Unwrittenby redsquirrel456ChaptersPrologueThresholdBreachPrologueHe couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. There was no air. There was no anything. He kicked a hoof and smacked the universe into motion, burrowing through what was and could have been. He felt hard packed coldness that was wet on his fur, and realized it was snow. He breached the surface of reality and found wind and cold and open space. His lungs were suddenly in his chest and burned for air, expanding of their own accord, and filled his mouth with snow. He flailed and kicked and carved a path upwards, surrounded by confusion and hard, packed ice. His new body was dying. He felt it. But he couldn’t die here. He wouldn’t die here. This wasn’t death, this was his new birth. His horn pierced the surface and found itself wrapped in cold. His lungs spasmed and he forced his head still higher, grasping at the wind as if it could lend a hoof and pull him the rest of the way. He fought his way out of the tomb of unreality and into the fearsome world outside, tearing free of the snow’s grip and exposing himself to the shearing wind and biting cold. Everything was only half-lit, illuminated by sunlight filtering through a stormy, brooding sky. Even that was too bright for his eyes, and he squeezed them shut. He didn’t know who he was, where he was, or how he was alive, and didn’t care about any of those things save that he lived. He was pure. He was whole. He was. A unicorn. I am a unicorn, he realized, and then he remembered the life inside him that needed to be nourished. He filled his lungs with his first breath, felt the freezing air whoosh into his mouth and over his tongue with such sweet, sharp feeling, turning his saliva to ice and tearing his throat. He didn’t care, only breathed and breathed until his lungs were fit to burst. He put his hooves on his head, felt his mane whipping in the wind and the lids over his eyes and knew that he had a solid body once again. He remembered what it felt like to have blood rushing in his veins and a heart pounding out a rhythm of life against the utter dark. He knew again the strangeness of being confined to flesh and bone, a spirit that wrapped around a frail frame. With his body and his nerves and his skin, he remembered pain. He screamed. He screamed out the death of a world he couldn’t remember, screamed for the pain of dead ponies and lost memories, for a face he couldn’t see and friends he didn’t know he had. He screamed for the sake of screaming and for the joy and horror of being alive and alone. He screamed until every ounce of breath was driven from his lungs, and then he took another breath and screamed again. Tears sprang from his eyes and burned red-hot on his cheeks, freezing before they reached his chin, and he began to sob and scream all at once. He collapsed into the snow and tried to bury the pain he felt in his chest, but it only seemed to grow the more he tried to ignore it, and there alone with nopony to console him he wept and railed against forces he couldn’t name or recognize. Only when his body could take no more did he stop screaming, and if only to remember the sensation of movement, he trudged into the endless blizzard. He didn’t know how long he walked, or if time was there to be measured. The hidden sun didn’t move and the snow did not abate. He longed for shelter and found a cave bored into the side of what might have been a mountain. It was too dark to see the peak or how far it went around. With no other choice he wandered inside. By the time he left the wind, a coat of ice covered him and his skin rubbed raw. He welcomed the pain to distract him from the gaping emptiness inside him. He put his hoof to his chest and knew there was skin and bone there, but somehow he felt a yawning chasm there too, an emptiness that needed to be filled. He walked deeper into the cave, finding his way illuminated by crystal shards growing from the walls that glowed all the colors of the rainbow. The shards became patches until the very ground was a shifting kaleidoscope of color and light. He went to the very deepest part of the cave, and there he found a wall blocking his passage, blank and smooth. “Re… re-re-… m-m-member,” he said through chattering teeth. He put his hoof on the stone and rubbed it back and forth, trying to score some message there. He searched around the floor of the cavern and found flecks of stone, picked one up by the hoof, and dragged it over the rock. It left behind a white trail, and with that he drew. One, two, three strokes, one six-pointed star. He smacked the stone into the wall five times, and drew a huge scribble on top of the star. “Remember,” he said, growling the word. “Remember, remember!” He pounded his forehead into the cave wall, directly in the center of the star. His horn ached, longing to release something that never found its way to the tip. In one swift movement he plucked up the stone again and scored the wall with more strange symbols and half-formed sketches. He worked in a feverish daze, taking an age, a second, an hour or a day to finish his work. One moment he was drawing and the next he was done, drenched in cold sweat and leaning against the wall. What he’d scribbled meant everything and nothing, the most and the least. It was all he could do to even remember how to breathe. “Remember,” he whispered. “I remember me.” He glanced back up at the wall, full of his meaningless scribbles, and touched the six-pointed star with his hoof. It began to glow. “Now you will too.” Threshold“A Princess always remembers that she is a servant to her people. A Princess always remembers that she is not merely a pony, she is an ideal.” Twilight Sparkle watched Cadance strut stiffly across the room, her hooves clicking on the hard marble floor. It was polished to true perfection; she saw mirror images of herself and Cadance below their hooves, following their every move. “A Princess cannot be taken by surprise!” Cadance barked, whirling around and making her bulbous dress billow behind her. Her eyes were narrow and fearful, and Twilight shrank back into the couch she lay upon, gently burying her nose in the cushion she had tucked under her chin. Cadance stalked back across the room with practiced, measured steps. Every movement was premeditated and breathtakingly elegant, smooth as the gossamer thin silk trailing from her dress that drifted peacefully in the air. “And by that I mean: she must never look like she is surprised. A Princess will face many surprises but she will never appear surprised.” She stopped in front of Twilight, who regarded her wide-eyed. The older alicorn regarded her younger out of the corner of her eyes, squinting until they were ferocious little lines cut across her face. “A Princess,” Cadance hissed, “is the definition of poise. A master of the self. She is unconquerable. Untouchable. A paragon of all things equine.” She leaned closer and forced Twilight down until she almost suffocated herself in the folds of her cushion. “Do you understand?” Cadance whispered. “Yes,” Twilight whispered back. Cadance leaned even closer until their noses touched. “Do you? Do you really? Do you really really—” She stopped, clenching her teeth and desperately trying to keep her cheeks from bulging. “Do you r- fft! Pfft!” Her sputtering made Twilight’s lips twitch, and then she was grinning and Cadance was laughing and they melted into puddles of giggles. Twilight sprawled over the couch and Cadance rolled onto her back on the immaculate floor, kicking her hooves in the air. “That’s her! That’s so her!” Twilight giggled, burying her face in the cushions. “Oh dear, I really shouldn’t be making fun of her like this.” “But it’s so much fun!” cried Cadance. “Luna should’ve come with you, Twilight. Maybe she’d get to lighten up like you.” “Ohhh, no! No no no no!” Twilight said, holding up her hoof. “She’d jump right into trying to teach you how to be a proper Princess and then we’d have to try and tell her how we already are, and then she’ll get all upset and we’ll have to call in Princess Celestia who’ll just tell us ‘Both of you need to learn to work together!’ And I’ll tell her ‘I am!’ but Luna will say ‘No, there is but one way to rule!’ And then Celestia will sigh and I’ll feel bad and Luna will be in a terrible mood for the rest of the night—” She stopped when Cadance’s hoof, slipped free of its shoe, pressed gently to her lips. The other alicorn’s eyes went soft and shimmery. “It’s really that bad?” Twilight groaned and nudged her way into a hug. “It’s really that bad,” she said. “Thank you so much for letting me visit, Cadance. I just… I just had to get away from… everything. I’m supposed to worry about a kingdom now, and I just got a castle, and I’ve been having to go all over Equestria fixing stuff but it feels like I’m never good enough…” Cadance rolled her eyes as Twilight trailed off into a depressed mumble. “It’s okay,” said Cadance, stroking Twilight’s mane. “We all have some rough spots on the road. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t an end to it.” Twilight sighed into Cadance’s mane. “It feels like there isn’t.” She pulled away and walked across the marble floor, her hooves click-clacking. She came to a balcony and put her hooves up, staring out over the vastness of the Crystal Empire. It was past midday and the sun looked especially low for this time of the year, as if it were trying to peek inside and get a good look at Twilight. The exceptional brightness of the crystal houses and the crystal ponies shining in the afternoon light didn’t hurt her eyes anymore, but they still ached all the same for something she wanted to see but remained hidden. “I’m scared a bumpy road is all my life will be, even if it comes to an end. I won’t live forever, I know that. Nothing does.” “Except love,” said Cadance, coming up beside her. “And friendship. Can’t forget that, my little protégé.” “Yeah. Yeah, I won’t,” said Twilight. “But I just don’t know if I’m strong enough to make it to the end. Every trial I’ve passed before, every situation I’ve fixed, every time I’ve come swooping down out of the sky as ‘The One and Only’ Princess Twilight… it doesn’t make the road ahead of me any smoother. In fact it’s like the bumps are mad I made it over them and started to turn into mountains.” Cadance sighed, and to Twilight it seemed like a happy sigh. “Nopony said life is easy. Even me and Shining have problems sometimes. But I don’t think things are meant to fit perfectly together… love isn’t a saw that cuts out and adds pieces until ponies are a different shape and click together. It’s a glue that binds them together, pointy bits and all. It’s a choice made every single day.” Cadance waved a hoof out over the Empire and all its citizens that milled about under the watchful Crystal Palace. “Every day I wake up and every night I go to sleep, I remind myself that I love this place. I remind myself that I love Shining and you and Equestria. I choose to have love in my heart and slather it all over everything, like this!” She waggled her hoof in front of Twilight’s face and smeared it over the sight of the Empire, stuck her tongue out, and went “Sssssmssshhhpppt!” It made Twilight giggle. Cadance’s beatific smile wrenched downward to a frown. “But love can be twisted. It can bind us to things we don’t actually want or understand, but love too much to let go.” Twilight grunted. “I know that feeling too well.” She remembered Celestia in the middle of the Canterlot’s throne room sobbing wretchedly, begging forgiveness. She remembered Luna and the fearsome need for love that made her Nightmare real. She remembered the twisted love that made her loathe and desire Celestia’s approval all at once. All of it so long ago now, but still so fresh. A knife twisted in her heart and she almost cried. Cadance rested a hoof on her shoulder, knowing what she was thinking. “It’s still worth it, though. Love should never be totally absent from a pony’s heart. Otherwise… well. We’ve seen what creatures devoid of love can do.” Her own eyes went distant and suddenly she seemed very far away. Twilight looked up at her, rapt with attention. “I tried to talk to Queen Chrysalis in the caves when she had me,” said Cadance. “She visited thrice and gloated each time. I tried to tell her what I’m telling you: that true love, the love that gives you real power, isn’t taken or coerced or demanded. It’s given freely, like rain falls without caring who it falls on. I looked into her heart while I spoke from mine.” Cadance closed her eyes tight and looked pained. “I saw a hole there, Twilight. A gaping, gnashing maw that only wanted to eat and eat and eat, like it wanted to be hungry and never full. Without love a creature can’t do anything except steal, because it has nothing to give. It made me scared and sad for her all at once.” She opened her eyes again and they were frightfully old, reminding Twilight of Celestia and Luna. “Whatever drives a changeling, or Sombra, or Tirek… it’s not what drives Luna to be so hard on us, or Celestia to have been as desperate as she was when the Nightmare found you. And I know for a fact that you, Twilight, are not driven by lack of love. If anything, we all have too much.” Twilight sniffled. “That’s what the Nightmare said.” Cadance tilted her head. “It was right. But that’s why you beat it.” Twilight circled a hoof on the balcony edge. "It didn't make it any easier though." Cadance smiled. "That's the beautiful, awful, wonderful, terrible truth about love. It doesn't make things easy and it doesn't make the pain go away. But it does make anything possible. No, defeating the Nightmare wasn't easy even with all the love in the world. But without it, you wouldn't have gotten anywhere." She laid her hoof over Twilight's. "Your love is as pure and wonderful a thing as I've ever seen, Twilight. Let it buoy you up like wind beneath your wings. Let it take you further than you've ever imagined. It won't clear the path ahead, but at least that path will be yours to walk." A deep, familiar voice interrupted them. "Since when did you become such a philosopher, Cadance?" "Shining!" both mares cried at once, turning and lunging at the stallion. Shining Armor backpedaled a moment, his eyes widening with shock before they tackled him and all tumbled onto the floor, laughing. To Twilight, it was like she was laughing away some great weight in her chest. "Okay, okay, I get it, I love you too!" Shining said, playfully trying to pry them off. Twilight only stopped hugging him when he gave her one of his old mane ruffles, then stood back to let him up. Cadance still clung to him, and they giggled at each other as Twilight spoke. "When did you get up here you big sneaker?" she asked. "Just a minute ago. I heard you talking and I snuck in. Sounded important." Cadance frowned. "We were just going over some of the problems Twilight's been having since..." She trailed off, and Twilight bit her lip and glanced to one side. Shining sighed, wrapping a sympathetic hoof around his sister's shoulders. "Hey, I know," he said quietly. "You already told us everything." "No," Twilight whispered, burying her face in Shining's chest. "Not everything. I’m sorry. It’s been over a year and I still get nightmares." Her heartbeat sounded louder than usual as she tried to shut the world out and hide in her brother’s fur. “I haven’t told anypony anything about that horrible time,” she whispered. “Not really. There’s so much I can’t even put into words.” "Just take your time," Cadance whispered, nuzzling Twilight's ear. "We're both here for you." "You shouldn't be so hard on yourself," said Shining, a frown etched across his muzzle. "Are you sure you only want to stay just the weekend? You just got here today. A few more days won't hurt. The guest rooms still need breaking in, you know." "No, no, it's fine," Twilight said even as a wave of fatigue crashed over her, making her go limp against her brother with a yawn. "I just... I just needed a short break. Then I can get back to work." Her half-lidded eyes didn't miss the glance Shining and Cadance shared. "I think getting back to work is part of the problem," said Cadance. "You're right, Twilight. Luna has been riding everypony really hard about all these unimportant things. Celestia is still aloof and thinks I don't notice. And you, Twilight... you keep charging off into the sunset to help solve Equestria's friendship problems nonstop. I'm worried about all of you. Before we do anything else you need to rest. Proper rest." "M'fine," Twilight muttered as her eyelids drooped. The train ride here had been awfully long—she was a stickler for taking regular transportation like a common pony instead of using her magic just to get here faster. And talking to Cadance had cut the strings of her anxiety, letting her fall slack at last. “Okay. C’mon champ,” her big brother said, ignoring her mewling protests. She felt Shining's magic wrap around her like a blanket and lift her onto his strong back, like he did when she was a filly, and her eyes closed completely. Not long after she felt a real blanket wrap around her, warm and soft, and she was on a downy mattress. She fell asleep to the warm sounds of Cadance humming some far-off, wondrous tune, a wordless melody composed in some lonely glen at the beginning of the world, and it reminded her so much of when Celestia coddled her as a filly that she even curled up like one. She felt love surround her and willingly fell into its embrace, letting her mind drift away. /-/-/-/ Twilight’s hoof scraped over stone. She looked up at the blank cavern wall and recoiled from it, gasping. This was not Cadance’s castle. This wasn’t a place she knew. She turned around and saw only darkness, and realized she didn’t know anything about this place or how she’d come here. A noise from behind the stone wall startled her. “Remember.” It was muffled, yet she knew the words before she even heard them. Without thinking she reached up and touched the wall again. It felt warm and tantalizingly thin, as if with a single push she could bring it crashing down. What? Who? Why? she asked the voice without truly speaking. There was a sound of rock scraping on rock. “Remember! Remember remember remember!” Who is that? Is that my voice? It couldn’t have been. It was deep and masculine, yet it was tinged with such sad desperation, such breathtaking determination. She knew it from somewhere, but something kept her from knowing, something deep and dark, like a gulf or a curtain between her and sweet remembrance. The scraping grew more intense. Somepony was trapped behind the wall. Somepony needed her help. Her instincts jolted her to life and she thumped hard on the rock with her hooves. It shuddered but did not give way. “Hello? Are you there? I’m here! Tell me who you are! Let me help you!” “Remember!” the voice growled, and something in its tone pierced her heart. Tears sprang unbidden to her eyes and she began pounding fervently on the rock. “I’m trying!” she cried. “Please! Just say your name! Tell me something! I’m here for you!” She cast around for something to knock the wall down. More large rocks were scattered all around. She picked one up in her hoof and banged it against the stone before her, trying to hammer her way through. “I’m coming,” she grunted. “I’m coming! Don’t worry. I’ll be there soon.” The noises from the other side were fervent, manic, distressed. Or perhaps she felt all those things at once and they were merely rebounding off the wall, feeding into her own hysteria and driving her crazy. All she knew was the wall had to come