Dreamscape

Lucidity cautiously stuck a hoof out of Luna’s mirror maze, careful to check whether the exit was actually safe before trotting triumphantly out of the obstacle and heading towards the adjoining antechamber. Lucidity followed from close behind, coming to a stop beside her conscious self and turning to see what had captivated her attention.

A large, ornate staircase spiraled up before them, tall enough that neither equine could see the top. “Oh, come on!” Lucidity finally exclaimed. “Geez. All we’ve ever done since getting to this place is walk. This is starting to get a bit ridiculous.”

“At least it’s not another maze.”

“Yeah, well…” the grey mare brooded. “Whatever. Let’s just get this over with.”

The two ponies set hoof on the first stair, mentally psyching themselves up for the long, tiring journey still ahead of them. They stepped forward together, their paces keeping in sync as they started to climb the grand staircase that Luna had so kindly left for them.

After a while, the silence between them had become unbearable and, wanting to distract herself from her sore legs, Lucidity asked, “So how far up do you think this thing goes anyway?”

Craning her neck upwards to see if they were anywhere near the top yet, her subconscious responded, “No idea, but I bet that Luna planned this whole setup.”

“Well of course she did. She made this whole castle, after all.”

“No, I mean that I think she’s trying to wear us out. What if her plan is to keep us wandering around in circles, waiting until we’re too exhausted to fight back before she decides to attack us?”

“Do you really think that’s what she’s doing?”

“I wouldn’t put it past her to try. Maybe we better save ourselves the time and energy and just teleport past this staircase. If her previous obstacles are anything to judge by, then I doubt there’s a booby trap waiting for us up there that we might accidentally set off.”

“But what if that’s what she wants us to do?” Lucidity argued. “I bet trying to teleport away from here will trigger a magic sinkhole or something. We’ll probably be better off just hoofing it the old-fashioned way. We can’t afford to take any chances now that we’re so close.”

“I guess so…” Lucidity acquiesced, unable to come up with any objections to her consciousness’ reasoning. An uneasy silence broke over the two of them once more, but it was quickly broken by the sound of scraping stone suddenly filling the room.

“What was that?” Lucidity asked worriedly, looking back over her shoulder.

“I’m not sure, but whatever it was, it can’t be good. C’mon, let’s keep going.”

Both unicorns quickened their paces, eager to escape whatever ill omen was causing the grinding noise. It was a couple minutes later—these ones seeming to pass by much more quickly with the ominous sound at their heels—before Lucidity interjected, “Hey, wait a second.” Both unicorns came to a halt, the room following suit as everything suddenly became still and quiet.

“What is it?” Lucidity asked hurriedly, sensing the urgency in her subconscious’ tone.

“Have you noticed anything strange going on here?”

“That whatever’s making that noise stopped at the exact same time we did?” Lucidity tried, hazarding her best guess.

“Not only that, but look at this window,” the other mare said, pointing towards a small opening in the castle wall through which one could view the constantly blank whiteness of Dream Limbo.

“What about it?”

“It’s still in the exact same spot it’s been in for the last few minutes, even though we should have passed it a while ago."

“But that would mean—” Lucidity started as it dawned on her what her partner was getting at.

“—that even though we’ve been walking, we haven’t actually gone anywhere,” her subconscious finished for her. “That noise we’ve been hearing is the stairs moving backwards as we walk, keeping us in the same spot.”

“Okay, it’s official: I really hate Luna,” Lucidity said bitterly.

“Well you have to admit, it was a clever trap,” the second unicorn pointed out.

“You’re not helping.”

“Okay, okay. I think our best bet would be to head back down and try to find a different way up. Maybe we missed a door or something when we were down there the first time.”

“Sounds good. Let’s go.” The two ponies turned around and started walking back the way they had come but found, to their collective horror, that the now-familiar sound of stone scraping on stone had started up again as soon as their hooves had left the ground. Glancing to her side, Lucidity could also see that the window was stubbornly remaining level with them, the enchanted staircase refusing to let her walk past it. “Well, now what?”

“We could always try teleporting to the bottom,” Lucidity suggested.

“I already told you, we are not trying that.”

“Well, do you have any better ideas for getting off of this thing?”

“Not yet. Argh. There’s got to be another way off of here, I just know it.”

She started to gallop up the stairs as fast as she could, determined to outrun the mechanism moving the steps beneath her hooves. Looking over to the wall, however, Lucidity was dismayed to find that the window was still directly beside her and that the stairs were easily able to match her pace.

“Lucy?”

She heard her subconscious calling out to her but ignored it, instead increasing her clip in a renewed effort to defeat Luna’s staircase.

“Lucy!”

Heart pounding and legs throbbing, the determined unicorn carried on, now also ignoring the cries of protest from her aching muscles.

“Lucidity!”

She finally came to a halt, reluctantly admitting to herself that she’d been beat as she fought to catch her breath. “What?” Lucidity asked hoarsely.

“Look!”

Hearing unexpected excitement in the other pony’s voice, the exhausted mare turned around and noted, to her great surprise, that her subconscious had somehow managed to lower herself partway down the stairs, now sitting far below the level of the window where Lucidity still stood. “How did you get all the way down there?” she shouted once she had regained her breath.

