Three Years Ago
A small blue pony sat on his bed in his room, pointedly ignoring the closet door. Every few seconds, the door would just kind of... bulge, like something was trying to push through it. "Ha... ha..." Oh yeah. There was something trying to push through it. Let's see, he was on repeat 423... Which meant it was evil clown time. Goody.
To be perfectly honest, he probably shouldn't remember this. He wouldn't put it past That Mare to create a spell that would endlessly kill somepony without their knowledge, but leave the fear and terror of the death intact. It sounded like a pointlessly cruel thing, which made it a sure bet she was going to invent it at some point. "Hee hee..."
"Yeah yeah, you're gonna kill me. Get it over with already." He was kind of sick of it. Even the most innocent of ponies would be horribly jaded after dying over two hundred times. It was the kind of thing that got old really quick. If he had one issue with his repeated deaths, it was the fact that it wasn't quick. It always took somewhere around two or three hours, leaving him with nothing to do in the meantime. It was so boring. If he wasn't sure the clowns and demons were his real nightmares, he'd consider the horrifyingly long wait the real torture.
"GWAAAAH!" The closet door exploded open, and he noted a blur of red before his face was ripped off. His dying mind registered his intestines leaving his body, his blood pooling on the floor and the chilling laugh of the clown that echoed in the small room. Then, as if it had never happened, everything reset. He was alive. Again. Dammit.
But this time, there was a difference. The door that in the real world led to a hallway, the door that in his nightmares was always locked, the door that had since the day he had moved into this room been painted bright red... was now open and blue, and leading into a staircase. This was... New. "So... Go down mysterious suddenly appearing staircase, or stay in creepy room waiting to be killed by clowns. Think I'm gonna take option one." And with that, he exited the Nightmare that had held him for so long, slamming the blue door behind him.
Welcome To The Dream Den
Now
"Okay, let's see..." The blue pony glanced around the field. His now light green mane and tail were tied into braids, and a dark red strip of ragged cloth was wrapped around his neck. On his flank rested the image of a shield emblazoned with three orange Zs of varying sizes. He'd gotten it after creating a new Dream, one where That Mare couldn't see. He lifted the map in his hooves, one of the entire documented Dream World. "I am... Completely lost." The map suddenly ripped out of his hooves and was promptly vaporized by lightning.
Though that might have had something to do with the fact that the terrain was being torn apart every twelve seconds by tornadoes that far outclassed the sorts that were generated by pegasi. The wind tore at the ground, acting like a crazed chainsaw. Golden bolts of lightning slammed into the ground, scorching the earth wherever they hit. Thunder rumbled above, and sounded so loud it was like the angry hoofbeats of a thousand angry gods.
Not the worst place he'd ever been, really.
"Help! Help!" He nodded and broke into a gallop. "Please! Anypony! I'll do anything!" After a few moments, the dust kicked up by the wind was pushed aside, and he saw dozens of black clouds shaped like pegasi chasing after a green coated pegasus. Judging from the look of the lightning the clouds were shooting, it was somewhere around twenty thousand volts. More than enough to cause enough pain before death. Time to go to work.
If anybody else were paying attention, they'd notice the dark green-ish mist that seemed to be slowly drifting out from under the stallion's hooves. They'd notice the fact that his cutie mark had began to glow. They'd notice his eyes turning completely blue, no white left in them. "HERE WE GO!" Despite the terrifying winds, the storm, the thunder, the hundreds of storm clouds shooting lightning and the terrified pegasus's screams for help, the words seemed to just echo throughout the world, carrying a weight that they definitely shouldn't have had.
He tensed slightly, and then burst into a gallop. Eight steps on the ground, and then his hooves hit the air. Green mist trailed behind him as he tore into the sky. Blue eyes narrowed as he tore into the sky, dodging tornadoes and lightning as he charged directly towards the frightened pegasus. "Help! Whoever said that, help!'
One of the black storm clouds let out a high pitched crackling laugh as it pulled back a fist covered in lightning. "INCOMING!" It was swiftly interrupted by an earth pony charging right through it at mach four. The stallion spun in the air, seemingly standing on thin air as more mist drifted up above him. The cloud of mist hung there for a moment before forming into a giant gleaming broadsword. It fell, and landed on the stallion's back, floating just above his coat. A feral grin appeared on his face.
It was a slaughter. The blade flashed, and the stallion leaped forwards faster than any pony should have been able to. A storm cloud was bisected with the blade, and another was impaled on the crazed sword wielder's tail, suddenly sharper than steel. Two steps to the right led him to cutting a dozen clouds in half horizontally, and the pegasus shaped clouds took that as their cue to leave.
