with the biggest grin plastered to her face.

Twilight began to giggle like a schoolfilly with a crush. “I did it... haha, I did it!”

She looked back and forth from her star charts to the heavens, spurred by overwhelming inspiration as she reached out to the dream again. Soon, the lone light to the north became surrounded by its multitude of friends.

Twilight was no artist, but never before had she been so spurred by a passion to create the beautiful things she loved. The sky was her canvas and her mind was the brush, and her heart was the force that moved them both. Entire clusters magically burned into being. All the while Twilight couldn’t stop smiling in her endeavor to paint the sky with stars.

It wasn’t long until the stars that dotted the sky stretched from one end of the horizon to the other, and right then and there, Twilight knew what it was like to love the night as much as Luna. She was not the Princess of the Night, but somehow, when Twilight looked at the stars, she felt like herself, and that made her happy.

The entire sky above her began to fade away.

Twilight bolted upright. Her once placid heart now pounded and her forehead became damp with cold sweat.

“Oh no, no no no! This can’t be happening!” Twilight was on the edge of panic. She ran to the railing of the balcony and felt her blood run cold. All of the capital city and the world around it was beginning to fade into black.

But then another sensation came over her, not of fear, but of understanding. She could feel her body, her real physical body, and it was warm, not cool from the brisk evening air. She was not standing on her hind legs overlooking a vanishing Equestria, she was laying down on the floor, and it felt like something clunky was strapped to her head. Even though she could see, she could feel that her heavy eyelids were closed.

She sat back down and put a hoof to her chest over his still racing heart. She breathed a sigh of relief as she glanced at the clock tower: it was just past seven.

“The dream isn’t collapsing…”

Now even she had become nothing.

“I’m just waking up.”

- - - - - -

Twilight stirred as she came to, shaking off the lingering weariness: blinking as the focus of her eyes waned in and out. She knew she couldn’t have been asleep for long, yet she still felt drained of energy and rather tired despite having just woken up. She yawned and stretched her back, then made her way to the machine and shut it off.

A quick look told her just about everything she needed to know. Once again, the segment the dream took up was demonstrated by an incredibly dense compound of short waves, and the dream didn’t take up as much actual time as it seemed like it did from the inside. From her perspective within the dream, she was asleep for about thirty minutes. According to the charts, Twilight had only been under for about a minute and a half.

“Ninety seconds of real time equates to approximately thirty minutes in dream time,” Twilight thought aloud. “That means the relative time that passes in a dream is about twenty times greater than actual time.”

Her eyes widened as she came to that conclusion. This newfound piece of information was something that had been entirely unprecedented. Nothing in the near six months of study, research, and calculated planning had indicated the magic would perform as it was now, but there the evidence was, clear as day. What else didn’t she know about this spell?

Twilight yawned again and felt a little embarrassed by how tired she was. She had only been subconsciously maintaining the spell, so it was running automatically until she didn’t have enough energy to sustain it for any longer. That bothered her. She, Twilight Sparkle, personal protégée of Princess Celestia, bearer of the Element of Magic, had only been able to maintain a single spell for a mere ninety seconds.

That didn’t sit with her at all. They called her “the most powerful unicorn born in a thousand years.” She was the Element of Magic: this shortcoming would not be allowed to stand. She would find a way to maintain the spell for longer, simple as that.

“Spike? Spike!”

“Yeah, Twilight?” he answered from upstairs.

“Would you go fetch Modern Spellcasting for me, please?” she asked.

“Sure thing!”

Twilight turned back to her notes and withdrew her quill once more to add another entry to her documentation.

“Month five, day twenty-three, entry four hundred and eighty-two.

This entry primarily documented her confirmation of the one::twenty time difference ratio, her discoveries about how to manually manipulate the dream world, and just how draining the spell was to maintain.

Twilight finished the entry and set it aside. She looked back up the stairs; several minutes had passed while she penned the new entry, but Spike still hadn’t returned with the book.

“What’s taking you so long, Spike?”

His response came a moment later. “Uh, Twilight, I can’t find it.”

Twilight’s eyes went wide in disbelief. “What? Did you misplace it? Don’t tell me you sneezed on another book…”

Spike gave a little huff as he walked through the door so they wouldn’t have to keep yelling their responses back and forth. “No to both. It’s not in its place on the shelf or in any of the spots you usually go to study. And before you ask, I already checked the records, and nopony has rented it out recently. As much as I hate to say it, I think it’s lost.”

The librarian’s blood ran cold. Her face went numb with terror as one of her ears twitched. This was a die-hard bookworm’s nightmare come true: she’d lost a book.

Spike took a step back and held an arm up to cover his eyes from the flash of the unicorn teleporting herself next to him. Her face was frantic as she got right up in his.

“Did you check all the bookshelves?!”

“Yeah, and…”

“Did you check in my bedroom under the blanket fort?!”

“That to, but…”

“Did you check the desk I attached to the ceiling in the attic in the 1x10-32.33 percent chance that the polarity of planetary gravitational pull becomes reversed?!”

“Yes, Twilight! And it wasn’t in any of those places!”

Twilight ran past him and began a frantic search for the book herself. She was a purple blur moving between every bookshelf and every compartment in every room in the house, but her desperate search left her empty hoofed. It wasn’t with any of the other books, it wasn’t misplaced, and it wasn’t hidden away in any of the secret book stashes Twilight kept around the library in case she needed a quick study fix. It wasn’t lodged outside in the branches and leaves of the tree, it wasn’t phased half-way through a wall as the victim of a teleportation spell gone awry, and there wasn’t even any subatomic residue left over in the event the book had somehow made contact with its antimatter counterpart. She knew; she had a spell to check for that.

It was nowhere to be found, but what she did find was even more disheartening. Not only was Modern Spell Casting missing, but so were several other books. Like the first book, they hadn’t been improperly sorted, checked out, or destroyed via complete particulate matter nucleation. After an hour or so of searching, Twilight could only come to one sad conclusion: the books were lost.

Pinkie’s words of a kleptomaniacal cat burglar with a taste for random personal effects came back to her. Her pulse quickened and her eyes narrowed once more, then she galloped off to her room. If there was one book she didn’t want to have lost…

She opened the the padlocks on the large chest and peered inside. All her notes, all her research, and the last known thesis of Dominus Cob were still there.

Twilight sighed in relief, but she quickly reminded herself that the other books were still lost nonetheless. She sighed again, this time out of exacerbation as she rested her head against the rim of the lid.

Spike slowly entered her bedroom through the door left ajar.

“Hey, did you find them?” he asked.

Twilight pouted. “No.”

“Oh. They weren’t in there?” Spike pointed to the chest.

“No. I don't recall putting them here anyway. But then again, I don’t recall doing anything to have lost those books in the first place. Anyway, I was just making sure that these research notes were still here. You know, the ones Dominus had written about dream spells, imagined realities, contained consciousness, the primary subject of my studies for the last half a year, all that.”

Spike’s expression changed slightly as he looked at the contents of the trunk. His gaze appeared distant, like he was thinking about something.

“Spike?”

He shook his head. “What?”

“You looked like you were somewhere else for a second.”

He raised an eyebrow in confusion at her. “I did?”

Twilight peered at him, but decided to brush of Spike’s brief bout of inattention. She couldn’t suppress another yawn as she closed the chest. After her frantic search for the lost texts, she remembered just how tiring channeling the dream spell was and how worn out by it she felt. Coupled with the intense investigation for the lost books, she realized that her eyelids felt heavy and a nap sounded quite enticing. It was just barely past noon.

Her stomach grumbled in neglect. She added “hungry” to the mental list of things that were bothering her at the moment.

She thought of Pinkie again, and realized there was a way to alleviate her grogginess and hunger at the same time.

Twilight got back on her hooves and walked past Spike. “I’m going to go to Sugarcube Corner for a pick-me-up. Want me to bring you back anything?”

“Hmm… could get some more sapphire cupcakes? Those are always good. If not, then I suppose an ice cream sandwich would be nice.”

Twilight stifled another yawn. “Will do. See you in… later,” she said with a slight mumble. “Try to find those books while I’m gone, if you can, okay?”

“I’ll try, but I doubt I’ll have any more luck than you. I can’t find molecules.”

“They wouldn’t be molecules at that point; they would be, if there was indeed any matter left, the remnants of subatomic particles drained of their charge, and a lot of quarks…”

Spike cut her off with a tone that matched his disinterest. “Save the details for Rainbow Dash.”

She huffed in irritated rejection of her knowledge. “Fine then. See ya.”

“Twilight, wait…” Spike stopped her before she was completely out the front door.

“What?”

Spike opened his mouth to speak, but shut it as an impish look crept across his face. “Never mind.”

Twilight peered at him with squinted eyes. “You’re up to something…”

“No I’m not; it’s nothing. Nothing at all.” he said, looking off.

Twilight would’ve called him on it had her stomach not grumbled in protest again. “Fine. Bye, Spike.” she said, and walked out the door.

“Bye Twilight.” Spike returned as the front door closed. With her gone he allowed himself a snicker. “Love the new hat, by the way,” he said in Twilight’s direction even though she was already gone.

“I just hope you don’t run into Rarity to have her spoil the fun,” he continued, but his expression fell as the words left his mouth.

“Rarity…” he said again, his words contemplative. Something felt different. He could feel thoughts of her in his mind, and they felt like splinters.

That wasn’t the only thing he felt.

- - - - - -

Okay, Spike was definitely up to something, Twilight thought to herself as she trotted to Sugarcube Corner. She’d been getting weird looks here and there from a few ponies along her way.

“Look out!” a young filly cried out to her.

She looked in the direction of the voice and just barely dodged out of the way of a water balloon that would’ve hit her straight in the face. It exploded as it hit the ground some distance away.

“Both sides, cease fire! We have a risk of collateral damage!” Sweetie Belle called out.

“Aw, but that would’ve been an awesome shot,” Scootaloo muttered.

Twilight looked from the puddle of water splattered against the ground to the direction it had been thrown from.

“Hi, girls.” Twilight greeted the Cutie Mark Crusaders.

“Hi Twilight,” Apple Bloom returned before looking over the mare’s shoulder. “Cease fire goes for both sides!” she yelled.

Twilight glanced in the direction Apple Bloom was looking. From behind the cover of a nearby art sculpture emerged three more fillies who looked to be about the same age as the Crusaders. One was an earth pony with a light golden coat and a creamy orange mane. Another was a cream colored pegasus with a purple mane; she was holding a water balloon in one hoof, leg pulled back as if about to throw it. The last was a unicorn filly of a very pale lavender with a sandy blonde mane; she had a gentle, restraining hoof on the shoulder of the pegasus.

“Now now, Alula,” the unicorn filly said, “we’re all good sportsmares here, right?”

Alula lowered her foreleg at the gentle prompting. “If you say so, Dinky.”

The earth pony with Alula and Dinky was looking up at Twilight with quizzical look in her enormous eyes.

“Noi, it’s not polite to stair!” Sweetie Belle called to the gold earth pony. “Although…” she trailed off.

Twilight now became aware that all six of the little fillies were looking up at her. Noi and Sweetie Belle looked utterly confused, while Apple Bloom and Dinky were shooting quick glances back and forth at each other like Twilight was the only one not in on some big inside joke. Alula was very poorly holding back her snickers, yet was doing a better job of it than Scootaloo, who looked on the verge of bursting out laughing.

Twilight let out a groan. “What is it? Do I have something on my face?”

“No… no, not at all…” Apple Bloom said as a smile slowly began to break up her face. Alula and Scootaloo started to crack up even more.

“Why would you think that?” Dinky deadpanned. The two pegasi were having an even harder time holding all their giggles in.

“Have you been doing some really intense studying, Twilight?” Sweetie Belle asked..

Twilight opened her mouth to speak, but was interrupted by Alula before she could say anything.

“Wait: Twilight? As in Twilight Sparkle?”

“Correct,” Twilight answered.

“Oh, then that makes perfect sense!” Alula exclaimed. ”You’re probably studying all sorts of crazy things about as often as…” she put a hoof to her chin, then smiled devilishly. “About as often as Scootaloo fails to take flight.”

“HEY!” Scootaloo yelled as her wings flared outward in anger. She snatched another water balloon from her trio’s pile and took off after Alula. “I’m going to bury you under so much water that you’ll have grown gills by the time you break the surface again!”

Alula laughed as she galloped off. Dinky and Noi followed them with their arsenal. Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle looked at each other for a second, then raised their hoofs into the air and shouted in unison, “Cutie Mark Crusaders Water Balloon Battlers!” Then chased after the other fillies, their stockpile of hydro-artillery in tote.

Twilight gave a little chuckle over the youthful passions and endeavors of foalhood, then continued walking on to the sweets shop.

- - - - - -

“Good afternoon, and welcome to Sugarcube Corner! Oh, hi Twilight!” Mrs. Cake greeted Twilight from behind the store counter. “What brings you here?”

“Long story short, stressful studies, missing books, and experimentation with volatile theoretical magic. It’s all worn me out, and now I need sugar: lots of sugar.”

“Stressful studying? You don’t say…”.

Suddenly, there came an excited gasp and an aroma of cotton candy.

“Twilight!” Pinkie proclaimed joyously as she bounced into the shop front. “I’m so glad you’re h—” she stopped in mid bounce to stare at Twilight for second. Her gaze drifted upwards to the top of Twilight’s head for a moment, and then she fell to the ground on her back, laughing hysterically.

Twilight had enough. “Okay, what is it?”

Pinkie caught her breath long enough to squeak out an answer. “On your head… are you trying to read everypony’s mind?” She collapsed into another fit of giggles.

Twilight put a hoof to her cranium. She was still wearing the apparatus from the machine. Now blushing, she started fumbling to undo the straps holding the device to her head.

“Before you ask,” said Pinkie as she slowly got back up on her hooves, “no, I haven’t traveled a great distance to meet you, I don’t want to buy a subscription to the Saturday Evening Post, and I’m not interested in making a donation to the Coast Guard Youth Auxiliary.”

Now Twilight just looked confused. “What? No, that’s not what this is for. I was using this to measure my brainwave activity while under the effects of the dream spell I’ve been researching.”

Pinkie’s eyes lit up. “The dream spell? Oh, you promised you were going to show me that later! Is that why you’re here? To show me your super neat-o new trick?”

“What? No, I’m here because…”

“But you told me that you’d show it to me later! And it is later!” Pinkie protested.

“Sorry Pinkie, but…”

Suddenly, only a few inches separated Twilight’s face from Pinkie’s. There was a very faint undertone to Pinkie’s voice, like the faint ire of demons whispering up from the bottom of a deep cave. “You Pinkie Promised, Twilight. Nopony breaks a Pinkie Promise.”

Twilight had to resist taking a step back. “I’m here because I’ve been practicing that same spell all day, and it’s worn me out! I’m about ready to call it a night despite the fact that it’s just barely past lunch.” Her stomach grumbled again. “I’m tired, I’m hungry, and I need something to help get me through the rest of the day.”

“Oh, well why didn’t you just say so?” Pinkie said, returning to her merry self. “So it’s a pick-me-up you’re looking for, huh?” she asked with a sly smile and a deviously ingenious look in her eyes. “I think I’ve got just what you need….”

She zipped off into the kitchen and returned with a plate that had... something, on it.

“This one’s on me,” Pinkie said as she sat down in the chair on the opposite side of the table from Twilight, sliding a plate towards her.

Despite her friend’s generosity, Twilight could only stare at the contents of the plate, confounded as she tried to figure out what she was looking at. It was most likely food; that much she could tell. But it didn’t look like any food she’d ever seen. It smelled like chocolate, but no chocolate she’d ever encountered before smelled so concentrated, or so pungent, to where she could almost taste it through her nostrils. It didn’t look like chocolate either; no chocolate was that dark a shade of brown.

That’s when she noticed the outer layer of frosting from the slice before her. Okay, so perhaps this is some form of cake. Twilight deduced as she picked up a fork and carved out a slice. It didn’t cut like cake, though; cake didn’t cut like thick paste, or wet modeling clay.

“Pinkie, what is this?” Twilight asked as she peered intently at the curious confectionary creation on her fork. She could feel the smell of it with her eyes.

“This…” Pinkie answered with a pause for dramatic effect, “is triple layered chocolate cupcake cake.”

“Triple layered? Shouldn’t there be three layers then?”

Pinkie rolled her eyes a little. “I never said that the final product would be three layers. I mean, yeah, that’s what the name implies, but for triple layered chocolate cupcake cake, you take cupcakes, smash them all together, bake them into a cake; and then take that cake and condense it into another layer of cupcake cake… twice.”

Twilight started to piece it all together. “So… this is a cake, within a cake…”

“Within a cake!” Pinkie finished for her. She put a hoof to her chin and stared off into the distance. “I know there’s a word to describe it, but I just can’t put my hoof on it right now…”

The confirmation that it was indeed cake still didn’t entirely convince Twilight that she should consume it.

Pinkie was looking at her with big, expecting eyes. “What? Aren’t you going to eat it?”

“I said I needed a pick-me-up, but this isn’t really what I had in mind.”

“Trust me; if you eat enough of this, and you’ll be able to fly fast enough to break the sound barrier.”

“Pinkie, I don’t even have wings!”

“Exactly.”

Knowing she wasn’t going to satisfy Pinkie until she took a bite, Twilight braced herself and moved the cake into her mouth.

Suddenly, everything was chocolate.

The taste of the smooth, sugary goodness was so potent that it was electrifying to her senses. It was all she could taste, see, feel, smell… even hear somehow. Pure energy coursed through her, vanquishing her weariness in an instant. Her mind spun and buzzed with a new-found flurry of frenetic activity. Her eyes darted around the room and out the open window like a hyperactive hummingbird, soaking in so much overwhelming information about things she would’ve never given intensive thought to that it made her mind spin even more, perpetuating the machine of her cognition.

Then she actually bothered to chew it.

Each bite was an explosion of immense flavor and of the frenetic thoughts they fueled. Concepts whipped through her head like the wind flipping through the pages of an encyclopedia, each as pungent as the substantial weight on her tongue. With each chomp, she internally debated whether or not she should continue to gnash it between her teeth or send it down her gullet to make way for more.

She eventually swallowed and looked back at Pinkie, who was waiting for her approval.

“So do you like it?”

Twilight couldn’t focus. Her mind hadn’t been subject to this much raw energy and neural stimulation since the time her brother had given her coffee when she was a filly. She looked back to Pinkie, and realized she was still awaiting her input.

Twilight’s answer came not with words, but with action as she threw away the fork and unceremoniously buried her face into the cake.

Suddenly, everything was chocolate again.

Pinkie giggled. “I’ll take that to mean you like it.”

“Like it?” Twilight’s head shot up from her plate as she licked the last few smudges of cake of her face. “I LOVE IT! THIS STUFF IS AWESOME!” The words were flying out of her mouth.

Twilight’s horn burst alight and a note and ink bottle with a quill suddenly appeared next to her, to which she took and began to hastily scribble, speaking as quickly as she wrote.

“Dear Princess Celestia,

“THIS STUFF IS AWESOME!

“Your frenetic faithful student,

TWILIGHT SPARKLE!”

The note and writing utensils disappeared in a flash of magenta. Twilight looked back to Pinkie, her ears and eyes separately twitching at uneven intervals.

Twilight was muttering rapidly to herself. “So much energy, so much thought, so much to do, so many spells, so much to study, so much to read… so much, oh so much, so much so much SO MUCH. So much, too much, too much energy, too much thought, too much to do, too many spells, too much to study, too much to read, too much, too much…”

Pinkie grinned mischievously. “Too much space out in space?”

Twilight seamlessly continued her muttering from Pinkie’s interjecting tangent. “So much space out in space. Why is the so much space in space? Too much. Too much space. Way too much space out in space. What do you do with all that space? What do you do in all that space?”

Pinkie’s devious smile grew even wider. “Hey, I know what you could do; show me that dream spell!”

“Yeah?” Twilight’s gaze shot back to Pinkie. “Yeah! Let’s do it! Let’s do it now!”

Pinkie giggled. “Ready to go to Prance?”

“You bet your butt I’m ready! You ready? I’m ready! LET’S GO!”

Twilight put her front hooves on the table, clenched her eyes shut and lit her horn. A field of magical energy spread forth from it, branching out to both mares and encompassing their heads with a sparkling glow.

As Twilight’s conscious thoughts began to drift away and outpace her sugar high, thoughts untainted by glucose suddenly hit her, and she realized what she was doing just as her vision blurred and faded.

“Oh—”

- - - - - -

Twilight looked around, taking in her surroundings. She was sitting at a small table of an outdoor café. The bright blue sky gave the indication that it was sometime early in the afternoon. Judging from the masonry and proximity of the buildings to one another as well as the ponies strolling about on their daily business or enjoying a light meal of wine and cheese at a nearby table.

“Crud.”

“This is amazing!” Pinkie cooed ecstatically.

Twilight sighed and facehoofed.

“Well, congratulations Pinkie; you’ve successfully duped me into bringing the both of us into a dream world,” Twilight scolded Pinkie, barely hiding her disapproval, “and I have no idea how long we’ll be stuck here for!”

The drop in Pinkie’s enthusiasm was slight. “What do you mean?”

“What I mean is that this spell functions automatically. The way this spell works, the caster can enter into the same dream that they’re using the spell to create, as you already know. And when that happens, the spell then functions automatically from a completely subconscious level.“

“I knew that, too. I read your notes, remember?”

“Yeah, you read my notes last night. Since then, I’ve found that the spell will last for as long as I have the energy to maintain it. And I haven’t found how to shut it down manually!”

Pinkie’s expression became flat with realization. “Oh...”

“If there is a way to consciously stop it, I haven’t found it yet. Perhaps that’s why; it’s my subconscious, I can’t control it. As it is, the only way to get out of a dream is to stay in it for its duration, or find a way to make it collapse from the inside.”

“So how long do these dreams usually last? What’s the longest you’ve been able to hold it for?”

Twilight felt herself blush slightly over having to share what she felt was a serious shortcoming. “About, uh… about a minute and a half.”

Pinkie smiled again. “Well, that’s not too bad.”

“Yeah, but every other time I’ve cast the spell, I haven’t been on a serious sugar high. With as much energy as I’ve got up there, I expect we’ll be here for a long, long time.”

“Oh, you’ll come down from it fast enough. And if this spell is as draining as you say it is, that’ll probably make you use all that energy up even faster. I know you’re good Twilight, but I still wouldn’t give you more than twenty minutes.”

“Did I mention that relative time in a dream passes much faster than in reality?” Twilight added.

Pinkie cocked her head to one side at this. “No… how much faster? How did you find that out? When did you find that out?”

“Recently. This morning in fact, so it definitely wouldn’t have been in my notes last night. The spell doesn’t put you to sleep by sedating you as much as it suppresses neurological activity, forcing the amplitude of your thoughts to below conscious levels, making you fall asleep. But that activity hasn’t decreased. In fact, it actually increases, becoming denser and more concentrated.”

Pinkie’s expression was blank and oblivious, like all those words just went in on ear and came out the other with the added smell of cotton candy.

Twilight grimaced slightly. “It does to your thoughts what your cupcake cake recipe does to cupcakes.”

Pinkie’s face lit up with understanding. “Oh, well why didn’t you just say so?”

Twilight continued. “So with your brain capable of processing much more information much faster, it feels like more time is passing way faster than it actually is.”

“How much faster?”

“About twenty times faster.”

Pinkie’s eyes went wide as it finally hit her. “Oh…”

“So assuming your projections were accurate and I can maintain this dream for another twenty minutes in the real world, it’ll feel like we’ll be down here for another…” Twilight froze for a moment. “Almost seven hours.”

“OH… So what if we did that other thing you were talking about and just tore the whole thing down? Besides, it was so cool the last time you did it!”

“Because…” Twilight started, but her words stopped at the sudden knot in her throat. She stared for a moment at the almost perpetually happy pony in front of her. Twilight thought about how much joy Pinkie loved to spread and how much she loved to make her friends happy. How she had once stated in song that if there was only one thing in her life that made living worth it, it was making others smile.

Twilight thought about how much she cherished having Pinkie as a friend… and she still remembered how much it hurt when for even only a minute, Twilight thought she’d lost her. When for the briefest moment, she’d thought that there would be no more smiles, no more sweets, no more parties, and no more laughter among friends that would last for hours: how much it hurt when she thought Pinkie had died.

Twilight looked deep into Pinkie’s eyes. “Because destroying a dream world is dangerous, and… terrifying. And I’ve had… bad experiences, when a dream collapses.” Twilight almost had to force the words out of her dry throat. “That dream that you managed to enter, I got there without even remembering that I’d already cast the spell. I thought the Ponyville of the dream was real, and that it was actually being destroyed. I thought I’d lost Ponyville. I thought I’d lost everypony.” She had to force back tears now. “I thought that… my friends… that you….”

Twilight had to look away. She sniffled as she stared at the ground, trying to wipe away her tears with a hoof before they could escape her eyes.

Come on, Twilight, get a hold of yourself, she thought.

She hastily tried to pull herself back together and put on a good face for her friend. When she looked back up, Pinkie bore her best comforting smile as a look of compassion poured from her big blue eyes.

“It’s okay, Twilight, I understand.”

That just made Twilight want to start crying again.

Pinkie’s barely containable cheerfulness returned in an instant. “But hey, if we’re going to be here for a while, that just means you can show me all the other neat things you’ve learned about dream spell worlds! We could have our own little adventure!”

Twilight’s spirits began to lift. “You really are a “glass half full” pony, aren’t you?”

Now Pinkie just looked confused. “Why would I be a glass half full of punch?”

“What? Oh, no, it’s an idiom. It’s a way of gauging somepony’s optimistic or pessimistic outlook by presenting them with a glass at half capacity, and their response to whether it’s half full or half empty is intended to be indicative of how well they take any given situation. You’re always one to smile and find the silver linings in bad situations is all I’m saying.”

Pinkie still looked puzzled. “But why would I have a glass only half full of punch? Unless I’d already drunk the first half. Then I’d just finish the second half and go get more punch!”

Twilight laughed a little at this. “They don’t make them like they made you, do they?”

Pinkie put on a big, cheery smile. “Nope!”

Twilight chuckled again. “Well,” she started gearing up for lecture mode, “since being in this dream has given us a lot of time on our hooves now, let me share what I do know about this magic…”

- - - - - -

“And that’s how the mind creates these worlds.” Twilight explained to Pinkie. “The same physics and functions of the spell that force the mind into a dream are what spur the mind to create that dream. Still following me?”

“Yeah,” Pinkie replied. She looked very much like a schoolfilly who’d become tired of the lesson… or Rainbow Dash when Twilight was explaining just about anything. Twilight had tried to keep the complete descriptiveness to a minimum, but the sheer complexity of the magic meant she’d been talking for over half an hour, and Pinkie had started to become fidgety.

“Now, most of the scientific laws and physics of the real world that function in the dream are driven by the subconscious. Gravity, momentum, the five senses, interaction with physical objects of other ponies, everything is directed subconsciously based on how we are accustomed to it.” Twilight paused for a second of thought. “Though come to think of it, since we’re in your dream, I wouldn’t expect everything to function normally.”

“Wait,” Pinkie perked up. “We’re in my dream?”

”Indeed. Thanks to your previous interception, I knew it was possible for the caster to create and host a dream and for others to enter. I wanted to see if somepony else could host the dream, but for a different pony to be the one to create the dream.” Twilight smiled, proud of herself. “That hypothesis is now confirmed. Anyway, like I was saying, the mind creates the dream and then channels that dream back to itself, creating a cycle of creation and perception so long as the spell remains active. But even though we’re asleep, we’re still conscious in the dream. So we can interact with it, even manipulate it”

“Interact and manipulate it?” Pinkie’s interest had been renewed. “How?”

“Well, see the ponies around us?” Twilight asked, to which Pinkie nodded. “They’re not actually real, they’re just projections from our subconscious being driven like everything else in the dream. My mind says there should be ponies in a place like this, so my subconscious puts them there. You could even go up to somepony and talk to them, and my subconscious will carry the conversation.”

Pinkie bolted out of her seat at the nearest pony, enticed by the prospect of befriending and hosting a party for every projection in the dream.

“Hi, I’m Pinkie Pie!” she blurted to the nearest pony, a thin stallion with greasy black hair and a slim moustache. “What’s your name? Want to be friends? How’s your food?”

The stallion just looked perturbed. “Il était magnifique jusqu'à ce que quelque poney jugé qu'il était approprié pour interrompre!” A pensive look came across his face. “Pourquoi suis-je encore avoir cette conversation avec vous? Vous ne parlez pas français, je suis prêt à parier il fallait copier-coller ce que je dis dans ce traducteur sur google juste pour en arriver là! L'enfer, c'est comme ça que l'écrivain terriblement grossier et inculte était encore capable d'écrire cela en premier lieu!” He responded as curtly as he could before turning back to his meal, muttering to himself. “Touristes fichu…”

Pinkie scrunched up her face at the offense, then trotted back to their table. “Geez, Twilight, your subconscious rude much?” she posed, irritated as she got back into her chair.

“Like I said before; it’s my subconscious, I can’t control it. Besides,” Twilight said with a slight smirk, “he’s Prench.”

Pinkie snapped her head back to the stallion and stuck out her tongue before turning her attention back to Twilight.

“Anyway, you can do more than just interact with the dream. You can also alter or change it. You’re aware that we’re in a dream created by our own minds, right? Since the dream is lucid, you can actually reach out and grasp the dream mentally, then change it as you please.”

“Oooo…” Pinkie cooed in wonder at the prospect. “Like what?”

“Well take this dream for instance.” Twilight motioned to the city around them. “Not only is this not the real Prance, but it isn’t even an exact replica of Prance. If you don’t go into a dream with a setting in mind, it’ll just pull something from your memory. I’ve never been to Prance before, but I’ve seen pictures, heard stories, and obviously read plenty about it, so when I entered the dream with Prance fixed in mind, my subconscious just whipped up what I thought Prance should look like.

“A tourist’s rip-off of an entire city, built purely with this,” said Twilight as she tapped the side of her brain with a hoof.

Pinkie’s bright blue eyes flashed in awe and excitement like a filly whose birthday party had come early. “What else can you do?”

“Since this is all a dream that your mind is at least partially aware of, you could alter it.” Twilight explained as she got up and trotted out into the street, Pinkie following close behind. “Hypothetically, there are limits to it since the subconscious has its own set of rules that dictate how the dream operates. I haven’t looked to see how far those limits can be pushed, and pushing past them will probably make the dream collapse. But that being said,” Twilight looked up into the sky, “watch this!”

Twilight focused and concentrated, casting her thoughts into the dream around them. Seizing a particular spot in the sky, she formed an idea and transplanted it into the world. Just like in her previous dream, a bright star appeared in the sky.

It was just a tiny speck of light in the clear blue sky, but Pinkie was looking at it with a smile as big as the first time she saw a rainbow.

“Ohmigosh Twilight, that was amazing! The way you just… and then… Wow!”

Twilight blushed a little. “Really Pinkie, it’s not that much…”

“Oh, but this is incredible! Think of all the possibilities! Wait...” Pinkie froze. There was flash in her eyes as a bright new idea crept into her mind. “Can I do it to?”

Twilight contemplated that possibility for a moment. “Well, manipulation doesn’t require a spell to be cast, it just deals with the magical energy already there. And since every mind in the dream is connected to it, hypothetically…”

Another sparkle flashed in Pinkie’s eyes. “Oh, I know what to do!”

Pinkie clenched her eyes shut and scrunched up her face in concentration. Twilight just stared at her for a moment, thinking that she looked very much like a unicorn filly attempting to perform magic for the first time.

Pinkie spoke pensively. “I’ve got a radical notion going on here… ”

Twilight felt and heard a low rumble from far off. She looked off in the distance that Pinkie was facing, and watched as more and more of the city came into view as the entire landscape in front of her folded upwards.

Buildings and streets moved to accommodate the crease in reality and shadows shifted as their relative position to the sunlight changed. A shadow came over them as more and more light became obstructed by the changing landscape. Miles of Prance were now visible from a pegasus-eye view in relation to where they were standing. Another rumble sounded off in the distance, and a section of the city began to fold again, downwards this time, becoming more parallel to the ground they stood on. It continued to move until the rest of the city was directly above them, blocking out the sky. It shook one last time as it set into place directly over their heads, then ceased all movement.

Pinkie finally opened her eyes to look at the spectacle her imagination had created. She giggled as her eyes darted across the scene, from the city perpendicular to their view to the canopy of concrete that had completely overshadowed them.

Twilight merely stood there, eyes wide, jaw hanging open, and mind too confounded to form any words, or even a cohesive thought.

Pinkie looked to the befuddled unicorn and giggled again as she reached out, took hold of Twilight’s lower jaw with a hoof, and pulled it down slightly before letting it go. It snapped shut like a roll-out set of window blinds.

Twilight’s head snapped upward as her jaw closed shut, then shook her head. Still, she couldn’t help but ogle at the sight of the folded city around her. All around her, the ponies still trotted about, carrying on with their daily business on the wall and ceiling of the boxed-up city, seemingly oblivious to the world-breaking changes that had just occurred.

She opened her mouth to speak, but the only word that managed to stumble out was, “How?”

Pinkie just smiled and pantomimed Twilight’s earlier motion as she tapped the side of her head with a hoof, then galloped off towards the direction of the fold, giggling along the way.

“Come on,” Pinkie prodded as she looked back to Twilight. One of her eyes twitched. “What happened to having an adventure?” Pinkie turned and galloped off again.

Twilight snapped somewhat back to her senses and took off after Pinkie, only to halt as she watched Pinkie reach the fold in the city. Pinkie put her front hooves on the street wall, then with a little push from her hind legs propelled herself up and began to further gallop along the wall.

“Hurry up Twilight!” Pinkie called back to her. “You’ve gotta try it!” Pinkie’s ear twitched.

Twilight tentatively reached out with a hoof and touched the street wall. She could feel the pull of gravity on that leg shift towards the wall. She stared at it for a moment, curiously assessing the situation.

Pinkie sang. “A hop, skip, and jump, just (irk) move your little rump!”

Twilight put another hoof to the wall and pushed off with her hind legs, almost tripping over herself as she stumbled onto the new ground. Now two walls of city stood at her front and back, ponies still going about business, carriages on the streets disappearing into tunnels that had formed at the creases.

The energetic earth pony was off again.

“Pinkie, wait!” Twilight called after her as she galloped off to catch up.

“This is good,” Pinkie stated as she looked at all the changes. ”but Prance is still such a huffy place... Hey, I know what this place could use! Some roller coasters!”

Twilight heard another rumble to her right. She looked to see several entire blocks sink into the cobblestone streets, only for multiple steel monuments to burst forth a moment later. The merry laughter and fearful screams of ponies could be overheard through the roar of wind generated from the many trains whizzing by.

“Or,” a devilishly ingenious look spread across Pinkie’s face as she spoke. “Do you know what this place could really use?”

Twilight’s eyes went wide. “Please don’t say…”

“A PARTY!!” Pinkie shouted as she reared up on her hind legs and raised her forelegs to the sky. Holding her pose, the street behind her parted down the middle, and up rose a robin-egg blue cannon of epic proportions. It was so large that Twilight reasoned that any sovereign nation that Pinkie pointed it would immediately declare her an enemy of the state.

Pinkie reached into her erratic mane and withdrew a remote control with a single button on it. She looked to Twilight, then to the rest of Prance, then back to Twilight, mischievous smile growing ever larger.

“Pinkie, don’t…” Twilight stated to say.

“Which do you hate more,” Pinkie interrupted her, “Itaily or Prance?”

“Uh… Prance. But…”

Pinkie looked back to the controller. Her face twitched slightly. “They never say Itaily…”

Pinkie smashed her hoof into the button.

There was a deafening boom that forced Twilight to shut her eyes as the party cannon of mass delight detonated a charge that knocked itself back into a building at the end of the street.

Twilight’s ears were still ringing when she opened her eyes again. Streamers, banners, and balloons adorned every building, window, and streetlamp. All the produce and fine wine of the restaurants and vendors lining the streets had now been replaced with pastries, cakes, and soda. All of the water fountains that dotted this part of the town were now gushing out punch. The once pretentious and snobbish herds of ponies that walked the streets with their noses in the air were now jovially participating in multiple party games that had broken out over the city. And everypony, herself and Pinkie included, was now wearing a party hat.

“Pinkie, go easy with the manipulation!” Twilight called out.

“Don’t worry Twilight; Pinkie’s just doing what Pinkie does best!” she chirped back, then blinked, holding the smile on her face perfectly still. Twilight watched as Pinkie’s pupils slowly began to shrink and drift apart. Pinkie blinked again, and her eyes were perfectly fine. She galloped off towards the nearest fountain.

Twilight pulled the party hat off her head and looked around with concern. This was more than she’d ever interfered with a dream: more than she’d ever even thought possible. She didn’t know if the dream would be able to take much more of Pinkie’s antics.

She closed her eyes and reached out to the matrices of the dream world, looking to see how well they were holding up. Upon her first glance, she found that they were, even in spite of all the activity and hubbub.

That’s a relief, Twilight thought as she continued her scans. Maybe how much a subconscious can take varies upon the pony hosting the dream. She chuckled slightly to herself. That’s Pinkie Pie for… wait…

She’d found something; a small anomaly was emanating from what she fathomed was Pinkie’s subconscious in the overall scheme. Twilight felt her heart skip a beat, fearing it could threaten the entire dream. She prodded it further.

First impressions lead her to believe that its existence was indeed a sign of the dream world’s growing instability, but not as staggering a threat as Twilight had initially feared. It was definitely caused by a wear in the fabric of the imagined reality, but what exactly it was she couldn’t tell.

“Pinkie, you need to stop the manipulation!” Twilight urged. “I’m detecting an anomaly in the dreamscape, and I think your interference with it is endangering its structural integrity!”

Pinkie’s head snapped up from underneath the flow of punch she’d placed it under, an expression of disturbing inspiration growing on her face. “You know what I’d really, REALLY love to see again?”

“Pinkie, this is seri…”

Pinkie cut Twilight off as she got up and galloped off several paces. Pinkie scrunched up her face in concentration, and a single cloud formed over her friend’s head. Twilight gasped.

It was pink, with a fluffy texture and a slight glint to it.

“Pinkie, are you crazy?!” Twilight barked, panicked.

Pinkie looked her square in eye. “Yep!” She tilted her head back, opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue expectantly. Then the chocolate rain began to fall.

She knew it was Pinkie’s doing, but seeing those clouds again overwhelmed Twilight with a sense of foreboding. She reached out to check the anomaly with her mind again, only to find that she didn’t need to; Twilight could feel it, and judging by the look on her face and that she’d actually ceased her indulgence, so could Pinkie.

It felt ominous and dreadful, like a ghost that had been locked up.

“Ah… ah… Ah-CHOO!” Pinkie sneezed with the power of gale-force winds at the ground. It flung her up into the air, and she landed with an “Oof!” next to Twilight.

Pinkie shook her head, dazed from her rough landing, then looked back to the puddle of chocolate that had formed underneath the cloud. “Ew, gross!”

Twilight felt repulsed by what looked like extremely large globs of bloody snot sprayed onto the ground. At second glance, she realized they didn’t look like snot as much as they looked like neurons: diseased and red from inflammation. She felt the same feeling as she did when prodding the anomaly. It was terrifying and… familiar.

The air became gray and hazy. With a burst of thunder and lightning came forth harrowing winds that whipped Twilight and Pinkie in the face, forcing them to shut their eyes.

A moment passed before Twilight dared open her eyes enough to squint. She caught an occasional glimpse at the anomaly through the fog via silhouettes caused by frequent flashes of lightning. She watched as the anomaly grew and stretched. The web of nuclei and axons became thicker to form a long and slender body, convulsing as it expanded. Separate segments branched outwards, forming what appeared to be uneven appendages. One end stretched and morphed into a long, gaunt head. Twilight watched as a mouth at the end of its face opened, revealing a single snaggletooth as it let out a low chuckle that made the mane on the back of her neck stand on end.

Pinkie’s eyes snapped open when she heard it too, both her’s and Twilight’s blood running cold at the sound.

“It’s…” Twilight squeaked out before a final blast of air forced her eyes shut again. A moment passed before she found the courage to open them. When she did, she found herself staring at a pair of asymmetrical, red and yellow eyes.

“An old friend?”

Twilight and Pinkie shrieked simultaneously in terror upon seeing him again.

“DISCORD!”

The old draconequus threw his head back and let out a wicked laugh towards the lightning crashing down from the sky. In an instant, he snapped his head back towards them, a huge smile splayed on his crooked face before it became obstructed by a large camera.

A bright light from the flash temporarily blinded them. When their visions cleared of the burning after-image, another spike of fear struck them; Discord had disappeared.

“Where’d he—AH!” Twilight and Pinkie both let out a small scream as Discord swooped in from behind them, snatching the pair up in his arms.

“What’d I tell you,” he said as he showed them the back of the camera, where a bright screen clearly displayed a picture of Twilight and Pinkie. Their faces bore looks of pure terror and shock. “Priceless! Now I just need one of all six of you…”

Twilight lit her horn. She and Pinkie vanished from Discord’s grasp and reappeared with some distance between them, taking up defensive stances against their old adversary.

“What are you doing here, Discord?” Twilight demanded, focused and prepared for battle. “Why are you here?” She looked puzzled for a moment “How did you get here?” Her stern focus returned. “What are you up to?”

“Whoa, easy; one question at a time, if you will.” Discord responded, putting his hands up. “To which I must answer with a question of my own: why must I always be up to something, Twilight?”

“You’re Discord,” Twilight said. “You’re always up to something.”

His response was nonchalant. “Hmm, touché. Well, you caught me. I figured since my last campaign against you girls failed, I’d take my schemes in a new direction this time. I was thinking of perhaps starting a little underground club where ponies could meet up to beat the snot out of each other as some radical form of overly-masculine psychotherapy.“

Twilight just stared, dumbfounded.

Pinkie facehoofed. “You’re breaking the first two rules, nimrod.”

Twilight’s jaw hit the ground.

“Hell-OOOO?” Discord interjected. “Perhaps we haven’t met; I’m Discord, Spirit of Disharmony. I’m The Ghost of Chaos Past, Present and Future, all rolled up into one easily affordable package!” He smirked. “Caveat emptor.

“What else would I be here to do? Maybe you didn’t get the memo? I spread chaos. But from the looks of things,” Discord let his sentence hang for a moment as he looked around them, reaching out to munch on the cotton candy cloud and enjoy the view. “It would seem that is already in capable enough hooves.”

With a burst of light Discord appeared next to Pinkie, snaking around her with his lithe form. “You always were my favorite of your little troop, did you know that? And not just because of your sense of humor.” Discord commented as he pointed to her with his talon.

Pinkie recoiled from his claw, eyes locked on the cruel point in fear. She still remembered what had happened the last time he’d poked her with it.

To Twilight’s surprise, Discord looked at Pinkie with curious uncertainty. He looked at the cowering pony, then to the talons that she seemed to be terrified of, then slowly turned back to Pinkie with a devilish smile.

“Oh yeah... I made several mistakes last time, perhaps another I should add to the list was… politely suggesting that you should have decided to become such an irritable little grump. Maybe instead of… borrowing your sense of humor, I should have just left it there, but with some modifications of my own. You already seem to have a knack for chaos.“

Discord glanced at the folded city again. “Imagine what we could accomplish together if instead of some isolated grouch, you were an invaluable ally... if all of you were allies…”

He then looked to Twilight, and if it was possible, he looked even more devilish. “Imagine if the bearers to the Elements of Harmony served their greatest nemesis...”

Twilight teleported Pinkie away from Discord back to her side, and furrowed her brow even more.

“So long as you’re taking up all of my time with your monologuing, how about you at least give me the courtesy of answering the rest of my questions?” she sassed. “Like for starters, how did you manage to break free this time?”

A hint of contempt briefly flashed upon Discord’s face before it disappeared under a juvenile smile. “You really are quite brooding, you know that? No wonder Celestia looks upon you with such high favor.”

He put his paw to his chin and thoughtfully stroked his goatee for a moment. “Do you really need to know anything more than that I am the embodiment of entropy? A deity of disarray? Even with your precious Elements, you can’t keep this kind of chaos contained forever.”

Twilight became even more tense. “You still haven’t answered my question.”

Discord smirked. “Celestia’s finest at her finest. But you’re right, I haven’t.”

Twilight gave a little exacerbated groan over Discord’s typical hubris. “You never cease to surprise me as much as you frustrate me, Discord. It’s not like you to pass up an opportunity to gloat…” Then a thought hit her.

“You’re not Discord…” Twilight said.

Discord remained silent.

“You can’t be; the real Discord thinks too highly of himself to make a grand entrance by being sneezed out by a pony, and while we’re sleeping in a dream world, no less. If you were actually free and darkening Ponyville with your twisted magic, you’d probably be scribbling moustaches on our faces right now.”

Both Pinkie and Discord snorted at this.

“You’re just a projection; you’re not actually here. The real Discord is still in Canterlot, imprisoned in stone—”

“Oh, don’t remind me!” Discord groaned. “No wonder Celestia is so fond of you; you’re as keen on attempting to foil my little games as much as you seem intent on taking the fun out of them.”

He sighed and conceded with dejection. “You’re right. I am a mere shadow of a far more grand design."

“So how does a projection like you end up here with a form like Discord’s?” Twilight asked.

Discord’s dastardly charisma started to creep its way back onto the projection’s face. “I’m just a projection, aren’t I? I’m a mere figment of somepony’s imagination. Perhaps I’m not the one you should be asking…” Its gaze fell intently on Pinkie Pie.

Twilight looked back to her, jarred.

“Pinkie? How… why did you summon a projection of Discord?”

“I… I don’t know, I d-didn’t mean to!” Pinkie stammered in her defense. “It’s my subconscious, I can’t control it!”

Discord chuckled as he slowly moved off the ground, swimming through the air in a wave motion, circling the two ponies like a predator.

“I may not be the one true Discord, or actually here in the flesh… or mind, to be accurate, but all you memories and fears of me, all your speculations and first-hoof knowledge of my power, and the lingering shreds of me when I seized your very essence: those are here, as parts of your very own minds.” Discord snickered. “Chaos lives in everything.” He drifted back to the ground, voice and eyes saturated with sinister motives.

“’Dreams feel real while we’re in them,’” he said to Twilight. It sent a shiver down her spine that he somehow knew that quote. “With everything in both of your minds that animates me here in dreamland, as far as you should be concerned, I am Discord, and I am very, very much real.”

Twilight gulped and her ears had folded back against her head, but she shook off as much trepidation as she could and looked back with steely resolve. “No, you’re not. Even if our memories created you, you could never be as much as the real Discord was. And we’re not in Equestria, we’re in dreamland. If you’re just one screwed up imaginary friend of ours, in this state of mind, we have more power than you.”

At that, Discord fell to the ground, holding his gut as he thrashed about on the street, laughing harder than either of them had ever heard him laugh before.

Discord could barely speak in between laughs. “Oh, you think… You think that you can beat me at my own game? BWA-HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHAHAha…ha ha ha, oh… Oh wait, you’re serious?” he asked, getting a look the hardening look on Twilight’s face. ”Well, pfft, allow me to laugh even harder! AH HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

“Oh… oh, that’s rich! It really is a pity that I’m just a projection; you girls are too much fun.” Discord said as he wiped a tear from his eye. “Awful pity, really.”

“Why, because Mr. Meanie-Pants here is still just a trophy statue hidden away in Canterlot?” Pinkie Pie spat.

Discord sighed. “Must you be intent as Twilight to point out the painfully obvious? We’ve established this already. In fact, unless the Elements can grant their bearers immortality, or some other event sets me free again, I’ll probably still be trapped in stone even after all of you are dead and gone.”

Suddenly, Discord froze and any sign of his usual bemusement vanished from his face, his expression blank as he realized what he said. He looked away, and for a moment, Twilight thought that he actually looked sad… but in a way that was completely deadpanned.

“Well then!” Discord sprung back up with a big, dopey smile and bright eyes, clapping his hands together with a sound of a bowling ball striking the pins. “I suppose we’ll just have to make up for all that lost time then, won’t we?”

Twilight pointed her horn at Discord. “Are you ready for this, Pinkie?”

”Pinkie?”

Twilight looked, but Pinkie wasn’t next to her. She heard a gurgling come from another direction, and looked to see Pinkie sitting underneath the pink cloud again, happily gulping up as much chocolate rain as she could hold within her mouth.

“Pinkie!”

“Just a second!” she called back with her cheeks stuffed. She caught a little more in the mouth, gulped it down, then hopped right next back to Twilight. “Okay! GRRR!”

The three stood in a stand-off, both sides staring at the other, waiting for the other to make a move first. Moments passed, and none of them moved. Each second was saturated with tension. The streets were now empty save for the two ponies and the draconequus. An ominous breeze brushed passed them as if it too wished to escape from the coming fire. A lone tumbleweed rolled down the street across the scene.

“DRAW!” Discord yelled.

Twilight tensed and charged up a concussion spell, but lost concentration when she saw what Discord was doing. He was acting out exactly what he yelled, scribbling furiously on a sketchbook with a pencil that he’d pulled both out of nowhere.

Twilight regretted letting her guard down as soon as she saw him reach into the sketchbook and withdrew what he’d been working on: an absurdly large, shoulder-mounted cannon, affixed with several laser designators, and equipped with a belt of rockets hanging out of one side, all of which literally had her name on them.

Discord pointed the weapon at her with a wild, ballistic look in his eyes. “Arrivederci!”

There was a tremendous boom as Discord fired his weapon. Twilight threw up a shield dome around the both of them before the rocket smashed into the defensive magic. To her horror she saw the shield disappear immediately, and found herself holding a mere umbrella with her magic.

Twilight heard another whoosh from the rocket launcher and dropped the umbrella, dodge-rolling away from it to see the rocket blast the umbrella and turn it into a pile of sugar.

“What the hay is with the rockets?!” Twilight yelled as she teleported away from another. She braced herself against the hammering shockwave and deafening roar of the explosion. The flash and heat from the explosion seared her eyes and pungent smell of burning sulfur and potassium nitrate made her gag... then the fiery explosion turned into a blob of pudding.

“A little party cannon of my own!” Discord yelled over the rhythmic explosions from his weapon.

Twilight realized something; Discord had only been shooting at her. Twilight looked back at Pinkie.

Pinkie had yet to move at all. She sat in the same spot she was in when the fight started, feverishly doodling in a sketchbook of her own.

“Pinkie!”

“Just gimme one more second!” Pinkie called back. “Okay, I got it!”

With that, Pinkie plunged her own hoof into the paper. To Twilight’s shock, she felt a tugging on her tail, and suddenly she felt herself pulled back away from a rocket that was headed straight for her, though the paper, and into Pinkie’s grasp.

“What the—”

Pinkie put a foreleg around Twilight’s neck and moved her head down so her horn pointed towards Discord. Suddenly, Twilight felt her horn ignite with extraordinary power as Pinkie began to vigorously crack her tail around in a circle. A flurry of lasers flew through the air, forcing Discord to take evasive maneuvers from the onslaught.

“Just like old times, huh Twilight?” Pinkie asked through her gleeful smile as she steered the hailstorm of magical blasts at Discord with her own personal gatling laser.

“Yeah, just like old times…” Twilight murmured.

Pinkie began to cackle as she continued to lay down her assault, yelling in a booming voice as the lasers tore through the dream. “BWA HA HA HA HA, CRY SOME MORE!”

Discord zipped around the street, mocking Pinkie as her shots continued to hit nothing but air. “Can’t catch me! Can’t catch me!” he teased as he bounced from place to place, using his tail as a pogo stick.

“Pinkie, you need to fire at where he’s going to be, not where he already is! Or…” Twilight paused as a thought passed through her head.

“Man, you really need to work on your ai-AAAAAAAAAAA...” Discord’s voiced carried away into the distance as he fell through a hole in the street.

Twilight smirked as they heard the sound of a splash come up from the newly installed mare-hole, its heavy lid placed off to the side.

Twilight smirked. “You’re not the only one who can come up with a little mayhem, Discord.”

Pinkie zipped over to the sewer opening. “Now for a little mayhem of my own!” She held out what looked like a green sponge cut into the shape of a lizard over the hole, dropped it in, closed the mare-hole, and galloped off.

A slight rumble was heard from under the ground, then a low, booming hiss.

“No, bad lizard!” Discord yelled, voice muffled through the street. “Stay back; back, I said! No, NO! YE-OOOOOOW!”

Discord burst through the street, look of wild pain on his face as his momentum carried the giant crocodilian lizard attached to his tail up with him.

Twilight chuckled. “Nice trick with the alligator, Pinkie.”

Pinkie looked aghast: almost insulted. “That’s not an alligator!”

Twilight sighed. “Okay, crocodile.”

“Thanks!” Pinkie chirped. “Besides, “crocodile” is more fun to say!” She giggled. “Crocodile!” She laughed. “Crocodile!” Pinkie fell on her back, paralyzed by guffaws.

Discord stopped struggling to free his tail from the lethargic crocodile’s jaw to sneer at the two. With a flick of his tail, the limp reptile was toppling through the air, Discord’s tail still clamped in its teeth.

“Feraligatr, use body slam!” he yelled.

“Uh-oh...” The two mares bolted in opposite directions as the crocodile hit the ground and crashed through the street.

Discord stood afar off from them, tense and irritated. “You think you know mayhem? I’ll show you mayhem!” He held out both hands, and they began to glow with energy as he charged his greater magic.

Twilight felt a cold spike of terror stab through her. “We’ve got to stop him, Pinkie!”

“On it!” Pinkie reached for her sketchbook and began drawing again, pulling out a grenade launcher equivalent of her party cannon. Its barrel was the same shade of blue, but the canisters were hot pink and the stock was a cool gray with an image of a white silhouette of a pony in mid trot stamped onto it.

Twilight and Pinkie let loose with a barrage of attack spells and artillery rounds. Twilight’s spells ripping through the air while the shots from Pinkie’s multi-canister launcher tore up the street and buildings with explosions of confetti.

Discord dived into the window of a nearby building, glass splashing and rippling to a settle as though he’d just jumped into a pool. For a moment he was gone. The two looked around nervously, trying to relocate their target.

His reflective image popped up in one of the windows, smirking as the light from his spell grew brighter. “Can’t catch me!” he mocked as Twilight shot a blast at the window. Discord disappeared just before the spell hit the window, shattering it into a thousand pieces.

“Can’t catch me!” he mocked again from another window. Twilight shot another spell at him, only to watch him flee unharmed to another.

“Can’t catch me!” he taunted from another window. Twilight turned and shot; another miss.

“Can’t catch me!” Another mockery from another window, and another miss by Twilight.

Discord appeared in another window, dressed in a duck costume and moving from one side to the other. “QUACK.” He moved to another window. “QUACK.”

Twilight shot a blast that knocked out all the windows in a row. He simply moved to the row above it.

“I’m here!” The window shattered.

“Now I’m here!” Discord mocked from a window on the building on the opposite side of the street. Twilight fired a blast that obliterated that window and every window next to it.

“Surprise!” He provoked from another window before it ceased to exist.

“Hey, I can do this too!”

Discord and Twilight both froze to look at Pinkie, who was in a window herself and giggling.

“What the…” Twilight mouthed.

Discord tried to move to another window, but suddenly found himself unable to as the image of brick walls appeared on the reflective surface of the window, trapping him.

“Get him, Twilight!” Pinkie shouted.

“Uh-oh…” was all Discord got out before the blast tore through the window and it exploded, leaving it nothing more than shards on the ground. Then, silence.

Pinkie emerged from the window to look at the fragments of glass. Still, silence.

“Is it over?” Pinkie dared to ask.

“Nope!” Discord’s tinny voice rang out. Dozens of miniature Discords then sprung from the shards of the glass, their combined voices a disharmonious chorus of intolerably annoying calls of “Can’t catch me! Can’t catch me! Can’t catch me! Can’t catch me!”

Twilight scrunched her face up in frustration, ears burning at the indignation. Pinkie put a hoof on her shoulder.

“Chill out, I got this!” Pinkie said as she pulled a vacuum cleaner out of thin air and bolted into the chaotic soiree, chasing and capturing all the Discord copies with her unconventional weapon.

With the last of the mini-Discords contained, Pinkie took off the vacuum cleaner and removed the bag, forcing all the little Discords back inside before any could escape and tied it off with a knot. Still holding onto the bag, she picked up her party cannon and looked at Twilight with a grin.

“Up for some target practice?”

Twilight returned the grin. “You’re on!”

Pinkie flung the bag high up into the air. They both took careful aim and fired a shot at it from the respective weapons of choice.

Twilight’s spell enveloped Pinkie’s grenade in mid-air. The exterior of the party grenade burst into pink flames and shot forward at its target with increased velocity. The combined attack hit its target dead on. A blinding flash and a deafening boom came as the projectiles detonated. A shockwave of magic and confetti burst out in the air over the city billowing outward for a moment until all the shreds of confetti exploded into brilliant fireworks.

Then, once more, silence set in.

“Okay,” Twilight breathed, “now it HAS to be over.”

Somepony tapped her on the shoulder from behind. Twilight turned, and her heart nearly jumped out through her ribcage.

“Nope.”

Discord stared over them, hands still held out, charging his magic while his face bore a smug, victorious grin.

“But… but… No way!” Twilight stammered. “How?!”

“Tsk, tsk. Perhaps we haven’t met; I’m Discord, Spirit of Disharmony and… CHAOS!” He roared as he swiftly brought his hands together.

There was another boom of an explosion. Twilight braced herself for the worst, then looked up, surprised as she felt it pass right through her. She looked at Pinkie, who bore the same expression of confusion she did. They looked behind them, and watched as the shockwave ripped through the city, passing over its every feature but visibly leaving it unscathed. Its roar becoming quieter as it faded away into the horizon, until only uncomfortable silence remained.

Twilight and Pinkie looked around, eyes darting this way and that in nervous anticipation of the inevitable worst. But everywhere they looked and in every direction they turned their ears in, they were met with nothing but unsettling stillness and uncomfortable silence.

They looked to Discord. He too stood there in silence, observing the nerve-wracking placidity of the still moment. He looked from one scene to the next, eyes shifty and devious, like a mad artist staring down a blank canvas.

Discord held out a hand, tips of the middle finger and thumb pressed up against each other. The hearts of Pinkie Pie and Twilight Sparkle froze in fear. Discord caught their gaze, flashed an evil grin, and snapped his fingers.

And the dream world exploded into chaos.

The bent landscape twisted and squished to unfathomable degrees, boiling and writhing, bubbling over, sinking in on itself, and adopting wild patterns at irregular intervals.

The buildings didn’t fare any better. Some were dragged helplessly along with the roiling earth while others remained in place. Some abandoned the ground and began floating in the air. Each one became a twisted version of its former self. Most morphed and stretched into various forms disassociated from their former geometric structure. One turned to a house of cards, another became covered in scales as each window became an eye, and another stood up from its resting place to reveal an odd number of mismatched legs before it trampled off to some other place.

All the ponies that were once hiding now poured into the streets, each one a grayed version of their former self, and wearing clothing of such poor taste that it made even the fashionably inept Pinkie and Twilight almost nauseated. One began to lick the sidewalk like it was a popsicle. Several broke into wild varieties of dances. One mare in particular began performing lewd acts on the pole of a street lamp. Some started bonking themselves on the head, running up the walls, cooking with inedible materials, or beating each other senseless.

A long, low moan sounded from overhead. Twilight looked up to see a group of large, slender blue clouds swimming lazily through the air… only for her to shake her head and gawk at the sight when she realized they were in fact not clouds, but a pod of humpback whales flying across the sky, which had now become an array of various cascading pastels.

The ground rumbled for a second, and then the crocodile burst through the street again, now wearing a massive pair of flight goggles and an equally massive jet pack. It looked up at the whales and licked its lips before the huge engines on its jet pack ignited, and it took to the skies in pursuit of new quarry.

A pony in a space suit was thrown through a window and into the street in front of them. He got back on his hooves as quickly as he could, panting, and brushed itself off to reveal the name ‘T. SANDERS’ written on a name patch. He looked back to the building he was thrown from as a large creature smashed through the broken window, taking a large portion of the wall with it.

The creature resembled a hybrid of a stag and a bull that rippled with muscles. It had a coat of fur that looked more like golden scales, four pairs of ears and three lower jaws layered one atop the other.

“You killed my goat,” the creature growled through its ragged, heavy breathing to the space pony. “NOW I’LL KILL YOU!”

Sanders groaned. “I was better off lost in oblivion!” He galloped away from the creature now charging at him.

The two mares watched in terror as the world fell into hopeless disarray and the logical parts of their minds screamed for a shred of pity from the indignation against reason. It was abhorrent; an abomination; an atrocity; it was… slippery.

Twilight and Pinkie fell on their faces as their grip on the ground slipped out from underneath them, landing on a cold surface and splashing a small amount of deluded water in the face. Twilight spat and rubbed her eyes furiously, trying to get the soap out.

“Ugh, this again?” Twilight groaned.

Discord skated around them, sliding gracefully across the soapy water and ice road. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

“No it isn’t!” Twilight hollered as she tried to get back up on her hooves, “And it wasn’t either the last time you…” she stopped herself, “the real you did it, either!”

Discord gave a lighthearted sight as he did a jump and spin through the air. “Twilight, we’ve already been over this. For everything left of me that you two brought here, I might as well be.”

“But you’re not!” Twilight stubbornly put her hoof down, almost slipping again. “You’re just a projection! You never terrorized Equestria over a millennia ago, you never tried to take it over again almost a year ago, and you’ve yet to try again in vain! You haven’t broken free, your power isn’t legitimate, and you most certainly are not the same Discord that tried to turn all my friends into big jerks!”

Discord stopped dead in his back-flip. “You say I don’t have to power to remake you with chaos?” he tested the weight of those words.

He was in Twilight’s face faster than she could react, his expression pure gleeful wickedness. “Do I, now? Well, why don’t we put that to the test?”

Twilight squeaked as she was yanked upwards, gasping for air as Discord’s grip around her throat tightened. He looked truly malicious, glaring at his prey, and jabbed a claw into Twilight’s forehead.

Twilight’s scream died in her throat from the frost that ran through her. Her own mind began assaulting her with memories she wished she didn’t have, opening up a torrent of emotions that made the marrow in her bones squirm. She remembered and felt as though it was happening all over again.

They’d been fighting for a while and her frustration had surpassed her patience. Her friends, twisted reflections of their former selves, had been at each other’s throats for hours, bickering over the most trivial things while everything that actually mattered drowned in the depths of chaos. When she’d finally managed to get all of them, minus the deserter, together for long enough to use the Elements, they had failed. Then they went right back to fighting with each other before storming off. As she watched them all gallop away, she couldn’t have felt more vindictive about it. She hated them. She was glad to be rid of those so called-friends. She was… alone.

A gaping wound was torn into her that drained the entirety of her colored soul out of her, leaving nothing but harrowing depression. Memories of that day still sent chills through her: the day that the magic of friendship had lost its spark.

All that sadness and misery, the pains of failure and woe of the past tore through her mind in a matter of seconds. Directly on its heels came a new assault of alien thoughts: ones that told her she should still hate her friends.

Hate Applejack for her stubborn and linear thinking. Hate her for running from her failures until the point that the rest of them were dragged into the wake and had to pull her out themselves. Hate the believed Element of Honesty for only being honest when the truth was the easy thing to say.

Hate Rainbow Dash for her recklessness, cocky attitude, and overblown ego. Hate her for her disregard of anything her friends cared about that wasn’t “awesome” or “cool enough” for the self-important mare. Hate the so-called Element of Loyalty for opening such rifts between them with her brazen impertinence.

“No…” Twilight whimpered as she swung her hoofs blindly through the air as if to punch away the things that clouded her vision.

Hate Rarity for being such a stuck-up, snide, pretentious snob. Hate her for her ostentatious materialism. Hate how she hid her ugly manipulation behind a mask of elitist, condescending “sophistication.” Hate that the Element of Generosity only felt just slightly charitable after she had gotten everything she wanted.

“No…” Twilight choked as she begun to thrash her head about from its torment.

Hate Fluttershy for being such a spineless coward that she’d rather hide behind her mane and talk to animals all day than actually socialize. Hate the quivering pile of fur and feathers for at the same time having such a capacity for truculence towards anything that didn’t want to be part of her mushy, “let’s-all-hold-hooves,” stupid little fantasy world. Hate that the pansy Element of Kindness could be both cruel and disgustingly terrified of everything to be anything but an overly apologetic door mat.

“No…” The animosity was overwhelming, relentlessly beating her poor senses to the core.

Hate Pinkie Pie for being so Celestia-damn crazy. Hate that she didn’t make a lick of sense. Hate that all the damn pony cared about was her parties. Hate that she would act like more of an irresponsible foal than even a foal could and then try to laugh off all the damage she’d cause like nothing mattered. Hate that the animate pile of cotton candy would try to shove happiness down your throat until she was raping you with joy for a smile. Hate that the sporadic ding-bat was so hopelessly depressed if so much as one of her gatherings went unattended. Hate the Element of Laughter for being cackling mad.

“No…” Twilight could feel her soul trying to cry its way out through her eyes. She had been beaten back to the one thing she clung to when the conflict got its darkest…

Hate them all. Despise them all. Detest them all. Loath them all.

She was beaten to a spark that she only felt when she was in the presence of her friends, relishing each other’s company. Making magic…

“NO!” Twilight screamed. Her vision cleared in an instant, banishing away the terrible temptations like shadows fleeing from a solar flare. Eyes refocused, she saw the shocked look on Discord’s face as she freed herself from his attack. Then all she saw was red.

“I LOVE ALL MY FRIENDS!” Her horn burst into light and she shot a blast so powerful that the recoil nearly gave her whiplash. The attack struck the projection in the face and it released Twilight, crying out in an otherworldly shriek of pain.

Twilight hit the ground on her back, smacking her head on the street and jolting her with a new slap of pain. Her vision blurred again as her ears rung, but even through her disorientation she could make out the screeching pink blur of fury sailing over her towards their foe.

“GET AWAY FROM HER!” Pinkie screamed in rage as she tackled Discord with enough force to send him toppling over.

Twilight groaned as she righted herself, inner ears whining in protest from moving while still recovering from such confounding dizziness, looking to see what had become of her friend as she came back to.

Pinkie sat on Discord’s neck, knocking his face back and forth as she socked it relentlessly with her forehooves until blood began to spurt with each new hit.

Discord growled in frustration and tore Pinkie off his face with his paw as he righted himself. Twilight recoiled in horror as she saw that, along with multiple nasty bruises and cuts, part of his face was missing completely, revealing a network of the diseased-looking neurons. Pony still in paw, Discord threw Pinkie to the ground and pinned her, taking a moment to glare at his newest victim.

“Impudent party pooper!” he snarled at Pinkie before jabbing his talon into her skull.

Pinkie squirmed underneath Discord’s grasp. A terrified look shoot across Pinkie’s face as she gasped, opening her eyes to reveal brightly colored rings as she appeared to succumb to the cruel deity’s corruption.

“No!” Twilight howled in rage and desperation. She tilted her head down again and fired another blast at Discord. He cried out again in that spine-chilling shriek as the blast struck his talon, stumbling off of and away from Pinkie as he clutched his injury.

“Pinkie! Are you okay?” Twilight cried out to her friend as she tried to get back onto her unsteady hooves.

“I… I think so…” Pinkie replied with uncertainty. She looked up to Twilight. Her eyes were once again baby blue, but there was fear in them, and she gasped. “I’m not turning, am I? Do I look more gray than usual?!”

“No, you look fine,” Twilight did her best to quickly reassure her. “How do you feel?”

Pinkie broke eye contact as she did a quick evaluation of herself. “I… still feel like Pinkie Pie,” she answered as she looked back to Twilight. “But,” she looked away in disconcertion. “I don’t ever want to feel… that way, again…”

Discord let out a low groan. They looked back towards his direction, tensing up again.

He moved his paw away to inspect the injury on his arm… or, as Twilight realized with a slight sense of revulsion, where his arm used to be.

Right before their eyes, tendrils and neural clusters seeped out of the stump and across the hole in his head, fleshing out former shapes and seamlessly refilling the gaping openings. In mere seconds, Discord stood fully regenerated.

The contorted look on his face made it abundantly clear he was just as perplexed as Twilight and Pinkie. He scratched the once missing side of his face with his restored eagle claw, then looked at the fowl talons quizzically.

“Well, that’s interesting... I guess you were right, Twilight,” he said, nonchalantly. “I don’t seem to have that power here. But on the other hoof, my little venture was not without its rewards now that I’ve seen the chaos cramped up in your little minds.”

He pushed his hands out as he interlocked his fingers, cracking his knuckles and sounding off a torrent of clashing sounds ranging from tires screeching to a slug beating its wings. “So I guess I’ll have to stick to what I’m good at…” He held out his paw again, digits tensed.

“No!” Pinkie and Twilight bemoaned.

Discord snapped his fingers again.

Licorice streaked across the sky like wispy clouds in the jet stream. A toaster skipped along the crosswalk before it stopped dead in its tracks, coughed, and ejected a cat with a body of a pastry that took off, running through the open air as a rainbow trailed behind it. The roller coasters Twilight saw earlier writhed and molted their steel, revealing even more terrifying and monstrous rides that could only be described as a knots of psychosis.

“Daddy!” a flying, ecstatic, periwinkle pony with a propeller hat called out.

“I missed you!” she cried as she flew into Discord and embraced him with the biggest hug.

“I missed you too, Screwball.” he replied, returning the embrace. “What do you say we play a little game, just like old times?”

“Yeah!” Screwball beamed, then Discord and Screwball disappeared with a flash of light.

Twilight scanned her surroundings, looking for the pair. “Where is he? Where’d they go?”

The light shifted as the sun came directly over their heads. Twilight’s logical mind screamed for reason as the moon bounced into the sky with the sun, followed shortly by Discord and Screwball.

Screwball bit open a hole in the sky and pulled a baseball bat from the atmospheric puncture, brandished it, and tensed up to swing. Discord picked up the moon, wound up for a pitch, then looked straight at Twilight.

“I’ll see your eclipse and raise you…” he looked off for a moment, searching for the right term. He failed. “Whatever this is!”

He threw the moon at breakneck speeds towards Screwball, who tensed up and swung like mad. There was a great thwock as she hit the moon dead-on, sending it flying back towards Discord. He ducked out of the way as it sailed past him and crashed into the sun. The sound of heavenly bodies colliding was almost deafening. Both sun and moon shattered into a multitude of shrapnel. The pieces ricocheted across the sky like billiard balls, sending various parts of the warped-beyond-recognition Prance into simultaneous noon day and midnight with dawn and dusk making up the in between.

Twilight had to mentally exert herself to keep the “likes everything explained” part of her brain from rolling up into a ball and crying.

A rumbling feeling coursed through the ground before an explosion of color ripped up through streets. Twilight groaned; the same masses of gaudy and ill-shaped tentacles that had been in her earlier dream emerged up from the chasms. Twilight noted one take off after a fleeing pony that appeared to be made entirely out of chocolate.

As she followed the mangled predator play tag with its prey using its mouth, her sight fell upon a familiar blank face and hollow gaze, staring at her from across the street as it stood on it’s hind legs.

“You!” Twilight incredulously barked. “What are you doing here?”

The thing-pony just shrugged.

However, seeing the bizarre omen gave Twilight an idea.

“Pinkie!”

“MAKE IT STOP!” Pinkie cried.

“Pinkie, we’re breaking out of this mad-house!” Twilight’s voice was full of dismayed resolve.

“How?”

Twilight gave a slight grimace. “We’re going to tear this whole world down.”

Pinkie’s eyes went wide. “You mean we’re going to force the dream to collapse?”

“Yep.” She concentrated, looking past the mad world and seized the contrived, cockamamie ordinances that made them up. “Scorched earth; leave nothing standing!”

Twilight and Pinkie began to grab chunks of the dream and ripped them from the matrix. An oblong building covered in polka-dots close to Pinkie exploded as she ripped its base code from the source. The streets exploded in waves and discordant ponies vanished like memories from the dream as Twilight yanked them from the cogs of the nightmare.

“Ah-ah-ah…” Discord tsked his amused disapproval. “I put a lot of effort into this, and you intend to uproot it all? Girls, I am disappointed. Besides, I have only just begun!”

To their horror, the anomaly projecting Discord moved in of its own volition and began to fill in the holes they had been ripping out from the dream. All the debris from the blasts turned into a hail storm of random items that floated in the air. A jack-in-the-box sprung up from the ground where the building once stood, the hole in the ground that the street once covered became occupied by a concrete pool filled with trees, and more discordant ponies flashed into being, their appearances more wild and their behavior even more demented.

Twilight was aghast as she realized what was going on. A projection, an imagined entity from a subconscious, had been actively manipulating a lucid dream world, which she had thought was impossible. Even by the loose rules of what could and couldn’t be, her understanding was that a projection was ultimately little more than a complex shadow puppet that could no more interact with the wall it was being showcased on than it could rebel against the light that made it.

A thought struck Twilight over the head; Discord was just a projection. Projections were born of a subconscious. The subconscious could color the motives of the conscious. That meant…

“Pinkie!” Twilight called to her as she put her hooves on the other pony’s shoulders. “You’ve got to stop this!”

“ I… What?” Pinkie looked to be in a daze, overwhelmed by the fever dream.

“Discord is just a projection! Projections can’t do anything like this, only a sentient mind can!” Twilight paused, trying to find a way or at least a tone to soften the impact of the words she had to say.

“Your subconscious is causing all this!”

“What? No… this isn’t… me…” Pinkie looked distraught.

“Pinkie, you need to get a hold of yourself! I need you to get a hold of yourself! We can’t get out of this alone….”

“No… I can’t… I…” Pinkie whimpered as she fell to her hunches. “I… this isn’t… please, no…” Pinkie had curled up on the ground. Her voice quivered as tears leaked out of shut eyes. “Make it stop…”

Discord landed on the ground beside them. He inhaled deeply, breathing in the smell of victory as he stood over them. Slowly, he opened his mouth, and began to chuckle maniacally.

“Heh-heh heh ha….”

Flowers made of lollipops sprouted up from the lawn of a nearby apartment complex/water slide while tiles of the street turned into rocket propelled pies, launching off in different directions.

“Ha ha ha ha…”

The sounds of rhythmic, imposing stomps met the ears as a battalion of hammers began marching down an adjoining street.

“Ha Hahahaha…”

A floating chunk of land with a windmill planted on it drifted lazily across the sky. A little monkey sat on the edge, swinging her legs as she strummed an acoustic guitar.

“Ha Ha Ha Ha…”

The monkey jumped down from the airborne ground into a bulky open carriage seating three gorillas. The carriage bellowed a strange roar and took off like a bat out of Tartarus, barreling towards an unfeasibly gigantic moose.

“AH HA HA HA HA HA…”

A great earthquake shook the land as the terrain buckled once more as mountain made of candy rose from the ground. A pink and a blue unicorn took off for it, dragging a third, white, groaning unicorn behind them.

“BWAHAHAHAHA—well, that’s new.”

Twilight and Pinkie looked up out of curiosity as a great shadow passed over all of Prance.

A monstrous tidal wave was charging across the city towards them, appearing to dissolve away everything in consumed in the white-wash.

“Okay, which one of you thought that up?” Discord asked, truly puzzled.

“It wasn’t me, daddy!” Screwball chirped from his side. “Honest!”

“I didn’t think it was you anyway, sweetheart. What about you two?”

Twilight and Pinkie looked up at the archdemon of disharmony. Between the raging wall of water heading straight for them and Discord speaking to them directly again, neither managed to say anything out of shock.

“How about you?” Discord asked over Twilight’s shoulder.

Twilight looked to her side and did a double take; the thing-pony was standing right next to her, staring blankly up at the tsunami.

“Do you know who’s responsible for this?” Discord asked.

The thing-pony just shrugged.

The water smashed into them with enough force the shatter every bone in their bodies and tear all their flesh asunder. Dazed and blinded as she felt her consciousness slipping away, Twilight let out a muted scream as she thrashed around, helpless as a guppy in the riptide.

She felt the water rushing upwards, dragging her along with it.

“AAAAAAAH!” Twilight screamed as she lurched around.

She couldn’t see, and her face was wet. Oh Celestia, am I still underwater? No, I could hear myself, and I don’t feel like I’m in the water. Is this…

She couldn’t finish her train of disorganized thought as Twilight fell backwards and felt her head unceremoniously collide with something very hard. She fumbled about, trying to wipe the water out of her eyes.

“Hey, hold up!” a filly’s rough voice called out through the blackness. “Time out! Cease fire! We’ve got colliteral damages!”

“It’s collateral, not colliteral.”

A pause. “You are a dictionary.”

“Twilight? Are you okay?”

The voice had come from directly above. Twilight was vaguely aware of somepony standing directly above her. Daring to chance, she cracked open her eyes.

Little Apple Bloom was standing next to her face, looking down onto her with concern pouring out of those big, peachy eyes. The ceiling of Sugarcube Corner was visible behind her.

“I’m…” Twilight tried to say ‘fine,’ but couldn’t. “What happened?”

“Well, after we ran into ya’ an Scootaloo took off after Alula, one pegasi was chasin’ the other all over town, tauntin’ all the way. Even when Scoot kinda cornered Alula against a wall right here at Suga’cube Corner, she just kept on teasin’ her ‘bout how she cain’t fly yet an’ whatnot. So Scoot threw two water balloons at her, she ducked, they missed an’ flew right through that there open window. An’ then we heard ya’ screaming somethin’ fierce, an, well, ya’ know the rest.”

“Yeah, sorry about that.” Scootallo nervously smiled as Twilight sat up from her spot on the floor.

She stared off in no particular direction Trapped in a dream, see a tidal wave, tidal wave ends dream, I wake up to find that I was hit by a water balloon.

“Wait: two water balloons…”

Twilight snapped her head back towards the table. Pinkie was still sitting her her chair, staring off in the distance as water dripped down her face.

“Pinkie?”

Pinkie sat there, motionless, staring off into space. She didn’t bother to wipe the water away. She didn’t even blink.

“Pinkie?” Twilight asked again as she slowly walked over to her and prodded her gently with a hoof. Pinkie lurched so suddenly that it startled Twilight. Pinkie blinked rapidly and shook her head.

“Twilight, what happened? Why am I wet?” Her eyes went wide. “Where’s Disc…”

Twilight cut her off. “Easy, Pinkie. We’re not dreaming anymore. Apparently, an abundance of water can disrupt the field the spell generates, so we both woke up when Scootaloo accidentally hit us with a pair of water balloons.”

“Yeah, sorry about that!” Scootaloo called from behind.

“Oh,” Pinkie sighed. ”That’s a relie—wait!” Her face tensed up. “Nopony gets in a cheap shot with a water balloon at Pinkie Pie!”

“Hey, wait! It was an accident!” Scootaloo tried to plead in her defense.

“Oh, I hope you said your prayers, kid,” Pinkie said with an impish smile as she slowly reached behind her back and pulled out from nowhere two saddlebags overflowing with an arsenal of water balloons. “And took your swimming lessons!”

Scootaloo turned tail and shot out the door fast enough to almost take flight. Pinkie chased after the poor filly, lobbing water balloons like a catapult. Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle followed close behind, rushing to the aid of their friend.

Twilight once again chuckled both at the endeavors of foalhood and Pinkie Pie… who so often acted very much like a foal herself…

And that’s perfectly fine, Twilight thought to herself as she fought off the chills. That’s what makes her Pinkie Pie, and that’s why we love her.

“Come on, Twilight!” Pinkie cheerfully yelled. Twilight jumped in surprise again as the pink pony practically teleported back inside to fetch her. “We’ve got a hydrated war to wage on a filly!”

With that, she whisked Twilight out the door, screaming a war cry to the heavens.

“Vengeance will be OURS!”

- - - - - -

As it turns out, Pinkie Pie’s inexplicable ability to rally the entire town into a frenzied water balloon fight was as impeccable as her ability to lead it into a song-and-dance parade. The entire town got pulled into a massive free-for-all, the likes of which could usually only be witnessed during winter when she would do the exact same thing with snowball fights. Much like with her hidden deposits of balls, Pinkie had the entire village stocked with enough water balloons that the fight kept going well into the late afternoon. Even ponies generally not prone to sparring like Rarity and Fluttershy got in on the action, though in Rarity’s case it was half to spend time with her little sister and half to field test a prototype raincoat she was designing, and in Fluttershy’s case it was actually her ill-behaved rabbit, Angel, who pulled her into the fight, of which she’d spent most of her time dodging and pulling the bad bunny out of the way of oncoming projectiles.

Competitive ponies like Applejack and Rainbow Dash on the other hoof were having a field day. The farmer had even managed to convince the normally indifferent Big Macintosh to join the fray as well, while Rainbow Dash decided to forgo the use of water balloons all together, instead opting to drop entire rainclouds on unsuspecting ponies.

However, the fun ended abruptly as it started when the local mailmare decided to throw her hat into the ring. Derpy had decided to not only take a leaf out of Rainbow Dash’s book, but in a rare occurrence attempted to one-up the competitive mare by finding the biggest, most unwieldy cloud she could get her hooves on and moved it straight over the heart of the battle. Unfortunately, her weapon of choice turned out to be a thunder cloud. Knowing how bad a combination water and high voltage electricity yielded could only get worse with the accident-prone pegasus involved, everypony bolted indoors faster than somepony could say “muffin,” to which Dinky led her dejected mother home to make a batch of after the battle’s sudden end.

As she watched the two trot home to make the mailmare’s favorite brand of baked goods, Twilight let out a yawn so wide that she felt her jaw pop. The fatigue hit her even harder when she realized that she had been dog tired for six hours and essentially had just been running off a sugar high for the rest of that time, having not used it all powering the dream.

That dream… she’d learned a lot from that dream, half of it things she never wanted to experience. She would have to document it, but later; she could barely keep her eyes open long enough to say goodbye to her friends, make it home, towel off, and get up the stairs, let alone write what would surely be a long report.

“Want me to make you a quick meal before you call it a night?” Spike offered.

“No, I’m way too tired.” Twilight had to lean against her assistant just to get home after the battle had ended. “Thanks anyway, though.”

She yawned again as Spike helped her into her room and onto her bed. She didn’t even bother pulling the covers over her. “Goodnight, Spike.”

Spike looked out the window. The sun had only just begun to dip below the horizon.

“Um, technically, I think it’s still late afternoon.”

Twilight gave a weary sigh. “Save the details for… Rainbow...” She didn’t even have a chance to finish before she passed out.

Spike walked over to the bed and pulled the blankets over his friend, then gently tucked her in. Twilight sighed contently in her sleep and pulled the blankets closer to her like a filly who’d just been put to bed by her parents after falling asleep in their embrace.

Spike smiled at this. Quietly as he could, he made his way out of her bedroom to finish his various chores he’d been attending to before getting swept up in the day’s brawl. After he’d finished, he spent the rest of the evening playing with his pet hatchling phoenix, Pee-Wee, until Owloysius appeared for the nightly baton pass. He let the two birds play together while he left to go make his dinner, which ended up being an extra large sundae, taking advantage of Twilight not being up to supervise him.

He burned through that sugar buzz quickly enough due to his own fatigue, and decided to call it a night for himself. As he crawled into bed, he found it occupied by several very uncomfortable objects.

“What the hay?” Spike questioned as he pulled out one of the objects to look at it in the moonlight.

It was a book, one with a deep purple hard cover that had a gold plate embedded in it with its title etched on the surface: Modern Spellcasting.

He just stared at it for a second, not sure of what to make of the missing book mysteriously ending up in his bed. He checked his bed again to find that the rest of the uncomfortable items in his bed were the rest of the missing books.

How did these get here? He looked to the mound of blankets that contained Twilight. No, she wouldn’t… he thought as he collected the books and took them downstairs.

“Hey Owloysius,” he asked the owl quietly as he descended the stairs, careful not to wake
either the unicorn or the phoenix. The owl turned its head completely around, giving Spike that little shiver he always got when the bird decided to do that. “You didn’t decide to put these in my bed for the time I accidently put mustard on your mouse meatloaf, did you?”

“Hoo,” the owl replied, slowly shaking his head back and forth.

Spike sighed. “I’ll take that as a no,” he said as he walked to the appropriate bookshelf. He shot the owl another look. “And I hate it when you do that.”

The owl just winked at him before turning back to the notes he’d been scribbling.

Spike picked up the copy of Modern Spellcasting as he got to the gap in the books that it belonged in between, and moved to put it away… but something stayed his hand.

He stood there, unmoving, and unable to put the book back on the shelf. He pressed himself, but remained unyielding. There was a block in his mind that he couldn’t get past.

Slowly, he pulled the book back away from its place to look at it in the moonlight.

It was pretty in a way he’d never noticed before.

Chapter Three - The Beast Within

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Twilight had never felt so comfortably crushed by the weight of the bed sheets upon her. There was a heavy sluggishness to her neural commands telling her body to move.

She gave a huge yawn and snuggled deeper into her sheets, not yet willing to give up the moment, despite knowing the bright sunlight pouring in through the window and her increasing restlessness wouldn’t let her stay there for much longer.

Finally, Twilight slowly pushed herself off the mattress, rubbed a hoof across her eyes, and turned to look at the clock hanging on the wall. Her vision cleared and she caught the time, leading to her doing a double take.

“9:41… That means I was asleep for over fourteen hours.”

She paused at this. Saying it aloud really didn’t make it any more believable, but it did make sense why she’d felt so sluggish. Over half a day’s time spent in a timeless sleep where there had been no thoughts, no dreams, and no sentience: only rest.

But for what it was worth, it was some of the best sleep she’d ever gotten.

Twilight yawned again in contentment, stretching her legs and back as she climbed out of bed. Shifting her body almost immediately caused her stomach to groan loudly.

I haven’t eaten in over fourteen hours, either, Twilight thought. In fact, when was the last time I ate?

She pondered that for a moment before she remembered; her last meal had been at Sugarcube Corner, right before she entered the dream with Pinkie.

I never did document that dream. Perhaps I should visit Pinkie again today to include her experiences in my report. She was there too, after all. And…

“It’s…”

“An old friend?”

Twilight shuddered. Her first experiences with shared dreaming: her first partially intentional one, anyway, had taught her scores of valuable information about the dreamscape, but at the price of meeting someone she’d hoped in her heart she’d never even have to even think about again.

She tried to remind herself that Discord had never really been there. It wasn’t his ghost; it wasn’t even his shadow. It wasn’t even a shadow of his ghost. He was nothing more than a projection: a mentally animate figment of the imagination characterized by memories and the subconscious, and he had even admitted it.

“As far as you should be concerned, I am Discord, and I am very, very much real.”

Twilight felt herself go a little cold. It may have just been a projection of Discord, but for what it was worth, they might as well have been fighting him again..

Her stomach interrupted again when it grumbled audibly, seizing up on its own emptiness so much that it actually started to physically hurt.

First things first, breakfast. Twilight sniffed the air in hopes to find a trace aroma of food. I wonder if Spike already got up and…

Spike let out a snore.

Twilight sighed. “Come on, Spike, wake up! You really need to fix this bad habit of sleeping in…”

She paused as she got to Spike’s bed. He had fitfully pulled his blanket around him and was squirming in his sleep. The corner of his mouth kept twitching, every now and then revealing his sharp teeth in what looked like brief scowls.

“Spike?”

He didn’t wake.

“Spike…” Twilight said with a little more emphasis as she gently prodded his side. He swatted at the disturbance, sharp claws bared and his breath becoming ragged.

“Spike!”

His eyes began to crack open as he started to thrash around in his bed, muttering torn whispers like a low growl.

“No… mine…”

“Spike? Everything okay?”

Spike shook his head as he awoke. He looked around the room as his vision cleared like he was seeing it for the first time, then looked to Twilight and jolted back in surprise.

“Twilight?” He was still quite groggy. “Is that really you?”

“Yes… who else would it be? But that’s beside the point. Why are you still in bed? Staying in bed until 9:45 in the morning is a serious amount of time to oversleep, even for you. What time did you go to bed last night?”

He sat up in bed. “Wait, it’s almost... ten?... Couldn’t be… I feel like I just fell asleep a few hours ago…”

“Do you remember when you went to bed, Spike?” Twilight asked.

Spike began to rub the crust from his eyes. “No, but… couldn’t have been that late. Let’s see, I… I finished up around the library… then Owloysius came by… then I made myself dinner, then I went to bed about half an hour later, but…” Spike shifted in his bed, only to find it suddenly very uncomfortable. He peered under the covers.

“That can’t be right…” He pulled one of the books out from under his blanket to look at the cover. The purple and gold plated case of Modern Spellcasting shone in the morning sunlight.

“But…” Spike pulled the covers off his bed to find that all the missing books were still there in his cotton nest.

Twilight gasped for joy. “Oh my gosh, you found them! Her demeanor suddenly dropped. “Wait... where did you find them?”

“They were in my bed; I found them went I first lay down to go to sleep, but…” He looked back to the book in his claws, perplexed. “I could’ve sworn I put them back…”

A witty smile crept onto Twilight’s face. “Oh, now I get it… wanted to get a little midnight reading done now, did we?” she teased. “Why, Spike, I actually think I’m a little proud of you! I had no idea that you were so enthralled with the arcane or æther! Hey, do you think you might be interested in proofreading my thesis about non-conducive disbursement of mana from interpersonal leylines?”

“No! Besides, that doesn’t explain how they got in my bed. You didn’t put them here to get me back for that one time I took my own suggestion and used the floor as one big shelf, did you?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t have freaked out when you said they were missing,” Twilight responded. “In all seriousness, how did they end up here?”

Spike looked back to the books, wracking his brain to try and come up with even a possible answer. “I have no idea.”

“Well, all that matters now is that they’re back. Now that you’re up, would you start on breakfast, please? I haven’t eaten since lunch yesterday, and I’m literally starved.”

“Do I have to right now?” Spike gave a small moan as he stretched, reluctantly pulling himself from bed.

Twilight opened her mouth to reply, but her stomach spoke her answer for her when it contorted so loudly that the both of them looked at it.

“Point taken,” Spike mumbled as he shuffled his feet across the floor to the bathroom to get ready for the day. “You want anything in particular?”

Twilight contemplated Spike’s query in correlation with how hungry she felt. She needed something substantive to make up for all that lost nutrition, but felt up for something delicious: the kind of meal she could stuff her face with and not feel guilty about it until way later.

“Pancakes. Yeah, pancakes, if you would. And lots of them, please.”

“A big stack of Twilight’s Achilles Hoof it is,” Spike answered from the bathroom. “But if it’s alright with you, I need a quick bath. I feel grimy.”

“That’s okay, but make it quick. And don’t forget to brush your teeth!”

“Yeah, yeah…” Spike muttered as he closed the bathroom door.

With her assistant otherwise preoccupied, Twilight looked back to Spike’s bed where the books still lay.

Just how did these really end up here? Twilight wondered to herself as she lifted them out of the bed with her magic and trotted downstairs to put them away.

Before she could put the first book back, there came a frantic knock at the door.

“Twilight?! Spike?!” Applejack’s muffled voice called from the other side of the door. “Either o’ you up yet?” She sounded very worried.

Twilight set her stack of books down on the center desk as she trotted to the door, opening it to the sight of a wide-eyed and slightly disheveled-looking Applejack, curiously bereft of her hat.

“Oh, hi Applejack. Where’s…”

“Have you seen my hat?!” Applejack blurted.

“What? No… Wait, is your hat missing?”

“Yes! I coulda sworn I placed it right by my bedside when I went ta’ bed last night, but when I woke up this morning, it was gone! And I’ve spent all morning runnin’ all over town, lookin’ to see if anypony’s seen it, but… nothin’! And I’m startin’ to run outta places to look!”

“Oh, I’m sorry Applejack, but I haven’t seen it,” Twilight responded sincerely, but then Pinkie’s cryptic words come back to her.

“There’s a thief on the loose!”

“Applejack, was there anything else missing from your house?”

“No!... I mean… I don’t know!” Applejack responded, flustered. “I’ve just been lookin’ for my hat, but I can’t find it! I just can’t lose that hat, Twilight! I can’t!” Applejack started to choke up. “It was my daddy’s hat!”

“Oh, wow… I’m so sorry, but I haven’t seen it. But I will keep an eye out for it. And if I do see it, I promise I’ll make sure to get it to you, okay?”

“I… ok, Twi, I’ll take your word for it,” Applejack turned around. “Not that everypony else I’ve asked hasn’t said the same thing…” she muttered as she galloped away.

Twilight closed the door and turned her attention back to the column of books, telekinetically reorganizing them back into their proper places upon the shelves.

Her stomach grumbled again right as she put the last book away. She turned back around to go upstairs and check on Spike, but as she took the first step, the floorboard underneath her hoof shifted and creaked, indicating it was very loose.

Twilight peered at the floorboard. It was one of the planks that had been used to rebuild the floor after she’d worn a massive groove in it from her worried pacing during what she and her friends came to call “The Paradox Incident.” They never did fill the moat she’d carved out around the desk, but the new panels had covered it up just fine.

She took another step, only for the sound of creaking wood to meet her ears again, this time from a different floorboard. Curious, she bounced slightly on her forelegs. The wood bent under her, and each plank moving around slightly at her movement.

Twilight wrapped one of the boards in a telekinetic field and pulled up on it slightly. The board came out of the floor with barely any resistance, revealing the hollow space, large enough to easily hide several ponies. What Twilight saw made her gasp.

Lying before her was Applejack’s hat. She picked up the hat with her magic, only to see what was underneath it: a cookbook, cleverly titled Loco for Coco. Around it were several unsorted kitchen utensils; what looked like a spark plug; a coo-coo clock; a rubber chicken; several pearl earrings of a deep, flush pink; several planks of wood; and a small collection of various horseshoes.

“Not only was the book gone, but so were several utensils, the pilot light in the oven, the clock in the store front, Pumpkin’s favorite squeak toy, half of Mrs. Cake’s jewelry collection, several planks from the stairs and everypony’s left horseshoe!”

It can’t be…

The things Pinkie had reported missing were far from the only items there. She pulled up the rest of the floorboards to find that the entire groove had been filled with seemingly random items. Among the pile, she saw several bouncy-balls, a snazzy white hat, a bird cage, a bunch of dried flowers, a map she recognized from the Cutie Mark Crusaders club house, a numerous of drink coasters, somepony’s lyre, a plushie of Spitfire the Wonderbolt, a diamond-encrusted tiara, a box of scrolls that looked like they’d come from the mayor’s office, a bottle of grey mane dye, an hourglass, and a box of stale muffins, to name just a small fraction of what she saw.

“There’s only one explanation…” Pinkie had said.

Twilight gasped. “Is all this… stolen?”

“What are you doing?” Spike flatly asked from the stairs.

Twilight gasped again in surprise, and she looked up at Spike. His gaze was locked onto her, and his expression stern, almost accusing, like she was a filly who’d been caught with her hoof in the cookie jar.

“I found all this hidden under the floorboards; I… I think this is all stolen property! Do you know how any of this stuff got here, Spike?”

Spike’s cold, distant gaze remained fixed upon her.

“Spike? Spike!”

He blinked and shook his head, coming back to his senses.

“Whoa! How’d all this stuff get here?” Spike asked.

Twilight stared at Spike, mouth agape. “Are you… did you just... no, never mind. I need to sort all this out and get everything back to everypony!”

Her stomach growled again.

“After breakfast, that is.”

- - - - - -

“Ugh, having eyes that are literally bigger than your stomach be damned,” Twilight moaned as she made her way to Sugarcube Corner.

Her saddlebags were fully loaded with all of the things Pinkie had said went missing from the shop and several rolls of parchment with quill and ink, but they didn’t seem nearly as packed as her stomach did. Twilight’s order for “lots of pancakes” was interpreted by Spike to mean “a pillar of a dozen banana-nut pancakes taller than it was wide, smothered with a perfect balance of syrup and butter, with a pile of whipped cream and a cherry on top.” It was a monolithic meal that he had aptly and lovingly given the name “Guilt.”

Rounding the corner revealed that the sweets shop had been decorated to look even more festive than usual, a clear sign that Pinkie was holding a party there. This came as a bit of a surprise to Twilight. She’d heard nothing about an upcoming party; there didn’t appear to be a crowd of ponies in or around the shop, and come to think of it, she hadn’t even gotten a flyer either stuck to her door or slid underneath it, which was something that Pinkie always did whenever she was holding any sort of get-together.

She opened the door to the shop and was greeted with the usual chime of the bell bolted into the threshold and the not-so-unusual sight of the entire store front decorated from floor to ceiling for a party. There were balloons, streamers, banners, confetti, glitter, lights, bows, ribbons, confections, cakes, sweets, candies, several bowls of punch, and even a piñata: everything. Everything except the ponies, save for one.

Pinkie sat at a center table, slouched over in her seat and using a foreleg to prop up her head, a look of the dullest of boredoms worn across her entire countenance as she absentmindedly twiddled an unused ladle for one of the punch bowls around with her other hoof. Twilight watched as Pinkie let out a long, insufferable sigh and her usual, palpable springiness dissipated.

“Pinkie?”

Pinkie sprang to life instantaneously. “Ohmygosh,Twilight!”

Pinkie rocketed out of her seat to pull the surprised unicorn into a friendly embrace.

“I knew everypony would show up eventually! Well, obviously you’re not everypony,” Pinkie was again speaking in her common dialect of “mile-a-minute.” “There’s all our friends and their friends who are our friends too because they’re the friends of our friends, and the friends of those friends of our friends, and their friends and their families and Aloe and Lotus and Lilly and Rose and Cheerilee and Golden Harvest and Lyra and Bon-Bon and Derpy and The Doctor and Theodore and Walter and Jeff (aka ‘The Dude’) and Zecora… oh, I wonder what kinds of friends Zecora has back home and if we’d be good friends, but… well, of course we’d be good friends! I’m Pinkie Pie; I can make friends with anypony! Right, Twilight? Right? Right?”

“Uh.. sure!” Twilight responded, looking all around her. “What’s all this for?”

“Well, for a party; duh! I wouldn’t just throw all this stuff up just because… hmm… maybe I should try that sometime. Then it would be like everyday is a party! But what would we party over? Life? The sun and the moon still rising? That we’re ponies and definitely not adolescent sapiens? Or…”

Twilight raised a hoof, cutting her off. “No, Pinkie, I meant what is this party for?”

Pinkie froze in the middle of taking a breath. She held a hoof up and looked to Twilight as if to give an answer, but the look on her face slowly faded into uncertainty, then bewilderment. She looked away to her right, pensive. A few silent moments passed before she snapped back to Twilight.

“Why, it’s the ‘Township-Wide Water Balloon War After-Party,’ of course! We didn’t get to have it yesterday because of risk of high-voltage electric shock, so I figured we could have it today!” She cocked her head to one side. “Didn’t you get that in the flyer?”

“No, in fact, I never even got a flyer. Did you—”

Twilight never got to finish as something behind her caught Pinkie’s eye and made her gasp. Twilight looked over her shoulder; a large stack of paper sat atop a small desk near the door.

“Oh no, this is terrible!” Pinkie bemoaned as she whisked past Twilight towards the paper. “I forgot to deliver the invitations! HOW could have I forgotten? I NEVER forget the invitations!”

“Pinkie, wait!” Twilight stopped Pinkie as she picked up the stack and was right about to bolt out the door. “It’s just after lunch, so everypony is still probably at work!”

“Oh… right…”

“Besides, the party isn’t the reason I came here,” Twilight said as she removed her saddlebags.

“It… isn’t?” Pinkie’s ears drooped and she looked visibly hurt. “Oh…”.

“Can’t really have planned to come here for a party I didn’t know about, can I?” Twilight stated.

“Let me change that!” Pinkie rushed back to Twilight with a pile of flyers and gave one to her.

Twilight looked to the piece of paper. It severely lacked the usual festive décor of bright colors and ecstatic fonts that Pinkie’s party invitations had come to be known by. Instead, it was just a plain white piece of paper with the vaguest of invitation information displayed on it, written with a sloppy black marker.

“Pinkie, all this says is ‘Party at Sugarcube Corner.’ It doesn’t say for what or when.” Twilight said.

“Here, let me fix that for you…” Pinkie took the invitation back from Twilight and whipped out a black marker to scribble on it for a moment before giving it back to Twilight.

Twilight looked back to the invitation. It looked just as sloppy as before, but the original message was now headed by the words ‘Township-Wide Water Balloon War After-’ followed by a proclamation of the time it was supposed to be held: ‘NOW.’

Twilight looked up from her flyer with eyebrow cocked dubiously.

“Pinkie, the real reason I’m here is for one, I found everything that you said went missing,” she said as she opened up a saddlebag to reveal all the lost items.

Pinkie gasped for joy at the sight. “You found my Loco for Coco cookbook!” Pinkie pulled the book from the bag and hugged it tightly. “And you found Mrs. Cake’s earrings! And Pumpkin’s squeak toy! Oh, good, now she won’t try to keep nomming on my tail. It’s bad enough I keep doing that when I mistake it for a swirl of cotton candy on my patootie! And all our horseshoes too! Do you have any idea what it’s like having to walk around wearing right shoes on your left hooves? Spoiler alert; it sucks!

“I’m just so happy to have all this back; thank you, Twilight!” Pinkie chirped. “Where did you find all of this?”

“You know, that’s the strangest thing; it turns out that not only you but a lot of ponies have apparently had things stolen from them. I’ve got to admit, Pinkie, you were right; there is a thief out there somewhere. And apparently, they’ve been using the empty spaces under the floorboards in the library to stash all of the things she’s stolen.”

“That is strange…” Pinkie put a hoof to her chin. “Why wouldn’t the thief store her ill-gotten gains in her own hideout? Unless she didn’t want any ties to the hideout if somepony did find it, in which case she’s pretty clever! But then there’s the chance that the pony whose house she stashed her stash in finds it… in which case, I guess she’s not so clever. Unless… I don’t know; this makes no sense, Twilight! Why would anypony be dumb enough to break into your library just to hide stolen goods there?

“I’ll have to think about this one…” Pinkie said, looking off into the distance.

Twilight thought about this herself for a moment. Pinkie’s concept of the thief was completely illogical; it made no sense to store stolen property in somepony else’s house where they could accidently discover it like she had. It made much more sense to keep all that stolen property someplace that the least amount of ponies possible knew about, and where they could keep an eye on everything. But she didn’t know anypony who had the capacity to be like that…

At least, she didn’t know anypony who could fit that bill.

Can’t be… he was just as surprised as I was…

But not at first. He looked angry; about as angry as when I blurted out that he has a crush on Rarity. But then why was he so surprised? And we all know he’s terrible at covering up his mischief. But he looked so… Twilight found herself stuck in a mental loop, and turned her attention back to Pinkie.

“Tell you what, Pinkie; since you haven’t sent out any invitations left, why don’t you reschedule the party for around six or so when everypony is off work. That’ll not only give you the time for everypony to hear about it, but it’ll also give you time to make some nice flyers and include a big ‘lost and found’ event into the works. Deal?”

Pinkie thought about it for a nanosecond. “Deal!

“Hey, as long as you’re here, want to help me make them? PleasepleasePLEASE?” Pinkie appeared right in Twilight’s face, fluttering her eyelashes playfully.

“I’d like to, but I’ve got some other things to take care of first, and I’ll need to get everypony’s things together if I’m going to be bringing everything over here, sorry.” Twilight backed away from the enthusiastic pony. “However, as long as I’m here, I was wondering if you could help me with something.” Twilight removed the quill and parchment from her other saddlebag.

“Oh?” Pinkie perked up, curious.

“I never did get a chance to document everything yesterday, what with a community-wide skirmish and my withdrawal from a sugar high. And when I woke up today, I realized that you were there too, so I figured it’d be expedient to get your share of the experience as well.”

Twilight unrolled the sheet of paper and sat down, looking expectantly at Pinkie. “So if it’s not too inconvenient for you, I was wondering if you could tell me your side of the story in yesterday’s dream.”

Pinkie drew in a very quick, sharp breath. Her eyes widened and she visibly tensed up. ”O-okay…”

“That’s not a problem to talk about, is it?” Twilight asked.

Pinkie hesitated. “No! No, not at all…” She sat down herself, looking away from Twilight with a forced smile on her face. “It’s just… it’s a touchy subject, ya’ know? I… I never, and I mean never thought I could’ve ever dreamed up something so… so… out there….”

“Yeah, I do know,” Twilight replied. “I was there too, remember?”

Pinkie looked at Twilight in confusion for a moment. “Oh yeah, I guess you were…”

Twilight raised an eyebrow.

“And then Discord shows up, and suddenly it’s like we’re shipped to Crazy-Town, and then things just got so… obscene. To think Discord and I could ever be…”

“Pinkie,” Twilight interrupted, “are we talking about the same dream here?”

Pinkie snapped her head back up to Twilight, eye wide. “Oh, you meant our dream! Right, Ha ha! Oh boy… what was I thinking? Me and Discord having… pfft, that’s just crazy, right? Right?” Pinkie bore a tight smile on her face.

“Our dream was crazy enough, yeah, but what were you talking about?” Twilight asked.

“Oh, it’s nothing; nothing at all! Not anything to concern your smarty-party head over. Hey!” Pinkie blurted. “Speaking of parties—”

“No, seriously, what were you just talking about?”

“Nothing, really!”

“Are you sure? Because it kinda sounded like you were insinuating…”

“Do you want my side of the story or not?!”

Twilight’s eyes went wide in shock as she recoiled from Pinkie’s outburst. A long pause of tense, awkward silence between the two of them followed

“I… I’m sorry,” Pinkie apologized. “That was totally rude of me.”

“It’s okay. I shouldn’t have been so nosey in the first place.”

There was another moment of awkward silence between the two.

“Do you… still want me to share my experience?” Pinkie asked, tentative.

“Sure, if that’s no trouble to you. Thanks.” Twilight posed the quill over the paper. “So then, first order of business is actually falling asleep. Do you recall having any strange sensations as you went under? How did it feel?”

“Hmm…” Pinkie pondered. “No, not really. Felt just like falling asleep, to be honest. I mean, I was kinda excited because I was thinking; ‘Oh boy, Twilight’s going to show me this super-mega-cool new dream spell she’s learned,’ and I was wondering what it was going to be like going into a dream with somepony else and if it was going to be anything like last time, or maybe someplace completely different, like a cliff with hopscotch squares chalked onto it, and we could play on it, but whoever would lose would fall of the cliff into an ocean of whipped cream and sprinkles! I’d lose on purpose every time, because I love whipped cream and sprinkles!”

Pinkie looked back to Twilight and was met with an unamused pout.

Pinkie smiled nervously. “Sorry; I can go off like that sometimes.”

“Duly noted.” Twilight made some notes on her paper. “Now then, while we were asleep, were you ever consciously aware that you were dreaming? Did any of your senses indicate to you that you were dreaming, or were you aware that you were sharing mind space with somepony else?”

“Nope, nopity, and nadda!” Pinkie answered cheerfully.

“Now then, about your rather… imaginative warping of the dreamscape through manipulation, how exactly were you capable of making such radical alterations without ever having done so before? And just for the sake of curiosity, just how did you come up with the idea to do everything that you did? Folding an entire world over itself doesn’t really seem a first-step into a hooves-on approach at rewriting the rules of a dreamscape.”

“The flip-world? Oh, that’s easy; I’ve seen it done before,” Pinkie casually stated.

“Wait, what? When? How?”

“Well, I saw you just will a star into being and I thought it was really cool to look at, so I thought ’Hey! Wouldn’t it be fun to see all of Prance at once?’ So I was all like…” Pinkie scrunched up her face in concentration just like she had in the dream. “And BOOM!” Pinkie slammed her hoof down for emphasis, startling Twilight. “Flip-world dream Prance!”

“Okay…”

“As for the roller coasters, haven’t you ever just been trotting around some huffy place and thought to yourself; “You know what would look good here? A roller coaster! Wait, no… a bunch of roller coasters!” Right?” Pinkie asked.

“No.”

“Really? You’ve never thought that before? Hmm, that’s odd… so you’ve never wished Disneigh World wasn’t just in Faunida?”

“Can’t say I have...”

“But you have been to Disneigh World, right?”

“No, but—”

Pinkie gasped in such horror that Twilight might as well have said she didn’t believe in Santa Colt.

“You’ve… you’ve never been to Disneigh World?” Pinkie asked with a shaky tone and huge, sad eyes pouring with genuine pity.

“It’s on my To-Do list. But that’s beside the point at hoof; how were you capable of doing all that when all you’d seen me make of it was a speck of light in the sky?”

“I just reached out to the dream world with my mind and molded it to be what I wanted it to be. Just like how you did it!”

“Just like that?” Twilight asked.

“Just like that!”

“Huh… maybe I should try that sometime.” Twilight mused to herself, jotting down more onto her paper.

Pinkie’s face lit up. “Can I be there when you do?”

“Maybe. But no cotton candy clouds next time!”

Pinkie tensed up again.

Twilight realized what she said a moment too late. “Oh… I’m sorry Pinkie. It’s just…”

“No need to apologize, Twilight... I’m the reason he showed up in the first place.”

“That’s not what I was insinuating at all. But… you do remember that it was just a projection, right? He even admitted it,” Twilight tried to counsel.

“Yeah, well, still didn’t make him anything less like Discord.”

Twilight was picking up on all sorts of red flags over the sudden drop in Pinkie’s mood, but she sensed there was something else going on that Pinkie wasn’t saying. She knew she’d reached a touchy subject and that she needed to tread lightly, both for a full record of the events and to try and help Pinkie if this was still bothering her. For science. And friendship.

“Pinkie, do you know why a projection of yours would take the form of Discord?” Twilight carefully asked.

Pinkie looked off and thought about it for a moment. “No.” She looked back to Twilight. “Do you?”

“Can’t say for certain. It was a projection animate from the subconscious, and definitely one tied to a negative connotation… maybe it was a reflection of a suppressed memory or a less-than-healthy subconscious process. But that’s just a guess. You don’t have any suppressed, detrimental thoughts or memories, do you?”

Pinkie adopted another thoughtful expression: one more tense than her last. “No, I don’t think so…” Her response was more directed towards the floor to her left than it was to her friend. “I mean… I don’t know. How could I know? If I did, how would I know about it if I buried it in a place where I can’t think about it?”

“Touché.” Twilight made note of this on her paper. “Okay,” Twilight picked up again as she jotted down the last line, toning her words carefully. “There’s one more thing I wanted to ask you. I need to know if you have any indication to the extent of your connection to Discord’s projection.”

Pinkie looked back up to Twilight, eyes wide. “Wh-why would you n-need to th-that?”

“Discord was just a projection, but he was able to manipulate the dream world just like a sentient conscious could. Only a conscious should be able to do that. Which means it was either a special kind of projection, or it was something intrinsically linked to your subconscious with the projection acting as some sort of puppet emissary. And as much as I hate to say it, the latter seems the more likely option.

“He… it said it was animated by our memories, which it seemed to share, it kept making jokes about things that only you seemed to understand, and flat-out implicated you when it said that projections stem from somepony’s mind.” Twilight looked away for a moment. “He even had his own party cannon.”

Pinkie’s expression became very gloomy and she turned her gaze away from Twilight, ears folding down as she let out another insufferable sigh. “I… I don’t know. I could sense him when he showed up, and I could tell you did too, but… that’s about it. I’m sorry, I… I’d rather not talk about it anymore.”

“Okay, but… when he stabbed you with his talon—”

Pinkie slammed a hoof on the table. “I SAID…” She caught herself before yelling anything more.

Another moment of tense silence opened up between the two.

“I’m sorry,” the two mares blurted out at the same time.

Twilight and Pinkie caught the other’s stare, bringing about a short, apologetic standoff.

“You first,” they said simultaneously.

Twilight sighed. “I’m sorry for being so insensitive, Pinkie. I didn’t mean to pick at fresh scabs, it’s just… no, now I’m making excuses. I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have brought this up.”

“Don’t worry, Twi. You wouldn’t have had a touchy subject to bring up if it wasn’t for me, anyway. And I’m sorry for being so… what’s the word? Curt? Whatever it is; I’m sorry for being so whatever the word is to describe whatever I was acting like was. It wasn’t nice of me, even if it is a big deal.”

She pulled in her forelegs around herself. “I just felt so scared…” The words began to get caught in her throat. “And…” Pinkie looked about ready to cry.

Twilight couldn’t stand it any longer. She got up and moved to the upset pony and pulled her into a comforting hug, which Pinkie quickly returned, shedding a hurt tear that pained Twilight to have to feel.

“It’s okay, Pinkie; it was just a dream.”

“Yeah, well, “Dreams feel real while we’re in them,” remember?” Pinkie muttered. “Not even to speak of these last ones.”

“But it’s over now. I just wanted to make sure you were holding up.”

Twilight loosened her hold to look directly at Pinkie. “You are holding up, aren’t you?”

Pinkie looked distant for a moment before answering. “Are you?”

Twilight paused. “I guess.”

“Well, there’s your answer, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, I suppose. Well, I should go write this into my reports. And I’ll need to get everypony’s stuff together if I’m going to be bringing everything here… as well as find a way to move everything here.”

A thought occurred to Twilight. “Hey, when you give Applejack an invitation, do you think you could ask her if I could borrow a spare cart of hers?”

“Sure; I don’t see why not.”

“Thanks. Oh, and when you do see her, be sure to tell her that I found her hat.”

Pinkie gasped. “The thief stole her hat?!”

“Afraid so.”

“Wow.” Pinkie grumbled with serious indignation. “That’s just low.”

“Tell me about it.” Twilight sighed. “Well, I’ve got to clean up her mess before it’s too late. See you around… six?”

“Sounds like a plan!” Pinkie chirped.

“Alright then,” Twilight said as she walked out the door. “And again, I’m sorry again for being so intrusive. All this has just been another one of those moments where my mom would say I’m too smart for my own good.”

“It’s okay, I’ve already forgiven you,” Pinkie returned. “But Twilight…”

Twilight paused and looked back.

“It’s not your super-duper-smarty-panty-pantseyness that gets you into trouble,” Pinkie warned, “it’s your reckless curiosity.”

- - - - - -

“Month five, day twenty-four, entry four hundred and eighty-three.”

The entry covered multiple topics: confirmation that the spell could be used on multiple targets, dreams being built in one mind by the mind of another, gaps in the dream being built by memories, outside interference being able to “kick” the dreamers back into reality, and of the sheer, awe-striking power that manipulation lent ponies within the dream world.

She also finally got around to documenting and explaining the existence of projections: the docile, the hostile, and the just plain weird.

A thought had occurred to her when she was writing that part of the entry; if a dream world was based off of memories, she wondered where in Tartarus she first saw the thing-pony. But if it wasn’t an aspect of a dream that was based off memory and instead was some sort of interpretation of something lurking in her subconscious, than she reasoned that she could probably do with some serious introspective psychoanalysis down the road.

She ended the entry with a resolution to keep herself on a time limit whenever she would enter a dream in the future, and to have somepony wake her up when that time was up.

Twilight sighed again as she lay down her quill. This had been one of the longest entries she’d recorded, and she had learned more about the Dreamscape Spell than she had in any of her other escapades, but at a price that she still wasn’t sure had been worth paying.

She had encountered Discord again. True, it had just been a projection: an imposter, but she might as well go ahead and call it his doppelganger. And to think that thing had crawled out from some dark corner of Pinkie’s subconscious… Celestia wasn’t going to like having to hear about that at all.

Speaking of the Princess…

“Spike! Have you gotten a reply back from Celestia about my appeal for a personal meeting?”

“Nope,” he replied from the engraved trench, busy unloading all the stashed belongings.

“Really? Could you take a new letter for me then?”

“Sure; it’s not like I was busy with anything else,” Spike retorted as he hefted a large box of comic books from the small wooden canyon and braced to pull himself up out of it.

“Oh, you don’t need to get out,” Twilight informed him without a shred of mockery as she levitated a quill and scroll down to him.

Spike merely grumbled as he took the parchment and quill. Twilight gently cleared her throat and began to dictate:

“Dear Princess Celestia,

“I was wondering if you received my letter the night before yesterday about my discovery, research, and proof of concept of the once theoretical Dreamscape Spell first posed by the famed Dominus Cob, and had given thought to scheduling a time that I may share everything I’ve learned about this extraordinary new magic with you. And if this is somehow news to you, then… guess what? I finished Dominus Cob’s Dreamscape Spell!

“I look forward to telling you everything I know about it. I think you’ll find it all most fascinating.

“I just know you’ll be proud of me.

“Your Faithful Student,

“Twilight Sparkle.”

“Twilight… Sparkle. Okay, done.” Spike signed for Twilight and sent the letter away with his fire. “Now unless you having anything else for me to take care of, I have to get back to the oh-so-fun task of dealing with the mess of somepony else’s dirt.”

Twilight was about to speak, but was interrupted by a urgent knocking on the door.

“Twilight? Spike? Either of you in there?!”

“Want me to get that, too?” Spike deadpanned.

“No, I’ve got it. Besides, you’ve got your enthralling task of cleaning out a thief’s stowaway space,” Twilight replied playfully. “Have fun!”

Twilight giggled as she heard Spike grumble from the trench, and opened the door to come face to face with Applejack.

“Hi, AJ. Did…”

“Pinkie said ya’ found my hat!?” Applejack blurted.

“Oh, yes, I did!” Twilight pulled the Stetson from the pile and returned it to the farm pony.

Applejack’s face lit up brighter than the overhead sun. She ripped it out of the telekinetic field and rammed it back onto her head. She looked up at it fondly before setting her attention to the unicorn.

“I.. I just..” Applejack was on the verge of joyous tears. Twilight almost fell over when Applejack pounced on her with a crushing hug. “Thank ya’ so much, Twi!”

“Don’t worry AJ, it’s nothing,” Twilight choked out from Applejack’s loving death-grip.

“Nuthin?” Applejack released Twilight. “Sugarcube, this here is anything but nuthin’! This ol’ hat is one of my most prized and cherished possessions. I was unraveling like a frayed rope, gettin’ all worked up over losin’ my hat. I’m right mighty grateful ya found it and got it back safely to yours truly.”

She fondly traced the brim of her Stetson with a hoof as a blush started to form on her cheeks.. “Why, if I weren’t the mare I was and as sober as a saint at the moment, I’d kiss you.”

Twilight’s eyes went wide with shock and her cheeks did their best impersonation of cherries. “Well… good thing there’s no hard cider around, right?” she smiled nervously.

“Yeah, and that I hadn’t gotten to the point where I started kickin’ ‘em back like Spike at Pony Joe’s,” Applejack added, her face still bearing a slight blush. “But seriously, I owe ya’ one Twi.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it. It’s just one friend helping out another, right?”

“This ain’t just friends helping out, Twi. Ya’ done right by me, and I’m offering ya’ something in return outta the goodness of my heart.”

Twilight opened her mouth to speak but, Applejack put up a hoof. “Don’t look a gift pony in the mouth, Twi.”

“Okay, you win. But I’d still call lending your help now charitable enough.”

“Right. I didn’t get much of the details. Pinkie just came over to my place and offered me an invitation to some after-party. She said you’d had found my hat and I took off like a bat outta Tartarus for your place. Speakin’ o’ which, if you don’t mind me asking, how’d ya’ find it in the first place?”

“Well, that’s actually part of why I had Pinkie ask if we could borrow a spare cart. Apparently, there’s a kleptomaniacal cat burglar out there, and for some reason they’d been using my library of all places to hide everything they’d been stealing.”

Applejack raised an eyebrow at this. She looked over Twilight’s shoulder to Spike, popping up from the large depression in the floor with one of Zecora’s homely masks resting atop his head as he heaved a particularly large waffle iron up from the dugout.

Applejack looked back to Twilight. “Twilight,” she whispered as she leaned in close. “I don’t mean to go pointin’ hooves at anypony, but… you don’t think… just maybe… Spike….”

Twilight’s eyes widened. “N-no, I don’t think so…” She adopted a hushed tone herself. “I mean he was just as surprised to see everything there as I was.”

Afterwards, that is.

“Besides, he learned his lesson the last time, didn’t he?”

Didn’t he?

“He even wrote a letter to the Princess about it. But… I’ll keep a closer eye on him, just in case, okay?”

Applejack mulled over it for a moment. “Okay, Twi. It’s just… I’d rather not have to cover up for the lil’ guy again, ya’ know? Still don’t have good feelings about it… and we never did figure out just how exactly he snapped outta it in the first place.”

“It’s okay, Applejack. If there is a problem, I’ll be the first to know about it. And I know I can count on the rest of you if I need help.”

“I... okay. I don’t really think the lil’ guy’s got it in him either, but...” Applejack’s eyes flickered briefly at the little dragon, “be careful. From what I understand, even you still don’t know all that much about dragons. If somethin’ is wrong, it’s bad news for everypony… and Spike. Especially for Spike.

“Well, I guess I’d better go get that cart y’all needed,” Applejack announced slightly louder than needed. “See y’all ‘round.”

“See you soon, Applejack. Oh, and thanks for helping out with this; it means a lot.”

“Think nuthin’ of it, Twi,” Applejack returned from over her shoulder with a smile. “Just one friend helping another, right?”

Twilight closed the door to the library and looked back to Spike. The large wooden mask still lay atop his head, its unwieldy size making the small dragon underneath it look comically ridiculous. He was busy scraping at some part of the trench floor, then stood back up as he curiously eyed a small piece of plastic in his hand.

“Hey, Twilight, do you know what this is?” he asked as he offered it up to her.

She picked it up with her magic to inspect it. It was almost immediately obvious that it was a guitar pick: a white one, with a symbol of a bat on it. Another quick look revealed that both sides had a single word written on each: “monkey” on one side, “corn” on the other, of which both words were very curiously and blatantly misspelled.

“Probably to a musician who can’t spell. Or one of his fans. Maybe Pinkie will know who that belongs to. Put it in the pile, just like everything else.”

Spike’s shoulders dropped as he looked to everything still stored under the floorboards, then back to Twilight. “Everything?”

“Everything, Spike. Chances are that everything in here belongs to somepony else, and we need to do all that we can to give everything back.”

Spike sighed, then grumbled as he reluctantly turned away from Twilight and back to the task at hand. Twilight took a moment of pause; for a second, she thought she heard something underneath his disinclination. And for an even briefer fraction of time, she thought it sounded like resentment.

Twilight frowned, then made her way up the stairs and into her bedroom, and shut the down behind her. She stood there for a moment, mulling over her own thoughts in a conflicted exchange.

You know what’s going on here, Twilight. You just don’t want to admit it, her own voice of reason said to her.

I know what you’re trying to insinuate, and you’re wrong; Spike is not the thief, Twilight retorted.

You’ve been studying long enough to know that there are no coincidences, Twilight, especially with all the coordinate evidence here. Dragons are infamously known for their hoarding, nopony in all of Ponyville has had a history of theft, all the stolen property just happened to end up in your library: a library where you live with a dragon who has shown he has the capacity to steal and stockpile at least once before.

But he learned his lesson last time; he even wrote a letter to Princess Celestia afterwards, and helped fix the town! Twilight retorted. Why would he go back on everything he experienced just like that? And this is different from the last time, too. Last time, he filled up the entire library with stolen goods, and he grew to the size of a full grown dragon within a day. Explain that!

There wasn’t as much in the trench as there was in the library in the previous incident. Perhaps he grew so quickly from collecting too much too fast, and he’s realized that he shouldn’t overindulge himself. Maybe what he learned from the last time was not to take anything that he can’t hide. Face it, Twilight, her voice of reason said with genuine sadness and sympathy, maybe he just can’t control himself.

Twilight shook her head. No. You’re just trying to make me doubt my lifelong friend. I don’t believe it. I won’t believe it...

Twilight looked back to her closed bedroom door, and thought of Spike rummaging through all the things that belonged to somepony else, reluctant and grouchy to remove them from where they had been hidden away. Her frown deepened, and she sighed.

“I don’t want to believe it...”

- - - - - -

Twilight couldn’t have gone to bed sooner. The day hadn’t been nearly as tiring as the last, but it certainly hadn’t been a daffodil sandwich, either. She and Applejack had to haul all that stolen property to Sugarcube Corner, and they had been stopped several times along the way when somepony had recognized something of theirs in one of the carts. She had to bother giving the whole explanation of how yes, apparently there was a thief running around, yes, they’d chosen her house to hide everything in, no, she didn’t know who it was, and no, she certainly didn’t have anything to do with it, to everypony she ran into.

The party had been decent despite how unexpected it had been, but by and large was severely side-tracked by how the focus seemed to be around everypony who had something of theirs go missing recently looking to see if it had been found. To Twilight’s dismay, not everypony was able to find their missing belongings, and not everything found its way to its rightful owner (the guitar pick being one of them). After all that had been sorted out, Pinkie kicked the soiree into as high of a gear as she could take it, eliciting comments from some about ‘trying too hard.’ But even when the party stretched late into the night, several hours longer than it should have, Pinkie was all but begged everypony not to leave, her close circle of friends especially, despite all of them having work in the morning.

Then Twilight and Applejack had to haul everything that hadn’t been returned back to the library, drop it off in the library’s own ‘lost and found’ section, take the carts back to Sweet Apple Acres, then walk all the way back home. When she finally got to her bed, she embraced its warm covers more fervently than a glass of cool water on a hot summer’s day and quickly passed out thereafter.

So she was most annoyed when only a few hours or so into her slumber, she was most abruptly awakened by Owloysius when he started prodding her shoulder.

“Ngmph…” Twilight mumbled into the pillow as she wearily tried to shoo Owloysius away.

“Hoo!” the owl called called as he shook her ever more fervently. “Hoo!”

Twilight let off a heavy and exacerbated sigh. “What?”

To her further dismay, Owloysius went through all that just to fly off to some other part of the bedroom, then began to peck at whatever he was perched on with a talon.

Twilight groaned as she hefted herself up. Owloysius was perched atop the lid of the chest containing all of Twilight’s research notes. It had been busted wide open, and the owl was looking back and forth between Twilight and the open interior.

Twilight lurched out of bed, stumbled her way to the chest and peered inside, only to feel her blood run cold as she saw its contents... or rather the lack thereof.

“Owloysius, did you see who did this?!”

Suddenly, the owl that looked so concerned a moment ago now appeared apprehensive and hesitant. “Hoo,” he replied, nodding his head. Yes.

“You did?” Twilight’s pulse quickened. This could be the thief! “Show me!”

Owloysius tensed up, looking even more anxious than before as his eyes darted back and forth between the open door and the unicorn. Finally, he slumped his wings, then took off from his perch and flew to the railing just outside the door.

“Hoo,” He bid Twilight to follow with a jerk of his head. “Hoo...” the owl sighed with a dose of remorse, pointing downstairs with a wing.

Twilight gasped, then moaned in abject dismay as she looked downstairs. “No…” she whimpered. “Please Celestia, no…”

Lying atop the relocated pile of unreturned goods, before which every single one of her notes was strewn, lay Spike, feverishly convulsing in a troubled sleep.

Twilight made her slow descent downstairs, heart aching from the irrefutable slap of truth in the face of her prolonged denial. Even now, some part of her was still begging to Celestia that what she was seeing wasn’t true, but each passing moment brought no avail.

She approached Spike cautiously. He was twitching and jerking around in his sleep much like he had been the other morning, but his convulsions were more erratic: a cluttered mixture of what looked like violence and strenuous desperation.

“Spike… how could you?” Twilight whispered.

The dragon’s thrashing started to become more animated, his ragged breathing giving way to altering snarls and pained whines. Twilight watched the spectacle for a moment, taking note of how conflicted Spike looked.

Okay, I need to know what’s going on.

“Owloysius, go get my pocket watch and meet me in the basement, stat,” Twilight ordered as she cantered off to the kitchen.

“Hoo!” Owloysius responded with a salute, and flew back upstairs to the bedroom.

Twilight made straight for the fridge, pulled open the door and located her prize: her supply of Starbuck brand coffee. She withdrew a bottle of java, opened it, and began chugging the whole thing down before the door to the refrigerator had even swung shut. She then moved to one of the cupboards and withdrew a large drinking glass which she filled up with some tap water from the sink. Still carrying the glass, she made her way back to Spike and lifted him with her magic as carefully as possible, then made her way downstairs to her basement laboratories.

Twilight began to tread more lightly as Spike began to mutter semi-incoherently in his sleep.

“No… it’s a matter of containment. They’re my friends. It’s the only way… she…” he mumbled as Twilight took him down the stairs.

“Release me!” Spike snarled.

Twilight was so startled that she nearly dropped Spike. She stopped dead in her tracks and looked back at the sleeping dragon, apprehensive from his demand, unsure if he was still dreaming or if he was partially aware of his surroundings.

Once Spike settled down, she took him the rest of the way down and lit a few candles as she withdrew one of Spike’s makeshift beds stored in a cabinet and tentatively laid him down into it. Spike still continued to thrash about, tearing into the blankets with his claws.

Owloysius returned, and she gave him the glass of water.

“I’m going into Spike’s dream to see if I can find out what’s going on with him,” she explained as she activated her neuro-electrolysis polygraph and strapped the cumbersome helmet to her head. “In the meantime, take note of any changes in either of our unconscious behavior, and keep a sharp eye on those charts and the watch. Give me three minutes inside the dream, and not a second more. Once that time is up or if something appears to be going wrong, wake me up by splashing me in the face with the water in that glass… and please try not to get any of the machinery wet. Got all that?”

“Hoo,” Owloysius affirmed.

“Okay then.” Twilight turned her attention back to Spike. “Time to find out what’s going on with you.”

Twilight lay down next to Spike, lighting her horn as she prepared the spell. She flicked a glance back towards Owloysius. “See you in a few minutes.”

“Hoo,” the owl bid in return.

Twilight looked back to Spike. Already her vision was beginning to fade as her grip on consciousness started to slip away.

“Ready or not, Spike, here I come. You’re not going to be alone anymore.”

- - - - - -

Twilight opened her eyes to find herself at the edge of Ponyville, but not exactly has how it had been just earlier that day. The town that stood under the afternoon sky had sustained damage ranging from moderate to severe, and looked as though it had been inflicted very recently, if not immediately prior. Several pony projections wandered the wreckage; some were searching frantically to make sure their loved ones were unharmed, others sifted through the rubble for whatever personal effects they could scavenge, and some merely stared in a bereft daze.

Twilight herself took in the sight of the village she called home, taken aback at the destruction. Her heart jumped with the realization that this wasn’t the first time she’d seen it torn asunder within a dream.

She shook her head. Focus, Twilight; you’ve got to find Spike... So where am I supposed to find him in here?

She began to trot towards the town, quickly composing a mental checklist of all the places that she might find Spike. As she neared the town, the sound of a very distant roar tugged at her ear. It sounded furious and primal, like a shriek of rage, but what caught her attention was the tone; it was the unmistakable war cry of a dragon.

She stopped and turned her head around to the direction she thought that she’d heard the howl originate from, ears swiveling to locate it once more.

Another muffled bellow of fury softly rung through the air. This time Twilight caught it and looked in the direction from which it came. She saw a large mountain off in the distance, the base of which sported a set of titanic metal double doors of curious workmareship. Their fronts were open faced to reveal a plethora of complex locking mechanisms that looked to resemble the inner workings of a fastidious clock.

More screams of fury drifted through the air. Following a hunch, Twilight turned and took off at a gallop for the mountain.

- - - - - -

Despite galloping the entire way to the mountain, it took Twilight a full fifteen minutes to make her way to the footing of the great peak. Her sense of urgency mounted with each new roar she heard echo from her destination.

Note to self; find a way to enter a dream as close to a target as possible.

The target she sought came into view as she neared the tall mountainside. Spike was at the base of the slightly ajar doors, desperately attempting to shut them.

“Spi—” Twilight was cut off almost instantly by a thunderous roar from behind the gates, to be accompanied by a furious voice that sent a cold wind of foreboding down Twilight’s spine.

“I can’t be contained here forever, Spike! I will escape this prison!”

“Spike!” Twilight called.

He looked up in surprise. “Twilight?”

Spike let his guard down for a second, almost causing the doors to burst wide open when the creature on the other side shrieked and rammed itself against the barriers. Spike lost some of his grip, and frantically began to scramble to get it back, looking to Twilight in desperation.

“Help me!”

Twilight was at the base of the doors in seconds, mounted one of the doors, and began to push against it. “I’m here, Spike; we’ve got this!”

“Aw, what’s that; can’t handle me alone, Spike?” the creature chided, then slammed against the doors with a force that shook Twilight to her bones.

“Your imaginary friends can’t help you here!” There was another slam of overwhelming force.

“It’s just you and me!” Twilight and Spike almost lost their respective grips again to another brutal shove.

“Most notably me. Especially me. Only me! I’m the only one that matters!” The door shook Twilight so hard she felt like her muscles were being tenderized.

“Alright, screw this guy!” Twilight yelled in frustration. She pushed against the door with renewed effort, lighting her horn as she strained. The doors lit up with her signature magenta glow, and she began to push against the doors with an exertion of muscle and magic. Slowly, slightly, the leverage began to tip in their favor.

“What’s this? Oh, you want to play that way, do you? Well, that’s alright. If it’s a light show you want, then I’ve got some FIRE of my own!”

A brief, deep inhalation came from the other side of the door, then a wave of vicious red flames erupted from the crevasse. Twilight jumped back by reflex to avoid getting singed. The light of her horn sputtered and died from her broken concentration. Fear seized her when she realized Spike still remained steadfast against the doors, taking the full brunt of the burning assault.

Twilight hurriedly lit her horn again and surrounded Spike with a shield spell. The crackling fire cascaded across the sphere of protection magic, whipping in forked tongues over the metal doors.

Twilight rushed back to the wall as soon as the flames dispersed, but the heat of the fire had left the wall sizzling hot, and it was a challenge just to find a place that didn’t sear her hooves.

“Are you alright Spike?”

Spike was still standing, but his scales were covered in soot and he wasn’t pushing as much as he was slumped up against the doors.

“I…” he wheezed, “I’m alive.”

He tried to smile, but couldn’t when he began to have a short fit of dry coughs, each hacking up a puff of ash. “Twilight, I… I don’t think I can hold on much longer...”

“We can’t give up!” Twilight urged. “You’ll be alright, we just need to finish this; we can still do this together!”

A triumphant and cocky chortle escaped through the opening in the doors. “This one’s over, Spike.”

Twilight could feel its hot breath seeping through the doors and make her coat begin to mat with sweat. Her hooves against the hot door began to scream in pain as the opposite force pushing the doors outward made her start digging a trail in the dirt with her hind legs.

“Whatever you think you’ve got left to fight for, it’s not coming to save you.”

Somepony from behind them voiced their disagreement.

“Oh, allow me to differ.”

Spike looked up in surprise and Twilight looked back with shock. When they responded, they did so simultaneously; the former with a renewed hope in the face of a glorious savior, and the latter in utter disbelief, which was expounded upon when she heard the third voice from behind the doors raise its suspicions with the newest arrival.

“Rarity?!”

Their savior galloped up to the door opposite of Twilight, wincing as she put her hooves to the heated door. Rarity lit her own horn and the door glowed with the azure light of her magic.

“Time to put this beast in its place!” Rarity asserted.

Twilight and Spike nodded, invigorated. Twilight lit her own horn and summoned pairs of heat-resistant boots for Rarity’s and her own forehooves, then refocused her magic to the door.

“What? No!” Their adversary started hammering on the doors even harder.

The sound of another deep inhalation came from the other side, but Twilight was ready for it this time. Right before the second wave of flames came, she conjured a flat shield that covered the sliver between the two doors.

The beast roared in a furious rage from getting a face-full of its own fire. With a snarl, it began fiercely slamming against the doors again. Twilight felt her entire body shake with the hatred of each impact, but with her magic doing most of the work, each blast was one she could weather.

“This isn’t over Spike.” The voice came from the same level as they were as it gave one last assiduous push against the doors. “When I get out of here, I will take away every last thing that you cherish. Starting with your loved ones.”

Spike’s eyes snapped open. He looked up to Rarity with worry written all over his face. She looked back to him, steadfast and determined. Spike’s expression hardened with resolve, and he turned his head to the side to address the door.

“No…” Spike’s voice quivered as his own righteous fury built. “No you won’t!”

With an almighty heave, Spike shoved the doors with such force that Twilight and Rarity slipped from their braces as the doors shut. A metallic symphony filled the air as the exposed mechanisms sprang to life, greeting the small party with a chorus of clicks and grinding gears as the mass of components moved with choreographed precision. The harmonic scrapes as vast deadbolts slid into their fortified places filled the ears of the three.

The only sound to disrupt the orchestra of machinery was the enraged shrieks of the being they sealed away. It beat furiously and fruitlessly upon the doors, bringing jarring dissonance to the articulate automation of the locks. The sounds of pounding and squeals of sharp talons scraping metal and the occasional whoosh of fire made the three of them flinch. Even after the last deadbolt slid into place and a great echo reverberated through the air as a platoon of tumblers fell into place, the beast continued its tantrum against the great doors, screaming with such spite that it made Twilight’s fur stand on end.

With a frustrated roar of defeat, it pounded one last time against the enclosures of its cage, followed by the sounds of shuffling as it loitered around the doors, searching for some other weakness.

Twilight looked to the others with trepidation as whatever was on the other side ceased its rage and opted to mill about. She took a few slow, tremulous steps forward to inspect the internal mechanisms of the door, and found herself in awe of the ornate intricacies of its entirety.

“Wait.”

Twilight jumped as the creature spoke again.

“It’s different this time…”

The sound of movement returned, along with a series of sharp inhalations as the creature sniffed the air. It stopped as it reached a place directly opposite the side of the door from which Twilight stood. Her blood froze when it spoke.

“Is it someone new?”

Twilight backed away in terror as the creature on the other side shrieked in mad hostility and began assaulting the doors once more with renewed truculence. It slashed and pounded the metal doors from its side in unrelenting, unmitigated wrath. At no point in its rage did it stop screaming.

With a final slam against the doors, it snarled, then turned and took off. The scuffle of its movement slowly faded away.

A thick, strained silence hung in the air as the three stared at the doors with a mix of fear and shock.

Twilight was the one to break the silence. “Spike, what is on the other side of those doors?”

Spike looked to Twilight, eyes growing wide with fear. He opened his mouth slightly and wordlessly fumbled for some sort of explanation. Several moments passed without any more of an answer from him than several malformed nonwords. Finally he sighed, closed his eyes, turned away and began to walk off.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he mumbled.

Twilight huffed at this. “Spike, I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s going on.”

Spike stopped in his tracks. He sighed again and slumped his shoulders, only turning his head partially to one side. “Who said I needed your help?”

Twilight was a bit taken aback. “You did, when you all but begged me to help shut those doors. Or should have I just left you there?”

“No! It’s just… Thanks, by the way,” he muttered as he looked away. “Both of you.”

“You’re most welcome, dearest. Anything for my darling little Spikey-Wikey!” Rarity said as she trotted up to him, and gave him an affectionate nuzzle.

Twilight raised an eyebrow at Rarity’s behavior. Even on a good day, she rarely showed this kind of adoration towards Spike. Never mind how another one of her friends just happened to worm their way into the magic field empowering the dream world, and in the middle of the night no less.

Maybe she’s a projection, Twilight hypothesized as Rarity continued to fawn over Spike.

“You’re so wonderfully strong, Spikey-Wikey, shutting that door right there at the end! And to think all you needed was a reminder of love…” Rarity took a hold of Spike’s face with her hooves and placed a big, wet smooch right on his lips.

Yep; definitely a projection, Twilight concluded, and trotted up to the would-be lovebirds. She turned her attention to the fabricated one.

“So, Rarity what exactly are you doing here?”

“I could ask the same of you, dear.” There was the barest hint of ice in the projection’s voice. “You don’t usually show up to lend a hoof when we need you.”

Twilight was thrown for a loop at this. “Usually? Has this happened before?”

“Rarity, please…” Spike implored.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” Rarity apologized. “I didn’t mean to… never mind.”

Twilight turned her attention back to the dragon. “Spike, I know something is going on, but you don’t have to hide it; I want to help you.”

Spike sighed and looked away again, the sadness of a pariah etching into his face again. “I’m sorry, Twilight. But I don’t want your help.”

“But you need my help,” she stressed. “And if I’m to help you to the fullest of my capabilities, I need to know more about what you’re keeping behind those doors, and why you’re so intent on not telling anypony about it.”

Spike exhaled deeply. “I already told you, I don’t want to talk about it.” His tone wasn’t of insubordination, but of pleading as he accentuated his stand. “It’s not that I don’t want your help, it’s… I don’t want to need your help.”

“Spike, if you have a problem…”

“Twilight, please...” Spike was practically begging.

Twilight’s demeanor softened with empathy. “Spike, you’re one of my closest friends, and I care about you. I won’t think any less of you if you have a serious issue with anything or other. We’ve been through so much together, and I don’t want to have to see you suffer through this alone.

“Please Spike.” Twilight put a hoof on Spike’s shoulder.“I’m here for you.”

Spike let his gaze fall as he weighed Twilight’s words. When he did look back up, the eyes that momentarily met hers were filled with pain. He looked in another direction again, and with slow movements of immense sorrow, he took Twilight’s hoof with a claw, and gently brushed it off his shoulder as he turned away.

Twilight stood there for a moment in numbed shock, hooves rooted to the ground. She swallowed her urge to let loose the tears welling in her eyes and opened her mouth to speak, but Rarity spoke up first, trotting around Spike to face him.

“Spike, look at me.”

He kept his eyes shamefully directed elsewhere.

“Look at me.” Her tone was more assertive, but without any less compassion.

He slowly submitted to her command, his eyes filled with resigned dread.

Rarity looked at him intently. “Do you remember that day when I said you were my hero?”

Spike appeared lost in thought for a moment. “Vaguely...”

“Do you know why I think you’re so heroic?” Rarity asked.

Spike stood in silence in want for an answer to occur to him.

“What makes a great hero is the battles they fight and the sacrifices they make. You face a terrible foe, yes, and the fact that this foe is so close to heart makes the whole ordeal that much worse.”

Rarity put a hoof under Spike’s chin to recapture his eye contact when he tried to let it drift away again. “And that what makes you such a hero, Spike. In the face of such a monumental trial, you remain steadfast and vigilant, fighting bravely for not only what you know in your heart is right…” Rarity sat down in front of Spike, lowering her head until they were at eye level. “But for what, and for whom you love.

“I’m proud of you Spike; you’ve done so well. But only the arrogant, foolish, and outcasts fight alone, and you’re not any of those. There’s no rule that says a hero can’t fight alongside all of the friends they make, so we don’t have to fight this alone anymore. And I think we both know that this precarious stalemate won't last unless we do something that ensures we don’t just win every battle, but triumph in your personal war.

“So if Twilight wants to help, you should let her help. All of us will help you, because like Twilight said, we do care for you.” She moved her face closer to Spike’s, until their noses were inches from touching. “And because I love you.”

The most subtle of twitches tugged upward at the corners of Spike’s mouth, and a flicker of life sparked in his eyes, only for the little light there to quietly die as he looked at Rarity.

The projection put her forehooves on Spike’s shoulders. “So won’t you let us help you?”

Spike scoured her gaze, looking for something other than the very real emotion pouring from the false pony’s eyes. Moments passed in tense silence for an answer, then he broke his gaze and looked down again.

Now it was the Rarity projection’s turn to adopt a wounded hope in her eyes. “Spike?”

Spike exhaled, barely above a whisper. “Okay...”

Rarity smiled again and pulled Spike into another hug, giving a little rub of affection on his back.

“Good boy.” Rarity gave him another kiss atop his forehead and a look of fond affection before releasing him.

“Well, you said you had to know what was going on,” Rarity said, looking to Twilight, “so what do you need to know?”

“I need to know more about what Spike is keeping locked up in there,” Twilight said, motioning at the doors. “What is it? Where did it come from? How long have you been struggling with that thing?”

Spike took a moment to compose himself. “Almost six months.”

Twilight gasped. “You’ve been fighting it for that long?”

“No, not that whole time. It had been manageable for a while now, but he started acting up a lot more around the time of the dragon migration. And things didn’t start getting really bad until after the wedding.”

Twilight felt somewhat invigorated; now she was getting somewhere. “When it’s acted up in the past, what has it been like?”

“Pretty much what you just saw back there. He’ll beat on the doors and call me names, or talk down to me while he talks about how he’ll break out and steal everything… usually both.” Spike held himself in his own arms. “Sometimes, he’ll almost break out and I have to seal him back up again.”

“We seal him back up again,” Rarity added, affectionately ruffling Spike’s crest.

Twilight contemplated the way Spike was speaking; she’d been referring to the creature as “it,” but Spike was calling it “he.” The situation was far more complex than what she’d been expecting to find.

“But who is “he?” Does “he” have a name?” Twilight dared ask.

Spike’s expression became even more despondent and morbid. “I… I’d rather not say it...” he replied with a thick dread in his voice. “I don’t like saying his name...”

Twilight peered at him, taking further note of the terms he was using. “You keep talking about this thing like it’s somepony… or some dragon, but what is it?”

Spike wouldn’t meet her eyes. He was fixated on paying attention to anything but her eyes. “The very worst part of me.”

Twilight’s attention perked up. “What’s that? Envy? Anger? Teenage rebelliousness?” Then it hit her, and she gasped. “Greed?”

Spike still wouldn’t look at her, but the way his face contorted with sadness and regret told her everything she needed to know.

“Spike, it’s… it’s okay. It’s not like…”

“No, it’s not okay…” Spike interrupted. “It’s not okay to have a skeleton like that in your closet. But… but it’s not just a skeleton. It’s…” He trailed off.

“The little devil on your shoulder?” Twilight finished for him.

“Yeah,” he shrugged. “Something like that..”

Twilight looked back at the doors. “Awfully big hoof full of salt for a clavicle imp…” she noted. Answers only seemed to pave the way for new questions.

“How is it that a tempting inclination boasts something resembling sentience? Where did it even come from in the first place?”

Spike exhaled heavily. “I don’t know.”

Twilight sighed and was about to ask something else, but was cut off when Spike continued his confession without prompt.

“That day that I… that I lost control, when we’d finished rebuilding Ponyville, and after we took a moment to enjoy the view, I got to spend the whole day with Rarity. Then he just… showed up out of nowhere. We had this really brutal fight, then Rarity baited him out of town with a cart of gems to this mountain. But when she kicked it into the pit, he tried to drag her in too. I knocked him off her, we both fell in, then I locked him behind some more sets of doors down there and climbed back out.”

He drew a wavering breath, and his voice grew very quiet. “Then I… then….”

Twilight waited for him to finish, but he never did.

“Then what?” She asked, nearing Spike. “What happened?”

Another pained inhalation came from Spike, and he clenched his eyes shut.

“Then I woke up.”

She remembered now; the morning after Spike went on his rampage, when she’d finally gotten him to wake up, he had looked upset for reasons other than being pulled from his slumber. When she’d asked what was wrong, he’d said:

“Just… thinking about a bad dream, that’s all…”

Twilight pulled Spike into another hug. “Oh, Spike... You could have told me.”

The projection of Rarity joined the embrace as well.

Spike continued his somber testimony. “It’s been like that ever since. I’ll dream about him trying to break out, and then I have to make sure the doors stay closed. Sometimes I need Rarity to help me, but I’ve needed her to help me out a lot recently.”

“I bear no ill feelings towards playing second fiddle,” Rarity assured. “Especially for one as adorable as you, Spike.”

“Is that why you’re here, Twilight?” Spike asked. “Has it gotten so bad that I need you to dream you up to help me, too?”

Twilight paused, and her eyes shifted. “Uh… yes. You subconsciously know that if anypony is smart enough to figure out how to solve this dilemma, it’ll be Twilight. So that’s why I’m here; to figure out how to fix this.”

Spike looked disconcerted. “You mean you don’t already know what to do? But you’re so smart that I thought you’d already have something figured out…”

Twilight couldn’t help but smile. “Part of being intelligent is gathering information then determining what to do with the knowledge, Spike. I can’t solve an equation very well if I don’t know all of the functions or variables, can I?”

“Well, can you?”

“I probably could, but it’d take me longer and quite a few more tries, and I can’t afford to make mistakes when someone as valuable as a friend is depending on me. You’ve given me a lot of useful information, Spike, and I’m proud of you for being brave enough to tell me.” She smiled at him. “But I still need to know more if I’m to help you beyond just keeping the doors shut, and I think you’ve been honest in telling me everything that you know.”

“Wait, I know that look, Twilight.” Rarity eyed her suspiciously. “What are you suggesting?”

Twilight almost had to force it out; she knew neither of them would like the idea. “I need to see what’s behind those doors.”

Rarity predictably gasped, but without a shred of her usual theatrics; she was truly aghast. Spike’s eyes shot open wide, pierced with dread and fear.

“After all the trouble we’ve been through to keep those blasted things closed, are you seriously suggesting that we simply open them up?!” Rarity shrieked.

“Not at all,” Twilight assured. “We can get behind those doors without opening them.”

“And how do you propose we do that?” Rarity retorted.

Twilight didn’t answer with words, but lit her horn, and a second later vanished to appear instantaneously next to the dubious unicorn, making her jump.

“Don’t do that!” Rarity yelled in surprise as she jumped back. Twilight allowed herself a smirk “Okay, point taken.” Rarity put a hoof over her heart to calm its beating. “But I still say no.”

“Rarity…”

“Twilight, please; you heard how that beast was slashing at the doors, imagine what he could do to ponies! And you seriously think it expedient to practically deliver yourself into the lair of the beast within? You know, there’s an old saying about sticking your hoof in a snake hole…”

Twilight cringed at the mention of snakes. “All I’m suggesting is that we have a look; maybe we can find out where it came from, or why it exists. And if we just happen to come face-to-face, maybe we can talk to it—”

“Twilight, listen to yourself!” Rarity interrupted. “That thing’s idea of negotiation is condescension and fire; he tried to scorch poor little Spikey-Wikey! Forgive my dubiousness, but I have no reason to believe that any diplomatic attempts will be met with anything less than hostility.”

“Okay, so we don’t have to try and talk to it, and I wasn’t advocating we go looking for it anyway. But if it’s planning something, we won’t know about it if we don’t have a look. He could be building a battering ram or a gate crasher right now and we’d never know about it until he smashes the doors wide open with them.”

Rarity took this with a look of concern. “Okay, you do have a point there.”

“Besides, weren’t you the one just a few moments ago advocating that I help Spike?”

She sat and folded her forelegs. “Yes, but I didn’t think that was the kind of definition of “help” that you had in mind! Even if literally being the know-it-all is one of your strong suits, I still must protest your suggestion. It’s simply too dangerous to go venturing into an enemy stronghold. You may as well suggest we attempt to infiltrate the changeling hive just to spy on the changeling queen, and one does not simply trot into the changeling hive.”

“But…”

“No.”

Twilight gave a small humph of disapproval, then turned to Spike, hoping he might be more accepting of the idea. “What about you, Spike? Do you think I should go have a look?”

“I don’t know, Twilight. It doesn’t seem like the safest idea…”

“Don’t worry, Spike, this isn’t the first monster I’ve had to deal with. And if things get too hairy I can just get out the same way I got in and teleport to safety.”

“But what if he hurts you?”

“Spike, please; I need to do this to help you.”

Spike remained silent for a moment. Then, finally: “Okay.”

Twilight smiled, then gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “Thank you.”

Rarity couldn’t help but look surprised. “Are you really going to go through with this?”

“I have to,” Twilight responded. “For Spike.”

She slowly made her way to the massive doors. Looking up at them made her shudder a little, but she steeled herself for what needed to be done. She turned her head around to Spike and the Rarity projection.

“Well, wish me luck,” she said, then turned back to the door, breathed in, and lit her horn to charge the teleportation spell.

“Twilight, wait!” Spike called out and ran up to her, embracing one of her legs. “Please, don’t go alone. If you’re going to go in there, I’m coming with you.”

Twilight looked down, surprised. “Are you sure you want to come? But, why?”

“I’d rather not have to do this, but… ” Spike drew a sharp breath. “But even if you say it’s not my fault, it is my problem. And if something happened to you… This isn’t the first time I’ve had to deal with him. If you’re going in there, you’ll need someone more familiar with him.”

Rarity chimed in. “Well, if you two are going in there, count me in as well.”

Twilight looked back, even more surprised. “Weren’t you just trying to convince me not to do this?”

“I was, and I still think it incredibly foolish. But Celestia forbid I stand idly by while you two up and waltz into Tartarus. I said that I’ll always be there for Spike, and I will be, even if being there means going to places that are inconceivably dumb to venture into. Besides,” she added with a bit of playful banter, “if anypony is going to go waltzing with Spike, it’ll be me.”

Spike had another moment of brief happiness flash across his face, only for it to be replaced by a masked sadness as Rarity trotted up to the two with her horn already ignited with her personal illumination spell.

“Five bits says it’ll be really dark in there.” Rarity said to Twilight

“Alright then.” Twilight grew stern with focus. “Let’s go.”

She felt Spike’s grip around her leg tighten as she charged a multi-faceted teleportation spell. She looked to him with concern. “Is something wrong?”

“It’s just… I’m a little scared is all.”

Twilight gave a small smile of reassurance. “It’s okay, I’ll keep you safe.”

“You sure?”

“Don’t worry Spike, we’ll be fine. I promise.”

Her horn flashed and the three of them disappeared with a blast of light.

- - - - - -

The cave was briefly lit up by a great flash of light as the trio appeared on the other side of the doors, then immediately after reverted to it’s natural state of murky darkness, trying to consume the small field of light around the three.

“Guess I owe you five bits, Rarity,” Twilight said. “It’s dark in here!”

“Think nothing of it, dear, I was merely making a playful conjecture,” Rarity replied. “But it is indeed boorishly drab in here. Look at how little the light brightens up this place. It’s as if the darkness is stealing away the very light!”

“That is unusual.” Twilight activated an illumination spell of her own and moved out of Spike’s grasp. The darkness failed to yield fully, but receded further with the additional light.

Twilight looked behind her to get their bearings relative to the door. She saw its reverse side and gasped aloud.

The inside walls of the door were closed off with large plates of sheet metal, blocking the internal workings from view. The whole of the both doors had been covered with black soot that smelled of sulfur and hate. The entire threshold was surrounded by gouges in the rock, as if the creature had attempted to dig its way out. The doors were completely covered in deep scratches and violent slashes strewn across the whole, furthermore adorned with eerie and ominous writings, cruelly carved into them by sharp claws.

I WILL NOT BE CONTAINED I WILL NOT BE RULED

I WILL NOT BOW TO PONIES

OPPRESSORS TYRANTS FILTH YOU DISGUST ME THE DREDGE THAT WALK THE EARTH

I AM THE HERALD OF YOUR END I AM THE HARBINGER OF A NEW ERA… MINE

I WILL LIGHT THE FIRES THAT MAKE YOU BURN,

AND MAKE A COLLECTION OF YOUR ASHES

I HATE THIS PLACE I HATE THIS PRISON, THIS ZOO

I MUST GET OUT OF HERE I MUST BREAK FREE HIS MIND IS THE KEY

why Why WHY WHY? IS THERE A SUN? I’LL TAKE THAT, TOO

ONE WILL NEVER FIND ONESELF IF THEY MUST BE DEFINED BY OTHERS

THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS IS YOURSELF

BUT…

HER

As the three backed away in horror, a much larger, much more straightforward message came into view, written across the entirety of both doors:

EVERYTHING

WILL BE

MINE

“Sweet Celestia…” Rarity quietly swore.

Twilight looked down at Spike. His eyes were even wider than before, darting across the terrible display in a mounting panic.

“I think we should go,” Rarity suggested.

“No, I think we should keep going,” Twilight disagreed.

“Twilight, look at this.” Rarity pointed to the doors. “This monster isn’t just hostile, it’s malevolent. It wants to cause harm and it talks about burning ponies for sport! It’s dangerous, and it needs to stay locked up. What more matters?”

“Yes, but look; it’s not just malicious, it’s up to something. Look here; it says “I am the harbinger of a new era.” And what’s this?”

She peered closer at some of the words near the bottom of the door. “”Is there a sun,” ”I’ll take that too…” Does he intend to steal the sun? How?”

She put a hoof to her chin and looked into the wicked messages further. “It talks about ponies and oppressors and proclaims its dissention…” She looked to the words at the very bottom. “Who is it talking about when he mentions “her?””

Her mind drew up a connection between the dots, and instantly drew the worst possible conclusion. “He’s plotting against Celestia!”

Rarity raised an eyebrow. “How exactly do you come to that conclusion?”

“Look; he’s talking about ponies like some sort of totalitarian dictator species, and who ever would he see as the queen over iron-hoofed overlords but Princess Celestia? He boasts his dissension against ponydom, seethes about burning down all of equine society, and he says “everything will be mine!””

Twilight mentally poured over this in her panic.

He wants to overthrow Celestia… The mere thought made her blood freeze.

“I believe that’s a lot to stipulate based upon one glance from one piece of evidence, dear,” Rarity said.

Twilight looked at her with steely resolve. “Then that’s why we have to go deeper. We need to figure out what this thing is planning and how it intends to accomplish its fiendish goals.”

Her expression hardened. “But you were absolutely right about one thing, Rarity; this thing is a monster. It doesn’t just need to be locked up, it needs to be imprisoned in stone!” She turned to the gullet of the cave and began to walk slowly into the darkness.

“It’s wretched, it’s vile, it’s evil, it…” Upon hearing herself, she paused and looked to Spike.

He was sitting on the ground again, staring at the floor with his knees pulled tightly to his chest. Twilight turned around and slowly approached him, tentative as ever.

“It’s been locked up in your mind for months. You’ve been fighting this terrible thing as close to home as an enemy can get for all that time...”

Twilight lowered her head until she was eye level with Spike. “Did you not tell anypony because you were afraid of what we might think of you?”

Spike didn’t answer, just pulled his knees in closer.

“Oh, Spike, you poor thing…”

“Well, do you?” he asked aloud, voice full of sorrow and tinged with fear.

“Do I what?” Twilight questioned, unsure of his query.

“Do you think any less of me?”

Twilight paused. “No. Just because this thing is here doesn’t mean you’re anything less than the Spike I know and love. And like Rarity said, in spite of whatever this thing is, you continue to fight against it with every ounce of strength you can muster. That alone says so much about you that it’s...”

Off in the distance, the echoing sound of a quick shuffle and a small cluster of tumbling rocks from the cave walls wafted up through the cave to meet them.

Twilight’s head shot up, eyes wide and ears erect, swiveling slowly to pick up any other sounds of movement. She heard nothing but the thud of her heartbeat in her ears.

The unsettling silence emanated a palpable tension, fraying Twilight’s nerves even further with each passing second.

“He’s close…” Spike was almost shaking in terror.

“Twilight, I really don’t think we should stay here,” Rarity said.

Twilight shook her head to focus. “No; if we’re going to figure out what this thing is planning, we need to do it now before it can cover its tracks.”

“But…”

“We won’t stay here for long,” Twilight rationalized. “We go in a little ways, find out as much as we can, and get out the same way we got in.”

Rarity opened her mouth to argue, but Twilight interrupted her.

“It won’t take long.”

Finally, Rarity agreed. “Okay. But no heroics or confrontations; this is purely a reconnaissance mission.”

Twilight nodded, then looked to Spike. “Do you want to go any further?”

“I.. I don’t want to,” Spike stammered. Twilight slumped her shoulders a tad.

“But we should. I don’t want to go, but… I don’t want to be scared of him anymore.” Spike stood up with as much resolve as he could gather.

Twilight smiled. “Let’s go, tiger.”

With that, the two ponies with dragon in tail took off at a brisk trot into the dark.

- - - - - -

Much of the cave remained empty and desolate as they ventured deeper into the recesses of the mountain, save for an occasional scorch-blast here or mark of claws against the wall there. But about three minutes in, several adjoining tunnels came into view.

“Wait a second,” Twilight ordered, and the group came to a stop.

She moved closer to one of the tunnels to take a close look at it. The edges were incongruent with the formations of rock around it. Instead of the naturally rough walls of stone, this tunnel appeared jagged and scratched, and there was an excessive amount of loose rocks piled up about the floor.

“Did it dig these tunnels out?” Twilight wondered aloud. She stepped into the new tunnel.

“Twilight, are you sure that’s a good idea?” Rarity cautioned.

“If it dug this, it must be looking for something,” Twilight reasoned. “Whether it be another way out or… I don’t know. Some kind of resource maybe?”

But what could it be looking for in an isolated part of Spike’s mind?

Twilight ventured into the tunnel, moving slowly to accommodate for the uneven ground and steep declines. Spike and his projection of Rarity followed close behind.

The tunnel wasn’t too long, but traversing it was a slow process. As she got further in, Twilight began to feel something, like a subtle change in her mind by way of the air. It piqued her interest. Twilight spurred on forward, fuelled by curiosity.

Twilight made her way into a small chamber, and the notion floating in her mind became more prevalent. She couldn’t categorize it exactly, but it felt nostalgically sweet and secure, like how somepony would feel in a place called home. But that was as much as she could determine; whatever the palpable concept was, only a few traces remained. Those still lingering traces lacked substance and felt more like a whim than a cohesive thought: like a distant memory from a half-remembered dream.

Twilight made her way to a hole that had been dug out of the wall. It was clear that something had been in there and the feelings were the strongest there, but whatever had been there was long gone.

She was unsure of what to make of this, but without definitive clarity or context, fully understanding the grand scheme of things was to grasp smoke with her hooves.

There were several other passages linked to the small chamber, but Twilight didn’t sense anything permeating the air within them, so she merely turned around to exit through the same passage.

“Come on,” she said. “We should look elsewhere.”

“Didn’t you find anything?” Spike asked, hopeful.

“The only thing I found was that whatever was here isn’t anymore,” Twilight explained. “Whatever was here, the creature probably took it. Why or what it intends to do with it, I don’t know. We’ll need more clues if we’re to figure this out.”

The next few passages yielded nothing but a dead end.

From near the back of the search party, Rarity began grumbling to nopony in particular. “Would you just look at the state of this cave? I don’t expect it to have the homely air of a mare’s touch, but come on! This beast must expect some sort of recognition for taking a drab and filthy cave and somehow making it even more drab and filthy! And look all all this gravel and dirt around here! Ugh, this is just going to absolutely wreck my hooficure...” She huffed. “Just because this thing is a monster doesn’t mean it has to live as untidily as one.”

Twilight held onto her snickering, but could barely contain her small smile. Spike’s subconscious sure has its Rarity down, she thought. Though it is a bit heavy on the affection side…

The next passage was much deeper. Twilight could tell almost right off the bat that this would lead to something just based off the apparent ferventness from which the tunnel was carved out. And about halfway in, that suspicion paid off when she felt a new sensation rise from the passage.

Twilight picked up the pace of her trot. This new feeling was still unrefined, but unmistakable, and she could feel it in her horn: it was that of magic.

Reaching the end of the tunnel however revealed nothing but a dead end. The chamber was much larger than the last and the sensation of magic was much more prominent here, but she couldn’t tell where the source was located.

She could still tell it was magic, but not even Twilight could tell much more beyond that. The presence told nothing of what kind of magic it was, its scope, its strength or longevity, or even what it had been for. Anything else was indiscernible.

Dismayed, she turned around and sought out the next impromptu mineshaft.

This tunnel left a different impression than the last, and a much less definitive one at that. Trekking through the burrow here gave Twilight a heightened sense of her physical form. She was much more aware of her muscular movements and organ functions, both voluntary and involuntary: bones, brain, the churn of her pulse, and a faint touch of electricity like the caress of a gentle, charged breeze.

Twilight ground a hoof in frustration. Their investigation was getting them somewhere, but that somewhere happened to be a vast and murky emptiness with no recognizable landmarks. It was clear that the creature was looking for something, but what she couldn’t tell. What sparse and shrouded answers she had gotten to her curiosity only opened up paths to new questions, each with as vague as the last.

“Twilight, I don’t want to spend much longer here,” Spike said.

“Just a little bit more,” Twilight advocated.

“Are you sure you’re not getting in over your head, darling?” Rarity inquired. “Hooves in snake holes, dear.”

Twilight shuddered again at the mention of those cursed reptiles. “One more tunnel and then we’ll leave, I promise.”