down. “Just… gotta… get…” she whispered, bashing and scratching and pleading and kicking. The marks she left on the stone grew more coherent while her movements only became ever more erratic. Her limbs grew heavy. Her brow beaded with sweat. Still she punished the stone. A crack appeared in the wall, and through it, a faint glow of light. “I’m here,” she whispered. “I’m—” Something yanked and something pulled, and all she could do was fall away as she felt torn in two. She didn’t even feel her back hit the ground. /-/-/-/ Twilight’s eyes flew open. Before she took a single breath she sat upright and threw the covers away from her with a disgusted grunt. They landed on Spike, who slept next to her bed in a little pile of cushions, and the baby dragon sputtered and spat as the downy comforter smothered him. “Ah! Hey! Twilight?! What’s going on?” A loud clack of hooves on marble as Twilight dropped onto the floor. Spike continued to fumble and claw at the blanket. “Twilight, say something!” He found his way out in time to see Twilight heading for the balcony, flinging the doors open with the heavy hoof of magic. They made a bang that stopped his little heart. “Twilight?” he whispered, now curling the offending blankets around his shoulders again. Fear and reverence gripped his heart as he watched Twilight spread her wings as though to take off, her mane a fearsome mess and her eyes slitted and narrow with intense concentration. He’d known Princess Celestia long enough to know regality when he saw it, and right now Twilight was a frightening and naked example. His caretaker put her hooves on the balcony railing, looking out over the Crystal City. A carpet of stars hung heavy across the sky, reflected in kind by the spires and verandas below the palace. Even at night the entire metropolis glowed and twinkled. The city was a slice of the sky all its own. To Twilight, being here was just as good as being up there. “He’s alive,” she said. “Who is?” Spike asked. Twilight leapt onto the railing, balanced precariously. She threw her head back and her wings out, and then tipped forward just far enough to fall. She heard Spike cry her name, heard little claws scrape on the floor, and then a weight on her tail unbalanced her just as vertigo took over and she began the plunge. “Twiliiiight!” Spike shrieked as he clung to Twilight’s tail for dear life, his voice competing with the wind. Twilight’s feathers snapped as they caught the air, making it roar as she pulled up. Spike gritted his teeth as his foot claws scraped over streets made of diamond and then left the earth completely. They rushed into the air, surprising a few late-night strollers with their updraft and leaving Cadance’s citizens baffled at a Princess who flew so wildly so late at night. She didn’t bother with them. None of her thoughts were here in the city, or the Empire, or Equestria itself anymore. They raced just ahead of her, going up, up, up into the sky, and she chased them with the steady beat of her wings and the drum of her heart. She galloped on the air and still her thoughts outpaced her, teasing and cajoling as they danced just out of reach. Spike’s screaming was just a mild nuisance in her ears as she left the earth far behind and sailed into the frigid clouds, and even the gleaming crystal city was just another light among millions. Further, she thought, I have to go further! This whole world was incomplete. The stars’ lights were so lackluster, the colors of the Crystal Empire so dull and dreary compared to the beauty her mind had touched. A million billion possibilities waited just out of reach, right at the tip of her hoof. She exalted in the desperate need that swelled in her chest, felt herself be pierced by the exquisite sadness of a great and powerful feeling that she could never quite name, and kept flying. No amount of exertion seemed to tire her out. No distance took her far enough. No words contained the vastness of what she felt. It was only after she breached the cloud layer and felt little talons prick her flanks did she stop and come to rest on a wispy cirrus. “Twilight,” Spike snapped, clambering onto her back with shaking claws, “don’t you ever do that again!” “What?” she asked, gasping and grinning. She whipped her tail and scattered part of the cloud, and then for good measure smacked it again. “Do what? Fly? Or fly with you hanging on back there?” “Both,” Spike snarled, securing his arms firmly around her neck. He didn’t like heights, and they were so high now the ground looked painted and the trees looked like toys. “You scared the heck out of me, Twilight! That was worse than a Pinkie Sense moment. Have you gone crazy?” “I did,” Twilight said, too giddy to be mortified she was acting like Pinkie. “I did go crazy, Spike. I am currently totally insane and I love it! My heart is pounding! Can’t you hear it?” Spike tilted his head one way and then another. “I hear the wind,” he said. “And I hear my bed calling for me. ‘Spike,’ it’s saying. ‘Spike! Get away from the crazy mare and get a good night’s sleep.’” Twilight laughed and didn’t warn him when she jumped off the cloud and dove straight down. The distant ground with its toy trees and painted ground became big and real terrifyingly quickly. “I remember!” she crowed over Spike’s terrified screeching. “I remember everything! I have to do something about this, Spike!” “Pull up! Pull up!” he wailed, and she did, but only after she found a few trees to buzz, shearing their leaves off with her wings. “He’s out there! He’s alive! Don’t you see what this means, Spike? He’s alive because I believe he’s alive because he always was alive! He’s alive and I’m going to see him!” “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Spike, closing his eyes as she corkscrewed and looped over a lake, “but I’ll agree with anything you say if it makes you stop flying.” Twilight screeched to a halt in midair, suddenly somber. “You’re right, Spike. Flying is absolutely not going to help right now.” She banked towards the Crystal Empire and flew as fast as her wings could carry her. “Right now I need you to take a letter.” Spike watched forlornly as their bedroom window went zooming by. Twilight spun around the tower in a giant loop and aimed for the lower part of the great castle, gliding silently through one of the windows of the Empire’s library. Between two giant shelves she spread her wings and dropped onto the crystal floor with a click of hooves that echoed through the halls, but she didn’t seem to notice or care. A curious night-shift librarian poked her head out from her desk at the front lobby. “Princess Twilight?” she asked in a venerative whisper. Twilight didn’t know if the respect was for her or the library. “What can I do for you?” “Inform Princess Cadance that I am in the Library and require her attention, immediately,” Twilight said in a clipped tone, turning back to Spike before the librarian even left. “Grab a quill and paper,” she said as she approached an empty desk, letting Spike slide off her tail. “I need to keep this quick and short.” “You know, usually I trust you if we’re gonna be experimenting, but this is kinda weirding me out, Twilight,” Spike grumbled. “What’s gotten you so worked up? You didn’t even make a checklist.” “I already know what I need,” Twilight snapped. “I can’t let anything interrupt me this time.” Spike peered at her over the top of the parchment. She moved with a breathless excitement, swept up in something that had left her inspired and distracted until it was done. He knew the mood well; she was having one of her ‘mad genius’ movements. But the way she stomped her hooves and gritted her teeth made him worry. “Dear Princess Celestia,” Twilight said, enveloping a whole row of books with her magic and tearing them off the shelves to circle around her head, “I’ve had a dream. No, scratch that. An epiphany.” “Epif…” Spike mumbled, trying to keep up as Twilight muttered to herself like a mad genius, snatching glimpses at seemingly random pages from random books and darting back and forth through the aisles. She snatched up another quill and dipped the feather in an ink jar, and used it to draw arcane symbols on the ground. “A year ago we suffered the depredations of the Nightmare’s near-return. Now I’ve sensed the stirrings of a power I thought was lost. Somehow, some way… Dusk Shine found a way to speak to me.” Spike dropped his quill. In the deathly silence of the library the velvety sound of the quill hitting the ground echoed like a drum. The whole world paused for breath. “Oh,” he said in a delicate whisper. “Him.” “Yes, that him,” Twilight said, forcing the world back into motion with an impatient tsk. She piled books to one side only to swing another row right off the shelves. Pages flipped like leaves in a windstorm, but every so often something seemed to catch her eye and she stopped to draw another letter or star or thaumaturgic rune on the ground. “Keep writing, Spike.” Spike bent down to pick up the quill and stopped halfway. With the slow certainty that only a child could muster, he stood back up. “I don’t know about this, Twilight.” The alicorn didn’t answer him. Her scribbling took on an even greater fervor. Spike fiddled with his claws. “I know you really wanted this to happen. You don’t say so in public… not even to me… but I know how important it is to you.” The loud flump of books hitting the floor and an angry flick of Twilight’s tail answered him. “I mean,” Spike said, his voice gaining confidence and volume as he went on, “Twilight, you talk to yourself about it when you think nopony’s looking. And sometimes you stare up at the ceiling and whisper about all these scary things, like new worlds and finding doors and…” He gulped heavily. “And leaving. At first I just thought it was you getting over, well, everything, but I see the books you keep lying around. I see how you keep asking Luna for more lessons on dream magic. And if I noticed, then Luna definitely noticed, and I think it has something to do with why she’s had such a temper lately.” “Spike,” said Twilight, her voice losing all warmth and turning over to reveal the ice beneath, “I need you to write that letter. I’m extending Princess Celestia the courtesy of letting her know before I attempt this.” “Attempt what?” Spike said, spreading his little arms as far as they could go. “You were blaming Luna about how things were getting so frosty between you, but we go all the way to the Crystal Empire to get away from it? And now this! Out of nowhere you’re jumping out of bed and flying around like a crazy pony! What are you even drawing there on the floor?” “A subliminal runic transfer system,” said Princess Cadance, appearing out of the shadows of the library, closely flanked by Shining Armor and a very nervous librarian. “Colloquially known as a ‘dream circle.’” Twilight tried not to notice the dawning comprehension on Spike’s face, with horror close on its heels. “Wait,” the little dragon said, pointing at Twilight. “You were… you were getting ready to go! Right now! You were just gonna jump in there with no ideas? No plan?” Twilight finally found her embarrassment and hid her face beneath her wing. “I… I would’ve been able to figure it out—” “Without telling me?!” Spike squeaked. Twilight gasped, coming out of her shelter full of bluster and righteous indignation. Arguments of all kinds to the contrary stood ready to burst forth. It all died in her throat at the sight of Spike, Cadance, and Shining all glaring at her. “Twilight,” said Shining, “please step away from that thing.” She trotted nervously in place, bit her lip, and shook her head. “Shining, please, you don’t… Cadance, you have to… Spike! I, I was just going to—” “Twilight,” said Cadance, and something in her voice stopped Twilight’s jitters. A sense of calm washed over her, stilling the roiling sea that was bubbling just beneath the surface of her skin. “Twilight,” Cadance said again, “do as your brother says.” Twilight stomped her hoof petulantly, but there was no force behind it. It was the act of a desperate child, and it scared her how true that was. “You don’t know what it feels like,” she whispered as a cold sweat broke out over her brow. “You don’t know, you weren’t there! I see him, and… and then I get this feeling, this incompleteness, like—” “It’s all right,” said Cadance, stepping forward and nudging Twilight with her nose, gently guiding her out of the circle. “We understand—” “No, you don’t!” Twilight snapped, recoiling to hide behind a stack of books. “None of you do. None of you can. I’ve been living a lie ever since that day, and I came up here to try and hide from the fact that I haven’t done anything to fix it!” Spike poked his head around the book pile, trying to look her in the eye. “But Twilight, you did so many things! All the girls got their keys, and you’ve really helped around Ponyville, and let’s not even mention Tirek!” “Yeah, let’s not,” Shining murmured, rubbing his horn. “You shouldn’t feel inadequate, Twilight,” Cadance said, settling down on her stomach and leaning into Twilight’s hiding place like she was trying to draw out a faun. “Nothing that happened that day with the Nightmare was your fault. You beat it!” “With Dusk’s help,” Twilight whispered. The blank stares she got only made her more frustrated, and she turned away to hide her face behind her wings. “You wouldn’t understand. I don’t blame you for it. How could you, unless you were there? Unless you were me?” “Try us,” said Cadance. Twilight sighed and stood up. “One moment.” She disappeared in a flash of light, and when she returned with another loud pop she held a mirror in her magic. “Look,” she said, and floated it in front of Cadance. Spike and Shining joined her. “What do you see?” “Myself,” said Cadance, patient as ever. “Yes,” Twilight said, distracted, “yes, but you only see you. The only you that ever could or ever would be. You’re an alicorn, Cadance. The Princess of Love. None of you is extraneous or unnecessary. Look hard, Cadance. You can’t see anything but you, right?” “I’m not sure I understand,” Cadance answered. Twilight’s words rolled right over hers. “But imagine if you looked in that mirror… and part of you wasn’t there.” Cadance’s reflection gasped in horror as her wings blipped out of existence. “But not just that,” Twilight said, her voice taking on a dreamy, distant tone. “What if something was added?” Cadance’s reflection was an alicorn once more. This time she wore strange and beautiful clothing, and stood taller than her original, nearly the size of Celestia, her mane blustered by intangible wind. The library had melted away to a book-crowded study, and a bright sun shone through wooden shutters on the windows. This Cadance looked grand and imperious, yet her eyes gazed at something far away with unspeakable compassion. Twilight saw Cadance’s breath catch in her throat. Shining gulped, either frightened or awed by the vision. “Twilight, what are you trying to say?” Twilight shook her head. She knew they could scarcely believe her, and that made it hard for her to believe herself. “I’m telling you what I see and what I don’t see, and how much I notice all the little gaps and missing pieces in who I am, and also the entire expanse of what could be there. Now. When you put another mirror up behind you…” Another mirror popped into existence opposite the first. Now an entire hallway of infinite mirrors and infinite Cadances stretched out ahead and behind. Shining and Cadance and Spike all gasped at once, because every last one was different. Tall or short, male or female, missing wings or horns or even their equinity entirely—somewhere in the far back they saw a dragon. Twilight gave a weary smile as she stepped up beside Cadance, and now an infinitude of Twilight Sparkles smiled up at the Princess of Love, every single one unique in some strange way. Though some were obvious a few looked uncannily similar, and yet that only made them all the more alien because Cadance knew they were different. “Every night,” Twilight whispered with tears in her eyes, “I have seen this when I look in the mirror. But the one who matters… the only one who ever looked back… who really, truly saw me… wasn’t there.” Her horn glowed. “Until now.” All the Cadances and Twilights, along with the second mirror, vanished. In the place of millions stood Dusk Shine, moving in synch with Twilight, speaking with her. Twilight reached up and touched the glass, and she smiled sadly as he smiled back. “The one who stands right on the other side. My true reflection. What I want and what I am all at once. The one who is the most like me, and yet… so far away this tiny pane of glass is the depth of a whole other universe.” She let out a breathless gasping laugh. “We saved each other. We made it all right again. And I… I dishonored that victory by hiding from the lessons I learned and the relationships I should have kept building. Celestia and Luna deserve better. He deserves better. I want to make it all right. Really, I do!” Her legs gave out and she dropped onto her flanks. The mirror, and Dusk, vanished. “But I’m scared, guys. I’m scared of reaching out again and being hurt. I always knew things had changed between me and Luna and Celestia… but it was so easy to just sit back and wait instead of trying to bridge that gap again.” She gave a desperate hiccupping sob. “I almost killed them. I almost killed everything. Do you know what that’s like? To know that you have the power to end everything that you love? My friends kept telling me after it was over: ‘It’s all right! We understand! It was the Nightmare, not you!’ But I look into their eyes and I still see the fear I caused. When I held Applejack over a cliff, when I almost killed Pinkie Pie, when I knew I was going to use the Elements to destroy this world and remake it like some… some foal playing with the universe’s building blocks! I would’ve just knocked it all over.” She lashed out and pushed over a stack of books. “Like that. They don’t know. They don’t really know what I’m capable of and neither do I. I haven’t spoken a word of what I really felt to them or the Princesses. After all that’s happened I haven’t said a thing.” She tossed her mane and scoffed, but it caught in her throat. “Oh, we said the usual things. ‘I’m sorry,’ and ‘We forgive you,’ but what do those words mean if I haven’t really done anything? And eventually we all just… buried it. Like an embarrassing report card or some silly family secret—” She bowed her head and wept openly. She didn’t clench or squeeze or shudder. Every muscle in her relaxed and the tears simply flowed free, finally overflowing the dam she built brick by brick ever since the day the Nightmare took her. “Listen to me. Princess of Friendship and I can’t even figure this out? I let it go for so long and now that I’ve seen Dusk again all I can think about is what I want. Some Princess I am, huh?” For a while all she felt were the hot tears streaming down her cheeks. She barely even noticed when Spike wrapped his little arms around her forelegs, and the warmth of Cadance folding her in big pink wings was a gentle breath against a blizzard. When Shining Armor finally found his way to them and enveloped all three in his strong legs, Twilight finally felt a twinge of relief. “If I don’t find him this time,” she muttered, “I’ll never forgive myself. I’ll never be whole. And thinking of telling Celestia just brought up all those bad feelings from before, and then I was scared of myself for letting those feelings take over so easily…” “You know what I think?” Shining said in her ear. “I’m just a normal everyday unicorn here, but I think that any Princess of Friendship who doesn’t face things like this isn’t qualified to be one.” “Shining’s right, Twilight,” said Cadance. “Things like this… they help us learn. Love is learning how to love somepony in spite of, and sometimes because of their faults. It’s painful. But it always is. That’s what makes love so special: it overcomes great burdens like this.” “We believe in you, Twilight. We believe you’ll do it right,” offered Spike. More tears flowed, but this time they were happy. Twilight looked at the half-finished rune circle and sighed. “Then the first thing I need is the rest of my friends.” BreachA cave. A cage. Black demon. White death. Dusk Shine remembered these things. Bits and pieces and sharp jagged edges that cut his mind as they fell through his senses. He twisted and turned in his sleep, panting and whimpering. There was nobody there to help him. He awoke in a flurry of sweat and tears, seeing he hadn’t left the cave he started in. No, that wasn’t true, he was in another cave entirely. His wall of drawings and insane scribbles was gone, replaced by a gaping corridor that beckoned him to follow it. He stood up, hooves scraped on rock, fur stuck to frozen ground. He walked, wobbling, teetering, falling along the corridor. His horn lit the way. His precious, unbroken horn. He pulled magic up from deep in a well inside himself, sucking it up like a straw into his horn, where it burned like a candle wick with a pale, violet light. He wanted to cast so many spells but he couldn’t remember any. The darkness had taken everything. Maybe if he chased it away with the light, he’d find something to remember. He heard voices at the edge of his hearing, muffled echoes and bell-like ringing. “Hello,” he rasped, “Is somepony there?” The voices danced just ahead, down the hall, around the corner, squirreling away into darkness just before he reached them. “Stop,” he pleaded, forcing himself along. “Please.” The voices moved further away. There were words half-heard and misunderstood, voices deep and comforting and high and alarmed. It was like listening to a distant waterfall and telling it to talk. He picked up the pace, his breaths becoming sobs. “Come back! I need to hear! I don’t want to be alone anymore!” The voices faded. “I need my friends!” Light. It was right there at the end of the tunnel. He ran for it, noticing the air get colder, sharper, drier. It was outside air, mountain air, and he remembered a great mountain where mighty Princes once ruled from a shining gold castle, and how they’d fought so bravely against the dark and one of them had been as radiant as the Sun, and then Dusk Shine burst into the sunlight and was enveloped by it. And it was cold. He skidded to a halt in ankle-deep snow, saw a forest spreading out before him in the distance. Long, perfectly straight trunks reached into the sky. Their branches jutted outward at odd angles like angry thorns, every last one bare and black and dead. He took a few steps forward and saw the rest of the forest fold out from behind the other trees like a turning page, and then it became clear: every last tree was perfectly spaced apart from the others like points on a grid. Dusk Shine lifted his head to the sun, but instead of a warm, comforting ball of radiance there was nothing but a cold disk like some all-seeing, inscrutable eye. There was no heat here, no life, only the cold light of a stark, uncaring world. Dusk turned to find the cave, suddenly wishing dearly to be back in the bosom of stone and hidden away from this strangeness. But the cave was gone. The entire mountain was gone. He was surrounded by perfectly spaced, perfectly dead trees that spread perfectly straight shadows over the ground, and he was still alone. Not wanting to stay in the strange forest, he walked. The shadows passed over him as the sunlight flickered through the trees’ branching claws like frames of a film, and he was the subject. Study of a Walking Unicorn, by Dusk Shine. He heard thunder in the distance. Perhaps it would rain or snow if he wished hard enough. He wondered if he could strip some of the bark from the trees for firewood, but when he put his hoof on their surface, it felt smooth and lacquered. The trees went on, and so did he. He pondered what might happen if he never saw another living pony out here. Maybe he'd lose himself, stop even thinking of himself as a living, breathing creature. What was a pony who couldn't make friends? What was Dusk Shine without a world to reach out and touch? He looked back and saw his hoofprints in the snow. It was the only evidence anything had passed this way, and when he was gone this blank world wouldn't care if there were hoofprints or not. He would be the only witness to a victimless crime—that of living in a lifeless world. Without someone else to come along and see, to say to themselves "another pony was here," without the opportunity to write his story on the blank page of another mind, he existed no more than a rock did. He was here, and then he was over there, and everything swirled around him and then when he was dead it would simply stop. But he wasn't dead yet. He thought that strange. He lived, and then he just sort of stopped living when the world vanished, and then he was here. He felt alive and since nobody was around to tell him differently, he decided he was most definitely alive. Yet this only made the loneliness that much more intense. The trees went on, and so did he. He followed straight lines, counting rows to pass the time. He went diagonal a few times to shake things up. He never once veered off course, but it was hard to say what course he was following in the first place. He played a game of tic-tac-toe, filling in squares carved out of the snow, using the trees as points for the square corners. He won. Three times in fact. The trees went on, and so did he. So if he wasn't dead, but he wasn't really living, was he immortal? Was this dull, interminable single day that went on forever what it felt like? He remembered a shining prince in golden armor and his dark, simmering brother, the two of them ageless and unceasing right up until the day they died. Was it like being a rock in a stream, he wondered often as a foal and even now, to watch everything eventually pass him by? To never be caught up in the stream of time, to sit and just exist until it started to feel as pointless as this forest stroll—that must have been true torment. Dusk Shine wondered if the day they died was the most interesting of their lives. He realized the loneliness was slowly driving him insane. He wanted to see Twilight Sparkle again. He wanted to see Prince Solaris again. He wanted to see Spines again. He wanted to see anything ever again but these damnable trees, locked forever in supplication or jealousy or whatever had motivated them to grow so tall and gnarled to the sky. Anything to not feel alone. Anything. The trees went on, and so did he. "Anything," said Twilight, pressing her hooves to her temples. "I'm hungry enough to eat anything. Just... just don't be long." Spike saluted and hurried off to fetch her breakfast. Two days had passed since Twilight sent word for the rest of her friends to come to the Crystal Empire. Two awful days of simply waiting, reading the same books over and over in hopes of finding a clue. The anticipation made the world feel listless and uninteresting, like it was all paused until that fateful moment she heard her friends' voices echoing down the hall and she charged out to greet them and realized it wasn't the wind this time. Then she might actually feel like she was moving toward something instead of sitting in place all day. She'd been doing that a lot even before she got to the Empire, and she self-consciously reached down to rub her flanks. Was it her, or were they a little pudgier than last time she looked? She didn't dare check in the mirror. Surely they hadn't been delayed? They'd come as quickly as they could. She made sure to write the letter in as urgent yet polite a way as possible. And she'd included the one thing that would bring them running faster than saying Twilight herself was in trouble. He's still alive, and maybe the rest are too. Oh, to see Rarity's smile again. To listen to Applejack's voice booming off the walls. To hear the whispery gust of Fluttershy's wings. To hear Pinkie Pie's giggles and giggles in turn like bells chiming in harmony. To listen to Rainbow Dash’s boasting a mile away... She didn't want to wait. She wanted them to be here, right now. She wanted breakfast. Spike swaggered back in proudly, bearing a steaming platter of oatmeal, muffins and toast with jam, daisy sandwiches with avocado spread, flapjacks piled five high, and enough orange juice to make her sweat it. She smiled widely. One out of two wasn't so bad. "Let me guess," she said, "it all happened to just be there, fresh and ready to be eaten." Spike snickered, seizing a muffin for himself. "The cook swore up and down he just got 'inspired' this morning to bake a five-course meal." Twilight laid out some flapjacks and liberally applied syrup. "I did tell Cadance she didn't have to fuss." "And now she has plausible deniability! Better Princess material than we thought, huh?" said Spike through a mouthful of muffin. "Mmm," Twilight said of the buttery-smooth flapjack that melted in her mouth, "if only we could learn to be so crafty." They enjoyed the meal, having a conversation without words. Snatched glances over big gulps of orange juice, laughing suddenly at how amazing the daisy sandwiches were, clinking their silverware loudly through bowls of oatmeal. “So what’s the plan today?” Spike asked, his cheeks bulging. Twilight reflexively magicked over a napkin to dab at the oatmeal that ran out of the corner of his mouth. “Everything,” she said. “We have a lot of ground to cover and I barely know where to start. I suppose we could begin with some preliminary tests, comparing dream journals, performing a few experiments with the dream magic Luna taught me… Test the waters, so to speak.” “And then what? What if you actually find him again? What if… what if you find all of them again?” Twilight sighed and looked down at her unfinished, though devastated, breakfast. “I don’t know, Spike. We’re taking this one step at a time, and the first step is to figure out why I suddenly started seeing Dusk here, now, and what could be causing it. I have a few theories on that front.” “Well, lay ‘em on me,” said Spike, consuming a whole mouthful of pancakes. “Or should we wait for Cadance to get back from her Princessing or whatever she does during the day?” Twilight smirked. “She does less ‘Princessing’ than you think. She’ll be busy for a while yet, but we’ve got pretty much free reign of the castle. Which reminds me…” She brought out a checklist. It unfurled. It kept unfurling. It rolled right over Spike’s head and didn’t stop until it hit the door. “That gives us plenty of time to start our experiments.” Spike whimpered. Some hours later, a bewildered Spike crawled out of his shared room with Twilight and tore off the mechanical device affixed to his head, slipping it under his arm. They’d spent the better part of the morning performing all kinds of little experiments that hardly counted as such to Spike—dream journals, endless cross-examinations of every possible meaning of every little thing she saw in her last vision of Dusk Shine. And then of course there was the experience of having that so-called ‘Oneirology Cap’ stuck on his head to help Twilight decipher more about the nature of dreams. The instructions were to sit quietly, think clearly, and allow the memories to flow between his and Twilight’s head, somehow. Spike was fairly certain it more over his head than through it, and sitting still during all that was just too much to ask for. He’d asked for a break; he didn’t think Twilight had noticed. He looked over his shoulder at his keeper, a pencil in her mouth and myriad equations scribbled on the paper she studied. He wasn’t sure how any of this had gotten her closer to figuring anything out, but if she insisted that it was necessary, he knew better than to keep her from it. He waddled down the hallway, grateful for a chance to stretch his legs and the chance to get away from Twilight’s constant muttering in the background. If he was right, lunch time would be starting soon. Maybe he could nip down to the throne room and catch Cadance before she went to eat and convince her to tell Twilight to lighten up… Guards and servants passed him by, the former stopping and moving to one side with a snappy salute, the latter with a respectful bow. He still wasn’t sure what to make of that; bungling the anthem had been a humbling experience and Sombra was long gone. But he supposed that any recognition was a good thing. Maybe when they got back to Ponyville he could convince Mayor Mare to erect a statue or two… “Spike!” He turned at the sound of Shining Armor’s voice. “Hey there, bro,” the unicorn said as he trotted up to Spike. “Taking a walk? What’s that thing under your arm?” Spike smiled and held up the device a little proudly; it made him happy to know things others didn’t. “Hey, Shining! Oh, this? It’s an oneirology cap.” Shining blinked. “I’m going to have to pretend I know what that is.” Spike shrugged, hefting the cap as he walked and fiddling with its pointy bits and bobs. “It’s some machine Twilight made to help her study dreams. It looks into your head using, I don’t know, some kinda magic. I don’t pretend it’s not beyond me. I took a walk ‘cuz I just couldn’t take all the obscure terminology!” He blinked and then smacked himself. “Oh, great. All of Twilight’s smart words are rubbing off on me. Where were you going?” “I was on my way to the throne room. I just came in from a patrol and Cadance is going to want to hear all about it, I’m sure.” He chuckled and rolled his eyes. “She likes to get all the details out of way so we can enjoy lunch together. She absolutely hates doing royal business during lunch. Double if I have to describe every little scratch I get on patrol. She hates hearing it, but she wants to be told regardless.” “I guess she worries a lot about you, huh?” Spike asked, reaffixing the Oneirology Cap to his head if only for a lack of something else to do. “She does. I’d say she worries too much, but then I’d be asking her to not be the mare I fell in love with. We all need somepony looking out for us. It’s why I’m so glad Twilight has you and the rest of her friends.” Spike chuckled. “Yeah, we do our best to keep her out of trouble, but she just keeps falling right back in and dragging us down with her. I mean, I don’t even know what all this dream stuff is about. I didn’t have any like she did, even when she first got them. But I do know she needs us. I mean… really needs us.” Shining grunted, and was silent the rest of the way to the cavernous throne room, which still made Spike salivate on seeing all the different gemstones that went into its construction. Decorative veins of tourmaline spun through great slabs of agate and diamond, accented by the gentle white-blue sheen coming off the great arched ceiling. The open air construction allowed sunlight to pour in, gathering in pools and lazy rivers on the glassy floor. It all led up to the unmatched glory of the Crystal Throne at the far end, where the twin seats of Shining and Cadance presided over the masses. Cadance occupied one of them, her front hooves hung off one of the throne’s arms and her back hooves were splayed over the other. Spike couldn’t recall ever seeing Celestia or Luna in a pose half as casual as that, yet Cadance wore it like a glove, more of a saucy goddess than a stern empress. Several attendants doted on her, holding up this or that report for reading or potted plant for placing. Cadance seemed to notice Spike and Shining coming in without even looking, as she was already dismissing her servants before she even called to them. “Oh, hello boys!” Cadance’s musical voice echoed through the open chamber, bouncing off the arched ceiling. “I was just finishing up. Welcome back, Shining… Spike, what is that thing on your head?” “An oneirology cap!” Spike quipped with childlike glee. Far from Shining’s confusion, a look of pleased understanding crossed Cadance’s face. “Ah, I see!” she said in a grandiose, knowing tone that was uncomfortably reminiscent of Celestia herself. “Twilight has dove right into the exploration of dreams. Is she still in her room?” “Yeah, I went for a walk and ran into Shining. I just couldn’t take all the hypotheses and theorems and whatever else Twilight was saying! I mean, I wanna help her, but I can only take so many big words and weird philosophies at once, you know?” Cadance favored him with a kind smile. “Your loyalty is a great boon to her, Spike. I know she appreciates it. Now, come here Shining! I need your daily report, starting with how much you missed me.” Spike glanced around the throne room, still impressed at how well the Crystal Empire had cleaned up after the depredations of King Sombra. Princess Celestia had chosen wisely when it came to nurturing Cadance for a leadership post. Then again, Spike couldn’t really recall Celestia making something close to a mistake. Except for that whole moon banishment debacle. He glanced down at the floor, seeing his reflection, and wondered for a moment if the giant hole beneath that hid Sombra’s chambers was still there. He shook his head to dislodge the memories that threatened to well up inside his little brain. It wasn’t worth it to think about what may still be down there. Cadance had it well in hoof. No reason to think about the darkness that dwelled below, the gate of fear that peered into his mind, showed him such horrible, horrible things— And the next thing he knew, he was on the floor shivering and shaking. Shining and Cadance stood over him, calling his name, and he had such a splitting headache. “Guys?” he asked, but his words came out in a slurred mumble. “What’s going on? What’s on my head?” “Get it off him, Shining!” Cadance yelled, sounding far away. Shining tore the oneirologist cap off his head, tossing it away with a loud clatter. “What happened?” Spike muttered. “You fell,” said Shining. “Just… fell over, right here, little guy. You were shaking, and we… are you all right? Do you feel ill?” “I got a headache, I think,” Spike said, touching his forehead. Then he heard a loud ‘pop’ and Twilight stood there with her own cap still on her head. She was sweating. “Spike!” she yelled, hurrying to his side and scooping him up in her hooves. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I didn’t know that would happen!” “Didn’t know what would happen?” Cadance asked, a dangerously suspicious edge to her voice. Twilight looked up, her face achingly desperate as she cradled Spike. “The cap! The spell! I, I cast a spell, it was so simple, just a spell to try and bridge the gap between minds long-distance, like, like a tether, it was just supposed to help share dreams when we fell asleep! I’m so sorry, Spike, I have no idea what caused that feedback!” Shining Armor and Cadance shared a look. “Twilight,” said Shining with a heavy sigh, “no more experiments, okay? You’re both gonna get some rest and some food, and then we’re gonna sit quietly until your friends get here.” “Oh,” said Spike, rubbing his eyes, “so it wasn’t Sombra coming back? Thank goodness.” Twilight’s frenzied breathing stopped abruptly. Spike saw her eyes widen. “What did you say?” “Uhh… Sombra. I was thinking about Sombra when it happened, and I thought... Twilight, are you okay?” Twilight looked over her shoulder. Right where it was supposed to open up to Sombra’s secret lair, where the awful door was. “Cadance,” she asked, “what did you do about the Door of Fear after we left?” “Do we have to talk about that awful thing?” said Cadance, rubbing one hoof with another. Twilight gave her a look that said yes, they very much did have to talk about it. Cadance relented with a sigh. “It was too dangerous to go down and try to destroy it. It showed no signs of activity after Sombra was killed, but my court mages recommended it was better to keep an eye on it. We have wards up and down the staircase in the event that it does activate again. Which, I might add, it has not.” “Maybe it has,” said Twilight. “Just not in a way we’d think to detect. Or maybe it doesn’t even need to be active.” “Oh, great,” muttered Shining. “More security problems.” Twilight handed Spike off to him and trotted to the middle of the throne room. “There’s so much we still don’t understand about dream magic. That Luna hasn’t taught me. It could be Sombra figured something out…” “There’s nothing that tyrant made that we need, Twilight,” Shining snapped. “It could be a door in more ways than one,” Twilight said, and Spike recognized the faraway quality to her voice. She wasn’t listening to any pony right now. They watched in helpless silence as Twilight’s eyes glowed green and her horn swirled with ichorous black magic, striking the twin thrones and setting them ablaze with sickly strands of shadow. The ancient power lanced out and burned away the floor just as it had so many months ago, revealing the stairwell that fell into darkness, to a door that knew how to dissect minds and peel open their most painful parts. Spike felt himself reflexively recoil into Shining’s grip. “Twilight, stop!” Shining called. “What are you doing?!” “The feedback from my spell wasn’t my doing,” said Twilight, walking as if in a daze to the edge of the stairs. “Right before it happened, I felt something tug on my magic. Maybe it wanted my attention. Maybe it was trying to pull me somewhere. But the connection broke because there was something powerful that tore at the middle of the tether between me and Spike. Like a cable under too much tension it snapped back and struck us both. It could be the Door of Fear, trying to get a hold of whatever it can.” She puffed out her chest. “I’m going down there.” “Like hayseeds you are!” Shining said. “You’re not touching anything that monster made. It can’t help us.” “But it can! Or it might, I don’t know! But what if that door is part of the reason I had another dream about Dusk? What if it’s part of the reason all of this is happening? What if it’s really that easy? I could learn so much about the dream realm if I know how it studied my head, how it reached out like I want to reach out. If it can get inside a pony’s head, maybe I can use it to find someone else’s! Dusk’s!” “It wouldn’t be worth it, Twilight,” said Shining in a calm, measured voice. “You know that. Even going near something Sombra made is dangerous. Just shut the floor up again, and we’ll be rid of it soon.” Cadance watched the argument from the sidelines, her eyes flicking between all of them. “Twi,” Spike croaked. “Please. Come on back. You’re scaring me again.” She locked gazes with him, and he wasn’t much comforted. “It’s okay, Spike,” she said, ears drooping, the picture of defeat. “Nopony has to go down there if they don’t want to.” There was a pregnant pause. “But I need to.” And with a puff of smoke and another ‘pop’, she was gone. Twilight almost felt guilty about leaving them behind. Almost. But something pulled at her. Tugged, like the interference between herself and Spike. It was like a string had been attached to her horn and was drawing her in. She appeared at the bottom of the steps in a puff of purple smoke, directly in front of the Door of Fear. It wasn’t as big as she remembered. Back then it had been massive, imposing, a dark and hideous perversion on the world that gaped hideously at her, ready to swallow her up. Now, bereft of King Sombra’s dark magics animating it, it seemed quite small, as if its size had diminished along with its presence. She let magical feelers poke and prod the icy, black-blue frame, then dared to touch the door itself. Her sensory spells bounced and slid off the glassy, black onyx surface like oil on a pan. Twilight trotted forward and waited for the inevitable attack on her mind, but it never came. Yet if it was just a simple door now, how could it have interfered with her mind-working earlier? She took a deep breath, ignoring the distant, echoing calls of her brother and Spike from far above, getting closer every second. She prepared to unleash the dark magic on the door herself when the sound of flapping wings and hooves touching hard stone alerted her. “Cadance,” she said. “I’m sorry. But… but this is something I have to do. I’m not the kind of pony to leave stones unturned.” “I know,” Cadance replied. “But Twilight, you mustn’t do this alone. You said so yourself. You shouldn’t have run off like that.” “I know,” Twilight said. “It’s just… it feels like there’s something inside me, Cadance. Something that needs to come out, worming around and eating me up. It’s awful. And I get the feeling that if I can just touch this thing, this portal, or whatever it could be, I might finally get some relief.” “What makes you think the door will lead you to Dusk Shine?” “It won’t. It’s just a regular door albeit warded against most of my spells. If I open it up, there’ll be nothing there but a blank wall. Either that or the weird null-space I was almost trapped in when he almost took over last time. But… if I can turn it to my purposes…” “Then Sombra’s influence could still reach out and grab you. Twilight, why don’t we just ask Princess Luna to—” “No!” Twilight barked. Her voice bounced back to her, ricocheting like ball bearings back and forth in the small space. She winced at how long the echoes went on, hiding beneath her wing. “I mean… no. Princess Luna would want to destroy this door immediately, like Shining. And I know, I know it would be to protect me, but trying to protect me is what got us into this mess! It’s what kept me from meeting Dusk Shine sooner and being able to save him! Do you understand that, Cadance? If the Princesses had just trusted me, if I was just allowed to trust myself, I could have saved him!” She looked up with tears in her eyes. “Did I tell you what it was like when I finally saw his world through his eyes? It was dark, Cadance. Nothing but blackness and emptiness everywhere. Dusk Shine died that day, I know it. If I had been able to do something, anything at all, I could have helped. I could be talking to him right now! I wouldn’t be feeling like half of me is just missing.” She sighed, spent, and sank to her knees. “I don’t know if I can be trusted to do the right thing right now. But I know that sitting here and doing nothing hasn’t helped anyone. I don’t want my friends to get here and meet a shell of a pony who went insane because she didn’t check every avenue. I want them to meet a pony who showed herself that she could finally take control of her life again… even over something as dangerous as this.” Silence reigned, save for the very distant clip-clop of Shining’s hooves on the stairwell. Twilight looked up and saw Cadance’s gaze boring into her, regarding her with cool, calculating intent. There was little enough pity and warmth, but Twilight felt those things too. It wasn’t the gaze of a friend. It was the gaze of a Princess, wracking her mind to see how best to fix a problem without endangering her ponies. She had to make a decision, even if there were terrible consequences. It was a look that was far too grown-up, and made Twilight realize how far her old foal-sitter had come in life. At last, Cadance closed her eyes, and with the tiniest, gentlest, quietest of movements, gave Twilight a nod. Twilight stood up, wiped her eyes, and turned to face the door. She wasted no time summoning the dark spell Celestia herself had taught her, powering it with her rage and fear. The inky black shapes gathered, not just on her horn but in their shadows and in every little crevice of the room. They squiggled and squirmed like living things, aching to reach into the light and withdrawing the moment they touched it. Then, Twilight scooped them all up in her spell and launched them at the door. It would be a Door no more, but a corridor between minds, between dreams and worlds. Twilight reached deep down inside herself, summoning the will of Magic. Every story apart from hers was spun into existence by her mere being, as Magic had said. It was time to reopen the book on Dusk Shine’s world and start writing. The magic shot from her horn and collided with the dark crystal atop the door. The twisted fragment slurped up the magic like a sponge. The shadows scuttled into it, disappearing within its infinitely complex angles, and then there was silence. Twilight blinked. Cadance stood still behind her, holding her breath. “I can feel a breeze,” one of them whispered, but Twilight couldn’t be sure which. They waited and waited while nothing happened at all. Twilight sighed. “I suppose it was too much to hope for,” she whispered, feeling very thin and frail all of a sudden. “Maybe it just takes time.” The walk back up the steps was slow and solemn. She met Shining and Spike halfway and endured their berating until Cadance stepped in and tried explaining to them what Twilight had explained to her. It didn’t come across quite as well, but at the very least it stopped them from yelling at her. When she reached the top of the stairs, she went to one of the windows and looked out over the Empire. “I’m sorry, you guys,” she said quietly. “It’s just… I need to be able to do this. Even if my ideas seem crazy. This whole situation is crazy. If I can just tap back into what Magic was trying to tell me, maybe then…” She sighed and bowed her head. “If my friends were just here…” “Well sheesh, Twi, I was flying as fast as I could!” Twilight jerked back from the window with a yelp, falling over on her backside. Rainbow Dash fluttered before her, a devil-may-care grin on her face. “Ha ha! Got ya good, huh? The train’s gonna get here in a couple more hours, but I just had to stretch my wings, and then, well, your letter made it seem like you really needed company so I figured I’d just fly on ahead! Say, you don’t have anything to eat around here, do you?” In a forest at the bottom of the universe, Dusk Shine’s ears quivered. He lifted his head and looked over his shoulder, down the rows and rows of elegantly spaced trees, peering between them. Nothing stirred and nothing breathed. But he knew what he had felt, and he spoke it aloud if only to hear the sound of his own voice. “There’s something in the woods,” he said, and his voice was swallowed by the snow. He stood up and started walking again, trying to find a path that would take him away from the strange presence worming around the back of his mind. He didn’t want to know what kind of crawling horror he’d encounter in a world like this, but it couldn’t be any good. The forest grew thicker as he walked, hemming him in on all sides. Their trunks adopted curves and bends. The branches became more irregular, and he saw the indentations of roots beneath the snow. At the very least they had lost some of that surreal perfection and smoothness. Perhaps, if he kept going, he might find a place where the trees became even more like actual trees. Would the next part of the forest have leaves and real wood? If he kept walking long enough, it was entirely possible he’d make it back to something resembling reality, if not his home. He heard a crack. He stopped walking. It stopped walking too. Dusk held his breath, ears straight up like spear tips. “Hello?” he called, his echo swallowed by the snow. “Is someone there?” No answer, not that he expected one. He continued forward, trying to find places where the trees were less thick so he could turn and get a look at his pursuer. But every time he turned around, he couldn’t be sure if he actually saw something. Either his vision was completely untrustworthy, or he was seeing black shadows flit behind the trees, trees that by anyone’s reckoning were too thin to hide behind. “I see you,” he said, but not loud enough for his voice to carry. He doubted whatever it was cared that he knew it was there anymore. He turned and kept walking, mind racing for ways to defend himself. He couldn’t cast any spells that he knew of. He likely wasn’t strong enough to snap any of the branches, and it may attack him while he was busy finding out if he was. The only real option was to run and hope it gave up easily. He kept walking in any case, and the feeling of being stalked only grow more and more insistent. He heard the thing’s footsteps, gently crunching in the snow almost perfectly in time with his own, but just enough out of synch that he noticed. Thousands of years of instinct screamed at him to bolt, but he had to pick the time. He wouldn’t be ruled by fear. Not after seeing what the Nightmare had done. He wouldn’t be ruled by fear. He wouldn’t— A gentle whisper of wind. A shadow very briefly obscuring the sun. He looked up and held his breath, and it seemed the world followed suit. He had thought, just for the barest moment, that he’d seen wings and a tail, and— And then he heard the pounding of something heavy behind him and a glass-like crash, too close for comfort. His muscles moved on their own, hurling him to the right, and he felt the brush of something big as it touched his tail and then hit the ground hard. He lifted his head from the snow and glimpsed powerful, stocky limbs lifting two giant hands that tore up the snow and crushed a tree that shattered like glass, spraying him with sharp, stinging shards. The creature the limbs were attached to was bipedal, thrice his size even with its ape-like hunch. It turned to face Dusk, but all he could see was its sheer size. Its whole body shimmered like a mirage, like it was constantly about to wink out of existence if he blinked. But when Dusk blinked, it was still there. He ran. The thing gave chase without a roar or a growl, or even the hot, eager panting of a predator about to grab a meal. Dusk heard it crushing trees and carving divots in the snow with its sheer bulk. Dusk tore through snow drifts and ducked low-hanging branches, but the shadowy creature crushed everything in its way without even slowing down. Claws that weren’t all there groped for him, a mouth he couldn’t see released clouds of steam as it breathed in a steady cadence. He didn’t know what it would do if it caught him, but he did know that couldn’t happen. In the distance he spied some kind of castle, taller than any mountain, reaching up like a spire and shining brightly as if covered in icy frost. It was too far away to offer safety. He ran for it regardless, feeling something deep down competing for space with the fear. A compulsion, a searing enigma of a thought that left him reeling. He recognized that place from somewhere long ago, or maybe something inside or about it, some indefinable quality that illuminated fragments of memory. But the thing behind him was upon him before he could even wonder about what he would have found in there. A talon as cold as the snow snatched his leg and yanked straight upwards. Dusk’s world spun as he flipped head over tail and landed in a heap in front of one of the trees. Acting on instinct he rolled away just as a massive fist punched the ground where he lay, leaving a crater. The ethereal arm it was attached to swung round and obliterated a tree trunk just above ear level, showering Dusk with shards as he scrambled for cover knowing there wasn’t any. He found he wasn’t scared, not really. Or maybe he was too terrified to feel scared. Only one thought had room in his head: I can’t die like this. But he was certainly going to anyway. Ironic that he’d be going back to the dark so soon after his resurrection. Maybe he’d have better luck the next time around. He closed his eyes. A great hand swept down and scooped him up, nearly cracking his ribs. It smelled of sweat and fear and felt like a shaggy carpet. His hooves left the ground and he was aware he was flying. Hitting the snow was surprisingly painless, though, it didn’t even hurt. Whatever grabbed him released him gently and set him down. Maybe the creature wanted to toy with him before it landed the killing blow. But the stomping was less insistent now, more cautious. He opened his eyes again. A pony stood between him and the mirage monster, having just set him down after lifting him away from the creature’s reach. A stallion by the look of his thick build, and a pegasus by the wings stretched out aggressively at his sides. He wore heavy clothes much better suited for the frigid landscape, all furs piled on furs with a hood up over his ears and thick goggles over his eyes. He clutched a long spear in one hoof, its grim, thick head pointed towards the beast, which hopped nervously from one limb to the other. The stallion’s tail flicked behind him, and with it, all the colors of the rainbow. “No,” Dusk mumbled through a mouth thick with phlegm. “It can’t be.” The stallion turned and lifted his goggles, exposing cerise eyes that burned like sunset. “You died,” Dusk rasped. Rainbow Blitz shook his head. “Loyalty never dies.” The beast charged and Rainbow rose to meet it. He moved faster than Dusk’s eyes could follow, faster than any pony he’d ever seen, leaping above a swiping claw as it ripped a meter wide furrow in the earth. The spear flicked out like a serpent’s tongue and caught the beast on its shoulder, tearing away a wisp of its smoky body. Now the monster roared. It sounded like a foghorn, ominous and artificial, but Dusk felt its rage nonetheless. Massive tree-trunk limbs swept out and annihilated three trees in one circle as it chased the pegasus clumsily; Rainbow darted in and out of its reach like one possessed, leaving a rainbow contrail as he went, tearing pieces off the monster with each pass. Enraged, the creature dug its claws into the earth, flinging dirt and snow into Rainbow’s face. He spun to avoid the worst of it, but too close the thing’s hand, which caught his tail in mid-air. With a triumphant roar it whipped him around and hurled him straight through a thick tangle of branches. Rainbow rolled in mid-air amidst the falling shards and hit a solid trunk with his back legs, then launched off it again right back at the creature, his spear couched under one arm. The creature recoiled, holding up one hand as if to shield itself. The spear tip slid straight through into its skull, and Rainbow kept going, colliding with it face-first in a tremendous crash of feathers and muscle. The monster toppled, but Rainbow hung on gamely to the spear as they went down in a spray of snow, ending up flopped over its head. The creature melted away like smoke in the wind, leaving him splayed out in a crater of tree fragments and patches of acrid smelling ooze. For a while, Dusk just listened to their breathing until it came down from its terror-induced high. He mustered his courage and crawled over to the lip of the crater, peering down at Rainbow. The other stallion tilted his head towards Dusk. “Hey,” Rainbow said. “What are you doing here, Dusk?” Dusk shook his head. “I’m not sure.” Rainbow grinned and looked back up at the pale sky. “Oh, good. Me neither.” Author's Note Welcome to rule 63, where stallions are stallions, and mares are stallions.