Too bad they weren't allowed to. A vertical slice from twenty meters away somehow cut a cloud in half, and a stab tore through eight clouds in all directions at once. The blade flickered, and suddenly the stallion was teleporting around like a drunk unicorn. The poor pegasus who had been chased looked at all this with a terrified look, not entirely sure if the clouds had been worse than the crazed swordstallion carrying a sword three times his size.
Finally, the last cloud was cut into twenty pieces. "P-Please, don't hurt me!" the pegasus yelled as the stallion turned. Her eyes caught onto the blade and hoped that she wasn't about to die.
The stallion blinked. "Huh?" Glanced at the sword. "Oh, yeah! This thing." The sword floated up and burst into mist. "Sorry. I'm kind of in the business of fighting Nightmares. And nobody says you can't enjoy your work, right?" He trotted through the air over to the green coated pegasus, careful not to spook the red-maned mare. "Anyways. Do you know where you are?"
"... Ponyville?" she guessed.
"Oh, a Ponyvillian. Makes more sense, actually, the place is always having some sort of calamity. Anyways, no. You've been Dreamlocked. That's why all the tornadoes and chaos around here, actually." He grinned and grabbed her hoof. "Anyways! I'm about to Wake you up! Come on!" The world shuddered. "Orrr, I was going to, but the Dream looks like it's about to murder us both. This is bad." The lightning came far too close for comfort, barely singing the mare's left ear. "Okay, so... The Dream's noticed you're not dead yet, it doesn't like that, and it wants to murder you."
"What?!"
"Relax, it's not a big deal." A large cut appeared on the side of his face. "I mean. For you. If the tornadoes get too close, then it's likely I'll die of millions of cuts and be torn into bloody pieces. You'll be fine. In comparison."
"Then stop it!" The mare's eyes were smaller than pins, looking around her in horror. By now, all the tornadoes had converged upon them, creating a solid wall up and down of galeforce winds that would kill them both in an instant. "Stop it! I don't want to die!"
"Then don't."
"The world doesn't work like that!"
"This one does." The stallion paused as mist slowly trailed up to heal the bloody cut. "This is your Dream. The one you've created. It's a Nightmare to be sure, but it's still yours. Fix it." The mare gave him an incredulous look. "I mean it. Just face up to it. Death isn't scary. It's just another thing that happens. Fix it."
The mare stared at the walls of lightning and wind. She closed her eyes and willed it away. Opened them. The wind was still there. "I can't fix it! It's impossible!" The stallion chuckled, though how she heard him over her impending death she had no clue. "What's so funny?!"
"Since when has anything in a Dream been impossible?" Blue eyes glinted with amusement. "It's a Dream. Do anything. Be anything. Stop anything. Just Wake up." The mare clenched her eyes shut and focused as she muttered things to herself. The stallion watched quietly. He could stop this on his own, but that would require finding the Dream's Heart... And he didn't have the time or resources to do that. So he would have to hope this mare was smart enough to figure out what he meant. "Come on..."
Time turned. Space shifted. And then, impossibly, as the mare opened her eyes, Celestia stood proud. The Princess of the Sun smiled softly at the mare, before turning to frown at the oncoming storm. Her wings lifted. Sunlight beamed out from Her Majesty, shining more brilliantly than anybody could have imagined. Calm eyes turned orange with rage. And then... Her wings flapped. Once.
The storm, tornadoes, clouds and all, exploded backwards, vanishing into the horizon within seconds. The mare stared up at Celestia, astonished that the Sun Princess would come to her aid. Celestia gave another smile, before slowly fading into nothing. "Where did she go?" the mare asked quietly.
"Your mind." The stallion grinned at her before looking around. "Wooow... Not a bad view!" The devastated terrain was gone. In it's place was a massive valley filled with fluffy white clouds and trees. Waterfalls cascaded into lakes filled with shells and fish, and the formerly black sky above was replaced with a bright blue expanse. Sunlight fell upon it, illuminating the valley with golden rays of sunlight. "Wish my Dreams were as good as this one!"
"My... Mind?"
"Well. Technically speaking, not from your mind, from the image provided to you by your subconscious, but for the purposes of somebody who probably doesn't understand Dream logic, it's your mind." The stallion paused. "Oh, right! Almost forgot! Oh, I've been a complete pain, haven't I? My name's Guardian Dreamer, call me Dream, call me Guard, just don't call me me Mister Dream, that's my father. Or is that the title of a song? I forget."
The mare stared for a moment. "... My name's Galewings." She looked somewhat confused. "What just happened?"