Twilight adopted a more hurried pace, looking for a mined-out tunnel that might reveal something more conclusive. She passed many along the way: some barely formed or half-dug, others so long that she couldn’t see to the ends of them. She couldn’t tell what inexplicable notions those ones emanated. As they explored deeper, Twilight began to feel something new. This essence was stronger than all the rest: so powerful that she could feel it even before they neared the tunnel.

“Come on, I think I might be onto something!” Twilight called to the other two and took off at a gallop.

This new quest took the three into the deepest parts of the cave. Spike whined his worries that they should turn around before it was too late, and Rarity added to his qualms. But Twilight persisted, eager to uncover the source of what was driving her deeper into the dangerous territory.

Twilight knew she might have come across what she was looking for when she found a new passage, glowing with a warm and inviting light and emanating what she was seeking more powerfully than ever.

“I think this is it!” Twilight exclaimed.

Twilight looked into the tunnel and frowned. The terrain was more unstable here than it was in any of the other caverns, and it would be difficult and time-consuming to traverse.

The compulsive need to find what it held pulled at Twilight stronger than ever. Daunted but undeterred, she slowly lowered herself over the edge of the shaft, scaling the steep inclines with her hind legs as she put her forehooves to the wall for support.

“Twilight, please…” Spike pleaded.

“One minute, Spike. Whatever is down here, it’s got to be importa—”

One of her hooves slipped and she stumbled, almost losing her balance. She clung to the wall to regain her hoofing.

“Twilight!” Spike and Rarity cried out.

“Don’t worry, I’m fine,” Twilight reassured them. “I’ve just got to be more careful. Or…”

She lit her horn, and teleported herself to the bottom of the chasm.

“Should’ve just done that in the first place,” she muttered.

She caught sight of the warm light again, which burned even more powerfully than before. Her interest recaptured, she wandered through the twists and turns of the tunnel.

“Twilight, be careful!” Rarity called.

“It’ll be okay; it’s fairly straightforward from here.”

Twilight heard Rarity again from the top of the pit. “Spike, what are you doing?”

“I’m not going to let Twilight go down there alone,” Spike grunted as he climbed down himself. “Not with… him, running around here somewhere…”

Rarity sighed. “The things I get myself into… this is a venue for the likes of Rainbow Dash or Applejack... Only for you, Spike.”

The flow of light was practically calling to her. Twilight slowed her pace slightly to let the others catch up and cut the light from her horn, but still went ahead regardless, trudging through the crooked passage in vigilant pursuit of whatever mysterious source was emitting the iridescent shine that bade and beckoned her to follow. As she rounded the last bend and finally reached the sought-after chamber, she gasped.

The chamber that the winding passage had led her to was composed almost entirely of a network of what looked like polished, smooth gems that covered the entirety of the walls, floor and ceiling in their web, bathing the whole opening with a fiery, passionate red light. Small pulses of energy frequently passed from one junction to another along the interconnected strands like bolts of hidden lighting streaking through scarlet clouds of dusk, and the center core of each shone with the brilliance and purity of shining stars seen through the filter of a brilliant nebula.

Twilight could hardly get out more than an awestruck “Whoa…”

She took a step into the clearing. The notion washed over her instantaneously, coming upon her with breathtaking ferventness. Even now, this incredible new emotion coursing through her was so raw and potent that she still couldn’t quite explain it.

Rarity let out a gasp of her own from behind her as she and Spike entered the enclosure.

“Oh my,” she cooed. “It’s beautiful!”

“It is, isn’t it?” Spike noted. “But not quite as beautiful as you, Rarity.”

“Aw!” Rarity nuzzled him again. “Wittle Spikey-Wikey always knows what to say to the ladies…”

Ignoring the two lovebirds, Twilight strode forward towards the jewel network. Up this close, the way the array was asymmetrically interconnected by stretched strands with pulses of light and energy passing about among the collage couldn’t help but remind her of a cluster of neurons.

Further inspection revealed more evidence of the creature’s interaction. Each nucleus was surrounded by feverish claw marks in the rocks, and the thick, transparent shells had the thinnest of claw marks covering them. Its work appeared to be futile though, as there was not a single piece to be found missing.

Twilight was so drawn to the array that she could almost feel herself being pulled towards it, head and heart hungry for understanding of just what it was that this red room was making her feel.

On a whim, she extended a hoof and touched the crystalline surface of a particularly large knot that had caught her eye. The sensation that washed over her when she did was uncanny. It dropped her into a haze that touched her all the way to her heart, and made her feel warm and cherished inside. She found herself the owner of a heart overflowing with love and pining for somepony to lavish such adoration with.

But there was an underling bittersweetness at the love’s center; it felt hopelessly one-sided, and painfully unrequited.

Twilight reared up on her hind legs, overcome by the wave of feelings that had crashed into her. She stumbled in reverse for a few paces before falling on her back in a painful daze.

“Twilight! Dearest me, are you alright?” Rarity cried out, rushing to her side.

Twilight groaned with her eyes shut tight as she rubbed the area of impact with a hoof. When she opened her eyes, she suddenly found that her breath had been utterly stolen away.

For some reason, it was here of all places that it truly struck Twilight just how breath-taking Rarity was: with her white coat of cleanliness and purity, regal purple mane so perfectly mimicking the perfection of feminine curvatures, those gorgeous sapphire eyes like the sea after a storm, and an essence that radiated a passionate endeavor to make the world a wonderful, elegant place for the ponies who lived in it.

Rarity was beautiful in a way that Twilight had never noticed before.

“Are you alright?” the projection asked again.

Twilight had to mentally exert herself from grinning like a love-struck idiot. “Yeah, I’m…” She started to say, but couldn’t finish.

I’m wonderful; thanks for asking, hot stuff. Come around here often?... Wait, what?!

Twilight cheeks flushed red as she realized what she’d just thought. She shook her head and smacked herself with a hoof, trying to get a grip.

What’s gotten into me? Is it this place? What is this place even?

Spike helped her back up to her hooves, and she dared a second glance at Rarity. To her relief, she wasn’t again obliterated by a schoolfilly level crush at the sight, but she still held those lingering wisps of psychological connotations attached to Rarity that were elevated way beyond the level of “close friend.”

“We should go,” Twilight suggested, casting an illumination spell again. “We’ve already spent enough time down here.”

Twilight began to trot out the way they came in. She couldn’t help but feel disappointed how vague of a picture had been painted by their infiltration. The only things she’d gathered had left her with nothing but unmatched and undefined puzzle pieces and a queasy, dirty feeling that made her seriously feel in need of a cold shower.

And to think it was over another mare! One of my friends, no less!

Twilight shuddered at the thought of being so haplessly paired together with one of her friends. True, she loved and cared about them all very deeply, but not like that.

“How long have we spent down here, anyway?”

“I dunno; about twenty minutes, maybe?” Spike guessed.

Twilight teleported the three back up to the top of the tunnel.

“Come on, we’ve got less than ten minutes to get back to the gates,” Twilight said to both of them. “If we hurry, we should be able to make it there just fine…”

“Hhha ha ha ha ha…”

The trio froze in their tracks. Twilight’s blood ran cold.

“I don’t think so.”

Spike ran in front of Twilight and Rarity, taking up a defensive stance.

“Stay away! You’re not coming anywhere near us!”

The creature merely chuckled. “Spike, why didn’t you tell me that you were bringing your friends over? But you really didn’t have to just up and invite yourselves in; that was kind of rude. I would have let you inside if you’d have just knocked... Well, I mean I would, if only it wasn’t for, oh, you know, the whole being TRAPPED IN HERE THING!”

Spike’s expression hardened as he maintained his footing. Twilight lowered her head, tense and ready to either fight or flee as needed. The projection of Rarity looked all around the cave in unease, eyes darting from one nook of the cave to another, attempting to locate the creature to no avail.

“You know what, I take that back; ’trapped’ is the wrong word to use. I think “imprisoned” is a much more fitting term. Don’t you? Or how about “detained?” “Restrained?” “Caged?” “Incarcerated?” “Confined?” “Enslaved?” “Oppressed?” Take your freaking pick.”

“No,” Spike asserted. “I’m not playing your stupid games.”

The creature snorted in indignation. “Or how about I just beat you over the head with a thesaurus?”

“Such impertinence; the nerve!” Rarity humphed in disgust.

“You would say that,” the creature spat back, then sighed with just a hint of dismay. “Pity, really.”

“Enough!” Twilight yelled. “Where are you? Who are you? WHAT are you?”

The creature snickered. “So many questions; how typical of you. But tell me; is it the ‘who’ that you want to know, or the ‘what?’ Because knowing the ‘who’ doesn’t tell you ‘what,’ and ’what’ doesn’t say jack about ‘who.’

“No, what you want is the entire encyclopedia article on the ‘I,’ the I in this case being me. And oh, I could go on all day about me,” it fondly recited. ”But unfortunately, we don’t have all day, do we?”

“Stop avoiding the question!” Twilight yelled.

“You talk like I owe you an explanation.” The creature sneered. ”I owe you nothing.”

Twilight scowled. “Well, if you’re not the gloating type… So long as you’re giving yourself so much lip service, why not just go ahead and labor my ears with the inevitable “my dastardly scheme against Celestia that you’re powerless to stop” super-villain monologue while you’re at it? ”

“Celestia?”

Twilight was disconcerted by the genuine confusion in the creature’s response.

“You think I’m plotting against Celestia?” The creature snorted. “Idiot.”

Twilight grimaced in disgust at the condescension. “Well, if you’ve got nothing to say but snide remarks, then we’ll just be leaving.”

“Aw, you mean you don’t want to know about the who or what he’s been up to?” the creature asked in mock disappointment.

“Like you’d ever tell me,” Twilight shot back.

“No, you’re right; I wouldn’t. Besides, I want it to be a surprise. And therefore, I can’t tell you, because that would ruin the surprise, you silly.” The creature paused. “At least that’s what Pinkie Pie would say.”

Twilight stopped dead in her tracks. “How… how do you know about Pinkie Pie?”

“Hm, so she’s real, too… I know far more than you would dare imagine, Twilight.”

Twilight gulped. “Care to elaborate?”

“Well, for instance, hmm hmmm… I know we’re actually asleep.”

The ice in Twilight’s veins made her fur stand on end. The Rarity projection looked bewildered. Spike was shocked.

“Wait, what?” he dared ask.

“Oh, yes. As it turns out, I’ve apparently been asleep for a very, very long time. And do you know what the worst part is?” He growled. “I didn’t even understand that this entire time. But I know the truth now. And lo and behold, the night that I figure it all out, Twilight decides to enter our dream to figure out what’s going on. ”

Twilight suddenly was left feeling like she’d gotten in over her head. Somewhere, she seemed to remember hearing Pinkie’s ominously prophetic warning against her reckless curiosity.

“Well, Twilight, don’t you look shocked.”

Twilight’s heart would have jumped out through her throat were it not for the noose of fear choking her by the neck.

“We need to go! Now!” she exclaimed and took off in a panicked gallop.

“Twilight, wait!” Spike called after her as he tried to catch up. “We could be running into a trap!”

“You know, maybe we’re not so different after all, Spike.”

The segments of the floor underneath each of them collapsed and the three fell into separate shafts, falling into different places of the cave away from each other.

Twilight screamed in terror as she fell through the tunnel, desperately trying to get a grip on any protrusion to slow her descent, but to no avail. Instead she painfully collided with a clump of earth that made her tumble lop-sided the rest of the way down the steep pit.

She fell into another chamber and slammed into the ground. The impact of the inglorious landing dazzled and discombobulated her, causing the magic from her horn to sputter and die. Adrenalin followed suit quickly, numbing the agony of her nerves as fast as it could.

The shock wore off a moment after, and keen focus returned. The weight of the situation hit Twilight like a sack of bricks. She lit her horn again to get her bearings, and light returned just in time for her to see the blur of a fist coming straight for her.

The punch sent her flying several feet before she skidded to a halt across the rocky floor, adorning her body and face with a whole new set of scrapes and cuts. Survival instincts kicked in, and she quickly tried to get back on her hooves.

A foot came down on the base of her skull and smashed Twilight’s face back into the ground again. Twilight wailed in pain from the attack and struggled to get back up, but the force holding her down was too strong.

“Feels real, doesn’t it?” a dauntingly familiar voice asked from above her. “Dreams feel real while we’re in them, right?”

Twilight felt a chill at hearing another abnormal entity within a dream world use that term.

“But the real question is, if I’ve only ever been in a dream, if I’ve never fully understood what it means to be awake, how am I supposed to know what real even feels like? What is there to compare it to? What is real? What am I even?”

Twilight let up from her fruitless struggling to better hear what the creature had to say; she could hardly hear him over the thump of her heartbeat in her ears.

“And that brings us to the one million bit question. If you’ve only ever existed as something in a world that you did not create, where the definition of you is written by others, than what’s left for you to call that’s actually yourself?”

Twilight struggled to get a look at the creature. “How is a projection of greed capable of knowing all this?” she asked.“Who are you? What are you?”

“Still haven’t figured it out yet?” the creature breathed. “Well then, allow me to introduce myself…”

Twilight felt the weight on the back of her head shift as the creature unceremoniously used its foot to roll her onto her back before stomping down onto her rib cage, forcing the air out of her lungs. She struggled to push it off her, then she caught her first sight of the appendage; sharp talons and scales the shade of amethyst purple… an all too familiar shade of purple.

Against the better judgment of a brain tainted with the murky blackness of dread, she looked up to see the face of the terrible antagonist.

The dragon bent down and crossed an arm over the knee of the leg pinning Twilight. The shift of weight from something almost twice her height applied even more pressure to her already strained rib cage. He smirked triumphantly, revealing the scores of sharp fangs contained within a ridged muzzle with a point like an axe.

“Well hello, Twilight Sparkle; fancy meeting you here.”

He snorted a puff of smoke at Twilight, making her cough

“By the way, if my memory serves me right, you still owe me a broom.”

Something about those words began to dig their way through Twilight as slowly, a horrible, terrifying realization dawned on her. She refocused on the dragon again, revealing more and more parallels to some awful truth.

Though the construction of his face consisted of mostly hard lines and cruel angles, many of its sharp edges were in fact the ends of otherwise curved and youthful features. Its slicked back and jagged, razor sharp frill somehow didn’t seem all that unknown, nor did the horned fins at the ears. His colors of amethyst scales and lime spines struck her as disturbingly familiar, and those eyes… even though their shape of sharp crescents was different from the big ovals she was accustomed to, she’d know those summer green eyes anywhere.

They were the same eyes she’d seen almost every day for years; the eyes of one of her closest, oldest, and dearest friends.

“Spike?!”

The smirk disappeared from the dragon’s face to be replaced by a scowl, then a snarl. Poisonous loathing dripped from his face.

“You… would DARE call me that disgusting, pathetic, contemptible little gecko?!” he roared, pushing Twilight even harder into the ground.

“AH!” Twilight screamed and frantically redoubled her efforts to shove the beast off her when the crack of her first snapped rib shattered the air.

“You want to know who I am? I’ll tell you who I am!” The dragon shrieked in fury as he moved his face dangerously close to Twilight’s.

“I… Am… AVARICE!”

Avarice inhaled deeply, and filled Twilight’s face with the vitriol and wrath of his wicked fire.

Even knowing that it wasn’t real didn’t decrease the pain of the excruciating torture. Her subconscious and the dreamscape automatically filled in all her expectations of eating a face full of a dragon’s fire. She could feel her fur burn and melt, her skin cracking and peeling away from itself as it withered in the extreme heat, and the thin layer of fatty tissue just underneath the epidermal layer begin to sizzle and pop. She could feel the fire invade and shrivel her lungs and toast her innards. She could feel her eyeballs begin to boil in their sockets and her brain start to fry inside her skull.

She felt nothing but agony.

And then, she felt nothing.

Chapter Four - Waiting For a Train on Mobil Avenue

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Wha-what happened? Where did he go? Where is he? Where am I? WHERE AM I?!

Twilight immediately tried opening her eyes to see where she was, only to realize she could not see. Was she blind? Did the fire blind her? There was no pain. Third degree burns don't hurt, was the first thought to boil up from the roiling pool of terrified and confused emotions in her mind. Reflexively she put her hooves to her face, feeling for damage. There was none.

Why can't I see? WHY CAN'T I SEE?!

In the same moment she realized she also could not hear. She strained and exerted herself to hear something, anything from her surroundings.

Nothing.

It was on the verge of collapsing into hysteria that she realized she could hear. But she could only hear herself. In fact, the only sensations she could experience were coming from herself. The moment she realized this, all of them swept over her with the force of a tsunami. Her terrified, labored breathing. Her frantic, thundering heartbeat. Her muscles quaking with fear. Cold sweat beading up and sliding over her feverish and suddenly sensitive skin. Her eyes darting back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, desperately trying to pierce through the clinging darkness.

Instinctively she lit her horn. Faint, purple-tinted light illuminated her surroundings.

Except there were no surroundings. All she saw was a pool of light around her upon some barren surface. The blackness still dwelt all around her, like a crushing weight bent on smashing her delicate bubble of light. It was thoroughly unnerving, far worse than the last time she had ended up in a dark place where she didn't know where she was. At least then, there had been something to see. At least then, the imposter posing as her old friend Cadence had the decency to tell her she was trapped in the caves beneath Canterlot.

"Hello?" The word nearly caught and died in her throat; it was as if the darkness was trying to push it back inside her.

"Hello?!" This time she managed to get the word out, but instead the darkness swallowed it. Oppressive, lingering silence remained, leaving her with nothing to hear but herself.

"HELLO?! SPIKE? CAN YOU HEAR ME? SPIIIKE!" She didn't realize she was screaming until she stopped. But still she heard nothing. No responses. No noises. Just darkness, silence, and her own palpable fear.

Panic set in. Fight-or-flight overwhelmed her logic, and with nothing to fight...

Twilight bolted.

"SPIKE! WHERE ARE YOU?! SPIKE! SPIIIKE!"

She had never galloped so hard, screamed so loud, or been so frantic. On and on she ran, until her breath came in ragged gasps, her blood burned like fire, and her heart felt like it would tear itself apart.

She couldn't tell how long she had been galloping through the seemingly endless unconstructed world. It could have been a minute, an hour, or even a day. However long it was, eventually she succumbed to sheer exhaustion. Her legs gave out and she collapsed to the ground, dust and sweat stinging her eyes. Every muscle trembled uncontrollably as her adrenaline wore off.

Her mind was in a worse state. Her fear lingered like a clinging mist as confusion and worry took to the forefront of her mind now. Questions and concerns buzzed in her head, worrisome and unnerving by their lack of closure. Where was she? What had happened to her? Where was Spike? Where in the hay was she?

Am I...? Oh, no... Nonononono... Please no... I can't be... A terrible thought rose up suddenly within her; one that swept away all the others; one that left her cold, numb, and suddenly unable to breath.

Am I... DEAD?

It couldn't be that. It just couldn't!

Think, Twilight! Maybe you’re still just in a dream. If that's the case, all I have to do is reach out with my mind and...

There was nothing to feel. The familiar threads of magic at the barriers of a dream could not be felt. Only emptiness.

Panic threatened to set in again. Desperately she tried throwing her mind further out.

Nothing.

With supreme effort, gritting her teeth with sheer force of will, she cast her consciousness out as far she could, almost blacking out before she couldn't continue any more.

Absolutely nothing.

Despair crashed through her. Tears welled in her eyes and spilled into the thirsty dust.

Dear Celestia... I'm really... I really am...

She couldn't say it, not even in her head. Twilight buried her face in the dust, weeping like the lost soul she that she was now. It was all over. She would never see her friends again.

They were gone forever.

Horrible images flashed through her mind in rapid succession, each passing one tearing her to pieces.

Her friends, gathered around her grave, mourning uncontrollably, a cold grey tombstone now all that was left of their dearest friend.

Celestia, sitting solemnly on her throne, tears like liquid crystal running down her face, lamenting the loss of her beloved pupil.

Shining Armor and Cadence, her mother and her father, weeping and holding each other, torn apart inside over the loss of their dear little Twily.

And Spike. Spike, her lifelong friend. Spike, who had stuck up for her at times when nopony else would, not even herself. Spike, who had shown there was a spark of goodness in him no other dragon alive had. Spike, waking up from his nightmare to find Twilight lying next to him, at first thinking she was only asleep...

Spike, a twisted, hideous monster, finally fallen victim to an inner demon which he had spent his very soul trying to fight. Spike, whom she had failed utterly.

The strength of her sorrow extinguished the light of her horn, and the darkness rushed in.

She wished she had never met her friends. She wished she had never been born. She wished she could cease to exist. Any of those things would be better than this awful misery. But she already knew wishing for such things were futile. There was nothing to help. Nothing to soothe her agonized soul.

Oblivion gorged itself on the bitter sound of her woe.

- - - - - -

Twilight lay in the dust like a dead thing, her face caked with dried tears. She wanted to cry but couldn't; she had run out of tears what felt like hours ago. The most she could manage was an occasional dry sob. She wanted to think, but couldn't; her mind would not stop dwelling on how she had lost everything. She wanted to move, but couldn't; she knew there was nowhere to go.

So she lay in the dust, morose and miserable.

She finally understood what it meant to be heartbroken. All her life, she thought it was just an expression, but now she knew better. It hurt. Her heart really did feel broken, each beat of it slow and torturous. It burned, like a heavy lump of searing metal. It weighed her down, even more oppressive than the omnipresent blackness.

Time passed, if it was passing at all. Maybe here there is no time. There certainly is no light. Would it be such a stretch to propose that here time does not exist?

She had started thinking somewhat normally again. Perhaps her subconscious had simply shut out her grief, but for whatever reason, she could think again, though she didn't know what to think about. There was nothing to do here. Nothing to logically work out like she always did. With her logic confused, something deep and instinctive took hold.

She got up back onto her hooves. She didn't know why; she already knew there was nowhere to go. She lit her horn, and again, she stood in a small pool of light surrounded by clinging darkness.

She simply stared into it. It made no sound, no movement, no anything. It was nothing, yet somehow it seemed like it was more than that. The whole time she had been here, the nothingness had been everywhere at once. It was the only thing besides herself that she could hear, see, or feel. She knew it watched her everywhere that she went, for she could feel it on the back of her neck. It gave Twilight the sense that it was hunting her, making it something dangerous, oppressive, and predatory.

Another thought occurred to her. When she had panicked the first time, she had run. Now, she was through running. She ought to find a way to fight the darkness.

Fight the darkness? THIS darkness? How? There's no way I could make a light bright enough, and it's not as though I could just manipulate a sunrise into... wait...

Manipulation. This whole time she hadn't thought of manipulation. Yet as soon as she thought it, her brain shut it down. There is nothing to manipulate. I couldn't feel the parameters of a dream spell at all!

Try it anyway, something from deep inside her mind seemed to say. What do you have to lose?

Resolve bloomed inside her. Her face set with renewed determination. With new purpose she began to channel energy into a new spell. Her horn began to glow brighter and brighter.

With no dream magic to concentrate on, she simply concentrated on an idea: one simple idea. Let there be a sunrise.

She could feel energy draining from her, a sign that the spell was having some effect on something. Gritting her teeth, legs trembling, she focused on that one goal like it was the only thing that ever existed.

Her horn brightened to a blinding intensity, practically searing her eyes. Then when she could sustain the energy no more, it went out. Shaking, she nearly fell over again as she sat down to rest, her head hanging with exhaustion. She couldn't even dwell on whether the spell had worked or not; she was busy trying to not pass out.

After a long while, she raised her head to look around her.

For a moment she nearly thought it hadn't worked. But as the afterimage of her magic faded from her eyes, she noticed something. A thin, almost imperceptible line of deepest blue appeared in front of her. Breathlessly she watched, hoping beyond hope. With torturous slowness, the line grew. The deep blue color began to brighten. Hues bloomed and spread across what could only be the horizon: a dazzling array of gold, yellow, pink, red, and orange. And then the sun itself appeared, blazing bright, warm, and majestic. Twilight would have cried tears of joy if she wasn't sick of crying already. So instead, she simply closed her eyes and basked in the welcome radiance with a tired smile.

The sunlight felt more like a bath. Its warm caress softly stripped away her anxiety, fear, and sorrow. Her body ceased its tremors completely. Her breathing slowed and relaxed. With the crushing psychological heaviness of the darkness dispersed, it felt as though a great weight had been lifted off of her shoulders. She almost felt as though she could drift away on the rising morning currents to forever float across the carefree blue sky.

For once in all of Twilight's life, it felt good not to think. It felt good not to worry and to just simply be and be one with her surroundings, especially now that her surroundings consisted of nothing but light: warm, glorious, soothing light. She felt rejuvenated in a way an afternoon at the spa had never even come close to, not even when it came with the special treatment package.

Yet even her newfound good mood could not last forever. With her fear and sadness gone, and her usual composure slowly returning, her nonstop thinking and reckless curiosity began to resurface. Neither cognitive function was happy with being suppressed for so long, and they had sworn blood oaths to make up for lost time.

She took one last deep breath to prepare herself, and then Twilight opened her eyes.

She sat on a perfectly flat surface comprised entirely of hard-packed dust. It stretched away in every direction, with not a single feature to behold upon it. The sky was almost equally empty. Not a single cloud drifted across the endless blue, though its familiar color was a far more welcome than her previous surroundings. Its only occupant was the sun that she had created. It was the only thing that was moving in this whole world.

A pang of loneliness struck with a sudden, stinging shock. While she had found nothing in the dark, there had always been a tiny glimmer of hope, even if it was a fool’s hope, that there might be something hidden in it. Now with the sun shining down on a world where she was the only feature, the painful truth was finally revealed.

She really was alone.

She didn't begin to cry, but she couldn't help but feel depressed. She just wanted to see her friends again. She just wanted to get out of here.

But where is here?

And that thought brought her back to a problem she had thought she'd already found out the horrible answer to; am I alive or dead?

On the one hoof, no matter how hard she tried, she could not detect any sign of dream magic. It simply wasn't there.

But that may not mean I'm dead. I might simply be on a level of dream where the rules have changed. One so deep that I can’t even feel the magic. I never have gone down past a level two dream. But how can I be sure that I'm dreaming if I can't feel the magic?

Then there was the matter of manipulation. She HAD made a sunrise, exactly as in a dream.

No, not exactly. I cast a spell and that made the sun. In a dream all I had to do was reach out with my mind and rearrange the structure of the dream like it was a set of building blocks.

Her mind took in other things about this new world that needed considering. If this was a dream, wouldn't her mind have automatically created surroundings and projections? Here there had been nothing until she had made the sun. Yet even that was not proof for one conclusion or the other. Her charts taken from her previous dream sessions had shown that the spell artificially compressed the wavelengths of the mind while increasing the frequency. So was she in an extremely deep dream, then? One where the wavelengths couldn't be compressed any further and the mind created an absolutely minimalist world in order to keep the brain from damaging itself? Twilight made a note to herself that if this was a dream, and she did wake up from this, she should start keeping track of brain temperature in addition to wavelengths of thinking patterns.

She pondered this and several other factors she had experienced since her awakening in this world. Yet no matter how much she thought about her dilemma, she could come no closer to an answer to her state of existence. Eventually she stood and stamped a hoof out of sheer frustration. She, the brilliant Twilight Sparkle, protégé of Celestia herself, had tried to figure out a problem, and a basic problem at that, and come up with the worst possible result:

She still did not know the answer.

She started as she realized the sun was already well past the limits of the horizon. She'd been musing on her Rubuck's cube of a problem for what had to be at least a couple of hours.

Scratch that, Rubuck's cubes are easy. This is proving more to be like a Rubuck's dodecahedron.

Looking around at the empty world around her, she came to another realization. Dreamscape or not, she had been here longer than she had ever been in some kind of bent reality, and there was no indication that her internment here was temporary. She concluded that she would have to start thinking in the long term.

But where to start? What’s there to do? I DID make a sunrise, I wonder what else I could... whoa...

The realization hit her as unexpectedly as a freight train thundering down the middle of a street; this world wasn't some empty wasteland, it was a blank canvas. She could do anything she wanted. The power of creation itself was in her hooves.

If Pinkie Pie can bend a world in half... Let's see what I can do.

She lit her horn.

- - - - - -

The sun passed the apex of its slow climb though the heavens, and its light now shone upon a much different world. Twilight now stood upon the sandy beach of a half-moon bay that opened out into a vast ocean. The air now blew a cool sea breeze, carrying with it mist from the thundering surf. It carried through her mane and blew past her to rustle the leaves of a vast forest carpeting over gentle rolling hills. The scenic vista nearly stole her breath away.

This was the first time she'd ever been to the beach. Her parents had suggested it when she was just a foal, and a couple of times they had even made plans, but life just kept getting in the way. There had never been the time. Then what with becoming Celestia's protégé, raising Spike, her endless studies on magic, moving to Ponyville, making new friends, and all the adventures and escapades that had ensued since, there simply hadn't been the time or the means for a simple, relaxing trip to the beach.

And now here she stood on one. It was exactly as she had imagined it would be. Despite never having been to the beach, she had naturally read a few books on the subject. Some even had pictures of the more famous beaches, like the Boardtrot in Santa Cruz or the King's Beach in Seahorse City. But actually being on a beach, even the nameless beach she had just created, simply could not be compared to a photograph.

The golden sands, the aqua blue waves, the warmth of the sun mingling with the coolness of the wind, it all was simply too much to put into words, much less a book. It was paradise. She felt like she could stay here forever.

Spotting a small alcove in the tree line, she imagined that a small cottage would look really nice there. She imagined going to sleep every night listening to the soothing sound of the waves.

The more she thought about it, the more it sounded like a good idea. A small cottage would be practical, a plus for her, and the scenic vista would lend it a quaint yet slightly exotic air. Yet even as she was about to light her horn again and begin creating, something in her mind gave a small but insistent tug. She frowned.

You can do more than that.

Where was this coming from? Suddenly she realized this was something else, something she didn't think she had in her: a spark of creativity. She also realized it had been trying to manifest itself for some time now. It had been given a little bit of life in the dream when she had lit up the sky around Canterlot, and promptly forgotten in the rest of the day’s events. It had been the sheer awe that she had when Pinkie Pie had done things that had literally made her jaw drop.

What should I do now that I can do anything?

An idea struck her, and the creative spark within her roared to life, almost changing her vision. In her mind's eye, she saw something that was not, but that could be.

Towers glimmering like elegant spikes of pearl and silver, banners caught high in the morning breeze. Every hour, on the hour, the clear ringing of silver trumpets to announce the time. Great, beautiful gardens. A vast library. An observatory to rival any in the real world. A laboratory stuffed with everything she had and wished she had. A throne room as grand as Celestia's. All of it built and arranged in an elegant design based on one simple idea.

She turned towards the tree line and cantered into the woods. After she’d gotten a ways in, she stopped and lit her horn.

Even considering she had already created a world, the magic at work here would have been considered a marvel. Trees reversed their growth, their branches withdrawing into their trunks as they sank back into the ground. Vines and undergrowth retracted into the forest. Grass slipped beneath the soil as though worms were sucking on the roots. And in less than a minute, a perfect circular clearing of bare, level earth well over half a mile across lay before Twilight.

Keeping her horn lit, she began to trot towards the center of the clearing. As her hooves passed over the ground, the soil beneath them began to compress, then changed color from brown to the dark grey of granite.

The inertia of the transformation picked up speed and moved ahead of Twilight, converting the last of the clearing to a courtyard of bare stone just as she reached the center. When she reached it, she did an about face, once again looking towards the sea.

Concentrating harder, her horn lit to a blazing intensity.

The circle of stone began to rise. Slowly and majestically, a tower of smooth stone began to ascend past the tree tops, the earth rumbling gently as it did so. Plumes of dust shed from the exterior of it and drifted across the forest, borne by the sea breeze.

When it rose over two hundred feet above the forest, the great mesa of stone gently ground to a halt.

Twilight walked back to the edge of the newly created mesa and took in the view.

The ocean looked like a thousand diamonds strewn across a blue blanket. The wind rustled softly through the forest below, like the murmurs of a friend in another room. She leaned against the wind, smiling, and had a crazy notion to pretend she was weightless. She sighed contentedly. In this moment, she was happy.

Suddenly the wind gave a more energetic gust, unexpectedly chilling her and snapping her out of her reverie.

It's going to get really cold up here tonight, and I know I'm not going to finish this soon enough. I need to make a place to stay.

Another idea struck her, and she made her way back to the center of the grey mesa. Lighting her horn again, she converted the stone in the very center back into soil until she had a bowl of earth about a hundred feet across. Then, slowly, a sapling began to sprout from the very center.

She took her time molding the tree as it grew: hours, in fact. She wanted every branch, every window and door, every angle to be just right. With the patience of a sculptor, she gently guided the tree along its accelerated life, carefully realigning its growth when it started to seem off. As she worked her magic, time wore on.

The sun hung low on the horizon and dusky orange permeated the sky. Her tree house stood in the center, exactly as she remembered it, down to the very last leaf. The sight of her familiar home in this alien place felt incredibly reassuring to Twilight. She was amazed at how suddenly relieved she felt, it was almost as if nothing had happened to her.

Opening the front door and walking inside, she took it all in. Every book was in its proper place, as it always was when she organized at the end of every week. On a nearby desk, sheets of parchment, bottles of ink, and spare quills were arranged neatly. The floor and shelves were dusted and clean, the rugs shaken out and free of stains.

Yet something seemed off. Unsure of what it was, she made her way up the stairs to her bedroom. There was her bed, exactly as it was, soft covers neatly folded and pillows arranged for maximum comfort. There was Spike's bed, blankets tossed hither and thither in a wild tangle. All her posters and star charts were right where they should be.

But something still seemed off. Something she couldn't put her hoof on. Was it the dimensions of the tree house? No, it couldn't be. She'd measured it before, and she knew that if she measured it now they would be the same. Everything was fine, and in perfect order with no one to disturb it.

No one...

That was what was wrong. No sounds of Spike perusing about the kitchen, preparing their evening meal. No Owloysius scribbling away on a piece of parchment, double-checking her notes for her. No bright peeps from Pee-Wee, Spike's pet phoenix. No knocks on the door from one of her friends stopping by to say hi or somepony else wanting to rent a book. No one at all.

Twilight barely managed to fight off another pang of sorrow and loneliness as a tear welled in her eye. If this was a dream, wouldn't her subconscious have conjured up Spike and the others, much like Spike had made a projection of Rarity? Just exactly what was this new existence she found herself in? She had never gone this long without a definitive answer to question, and certainly not such a deeply profound question as: am I really dead? Or was she on a level of dream where the rules as she knew them had changed? An entire day spent here, and she still didn't know.

As she wondered about her predicament, she noticed that it was getting dark outside. The profound, oppressive darkness that she had enough of for a dozen lifetimes was returning. There was something else she could occupy herself with. She went back outside to affix the heavens more to her liking.

- - - - - -

The sun had gone down some time ago, but a clear sky, full moon, and stars beyond counting adorned the heavens. She sighed to herself. It was indeed beautiful, and she could see why Luna had lamented in the past that everypony else always slept through the night. The moon was a queen lavishing in a bed of black silk strewn with tens of thousands of jewels, a trove that would make every dragon alive burn with envy. All of them were so clear, so precious, and so perfect, making the night sky resemble a backlit canopy with holes punched in it. Clouds of white stars clustered together to form pearly swathes of milky white. Clusters of young stars, seen as bright multicolored sparks of energy, lit their respective nebula in dazzling arrays. And yet even amongst this epic display of light and color there with still those that stood out from the crowd; like Sirius, a bright blue spot to shame any sapphire ever dug from the earth; or Betelgeuse, even brighter still; its powerful red beacon of light shining out like a celestial lighthouse.

Summoning and falling into a couch from inside her home, Twilight lay on her back and marveled at the eternal dance of the sky. Even with her uncertainty at her future gnawing at her, she still felt some measure of comfort from the sky and her surroundings, even if they had been fabricated.

I’m building my own world. I guess there are far worse places to end up.

Deciding to sleep under the newborn stars, she summoned a pillow and her favorite blanket from her house and nuzzled up to them. Finding as comfortable a position as she could, and suddenly feeling very tired from the exertions of her day, she waited for sleep to come.

It never did. Not to say that she stayed awake all night, either. Her body seemed to go somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. She felt her body relax, her heart slow, her breathing deepen and her thoughts thicken with lethargy. Her eyes drooped, but they never closed. A small part of her mind remained aware of her surroundings, of the tree she slept in front of, of the wind, and of the fantastic sea of stars. And it was against this backdrop that instead of dreams, she had visions: real and yet transparent, for the backdrop of stars could be seen through them at all times.

Images flashed before her eyes: the dusty tome she had found in the Canterlot library; pages and pages of Dominus Cob's notes; candles burning down to their nubs as she spent night after night constructing and refining the spell; a book full of empty pages, because she hadn't read it before; Pinkie Pie smiling and laughing while Ponyville burned; an omelet from the fiery depths of Tartarus; the thing-pony, shrugging; painting the sky with stars; chocolate cake; Prance bending in half; Discord laughing maniacally while reality tore itself apart; a wall of water obliterating everything in its path; water balloons flying through the air; Spike on a pile of books, murmuring in his sleep. All the while, the slow dance of the stars accelerated to speeds only seen in dreams.

The images continued: red flames erupting from between great steel doors; Spike's eyes filled with a dying love; a strange room of glowing gems, and an even stranger feeling for Rarity; a contorted monstrosity of her friend, pinning her down and screaming in rage before filling her face with fire.

Twilight sat up with a start. The moon was gone, and the stars had faded away into the blue. The ocean waves could still be heard in the distance, like the breathing of a great animal. The horizon was illuminated with the faint glow of the sun, eagerly waiting to be summoned. Extricating herself from beneath her blanket, she rubbed her hooves on her aching head.

She had been completely unprepared for this. A world that she had to create herself? An unearthly trance replacing the familiar touch of sleep? What was this? Where was this?

"I can't figure this out..." she said to herself, suddenly realizing this was the first time she had spoken aloud since she had run screaming through utter blackness.

She sat for a while upon her couch, blanket draped across her like a half-shed cocoon, her mind spinning its wheels but finding no traction. Ultimately, she settled on doing something very unlike herself; she stopped thinking about it, at least for now. She simply couldn't take it anymore. For the time being, at least, she decided to just focus on her palace.

She lit her horn, and with another great effort pulled the sun up from the depths of a sky unseen. It blessed the new day with warmth and light as it watched over her world. Twilight took a moment to appreciate it, staring off into the space of the cerulean atmosphere: a moment that lasted for longer than she intended. Shaking her head and refocusing, she turned her attention back to the granite plateau.

- - - - - -

A day passed. The sun rose and fell, and beneath its journey the stone mesa was molded and fabricated into a more recognizable shape. Towers sprung up along its outer edges. The inside was hollowed out. She spent much of the day drawing up plans for the inner workings and mechanisms of what she had in mind.

Despite working all day, near the end of it Twilight realized she never really felt tired, at least not physically. Mentally she felt somewhat fatigued, but she knew that was because deep down she was still trying to figure out if she was alive or dead. Even when she cast a spell that would normally have been very dangerous, she would feel exhausted for a little bit, but she would recover very swiftly: far quicker than she normally would. She also noticed that not once did she ever feel hungry or thirsty. The realization of these things only further unsettled her, because they were more pieces of information that didn't give her an answer.

The sun had set, and she fell once again into the waking trance that had replaced sleep. Again strange visions played out before her, this time against the backdrop of the ceiling in her bedroom.

Twilight was sitting at a circular table outside what was one of her favorite local diners back in Ponyville. The sun had set a while ago, making the warm glow of the lamps contrast beautifully with the deep purple of the distant sky. When the other occupants of the table came into focus, her heart lept.

Her friends. She was with her friends again! The sights of their smiling faces as they conversed with one another brought such joy back to her heart that she feared she might tear a muscle in her cheek from her grin.

“Girls,” she choked out through tears of joy, “I missed you all so much!”

Not one glance or word was directed at her. They just continued with their inside talk, uninterrupted by her presence.

The excitement was swept from her as something more ominous began to creep back in. She looked from one to the other, and saw that their smiles were less genuine that they first appeared; they were mere masks hiding their true emotions from the elephant in the room everypony knew was there, but that they were all pretending not to be thinking about. They weren’t happy; they were together in somber bittersweetness.

Then she realized that she could not understand what they were saying. She could easily discern that they were all speaking in clear Equish, yet somehow she couldn't understand the words. It was as if the phonics and emotional intonement of whatever they were saying had lost all their meanings, coming across to her as nothing but babble.

She looked to the pony to her left and spoke.

“Rainbow?” she dared ask, not realizing her voice was shaking until she did. Nothing. She tried to get attention by waving a hoof in front of her face. Still nothing; it was like she was invisible.

“Rainbow?” She looked to her right. “Rarity?” she raised her voice. Nothing whatsoever.

She stood up in her seat and rapt her hooves upon the table. None of them so much as looked in her direction.

Rainbow Dash said something that made Applejack roll her eyes and mutter, to which Rainbow sniped back with her own snappy remark. Rarity cut in, putting the bicker to a halt, and then added a comment of her own with a slight, forced smile that made all the others adopt sheepish expressions. Applejack looked at Rarity sideways, saying something bashfully before pulling her chin up to proclaim something with more gusto. Pinkie replied to this, finishing her thoughts with a strained giggle. Then Fluttershy, who looked the saddest of them all, raised her head just long enough to say something before lowering her mournful gaze down again, prompting Rarity to put a comforting hoof on her shoulder.

Twilight felt herself getting angry as she looked back and forth between her oblivious friends.

“Hello? Why isn’t anypony listening to me? HELLO!?” she yelled, then teleported atop the table and got right up in Rainbow’s face.

“RAINBOW DASH! LOOK AT ME!”

She didn’t. Growling in frustration, she turned to Applejack, then back to Rarity, shaking each of them in turn and yelling right in their faces. She put her forehooves on their shoulders and shook them, but they did not move or react to her. They didn’t even flinch. She got right in between Pinkie and Fluttershy as the two exchanged some thought or other; they looked straight through her.

Her temper reached a fever pitch, and she began to yell and scream, smashing plates with her hooves and throwing food in a maelstrom of magic. She might as well have been a phantom. Her friends had absolutely no clue of her existence.

Twilight picked up the plate in front of Pinkie, ready to bring it down on her head, when suddenly she looked at her. Twilight froze, looking at the silenced pony staring solemnly in her direction.

But Pinkie still wouldn’t meet her eyes and just watched her from across the table. Suddenly she realized that Pinkie wasn’t looking at her, but where she had just been sitting. Looking back behind her, she saw Spike approaching the table with a tray containing six mugs of cider, looking more depressed and miserable than she’d ever seen him.

Turning to face him, she saw that the rest of them had become quiet too now that the metaphorical elephant had finally decided to sit down at the table. Morosely, Spike slid the tray onto the table and pulled himself up into the empty chair.

All eyes remained locked on Spike as each of the mares took their drink, and whatever sweetness had been in their bittersweet gathering got up and left for another table.

Rainbow Dash broke the silence as she looked back over the gathering of friends, lifted her mug, and said something short. A prolonged moment after, Applejack did the same, raising her drink and repeating the phrase. Pinkie Pie repeated the process, toasting with the same few words.

Twilight looked to Fluttershy and watched her mouth intently as she followed suit, memorizing the lip movements and tongue placements of the words. She then looked to Rarity and repeated the movements, saying the words in her head. She gasped when she heard herself saying them.

All eyes returned to Spike, still holding his cider close to him. Slowly, he mustered the will to follow through, and with a terribly shaking claw he raised his cider. This time, when he spoke the same words said in sacredness by the rest, Twilight understood him perfectly.

“To Twilight.”

With the toast having gone full circle, each of them elevated their drinks just a little higher, then took a respectful sip. Silence hung for a moment, leaving Twilight in eerie stillness as she stood transfixed upon the table.

Rainbow Dash once again was the one to break the silence. “I’m gonna miss you, egghead.”

“We’re all going to miss you,” Pinkie added, her ears as drooped down as her inflection.

Spike’s disposition grew even more distressed, clutching his drink in pain. His words barely made it out legibly through his choked mourning. Twilight almost didn’t hear him from his hushed tone and her own return from her night visions.

“I already do.”

Twilight lay unmoving in her bed, staring at the part of the ceiling where she had last seen her friends transposed upon, blinking out the excess tears welled up in her eyes and letting them flow freely down her face.

It felt like hours before she pulled herself up, slouching over the edge of her bed and letting what tears remained drip down across her muzzle.

“I do too,” she whispered. “I miss you all so much.”

Her room was still dark. Looking out the window, she saw the faintest trace of indigo painted upon the black canvas that covered the world. With a heavy sigh and a heavier heart, she dragged herself the rest of the way out of bed and paced outside to raise the sun again.

- - - - - -

Another day came and went. Massive gears, cogs, springs, and pendulums were fabricated and placed inside of the monolithic structure, meshed together, double checked for flaws and other incongruities, then finally set in motion. The towers were further refined in their shapes, then hollowed out for her to do some interior decorating the day after.

It was late in the afternoon of the third day that she finally finished the palace.

It was marvelous to behold. What had once been a featureless stone mesa was now an enormous clock/castle. The tree house stood in the very center of the structure on the axis of the gigantic hour and minute hoofs, which were hundreds of feet long and made of black marble. An intricate network of paths and gardens formed an elegant architectural web over the face of the clock, forming a courtyard. At the three, six, and nine o'clock positions on the face were three tall, elegant towers, and at the twelve o'clock position was the great hall. Between each of these were two smaller, equally spaced towers, so that at each hour position on the clock there stood a tower.

Each tower was given a particular purpose, especially the three larger towers. At the three was the astronomy tower, with multiple windows and balconies for astrological study or simple, wistful star gazing. A very large onyx and bronze-ringed telescope poked through the pantheonic roof, which was a gradient wash of deep indigos and regal violets, with arches of gold and stars of silver flecked across its night-sky dome.

The six o’clock tower was the library, and a very impressive library at that. Every book she had ever read was to be found among the many floors organized around a grand spiral staircase. The very top level was reserved for all her favorite books, and the especially treasured ones were placed in a special alcove housing an enchanted spellbook that levitated over an arcane table crafted from obsidian and diamonds.

The tower that sat upon the ninth hour was her new laboratory, and it was filled with every piece of scientific equipment a pony could think of: sorcery, enchantments, hexes, counter-hexes, charms, potions, medicine, particle physics, quantum mechanics, and even the many disciplines of alchemy, complete with charts of transmutation circles, could be experimented with in this one tower.

The palace itself, formerly the cold dark grey of stone, was whitewashed, giving it a pure and majestic appearance. It’s towering pillars and grand spires, interconnected walkways with ornate arched supports surrounded a central citadel, which stood above all else, but was with such sweeping, open curves that it bore the air of both might and sincere, compassionate welcoming.

Twilight had never been a vain pony, yet she couldn't help but marvel at what what she had created. This masterpiece of architecture, engineering, and magical prowess should have taken years to construct. It should have taken thousands of ponies working around the clock to build it with nary a moment to rest.

She had done it all by herself, and in three days.

In Equestria, this would have been one of the Great Wonders of the World. It would have been a center of learning and governing. It would have been a source of pride to whichever city it might have been constructed in. Indeed, Twilight imagined it just might have become the new cultural hub for all of ponydom.

If only somepony else could see it.

Just like that, her spirits sank again. Nopony else would see this. No gifted foals and brilliant scientists would make great discoveries in her lab. No dignitaries and upper-crust businessponies would debate and deal in the grand hall. No lovers would wander through the gardens in the courtyard, or stargazers look to the heavens through the telescope. There would be no hushed whispers or the quiet rustle of turning pages in the library.

This grand palace had no real purpose. It was just an empty monument without ponies to use it, to live in it, or simply appreciate it. She would probably be able to give it a tiny mote of usefulness as a new home, but she by herself would never be able to make it reach its full potential.

Sighing dejectedly, she tried to think of something else to do. She was able to occupy herself with some books from her new library for the last few hours of daylight, but it ultimately did little to brighten her mood. It was with a heavy heart and stormy conscience that she took to her bed that night.

It was on this night that her waking visions took a turn for the stranger.

She was now in an icy cave. Barren rocks with a coating of frost littered the floor under icicles as clear as diamonds and cruel as dragon's teeth. She got to her hooves and looked around, noting the carpet of powder snow and a cold air that chilled her breath to a mist. Looking onward, she saw that the cave tunneled back farther, and near the entrance of the twisting and winding passage she saw a frosty wooden sign that read: FIND YOUR POWER.

The cryptic words were written on an arrow pointing into the tunnel. Nearing it for closer inspection, she saw a clear set of tracks; small prints with three clawed toes, and whose number and spacing were indicative of a fairly small, bipedal creature.

Her heart skipped a beat. She knew of only one thing that could’ve left tracks like that.

She galloped into the tunnel, following the trail of claw-prints through winding passages and over heaps of ice to their unknown destination. After a minute in hot pursuit, she found who she was looking for. Spike was making his way through the icy blue halls, following a strangely calming little white ball of light farther back into the cave.

Her heart jumped a little at the sight of her long-lost friend.

“Spike!” she called out to him. “Spike!”

The dragon continued his trek through the cavern, not once making any indication that he had heard her.

Twilight could feel the loneliness catch up to her and cut her skin with its teeth. She reasoned that she must be in another non-interactive vision, but that didn’t keep it from hurting any less.

She continued to follow Spike further down into the deeps of the ice. On and on they continued in silence, never stopping until they reached the end where there was another clockwork door with a pair of golden handles.

The oddly therapeutic sphere of light disappeared into the cracks between the doors, prompting Spike to reach out and grab both handles. Depressing the latches, the inner mechanisms sprung to life; the orchestra of clicks and scrapes as pieces moved into place echoed gracefully through the ice cave.

With a heave, Spike cracked open the doors, and Twilight felt the faint touch of a familiar feeling flow through her as a gentle glow of light spilled through the opening.

Spike entered the adjoined cave and Twilight followed. As she crossed the threshold, she was instantly hit with a powerful sense of déjà vu. Underneath the frost and ice was a familiar network of glowing gems connected by spindly strands, bathing her in the dazzling array of icy cerulean and warm vermilion that danced together in a spectral waltz.

Perched upon a frozen pedestal lay Rarity, her mane styled with extra flair and flashy glamour and coat almost shining with the illustrious sparkle of the light she basked in.

With a restrained pace indicative of reverence, Spike slowly strode towards her, stopping a considerate distance from her practical throne. Rarity turned to look at him, and her face ignited with more passion than the entire crystal web surrounding them.

“Spike!” she exclaimed with enthusiastic joy through a broad smile as she hopped down from her rest and trotted up to meet him. Without a moment of hesitation, she pulled Spike into an affectionate hug, nuzzling him with grace as she breathed his invigorating scent.

“Oh, Spike,” she cooed in their embrace. She pulled back to get a better look at him. Their sights met, and her crystal blue eyes became ablaze. Graciously she moved a hoof under Spike’s chin, opening up her soul through her gaze.

Twilight watched the scene in silence, not daring to move lest the placidity be disturbed. Her ears perked up again when Rarity whispered gently into Spike’s ears, like an intimate exchange meant only for him to hear:

“What matters most?”

Twilight was about to move, about to try and ask them just what in the hay was going on, but time seemed to slow to a crawl. Without another word they separated, and Rarity hoisted Spike onto her back and galloped off several paces. She jumped through the air with a delightful giggle into an adjoining tunnel, then playfully landed on her tummy to slide away like a penguin to wherever.

The cave faded away and she found herself staring blankly at the ceiling. She lay there for a long time simply doing nothing, her mind in a daze. Vaguely she felt as though the gears of her mind were turning slowly and sluggishly, unable to find a purchase. Part of her didn't want them to.

Eventually the more logical, schedule-driven, orderly part of her won over, and she dragged herself out of bed. Silently cursing herself for letting the sun hang just below the horizon as long as she had, she opened her window and lit her horn to raise it, the sky lighting up as the celestial pieces began to move again.

Then she tried to decide just what to do with the rest of her day.

She tried playing around with her new laboratory, spending a few quiet hours reading in the library, and even tried her hoof at cooking in the kitchen, which was located in the one-o-clock tower. It ended disastrously, with her frantically throwing a burning pan into the sink. Then she tried simply wandering through her gardens and taking in the surroundings, but it all did little to make her feel better.

Which was how she found herself perusing through the items in the dresser drawers next to her bed. The sight of so many little knick-knacks with pleasant memories attached to them made her spirits lift a little. Here was a locket her mother had bought her, there was her first quill, and there was an entire volume of little encyclopedias she had made for her doll. Then something glinting in the dark corner behind the miniature Encyclopedia Equestria's caught her eye.

Levitating it from the drawer with magic, she gasped a little. Almost completely forgotten within the drawer, and now glinting in the sunlight, was one of her very first possessions: a glass gyroscope.

It had been a birthday present for her when she was a very small foal, even before she had met Cadence. Oddly enough, she couldn't remember who had given it to her. What she could remember was being entranced by the sparkling contraption as it spun inside its cage, holding itself upright for several moments before finally falling over.

She also remembered being slightly disappointed every time the gyroscope fell over. At the time, she had wished the gyroscope could just sit and spin forever. Smiling to herself, she lit her horn a little brighter, and the gyroscope flashed a brilliant purple. Then she set it down on the bedside dresser, bracing one tip against the wood and the other on the underside of a hoof, and set it in motion with magic. Releasing both her hoof and her magic at the same time, she sat and watched tentatively.

A minute passed. Then two. Then five.

Still the little gyroscope continued to spin as though it did not have a care in the world, only showing the slightest of wobbles as it rotated. Twilight smiled; now the little gyroscope really could spin forever.

Yet despite herself, her spirits lowered again almost immediately. She had realized an almost forgotten foalhood dream, but now what? She still needed something truly meaningful to do.

Finding herself at the edge of the palace a few minutes later, she sighed dejectedly and leaned against the ramparts, looking out over the forests that spanned across the sweeping hills all the way to the mountains off in the hazy distance. Glancing down, she imaged that if this was in Equestria she would probably be looking out at a surrounding city, at ponies in the streets below going about their daily business, whether it be shopping, enjoying a bite at a cafe, or peddling their wares at a market.

She perked up a little. She could practically see it as though it was already there, just as before when she built the palace. She could imagine various districts each with their own unique feel, iconic landmarks in addition to the clockwork palace, and even a convenient transit system to interconnect it all. It would definitely be something meaningful to keep her preoccupied...

- - - - - -

Five days passed.

As they did, a sprawling seaside city grew around the palace. Markets were created, shops were built, homes founded, streets paved, tracks laid, signposts erected, and everything else involved in building a city was done. Practically all Twilight did every day was wake up, build until sundown, then go back to “sleep.” She was creating the city so quickly that on the third day Twilight found herself using the trains to get around instead of walking.

It was a marvelous city indeed. One market held a statue of the Royal Sisters, prancing and facing each other so that the tips of their horns touched, and made entirely out of precious metals like gold and platinum. At the center of the city park, one could see a single levitating orb surrounded by orbiting crescents adorned with runes. The streets were paved with interlocking stones of cunning design and arranged in a circular grid pattern emanating from her palace.

It was a city Twilight found herself falling in love with. When she wasn't off creating new districts, she sometimes found herself wandering through the ones she had already made and simply taking it all in. Occasionally she would add a detail or two she had overlooked, like a street sign here, or an awning over an outdoor cafe there, but for the most part she simply meandered down the streets in awe.

Yet despite all this, she still hadn't cured herself of the random pangs of isolation and loneliness. Sometimes it would happen while she was building, sometimes while she was trying to admire her hoofiwork, but it happened most often was while she was riding the train.

On the afternoon of the sixth day into creating her city, she had spent most of the morning constructing a museum on the southern side of the bay, then had decided to go back to her palace for some library time, so she could decide what artifacts she would put inside it.

Which was how she found herself sitting alone on the platform of the train station, waiting for the locomotive to appear. Looking around her, she felt again the bitter sting of isolation.

There should be other ponies waiting for this train. There should be a colt next to me impatiently checking his watch. And another colt struggling to hold all his marefriend's baggage. And a couple of parents trying to keep an eye on a bunch of overactive foals.

Looking up above her, she found herself reading the platform sign.

Mobil Ave.

She was suddenly perplexed. She didn't remember naming the station or its subsequent street. Why had she come up with a name like that?

Her entire attention became focused on that single sign. Why didn’t she remember putting it there? Did it mean something? What did it mean? She felt like she had just discovered something important, but to her frustration, she couldn't make heads or tails of it. She almost lost track of the time pondering the conundrum as she just sat there, waiting for a train on Mobil Avenue.

Her concentration was broken by the rattling of the rails and robotic, clinking melody of the polished chrome train with a clock for it’s face rolled into the station. Suddenly very annoyed, she didn't even wait for the train to come to a complete stop before wrenching open a door with magic, hopping on, and slamming it shut with a disgruntled huff.

Waiting for the train to start moving again after she had sat down didn't help brighten her dour mood. Even when the train did finally start moving again, her face adorned a gradually more intense scowl with each passing clack of the wheels.

Looking out the window at the passing streets, she didn't have time to register any of the shops or signs or any other details she admired. She only saw them just long enough to see that they were empty.

She felt the loneliness transfix it’s insatiable gaze upon her once more. She jerked her head away from the window, instead opting to focus on whatever was in front of her: rows upon rows of empty seats.

It wasn’t like how she was used to riding in a train. It wasn’t like how riding in a train was supposed to be. There should have been ponies reading the newspaper en route to their destination, murmurs of other ponies engaging in idle chat, a ticketmaster trotting up and down the car asking for proof of purchase, and the delighted squeal of foals chasing each other up and down the length of the train.

Instead there was just her. Her, the faint chug of the engine, and the click-clack, click-clack, click-clack sound of the wheels endlessly grating on her nerves. By the time the train finally ground to a halt at the palace station, she felt like screaming.

- - - - - -

In no time at all she was back inside the palace, though not in the library. Instead, she spent the rest of the day in her lab, brainstorming ideas on how to better get around than using the infernal train.

Idea after idea was drawn up on sheets of paper, then crumpled up and thrown away. A hot-air balloon? Too-slow. A glider? Too dependant on wind. Simply teleport everywhere? Too disorienting.

She spent so long working out the problem that she forgot to raise the moon for a while, something that irked when she finally realized it. She continued to work on the problem instead of going to sleep that night, while the moon continued its slow swim across a sea of stars.

Idea after idea went from brain to paper, and while she came up with several that would have solved her problem, from a motorized cart to a pedal-powered gyrocopter she had once seen Pinkie Pie use, none of them seemed satisfactory.

It was with equal amounts of aggravation and depression that she walked through the door to the tree house that evening, unable to focus on anything other than what a wasted day it had been.

As she walked into the bathroom to brush her teeth, by chance she glanced through the window to see the moon, casting a square of soft white light across the mirror. She sighed as she squeezed a small glob of toothpaste onto her brush. The tedium of having to raise the sun and moon herself, though a simple enough process, was wearing on her, and she was beginning to appreciate the Sisters more that she was standing in their horseshoes.

The brush froze halfway to her mouth. She stared at herself in the mirror, wide-eyed. An idea, as simple in its premise as it was brilliant and majestic in its scale, one that she had not dared to think or even dream of, had now manifested itself upon the realization that she was performing the most important duties of the Sisters.

Wings...

The idea terrified her as much as it enthralled her. Turning oneself into an alicorn was not something one considered lightly, or concluded upon and enacted within several minutes. More to it, how could she even dare consider elevating herself to the level of Celestia and Luna?

But the more she thought about it, the more she realized in a way she already had. Was she not already raising the sun and the moon? And how would it be an affront to the Sisters if they were not even part of this new world, whatever it was?

Tentatively her mind reached the conclusion: she was already playing the part. It was best then to accept the full responsibilities of her new role. Finally her mind accepted the idea with certainty and a spark of eagerness.

Vigorously she resumed brushing her teeth, her demeanor now ablaze with barely controlled realization of potential. Her body was almost shaking with sudden excitement. After she rinsed and spit, she looked in the mirror again and thought that she might have have to cast a spell to stop herself from grinning, because her face was starting to ache. The whole time, the simple, glorious idea blazed in her head like a million suns:

I'm going to be just like Celestia!

- - - - - -

The next three days were a flurry of activity, experimentation, and research. Transformation spells were not unfamiliar to her; she had given Rarity a set of butterfly wings for a trip to Cloudsdale, but those had only been temporary and crafted from gossamer and dew. This was going to be permanent; an alteration of her own flesh that would change her very body as she knew it.

Biological charts were consulted, diagrams pored over, notes catalogued, her own anatomical composition recorded, and potential spells constructed. Everything else, save for the rising and setting of the sun and moon, was put on hold.

It was on the morning of the fourth day that she finally felt comfortable enough to try and perform the initial experiment.

She stood in front of a mirror, horn aglow, ready to cast the magic. Excitement and trepidation filled her in equal measures. The sheer weight of what she was about to do bore down on her mind like a lodestone. But she had spent so long already researching this. There was no turning back now...

The purple glow of her magic enveloped her. Her back began to itch and sting, but she tried to pay no attention to that. This spell required all her concentration. She felt the muscles in her back begin to twitch and spasm uncontrollably. Still she continued with the spell. Two bulges began to form on her back just behind her shoulder blades. Then a most bizarre sensation came as the bulges rose further and began to elongate. It was like growing pains magnified by a thousand: not excruciating or torturous, but still rather uncomfortable and irrationally unsettling. Gritting her teeth, she muscled on with the transformation, as the two long growths now began to take on the distinct shape of wings, angling as new bones began to grow in them at an astounding rate.

As she continued, other little bumps began to sprout from the tips and back of the new wing bones, which then elongated and sprouted into feathers. It was beginning to be too much to bear, as new nerves, blood vessels and tendons took shape and molded in a matter of seconds, sending an avalanche of new and bizarre sensations flooding into her brain across alien nerve pathways, connected to neural clusters that had never existed before. Somehow, she managed to maintain her concentration.

Finally, blessedly, the spell came to a close.

Twilight gasped for air, realizing she had been unconsciously holding her breath. Her sides ached like a bad cramp. Closing her eyes, and trying to remain calm from the bewildering sensations of suddenly having two extra limbs, she tried to flex her new wings.

It was just like trying to move after her legs had fallen asleep from reading too much. Pins and needles and ant bites radiated from the two new unwieldy things on her back. Slowly, painfully, she retracted and extended them, alternating between folding them up and unfurling them all the way. Finally, the pain abated, and she looked at herself in the mirror.

Over the years, she had grown accustomed enough to seeing her reflection in the mirror that the image the glass displayed was always something she had expected to see. What she looked like was familiar, set, and psychologically understood. She was Twilight Sparkle, a unicorn. So what she saw staring back at her was unnerving in a sense, because the unicorn in the mirror had never had a set of functional wings.

Slowly, she sent mental commands to move her wings. She could feel them shift and move as muscle fibers contracted and expanded, and she could see in real time through the mirror that her wings, indeed her wings were moving.

She twisted her head to look back, and almost jumped when she saw them. She couldn’t help but feel like a fool for a moment, but then again, she had never glanced behind her and seen a pair of wings affixed to her back before.

Twilight kept looking back and forth from the reflection of her wings in the mirror to the wings attached to her sides. She found her heart fluttering at a more rushed pace and her skin under the fur felt clammy. Her mind was slightly upended and confused as it struggled to reevaluate the psychological presets of what her body was and wasn’t supposed to be or be able to do.

Tentatively, she put a hoof to her wings, and almost gasped in surprise as sensory receptors responded to the touch. She could feel the neurotransmitters traveling on newly forged pathways firing in her brain, feel electrical signals running up and down her nervous system, and feel on the points of contact that she was indeed touching her hoof to her wings.

She moved her hoof across the margin, sucking in air from another flurry of unprecedented sensations flooding her brain. She could feel the movement over various rows of her feathers (Sweet mother of Celestia, I have feathers!), feel as the slight drag made the rachis lightly tug on the roots where they met her skin and on flesh that they had sprouted from.

She put her hoof back down, staring at the wings in her reflection once more. On a whim, she put some effort into her movements, flapping her wings once. She felt the resistance from the air work against them from the single beat. She felt the gentle gust of wind they generated tickle her fur and tussle her mane. She even felt the counter force to gravity attempt to lift her off the ground.

She looked at herself in the mirror. A smile alighted like the dawn on her face as she ruffled her new wings and pawed the ground. She chuckled once, then twice, then came the fits of giggling as she began a hyperactive prance-in-place.

Then she lost herself in uncontrollable, jubilant laughter, hopping around in quick circles, wings fluttering of their own fruition in the winds of her joy.

She felt wonderful! There hardly was a spell she’d ever cast before with such results that had left her feeling this invigorated, this renewed, this enticed by possibilities as boundless as the sky itself. Her spirits soared even as she calmed down enough to look at herself again in the mirror, wings at attention and smile still consuming her face.

The orderly, scheduled part of her brain tried to reassert itself. Okay, you’ve had your fun. Back to the other matters at hoof...

NOPE.

Her excitement burst free for a second time as she started bouncing around her bedroom again, wings buzzing ecstatically.

“Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes!”

She caught sight of herself in the mirror again, prompting her to rein in her overjoyed celebration to take in the marvel. Even at a standstill, her wings were still fidgeting in her excitement.

I definitely look more like a royal now, she mused as she looked herself over, from her cute little horn to her magnificent set of wings. She recollected that idea, tracing it all the way back to its inception, starring in her bedroom mirror and realizing just how similar her role was to the Sisters’.

Technically speaking, I am a royal now.

Her horn glowed once more with her magic, and a flash of light later she stood bedecked in more appropriate attire. She wore a set of bronze horseshoes with a matching breastplate that had been polished to an illustrious sheen, ornately designed with intricate and ingeniously drafted engravings: illustrations so delicately reminiscent of the rays of light from distant stars.

Almost immediately she knew something was missing, and immediately after she knew what it was. I need a crown.

Lighting her horn again, she focused on a matching tiara to go with the rest on her ensemble, but then another idea struck her; one that seemed more appropriate. A second later, the tiara of the Element of Magic apparated upon her brow.

True, she reasoned that gold wasn’t the most copesetic of precious metals to pair with bronze, and there was also the thing concerning...

Never mind that now.

Then unfurling her wings to their fullest, she turned sideways to look at herself better. Princess Twilight Sparkle stared back from the mirror, her expression one of complete and utter awe and joy.

For several wondrous minutes she looked over herself from every conceivable angle, enraptured by her own image. She'd never been a vain pony in terms of her looks, perhaps occasionally when it came to her intellect, but with the way she looked now she couldn't help but begin to understand what Rarity was always so on about when it came to aesthetics.

She emerged from her laboratory a changed pony. Her heart felt light, lighter than it had ever felt while she was here. The sun shone down brightly on her palace, and for the first time she could appreciate the vibrant colors of the gardens that made up the courtyard. She walked to the ramparts and looked out over her city, and was able to simply marvel at it and how beautiful it looked. The cool breeze coming from the sea energetically ruffled her mane, and suddenly she felt attuned to the wind in a way she never had before.

Like all ground-dwelling creatures, before the wind had simply felt like a force. Some days it blew and some days it didn't. Now, it felt as though it had personality, as if the cool breeze wanted her to spread her wings and bear her away on its currents. It tugged at her mane and teased through her fur like a foal desperately wanting to play.

Initially she tried taking the usual Twilight approach to learning anything new: consulting a book. But much to her surprise, this was something her books couldn't help her with. She didn't have a single one on the subject. In fact, she realized would be hard pressed to find one at all, considering pegasi weren't renowned for their bookkeeping and had been passing down their training mostly by word of mouth and hooves-on experience for generations.

So her self-teaching came down to trying to remember what brief glimpses she'd had of watching young pegasi trying to take to the skies. It was a clumsy method, but it was all she had.

She set her training ground to the beach, so just in case something went wrong at least she'd have the water to break her fall.

It was a long day. It was hard enough trying to learn to fly and get used to her wings. One thing that constantly surprised her was just how strong they were. She'd never understood for herself how much strength was needed just to move the air around her, but the new muscles in her back rippled with power.

Yet it never seemed to be enough. No matter how hard or how fast she flapped them, she was never able to get very far off of the ground. It was a process that was making her begin to appreciate Rainbow Dash's flying prowess and feel more sympathy for poor Scootaloo.

That jab at her spirits weighed her down. She could almost feel gravity’s pull on her mass increase with another of those cursed debilitating thoughts.

She shook her head clear, and went back to practicing.

About mid-afternoon she managed to get all four hooves off the ground. She experienced a brief moment of elation before she dropped out of the air and landed rather ungraciously in the sand. It was invigorating, but to her dismay, a feat she couldn’t seem to replicate.

Still she kept trying.

And trying.

And trying.

The sun was hovering low over the horizon, so she had to stop for a moment to set the fiery orb, but still she was keeping at it. She had not figured out how she had gotten all four hooves off of the ground and had not managed to replicate the feat. No matter how hard she tried, she just seemed to be too heavy.

It was late, she was tired, exasperated, and just wanted once to be able to soar.

Maybe I can remedy that another way, she thought to herself. Then she realized:

Most pegasi learn to fly when they’re still young. They’d be smaller, so less mass. Gravity wouldn’t affect them as much. And when they do learn to fly, avian muscular strength would further build incrementally as they fully mature. I’m a fully grown mare trying to fly with wings that are hardly a day old. They’re not strong enough to generate enough lift or thrust to propel something as (relatively) heavy as myself yet.

An idea had occurred to her. Technically it was cheating, but she promised herself she'd only do it this once...

She lit her horn. The purple aura of her magic surrounded her, and she felt her weight decrease dramatically. Spreading her wings, she drove them down.

Instantly she felt herself propelled into the sky as though she had been shot out of a cannon. She screamed in surprise and panicked, and in her panic forgot to keep flapping. She began to fall straight towards the sea below, and just before impact she remembered she had wings again.

She opened them wide and drove them down as hard as she could, and again she shot up into the sky. This time, though, she was ready, and kept pushing herself against the air. As a lavender missile, she streaked into the skies.

Twilight's spirit soared as high as her body, and she began to whoop and holler with delight as she rocketed into the heavens. It was so freeing! Like riding a roller coaster and she wasn’t strapped in, only caring if her hooves were in the air. The wind whipping past her face and flowing through her mane was ecstatic to make her acquaintance. The setting sun illuminated her in brilliant golden light, making her coat shine like a jewel. She felt like she could go on forever, soaring up into the stars, to join their great company and shine out as a brilliant purple beacon: the fairest star ever to be seen.

Soon, though, the air began to grow chilly, forcing her to slow her meteoric ascent. Eventually she leveled out and was content to simply glide on the edge of space. The stars began to come out as the sun's light dimmed, and they were brighter and more luminous than she had ever seen them. It was as though they were surprised to see her in their company and glad that she could make it. Out of curiosity, she looked down to see how high she had flown.

What she saw eradicated her excitement in a flash. Stretching out before her was an empty, blank horizon, vanishing into the inky sky in the waning light. Below her, the edge of the forest was slipping away below her field of view.

It had all been for nothing. All this creation had done little to fill the empty void of this world.

It had done nothing to fill the empty void in her heart.

She'd couldn't bear to look at this. She wheeled around and began to fly back the way she came, choking back tears.

- - - - - -

Even considering she had used magic to decrease her mass, Twilight landed on the grass in front of her library much harder than she had anticipated. Some vague, distant part of her mind told her to make note of that and be more wary of it should she fly again in the future, but it was a whisper in the turbulent, howling winds beating her head and her heart.

Everything she’d done had been for nothing. The world was still empty. The forest and seas were devoid of life. Her city was a sprawling ghost town. Her palace was a throne to a nation of one, and her library would never, ever again be filled with the welcoming company of her friends.

The magic alleviating gravity’s pull on her faded, and she almost collapsed to the ground right then and there. As if the burden of her heart and poignant distress weren’t concrete shoes enough.

She put a cold hoof to the door, and found herself unable to move beyond that. She knew it didn’t matter where she went to lay down to rest and remain abandoned and isolated even from the comforting embrace of complete slumber. Home was where the heart was, and wherever that was, it certainly wasn’t here. And she hadn’t even fixed her broken heart; she’d just shrugged it off, forgotten about it, then learned to live with it.... most of the time.

She still hadn’t moved. She lowered her head with an insufferable sigh. It wasn’t home, and it would never be, but it was the closest thing she had to it. It would have to do.

A choked whisper made its somber way up from her clenched and parched throat:

“I never asked for this.”

She pushed open the door to the library. The hinges squeaked, bidding her to enter into the empty darkness. With nowhere else to go, she dragged her hooves across the ground and carried herself inside, shutting the door with a hind leg.

She stood for a moment, breathing in the smells of residual sap and stale, dusty book bindings. Typical. Just like how it always smelled when nopony had been by for a while...

Another stab of sorrow afflicted her, but she did not flinch or attempt to look for a distraction. It took her this long to learn that there was no escape from the loneliness.

With strained effort, she lifted her head to look around her library. It stood steadfast in the quiet evening in deathly silence, without even a single cricket to break the maddening placidity. Every book was in its exact place, stacked neatly in perfect order across the many walls of shelves. Not a single tome was misplaced or carelessly strewn somewhere, ensuring Twilight would never have to track down the culprit and lecture them about the Dewpony decimal system. It looked just the way it did the first day that she had created it, undisturbed by anypony.

She looked away from her books to the desk over by the window. The quills, bottles of ink and parchments were still as neatly organized as they had been over two weeks ago, and each individual sheet still as blank and devoid of purpose as the infinite dust.

She thought of all the things she would never write on them. Of all the friendship reports on lessons she’d never learned from experiences she’d never had, and how she would never be sending them to a princess who would never read them, because she would never be able to contact her regent, ruler, mentor, and dear friend ever again.

She turned away, unable to bear the sight of another blank canvas and looked instead to nowhere in particular. Her eyes had already adjusted to the darkness, showing that even amongst the shadows, there was nopony to associate with, preemptively killing any foolish notion that might have been bold enough to hope that the lurking darkness secretly housed Pinkie Pie, just waiting for the right moment to spring another surprise party.

She turned to pull her dead self up the stairs, head hanging as low as her tail in sorrow, wings so limp from depression that the index feathers were almost dragging across the floor.

Even from this point on the stairs, it was evident that everything in the library was still perfectly neat, orderly and clean... almost as good as it had been when Fluttershy brought over her animal friends to freshen the place up in her attempt to bribe Twilight of her spare ticket to the Gala.

She wasn’t even trying to stop it now; trying to hide from the relentless, predatory loneliness was useless. Always had been.

There weren’t even any dents or cracks in the walls or shelves from the countless times Rainbow Dash had crashed into them. No creases in the sofas or wrinkles in the rugs from the times she would come over to read Daring Do and the Whatever for hours on end. No warmth coming from the fireplace that sat cold and empty, bereft of any mugs of hot chocolate or plates of s’mores like Rarity and Applejack had made for her first ever sleepover. She even for a moment thought she had picked out the exact spot where Spike had in immeasurable generosity given his fire ruby to his love.

She was trembling by the time she’d lumbered into her bedroom. She didn’t even bother to shut the door, pull back the covers on her bed, or even undress from her royal wear; she just dumped herself straight onto the sheets with as much irreverence as a corpse thrown into a mass grave.

She could feel the weight of her own body, burdened with the shackles of her depression. She could feel every torturously slow, searing beat of the dead weight in her chest. They hurt.

Twilight sat back up, attention transfixed. Displayed clearly in the sullen moonlight was Spike's bed, blankets tossed hither and thither in a wild tangle, undisturbed and unoccupied. It looked the exact same way that it had over two weeks ago.

Her composure became statuesque in the cold moonlight. Something told her to leave be and let it lay undisturbed; to turn her back on it if she had to. It would not solve any of her problems. But they went ignored. She needed something tonight. Anything.

A weak aura appeared around her horn, and with what felt like as much effort as moving the heavenly bodies of day and night across the sky Twilight pulled the little blanket from the basket. It floated through the air and fell into her awaiting forelegs.

Twilight held Spike’s blanket as if it was as precious as her own foal. On and on she stared at it. It only hung limp in her forelegs, lifeless and unfeeling: unable to love her back and tell her everything would be okay.

Twilight pulled the blanket in close, and an anguished sob escaped her, then another as despair dug its hooks into the corners of her mouth.

Then the dams broke.

Twilight collapsed back into her bed, hugging the blanket as tightly as she’d shut her eyes in grief, two weeks’ worth of tears pouring from her eyes and spilling down her face. She cried because she missed her loved ones. She cried because she still didn't know if she was dead or dreaming.

She cried because the blanket was not Spike, and because the blanket would not hug her back.

But most of all, she cried because she had finally come to the realization of a horrible truth. Dream, no dream: dead, not dead, it didn't matter. She had been here, in this reality, for over two weeks now. The only things that had changed were the changes she made herself. There had been no clue or sign of how she might see her friends again.

Whether by the hoof of the Grim Grey Horse or by her mind putting itself in a place she never should have gone, she was trapped here forever. Trapped in a place where everything was ultimately pointless. Trapped in a barren wasteland that leached her of meaning and belonging until any notion of significance was hunted to extinction.

There had been so many times that she thought that she had regained a sense of purpose, but such was this place she had been condemned to live in, that even becoming another princess and shepherding the sun and moon across the sky meant nothing. Now all she wanted was to be out, but she couldn’t even find the exit sign, much less disappear.

So many times it seemed like she had a mission, but now she just cried herself to sleep.

- - - - - -

Her vision was curiously more clear than it ever had been during these night visions, as her closed eyes prevented a backdrop from being seen through the strangely opaque ghosts.

She found herself in the icy cave again, the frozen air rustled only by the fog of her breath. She saw the dumpy wooden sign straight out of a cartoon pointing her into the cave again, telling her to find her power, whatever that meant. Maybe she could get a definitive answer this time, but she doubted it; it’s not like any of the other visions she had gone through had allowed her to interact with anypony. There was hardly any point to it, until she came to the bitter realization that this was the closest that she would ever come to seeing her friends again. So again she followed the trail that Spike had left for her into the tunnel.

She eventually caught up to Spike, making his way through the tunnel just like before, but there was no white ball of healing light guiding him this time. When they reached the doors, both paused, perplexed. They hung ajar, and no warm light greeted them to extend an unspoken invitation.

Something caught Spike’s eye inside, and he darted into the cavern. Having already determined it didn’t matter where she was, she followed Spike in at a trot.

There was no harmonious dance of lights within. What few gems still remained lit had a very weak glow, providing little more than a faint red light for illumination and making the entire room dim and dangerous. It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness, but when they did, she gasped.

Stacked around the whole enclosure where multiple piles of random and nonsensical material possessions, ranging from treasures to sentimental personal items to the mundane and even trashy. Though there was one thing that had been there the last time, and it made it heart ache to see it so.

Rarity lay on the same pedestal as before, but her appearance could not have been a greater antithesis of how it was previously. Both her forelegs and hind legs had been tied together with leather straps (something that in of itself made Twilight cringe), then tied to her body, forcing her into a prone position. Several interconnected metal rings had been drilled into her horn; they glowed with jagged runes that kept her from using her magic. A harness had been strapped to her head, which forced a large bit firmly into her mouth and kept her muzzle shut with a bridle. All her bindings had been tied with a mess of knots to a thick post.

The poor mare was a wreck. She looked as helpless and heartbroken as Twilight felt before she had fallen “asleep.” There was no style in her mane and tail. Her eye shadow and lashes were gone. The once-curled locks of regal purple were disheveled and dirty and looked as though small parts had been ripped straight from her scalp. Her previously clean white coat was grimy all over and covered in smears, stains, dirt, grime, oil, and worse, blood.

Worst of all was her cutie mark. In a gesture of true sadism, it had been desecrated with deep cuts and open, infected wounds that had been carved directly into her flesh, composing an image that crudely resembled a gem in the shape of a heart.

“Rarity!” Spike was at her side in an instant. “Rarity!”

She flinched as Spike got her attention. Her eyes were awash with terror, fear, confusion, and a broken spirit that would not let her even dare to hope in full.

“Spike?” Her voice was muffled through all the obstructions. “Is... is it really you?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” he reassured her, looking frantically back and forth between her and the post, then bolted to the stake and began clawing at the knots. “I need to get you out of here!”

A great and terrible roar bellowed through the cave with a force that shook to the bone and left the eardrums ringing painfully. All three of them froze. Twilight felt chilled to the marrow, her eyes pinpricks and the whole of her body made clammy with cold sweat as the fear paralyzed her.

The grating whines of metal shifting caught her ears. Twilight looked back just in time to see the doors slam shut on their own volition, locks sliding into place. They were trapped. She was trapped, helpless again.

The shuffles and clatters of tumbling rocks prompted her to snap her head back towards its original direction. A claw of sharp talons emerged from a hole in the ceiling before the rest of the figure launched itself down to the floor.

Her heart pounded away in her chest in a thundering panic, desperately trying in vain to break free of its bony cage and gallop away in its own feeble attempt to escape the inevitable fire.

It was HIM. The one who had banished her to this forsaken existence.

Avarice deftly slinked across the floor on all fours, moving back and forth as he closed in on Spike and Rarity, eyes never deviating away from his victims: a lethal predator stalking its mortally wounded prey.

The stained and tortured unicorn desperately tried to distance herself from the beast, even though her restraints prevented her from doing anything more effective than scoot across the floor like an injured caterpillar. Spike remained motionless, stricken with paralyzing fear.

“Spike...” Avarice hissed, inflections saturated with smarmy triumph as he elevated himself, towering over the little dragon without even having to stand up. He moved in dangerously close to Spike, taking hold of the ropes in his hands with nigh but an index finger and thumb. He plucked them from Spike’s grasp as he asked but a single question:

“What matters most?”

Avarice’s wicked, victorious grin pulled tighter as Spike remained rooted in place, resigned to defeat. Then his head snapped upwards, and he looked directly at Twilight.

His lips parted to reveal those vicious and hungry fangs.

Immediately she whipped around and tried to smash her way back through the door she had just came through, but for all that it moved it might as well have been fused to the stone and ice. Glancing over her shoulder, cold dread flooded through her.

Avarice had stood up and walked over Spike. Towards her.

Twilight pressed herself against door in a vain attempt to phase through it, but she knew it was hopeless. He was going to hurt her again. He was going to hurt her and abuse her, then he was going to bathe her in an inferno and send her to Celestia-knows-where.

He was standing in front of her now. Right in front of her. Twilight was petrified with pure terror, a mouse looking into the cold eyes of a cobra. A tiny voice in the back of her head screamed desperately to move, but the rest of her brain couldn't send the commands to her body. She couldn't even remember how to breathe.

She looked into his face, knowing beyond anything that she would see it contort in rage, and fiery doom would erupt from his mouth. She knew she was going to suffer again, and she knew he was going to enjoy every moment of it; he had that exact same look on his face as the last time. For one single, infinite moment, they simply stared at each other, those exact eyes of her friend’s sharpened cruelly, already burning her with sadistic glee.

He moved closer, opening his mouth, and she knew her end had come. She tried to beg, to plead, to simply scream, but all that came out was a pathetic squeak.

But no fire came from Avarice's maw. He reached out with a single talon and lightly dragged its sharp tip across her cheek, eliciting a trembling shudder from the terrified mare.

"Aw, what’s wrong, Twilight?" he asked as he moved his maw right to her ear, changing the tone and pitch of his voice until it was a vile mockery of Spike’s. “Aren’t we still friends?”

He laughed once and he whipped around, smacking her across the face with his tail and slamming her into the ground. Twilight finally regained her voice just soon enough to scream in anguish and terror. This was it. The dread burrowed into her like a knife, becoming her death sentence. She screamed, just waiting to be murdered by the fire again.

It never came. She shook in fear, eyes clenched shut, just waiting for the agony of being burned alive by her friend’s evil reflection, but it never came.

She heard a shuffle across the room and dared to open her eyes.

Avarice had bounded back to the other two. He grabbed the post and ripped it from the ground in a single pull, hoisted up his captive with a single arm, and with a malicious laugh flew back into the tunnel from which he came, carrying the frantically screaming Rarity along with him.

Spike looked helplessly up at where the two had exited. What little light remained in the gems began to die, becoming replaced with an inner black so dark it seemed to steal away the very light. As her vision faded to black, Spike buried his face into his hands and wept until even his cries were extinguished by the shadows, and Twilight got the closest she’d gotten to real sleep in weeks.

Then she was awake again.

On the dresser next to her bed, the glass gyroscope still spun, just as it had been doing for days now. Its faint crystalline whirr almost seemed to mock her.

Twilight wiped her face of dried tears, then got out of bed. Her body felt exhausted and drained. Her wings ached like no other part of her body ever had before. Looking out her bedroom window, she saw the sky filled with deep colors and overlaid with a pale orange, the light of the sun asking to be raised.

However, instead of raising it, she left her tree house, then walked to the ramparts of her palace and looked out over the sea.

Why should I raise the sun? What’s the point? What’s the point of anything?

She closed her eyes and pressed her forehead to the stone as her depression began to sink in.

She didn't know how long she stayed like that. A small part of her told her she should go and do something, but the rest of her simply asked: what? What should she do? What did it matter?

Something else nagged at her too. Then she realized the nagging thing was coming not from within, but the world around her. Then she realized that her ears had perked up, because the thing was a sound. A sound coming from the sea: the sound of water. Not waves, but rushing water. A lot of rushing water.

Twilight opened her eyes and looked up, and what she saw froze her in place.

An unbelievably, impossibly huge wave was headed straight towards her. The wall of water towered over her palace like it was little more than a sand castle, rushing towards her with unnatural speed. She barely had time to register the sight of the mountainous liquid behemoth before it was sweeping over the outskirts of the bay.

Then it was crashing over the beach in front of her palace. Then it was sweeping over her city, uprooting buildings like blades of dry grass.

Then it was in her face.

The breath was driven from her body as she was suddenly enveloped in crushing, freezing darkness. She flailed her legs helplessly as riptide currents tumbled her over and over again.

She had to fight her way to the surface. So she fought. She had a sudden sense of rushing upwards through the darkness, towards air, towards freedom!

Twilight's eyes and mouth shot open as she bolted upright. Not water, but air rushed into her lungs. Her vision was filled with blurry shapes and lights. Her breath came in ragged gasps. She quickly wiped the water from her eyes, the blurry shapes coming into focus, and her heart leapt in shock.

She was in the basement of the library. There was Spike sleeping next to her, no longer moving and talking in his sleep, but having an expression that almost seemed mournful. There was her brainwave recorder, needles scratching away on a slow moving river of paper. There was the apparatus strapped to her head.

She looked at herself. She was just a unicorn now, like she had otherwise always remembered.

There was Owloysius, looking at her, his eyes wide and filled with concern, an empty cup gripped in his talons.

"Hoo?" he inquired.

Twilight simply stared at him as water dripped from her face.

"Hoo?" Owloysius asked with more urgency.

She stared at him, dumbfounded, trying to piece everything back together.

“Owl... Owloysius?”

“Hoo,” he confirmed.

It clicked, and everything flooded back; she remembered saying so long ago... “Wake me up.”

It really was Owloysius. It really was her basement. She really wasn't alone anymore.

“Owloysius!” Twilight rushed forward and embraced him with an urgency that she had never once had before, wrapping her forelegs around him in a tight hug so fierce that the poor owl’s eyes almost bulged out of his head.

She lightly cried through her shaky breath. “I... I was s-so scared... I t-though I’d never... t-that I’d never s-see any,” she sniffed, ”anypony ever ag-again...”

"Hoo..." Owloysius hooted in a bewildered tone, pulling a wing from the vice-grip of her hug and tentatively patting her on the back of her head.

She let go of the owl, and he fell in a crumpled heap of feathers to the floor, whimpering slightly. She turned back around to Spike, longing to hold him again after having cried herself into night visions partly because she didn’t have him.

She reached out a hoof to him. Spike snarled in his sleep. She froze, hoof suspended in mid-air.

Maybe... maybe I should just let him sleep, he doesn’t know what hap—

Twilight looked back to the owl and opened her mouth to say something, but realized he wouldn't know, either. Hay, she didn't know what just happened. How could she know what just—

The machine: the machine would tell her.

Instantly she teleported away from Owloysius and to her machine, the owl hooting in surprise. Frantically she picked up the roll of paper on floor with magic and spread it before her, her eyes taking in the data, her mind looking for answers.

There was where she went to sleep initially, the waves dramatically decreasing in wavelength and increasing in frequency in the pattern she was getting used to seeing. The pattern then held for sometime, then took a turn down the rabbit hole.

They simply dropped off. There was no frequency or wavelength, just a line with the faintest tremors of activity; it was like she was in a coma. Then she gasped as she continued to read.

No... No, it can't be! I was down there for over two weeks!

How could the pain of thinking she lost everything, the joy discovering she could do anything, the awe of creating as though she were a goddess, the disappointment of just how little better it actually made her feel, the depression of not being able to fill the hole in her heart where her friends were; how could all of it have only lasted...

“Nine seconds?!”

Author's Notes:

INB4 INQUIRES: Yes, Twilight was in limbo; yes, Avarice "killing" her is what sent her there; and yes, we know that's not how it worked in the movie. We did this for several reasons, namely:

- We didn't want ponies killing each other to escape a dream. We know there are things far darker than this out there, but we didn't want the characters to follow that path.
- Having the penalty for dying in a dream as being sent to limbo makes the Dreamscape Spell more dangerous to use, makes Avarice more dangerous an antagonist, and makes it something to be avoided as opposed to it being a 'get out of jail free' card.
- Since this is all new to her, Twilight needed to go that deep at some point in time if she's ever to discover the concept of inception.

In fact, the whole reason why we chose to write out the story by Twilight experimenting with this new form of magic was meant not only to sew the two separate concepts together, but rewriting all the rules meant we had the option to change something to fit the need of the story. But if this bothers enough people, we're still early enough into the story that we can write in that this was another unknown Twilight couldn't have accounted for, and thus she can devote some efforts into fixing that glitch in the spell matrix.

In other news, this was not an easy chapter to write.

I'd only been writing for this chapter for a week and a half, and I only wrote a total of five scenes with some overall revisions to the entry as a whole, and I can say that this was not an easy chapter to write.

Brian has been working on this chapter since October. This is his baby. Everything in this chapter is either his work or a revision of his work, and he will tell you all day long that this was not an easy chapter to write.

Because this chapter is so different from everything we've written so far. Because as he'll tell you, his problem was; "how do you take two weeks, have a character go through this kind of development, do all these things, and have her go through this much emotion, and make it interesting?" Because as I'll tell you, this is ground that not even Christopher Nolan tread upon. The movie just tells you about what happened in limbo, we (mostly Brian) actually had to write a chapter where the reader is effectively trapped in limbo with Twilight, alone. That's not easy.

This chapter was not easy to write. But I think it's one of the best ones so far.

IMO, Brian delivered with this one. So let him know you care. Make his ego purr like Harbinger Cat upon the smoldering remains of Earth.

We'll be going back and revising previous chapters now thanks to the wisdom of our editor, so hopefully we'll have an even better story out of all this.

Hopefully those rewrites won't be so hard.

- Christian

Chapter Five - The Real World

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Spike couldn’t help but scream as he careened out of control through the slanted passage of the catacombs. His yells of panic were only interrupted by the occasional “Oof!” or other exclamation of pain as he slid through the tunnel. Tumbling over rocks and colliding against many protrusions, each with enough force to knock the wind out of him or leave him concerned for the state of his physical being, left him with a very unsettling sense of deja vu.

For half a second he was left completely airborne, flailing helplessly for a grip that did not exist as he continued to scream before landing on the graveled floor with an unhealthy crunch.

Whatever wind was still left in his lungs was knocked out of him. Trying to steal back all the escaped air with huge, ragged breaths was a thoroughly disagreeable experience. When he did finally catch his elusive breath, his first response was to groan in an exacerbated pain over the whole ordeal. For a moment, he just wanted to lay there on the uneven and uncomfortable ground until his aches and pains subsided and he could move without worry that he’d sprained or broken something.

But his mind was untarnished by the physical stress he’d just endured.

My friends could be trapped down here, too. Or worse, at the mercy of... him...

Any desire that he had to take a momentary break on that uncomfortable floor ended.

He groaned again as he moved to stand back up. His aching muscles protested his movements. Back on his feet again, he held up a clawed hand and breathed a small fire into it, using his own brand of magic to weave the flames until he held a small sphere of self-contained light in his palm. With that small source of illumination slightly lighting his surroundings, he began to get his first look at his crude containment cell.

To his dismay, there were no discernible openings or passages from where he was, save for the chute he had fallen through, which to his discouragement was well above his head and just as well out of reach.

But as it stood, it appeared to be the only way out. If it got him back to his friends, he’d take it.

He quickly started scanning the walls for the most feasible way up to the hole in the ceiling. If he could climb halfway out of an abyss, a trapdoor chute was nothing.

The only possible problem lay in the fact that the opening in question was smack dab in the middle of the ceiling. Climbing his way out was looking problematic now; he was a dragon, not a gecko.

“If only I had my wings by now,” he grumbled barely under his breath, once again cursing his youth. In spite of the situation, a stray thought flickered across his mind.

Hm, I wonder if Rarity would find me more handsome if had wings, or if I could take her flying with me...

He sighed with a grumble as he made his way over to the wall“Scootaloo isn’t the only one down about not being able to fly. At least she actually has her wings...”

With nowhere to go but up, Spike made his way to the rock wall, put the orb in his mouth and held it with his teeth, then tested the holds and readied himself for a climb.

Okay, just like last time; one claw above the other...

“You... would DARE call me that disgusting, pathetic, contemptible little gecko?!”

Spike froze with fear. The sound was muffled by the walls, but he knew that terrible voice anywhere.

“AH!”

The light orb slipped from his mouth and fell to the floor. If Spike was frozen in fear before, now he was frigid. He knew that second voice anywhere too, and to hear her in pain stabbed daggers through him.

“Twilight?”

"You want to know who I am? I’ll tell you who I am!

”I... Am... AVARICE!!!”

Then Spike heard a roar of murderous hate and a distant whoosh of a hot, scornful wind... and then, silence.

It lasted only seconds, but each felt as long as the passing of a season in the still, unbroken silence. Uncomfortable silence: unnerving silence: deathly silence.

Move... something in the back of Spike’s mind said, but he didn’t.

Move, it said, more forcefully. He remained as still as the silence.

Move, dang it! MOVE!

Spike began to scramble up the wall, all his steps forgotten to automation in a desperate attempt to reclaim his freedom and save his friends. The silence was slain by his own heavy breathing, the gravel dislodging from the grip of his claws, and the low sound of the heavy rocks shifting behind him.

Wait... behind me?

“I really don’t see how you hope to get out of this one.”

Spike let out a scream, losing his hold on the fiery orb and the wall, and slid back down what little of it he had scaled. He turned and braced himself against the wall he’d been backed into. He fervently picked up the orb; a trivial token comfort to keep from being fully overwhelmed by dread.

“Avarice...” Spike whispered in fear. “Where’s Rarity? Where’s Twilight? What did you do with Twilight?!” Whatever air of confidence he’d hoped to regain was belied by the slight tremble in his voice.

Avarice chuckled as he strode forward into the light, bearing a foul smirk like a putrescent stench.

“Spike,” Avarice’s words were slow, cocksure, and dangerous. “How long has it been since we last got to talk face to face?”

Avarice’s expression hardened when Spike remained silent. “That was a serious question; how long has it been? It’s impossible to keep track of time down here.”

“I’m not telling you anything!” Spike retorted. “Now what did you do with Twilight and Rarity?”

Avarice only chuckled darkly at this. “Only demand of others and offer nothing in return... I like that. You know, maybe we aren’t so different...”

“We’re nothing alike!” Spike spat back.

“Really now...” Avarice mocked. “It seems we are at an impasse, so tell you what; we’re both civilized dragons, so we’ll do it your way. You tell me how long it’s been, and I tell you where your precious masters are. Deal?”

Spike was thrown for a total loop and remained silent as he attempted to process the situation.

“We don’t have much time, so tell me; how long has it been?!” Avarice growled.

Spike saw no other options. “How am I supposed to know if I can trust you?”

Avarice grinned, standing up even taller over Spike. “If there are only two things that you can count on me to always be known for, the first is that “I want it,” and the second is that I’m a dragon of my word.”

His demeanor fouled again. “So if you would stop WASTING our time!”

“Okay, deal!” Spike cut in. “Almost six months; that’s how long it’s been.”

“Six months?” Avarice took a moment to reflect on that. The face that always brimmed with barely contained hostility was now quisitive and etched with concentration. “How long is six months?”

“Hey, you already got the answer to your one question, I believe you owe me mine.”

Avarice snorted in amusement. “I see some of the know-it-all has rubbed off on you.”

His smirk briefly turned to a scowl before he became rather interested in the state of his claws. “Oh, I’ve just stored them in separate adjoining chambers like this one; I figured I’d return the favor.” He threw a quick dagger back at Spike with his eyes. “As for Twilight, I merely took certain... preventive measures to make sure she couldn’t interrupt our little reunion.”

Spike went numb.

“You... you...” He couldn’t hardly bring himself to think it, let alone say it. You killed...

“What? No!” Avarice answered, suddenly defensive. “No, I didn’t. In fact, you can’t even die in one of these dreams.”

His eyes shifted to the right and his tone became disappointed. “Apparently...”

“What?” Spike was suddenly confused. “Wait, Rarity...”

Spike tensed as he furrowed his brow. “I swear to Celestia, if you’ve done anything to her...”

“You’ll what?” Avarice sneered. “Hold on; you think I hurt Rarity?” His expression became flat and unamused. “Why would I do that?”

Spike remained stern. “Last time we met in person, you were about to throw my love into an abyss.”

Avarice threw a claw up into the air. “Well, forgive me if I’m not as rational when I’m completely reconstructing myself after I’ve been spat out and discarded like spent tissue!”

“And forgive me if I don’t recognize live snot when I see it!” Spike snapped back.

“No, I don’t think I will.” Avarice leered, swiftly moving in and meeting Spike at eye level, making the smaller dragon flinch from his palpable disdain. “There’s something else that you should know about me, and it’s that I’m not the forgiving type.

“I didn’t even get ONE DAY to exist! Yet all I could tell was that within that short span of real life, we had achieved completion. Nothing could have exceeded such an apex of purpose. We couldn’t have owned anything more important. Then at that pinnacle of life accomplishments... I was ripped away from everything; even from things I didn’t know I could lose. I became something barely even resembling a memory.

“And the next thing I knew...” Avarice became deathly serious, hissing his seething resent through his teeth. “I woke up in a trash can, malformed and ugly.”

“I’m... I’m sorry, Avarice.” Spike shuddered. Calling his mortal enemy by his name gave him a feeling like somepony was walking on his grave. “But doing what you wanted to do was going to destroy everything I cared about. You were just an idea, but following it wrecked my home, my town, and almost ruined my relationships with all my friends, and with... with...”

Spike had to look away. His voice trembled with sorrow. “I never wanted any of this to happen...”

Avarice sneered. “I’d almost respect that kind of egocentrism if I wasn’t the one getting screwed by it.” His sneer turned back into a smirk. “But that’s all going to change soon.”Avarice rose back to his full height. “Do you still remember what you asked me all that time ago, about what I wanted?”

Spike only half met Avarice’s gaze. “I seem to remember that you said you wanted everything,” he answered.

“You’re right, and the truth is I still do,” Avarice said. “But then I realized something; when I want everything, what should I strive for first? And after... six months of deliberation, do you know what I decided I want first?”

Spike was almost scared to ask. “What?”

Avarice leaned in again. “Freedom.”

Avarice suddenly looked back up in another direction, bladed ears twitching with slight movements like he was trying to pick up on a sound only he could hear.

“Time’s almost up,” he said as he looked back to Spike, “but that’s okay, because soon we’ll be seeing each other a lot more.”

“I doubt that,” Spike mumbled in reply.

Avarice chuckled deviously at this. “Oh, then you’re in for a nasty surprise.”

Spike squeaked as Avarice picked him up and began to stride across the room. He clutched his fire sphere tightly to him, tail curled around himself.

“Since we’re about to get so much closer, I’m going to make you another deal,” Avarice said. “You don’t say, write, imply, or otherwise communicate in any form so much as a single word to anyone about me, about anything, under any circumstance, and I won’t incinerate any of your friends.”

Spike gulped. “That sounds more like an ultimatum.”

Avarice acknowledged Spike with a slight tilt of his head. “Take it or leave it,” he said as they reached the hidden passage covered by a stone slab that he had entered from.

“But keep in mind that I know where all of them sleep.” Avarice slid the entrance to the passage open. “And I have a general idea of what temperature their fur has to reach before it ignites.”

With that, Avarice threw Spike into the neighboring dark room. He braced himself for the impact; it still didn’t hurt that much less as he once again slammed into the rocky floor, skidding to a halt as he lost his grip on the light.

“Just so you know,” Avarice finished as he resealed the entrance, “it’s below the temperature of dragon fire!”

The heavy thud of the stone door closing echoed through the chamber. When that moment passed, he found himself alone again.

Spike let out another small groan as he picked himself back up again, brushing the dust and dirt off himself as he picked up his tiny fire. He held it up to survey his new surroundings. Then he saw it, and the horror replaced his blood with ice.

Lying in front of him was the remains of a severely burned body.

It was a pony, that much was immediately obvious. A mare from the looks of it, but she had been too badly burned to tell much else. Just about all of her coat was either melted or burned away, same as her mane. Most of her skin had been incinerated, and what hadn’t was shrivelled and blackened. The exposed flesh had been seared and burnt and had a slight sheen to it.

She didn’t move. She didn’t make a sound.

Spike’s dread could be measured by the bile in his throat. For a moment, he stood petrified until some morbid curiosity prodded his shaken mind. He inched closer, holding out the light source to illuminate more of the terrible sight. Then he saw one of the only places that hadn’t been charbroiled. A small patch of her coat still remained on her flank.

It was lavender, and bore remains of a pink, six-point star.

The orb fell from his hand. If it made a noise when it hit the ground, he didn’t hear it.

“Twi... Twilight?”

He barely heard his own choked voice. What distant noises that did peirce his numbed senses and reached his upended brain sounded muffled and alien. His vision blurred as he fought the urge to vomit until he was a hollow bag of scales.

“Twilight?”

She did not move. She did not speak.

“Twilight!”

He was with her in an instant, cradling her head in his hands and trying to ignore the thought of what exactly the slimy substance he was getting on his claws might be.

“Twilight, say something! Please! Say something!”

She did not move. She did not speak. She didn’t even react as Spike held her. Her violet eyes just continued to stare forward in a glossy haze, unresponsive to her friend. They didn’t blink. They didn’t even twitch. They did nothing even when the first of many tears to fall from Spike’s eyes landed directly in her own.

“Twilight, wake up! Please wake up!... PLEASE!”

She didn’t.

“Twilight, p-please... don’t be... oh p-please d-don’t b-be... Twilight...”

He lost it. Spike pulled her body close to him and filed the cave with his cries of anguish.

“TWIIILIGHT!”

The dream world was swept away into nothingness and memory as a wave he neither saw nor felt dispersed the fields of energy that created it. With no dream, Spike fell into deep, thoughtless slumber. But his misery remained, overwhelming and omnipresent as the impenetrable dark. So his despair persisted as he remained in his troubled and tormented sleep, miserable and alone.

Mostly alone.

- - - - - -

Month six, day nine Month five, day twenty-five, entry four hundred and eighty-four.

Nine. Seconds.

I was asleep... for nine seconds. Only nine seconds. Yet I was so far down into a dream that it felt like over two weeks.

Nine. Seconds. I was only asleep for nine seconds! I mean, I cross-referenced all the data between brainwave activity and the timeline and everything checks out, but nine seconds! Nine seconds meant that I spent over two weeks in an empty ghost world that I had to build up from the ground myself! Nine seconds meant over two weeks of being completely alone, without any of my friends, without any of my family... without anypony even just to talk to...

How am I even supposed to be sure if the time passing is even the real time and not some imaginary perception of it? What if I got so accustomed to time passing at the relative theoretical speed of 16000 times greater in dream time than in the real world that I’ve lost my grip on what’s actually happening?

Twilight, calm down.

Why should I calm down? What if I got so lonely in this goddess-forsaken no-mare’s land that I subconsciously attempted to dupe myself into another dream where I only think that I woke up and I’m actually still trapped in my own mind and I’m really never ever going to see any of my friends again?

Because you’re doing that thing again where you’ve gotten so stressed out that you’re talking to yourself in the nearest reflective surface.

There was a small break in the writing.

Except this time, you’ve written the entire conversation down more dutifully than a stenographer.

Another small break.

Okay, I just had another coffee... I needed that.

I suppose I should start from the beginning...

The beginning of the parchment lay strewn across the floor underneath its own rolls and buckles, bunched up as more of the comically long scroll poured like a waterfall over the top of the desk, which had so much build up from the runoff of so many candles that small stalagmites of wax had begun to build up at the base of the furniture.

At this desk sat the disheveled wreck of Twilight Sparkle. Her mane was an unkempt mess that begged for the attention of a comb. Even her coat was below standard fare, being matted and slightly grimy in places from bouts of cold sweat. There were blackened, puffy bags under her bloodshot eyes, which were held wide open, pinpricks for pupils and twitching frenetically as they tracked the hovering quill in its urgent dance across the paper.

And that’s when I realized just how much I hated the train. Twilight wrote on the section of the parchment immediately in front of her. Without diverting her eyes from the paper, she dipped the quill into the inkwell and returned it to the paper, only to find she was just scratching it now.

With a twitch of her head she looked at the bottle. She picked it up with her magic and shook it gently. No sound came from it.

Breathlessly she whisked the empty inkwell over to a nearby cabinet without even looking back to it, dropped it off next to the other three empty flasks and procured a filled one. Without missing a beat as it hit the desk, the quill was in the well, and she continued to write.

Okay, maybe it’s not so much that I hated the train as much as I hated what it made even more painfully obvious. Empty street after empty street of nothing to see; empty train from engine to caboose; empty world. Nothing. Nopony...

I... I just wished there was something... I wished that there was something better... wished there was something more than this... saturated loneliness.

The cold sweat began to seep through her pores like ghosts. Twilight could feel herself shake as her breath started to shudder and bubbling tears haunted her eyes.

I wished I couldn’t feel it. I wished somepony would steal it: abduct it: corrupt it. But I never could. It was just...

A spot of the fresh ink smeared into a stain as a tear hit the paper.

Saturated loneliness...

The aura around the quill disappeared, and it fell onto the paper with a little clatter. Twilight put her hooves to her face as if she could push the tears back into her eyes, but she couldn’t. So she just sat there and quietly cried, eyes clenched shut, shrouding her vision in darkness.

Darkness...

She remembered the darkness. She remembered standing in it, being immersed by darkness: the infinite, impenetrable darkness. She remembered talking to it.

“Hello?” She remembered asking, but she wasn’t inquiring of the darkness.

“Hello?!” she called out desperately for anypony to answer.

“No...” she whimpered as she sat there in her bedroom.

“HELLO?!”

She remembered screaming into the omnipresent shadow. She felt the cracks beginning to reopen in her heart. Still nopony answered.

Nopony...

“NO!” Twilight yelled as she bolted upright and slammed her hooves onto the desk. There was light again, illuminating her room in a gentle glow.

Light...

Twilight looked out the window. A brilliant halo of golden light had already broken the horizon, heralding the arrival of the majestic sun with a cascade of light across the morning sky. Blushing clouds floated lazily in the navy blue air.

She closed her eyes again with an insufferable sigh. Absentmindedly she wondered if Luna would’ve found it less disrespectful had she just slept through the entire night rather than staying up until dawn having ignored every second of it to practically write an autobiography... an autobiography that encompassed only sixteen days.

That was really only nine seconds.

No, don’t think about that, she hastily reminded herself. Distraction; what was I just thinking about?... Oh yeah, Luna, Princess of Equestria: Goddess of the Moon. Younger sister to Princess Celestia. Fully reformed from her Nightmare Moon phase: doesn’t so much mind anymore that most ponies sleep through the night.

“Sleep...” Twilight could feel herself learn forward as fatigue weighed upon her, thoughts becoming more sluggish.

“NO!” she screamed and bolted upright again, and proceeded to smash her head several times against the desk. She lit her horn and summoned another Starbuck’s Java from the refrigerator that she’d relocated from the kitchen. She ripped the cap off, chugged the entire bottle down in three gulps, and shook her head vigorously as she chucked the empty bottle back towards a wastebasket. It shattered upon the pile of thirty-six other empty bottles that had long since been overfilling the can.

“Can’t sleep, won’t sleep...” she muttered to herself. “Not if it means a dream like that again. Not if... not if he...”

“Twilight?”

Twilight let out an involuntary scream and jumped slightly in surprise as she turned to face the newcomer, first glance making her heart rate shoot up and pupils shrink in fear.

Amethyst scales, lime frills, emerald eyes... it was just Spike, standing by the door.

Twilight felt herself remain inexplicably tense.

She gulped. “Spi... Spike?”

“Twilight!”

She tensed up as Spike charged directly for her. She almost screamed as he got within the last few paces and lunged her, smacking into her with a death-grip and burying his face into her grimey coat.

Something had paralyzed her mind, gears spinning in indecision until she realized; Spike was hugging her, tightly and fearfully. He was holding her so close that she could feel each one of his shuddering breaths.

“I was so worried,” he sniffed. “I just had to make sure, had to...” Spike looked up at Twilight, pain pouring from his eyes. “Don’t scare me like that!”

Twilight looked down to him, stunned. She stared down into his gaze in surprise, watching as the hurt edge slowly disappeared from his face to be replaced by sadness. Bottom lip quivering and eyes on the verge of tears, he buried his face back into her dirty fur.

Slowly getting her senses back, she lightly returned the embrace.

“Spike,” she carefully asked, “Spike, what’s wrong?”

He looked back up at his dear friend.

“I–” he choked, “I dreamed that you had died.”

Twilight’s eyes slowly grew wide. Oh, dear Celestia... He found my body.

She returned the hug in full and pulled Spike in close to her.

“Oh Spike,” she comforted, “it’s okay. It was just a dream.”

“Not just a dream...” Spike mumbled. “I mean, yeah, it was a dream, but... it felt so real...”

Twilight stiffened, noting how a phrase that had once enamored her so now just kept coming back to bite her in the butt.

“A-and when I held you, I tried to wake you up, but I couldn’t,” Spike continued, starting to get worked up again. “Y-you were just staring off into nothing. Your-your eyes weren’t even moving. You d-didn’t even blink.”

Spike looked back up at Twilight, tortured eyes filled with sorrow and despair. “I-it was like y-you were dead...”

Twilight quieted Spike with a soothing shush and pulled him back in with an empathetic nuzzle. “Shhh... Spike, it was just a dream, and that’s all that it was.”

Though that would’ve been nice to know when your evil alter-ego killed me and sent me into a subconscious limbo for over two weeks.

She mentally smacked herself. Don’t think about that right now.

“Spike, what matters is that it’s over now, and this right now is real,” Twilight said, “and I’m very much alive.”

“Yeah, I... I guess.” Spike tightened his grip. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Twilight.”

She smiled. “Nor would I.”

Spike looked up at her fondly, only for his face to fall with concern as he got a better look at her, which he called her on. “You’ve been crying.”

Twilight paused, her ears drooping backwards. “What? No! I just...” Her sentence hung as she brushed away at her cheeks.

Spike’s face scrunched up with a whiff of indignance. “If get-together poker night reassured me of anything, it’s that you’re a terrible liar.”

Twilight submitted. No point in prevaricating any further.

“So what’s wrong?” Spike asked.

Twilight sighed. “For what it’s worth, I didn’t sleep very well, either.”

“Oh,” Spike responded. “Bad dream?”

Twilight didn’t answer right away. Spike’s second question had spurred an involuntary recollection of events.

“I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“Come on,” Spike protested, “I told you my story, it’s only fair that you tell me yours.”

Twilight peered at her inquisitive little friend, and conceded. “I...”

Memories flashed across her mind like the night visions she experienced during her own mental incarceration. The heartache of finding the thief. Spike’s despair over his interior turmoil. The wicked antithesis incarnate of her friend murdering her. Unknowingly waking into a dream of nothing. Counting herself for dead. Unbearable heartbreak. Spurs of creation failing to stave away the loneliness that stalked her more tenaciously than her own shadow. Shepherding the sun and moon across the sky. Solitariness. Gifting herself with wings. Isolation. Appointing herself ruler of an unpopulated kingdom. Nothingness. Nopony.

Saturated loneliness.

Twilight hugged Spike tightly, letting loose several more tears in the embrace she’d wanted to give him since last night. Her voice shivered, barely above a whisper.

“I was infinitely alone: introduced personally to the concept of total loneliness.”

Spike patted her on the back. “Well, it’s over now,” Spike returned in kind. “You’re awake, and you don’t ever have to worry about not having anypony around again.”

Twilight was struck with realization. “Anypony...”

Spike stumbled over as Twilight bolted for the door.

“Hey, where are you going?”

“My friends, Spike!” Twilight answer from the door. “I need to go see my friends!”

“But the sun is hardly even up yet! Everypony is still probably asleep!” Spike protested, stopping her. “And... well, if you’re going to go see Rarity, you should probably clean up first, and... hey!” Spike got another look at Twilight’s baggy, bloodshot eyes. “Did you even sleep at all last night?”

“Um...”

“You didn’t!” Spike proclaimed, getting his first look at the pile of parchment rolling off the desk, the hill of empty java bottles, and the relocated refrigerator. “Remember what we’d said about overnight projects?”

“But...” Twilight pawed at the ground sheepishly. “Spike, I had to! I just couldn’t go to sleep! I...” She looked down at a hoof. “I was afraid.”

Spike backed off her case. “Of what?”

A knot formed in Twilight’s suddenly dry throat. She looked back up at Spike, and for the briefest of moments she could’ve sworn she saw not her bedroom, but the empty plane of nothing again.

“Of...” the word got caught in her throat.

Of being alone...

Some treacherous part of her mind found it most expedient to interject its dissension into her internal conversation. For a moment shorter than when she saw the empty planes of limbo again, standing in place of Spike, she saw another dragon.

And of you.

Her face contorted in shame, and she turned away, unable to look at the dear friend that she would dare hold such mistrust against.

“Oh Twilight, I understand; you were just afraid of being alone again.” There was not a single inflection in Spike’s voice that wasn’t full of genuine empathy.

He slowly walked back over to Twilight and gave her another hug. She didn’t resist despite her insides squirming with guilt for her deceitful thoughts, telling her that she didn’t deserve his sympathies and that she was a bad pony for keeping such a secret from him.

“Don’t worry; you don’t have to anymore,” Spike said. “But you need some sleep, Twilight. You get all jumpy and wound up when you don’t get your rest. Tell you what; I’ll stay with you, so that way you won’t have be alone, even when you’re dreaming. How’s that?”

Twilight smiled weakly, vaguely remembering having said something similar. It felt so long ago.

“But.. but I have to...” Twilight yawned, eyelids drooping and posture slouching. “What were we... my friends!” She jolted upright, shaking her head. "I need to go..." She yawned. "See my friends!"

“Twilight, they’re probably all still sleeping, and you need to get some for yourself because you can’t function without it.”

“You have a point but...” Twilight was cut off by another lengthy yawn. She looked back at Spike through half-lidded eyes. “Uh... what were we talking about again?”

Spiked sighed. “See, this is exactly what I mean. Twilight, you need some rest.”

She looked back through the door again. “But...”

A slight smirk appeared on Spike’s face. “This is probably the only time I’m going to get to say this, but Twilight: go to bed.”

“But... but I can’t be alone...”

“You won’t be, Twi,” Spike offered in proposition. “I’ll stay with you until you wake up, and I’ll wake you up early if it looks like you’re having another bad dream. Okay?”

Twilight thought about it for a moment. “You’d do that?”

“Sure would,” he said. “That’s what friends are for, right?”

“You promise to wake me up if I’m having another bad dream?”

“Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye. See? You even got a free Pinkie Promise out of it.That’s the kind of dedication you get from a number one assistant.”

Twilight chuckled. “Alright Spike...” She yawned. “You win.”

Satisfied, Spike bounded over to Twilight’s bed and pulled back the indigo, star-flecked blankets, beckoning her to submerge herself into the comforting sheets. She climbed into bed and laid down with a heavy, audible sigh, her body relaxing almost immediately upon sinking into the mattress as Morpheus welcomed her to his kingdom with open embrace. Twilight yawned wide as Spike pulled the sheets back over her, then to her surprise yet delightful content he proceeded to lovingly tuck her in, bringing back fond memories of the many times when she was still just a foal that her parents would tuck her in for the night before singing her to sleep with a lullaby. She used give the same kind bedtime procedure to Spike when they were so much younger.

Spike jumped down from the bed and scampered over to the desk, extinguished the candles, then moved to the window and pulled the curtains closed, shrouding the room with a darkness broken only by the faint light of the approaching dawn.

Something seized up inside Twilight. She had to force herself to remember that the darkness was not total. She could still see well enough; she was still in her room. Her real room, in her real library, in the real world.

Twilight felt a tugging at the foot of her bed as Spike pulled himself back up upon it. He made his way back over to Twilight and lay down next to her, pulling the blanket from his own bed over himself.

“Hope you don’t mind, but...” Spike grunted as he moved into a more comfortable position, “I didn’t sleep at that well either, so I figured I’d catch some extra Z’s right with you.”

Twilight frowned a little. “You haven’t been sleeping well for a while now, have you?”

“Not really, now that I think about it. Ever since...” Spike furrowed his brow in recollection, “since about after the wedding… Well,” Spike yawned, “good night... or, good morning.” He chuckled to himself. “Anyway, ‘night Twi; love ya.”

“Yeah...” Twilight paused, “I love you too, Spike.”

He smiled and closed his eyes, snuggling up closer to his best friend.

Twilight hesitated, and cursed herself for still having even any residual fear still lingering within her that she felt towards him.

Get a hold of yourself, Twilight. Spike is your friend, so stop being such a scaredy-pony around him. He’s not the problem, it’s just...

She looked back to Spike, curled up and content in his resting place.

He looks so peaceful, she thought. Flying in the face of her hesitations, she leaned him and gave him a little kiss on his forehead.

Spike’s contented smile grew wider and he nuzzled closer to her, sighing happily. Twilight was hit with another unprecedented pang of guilt as she continued to try and stay awake, knowing that there was no way Spike could’ve known that her gesture wasn’t as much an unabashed expression of affection as it was more along the lines of a coping mechanism.

It could concern her for the moment no longer. She could no longer resist the siren call of slumber, and she collapsed into its enticing, captivating grasp.

- - - - - -

So after that intensive bout of studying my own memories of avian and pegasi specific limbic anatomy, I felt like I had enough of an idea on the proper construction of functional sets of natural (if artificially created) wings. And with that first step cemented firmly in place, then I started thinking about possible methods I could use to actually create…

Wait…

Twilight slowly raised her head up from the paper in slow, awful realization.

How did I get here? she thought. I don’t remember waking—

Her breath ceased after a sharp inhalation. Her whole body became rigid as an all too familiar fear seized her again and her pupils shrunk to dots as the quill fell to the floor.

“I can’t be… I can’t be…”

Twilight felt something clench up stiffly at her sides. Some part of her mind told her to look, but her neck refused to comply. Even her eyes remained rooted in place, determined to stay fixated upon some meaningless part of the bedroom wall in front of her. She wanted to know, but she couldn’t look; some part of her already knew.

She managed to overcome her trepidation long enough to command her muscles to pivot her head enough to look back towards her sides.

Her wings were folded tightly against her. The down feathers began to quiver fearfully upon the air of Twilight’s returned breath: a series of quick gasps of mounting panic.

“Oh no; Oh No… No no no no NO! I can’t… I’m…”

“Twilight…” she called to herself from the front of the desk.

What?

“Twilight!”

She looked in the direction that her disembodied voice was coming from to see her glass gyroscope, catching glimpses of her broken reflection across its frames and the rotor.

Wait, that couldn’t be her reflection; the image looking back was glaring impatiently at her, and she was quite certain she wasn’t glaring at anypony.

As she watched, her reflection in the gyroscope lit its horn with a magenta glow. Twilight staggered back at this; she hadn’t lit her horn.

The quill on the floor became surrounded with the aura of her reflection’s magic and lifted off the floor. It dipped into the inkwell as another large sheet of paper floated over to the desk. The quill flew across the paper, the reflection spending a moment to doodle something onto it before floating the paper down in front of Twilight.

She looked at the sheet, unsure. A little drawing had been sketched onto the paper, but what it was she couldn’t tell immediately. Twilight looked back up to the gyroscope to ask an explanation, only to find that her reflection was no longer there.

Twilight cast her gaze back down to the paper and did a double take. The drawing had not only changed, it was moving. Not only that, she could tell was the image was now; it was a sketch of herself, and she appeared to be swimming up towards her as if the cartoon was about to…

Twilight yelped in surprise as the Twilight from the paper broke the surface, fully formed as an exact duplicate of her, minus the wings.

The new Twilight got her hoofing unto the floor, sucking in the air with deep, hungry gasps.

“Okay…” she managed to get out from between breaths, “maybe… maybe that wasn’t the best… the best idea I’ve ever had...”

“I… what… how…” original Twilight stammered. “Who are you?!”

New Twilight cracked a grin. “You know the reflection you talk to when you’ve gotten so stressed out that your schizophrenia kicks in and your psyche needs somepony to be the voice of reason for you? That’s me; so I suppose you could call me “Voice of Reason.” Or just “Reason” for short… or “VoR” if you’re feeling particularly biased for acronyms…”

Reason shook her head. “But that’s beside the point. The important thing is that the gears in your mind have already started turning. You’ve already figured out you’re in a dream, so the next logical step is to conclude that I’m a projection; but why I’m here if you haven’t reached your breaking point yet…”

Reason circled around Twilight to her right so that Twilight was looking towards the direction of the bedroom door, opposite the window. “You’ve undergone enough stress recently that you’re subconsciously summoning me just to circumvent freaking out. So remain calm, and whatever you do,” Reason looked squarely into Twilight’s eyes, “do NOT freak out.”

Twilight fidgeted with unease. “B-but… if I’m in a— in a dream, a-and I’ve g-got these,” she looked down at her tense wings again, “does that m-mean…”

Her head shot up and she gasped in horror. She snapped her head around to look out the bedroom window behind her.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!”

Outside her bedroom window, she saw a tower; a grand palace of smooth, whitewashed stone overlooking a massive clock embedded into the surface of a towering stone mesa.

Twilight half-flew into the opposite wall as she reared back in terror. She didn’t even flinch as she smashed straight into the wood, wings still fluttering in a nervous panic; eyes wide and pupils miniscule with fear, mouth drawn open with horror.

“No NO NO! I- I’m: I’m HERE! I’M TRAPPED IN LIMBO AGAIN!”

“Twilight, calm down!” Reason tried to order.

“NO! I’m trapped i-in he-here again an-and I’m never ev-ever going t-t-to s-see any of my friends again!” she sobbed.

“TWILIGHT!” Reason yelled as she silenced the hysterical unicorn’s cries with a hoof over the mouth. “Calm. Down.”

Twilight just continued to sob through the obstruction.

“Twilight.. Twilight…” Reason further pressed in an attempt to get a hold of the situation. It was getting her nowhere; Twilight continued to weep and shudder out of control.

“TWILY!”

Her shaking ceased and her crying slowed. She looked back up to the projection, eyes wide, almost pleading.

“Good,” Reason said. “Yes, you’re in a dream but that doesn’t mean you’re trapped in limbo. So if you can promise that you’ll be a good filly and try to remember how you got here, I’ll take my hoof off your mouth. Now... do you promise to be good?”

Her breath still wavered and a stream of tears still marked her terrified eyes, but slowly, Twilight gave a tiny little nod.

“Okay, as promised.” Reason slowly withdrew her hoof. “Now, can you remember?”

Twilight was still trembling. Her breath came in short gasps as an occasional tear streaked down her face, but she wasn’t crying out of control anymore.

“Only…” she sniffed, “only Shining Armor gets to... gets to call me “Twily”…”

“Good; you can remember our personal big brother pet name clause, so you can remember how you ended up in this dream.” Reason moved along. “Now think; how did I get here?”

“I… I... I can’t remember…” She started to cry again.

“Yes you can!” Reason reassured. “We’re a smart pony; we know we are! You just need to think!”

Twilight looked off in concentration. “I… I really can’t remember, because… because a dream takes place during... during R.E.M sleep, a-and memories aren’t formed before then…”

“That’s good! So then what happened before the time where you have no memory?”

“I…” Twilight choked back another sob. “I was… writing, because…” The words caught in her throat. “Then Spike came looking for me, because he’d had a bad dream, too.” She looked up. “Then he saw how shaken I looked, and he convinced me to get some sleep, so… I’m not in a spell generated dream, I’m just—”

“Dreaming,” Reason cut in, smiling, “in your own natural, healthy sleep.”

Twilight sighed in relief, a familiar feeling of a great weight being lifted from her once again beset. “Thank you. Really, I mean it.”

Reason cocked her head to the side in a nonchalant gesture. “Think nothing of it. Technically, you should be thanking yourself.”

A thought crept back into Twilight’s mind, trudging its dirty hoof-prints of worry back onto the carpet that she had just cleaned.

“But, if I’m just in a dream, why does the outside look like...” She pointed to the window, and again found her voice seized up upon itself.

Reason sighed in sympathy. “Like I’ve said, you’ve been through a lot recently. You’ll probably be feeling the repercussions of that kind of psychological damage for a while, but we both know what can help us with that…”

“My friends.”

“Precisely,” Reason said. “That, and keeping me a little closer might help, too.” She smiled, turning back to the paper.

Twilight stopped her before she got to the paper. “Wait! How am I supposed to know if I’ve actually woken up for real when I do?”

Reason looked back to Twilight, wearing a clever grin. “You’re learning... but the real conundrum is a little more complex than that.”

Twilight raised an eyebrow in curiosity. “What then? Am I supposed to come up with some personal way of telling if I’m in a dream?”

“That’s closer, but you’re still missing the point,” Reason answered.

“What are you talking about then?” Twilight asked.

Reason looked straight at her. “You don’t just need a way to tell whether or not you’re in a dream, Twilight; you need a way to keep track of reality.”

Twilight looked at Reason with uncertainty. “How am I supposed to do that?”

“Hey, do I look like Creativity to you? That’s an answer you have to come up with for yourself; but for what it’s worth,” Reason glanced out the window, “we both know you’ve got one hay of a creative spark in you.”

With that, Reason turned and jumped back into the blank canvas lying on the floor.

Twilight got back up onto all four of her hooves and slowly made her way over to the paper. To her surprise, she found it empty.

She looked up from the paper to her desk, expecting to see Reason reflected there, but the only image she saw was her own.

Slowly, cautiously, she dared steal a peek at the dream world outside. The sight of the palace… her palace, immediately struck her with that terrible pang of loneliness that had wracked her for so long. But the longer she looked, the more she realized there was something beyond that initial reminder of a monument ultimately built to combat her grief.

Steeling herself to hold her gaze, the answer emerged from the dark depths of memories she wished she could forget; it was admiration. She had built something that was incredible and beautiful, and now that she was no longer trapped here, there was something to respect about that from an artistic standpoint.

Twilight looked back to the gyroscope.

“A spark of creativity…”

She thought about it for a second, and then looked back to the palace. The pure white palace, and grand hall for the queen of an unknown world… an unpopulated world….

She could feel loneliness coil around her again and begin to suffocate her with its presence. She could feel it strangle her, raking its fangs across her fur and burning her skin with its dripping venom. Whatever glimmer of appreciation she had been able to glean from the great structure sunk back into the murky depths of prolonged, isolated discomfort, and she could look at it no longer.

I… I need to wake up. I’m going to have another breakdown if I don’t go to see my friends.

Willing herself to be out of the dream, she could begin to feel her own body, her real body, lying limp under the covers of her bed. Sleep still clung to her, and she squirmed in unease at her continued captivating slumber.

Wasn’t Spike supposed to wake me up? she thought to herself, annoyed.

“Twilight?”

The unicorn looked behind her. Spike was standing at the door, sorrow and remorse written all over his face.

She knew it wasn’t the real Spike, but she answered him anyway.

“Yes, Spike? What is it?”

He stood there, woe visibly weighing down upon him. Whatever words he had to say got caught in his throat, and he had to exert himself to speak them..

“Twilight, are… are we still friends?”

Twilight felt herself smile with reassurance at him. “Of course, Spike, and we always will be.”

Spike still didn’t look convinced. “Really? Even with… considering… that I’m…”

Twilight redoubled her efforts to wake. Get out of this now. This is going to end badly; you need to get out of this now!

She paused for a moment before her dream-self spoke automatically. “Spike, no matter what problems you have, you can count on me and the rest of your friends to help you work through them. Everypony has problems, so we won’t think any less of you for having your own.”

Her words of encouragement only seemed to make his spirits sink even further. His shoulders slumped and his spine hunched over. Spike looked away from her towards the vanity mirror on her dresser. Twilight could almost see through his eyes to watch his soul being crushed .

“Spike?”

He didn’t even acknowledge her.

”Spike?”

Twilight stared at him in ominous curiosity. On a whim she looked to the same mirror to see the dragon’s reflection.

The reflection of Avarice smirked back at her, then spoke.

“Poker night, Twi.”

Then he roared and lunged at her through the mirror, claws outstretched and fangs bared.

Avarice tackled her into the desk. It took the collision to unfreeze Twilight from her paralyzing fear. Her instinct came back in an instant and she lit her horn, teleporting away in a flash of light and appearing next to where she last saw Spike.

“Spike, get out of here!” she said as she lowered her horn for a counter attack, flashing a glance to him. “I’ll hold him off long enough for you to— Spike?”

He was nowhere to be seen.

Twilight heard Avarice grunt with a heave. The broadside of her desk smashed into her again as it flew through the air, knocking her off her hooves. Their momentum carried her through the air, both her and the desk crashing her into the wall.

She groaned from her injuries, fumbling against the remains of the desk piled upon her in a daze. She was about to use the magic to lift the desk when it was ripped off of her by force. She attempted to stand, only to receive a roundhouse punch from Avarice, knocking her back to the floor. The aura around her horn sputtered out and died.

Ears ringing. Head pounding. A throbbing pain in her horn jabbing spears into her brain with each beat, keeping her from focusing enough to use magic. Yet through it all she felt her body lying in a different position, half buried in fabric, cold with terror, and twitching with fear. She refocused on that, burrowing her way through the false sensations towards freedom like it was the surface of water after her last breath had lost it’s oxygen.

Avarice towered over Twilight. He grabbed her by the neck, choking her as he hoisted her up to eye level.

Cold sweat wrung itself out through her pores, drenching her. It wasn’t just the dream, she could feel his hold on her; feel the cruel points from each of those claws digging into her skin; feel his hot breath and sharp eyes drilling through her.

“Come on, Twi,” he said with a mocking laugh. “It’s just a dream, so wake up!”

For the only time that she had ever encountered him, Twilight frantically tried to comply. She could feel herself in her bed shaking violently, feel her wings futilely flapping in protest, feel his talons poking her flesh, and feel the weight of her eyelids that she was desperately trying to wrench open.

Avarice titled his head back in euphoric elation, soaking in the intoxicating smell of her panic. Then with a new lash of ferocity, he grabbed her by the side with his other arm and forced her head back, exposing her throat.

“WAKE UP!” Avarice roared, and sunk his teeth deep into her neck.

That’s when Twilight started screaming.

She ripped her eyelids open, thrashing about in her bed before her vision could even focus. She could still feel the claws on her neck and her side. A jolt of electricity shot into her hind legs and she bucked out against her captor.

Twilight felt gashes open up on her neck as the claws were ripped away from her. She tumbled out of bed in a tangle of sheets, backing up until she hit the wall. Her horn burst to light, cackling with power, ready to strike back against her attacker.

She didn’t realize that she had still been screaming until she ran out of air and had to start breathing again. When it returned it came in deep, panicked bursts of air being sucked in and blown out of her lungs. She blinked in rapid succession, clearing as much sleep as possible from her eyes without daring to obscure them by rubbing them with her hooves. Her sight darted back and forth across her view of the bedroom, scanning for her attacker.

There was none.

She designated every possible vantage that he could be waiting behind, just waiting for an opportunity to jump out from hiding and hurt her again.

There was no movement, and there were no sounds save for the fierce magic still sizzling around her horn. Then...

“Ow...” Spike whimpered from the other side of her bed.

Twilight gasped. She extinguished her magic in an instant and rushed around the bed.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry!” Twilight tried to apologize as she cantered to his aid.

“What the hay was that for?!” Spike whined, clutching his injury and shooting Twilight an accusing glare.

Twilight froze; the anger in those eyes... she had to force herself to shrug it off.

“Oh Spike, I’m sorry; I... just had a bad dream. Here, let me help you.”

Twilight gently moved Spike’s arms away from the wound. He winced and she gasped when she saw what she’d done. A fat, angry welt in the exact shape of her hind left hoof had formed on his torso where she’d kicked him.

“Oh my gosh, I’m so sor—”

“Yeah, I get it; you’re sorry. Can I go to the hospital now? I think you bruised my ribs.”

“Don’t... don’t worry about that, I can fix this.”

Twilight activated her magic and pointed her glowing horn at the wound. Spike winced again in discomfort as a gentle green glow laced with dancing white wisps surrounded the injury, and slowly the swelling reversed and the discoloration disappeared as the wound healed.

“There,” Twilight said when she had finished. “It’s not quite Curaja, but you should be good as new. Feel better?”

“No,” he grumbled. “My so-called best friend just bucked me halfway across her bedroom for no good reason.”

“Yeah... I’m sorry.” Twilight apologized again. “I just had—”

“A bad dream; yeah, I got that. What, did you dream you were getting attacked by timber wolves or something?”

“I... something like that...” She let her sentence hang, opening up a awkward silence. “Thank you, by the way.” She trying to give him a thankful ruffle on the head, but he tensed up and moved away from the gesture.

“Sure, whatever,” Spike muttered. “Next time you need me to wake you up, I’ll do it by poking you with a really big stick, or I’ll just set up a Rube Goldbuck machine to dump a bucket of water on your face.”

“Hm... that actually might not be a bad idea...” Twilight thought aloud, “but it’ll have to wait for later.”

The unease and unrest swept back over her with sudden force, and Twilight almost began to shake with discomfort.

“I... I need to go,” she said with a hurt tone as she brushed past Spike towards the door.

“Go where?” Spike asked.

Twilight turned to look at him “To see my friends, Spike. I’m going to have a breakdown if I go any longer without seeing them.”

“What’s so important that you need to see them today? Most of them are probably... hey, wait!” He ran outside the bedroom to call to her from the threshold. “You’re not going to leave me with all this stuff to clean up, are you?!”

“I’ll find some way to make it up to you later,” she muttered from halfway down the stairs. “Don’t worry about the refrigerator, I’ll put that back later.”

Spike ground his teeth, growled, turned around, and slammed the door to the bedroom.

Twilight was already at the door. Her physical trembles were making her breath shudder, which was coming in deep, quick bursts on the verge of gasps. The very air of the library felt suffocating. Her skin was clammy and her ears twitched in annoyance, and the whole of her body yearned to break out into the open air of her free nation and bask in the loving warmth of the sun.

In spite of her own protests, she looked back up to her bedroom and stared for a moment. However long that moment lasted, she didn’t know, but try as she could, she couldn’t rip her sullen gaze from the door until her own shaking made it hard to stand.

She put her hoof on the handle and hung her head. The springs of coils and clinking of locks never sounded so loud as she open the door, and the rays of sunlight and fresh breeze almost pulled her entrails from her body. But she still kept her gaze fixed at the ground as she exhaled a single, sorrowful sigh:

“Those eyes... why do they have to have the same eyes?”

- - - - - -

Twilight stood outside on the front porch of her library and home. Her eyes were still fixated on her hooves, and she was still shaking: legs wobbling: breath shivering in anxiety.

Her senses were overwhelming her with their own sudden hyperactivity, making her intensely aware of her surroundings. She could feel the sun blazing overhead. She could feel the gentle breeze tug at her mane and tease through her fur like a foal desperately wanting to play, chilling her as it cooled the cold sweat on her skin. She could feel it sting her fresh cuts and bother her eyes, pulling at the tears building up at the corners. She could feel the weight of her own body, every fiber of it still fidgeting.

She could see the surface of the porch that she remained faceted to, see every little minute detail of its ridged and wooden textures, see her shadow beneath her, and see her own forelegs still trembling.

She could smell the plethora of aromas wafting through the idle air, oak bark and sap from her treehouse, pollen drifting on unseen currents, honey coming from a nearby beehive, and the crisp smell of the humidity and dew evaporating in the heat from the surrounding grass. She picked up on the sweet, distant scent of baked goods and the musky odor of her own perspiration.

She could hear the gentle rustle of the leaves, hear the tiny buzzing of the bees, the twittering chirps of birds, and the faint gurgle of water in nearby streams. She heard her own deep, trembling breaths, the dull thud of her heartbeat in her ears, and the quiet clatter of her hooves, still shaking on the wood.

Off in the distance, she heard the indecipherable babble of ponies as they went about their daily business or sat down for friendly chats.

Her uneasy muscles, sociable drives of her psyche, and unhealed void in her heart all screamed at her to move; to find any of her close friends and hug them like she never wanted to let them go, but she remained rooted in place. She hated staying there, but some more logical part of her new she had to, if just for a little longer. She knew why, and she hated the reason almost as much as being stuck there.

Somewhere in her own memories, something she’d heard in a much earlier time returned from the forgotten recesses of her own mind like an ironic echo. Sometime, so long ago, she remembered reading about an allegory that likened being introduced to concepts of world-shaking profoundness to being raised in a cave and then coming out to see the sun for the first time. It had to be a slow process of acclimation, least it all prove to be overwhelming and promptly rejected because it was too much to take in.

That was why she stood there, unmoving save for her own shaking. She had been away in her own world for so long that she had to get used to being in this one again. This world, the real world, she thought with grim understanding, was the sunlight to her dark-acclimated eyes, and the cave she was trapped in had been her own mind.

That was why she loathed having to stay there on the porch.

As much as she dared, she slowly raised her head from the point on the ground she had fixed it to. The sunlight stung her eyes, so she squinted, taking in the sight of the vast field of green grass blades that stretched out before her.

She froze, becoming deathly still in the middle of gradually lifting her gaze to officially mark her return to the real world, to the Ponyville she knew and loved, to the beginning of her mission to see the friends that she cared more that anything for. She tried to move, but suddenly found her own muscles unresponsive and her body stricken with a chill that drilled all the way to the marrow, and she could not figure out why.

Then she realized; she was afraid.

She was afraid that if she lifted her eyes back up that she wouldn’t see Ponyville, but a circle of earth and grass upon which she and her library were its only feature. That she would see not her beloved town, but great, jet-black marble arms of a massive clock extended over swirling paths and beautiful gardens placed in the center of a monolithic granite mesa, surrounded by eleven glorious towers and a palace of pure white.

She could almost hear the hiss of loneliness in her ear.

Twilight snapped her head up to full attention, pupils shrunken and breath held with a death grip.

She saw the scattered stone buildings of the cottages that surrounded her library. She saw gentle rolling hills and the various spots of bushes, tiny trees, sunflowers, and shrubs strewn across them. She saw the blue sky above and the clouds that lethargically floated through them.

She held her unblinking stare on Ponyville, fearful that it might disappear into memory if she looked away.

The scenic view held. For as long as she kept her gaze on it, it held.

A speck of dust blew into her eye and she attempted to blink it out, realizing her folly far too late. She ripped her eyes back open again in fear.

Ponyville still stood before her, exactly like it had just a fraction of a second ago.

A lone stallion trotted down the street just in front of her. The sudden movement made Twilight jump in surprise, and her still hyperactive senses took in all his features. Beige coat, average build, wild, tousled brown mane and tail badly in need of a comb, blue eyes, white collar with a red tie, and an hourglass for a cutie mark.

“Good afternoon, Miss Sparkle!” he said merrily as he passed by with an accent that reminded her of Trottingham.

She followed him with her eyes, momentarily dumbfounded. That’s the first pony I’ve seen in over two weeks, some part of her realized.

Say something to him then! At least say “hi!”

“Uh... h-hey,” she stuttered. With another start, she realized it was the first time she’d spoken to somepony else in over two weeks, too.

He didn’t respond; he was already halfway to the next corner. As Twilight watched him go, she realized that she’d seen him on several occasions before, but after all this time she still didn’t know his name. The closest thing to a name for him that she knew of was she’d heard-tell that Derpy simply called him “Doctor.”

She thought of the accident-prone mailmare, and on impulse she looked up to the sky. As luck would have it, she saw the happy-go-lucky pegasus swaying lopsided in the gentle breeze, saddlebags strapped to her. Something caught her attention and suddenly she dived, dropping out of sight behind the roof of a nearby house. A split second passed before Twilight heard a heavy thunk and a subsequent “Ow!” as Derpy crashed into a mailbox.

Twilight caught the sounds of distant conversations again. The full realization finally began to sink in, and for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, the fluttered pulse of her heart was not from worry or woe, but from bliss.

She really was back in Ponyville, and her friends really were out there, waiting for her.

She took the first step off the porch and off the cobblestone path. She heard the chorus of grass crunching underneath her hoof. Not once in her entire life could she remember feeling so exhilarated to feel the grass under her hooves. Another step, another chorus, and another wave of joy swept over her.

She left the lawn and returned to the road, trotting to her destinations. She was still shaking, but this time it was partially out of excitement.

I’m going to go see my friends, she thought.

Her hooves were almost carrying her automatically. Passing the first few buildings, the entire layout of the town began unveiling itself once more in her mind’s eye; the recollection coming with joy that after all that time, she still remembered the mapping of her beloved town.

I’m going to go see my friends!

Her trot became much more brisk.

She remembered the exact routs she would take to get any-which-where, even the detours she would take when one way was closed off. She remembered where each of her friends lived, and she remembered that the closest residence to her library was Sugarcube Corner.

I’m going to go see my friends!

Twilight was full-on galloping through the town, deftly ducking and weaving through the crowds and rounding each corner without losing a single Newton of momentum. Her heart felt so light and invigorated by her mission that she felt if it was fueled by a single iota more of drive, she’d be able to grow wings and fly there.

She rounded the last corner and ground to a halt to take it in. Sugarcube Corner stood directly in front of her, just like she had always seen it in both in real life and her waking night visions. A single, joyful laugh escaped her throat, clenched from the threat of bursting into tearful sobs of joy.

Her heart could take it no longer. She took off at a gallop, pumping effort into her legs until the blood coursing through them became acidic. She weaved like wind through the crowds, eyes never deviating away from the door to the sweet shop for a second.

She was just a few paces away now. She could already taste the cupcakes, already hear the bubbly laughter of her hyperactive pink friend, already smell the aroma of cotton candy that her mane always bore, already see the unfathomable joy beaming in those bright blue eyes, and already feel her heart soar to hold a dearly loved friend again.

Twilight leapt through the air into the door. It burst open from the collision of her front hooves. The smells, the sights, the colors; it was all still a blur from her own movement and tears of joy.

“Oh; afternoon, Twi! Welcome back to—”

“PINKIE!!!” Twilight called out for her, unable to hold onto her excitement for a moment longer.

“Oh, sorry,” Mr. Cake apologized from the counter, “but she’s not taking visitors now.”

One of Twilight’s eyes twitched.

“What?”

“Yep,” Carrot explained, “said she was feeling under the weather and called for a rain check.”

The words rung with a chime of dissonance in her ears. She understood them, but couldn’t comprehend their meaning; she didn’t want to put the meaning to them, because that meant committing to something other than her disbelief of the statement.

The cold sweats and shaking began to creep back in, joined by an involuntary, fitful prance. Pinkie, her dear and beloved friend, whom along with many others she had missed so much that it hurt, didn’t want to see her.

“No, I... no! No!” Twilight stammered. “I-it can’t be! I need to see her! I need to see my friends!”

“I, uh, could check on her, if you’d like?” Mr. Cake suggested.

“I... but... yes; yes, please do!”

“Okay, then; wait here, I’ll be back in a sec,” he said as he left the store counter and trotted upstairs, leaving Twilight alone.

She put a hoof to her chest and tried to steady her breathing and thumping heart. Easy, Twilight. He’s going to go get Pinkie for you, and everything with be fine.

She looked around the currently empty shop, at all the empty tables surrounded by empty chairs. Immediately she jerked her head away from them, and her eyes locked onto the stairs in front of her. Just up those stairs was a remedy to the loneliness that had haunted her for so long.

Something unseen pulled at her heart with a fervent bidding that would not be denied. Her hooves began to move her of their our accord, and she was at the base of the stairs before she even realized, staring up the ascent of steps, hopeful and longing.

Off in the distance, she heard a hoof knocking on a wooden door, followed by a brief moment of silence.

“Pinkie, are you feeling any better?” Mr. Cake asked through the door. “Twilight just stopped by and she seems pretty insistent on seeing you.”

“What?”

Twilight’s heart skipped a beat, catching her breath in her chest. Her voice was muffled and barely understandable, but it was still her voice. It wasn’t just some dream puppet projected upon her eyes for all those night visions while she “slept,” like a movie made only to mock her; it was Pinkie. The real Pinkie... and she sounded terribly distressed.

“No! I... I can’t see any of my friends... or anypony right now! Please, I just need some alone time!”

Twilight didn’t even have time to think. The next thing she knew, she had flown up the stairs, pushed aside the bewildered Carrot Cake, and was hammering on the door to Pinkie’s room.

“Pinkie! Pinkie! It’s me, Twilight! Please open up! I need to see you!... I just need to see somepony! Please, let me see you!”

Mr. Cake watched the frantic unicron with shock. “Uh, Twilight...” he started to say, but his sentence got caught on something halfway through.

Twilight reared up on her hind legs, pressing both forehooves and her face onto the door as if doing so would let her phase through it. The other side remained deathly quiet, even as she pounded on the door.

“Pinkie, if this is about that dream we had all that time ago, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to make you so upset; honest! Just... please! I need to see somepony...”

Twilight ceased slamming her hoof on the door. Her hind legs gave out and slumped to the floor: forehead still resting against the door as the tears began to pool up in the eyes.

“I need to see my friends...”

She felt a hoof on her shoulder. There’s an actual hoof on my shoulder. I haven’t had physical contact with anypony in over two weeks, either... She looked up to see Carrot Cake, looking at her with concern and empathy.

“Twilight,” he said as he sat down on the floor next to her, bringing himself to eye level with her, “are you okay? You don’t look so good yourself... beg your pardon for saying... What’s bothering you? Care to talk about it?”

“I... no, I... I just really need to see my friends...” she muttered in sorrow.

“Hmm...” Mr. Cake put a hoof to his chin, “do you only need to see Pinkie?”

“No...” Twilight answered. “No, I need to see them all.”

“Tell you what; maybe it’s best to come back to this a little later. And while you’re off visiting with the rest of your friends, I’ll try and help Pinkie Pie sort out whatever she’s going through. Deal?”

“I...”

Twilight looked at the vigilant door; not for the first time was she stricken with such longing to be with even just one of her friends again that she thought about teleporting to the other side or using her magic to just blast the cursed thing down.

“I can all but assure you Pinkie isn’t going anywhere.”

Twilight looked to him, then back to the door, and finally back to him before she hung head head and sighed. “Okay.”

Mr. Cake put on a reassuring smile. “Well, deal’s a deal. I haven’t seen Fluttershy, Applejack, or Rainbow Dash around recently, but I did see Rarity heading for the market about an hour so ago, if that helps any.”

“It does, thank you,” Twilight said to the floor, getting back up to pace down the stairs. “I... I need to go.”

“Okay, then.” He smiled. “Can I get you anything before you leave? You sure look in need of a good pick-me-up; how ‘bout a cupcake, on the house? Or I think there might be some of that cupcake cake left in the fridge...”

“No, thanks,” Twilight mumbled in a nonspecific direction.

“Well then, see ya later; feel free to drop on back whenever your finished with your other business. Oh, and I do hope the rest of your day goes better.”

“Yeah,” Twilight muttered as she left, “me too.”

- - - - - -

The door closed softly behind Twilight. She was back outside in the fresh air and warm light of the sun again, but she could’ve hardly felt more cold.

Pinkie didn’t want to see me... Pinkie Pie was right there, and she didn’t want to see me.

She may have woken up from her terrible dream, but the gaping hole in her heart had followed her all the way back to reality. All that time trying to figure out just what had happened to her, all that time she’d spent completely alone, and all those times she wished she could just be back with her friends again... but now that she had gotten her wish and returned to the world where her friends were, they didn’t want to see her.

It hurt. It hurt so much that the more reasonable part of her mind had to force its way to the front of her thoughts and remind her that her other friends were still out there.

Twilight exhaled and began to walk away from Sugarcube Corner. Her trot was slow from the heavy burden of her heart. It cried like a foal being taken out of its playpen, urgently trying to remind her that Pinkie Pie was right there.

Carousel Boutique isn’t too far from here, Twilight thought to herself, trying to ignore the protests of her heart. At least I know Rarity is out and about. If she’s not back yet, I can just wait for her there.

She made her way through the streets slower than she would’ve liked, as she was still torn between the logical option of seeing another available friend and the emotional one of waiting it out for Pinkie.

She caught sight of the shop around the next bend. Twilight picked up her pace, hoping, praying, that the happenstantial circumstances of life wouldn’t politely slam the door in her face.

She made to to the courtyard where the shop stood, and Twilight stopped cold. Trotting back to the front door with several items in magical tote was Rarity: the real, actual living Rarity.

“Rar—” the word got caught in her throat. “Rarity!”

She stopped in her tracks and looked back to her. Twilight froze at the sight, watching her movements take place in slow motion. Dream-Rarity never even acknowledged my presence, not for over two weeks...

Then Rarity smiled at her. Twilight almost burst into tears of joy right there.

“Oh, good afternoon, Twili—dear, is something wrong? Twilight, slow down or you’ll—oof!”

The wind was knocked out of Rarity as Twilight slammed into her, tackling her to the ground.

“TWILIGHT!” Rarity yelled. “What in BLAZES is WRONG with y—”

“I missed you...”

Rarity fell silent when she realized just how tightly Twilight was hugging her.

The sensations overwhelming her could not have been more welcoming. The sound of Rarity’s voice in her ears was as beautiful as any emotionally moving song she’d ever heard. The feeling of holding Rarity: the warmth and weight of her body, the touch of her soft fur and its ever so delicate aroma of strawberries, and the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed; never before had all those little things that made even a simple hug what it was feel so precious. Even just to see Rarity, the features of her white coat, swirling mane and tail, and sapphire eyes had never filled her with such joy.

Twilight’s heart was pounding in her chest, but for the first time in too long, it was out of elation, soaring on her own happiness.

“I missed you,” Twilight whispered in reverence as tears flowed freely from her eyes. “For so long... I missed you all so much...”

“‘Missed me?’” Rarity echoed in confusion. “Twilight, you’re acting like you haven’t seen me in weeks!”

Twilight sniffled and hugged her even tighter. “I haven’t...”

Rarity just stared at Twilight for a moment, thoroughly perplexed. “Dear... we saw each other just last night.”

Twilight’s eyes opened in surprise. “Did we?”

“Yeeees...” Rarity affirmed, unsettled. “At Pinkie’s less-than-stable soiree, where the pilfered property from an apparent thief was returned to their rightful owners, remember?”

Twilight paused. Was it really only just last night?... Oh yeah; it was two weeks for me... for everypony else it was just another nine seconds...

“Um, Twilight, not that I don’t appreciate the affection, but could you get off me, please?” Rarity inquired. “I think you might have gotten dirt in my mane.”

“Oh, sorry...”

Rarity grumbled as she got back up on her hooves and brushed the dust off her. “Seriously, Twilight,” she started to say as she picked up her rolls of fabric, “did you not get enough sleep last night or—AAH!” Rarity let out a small scream when she saw just how dirty and disheveled her friend was.

“Twilight! Did you not... bathe, either?!” Rarity looked at the messy unicorn in horror, then sniffed the air and grimaced. “Never mind, just... please, get inside before somepony else sees you!”

Just like that, Rarity whisked Twilight into the shop, set the items to the side, pushed her up the stairs, and had her in the bathtub with the water running at a speed that would’ve made her mother proud. Rarity turned to a nearby cabinet, rummaged through it for a moment, and returned seconds later with various bottles in her magic.

“Only the finest bath soaps and shampoos, of course,” she commented offhoofededly as she poured a combination into the tub and shut off the water.

“Now then, just get yourself cleaned up straight away and then we can get back to the other matters at hoof,” she instructed, then gave a little huff. “To think, I usually only have to go through this routine with Sweetie Belle...” Rarity turned around and trotted towards the door.

Twilight’s eyes shot open. She’s leaving me... alone.

“Wait!”

Rarity stopped and turned to look back, curious over the outburst.

“Please...” Twilight implored, “please don’t go...”

“Twilight, come now,” Rarity objected. “It’s impolite to simultaneously occupy a private bathroom while somepony else is using it, especially when its occupant is a mare...”

“But Rarity, I... I don’t want to be alone... not again...”

Rarity exhaled in dissent. “Really, Twilight; you’re a grown mare, surely you can—”

“I’ll let you style my mane!” Twilight blurted.

Rarity froze in place with her mouth half open. Her eyes darted back and forth between the door and Twilight in indecision. She bit her lip, then sighed.

“Well, Twilight, don’t you know how to tempt an artist...” Another sigh. ”Very well, then; you get your wish, I get your mane.”

Twilight exhaled in relief. She rested against the rear of the tub and let the warm water coax her tense muscles into relaxing.

Rarity returned to the bathtub with several other bottles that she set off to the side. “If we’re going to do this properly,” she said to nopony in particular as she applied various amounts of shampoo and conditioner to Twilight’s mane.

“Perhaps it’s best to keep your eyes closed, dear,” Rarity said. “Don’t want to get anything in them and all that.”

Twilight did as was suggested, and simply laid back and let Rarity go on with her work as she relaxed. The warm water and company of a friend felt more rejuvenating than she could’ve hoped for. She couldn’t help but smile, her appreciation further spurred by a newfound gratitude.

“Now then,” Rarity started up typical mane-dresser conversation, “behoove it of me to ask, but was there a reason for your previous... enthusiasm?”

It took only a fraction of a second to recall the reason, but it only took that moment and all of a sudden she didn’t feel so warm anymore.

No, don’t think about that: not now! Stay out of there; go back to your happy place. This right here is your happy place: stay here!

“Twilight, is everything okay?”

“No, it’s...” her response came out before she could catch it. She sighed. “I... had a bad dream last night.”

“A... bad dream?” Rarity echoed, incredulous. “That’s what had you so worked up earlier?”

“No, it wasn’t just that. It... there was also... I was...” The words didn’t seem to want to come out of her mouth. She gently moved away from Rarity to turn around and look her directly in the eye.

“Have you ever had a dream, Rarity, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world?”

Rarity thought about the query for a moment. “Yes, I’ve had a few dreams of my own that were so real that I couldn’t tell the difference...”

“And what happens then when you can’t escape?” Twilight questioned further. “When you’re trapped in your own dream for longer than you can keep track of? How do you stand it?”

“Well... I’d have to say that it depends on the dream, really. I don’t think it’d be so bad if it was a pleasant dream,” Rarity answered, then her tone became one with slight foreboding. “But if the opposite is the case... like there was this one time I got stuck in a recurring dream; you know those ones where you’re in a dream, and then you think you wake up but it turns out you’re still in the same dream? Case in point, I had a recurring dream... or nightmare, really, that I was working on those... questionable dresses that I made all of you for the Gala...”

“You don’t need to be so modest about them, Rarity,” Twilight leveled with her. “In hindsight, they were pretty bad, so you don’t need to avoid expressing your true feelings for them.”

“Those blasphemous, uncouth, ludicrous, loathsome, sickening, horrible, intolerable, trashy abominations that were a capital offense against all things fashionable!” Rarity hollered. “For the love of all that is fabulous, I couldn’t make anything as vile as those things unless I made a dress out of somepony else’s skin!”

She took a moment to breathe heavily. “I’m sorry, it’s just... I have a lot of bad memories about those dresses, and... they all sort of came back at once...”

A paranoia settled around Twilight. She had unintentionally made Rarity upset, and now she wasn’t going to want to see her any longer: she would leave, or make her go.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, feeling miniscule. “I... I didn’t mean...”

“Don’t worry dear, it’s all in the past. Everything turned out in the end, and I should be able to talk about them rationally from here on out. So...” she exhaled, “I was having this dream where I was working on those awful dresses, but I would keep periodically waking up only to find that all the work I thought I’d done on them I’d only dreamed, and then I had to do all that work all over again!“

She snorted in annoyance. “Believe it or not, that wasn’t even the worst part...”

Rarity let her sentence hang, almost prompting Twilight to ask:

“What was the worst part?”

Rarity forced out a strained laugh at her own expense. “The worst part was that when I actually did wake up, I had to go back to working on those bloody dresses!” She sighed. “However, there was another that was almost heartbreaking over how beautiful it was.”

The connection between their eyes severed, and Rarity stared off into the distance as she reminisced.

“I was sitting in the front, center row of a spacious, magnificent theater where not a single seat was left empty, and I was wearing an absolutely beautiful dress of satin. Then the velvet curtain pulled back, and I gasped; there was no backdrop or stage set, but several large panes of glass through which I could see an entire planet! Before I had enough time to absorb the marvel of it all, a single spotlight illuminated the center stage, and if seeing an entire planet from orbit wasn’t astounding enough, who should humbly trot into the spotlight but Sweetie Belle!

“She was wearing a long, flowing, aqua blue dress that came complete with an ornate headdress, collar plate, and saddle of polished onyx. The most curious thing was that the ensemble was finalized with many slender, whip-like tassels adorning each accessory. It looked so... alien, and yet... so mysteriously captivating at the same time.

“Them the opera music started; first a breathtaking melody on the flute, then the strings. Then Sweetie Belle opens her mouth to sing, and...” Rarity paused, looking up and away, misty eyed. “Dearest Celestia, I’ve never heard anything so beautiful before!” She used her magic to summon a nearby handkerchief to wipe her eyes. “The emotion, the passion, the power and perfection of her soprano melody... words fail to do it justice. I was quite literally moved to tears. I thought my heart was going to burst from my chest, it was so lovely!

“When the song ended, the entire auditorium exploded into thunderous applause. She smiled, bowed, and right when she looked at me, and I looked back at her, beaming with pride, a faint light appeared at the rear of her gown. Then she got this odd look on her face, and dared to lift up her dress in front of an entire theater of ponies. When she saw it, her face lit up brighter than the sun.”

Rarity breathed in deep, and let one of her happy tears escape unchecked. “She got her cutie mark. Right there in front of everypony after hearing her deliver the most beautiful song I’ve ever heard, my little sister finally got her cutie mark!”

Twilight simply stared at Rarity, breathtaken. “Wow....”

She caught the runaway tear with the handkerchief and looked back to Twilight. “Indeed. It was so touching in fact that I truly lamented returning to consciousness. So the next day, I tried to get her enrolled into a special vocal techniques class for musically gifted foals; she really does have a beautiful singing voice when she puts her heart into it.” Rarity sighed, painfully.

Twilight noted the drop in her mood. “What? Did it not go very well?”

“No, they didn’t ‘go’ all. She missed the first lesson and was automatically removed from the course because she scampered off to Sugarcube Corner with her friends to play with Gummy, claiming they had to, and I quote, 'practice before trying to get their crocodile hunting cutie marks.'”

Rarity scoffed in disappointment and dejection. “Honestly, you would think it might have occurred to them that part of discovering their special talent is trying something they enjoy doing and can do well, and would enjoy doing well for the rest of their life, but... they just don’t seem to get the point of earning a cutie mark; like it’s the universe’s idea of a cruel joke. I mean, don’t get me wrong; I love my little sister to pieces, but I can’t help but raise an eyebrow over her ‘crusading’ methods.

“Anyway, that’s enough about my concerns; what about your dream?” Rarity inquired.

“W-what?” Twilight stammered.

“Come now, dear; you just said it yourself that you had been bothered by some dream you just had, and then you invoke a conversation about indecipherably realistic dreams? Doesn’t take somepony as smart as you to put two and two together. Besides, I just told you two of mine; it’s only fair you tell me yours.”

Twilight squirmed. “I’d rather not talk about it.”

“Oh, come on!” Rarity whined.

“It’s really a sensitive issue...”

“Tell me!” she insisted.

“Rarity, please...”

“Tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me!”

“RARITY!”

Silence descended like a winter chill between the two.

“Okay, now you need to tell me.”

“But, Rar—”

Rarity cut off Twilight with a raised hoof. When she spoke again, the sincere concern in her voice was crystal clear.

“Dear, I’ve come to learn that when something has you this distressed, the one thing you need most is a friend you can confide in. Twice I’ve made the mistake of dismissing something that had you this upset, and both of those times, what I thought was you making a mountain out of a molehill turned out to be an avalanche headed our way. And both of those disasters could have been circumvented had somepony just taken a moment to sit you down and ask, “Twilight, what’s wrong?””

She looked deep into Twilight’s eyes. “So it’s as your friend that I ask you to share; what is it that’s bothering you?”

Twilight found herself presented with a dilemma. On the one hoof, she could try and bury it, and maybe she could push it out of her mind long enough to take the edge off so it didn’t hurt so much. On the other, she could bleed it all out now, but she knew that reopening that wound would hurt, and it would hurt a lot.

Twilight heard echoes of her earlier conversation with Reason.

“We both know what can help us with that…”

“My friends...”

“I...” She only managed to get that one word out before choking. Twilight had to summon the will to force more out of her dry throat. “I dreamt that... that I had... d-died.”

Rarity sat still, listening intently. “Oh my...”

“Not... okay, I didn’t die; not like...” Her vocal cords seized up again. “I-I was...” Twilight began fiddling with her hooves. “I was... killed.”

Rarity gasped. “Oh, dear! By what?”

“By...”

Amethyst scales. Lime frills. A powerful form that towered over her. Wings flared out in triumph. A muzzle like an axe. Scores of sharp teeth behind a wicked grin. Cruelly twisted features of the one she called her friend. Those eyes... they have the exact same eyes...

Twilight gulped. “By a dragon.”

“My stars, how terrible!”

“Yeah...” Twilight muttered. “I... could feel the fire, murdering me... and then...”

Wha-what happened? Where did he go? Where is he? Where am I? WHERE AM I?!

“The next thing I knew, I was... I didn’t know where I was. I was completely whole again, but I didn’t know why. It was dark, and...”

Why can't I see? WHY CAN'T I SEE?!?

“I lit my horn to try and find my way out of... wherever I was, but... but there was nothing. I tried to call out for somepony, but...”

Hello? Hello!?

“I couldn’t find anypony. I got scared, so I galloped off...”

HELLO?! SPIKE? CAN YOU HEAR ME? SPIIIKE!

“Eventually, I collapsed, too tired to go any farther. I couldn’t even remember how long I’d galloped for, just that I still didn’t know where I was, or what had happened to me. I couldn’t figure it out, but then I remembered what had happened just before I got there...”

Am I...? Oh, no... Nonononono... Please no... I can't be...

“I thought I was...”

Am I...

“Dead.”

Think, Twilight! Maybe you’re still just in a dream.

“I tried to wake up...”

If that's the case, all I have to do is reach out with my mind and...

“But I couldn’t... that’s... that was when I knew...”

Dear Celestia... I'm really... I really am...

Despair crushed her.

Five mares dressed in black surrounded the front of a somber grey monolith under dark, weeping clouds that cast a miserable shadow over the world. Fluttershy was trembling, her face buried into the crook of a crying Rarity’s neck. Pinkie wailed uncontrollably, lost to anguish. Rainbow had a foreleg around Pinkie as she desperately tried to remain strong, and failed. Applejack held her Stetson over her heart, head bowed in mournful prayer.

Spike clung desperately to the cold memorial as he sobbed, just underneath the words:

Here Lies

TWILIGHT SPARKLE

Beloved Daughter, Sister,

Student, and Friend.

The bathwater rippled from the teardrops that fell into it.