“Stay there, I’ll show you.” Lucidity started walking forward, her consciousness watching on in astonishment as she easily closed the gap between them, the only sign that the staircase was still moving the grating sound it continued to produce as the mare moved towards her.

“How did you do that?” Lucidity asked, amazed. “I still can’t walk past this stupid window in either direction.”

The grey mare smiled mysteriously and answered, “Look at where you are right now.”

Lucidity regarded her surroundings, her eyes eventually attracted to the windowless wall at her side. Looking further up the stairs, she noticed a bright patch of light coming out of the wall about where she guessed the window must now be. “I don’t—”

“When I walked up to meet you, the steps moved down to stop me from going forward. Since you weren’t moving, you were able to move down with them,” she offered as explanation. “If only one of us walks at a time, we should be able to get past this staircase without any trouble at all.”

“That’s brilliant, Lucy!” her consciousness exclaimed.

“Well, it was really your idea,” Lucidity returned. “Okay, I’ll start. Just stay there and tell me when you’ve reached the top so I know when to stop, then walk down the steps to raise me up to you.”

It seemed to take ages, but eventually Lucidity found herself at the top of the staircase. Greatly relieved, she called out, “Okay, you can stop now.” Her voice echoed over to where her subconscious had been trying to walk down the steps, causing her to quit moving and wait for her partner to bring her back up.

Lucidity paused for a moment, taking in how creepy the silence was now that she had gotten so used to hearing the sound of the stairs scraping against the stone floor below, before starting her own attempted trek down the enchanted steps.

After an equally long wait made longer by the fact that she had been walking downwards endlessly without having made any visible progress, Lucidity finally saw her subconscious come into view. “This is a ridiculously long staircase,” she panted out once they were both on the last step.

“No kidding. Well, here goes nothing.” Both ponies jumped off of the staircase, landing in a spacious hallway lined with passages leading off to various other areas of the castle. “Alright, we did it!” Lucidity cheered, enthusiastically high-hoofing her conscious counterpart, both of them relieved to be done with that particularly annoying obstacle.

“Yeah, I guess Luna didn’t count on there being two of us here to stop her.”

“You know, there’s probably a lesson about teamwork and friendship in there somewhere,” Lucidity pointed out.

The two unicorns were silent for a moment, mulling over that thought before Lucidity responded, “Oh well. Let’s keep going. So which path do you think we should take?”

“I’m guessing that it’s the one with the giant twin oak doors in front of it,” her subconscious deadpanned.

“But none of these passages have—” Lucidity started, the end of her sentence left hanging on her tongue as she was turned around to face the direction the other mare had been looking in. “Oh.”

Now standing before her was a pair of large, impressive doors inlaid with a crescent moon seal that closely resembled the bigger one hanging outside of the castle. The obviously important doors clearly led to some sort of main chamber where, with any luck, Luna was likely to be waiting. The only other route branching off of this side of the hallway was a small, ordinary-looking staircase that appeared to be heading to a room just above whatever was beyond these doors. “Well, this is it,” her subconscious piped up once Lucidity had gotten an eyeful. “You remember the plan, right? Are you ready?”

“Are you sure it has to be this way?” Lucidity asked worriedly. “I mean, maybe if we both—”

“No, that wouldn’t work. Trust me, Lucy, this is the only way to beat Luna. You’re going to have to fight her on your own.” Lucidity still wasn’t entirely convinced, but one look into her subconscious’ stern, blue eyes, compounded with her knowledge of her own resolve, told the nervous mare that there was no other way out of here and that Lucidity wouldn’t let her back down from this. And so, with a nod, the two ponies went their separate ways: one up the stairs to find a decent vantage point and keep a lookout, and the other through the double doors to confront Luna head-on.

She stepped into the throne room with both trepidation and determination, the clacking of her hooves on the freshly polished and gleaming marble attracting the attention of her adversary. “Well, well, well. It would appear that our summons did reach thine ears after all,” Luna remarked upon noticing the other equine’s presence in her fortress.

“That’s right, and we’re here to fight back!” the unicorn retorted bravely, meeting the princess’ eyes with a resolute stare.

“We?” Luna echoed with a snort of contempt. “Dost thou dare to poke fun at our expense? Thy insolence shall be thy undoing.” With that, the lunar princess aimed a bolt of dark magic towards the grey mare, hitting her horn directly.

Surprised by the sudden change in momentum, the hapless victim attempted to wriggle her way out of Luna’s magical grip, but instead found herself being lifted up into the air. She could feel the princess’ presence inside her mind coaxing her to surrender and give in to sleep. She valiantly battled against the influence, but it proved to be a hopeless effort. Unable to weather out the storm any longer, her mind and body inevitably yielded to Luna’s control and her blue eyes soon began to roll back in her head and turn white. The white ocular glow grew brighter and brighter, until it eventually gave way to translucency. Her coat’s and mane’s hues and saturations soon followed suit.

A satisfied smirk on her lips, Luna let the pony’s remains hit the ground with a muted thud. The body flickered between opaqueness and transparency, but in its bouts of color one could see the damage’s toll. What was left of the body was bent, bloody, bruised, and broken. Her form lay on the cold castle floor, crooked as the marks on her flank, for a few more moments before finally melting away into nothing, becoming just another piece of the Dreamscape’s white blankness surrounding Luna’s dark fortress.