"Dreams. You learn to roll with the weirdness, after a bit." The mist beneath his hooves suddenly vanished, forcing gravity to take hold as he fell towards the earth. "Follow meee!" he yelled, laughing the whole way. Galewings yelped and dived to catch him. "Wahaha! Come on, keep it up!" Despite her best efforts, Guardian fell into a lake. He surfaced a moment later, trotting out of the lake without a single drop of water on him. "... You get points for effort." He motioned towards a blue door that had suddenly appeared next to him. Galewings stared at the strange thing. "Welp. There's your way out."
"Out?"
"To the Waking World." He nodded at the door. "You want to wake up? Go back to the normal world? There it is." Guardian leaned up against the door and knocked against it twice. It creaked open, revealing a room so very familiar to Galewings. It was her room. The one she'd last fallen asleep in... Sweet sun, how long had it been? She had no idea. Then, in the corner of the room, she saw something.
Her body. Her still blissfully sleeping body, lying in her dark green sheets. "Wha... What? How... I..."
"It's you. Your body." Guardian stared at her body. There was some strange emotion in his eyes she couldn't place. "It's all yours. Just proceed through this door." Galewings nodded and gave the stallion a brief hug. "ACK"
"Thank you." And with that, she trotted through the door, leaving her Nightmare. Dream Galewings vanished. Real Galewings began to stir. Silently, he closed the door and waited a few moments. Then he reopened it, and entered.
The Next Day
"Err... Maam? Are you sure that--"
"PUT THE DONUTS BACK OR I WILL STAB YOU"
So as it turned out, waking up from a Dream you'd been in for a while had some side effects. One of which was hunger. Using up every single bit of cash she had, Galewings had charged right for the nearest building that sold food and began to shovel it into her mouth. Donuts, jellybeans, coffee, cheese rolls, cupcakes, even disgusting mint lollies. She officially did not care what she ate. Because she was so freaking HUNGRY.
Shovelling another donut into her mouth, she mindlessly thought about what she'd learned in the past few hours. The biggest of which was the year. Year the Second in the Era of Queen Nightmare. That meant she'd spent a full three years inside that Nightmare. Three years of her life, that she would most likely never get back. Three years of her life that had relieved her of her worthless retail job at Quills and Sofas, three years of her life being tormented by endless Nightmares, three years of her life without visits from her mother, three years of her life starving in her bed. It all kind of balanced out, in a way.
The second thing she'd learned was the identity of the Lunar Guard. No longer personable stallions and mares in shining gold armor, the guard was now hulking monsters wearing massive black stone armor that made them look like moving statues. But despite looking like mountains, they moved faster than most pegasi. Heck, she'd seen one move so fast it had practically teleported.
But the unicorn it had appeared next to had moved even faster than that, and had appeared right next to her two streets away. The mare had followed Galewings into the bakery and paid for a good portion of the food. She seemed more than annoyed to be there, but Galewings doubted the mare wanted to be seen with somebody as gluttonous as her.
"You done yet?" the black unicorn opposite her deadpanned. "I get that us Lucids are always hungry when you first wake up, but this is seriously pushing the limits." She blew a strand of silver mane out of her eyes. "When I get back, I am so yelling at Guardian..."
"Lucids?" Galewings asked through a mouth full of daisy sandwich. "You keep mentioning that word."
"Seriously? Guardian gave you a hand, but didn't even bother to explain what was going on?" She groaned. "Of course. Throw the newbie with no clue of what's going on directly at me." The mare sighed. "Alright. First things first. My name's Rainy Day. I am helping you under severe duress from Guardian, because he's a jerk. And Lucid is what we call ponies like you and me. We're Awake, permanently now. That makes us different."
"I... Sorry. This is all going over my head."
"Sweet sun, I hate you newbies. Check your cutie mark." Galewings blinked and did as directed, only to see that the mark on her flank had somehow changed. Instead of just her simple tornado cutie mark, three blue Zs had been added next to it. "See those Z marks? That means you're a Lucid. It means we're free. We can never be Dreamlocked ever again. But, at the same time, things are... Different. We're just... Better."
"How did it change? Why did it change?" Galewings felt like that was an important question, given how such an important part of her had been changed so suddenly.
Rainy shrugged. "We don't know how. As for the why, it's because you Woke up. Because Guardian rushed it, and now you're one of us." She glanced at the door. "You have two choices," she continued, somewhat hurriedly. "Go home. Get a new job. Return to the nameless masses and become normal again, and forget that you ever saw me or Guardian."
"Or?"
"Become one of the Dreaming Dead. Become a husk to these ponies, but a beacon to others. Wander the Dreamworld, help those who were like you." She paused. Quietly, almost in a whispering tone, she stated the thing that made Galewings agree. "End the night."
It took Galewings all of three seconds to reply. "I accept. How do I help?"