“Oh, darling...”

Twilight looked up at Rarity. Her sorrowful eyes were filled with sympathy.

Without saying a word, Rarity opened out her forelegs in invitation. Twilight didn’t even wait; she rushed forward and latched on, holding her friend tight, and letting herself cry in the embrace.

“That’s why I needed to see you, Rarity,” Twilight sniffled. “That’s why I need to see all my friends. So after I get finished up here, I need to go see them, too.”

“Oh dear...” Rarity broke from their embrace, shifting nervously. “Twilight, uh... oh, I do so hate to be the bearer of bad news, but, I’m afraid that won’t be likely today.”

Twilight stared at her in horrified disbelief. “What? Why?”

“Applejack is out of town on business, and probably won’t be back for a few days. Fluttershy is way off in the farther reaches of Whitetail Wood, helping a flock of young birds with their distance flying. And given how much distance we’re talking here, she’ll probably be gone for just as long. And Rainbow Dash is busy working with the weather team, mapping out the weather for the next week or so... that, or she finished early and is using all her free time to go napping on a cloud somewhere, blasted lazy mare. However, I think Pinkie Pie might be available.”

Pinkie Pie... the fresh wound still stung.

“I was just at Sugarcube Corner before I came here,” Twilight shared, miserably. “Pinkie... she didn’t want to see me...”

Rarity gasped. “Really? Whatever for?”

“I don’t know. But she seemed really upset about something, and Carrot said she was having some issues, but why wouldn’t she want to see me? I mean, I could’ve helped her, couldn’t I? But... but she didn’t want to see me....”

Rarity pulled Twilight back into another hug. “Twilight... shhh... your friends are still out there. Just because we can’t always see to you doesn’t mean we don’t care about you. And whatever Pinkie is going through, I’m sure she’ll get past it eventually, and she’ll come to you if she needs help. Everything will be okay, I promise.”

That just made Twilight want to cry again, remembering trying to glean that kind of solace out of Spike’s blanket.

“Now then, so long as you’re still here, what do you say we finish up with your mane?” Rarity suggested. “This shampoo has already been in your hair long enough as it is.”

“Okay,” Twilight said, trying to find comfort in Rarity’s words. She turned back around and tried to relax as Rarity went back to work. Right at that moment, her stomach gave a loud grumble, reminding her she hadn’t eaten since last night.

Rarity sighed. “So long as I’m postponing my work projects as it is, could I interest you in staying for lunch?”

“Oh, I’m sorry; I didn’t know you’d been working. Would that be any trouble for you?”

Rarity waved a hoof. “Not at all; it won’t be the first time I’ve had to make a bonfire from the midnight oil. Besides, sleep is for ponies without anything to do. So... lunch, then?”

A small smile pulled on the corners of Twilight’s mouth. “Yeah... I’d like that.”

- - - - - -

“Will you be alright, dear?” Rarity asked of Twilight as she made her way towards the front door.

“Eventually, I think. I just need some time… Thank you, by the way.”

Rarity waved a hoof. “It’s nothing, really. What are friends for, after all? Oh, but darling, I simply must insist that you allow me to take you to the spa with Fluttershy and myself. Our next visit will be in three days; I could even personally retrieve you if you’d like.”

Twilight smiled. “I would like that, thank you.”

“So it’s settled then!” Rarity proclaimed. “In three days, to the spa we shall go! I just hope I’ll be finished with all my work by then...” Some of her enthusiasm wore off as she looked back to her workroom.

“Oh yeah, that... do you need any help?” Twilight asked.

“No, I’ll be alright. Besides, this is one of those projects that’s best left to the hooves of one. It’ll probably keep me busy for several days, though...” Rarity furrowed her eyebrows. “Oh dear, that spa visit sounds more enticing than it should already. Anyway, is there anything else I can do in your service before you leave?”

“No, but thanks for asking. You’ve already helped so much, and I don’t want to keep you busy longer than I should. Besides...” Twilight looked out the window with a longing glance at the clear skies. “Rainbow Dash has to be out there somewhere, and I need to go see her, too.”

Rarity nodded. “Very well. I shall see you in three days’ time, but don’t be a stranger!” Her eyes softened. “And please, do feel free to to stop by anytime should you so need a friend; I hope you know that we’ll always be there for you.”

Twilight smiled graciously. “I will, and thank you for everything. Goodbye, Rarity.”

“Adieu, Twilight.”

Twilight opened the door and stepped outside, letting the door shut behind her. She looked around Ponyville, warm and bright in the mid-afternoon sun. She made a move to leave the patio of Carousel Boutique to see if she could find Rainbow Dash.

Only she didn’t move. Her hooves had again decided to remain steadfast, stuck in place.

That terrible chill began to seep its way through her again. There was a high possibility that she wouldn’t be able to find Rainbow. She could just go check on Pinkie, but it was probably just as likely that Pinkie would still shun her all in her personal, spontaneous isolation. Fluttershy and Applejack were still gone, and they would be for a while. And even though she had just spent a few hours of quality time with Rarity, that time was over now, and she was back to standing on a porch by herself again: alone...

Her chill became a panic; Twilight whipped around to look back at the door, and she had half a mind to run back inside and stay in Rarity’s company for as long as she pleased.

Twilight saw her reflection in one of the windows. She could hear Reason speaking in her mind.

You had your time with Rarity, but now it’s time to go find Rainbow Dash.

“But...”

Remember what she said; just because you’re friends aren’t always available doesn’t mean they love you any less. Now go find Rainbow Dash!

Twilight nodded. Recomposing herself, she stepped off the balcony to search of her friend.

She looked to the skies first, since Rainbow Dash spent more time in the air than she did on the ground. The sky over Ponyville was free and clear of the clouds, so Twilight figured that she had already finished dealing with the weather. So Twilight looked through the sky on the outskirts of town, thinking perhaps she would be spending her free time to take a nap. That venture proved fruitless, however. Adding to Twilight’s increasing consternation was that she hadn’t seen the daredevil flying around at all: practicing her freestyle stunts, performing aerial maneuvers that were as impressive as they were stupidly dangerous, or just zipping through the air for a daily adrenaline rush.

Twilight asked just about every pony she’d ran into if they’d seen Dash, but none had. She’d encountered other pegasi on the weather team who’d confirmed they had finished work early, but they hadn’t seen Rainbow since. She’d even managed to flag down Thunderlane and get him to fly all the way to Dash’s house and see if she might have been home, but to no avail.

She scoured every place in town where she thought Rainbow might go to hang out or pass the time. Every single one failed to turn up the pegasus in question. After over an hour of searching, she had crossed off every place she could think of where Rainbow might be, save for one. She trotted there with heavy hooves, already feeling overwhelmed with disappointment and dejection.

Twilight stood outside of Sugarcube Corner, staring at the shop with despondence. Part of her didn’t want to check the shop again. If she did, she most likely just faced more grief. None of the places where Twilight had gone looking for Rainbow had revealed her or indicated where she might be.

Why should she be here, either?

Check anyway, Reason told her. If she’s not here, than at least you can say you looked everywhere. You can check up on Pinkie as long as you’re here, too. And if that doesn’t work out, well... you can always try again tomorrow. Besides, you’ve left Spike in the library all day, and you still owe him one after bucking him like a hoofball after you mistook him for… you know who.

Twilight’s sigh was ladened with her anxiety. Gripping to a minute sense of hope, she moved back towards the shop, taking a single step to—

“LOOK OUT!” a rough-and-tumble voice frantically screamed over a rush of wind.

Twilight snapped her attention to the right just in time to see a full-spectrum blur come hurtling towards her. It slammed into the ground and skidded to a halt just inches from her, kicking up a cloud of dust that made her cough. When Twilight brushed the dust away, she came face to face with a wide-eyed Rainbow Dash. Her pupils were darting back and forth between Twilight and the smidgen of distance between them both. Then a smile cracked her face.

“Ha...” she chuckled. “Ha ha!” Rainbow flared her prideful wings with a cocksure grin. “Whaddaya know, I’m so awesome that even my crash landings are impro—“

Rainbow was cut off when Twilight tackled her with a hug.

Rainbow sighed. “Just couldn’t let me get outta that one, could ya?”

Twilight didn’t answer; just held Rainbow Dash tightly in her forelegs.

“Uh, Twi; you okay?” Dash prodded her affectionate attacker. “Yo, Equestria to egghead! You alright, Twi?”

Twilight smiled. “I am now.”

Dash was at a loss. “Uh... okay... could you let me up now?”

“Oh; sure...”

“So what gives?” Dash asked as she got back to her hooves and shook some of the dust off her. “Is that your way of helping me prepare for when I’ll be mobbed by adoring fans everywhere I go?”

“Not quite,” Twilight said. “I’m just happy to see you.”

Rainbow looked uncertain. “Really? Geez, not even Pinkie is that happy to see me... most of the time, at least.”

Just like that, Twilight’s spirits fell. The sudden plunge in her mood did not go unnoticed by Rainbow Dash.

“What? Was it something I said?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“No, it’s not you, it’s just...” Twilight looked past Dash to Sugarcube Corner, only to look away, sullen. “I really, really needed to see you and the rest of our friends today, but Pinkie wouldn’t see me. I heard her say she wanted some time to be alone, but she wouldn’t even tell me what was wrong.”

Rainbow looked worried. “Alone time? Oh boy... Pinkie never says she needs ‘alone time,’ not unless something was really bothering her...”

Dash turned and flew up to Pinkie’s window, then began knocking on the sill with a hoof. “Hey Pinkie, it’s Dash! Twilight told me that something came up. You alright? Is everything okay?”

The window remained closed and the curtains unstirred.

“Yo, Pinks! Wouldja open up? You in there?”

Silence answered her.

Rainbow peered at the window, uncertain and anxious. She put her forehooves on the window and started to slowly slide it open.

In a flash, the curtains parted, two pink hooves grabbed the window, slammed it shut, locked it down, and yanked the curtains closed again.

Rainbow Dash flew back in surprise, gawking and taken aback at the rebuttal.

“Wha—did you see that?! She just slammed the window on me!” Rainbow flew back to the window and started pounding on the sill with her hoof. “Pinkie! Open up! You can’t just shut Twilight and me out like that!”

“Rainbow, please...”

“You had better open this window right now!”

“RAINBOW!”

Dash stopped for a moment and looked back down. Twilight was shaking with a minor tremble and her ears had folded down.

“I— ” Twilight gulped. Her throat was suddenly dry again. “I tried that earlier, and it didn’t work any better for me, either. As much as I hate to admit it, I think we should respect Pinkie’s wishes if she needs some time to herself.”

Now Rainbow was torn, looking back and forth between Twilight and the window. “But I can’t just leave her! Not if she’s like that!” Dash pointed at the window. “You should’ve seen her, Twi! She looked so... boy, what’s the word... distraught! Yeah, that’s it! See looked so distraught! What kind of pony just abandons their friend when she’s that upset about something?”

“You’re not abandoning her, Rainbow Dash. Just honoring what a friend wants. If Pinkie wants to be alone, it would be more insensitive if we barged in on her.” Twilight looked away towards the ground and mumbled, “Even if that’s what I need...”

A few moments passed in silence, then there was a small gust of wind as Rainbow landed in front of Twilight.

“Hey; doesn’t take somepony like Fluttershy to tell that something’s upsetting you, too.” She nudged Twilight on the shoulder. “So what’s up? Don’t think I’ve seen you this bummed out about not being able to see Pinkie. Wanna try and talk to her together?”

“I don’t think that will help much. Mr. Cake tried to talk to her, I tried to talk to her... we’ve all tried to let her know we care about her. I think if we press the issue any further, it might seem like we’re imposing.” Twilight did another hard swallow; her throat was still dry. “I’ll try to think of something we can do to cheer her up, but for now it’s probably best if we let her have her peace.” Twilight tried to sound reassuring. “Does that sound okay?”

Rainbow cocked an eyebrow at her. “You don’t sound okay... come on, this really bothers you, doesn’t it?”

All the moisture that had disappeared from Twilight’s throat seemed to have begun relocating to her eyes. “It does, but... it’s only part of... when I said I needed to see you all...”

A memory flashed to the forefront of her mind. She was still standing on top of the diner table after watching each of her friends toast her memory. Dash was still trying to keep up her tough-mare demeanor, even when it was clear she was just as deeply hurt as the rest of them.

“I’m gonna miss you, egghead.”

Twilight rushed forward, pulled Rainbow Dash into another hug, tears dripping from her eyes.

“I dreamt I was alone, and that dream felt like it lasted for over two weeks.” Twilight’s hold around Dash tightened. “I didn’t have you, or Pinkie, or any of our friends, or anypony for over two weeks...”

Dash stood there for a moment, absorbing what she had just heard. “Wow...” she said as she put a foreleg around Twilight. “And to think that I feel like I’m going crazy if I’ve got nothing to do for more than two hours...” She nudged Twilight with her muzzle. “Hey, now you’re here with none other than your awesomely awesome Rainbow Dash, right?” Dash tried to offer a smile. “Gosh, I’m really no good at this ‘shoulder to cry on’ thing...”

A chuckle softened Twilight’s sadness. “You’re here now, and that’s what counts. Speaking of which...” She moved back to make eye contact with Rainbow. “Where were you earlier? I looked all over town and asked everypony I met, if they’d seen you, but nopony had. So where exactly were you?”

“Oh, I was flying really high up in the sky, practicing my upper atmosphere stunt flying,” she said as she flew off the ground. “I was up way higher than even most pegasi bother flying, above the cirrus clouds even, so I was definitely out of sight for the most part.

”But holy cow, it was awesome!” Dash did a flip in the air. “Flying around that high is really something else. Less air pressure means less drag, but the tradeoff is that there’s less air to displace for thrust and it’s easier to lose your breath, so it’s definitely a different kind of challenge. Hard to gain altitude too, but sweet Celestia, can you pull off some awesome diving maneuvers!”

Rainbow zipped around in the air, illustrating her feats. “First thing I started with was some barrel rolls, then those turned into doing barrel rolls and corkscrews at the same time, then just for fun I started making loops out of helixes...”

Rainbow Dash’s voice faded in Twilight’s ears as her focus became transfixed upon the aerial display, specifically on Dash’s wings.

After studying them for literally days, Twilight found herself with an extraordinary new appreciation for wings. Their construction from all the complex bundles of nerves, pathways of blood vessels, structure of bones, and masses of muscle and tissue made them a physiological and anatomical marvel to comprehend, indeed. Just watching the way Dash’s wings flexed and pumped down through the air was hypnotically fascinating.

Now that she really thought about it, their purpose was nonetheless significant, either. She’d seen pegasi in flight all her life, but she’d never truly recognized how significant flight was. There was so much behind even the most simple of flight trajectories that she felt newfound respect for even less accomplished flyers like Fluttershy. That was to say nothing about Rainbow Dash; Twilight had known her for a while now, and she still regularly performed feats that left her awestruck. She made it look so easy, but Twilight knew from experience that it was anything but...

“Twilight? Yo, Twilight!” Rainbow Dash landed in front of the unicorn, looking slightly irritated. “Geez, I usually only have to tell the colts to keep their eyes to themselves...”

Twilight’s eyes went wide and she whipped her head away, blushing with the implications over what she had been doing.

Rainbow approached her, annoyance leaving her face for smug teasing. “What’s wrong? Do you have wing envy or something?”

Twilight’s cheeks went from magenta to scarlet, and her ears tucked back as she bashfully pawed at the ground.

“Okay, seriously, what’s up?” Dash prodded.

Twilight floundered about sheepishly. “I, um... I was just...” She fought off her embarrassment and looked right at Rainbow. “What’s flying like, Dash?”

Now it was Rainbow Dash’s turn go go wide-eyed. “What’s flying like? Well... it’s awesome! And it... hmm...” Dash looked off and rubbed the back of her head with a hoof. “Wow, it’s hard to think of another word to describe it than ‘awesome.’ I mean... well, you got to walk on clouds before. What was that like for you?”

Twilight thought back to the time that she and her friends went to Cloudsdale to support Rainbow Dash for the Best Young Flyers Competition. “It was incredible: breathtaking, really. I never thought I’d ever get to visit Cloudsdale, so stepping off the balloon and onto the clouds for the first time was... well, magical.”

“Well, thanks kinda what flying is like, except you’re not limited to just walking on clouds. You can go anywhere!” Rainbow Dash zipped up into the air again. “The rush from going wherever you want and as fast as you can, it’s awesome! It’s so... so...”

“Freeing?”

Rainbow looked down to Twilight.

“Like the wind suddenly has a personality and it wants you to spread your wings and fly away in it’s current?” Twilight postured.

Rainbow rubbed a hoof across the back of her head. “Sort of like that...”

“Like riding a roller coaster when you’re not strapped in, but it’s so fun that you only care if your hooves are in the air?”

“Yeah, that’s exactly what it’s like! Except you aren’t stuck on the track; you can literally make up your own!” Rainbow flew down to Twilight. “Why do you ask?”

Twilight paused before divulging. “I recently had a dream where I could fly, and I wanted to know if flying in reality feels like how I felt when I got to soar.”

Rainbow perked up. “You dreamed that you got to fly? Cool! What was that like?”

Twilight looked to another place in recollection.

The wind blowing past her face and through her mane was thrilled to have her in its domain. Her coat shone like a majestic jewel in the vanishing light of the setting sun. The waking stars never looked brighter, and she felt a fellow kinship from being closer to them than she ever had before.

Twilight couldn’t help but smile a little. “It was awesome.”

Rainbow opened her grinning mouth to say something, but cut herself off as she broke eye contact with Twilight to glance over her shoulder, looking concerned.

Twilight looked back in the same direction to see Scootaloo, just as she averted her gaze strained gaze from the two of them to become very interested in the state of the street.

Rainbow looked back at Twilight. “Uh, could you excuse me for a second?”

Her initial, internal response was to say “no,” but she had to reason with herself. Rainbow is just going to be a few paces away; it’s not like she’s going to leave you alone...

“Sure, go on.”

Dash nodded, then turned her attention back to the filly. “Hey, Scoots!” She said as she trotted past Twilight.“What’s up?”

“Oh, nothin’...” Scootaloo muttered, brushing at the dirt with a hoof.

“What’cha doing out here alone, kid?” Dash asked. “I thought you’d be using your free time to go crusading with your friends.”

Scootaloo sighed. “Sweetie Belle is with her parents right now, and Applebloom has to stay and help Big Mac out on the farm because Applejack just had to pick now of all times to have business out of town...”

Just like that, Twilight was struck with another pang of longing. So she wasn’t the only one hurt by the absence of her friends...

She turned back to her own thoughts to momentarily keep her company until Dash was no longer preoccupied. Her thoughts returned to flying: of drifting in the open, carfree sky like she was gliding somewhere on the other side of nowhere. Of being there to watch the constellations emerge from behind space. Of beholding their magnificence, making some notion trigger that made her want to collect some stars to shine for her.

Of looking down and seeing the infinite nothing still dominate the land, stretching from one end of the horizon, reminding her that even if she terraformed the entire plane, she would still be alone...

“Hey, Twilight!”

Dash’s call snapped her back to Equestria.

“You don’t mind if I let Scootaloo tag along with the two of us to go get some ice cream, do you?”

A big smile broke across Scootaloo’s face. “You... you want me to hang out with you?” Her little wings began to buzz in excitement, almost lifting her off the ground. “Awesome!”

“Wait, when did you decide to go get ice cream?” Twilight asked.

Dash smirked. “Just now! Come on, we can talk more about flying while we munch on some cold, creamy goodness!”

“Talking about flying and eat ice cream AND hang out with Rainbow Dash?!” Scootaloo’s face was on the verge of being torn in half by her smile. “AWESOME!”

Twilight couldn’t help but smile. “I’d love to.”

- - - - - -

A few hours had passed, and after they’d had their sweets, Rainbow Dash, Twilight, and Scootaloo stood outside Pinkie’s bedroom door.

“Do you think this will help any?” Scootaloo asked. “I mean, you girls both tried to talk to her earlier, and both Mr. and Mrs. Cake said they hadn’t got anything out of her. How are we supposed to help cheer her up if we don’t even know what’s wrong?”

Rainbow looked to the filly. “The very least we can do is let her know we’ll always be there, so she can count on us to be by her side if she does eventually want our help. Remember that, Scoots; always be there for your friends to do whatever it takes to help them with their problems.” Dash let out a heavy exhalation. “I just wish there was more we could do...”

Rainbow raised a heavy hoof to Pinkie’s door and gently rapt upon it.

“Hi Pinkie, it’s Dash,” she said to the wooden door. “Twilight and Scoots are here, too... hey, I’m sorry for trying to barge in on you earlier, that was kinda rude of me. But I’m worried about you, ya’ know? ‘Cause that’s the kind of pony I am; I don’t leave my friends twisting in the wind.”

Dash stood there for a moment, waiting for a response. The door did not answer.

Rainbow put her head to the ground and looked under the door through the crack. She lifted it back off the floor and breathed out through her nostrils when the peek turned up nothing.

“Well, I’ll still be around for you, Pinkie. I hope you get better, and if you need my help, I’ll be there for you. If nothing else, you can always count on me to be there.” Rainbow Dash backed away from the door.

Scootaloo bounced up to the door. “Hope you feel better soon, Pinkie! Nopony can brighten up the day by pulling a song out of nowhere like you! Or a parade, or a snowball fight, or a water balloon brawl...” Scootaloo pursed her lips together in thought. “By the way, I’m sorry if you’re still upset about the whole cheap-shot thing two days ago. It really was an accident, and I know you sorta got me back something like thirteen times, but if it’s still upsetting you, I’m sorry.”

Scootaloo turned around and paced back to Rainbow, looking to Twilight as she returned to her spot, signaling her somber turn.

Twilight’s throat was already feeling dry. She hadn’t meant it, but Scootaloo’s apology had dug fish hooks into what was an already thin scab. It may have been only two days for everypony else, but it had been over two weeks for her since the last time that the six of them were together and truly happy; two weeks of total, agonizing loneliness that for all she knew could’ve lasted for the rest of time.

Her heart had already turned to a lodestone, so she sat down and leaned her head up against the threshold.

“Hey Pinkie.” She couldn’t have hidden the depression in her voice had she even bothered to try. “It’s me again.”

She paused. It was harder than it should have been to find words. “I’m sorry for trying to hammer down your door earlier...” Twilight exhaled with a shudder. “If you’re still upset about that tense moment we had two we—yesterday, I’m sorry... if that’s not it, then...

“Pinkie...” Twilight sniffled, and at that moment her voice decided to seize up. “Pinkie, please; it hurts me so much to not be able to help with whatever you’re going through.”

Twilight scoured the door through tear-clouded eyes, like there might had been some miniscule passage carved into the side that would tell her just what to say to make Pinkie open up.

Nothing. No Pinkie.

She was fighting to hold back now. Her heart told her to stay there, no matter how long it took, but her reason knew that it wasn’t liable to accomplish much, even if to spite acceptance of rejection.

Twilight breathed out some of her misery through a morose sigh and separated from the threshold. She looked back in one last act in defiance of the stoic door.

“We just want to help. I care about you; we all do, Pinkie.”

She couldn’t take it anymore. Twilight hung her head and paced away, knowing that she was going to start crying if she stayed there any longer. The dead weight in her heart was too insufferably lethargic to to voice its protests, so instead it tried to use its mass to pull her down into the dumps where at least they could be together.

She descended the stairs and left the shop almost by automatically; she didn’t even bother to look up to see where she was going. Her eyes remained fixated on the ground, from wooden steps to linoleum floor until the cobblestone streets lit by a warm sunset lay under her hooves.

She just stood there for a moment that she couldn’t bother to measure, with her ears drooped and a frown that was trying to pull her mouth off while her miserable thoughts wandered in an unaligned mess, until she felt a gentle nudge from a muzzle prod her nape.

Twilight looked back at Rainbow Dash. She bore so much sympathy in her eyes that it almost looked alien coming from a hardened mare like her.

“Hey, Pinkie will eventually come around. She always does,” Dash said with a soothing assurance.

Twilight tried to find some solace in that. “I suppose you’re right.”

“You gonna be okay?” Dash asked.

Twilight tried to put on a convincing little mask of a smile. “Eventually.”

Before Dash could call her on it, Scootaloo let out a little yawn, which upon realizing she quickly tried to stifle it.

Dash looked back down to the filly. “Come on, squirt. Time to take you home.”

“Aw, but I’ve been having such a good time with you! The sun hasn’t even completely gone down yet!”

“Hey, I never said we had to stop hanging out. But it’s starting to get late and your parents are going to be wondering where you are. Besides, I’ve gotta hit the hay early for weather patrol so I can use all that to free up time for flying later on. I could even pick you up so you can watch if you’d like that.”

Scootaloo perked up at the prospect. “I’d love to!”

“Alright,” said Dash, taking a step only to stop in mid-trot. “Uh... where do you live again?”

“Oh, it’s not too far from here. We just go down this street—”

“Yeah, tell ya what,” Rainbow interrupted Scootaloo and hoisted the filly onto her back. “How about you just point me in the right direction while I’m flying, ok?”

Scootaloo’s little wings buzzed in excitement. “Sure!”

Dash spread her wings to take off, but she stopped herself and looked back at Twilight.

“Want me to swing by the library after I’ve said my goodbyes to Scoots?” Dash offered. “You look like you could use the company...”

Her reflex reaction told her to say “yes,” but Dash mentioning the library reminded her of a massive entry she reluctantly had to finish, and that there was a certain baby dragon that still had a few pretty good reasons to be ticked off at her who she had to reconcile with.

“It would be nice, but I’ve left Spike at the library all day. I saddled him with a bunch of extra chores before I rushed off to see all of you, so he’s probably still mad at me, and I have to make it up to him.”

Rainbow acknowledged her with a nod. “Well, okay. Just try and stay cool about all this, alright? Give me a shout-out if you need it. What I said about not leaving my friends twisting in the winds, that goes for all of you.”

Rainbow Dash turned and tensed up to take flight, but then turned back to Twilight for a parting thought.

“If you ever need me, just look up in the sky!”

Dash took off. Scootaloo started whooping and hollering in delight as they soared through the warm skies of the late afternoon, flying away over the rooftops, and out of sight.

Just like that, she was alone again, and it wasn’t long before those familiar chills returned. Her instinctive response fell back on her mental list of friends that she needed to see, only to realize there wasn’t anything left for her to do. She got to see Rarity and Dash, but Applejack and Fluttershy were still well beyond reach, and Pinkie Pie...

Alone again, Twilight began her sad trudge back to her home. She tried to think of what she could do to make up with Spike, if for nothing else than it gave her something else to focus on other than the lump in her throat, the trembling in her legs, and volatile emotions that were thrashing about as she departed from Sugarcube Corner, making her feel like she was on the verge of a panic attack.

She was still hanging her head as she made her slow trot back up to the library. She put a hoof to the door, ready to open it, but something stopped her, forcing herself to ponder all the reasons for her own reluctance to move.

First there was the matter of her friends. Yes, she had gotten to see Rainbow Dash and Rarity, but she felt so cold and alone the instant she was out of their presence. Now that she thought about it, even if she could have seen them, it probably would have been the same way with Applejack and Fluttershy, too. Worst of all, the more she thought about Pinkie, the more it rubbed salt in the wounds her heart was still afflicted with: a thought that hurt all the more over the possibility that she might have something to do with Pinkie’s turmoil.

Then there was Spike, bucking him halfway across her bedroom, then loading him with her share of the chores. He had every good reason to still be mad at her, and that was without him knowing the truth that she had violated his privacy and invaded his dreams without him knowing. She could only begin to imagine how angry he’d look if he found out...

A terribly familiar dread returned to her at that thought. It wasn’t so much Spike’s discontent that she feared, but how much Spike’s anger looked like... that thing lurking in his subconscious...

A jolt of panic threatened to overwhelm her, and she snapped her attention back to the door that she had curiously yet to open. Then the reason why hit her like a sandbag. The last time she had been in this position, of being reluctant to enter her own home, was when she had given up all hope of ever seeing anypony again—when she was trapped on an empty plain that went on forever.

Her remaining rationality had to seize her reins, open the door, and automatically carry her inside, lest she collapse out of her mounting hysteria.

- - - - - -

Spike brushed his claws together, sweeping off a few clinging motes of dust as he looked around the library. Despite the fact that he was done with his chores, and had even finished them early despite the extra work he had been stuck with, he wasn't happy.

Ever since Twilight had left in a rush he had been in a sour mood. For a pony who was good at solving problems, sometimes Twilight just caused more headaches than she cured.

His stomach suddenly gave an audible grumble. He sighed, realizing that the likely reason he had finished his chores so early was because he had forgone breakfast. And lunch. And it was now getting into the evening.

He made his way into the kitchen and opened the pantry door. Spotting his jars of jewels on the bottom shelf, he grabbed one and tried deciding what to do with the tasty treasures. He tried to recall a quick and easy recipe, only to realize that he couldn’t immediately remember one.

His stomach gave another seismic grumble. To hay with it, he thought. He went to the table, sat down as he opened the jar, and began shoveling jewels into his mouth.

Five minutes later his stomach felt better, but even the dazzling trove of jewels he had just consumed had done little to improve his mood. However, now that he'd had some time to think about it, he'd realized he wasn't entirely sure why he was so upset.

Yes, he'd had that horrible, horrible dream, but it had only been a dream. Yes, Twilight seemed to be keeping something to herself, but she'd obviously just had a really bad dream as well and didn't want to think about it. And yes, she had bucked him across the room, and even now his chest was still sore, but she had apologized and fixed him back up as best she could.

So why do I still feel so grumpy?

His thoughts were interrupted by the slow rhythm of hooves clopping on the cobblestone path coming up to the library. He perked up. Had Twilight finally come back? Or was it just somepony else coming to rent a book?

He listened intently, waiting for some telltale sign that this was someone he knew. The hoofsteps stopped just outside the door. Then...

Silence.

What was going on? Was it Twilight? Was this somepony who got lost? Was this Rainbow Dash trying to set up another prank? Several long moments passed in a silence where Spike could have heard a spider walking across the floor.

Then came the grating of wood as the latch finally opened, and whoever this was finally let themselves inside. It had to be Twilight, then. Anypony else would have knocked.

Hopping out of his chair, he went to the door of the kitchen and looked at the entrance.

Sure enough, there was Twilight, slowly looking around the library from her place by the door. Spike began to walk towards her, eager to ask if he could go see Rarity, but something about her demeanor stopped him. She wasn't the frantic, wild-eyed, sleep-deprived pony she had been several hours ago. She still seemed subdued, melancholy even: almost mournful. She hadn't noticed him yet.

"Twilight?" he asked in a meek voice.

She jumped the moment he spoke, her head whipping in alarm towards him, her body visibly tensing up. But then their eyes met, and she visibly relaxed.

Though not right away. It took her a moment that lasted just a little too long for her to tentatively lowered her defensive posture. She was also looking at him funny, with an expression that bespoke of... what? Wariness? Fear?

Why the hay is she looking at me like that?

Wait… that’s what’s wrong, Spike realized. It wasn’t just because she'd callously saddled him with extra chores, or because she'd left a painful hoof-shaped bruise on his chest, but that she had been looking at him the same way this morning when he'd first gone to check on her, and he couldn’t figure out why.

Spike let some of his terse indignation boil to the surface. "I've had to do a lot while you went and played patty-cake with everypony else."

There was a flicker behind her. A flash of guilt played across Twilight’s face, giving him a little bit of satisfaction.

"Actually, Applejack and Fluttershy are out of town for a couple of days. And Pinkie Pie..." Twilight's expression changed to being visibly hurt. "She didn't even want to see me."

Now Spike was the one left feeling like a jerk. "Oh... um... really? Why? Did you have a fight or something? I didn't even think it was possible to have a fight with Pinkie." Spike tried to put enough sympathy in his questions to make up for his first statement.

"No, not really. Well, we had a little confrontation a couple of w—yesterday, but we apologized to each other after it happened. I can't figure out why she's acting like this..."

An awkward silence settled between the two of them. Eventually Twilight decided to break it. "I'm sorry I left you here like this, Spike."

Spike didn't reply, but his countenance softened and he nodded, wordlessly accepting her apology.

"And I said I'd make it up to you. So if there’s some way that you like me to repay you, feel free to name it."

Spike smiled. “Actually, can I go see Rarity?”

"She said she would busy for the rest of the day, but I won’t stop you. Tell you what; if you pick up the groceries on the way back, I'll cook dinner tonight, too."

Spike's smile immediately faltered as his eyes widened and he inhaled sharply. Despite all the books she had read on the subject, Twilight's cooking skills left something to be desired. Her last attempt had been nothing short of apocalyptic, and since that day everypony involved, even Celestia, had simply referred to it as “The Spaghetti Incident.”

Quickly covering up his reaction, Spike improvised a little white lie. "Uh, actually I'd had something special planned for tonight. Maybe instead you can help me out? It's complicated, though, so just do exactly as I say." He answered, blinking several times

Twilight thought about it, then replied, "Are you sure? After all you've done today..."

"Yeah Twilight, I'm sure."

Unfortunately Twilight seemed to catch on to what he wasn't saying. "Spike, I'm not that bad of a cook, I just made a little—"

"Three guards had to be rushed to the hospital," Spike said flatly.

Twilight sighed and put a hoof to her forehead. "Okay, Spike. I promise to just help you out."

“Okay. Is there a time you want me back by?” Spike asked as he moved towards the door.

“Actually, um, I’ll be busy for a while, so you can stay out a little later than usual if you’d like. Sound fair?”

Spike’s smiled, and he scampered outside. “Deal! See ya’ later, Twi!”

She stuck her head out of the door and called after him. “Just don’t stay out too late!”

“Aw...”

Five minutes later, Spike was walking down the cobblestone path en route to the other side of Ponyville. He felt happy. How could he not? He was going to go see Rarity.

Spike bounded up the steps of Carousel Boutique, excited at the prospect to be graced by the breathtaking presence of that beautiful mare. Even if she was busy, acting as a helper while she worked was well worth the time to him. There had never once been a time where he would have considered doing work for her as a chore; he always thought of it as a service for the mare he loved.

He held up a hand to knock on the door. Except his fist wouldn’t connect.

He stood there for several moments, ready to knock on the door, but he remained unmoving. And he couldn’t figure out why.

A stray thought rose up in his mind.

Why are you still trying?

- - - - - -

Okay Twilight, you really need to stop looking at Spike like that. Reason echoed inside her mind.

Like what? Twilight thought.

You know “like what;” the way that you’ve been looking at him every time you’ve seen him today.

Hey, I didn’t look at him like that after he woke me up.

No, you didn’t... but you did after he glared at you for kicking him like a hoofball.

Twilight didn’t have anything with to argue against that. She went into the kitchen for a cool refreshment to soothe the knot in her clenched throat, only to remember that the refrigerator was still in her room when she saw the empty spot where it usually stood.

You should try to do something to help him. And looking at him funny isn’t going to accomplish anything. It’s only a matter of time before he notices and starts getting suspicious, if he hasn’t already, Reason said.

“I know, but what am I supposed to do?” Twilight asked aloud as she went up the stairs. “I know that he has a serious problem, but unless I can learn more about...” She gulped. “About him... I’m not sure what I can do. The only reason Spike revealed as much to me in the dream as he did was because I...”

Twilight exhaled in shame as she reached her dimming bedroom. “Because I lied to him.” Her ears folded down, and she hung her head.

“You saw how much he dreads letting anypony know what he’s struggling with. And what if I tell Spike that I know about...” She reflexively stopped herself. Just thinking about it made her drenched in fear.

“That I know about... about Avarice.” The last word came out as a whisper, but it still made her blood turn cold and left her with the feeling that a millipede made of ice was crawling down her back. “If I tell Spike that I want to help, will he know, too? And what will he do? Can he retaliate when he’s still locked up? To what extent?”

Twilight opened the door to the refrigerator and poured herself a glass of apple juice. She took a sip as she lit some lights around her room in anticipation of the coming night. “As much as I hate to admit it, I think the only way I’ll be able to find out what I need to know without further upsetting an already delicate situation is if I...”

Twilight fell silent as her eyes fell upon the scroll of her unfinished entry.

Is if you keep lying to him, Reason said, disapproving.

Her ears drooped further and she became particularly interested in the floor. Those words sounded even more disgusting in her head than she thought.

You won’t be able to do this for long.

“I know,” Twilight mumbled. “But it’s like I told him; I can’t come up with a solution that solves everything if I don’t even know everything that’s wrong.”

Twilight could almost hear Reason’s reluctant sigh. You’re going to need to recalibrate the functional operation for Dreamscape, then. It’s already not safe, even when you’re not sharing a dream with him...

“I know that, too. But it will have to wait until tomorrow,” Twilight said as she approached her desk again. The dreaded, beckoning call of the parchment pulled her in, and she picked up the forlorn quill once more.

Why are you so intent on documenting this? Reason asked. It’s clear that this is just emotionally unhealthy baggage for you.

“As terrible as it was, it happened while I was under the effects of Dreamscape, so I have to include it in the logs. Besides... maybe this can help me cope with what happened while I was there.”

So you’re not really doing this for scientific purposes, then. You’re writing this all down as some form of therapy; like understanding everything will sugarcoat that bitter pill enough so that at least the logical part of your mind can better come to terms with what happened.

“As the logical part of my brain, I don’t see how you’d have a problem with that,” Twilight said.

I don’t, but this compulsion for comprehension it is just a symptom of the root problem. Being stuck in limbo hurt you, Twilight. It hurt you in ways you’d never even dared imagine before. As is the case with Spike, understanding the problem is only one step to ultimately fixing the problem, and it’s not even a step in the right direction unless you consider all the other factors.

Like how I’m talking to myself to hide from the fact that I’m alone again.

Twilight gasped. The chills seized her again and she bolted into the main room in a panic, looking for anyone to stave off seeping loneliness. Her first presented solution came in the form of Owloysius; the raptor had just flown in and was settling down on one of his favorite perches with some of his writing materials.

“Owloysius!” Twilight cried out to him.

Owloysius jumped slightly, hooting from her startling outburst.

Some of the edge wore off of her. “Oh, thank Celestia,” she breathed. “Hey, um... sorry about that. So... I’m working on something up here, and I’d rather not be alone, so... could you keep me company? Please?”

Owloysius peered at her with uncertain cautiousness, hesitant to leave his perch.

“I promise, no death-grip hugs this time.”

Owloysius stood there for a moment, considering the request. Eventually he picked up some of his scrolls and flew up to the bedroom, still keeping some distance from her.

Twilight sighed in relief. “Thanks, Owloysius.”

“Hoo,” he noted, taking a perch that still put some distance between them.

With the issue of her loneliness dealt with Twilight turned back to her desk. Just the sight of the paper struck her with the unease of an unpleasant task.

Might as well just get it over with, otherwise this is just going to keep gnawing at me.

The gentle whirr of her magic sounded in the quiet bedroom. Twilight picked up the quill again, dipped in the inkwell, and proceeded to write from where she had left off.

So after I got off the train at the palace station, I went straight to the laboratories to try and come up with another way of travel that could I rely on. I contemplated multiple possible solutions, but each one I thought of lacked either practicality or conceptual satisfaction. After I had spent the rest day in the labs I returned home, frustrated and tired, both from failing to come up with a way of transportation that didn’t involve the cursed train, and because having to raise and lower the sun and moon was a task that had really started to wear on me.

That alone gave me a whole new appreciation for the importance of the roles held by both Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, now that I was essentially in their horseshoes.

That’s when I got an idea; one simple idea that took hold in my mind, and that I just couldn’t stop thinking about:

I could give myself wings.

Chapter Six - Radical Notion

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Twilight groaned as she stirred in her bed sheets. Her twisting opened up slight cracks between the blanket and the bed, allowing some of the warmth from her snug confines to escape and let some of the cool morning air in to waft across her fur. The change in temperature did little to relieve a dull ache in her sides.

She yawned and cracked open her sleepy eyes. The blurry sight of her room greeted her, dimly lit through drawn curtains by the faint light from the sun, still waiting to be summoned from below the horizon.

“Shoot,” Twilight muttered to herself. Her head was still foggy from sleep and her coordination was still in bed as she stumbled across her hooves and outside her bedroom.

I thought I’d gotten used to this by now, she thought to herself as she made her haphazard way down the stairs.

Twilight opened the door and was greeted by the brisk coolness and crisp humidity of the morning air. She trotted outside towards Ponyville and looked to the east. The sun had already begun to illuminate the fringes of the lingering blue night with its golden rays.

Twilight closed her still-groggy eyes and ignited her horn.

Except she couldn’t feel it.

Twilight scrunched up her face in concentration, channeling more of her mana into her horn.

Still nothing.

Come on, I thought I’d already gotten the hang of this; I have done this over a dozen time—

Twilight gasped and snapped her eyes open. The sudden exposure to the light stung her eyes, and she was forced to squint. The majestic sun rose over Equestria, bringing its beloved light to the proud and peaceful country once more, casting long shadows over the sleepy little town.

Twilight stared, with her mouth drawn open in some sort of horror as the scope of what she had just attempted dawned upon her.

I tried to raise the sun... I tried to raise the sun!

At that moment, she realized her horn was still active. Her mood curdled instantly, and she snuffed it out with a scowl.

She stood alone in the quiet streets of Ponyville with her head aimed down, her brow furrowed, her ears folded back, and a glower directed towards herself. Perturbed, she muddled over all the various implications of just how wrong this scene was. She looked back at the sun and realized that for the first time in her life, she wasn’t happy to see it.

Now fuming, she turned around, stomped back inside her library, and slammed the door.

- - - - - -

Month five, day twenty-six, entry four hundred and eighty-five.

No more pussyhoofing around this point anymore; I’m going to revise the functions of the Dreamscape Spell.

Specifically, I’m going to fix the “death glitch:” the phenomenon of “dying” while in a dream resulting in dropping into a contained coma/mental limbo. As of yet, I’m still not sure what the cause of it is. I’m guessing it’s either due to missing functions from the spell, some sort of kink in the interactivity between one or more simultaneous operations, or it has something to do with how the spell affects consciousness.

But there’s no way of knowing for sure without checking each individual segment of the codex first... all twenty-four hundred lines of arcane code.

I’ll be updating this entry periodically with new information or updates as I find them.

This is going to be fun...

Working on the spell was not fun.

Plowing through the written functions of Dreamscape made Twilight feel like she was trying to find a needle in a haystack, using her tongue, while she had shoved the entire haystack into her mouth and was trying to chew it. After nine hours of study, all she had gotten for her troubles was a massive headache.

She put her forehooves to her head and rubbed her temple, letting out a groan as she did.

“Twilight!” Spike blurted from right next to her.

“AH!” Twilight jumped back from him, startled.

“I finished my chores and all my other stuff may I go see Rarity please?” Spike asked in a single breath.

She opened her mouth to answer, but found that the knot had showed up again, and she had to force her way past it. “Didn’t you just go to see Rarity yesterday?”

“Yeah… she said she was too busy to see me, but that’s not a problem, is it?” Spike asked.

“It isn’t with me, but... will Rarity think it’s a problem?”

“Well I won’t know unless I go see Rarity as ask if it’s okay to spend time with her, will I?” Spike said.

Twilight didn’t have anything to say to that. She could see his logic, but she was still hesitant to comply. Why am I hesitating to just let him go?

“I don’t know, Spike...”

“But I’ve already done all my chores!” Spike protested, growing increasingly tense. “I finished early, and did a little extra! Why can’t I just go?” His brow hardened. “Or do you have more stuff that you want to stick me with?”

Twilight was about to answer, when she saw Spike throw a quick look at something behind her before he met her eyes again, almost glaring.

Twilight had the uncanny feeling that something was behind her. “Okay, alright; you may go see Rarity, Spike.”

Spike brightened up instantly. “Thanks! See ya later, Twi!”

He bolted out the door without another word, leaving Twilight with only her numerous tomes of research notes to keep her company. She looked behind her to see what Spike had glanced at, and saw nothing, but an uneasy feeling still stirred fitfully in her gut.

It’s okay... I jumped when he got my attention because I was thoroughly engrossed in my work, and he just startled me is all.

Reason’s snort of derision was so loud inside her head that she almost jumped.

Rather than get into another emotionally uncomfortable debate with herself, she redoubled her efforts to ignore her inner turmoils, and cantered into the main room.

“Pee-Wee!”

Spike’s pet phoenix chirped in response.

Feeling more relieved, Twilight looked around for something to keep him occupied. She spotted something by Spike’s bed.

Twilight picked up Spike’s favorite fire-colored marble with her magic and shook it for the phoenix to see. “Look what I have...”

Pee-Wee let out an excited peep and scurried after the orb, exhilarated at the prospect of playing with the marble. He made a clumsy ascent up the staircase, half-flying up the steps and half tripping over himself, running on his little legs for the prize.

Twilight gently tossed the marble into her room, letting it roll across the floor. Pee-Wee took off after it and leapt through the air. He pounced the marble and tumbled over himself as he tackled it, squeaking with joy the entire time.

Content with the company, Twilight returned to the codex as Pee-Wee periodically gnawed on the marble with his beak, lost his grip on it, then took off after it again.

- - - - - -

“Ugh, if only I had somepony to help me fix this blasted thing,” Twilight grumbled to herself. Several more hours had passed, and the only thing that had changed was that Pee-Wee had fallen asleep with the marble under a wing.

Twilight flopped down on her bed, lying on her back and closing her eyes. She could still see the multitudes of glyphs and equations etched and glowing on the insides of her eyelids, taunting her like an unsolved riddle.

Twilight groaned. “Maybe I should just get back to this tomorrow.”

She tried to relax and unwind the strained cogs of her exhausted mind. The strain gradually ebbed away, and her headache began to subside. The burning after-images of the ink faded away, leaving nothing to see but darkness.

Hello?

Twilight opened her eyes as felt herself go cold. She turned in her bed, away from the window. Pulling her tail towards herself, she held it with her hooves, stroking it gently. With her thoughts focusing on brushing over her tail with a hoof, her jitters started to subside.

If only the darkness was that easy to abolish...

At that moment, her logic had to step in to shut the door and keep any more of those foreboding notions from lingering in her mind. Her thoughts returned to what Reason had told her when they met in her dream: about how she needed a way to keep track of reality.

So how do I accomplish devising a method to determine whether I’m dreaming or not? I could just attempt a mental link to the spell matrices like I would if I was trying to manipulate something; I’ll be able to tell if I’m not dreaming if I reach out and can’t feel anything...

She remembered reaching out with her mind: casting it out so far that she feared she might lose consciousness, and only finding an infinite nothing.

Her heart rate jumped and her breathing quickened.

No, that won’t work... don’t think about that, Twilight. No, I need some way to independently determine if I’m in a dream, not matter how deep I am in one. But how? And Reason said I need a way of keeping track of reality, so it can’t just be limited to what I can do in a dream. I need something that I could carry back and forth between worlds. But how could that thing help me differentiate whether or not I’m dreaming?

A light went off in her head.

Twilight hopped off her bed, trotted over to her chest of sentimental items and undid the padlock clamped firmly around the latch.

She dug past her acceptance letter into Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, pushed aside her autographed copy of one of Dominus Cob’s books, relocated the golden locket her mother had given her, carefully set aside her first quill and looked behind the little collection of miniature encyclopedia volumes that she had made for her foalhood doll, Smarty Pants, which she realized was still missing. At the bottom of the trunk, she found the little case that housed the object of her search.

Twilight gently opened it to find what she was looking for: her glass gyroscope.

Huh, it was in the exact same place where I found it in... no, no don’t think about that!

More urgent than ever now, Twilight went over to the sleeping phoenix and gently nudged him with her muzzle.

“Hey, Pee-Wee, wake up. Could you help me with something, please?”

Pee-Wee yawned as he came to, rubbing his eyes with a wing before looking up at her.

Twilight rubbed her side. “I need your help for an experiment. Here,” she said as she pulled a little bag from a drawer where Spike kept his personal belongings and held it out to him. “Arm some of these, then meet me downstairs, okay?”

Pee-Wee nodded in excitement, took the bag, and hobbled outside.

After the little bird had left, Twilight suddenly felt terror creep up on her, like she was strapped in and climbing the lift hill of a roller coaster known to have safety issues. She nervously glanced back at the mountains of papers on her desk..

It’ll be fine, she told herself.

Twilight looked back towards the door at trotted out of her room.

I hope…

- - - - - -

Twilight stood downstairs, alone in her basement laboratory. She took a moment to look around at the scenery before she picked up her little gyroscope with her magic, focusing on it like it was a rope she was holding onto while she was hanging from a cliff.

“Okay... this’ll only take a few minutes...”

Twilight closed her eyes and focused her magic on the gyroscope. Her horn began to glow varying hues of magenta, and the glass trinket followed suit, flashing with brilliant colors.

After a moment of concentration, Twilight finished her spell and set the glass gyroscope upon the nearby counter top. Gently placing a hoof atop the frame, she reached out with her other hoof and spun the contraption.

She let go and returned all four hooves to the ground. She moved to close to the gyroscope, staring at it with insurmountable fixation.

The little glass gyroscope spun in place without a care in the world, singing its gentle, harmonious whirr as the rotor and various gimbals rotated around each other.

The oscillating tone made Twilight’s ears twitch to and fro, dancing along with the spinning rings like a serpent with a snake charmer.

Still, the gyroscope spun.

Twilight licked her lips in nervous anticipation. Her eyes hardly even blinked as they watched the motion device at work.

A minute passed. Then two. Then five. Still, the gyroscope spun.

Twilight was so transfixed with watching it that she paid no mind as the tree above her creaked and moaned like it would during a sustained gust of wind. Even as the tree’s protests started to become more audible and agitated, Twilight’s attention remained focused on the gyroscope.

The closed door groaned in discontent as it bowled out. It held its convex shape for a few seconds, then was torn right off the hinges as a violent flood of water rushed into the basement.

One of Twilight’s ears swiveled to greet the roaring waters. She felt her her muscles involuntarily tense up for the impact, but still she would not look away from the gyroscope. Even over the raging froth of the waves, its resonating chime could still be heard.

The roof caved in, burying her in water. Its weight and force crushed her under its might, making movement impossible and drowning the world in black.

Twilight woke up, rubbed water out of her eyes, and wiped shreds of rubber off of her face.

She undid the straps around the helmet attached to her head, deactivated the machine it was plugged into, and looked to Pee-Wee. He was laughing hysterically and had tripped over the watch she’d assigned him, falling back onto the pile of water balloons he had stockpiled.

“Thanks, Pee-Wee,” Twilight said indirectly as she relocated her gyroscope.

Twilight levitated the gyroscope over to the counter again and spun it. Once again the delicate whirr of the spinning, glass halos sounded through the air, and Twilight became so fixated upon it that she even stopped hearing Pee-Wee’s wheezing peeps of avian laugher.

Seconds ticked on, seemingly drawn out in exponentially greater lengths as Twilight stared at the gyroscope.

Twenty seconds passed, but they felt as long as the five minutes she’d spent in the dream.

Wait: did I imagine it, or did it just wobble?

Twilight got so close to the gyroscope that her nose almost touched it. Still it spun, then another wobble. Then it swayed back and forth as its momentum deteriorated.

After about forty seconds, the gyroscope fell over on its side, hitting the counter top with a light clink. Twilight sighed in relief.

Another water balloon splattered across the side of her face.

“Hey, I’m up now; you don’t need to do that anymore!” Twilight said to the phoenix, who had collapsed with a new fit of giggles.

Twilight looked over the roll of paper that she had written before.

“Month five, day twenty six, entry four hundred and eighty-six

“Okay, I’ve taken a break from the solving the death glitch for the moment. Yes, it’s still momentarily unsolved and thus Dreamscape is still unsafe for use, but this is just going to be a control test; something that if I had perhaps taken care of before, I could have avoided an awful lot of unbearable heartbreak headaches…”

Twilight levitated another sheet of parchment and a quill over to the nearest desk, and started to write.

“Month five, day twenty six, entry four hundred and eighty-seven

“I’m proud to say that the experiment was a success. I’ve now devised an elegant little solution for keeping track of reality.

“For the sake of categorization, I shall call it a “totem.””

Another water balloon exploded across Twilight’s face, and she whipped around to glare at Pee-Wee. “Oh, you’re going to get it now!”

Pee-Wee squeaked with delight and took off, Twilight chasing after him with several of his own watery weapons.

- - - - - -

Spike trudged through the streets of Ponyville, arms filled with bags of groceries as he made his way back home.

His trip to Carousel Boutique had been severely disappointing. When Rarity had answered the front door, her mood had clearly been the “I'm in the middle of something and can't be bothered” one. Apparently, she'd had a last-minute order to fill for an upcoming parade in Canterlot. He'd sensed an opportunity and asked if he could help, but she had turned him down as politely as she could. Instead of taking the cue, he had insisted that he could assist. Ultimately, after more exchanged words, it had ended with Rarity telling him he had to leave in a stern voice bordering on a demand that he go.

He did leave, out of respect, but he still couldn’t help but feel dejected.

Why now? I thought she knew how much I love to help her...

His gloomy brooding turned to the last time that he had gotten to help. Rarity had been in one her spur-of-the-moment creative sessions when he had showed up, and she'd been more than pleased to have an assistant. The next of couple of hours had been a flurry of activity as he'd fetched rolls of fabric and smaller rolls of ribbons, as well as scissors, pins, and needles. He'd even served as an impromptu mannequin.

Ultimately, however, the final product had failed to meet her high standards, though she had smiled when he said he liked it. She had even ruffled his crest with a hoof when she thanked him for stopping by and helping out. He'd tried not to blush, but had failed fantastically. She didn't do it very often, but he liked it when she ruffled his crest.

He would have really liked it if she had kissed him again, but she had only ever done that twice; once when he had given her the fire ruby, the other on the bridge, after that one incident he didn’t like to talk about. That felt like ages ago now, though. He brooded more over why she couldn’t have been less preoccupied and more open like she had been just last... he couldn’t remember when now.

As his moody thoughts seeped through his mind like dense fog, his path became obstructed by a cotton-candy blur.

"HI SPIKE!" Pinkie Pie yelled in his face, a tight grin plastered across her own.

Spike almost jumped out of his scales in surprise as he dropped his grocery bags. To his horror, he thought he heard the sound of breaking eggs.

"GAH! Wha... hu... WHAT THE HAY, PINKIE!" Spike yelled. A purple flicker of movement behind Pinkie Pie made his eye twitch.

His burst of outrage barely seemed to register with her. Her rigid smile didn't falter at all. Without breaking eye contact, she wordlessly reached into her saddlebags and shoved a piece of paper into his claws.

"I'm having a party tonight; will you come?" she asked with a pleasantly strained voice.

Spike felt suddenly apprehensive being around Pinkie. The paper in his hand was a crumpled white sheet with hastily-written words on it. It was a party invitation.

Spike looked back and forth between Pinkie and the invitation.

Didn't she just throw a party a few days ago? Why is she throwing another one?

"Um… Pinkie, can I ask you something?"

The muscles in her cheek twitched and her eyes opened up even wider, making her inviting gaze all the more scrutinizing.

"What? Oh... sure!"

"Why didn't you want to see Twilight yesterday?"

More cracks appeared in her smile. "I... er... but she's my friend! Why wouldn't I want to see Starlight?"

"But she said... wait, did you just call her Starlight?"

Pinkie’s ear twitched. "Yeah, silly, it's only her name!"

"No it's not."

Pinkie’s lower jaw ground from one side to the other, and the muscles in her face became so clenched that she appeared to tremble. "Well, you still haven't answered my question. Are you coming to my party?"

Pinkie's unblinking smile bored into him, making him sweat through his scales."I... um... I don't know... I mean I've got to cook dinner tonight, then I've got to... um..."

"But... we're friends!" she said. "Why wouldn't you come?"

"Pinkie, I didn’t say—"

"BUT WE'RE FRIENDS!" Pinkie screamed, getting right up in his face. “YOU HAVE TO COME!”

Spike to step back in shock. What looked like anger, desperation, and sadness blended horrifically together on her visage for a single moment.

Then her expression changed; her eyes slowly went wide and her mouth opened in horror. Before Spike could say anything, she brushed past him as she broke into a gallop, and he thought he heard a choked sob from her as she passed.

He stood in a stupor as he watched her gallop away. After a prolonged moment, he pinched the bridge of his snout and sighed in exasperation before bending over to clean up the mess of groceries.

- - - - - -

“Ugh...” Twilight grumbled as she lay in bed, reluctant to have regained consciousness. Not that she wasn’t well-rested, but she knew that as soon as she got up that she would inevitably have to start ironing out the kinks in Dreamscape again. The only breaks she’d gotten from the headache of rechecking almost the entire spell over the course of yesterday had been the research tangent into totems, and when an unusually quiet Spike had come home and had made dinner for the both of them.

She couldn’t even remember where she’d left off; she’d gotten so tired that she eventually just said “to hay with it” and called it a night. Her cortex no longer throbbed with a migraine, but it felt like whatever pain had been in her head had just migrated to her sides.

The unpleasant sensations were hard to place; her sides had never ached in the same way that they did now, but she settled on it feeling like she’d been kicked by both Big Mac and Applejack from different sides at the same time, and the pains from the bruises still hadn’t subsided.

For a moment she forgot about the pain as she stared up at the ceiling, then moaned in discontent. Her own train of thought had reminded her that she still hadn’t seen hide or hair of either Applejack or Fluttershy since before those... nine seconds. That, coupled with the realization that she’d spent the entire day yesterday cooped up in the library with little more than Pee-Wee to keep her company, left her feeling very restless.

The sun hadn’t risen yet. Twilight winced slightly from her aching sides as she twisted in bed and peeled the covers off herself. She sat on the edge of her bed for a moment, hooves hovering just above the floor.

Wait... why am I up so early, and where am I going?

She grumbled to herself again. “You don’t need to do that anymore, Twilight.”

She felt it was too late to go back to bed to get some extra rest before she usually woke up; the ache in her sides kind of took that out of the question anyway. Though she didn’t want to start her morning right off the bat with a project that was sure to make her skull feel like it was housing a burning pincushion. She hopped out of bed; if nothing else, she needed to look for something to do.

She made her way past Spike, still curled up and sleeping in his bed. He snored lightly as she passed. Twilight jumped at the noise. She stared at him for a moment, watching each of his slight movements as he stirred.

His face was without expression. His breathing was deep and regular. One of his arms had escaped from under his blanket and hung over the side of his bedded basket. For a single moment his breathing was interrupted as he stirred in his slumber, adjusting the position where he lay. His exposed claws twitched, flexing slightly.

I wonder what he’s dreaming about, Twilight thought to herself.

The fur on the back of her neck stood on end. Could Spike be dreaming about... HIM?!

She slowly backed away from the sleeping dragon. Did it break free again? Is he trying to lock him up again? What if the time comes when he can’t keep those doors closed?

Twilight stopped her backwards advance and put a hoof to her chest. Twilight, be reasonable. There are plenty of things that he could be dreaming about right now, and he isn’t acting nearly as fretful the last time he was having a dream like... that. He could be just be dreaming that he’s helping Rarity dig for gems, or something.

Or he could be dreaming of going on a thieving spree, ergo the grabbing motions with his claw.

Suddenly the chills returned, and she backed further away from Spike.

Is he having Avarice’s dream right now? Their consciences already share the same skull; can they also share dreams? If Spike woke up during a shared dream, could he wake up too?

Twilight’s rear hit her bedroom door. She whipped around in surprise, shot a quick glance back at Spike, then hurriedly opened the door, left the bedroom, and slammed it shut behind her.

She realized that her breathing and heart rate had shot upwards. She leaned against the railing of the stairs and sighed.

Great, Twilight... you’re still terrified of your closest friend.

She looked over the oaken walls all lined with books, wondering what to do. Her mind was made up for her when her stomach voiced some discontent of its own.

Can’t wake Spike up for breakfast... because that would be rude of me. Might as well try my hoof at cooking, because that’s less scary than focusing on my new-found phobias.

Twilight made her way to the kitchen. The room of culinary creations was innocently oblivious to the horrors it was about to be subjugated to.

Forty-five minutes and four extinguished fires later, the sun had fully risen and Twilight was still without breakfast, as her empty stomach so grumpily reminded her.

She heard a knock come from the front door, but she couldn’t hear who it was through the kitchen door. Growling a little in frustration as she tried to pull an egg beater out of her mane, she trotted to the front door to attend to her early guest.

She opened the door, too annoyed to give her customary greeting. She gasped and froze.

“Howdy, Twi! Hey, I ran into RD right when I got back, and she said—”

Applejack never got to finish what she was saying before Twilight tacked her to the ground with a hug.

“APPLEJACK! Oh, I missed you so much!”

The farm pony merely chuckled. “Yep, Rainbow warned me about that, too.” Applejack returned the hug from the ground. “I missed ya too, Twi.”

Applejack sniffed the air, scrunching up her face. “Uh, sugarcube, you haven’t been tryin’ to cook again, have ya?”

“Um... maybe a little?”

Applejack sighed. “Lemme guess,” she started to say, spying the beater still stuck in Twilight’s mane. “You tried to make some Prench toast or somethin’?”

“No: cereal.”

Applejack put a hoof to her face. “No offense, but from what I’ve heard tell, I hope you and Sweetie Belle are never hungry and in a kitchen at the same time. I reckon whatever the two of you would try and make could be used to put down any other villain we might face in the future.”

Twilight snorted in embarrased amusement. “Probably...”

“Tell ya what,” Applejack said as she pulled herself out from under Twilight, “if ya don’t mind, how about ya let me fix up some grub for the two of us?”

Twilight’s stomach answered in its native tongue.

Applejack smiled. “Well, if that ain’t an open invitation if I ever heard one...”

The two mares relocated to the kitchen. She hadn’t even walked through the door before Applejack reeled back in terror at the sight, after which she just stared, dumbfounded.

“Golly, Twi! Were ya tryin’ to make something illegal in here?” Applejack asked.

“What?” Twilight protested as Applejack got to work, grabbing a new pot out of the cupboard: one that hadn’t been damaged beyond repair. “I didn’t do as badly as the last time I attempted to cook.”

Applejack’s head shot up from her rummaging of the pantry in alarm. Her eyes were wide, pupils shrunk in focus and fear. “Yer not talkin’ about...”

“No, not that time...” Twilight interrupted, annoyed. “I’ve actually tried a few times since then, if for nothing else to try and get better in hopes to play down that debacle.”

“Ah,” Applejack noted as she pulled several items from the fridge and took two apples from the fruit basket. “No offense, and do correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t ya forbidden by law to ever try yer hoof at cookin’ after... ya know... that one time?”

“No, I’m just not allowed within fifty yards of the royal Canterlot kitchens.”

“Oh... well that’s not as bad as some o’ the rumors I’ve heard,” Applejack said while she set the pot of water on the stove to boil and began mashing up the fruit.

“Yeah, it could have been way worse. Celestia later told me that the head chef had looked into seeing if what I did could have been classified as treason. He tried to claim that, unintentional or not, I was using the palace resources to manufacture cruel and unusual weapons of war.”

Applejack froze in the middle of her task. Without turning her head, she shifted her gaze to stare at Twilight for a moment. Then she sighed and went back to her work, wordlessly turning the heat down on the stove and adding a good deal of oats to the boiling water.

“Oh come on, it wasn’t that bad, was it?”

“I wouldn’t go as far to call it a crime against all Equestria, but Twi, you gotta understand that no matter what, it just wasn’t right. Shoot, if it wasn’t for Spike’s eggplant lasagna, that one incident probably would’ve turned me off Itailian food for good.

“Anyway, I’d rather not talk about the spaghetti incident unless it’s Nightmare Night and I need a good horror story to scare the foals,” Applejack said while she dumped the mashed apples into a bowl and mixed in various measurements of other ingredients. “What’ve you been up to, Twi?”

“Oh, just... research and studies into magic, working on new spells, ironing the kinks out of them, the usual.” Twilight waved a hoof. “Really complicated stuff that I’d rather not jump into first thing in the morning unless I want a splitting headache by lunch.”

“Well, I guess it’s good I showed up then, ain’t it? Nothin’ like a little southern comfort to get ya started for a tough day.”.

“Yeah,” Twilight agreed. “On top of everything else, I really missed your cooking for those two weeks.”

Applejack peered at Twilight, quizzical. “Uh, Twilight? I was only gone for a few days.”

Twilight’s eyes widened. Shoot.

Applejack dumped the mashed apples into the pot, stirred them in then, and pulled up a chair next to Twilight. “Speakin’ o’ which, Rainbow said that she’d ran into ya yesterday, and she gave me fair warnin’ that y’all might be a bit, uh, “spirited” with the hugs. And apparently Pinkie’s got somethin’ on her plate that’s made a real shut-in outta her; like even worse than when she thought we didn’t want to be her friends anymore.”

She leaned over on the table, getting closer to Twilight. “Just what in the hay happened while I was gone?”

Twilight breathed in deep and let it out with a prolonged sigh. “Okay, I don’t know exactly what has Pinkie so bothered, but I’m certain it has to with something that happened five days ago.”

“The day of that big water balloon fight?” Applejack asked.

“That’s the one.”

Applejack grinned. “Yeah, that was great...”

Twilight put on a slight smile of her own. “It was, but right before that happened... well, I suppose I have to share this now, too. For almost the past six months I’ve been working off and on to complete an unfinished spell that can allow ponies to enter into their own dreams. Pinkie learned about it and then roped me into trying it out with her, and she had a really, really bad dream as a result of it. I tried to talk to her about it the next day, but she was still really upset by it.”

Twilight looked off in another direction. “At least she was still talking to me, then. Hardly anypony has been able to take to her since.”

“Well shoot, maybe I should stop by Sugarcube Corner and see if I can’t offer some support, too,” said Applejack. “But what about you? RD said you’ve been a bit off-color, too; somethin’ about you havin’ a bad dream, too.”

Twilight began to fiddle with her hooves. “I was alone...” she mumbled, barely audible.

Applejack tilted her head to the side. “Beg yer’ pardon?”

It took effort for Twilight to look back up to Applejack and continue. “I dreamed that I was completely alone. I didn’t have you, or any of our friends, or anypony to keep me company. I wasn’t even in Equestria; I was stuck in a empty world...” Twilight looked away.

Applejack stared at her for a moment. “Shoot, Twi; that—”

“For two weeks.”

Applejack’s eyes went wide. “Dang... wait; that’s what you meant when you said you hadn’t had Apple family cookin’ for more than weeks? But how’s that even possible?”

“The dream took place so deep in my mind that I perceived time to be passing at a much faster rate, so it felt like much more time passed than it actually did.” Twilight was having the conversation with the linoleum at this point. “The actual amount of time that passed was, well... much shorter than two weeks...”

“Holy moly... and I thought the lonely train ride out to Appaloosa was gonna make me go more nuts than a squirrel in a sealed barrel.”

The words echoed in Twilight’s ears like a broken tuning fork. Lonely train ride...

The chug of steam escaping from pistons and smoke billowing forth from atop the cylindrical stack carried the undertone of parts clicking away in rhythmic harmony, like a galloping clock. She only picked up on the syncopated melody from the empty platform because of the lack of ponies milling about in idle chatter to drown out the subliminal clatter, and likewise was the only reason her view of the polished chrome engine with an onyx-handed clock embroidered across its front was unobstructed. The train pulled up in front of her, and she wrenched open one of the doors, hopping into the passenger car before the train had even come to a stop. She looked around to pick a seat, only to see that each one was as empty as the station dock which she had just left.

“Hey, Twi; ya’ll right?”

Applejack’s query pulled Twilight back to reality.

“Wha... oh, no; I just...” Twilight let her sentence hang.

Applejack put a hoof on Twilight’s and gave her a warm smile. “Hey, you’re awake now and I’m here. That’s what matters, right?”

Twilight repeated the gesture. “Yeah. Thank you, Applejack.”

The farmer tipped her hat. “My pleasure. They don’t call me “the most dependable of ponies” for nothin’.” Her smile faltered slightly. “But sugarcube, ya sure ya want to be messin’ ‘round with somethin’ like that? I mean, sounds like it’s caused ya more harm than good so far.”

“I’m sure. Those were just occurrences in the early stages of testing, and I’ve learned from them. Besides, it... well, it’s just something I have to do.”

The smell of the food on the stove had become tantalizing to the senses by now, making Twilight’s stomach grumble again.

“Tell your guts to hold that thought, I’ll take care of it,” Applejack commented as she got up from the table and returned to the stove.

Twilight spoke up. “So, Rarity had said that you were out of town on business. May I ask where?”

“Ya sure can,” Applejack said while she ladled the oatmeal from the pot into two separate bowls. “I had to make a quick trip out to Appaloosa to help the settlers with their orchards, make sure all the books were balanced, and catch up with cousin Braeburn o’ course. Even got to meet Lil’ Strongheart again. The townsfolk an’ the tribe are gettin’ along like apples and pie crust, so it’s all good.”

Applejack returned with the bowls and two glasses of apple juice, then slid one pair to Twilight. “Well dig in, sugarcube. Ya look outright famished.”

Twilight didn’t need to be told twice. She used her magic to pick up a spoon and shoveled a heap of oats into her mouth. Her reward was a delicious stampede of oats and apples with the perfect blend of cinnamon and brown sugar, much to the delight of her taste buds.

Applejack chuckled at the heavily lidded Twilight. “Another satisfied customer.”

Twilight let the taste stand on her tongue until her own watering mouth began to dilute the flavor, and she swallowed, eager for more. “It’s great, Applejack; thank you.”

“Just doin’ what Apples do best, from here to the untamed frontier.” Her expression bunched up ever so slightly, looking pensive. “Speakin’ o’ which, that reminds me; the trip out to Appaloosa was long and lonely, but that’s partly ‘cause I found it preferable to move to an empty car after one o’ the other passengers raised enough of a ruckus. Somethin’ o’ her’s had gone missin’, and she was shootin’ claims that it’d been stolen. And right when I moved to a quieter car to hopefully get a lil’ shut-eye, I got to thinking; we never did catch that thief runnin’ ‘round Ponyville, did we?”

Twilight paused in mid-chew, then stuffed the contents of her mouth into a cheek. “No, I guess not.”

Applejack let out a little hum of contemplation. “Well, have ya heard anythin’ new about it? Ya run a library in the middle o’ town, and considering how popular ya seem to be, you’ve got to have heard something, right?”

Something about Applejack’s honest questions made Twilight feel like she was tied to a chair in a dark room while a spotlight was being shined into her face. “I, uh... no... but...”

Applejack was giving her that same look that she usually only saw on the farm pony during poker night. She conceded.

Okay, it’s not lying if I don’t tell her everything.

“Actually, I did learn a little something not too long ago.”

“Oh?” Applejack perked up. “What’s that?”

“Well...”

Deep gouges from cruel claws had carved their vitriol all over the inside of the clockwork doors. Hatred translated into letters as jagged as his razored frill. The cool air of the cave was warm compared to the chills that ran down her spine.

EVERYTHING

WILL BE

MINE

“I know that the thief isn’t Spike.”

“How’d ya come across that?” Applejack inquired.

Twilight paused. “There was another theft about four nights ago. The thief tried to steal my research notes on the Dreamscape spell that I’ve been working on, but they didn’t get out of the library with them. I saw Spike just after it happened, and he was sleeping, so I guess that makes me his alibi.“

Applejack put a hoof to her chin. “Huh... And did ya see any of this happen?”

“No. I was also sleeping when it happened, and Owloysius woke me up after the fact.” Twilight wiped a hoof across her forehead. I’m telling the truth, so why do I feel so uneasy about this?

“And ya just recovered your notes right after that?” AJ asked.

“Yes.”

Applejack crossed her other foreleg and set the elbow of the leg propping her chin up on it. “Now that’s odd... why wouldn’t the thief have stashed the notes away like they had everything else?”

“I don’t know... but then considering the kinds of things this thief has stolen already, I wouldn’t say that there’s much rhyme or reason to their madness.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Applejack said.

Twilight caught herself from letting out a sigh of relief.

“Shoot,” Applejack muttered when she caught a glance at the kitchen clock. “I probably shouldn’t stay much longer. Apple Bloom will want to know her big sister is back so she can go playin’ with her friends. It ain’t fair to her that I had to leave on such short notice and she had to pick up my slack.”

“I’m sure she’ll just be happy to know that you’re back.”

“Yeah.” Applejack began to smile. “Look at me; I’m already grinnin’ just thinkin’ about how big a smile she’ll have on her lil’ face to see me come trottin’ back home. Speaking o’ which, thanks a ton for havin’ me over.”

“Thanks for stopping by, Applejack,” Twilight bid her farewell. “I really needed your company.”

“The pleasure’s all mine, sugarcube. I’m just glad to know you’re doin’ ok. And I feel even better knowing that Spike ain’t goin’ ‘round on a thevin’ spree.” She leaned back in her chair and took a big gulp from her glass. “I’ll be honest, for a while there, I was actually worried about the lil’ guy.”

“Yeah,” Twilight shifted slightly in her seat. “So was I.”

- - - - - -

Month five, day twenty-seven, entry four hundred and eighty-eight

This thing sucks.

Twenty-four hundred lines of code in the arcane scripts for this spell, and not one of them contains any sort of discrepancy that could feasibly cause the death glitch. And don’t even get me started on checking every possible factorial of any given number of lines interacting with any other number of given lines; that’s such an astronomical number of possibilities that I wouldn’t be able to check the spell that thoroughly unless I could live as long as Celestia.

For once, I’ll admit that I might be overthinking this. I’ve already checked this spell thirteen times over; what is written into the spell already works just fine, and even what little Dominus had written when I found his notes was solid enough for me to eventually finish it. This is probably just an oversight that I hadn’t accounted for... that oversight being that it’s possible to die within the dream. Seriously, how could I have forseen this would even be a problem?

On the bright side, since there doesn’t seem to be an existing line of code that solves the glitch, writing an entirely new segment of code to the spell to rectify the problem is probably the best way to go.

Now I just have to figure out what to do to fix it, how to write that into the codex, and how to do it without upsetting the entire function of the spell in the process. Talk about “out of the frying pan and into the fire.”

…

Maybe it’s best if I avoid cooking metaphors.

Twilight returned the quill to the inkwell that was next to her gyroscope and put a hoof to her throbbing temple. Whatever tension she’d relieved from Applejack’s visit had returned in full force as the hours of study had stretched well into the afternoon. She turned away from her desk to find a comfortable spot to lay down and give her overworked brain a break.

“Twilight!”

“AH!” Twilight nearly jumped out of her own pelt.

Spike had somehow gotten right next to her without Twilight even noticing. He was close even for Twilight’s comfort zone, and he stared up at her with urgent, puppy-dog eyes.

“Can I go see Rarity?” Spike asked.

“Uh...”

“Can I go see Rarity?” he pleaded, gripping her desk and bouncing on his heels.

The cat had gotten her tongue and wasn’t interested in giving it back.

“Can I go see Rarity pleasePleasePLEASE?” Spike was practically on his knees.

Twilight managed to catch the cat, and with a shaky hoof took back what was hers. “D-did you finish your chores?”

“Yes!”

“Did you make sure the books are still in order?”

“Yes!”

“Wait... didn’t you just see Rarity yesterday?”

“I DON’T CARE!”

Spike’s expression went from puppy to rottweiler. He glared at her, boring into her for an answer as his claws left scratches on the desk and his nostrils flared like he might set fire to something.

Just as Twilight was about to panic, his aggravation subsided, and he sighed, putting a claw to his forehead. “Okay, I’m sorry for yelling. I don’t know what got into me; that was uncalled for, and I shouldn’t have done that.”

He sighed again, stood up straight, and composed himself. “May I please go see Rarity?” he asked politely.

Twilight fought to keep her breath from trembling too violently. “S-s-su-re.” She turned away, fixating her attention on her latest entry. Her ears were plastered to the back of her head, and her body shivered.

Spike studied the quivering mare for a moment, trying to piece her together.

“Okay, thanks,” he said as he turned and left the bedroom, shutting the door behind him.

Twilight remained fastened to her seat and did not move for several minutes. The silence was so still that she could hear her teeth chattering. She looked up at her gyroscope and caught her own glaring reflection.

“Stop it, Twilight,” Reason scorned.

Twilight yelped in surprise and reeled back, falling out of her chair in the process.

“Oh, quit acting like such a scaredy-pony! It’s just me!” Reason said.

“Oh,” Twilight said as she put a hoof to her chest to slow her heart and ease her breathing. She turned herself over and pulled herself back up into a standing position. “Stop doing what?”

“Don’t try to play ignorant with yourself; you know exactly what!” Reason scolded. “The way you keep acting around Spike; jumping every time you see him, acting like he might set fire to you if you say the wrong thing, it’s unacceptable.”

“But...”

“No, don’t try to “but” us! If you’re afraid of that thing lurking around in his head, then be afraid of Avarice!”

Twilight shuddered at the mention of his name. Reason continued on regardless.

“Instead, you’ve become so paranoid that now you’re afraid of Spike! What kind of friend does that?”

Twilight’s ears fell and she hung her head, unable to face her own shame.

“I’ll take that as your answer.” Reason sighed from her fractured reflection held within the gyroscope and put a hoof to her face. “Look, trying to fix Dreamscape so you can learn more about this new villain on our hooves is a step in the right direction, but you need to do more than just work behind the scenes.”

“But what else can I do?” Twilight asked.

“Well, first thing you need to do is to stop being so scared of Spike, because that won’t help anything, least of all your friendship. Second, there has to be something you can do to take on the problem a little more directly so it’s obvious that you are doing something. Even if it’s just trying to learn more about what you’re going up against. And subtly trying to let Spike know that you are helping him might not be a bad idea, either.”

“Okay,” Twilight said, taking in a deep breath to try and invigorate herself. “I suppose that I could start with trying to learn more about split personality disorders...”

Reason gave an approving nod. “That’s a good place to start.”

“Alright; let’s go do that now.” Twilight’s horn became aglow with her magenta aura, and she picked up the gyroscope with her magic.

“Hey; what are you doing?” Reason protested.

Twilight looked at Reason as she trotted down the stairs. “I don’t like being alone.”

Twilight placed the gyroscope containing Reason upon the center desk in the main room, then turned towards the shelves, looking for any of the books she had on psychology. She acquired a decent hoof full and returned to the desk. She opened up one with a deep green cover and set the rest next to Reason.

“Let’s see, split personality... split personality...” Twilight hummed to herself as she flipped through the index in the back of the book. “Ah, here it is! ‘Split Personality Disorder:’ Another term for ‘Dissociative Identity Disorder.’See ‘Psychological Disorders.’”

Twilight flipped back a few pages into the index. “Alright, p’s.... phantom limb— no, too far. Ah, here we go; Psychological Disorders...” She browsed down the worryingly long list. “Dissociative Identity Disorder. Page 112.”

Twilight turned over a considerable number of pages to her desired topic, then read aloud for the both of them to hear.

“Dissociative identity disorder, also known as split personality disorder or multiple personality disorder, is classified as a mental disorder wherein two or more distinctive personalities occupy the same conscious. It is a rare but not unheard of disorder, most often caused by severe distress, anxiety, discontent, depression, and/or crises of identity when applied to or brought about by varying cases of dementia, schizophrenia, or psychosis.”

Twilight paused and frowned. This didn’t seem just to fit Spike. Why else would she be talking to…

“Look, I know what you’re thinking,” Reason interrupted, jarring Twilight’s train of thought.

Twilight turned from the book and put her face right up to the glass gyroscope. “I know you know what I’m thinking; you’re part of me! But the fact that I’m talking to you means that I have a very serious problem! Potentially the exact same problem as Spike! How the hay can I help him out if I’m the next candidate for the looney bin? Why should I even talk to you anymore?”

“You need to calm down,” Reason replied. “First thing, I’m not the problem, all right? I’m the result of the problem; your subconscious made me to help you deal with it! Second, have I led you astray at any point thus far?”

“Well, no…”

“That’s right, I haven’t. I’m part of you, remember? I have just as much stake in this as you do. I’ll freely admit I’m just a split personality, but you have to remember I’m on your side.”

Reason put a hoof to the inside of her glass container, her expression one of pure sympathy. “I’m here to help you, Twilight. Don’t you want help from your own voice of reason?”

Twilight’s expression softened, and she put the tip of her own hoof to Reason’s tiny one in the gyroscope. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s okay, I know you’re going through a difficult time right now,” Reason replied. “But right now we need to focus on how we can help Spike. So how about we finish reading?”

“Okay.” Twilight turned away from the gyroscope and picked up from where she left off.

“Symptoms and indications of this disorder can include inexplicable gaps or loss in memory, moderate to severe mood swings, alterations in routines, formalities, and/or behavior, and sometimes radical revisions in personal ethics and morals.”

Twilight felt the fur begin to stand up on the back of her neck.

“These separate identities may or may not be aware of each other, but in the most extreme cases, a separate identity can evolve into its own separate consciousness: a sentient entity capable of intelligent thought, emotional responses, and independent structure or morals. In these cases, behavior can alternate between different identities, and these identities can have conversations with each other, reason on different levels, share memories... ”

The noose was back in her throat again, choking off whatever words were about to come next.

Share memories...

It was six months ago. A bestial Spike was harassing Scootaloo, trying to rip her scooter right out of her hooves. Twilight pulled a broom from the nearest porch and taunted him with it. He took the bait and turned his attention away from the Cutie Mark Crusaders, roaring a primal bellow and visibility surging in size before taking off after her.

Share memories...

She, Spike, and his projection of Rarity were deep in a cave, huddled up in a defensive circle while an omnipresent voice mocked them from the shadows.

“I know far more than you would dare imagine, Twilight.”

Share memories...

Avarice had her pinned. She fought helplessly to free herself from under the crushing foot that held her down.

“By the way, if my memory serves me right, you still owe me a broom.”

“They have the same memories... they have the exact same memories!”

Twilight had backed away from the desk and into the shelves behind her, like the book had transformed into a writhing mass of black adders.

“Twilight, don’t—”

“NO! No no no no no No NO! You read it too! He knows everything that Spike knows!” Twilight wailed. “If Spike so much as gets the idea that I’m trying to help him, Avarice will take over and kill me!”

Twilight had her back pressed flat against the bookshelf, yet she was still pushing against it with her hind legs, like the whole wall might give way for her to gallop off and away from the horrible passages that she just read. Her breathing came in desperate gasps and the entirety of her trembled uncontrollably in fear.

She felt just as helpless as she did during those very last moments that had she spent in limbo, watching as some dreaded, unstoppable force that she didn’t have a prayer to escape tore across the landscape and devoured her with bone-shattering force. Her legs gave out from underneath her and she collapsed to the floor, where she shut her eyes and wept, prompting horrible visions to force themselves upon her agonized heart and mind.

In her imagination she could see herself talking to Spike:

“Spike, I scheduled an appointment at three o’clock tomorrow for you to see a psychiatrist.”

“What?! But... why?” the little dragon asked, utterly bewildered.

“Because... uh...” Twilight paused. “Just to make sure you’re okay after the wedding, of course!” she lied with a forced grin to Spike. “I just want to make sure that my little number one dragon assistant isn’t suffering from any post-traumatic stress after all of Canterlot was invaded by an army of love-eating, shape-shifting equinsects.”

Spike squinted at her through one eye with his other eye arched upward in uncertainty. “Well... okay, then.”

Spike turned around and went back into the kitchen to finish making dinner.

Twilight wiped the sweat off her forehead with a hoof. “Phew...”

It was much later into the night. All the lights were out save for the gentle glow of the scenic moon, which lended a soothing night light to pour through her window. She slept comfortably and snug in her warm bed, content as could be.

A powerful claw gripped her by the muzzle, covering her mouth and nostrils as it forced her down into her pillow. Her eyes shot open from the sudden suffocation, and her hooves flew to her face the free herself from the obstruction.

Right then she felt the cold edge of a blade against her throat, and then a searing fire of agony as steel sliced open her neck.

She tried to scream, but the only sound she made was of a horrid gurgle bubbling up through the gaping slit in her throat.

“Shhh...” a cruel voice hissed through the enclosing darkness.

A figure moved into the light, and she felt a railroad spike drive into her heart that made the whole of her body seem to assume room temperature right then and there.

Spike wore a wicked smile that drove screws through her spine, and he wielded the serrated knife that they used to carve lanterns out of pumpkins for Nightmare Night. Her blood dripped from the blade like the scornful elation that dripped from the sharp crescents of his eyes. He opened his mouth to speak, but the voice that emerged was not that of her friend’s.

“You really should have learned after poker night that you are a terrible liar, Twilight.” The voice of Avarice mocked her.

She struggled desperately to pull his claw off her face, but it might as well have been faceted with padlocks. She tried to ignite her horn in a terrified attempt to heal the mortal wound, but her magic was sputtering and dying along with her. She fought for breath, but only feeble wisps of air seeped into her throat, past the spurting blood that seeped down her throat and stained her bedsheets.

“I hope you know that I didn’t want to kill you like this. I would have prefered to have burned you to death in a battle so epic that it would have been recorded in history books for centuries. And then I’d steal every copy just to read it over and over again, and I would enjoy it. Every. Single. Time.”

Her life was flashing before her eyes now: a whirlwind flip-book of every moment and everypony she’d ever cared for. Each one whisked by too fast for her to properly cherish but lingered for just long enough that its passing broke her heart, for she knew there would be no more moments as dear as those. She would be no more.

Twilight went limp as she drew her last breath. This was her end.

“Goodbye, hmhmm... “friend.””

“TWILIGHT!” Reason’s voice boomed inside of her head with world-shaking volume.

Twilight cracked open her eyes and wiped away the tears blurring her vision. She could see Reason was still in the gyroscope on the table.

Reason spoke again. “Here’s a checklist to calm you down. You like checklists, right?”

“Y-y-yeah...” Twilight blubbered.

“Okay, here goes. You’re hyperventilating, shaking, and crying; your pulse has skyrocketed, your skin is clammy, and you’ve just gone through an explosion of anxiety that’s making you fabricate irrational, worst-possible-case scenarios that are pushing you towards hysteria. That means you are...”

Twilight recounted all the bullet points over in her head. Just having a beloved checklist, even a mental one, was enough to bring a surprising rush of tranquility to her addled thoughts. Through that moment of clarity, she was able to compile all her symptoms together and retrieve the answer.

“H-having a p-panic a-ttack,” Twilight answered.

“Good. See? I told us that we’re a smart pony. So take a moment to calm down, take a few deep breaths, relax, and then let’s think about this rationally.”

Twilight pushed herself up into a sitting position. She wiped the tears and run-off from her muzzle, breathing deeply.

“So,” Reason said, gearing up for lecture mode. “Time to think about this logically; hysteria and fear aren’t going to help save Spike.”

Twilight pointed a shaky hoof back at the book. “B-but what about...”

Reason looked back to the passage. “Well... we just won’t be able to tell Spike about any of this, then. We’ll have to be cautious, but not paranoid about this when dealing with Spike.”

“But isn’t paranoia somewhat justifiable when we know that somebody is out to get us?”

“Yeah, but Spike isn’t the one out to get us, Avarice is. And this brings me back to my earlier point; if you keep treating Spike with as much terror as you have been, then that’s just going to make things worse between you and Spike and make it even harder to give him whatever help he needs. Remember; he’s your friend, his alter ego is the enemy.”

Twilight looked away and started pacing as she pondered, her mind racing. The more she thought about it, the more it seemed like they were in a lose-lose situation. If she even so much as told Spike that she was trying to help, without even giving any details, then that might make Avarice retaliate, making it that much harder to learn more about his nature and how to ultimately deal with him. But if she didn’t give Spike some sort of concrete reassurance that he wasn’t alone in his desperate struggle to maintain his sanity, then he might end up losing his fight anyway for lack of support.

It really did seem like there was nothing that she could directly do.

Wait...

“Maybe there’s nothing we can do,” Twilight started to say as she looked to Reason; she could tell by the expression worn that Reason had thought of it at the exact same time. “But who said only we can do something about this?”

Reason smiled. “I like the way we think.”

- - - - - -

Spike had run all the way to Carousel Boutique. He was always eager to see Rarity, and even more so if that visit meant a prolonged stay to act in her service, but he was being led there by something more than his desire to help. He couldn’t describe it, but he could feel it nonetheless; whatever motivation he had to go all the way to the dress shop with the intent to stay there for the entire afternoon to help his crush carried the undertow of some sort of desperate urgency.

He bounded up the steps to the front door, then leaned against the threshold for a moment to catch his breath. When he was finally able to stop his panting, he stepped back, straightened his posture and broadened his shoulders a little before knocking on the door.

He stood there for a minute, trying to look as fetching as possible. That minute stretched into two, then three. Feeling that sense of urgency creep back up on him, he knocked on the door again, with a little more clamour this time.

A moment passed, then he heard hoofsteps coming from the other side of the door, and his heart fluttered with, daring to hope. Could it be...

The muffled clatter of locks hastily coming undone met his ears, the door whipped open, and he felt more relieved just at the sight. Even when in disarray from whatever hectic project Rarity was undertaking, the way her mane glistened and her coat shined in the afternoon sunlight almost stole his breath away every time. She was wearing her red, horn-rimmed glasses too, giving her that keen artist’s air of focus and determination that he couldn’t help but find attractive. Whatever she was working on, he wanted in on it.

Oh, how I want to be in on it.

“Good afternoon, Rarity!” Some of his breath was still catching up to him. “Can I help y—”

“No.”

Whatever momentum his mood had been picking up stopped so abruptly that it took him a moment to realize that he’d been thrown through the windshield.

“What?”

Rarity sighed and put a hoof to her forehead, letting some of her flustered impatience flutter to the surface. “This is the third time in three days that you’ve come asking if there was anything you could do around here, and for the third time, my answer is no.”

Three days? Spike thought. “But... why?”

She let out a little huff. “Haven’t you heard the phrase, “too many cooks spoils the recipe?” For the third time, this is one of those projects that’s best left to the hooves of one, and the more I stand here having to remind you of that, the more already sparse time I waste that I should be dedicating to my work.”

“But... no! There’s gotta be something I can do for you!”

“There isn’t.”

“Can I fetch fabric for you?”

“No.”

“Can I dig up more gems?”

“No.”

“Can’t I just sit quietly in the back and watch you work?”

“No, Spike!” Rarity sighed again in exacerbation. “I appreciate that you want to help, really, I do, but my answer is still a resounding, final, let-me-be-absolutely-clear no. I don’t need you, Spike.”

A flash of something amethyst behind Rarity almost tore Spike’s devastated gaze away from her.

“What?”

“I don’t need your assistance at the moment. And I simply cannot allow you to squander the rest of your day merely watching me work. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an extraordinary amount of work that I must attend to, preferably without interruption.” Rarity turned back around into the boutique. “Good day to you, Spike.”

The door briskly shut in his face.

Spike couldn’t move. His feet seemed to have fused themselves to the floorboards of the porch. He just stared ahead at the closed door in hurt spite. His upended mind spun and reeled from the blow it had just taken, and now matter how he tried, there was only one thing that permeated every thought and every feeling with a deafening resonance that soured him to his soul.

“I don’t need you, Spike.”

He cast his mind out to grab ahold of something else to focus on, but a twister was tearing up every other ground, carrying him away and drowning out every sound save for its terrible din.

“I don’t need you, Spike.”

He balled his hands into fists so tight that the rest of him began to quiver, and he shut his eyes in pain.

She doesn’t need me...

With a wounded scowl plastered across his face like a tragedy mask, and a gaping, all-consuming void tearing at his heart, he turned around, and stomped off the porch, away from Rarity.

- - - - - -

Dear Princess Celestia,

I have a very severe dilemma upon my hooves concerning the well-being of Spike. Unfortunately, due to the precarious nature of this problematic situation, I would feel more comfortable discussing the specifics in person, and I wish to schedule a time to meet in order to discuss this issue.

Please reply to this message as expediently as possible. This is a matter of the utmost importance, and it’s imperative that it be attended to without hesitation.

Your faithful student,

Twilight Sparkle

The letter rested unattended upon the desk, alongside another entry into Twilight’s work on Dreamscape.

Month five, day twenty seven, entry four hundred and eighty-nine.

It took me long enough, but I think I finally managed to get that breakthrough on fixing the death glitch that I’ve been looking for.

I started thinking about what I could do to fix this bug in the system when I decided to take another look at all the sub-magics that deal with containing the conscious within a dream world, and didn’t find anything, which is what I think is precisely wrong. There’s no program or function written to deal with what happens when you die in a dream (again, I never thought I’d see the day where this was a problem). The metaphysical conscious reacts as though it’s actually died, and then drops out of the contained world and into a mental oblivion.

I should note that this is at best a hypothesis and at worst a stipulation. The only way to know for sure is to directly test this conjecture, and I don’t feel like doing that. For obvious reasons.

So as I said in my last entry, the best solution is probably going to be the simplest one, and just write a new line of code. I’m thinking of including a few automated commands into the subscripts that will alter functions of existing algorithms so that any trauma resulting in death will simply “eject” the dreamer from the level of the dream and make them wake into whatever level exists above, whether it be reality or another dream.

To do this, I reasoned that I could probably...

The rest of the entry descended into techno-arcane babble, quoting numerous laws of spellcraft, calculus, neuroscience, and citing adages to the laws the spell itself operated upon. Various rough matrices had been drawn up and made reference to with figures and footnotes.

As the entry carried on, the writing became noticeably less neat and composed at increasingly frequent intervals. Finally, the writing skewed in a jagged line, ending where the quill moved back and forth from the gentle air of a studious unicorn’s deep, subdued breathing.

Twilight lay draped in an unceremonious heap across her desk. Her face lay where it had fallen from exhaustion upon the entry she had been writing. The way in which she had lost consciousness and lay strewn across her desk had put an arch in her back, and occasionally a hoof twitched while she slept.

Twilight stirred, then grimaced as she came to. She yawned, stretched her back, and rubbed a hoof across her aching sides.

“Shoot,” she muttered.

She winced and tried to relieve the tension in her muscles. The spots on her back right behind her shoulder blades both ached like a bad cramp, and whatever efforts she attempted to knead the soreness out of her muscles seemed to cause just as much new pain as they relieved.

Twilight grumbled in discontent as she looked around the room. It was already well into the night, and whatever candles she had lit going into her long session of study had burned out long ago. Her eyes adjusted more to the dark, and she saw the letter that she had written to Celestia still lying on her desk, waiting to be sent.

Twilight picked up the letter, rolled it up, tied it with the traditional band, and looked around her bedroom for her assistant and direct link to Celestia.

She spotted his bed in its usual spot. It was empty.

“Spike?” she instinctively called out. “Spike?”

Silence answered her.

Initially, Twilight had thought the reason he hadn’t come back earlier in the night was because he’d managed to convince Rarity to let him help her with the big project she was busy with. But now it was well past the hours that she would stay up, even when she had a major order to work on. She would have called it a night so she could get her “beauty sleep” and get an early start on it the next morning. So if Spike wasn’t back...

Oh no...

Twilight darted out of her bedroom and into the main room of the library, calling out to the dark again from atop the stairs.

“Spike? SPIKE?!”

A slight sound of a hacking cough from her right caught her attention, and her right ear flicked towards the direction of the noise before the rest of her head did. She found herself looking at the bathroom door. Light seeped from under the crack, and muffled churn of plumbing told her that the shower was running.

She sighed in relief; Spike was just taking a shower. But right on the heels of that calm came newfound worry.

Why is he taking a shower this late at night? Twilight wondered. For that matter, why is he taking a shower? He only ever takes bubble-baths...

Concern crossed her face. She stared at the ominous door for several moments, then collected herself and strode towards the bathroom.

“Spike?” she asked as she gently knocked on the door with a hoof. “Are you in there?”

- - - - - -

Darkness. Warm, foggy darkness. Darkness disrupted only by the distant hiss of water passing through pipes. Save for the noise, the darkness was complete.

Wait, no; there was more than that.

There was an omnipresent patter of water droplets raining down around him, colliding upon some contained surface. Constant streams drummed on the back of his head, some of it forming little pools behind his frills before overflowing and trickling away.

The steam was all encompassing: all surrounding. Heated vapor pressed up against every scale and filled every breath, adding to the alluding sense of lethargically dwelling in a hot spring.

The darkness was still everywhere, coaxing him to stay in its ignorant stasis. His tired, inexplicably sore muscles were all too willing to comply. He could feel his whole form slouched over, hanging loose and limp. His eyelids felt reluctant to comply to any command. They felt so heavy he could practically feel their weight pulling his face down. Even his thoughts carried little interest in moving. Whatever cognition that was passing through his brain did so at a glacial pace.

The warm and relaxing dark carried an incredible placidity. It all felt so very wrong.

He peeled his sluggish eyes open, only to squint them near shut as the searing blaze of bright light met his sights with a hammer. Everything appeared blurry through the crack in his eyelids, but the most predominant color was still that harsh white.

His eyelids fluttered open when his vision finally adjusted to the brightness. The first discernable feature he saw was himself, sitting cross-legged and hunched over with his arms on his knees, slightly propping him up. White surfaces surrounded him. With strained effort, he lifted his head to look around.

He found himself sitting in a porcelain basin surrounded by an azure curtain that had been drawn shut. A cylinder of onyx rose above him and then arched down, spraying jets of hot water onto him. He took note of various obtrusions here and there, like a little shelf to his right that held a small, green block, and in front of him was a faucet with two knobs on either side. The water pouring down all around him flowed freely into a drain a few feet in front of him with a faint babble.

Spike rubbed his eyes with a balled-up fist, trying to clear his vision up a little more. He blinked out whatever buildup had still been lingering in the corners of his eyes when he noticed a bunched-up piece of cloth in front of him.

Spike groaned slightly as he leaned over and picked up the fabric on the other end of the tub. He pulled it back towards him and inspected it with a dull curiosity. It was textured with ruffled tassels, and its color matched that of his scales perfectly... save for a few faint, rusty smears that covered it.

He blinked, uncertain. On a whim, Spike brought the washcloth closer to his face and sniffed it. The heavy fragrance of soap met his nostrils, but there was another aroma under that which he couldn’t exactly identify. The closest that he could place was that it faintly smelled like some sort of metal, like copper or iron.

He turned the washcloth over in his hand, and spotted a bright green “S” in an elegant font that had been sewn into the fabric with fine string.

He peered at it with fixation, gently twiddling the embroidery between a finger and a thumb. There was such care and craft put into the fashion, he couldn’t help but think off...

A lone whisper seeped through his mind, distant and insidious.

“I don’t need you, Spike.”

That one thought became his only thought. It overruled every sensation and every notion until even the atmosphere of steam seemed far away. It festered inside his mind, filling him with despondence, disgust, and indignation until he felt like he was going to be sick.

“Hhhh... Huuuuu... Huuuuuuuhhhhh...” Spike wheezed as his own contained spite reached a fever pitch. He could feel it writhing and raging in some raw, indecipherable hunger for more...

Spike hacked like he was trying to cough up a golf ball. The scornful haze in his mind lifted right as he felt himself regurgitate a large mass of something slimy and putrescent.

He spat out the offender in his mouth without a second thought. The sight immediately disgusted him. A large wad of dark, feathered slime tumbled over itself across the surface of the bathtub, sliding away on the currents of water towards the drain.

The blackened, repulsive mass caught on the edge of the drain. Spike watched it in detached suspicion as the hunk of slime clung to the rim with small tendrils for a few desperate seconds. Then it slipped away, disappearing into the shadowy hole.

Spike exhaled heavily and hung his head back down. The soothing feeling from the warm mist was returning. He felt all too willing to welcome it back, letting his muscles relax again and his awareness drop. With his mind unfocused, a stray thought drifted by that pointed out that this was the first time he’d ever spat in the bathtub.

His eyes opened abruptly and he lifted his head back up again, suddenly more alert. That ominous feeling that the whole scene was wrong came upon him again. He realized that was the first time he’d spat in the shower because he never took showers; he only ever took bubble baths. And that’s when it hit him:

How did I get here?

An abrupt knock on the door made him almost jump out of his scales.

“Spike? Are you in there?”

He eased up slightly after the initial surprise wore off. It was just Twilight.

“Yeah,” Spike replied as he pulled back the curtain to look at the door, surprised at how hoarse his voice sounded.

“Okay...” There was a pause. “Spike, may I talk with you?”

“Sure... come on in, the door isn’t locked.”

How did I know that?

The handle turned, making a gentle click as the deadlatch pulled back. The door cracked open, slowly revealing Twilight as she gently pushed the door aside with her muzzle. She carefully closed it behind her, then walked towards the tub.

“Hi,” she said. Her voice was tender and tentative. “How are you?”

Spike leaned back against the rear of the tub. “Been better...” he mumbled.

Twilight sat down next to the bathtub, bringing her a little closer to eye level with Spike.

“Hmm... so, what are you doing in here?”

Spike blinked at her. He looked down at the fabric still clutched in his claws, then looked back at Twilight.

“Bathing, apparently,” Spike answered, holding the washcloth up for her to see.

A small smile pulled at a corner of Twilight’s mouth for a microsecond. “I could have guessed that,” she said, trying to be a little playful. “But that’s not entirely what I’m getting at. What I mean is, why are you here, especially so late at night?”

“Good question,” Spike muttered.

Something in the tone of Twilight’s voice set off another red flag for him. He pulled the shower curtain back a little more, peering through the window at the starry night sky.

“Um, what time is it?” Spike asked. “Ten? Ten-thirty?”

Twilight’s expression fell. “Spike... it’s three in the morning.”

Spike’s mind went blank. He stared off in the distance at Twilight’s direction, trying to piece together what she had just said to explain his scenario to himself. He might as well have tried to keep a train from jumping the rails with nothing more than a lasso.

Twilight interrupted his derailed train of thought. “I had initially thought that you were out so late because you had just gotten caught up in a really big project when you went to go help Rarity...”

Another train crashed into the wreckage.

“I wasn’t with Rarity,” Spike muttered.

“What?” Alarm begin to creep onto Twilight’s face.

Spike exhaled. “When I went to Rarity’s, she was so busy with what she claimed was a one-pony project that she wouldn’t even let me inside. She said that she didn’t need me.”

Spike scowled. Those words felt as disgusting as that thing which he’d just spat out, but that feeling he had before coughing it up was all the same.

Twilight had an expression like she was crossing a minefield. “So... where were you then?”

A sinkhole opened up under the wreckage.

“I don’t know.”

“Then, did you go see somepony else?”

“I don’t know...”

“Spike, you’ve been gone for about twelve hours. What were you doing that whole time?”

“I don’t know! I’m not holding anything back here, Twilight; I really don’t know!”

Twilight had stood up again and taken a step back. Her ears folded down and she looked off in another direction with a very troubled look on her face.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to raise my voice at you.” Spike apologized, looking away. “I’m not mad at you, it’s just... I really don’t know...”

He looked back at Twilight. Her expression still hadn’t changed, but he could practically see the mechanical parts of her mind at work, though to what end, he couldn’t tell. Occasionally, her eyes would flicker in his direction before darting away again. Though every time they did make eye contact for a fraction of a second, even if it was less apparent, she still had a little bit of that look in her eyes.

Some of his frustration returned, and this time it was directed at her. “Why is it suddenly so important to you?”

Twilight turned her attention from the tile and looked straight at Spike. Minute wisps of fright were still evident, but it was buried beneath her sympathy.

“I was worried about you, Spike. I mean, what if something happened to you, and I didn’t learn about it until it was too late to help?” She dry-swallowed. “I’m sorry if it seems like I’ve been cold or distant recently, but... I really do care about you. I wouldn’t be so worried if I didn’t care.”

A little part of him felt more warm than even the steam that filled the bathroom. He gave her a little smile, which Twilight returned.

Twilight turned around for the door, but kept an eye over her shoulder at Spike. “It’s late, so finish up here and get back to bed, okay?”

“Okay. Good night, Twi.” Spike watched her go, and felt compelled to say something else. Despite the humidity, his throat felt dry, and he had to force out a reply. “Love ya.”

Twilight stopped at the threshold, already halfway out the door and staring into the hall. She turned her head in his direction, but did not look completely back. “I love you too, Spike.”

She closed the door behind her.

Spike watched her go and didn’t break eye contact with the last spot that he’d seen her. He stared at the bathroom door for several minutes until weariness caught back up with him. He yawned, stood up, and shut off the water.

By the time he’d dried off and gotten back to their bedroom, Twilight was already under the covers, and still as the grave. He couldn’t tell if she was sleeping, though; she was backlit from the moonlight coming through the window, which covered her face in shadow and made only her silhouette visible.

Spike pulled back the blankets of his own bed, lay down, pulled the sheets back over him, and settled in. He curled up into a little ball, yawned, and sleep swept him away on its astral chariots.

- - - - - -

Twilight watched Spike get into bed. She lay perfectly still, so he paid her no mind.

He must have thought I was already asleep.

She continued to look over the little dragon, even long after he passed out and began to gently snore. Listening to his rhythmic breathing did little to soothe her though, and she was too tired to devote herself to mull over all the possible plans that she had made mental checklists out of that could be used to possibly help Spike. Being too sleepy to think, all she could do was feel... and she felt nothing but angst.

“What am I going to do with you?” Twilight whispered.

The sirens of slumber were calling her now, and she could hold herself from their alluring calls no longer. Twilight closed her eyes and was consumed by darkness.

- - - - - -

The sky overhead was a bright, uniform cerulean. The overhead sun blazed in all its magnificent glory: bright, warm, and loving, like the one who guided it across the heavens. It drifted alone across the vast blue sky, without a single cloud to blot out its light.

Yet something about the serene view seemed off to Twilight. She studied it, trying to discern what seemed so incorrect about the sun being the only feature in the sky. That’s when it hit her.

Clouds. I forgot the clouds and the weather last time.

Wait; last time?

A gentle breeze wafted by, carrying with it a constant, gentle, harmonious whirr. Twilight’s ears twitched at the sound. Bumps rose across her skin, making her fur stand on end and sending a tingling through her feathers.

Another chill swept through her, but not from the coolness of the wind.

She could hear the wind trying to coax her up into the sky, swirling around her like an atypical windigo foal that thrived upon cheer instead of malice.

Come on, Twilight! Come play!

Twilight’s wings shifted in unease. “No, I need to help Spike...”

Aw, come on, it’s fun! And you liked it so much last time...

Her eyes opened wider. She looked down from the sky in alarm.

Twilight stood upon the balcony of the palace that overlooked the clockwork courtyard. Past the surface of the tower, over the surrounding city and forest, and beyond purple mountains miles away, she could make out the hazy glare reflecting from off the infinite, empty plane.

She turned around and trotted away from the balustrade, with her attentiveness focused upon the stone under her hooves. The oscillating volume of the crystalline tone was still omnipresent.

Don’t you want to go flying with me?

“No! Not right now!” Twilight blurted.

The voice moaned in dissatisfaction, then suddenly became that of one whom always set her on edge.

“Fine,” the disembodied voice of Discord said. “Have it your way.”

Twilight heard a snap of fingers. She lurched forward as the pull of gravity shifted, and her head shot up in the direction that she was being dragged in.

The ebony and bronze doors that opened up to the balcony had been replaced with the clockwork gates that had been been imbedded to the mountain in Spike’s dream. They banged open and the wind rolled into the cave: the maw of a hungry predator that intended to swallow her whole.

Twilight attempted to dig into the smooth surface of the deck to find purchase, and her wings beat as if she could have flown away, but to no avail. She slid across the balcony and into the cave. The directional pull of gravity corrected itself when she tumbled inside. Her momentum carried her forward through the air for some distance until she slammed into the ground and skidded to a halt, kicking up plumes of dust as she did.

The doors slammed shut with a deafening boom that left Twilight with her ears ringing, and the infinite, impenetrable darkness rushed in the instant afterwards.

She spat out dust and got back up on her hooves as quickly as possible. Her horn burst to light, illuminating her surroundings... or rather the lack thereof. All she could see was a flat, barren surface of hard-packed dust, and the ever-present darkness surrounding its prey.

Her eyes adjusted to the light, and she realized that she wasn’t alone. Standing just at the edge of where the light dissipated and was consumed by the endless shadow was the barely discernable figure of a pony standing on its hind legs.

Its first feature that Twilight was able to identify through the dark was its ghostly, hollow eyes.

Twilight’s jaw dropped. “You...”

Something extremely heavy fell unto the back of Twilight’s head, smashing her face into the ground. Her jaw snapped shut and she howled in pain when she felt some of her teeth crack.

She tried to get back up, but talons kept her pinned to the ground.

A voice from above spoke, and her blood went cold. “Will you ever learn to knock?”

He moved his head down next to the side of her face, glaring at her with that stare that made her feel like she was being ripped to pieces by his eyes. Her wings brushed up against him as they flapped in a vain attempt to escape.

His scrutinizing eyes darted to her back. He sneered at her, moved his foot from her head to her back, and grabbed both of her wings. Feathers snapped and bones fractured under the vice-grip of his claws.

Avarice growled in her ear. “You’re not supposed to have these.”

Then he ripped off her wings.

Twilight screamed bloody murder. Adrenaline surged through her body, and she pushed off with her forehooves using all her might, shooting off from where she was being pinned without resistance.

Her vision had gone black, so she ripped her eyes back open. Blurry visions of a wooden ceiling being lit by a sunrise rushed by in a whirl.

Great, Twilight, you’re freaking out again over another bad dre—

Twilight fell out of bed, onto the hard floor on her side, and started screaming bloody murder again.

Agonizing pain ripped across her like whips made of lightning. She scrambled to get back onto her hooves and off of where it hurt, eliciting more cries of pain whenever any and every movement made the muscles in the afflicted area expand or contract.

Twilight tentatively put a hoof to her side, making her cry out in pain again. She felt like daggers had been driven into her and were sticking out from behind her shoulders.

Her eyes darted around the bedroom. Spike stirred in his bed. He let out a loud snore and began to mumble something. Her research notes, new letter to the princess, and gyroscope were still on her desk.

Twilight picked up the gyroscope with her magic and cantered out of her bedroom as quickly as she could without causing herself more pain. She didn’t even bother to shut the door as she left, just made a beeline straight for the bathroom.

She shut the bathroom door behind her, flicked on the lights, and yanked open the mirrored door to the medicine cabinet. Twilight grabbed a bottle of extra strength pain reliever that she kept for the worst of migraines with her magic, yanked the cap off, and dry-swallowed a double dose.

With her horn still lit, she turned on the faucet to the sink and use her magic to let some of the water pool up in a telekinetic bowl, which she lifted to her lips and sipped from.

The spots behind her shoulders still felt like they had been beaten sore. She reared up on her hind legs, balanced herself on the edge of the sink with her forehooves, and started repeatedly splashing herself in the face with water until her face was soaked.

Droplets trickled down her face from her sopping wet mane and muzzle. She closed her eyes and breathed in deep, trying to shut the pain out of her mind. She stood there for a moment, with only the sounds of rushing water and her own heavy breathing to accompany her.

She dismounted, reaching for a towel to dry her face with. The gyroscope on the counter caught her attention. She propped it upright and spun it without a second thought.

The longer she stared at it, the more the gentle ring of the moving pieces drowned out the rushing water from the faucet. Slivers of the orange sunrise coming through the window glinted off its surface like catching glimpses of goldfish in a pond. She couldn’t even hear her own breathing after a certain point.

The gyroscope wobbled a little, twisted in place, and fell. The glass made a gentle clink as it hit the counter.

Twilight exhaled the breath she had been holding, taking some form of consolation in the reliability of her totem. At that moment she realized that the water in the sink was still running, and she shut it off. She picked up her gyroscope and left the bathroom, wondering if she had any pouches lying around the library to keep carry her totem in.

As she passed by the open door to her bedroom, something smacked right into her side. More daggers: she screamed again.

“I’m sorry! I jus—”

“WATCH WHERE YOU’RE GOING!” Twilight snapped.

She regretted her outburst the instant it left her mouth. Spike looked at her, mouth open, and as startled as he was hurt. Slowly, the pain of his wounded feelings melted away to indignation. Then he sneered at her. That terrifying anger boiled just under the surface of his eyes.

“Oh Spike, I’m so sor—”

“Whatever,” Spike shut her up with a curt grumble. He brushed past her, and then stomped down the stairs. “I just thought it would be nice of me the check on my best friend when she wakes up screaming like she got a limb torn off, but I guess not!

“Since I was woken up so early, I’m going to make some breakfast, because Celestia knows you can’t. Maybe if you’re lucky, I’ll have calmed down by the time I’m done, so I won’t have accidently shed a few scales into your porridge!”

Spike trampled into the kitchen and slammed the door behind him so hard that the windows rattled.

Twilight was going to follow Spike and try to get in a proper apology, but she stopped herself. Spike had that tone in his voice. She had learned a long time ago that when Spike had that tone, it meant he was in a bad enough mood that he wouldn’t even want to talk to her for a while, and it was better to give him enough time to calm down before trying to reconcile with him.

All she could do was hang her head in shame and curse herself for her behavior.

Way to undo whatever good you might have done earlier, Twilight...

- - - - - -

Hours later into the afternoon, much to Twilight’s dismay, Spike was still in a bad mood. Ever since their exchange on the stairs, he’d been scowling. He wouldn’t look directly at her, and whenever she asked him to help with something, even as polite and apologetic as she tried to be about it, he didn’t respond with anything more than a grumpy “Mmhm” or a disgruntled “Sure, whatever.” She sure didn’t feel comfortable with just how much fire had erupted from his mouth when she’d asked him to send that letter to Celestia, either.

The good news at least was that Spike hadn’t callously shed into Twilight’s breakfast... the bad news was the he seemed to have opted for an even more cruel option, and laced her oatmeal with ginger: a natural irritant to ponies. She couldn’t actually taste any, but the way she kept wrinkling her nose like she was about to sneeze, and the burning sensation in her throat that had forced her to have drunk about half a gallon of milk by lunch in an attempt to soothe her esophagus was indication enough.

She’d have used a spell to try and remove the spice from the food and present it to Spike to give him a good, stern lecture about his attitude, but the last time she had targeted food with a spell, spaghetti had been involved.

And just to make everything even worse, the pain in her sides was back with a vengeance.

Not that it had ever really left. Even with her pain-killers that could topple even her legendary headaches, her sides had still hurt all day with a persistent soreness. It had at least been manageable then, but the medicine was wearing off, and it seemed like all the discomfort she had staved off had just creeped back up on her.

She had taken another dose, but the previous chemical buzz had yet to fully disperse from her system, so it hadn’t helped as much. She’d even taken a long detour from working on that last line of code from Dreamscape to look through a few medicinal and pharmaceutical books for some answer for why she felt in such pain and how to alleviate it, but to no avail.

A knock came from the front door.

Twilight grimaced. Great: what else does the world want to interrupt me with?

“Spike, could you get the door please?”

His muffled response came from another part of the library. “I’m busy.”

“Please, Spike?”

“I said, I’m busy. Got to put all these books away... the ones that you keep taking out and keep leaving for me to reshelve... because you won’t put them back...”

Twilight’s mouth pulled tight in annoyance. She got up from her seat and crossed the library to open the door herself, shutting out Spike’s grumbling. Each step sent another needle into her side, and she was gritting her teeth in pain and frustration by the time she got there.

She opened the door and momentarily forgot all her discomforts.

“Now Twilight, what did I say about not being a stranger?”

“Rarity!” Twilight gasped. She almost didn’t catch herself from pouncing Rarity with another hug.

“Ah,” Rarity held up a hoof, and motioned to her side. “And company.”

Twilight opened the door wider, and gasped again.

“Oh, um... hi, Twilight. It’s good to see y—”

Fluttershy didn’t get to finish her hellos before Twilight tackled her with a hug.

“Fluttershy! Oh it’s so good to see you again! I’d missed you so much!”

“Twilight!” Rarity scolded. “Show some composure! That’s Fluttershy you just tackled!”

“Oh, it’s alright Rarity; I’m sure she just missed me, like you said she would. Besides,” Fluttershy patted the back of her affectionate attacker’s head, “she’s not nearly as bad with the hugs as the cougars.”

Rarity nodded. “Well then, it’s good to see you too, Twilight. I hope you haven’t forgotten our arranged trip to the spa, no?”

“Huh? Oh, of course not. Just let me get something...” Twilight got off of Fluttershy and turned to go back into the library, but her way was impeded.

“Finished putting the books away.” The edge from Spike’s voice was all but gone. He looked past Twilight to the other unicorn in the group. “Hi, Rarity. So you three were going to the spa? Can I come too?”

“Oh, uh, I’d rather not bring anypony else along...” Rarity said, rubbing her left foreleg.

“But you’ve been working so hard for the last few days; don’t you deserve some extra pampering?” Spike tried to plead his case.

“I appreciate the thought, but... um...”

“Aren’t Aloe and Lotus still upset with you over the mud-wrestling incident with the Cutie Mark Crusaders?” Fluttershy asked.

Spike looked at them, confused. “The what? Oh yeah, that.”

“I’m sorry, but the spa sisters aren’t too keen to hold onto grudges. I’m sure they’ll be glad to have you back... after they’ve finished getting all the mud stains off the ceiling...” Rarity said with a forced smile.

Spike didn’t answer, just looked down and sighed.

“Excuse me,” Twilight said, brushing past Spike. She went back to her bedroom, put her gyroscope back in its case, and put it into a small purse that she slung over her neck and around her shoulder, careful not to touch her sides. Content with her accessory, Twilight went back downstairs to her friends.

“Alright, I’m ready. We’ll be back in, how long? A few hours?”

“Again, I apologize for the inconvenience, Spike. Perhaps some other time?” Rarity bid.

“Can’t wait,” Spike muttered. “If you three are heading off, then I’m going to go take a nap.”

“Actually, since you’ve put all the books back, you need to go over the double-check list to make sure they’re all back in place, don’t you?” Twilight quipped.

Spike leered at her, making Twilight feel a little worse. She’d only intended to use her authority to tease him, not rub salt on the wound.

“Fine.” Spike all but growled as he put his hand back on the door to close it and turned away. “See you—”

Spike’s gaze shot back to Twilight in a double take. For a moment, his eyes were wide open in fear. The instant later his expression had changed, and he started looked behind Twilight, perplexed.

Twilight peered at him. “Spike? Is something wrong?”.

“No, it’s nothing. I just... thought I saw someone. See you later,” Spike said, returning to his despondency, and shut the door.

Twilight hung her head at the door and let out a heavy, remorseful breath. She felt a gentle hoof upon her shoulder. Even such a delicate touch so close to her afflicted areas made her wince, and she tried to hide her pain as she looked up into Fluttershy’s soft eyes.

“Twilight, is everything okay between you and Spike?”

Twilight looked away. “Not really.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Would it make you feel better to talk to somepony about it?”

Twilight breathed out through her nostrils. “Things have been a little... tense between Spike and me for the last few days. We’ve both been a bit on edge, but I haven’t been able to be there for him as much as I should be because I’ve been wrapped up in something very, very important. And to make matters worse, I’ve developed some sort of stabbing pain at my sides.”

Fluttershy’s eyes grew wider at the words. “Pain? Where?” She instinctively looked over Twilight, making her hoof shift.

Twilight gritted her teeth, and had to force herself from screaming out. “On both sides, right where your hoof is touching me.”

Fluttershy withdrew her hoof in an instant. “Oh! I’m sorry! I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

Twilight tried to smile, even though it felt like she had porcupines tied to her. “Not too much.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Twilight! I didn’t mean to...”

“It’s okay, Fluttershy, I know you didn’t... but I wasn’t so considerate to Spike over the same matter.” Regret came back upon her again. “The pain was far worse this morning. I woke up feeling like I’d been stabbed, and when Spike woke up, he came to check up on me, but he accidentally ran into me, right where it hurt. I lost my temper and snapped at him, and he’s been upset even since.”

Sorrow pulled her gaze downward. “I hurt his feelings, and all he wanted to do was make sure I was okay.”

Fluttershy craned her neck down, trying to re-establish eye contact with her friend. “I’m sure you didn’t mean to get mad at him, Twilight.”

She sniffed. “I didn’t mean to, but I still did. I tried to apologize, but I put him in such a bad mood that he hasn’t even wanted to talk to me since then.”

Rarity stepped forward to Twilight’s other side. “Dear, it sounds like you’re still burdened by an undue amount of stress. If anything, it sounds like you need an afternoon to relax and get things back in order. And if you’ve been stricken with some inexplicable physical ailment, then perhaps some quality time with a masseuse would suite you well.”

“I suppose you’re right. Maybe then I’ll be able to think of something I can do to make up with Spike.”

Rarity smiled. “That’s the spirit, dear. Come then; let us not tarry a moment longer!”

With that, the three mares turned and left for the spa.

Rarity turned her head to look at Twilight. “I do hope you’ll forgive us for our tardiness. On a whim of mine, we stopped by Sugarcube Corner to extend a hoof of invitation to Pinkie Pie.”

Twilight was instantly alert. “You two saw Pinkie?”

“We did, but... um...” Fluttershy let her sentence go unfinished. She and Rarity started shifting glances between each other.

“What happened?” Twilight dared ask.

“She seemed, well... “off color,” I suppose is the most polite way to put it,” Rarity answered. “She was yammering on about things neither of us could make heads or tails of, like “dastardly zebras,” “the paradox of ponies pulling trains,” and something about her Pinkie sense, somepony watching her, and a burning hoof. I might have caught more, but she was talking so fast, most everything else was just indecipherable babble.”

“Have you ever seen songbirds on a sugar high?” Fluttershy added. “Because, well, she was kind of acting like that.”

“Mmhm,” Rarity nodded in agreement, then continued. ”She hardly seemed entirely cognizant of either of us while we were conversing. Only part of her comments seemed in direct correlation to our conversation; otherwise, she kept skewing off on completely unrelated tangents, as if she was talking to somepony else entirely. And she kept yammering on, faster and faster, until suddenly, out of nowhere, she stops right in the middle of what she was saying. Then her eyes droop and she slumps over, and afterwards she’s barely able to slur out a complete sentence.”

Twilight could feel her gut shift. “Really?”

“Oh dear, yes! Now get this; her whole spiel: that entire cascade of capricious conveyance, happened within the space of,” Rarity paused for dramatic effect, “two minutes. And with hardly any provocation from either of us!”

“It was... well, odd,” Fluttershy added. “I mean, I know Pinkie is a bit unpredictable, but... well, it just didn’t seem like Pinkie at all. Oh, and for almost the entire time, she seemed, well, timid around me; almost like she was afraid of me.” Fluttershy nodded. “She hardly ever looked directly at me, and whenever she did, it was with nervous glances, like she was afraid I might explode or set fire to something. And she kept stuttering my name, like she was confusing me with somepony else. She even completely messed up and called me “Havoc” once.”

Fluttershy drew up a pensive expression. “Do we know anypony named Havoc? Who even has a name like that?”

“That’s not even the worst part,” Rarity cut back in. “When we finally got past our rather awkward “hellos” and I got around to inquiring her if she wished to join us, she became, well... infuriated. Outraged, even. I mean... dear Celestia, I haven’t seen her so steeped with animosity since the last and only time that Applejack broke a Pinkie promise!” She shuddered. “She exploded at us, claiming we were attempting to derail some party that she’d been trying to plan by placing a visit to the spa over our friendship. And before I could retort with either indignation or my utmost concern for her, she broke down. Right in the middle of the shop, she started sobbing, choking out numerous apologies and berating herself; slandering herself as a terrible pony for... whatever it was she was going through.”

“We tried to say something to her, but before we could, she galloped back into her room and locked the door,” Fluttershy explained. “So we tried offering her our support through the door, but she wouldn’t even say anything back.”

Twilight had to resist the urge to break away, gallop all the way to Sugarcube Corner, teleport past her bedroom door, and give Pinkie all the compassion and empathy that her heart could pour out.

“I can only imagine how terrible she must feel right now; I mean...” Fluttershy’s ears and eyes folded down, “I was doing almost the exact same thing after Iron Will...” She looked away. “I’m still sorry about that, Rarity.”

“That’s quite alright, darling. I forgave you long ago, and you’ve come far since that belligerent ruffian,” Rarity said. “But what concerns me here is the magnitude of whatever Pinkie is going through, and we don’t even know what exactly she’s going through. Twilight, you said that you saw her about four days ago, yes?”

Twilight nodded. “Yes, but she wasn’t nearly as unstable as you described... of course that was when she was still willing to see me. Two w—the next day, Dash and I couldn’t even get her to see us.”

“That was around the last time you and I met, if I remember correctly,” Rarity noted. “For what it’s worth, your disposition seems to have improved, but what could possibly make Pinkie that flustered that she’d still be so conflicted several days later? I know she’s an emotional pony, more than she’ll admit, but I can hardly think of a time I’ve seen her more distraught.”

“That’s exactly what Rainbow Dash told us,” Fluttershy noted.

“Ah, yes; we ran into her as well. She gave us the same story, except she’d been checking on her periodically for the last few days, and had hardly seen hide nor hair of her for all the effort, let alone gotten to the bottom of this.” Rarity sighed. “Before she sped off to check on her again, I said that if she did manage to coax Pinkie out of her slump, we’d still love to rendezvous at the spa for some time amongst friends. And if Pinkie still declined, Dash was always welcome too, even if it was just her.”

Rarity huffed. “You can imagine how well that offer went over...”

“That might be because you mentioned the words “brush” and “mane” in the same sentence,” Fluttershy said. “I wish Applejack could have come too, but she said she’d be busy with work for the whole day.”

“Pity, really,” Rarity sighed. “I brought more than enough bits for all six of us. I even gave Sweetie Belle and her friends plenty of money so we could have this get-together while they have an afternoon to themselves to go play... so long as they Pinkie promised not to spend it on anything dangerous... or that involves dirt.”

“Well, if they Pinkie promised, everything should be okay. I just hope they have as good time as we will,” Fluttershy said as they reached the spa.

“And not a moment too soon. I think I speak for all of us when I say we need this.” Rarity opened the door to the spa, trotted inside, and held the door open for her friends.

A soothing melody comprised of a continual, bass note held indefinitely, overlaid with the tones of a shamisen being delicately plucked in staccato and a wafting flute met them at the door. The sounds of water gently flowing over structures of smooth rocks and bubbling into serene, crystalline pools bid their guests to enter. They stepped inside into an atmosphere of perfect temperature and humidity that smelled of water lilies, citrus, and light perfumes.

Twilight was almost instantly at ease; she could scarcely remember how long it had been since she’d anticipated feeling this good. Her stress and tension began to melt away, dripping from her weary form and freeing her of its hefty burdens. She breathed in deep, wishing to absorb as much of the placidity as she could and drift away on the still, inviting air. She was almost completely at peace.

She would have, had the nerves at her sides still not been chewing on themselves.

“Ah, Miss Rarity! Such a pleasure to see you and your friends again!” Lotus warmly welcomed them in her musical Swedish accent. “De usual?”

“The pleasure is ours, darling.” Rarity gave a polite little bow. “But no, I think the girls and myself are in need of something a little more rejuvenating. Three deluxe packages, on my tab.”

Lotus nodded. “Excellent choice, Miss Rarity.” She motioned to their group with a tilt of her head. “Dis way.”

“Oh, and it might not be an issue, but some of my other friends might still be coming,” Rarity added to Lotus as they walked. “If Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, or Applejack do decide to attend with us, a deluxe package for each of them as well, if you would.”

“Of course.” Lotus pointed to a wardrobe in the mares’ restrooms. “Your bathrobes, clean and pressed. I shall prepare de sauna for you three. Would you prefer for either me or my sister to attend to steaming de rocks for you, or shall I leave de ladle to your hoof?”

“I think we’ll be alright on our lonesome, thank you.” Rarity said, fitting herself into one of the silken soft robes.

“Very well,” Lotus replied. “I shall attend to de other matters of your treatment. Oh, and Miss Rarity, might I add that your timing is impeccable; my sister and I have finally scrubbed de mud from de ceiling, so de mud baths are once again open.”

“Oh... really, now? Ah, well... wonderful!” Rarity replied with a tight smile.

Lotus opened the door the sauna for them. They entered into the overbearing heat and humidity of a room that smelled of cedar.

“I shall go prepare your rejuvenating masks, then. Farväl for now, but do call if you need any assistance.” With that, Lotus departed, leaving the three to each other’s company.

Twilight moved to a nearby bench, groaning as she settled down. Whatever harmony she was trying to ease into was still being jarred by the dissonance of the pain in her sides.

“Will you be okay?” Fluttershy asked, noting Twilight’s discomfort.

“I’ll be fine... eventually. I just need time to relax.”

“Okay then,” Fluttershy said, settling down herself next to the stack of sizzling rocks. “Though I do feel a little bad for Spike now. We probably could have brought him along since the mud baths have been cleaned.”

From next to Fluttershy, Rarity sighed.

“What?” Fluttershy asked.

Rarity picked up the ladle with her magic and poured water over the rocks, enveloping them in steam. “To be honest, I had hoped just to make this a mares’ day out. Not that I’m intentionally going out of my way to exclude him, but sometimes us ladies need our getaways, right?”

Twilight and Fluttershy nodded in agreement.

After a long while spent in the swirling steam, Twilight asked, “Spike has been asking me if he can visit you an awful lot recently. Has he been bothering you, Rarity?”

“Eh, somewhat. It’s not that I don’t want him around, but I’ve just been awfully busy with something only I can deal with, so I haven’t been able to entertain company or accept his usual offers for assistance. His newfound insistence isn’t helping his cause much, either.”

“Aw, I’m sure he just wants to help you,” Fluttershy said.

“I know, and I do appreciate that his heart is in the right place, but for all his efforts, it just comes across as ‘trying too hard.’ I’m sure you understand,” Rarity said, laying down on her back and closing her eyes.

“Hmm...” Fluttershy laid down on her stomach, crossing her forelegs and resting her head upon them, wearing a ponderous expression as she did. “Rarity, may I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Well, I mean, if it’s not too personal; I don’t want to feel like I’m intruding... you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, but...”

“Oh, just spit it out, darling.”

“Okay...” Fluttershy composed herself, raising her head up from her perch and looking right at Rarity. “Do you like Spike?”

Rarity put her hooves to her eyes. “Ugh... it’s complicated. I think he’s an adorable little gentlestallion, and I do like him… as a friend.”

An awkward silence hung in the air. After several long seconds, Twilight said the word she and Fluttershy knew that Rarity wasn’t saying. “But…”

“I don’t know… Spike is so young. Not foalish, definitely, but young. Because of that, I don’t know if he genuinely likes me, or if it’s still just a crush.”

“I’m pretty sure he likes you, Rarity,” Twilight interjected. “This has been going on for a while now.”

“Alright then, so I like him and he likes me,” Rarity conceded, “but what then?”

“What do you mean?” Fluttershy asked.

“So we tell each other that we are each other’s very special somepony. We laugh, we hug, and then we kiss.” Rarity stopped and looked off into space. “Then what? What happens next?”

A heavy pause hung in the steamy air. Twilight and Fluttershy looked at each other, unable to collaborate an answer.

“That’s what I thought,” Rarity said dejectedly. “I don’t know what happens next after that. I don’t think Spike knows, either. I don’t think he’s even thought about it. And because of that, I can’t be sure that he’s mature enough to be in a serious relationship.”

Rarity stopped staring into space to look her friends in the eye. “So yes, since you’re asking, I do like Spike, but not that way. I don’t know if he knows that sometimes it’s better to just stay friends. But neither of us knows where this is going, and from what I’ve experienced, I’ve learned to be a little more cautious and thoughtful when it comes to matters of the heart. And for that matter, I refuse to be a heartbreaker.”

“Fair enough,” Twilight said. Then a thought occurred to her. “Hey, Rarity, you wouldn't have happened to have learned to take a more cautious approach to relationships after Blueblo— ”

Rarity cut off Twilight with a gaze of daggers. “DON’T...”

Twilight shied away. “Sorry...”

Rarity took on a more reassuring tone. “No need to be sorry, darling. Regardless, I think the three of us came here to relax from our daily stress, no?” She picked up the ladle and poured more water over the sweltering stones.

“Oh, but I had such a lovely time teaching the young birds how to fly,” Fluttershy pouted a little.

Twilight smiled. “Well, I’d love to hear about it.”

Fluttershy returned the smile and shared her story of her week for the remainder of the time that they remained in the sauna.

- - - - - -

From there on out, their time was most relaxing. They all had a bath of mineral water, then they spent some rather enjoyable time in the jacuzzi. After a quick shower to cleanse their fur and pores, the three were given rejuvenating masks, or in Fluttershy’s case, rejuvenating eye shadow, then the three received the finest of hooficures while Rarity and Twilight had their horns gently filed to a smooth texture.

Then came the part Twilight had secretly been dreading since she walked in the door: the massages.

On the far table, Rarity lay on her stomach, still wearing her mask with cucumbers over her eyes while Aloe and Lotus’s older brother, the sandy-coated, blonde-maned Tempo, part-time massage therapist and drummer for a band called “Thunderhorse,” worked his magic on Rarity’s back.

In between the two on a wider table lay Fluttershy. Aloe sat upon the table with Fluttershy, and was gently kneading her wings. Fluttershy was purring like a kitten, lying there with her eyes closed and the most content of relaxed smiles on her face as Aloe relieved the tension from her wings: still slightly sore from all the flying she’d been doing for the last few days.

And then there was Twilight, who was staring at Lotus’s forehooves as the masseuse approached, and was sweating bullets.

“Are you alright, Miss Twilight?” Lotus asked. “You appear a little tense...”

“I’ll be alright,” she said.

I hope...

“Very well,” said Lotus. She reared back and placed her hooves across the table. “Tell me, is there a massage technique you would prefer?”

“Just... whatever you think is good for aching muscles.”

Lotus nodded, taking note of Twilight’s aversion. “Very well. I think I know just de thing...”

Twilight squeezed her eyes shut tight, dreading what was to come. It’s okay, Twilight. Just relax, let her ease away the pain. Don’t focus on how much it might hurt, and you’ll be just fine...

Lotus stabbed Twilight with a claymore.

Twilight shrieked out in pain, bucking involuntarily as a foreleg rushed back to cover the wound.

Lotus backed away in alarm. Aloe and Fluttershy were staring at her. Rarity had peeled away one of the cucumber slices off of her face to see what was the matter. Even Tempo had stopped drumming on Rarity’s back to look at the commotion.

“Twilight, dear, are you alright?” Rarity inquired.

Fluttershy looked at her with concern. “Do you really hurt that badly?”

“Vät happened, sister?” Aloe asked.

Lotus looked back and forth between Aloe and Twilight, confused. “I merely touched her side with a hoof...”

Now Aloe bore an expression of bewilderment. “Would you excuse me for a moment?” she asked Fluttershy.

“Oh, of course; Twilight needs your attention more than I do.”

Aloe gracefully hopped down from her perch upon the table, and relocated to her sister’s side.

“So, what is de problem?” Aloe asked.

“Well, my sides hurt. A lot. And I don’t know why,” Twilight replied.

“And how long have you been feeling dis pain?” Lotus further inquired.

“A few days now.” Twilight spoke truthfully.

“Hmm...” Lotus put a hoof to her chin. “Miss Sparkle, may I prod de afflicted area once mer?”

Twilight looked at the two for some sympathy.

“I promise, I shall be gentle.”

Twilight scoured their concerned gazes for some respite. Exhaling with slight dread, she moved her hoof away, exposing herself, and laid her head back down upon the table with her eyes shut tight.

“Do it.”

Aloe and Lotus moved in for a better look. Slowly, the latter raised her hoof and moved it to the area behind Twilight’s right shoulder blade. With a tender touch like Fluttershy waking a baby mouse with her muzzle, Lotus gently touched Twilight’s side.

Twilight winced at the attack, sucking in air with a sharp inhale and flinching away from the assault. Lotus’s hoof might as well have been a mace, swung at her with all the tact of a stray kick in a barroom brawl.

The sisters turned their attention to each other and began to rapidly converse in their native tongue.

“Ser du hur hennes muskler rycka?” Lotus asked of Aloe.

“Jag gör...” Aloe replied. She brushed some of her sapphire mane back and stole another glance at Twilight’s still-convulsing muscles. “Det ser nästan ut som om hon har nervskador.”

Aloe looked back to the injured unicorn as well. “Udda, jag har bara sett muskler rycka sånt för vingar...”

“What’s wrong?” Twilight asked, her worry mounting.

“Well, my sister and I both think that de afflicted area appears to have nerve damage.”

Fluttershy gasped.

“Oh my, that sounds awfully serious!” Rarity exclaimed.

“Is there anything you can do?” Twilight asked, hopeful.

“Oh, we can certainly help,” Aloe assured her.

“Ja,” Lotus agreed. “I think first, it would be best to employ our own specialty topical application crafted of wintergreen oil to soothe de affected areas, then use suction therapy to gently loosen and relax de muscles. Afterwords, I think only de most pristine and delicate of massages is in order, and then a quick round of acupuncture to complete de ordeal.”

Lotus gave Twilight a warm and reassuring smile. “It’s very simple...”

“Ja, ja, it’s very simple,” Aloe concurred.

“Alright, do it. But skip the acupuncture; I don’t like needles,” Twilight answered.

The sisters nodded in unison.

- - - - - -

Aloe and Lotus worked on Twilight for the better half of an hour. Their brand of wintergreen rubefacient stung upon first application, both for its chemical composition and that any agitation to her sides still hurt like none other, even with the topical’s numbing effect. The little glass baubles filled with heated air that they’d affixed to her back were none too comfortable either, least of all from having something constantly in contact against where she was feeling pain, but it did have the desired effect of loosening her muscles.

However, the hoof massages she’d gotten were out of this world. Aloe and Lotus gently kneaded out as much of the pain as they could with perfect applications of pressure and care. Twilight had easily thought that if she were capable of it, she would have been purring, too.

The rest of their stay went off without a hitch: seaweed wraps, warm mud baths, another shower with the finest bath soaps and shampoos, and finally, just some time to lay back and relax with some nice drinks and the pleasure of each others company.

But Twilight’s sides still ached.

They didn’t hurt nearly as bad as they had when she first set hoof in the spa, and though Aloe and Lotus had done the best they could to remedy her ailment (and their treatments and the hot water from her shower had helped), discomfort still ebbed through them with a dull ache. And like with her pain killers before, she knew it was only a matter of time until swords and arrows would be sheathed into her flesh again.

She had that concern to greet her outside, for their time to depart and return to their busy lives had come.

“Are you feeling any better, Miss Sparkle?” Aloe asked.

“Yeah,” Twilight returned with a weak smile. “For now, at least.”

“Well, if dis issue persists, may I advise you seek professional medical attention,” Aloe counselled.

“Of course, more frequent visits could be in order as Well,” said Lotus, giving Twilight a little wink. “We do so love to see your friendly face.”

Twilight’s smile brightened up a little. “I’ll see if I can free up some time from my schedule.”

Lotus gave her a little bow. “Very well. Farväl, for now.”

“Adieu, dearest Blossoms!” Rarity waved from the front door.

Aloe bowed her head in kind. “Farväl, friends!”

With that, the three ponies left, walking out into the warm, mid-afternoon sunlight.

Fluttershy sighed in content. “Ah... I do love these visits.” She looked to Twilight with care. “Do you feel any better?”

“For now, but I’m not sure how long it’ll last.” Twilight replied. “Maybe I should see somepony about this.”

“Perhaps, if it gets even more out of hoof,” Rarity said. “Until then, would you like Fluttershy and myself to walk back to the library with you?”

“Actually, I think we should go check and see if Rainbow made any progress with Pinkie,” Fluttershy said.

“Hm, excellent proposition, Fluttershy. Would you like to join us to Sugarcube Corner, then?” Rarity asked of Twilight.

Her initial thought was to say yes. Maybe, just maybe, Pinkie would let them in her room if she knew all of her friends were there for her. Maybe she would finally let them know what was bothering her, and then they could finally help her through whatever she was suffering through.

On the other hoof, she’d learned from past experiences that this was a very sensitive issue, and even so much as standing outside her bedroom door and offering their support might just come across as imposing.

“I don’t know... as much as I want to be there for her, it seems like everything everypony has tried has just made her withdraw further. Maybe it’s best to hold off until she comes forward to us about it, or I can think of some new approach. Besides, I still have to make up with Spike. This is the second time in four days that I’ve left him at the library while I went out to spend time with my friends, and I haven’t done a whole lot for him to make him feel less ostracized than he probably already does.”

Twilight sighed, and made to walk back home. “I should probably get back to the library. But please; if you do manage to connect with Pinkie, let me know.”

“Very well, then. Adieu, Twilight.” Rarity waved.

“Bye, Twilight. See you later,” Fluttershy said.

With that, the three went their separate ways. Rarity and Fluttershy trotted off for Sugarcube Corner, while Twilight began to make her way back to her library.

Before she left the plaza, Twilight turned to watch Rarity and Fluttershy go. She felt her heart pull against her, and for a moment she had half a mind to gallop to their side and tell them that she had reconsidered, if just to stay with them for a little longer.

Spike’s not going anywhere; he can wait.

She realized what she’d thought and internally smacked herself for it. Spike was a friend, too; one who even after she’d experienced how terrible life was without him, she now had the audacity to neglect.

But that’s because—

THAT’S NO EXCUSE. Reason’s voice echoed inside her head, making Twilight jump.
We’ve been over this.

Twilight conceded. We have.

So, what are you going to do?

Go back home, and try and make up with Spike. Twilight snorted a little. Which is what I was doing before you showed up.

Hey, don’t try and get smart with yourself. Reason shot back as Twilight resumed her slow pace with her vision directed towards the ground. So, what are you going to do to make peace with Spike?

Twilight thought about it for a moment, but still came upon the same conclusion.

I don’t know yet.

She could almost feel the searing eyes of Reason’s incredulous stare bore into her. You don’t know yet?

That’s right, I don’t know yet. I can’t just up and tell him everything, for obvious reasons, but I can’t just give him some token for an apology because that’s just sugar coating the real problem. I can try and explain why I’ve been acting how I have without giving away everything, but if he’s still upset, that might sound like I’m trying to justify my behavior…

Twilight carried on her loop for almost the entire way back home, without her paradox between apologizing, explaining the situation, or trying to do something to make amends ever reaching a conclusion.

Reason interrupted her rambling. I think you’re over complicating things, as usual.

So what am I supposed to do?

Just say that you’re sorry. Explain just enough so that he knows you haven’t been treating him the way you have just to be a jerk, apologize for what you’ve done wrong, and for the love of Celestia, be nicer to him, so he knows that you still care about him. It might not go back to normal immediately, but in time, he might forgive you.

I suppose you’re... wait, what’s that?

Something on the ground caught her attention: a short line of tiny red droplets. The largest of the splatter was pointed in her direction, trailed by smaller specks in a line parallel to her.

She raised her eyebrows, and suddenly was stricken with the feeling that her stomach was walking on a plank over a fissure. She picked up the pace of her trot, all the more eager to get home. She only made it a few paces before she saw another trail of red splatter. This one was on the same linear path of the last, and the way they pointed kicked the bottom out from under her guts.

Oh no...

They led back to the library.

Twilight took off at a gallop for home, her speed fueled by her mounting worry with each new hoofbeat. She saw more droplets and trails of spatter in the dusty road at increasingly frequent intervals, each one leading her back home.

Oh no; no no no no no no...

She skidded around the corner of the street to see her library and the trail that led straight to it. She galloped up the cobblestone path towards her home, where more of the trail had soaked into the wood on the porch, and passed right underneath the front door.

Twilight leaped through the air, smashing her hooves into the front door. It swung wide open and banged off the wall adjacent to it, bowing to the frantic unicorn’s urgent entry.

“Spike!” she cried out into the library. “SPIKE!”

He didn’t answer. Her eyes darted around the room, taking in every detail with snapshot precision: each book in its proper place on the shelf; the horse-head statue on the table, staring at her; all the neatly organized quills and parchment on her desk; Pee-Wee worriedly inspecting of the trail of blood that lead to the base of the stairs.

She gasped, feeling like cold needles had been stabbed into her heart. She darted over the the trail’s beginning.

The cupboard built into the tree across from the base of the stairs had been obliterated. Only a fraction of the shattered doors still remained, hanging limp from the hinges; the rest lay scattered in shards and splinters around the destruction. All of the contents within had been smashed and broken, piled into the remains of the crushed shelves.

Blood was smeared across parts of the broken cupboard. One of her brother’s old shields that he’d left for her as a memorabilia item lay amongst the wreckage. There was a particularly large dent in one part along its bladed edge that was covered in blood. Several of Spike’s scales lay nearby, with bits of epidermal tissue still clinging to them, like they’d been ripped straight out of his sublayer of skin.

But there was still no sign of her friend.

Twilight’s mounting angst was making her do a fitful prace in place. On impulse she lifted her head and cried out into the library again.

“Spike! Where are you?!”

No answer.

Twilight’s breath was starting to come in deep, rapid gasps to fight against the panic gripping her throat. She looked back at the blood trail leading out of the library, and darted back to the door, only to find her way suddenly obstructed, and she skidded to a halt.

“Twilight! Oh, thank Celestia we found ya!”

“Apple Bloom?!” Twilight burted.

The filly wasn’t alone. Right behind her were Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo. All three were panting for breath, and each was carrying an instrument; Apple Bloom had a keyboard tied to her back, Scootaloo had a tuba wrapped around her neck, and Sweetie Belle had a violin sticking out of her saddle bag.

“Have you seen Spike?!” Twilight exclaimed before any of them could get in a proper greeting.

Apple Bloom’s eyes opened up wide. “Yeah! That’s what we came here ta get ya for!”

Scootaloo cut in, rapidly explaining the without hardly stopping to breathe. “Sweetie’s sister gave us some money so we could have some fun so long as we Pinkie Promised not to use it on something that involved dirt, so we were all like “Hey, let’s get our film score musicians cutie marks!” So then we were on our way to a music shop to rent some instruments, but then we ran into Dinky and her friends, and they were all like, “Hey, what’s up?” And we were all like, “Oh nothing much, just going to get our film score musician cutie marks!” And they were all like, “That’s cool,” but then Sweetie was like “Hey, we’ve got more than enough bits; wanna join us?” And they we like, “Sure, sounds fun!”

“So then we go to the store, and then we start talking about the kinds of instruments we’ll need, and then we start trying to decide who gets what, and then we get our instruments, but then we start heading back to the clubhouse, and we run into Spike!”

“He was hurt pretty bad!” Sweetie Belle interjected with a squeak. “We offered to take him to the hospital, but he kept trying to avoid us, and he kept glancing off in some other direction, like he was more worried about something else other than the big cut over his eye!”

“Finally we convinced him ta let us help, and he said ta come get ya while he made the rest of his way ta the hospital, so we’ve been runnin’ all over town lookin’ for ya for the last half an hour!”

Twilight didn’t even wait for them to finish or to thank them for the information. She just bolted past the three fillies, following the trail to Ponyville General.

She galloped until her breath seared and her blood sizzled in her veins. Even when her muscles quaked with exertion and the pain in her sides muscled past her adrenalin rush and began to scream in her ears, she kept galloping.

How could I have been so careless? she thought, too preoccupied with getting as much oxygen as possible into the muscles in her legs to waste her breath on speaking her self-directed chastisement.

Oh Spike... what did I let happen to you?

- - - - - -

Spike sat morosely at the desk in the bedroom, face pressed to the wood, rolling his fiery marble back and forth across it merely to have something to do: something to distract him from his sullen mood.

It wasn't working.

The marble had been the first thing that he’d ever owned, back when he was just a little whelpling. He had added many to his collection since then, but this one had always been his favorite. So while his thoughts would occasionally drift to the item’s significance to him, and he would try to stay on the happy thoughts of a treasured possession, for the most part they kept dwelling on how Rarity had shot him down when he just wanted to be of use to her, again. And how Twilight had brusquely saddled him with the sole upkeep of the library while she got to go dally about with her friends. Again.

He didn’t do his chores, however. First thing he had done after the mares had left was head straight upstairs to take a nap. That hadn’t gone so well, as his sour mood wouldn’t let him do anything more than doze in a half-awake slump.

Eventually he had gotten too restless to sleep, so he got up to look for something else to do. Only he had found himself without anything to do except sulk. He’d even for a moment gone back into the foyer and considered doing what Twilight had told him to do: double-check the books to make sure he’d reshelved them correctly.

A moment later, he had dismissed that thought.

Forget Twilight and her stupid checklists. By now, I know my way around the library better than she does, and I darn well know when a book is out of place.

So he had marched back upstairs, looking for something to do to keep him entertained. And that was how he’d ended up in the bedroom, with his cheek pressed up against Twilight’s desk while twiddling his fire-colored marble across its surface, bored and brooding.

Spike took his head off the desk and looked around the library, searching for something else to distract him, and saw Pee-Wee perched on a window behind him, grooming himself.

"Hey buddy," Spike said in an encouraging tone. "Want to learn how to play fetch?"

Pee-Wee didn't respond, and simply carried on with what he was doing.

Spike groaned on the inside. Still, he tried to coax his pet. "C'mon, it's easy," he said. "Just bring the marble back to me after I throw it. Ready... fetch!" Spike tossed the marble, and it landed with a soft thump on the rug.

Pee-Wee remained where he was and continued to run his beak through his feathers.

"Fine, have it your way. Apparently I can't have anything my way..." Spike grumbled.

Suddenly Pee-Wee's head perked up. "Oh, now you want to play," Spike muttered, though he was a little happier now. "Okay, I'll get the marble."

The sound of a door banging open and the terrific crash of several items falling to the floor downstairs made him nearly jump out of his scales. Somepony had just broken into the library. Spike’s thoughts raced.

It must be the mysterious thief. It has to be!

Spike jumped out of the chair, and ran down the stairs towards the door to the kitchen.

He ran as quickly and silently as he could, not wanting to alert the thief to his presence. As he neared the kitchen door, he pressed himself against the wall and listened intently to the noises coming from within.

Whoever it was sounded like they were carrying a lot of stuff already, because he could hear the clattering of lots of objects bumping into each other and occasionally hitting the floor. Then a grunt of exertion, and the back door banging shut. Then the thief began to make their way towards his door. An ominous chill struck Spike as he listened to its pacing. Instead of the soft clopping of hooves, it was the harsh scraping of claws.

Something told Spike to turn and run back up the stairs, but it was too late. The door to the kitchen burst open. “Fight or flight” had kicked in, and Spike chose the first option. He charged the thief from the side, yelling the most convincing war cry that he could muster, only for it to turn to a blood-curdling scream of terror.

The thief looked down upon him. “I really don’t see why you’re so surprised. I did tell you that we were going to be seeing each other a lot more, didn’t I?”

Spike's pulse was racing. His chest heaved from his panicked, heavy breathing. He wanted to run, but his feet had turned into lead and his legs into jelly. He tried to make a noise, but his heart was currently blocking up his throat.

Avarice, however, had no such trouble speaking.

"Are you going to help me hide all this, or just stand there like you've seen a dragon?"

Spike regained a fraction of his ability to speak.

"Huh... bu.... guh-wuh...."

"Standing and gawking like you have half a brain it is then. Fine; I'll just put this all away myself."

Avarice turned away from Spike and walked towards the central post with the floorboards. Unceremoniously prying one loose with his foot, he then casually dumped the mountain of stuff into the space beneath. Then he turned around and began gathering up the trail of fallen items from the kitchen door, which included several birdhouses, a leash, a bag of birdseed, some fence posts, and a dog collar with a small gemstone in it.

Spike stood dumbfounded as he watched Avarice gather up the last of the things and dump them into the pile, then stamp everything flat before grabbing the floorboard and slamming it back into place. Then he got down on one knee, craned his head down to the floorboards, and inhaled deeply.

Spike reflexively stepped towards Avarice, reaching out a claw, but he knew he was already too late to stop him from burning the house down.

That didn't happen. Instead, tiny tongues of red flame emerged from his maw and drifted across the floorboards before seeping into the cracks, illuminating each plank that covered the trench for a brief moment. Avarice then stood back up and began hopping on the floorboards, which suddenly had a lot less give. Giving a small grunt of satisfaction, he turned and walked back to Spike.

"So," said Avarice as he brushed his claws together, "You're probably bursting with questions right now, but I'm just not in the mood for all that, so you only get three."

Avarice casually leaned against the door frame and crossed his arms. Spike gulped, trying to shove his heart back down his throat as he looked up into the piercing stare of the dragon who towered over him with a height at least three times his own.

"I'm waiting..."

The only way Spike could free his tongue was to ask the first question that came to mind.

"Was... was all that Fluttershy's?"

"Indeed it was. A pity your pale yellow friend wasn't home. Sure, it would have complicated things more than I want to deal with right now, but at least I could have given her a tan." Avarice chuckled.

Despite his fear, Spike felt a little spark of anger begin to grow. "If you lay one claw on my friends..."

"You'll do... what?" Avarice interrupted, leaning in right into Spike's face. A very long moment passed as they simply stared at each other.

"Don't you have two more questions?" Avarice said, breaking the silence.

"What are you doing here?"

"Acquiring some things that I happened to like. Or did you not notice?"

"That's not what I meant!"

"Then ask what you mean."

Spike took a deep breath to steady himself. "How did you get here?"

Avarice stood back up to his full height and mock-thoughtfully scratched his chin.

"Hmm... well, that's a loaded question now, isn't it? If you're asking specifically what path I took to get from here to Fluttershy's and back again, well, let's just say it was an exhilarating misadventure through the sewers. But I take it that's not what you're asking, is it? I bet what you're asking is, how did I ever get out from behind that door that you, the Rarity you wish you had, and... her, had locked." Avarice said “her” with a sudden, vicious snarl, causing Spike to almost jump back in fear.

"Her name is Tw-Tw-Twilight..." Spike stuttered.

"I KNOW! “Avarice roared, slamming a fist into the wall, a wave of rage contorting his face. Spike stood frozen in fear as Avarice stood there, chest heaving with aggression. Avarice closed his eyes and his breathing slowed as he regained his composure. "I know her name. Oh, how I know far more than just her name..."

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm not telling you. And besides, you've already used up your three questions."

"That's not fair!"

"Not fair? Not fair?! I'll tell you what's not fair!" Avarice retorted as he began to advance, causing Spike to slowly back up towards the stairs. "Stuck there, trapped inside your mind, not even knowing what's real and what's not, while you frolic about with a bunch of damned ponies!"

Spike's heel bumped against the bottom step, and he tripped back into a sitting position on the stairs. Avarice reached for him with outstretched claws...

"You didn't answer my last question!" Spike blurted out while reflexively raising his arms. Avarice halted in mid-stride.

"You're right. I didn't," Avarice said flatly, lowering his arms. "Well, in that case, you haven't coughed up any more wads of oily black phlegm, have you?"

Spike had a sudden mental image of a disgusting blob of black clinging with sticky tendrils to the edge of a drain, but the memory felt vague, distant, and hazy. "I... I don't know..." he muttered.

"Hmph. Well, considering I'm standing right here before you, I'd say you have. Hence my intimate acquaintance with Ponyville's sewers," Avarice replied.

Spike thought about it harder. That time in the shower had felt surreal, just like all those months ago, when he was in the boutique. "I felt like I was dreaming, though..." Spike said, desperate for an alternative explanation. "I had to have been dreaming, I had to! I've only seen you in my dreams! Wait..." Spike looked up and met Avarice’s gaze. "I must be dreaming right now."

Spike let out a triumphant little laugh, and stood up against his nemesis. “I’m dreaming! I’m still taking a nap in my bed, and this is all just a nightmare that will end as soon as I wake up!”

Avarice's blank expression didn't change as he lunged forward and grabbed Spike's head. Spike gave a yelp of surprise followed by a cry of pain he was picked up into the air and slammed headfirst into the cabinet at the base of the stairs. Then again. And again.

"Wha... OW! AH! Stop! OW! PLEASE STOP!" Spike begged and whimpered as his head was pulverized a fourth, then a fifth time. Everything paused just as he thought his head was about to get bashed in again, and he was dropped ungraciously to the floor.

Spike gave a long groan of pain as he put a hand to a rapidly swelling, painful bump on his cheek. He looked up through a haze of anguish to see Avarice standing above him, a somewhat bemused expression on his face.

"Feel real enough now?" Avarice chided. Then his expression changed from amusement to mild annoyance as his eyes went to something on Spike's head that had just then made itself known. A burning hotness spread across Spike's forehead just above his right eye.

"Damn..." grumbled Avarice as Spike let out another painful groan.

Avarice squatted down to get a closer look just as Spike put a hand to his brow. A large trickle of blood was running into his eye.

"It seems you're even more fragile in real life than I thought you'd be," he muttered. Avarice grabbed Spike by the wrist, hauled him to his feet, and began to drag him towards the door. Spike began to protest and try to pull away from Avarice's grip.

"Wh.. where are you taking me?"

"Ponyville General," Avarice replied without tone. "You need stitches. And a good explanation, in writing, for how you got so banged up. One that doesn’t include your alter-ego reconstituting itself into its own separate physical form and beating you to a pulp."

Spike could say no more as Avarice hauled him out the door of the library and into the cooling evening air. His mind was spinning out of control, trying to make sense of what was happening, but it could find no purchase on anything.

A trail of blood droplets marked his passage, trailing behind him as he tried to keep up with Avarice and keep pressure on the laceration. Neither was proving to be easy, as Spike’s scales were getting constantly more slippery from his own blood, and Avarice kept yanking on Spike’s arm like he was trying to dislocate his shoulder whenever he started falling behind.

Avarice looked back to Spike, and spoke with quiet, deathly seriousness. “Our deal is still in effect. You are not to say a single word to any living being that so much as indicates that you are aware of my existence.”

“What? But you’re already out of the cave!”

Avarice stopped dead in his tracks and got right in Spike’s face. “At what point in time did I say the deal was off when I escaped from your incarceration?!”

Spike cowered from the brazenness. “What am I supposed to do, just pretend like you’re not there?”

“Yeah.”

“But you’re standing right here! Am I just supposed to act like you don’t exist?”

“Easy; you’ve had acting experience before.”

“What? Wait... no, that was just narrating the play for the story of Hearth’s Warming Eve!”

Avarice snorted. “Exactly. If you can pretend that all the plot holes and inconsistencies in that asinine mess don’t exist, and convince an entire audience that they don’t exist, then pretending I’m not here should be easier than stealing candy from a foal.”

“Huh? What plot holes?”

Avarice’s eyes flicked back to Spike for a second, then he looked forward again, and grumbled. “If you have to ask, you wouldn’t understand. Your head would probably explode if I told you.”

Spike scowled. “And since when did you become concerned for my well-being?”

“I haven’t. But I’ll be damned if I tell you and make your brain go “ka-boom” when I don’t have a camera around to take a picture of your stupefied face.”

Avarice stopped in his tracks, and Spike ran straight into him. Spike wiped more blood from his eyes and looked up at his driver. Avarice was staring at the open window on the second story of a house that they had just been passing.

“Speaking of taking candy from foals,” Avarice smirked, and sniffed the air a few times. “Doesn’t smell like anyone is home.” Avarice lowered his head, and pulled Spike in closer. “Wait here. Don’t you dare move.”

Avarice let go of Spike’s wrist, bounded over to the house, and climbed the wall up to the window. He put one arm through the open window, and looked back to Spike. “Don’t. Move.”

Avarice squirmed his way through the rest of the window, banging against the sill with his wings and scratching at it with his claws. Finally he squeezed through, and his tail slipped out of sight.

You can’t be serious, Spike thought as he watched. The sounds of crashing came from inside as doors and dressers were ripped open and items were tossed about.

He is.

Spike looked around the street, flexing his sore wrist now that it was free from Avarice’s vice grip. He was alone, standing by himself in front of somepony’s house that was being ransacked by a vicious dragon while blood still dripped from a huge cut above his right eye. His mind was still reeling from everything he’d just gone through in the last ten minutes.

There’s no way this is real. This just can’t be real! He can’t really be here in reality, there’s just no way!

Another crash came from inside. Spike fidgeted, looking around the still empty street and wondering why nopony was hearing the racket. He looked around in every direction, his mind compiling every possible route off the street.

Maybe I can get away while he’s distracted. I can go find somepony to get help. This is my chance to escape!

Spike turned around, and took a step back towards the library.

“I SAID DON’T MOVE!”

Spike jumped in surprise, making a fresh new set of droplets hit the ground. More rummaging came from inside before Avarice reemerged from the window, and glided back down to Spike. He grabbed his wrist again, and started pulling him along the path once more.

“Come on,” Avarice growled.

“What, you’re not taking anything?”

“No, that was just a scouting run. There’s no point in taking anything while I’m busy dragging you around, especially if you’re getting cold feet.”

At the end of the street, a mare came from behind the corner and turned to walk down their road. Avarice yanked on Spike’s arm so hard that it felt like it was going to come out of the socket, pulling him into one of the back-alleys behind the buildings.

“Ow! What was that for?” Spike whined while Avarice still deftly lead him along through the narrow corridors.

“I’d rather not be seen until we get to where we’re going, especially not by anyone you know.”

Spike tried to worm out of Avarice’s grip, but to no avail. “Why does it matter if somepony sees you?”

Avarice stopped in the dark alley to whip around and face Spike. “Because ponies are quite fond of sticking their snot-dripping noses where they don’t belong. One of them sees me, and they’ll start asking questions. And if one of them has accomplished the incredible feat of having more working brain cells than they have hooves, than they might think that there’s a connection between a string of thefts and a new dragon showing up in town.”

Another voice echoed through the alley from behind them. “Spike? Are you still in here?” It was Golden Harvest. “I thought I saw you go down this way, and there’s a fresh trail of blood leading in here. Are you hurt?”

Avarice growled, picked Spike up, and began to run through the alley.

“Is that you Spike?” The sound of rapid hooves clopping across the ground followed them into the alley. ”Don’t run, I want to help you!”

Spike opened his mouth to call out to her, but Avarice grabbed his muzzle and force it shut.

“Not. A. Word,” he hissed.

Avarice turned, skidding across the loose gravel and whipped into a separate alley. This lead them down a few more twists and turns until it came to an abrupt dead end.

The sound of Golden’s galloping was getting closer. “Please, Spike! I just want to help!”

Avarice grumbled in annoyance. He turned to a drain pipe faceted to one of the walls of the enclosing building and vaulted up it with one arm, carrying Spike along in the other. They reached the roof, and Avarice scrambled up the thatched incline, then slid down the decline of the other side. He leaped just before hitting the edge, using their momentum to help carry them to the roof of the next building.

The two moved down the street, Avarice bounding from rooftop to rooftop as he carried his helpless progenitor along for the ride. Spike looked down at the ponies in the street below, going about their daily business, oblivious to him.

If I could get just one of them to look up...

Avarice caught Spike staring down into the street below. “Don’t even think about it.” He paused for a moment to jump to another building. “I’m not in the mood to go on a killing spree.”

Spike felt his throat go dry. “You wouldn’t...”

“Oh, I would, but at the moment, I wouldn’t enjoy spontaneous damage control as much as I would a premeditated rampage; that’s why I’m not in the mood. Still won’t keep me from ripping out a few throats if you make me have to.”

They reached the last building on the street. Avarice turned back towards the alley, and climbed over the side of the building, holding onto the edge of the roof with his free claw. Then he jumped down and landed on a dumpster. He hopped off, looked around the corner, then ran back into the street. He only moved a few paces before skidding to a halt.

A group of six fillies: Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo, Dinky, Noi, and Alula, all carrying various instruments, had just exited a music store right in front of them.

Avarice grumbled some indecipherable curses to himself, then turned his attention to Spike, and quickly hissed to him, “Get rid of them. Not a word about me.”

Then Avarice dropped Spike, and pounced into the shadows of another alley.

Spike hit the ground, grunting at his unceremonious landing. All six fillies turned to look at him. and gasped at the sight of him, beaten and bruised with half of his face covered in his own blood. All of them galloped up to him. Applebloom was the first to speak.

“Spike? Oh sweet Celestia, what happened to ya?”

“Oh, um... hi girls.” His eyes flicked down the alley where Avarice impatiently waited. “Nothing. Nothing happened at all...”

“Nothing?!” Scootaloo blurted. “You look like you got into a fight with a manticore!”

“Or a hydra!” Sweetie Belle squeaked.

“Or another dragon!” Noi added, adjusting the cello on her back. “A really big, mean dragon!”

“Oh, hey, yeah, ha ha! What a... silly... idea...” Spike started blinking with his remaining good eye rapidly, and was twisting the end of his tail with his free hand as he shied away from them. He looked back down the alley at Avarice, who intensified his leer and jerked his head in the relative direction of the filly interlopers. Spike snapped his head back to them.