PrologueHe couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. There was no air. There was no anything. He kicked a hoof and smacked the universe into motion, burrowing through what was and could have been. He felt hard packed coldness that was wet on his fur, and realized it was snow. He breached the surface of reality and found wind and cold and open space. His lungs were suddenly in his chest and burned for air, expanding of their own accord, and filled his mouth with snow. He flailed and kicked and carved a path upwards, surrounded by confusion and hard, packed ice. His new body was dying. He felt it. But he couldn’t die here. He wouldn’t die here. This wasn’t death, this was his new birth. His horn pierced the surface and found itself wrapped in cold. His lungs spasmed and he forced his head still higher, grasping at the wind as if it could lend a hoof and pull him the rest of the way. He fought his way out of the tomb of unreality and into the fearsome world outside, tearing free of the snow’s grip and exposing himself to the shearing wind and biting cold. Everything was only half-lit, illuminated by sunlight filtering through a stormy, brooding sky. Even that was too bright for his eyes, and he squeezed them shut. He didn’t know who he was, where he was, or how he was alive, and didn’t care about any of those things save that he lived. He was pure. He was whole. He was. A unicorn. I am a unicorn, he realized, and then he remembered the life inside him that needed to be nourished. He filled his lungs with his first breath, felt the freezing air whoosh into his mouth and over his tongue with such sweet, sharp feeling, turning his saliva to ice and tearing his throat. He didn’t care, only breathed and breathed until his lungs were fit to burst. He put his hooves on his head, felt his mane whipping in the wind and the lids over his eyes and knew that he had a solid body once again. He remembered what it felt like to have blood rushing in his veins and a heart pounding out a rhythm of life against the utter dark. He knew again the strangeness of being confined to flesh and bone, a spirit that wrapped around a frail frame. With his body and his nerves and his skin, he remembered pain. He screamed. He screamed out the death of a world he couldn’t remember, screamed for the pain of dead ponies and lost memories, for a face he couldn’t see and friends he didn’t know he had. He screamed for the sake of screaming and for the joy and horror of being alive and alone. He screamed until every ounce of breath was driven from his lungs, and then he took another breath and screamed again. Tears sprang from his eyes and burned red-hot on his cheeks, freezing before they reached his chin, and he began to sob and scream all at once. He collapsed into the snow and tried to bury the pain he felt in his chest, but it only seemed to grow the more he tried to ignore it, and there alone with nopony to console him he wept and railed against forces he couldn’t name or recognize. Only when his body could take no more did he stop screaming, and if only to remember the sensation of movement, he trudged into the endless blizzard. He didn’t know how long he walked, or if time was there to be measured. The hidden sun didn’t move and the snow did not abate. He longed for shelter and found a cave bored into the side of what might have been a mountain. It was too dark to see the peak or how far it went around. With no other choice he wandered inside. By the time he left the wind, a coat of ice covered him and his skin rubbed raw. He welcomed the pain to distract him from the gaping emptiness inside him. He put his hoof to his chest and knew there was skin and bone there, but somehow he felt a yawning chasm there too, an emptiness that needed to be filled. He walked deeper into the cave, finding his way illuminated by crystal shards growing from the walls that glowed all the colors of the rainbow. The shards became patches until the very ground was a shifting kaleidoscope of color and light. He went to the very deepest part of the cave, and there he found a wall blocking his passage, blank and smooth. “Re… re-re-… m-m-member,” he said through chattering teeth. He put his hoof on the stone and rubbed it back and forth, trying to score some message there. He searched around the floor of the cavern and found flecks of stone, picked one up by the hoof, and dragged it over the rock. It left behind a white trail, and with that he drew. One, two, three strokes, one six-pointed star. He smacked the stone into the wall five times, and drew a huge scribble on top of the star. “Remember,” he said, growling the word. “Remember, remember!” He pounded his forehead into the cave wall, directly in the center of the star. His horn ached, longing to release something that never found its way to the tip. In one swift movement he plucked up the stone again and scored the wall with more strange symbols and half-formed sketches. He worked in a feverish daze, taking an age, a second, an hour or a day to finish his work. One moment he was drawing and the next he was done, drenched in cold sweat and leaning against the wall. What he’d scribbled meant everything and nothing, the most and the least. It was all he could do to even remember how to breathe. “Remember,” he whispered. “I remember me.” He glanced back up at the wall, full of his meaningless scribbles, and touched the six-pointed star with his hoof. It began to glow. “Now you will too.”
Threshold“A Princess always remembers that she is a servant to her people. A Princess always remembers that she is not merely a pony, she is an ideal.” Twilight Sparkle watched Cadance strut stiffly across the room, her hooves clicking on the hard marble floor. It was polished to true perfection; she saw mirror images of herself and Cadance below their hooves, following their every move. “A Princess cannot be taken by surprise!” Cadance barked, whirling around and making her bulbous dress billow behind her. Her eyes were narrow and fearful, and Twilight shrank back into the couch she lay upon, gently burying her nose in the cushion she had tucked under her chin. Cadance stalked back across the room with practiced, measured steps. Every movement was premeditated and breathtakingly elegant, smooth as the gossamer thin silk trailing from her dress that drifted peacefully in the air. “And by that I mean: she must never look like she is surprised. A Princess will face many surprises but she will never appear surprised.” She stopped in front of Twilight, who regarded her wide-eyed. The older alicorn regarded her younger out of the corner of her eyes, squinting until they were ferocious little lines cut across her face. “A Princess,” Cadance hissed, “is the definition of poise. A master of the self. She is unconquerable. Untouchable. A paragon of all things equine.” She leaned closer and forced Twilight down until she almost suffocated herself in the folds of her cushion. “Do you understand?” Cadance whispered. “Yes,” Twilight whispered back. Cadance leaned even closer until their noses touched. “Do you? Do you really? Do you really really—” She stopped, clenching her teeth and desperately trying to keep her cheeks from bulging. “Do you r- fft! Pfft!” Her sputtering made Twilight’s lips twitch, and then she was grinning and Cadance was laughing and they melted into puddles of giggles. Twilight sprawled over the couch and Cadance rolled onto her back on the immaculate floor, kicking her hooves in the air. “That’s her! That’s so her!” Twilight giggled, burying her face in the cushions. “Oh dear, I really shouldn’t be making fun of her like this.” “But it’s so much fun!” cried Cadance. “Luna should’ve come with you, Twilight. Maybe she’d get to lighten up like you.” “Ohhh, no! No no no no!” Twilight said, holding up her hoof. “She’d jump right into trying to teach you how to be a proper Princess and then we’d have to try and tell her how we already are, and then she’ll get all upset and we’ll have to call in Princess Celestia who’ll just tell us ‘Both of you need to learn to work together!’ And I’ll tell her ‘I am!’ but Luna will say ‘No, there is but one way to rule!’ And then Celestia will sigh and I’ll feel bad and Luna will be in a terrible mood for the rest of the night—” She stopped when Cadance’s hoof, slipped free of its shoe, pressed gently to her lips. The other alicorn’s eyes went soft and shimmery. “It’s really that bad?” Twilight groaned and nudged her way into a hug. “It’s really that bad,” she said. “Thank you so much for letting me visit, Cadance. I just… I just had to get away from… everything. I’m supposed to worry about a kingdom now, and I just got a castle, and I’ve been having to go all over Equestria fixing stuff but it feels like I’m never good enough…” Cadance rolled her eyes as Twilight trailed off into a depressed mumble. “It’s okay,” said Cadance, stroking Twilight’s mane. “We all have some rough spots on the road. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t an end to it.” Twilight sighed into Cadance’s mane. “It feels like there isn’t.” She pulled away and walked across the marble floor, her hooves click-clacking. She came to a balcony and put her hooves up, staring out over the vastness of the Crystal Empire. It was past midday and the sun looked especially low for this time of the year, as if it were trying to peek inside and get a good look at Twilight. The exceptional brightness of the crystal houses and the crystal ponies shining in the afternoon light didn’t hurt her eyes anymore, but they still ached all the same for something she wanted to see but remained hidden. “I’m scared a bumpy road is all my life will be, even if it comes to an end. I won’t live forever, I know that. Nothing does.” “Except love,” said Cadance, coming up beside her. “And friendship. Can’t forget that, my little protégé.” “Yeah. Yeah, I won’t,” said Twilight. “But I just don’t know if I’m strong enough to make it to the end. Every trial I’ve passed before, every situation I’ve fixed, every time I’ve come swooping down out of the sky as ‘The One and Only’ Princess Twilight… it doesn’t make the road ahead of me any smoother. In fact it’s like the bumps are mad I made it over them and started to turn into mountains.” Cadance sighed, and to Twilight it seemed like a happy sigh. “Nopony said life is easy. Even me and Shining have problems sometimes. But I don’t think things are meant to fit perfectly together… love isn’t a saw that cuts out and adds pieces until ponies are a different shape and click together. It’s a glue that binds them together, pointy bits and all. It’s a choice made every single day.” Cadance waved a hoof out over the Empire and all its citizens that milled about under the watchful Crystal Palace. “Every day I wake up and every night I go to sleep, I remind myself that I love this place. I remind myself that I love Shining and you and Equestria. I choose to have love in my heart and slather it all over everything, like this!” She waggled her hoof in front of Twilight’s face and smeared it over the sight of the Empire, stuck her tongue out, and went “Sssssmssshhhpppt!” It made Twilight giggle. Cadance’s beatific smile wrenched downward to a frown. “But love can be twisted. It can bind us to things we don’t actually want or understand, but love too much to let go.” Twilight grunted. “I know that feeling too well.” She remembered Celestia in the middle of the Canterlot’s throne room sobbing wretchedly, begging forgiveness. She remembered Luna and the fearsome need for love that made her Nightmare real. She remembered the twisted love that made her loathe and desire Celestia’s approval all at once. All of it so long ago now, but still so fresh. A knife twisted in her heart and she almost cried. Cadance rested a hoof on her shoulder, knowing what she was thinking. “It’s still worth it, though. Love should never be totally absent from a pony’s heart. Otherwise… well. We’ve seen what creatures devoid of love can do.” Her own eyes went distant and suddenly she seemed very far away. Twilight looked up at her, rapt with attention. “I tried to talk to Queen Chrysalis in the caves when she had me,” said Cadance. “She visited thrice and gloated each time. I tried to tell her what I’m telling you: that true love, the love that gives you real power, isn’t taken or coerced or demanded. It’s given freely, like rain falls without caring who it falls on. I looked into her heart while I spoke from mine.” Cadance closed her eyes tight and looked pained. “I saw a hole there, Twilight. A gaping, gnashing maw that only wanted to eat and eat and eat, like it wanted to be hungry and never full. Without love a creature can’t do anything except steal, because it has nothing to give. It made me scared and sad for her all at once.” She opened her eyes again and they were frightfully old, reminding Twilight of Celestia and Luna. “Whatever drives a changeling, or Sombra, or Tirek… it’s not what drives Luna to be so hard on us, or Celestia to have been as desperate as she was when the Nightmare found you. And I know for a fact that you, Twilight, are not driven by lack of love. If anything, we all have too much.” Twilight sniffled. “That’s what the Nightmare said.” Cadance tilted her head. “It was right. But that’s why you beat it.” Twilight circled a hoof on the balcony edge. "It didn't make it any easier though." Cadance smiled. "That's the beautiful, awful, wonderful, terrible truth about love. It doesn't make things easy and it doesn't make the pain go away. But it does make anything possible. No, defeating the Nightmare wasn't easy even with all the love in the world. But without it, you wouldn't have gotten anywhere." She laid her hoof over Twilight's. "Your love is as pure and wonderful a thing as I've ever seen, Twilight. Let it buoy you up like wind beneath your wings. Let it take you further than you've ever imagined. It won't clear the path ahead, but at least that path will be yours to walk." A deep, familiar voice interrupted them. "Since when did you become such a philosopher, Cadance?" "Shining!" both mares cried at once, turning and lunging at the stallion. Shining Armor backpedaled a moment, his eyes widening with shock before they tackled him and all tumbled onto the floor, laughing. To Twilight, it was like she was laughing away some great weight in her chest. "Okay, okay, I get it, I love you too!" Shining said, playfully trying to pry them off. Twilight only stopped hugging him when he gave her one of his old mane ruffles, then stood back to let him up. Cadance still clung to him, and they giggled at each other as Twilight spoke. "When did you get up here you big sneaker?" she asked. "Just a minute ago. I heard you talking and I snuck in. Sounded important." Cadance frowned. "We were just going over some of the problems Twilight's been having since..." She trailed off, and Twilight bit her lip and glanced to one side. Shining sighed, wrapping a sympathetic hoof around his sister's shoulders. "Hey, I know," he said quietly. "You already told us everything." "No," Twilight whispered, burying her face in Shining's chest. "Not everything. I’m sorry. It’s been over a year and I still get nightmares." Her heartbeat sounded louder than usual as she tried to shut the world out and hide in her brother’s fur. “I haven’t told anypony anything about that horrible time,” she whispered. “Not really. There’s so much I can’t even put into words.” "Just take your time," Cadance whispered, nuzzling Twilight's ear. "We're both here for you." "You shouldn't be so hard on yourself," said Shining, a frown etched across his muzzle. "Are you sure you only want to stay just the weekend? You just got here today. A few more days won't hurt. The guest rooms still need breaking in, you know." "No, no, it's fine," Twilight said even as a wave of fatigue crashed over her, making her go limp against her brother with a yawn. "I just... I just needed a short break. Then I can get back to work." Her half-lidded eyes didn't miss the glance Shining and Cadance shared. "I think getting back to work is part of the problem," said Cadance. "You're right, Twilight. Luna has been riding everypony really hard about all these unimportant things. Celestia is still aloof and thinks I don't notice. And you, Twilight... you keep charging off into the sunset to help solve Equestria's friendship problems nonstop. I'm worried about all of you. Before we do anything else you need to rest. Proper rest." "M'fine," Twilight muttered as her eyelids drooped. The train ride here had been awfully long—she was a stickler for taking regular transportation like a common pony instead of using her magic just to get here faster. And talking to Cadance had cut the strings of her anxiety, letting her fall slack at last. “Okay. C’mon champ,” her big brother said, ignoring her mewling protests. She felt Shining's magic wrap around her like a blanket and lift her onto his strong back, like he did when she was a filly, and her eyes closed completely. Not long after she felt a real blanket wrap around her, warm and soft, and she was on a downy mattress. She fell asleep to the warm sounds of Cadance humming some far-off, wondrous tune, a wordless melody composed in some lonely glen at the beginning of the world, and it reminded her so much of when Celestia coddled her as a filly that she even curled up like one. She felt love surround her and willingly fell into its embrace, letting her mind drift away. /-/-/-/ Twilight’s hoof scraped over stone. She looked up at the blank cavern wall and recoiled from it, gasping. This was not Cadance’s castle. This wasn’t a place she knew. She turned around and saw only darkness, and realized she didn’t know anything about this place or how she’d come here. A noise from behind the stone wall startled her. “Remember.” It was muffled, yet she knew the words before she even heard them. Without thinking she reached up and touched the wall again. It felt warm and tantalizingly thin, as if with a single push she could bring it crashing down. What? Who? Why? she asked the voice without truly speaking. There was a sound of rock scraping on rock. “Remember! Remember remember remember!” Who is that? Is that my voice? It couldn’t have been. It was deep and masculine, yet it was tinged with such sad desperation, such breathtaking determination. She knew it from somewhere, but something kept her from knowing, something deep and dark, like a gulf or a curtain between her and sweet remembrance. The scraping grew more intense. Somepony was trapped behind the wall. Somepony needed her help. Her instincts jolted her to life and she thumped hard on the rock with her hooves. It shuddered but did not give way. “Hello? Are you there? I’m here! Tell me who you are! Let me help you!” “Remember!” the voice growled, and something in its tone pierced her heart. Tears sprang unbidden to her eyes and she began pounding fervently on the rock. “I’m trying!” she cried. “Please! Just say your name! Tell me something! I’m here for you!” She cast around for something to knock the wall down. More large rocks were scattered all around. She picked one up in her hoof and banged it against the stone before her, trying to hammer her way through. “I’m coming,” she grunted. “I’m coming! Don’t worry. I’ll be there soon.” The noises from the other side were fervent, manic, distressed. Or perhaps she felt all those things at once and they were merely rebounding off the wall, feeding into her own hysteria and driving her crazy. All she knew was the wall had to come down. “Just… gotta… get…” she whispered, bashing