"When you go to sleep tonight... Dream of a blue door." Rainy hopped off the chair. "Anyway. I'd better see you there, newbie. I don't want to have wasted my time. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have guards to humiliate in every possible way." And with that, the black unicorn trotted out the door. Galewings heard a few shouts from the new guards for the unicorn to stop.
"Dreaming Dead, huh?" She bit down on a piece of chocolate cake. "I'll do my part, then."
When she fell asleep, she felt her head instantly leave the pillow. She'd fallen asleep, and woken up in the exact same place. But unlike being in the real world, there was a sense of weightlessness that accompanied sleep. She looked at the doorway and saw a blue door creak open. It led down into a spiralling staircase, one made of light blue stone.
The door slammed behind her as she entered, trotting down the steps one at a time. Torches on the wall suddenly burst into flame as she passed by, turning from mild embers to roaring flames the further she went. Eventually, the simply blue stone walls vanished beneath large paintings and tapestries of ponies from history. "How far down does this go?" she murmured to herself. This stairway seemed to last forever!
Suddenly, the twisting staircase straightened out. The sound of her hoofsteps went quiet, and the sounds of dozens of voices ahead began ringing in her ears as if from nowhere. How hadn't she noticed those voices before now? After a few moments, she reached the bottom floor of the staircase that held nothing more than a wooden blue door. Slowly, Galewings raised a hoof to knock on the door. The door suddenly swung open and slammed against the wall. "WHAT?!" Rainy Days screamed. "Oh. It's you. Hey, newbie. Come on, everybody's dyin' to meet you."
Galewings cautiously trotted inside, somewhat surprised by what was inside. The floor was covered with all sorts of different rugs and carpets of varying sizes, with little to no thought of how they were arranged. The large room was painted bright blue, with bits of art drawn in varying styles covering the walls. A bar sat at the right side of the room, the shelves behind it filled with colorful bottles. A fireplace sat opposite it, with dozens of kinds of chairs surrounding it. Bookshelves lined the room, and a large chandelier hung above them. There was probably more to the strange place behind the few doors on the other side of the room, but she couldn't tell for certain.
The thing that most caught her attention was the crowd of ponies and zebras that immediately swarmed around her, laughing and welcoming her from all angles. "You're the new kid? Not bad!"
"Guardian was telling me about you, y'know!"
"If you ever see a red door, don't go through! It's a trap by the Eclipse guard!"
"If you need help with combat training, go find Cautious Way, he'll give you a hoof."
"Dragons have weak joints near their wings, remember that since a lot of ponies dream about them!"
"There are ponies called the Shadowbolts running around, keep clear of them if you can."
"You're a Lucid, huh? Well, that figures."
"Quick! How many chucks could a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood?"
"Make sure to sign in with Selene once the Boss gets through with you!"
"Always remember your door, if you forget you're in trouble!"
"ALRIGHT!" a familiar voice yelled out. The crowd parted as Guardian Dreamer entered the room. "Okay people, I get you're eager to give the new girl advice, but she's probably overwhelmed. She just Woke up yesterday, after all." The crowd mumbled and backed off. "Well, after yesterday, I wasn't entirely sure you'd join us. But I guess you're here now, so follow me."
"You two going to talk?" Rainy asked. "Because I'm gonna split, if that's the case."
"Go ahead, me and Miss Galewings here have to talk." Rainy nodded and trotted away. "So. You want to help fight That Mare."
"... Yeah. I've been asleep for three years. I've lost three years of my life because of this. Because I had the audacity to question how eternal night would effect weather patterns. And if I was imprisoned for that, who knows what she'll do to somebody who actually outright defies her..."
Guardian nodded. "Yeah, she's kind of a jerk like that. So. You've found your way here. Congratulations. But the road will get infinitely harder from here. It took me a year to become the pony I am now. It will probably take that long for you as well. But it's worth it." He paused for a few moments. "Did Rainy tell you who we are? Where we are?"
"She said we're the Dreaming Dead, but I don't get why."
"Some of us are dead on our feet. We're the ghosts in the machine, so to speak. We're the little ponies. We're the ones who're trying to eke out an existence beyond trying to avoid That Mare's attention. We Dream, but at the same time, we're living a routine. Day in, night out, night in, day out. Dream Dream Dream. All to help the ones we care about." He paused. "That, and she read a comic with a similar title once. As for where we are... Well. That's a matter of opinion." A bottle of something alcoholic materialized into his hooves. "Do you want to know for certain?"
Galewings nodded, more sure than she had been in a very long while. "Yes. I need to know."
A grin crossed the stallion's face. "A place where the Real World meets the Dreamworld, and ponies kill Nightmares. On behalf of everybody here, I welcome you to the Dream Den."