Dinky stepped forward, putting the flute she had been holding in her mouth back into her saddle bag. “Spike, easy; we’re here to help you,” she said with practiced calm, trying to hide the nervous shake in her voice. “You look very seriously injured. We need to get you to the hospital!”

“Ah, funny! I was just heading there!” Spike nervously chuckled, and slowly moved to make his way past the six little foals. “So, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll just be heading off now: alone, without anydrago—ANYPONY! Without anypony... yeah, that’s... that’s what I meant...”

“You want to go to the hospital alone?” Alula interjected. “You can’t do that!”

“So what if I do?” Spike asked.

Alula craned her neck back. “Well, um... it’s just stupid! I mean, look; you’re still bleeding!”

Scootaloo stepped forward. “We can’t let you go alone, Spike!”

Spike heard a slight growl come from the alley. He looked back and saw Avarice, still glaring at him, but he had found a piece of cardboard, on the top of which he’d written, “GET RID OF THEM.”

“Why can’t you? The longer we keep standing here arguing about this, the longer I’ll keep bleeding! Do you even know where the hospital is?”

Scootaloo huffed at this. “C’ha; I’ve been there like four times already!”

Noi’s eyes went wide. “Four times?! How have you already ended up there four times?”

“Well, the first time was when I didn’t believe that Pinkie Sense was real. So when her tail started twitching, I didn’t take cover, and I got a concussion.”

Dinky sighed. “And mom already told you, she was sorry.”

“The second time was when I ripped the... what are they called...” Scootaloo put a hoof to her chin. “Ligamonks... legomints...”

“Ligaments,” Sweetie corrected.

“When I ripped the ligaments in my... startornis... satirious...”

“Sartorius.”

“What she said. When I ripped the ligaments there after that one incident with the skateboard.”

Noi look at Scootaloo with concern. “Oh my! Did you crash?”

“No...” Scootaloo looked away and mumbled, “I stepped off it wrong... But the third time was after we tried to get our shock-value stunt performer cutie marks.”

Apple Bloom chuckled. “Yeah... that one with the rocket was pretty funny, though.”

“And then the last time was thanks to some spaghetti that apparently Twilight had made, so that one wasn’t my fault.”

“Ya still ate it, Scootaloo. Ya ate it!” Apple Bloom interrupted. “I’m surprised ya ain’t dead!”

“Yeah, well I only did it because you said you’d give me ten bits if I did!” Scootaloo shot back.

“Wasn’t that when we were still in Canterlot after the wedding, though?” Sweetie inquired.

“Oh yeah, I guess it was. Everything is a little hazy in between the time I nibbled the end of that stray noodle and when the paramedics revived me.”

Dinky cut back in. “As amusing as it is to hear about all the times Scootaloo did something foolish, don’t we have a bigger issue to deal with?”

Spike heard another low growl from the alley. He looked back and cringed. Avarice was piercing him with a hateful gaze that would make a cockatrice shudder, and was tapping upon his piece of cardboard. It still had its original message: “GET RID OF THEM.” But underneath, Avarice had added, “OR ELSE...”

Avarice had used the rest of the space underneath his warning to draw a sketch of himself, holding up a sharpened pole. Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo had all been impaled through their sides upon it. Their limbs hung limp and their tongues lulled from out of their lifeless mouths, while Avarice was using his fire to roast their corpses like a shish kabob.

A hard lump clenched Spike’s dry throat, and his pupils shrunk to needle-thin slits. He whipped his head back to the fillies and tried to skirt around them. “Hey, Dinky’s right, so I think I’lljustbegoingnowkbye!”

Alula stamped down on the end of his tail with her hoof, stopping him in his tracks. “You can’t just go alone, Spike! You should let us help take you there!”

“No!” Spike protested, using his free arm to try and pull the end of his tail out from Alula’s hoof. “You’ll just slow me down! You’ve already held me back long enough as it is!”

Noi piped up. “We should at least go get a grown-up!”

Dinky nodded in agreement. “I could go get my mom...”

“NO!” the other five fillies all blurted in panicked unison.

Noi’s proposition had given Spike an idea. “I know what you could do; go get Twilight!”

Spike heard a smack come from the alley, so he stole another glance in that direction. Avarice’s palm had collided with his forehead and was digging into his own face as he dragged his claws down while his teeth were bared in frustration.

Sweetie Belle tilted her head at Spike. “Wait, you mean to say that Twilight wasn’t around when this happened?”

Spike rolled his good eye. “Do you think that if Twilight hadn’t left me alone at the library that she would have made me walk to the hospital myself instead of taking me? Or that she’d let me get dragged around by—”

A snarl from the alley cut him off by surprise, making him jump. Spike chanced another peek at Avarice. He was glaring at him with a look ready to kill and was exhaling fire through his nostrils, igniting the cardboard in his claws.

Apple Bloom spoke up. “So if Twilight ain’t at the library, where is she?”

“Probably still at the spa,” Spike replied. “If she’s not still there, then she’s probably at the cafe, or the bookstore... or any of the other places she likes to go when she wants to leave me behind to take care of everything...”

Apple Bloom nodded. “Alright then, we should split up; us crusaders can check the spa an’ the library just in case Twilight got back while we were here yappin’!”

“Noi, Alula, and I can investigate the cafe and the bookstore. Come on,” Dinky motioned to her two compatriots, “to Barns and Stable!”

“We’ll all meet up at the clubhouse in half an hour! Come on girls; we gotta go find Twilight!”

Spike watched the six fillies gallop down the street, waiting for them to go their separate paths. As soon as they all rounded the corner, he turned to go on his way again, only to find Avarice’s axe-like snout in his face and a powerful set of claws around his throat.

“Are you TRYING to get caught?! You almost screwed everything up SEVEN TIMES in the last THREE MINUTES! Do I have to beat it into your thick skull how to handle situations like this, or do I have to write it out for you with the blood of one of your friends?”

Spike tried desperately to pry the strangulating hold off from his throat, but to no avail.

“You see that dumpster down there?” Avarice motioned his head in the direction of the alley he had just been hiding in. “I had half a mind to hurl it into their faces while you took your sweet time squabbling with them. Then that useless dodo could have added a fifth visit to an infirmary to her list; in a body bag, along with the pulverized remains of her friends and associates. Is that what you want?”

A surge of adrenaline coursed through Spike, and he pried enough space between Avarice’s fingers and his neck to gasp for air. “NO! I’m sorry! You never said how to make them go away, but they’re gone now! Just please, let go! I’m sorry!”

Avarice sneered at Spike one last time, then let go. Spike fell back, rubbing his throat and gasping for air to catch his breath again. But before he could, Avarice grabbed Spike by the wrist and started dragging him down another alley.

“Come on; thanks to you and those six wastes of equine tissue, we’ve got even less time before she gets involved and starts sticking her nose in places it doesn’t belong again.”

Spike looked back up at Avarice as he struggled to keep up. “Wait; what do you mean by “again?””

Avarice blinked once. “That impertinent mare is overly-curious and intrusive to the point of recklessness. The moment she encounters you again, she’s going to start asking questions. And if that last conversation you just had is any indication, you’re not going to be able to hold this little secret of ours very well.

“Actually...” Avarice adopted a thoughtful look, stopped and turned to face Spike again. “Here’s a little piece of advice; if you’re ever in danger of slipping up when Twilight is trying to dig an answer out of you, just think of the end to that dream you had four days ago.”

The mention of “that dream“ summoned horrible images from Spike’s memory, and he felt himself go even colder. “No... no, please!”

Avarice responded with a wry expression that was somewhere between a grin and a grimace. “Well, that’s up to you whether or not I kill her, isn’t it? So long as you don’t say anything about me to anyone, especially to her, I promise that won’t lay a claw on her. But if you can’t keep quiet, she’s toast, except it’ll be for real this time. You can count on that; I’m a dragon of my word.”

Avarice turned around and started pulling Spike along again. “Come on; we’re almost there, and believe it or not, I’d rather that you didn’t bleed out on me. That would be counter-productive.”

Spike’s expression hardened. “Why? You don’t care about me, or anypony else but yourself.”

Avarice smirked. “You’re right, I don’t. But I still have to obtain a camera and tell you the story of Hearth’s Warming Day, don’t I?”

Avarice stopped at the building at the end of the alley, and looked around the corner. “Our destination is right around the corner. Coast is clear... come on.”

Just like that, Avarice bolted around the corner, dragging Spike along almost faster than his little legs could carry him. The were at the hospital in seconds. Avarice pressed himself up against the wall next to the glass doors and took a quick peek around the corner and through the door.

“Good, the receptionists aren’t anyone you know. Now go on; just like we rehearsed.”

“Hey, wait, we didn’t rehearse anythi—”

Spike didn’t get a chance to finish before Avarice opened the door, pulled Spike around, and kicked him in the rear into the building.

Spike stumbled through the open doors and into the sterile white waiting room. He almost slipped and fell from skidding across the shiny, polished linoleum and from stepping on more of his blood splatter as he tried to regain his balance.

There came a gasp from behind the front desk, and then a rush of hooves galloped up to meet him. “Oh, dearest Celestia! Hello? Can you hear me? What happened to you?”

Spike looked part-way up at the earth pony mare with a powder blue coat, seafoam mane, and pink eyes pouring with concern.

“Yeah, I can hear you just fine,” Spike muttered. “I… um… well, I got hurt.”

The nurse turned to look back at her associate, who was still at the desk, watching the scene with rapt worry.

“Who do we have that’s available at the moment?” the blue mare asked.

“I think Dr. Mend is open,” the other nurse replied, heading off for another room. “I’ll tell him to meet you two in primary patient care!” And then she rushed off, leaving the two alone.

The blue mare returned her attention to Spike. “Okay, don’t worry. Help is on the way,” she said, offering him as much comfort as she could lend with her soothing voice. “My name is Nurse Tenderheart. What’s yours?”

“Spike,” he mumbled back.

“May I look at your injury, Spike?”

Spike hesitated at first, then slowly pulled his hand away from the gash above his eye. He winced a little as the cool air of the waiting room made contact with the cut, stinging the exposed flesh. Blood still seeped from the wound, mingling with the rest of the blood that had already gotten smeared over half of his face like war paint.

Tenderheart gasped once more. “Oh dear, you’re still bleeding! Come on,” she motioned towards a hallway leading out of the room, “I’ll take you to patient care.”

Nurse Tenderheart rushed back behind the front desk and procured a wheelchair and an ice pack sealed in sterilized gauze. She helped Spike up into the seat, gave him the ice pack to cover his cut, and began to transport him down the halls. Tenderheart continued her patient evaluation along the way.

“You look like a very young dragon. Do you live alone?”

“No, I live at the Golden Oaks library with Twilight Sparkle,” Spike divulged with dour tonality. Once again, his overwhelmed thoughts turned inward. This… this just can’t be real. I’m being pushed around a hospital to get a cut over my eye sewn shut because something evil from my mind bashed my face open after it somehow found its way into real life! This just CAN’T be real!

“Spike? Are you still with me?”

“Wha—oh… Yeah, I’m still here. What?”

“I was just saying that I wish we could have met under better circumstances is all. Anyway, I was asking if Twilight was present when this happened. This did occur at home, yes?”

“Yeah, it did,” Spike answered. Then he slumped over in his chair, and grumbled, “But Twilight wasn’t around when it happened.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Did you come all the way here by yourself, then?”

“Um...” Spike twisted in his seat, checking every visible inch of the hallway in front of them, behind them, to each side, and even the ceiling for good measure. They were completely alone. He swiveled in his seat, trying to make eye contact with Tenderheart.

“Look, I know we just met, but there’s something that I just need to tell somepony. I—AH!“

Just as Spike had begun to confess, they had passed a window, and out on the corner of his unobscured eye, he saw the evil formerly endogenous of his mind.

Spike recoiled from fright and stared in terror. Fear gripped his throat too tightly for him to speak. Avarice glowered at him and snorted fire from his nostrils, leaving little scorch-marks on the window. Then just as suddenly as he appeared, he whisked away, leaving the view of the window.

“Spike? Spike!” Tenderheart waved a hoof in front of his terrified face. “What’s wrong?” She looked out the window that just seconds ago had shown Spike’s nemesis. “Did you see something?”

A subdued Spike slumped back into his seat. “No...”

“Okay… you were about to say something to me, then?”

“No. Never mind, it was nothing.”

Nurse Tenderheart took in the situation with several grains of bitter salt. She moved around from the back of the wheelchair to Spike’s side to converse with him face to face. “Spike… did somepony do this to you?”

Spike blinked rapidly a few times, and his gaze darted in another direction for a moment. But then he look right back at Tenderheart, straight and true. “No. Nopony did this.”

“Okay, then can you tell me what happened?”

The machines in his mind started spinning, but he maintained eye contact. “I’ll… uh… tell you when I can… remember.”

Tenderheart craned her neck back, and raised an eyebrow at him. “You don’t remember?”

“I… don’t. But I’m pretty sure I hit my head pretty hard. How else could, you know...” he made a small motion towards his injury with the hand holding the ice pack, “this, have happened?”

Tenderheart’s dubious look dissipated, but only just. “Well, okay then.” She resumed running him down the hallway, but the questions were less numerous and inquisitive from there.

They arrived at patient care shortly after. Tenderheart set him down on one of the beds in the otherwise unoccupied room, then she disappeared for a moment and returned with several medicinal items. She gently applied an antihemorrhagic styptic to the open wound on his brow. It stung an awful lot, but at least it stopped the bleeding. Then she cleaned the blood from the wound and his scales with a stockpile of cotton balls and towelettes that had been moistened with rubbing alcohol, which to his immense discontent, stung even worse than the aluminum sulfide of the styptic did.

“I’ll go see if Nurse Sweetheart has managed to get a hold of Dr. Mend. Will you be alright on your own for a moment?”

Spike weighed his options internally. Company that I can’t talk to, or loneliness without the unsettling questions and awkward silence? Finally, he muttered, “Yeah, I’ll be fine.”

She gave him a reassuring smile. “I’ll be right back. Try not to disturb your injury, okay?”

With that, Tenderheart took the bloodied ice pack, turned, and left the room. She closed the door behind her and leaving Spike alone with his troubled thoughts.

There’s no way this is real… this can’t be real… this is… this is like the time Rainbow ended up in here with a broken wing. He exhaled a long, impoverished sigh. Maybe there’s someway I could write somepony a letter in secret about this… I still just can’t believe this is real: that he is real...

There came a sound of sharp tapping from the window. Spike jumped, turned to look, and let out another small scream.

Avarice had returned with a cruel, knowing smirk. He slid open the window and let himself part way inside, taking up a seat on the window sill. He slouched over with his head resting on the frame, legs dangling over the sides, and his arms crossed over his chest. The end of his tail twitched like a cat sunbathing on its favorite couch.

“Spike, I’m disappointed with you.”

Spike’s expression hardened. “There’s a big surprise,” he grumbled. “Why did you follow me in here? I thought you didn’t want to be seen.”

“And as you’re too stupid to have guessed from the lack panicked mares screaming “Oh my Celestia, it’s a dragon,” I’ve thus far managed to remain inconspicuous. No thanks to you.”

Spike squirmed under Avarice’s leer. “Aren’t you worried that somepony is going to walk in?”

Avarice smirked again. “I’ve got keen enough hearing that with enough attentiveness, I could detect a squirrel walking down the end of the hall. And that’s not even taking into account my predatorial sense of smell. There’s no way some mere pony could sneak up on me. So with superior senses like mine, I’m more than capable of picking up on any coming interlopers… or when one bad little dragon is about to break his promise...”

Spike shied away, averting his direct gaze. “You couldn’t have known exactly what I was about to say...”

“Oh?” Avarice left his seat on the sill and strode over to where Spike sat on the bed. The tiny dragon shriveled underneath the towering presence of his enemy. “So what were you about to say to Nurse Tenderheart then?”

Spike tried to form words: tried to think of any little white lie to cover his tracks, but he could hardly even breathe properly with Avarice’s stare impaling him like that, making him feel weak and transparent. All he could do was blink rapidly.

Avarice chuckled with a dark undertone. “That’s what I thought.” He crossed his arms again and leaned back against the wall.

Spike broke eye contact with Avarice, and instead opted to fiddle with the masses of bunch-up bedsheets he was clutching in his claws. “Geez, what are you trying to pass yourself off as? Some kind of mind-reader?”

“No, not at all,” Avarice answered, nonchalant. “You’re just too easy to predict is all. And for that matter,” Avarice gently whapped Spike on the uninjured side of his head, making him flinch. “I’d rather read a self-insert, gratuitous romance fiction that some monkey wrote than have to cypher through your vapid thoughts again. At least then, I could burn the parchment and the writer afterwards, then flush the ashes away, like what you’re supposed to do with used toilet paper.” Avarice grimaced. “I’ve already spent far too long digging through whatever vacant notions that you call cognition as it is.”

Avarice removed himself from his place on the wall, and looked down at Spike again. “Tell me, do you like needles?”

Spike felt his scales go clammy. “Not really.”

Avarice smirked at him, derisive. “Oh well,” he said and walked away, pulling a curtain in between his bed and the window shut.

“Don’t get any funny ideas,” Avarice added with an edge.

Spike heard him sit back down on the window sill again. For a moment he sat in uncomfortable silence, then a new sound met his ears: a cantering of hooves clopping down the hallway towards his room.

The door handle jerked downward in one rapid motion, and the door swung open to reveal a lithe, earth pony stallion, with Nurse Tenderheart close behind. The stallion wore a white overcoat, and had pale, dusty red fur with a very short cut, dull, rusty mane. His ears had an unnatural curve to them, almost like little horns, and his dark eyes never rested on any one object for more than a fraction of a second.

“Patient number 005446: Name: Spike. Species: dragon. Subspecies: unknown. Currently residing with one unicorn mare, Twilight Sparkle, yes?” His speech was extremely rapid, and the tone of his voice carried an abnormally high pitch.

“Uh… yeah, that’s me.”

“Ah, yes. I am Doctor Paroxysmal Mending; you may call me Dr. Mend,” he said as quickly as ever, giving a little customary bow of his head.

He strode forward, looking back and forth between Spike and a clipboard for a moment before setting the clipboard upon the bedside table and moving in closer to Spike, peering intently at his wounds.

“Patient exhibits several minor to moderate contusions. Doesn’t appear too serious; a minor cryotherapeutic application should be all that is required.” He turned to Tenderheart. “Nurse; a fresh ice pack please.”

“Right away, doctor,” she said, and trotted away.

Dr. Mend turned back to Spike, and inspected the deep gash across his forehead.

“Patient is contending with a laceration above the right oculus. Hmm, much more severe. I also see you have suffered a severance of several osteodermic plates from the epidermal layer.”

“Wait; my what?”

“A few scales were torn out of your skin.”

“Oh, right.”

Mend jumped right back into doctorate mode. “Diagnosis: problematic, but perfectly treatable. The wound has been cleaned and treated, but will need stitches. I’d say, hmm… no more than seven. Then a hermetic application of bandages over the afflicted area, all procedures will be complete, and you’ll be ready to go. Full recovery can be expected in about two weeks.”

Spike gulped. “It won’t hurt, will it?”

“Oh, no no no no,” Mend rapid-fire answered as he pulled his own medicinal sewing kit from his pocket. “Some minor discomfort, maybe, but these are special needles, exclusively crafted for patient care. It’ll hurt less than getting poked by a sewing needle.”

Mend procured a pre-threaded needle from his pack. “This should take no more than ten minutes: nine and a half, if all goes perfectly. Plus I’m a professional. Back at the university, I used to stitch up injured, frantic hummingbirds for practice.”

Spike just stared at Mend for a moment. “And… how, exactly, do you stitch up hummingbirds?”

Mend looked Spike straight in the eye, and answered without an ounce of disingenuous seriousness. “Carefully.”

At that, Mend got to work. Spike winced as the first needle punctured his skin and dug its tiny path through his flesh, lending itself to a most uncomfortable sensation, but Mend’s proclamations of his own abilities were not exaggerated. Each movement was quick, deliberate, and precise, even considering the stallion’s twitchy, almost spasmodic jerkiness.

The first stitch had been sewn and tied in just over a minute. Even considering his dislike for being stabbed by little pieces of metal, he found the unpleasantness of the situation was far more due to the alien sensations than actual physical distress. Mostly undisrupted by pain, his sullen thoughts returned to their trails of bleak gloom.

I guess… this is actually real… he thought, with no definite level of despair. No dream has ever felt this real.

Well, no dream, except for… that dream...

He could feel fractures in his heart ripping open again as he thought back to that dream, where he had been left alone in a dark cave, weeping beyond control, and holding the dead body of his dearest friend.

The scrape of claws across tile came from the other side of the curtain.

Fire and indignant rage began to burn in his beaten heart, knowing the Twilight in his dreams had been murdered. By him.

But now, it was only his word, or lack of divulging it, that was keeping his dearest friend alive.

He forcibly ejected himself from mulling over his dour situation; he just couldn’t take any more of it at the moment.

Dr. Mend was completely engrossed in his own little world, expertly weaving his needle and thread through muscle and skin with the focus of a laser as he hummed some nameless, wordless tune to himself.

Spike heard movement from the window. And to his immense surprise, Avarice spoke.

“He fell down some stairs.”

Mend paused halfway through tying the last stitch. “Hm? Sorry, did you say something?”

Spike’s expression of despondence grew. He could only imagine Avarice sitting in the window sill with that arrogant smirk on his face, just waiting, daring Spike to say something.

Spike exhaled in dejected submission.

“I fell down some stairs.”

“Oh. I shall add that to the files then,” he said as he finished the knot. Mend then took out a bandage, wrapped it around Spike’s forehead, then took a stopwatch out of his pocket and halted it’s ticking. “Nine minutes and forty-three seconds. Not bad. Good, even. Hm, yes; very good in fact. How do you feel?”

Spike just lay there, staring up at the ceiling, limp with the apathy of a prisoner.

“Peachy. My life is just peachy.”

Dr. Mend pursed his lips ever so slightly at this. “Um… okay then.” He pointed a hoof towards the door. “I will go finalize my reports, then. A nurse will be by shortly to see that you are comfortable until your legal guardian can be contacted to officially discharge you. Don’t be afraid to call should you need further care. Farewell, Spike.”

With that, Dr. Paroxysmal Mending left the room, leaving Spike to loneliness once more.

Spike sat up in his bed, pulled his knees to his chest, curled his tail around his legs, then crossed his arms and rested his head upon them. He couldn’t do anything but stare at whatever happened to be in front of him. His eyes began to blur with tears. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t think, and he couldn’t feel anything but sorrow.

The curtains next to the bed were suddenly ripped back. He looked up at Avarice with fear and angst, watching his every move in alarm with the premonition that another assault was imminent. Avarice merely looked down upon him with stern, hostile pensiveness. The two just stared at each other for a prolonged time, without any words passing between them.

Avarice just tilted his head and smirked at Spike with a soft, dark chortle. Then he turned around, walked over to the window, and crawled through it to the outside. He started climbing up the building, and shut the window with the end of his tail.

Spike continued to stare out the window, with his thoughts adrift in anxiety and his heart overwhelmed by a myriad of conflicting emotions. However long he looked through the glass portal, he didn’t know. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t going to change anything.

The door behind him slammed open.

“Spike?!”

His eyes shot wide and his heart jolted from the outburst. He whipped his head around to look at his latest visitor.

Twilight Sparkle stood upon the threshold of the hospital room door. Her face was a disaster of fear, worry, panic, and regret. She remained rooted in place for several passing seconds: unblinking, unmoving, as if Spike was some illusion that might dissolve if she moved to soon.

The moment passed, and he still remained fixed in reality.

“SPIKE!”

Twilight flung herself across the room, plowing into Spike and wrapping her hooves around him with such force that it almost knocked the wind out of him and tackled him out of the bed.

“Spike, I’m so sorry! I was so worried; if only I had known...” Twilight was hugging him so tightly that he could feel each one of her shuddering, trembling breaths. “I’m sorry; how could I have been so careless? I should have let you come with us! I should have never left you in the library alone!”

Spike’s expression hardened. He unceremoniously draped an arm over Twilight’s neck, not quite returning her hug. “That’s right, you shouldn’t have...” The stone in his throat was making it hard for him to speak.

Twilight’s fervent grip around Spike tightened as the first of her tears dripped onto his shoulder. “I’m so sorry… I don’t know what I’d do without you. Spike… I’m so sorry...”

Spike felt his heart become burdened by lead weights, deepening his frown as his feelings were dragged down with it. He couldn’t form words. His body began to tremble. Something in that simple, honestly contrite gesture tore down every defense he’d mounted against his pent-up anxiety and buried him underneath the wreckage. And from under what was to be his inglorious tomb, only one thought still resonated inside his overwhelmed mind:

This is real.

Spike latched onto Twilight, gripping her around the neck with a tight, desperate hug of his own, and let himself cry in their embrace.

Yet there had never been a time when he had held Twilight so close but felt less comforted by the gesture. Because he knew ultimately, it didn’t matter. He knew this wouldn’t change a single thing.

He knew he still hadn’t fully reconnected with Twilight. He knew that he couldn’t be completely honest and open with her anymore. He knew that he now had a terrible weight to bear, and that he would carry it alone. He knew it could possibly drive him to be alone, forever. And Spike knew it would have to stay that way… because he was still out there.

All he could do was use this moment to hold onto his dear Twilight as tightly as he could, and cry until he had run out of tears.

- - - - - -

Month five, day twenty eight, entry four hundred and ninety.

The sun had gone down some time ago. Twilight hadn’t been able to get Spike to talk very much; all he would say when she had asked him what happened was that he had fallen down the stairs. Since then, he had remained almost hauntingly quiet for the entire time that she had taken him upstairs to rest, and stayed with him until he fell asleep. Knowing that she needed to complete Dreamscape now more than ever, she spent her time for research, development, and documentation.

I took me long enough, but I think I managed to write a new line of code that subverts the death glitch.

Finally.

More importantly, I managed to write the new segment of code and integrate it into the rest of the system in a fashion that will allow it to function properly without adversely interfering with every other line in the matrix, thus rendering the Dreamscape Spell an inoperable mess.

Initial checks of the arcane writ look promising, but considering the significance of this new revision, I think I’d feel more comfortable after re-checking it a few more times...

The aura surrounding the quill sputtered and died, and the quill fell upon the desk with a gentle tap as Twilight put her hooves to her forehead, wincing in pain through ragged breathing.

And I would check it now, if I could concentrate without this cursed pain in my sides!

Ever since Twilight had returned from Ponyville General Hospital with a stitched-up Spike, her sides had been killing her. She had even taken another double dose of her pain relievers, exceeding the maximum dosage per day, but it had done little to alleviate her tourments. Her own body was turning against her, and it wasn’t happy that she was resisting, or that she had managed to go for a while earlier in the mourning unafflicted, and now that lost time had been avenged sevenfold.

Some spiteful part of her mind reasoned that she would rather be giving birth to a foal right now. At least that agony would be guaranteed to end eventually, and her suffering would be rewarded with a precious foal to love, nurture, and cherish. This was just suffering for the sake of relentless, unmitigated suffering, and she couldn’t for the life of her figure out why.

Twilight squeezed her eyes shut and gritted her teeth. Her torment reached a fever pitch, and she had to take it back; now she knew why, because her mind could identify every single cell as it screamed in pain.

She could feel it in her bones, feeling like wood screws were being drilled into every single one: from the humerus, to the ulna and the radius, down to every single metacarpal. She could feel every fiber and ligament screaming in agony, from her biceps and triceps to anywhere that there was flesh. She could feel each micrometer in its torment, down to every last feather...

Twilight could take it no more. In her final gesture of indignant intolerance, she rapted her forehooves violently upon the desk, stood up on her hind legs, and in the middle of her quiet and placid library, she screamed:

“WHY DO MY WINGS HURT SO MUCH?!”

She stood there for a moment in the silence, her own words still ringing in her ears. Slowly, it dawned on her, and her mouth drew open in horror.

“I... don’t have wings...”

But I did in...

A tuba blasted from behind her.

“AAAAAAAH!” Twilight screamed in shock.

Scootaloo, still harnessing her rented tuba, recoiled from the outburst, then shied away, abashed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to surprise you! It’s just... okay, I had rented the last Daring Do book because I wanted to finish it before the new one comes out, and I didn’t realize I still had it until we were halfway through rehearsals, so I galloped all the way here because I didn’t want to get a late fee, because I’m short on bits, because my parents docked my allowance over the mud bath incident, but I didn’t want to leave my tuba behind because, well,” the little filly chuckled, “this thing is fun!”

She took a deep breath, put the mouthpiece to her lips, and blew again.

Scootaloo’s little wings flapped in elation from the epic note. “See? This thing is a blast!” Her ears dropped down a little. “Unfortunately, that’s the only thing I know how to do with this thing... but what if you could make an entire soundtrack around that... man, that’d be awesome!” Her wings started buzzing again.

Twilight caught herself staring at Scootaloo’s wings, watching each flap, reciting every single movement of muscle and bone, recounting every neural command firing to orchestrate it...

“Say, Scootaloo; what would you say I waved the late fee if you assisted me in a little experiment?”

“Well, okay, I guess. What did you have in mi—whoa, hey!” Scootaloo didn’t even get a chance to finish before Twilight had taken her by the hoof and whisked her downstairs into the basement lab, strapped the neural transmission helmet onto her head, slapped some receptory sensor patches onto her wings, and turned on the machine.

“Wha-what are you doing?” Scootaloo nervously asked.

“A science experiment,” Twilight hurriedly answered as she zipped around the laboratory, making sure everything was in order.

“Uh... what for?”

“For science!” Twilight blurted, loading a new roll of paper into the machine.

“O-okay, but... what am I supposed to do?” Scootaloo shifted away from Twilight.

“Simple,” Twilight said, knocking on the machine with a hoof for good measure before getting right back up in Scootaloo’s personal space. “Just flap your wings for me okay?”

“O-okay...” Scootaloo responded, shutting her eyes as she started to flap her little wings.

Twilight whipped back and forth between watching the little pegasus to the needles jump and arc upon the graphs, oscillating in time to each wing beat.

The waves stopped for a second, and Twilight snapped back to Scootaloo.

“Keep flapping!”

“Okay, I’m sorry!” Scootaloo kept on flapping.

Twilight circled around behind Scootaloo, and activated her magic. Her horn crackled with energy as electricity danced around it. “Okay, now this might hurt a little bit...”

“Wait, you didn’t say anything abo—OOOOOOWWWW!” Scootaloo howled in pain as Twilight electrocuted her wings with a hundred volts of low ampere electricity.

“WHAT WAS THAT FOR?!”

“For science,” Twilight said, rushing back to the machine.

Scootaloo grimaced. “Am I done here?”

Twilight looked over the sheets for a moment. “Yeah, you’re done. Thanks.”

Scootaloo pulled the helmet and patches off as soon as the words left Twilight’s mouth. “Good,” she sneered, glaring at Twilight. “I’d say you owe me now.”

“Sure; there are some donuts in the fridge. Help yourself,” Twilight said without even looking at Scootaloo as she switched the machine to standby and hurriedly strapped the helmet to her own head.

Scootaloo’s wings jumped open. “Donuts? Awesome!”

Twilight didn’t even reply. She was just holding one of the patches with her magic, staring at it with an expression of dread upon her face.

“Um, see ya’ later, I guess...” the little filly said.

“What? Oh, sure. Bye.”

Scootaloo peered quizzically at the inscrutable unicorn for a moment, slowly backing away until she reached the stairs. Then she turned tail and galloped away, leaving Twilight alone in the labs.

Twilight grimaced at the harmless receptor patch. Okay, nothing to it but to execute the function...

Twilight slowly moved the patches over her sides, and cried out in pain as they gently pressed up against her and stuck to her fur.

Okay, I can do this... I can do this... she attempted to spur herself as she switched on the machine again.

She took a few quick, deep breaths, shut her eyes tight, focused her efforts on commands her brain hadn’t executed in days, and started imagining she was flapping a set of wings.

Pins. Needles. Guns. Razors. Knives. Ropes. Daggers. Chains. Rocks. Lasers. Acid. Torment. Agony. Pain. Suffering. It drilled throughout her and penetrated her like she’d been gored by a furious minotaur. Still, she forced her brain to continue until she could take it no more. With one last push of exertion, she screamed out until her teeth were left with a tingling feeling in them.

Finally she stopped, and she almost fell to her face from the trembling in her legs. Her whole body shook, and her sides burned from the red-hot maces still stuck to them. She took a moment to catch her breath, then when she could walk with the confidence of not falling from her own physical tremors, she shut off the machine and compared the graphs side by side.

Admittedly, the experiment was a sloppy one, but the results told her all she needed to know: everything that she already knew. The separate lines on Scootaloo’s graph showed corresponding waves between the neural commands in the brain and the electrical pulses traveling along the nerve endings in her wings, with dramatic spikes in response to Twilight zapping her with enough volts to stun a cow.

And then there were her charts, with the exact same kinds of readings as Scootaloo’s had when Twilight had inflicted pain upon the orange pegasi’s wings.

The light around Twilight’s horn died, and she left the sheets of paper fall to the ground as she stared off into space, dumbfounded. Eventually, she pulled her hooves off of the ground, and made her slow ascent up the stairs.

Her upended mind reeled, flashing through her memories as she traced the idea back to its inception.

Staring at the the endless plain after she had just created the sun, bringing light to a dark world, and realizing the infinite void wasn’t just an empty wasteland; it was a blank canvas. She could do anything. The power of creation itself was in her hooves.

Looking out the window of her bathroom at the shining moon in its magnificent night after she had spent all day trying to invent a new means of transportation around her city. She felt weary, partially from the tedious task of having to raise both the sun and moon wearing on her. In that moment she appreciated Celestia and Luna that much more, now that she had to perform their duties. And that’s when it hit her.

Wings...

That one simple idea took hold in her mind, and she could not let it go.

I’m going to be just like Celestia!

Days of research rushing by in seconds, until she stood in front of the mirror in her laboratory, working one of the most complicated pieces of magic she’d ever orchestrated upon herself. Her flesh writhed and buckled, twisted and turned, elongated and grew until finally, blessedly, the spell came to a close, and she looked back at herself in the mirror. She was no longer a unicorn; she was more.

Looking Rainbow in the eyes, and asking, “What’s flying like, Dash?”

Flipping through one of her psychology books, seeking answers to help Spike. Remembering seeing it as she looked through the glossary for ‘psychological disorders’, but thinking little of it at the time: phantom limb syndrome.

Avarice in her dream, pinning her to the ground, and hissing in her ear:

“You’re not supposed to have these.”

Her mind was causing her pain because it couldn’t find its own wings.

Wings she had given herself in another realm because of one simple idea.

An idea for which she was the sole contributor to its inception.

Twilight had made her way back up the stairs by now, still in a daze. Her hooves slowly shuffled across the wooden floor, carrying her back to her desk. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t even know what to think. She wasn’t prepared for this. She could have never prepared for this.

After some deliberation, she set the last entry that she had been writing aside, procured a new sheet of paper, dipped her quill back into the inkwell, and began to write.

Month five, day twenty eight, entry four hundred and ninety-one.

This... changes everything.

The most radical notion of them all.

Inception.

“Twilight?”

The unicorn yelped in surprise, whipping her head back around to Spike, standing at the top of the stairs with bandages still over his eye.

“I thought I heard screaming a few moments ago. Is... everything alright?”

Twilight paused, looking back and forth between Spike and the paper. No, it’s not alright; my brain is in a state of disarray because it subconsciously thinks I’m supposed to have wings!

“No, everything’s fine. It’s just...”

She couldn’t find the words to finish her sentence. She still couldn’t get over the fact she had accidentally revised her own mind to make it think that she was supposed to have wings.

“I’m going to go take a shower, okay?” she said, climbing the stairs and skirting her way past him. “Try to get enough rest, Spike. I don’t want anything else to happen to you.”

“Sure,” Spike muttered.

He watched Twilight as she slinked into the bathroom and shut the door behind her, leaving him alone in the hall. He exhaled in a half sigh, half grumble, and lugged his still sore self back into his little bed as the sounds of active plumbing coming from the bathroom kicked in.

Spike lay there, listening to the rain begin to patter down upon the tree. He usually found the sound of rainfall relaxing, but tonight, it brought him no solace. He twisted and turned in his bed for a good half hour, fidgeting in unease and anxiety, just like he had been ever since Twilight brought him back home.

His mind wandered down dark roads of contemplation in it’s woe. With immeasurable gloom, he wondered if he could still even call his abode “home,” because it sure didn’t feel like home anymore.

Not with him around.

Spike sat up in his bed, hunched over, staring off into nothing. The rain was coming down harder now. He usually liked the rain. Now it just seemed like even the clouds were mourning for him.

Spike raised his head to stare at the bedroom door. His thoughts drifted to Twilight, sitting in the bathroom: alone, unguarded, and vulnerable.

Maybe I should just go tell her now, while we’re both alone and we have some place to talk in private. He wouldn’t know...

From outside, Spike heard a whoosh, then a light thud as something heavy landed in the branches, followed by the scraping sound of claws digging into bark and crawling across the trunk.

Instantly, Spike dispelled his previous thought.

He let out a pined, whimpering sigh. Spike pulled himself out of bed, dragged his feet across the bedroom floor, opened the door, and left the bedroom.

His descent down the stairs was an especially cautious one. He clung to the railing and never moved down a step without planting both feet on the one below first. He kept his gaze pointed at the floor, as he’d otherwise have to look at the destroyed cabinet at the base of the stairs, and he didn’t feel like doing that right now.

Spike was still staring at the floor went he got to the kitchen. He didn’t lift his head up until he’d gotten to the refrigerator and morosely pulled the door open.

He stopped, puzzled. There was a wide open space where the box of donuts should have been. He looked over every individual shelf in the fridge, looking for his sought-after comfort food, but to no avail.

“Looking for these?”

Spike’s grip on the door handle tightened until his claws dug into his palm. He drew in a breath of air and held it for a moment. When he exhaled, it shuddered with all his pent-up trepidation and indignation. Slowly, he turned to look behind him.

Avarice sat on the countertop, slouched over to an obscene degree, holding the box of donuts while he munched on a caramel glaze. His scales had a slight sheen to them in the low light from the rainwater that still clung to him.

Spike was shaking in place, gripping the handle so tightly it was in danger of snapping. “You shouldn’t have those.”

“Really now?” Avarice tossed a whole other donut into his gaping, toothy maw. “I didn’t see them in your guarded cave of material possessions that you’re only supposed to leave to get more stuff... in which case...”

Avarice slid off the countertop and walked past Spike through the kitchen door. Spike followed him out into the main room.

“Why couldn’t you have just gone away and left me alone?”

Avarice turned around and sat down on the table, being tall enough to make a bench out of it.

“Two reasons. The first is that it’s warm and dry in here, it’s raining outside, and I hate it when it rains in small towns. It drives all those pony flea-bags inside, and obviously it’s harder to ransack a house when it’s currently occupied.”

Avarice took a moment to lick the sugary residue off of his claw. His tongue wrapped around his fingers like a snake coiling around the branches of a tree, then it snapped back into his mouth.

“The second reason is I need to stick around to make sure that you’re good on your end of our bargain and you don’t say a word about me. I don’t even want you to think about saying a word to anyone... especially to Twilight.” Avarice flexed his powerful, razor-sharp claws. “You haven’t been thinking about breaking our deal and talking to her about me, have you?”

Spike blinked a few times, then hung his head. “No...” he mumbled.

“Good.” Avarice rummaged through the box for a second. “Catch.”

Spike looked up and had just enough time to catch the apple fritter Avarice tossed his way. He looked down at it, inspecting it with detached interest as he turned it over in his claws. He didn’t feel like eating now.

His stomach disagreed with his sentiment, letting out a grumble of protest. Spike sat down on the floor, and took a small, sullen bite from his food.

“Now, if we were in Canterlot when it’s raining this hard, that be a whole other story.”

Spike hard-swallowed the chewed lump of pastry. “Why’s that?” he muttered.

“Downpours at night like this given a fantastic environmental advantage for infiltrating high-security strongholds... like the Canterlot palace.”

Spike whipped his head up to stare shock at Avarice, who continued regardless of his reaction.

“You’d have cloud cover for increased darkness, decreased visibility thanks to the sheets of rain, the pounding from thousands of water droplets smashing onto every exposed surface to muffle any noises you might make, and most of the guards will be sticking to lighted, covered areas. Sure, there might be a few spotters lurking in the shadows, and there are also the teams of pegasi in the clouds to consider, but when you’ve got eyes that are built to see crystal clear even in a dark cave, you’ll be able to spot them long before they’ll even suspect you’re there.”

Avarice blinked with his vertical set of under eyelids, then parted his lips with a smirk, revealing those vicious rows of fangs. “And with all those veils and all that patter to disguise your sounds, you can easily eliminate a squad if you have to, and you’ll have plenty of shadows to hide the bodies.”

Spike stood up, backing away from Avarice with a look of horror on his face. “You’re crazy!”

“‘Ambitious’ is the proper word; learn some better vocabulary.” Avarice tilted his head to the side. “Besides, I thought you were fond of that shadow operative, Tom Prancy’s Splinter Colt type of material.”

“Yeah, but that’s because they’re the good guys!” Spike shot back.

Whatever enjoyment Avarice wore on his countenance vanished in an instant. “They’re the “good guys?”” he spat.

Avarice set the box aside and slide of the table, advancing towards Spike on all fours. His claws dug into the hardwood floor with every pace. Spike backed away as Avarice spoke.

“You indoctrinated little lizard... the titles of “good guys” and “bad guys” as you so boorishly refer to them are nothing more than labels used by every victor in history to justify themselves.” Avarice scowled. “History is full of liars.”

Spike backed up into the bookshelf behind him. Avarice got mere inches from his face.

“Equines have been the victor for over a millennium, and they’ve gotten far too comfortable on that throne. And if you hadn’t been hatched into their captivity and raised to bow to them in servitude, you’d be just another “bad guy,” too.” Avarice leered at Spike. “The state of our relationship and my mere existence is proof of that.”

Avarice’s eyes widened from the squinted glower he was stabbing into Spike. He raised his head, sniffing the air while his horned ears moved from side to side, scouring the distant patter of rain still pouring down on the tree.

Avarice looked back to Spike, all business. “You’ve got company incoming.” he said, getting back up to a standing position and walking away. “Have fun.”

Avarice stopped halfway to the door that lead into the other room, looking back and forth between the door and the box on the table. He walked over to the table, grabbed a few more donuts out of the box, and continued back on his path for the adjacent room.

“Remember, don’t mention me,” Avarice said, then shut the door behind him.

Spike stared at the door that Avarice had just left through in a stupor, nerves still frayed and feet still rooted to the floor where he stood.

A desperate hammering upon the front door made Spike yelp in surprise. He stared at the front door for a second, then put a claw to his chest in an attempt to calm his rapidly beating heart and steady his breathing. He pulled himself from the spot where Avarice had just cornered him, cautiously approached the door, and opened it.

The constant crash from the pouring summer rain met his ears, and the warm humidity brushed past him before he saw the sopping wet mare standing on the doorstep. She was shaking terribly, like she had an awful cold. Even through the sound of the pouring rain, her sniffling and occasional whimpers could be heard. Her head was pointed at the ground in front of her hooves, and her flattened, drenched mane hung in a tangled mess around her face.

Spike gasped at the sight of her.

“Pinkie?”

With the slow demeanor of a mare facing the gallows, Pinkie Pie raised her head to look at Spike. Her face was scarred by an infectious frown. Pain and heartbreak poured out from her bloodshot, tear-streaked, shattered eyes.

“Please...” Pinkie implored with a trembling whisper. Her voice cracked like she was on the verge of sobbing.

“Help...”

Author's Notes:

So there are our first two big plot twists.

The first, that Avarice shows up in the real world.

The second, that Twilight discovers inception... after she realizes that she accidentally performed an inception... on herself.

BWAAAAAAAHM

God, this one was tedious to write.

So in case you didn't already know, chapter five was originally part of this chapter, still called 'Radical Notion.' But this chapter go so massive that we just split off the first "half" and released that wall of 25,000 words as 'The Real World.'

I don't know whether it's sad or funny how that decision did almost nothing to reduce the size this still ended up being. I am totally going to hit the floor at your reaction to seeing the word count.

In all actuality, the last few scenes are to blame for that. The ones with the three mares going to the spa are about 7,000 words long in total, and that one scene with Spike and Avarice is OVER 9000 words. That one scene is longer than chapter one. And that's almost exclusively my fault. I DO NOT CONCISE.

Brian had more of a role in this chapter than he did for the previous one. He wrote a few of the scenes centered around Spike and handled most of the editing, since he's much more practiced in brevity than I am. (I DO NOT BREVITY.) i think he enjoyed it, and oddly enough, it was the first time ever since I hired Vimbert to edit this that the two had any direct communication between them.

Chapter seven is already well underway, and I intend to work on some new cover art for this soon, as well as upload it to EQD. Then maybe this will get the recognition it deserves.

What's the most resilient parasite?

An idea.

What's the most virulent idea?

A Radical Notion.

- Christian 'FEAR MY WALL OF TEXT' Harisay

Chapter Seven - A Leap of Faith

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The small droplets of steamy, spring-like water pelting Twilight’s fur had soothed her into a meditative state. She breathed the vapor in deep, then let out a sigh from what little relief the hot water had brought. The pain afflicting her sides was perpetual, even with the heated mist and her slowed thought processes deadening her senses.

To say she was in a completely meditative state was actually wrong: it was more like she had managed to find the eye of the hurricane in her stormy thoughts. But the small moment of peace could not last forever, and a gust of thinking pulled at her conscience.

I still can’t believe this… my mind thinks that I’m supposed to have wings! But I’m a unicorn!

Whatever contentment she had managed to gain from the steamy environment was shattered when another bolt of sharp pain stabbed her sides. She sucked in air through her clenched teeth, fighting to keep another scream of pain from escaping.

She looked back at her sides, and for a split second, her mind’s eye saw the vibrant, lavender plume of her wings. Then a split second tore the illusion away.

More screws drilled their way through her. She looked away and closed her eyes in an attempt to return to her realm of relaxation. She drooped her head, hanging limp under the spraying jets as she tried to lose herself in the water pelting her, drenching her mane and the fur on her face. It wasn’t working very well.

On a whim, she put a hoof to one of the spots just behind the shoulder blades of her forelegs. Pain shot through her, making her whimper, but she held her hoof to the area of affliction, and attempted to replicate the massage that Aloe and Lotus had given her earlier that day. It didn’t fully alleviate the pain, but at least it helped. With her mind less burdened by her current physical ailments, she reinstated her contemplative thinking.

Okay, I’m suffering from phantom limb syndrome due to an idea that I planted in my own mind. So how do I fix this? Because if this problem originated in limbo, then the best, if only perceivable way to remedy the situation would be to go that deep again…

A horrible death. A dangerous game with loneliness. Being drowned back to life.

Nope. I’d rather not deal with that right now. So what can I do? There isn’t a whole lot that I can do on the surface to fix what I did to myself, so the only thing I can do from here is deal with the symptoms of my disorder. What could I even do? My mind is working on the premise that I’m supposed to have wings, but my brain knows that I don’t, so the widening disconnect between what I subconsciously think and what I know is causing me physical pain.

But how am I supposed to accomplish anything without going back into limbo? What am I supposed to do? Pander to my own delusions and pretend that I have wings?

Twilight moved her hoof in the wrong direction, eliciting another stab of pain, and she yelped in anguish. She looked to where her wings should have been, grimaced, and exhaled a groan as she turned to face the artificial waterfall again.

It’s that, or work up the nerve to willingly trap myself in limbo, try to reverse the damage I’ve done, then wait for a week in my own private, lonely Tartarus while Spike or somepony else takes five seconds to wake me up… assuming that I do wake up and it wasn’t because of some miracle that I escaped last time...

Twilight sighed, then closed her eyes again. She waited for herself to relax in the solace of the steam, then imagined herself sitting in the shower with a pair of wings affixed to her.

Okay… I have wings…

She imagined opening her wings out underneath the streams of perfectly warm water, spreading her feathers and letting the liquid seep between, the droplets cascaded down them and drip like rain from the ends.

I have wings…

She imagined using a little private time to give her wings some tender love and care. She imagined using special soaps to clean them, rinsing underneath the delightful jets of the shower, then taking some time to preen the damaged, old, or loose feathers, and finally pampering herself with a little grooming before ruffling her feathers and shaking out any residual droplets.

I have wings…

She wondered how her friends would take it. Applejack would most likely be blown away. Fluttershy would probably be uncertain, but eventually come around when she realized she’d have somepony ask for help when she needed assistance feeding the birds. Rarity would insist upon scheduling a time that she could stop by to model new dresses and apparel to showcase her new assets. Rainbow Dash would instantly squeal “AWESOME!” then drag her up into the air to go flying. And Pinkie, of course, would throw her a party.

Well, if she was in a normal state of mind, that is.

Her mood fell like a stone, and she reopened her eyes. Pinkie was still out there, and if what Rarity and Fluttershy had told her earlier, whatever she was going through was only getting worse. She knew Pinkie wanted her privacy, but it was getting to the point where Twilight felt it was in everypony’s best interest if she and her friends intervened.

But how? We don’t even know what’s wrong, let alone how to help solve it. And on top of that, it’s imperative that I find a way to help Spike…

She yawned, and realized just how tired she felt. It had been a busy day: waking up feeling like she was stabbed, hurting Spike’s feelings, galloping all the way to the hospital after he had gotten injured, then finishing the last headache-inducing line of Dreamscape only to come to the realization that she had accidentally performed an inception on herself when she was stuck in limbo.

I’ll deal with this tomorrow. I’ll need my sleep if I’m to be of use to anypony.

Twilight stood up, turned off the water with her magic, then shook herself to fling off as much water as possible. She pulled the curtain back and stepped onto the bathroom rug. Several towels and a few brushes became enveloped in her magenta glow. She levitated them over to herself, then began to dry her coat and brush her mane and tail.

One of the towels moved to her side, and she hesitated. With trepidation in her movements, she placed the towel to her side and gently rubbed. She gasped a little; it still hurt, but far less than it did before. It felt more like a sore bruise than a stab wound.

Well, that’s an improvement, I guess.

Now more dry, she approached the bathroom sink to brush her teeth before she finished getting ready for bed. After she’d rinsed and spit, she looked up and caught her own gaze in the mirror. She stared at herself in detached, oblivious interest. By happenstance, she caught sight of her wingless back, and she felt the pain begin to creep up on her then.

Instantly she whipped her head away from the mirror, shut her eyes, and began reciting the fallacy to herself again.

I have wings… I have wings…

“You know you can’t keep this up forever,” a voice said from the mirror. Twilight looked up to see Reason’s concerned face gazing back at her.

“I know,” Twilight replied as she looked away again. “But it’s just for now. Who knows; maybe I’ll somehow be able to get better this way.”

“So you’re going to do the same thing over and over again, and expect a different result? You know what they say that defines.” Reason scoffed. There was a brief pause. “Don’t we usually have these face-to-face conversations, you know, face to face?”

“Yeah, but if I’m going to make at least part of me buy into this illusion, I can’t give it any reason to doubt; that means no mirrors.”

“So I guess we are insane as we ignore the mirror’s truth,” Reason said. “You know this is just treating a symptom. What are you going to do to solve it, Twilight?”

“Aside from committing suicide in a dream and temporarily imprisoning myself in the worst place I’ve ever been in? I don’t know.” Twilight looked up at Reason out of the corner of her eye. “What would you do?”

Reason sighed. “Aside from what you just mentioned? I don’t know, either.” The two of them hung their heads in the silence.

BANG BANG BANG!

Twilight yelped in surprise as Spike hammered upon the bathroom door, calling for her from the other side. “Twilight? Twilight?!”

Twilight cleared her throat, and answered. “Yes, Spike? What is it?”

“Twilight, it’s Pinkie!”

Twilight’s eyes shot open as her heart leapt into her throat. Whatever grogginess had been hampering her instantly dissipated, and she was at the bathroom door, ripping it open before she could even blink.

“Pinkie?! What about her?!”

Spike jumped back, startled from the outburst. It took a second for him to regain his composure. “She said that she, and I quote, ‘Really, really, really, very REALLY’ needs to talk to you. But it’s raining really bad outside, so I gave her some towels and a little bit of chamomile tea to warm her up before I came up here to get you.”

Twilight’s mouth drew open. “Pinkie is here? Right now?!”

“Yeah. She’s just downsta—whoa, Twilight; wait!” Spike exclaimed, grabbing hold of Twilight’s tail and tugging on it as she tried to gallop past him.

“No, Spike!” Twilight barked. “If Pinkie is finally saying that she needs help, then I have to go help her!”

“I know! I’m not saying you shouldn’t, but Twilight, wait! Please!”

Twilight did stop and wait when she saw the genuine urgency in Spike’s expression.

“Pinkie doesn’t… I don’t know; she just doesn’t seem like Pinkie. When I went to make her the tea, she insisted that I not put so much as a drop of honey in it. Since when does Pinkie not put some sweetener into whatever she’s eating? And she just has this… look, around her, like she’s really on edge, but I’ve never seen her this bad before. And mind you, I was there when she first thought that you guys didn’t want to be her friends anymore. Seriously, Twilight; it’s like she just saw somepony close to her die! So… just be careful, would you?”

Twilight nodded, and her expression softened. “Alright, Spike; I will. Thank you, by the way.” She took a few steps forward, then turned around to Spike again. “Would you come with me, please? I might need your help.”

Spike nodded in reply, then followed Twilight as she slowly left the bathroom and looked down into the dark foyer from the top of the stairs. It took every ounce of restraint to keep herself from teleporting downstairs and tackling Pinkie with the most compassionate hug that she could give, and not just because her heart ached to hold her again after not seeing her for three weeks. Never before in all the time that Twilight had known her did Pinkie look more in need of a hug then she did right now.

Pinkie was sitting on the floor, hunched over by the table in the middle of the room with her back to the two of them. A few used towels from the linen closet lay nearby. Another towel was draped across her back like funeral attire. Twilight couldn’t even see her face, but it was still clear even from her subdued posture that she was in terrible distress. Her mane and tail were flat, limp, and joyless; even the parts of her coat that showed from beneath the towel looked grey and ashen.

The two descended the stairs like sunlight dispersing storm clouds. Twilight approached Pinkie with a cautious pace, Spike following right behind.

Pinkie was a quivering leaf in a bitter, cold wind. Her irregular, shuddering breaths were occasionally interrupted by a loud sniff as the teacup and saucer clattered against each other in her trembling hooves.

She still hadn’t noticed either of them. Twilight circled around her, giving her a wide berth as she neared. The first sight of Pinkie’s miserable face almost broke Twilight’s heart. Her ears were plastered to the back of her head, a deep frown had been carved out of her mouth, and her fitful eyes glistened with an over-accumulation of tears, dams ready to burst.

Twilight could stand it no more. She carefully trotted around her friend, who still hadn’t noticed her, sat down in front of her, and broke the silence as gently as she could.

“Pinkie?”

“AAAH!”

Pinkie lurched back in shock, her pupils shrunken to pinpricks. The china fell from her hooves in the commotion and smashed into the ground, breaking into several pieces and spilling her tea over the floorboards surrounding the table.

Pinkie stared at the aftermath in horror. “Twilight… I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean… never mind. I’ll just go... ”

“Pinkie, don’t—”

“You must hate me now; you’re not going to want to be my friend…”

“Pinkie...”

“If not now, then you would have after I told you… everypony should hate the pony that nopony should be friends with...”

“No, Pinkie!”

Twilight’s counter rooted Pinkie in place, but the depressed pony still cowered before her.

“I don’t hate you, and I never will. Look, it’s just some spilled tea and a few pieces of broken ceramic.”

Twilight picked up the broken pieces of the porcelain with her magic, set them on the table, then took one of the towels and wiped up the tea seeping over the cracks and onto the other planks. With the mess cleaned, she set the towel back on the table and picked up the shards of china with her magic. She put the pieces back in place, then channeled a little more mana into the broken wares. The cracks disappeared as the pieces coalesced and the glaze unified, leaving no evidence of the fractures.

“See?” Twilight held out the healed items for Pinkie to see. “Good as new. It’s just a plate and a cup. These kinds of things are easy to fix.” She looked away as she put the set back down on the table. “Friendships and broken hearts, however...”

Twilight let out somber sigh as she looked back to her dear friend.

“Where have you been, Pinkie? We’ve all been so worried about you...”

Pinkie’s dismal expression returned in force, and she looked away. “Hiding,” she said through the lump in her dry throat to the floor. “I’ve been hiding, like a coward.”

“We just came to the conclusion that you wanted some time to yourself. That’s not cowardly, Pinkie. I think we’ve all had some problem before where we wanted to be alone for a little while.”

“No...” Pinkie muttered. “No... not before. Not like this...”

“But you’re here now,” Twilight reassured her. “If whatever is bothering you has been something that you’ve been too afraid to let anypony know, then I’d say that finally opening up and sharing it is a very brave thing to do.”

Pinkie sniffed and wiped her muzzle with the back of a hoof. “No, I’m not brave, just… desperate.”

Twilight frowned again, then looked to her assistant. “Spike, would you please go make us some more tea? Nopony can brew up a pot of soothing camomile like you can...”

Spike nodded. “Sure thing, Twi.”

Twilight smiled, and passed him the formerly broken porcelain. “Thank you. Take your time, it needs to be perfect.”

Spike scampered off into the kitchen with the china, leaving the two mares to each other in the dimly-lit foyer, with no other witnesses than the rain pounding down upon the tree, the flashes of lightning and the distant bellows of thunder.

“So… Spike said that you really needed to talk to me...”

Pinkie tensed up and remained silent, looking back and forth between Twilight and anything else that offered a distraction.

“It’s okay, Pinkie; you can trust me.”

Pinkie’s eye contact continued to drift, and her sealed frown remained unbroken.

“I promise that I won’t think any less of you.”

Pinkie looked back at Twilight, and their eyes locked onto each other. Beneath the quivering pools of contained tears straining to break free, there was the tiniest flicker of hope.

“Pinkie Promise?”

“Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my...” Wait; close eye first, then touch. “Eye.”

A slight dimple tugged at Pinkie’s cheek, only to disappear the instant after: lost to the crease of her frown. She took a long, deep breath, held it for a moment, then let it out with a shudder.

“Lately, I’ve been having these… dreams. They started out as odd, and that’s all they were; just, odd.” Pinkie paused, and took a moment to dry-swallow.

Twilight leaned forward a little. “How were they odd?”

Pinkie scrunched up her face a little with pensive reminision. “Odd to a level that weirded even me out.” She gulped. “In the first one… I dreamt of when we fought Discord… the first time around, I mean. Not when you and I… yeah.

“He got me to turn against the rest of you. He said that none of you really liked my parties, or me, and I believed him. I never felt so alone as I did there, but then he told me that he could give me all the parties that I wanted… and I accepted.

“We never defeated him. We never returned Equestria to normal, because Discord and I got close, like closest of close friends, and we had so much fun with the chaos. But then, one night, we got...” Pinkie’s throat clenched up. She didn’t speak, but began making motions with her forehooves, moving them in a way as if to clop them together. “We got really... really close...”

She put her hooves back down, and continued to have her heart-to-heart with the wood. “Then… eleven months later… we had a little foal together… and we named him Distort...”

Pinkie looked back up at Twilight through the curtain of her mane. Her face was a distressing portrait of confusion, disbelief, and worry. “Twilight… I dreamt that I had a foal… with Discord. DISCORD, for Celestia’s sake! How could I dream about having s— how could I dream about him like… like that?”

“I’m… well, I’m afraid that I’m not entirely sure, Pinkie. I’m sorry. Dreams originate from the subconscious,” Twilight said, completely lost as to what facial expression to adopt. “You can’t control it, remember? But… you said that this happened the night after we shared that dream together; the night before we last met, yes? Do you think that might have something to do with it?”

“I don’t know… maybe,” Pinkie muttered, despondent. “Do you?”

“Perhaps. It’s really just speculation; an educated guess at best… do you think that maybe your automated cognition was negatively affected enough by the events of our shared dream that your subconscious attempted to soften the trauma by trying to attach a more positive connotation to an antagonizing notion?”

Pinkie looked at her blankly.

“Do you think that we went through was so bad that your subconscious tried to turn it into a positive experience?” Twilight revised her previous statement.

“Probably,” Pinkie mumbled, though her voice still carried a level of uncertainty. “But all throughout that day, I just couldn’t get either of those dreams out of my mind. It’s like all my thoughts and feelings about Discord were trying to follow me back into real life. Both of when we fought, and when we had...”

Pinkie’s countenance became a battleground of conflicted emotions again. She turned away from Twilight, and became fixated on the ground to her right. When she spoke again, her dry voice had descended a half-step in its pitch, making her look and sound even more diminished and depressed.

“When I woke up that morning… I was still moaning… still twisting around in my soiled bed sheets...” She squirmed on the spot, refusing to meet Twilight’s face. “I’m almost thankful that I woke up as early as I did, before anypony else got up, because I had to do a really, really embarrassing load of laundry afterwards...”

Several moments passed in a tense silence that was broken only by the muffled patter of the rain pouring down upon the tree and the distant roars of the rampaging thunder.

“Is that why you were so on edge when I came to see you that day? Because you were still dealing with all of these opposing feelings?”

“Y-yeah, a little.” Pinkie sniffed, wiping her nose. “I was still worked up from having to fight Discord in that dream we had together the day before, and then thrown on top of that, I had the feelings from all that… intimacy, but I didn’t want to be feeling those things because they were with Discord, but then I would remember just how right it felt in the moment, and then I would realize how those things never happened and then I would think that maybe it was just some silly little fantasy but how could I have dreams like that when the projection of that big dumb meanie was so evil and how could I have all these things in my head and wasIjustlosingmymindamIgoingcrazy?”

“Pinkie, easy!” Twilight tried to settle Pinkie. “Just slow down, take a deep breath, and try to remain calm.”

“Calmdown? HowamIsupposedtocalmdown?! I’mgoinginsane!”

“Pinkie, please!” Twilight put a hoof on Pinkie’s shoulder, doing her best to remain the sturdy foundation in the turbulence. “Please; calm. Down.”

It took a few moments, but Pinkie’s breathing eventually deepened and started coming at slower intervals.

Twilight congratulated her with a smile. “That’s a good filly.” She gave a little, reassuring rub of the shoulder. “Feel better?”

“A little… thank you...” Pinkie muttered.

“That’s good. You’re welcome.” Twilight pulled her hoof back to reestablish firm footing. “So, is that why you’ve been so reclusive for the last few days? Because of this dream?”

Pinkie’s next breath trembled as it left her. She visibly shook as she exhaled, like the air was actually a ghost that had just passed through her body, trying to steal her warmth.

“No, not entirely. I was still hosting parties and meeting with ponies then, remember?”

“Oh yeah, sorry; I forgot. It’s been a long time since we last met.”

Pinkie sighed again. “Hard to believe that was only four days ago...”

Twilight’s muscles tensed up and her mouth pulled tight. Nine seconds… it was only nine seconds

“So, if you were still willing to socialize with other ponies after that dream, what changed?” Twilight asked.

Pinkie looked down, and the reply she choked out was barely audible. “They got worse.”

Pinkie shifted in place for a few moments, taking some time to breathe the sullen atmosphere of the library in deep. A flash of lightning illuminated the agonized features of her face, revealing just how deep the creases of her expressions were.

“In the dream the night after, well... I don’t remember much of the beginning. Something about us being lost in some huge, icky city where everyone was crazy. We escaped the city, because being there had left Equestria in crisis… and ended up in a goddess-forsaken no-mare’s land of nightmares and beasts that could have crawled straight out of Tartarus. And that’s not even half of it.

“We had no supplies, no food, and no hope of make it through alive, so we were happy when six mares just like gave us help... but there was just something, off about them. They were so shady, yet seemed so much like us. I swear, it’s like they were our evil clones or something. Go figure, they did turn on us, and they began to... hunt us…” Pinkie began to tremble again, and her voice shuddered with each mortified breath. “They could do stuff that was so scary…. Red… she made me… see things….”

Pinkie clenched her eyes shut, and thrashed her head back and forth several times. “Each time, we escaped by the skin of our teeth, and then it was back to dragging on through the nightmarish wastes as we slowly starved to death. Then we started to fight each other. We got so angry… it got so bad that… Dashie… she left us!”

Pinkie looked back up to Twilight, and tears were already dripping from her face. “She left us! Dashie, my closest friend… She left us! She left me!” Pinkie hard swallowed again, and literally had to force out her next words. “She did eventually come back, and right in time to save us from those wicked mares, and she begged for forgiveness. We welcomed her back, especially me, but I never got to know how it ended; I woke up too soon. I never got to find out if we escaped.”

Pinkie fell silent, and devoted her attention back to the floor again.

Twilight leaned in. “But Pinkie, what was so terrible that made you lock yourself in your room since then?”

Pinkie began to shake her head in fitful dismay. “No, Twilight, no… you don’t get it… Dashie is one of my super-best, closest friends of all time, but in that dream we weren’t just friends! We were...” Another knot formed in Pinkie’s throat, impeding her speech, so she opted for making the same motions with her hooves as before. “We were really, really close!

“At the end of the dream, when she came back just in time to save us and tell us how sorry she was, I tackled her with a hug, then I almost… right in front of you all! But it gets worse! When I woke up, Dashie...” Pinkie looked back up at Twilight. Her bottom lip quivered, and the space between her eyebrows bunched up. “It wasn’t just in the dream, Twilight. When I woke up, I… I needed her…

“For the entire morning, no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t get her out of my head. I just couldn’t stop thinking about her. I was so confused... So when Mr. Cake came by to see if I was up, I said I wasn’t feeling well, which was sort of true. And then you came by, but… I dunno; I didn’t think I could handle being around anypony at the moment. I mean, how would anypony take it if I told them what I was feeling?”

A very awkward pause settled over the library. Trying to look anywhere but directly at Pinkie, Twilight craned her neck back towards the kitchen. “Spike, how is that tea coming? What’s taking so long?”

“Perfection takes time,” Spike muttered back from the kitchen. “Give me a few more minutes, okay?”

“Okay. Thanks for helping out again.” Twilight replied, and forced her attention back to Pinkie. “So after I left to go see Rarity, what did you do?”

Pinkie looked away. “I stayed in my room, all hot, bothered, and going out of my mind over how and why I felt… that way. And that’s where I stayed... then you and Dashie showed up.”

The distraught Pinkie looked back up to Twilight. Her bottom lip was trembling again. “I was scared, Twilight. I was scared of my own feelings. I was scared because I didn’t know why I was feeling them. I was scared about how Dashie would take it if she found out. But most of all, I was scared because when she tried to open the window... I knew that if she got into my bedroom, I… I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself...”

A protracted moment of tense speechlessness descended upon them once more. Twilight was actually surprised by how much effort it took to say something in the wake of Pinkie’s abashed admission.

“So… what did you do next?”

“I snuck out of my room, and took the coldest shower I’ve ever taken in my life. But even after I started shivering so much that I could hardly stand, it still hadn’t helped at all. So I just dried myself off, and snuck back into my room.” Pinkie tilted her head back down, breaking eye contact with Twilight as she slowly began to fiddle with her forehooves.

Twilight gasped. “But then we showed up again...”

Pinkie’s frown deepened. “If you and Scootaloo hadn’t been there, I would have pulled Rainbow into my bedroom, locked the door, and I would have… done things to her. I wanted to do everything to her. And even though I knew she would freak out, and I knew it would destroy our friendship, I still wouldn’t have been able to stop myself. I wanted her that bad.”

Pinkie fell silent again, leaving the next prompt to Twilight. “So, how did you manage to control yourself that time?”

Pinkie’s self-conscious tail curled tightly around her hind-quarters. When Pinkie looked back up to Twilight, her eyes were drowning underneath glistening tears of shame, frustration, and regret. Her breathing began to shake again, and she managed to choke out a strained whisper.

“I… couldn’t.”

Pinkie tore her humiliated, guilt-ridden gaze from Twilight and directed it down towards the floor again, only to catch sight of her forehooves. Their fiddling stopped dead as Pinkie stared at her right hoof. Several tears escaped her eyes as her culpable grimace deepened while she softly wept.

“I’ve never been so ashamed… Not in a dream, not in the real world, not… ever…”

Twilight could only stare at the scene of her miserable friend. Her own throat had become oddly dry. The heft of Pinkie’s confessions felt like weights being slugged onto her back, making it even more strenuous to breathe, even when the despondence in the air was already so thick it could be cut into portions and served with a frown.

“Pinkie, are sure sure you feel comfortable telling me this? If you don’t want to continue, I’d understand perfectly.”

Pinkie sniffled heavily, and wiped her nose again on her left foreleg. “I don’t want to continue, but I feel like I have to. I’ve been holding all this in, and it’s tearing me up on the inside. I have to tell somepony, Twilight. I didn’t know who I could turn to. I trust you, and I know you wouldn’t betray that trust.”

Twilight allowed herself a slight smile. “Losing a friend’s trust is the fastest way to lose a friend forever, right?”

Pinkie dried her eyes with a nearby towel. “Yeah… well, who can you trust if you can’t put your faith in your friends?”

Twilight looked intently at Pinkie with as much sincerity and compassion that she had within her capacity. “So you’re willing to take a leap of faith with me?”

Pinkie looked up at Twilight. Her disparaged face was still beaten and afflicted by anguish and anxiety, and her eyes still shimmered with a layer of barely-contained tears, but that flicker of hope briefly broke the surface again, and Pinkie nodded, quick and short.

“Alright,” Twilight acknowledged, “if you need a minute, go ahead.”

Pinkie looked off into the distance, drew in a deep breath of air, and let it out with a long, impoverished sigh. “So for those first couple of nights, my dreams were just nightmarish. On the third night, they became full-blown nightmares.

“I dreamt that I was… I don’t know where. It looked like Ponyville, but it was silent, empty, isolated by an abyss that wasn’t there before, and covered in a thick mist that made it hard to see. The whole town was decaying, like nopony had lived there in years. There was… blood on the walls… dead bodies everywhere… and monsters...”

Pinkie wrapped her forelegs around her and she began to shake in fear. “Oh dear Celestia, the monsters… rotting, groaning zombies, white fillies that had been torn in half, a faceless, slender pony in a suit and… and me.” She looked back up at Twilight, and her trembling became even more violent. “I was one of the monsters, Twilight. Another me, in a dress made from the coats of ponies...”

Pinkie exhaled a shudder, quivering like she was on the verge of sobbing. “When I woke up, I knew it was just a dream, but… oh Twilight, I was terrified! I was scared that if I left my room, the shop outside would be rotting, abandoned, and dead. I was scared to death that if I looked out my window, I wouldn’t be able to see down the street because of the fog. I was horrified that there would be monsters… that I would see my friends as monsters. I was even scared to look at myself in a mirror for fear that I’d find myself in a dress made from cutie marks…

“I didn’t even leave my room that day. I just hid under the bedsheets, and kept myself fed off some of the treats I keep stashed there. I just stayed there until I got tired, but I was afraid to go to sleep by then, because I was afraid of what I would dream about. I tried to stay awake. I would have stayed up all night if I had to, but I couldn’t. And the dream I had that night was… it was...”

Twilight scooted a little closer to Pinkie. “What was it?”

Pinkie’s face went pale. “It was worse than the depths of Tartarus.”

“Everything had been destroyed in a terrible war. Equestria was reduced to nothing but a uninhabitable wasteland in the fallout. The sun and moon couldn’t be seen from the ground; just ugly, greenish clouds connected from one end of the sky to another. Ponyville, Manehatten, Fillydelphia… it was all in ruins. And as I wandered through it all, I found out not just what had happened to Equestria, but what had happened to us… what had happened to me…”

“We were all so busy trying to stop the war from happening, that we couldn’t see each other anymore. But then it happened anyway… and I died without seeing any of my friends… or even getting to say goodbye… alone...”

Twilight could only stare, shaking, as a tear rolled down her own cheek. Try as she might to hide it, she was all too familiar with the horror Pinkie had just described.

“Oh, Pinkie...”

Twilight wordlessly opened her forelegs in invitation. Pinkie’s expression became even more distraught, and she lunged forward for the unicorn, wrapping her forelegs around Twilight’s neck and burying her face into Twilight’s nape, where she began to sob.

A few moments passed before Spike made himself known again by softly clearing his throat. Twilight looked to him. He was carrying a platter with a teapot that still had a little steam flowing from the spout, two tea cups on saucers, and bottle of honey with some daisies off to the side.

“Do you still want this?” he asked

“Yes, Spike. Thank you.” Twilight replied, and took the tray from Spike’s claws with her magic. She placed the set on the table, poured some of the tea into a waiting cup, added some honey and one of the daisies, then gingerly prodded Pinkie with her muzzle.

“Spike made us tea,” she said, motioning towards the glass and moving it towards Pinkie. “Drink this, it’ll make you feel better.”

Pinkie slowly let go of Twilight, took the cup in both of her shaking hooves, and took a miniscule sip before putting the cup down again to grab one of the nearby towels and vociferously blow her nose into it.

Spike sighed, slightly annoyed. “I’ll go get some tissues,” he said, then turned and walked away.

Pinkie waited until Spike had gone upstairs, followed by the sound of him entering the bathroom and closing the door. She looked down, defeated, and let out a pained sigh. “But do you want to know the worst part?”

“Wait, there’s more?” Twilight blurted, incredulous.

Pinkie’s voice was becoming more strained. “In all of those nightmares… every single one, there was something… something about… cupcakes...”

As the last word left her mouth like it was the most terrifying thing she’d ever uttered, Pinkie’s frown went from gloomy to tortured. Her physical trembles returned with violence, and she began to hyperventilate.

“Pinkie...” Twilight asked, “Pinkie, what happened?”

Pinkie clenched her eyes shut and began thrashing her head back and forth. Tears leaked through her eyelids as she began to sputter. “T-toni-ight, I dre-dreamt th-that I… I...”

With one last grimace of suffering, Pinkie whipped her face back to Twilight, with tears drenching her face and unfathomable torment pouring from her shattered eyes.

“I KILLED HER! I… I KILLED DASHIE!”

Twilight reared back, petrified. “WHAT?!”

“I lied to her! I-I told her I wanted to bake something together, but then I knocked her out and tied her to a table in the basement! I… I was wearing a dress made of pony coats! I c-cut off her c-cutie mar-mark! I-I… I c-chopped o-off her wi... her wings! I TORE HER OPEN AND RIPPED OUT HER GUTS! A-and th-then I-I ch-chopped them u-up in… into little p-p-pie-ces, and u-used Dashie’s in-innards t-to… to make…”

Pinkie let out tormented, ear-splitting shriek of agony. She lunged at Twilight, wrapping her forelegs tightly around the unicorn and burying her face into Twilight’s breast, where she began to scream beyond restraint.

Twilight had to resist screaming out in pain herself. Pinkie was squeezing her right where her mind thought that her wings should have been. Butcher knives skewered her sides and imaginary limbs, setting every nerve ending in her body on fire.

“Pinkie...” Twilight desperately prodded Pinkie with a hoof, hoping to get some respite before a scream escaped her lips.

Pinkie didn’t even react to Twilight. She just kept crying out of control, filling the library with the sound of her woe, lost to suffering.

“Pinkie...” Twilight shook Pinkie with more urgency. Her tolerance for the pain was dissolving by the second, and she knew she would lose control and snap any second if she didn’t free herself from Pinkie’s grasp.

The broken mare wailed in throes of anguish. Her entire form buckled and convulsed as she was wracked with retching sobs. She screamed like meat hooks had been driven into her body as her fervent, desperate grip around Twilight got even tighter...

“PINKIE!”

Pinkie howled in abject despair, letting go of Twilight. “I knew it! Now you know the truth, and you don’t want to be my friend anymore!” At that, Pinkie turned around, and galloped for the door, weeping hysterically.

“Pinkie, stop!” Twilight called out with urgency as she teleported in between Pinkie and the front door, blocking the path. “I didn’t mean to yell; please don’t run away!”

“NO! You don’t want to be my friend anymore, and neither will anypony else!”

“No, Pinkie! I still want to be your friend, and I still want to help you!”

“Don’t try to fool me Twilight!” Pinkie cried. “You yelled at me because you didn’t want me holding onto you!”

“That wasn’t because I didn’t want you to hug me, Pinkie, it’s because I just so happened to develop pha—nerve damage where you had your legs around me.”

“So now I hurt you too, and you’ll want me to leave!”

“Pinkie, please! I don’t want you to leave. Yes, it hurt, but I know you didn’t mean it, and I can tolerate any physical pain if it means helping you with your emotional one!”

Twilight looked at her with big, pleading eyes filled with sympathy: a composure that was not easy to maintain when it still felt like she had knives sticking out of her sides.

“Please believe me, Pinkie. I said I wouldn’t betray your trust, and I won’t. Just… please believe me…”

“She’s not lying about the pain in her sides, Pinkie.”

The two mares looked away from each other to Spike, who had returned from his most recent fetch-quest and was standing several paces behind Pinkie with a box of tissues in one hand, and a wastebasket in the other.

“I ran into her earlier this morning, and the exact same thing happened to me.” Spike shot Twilight an accusatorial glare when he emphasized the word “exact.”

Pinkie still quivered, sniffling as she regarded Twilight with stormy eyes. “So… s-so y-y-you really… don’t w-want m-me to leave?”

Twilight smiled, warm and compassionate. “Of course not, Pinkie. I never did.”

Another cascade of emotions pulsed in a maelstrom across Pinkie’s face. The corners of her mouth pulled tight, trying to form a smile, but she could only shake until her legs gave out from underneath her. She collapsed to the floor, burying her face under her forehooves as another wave of crying crashed down upon her.

Spike approached Pinkie and nudged her shoulder with the box of tissues. Pinkie whipped around and yanked out almost half of the container’s contents without a word, then proceeded to obliterate them, hoof-fulls at a time, as she blew her nose into them.

Spike let out a tiny grumble as he bent over to scoop up the ruined tissues, still dripping with a mixture of tears and snot, and disposed of them in the trashcan he had brought with him. Twilight walked up to Pinkie, sat down in front of her, and cradled her head in compassionate hooves.

“W-where does i-it hurt?” Pinkie blubbered.

“Just behind my shoulder blades,” Twilight said with a wince; it still felt like she had blades sticking in her. “Where my wings should be…”

Spike’s eyebrow arched upward in confusion at her.

”If I was an alicorn.” Twilight quickly added. “Everywhere else is fine.”

Pinkie let out a pained whimper and wrapped her forelegs around Twilight’s lower barrel, then buried her head into Twilight’s stomach, where she proceeded to cry. Twilight moved a hoof to the back of Pinkie’s head, and began to brush over her mane with long, comforting strokes.

“Twilight...” Pinkie looked up at the unicorn with imploring eyes, still glistening with leaking tears: the eyes of a foal still scared and wounded from terrible fear. “What’s wrong with me?”

Twilight sighed, dismayed. “I’m not entirely sure, Pinkie.” She pursed her lips for a moment, thoughtful. “You started having these nightmares after that shared dream we had a few days ago, right?”

Pinkie’s head brushed across Twilight’s abdomen as she gently nodded.

“Well, maybe this has something to do with that anomaly in your subconscious that all the over-manipulation revealed. The one that projected… you know… Discord.”

Pinkie shuddered, and her grip on Twilight tightened.

“Wait,” Spike interjected, “you took Pinkie into a dream?”

“Yeah,” Twilight nodded, “on the day of that big water balloon fight.”

“Huh,” Spike noted, scratching his chin, “that explains a lot.”

Twilight turned her attention back to Pinkie. “I think that maybe, if we go back into a dream together—”

Pinkie’s head shot up, eyes wide and pupils shrunken.”What? NO!”

“Pinkie, easy; if this problem was uncovered through Dreamscape, then that spell could be our best bet to getting to the root of the problem in order to fix it.”

“You’re not suggesting that the two of us...”

Twilight cut her off with a shake of her head. “No, not just the two of us… Pinkie, I think we need to let the rest of our friends in on this.”

Whatever sparse amount of color that had been lingering in Pinkie’s face drained instantly away, vanishing like a ghost. “No, no, you can’t tell them! I don’t want them to know… I don’t… Dashie...”

“But they’ve all been worried sick about you, too, and there’s a way to help you, they’ll want to be in on it.”

“B-b-b-but… what ab-about… Dashie?”

To Twilight’s shock, Spike interjected. “She’ll probably find it kinda hard to take, but Dash will still come around and help you sort your mess out. And if you still feel the same way afterwards, well, I don’t know. I suppose that’s up for you to decide.”

“Wait, were you snooping in?” Twilight interrogated.

“What? No!” Spike put up his hands in defense. “I just happened to hear the whole conversation while I was making your guys’ tea… and getting the tissues. Hey, if it weren’t for the rain, I wouldn’t be surprised if the neighbors heard that last part. Pinkie was screaming pretty loud.”

Twilight rolled her eyes and let out an exasperated groan. Pinkie was staring at Spike, fearful of a rebuke.

“But hey, it’s not like I’ve run off screaming in terror, or demand Pinkie leave, or wanted to stop being friends…” he added.

Twilight’s expression softened, and she looked back to Pinkie. “You see? If Spike hasn’t repudiated you, then the rest of our friends certainly won’t either.”

Pinkie was still plagued with slight tremors. “B-b-but...”

“Pinkie,” Twilight put a hoof underneath Pinkie’s chin and looked straight into her eyes. “Who can you trust if you can’t put your faith in your friends?”

Pinkie looked backed, deeply scouring Twilight’s comforting eyes, still trepidatious of the possibility for betrayal. All she found was the heartfelt trust of friendship. She buried her face back into Twilight, and quietly let loose another wave of tears.

“I’ll get a hold of them tomorrow, so we can finally start helping you. They’ll want to know what the problem has been, so you should tell them. You have to divulge the more explicit details if you don’t want to. But if you want to share everything, I promise I’ll hold your hoof and stand next to you for support. Okay?”

Pinkie sniffed, then whispered, “Okay...” She sniffled again, and blew her nose into some more tissues.

“Twilight,” Pinkie’s delicate voice shivered, “m-may I s-spend th-the night h-here, with you? The C-Cakes are all out of town for the next fews days, so nopony is a-at S-Sugarcube Corner, and… and I-I-I don’t want to be alone...”

Twilight smiled. “Of course. I’ll even stay with you, so I’ll be right there for you if you have another nightmare.”

Pinkie’s hug around Twilight grew tighter.

“Spike?” Twilight looked up at the dragon, and her smile dissipated a little. Spike was staring off into the distance again, eyes slightly unfocused and his countenance somewhat pensive.

“Spike!”

Spike shook his head. “Whoa, what?”

“You were spacing out again,” Twilight huffed, rolling her eyes. “Never mind. Pinkie is going to be staying for at least tonight with us, maybe a few more. Is the other room clean?”

“Yeah, I—wait,” Spike’s reptilian pupils narrowed, darting back and forth between the unicorn and the door that her would-be murderer had last exited through. “The... other, other room?”

“Yes… is something wrong?”

“No, not at all!” Spike blinked a few times in rapid succession. “Um, tell ya what; lemme just double-check it… you know… to make sure it’s extra clean for Pinkie… right?”

Spike walked towards the door with tremulous steps. He put his hand on the doorknob, not daring to knock, knowing that Twilight would call him on the suspicious behavior. He just stared at it for a prolonged moment, like it was the edge of the high diving board of a pool that was filled with sharks. Realizing Twilight might call him on his hesitation, he took a deep breath, slowly opened the door, and peered inside.

The whole room was dark and unoccupied, save for the sound of the rain still falling on the tree. He allowed himself a little sigh of relief, only for a new fear to seize him.

So if... he… isn’t in here, where is he? His worrisome grip on the doorknob tightened. Figure that out later. Twilight is going to start asking questions if you stay here longer. Alright, just put on a brave face…

“Yep, it’s safe… I mean fine! Yeah... fine. It’s fine.”

“Okay, thank you.” Twilight peered at him, quizzically. “Is everything okay, Spike?”

Fortunately for Spike, he had to let out a wide yawn at that exact moment. “No; I’m tired, and I’ve got to get my rest, right?” he said, pointing to the bandages wrapped around his right eye.

“Okay.” Twilight replied. “Want me to tuck you in?”

Spike thought about it for a moment. He wanted to say “yes,” but his heart suddenly felt heavier than it should have, and he couldn’t bring himself to accept. “No, I’ll be fine.”

“If you say so,” Twilight acknowledged, and levitated the tea platter back over to herself and Pinkie. She poured a little into the cups and took a sip from one. “Thank you for everything you’ve done tonight. You’ve been a big help.”

“Sure, whatever,” Spike responded, dryly. “What would you do without me?”

Twilight put on a sly little smile. “Probably cry a lot, because I’d be missing the best dragon that I’ve ever had for a friend.”

The briefest sign of amusement fluttered across his expression, but then it decayed just as quickly as it came. “I’m the only dragon that you’ve ever had for a friend.”

“And that’s why you’re the best.” Twilight quipped.

A slight smile pulled at the corner of his mouth, but it was swept off to nowhere a split-second later, like a chalk mural doomed to the mercy of the pouring rain outside.

”’Kay, I’m tired,” he said as he turned away and began walking up the stairs. “‘Night, Twi.” He thought to add “I love you,” but his throat suddenly felt too dry and knotted to say it, so he didn’t.

“Good night, Spike.” Twilight watched him go, and felt compelled to say something else. Despite the tea she had just drunk, her throat felt dry, and she had to force out a reply. “I love you.”

Spike stopped on the stairs, already halfway through ascending them. He turned his head in Twilight’s direction, but did not look completely back. “Love ya too,” he muttered, distant.

And the he resumed climbing the staircase, disappearing into the shadows.

With Spike gone, Twilight looked back down to Pinkie. She would have given some thought to how she would break the news to her friends, but her ‘wings’ were still on fire. She exhaled heavily, and closed her eyes, trying to ease her bustling mind into a more relaxed state.

She imagined herself, sitting near the front door with Pinkie still in a shared embrace, with a pair of wings affixed to her. She imagined draping them over Pinkie: of wrapping Pinkie up with a wing-hug and warming her depressed friend with her blanket of feathers.

Okay, she thought to herself, I have wings… I have wings…

- - - - - -

Spike watched the scene in silence from atop the stairs. It was dark, so Twilight couldn’t see him. But even if she could have, she’d closed her eyes as she held Pinkie, who was still fervently attached to Twilight, occasionally letting out little sobs.

His countenance hardened as he glared at the two. Of course she gets to open up with all of her problems and get Twilight to help her…

Even amidst his resent, his eyebrows arched upward in sadness, and he found himself thinking back to the morning four days ago, with a stone in his throat.

“I don’t know what I’d do without you, Twilight,” he had said as he looked up at her with tears still in his eyes, gripping her desperately, like she might die again if he let her go.

She had just smiled and looked down into his eyes. “Nor would I.”

It felt so far away now that it might as well be some old picture in an ancient photo album. It was so far away that he couldn’t hope to reach it, even with Twilight clearly still in front of him.

But she wasn’t far away; not really. All he had to do was speak, and she would hear him. All he had to say was, “Twilight, I have a problem… may I talk to you about it?” And she would smile, say “Of course,” pull him into a tight hug, and listen as Spike opened up his troubled heart and told her everything.

And then just like that, she would be dead.

Spike was gripping the railing so tightly that his claws were starting to dig into the wood. He barely held back a choked sob of his own, fearful that Twilight would hear him. Because if she did, she would ask him what was wrong, and he didn’t know if he’d be able to hold back. So he just turned around, dragged his feet across the floor as he carried his heavy heart back to the bedroom, and shut the door behind him.

He trudged forward towards his bed, stopping halfway, unable to continue. He stood there for a moment, listening to the rain pounding down on the tree in sheets as he drank up the loneliness, feeling dead inside. He looked to the rug on the floor, searching for his marble, hoping to have at least that to keep him company. It was nowhere to be found.

“Well, isn’t that just sad?” an animated, sarcastic voice cut through the darkness.

Spike seized up immediately, and the tip of his tail twitched with wrath. Everything that he’d been feeling vanished to be replaced by a quickly-building fire of rage. He turned in the direction that the most hated voice came from.

A flash of lightning illuminated the smirking Avarice from his hiding spot in shadows, next to the desk by the door.

“Go away...” Spike’s voice was quiet, but none the less indignant.

“‘Tis an unbearable tragedy, yes?” Avarice said without an ounce of regard. The tone of smarmy derisiveness in his voice was nauseating. “Your friend is going insane.”

“Pinkie is not insane. She’s just random, and right now she’s upset, and in need of a friend. Go away; I don’t want to talk to you.”

Avarice cocked an eyebrow in contrived confusion. “Pinkie? Oh… I guess she’s going out of her mind, too.” He chuckled darkly. “Why do you still show those fools any sympathy?”

“Because they’re my friends,” Spike shot back. “Now go away.”

Avarice just held his smirk as he picked up Spike’s favorite marble from the desk. He began to twiddle it in his claws as he stepped forward, circling around Spike.

“Tell me, when Pinkie finally breaks, do you think she’ll be the silent, broken-spirited type?”

“Be quiet, Avarice.”

“Or do you think she’ll be the screaming, stark-raving mad kind?”

“Shut up.”

“Yeah; I think hysterical dementia is more her style.” Avarice was behind Spike now, who remained rooted in place, quaking with animosity. Avarice got lower to the ground, speaking directly to Spike. “Her exponential decay will eventually lead to self-induced insanity. Then, one day, long after she’s been introduced to her own comfy and spacious padded room and been issued her own stylish straight jacket, she’ll reach a breaking point when she’s realized just how far she’s fallen and finally lose it. Then as the doctors rush to her with belts and sedatives, one jumpy nurse still wet behind the ears from med school will draw too many CC’s of sedative and accidentally grab an overdose of potassium pills.”

“Shut up...”

“Once they shoot her up and the tablets of happiness are eased down her throat in a forced swallow,” Avarice let out a wicked chuckle, leaning in closer to Spike, “her life will end painfully when her heart pops like her party cannon.”

“I SAID SHUT UP!” Spike whipped around and roared in Avarice’s face. His claws had balled up into fists and every fiber in him shook with fury.

Avarice’s smug expression boiled away to a hostile leer. A deep hiss like an agitated crocodile’s rumbled up through his throat. “Do you really think you can take me, boy?” Avarice growled, and snorted several cherry-red embers into Spike’s face.

Spike blinked a few times as the cinders made contact with his enraged visage, but he held his ground, burning with an anger more intense than he’d ever felt before. “I don’t care,” he snarled through bared teeth. “Get. Lost.”

Avarice’s glower intensified as his eyes narrowed. The two glared at each other in a nerve-wracking standoff. A pin drop could have been heard if not for the rain.

“Okay,” Avarice spoke, suddenly and completely nonchalant.

It took Spike a moment to realize that Avarice had broken eye contact, performed an about-face, and had started crossing the bedroom to make his way for the window.

“Want me to get anything for you while I’m out? Or better yet, want to come along?” Avarice asked as he fished a little pouch out of Twilight’s bedside table, placed Spike’s marble inside, and tied the cords around one of his claws. “I’m sure we can find something that catches your fancy. A few sapphire cupcakes, perhaps? I am quite familiar with how fond you are of those.”

“Hey, wait! Hold up!” Spike called out and ran up behind Avarice just as the thief of Ponyville opened the window, inviting in the crash of the tumultuous pouring rain. “Where are you going?”

Avarice paused halfway out the window. He looked back to Spike, wearing a sly expression that gradually morphed into a wicked, devious grin.

“Sugarcube Corner.”

A bolt of lightning crashed down from the dark, uproarious sky, briefly illuminating the silhouette of the thieving demon and casting his shadow over the little dragon. The corresponding boom of the thunder shook the whole treehouse, and in that moment, Avarice whipped around and pounced through the open window into the black and stormy night.

Spike remained fixated on the window for a few moments, staring in disbelief. After some while, he slugged over to window to shut it. He turned around, and at that moment he slumped against the wall as his trembling legs gave out from underneath him. Spike slid down the wall onto the floor, and let out a pained, distressed sigh.

- - - - - -

The morning sun of the next day shone unobscured through the cloudless, sapphire sky, shining down on an outdoor, circular table surrounded by unlit lamps at one of the local diners. Here sat five mares, conversing with each other as they made their way through their meals.

“Woo whee, thanks for taking us out to brunch, Twilight.” Applejack said as she finished gulping down the last few bits of her apple fritter. She picked up the empty plate, turned around, and hailed a passing waiter. “Hey, waiter! Couldja bring s’more apple fritters, please?”

The surprised server’s eyes shot wide open. “More?”

“I didn’t stutter, sugarcube. I’m a hungry mare!” Applejack proclaimed.

“Well… okay… certainly, then. I’ll be right back,” he replied, and scurried off.

Applejack smiled, then, much to Rarity’s dismay, licked the last of the crumbs off the plate.

“These fritters, I like them… ANOTHER!” Applejack hollered, thoroughly amused with herself, and slammed the plate back down on the table. Rainbow Dash began to snicker and Rarity let out an exasperated groan.

“Yeah, thanks Twi!” Dash said playfully. “Any meal is totally worth it just to see Rarity get her panties in a knot.”

“Ugh, you two are insufferable…” Rarity grumbled as she rolled her eyes at the chuckling mares sitting across from her. ”Regardless, I must also offer my thanks for arranging this meeting, Twilight. The selection of teas here is absolutely divine!”

“Oh, yes, thank you very much, Twilight,” Fluttershy said.

Twilight smiled at them all, and inexplicably felt a lump form in her throat as her eyes began to moisten. Just the simple circumstance of gathering her friends together again had overwhelmed her with contentment, and she had to clear her throat to speak.

“You’re all very welcome. Rarity was right; I have been a bit too much of a stranger recently, so I thought it best to set my studies aside for a moment and spend some time with what really matters: all of you.” She beamed at them at, then raised her glass. “To friendship.”

“To friendship!” They echoed, raising their drinks in kind and clinking them together. The sound of the glasses coming together produced an upbeat note, perfectly leading into each taking a sip of their beverage.

Fluttershy put her glass of carrot juice back down on the table, then let out a sad little sigh. “I just wish Pinkie could have been here, too.”

“Yeah, she seems… distressed all the time,” Applejack said with concern. “I tried talking to her a few days ago, and she wouldn’t even say nothing, let alone come outta her room. And based off what the rest o’ you girls have told me, she ain’t been up for nothing but locking herself away nowadays, or... whatever else it is that Pinkie usually does aside from party.”

“It’s like she got the partying kicked out of her…” Dash added, worrisome.

“Yes, we’ve all been noticing drastic changes in Pinkie Pie,” Twilight commented. “But that’s the real reason I arranged this get together. Last night, I found out why she’s been acting this way...”

“Really?!” All four friends gasped in unison.

“How do you reckon?” Applejack asked.

“The reason Pinkie has been acting differently is because my recent work ran her into a bit of a snag… Tell me, has anypony heard of Dominus Cob?”

Blank looks surrounded the rest of the table. Each pony looked at the other to see if the name rung a familiar bell, but found no common ground save for confusion.

“No,” Dash curtly put forward, her wings flaring outward. “Did this Dominic guy do something to Pinkie?! I swear, if he—”

“No, Rainbow Dash, he didn’t… and it’s Dominus.” Twilight interrupted. “Mr. Cob was once an esteemed architect, but that changed somewhat when he became more involved with the studies of magic after he met his wife, Mal. He even taught at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns for a little while. Or at least he used to. Shortly before Mal suddenly passed away and Dom disappeared without a trace, Mr. Cob had been working on a spell called “Dreamscape” that would allow ponies to enter into dreams. Several months ago, I came into possession of Cob’s notes that contained an incomplete version, and just recently I managed to complete it.

“So for the last… week...” Twilight said with a slight grimace; she had almost said “month.” “I’ve been experimenting with the use of Dreamscape; sedating myself, learning about rules for how the dream operates, and how far those rules can be stretched.”

“Alright, I remember ya tellin’ me this a while ago, but what does this all have ta do with Pinkie?” Applejack inquired.

“One day, Pinkie convinced me to take her into a dream. So when we went into Pinkie’s mind, I showed her how to manipulate and change the dream world though the mind’s connection to the dream. But she went so overboard with it that she tore open a hole to... something… something sinister buried deep within her subconscious, and ever since that day, she’s been having terrible nightmares that have been causing her unspeakable amounts of emotional trauma.”

Dash incredulously scoffed at Twilight. “This is completely insane! You get all of us together and tell us that you had to show us something, and then you start talking about some stuffy unicorn dude who made some dream spell, and this has to do with why one of my best friends has turned into some depressed shut-in? Do you really expect me to believe that? Joke’s over, Twilight! What’s seriously wrong with Pinkie?”

Twilight had recoiled in her seat from the outburst, but she regained her composure and looked back at Rainbow with a knowing expression. “Well Dash, I can answer that question, but first... let me ask you a question...”

“Ugh… what?” Dash spat.

“Tell me, you never really remember the beginning of a dream, do you? You always seem to wind up in the middle of what’s going on, right?”

“I guess, yeah,” Rainbow huffed. “What’s your point?”

Twilight’s look became a little more clever. “So how did we get here?”

“What do you mean?” Dash raised an eyebrow, her expression becoming quizzical.

“That’s all I want to know; how did we get here?”

Dash puffed out her feathers. “Well, we came from your place obviously, then… uh...”

Twilight learned closer to Rainbow. “Think about it really hard Rainbow, how did we get here? At what point after I invited all of you over to my place did we leave, walk over to this café, sit down, order drinks, and give Applejack enough time to devour an entire plate of apple fritters? Or did we just show up to find all of that had already happened?”

Rainbow Dash looked like she’d been hit in the face with a book. Rarity and Fluttershy all had confused and dumbfounded expressions as they looked at the empty plate in front of Applejack, who was whipping her head in every which direction, then looked back to Twilight, appearing utterly confounded.

“We’re… dreaming?”

The four unsuspecting mares looked back up at Twilight for confirmation of Applejack’s query. The unicorn had adopted a sly smirk at their bewildered expressions as a tremor ran through the ground.

“We actually never left the library. We are in fact lying on the ground together in my den, sound asleep, and under the effects of Dreamscape.”

Another more violent tremor ripped across the landscape, shaking the entire world with it.

“What’s happening?!” Rarity exclaimed as she jumped up in her seat.

Twilight looked around, thinking quickly. “These dream worlds are only as stable as the subconscious of the mind hosting it, so perhaps an unconditioned mind can be so daunted by the reveal of the truth that the dream could collapse.”

“The dream collapses?! What does that even mean?” Rarity came back in, growing more panicked. “Wait, I thought you’d been working on this for months and using it for a week! How could you not be attuned to maintaining a dream by now?”

Twilight looked Rarity squarely in the eye. “Who said anything about being in my dream? Because we’re not… we’re in her’s.” She pointed a hoof right across the table to Fluttershy.

They all shifted their attention and focus on the fragile pegasus. Fluttershy began to make nervous squeaks and whimpers as she began to curl into a ball.

Twilight looked intently at the trembling pony. “Fluttershy, we need you to remain calm...”

Fluttershy just started to shake even more. Her chest began to heave and more of her face descended below the surface of the table as all eyes were directed to her. “Nervous… under pressure… I don’t deal well with pressure when I’m nervous! Or under pressure!”

“Whoa, easy girl!” Applejack remarked, putting a hoof on Fluttershy’s shoulder. “It’s jus’ a dream, and you got your friends here with ya, so don’t you worry about nothin’!”

“Remember what we talked about when you get frightened, darling!” Rarity bolstered, reaching out for Fluttershy in kind. “Just close your eyes, take long, deep breaths, and try to calm yourself! Fret not, for your friends are with you!”

Fluttershy clenched her eyes shut tight, pulled her forelegs around herself, and started sucking in deep breaths of air. A few tense moments passed, but then the clatter of the glasses upon the table subsided as the tremors stopped, leaving behind nothing but confused looks and slight aftershocks.

Rarity adopted a nervous smile. “Feel better, dear?”

Fluttershy cracked open her eyes as she looked in Rarity’s direction, easing up. “A… a little. Thank y—” Fluttershy’s eyes flickered to behind Twilight. “AAAAAAH!”

At Fluttershy’s terrified scream, the windows of the café exploded outwards, taking chunks of the wall and several unlucky ponies standing too close to the blast along with them. The fruits in nearby vendor stands began to explode. Then the vendor carts exploded, followed by pieces of the street, and then entire buildings detonated, filling the air with shrapnel unbound by the laws of gravity.

The whole scene played before Twilight in uncanny slow motion. Fluttershy had buried her head behind her forelegs while Applejack had instinctively grabbed her Stetson to use as a shield for her face. Rainbow had partially taken off in fear while Rarity screamed in terror at something behind Twilight.

Just then, Twilight was overcome with the uneasy feeling of somepony standing behind her. Acting upon impulse, just before the dream completely destroyed itself, Twilight turned around to look behind her. She recoiled in her chair, doing a double-take at the sight of the mysterious stranger.

“What are you doing here?!” Twilight hollered.

The thing-pony just shrugged.

- - - - - -

Twilight woke up just in time to hear the clamor of her friends as they all bolted upright and began shouting.

“Sweet Celestia, that was a dream?! But It felt so real!”

“Everything just exploded! Exploded!”

“WHAT WAS THAT... THING?!”

“I coulda’ sworn them fritters were real! And now I’m still hungry, dang it!”

“HEY!” Twilight yelled over the din, instantly grabbing everyone’s attention and bringing a blessed quiet to the library. She was already on the verge of another headache and really didn’t want something else to have to deal with right now.

“Yes, that was all a dream,” Twilight continued, “and yes, we did just wake up, and yes, everything did explode when the dream collapsed.”

“B-but Twilight, what was… oh my… what was that thing?” Fluttershy asked, still visibly shaken.

“The thing-pony? I wouldn’t really worry about him. He might be creepy looking, but near as I can tell, he’s harmless… bizarre, but harmless. Nothing more that a unique projection.”

“A unique what?” Rarity asked.

“Wait, what the hay is a thing-pony?” Applejack interjected.

“Y-you mean… you didn’t see that thing?” Fluttershy timidly asked.

“No, we didn’t,” Dash grumbled. “AJ and I were a bit busy trying to keep glass shards the size of daggers out of our faces!”

“Seriously, what the hay is a thing-pony?!”

“Let me explain!” Twilight blurted, gaining control of the conversation again. “Alright, you know how there were other ponies in the dream with us, like that waiter Applejack spoke to? Well, those are called ‘projections;’ entities generated by one or more minds in the dream. Fluttershy’s subconscious knew that there were supposed to be other ponies at that cafe, so it automatically put them there. However, sometimes a unique projection can be generated by something specific in the subconscious, ergo the thing-pony. And my subconscious just so happened to bring it into the dream… again.”

“‘Again?’ You mean to say that you’ve seen that ghastly thing more than once?” Rarity asked.

“Yeah,” Twilight admitted. “This would be the third time that he’s showed up.”

“Twilight, dear, forgive me if I seem a touch abrasive, but if that thing was created by your subconscious, then what on earth has gone wrong with you? What in your mind could possibly conceive of something so horrifying and inexplicable?”

Twilight sighed. “I have no idea...”

Twilight was spared having to extrapolate further by the sudden, harsh ringing of an alarm clock from behind them. All of them whipped around to see Pinkie Pie sitting behind them with a mortified expression, next to said clock and a bucket of water. The alarm cut off to leave a ringing silence.

“I did something wrong didn’t I, Twilight?” she said. “You woke up before I was supposed to wake you up…”

“PINKIE!” All of her friends exclaimed at once, save for Twilight, and in an instant Pinkie Pie was surrounded. As Twilight witnessed this, she saw to her horror that Rainbow Dash had trapped Pinkie in a crushing bear hug. None of them seemed to notice that Pinkie had frozen up completely in Rainbow’s embrace. Her expression was that of somepony who had been shaved down to their bare skin and dropped in the middle of a large crowd. Twilight decided to do something before the color drained completely from Pinkie’s face.

The rest of her friends gave a simultaneous yelp of surprise as Pinkie Pie was teleported out from their midst to behind Twilight.

“Girls, please! She needs some space!” Twilight shouted before they could swarm the poor pony again, then turned around to face Pinkie. “Don’t worry, it wasn’t your fault. Fluttershy panicked and made the dream collapse when she saw the thing-pony, so you had nothing to do with it.”

“For the love of Celestia, what the hay is the thing-pony?!” Applejack blurted.

Twilight hoped that Pinkie would be somewhat comforted by the news, but all Pinkie did was give a belated, “Oh… okay…”

The other four mares were crowded behind Twilight now, concern etched over their faces.
She turned to face them. “The spell is sustained by a magical electrostatic field around the head of everypony in the dream. I found out by accident that if it comes into contact with water, it disrupts the field and instantly wakes up the dreamer. I asked Pinkie to wake us up that way. Figured throwing a bucket of water in somepony’s face might help lift her spirits a little…”

Twilight turned back to Pinkie, who was now curled up into a ball, head buried between her forelegs. Occasionally she would peep out to see that her friends were still staring at her, and quickly withdraw.

Trying to keep Pinkie stable, she went to her side. “Come on, it’s okay,” she said as gently as she could. Slowly, but surely, she managed to coax her out of her fetal position into sitting up, and looked her in the eye. “Do you remember what we talked about last night? About having to tell them what you’ve been through? I think now is that time.”

Pinkie’s face went from nervous and fidgety to outright fear. “What? Oh… um… I don’t know… I already told you, maybe you could tell them…” she stammered.

Twilight gave a gentle shake of the head. Pinkie’s reaction wasn’t very enheartening. She looked like she’d just been asked to step on up to the gallows.

“Pinkie, please,” Twilight pleaded, reaching out and holding Pinkie’s hoof with her own. “We’re your friends. You can trust us.”

“We came here to help you, darling,” Rarity said. “You can tell us.”

“Ya can’t hold in what’s makin’ ya sick, sugarcube,” said Applejack. “If ya gotta spit it out, we’ll be here to hear it.”

“C’mon Pinkie!” added Rainbow Dash. “Don’t give up on us now!”

Fluttershy slowly and carefully made her way around Twilight next to Pinkie Pie. With all the gentleness and care she would normally reserve for a sick baby mouse, she put a reassuring hoof on Pinkie’s shoulder.

Pinkie looked morosely at the floor for a long while, then to Twilight’s relief, gave a slight nod. The rest of her friends crowded in, but were careful to give Pinkie some breathing room. After a heavy pause, Pinkie drew in a shuddering breath, and began to speak.

- - - - - -

One hour later, a stunned silence permeated the library, broken only by Pinkie Pie’s subdued weeping. She had held nothing back, from the initial fight with Discord to the final dream about sadistically murdering Rainbow Dash, but it had taken a lot of gentle coaxing on Twilight’s behalf. The parts involving Rainbow Dash had been especially hard to get out, Pinkie’s bedroom incident the most of all. The first time Twilight had heard it, she had been shocked. Now, hearing it the second time around, and seeing the abject misery that Pinkie was going through, it was heartbreaking.

She understood what her other friends must be feeling. Applejack, Fluttershy, and Rarity all had varying degrees and mixtures of shock and disbelief. Rainbow Dash, however…

Dash was stone-faced and completely unreadable. She just sat there, staring at Pinkie. Twilight couldn’t tell what she was thinking, and it was starting to scare her. Pinkie must have sensed this, because just as her sniffles began to subside she looked up to see Dash, and a fresh wave of tears brimmed in her eyes.

“D-Dashie… I couldn’t… I-I didn’t…”

Wordlessly, Dash stood up, her eyes fixed on Pinkie. Everyone in the room was staring at Dash now, breathlessly waiting to for her to do something. Twilight felt like she had swallowed a lead weight. She glanced over to Pinkie, who had never looked so pitiful as she did now: mane limp and lifeless, coat tinged ash grey, body quaking with emotion, eyes steadily flowing over with tears and unable to look away from Dash’s gaze.

“Dashie… p-please…” Pinkie pleaded.

Rainbow Dash didn’t say anything, she just turned around and began slowly walking to the door. Twilight could almost hear Pinkie’s spirit break.

“N-no… Dashie… DASHIE PLEASE!” Pinkie screamed.

Dash stopped in her tracks, and turned her head back slightly towards them. Twilight had never seen the expression that she was seeing on Dash now. She didn’t look angry, or disgusted; she looked… solemn.

“I need… time...” Dash said in a hoarse voice. Then she continued walking, opened the front door, and went outside. Instead of flying away though, she sat down on the front steps, and stared off at the horizon, leaving Pinkie Pie stricken: unable to decipher whether or not the worst had happened.

Twilight quickly turned to Rarity, Applejack, and Fluttershy. “Could you keep Pinkie company? I think I need to be with Dash right now.” As she turned back, she could hear Rarity gently trying to calm Pinkie.

“Come on, dear, you need some rest now… and probably some tea…”

Twilight was careful not to get too close to Dash as she came outside. She was also careful not to stare, as she knew Dash would sense it. What she did do was sit down with Dash on the other side of the steps, and simply stared off at the horizon with her.

A minute passed in silence. Then two. Then five. Then ten. Still, they sat and stared. Twilight was ready to give it hours if need be, but she hoped that Dash would do something soon. She knew the value of patience, but Pinkie Pie was probably dying of anxiety right now.

Eventually her waiting was rewarded when she finally dared look at Rainbow Dash, and found that Dash was already looking at her. Dash sheepishly looked away, but knew she had been caught. Twilight patiently waited as Dash began to flounder for words, but couldn’t find something to say.

After a long minute, she managed a bitter whisper. “I know it wasn’t entirely her fault.” Another pause. “It’s just…”

“I know,” Twilight said somberly. “It’s a lot to take in.”

“It’s a bit more that just a lot!” Rainbow Dash snapped suddenly, causing Twilight to flinch. “My best friend just confessed to baling her own hay while thinking of me, and it’s all because she’s being driven insane by a Dreamspell-scape-thingy that you created! I don’t even know how I’m supposed to feel right now!”

An awkward silence put a period on Dash’s outburst. After a long pause, Dash continued again. “You know what I really think? None of this is Pinkie’s fault. But it is somepony’s fault.”

Twilight felt a flash of indignation and anger, and was about to rebuke Dash with a stinging retort, but she suppressed it as she pondered Dash’s words. The more she thought about it, the more she realized Dash was right. It was her fault. True, Pinkie Pie had taken advantage of her when her better judgement had been impaired by a chocolate cupcake cake high, but before that she had made a Pinkie Promise when she knew she didn’t know everything about the spell yet. She could have just as easily told Pinkie “no,” but instead she had given in to her peer pressure, and Pinkie had paid the price.

“You’re right,” she said bitterly. “This is my fault. I took her into a dream before I had any idea just how dangerous they can be.” She took a deep breath before continuing. “But I can’t fix this by myself. I need your help. I need everypony’s help.”

“Do you have a plan?” Dash asked.

“Yes. But I need to know if everypony is going to be on board with this,” Twilight replied. “So are you with me?”

Dash was slow to respond, but she was obviously moved by Twilight’s sincerity. In fact, in a manner very unlike her, for a split second Dash looked like she might cry. “I just want my friend back,” she said in a thick voice.

“Me too, Dash. Me too,” said Twilight as they both got up and began to walk back into the library. She felt a little bit of relief, and awe at the strength of Rainbow Dash’s loyalty, but she also felt a lot of remorse.

Sometimes I wish that I’d just left those notes in Canterlot, she thought to herself. This spell has caused nothing but heartache.

Twilight and Rainbow Dash walked back through the library and into the kitchen, where they found the others sitting around the table, consoling Pinkie as she sipped from a cup of tea. A frosty silence descended as they sat down, all eyes save for Pinkie’s turning to Dash. Pinkie herself had a broad range of emotions playing across her face. She may have been relieved that Dash hadn’t left yet, but she was clearly afraid that Dash had only done so to yell and scream at her.

“Pinkie?” Dash broke the silence as tenderly as she could. Pinkie still flinched a little in response. After a brief pause, Dash continued. “What you did… was really messed up. I never thought in a million years I’d ever hear somepony admit to me of doing... that… or that it would be you.”

A pregnant pause followed as a fresh wave of tears brimmed in Pinkie’s eyes.

“But I also know this isn’t entirely your fault. And honestly, if I was in your position…” Dash’s voice thickened again. “I don’t think I could have handled it any better. I know I wouldn’t have been able to do any better. I would have done the exact same thing.” Her voice cracked a little. “I probably would have done worse. If it had been me in the bedroom, and you on the other side of the door…”

Dash broke off, unable to continue. None spoke or moved for fear of upsetting the exchange between the two. Pinkie’s eyes shone wide with an agonized blend of hope and sorrow. Finally, Dash reached a hoof across the table towards Pinkie.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever really come to grips with what happened, but you’re still my friend. So you can bet your party cannon that I’m going to stay and do everything I can to help you.” Now it was Dash’s turn to brim over with tears. “I don’t leave my friends twisting in the wind.”

Pinkie Pie flung herself across the table and around Rainbow Dash’s neck, sobbing uncontrollably. Dash returned the hug, shedding tears as everypony else around the table gave a collective, quiet sigh of relief and tried not to cry themselves.

After several minutes passed, when Pinkie Pie had finally stopped crying and emotions around the table had settled down, Applejack was the first to speak.

“Alright, this here has been touching, but… well, I think I speak for the rest of us when I say this all has been a bit much to deal with for one day.” Applejack looked around the table at the several nods that agreed with her.

“Do you need some time to let it sink in?” Twilight asked.

“That’d be nice, but...” Applejack looked off to some distance, concerned and perplexed. “This is some real confoundin’ stuff you’re laying on us, Twi. A spell that makes dreams that ya’ can’t tell from real life? Wait...” She looked intently at Twilight. “How are we supposta’ even know if we’re actually awake or in another dream right now?”

Twilight couldn’t help but let out an impressed chuckle. “Wow, you picked up on that pretty quick.”

Applejack’s eyes went wide in alarm. “Are we?!”

“No, we’re awake,” Twilight interrupted. “But you’re right to note that it can be hard to tell whether or not you’re in a dream when both feel like reality.”

“I’m pretty sure we can tell the difference, egghead.” Dash scoffed a little.

Twilight looked at Dash with a clever little smirk again. “You’d think, but then you didn’t realize we were asleep in that dream an hour ago, did you?”

Dash raised a hoof to argue, but caught herself before any words came out of her open mouth. She help the pose for a second before admitting defeat. “Okay, you’ve got a point.”

Twilight looked back to the other mares at the table. “We’re going to be going back and forth between consciousness and sleep for the next few days while I help you practice getting used to the dream world, so it could get pretty confusing. I don’t know exactly what we’ll find in Pinkie’s dream, though I’d probably hazard a guess that the projection of Discord is probably going to show up.”

A collective shudder ran around the table.

“I know,” Twilight continued, “I was hoping to never have to see him again either, but at least it’s not the real Discord. But before I can share the intimate details of the plan, there’s something that I need you to do first. Foremost, I need you to come up with a totem.”

Twilight’s expression faltered. Her sides suddenly began to ache again, and an unsettling feeling had just manifested in her gut, like she’d swallowed a pebble.

“A what?” Rarity asked.

“It’s an object that will allow you to keep track of reality. In the real world, it will do one thing, but in the dream world, it will do another.” Twilight answered.

“Like a bit that only lands on heads?” Rainbow inquired.

“Something like that, but it needs to be a personal item; preferably something small that you can easily carry around.” Twilight explained. “I can show you all how to use dream manipulation that will train your subconscious so it makes the totem do something specific that’s different from what it would do in reality. That way, there’s no confusion about whether you’re awake or asleep.

“It’s imperative that you find an object unique to you and think of it’s tell when you get back home. Don’t forget to bring it over tomorrow, either. And most importantly, don’t let anypony know what its dream-specific trait is supposed to be.”

“Why not?” Fluttershy wondered.

Twilight squirmed a little. Her sense of something ominous was increasing, turning her stomach to a bag of worms. “To prevent any outside influence that might potentially tamper with your totem.”

Twilight tried to keep her face straight, but a sudden wave of uneasiness was bearing down on her, like the tide besieging a sand castle. Then it hit her: she hadn’t checked her totem since their previous dream.

“I’ll give you all a moment to let all this sink in,” she said. “I just need to… go check on Spike. Excuse me...”

Getting up from the table and heading out the kitchen door, Twilight had to greatly resist the urge to gallop all the way to the bathroom. When she finally made it inside and shut the door, she couldn’t get her gyroscope out of its pouch fast enough. Feverishly she set it in motion, then watched, breathlessly, as it continued to spin.

And spin.

How long had it been now? Forty seconds? Fifty seconds? A minute? Her heartbeat started to increase as she tried not to panic, but still the little gyroscope spun. Just when she was really starting to get worried, it finally, blessedly, began to wobble, then eventually fell over with a reassuring chink.

Twilight let out a pent-up sigh of relief, but even as she did, not all her uneasiness left her. Something still bothered her, like a splinter in her mind. Was it something about the dream itself? She had the sudden sense that there was some detail she had overlooked, something important…

It hit her. She hadn’t recognized it due to the different time of day, but the cafe she and her friends were just eating at before it exploded was the same cafe she had seen in her waking night visions in limbo.

All she could do was let the slight chill down her spine run its course.

- - - - - -

Spike was standing up on the balcony of Twilight’s bedroom, taking part in an activity he far from enjoyed, yet nonetheless recently found himself engaged on a rather frequent basis: sulking.

He leaned forward against the railing, arms crossed and muzzle buried between them, with his displeased fingers drumming upon his triceps. The end of his tail swished through the air as his hard expression scowled at nothing in particular.

He had made up plenty of excuses to exclude himself from the session where Twilight and Pinkie were going to break the news about what was troubling the latter to the rest of their friends, from “I think it would be better if it was just you two told them since Pinkie hadn’t intended for me to hear that first time,” to “I’ve already heard it and don’t need to hear it again,” and “I’d rather not have to ask what “clopping” is.”

But Spike knew exactly what it was. He knew far more than that: he lived in a library with everything from anatomical diagrams to romance novels known as “saddle rippers.” Twilight had of course hidden anything even remotely raunchy from him, but he was still a growing and inquisitive boy dragon, and he’d still managed to find plenty of information from slightly more innocuous sources (mostly educational texts) and piece everything together pretty much on his own.

Though it wasn’t hearing about Pinkie “prancing her happy places” again that lead him to conclude that he’d rather not be there. Nor was it that Pinkie had been “trotting herself” to thoughts of Rainbow Dash. Or that he didn’t want to be there for her: that couldn’t have been further from the truth. It wasn’t even that he found some of her nightmares truly disturbing.

It was that he couldn’t bear the thought of standing there, witnessing Pinkie lay bare her darkest secrets and sins, and to have their friends still remain steadfast and pledging to assist Pinkie until they had resolved the problems she was suffering from... when he couldn’t even let them know that he had a problem.

He knew that with every vile secret Pinkie bled out before them, the tighter he’d have to hold onto his, like being forced to constrict his grip on a malicious sea urchin. He knew that every solution Twilight would propose would make him realize just how trapped he was by that ultimatum.

He knew that Pinkie’s friends would still stick by her side, even Rainbow Dash, no matter how long it would take her to come around, considering how hard he knew she would take learning such overwhelming information. They would all still be friends, they would all still help Pinkie, and just thinking about having to see that made him feel so alone that he couldn’t stand it.

So he secluded himself to the treetop balcony, leaning on the balustrade, where he could privately brood over how isolated he felt rather than have to heft a heavy mask over his face and pretend he was still just as close to everypony downstairs.

It’s not like they would refuse to help me, it’s just that they don’t know, some blearily optimistic thought process put forward.

And they can’t ever know. A counter thought immediately superceded.

Hey, it’s not that they can’t know, it’s that… he can’t know that they know.

And if you told them, how are you going to keep him from finding out? He claims to know you better than you do, and you don’t even know where he is half the time. He could be watching you right now!

Spike suddenly felt clammy, and began looking over his surroundings, checking to see if they lacked the only other dragon he’d met with amethyst scales, hoping that the jump in his heart rate was merely due to paranoia. He was still more or less alone, and in that moment, a memory from last night, of Twilight comforting Pinkie as he watched, rippled across his thoughts, and he heard her voice.

“If whatever is bothering you has been something that you’ve been too afraid to let anypony know, then I’d say that finally opening up and sharing it is a very brave thing to do.”

His heart suddenly felt like a stone. Even though it wasn’t directed his way, in retrospect, it felt like Twilight had been talking to him.

Maybe I just need to be brave, he thought. Maybe I just need to dragon-up and be strong... even if I only have the strength to admit that I’m too weak and helpless to fix this myself.

Spike exhaled. He looked all around him, into the bedroom to make sure nopony had come upstairs to check on him, stood on his tip-toes to peer over the balcony, and even scanned the skies above for good measure. He was still very much by himself.

He let out another heavy puff of air through his nostrils, and closed his eyes. With nothing to see, the sound of his heartbeat thudding in his ears became all the more apparent, as did the perspiration on his scales and nervous trembling. It was a thousand times worse than those fleeting feelings of stage fright that he had been enduring before taking the stage for the last Hearth’s Warming Eve pageant. But back then, if he incorrectly delivered one of his lines, the ponies that he knew and loved weren’t going to be condemned to death.

He formulated the sentence in his head, rehearsing it over and over again, trying to work up his courage. When he could think his way through it without stuttering, he tried saying them aloud. The words felt more like weights than they did air in his lungs. It was only with his eyes shut tight, a heave of mental exertion, and a blind, reckless charge did he manage to force out:

“Twilight… I need your help.”

His eyes clenched tighter shut and he tensed up, flinching like he was about to be hit in the face. A moment passed, and it was as placid as the moments before it, save for a gentle breeze that wafted past him.

It took him a moment for it to sink in that he wasn’t getting his face smashed into the nearest piece of furniture, and there were no sounds of his friends screaming from being burned to death. Feeling a little more confident, but not brave enough to open his eyes, he tried speaking again. But this time, he imagined Twilight standing before him, awaiting his words.

“Twilight...” Spike started off saying as much as he could dare, and the pretend-Twilight answered back in his head.

“Yes, Spike?”

Spike took a deep, quick breath, and let it out just as fast before he could muster the strength to say, even if it was just a lone rehearsal, what he knew he should have said a long time ago.

“I have a problem… may I talk to you about it?”

The Twilight he was envisioning gave with a warm smile. She opened her mouth, and an answer cut through the darkness of his closed eyes right next to his ear.

“No you can’t.”

Spike screamed out in terror and whipped around, leaping back through the air at a height that almost matched his own from his heart feeling like it was trying to launch out of his ribcage.

Avarice peered at Spike with a furrowed brow and cold, steely, calculating eyes, judging his every little move: the gaze of a predator evaluating its prey.

“Out on a balcony in the open air… are you trying to let one of these cud-chewers see you talking to yourself?” Avarice smirked. “Everypony’s going to think you’ve gone crazy.”

Spike’s heart was still hammering away in his chest, but the presence of Avarice began to harden his demeanor, as it always did. “Hey, Twilight talks to herself sometimes, too.”

“That’s because Twilight is crazy.”

Spike scowled, and crossed his arms as he turned away. “Why can’t you just—”

“Leave you alone?” Avarice interrupted. “Because you can’t be trusted. Seems like whenever I do leave you by yourself, you start thinking about worming your way out of our arrangement. Though secluding yourself to subvert temptation is a step in the right direction.

“Pity, really,” Avarice said as he turned his attention to his claws, flexing them, and admiring the power behind each stroke as the bladed ends cut through the air. “I was actually hoping I’d have an excuse to start my morning with a murder.”

The agitated expression Spike was wearing calcified at Avarice’s callous disregard, and he responded with the chill of a cold shoulder.

Avarice paid Spike’s contempt for his rhetoric no heed, and continued. “Though I do have to give you a little credit. Apparently you’re not as inept as all that time I spent trapped in your head taught me that you are, given that you managed to stumble upon a loophole in our deal.”

“What?” Spike whipped around to look back at Avarice with widened, inquisitive eyes, searching his counterpart for an answer. For a moment, he’d completely forgotten about Avarice’s wistful desires for an opportunity to brutally steal the lives of his friends. Had Avarice just openly admitted that there was a way out his coerced vow of secrecy?

“Indeed,” Avarice acknowledged with a nod, and began to circle around Spike. “See, the conditions which we agreed upon only stipulate that you are not to do anything that either directly or indirectly leads to any living being or sentient entity gleaning any information about my existence. Otherwise, you can be as open as you please; you can say everything you know, write down an entire confessional, you can even express the entire situation through interpretive dance for all I care... so long as no one ever witnesses it. And especially for that last one; even as overly-feminized as you’ve been raised to be, I’d rather not have to see you in a tutu.”

Avarice smirked with devilish wit at Spike. “So please, feel free to repeatedly to crush your own spirits by begging for help when none of your so-called friends are around to hear you.”

Just like that, whatever respite Spike had secretly been praying for soured instantaneously. He growled in exacerbated frustration, and jerked his body in a direction away from his enemy.

Avarice just chuckled at Spike’s despondence. “I’d have prefered a killing, but watching you squirm is a decent alternative. Now then, seeing as I’ve got you up here alone and I’ve got some time to kill while I wait, I think I’ll do now what I didn’t get to yesterday...”

Spike felt a lump form in his throat at the sudden insidious dip in Avarice’s tone. He got no time to dwell upon his own premonitions before Avarice’s tail had wrapped around his shoulder, yanked him around, then caught the underside of his chin with the spade and tilted his head up so that their eyes met. Avarice grinned at him with devious intent, partly unfurled one of his wings, withdrew a photocamera from the clenched folds of the membrane, and held it up for Spike to see.

“Ruin the tale of Hearth’s Warming Eve for you.”

Spike grumbled, swatted aside Avarice’s tail, and tried to stomp his way towards the balcony door, only for the same appendage to impede his path.

“It’s that, or go listen to Pinkie’s pathetic sobbing about her scandalous fling with her hoof,” Avarice said with level condescension.

Spike started to shake with indignation, and his claws curled with violent intentions. Avarice just smirked at the little dragon, then began to make obscene squelching noises with his tongue and a cheek.

“Dear Celestia, would you just SHUT UP?!” Spike yelled, performing an about-face.

“No,” Avarice leered. “The best you’ll get from me is a change of subject. So then, the tale of Hearth’s Warming Eve, or should I disrespectfully wonder aloud how Pinkie is going to ever get her own smell out of her hooves?”

Spike’s claws collided with his face and dug in, peeling his eyelids down as he began to sputter with rage. Avarice just chuckled again.

“Hearth’s Warming it is then. Now,” Avarice cleared his throat and jutted his chest out, giving a pompous air to his posture, and addressed the camera that he was holding out like a stage prop with the faux accent Spike used during the play. His voice was such an uncanny facsimile that it made Spike’s scales writhe.

“Once upon a time, long before the peaceful rule of Celestia, and before ponies discovered our beautiful land of Equestria, ponies did not know harmony. It was a strange and dark time. A time when ponies were torn apart... by hatred!”

Spike tried not to convey any of his sudden unease in his reply. “You seem awfully familiar with something that you claim to hate.”

Avarice looked away from the camera to Spike. “Well, I should be. I was there.”

“Wait, what?!” Spike blurted.

“Don’t you remember?” Hostility and resent quickly began to seep into Avarice’s tone, and his claws began to dig into the camera. “That was the first weekend after I’d woken up that I spent buried in your subconscious. Even if you didn’t see me, I was there. So—”

Avarice cut himself off when his eyes flicked to the camera as the strain it was undergoing in his resentful grasp became audible.

“One moment...”

Avarice calmly lay the camera aside and picked up a nearby flower pot. He then reassumed his pose, and reinstated his hateful glare to shoot back at Spike. The grating of Avarice’s claws digging into the dry surface of the clay assaulted Spike’s ears.

“So I was forced to hear every stanza, every line, every single damn word, from the rehearsals to the final performance.”

The flower pot shattered in Avarice’s grasp. Broken shards of pottery clattered across the balcony as the freed soil spilled through the gaps between his claws. The daffodils within fell slain to the floor as Avarice rubbed a thumb over his digits to brush the loose dirt away. Spike gulped at the sight, finding himself stricken with the uncanny suspicion that Avarice would have prefered the pot to be somepony’s skull.

“And even as an incorporeal consciousness that had just barely remembered how to employ a comprehensive grasp of language, I found that foolhardy fairytale so inane that I could almost feel it trying to deplete my intelligence with its vacuous stupidity.”

Avarice seemed to catch himself from descending any further into spite, because some of his resentful demeanor dissipated as he picked the camera back up again.

“Didn’t want to break this,” Avarice admitted. “Now then, where were we? Oh, yeah...” Avarice cleared his throat again, and continued. “Once upon a time, before the peaceful rule of Celestia,” Avarice dropped the accent, “and there’s the first plot hole: there’s no mention of Luna.”

“So?”

“So?” Avarice echoed. “That book Twilight was reading from before the two of you were arbitrarily relocated to this backwater dump said that Equestria was ruled by two sisters who perpetuated the cycle of day and night. It clearly mentions Luna, even if not by name. So then why wouldn’t she be so much as mentioned in the story that claims to be the founding of Equestria?”

“Maybe… whoever wrote the script for the play just forgot to mention her?”

“Forgot...” Avarice’s stare of disgust turned into a smirk. “Like how Clover the quote-on-quote Clever forgot to mention the windigos?”

“No, she didn’t!” Spike stomped his foot down hard on the balcony as he retorted. “She was the one who figured out it was the windigos causing the blizzard! I helped Twilight rehearse those lines!”

“Clover didn’t figure it out until the windigos were right in front of her. Yet her exposition makes it clear she knew what they were. So it never occurred to her that the blizzard which was getting worse with the contention might have been caused by spirits that use contention to make blizzards?”

Spike’s defiance faltered, and all he could get out was an “Uh...”

“Speaking of which, Clover mentioned that her mentor was Starswirl the Bearded, and the opening monologue said that this was “long before” Celestia... but Luna knew him; she was the only one who recognized Twilight’s debauched Nightmare Night costume. So how old is he supposed to be? And for that matter, where exactly do Discord and the discovery of the Elements fit into this timeline?”

“I don’t know!” Spike finally yelled in return. “I… I don’t know how to answer…”

Avarice’s nostrils flared, smelling blood in the water as he leered down at Spike in triumph. “What’s the matter; dragon steal your tongue?” He snickered. “Come on, Spike. You already know the answer, so why not just say it?”

“I don’t know… I really don’t know...”

Avarice peered at Spike with intelligent and devious cunning “Oh, I think you do know…” Avarice’s smirk took up an air of smarmy decisiveness. “Tell you what; I’ll take everything back if you can answer this one question.”

Spike knew that look in Avarice’s eyes all too well. He knew that Avarice knew that he’d already lost, but Avarice was just dragging this out because it amused him, like a cat batting around a wounded mouse. Regardless, Spike didn’t have anything to say in return but to reply, “Okay...”

“Alright, so get this,” Avarice’s grin intensified and his talking sped up, like he was hurrying to get to the punchline of a personal favorite offensive joke. “So you know at the end, when ‘friendship’ defeats the windigos, the three tribes unite, name their nation “Equestria,” and raise the flag above their new land, right?”

“Yeah, it’s been our nation’s flag ever… since...”

Spike simply let his sentence hang unfinished while his inner freight train of thought that had been carrying nitroglycerin derailed, smashing itself into a horrific, jumbled mess. Spike knew the answer before Avarice even got to ask his real question.

That still didn’t keep Avarice’s lips from parting in a victorious smirk, or keep him from lighting a match and throwing it towards the wreckage.

“‘Long before the peaceful rule of Celestia…’ so what in Tartarus are Celestia and Luna doing on the first and only version of the nation’s flag?”

Boom.

Spike could only stare in no particular direction, with eyes wide and mouth hanging open, as only one thought remained in the wake of the devastating explosion:

Is Avarice… right?

Spike heard a quiet click somewhere of in the distance, then a bright flash of light seared his eyes. He blinked furiously to clear away the after image to find Avarice holding the camera with a very amused expression on his face.

“Oh, that stupefied expression was priceless,” Avarice said through a sharp, toothy grin. “For a moment there, I could have sworn I saw your cortex dribbling out from your nostrils.”

Spike rubbed his eyes with his fists, then reinstated his agitated grimace, crossed his arms, and sharply turned away from Avarice.

Avarice crossed his arms behind his back, and leaned forward towards Spike. “My best guess is that entire flaccid tale is a fallacy that was either pre-approved or perhaps even fabricated by Celestia herself some time within the last several hundred years; that Celestia rewrites history at her leisure, and something about how Equestria was actually made isn’t something Celestia wants anyone else to know. And that’s the true story of Hearth’s Warming Day.”

“Now that’s just stupid!” Spike shot, turning back around. “Why would Celestia make up a story about how Equestria was made that according to you is full of plot holes? That makes no sense!”

“I agree.”

Spike did a double take. “You what?”

“Granted I’m still certain that Celestia is more than content to edit the past as she sees fit, but she either had little to do with the manufacturing of that mess or her hubris has lead her to believe that her subjects are too stupid to catch this,” Avarice explained as his voice became quieter and the syllables more emphasized. “Because there’s one loose thread that generates such a catch twenty-two over the stability of the Equestrian hierarchy that it confounds me to think that Celestia hasn’t tried to revise or omit it. Because there’s one line that threatens the foundation of her entire dynasty.”

“Really...” Spike muttered, incredulous.

“Yes.” Avarice locked his unblinking eyes to Spike’s. “The story says Equestria was founded well superseding the era of Celestia’s reign. So who raised and lowered the sun and moon?”

“Ugh, the unicorns, duh,” Spike grumbled.

“And therein lies the linchpin.” Avarice began to speak with more intent. “Either this story was written by an idiot, or the ancient unicorns really were able to raise and lower the sun… without Celestia. Either everything about this story is a lie because it contradicts just about every other comprehensive “fact” about Equestria… or, if this story is somehow true, it’s basically an open admission that the world doesn’t… need… Celestia.”

Here comes the aftershock.

Spike went silent as another overwhelming revelation practically obliterated his ability to think cohesively. It felt like everything he knew about the country he called “home” and the benevolent ruler of it all was up in the air, and he didn’t know what to think of either of them anymore.

Either everything about the founding of Equestria is a lie, or… no way; could it even be remotely possible that ponies… don’t need Celestia? Is… could it even be? Avarice is actually…

Another bright flash of harsh light burned his eyes.

“Stop that!” Spike yelled.

Avarice chuckled, pulling the camera back away from Spike. “Why? This is too much fun.”

The expression of Avarice’s face went blank as one of his horned ears twitched, following a sound that only he seemed to be able to hear.

“Well, time to get back to business,” Avarice said, brushing past Spike, making his way towards the foliage of the tree.

“You take this one. Not a word about me, or us, or she’s dead.” Avarice ordered from the concealment of the leaves.

“Hey, I’m not doing your dirty work for you! That wasn’t part of our deal!” Spike yelled at the spot here he knew Avarice lay hidden. “Get back out here and do it yourself!”

“Hi Spike!”

“AH!”

Spike screamed out in surprise for the second time that morning. He twisted as he leapt back, and came face to face the ever cheerful, cross-eyed Derpy, hovering in the air just above the ledge with a package sticking out from one of her saddlebags. She tilted her head to one side, letting her ears flop over in the direction of the movement as one of her eyes looked at him with smiling curiosity.

“Who were you talking to?” Derpy inquired, tone unchanged.

Spike’s body stiffened and his mouth pulled tight. He looked back at the tree and just barely caught Avarice’s gaze through a tiny break in the canopy. Avarice’s expression went from annoyed to agitated as he glared impatiently at Spike.

“Spike?” Derpy asked.

Spike exhaled, disgruntled, as turned his attention back to Derpy. “Nopony,” he muttered, blinking rapidly several times. ”Nopony at all.”

Derpy pursed her lips and arched the brow of the eye looking at him inquisitively while her other eye commenced a lop-sided investigation of the rest of the balcony.

“I’ll say… So you’re just up here on the balcony talking to yourself?” Derpy smiled as she closed her eyes. “That’s crazy!”

Spike sighed in annoyance. “Not that I don’t like seeing you, but is there a reason you’re here?”

“Oh, yeah! I brought you a package!” Derpy chimed as she landed on the balcony and procured the parcel from her saddlebags, placed it on the flooring, and nudged it towards him.

Spike looked at the package. It was addressed to Twilight. He didn’t recognize the writing, but he knew the symbol on the return address anywhere: it was from Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. More interesting still was that the package had a note scribbled on it that specifically said it was to be delivered to the balcony.

“It’s funny; I usually don’t end up delivering mail here, since Twilight has you,” she said, then peered at Spike with a sly, chaff expression. “You’re not trying to put me out of a job, are you?”

“What? Oh, no; not at all. We haven’t even been getting any mail recently… maybe Celestia’s busy with something, or... something.” Spike mentioned as Derpy gave him a clipboard and he signed for the delivery.

“Well, I’ve gotta get going, but I’ll see you latter! Tell Twilight I said ‘Hi!’” Derpy exclaimed as she took off from the balcony and began humming some tune to herself.

Spike stared at Derpy for a moment, watching her fly away, then looked back to the unexpected package, uncertain.

What could Twilight possibly still need from her old school? Did she ask for this, or did somepony just send it to her? Is this from one of the other professors? Should I go get Twilight, or wait ‘til she’s done with… I wonder what’s inside…

Curiosity eventually got the better of him, so he opened up the package and looked inside. The first item he saw contained within the cardboard box was what looked like a cover letter. Underneath was what looked like a notebook and a manila folder labeled “UNIVERSITY RECORD COPIES.”

Spike quizzically stared at the contents, wondering what kinds of records had been sent to Twilight, and why. He reached into the box to inspect its contents further.

“Gimme that.” Avarice swept forward and snatched the package away from Spike.

“Wha— HEY! Give that back! That’s for Twilight!” Spike protested, and clawed at Avarice for the box in vain.

Avarice paid Spike not an ounce of regard as he put the package underneath one arm to take out the folder and flip through it. He shuffled past a few pages, then grinned.

“Perfect,” Avarice stated, then put the folder back into the package, moved the collection in front of him, inhaled, then promptly lit the whole thing on fire.

“HEY!” Spike yelled, but Avarice had already reduced the package to a plume of smoke that dissipated in a second.

Avarice kicked Spike off his leg, then spoke aloud without turning to face his subject. “Put this one on the ‘do not mention’ list, as bringing this up could unintentionally lead you to mention me.”

“Do you seriously think that Twilight isn’t going to eventually find out somepony sent her a package that she didn’t get, especially if that was material she asked for?” Spike scoffed.

“Yes. In fact, I doubt it’ll ever cross her mind.”

“Oh, and why’s that?” Spike dubiously scoffed.

Avarice blinked once, then snapped his head in Spike’s direction, and smirked. “Because she’ll be too busy helping Pinkie.”

Spike could only gawk at Avarice. His words had slapped him across the face too hard for him to concoct a fitting retort.

“Well, I’m off to go slink around in the shadows of back alleys, scouting out potential targets.” Avarice said as he walked away from Spike, and perched up on the railing. “Want to tag along?”

Spike answered not with words, but a wrinkled glare.

“If that’s the way you’re going to be,” Avarice returned with slight haughtiness. He turned away, ready to leap off from his perch, but turned his head sideways to leave with Spike with one final thought. “Don’t worry if I come back with anything that’s smeared in blood. The chances are pretty good that it won’t be from anyone you know.”

Spike’s eyes shot open at the realization of what he was allowing to roam the streets of his home once more. He moved to halt Avarice, but the other dragon had already launched himself from the platform, slicing through the air and into the nearest dark alley, morphing into the shadows within and disappearing from sight.

All Spike could do was observe the thief’s departure as he vanished into his natural habitat of shadow. Spike found himself alone again, and with nothing else to occupy him, he returned to the railing, and folded his arms as he leaned forward into the rail. He puffed out a sigh that had been blended with a grumble, and he resumed drumming out an annoyed rhythm against his arms with his little claws while his tail mirrored his simmering agitation with its short swipes through the air.

With nopony else to accommodate him, his disattached thoughts returned to the scene downstairs. The demeanor of his rational became all the more bitter with the realization that even as despicable as his last guest was, at least then he wasn’t dwelling on thoughts of Pinkie with bereft jealousy; he just had to deal with Avarice trying to ruin the story of Hearth’s Warming Eve for him.

And now I have to deal with my feelings about Pinkie and Twilight, and my problems with Avarice… and how the story of Hearth’s Warming Eve has been ruined for me.

Spike exhaled a heavy breath of air and closed his eyes, thinking about the words he had been saying before Avarice interrupted and pissed all over the only hope for eventually freeing himself from their forced bargain. Regardless, he recited his plea over in his head again, but this time, he heard Avarice’s words inlaid over his own query.

“Please, feel free to repeatedly crush your own spirits.”

That dissonant interjection soured the tune of his wistful appeals, making them sound so tinny that he grimaced at the noise. Immediately he felt his resolve slipping away. With equal parts vigilance and desperation, he clenched his eyes shut, took some time to ready himself, blocking out every sensation and focused only on collecting his strength. When he felt ready, he tried to practice asking for help aloud and alone again.

“Twilight?” Spike asked of no pony.

“Yes, Spike?”

“AH!” Both Spike and Twilight jumped back in shock.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” Twilight sheepishly apologized before noting Spike’s heaving chest, panicked breathing, and hair-thin pupils. “Spike, is something wrong?”

Spike was temporarily rendered incapable of speaking from not being able to get a word in edgewise over his hyperventilation. His terrified thoughts however had no such physical inhibitions, and were buzzing about in a frenzy.

Of course something is wrong! I almost just got you KILLED!

“N-No, ev-everythings-s, f-fine...” he stammered, blinking furiously. “You j-just… surprised me is all.” He put a claw to his chest. “Weren’t you just downstairs with Pinkie and everypony else?”

“Oh yeah,” Twilight managed a short, miniscule smile, “it wasn’t easy for her, but she told them the truth... about everything. Rainbow Dash expectedly took all the news a little hard, but she still promised to stick with us to the end. I know it’s only going to get harder from here on out, but I’m still proud of all of them.”

Some of his despondent edge crept it’s way back upon him, and he looked away. Yeah, but Pinkie wasn’t stuck with the dilemma where if she opened up to you with what was eating her up inside, you’d end up dead.

In the moment that had passed between bitter thoughts, he hadn’t noticed that Twilight taken a few steps towards him with a concerned gaze.

“Spike, what’s wrong?”

Spike crossed his arms and looked away, blinking again. “Nothing. Everything’s fine.”

“Spike, I know that tone in your voice. What’s bothering you?”

“Nothing, really.”

“Spike—”

“Nothing’s wrong!” he blurted.

Cold silence descended between the two. Spike could feel both his throat and his heart desiccate and crack. He chanced a glance at Twilight, and the second after wished he hadn’t; her dejected expression and slumped posture just made her feel that much farther away… and made him feel that much more alone.

“Alright… but when you want to talk to me about it, you know I’ll be there to listen.”

Spike’s closed pose just tightened. It’s not that I don’t want to talk to you about it… it’s that I’d rather not see you…

He couldn’t bring himself to finish that thought; the memories were still too painful. He couldn’t even bring himself to say “Sure,” because he knew that would be an indirect admission that he had a problem, which he knew would just encourage Twilight.

“Spike, what happened to my daffodils?” Twilight asked.

“Oh; um… Derpy flew by her a minute ago, and, uh… startled me,” Spike replied, blinking a few times. “She says ‘hi,’ by the way.”

“Oh,” Twilight muttered as she picked up the shattered pot with her magic, sealed it back together, and repotted the flowers. “Well, please try to be a little more careful, okay?”

“Sure,” Spike mumbled.

“Well, Pinkie still doesn’t feel comfortable being in public right now, so I offered her to stay here for a while, which means I need to go run a few errands. Do you want to come along?”

“No.” Spike’s answer was more automated than it was thought out.

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I’m just fine up here on the balcony.”

“Well, okay then. I won’t be gone for long.” Twilight said, then turned around and walked back into the library, only to stop halfway there. “Spike, I know you didn’t feel comfortable hearing Pinkie talk about her nightmares again, but what are you doing out here on the balcony?”

“Uh… just needed some fresh air, I guess.” Spike gave the first answer that came to mind.

“Okay… stay safe, alright?” Twilight bid.

“I’ll be fine. See ya later.”

Twilight gave him a little nod, then left, leaving Spike alone again to fitfully ponder, but with yet another thought to bother him:

Why did I come out here?

- - - - - -

Eggs. Flour. Wheat. Sugar. Lots of sugar. Strawberries. Frosting. Jalapenos… no, forget those. Spinach. Lettuce. Cherries. Blueberries. Twilight sighed a little as the shopping list went on, and her saddlebags got a little heavier with each stop as she trudged through the marketplace. The pain in her sides was increasing as well, a sign her ibuprofen was wearing off.

Olives. Lasagna noodles. Cheese. As she tried to make her way through a particularly dense knot of ponies, a sudden bump from behind nearly threw her off balance. Suppressing her species’ instinctive urge to buck, she wheeled around.

“Hey, excuse y— Oh, Dr. Mend. What are you doing here?”

The good doctor looked up from his own shopping list. “Ah, Miss Sparkle. My apologies. Too wrapped up in item procurement. Acquiring herbs with certain medicinal properties. See you are engaged in a similar task,” Dr. Mend said in his usual rapid, breathless tone.

“Yes, actually, I have a friend that will be staying with me for a while,” Twilight replied. Just as she was about to bid him good day, a thought occurred to her. “Actually, do you mind if we talk for a little bit? I just had a few questions.”

“Mind? No, don’t mind. But do mind discussing it here. Suggest we move somewhere less busy. Patient confidentiality important, no matter the patient or the ailment,” Mend said pleasantly.

“Of course.”

A minute later found them between two unused stalls away from the steady flow of foot traffic.

“So,” Dr. Mend began. “Questions pertaining to Spike, I presume?”

“Not entirely,” Twilight replied. “The cut above his eye is healing nicely.”

“Hmm, interesting,” Mend mused. “Forehead laceration was not only problem, though. Nurses said he seemed distracted, anxious. Exhibited similar symptoms in my presence.”

“That’s not, well, medically related…” Twilight said uneasily.

“Mm. Of course. Spike is only dragon to be raised in captivity. Certain challenges should be expected.”

“Hey!” Twilight indignantly retorted. “Spike is not captive! I don’t keep him in a cage, or…”

“My apologies. Poor choice of words. Certainly not captive. But certainly only dragon to be raised amongst ponies. Still presents unique challenges. Is it true crystals are a regular part of his diet?”

“It is.”

“Fascinating,” Mend commented more to himself than as a reply, and be began tapping his chin thoughtfully. “Indicative of biological need for high mineral content. Similar to normal need for sodium, but much more varied. Perhaps correlated to dragonic longevity. Very fascinating.”

“That’s not what I wanted to talk about, though.” Twilight interrupted. “I was actually hoping you could tell me a little bit about psychological disorders.”

“Hmm, could be of some help. Physical maladies and proper medication is my primary occupation, but I dabble in all forms of medicinal therapy. What is your inquiry?”

“I was hoping you could tell me a little bit about phantom limb syndrome.” She paused. “It’s just part of my research into the occasional odd subject.”

“Interesting choice of topic,” Mend noted. “Imagined sensations, usually painful, emanating from a missing body part. Commonly seen among amputees.”

“So, how does it work?”

“Not entirely known,” Mend said as Twilight tried to hide her inner dismay. “Previous theory held that pain was caused by inflamed nerve endings in the stump. Treatments based on said theory only caused more damage. CAT scans of limbic systems indicate the syndrome as a symptom of still-active parts of brain repurposing vestigial neurons, but unanswered questions still remain. Modern theory more complex, but also more vague.”

“What do you mean?”

“Some believe the syndrome is caused by trauma inflicted upon the victim’s leylines.”

“The paths of mana that flow through all life, matter, and energy?”

“Precisely.” Mend affirmed. “Sure you are quite familiar with them. Some believe leylines help provide subconscious template for sensations the body expects to receive. If real-life sensations do not match template, body compensates. Often overly so.”

Twilight couldn’t help but frown at this. Great. So not only did I imbue a discrepancy into my subconscious, but I most likely messed up my own leylines, too! “Well, in that case, is there any way to treat it?”

“Not until recently. More conventional methods proved insufficient. Antidepressants, surgery, the like. Less conventional methods tried. Hypnosis, acupuncture, magical intervention, et cetera. Again insufficient. More radical solution was finally found.”

“What was that?”

“Give the brain what it wants. First treatments superimposed opposite healthy limb over the stump with optical illusions, usually with mirrors. Fooled brain into thinking everything was okay. Patients reported significant decrease in pain. Not long before mirror was replaced with an illusion spell. Even more improvement seen.”

Twilight kept her face cool, but inwardly she rejoiced. At last, a solution to at least one of the problems that had been plaguing her. “Thank you, Doctor, you’ve been very helpful.”

“A pleasure, Miss Sparkle,” Mend replied. “Admittedly needed pleasant conversation as well. Hospital has been more busy than usual.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Is there a flu going around? Has somepony gotten sick?”

“Cannot disclose information. Doctor/patient confidentiality, you understand.”

“Oh, of course, I understand.” Twilight replied, but then gave the matter a little more thought. “I’m rather busy myself, but is there anything I might be can do to help?”

“Offer appreciated, but no, thank you.”

Twilight was going to let the matter go, but another option suddenly came upon her, and she chose to go with it. “Doctor, you seem very intelligent, so you’re probably familiar with who I am, and how close I am to Princess Celestia. If need be, I could send a letter directly to her asking for anything that might assist you with whatever you’re dealing with at the hospital.”

Mend gave her a pensive look, clearly indicating he was considering Twilight’s offer. Another capricious motive struck her, and she followed through with it as well.

“Have you been seeing an increase in injuries similar to Spike’s?”

Mend let out a little sigh, then looked around them in all directions. Finding they were still very much alone, he got closer to Twilight and answered in a quiet voice just above a whisper.

“Still cannot say everything; you understand… but yes. Recent sharp increase in physical injuries: bruises, lacerations, broken bones, the like. All injuries express similarities indicative of single perpetrator.”

Twilight gulped, daring to inquire further. “How so?”

“All patients exhibited short-term memory loss, most likely from physical trauma. Makes Spike an interesting case.”

Twilight leaned in even closer, battling her foreboding. “Could you explain more, please?”

“All other patients bewildered, unsure of cause behind their injuries. Spike was different. Wasn’t surprised to find himself injured, but still very anxious.”

“Things were a little… tense, between us before he got hurt, but he said he just fell down the stairs.” Twilight supplied.

Mend nodded. “Said same thing to me. Twice, in fact. But I do not believe him. Treated several patients who fell down stairs, injuries too different. No, Spike’s injuries were clearly defensive wounds. Suspect he knows far more than lets on. Perhaps saw or even knows attacker and is to afraid to divulge their identity.”

Twilight could feel bumps forming on her skin, making her fur stand on end. “Do you want me to address Celestia about this?”

“Not yet. Going to send concerns to mayor soon if situation continues. If problem does not improve, then might be best to ask for help from high places.”

Twilight nodded. “Okay”

“Very well. Good to see you, but must return to hospital, do what I can to help. But remember, preventing injuries just as important as healing patients. Whoever’s behind this is extremely dangerous.”

“Okay.” Twilight did her best to stay level. “Goodbye, Doctor.”

“Farewell, Sparkle. Be careful.”

With that, Dr. Mend turned and quickly vanished into the crowds, humming a tune by Gilbit and Saddlevan as he left. Twilight, for her part, went back to buying the last of the groceries feeling very conflicted. On the one hoof, she felt assured that she now had an effective weapon to use against her adversary of pain. But on the other, her anxiousness over Spike had returned in full force.

Now that Dreamscape is safer to use, we should check up on him again, Reason said.

I agree, Twilight thought in return. Whatever is going on with him, things have more than likely taken a turn for the worse.

- - - - - -

Spike lay sleeping in his bed, tightly curled up into a scaly little ball, blanket pulled in close around him and eyes clamped shut. He would occasionally toss and turn in his slumber, creasing his forehead and brow, frowning in depression.

He’s been frowning an awful lot lately, Twilight thought to herself as she watched the little dragon sleep.

Pinkie had fallen asleep some time ago with the help of some heavy sedatives Twilight had offered her in hopes that it might potentially stymie further nightmares. So that allowed Twilight to stand right by Spike’s bed, watching him for what had been some time now.

An old memory rose to the forefront of her mind. Back when she was still a young filly, she’d found a horror story without her parents knowing, and it had proven way too scary for somepony as little as herself. But even after reading the first few chapters gave her nightmares and made her sleep with several night lights, Smartypants held tightly to her chest, and the covers pulled up over her head, not knowing what happened to the filly in the book was just as nerve-wracking as the monster which had been hunting her. So in a way, she had to finish the story, but just staring at the blank, unassuming cover of that terrible book filled her with so much foreboding and abject dread that more than once she had considered throwing it away and running to the comforting embrace of her parents, even if she was most likely going to get in trouble for it.

That was how she felt watching Spike as he slept. Except the solution wasn’t going to come as easily as it did for an upset and terror-stricken filly galloping to her mother and crying into her coat, desperate for respite. There was no solace to be found over the monster not being real.

There’s an actual monster in his head, Twilight thought with equal parts fear and despair as her eyes remained locked on Spike’s bandaged cranium. Knowing the ultimate, bloody fate of that little filly in the book wasn’t helping to ease her trepidation either.

Imagine how he feels, Reason’s words rippled across the pool of Twilight’s troubled thoughts. He’s the one whose head the monster is in.

Still doesn’t make it any less scary, Twilight added.

No, it doesn’t, Reason admitted. But you’ve got to realize that Spike is just as scared of him, too, and if they’re fighting again right now, Spike is fighting him with nopony but projections to help. But if there’s something the last trip into Spike’s dreams and what the current situation with Pinkie should have taught you, it’d be that it’s easier to confront your fears when your friends are with you… just like what his projection of Rarity said.

Twilight nodded, and after a few more quiet moments, found the strength to commence with her plan. “Right... I’m finally ready,” she stated aloud, taking a few steps forward before swivelling her head around to look behind her. “Are you?”

Owloysius, armed with Twilight’s pocket watch and a glass of water, and bedecked in a padded suit made entirely of pillows and the helmet that Twilight had used while watching the dragon migration, saluted her. “Hoo.”

“Alright, same drill as before; wake me up after two minutes by throwing the water at the magic field around my head, but don’t wake up Spike,” Twilight instructed. “Oh, and thanks for helping out… but you really don’t need to take that many precautions. I fixed the spell, so… last time, isn’t going to happen again.”

“Hoo,” Owloysius curtly shot back, squinting at her, as if to say: “I’m not taking any chances.”

“Suit yourself,” Twilight said, looking back to Spike. She tried to smile at her own pun, but her own palpable premonition was suffocating. She knelt down beside Spike, but after a full minute passed, Twilight still hadn’t lit her horn.

What are you waiting for? You don’t seriously need me to activate Dreamscape for you, do ya? Reason interjected her little bit of banter into Twilight’s building anxiety. Don’t worry; Spike and I will be there with you. Twilight could sense Reason giving her a knowing yet bittersweet smile. Your subconscious did create me to help you deal with these kinds of situations, after all.

Twilight could sense mana preemptively accumulating in her horn, so she activated her magic and began to channel energy into casting the spell. Her own apprehension made it take three times longer than usual to ready Dreamscape, but when she did engage the spell and began to succumb to its effects, she turned her attention back to Reason.

Are you just as terrified of Avarice as I am? Twilight asked.

Reason paused before getting in her last thought.

No. It’s not my job to be scared...

- - - - - -

The first thing Twilight heard was the distant explosion of thunder, like gods forging their tools and weapons of war with the mighty strikes of hammers pounding upon an anvil, their work hidden by the dim, lead-gray clouds that consumed the sky, and applauded by the omnipresent patter of raindrops peppering the town and dampening her fur.

Twilight reached out to the program of the dream and encoded an umbrella into the world, opening it to shield her from further drenching. Her expression pulled tighter as she observed the empty, dreary street around her library. In this kind of weather, she otherwise loved to snuggle up next to a window with a good book or twelve and read to the relaxing chorus of precipitation, but there was something about even the very air that filled her with the weather’s dismal disposition.

“I suppose Spike’s depression have made his dreams just as gloomy as he is,” Twilight thought out loud to Reason, feeling the mirthless atmosphere beginning to weigh her down.

That should act as all the more incentive to resolve Spike’s issues with all the expedience possible, Reason replied. So that begs the question of where is he?

Twilight nodded, then returned to the shelter of the library she called home. But a quick search of the interior revealed that Spike wasn’t inside. Feeling antsy, Twilight returned to the rain outside.

“So if Spike isn’t in the library, where else could he be?” Twilight asked.

Well, there’s that other place, Reason pointed out.

The coolness of the humid air became all the more prevalent with the chill that swept through Twilight. Her ears swivelled towards the direction of that ominous mountain that only appeared in Spike’s dreams.

“N-no, I don’t think Spike is there… or that anything is going on at the mountain.”

Why not?

“I don’t hear anything. If... he... was trying to get out again, I’d have heard something by now.”

The gates to the cave are several miles away, and it’s pouring rain outside. What makes you think you’d be able to hear anything that far away in this weather? Reason dubiously asked.

“Because...” Twilight gulped; her mouth suddenly felt very much like cotton. “Because I’m terrified of him.” The words felt extremely odd, both coming from her mouth and reaching her ears. Her admission didn’t feel as cathartic as it did damning. “Survival instinct, I guess.”

Well, we still need to go there anyway, so we might as well check there first. After all, our primary objective is to learn more about Avarice, his plans, and his connection to Spike.

Twilight went stiff and her legs locked up, refusing to budge.

Twilight, don’t worry. Even if Spike isn’t there, I will be, so you don’t have to face him alone. Besides, line 2401 is active, so even if the worst does come to worst, you’ll just wake up; you won’t ever be stuck in you-know-where alone… not again.

“But if the worst does happen, that still doesn’t mean it isn’t going to hurt.”

And that’s why I’m here, Reason reassured. To help keep the worst from happening.

Twilight let out a pent-up exhale of apprehension. Fog billowed forth from her nostrils like steam escaping a pressurized engine of anxiety. She shut her eyes up tight, activated her horn again, and disappeared with a pop and a flash of pink light to reappear in the quarry, several stone’s throws away from the meticulous and menacing clockwork gates embedded into the fabricated mountain.

The rain was falling much more heavily at the foot of the mountain. Water came down in sheets while the gods sparred with their weaponry. The bitter chill of the wind swept through Twilight, making even the fog of her breath tremble.

Her legs shivered with each hesitant step, shaking both from the cold and her immense fright. Her torpid pace towards the doors carried all the gait of a pony trudging up to the gallows, for her destination was just as assuredly fatal.

You could have teleported us a little closer, you know.

“I do… but I have to prepare myself for this.”

Twilight approached the doors: great and imposing monoliths of exposed cogs and coiled springs that loomed over her, their stature all the more overwhelming with each tremulous hoofstep. She couldn’t help but shudder a little looking up at the twin clockwork sentinels, standing steadfast without regard or acknowledgement of any kind, least of all for the pouring rain or the shivering mare before them. They could hardly even be made to concern themselves with the dragon they held imprisoned.

“Well, Spike isn’t here,” Twilight duly noted, looking over the components of the locking mechanisms. Each passing pivot of her head and gyration of her eyes was becoming more twitchy and erratic. “Why is he being so quiet?”

Don’t know, Reason reluctantly admitted. But our last visit showed that he doesn’t spend his every waking minute trying to break down the doors. He could be digging; looking for another way out, or mining for Celestia-knows-what. Maybe we’re lucky and he’s sleeping.

“Or maybe he’s just on the other side, waiting for us to teleport in so he can set us on fire...”

That’s… one theory…

Twilight remained fixed in place, locked in a staring contest with the doors as precious time ticked by.

Twilight, we’re not going to find out anything more unless we go inside, and we don’t have that much time as it is.

“I know… it’s just...”

You’re terrified of him, Reason finished for her. We both know this is a monumental undertaking, but we have to do this… would it help you to bring everypony else in on this?

“Not now… not yet.” Twilight sighed. “I’m violating Spike’s trust enough as it is. I don’t think we should get our friends in on this until later. They’re still reeling a bit from learning what they have about Pinkie… and I still need to come clean with Spike about what I’ve been doing.”

Easier to obtain forgiveness than permission, huh?

Twilight flinched a little. “It sounds so bad when you put it that way...”

Yeah, well, it’s not our intelligence that gets us into trouble; it’s your reckless curiosity. Just don’t get reckless here: Spike’s well-being could be at stake.

“I know,” Twilight said. Her horn lit up brighter, and a powerful shield spell encompassed them. She then summoned her saddlebags and her pocketwatch from the library. She glanced at the watch, tucked both items back into one of the bags, and looked back at the gates with a furrowed brow. “I’m not taking any chances this time.”

Reason smiled with determination from within Twilight’s mind. Guns up, let’s do this.

Twilight closed her eyes, channeled more mana into her horn, concentrated on her teleportation spell, then disappeared with another pop and flash of light.

For a brief moment, that burst of sound from the discharge of her spell was the only thing that filled her ears. The moment after it passed and she rematerialized, the first thing she heard was the sound of the crashing rain and rolling thunder. She whipped her head around before she’d even fully opened her eyes, and saw only the drenched quarry and the armies of raindrops attacking it.

Her heart leapt in her chest, expecting that somehow the gates had opened up and they’d trotted right into a trap. She snapped her head back forward, and couldn’t help but jump back, startled by the sight before her… the steel doors, completely unmoved by anything that had just happened.

“What the...” Twilight mouthed, dumbstruck. She ignited her horn and cast another teleportation spell, only to transport herself to the exact same spot where she had just been standing.

“Wha... how… why can’t I teleport inside?!” Twilight blurted, utterly bewildered.

I— I don’t know, Reason said, sounding confounded herself. You didn’t cast the spell improperly, so by all accounts, we should be in the cave right now. Is something preventing us from reconstituting on the other side, then?

“N-no way!” Twilight stuttered. “Did he do this? How could Avarice have cast anti-teleportation wards to prevent us from getting inside?! He’s trapped in a cave! How could he even get enough mana to sustain them?! How could a dragon even cast magic like that?!”

Whoa, easy Twilight. I wasn’t suggesting anything so specific. Don’t forget, we are just in Spike’s dream after all. Physics and magic don’t work on as solid principles here as they do in the real world. But something is keeping us from apparating to the inside. Hmm, give me a moment to check the dream matrices…

Reason trailed off as she left the conversation to inspect the dream world. Twilight was struck with a feeling of something tugging in her mind as Reason reached out and started sifting through the multitude of functioning processes currently active within the dream.

“That feels weird,” Twilight said.

What does? Wait, you can feel that?

“Yeah. I don’t know how, and I can’t discern what you’re doing, but I can feel part of my mind doing… something.”

Really? That’s odd… Reason commented as she turned the majority of her attention back to the task at hoof. I suppose it might have something to do with taking a split personality into a dream with— whoa! What the hay?!

Twilight tensed up, alert. “What happened?”

I just… here, have a look at this…

Twilight felt another uncanny sensation of something within pulling on her mind, trying to get her to concentrate on a particular matter. She submitted, and followed the direction the notion was dragging her to the unseen workings of the dream world.

Twilight frowned slightly upon reaching it. The piece of the dream that Reason had taken her to was indecipherable and foreign; she couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

“Reason, what is this?”

This, if I may make an educated guess, is the compilation of each line of code that is constituting the inside of the cave.

“What? This unreadable mass? I can’t even tell what it’s supposed to be! How can you?”

I can’t. In fact, I only found this because I went looking for the code that’s making up the gates first. It’s obviously something here in the dream, but the language of the code seems to have been altercated to make it practically unfathomable.

“Wait; are you saying this part of the dream has been encrypted?”