and scratching and pleading and kicking. The marks she left on the stone grew more coherent while her movements only became ever more erratic. Her limbs grew heavy. Her brow beaded with sweat. Still she punished the stone. A crack appeared in the wall, and through it, a faint glow of light. “I’m here,” she whispered. “I’m—” Something yanked and something pulled, and all she could do was fall away as she felt torn in two. She didn’t even feel her back hit the ground. /-/-/-/ Twilight’s eyes flew open. Before she took a single breath she sat upright and threw the covers away from her with a disgusted grunt. They landed on Spike, who slept next to her bed in a little pile of cushions, and the baby dragon sputtered and spat as the downy comforter smothered him. “Ah! Hey! Twilight?! What’s going on?” A loud clack of hooves on marble as Twilight dropped onto the floor. Spike continued to fumble and claw at the blanket. “Twilight, say something!” He found his way out in time to see Twilight heading for the balcony, flinging the doors open with the heavy hoof of magic. They made a bang that stopped his little heart. “Twilight?” he whispered, now curling the offending blankets around his shoulders again. Fear and reverence gripped his heart as he watched Twilight spread her wings as though to take off, her mane a fearsome mess and her eyes slitted and narrow with intense concentration. He’d known Princess Celestia long enough to know regality when he saw it, and right now Twilight was a frightening and naked example. His caretaker put her hooves on the balcony railing, looking out over the Crystal City. A carpet of stars hung heavy across the sky, reflected in kind by the spires and verandas below the palace. Even at night the entire metropolis glowed and twinkled. The city was a slice of the sky all its own. To Twilight, being here was just as good as being up there. “He’s alive,” she said. “Who is?” Spike asked. Twilight leapt onto the railing, balanced precariously. She threw her head back and her wings out, and then tipped forward just far enough to fall. She heard Spike cry her name, heard little claws scrape on the floor, and then a weight on her tail unbalanced her just as vertigo took over and she began the plunge. “Twiliiiight!” Spike shrieked as he clung to Twilight’s tail for dear life, his voice competing with the wind. Twilight’s feathers snapped as they caught the air, making it roar as she pulled up. Spike gritted his teeth as his foot claws scraped over streets made of diamond and then left the earth completely. They rushed into the air, surprising a few late-night strollers with their updraft and leaving Cadance’s citizens baffled at a Princess who flew so wildly so late at night. She didn’t bother with them. None of her thoughts were here in the city, or the Empire, or Equestria itself anymore. They raced just ahead of her, going up, up, up into the sky, and she chased them with the steady beat of her wings and the drum of her heart. She galloped on the air and still her thoughts outpaced her, teasing and cajoling as they danced just out of reach. Spike’s screaming was just a mild nuisance in her ears as she left the earth far behind and sailed into the frigid clouds, and even the gleaming crystal city was just another light among millions. Further, she thought, I have to go further! This whole world was incomplete. The stars’ lights were so lackluster, the colors of the Crystal Empire so dull and dreary compared to the beauty her mind had touched. A million billion possibilities waited just out of reach, right at the tip of her hoof. She exalted in the desperate need that swelled in her chest, felt herself be pierced by the exquisite sadness of a great and powerful feeling that she could never quite name, and kept flying. No amount of exertion seemed to tire her out. No distance took her far enough. No words contained the vastness of what she felt. It was only after she breached the cloud layer and felt little talons prick her flanks did she stop and come to rest on a wispy cirrus. “Twilight,” Spike snapped, clambering onto her back with shaking claws, “don’t you ever do that again!” “What?” she asked, gasping and grinning. She whipped her tail and scattered part of the cloud, and then for good measure smacked it again. “Do what? Fly? Or fly with you hanging on back there?” “Both,” Spike snarled, securing his arms firmly around her neck. He didn’t like heights, and they were so high now the ground looked painted and the trees looked like toys. “You scared the heck out of me, Twilight! That was worse than a Pinkie Sense moment. Have you gone crazy?” “I did,” Twilight said, too giddy to be mortified she was acting like Pinkie. “I did go crazy, Spike. I am currently totally insane and I love it! My heart is pounding! Can’t you hear it?” Spike tilted his head one way and then another. “I hear the wind,” he said. “And I hear my bed calling for me. ‘Spike,’ it’s saying. ‘Spike! Get away from the crazy mare and get a good night’s sleep.’” Twilight laughed and didn’t warn him when she jumped off the cloud and dove straight down. The distant ground with its toy trees and painted ground became big and real terrifyingly quickly. “I remember!” she crowed over Spike’s terrified screeching. “I remember everything! I have to do something about this, Spike!” “Pull up! Pull up!” he wailed, and she did, but only after she found a few trees to buzz, shearing their leaves off with her wings. “He’s out there! He’s alive! Don’t you see what this means, Spike? He’s alive because I believe he’s alive because he always was alive! He’s alive and I’m going to see him!” “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Spike, closing his eyes as she corkscrewed and looped over a lake, “but I’ll agree with anything you say if it makes you stop flying.” Twilight screeched to a halt in midair, suddenly somber. “You’re right, Spike. Flying is absolutely not going to help right now.” She banked towards the Crystal Empire and flew as fast as her wings could carry her. “Right now I need you to take a letter.” Spike watched forlornly as their bedroom window went zooming by. Twilight spun around the tower in a giant loop and aimed for the lower part of the great castle, gliding silently through one of the windows of the Empire’s library. Between two giant shelves she spread her wings and dropped onto the crystal floor with a click of hooves that echoed through the halls, but she didn’t seem to notice or care. A curious night-shift librarian poked her head out from her desk at the front lobby. “Princess Twilight?” she asked in a venerative whisper. Twilight didn’t know if the respect was for her or the library. “What can I do for you?” “Inform Princess Cadance that I am in the Library and require her attention, immediately,” Twilight said in a clipped tone, turning back to Spike before the librarian even left. “Grab a quill and paper,” she said as she approached an empty desk, letting Spike slide off her tail. “I need to keep this quick and short.” “You know, usually I trust you if we’re gonna be experimenting, but this is kinda weirding me out, Twilight,” Spike grumbled. “What’s gotten you so worked up? You didn’t even make a checklist.” “I already know what I need,” Twilight snapped. “I can’t let anything interrupt me this time.” Spike peered at her over the top of the parchment. She moved with a breathless excitement, swept up in something that had left her inspired and distracted until it was done. He knew the mood well; she was having one of her ‘mad genius’ movements. But the way she stomped her hooves and gritted her teeth made him worry. “Dear Princess Celestia,” Twilight said, enveloping a whole row of books with her magic and tearing them off the shelves to circle around her head, “I’ve had a dream. No, scratch that. An epiphany.” “Epif…” Spike mumbled, trying to keep up as Twilight muttered to herself like a mad genius, snatching glimpses at seemingly random pages from random books and darting back and forth through the aisles. She snatched up another quill and dipped the feather in an ink jar, and used it to draw arcane symbols on the ground. “A year ago we suffered the depredations of the Nightmare’s near-return. Now I’ve sensed the stirrings of a power I thought was lost. Somehow, some way… Dusk Shine found a way to speak to me.” Spike dropped his quill. In the deathly silence of the library the velvety sound of the quill hitting the ground echoed like a drum. The whole world paused for breath. “Oh,” he said in a delicate whisper. “Him.” “Yes, that him,” Twilight said, forcing the world back into motion with an impatient tsk. She piled books to one side only to swing another row right off the shelves. Pages flipped like leaves in a windstorm, but every so often something seemed to catch her eye and she stopped to draw another letter or star or thaumaturgic rune on the ground. “Keep writing, Spike.” Spike bent down to pick up the quill and stopped halfway. With the slow certainty that only a child could muster, he stood back up. “I don’t know about this, Twilight.” The alicorn didn’t answer him. Her scribbling took on an even greater fervor. Spike fiddled with his claws. “I know you really wanted this to happen. You don’t say so in public… not even to me… but I know how important it is to you.” The loud flump of books hitting the floor and an angry flick of Twilight’s tail answered him. “I mean,” Spike said, his voice gaining confidence and volume as he went on, “Twilight, you talk to yourself about it when you think nopony’s looking. And sometimes you stare up at the ceiling and whisper about all these scary things, like new worlds and finding doors and…” He gulped heavily. “And leaving. At first I just thought it was you getting over, well, everything, but I see the books you keep lying around. I see how you keep asking Luna for more lessons on dream magic. And if I noticed, then Luna definitely noticed, and I think it has something to do with why she’s had such a temper lately.” “Spike,” said Twilight, her voice losing all warmth and turning over to reveal the ice beneath, “I need you to write that letter. I’m extending Princess Celestia the courtesy of letting her know before I attempt this.” “Attempt what?” Spike said, spreading his little arms as far as they could go. “You were blaming Luna about how things were getting so frosty between you, but we go all the way to the Crystal Empire to get away from it? And now this! Out of nowhere you’re jumping out of bed and flying around like a crazy pony! What are you even drawing there on the floor?” “A subliminal runic transfer system,” said Princess Cadance, appearing out of the shadows of the library, closely flanked by Shining Armor and a very nervous librarian. “Colloquially known as a ‘dream circle.’” Twilight tried not to notice the dawning comprehension on Spike’s face, with horror close on its heels. “Wait,” the little dragon said, pointing at Twilight. “You were… you were getting ready to go! Right now! You were just gonna jump in there with no ideas? No plan?” Twilight finally found her embarrassment and hid her face beneath her wing. “I… I would’ve been able to figure it out—” “Without telling me?!” Spike squeaked. Twilight gasped, coming out of her shelter full of bluster and righteous indignation. Arguments of all kinds to the contrary stood ready to burst forth. It all died in her throat at the sight of Spike, Cadance, and Shining all glaring at her. “Twilight,” said Shining, “please step away from that thing.” She trotted nervously in place, bit her lip, and shook her head. “Shining, please, you don’t… Cadance, you have to… Spike! I, I was just going to—” “Twilight,” said Cadance, and something in her voice stopped Twilight’s jitters. A sense of calm washed over her, stilling the roiling sea that was bubbling just beneath the surface of her skin. “Twilight,” Cadance said again, “do as your brother says.” Twilight stomped her hoof petulantly, but there was no force behind it. It was the act of a desperate child, and it scared her how true that was. “You don’t know what it feels like,” she whispered as a cold sweat broke out over her brow. “You don’t know, you weren’t there! I see him, and… and then I get this feeling, this incompleteness, like—” “It’s all right,” said Cadance, stepping forward and nudging Twilight with her nose, gently guiding her out of the circle. “We understand—” “No, you don’t!” Twilight snapped, recoiling to hide behind a stack of books. “None of you do. None of you can. I’ve been living a lie ever since that day, and I came up here to try and hide from the fact that I haven’t done anything to fix it!” Spike poked his head around the book pile, trying to look her in the eye. “But Twilight, you did so many things! All the girls got their keys, and you’ve really helped around Ponyville, and let’s not even mention Tirek!” “Yeah, let’s not,” Shining murmured, rubbing his horn. “You shouldn’t feel inadequate, Twilight,” Cadance said, settling down on her stomach and leaning into Twilight’s hiding place like she was trying to draw out a faun. “Nothing that happened that day with the Nightmare was your fault. You beat it!” “With Dusk’s help,” Twilight whispered. The blank stares she got only made her more frustrated, and she turned away to hide her face behind her wings. “You wouldn’t understand. I don’t blame you for it. How could you, unless you were there? Unless you were me?” “Try us,” said Cadance. Twilight sighed and stood up. “One moment.” She disappeared in a flash of light, and when she returned with another loud pop she held a mirror in her magic. “Look,” she said, and floated it in front of Cadance. Spike and Shining joined her. “What do you see?” “Myself,” said Cadance, patient as ever. “Yes,” Twilight said, distracted, “yes, but you only see you. The only you that ever could or ever would be. You’re an alicorn, Cadance. The Princess of Love. None of you is extraneous or unnecessary. Look hard, Cadance. You can’t see anything but you, right?” “I’m not sure I understand,” Cadance answered. Twilight’s words rolled right over hers. “But imagine if you looked in that mirror… and part of you wasn’t there.” Cadance’s reflection gasped in horror as her wings blipped out of existence. “But not just that,” Twilight said, her voice taking on a dreamy, distant tone. “What if something was added?” Cadance’s reflection was an alicorn once more. This time she wore strange and beautiful clothing, and stood taller than her original, nearly the size of Celestia, her mane blustered by intangible wind. The library had melted away to a book-crowded study, and a bright sun shone through wooden shutters on the windows. This Cadance looked grand and imperious, yet her eyes gazed at something far away with unspeakable compassion. Twilight saw Cadance’s breath catch in her throat. Shining gulped, either frightened or awed by the vision. “Twilight, what are you trying to say?” Twilight shook her head. She knew they could scarcely believe her, and that made it hard for her to believe herself. “I’m telling you what I see and what I don’t see, and how much I notice all the little gaps and missing pieces in who I am, and also the entire expanse of what could be there. Now. When you put another mirror up behind you…” Another mirror popped into existence opposite the first. Now an entire hallway of infinite mirrors and infinite Cadances stretched out ahead and behind. Shining and Cadance and Spike all gasped at once, because every last one was different. Tall or short, male or female, missing wings or horns or even their equinity entirely—somewhere in the far back they saw a dragon. Twilight gave a weary smile as she stepped up beside Cadance, and now an infinitude of Twilight Sparkles smiled up at the Princess of Love, every single one unique in some strange way. Though some were obvious a few looked uncannily similar, and yet that only made them all the more alien because Cadance knew they were different. “Every night,” Twilight whispered with tears in her eyes, “I have seen this when I look in the mirror. But the one who matters… the only one who ever looked back… who really, truly saw me… wasn’t there.” Her horn glowed. “Until now.” All the Cadances and Twilights, along with the second mirror, vanished. In the place of millions stood Dusk Shine, moving in synch with Twilight, speaking with her. Twilight reached up and touched the glass, and she smiled sadly as he smiled back. “The one who stands right on the other side. My true reflection. What I want and what I am all at once. The one who is the most like me, and yet… so far away this tiny pane of glass is the depth of a whole other universe.” She let out a breathless gasping laugh. “We saved each other. We made it all right again. And I… I dishonored that victory by hiding from the lessons I learned and the relationships I should have kept building. Celestia and Luna deserve better. He deserves better. I want to make it all right. Really, I do!” Her legs gave out and she dropped onto her flanks. The mirror, and Dusk, vanished. “But I’m scared, guys. I’m scared of reaching out again and being hurt. I always knew things had changed between me and Luna and Celestia… but it was so easy to just sit back and wait instead of trying to bridge that gap again.” She gave a desperate hiccupping sob. “I almost killed them. I almost killed everything. Do you know what that’s like? To know that you have the power to end everything that you love? My friends kept telling me after it was over: ‘It’s all right! We understand! It was the Nightmare, not you!’ But I look into their eyes and I still see the fear I caused. When I held Applejack over a cliff, when I almost killed Pinkie Pie, when I knew I was going to use the Elements to destroy this world and remake it like some… some foal playing with the universe’s building blocks! I would’ve just knocked it all over.” She lashed out and pushed over a stack of books. “Like that. They don’t know. They don’t really know what I’m capable of and neither do I. I haven’t spoken a word of what I really felt to them or the Princesses. After all that’s happened I haven’t said a thing.” She tossed her mane and scoffed, but it caught in her throat. “Oh, we said the usual things. ‘I’m sorry,’ and ‘We forgive you,’ but what do those words mean if I haven’t really done anything? And eventually we all just… buried it. Like an embarrassing report card or some silly family secret—” She bowed her head and wept openly. She didn’t clench or squeeze or shudder. Every muscle in her relaxed and the tears simply flowed free, finally overflowing the dam she built brick by brick ever since the day the Nightmare took her. “Listen to me. Princess of Friendship and I can’t even figure this out? I let it go for so long and now that I’ve seen Dusk again all I can think about is what I want. Some Princess I am, huh?” For a while all she felt were the hot tears streaming down her cheeks. She barely even noticed when Spike wrapped his little arms around her forelegs, and the warmth of Cadance folding her in big pink wings was a gentle breath against a blizzard. When Shining Armor finally found his way to them and enveloped all three in his strong legs, Twilight finally felt a twinge of relief. “If I don’t find him this time,” she muttered, “I’ll never forgive myself. I’ll never be whole. And thinking of telling Celestia just brought up all those bad feelings from before, and then I was scared of myself for letting those feelings take over so easily…” “You know what I think?” Shining said in her ear. “I’m just a normal everyday unicorn here, but I think that any Princess of Friendship who doesn’t face things like this isn’t qualified to be one.” “Shining’s right, Twilight,” said Cadance. “Things like this… they help us learn. Love is learning how to love somepony in spite of, and sometimes because of their faults. It’s painful. But it always is. That’s what makes love so special: it overcomes great burdens like this.” “We believe in you, Twilight. We believe you’ll do it right,” offered Spike. More tears flowed, but this time they were happy. Twilight looked at the half-finished rune circle and sighed. “Then the first thing I need is the rest of my friends.”
BreachA cave. A cage. Black demon. White death. Dusk Shine remembered these things. Bits and pieces and sharp jagged edges that cut his mind as they fell through his senses. He twisted and turned in his sleep, panting and whimpering. There was nobody there to help him. He awoke in a flurry of sweat and tears, seeing he hadn’t left the cave he started in. No, that wasn’t true, he was in another cave entirely. His wall of drawings and insane scribbles was gone, replaced by a gaping corridor that beckoned him to follow it. He stood up, hooves scraped on rock, fur stuck to frozen ground. He walked, wobbling, teetering, falling along the corridor. His horn lit the way. His precious, unbroken horn. He pulled magic up from deep in a well inside himself, sucking it up like a straw into his horn, where it burned like a candle wick with a pale, violet light. He wanted to cast so many spells but he couldn’t remember any. The darkness had taken everything. Maybe if he chased it away with the light, he’d find something to remember. He heard voices at the edge of his hearing, muffled echoes and bell-like ringing. “Hello,” he rasped, “Is somepony there?” The voices danced just ahead, down the hall, around the corner, squirreling away into darkness just before he reached them. “Stop,” he pleaded, forcing himself along. “Please.” The voices moved further away. There were words half-heard and misunderstood, voices deep and comforting and high and alarmed. It was like listening to a distant waterfall and telling it to talk. He picked up the pace, his breaths becoming sobs. “Come back! I need to hear! I don’t want to be alone anymore!” The voices faded. “I need my friends!” Light. It was right there at the end of the tunnel. He ran for it, noticing the air get colder, sharper, drier. It was outside air, mountain air, and he remembered a great mountain where mighty Princes once ruled from a shining gold castle, and how they’d fought so bravely against the dark and one of them had been as radiant as the Sun, and then Dusk Shine burst into the sunlight and was enveloped by it. And it was cold. He skidded to a halt in ankle-deep snow, saw a forest spreading out before him in the distance. Long, perfectly straight trunks reached into the sky. Their branches jutted outward at odd angles like angry thorns, every last one bare and black and dead. He took a few steps forward and saw the rest of the forest fold out from behind the other trees like a turning page, and then it became clear: every last tree was perfectly spaced apart from the others like points on a grid. Dusk Shine lifted his head to the sun, but instead of a warm, comforting ball of radiance there was nothing but a cold disk like some all-seeing, inscrutable eye. There was no heat here, no life, only the cold light of a stark, uncaring world. Dusk turned to find the cave, suddenly wishing dearly to be back in the bosom of stone and hidden away from this strangeness. But the cave was gone. The entire mountain was gone. He was surrounded by perfectly spaced, perfectly dead trees that spread perfectly straight shadows over the ground, and he was still alone. Not wanting to stay in the strange forest, he walked. The shadows passed over him as the sunlight flickered through the trees’ branching claws like frames of a film, and he was the subject. Study of a Walking Unicorn, by Dusk Shine. He heard thunder in the distance. Perhaps it would rain or snow if he wished hard enough. He wondered if he could strip some of the bark from the trees for firewood, but when he put his hoof on their surface, it felt smooth and lacquered. The trees went on, and so did he. He pondered what might happen if he never saw another living pony out here. Maybe he'd lose himself, stop even thinking of himself as a living, breathing creature. What was a pony who couldn't make friends? What was Dusk Shine without a world to reach out and touch? He looked back and saw his hoofprints in the snow. It was the only evidence anything had passed this way, and when he was gone this blank world wouldn't care if there were hoofprints or not. He would be the only witness to a victimless crime—that of living in a lifeless world. Without someone else to come along and see, to say to themselves "another pony was here," without the opportunity to write his story on the blank page of another mind, he existed no more than a rock did. He was here, and then he was over there, and everything swirled around him and then when he was dead it would simply stop. But he wasn't dead yet. He thought that strange. He lived, and then he just sort of stopped living when the world vanished, and then he was here. He felt alive and since nobody was around to tell him differently, he decided he was most definitely alive. Yet this only made the loneliness that much more intense. The trees went on, and so did he. He followed straight lines, counting rows to pass the time. He went diagonal a few times to shake things up. He never once veered off course, but it was hard to say what course he was following in the first place. He played a game of tic-tac-toe, filling in squares carved out of the snow, using the trees as points for the square corners. He won. Three times in fact. The trees went on, and so did he. So if he wasn't dead, but he wasn't really living, was he immortal? Was this dull, interminable single day that went on forever what it felt like? He remembered a shining prince in golden armor and his dark, simmering brother, the two of them ageless and unceasing right up until the day they died. Was it like being a rock in a stream, he wondered often as a foal and even now, to watch everything eventually pass him by? To never be caught up in the stream of time, to sit and just exist until it started to feel as pointless as this forest stroll—that must have been true torment. Dusk Shine wondered if the day they died was the most interesting of their lives. He realized the loneliness was slowly driving him insane. He wanted to see Twilight Sparkle again. He wanted to see Prince Solaris again. He wanted to see Spines again. He wanted to see anything ever again but these damnable trees, locked forever in supplication or jealousy or whatever had motivated them to grow so tall and gnarled to the sky. Anything to not feel alone. Anything. The trees went on, and so did he. "Anything," said Twilight, pressing her hooves to her temples. "I'm hungry enough to eat anything. Just... just don't be long." Spike saluted and hurried off to fetch her breakfast. Two days had passed since Twilight sent word for the rest of her friends to come to the Crystal Empire. Two awful days of simply waiting, reading the same books over and over in hopes of finding a clue. The anticipation made the world feel listless and uninteresting, like it was all paused until that fateful moment she heard her friends' voices echoing down the hall and she charged out to greet them and realized it wasn't the wind this time. Then she might actually feel like she was moving toward something instead of sitting in place all day. She'd been doing that a lot even before she got to the Empire, and she self-consciously reached down to rub her flanks. Was it her, or were they a little pudgier than last time she looked? She didn't dare check in the mirror. Surely they hadn't been delayed? They'd come as quickly as they could. She made sure to write the letter in as urgent yet polite a way as possible. And she'd included the one thing that would bring them running faster than saying Twilight herself was in trouble. He's still alive, and maybe the rest are too. Oh, to see Rarity's smile again. To listen to Applejack's voice booming off the walls. To hear the whispery gust of Fluttershy's wings. To hear Pinkie Pie's giggles and giggles in turn like bells chiming in harmony. To listen to Rainbow Dash’s boasting a mile away... She didn't want to wait. She wanted them to be here, right now. She wanted breakfast. Spike swaggered back in proudly, bearing a steaming platter of oatmeal, muffins and toast with jam, daisy sandwiches with avocado spread, flapjacks piled five high, and enough orange juice to make her sweat it. She smiled widely. One out of two wasn't so bad. "Let me guess," she said, "it all happened to just be there, fresh and ready to be eaten." Spike snickered, seizing a muffin for himself. "The cook swore up and down he just got 'inspired' this morning to bake a five-course meal." Twilight laid out some flapjacks and liberally applied syrup. "I did tell Cadance she didn't have to fuss." "And now she has plausible deniability! Better Princess material than we thought, huh?" said Spike through a mouthful of muffin. "Mmm," Twilight said of the buttery-smooth flapjack that melted in her mouth, "if only we could learn to be so crafty." They enjoyed the meal, having a conversation without words. Snatched glances over big gulps of orange juice, laughing suddenly at how amazing the daisy sandwiches were, clinking their silverware loudly through bowls of oatmeal. “So what’s the plan today?” Spike asked, his cheeks bulging. Twilight reflexively magicked over a napkin to dab at the oatmeal that ran out of the corner of his mouth. “Everything,” she said. “We have a lot of ground to cover and I barely know where to start. I suppose we could begin with some preliminary tests, comparing dream journals, performing a few experiments with the dream magic Luna taught me… Test the waters, so to speak.” “And then what? What if you actually find him again? What if… what if you find all of them again?” Twilight sighed and looked down at her unfinished, though devastated, breakfast. “I don’t know, Spike. We’re taking this one step at a time, and the first step is to figure out why I suddenly started seeing Dusk here, now, and what could be causing it. I have a few theories on that front.” “Well, lay ‘em on me,” said Spike, consuming a whole mouthful of pancakes. “Or should we wait for Cadance to get back from her Princessing or whatever she does during the day?” Twilight smirked. “She does less ‘Princessing’ than you think. She’ll be busy for a while yet, but we’ve got pretty much free reign of the castle. Which reminds me…” She brought out a checklist. It unfurled. It kept unfurling. It rolled right over Spike’s head and didn’t stop until it hit the door. “That gives us plenty of time to start our experiments.” Spike whimpered. Some hours later, a bewildered Spike crawled out of his shared room with Twilight and tore off the mechanical device affixed to his head, slipping it under his arm. They’d spent the better part of the morning performing all kinds of little experiments that hardly counted as such to Spike—dream journals, endless cross-examinations of every possible meaning of every little thing she saw in her last vision of Dusk Shine. And then of course there was the experience of having that so-called ‘Oneirology Cap’ stuck on his head to help Twilight decipher more about the nature of dreams. The instructions were to sit quietly, think clearly, and allow the memories to flow between his and Twilight’s head, somehow. Spike was fairly certain it more over his head than through it, and sitting still during all that was just too much to ask for. He’d asked for a break; he didn’t think Twilight had noticed. He looked over his shoulder at his keeper, a pencil in her mouth and myriad equations scribbled on the paper she studied. He wasn’t sure how any of this had gotten her closer to figuring anything out, but if she insisted that it was necessary, he knew better than to keep her from it. He waddled down the hallway, grateful for a chance to stretch his legs and the chance to get away from Twilight’s constant muttering in the background. If he was right, lunch time would be starting soon. Maybe he could nip down to the throne room and catch Cadance before she went to eat and convince her to tell Twilight to lighten up… Guards and servants passed him by, the former stopping and moving to one side with a snappy salute, the latter with a respectful bow. He still wasn’t sure what to make of that; bungling the anthem had been a humbling experience and Sombra was long gone. But he supposed that any recognition was a good thing. Maybe when they got back to Ponyville he could convince Mayor Mare to erect a statue or two… “Spike!” He turned at the sound of Shining Armor’s voice. “Hey there, bro,” the unicorn said as he trotted up to Spike. “Taking a walk? What’s that thing under your arm?” Spike smiled and held up the device a little proudly; it made him happy to know things others didn’t. “Hey, Shining! Oh, this? It’s an oneirology cap.” Shining blinked. “I’m going to have to pretend I know what that is.” Spike shrugged, hefting the cap as he walked and fiddling with its pointy bits and bobs. “It’s some machine Twilight made to help her study dreams. It looks into your head using, I don’t know, some kinda magic. I don’t pretend it’s not beyond me. I took a walk ‘cuz I just couldn’t take all the obscure terminology!” He blinked and then smacked himself. “Oh, great. All of Twilight’s smart words are rubbing off on me. Where were you going?” “I was on my way to the throne room. I just came in from a patrol and Cadance is going to want to hear all about it, I’m sure.” He chuckled and rolled his eyes. “She likes to get all the details out of way so we can enjoy lunch together. She absolutely hates doing royal business during lunch. Double if I have to describe every little scratch I get on patrol. She hates hearing it, but she wants to be told regardless.” “I guess she worries a lot about you, huh?” Spike asked, reaffixing the Oneirology Cap to his head if only for a lack of something else to do. “She does. I’d say she worries too much, but then I’d be asking her to not be the mare I fell in love with. We all need somepony looking out for us. It’s why I’m so glad Twilight has you and the rest of her friends.” Spike chuckled. “Yeah, we do our best to keep her out of trouble, but she just keeps falling right back in and dragging us down with her. I mean, I don’t even know what all this dream stuff is about. I didn’t have any like she did, even when she first got them. But I do know she needs us. I mean… really needs us.” Shining grunted, and was silent the rest of the way to the cavernous throne room, which still made Spike salivate on seeing all the different gemstones that went into its construction. Decorative veins of tourmaline spun through great slabs of agate and diamond, accented by the gentle white-blue sheen coming off the great arched ceiling. The open air construction allowed sunlight to pour in, gathering in pools and lazy rivers on the glassy floor. It all led up to the unmatched glory of the Crystal Throne at the far end, where the twin seats of Shining and Cadance presided over the masses. Cadance occupied one of them, her front hooves hung off one of the throne’s arms and her back hooves were splayed over the other. Spike couldn’t recall ever seeing Celestia or Luna in a pose half as casual as that, yet Cadance wore it like a glove, more of a saucy goddess than a stern empress. Several attendants doted on her, holding up this or that report for reading or potted plant for placing. Cadance seemed to notice Spike and Shining coming in without even looking, as she was already dismissing her servants before she even called to them. “Oh, hello boys!” Cadance’s musical voice echoed through the open chamber, bouncing off the arched ceiling. “I was just finishing up. Welcome back, Shining… Spike, what is that thing on your head?” “An oneirology cap!” Spike quipped with childlike glee. Far from Shining’s confusion, a look of pleased understanding crossed Cadance’s face. “Ah, I see!” she said in a grandiose, knowing tone that was uncomfortably reminiscent of Celestia herself. “Twilight has dove right into the exploration of dreams. Is she still in her room?” “Yeah, I went for a walk and ran into Shining. I just couldn’t take all the hypotheses and theorems and whatever else Twilight was saying! I mean, I wanna help her, but I can only take so many big words and weird philosophies at once, you know?” Cadance favored him with a kind smile. “Your loyalty is a great boon to her, Spike. I know she appreciates it. Now, come here Shining! I need your daily report, starting with how much you missed me.” Spike glanced around the throne room, still impressed at how well the Crystal Empire had cleaned up after the depredations of King Sombra. Princess Celestia had chosen wisely when it came to nurturing Cadance for a leadership post. Then again, Spike couldn’t really recall Celestia making something close to a mistake. Except for that whole moon banishment debacle. He glanced down at the floor, seeing his reflection, and wondered for a moment if the giant hole beneath that hid Sombra’s chambers was still there. He shook his head to dislodge the memories that threatened to well up inside his little brain. It wasn’t worth it to think about what may still be down there. Cadance had it well in hoof. No reason to think about the darkness that dwelled below, the gate of fear that peered into his mind, showed him such horrible, horrible things— And the next thing he knew, he was on the floor shivering and shaking. Shining and Cadance stood over him, calling his name, and he had such a splitting headache. “Guys?” he asked, but his words came out in a slurred mumble. “What’s going on? What’s on my head?” “Get it off him, Shining!” Cadance yelled, sounding far away. Shining tore the oneirologist cap off his head, tossing it away with a loud clatter. “What happened?” Spike muttered. “You fell,” said Shining. “Just… fell over, right here, little guy. You were shaking, and we… are you all right? Do you feel ill?” “I got a headache, I think,” Spike said, touching his forehead. Then he heard a loud ‘pop’ and Twilight stood there with her own cap still on her head. She was sweating. “Spike!” she yelled, hurrying to his side and scooping him up in her hooves. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I didn’t know that would happen!” “Didn’t know what would happen?” Cadance asked, a dangerously suspicious edge to her voice. Twilight looked up, her face achingly desperate as she cradled Spike. “The cap! The spell! I, I cast a spell, it was so simple, just a spell to try and bridge the gap between minds long-distance, like, like a tether, it was just supposed to help share dreams when we fell asleep! I’m so sorry, Spike, I have no idea what caused that feedback!” Shining Armor and Cadance shared a look. “Twilight,” said Shining with a heavy sigh, “no more experiments, okay? You’re both gonna get some rest and some food, and then we’re gonna sit quietly until your friends get here.” “Oh,” said Spike, rubbing his eyes, “so it wasn’t Sombra coming back? Thank goodness.” Twilight’s frenzied breathing stopped abruptly. Spike saw her eyes widen. “What did you say?” “Uhh… Sombra. I was thinking about Sombra when it happened, and I thought... Twilight, are you okay?” Twilight looked over her shoulder. Right where it was supposed to open up to Sombra’s secret lair, where the awful door was. “Cadance,” she asked, “what did you do about the Door of Fear after we left?” “Do we have to talk about that awful thing?” said Cadance, rubbing one hoof with another. Twilight gave her a look that said yes, they very much did have to talk about it. Cadance relented with a sigh. “It was too dangerous to go down and try to destroy it. It showed no signs of activity after Sombra was killed, but my court mages recommended it was better to keep an eye on it. We have wards up and down the staircase in the event that it does activate again. Which, I might add, it has not.” “Maybe it has,” said Twilight. “Just not in a way we’d think to detect. Or maybe it doesn’t even need to be active.” “Oh, great,” muttered Shining. “More security problems.” Twilight handed Spike off to him and trotted to the middle of the throne room. “There’s so much we still don’t understand about dream magic. That Luna hasn’t taught me. It could be Sombra figured something out…” “There’s nothing that tyrant made that we need, Twilight,” Shining snapped. “It could be a door in more ways than one,” Twilight said, and Spike recognized the faraway quality to her voice. She wasn’t listening to any pony right now. They watched in helpless silence as Twilight’s eyes glowed green and her horn swirled with ichorous black magic, striking the twin thrones and setting them ablaze with sickly strands of shadow. The ancient power lanced out and burned away the floor just as it had so many months ago, revealing the stairwell that fell into darkness, to a door that knew how to dissect minds and peel open their most painful parts. Spike felt himself reflexively recoil into Shining’s grip. “Twilight, stop!” Shining called. “What are you doing?!” “The feedback from my spell wasn’t my doing,” said Twilight, walking as if in a daze to the edge of the stairs. “Right before it happened, I felt something tug on my magic. Maybe it wanted my attention. Maybe it was trying to pull me somewhere. But the connection broke because there was something powerful that tore at the middle of the tether between me and Spike. Like a cable under too much tension it snapped back and struck us both. It could be the Door of Fear, trying to get a hold of whatever it can.” She puffed out her chest. “I’m going down there.” “Like hayseeds you are!” Shining said. “You’re not touching anything that monster made. It can’t help us.” “But it can! Or it might, I don’t know! But what if that door is part of the reason I had another dream about Dusk? What if it’s part of the reason all of this is happening? What if it’s really that easy? I could learn so much about the dream realm if I know how it studied my head, how it reached out like I want to reach out. If it can get inside a pony’s head, maybe I can use it to find someone else’s! Dusk’s!” “It wouldn’t be worth it, Twilight,” said Shining in a calm, measured voice. “You know that. Even going near something Sombra made is dangerous. Just shut the floor up again, and we’ll be rid of it soon.” Cadance watched the argument from the sidelines, her eyes flicking between all of them. “Twi,” Spike croaked. “Please. Come on back. You’re scaring me again.” She locked gazes with him, and he wasn’t much comforted. “It’s okay, Spike,” she said, ears drooping, the picture of defeat. “Nopony has to go down there if they don’t want to.” There was a pregnant pause. “But I need to.” And with a puff of smoke and another ‘pop’, she was gone. Twilight almost felt guilty about leaving them behind. Almost. But something pulled at her. Tugged, like the interference between herself and Spike. It was like a string had been attached to her horn and was drawing her in. She appeared at the bottom of the steps in a puff of purple smoke, directly in front of the Door of Fear. It wasn’t as big as she remembered. Back then it had been massive, imposing, a dark and hideous perversion on the world that gaped hideously at her, ready to swallow her up. Now, bereft of King Sombra’s dark magics animating it, it seemed quite small, as if its size had diminished along with its presence. She let magical feelers poke and prod the icy, black-blue frame, then dared to touch the door itself. Her sensory spells bounced and slid off the glassy, black onyx surface like oil on a pan. Twilight trotted forward and waited for the inevitable attack on her mind, but it never came. Yet if it was just a simple door now, how could it have interfered with her mind-working earlier? She took a deep breath, ignoring the distant, echoing calls of her brother and Spike from far above, getting closer every second. She prepared to unleash the dark magic on the door herself when the sound of flapping wings and hooves touching hard stone alerted her. “Cadance,” she said. “I’m sorry. But… but this is something I have to do. I’m not the kind of pony to leave stones unturned.” “I know,” Cadance replied. “But Twilight, you mustn’t do this alone. You said so yourself. You shouldn’t have run off like that.” “I know,” Twilight said. “It’s just… it feels like there’s something inside me, Cadance. Something that needs to come out, worming around and eating me up. It’s awful. And I get the feeling that if I can just touch this thing, this portal, or whatever it could be, I might finally get some relief.” “What makes you think the door will lead you to Dusk Shine?” “It won’t. It’s just a regular door albeit warded against most of my spells. If I open it up, there’ll be nothing there but a blank wall. Either that or the weird null-space I was almost trapped in when he almost took over last time. But… if I can turn it to my purposes…” “Then Sombra’s influence could still reach out and grab you. Twilight, why don’t we just ask Princess Luna to—” “No!” Twilight barked. Her voice bounced back to her, ricocheting like ball bearings back and forth in the small space. She winced at how long the echoes went on, hiding beneath her wing. “I mean… no. Princess Luna would want to destroy this door immediately, like Shining. And I know, I know it would be to protect me, but trying to protect me is what got us into this mess! It’s what kept me from meeting Dusk Shine sooner and being able to save him! Do you understand that, Cadance? If the Princesses had just trusted me, if I was just allowed to trust myself, I could have saved him!” She looked up with tears in her eyes. “Did I tell you what it was like when I finally saw his world through his eyes? It was dark, Cadance. Nothing but blackness and emptiness everywhere. Dusk Shine died that day, I know it. If I had been able to do something, anything at all, I could have helped. I could be talking to him right now! I wouldn’t be feeling like half of me is just missing.” She sighed, spent, and sank to her knees. “I don’t know if I can be trusted to do the right thing right now. But I know that sitting here and doing nothing hasn’t helped anyone. I don’t want my friends to get here and meet a shell of a pony who went insane because she didn’t check every avenue. I want them to meet a pony who showed herself that she could finally take control of her life again… even over something as dangerous as this.” Silence reigned, save for the very distant clip-clop of Shining’s hooves on the stairwell. Twilight looked up and saw Cadance’s gaze boring into her, regarding her with cool, calculating intent. There was little enough pity and warmth, but Twilight felt those things too. It wasn’t the gaze of a friend. It was the gaze of a Princess, wracking her mind to see how best to fix a problem without endangering her ponies. She had to make a decision, even if there were terrible consequences. It was a look that was far too grown-up, and made Twilight realize how far her old foal-sitter had come in life. At last, Cadance closed her eyes, and with the tiniest, gentlest, quietest of movements, gave Twilight a nod. Twilight stood up, wiped her eyes, and turned to face the door. She wasted no time summoning the dark spell Celestia herself had taught her, powering it with her rage and fear. The inky black shapes gathered, not just on her horn but in their shadows and in every little crevice of the room. They squiggled and squirmed like living things, aching to reach into the light and withdrawing the moment they touched it. Then, Twilight scooped them all up in her spell and launched them at the door. It would be a Door no more, but a corridor between minds, between dreams and worlds. Twilight reached deep down inside herself, summoning the will of Magic. Every story apart from hers was spun into existence by her mere being, as Magic had said. It was time to reopen the book on Dusk Shine’s world and start writing. The magic shot from her horn and collided with the dark crystal atop the door. The twisted fragment slurped up the magic like a sponge. The shadows scuttled into it, disappearing within its infinitely complex angles, and then there was silence. Twilight blinked. Cadance stood still behind her, holding her breath. “I can feel a breeze,” one of them whispered, but Twilight couldn’t be sure which. They waited and waited while nothing happened at all. Twilight sighed. “I suppose it was too much to hope for,” she whispered, feeling very thin and frail all of a sudden. “Maybe it just takes time.” The walk back up the steps was slow and solemn. She met Shining and Spike halfway and endured their berating until Cadance stepped in and tried explaining to them what Twilight had explained to her. It didn’t come across quite as well, but at the very least it stopped them from yelling at her. When she reached the top of the stairs, she went to one of the windows and looked out over the Empire. “I’m sorry, you guys,” she said quietly. “It’s just… I need to be able to do this. Even if my ideas seem crazy. This whole situation is crazy. If I can just tap back into what Magic was trying to tell me, maybe then…” She sighed and bowed her head. “If my friends were just here…” “Well sheesh, Twi, I was flying as fast as I could!” Twilight jerked back from the window with a yelp, falling over on her backside. Rainbow Dash fluttered before her, a devil-may-care grin on her face. “Ha ha! Got ya good, huh? The train’s gonna get here in a couple more hours, but I just had to stretch my wings, and then, well, your letter made it seem like you really needed company so I figured I’d just fly on ahead! Say, you don’t have anything to eat around here, do you?” In a forest at the bottom of the universe, Dusk Shine’s ears quivered. He lifted his head and looked over his shoulder, down the rows and rows of elegantly spaced trees, peering between them. Nothing stirred and nothing breathed. But he knew what he had felt, and he spoke it aloud if only to hear the sound of his own voice. “There’s something in the woods,” he said, and his voice was swallowed by the snow. He stood up and started walking again, trying to find a path that would take him away from the strange presence worming around the back of his mind. He didn’t want to know what kind of crawling horror he’d encounter in a world like this, but it couldn’t be any good. The forest grew thicker as he walked, hemming him in on all sides. Their trunks adopted curves and bends. The branches became more irregular, and he saw the indentations of roots beneath the snow. At the very least they had lost some of that surreal perfection and smoothness. Perhaps, if he kept going, he might find a place where the trees became even more like actual trees. Would the next part of the forest have leaves and real wood? If he kept walking long enough, it was entirely possible he’d make it back to something resembling reality, if not his home. He heard a crack. He stopped walking. It stopped walking too. Dusk held his breath, ears straight up like spear tips. “Hello?” he called, his echo swallowed by the snow. “Is someone there?” No answer, not that he expected one. He continued forward, trying to find places where the trees were less thick so he could turn and get a look at his pursuer. But every time he turned around, he couldn’t be sure if he actually saw something. Either his vision was completely untrustworthy, or he was seeing black shadows flit behind the trees, trees that by anyone’s reckoning were too thin to hide behind. “I see you,” he said, but not loud enough for his voice to carry. He doubted whatever it was cared that he knew it was there anymore. He turned and kept walking, mind racing for ways to defend himself. He couldn’t cast any spells that he knew of. He likely wasn’t strong enough to snap any of the branches, and it may attack him while he was busy finding out if he was. The only real option was to run and hope it gave up easily. He kept walking in any case, and the feeling of being stalked only grow more and more insistent. He heard the thing’s footsteps, gently crunching in the snow almost perfectly in time with his own, but just enough out of synch that he noticed. Thousands of years of instinct screamed at him to bolt, but he had to pick the time. He wouldn’t be ruled by fear. Not after seeing what the Nightmare had done. He wouldn’t be ruled by fear. He wouldn’t— A gentle whisper of wind. A shadow very briefly obscuring the sun. He looked up and held his breath, and it seemed the world followed suit. He had thought, just for the barest moment, that he’d seen wings and a tail, and— And then he heard the pounding of something heavy behind him and a glass-like crash, too close for comfort. His muscles moved on their own, hurling him to the right, and he felt the brush of something big as it touched his tail and then hit the ground hard. He lifted his head from the snow and glimpsed powerful, stocky limbs lifting two giant hands that tore up the snow and crushed a tree that shattered like glass, spraying him with sharp, stinging shards. The creature the limbs were attached to was bipedal, thrice his size even with its ape-like hunch. It turned to face Dusk, but all he could see was its sheer size. Its whole body shimmered like a mirage, like it was constantly about to wink out of existence if he blinked. But when Dusk blinked, it was still there. He ran. The thing gave chase without a roar or a growl, or even the hot, eager panting of a predator about to grab a meal. Dusk heard it crushing trees and carving divots in the snow with its sheer bulk. Dusk tore through snow drifts and ducked low-hanging branches, but the shadowy creature crushed everything in its way without even slowing down. Claws that weren’t all there groped for him, a mouth he couldn’t see released clouds of steam as it breathed in a steady cadence. He didn’t know what it would do if it caught him, but he did know that couldn’t happen. In the distance he spied some kind of castle, taller than any mountain, reaching up like a spire and shining brightly as if covered in icy frost. It was too far away to offer safety. He ran for it regardless, feeling something deep down competing for space with the fear. A compulsion, a searing enigma of a thought that left him reeling. He recognized that place from somewhere long ago, or maybe something inside or about it, some indefinable quality that illuminated fragments of memory. But the thing behind him was upon him before he could even wonder about what he would have found in there. A talon as cold as the snow snatched his leg and yanked straight upwards. Dusk’s world spun as he flipped head over tail and landed in a heap in front of one of the trees. Acting on instinct he rolled away just as a massive fist punched the ground where he lay, leaving a crater. The ethereal arm it was attached to swung round and obliterated a tree trunk just above ear level, showering Dusk with shards as he scrambled for cover knowing there wasn’t any. He found he wasn’t scared, not really. Or maybe he was too terrified to feel scared. Only one thought had room in his head: I can’t die like this. But he was certainly going to anyway. Ironic that he’d be going back to the dark so soon after his resurrection. Maybe he’d have better luck the next time around. He closed his eyes. A great hand swept down and scooped him up, nearly cracking his ribs. It smelled of sweat and fear and felt like a shaggy carpet. His hooves left the ground and he was aware he was flying. Hitting the snow was surprisingly painless, though, it didn’t even hurt. Whatever grabbed him released him gently and set him down. Maybe the creature wanted to toy with him before it landed the killing blow. But the stomping was less insistent now, more cautious. He opened his eyes again. A pony stood between him and the mirage monster, having just set him down after lifting him away from the creature’s reach. A stallion by the look of his thick build, and a pegasus by the wings stretched out aggressively at his sides. He wore heavy clothes much better suited for the frigid landscape, all furs piled on furs with a hood up over his ears and thick goggles over his eyes. He clutched a long spear in one hoof, its grim, thick head pointed towards the beast, which hopped nervously from one limb to the other. The stallion’s tail flicked behind him, and with it, all the colors of the rainbow. “No,” Dusk mumbled through a mouth thick with phlegm. “It can’t be.” The stallion turned and lifted his goggles, exposing cerise eyes that burned like sunset. “You died,” Dusk rasped. Rainbow Blitz shook his head. “Loyalty never dies.” The beast charged and Rainbow rose to meet it. He moved faster than Dusk’s eyes could follow, faster than any pony he’d ever seen, leaping above a swiping claw as it ripped a meter wide furrow in the earth. The spear flicked out like a serpent’s tongue and caught the beast on its shoulder, tearing away a wisp of its smoky body. Now the monster roared. It sounded like a foghorn, ominous and artificial, but Dusk felt its rage nonetheless. Massive tree-trunk limbs swept out and annihilated three trees in one circle as it chased the pegasus clumsily; Rainbow darted in and out of its reach like one possessed, leaving a rainbow contrail as he went, tearing pieces off the monster with each pass. Enraged, the creature dug its claws into the earth, flinging dirt and snow into Rainbow’s face. He spun to avoid the worst of it, but too close the thing’s hand, which caught his tail in mid-air. With a triumphant roar it whipped him around and hurled him straight through a thick tangle of branches. Rainbow rolled in mid-air amidst the falling shards and hit a solid trunk with his back legs, then launched off it again right back at the creature, his spear couched under one arm. The creature recoiled, holding up one hand as if to shield itself. The spear tip slid straight through into its skull, and Rainbow kept going, colliding with it face-first in a tremendous crash of feathers and muscle. The monster toppled, but Rainbow hung on gamely to the spear as they went down in a spray of snow, ending up flopped over its head. The creature melted away like smoke in the wind, leaving him splayed out in a crater of tree fragments and patches of acrid smelling ooze. For a while, Dusk just listened to their breathing until it came down from its terror-induced high. He mustered his courage and crawled over to the lip of the crater, peering down at Rainbow. The other stallion tilted his head towards Dusk. “Hey,” Rainbow said. “What are you doing here, Dusk?” Dusk shook his head. “I’m not sure.” Rainbow grinned and looked back up at the pale sky. “Oh, good. Me neither.” Author's Note Welcome to rule 63, where stallions are stallions, and mares are stallions.