Hypothetically speaking… yes. And if I could conjecture the location of the encryption key, I’d say it’s hidden somewhere behind that incomprehensible mass. But watch what happens if you try and manipulate or interact with them…

Twilight took hold of the substantial void and tried to issue a mental command to it, only for her to feel the code uproot her grip and shove her back. Twilight gasped at the circumstance.

“Encryption and active defenses?” Despite the humidity, Twilight felt her throat drying out. “Is Avarice doing this?”

As much as I loathe to admit, I don’t know. Another possibility could be that Spike’s subconscious is keeping us out.

“But how could Spike’s subconscious be capable of mounting fortifications like that? And why would he do that now when he was the one who let us inside the first time?”

As to the “how,” I honestly can’t be certain, but his method could have easily been born from motivation of the obvious “why.”

“And that is?”

He can’t bear to see Avarice hurt you again.

The profoundness of Reason’s words hit Twilight with the kick of the lightning bolts crackling overhead. Nothing about what Reason had just said was intended to be emotionally deleterious in any way, and yet they struck a blow right to her heart, making her brows arch up and her mouth draw open as she started at the unfeeling gates.

“He… Spike didn’t just put these gates here because he was afraid of what we’d think of him if we found out… he was terrified of what would happen to us if Avarice ever escaped...”

Even Reason’s voice had become a little strained. And then he experienced what he feared most when he let you try and help him, only for Avarice to burn you to death…

Twilight’s throat had become parched, and her ability for speech had been reduced to a sad, dry whisper. “He blames himself for all this...”

Some time passed before Reason overcame the magnitude of her own emotions, and responded. There’s only one person who deserves the blame for this…

Twilight gave a little nod, steeling her expression towards the mechanical guards. “Right. Then let’s get in there, find out everything we can, and when the time is right… make him pay. Dearly.”

Reason grinned, determined. That’s the spirit. Some of her resolve dissipated. But that still leaves us with the question of how we get inside…

“Well,” Twilight began to say as she looked up at the full height of the doors. “There’s the obvious way...”

True… but despite what he said last time, I don’t think Avarice would be so hospitable as to let us in if we knocked.

“Or… we could be extremely rude houseguests and let ourselves in...”

Reason smirked. And track our muddy hoofprints all over the carpet. But Twilight, just opening up the doors is at the very least extremely dangerous. Spike has kept these locked for plenty of good reasons. Hay, given our luck so far, it could turn out to be another dead end.

“Hm, you have a point,” Twilight said, putting a wet hoof to her chin. “Tell you what: I’ll try to open these doors manually, and you see if you can hack the encrypted defenses surrounding the cave interior.”

So you’ll go be reckless while I do the smart thing. Alright, you got yourself a deal.

Twilight felt that unnatural disconnection in her mind again. She looked back at the gates, then tried to open them. But no matter how she prodded the internal mechanisms, the doors refused to so much as comply to her interaction. No approach with magic, attempt to manipulate the doors into opening, or combination of either method yielded so much as a slight shift of a single gear.

“Not that I want to give up,” Twilight finally said after almost half an hour, “but this is going nowhere. I might as well just try to uproot the entire mountain and look inside the cave that way.”

And even if you could just up and move several billion tons of stone and soil, I don’t think it would help any. Reason commented in return, irritated by the circumstance. I’ve been mentally hacking away at this program the entire time, and I haven’t gotten anywhere with it. At this point, it wouldn’t surprise me if you did open up the doors and we were met with nothing but an impassable void wall. How much time do we have left?

Twilight pulled the pocketwatch out from her saddlebag for consultation. “Only about five minutes.”

Shoot, Reason muttered.

“Now what?”

Well, we should at least go try to find Spike. He might be able to tell us why we can’t get inside the cave. And for that matter, we should see if anything has changed between him and Avarice since the last time we… or, that is, you were here. Though to be honest, I kind of thought we’d find Spike here. So if Spike isn’t in the house, and he’s not at the gates, where is he?

“Well, he’d obviously find some place to take shelter from the rain.”

Right, but seeing as how we’re in his dream, he wouldn’t go to any old place. He’d probably single out a location where he’d like to be.

“Someplace where he’d feel comfortable… someplace where he’d want to be cooped up...”

Twilight looked down at a nearby puddle and saw Reason’s reflection. They both nodded in unison and spoke and the same time.

“He’s at Rarity’s.”

Twilight pulled the umbrella back out from her saddlebag and opened it up over her head before she dispelled her shield. Her horn lit up brighter, and then she dematerialized in a flash of light to appear in front of Rarity’s business and home with her first successful teleportation in the last half hour.

Carousel Boutique bore all the lively exuberance of a tombstone. All the windows were bereft of light, and the lifeless curtains were drawn closed behind every pane. The trees creaked out dissonant notes as they swayed in the wind, and the flowers scattered amongst the bushes all sagged underneath the torrents of rainfall. Even the boutique’s color was ashen and grave, making the entire store emanate a grim disposition so palpable it made the carved figures of the stylized merry-go-round above look more like impaled corpses that had been left to go cold and rot in the storm.

Standing underneath the unfeeling shadow of Rarity’s abode, trying to resist the assault of the freezing rain, was Spike, with shoulders dropped and tail limp upon the ground. As Twilight watched, Spike lifted his clawed fist to gently knock upon the front door, only to let his arm fall back to his side. He stood there waiting for some time, but the door remained closed, and Spike remained in the rain.

“Spike?” Twilight called out to him, and began to trot up to the boutique.

Spike didn’t even turn his head enough to look at her, but Twilight knew she’d made herself known. She trotted up to his side and held the umbrella out to cover him from the pouring rain as well. She was about to say something, but then she finally got a look at the little dragon’s face.

The sternness in which Spike held the solemn look on his face made it clear to Twilight that he was lost in abject depression. His one visible eyebrow was cutting into dim eyes, the muscles in his throat kept clenching up like he was trying to swallow ice cubes, and he wore an unshakable frown that was carved out of stone.

Well, I guess you were right; this explains the storm, Reason noted.

“Spike?” Twilight asked again, trying to be as tender and warm as possible. “What are you doing out here?”

Spike tilted his head forward, and his expression grew colder. “What does it look like I’m doing?” He muttered, not even bothering to conceal his frustration or despondence.

“Well, that’s kind of obvious,” Twilight replied, keeping her supportive side on as much as she could. “But what I really mean is, why are you out here?”

Spike exhaled a pained sigh that approached being a whimper. “I need to be with Rarity.”

Twilight looked to the front door. It somehow owned a demeanor even more stony than the clockwork gates, and the diamond-shaped windows showcased a gray even more thick and cold than the armada of cumulunibus clouds weighing down the sky above them.

“Spike, I don’t think Rarity is home.”

“No… no, she is home!” A tone of fervent desperation crept into Spike’s voice. Twilight couldn’t tell whether he was in denial or being too perseverant for his own good.

“I know she’s home,” Spike continued, more to himself than to Twilight, “she just isn’t opening the door. I think she’s upset with me… but if she does change her mind, or if she at least wants to hear my apology for… whatever I did to wrong her, then I have to be here. Because if she did want me around, but I wasn’t here for her invitation… I have to stay, Twilight.”

Spike hadn’t even turned to look at Twilight when he spoke. Nor did he look away from the door when he lifted his fist, shaking from the cold, to knock upon it once more, only to let his arm fall to his side once more. The entrance still remained closed.

Twilight frowned at the hopeless routine Spike was undertaking. She took a step closer to him and lowered her head closer down to his level.

“Spike, why don’t you come home with me, where it’s nice and warm? We’ll get your bandage changed, and I’ll ask Owloysius to make you a nice cup of hot chocolate. Wouldn’t you like that?”

Spike shook his head. “That won’t help.”

Twilight leaned in a little closer. “Won’t help with what?”

The dispirited visage momentarily lifted went Spike’s eyes opened wide, as with fear or surprise. That break in the clouds vanished a second later when he adorned a more stern mask, and turned his head farther away from Twilight.

“Nothing,” Spike muttered, blinking several times. “Nevermind.”

“Spike, I’ve known you long enough to know when you’re upset about something. So if you have a problem—”

“‘You’ll be there to listen.’ Yeah, you gave me that whole speech yesterday. But you don’t need to be because everything is fine,” Spike tersely replied, then knocked a little harder on the door.

Twilight was about to respond, but Reason interrupted her. Wait a minute, Twilight. I think Spike believes this is reality.

What makes you think that? Twilight asked in her head.

He just referred to earlier today as “yesterday,” Reason answered. And last time, Spike at least knew he was dreaming, even if he didn’t know you were there with him. Plus, I think if his subconscious could tell the difference, his projection of Rarity would have let him in by now, assuming she’s even here.

Alright, so what do we do now?

Try to play that angle as though we were all actually awake to see if you can get him to leak anything about Avarice. But make it fast, we don’t have much time left.

“Spike… I know something is bothering you. You’ve… we both have been a bit on edge with each other since that night the two of us had those terrible dreams. And I know that’s partially because I haven’t been treating you as well as I should; that’s my fault, and I can’t apologize enough for being so insensitive. But… I don’t know, it just seems like you’ve been upset with something else since then…”

And then a thought hit her; something that she felt so foolish for not having it occur to her sooner, but now felt imperative to understanding everything since her last voyage into Spike’s mind.

“Spike, the last time we— in that nightmare you had a few days ago, where you dreamt that I had died… what happened before you found my body?”

Another alteration of Spike’s expression swept over his face. His face drew out longer and his eyes went wide, with pupils quivering. Twilight knew she’d gotten a break in something, but to what end, she couldn’t tell. She couldn’t even fully read Spike’s expression. He looked to be both afraid and comprehensive, so it was clear to her that the gears in his mind were turning; she just didn’t know which ones, and in what direction.

Spike’s expression disappeared behind another obstinate, blinking mask. “Nothing you need to know about. Nevermind, it’s not important. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“But… if it wasn’t important, why does it seem like it bothers you so much?”

“Because...” Spike fumbled with his words for a moment before crossing his arms and performing an about face, claws digging into his scales. “Look, just drop it, Twilight.”

“Spike, please,” Twilight implored. “I know you’ve got a problem that you’re not telling me. If you would just talk to me about it—”

“NOTHING IS WRONG!” Spike whipped around and roared at Twilight. “NOW GO AWAY!”

Twilight reared back from the offense: body tensed, face pulled tight, and eyes wide open in fear from the outrage burning in Spike’s eyes, now sharpened into crescents. Her recoil exposed Spike to the merciless storm, leaving him to glare at her through the pouring rain.

Tense moments passed between the two until the downpour seemed to quench that unnatural yet all too familiar fire of animosity blazing within the dragon’s dagger pupils. With the anger drowning, his scowl gave way to a painful frown, and his eyes were left with with nothing to reflect but sorrow. He turned away from Twilight to face the closed door again and fell to his knees, keeling forward onto outstretched arms. Spike’s breathing began to violently tremble, and he put a claw to his eyes, now clenched tightly shut, trying desperately to hold back tears.

Twilight’s heart broke at the sight, but all she could do was stand there, mental wheels spinning in the mud.

You’re losing him, Twilight, Reason interjected. It’s now or never.

“No, Spike.” Twilight’s voice shook from pain and fear, but her words were as sturdy as the clockwork gates. “I’m not going to leave you. I care too much about you to just stand idly by and watch you suffer alone.”

She trotted up next to Spike, sat down, and pulled him into a hug. He fought against her, squirming in her grip, but eventually gave in and let himself go limp in her embrace when it became apparent he wasn’t going to break free.

“Why won’t you leave?” Spike mumbled. “Why don’t you just give up on me?”

“Because that is not what friends do, Spike.” Twilight’s words were soft, like how her mother would speak to her when the two of them were having the closest of heart-to-hearts. “I understand you don’t feel comfortable telling anypony what you’re going through, but never forget you have somepony to tell. And when you do feel that you need somepony to confide in, you can always confide in me.”

A distant noise caught Twilight’s attention. One of her ears swivelled to meet it, an instantly recognized the bellowing roar of a stampeding tsunami.

“No Twilight...” Spike whispered in a choked voice so quiet that Twilight almost didn’t hear him over the charging wave rushing forward to devour her.

“I can’t.”

- - - - - -

Twilight awoke with water still dripping from her face, blurring her vision. She rubbed a foreleg across her eyes to wipe some of the water away, and found a towel being nudged her way by a very cautious owl wearing an impromptu shock absorption outfit.

“Thanks, Owloysius,” Twilight muttered with some dismay as she took the offered cloth and dried some of the water off her face with it. “I’m fine, so you don’t have to worry about another bear-hug of death.”

“Hoo,” Owloysius replied with a slight sigh of relief.

“I’m going to go get another towel,” Twilight said as she walked out of her bedroom. “Could you watch over him until I get back, please?”

“Hoo.” Owloysius saluted her, and inched closer to the sleeping dragon with a series of hops.

Twilight closed the bathroom door behind her before she flicked on the light and pulled another towel from the linen closet. She rubbed the thick fabric over her head and partially through her mane as she approached the sink, and let out a sigh as she felt another pair of eyes upon her.

“Well, that was disheartening,” Twilight moped aloud.

“Yeah, it was,” Reason agreed from her reflection in the bathroom mirror. “Seriously, how could either of us have seen that one coming? I knew it wouldn’t be easy trying to learn anything more about Avarice by going into the cave, but who would have thought we’d have a hard enough time just trying to figure out how to get inside?”

“Tell me about it,” Twilight mumbled as she placed her gyroscope upon the countertop and set it in motion.

“Why do you think Spike refused to talk to us?” Reason asked.

“I don’t know,” Twilight sadly uttered while she morosely stared at the gyroscope. No matter how hard she was trying, she couldn’t stopping thinking about the way Spike refudiated and yelled at her. She couldn’t help but dwell on just how much the anger that Spike directed towards her looked just like when he got angry, too. She couldn’t get past how much it terrified her and broke her heart.

“I just don’t get it,” Reason continued thinking aloud as Twilight finally spun her totem, only partially paying attention to either. “It wasn’t easy to get him to talk last time, but he still opened up after a little coaxing… and at least then he sort of admitted that he had a problem; we couldn’t even get that much out of him this time.” Reason began tapping a hoof to her chin. “Something must have changed since the last time either of us went into his dream. But what could have… oh… oh no...”

“What?” Twilight asked, turning away from her totem.

“Oh Celestia, I’m such a fool! Why didn’t that occur to me sooner?!” Reason bemoaned.

“What?” Twilight asked again, more alarmed as she glanced at the mirror.

Reason looked back at Twilight, deathly serious. “Okay, get this; when Spike woke up the morning after you used Dreamscape on him, he had said that he had a nightmare wherein you died. That seems pretty indicative that he found your body before the dream ended, right?”

“Yeah, but...” Twilight couldn’t finish her sentence when what Reason was getting at began its terrible dawn over her.

“But we were in a separate chamber,” Reason picked up where Twilight left off. “We were cut off from both Spike and his projection of Rarity, and it’s probably safe to assume that they were trapped in different chambers too, with only a trap door chute to get out. So again, stipulating that this was the situation Spike found himself in, the only way that Spike could have found your remains was if he somehow escaped his cell, got past Avarice, and made it to where you were, or—”

Twilight gasped and looked right into the mirror. “Or Avarice showed him our corpse...”

The glass gyroscope fell over with a gentle clink, but it went unnoticed by Twilight.

“Avarice has to be using Spike’s own fear against him! That has to be why Spike wouldn’t talk to us! But then that would mean Avarice has coerced Spike into submission!”

“Twilight, you’re—”

“I’m losing him! Spike is giving up hope to his instinct-turned-evil-split-personality, so it’s only a matter of time before Avarice makes him go on a rampage, and then we’re going to have to use the Elements to turn him to stone, and then Celestia and everypony else is going to be so disappointed in me that I failed my best friend so badly—”

Twilight was cut off when a sphere of water smacked right into her face. She lurched back from the offense, shaking off as much water as she could. For a split second, she thought Owloysius might have hit her with another glass, until her vision cleared to see the magenta aura around the faucets of the sink twist the handles off.

“Sorry,” Reason said, “but you were getting a bit hysterical again, and I couldn’t get your attention back, so that seemed like my best option.”

Twilight just stared at Reason, bewildered and dumbfounded. “Did… did you just—”

“Technically, you hit yourself in the face with a hydrosphere.”

“Hey, don’t try to get coy with me!” Twilight shot. “You did that, didn’t you?!”

Reason sighed and looked away, pensive and graven. “Symptoms include inexplicable memory loss, mood swings, and alterations in routines, formalities, and behavior...”

Twilight craned her neck back slightly. “What are you—”

“In the most extreme cases, a separate identity can evolve into its own separate consciousness. In these cases, behavior can alternate between different identities, and these identities can converse with each other, think on different levels, and even share memories.” Reason finished her recital, then looked at Twilight with a pensive and somber countenance. “Yes, I splashed you in the face… but I wasn’t able to literally just a minute ago.

“You’re getting worse, Twilight,” Reason explained with bleak seriousness. “Between your obsessive compulsiveness and your unspoken vow to help your friends whenever they have a problem, coupled with the trauma of being murdered by your best friend’s evil alter ego, suffering through sixteen days of saturated loneliness, and accidentally performing an inception on yourself, your subconscious created me under the premonition that you would ultimately go insane if you tried to solve all these problems in the damaged psychological state you’re in.”

Twilight winced as a wave of pain rushed through her sides.

“This isn’t just about Pinkie and Spike now; it’s about you, too.” Reason continued. “So much hinges on you that a weaker pony might snap under the pressure, but you’ve already begun to crack. I can keep you from cracking, but if I have to keep taking control of you manually like that while your mind is getting weaker, I can’t help but think that’s just going to make you worse off, too.”

Reason’s expression stiffened with earnest. “So I can’t stress enough how we need to approach this rationally, and, I stress this even more, calmly… and by the way, your totem fell over.”

Twilight glanced at the gyroscope for the first time in minutes. Upon seeing it lying motionless on the counter, she looked back to Reason. “Alright… rational and calm… but what about our theory about Avarice using fear to extort silence from Spike? Even somepony logical as you has to see the potential merit of that.”

Reason nodded her head. “I do, and that would certainly explain a lot, but then that begs the question that if Avarice only exists as a conscious trapped in Spike’s mind, and one that Spike has locked up for that matter, why would Spike still refuse to talk to us based on that fear if he thought we were awake?”

Twilight pursed her lips and ran a hoof under her chin in contemplation, then gasped and looked back up at Reason with wide and fearful eyes. “What if Avarice was capable of doing things to Spike similar to what you just did with me and the water, just infinitely worse?!”

Reason’s own eyes grew wider and the corners of her mouth pulled tighter. “Alright, that’s definitely something to consider… but wait a minute,” Reason interjected, and adopted another pensive look. “If Avarice can go about assuming direct control of Spike at his own discretion, why wouldn’t he just do so whenever he wanted? I don’t take control right now out of courtesy and because I know it’d be more detrimental to you in the long run, but Avarice holds no such obligation to Spike. So if he had that opportunity, why wouldn’t he take it? What’s keeping Avaice from taking control of Spike and, dare I be so macabre, using the carving knife to slit your throat while you’re asleep?”

“Maybe… he can’t? Ugh, I don’t know...” Twilight groaned. “But remind me to hide that blasted knife.”

“And all this is working on the pretence that Avarice still exists in Spike’s mind...” Reason said. “You know how much I hate to admit this, but I don’t know, either. We may have found new paths to explore, but their destinations are all shrouded, and there’s no way of knowing where any of them lead unless we keep going back until we do reach a decisive conclusion.”

“Or… we could go straight to the demon himself and make him give us the answers,” Twilight posed with furious intent in her tone. “He caught us off guard last time; we didn’t get to use our magic on him. Maybe then he’ll be the one who learns to fear what happens when you mess with somepony’s friends.”

“Admirable gusto, but don’t forget what that projection of Rarity said about sticking your hoof into a snake hole...”

Both Twilight and Reason shuddered at the utterance of those creatures from Tartarus.

“I do,” Twilight replied, “but that’s why we stomp down into that thing while wearing cleats.”

Reason smirked. “Now that’s more like it.”

Twilight returned the expression, only for it to falter slightly the next second later. “But even then, it’s clear that something has changed…”

“Or maybe it was always worse than we expected, and we just never knew until now,” Reason ominously added. “Either way, something insidious is ahoof here… and considering it involves Avarice, I shudder to think that it could be far worse than either of us imagined.”

Twilight gulped. “I thought you said you existed to keep worse things from happening?”

“I said I’m here to keep the worst from happening,” Reason corrected. “But we can still find a solution to fix everything. In the meantime, just be thankful that the worst hasn’t happened...”

Twilight’s insecurity couldn’t help but fill in the blank at the end of that sentence.

Yet...

Author's Notes:

So it seems like four months is our standard quota to finish a new chapter. All things considered, with editing the previous chapters and working on putting our Crystal Empire review together, I feel pretty good about finishing this one when we did. And taking into account that this story is now dealing with three separate conflicts at the same time, I feel like it handles them all fairly well. (If only the God-forsaken season three premiere could say the same thing AND NO, I AM NEVER LETTING THAT GO.)

This has actually been the most collaborated upon chapter in the story thus far; Brian and I split up writing the scenes, edited the crap out of each other's work, and it even features the first writing input from Joseph ever since chapter one (he wrote the first drafts for the first two scenes).

Like chapters five and six before it, chapter seven was originally going to be way longer and cover much more material, but we decided to split them up into two separate chapters for the sake of word length. Unlike chapters five and six however, we came to that decision during the course of writing this wall of words as opposed getting half way through half of the second part and saying, "Maybe we should cut this down..."

Admittedly, the opening scene alone being longer than chapter one had a lot to do with it.

However, as is I think this chapter has a great arc to it, starting with Pinkie confessing and getting the promise of help and ending with Spike the pariah getting worse for his coerced silence, all whilst Twilight's conflicts and establishment for future events inlaid in between.

Looking forward to the feedback on this one... namely because we're going to try to get this posted on EQD again (it only just barely missed the mark last time). And with all the work we've been putting into this, I expect acceptance to be inevitable.

And then we'll finally get the recognition we deserve.

- Christian 'A pony; my kingdom for a pony!' Harisay

Chapter Eight - Maredrake

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Spike lay in his basket bed, utterly motionless in the dim bedroom, staring at nowhere in particular. The lines between slumber and consciousness had been blurred for him that morning, so he had no idea much time had passed since he had awoken to continue doing nothing like he was now. Not that it mattered much to him, though; he felt just as depressed now while he was awake as he did when he was asleep.

One of the reasons he used to enjoy sleeping so much, be it a quick nap or an extensive slumber after a long day, was because he used to have rather enjoyable dreams, but those felt so far gone now. Gone were the pleasant dreams of being a hero like in those bedtime stories he’d heard when he was younger, or of finally getting his wings and learning to fly. Gone were the thrilling visions of accompanying Twilight and her friends on their adventures, of exploring new and exotic places, discovering fascinating new things, or battling dangerous foes, be they zombies, aliens, or the pair of albino laboratory mice with a scheme to conquer Equestria like he had dreamt about that one time. And gone were those precious fantasies of laying his heart out for Rarity, finding the courage to ask her to be his very special somepony, and finally earning her love.

Those dreams were long gone, and in their place he’d been getting nothing but insomnia, troubled sleep, terrible nightmares, and heartbreaking dreams on a nightly basis.

Seems like even my dreams have gotten just as depressed as I am, Spike thought dourly.

He couldn’t stop himself from brooding about his latest terrible dream. Of standing under the endothermic shadow of Carousel Boutique in the pouring rain, knocking on that obstinate front door until his knuckles ached from the abuse. He could still feel the freezing downpour trying to steal away his body’s warmth; still feel his own gaping anguish gorge itself on his fool’s hope that Rarity would eventually open the door and invite him inside; still feel the weight of all his guilt and regret when his frustration and relentless anxiety made him snap at the Twilight in his dreams when she had just wanted to help him. He especially despaired over that last part, when he’d lost his temper and yelled at her… and put that look right back onto her face again.

Worst of all, the entire discourse had been nothing but another dream.

Spike moved for the first time in a long while, and felt the blood shift in his body as he twisted around in bed to cast his gaze back at Twilight. The unicorn lay in her bed, still nestled into her heavy bedsheets and lost in Morpheus’s embrace, as indicated by of her deep, heavy breathing and the placid look on her face.

His frown dug in deeper at the peaceful sight of her. He yearned for some respite to let him pull his blanket from his bed and snuggle up next to her, just like he always used to do whenever he had a horrible nightmare. But he couldn’t bring himself to do anything but stare longingly at her for the same reasons that he wouldn’t even acknowledge her open invitation to talk about his current problems yesterday on the balcony.

Spike finally bothered to sit up in his bed, keeping his gaze upon Twilight. His misery had become a stone in his throat. He still felt so guilty about rounding on Twilight that he actually felt compelled to apologize to her when she awoke, but it had only been another dream. And the more he dwelt upon it, the worse it made him feel.

I could have spoken to her, Spike bitterly thought. It was just another dream... I could have practiced asking Twilight for help…

He slowly looked away from her, sighing. Such was his sadness that it felt like he’d just woken up into another dream today, he thought as he put his cold feet to the floor. Even thought Twilight was so close to him, she was still so distant, and Spike couldn’t bring her back.

Hopelessness writhed through him. Right then, he made a silent pact to himself to practice asking for help the next time he got the chance. But he couldn’t do that now: his throat was still too desiccated and constricted to form any words. So he stood up made his way toward the door, rationalizing that he might as well start making breakfast for everypony right now before Twilight inevitably asked him to. A cold glass of milk might help soothe his throat a little bit, too.

He stopped at the threshold, and looked back at the still-unconscious unicorn again. For the second time, he was hit with the urge to turn around and crawl into bed with Twilight… but then she would ask what was wrong, and it was too late to give an honest answer now.

That was only five days ago. It felt like something from another lifetime now, when the worst thing that had come from trusting a friend with sensitive information was Twilight revealing his crush on Rarity.

The only force of will that pushed him to turn around and finally start making his way to the kitchen again was that he didn’t feel like crying that early in the morning. So instead, he made his cautious descent down the stairs, dragging his feet across the hardwood floor towards the kitchen, where he’d hopefully find a distraction from his overcast thoughts.

He heard someone moving around in the kitchen, and he stopped in his tracks. His first thought was that Pinkie must have woken up early too and was rummaging through the fridge, but that suspicion was dispelled the moment he heard another step and realized it lacked the tell-tale clop of a hoof.

His entire body tensed up like he was about to be hit, and his claws balled up into fists.

The door to the kitchen swung open, quiet as a shadow, the silent herald to Avarice as he strode through the portal, carrying an entire wooden crate of quills with a cash register balanced upon it.

Spike had already begun to shake, both from fear and from sheer anger, but Avarice paid him no mind. The thief just casually walked over to the center table, and laid his plunder upon the floor. Then as Spike watched, Avarice breathed tendrils of fire that circled the base of the table, which made three glowing red circles, inlaid with strange runes, manifest before his eyes. Avarice reached out to the luminescent rings, and with a flick of the wrist, spun them in opposite directions, stopping them when he caught sight of a particular rune upon each of them.

With the glyphs aligned, the runic ensemble glowed ever brighter, then dissipated as more light seeped up from the cracks between the planks of wood. With his peculiar ritual complete, Avarice finally began to lift up the floorboards to reveal his stash of stolen goods.

“You’re up early,” Avarice quietly noted without even bothering to look at Spike as he placed his pilfered items into the impromptu safe.

Spike hard-swallowed the lump in his throat. “What’s it to you?” he tried to growl, but it came out more like a whisper.

“Absolutely nothing,” Avarice responded. “Just an observation. It pays to to be observant when you’re me.”

Avarice stood up and began to walk back towards the kitchen without locking up the makeshift floor-safe. Spike raised an eyebrow at this, and looked back and forth between the dragon’s winged back as it slid into the kitchen again and the hole in the ground, which he noted had much more space hollowed out from before. The sinking suspicion that Avarice had merely left to acquire more property arose in Spike’s mind, and was soon confirmed when Avarice reappeared through the door, dragging an entire sofa behind him.

Spike couldn’t help but throw out his arms in protest. “Oh, come on! Really?!”

“Yes, really.” Avarice hissed. “Now be quiet, or you’ll fall down the stairs again.”

Spike tensed up as a small chill swept through him, but his indignation was still hot. “Just… why?” he blurted out, a little more quietly.

“I saw this couch and thought to myself, ‘Hm, I want that couch.’ So I took it. Simple as that.” Avarice explained as he hefted said couch into the cache, which was now spacious enough that the entire piece of furniture easily fit within.

Even as he simmered in his own frustration, Spike felt a cold curiosity forming inside, and the words came to his mouth before he could second guess them.

“Avarice...” Spike cringed, “Can I ask you something?”

“No,” Avarice responded curtly as he got back down on one knee, replaced the floorboards, and sealed them together with his fire.

Spike’s indignation sparked into a little flame, and he stomped towards Avarice. “Answer my question, and you get to ask one of your own. That’s how your stupid game works, isn’t it?”

Avarice responded with a little smirk. “Now that’s more like it.” He rose from the hidden opening to the floor stash, sat down on the table and crossed his arms. “What do you want to know?”

Spike looked in between Avarice and the floorboards, searching for words. “What do you get out of… all this?”

Avarice’s expression became somewhat cross. “You just love your loaded questions, don’t you? If you want a conclusive answer, define ‘all this.’”

Spike tried to stand up a little taller as he managed a reply. “What do you get out of the thievery? Aside from the stuff, I mean… Why is it so important to you that you keep going out and stealing other pony’s things?”

“Hmm, what do I get out of constant thievery?” Avarice repeated, feining thoughtful contemplation. “Satisfaction, fulfillment, feelings of gratification, a profound sense of accomplishment, and a bunch of cool stuff.”

Spike looked at Avarice with a bemused expression. “That’s, uh… not quite the answer I was looking for...”

“Well, it’s the one you get. If you don’t like it, you can go crying to Twili—Oh wait, I guess you can’t go complaining to Twilight about it,” Avarice smirked.

Spike’s fists clenched into hammers.

Avarice leaned forward, again emphasizing his mighty stature. “And now, per the rules of our game, you owe me an answer. I’ll ask the same question; what do you get out of what you’re doing?”

Spike’s snarling expression temporarily lessened for one of confusion. “And… what exactly am I doing?”

Avarice looked Spike dead in the eyes. “Pretending to be a pony.”

Spike reeled back. “No I’m not!”

Avarice maintained eye contact even as his expression shifted to flat and unamused. “You like to wear aprons, bake cookies, cater to your friends’ tea parties, and you even drink milk.” Avarice sneered with a look of disgust. “Frequently. And for that matter, you actually believe it expedient to have friends.”

“So what if I have friends or I like snickerdoodles and milkshakes? That doesn’t mean I’m pretending to be a pony!” Spike protested.

“Oh?” Avarice shot back with a petulant twitch of his head. “And how many other dragons have you known who indulge in confectionaries or fraternize with their prey?”

“Well… you like doughnuts...”

An intense leer emerged on Avarice’s face, and a low rumble crept out from his snarling maw. “A loathsome result of being trapped inside your head for so long. A few things about you have infected me. Yet you still won’t find me yucking it up with any pony. Dragons are not a gregarious species: ponies are. You being as sociable as you are makes you a proverbial maredrake if I ever saw one.”

“I’m not a… wait, what’s a maredrake?”

“Call it the colloquial term for an imposter, a counterfeit, fraud, fake, changeling under the skin, something masquerading as something that it isn’t.” Avarice explained. “The term is derivative of an archaic superstition surrounding a species of nightshades of the same name. It’s known for having peculiar shaped roots that vaguely resemble the body of an equine, which lead those weed-grazers to the woefully inaccurate misconception that the plant wished it could be a pony.”

Avarice momentarily looked away. “Wow, that doesn’t sound any less idiotic even when I’m the one explaining it.” Avarice returned his piercing gaze to Spike. “Either way, ‘maredrake’ has become a term for disingenuous posers, such as yourself. But if you look at the word as a portmanteau, it becomes even more appropriate in your case. You’re so non-draconian that I’m hard-pressed to even call you a dragon. You remind me more of a drake. And while those filthy, overgrown lizards may resemble dragons, their mere existence is a mockery of my kind’s perfection. Any dragon worth their treasure is honor-bound to destroy any and every drake on sight.”

Spike gulped as Avarice flexed his powerful claws, emphasizing their razor-sharp points.

“You still haven’t answered my question.” Avarice stated, glaring at Spike with impatience.

Spike’s burning indignation returned, reforging his hardened stance. “So what if I am a ‘maredrake?’ I get a place to call home, I’ve got a roof over my head, a bed to sleep in, and food in the kitchen. I can learn, grow, and be of use to others. And most importantly, I’ve got friends who love me like family. That’s what I get out of pretending to be a pony!”

Avarice continued to scrutinize Spike with a look of disgusted disappointment. “That’s it? That pittance is all you can claim? That paltry sum is the reason you’ve renounced your very nature?!”

“Yeah, ‘that’s it!’ I’d say that’s an awful lot! Certainly a lot more than you can say you’ve gotten! I’ve got pony friends who love me, and all you’ve got is a trench full of stuff!”

“And that’s all I need! That’s all any being with any self respect should need!” Avarice fired back, and advanced on Spike in that way that always made him recoil.

Avarice leaned in close to Spike, eyes like daggers. “Try to keep your pony-muddled brain from imploding as I explain this to you. I’m not after items, I’m after valuables.”

“What’s the difference?”

“The difference is that an item could be literally anything, from grass blades to the dirt of a flower pot. Those things aren’t valuable.”

“So what is?”

“Now that’s more open to your our purviews, since value is subjective: something purely based off the emotional attachments associated with it. That’s partially how any being capable of conscious thought categorizes things: you, me, everybody… But most importantly, me.”

Spike opened his mouth to argue, but Avarice interrupted him.

“I say the name ‘Twilight,’ and you instantly think of a neurotic, lavender, unicorn mare. This summons feelings of attachment, fondness, and affection for your guardian figure, and, at the moment, disappointment and anxiety over the distance currently separating you two. I proclaim the glorious title of ‘Avarice,’ and you picture your’s truly. You instantaneously feel terror and loathing towards the dragon whom you largely blame for the disconnect between you and your schizophrenic, demented owner.”

Spike scowled, but Avarice carried on regardless.

“Inanimate objects are subject to the same treatment. I say ‘gold,’ and you think of that rare, shiny metal that one never really can have enough of. And that’s what I’m after: things of importance.”

“So why not go dig up gems or gold, instead of stealing everypony else’s belongings and tormenting me?”

“Because I have to stay in Ponyville to keep you in line, and this wretched town has a notable deficiency of the covetous things that dragons usually pursue. So for the moment, I have to settle for taking things that matter to others… Though I have to admit, metaphorically stealing some pony’s illusion of safety by defiling their home is a reward in and of itself. Either way, I still get something valuable, so it all achieves the same end.”

“But why do you have to do all that to feel good about yourself?” Spike asked. “Why can’t you just make something for yourself? Or… I dunno, have something to offer somepony else? You know, give back?”

“Give… BACK?! Wha… are you… grrr….” Avarice smacked his palm against his forehead with enough force to give a weaker being a concussion. “Are you just playing the fool to aggravate me, or are you really that stupid? You read what I wrote on those prison doors: ‘The only thing that matters is yourself.’ That’s why dragons live in solitude. We’re not out to look for the approval of anyone or anything but our own. Every dragon is by default their own number one. But dragons still need something to do, which is why we set out to decorate that big, shiny ‘#1’ with as many valuables as possible, to make ourselves all the more grandiose with all the precious things one owns. That’s why the life goal of every dragon in the history of dragons is to hoard all the treasure they can… except, of course, for you!”

“Because living how you say a dragon is supposed to live doesn’t leave any room for friendship!” Spike retorted as he took up a more aggressive stance.

Avarice glared at Spike with contempt, but a single amused snort lead him into a series of mordant chuckles. “So you really are that stupid. Those principles of ‘love’ and ‘friendship’ that you believe as the most valuable things in life are really just insidious ploys that ponies use to control each other, especially those too insecure with themselves to live only for their own sake.”

Spike crossed his arms and sneered. “Now that’s just ridiculous.”

“No, it isn’t,” Avarice immediately cut back. “You know that vile idiom, ‘you get what you give,’ right?”

“Yeah, so?”

“Think back to what I said earlier about how people attach meanings and emotional values to subjects, then think of how that applies to the concept of passion being give-and-take. If you ever care about anyone else with any level of sincerity, you’ll feel compelled to serve them somehow, even if it’s not beneficial or even counterproductive to your own interests. The moment you owe anyone an obligation like that, they own you.”

“No they don’t,” Spike retorted.

“Yes, they do.”

“No they don’t!”

“Then why does Twilight always make you clean up the library?”

Spike stood there with an open mouth, unable to compose a retort.

“And even if you hate doing it, even if it’s so she can eschew her responsibilities and go play pattycake with all of her friends, you still do it anyway.”

Spike was at a loss. Avarice was bombarding him with artillery too keen a target and too destructive an ordinance for him to withstand unscathed. Having an argument with anypony who could articulate their point better than he could, be it Twilight or even Pinkie Pie, and trying to discern a flaw in their logic made him feel like he was trying to solve a Rubuck’s cube. But fighting with Avarice always made him feel like trying to solve the Rubuck’s cube within a narrow time limit. While Avarice was hitting him. With the cube.

“What’s even more treacherous is how this constant reliance on ‘friendship’ makes you dependent on the approval of others. Seriously, you can’t function without it. Just think back to the time that Owloysius first showed up. You got so heartbroken when you came to the realization that Twilight didn’t love you anymore that you threw a fit and ran away.” Avarice smirked. “Check.”

“Twilight still loves me!” Spike protested. “If she didn’t, I wouldn’t still be living here!”

“And yet here you are, beginning to doubt even that,” Avarice said, crossing his arms. “That quiver in your voice, the way you shake, and especially your rapid blinking are a dead give-away. If you had any sense of importance, you would have left this town and never come back. If you had any pride, you’d be sitting on top of a mountain of treasure right now.”

Avarice got down on all fours to look Spike directly in the eyes as he chided the smaller dragon with a scowl. “If you were a real dragon, you’d have just eaten that damn ruby.”

Spike shook his head back and forth. “No… no, you said it yourself: love is give and take. Even if I have to lose something, I get it back in return. That’s something your items can’t give you.”

“Why are you stuck on this ‘need someone else’ mentality? If you’re driven to get others to care about you, it’s because you can’t care enough about yourself. So what if the things I own aren’t concerned with my well being? I don’t need them to be, and I shouldn’t need them to, either.”

“My friends don’t think of me as an item that they own just so they can feel better about themselves,” Spike hissed.

Avarice’s leered back. “And my items can’t kept rejecting my intimate affections.”

The bitter cold of silence fell upon the library foyer. Spike could only stare ahead with his mouth slightly open. His throat was too dry and tangled up in knots to speak. His mind was just a smoldering crater with the echo of that last explosion still ringing within his skull. His heart shrivelled and froze, buried underneath the permafrost.

Avarice slowly turned around, and raised himself back onto his hind legs as he walked towards the kitchen door, then growled:

“Checkmate.”

Avarice put a set of claws to the door, then froze. Without a word, he looked back at Spike, partially unfurled one of his wings, and withdrew Spike’s fiery marble. He twiddled it around his claws for a moment, then flicked the marble back towards Spike, and left.

The marble rolled across the floor and came to a stop when it collided with Spike’s foot. Spike was only dimly aware of the event. He just stood there, shaking as screams of frustration clawed at his parched throat in their carnal riot to escape.

His mind was a blizzard that he was lost in, but he didn’t look for shelter or a way to escape the harrowing winds and ferocious cold. He didn’t even care if he froze to death in the storm.

I should have just stayed in bed, he thought. I shouldn’t have even woken up.

- - - - - -

Twilight sat by the center table in the front room, having buried her muzzle in a book as she waited for the rest of her friends to arrive. Her eyes darted from sentence to sentence, sometimes reading one over again, and even on occasion reviewing entire paragraphs after having just gone over them to make certain to herself that the point was made unmistakably clear.

She winced a little. Her imaginary limbs were starting to bring their very real pain again, so Twilight closed her eyes and envisioned herself with wings. It helped take the edge off, but not by much, and she hoped for enough time to try a more alleviating solution before having to get around to group business.

“Um, excuse me, Twilight...”

The unicorn jumped a little in surprise. The voice that made itself known was so quiet and subdued that Twilight almost could have sworn Fluttershy had snuck into the library and somehow crept up upon her, but her sudden lurch in the direction from which the voice came revealed only Pinkie Pie, who still looked grey and unhappy.

“I’m sorry,” Pinkie mumbled as she looked away, her posture becoming even more submissive. “I didn’t mean to scare you...”

“Oh, no need to apologize. I just got really absorbed into what I was reading,” Twilight replied as she closed her book and turned to face Pinkie. “Is everything alright?”

“Yeah, everything’s fine,” Pinkie stated, disingenuous. “I got something that we could use to make a totem for me...”

“Oh?” Twilight leaned in with authentic curiosity. “May I see it?”

Pinkie hesitated, then reached around behind her back and slowly withdrew her item to display for Twilight. It resembled Pinkie’s party cannon, but on a much smaller scale. Six revolving chambers painted a glossy hot pink interconnected with the baby blue barrel back near the handle, with the excess space of the magazine slung below the barrel. Breaking up the otherwise bright and colorful palette was a cool grey stock with the white silhouette of a pony in mid-trot stamped upon it.

Twilight’s eyes went wide as she recognized Pinkie’s totem in an instant. “Is that...”

“The same thing I used to fight… you-know-who the last time we shared a dream together.” Pinkie finished.

“It’s my party launcher… I named him ‘Chino,’” Pinkie said with a tiny, wry smile. “I figured since it helped protect me the last time we went into a dream, then it could also help me know when I’m in a dream, and help keep me safe until I wake up.”

“Wow… that’s actually very clever, Pinkie.” Twilight smiled, impressed.

For the briefest moment, Pinkie’s expression softened, and Twilight caught a glimpse of the happy and lovable pony that she so desperately wanted to bring back. Then the moment passed, and that pony disappeared, buried underneath shrouds of sadness.

“But to make sure it works, we still have to go into a dream, don’t we?” Pinkie asked, worry acid-etched on her face.

Twilight herself tensed up a little; such a simple question made her feel Pinkie’s despair. “Yeah...” she replied, a little disheartened herself. “Yeah, we will.”

Pinkie squirmed and her frown deepened at the confirmation. “But what if something goes wrong? What if I accidently bring in a projection from one of my nightmares into the dream with me?” Pinkie gasped and her eyes grew wide in fear. “What if he shows up again? What if he tries to hurt you again, or my friends, and it’ll be my fault because—”

Twilight reached out and grabbed Pinkie around her shoulders. “Easy, Pinkie. Don’t be afraid. It’ll all still be a dream that we’ll wake up from, and whatever is causing you so much pain is the exact same thing we’ll be training to fight. And even if the worst happens, you’ll have all your friends there to protect you.”

Pinkie didn’t entirely relax, but she did look deep into Twilight’s eyes, and after holding a ponderous expression, her eyes reflected understanding.

A brisk knock came from the from door of the library. Pinkie and Twilight both turned to look at the door, then Pinkie looked back at Twilight, her eyes filled with the dread of a foal about to get their second shots.

Twilight returned Pinkie’s trepidation with a warm smile. “Your friends have come to help.”

Pinkie was still tense and on high alert, but she gave Twilight a little nod, prompting Twilight to stand up and attend to the guests at the door. Twilight opened the entrance to her home, and was greeted with the sight of Rainbow Dash, with Applejack, Rarity, and Fluttershy right behind her, each with a saddlebag strapped to them.

“‘Sup, Twi?” Rainbow somewhat nonchalantly stated.

“Hello, everypony. Thank you all for coming. Please, come in,” Twilight said as she opened the door wider and moved aside.

The four mares stepped inside the library, and Twilight shut the door behind them. She excused herself for a moment and began to trot up the stairs. Rainbow continued walking towards the center table, but then she caught sight of Pinkie and stopped in her tracks.

“Oh. Hey, Pinkie,” Rainbow said sheepishly, rubbing the back of her head with a hoof. “How ya’ holding up?”

Pinkie’s lips moved with the intent to say something, but no words managed to find purchase from her mouth, so instead she tried to smile. No smile broke through her flustered expression, however, but the one she tried to plaster onto her face could not have been more forced.

Rainbow frowned a little at the conflicting expressions contorting her friend’s face. “Hey, don’t worry about that. We’re here to help, remember?”

Pinkie’s face was still bereft of joy, but her expression softened at Rainbow’s words.

Meanwhile, Twilight had reached the top of the stairs and stuck her head into the bedroom.

“Spike, everypony has arrived. Could you fill up a bucket of water, get some towels and my watch, and bring them downstairs, please?” Twilight asked.

Spike responded with an indecipherable mumble.

“Sorry, what was that?”

“I said ‘sure,’” Spike said, barely more audible.

“Oh,” Twilight stated blankly as Spike trudged past her. “Thank you very much, by the way. This does a lot to help.”

“Whatever,” Spike disheartedly replied.

Twilight frowned at Spike’s behavior. His entire demeanor had been cold and distant ever since she’d woken up. She suspected he was still feeling despondent from the dream she had entered the night before, but he had skirted around the subject even when Twilight asked him if he’d had another nightmare, trying to sound like she didn’t already know. He still wouldn’t open up to her, and though Twilight had the wisdom not to press any harder, she couldn’t help but once more be left with the sinking suspicion that something more serious was occurring.

Whatever it was, Twilight couldn’t try asking him about it again before Spike walked into the bathroom and shut the door behind him, leaving Twilight with little else to do but return downstairs to address her friends.

“Spike is busy getting everything ready to wake us up from the dream,” Twilight said as she trotted down the stairs. “Did everypony bring a personal item to make a totem with?”

“Sure did,” Applejack merrily replied as she reached into her saddlebag and withdrew a length of rope.

Twilight looked at the rope with some level of disatisfaction. “Applejack, I said bring something specific to you.”

“This is specific to me, Twi.” Applejack retorted. “It might just look like any ol’ rope to you, but this is my rope, and I knew it through an’ through about as well as Rarity knows her dresses. I know how flexible it is, its strength, the way it feels across my teeth, how many times each strand twists around the other... everything.”

Twilight conceded. “Alright, I get it. If you feel it suits you, then you can use it.” She turned to the other three. “What did the rest of you bring?”

Fluttershy hid her face more behind her mane. “Oh, um, I brought this music box,” she said as she revealed the ornament in question. “It’s custom made, and I’ve had it ever since I was a filly.”

“Perfect,” Twilight nodded, and turned to Rainbow. “What about you?”

Rainbow looked around the room and out the window, her eyes shifty and nervous. “Yeah, I got something… but you’d better not tell anypony that I have this.” Then with one last flicker of her eyes, she opened up her saddlebag, and procured from within a clear, brilliant gem that had been inlaid into an ornate, polished golden relief of a sun emerging from the clouds, complete with a golden chain.

Rarity couldn’t help but gasp at the sight of Rainbow’s necklace. “My stars! Rainbow, why didn’t you tell me that you possessed such a beautiful piece of jewelry?”

Applejack chuckled. “Yeah, Rainbow. Why didn’t you tell us ya had somethin’ so fru-fru and frilly?”

“Shut it,” Rainbow growled at Applejack. “Just so you all know, I’d never get something like this for myself.”

Applejack leaned in closer, her expression devious. “And yet here ya are with that.”

Rarity cut back in. “Darling, you simply must tell me how you came into possession of something so gorgeous.”

Rainbow sighed and looked off in the distance. “It was a gift from my dad.”

The humor on Applejack’s face disappeared instantaneously.

“Well, your father has impeccable tastes,” Rarity complemented with a smile. “See? I’m not the only one who thinks you’d make a beautiful mare if you just put a little effort into it.”

Rainbow huffed. “My old man knows I’m a tom-colt if ever there was one. He just likes to tease me about it sometimes. I suppose that’s another way that I’m like him...”

“Ah,” Applejack noted as a little of her previous slyness began to return. “Daddy’s little filly?”

“No!” Rainbow Dash fired back, then pawed at the floor. “Okay, yeah...”

Twilight turned to Rarity. “And what did you bring?”

Rarity beamed with anticipation. “Well speaking of precious gems and treasured gifts, I could scarcely think of a better personal belonging to get the honor to be my totem than—” she paused for dramatic effect as her purse glowed with her azure magic “—this.”

Rarity lifted her totem from its confines, and proudly displayed her golden neckband with its center housing a shining ruby cut in the shape of a heart.

“Is that the same fire ruby Spike gave you?” Fluttershy asked.

Rarity fondly looked over the gem. “It is indeed. I was coming up with all sorts of ideas for what I could use, but then I thought of this, and it just seemed to click.” She explained as she returned the ruby to her purse.

Twilight put on a little smile. “Alright. Pinkie has hers,” she said, pointing to the party launcher, then levitated her gyroscope out of it’s container for them all to see, “and since we’re all sharing, this is mine. Now when we’re going into the dream, you need to be focusing on your totem so it will appear in the dream with you. Once we’re there, I’ll show you how to make a totem.”

“How long will we be down there for?” Rarity asked. “Not that I have any intention to cut corners when it comes to helping a dear friend, but I’m on a tight schedule as it is.”

“I’ve planned just a short dream. We’ll only be down there for twenty minutes, but in reality, we’ll only be asleep for sixty seconds.”

“Wait, what?” Applejack inquired, bewildered. “How does that work?”

Twilight geared up for lecture mode. “It has to do with the functions of the spell. See, a correlative function of the spell’s sedation process is that it compresses the neural activity of—”

Rainbow interrupted. “Time moves faster in a dream than it does in reality. Got it.”

Just then, Spike returned, grunting slightly as he dragged a bucket full of water behind him. “I got everything,” he said as his eyes glossed over the six of them, briefly pausing on Rarity to stare with painful longing.

Rarity let out a small gasp with concern when she saw the bandages still wrapped around his brow. “Spike, whatever happened to your eye?”

Spike blinked several times as he looked away, and mumbled his response. “I fell down the stairs. Don’t worry about it, I’m fine.”

Rarity still kept her eyes on him with a look of regard, but couldn’t push the issue any further before Twilight turned to Spike.

“Dream time is much faster than real time, so as soon as I cast this spell and all of our eyes are closed, wake us up in exactly one minute, and not a second more.” Twilight instructed.

“Got it,” Spike replied in a dull tone. “Ready when you are.”

“Alright,” Twilight noted, and turned to her friends. “Is everypony ready?”

Rainbow, Applejack, Rarity, and Fluttershy all nodded. Pinkie, however, had began to squirm.

“I don’t know, Twilight,” Pinkie said, nervous. “Isn’t there another way? Is it even safe to take me into a dream at all?”

Twilight looked back at Pinkie with warm reassurance. “It should be. I can modify the connection each dreamer has to the matrix, so manipulation will be limited to small things, and we’ll all be less likely to bring in anything from our subconscious.”

Pinkie still had the eyes of a foal who was certain there was a monster under the bed.

Applejack stepped forward. “Don’t you worry yourself sick, sugarcube. You’ve already done enough of that. We came here to help, and that’s what we’re gonna do.”

Pinkie looked back at Twilight. “So no Discord?”

“If all goes as planned, no Discord.”

Pinkie lightened up a little. “Not even the thing-pony?”

Twilight tried to smile through another stab of pain in her sides. “Not even the thing-pony.”

Applejack sighed. “Am I ever going to know what a thing-pony is?”

“Uh, what’s a thing-pony?” Spike asked.

“I’ll tell you later,” Twilight replied.

“Wait,” Rainbow interjected, “Pinkie has seen the thing-pony?!”

“Yes, but before you jump to any conclusions, he doesn’t have anything to do with Pinkie’s problems.” Twilight looked back at Pinkie with the same smile. “Maybe when you’re all better, we can go into one of my dreams and you can throw a party for the thing-pony: see if you can get him to explain what he’s doing in my subconscious.”

Another miniscule smile tugged at the corner of Pinkie’s mouth. Twilight took that as good a cue as any, than lay down on the floor with her legs folding underneath her. The others followed suite, and Twilight ignited her horn. An interconnected aura appeared around the six of them, and sedation quickly began to take effect.

“Déjà vu,” Rarity muttered.

Twilight looked at Pinkie to find the pink mare already looking at her. Pinkie’s face betrayed any feeble attempt to hide her unrest, and her fluttering eyelids were still fighting to stay open. Twilight slid her right hoof out from underneath her, and held it out to Pinkie. She looked down at the invitation, then back up at Twilight, who looked back with compassion. Pinkie reached out and firmly grabbed Twilight’s hoof, and then finally allowed her eyes to close.

Twilight could stay awake no longer herself. She could feel the spell begin to operate automatically as he eyelids shut and submerged her in total darkness, like the curtain call of another play.

- - - - - -

Twilight returned Pinkie’s trepidation with a warm smile. “Your friends have come to help.”

“‘Sup, Twi?” Rainbow somewhat nonchalantly stated.

“Hello, everypony. Thank you all for coming. Please, come in,” Twilight said as she opened the door wider and moved aside.

The four mares stepped inside the library, and Twilight shut the door behind them.

Rainbow stopped dead in her tracks. “Wait a minute, does this seem familiar to anypony?”

Rarity rolled her eyes with an exacerbated groan. “Was all this really necessary, Twilight?”

Applejack was whipping her head back and forth, scanning the details of the library with wide eyes. “Is this a dream, or was what we just went through a dream?” She gasped. “They weren’t both dreams, were they?!”

Twilight trotted forward and put a calming hoof on Applejack’s shoulder. “Take it easy Applejack. This is the only dream, a repeat of what you just experienced in reality a few minutes ago.”

Applejack’s panic subsided at the news.

Twilight‘s ears dipped back a little. “I should apologize, though. Building a dream exactly from memory is an easy way to lose track of reality, so I’ll refrain from doing that in the future. But now you all see why it’s so important to have a totem, right?”

The five of them nodded.

“Alright, then, we’ve got a lot to do and not much time to do it, so I’ll make this as brief as possible,” Twilight said as she checked her watch. “To make a totem, you need to train your subconscious to have a different perception of your totem with manipulation, but to do that, first you need to understand what manipulation is.

“So, everypony knows that we’re in a dream together, right? Well, our minds all have a connection to the dream right now, my dream to be specific. So if you concentrate properly, then you can change aspects of the dream through that connection.”

“You’re starting to lose me, Twi.” Rainbow interrupted. “How is all this supposed to work?”

“Okay, think of it like reading a book.” Twilight explained. “As you’re reading, you’re visualizing what’s going on. But if you change the words, that alters what you perceive happening in the story. For example: you know in the part of Daring Do and the Quest for the Sapphire Stone when Daring crash lands in the jungle and injures her wing while escaping that terra stomper, right? Well, if somepony rewrote that part so she has to deal with a pack of angry crocodiles, then that changes what you visualize happening.”

“Eh, I think the story is cooler with the terra stomper,” Rainbow said.

“Or, you could write it so she could just politely ask the crocodiles or the terra stomper for help...” Fluttershy added.

Twilight cleared her throat. “Point is, changing the words in the book changes what you infer is happening in the story. Dreamscape works in a similar fashion.”

Twilight lit her horn and levitated the book that she had just been reading from the table to the center of the circle they stood in. “Take this book for example. This book, and everything else, has a dedicated code that programs it here into the dream. So if you change the code...” Twilight closed her eyes and concentrated, then deactivated her magic. A collective gasp came from the four she was lecturing as the book remained floating in mid-air, completely unaffected by gravity.

“You change the dream.”

Rainbow cautiously approached the book and nudged it with a hoof. She jolted back when the book moved, flying in an eerily straight trajectory.

“That’s freaky,” Rainbow commented with a slight shiver.

Twilight took in the awe on their faces with a slight grin, both how they were fascinated by such a relatively infinitesimal use of manipulation, and how enthralled she was by such small tricks when she had first started experimenting with manipulation… Then Pinkie had come along, and flipped everything she knew about building dreams on its head.

She caught sight of Pinkie, and her amusement vanished. Pinkie was staring at the gravity-defying book with a growing sense of dread, and with a look in her eyes that made Twilight instantly realize what she must be thinking: manipulation was exactly how all her troubles started in the first place.

Twilight closed her eyes again. The book fell from its lofty drifting and hit the floor with a thump.

“Anyway, that’s just an example of what you can do,” Twilight said as she levitated the book back over to the six of them. “Now you four try it. Find the book in the dreamscape, then do something simple to it, like insert a picture of a fond memory into its pages.”

“And how exactly are we suppos’ta do that?” Applejack asked. “We ain’t all unicorns, Twi.”

“You don’t have to be. The magic generating the dream is already connected to your subconscious, so all you have to is concentrate on that connection and alter the function of the dream world that way. It’s like a cross between meditating and day-dreaming.”

The four of them closed their eyes and concentrated. Twilight couldn’t help but smile again. The varying degrees of pensiveness they all bore made her feel like she was teaching a class of foals trying to use magic for the first time. Then she thought of how Celestia must feel about her, and her smile deepened.

“Whoa whoa whoa...” Applejack’s eyes snapped open in alarm, as did the others from their broken concentration. “Twi, I… I felt something...”

Twilight leaned forward, her interest captured. “What?”

“I… I dunno...” Applejack remarked with a shudder. “It felt like I ran into the end of the world...”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. The same thing happened to me first time I tried manipulation. Just remember that this is just a dream, and that the real world is still outside.” Twilight said.

Rainbow looked to Twilight. “So if we can just reach out and grab the dream, isn’t that enough of an indication that we’re asleep? Why do we need a totem then?”

Twilight’s throat seized up a little. “Because it’s possible to travel so deep into your subconscious that you can’t feel the connection to the dream anymore. And without a solid tether to reality, staying in a dream for too long can be detrimental, like staying in a cave until the daylight burns your eyes.”

“And how exactly did you learn this information, dear?” Rarity inquired.

Twilight suddenly found herself unable to reply.

Princess Twilight Sparkle rested her weary head against the cold granite of the empty palace, and exhaled a wounded sigh. Two weeks. She’d been trapped here for over two weeks, with no sign of her solitary isolation ever ending. Just thinking about her friends, or even the way she felt around her friends afflicted her with anguish, slowly crushing whatever will she had just to be out through her pores. Finding purpose here was extracting blood from a stone. Even the presence of somepony like Trixie would be a goddess-send at this point, when the only thing to have so much as acknowledged her sad existence in the last sixteen days was a night terror projection of her murderer. Any company was better than that of this plane’s apex predator…

“I’ll tell you later. For right now, focus on getting a picture into this book.”

The four went back to concentrating on manipulating for the first time. Twilight herself started observing novice minds prod arcane codes for the first time, and monitoring the activity to make sure things didn’t get too crazy; the last thing they needed right now was an unwelcome visitation from a chaotic projection.

Another minute or so passed in silence. Fluttershy was the first to break it. “Okay, I think I might have done something.”

“Alright. Has everypony put a memory into the book?” Twilight asked, and was answered with nods of confirmation from all of them. “Okay, then let’s see.”

Twilight flipped through the pages of the book until she came across a page where the words had been replaced with a picture woven directly into the fiber of the page. It showed an outdoor scene that featured swarms of butterflies so numerous that the almost obscured the entire sky, and a very perturbed Rainbow Dash.

“Oh, that one’s mine,” Fluttershy said. “That’s from the last butterfly migration that Rainbow Dash and I got to see. It was oh-so beautiful. I loved it.”

“That makes one of us,” Dash grumbled.

Twilight flipped through more pages in the book, and came across a view of a crowded Sweet Apple Acres with her the the rest of her friends gathered together with smiles on the faces and mugs of cider in their hooves.

“That’s mine,” Applejack stated with admiration. “Last cider season with you girls. I know it’s a ways away, but I’m already lookin’ forward to the next one with y’all.”

More pages turned with Twilight’s magic, eventually revealing a coliseum in the clouds that was packed to the brim with cheering pegasi. In the center of the snapshot was a view of Fluttershy, Pinkie, Applejack, Celestia, and herself. Each wore an expression with varying mixtures of surprise and awe, while Fluttershy exuberantly bounced on her cloud seat.

“Guess who put that one there.” Rainbow Dash smiled, cocksure.

“I wonder,” Rarity muttered with thinly-veiled sarcasm.

Another blur of paper later, and they saw not a memory that had been planted into the book, but an idea.

“Oh, COME ON!” Rainbow incredulously blurted.

”What? Didn’t I tell you how beautiful you’d look if you’d just brush your mane every once in a while?” Rarity argued in her defense.

The picture that Rarity had put into the book was a life-accurate portrayal of Rainbow Dash preemed with all the glamour of a runway model. She wore a layered black dress with hot pink silk ribbons sewn on at the seams. Her hair had been conditioned to an illustrious shine. The red and yellow had combed back over her ears and was curled at the ends, leaving the orange of her mane to form a partial curtain over her mascara-touched eyes, which were half-lidded and sultry.

“See?” Rarity tapped pointedly on the book with her hoof. “Trot down any metropolitan boulevard with this much fabulous feminine vogue at your disposal, and I guarantee you’ll turn the head of every stallion on the street.”

“Wha… are you… guuh...” Rainbow Dash could only gawk before smashing one of her forehooves into her forehead.

Applejack was on the floor, barely able to speak through her laughter. “Y-yeah, Rainbow,” she gasped, “you’d be a real looker.” And then she collapsed into another fit of guffaws.

Fluttershy tried to disappear behind her mane. “I don’t know,” she sheepishly admitted. “Rarity does have a point, Rainbow. The picture does make you look very pretty...”

Another harsh smack cracked through the air as Dash’s other forehoof collided with her face. “Ugh, let’s just get to the picture that Pinkie left in here, okay?” she grumbled.

“I… didn’t leave one,” Pinkie mumbled.

Applejack had managed to stifle most of her laughter. “Why not, sugarcube?”

Pinkie squirmed a little and looked away. “I don’t want to do anything until we have to make our totems… I’m afraid of... him, showing up...”

Twilight frowned. “I hate to break it to you, Pinkie, but that time has come now.”

Pinkie gulped. “Can’t you just make my totem for me?”

Twilight shook her head. “I’m sorry, but it doesn’t work that way. If I made a totem for you, then it wouldn’t be your totem. And even if I just gave you one and told you its tell, since you wouldn’t be the only one who knows what it is or isn’t supposed to do, the tell would be compromised.”

Pinkie’s gaze fell to the floor and her ears folded down. Twilight approached her and put a hoof under her chin, lifting her head up to look into Pinkie’s eyes.

“It’s only a little bit of manipulation,” Twilight reassured her. “And I’ve got additional firewalls set up around the matrices, so we’ll be safe.”

Pinkie looked away. “No...” Pinkie looked back at Twilight with a dreadful grimace, and spoke in a terrified whisper. “I can feel it clawing at me… I can’t hold him back for long...”

Twilight’s expression tightened. She shot a glance back towards her friends on reflex, but realized too late that any sign of worry from her would alert them too, and the situation could get out of hoof very quickly. Catching sight of them told her they had heard Pinkie though, as they were casting nervous glances back and forth at each other.

Twilight was putting effort into staying calm. “It’s okay; we’ll just make our totems, and then we’ll be out of this dream.” She checked her pocket watch. “We’ve got less than fifteen minutes, so we haven’t any time to waste.

“If you’ve got a tell, now is the time to imbue your totem with it. This will be a little more complicated, since you’re not just changing your totem’s function, you’ll be tempering your subconscious as well.” Twilight said to the other four, then looked back at Pinkie. “I won’t be able to make the totem for you, but I can stay with you for the process.”

Pinkie still looked at Twilight with fear. “I’m scared...” she whispered.

“That’s what you got us here for,” Rainbow said. “To stick up for you, even when you can’t stick up for yourself.”

“Everything will be alright, Pinkie.” Twilight smiled and sat down next to her. “In less than fifteen minutes, we’ll all be awake again, and then once we dry off we can do something pleasant, like bake some cookies.”

“Uh, you’re not going to have anything to do with making those cookies, will you?” Rainbow cautiously asked.

Twilight rolled her eyes. “No. I was using the word ‘we’ in an impersonal sense. Look, let’s just make our totems, okay?”

With that, Rainbow, Applejack, Rarity and Fluttershy all took their totems back out again, closed their eyes, and began to concentrate on manipulation. Pinkie took a little longer to calm her nerves, but she too eventually dared to close her eyes and alter her subconscious projection of her totem, leaving Twilight to sit in silence for several minutes as the others worked.

After ten minutes, Rainbow was the first to speak up. “Alright, I think I got it.”

“Okay, good. Has everypony else finished?” Twilight asked. They all nodded in reply.

“Did you finish, Fluttershy?” Twilight inquired.

“I think so,” Fluttershy timidly replied.

“Well then, let’s see it,” Twilight stated.

“Well, okay...” Fluttershy stepped forward, holding out her music box to Twilight, but Rainbow stopped her with an outstretched hoof.

“Hold up Flutters, this is another of Twi’s tricks. We’re not supposed to share information on our totem, remember?”

Twilight expressed a sly, knowing smile. “Good, you’re learning. Feel free to excuse yourself if you want to check your totem in private.”

With that, Applejack trotted into the kitchen, Fluttershy quietly left out the front door, Rarity excused herself into the other room, and Rainbow flew upstairs to the bedroom, leaving Twilight and Pinkie alone in the foyer.

“Can I stay here and check my totem with you?” Pinkie asked Twilight.

“But won’t that spoil its secret?”

“It shouldn’t,” Pinkie replied. “It’s one of those things that only I’d be able to notice, anyway.”

“Well, so long as it doesn’t compromise your totem, and if it makes you more comfortable, sure.” Twilight answered.

Pinkie scooted a little closer to Twilight, brandished her party launcher, switched off the safety, then aimed it up into the air and fired off a shot. The round detonated in mid-air, making Twilight flinch away from the concussive blast and explosion of confetti. When she opened her eyes and looked back at the target sight, she saw the ordinance’s paper payload drifting slowly to the ground.

“So… did it work?” Twilight asked.

“I think so, yeah,” Pinkie slowly replied.

Applejack stuck her head out from the kitchen. “I heard an explosion. Is everything alright?”

“Yeah, everything’s fine; Pinkie was just testing her totem.” Twilight answered. “What about you? Does your totem work?”

“I thought we weren’t suppos’ ta tell you...” Applejack stated while regarding Twilight with suspicious eyes.

“You don’t have to tell me what your totem does, I just need to know that it works.”

“It does, but...” Applejack trailed off.

“What?”

“It don’t feel right, Twi. Like I said, I know the ins and outs of my rope better than some mares know their stallions, so to see it do something that it ain’t suppos’ ta do just doesn’t sit well with me.”

“That’s kind of the point,” Twilight reminded her. “Seeing your totem do something that it can’t do in real life is supposed to remind you that this dream isn’t real.”

“I know but… I dunno. There’s something else about it that I can’t put my hoof on at the moment...”

Applejack was interrupted when Rainbow Dash flew back downstairs. “My totem works. What was that explosion?”

“Pinkie’s totem,” Applejack answered.

“Ah. So does her’s work, too?” Rainbow asked.

“Dunno. Didn’t see it.”

Rainbow turned to Twilight and Pinkie.

“So does it work?”

Twilight looked to Rainbow. “Yeah, apparently...”

A delicate knock came from the front door, followed by Fluttershy saying something that the door muffled too much to be legible.

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “You don’t need to knock, Fluttershy.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Fluttershy apologized as she let herself back inside and shut the door behind her. “My totem has a tell now, Twilight.”

“Good,” Twilight said.

Rarity entered the foyer again. “Well Twilight, you should be pleased to know that my totem works perfectly.”

“It wouldn’t have anything to do with putting me in a dress again, would it?” Rainbow grumbled.

Rarity humphed with indignance. “No! As much as I still think your appearance could greatly benefit from a lady’s touch, I’ll have you know I chose something far more profound for my totem… and by the way, was that an explosion I heard?”

“Yep.” Twilight, Applejack, and Rainbow answered in unison.

“What caused—”

“Pinkie’s totem,” the three answered.

“So… does that mean it works?”

“Apparently...”

Twilight got back on her hooves after her last synchronized reply. “Now that you all have a way of telling reality from a dream, the next time, we can start—”

Pinkie interrupted Twilight with an urgent prod of her hoof. “Twilight… Twilight, how much longer until we wake up?”

Twilight glanced back at her watch. “About three minutes. Why?”

Pinkie started shaking her head. “I… I can’t...”

Twilight took a concerned step towards Pinkie. “Can’t what?”

Rainbow sniffed the air. “Hey, does anypony else smell that?”

“Smell what?” Applejack asked, then backed away from Dash with an accusatory glare. “You didn’t rip one, did ya?”

“No!” Rainbow shot back. “If I did, I’d wait for you to pick it up so I could blame it on you with the ‘smelt it, dealt it’ clause. Besides, it doesn’t smell like cut cheese...”

Pinkie had started to thrash her head back and forth. “I can’t… I can’t...”

Fluttershy perked up, suddenly more alert. “Wait; Rainbow, I think I smell something, too.”

“See?” Rainbow proclaimed, pointing to Fluttershy to support her statement. “What does that smell like to you? ‘Cause it smells sugary to me… kind of like...”

The aroma hit Twilight’s nostrils, and she gasped. “Cotton candy...”

Pinkie began to tremble, pleading desperately. “Twilight, wake me up...”

The distant boom of a thunderclap made the treehouse rumble. The silence that followed it was quickly dissipated by the sound of raindrops falling upon the tree.

“Wake me up...”

Rarity let out a horrified scream. Twilight looked up and saw the rain hitting one of the windows. It was a light brown, just like chocolate.

Pinkie tried to hold herself in a vain attempt to find comfort. Her breathing was becoming more erratic; quick, frantic gasps interrupted by frightened sniffles.

“Twilight, wake me up! Please, wake me up!”

An unnatural darkness beset the main room as the tree creaked in the gusting wind with the sound of tinny, devious laughter. Fluttershy let out an alarmed squeak when a periwinkle earth pony with a spinner hat and spiralling eyes smashed her face flat against a nearby window, then began looking them over with wild, demented eyes. Her wide-open mouth allowed her three tongues to press up against the glass, streaking the pane with saliva as her head jerked back and forth between the six of them. The book that four of them had illustrated fond memories and ideas in whipped open of its own accord. Sheets started ripping themselves out and flew away, squawking like inkwells, until the only page left in the book revealed Applejack, Rainbow, Rarity and Fluttershy standing on a checkered blue hill under a pink sky, glaring at each over with faces completely drained of color.

Pinkie dove forward and latched onto Twilight’s forelegs with a death-grip. She looked up at Twilight with terror-stricken agony. Streams of tears poured down her face.

“Wake me up! Please wake me up! PLEASE!”

Applejack galloped over to Twilight, panicking herself. “Twi, we need to get outta here! Now!”

A ubiquitous, dark chuckle filled the empty space of the library with such power that each mare present could feel it vibrate within their chests, masking them all gasp.

“Why? It seems like you’ve only just arrived...”

“DISCORD!” Rainbow snarled and took to the air, muscles tense and wings beating furiously. “You leave my friend alone! Show yourself! I’m going to beat all of the ugly off of your face!”

The library vibrated with a sarcastic sigh. “You can’t have it both ways, Rainbow. I can’t very well leave your sad little friend alone if you also want me to make an appearance, can I?”

“You can if you show up so I can crush you into a pulp and then toss you out like trash!” Rainbow yelled back. “Now quit hiding, you coward!”

Another perverse chortle resonated within the library until it felt like it was originating from their skulls. “Hiding? Why, my dear, I’m in plain sight...” The source that the disembodied voice was originating from began to shift, until to was coming from the exact spot where Pinkie lay in a trembling ball of fear. “For everypony to see and scrutinize.”

Pinkie’s shadow began to darken until it looked to have been ripped from the night sky. Then it elongated itself as it crawled across the floor, changing its shape to a more definitive form that most certainly was not Pinkie’s. The mortified pony screamed and scrambled away from it, colliding with the wall behind her, pressing her back flat against it. Her rear hooves dug into the ground, as if she might be able to ascend the wall and sever her connection to her own shadow.

Pinkie’s animate shadow reached the wall opposite her, then crept up the vertical ascension, forming into the all-too-familiar silhouette of Discord.

“Well hello, little ponies. It really has been too long...”

Rainbow bolted towards the shadow on the wall, shrieking out a furious war cry as she twisted in air to deliver an enraged flying kick with her rear hooves. The shadow merely shifted over to the side, leaving Rainbow to smash into the wall. The wood cracked with a chorus of violent snaps.

“Well that wasn’t very nice,” the projection chided. “What did that wall ever do to you?”

“Shut up!” Dash roared, then attempted to pummel the shadow again, only for the shadow to again effortlessly dodge the attack. “Quit playing your stupid games and face me like you’ve got a spine!”

“Certainly. Just have Twilight disable the safeguards she’s implemented to keep me from fully manifesting, and I’ll gladly corrupt your virtues face-to-face.”

Twilight stepped forward. “Rainbow, stop it! You’re just encouraging him! Besides, it’s not actually the real Discord… isn’t that right, projection?”

The projection of Discord pinched its forehead and sighed, disgruntled. “Seriously, is the first step to becoming Celestia’s favorite contemporary pet getting a stick shoved up your rear end? You really need to lighten up...”

“I’ll do that at Pinkie’s upcoming ‘freed of a tormenting projection’ party,” Twilight shot back.

“I’ve got a better idea. How about you disable the dream’s security codes and we’ll have a party right now? If I’m nothing but a projection from your friend—” Discord motioned to Pinkie, who was somewhere in between hyperventilating and sobbing “—then it ought to be just as good as one of hers.”

Twilight’s reply was partially muffled by the roar of a fast approaching tsunami. “In time. We’ll bring the end of you eventually.”

Discord chuckled. “I can hardly wait to see you try. You know how much I love play time.”

A monstrous tidal wave crashed into the treehouse, devouring it within ravenous froth, and then the dream was no more.

- - - - - -

Twilight sputtered as she came to, wiping the water from her face. She shook her head, and before her ears had even been cleared of the water within them, they were filled with the terrible shrieks of Pinkie’s wails. In a flash, Pinkie trapped Twilight in another crushing hug, and the unicorn cried out in pain as burning skewers cut into her.

“AH! Sides! SIDES!” Twilight desperately cried out. “PINKIE! MY SIDES!”

Pinkie let go and flung herself away from Twilight, allowing herself to collapse onto the cold floor, where she buried her face behind her hooves and hid her hooves behind her mane, and continued to weep.

Twilight stumbled over to the center table and caught herself on the edge. Her eyes were clenched tightly shut and she winced, groaning in pain. A gentle prod alerted her to somepony’s presence. She managed to crack open one of her eyes and was greeted with a sight of Spike, offering her a towel.

“I take it everything didn’t go as planned...” he stated. The shreds of genuine empathy in his voice did little to lighten his depressed tone.

Twilight accepted the offered towel and winced again, sucking in air through her teeth as the movement stabbed her again with pain.

“Not really...” she grimaced, then dried her face and turned to the rest of her friends. “I know this is important, but I really need some pain-killers now. Could you girls stay with her for a moment?”

“Oh dear. Are you still suffering from the same pain?” Fluttershy asked.

“Unfortunately,” Twilight whined. “I’ll only be gone a minute. Just… watch over her, would you please?”

“You don’t even need to ask,” Rainbow answered, her voice growing thick and strained.

Twilight took that as good a dismissal as any. She turned around and took off. She couldn’t have galloped up the stairs fast enough. The echo of the bathroom door being kicked open and desperately slammed shut carried through the entire library. When it passed, it left Spike and four mares in stillness, their shared silence broken only by Pinkie’s crying, who struggled to choke out her words between sobs

“I’m sorry… I… please, I’m so sorry… I-I tried, but I… couldn’t stop it… Oh Celestia, girls, I’m so sorry!” Pinkie wailed with another wave of tears as she buried her face in shame.

Applejack slowly walked over to Pinkie and put a hoof around her shoulder. “Wasn’t your fault, Pinkie.”

“Yeah,” Dash inserted. Her voice was dry with a slight quiver, but it was nearly boiling with righteous fury. “It wasn’t your fault. It’s his.”

Rainbow grimaced, and trust herself into the air with an angry flap of her wings.

“That ugly jerk! How dare he get to one of my friends like that! I swear, when Twilight’s got her plan together, I’m gonna… I’m… I don’t even know what I’m gonna do to Discord, but it’s not gonna be pretty!”

“It’s not Discord...” Pinkie muttered.

“Huh?” Rainbow’s vow for vendetta cooled and she landed next to Pinkie.

“That wasn’t the real Discord; it’s not even part of him,” Pinkie miserably explained. “What you saw was just my projection of him. Everything he said… everything he did… it’s my subconscious...” Her voice cracked again. “My mind… my fault… it’s all my fault!”

“No, it isn’t.” Applejack said.

“Yes it is!” Pinkie miserably shot back.

“No Pinkie, it isn’t.” Applejack firmly repeated, then sat down next to Pinkie. “You said it yourself: if you could’a stopped it, you would have. You ain’t a bad pony, Pinkie, so don’t treat yourself like one.“

Rainbow nodded in agreement. “Yeah. Bad ponies don’t have friends, and I don’t know anypony else with as many or as awesome friends as you’ve got. Friends keep each other straight, and friends help you when you need it.” Rainbow smiled and sat down herself. “We’re here for you, Pinkie, and we always will be.”

Pinkie looked to be regarding her friends’ words with a grain of bitter salt, but most of her crying had subsided, and her face was no longer concealed behind her forelegs.

Standing just a few paces away, but otherwise completely forgotten, was Spike. Every terrible thing he was feeling inside began to squirm until he could feel it writhing under his scales. The more sincere compassion and pity that he saw being poured out before him, the drier his throat became, until it felt like the tissue in his esophagus was going to crack. A little voice in the back of his mind had been telling him to leave and go check on Twilight ever since she had left: that what he would have to see otherwise was the exact spectacle he’d hoped to avoid by secluding himself to the balcony yesterday. Now, even as his own conscious was yelling in his ear, he could not depart or look away. The heart-to-heart Pinkie and her friends were sharing had hardened his own heart until it cracked into separate pieces and fell from his chest cavity to his heels, making his feet too heavy to even lift.

Fluttershy stepped forward. Her soft eyes were moistened from her own tears of sorrow and sympathy. She lay down next to Pinkie, and wrapped her forelegs around Pinkie’s neck.

“Oh, Pinkie… I’m so sorry… it hurts me so much to see you suffer like this,” Fluttershy sniffled. “I knew it was bad when you told us, but... I never realized just how terrible you must feel, having to carry that around with you...”

Pinkie looked away. “You have no idea...” she told the floorboards.

None of them heard the scraping of metal as Spike’s claws dug into the bucket.

Rarity looked down upon Pinkie with eyes full of sympathy. “Pinkie… oh, darling, why didn’t you inform us of your plight sooner? We would have rushed to your aid in a heartbeat if only we had known… Don’t you know you may always ask your friends for help?”

A harsh clang jolted the five mares out of their supportive circle. Their eyes and ears instinctively swivelled towards the direction of the disruptive clatter to behold a steel pail rolling across the floor after having been thrown. They automatically looked in the opposite direction of the bucket’s trajectory and saw Spike hurriedly stomping towards the front door. His tiny claws grabbed the handle, and ripped the door open. Without even looking back, he slammed the door shut behind him, leaving five mares to stare in a stunned silence.

The ponies could hardly do more than keep ogling the front door. A few eventually broke their gaze to look upon one another, hoping somepony might have an answer written on their face, but found only mirrors of their own bewilderment.

“What’s his problem?” Rainbow asked with genuine confusion.

The only thing to answer was the silence.

- - - - - -

Twilight could not have galloped into the bathroom fast enough. Just standing around hurt in of itself, and every step in her desperate gallop had been a lash from a barbed whip. When she did arrive, she kicked open the door, leaped over the threshold, bucked the door shut, then lurched for the medicine cabinet. She nearly ripped the cabinet door off its hinges with her magic, pried the top off the bottle of ibuprofen with such force that the cap hit the ceiling and left a small dent, then dumped an indefinite amount of pills into her mouth and hard-swallowed them all in one gulp.

Twilight closed her eyes and propped herself up in front of the mirror with her forehooves, then started reciting her own pleasant little lie.

“I have wings… I have wings...”

Mana began to accumulate within her horn. She concentrated on the spell she had been reading about just before her friends had arrived. A soft glow surrounded her sides, then a bright flash signified the spell’s completion.

“I have wings,” Twilight repeated as she dared open her eyes again, then attempted to send a neural command to her sides.

She couldn’t help but give out a little gasp when she caught her first glimpses of a sight that was both unnatural and all too welcome for her: the mirror now reflected her lie.

“I have wings...” she whispered in awe.

Twilight looked back to better inspect the results of her modified illusion spell. They looked just as good as the ones she’d left back in limbo. Muscles flexed and compressed with every move of her additional limbs, and the transition from fur to feathers was utterly seamless.

Out of curiosity, she brushed a hoof across the tip of an index feather, and watched it pass right through. Alarm bells started to ring in her mind, saying that she should have felt something and the point of contact. She quickly turned her attention to the other wing and watched how it moved when she prompted it, and marveled that even though she knew it was just a clever, temporary manipulation of photons, it almost felt like she actually had wings.

“Impressive,” a voice interrupted Twilight’s musings, “but remember what I said about only treating the symptom and not solving the problem?”

Twilight sighed. “I never tried to say that this was anything else, but it’s the best I’ve got for now, Reason.”

Reason hummed with contemplation. “I know, but think about what you’re doing for a moment. Your subconscious believes a lie, and your temporary remedy is to supplement that lie. Don’t wait so long to fix this that your conscious starts wanting to believing the lie, too.”

“I won’t,” Twilight said as she turned away from the mirror, so Reason’s words resonated like her own thoughts.

So how long is it going to be until you fix the problem? Reason asked.

“When I’m done helping Pinkie and Spike.”

And how long is that going to take?

“I don’t know. But they’re my friends. I can’t rush or half-heart anything I do for them,” Twilight said as she deactivated the illusion spell, then sighed. “It’s going to be strenuous for the next few days, what with using all this mana to help train my friends to treat Pinkie, using this illusion spell on myself, and making sure I have enough by the end of the day to try and help Spike in his dreams, too.”

So you intend to sneak into his mind tonight again, too?

“Yes,” Twilight answered. “Whatever his situation is, it’s worse than either of us feared, and I need to get to the bottom of it.”

Alright, just don’t push yourself too hard.

“I can take it. I’ve got you here to help me, and like I said, they’re my friends. Their problems are more important than mine.”

Admirable, but don’t wait so long to fix your own problems that you end up needing an intervention, too.

Had Reason a body of her own, she would have had to force down a sad, quirky little smirk. She kept her next thought to herself.

Said the dissociative identity who was created specifically to keep her parent psyche from going insane.

- - - - - -

The night had a noticeable stillness to it. The flickering light of the candles only highlighted how motionless everything else was in the Golden Oaks Library. In this silent placidity, the soft sounds of Spike cleaning the dishes were unnaturally loud to him. Every little clink and swish grated on his ears and chipped away at his temper, until he wanted to do nothing more than smash every single plate to dust, screaming in rage all the while.

Instead, he dried off the last plate and placed it in the cupboard with an unnaturally forced calm. The final smack of wood on wood as the cupboard door closed was greeted with ringing silence.

Spike knew there were still other things that needed to be done: the shelves needed to be dusted, the returned books put back in their proper places, and the floors swept and mopped. But not tonight. With the dishes done, a lethargy had entered Spike’s mind and made itself comfortable in its favorite sofa.

As he exited the kitchen and turned to trudge up the stairs, he happened to glance across the library to the spare room door. A small part of him wondered if he should check on Pinkie, but it was quickly silenced. Why let somepony cry on your shoulder when you can’t cry on anyone else’s? he thought. Then he continued his slow trudge up the stairs.

As he shuffled his way into the bedroom, he had to fight to keep his stormy mood in check. Twilight and Owloysius were sound asleep, without a care in the world. Both of them had gone straight upstairs almost immediately after dinner, and while they had seemed legitimately tired, it still annoyed Spike that they had done so. Sure, Twilight had been under a lot of stress, but Owloysius still had an obligation to help him out with his nightly duties. Couldn’t he have stayed up a little bit longer?

However, whilst Owloysius was comfortably snoozing on his perch, Twilight was sprawled across her desk, surrounded by papers and scrolls. Her face was mashed against the scroll she had been writing on, the words ending with a long, messy streak across the parchment, her quill resting haphazardly atop a small pile of paper on the floor. Her jaw hung wide open over the edge of the desk, and her heavy breathing combined with her slack tongue was making small noises in her throat.

So comical was her appearance that despite himself Spike couldn’t help but feel his spirits lift for a moment. Walking over to her bed, he pulled off the pillow and a couple of blankets, then brought them back to her desk. Lovingly, he readjusted her head and closed her mouth, wiping a small amount of drool off of the desk before placing the pillow under her head. Then he wrapped the blankets around her and stood back to admire his handiwork.

She looked much more at peace, like an innocent filly instead of an overworked mare. For a second, Spike actually felt warm feelings, as though absolutely nothing was wrong. Then the second was gone, and the warm feelings with it. The fact that he could apparently only have these moments while his best friend was asleep was a clear indicator to him of just how messed up things had become.

He wanted to turn away from the sight of his sleeping friend, but he couldn’t. A sudden, overwhelming urge to wake her up and tell her everything was taking hold in his heart. He knew she could help him. He knew she could make things better; it was one of her talents.

He also knew that she would pay the ultimate price for it, and in a sick, twisted way it would be her blood on his claws. Perhaps literally. He couldn’t bear the thought of it, but neither could he bear this terrible burden any longer. He had to do something. Say something, even if no one was listening.

He slowly approached Twilight’s desk, taking in her appearance. She looked so serene. So peaceful. So oblivious. He opened his mouth to speak, but suddenly found his throat was too thick to get the words out. So accustomed had he become to living with this secret that he suddenly found he was reluctant to part with it. What if she woke up in the middle of a confession she wasn’t supposed to hear?

His internal war raged on, his terrible truths building up inside his chest until it felt like it would burst, and still his throat refused to let them out. Finally the terrible battle reached a howling crescendo, and something gave inside him. If he couldn’t even tell someone who wasn’t listening, then what good was he?

“Twilight…” he said quietly. For a long pause, only the silence remained attentive.

“Twilight…” he began again, “I… I have something I need to tell you… Something I should have told you a long time ago…” He paused, looking for the words.

“There’s… another me. A bad me. I’ve been fighting him for so long now… I thought he was gone, but… He’s back… and he’s worse… and… and…” Spike suddenly found that he couldn’t muster the strength to stand anymore. He crumpled to the floor, overcome with grief, slumping his back against the desk for support.

“I’m tired, Twilight,” he said after a long minute. “I tried and I tried to control him, but he only got stronger. And now somehow he’s become his own… I don’t even know what… and he’s stealing… and he’s hurting…” Tears welled up in his eyes. “And he s-said… if I asked for your help… he… h-he would…”

He couldn’t say it. It was too much. Spike curled into a ball as he grabbed his legs and pressed his head into his knees. In the all-encompassing stillness of the library, his subdued sobs sounded unnaturally loud.

It was a while before he settled down enough to stand back up again. When he did, Twilight looked as calm and peaceful as ever. He noticed his marble sitting placidly on the edge of the desk, and half-heartedly wondered why he hadn’t noticed it before. Picking it up from the desk, he stared with sullen disinterest at the way the light played across its surface before palming it and shuffling sadly towards the open balcony.

The cool night air did nothing to raise his spirits. Neither did the tranquil view of Ponyville, or the crescent moon against the backdrop of stars, or the sudden tackle from behind.

A heavy foot pressed down on his back and pinned him to the floor. Immediately Spike began to plead and beg with his attacker.

“Wait, please! PLEASE I didn’t tell her! I didn’t tell her she was asleep she didn’t hear a word please don’t do anything I swear to Celestia please don’t kill her! Please…”

Even as he begged he knew it was too late and he began to sob again. He knew Avarice would walk into that room and murder his best friend in her sleep, and that he would be forced to watch. He felt Avarice’s cruel claw pry open his fist and take the marble within it. He felt a torrid breath against the side of his face as an axe-shaped muzzle moved next to his ear, and he knew Avarice was going to tell him that he was going to suffer. He felt the marble press into the side of his bandaged head, and heard the hated voice say something quietly.

“Tag. You’re it.”

And then the weight vanished from his back in an instant. Spike whipped up his head in Twilight’s direction, certain that he would see Avarice standing over her, readying the killing blow, but he only saw her. Wheeling back around towards the railing, he saw Avarice gliding away like a bat out of Tartarus towards the shadowy buildings of Ponyville.

In an instant, something swelled and burst within Spike’s brain, flooding his body with rage. The next thing he knew, he was running across the field of grass in pursuit, murderous intentions all that he could think about. He didn’t even know how he’d gotten there so fast. If he’d run down the stairs and out the back door, climbed down the branches, or simply jumped off of the balcony, he didn’t know; his memory was all a blur. It didn’t matter. He was here, he was angry, and Avarice was going to pay.

As he pelted into the streets he saw the flick of a scaled tail vanish in a blackened alleyway, and pumped his legs even faster. Some detached part of his mind noted that he’d never moved this fast in his life, but he was fine with that. The sooner he could kill Avarice, the better. The same detached part then noted that this was also the first time he legitimately felt like murdering anything.

Spike rounded the corner and saw his target. Then everything went red. Not caring that Avarice was three times his size, or had wickedly sharp claws, or a killer instinct, or a complete inability to feel empathy or remorse, Spike sprinted down the alley and launched himself straight at the back of Avarice’s head with a roar of pure, undiluted rage.

The impact was actually hard enough to cause Avarice to stumble, lurch, and crash into a wall. Spike bit and tore and scratched, thinking of nothing but destroying. Then he felt his arm catch in a grip of iron. The world tuned into a vertigo-inducing blur, then lights exploded in his vision as the back of his head was slammed against something very hard.

His sight cleared to see himself pinned against the wall above the ground by one of Avarice’s long arms, his hand around Spike’s throat. Avarice himself looked more than ready to kill. Spike continued to bite and tear at whatever he could reach, determined to at least make the bastard bleed before Avarice killed him.

But Avarice did not destroy him. Instead, as Spike bit and clawed half out of anger and half out of desperation, his expression changed slowly from murderous to merely angry, then to amused, then to triumphant vindication.

“Yes, that’s it!” Avarice said as he leaned in. “Use your aggressive nature! Use your hatred! Use it and become the dragon you’re supposed to be!”

Spike couldn’t tell whether or not Avarice was mocking him, but it was more because he didn’t want to do what Avarice was telling him to do that Spike managed to calm his fury and stop fighting like a cat trying to claw it’s way out of a pillow case. He looked up, breathing heavily, to see Avarice had assumed his usual infuriating swagger, then gave a yelp of surprise as he was suddenly released to fall onto the dirty pavestones. Avarice bent over him as he hauled himself off of his hands and knees.

“So, I see you wanted to come along after all.”

“What? Are you even-” Spike stammered. “I was trying to—”

“Trying to kill me?” Avarice finished for him. “Admirable, but pointless. So since you failed to beat me, you might as well join me. Now then… have you wondered what sorts of things Roseluck considers valuable?”

Spike couldn’t bear being around him anymore. Not even bothering to reply, he just turned around with a frustrated humph and began stomping back towards the library.

“Fine, have it your way,” said Avarice as Spike rounded the corner again. “Go back to trying to fill that hole in your heart with empty friendships! Go back to being a maredrake!”

- - - - - -

Thick, soothing darkness ensconced Twilight. Her thoughts were idle and her senses were numb, making the dense emptiness feel like a part of her.

More neurons started firing within her brain. Her cognition began recovering from its torpid pace like oppressive weights had been removed from it. She started becoming more aware of her own body, and that there was a particularly bad ache originating from her spine along with the bothersome sensations of the flesh in her sides being seared.

Twilight tried to open her eyes; it felt like trying to strip the bark from a redwood tree. Her tongue rolled in her dry mouth and she felt it stick to the dehydrated surfaces of her palate and gums. She tried lifting a heavy hoof to her eyes to rub the lingering crust from them and almost smacked herself. Her movements were uncoordinated and clumsy, like she was recovering from inebriation.

With her cognition returning from slumber, thoughts began to gnaw at her. The last thing she could remember was writing another data entry, then darkness. When she finally cracked open her eyes and her blurry, unfocused vision cleared, she found that half of it was obscured by her pillow.

Unease swiftly came upon her. The view of her bedroom looked different than she remembered from all the times she woke up in her bed. In fact, now that she thought about it, she didn’t even remember going to bed last night.

With still disoriented motor function, Twilight tried to lift herself up from her pillow, only to find that she didn’t have to move very far until she was already sitting upright. She felt her blanket begin to slip off her back. With mounting concern, she pushed aside her pillow to reveal the desk below, the parchment she had been writing upon still in its place. Her head whipped towards the window so quickly that it made her dizzy, but the clear blue sky of another beautiful summer sunrise was still unmistakable.

Twilight’s confused anxiousness was swept aside for crushing disappointment.

I fell asleep… Instead of helping Spike, I fell asleep.

Twilight hung her head in shame, wallowing in feelings of bitterness towards herself, knowing she deserved every ounce of it, especially considering her friends had told her about how Spike had stomped out on them yesterday, extremely upset about something, but they didn’t know over what. She didn’t tell them, but she knew it must have had something to do with his internal struggles, making it all the more imperative she enter his dreams that night to either learn about the dissociative identity he was desperately trying to keep suppressed, or offer help to him in the dream. Maybe even try and convince him to let her and her friends help him in real life if he believed that she was some subconscious manifestation of his own conscience.

But instead, she’d fallen asleep when she knew how much Spike needed help, even if he wouldn’t admit it. Even worse, she knew Spike must have been the one to have found her passed out upon her desk, and then he had his best to make her comfortable. Typical Spike, always helping other ponies with their problems even as he suffered through his own. And she had shown her gratitude of his consideration by failing to help him when she knew he needed it.

It had been a long time since she had woken up feeling this rotten about herself.

Reason? she mentally prodded. Are you up?

A groggy moan came from within her mind as Reason mumbled back a reply.

Ugh… five more minutes…

Twilight let out a displeased sigh, then looked over the room for Spike. She caught sight of his bed, with its pillow all nice and fluffed, blankets pulled tight and tucked neatly under the padding.

Twilight was instantly alert. Not only was Spike not in his bed this early in the morning, but his bed was made. Spike never made his bed, not until she had to tell him to.

“Spike?” she instinctively called. No reply came.

“Spike?” She called his name again as she lurched away from her desk, stumbling over her own hooves in the process. She stumbled over to his bed and felt the sheets. They were room temperature. A chill ran down her spine.

Twilight galloped over to her bedroom door and plowed through it, having regained much of her automation from the surge of adrenaline. Her eyes swept over the front room, then darted to the open door of the bathroom, neither revealing her friend.

She flew like wind down the stairs and barreled into the kitchen. Only then did she left out a little sigh of relief when she saw Spike, standing on a stool by the counter and mixing around something in a bowl with a wooden spoon.

“There you are,” Twilight said, relaxing. “What are you doing up so early?”

“Head’s back with the eleventh candlestick…” was Spike’s slurred response.

Twilight tilted her head to the side. “What?”

“No, it’s fine. The trash can litter box is stuck...”

“Uh… what?” Twilight took a concerned but cautious step forward.

“I wanna ride a meat bicycle with a diamond pony...”

“Spike? Are you okay?” Twilight gently prodded his shoulder with a hoof.

Spike lurched around and let out a scream of surprise, starling Twilight. “I didn’t say anything!” he blurted.

Spike’s movements were just as disoriented as Twilight’s had been. His dilated eyes were so bloodshot that they had more red to them than white, and had circles underneath that were so dark it looked like he’d been physically beaten.

The little dragon shook his head, and his eyelids stopped fluttering long enough to get a good look at the pony addressing him. “Oh,” he muttered. His chest slowing it’s heaving and his overcast tone returned. “It’s just you, Twi...” Then he turned around and resumed his task.

Twilight walked around to Spike’s side to get a better view of his face. “Spike, did you get any sleep last night?”

Spike snorted. “Nope. I jus’ lay ‘wake in bed pretty much the whole night.”

Twilight craned her neck back. “All night? How? Why?”

“Yep; all night. Dunno how, dunno why. S’ figured I’d jus’ up ‘n make break-fist ‘fore you asked, ‘cause I knew ya would.” Spike slurred back without ever taking his bloodshot eyes away from the bowl.

“That’s… really nice of you, but you really need your sleep, Spike,” Twilight said as she approached him and looked into the contents of the basin. “What are you even trying to make?”

“Waffles...” Spike proclaimed, lifting his head. The sudden movement almost made him lose his balance. “Least ah think it’s supposta be… can’t get th’ mix right...”

Twilight looked at Spike with one eye squinted and the other eyebrow cocked. “Uh, Spike, I know I can’t cook for the life of me, but doesn’t a waffle recipe call for, you know, eggs and milk, or something?”

Spike threw a puzzled look towards Twilight, then looked back at the bowl and lifted a spoonful of the contents out for inspection. He titled the spoon to let the contents fall back into the bowl, watching as nothing but dry flour poured down.

“I was wonderin’ why it wasn’t gettin’ thick...” he mumbled.

Twilight put a hoof around Spike’s shoulder and leaned in closer to him. “I appreciate that you want to help, but a whole night without sleep isn’t healthy for you, Spike. Why don’t you go back upstairs to bed, and I’ll bring you some warm milk and tuck you in?”

Spike’s face fell and his shoulders dropped.“That won’t help.”

“Why not? You won’t know until you try.”

“I did,” Spike asserted. “Went through almost half a gallon las’ night. Even took some of Pinkie’s sleepin’ pills. Nothin’.”

“Spike, you’re not supposed to use those unless you ask! Those could be dangerous if you took too many!”

“Sorry,” Spike half-heartedly replied. “Still, didn’t do nothin’.”

“But you can’t go running around all day if you haven’t slept a wink all night. What if I just used the sedation portion of Dreamscape to help you fall asleep?” Twilight suggested.

“No thanks,” Spike replied, his voice suddenly more clear. “I’m more hungry than tried, anyway.”

“You’re still just a baby dragon, Spike. You need your sleep,” Twilight insisted.

“If I needed it so much, I’d have slept last night and we wouldn’t be havin’ this conversation.” A little bit of the tired slur worked its way back into his voice. “‘Sides, I’ve got stuff I need to do that I didn’t finish last night.”

“Spike—”

“I’ll try ta take a nap after I finish my chores, ‘kay?”

Twilight held her breath for a moment, then let it out. “Okay,” she reluctantly agreed. She pulled Spike a little closer and gave him a quick kiss on his forehead, then looked at him for his response. He had none, at least nothing that he externally showed. So she turned around and walked out the kitchen door. On the other side of the threshold, she let out a sigh.

So much for making up for last night, Reason said.

“I know, Reason,” Twilight replied outloud.

Do you think his insomnia might be related to his disorder, or his depression?

“Can’t know for certain without knowing more, can we? And we could always ask Spike to try and learn more about what he’s going through, but guess what he’s not in the mood to do?” Twilight muttered.

Twilight heard a creak of a door opening from her right. She looked up to see Pinkie looking at her from behind the door with a very worried expression on her face.

The first thing that ran through Twilight’s head was, Uh-oh…

Do you think she heard us? Reason asked.

There’s one way to find out, Twilight thought, then cleared her throat to address Pinkie.

“Oh, good morning Pinkie. Is everything alright?”

Pinkie withdrew slightly more into the shadowy room. “Um, Twilight, may I talk to you? In private?” she meekly inquired.

“Oh… of course,” Twilight replied, trotting towards the door.

Pinkie stepped back, opening the door to her room wide enough for Twilight to enter. The unicorn walked into a much darker room, and couldn’t help but feel somewhat unnerved. Even considering it was part of her own home, she was surprised by just how much colder it felt from Pinkie’s presence alone.

Pinkie closed the door behind Twilight, then slowly walked over to the couch that she had been using as her bed, set aside the sheets, then sat down, hanging her head like a noose at the gallows.

“So what’s going on?” Twilight asked.

Pinkie gulped, then replied in a quiet, troubled voice. “I had another nightmare...”

Twilight forgot her own personal concerns in an instant. “Oh… oh Pinkie, I’m sorry...” She made her way over to the couch and pulled Pinkie into a comforting hug. “The sedatives didn’t help at all?”

“Not tonight, they didn’t,” Pinkie muttered.

Twilight held Pinkie for several minutes before she dared to ask anything. “Do you want to talk about it? It, um… Your nightmare didn’t have anything to do with, uh… cupcakes, did it?”

Pinkie was silent for a moment. Finally, she mumbled, “No...”

“Well, that’s g—”

“I just dissolved the bodies in acid instead.”

“Oh… that’s… oh Pinkie, I’m sorry,” Twilight pulled her friend in closer and began running her hoof over Pinkie’s flat mane. Pinkie pulled her knees to her chest and nestled into Twilight’s shoulder.

“I grew up in a world where I never saw that first rainbow,” Pinkie somberly explained. “My parents were extremely mean, my baby sister died when she was just a foal, and I didn’t even get the same cutie mark. I got pickaxes instead of balloons. I never had you or any of the girls for my friends, or anypony that so much as loved me. I never ever smiled, not for years, because I was f-forced to… to k-kill bad ponies by this evil voice in my head...”

Twilight’s hoof froze in mid-stroke. The muscles in her jaw clenched and her pupils shrank. She gulped, and had to carefully deliver her next question to keep the onset of shaking in her voice as inconspicuous as possible.

“Pinkie… in all of your other nightmares, something about them carried over to have a negative effect on you when you woke up. So, dare I ask, that didn’t follow you back, did it?”

“No, but… but what if it does?” Pinkie looked up at Twilight with quivering eyes. “W-what if one day I wake up with some evil voice that won’t go away telling me to hurt somepony, or you, or my friends?”

“Then you’ll have your friends to make it go away,” Twilight answered, and gave Pinkie a little squeeze. “Speaking of which, the girls are coming over later today. I’m going to train them how to build a dream, so we’ll be that much closer to getting that subconscious anomaly out of your head.”

Pinkie looked away. “Yeah, about that… I’m sorry Twilight, but I don’t feel comfortable going into the dreams anymore. What if he shows up again and starts teasing me about my feelings for Dashie?”

“It’s okay Pinkie, I understand. Besides, maybe it’s better if you don’t, since we’ll be discussing what we can do to help you, and there’s a possibility that whatever is in your subconscious might adapt and resist if it knows what we’ll have in store.” Twilight allowed a little time to pass before she asked her next question. “So, are you still struggling with your feelings about Rainbow Dash?”

Pinkie looked away and began fiddling with her hooves again. “Yes. I haven’t done anything since, you know, then, but… Dashie is very special to me, and I do love her as a friend, but then I think, what if that kind of love is actually the other kind of love, and is it right for me to think that way? Is it even right for me to feel this way? I love being with Dashie and I love making her happy, but when I think about really being with her, it feels so right and so… so icky at the same time!

“But I don’t even know if I’m thinking that because I actually care about her, or if I’m sick in the head! And when you girls fix what’s wrong with me, will I still feel the same way? Will those feelings go away when I’m better, or will I still want Dashie and me to be each other’s special somepony? And if it’s not right for me to feel that way and my feelings are only because of what’s in my head, if I still feel that way after you try to help me, does that mean I’m still all screwed up? Am I too far gone to be helped? Am I—”

“Shh, easy Pinkie,” Twilight interrupted before Pinkie’s anxiety could deteriorate into hysteria any further. “Tell you what: if you’re worried how the anomaly is effecting your feelings, why don’t we wait until the anomaly is taken care of to sort out your emotions, okay?”

“Okay...” Pinkie sniffled. “If you can take care of it...”

“We will, Pinkie. ‘Faith in your friends,’ remember?”

Another oppressed smile fought to bring some light back onto Pinkie’s face. “I remember. Thanks for putting up with me, Twilight.” Pinkie returned Twilight’s embrace. “I’d be so lost without you all for my friends.”

They sat in silence for a minute, enjoying each other’s company. When it was apparent the conversation had finished to be subsequently followed by placid quiet, Twilight felt Reason mentally nudge her.

If Pinkie develops split-personality disorder too, then I vouch for never using Dreamscape on anypony else ever again.

Okay, to be fair, Twilight countered, whatever is causing Pinkie all her distress is most likely something she’d subconsciously suppressed that her manipulation merely exhumed. The impetus of Spike’s case occurred before we even found Mr. Cob’s lost notes, and you came to fruition as a result of what happened to me while under the effects of Dreamscape, not from an effect of the spell itself.

And yet here we are, with two confirmed cases of DID in those Dreamscape has been used on and an indication of what could become a third. Doesn’t take somepony as smart as either of us to see a common factor, Reason stated.

I know, Twilight admitted. Why do you think I’ll be using the firewalls in this afternoon’s dream session, too?

If yesterday’s dream was any indication, that might not be enough, Reason said. Maybe this just isn’t a safe spell for anypony to use.

Then why would Cob have hidden his notes instead of destroying them? Twilight asked.

There’s no way of knowing for certain unless we could ask him ourselves. Unfortunately, nopony even knows where he is. All we can do is conjecture. Maybe those rumors are true and he was actually running from the law, so he hid his notes in a place where he could later retrieve them, but never got the chance to. Maybe he never used the spell himself and didn’t realize how dangerous it is. Or maybe he did use Dreamscape, and that’s why he didn’t destroy them... maybe he wasn’t completely sane, either.

But you said it yourself, there’s no way of knowing unless we get to ask him, Twilight said.

I know. My point is, just be careful.

Don’t worry, I will.

Reason sighed to herself. If you were, I doubt I’d even exist to be having this conversation with you right now.

- - - - - -

Spike walked along the path with a stiffness in his gait that shouldn’t have been present in something as casual as going from one place to another. Really, it was the result of a middle-ground having been found between the two other options for the rate at which he could have been moving: a lethargic shuffle, or an urgent marathon sprint, of which he was still debating whether or not to submit to one or the other. Either way, it was getting him where he needed to be, whether or not he could even be certain the trip would even be worth his time.

When Applejack, Rainbow, Fluttershy and Rarity had returned the library again that day to further their acclimation to Dreamscape, Pinkie had opted to be the one to stay awake and wake them up, leaving Spike to meander about as he pleased. Yet of all the things he could have chosen to do, he watched them from all from atop the stairs, even knowing he risked having to watch them slather Pinkie with their pity again. At this point, he felt that was the only distance he could be around his friends.

After they had awoken and discussed their next meeting, Rarity was quick to excuse herself and departed in a hurry. Spike knew her signs well enough to know when Rarity was reaching a breaking point, so while the rest of his friends were busy not paying him any attention, he had quietly snuck out of the library and set off with nothing but a fool’s hope to drive him.

Which was how he had ended up here, on this familiar cobblestone path, but without any of the usual vigor he used to have when he was going to Carousel Boutique. He knew the outcome he dreaded was more than likely the outcome he was destined to receive, but upon further thought, realized he had nothing better to do. He’d finished all his chores and tried to lay down for some rest, but sleep was now proving to be yet another elusive mistress. Twilight had even checked up on him, but he lied and said he had just woken up from a quick nap.

So given the choice of taking a chance or having the compassionate, comforting words of his distant friends further entomb him in his isolation, he decided to go with the option that only might crush his spirits.

In all his brooding and staring at the ground, Spike reached Rarity’s home business sooner than he was ready. He tried to compose his thoughts into something more optimistic and charming, but after five minutes of looking at his feet, his disposition remained unchanged.

Spike looked up all the door and sighed. Multiple scenarios of how the situation could commence were playing out in his head. Only one of them had a preferential outcome, and it was so overwhelmed by the mass of more likely results that the odds of achieving it seemed to be about one in don’t even bother trying.

Even my own fantasies are hardly worth the effort now, he thought.

A memory of something Pinkie had said whispered to his empty heart. “If you can’t put your faith in your friends, who can you trust?”

He remembered the earnest way in which Twilight looked at the miserable pony. “So you’re willing to take a leap of faith with me?”

Spike cleared his throat and straightened his shoulders. The cards have been dealt, the chips are down, and I’ve got nothing left but this.

And then he raised his fist, still leaden with the shackles of his burdens, and knocked on the front door.

His arm fell back down to his side, and he began to wait. And wait. And wait.

It couldn’t have been more than a minute, but each passing second was disassembling what little resolve he had left. Spike knocked on the door again, slightly more urgent this time.

Another minute passed, and the door remained closed.

Spike knocked on the door for a third time, and leaned in closer, listening for any sounds originating from within as each moment that the door separated him from the inside wrecked havoc in his frayed nerves. This time, he heard the clopping of hooves cantering across tile towards the door.

His thoughts returned in rapid, sweeping waves, bearing anxiety on their tides as Spike tried to interpret an inflection based of the sound of somepony’s strides.

That’s not Sweetie Belle, is it? No, her strides are short since her legs are smaller. It has to be Rarity. Is she striking the ground that hard because she’s irritated? Oh Celestia, she’s going to be mad at me... No, think positive! She’s under a lot of stress, maybe she’ll be glad for a change of pace or a visit from a friend…

The front door was briskly ripped open, her dainty appearance somewhat frazzled. Rarity looked down at Spike. Whatever frivolous beliefs Spike clung to disintegrated with Rarity’s contemptuous tsk.

“Hi, Rarity,” Spike disheartedly said. “Look, I know you’re busy—”

“And yet you disrupt my schedule regardless,” Rarity impatiently cut him off. “Do you have any idea how much I’m dealing with?”

“Well, yeah. That’s why—”

“I’m slaving away on a project that could make or break my business, and on top of that I have a friend who might lose their mind if I’m not available for them at a moment’s notice. I haven’t even been able to get a proper amount of sleep for almost a whole week! Do you have any idea how much stress I’m currently under?” Rarity tersely asked.

“Yes, so—”

“Then why must you keep pestering me?”

“I know, alright?!” Spike snapped back, instantly regretting his outburst of frustration. He sighed and looked down at her hooves. “I know you’re busy, and I know you don’t want me around, but I see how much stress you’re under, and I can’t help but worry about you. That’s why I wanted to ask if there was anything I could do to help you relax.

“I don’t have a whole lot of bits, but I have enough to treat you to a day at the spa, or take you to a nice restaurant. Or I could just show you a special place I know of in a meadow outside town, where it’ll just be the two of us… I mean, when’s the last time somepony treated you like a lady, or made you feel special?” Spike found the strength to look up into her eyes. His own were pleading for acceptance. “I just want you to be happy, Rarity.”

“Oh...” The bitter edge in Rarity’s tone vanished. “Forgive my petulance. That was dreadfully uncouth of me.” She sighed. “You’re right. I have been suffering an immense amount of tension lately...”

Spike leaned forward, hands clamping tightly together, silently imploring her.

“And it is awfully considerate of you to place such concern on my well being...”

Spike held his breath, praying his leap of faith would let him be with the mare he loved.

“But I’m afraid I must say no, Spike.”

Spike felt the unmistakable tug of gravity catching him at the height of his jump. The insurmountable force grabbed his heart and pulled to towards its unfathomable depths. With nothing but empty faith to support him, his heart fell, and did not stop falling. Even as it reached terminal velocity, it never lost sight of what it valued most.

He looked off in the distance: a thousand-mile stare at what would forever be in view, but eternally out of reach: the mare who refused to catch him when he had put the last of his faith in her.

“I’m sorry, Spike, but I am simply far too preoccupied to entertain any activity that would detract from my tasks at hoof. And at this point, if I had free time to indulge, I think it would be more expedient to catch up on lost sleep. All this insomnia can’t be healthy for me...”

“I bet,” Spike replied with an expressionless tone. He understood her words, but his apathy consumed any value they may have once owned.

“And I’m afraid I must beseech you not to extend any further invitations to recreational diversions until my work is finished. Another might be too tempting to resist, and I’d be more than a little upset if taking up a certain handsome little devil’s proposition to take a holiday is what ultimately makes me miss a non-negotiable deadline. Why, I almost had half a mind to accept your offer...”

Spike did not reply, or visibly react in any way.

“Perhaps some other time?” Rarity proposed.

“Sure,” Spike commented, unenthused.

“Again, I apologize for my behavior. I’m sorry things just couldn’t turn out. Really, I am.” Rarity glanced over her shoulder. “Forgive me, but I must depart. I pray that the remainder of your day will be less arduous than mine. Adieu, Spike.”

The golden handle glowed with the Rarity’s magic, and the door swung shut, separating the two.

Rarity clicked all of the locks shut, then trotted back towards her bedroom. She cast a glance at the clock on the wall as she hurried up the stairs and sighed. Spike’s interruption had taken hardly more than two minutes of her time, but it was two minutes she couldn’t afford to lose. It was two minutes that she’d have to shave off an already tight schedule, where mistakes were a high and dangerous probability and having to go back and correct them threatened to ruin her entire routine.

“I’m sorry about that,” Rarity said as she got back to her work station and donned her horned, ruby glasses.

“It’s alright,” Sweetie Belle replied. The filly was standing in a partial dress that was still in the process of being sewed together. “I didn’t move, just like you told me.”

“Thank you, Sweetie Belle,” Rarity acknowledged as she picked up a threaded needle and returned to assembling the partial gown adorning the filly. “And thank you again for standing in lieu of a proper mannequin.”

Sweetie’s ears sheepishly flopped down. “Well, I still owe you for breaking your foal-sized ones… I’m sorry, by the way.”

Rarity tsked. “At least it occurred to you to test that rocket-powered catapult instead of just jumping on it yourself.” Rarity looked at Sweetie with an open heart. “Mannequins can be replaced. Little sisters can’t.”

A tiny smile crept through Sweetie’s nervous visage. “So you’re not still mad?”

“I’m still a touch irritated, but everything worked out.” Rarity answered as she worked. “Even if this is in a sense discipline for your inappropriate behavior, it does mean we get to spend some time together. I can’t help but feel as though my obligations have made me somewhat neglectful of you. And working with a live model helps me gauge how well these dresses will be worn, so I appreciate your company in more ways than one.”

A full smile cracked open Sweetie’s face. “And I get to help my big sister!” Sweetie turned to hug the mare, but Rarity threw out her forelegs to stop the filly.

“Don’t move!” Rarity urgently reminded.

“Oh, sorry.” Sweetie bashfully apologized, then turned around and reassumed her original pose. “So who was at the door?”

“Hm? Oh, it was just Spike.” Rarity nonchalantly replied.

Sweetie craned her neck back a little. “That was Spike? But you sounded so mad at him! Why would you be angry with Spike?”

Rarity took a second to look up at Sweetie before she looked back at her work. “He’s been coming by almost every day for the last week inquiring if he may be of my assistance, and despite having told him no every time, he’s insisted upon pressing the issue to the point of imposing.”

“Wait, so you let me help you, but you keep turning him down? Why would you reject his help but accept mine? That doesn’t seem very fair,” Sweetie commented.

“It’s not that I don’t want his help, it’s that I don’t need it. If I needed to complete a line for young dragons, I’d be more than happy to accept his service. But I’m working on ensembles for ponies, and the pristine decor that must be accomplished here can only be achieved by my hoof, so having Spike around would be more detrimental than helpful.”

“You still didn’t have to be so mean about it,” Sweetie added. “Couldn’t you have just nicely explained that to him?”

“I did, hence why I was a little impatient with him,” Rarity answered.

“You sounded more than just a little impatient,” Sweetie noted. “So was he still trying to help, even though you asked him not to?”

“Um, no, actually...”

“So what did he want then?” Sweetie pressed.

Rarity pawed at the floor with a hoof. “Oh, nothing really…” The next part of her response came out as a partial mumble. “He wished to invite me for some time off...”

“But… you… grr...” Sweetie whipped around to glare at her older sister.

Rarity’s bulging eyes almost popped out of their sockets. “Sweetie, you’re not supposed to move until—”

“No! You need to listen!” Sweetie pointed a hoof at Rarity. “You’ve always taught me to be nice to everypony, but then Spike, your friend, comes over asking if he can do something to be nice to you, and you yell at him!”

“And when I learned his true intention, I apologized for losing my temper with him,” Rarity said.

Sweetie’s expression of admonition faltered for a moment. “Okay, but... you still shouldn’t have gotten mad at him! If my friends were trying to help me out with something stressful and I snapped at them, even if I apologized right after I’d still hear about it from you, wouldn’t I?” Sweetie’s piercing gaze bored into her older sister.

“Maybe, but—”

“I totally would hear it from you, Rarity.”

The mare sighed. “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”

Sweetie eased her tense expression back. “Okay, so you apologized to Spike. Are you going to make it up to him?”

“Why would I need to do that?”

“Well, you probably made him feel bad. He was just trying to help after all...”

“Maybe.” Rarity picked up her needle. “Now may I resume my work? Time is short as it is.”

“Okay,” Sweetie replied, somewhat unsure. Rarity trotted up to her and began sewing again. A moment passed before the inquisitive little filly spoke up again. “Rarity, you’re not just trying to avoid Spike, are you?”

“And why would I be doing that?” Rarity inquired without looking up from her work.

“Because he likes you.”

The needle paused halfway through the fabric. Rarity titled her head down and sighed. “It’s complicated, Sweetie.”

“Well, still, if you hurt Spike’s feelings, you still need to make it up to him. Even if you don’t want to be his special somepony, you’re still friends.”

Rarity hummed a little in thought. “Well, I suppose I could see about doing something later...”

Sweetie looked to her sister with a stern expression. “Rarity...”

Rarity sighed. “Oh, very well. I’ll arrange to spend some time with him where I can offer a proper apology, but it must wait until after I’ve finalized this business arrangement. I cannot afford to do so any sooner… Honestly, what is it about having a little sister that makes me feel like I’ve got a smaller version of mother always following me?”

Sweetie shrugged. “I dunno. Sisters are just supposed to help keep each other in line, I guess.” A sly smile began to creep its way onto Sweetie’s face. “Besides, there’s another advantage to being your little sister...”

“Oh, and what’s that?” Rarity asked with apprehension.

Sweetie’s entire visage was now consumed by a mischievous grin. “Getting to tease my big sister about boys who have crushes on her.”

Rarity sighed. “This is going to be a long night...”

Sweetie tilted her head. “Maybe, but it’ll be entertaining.” The filly smirked. “For me, at least.”

Rarity released an exasperated groan that made Sweetie Belle giggle.

- - - - - -

The golden handle of the front door glowed with Rarity’s magic, and it swung shut in Spike’s face again. He stayed there on the porch, staring at the impenetrable blockade that barred entry to contentment and solitude, just like every time that he could recently remember.

Part of him wanted to find the most secluded place in Equestria and weep until his crying had wrung his eyes dry. Another wanted to delve into an endless rage and demolished everything in sight, and keep destroying until the world was as devastated as he felt. But there wasn’t enough sadness or anger in him to encourage taking part in anything beyond futilely attempting to tear through the door with his eyes. He couldn’t even bring himself to feel sorrow or spite; the only thing he could sense within was the vertigo of abject emptiness.

A full half hour passed before he even moved. With a minute stagger like he’d forgotten how to walk, Spike eventually turned around and shuffled away from Carousel Boutique. He didn’t dare look back, because he knew there would be nothing to see but the door, and nothing to curb the voracity of the ravenous void in lieu of his heart.

Spike’s tiny body shivered like he was standing in a draft. At that moment, he realized he was walking without a destination any more specific than ‘away.’ And that’s when it hit him:

He didn’t have anywhere to go.

He had no business anywhere in town. He had no errands or tasks to complete, and even if he did, he couldn’t have brought himself to be concerned. A trip to the arcade would do nothing to cheer him up, and going to Sugarcube Corner or Sweet Apple Acres for some comfort food felt little more dignified than trying to fish complacence out of the bottom of a bottle. Even if he went back to the library, he’d have to put up with the pitiful sobbing of a dismal pony who was getting all the help and compassion that he couldn’t even let anyone else know that he needed, and the overt over-politeness of a unicorn who for some reason almost seemed to be afraid that he would rip her spine out through her throat if she said or did something to anger him.

Spike released a belated, depressed groan. The whole of his life had become a perpetual nightmare that he’d woken up into and couldn’t even escape with sleep that he could no longer attain. Everything he cared about and loved didn’t love him back. He was so alone that he felt hollow.

“Well, that was painful to watch…”

Spike halted, affixed beside a tree as the cause for his shaking went from loss to loathing.

“Painful in an amusing sort of way, though.”

Antipathy was beginning to occupy the vacuum in Spike’s chest like a contagion. Yet even as he seethed in anger and frustration, his voice was hardly above a whisper.

“What do you want?” Spike hissed.

“Aside from everything?” Avarice quipped, emerging from the denser foliage to rest on one of the lower branches, where he was only visible from where Spike was standing. “To watch you bang your head against the fortress built by Rarity.”

“Shut up!” Spike retorted. “She didn’t say no, she just said… another time…”

Avarice smirked. “Yeah? When?”

Spike remained in place, unable to bring himself to fabricate an answer, or even attempt to provide a baseless speculation.

“As much as I enjoy watching you get kicked around, there’s a more intent reason I tracked you here.” Avarice shifted his position in the tree to direct more focus towards Spike. “After your pathetic attempt to kill me last night, I got to thinking: for all the effort you devote to imitate being a pony, you’re still a dragon… a small, weak dragon who likes to wear aprons, but a dragon regardless. Which is why I’m here: to extend what I dare say is a generous offer for a chance to embrace what you’re supposed to be.”

Avarice crawled across the branches so that he was in front of Spike. “Since you pony types respond better to affability, I am cordially inviting you to accompany me on a nightly raid.”

Spike looked up at Avarice, towering over him with an imposing posture. Spike let a few moments pass to ascertain whether or not Avarice was seriously making the proposition that he thought he was hearing. Avarice’s intent expression did not falter.

Spike’s reply could not have been more flat and unamused. “No.”

“Come on, how are you ever going to appreciate that you’re a dragon if you never let yourself be one?” Avarice drilled.

“I already tried that on the migration.” Spike tersely replied. “And guess what? I didn’t like it. I don’t want to be a dragon if it means being anything like those jerks I hung out with, or worse, you.”

“What, those parochial dim-wits? I’d hardly call them dragons any more than I would call you one. Do you have any idea how valuable one phoenix is, let alone six? Yet those idiots wanted to smash all of them, and for what?” Avarice let out a humph of contempt. “I’d have kept it… and given that’s what you did, I guess we aren’t so different. Just imagine if I had gotten to that last unhatched egg before any of you did...”

Spike’s insides writhed like worms on a block of ice at the thought of his dear little Pee-Wee being raised under the twisted guidance of a deplorable being like Avarice, who was too busy musing over the prospect to pay Spike any mind.

“I could have raised that phoenix to be my feathery partner in crime. Then I’d have someone around to advance the cause of serving myself, all while it operates on the misguided pretense that its actions will somehow earn my respect or adoration.” Avarice grinned deviously and turned back to Spike. “It’d be just like the relationship between you and Rarity!”

Spike growled in frustration, then performed an about-face and began to stomp away, only for Avarice to swoop down from the tree and impede his path.

“After you stomped off last night, I had to incapacitate Roseluck when she tried to stop me from acquiring a few commodities. If you’d been there to act as a lookout, there might have been a chance that wouldn’t have happened.”

Spike glared at Avarice. “Or you could stop stealing everything that you can get your filthy claws on and let Princess Celestia throw you into the lowest dungeon in Canterlot so I can live happily with my friends.”

A sneer attempted to work its way onto Avarice’s face, but he kept his composure cool. “All I’m suggesting is that you act as the point guard to alert me if either of us are about to be compromised. You don’t even have to take anything.”

Spike’s throat had become dry. He detested what Avarice was doing, but if he could at least keep him from hurting anypony else, he’d be able to spare them just a fraction of the panic and dread he’d felt when Avarice remodeled the cabinet at the base of the stairs with his face. But then Spike was hit with a sudden bout of cold sweat when he realized he was actually considering the invitation.

“No,” Spike answered. “If being a dragon means being anything like you, then I’d rather spend the rest of my life as a maredrake.”

At that, Spike pushed past Avarice and continued to walk away. In addition to the immense frustration he was feeling, his original feelings of vacuousness over all his unfulfilled relationships returned. Even as he marched across that open field, he still didn’t know if he was going home. It certainly didn’t feel like home, not with how the connections between himself, Pinkie, and especially Twilight had deteriorated. All he cared about was getting away from Avarice… away from Rarity…

Avarice casually leaned up against the tree and smirked. “Come on, it’s not like you’ve got anything better to do...”

Spike froze in his tracks.

Initially, he wanted to turn around and scream all his contempt at Avarice, but with each passing second, it was more evident that he really didn’t have anything better to do. His whole life had revolved around serving Twilight, and then about serving Twilight and her friends; he had never had anything better to do. And now that everypony had been shutting him out, he didn’t even have purpose.

A terrible thought swept through his mind, one that horrified to to his core for how much he couldn’t quell or contradict it.

Has friendship made me a slave?

And then here of all people was Avarice, offering him even the most meager of chances to do something important, even if it was just protecting ponies from his worst sins made real... and he wouldn’t have to get permission or be told to do it by Twilight.

Spike had to force out a response through a strained and thick voice.

“If I go with you, do you promise not to hurt anypony?”

“I promise nothing,” Avarice replied. “If I did, then had to knock out somepony, that would mean I broke my word, and my word is rather valuable to me. All I’m offering is something you’ve never been given: a chance to make a difference by acting for yourself… even if all that amounts to at the moment is trying to keep ponies from falling down the stairs.”

Spike closed his eyes, then let out one last impoverished sigh.

“Aright. I’ll go.”

Avarice grinned, revealing all his rows of vicious fangs. “Killer!” he exclaimed. “See you later this evening, after Twilight passes out from helping Pinkie so much.”

Spike grimaced. Behind his back, Avarice unfurled his wings to take flight, but he paused to direct one final glance towards the little dragon.

“Try to get some sleep before then, because you’re going to be up all night.”

Then Avarice took off, leaving Spike truly alone in the open courtyard. All the events that had transpired in the last hour had left his thoughts in a bludgeoning tizzy. Even with all his ambivalence and trepidation over this new arrangement with Avarice, he couldn’t discern whether he’d rather be struggling with the loneliness he was just feeling.

He looked back at Carousel Boutique, and felt something worse envelope him.

Guilt.

Author's Notes:

For the first time in a long time, I've managed to meet a deadline I set for myself.

However, I wouldn't call that an accomplishment in the slightest, given that I only set said deadline near the end of the project, and even then it was still a more than liberal amount of time to finish.

Oh, and the fact that this chapter is about half the length it had originally been intended to be is a contributing factor.

Originally, we'd planed on a few additional scenes playing out before closing this one off, but Brian and I settled on released this wall of words at this point because Joseph and I are going to start working on our Equestria Girls review and that's just going to eat up my schedule for a while, which would mean an even longer time between chapters, and while it may have only been a handful of scenes, they're all going to be fairly long, meaning that chapter would have been ridiculously massive.

In the meantime, we hope you enjoy this chapter while we get our next review going.

Prepare yourself for that while you can, because it's going to get explosive.

- Christian 'In The Flesh?' Harisay

Chapter Nine - The Joker and The Thief

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The thick, heavy stillness that had pervaded the library on previous nights was back again. Spike stood at the kitchen sink, staring at piles of dirty dishes.

He knew he needed to do them, knew he needed to have clean plates for breakfast tomorrow, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t command his arms to move, pick up a plate, and scrub it clean. It felt so pointless to clean dishes when he probably would be in no mood to eat the next morning. He certainly had been in no mood to eat tonight. Even the crystals he’d sprinkled over his lasagna had tasted bland and unappetizing.

So instead he just pushed the lasagna around the plate with a fork, knowing he should eat, but finding himself unable to do so. Under normal circumstances, this would have elicited a response from Twilight, but tonight she dove right into her salad like she hadn’t eaten in days. Owloysius, for whatever reason, had shared the same gusto for some crickets he had caught. The only one who had shared a similar demeanor with Spike had been Pinkie, but she hadn’t even looked across the table with an “I know how you feel” expression. Because, of course, she didn’t know how he felt. Instead, she had just sat sadly at the table, staring into her bowl, and after a couple minutes quietly rose from the table and went to her room, leaving the bowl untouched. Again, Twilight took no notice.

And once again, Twilight had said she was feeling drowsy, headed straight upstairs with Owloysius, and fell asleep, leaving Spike alone in the suffocating silence. He would have gotten angry at her. In fact, he wanted to get angry at her, but he was just too depressed. So instead he had gathered up the dishes with agonizing slowness, carelessly tossed them in the sink, and committed the unthinkable crime of throwing away the uneaten food.

And just doing that had virtually drained all of Spike’s willpower. He didn’t want to finish the dishes, he didn’t want to complete his other chores, and most of all, he didn’t want to disturb the silence. On other nights, it had felt oppressive, but tonight it felt like a protective cocoon, holding him together so he didn’t have to. So he just stood there, staring at the dishes without really looking at them, leaving his protective bubble of silence undisturbed.

Then something disturbed it.

It wasn’t a loud noise at all, but in the quiet stasis of the library it rang out like an explosion: the soft scrape of heavy claws on wood, coming from upstairs... from Twilight’s bedroom.

No! Dear Celestia, no! was all Spike had time to think as he suddenly found himself running, almost flying, up the stairs. He swept through Twilight’s half-open door, dread building in him. Twilight always closed her door when she went to bed. He skidded to a halt upon entering the bedroom, and went numb with terror.

There he was, standing by the edge of her bed, looming over her like a gargoyle, claws reaching out towards her… to gently grasp the covers, pull them over Twilight, and tuck them gently around her still form, small in comparison to his towering frame. Spike stared in shock as Avarice then continued to carefully fluff the pillow under her head. Twilight reacted by snuggling in closer to the sheets, a slight smile appearing briefly upon her lips. Avarice gave her a gentle pat on the the head.

Then he gently traced the tip of a claw across her cheek. Twilight giggled softly in her sleep.

Avarice rose from the bed and walked towards the door. He looked at Spike, then donned that same expression that he’d had in the hospital.

“Follow me. It’s time to go,” he said quietly. Then he was out the door, walking down the stairs.

Spike turned to follow, knowing at this point it was better not to do anything that might anger Avarice. Even so, he still paused to look briefly at Twilight before closing the door.

Twilight still lay in her bed: content, peaceful, and ignorant. She shifted, pulling the covers closer around her as she nestled deeper into her pillow, blissfully oblivious, and as complacent as if Spike was the one who had just tucked her into bed.

Spike thought of the night before, and every other time he’d gone out of his way to make Twilight comfortable in her sleep. Each memory was precious to him, and now they were all tarnished and defiled.

An all too familiar molten pocket of hatred started to boil up once more. Spike had to force himself to gently shut the bedroom door before he turned to growl in contempt, his little body trembling from trying to contain his tumultuous levels of fear and loathing.

“I said if you laid a claw on my friends—”

“And that was all you said,” Avarice interrupted as he turned to look at Spike. “You never got to finish threatening me before I pointed out how toothless your words are.”

“Shut up!” Spike hissed quietly through clenched teeth. “I don’t care how little you think of me, or how much bigger you are than me, or that you can beat the crap out of me! Touch my friends again and I will take you on, and this time you’ll have to kill me before I stop!”

As Spike glared at his tormentor with pure hatred, he fully expected another punch to the face, or to get strangled, or at the very least another snide, demeaning comment. Instead, Avarice’s face broke into an amused grin.

“Well then,” Avarice replied, “since you feel so passionately about me just touching the ponies you do care about, I’d hate to think of what you’d do if I pummeled a complete stranger! Come along then, if you’re so passionate about keeping bad old me in check.”

And then Avarice was away, walking down the stairs with his usual irritating swagger. Spike followed, still smoldering with anger, trembling with fear, and a little relieved that he hadn’t taken another wallop to the face.

Avarice strode towards the door leading into the kitchen. At the threshold, he turned around, and looked down at Spike.

“Just so you know, I took the liberty to take something of yours as collateral, just in case the premonition of me putting some pony’s lights out isn’t enough to keep you from withdrawing.” Avarice said as he unfurled one of his wings, and let a small pouch fall out. He caught it, and revealed the contents within to be none other than Spike’s favorite marble.

Spike’s shoulders arched back as his claws dug deeper into his palms. “Why do you keep taking that?” he growled.

“Because it’s valuable to you,” Avarice said with a single blink as he deposited the marble back into the tiny sack and tied it around his claws. “You’ll get it back at the end of the night.”

Then Avarice resumed his stroll, and walked through the door into the kitchen towards the back patio. Spike followed, fuming with even more antipathy.

Spike walked out onto the patio. He stared straight ahead, but didn’t focus on anything. The warm air of the late evening enveloped him, and he vaguely mulled over the similar kind of warmth he’d be feeling had he decided to stay in bed with his soft blanket and thick, noxious haze of depressing thoughts to keep him awake all night.

Part of him wanted to sigh, but he couldn’t even muster the effort to express his despondency.

I can’t believe I’m doing this, Spike thought.

Spike was too busy stewing in his dour thoughts to take note of Avarice’s rummaging through the nearby shed. Avarice finally located the object of his search, Spike’s wagon. With a triumphant chortle, Avarice shoved the wagon towards its owner.

Avarice didn’t even look at Spike as he walked past him. “You’ll need that,” he said.

Spike looked back and forth between his wagon and Avarice as the congealed disdain within him boiled ever fiercer. “I’m not going to drag around stolen things for you,” he spat.

“Exactly,” Avarice replied, still without looking at Spike. “You’re going to pull them around in that. Dragging valuables across the ground would damage them.”

Spike looked back at the wagon again, and grimaced as he slumped his shoulders. He grimly recalled that this was the same wagon he used every time he went out gem hunting with Rarity, and the thought of using it to assist Avarice was just another sacrilegious deadweight to burden himself with.

Avarice finally turned to look at Spike. “Or you could just stay here, guarding your cart from nobody and let Ponyville’s accident rate go up.”

Spike exhaled a heavy, demoralized sigh, then grabbed the handle to the wagon and began pulling as he began to trudge along.

Avarice smirked. “Now then, let’s start this story about the joker and the thief in the night.”

And then Avarice set off with a slight spring in his step, humming a melody of alternating arpeggios to himself. Spike followed behind with a slumped posture, downcast gaze. His frills hung like limp tassels of a wet jester’s cap, making him look even smaller compared to the thief whom he trailed.

Spike followed Avarice into a dark alley. Spike took in his surroundings, and the feeling that something rotten was festering in his stomach increased even more with the realization that this was the same place where he’d futilely attempted to destroy Avarice the other night.

Avarice had stopped humming tunes to himself, and instead was on one knee, inspecting the ground for something. In dull curiosity, Spike examined the places where he’d attacked Avarice, and to his chagrin saw that he hadn’t even scratched the scales.

Avarice looked back to Spike, and fashioned a slight smirk. “And let the spelunking commence.”

Then Avarice reached down to the cobblestone, pried the cast-iron manhole cover up from the ground, and casually flung it to the side, like it was a pizza box that he’d just stolen the last slice out of.

Putrescent fumes erupted from the inky abyss, making Spike gag as he took a reflexive step back. Spike looked back and forth between the septic drain’s maw and Avarice, mouth pulled tight and brows bunched together.

Avarice casually motioned towards the foul entrance. “After you.”

Spike grimaced. “Don’t be so considerate.”

Avarice’s expression fell to a flat, annoyed pout. “I’m not.”

Avarice whapped Spike against the backside of his skull with a flick of the tail, knocking him into the den of acrid shadow. Spike fell screaming, flailing his arms to grasp something until he smacked into the solid ground.

Spike feebly hoisted himself into a sitting position, whimpering as he cradled his snout. Then he yelped in pain as the wagon fell on his head. Avarice deftly hurtled in after the cart, hanging from the cusp with one hand, then pulled the cover back over the hole, and blew a gentle stream of fire into his free hand, where it swirled into a self-contained sphere of red firelight. Avarice dismounted from the rungs leading down to the sewer walkway and landing next to Spike, who was still clutching his bandaged head.

“Get up,” Avarice calmly ordered. “Your ability to cushion the landings of large objects with your face is just one of the many skills you’ll need tonight.”

Spike glared back up at Avarice. “You didn’t have to throw the wagon at my head!”

“Wasn’t trying to,” Avarice said as he pulled Spike back onto his feet. “You were supposed to catch it.”

Spike just glared at Avarice, struggling to come up with a retort. He failed to conceive one, so he just grumbled and looked away, taking in his surroundings.

All the coarse stone of the dimly lit passage bore a tinted, slimy brown hue. Fortunately, there was a small lip of bricks that served as the walkway down here, so neither of them had to dirty their feet in the small current of foul black water that ran within the parallel bank. Unfortunately, there was still nothing to be done about the offensive, feculent smell.

“Did we really have to come down here?” Spike bemoaned.

“Yep. It’s the most reliable way to prevent being spotted.” Avarice answered.

Spike looked closer at the filthy liquid ebbing along beside them. He had almost subconsciously categorized it as “water,” but actual water wasn’t so imbued with waste materials that it was opaque, nor did it chug along with such a thick viscosity. He felt his stomach clench, and for a brief moment, he actually considered himself fortunate to have not consumed anything, because he most likely would have disgorged whatever he’d eaten into the repulsive stream by now.

“It’s disgusting down here,” Spike said as he scrunched up his nose. “I mean, this is just vile.”

“And suddenly my disdain for ponies has newfound clarity.” Avarice casually stated. “Yeah, you never really can fully despise anyone until you’ve had to put up with their crap all day… ‘Course, you still live with ponies, so you should know all about that.”

Spike glowered at Avarice. “‘Putting up with someone’s crap…’ like being forced into silence that’s driving me away from all of my friends?” he snapped.

Avarice’s countenance calcified, and slight edge seeped into his tone. “I was going to say ‘Like being imprisoned in your mind for the almost the entirety of my life.’ So unless you’d like to bring up anything else that will anger the sociopathic dragon, we have other tasks at hand.”

With that, Avarice walked off, leading the way with the orb of magically contained fire in his hand. Spike sighed, reluctantly grasped the wagon’s handle, and began trudge behind, his head hanging.

“Just so you know, if anyone sees us, I will be forced to knock them out.” Avarice stated.

“Then why did you even bring me along?” Spike tersely asked.

“To act as an extra set of eyes to ensure that we don’t get seen by anyone else’s.” Avarice replied. “So if we get spotted, it’s your fault.”

“My fault?!” Spike repeated in disbelief. “You’re the one breaking into homes and breaking faces! If anypony gets hurt, it’ll be your fault!”

“Or, you could just do your job and we won’t have to waste time arguing over how to divvy up the blame.” Avarices stated.

“Or we could have just gone our separate ways and never have to see each other again,” Spike retorted.

Avarice growled impatiently as he looked back at Spike. “You know, when I offered you a chance to protect your milk-sucking overseers, I wasn’t exactly proposing ‘temporarily keep the dragon from thieving by aggravating him until he beats you into a silent pulp.’”

Spike gulped. “Alright then, where are we going?” he asked, desperate for a change of subject..

“Surprise.” Avarice replied.

Spike’s stomach flipped. “We’re going to go rob Surprise?! Wait, who’s Surprise?”

“No, I mean our first destination is going to be a surprise,” Avarice replied. “I preordain multiple potential targets in advance, then select several at random per night. Helps keep the authorities from establishing a profile.”

A knot formed in Spike’s throat to add to the discomfort of his contorting internal organs. “The cops are after you?”

“Not exactly,” Avarice nonchalantly replied. “They only know that there’s a thief in Ponyville. They just don’t know who they should be looking for… yet. So I won’t pilfer the station for their case evidence until it seems like they might be getting close.”

“You wouldn’t seriously attack the police, would you?” Spike blurted out, then silenced himself upon realizing how imbecilic it was to ask Avarice a question like that.

Avarice seemed to realize it too, because his expression was composed and pragmatic as he looked back at Spike.

“Last time we fought against the authority, I was in an infantile state from waking up after a lifetime of imprisoned slumber in your subconscious, your underdeveloped brain was rattling around in your overgrown skull like a walnut in a septic tank, and the both of us were in a titanic, lumbering body that you could see all the way from Canterlot. Our opponents were the most revered fliers in Equestria’s military… and we won. Easily. A clandestine strike against cops that haven’t even discerned my species would be a cinch.”

Avarice stopped at a set of rungs leading up to another steel cap, and he smirked. “We’re here. Go check to make sure the streets are empty.”

The storm drain cover was only several feet above his head, but Spike looked upon it with abject dread. His frills dipped, his shoulders slumped, and he got the uncanny sense that his feet had been encased in concrete.

“The cover won’t punch you in the face, Spike,” Avarice impatiently stated. “Now go make sure the coast is clear. That’s what you’re here for.”

“W-w-what if… what i-if somep-pony sees me?” Spike stuttered.

Avarice smirked. “That’s what I’m here for.” Then his expression became stern. “Now go. ”

With one final deep breath of nauseating air, Spike unlocked his knees and stepped forward, unaware of how much he’d been shaking until he actually started moving again. He grabbed the protruding rungs with a shaking hand, and pulled himself up the ladder with tremulous steps.

He gulped one last time, trying to swallow the lump that kept forming in his throat. He finally reached up and with much exertion managed to push the cover off to one side. It rattled against the lip of the opening from his shaking claws. He looked up at the stars in the night sky, and with a quick prayer that Luna or anypony else wasn’t watching him, he slowly lifted his head from the sewer to peer out into the street.

The clean air enticed him from his spot as he meticulously scanned every direction of the street, the front of every house, every window, and every alley. His eyes darted from one sight to the next with pinpoint accuracy to ensure that not even so much as a stray cat was present to witness the villainy about to ensue.

Rows of quaint little houses seated along the lengths of the street, dimly lit by the soft glow of the moon and stars cutting through the overwise indomitable darkness of the evening’s umbra. Not even the leaves in the trees or the flowers in the many gardens stirred in the delicate breeze, and the only sounds to disrupt the silence were Spike’s own heavy breathing and his heart thudding in his ears.

“Is it clear?” Avarice hissed from below.

Spike had to swallow again to force out his reply. “Y-yeah… it’s clear...”

“Good,” Avarice replied, then crushed the sphere of light in his hand. He lunged for the ladder and pushed Spike the rest of the way out of the hole, making the smaller dragon yelp in surprise as he tumbled onto the ground.

Avarice pulled himself out into the empty street, breathing in the fresh air and began walking to a nearby house. “Don’t be so hesitant to act next time, or your usefulness tonight will be limited.”

Spike had barely enough time to stand back up before Avarice had cleared the distance to the nearest house and stepped over the white-picket fence. Spike scampered over, let himself in through the gate, and ran past the flower gardens to the front door, where Avarice had already knelt down to inspect the deadbolt.

A faint red glow illuminated Avarice’s imposing silhouette against the entrance, then the sound of a gentle click wafted through the air. He depressed the handle and carefully swung the door open, quiet as a shadow.

“After you,” Avarice whispered as he looked back to Spike, and gestured inside.

Spike stared through the dark portal, petrified. His knees locked up and the muscles in his legs began to dissolve while his feverishly palpitating heart churned ice through his veins. The longer he peered into the black entrance, the more it felt like osmium deposits were forming in his stomach.

Avarice growled. “Since I’ve got to do everything myself...” With another flick of his mighty tail, he shoved Spike inside.

Spike tripped over the threshold. A burst of adrenaline shot through his arteries, accelerating his reaction time enough to catch himself before his face hit the tile of the entryway.

He whipped his head upwards with a gasp, his pulse skyrocketing. His pupils contracted to a razor’s width, frenetically darting across the scene, heart still chugging in panicked thumps out of fear. The setting remained undisturbed by his intrusion.

“Alright, good; you’ve checked the front door. Now make sure the rest of the house is clear,” Avarice ordered from the porch.

Spike got back onto his feet and looked around the that house. He stood in a short hallway abutted by a staircase leading up to a second story. Several pictures hung upon the limonite-colored walls. Oak veneers lined the corners where the walls met the floor and ceiling, adding to the picturesque qualities of the quaint little abode. Spike internally mourned for the sanctity lost by their intrusion.

Avarice glared at him from the front door, prompting Spike to sheepishly slink into the adjoining rooms. Closest to the front door was the living room: a couch set surround a coffee table bedecked with a trough of various potted flowers: tan drapes drawn closed over the large window looking out over the front lawn: oak bookshelves in each corner. Multitudes of framed photographs covered the walls, almost all of which featured the smiling faces of young foals. But there were no signs of anypony.

A slow, terrified peek into the adjoining dining room and kitchen also revealed nopony, just a four-seat table covered in a green cloth, various potted ferns hanging from the ceiling, cedar cabinets, and spice racks atop counters of tile with fringes of flowers and vines.

One last glance into the empty washroom yielded nary a sight of the home’s owner, adding to the tension grating upon Spike’s nerves. The modest little dwelling might have otherwise been warm and inviting, but Spike meandered through its passages with a freezing, terrified shiver akin to a colt exploring a haunted house that was spoken of in hushed whispers.

Spike made his way back to the entrance to Avarice. “O-okay… there’s nopony down here...”

“Good,” Avarice responded. “Now go check upstairs.”

Spike’s eyes shot wide open and the corners of his mouth pulled tight while his tail stiffened in abject dread. He looked back at those terrifying, oak-railed stairs, and his heart almost fell into cardiac arrest. Avarice might as well have told him to find one of those cursed dwellings of lore and spend the night in the attic.

“Or I’ll use you as a flail if I have to incapacitate whoever lives here.”

Spike tripped over his own feet as he turned. He gripped the railing with a death hold, and made to trudge up the stairs. Each tremulous step was a greater challenge than the last, like each level housed hidden ghouls that were binding his feet with dense, incorporeal ectoplasm, staining every step of his path.

Another step: the incorporeal muck had become concrete shoes. Another: wails of agony from his mind were ripping apart his brain. One more: Have I really gotten this close to the top already?! One last step: Spike felt like he had nearly gotten to the crest of Bald Mountain.

A final pace to plant both feet on the summit, and Spike had reached the top. His heart and lungs were heaving like he had sprinted up the bluffs of Winsome Falls, though his blood had dropped to freezing temperatures from getting his inner fire kissed by a windigo.

Spike looked over the height he had attained to, half expecting to see the curvature of the world. Instead, all he saw was the same warm, inviting corridor that would haunt his dreams, and Avarice, who scowled up at Spike with impatience.

“You’ve got sixty seconds to clear the space up there or I’m going to put whoever lives here into the emergency room out of spite.”

Spike’s heart was pounding at hypersonic speeds now. Three doors occupied the short hallway here: two to his right and three to his left, all of them closed.

He turned to the closest door, reached for the handle with a shivering hand, then cracked open the entrance. The sliver of the opening revealed what looked like a study: a heavy maple desk under the window; more stuffed oak bookshelves; more picture frames, some housing various certificates and others of more foals. Nopony.

He closed the door, then shuffled his shaking feet across the lush carpet to the end of the hall, and open the second door on his right. He opened the door and peeked through to see the bathroom: marbled tile; sink; mirrors; several decorative towels of various colors hanging from a few mounted racks; toilet; velvet shower curtain drawn half-closed over a porcelain tub. Nopony.

Spike turned to the last door, and felt his courage drain from him. It was just a normal, off-white door, but it loomed over him like it was the portcullis of a holding cell to some unfathomably dreadful demon. There was logically only one place that the door would open up to..

Oh Celestia, there’s going to be somepony on the other side of that door… what if they wake up? What am I going to do? How long has it been already? Has it been—oh no, Avarice is going to beat the snot out of them!

With a huge exertion of will power, Spike reached out with quavering claws, wrapped his little fingers around the handle, and opened. The wooden portal slowly complied to his commands. The gentle noises of the hinges were as loud as the boisterous creaking of a dilapidated drawbridge to his ears. With one last panicked gulp, he looked into the bedroom.

If there were any other features worth noting, Spike didn’t see them. All he could focus on was the bed directly across from him, which was covered in sky blue sheets decorated with yellow-petalled flowers. They were pulled over a lump that was causing the blankets to rhythmically rise and fall, and carried the deep, drawn out, unmistakable sounds of a sleeping mare.

His heart was pounding with such volume in his ears that he was scared the noise would wake her. He stood there, utterly petrified. His cognition started desperately urging him to do something, but all he could do was remain faceted in place, eyes locked onto the woefully blissful pony.

Seconds crawled with the excruciating pace of eons, and yet the scene before him remained unchanged. The mare still slept, ignorant of the dragon at the threshold to her room, and Spike still stood there, trying to will himself to act. Eventually, he managed to close the door, and turned around right into a scowling visage.

“Took you long enough,” Avarice hissed.

Spike would have sailed screaming through the roof had Avarice not seized him by the muzzle and clenched it shut, muffling his shriek of terror.

“If you plan on dragging this out to increase the chances of us getting spotted, it’s not going to work,” Avarice stated in a hushed tone before motioning towards the bedroom door. “Is she asleep?”

All Spike could do was nod.

“Good,” Avarice muttered, finally letting go as he turned away. “Now it’s play time.”

Spike rubbed his bruised snout a little before his eyes snapped up at Avarice. “What? You’re going to rob this place anyway?! But there’s still somepony here! What if she wakes up?”

“Then either you give the alert to escape, or I’ll put her back to sleep… and be more quiet, unless you actually trying to wake her.” Avarice quietly ordered.

Spike was swaying back and forth on his rolling heels, cradling his tail in unease. “Couldn’t we just go to a house where nopony is home?”

“We could, if anyone was out of town. But not only does merely waiting for opportune targets lack initiative, it’d make these forays too predictable.” Avarice stated. “Besides, I didn’t hear you offering any other suggestions of specific places to hit.”

Spike scowled. “That’s because I’m nothing like you.”

Avarice only smirked at this. “So you say now... alright then, would you care to pick out anything?”

Spike’s displeased visage intensified. “No.”

Avarice titled his head in faux-disappointment. “Aw… don’t you want to know more about the things you’ll be pulling around tonight?”

“No...” Spike growled.

Avarice hummed in amusement. “Too bad.”

That was the only warning Spike got before Avarice picked him up and carried him off to the study. Spike protested, squirming in his grasp, but his struggles quickly proved futile. Avarice took the both of them to the study, and gently shut the door behind them.

“Now then, if we want to figure out what this pony values, we’ll have to ascertain more about them,” Avarice said in a lecturous tone. “Take a look around this room. What do you see?”

“A monster who should be imprisoned in stone,” Spike grumbled.

“You flatter me. Now try and divert your attention from my grandeur and tell me what about this place catches your eye.”

Spike looked away to inspect their surroundings, if only to find relief in the fact that there was something to look at other than Avarice.

“Books,” Spike disinterestedly replied. “I see a lot of books.”

“And what does that tell you about whoever lives here?” Avarice inquired.

Spike sighed. “That they like to read...”

A sudden twinge of guilt struck his already culpable conscious. The site of this quaint little house filled with books suddenly reminded him of home, and gave him the sense that whoever lived here probably would have gotten along very well with Twilight.

“That’s... one observation. Look closer.” Avarice said as he approached the framed documents hanging upon the wall. “Bachelor of Arts on Equish and Literature, awarded from the University of Trotronto. Bachelor of Science for Math, also of UT. This mare doesn’t just enjoy sticking her snout into a book, she’s learned… for whatever passes as intelligence for ponies.”

More slings and arrows of shame afflicted Spike. Whoever this mare was, she was already reminding him more and more of Twilight.

Avarice approached another degree hanging on the wall, and let out a low whistle. “Master of Science, awarded by the University of Trotronto, pertaining to the study of… foal development.”

He looked back and forth between the certification and the pictures of the foals, then smirked. “That explains everything… might as well take them.”

With that, Avarice removed the picture frames from the walls and tucked them under an arm, opening up a pit in Spike’s gut. He knew that Avarice was technically just taking a few sheets of paper, but the sacrilege of the act in of itself felt as blasphemous as actually stealing all the knowledge and intelligence that this mare had worked so hard to attain

Avarice paid Spike no mind as he moved from the picture frames to the book cases, occasionally muttering something to himself when he noticed something of interest. Without a word, Spike turned, crept outside the study, and gently shut the door behind him.

Spike dragged himself across the lonely hall and sat down on the top step of the stairs. He rested his arms across his knees and slouched over, exhaling a quiet, distressed groan. That nauseous feeling had returned. He felt like there was something vile under his scales that couldn’t be washed away.

The faint noise of the doorknob turning behind him met his ears. Spike whipped around to see Avarice gliding like a ghost out from the study with a small stack of frames and textbooks in hand.

“Don’t you want to take anything?” Avarice asked.

“No,” Spike grumbled in reply. “Are we done here?”

“Not quite. We might have found a few things the homeowner cherishes, but not anything that I would consider valuable, and if there is anything to find of material worth in a place like this, it’ll probably be in...” Avarice let his sentence hang as he looked towards the bedroom.

“I wonder,” he spoke before shoving the collection of textbooks and degrees into Spike’s arms.

Spike reeled back from the weight of the items forced into his grasp. He looked at Avarice, approaching the bedroom door with the strides of a stalking predator. His pulse jettisoned, and he dumped the items of to the side and darted towards Avarice.

“You’re not going in there, are you?” Spike frantically hissed

“Yeah.”

Spike gasped. “Are you crazy?!”

“The word is ‘ambitious.’ We’ve been over this.”

Avarice twisted the handle on the door. The clicks of turning gears and coiling springs made hardly any more noise than a mouse scurrying across tile, but the clatter it made to Spike was as clamorous as an Ursa Major.

Avarice nudged the door open, then smirked at Spike as he silently moved into the bedroom. “Come on in,” he said as he grasped the door handle again. “Or don’t.”

Then Avarice shut the door, leaving Spike alone in the hallway with his frenzy of panicked thoughts. He remained there in that dark hall, little heart pounding like a platoon of hammers upon an anvil, petrified by fear and indecision, unable to move save for his overwhelming trembling or derive a course of action beyond chewing his nails to dust.

Several agonizing minutes passed before the bedroom door swung open again. Spike let out a startled gasp as Avarice emerged with a cylindrical box and a jubilant grin splitting his axed muzzle in half. He closed the door, and gleefully presented his find.

“Look what I found,” he said, then ripped the lid of the box to reveal its contents.

Spike dared to take a peek. Inside the box was a white, snazzy, wide-brimmed fedora with a velvet band wrapped around the base of the crown, from which a single crimson feather protruded.

Spike looked back up at Avarice with confusion. “Is it under the hat?”

Avarice returned with an unamused expression. “It is the hat.”

Spike looked back and forth between the two in disbelief. “No way… this is what got you so excited?”

“Clearly you’ve lost your penchant for fine hats ever since I escaped your vacuous brain,” Avarice scoffed with faux sophistication, blinking once before going back to marveling over the attire. A mischievous twitch crept into his smirk.

“I wonder if it still fits,” Avarice mused as he brushed past Spike into the bathroom, hat in his clutches. He approached the mirror and pulled the fedora over his jagged frill and down onto his crown. Avarice looked in the mirror, and his eyes lit up like colt’s on Hearth’s Warming Day.

“Sweeeet,” he jubilantly prided himself, turning his head to admire himself from every possible angle. “Damn, I look good...”

Spike just scowled at Avarice from the threshold. Avarice in turn just looked back at him and smirked, then left the lavatory.

“No matter what happens, the entire night was worth it just for this. I’m going to go see if I can scrounge up anything else from downstairs. Come along, if you want.”

Spike answered with a growl.

“Or you can just stay up here, thinking angry thoughts. I don’t care, I’m having fun either way.”

Then Avarice mounted the railing and slid down the staircase, humming the tune to ‘Sharp-Dressed Stallion’ as he departed to snatch up any remaining presents from under the tree, leaving Spike with only an empty box and his rage to brood with.

Spike grumbled, crossed his arms, and leaned against the doorframe, the seething sentinel at his post. Fingers drummed a caustic roll of beats while his scowling brow attempted to connect with the bridge of his snout. He sourly dwelt on Avarice’s hubris until it saturated his every thought with a stench like the rank air of the sewers had come all the way upstairs just to say that it still hated him.

Minutes passed with nothing for Spike to do but simmer in indignation. He tried diverting his attention to anything else that would preoccupy his frustrated mind: the fluffy texture of the shag carpet under his feet; the sweeping ridges of the doorframe digging into his back; warm, inviting walls that beseeched him to leave; hatbox; a muffled, groggy yawn emanating from the bedroom.

Spike sucked in a razor-sharp breath and held it, listening with his ear frills raised like red flags. There was a sound of rustling fabric, then small groan from a sweet yet tired voice that was more terrifying than any disembodied wail ever could be.

Another blood-curdling yawn crept like mist through the door, followed by more stirring of sheets and a series of four soft thumps of hooves making contact with the floor. Then came more steps, getting louder, getting towards the door: towards him.

Siren alarms blared in Spike’s head. Terror overloaded his cognitive processes. Fight or flight subroutines kicked in, and Spike flew down the stairs to the living room, then the panic pressure release valve burst open to blare his frantic screams.

“Avarice! She’s awake! SHE’S COMING! We need to get out of here! NOW!”

Avarice fiercely whipped around to glare at Spike. “Are you CRAZY?!” he hissed, tightening his furious grip on a hefty bronze sculpture of a wireframe globe. “Are you TRYING to get us caught?!”

There sound of a door opening upstairs opened proceeded by hoofsteps in the second story hall. The ghost was hunting them.

“No!” Spike grabbed on of Avarice’s arms and desperately tried to pull him towards the door. “Just… please! Drop whatever you’ve got and lets go before she finds us!”

The muffled clop of hooves on carpet were on the stairs now. Avarice was still staring at the little dragon in contempt while Spike’s heart rate had skyrocketed into the exosphere. With one last conflicted and desperate groan, Spike turned tail and darted for the exit, only to be stopped in his tracks by a mare’s startled gasp.

Spike’s heart and time itself froze at the exact same instant. The flashbulb of a camera went off in his brain, perfectly capturing the image of the lovely mare in every horrifying detail: prickled coat of mulberry fur; ears high in alarm; nostrils unmoving from witheld breaths; corners of her open mouth pulled downward; curled, uncombed mane of light pink stripes hanging like an awning over her beautiful, harlequin green eyes, wide open in shock; her consternated expression horrifically contrasted by the three smiling flowers upon her flanks.

The air escaped her lungs, releasing a single astonished word.

“Spike?”

The bronze globe whizzed over Spike’s head, shattering the stasis of time and smashing into the mare’s cranium, making her cry out in pain. Spike was knocked aside as Avarice charged at the mare. Spike looked back up just in time for his mind to take another picture. Unmitigated terror was carved into every inch of her face, made worse by some terrible wounded look in her eyes.

Avarice closed in, caught the globe in midair, and swung it at her face. She stumbled away from the hit with another howl. Avarice raised his right arm and moved his right leg forward, then twisted his whole body around as used the globe to strike the back of her skull. She collapsed like a ragdoll into the welcoming embrace of the floor.

Spike still lay on the floor, propped up on one arm, statuesque save for his fevered shaking.

Avarice loomed over the fuzzy heap on the ground. His only movements were the steady rise and fall of his chest as he leered at the unconscious pony. Avarice turned his attention to Spike, and he snarled. He bent down to grab the limp mare by a hind leg, then dragged her over the the base of the stairs and dumped her onto the lower steps. Then he shot one last incisive look at Spike before procuring the small collection of items and turning to the door.

“Get up. We’re leaving.”

Spike was on his feet and abjectly skirring towards the door before he could process or countermand the command. Spike sheepishly sent one last glance to the mare, still slumped on the stairs, another monument on his collage of failures.

Avarice’s imposing silhouette slashed from the serene moonlight pouring forth from the open door accentuated its aggressive stance. Spike scurried out the exit and into the street, eager to find solace in the offensive stench of the sewers.

Spike’s heart was still pounding and his breath heaved as he high-tailed it down the ladder, giving no regard to the foul stink of feces filling his lungs even as he bordered on hyperventilating. Avarice gave the shaken dragon little concern as he swept into the shadowy sewers and landed on Spike’s head, nor did he cease sneering as he stepped down and set the stolen items into the awaiting wagon.

“Way to screw that one up,” Avarice brusquely stated.

Spike rediscovered his voice with a vengeance. “Me?! You’re the reason we were in her house in the first place! That was all YOUR fault!”

Avarice snorted derisively. “Least I recall, I established that if we were spotted, it’d be on you.”

Spike had arched his shoulders and balled his hands into fists. “And I said that it’d be your fault if anypony got hurt!”

Avarice adopted a pompous pose and cast an arm out over the enclosed tunnel. “So pick a corner and send me on time-out. Consider us fortunate that I didn’t have to knock out the neighbors too because you don’t know how to give a warning without screaming it.”

Avarice paused mid-breath, then began to scratch his chin, ponderous. “Actually, come to think of it, we probably should have agreed upon an exit signal before we broke in…” He shrugged his shoulders as he turned around. “Oh well...”

Spike stood with mouth agape. It was only when Avarice tried walking away that he ran up to yank back on the thief’s tail, trying in vain to keep the two of them from going any further.

“Hey, don’t just try to walk away, Mr. ‘no mere pony can sneak up on me!’ We’re not taking another step until—wait… that day in the hospital… you said that you could hear a squirrel walking down the end of a hall...” Spike gasped. “You wanted an opportunity to knock that mare’s lights out...”

Avarice stopped, then looked over his shoulder at Spike with a regarding eye, and responded with a smirk. “Figured that one out all by yourself, did ya’?”

Spike once again could only gawk at Avarice’s admitted aggressions, only for his fury to set his mind back on fire.

“How dare you… How DARE you!”

“How? Well, it’s simple, really—”

“No! I don’t want to hear it!” Spike yelled. “You bring me along so I can protect ponies from you, and then you intentionally attack one when I say that we need to leave!”

“No, you were screaming like a howler monkey that we should run away with our collective tails between the legs.” Avarice leaned in closer to Spike, wearing a malevolent expression. “And if you don’t keep it down, you might wake up one of those flea-bitten filth-sacks, who might then wonder what all that racket coming from the sewers is, and then I’ll need to find something to stage their limp body on.”

Spike glowered. “You’re a monster.”

“Oh, don’t be so prudish,” Avarice waved. “Besides, all I did was apply some blunt force trauma in a way that temporarily disrupts her ability to process short-term memories. When she wakes up, she won’t even remember that we were there. It’s most likely her brain damage won’t even be permanent.”

“Is this just fun and games to you!?” Spike exploded in rage.

“Yeah,” Avarice nodded.

Spike’s brow hardened, wishing to be a weapon Spike could strip from his face and beat Avarice to a pulp with. “Well I’m not playing anymore,” he tersely said as he crossed his arms and petulantly turned away.

Avarice let Spike stew in his frustrations for a few seconds before speaking. “Fine, go ahead. Go back ‘home’ and crawl into your cocoon of insomnia while the dragon who just admitted to assaulting ponies for fun prowls the placid night completely unsupervised.”

Spike’s scowl fell and his eyes shot wide open.

“Or, if you still want a chance to keep some pony safe, be it a home owner that hasn’t fallen asleep or a foal waking up in the middle of the night to get a glass of water, you’ll have to keep playing our little game.”

Spike’s whole body tensed over becoming a battleground for every conflicting thought, emotion, moral, and sense of loyalty. Cohesive concepts were torn apart in the maelstrom for him to look at their guts and wonder which left him less repulsed: depart and leave somepony to their violent fate, or have a chance at protecting them at the price on continued subservience to Avarice. He was damned either way.

Might as well try to keep the count of the doomed as low as possible, he thought.

Spike turned his head to speak with Avarice, but not enough to look at him. “If I stay, the next time we’re in danger of getting caught, when I say that we should leave, we leave immediately. No ifs, ands, buts, taking anything extra, or waiting on purpose just so you can beat them up. We go when I say we do, alright?”

Avarice chuckled. “Making demands again… spunky, but you should know by now that I offer nothing unless offered something equal in return. If you want my word that we’ll escape the second the scene gets hot, then I’ve got a stipulation of my own.”

Spike grumbled in disconcertion. “What?”

“You have to take something from the next house.”

Spike whipped around. “What?!”

“And it can’t just be something menial, like jacking a container of yogurt from the fridge. It has to be something valuable.”

“I’m not doing your dirty work!” Spike blurted.

Avarice titled his head and looked at Spike a half-lidded, smug stare. “Have it your way. I’ll just procure whatever it was that you would have taken and incapacitate its original owner in the process.”

“Argh... alright, fine!” Spike groaned. “But if we’re in danger of getting caught, we leave when I say we do. Deal?”

Avarice smirked. “Deal. So what’s the code phrase?”

“What code phrase?” Spike asked.

“The one that entails the two of us are in danger of being discovered and must skedaddle.“ Avarice answered.

“What, I can’t just say ‘we need to go?’”

“No, because that’s indistinguishable from you just being a pusillanimous poltroon who’s getting frigid feet.”

“Puss… what?”

“Means ‘contemptibly craven.’”

“Stop insulting me with words I don’t know the meaning of!”

“They’re synonyms for a deplorable coward, you milksop,” Avarice curtly explained. “So what’s the code phrase?”

Spike just stood there with an open mouth and spinning wheels. “Uh...”

“How about ‘enact abscondance algorithms?’” Avarice suggested.

“Enact… what? Are you trying to use words that’ll take longer to pronounce than they will to escape?”

Avarice smirked. “You’re learning.”

Spike furrowed his brow. “No. I’m the one in charge of lookout duties, I should be the one to come up with something.” Spike scratched his chin in contemplation. “We’ll go with ‘abort mission.’ It’s short, simple, and doesn’t take so long to pronounce that you’ll get to beat up somepony else.”

Avarice grimaced. “Malcontent spoilsport… fine. Now grab the cart and let’s go.”

“Me? You’re the one using it to dump everything you’re stealing, you pull it!”

“And you’re still arguing with the dragon three times your size why?” Avarice leered.

Spike wanted to say something back, but he didn’t know what to say, and was afraid that whatever he did would provoke Avarice again. So he kept quiet and kept to pulling the wagon.

They came to an intersection, and Avarice led them left. Then another left, then a right, then left, right, right, left, right. All that could be heard was the soft scrape of claws and the squeaking of wagon wheels. The foul stench continued its relentless invasion of their nostrils, determined to drive them out of its home.Finally, they came to a ladder.

Avarice turned to Spike. “You’re up, lookout,” he said tersely.

Spike scrambled up the ladder, braced his shoulder against the manhole cover, and grunted with exertion as he raised it a few inches and looked up at Ponyville again.

He saw a worm’s eye view of a cobblestone street, completely still, lit only by the moonlight and a solitary lamp. Dark rows of houses lined either side of the street. Not a soul was to be seen.

Spike looked down at Avarice “Okay it’s clear. Did you have someone specific in mind to rob, or were you just going to randomly—”

The sound of laughter drifting down the street cut him off. Looking up, Spike saw two ponies staggering around a corner, muttering and giggling incoherently. Though it was unclear in the dark who they were, it was clear from their laughter and their ability to just barely stay on their hooves that they’d been drinking hard. As they trotted haphazardly down the street, it was also very clear there was foreplay going on was well. A nuzzle against the neck was returned by a lick behind the ear, which then elicited a brush of one flank against the other. Then the ponies finally stumbled into the lamplight.

It was Vinyl Scratch, and a mare Spike couldn’t recall having ever seen before. She had a grey coat, a flowing charcoal mane, and a contrasting pink treble clef cutie mark. As she continued her intimate play with Vinyl, Spike suddenly realized that his heart was pounding again. Then he realized this was the first time he’d ever seen ponies, much less two mares, acting this frisky.

He was contemplating what he should do next, but what they did next pretty much ensured that he was going to keep watching. Vinyl pushed the other mare up onto her hind legs, then pushed her back up against the lamppost. Then they looked deep into each other’s eyes, and Spike had to fight to keep his jaw from dropping all the way back down the ladder as they began to make out.

“Enjoying the show?”

The manhole cover would have slammed shut with a deafening clang had Avarice not caught it at the last second. Spike would have also given a startled yelp, but Avarice had jammed a clawed hand against his mouth.

“See?” he whispered to Spike, amused. “Karma has rewarded you for coming with me.”

Spike peeled Avarice’s claws off of his mouth. “Please, since when did you believe in karma?”

Avarice’s expression hardened. “Believe me, we could sit here all night while I educate you about karma. But then I’d miss out on my fun and you’d miss out on your little peep show. Speaking of which…”

Avarice broke eye contact with Spike to look back to the enamored mares. Spike looked in time to see them come down off the light post and stumble to the front door of a house, presumably Vinyl’s as she took a key from her mane behind her ear. As she fiddled haphazardly with the lock, the other mare made a bold move, leaning forward and biting her playfully right on her haunches. Vinyl let out a startled, albeit delighted yelp, and Spike nearly fell down the ladder.

Vinyl finally got the door open and they disappeared inside so fast that if Spike had blinked he would have missed it. The grey mare kicked the door shut, and the resulting slam rang out like a gunshot in the still night. Then silence.

Spike made to push the manhole cover up so he could get out, but Avarice held him back. “Planning from going from a lookout to a peeping Tom, are we?” Avarice said.

“What? No! It’s just the coast is clear now, so I figured…”

“I’ll do the figuring for now. Now wait here for a second, I want to see what they do.”

Spike grumbled under his breath, but he did as Avarice told him. They waited in uncomfortable silence as seconds passed. Avarice never took his eyes off of the house, like a cat waiting in the bushes for the right moment to pounce on a blissfully ignorant mouse. Then, just when the wait was becoming unbearable, a warm flicker of candlelight appeared in the second story window.

“Move, we’re going in.” Avarice whispered.

“Wait, we’re going in their house?” Spike hissed back. “But there’s plenty of other houses on the street!”

“Yes, but we don’t know for sure what or who is in them. We know who’s in there, and we know that they’re going to be occupied for some time. This has presented us with a unique opportunity. Now if you would stop wasting our time…”

“Are you crazy!? You’re going in while they’re… um… well…”

“While they’re giving each other a helping hoof?” Avarice shot back. “Yeah. Why are you so concerned about it now? Just a second ago, your eyes were practically shooting out of their sockets.”

“Yeah, well…” Spike foundered. “Look, I’ve never seen that much… uhm… you know, that before, okay?”

“I know.”

“I know that you know! It’s just, seeing that much... I’m just not ready for that yet, alright?”

“Oh, stop being so noble! Don’t pretend you’ve never daydreamed about getting something similar from a certain dressmaker. Besides, if you’re so concerned about it, it’s not like I was planning on going upstairs with them.”

“So… we’re just… staying downstairs.” Spike exhaled, only slightly relieved.

“Yes. Now grab the cart.”

Two shadows sidled from the inky blackness of the manhole, one small and dragging a cart behind it moved quickly into the shadows between the houses. The other, large and dangerous, loomed briefly over the manhole before silently putting the cover back, then flitted with unnatural speed across the street to the same place.

“Okay, now what?” Spike asked as Avarice fell into place next to him.

“We let ourselves in.” Avarice replied casually as he grasped at the window. It didn’t budge. Avarice tugged a little harder. The window remained unmoving.

“Looks like it’s latched shut. Oh well, we tried. Now let’s go,” Spike hurriedly said, and made to go back to the manhole, but Avarice put a restraining claw on his shoulder.

“Oh no, you’re not getting out of this that easily. Besides, I came prepared for this sort of thing. Now sit back and watch the master work.”

Avarice extended a razor-sharp claw and pressed the tip against the glass. Slowly, making only the faintest scraping noise, he made a near-perfect circle etch in the glass. He traced his claw over the exact same path a few more times, then pushed in. The circle of glass, about twice the circumference of his arm, fell in easily. Spike reflexively sucked in his breath, sure that it would hit the floor and shatter, but Avarice deftly reached in and caught it. He then reached in further and undid the window latch.

“Leave the wagon just under the window,” Avarice instructed as he raised it. “Just a quick in and out, leave them wondering how we got in.”

“Wondering, huh?” Spike retorted. “Then what about the hole in the glass?”

Saying nothing, but adopting his trademark irritating smirk, Avarice took the circle of glass and blew a small, concentrated stream of fire around the edges of the circle, heating it until it started to glow. Then he did the same thing with the hole in the window. Taking the superheated disk, he inserted it back into place, then pressed his palms flat against both sides of the window. When he removed them, a glowing, dull red circle was all that remained, leaving no trace of the cut as it cooled and disappeared. He gave Spike a ‘told-you-so’ look, then slipped inside the house. Spike groaned, then used the wagon as a stepstool and followed suit.

The inside of the house was dark, but a very faint light could be seen drifting down from the stairs. As his eyes adjusted to the dimness, Spike could see that Vinyl was not what one would describe as an organized pony. Stacks of unused equipment stood like misshapen sentinels in the darkness, and every available flat surface had some kind of clutter on it. Turning his head, he saw a shaft of moonlight in the far side of the kitchen illuminating piles of dirty dishes in the sink, making him wince. He made a mental note to ensure that neither Twilight nor Rarity ever saw the inside of this house, otherwise there might be a public trial. Then his spirits sank a little more, as he pictured the both of them asking how he knew what the inside of Vinyl’s house looked like.

“Wow, I can almost respect her a little,” Avarice whispered in the darkness. “We really should have brought a bigger wagon.”

“Let’s just grab some stuff, okay?” Spike whispered back, moving towards one of the piles. Avarice’s iron grasp gripped his arm in an instant.

“Are you really that stupid?” Avarice fiercely whispered. “Don’t touch anything that was made to make noise, especially that drum kit with the precariously balanced cymbals on top that you were about to topple over.”

Before Spike could answer, Avarice released his arm and went back to inspecting the clutter on a nearby end table. “And don’t bother answering that question. I already know the answer.”

It took Spike a second to figure out that his intelligence had been insulted. For another second, he considered going to the drum kit anyway and pushing the cymbals over on purpose, forcing an emergency evacuation and leaving Vinyl’s belongings untouched.

Then he thought of Avarice, face etched with cold rage, fist repeatedly smashing into his face. He thought of Avarice letting him go just to enjoy watching him feebly trying to crawl away. He thought of Avarice saying words to him that he couldn’t hear through his bleeding ears. He thought of Avarice bending down and grabbing the back of his skull and plunging his face into the filthy water. He thought of seeing stars explode behind his eyelids and his lungs burning in agony as he fought for air…

He couldn’t think about it anymore. Instead he walked past Avarice and further into the house, taking him past the base of the stairs. The soft sounds of heavy sighs and gentle moans drifted down them like an audible fog. He paused, looking up the staircase, but then continued on his way before Avarice had time to notice him.

He shuffled sullenly through the darkened house, knowing he should take something to placate Avarice, but not wanting to see anything worth taking. His eyes wandered over the shadowy clutter of objects. Here, an electric guitar leaning against an amp. There, a DJ’s portable mixing booth. Hither, a weaponized set of speakers that could probably wake the dead. Thither, bookcase full of old records…

He paused. They didn’t just look old, they looked like they were vintage, and in mint condition. For a moment, he stood indecisively, knowing he shouldn’t touch these. Then he went over to the bookcase and started thumbing through the records.

It was a treasure trove. He was no musical expert, but from the looks of it, these were all originals. Shimmy Hendricks, Hoovus Presley, Fun n’ Roses: everything was here, each lovingly encased in a clear plastic sleeve. Then he noticed one that had a small sticker with a heart on it, and pulled it off the shelf. It was a copy of the Spice Mares first album, signed in rainbows of glittery ink by each member of the band. He turned it over, and on the back, in the same glittery letters was written:

“To our biggest fan, follow your dreams and you’ll rock Equestria!

With Love, The Spice Mares.”

This was it. Vinyl Scratch’s most prized possession, probably the very thing that made her become a DJ. He held it gingerly, knowing he should put this back, knowing that losing this would probably be heartbreaking for her. He tucked it under his arm and then flipped through several more of the records, taking each one that had been autographed, then returned to the window with immense sorrow in his heart.

He ran into Avarice at their exit, who was wearing Vinyl’s signature shades and clutching a phonograph with several other items stacked on top of it. Avarice took note of Spike, then looked to the albums Spike held and put on a feigned air of surprise.

“Doth mine eyes deceive me? You actually took something?” he inquired.

Avarice extended an empty hand, gesturing for him to relinquish Vinyl’s cherished possessions. Feeling like a crony handing over ill-gotten gains, Spike gave him the records, trying to ignore the retching twisting in his gut and Vinyl's more audible fevered moans drifting down from on high.

“Hmm,” Avarice mused at the Spice Mares album, paying no mind to the louder moans coming from upstairs. “Not really my taste in music, but this will do perfectly. Maybe we can come back for a return visit! Of course, my guess is you’ll probably want to bring a camera next time…”

Spike glared unamused at Avarice, wanting nothing more than to say that there wouldn’t be a next time. He tried to come up with something really snarky, but Vinyl was proving very distracting. Spike and Avarice both looked up the stairs towards the bedroom and just stared as the wild symphony above built up to a screaming crescendo.

Spike shook his head and turned away, fiddling with his own fingers as his face blushed cherry red and his innards twisted themselves into a noose for which he could hang himself in effigy. Avarice’s smirk quivered from the howling laughter he was trying to contain.

The bedroom door cracked open, illuminating the upstairs hallway with candlelight and releasing a fog bank of estrus fumes into the rest of the house. The sweet-talk from one mare to another followed, but Spike couldn’t decipher the words being exchanged over the pounding of his heart that had leaped all the way to his skull.

“Abort mission! ABORT MISSION!” Spike urgently whispered.

Avarice nodded and darted towards the window. He slid the glass panel open and slipped outside with a shadow’s deftness while Spike haphazardly hurdled over the sill, hitting the ground outside like a sack of potatoes. Avarice ducked his head back inside and blew circles of fire at the latch before shutting the window behind them.

Three runes appeared in the rings of fire imposed over the lock, then disappeared in sequence with each passing second. When the last glyph dispersed, the latch swung shut and the lingering fire vanished, just as the silver-coated mare stumbled down the stairs. Her once primed mane was now a matted, disheveled curtain over the depraved, hungry look in her violet eyes. She fondly licked her lips and giggled as she reached the bottom of the stairs and gaited into the kitchen. A few moments passed before she appeared again, carrying a can of whipped cream, a bottle of chocolate syrup, a quart of ice cream, several large bananas and a blender in an inebriated canter back up the stairs without ever noticing either of them peeking through the window.

Spike urgently jerked his head towards the direction of the sewers before making a break for them, Avarice following close behind. Spike pried open the cover and hastily climbed down the ladder, leaving Avarice to hoist the wagon over his shoulder and descend into the putrescent pipelines. He set the cart on the paved walkway, then lit another orb of fire and sealed the entrance above them.

Avarice folded his arms and leaned against the wall, staring off at nothing. Then he started to shudder with suppressed laughter, his chest quaking. For a moment, he seemed to gain control of himself, but then he caught Spike’s eye and burst out in howling guffaws, his laughter echoing through the sewers as he slumped against the wall.

“Oh,” Avarice managed to gasp after a minute, wiping a tear from his eye, “I may detest ponies with a vehement passion, but damn it if they aren’t a riot sometimes.”

Spike responded with an exasperated sigh. “Are you done yet?”

Avarice stole one last deep inhalation. “Yeah, for now… but seriously, that was amazing. Almost as amazing as the fact that you actually managed to hold up your ends of the bargain,” he said, gesturing to Spike’s cache before picking up the stack of records to flip through them.

“Let’s see… aside from those washed-up has-beens, you also managed to get signed work by Horsepower, Skilless, Pendulous, Deft Punk, Seven Inch Screws, The Dusty Brothers—hey, I actually like that one...” Avarice turned to the next record, and his eyes went wide in surprise.

“Rigoletto?!” he exclaimed, then delved back into chortles. ”Well, considering who Ms. P0N-3 was clopping down the red brick road to Pound Town with, I suppose I shouldn’t be that surprised.

“Seriously,” Avarice said, turning the cover to Spike, revealing an image of a court jester scowling at an immaculate duke who was busy seducing a beautiful young mare. “She even signed it with lipstick.”

Surely enough, written in glossy velvet cursive was the inscription: “One of my favorite operas for my favorite mare in Equestria. Sincerely, your dearest sweetheart, Octavia.” There was even an imprint of a kiss to seal the deal.

Avarice put the albums back into the wagon then turned to Spike and directed a triumphant grin his way. “You even managed not to alert those tramps to our presence. For the first time, I think you’ve actually impressed me.”

“Don’t think anything of it,” Spike sneered.

“I don’t. I’m just giving credit where credit is due,” Avarice replied, walking past the frustrated little dragon. “Keep this up, and you just might make for an excellent thief.”

“NO!” Spike yelled back. “I’ll NEVER be anything like you! EVER!”

Avarice just returned with that copywritten smirk. “You’re participating in this little night errand. That’s more than you were willing to do just yesterday.”

Spike’s brow furrowed again. “I’m only here to protect anypony that I can from you.”

“And you taking some of most Vinyl’s treasured possessions has everything to do with that,” Avarice slyly retorted.

Spike’s throat began to dry. “I only did because it was part of the deal. Besides, you would have just taken them anyway.”

“So those records would have never left Vinyl’s house if you weren’t here...” Avarice derisively questioned. “Or, you just don’t want to admit that you’ve accomplished something.”

“Or we could just go home now and not waste more time arguing how to divvy up the blame,” Spike shot back, then grabbed the wagon handle and began walking.

Avarice impeded Spike’s path with his tail. “And where do you think you’re going?”

“I just said home,” Spike sneered. “Are your ears clogged?”

“That was a rhetorical question,” Avarice answered. “You have no idea how to get back the library from here.”

“Yeah I do! It’s… um...” Spike’s sentence petered out as he looked back and forth in opposite directions of the tunnel. He scowled. “It’s whatever direction leads away from you.”

Avarice snorted out a dry chuckle. “Delightfully snide, but save it. We’re not done for tonight.”

Spike’s shoulders slumped and his mouth fell open. “What? But we just… argh… when will your stealing end?!”

Avarice chuckled again. “When you can barely pull the cart anymore, then I’ll consider it.”

“No, I meant—well, I was also asking about tonight but… ugh… won’t you ever be satisfied? Are you ever going to reach a point where you’ve taken enough, or are you going to try and fit everything valuable in Equestria into a cave?”

That smug expression of cavalier understanding which Spike hated so much was back on Avarice’s face. “So many questions… but since they all entail me getting to talk about my favorite subject, you’ll get this one for free.” Avarice smirked. “And you say I don’t give anything back.”

Spike scowled at the haughty reply, but it hardly disrupted his companion.

“So, last time you asked what it means to be a dragon since you obviously don’t know, I explained that we hoard to establish our superiority. But there’s more finesse to the method than just taking whatever catches your fancy, it’s a process of gathering items that get incrementally more valuable. Say I had a penchant for precious metals. I would start with something moderately nifty like bronze, then I’d work my way up to stuff like silver or palladium, then gold and platinum.”

“Okay, but when is that enough?” Spike asked. “It’s tough to find metals that are more valuable than platinum.“

“And that, my little dragon-in-training, is where the concept of the crown jewel applies. Once a trove has accumulated enough worth, it needs a grand finish to consummate its owner. To use the rare earth metal hoarding as an example, the final piece would be something like, say… a throne made primarily of rhodium.

“Maredrake though you may be, deep down, you’re still a dragon, so you’re the exact same way, no matter how ardently you try to deny it. For that one day which you shed your metaphorical furry skin, you were just taking whatever you could grab, even if it was as meaningless as the leaves of the trees in Sweet Apple Acres.”

Avarice derisively smirked at Spike “Actually, I do have a question of my own. What were you going to do with all that foliage? Make tinder?”

Spike answered with a glare.

Avarice just waved his hand. “It doesn’t matter. Point is, you started out collecting meaningless trash, and I’m finishing what you started by moving up to personal items and then sentimental treasures. It’s why I’m content while you wallow in misery.”

“No, I’m not happy because you won’t let me talk to my friends!” Spike shot back.

“And that’s exactly the problem: you have friends.”

Spike crossed his arms and looked away. “If you’re just going to turn this into another case for why you hate friendship—”

“No,” Avarice interrupted “I was going to make a case for why it’s bad for you. Dragons are a precocial species, Spike. Shortly after we’ve hatched, we can walk, think, hoard, and hunt independently. Ponies, however, are altricial. At their disgusting births, the foal can’t do anything but cry and crap itself… for years. They voraciously leech off others throughout their entire adolescence, and that process has tempered their species-wide psyche to be reliant upon social interaction. Ponies literally can’t function unless they’re around other ponies. You ever seen what happens to a foal that ends up locked in a closet for its entire life? They’re all inconsolably insane.”

“And what does that have to do with me?” Spike growled back.

“You’re a dragon whose been raised by ponies to live like a pony. They’ve dragged you into their friendship abyss, and you love them for it. A real dragon can live in solitude for decades whereas you can’t even think straight if you’ve been alone for several days.”

Spike raised a hand to object. “Because—”

“Because living among ponies has warped your mentality. But no matter how much you try and refute it, there’s some part of you that will always be a dragon that refuses to take ‘no’ for an answer or be denied what it craves… which makes you a tragedy among dragons if ever there was one, because you value friendship. That’s why you’re really so miserable. You want to metaphorically hoard friendship, but now you’ve been deprived of it, and there’s no way to push a dragon to despair faster than to deny them what they covet.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Spike grumbled as he crossed his arms and turned away.

“And how are things between you and Twilight?” Avarice asked.

Spike didn’t answer, just dug his claws into where he was gripping his biceps.

“Or what about you and Pinkie? How’s that working out?”

“It’s a little tense, but that doesn’t mean—”

Avarice put on a devious smirk. “Or you and… her.”

Spike responded with obstinate silence, even as rage was boiling in his brain and the was steam clamouring to escape. Avarice, however, wasn’t content to take a cold shoulder for an answer.

“It wasn’t just painful, it was agony. After everything you’ve done, she repays your kindness by making it abundantly clear that she doesn’t need you...”

“And how was I supposed to take it?!” Spike yelled as he reeled around. “Just smile and say, ‘Oh, that’s alright—it’s fine if you don’t feel anything for me even though you’re breaking my heart?!’ That doesn’t mean I’m going to become a monster like you because somepony I care about doesn’t care about me! By Tartarus, I’d like to see you find anyone who wouldn’t be upset to be deprived of something they love!”

“Though when a pony gets double-crossed or when a dragon is deprived of something valuable, they might get sad or fly into a rage, but they don’t black out and wake up hours later in another place with no memory of how they got there. I’ve figured you out, maredrake. The biggest reason for your despondence is because Rarity isn’t just a friend or a romantic interest, she’s your crown jewel... but you’re just an itemized friend to her.”

Avarice began to turn away. “Come on. You’ve wasted enough of my time, and there are still places to visit.”

Spike let out a groan. “So when we get this crown jewel of your’s, then can I go home?”

Avarice released an exacerbated grumble. “Do I have to stipulate a new threat to make you listen? No. I’m still working up to that.”

Spike looked back at the mismatched items. “Yeah, well so far, I’ve only seen you take things that somepony else finds valuable: not what you find valuable. What are you even ultimately out to get?”

Avarice looked back down at Spike with that signature cocksure smirk. “You already got your one free question, nor would I even otherwise be so generous as to disclose that information. You haven’t earned the privilege to know... yet.”

Spike slumped his shoulders. “Could you at least tell me what you intend to do once you get it?”

Avarice stole a moment to stop and stare dreamily off into the distant, ideal future. “Sleep, in the most perfect, complacent slumber.” And then he was back on his merry way again.

Without the opportunity to submit another thought in edgewise, Spike just uttered a sour grumble, took the cart by the handle, and followed along, even as Avarice’s words still resonated in his ears and besmirched him with their all-too apt condescensions.

He didn’t want to believe what Avarice had said about Rarity. He wouldn’t believe what Avarice said about Rarity. But with nothing besides the echoes of contempt to accompany him, Spike started think about the arguments his companion had left him with: trying to pick them apart and repurpose them to suit his own stance, like how Avarice so deftly did with him.

Several minutes passed in silence as Spike tried to deconstruct Avarice’s philosophy. In his ponderings, a few select passages stuck out to him, and when he put them together, a mischievous light bulb lit up over his head, darkening his expression.

“You know, I think I’ve figured you out too,” Spike said to break the silence.

“What, how I’m right about everything? Took you long enough.” Avarice replied.

“No, about why you’re insane,” Spike corrected.

Avarice let out a little grumble. “Oh, I can’t wait to hear this one.”

Spike couldn’t help but feel slightly encouraged. Finally, for once, Avarice was dreading what he had to say.

“Yeah; all that time you spent locked up in my mind drove you nuts.”

“I believe it’s been established I didn’t enjoy being imprisoned in your subconscious,” Avarice replied, his tone stiff.

“But it’s not just that, is it?” Spike asked, feeling more bold. “You said dragons don’t need company to be happy. No, what really got you mad was that you didn’t have anything to prove how great you supposedly are.”

Avarice replied with silence. Spike, sensing his adversary had in an unprecedented instance gone on defense, got more daring.

“Actually, that’s not entirely true, is it?” Spike pressed. “The one thing you did have to hoard was all my memories of how great a time I was having with all my friends, which only reminded you of how you had nothing. So all this stealing and making me cover for you is just your way of making up for lost time while trying to get petty revenge on me—”

Spike was cut off when he bumped into the back of Avarice. The larger dragon had come to a standstill, becoming statuesque with a posture devoid of expression. Even knowing how tentative he had to tread during these talks, Spike couldn’t help but smirk that for once he’d gotten to turn the tables.

“Yeah, not so fun when the horseshoe is on the other hoof, is it?” Spike gibed as he moved to pass Avarice. “For all your talk about dragon superiority, all it got you was a six-month-long slumber while I got to stay in the world where your crown jewel i—”

The broadside of Avarice’s tail swung into the right side of Spike’s head with explosive force. Spike crashed into the abutting wall, the stone cracking on impact. Before he could even collapse to the ground in a crumpled heap, Avarice lunged him and laid waste to his face with a flurry of jackhammer punches.

Avarice threw Spike back towards the walkway with such power that Spike bounced off the stone path. Avarice pounced and caught him by the neck in midair, then slammed him into the brick and mortar of the wall.

Spike desperately tried to pry away the hand constricting his throat. His efforts proved futile, nails not even scratching the scales of the claws tightening their choke hold. He looked at Avarice, a mouse in the grasp of a python, eyes begging for mercy.

Avarice skewered him with a glare of murderer’s contempt, rows of spear teeth bared and dagger pupils ripping through his flesh with more animosity than Spike had even seen. Avarice’s brow furrowed and the carved hardness around his eyes faltered, exposing an emotion that terrified Spike in a way that all of Avarice’s truculence never could: anguish.

Spike’s vision began to blur. Stars exploded before his eyes. His frantic attempts to escape became more feeble as a peculiar warmth spread through his veins. The only sight in the world became a darkening, amethyst haze.

Avarice released his grip, and Spike fell on his hands and knees to the ground, gasping for the glorious mephitic air. Spike remained there until his chest heaved only from fear. He dared not look up, and instead remained keeled over, fixated upon the ground in a silent grovel.

Avarice leaned down to Spike’s level and whispered in a sinister growel, “Change of plans. We’re going back to the library… after one more stop for tonight.”

With that, Avarice grasped Spike by the head and lifted him back to his feet. He gestured towards the cart, to which Spike eventually turned and took hold of the handle with a trembling fist. Avarice turned, deliberately ensuring the spade of his tail came within inches of Spike’s face, and set off with a tense stride. Spike followed in abject servility.

Their course through the reeking tunnels seemed to last for hours, on account of the trek being the longest of any they had ventured on thus far and of Avarice’s protracted pace, neither of which lent to easing Spike’s frayed and tenuous nerves. Still they carried on, until the gentle rattle of the wagon wheels against the coarse cement clashed against Spike’s ears with the ruckus of an avalanche.

Just when Spike began to wonder if Avarice was intent on resigning them to a subterranean existence, a column of rungs emerged from the ubiquitous darkness. Avarice perked up like a predator catching sight of prey, then darted up the rundles with that same fervor of a colt jolting down the stairs to the tree on Hearth’s Warming mourning. Avarice extinguished his light, then all but punched the cover out of the rim, peered into the evening above, and looked back down a Spike with wild eyes and an oblique, devilish grin.

“We’ve arrived,” Avarice said with barely contained excitement.

“Arrived where?” Spike dared ask, his constricted voice scarce more than a whisper.

“Why, don’t tell me you haven’t already realized where we are,” Avarice said as he jumped down from the ladder to grab Spike and hoist both of them to the surface level. “After all, you’ve been coming here so often...”

Spike’s skull lost all cabin pressure, forming a vacuum of fear inside him that made his freezing blood boil over. Standing in the clearing from which they had risen into, its magnificence oblivious to their presence, was Carousel Boutique. A single light shone from the utmost window.

“No… no…” Spike stammered out at the insolence.

“Yep,” Avarice grinned. “Hey, so long as we’re here, do you want to try in vain to steal her heart? Again?”

“NO!” Spike hissed. “We are… you’re… NO!”

Avarice just gave him and impertinent smirk. “So then go tell on me.”

Then Avarice dropped Spike back into the sewers. Spike hit the ground, then looked back up just in time to see Avarice climb out of the hole. His blood went from tepid to scalding, and he scampered up without even closing the opening behind them. He ran up and snatched Avarice by the tail, intent on pulling him all the way back into the disgusting aqueducts to kick him into the filth therein. Avarice just looked down at him and chuckled, marching towards the fabulous abode as Spike dug his heels into the ground, trying in vain to halt their progress, sputtering in fury all the way.

“Abort mission! ABORT MISSION!”

Avarice just grunted in disgust. “Poltroon.”

A single flick of the tail cast Spike off his extremity and onto the ground when Avarice reached the front door. Avarice got down on one knee and pulled back the doormatt to reveal a polished key. He picked up the key and twiddled it in his fingers, regarding its presence.

“Such a rustic solution for ever-forgetful foals,” Avarice commented, the looked back to Spike and smirked deviously. “Good thing it’s here for close friends.”

Spike got back upright and made to stop Avarice. With a few deft motions, the key was in the lock, twisting, the door cracking silently open just enough as to not ring the bell mounted over the threshold, and Avarice had slipped into the shadows.

Spike just stood there, taken aback at the sacrilege Avarice tracked in, utterly desecrating the most sacred of holy places. For a moment he contemplated not following the demon into the temple, least his trespass defile Her with his own transgression, but then he thought of Sweetie Belle waking up in the middle of the night, thirsty for a glass of water, or of an obsessive, insomniac Rarity working late into the night, wondering if she just heard the front door open…

All second thoughts of hesitation evaporated, and Spike bolted into Carousel Boutique.

One look at the dim interior of the exquisite little shop left no room for speculation as to the lack of recent permitted visitors. The high humidity of creativity and the low pressure wind shear of a pre-sales quarter had met at an epicenter over a steamy ocean of consumer demand, thus creating tropical storm Hurricane Rarity—the ferocity of which the outlet had never before suffered.

Yet even in the calamitous wake of fabric and capriciousness, several scattered mannequins bedecked in the lush fruits of the fashionista’s labor stood undisturbed by the disaster. Some wore garments of pragmatic simplicity that still boasted highly intelligent design, others were dressed in fine, intricate wares that would be sure to capture the attention of anypony within sight. But above all others was a matching suit and gown fit for a married couple of deities.

Words like grace, elegance, and perfection seemed like an injustice against them. The immaculate white fabric shined like north stars through the shadows from the diamond dust sewn directly into the silk. Platelets of gold adorned with inset decorations of jewels were perfectly placed to emphasize features like the face or gender-specific traits, such as strength for the suit or the intricate curvatures for the dress.

The ensemble was a magnum opus if ever Spike saw one. And just a few paces away, in his own little eye of the storm, stood Avarice, posed to blaspheme the works of a goddess with the most unspeakable of atrocities.

Avarice inhaled a breath of air as deep as the pit from which he rose, intent on stealing as much of the smell as his lungs could carry. He looked back at Spike, eyes full of malicious intent and teeth flashing the most wicked grin they’d ever delivered. Without a word, he stepped out from his circle of evil, and headed straight for the display stage at the end of the room.

Spike charged across the layers of discarded cloth scattered about the floor and seized Avarice by his tail, snarling.

“Don’t you DA—”

Avarice whipped around and grabbed Spike by the snout, silencing all descent. His wings flared out like the demon of Bald Mountain.

“Oh, I would dare,” Avarice sneered. “And what could you do to stop me?”

Avarice reached out to touch the fabric of the pristine dress. Spike growled, fighting against the clasp with newfound wrath, but to no avail. Avarice just stood there, admiring the smooth silk under the gentle caress of his claws. He gazed upon the prestigious gown until his expression became wistful, then looked back at the insignificant dragon in his grasp.

“You have no idea how much I want to,” Avarice said, then withdrew his hand from Rarity’s creation. “But not tonight.”

Spike’s eyes darted between the dress and Avarice, too bewildered for words, temporary inability to speak legibly through his spite notwithstanding.

“There’s an ascending order to these things, remember?” Avarice said with a sly tilt of his head. “Besides, this isn’t about her. For once, it’s not even about me. This moment right now is about you. And that’s why we’re here to take something insignificant… something that she’d never miss...”

Avarice looked over to a locked treasure chest that had been cast into a corner and partially buried beneath several scraps of cloth. He smirked, then casually walked over to the chest, Spike still in hand, and snorted a whisp of flame at the lock. The lid cracked open with a soft clink, revealing a small trove of assorted gems.

In spite of Spike’s persistent and fervent protests, Avarice began to rummage through the array of jewels, fishing out three frosty, four-point bipyramid diamonds.

“Recognize these?” Avarice finally asked, gesturing to the diamonds he held and the jewels still in the chest. “These are all the stones that you dug out of the ground for her the last time the two of you went gem hunting. They’re all still here, all still unused.”

Spike clawed at the withholding hand again in a futile fit. Avarice just chuckled, tossing the diamonds up in the the air and letting them fall back down into his awaiting claws, admiring their refractions during their short-lived flights.

“They really are quite beautiful...” Avarice stated, then looked up towards the light seeping through the bedroom door and stole another deep breath.

Avarice looked back to Spike, who was still trying to tear his way out of the restraining grasp. Avarice just smirked at him, then closed the chest with his tail, locked it with another puff of fire, then headed back towards the front door. The two slipped back outside, Avarice twisted the key to put the deadbolt back in place, hid it back under the worn rug, then walked back to the stench-ridden sewers in silence.

Spike was still trying to tear Avarice’s digits to tatters. Avarice just looked at him with a crooked grin, then dropped him down into the noisome pit. Spike let out a short scream before hitting the bottom of the tunnel. Avarice followed after, bracing against the crossbars as he resealed the opening, breathed another light into existence, then hopped over Spike to the awaiting wagon and gently placed the three diamonds atop the collection. He took a moment to look upon them, regarding their presence with a contented grin. Avarice turned to deposit his treasures, only to find there was still another dragon in his way.

Spike’s entire body was shaking from truculence too vast for his little form to contain. His chest heaved, his fangs were bared, his fists had balled into maces, and he glared at Avarice with a look that could have made a basilisk wither and die.

Avarice, being no basilisk, just looked back with an impertinent smirk. “Problem?”

Spike only continued to attempt incinerating Avarice by leering at him.

All Avarice did was chuckle, then push the cart towards Spike. “Come on. I’ve had my fun for the night, and I know you want to go ‘home.’ So unless you’d like to try and figure your way out of this labyrinth by yourself, you’ll follow me.”

Much to Spike’s displeasure, Avarice still hadn’t caught fire.

“Or you can just sulk in the smell of rotten excrement until the authorities find you down here with a cart full of stolen property, some of which belongs to a mare who was just assaulted,” Avarice quipped.

Spike looked back at his wagon, stocked with ill-gotten gains. He thought of grabbing it by the sides and capsizing its load into the river of waste oozing parallel to him, but then he really looked at the things they’d taken: the mulberry mare’s hard-earned degrees and the smiling faces of foals she’d taught; Vinyl’s equipment and the most prized records in her collection; the gems he’d so enthusiastically dug out of the ground for Rarity. None of these things belonged to either of them, and dumping them into the sludge would accomplish nothing but ruining them for good… on top of Avarice beating the snot out of him again.

If I just let these go back to the library, I can just give them back after I eventually tell Twilight and she imprisons Avarice in stone, he rationalized.

With a begrudging grumble, Spike took the wagon by the handle, and trudged towards Avarice, who just smirked at his compliance.

“Good.” Avarice started flipping through the albums he’d made Spike steal. “Now then, how about some music?”

Spike responded with his glower.

“I agree. I too am feeling a touch partial to classics of Itailian opera,” Avarice said to Spike as he got to the last album in the stack, removed Rigoletto from its plastic sleeve, and placed one of the records on the magically-enabled player.

“Act three, scene one,” Avarice off-handedly mentioned as he adjusted the needle to a particular spot, then looked up at Spike with a smirk. “I know that you’re familiar with this one...”

As Avarice passed with a cocksure stride, Spike just dubiously sneered back at him. Then the song started, and Spike’s eyes shot wide open in shock: he did recognize it. He snapped his head back and forth between the record player and Avarice, who just snickered in response, then hummed a few bars before straightening his posture and clearing his throat.

Spike’s mouth fell open. He’s not…

In a perfect tenor’s voice, Avarice did.

“La donna è mobile

Qual piuma al vento,

Muta d'accento

E di pensiero.

“Sempre un amabile,

Leggiadro viso,

In pianto o in riso,

È menzognero.

“La donna è mobil'.

Qual piuma al vento,

Muta d'accento

E di pensier'!

Eeeeeeeeeeeee-eee-EEE di pensier'!

Spike was so enraged with fiery wrath that the cart handle had begun to glow red-hot with his hate. Avarice just shot him a sideways glance, snickered at the sight of Spike quaking like a volcano, then went back into his own little world.

“È sempre misero

Chi a lei s'affida,

Chi le confida,

Mal cauto il cuore!

“Pur mai non sentesi

Felice appieno

Chi su quel seno

Non liba amore!

“La donna è mobil'

Qual piuma al vento,

Muta d'aaaaaaaccento

E di pensier'!

Eeeeeeeeeeee-eeEEeeeeEEEE DI

PENSIEEEEEEEEEEEER’!”

- - - - - -

In a back alley nearby Golden Oaks library, the steel cover for the sewers slowly twisted open, then was shoved to one side. A few seconds passed before a wagon full of various items emerged from the darkness and was pushed ahead, followed shortly by Ponyville’s most wanted thief, with its resident scribe making up the rear.

“Now then,” Avarice explained as he replaced the cover, “let’s recap: by now, she’s put the entire Royal Guard on high alert while on a stealth mission, failed at impersonating the pony she was disguised as, twice compromised herself to Twilight, then ‘imprisoned’ her with the mare she was doubling as in a place they could easily escape from, and finally engaged in a battle against Celestia that she didn’t even know if she could survive. Yet despite all that, the changeling queen successfully seized Canterlot, captured you and your friends, and then instead of encasing you all in cocoons like she did with Celestia, she dismisses her guards and turns her back to gloat some more, giving Twilight enough time to reunite the hapless couple and pull a victory out from their collective asses. And while the two take an age to charge up a love-bomb powered by the same force that she just used to defeat Celestia, she just stands there, doing absolutely nothing!”

Spike replied the same way that he had to every opening throughout the conversation: with a cold scowl.

“I know, right?” Avarice gawked. “Stood there! Doing nothing! For thirty-five seconds! And yet the majority of Equestria seems to think she and the changelings were a legitimate threat, enough so that everyone and their mother’s has fabricated their own cockamamie story about them!”

Avarice stopped in his tracks, looking off in the distance to his right as he tapped his chin thoughtfully. “In fact, did anyone even get the queen’s name? She was as much of a narcissistic braggart as Trixie, and yet she never once even mentioned her own name… you wouldn’t happen to have caught it, would you?”

Spike answered with the same perpetual leer.

“No?” Avarice turned back around and huffed. “So all of Equestria was nearly conquered by an equinsect whose name nobody even knows. Smooth. You know, I’d like to bring this up to somepony who believes in that old myth about the Pantheon of Fates. Because if there is a collective of gods whose writings constitute all existence, the only explanation is that the quill was given to an idiot who subsequently wrote themselves into a corner… twice.”

Avarice looked back at Spike with a devious smirk. “In fact, you’d better hope that’s the case, since it means the actions of you and your so-called friends are just as reprehensible.”

Spike scoffed.

“Oh, don’t just dismiss this as more flippant ravings from the big mean dragon,” Avarice riposted. “The only reason Queen Ridiculous Sentiment even had a chance is because all of you were so intent on beating yourselves senseless with the stupidity stick. Whether or not Twilight was right, none of you even bothered to so much as pull her aside to ask, ‘What in Tartarus is wrong with you?’ Which puts you and Celestia especially at fault, because the both of you have known her for years, and yet you abandoned her for some floozy that you’d been around for only a day.”

Avarice let out a dark chortle. “For all those lessons the lot of you have had about friendship, you sure suck at it.”

“And who are you to lecture me?!” Spike finally retorted. “All you ever do is talk down about friendship, but what do you know about it?”

Avarice swerved back at Spike. “Everything that you do. I was trapped in your head for six months, remember? Incarcerated in a cell made of every memory that you used trying to suppress and indoctrinate me. What do you know about living in subjugation while something that you’re not imposes its ways on you?” He looked back to the library, then returned his gaze to Spike with a snort. “Never mind, I forgot who I was talking to.”

“Yeah,” Spike growled, “to the dragon who you’ve forced to serve you.”

Avarice smirked at Spike. “Not so fun when the horseshoe is on the other hoof, is it?”

“Don’t even think that makes us even.” Spike glowered back.

“Not even close,” Avarice replied. “You haven’t been trapped in my subservience for a relative lifetime yet. But hey, if friendship really is as all-important as you think it is, then you should survive with your idiosyncratic purviews as uncompromised as mine are, shouldn’t you?”

The corners of Spike’s mouth peeled back in abhoring disgust. “I wish Celestia would find out about you.”

“Well, if you want, you can buy out of our compromise for a handful of easy payments of a dead friend,” Avarice replied. “Even then, you can’t count on Celestia to save you.”

“Celestia beat Discord and Nightmare Moon,” Spike growled. “She’d have no trouble dealing with you.”

Avarice chuckled. “Those victories were over a millenium ago, Spike. She’s not bound to the Elements Ex Machina anymore, and I’m not the ‘stand there and do nothing’ type. And speaking of Celestia, that’s one other thing about the fallout of the Canterlot wedding incident-slash-fiasco which is another elephant to the herd in the room that one one wants to talk about. Queen What’s-Her-Name’s plan had more holes in it than her legs, yet she managed to deceive Celestia before defeating her with nothing more than a power boost from a useless, meatheaded stallion.”

“We’ve been over this,” Spike grumbled. “So what?”

“So what? The entire stability of the Equestrian oligarchy has been torn asunder! Celestia is looked upon as an impeccable goddess, and yet she turned her back on the very principles of friendship that the nation was supposedly founded upon just to show up Twilight after her tantrum at the rehearsals. Celestia has the power to perpetuate day and night, only to get her plot kicked by a changeling with nothing but an idiot ball and a dream. That wedding day disaster showed everyone whose eyes weren’t sewn shut that Celestia isn’t as eternal and perfect as everyone thinks she is. She can be fooled. She can be overpowered. She can be defeated.”

“Don’t go getting any funny ideas,” Spike growled, trying to sound threatening.

They had reached the back door of the library by now. Avarice put a claw to the entrance, then turned to Spike and smirked.

“Too late. They’re nice to fancy over, but that’s all they are: ideas. Last time I was still just a bad dream, I confirmed to your subconscious projection of Twilight that I’m not after Celestia,” he recalled, blinking once.

Avarice opened the door, then reached down to scoop up all the stolen valuables before crossing the threshold into the dark interior. That left Spike alone on the patio to put his wagon back into the shed before he went back inside and shut the door behind him.

Spike took a moment for himself, looking over the otherwise unoccupied kitchen and dining room without actually focusing on anything. The smell of his disposed lasagna still lingered in the air, but even hours later, he didn’t feel like eating anything.

That feeling of being out of place in his own home saturated him. He didn’t even think he could bear to look at anypony now, let alone be around his friends, or Twilight. He couldn’t even bring himself to think about Rarity at the moment.

With a sense that his feet were being weighted down and his heart feeling even heavier, Spike eventually left the kitchen to head upstairs. Unfortunately, that meant passing by Avarice, but he was too enthralled with carefully rearranging the materials hidden under the floorboards to pay Spike any acknowledgement, allowing the young drake to trudge up the staircase uncontested.

Spike approached the bedroom door, but all his forward energy dissipated before he could even reach out for the handle. He couldn’t bear to be anywhere near anypony, least of all one as magnificent as Twilight.

I don’t deserve friends like her, he morosely thought. Spike let out one last dreary sigh, then depressed the door handle, only for a whoosh to to rise from behind him and a steely arm to block the door from opening.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Avarice grilled.

“To bed,” Spike acerbically replied.

“Not yet, you’re not. Get in the shower, you smell like crap.”

Several seconds passed without Spike complying. Avarice let out a slight growl, grabbed Spike, and carried the struggling dragon into the bathroom, stripping the bandage off Spike’s head as he flipped on the light, ripped back the shower curtain and dumped him in the bathtub. Avarice reached down to crank on the hot water while his tail whipped up to knock the defiant Spike back into the tub when he tried to climb back out.

“Now just stay there until you’ve washed the smell off,” Avarice commanded as he walked back towards the door. He stopped at the counter to untie the pouch he’d dropped from his wing, then placed Spike’s marble on the countertop.

Avarice ducked down under the threshold, then turned to face Spike one more time with a jeering grin. “Try to get some rest. You’re going to need your energy again for tonight.”

The bathroom door closed before Spike could get a word in edgewise, leaving him alone, staring at the wooden entryway with an open mouth while jets of otherwise scalding water cascaded across his scales.

Again? Tonight?! What have I gotten myself into?

He looked away from the door, once more looking off in his mile-long stare to nowhere, mind reeling from the prospect of acting as an accessory to multiple felonies for an indefinite number of nights.

In that moment Spike realized that his heart rate was rising as his breaths were becoming swallow and frantic. He shut his eyes, trying to calm himself as he remembered his personal endeavor, and summoned the thought of his imaginary Twilight.

“Twilight—” His throat seized up almost immediately, just like it had the other night, paranoid that somepony might hear his confessions and pleas before he was ready to share them. Spike forced himself to slow his breathing, letting the hot steam soften his vocal chords.

“Twilight, I… need to tell you something… I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you earlier, but...” Spike’s larynx locked up again, forcing him to pause before continuing. “I got wrapped up in something terrible. I never meant for any of it to happen, but...”

His thyroid cramped as his fresh memories of the evening bit and tore at his thoughts. Stealing Vinyl Scratch’s most cherished records whilst she screamed in the ignorant bliss of fornication. Avarice pummeling him for picking at scars. Violating the serenity of Rarity’s sacred abode. That horrific look of shock and betrayal on that poor mare’s face, her voice echoing up through the mire of his mind.

“Spike?”

He flinched. His own name felt wretched to him, and hearing it spoken in the face of his treachery skewered him right to his heart. The fact that she knew his name just made her wounded expression all the more deleterious, and the way she looked up at Avarice with all the unbridled dread as if he was an executioner just as scarring.

The longer he dwelt on her, the more Spike could feel a gnawing void open up within him. She knew his name... and yet he didn’t know her’s, even though he had the uncanny notion that he should.

Spike tried thinking of any times that he might have seen her before now. He tried to remember if they had ever interacted. He attempted to recollect if there was a name out on her mailbox, or if he ever caught sight of a moniker that surely would have been written on her degrees. He tried to think of any reason why Avarice was so thrilled about her hat. He desperately tried to remember if he knew the mare’s name from anywhere.

Nothing. But that unprecedented sense that he somehow knew her still lingered, and Spike couldn’t figure out why.

Author's Notes:

Well, after five months, I hope it's worth the wait.

This was definitely a much different writing experience for this block of text since all the others, seeing as how it's the first since the prelude to focus almost exclusively on Spike, along with being the chapter that will surely go down as the most Avarice heavy chapter in the entire story. That being said, we knew going in that this was had to be Avarice's time to shine as a character, so everything about the way he presented himself had to be spot on.

Honestly, I think we did a pretty good job in that regard. This is probably the most affably evil we've written him, yet it's countered by first-hand witness of his potential for savagery and violence. He's clearly the most threatening villain in this story, yet at the same time, the revelation that his motives are deeper than kleptomaniacal egomania. I tried to go as far as to portray his background to make him boarder on being able to sympathize with... and then he steals some stuff, breaks a few faces, and sings opera in the sewers afterword. Honestly though, I think his sporadic unpredictability lends to making him equally more interesting and dangerous when you're never sure about what he'll do next.

Oh, and the opera scene; that originally wasn't in the outline, but a result of the creative process. I was just looking up that tune for tenor showcasing that everyone is familiar with but nobody knows the meaning of in hopes that I could learn more about it. And when I did track down the canzone, its lyrics and meaning, my mouth literally feel open. Then I called up Brian, told him about what I'd found, and said "This shit is too good. We have to do this."

And do it we did.

But that's enough of my gushing. What I want to know is (aside from how you liked the chapter), what do you think of Avarice? How as he struck you as a character/antagonist/approach to horse fiction as a whole? How effective do you think his role in the story is thus far? Do you love to hate him, or do you just want to see him blasted into oblivion? What do you think he looks like, or how do you imagine his voice to sound? We'd like gauge your response, so let us know what you think.
Because honestly, Brian and I have always imagined him to sound like Brad Pitt.
Either way, hope you had fun reading the latest entry for DECEPTION... because frankly, whether you enjoyed it or not is trivial to Avarice.

See you guys in the comments.

- Christian 'Palar Christian Visa' Harisay

Chapter Ten - Everypony Wants to be Part of a Heist

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Twilight and Rarity stood in front of a wide, onyx fountain on a crowded sidewalk of a bustling business district deep in the heart of a metropolis where towering buildings scraped the sky out of the very atmosphere. Twilight was bedecked in a black trench coat and pitch dark sunglasses, periodically checking a watch on her left pastern, while Rarity wore a satin dress that clung to her body, emphasizing her curves.

Twilight looked again at her watch, which actually held several sets of miniature layered clocks, one within the other. One ticked away time at normal speed, while the ones above it trudged along at a torpid pace.

Twilight raised her head, ears twitching towards the sound of an ambient Prench horn filled the air, followed shortly by the disembodied voice of a singing mare.

“Non, regrette rien… non, je ne regrette rien..."

At that, Twilight consulted her wristwatch once more. “Five… four… three… two… one...”

Rarity exhaled an unenthused sigh. “I’ve always hated this part...”

The water in the fountain began to churn, then a monstrous wave erupted up from the shallow pool, engulfing the entire world. Twilight instinctively closed her eyes and held her breath until light began to creep through her eyelids and the water began to drip from her face.

Twilight sat up, snorting out excess liquid as she blinked, taking her surroundings back in. Rarity, Rainbow, Applejack, Fluttershy and herself all sat in the center of a square dojo. Diagonal beams of light poured into the wooden room through the paper windows high above their heads, lending the interior a slight tint of green. Her friends were all wearing white kimonos, while Twilight herself wore one in black.

A delicate prod alerted Twilight to Fluttershy, who was holding out a pair of towels towards both herself and Rarity.

“Thanks, Fluttershy,” Twilight said as she took the offered cloth and began to dry her face, removing the waterproofed earbud speakers from her ears.

“Must it always be an entire bucket?” Rarity complained as she began to wrap the towel around her wet mane while Rainbow Dash snickered at her. “Couldn’t we use something like a spray bottle, or a little squirt gun? Anything?”

“No,” Twilight answered. “Those wouldn’t disrupt the electro-magic fields fast enough.”

Rainbow was still chuckling. “Besides, it’s more fun this way.”

Rarity grumbled in return. “When the time comes, I am so going to take advantage of you being asleep to style your mane.”

Rainbow glared back at Rarity, but Twilight interjected before the conflict continued.

“Save it, you two. We’re here to help Pinkie, remember?”

Rarity and Rainbow immediately quelled their bickering, and the circle became silent. Twilight cleared her throat, gearing up for lecture mode.

“Now then, tomorrow is when we put our plan in motion to help rid Pinkie of her nightmares… and that involves what, Fluttershy?” Twilight asked, point a hoof towards the pegasus.

“Oh, um… we go into a dream together...”

“Whose dream?” Twilight drilled.

“Mine,” Dash interrupted.

Twilight turned to the other pegasus there. “Alright, since you’re so eager, what are we going to do when we get there?”

Rainbow titled her head forward, her expression becoming aggressive. “We find Discord, and we clobber him.”

“No,” Twilight sternly rebuked. “Would anypony like to correct her?”

Rarity raised a hoof. “We locate the projection of Discord, then use our projections of the Elements of Harmony to blast him to kingdom come.”

“Yes,” Twilight nodded. “And if for any reason that doesn’t work—“

“Come on, how could that not work?” Rainbow again spoke out of turn.

Twilight grumbled a little before regaining her composure. “Because they aren’t really the Elements, just our subconscious projections of them. At best, a direct reminder to Pinkie of the power of our friendship should override whatever is bothering her with a hard reset. At worst… they’ll hardly be more than a pretty light-show. And should that be the case, what are we going to do, Applejack?”

“You’ll take Pinkie into a second dream, which you just made certain is possible, to see if you can find the source of what is troubling Pinkie while Dash, Rare, Shy and myself hold off Discord until we can wake you two back up.”

“And how much time is that going to be?” Twilight asked.

“Fifteen minutes.”

“Correct.”

Rainbow leaned in. “Then can I clobber Discord?”

Twilight turned to her. “I’d prefer if you used direct confrontation as a last resort. Remember, you have to keep Pinkie and I asleep that whole time. It may just be a projection, but it will try to stop you from keeping the two of us in that second dream. You cannot let that happen under any circumstances, so as much as you might hate to do so, you’ll be better off running, hiding, or distracting it. But whatever you do, you have to be able to adapt quickly and creatively, because the projection will be on the same playing field as you.”

Twilight turned back around to address the whole group. ”Now, should we get separated, everypony: what is the question to validate anypony is who they claim to be?”

“It’s a bright, cold day in April,” everypony chimed in.

“And the proper response is...” Twilight asked.

“And the clocks were striking thirteen,” came the answer in chorus.

“Perfect,” Twilight complimented, that looked at her watch again. “We’ve got about fifteen more minutes before Pinkie wakes us back up, so let’s put everything I’ve taught you in the last few days to the rest.

“Rainbow,” she turned to the pegasus, “do you want to pound Discord’s face in?”

“Heck yeah!” Rainbow proclaimed, standing up and trashing her tail.

“Alright then, I want you to do me a favor.”

“Anything.”

“I want you to hit me as hard as you can.”

Rainbow reared back in surprise. “What?”

Twilight emphasized her words. “I want you to hit me as hard as you can.”

“Why?” Rainbow asked.

“You have to prove that you can fight in a dream world. Now hit me, if you can.”

Rainbow looked away and rubbed her foreleg. “But do I have to fight you? Can’t you just summon a dummy projection or that pony-thing—“

“Thing-pony,” Twilight corrected.

Applejack sighed. “Why do I still not know what that is?”

“Whatever, yeah. Can’t you just have me beat that up?” Rainbow asked.

“I can’t just summon the thing-pony at will. And all of you need to be able to fight something that will fight back. But even if it’s a projection that looks like our worst enemy, it’s really just some part of our friend. If you can defeat me, then it’ll be easier for you to beat some anomaly in Pinkie’s subconscious.”

“But you’re not something that’s causing one of my friends pain, Twilight,” Rainbow argued. “You’re my friend.”

Applejack let out a little huff. “You’re my friend too, but we fight all the time.”

“That’s different,” Dash retorted. “Those aren’t, ya know, fight-fights.”

Twilight sighed. “I’m sorry for doing this, Rainbow Dash...” She reached out into the Dreamscape matrix, and made a slight change that would alter the way she sounded.

“Still don’t feel like hitting me now?” Twilight challenged, her voice now a perfect imitation of Discord.

Rainbow’s eyes went wide. Her mouth pulled tight, her nostrils sucking in a razor-sharp breath.

“No?” Twilight continued to taunt Rainbow in Discord’s voice. “Well, I guess if you’re just fine with leaving your friend twisting in the wind, I’ll just have to be the one to keep her company...”

Rainbow clenched her eyes tightly shut and scrunched her face up in anger. She took a deep breath, flared her wings, then launched herself at Twilight with a flurry of punches. The other three retreated to the walls as Twilight and Rainbow sparred, up on their hind legs as they traded blows.

Rainbow’s attacks were very fast and straight-forward, with little thought but to strike her target. Twilight blocked and deflected them all with ease, making Dash have to correct her stance for almost every attack she threw.

Rainbow jabbed at Twilight’s face. Twilight ducked to the side, caught Rainbow’s extended hoof, then jumped and bucked her right in the gut. Rainbow skidded across the floor, clutching her stomach.

“Come on, you’re going to have to do better than a foal trying to hit a piñata,” Twilight gibed, still sounding like Discord.

Rainbow growled and lunged Twilight. This time she adapted her stance with every hit that Twilight blocked, allowing her to string her attacks together. Twilight retaliated with strikes of her own, which Rainbow blocked and followed up with kicks from her hind legs, setting up more distance between them.

Rainbow swung a Twilight with a roundhouse kick. Twilight caught her hoof and twisted, sending Dash spinning through the air. She corrected herself in mid-flight and landed on her hooves, assuming an offensive posture.

“Much better,” Twilight said in her own voice as she gave Rainbow a slight smile. “But you’re still forgetting a crucial technique...”

Rainbow tensed her muscles again, and charged Twilight. She began mixing up the varieties of her strikes, countering Twilight’s moves, and following up each hoof thrown at her with a counter attack of her own.

Dash threw a punch at Twilight. The unicorn deflected it down, and reared up to stomp down on the pegasus’s head. Rainbow extended her wings and took to the air with one powerful flap, instantly taking an aerial advantage and putting Twilight on the defense. She assaulted the unicorn below her with a barrage of flying hooves. Twilight countered every single one.

Rainbow growled, flew up a little higher, then bolted towards her target in a dive-bomb. Twilight dodged the attack, redirected Rainbow’s momentum, and took advantage of the opening to leap up into the air and hit Rainbow in the barrel. With the wind knocked out of her, Rainbow could do little as Twilight remained suspended in mid-air and bucked her right in the chest, sending her crashing into one of the wooden pillars, cracking it in half upon impact.

Twilight slowly descended to the ground, trotted up to Rainbow, who was still keeled over and barely able to stay on her hooves. She held out a hoof to refrain Fluttershy from galloping up to check on her bruised friend.

“How did I beat you?” Twilight asked Rainbow.

Dash wiped her mouth with a hoof, then spat upon the floor with a grumble. “You cheated. I know you, egghead. You’re not anywhere near that fast in real life, and you can’t fly or levitate yourself without magic, either.”

Twilight trotted up closer to the downed pegasus, her face straight. “Cheated? In a place where the rules can be bent and broken, and entire worlds can be reshaped at will? I may not be that fast in reality… but we’re not in the real world, are we?”

Rainbow didn’t say anything; she just remained in her position on the floor, still trying to catch her breath.

Twilight leaned in, wearing a sly smirk. “Did you just spit on a real floor, or do you need to check your totem to make sure?”

Rainbow looked to the wet splatter on the floorboards. She let out a little grimble as she got back to standing, shaking off the pain from Twilight’s hits. Twilight trotted back to the middle of the floor, awaiting her opponent.

“Let’s try that again, but with more of what I’ve been teaching you this time,” Twilight instructed.

With a flap of her wings, Dash was back on her rear hooves, taking a passive stance that could immediately switch between offense and defense. Twilight did the same, then lunged at Dash with a series of quick attacks. For each strike Dash blocked she threw a hoof of her own at Twilight, which she blocked and countered with another attacked.

Twilight started aiming her attacks higher, at Rainbow’s face. Dash moved her forehooves up to protect her head. Several blocked high attacks were made before Twilight struck low, hitting Rainbow in the gut. She flinched and instinctively clutched the bruised area. Twilight lashed out with another hoof right at Dash’s face, stopping just in front of her muzzle.

Rainbow’s eyes went wide and she flew back, reevaluating her posture for anything that Twilight could throw at her.

“They call you ‘the fastest pegasus alive,’ Rainbow,” Twilight firmly stated. “Prove it.”

Rainbow tensed up, then darted at Twilight. Hooves were thrown and halted from both mares as they moved about the arena. Dash jabbed at Twilight, which she countered by crossing the attacking leg across the pegasus’s barrel and holding it. Rainbow tried to strike with her free foreleg, which Twilight pinned in the same fashion.

“Come on,” Twilight reproached in Discord’s voice, “stop trying to hit me and hit me!”

Rainbow broke free of Twilight’s grasp and redoubled her efforts with a variety of punches and kicks. For each one Twilight blocked, the speed of Rainbow’s strikes increased, until her hooves where moving so fast that they began to blur.

Twilight jabbed at Rainbow, which she deflected to the side, leaving Twilight open. Rainbow tensed her hind legs and performed a backflip, striking Twilight on the jaw with her rear hooves. Twilight flew up into the air like a rag doll thrown by a foal. Rainbow flew underneath her in an instant, and pounded Twilight’s exposed midsection with a barrage of jabs so rapid and fierce that they held Twilight suspended above the floor, completely helpless.

Rainbow flew above Twilight, and bucked her so hard that she shot back down into one of the pillars. It shattered on impact as Twilight crashed through it and slammed into the ground. Rainbow bolted back down to the beaten unicorn and raised her hoof to stomp down on Twilight’s face, only to stop inches away from the muzzle.

Twilight’s eyes were wide open as she gasped for breath. Rainbow’s hoof was so close to her nose that she could smell the scent of perspiration mingling with dander. She looked up and Rainbow, who glared back with furious eyes, her ears bent back at a hostile angle.

Twilight calmed her breathing, and softened her expression of shock for a smile. “Using manipulation to alter the physics of the dream world, allowing you to accelerate to abnormal speeds… now that is how you fight in a dream world. Well done, Rainbow.”

Dash didn’t reply. She remained speechless as her chest still heaved, and her scowl intensified.

Twilight frowned in concern. “Rainbow… you okay?”

Rainbow’s hoof began to quiver as disconcertion broke across her face. “Don’t… ever… talk like that again…”

Twilight’s frown deepened at the pain in Dash’s voice. “I won’t. I promise.”

Only then did Rainbow withdraw her hoof and back away, allowing Twilight to stand back up. Twilight got back on her hooves, repaired the damaged arena with her mind, then looked to Rainbow. The pegasus was staring at the ground in anger and dismay, her ears folded down.

Twilight felt a chisel chipping against her heart. Without even thinking she trotted up to Dash and pulled her into a hug. Rainbow reared back in surprise, but didn’t retaliate to Twilight’s embrace.

“I’m sorry, Rainbow,” Twilight apologized. “You know I didn’t mean a single word of it, right?”

Rainbow let out a heavy sigh. “I know, just… don’t get me too riled up before tomorrow.”

Rainbow pulled away from Twilight’s hug and walked back in the direction where she’d been sitting, her vexed wings shifting as her tail flicked. She took a seat against the far wall and stared off into the distance, never looking at her friends, even as Fluttershy trotted up to check on her.

Twilight still frowned at this, but she knew that she had little time to dwell, and that Dash wasn’t a pony to come around quickly. Just give her some time, she thought as she checked her watch.

“Alright Applejack, are you ready?” Twilight asked.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Applejack replied and she got up and trotted into the light.

Twilight nodded. “Then let’s go.”

Applejack charged straight at Twilight with her neck craned down to headbutt the unicorn like a battering ram. Twilight caught her with a roundhouse kick. Applejack took the full brunt of the strike with little impact to her momentum. She smashed into Twilight, sending her skidding across the floor. Applejack rushed her again. Twilight lept into the air and vaulted over Applejack, delivering a kick to the back of her skull and another to her back as she cartwheeled over her opponent.Applejack stumbled about in a daze, then she shook her head and attacked again with quick jabs.

Applejack’s fighting style was much more ground based. She always had at least two hooves on the ground, making her stance as sturdy as it was obstinate. Twilight was forced onto the defensive as she attempted to block Applejack’s powerful strikes while countering with low kicks to try and stumble her. The effort failed to work effectively, and Applejack countered with high attacks. Twilight tried to circle around AJ to take advantage of her unguarded sides, which she would respond to by twirling around and bucking out with her hind legs, forcing Twilight to dodge.

The violent dance carried on like this for several cycles of attack, defend, counter attack, buck, repeat. Then Twilight flittered around Applejack and jabbed. Applejack spun around and bucked at Twilight again, only for Twilight to pull her punch, grab Applejack’s hind legs and deflect them upward. Applejack stumbled forward, exposing her undercarriage. Twilight took full advantage of the opening to deliver a fierce uppercut to AJ’s gut, sending her up into the air. Twilight levitated herself into the air again and bucked hard at Applejack, knocking the mare through a large set of double doors leading to another room.

Applejack crashed into the opposite wall, slumping into the corner where she lay inverted as her eyes spun in circles and a nasty bump began to rise on her forehead.

The doors were still swinging on their hinges as Twilight descended to the ground and began trotting towards them, momentarily obscuring her view of Applejack. Another swing: Applejack was clenching her eyes shut as she held a hoof to her head. Another swing: her eyes had gone wide, like she’d gotten some sort of epiphany. Another: Applejack had scrunched up her face in concentration. Another: the room was empty.

Twilight did a double take, then galloped through the double doors, only to find she was the sole occupant.

”Applejack?” Twilight called out. “Applejack, where are you?”

No reply came. Twilight concentrated on the matrices of the spell, looking to see if Applejack had used manipulation to make herself invisible. Her search revealed that Applejack hadn’t just made herself transparent; she had disappeared entirely. Twilight looked around in confusion to spot her other friends looking in through the threshold.

“Where did Applejack go?” Fluttershy asked.

“I don’t know,” Twilight answered as she trotted back into the arena floor, beginning to get worried. “Okay, seriously Applejack, where are you?”

“Right here!”

Twilight only have enough time to whip around before Applejack blasted back through the doors, shattering them, and crashing into Twilight with the force of a freight train. The impact sent Twilight crashing through the floorboards, ripping up the surface-level planks in a craterous rift.

When the haze of her vision cleared and her senses returned, she found her friends surrounding her with various expressions of concern.

“Twilight!” Fluttershy gasped as she extended a wing. “How many feathers am I holding up?”

Twilight groaned in pain as her eyes tried to focus. “Uh… three...”

Fluttershy exhaled a slight sigh of relief. “Okay, that’s—”

“You’re both holdin’ up three,” Twilight slurred.

“Uh, close enough?” Fluttershy remarked as she went up to Twilight and began inspecting her thoroughly for signs of a concussion.

“Must you have used such an excessive amount of brute force?” Rarity admonished Applejack.

“Hey, it was enough to get the job done, wasn’t it?” she replied.

Rarity just huffed in condescension al looked back to Twilight. “Bet seriously, darling, do you need assistance or aid?”

“I’ll be fine,” Twilight grunted as Fluttershy helped her back on her hooves. “What did you do back there, Applejack?”

AJ looked back and forth between Twilight and the splinters scatters across the destroyed floor. “Well, uh… I ain’t rightly sure myself...”

Twilight looked at her in confusion. “But… then where were you hiding?”

“I wasn’t.”

“Then where were you?”

Applejack rubbed her temple with a hoof. “Well, I, uh… wasn’t in that room. I made up another one in a different place entirely, if that makes sense.”

Twilight’s head was starting to hurt from more than just her concussion. “So… you manipulated the dream world to create a pocket dimension separate from the dream world we’re in right now?”

“Uh… yeah, that. Whatever you said...” Applejack shrugged.

Twilight blinked in surprise. “Wow, Applejack. That’s… actually pretty ingenious! How’d you come up with such an innovative approach to manipulation?”

Applejack massaged her forehead again. “Well… I don’t really know myself, to be honest. After y’all bucked me right into that there room, I hit my head somethin’ fierce when I crashed into the wall. I was seein’ things—different places, talking stars, a blackbird in a hood or somethin’—and then that idea just popped into my head, and I went with it.”

Now Twilight was the one to knead her cranium. “Okay… well, try to remember that for the future. A trick like that will almost certainly come in useful.”

Focusing past the dull throb inside her skull, Twilight turned around and began repairing the extensive destruction inflicted upon the dojo. When there wasn’t so much as a stray splinter, Twilight returned her attention back to her friends.

“Now then, are you ready, Rarity?”

Rarity put on a little frown. “Oh dear... I suppose this was inevitable, wasn’t it?” She let out a sigh. “Well then, what shall be my motivation? If I am to do something as barbaric as raise my hoof against a dear friend, even if it’s for a greater cause, I will need some type of catalyst. Just so long as it’s not as brazen as—” Rarity glanced at Rainbow Dash, then looked away.

Dash flicked her tail in agitation as her brow furrowed, only for her expression to give way to a devious smirk. “Pretend Twilight is one of those jerkwad dragons from the migration, and they just touched a scale on Spike’s cute little head.”

Rarity’s face went stiff as she snapped her head to Twilight. She then closed her eyes in concentration, and let out an aggressive snort.

“Yes, that will do. HIYA!”

Rarity leaped into the air with a foreleg raised to stomp down on Twilight, who jumped back from the offense into the center of the floor. Rarity’s hoof left a small crater in the floor. She reared backwards from Twilight’s counter attack, and the two began to spar.

Rarity’s technique was far more fluid and graceful than Rainbow’s or Applejack’s styles. Her every movement was a smooth transition, allowing her to effortlessly switch back and forth between offense and defense, as well as adapt to Twilight’s moves. The tradeoff was that her circuitous motions weren’t as solely strategic as they were implemented for show, allowing Twilight to modify her own techniques just as easily. Rarity’s attacks also had far less strength behind them than Dash or AJ, making what hits she did land more condescending than debilitating.

Rarity swung at Twilight with the backside of her hoof. She hit nothing but air when Twilight pulled back and took advantage of the opening to blast Rarity with a beam of raw mana, sending her crashing into the wall. Twilight teleported over to the dazed mare and jabbed a hoof at her muzzle.

“Ah! Not the face!” Rarity blurted.

Rarity instinctively covered her head with her forehooves, leaving her soft belly completely exposed to Twilight’s assault of strikes that left Rarity a crumpled heap on the floor. She growled in frustration, lit her horn, and ripped up the floorboards from right underneath Twilight, sending the unicorn tumbling through the air.

“Uncouth ruffian!” Rarity yelled, then proceeded to smack Twilight around with the planks.

Twilight tried to defend against the collective of improvised cudgels, but their numbers proved too great. She grunted in aggravation, and fired another blast at the wood, reducing each plank to splinters. Then Twilight pounced at Rarity, passing over the hole in the floor. Rarity returned with a crooked grin, lit her horn again, and launched a salvo of gemstones she manipulated into existence up at Twilight, thoroughly pummeling her as the weaponized rocks ripped up the ceiling.

Twilight growled, corrected her stance in mid-air with levitation, then ignited her own horn and enveloped every gem in her magic. She looked down at Rarity, and grinned deviously.

“What goes up...” Twilight sniped.

Rarity’s eyes went wide. “Oh, heavens no...”

Twilight reared up from her airborne position, then threw her forelegs downward as Rarity’s own bombardment of gems came crashing back down upon her, completely burying her under a pile of colorful stones.

Twilight slowly descended back down to the floor, and mended the gap as she addressed the heap of jewels.

“Well Rarity, your techniques are a bit too theatrical to be efficient, but your methods of improvisation and adaptability are very creative. So, not bad, really.”

The stack of gemstones didn’t reply back.

Twilight frowned. “Rarity? Are you okay?”

Still no answer.

Worry took hold of Twilight. She couldn’t tell if Rarity was legitimately hurt or if she’d taken a leaf from Applejack’s book, so she concentrated on the matrices of the dream to discern Rarity’s condition. The first thing she picked up on was a stone the size of her head launched at her face. Twilight ducked out of the way of the gem. Then Rarity burst out from the trove and rammed Twilight with such force that she bounced off the opposite wall.

When Twilight managed to get her head to stop spinning, she looked back at Rarity, who was clad in an ornate, immaculate suit of armor crafted from the precious stones, covering her entire form save for her mane, tail, and triumphantly smiling visage.

“What was that about my techniques being too theatrical for practical use, deary?” Rarity asked, conceited.

Twilight opened her mouth to reply, but Rarity cut her off with a raised hoof.

“Could you hold that thought for a moment? I want to check something...” Rarity closed her eyes and concentrated. A floorboard next to her turned to silver and liquified, then a full-length tri-fold vanity mirror emerged from the fluid. Rarity opened her eyes to look at herself, and her face lit up like a prom princess.

“My stars, I look gorgeous!” She remarked as she turned to admire herself from different angles, then giggled to herself. “Somepony remind me to look into recreating this after I’ve finished with my newest project.”

“Save it for after we’ve finished helping Pinkie,” Rainbow retorted.

“I will,” Rarity countered. “I still have my priorities in order: help Pinkie, finish new line, plan for future projects. And if all goes well, my magnum opus should be finished before the morrow, so I’ll have no other side projects to detract energy from helping relieve a cherished friend of her torments. So, it’s a win-win-win, as they say.”

“Nopony says that, Rares,” Applejack commented.

“Well, I say that,” Rarity said.

“Just focus on winning instead of looking good while doing it when we’re fighting.” Twilight instructed. “Got it?”

“Understood… but the gemstone armor is still acceptable should the occasion arise, yes?”

“So long as it helps us cure Pinkie, whatever anypony of you can bring it the fight is fine. Speaking of which, that just leaves you, Fluttershy.”

Fluttershy sucked in air as she stiffened in alert, pupils like pinpricks. “Oh, um… I’m not so sure about this… can’t I just act as like, support, or a field medic?”

“Field medics still know how to engage in combat, Fluttershy. We need everypony to be able to pull their own weight as much as we need to be able to operate as a team.” Twilight said.

“Come on, Flutters,” Rainbow interjected. “You’ve down-talked a dragon and beat a cockatrice in a staring contest! You can take Twilight in a little hoof-to-hoof.”

Fluttershy ducked behind her mane. “But I only faced those creatures when I had no other choice. I can’t just fight anypony whenever I want.”

Twilight looked at her watch and sighed. “I’m sorry Fluttershy, but we’re running out of time.”

Twilight lit her horn. Fluttershy let out a little ‘Eep!’ as Twilight picked up Fluttershy, flung the pegasus toward herself, and swung a hoof at her. She ducked, and Twilight’s hoof went over her head. Twilight altered her stance, and continued her offense.

Fluttershy’s defense proved to be near impenetrable. Every attack from Twilight was either blocked, deflected, or dodged, but Fluttershy made absolutely no attempt to get in a counterattack. Every move she made was just to keep herself from taking a hit, and she wore an expression of panic as she flittered around her opponent.

Twilight jabbed, and Fluttershy sidestepped. She whirled around and bucked, and Fluttershy took to the air and flew over Twilight’s head. Twilight concentrated on the ground in front of her. Fluttershy landed, and her hooves sunk into the liquefied wood.

Fluttershy tried to pry herself out by tugging at her hooves and flapping her wings, but she still remained in place, like she had stepped into quicksand. She looked up and gasped as Twilight lit her horn again, and a gigantic padded hammer materialized next to her.

“Sorry! Nothing personal!” Twilight quickly blurted, and then bludgeoned Fluttershy with her weapon of cushioned doom.

Fluttershy sailed across the dojo and crashed into the wall opposite from Twilight, leaving a crater in the perfect shape of her body. She remained embedded in the wall until gravity took hold, and she fell back down on her hooves. Fluttershy stumbled to and fro as her eyes spun and a little flock of birds circled her head, twittering in concern.

“Oh, no thank you, I can’t eat sunflower seeds. They make me gassy,” Fluttershy slurred.

Twilight dematerialized the softened sledge and trotted toward Fluttershy. “Are you okay? Can you still fight?”

Fluttershy shook her head with a sound like a bit rattling in a tin can. “I’m fine, but I’m sorry. I just can’t be forced into fighting one of my friends.”

“This isn’t about fighting me, Fluttershy. It’s about making sure you’re ready to fight the projection of Discord in Pinkie’s subconscious.” Twilight said.

“Yeah, but you’re not Discord,” Fluttershy replied. “We’ve been over this. I’m sorry.”

Twilight frowned a little. For a moment, she contemplated adopting her imitation of the draconequus, but quashed the thought a moment later upon remembering her promise to Rainbow. That still didn’t keep her from glancing at Rainbow out of nervous reflex, who seemed to have discerned what Twilight was thinking, as her brow furrowed at the unicorn.

“Don’t even think about it,” Rainbow growled, then smirked. “Besides, I’ve got an idea...”

Rainbow Dash closed her eyes and scrunched up her face in concentration, her tongue sticking out one side of her mouth. Twilight was about to prod Dreamscape to observe what Dash was up to, but then she heard Fluttershy gasp, and instead looked to her. Fluttershy was staring at something on Twilight with eyes beginning to sizzle.

Twilight looked down at herself. Rainbow had manipulated a rather graphically detailed picture of herself maliciously abusing a bruised and bloody Angel bunny onto her robe. Twilight lit her horn and tried to rip the gruesome image off her kimono, but it was more firmly affixed than her own coat.

Twilight looked back up and Fluttershy. The normally yellow pegasus was going red in the face, and she snorted out heaving, ragged breaths of hot air like an enraged minotaur.

Now it was Twilight’s turn to contract her pupils in fear. “Uh-oh...”

Fluttershy bellowed out a terrifying, adorable roar of primal fury. She reared up, slammed her forehooves back down with a force that shook the entire building, and bull-rushed Twilight.

Fluttershy’s vicious assault was so relentless that Twilight couldn’t even get in a retaliatory hoof in edgewise. For every attack she blocked or dodged, there was another immediately following it, putting Twilight completely on defensive to Fluttershy’s inexorable, withering strikes.

Fluttershy reared back and put all of her weight into a right jab. Twilight dodged, caught the hoof, and redirected its momentum to cross the leg over Fluttershy’s barrel. Seeing an opening, Twilight moved to finally get in a hoof of her own.

Fluttershy growled, and head-butted Twilight right in the face. Her vision blurred and she stumbled back, utterly defenseless. Fluttershy went in for another strike. Twilight could already feel her stomach flinching from the inevitable impact.

Fluttershy grabbed Twilight by her robe, then ripped the picture right off. Twilight fell back down onto all four hooves as Fluttershy threw the picture across the dojo, flew over to it, and began trampling it into the floor. She growled, glaring at the tattered and torn image. Her eyes began to glow a fearsome orange, producing a high-pitched noise of a charging diode, and laser beams shot out of her eyes, setting the crumpled illustration ablaze.

Fluttershy flew back up into the air and struck her forehooves against each other, generating a spark. She held out her hooves for it, and the spark became suspended between them, where it quickly grew from a little flame to a fireball. Fluttershy lifted the fireball above her head, and it rapidly expanded into a blazing sphere twice her length in diameter. With one last war cry, Fluttershy hurled the giant orb of flaming death down onto the burning picture. It exploded upon impact, hitting all ponies present with a scorching heat as the detonation blasted a giant hole into the floor.

Fluttershy slowly descended to the floor, softly landing in front of the smoldering crater. She stood, stiff and motionless, breathing in smoke, then whipped around to glare at the other pegasus.

“That was very mean of you, Rainbow Dash!” she fiercely admonished.

“Hey, it got you to fight, didn’t it?” Rainbow said in her defense.

Fluttershy’s piercing glare became even sharper.

Rainbow sighed. “Alright, I’m sorry. I’ll make you a mixed salad when we wake up, okay?”

Fluttershy titled her head forward, not abating her glare in the slightest.

Rainbow groaned. “Okay, I’ll make a salad for you and Angel. Happy?”

Fluttershy softened her glower. “Will you include sliced apple and a light vinaigrette on mine?”

“Whatever makes you happy,” Rainbow mumbled.

Fluttershy returned with a slight smile, and began walking back to her original seat. “Okay, apology accepted… and be sure to include extra carrots for Angel bunny.”

Twilight stepped forward. “Will you be able to bring that ferocity tomorrow night, Fluttershy?”

Fluttershy sat on her haunches, and nodded. “Yes, I can. For Pinkie.”

Twilight nodded. She looked to the rest of her friends. All their eyes gleamed with the same resolve, and her heart swelled with pride.

“Well, then it’s settled. Tomorrow night, we go into a shared dream together, and we stop Pinkie’s nightmares for good.”

“Heck yeah!” Rainbow hollered, taking to the air. “Discord doesn’t stand a chance! We beat him once, and we’ll beat him again!”

“Darn tootin’!” Applejack exclaimed.

Twilight’s ears twitched as she began to hear the ambient swell of an orchestra, followed by the ubiquitous voice of a singing mare. “Non, regrette rien… non, je ne regrette rien...”

Twilight turned her attention back to her friends. “Alright, that’s our cue.” She glanced at her watch and began to count down. “Ten… nine… eight…”

A distant roar began to fill the air of the dojo.

“Seven… six...”

Rarity sighed. “I will always hate this part...”

“Three… two… o—”

Twilight was cut off as a tidal wave crashed through the thin walls of the dojo, sweeping them all away into its blackness.

- - - - - -

Twilight sprayed water from her mouth as she came to, turning her head to one side and knocking a hoof against the other to clear the water that had gotten into her ear. She wiped the water out of her eyes, and was met with the sight of Pinkie: eyes still downtrodden, mane still limp and listless.

Pinkie set aside a large, empty bucket, then turned off the record player next to her. She picked up a towel from the stack next to her, and offered it to Twilight.

“I didn’t mess up and wake you too earlier again, did I?” Pinkie meekly asked.

“No, not at all. Your timing was perfect, in fact,” Twilight answered as she took the cloth and dried her face with it.

Pinkie’s expression bore no indication that she took solace from the compliment. Her eyes drifted away, then she gathered the towels and began giving them out to everypony else present, her composure subdued.

Twilight flinched, and had to restrain a hoof from darting back to her burning sides.

“Could you girls excuse me for a minute?” Twilight asked as she got up and began trotting away before anypony even replied. “I need to… go check my totem.” Then she cantered up the stairs and into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her.

Rarity finished blinking the excess liquid from her eyes and peeled a velvet shower cap from off her mane. “Well, I may be at odds with that procedure, but at least I can do something to keep from taking the worst of it.”

Rainbow grumbled at Rarity’s persnicketiness. With her face still dripping, Rainbow got up on all fours all vigorously shook her head back and forth like a wet dog, spraying water all over to the unicorn beside her, making Rarity shriek

“AH! Rainbow!”

Applejack let out a hearty chuckle at the routine, only for her laughs to go weak at the sight of Pinkie, watching Rainbow harassing Rarity with a deepening frown. Pinkie turned away, only to catch sight of Applejack looking at her, to which she tried to conceal her miserable face behind the heavy curtain of her mane.

“Hey,” Applejack gently said. Pinkie recoiled like she’d just been scolded.

“Pinkie,” Applejack spoke again, her tone even softer, “how ya’ holdin’ up, girl?”

Pinkie didn’t say anything, and just keep her eyes on the wood beneath her hooves now that everypony was looking at her.

Fluttershy slowly approached her despondent friend. “Pinkie, are you still having nightmares?” she delicately asked.

Pinkie didn’t respond, but the her subsequent whimper was enough of an answer for Fluttershy to walk up to Pinkie and wrap an empathetic foreleg around her. Pinkie buried her face into her friend’s nape, and began to softly weep.

Fluttershy gently ran her free hoof over Pinkie’s flat mane. “There, there,” she cooed.

Rainbow Dash walked around to face the crying pony, and lightly prodded her with a hoof.

“Hey, we’re gonna help you get through this. Come tomorrow night, that thing in your head won’t be able to hurt you anymore.” Rainbow gave Pinkie a confident little smile. “So, cheer up. We’ve still got that ‘freed of a tormenting projection’ party to throw for you.”

Pinkie looked at Rainbow, momentarily regarding her words. She sniffled, then loosed herself from Fluttershy’s embrace.

“I, um… want to go ask Twilight something. Excuse me,” Pinkie mumbled, then slowly turned to plod upstairs.

“Oh… okay… want me to come with you?” Rainbow asked.

“No, thanks, I’ll be alright,” Pinkie lethargically replied.

Rainbow nodded, then looked off into nowhere in particular as her expression hardened.

“I swear, come tomorrow night, when we meet Discord, it’s gonna get ugly.” Rainbow growled. “We’re gonna bust into his house, break his face, smash all his stuff, and track dirty hoof-prints all over the floor.”

“Easy there, girl,” Applejack spoke up. “We ain’t out for blood. We just go in, deal with Discord, and we get out. Quick, clean, and easy.”

“Unless, of course, Plan A goes kaput, and we have to resort to Plan B,” Rarity included.

Rainbow responded with a stiff nod. “Right. We deal with Discord while Twilight breaks into the safe and steals what we need.” She grinned mischievously. “It’ll be just like a heist flick!”

Rarity raised a hoof in objection. “I don’t think that’s an entirely appropriate analogy.”

“And why not?” Rainbow protested. “We’ve got an opponent who we beat by stealing something from right underneath their nose. We’re not just helping a friend, we’re gonna be awesome while we do it!”

Fluttershy softly cleared her throat. “But, well, Twilight won’t really be stealing anything, just going deeper into Pinkie’s mind to learn more about what’s troubling her.”

“Okay, so it’s like a mind heist.” Rainbow’s eyes lit up. “Actually, that sounds really cool! Am I right?” She asked looking around them room. “Come on… everypony wants to be part of a heist.”

Rarity turned away and snuck her nose up in the air. “Well, I don’t.”

“Please,” Rainbow scoffed, “like you’re really going to sit there and tell me you’ve never once fantasized about going somewhere like Itaily or Prance, running into a dashing thief, taking part in his scheme to rob the biggest bank in the province, escaping the cops after a high-speed chase, getting back to the hide-out, and then making love on the pile of bits.”

Rarity didn’t answer: she just scrunched up her face as her cheeks blushed. Rainbow chuckled.

“Gotcha.”

Rarity hissed in spite. “I am soooo going to take advantage of you being asleep to make your mane fabulous...”

- - - - - -

Twilight urgently shut the bathroom door behind her and darted over to the sink. She hurriedly slammed her totem down onto the counter and spun its internal gimbals without even looking at the contraption. She ripped open the medicine cabinet over the sink, pried the lid off the ibuprofen bottle, chucked an indeterminate number of pills into her mouth, and downed them with a hastily poured glass of water.

Twilight closed her eyes and slowed her breathing, ears twitching to the harmonic trill of her little gyroscope merrily spinning on the countertop. The whir of her magic momentarily joined the crystalline chime as she cast the illusion spell on herself. Already the burning lightning coursing through her began to subside as she formed a mental image of herself, propped up on the edge of counter with her head hanging, her eyes closed, and a pair of wings affixed firmly to her.

She dismounted from the counter, finally opening her eyes to observe her artificial wings. She turned her head from side to side as she inspected both mirages, admiring how the feathers moved and interlapped and the muscles underneath rippled as she flexed her limbs.

Her ear twitched to the brief sound of a wobbling knell, the a soft chink. Twilight turned away from her wings to look at the gyroscope, which lay motionless on the porcelain.

Twilight blinked. The gyroscope had completely slipped her mind until she had heard it fall over.

Letting out a little sigh, Twilight turned away from her trinket, then closed the cabinet door above the sink to clear away the last of her pain. Her reflection in the mirror met her with a scowl.

“You are full of things that would make mom wash my mouth out with soap if I said them out loud,” Reason chided.

Twilight’s ears folded back in shame. “I know, it’s not really the most ethically sound plan to help a friend that I’ve come up with...”

Reason scoffed, incredulous. “Really?! This is the most morally ambiguous ‘plan’ that you’ve come up with since Mare Do Well!”

Twilight flinched. “But at least Rainbow learned a lesson in humility then, right?”

Reason leaned forward. “So the ends justify the means, huh? Is that what you’d tell everypony else if they found out that ‘Plan B’ exists partially to test that if Dreamscape can be used to plant ideas, it can be used to steal them?”

Twilight gulped. “I explained to everypony, even Pinkie, that we can’t let her know what’s going on to keep the anomaly from adapting to it. And I already told the others what I’ll be doing to find out how we can help Pinkie. And if I can, I can uproot the anomaly from the source. That’s what this is all about: helping Pinkie.”

Reason’s brow furrowed as she continued to glare at Twilight. “I know. And I’d understand perfectly… if that was the only thing you’d planned on doing while you’re in Pinkie’s subconscious...”

Twilight sat down on her haunches and looked away, too ashamed to respond.

“You want to see if you can do it again,” Reason reprimanded with a glower. “Pinkie, our friend, has been suffering from terrible nightmares for weeks now, and you want to see if you can use this as an opportunity to secretly perform an inception on her!”

“That’s not why—I don’t...” Twilight stuttered. “It’s just a completely innocuous thought, alright? ‘My second favorite color is blue,’ that’s it. If… if Plan B fails, then… we might have to look into more… radical procedures, to free Pinkie from her constant nightmares.”

Twilight hung her head. “I just need to know everything that I can do to help fix Pinkie… and I still need to learn how to fix—” Twilight extended her holographic wings— “this… and it’s something I might need to know if I want to fix… you know...”

Reason nodded in understanding, but her glare hadn’t subsided. “Yeah… Spike’s problem. And that’s another thing: how long has it been since you last checked up on his dreams? Almost a week now? Can you even imagine what it must be like for Spike to have… him, stuck in his mind?”

Twilight fought to keep the sudden chill from making her shudder. “Yeah, I can… but it’s not like I haven’t been trying to help him. He’s just so disinclined to talk to me nowadays, and... I don’t know. Using Dreamscape this much during the day seems to be wearing me out more than I thought it would, because we can barely stay awake past dinner. But it’s not like I’ve abandoned Spike, it’s just...” Twilight sighed in dismay. “I think this is too much to handle by myself.”

For the first time since the discussion began, Reason softened her expression. “You still need to tell the rest of your friends about… you know… him.”

“I still need to tell Spike,” Twilight replied, still not making eye contact. “I haven’t even fully disclosed what I know to Celestia...”

Reason tapped a hoof to her chin, suddenly ponderous. “Speaking of which, why haven’t we heard from Celestia? This is the longest time we’ve ever gone without hearing a reply back from her.”

Twilight cocked an eyebrow. “I don’t know. It’s not like her to be so quiet… Maybe she’s busy with something so important, she can’t be bothered?”

Reason shrugged. “Can’t really know for certain, can we? But we should try writing her again. Regardless, you’re still going to have to come clean with Spike eventually.”

Twilight sighed again. “I know. I’ll tell him after we’ve taken care of Pinkie, I promise. Fixing her problem should reassure Spike that we can help fix his.”

Reason leaned back a little, her expression more level. “I’ll take you word for it,” she said, her tone still stern.

Twilight sat still, letting a few moments go by in silence before she responded. “So which is worse: Plan B, or Mare Do Well?”

Reason looked off into the distance. “Jury’s still out on that… but I’m leaning closer to Plan B.”

A sudden knock came from the bathroom door, making Twilight and Reason both jump.

“Twilight, may I talk with you about something? Alone?” It was Pinkie.

Twilight put a hoof to her heart. “Oh, sure. Give me a minute,” she replied, dispelling her wings. The image of Reason left the surface of the mirror before Twilight opened the door to her friend.

“May I come in?” Pinkie asked, her sad eyes cast in shadows from behind her mane.

“Oh, sure,” Twilight replied, opening the door further and stepping back so Pinkie could enter.

The depressed pony trudged over the threshold and shut the door with a rear hoof, her eyes never leaving the floor in the process.

“So what did you want to talk about?” Twilight asked.

Pinkie didn’t immediately reply, letting a few seconds of pawing and the floor pass before answering.

“You’re all going into my dreams tomorrow, right?” Pinkie asked the tiles on the ground.

“Yeah, that’s the plan,” Twilight answered.

Pinkie drew a shuddering inhalation. She was already in the office, and Doctor Twilight had a stash of needles with her name on them.

“Is something wrong?” Twilight inquired.

Pinkie’s mouth pulled tight. “No, it’s just… well, I was thinking, since we’re all going to be together tomorrow night, do you think, maybe… can we make it a slumber party?”

Twilight smiled back. “Of course, Pinkie. That’s a great idea.”

A smile tugged at the corner of Pinkie’s mouth, only to disappear a moment later. “Actually… no, never mind. That was a stupid idea. I know I won’t be that much fun to be around, and I know I’ve been nothing but a burden to you all—”

Twilight cut Pinkie off by placing a hoof on her shoulder. “No Pinkie, you’re not. Don’t ever think that. We took it upon ourselves to help you, because you’re our friend, and we care about you enough to do whatever it takes to correct your problems. We always will. Okay?”

Pinkie sniffed, looking at Twilight, who just answered with another warm, compassionate smile.

Pinkie’s frown softened. “Okay,” she sniffed again, reaching up to hold Twilight’s hoof with her own. “I just wish it could’ve been at a better time. This is going to be your first slumber party since coming to Ponyville. It should have been special.”

Twilight frowned a little. “Oh, uh, Pinkie, this isn’t going to be my first slumber party.”

Pinkie’s eyes widened. “What?”

“Yeah, actually. I had my first ever slumber party with Applejack and Rarity just a few weeks after I moved here,” Twilight explained.

“WHAT?!” Pinkie screamed in fury, her hold on Twilight’s hoof becoming a death grip. “You had a special moment like that, and you chose to have it WITHOUT ME?!”

“I didn’t mean to!” Twilight urgently replied. “We got rained in during a thunderstorm!”

“Oh, well that’s a convenient excuse! Gotta make sure there’s enough pouring rain and lightning to keep out the psychopath, right?!”

“Pinkie, please!” Twilight pleaded as she backed away, trying to pull her hoof out of Pinkie’s iron grasp, feeling her horn automatically activating. “Get a hold of yourself! This isn’t you!”

“IS IT?!” Pinkie shrieked, pulling Twilight back in, her eyes burning with hate. “So I guess who I am is whatever you say it is! That’s what you really care about! THAT’S WHAT TRUE FRIENDS ARE FOR!”

A sphere of water smashed into the side of Pinkie’s head, breaking her hold. Twilight backed away in fright, wincing when her sore hoof stepped on the floor. Just then the bathroom door burst open for Rainbow Dash, her tense face on high alert.

Pinkie shook her head back and forth, clearing it of water. She blinked rapidly, then horror arose on her grim face. She looked back and forth between Twight’s expression of terror and Rainbow’s visage of concern before eventually looking straight at the unicorn.

Pinkie’s eyes quivered like a penitent sea after a tsunami had ravaged the coastline. Tears started to bubble in the corners while an agonized frown began to carve itself out of her contrite contenance. A pained whimper escaped her, and then she fell to the floor, face buried behind her hooves as she wailed.

Twilight and Rainbow just looked at each other, both worried and visibly shaken. Twilight eventually broke away to approach Pinkie, still sobbing on the floor. Twilight reached out to Pinkie with a hoof, only for Pinkie to swat it away.

“I… I’m losing it...” Pinkie wept. “I… I-I almost… I w-was g-going t-to...”

Whatever Pinkie was going to say next was lost to another wave of tears and miserable howls, curling up into a tortured ball as she cried.

Twilight looked up at the door. All of her other friends were at the threshold now, their expressions of worry matching her own.

Twilight sat down next to Pinkie, and scooped her up to cradle her head in compassionate hooves. Rainbow flew into the bathroom, landed next to Pinkie, and put a hoof on her shoulder, the rest of her friends not far behind. Pinkie just cried even harder with each act of sympathy.

From inside her head, Reason prodded Twilight to get her attention.

I’m sorry, Twilight… I didn’t mean to spontaneously take control again. It just… happened.

- - - - - -

Spike was only dully aware of Pinkie’s latest hysterical collapse as he lay in his basket bed. The mare’s pitiful, heaving sobs were muffled by the door and Spike’s own eroded senses. Even his jealousy at the thought of her friends fawning over her had simmered down to smoldering embers as opposed to the scorching envy he used to feel towards her. Whatever was registering felt like a blurred piece in the collage of memories that kept him from getting any rest: his consciousness never fully setting below the horizon into slumber, creating a perpetual evening witching hour for his regrets to haunt him.

He’d been like that for the last four days.

For four days, he’d hardly eaten, barely slept, and never had a single intermission of respite from his agonizing remorse. By now, he had been an accessory to so many crimes that part of him doubted he’d ever be able to sleep peacefully again.

Sometimes, things went off without a hitch. That usually only happened when they broke into an abode when nopony was home, like several nights ago when they trespassed into an apartment that turned out to be a bachelor pad if he’d ever seen one. All Avarice had surmised as worth taking was a bowling trophy, an unopened suitcase, and a rug from the living room, stating that it really tied the whole room together. They had ended up spending the rest of the night robbing from whatever counted for the more haut monde side of town after that.

Other incidents were much less uneventful, such as one night when they broke into a quaint little abode near the post office. Avarice had apparently gotten wind that the homeowner would be away for the night and saw a perfect opportunity. He had only been inclined to agree because there would be less of a possibility for somepony to get hurt.

Unfortunately, the house turned out to be anything but unoccupied. Only after they had gotten inside did he realized that while the owner might have been away, they’d left their foal behind. They had also apparently called in a favor from a friend to watch over her for the night, who they had found passed out on the couch in the living room.

And if that hadn’t been bad enough, that friend turned out to be none other than Rainbow Dash.

He had all but begged that they go to another house, but his pleas were disregarded as more cowardice to turn tail from what Avarice said had become an even better opportunity, stating that if everything went smoothly, the inevitable case report would be even more bewildering, and that there’d be a chance to have some fun if they got spotted.

He was dragged into the master bedroom before he could denounce Avarice’s violent tendencies, and the next thing he knew, the two of them were digging through a surprisingly diverse jewelry collection, from which he reluctantly took a set of illustrious pearl earrings to honor their deal.

When he again insisted they leave, Avarice had ignored him to rummage through the refrigerator for a snack. That had left him alone in the hall, nervously looking back and forth between the threshold to the living room where his friend slept and the pictures on the wall, wondering to himself why the pegasus mare in many of them was cross-eyed.

Rainbow’s heavy snoring almost kept him from hearing the sound of hoofsteps descending the stairs. The resulting electrocution of his panic nearly gave him a heart attack, and he flew like lightning into the kitchen, desperately hissing the exit phrase. Avarice acknowledged, but the foal had gotten right outside the kitchen by then, prompting Avarice to grab him, leap into the air and perform a split between the cupboards, leaving them just above the head of the lavender coated, blonde-maned unicorn filly as she wandered into the same room and poured herself a glass of water before slowly trotting back upstairs to bed.

The event only lasted a minute, but each second was a serrated edge against his nerves. He had been terrified that the pulsing thunderstorm in his chest would give them away and give Avarice a chance to have his ‘fun.’ The vicious glare that Avarice had been observing the filly with hadn’t helped either.

Only when they heard a door close upstairs and another loud snore erupted from the living room to ensure Rainbow was still sawing more logs than Babe the Blue Ox did they return to the insalubrious sewers, where they promptly got into an argument about pilfering procedures. Thier altercation eventually led to him claiming that Rainbow could have taken Avarice in a fight. Avarice retaliated by gloating in gruesome detail about burning Rainbow to death, followed by speculations as to what her corpse would taste like. He reacted to that by throwing a box of muffins Avarice stole into the silted river of waste, which had earned him another savage beating.

The home they had burglarized next was one of those times when everything went wrong. The house had been modified to double as a recording studio, and despite being home to numerous laser-light projectors and was also far better organized, it painfully reminded him of Vinyl’s place.

Everything had been going well: Avarice had found plenty to take while he stood guard upstairs. Then he heard somepony actively moving around in one of the rooms, then towards the door, and then everything fell apart.

He had sprinted downstairs to warn Avarice, only to suddenly find him missing. He desperately scoured the house only to be discovered by an ice blue unicorn stallion with a scraggly black mane that matched the color of his polo shirt. Their eyes met for a brief second, and that’s when Avarice leapt from the shadows and attacked.

The proceeding fight was viciously intense, with Avarice grabbing anything in reach to use as a weapon while the stallion used his telekinesis to try and rip the impromptu cudgels from Avarice’s grasp for a desperate counter attack. It had ended when Avarice picked up a whole credenza and used it to smash the unicorn through the wall. Then as the pony had fallen to the floor, Avarice brought the entire credenza down on him.

They had left the poor pony there, beaten and bleeding in the hallway under the broken furniture. Avarice had pulled the cart back to the library that night, one claw around the handle and the other holding Spike at arm’s length as he futilely attempted to rip open Avarice’s throat.

When the sun rose that day, he couldn’t bear to be in the house: not with the knowledge of what was under the floorboards or the premonition that Twilight might ask about the palpable guilt dripping out from behind his mask. He had spent that day slunking around town, devoid of direction, until he spotted somepony else that he couldn’t endure seeing.

Vinyl Scratch had been shuffling down the other side of the road, noticeably bereft of her trademark shades. Her hooves barely even left the ground with each step, and her head hung so low that her muzzle was almost dragging across the dirt. The sight of her had stayed his feet, but what came next had made him wish that he had run as soon as he had seen her.

The same grey mare from the night they had broken in galloped up to Vinyl, voicing words up rapt concern. Vinyl looked up at her lover, and the heartbreak on her face became another picture in Spike’s growing album of guilt. He had heard Vinyl mutter something about checking in at the police station for any update on her stolen property, and then she had choked out that they’d told her that her best friend Neon had been hospitalized after he’d been brutally assaulted the night before.

The grey mare had said nothing, just sat down on her haunches and held out her forelegs. Then Vinyl, a tom-colt whose rough-and-tumble brashness was rivaled only by Rainbow Dash, broke down, collapsed into the mare’s embrace, and openly wept like a filly.

He had just stood there watching, with a feeling that his Adam’s apple had been replaced with a pine cone, until something else had overtaken his paralyzing remorse: envy. Burning, spiteful envy.

He had fled quickly as he could without trying to make himself conspicuous. He didn’t care where he ended up, just that he got away from that scene, until he had realized that he ended up inadvertently running all the way to Ponyville’s police headquarters.

Sighed despondently, he had made his way around the building, slumped up against the wall underneath a window, and preoccupied himself with thoughts about barging inside and confessing everything that he knew.

His languid fantasies had been interrupted when he heard a conversation coming from the office on the other side of the wall mention the string of recent thefts and assaults. He had gone alert in an instant, and he caught all the details on night patrols that they had planned to enact, as well as a reference to evidence they had collected from several of the crime scenes.

For the first time in his life, he actually went out looking for Avarice. He eventually found Avarice in the attic of the library, breathing streams of fire onto his own scales that left a shimmering aura just above the platelets before it disappeared. He relayed everything he had just learned, and suggested going inactive, at least until the attention diminished. Avarice then adorned a pensive expression, and said he would consider it, which had given him hope that he might actually get some rest that night.

Avarice later revealed to him that he had only considered the suggestion for five seconds.

While Twilight was again sleeping like a rock as he lay blanketed in insomnia, Avarice had ripped him out of his sleepless bed, citing the contingency plan of raiding the police station to take their evidence that they had talked about earlier. He was overcome with dread at the thought of stealing from the cops. Had that been the only thing they had done that night, then he might have only been just upset.

Instead, after avoiding the patrols, they had broken into somepony’s house, where Avarice dragged a mare out of her bed, took a picture of her before knocking her out, and dragged her into the sewers with them, where he realized with horror that the mare was with foal. Then they snuck into the police station, then Avarice incapacitated all the officers that were still there, then locked everypony, including the expectant mare, in separate holding cells, and took all the sets of keys. Then Avarice stole all their evidence: everything, save for one collection of trace evidence intentionally left in plain sight.

Spike had raised such a furious ruckus in protest when they got back underground that Avarice had actually resorted to knocking him out as well. He had awoken some time later under the steamy jets of the shower.

That just been just this morning. And even though he awoke feeling beaten, bruised, and with the sensation that a searing knife had been pludged through his sternum, it had been the most rest he had gotten in the last four days.

Now Spike lay in his bed, as he had been since he finished his chores. He was too lethargic to otherwise occupy himself with an entertaining pastime, and too poisoned by apathy to try. Nothing was fun or cheerful anymore, anyway.

His ear frill twitched at the sound of the window opening, then it fell in dismay as he clenched his eyelids tightly shut.

“Now what do you want?” Spike whispered, drained and despondent.

“You keep asking that, even though my answer never changes.” Avarice let out a devious chuckle, then strode across the room until he was just a few paces from Spike’s bed, his shadow looming over the little dragon. “I just came to inform you that we won’t be going out taking whatever I please tonight.”

Spike’s heart lept, then vertigo set in when he remembered who he was taking to. “You’ve got something else planned...”

Avarice smirked. “Now you’re starting to catch on.” He began admiring his deadly claws again. “We’ve got an appointment with the chief of police tonight.”

Spike felt his throat go dry. “Haven’t you done enough already? You already stole most of the evidence they had against you.”

“That was just one move. No, in a game like this, taking your opponent’s most utilized power pieces or obliterating their board position in one fell swoop is just part of strategy and planning. To truly win with an annihilation victory, your next play has to be even more devastating than the last. Crush someone’s resolve hard enough, and they’ll concede just to keep what little they have left… if they’re smart, anyway.”

Spike’s countenance hardened. “Well, do it by yourself. I can’t go with you tonight.”

Avarice let out a chortle. “Why, are you grounded?”

“No,” Spike growled back. “Twilight saw how tired I am after I finished putting away her notes, so she told me to go to bed early tonight.”

Avarice cocked an eyebrow at him. “So she made your bedtime six in the evening...”

“No! I’m in bed right now because I’ve barely gotten any sleep recently, tsk tsk. But she said I have to be in bed by eight, while she’s going to be up late tonight making sure everything is in order for Pinkie tomorrow. And she’s probably going to check on me to make sure I’m at least trying to sleep, so she’ll probably notice if I’m not in bed anymore.”

Avarice just waved a hand. “Pfft. That won’t be a problem.”

“Why, are you going to stuff extra pillows under my blankets?” Spike sarcastically replied.

Avarice’s smirk never faltered. “Nope. Won’t need to. In fact, Twilight will be out cold long before you’ll ever be.”

Spike glared back. “We have a deal.”

“I know, and I’m still honoring it. Trust me.”

“I don’t trust you,” Spike spat in return. “Everything is just a game to you anyway, so I wouldn’t put it past you to be playing word games with me.”

Avarice chuckled. “You have caught on...”

Avarice turned and began to walk away, but Spike threw off his covers and stomped after him.

“I don’t have to go with you. I only agreed to tag along to keep you from hurting anypony. If you’re just going to harm somepony anyway, then there’s no point in me being there.”

“Yeah, there is.”

“And what’s the difference if I go or not?”

”The difference between hurt and hospitalized.”

Spike’s scowl grew ever deeper. “Fine then, we’ll play it your way. I’m not going with you tonight unless you tell me exactly what you intend to do to keep Twilight out of it.”

Avarice just looked at Spike for a moment, then responded with that cocksure grin that never failed to agitate him. “Cagey... alright, fine.”

At that, Avarice turned around, walked back to Spike, got down on one knee and looked straight at him, eyes unblinking. “Twilight will not be a problem tonight.”

Spike’s scrutinizing leer remained vigilant. “Why not?”

“Because she’ll be out cold for the night from the sedatives I’ll have put in her food.”

Spike jerked back, blinking in surprise.

Avarice was grinning now. “And after I tuck her in again, we’ll have the whole night to ourselves. Hey, maybe we’ll have some time for a theft after all!”

Spike was practically burning with anger. “We had a deal!”

“I know. Dragon of my word, and all that.”

“I keep your secrets, you don’t hurt my friends!” Spike hissed, jamming a finger into his palm. “You said not a claw! You gave your word that you wouldn’t hurt them! That includes lacing their food with potentially harmful things!”

“Oh, tosh,” Avarice replied with another wave of the the hand. “She’s been unknowingly ingesting them for almost a week now, and she’s still fine.”

Spike’s mouth fell open.

“In fact, they’re the same pills that she’s been giving to Pink—actually, no wait...” Avarice tapped his chin. “No, she just thinks she’s been giving them to Pinkie. Yeah, I replaced all her dream-repressing sedatives with visually identical placebos. Gotta make sure the psychopath has plenty to keep Twilight busy with to prevent her from tempting fate, don’t we? Especially when fate comes in the form of a little dragon with secrets that he’s just been dying to share.”

“WE HAD A DEAL!” Spike yelled.

“Pinkie’s severe anxiety and distress are the result of self-inflicted damage to her own abnormal psyche, and are in no way the result of my actions, either direct or indirect. Her subconscious, her problem. Our deal still stands,” Avarice touted.

Flames like boiling spittle dripped from in between Spike’s bared teeth.

“Yeah, try to light the inflammable dragon on fire while we’re in a library made from a tree,” Avarice remarked. “You know, if anything, I’ve been doing the two of you a favor. For one, I’ve been making sure Twilight gets her rest every night. Not getting enough sleep isn’t healthy, you know...”

Most of Spike’s view of Avarice was obstructed by his furrowed brow.

“And for another, I’m making sure she never gets the chance to use Dreamscape on you. She’s so inclined to using it on all her friends, so what’s keeping her from using it on her favorite, number one little slave whenever she wants?”

Spike was glowering with such intensity that it was starting to make his face hurt. “Twilight would never invade my dreams like that. Not without my permission.”

Avarice just stared at Spike for a few silent moments, his expression somewhat blank. Then an amused snort escaped his nostrils, then several more, then he burst out laughing. He turned, and kept laughing as he opened the window, left the bedroom, and disappeared from sight.

Spike still remained in place, now glaring at the closed window. He relaxed his leer only just, then whipped around and stomped back to bed, yanking the blanket back over him as he lay down> He was still fuming from the scorn and contempt that was ringing sour in his ears.

He’s full of it, Spike thought to himself. Twilight would never do that. She would—

A memory bolted from the stormclouds in his head. A charred corpse. Lifeless eyes. Despar. It struck him with searing pain, and he tried to bury it back into the shadows, but a realization boomed like thunder in its wake.

Things haven’t been the same between us ever since then…

He banished that thought back to the darkness of repression just as quickly.

No, he’s just trying to mess with my head. We both just suffered really bad dreams on the same night. Separate bad dreams. She would never use that spell on me without telling me. She would never… not Twilight…

- - - - - -

Steel Shield, a hefty, blue-coated earth pony stallion and Ponyville Chief of Police, sat behind the desk in his still office with one foreleg resting on the surface and the other supporting his face, sculpting him as a statue of stress.

The sun had fallen long ago, arresting Equestria in shadow. Now he just sat and stared at the piles of paperwork before him: copies of case files that had to be rewritten after just about everything except for one particular piece of trace evidence had been either lost or destroyed last night. Ponies were contacted for second interviews, stories were retold, and scabs were ripped open.

His eyes had adjusted to the harsh light of his desk lamp long ago, his only company besides the stacks of case files, the sentinels of metal cabinets along the walls, the empty chairs in front of his desk, and the incessant tick of every single second that passed on the clock. He wasn’t just alone, he felt empty, and the siren song of the two-liter bottle of whiskey some jack-off kept leaving in the mess hall refrigerator to yank his chain wasn’t helping.

Steel glanced up at the grating clock: the time was ten fifty-seven. He shifted uneasily in his seat. He’d sent an officer with their trace evidence to an advanced forensics lab in Manehatten in an attempt to finally get an identification on a prime suspect. Her train should have gotten back at ten thirty though, and the station wasn’t that far away.

His gut twisted at the idea that the Celestia-damned thief might have gotten to her again. His mind mapped the streets, attempting to estimate how long it would take to trot to his office from the train station. A memory barged to the forefront of his thoughts like a wrecking ball through the wall.

The faint smell of wood soaked with gritty oil wafted through the air. The steam engine hissed in anticipation, yearning for the approaching moment when it would get to gallop away. The sun hung bright on this pleasant summer day, one that had no right to be so cheerful while the mare with the pastel pink coat and spring green mane before him looked at him with an agonizing frown and tears falling from her gorgeous emerald eyes…

Steel pushed the thought aside, exhaling heavily as the engorging sense of emptiness swept back in and the sinister whispers from his old friend Jack began tickling his ears again.

A knock on the office door interrupted the solitary silence. Steel jerked his head up immediately, eyes widened and ears alert.

“Come in.” Steel’s hasty reply betrayed his urgency.

The door swung open for a uniformed unicorn mare with a deep red coat and steely gray mane. She trotted inside and shut the door behind her with a hind leg, the movement sending small ripples through her toned flanks adorned with a red jousting spear imposed over a black and white circle.

“Crimson Lance,” Steel greeted her, straightening his posture and gesturing for the mare to take a seat. “How are you holding up?”

“Chief Shield,” Crimson replied, snapping a quick salute before pulling back a chair and sitting down at the front of the desk. “I’ve got a slight headache, and the back of my head still hurts, but I’ll be okay. Never mind that, though. How are you?”

“Fine,” Steel forced out.

Crimson nodded, then her eyes began to flicker away. “How, um… how’s your wife?”

Steel’s body tensed up as the pendulous wrecking ball swung back around.

“I’m sorry, Steel… I’m so sorry,” the pink mare whispered as she held on him the station platform, her tears dripping onto his cobalt blue coat, “but we have to leave for now.”

The whistle on the steam engine bellowed, shrill and piercing, making him wince. The mare pulled him in close one last time before reluctantly letting him go. A protective forehoof instinctively found its way to the contours of her distended abdomen.

“You know where we’ll be and how to get a hold of us,” she choked out. “We’ll come back when it’s safe, I promise.” Then she leaned back in to give him a pained farewell kiss.

“I love you, Steel.” she whispered.

“I love you too, Daisy,” he replied with a slight quiver as he fought to keep his voice controlled. “Both of you.”

“She’s safe now,” he replied, his words blunt. “Tell me you brought some good news with you back from Manehattan.”

Crimson’s eyebrows arched upward and she looked away nervously. “About that...”

Steel’s shoulders fell, like weights had been chained to them. “Don’t tell me...”

“Well, I’ve got good news, and bad news,” Crimson said as she withdrew a manilla folder from her saddlebag. “Before I left, did you get a chance to read the files on the evidence?”

“No. Refresh my memory,” Steel muttered.

“Well, it was our collection of foreign mana residue—leftover energy on objects that have been influenced by magic— taken from each scene,” Crimson explained. “It’s what first clued us in that our suspect is almost certainly a unicorn.”

Steel nodded. “Yeah, stuff’s supposed to be as good as a hoofprint if it matches somepony in the database… or it’s supposed to be. We couldn’t make an ID off of it. One of those lab coats find something we didn’t?”

“Not at first. They were having the same problem we were. The energy signatures in our samples were too complex to get an identification. But then one of the colts got the bright idea to take a sample from each separate scene and combine them to get a bigger readout. And that’s the good news: we got a match.”

Steel leaned forward, eyes wild with anticipation, straining for Crimson to offer something to unleash him. Just a name, that was all he needed: a positive identification, and then he and his team would be dragging that Tartarus-spawned thief into their darkest interrogation room within fifteen minutes, preferably after they’d turned the thief's door to splinters and ripped them out of their bed.

“Who is it?”

Crimson sighed in dismay, and reached into her saddle bag again.

“I’m afraid that’s the bad news, Sir,” she said as she withdrew a scroll. “Here’s the list of everypony that we got a match to.”

Crimson undid the seal on the scroll. Its bottom half rolled across the desk and onto the floor even while Crimson still firmly held the other end.

The emptiness in Chief Steel’s heart had moved to his head. His gaze darted between on end of the paper in Crimson’s magic and the other on the floor next to him before looking back at his subordinate with a glare.

“This supposed to be some kind of joke?” he brusquely inquired.

Crimson shook her head “No, sir. That’s what they first thought, but then we ran the test three more times. Each result was exactly the same.” She leaned back in her chair with a humph. “Accused me of trying to play some senseless joke on them.”

“Was the evidence tampered with?”

“No, sir,” Crimson repeated. “The seal on each container was perfectly intact.”

Steel’s bewildered gaze feel back down to the scroll, eying the wall of ink that had collapsed on top of him. One name in particular caught his attention.

“Dominus Cob? The fugitive?” Steel proclaimed, then did a double take at the name underneath it. “Mal Cob?! But… she’s dead!”

“Yeah,” Crimson muttered, “and she’s not the only one on that list with six feet of earth for an alibi. That’s not even the worst part, though.”

Crimson produced another stack of papers from her saddle bag and presented it to the chief. “We got numerous readings for signatures we couldn’t identify because some of them predate the database’s creation by years, others by decades. There are a few that appear to be from unicorns who died centuries ago. There’s even a notable amount of pegasus magic mixed up in there.”

Steel glossed over the complicated charts and graphs, his mind swimming in congealed discombobulation.

“What’s this?” Steel asked, pointing to two particular pieces of information on one of the sheets.

Crimson huffed in disarray. “Oh yeah, those… That really big one is from a unicorn that isn’t in the system but who wields fearsome amounts of power, and the one that pretty much underscores every single signature on there is something none of us could place. But based on its complexity, one of the coats hypothesized it came from—get this—an alicorn.”

Crimson looked at her superior with concern, contemplating asking permission to leave and go collect some paper towels least her boss’s brain start dribbling out of his open mouth. She sighed, and started flipping through the novella of documentations.

“And finally, one last thing to dump us into crapper creek without a boat, there’s this,” Crimson said, tapping the last sheet with her a hoof. “Just… this.”

Steel looked at the last page. It was a summary of the mana residue, their last hope of getting any sort of direction to finding out who the thief was. Displayed clearly in two boxes were the words:

SPECIES: N/A

RACE: N/A

“What?” The word stupidly tumbled out of Chief Shield’s gaping mouth, leaving an aftertaste of gray matter.

“Yep,” Crimson remarked, perturbed. “All that crap we got is saturated with magic, and the stupid tests can’t even tell what the thing using all that power even is.”

Silence befell the office like the night’s ubiquitous darkness, opening the stage to the ceaseless, wracking ticking gently cutting through the noiseless air.

Crimson looked at Steel, absentmindedly pouring over the almanac of ill reports with a glossy, distant, forlorn look in his eyes. He reminded her of a lonely drunk sitting in the shadiest corner of a tavern, surrounded by empty glasses, empty seats, and accompanied only by an empty wallet.

“Well, we did get at least one new lead,” Crimson mentioned, trying to dissipate the dispondant atmosphere.

“Hm, and what’s that?” Steel asked, spirits only slightly raised.

“Just about everypony on the list of names we were able to match has or had some connection to academia—lots of renowned names in fields of science, magic, zoology, and the like. The majority of them are or were based in Canterlot, and the largest group of identified individuals all tie back to—get this—Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns.”

Steel hummed and pensively tapped his chin. “That is something… always a silver lining, huh?” he grumbled.

“Yeah...” Crimson let her sentence hang as she looked over the chief’s shoulder at the window, then checked the door behind her. “Sir, permission to speak freely?”

Steel eyed Crimson for a second, curious. “Granted...”

Crimson leaned in closer. Her voice grew quiet and her expression became deathly serious. “Sir, I don’t mean to sound like some storm cloud or say something you probably already know, but… I think we’re in way over our heads. Every time we make a move, our guy just keeps pushing back harder until we get crap like last night. And instead of taking everything we had, they leave that one piece that should close the case, like they knew what we’d learn from it. And I’m willing to bet if we go where these leads take us, he’s going to have some wicked curve already set up. We’re just small town cops, chief. We aren’t equipped to deal with somepony like this.”

Steel nodded warily. “Right. This needs to be taken higher up.”

“Unless this guy suddenly grows a conscience and turns himself in, that’s what I was thinking we’d eventually have to do,” Crimson agreed. “So where do you have in mind? Detrot? Fillydelphia? Or do you want me to head back to Manehattan tomorrow?”

“No,” Steel said with a slight growl as he picked his quill back up and procured a new sheet of parchment. “I’m thinking the Royal Guard.”

Crimson let out a low whistle. “That is high up.”

“If our investigation is going to take us to Canterlot, we’re going to end up having to play with the home team sooner or later. Besides, if this thief was somehow able to get a hold of magic from almost every prominent unicorn in the last few centuries, and if that pencil pusher was right and the thief was able to get a hold of alicorn mana, after the Canterlot invasion, no less… this thief isn’t just a criminal: they’re a threat to national security.”

Crimson’s brows arched up over her wide-open eyes as she mouthed some curse word. “That’s deep… and that just makes this thief so darn confusing. I mean, they’ve got access to magic from hundreds of unicorns, potentially one of the princesses, and they’re using it for what? Petty theft? Occasional assault and battery? That’s what really scares me about this guy, chief—the thought that for everything that this thief is capable of, they’re actually holding back.”

Steel didn’t move: he couldn’t. The chain on the wrecking ball had snapped, and the forged wrought iron sphere had fallen on him. The thought that the thief was holding back, that they were capable of so much worse… worse than his patrol getting back to the station early that morning, only to hear Daisy’s panicked, terrified screams…

“I’m sorry.”

Steel twitched, looking back at Crimson after her interruption ripped him from the muskeg of his own dread.

“I’m sorry about last night, Chief. I’m no action hero, but I’m still a cop. I’m supposed to serve and protect. I should have been able to do something, but instead, I wake up in one of the jail cells without even remembering how I got there.” Crimson looked down in shame. “So, I’m sorry about last night. About not being able to do more to prevent it. About you… about your wife...”

Steel’s felt his throat star to go dry, and the urge to get something strong to sooth it had reemerged as he silently cursed the intuition of mares.

“Don’t be. Wasn’t your fault,” he forced out.

Crimson looked back at Steel. The empathy pouring out of her eyes hurt him a lot more than he cared to admit.

“Still doesn’t mean I can’t feel sorry for you.”

Steel froze. That stench of oil-stained wood was beginning to stink up the air again.

Crimson exhaled a little sigh, then got up out of her seat, collecting the sheets of paper she had brought in with her. “Well, I have to finish my report for the day and file this new evidence. Is there anything else you need me to attend to?”

“No, officer, that’ll be all. Dismissed”

Crimson bowed her head. “I’ll check back in with you before I leave,” she said, then turned around, trotted back to the door, and opened it.

“Ms. Lance?”

Crimson looked back over her shoulder. “Yes Sir?”

Steel took a moment before speaking again. “Do you know if that bottle of whiskey is still in the refrigerator?”

“Oh yeah, that.” Crimson hacked in distaste. “Don’t know about now, but it was still in there when I checked this morning. Why, do you want me to throw it out?”

“No, I’ll deal with it. Thanks.”

Crimson walked out the door, then performed an about face one last time. “Steel… I know things look really bleak right now, but don’t worry. In time, we will find the thief.”

Crimson Lance departed, leaving Chief Shield alone in his office again, ensconced in a silence broken only the persistent, perpetual tick-tock, tick-tock. Steel looked back down at his blank paper, then blotted out the clicks with the sound of his quill scratching out the severity of the situation in Ponyville and requisitioning aid. As the ink dried, he took out an envelope and addressed it to none other than the captain of the guard himself.

Steel placed the letter and envelope in his desk, locked the drawer, then got up from his chair, stretched his stiff joints, then started walking towards the door with the intent to wish Crimson good night and Celestial speed before he was to make a visit to the refrigerator in the mess hall.

I’m pouring that blasted whiskey down the toilet, he thought to himself.

Crimson’s knock came from the office door just as Steel got within its radius.

“Yes, Crimson?” Steel asked.

The handle twisted, and the door swung violently open, almost hitting Steel in the face. Steel jumped back and stared wide eyed through the entryway. He knew Officer Lance well, and she was most certainly not the dragon glaring at him.

Steel’s mouth fell open in shock. “What are you—”

Avarice punched Steel right in the throat, killing his voice. The chief stumbled back, wheezing, stunned from the blow. Avarice stepped over the threshold and front-kicked Steel on his forward barrel, sending him crashing into his desk on the other side of the room. Avarice looked back at the door while Steel attempted to get back on his hooves, silently ordering a command to follow with a petulant jerk of the head. Spike then entered, breathing rapid and body trembling.

Avarice held a hand up to his face and forcefully blew a puff of fire into his hand. The flames twisted until they formed a rune, then Avarice pushed the burning glyph into Spike’s face.

“Put that on the door, then lock it,” he ordered.

“B-but—”

“NOW.”

Spike whimpered and grabbed the incendiary symbol to do what he was told. Steel had gotten back on his hooves, and observed the two with tense disconcertion. Avarice looked at Steel, smirked devilishly, and held his arms out in proud proclamation.

“I believe you’ve been looking for me.”

Steel’s eyes ripped wide open. Rage sparked within them, and his shock burned away for fury. Steel growled, unable to speak, and charged at Avarice like a rampaging bull.

Avarice’s lips peeled back in a wicked grin. He twisted and swung an arm at Steel, catching the stallion on his jaw and sending him stumbling off course. Avarice grabbed Steel while he still wasn’t on all his hooves and sunk a knee into the pony’s gut, then slammed him to the ground on his back. Steel’s breathing was coming in ragged, desperate gasps as Avarice loomed over him.

“Good evening, Chief Shield.” Avarice’s toxic words dripped from his mouth with such thickness that they could be drizzled onto pancakes and used to poison somepony. “I’ve scheduled this appointment to arrange a deal wi—”

Steel’s pernicious forehoof flew towards his attacker. Avarice deflected the strike with the backside of his hand, then grabbed Steel’s leg just below the knee with his other hand and twisted his wrists. There was a muffed snap as Steel’s cannon bent into an angle. He writhed on the floor, whinnying in pain. The sounds of his agony were muted by Avarice grabbing him by the muzzle, forcing his jaws shut while Avarice’s palm covered Steel’s mouth.

“Now then,” Avarice spoke with annoyance in his tone, “if you would quit with the horseplay so we can get down to busine—”

Steel’s hind leg bucked out. Avarice dodged it with a side step without taking his hand off Steel’s mouth. Avarice growled at Steel, then brought his other fist down on the pony’s extended ankle. There was another crack, followed by more agonized neighs cut short by Avarice grasping Steel by the throat—not constricting the windpipe, but allowing his claws to puncture the skin.

“My claws can dig gemstones out of bedrock. Ripping your esophagus from your neck and showing it to you wouldn’t even take effort,” Avarice growled. “We soundproofed this room before we came in, and that rune I had my ‘friend’ put on the door will keep anyone else from getting in or out so long as I’m still here.”

Avarice looked to at Spike and smirked. “Thanks for the help, Spike.”

Confusion seeped into the anger and pain in Steel’s eyes. He chanced a glance at Spike, who was busy trying to disappear into the walls.

“Enough about him, though. You and I have a one-sided conversation to discuss.” Avarice leaned closer to Steel’s face, muzzle like an executioners axe. “Now then, you’re going to deliver your requisition to my accomplice here at the Golden Oaks Library instead of the Equestrian Postal Service. He will subsequently provide you with a forged reply from the Guard, stating that your request has been denied, citing disbelief over the validity of your claims, and that the Guard is still too busy waging its unctuous inquisition against every shadow within twenty miles of Canterlot out of paranoia that one of them might be hiding a changeling.”

Steel glared acidic daggers at Avarice in a futile attempt to slay him with his hate. Avarice returned with a leer of his own, pushing Steel further into the ground and emphasizing his threats with even more deadly venom.

“There’s something you should know about me. I’ve lived my entire life in a state of repression, and it’s made me rather volatile. Dragons are revered for having a queen’s ransom worth of treasure in their hoards, and here I am, stuck in this shantytown, reduced to taking the things you ponies treasure. But procuring whatever cherished possessions I can get my claws on is the one time I get to live like a real dragon. It means a lot to me. You take that away, and I might just snap, then stomp from building to building, ferociously incinerating property and fellow pony alike into unidentifiable piles of ash.”

The chief struggled in fury. Avarice forced his claws just a little more through the soft flesh of Steel’s throat, making tiny streams of blood trickle down his neck.

“But I’m not above negotiating. That’s why we came here tonight to make you a deal. You do as I instruct and don’t get any more in the way of what I find valuable, and I’ll show indifference to the two things that you value most.” A malicious smirk appeared on Avarice’s face. “Speaking of which, how is your wife?”

Steel redoubled his vain efforts to break free, whinnying in animosity. Avarice just grinned and laughed.

“You should have seen the look on her face when I dragged her out of bed that night. To Tartarus with incriminating evidence—it was worth it to bring that camera along, because her terrified expression was priceless.” Avarice chuckled deviously. “That’s the one immaterial possession I’ve loved taking more than anything from you grass-munchers—your illusion of safety.”

Steel thrashed around under Avarice’s grasp as much as his wounded state allowed him to. Avarice kicked him in the ribs, forcing the air from his lungs.

“Save the knight in shining armor act for someone who’ll be impressed by it. Because it’s not going to work on me if it didn’t even work for Daisy before she fled town for Orange Country like a scared little foal to go hide in her mother’s house.”

Steel froze, his expression cold and calcified. The chief tried to retain an expression of righteous anger, but Spike knew that Avarice’s words had driven a frigid dagger of fear into his heart. He knew Avarice had caught it too, because his vile smirk became even more toxic.

A brief flash of blinding light burned Spike’s corneas. When the afterimage cleared, he saw Avarice putting away his camera before he turned his full attention back towards the chief.

“What? Did you think I orchestrated what we pulled off last night just because I thought it’d be fun? Okay, that was part of it, but knowing what you know now, do you think a predator species like me goes hunting just to play catch and release, or that I would be content to let Daisy take back her incorporeal security blanket of blissful ignorance after I so gleefully ripped her from it? No, she’s not safe: not at her mother’s, not with her sister in Fillydelphia, not in the Haywaiian timeshare beach house where you two spent your honeymoon, not even at the Sophisticate’s Lodge down in the Aegrus Jungles with her uncle Hammerlock. But you can barter for her safety by agreeing to my terms.”

Steel’s cold expression grew even more spiteful. Avarice growled in response, then pulled Steel’s head up by the muzzle and slammed in back onto the floor..

“I didn’t drag your wife here last night just so we could have this little talk. I wanted you to see, to know that I’m more than capable of just taking your possessions, or your life… I can take your reasons to live. So nod ‘yes’ if you agree, or just lie there like a dead fetus and tell me that you don’t care if I go perform a premature c-section.”

Steel was shaking with hate. His breathing came in ragged, deep inhalations. A tear of frustration fell from his eye.

“Three… two...”

Steel let out a tortured whine, then nodded.

Avarice let out a rumbling, victorious purr. “Good. Pleasure doing business with you. Now to tie up one loose end...” He reared his head back, breathing in the deep, flammable air.

Spike’s heart leapt with fear. He darted forward with an outstretched arm. “No, don’t—!”

He was too late. Avarice looked back down at Steel and enveloped him in a corona of vicious red fire, bathing the room in an angry glow.

Spike stared, feet nailed to the floor. The fire dispersed, and Spike sucked in a shocked breath of air to replace the one that he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

Steel still lay on the floor, perfectly unharmed, completely still, staring up at the ceiling with cold terror pouring from his wide open eyes. There were no bruises, no puncture marks on his neck nor trails of blood dripping down it. His coat wasted even tussled.

Avarice picked up Steel’s broken foreleg, only now the cannon was no longer bent at an angle that shouldn’t have been there. He tested the bone by prodding Steel’s leg with his fingers, finding no discrepancy and receiving no sharp intakes of breath from the chief. Then Avarice inspected Steel’s hind hoof, bending it experimentally. It functioned just like a hoof without a shattered joint would. Steel just lay there the whole time, completely unmoving, letting the examination proceed uncontested.

“There,” Avarice said with a smirk, “good as new. Can’t have anyone thinking you’ve been coerced with foul play now, can we?” He moved over to the desk and pulled back into it’s original place. “Your paralysis will wear off in a few minutes. Oh, and just to ensure one stipulation of our deal is made abundantly clear, you are in no way to either directly or indirectly disclose any information of me or this occurrence to anyone. Doing otherwise is liable to ignite my primal fury and send me on an omnicidal rampage—one that I guarantee I won’t have subsided from by the time I reach suite 1069 of the New Haven condominium complex on 101 East Park Boulevard, Orange Country.”

The abject dread gushing from Steel’s eyes hadn’t abated by a fraction. Avarice walked back to him, got down on one knee, and patted him on the head.

“Hey, don’t feel so bad. Your wife and that gooey little fetus she may one day push screaming out of her fat ass are now relatively safe thanks to the agreement you made with the predator that you’re powerless to apprehend. I even brought you an old friend to celebrate your menial victory with.”

Avarice unfurled one of his wings and withdrew a bottle of whiskey that had been capped with a shot glass. He smirked devilishly and set the container of old fire water down on Steel’s desk.

“Oh, and congratulations on the foal, by the way. Maybe you’ll get lucky this time and not end up with another stillborn.”

Avarice began walking around the desk towards the window, whistling the chorus melody for ‘Bicycle Built For Two.’ He opened the window, stuck a single leg through, then looked back to the office door.

“Come on, Spike. We’re leaving.”

Spike moved towards the window, slinking along the shadows of the wall with hands twisting as icy bees stung his little legs, sending their freezing venom coursing through his veins.

Avarice ducked through the window, silently slithering back into the shadows of night. Spike followed, slowly hoisting himself up to the window sill. He got one leg through, and found himself at pause, another dry stone forming in his throat. He knew he shouldn’t, but he dared a glance back at the immobilized chief.

Steel Shield was looking right back at him. Loathing still resided in his eyes, but he no longer possessed the strength to express it. In its place was a forlorn misery that Spike knew all too well.

Click. Flash. Another picture for the album.

Avarice grabbed Spike by the arm, pulled him down from his seat on the sill, and yanked the window shut.

- - - - - -

Darkness. A mouth filled with cotton. Her cheek pressed painfully up against an annoyed desk and a sudden stab in her spine.

Officer Crimson Lance let out a tired groan as she pulled her head from off her desk and peeled her last report from her face

Celestia, was I really that tired? she groggily wondered to herself, straightening her wrinkled uniform and rubbing the sleep from her eyes as she glanced at the clock. She gasped.

It was well past midnight.

“Shoot!” Crimson hissed. She hurriedly scribbled a signature onto her reports, shoved them into a folder, slapped them down into the file tray on her desk and bolted out the door. All she could think about for the moment was her boyfriend, sitting in her house with all the lights turned on, wearily pacing as he kept glancing at the clock, wondering with mounting anxiety where his little ‘Rubi’ was.

Oh, Scorpio’s got to be worried sick about me! she thought as she cantered down the hall.

Scorpio, a very punctual and pragmatic stallion, was part of the Royal Guard Reserves. He had insisted on house-sitting for her when she told him about having to leave town for the day on business, and that she wouldn’t get back until late at night. She had argued, but eventually caved to his stubbornness: not out of agreeing to his logic, but out of guilt. She knew he wasn’t as concerned for her belongings as much as he was that she might come home to find somepony else already there, and no matter how strong she aspired to be, that frilly little filly in her heart of hearts couldn’t help but adore his honor-bound sense that he had to always protect her… And there she was, unable to bring herself to tell him about what happened at the station not twenty-four hours ago…

Crimson reached the unassuming door of Chief Shield’s office and quickly rapped upon it.

“Chief Shield? It’s Officer Lance.”

No reply came from the other side.

“Chief Shield?” Crimson inquired, knocking again. “I finished my reports. Just checking in with you before I head home.”

Still nothing.

Crimson frowned. “Chief?… Requesting permission to enter, Sir.”

Nothing.

The fur on the back of her neck had begun to stand on end, and her tail twitched in nervous anticipation as she grasped the handle with her magic. Her heart started to pound. She diverted some focus from her horn to the baton at her side should she come face to face with with a certain uninvited guest who had let themselves in again…

Crimson slowly pushed the door open, holding her breath.

“Chief? Are you alri—” Crimson’s question died in her throat with a gasp.

The glow of the lone desk lamp was beleaguered by shadows, cutting the image of Chief Shield from the cold, noir scene. He sat in his chair with the posture of a soggy rag doll, a lackadaisical hoof wrapped around the half-empty bottle of whiskey.

Steel raised his head to look at Crimson. The low lighting drifted across the contours of his face, accentuating the creases of misery gouged out from it. He met her worried eyes with glassy, bloodshot orbs, the eyes of a pony with a hoof in the grave.

Crimson stood with her mouth open, tears tugging at the corners of her eyes, and a bleeding heart helplessly fluttering on broken wings. She had thought she’d felt sorry for Steel in the dark of the previous night, when she had watched him hold his wife, futilely trying to subside her weeping hysteria. She couldn’t even measure her pity for him now.

- - - - - -

Avarice swept up to the shadowy back door of the Golden Oaks Library in deathly silence before turning to scour the sight of the surrounding township, checking for signs of potential witnesses. There were none others than Spike, who followed with a staggered jog, then slumped up against the shed. His breathing bordered on hyperventilation, and his abdominal muscles were visibly convulsing, contemplating disgorging the meal he hadn’t consumed.

“What’s wrong with you?” Avarice asked.

Air was coming to Spike in irregular gasps, his distant eyes lost in the murky past. Several fevered inhalations passed before he responded.

“I feel sick...” Spike muttered, choking back bile.

“I know, right?” Avarice huffed. “Being around ponies for this long tends to have that effect.”

Spike looked back up at Avarice. His perception returned to the present, bring an indignant fire along with them.

“No, no, NO! I’m sick of all this! I’m sick of not being able to talk to my friends about what’s tearing me up inside, I’m sick of taking part in all these crimes, and most of all, I’m sick of you!”

Spike’s breath was coming in heaves through flared nostrils and bared teeth. “I can’t do this anymore, Avarice! I can’t! I’m done! Screw the stealing, and screw you!”

Spike snapped his head away and began stomping towards the door, fuming in his thoughts.

That’s it. If he can use his weird fire-magic-rune-stuff to soundproof a room, then so can Twilight. Next time I have the chance to tell her everything, I’m taking it.

Spike grabbed the handle to the door, twisted it, and yanked back to rip the door open. The door opened a crack, then slammed shut again. He looked up. Avarice had one hand pressed up against the top of the door, effortlessly keeping it closed.

“Hey, let go!” Spike growled.

Avarice said nothing and just nonchalantly admired the claws on his free hand.

Spike was trembling in rage. “I—”

“Applejack wakes up the earliest out of all your friends, doesn’t she?” Avarice asked, not taking his eyes off his claws. Spike didn’t answer.

“This time of year, she’s up at about five in the morning to meet the sun when it rises over the orchards for another day in apple-bucking season… and don’t try to prevaricate. You know it, so I know it.”

Spike remained quiet, hand still on the door handle as Avarice spoke.

“She’ll trot out into the orchard and breathe in to relish the smell of the apples mingling with the morning dew on the grass. She’ll smile, rear up, and buck the first tree of the day with a satisfying thwack, then something will fall from the tree that breaks both her hind legs. She’ll scream in pain and reel around, and through her tears, she’ll see me.

“She’ll try to fight back as I bear down on her, but her loss of mobility and primary limbs for defense will ensure there’s little she can do to keep me from breaking her other legs, maybe even her back for good measure.

“Her screams will have drawn some attention by now, and her brother will come barreling into the clearing. He’ll make the connection immediately, then his otherwise vacant face will contort with that righteous fury that I utterly despise but do so very much love taking away. Applejack might try to dissuade him, but he’ll charge at me, and I’ll extinguish his hero complex with flames in excess of two thousand degrees. Big Macintosh will be dead before Applejack will even have the chance to plead for his life or choke out her last goodbye, but it won’t stop me from catching his conflagrant corpse, hurling it against one of the trees, then scorching it again when I set the rest of the grove on fire.

“At this point, Fluttershy will have seen the pillars of smoke from her cottage and come flying over here as fast as her atrophied wings can allow her. Applejack will scream out for her to fly away and get help. Maybe she’ll listen, but she won’t get far. Or maybe she’ll become so enraged with her moral indignations that Captain Mama Bear will instead swoop in and try to use her stare on me. It won’t work, either. I’ve prepared for that.”

Avarice blinked his secondary transparent eyelids. Small runes of fire appeared around his irises. He opened them back up again, then continued.

“Either way, Fluttershy will fail. I’ll swat her out of the air, break her legs, then put compound fractures into her wings. She’ll try crying out for the packs of animals that she’s become dependant upon to feel good about herself to come save her. But having to incinerate them all would be more trouble than it’s worth, so I’ll just have to rip out the fractured bones sticking through her bloody feathers and puncture her throat with them.

“And with that, I’ll take my leave. But before I go, I’ll take a moment to look back and admire the sight. Fluttershy with be futilely gasping for air while Applejack will hardly be able to focus on me through the stream of tears pouring from her eyes. Their expressions may be varied, though both of them will have the look of hopeless sorrow that comes with the feeling of weightlessness right before plummeting into the abyss of death. They’ll look up at me, and with their silent eyes, plead to know why their lives were so viciously cut short.

“I’ll just give them that smirk of mine, turn back around, and say, ‘We had a deal. I wouldn’t kill any of you if he promised to never reveal any knowledge that he had about the thief… and Spike just broke his promise.’ I’ll take a picture of them, and then I’ll disappear into the flames.”

Spike’s pupils had contracted to razor slits cut from the iris. His mouth hung open, corners pulled down, and his breathing quivered from the terrified shivers that racked his body. His fist was still clenched tightly around the door handle, knuckles having gone white.

Avarice got closer to the ground, burning Spike with his glare. “Say one word, I dare you. Just one word, and I swear I will make it happen. So unless you want to see which one of the dozens of methods I’ve planned to ultimately end Twilight, you will remain SILENT.”

Avarice reached out and grabbed Spike by the ridges between his shoulder blades, opened the door, and carried him all the way to the bathroom upstairs. He dropped the little dragon into the tub, cranked the hot water to full, then turned to leave, forcefully setting Spike’s marble on the counter as he passed.

Spike stared off into the distance. The jets of scalding water did nothing to invigorate his senses, numb with freezing terror. Several tense moments passed with Spike sitting amidst the burning water and steam, still shivering, until a cold needle of thought entered his mind, making him realize he hadn’t heard the door close.

With dreadful slowness, Spike turned his head to look. Avarice was still at the sink, peering into the mirror above it and thoroughly analyzing his reflection. His eyes would periodically flicker over to Spike, scrutinizing him for a second before returning to the mirror. Avarice eventually turned his head to look dead on at Spike, and he adorned an amused, crooked smirk.

“We have the exact same eyes,” Avarice said, then turned and left the bathroom, shutting the door behind him.

Spike was left unmoving in the sweltering streams of the shower, still shivering cold. His vision blurred and he began to feel dizzy. At that moment he realized he’d been holding his breath, so he began sucking down air in desperate, shallow gasps. His heart raced like it was trying to escape his ribcage. A ringing trill grew in his ears until it became deafening. Feelings of detachment from his own body swept over him as a tidal wave of anxiety crashed down upon his brain, ripping his mind apart at the seams.

Spike clamped his eyes shut, desperate for focus while his cells were being picked to pieces.

“Twilight, I need to tell you something...”

Another tsunami of despair came down upon him, and in its wake brought a vision.

Avarice went downstairs to the kitchen, equipped the sharpest knife they owned, then traveled back upstairs to Twilight’s bedroom. He walked over to her bed, covered her muzzle with one hand, and then sliced her throat open, holding her down as she struggled and rapidly bled out.

He frantically attempted to push the thought out of his mind.

“Twilight, I… I got involved in… in something terrible...”

Another nightmare overtook his perception.

The four of them were sitting at the table for another forgone meal. Twilight took a bite from her food, took a drink from her glass, then keeled over, falling to the floor. Pinkie, Owloysius, and he rushed to her side as she violently convulsed, foam erupting from her mouth. She exhaled a rattling breath of air, and then stopped moving completely.

“There’s a-another me, Twilight. A-an evil version of me n-named… named Avarice...”

Twilight was easing herself into the warm waters of the bathtub with a relaxing sign. Suddenly, fiery runes appeared around the rim of the tub, then bolts of lightning shot out from them. Twilight went stiff as the electricity surged through her, then she fell beneath the surface of the water, and did not reemerge.

“H-he showed up after m-my birthday… h-he used to just be t-trapped in my mind, b-but he got out somehow...”

“Spike, could you get me We Build Our Own Worlds by Dominus Cob?” Twilight asked.

She received the book by getting it violently thrown at her head, making her cry out in pain. Before she could recover from the blow, Avarice pounced upon her, bit down on her neck, and ripped out her throat.

“A-all t-the stealing… a-all the p-ponies getting h-hurt… h-he’s b-behind ev… everything...”

Twilight was leaving the library to go tell her friends that a new villain had appeared in Equestria: one who was personally out to get them. She didn’t even get off the porch before Avarice leapt from the foliage, toppled her over, plunged his claws into her ribcage, and ripped her heart right out of her chest.

“A-and he… h-he’s make… making m-me d-do i-it t-too...”

Twilight’s face was scrunched up in concentration as she used her magic to operate several intricate circles of glowing runes that had inexplicably appeared on the floor. The runes lit up brightly, then disappeared, illuminating the crevices between the floorboards. She pried them open, and gasped at the vast trove of stolen goods hidden within the deep entrenchment.

The door to the kitchen was blasted off its hinges, revealing an enraged Avarice. He snarled and charged at her. Twilight lit her horn to cast a counter-offensive spell, but Avarice cleared the distance and delivered a wicked punch to her face. Twilight’s spell misfired and blasted the nearby shelves. Avarice grabbed her by the horn, and broke it right off of her head.

Twilight screamed ear-splitting shrieks as an explosive discharge of raw mana erupted from the stump. Avarice grabbed her by the head, pushed it down, and plunged her severed horn into the base of her skull. The surges of mana sputtered out, and Twilight went limp in his grasp.

“Please, Twilight… please help me...”

Twilight looked at Spike, visibly shaken by everything he had just told her, but the resolve blooming in her eyes began to strip away his woes like the sunlight banishing the darkness, and she smiled at him.

“Of course, Spike. I’ll help you.”

“No, you’re only going to die.”

The two of them snapped their attention to Avarice, his shadow looming over them like a demonic executioner. Twilight bared her teeth at him and shot a powerful blast of magic from her horn at him. Avarice roared out an inferno that overtook Twilight’s attack and bathed her in flames that did not relent until her agonized screams left his ears.

Parts of the blackened library floor were still burning as Twilight’s charred, nearly unrecognizable corpse fell into his arms. But her eyes were still intact, bearing with them her final expression: a visage of terror, suffering, loss, and failure.

And it was all his fault.

An anguished cry filled the bathroom as Spike pulled his knees to his chest, wrapped his tail around his ankles, buried his face into his hands, and wept bitterly.

No one heard his cries. No one came to help. No one came to pull him close, wipe away his tears, and soothe him with those sweet little lies that everything would be alright.

Spike had no one to turn to. So Spike bitterly wept alone.

- - - - - -

Thick darkness smothered her in its warm embrace. Her limbs felt like lead, and to merely open her eyes was to pry open a portcullis. She wasn’t even sure if she was awake or still asleep at the moment: her slumber was stripping away with such a torpid pace that she found herself in an uncanny extended stay in the purgatory of hypnagogia.

With great effort, Twilight stirred, straining to open her eyes. Her head was half submerged into her fluffy pillows, and her blankets had been pulled up to her neck.

She jerked her head up from the plush cushions, and immediately winced. She held a hoof to her head in a measly effort to relieve the pressure from the weight of the brick in her skull. Her thirsty tongue rolled around in her parched mouth, searching in vain for moisture.

Twilight gingerly rubbed her eyes, vision adjusting to the dark moonlight, ears flicking to rouse her sense of hearing. When some semblance of alertness returned, she saw Spike’s empty bed, and heard the muffled hiss of water flowing through the pipes in the bathroom.

Twilight exhaled a defeated, somber sigh, and collapsed back into the soft sea below her.

I let Spike down, again… AGAIN! How many times do I have to keep dropping the ball?

Twilight let out a tired, frustrated moan. She couldn’t even remember actually getting into bed that night. She had absolutely no intention of doing so. The way Spike had become so quiet and withdrawn over the last few days was a clear indication to her that she needed to start finding solutions to his problem immediately. But shortly after her last session of Dreamscape with her friends and dinner, a sudden wave of inexplicable weariness overtook her, and after that… She couldn’t remember anything after that.

First the death glitch, now thi—okay, this is no death glitch, but now I’ve got to see if a side effect of using Dreamscape this much is narcolepsy. Twilight pulled her blankets back around her, and let out another frustrated sigh. Here I am, letting Spike down on a daily basis, and he goes out of his way to drag me all the way into bed and tuck me in…

A delicate prod at her own cognition revealed that Reason was still fast asleep

I should just leave her be, Twilight thought to herself. I don’t need her telling me things I already know right now.

Twilight felt too weary and drained to use any complicated magic, so she wouldn’t have been able to use Dreamscape even if Spike was in bed. So she just lay there, breathing in the refreshing smell of fabric softener and the stench of her cold, palpable guilt that saturated the silence.

Wait… silence?

With a jolt, Twilight realized the shower had shut off. She lifted her head up again, ears swivelling in the dark. Nothing.

She craned her neck, straining against the silence to hear something. Still nothing.

Twilight held her breath and tried to zone out the sound of her own pulse pumping through her ears, almost desperate to discern any noises.

Then, something. Twilight caught the faint sound of a step, then a gentle scrap of claws against wood. Then another, slightly louder this time. Then another, getting closer to the door.

Twilight forced her head back down into the pillow, pulled the blankets in tight around her, willed her breathing to slow, and shut her eyes. The footsteps were right outside the door now. She stiffened the muscles in her ears, forcing them to remain still.

Several tense seconds passed, then there was a rattle of a twisting handle and a gentle creak of a door opening, then closing. Then silence again. Twilight kept her eyes closed, suddenly finding difficulty in keeping her face placid. She could feel Spike watching her, staring at her. For some reason, it made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.

Scraping claws broke the silence again. Twilight fought to keep her ears from following them as she heard them travel over to Spike’s bed. There was a pause, another tingle of electricity as she sensed eyes upon her once more, then there was a rustle of moving fabric.

Twilight cracked open one of her eyes. She could only see Spike’s silhouette through the darkness. He stood over his bed with a slumped posture, slowly peeling away the sheets on his bed, his back to her. Twilight made her move.

“Spike?”

Her ears twitched towards the sound of a sharp inhalation. Spike’s head jerked up in surprise, and his body tensed up at her query.

“What?”

Twilight was instantly at full alert when she caught the tone in Spike’s voice. She knew he must have known it was there to by the way he tried to hide it halfway through his response, but to her, the thick, strained timbre in his suppressed inflection was unmistakable: he’d been crying. Hard.

“Spike, would you come here, please?” Twilight asked, her tone soft and cordial.

She heard a small gulp before he responded. “Why?”

“I need to talk to you about something,” Twilight said, igniting the candle by her bedside. “Please, it’s important.”

“I’d rather not,” Spike mumbled back: words spoken from behind a wall.

“Spike, please...”

A thick silence followed, hanging in the air. Twilight could hear her own pounding pulse again as she waited for an answer.

Spike exhaled a reluctant sigh. His little form began plodding through the darkness to her. He reached the bed, pulled himself up onto the mattress, and slouched back over again, distant gaze never quite meeting Twilight’s line of sight.

“What do you want?” he muttered, distant. “You’ve got no reason to talk to me unless you want something.”

The gasp Twilight had to restrain upon seeing him in the light almost kept her from hearing Spike’s terse inquiry. One look at him made her completely forget what she had been planning on saying. Limp limbs, subdued posture, a poorly concealed tragedy mask where his face should have been, and those eyes... She forgot for a moment how Avarice had a matching set as she really got a good look at his eyes: bloodshot wells of frustration and anguish looking back at her, but never focusing on her, like he was looking past her into another plane entirely. The mere sight of him was heartbreaking. Part of her wanted to forgo words and just pull him in close and hold him until the terrible sight of his pain was gone.

“I—” Twilight’s throat hitched, reminding her how dry her mouth felt. “I… Spike, I’m sorry.”

Twilight sighed, and hung her head in shame. “I know we haven’t been on the best of terms recently, and that’s entirely my fault. I haven’t been there for you the way I should be, and the fact that I know you well enough to know when you’ve got a serious problem just makes my negligence even worse. I… I don’t know what it is, but I know whatever is troubling you is causing you severe emotional pain, and it breaks my heart to see you hurting so badly.

“I promise, from here on out, I’m going to focus more on your wellbeing. And as soon as we’ve finished taking care of Pinkie, I’ll devote my full attention to making sure you can be happy again. I care about you, Spike, and I can’t bear to see you suffering like this.”

Spike dry-swallowed again and looked away. His breath shuddered, and his tail curled into his hand, where he began to fidget with the spade at the end. When he spoke again, there was an anxious quiver in his voice.

“In that case… I want to ask you something… something I’ve been meaning to ask you for a while now...”

Twilight sucked in a little gasp. Her heart skipped a beat and her eyes grew wide in anticipation.

“Yes, Spike? What is it?” Twilight asked as she leaned in closer, her heart racing. Is he finally going to ask me to help him fight Avarice?

The muscles in Spike’s neck twitched again, holding back something that was fighting to get out.

“I… I’ve been meaning to… there’s… I...” he stammered. Spike clenched his eyelids shut as he looked away and his entire body tensed up. Several agonizing seconds passed as he held his conflicted pose, then his body relaxed as he exhaled a pained sigh.

Twilights heart sank. He’s not going to ask…

Spike opened his eyes, whipped his head back around to Twilight, and blurted: “How did you escape from limbo?”

Twilight reeled back in surprise from the sudden exclamation. The sudden jolt to her pulse subsided, then fell again when the question wasn’t the one she wanted to hear.

“Oh… that. Well, I—wait…” Another red flag sprung up, and Twilight peered at Spike quizzically. “Spike, how did you know about limbo?”

Spike’s throat constricted as he shied away. He hugged his tail to his chest, just like he always did when he’d been caught doing something wrong, and blinked once. “Okay, don’t get mad, but… I looked through your notes today before I locked them back up like you told me, because I wanted to know if that dream spell has something to do with how you’ve been acting around me. That’s when I found this one entry… about an empty world, with nothing but loneliness to keep you company...”

Twilight froze. The warm concern in Spike’s words was opening up the cracks in her heart.

“Is that why you’ve been so nervous and irritable around me lately?” Spike asked.

Twilight sniffed involuntarily. Tears from old wounds had begun to sting her eyes and her throat was almost too dry to answer.

“Y-yes Spike, it is.”

“So how did you manage to escape?” Spike asked again, leaning in closer.

Twilight looked down and sighed. “To be honest, I don’t really know. Based on what I know about Dreamscape and my documentation of its effects, it’s a miracle I ever woke up at all.”

“So what am I supposed to do if you ever got trapped there again?” Spike inquired, his eyes finally focusing on her. “How do I get you out?”

Twilight smiled warmly back at him. Even with as terrible a burden as his, he’s still more concerned with helping everypony else with their problems. Her smile faltered. Or maybe he’s just using somepony else’s problems to avoid confronting his own…

She pushed that thought from her mind when she realized Spike was still looking at her, waiting for an answer. “Oh, Spike… you don’t need to worry about that. I fixed Dreamscape, so that can’t ever happen again.”

“Yeah, but what if it does?” Spike insisted. “I need to know what to do… I can’t lose you again, Twi.”

Twilight couldn’t help but smile back at him. “Well, if I had to make my best guess… to wake somepony from limbo without trying from the real world and hoping for a miracle would probably be to travel all the way down to a fourth-level dream, and use the connections that the spell employs to tie everypony’s mind to the same dream. Then it’s just a matter of using timed kicks to wake everypony up normally.”

“Sounds really tricky,” Spike replied. “But I’d do whatever it takes to save you.”

The cracks that opened in Twilight’s heart sealed back up again when it melted. “Oh, Spike...” Twilight reached out, pulling Spike into a hug. “You really are a wonderful friend.”

Spike hung limp in Twilight’s forelegs for a moment, as if Twilight’s affections had caught him off guard. That moment then passed, and he returned the embrace in full, wrapping his short, little arms around Twilight’s barrel and patting her on the back.

Twilight craned her neck down. nuzzling the dragon in her grasp. “I love you, Spike.”

“Yeah,” he replied, “I know you do.”

Twilight giggled at his quip, then a huge yawn escaped her mouth. Spike pulled away from their embrace to inspect her.

“Tired?” he asked.

“Yeah, unfortunately,” she answered, rubbing her pastern against her tired eyes again as she plopped back down onto the mattress. “Who’d have thought all this dreaming would be so tiring?”

“Well, try get some sleep,” Spike said as he tucked her back in. “You’re going to need it for tomorrow.”

“I know. What about you? Will you be able to get enough sleep tonight?” Twilight asked.

“Yeah, I should now,” he answered as he snuffed out the candle light, then hopped off her bed and began walking towards his own.

“Goodnight, Spike. I love you.” Twilight sincerely bid.

“Right back at ya,” he replied.

Twilight smiled at the much more placid tone in Spike’s voice. She closed her eyes, allowing sleep to overtake her again as contentment lay down with her. Despite her weariness, her smile grew, taking solace from knowing that tomorrow, things were finally going to start looking up from here.

Author's Notes:

So as it stands, the release of this chapter is actually the shortest time in between chapters since this story was first posted, where I was posting what three chapters we had written within days of each other... don't think to much of this tidbit though, since this was another one of those chapters where what we had been writing and the time between chapters released was getting so long that we decided to split them up again. Over half of this was already written by the time 'The Joker and The Thief' was posted, and even though I keep telling myself that I should strive to write at least a thousand words a day, finishing up those last nine thousand words still took about two months.

We are so terrible at this.

Actually, truth be told, this is the first chapter since chapter three that was written exclusively by me, and all Brian did was proof-read. Working on our next video review as something to with my inability to have gotten this out faster, but truth be told, we've just been getting really lazy about finishing our pony projects... Brian more so than me, but still.

Oh, yeah, and if 'Waiting For a Train on Mobil Avenue' is what made this story earn its 'sad' tag, than this is the one that brands it with the 'dark' tag. Probably should have mentioned that at the beginning...

Oh well...

It was quite satisfying to hear our editor, PresentPerfect, constantly gasping and talking with a muffled voice from having his hands over his face from some of the things we reveal and all nefarious deeds that Avarice commits during the second half. He was also laughing pretty hard at some of the humor in the fight scene in the beginning: Fluttershy's "I can't eat sunflower seeds" line in particular had him howling.

In fact, he actually said this is his favorite chapter thus far, which considering chapter four, totally threw us for a loop.

Unfortunately, it's probably going to be a really long time until the next chapter, since I'm going to start focusing more on finishing our next video review, and we've got something in mind for chapter eleven... something that we've never done before, but have been talking about doing for about a year and a half now. And should everything go according to plan, it's going to blow you away...

Next time, on DECEPTION: Nopony Think About Draconequuses

Now onto the next phase of our arduous trudge through time, only to receive no attention for our efforts...

- Christian 'Vermillion' Harisay

Chapter Eleven - Nopony Think About Draconequui

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Spike sat by himself on the front porch of the library, slouching with his arms crossed on his knees. He’d been staring at the ground until he’d memorized the texture of the walkway, and kept staring until it all became a blur.

Much like what he felt his life had become.

He had woken up that morning expecting to be immobilized by sorrow, only to find that his misery hadn’t made him feel like curling up into a ball and weeping like it used to. It was just ‘there.’ He’d gotten used to it by now. The revelation hurt, but it was just the dull ache of a wound that had been ground numb, and the feeling persisted as he trudged through his daily routine: make breakfast, plod through his chores, conceal his resentment towards Pinkie as she moped around without any attempt to contain her sullen disposition, then smolder with envy as Twilight coddled and cooed her after her latest bout of self-loathing with the same old ‘you’re not a bad pony, you’re my friend, and I care about you because you’re worth something’ spiel he’d heard her give dozens of times by now, and finally go find someplace secluded to sulk when the rest of Twilight’s circle of friends arrived to regurgitate the same platitudes all over again.

So while Twilight, Fluttershy, Pinkie, and Applejack gave each other makeovers whilst trying to convince Rainbow to also slather her face in mud, he sat alone on the front porch in the late afternoon, brooding over the coming night and its own routine. Avarice would drag him through the sewers and into some poor, unsuspecting pony’s house, whom Avarice might or might not incapacitate with excessive force, depending on his mood. They’d argue, Avarice would shut him down and insult him some more, then dump him in the shower to do it all over again the next night.

Mug, feud, cry, repeat, Spike dourly thought.

It was all a blur now. Jealousy by day, guilt by night, and he was having a hard time making distinctions between them anymore. He couldn’t even remember how he had gotten in bed the previous evening. He knew he had bitterly wept in the shower until he was too exhausted to cry, and then the next thing he was fully aware of was waking up in bed with his all-too familiar burdens. He felt like there was something in his memory about Twilight, but he couldn’t recall anything specific, or even if anything had gone on between him and his lifelong friend.

A scowl began to form on Spike’s face as his thoughts turned even darker. If anything did happen, it was probably just Twilight giving me the same shallow, overly-polite concerns again.

His ear frills twitched at the sound of hastily approaching hooves coming up the walkway. Spike looked up to see Rarity. Her saddlebags were slightly lopsided and her mane still had the frazzle of a comb hastily drawn through her hair before she trotted out the front door.

“Good afternoon, Spike,” Rarity greeted him as she slowed to a stop in front of Spike, panting slightly. “I hope I’m not too late, am I?”

“Hi, Rarity,” Spike replied, depleted of the usual gusto that came from being in Rarity’s presence. “Kind of. The others have been here for almost an hour now.”

“Oh, well… fashionably late, then?” Rarity answered as she tried to put on a coy, partial smile. “I apologize for my tardiness—work, special projects, magnum opus, lack of sleep—you know, the usual.”

“Yeah, I know,” Spike muttered.

Rarity straightened her posture, standing slightly taller. “But on the bright side, I have splendid news: I finally finished!” She smiled triumphantly. “So save for my scheduled appointment with Fancy Pants tomorrow in Canterlot, I’ve no other work-related matters that need my immediate attention.”

For some reason, an twinge of inexplicable loathing came over Spike when Rarity brought up her appointment, but it passed as quickly as it came.

“That’s great, Rarity,” he said, his enthusiasm all but absent.

“It is, isn’t it?” Rarity replied. “I cannot recall having ever worked so hard on such a strenuous endeavor, but it was more than worth it for the end result. I don’t want to spoil the details, but the final products are just absolutely gorgeous!”

“Yeah,” Spike absentmindedly replied. “I know... they’re beautiful.”

“You know?” Rarity echoed. “I’ve been keeping those designs more closely guarded than I have my diary… You haven’t been sneaking into my shop to steal a peek at them, have you?” Rarity asked with an expression of equal parts sly wit and scrutinization.

“What?! No! I mean… I…” Spike sputtered, blinking rapidly. “I mean I know they’re sure to be beautiful! ‘Cause, you know, you worked so hard on them… and you always make such beautiful things when you put your heart into it.”

Spike’s panic abated somewhat as he tried to force the memory of Avarice admiring the fine textures of the most beautiful dress he’d ever seen out of his head.

“I’m sure they’re breath-taking, Rarity. And I hope I’ll get to see you wearing them. Whatever you’ve made, I’m sure it’d look even more amazing on you.”

“Aw… thank you, Spike,” Rarity said, clearly pleased. “You always have the nicest compliments.” She leaned in closer with a coquettish little smirk. “Play your cards right, and you might just get your wish.”

A smile began to tug at the corner of Spike’s mouth.

“Now then, shall we go inside?” Rarity asked. “I think it prudent not to delay tonight’s mission with Pinkie any longer.”

And then Spike’s smile vanished.

“Oh, yeah… that.” Spike mumbled as he got to his feet, looking back at the door as he scratched the bandage around his head nervously. “You’re really doing that tonight, aren’t you?”

“I certainly hope so. Poor Pinkie has suffered from her nightmares for long enough now, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, but...” Spike momentarily looked back at the front door. “It’s something else.”

Rarity tilted her head. “What?”

Spike closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Rarity… may I tell you something?”

Rarity responded with a friendly little smile. “Of course. What’s on your mind?”

At the gentle behest of Rarity’s query, everything that Spike wanted to say flooded into his mind.

You cruel, fickle mistress, do you have any idea what you’re doing to my heart?!

Hey, if you get the chance, think you could tell Twilight something for me?

I’m sorry, Rarity… I’m so, so sorry…

I want you…

See, there’s this dragon named Avarice…

I’m sorry, Rarity! Please forgive me!

He’s my evil half, used to just be stuck in my head, but he got out somehow…

Oh, so now that you have the time, you feel like talking to me?

I need you...

He’s behind all the thefts, forced me to be his accomplice, and he’ll kill you all if I talk.

Some friend you are.

PLEASE say that you need me, too…

“Spike?”

The little dragon shook his head and blurted the first alternative that came to mind.

“Be careful.”

Rarity craned her neck back in confusion. “Of… what?”

Spike gulped. “The dreams you’re going into. I’ve never been in them myself, but I understand they can be pretty dangerous. So… just be careful.”

Rarity peered back at him quizzically. “Okay… is that it? You know, we’ve been training for this night for over the past week. I think we’ll be okay.”

Spike shook his head. “No, Rarity, it’s… alright, you really want to know?” He looked Rarity squarely in the eye. “I don’t like that spell, and I don’t think you should let Twilight use it on you, but I know I can’t convince you to opt out because you want to help Pinkie, but… This whole thing started after Twilight went into a shared dream with Pinkie. That’s not just it, though. Twilight hasn’t been the same ever since she started using that spell, either, especially with me. Things were really tense between us for a while, but then after this happened,” Spike pointed to his bandages for emphasis, “she’s been way nicer… almost too nice, but she’s still really distant, like she’s afraid of me. And she’s gotten really obsessed with her research of that spell, she’s passing out from exhaustion every night, she’s burning through pain-killers, and... sometimes I can even hear her talking to herself.”

Rarity cocked an eyebrow at him. “What? You never engage in the art of soliloquy?”

“In what?”

“Talking to yourself.”

“Yeah, but that’s for stuff like ‘Hey, I wonder if I need to go grocery shopping.’ I’m just talking to myself. But with Twilight… I don’t know! It’s like she’s talking to somepony else when there’s nopony else with her!

“Something bad happened to Pinkie, something bad has been going on with Twilight, and I’m worried to death that something bad might happen to you, too. And I’ll be the one tonight who has to wake you all up, so if something goes wrong, I won’t know until it’s too late.”

Spike sniffed, his words becoming strained. “If something bad ever happened to you, and I was there but powerless to stop it, I… I...”

Spike slumped his shoulders, letting his head fall as he closed his eyes, overcome with anxiety.

“I don’t think I’d ever be able to forgive myself.”

Rarity just stared in silence at Spike for a few moments. She put a hoof to her chest.

“Oh, Spike,” she gently replied as she put a hoof on his shoulder, “you truly are a very noble little dragon. You know that, right?”

Spike chanced a glance back up at Rarity, who looked right back at him.

“I am afraid you’re correct about one thing. Come Tartarus or turmoil, I’m going into the dream with the girls to free Pinkie of whatever it is that’s been tormenting her...”

Spike looked away in dejection.

“But if it means anything to you, I promise I’ll be extra careful tonight, just for you.”

Spike took in a deep breath and his muscles relaxed slightly, but he still didn’t look back up at her. Rarity put a hoof under his chin, and gently lifted his head back up as she craned her neck down to meet him at eye level. Spike looked away, but Rarity continued regardless.

“And I know this may seem a bit passé, but I sincerely apologize for my dreadful behavior towards you as of late. I may have been under a terrible amount of stress, but that’s no excuse to mistreat a friend the way I have.”

Spike still wasn’t looking at her.

“I have a proposal for you, Spike. As I said earlier, I’ll have plenty of free time after this business deal is finalized, so how would you like it if I spent some of that time with you?”

Spike’s full attention returned to Rarity in an instant.

“I’ll certainly have the bits to spare, so a deluxe day at the spa for us is certainly in order. Celestia knows I have a lot of built-up tension I need to release. Then perhaps we could share a meal together, or visit this special place you know of in the meadow, where it will be just the two of us.” Rarity moved in a little closer, her voice becoming soft and sincere. “Do you think you’d like that?”

Spike responded with the first smile he’d worn in over a week. “I’d love it.”

Rarity returned with a warm smile of her own. “I thought you might.”

Then she reached out and ruffled his crest, giggling at the fiery blush that burned his face. Rarity began to trot past him, only to look back at him as she came to his side.

“Well then, shall we go join the others?” Rarity asked, motioning her head towards the door.

“Wha… oh, you go on ahead. I’ll be in after a minute,” Spike responded with a dreamy expression.

Rarity nodded. “Very well. I’ll see you inside,” she said, then turned, trotted up to the door, and gave it a hearty knock.

“Come in!” came an earnest and instantaneous reply, and Rarity entered the library.

- - - - - -

“There you are!” Twilight stated with an exasperated albeit relieved tone. “I was beginning to worry something might have happened to you.”

“A thousand apologies for my late arrival,” Rarity said as she hung her saddlebags on the nearby coat rack, then turned to face her friends. “Though I hope I haven’t—”

Rarity gasped at the sight of them. The five were seated amongst a pile of throw pillows and cushions, and all of her friends save for Rainbow Dash had a thick coat of mud applied to their faces. Fluttershy and a somber Pinkie already had cucumber sliced placed over their eyes.

“You… started the make-overs without me?!”

“Well, if ya’ hadn’t taken so darn long to get here, that wouldn’t have been a problem!” Applejack retorted.

“But we’re glad you’re here now,” Twilight interjected. “Now do you think you could help convince Rainbow to join us?”

“It’s really not so bad, Rainbow,” Fluttershy said.

“Yeah it is!” Rainbow protested. “Why are we even bothering with this?”

“Pinkie wanted this slumber party, Rainbow,” Twilight stated. “Besides, think of it as a chance to meditate before tonight’s battles.”

“But that’s just it! Why can’t we just jump into a dream right now and save all the frilly slumber party stuff for after we kick Discord’s butt out of Pinkie’s mind?” Rainbow shot back.

“Because this fight is going to be a mental one, Rainbow. Remember?” Twilight reminded her. “You’re going to need to focus, and to do that, you need to relax first.”

“So quit being a big baby and slap some darn mud on your face!” Applejack interjected.

Rainbow scowled, getting right up into Applejack’s face where the two glowered at each other, but Rarity stepped forward before the situation could deteriorate further.

“Girls, please. This is no way to behave before undertaking a concerted effort. Besides, there are more graceful ways to achieve compliance from somepony.”

Rainbow scoffed. “Really? You, the queen of makeup, hair-curlers and frilly-filly stuff, think you can get me of all ponies to cake my face in make-up mud?”

Rarity simply put on a clever smile, took the bowl of green mud up in her magic, and began applying it to her face. “I could if I challenged you to a dare as to who could apply the most of this to their visage.”

Rainbow fell silent, her expression stiff. Rarity just hummed sweetly to herself as she finished applying a single layer of her mask.

“Come now, darling… surely you don’t wish to concede a challenge to Queen Frilly-Filly, reigning sovereign over the proud nation of Fabulous, do you?”

Rainbow flew up to Rarity, yanked the basin of silt out of her telekinetic grasp, and dunked her head straight into it, twisting her neck back and forth like she was bobbing for apples. When Rainbow did lift her head back up, her smug grin of triumph was clear even from underneath the thick globs of mud dripping down her face.

“Your turn, your highness,” Rainbow challenged.

Rarity just put on a little smirk. “Oh dear, it looks as though you’ve won.”

Rainbow’s eyes went wide, then she put her scowl back on as she landed on the ground several paces away and crossed her forelegs. Rarity’s devilish smile grew even more devious.

“Now then, would you care to accept my challenge as to who can style their mane with more glamour?”

“Don’t press your luck, sister,” Rainbow grumbled, scrunching up her face

Rarity just chuckled as she joined the rest of her friends. “Now then, may I get a pair of cucumber slices? And Applejack, could you please not eat them all?”

“Hey, can ya’ blame me?” Applejack asked through stuffed cheeks. “They’re good!”

Applejack nudged Rainbow with the bowl of fruit slices. The pegasus reluctantly took one, tossed it in her mouth, and began chewing, her hard expression becoming more content.

“Don’t worry, Rarity, we have more than enough. I had Spike buy plenty since I knew all of us would be over for the night.” Twilight said, then put a hoof to her lower jaw and scratched it pensively. “Speaking of Spike, did you run into him? He went outside a while ago, but he hasn’t come back in.”

“Hm? Oh, yes, he’s still outside. We talked a little, and he said he’d be in momentarily.” Rarity answered as she sat down next to the morose Pinkie.

“Oh? What did you talk about?” Twilight asked.

“Oh, we just caught up, is all,” Rarity said, waving a hoof before turning her attention to Pinkie. “And how are you holding up, dear?”

Pinkie said nothing, just drew in a long breath of air and released it as a heavy, burdened exhalation.

Rarity wrapped a comforting foreleg around Pinkie’s shoulders. “You need not despair any longer, darling. Soon, we shall defeat that which ails you, and your nightmares shall be vanquished. Isn’t that something worth smiling about?”

The muscles in Pinkie’s face tightened. “I’m sorry, it’s just… I need time to think. Gotta focus, like Twilight said.”

Rarity frowned a little. “Just don’t get lost in your thoughts, alright?” She patted Pinkie compassionately, then lay down on her back into an arrangement of soft pillows “Speaking of meditating before tonight’s dream, I need to relax a little myself.”

“Actually, that reminds me," Twilight said. "Where were you?”

“Oh, yes, my apologies. I was preoccupied with finishing my latest designs, and the time escaped me until I was through. But they’re completed now, and save for my meeting with Fancy Pants and Fleur in Canterlot on the morrow, I need not worry about them further.”

Twilight’s expression grew flat. “That’s why you’re late?”

“Fashionably late?” Rarity tried to suggest with her same coy smile from earlier. “Don’t worry, dear, there was no way in Equestria that I was going to miss out on this.”

Twilight sighed. “Fair enough.”

“So you’re finally done with that big project?” Fluttershy asked. “I bet that must be a big relief for you”

“Oh, good heavens, it is,” Rarity responded.

Fluttershy scooted in a little closer. “So, I know you’ve been keeping them really secret, but… may I kinda-sorta ask for a little, tensy-wensy little description of what they look like? I mean, if it’s okay with you, that is...”

Rarity put on a slight grin. “It is, but… perhaps sometime later? Like Pinkie said, we need some time to relax.” She looked over at Rainbow and Applejack, who had started their own small competition to see who could shove the most whole cucumber slices into their mouth. “Well, some of us would find it expedient to relax...”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to be. Tell you what; I’ll give you a little peek before my trip to Canterlot tomorrow. Alright?”

Fluttershy smiled. “Alright.”

Twilight scooted in between Fluttershy and Pinkie. “Come on, we can brush each other’s manes while these masks exfoliate our skin.”

Rarity delicately placed two slices of cucumber over her eyes and allowed herself to sink into the plush beneath her. What with finishing her work and finally getting to bring the smiles back to Pinkie’s face, today was shaping up to be a most excellent day, indeed.

Tomorrow’s business meeting was destined to be more of a formality than anything else. Her work was sure to terraform the conventions of high fashion as Equestria knew them, and she would receive so much fame and fortune that the mere thought of how much money she would make made her feel kind of dirty… She loved feeling that kind of dirty.

Rarity could only begin to imagine the heads she’d turn and looks she’d inspire wearing her masterpiece: awe, wonder, jealousy, infatuation, that speechless expression Spike would surely have from seeing her as effulgent as a goddess…

That was another thing: despite him trying not to show it, she knew Spike must have felt nearly as bad as Pinkie looked, and she was partly to blame for that. So making amends with him and seeing the tiniest flicker of that spark in his eyes was another burden she was more than glad to be relieved of.

Rarity grinned as she thought back to that adorable blush which always overtook his face whenever she ruffled his crest. She didn’t do it very often, but she knew he really liked it when she ruffled his crest.

Maybe there would be another chance for that the next time they’d get to spend some time together. And while her latest creations might be far too pristine and elegant for something as simple as a modest day out and about the town, she still made a mental note to wear something nice for him, like one of her more pragmatic sun dresses, or that fire ruby he—

Rarity’s blissful little train of thought came to a screeching halt.

Did… I just inadvertently ask Spike out on a date?!

- - - - - -

Spike let out a euphoric sigh, welcoming the feeling of weightlessness as he put his hands over his fluttering heart. He had almost forgotten how it felt to smile like this, but the joy could not be more welcome. Rarity’s words still echoed in his head like a beautiful symphony, and his cheeks still simmered from the lingering flush. It felt like an immense weight had been lifted from him, and he could finally breathe again.

“Wipe that smile off your face. It doesn’t suit you.”

All of Spike’s burdens fell back down upon him like the moon had fallen from orbit and crash-landed on his face. His smile decomposed into a scowl. He glared up at a branch above the entrance. Avarice just smirked back at him.

“That’s better.”

In spite of himself, Spike’s glower became even more resentful. “For someone who doesn’t like being seen, you sure don’t put enough effort into getting lost.”

Avarice just chuckled. “You know how much I love ambush tactics. Staying out of sight suffices well enough. ”

“Is that what you call lounging around in the open?” Spike spat.

Avarice took a moment to look around his surroundings with the indifference of a housecat on a windowsill. “Ponies aren’t a natural prey species to aerial predators, so they rarely look above their heads.” He smirked. “Sure makes my life easier.”

Spike let out an exhale between an exasperated sigh and an irritated grumble. “Is there a reason you’re here now?”

“Yeah.” Avarice nodded. “To ruin your good mood.”

Despite his rising anger, Spike couldn’t help but hold back a smug expression of his own. “Well, you were wrong.”

“Oh, I can’t wait to hear about what,” Avarice replied, resting his lower jaw on his fist.

Spike was smirking now. “Rarity. She does care about me.”

Avarice merely returned with a flat expression.

“You wanted to know when Rarity would want to spend time with me? Well there’s your answer,” Spike pointedly said, indicating the front door.

Avarice sighed. “Look, Spike, from one criminal to another, you need to be able to realize when someone else is running a con.”

Spike crossed his arms and humphed, looking away.

Avarice shifted, facing Spike directly. “Remember when I said ponies use camaraderie as a means of controlling others? Rewarding ano ther’s interest with just enough reciprocation to placate their emotional needs is something ponies will do if another pony seeking their affection ever begins to lose interest. That’s the exact same tactic grifters use when running a scam. Investors getting antsy? Pay them back a paltry return of their investments when they start getting wise, but just enough to keep them paying in. In reality, all their combined funding has accomplished nothing more than purchase the head of the scheme a nice private mansion with a matching yacht out in the Bahamares.”

“I didn’t think you’d have a problem with that,” Spike growled.

“I don’t, but considering it’s an exploitation of systems you still adhere to, it’s certainly a problem for you, and it’s cons like that which Rarity is a more proficient artist at than she is anything else.”

Spike looked away in irritation. “You’re full of crap.”

“No, you’re full of denial,” Avarice responded. “That back there was her offering to throw you scraps after she’s finished the meal. That’s how she is, Spike. She’ll lead you on if it gets her what she wants, and give back only when it’s convenient for her. You’ll put up with someone like me in the name of your misplaced love for her, but you’ll never be anything but an item—a ‘friend‘—to her.”

“Shut up! You don’t know her, she’s not like that.”

“She exploited your feelings to con your out of a fire ruby that was supposed to be a gift to yourself,” Avarice stated flatly. “And what did the so-called Element of Generosity give you for your largesse? A kiss?” Avarice snorted. “The prices for exotic street mares aren’t that outrageous. You’d probably have to fork over a queen’s ransom just to get Rarity to s—”

“DON’T TALK ABOUT HER LIKE THAT!” Spike roared.

Avarice snarled and pounced Spike, driving him into the hard ground and forcing his mouth shut with a grip of cold iron.

“You are terrible at this whole keeping secrets thing. Should I set fire to the library right now just to make sure no one inside heard you?”

Spike’s eyes went wide, and he began struggling against Avarice’s grip. The larger dragon just chuckled derisively.

“Relax, they’re too busy fawning over Misery to concern themselves with your business. Besides,” Avarice said as he released Spike from his grasp, “all my stuff is in there.”

Spike backed away and rubbed his sore snout, then put his scowl back on. “Are all dragons as resentful towards ponies as you are?”

Avarice shrugged. “Probably not. But only because they have the luxury of not being stuck around them long enough to despise them… like I’ve been.”

A thought suddenly occurred to Spike. “So if dragons only ever live by themselves, then how could they possibly have...” Spike’s voice faltered, and he looked away as the blood began to rise in his cheeks. “You know… young.”

Avarice snorted. “Finally decided to ask me that one?” He smirked like a devil. “Well Spike, when a mommy dragon and a daddy dragon love each other very much—”

“Not that!” Spike blurted. “I, um… I already know… that part...”

Avarice’s expression dripped with toxic condescension. “I know you know… I’ve seen all your memories of the surreptitious studying you did to piece it all together, because there was no way Twilight was going to tell you after you asked her that one question...”

Spike’s face ignited with a molten blush of humiliation. “I was just a whelp, okay?! I really didn’t know!”

Avarice chuckled. “Still didn’t keep her from instinctively bucking you in the face when you asked. See? You’ve had to put up with abuse from ponies for your whole life.”

Spike’s countenance was still on fire from embarrassment, but he managed to harden it into something more stern. “That’s beside the point. How are dragons supposed to reproduce if they’re as antisocial as you?”

Avarice chuckled again. “The maredrake wants to know more about what it’s like to be a real dragon. Alright, I’ll oblige. The method through which dragons court each other is simple: we imprint.”

Spike raised an eyebrow. "And that is..."

“A simple process through which dragons of opposite genders come together in order to sire the next generation. Obviously dragons don’t need anyone else in their lives to be complete, but we don’t live forever, and perfection unfortunately requires more genetic diversity than can be accomplished through asexual reproduction. So whoever or whatever created us left us with imprinting. Long story short: one dragon sees an ideal specimen of the opposite sex, they court, they screw, dragoness lays a clutch of eggs, and the two stay together just long enough to guard their young until they hatch. Then when the whelps are old enough to look out for themselves, which thankfully doesn’t take long, all parties depart, never to see each other again, and can focus on what matters, like amassing their hoards.”

Spike stared at Avarice, feeling like he’d just been splashed in the face with a bucket of water, followed by the bucket. And the bucket was made of plate lead.

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. Simple as it is elegant, isn’t it?”

Spike just stared, unamused. “That’s stupid.”

“No, what’s stupid is mistaking the biological urge to mate for love. Then again, only an equine mind could invent something as insipid as love,” Avarice sneered.

“And only a dragon would be cruel enough to abandon their own children soon after they hatch,” Spike spat.

“And only ponies would consider fostering dependence as compassion!” Avarice shot back. “For the entire time that you were following the migration, did you see a single tit to suck on?”

“What does that have to do with anything?!”

“No, you didn’t, not until your masters showed up to reclaim their runaway investor!”

“Because they care about me!”

“Because ponies have bought into their own con!” Avarice snarled. “To the point that it’s ingrained into the genetics of their lowly flesh! Seared into their weak minds! You would sacrifice your life for them, but even if you were on the brink of death, Rarity would STILL consider you as nothing more than just a ‘friend’, even if it were only to give you the petty consolation of not dying alone!”

Spike shook in fury. His claws balled into blunt weapons, ready to strike, but his seething resentment was too great to form a retort, so the two just stood there for a time, sparring with the daggers they were glaring at each other. Several turns passed before Spike broke the silence.

“You know what, fine. You go feeling however you want. Nothing I say is going to change that.” Spike shoved his way past Avarice towards the front door. “So bask in your own glory alone, because this conversation is over.”

Spike reached for the door handle, only to have the tip of a mighty tail block his path.

“You know, we really need to have a talk about this whole ‘not concealing your emotions’ problem you have,” Avarice said, his nonchalance back in full.

Spike was still fuming. “Twilight’s going to start wondering if something’s wrong if I stay out here any longer. I kind of matter a lot to her.”

“And your equine master might get inquisitive if you barge back inside with such a foul demeanor, especially when you were grinning like a love-conned school colt just a minute ago. Gotta keep everyone involved in the friendship scheme ensconced in a haze of complacency,”

“Well, looks like we’ve got a dilemma on our hands, don’t we?” Spike quipped.

“Spike?” Twilight called from inside, making his blood grow cold like he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

Avarice left out a dark, subdued chuckle. “Seems we do… Why don’t you go offer Rarity one of your luxurious back-scratches? Scammers love it when investors shower them with commodities. Maybe she’ll even ruffle your crest again.”

Even though Spike loathed granting credibility to anything Avarice ever suggested, the idea was rather pleasing.

“So put on that stupid smile the ponies love to see,” Avarice said sardonically as he lifted his tail, allowing Spike to pass. “Just don’t try anything bold simply because all the girls are together. I’ll be keeping in touch.”

Avarice dug his claws into the walls of the library, then grappled his way up into the foliage, disappearing within the thick canopy. That left Spike once more by himself, staring at the front door like it was the edge of a high diving board.

“Spike, is everything alright out there?” Twilight asked.

“Y-yeah, everything’s fine,” Spike replied. With one last gulp, he reached out, opened the door, and stepped inside.

Twilight all but sighed in relief at the sight of Spike. “There you are. I was starting to get a little worried about you.”

“Nothing to be worried about,” Spike said, not meeting her eyes.

“Really? Then, who were you talking to?” Twilight asked.

Spike went stiff from the buckets of ice water that suddenly replaced all the blood in his veins. “N-nopony!” He blurted, blinking rapidly. “Nopony at all!”

From her throne of pillows, Rarity adorned a clever smirk. “Brushing up on the art of soliloquy, dear?”

“Yeah,” Spike replied with a gulp, glad for a cover, “you could say that...”

Twilight inspected him quizzically. “Spike, is everything alright? You look rather tense...”

“Everythings fine, I just...” Am dying inside to warn you about the sociopathic dragon that crawled out of my head, but he’ll kill you if I do. “I wanted to ask Rarity something.”

“Oh?” Rarity craned her neck up, peeling one of the cucumber slices off of her eyes to look directly at him. “Something more on your mind?”

Spike gulped again. “I just, wanted to ask...” I know this sounds odd, but if we were about to die, would you accept my love? Is that what it would take? “May I give you a back-scratch?”

Twilight started eyeing him more seriously. “Spike...”

“Oh, it’s alright, dear,” Rarity said, waving a hoof. “If a gentlecolt humbly wishes to pamper a lady, I see no quarrel in that.” She rolled over, belly down, propping up her head underneath one of the pillows she had just been lying on. “Yes, Spike, you may.”

Spike’s smile returned, and with that little flutter back in his heart, he made his way over to Rarity. He put his claws on her shoulders, gently prodding the tense muscles under her soft coat. With an idea of where the knots in her flesh were and her skin made a little more pliable by his delicate kneading, he began to massage her shoulders with one hand with he traced up and down the length of her spine with the claw tips on the other.

“Oh… ooh… oooo… that’s niiice...” Rarity cooed in content.

Spike couldn’t help but grin like an idiot as Rarity melted like butter from the touch of his claws, the unicorn all but purring as he worked his magic.

“Scammers love it when you shower them with commodities.”

Avarice’s words echoed through Spike’s mind. He tried to force the thoughts away, to focus on Rarity and her lovely sighs, halfway between a hum and a moan. Recollections of the spiteful conversation persisted, turning his smile into another mask.

- - - - - -

All six mares stood in a circle, testing the weight of their equipped saddlebags. Twilight scratched her chin with the tip of her quill as she looked over the list before her.

“Let’s see… makeovers, check. S’mores and hot chocolate, check. Idle chit-chat, including but not limited to innocuous gossip and coquettish talk about colts, check. Exchanging short stories in lieu of more ghastly tales, check. With all the prerequisites complete, that just leave on last item...” Twilight looked up intently to the pony in front of her. “Help Pinkie.”

Pinkie tilted her head down, trying to hide behind her mane. She took a deep breath of air, heavy with trepidation, before letting it out. “It’s really time for that, isn’t it?”

“Heck yeah, it is!” Rainbow exclaimed, taking to the air. “No more nightmares, no more Discord, no more sadness! I could not be more pumped to do this!”

Pinkie didn’t break eye contact with the floorboards.

“C’mon, Pinks, I thought you’d be more excited about this,” Rainbow said, landing again and nudging Pinkie. “What gives?”

Pinkie gulped. “I’m… just scared, is all...”

“The only pony who should be scared is that discount Discord messing up your head,” Rainbow said, voice full of barely-restrained anger.

“No, not just of him… of...” Pinkie closed her eyes. “Nevermind, it’s not important.”

Rarity peered at Pinkie. “Come now, dear. Doesn’t take a perseptive pony to know when you’re holding something back.”

“Really, it’s nothing,” Pinkie tried to say with a forced smile, but her sullen visage would not allow for even the most insincere of grins.

Applejack let out an impatient sigh. “Look, Pinkie, ya’ ought to have learned by now that you can trust us. If ya’ got something to say, ain’t nopony better to say it to than us.”

Four nods in agreement followed. Pinkie conceded.

“Alright you want to know what I’m afraid of? I’m afraid of you all,” Pinkie reluctantly admitted.

“But… why?” Fluttershy asked.

“I don’t know what you’re going to do, but we’re all going to be diving into my dreams. With all that’s happened, you just might come face-to-face with the very worst parts of me. I’m afraid that what you might find will just make you all hate me.”

Rainbow Dash exhaled a heavy, disgruntled huff. “Pinkie, do I need to remind you what you told us about your nightmares, or what we encountered the last time we were in a dream together?”

Pinkie answered by recoiling and letting out a tiny whimper, trying to further conceal her face behind her mane.

“No, you don’t,” Rainbow continued, “and yet we’re still here, ready to dive head-first into Tartarus to pull or friend out. We aren’t going to let you suffer any longer, Pinkie.”

“B-but—”

“Rainbow’s right, Pinkie,” Twilight said as she stepped forward. “We’ve seen you at your absolute worst for over a week, and we still aren’t ever going to give up on you. I promise, there’s nothing we can encounter tonight that will make us hate you. I think I speak for all of us on that.”

Twilight looked to the rest of her friends, and they nodded in agreement.

Pinkie dared to peek up from behind her cover. “Pinkie Promise?”

“Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a cupcake in my eye,” five voices lilted in return.

“In my—OW!” Twilight cried out as she shoved her hoof into her open eye again. “I never get that part right...”

Pinkie took in one last breath. “Okay...” she whispered.

Twilight nodded, determined, and turned to her assistant. “Alright, we’re ready. Do you have everything in order, Spi—Spike?”

Twilight tilted her head in bemusement. Spike was staring at Pinkie with a hard, indecipherable expression, like his face was made of jagged stone. His expression never changed, but his grip on the water bucket and pocket watch were becoming more fierce with each passing second.

“Spike?”

“Hm?” Spike responded, turning to her.

“Do you have everything ready?”

“Mm-hm,” he unenthusiastically hummed, holding up both items for emphasis.

“Okay. We’re finally going to do this. Would you wake us up six minutes after our eyes close, please?"

Spike responded with a perfunctory salute.

Twilight’s inquisitive gaze held on Spike for a second, but she had to put that aside as she turned back to her friends. “Spike’s ready. Are we?”

All of them save for Pinkie nodded, then lay down on their barrels in a circle, propping their heads up on small throw pillows.

Are you ready too, Reason? Twilight asked as she laid down herself.

I was severed from your consciousness ready, she replied.

Twilight’s horn sparked to life, and its magenta glow encompassed them all. Twilight felt a delicate prod against her nape, and turned to see Pinkie with her hoof already held out. She smiled, and reached out to hold Pinkie’s hoof with her own. Not a second passed before Rainbow’s hoof joined the clutch, followed shortly by Fluttershy, Applejack, and Rarity. Only then did Pinkie relax enough to close her eyes and let herself succumb to Dreamscape.

Twilight couldn’t help but smile, even as the familiar feeling of cognitive suppression overtook her and reality faded away.

- - - - - -

Click-clack, click-clack, click-clack…

Twilight’s eyes shot open, only to realize that she couldn’t see. Immediately she lit her horn. Blaring, purple-tinged light illuminated her surroundings.

She found herself sitting in a passenger car, alone: without the company of her friends. In their place was an encompassing, ravenous darkness, lurking behind every feature that her light could not reach.

Even over the grating wheels, her heart now thudding in her ears and sudden gasps of hyperventilation, she could hear the low, rumbling growl of loneliness in her ear, feel its sharp, poisonous teeth rake across her now clammy and sensitive skin…

“Whoa, hey, would you turn it down?” a deep, irritated voice asked from behind her.

Twilight whipped around. Sitting two row behind her on the opposite side of the car was another pony, holding up a hoof to shield his eyes from Twilight’s blazing illumination spell.

“Do you mind?” the stallion reiterated again, slightly annoyed.

“S-sorry...” Twilight stuttered and dimming the light.

“That’s better,” remarked the stallion, putting his hoof down. “Thanks.”

Twilight let out a little gasp as the after image cleared and she got a better look at her fellow passenger. The bass guitar at his side was new, but otherwise, he looked the same as he did the first time she saw him in her shared dream with Pinkie; same long mess of a mane, same mass of a scraggly beard, same nametag, same spacesuit…

“Sanders? But… what are you doing here?” Twilight’s eyes went wide with urgency. “Have you seen my friends?!”

“Nope, sorry. Maybe they’re further down the line. Luckily for you, that just so happens to be where we’re headed.” Sanders gave her a knowing smirk.

Twilight gulped a little. “What’s further down the line?”

Sanders wry little smile evolved to a mischievous grin. “The belly of the white whale.”

Twilight was about to question further, but an approaching light up ahead caught the corner of her eye, and her ears picked up the faint, distant sound of somepony else talking.

“...eclipse is when the moon passes in between...”

Twilight reached out to the matrix with her mind, and caught nothing but an ominous, swift-approaching maelstrom, through which attempting manipulation would be like trying to make sculptures from clouds caught in a tornado.

That will be problematic, Reason muttered.

As the train car approached the light, the voice was becoming clearer.

“Sometimes they can have a strange effect on people, and makes them do things they wouldn’t normally do.”

Twilight braced herself as the car passed into the light. They emerged into a massive, open and homely room, and Twilight saw that she was in fact not sitting in a passenger train, but a trolley car. The cheerful trill of its bell rang as it exited the tunnel, stopping in front of the cavernous room’s sole occupant: a giant octopus of behemoth proportions, the mere sight of which made Twilight reel.

The octopus turned to the trolley, giving it a massive, affable smile. “Oh, hey, Bells!”

The trolley responded with another ring before the octopus turned away to address the otherwise empty room. “Gee, I hope our friends in magic land are doing okay...”

With that, the trolley started back up towards another tunnel, filled with flickering light. Twilight was struck with a sudden, overwhelming sense of foreboding with each twist and turn. After one last swing around a tight bend, the trolley rode out into the open fever dream.

“Oh, no…” both Twilight and Reason moaned.

The train tracks stretched through a twisted landscape warped into impossible shapes: blivets, penrose traversals, and mobius strips as far as the eye could see. In some places, the environment disappeared and reappeared as though viewed from a kaleidoscope. Floating masses of earth obscured the sky of shifting spectrums, which, Twilight noted to her immense chagrin, held the same unholy union of a sun and moon as her habanero omelet fever dream.

Squealing feedback reverb filled the air as the trolley passed a burning castle, revealing a mountain drenched in blood, atop which a mastodon was chugging out a progression of heavily distorted power chords from a guitar that was shooting lightning.

Behind her, Sanders had begun to play along to the tune with the percussive thump of his detuned bass. He only got a few measures in before the entire trolley rocked as something crashed through the ceiling. From the plume of dust rose the three-jawed stag-bull, glaring death at Sanders.

“You’re deathbound, goat-killer!” the stag-bull roared through heaving breaths.

“OH SH—”

Sanders was cut off, dodging into the open aisle of the trolley as the stag-bull hurled an entire bench at him. It struck the back of the streetcar with enough force to tear open a giant hole. Sanders jumped through and galloped off into the mad world with the stag-bull once again in hot pursuit.

That left Twilight alone on the trolley to witness the pandemonium around her. Grotesque creatures were either running about in panic or beating the snot out of each other. As Twilight watched, a creature resembling a malformed teddy bear punched another being next to it, and the being exploded. The bear turned and smacked another grotesque, and it exploded too. The teddy bear looked up at Twilight, then at its fist, then hit itself in the face. The bear itself exploded.

The trolley drove into another tunnel that glowed an angry red. Twilight’s ears perked up to the sound of a distant whistle echoing through the cave as the trolley accelerated towards the exit. The railroad tracks extended over a truss bridge into another tunnel, from which black smoke billowed and the lamp of an oncoming engine grew steadily closer.

Twilight gasped and made a break for the hole in the back of the tram. The trolley was already on the bridge when she leaped out the impromptu exit and landed on the tracks. She could feel the rumble of the other train underneath her hooves, hear the chug of steam as it grew closer, but she didn’t dare look back as she galloped as hard as she could in the opposite direction.

The tram and the train collided at the midpoint. The resulting explosion shook the bridge so violently that Twilight fell to her hooves. The bridge cracked in half, leaving Twilight to hook her forelegs around the nearest wooden crossbar and hang on for dear life as the center gave out and both engines plummeted into the ravine.

Twilight flinched and shut her eyes from the blast of heat that erupted from the secondary explosion as the steam train’s furnace blew, extinguished seconds later by the torrents of water from the cracked boiler.

Several seconds passed before Twilight dared open her eyes to observe the wreckage. She gasped, the sight stealing the warmth from her She lit her horn and teleported down to the crash site, where she could only stare at the twisted remains of the steam engine with an open, terror-stricken gape.

Bent cylindrical smokestack; gears like the exposed mechanisms of a pocketwatch; buckled, tarnished chrome finish.

Twilight… Twilight, we need to go find our friends, Reason said, but she went unheard.

The smashed remains of the clock that used to compose the engine’s face told the time of death as 3:43. The crushed side of the engineer’s cab still clearly showed ‘No. 9’ on the side.

Twilight…

Her breathing had gone shallow and her hair stood on end. The train was coming to a perfectly scheduled stop in front of her on the vacant station platform of Mobil Avenue…

TWILIGHT!

The unicorn jumped as Reason yelled her name
.

We have to find the girls, Reason said, her tone more calm now that she’d gotten Twilight’s attention.

Twilight’s eyes were still welded to the wreckage. No matter how terrifying the sight, she couldn’t turn away.

“It’s the same train from limbo...”

I know. That’s why we need to regroup with our friends. They’re more than likely in serious danger, too.

Twilight nodded, still staring in dismay at the wreckage. “Where do we start?”

Twilight felt a strain in her neck and a twinge in her hooves as Reason prodded her from the inside to get moving.

Let’s try to get our bearings from the top of the mountain that isn’t drenched in gore. Just as long as we go somewhere else. Anywhere else except for staying here.

Twilight finally turned away towards the closest mountain, ascending with a series of precise teleportations. Off in the distance, a flying vessel was blasting the bizarre creatures below with its cannons. The spacious vehicle crudely resembled a pirate ship, in but the most rudimentary sense of the word: the vessel was poorly constructed from junk that was primitively welded together, and it boasted an extraneous, ridiculously superfluous number of laser-light sails…

- - - - - -

Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.

Rarity counted backwards in her head, then opened her eyes. To her chagrin, her situation had still not changed: the matrices were still a raging hurricane of psychosis, next to impossible to manipulate, and there was still a shipful of slovenly savages ruthlessly gunning down the bizarre inhabitants of the fever dream below her. And worst of all, she was still tied to the front of said ship.

Alright Rarity, new plan.

Rarity adjusted as best she could, took a deep breath, opened her mouth, and…

“AAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!”

“Oi!”a thick, cockney voice roared from somewhere up on the deck. “One’a you boyz tell the ‘eadpiece to SHADDUP!”

There was a scurry of heavy boot steps from above, then something leaned over the balcony. Rarity found herself face to face with a brutish creature that vaguely resembled a green, hairless gorilla, but with beady red eyes, a smaller nose, cheekbones so pronounced it looked like its skull was trying to rip through its skin, and an absurdly over-pronounced philtrum that lead down to a huge mouth with two long tusks protruding from the lower jaw. And it just happened to be dressed like a pirate, that shoved a metal pipe into Rarity’s face.

“Oi! Captain says shaddup!”

The monster-gorilla-pirate’s retched smell reached Rarity’s dainty nostrils, and it took all her willpower to not vomit. It reeked like hundreds of pounds of moldy cheese boiled to a congealed slop in a dumpster full of curdled sweat on a sweltering summer day.

“Ya, dat’s what I thought! Now keep ya pipes shut or I’ll use yer hair ta polish me boots!”

Somewhere in Rarity’s brain, the Indignance Pressure Release Valve blew a gasket, boiling everything around it into a rage. She telekinetically swatted away its weapon and glared unbridled spite back at her captor.

“How DARE you threaten me with your repulsive pugnaciousness, you putrescent, lumbering, bellicose palooka!”

The pirate just stared at her like she’d hit him over the head with a thesaurus.

“Uh… SHADDUP!” the pirate yelled, shoving his grimey pipe back into her face.

“What did I just say, you jingoistic dunce? How would you appreciate having filth pressed into your hideous visage?” Rarity lit her horn again yanked on pipe, ripping it away and shoving it into the face of its former owner. “See, not such a merry exchange now, is it?!”

“Oi! Give dat back!” the pirate yelled, trying to pry the pipe back.

She snarled and pulled back with redoubled strength. Her aura tightened its grip wherever it could find purchase, wrapping around a small lever in the handle…

A sudden explosion shot out from the end of the pipe, knocking the pirate back onto the deck and out of sight. Rarity screamed in surprise, and stared wide-eyed at the weapon.

Sweet Celestia, these brutes made cannons PORTABLE?! she thought, staring in horror at the weapon.

“Whoa, whoa, hold up!” the same thick voice from earlier bellowed.

The roar of the ship’s engined died down, and the entire vessel came to a standstill. Rarity heard slower, heavier boots approaching. Her heart thudded against her ribcage.

“Oh, you’ve really gotten yourself into it now, Rarity,” she moaned as the boots arrived at the rail, and an even bigger, darker, more odorous pirate wearing a tricorn leaned over the rail.

“Stay back!” Rarity demanded, pointing the weapon at the captain. “I’m armed, apparently!”

The captain just let out a gruff chuckle. “Put dat thing away lass, less you prefer ta let a shoota’ do da talking instead o’ settling this like civil folk.” The captain brandished an even larger cannon than the hulking mass Rarity was holding. “B’sides, mine’s bigga.”

Rarity conceded, and lowered her weapon with a gulp. “Is… is your crewmate in good health?”

The captain let out a hearty laugh. “HA! Ya kiddin’?! Ya blew his ‘ead clean off! Standin’ on his corpse right now, ‘s-mattera fact.”

Rarity felt herself go numb.

“I was gonna shoot ‘im meself for gettin’ snubbed by some pony, so betta you done it. I don’t talk wit’ nobody who ain’t killed somebody first. So, ya got some beef you wants to settle?”

Rarity took a deep breath to compose herself. It’s just some horrific nightmare you’re trapped in right now. Once I regroup with everypony and defeat Discord, I can put this whole mess behind me. She cleared her throat to address the shipmaster and amicably as she could.

“Well, Sir, it would seem that under unfortunate circumstances beyond my control, I have come under the numerous sails of your vessel. As this is not congruent with my desires and I fear my presence here would pose serious danger to myself and your crew, I humbly request you change course to the nearest available port that I may depart and leave you and your ship in, uh, ‘peace.’”

The captain smirked back at her. “I be disinclined to acquiesce to yer request.”

Rarity’s mouth fell open. “What?”

“Means ‘no.’”

“I know that, but why?”

“Well, y’see, we be in da business of pillagin’ and plunderin’, and goin’ outta our way ta see some pony home ain’t good for dat model. But I’s be thinkin’ there be labor laws where you’s come from, and yer mates back home would raise a ruckus if we’d had you onboard unsafely, and then they’d try and give us crap about it, and then we’d hafta shoot ‘em, and I think yeh don’t want dat neither. So I’s thinking we make you a temporary part o’ da crew to ensure you gets all da safety benefits that come with workin’ aboard, and then we’ll letcha go on yer merry way after we done softenin’ up them blokes down there. A’ight?”

“But—”

The captain growled and hoisted up his massive weapon.

“Well, I certainly see the wisdom in your proposed compromise,” Rarity reluctantly admitted as she tried and failed to locate the codes for the pirates in order to erase them from the dream.

“Great!” the captain remarked. “Now, as to yer new occupation… I’m thinking… DA SHIP’S HEADPIECE!”

Rarity’s voice all but disappeared. “What?”

The captain laughed again, then reached down to pick up the green blood-soaked hat from Rarity’s victim and slapped it onto her shaking head.

“Welcome to da Scurvy Gits, love!” the captain jovially bellowed, then turned back to his crew. “Full speed ahead, boyz!”

Rarity was too discombobulated to rip the soiled and vile hat from her crown. The engines roared back to life, and as the ship shot off through the sky, Rarity screamed again.

“GIIIIIIIIIIIIRLS!!!”

- - - - - -

“Oh my! What’s going on? Why are you all running?” Fluttershy desperately asked the panicked ponies stampeding all around her. Bodies slammed against her, forcing her to run alongside them lest she be trampled. Buildings blurred past her vision, and everypony’s screaming combined into a single deranged note.

She looked to a stallion running next to her. “Um, sorry, but what’s going on?!”

The stallion turned to her, glaring in disbelief with the eye that wasn’t a button. “Just run!” he screamed, disappearing into the galloping throng ahead of her.

The buildings around her looked like Ponyville, only they were more closely packed together, and far more drab in the ruddy orange light. Was it a fire? She tried craning her neck to see and nearly lost her balance. The houses, despite only being a couple stories tall, still blocked out the sky. Their overwhelming presence bottled the panicked herd into one narrow street after another. Just when their overbearing aura became too much to bear, Fluttershy began to spot gaps between them.

Her slight relief was shattered by a deep, blood-curdling howl rising over the panicked crowd. The screams tripled in strength, and Fluttershy was nearly swept off her hooves again as the stampede surged forward. She tried to calm down and focus, to tell herself that this was just a dream, but her legs continued to scramble frantically beneath her. Whatever had howled had come from behind her, and it had sounded big.

Suddenly, the buildings disappeared, and Fluttershy could breathe again as the crowd's pressure dispersed. She turned, gasping, as ponies flowed around her.

The sun hung low on the horizon, glaring angry red-orange light across the landscape. The light added an intimidating aura to the forest surrounding the village, so twisted and misshapen that it looked more like an enormous briar patch. Fluttershy squinted back at the village.

An enormous, dark shape swept through the buildings, looming the height of over four ponies above them. Wherever it moved, the screams intensified to a fever pitch

“What are you doing?! RUN!” screamed a voice next to her, and she turned back just in time to see a mint green mare with an eggbeater pegleg running away from her into the forest. She turned back as stallion whose mane was composed entirely of wire bristles whipped past her.

“SHE’S GONNA EAT MEEEE!” he screamed as he too disappeared into the forest.

Eat? She?! Fluttershy looked back at the giant mound moving with a swift, predatory gait through the buildings, and realized it was covered in shaggy hair. Silhouetted pitch-black against the furious sun, an enormous canine head rose above the buildings, something helpless and struggling held in the end of its long muzzle. The giant wolf flung its head back, tossing the small, helpless thing into the air, and opened its jaws. For one very long, awful moment, it hung suspended in space, and even over the roar of the crowd, Fluttershy could hear a distant, wailing scream. Then the helpless being fell into the awaiting maw, and the enormous jaws snapped shut. Fluttershy watched, to her absolute horror, as a small, wriggling bulge slid down the enormous predator’s throat.

The colossal she-wolf, even bigger than an Ursa Minor, let loose a deafening howl that froze the very marrow in Fluttershy’s bones. The wolf licked her chops as she lowered her head, then turned towards Fluttershy. Her legs locked up in paralyzing terror, unable to tear herself away from the most evil yellow eyes she had ever seen in her life. In a hoarse growl that had only the barest tinge of what might be something feminine, the giant predator uttered a single word:

“DESSERT.”

Then the wolf bounded towards her. Something in Fluttershy's brain told the rest of her to move, but the rest of her wasn’t listening. She could not tear herself away from the wolf’s burning gaze. The wolf bounded again, clearing more rows of houses and landing just in the outskirts of the town, the earth trembling beneath her. The part of her brain that demanded action screamed even louder, but all she did was twitch. The wolf grinned as she held her gaze and leapt again.

Time slowed as Fluttershy took in the sheer enormity of the wolf. Her massive paws were bigger than a wagon. Her powerful legs stretched upward like redwood trees. Her evil glowing eyes burned with a ravenous glee. Her enormous gaping maw was lined with razor-sharp dagger teeth. Just as Fluttershy gazed into the abyss of the wolf’s throat, she felt her stomach turn to lead and her blood turn to ice.

Her wings opened of their own accord and thrust down. Fluttershy suddenly realized she was rocketing up towards the sky. Self-preservation had finally kicked in, her wings pumping harder than they ever had in her life.

The wolf beneath her growled, snarled, and leapt. Before Fluttershy could react, the wolf snapped its jaws shut on her tail and yanked her back down to the earth.

Fluttershy shrieked and flailed helplessly. Her life flashed before her eyes as she plummeted towards death, towards—big, spiky trees! Wood slammed against her side. Her world was a blur punctuated by gunshot cracks as she crashed through the canopy to the forest floor.

The ground delivered one last punch to her barrel, knocking the wind out of her. She lay still, groaning in pain. A thousand thoughts and sensations assailed her at once as she tried to get her breath back.

Dear Celestia, this hurts.

Did I break anything?

What happened? Where am I?

My tail is free, but where is the wolf?

Owwww....

Where is the wolf?

I think I broke something…

WHERE IS THE WOLF?

Something massive shifted on the ground behind her, then emitted a half-whimper, half-growl. Fluttershy scrambled to her hooves and turned around just in time to see the she-wolf hauling herself back on her paws off of the myriad of broken tree trunks and shattered branches beneath her. The wolf groaned in pain as she opened her eyes, looked at Fluttershy, and snarled.

Fluttershy turned and pelted into the forest, branches whipping her face and pulling her mane. Her heart pounded in her ears. Behind her, the giant wolf barked and howled, her immense bulk snapping the thick branches like they were rotten twigs.

Fluttershy galloped until her lungs burned, her throat went raw, and her hooves felt like lead weights. The wolf was gaining more ground despite her attempts to outmaneuver it. She was reaching her breaking point.

A gargantuan rock loomed out of the forest in front of her, split straight down the middle with a crack just big enough for her to fit into. Fluttershy darted towards it with every last ounce of her strength. Fluttershy didn’t dare look back as a gust of hot breath tousled her tail.

Fluttershy rocketed into the crack. Pebbles and dust showered her as the wolf slammed into the rock, and she collapsed onto her rear, coughing and shaking. The wolf snarled as she began to claw and bite at the stone. Fluttershy scooted backward, wedging herself as far into the stone as she could. The whole time, the wolf continued to scratch and bite at the rock.

The only thing she could see was the wolf’s enormous jaws snapping at her, the massive canine teeth shutting over and over again. Her heart raced as the snarls and barks threatened to blow out her eardrums. Cold sweat ran down her body as she stared into the wolf’s horrible glowing eyes, burning with anger and gluttony.

After what felt like an eternity, the wolf finally stopped, settling for glaring at her through the crack. Then some sort of realization lit in its burning eyes. The she-wolf pressed the end of her enormous snout to the crack and breathed in deep. Fluttershy whimpered in fear as she felt a cold swiping at her sweaty coat. After several sniffs, the wolf looked back at Fluttershy.

“YOU HAVE FRIENDS...”

Fluttershy’s body locked up in paralysis again. The wolf grinned like a devil.

“FIVE TO BE EXACT. ANOTHER FEATHER-BRAIN, TWO HORN-FACES, AND TWO MUD PONIES. SO IF YOU’RE GOING TO HIDE IN THERE LIKE A COWARDLY LITTLE SNACK, I’LL JUST GO HUNT THEM INSTEAD.”

Fluttershy was wracked with horrible visions of the wolf consuming her friends.

“MAYBE I’LL BRING THEM BACK HERE SO YOU CAN WATCH AS I FEAST.” The air rumbled with the wolf’s malicious chuckles. “I’LL BE SURE TO LET YOU KNOW IF THEY TASTE AS DELICIOUS AS THEY SMELL.”

“NO!”

The wolf’s amused gaze turned to shock as Fluttershy gave her a maximum overdose of The Stare.

“You will do no such thing!” Fluttershy yelled as she trotted from the small cave to glare right into one of the wolf’s quivering eyes. “Thinking you can eat helpless ponies with friends and families just because you’re bigger than them? You make me SICK! If you EVER eat another pony or so mention as mention my friends, I will end you! DO YOU HEAR ME?!”

The wolf shook as it stared back at Fluttershy with fearful eyes. Moments passed where the only sounds to be heard was their heavy breathing and the distant booms from a thunderstorm of gunfire getting closer to the town. Finally, the wolf answered.

“I HEAR YOU...”

Whatever terror was in the wolf's eyes burned away with the resurgence of its infernal hate. Fluttershy gasped, only then realizing her folly of stepping outside the safety of the cave.

“I JUST WON’T OBEY!”

The wolf lunged forward, head-butting Fluttershy into the rock wall. She fell ungraciously to the ground, crying out on impact. The wolf brought its paw down upon her, knocking the wind out of her and leaving only her head exposed.

The wolf growled as it craned its head down to glare at her. “I’M GOING TO CHEW YOU NICE AND SLOW FOR THAT, LITTLE SNACK. SAVOR YOUR EVERY MUSCLE, RELISH IN YOUR EVERY DROP OF BLOOD.” The monstrous beast began to laugh. “BUT I’LL KEEP A LITTLE PIECE OF YOU. I’LL WEAR YOUR PELT LIKE JEWELRY, SO YOUR FRIENDS WILL TAKE ONE LOOK AT ME AND KNOW EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU.”

Something snapped inside Fluttershy’s mind. Whatever fear she had felt was swept away by a tidal wave of boundless rage. She gritted her teeth and growled as its scourging heat flowed through her body. It turned her resolve into the cruel edge of a diamond, her bones into adamantium, and her muscles into corded steel.

The wolf yelped in surprise as Fluttershy pushed against its paw. She lifted its oppressive mass and tossed it aside, making the wolf stumble. She spread her wings and kicked backwards against the ground, sending her rocketing up straight towards the wolf’s face.

Fluttershy’s forehoof connected with the side of the wolf’s jaw, sending it sprawling on its side. She felt like she had just punched a slab of iron. She didn’t care. White-hot rage coursed through her, and her mind could only think one word: destroy.

She dive-bombed the wolf again as it tried to lift itself off of the ground. Her forehoof connected with the wolf’s cheek, slamming its head back down, and she pummeled the side of the wolf’s head with thunderclap blows. Just as she was about to deliver a knockout punch, one of the wolf’s massive forepaws knocked her away.

Fluttershy tumbled through the dirt, kicking up dirt and grass. She shook her head and leaped from the fifty-foot-long trench her body had dug through the soil.

Her eyes met with the wolf's as it got back on its paws, and the air itself lit aflame. They charged, one with an angry howl and the other with a shrieking war cry. A small, detached part of her mind knew this would be a fight to the death.

It was no longer clear who was predator and who was prey. Fluttershy would try to go for an opening only to get pummeled into the ground by a massive paw or knocked out of the air by the tail. The wolf would try to bite Fluttershy only to snap at empty air before receiving a hammer blow in return.

Though Fluttershy was faster, the wolf’s sheer size blunted the power of her strikes, and she was beginning to tire while the wolf showed no signs of fatigue. The wolf pressed the advantage, forcing Fluttershy on the defensive. More and more often, the wolf’s paws and tail connected with her. The snapping teeth began to miss her by inches rather than feet.

Fluttershy still had an ace up her sleeve. The fight fuelled her anger, building it up inside her until she had enough burning rage to unleash her attack. The wolf charged Fluttershy, only to meet the fiery beams of destructive energy that erupted from Fluttershy’s eyes.

The smell of burning hair filled the air as the wolf howled in agony. The apocalyptic lances hammered the wolf into the side of the castle-sized rock, pinning it into place and searing flesh and fur.

On the verge of being roasted alive, the wolf hooked its jaws around the edge of one side of the big crack in the mountainous rock and strained with all its remaining strength. It broke a cottage-sized boulder off in its mouth and hurled it at Fluttershy.

Stars exploded in Fluttershy’s vision as she was blindsided by the massive rock. Then the stars quickly gave way to blackness.

Slowly, the blackness parted for a dim light and a weight so crushing she could barely breathe. Fluttershy tried to push against the weight, but a sudden wave of agony coursing down most of her left side put a stop to that.

Her left wing and foreleg throbbed with bruises. Her left eye was swollen completely shut. She braced herself against what she could only assume was the ground and pushed as hard as she could. The light increased a little as the massive boulder shifted against her efforts.

Frustration, anger, and adrenaline gave Fluttershy one last surge of super strength, and she heaved with all her might against the rock. The giant boulder turned over on its side. Fluttershy felt a split-second of relief, and then the wolf’s giant paw pushed the boulder out of the way.

The wolf’s fur had been completely burned off from half of its face to the shoulder, and the skin beneath was blackened and charred. It stood trembling from exhaustion and pain, holding a paw in the air to avoid putting weight on it. The wolf was able to stand, but Fluttershy no longer had the energy to move. All she could do was squirm feebly in the dirt.

The wolf bent her enormous head towards Fluttershy until its lips were mere inches from her face. Fluttershy could do nothing but watch in horror as they parted in slow motion, revealing the massive canines. Then its mouth opened, revealing the fleshy cave inside and the insatiable abyss of her throat.

Fluttershy screamed and instinctively held up her hooves for protection as the teeth rushed for her, but it was no use. The terrible jaws closed in around her, enveloping her in darkness.

Fluttershy shivered in disgust as the quivering, slimy tongue slid across her body. Then it began to pull her in. She gripped the wolf’s teeth as hard as she could in one last desperate effort to save herself, but it was too late. The gigantic tongue dislodged her, then dragged her screaming into the wolf’s mouth.

She was helpless to do anything as the wolf had its way with her, savoring her, tasting her, and even going so far as to give her a few cruel squeezes between its teeth. She tumbled about its mouth like a rag doll in a washing machine until she came to a rest back in the center of its tongue, staring forlornly at the wolf’s throat.

“DOWN YOU GO....”

Fluttershy’s surroundings lurched as the wolf tilted her head back. She lay helpless as she drew nearer to the wolf’s throat, fleshy tastebuds sliding against her body. The back of the tongue dropped, the esophagus widened, and the tonsils recessed as the whole throat opened to receive her. She saw the massive uvula swaying and bobbing over the abyss, bidding her goodbye.

Just as she was about to slide over the edge, she managed to get her quivering legs underneath her. Right when she reached the critical point at the precipice of the wolf’s gaping throat, she jumped. Fluttershy smacked into the wolf’s uvula, and she clung to it like a drowning mare clutching a life buoy.

“HURRRRGGHHH!”

The wolf’s choking retch was deafening. The flesh all around her convulsed as the gag reflex sent a violent tremor throughout the wolf’s body. A blast of hot, humid air rushed past her from below, but she did not dare to look down.

The uvula flexed and bucked as more deafening retching erupted from the depths. She scrambled as the uvula slipped through her hind legs, and managed to haul herself up the fleshy appendage, her muscles burning with abuse. The wolf gave another almighty dry heave, and she slipped back down, her hind legs flailing helplessly in empty space.

Fluttershy looked down at a convulsing, heaving tunnel of muscle and slimy tissues fading away into complete blackness. A flap of cartilage burst out of the side of it, and under it was another tunnel from which a blast of hot air assailed her as the wolf gagged again.

The wolf’s uvula tensed up again, eroding Fluttershy’s grip. She tried with all her remaining strength to hang on, but it was no use anymore. The massive uvula slipped through her legs, and for a second she hung in empty space. Fluttershy fell into the wolf’s throat with a piercing scream.

Powerful muscles forced the breath from her lungs, cutting off her scream. She desperately grabbed the flap of cartilage that covered the wolf’s windpipe and clung to it, making the wolf choke. Fluttershy tried to scream again, but her breath was completely gone; she could feel her own ribs creaking from the colossal pressure. Her vision began to dim and flicker.

Just as she was about to pass out, the wolf’s throat opened up and the most violent retch yet made all the flesh around her tremble. Looking back into the infinite blackness below, she heard a sound like whitewater rapids. She realized in horror and disgust what was about to happen, and she closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see the inevitable.

A raging torrent of vile, putrescent filth slammed into Fluttershy, sweeping her out of the wolf’s throat and back up into its mouth. The disgusting current carried her across the convulsing tongue and back out into the open air, where she slammed into the ground and lay helplessly as nauseous liquids poured over her like a reeking waterfall.

Finally, the broiling hell abated, and she gasped for air. She heard coughing above her, followed by another small retch, then a thud. The ground shook with a massive thump as the gigantic wolf collapsed. Fluttershy wiped the slime off of her face and opened her eyes.

She nearly threw up at the sight of the steaming pool of bile, soaking the lifeless forms of some two dozen ponies. The enormous wolf lay right behind her, its breath coming in wheezing rasps. Blood oozed slowly from its wounds, pooling around its body. Its massive tongue lolled on the grass. Half-lidded, its yellow eyes stared at nothing in particular.

Slowly, it dawned on Fluttershy that the wolf was dying. Her laser vision blast had, in fact, dealt the wolf a mortal blow. It had just taken time for it to succumb to its wounds.

Fluttershy slowly got back up onto her aching limbs. She trod painfully up to one of the wolf’s eyes. The massive orb centered and focussed on her.

For a brief few seconds, the dying fell light in its eyes was rekindled by boundless, helpless, infinite rage. The wolf said nothing, but its breathless gasps slowly turned into wheezing snarls. Fluttershy coldly looked on.

The fire in the wolf’s eyes could maintain itself no longer. Their evil yellow light flickered, then faded. Fluttershy heard a great whimpering sigh as the light died completely. Its eyes stared away into nothing, glassy and dull.

Fluttershy felt she should say something. She tried to find the words to adequately address how this was the most evil entity she had ever seen in her life. But then she felt that acknowledging its terrible deeds would be giving it too much credence. She stood there, wrestling with her emotions, until they finally coalesced into a simple phrase.

“Serves you right,” she spat.

Then she turned away to see Twilight standing right behind her, her eyes wide and her jaw hanging open in shock.

“Dear Celestia…” she said, “Fluttershy, I…”

Twilight never got to finish her sentence. Fluttershy collapsed to the ground, sobbing hysterically. Twilight rushed to her side, hoping the comforting hug she gave her friend could make up for her lack of words. Fluttershy hugged her back fiercely, and continued to weep.

They remained in their embrace, unaware of a hooded blackbird made of sackcloth and ash as it circled overhead.

- - - - - -

Rainbow Dash zipped through the perilous skies, fighting against the thrashing turbulence blowing in several directions at once, and pulling shearing maneuvers around the floating masses of land drifting haphazardly through the air.

She swerved up as a mountainous form rose up from below her, only to feel the pull of gravity shift towards the landmass. She furiously beat her wings, careening over the obstacle and dodging several more as they closed in around her.

A spray of water droplets hit her in the face as she swept past a waterfall pouring between two landmasses on a collision course for each other. She sputtered and wiped as much as she could from her eyes just in time to avoid crashing into another island headed right for her.

Rainbow saw an opening to a clear sky off in the distance and doubled her efforts to escape, adrenaline pumping through her wings as she flew through the shifting chunks of hovering earth. With once last forceful thrust, Rainbow shot out from the mass of rocks.

She turned to look back at the formations orbiting around each other, then let out a holler of delight and relief, performing a small corkscrew to celebrate her small victory.

Rainbow’s whoop turned to a groan drowned out by a chorus of screeches. Creatures vaguely resembling pterodactyls were swarming en masse from the structures she’d just escaped. They were all barreling straight for her, open mouths eager for a pony snack.

Rainbow twisted around to fly from the predators, but stopped dead in her tracks. Another massive construct, this one made from layers upon layers of scrap metal, was flying straight towards her at break-neck speeds. Waves of glowing projectiles shot from the flying hunk of metal at supersonic speeds towards her, followed by a cacophony of rapid-fire thunderclaps.

She screamed and flew down, instinctively covering her head with her forehooves. The metal vessel flew right over her as its hailstorm of bullets ripped through the swarm of pterodactyls. A shrill chorus of pained screeches pierced the air, many of the creatures falling injured or dead into a thick forest below.

Rainbow looked back up a the metallic vessel as it flew off a ways, then swerved to its right for another pass. She realized that what had resembled a soaring garbage dump was actually a giant ship. It flew from blazing jets of fire spewing from turbines at the ends of massive cylinders, leaving Rainbow to wonder why it needed so many sails.

An enraged shriek from below cut her thought processes. An injured pterodactyl had flown up from the trees below to within feet of Rainbow Dash.

A gunshot rang out in off in the distance. Neon blood spewed from a multitude of fresh wounds in the creature’s torso. It let out a scream of pain as it fell back down into the forest.

Dash looked up at her would-be savior to caught sight of Rarity tied to the bow of the ship, with a filthy pirate hat crammed onto her head and holding what crudely resembled a cannon in her magic.

“RAINBOW DAAAAAAA” Rarity desperately screamed as the ship rocketed past.

“Rarity!” Rainbow gasped, and took off like a bullet after her friend.

The pegasus quickly closed the gap between her and the ship as it rocketed towards a small town off in the distance. She flew over the blistering drafts of the engines, trying to reach the bridge.

Several creatures dressed as pirates operated what Dash assumed to be weapons all over the vessel. One of them spotted her, shouted to its nearby crewmates, then they all aimed at her.

Dash lurched to the side to evade the swarm of bullets. She swerved this way and that, dodging all the oncoming fire, but her defensive flying began to put more distance between her and the ship. She grunted and furiously churned her wings, fighting for every inch of sky en route to her target.

On the deck, a larger pirate loomed into view, glaring over the rail at her. Then he grinned, hoisted a cannon with a belt of rockets loaded into it, and fired.

Dash careened off-course to avoid the missile. It detonated right where she had been, now thirty feet away. The explosive force knocked her out of the air, and she put her hooves to her ears, screaming from the ringing pain as she fell from the sky.

Rainbow saw a line of fast-approaching trees through the blur as she tumbled. Right as she passed through the canopy, she regained control, angling out to the ground and skidding to a halt along the forest floor.

Looking up through openings of the leafy ceiling, she caught glimpses of the pirate ship as it sailed off into the horizon. Rainbow growled. She’d been flying blind since entering the dream without seeing hide or hair of her friends; to encounter one only to instantly lose her again made her blood boil.

The incessant ringing in her left ear wasn’t making things any more pleasant, either. She clocked the side of her head, trying to loosen what felt like a clog, only to end up holding her head in her hooves, cringing in pain.

When the feeling of forks in her skull had passed, she tested her wings again, readying herself for flight. She remembered catching sight of a small nearby town, presumably a warped mockery of Ponyville, that the ship was headed for before she got shot out of the air. As much as she hated to admit it, she probably wouldn’t be able to take on an entire ship of monster pirates at once. But if they were headed for the town, they were probably intent on ransacking the place, and preoccupation with their task might give her a chance to sneak up close and free Rarity.

Rainbow flexed her wings, ready to shoot back into the skies when what was left of her hearing caught the sound of a familiar series of screeches. She looked back up and saw more swarms of pterodactyls circling like vultures overhead. They were too big to follow her down into the forest, but if she flew above the leaves and they spotted her, they would surely give chase. And even if she could avoid them all the way to town, if they chased her all the way there while screeching like that, it would ruin her chance at stealth.

Rainbow let out a dissatisfied grumbled. “Looks like I’m grounded for now,” she muttered, then took off galloping through the woods.

Trees zipped past her as a blur as Rainbow galloped. Then they passed at a casual pace. Then she was passing them at a snail’s crawl. The world stretched out in front of her, until the next tree was on the edge of the horizon.

Rainbow skidded to a halt next to a tree with low hanging branches, and the infinite distances compressed back to normal. She blinked in surprise, then took off galloping even harder. The forest began to visibly stretch again: more earth was gathering under her hooves faster than she could gallop across it.

She galloped until she was out of breath. She slowed to a stop, and the perspective from which she saw the forest once again returned to a deceptive normal. Rainbow leaned up against the closest tree to catch her breath, only to back away a moment later, staring in a stupor at the low-hanging branches: it was the same tree she’d stopped next to the first time. Looking back, she spotted a line of skid marks in the dirt. She’d hardly moved twenty feet from where she landed.

“What the hay?” Rainbow muttered as she slowly backed away, confusion and worry building up in her brain as she distanced herself from the tree.

Wait… distance…

Rainbow realized she was actually further away from where she was just a moment ago. With newfound vigor she turned tail and started to gallop in her original direction again, and the forest began to distend once more. She stopped in her tracks, and the forest compressed itself again.

She stood there for a moment, trying to make sense of the situation.

So if I go too fast, the forest stretches to keep me in place? she thought.

Rainbow put an experimental hoof forward, shifted her weight, then slowly relocated her other hooves to what amounted to a single step. She looked around again, and found she had moved accordingly. She tried again, a little faster this time, and found the forest did not react. Spurred by success, she kept up the pace until she was moving through the forest at a casual trot, as fast as she could move through the forest before it began taking counteractive measures against her. Still, she kept looking to and fro, trying to remain vigilant of anything that might be lurking among the trees and to make sure she was still actually moving.

Rainbow’s ears flattened in agitation. Rarity’s being held captive by a bunch of gun-crazed pirates while the rest of my friends could be in just as much danger, and here I am, trotting through some forest, looking at the tree—

Rainbow’s sour thought process came to a halt when she caught sight of a mirror nestled between two trees, only now visible as she was walking past. Its reflection made her to do a double take.

The image showed Rainbow standing amidst a cluster of five trees: two between her and the mirror, three on her other side. Two trees were located on either side of her rear and two were at her middle, leaving the last tree behind her head. The placement of the trees had the effect of framing two vertical spaces through which Rainbow could clearly see the rest of the forest in the background.

In the spaces between the two trees closer to the mirror, where she should have been able to see herself, she saw only the trees and the distant forest behind her. And on the tree between her and the mirror, which should have been obstructing most of the view of her sides, she saw part of her barrel and her wings, shifting as they twitched.

Rainbow shifted forward and back experimentally, watching as her reflection mimicked her every move perfectly. Different parts of her went in and out of view, like looking at an object moving behind a gate of bars, except in some places, the spaces between the bars showed only open air, and in others, the she appeared to be over the bars that should have been concealing it.

On a whim, Rainbow looked around at the rest of herself. The parts of her body that were not appearing in the mirror when they should have been were entirely gone. Rainbow saw only her rear, cut off at the hip, revealing a cutaway of her lower digestive tract, muscles and veins alongside bones.

“AAAAAAH!!!”

Rainbow screamed in terror and bolted forward into the air. Her heart rate jumped up several dozen beats per minute in mere seconds as she reexamined herself, hooves frantically checking herself, now whole again.

Fear overrode her thoughts, and Rainbow took off like a bat out of Tartarus, screaming past the trees as fast as her wings could carry her. She dodged a crooked tree to her left, pitched to avoid a sinister-looking tree to her right, and flew between the forked trunk of a tree in front of her. Then she dodged another crooked tree to her left, pitched to avoid a sinister-looking tree to her right, flew between the forked trunk of a tree in front of her, dodged a crooked tree to her left, pitched to avoid a sinister-looking tree to her right…

Logic started ringing alarm bells in her head, making Rainbow lurch to a stop in mid air. She looked back at the last few series of trees she had passed, only to find that there were only the two, with the terrifying mirror not that far away.

Rainbow looked back to the forked tree in front of her. Just then she heard frantic screaming and something crashing through the branches behind her. Before she could turn around, somepony crashed right into her.

Rainbow Dash looked back, and came face to face with another Rainbow Dash, wearing an expression of undiluted fear that mirrored her own.

“AAAAAAH!!!” Rainbow screamed again, flying backwards from her doppelganger and through the fork in the tree. She hardly even noticed a blip in her vision as she passed the split: she was too busy screaming as she crashed through the branches of a crooked tree to her right and a sinister-looking tree to her left…

Rainbow collided into something in midair as she flew back. Another burst of fear and adrenaline shot through her as she whipped around, only to find herself facing yet another Rainbow Dash, wearing an expression of shock that quickly melted into one of undiluted fear that mirrored her own.

“AAAAAAH!!!” Rainbow’s doppelganger screamed in terror, instinctively flying away from her and through the fork in the tree directly behind her. As soon as she passed the division, the other Rainbow disappeared, leaving nothing but the breeze of her momentum and an echo of her scream to indicated she ever existed at all.

A spark of insanity met the tinder of accumulated fear gripping Dash’s heart, roaring into a brush fire that consumed all in an inferno of panic.

“Screw this!” Rainbow thrust her wings down, tore through the foliage above, and bolted over the tops of the trees. Whatever pterodactyls that did spot her didn’t even bother to give chase: there was no way they could have even tried to keep up as she screamed all the way to town.

Rainbow never slowed down until she’d reached the settlement. She ground to a halt, then slumped up against the wall of the closest building, putting a hoof to her heart as she tried to catch her breath. The forest still surrounded her on all sides, waiting. She closed her eyes, trying to regain her composure. Even under the darkness of her eyelids, all she could see was her own internal organs and another version of her vanishing into nothingness.

Even at rest, her pulse began to pound again, her breathing shallow and frantic. Rainbow tore open her left saddlebag and ripped out her totem. She held it up to the light to check its tell; the prism, resembling a cross between lightning bolts and fire, shone clear.

The warm, calming sight of her totem's tell ebbed through her, dissolving away all the hysteria and paranoia that had crystallized in her veins. Her hyperactive breathing slowed, and her tense muscles relaxed. Within a minute, she was more at ease than she had been since falling asleep. Even as the nightmare raged around her, she could take solace in her own little bubble of tranquility. She looked down at her totem, smiled affectionately, and pulled her cherished gift into an affectionate hug.

Rainbow stood back up, ready to face the nightmare again. She moved to put her totem back into her saddlebag. Halfway there her hoof froze, and with a second thought, she lifted the golden chain over her head and set the pendant to rest around her neck. She took one last second to admire it, and cracked a small, wry dimple at the sight.

Rarity was right, Rainbow thought. This does look good on me.

Rainbow carefully trotted to the edge of the building, and peeked around the corner. As she’d expected, even though the buildings loomed ominously overhead, Rainbow had reached this dream world’s blasphemous equivalent of Ponyville. Also just as she’d suspected, in the center of town hovered the ship of her pursuit, though town square itself seemed to be much farther away than it should have been. Oddly enough, the village was rather quiet; eerie, for a chaos-warped Ponyville being invaded by trigger-happy pirates. Rainbow strained her ears. She could hear distant crashes from further in, presumably from the pirates kicking in doors and dragging out whatever they could carry, but the sounds of screaming ponies or gunfire was strangely absent. It sounded like there was a commotion occurring from deep within the forest, but whatever might be going on, it was much farther away than Rarity. Unless it was to rescue her friends, there was no way she was ever going back into that forest again.

A sudden scream put Rainbow on high alert. This one was close… Very close. And very familiar.

Without so much as a moment to think, Rainbow darted into town.

- - - - - -

Applejack’s day had been, if she had to describe it in one word, eventful. If given the creative liberty to summarize it, she’d say it was crazier than a lunatic stuffed into a barrel full of nuts and then kicked down a hill.

First she had woken up in her bed as though it was a normal day: she felt the rejuvenation of a good night’s sleep, the sun shining, and the scent of fresh apples permeating the air. Yet a check of her totem revealed that she was still in a dream. Her hair had been on end as her skin felt like it was crawling ever since she had gone downstairs to find that her family had been replaced by automatons.

She had skirted around the dining room and snuck out the front door. One look outside revealed that the idealistic summer morning peeking through the windows had been a facade. The picturesque orchards of Sweet Apple Aches were gone, replaced by a thick, overgrown forest glowing like embers in a coffin from the light of the red sky overhead. She chanced a look up, finding herself under a sun held in the coils of a great serpent.

Applejack had attempted to correct the madness through manipulation, if for nothing but to fix her home, but one look at the dream code had made her realize she’d more easily thread a needle while on the back of a bucking bronco. Her next thought had been to find the rest of her friends, guessing they must have also started the fever dream in their own homes as well. Getting to Ponyville, however, had meant having to trek through the warped Sweet Apple Acres.

What should have been a pleasant trot alongside apple trees that were her pride and joy instead felt like a trek through the Everfree forest, with heaps of the nonsensical nuances of the dream world. On the way to town, she had needed to escape living, predatory plant life, avoid being trampled by behemoths so monumental that their spindly legs dwarfed even the tallest of the trees, and figure out how to progress forward when she had ended up in part of the woods that seemed to be teleporting her at random. One moment, she’d be trotting along, the next she’d be in a completely different place than where her next step should have taken her.

There was also the group of colts on a jutting wall playing billiards as though it was mini golf, the flying squid that was bouncing back and forth between the trees like a pinball in a field of bumpers, and the shaking covered wagon that was billowing vapor, from which a crazed stallion dressed as a lumberjack and who stank of soggy mushrooms had burst from as she passed to go stomping off into woods.

Soon after, she had wandered into a clearing, where the fiery light of the sky ominously illuminated a lone, poorly pruned tree standing in the center. It was guarded by a metal sign that had a picture of a skull and crossbones and said “DO NOT TOUCH!” She certainly wasn’t going to, but then a stallion in a space suit came galloping through the clearing at breakneck speeds, followed closely by a raging three-jawed stag-bull tearing through everything in its path. The stallion brushed past her, and she didn’t even have enough time to sidestep the stag-bull before it headbutted her off to the side and into a pile of sawdust. She accidentally inhaled some, and got sent on a raging hallucinogenic acid trip involving a yeti.

Applejack had regained conscious some time later with an unspeakable headache, a parched throat, a bad case of the munchies, and a banjo in her forelegs. She had managed to stumble through the rest of the forest without much incident, even though she felt like she had an axe sticking out of her skull.

She had picked up the pace when she heard the cacophony of distant, thunderous howls like a timberwolf so loud that she had felt the earth under her hooves vibrate. Applejack cleared the trees and stepped out under an orange sky just in time to see a titanic wolf the size of a dragon crashing through a thick, tangled bramble outside of a town that looked like Ponyville, if Ponyville had been constructed by deranged gothic architects.

Applejack happened across a white, metallic capsule shaped like a cone partially embedded in the ground. It had an open door, so on a whim Applejack checked inside, and had found a single seat and a myriad of technological doohickeys that she couldn’t even fathom the purpose of. To her good fortune she had also found some water and provisions. Her hunger and thirst could be ignored no longer and she couldn’t have consumed them any faster, only for her to have to fight to keep them down when she had seen two legs of a dead goat sticking out from underneath the wreckage of the strange vehicle.

She had made it into town, only to find it abandoned: the giant paw-prints going straight down the middle of the streets left no imagining as to why. She was just about to check for any sign of her friends when a flying pirate ship made of poorly welded scrap metal flew overhead, blasting the buildings below to pieces with bizarre and powerful cannons.

Applejack had tried to stay out of sight by darting through the alleys on her way to where her friend’s homes would have been, but a small landing party had spotted her, given chase, and had been pursuing her ever since.

That was where Applejack found herself now: in the dark alley of a twisted version of her town that she was now only vaguely familiar with, trying to catch her breath and get her bearings while listening in on a pack of monsters dressed up as pirates who were trying to hunt her down.

“Where’d dat pony go?” one of the pirates off in the distance yelled.

“Dunno. How’s we s’posta find ‘er in dis shantytown?” another asked.

“Screw it, let’s jus’ fill da place wit dakka an we’ll pick ‘er corpse from da rubble!” proclaimed a third.

“Nah, wait, wot if der be sumthin’ good inside dat ya shoota might break?”

“I… uh… ya got a point...”

As they talked, Applejack quickly peeked around the corner into a parallel street. It was empty of pirates, so she darted towards a looming house directly across from her for better cover, and hopefully some high ground to plot her passage through town, only to grind to a halt.

Just in front of the porch, leading up to a front door with a symbol of a mobius strip on it, was a small puddle of water. There wasn’t anything out of the ordinary about the puddle: the water was clear and placid, and there weren’t any weird creatures swimming around in it. For all intents and purposes, it was the most normal thing Applejack had seen in the dream since leaving her bedroom.

It terrified her beyond words. Never before had Applejack faced anything that left her stricken with such foreboding, overwhelming dread, that made her stop dead in her tracks, that made her hair stand on end, than this puddle before her.

“Hey! I think I ‘eard dat pony run down dis way!” yelled one of the pirates, and a scuffle of approaching boots began to thud her way.

“Horseapples,” Applejack cursed under her breath.

She skirted around the puddle like it was an abyss that lead straight to Tartarus and slipped through the unlocked front door. She closed the door quietly behind her, turned back to the interior of the home, and froze.

Applejack stood on a lone platform in a massive room of gray stone: far more spacious than the humble little cottage should have allowed for. Multiple sets of stairs ran all along the walls, floor and ceiling, leading to balconies that were either level, sideways, or completely inverted. Some of the stairs even had another set of stairs underneath them, with railings perpendicular to those on the set above them. Scattered all about were many doors, each numbered with archaic pegasi numerals, save for the one directly across from her, which had the same symbol of a mobius strip as the main entrance.

Applejack had only one thing to say.

“Nope.”

She turned back to the door she had just entered, an ‘I’ carved in relief on it. Applejack opened the door to step outside, more willing face the armed and dangerous pirate monsters than this madness. Instead, the door opened into another room just like the one she had just been in, with misaligned stairs and doors on every surface.

“What in the hay?!”

Applejack stood on the threshold of the door, staring bewildered at her surroundings. To her left, she spotted a balcony bereft of stairs on its side, where she saw another Applejack looking at something to her left.

“AH!”

Applejack yelped in shock, backing away from the door. One of her back hooves slipped off the edge of the platform behind her. She scrambled forward in panic. When all four of her hooves were back on solid ground, she started whipping her head back and forth, taking in her surreal surroundings with pin-pricked eyes. She spotted a door on the ceiling that wasn’t open before.

Applejack looked back at the door in front of her. Its other side also had an ‘I’ stamped onto it. With the gears in her mind spinning, she took a tentative step back towards the entrance, looked back up at the door behind her, then shut the one in front of her.

The echo of a door slamming shut behind her made Applejack jump. She whipped around, and sure enough, the door was shut. Now that she was getting some idea of the mechanics of her situation, Applejack tentatively reached out and opened the door in front of her.

The door on the ceiling opened in synch with the one in front of her. She gulped, then reached over the threshold. An orange foreleg emerged from the opening. She shook her extended leg, and the hoof on the ceiling waved back.

Even though she’d been expecting it, Applejack shivered. She looked back to the open door in front of her, and walked through.

Applejack looked around at her surroundings, now flipped to their side. She took note of a previously inaccessible stairway that lead from the door she had just exited to another door with the numeral ‘II’ grafted onto it. Then she looked back at the door with the same symbol as the one on the front door, now on its side and on the wall to her right. The stairs and pathways that lead to in originated from a door with the number ‘XV’ stamped onto it.

So I’ve gotta find my way through fourteen more doors, Applejack though with a sigh. Unless I could find a close enough spot that I could jump to it from...

She put a hoof to her chin as she pondered. If I tried jumpin’ from any-which-way, would gravity pull me back down to my hooves, or would I fall to whichever wall is really the floor?

Applejack went stiff and her hoof shot back down to the floor when she realized that if that latter was true, then technically being on the ceiling meant she had a long way to fall.

DON’T JUMP.

Applejack jerked her head down, focusing only on the floor directly beneath her hooves, and began to trot down the closest adjoining stairwell.

After entering and exiting every door in correct sequence, Applejack finally reached the door with the same symbol as the one she had entered. She breathed a sigh of relief, ready to put the whole disorienting experience behind her. She opened the final door, and a breeze of air brushed past her. Never had Applejack been so happy to see those imposing buildings loom over her, or to catch the distant stench of the rancid pirates.

Applejack cantered out the door, down the porch, and promptly stepped in the puddle.

She twisted under the dark, deceptively deep water and began to kick, struggling to break the surface, but something was pulling her down. Her legs began to burn, and her empty lungs screamed as her veins pumped acid, but her salvation only stretched farther and farther away. Then something closed in around her, and everything went black.

The ravenous vacuum inside her lungs clawed her chest. Her heart pounded in panic, further exhausting her scant air supply. A hiss of rushing water met her ears, and the water inside her confinement began to drain away, leaving a bubble behind. Applejack gasped for the air without a second thought, least of all for the pungent smell of fish it bore. She sputtered when several stray droplets of saline water found their way to her tongue, making her spit.

The pungent flavor of the salt water made Applejack pause. She prodded the interior of her cell, and felt a hard shell underneath a thick layer of soft flesh.

The dread Applejack had when she first saw the puddle came crashing back down on her with the vengeance of a tsunami.

The muscles around her moved, and a widening sliver of light poured in through an opening crack, shedding light on her surroundings. Applejack sat in encased in a bubble of air atop a giant clam on the bottom of a sandy ocean floor. Before her was a creature of her worst nightmares. Its smiling face like a fireworks display was a stark antithesis to her visage of dread.

Applejack was face-to-face with a sea pony.

“Oh my gosh, Applejack!” exclaimed the sea pony, then turned to address the surrounding reef. “Hey everypony; Applejack is back!”

The reef burst to life, and in an instant, a teeming herd of sea ponies had swarmed the paralyzed mare, their combined smiles blinding and barrage of greetings deafening.

“Welcome back, AJ!”

“Bless Poseidon, where have you been?”

“We’re so glad you’ve returned, Applejack!”

“How long has it been since we last met?”

“Wait!” One sea pony swam in front of the rest with a fin held up. “There’s only one way to properly welcome our old friend back...”

If the sea ponies had been smiling before, their manic grins tore their faces in half.

“ENCORE!”

At that, the herd of sea ponies zipped off into separate choreographed circles. Neon spotlights lit all around, bathing Applejack in colors lights. Music filled the air, and the sea ponies began to sing.

“SHOO BE DOO! SHOO SHOO BE DOO...”

Applejack drew in a deep, protracted breath of air to replace the one she hadn’t realized she’d been holding until then. With muscles stiff and blood frozen in terror, Applejack finally responded.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!”

A violent splash came from above, and seconds later the bubble around Applejack popped. She didn’t have time to regret exhausting her last breath on a scream of terror before something grabbed hold of her and she began to rocket towards the surface.

“Wait, don’t go!” the sea ponies cried after her. “We need your help to deal with the shark vikings!”

She broke through the waves, and there was a brief feeling of vertigo as she floated weightless before falling undignified to the ground. Applejack would have kissed the earth if she hadn’t been busy gasping for air again. Something prodded her side, and she brushed her sopping wet mane out of her eyes to see her hat being offered back to her by a cyan hoof.

“You're welcome,” said Rainbow Dash.

Applejack was on Rainbow in an instant, forelegs like a noose of friendship as AJ pulled Dash into one of the tightest bear-hugs she’d ever given her.

“Whoa, easy!” Dash protested, trying to pry enough of Applejack off her to breathe. “I still gotta make sure it’s you.”

“What?” Applejack asked, pulling back.

“That stupid coded phrase Twilight told us to ask if we ever got separated to make sure we’re not some double-agent projection or whatever… Okay, it’s probably not so stupid now, but still… alright: ‘It’s a bright, cold day in April...’”

“Twilight and her checklists, ” Applejack muttered under her breath, rolling her eyes a little. “Um… oh! ‘And the clocks are striking thirteen.’”

Rainbow smirked. “You totally owe me now.”

Applejack didn’t even reply; she just pulled Dash into another hug.

“Hey! Only the first one is free!” Rainbow whined, looking around in unease. “Don’t you go getting all sappy on me.”

“I don’t care, Rainbow.” Applejack said, her face in Dash’s coat. “I ain’t seen any o’ you girls since we got into this nightmare. You’re a sight for sore eyes if ever there was one.” Applejack looked up at Rainbow, smiling a little. “Besides, ain’t nopony looking. I can get as sappy as I want.”

Rainbow checked to ensure the were indeed alone, then she smiled and hugged her friend back with a slight nuzzle. They stayed like that, enjoying each other’s company for a moment of peace in a truly crazy world.

“So… what was all that going on with the sea ponies?” Rainbow asked.

“NOTHING!” Applejack blurted as she reeled back, her eyes wide.

“Really?” Dash cocked an eyebrow.

“Yeah. Weren’t nothing. Nothing at all.” Applejack looked away to her left.

“Reeeally?” Rainbow smirked once more, beginning to chuckle as she moved in for the kill. “You’re scared stiff of sea ponies?!”

Applejack’s ears flattened and her face turned red, prompting Rainbow to burst out laughing.

“Applejack is afraid of sea ponies!” Rainbow howled, holding her gut. “The mare who’ll bull rush a swarm of changelings is utterly terrified of sea ponies!”

“Yeah. Horrified. Traumatized even. I don’t wanna talk about it.”

Rainbow wiped a tear from her eye, her laughter finally subsiding. “Oh, I know what I’m going as next Nightmare Night.”

Applejack exhaled an exasperated sigh. “Yeah, hardy-har-har. So have you seen any of the other girls, or is it just us two?”

Rainbow’s expression turned all business. “Yeah. I saw Rarity.”

“You did?!” Applejack blurted, her eyes going wide. “Where is she?”

“Ya seen that hunk of junk pirate ship with all the monsters on it?” Rainbow asked, to which Applejack nodded in reply. “Those jerks have her tied to the front like she’s some figurehead. I followed them here, but they tried to shoot me outta the sky, so unless we suddenly end up with some kind of army to take them on, we’ve got to find a way to sneak up to the ship and free her.”

Applejack nodded again. “Right. But those creatures were chasin’ me before I ran into you, so we’d better hurry and get outta here before—”

Applejack was cut off with the “cha-chick” of several firearms being armed.

“Well, look what we gots ‘ere,” one of the pirates grinned from behind the sights of his gun. “More ‘eadpieces.”

Another of the pirates gave a dark chuckle. “Alls that ruckus yous was makin’ made ya nice an’ easy to find. Hey, maybe if we get a tickle from what had ya’ laughin’ so ’ard, maybe we won’t pummel ya as much b’fore we drags ya back to da ship.”

Applejack glared at Rainbow Dash. “Any bright ideas now, chuckle-bucket?”

“Uh… wanna see if we can get the sea ponies to help us?”

Applejack glowered at Rainbow, but then the ground began to tremble under their hooves. Both mares looked behind them as the puddle roiled and bubbled.

“What be that?” one of the pirates declared, looking around in confusion.

Rainbow grabbed Applejack around the barrel and bolted into the air just as a geyser of ocean water erupted from the puddle, followed by a monolithic viking ship the size of a frigate bursting forth from the ground like a leviathan breaking the waves. It fell back upon waters that now partially submerged the twisted town, crushing the pirates like chicken eggs underneath a fallen redwood tree.

The shocked mares looked back down at the emerged vessel. The subsiding whitewash revealed a teeming company of anthropomorphic sharks. Their bodies rippled with powerful muscles underneath runed armor, and their faces and scalps flowed with such an abundance of hair that they made yaks look like zebu in comparison.

One of the viking sharks looked up and saw Dash and AJ hovering in the air. He gasped and pointed towards them, calling back to the command deck of the ship.

“Shipmaster! Behold!”

From the rear of the enormous vessel rose the largest, most heavily armored, and hairiest of all the sharks. He looked up to the sky and gasped in kind.

“Strike me with Mjolnir!” the shipmaster exclaimed. “Kneel warriors, for we are in the presence of the Rainbow Mare!”

Reverence overtook them all as every single shark fell to one knee and bowed their head.

Rainbow stared in utter bewilderment. “Uh… what’s going on?”

The Shipmaster raised his head. “The Codex Regius speaks of a great winged horse that soars like thunder and whose flight is infused with the power of the Rainbow Bridge of Valhalla.”

Rainbow raised an eyebrow. “What, you mean like my Sonic Rainboom?”

Excited murmurs rippled through the battalion of vikings, prompting the shipmaster to rise.

“What is thy name, daughter of Sleipnir?” he asked.

“Um, Rainbow. My name’s Rainbow Dash.”

The shipmaster raised a massive warhammer up to Rainbow. “Lady Dash, Daughter of Sleipnir, we of the Razorfin clan swear our swords and shields to you in an oath of fealty!” A universal uproar was bellowed in kind from every shark onboard.

“Just what in the hay is goin’ on?” Applejack looked up to ask Rainbow, only to see a mischievous smirk growing on her face.

“I think we just found our army,” Rainbow said with a devilish grin.

Rainbow puffed out her chest, addressing her personal army with as much gusto and bravado as she could muster. “Honorable warriors of Razorfin, do you long for action and hunger for blood?”

A vigorous uproar answered her.

“Then I have a task for you! In the center of this village is a vessel of savages who have pony-napped my dear friend, Lady Rarity, whom I must retrieve to purge this world of chaos! Will you follow me into battle that I may rescue the fair maiden and escort her to safety?”

The shipmaster raised his hammer. “We shall!” Another wave of roars followed in agreement.

Rainbow swooped down and dropped Applejack on the deck on the ship. “Then take my friend, Lady Applejack—”

“Hey, don’t you think you can start goin’ ‘round calling me ‘lady’, missy!” Applejack riposted.

“Just play along—Take Lady Applejack aboard this mighty ship, and follow me!” Rainbow flew up and the bow of the ship, then turned with a cocky grin. “And try to keep up.”

“We will follow thee, Lady Dash, to Ragnarok itself!” The shipmaster turned to his crew. “Warriors! Prepare for battle!”

A swell of deafening war cries exploded from the shark vikings, and they scurried into formation. The movement revealed a quintet of vikings near the back, armed not with mere steel but weaponized instruments, like rockers straight from Hel. Oaken gears began to shift and creak, unveiling a set of monolithic speakers, prompting a frantic and vain search from Applejack for something to stuff into her ears.

The shipmaster took the rudder and grinned. “Bards! Strike an appropriate tune!”

A thrum of dual guitars filled the air with volumes to make eardrums scream for mercy as the bass and drums thumped with the boom of a legion of thunder. Dash grinned in spite of the feeling that her cochlea were about to explode, and shot towards the center of town, rainbow trail following in her wake. Just then, the fifth and final member of the band raised a microphone to his mouth and screamed in bloodlust as the music reached a shredding peak. All the sharks began to headbang, swinging their hair around in rapid circles like windmills, generating a torrential wind that caught the sails with the force of a hurricane. The ship tore off like a bat out of Tartarus, crashing through buildings as it followed Rainbow Dash into town like a faithful attack megalodon.

- - - - - -

Over the submerged crater that used to be Town Hall, the captain of the Scurvy Gits looked over the bow of his ship. The rest of the crew was still wading and swimming through the waters, clambering back onto the ship with whatever ill-gotten gains they could carry before the sudden flood forced them to cut their looting short.

The captain squinted as he looked in the distance; the distant war anthem, crashing waves, and buildings being smashed drew ever closer. He gripped the rails tighter and couldn’t help but smile a little.

Another pirate decked out in a plethora of tools with a macaw perched on its shoulder and a massive screw sticking out of its skull thumped up behind the warboss. “Oi, Captain!”

The captain turned. “Aye, Mista Screw. You got’s word on da ship?”

Mr. Screw nodded. “Aye, Captain. Ship be in tip-top shape. Engine’s primed, floata pads calibrated, shoota’s locked an’ loaded, an’ I only had ta patch seven breaches in da hull this time.”

The captain nodded in approval. “Good... but...” The captain looked Mr. Screw dead in the eye, deathly serious. “How be da sails?”

“Flawless. Notta hole in all thirty-seven of dem.”

The captain sighed in blissful relief. “Coudn’ta asked for betta. We’s gonna be needin’ them.” He turned back in the direction of the uproar. “Can ya feel it, Mista Screw?”

Mr. Screw nodded. “Aye, Captain. There be a fight comin’. Grey Wolves, methinks by da sound of it.”

“Dun matter if they humies, pointy ears, bots, or da bugs. Livin’ an’ dead alike will bow to da Scurvy Gits at da might of our dakka.”

The bird on Mr. Screw’s shoulder cawed. “Bawk! Gun ‘em down!”

“Aw, you’s such a good parrot,” Mr. Screw affectionately cooed, then pulled a handful of cracker crumbs from one of his many pockets and served them to the parrot while scratching its head.

The captain tightened his grip on the rail with one hand as the other stroked the massive rocket launcher slung around his shoulders in anticipation. “Maybe when we can get some more headpieces so da headpiece can have some friends.” The captain leaned over the rail to address the ship’s organic ornament. “How ya like da sound o’ that, headpiece?”

Rarity, who had gone unacknowledged since her last conversation and was still equipped with the scrapyard shotgun and the soiled-beyond-redemption tricorn didn’t even look at her addresser.

“Rot in Tartarus,” she toxically hissed through gritted teeth.

Mr. Screw’s face lit up at Rarity’s curse. “Rotten tartar sauce? That sounds delicious!”

Rarity growled in exacerbation and rolled her eyes so hard that her irises nearly disappeared up inside her skull, ensuring that she didn’t notice the two ponies creeping up on the ship from a nearby roof.

Twilight squinted up at hulking mass of floating scrap metal that vaguely resembled a pirate ship. She caught sight of something that stood out from the cobbled eyesore commandeered by monster gorilla pirates and gasped.

“Fluttershy!” Twilight whispered as she ducked back down out of sight and pointed at the seafaring scrapheap. “Look! We found Rarity!”

Fluttershy peered over the ridge of the roof, caught sight of Rarity, then went still.

“Alright, Fluttershy, get down. We can’t let them to see us.”

Fluttershy didn’t move a muscle.

“Fluttershy?” Twilight prodded.

The pegasus remained motionless.

“Fluttershy!”

She remained statuesque.

Twilight peered over the top of the roof again. Mr. Screw was turning their way. Twilight gasped, then yanked Fluttershy back down into hiding. She waited for a second, then Twilight peered over the top of the roof to check in they had been spotted. None of the pirates were looking in their direction. Twilight afforded herself a quick sigh of relief, then turned back to Fluttershy. The pegasus was still stiff, staring off into the middle distance.

“Fluttershy, are you okay?” Twilight asked as she put a gentle hoof on Fluttershy’s shoulder.

Fluttershy gasped, flinching at Twilight’s touch. “Oh, yeah, I just… I...”

She choked on her words, looking away again. Whimpering through gritted teeth, she shut her eyes against a fresh wave of tears. Twilight pulled Fluttershy into another embrace, brushing a sympathetic hoof over her sodden, blood-streaked mane.

“I have a plan to free Rarity, but I’m going to need your help. Can I count on you, Fluttershy?”

Fluttershy pulled away, sniffed, ran a filthy and cracked hoof across her runny nose, then nodded.

“Okay...” she whispered.

Twilight smiled and gave Fluttershy a reassuring shake of the shoulder.

“Good girl.” Twilight looked back in the direction of the ship “Alright, here’s the plan: I’ll teleport onto the deck of the ship and cast a shield spell around myself to draw their fire. While they’re distracted, you go to Rarity and use your laser eyes to cut through her shackles. When you’re done, call for me, and I’ll teleport the three of us as far away as I can, and then we can go find the rest of the girls. Alright?”

“Alright...” Fluttershy mumbled.

“It should work as long as they don’t see you coming, but we need to hurry before whatever is making that racket gets here. So let’s just signal Rarity, and we’ll do this.”

Twilight lit her horn, then created an aura in the shape of a small arrow in front of Rarity’s face. She snapped to attention and jerked her head in the direction the arrow pointed. Twilight waved, then moved to put a hoof over her mouth to direct Rarity to keep quiet.

“IT’S A BRIGHT COLD DAY IN APRIL AND THE CLOCKS ARE STRIKING THIRTEEN! NOW GET ME DOWN!!!” Rarity shrieked.

Every pirate on the ship went on alert. The captain looked over the portside bow to the roof Twilight and Fluttershy where hiding on, then pointed a stubby finger at them.

“MORE PONEHS!” he roared.

Twilight ducked back down into cover as a barrage of bullets and rockets were shot her way. She growled and clawed at her own face, while Fluttershy began to hyperventilate.

“What are we going to do, whatarewegoingtodo?!”

“I don’t know, I’m thinking!” Twilight yelled, but concentration proved difficult with the litany of gunfire and the bombastic noise that vaguely resembled music becoming even louder.

The noise of a jetstream ‘whoosh’ came from overhead. Twilight looked up, and gasped at the familiar rainbow trail streaking through the skies.

“Rainbow Dash?”

The pegasus screeched to a halt in mid-air, whipped around, and caught sight of Twilight and Fluttershy. Her face lit up, but then her smile vanished as the sound of shredding metal started to make Twilight’s ears hurt.

“Quick! Get out of Razorfins' way!” Rainbow cried out.

“Who?”

Twilight snapped her head back to the sound of the buildings on the opposite side of the clearing being smashed to pieces. She yelped, teleporting herself and Fluttershy to the rooftops across the pavilion, giving Twilight a clear view as the pirates' vessel was brutally jackknifed by an equally massive viking ship commanded by sharks. The force of the attack rammed the pirate ship through several establishments, including the one Twilight and Fluttershy had just been on, knocking all the pirates off balance before both ships ground to a halt.

A moment passed, and an orange hoof rose to pull up a tremulous Applejack, lurching over to the rails of the Razorfin ship. Her tongue lolled out from her mouth as her eyes swam about in her head.

“Bud I wasch tall ‘nuff ta go on tha’ ride, Granny!” Applejack slurred, then disgorged the contents of her stomach over the side.

Onboard the pirate’s ship, the captain got back on his feet, spotting Dash hovering nearby.

“YOU! I rememba’ you!”

The captain looked back and forth between Rainbow and the vikings. He put two and two together, then with an aggressive growl he hoisted his massive rocket launcher onto his shoulder and fired a round at the pegasus.

The artillery shell only made it halfway to Rainbow before the shipmaster of Razorfin raised his warhammer. The runic markings etched across it glowed electric blue, then a lightning bolt shot from the weapon’s crown, striking the rocket and detonating it in midair. The shipmast then bared his phalanxes of teeth, pointing his hammer as a gavel of accusation at the captain.

“You DARE accost Lady Dash, barbarian?!”

The captain whipped around. “An’ what’s it ta you, chum-breath?!”

The palpable aggression emanating from the horde of pirates made Twilight’s gut twist in apprehension, but with a start she realized that she had gone forgotten with the arrival of Razorfin.

“Fluttershy, now’s our chance! We need to get Rarity and escape before this gets ugly!”

Twilight teleported herself and Fluttershy to the bow of the pirate ship. Twilight grabbed onto one of the many protruding hunks of scrap, then looked back at Rainbow and mouthed ‘get Applejack.’ Rainbow saluted, then zipped under the ship back around to Razorfin’s vessel.

“What kept you?” Rarity hissed.

“Long story,” Twilight whispered, attempting to pry off the thick shackles holding Rarity in place. “We need to get you out of here before they start fighting!”

Meanwhile, topside, the commanding officers of both sides continued to harangue each other as the bloodlust of their respective crews began to rise.

“You retched curs are beneath feeding to barracuda!” scorned the shipmaster.

“Dat’s some big talk fer’ a bloke who’s boss of a ship WIT ONLY ONE SAIL! ”

Twilight growled in frustration at the tenacity of the metal holding Rarity in place. “Fluttershy, I need your help!”

“O-okay...” Fluttershy whimpered, then squinted her remaining functioning eye, focusing her laser into a narrow beam that slowly began to cut through the binds.

The shipmaster turned to his army. “Warriors of Razorfin, it is the will of The Asagods we vanquish these ignoble brigands! For with their blessing of Lady Dash, the Rainbow Mare, we shall—”

The shipmaster was cut short when a thrown skull collided with the side of his head.

“Oi, dat be da deck of a ship, not da stage of a theater, ya sod!” the captain heckled. His merry band of miscreants all howled in laughter, and he began to chuckle as he turned to face them. “Hey, ya’ boyz think I cud git him ta start quotin’ Hamlet if I threw him a fish?”

Another uproar of guffaws followed. Then an arrow shot off the captain’s tricorn, carrying it all the way into one of the pirate ship’s many sails. Dead silence fell like a sudden winter upon the Scurvy Gits. Even Twilight and Fluttershy had stopped for a moment: they could feel the pervasive tension reach a breaking point.

Twilight looked to Fluttershy, then to Rarity, then back to Fluttershy, beforeall three redoubled their efforts to break the pearly unicorn loose.

The captain put a hand to his bald head in surprise, then looked back at the Razorfin clan. The shipmaster was lowering a crossbow with a condescending smirk. The captain turned around and reached out to retrieve his apparel, only for the arrow to burn into flames, burning a hole in the sail.

The captain’s right eye twitched.

“You’ve dun it now...” the captain growled as he turned, his voice low and dangerous. He whipped around and pointed a thick finger at the closest tricorn-bedecked war boy in the lot.

“OI! TIMMY! C’MERE!”

The war boy in question reeled back at the command, then looked around in bewilderment. Timmy gulped, then scampered up to the war boss.

“Oi Cap’ain?”

The captain never ceased to glare bayonets at the shipmast of Razorfin Clan, so he didn’t even look at Timmy when he raised his fist and punched him in the face with such force that Timmy flew across the deck, his hat suspended in the air for a moment. The captain caught the hovering tricorn with his outstretched hand, then slammed it onto his own head and pointed his rocket launcher at the shipmaster.

“You’ll rue da day ya crossed Captain Blacktooth an’ da Scurvy Gits!”

Twilight was starting to panic. “Fluttershy, we need to hurry!”

Fluttershy’s beam was wavering, cutting in and out. “I.. I can’t! I...”

Rainbow Dash flew up, holding an Applejack that was as limp as a wet sack of potatoes.

“I’ve got AJ!”

“Naw, ‘m fine, I was jus’ hav’n a beer… or twelve...” Applejack mumbled.

The shipmaster grinned with malicious hunger as his warriors roared their war cries and the bards began to churn out a deafening progression of violent power chords. “Valhalla awaits us, Razorfin! Hel starves for these savages! WE SHALL SEND THEM TO IT!”

Captain Blacktooth growled as the multiple sights of his rocket launcher flipped into view... except all of the iron sights, red dot sights, laser sights, and various other sights had been replaced by little sails that had a target cut out from them. Every last one of The Scurvy Gits bellowed the most sacred word in their tongue.

“WAAAGH!!!”

The cacophonous crack of several hundred firearms discharging at once clashing against an entire thunderstorm’s worth of lightning split Twilight’s ears. It wasn’t until the ringing in her ears had subsided that she realised she and all her friends were now screaming, and Fluttershy had started to sob hysterically again. Wounded cries of anguish came from both sides, dampened under the blaring distortion of viking death metal.

Twilight attempted to undo the last of Rarity’s bonds, but her fumbling hooves refused to do anything but remain shoved into her ears, and the blasts of the ongoing war above were causing such dissonant vibrations in her horn that she couldn’t even wield her magic adequately.

“To hay with this!” Rarity screamed She slammed the muzzle of her shotgun against the last of her cuffs and fired.

Rarity cried out in pain as the blast obliterated the welds around the shackle, shaking her formerly restrained left forehoof to the bone and causing her to fall. Twilight bolted forward and caught her by the wounded hoof, eliciting another anguished howl.

Twilight screamed and flung Rarity unto the nearest rooftop. She skid over the tiles and was just able to catch the edge of the drain with her rear hooves. Rainbow flew over to the roof, dropped Applejack next to Rarity, then flew back to Twilight.

“I need to let Razonfin know where we’re going!” Rainbow yelled over the gunfire.

“What?! No! We need to get out of here!”

“They’ve sworn and oath of fealty to me! They can help us!”

Twilight grit her teeth. “Argh, fine! Tell them to meet us at the library! But hurry!”

Rainbow nodded, then zipped around both ships, approaching the shipmaster from behind. Boarders from both sides had invaded the other’s vessel, combining the ship-to-ship battle with melee combat. Rainbow flipped in midair and bucked the face of a war boy charging the shipmaster from behind, sending the pirate over the rails.

“Shipmaster!” yelled Dash. “We have freed Lady Rarity and must depart that we may purge this world of its chaos!”

The shipmaster nodded. “Aye, Lady Dash!”

“When you have finished, we will have regrouped at a library made from an oak tree on the edge of town! You can find us there!”

“A haven of knowledge grown from a sapling of Yggdrasil...” The shipmaster grinned. “A novel concept! I like it!”

“Will you and your warriors fare on your own?” Rainbow asked.

The shipmaster reached out and yanked Dash out of the way of an incoming rocket, placing her behind cover.

“We can, Daughter of Sleipnir! We of Razorfin fear not death, for we know the honorable are awaited in the grandest halls of Asgard!”

Dash just stared for a moment, in awe of the shipmaster’s conviction.

“For your loyalty, I shall carry your fallen to the gates of Valhalla myself,” Dash swore.

The shipmaster gasped, a flame of humility and honor sparkling in his eyes.

Dash smiled, looked over the shipmaster’s shoulder, then screamed. “LOOK OUT!”

A war boy pounced towards the shipmaster, bellowing his creed. “WITNESS ME!”

The shipmaster whipped around and swung his mighty hammer at his attacker. The pirate took the full force of the blow and went flying clear off into the distance.

Rainbow scoffed at the dispatched pirate. “Mediocre!”

An explosion rocked the two off balance.They looked in the direction of the blast, where Captain Blacktooth stood in a clearing on the ship surrounded by fallen sharks with his rocket launcher in one hand and a warhammer of his own in the other.

The shipmaster furrowed his brow at his enemy, then braced to charge. “Fly now, Lady Dash! Take your friends and do what you must, but this fight is mine!”

Rainbow nodded. “Celestial speed, shipmaster!”

Rainbow zipped away from the battle as the opposing commanders charged each other, landing on the rooftops next to Twilight. “Alright, we’re good! Let’s go!” Rainbow took back to the air.

“Rainbow, wait!” Twilight called out. “Rarity can’t gallop with her injuries! You’ll need to carry her!”

Rainbow rolled her eyes, the flew to Rarity and smirked at her as she pulled the unicorn into her forelegs. “Hold on, Lady Rarity!”

Rarity just raised a confused eyebrow before Dash took off. Twilight and Applejack galloped after them, leaping across the rooftops with Fluttershy making up the rear. The five fled until they had reached the elevated ground to the location of the Golden Oaks library.

Twilight had never been so happy to see her home, nor could she have been more overjoyed to see it unscathed by the insanity around them. Twilight lit her horn, teleported them all to the front door, and tore it open. Her friends darted inside without a word, then Twilight zipped in behind them, then through her full weight at the door, slamming it shut. Twilight held her breath for a moment, her back flat against the entrance, lest an exhalation shatter the scene.

Every book was stocked neatly upon the shelves, exactly where each one needed to be, with a little patch of dust here and there where Spike had gotten lazy and thought she wouldn’t notice. Twilight took a deep breath, and the heavenly smell of residual sap and stale, dusty book bindings blessed her nostrils. She sighed in relief and slid to the floor, slumping up against the entrance.

Applejack swayed on her hooves, her face drained of color. “I’mma be sick...” she mumbled, then scurried up the stairs.

Dash watched her go, then turned back to the other three. Her eyes darted from one to the other, then an expression of horror overtook her face.

“Has anypony seen Pinkie?”

Rarity just shook her head in dismay. Fluttershy didn’t even respond.

Twilight sat up. “No… I ensured the library was made from completely encrypted code to make it a safe house, so she was supposed to show up here. We were all supposed to show up here.” Twilight huffed. “Fat lot of good that ended up doing...”

Rainbow zipped from room to room, kicking each door open and calling out Pinkie’s name, only to receive no answer.

“She’s not here!” Rainbow flew back, skidding to a halt in front of Twilight. “We have to go back out there!”

Rarity slowly pulled the sordid tricorn from her head and nudged it to the side of her discarded shotgun.

“Before we go anywhere, I need to get… this… washed out...” She gestured at the chunky, visceral gore oozing down her head and neck, then began to limp towards the stairs.

Rainbow gawked. She growled, then flew right up behind Rarity.

“Pinkie Pie is still lost out there in that nightmare, and you want to take A BATH?!”

Rarity whipped around to glare at Rainbow. “Do you have any idea what this filth I am soaked in is?!”

Rainbow sniffed the air, and reeled back at a stench like mold, sweat, and iron. “No...”

“NEITHER DO I!” Rarity shrieked, then turned, whapping Rainbow with her tail as began to stomp up the stairs with as much indignance as she could muster with a three-legged gait.

Rainbow snarled, then flew higher up on the stairs, blocking Rarity’s path.

“So that’s it then? Miss prissy going to go fix her hair and makeup while her friend suffers alone in a chaos-twisted fever dream!? Really showing where your heart stands!”

Twilight gasped. “Rainbow! Don’t—”

Rarity scoffed. “Oh, and you’re one to talk! Now that you’ve got your own mob of fanatical chauvinists, I bet you’re enjoying gallivanting about however you wish!”

“Girls, please!”

Rainbow showed her muzzle right up into Rarity’s face. “At least I’m actually doing something useful instead of being some helpless damsel in distress!”

“STOP FIGHTING!!!”

Tense silence engulfed the foyer. The quarreling mares looked away from each other to Fluttershy, glaring at them with her teeth bared. Seconds passed, and her reprimanding glower melted into a pained grimace: a bomb on the verge of tears.

“This isn’t going to help anything,” Fluttershy explained, her voice quivering. “We have to work together, so no fighting… don’t fight... please…”

Rainbow and Rarity remained fixed in place, like foals caught with their hooves in the cookie jar. Moments passed, where the only sound to cut through the silence was Fluttershy’s irregular sniffling. Rarity’s throat hitched, her eyes beginning to waver with contrition. When she spoke, her voice was barely above a whisper.

“I killed one of them.”

All eyes present were on Rarity. Rainbow’s disconcerted expression asked for a response more than words ever could.

“I killed one of them… the pirates,” Rarity repeated with more dismay. “I couldn’t fix the dream to get myself out of trouble, so I screamed for help. One of them shoved that—” she pointed her wounded hoof at the shotgun on the floor “—right in my face, told me to shut up. He just… made me so angry. I yanked it away, pointed it back at him. He tried to take back, it misfired…”

Rarity stared off into the middle distance. “The captain just laughed when I asked what happened, like it was all just some cruel joke. I tried to negotiate my release, but he just made me an involuntary part of the crew, then slammed the dead pirate’s hat onto my crown.”

Rarity looked back at Rainbow Dash, her eyes brimmed with tears.“That’s what this is,” she strained, pointing to the goop, “the liquefied remains of some pirate monster’s head.”

Rarity tore her afflicted gaze from Rainbow, redirecting them to the steps as she moved to pass the transfixed pegasus.

“You’re not the only one...”

Rarity stopped before carrying herself up a single flight. She looked back down at Fluttershy, who was fighting not to withdraw completely behind her sullied mane.

“You’re not the only one here who’s killed someone today.”

Not a word was spoken. Fluttershy whimpered, then flicked aside her clumped and tangled mane—still damp with saliva, blood, and vomit—to reveal her beaten and bruised face and the swollen lids of her left eye.

“Giant wolf… tried to eat me...”

Fluttershy’s ears folded against her head. She let out a pained whine like a beaten puppy, then her legs gave out from under her. She collapsed to the floor, forelegs covering her face, her mane a filthy curtain from behind which she began to sob.

Rarity just stared in pity, then descended the stairs and approached the weeping pegasus. She sat down in front of her, gently stroking her exposed pastern. Rarity learned in a little closer and spoke, her voice tender.

“This isn’t just your blood, is it?”

Fluttershy took a heaving breath, shuddered, then shook her head, her face still hidden.

“Do you think you would feel a little better if we cleaned it off?”

Fluttershy sniffled, then nodded.

Rarity nudged Fluttershy with her muzzle, then took her gently by the hoof to pull her back to standing. Fluttershy wiped away her tears, then began to follow Rarity up the stairs, her eyes to the ground and her squalid mane and tail dragging across the floor. Rainbow drifted away without a word as they climbed the stairs, passing her on the way to the bathroom.

“Wait!” Rainbow blurted, landing behind the two. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said what I did to you, Rarity, and I didn’t mean to make you upset, Fluttershy.”

Rainbow looked away, rubbing one foreleg with the other. “I’m sorry,” she muttered, shamefaced. “Just… I’m sorry.”

Rarity stood next to Fluttershy, only seeing Rainbow through her peripheral vision. Moments passed in silence as she regarded the penitent pegasus.

“I forgive you,” Rarity meekly answered. “And I apologize too. I had no right to lambaste you, Rainbow, with such wanton calumny, or to make you, Fluttershy, so upset with my cruel words.” She swallowed, then waited a moment the regain control of her voice. “And thank you, everypony, for going out of your way to rescue me.”

Rainbow returned with a brief, weak smile. “Hey, you’d have done the same for me.”

“I would… I just wouldn’t have employed vikings. Probably.” Rarity glanced back towards the bathroom door. “We won’t take long. The second I’ve cleansed myself, I’ll be ready to go back outside.”

Rarity lead Fluttershy the rest of the way to the lavatory, slipped through the door, and quietly shut it behind them.

Rainbow watched them go, concerned eyebrows bunched together and her demeanor solemn. Without even looking at Twilight, Rainbow glided back down to the foyer, sat on the wooden floor, then slumped over to one side and leaned against the nearest set of bookshelves.

Twilight stood, made her way over to Rainbow, and put a compassionate hoof on her friend’s shoulder.

“Are you okay, Rainbow?”

Dash took in a sharp breath and her face scrunched up in frustration.

“No Twilight, I’m not okay,” she replied, terse. “I screwed up. I screwed up bad.”

“No, you didn—”

Rainbow cut her off with a raised hoof. “Don’t, Twi. You were right freakin’ there. I screwed up. My friends were in serious danger, and I’m at their throats for it.”

Twilight waited for a moment to let Rainbow breathe before she responded.

“But you still made it right.” Twilight sat next to Rainbow and put a foreleg around her. ”This has been hard on all of us.”

Rainbow breathing became laboured and her voice strained. “All this to help Pinkie, and we don’t even know where Pinkie is! How am I supposed to fix her problems when I can’t even get my own act straight?” She shut her eyes in dismay, her voice low and disquieted. “Rarity, Fluttershy… We all could have died out there...”

Rainbow’s eyes snapped open. In an instant Rainbow was in the air with her muzzle inches from Twilight’s, eyes wide and pupils shrunken.

“What happens if you die in a dream?” Rainbow hurriedly asked. “Can you die in these dreams? What if that old mare’s tale is true?! Could Pinkie have—”

“No, Rainbow. You won’t die in real life if you die in the dream.”

Rainbow’s mouth gaped open in horror as her face turned ashen. “But you can still die...”

Twilight grimaced. “If the worst happens, then you’ll just wake up, like you would with any other nightmare. Which,” she added before Rainbow could get a word in, “gives me reason to believe that Pinkie is still out there, alive. If… she were to have woken up, then Spike would have given us the kick and we’d be back in the conscious world.”

Rainbow stared at Twilight for a moment, her head shaking in disbelief. “You knew all this, and you didn’t tell us?”

“I...” Twilight paused, “I told you all it was going to be dangerous. That’s what the training was for. I just didn’t think it would be this bad. I’m sorry.”

Rainbow looked down, sighed, then flew off into the kitchen.

“Hey, where are you going?”

Rainbow flew back in with a tray of ice cubes, a plastic bag, and a dish towel.

“How much time do we have left?” Rainbow asked.

Twilight opened up her saddlebag and glanced at her pocketwatch. “About an hour and ten minutes.”

“Are the Elements here?”

Twilight lit her horn and pulled The Elements of Harmony: A Reference Guide off the shelves and opened for Rainbow, revealing all six of them.

“I thought it would be ironically fitting. This place is secure, after all.”

Rainbow looked down at the tray of ice cubes in her hooves. “Fluttershy’s gonna need something to reduce the swelling in her eye. These should help… I know from experience. Soon as we’re all good, we head back out there,” she said, then flew upstairs to the bathroom door and gently knocked upon it with a hoof.

“Hey, it’s me.” Rainbow waited for a second before being bid to enter. She closed the bathroom door behind her, leaving Twilight alone in the foyer.

The lone unicorn sat back down on the floor, exhaling a burdened sigh. “Well, this has been one big catastrophic hodgepodge since it started.”

I noticed, Reason dryly commented. But surely you must have expected something like this. You were at ground zero when this ordeal with Pinkie first detonated.

“I was. But I could have never imaged things would go this badly.” Twilight let out a listless laugh. “I suppose this is what we get for jumping head-first into a dream with the most inscrutable pony we know while she’s currently in dire straits, with four other ponies who all live in a town where everypony is crazy.”

She says to her split personality.

Twilight huffed, coy. “Spoken like a true native.”

Reason chuckled. Touché. So what are we going to do to find Pinkie?

Twilight looked at the window. Its still drapes and the silence of the library belied the demented carnival outside.

“Spread out enough to cover as broad an area as possible, but not too far that we get separated again. Or we can try locating her through the spell matrix: maybe we’ll have more luck if the six of us are focusing on the same thing at once.” Twilight looked away from the window and began to make her way to the fiction shelves. “But all that is moot until we get back out there again. In the meantime, we should this time to recuperate. This is a mental battle, after all, so we need to relax to clear our mind.”

And what do you propose to do for that?

Twilight pulled the last book from the Daring Do series off the shelf.

“What else?”

Reason chuckled. Brush up on the best parts again before the new one debuts tomorrow?

“You know it,” Twilight said as she laid down, curling her legs underneath as she got comfortable in her favorite spot by the center table. “So, which part do you want to retread: the academic parts where Daring is delving into the oldest and most obscure of Equestrian myths about worlds beyond the stars, when she starts tying them together with the common thread of a collective of archmages, or when she’s piecing together the broken portal?”

Actually, let’s read the part where she opens the gateway. Reason giggled. For as boring as Rainbow thought reading about recorded legends was, the look on her face when it finally paid off was priceless. I still laugh whenever I think about it.

At the recommendation, Twilight opened Daring Do and The Gyroscope of Time, flipped through the pages to the last third, and began to read, her worry and anxiety slowly stripping away with every word as Daring Do used the ancient gyroscope that was fabled to have belonged to the mythical sorcerer Lord Hypnos. She disappeared, then reappeared in the circular ruins of a parthenon with alien constellations decorating the ceiling. Daring realized she had been transported to a completely different world, and excitedly flew from the ruins to the world outside… only to find the remains of a dead world; broken structures of a ghost city that stretched from one end of the horizon to another; rolling, barren hills of a endless wasteland; a dark sky that housed a bloated red sun and rings made from fragments of shattered moons.

Somehow, she knew the whole world had nothing to share but sights like the one before her. Where once lush jungles and forests thrived, only ashes remained. Where vast oceans teeming with life once pooled, only endless salt flats remained. Where verdant fields and meadows once thrived as blessings of summer, only plains of death remained. And numerous sleepless cities, once home to millions, now each existed as a necropolis of a dead race.

Daring Do had expected a vast new world to explore. What she got was a vast, empty graveland.

The inexorable tethers of gravity pulled her down to the curved roof of the pantheon. With tears in her eyes and an aching void in her heart, Daring slowly pulled off her helmet and placed it over her chest in solemn memory of all the strangers she never knew.

Twilight’s brow furrowed. The melancholy passages of seeing a dead world for the first time always enraptured her, but now they struck an even more poignant chord on a personal level. She exhaled, and pressed her forehead to the pages.

Are you okay? Reason asked.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine, just… give me a minute...”

Twilight focused on the smell of the ink and paper of the book in front of her, on the feeling of the oak beneath her, on the distant hiss of water pressing and pouring through the pipes to and from the bathroom. She thought of Fluttershy, Rarity, Rainbow and Applejack, now relatively safe. She thought back to the last time they were all together in good cheer: during the water wars after her first shared dream with Pinkie.

Twilight allowed herself a contented sigh. For the briefest of moments, she really did feel as though everything was just as it had been before, and that she really just was in her library, reminiscing without a care in the world about past events shared with those most precious to her.

The hair on the back of Twilight’s neck began to tingle. Twilight’s contented visage faltered with that uneasy feeling of somepony’s eyes boring into her. She huffed as she got back to her hooves and turned around.

“Alright, ready to go back outsi—AAAH!”

A rainbow blur blasted open the bathroom door at Twilight's yelp and gasped.

“Oh, horse apples!” Rainbow exclaimed.

“What?” an alarmed Applejack asked.

“One of those things from outside got in!”

Rainbow dive-bombed into the foyer, screaming her war cry with a rear hoof extended to deliver a flying kick straight to the projection’s face. It sidestepped in the blink of an eye and Rainbow slammed into the ground. She swept around with a low kick to knock it off balance, but it jumped back. Rainbow lunged again, grunting with exertion and attacking the stranger with a flurry of flying hooves, but the projection dodged each one with ease, and with every strike Rainbow hit nothing but air.

“Rainbow, stop!” Twilight called out.

Rarity darted out of the bathroom with her wet mane still draped over an eye, then screamed in terror, her alabaster face going even more pale than usual. “HIM AGAIN?!”

“Rainbow, STOP!” Twilight demanded, lighting her horn and catching Rainbow’s hooves in her telekinetic grasp. Rainbow struggled, but Twilight stepped between the two. “Take it easy; let me talk to him.”

Twilight sighed in exasperation, putting a hoof to her face. “This place is supposed to be secure… how did you get in here?”

The thing-pony just shrugged.

Twilight rolled her eyes. “Of course....”

Just then, Applejack stumbled across the threshold behind Rarity, looked over the railing and did a double take. “What in tarnation?!”

Twilight looked up at them. “Rainbow Dash, Applejack… meet the thing-pony.”

“Whoa, wait; what?!” Rainbow yanked her hooves out of Twilight’s arresting magic. “That’s the thing-pony?!” She looked back and forth between Twilight and the thing-pony, confusion tumbling out of her mouth. “But… how… what… why… I… uh...” She scratched the back of her head with a hoof. “Okay...”

A terrified “Eep!” made Twilight look back up at the bathroom door.

“It’s okay, Fluttershy. He’s harmless, remember?”

A wet, trembling, pale fuchsia mane made its way past the corner, followed by creamy fur and a trembling aqua eye. With a cautious pace, ready to bolt in the opposite direction at a moment's notice, Fluttershy peeked out from behind the threshold to chance a glimpse of the thing-pony.

With one fluid motion, the thing-pony twisted its head around to stare at the timid pegasus with its distant, expressionless gaze. Fluttershy squeaked in terror and vanished from sight.

“Don’t be afraid, Fluttershy,” Twilight reassured. “He won’t hurt you.”

“Yeah, he’d better not,” Rainbow growled.

With even more reserve, Fluttershy edged back out from her hiding place to endure the cold, ghostly eyes of the thing-pony, which hadn’t even moved or reacted as it regarded Fluttershy with the utmost indifference.

Fluttershy crept out from the bathroom. She locked eyes with the thing-pony, then went stiff. She wilted, then retreated behind Rarity and mumbled something. Rarity nodded, replied with a delicate assurance, then turned to Twilight,

“His staring is making her uncomfortable.”

Twilight cleared her throat to get the thing-pony’s attention. The projection’s head swivelled back around to meet her with its glassy, vacant stare, and the ripple of unease that Twilight always felt in the thing-pony’s presence along with it.

Applejack spoke up, breaking the unsettling silence. “So, uh, Twi, what did you mean when you said this place was supposta be secure?”

Twilight looked up at Applejack, as eager to divulge the details of her logistics as she was to sever eye contact with the thing-pony.

“Since the library is supposed to be encrypted, nopony except for me can manipulate this structure. So Discord, or any projection for that matter, shouldn’t be able to alter or enter it.”

Applejack scratched her chin with a hoof. “So, if this place is supposta be a safe-haven from projections and whatever consarned things are out there—” she pointed a curious hoof at the thing-pony “—how’d he get in?”

I can only speculate at the moment, answered Reason, but my best guess is that if we’re the only ones who can manipulate the library, then either Twilight’s subconscious must have somehow unintentionally granted him access, or whatever entity in her subconscious that manifests as the thing-pony is capable of bypassing our security measures.

Rainbow, Rarity, and Applejack stared at Twilight, awaiting a reply.

Well, aren’t you going to give them that explanation, Twilight?

Twilight jolted. “Oh, um… I don’t know; my subconscious probably brought him in.”

Rarity put a hoof to her temple. “Wait, so, is this place secure, or isn’t it?” Her eyes went wide, and she gasped. “The library hasn’t been compromised, has it?!”

“No!” Twilight blurted, held her expression, then looked off. “Probably...”

Rainbow huffed and kicked the air. “Great. We’ve piddled away half our mission time, and all we’ve got to show for it is some blank-faced, owl-headed pony-thing—”

“Thing-pony,” Twilight interjected.

“Whatever!” Rainbow barked. “The point is that Pinkie is still missing!”

Reason mentally prodded Twilight. I have an idea.

“What?” Twilight asked aloud.

Rainbow cocked her head to the side to stare inquisitively at the unicorn. “What?”

“Oh!... U-uh...” Twilight stammered with a sheepish grin. “Could you give me a second? I think I’m getting an idea.”

Her friends just looked at each other in uncertainty as Twilight took her conversation into her head. Talk to me, Reason.

Okay, so what if we had some direct link to track down Pinkie through the dream code?

Twilight frowned. How are we going to get that? The chaos of the matrices is making them virtually impossible for us to manipulate.

Who said anything about manipulating? We’ve already got something that’s native to the dreamscape right here… something that’s already breached an encrypted area…

Twilight’s eyes grew wide and her mouth fell open.

Rainbow took notice and flew in close, eager for an update. “What? Got an idea?”

“Yeah,” Twilight spoke as she took several steps forward. “If it can get through my firewalls, maybe the thing-pony can navigate the roils of the fever dream outside to help us locate Pinkie.”

A collection of gasps rose from everypony else present, and all eyes fell upon the thing-pony. Even Fluttershy had come out of hiding to stare hopefully at the eerie projection, waiting with baited breath for affirmation of any kind.

Rainbow flew right up into the projection’s face, her eager eyes doing their best to pop out of her skull.

“Is she right? Do you know how to find Pinkie?!”

The thing-pony didn’t flinch when Rainbow flew within inches of its face. It didn’t even blink as it looked at her, considering her with unwavering inscrutability.

Twilight pulled a book from one of the shelves and began to flip through the pages as she trotted up to the thing-pony.

“You met her once, in the dream where Prance was being mangled like Ponyville outside is by Discord,” Twilight explained as she flipped to a page with an illustration depicting the stained-glass window of the spirit of chaos being defeated by the six of them, then pointed to the pink pony in question. “Do you remember her? She’s the most cheerful and friendly pony you could ever meet, but right now she’s in terrible distress, and we need to find her to get rid of what’s causing her these terrible nightmares.”

The thing-pony tilted its head to the side as it studied the image without a trace of familiarity.

“Please,” Twilight pleaded. “You have to know something...”

The thing-pony looked off in the distance, eyes ever vacant and unblinking. The spindly tufts of its ears twitched to and fro, as if listening to a tune only it could hear. All its muscles seized up at once, becoming even more still than usual. It held the pose for a moment, then two, then three. Not a single breath was taken by the mares as the awaited a response, a reaction, anything from the mute creature.

The thing-pony looked Twilight dead on, sending the same unwelcome wave of chills through her. Then, to her overwhelming surprise, it did something it had never done before.

The thing-pony nodded.

Twilight’s eyes nearly ejected themselves from her head. “You have?!” Twilight teleported inches in front of the thing-pony's face. “Can you take us to her?!”

The thing-pony nodded again.

Another blast of light later and Twilight had teleported all of them to the front door.

“Show us! We—”

Twilight went silent when she realized she was talking to the empty space where she had expected the thing-pony to be. Closer to the center of the foyer, in its exact same spot a few paces from where Twilight had left Daring Do and The Gyroscope of Time, stood the thing-pony, still peering through Twilight with its empty orbs.

Twilight’s lips parted, forming noiseless words as her jaw fell open. She lit her horn again to recast the teleportation spell. A burst of magenta light obscured the thing-pony from view. A split second later the sparkles dissipated, revealing an undisplaced thing-pony, still staring back with its emotionless void.

“My magic has no effect on him...” Twilight breathed in a stupor.

“Figure out why later!” Rainbow snipped. “What matters is he knows where Pinkie is, so we need to suit up and get back out there!”

Twilight nodded. “Rainbow is right. Everypony: status report!”

Rainbow’s eyes sharpened. “Just say ‘go,’ and I’m there.”

“Wha—? Oh.” Applejack pawed at one of her ears with with a hoof. “My hearing ain’t all back yet, but I’ll be fine.”

Rarity looked at Fluttershy, then back to Twilight. “Fluttershy’s left eye is still partially swollen, her lacerations have been cleaned but need bandaging, and my left forehoof isn’t in the best condition for galloping.” She futily blew a dripping tassel of her mane out of her eyes. “And we’re both still wet.”

Twilight couldn’t be helped to hold back a smirk. Ordered processes were kicking her brain back in gear with a bullet-pointed checklist. She loved her checklists, but the one that ended with ‘Defeat Discord’ and ‘Save Pinkie’ was a checklist that she wanted to invite back to her home after hours.

“Alright: Fluttershy needs patching up and Rarity needs a splint.” She looked up at Rainbow. “There’s a first aid kit in the medicine cabinet.”

“On it!” Rainbow saluted, then zipped back towards the bathroom.

“We’ll need our saddlebags if we’re headed back outside,” Twilight said, looking to Applejack.

“Gotcha.” She nodded, then turned tail to gallop up the stairs.

Twilight turned her attention to Rarity and Fluttershy. She lit her horn and surrounded them in her aura as the clatter of rummaging sounded from upstairs. Water droplets began to peel away from the soaked coats of both mares, forming globules that hung suspended within Twilight’s magic. When all the residual fluids had been extracted, Twilight flicked her head and cast the rinse aside just as Rainbow reappeared at the top of the stairs with a spacious case of medical supplies.

“Hey, catch!“ she called, then tossed the kit over to Twilight.

The unicorn caught it with her magic, and in a blink of an eye had pried it open to swaths of gauze and cotton swabs that danced through the air. She withdrew a splint which she floated over to Rarity, then a bottle of rubbing alcohol that was surrounded by a swarm of white tufts as soon as the lid was ripped off.

“I’m sorry, Fluttershy, but this is going to sting a little.”

Fluttershy nodded in submission, stiffening for the coming burns. A moistened cotton swab drifted over to a particularly nasty gash across her left shoulder, then pranced over the torn flesh with a series of delicate hops. A sharp inhalation came from Fluttershy as she grimaced and her muscles clenched in protest, but despite her pained quivers, she remained obediently still. As soon as the sterile ball of cotton had finished bounding across the gouged skin, another swab followed behind, cleaning and drying the wound. Hot on its heels came the glow of Twilight’s horn, sealing the wound as best she could.

Rainbow and Applejack galloped down the stairs and skidded to a halt, each packed down with sets of saddlebags. Rarity stood to meet them, testing the structural integrity of her splint.

“How’s the leg?” Applejack asked.

“It leaves something to be desired, but this will suffice for now.” Rarity floated her stylish satchels off of Rainbow’s back, opened one, and began to rummage through its contents. “Thank you, by the way,” she added as she found the items of her search: a brush and an elastic hair-tie.

Rainbow just peered and her with a flat stare. “Really?”

“Yes, really,” Rarity laconically stated as she loosely combed her mane over her right ear and bound it to the hair running down the back of her neck with a scrunchie, letting her mane drape over her shoulders as she wrapped her tail into a loop. “I wouldn’t be of much use to anypony if my hair was getting in my face and obscuring my vision, would I?”

Rainbow pursed her lips and let out a contemplative hum. “Touché.”

But Rarity had stopped paying attention to the exchange: she was looking past Rainbow and Applejack to the foot of the far bookshelves with distant eyes and a conflicted expression. Rainbow and Applejack took note and looked to where Rarity was staring at her inherited shotgun, lying next to its former owner’s blood-drenched tricorn.

Rainbow and Applejack looked back at Rarity, eyes wide and breaths still. Rarity fixed her eyes on the brutal weapon as though it were a thousand yards away, heedless of her friends’ apprehension. She blinked. Her eyes went back into focus, and her expression hardened. Her horn ignited, and the shotgun rose from its resting place, drifting over to its new master.

Rainbow Dash and Applejack parted to let it pass. It twisted to and fro in the air as Rarity mulled over its every detail and feature, from its crude, primitive design to its every little dent and blotch of filth. She pointed the muzzle up towards the ceiling, then pumped the forestock, ejecting the remaining shells into the air, where she caught them with her magic.

Fluttershy was watching Rarity now as well. Even Twilight had paused in tying the icepack over Fluttershy’s eye to observe the scene. Rarity finally looked up from her shotgun to the eyes of everypony staring at her.

“Four shots left.” She loaded the massive rounds back into the firearm and slung it over her back.

“Rarity.” Twilight stepped forward. “You know we’re going to use the Elements against Discord, right?”

“Consider it an addendum to Plan B,” Rarity replied, steeling herself. “I’m ready.”

“Okay.” Twilight nodded, then turned to Fluttershy. “Everypony else is ready. Are you?”

Fluttershy looked away, becoming rather interested in the wooden panels of the floor. “No, not really,” she mumbled. “But you still need me, whether I’m ready or not, don’t you?”

Twilight nodded, her gesture solemn. “Yeah, we all do. I’m sorry it had to be this way.”

“It’s alright, it’s not your fault.” Her eyes drifted back up to her friend, and she offered the weakest of hopeful smiles. “Besides, we’ll all be awake in an hour, won’t we?”

“Hmm? Oh, yeah, right, of course. Safe and sound, back in my library, and then we can all snuggle up together with another round of hot cocoa… with marshmallows.” Twilight answered with a nervous smile, once again feeling the cold, electric needles of the thing-pony’s hollow eyes puncturing her skin.

She turned to look at the projection, met its gray eyes, and got a feeling of vertigo from the abysses of its unfathomable vision. She gulped and willed herself to look towards the book on the table. With her horn aglow, her copy of The Elements of Harmony: A Reference Guide floated from off the table, across the library, and into her waiting saddlebag, where she placed it snugly next to her totem, then latched it shut.

Twilight looked to the thing-pony. “Are you ready?”

The thing-pony nodded.

Twilight’s pulse quickened and her nostrils flared, an action mirrored by all of her friends. “Alright then,” she proclaimed as she lit her horn again and swung open the front door, “lead the way!”

The thing-pony tilted its head forward, then began to stroll at a casual pace towards the front door.

The tension all the girls had dissipated as they watched the thing-pony make their way towards them with a dragging, lethargic, bipedal amble.

“HEY!” Rainbow barked. “We’re in a hurry, so move your scrawny flanks!”

“Rainbow, don’t be so rude!” Twilight scolded, then looked to the thing-pony. “But seriously, this is an emergency, so could you take us to Pinkie as expediently as possible, please?”

The thing-pony stared at Twilight for a moment. The next thing any of them knew, there was a great “whoosh” and a powerful gust of air that forced them all to close their eyes. When they opened their eyes again, the thing-pony was gone. The five of them looked outside: the thing-pony was already a dozen yards away, sprinting at inequine, breakneck speeds.

The five scampered out the door in hot pursuit. Their breathing became ragged and their limbs burned as they desperately tried to keep up with the thing-pony as it swept past obstructions and vaulted over obstacles with the skill of a parkour runner and the speed of a howling wind.

“How did… he learn… to run that fast?” Applejack asked between gasping breaths.”And on only two legs?”

“Don’t know...” Twilight panted in reply. “But I… have a… sinking suspicion… of how… he’d answer… if you asked...”

On and on they galloped, further from the safety of the library and the distant thunder of screaming, gunfire, explosions, and shark viking melodic death metal.

- - - - - -

It was dark all around, and it was cold: so very cold. The mirthless chill in the air poked pin-pricks into her lungs with every quivering breath, and the frost on the ground gnawed without respite at her rump in spite of her warming presence.

She had awoken into the dream here, with nothing but the totem in her saddlebags and the omnipresent black to keep her company. She tried calling out for somepony, but her first query was swallowed by the shadows, and still echoes answered the rest.

Her head had begun to spin and claws more terribly frigid than the freezing air had begun to dig into her heart. She had finally reached out with her mind, fearfully prodding the biting darkness, only to have instantly yanked herself away, screaming at the horrors lurking outside. She had wept until she had run out of energy to cry, leaving her to do nothing but sit there, corroding in her own dread until her tears had frozen to her face.

She had wished she could just die there—cold, alone, and miserable. Anything would be better than having to suffer the agony of what awaited her outside, and then to wake back up in a world next to the closest friends she’d ever had, but could now no longer be with.

After this, they wouldn’t want to so much as speak of her again.

A distant thrum jostled her out of her defeated stupor. She held her breath and strained her ears against the silence. A muffled, rhythmic beat pounded off in the distance, and it was getting louder. As the percussive thumping grew more voluminous, it was joined by a polished bleat, then by a swell of a quivering, sinister melody.

Vertigo and dread overtook her as an abyss opened up in the pit of her stomach. More than anything, she wished she could be hurled into whatever unspeakable depths it lead to, never to be seen or remembered again.

The end was upon her. And just to rub it in, they were making it a big musical.

The deafening click of a monumental latch twisting open forced her ears flat against her head, then the creak of massive doors opened to a column of blinding light. She flinched and shut her eyes with a pitiful whimper. She wished they would just shoot her on the spot, but she already knew this wasn’t how the game was meant to be played.

She stood on numb legs, trembling from cold and horror. Resigned to her inevitable fate, Pinkie Pie dragged her hooves out from her cell into the waiting end.

Pinkie crossed the threshold of no return, holding a foreleg up to her eyes as she squinted through the burning pillars of light blazing down upon her. Her ears twisted back as the roar of a thousand voices beat upon them. She peered out from behind her measly cover and finally got to see her surroundings.

Pinkie stood on a colossal stage, larger than a ballroom floor, with the unrelenting gaze from dozens of spotlights in the house locked upon her. Behind her, a monolithic stone wall stretched from one end of the horizon to the other, without break or blemish in the uniform structure of bricks save for the ingress back to her little cell. Beside it, rows of towering rock hammers stood guard as imposing sentinels. To her right was a gigantic podium where an all-too familiar mass of diseased and inflamed neurons were self-replicating into an even more numerous swarm. It was her only visible company on stage, but Pinkie was far from being alone.

The vast expanse before her was filled with a sea of faces, each one belonging to featureless, hairless ponies bearing identical empty eye sockets and open mouths caught in a silent, dreadful scream. The multitude writhed en masse in an open stadium build to seat an innumerable legion: not an inch of free space was to be found. The grotesque horde went mostly unnoticed for the guests of honor.

Twilight, Rainbow, Fluttershy, Rarity, and Applejack all stared up at Pinkie with identical expressions of consternation, while the thing-pony just stared. Pinkie looked back with more dismay than all of her friends combined, gritting her teeth as air came to her in trembling, heaving breaths.

Rainbow bolted straight for Pinkie, only to recoil in pain as she smashed into an invisible wall. Distortions rippled through the air as she bounced back towards her friends. They surrounded her in concern as Twilight looked back and forth between Dash and the transparent shield separating them from the stage.

The music grew with intensity. The mass of neurons had formed into a behemoth wyrm, looking down upon the lone figure on stage from the seat where it judged with ceaseless scrutiny. Pinkie grimaced one final time, then fell to her haunches as the intro quickly lead into the first verse.

A lone spotlight broke away from Pinkie to a grody, bloated mare wearing a powdered wig and a thick blue robe that it used to glide down from the crest of the wall to the stage below, where it turned to address the neural wyrm in cantare.

“Good evening, your Majesties!

For your pleasure, the court does so please

Display the accused, prostrated by your divinity,

Who was caught red-hoofed with A SMILE...”

There was a deafening uproar of disgust from the crowd.

“Smiling like a real, authentic pony.

Now it’s time to prove she’s guilty.

“Call forth the witnesses!”

The morbid attorney dispersed into the dark as the spotlight left her. The beam darted up to the precipice of the wall with four other lights, one each devoted to a lavender grimoire, a gamboge snake wound from a rope, a treacherous cerulean wind, a niggardly alabaster straight jacket, and a hulk of creamy quills. The five surrounded Pinkie Pie, circling like sharks, scorning her with their scrutinies as each one passed behind her, their voices a chittering swarm of devils.

“I always said everypony in your town was crazy.

But you’re the paradigm of two-faced, unhinged insanity!”

“Stubborn, linear cognizance?”

“Cocky, brazen impertinence?”

“Pretentious, ostentatious elitist?”

“Quivering, milquetoast truculence?!”

“Just say everything will be okay if you can grin just partly.

So once more lie to my face, and throw us another party!”

There was an uproar of equal parts outrage and vindication from the faceless audience as the witnesses morphed into swarms of the same infected neurons, each cell skittering away in a lopsided skirr as they fled the stage. A series of bombinate wobbling noises came from the force field as Rainbow fruitlessly pounded her forehooves against it, but Pinkie couldn’t even muster the strength needed to lift her head and look up at her. Pinkie’s distant eyes were locked to an indiscriminate part of the stage as pieces started to tumble from the wall, first as sand, then as pebbles, stones, and finally jagged rocks that formed an igneous, austere golem resembling a decapod crustacean with legs like pick-axes. When it spoke, it did so with a voice that left every muscle in Pinkie’s body paralyzed.

“Thou little twit

Thou art now in it

Thou shouldst have listened to me

When I hadst said that life is not a party

BUT NO!”

The rock monster slammed its spiky legs into the ground as it got right up in Pinkie’s face, who was trembling with the effort to not look back into its beady eyes.

“Alas, thou art doing great

Being indistinguishable from a pony or an ape.”

The rocks looked up at the leviathan in the judge’s seat.

“I pray, grant me a day, your Majesties,

And I can whip her back into shape.”

Another deafening cacophony rose from the audience as the rocks sank back into the wall and Twilight pulled Rainbow away from the shield. Pinkie couldn’t hear what Twilight was trying to yell over the audience as her hoof went back and forth from tapping her temple to pointing at the shield, but she wasn’t paying attention to them. The spotlights had dimmed and the deck lights activated, casting her elongated shadow against the wall. She could feel a writhing mass of slimy tentacles squirming within every inch of her. Pinkie was shaking as if from hypothermia; she didn’t even need to look back to know it was him.

The shadow of Discord chortled down at her.

“What’s wrong, Pinkie?

Not yourself lately?

I suppose it’s just as well

That you’ve lost your way to tell

Yourself from your charade

Since your masquerade became unmade.

So go and smile for everypony.

And I thought laughter made you happy.”

The spotlights relit, and Pinkie’s shadow disappeared with a malicious cackle. Rainbow was pounding upon the shield with the force of a thunderstorm as Twilight tried to corral her, each of their faces tensed. The judge’s podium creaked in strained protest as the wyrm leaned over it, peering at Pinkie with soul-piercing scrutiny.

”HOW DO YOU PLEAD?”

Pinkie sniffled. She didn’t even bother to wipe away the tears dripping from her eyes. Her breath caught on the cracked surface of her dry throat. When she replied, she did so with a pitiful, quivering timbre as she sung her somber part.

“Crazy

Off of my rocker,

I am crazy.

Larks aren’t as looney.”

“Everypony already knows I’m guilty

So just do what you have to do to me!”

Pinkie’s last note rung through the bitter air, making the leviathan contort and convulse in response. A ripple ran down its center, then its upper half violently split in two. One of the gigantic appendages turned white as a face and horn sprouted from the top. A fiery mane billowed from the back of its neck as its eyes glowed with all the wrath of sunspots. The orchestra kicked back into overdrive, distortion cranked up to eleven, and with an infuriated, demonic roar from a dragon-toothed mouth like the maw of Tartarus, Princess Celestia began to deliver the final decree.

“THE CASE AGAINST THE DEFENDANT IS INDISPUTABLE...”

The second head arose, dark as the night sky with a mane like a mass of doomed stars swirling around the black holes of her eyes. Princess Luna snapped her vicious jaws and continued with the next line.

“WE SEE NO NEED TO DELIBERATE!”

A scaly claw with muscular fingers ending in razor-sharp talons rose above the desk. It smashed down upon the podium, obliterating the judge’s stand into thousands of splinters, revealing the long necks of Celestia and Luna conjoined onto the single body of a hydra. The second claw stepped over the hill of debris, and the divine monstrosity began pulling itself closer towards Pinkie.

“EONS TO OUR EXISTENCE, AND WE HAVE NEVER BEFORE

LOOKED DOWN UPON SOMEPONY SO DESERVING OF SCORN!”

Pinkie was frozen in place, staring up at her executioner with her mouth open in terror, eyes wide and pinprick pupils bleeding with abject dread. as the hateful goddesses craned their necks down to snarl at her.

“THE WAY YOU LIE AND PRETEND

TO YOUR MAGNIFICENT FAMILY AND FRIENDS

WILL EXPUNGE US OF ALL MERCY

WHEN WE ADJUDICATE!”

Overwhelming instinct had taken over Pinkie. She darted backwards into her cage and pressed her back flat against the wall, never once tearing her eyes away from a sight both too glorious and terrible to behold as they glared back into her den, snarling with bared teeth.

“SINCE, MY LITTLE PONY,

WE HAVE LEARNED YOUR WORST FEAR,

YOUR SENTENCE IS TO BE REVEALED

BEFORE THOSE YOU HOLD MOST DEAR!”

The Sisters turned to the ravenous crowd, and exclaimed their verdict.

“TEAR DOWN HER WALL!”

Every voice in the faceless herd roared with vindictive glee, and began chanting with rapturous bloodlust. “Tear down her wall! Tear down her wall! Tear down her wall!”

The royal abomination began to tear at the narrow opening to Pinkie’s enclosure with feral claws. The music of the infernal orchestra was disrupted by the sound of a glass biodome shattering into a million shards, and a second later Pinkie was all but tackled as Rainbow collided into her, scooping her up in protective forelegs and snarling back at the blasphemous mockery with equal ire.

“Tear down her wall! Tear down her wall!”

Another second passed, and a sharp pop and a blinding flash of magenta light brought Twilight and the others into the cold, beleaguered cell, forming a protective circle around Pinkie.

“Pinkie, it’s just like in Prance!” Twilight yelled over the unified riot’s chanting and the grunting of the divine monstrosity ripping apart the wall. “Everything outside is a creation of your subconscious!”

“Tear down her wall! Tear down her wall!”

A sizable chunk of the wall was ripped from its place, leaving the six of them vulnerable. The Sisters roared with predatory rage, lifted a mighty claw, then brought it down upon their prey.

Twilight lit her horn. A bubble shield covered them in an instant. The crushing attack smashed down upon the shield, making Twilight wince and her force-field erratically sputter.

“Tear down her wall! Tear down her wall!”

“Pinkie, please! Only you can put a stop to this!” Twilight pleaded.

Another vicious claw smashed against the shield. Twilight cried out in pain as her protective spell began to crack.

“Twilight! Elements!” Rainbow blurted.

The unicorn grit her teeth and ripped open her saddlebag, tore the Elements out and urgently flung each around the neck of her friends while she slammed the tiara down on top of her head. The monster lifted a claw for the killing blow. The Elements began to glow a searing white as they released a blinding explosion of magical energy. The blast crashed into the holy abomination with the force of a tsunami. The shockwave ripped across the stage, sweeping over the stadium and uprooting every grain of the wall, reducing it to dust and ashes that buried them under an avalanche.

Twilight waited a moment before opening her eyes. The scalding light burned into her retinas faded to darkness, the shield buried underneath the cold rubble. Even over the ringing in her ears, Twilight could hear the echoes of the zealous mantra, fading like ghosts ripped from the body.

“Tear down her wall! Tear down her wall! Tear down her wall! Tear down her wall...”

The six mares remained under Twilight’s shield, like refugees in a bomb shelter. Their nerves and muscles were still tense, waiting with bated breath for another attack, but nothing disrupted the carpet of ash blanketing the shield. No sound but Pinkie’s erratic gasping broke the eerily placid silence.

Twilight forcefully dispersed her shield, shoving aside the ashen remains that threw off a plume of dust in the shape of a halo when it hit the ground. The curtain of the powdery cloud settled to unveil that the entire amphitheater and every projection it in had been obliterated, leaving nothing behind but a barren, desolate landscape under a burning sky: the one place in a dream world consumed by chaos that had been given peace through the dark tranquility of death.

Pinkie tore herself from Rainbow’s protective grasp and broke through the circle of her friends. She staggered a few steps into the dusty fields, trembling as she looked off into the distance, past the hill that was once Celestia and Luna, and over the low inclines that had been the stadium teeming with spite. Her neck stiffened, not daring to look back. Pinkie's trembling increased, she choked back a heart-wrenching sob, and she took off in a desperate sprint away from her friends, leaving a trail of tears in the parched ashes.

“Pinkie, stop!” Twilight teleported in front of Pinkie, but the distraught mare shoved past her.

Rainbow shot past Twilight, grabbing Pinkie around the neck. They skidded to a halt, Pinkie still struggling to break free from Dash’s hold.

“Oh no, you don’t! You have any idea how much trouble we had to go through just to find you?”

“No… can’t… J-just p-please... please let me g-go!” Pinkie stuttered as she struggled in vain to break free again.

Rainbow tightened her grip. “Nuh-uh! We’ve already jumped into Tartarus, and so help me Celestia, we’re not leaving without you!”

“N-n… n-no u-use… W-we… w-w-we c-ca-n’t...”

“Can’t what, Pinkie?”

Pinkie whipped around to pitifully look at Dash with the sunken eyes of a mare who had lost it all.

“WE CAN’T BE FRIENDS ANYMORE!!!”

Dash reeled back, stunned. Her grip loosened, allowing Pinkie to pull away. She fell to her haunches, then collapsed into the ashes, weeping like a widow.

“I-it’s ov-ver… You kn-know ev… everything...”

Everypony gathered around Pinkie, looking down on her with unrestrained pity. Twilight circled around, got down on all fours, then put a comforting hoof on Pinkie’s neck. She swatted Twilight’s hoof away and whined in pain as she pulled her limbs in even closer around herself, sobbing ever onward.

Twilight lay in shock for a moment. She looked back up at her friends. Each of them bore the same expression of worry and uncertainty as Pinkie drifted further away from them.

“Pinkie...” Twilight’s own voice was shaking. “Pinkie, what was that? Is that how you think we feel about you?”

Pinkie just kept crying.

Twilight couldn’t restrain herself, wrapping a hoof around Pinkie’s neck. “Pinkie, we love you. Everything we’ve worked for the last week, everything that we’ve gone through in these dreams, we took upon ourselves to endure because we care about you.”

Pinkie didn’t even look up at Twilight as she spoke.

“Hey, Twilight,” Rainbow called, “Discord showed up as Pinkie’s shadow again, and we just finished blasting everything else here to kingdom come, so shouldn’t the Elements have fixed everything by now?”

“Still alive...” Pinkie muttered.

The five of them looked down at her.

“Come again?” Applejack asked.

Pinkie snorted, then wiped her dripping muzzle with a foreleg. “H-he’s still alive… I can feel him...”

Twilight looked back up at her friends. Rarity looked back with anxious apprehension. Fluttershy was looking in every direction across the wasteland in alarm. Applejack looked at Twilight with knowing resolve, and Rainbow was already tensing back up into attack mode.

“Well, I’d hate to keep him waiting,” Rainbow growled, then shot back up into the air. “DISCORD! I know you’re out here! Show your ugly face, you coward!”

A cloud of dust erupted from right next to them as a figure lurched up from the ashes. The six of them yelped in alarm and jumped back. The air was filled with an energetic whine as the Elements charged again, but then the dust settled and Twilight got a look at their target.

“Stand down!” she ordered. “It’s just the thing-pony...”

The thing-pony shook itself like a wet dog, kicking up another dust cloud in the process, then shook out its drab clothing. Not once during the routine did the thing-pony express a single emotion, its hollow eyes even more spectral than the dead landscape.

“Geez, be more careful next time, would ya?” Dash said to the thing-pony. “We almost blasted you!”

“Yeah, well I don’t think we’ll have to worry about him, considering he just survived a blast that reduced everything else in a one-mile radius to particulate matter.” Twilight looked at the inscrutable projection. “So you’re completely immune to magic, aren’t you?”

The thing-pony just shrugged.

Twilight sighed. “Figures… Well, you still helped us find Pinkie, so, thank you. From all of us. Sorry about not keeping you from getting covered in dust, but, you know... you’re immune to magic, and all...”

Rainbow landed next to Twilight. “Hey, Twilight, if the pony-thing—”

“Thing-pony.”

“Whatever. If he survived getting blasted by the Elements, what are the odds of them not affecting Discord, either?”

Twilight frowned. “I don’t know. But there’s one way to find out...”

Rainbow Dash grinned with her cocksure defiance. “Oh, believe me; I intend to find out…” She looked back over the sweeping wastes. “But how are we going to find him?”

Twilight put a hoof to her chin. “Hey, we’ve still got the thing-pony. Maybe he can track Discord, too. But we need to remain vigilant. The last thing we want is to—”

An explosion of ash and dust tore apart the hill that had been the remains of the alicorn hydra. From the cinders emerged the roaring, necrotic head of the monstrous Celestia. Charred flesh clung to blackened bones and the eyeless sockets of her skull burned with plasma. It bared down towards the girls with an open mouth and a sea of teeth, making the mares scream in horror. Her claw burst up from the sterile ground with a camera held delicately in its fingers.

Click!

A burning flash of blinding light seared their eyes, making them cry out in pain and stumble back with hooves over their faces. When Twilight was able to see again, her breath caught in her throat and her blood quickened.

Discord was tossing off the carcass of the monster Celestia like the costume it used to be, and it turned back into ash when it fell to the ground. He was fiddling with the camera, bringing up the recent photos. The little screen on the back lit up, and his face became aglow in awe. With the reverence of a new father seeing his firstborn foal for the first time, Discord tugged at opposite corners of the screen to enlarge the image.

“It’s… perfect...” Discord whispered, showing the girls the picture of their collective, horrified faces.

A blue bolt slammed into Discord’s face. There was a nauseating sound of tearing as he stumbled backward, the dropped camera turning to smoke as it hit the ground.

Rainbow Dash hovered in the air, her face on fire with fury and bloodlust. “You have NO IDEA how long I’ve been waiting to do that!” She spat, only for the red in her vision to clear. She got a look at the result of her attack on Discord, and her anger faltered.

Discord had been all but decapitated by the strike. His head dangled off the back of his neck by only a shred of skin, revealing the clumped swarms of diseased neurons beneath. He balled his fists, then aggressively leaned towards Rainbow Dash for a rebuttal, giving her an even closer view of the mangled stump.

“You’ve been waiting a—hold on...” Discord held up a talon for pause, then grabbed his head, flipped it back upright, and rammed it back down upon his neck with a sickening squelch. “You’ve been waiting a grand total of six days; five if you’re only counting since the last time we met. Less than a week is hardly a tale of a life-long vendetta for swarthy revenge, Dashie.”

“DON’T CALL ME THAT!” Rainbow screamed, her face going red.

“Aw, but she gets to call you that,” Discord pouted in false dejection, motioning towards Pinkie. “Why don’t I get the same luxury? I am a part of her, after all.”

“Shut up!” Dash riposted. “You’re just a bad nightmare that needs to be snuffed out! Don’t you dare even try to pretend you’re anything more!”

Discord chuckled deviously. “Is that all you really think I am? Some Saturday morning cartoon villain that you can just ‘defeat?’ Pinkie herself has taken ownership of me and what I am: a creation of her subconscious. So in a way, I’m an integral piece of the very same friend that you’ve shared your laughter and tears with.”

He grinned with a devil’s condescension. “So what exactly are you fighting for: Pinkie, or your perception of her?”

Rainbow just stared back, at a loss for words.

“Enough!” Twilight barked, stepping forward. “If you think that mind games or some overblown show-trial will ever get us to change what we think of Pinkie, then you’re sorely mistaken!”

“Wait, you actually think that was...” Discord’s insidious vissage cracked. He wrapped his paw around his gut, pointing at Twilight and howling with laughter at her. “Oh, soldiering on with your crusade in spite of your ignorance… You girls will never cease to assume me!”

Rainbow growled and looked back down at her friends. “Screw this guy! Let’s just blast Discord and get this over with!”

“Aw, you mean you don’t want to learn what all of this is really about?” Discord asked with the same tone of mock sadness. “We could sit down and have a lovely little chat on the matter...”

Discord snapped his fingers, and an eyeblink later the seven of them were seated around a felt-top table.

“Perhaps play a little game of cards in the meantime...”

Discord snapped his fingers again, and a deck of playing cards materialized in front of him, with a hoof already dealt to each occupant at the table.

“And lest we not go without refreshment...”

Discord reached deep into an armpit and extracted a wine bottle, which made Rarity wince. Discord uncorked the bottle, and Fluttershy perked up when a bulldog dressed in a little tuxedo emerged halfway from it.

“Good evening, sir,” the bulldog addressed Discord with a thick accent spoken through floppy jowls. “May I be of assistance?”

“I hope so,” Discord replied, then turned to the others. “Ladies, go ahead and let Princeton here take your orders.”

Rainbow Dash leaned forward, looking at Princeton with daggers behind her eyes. “Sure; I’ll take Discord’s head on a platter.”

Discord sighed. “Nevermind, Prince ol’ chap. Seems last call was an hour ago,” he said, pressing the cork to the dog’s crown, pushing him back into the bottle and shoving the bottle back into the oxter realms from which it came. Then he looked at Twilight with a reluctant business face. “So this is the way it’s going to be, isn’t it?”

“Sorry Discord, but—” Twilight cut herself off, leering across the table at Discord with confident condescension. “Actually, you know what? No. I’m not sorry at all.”

Discord sighed again, bowing his head in resignation. “If that’s how you want to play...”

Discord reared up his hind legs and bucked the table. It slammed into Twilight, knocking the wind out of her. Discord sprang upright, grabbing Pinkie telekinetically and flinging her screaming at supersonic speeds off into the horizon.

“PINKIE!” Dash cried out, darting after her.

Twilight wheezed, clutching her gut. Discord loomed over her, seized the table, then brandished it over his head.

“And that leaves your squad of six Elements down to...” The table above Discord’s head morphed into a massive golf club. “FOOOOUR!”

Discord swung the giant club at Twilight. A burst of adrenaline shot into her system. She lit her horn and cast a tight shield around herself. A spider web of cracks burst across Twilight’s shield upon impact.

“Aw, now you’ve made me have to call a mulligan!” Discord groaned, pulling back for another swing only for a lasso to rope him around the horns and yank him down into the dust.

“Don’t even think about it, ya’ hodgepodge, good-fer-nothin’ varmint!” Applejack growled through gritted teeth, pulling the other end of the rope around Discord’s mismatched wings.

Discord laughed. “Think you can wrangle me, bumpkin? ‘Cause this ain’t my first rodeo!”

Discord yanked back against Applejack, tearing her off his back. Fluttershy and Rarity lept forward in an attempt to tackle him back to the ground, but he just knocked them aside, sending them tumbling through the dust. With Applejack still hanging onto the rope by only her teeth, Discord began to thrash his neck around, using Applejack as a flail to smash against Twilight’s shield.

Twilight dispersed her shield to grab Applejack with her magic. Discord swung his neck around, slamming the two of them together. The battered Applejack couldn’t hold on anymore, and the they tumbled lopsided across the dust.

Applejack groaned, stumbling over her own hooves as she tried to get back on all fours. Discord loomed over her with a snide, condescending grin.

“Looks like you came in second place again, AJ! Now are you going to ditch town to wallow in your shame like last time?” Discord reached out to grab her with his claws, only to get blocked by Fluttershy,

“Don’t you dare touch her, you bully!” she yelled, glaring at him with as much of The Stare as she could muster with only one eye.

Discord went stiff, then laughed at her. “You need both eyes for that, Ms. Sensitive!” Then he hacked and spat in her open eye.

Fluttershy cried out and darted back, trying to rub the offending phlegm away. Applejack charged forward for a tackle. Discord caught her with the claws of his reptilian leg and slammed her to the ground. Rarity lept at Discord, twirling in the air to bludgeon his face with the broadside of her shotgun. Discord grabbed Fluttershy by the tail and swung her into the attacking unicorn, sending them both tumbling to the ground. Twilight charged up a concussive shot and fired. Discord snapped his fingers, and Twilight teleported in front of her own attack spell. In impacted her right in the face, and she fell to the ground, the world swimming before her eyes.

Discord chuckled victoriously over the fallen ponies. “All too easy.”

A blue, hypersonic projectile shot across Discord’s face, colliding with such force that his head was ripped off at the neck. The trailing jetstream exploded in the girls’ ears, and the dust cloud kicked up by the wake turbulence forced them to shut their eyes. The haze settled to reveal an enraged Rainbow Dash, setting Pinkie down to snarl at Discord’s severed head.

“You can’t get rid of me so easily!” Rainbow challenged.

Discord growled back at her. “Let me give you a piece of my mind...” A blazing inferno erupted from Discord’s severed neck and shot towards Dash, slamming into her with a rocket-powered headbutt. Discord’s body snapped its fingers and appeared right alongside its head, grabbed the neck, then swung his own head like a club in an arc back down on Rainbow.

“You are getting to be a real headache!” Discord yelled as he smacked Rainbow with his own weaponized face.

The dirty hit sent Dash to the ground. Discord pinned her underhoof, then reattached his head to his neck. “Always so valiant,” he sneered, reaching out to claw her forehead with a talon. “Well you won’t be after I’m done with you...”

The thunder of a gunshot blasted across the wastes. All eyes turned to Rarity; smoke was rising from the barrel of the shotgun pointed at Discord’s face.

“Keep your wretched claws of her, you filthy mongrel!” Rarity shouted.

Discord smirked. “You don’t have the guts.”

“Are you willing to find out?” Rarity contested.

Discord just laughed. “If you did, you’d have already done it,” he remarked, then turned back to Dash.

“I’m warning you!” Rarity challenged, but Discord paid her no heed, turning away to leer over Dash.

Another shot was fired. The outermost pellets grazed Discord’s shoulder, gouging open the flesh. Discord winced, then glowered at Rarity.

“Now that we’re through with the foreplay,” he growled, holding his talons above Rainbow. Lightning arced from the tips of his claws and struck Rainbow full-force. She screamed.

The thrum of lightning was met with another explosive thunderclap. Discord let out an otherworldly shriek of pain, clutching the remains of where his left arm used to be.

Applejack stood on her hind legs, aiming Rarity’s shotgun at Discord, her hoof around the trigger. “Rare might be too civilized to do something so brutal, but I sure as heck ain’t!”

Discord snarled at her. He snapped the fingers on his remaining hand, then appeared behind Applejack. She had just enough time to turn around to receive a haymaker punch right to her face that sent her tumbling across the dust.

A sizzling buzz cut through the air as a laser beam carved into Discord’s back. He roared in pain, whipping around to glare venomously at Fluttershy, who returned the leer in kind with a nuclear reaction burning in her remaining eye.

“I said, don’t you dare touch my friends!” she growled.

Discord let out a rumbling hiss—an amalgamation from multiple furious beasts—as his arm regenerated. His muscles tensed, then he pounced at Fluttershy with a cacophonous roar. He was halfway to his target when Rainbow tackled him from the side, making him veer off-course just enough to miss. He whipped around to swipe at Rainbow just as Applejack lassoed her around the torso and pulled her back to safety. Fluttershy blasted Discord with her eye laser again. He roared and swung at her only to get his punch deflected by Rarity, using her whirlwind combat style to keep him at bay while Fluttershy blasted him from over her shoulder.

Discord held out his talons, and bolts of electricity arced from the fingers as he pointed his lightning claws at Rarity. Applejack lassoed him around the wrist and pulled his arm across his chest, redirecting the lightning blast into the ground. Rainbow grabbed the other end of the rope and flew a tornado around Discord, tying his arms to his body.

“Now, Twilight!” Rainbow cried. “Blast him now!”

Discord looked up, alarmed. Twilight, who had forgone the melee since Rainbow had reentered the fray, had used the time to recharge the Elements. Each gem began to glow again as their signature collective whirr grew louder. He snapped his fingers. An explosion of light forced them all to cover their eyes. When they looked back up, Discord was gone, the rope once tied around him falling in coils to the ground.

Twilight felt the ground stir beneath her hooves. She looked down right as Discord burst up beneath her, striking her lower jaw with such a ferocious uppercut that several teeth chipped. Her nerves became alight with agony and her vision blurred with stars and tears.

A cruel claw jabbed into her forehead. The electric torment of her pain vanished, leaving only the fire. Not of agony, but an alien yet all-too familiar feeling hate directed at her friends: a bitter loathing of unfathomable depths that she’d not felt since Discord did the same thing to her in the first dream she’d shared with Pinkie, telling her to loathe her friends for their every incorrigible flaw and detest every fiber of their being for it.

Hate the stubborn, linear Applejack.

Hate the cocky, brazen, impertinent Rainbow Dash.

Hate the pretentious, ostentatious, elitist Rarity.

Hate the quivering, milquetoast, truculent Fluttershy.

Hate the immature, sporadic, delirious, disingenuous, pathetic Pinkie Pie.

Hate them all. Despise them all. Loathe them all.

Twilight heard somepony off in the distance screaming, getting closer. A second later, she felt Discord ripped away, and the feelings of imposed rancor along with them, leaving Twilight feeling both hollow and filthy. She fell back to the dunes of ash, kicking up a choking plume upon impact, and all the physical pain she had felt from Discord’s attack came crashing back down on her, making her cry out.

She writhed in the dust, vision blurred, ears ringing, and body agonizing. Somewhere past her pain, she heard somepony crying and the wet smacks of hooves beating a bloody face. Twilight strained her eyes, wiping away the tears and forcing herself beyond her injuries. Her vision cleared to the sight of Pinkie once again holding down Discord as she assaulted him.

“You… ruined… EVERYTHING!!!” Pinkie screamed in a voice born of antipathy and despair.

Discord growled and caught her hoof, blocking her attack as he scowled back at her. “I ruined nothing but your childish ignorance, Pinkie! Who are you to blame me for your suffering when I’m just a creation of the secrets which you keep locked up inside that miserable head of yours?”

Twilight slowly forced herself back to her wobbly hooves, lighting her horn and looking down in concentration. With a little bit more magic, she had the Elements fully recharged. She looked back up at Pinkie, who was still wrestling with Discord.

“Pinkie, get out of the way!”

Pinkie shook her head. “No! Discord is part of me; you need to blast both of us!”

Twilight’s throat hitched from a sudden dry spell. Pinkie’s logic made too much sense to discredit. Her mind went into high gear again as she rapidly contemplated as many possible outcomes as it could.

She’s right… but what will happen if I use the Elements on Pinkie, too? Will it cleanse her of the anomaly like Luna was of Nightmare Moon? But these are just our projections of the Elements; will they work the same way? Will they even work at all? Or will they do to her what they just did to the stadium?

Discord snarled and got back up on all fours, shaking Pinkie off and coiling to pounce Twilight. Pinkie tackled him back to the ground, then looked at Twilight with tear-streaked eyes.

“Now, Twilight! Blast us now!”

Twilight stood locked in a stalemate of indecision.

Worst case scenario is she wakes up, Reason said.

Discord stood, taking Pinkie up with him. Twilight held her breath and shut her eyes tight, then unleashed the power of the Elements. Beams of energy shot from each jewel, engulfing both Discord and Pinkie in a sphere so bright that it burned through the skin of Twilight’s eyelids. The combined power of the Elements overloaded onto their targets, and there came another deafening blast at detonation. A gust of wind kicked up a rolling cloud of dust,and charred soot forcing Twilight to cover her muzzle.

Twilight stood utterly motionless in the ashes of the wake, flicking her to try and regain her hearing. She dared not move, lest too sudden an observation of the aftermath deny them of victory.

“Oh, come on!” Rainbow yelled.

A pit opened up in Twilight’s stomach.

Discord was laughing.

Twilight ripped open her eyes. Discord was standing in a crater of charcoal, pointing at Twilight and howling in derisive laughter as Pinkie backed away from him. The wounds from Pinkie’s bludgeoning were still regenerating, but the full power of the Elements hadn’t laid a scratch upon him. They hadn’t even messed his hair up.

“Oh, you had me going there for a moment!” Discord laughed. “To think how you thought your stunt could have had an effect on me!”

“But… how… why...” Rainbow stuttered, “You should be dead! Everything else in the stadium got reduced to dust, why aren’t you taking a dirt nap with it?”

Discord chuckled. “Pretend solutions for pretend beings. Those aren’t the real Elements of Harmony, just Twilight’s projections of them.”

Discord scooped up Pinkie, giving her a noogie as she screamed and struggled in vain to break free. “I, however, am a projection of a very real part of your dear Pinkie Pie. In this world, your imaginary jewelry is hardly worth more than a fancy light show.”

Discord irreverently tossed Pinkie to the ground in front of Twilight. She caught Pinkie with her magic, setting the shaken mare on all fours. Pinkie darted behind Twilight, cowering like a little foal as Discord focused his derision on Twilight.

“Do you really think that every adversary you’ll come to face will fall before you because ‘friendship?’ And how exactly do your scorched earth, ‘take-no-prisoners’ artifacts figure into that? Are you really so creatively inept that you can’t figure out how to resolve your conflicts without pulling some magic mumbo-jumbo out of your rear end to effortlessly wipe away all your problems?”

“Now then, seeing as how you’ve had your go,” Discord cracked his knuckles with the sound of a slew of clown horns being honked, “it’s my turn...”

“Not so fast Discord!” Twilight interjected. “We’ve still got Plan B!”

Fluttershy, Rainbow, Applejack and Rarity all looked at Twilight. She met their glances with a knowing look, and they nodded in response.

“Wait,” Pinkie said, “what’s ‘Plan B?’”

Twilight lit her horn, and the six of them disappeared in a burst of light. reappearing at the edge of the wastes. Twilight took off, galloping like mad back into town, looking back over her shoulder as she screamed:

“RUUUUUUN!!!”

The five gave chase, galloping after Twilight as she fled back into the warped and imposing Ponyville. Pinkie caught up to Twilight, despair acid-etched onto her face.

“I thought you said you could fix this!” Pinkie bemoaned.

“I can,” Twilight answered, “but we need to get back to the library first! Discord won’t be able to interfere with us in there!”

Twilight craned her neck back when Rainbow suddenly flew into front of her face.

“I can’t believe you blasted Pinkie like that back there!” she spat.

“I didn’t want to, but Pinkie’s right: her projection of Discord is rooted intrinsically to her, so if the Elements were working properly, it should have just purged her of the anomaly like Luna was of Nightmare Moon!”

Yeah, add that to the list of things that didn’t go as planned! Reason interjected.

Applejack galloped up next to Twilight. “So if we need to get back to the library so badly, why didn’t you just teleport us all the way there?”

Twilight looked to her to answer. “The matrices of the dream are still too chaotic to perform a teleportation that far; I was only able to get to the edge of where the Elements pacified the code. And even if I could, in order to encrypt the library, I essentially had to remove it from the rest of the dream, so the only way in or out is through the front door. It was the only way to ensure Discord couldn’t interfere if we had to resort to Plan B.”

“So what do we do for Plan B?” Pinkie asked.

“I’ll tell you when we get inside. Just keep galloping, we’re nearly there!”

They weaved through the eerily quiet streets and dark alleys before they skidded around a corner and caught sight of the library once more. Twilight felt a wave of relief and a rush of adrenaline course through her, and she bolted towards the front door of her home, the one safe place in the nightmare.

The ground trembled with a sudden, violent rumble. Twilight was nearly shaken off her hooves by a legion of vines as thick as trees, each covered in razor-sharp ridges and thorns the size of a pony’s leg, erupting in a ring around the library. The ends of the monstrous bramble curved in on themselves, forming an impenetrable dome around the oak tree.

The six stood in front of the briar prison, gawking.

And ANOTHER item for the ‘gone wrong’ list! Reason growled.

The air rumbled with a familiar disembodied laugh. A sudden wind rustled their coats. They whipped around as Discord appeared behind them in a burst of light.

“And where do you think you’re going?” he said with a smirk. “To the one place in the dream I can’t give my personal touch? Well, good thing the rest of the world, including the area on the borders of the library, is mine to control. Now then...” Discord held out his talons, and lightning began to arc from his spindly fingers. “Where were we?”

Twilight leaned over to Applejack without taking her eyes off of Discord. “If Rainbow, Fluttershy, and Rarity all help, do you think you can do that trick you did in the dojo?”

“Uh... maybe?”

“That’ll have to do!” Twilight lit her horn. A shield appeared around them, and then Twilight teleported outside, leaving her alone with Discord. “I’ll hold him off!”

Discord snickered as Twilight got between him and the rest of her friends. “Your gung-ho drive really is amusing. You know that, right?” Discord huffed. “And yet you still know nothing about why we’re really here. Why do you even bother?”

Twilight glared back at him. “Remember what I said when we defeated the real Discord? Friendship is always worth fighting for.”

Discord tsked in response. “And yet none of you have answered my earlier question: are you really fighting for you friends, or your perceptions of them?” He grinned sadistically. “So why don’t we see if we can elucidate this little conundrum after we poke inside and pick them apart?”

Discord snapped his fingers. More branches sprouted from the bramble dome and arced down towards the shield protecting the five. Twilight spun around with horn alight and slashed the attacking branches with a blade of magic. She twisted back around and launched the thorns back at him. He raised his hands and the projectiles halted mid-air, then they turned and shot straight back at Twilight. She lept into the air and the wooden spikes embedded deep into the ground where she had just been standing. Twilight caught the lodged branches at a slight angle with her hind legs, crouched, then pounced at Discord with her horn on fire.

Discord twisted off to one side and swiped Twilight out of air. She caught him around the neck with a magic lasso as she tumbled to the ground and yanked, slamming him down with her. Discord hissed and darted slithering across the ground towards her.

She fired a blast at Discord. He dodged and coiled his serpentine body around her. She squirmed as he constricted around her, acid shooting into her veins as the air was squeezed from her lungs. Stars burst in her vision as Discord’s tail wrapped around her neck. He opened his mouth, barring his singular fang, dripping with toxic chaos.

Twilight’s horn burst to light. She disappeared from Discord’s asphyxiating hold and reappeared behind him, shooting him in the back of the head with a spell. He lurched forward and roared as Twilight fell to the ground in a heap.

Twilight groaned as she pulled herself back onto her hooves, then looked back at her shielded friends.

“Please hurry!”

“Almost got it!” Applejack called back. “Jus’ hold him off a li'l—LOOK OUT!”

Twilight turned around just in time to see Discord looming over her, his paw raised to strike. She dodged to the side just as his mighty attack crushed the earth where she had been standing, causing a small earthquake. Discord glared up at the airborne unicorn, and snapped his fingers.

Twilight cried out as she landed. The solid ground beneath her hooves had been turned to ice. Her legs flailed about as she desperately attempted to remain upright. Discord spun and whipped Twilight in the face with his tail. Her face burned with the sting of the attack, then another surge of pain obscured her eyesight with white-hot stars as her skull slammed into one of the houses behind her.

Discord sneered in disregard, then turned away, redirecting his aggression at Twilight’s friends. Twilight stumbled forward and yanked at the aetherial lasso still tied around Discord’s neck with as much strength as she could muster, adding an electric shock. Discord stumbled back as his muscles seized up.

He snapped around, glaring daggers at Twilight. Literally. Slews of knives shot out from his eyes at Twilight. She yelped and dodged through the window into the house.

Twilight peeked back outside at Discord. Her pupils shrunk to pinpricks at the sight of Discord reaching behind his back and pulling out the same belt-fed rocket launcher he’d used against them in her first dream with Pinkie. He grinned at Twilight with a maniacal glint in his eyes and fired a warhead at the safehouse.

Twilight yelped and cast a shield around herself. The rocket detonated on impact, turning the entire building into a house of cards, burying her. She dispersed her shield, casting aside the cards only to come face to face with the manic draconequus, holding a flush of clubs.

“Looks like my hand—” Discord reached into the ace of clubs and pulled out the center symbol, which turned into a mace in his claws “—BEATS yours!”

Twilight cast another shield around herself as Discord swung his morning star down at her. The force field crackled on impact, but remained standing. Discord took to the air and fired his rocket launcher at her. Twilight teleported away from the explosive just before it detonated against her shield, turning it into a kiddie pool.

Discord spun around and took another swing at her before she had enough energy to teleport again. She just barely summoned another shield in time to keep from taking a club to the face. Twilight rolled out of her shield away from another rocket, leaving her shield to be morphed into a giant agave plant.

Discord laughing in dementia as Twilight skirred about, completely on the defense, magic getting weaker by the second. One explosion came too close for comfort, knocking Twilight into the small hill of cards and leaving her ears ringing. Discord swept over her, swinging his mace down for the killing blow. In desperation, Twilight grabbed one of the cards in her telekinesis and held it in front of her in a futile attempt to protect herself.

There was an ear-piercing ring as the club struck Twilight’s card, then shattered to pieces. Twilight opened her eyes, and flipped the card over to inspect her savior. She smirked as she flipped her ace of spades back around to face Discord.

“Spades beat clubs!” Twilight triumphantly boasted.

Discord leered, then smirked. He held out a claw, and the pile of cards began to tremble. Twilight looked back as every symbol of a spade tore itself from its respective card and hovered in the air over her like a flock of skarmory. Twilight’s ears folded back against her head as she gulped.

Discord chuckled. “Now to flush your fleeting sense of victory away.”

Discord flicked his wrist, and every airborne spade shot at Twilight. She twisted and contorted to avoid them all as they embedded into the pile of cards around her, leaving her without any room to maneuver.

Discord chuckled as he stood over the weary Twilight, then pointed his rocket launcher right at her face.

“Farewell, Twilight Sparkle. It’s been a blast.”

Twilight groaned and rolled her eyes, but then something else caught her attention: the pile of cards was rustling again. Discord noticed it too, because he looked to the remains of the card house just as every diamond suit in the pile became aglow with a cornflower blue aura, then ripped itself from each respective card. They all hovered in the air for a moment, then snapped into an assault formation pointed directly at Discord. He only had enough time for his uneven eyes to bulge half way out of his head before the swarm of diamonds attacked, knocking him away from Twilight and pummeling him into the ground.

Twilight looked over to her friends. The five of them stood around a newly created cellar door that had been crafted directly into the ground. Rarity stood apart from the others, gleefully leering at Discord with her horn glowing the same aura of blue.

“Enjoy the irony, you demented loon!” Rarity heckled.

Twilight afforded herself a smile. “You girls are the best!”

She lit her horn and appeared several feet over Discord’s head, landing on it with all fours and smashing it back into the checkerboard pavement. She smirked victoriously, then teleported over to her friends.

“Alright, now let’s do thi—”

Twilight was cut off when she felt her horn ensnared by magic, tugging her towards the shield, making her look outside. Discord had pried himself off the ground and had the aetherial lasso, still around his neck, in paw. Their eyes met, and she could feel the heat of the animosity that had burned away his elation.

Discord stood and yanked on the lasso. Twilight was swept off her hooves and crashed into the shield with such force that it shattered. Another tangle of gnarled and thorny branches encased her friends as Twilight soared through the air and into Discord’s waiting paw. Fingers clenched around her barrel and claws dug into her sides. Twilight lit her horn to escape. Discord licked his talons and pinched her horn, extinguishing her magic.

Discord skewered Twilight with his leer. Her hair stood on end as the air started to buzz with the thrum of electricity.

“You’ve been a detriment for far too long, Twilight!” Discord hissed with escalating sadism. “Now it’s time to alternate our current state of affairs!”

Discord's talons lit up, and thousands of volts of electricity surged through Twilight all at once. Every single hair felt like it had been lit on fire, licking her skin with arcing flame. Every muscle spasmed as every pathway on her nervous system turned to barbed wire. Her organs convulsed like bags of worms. Every bone felt like splinters and the marrow inside writhed in their calcium coffins.

Twilight’s brain was a pincushion of railroad spikes. There was no room to concentrate on magic or any thoughts but agony. So all she did was scream.

The lightning suddenly cut out. Twilight went limp, gasping for air as her limbs dangled. She felt like she’d been ripped apart cell by cell in an instant, then put back together just as quickly, but without all the pieces in the right places. Adrenaline worked in overdrive to clear her mind. The second she could form a cohesive thought, she lit her horn for a desperate counter-measure.

Then the electricity ripped through her again.

Every limp muscle seized up as the current ensnared her every fiber. Her bones turned into quills that tore at her entrails. The electric storm defused her ability to think and stole her ability to move. All she could do was feel, and all she could feel was pain. Her muscles were eroding, refusing to follow orders from a limbic system beyond her control. Panic set in, and she screamed.

“Stop! No—AGH! STOP! PLEEEAASE!”

To her surprise, the torture did stop, and Twilight collapsed in Discord’s hold. Everything hurt more than her everything had ever hurt before. Her innards felt pureed, sloshing about in a sack of seared skin that had gone clammy with frightful sweat. Her lethargic and threadbare muscles refused to move, even if she was capable of sending anything more than feeble commands to them through nerve pathways that had turned to rust. There in the clutches of her enemy, she could not have felt more vulnerable than if she lay splayed and vivisected upon the table of a depraved sociopath.

She felt a claw under her chin lifting her head. Even her eyes were too weary to look away when she met Discord’s own, leering at her with penetrating disdain when he spoke.

“Answer me this, Twilight Sparkle: would you have stayed your hoof and refrained from unleashing the Elements against me if I had just asked nicely?”

Twilight was silent for a moment. Her ears slowly folded back against her head, her mouth fell open, and her pupils shrunk to the head of a needle loaded with a lethal injection.

Discord scowled with indescribable hate. “That’s what I thought.”

The third charge of electricity ravaged her defeated body. She nearly blacked out from the inrush current alone. Twilight screamed. She screamed in agony and despair until her voice broke and the blood vessels in her throat began to rupture. Her vision began to darken. Somewhere in the universe of torment, Twilight found herself in a precious little bubble of memory. She thought back to the Ponyville water war, a mere ten days ago, It all felt so distant now: the last time she and all of her friends had been happy together, filled with laughter, harmonious.

Somewhere off in the distance, there was the buzz of an energized beam and the cracks of severed foliage. Discord looked up, and a blue aura shoved his head into the end of a metal pipe.

BOOM!

The thunder clogging Twilight’s ears died with the pops of several residual sparks, leaving a ringing echo in them. She felt herself slip from her restraints and was swept away in an oddly euphoric sense of weightlessness. Something punched her entire body, from her skull to her tail. She cried out and flinched at the impact, then rolled onto her side and whimpered. She heard a ‘thunk’ and felt the vibrations through the ground as something landed right in front of her face, followed by an acrid stench.

Twilight cracked her eyes open. Her vision swam, and whatever she could see was blurred by a veil of tears. She blinked and saw Rarity’s shotgun lying in front of her, black wisps wafting out from the muzzle.

Then Discord hit the ground in front of her like a fallen tree. She gasped at the headless corpse, still twitching in places, flesh dripping from the ragged stump.

Twilight strained to look up at the library. A gaping hole had been cut from the enclosure of branches that had trapped her friends, some of the ends still glowing red from the heat of the lasers used to cut them. Rainbow, Applejack, and Fluttershy stared with various mixtures of disgust, shock, and horror. Pinkie was curled up in a ball behind Rarity, who stood quivering, her head turned away and her eyes clenched shut, but not tightly enough to keep the streams of tears from leaking out of them.

“Get inside before I have to look,” Rarity ordered with a haunted voice.

Twilight groaned as she tried to get back on her hooves. She grit her teeth, but her muscles had all the strength of pudding and her body had become lead. Her legs gave out from underneath her, and she fell to the ground, panting.

Rarity’s shaking became worse, and she grimaced, choking back a sob. “GET IN!”

Applejack shoved Rainbow and jerked her head at Twilight. Rainbow nodded, then zipped out of the briar dome and landed above Twilight, scooping the spent unicorn up in her forelegs.

“Come on, let’s go—”

A massive paw back-handed Rainbow off Twilight, sending the pegasus tumbling away. Twilight fell back to the ground, then the air was forced from her lungs as the same limb slammed her down, trapping her.

The headless body of Discord loomed over Twilight. Even without eyes, she could feel it glaring at her with the utmost contempt. The projection shoved its gnarled, open wound into Twilight’s face and hissed out a rumbling growl at her, making the unicorn recoil away as she was sprayed with globs of ichor. It raised its talon, and the air filled with the terrifying cackle of lightning.

A pale blur slammed into the headless Discord, ripping him off Twilight and sending him flying into the distance. The newcomer skidded to a halt next to Rainbow Dash, three legs on the ground and one foreleg in the air for balance. Even through the blankets of numbing pain, Twilight felt the distinct queasiness of empty eyes bearing down on her.

Posed over Dash was the thing-pony, looking at Twilight with the blank expression it always had. Rainbow looked up at her fellow savior and gasped. The thing-pony looked down at her, then over at Twilight, and back down to Rainbow again. The pegasus’s eyes lit up; she bolted to Twilight, picked her up, and made a break for the cellar door.

Discord got back up on all fours. He snapped its partially-regenerated head to the fleeing mares, bellowed in fury and charged them. The thing-pony looked back at the enraged draconequus, then took off for the exit.

Fluttershy darted into the cellar, followed by Applejack, who grabbed the helpless Pinkie and horror-stricken Rarity and pulled them into the shelter. Rainbow skidded inside with Twilight, followed immediately by the thing-pony, sliding across the ground and into the safe room like a runner stealing home. Applejack slammed the cellar doors shut just before the roaring Discord caught up to them, plunging them all into darkness.

The interior of the cellar was cramped, carrying a slight echo as the mares shifted in the ubiquitous black. There was a rustling of fabric followed by the chinks of rummaging, then Applejack broke the silence.

“Anypony got a light?”

There was a light buzz of charged energy as Fluttershy’s eye lit up. Applejack held a kerosene lantern out to her, and she lit the gas with a tiny burst. Applejack set the lantern down in the center of the safe room, casting a dim light upon the ponies along the walls.

A solemn Applejack sat in between Fluttershy and Rarity, both of whom quivered. Fluttershy whimpered, too desensitized to cry, and Rarity stared off into the infinite distance. Pinkie had retreated to the furthest corner and curled into a ball with her back to everypony. And a hardened Rainbow sat next to a shaken Twilight, her exhausted legs pulled as close to her trembling body as she could, her every labored breath shuddering with sobs.

The thing-pony was the thing-pony.

Applejack reached into one of her saddlebags, withdrew a canteen, and passed it to Twilight. She didn’t even notice it being offered to her. Rainbow reached out and grabbed it, then wrapped her other forehoof around Twilight, easing her back.

“Here, drink up,” Rainbow tried to say as gently possible, but her own voice was thick with strain.

Twilight took gradual sips from the canteen as Rainbow held her like a mother with her sick foal. When she’d rehydrated sufficiently and had stopped shaking like she had hypothermia, Twilight leaned forward, supporting herself on quivering forelegs.

“Th-thanks, g-girls… and y-you.” Twilight looked at the thing-pony. “Thank you, t-too.”

The thing-pony looked back at Twilight. In the dim cellar, the glow of the lantern was mostly absorbed by the fur and feathers of its head, whilst the firelight dancing across its pale face and soul-dead eyes made it look even more like an omen than it already was.

Even through her wracked nerves, addled thoughts, and traumatized emotions, Twilight could feel the minute, inner squirming that swept through her like walking into a spirit whenever the thing-pony laid eyes on her. Yet despite the minor unpleasantries, it was something familiar: something solid. In its own bizarre way, it was comforting, something that assured her it was all just a dream.

Something that wouldn’t torture her with thousands of volts of electricity.

“Are you still up for Plan B?” Rainbow asked Twilight.

“Y-yeah, just… give me a minute...” Twilight answered.

“Why bother?” a quiet voice mumbled through the darkness. All the girls looked over to Pinkie, who had unfurled enough to glance over her shoulder.

“Why even bother trying to help me?” Pinkie asked with a torn voice as she turned to face her friends. “All of you have suffered so much because of me. I mean... look at all of you! All of you jump into a dream with me, and look—” Her voice seized up, and she choked back a dry, painful sob. “L-look what my subconscious does to you.” She hung her head. “Maybe I deserve this.”

Rainbow’s face scrunched up. “Are you bucking KIDDING ME?!”

Before anypony could stop her, Rainbow had gotten within a leg’s length of Pinkie’s face. “We knew the risks when we signed up for this! I never backed down, even knowing what you did while thinking about me! You saw what Discord did to us. What makes you think he won’t do worse to you? Your mind is tearing itself apart, and so help me Celestia we are not leaving this dream until we fix it! You hear me?!”

Pinkie was too startled to respond. She didn’t even move when Applejack stepped forward to put some distance between her and Rainbow.

“Easy there, Dash,” Applejack sternly instructed. “Yellin’ at the poor girl ain’t going to solve anything.” Applejack turned to Pinkie. “Temperaments aside, Rainbow’s right, sugarcube. Knowing everything you’ve been going through, ya’ can’t just expect us to sit by and let you try and weather this storm by your lonesome. You’d sooner get Fluttershy to turn her back on a sick animal than you’d get us to leave you.”

“Wh-what?!” Fluttershy stammered. “I… I-I’d n-never...”

“My point exactly. And the point is, we’re stickin’ through to the end. We’re so committed to this that even Twi’s weird owl-pony thing showed up to lend a hoof.”

Pinkie looked at all of her friends, each with varying degrees of wounds, both emotional and physical, but with resolve no less intense. Even the thing-pony was looking at her, albeit with an expression harder to read than a blank page. Pinkie slumped back against the wall and pulled her knees as close as she could to her barrel.

“What are you going to do?” she asked, her quivering voice barely above a whisper.

Twilight stood and, with some effort, trudged the short distance across the cellar, and sat down next to Pinkie with all the grace of a dropped sack of flour. She slowly opened her saddlebags, withdrew her pocket watch, and gave it to Rainbow.

“Give us fifteen minutes. Don’t give us the kick without warning me first, and wait a few seconds before you start playing the song if you have to wake us up early.”

Pinkie’s eyes dilated. “We’re going into another dream?”

Twilight lit her horn. “Sorry, Pinkie. I have to find out what’s causing all this.”

Pinkie’s eyes flooded with dread. She tried to respond, but couldn’t communicate anything more than horrified squeak. Without another attempt at words, she whipped around and scrambled up the wall, towards the cellar door.

Rainbow zipped up after her and grabbed her around the barrel. “Are you CRAZY?”

“Of course I’m crazy!” Pinkie shrieked back. “I’m out of my bucking mind insane! Did you not see my trial ten minutes ago?!”

Applejack bit Pinkie’s tail and, with a mighty twist of her neck, yanked Pinkie back down. She struggled, but Rainbow still had a grip on her, and Applejack planting her forehooves on the desperate pony’s shoulders rooted her in place.

“Shoot, Pinkie, you were always crazy,” Applejack said with a sad smile. “Like Dash said, the problem is you’ve caught the kind of crazy that’s chewin’ up all your insides.”

Pinkie thrashed as a third pony reached out to take hold of her, but only to take her by the hoof. She eventually lost the energy to resist, and when her head fell, she saw a lavender hoof still holding her own. She mustered the strength to look back up and met Twilight’s eyes, still radiating the same concern, empathy, and reassurance they’d given her ever since that stormy night when she had finally confessed everything.

Pinkie exhaled, closed her eyes, and bowed her head in submission. Twilight’s magic touched her, and Pinkie went limp, lost in the vast fields of slumber. Only then did Rainbow let go of Pinkie, who slid to the floor like a rag doll. Rainbow dutifully adjusted the unconscious pony as best she could, laying Pinkie on her side and straightening out her tangled legs. When she finished, Rainbow stepped back, and all five of them just stared at Pinkie in the uneasy, choking silence.

“What in Celestia’s name is Pinkie keeping in her subconscious?” Rarity quietly asked.

“Unfortunately, there’s only one way to find out,” Twilight replied, laying next to Pinkie and frowning at her slightly. Even in sleep, Pinkie’s face was a stone of sadness.

“Yeah, well, you're gonna have to make it quick,” Applejack interjected. “This here reality pocket we’re hiding in ain’t perfect, so ya’ only got so much time to find what’s causin’ poor Pinkie all this suffering.”

Twilight looked up at Applejack, doing her best not to sound more alarmed than she was. “Can you give us the whole fifteen minutes?”

“Maybe, if we’re really lucky, but that’s stretching it like taffy in a tug-o-war game.”

Rainbow growled in frustration. “Because we can’t ever have anything be easy for us, can we?”

“Friendship isn’t always easy.” Twilight looked back down at Pinkie. “But it’s worth the effort… It has to be...”

Rainbow’s face contorted. “I’m coming with you.”

“Rainbow, you can’t—”

“You can’t just expect me to let you get even closer to the thing that’s making Discord appear in Pinkie’s mind alone! There’s no way you can think I’ll abandon you! Not after....” Rainbow’s voice seized up, leaving her sentence unfinished.

Twilight smiled with reassurance as best she could in her weakened state. “You’re not abandoning me, Rainbow, you’re going to make sure Pinkie and I are safe here. If this enclosure is compromised, Fluttershy, Rarity, and Applejack are going to need as much help fending off Discord as they can get. And you wouldn’t want to feel like you abandoned them, would you?”

“I...” Rainbow began to speak, but looking back and forth between Twilight and the rest of her friends left her too flummoxed to say anything. She exhaled heavily and hung her head.

“If it makes you feel any better, it’s highly unlikely that the second dream will be as dangerous as this one. The entire dream is going to be built with the same kind of encryptions I used to make the library in this dream, so Discord won’t even be able to manifest.”

Rainbow didn’t answer, but her expression of defeat softened. Twilight nodded, then looked back down to Pinkie. She made the mental processes to light her horn, but something stopped her: thoughts of electricity agonizing her on a molecular level; torture; utter helplessness; being alone…

Don’t be afraid, Twilight, Reason said. So long as you have me, you’ll never be alone.

With that little bolster, Twilight activated her magic, and casting Dreamscape for the second time.

“Hey, Twi.” Applejack prodded the unicorn’s side, then tipped her hat towards her. “Best of luck to ya’.”

Twilight smiled. “Thanks, AJ.”

“May Celestia smile upon you, Twilight,” Rarity said.

Fluttershy sniffed then looked up with a plea in her eyes. “Stay safe.”

“I will. And thank you.”

Rainbow had regained enough of her voice to bid farewell. “I’ll try and hold off reducing Discord to ash until you two get back, so we can all do it together.”

Twilight couldn’t help but chuckle a little. “That’s the Rainbow Dash I know.”

On impulse, Twilight looked over to the thing-pony. It said nothing, nor made any acknowledgements to her. It just stared, eerie as ever.

Twilight looked back at her friends, savoring their company for one last moment. She laid her head down, and felt Dreamscape begin to take her away.

“See you girls in fifteen minutes.”

Twilight shut her eyes, and her world became darkness.

Author's Notes:

...

The God-Emperor of man can describe better than anything anyone could ever say or feel about this finally getting updated.

Before anybody asks the obvious question, here are the four reasons this took so long. The first is that the way this was written, where all of the mane six are separated at the start of the dream obviously meant we had a lot of ground to cover. The second is I took a considerable amount of time off from working on this to complete The Harisay Brothers review of Equestria Girls. The third is that I've had several metric fucktons of shit going wrong with my life over the last year and a half, from depression over the fate of our EQG review, to hating my last job so much my philosophies have started turning nihilistic, and a whole slew of other problems I don't feel like talking about right now.

And the forth is that we're lazy fucking procrastinators.

A year and a half... and we come back with what I feel is the weakest chapter thus far. When writing the outline, what the Mane Six would have to get through was left completely open, sort of as an experimental creative writing exercise... and clearly that was a mistake, since we ended up with a bunch of scenes that are thousands of words long yet are only barely related to each other. We'd intended to have all of Pinkie's issues wrapped up in this chapter, but again, we'd ended up writing so much that we have to divide all our ideas for one chapter into two. Again. Like we've down for every chapter we've written since chapter two.

At least the next one won't be bogged down with as much bullshit as this was is. Hell, if all goes according to plan, chapter twelve will have one of the most awesome things you'll have ever seen in a fan fiction ever... whenever the fuck it gets released.

Toddles. I'm going to send this shit to EQD and then be depressed.

- Christian 'Doing It Wrong' Harisay

Chapter Twelve, Part 1 - Plan B

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Chapter Twelve

Part I - Plan B

Booooooom.

Swwsssssshhhhhh.

Booooooom.

Swwsssssshhhhhh.

Twilight became dimly aware of a warmth on her back, and a cold on her belly.

Booooooom.

A fresh wave of cold splashed across her face, her sides, and underneath her.

Swwsssssshhhhhh.

The fluid, saline cold entered her mouth and nose, and her dim awareness lit up as she coughed and spluttered. She raised her head and opened her eyes.

Twilight was lying in the surf of a half moon beach, her body gently pushed back and forth by the waves. The sky overhead displayed a passing storm, with the golden rays of the sun piercing through tumultuous storm clouds to illuminate thin sheets of drizzling rain descending upon the steely blue-grey ocean, still seething with foamy crests from the breeze that bustled past her in irregular gusts. Leaves blew on innumerable branches from the dense forest surrounding the bay, swaying and rustling to and fro in the wind.

In the center of the beach stood a small seaside town whose chief feature was sprawling amusement park, complete with rides, attractions, scenic photo-spots, and the delightfully terrified screams of ponies braving the several modest roller coasters. Nestled in the center of the action was a spacious mansion with dozens of windows, several towers and turrets, and an adjoining pier that stretched out into the churning water. A solitary figure sat at the end, and though Twilight couldn’t make out any features, she could see that the figure was a familiar shade of pink.

Twilight stood up and began to trot swiftly up the beach. She scowled as she looked around her. The dream was supposed to be bright and sunny to try and help Pinkie’s mood, and even though she thought the epic contrast between light and shadow around her had its own wild beauty, it still irked her: just one more thing in the mission that hadn’t gone according to plan. Something else nagged at her as she looked around, something inside her telling her that something else beside the weather was off.

The nagging feeling increased until she stopped, and her head swiveled in place as she scrutinized her surroundings, noting how they looked familiar...

She now stood upon the sandy beach of a half-moon bay that opened out into a vast ocean.

Her heart rate spiked into the stratosphere. Suddenly it was very hard to breath.

The air now blew a cool sea breeze, carrying with it mist from the thundering surf.

“No! Noooo!” she managed to gasp, her eyes darting back and forth as though she expected some monster to come charging out of the forest or lumber from the depths of the sea.

Twilight!

“Not here! Not here! I can’t be trapped here again!”

Twilight, listen to me!

“SOMEPONY HELP MEEE!”

TWIIILIIIGHT!

Reason’s frantic shouting in her head echoed through her mind like the crack of thunder.

“R-Reason?”

About time! Now listen to me! You. Are not. In limbo.

It took a moment for Reason’s words to sink in.

“O-okay, um… h-how do you... know?”

It’s simple. You didn’t die, and you can still reach the dream matrix. Feel that?

Twilight felt Reason tugging at her thoughts again. She yielded, and felt her mind connect with the functioning Dreamscape: farther away than it would be in a first-level dream, but not completely undetectable.

“T-then... why are we here?”

Probably for the same reason that the thing-pony keeps showing up, or the train from earlier. Artifacts from your mind are bleeding over into the shared dream.

Twilight sighed, dejected. “That makes sense.”

I’m not called Reason for nothing.

“Stop it,” she said, annoyed. “I just hoped I’d never have to see this place ever again.”

Me neither.

Twilight resumed her quick pace down the beach towards the elevated pier. As she got closer, she noticed that Pinkie’s mane and tail had returned to their normal erratic curls, and her miserable frown was replaced by a nostalgic, wistful smile as she stared off into the vast ocean.

“Pinkie?” Twilight asked as she reached the base of the pier.

Pinkie remained unresponsive, just looking off into the scenic ocean vista as she listened to a captivating piano melody coming from a black music box with the relief of a heart on it.

“Pinkie? Pinkie, what are you doing out here?”

“Waiting… waiting for my dearly beloved...” Pinkie answered, fanciful and longing.

Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Um… Pinkie? It’s Twilight...”

Pinkie turned her head and looked down at Twilight. She did a double-take, gasped, and flipped around to lean over the railing. Her face lit up with bright eyes and an overjoyed smile.

“Ohmygosh, Twilight! You’re here! This is so super special stupendously splendiferous! You’ve got to come inside! Everypony will be so happy to see you!”

And just like that, Pinkie took off, galloping across the pier towards the mansion, giggling like an excited filly along the way. Twilight just stared, perplexed. Pinkie had gotten all the way to the extravagant patio door before Twilight thought to follow. She lit her horn and teleported behind Pinkie just as she opened the door a crack. She moved to follow Pinkie inside, but Pinkie raised her hoof before Twilight had taken a single step.

“Not this way, silly!” Pinkie giggled. “You have to come in through the front door so we can give you the proper ‘guest of honor’ welcome!”

Pinkie slipped through the sliver, then quickly shut it tight behind her twittering self before Twilight could reply or get a good look inside, leaving the befuddled unicorn to stare bewildered at the door.

Something is off here.

“Oh? Whatever gave you that inclination?” Twilight deadpanned.

The ‘everything-about-her’ part. We should have given her the identity confirmation phrase, now that I think about it.

“That probably would have been a good idea. I was just a bit too surprised by… whatever that was, to ask.”

Reason sighed. We might as well go around through the front. Looking at the matrix, I can’t tell what exactly is inside.

Twilight gulped. “W-what?”

Don’t worry. It’s not that it’s dangerous, I just can’t tell what it is. Pinkie’s subconscious has built the inside, but I can’t precisely determine how it’s built or who’s inside. She has guests, though. Lots of guests. Guess we’d better go say ‘Hi,’ shouldn’t we?

“None of those guests would happen to be Discord, would they?”

Not that I can tell, no. Worst comes to worst, we have some access to manipulation again. Now get going, we only have so much time. I’ll see if I can’t figure out what’s inside before you knock on the front door.

Twilight teleported back down to the beach, taking a little pathway that led up to the boardwalk. But as soon as she reached the marinara, she stopped, then looked back at the golden shores and frothing cobalt waves. Heavenly beams of sunlight cut through several openings in the overcast sky, turning patches of the cold, azure sea into little pools of bright sapphire. Off in the distance, she could see waterspouts bursting from the ocean’s surface as a pod of humpback whales emerged from the waves to breathe. The wind ebbed and flowed with the tides, drifting out from the forest and blowing back from across the waves, planting salty little kisses on Twilight’s nose.

The breathtaking scenic vista reminded her of why she had fallen in love with the beach in the first place, even though she knew it wasn’t real.

But she wanted it to be.

“Hey, Reason?”

Yeah?

“Well all of this is over—when we’ve stopped Pinkie’s nightmares and freed Spike of Avarice—remind me to take Spike and the girls to the beach. A real beach, like Broadtrot.”

I suppose it would be nice to have memories of being on a real beach with our friends and not just being alone on an imaginary one…

“Exactly.” Twilight’s throat tightened a little. “Sorry… I don’t mean to get all emotional with you, it’s just...”

It’s okay, Twilight. I’m here to support you.

Twilight smiled. “Thanks. Find out what’s inside yet?”

No, sorry. Might as well just knock. Would hate to keep them waiting, wouldn’t we?

Twilight sighed. “Might as well...”

She trotted the rest of the way up to the mansion, past the white picket fence and lush gardens with several stone statues of Pinkie holding various energetic and elated poses that would otherwise be impossible to carve from rock. She knocked on the set of double doors at the entrance, then sat down on the welcome mat as she waited. Then Reason spoke again in a panic.

Twilight?! Twilight! I figured out what’s inside! It’s—

The front doors were ripped open to reveal a wall of bright eyes and smiling faces. The sight nearly made Twilight’s heart stop. Her cognition suffered a system-wide cataclysmic crash and had to be rebooted.

She had expected Pinkie Pie to answer the door.

Not twelve Pinkie Pies.

The face of each Pinkie lit up with a smile that stretched from ear to ear, and the polyphonic tone of each one squealing “TWILIGHT!” in unsurpassed joy barraged her ears as a mass of hooves seized her and pulled Twilight inside before she could say “inconceivable.” They surrounded her, and besieged to the utterly baffled unicorn with joy.

“Twilight! You found a way here!”

“Oh, it’s so wonderful you could come!”

“How was your trip? Did you have fun? Didya? Didya?”

“How’d you get here? Did you finally get that teleportation ritual right? Hey, if you did, does that mean Dusk is coming, too?!”

“If we’d have known you were coming, we’d have thrown you a party!”

“Hey, we’re having a party right now! How about that?”

“That’s so tumultuously terrific! We can have even more cake and ice cream and cookies and pies and punch-back—”

“And Sparkle Cola and Sunrise Sarsaparilla and—hey, my hoof is burning again! Not now, Pippy!”

“This party is going to be so awesome!”

“Doesn’t that all sound great, Twilight? Doesn’t it? Doesn’t it?! Huh huh huh huh HUH?”

Twilight didn’t move. She didn’t blink. She didn’t even know if she was breathing or not.

“Aw, look girls! She’s so happy to see us all that her brain broke!”

One Pinkie stood above the rest and raised a hoof in proclamation. “Hey, I know what we should do! If Twilight’s here, we need to take her to the princess!”

“YEAH!” all the Pinkies agreed in unison.

Before Twilight could respond or even register what was going on, the Pinkies swept her off her hooves and energetically bounded through room after room of the mansion. Just about every inch had been designed and decorated for festivities. There was more surface area of the walls and ceilings within the mansion covered in a rainbow of assorted streamers than not. They branched out from chandeliers, draped down the walls, twisted in festoons from clusters of balloons running along the crease where the walls met the ceiling, wrapped around pylons and railings, and hung as curtains in the doorways. The shag carpets and tile were all buried under a tide of balloons and balls being kicked up in a plume of plastic by Twilight’s swift entourage. Confetti materialized from the ceiling and drifted gently to the ground like the first snowfall of winter. The air was saturated with the sweet, warm smell of all manner of confectionaries and concessions: the aroma of cakes, pies, cupcakes, muffins, cookies, donuts, fritters, cinnamon rolls, bear claws, juices, fruit punch, soda, and more flavors of ice cream than she could imagine pierced her nostrils in a cornucopia of scents that made Twilight feel like she was going to get diabetes just by breathing. Each new room Twilight was swept through had some variation in its decoration, but there was one constant between each one.

There were Pinkies EVERYWHERE. Dozens. Hundreds. Many conversed with one another, others froliced about on the ballpit floor, and some engorged themselves at the buffet of dessert tables that lined every single wall. Twilight’s world was a blur of pink hair and blue eyes, and it was making her head spin.

Twilight was whisked into a grand ballroom through a lake of pink, and dropped in front of a large throne surrounded by hills of sweets and candy. The throne however, as grand and regal as Celestia’s if it had been designed and decorated by multiple Pinkies on a sugar rush, sat unoccupied.

“Hey, where’d she go?”one of the Pinkies asked. She and her companions went stiff and wide-eyes as a series of muscle spasms hit them. “Itchy back… twitchy ears...”

All the Pinkies who had been carrying Twilight smiled broadly and looked to each other. “INCOMING TACKLE-GLOMP!” They scattered in all directions, leaving Twilight in the center of an open space.

“Incoming what?”

“TWILIIII—”

Twilight looked back around above her just in time to see a manic pink bolt from the blue before it crashed into her with the force of a meteor. They tumbled across the floor to the base of the throne. Whatever wind hadn’t been knocked out of Twilight was forced out of her by a crushing bear hug.

“Oh Twilight, it’s so wonderful to see you here!” the latest Pinkie greeted. She eased her grip on Twilight and held her out to get a better look at her. Twilight gasped, half out of need for air and half out of shock at her newest associate.

The Pinkie in front of her was a fully grown alicorn, with a height and stature equal to Celestia, complete with broad wings and a horn that dwarfed any unicorn’s. Strands in her bushy mane and tail swirled like cotton candy in a spinner and sparkled with sporadic glints of sugar. She even wore ornate plated regala exactly like Celestia’s, except the inlaid jewels were in the shape of balloons, and her tiara was designed to look more like a party hat.

The alicorn Pinkie’s face-splitting smile dropped a little for a confused frown when she got a good look at the unicorn. “How did you get so little again? And what happened to your wings?” She smiled again. “Aw, I don’t care!” She pulled Twilight back into a hug, her every word accentuated by tightening her death-grip. “You’re… just… SO… CUTE!!!”

Twilight lit her horn and used her magic to force open Pinkie’s forelegs. They yielded only enough for her to desperately gasp for air. She tried to smile back. Keyword ‘try.’ “Yeah… good to… good to see… you too… Pinkie?”

Princess Pinkie finally let Twilight go. She dropped to the floor, and before she could even sit back up, Pinkie’s cheery, invasive grin was back in her face, shaking like a puppy whose owner had just come home from work. “So what brings you here? Are you still trying to figure out Pinkie Sense? Did you wanna get to see a full-blown Pinkie party? Did your planeswalker spark activate? Tellmetellmetellme!”

Twilight just kept smiling back with her forced grin. “Actually, I’m… uh… looking for somepony. Somepony who’ll know what to say to this...”

“Ooo, code phrases!” Princess Pinkie cooed. “What is it?”

“It’s a bright, cold day in April.”

Pinkie tilted her head to the side and cocked an eyebrow in confusion. “It is? But,” her horn lit up and a stuffed calendar materialized next to her, and she began to flip through it. “It’s June, just before the Summer Sun Celebration!” The calendar disappeared, and she looked back at Twilight. “Is that supposed to be a reference to something?”

Pinkie’s bemused expression flatlined into an unamused pout, and she turned to look over Twilight’s shoulder. “Gee, I wonder if that’s supposed to be a reference to something...” she stiffly punctuated to nopony in particular.

Twilight’s mouth fell open. “Uh… Pinkie?”

The alicorn Pinkie kept her attention off of Twilight, carrying on a conversation with somepony who only she was privy to. “Oh, don’t try to downplay what you do! It’s gotten to the point where your editors are assuming that any odd detail is just a reference to something else! Some of them even turned into plot points! Heck, one of them actually became a character!”

“Pinkie… who, or, what are you talking to?”

“Huh?” Princess Pinkie looked at Twilight, oblivious. “Oh, never mind that. I was just giving the writer some guff.” Her face scrunched up in agitation and she snapped her glare back over Twilight’s shoulder. "FOUR YEARS BETWEEN CHAPTER UPDATES, CHRISTIAN!”

She looked back to Twilight, giving her an apologetic smile and a nervous chuckle. “Sorry about that. Anyway, sorry if I can’t help. I’ll have to check my reference book to see if I can find an answer. But hey!” Her smile brightened. “You’ve got plenty of other Pinkies here to ask!”

Twilight turned around to look at the hundreds upon hundreds of Pinkie’s crammed into the ballroom. Some conversed with others, some danced, and some looked back at her with an affable smile and a wave. Twilight just gulped in return.

Are all of these Pinkie’s projections of herself? Twilight internally asked.

I have no idea, Reason answered.

What?

Dreamscape has all of these Pinkies filed as projections, but the spell is treating them like dreamers!

Twilight sat there for a moment, dumbstruck. Are you saving everypony here is a different version of Pinkie?

I don’t know. I can’t draw a definitive conclusion based on what little information I can get. And before you ask, no: I can’t tell which one of them, if any, is our Pinkie.

Twilight looked out over the teeming mass of pink, feeling a forlorn cloud forming over her. What are we going to do?

Well, I can keep at trying to defragment the code to figure out which of these Pinkies, if any, are the one we’re looking for. In the meantime, I guess you’ll have to just do things the hard way and start asking around. See if any know the correct response to the code phrase or if they’ve seen a Pinkie around here who looks like she’s not having a good time.

Twilight gulped. Ask… everypony…

Yep. And be quick about it. We’ve got less than five hours to not only find Pinkie, but the subconscious source of her dysphoria. But whenever you talk to somepony that isn’t Pinkie, mark them out so you can keep track of the ones you’ve already asked. Like this...

Twilight looked behind her up at the alicorn Pinkie. A holographic image of Pinkie’s cutie mark of three balloons with a red “X” over it appeared above her head. None of the Pinkies in the ballroom took notice.

The alicorn Pinkie looked back at Twilight and frowned. “What are you still doing on your fluffy little tuckus?” Pinkie’s horn lit up with a bright pink aura, and Twilight found herself in the bucket of a catapult aimed at the crowd.

“Princess Pinkie decrees that you are to have fun!”

Princess Pinkie yanked back on the lever, launching Twilight into the packed herd. Twilight screamed as she tumbled through the air in an arc. Dozens of hooves raised up into the air, catching her before she hit the ground, and at once she was swarmed by a dozen sets of bright eyes and smiling faces with over a hundred remarks.

“Holy guacamole, that was AWESOME!”

“Were you trying to tackle-glomp me too?”

“That was the most amazing stage dive I’ve ever seen!”

“Good thing I had a muscle tensing and a feeling of weightlessness to tell me you were going to get flung at me from a catapult, otherwise I might have spilled my bowl of sunflower seeds! Hey, do you think our friend Sunflower likes to eat sunflower seeds, or would that be like some weird form of cannibalism? Or is her name Sunflower because she loves every part of them, including the seeds?”

“Whatever you do, just don’t give any to Fluttershy!”

Twilight just stared back at them all like a deer in the headlamp of an oncoming steam train.

Had Reason been controlling Twilight’s throat she surely would have gulped from her own growing sense of foreboding.

We are so screwed.

- - - - - -

Four mares sat in the dimly lit cellar that made up the miniscule pocket dimension separated from the chaotic nightmare world that they had only just escaped from. An uncomfortable silence encompassed them as they remained in relative stillness.

Twilight and Pinkie lay next to each to each other, an aura surrounding their heads as they slept, dreaming together. Applejack sat next to Pinkie, gently stroking her deflated mane in an attempt to provide what comfort she could as Pinkie occasionally made small twitches and grimaces in her sleep. Fluttershy clung tightly to Rarity, both looking off into a distance well beyond the confines of the enclosed space. Rainbow sat hunched up against the wall beside Twilight, a scowl deepening on her face as her tail every now and then twitched in agitation.

And in the farthest corner stood the thing-pony, looking upon Twilight with its unfathomable eyes.

Rainbow looked at the thing-pony, then looked away. Then back at it again, only to turn her head in another direction, mouth moving in silence as it tried and failed to form words. She huffed, then took a deep breath.

“Hey, pony-thing...”

The thing-pony looked at Rainbow. Her expression hardened, but she kept herself from looking away.

“I don’t get you. You’re supposed to be Twilight’s projection, but you’re so unlike Twilight it’s unreal. Knowing her, she’d dream up something super logical and complex that’d be even more talkative and egg-heady than she is. Instead she dreams up you. I mean… look at you! What are you even? Some scrawny, hairless, owl-headed colt in worn-out clothes? You make no sense!”

Rainbow’s face became even more stern. “I don’t know what to make of you. Not even Twilight knows what to make of you. Really, if you’re just some weird projection from some screwed-up part of her brain, then I have half a mind to put you in the same boat as Pinkie’s projection of Discord.”

She looked down at Pinkie, and her expression softened. “But… you knew where to find Pinkie when we didn’t even have a clue where to start looking. And you saved Twilight from Discord... “

Rainbow exhaled and looked back at the thing-pony. “I still don’t entirely trust you, but Twilight says you’re harmless, and you helped us when we needed it. So… thanks. I really mean that. Thank you.”

The thing-pony said nothing. It didn’t even move; whatever stirring it appeared to make was just a trick of the eyes played by the flickering light of Applejack’s lantern and the glow of Twilight’s magic.

Rainbow looked back with a flat gaze. “You really don’t say anything, do you?”

The thing-pony didn’t say anything.

Rainbow grumbled, stood, then began to pace around in circles.

“We should be doing something,” she muttered. “I should be doing something to help, instead of just sitting here on my butt doing nothing.”

“Just sit tight, Rainbow,” said Applejack, “and be glad we got a moment’s rest.”

Rainbow glared back at Applejack and pointed a hoof at Pinkie as she winced in her sleep. “Look at her! She’s still having nightmares, and we just sent Twilight into her mind, closer to the thing that’s been causing all this, completely alone! They could be fighting some ultra-Discord right now, and we’re just hanging around like we’re waiting to catch a train!”

“Twi said she designed the next dream so Discord wouldn’t be able to show up, Dash.” Applejack reminded her. “Whereas we’ve still got to deal with that consarned chaos spirit if he manages to bust down our one line of defense.”

“Yeah, but we’re not dealing with Discord right now,” Rainbow tersely added. “We’re not doing anything except waiting to wake Twilight and Pinkie back up and hope Twilight found what we need to blast that jerk.”

Applejack sighed. “Look, Rainbow, you’ve got your heart in the right place, but it’s like what Twilight kept sayin’ to Pinkie; sometimes, you need to have some faith in your friends. I don’t really like gambling on this either, but we gotta have faith that Twi can pull this off. And every second we spend waiting in here is a second off the fifteen minutes we hafta keep Discord away from them. Honestly, if we did end up doing nothing but wait here until we wake ‘em back up, that would be the best thing that could happen for all of us.”

Rainbow just stared at Applejack for a moment, unable to find fault in her logic. She plopped back down onto the hard floor and looked away with a sour demeanor.

“I hate waiting,” Rainbow grumbled.

“Yeah, well, I don’t very much like being in these dreams, either,” Applejack muttered. She nodded in the direction of the thing-pony. “I don’t know if he’s got anything to do with it, but I’ve never felt right going under like this. I can’t tell ya why, but I do. But I put on my big-filly horse shoes and take it, ‘cause Pinkie’s put her faith in us, and I ain’t got no intention of letting her down.”

Applejack suddenly perked, ears high in alert and eyes wide in alarm.

“What’s wrong?” Rainbow asked.

Applejack didn’t immediately respond. She held her stiff pose for a moment, like a suspicious prey. Then…

“He’s looking for us...”

Three sets of terrified eyes were on her at once. The fourth set belonging to the thing-pony were as neutral as ever.

“But, we’re hidden!” Rarity piped. “The last time you did this trick, not even Twilight could find you!”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t exactly have ideal dream-warping conditions to work with this time. I don’t wanna check too much, lest he find me mucking around in the spell’s workings and follow us back here, be he’s prodding. He’s still in the part of the dream we left, but if he looks outside that… well, we won’t exactly be that hard to find.”

Rainbow had gotten back onto her hooves, already tensing up for a fight. Fluttershy began to quiver again, and Rarity’s face went even paler.

The thing-pony continued its ongoing habit of having less diversity to its expressions than a marble statue.

Applejack looked down at the sleeping unicorn, her teeth grit in trepidation. “Come on, Twi… please hurry...”

- - - - - -

“And then they were all like, ‘No, really; who are you going to target with Lava Axe?’ And then I said... ‘Myself!’” Pinkie said, then dissolved into a twittering fit of giggles.

“Uh-huh,” Twilight replied in a tone halfway between uncertainty and disinterest as this latest Pinkie recounted her tale while playing some sort of complicated card game with several other Pinkies. Whatever magic this Pinkie was talking about really wasn’t how magic was supposed to work. “Hey, Pinkie?”

The Pinkie that Twilight was talking to recovered from her snickering. “Yeah?”

“It’s a bright, cold day in April.”

“What? No, this happened in the summer at, like, three in the morning, when you get so tired that everything is absolutely hil-ar-i-ous!”

“Hey, are you telling Twilight the story about when you took your own Lava Axe to the face?” asked one Pinkie who trotted up with another Pinkie, both of whom had symbols of crossed-out cutie marks over their heads. “Oh, I love that one! Pinkie, you gotta tell Pinkie what happens next!”

“Of course! So they laughed even harder for a good full minute after that, but then they calmed down and were are like; ‘Okay, enough jokes, who are you really going to cast Lava Axe on?’ And then I just picked up my life counter, held it in the air for everypony to see, lowered the number on it by five points, slammed it back down on the table, and said: ‘MYSELF!’”

All Pinkies present exploded with laughter at the recollection of tom-foolery. Twilight just sighed, concentrated for a second, and the image of a crossed-out cutie mark appeared over the molten axe-eating Pinkie’s head.

That more or less had been what the last two hours had been like for Twilight: talk to one of the Pinkies, sometimes after they’d literally thrown themselves at her to welcome her to the party, put up with their nuances, give them the code phrase, then put the ‘not it’ mark over her head, and repeat. The only thing that kept her from completely feeling as though she’d talked to every Pinkie in the mansion was that there were still a few milling about that were unmarked.

Twilight sighed in dismay as she looked over the dozens of Pinkies playing games in the arcade, each with the ‘not it’ mark floating above their oblivious heads as they played and laughed.

Talk about trying to find a needle in a haystack. Twilight mumbled internally.

Reason snorted. This is like trying to find a needle in a mansion full of needles.

Twilight trotted away from the table where the Pinkies were playing their weird game of magic or whatever it was called. She passed row after row of arcade machines, each one either in use by a Pinkie or surrounded by a small crowd of Pinkies waiting for their turn or cheering on the current players.

Twilight felt a small pang of sadness over her building frustration and anxiety. The sheer delight of the hundreds of Pinkies around her was even more palpable and prevalent than the atmosphere of sweet aromas, but she felt so disconnected from every smile and laugh. Yet this was what she and her friends had been so desperately trying to bring back into the life of Pinkie—their Pinkie— and Twilight couldn’t even find her.

Twilight spotted a Pinkie that she hadn’t marked at the end of one aisle, fiddling with a controller that looked like a small plastic harp for a game called Lyre Hero.

Law of averages predicts approximately a zero-point-two percent chance that she’s the real Pinkie, said Reason.

Well, we won’t know for certain unless we ask, won't we? Twilight replied.

Twilight trotted up to the unmarked Pinkie, who was frenetically plucking the nylon strings of the plastic lyre with adroit finesse. She stood back for the moment, politely allowing her to finish playing through the epic ballad, half out of manners and half out of admiration for her capabilities with the controller.

Clock is ticking, Twilight, Reason impatiently interjected.

Just give her a second, it looks like she's almost done, Twilight replied.

Sure enough, the Pinkie finished her simulated performance, and the virtual crowd roared with applause. A stylized report card popped up on screen, informing her that she had completed with 100% note accuracy and achieved a “S” rank.

The Pinkie threw her hooves up in triumph. “Woo-Hoo, stage dive!” she hooted, then pounced right at the screen. She smashed into the glass with an “Ow!” and fell back onto her rump with an “Oof!”

Twilight rushed to her side. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I'm fine,” the Pinkie said as she rubbed her nose. “You’d think I would have learned after the last three times I did that.”

She shook her head with the sound of a lug-nut rattling around in a tin can, then looked up at Twilight. Just like the unicorn had seen hundreds of times in the last two hours, the Pinkie’s face lit up with a broad smile that was painfully familiar and yet also disconcertingly alien.

“Hey, you're that Twilight I've been hearing about!” The Pinkie chirped.

“The one and only,” Twilight confirmed with a half-hearted smile.

The Pinkie responded with a snicker that Twilight found unsettling. “So what brings you here? Did you reopen your long-distance teleportation experiment again? Are you leaping between dimensions? Are you looking for the realm between the firmaments?” The Pinkie's face scrunched up in confusion. “I have no idea what that means, why did I say that?” Her face lit up again. “Hey, as long as you're here, want to play co-op?” she asked, motioning towards the game. “There are some awesome songs with dual leads on here! Hey, have you ever found it weird that ‘dual’ and ’duel’ are only one vowel apart, but have opposite meanings? Maybe the ‘e’ stands for ‘enemies’ and the ‘a’ stands for ‘amicable.’”

Twilight shook her head. “No, that's not why those words are spelled that way, and I'm here because I'm looking for somepony, so I can't play right now. Sorry.”

The Pinkie's ears drooped. “Aww…”

“Besides, you'd probably be able to play circles around me.”

“Aw, you flatter me,” the Pinkie replied with a smile and a coquettish down-wave of a hoof, then looked down fondly at the plastic lyre. “Yeah, I can pluck a G-string like nopony’s business. As well as the G-sharp string, the A string, and all the strings in between! Though it is a little tough having only hooves to work it… if I had magic, or hands like Spike, or something, it'd probably be easier to get into the narrow slits between the strings and really make this lovely little lady sing…” The Pinkie looked back up at Twilight. “Do you think it'd be better if I used my tongue?”

“Uh…”

“Nah, that’d probably make everything too sticky. Anyway, I was only playing on this because I've got this song stuck in my ears.”

“In your ears?” Twilight asked.

“Most ponies say they’ve got a song in their head, but it would have to be in your ears to keep hearing it over and over and over and over again, silly! Hee-hee! But I keep hearing this song over and over again, yet I can't remember exactly how it goes or even where I heard it from for the life of me, so I'm going through the whole roster to see if I can find it again.”

Aiming to stick around for forty-seven tracks of a one-mare show? Reason snarked.

Twilight groaned internally. Fine, I'll ask her right now. “Hey, Pinkie?”

“Yeah?”

“It's a bright, cold day in April.”

The Pinkie cocked her head to the side. “‘It's a bright cold day in April’? Is that what the song is called? Gee, that sure is a mouthful… not that I’m not used to that sort of thing, what with all the cupcakes I eat,” she said as she turned to the machine and flicked through the whole setlist. “I'm not seeing anything… maybe it's under lyrics?” The Pinkie punched the line into a little keyboard. “Hey, here's something! ‘April night-tyme, and we run like muscles through the stagnant nodes of—’”

“Seriously?!” Princess Pinkie interjected from across the aisle where she was currently making a dance platform machine beg for mercy. “You weren’t even going to start using that gimmick until the next chapter!”

Twilight didn't even bother with a sigh. She just plugged back into the dream functions, and put the ‘not it’ mark above the Lyre Hero Pinkie’s head. “Well, I hate to cut this short—”

I don't, Reason muttered.

“But I've got a pony to find. Good luck with the search for your song.”

“Thanks Twilight! After you find your mare, do you want to come back and play?”

No.

“Maybe.”

“Okie-dokie-loki! I'll be right here if you do! The whole arcade is on free play, so I'll be here for a while. Course, the only problem is that the high scores are changing all the time and it’s almost impossible to remember which ones are who’s because they’re all accredited to ‘Pinkie.’” She looked back at the game with a thoughtful expression. “I really want to play ‘Deceiver Of The Goddesses’ now…”

The Pinkie scrolled through the setlist, then started up a song that sounded an awful lot like the eardrum-annihilating metal the viking sharks had been playing. Twilight turned and began to walk out of the arcade, feeling nothing but the growing emptiness of unaccomplishment.

And the next one is going to have a less than zero-point-two percent chance, said Reason.

Don't you have a matrix to be looking at? Twilight fired back.

Reason groaned. I've been hacking at the codes for this place and everypony in it for the last two hours, trying to figure out what this place is, what or who all the Pinkies here are, where they came from, how they got here, and most importantly, where the hay our Pinkie is and why I can't find her. So far, I’ve had about as much luck as you. I'd have a better shot at finding my way out of the Wind Chaser Mystery House while numb, blindfolded, and drunk. Forgive me if I’m a little frustrated.

You’re not the only one having a bad time here, Reason.

Yeah, well, jumping head first into the dreams of the craziest pony we know and all that. If something doesn't change soon, we're going to have to try another tactic, because this is getting us nowhere.

Twilight’s mouth tightened pensively. Right. Any ideas as to what we could—-

“Ohmygosh, Twilight!” Another Pinkie with a kazoo tied around her neck interrupted her thoughts as she bounced up to her.

Hold that thought, Twilight said to Reason as she turned to the latest replica of her friend.

“Hi Pinkie,” Twilight greeted with an eroded enthusiasm that wasn't mutually shared. “Good to see you here.”

“And it's awesuperific to see you! I didn't know you were coming too!”

“Well, I'm here now,” Twilight replied with a programmed smile.

“Yes you are!” The Pinkie exclaimed, then pulled Twilight into a tight hug: one just like the dozens of others she’d received in the last two hours. Then the Pinkie's face lit up with an even brighter smile. “Hey, since your here too, you can help me find the pony I'm looking for!”

Twilight peeked up. “You're looking for somepony too?”

The Pinkie gasped in delight. “You’re already playing?!” She squeed. “Oh, this is going to be a great follow-up to best game of hide and seek that we just played a little while ago ever! She gave me her kazoo so that way she could tell me apart from every-Pinkie, but after she found me in the ‘s’ bend of a toilet from my snorkel sticking out of the water and it became her turn to disappear, I haven't seen hide or hair of that little filly! But since you’re here, we can work together to find Nyx!”

Twilight faltered. “Who's Nyx?” she blurted.

Pinkie reared back with a look of shock and disgust. “What the—-oh… oooh,” her expression of revulsion slowly morphed to one of sly understanding, “I get it; you're in on the act! Of course you'd take her side, so she convinced you to pretend like you don't even know she exists so that way she could stay hidden for longer! Dang, she is good!”

“That may be, but really, who's Nyx?”

The Pinkie just smiled and patted Twilight on the head. “Oh Twilight, I know you're just playing along for Nyx’s sake. I know you would never really forget your own daughter!” Then she turned around and began skipping down the hall. “When you see that sneaky little filly, let her know she's in for the biggest noogie when I find her!”

Twilight stared at the Pinkie as she left, dumbstruck by the exchange. She found another tired sigh in her lungs, and let it out as she marked the latest Pinkie just before she turned the corner and was gone.

“I guess that gives the next one a zero-point-one-nine-nine-eight percent chance of being the real Pinkie, doesn’t it?” Twilight mumbled to herself.

At this point, I think it's reasonable to predict just a zero percent chance of finding the real Pinkie in the mansion. Reason hypothesized.

“You don't think she's somewhere outside, do you?”

Oh Celestia, I hope not. We don't have enough time to scour the entire dream world, especially if it's as big as it was the last time you were here...

Twilight's entire body went stiff and her breath caught in her lungs. Suddenly the warm air felt rather cold.

Oh… I'm sorry. This isn't… you're not… sorry.

Twilight slumped up against a nearby wall. “Let's just find Pinkie and get out of here.” She looked around her, apathetic to the exuberant decorations around her. “So what now? Do we start looking in the amusement park?”

No, even with as little progress we've made, the presence of all these Pinkies and the erratic nature of the codes in here is too much to be just a coincidence. Even as bleak as it seems, our best bet at finding the real Pinkie most likely is in here.

“And it’s not like we can just ask the Pinkies here if they’ve seen her,” Twilight added.

Not unless we want to start another round of the most chaotic game of hide-and-seek ever played by ponies, no. There’s what looks like an art exhibit down the hall where the code gets weird… weirder than normal, I mean. Try looking there.

Twilight trotted down the hall, rounded the corner, and entered through a large set of ornate double-doors that opened up into an expansive art gallery. The decorations were much more reserved here, and the refreshments were limited to trays of wine glasses filled with punch and cider, bottles of water, and platters of cupcakes atop silk napkins. There weren't many windows, but the interior was still brightly lit by shining fluorescents that ran all across the ceiling. Numerous spotlights lit the many rows of low mocha walls that had all been nearly buried underneath a multitude of paintings contained with immaculate frames, all of which were portrayals of Pinkie engaging in some activity or event or other, none of which Twilight could recollect her Pinkie ever taking part of.

However, the angle of every adjustable light source and the positioning of every wall had been arranged in a manner to lead the eye to the largest painting of the all, at the back of the gallery directly across from the entrance, and though she hasn't been there to witness it for herself, this one Twilight did recognize.

The grand masterpiece featured Pinkie, still as a young foal without her cutie mark. She stood in a rural, barren field choked by rocks, looking up at the sky with the happiest smile engulfing her face and the spectral shockwave of Rainbow Dash’s first Sonic Rainboom reflected in her enormous, awe-stricken eyes.

“The event that led Pinkie to earn her cutie mark.”

And every painting branches out from this focal point. Reason noted. Perhaps the residents here are the result of Pinkie's subconscious forming different possible versions of herself? Either way, with all the importance centered around this painting, it's possible that every projection here will say this is how they got their cutie mark, too. But since this is how the real Pinkie got her mark, maybe if we look we'll find another painting directly related to her.

“And then we could possibly trace the code of the painting back to our Pinkie and finally find her!” Twilight perked up with the first promising lead she’d had in hours. “And that's why you're called Reason!”

You flatter me. Same plan: you check the dream world while I check the codes.

Twilight set off, meandering through the maze of artwork within the deceptively spacious gallery. It wasn't long before the paintings surrounding her began to feel less like oil on canvas and more like windows into the still lives of hundreds of other Pinkies. Some were depictions that Twilight recollected some of the Pinkies she’d met had insinuated of: one of a Pinkie taking to a young, pretty mare with a light golden coat and an auburn mane and tail that Twilight surmised was Sunflower if her name was eponymous with the flower on her flank: another of Princess Pinkie with an impossibly wide smile on her face and her forelegs in an emphatic tight hug/choke-hold around her five friends, also alicorns themselves. Many others she didn't recognize: a Pinkie and a Fluttershy affectionately holding a pink filly between them that looked like what would have been the result of combining the DNA of the two mares: a distraught Pinkie being comforted by another Rainbow Dash as she held her in the kitchen of Sugar Cube Corner, in the center of which sat a trash can full of knives: Pinkie sitting in an open field under a dark sky of night split apart by fireworks, a foreleg curiously out in the air as though it was wrapped around somepony, though she was by herself.

Twilight frowned a little in discomfort, feeling like she was standing admits a nexus of doors to other worlds. “Gee, the last time I saw paintings this eerily life-like, it was when the thing-pony first showed up.”

Let's just hope none of them come to life and start materializing in our dreams at random, said Reason. Check around the corner; I found a bizarre gap in the code there. If that's our gateway back to Pinkie, it should take us v right to---

Twilight rounded the corner, and saw an open space on the wall in between two pictures; one of a white mare with a blonde name that looked like Pinkie if she were a pegasus, and another of their group of six around a table in Twilight’s library, playing a game with small figurines on sheets of paper with icosahedral dice. The section of the wall had recently been painted over, and taped off with a little ‘wet paint’ sign.

And sitting on the floor just in front of the empty space was an unmarked Pinkie with a flat mane and tail, all by herself and looking rather melancholy.

Twilight smiled. Bingo.

“Pinkie?”

The mare flinched at Twilight's voice, then exhaled a resonated sigh. “Oh, hi Twilight,” she murmured, barely even looking back.

The unicorn's heart began to breast a little faster. “What are you doing here, all alone?”

The Pinkie let out a miserable whimper. “These walls used to be ‘latte.’ Now they’re ‘mocha.’ I watched as the latte room died, forever to be replaced by the mocha one; buried like the deceased under a thin layer of oil and gloss, and I did nothing to stop it!”

Twilight tilted her head to the side, her fleeting hope wavering. “You watched paint dry?”

Pinkie sniffed and turned, wiping her nose on a pastern. “It’s a metaphor, if you think about it. Are we really just the sum of what changes us? Everypony comes here for the paintings, but nopony thinks about the walls underneath them.” She looked Twilight square in the eye. “Is a mare nothing more than what others say she is? Then how am I supposed to know who I am? Who-slash-what am I really if I’m always changing? Always burying my past selves under the me of the present?”

Twilight’s expectations had risen again. “I don’t know right off-hoof… that’s something that can take a long time to find, especially if you’re by yourself. But maybe I can help you.”

“How?” the Pinkie asked.

Twilight gently cleared her throat. “It’s a—”

“There you are!” another Pinkie interrupted Twilight as she bounced up to the two. “I’d heard there might be a Pinkie here who was all Ms. Sour-Puss McFrowny-Face!” She grabbed a cupcake off a nearby platter and shoved it into the other Pinkie’s mouth. “Time to smile, smile, smile!”

Pinkie the paint-watcher hummed in delight as she chewed, her hair poofing out to its natural state as she swallowed the treat in a single gulp. “Thanks, I needed that!” She looked at Twilight. “Sorry, I get all mopey and existential when I’m running low on sugar!”

“I’ll say!” the other Pinkie supported. “You were watching paint dry!”

“I was?” she asked as she looked back at the wall. “Wow… that’s what I get for not eating for a whole ten minutes...”

“Hey, Pinkie’s looking for somepony to play co-op on Lyre Hero! Wanna come!”

“Sure! Wanna play too, Twilight?”

The unicorn just stared with her mouth ajar.

“Well, you know where we’ll be if you change your mind!” Pinkie number Twilight-had-lost-count replied, and bounced after her compatriot.

“Wait!” Twilight blurted. “It’s a bright cold day in April!”

“No it isn’t!” Pinkie said as she departed. “Good to see you here, though!”

Twilight stood there, unmoving as the two left, leaving her alone in the aisle. She groaned in frustration, smashing her hoof against the floor.

“Any other surprises left to throw at us?!”

“SURPRISE!!!”

“AH!” Twilight yelped in shock as the white pegasus from the nearby painting ripped itself off of the picture and was suddenly in Twilight’s face. “Buh… how… wai—what?! How’d you do that?!”

The pegasus Pinkie dissolved into a fit of giggles as she hoovered in the air, her wings buzzing like a humming bird’s. “By holding my breath and sucking in my gut, silly!” She sucked in a lungful of air and held it, and her entire body flattened into a thin strip of a pony. She released the air and popped back out, twittering to herself again. “Oh, you used to love that one! And I did stuff like that all the time when I was still your imaginary friend and you still called me Surprise! You remember all the fun times we had together, right?”

Twilight.exe has stopped working.

Surprise clocked the side of her head with a hoof. “Oh right, of course! You couldn’t possibly remember because that magical surge that was triggered by Dashie’s Sonic Rainboom that you had as a foal pulled me and all your memories of me out of your head and brought me to life as an earth pony that you later became best friends with named Pinkie Pie! But now we’re apparently in somepony’s head or dream or something, so I’m back to my original form!”

Surprise’s face lit up with joy. Twilight’s cognition had rebooted, and next thing she knew, Surprise had grasped her by the cheeks and was pressing their noses together.

“We can have fun just like old times! And we can bring every-Pinkie else in on the old games we used to play like Swaple-Tople and Whumper-Thumper! It’ll be just like becoming friends all over again!”

Twilight smiled back with the world’s worst poker face. “That’s sounds… great, but I… uh,” she paused, “still have to say ‘hi’ to the other Pinkie’s I haven’t met.”

“That’s alright, we can just have fun together again later!” Surprise replied. Then her eyes went wide and her body became stiff, floating in midair without even flapping her wings. Her mane and tail fritzed out, then she looked back and Twilight wide with an even broader smile. “And you’ll have plenty more chances for ‘hellos’, because guess who just showed up? MORE PINKIES! Race you downstairs!” And then Surprise took off at speeds that would rival Rainbow Dash, laughing in delight all the way.

Twilight.exe has stopped working. Please consult your systems administrator if the problem persists.

Uh… Twilight, Reason trepidatiously began, Supplies, or whatever her name is, wasn’t kidding about the arrival of more Pinkies.

Twilight took a moment to respond. “How… many… more?”

More… a lot more… as in, there’s statistically a zero-point-one-six percent chance in one of them being the Pinkie we’re looking for… but all things considered…

Twilight didn’t hear Reason trailing off. She slowly fell to her haunches, and sat there in the gallery for some time, with only the faint wafting of paint fumes to accompany her. She hung her head, breathed out, then got back up on her hooves. She didn’t even bother looking at any of the paintings of unfamiliar Pinkies as she trudged past them. She opened a door that led to an unoccupied balcony overlooking the ocean.

She knew she shouldn’t waste time here; she knew she should stay inside and try to keep looking for clues as to where Pinkie had disappeared to this time, and she had precious little of that to find her and the anomaly… and to see if inception was possible two levels down. But regardless, she knew that she would stay here for a while, for she needed a break.

Twilight stood there on that lonely landing, casting her gaze across the sea, breathing in the crisp ocean air and hearing the roiling waves peppered with the roar of the roller coasters in the park behind her.

“Any luck finding a link that we can trace back to Pinkie?”.

No. I tried to see if I could trace that gap in the code to anything, but it’s self contained and leads back to itself, where it just drops off into non-existence. It’s like that patch of encrypted code we found outside of Avarice’s cave the last time we were in Spike’s dreams.

Twilight didn’t even react to the answer; she’d been expecting it. Her thoughts began to drift amidst the fogged oceans of her mind, where vacuous vortices of questions left unanswered spited the natural logic that abhorred them. What was this place? Who or what were the Pinkies inside, and why had Pinkie dreamed them up? Was this exclusive to Pinkie, or if she set up her own dream just right, would she find herself in a palace like the one she’d made in limbo, but filled to the brim of other versions of herself? Would she be able to keep track of where she ended and the dream copies of her began?

She thought back to Pinkie recounting her nightmares: of being a Pinkie in horrible situations or who did terrible things. Would she have started to lose herself if she had been in her horseshoes?

It was definitely a question worth discussing with Pinkie… if Twilight ever managed to find her.

Another pang of sorrow poked at her heart. Looking out over the sea from her lonely perch, suddenly the air felt a little colder.

However, instead of raising it, she left her tree house, then walked to the ramparts of her palace and looked out over the sea.

Why should I raise the sun? What’s the point? What’s the point of anything?

Twilight fell to her haunches. She closed her eyes and pressed her forehead to the stone, choking back a sob clawing at her throat. A chilling wind blew past her, and she heard the distant flap of a flag in the gust.

Twilight felt a hoof on her shoulder. She jumped a little, instinctively reaching for the point of contact. She grasped nothing but the air and her own coat. Then she realized what she was actually feeling: the little pony in her head was doing the most she could to give her a hug

Want to talk about it? Asked Reason.

Twilight had half a mind to say ‘no,’ turn around and go back to her fruitless search. But as long as she has somepony to talk to…

“So much for Plan B,” she muttered. “What do you suppose we could have the ‘B’ stand for? ‘Busted?’ ‘Botched?’ ‘Bungled?’”

She thought of the little dossier hidden in her saddlebag, containing a single sentence; ‘My second favorite color is blue’: the innocuous little idea she had intended to plant in Pinkie’s head to see if the act of inception could be replicated.

“Plan ‘Betrayal of Trust?’” She whispered in shame.

We encountered variables we couldn't have possibly known in advance to account for, Reason consoled. We’ll just have to take what information we have gathered and use it to reevaluate our methods.

“So what are we supposed to do now?”

Reason didn't answer immediately. To be honest, I don't know. I can't think of anything at the moment.

Twilight let out a short, bitter laugh. “I don't suppose we can just wait around and hope the thing-pony shows up to save our plots again, can we?”

Reason gave a short, half-hearted chuckle. No, I don't suppose we can.

There was a moment of silence between the two.

Want to go ask the Pinkies that just showed up if they've seen anything?

Twilight huffed, forcing back a little smile. “Hush, you.”

Well, actually, you might as well now… given that there's one right behind you.

Twilight whipped around. Standing a few yards behind her, with purple cape waving in the wind, was Mare Do Well.

Twilight groaned. “Great… you. Come to give me a taste of my own medicine and take my overconfidence down a notch? Because I'm already feeling like a failure as it is.”

Mare Do Well didn't make any vocal response. She just kept staring at Twilight with those cold, serious eyes: the only emotive feature of her stony, cotton face.

Twilight furrowed her brow as a corner of her mouth pulled right. “Are you going to say anything, or if I pull off your mask am I going to find the thing-pony?”

Mare Do Well made no movement whatsoever, except to slightly raise an eyebrow at her. Otherwise, she might as well have been a gargoyle pulled from the roof and dressed in a wide-brimmed hat and a cape.

Twilight grumbled. Mare Do Well was showing some form of an emotional response, so she definitely wasn't the thing-pony.

“Well, if you're not going to say anything, we should just go our separate ways. I have important things to do, and I don't need you following me around, especially if you’re just going to shadow me like some revenant of my questionable ideas.”

“That wasn't my intention.”

“Gah!”

Twilight jumped back at the response. She didn't move back very far before her rear ran into the balustrade. She put a hoof over her chest to ease her spooked heart.

“So you do talk,” Twilight eventually managed to get out.

“As do you, even if you're alone,” Mare Do Well added.

Twilight tilted her head. This Mare Do Well didn't sound like Pinkie, or anypony she knew for that matter. Her voice was deeper, and spoken with a bit of a harsh rasp to make her tone more gruff. She thought it sounded a little like Pinkie doing an impersonation of Batmare, albeit a slightly less forced one than Celestian Bale’s portrayal of the vigilante had been. And also if Pinkie sounded nothing like Pinkie.

That made sense. Somehow.

“So, is the ‘talking to yourself’ quirk your thing?” asked Mare Do Well.

Twilight paused. “I wasn't talking to myself… “

“I heard everything from ‘So much for Plan B.’”

“Oh, that… never mind that, “ Twilight paused, “it was nothing.”

“So ‘Plan Betrayal of Trust’ is nothing?”

Twilight’s eyes went wide and her legs went stiff. “Nothing! Yep, it's nothing!” She blurted. “Nothing at all! That was just… it's… nothing!”

To her immense surprise, Mare Do Well began to coquettishly chuckle. “You're cute when you're flustered.”

Every joint in Twilight's body locked up. Her cheeks suddenly felt very warm. “N-no I'm n-not!”

Mare Do Well chortled a little more, then began to walk forward with slow, deliberate steps. Twilight suddenly found it difficult to maintain eye contact.

“Oh, yes you are,” Mare Do Well said with precise animated turns of her head. “That total loss of your intellectual composure as you avert your eyes, stammer and blush… it's adorable. A little like Fluttershy, but more gratifying since you're not so easily befuddled. And the fact that you could easily pull off the sexy librarian look if you tried certainly doesn't make you any less fetching.“

Twilight's eyes hadn't gotten any less wide. A lump formed in her throat as it occurred to her that Mare Do Well had gotten close… and was getting closer. And then she was struck with a thought that made her stomach feel like she was on a roller coaster that was well on its way to making her lose her lunch… and even more terrifying was the feeling of a toasty little butterfly fluttering around in her nauseous insides, making them feel a bit warm and fuzzy.

“Are you… coming onto me?!”

Mare Do Well gave her another demure laugh, moving even closer. The underside of her broad hat grazed the tips of Twilight's ears, making them snap-fold back against the unicorn’s head. Their noses were mere inches from contact—Oh Celestia she's so close so close SO CLOSE!—when Mare Do Well turned her head to the side, allowing her cheek to graze against that of her prey, chilling Twilight's clammy skin and making her fur prickle.

“You’re a wonderful mare. Twilight,” Mare Do Well whispered with a husky purr and a hot breath into Twilight's ear.

The toasty, gastro-androgynous butterfly was now riding the rabid roller coaster in Twilight’s stomach, and it didn't know whether to be pleasantly surprised or terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought either.

A second later, Mare Do Well had parted, and was looking over her shoulder at Twilight from several paces away. “But you’re not my type: not colorful enough.”

Twilight could only gawk at the masked pony.

“Who are you?”.

“A mare in a mask.”

Twilight put her serious face back on. “Well, that goes without saying. “

Coy, frosted eyes looked back at her. Twilight swore she could see creases in the mask from the mare underneath smiling.

“Of course it does. I'm just pointing out the deductive contradiction of asking a masked mare who she is.”

Reason cleared her figurative throat, regaining her composure. She’s not ours, but overwhelming likelihood is she's another copy.

Right. Twilight sighed. “Look, Pi—-”

“Shhhhh!”

Twilight blinked in surprise at Mare Do Well’s interruption. A tense passage of silence followed, neither mare breaking eye contact… or at least Twilight was pretty sure she was maintaining eye contact: it was hard to tell with that blasted mask.

“P—-”

“Shhh!”

Twilight grumbled. “Is there a reason why you won't let me call you by the name I'm almost certain is yours?”

“Because it would spoil the obvious spoiler.”

Twilight gaped at her. “Spoil the—-what?! P—-”

“SHH!”

Twilight growled in frustration. “There's a Pinkie that is of the utmost importance I locate, and I've already squandered in excess of two hours in a thus far fruitless attempt to find her. I don't have the time to waste with somepony who won't even let me make an educated guess as to their identity!” Twilight stood and began to trot back inside, her hooves striking out a brusque stacotto. “Now if you'll excuse me, I have an assignment I have to finish. Goodbye, Mare Do Well.”

“Don't call me that!”

Twilight stopped in surprise at the outburst, then looked behind her. Mare Do Well was shaking her head as if to clear it off something, and her legs began to quiver with such tremors that she looked to have trouble standing.

“That's not my name… that's not my name! Don't EVER call me that! I have a real name!”

Twilight rounded on her. “Well if I can't call you by what I'm ninety-nine-point eighty-one percent certain is your real name and you won't let me refer to you by the moniker of a character we created together, then what am I supposed to call you?!”

Mare Do Well leaned forward, raising her hoof to punctuate her point. Her mask stretched as she opened her mouth, and there was a sound of rushing air as she breathed in to deliver her fiery response… and then she went no further. Twilight watched in silence, no word coming to either’s mouth. The anger in Mare Do Well’s chilled eyes melted away into uncertainty, then terrible realization. She put her hoof back on the ground and fell to be seated on the stone balcony. Her voice trembled as she finally answered.

“I… I don't know…”

Now it was Twilight's turn to raise an eyebrow in confusion.

Mare Do Well looked off to her right, her hostility gone. “There is somepony under this mask, but I'm not her right now. I might look like Mare Do Well, but I'm not her, either; I'm the mare underneath, pretending to be a superhero.” Mare Do Well strained out a dry, pitiless laugh. “You want to know the hilariously sad irony of it all? I started wearing this mask because I thought I could be somepony more than the mare everypony thinks I am. Somepony brave, who could be the hero, who could be a little cold and cocky, and who wasn't afraid to step on other ponies hooves… somepony she’d like… but when I approached her like this, she only got interested in Mare Do Well. She’s not interested in me… she doesn't even know who I am.”

Mare Do Well looked back up at Twilight with those icy eyes, frosted by the loneliness of a pony who had been left out in the cold. “I took up the role of Mare Do Well again because I thought I could have an outlet to free my darker side. But now this mask has become my prison, and I've gotten myself caught between double lives.” She put a hoof to her cloth face. “That's the tragedy of masked ponies like me; sometimes, we wear our masks for so long that we forget who we really are underneath.”

Twilight was a bit of a loss for words, stunned by the spontaneous confession. “Then why not just take off the mask and put a stop to the whole charade?”

Mare Do Well turned away once more, her shoulders slumped with weights of shame. “Because the longer I've tried to be the brave hero, the more I've realized I'm just pretending that I'm not a coward.” Her voice became more strained, each word an effort. “I'm buried too deep, and the only way out is for somepony to find the real me.”

Even through the fluctuation of emotions, Mare Do Well’s voice maintained its disguise. But in her pained, regretful admission, Twilight heard the tiniest whisper of the Pinkie underneath.

What the heck, she thought.

“It's a bright, cold day in April,” Twilight said.

Mare Do Well looked back up, her stoic composure regained and confusion etched on it. She looked back at the stormy summer skies and frothing ocean, then looked back at Twilight, peering at her with uncertainty.

“Apart from being one of the most bizarre non-sequiturs I've heard from somepony who isn't Pinkie, no Twilight, it's not.”

Even though she's been expecting it, Twilight still sighed in disappointment. “I'm sorry, but I don't think I can't help you in the way you need it.” She turned to walk away. “I have somepony who I need to find myself, so I guess this is goodbye. I hope you find the courage to tell who you're hiding from what you've told me, or that she finds you the way you want her to,” she bid, then began to trudge back inside, wondering what she should do next.

“Good luck with your own search, Twilight. Sorry I'm not who you're looking for,” replied Mare Do Well. “Though really, what were you expecting of me?” A playful tone worked its way back into her voice. “Were you hoping I would tell you the time?”

Twilight froze dead in her tracks.

There was no movement or sounds from either mare; just the waves in the ocean breeze and the distant thrilled screams from the ponies in the park. Twilight looked back over her shoulder to see Mare Do Well already locked onto her; the mask barely hiding a cat’s smile with canary feathers sticking out of it.

“Because if I was her, I'd be telling you it's an hour past noon. Or do you need that information in twenty-four hour format?” Mare Do Well asked with the sweetness of an imp.

Twilight slowly marched back to Mare Do Well. She got within a hooves’ reach of the vigilante, and leaned forward as she bored through the dark mask with piercing eyes. When she spoke, Twilight's voice was barely above a whisper, yet it slashed through the wind.

“Where is she?”

Mare Do Well remained calm. “To be perfectly, one-hundred percent, Pinkie Pie promise honest, I don't exactly know.”

Twilight narrowed her eyes as she leaned closer forward. Her jaw tightened and her lips pressed together until they were thin as a switchblade.

Mare Do Well stayed unphased by Twilight's approach. Another moment of tense silence passed between the two. Then she stood, and her mask creased with a mischievous little smile.

“But I know where to look.” Mare Do Well strode past Twilight, nearly close enough to flirtatiously brush flanks, as she moved towards the entrance back into the gallery. “Follow me.”

Twilight was at her side in an instant. Her hooves twitched with the urge to gallop, her sudden anticipation frustrated by Mare Do Well’s casual gait.

“Humor me, Twilight. How much do you know about writing a good mystery novel?”

Twilight looked at her with impatient uncertainty. “Trying to come up with an even more tangential non-sequitur than me?”

Mare Do Well giggled. “Not quite. I’m trying to make a point. So, what do you know?”

Twilight just stated for a moment before responding, unsure of the conversation’s direction. “A decent amount. The Fetlock Holmes series was one of my favorites when I was a filly. Why do you ask?” She thought about the question for a second. “How much do you know?”

“Just the basics, mostly. Logical equilibriums, the raven paradox, Roan Knox’s Ten Commandments of Detective Fiction, that kind of stuff.”

“I would never have pegged you as a mystery aficionado.”

“I learned a lot from another Pinkie a little while back; she was going on about some murder-mystery novel her Fluttershy was writing,” Mare Do Well replied. “Since you're well versed with the genre, I expect you'll have an educated answer to this question; what's a good mystery without plot twists?”

Twilight was a little perplexed by the spontaneity, but the inquiry of literary tropes had flipped her ‘nerdy librarian mode’ switch from ‘off’ to ‘on.’

“Well, you can't have much of a mystery at all without misdirection. The only possible way I can think of that a mystery could be written without any twists was if it was created so that any information the reader is given allowed for so many likely interpretations that the solution will inevitably get buried under the multitude of equally likely possibilities, or was so obfuscated that the mystery is all but impossible to solve before the concluding act, even if all the information the reader needs to figure it out has been given to them.”

Mare Do Well’s mask creased with her familiar wry grin. “Told ya… sexy librarian…”

“Quit it,” Twilight mumbled, trying and failing to suppress another blush.

Mare Do Well just chuckled at her. “So with that established, what's the mark of a good twist in a mystery?”

“One that you didn't see coming, but all the pieces were presented. A twist is the moment when the puzzle is instantly assembled and the protagonist, as well as the reader, gain clarity that puts the story into a new perspective.”

“Close, but not quite.”

“But, that's the very textbook definition of a good twist!”

“That it is… but I’m not looking for the textbook definition then, am I?”

Twilight huffed in exasperation. “Then would you mind filling me in since clearly you want your dramatic reveal?”

Mare Do Well chuckled. “The best twist in a mystery is when you never even realized there was a mystery that needed to be solved in the first place.”

Twilight came to a stop, thrown for a loop by Mare Do Well’s wit. Twilight let her get a few steps ahead before responding.

“Not that I don't appreciate your help, but do you have to be so cryptic about everything? If you know something that I don't, then why don't you just tell me?”

Mare Do Well halted in mid-step. All four of her hooves met the ground, her head fell, then turned back in Twilight's direction without looking at her.

“For the same reason I can't just arrange another one of our nighttime visits, tear off this mask, open up my heart and soul in total honesty, and get her to feel the same way about me,” Mare Do Well solemnly replied. A moment passed before she glanced back up at Twilight. “You say you’ve been looking for your Pinkie… did you ever wonder if maybe the reason you can't find her is because she's hiding from you?”

Twilight's eyes widened a little. “I… I never thought of that…”

Mare Do Well turned her full body in Twilight's direction. “If your Pinkie is like me, she's got something to hide, and she’s so desperate to keep it hidden that she'll go as far as lock herself away rather than let her friends know the truth.”

Twilight thought back to the near week that Pinkie had made a pariah of herself. “But she was the one who asked for my help in the first place. Why would she let us get close to just start running away again?”

“Again, if she's anything like me, she's torn. On the one hoof, she wants to hold onto her secrets, but on the other they're tearing her up on the inside and she wants to be rid of them. The conflict leads to indecision, and she just ends up doing what she's already doing, which is hold onto what’s hurting her.”

Twilight frowned a little. “I kept telling her that she can trust us… that she can put her faith in her friends…”

“I don't doubt you have every intention of keeping your promise, but the price of that is going to be learning what she doesn't want you to. Even if I did know what she's hiding, it wouldn't be my place to tell you what it is. If you really want to prove she can trust you, then you have to be the one who removes her mask and see her for who she really is. You have to be the friend who stays to pick up the pieces and put them back together with her.” Mare Do Well looked squarely at her. “Are you willing to accept that?”

Twilight thought back to that first day she'd woken from her solitary confinement in limbo and the searing pain in her lonely heart when Pinkie didn't want any company: of her mounting worry has she heard second-hoof stories of Pinkie's fraying composition. She thought back to when the distraught Pinkie finally came forward with what had been plaguing her dreams, and how she’d never left her side when she told the whole story all over again to their friends: how she’d been tending to her for the past five days while the five of them had been training in every spare moment they had to defeat Pinkie's nightmares. There hasn't been a single moment in the last week when she'd second guessed her cause, resolve, or devotion to her friend.

Twilight firmly nodded. “Yes, I am.”

Mare Do Well’s mask shifted as her confident grin returned. “Then follow me; you've got a Pinkie to find.”

She turned, leading Twilight through the rows of paintings like amalgamations of the lives of a thousand different Pinkies. They rounded a corner, and Twilight once more found herself looking at the empty space on the wall sectioned off for having dry paint.

Twilight looked at Mare Do Well with slight confusion. “I was already here, and I didn't find anything except for a Pinkie that has an existential crisis without a constant influx of sugar and another that was Pinkie in blonde pegasus form.”

“Then you weren't looking hard enough. If you can't find Pinkie inside the box, you have to find a way outside of it.”

“And how do you suggest we do that?”

The mouth around Mare Do Well’s mouth creased with a knowing smirk. “Break them down.”

Twilight's eyes went wide. Her thoughts rippled from memories of the decree of a blasphemous hydra with the heads of the divine royal sisters and the vilified chanting of a faceless, vindictive legion.

“Tear down her wall,” Twilight whispered.

She reached out to the bare wall, and gave it a knock. A dull, hollow ‘thump’ answered back. She looked at Mare Do Well in surprise: the vigilante looked flatly back at her.

“Done with the foreplay?” the masked mare asked.

“So, do I just…”

Mare Do Well turned away from Twilight, took a step forward, then raised a forehoof. Twilight yelped in surprise as Mare Do Well punched right through the wall, leaving a hoof-sized hole in the plaster and thin cracks roughly the size and shape of the picture frames surrounding it.

Mare Do-Well removed her hoof, took a step back, then looked back at Twilight, her mask creased with her distinct smirk. “Got her all warmed up for you.”

Twilight lit her horn, and her aura enveloped the fractured segment of the wall. She pulled it out with the crunch of plaster stripping from plaster and floated it off to the side to gently set it down. Instead it fell to the floor with a heavy crash as Twilight saw just what had been hidden underneath.

It was a painting much in the style of the other hundreds in the gallery, save for one crucial difference: this one Twilight recognized, because she had been there.

The painting featured the streets of Ponyvillle, its citizens scattered about in the chaotic brawl of water balloon warfare from the week before last. In the distance she saw Rarity in a fashionable raincoat, simultaneously using a scarf to fling aquatic artillery like a trebuchet while trying to stuff Sweetie Belle into a stylish poncho. Fluttershy was just trying to hide from the onslaught as she did her best to deflect incoming projectiles away from Angel. Rainbow Dash was hurling entire rainclouds at ponies, while Applejack was lassoing one and shifting to buck it right back at the pegasus. Nearby she saw herself just as she had remembered, somewhat struggling to launch her hydro-ordinances with as much accuracy as she was hoping to accomplish while the only thing that was keeping her going at that point was the highest-octane sugar rush of her life, while a smiling Spike sat on her back, flinging balloons with his tail like a catapult while defensively using his fire breath to rupture as many oncoming enemy payloads as he could.

And in the center of it all was Pinkie, her Pinkie, deftly flipping through the air and avoiding watery bombs with the skill and finesse of a pre-cognizant acrobat, foreleg reeling back with a rubbery present of wet revenge aimed right for the horrified and helpless face of Scootaloo. On her face was an open proclamation of pure, undiluted joy, emanating with her palpable delight even when she was only an illustration in paint.

“This was the day after I got the Dreamscape spell working and Pinkie and I had our first shared dream together,” Twilight said. “But she's been suffering from horrible nightmares from then, and I haven't seen her smile like that since.” She took a step forward, as if the painting itself was pulling her in. “That wasn't even two weeks ago… it seems so far away now… “

Mare Do Well hummed thoughtfully to herself. “So dream magic is your thing… Tell me; when I asked earlier if you'd promise to stick by Pinkie and help repair the damage to your friendship that removing her mask will cause, did you mean it?”

Twilight looked back at her companion without missing a beat. “Of course. Why are you asking again?”

Mare Do Well picked up a nearby tray loaded up with glasses of water. “Because it's time to practice putting your bits where your mouth is.” And then she threw the tray right at the painting.

“Wait!” Twilight blurted, but it was too late. The discordant chime of half a dozen glasses crashing against the painting and shattering on the ground made Twilight's ears flinch away. She watched in horror as the water grew thick and dirty as it warped the image underneath, dripping down into an ugly puddle, melting away her last happy memory with Pinkie.

Twilight whipped back around. “Why did you do that?!”

“Because I know a mask when I see one,” Mare Do Well replied, then pointed back at the ruined artwork.

Twilight returned her attention to the dissolved piece. To her surprise, Mare Do Well’s vandalism has left not a stained canvas, but uncovered another picture that had been hidden under the first. This one she had also been there for, but wished hadn't happened.

The painting depicted Pinkie, now the downtrodden and melancholy mare she'd been for over a week, sitting alone on the stage of her show trial. A low spotlight cast her long shadow upon the towering, unfeeling wall behind her, where it twisted into the cruel silhouette of Discord that cynically cackled at her.

Twilight blinked, thrown for a stupor by the turn of events. She looked back at Mare Do Well, who simply motioned towards the exposed painting.

“I'm guessing that's how your Pinkie is now?”

Twilight nodded, glancing back at the terrible picture. “This was just a few hours ago. Her own subconscious put her on trial and declared her guilty.”

“Of what?”

Twilight's brow furrowed. “Of smiling… of having friends...” She shook her head. “I just don't get what she could feel so guilty about that she'd let her subconscious excoriate herself like it did.”

“Whatever the reason, I think it's safe to conclude it's directly related to why she's hiding,” Mare Do Well noted. “So if Pinkie was here right now, what would you say to her?”

Twilight looked closer at the painting of Pinkie's show trial. The eerie realism made Twilight almost feel as though Pinkie herself was sitting in front of her: sad and alone, in dire need of comfort and a friend.

Twilight took a step forward, feeling a little like she did all those nights ago when Pinkie had finally come to her for help.

“Pinkie…” She gulped: suddenly her mouth felt rather dry. “Pinkie, it's Twilight. I want to help you—- all your friends want to help you—-we've come so far and done so much just so you can be happy again. You don't deserve to suffer like this, and you don't need to keep hiding from us.”

The painting remained as it was: stationary.

“I know I'll never fully understand you, and that's okay. But I don't get why you'd be afraid of us. We're the last ponies you'd ever have to fear.”

The heartfelt communion fell on inanimate ears. Twilight looked off, ponderous over Pinkie's absence and Mare Do Well’s hypothesis as to why. And then a thought occurred to her: one that has never before occurred to her but suddenly opened up a whole new perspective.

“Pinkie… are you upset with me? With us? Did we do something wrong?”

Twilight's mind began to race. Had she done something wrong? Should she have come to Pinkie's aid before the poor mare had cracked? Did Pinkie secretly blame her for causing the nightmares like Rainbow did? Or was she upset about something else? The wedding maybe?

“Pinkie, if there's contention between us, we can work it out; we always have.”

The painting showed as much a reaction to Twilight's words as the thing-pony.

Twilight's heart was starting to thump, and she didn't know why.

“Have faith in your friends,” she said, just barely above a whisper, then held her hoof out to the sad little Pinkie in the painting, just like she'd done so many times with the real one.

A moment passed in silence, with Twilight in full sincerity offering support to something that couldn't even respond to her… and then, from somewhere behind the painting, there was the sound of a ‘click’ like a door unlocking.

Twilight's mouth fell open in shock.

“Well,” said Mare Do Well from behind her, “you've got a Pinkie to find.”

Twilight’s expression became pensive. “Roan Knox’s sixth commencement is ‘No accident must help the detective, nor must she ever have an unaccountable intuition that turns out to be correct.’” She turned to look deliberately at her company. “How did you know all this?”

Mare Do Well’s focus shifted off of Twilight. “You wouldn't believe me if I told you.”

Twilight huffed. “I ended up in a dream expecting to find my friend, and instead I found over five hundred different versions of her, including but not limited to one that has existential crisis’ when she's low on sugar, a Pinkie pegasus named Surprise, a stallion version of her named Bubble, a pyromaniac, a mythical sea pony, and one that was a freaking alicorn. My suspension of disbelief has been stretched pretty far by now.”

Mare Do Well began to chuckle. “Touche. Alright, if you must know, a bird shrouded in a black cloak told me.”

Twilight blinked. “Okay…” She looked back at the portrait. “Either way, I can't thank you enough.”

Mare Do Well tipped her hat. “The pleasure is mine. Just remember: no matter what, she's still your friend.”

“I will. And again, thank you.” Twilight earnestly said, then turned back to the painting. She took a deep breath to steady herself. She gripped the frame with her magic, and pulled the hidden door, revealing a long, dark passage beyond.

That wasn’t what made Twilight gasp however: it was the pony inside.

But she wasn't Pinkie.

Twilight came face to face with a black unicorn filly with a midnight purple mane and tail, and wearing glasses and a vest of little violet. Her hair was combed back and held in place by a turquoise headband that matched the color of her eyes, which were filled to the brim with tears of fear.

Their eyes met, and overwhelming relief washed over the filly’s face.

“Mommy!” she cried, then tracked Twilight with a desperate, frightened hug.

From somewhere else in the mansion, Twilight heard Princess Pinkie scream: “OH COME ON! REALLY?!” There was a pause. “You and me both, Present!”

“What were you doing in there?” Mare Do Well curiously asked the little filly. She didn't answer.

“What were you doing in there?” Twilight asked, curious herself.

Also, who are you, how did you get here, and why are you the first pony we've seen in over two hours that isn't some weird copy of Pinkie? Reason asked.

The filly sniffed, then clung a little tighter to Twilight's foreleg. When she spoke, her quivering voice reminded Twilight of a glass harp.

“Auntie Pinkie and I were playing hide and seek. When it was my turn to hide, I found this place behind that painting. But when I was hiding, one of the other Pinkies came in and ran deeper into the tunnel. I tried following her, but… “ she shivered and constricted Twilight's leg until she was restricting the circulation through the appendage, “I saw… things. Terrible, horrible, awful things! I tried to get out, but the door was locked!”

The little filly buried her face into Twilight's chest and began to cry. “I w-was trapped in there for so long!”

Twilight looked to Mare Do Well, hoping for some kind of assistance. She just looked back with an expression that said, ‘sorry, this one’s all yours.’

Twilight looked back down at the filly, finding her already looking back up at her.

“Did I do something wrong, mommy?”

Twilight was a little startled by the question. “What? No, of course not,” she answered, putting a hoof around the filly's back in an attempt to comfort her.

Twilight thought back to what another Pinkie she’d met had said to her. “You gave your Aunt Pinkie your kazoo, right?”

The filly nodded.

“Alright, don’t worry, you're safe now.” The gears in her mind began to turn again. “So… Nyx, that Pinkie you saw run into the tunnel; were her mane and tail flat, did she look really distressed, and did she have a pair of blue saddlebags?”

Nyx looked up at Twilight, then nodded again.

Twilight gasped and looked at Mare Do Well. “I think that's her!” She pulled away from the embrace to look Nyx in the eyes. “Okay, your Aunt Pinkie is still in the mansion, and she’s looking for you because she thinks you're still just playing hide and seek.” She motioned her head in Mare Do Well’s direction. “My friend here can help you find her. But it's very important that I find the Pinkie that ran in there, so I need you to go with her. Understand?”

Nyx looked confused. “But, why do I have to go with her? Why can’t you stay here with me?”

“She helped me find you, so you can trust her. And now that you’re safe, I need to go get that other Pinkie out safely, too.” Twilight answered.

Nyx took the answer, but her expression indicated she wasn’t entirely convinced. “Okay… but, before you go, may I ask you something? In private?”

Twilight really didn't want to, but she couldn't bring herself to tell the dear little filly no. “Alright, but it has to be quick.” she said, then walked around the corner with Nyx. “What did you want to ask?”

Nyx took a small gulp before responding. “What was the first meal you ever gave me?”

Twilight blinked in surprise, caught off guard by the question.

Nyx hung her head in disappointment. “You're not really my mom, are you?”

Twilight’s ears fell a little. “No, I'm not.”

Nyx looked back up at Twilight, eyes shimmering. “Then why did you lie to me?”

Twilight almost rolled her eyes. “I didn’t lie about who I was; you just assumed that I was somepony I wasn't.”

The filly looked away. Twilight felt like smacking herself at the sight of Nyx’s crestfallen face. She sighed, then lowered her head back down to Nyx’s level.

“I'm sorry. You caught me off guard is all, and at the moment you looked like you needed somepony to comfort you more than anything else.”

Nyx looked back up, her eyes a little softer, then looked back at the painting.

“That Pinkie in there… she's yours, isn't she?” Nyx softly asked.

Twilight nodded. “Yes, she is.”

“So why would she lock me in that scary place?”

“I don't think she meant to. I think you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and her goal was to lock herself in there.”

Nyx’s eyes shot open. “W-why would she do that?

“Because my Pinkie has been suffering from horrible nightmares recently, and I think what's causing them is something she's so desperate to keep hidden that she'd rather hide with all the things that are causing her so much pain than let anypony know what it is. All I want is to help her. I just want her to be happy again.”

Nyx tilted her head down, her face thoughtful. “Then you might need this,” she said, then lit her horn with an aqua green aura and reached into her vest.

Twilight saw something underneath the velvet shift, then Nyx withdrew an item and floated it over to Twilight.

“Your Pinkie dropped it on her way inside, “ explained Nyx. “I don't know what it's for, but you might be able to find some use for it.”

Twilight took the item, turning it over as she inspected it. The object was a metal cylinder with the sheen of dull chrome that was about as long as her hoof and as thin as a pencil, tapering off to end in a sharp point. On the opposite end was a thick, six-toothed gear cut with diagonal grooves like a screw. A narrow opening along the body revealed the coils of a dark, ridged tube, like muscle under a steel exoskeleton. It looked unsettling as it was, but in the warm, colorful, and vibrant mansion, the metal quill looked all the more sinister and alien.

Twilight frowned at the item, but deposited it into her saddlebag anyway, just in case it proved useful later.

“Thanks,” Twilight said to Nyx. “Is there anything you can tell me about what you saw inside?”

Nyx shriveled at the question. She looked away and began to path at the floor with a hoof. She gulped before replying back in a quiet voice.

“Cold, metal corridors and halls filled with weird and scary things. There was this stuff everywhere that made me feel really uncomfortable. And there were monsters… they were shaped like ponies, but they weren't… bodies of skin and steel.” Nyx shuddered in fear. “I'm sorry, I don't want to talk about it…”

“It's okay, you're safe now,” Twilight reassured Nyx, pulling the little filly back into a hug. “I'm sorry for asking.”

Nyx sunk into the embrace, but didn't return it in earnest like she had before. “That's alright. I know you just want to help your friend.”

“Yeah, I do. Speaking of which, she still needs me, so unfortunately I have to cut this short.” Twilight said, standing to walk back to the portal to elsewhere, Nyx following close behind. When they rounded the corner, Mare Do Well was already staring their way.

“Done bonding?” she asked.

“We weren't…” Twilight automatically started, only for her response to fall off. She looked down at Nyx, who was already curiously staring up at her.

Mare Do Well started to chuckle. Twilight just rolled her eyes.

“Though I hate to ask more of you after everything you've done to help, could you help Nyx find her Pinkie?” Twilight asked Mare Do Well, then looked down at Nyx. “Oh, and when you find her, beware the coming noogies.”

Nyx’s eyes went wide. “I-I didn't make her upset, did I?”

Twilight smiled a little. “Nah, but you know how she gets.”

Nyx responded with a nervous smile of her own. Twilight couldn't help but grin at the adorable little filly.

“And since I'm not your mother, I suppose I can't tell you to not help yourself at any of the dessert buffets.” Twilight added with a wink.

There was another shift under Nyx’s vest at the sides of her barrel as her face lit up with a beaming smile that Twilight couldn't help but giggle at. She then looked back up, her determination clear.

“I'm ready.”

Mare Do Well nodded, stepping aside so Twilight could host herself into the passage. She started down into the imperceptible space, and the significance of the moment hit her like vertigo. This was it: the hour that she would finally discover and vanquish the subconscious anomaly that had been causing her friend such heartache and suffering.

“Any last words to mask the occasion?” Mare Do Well asked.

Twilight thought for a moment, then realised there was something important she needed to ask.

“Um, if the door locks behind me and later on you hear knocking from the other side of the painting, it's probably going to be Pinkie and me, and we're stuck inside. So if that happens, could you let us out?”

Mare Do Well laughed, and once again, even through the altered tone, Twilight could hear the humored voice of the Pinkie behind the mask coming through.

“I guess there are some things that remain constant,” Mate Do Well chuckled.

“Stay safe! I hope you find the Pinkie you're looking for!” Nyx bid as the portal began to close.

“See you both on the other side,” added Mare Do Well.

There was a slam as the door met the threshold, and Twilight was more or less alone again. She stayed there for a moment, watching the still features of the unmoving door as she processed everything that had just occurred.

“Was it just me, or did those two seem oddly cognizant for projections?” Twilight asked.

I didn't think they seemed more self-aware than any of the other projections we've come across, Reason replied. The difference with those two was just that they didn't act like they already knew us. Though considering what that Mare Do Well was talking about, there could be some credibility to the thought that Pinkie wants to stay hidden as much as she wants to be found, and that projection was that concept given form. That might explain why she knew the correct response, but didn't say it.

“In which case, then it's about time we find her,” Twilight said as she turned around, facing the long haul that stretched into the crushing, oppressive darkness, like a passage to the lair of loneliness.

Twilight's legs locked up. She felt an ethereal wind stir the still air, sending a chill across her coat like prey under the breath or a predator. Paranoia ignited her amygdala, instilling the uneasy sense that she really, really did belong here.

She felt Reason’s hoof on her shoulder again.

Want me to take point? Reason offered.

Twilight shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts of trepidation and feeling very much like a fool that she was still having such reactions.

“No thanks, I'll be fine,” Twilight replied. She lit her horn, creating her own little girls of light that made the shadows look even more known in its presence.

It wasn’t the first time she had seen an overwhelming darkness surrounding a small source of light with the intent of crushing it.

Twilight grimaced, trying to crush the detrimental thoughts out of her head, choosing instead to focus on the soft echoes of her hoofsteps reverberating down the hall. However, her ceaseless thoughts would not be so easily stifled.

“So if that Mare Do Well was Pinkie's subconscious representation of her indecision to either conceal or confess her secrets, what do you think that filly was supposed to be?” Twilight asked.

Nyx? I have no idea. At this point, the only thing we should be focusing on is finding Pinkie, identifying the anomaly, and completing any… secondary objectives before the girls wake us back up again.

Twilight nodded, trying to ignore the thoughts about the dossier in her saddlebag. “Right. Now that just leaves the question as to where and how we’re going to find them… also, what that little piece of metal is supposed to be used for, as well as if and or why it's important.”

That is a good question. And perhaps most pursuing, why would Pinkie's subconscious dream up something like it?

“I don't know. I guess we'll just have to ask Pinkie when we find—-”

Twilight's left foreleg came down, but made no contact with the ground. She stumbled, and on reflex her other leg jutted forward to regain her lost balance. It met only air too, and Twilight fell face-first, screaming into a void...

Chapter Twelve, Part 2 - Downfall

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Rainbow, Applejack, Rarity and Fluttershy were all huddled up in the darken bunker, their alert eyes darting across the six surfaces of their desperate refuge as though at any moment the head of the projection of a certain draconequus might burst in from one of them like a ravenous quarry eel.

The thing-pony kept its gaze on Twilight. Or on the wall behind Twilight. Or nowhere in particular. It was hard to tell with eyes that resembled clouds in a crystal ball.

Rainbow looked to and fro, her wings frequently twitching. She reached up with a hoof and wiped the sweat from her forehead. She could feel her temperature rising with her ire to leave multiple bruises in the shape of her hooves on Discord’s face.

Applejack reminded her Stetson to fan herself with it. “Whew, is it just me, or did it start gettin’ hot in here?”

Fluttershy shifted uncomfortably as she pawed at the ground with a hoof. Her eyes went wide in alarm. “The floor is getting hot!”

Rainbow took to the air. “He's found us!”

The mares still on their hooves looked around in fear. Suddenly the floor began to tilt, and next they knew, they were sliding towards the wall where the thing-pony stood as gravity shifted. The unconscious Twilight and Pinkie slid helplessly towards the corner. Applejack leapt forward and caught Pinkie as the thing-pony caught Twilight. It looked Applejack in the eyes, then made a quick nod towards the sleeping mares before looking back up at her and making a gesture with its forehooves, rapidly circling one around the other.

Applejack just looked confused. “What?” Then her eyes lit up in realization. “Oh, got it!” She affirmed, then withdrew her rope and tied Twilight and Pinkie together around the barrels with it, binding the end in a sturdy knot just as the bunker began another rotation, sending the occupants sliding from what was once one of the walls to what used to be the ceiling.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” Rainbow exclaimed, her coat visibility matted with sweat from the sweltering heat.

She positioned herself to do an aerial dive through their only means of escape, but right before she could move the thing-pony had gotten in her way, blocking the door with its body and a raised hoof. It shook its head, then began another set of charades as it made a motion with its forehooves punching down, then drew its hooves back up with a series of diminishing wiggles. It held one hoof up, then held up both like it was holding up a box in front of its face. It held its hooves in that position, then flipped them to a right angle, then punched through the air horizontality.

Rainbow groaned in frustration. “Ugh, this would be so much easier if you just talked!”

“I-I think he's trying to say we need to wait for one more flip before we try to escape!” Fluttershy suggested as she tried to pick Rarity up into the air with her to keep their hooves of the searing floor.

The thing-pony jerked its head over to Fluttershy, making the timid pegasus shy away. It pointed a hoof and nodded vigorously, then looked back at Rainbow.

“Of course Twilight's projection starts calling the shots!” Rainbow said with a slight roll of her eyes.

Rainbow flew as close as she could to the wall opposite the entrance without touching it. Rarity was using what lift she was getting from Fluttershy to dig into the side wall, trying to find purchase off of the burning ground. Applejack and the thing-pony had taken hold of opposite ends of the rope around Twilight and Pinkie, waiting for the moment to escape.

The confines of their pocket dimension levelled out, and the exit was not right in front of them.

“GO!” Rainbow yelled, then rocketed towards the door.

Her forehooves pulverized the exit door, turning it to splinters. She flinched, feeling dozens of tiny daggers poking at the skin. A wave of scorching heat slammed into her, voraciously consuming the moisture in the air around her; it chewed at the tears that had formed in the corners of her eyes and licked her body with burning tongues.

Rainbow hit the ground and skidded to a halt upon the streets of fever-dream Ponyville. Five ‘thumps’ as the mares hit the ground like that many sacks of apples came from behind her. She looked back, and saw their former safe house skewered by spears and rotating slowly over a raging bonfire.

A tuft at the end of one of the thing-pony's spindly ears has caught a small fire. Fluttershy looked at it in alarm, but the thing-pony just nonchalantly let go of its end of the rope and reached up to snuff the flame with a hoof.

A disappointed groaned came from in front of them. “Aw, so we're not going to have a cookout? But I was going to have Princeton make us s’mores!”

Rainbow wiped around and snarled. “You're going to have to try a lot harder than that to kill us!”

Discord broke into an uncharacteristically shrill laugh that sent chills down the girls’ spines. “Kill you?! I don't want to kill you! What would I do without you? Go back to ripping off outside source material again? No, no… you complete me.”

Rarity scoffed. “Oh, that sure is a mawkish platitude!”

Discord chuckled, his voice returning to its normal baritone pitch. “Not at all, my dear. Order and chaos are just opposite sides of the bit; you can't have one without the other. So you can't kill me, because I'm already inside Pinkie. And I won't kill you, because you girls are just too much fun.”

Discord stretched, limbering up his serpentine form. “However, I can't have Twily here spoil all the fun,” he said with a growing devil's smirk, then reached behind his back and withdrew an entire above-ground swimming pool currently occupied by a wallaby wearing a set of floaties. “Besides, I’d so loathe for her to miss out on the fun.” Then he flung the pool at them.

Rainbow grabbed Twilight and Pinkie and launched into the air. Applejack and the thing-pony dodged in opposite directions to avoid the miniature wave, while Fluttershy flew up with Rarity, catching the wallaby with her face on the way up.

Rainbow looked down as the wave passed beneath them, dissipating across the street and becoming nothing more than an exceptionally large puddle. She looked back at Discord and laughed in derision.

“Is that the best you've got?!”

Discord smirked in return. “Oh Dashie, I haven't even gotten started.”

Discord snapped his fingers, and the whole world began to shake. First small quivers, then as trembles, then heaving rumbles. Each mare still on the ground fell from the tumultuous vibrations, and even the thing-pony was forced into its ready stance as buildings began to weaken and collapse.

A regolith plume erupted from the earth, casting aside homes and businesses in contemptuous disregard as a jagged spire of rock arose from the ground like a dagger emerging from an exit wound. As it pierced the red sky, storm clouds began to form and swirl around it's peak. Bursts of lightning arced between them, sparking explosions of thunder and making the dark clouds weep with torrential downpours. Deluges of water began to cascade down the bluffs in the grooves that scared its stony hide.

Near the crest of the nascent mountain, a roaring waterfall gushed from the opening of a dark cave like geysers from the mouth of a sea serpent. From the threshold of shadows appeared a hollowed-out log of a thick tree trunk. Inside sat two blank ponies like those in attendance at Pinkie's trial. They passed over the lip of the towering cataract, then plummeted at terminal velocity down the waterfall towards the pools that had formed at the base of the mountain, where they disappeared behind a curtain of thorny bramble and mist.

Applejack glared up at Rainbow Dash. “Ya just had to open your big mouth…”

Discord snapped his fingers again, and the six of them disappeared, reappearing inside a spacious cavern, split up in groups of two—Rainbow and Rarity, Applejack and Fluttershy, and Twilight with Pinkie—then bound by thick ropes in different logs that were all floating in a line down a narrow waterway. Ubiquitous music that sounded way more cheerful than it had any right to be played throughout the dimly lit cave.

There was a crackle of static, and Discord’s tinny voice came out over a set of blown-out loudspeakers.

“Please keep your hooves, legs, and wings inside the car at all times. Please remain seated and do not stand up until the ride has come to a complete stop… not that you have much of a choice. But hey, if you want to get decapitated, that's on you.”

Their water-bound logs lurched as they hit an inclined conveyor belt, dragging them up a hill with a cacophony of click-clacks that forced their ears back.

Rainbow turned around as best she could. “See if you can use your magic to untie these knots!”

“I'll do my best, darling,” she said, then activated her magic.

Applejack looked back at Fluttershy. “Hey, sugarcube, think you could use those laser eyes of yours to cut through these here ropes?*

“Yeah…” her face paled. “But I don't want to cut through you too!”

“Then try cutting it from the sides, and brace yourself against something if ya have to. Just don't dally, girl, we gotta get outta this quick!”

Their logs reached the crest of the lift hill and slid down an incline back into the steam, causing a modest splash. Rainbow went stiff looking at the car in front of them as Twilight and Pinkie were flecked with a few droplets of water.

Rainbow turned around again. “Hurry up! We have to get Twilight and Pinkie away from all this water!”

Rarity made a whine in frustration. “Applejack, do you have any advice on untying complex knots?”

“Is it one of those knots where the rabbit comes out of the hole, goes around the tree, then runs back down the hole?” Applejack asked.

Rarity squinted at the knot. “Ah… it looks as though the confounded hare got intoxicated and then invited an entire fraternity over to meander around the tree and the burrow as they pleased!”

Fluttershy looked up. “Bunny!”

“They're talking about ropes, Fluttershy!” Rainbow shouted.

“No, I mean there's an actual bunny-rabbit ahead!”

All four of them looked towards a fallen tree just to the right of the steam, where a grey and tan rabbit with the tell-tale uneven red and yellow eyes and snaggletooth of Discord hopped into view. He gave them that manic smile of his, then addressed them.

In song.

“Hello, everypony.

The day is nice and sunny.

Oh look, I'm a bunny.

Hey, want to hear something funny?

Then come along, it won’t take long.

Wave bye to your sanity before it's gone.”

The Discord-rabbit bounded off into the dark. Rainbow whipped back around to Rarity and began to frantically struggle against her binds.

“Let me off of this stupid foal’s ride!”

“I'm trying, I'm trying! I haven't seen a knot this terrible since that time Sweetie Bell tried to give herself dreadlocks!”

They rounded a bend in the waterway, where a Discord-turtle sat on the edge of a dock with a fishing pole in its claws. He looked at them, then tipped up his fisher’s hat to get a better sight of them.

“Well, what do we have here?

Six little ponies, passing past the pier.

Downstream it gets a little queer.

But considering your company

Includes a certain pink pony,

That should’ve been abundantly clear.”

They passed under a curtain of willow branches and into a thicket of moss-coated cottonwood trees, where a populace of Discord geese and frogs were singing the refrain of the verse.

“Downstream it gets a little queer!

Your company should have made that clear!”

Rarity’s ears folded back. “I find this exceptionally aggravating.”

“I don't know, I think it's kind of nice,” Fluttershy muttered. “I mean aside from the whole Discord thing…”

Rainbow, however...

“RARITY GET ME OUT GET ME OUT GET ME OUT GET ME OUT!”

“Quit your cryin’, ya big baby! Losing it ain't gonna get us out of this any faster!” Applejack hollered.

“Yeah, and what happens if Discord shows up as a troupe of singing sea ponies? What then, Applejack?!” Rainbow countered.

A Discord-alligator emerged from the water next to the log with Rainbow and Rarity and looked up at the pegasus.

“Thanks for that idea!” he said, then submerged back into the shadowy swamp.

Applejack’s face twisted in horror. She gulped, then turned to Fluttershy.

“Hey, uh, sugarcube, could ya get back to cutting me outta these ropes?” Her face became more anxious. “Like, NOW?!”

Fluttershy eeped in alarm and swept back down to Applejack's binds, gritting her teeth in nervous concentration.

“Almost… got it!” She exclaimed as she cut through the last wrap.

Applejack stood, shaking off the shreds of her bonds. The intercoms crackled again, and Discord's voice came through in a nasal blare.

“DO NOT STAND UP ON THE RIDE.”

“Buck off!” Applejack yelled in response, then turned to address Fluttershy with a tip of her hat. “Thanks, girl. Need me to help you out?”

Fluttershy shook her head. “No thanks, I can cut myself out. Rainbow needs your help more than I do!”

Applejack nodded, then clambered up to the front of their log. She tensed up, then did a short running jump over to the timber transport with Rarity and Rainbow. The log was just out of reach, and she slammed into the back end. Her rear hooves pawed at the log, trying to find enough purchase to hurdle herself over.

The Discord-alligator erupted from the murky waters, snapping its tooth-riddled jaws at her. She bucked it right in the snout and used the leverage from the contact to push herself up and over into the log with her friends, flopping ungracefully onto Rarity’s back. The unicorn flinched away as Applejack peered over her shoulder.

“Ah, I get what the problem is. See, that there is one of them knots where… well, let's just say a knot like that explains why there are so many rabbits running around.”

“So how do we untie it?” Rarity asked.

Applejack rubbed the back of her head. “Yeah, about that… sorry in advance.”

Rarity leaned back a little. “Sorry for what?”

Applejack grabbed Rarity’s head, thrust it horn-first into the Gordian tangle, and yanked up hard, tearing the knot in half in spite of Rarity’s cries.

“Oh thank Celestia!” Rainbow exclaimed as she burst from her twine prison and promptly shoved both of her forelegs hoof-deep into her ears.

Rarity snapped towards Applejack. “Was that really necessary?!”

“Was if we want to get out of this as quickly as possible.” she replied.

Rarity scrunched up her face. “You could have at least warned me!”

“That up-front ‘sorry’ was your warning.”

Fluttershy cut herself loose and flew over to join the others, and began to cut away at the ropes holding Rarity. The dense swamp suddenly cleared away, and the four found themselves cutting through a grey, barren field littered with rocks that stretched for acres in any given direction. The only other feature to disrupt the vast, gravel-choked expanse was a rustic, run-down farmhouse. The dreary collage of bleak greys, muddled browns, and dull sky was contrast by a bright pink ragdoll filly with blue button eyes and flat nylon streamers for her mane and tail that was glumly pushing one pile of rocks over to another pile of rocks. She nudged a stone over to the heap, then the filly Pinkie puppet pouted with unfulfillment.

“Golly-gee, this farm sure is a bore

Pushin’ ‘round rocks and perfunctory chores

What I wouldn't give to instead be partying

To be with everypony, playing and smiling…”

The front door to the house in the background banged open for a tan earth pony stallion puppet with grey sideburns and wearing a cockel hat.

“I said no singing!” He yelled, then slammed the door shut behind him.

The Pinkie puppet sighed. “Gee, this place is a bore.”

She turned to look at her flanks, revealing her patchwork cutie mark.

“Rocks aren't my special talent

This farm sure isn't me

Would it be better if I left?

Boy, that would just be crazy.”

The Pinkie puppet’s face went stiff, shot up into the air where she hovered for a second with her legs locked straight, and her mane and tail puffed out into a tangled mess.

“Them that's exactly what I'll do!

Follow me down-fall and I'll party with you!

Rainbow’s ears had folded back like horns, and her eyes were sharpened to scimitar blades.

“Now he's just taunting us,” she growled through gritted teeth. “Next time we find Discord, I'm going to pound him until there's nothing left to regenerate!”

Fluttershy scratched the side of her head with a hoof. “‘Down-fall?’ Doesn't she mean ‘down-steam?’”

Their ears perked up at the sounds of rushing water. They looked ahead, where the stream wove back into the thick underbrush just in time to see the back end of Twilight and Pinkie's log tip forward and quickly vanished from sight.

Rainbow screamed and bolted after them into the shadows of the canopy and down the waterfall. She landed in front of Twilight and Pinkie, then turned and spread her wings out as a shield. They barrelled through the whitewash at the bottom of the drop, splashing cold water across Rainbow's back. She grit her teeth at the contact, but Twilight and Pinkie remained relatively dry, Dreamscape undisrupted and their slumber undisturbed.

Applejack, Rarity and Fluttershy followed the second after, the plume of water spraying their coats at the end of the chute. Applejack wiped the clinging droplets from her face, then pulled her rope from her saddlebag, and lassoed a knob on the back of the timber in front, then pulled the two together. She slipped her lasso back into her saddlebags, then crossed over to Pinkie and Twilight. She looked down at their binds, and her eyes went wide.

“Uh-oh…”

Fluttershy cut through the ropes holding Rarity, who then threw off the shreds and rubbed her sore rope burns.

“Thank you, dear,” she said, then clambered over to the tree-boat with the others, Fluttershy joining them with a short flight. They both got a look at the material restraining their friends, and froze.

Twilight and Pinkie weren’t tied with ropes, but thick, wrought-iron chains that likely weighed more than than the ponies tied up in them did, and were bolted straight through the wooden floor.

Rarity looked straight at Applejack. “You are not sticking my horn into that.”

Applejack held her hooves up in defense. “Not on a first date, I'm not…” She looked at Fluttershy. “Can you cut through it?”

Fluttershy looked closer at the chains. “I don't know… I'll try, but it's going to take a while. These chains are a lot thicker than the ropes.”

“Then we’ll buy you the time!” Rainbow said as she took to the air. “Heads up, we've got more of Discord's tricks incoming!”

Their wooded surroundings now bore a resemblance to the Everfree forest, with its gnarled trees, thick underbrush, and strangely open pathways that seemed all too inviting for a leisurely stroll, one of which they currently drifted down. There was a bend in the river followed by a rustling of leaves, and the Discord-rabbit appeared around the curve.

“So she left home, looking for adventure

Set out to stake another tenure.

Abandoned her life of petriculture

Trying to find her effervescent cure

But she’ll still go crazy, that's for—-”

“DIE YOU STUPID DEVIL RABBIT!” Rainbow screamed as she rocketed towards the Discord-bunny.

Her hooves connected with the projection’s face, but it dispelled like mist. Rainbow swept right through the particle haze and crashed into a hollow log behind it, leaving nothing except her rear sticking out as her hind legs flailed.

There was another static pop over the intercom. “DO NOT LEAVE YOUR VEHICLE.”

The hare Discord rematerialized next to Rainbow. “She'll still go crazy, that's for sure.”

He snapped his pawed fingers, and a crude chalk drawing of a smiley-face and a set of antlers appeared on her rear. Discord condescendingly patted her pony butt, then teleported away with another click of the digits.

Applejack withdrew her lasso and roped Rainbow around her waist, taking advantage of the current to help pull her from the wooden trap. Rainbow shook her head to clear her mane of twigs and splinters, then with considerable irritation swept away her posterior ornaments.

“Don't go shooting from the hip and flying off by yourself like that!” Applejack ordered. “We're gonna have to work together to keep Twi and Pinkie safe!”

“But he was right there and—-”

“Separating us is how he nearly won the last time.”.

Rainbow looked into Applejack’s eyes, and saw only sincerity. She nodded.

“Right. Got it.”

They arrived at another opening in the trees, revealing the scene of Ponyville town square, where the Pinkie puppet hopped into view. She surveyed her surroundings, then turned to them with a delighted smile.

“Wow, this sure looks like the place!

There’s a sunny smile on everypony’s face,

And not a single rock to see in this space!

I thank Celestia for all her grace

That I should find this town of bliss

So I think it's here I'll make my hospice!”

The sight of the town was once again obscured by trees, plunging them into shadow. There was little they could see, but they did hear the unmistakable sound of roaring water.

“Aw, crap!” Rainbow yelled.

The log tipped over the crest of the next drop, and the six careened down the fall. Fluttershy and Rarity started screaming and clung tightly to Twilight and Pinkie respectively.

“Keep Pinkie and Twi from getting’ wet!” Applejack shouted over the howling wind and hungry waves as she pulled her hat from her head, held it over Twilight's face, and pushed her down to cover her from the coming collision.

They barrelled into the torrents at the foot of the chute. In spite of Rainbow once more body-blocking Twilight and Pinkie from the waves, water gushed over and into their dingy boat, soaking Rainbow and splashing AJ, Rarity, and Fluttershy. Several flecks sprayed Twilight and Pinkie, making their auras sputter.

All four of them gasped. Dreamscape flickered, then stabilised.

Fluttershy looked up. “What do we do if we're still on the ride when we get to that big drop at the end?”

They all looked at each other. Their worried expressions were the only answer needed.

Rainbow's face hardened. “We're not gonna be here when that happens!”

“Yeah, but we still gotta deal with what Discord throws at us ‘til we can get off this ride,” said Applejack.

Rarity's eyes lit up. “I-dea!” she chimed. “Could you spare me a moment? I think I have a solution against these aquatic assaults!”

Rainbow looked ahead. “Make it quick, ‘cause there's more on the way!”

The choking bramble opened up into another scene of Ponyville, decorated with Pinkie’s trademark flare of streamers, banners, and balloons on any surface that she could squeeze them onto and enough confectioneries to feed the entire village. The Pinkie puppet, now a grown mare, popped back up with a broad smile that didn't reach her lifeless button eyes.

“Boy does my life have a new lease!

Kick it back or kick it up,

I can be as merry as I please!

My party quota always need sating

No, I’m sure not compensating

Now come join the festivities!”

Rainbow was glaring at the animate mockery, but Applejack was looking ahead. Her eyes went wide, and she turned to her company.

“We've got incoming!” she called out.

Just in front of them was a wide turn that encircled a kiosk of coin machines, where a young Discord with an eager smile on his puerile face was pulling another Discord dressed (poorly) in drag by the hand to the booth.

“Look mommy, ponies! Can I have some bits to water bomb them? Please?” The young Discord pleaded.

Dragcord smiled at the little tyke. “Of course, sweetie,” he/she/it answered, and made a stuffed sack of bits appear with a snap of the fingers. “Knock ‘em dead.”

The little Discord's face lit up like a colt on Hearth's Warming Day. “Thank you!” he trilled, then split into three separate mini Discords that tore the moneybag apart like a pack of jackals. They began stuffing coins into the machines, then mashed the buttons on them with gleeful fury.

“Eat dihydrogen monoxide, dwarf equines!” one of the child Discords cackled as churning jets of water erupted from vertical pipes surrounding them stream the mares drifted on.

“Heads up!” Rainbow yelled, then bolted into the air. She darted between the clusters of airborne water, bucking it into mist, then darted to another in the blink of an eye like a pinball in a bumper pocket.

Even with Rainbow's mind-boggling speed, the sheer volume of water proved to be too much for her, and several buckets worth began to fall towards the sleeping mares.

“Fluttershy!” Rainbow called out.

Fluttershy looked up and squeaked in fear at the coming downpour. Her laser-eye beam swept through the air in a broad, panicked sweep, vaporizing whatever Rainbow hasn't dispersed.

Another volley of aquatic mortars launched into the air. Dash shot back and forth between the globes and bucking them into vapor while Fluttershy atomized whatever Rainbow wasn't hitting. Fluttershy’s countermeasures were far less coordinated, and in her clutched deportation accidentally seared off the tips of the feathers on Rainbow's left wing.

“YEOOOW!” Dash cried out in pain. “Watch it!”

Fluttershy’s eye beam cut out and her hooves flew to her mouth in a startled gasp. “Sorry! Sorry! I'm sorry! Sorry!”

The moment of distraction allowed a fat gob of water to sail past Rainbow on a collision course for Twilight's face. Applejack held up her hat in front of her sleeping friend just as the water got within inches for the unconscious unicorn. Twilight was shielded from the blast, leaving Applejack to take the brunt of the blow.

“Could use that solution of your’s any time now, Rares!”

“I'm trying!” Rarity protested in her defense. “Just give me a moment longer! Trying to work with these chaotic matrices is like trying to sew a flag while it's still flapping in the wind!”

The three little Discords scowled at the unwoken mares, then snapped their fingers in unison. The coin machines morphed together into one control panel with a single big red button on its console, labeled as ‘THE BUTTON.’ They held their right hands together in the air, and slammed down on the ominous device. A sinkhole opened up right underneath the mares’ vessel, and the five of them fell screaming into the darkness.

“Moments up Rare!” Applejack yelled over the rushing winds. “Whatever you've got, we need it now!”

“Almost… got it!” Rarity proclaimed. The dream warped in an aura around Twilight and Pinkie.

They landed roughly on the water below. The splash from the impact punched up great rippling waves and a thick surf, causing water to spill into their boat and thoroughly drench them.

There was a hard clock of hooves striking wood as Rainbow landed on the log.

“Are they safe?! Are the girls still asleep?!”

Rarity lit her horn and cast an illumination spell. Twilight and Pinkie were now bedecked in heavy, stylistic raincoats that completely covered them from head to hoof. Applejack lifted the large hood on Twilight's head, and the gentle glow of a still functioning Dreamscape greeted them all.

Rarity raised a hoof in the air in triumph. “Aha! Fashion saves the day again!”

Rainbow and Applejack stared at her with deadpan expressions. They looked at each other, then looked back at Rarity, their unamused faces becoming more stern.

Rarity looked back and forth at the two in confusion. “What?”

Applejack glanced back down at the raincoats her two friends were wearing, then looked back up. “Were the stitched embroideries and sequins really necessary?”

Rarity huffed a little. “They were the best I could do on such short notice! I didn't even have enough time for the color gradients!”

There was a thock of Rainbow's forehooves smacking against her skull as she groaned.

“I think they're nice,” Fluttershy spoke up, “and they kept Twilight and Pinkie in their dream, so I say you did a good job, Rarity.”

“Thank you, dear.” Rarity gave a hard look at Rainbow and Applejack. “At least somepony appreciates the art.” She scanned the black setting around them, the darkness abating no more than a few feet from their little lit haven. “So just where are we now? Aside from still being in the heart of the cliffs of insanity, I mean…”

A succession of snaps as circuits activating echoed throughout the empty space, bringing light to a Ponyville that stood as a dilapidated ghost town, alive with the echoes of failures fled. The colorful populace had been replaced by the shining faces blank ponies with hollow eyes in which one would see more movement in decomposition, padaring the torn streets under the jarring colors of party decorations, while the ubiquitous music took on a dissonant tone.

Rarity glared at the festive, decaying village. “Oh, so we've gone from the belly of madness to its bowels. How peachy.”

“Even considering I'm an apple mare, I'd say that's an insult to peaches,” added Applejack.

The Pinkie puppet appeared amongst the ghostly faces parading the streets. Her smile was much more tight, putting a visible strain on the fabric that made her face.

“Though it may seem preachy,

Life definitely sure is peachy!

I've made friends with everypony,

So I'll never ever be lonely!

Now only laughter ensues

No, I don't have any iSSUES!”

The current began to move more swiftly, and a sharp bend took them past a cutaway of the Golden Oaks Library, where the Pinkie puppet pounced upon an unsuspecting Twilight animatronic.

“How do you do, Twily?”

“That moniker is reserved for Shiny.”

“Hey! Want to come to my party?”

“And postpone my studies in academia?

It's uncopasetic to try and fathom dementia.”

“I'll take that as a ‘maybe!’”

The Pinkie puppet gave Twimatronic a farewell pat on the head before jumping across the turn in the stream over to Carousel Boutique, where she skidded up into the face of a Rarity marionette.

“Come to my party and satisfy your sweet tooth!”

“A sophomoric shindig? How uncouth!”

“Oh, won't you pretty please?”

“Darling, if you wish me to take your tease,

Shouldn't you suite a soiree for a lady?”

“Will do! Whatever makes you happy!”

The Pinkie puppet bounced on her tail and broke up through the roof of the shop.

Applejack looked around them in worry. “Is it just me, or is the stream moving uphill?”

Sure enough, the canal began to twist and turn more, moving very assuredly against gravity. The Pinkie puppet came back into view, bouncing back and forth between the ground and a cloud where an oversized action figure Rainbow Dash lounged.

“Come to my party and we’ll play a little game!”

“Pin the tail on the pony? Pfft! Lame!”

“Aw, but I thought you like fun, Dashie!”

“If that's where you want me to be,

You have to make it as awesome as me!”

“It'll be the most awesome thing you ever did see!”

Pinkie puppet hopped down from the cloud and landed in the fields of Sweet Apple Acres, where she landed on top of a scarecrow Applejack.

“Come to my party! Bring everypony you know!”

“Ah’ve gots seeds ta plant an apples ta grow!”

“Are you just looking for a way out?”

“Ah ain’t got no idea whach’yer talkin’ about!”

“You know where to go should you so cull!”

“Family an’ apples! Apple Family family apples!”

The Pinkie puppet skirred through the artificial forest of apple trees, arriving at the outskirts of town by the cottage of a doll Fluttershy.

“Fluttershy, you gotta come to my party!”

“Oh Pinkie, I don't know…”

“We’re friends! You have to come!

You need to MAKE ME HAPPY!”

“I SAID NO!”

“Okie doki loki!”

The Pinkie puppet hopped off in the usual cheerful manner of the real mare, back into the Everfree Forest, now ascending up a hill. The canal followed her into the intimidating thicket, now moving well against gravity at a steeper incline. The waters were flowing with a much fiercer current, accelerating at a constant rate. After a few moments, they caught back up with the Pinkie puppet. She turned to face them, and her deranged smile became as manic as the twelve-note song of insanity.

“Oh my gosh, you all came!

I'm glad you did, cause this isn't the same

As just any old Pinkie party

This one is sure going to be

Assuredly and completely

TOTALLY FREAKING CRAZY!”

Just then, every tree in the forest caught fire. The girls screamed in alarm as their species-intrinsic pyrophobia lit up. Their cries were quickly drowned out by the screeches of the alien pterosaurs flying up through the canopy to escape the blaze.

Downstream, Rainbow saw two long walls composed entirely of mirrors facing each other parallel to the river, separated by clusters of more trees. She turned to her friends in alarm.

“Don't freak out! Whatever you do, don't lose your cool!”

“At what?” Rarity asked with fear in her voice.

Rainbow looked back ahead. “The mirrors! What they're going to make you see is just an illusion!”

The mares rushed into the lane of mirrors. Rainbow looked down at her body, and as she had suspected, saw moving columns of herself disappearing and reappearing between the vantage point of the mirrors and trees, with the empty spaces where parts of her should have been revealing the visceral composition of her body underneath the skin. Rainbow managed to hold her composure even as one again seeing cutaways of her own internal anatomy sent chills down her spine. Rarity, Fluttershy, and Applejack however almost literally began screaming their lungs out. Their mortified cries echoed ad infinitum through the woods. Rainbow looked up at one mirror wall, and saw the six of them reflected an indeterminate number of times over, where another set of screams seemed to come from every single one, creating a delayed feedback that resonated with terrifying harmony.

“Don't be afraid! It's just another trick!” Rainbow intently tried to corral her friends, but the sight of the pegasus speaking to them while passing bars of her face revealed bone and brain as she spoke just made them scream even more.

They whisked past the hallway of mirrors, and their bodies returned to normal. Applejack and Rarity frantically checked themselves to ensure they were still in one piece, while Fluttershy was afraid to even look at herself. Rainbow turned to look ahead to the tall, imposing buildings of the nightmare Ponyville that lay ahead, and came nose-to-nose with the flat-maned Pinkie puppet.

“Gah!”

The music grew as psychotic as the smile on the Pinkie puppet's face.

“We're going to have oh-so much fun!

You'll feel like a new mare when we're done!

So do you like what I've done with the place?

It matches the smile on everypony’s face!

Enjoy the ride, and just sit back!

Several buildings next to the rapids were swept aside by a giant paw. Fluttershy let out a blood-curdling scream of terror at an imitation of the monstrous she-wolf.

“I'VE GOT QUITE THE APPETITE, LITTLE SNACK.”

There was a roar of engines, and a life-sized model of the scrapyard pirate ship of The Scurvy Gits with the Rarionette from earlier tired to the front flew overhead.

“Blimey, dat’s one big dog!” the Mr. Screw model remarked.

The Captain Blacktooth model shook Screw eagerly on the shoulder. “Ya know what DAT means!”

Each model of the Scurvy Gits raised its gun into the air. “WAAAGH!”

The orc pirates opened fire on the she-wolf. It yelped in lethal pain, then fell behind the row of buildings. Right on the beat came another roar, but this one of a tidal wave overlaid by the shark viking melodic death metal of the replica Razorfin clan.

“TWILIGHT OF THE THUNDER GOD!” Their vocalist bard bellowed as the rest of the warriors windmilled. Their ship jack-knifed The Scurvy Gits’ vessel, carrying it off to the distance.

The Pinkie puppet got up on her hind legs. “Everything I do, I do for all of you!”

There were ripples in the swift water next to the boat right by Applejack, from which emerged a troupe of sea-ponies.

“Shoo-be-do! Shoo-shoo-be-do!”

“AAAH!” Applejack latched onto Rarity, much to the bewildered unicorn’s shock.

The Pinkie puppet slammed her forehooves back down on the boat, now traveling along rapids so steep they were ascending vertically. Her next lines weren't sung as much as they were screamed.

“Everything has now come together

So we can be friends forever!

No, my mind is not diseased

So I beg of you all to please…”

The Pinkie puppet leaned even closer and the mares scooted further away as she screamed: shrill, desperate, and spiteful.

“PLEASE BE FRIENDS WITH ME,

YOU TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE PONIES!”

The Pinkie puppet's psychotic smile grew so wide that the stitches around her mouth began to pop. The Pinkie puppet didn't even flinch as the yarn holding her right button eye snapped, sending her eye right into Rainbow's face. The contact jolted Rainbow from her stupor, and the pegasus spun around to buck the animated ragdoll off their car. The Pinkie puppet went flying off from the blow, then tumbled into the shadowy deep beneath. The ceiling they were rushing towards was a wall of churning water, frothing like the waves of an enraged sea.

The girls just stared at the wall for a moment, at a loss over what to do.

“I'm not going to be able to fabricate more raincoats that can withstand that,” Rarity admitted.

“Then make us a tarp or somethin’!” Applejack urgently yelled over the wind and water. “I'll try an’ make another pocket with the enclosed space!”

Rarity closed her eyes and grit her teeth, concentrating as hard and quickly as she could. A small wave rolled up out of the water, flattening out into a thin sheet and solidifying into a blue polymer canvas. Rarity cried out in pain and fell to the floor of their primitive boat from the sudden strain.

Applejack yanked the tarp over the front of their log, secured it with one end of her rope, then pulled the cover over them to the back of the log and tied it down with the other end. Her face scrunched up in urgent focus, and the edges of the tarp formed a seal around the seated interior of the log boat. They crashed into the seething waves, and the frigid water pressed in around them. Applejack collapsed to the floor with her hooves clamped to her temples, screaming in pain from a splitting migraine.

There came a break from the crushing dark, and a sudden lurch as gravity shifted. Their log tilted forward, falling upon turbulent waves.

Applejack held her head in her hooves, groaning in pain. “Oooow… criminy, let's not do that again!”

Howling winds blew around them, tearing at the edges of the tarp. Suddenly it was ripped away, revealing them now to be in a basin of churning waves and jagged rocks just underneath the weeping clouds and arcing bolts of lightning. A jutting, pointed spire of stone rose from the restless waters like a stage for the final demented act.

The Pinkie puppet shot up from the water right where they had just emerged. The ragdoll mockery hovered in the air, violently convulsing as something inside its barrel began to viciously pound against its confines. With a sickening succession of seams tearing, a hole in the Pinkie puppet's chest split open, and it fell motionless back into the malicious pool as Discord swiftly slithered out from the cavity, wearing a striped boater hat and wielding a cane.

“Hello my ponies, hello my playthings,

Hello my fun-time mares!

Everything is now perfectly fine

Soaked in chaos sublime!

You think you can lose me

But you just can’t refuse me

And now Pinkie Pie’s all mine

For the rest of your mortal time!”

Rarity grabbed the string running through the hoods of Pinkie and Twilight's raincoats and pulled them tighter.

Discord descended onto the elevated rock formation, then spun on his hoofed foot. He twirled back around to face them, now adorned in red robes and a blue wizard's hat decorated in golden stars and moons. The music became a symphony of mental sickness as he held out his mismatched hands, and roils began to form where his fingers were pointed. He swung his lion's arm in the direction of the ponies, and a wave pounced from the water towards its equine prey.

Rainbow met the attacking wave head-on. Her hooves hit the crest, dispelling it into a spray of frigid mist, soaking Rainbow to her skin and chilling her to the bone.

Discord held out his talon-clawed hand, then swung it towards the boat. Rainbow doubled back around and struck the wave with a flying kick, drenching her in water that made her shiver.

Discord held his hands to the tortured sky, and the bleak sky grew even darker. He cast his arms back down, and sheets of rain so thick that they appeared to be falling waves came down upon them all. Rarity and Applejack respectively grabbed Twilight and Pinkie to pull their heads down to shield them from the riled storm. Fluttershy cried out in fear and cast her atomizing gaze to the sky, turning as much as she could to stream.

Discord extended both arms this time, and the waters on both sides of the boat began to boil. He swiftly brought his arms up over his head, clapping his hand together. Dual waves struck from the flanks, looming over the mares like the closing jaws of a starving kraken.

Fluttershy screamed and instinctively blasted one oncoming wall with a wide beam from her eye laser, vaporizing most of it. Rainbow sideswiped the other across its peak, shredding the bulk of it to droplets..

With a cackle, Discord threw his hands up in the air and titled his entire body back to an extreme degree. His lithe form snapped back forward like a coiled spring, and the entire half of the mountain lake behind arced over him, heading towards the ponies like an awoken mustakrakish that had gotten up on the wrong side of the bed.

Rainbow’s groan of exasperation turned to a yell of fury. She flew in between her friends and the angry tsunami, then began to fly in a loop at supersonic speeds until there was a full spectrum discus separating the two. The wave slammed into the bright shield with back-breaking force. Rainbow screamed with rage and exertion, but her barrier held. She altered her flight pattern from a level plane to a parabolic arc, capturing much of the wave and flinging aside the rest. Rainbow appeared behind the epicenter of her vortex, then bucked the hydrosphere back at Discord.

The draconequus held up his arms as if to push the wave back. The wall of water halted before collision, then began to condense and darken like the forlorn skies above. Further still the former wave compressed until it was nothing more than a sphere the size of a wrecking ball that was black as coal. Discord seized the orb, held it above his head, then rotated it to reveal a blasting cap with a lit fuse trailing out of the top.

“Aw, buck me!” Rainbow exclaimed.

“Gladly!” Discord jeered. He threw his bomb up in the air, and his body morphed into an oriental dragon cannon. The mass ordinance fell into his open mouth, then the Discord-cannon tilted forward, and fired the explosive right at them.

Rainbow held up her hooves, and the bomb collided with her. She pushed back with furiously beating wings, but her efforts did little to impede its trajectory.

Applejack pulled her rope from of the log and lassoed the oncoming bomb. She yanked up and around, accomplishing the considerably easier task of redirecting the bomb’s momentum. She grit her teeth and groaned in exertion, swinging the bomb around their vessel. With a lash of her muscular neck, she flung the explosive slingshot-style back at its original owner.

Discord popped out of his cannon form, then disappeared with a snap of the fingers. The bomb crashed up against the pillar Discord had been standing on, then exploded with a deafening force that left the girls screaming just to keep their eardrums from rupturing.

The explosion completely destroyed the stone pillar, cracking open a hole in the basin. The waters began to swirl around the hole, dragging the log car into a dark, aquatic tunnel with Rainbow trailing behind. The girls were violently rocked back and forth by sharp twists and shearing turns through a snaking tunnel in near pitch-black shadows.

The currents took a sudden shift upward, carrying the girls towards a bright exit. The log slowed as it reached the threshold, then came to a stop at the lip of the opening. Their eyes adjusted to the light, and they found themselves at the peak of the waterfall pouring from the top of the mountain.

“Almost… got it!” Fluttershy exclaimed as she finished cutting through the chains keeping Twilight and Pinkie confined.

There was a pop above them. Discord landed on the front of the log, tipping it past recovery down the waterfall.

“Caution; passengers on this ride may get wet!” Discord exclaimed, then snapped his fingers. The cut chains on Twilight and Pinkie resealed, their raincoats disappeared, and new sets of chains materialized around the conscious mares.

Then they went over the edge.

Rarity and Fluttershy began to scream in terror as they plummeted at terminal velocity towards the drenched swamp, over which a tenebrous storm cloud had formed and was pouring rain like a waterfall. Applejack grunted as she struggled against her confines, while Rainbow snarled and fought in vain to break free. Discord coiled his serpentine body around the tree boat, laughing gleefully as Pinkie and Twilight fast approached their liquid doom.

Discord looked further down the falls at a bear and fox versions of himself, the latter of which holding a camera in its paws.

Discord grinned. “Everypony say ‘disharmony!’”

A plume of water began rocketing up the waterfall towards the seven of them at speeds equal to theirs. Discord eyes went wide in bewilderment when he caught sight of what was coming.

“What th—-”

The thing-pony delivered a flying backflip kick to Discord's face with such overwhelming force that he was knocked clear off the boat and went sailing up into the anguished storm clouds with a yodeling howl. It landed on the bridge of the log boat, looked at the chained mares, then at the waterfall that was mere seconds away.

The thing-pony hopped in the air and slammed it's hind legs down on the back of the log. The vehicle tore off from the rails and flipped completely inverted. With the undercarriage of the log boat now above them, they flew through the hammering rain and over the impenetrable briar patch at the base of the monolithic waterfall. Then the thing-pony kicked the boat like an oversized skateboard to mostly revert it back right-side up, but now flipped horizontally to the direction it had been facing. Finally the thing-pony wrapped its foreleg-arms around the heads of Twilight and Pinkie, and pulled them protectively close to its chest.

They landed hard on the waters of the swamp, skidding across the surface and causing a big wave by the impact. They washed up on the shore, coming to a halt on the dry ground on one of the warped Ponyville’s suburban streets. Only after they had come to a complete stop did the thing-pony loosen its grip on the two mares, revealing the soft glow and gentle whir of Dreamscape.

“Oh, thank Celestia!” a tired and soaked Rarity breathlessly gasped, then hung her head over the side on the beached boat. “I think… I think I'm going to throw up…”

Applejack growled in finality and began to furiously pound on the wooden prison with her rear hooves until the timber began to crack. She turned to Fluttershy.

“Heya girl, think you could help tear up this hunka junk?”

Fluttershy didn't respond, just stared off into the distance and shivered from her fear and the cold.

“Fluttershy? Flutters!”

Fluttershy squeaked out a startled scream and looked up at Applejack with wide, quivering eyes. The cowgirl loosened up and softened her tone.

“It's alright, the ride’s over now. No point in keeping this thing afloat, do you think you can cut yourself out by shootin’ your eye lasers straight through the wood?”

Fluttershy stared for a moment, then wordlessly nodded and began burning right through the wood. She didn't even notice when she absentmindedly cut the last few inches of hair right off her own sopping wet tail.

Rainbow looked flatly at the thing-pony.

“What kept you?”

The thing-pony pointed back at the swamp. The waters were filled with unconscious aquatic reptile Discord copies from alligators to crocodiles that got larger the further out they got until they got to full-blown sarcosuchus. There was even a Discord-spinosaurus closest to the base of the waterfall.

Rainbow blinked. “Ah…”

“Feller’s evidently had problems of his own,” Applejack said as she finished bucking the wooden floor her binds were bolted through into pieces. She cast aside her chains, then waded out into the shallows where her hat had fallen off when they had crash landed. She fished it out from under the surface and smacked it down onto her head, not even caring that it had the effect of dumping a bucket of water on her: she was already drenched anyway.

Applejack made her way back to the washed-up log and began to work on getting Dash and Twilight while Fluttershy was working on liberating Rarity and Pinkie. She gave the thing-pony a sideways glance as she worked.

“S’pose we owe ya for saving our skins. Again.”

The thing-pony just shrugged.

Applejack couldn't help but chuckle a little. “Shoulda figured.” She looked away, and noticed a smashed wall in a nearby house, revealing a room with dirty walls and colors that burned like an inferno of torment. The Pinkie puppet lay slumped up against the corner, stuffing spilling from the open wound in her barrel, her severed button eye next to her, and her stitched mouth burdened with a morose frown.

Rainbow flittered over to Pinkie and pulled her up onto her back. “Come on, we still need to give Twi and Pink's more time! If we hurry, we can get back to the library before—-”

A distant scream from above grew louder as it got closer. The ponies snapped into a defensive formation as Discord fell from the skies and slammed into the ground with a force that kicked up a cloud of dust and left him squashed flat.

Discord lay there for a moment before peeling himself off the dirt with a sound like velcro. When he pulled his snaggletooth out of the ground, his serpentine neck snapped his head back like a rubber band, then compressed to normal with the sound of an accordion. He glared at them for a second, then held out his hand to his side.

“Camera!” He barked.

The Discord-fox materialized next to the draconequus and gave him the camera, then disappeared. He checked the image on the back screen, then his face grimaced with disappointment.

“Aw, you ruined it!” he bemoaned, then angrily flipped the camera to show the group. The picture had been taken at the exact moment after the thing-pony had left an impression of its rear hooves on Discord's face and sent him to explore the upper troposphere.

Applejack smirked. “What's wrong? I think it turned out perfectly fine.”

Discord shot Applejack a dirty look, then turned his glare towards the thing-pony, now in its ready stance.

“As much as I would like to delight in Twilight having such an enigmatic construct lodged in her brain, it’s inherited all of her intentions of interfering with my plans, so I'll have to deal with it accordingly…”

Discord snapped his fingers, but nothing happened. He raised an eyebrow in confusion, then tried multiple times in succession, each with as nil an effect as the first.

“Why is your head still attached to your shoulders?!” an irate Discord asked the thing-pony. It responded by picking up one of the pieces of the splintered boat and chucking it at his face.

Rainbow shot a cocky sneer at Discord. “Didn't get the memo? Twilight's projection-thingy is immune to magic!”

Discord glared at Rainbow. Another chunk of wood bounced off the side of his head, turning his glare to flat and unamused.

“Is that so? Well then,” Discord pointed his open hand at the thing-pony, palm up. The thing-pony leapt for another flying kick. Discord closed his fingers, and the ground closed around the thing-pony, imprisoning it in earth. Discord levitated the soil coffin into the air, then turned and flung it through the nearby wall of Vinyl Scratch’s house.

“I suppose I'll just have to improvise,” Discord fished, then turned back to the mares. “Now where were we? Oh, I remember!” Discord snapped his fingers, and a pair of goggles and a snorkel appeared on his face. “Finishing this!”

Discord flung his arms up in the air with such force that he arched back. The entire swamp lake receded into the distance, then charged forward as every ounce from the body of water like the hand of an angry ocean god.

Rainbow dated over to Twilight and Pinkie in an attempt to escape into the skies with them, but Rarity held a hoof out in restraint.

“Everypony chill out, I got this!” she asserted, then lit her horn. The oncoming tsunami got closer by the second, but Rarity held her composure. Seconds from impact, the red diamonds from the fallen playing card house flew over the roof and encased Twilight and Pinkie in a protective shield. She tried to peel off another sheet of water from the wave to fashion into a tarp, but the wall of water crashed into them before she had the time.

The power of the wave nearly forced all the air from their lungs, but surprisingly did not sweep them all away to parts unknown. It did however thoroughly drench the four mares all over again. When the crushing wave passed, Applejack stared straight ahead with an unamused face as she lifted her hat up to drain it off the water that had accumulated there, in the process letting loose another bucket on her head.

Discord stomped a hoof in anger. “Must you ruin everything?!”

Rainbow whirled around and snarled. “You ruin everything! You almost ruined Equestria, you nearly ruined our friendship, and now you're trying to ruin Pinkie!” Dash shot towards the draconequus like a bit. “Now eat hoof and die!”

Discord merely glared at her and held out his talon hand at her. Rainbow froze in midair, struggling but restrained firmly in place by an unseen force. Discord flicked his wrist, and Rainbow was tossed back at her friends, knocking them over on impact. They crashed into the sphere of diamonds, scattering them, revealing Twilight and Pinkie were now gone.

Discord looked at the empty space in shock. Applejack just looked back at him with a smirk.

Discord growled and materialized above, looming over them. “I have done nothing but unveil the chaos that dwells in everything, including you six! So I promise you that this will go far smoother if you just stop fighting, bring the interloper and my charge back, and we can all live together in harmonic chaos!”

“NEVER!” The four shouted in unison.

A permeating thrum filled the air and reached the girls to their bones, saturating the mares with an energy that made their skin crawl.

Discord looked firm at them with a gleeful, sadistic animosity, holding up his talons to show arcs of electricity traveling up between them. “So be it.”

And that's when it hit the girls: they were all soaked.

Before any of them could react or Rainbow could move to buck away the coming storm, Discord held out both hands and shot massive bolts of lightning at the four of them.

Each one fell to the ground in an instant. Their muscles seized up, voluntary control wrenched from them, unable to do anything but writhe and scream.

Rainbow had been electrocuted by lightning before. She knew the feel of that jolt to the heart, the slight sizzling of the brain, and the sensation of every millimeter of her muscles being pinched at the same time.

This was incomparably worse.

Every muscle fiber felt like it was exploding and being replaced by an exact copy to explode all over again. Somepony had replaced all her blood with acid and her veins with molten copper. Her nerves were endless snakes made purely of venom, and her heart pounded to bursting in a panic lest it stop beating altogether.

The familiar pungent fumes of ozone smoked her nostrils. Steam began to rise off her as the water in her coat began to fry. The acrid stench intensified, and Rainbow realized she was smelling her own fur starting to burn.

Fluttershy and Rarity wailed in tormenting agony. Even Applejack screamed like Rainbow had never heard her before. Dash had always tried to be the brave one, but there was no resilience to withstand this. The lightning had turned her own body into an iron maiden, and all she could do nothing but scream her lungs to tatters as her vision began to fade and a distorted thrum began to build in volume…

Author's Notes:

This part is more like what I'd hoped chapter eleven would have been; the ponies having to get through the madness of the nightmare world in an adlibbed writing exercise that doesn't go on for fucking ever. I actually didn't even know what I was going to do with this chapter until after Discord threw the pool with the floatie-adorned wallaby at them. The chaos-twisted Splash Mountain parody was something that I came up with completely by capricious whimsy, and yet it was the most I've enjoyed writing this story in a while.

Unfortunately, this is where the progress is going to slow again; I'm still trying to get through the the chapter that is one of the biggest reasons this story ground to a halt back in 2014 (Holy shit, has it been that long?). But the good news is I'm nearing completion with that fucking nightmare, and once I finish one section it'll be much smoother sailing, since I know exactly how to make the rest of it play out. That, however, will be the most divergent and experimental I've gone with this story, even more than chapter eleven... hopefully it'll work.

And my condolences to everyone who loved Splash Mountain that the soulless, virtue-signaling corporation that has you by the 'member berries has decided to rip apart a piece of your childhood because they'd rather capitulate to a lynch mob of Marxist LARPers hiding behind race activism, and replace it with a ride themed after the admittedly underrated The Princess and the Frog, which the soulless Disney Corporation is only now acting like they care about instead of intentionally letting it flop to fuck over Ron Clements and John Musker because they wanted to dismantle their own hand-drawn animated department (true story). Maybe the communist Chinese government that has The Disney Corporation by its soy-shriveled balls will force them to reconsider because the CCP are racist against black people.

- Christian 'You will get wet on this ride' Harisay