Author's Note

Sorry. I double-checked, and the actual sex starts tomorrow. Of course, I'm not done with part 2 of day 2 yet, but.

Also, I'm weird.

Day 1

Green glows, as a rule, generally just mean your local unicorn has uncommon, but not that unusual eyes. Or some serious plant-based earthpower is being used. There was that one time when Big Mac replanted… Shadow Hopper shook away from that thought; it seemed blasphemous to think of good, dark earth and healthy, living plants here.

The green glows were everywhere. They seemed to stick to the black of his hide, like they'd clung to the navy of hers. When he moved, they shifted and mottled, making it look like something was bubbling below the surface. It came from the walls; it came from the sludge that their boots tromped through. It came from the air, fumes omnipresent.

And the earth was worse than dead here.

But that didn't matter. This wasn't a healthy, vibrant green. If this was growth, it was sickness, the vile, still-beating heart of a reality-destroying abomination. The power core of an Inconnu Juggernaut, still throbbing after local reality had been fragmented, and locally rebooted. Badly.

Their quarry had nothing to do with the Diseased. In some ways, this was worse. Even demons hated the unmakers, and for good reason. Whatever discarded cast-off of a prior multiverse had oozed into the body once named Quirky Hoof wanted nothing but to dissolve away all shape and attempt to force its own mad memories and delusions upon the fabric of reality. Even the makers of the Juggernaut hadn't been willing to work with the creatures of the Defile, but whatever final strike had slain the construct had apparently let a very small hole drip into being over a very, very long time.

Hopper knew he had to reach the shape-shell before it reached that hole. As his boots trod in the wasted rot of an apocalypse golem's corpse, he knew he wouldn't make it. As he breathed the outgassing of rent and spent reality, of armageddon's decay, he knew that he was dying with each stride. He sped up anyway, vast muscles pumping, wings lifting lightly to jump from impenetrable corridor to impenetrable corridor. At least he'd convinced her to leave him behind, even if they weren't then, yet.

"Shadow Hopper."

She wasn't here anymore. He had begged, and she'd listened. She went home. That was later, of course, but it didn't matter; she had left. She could save the herd.

The pain wasn't for her.

"Shadow Hopper. Lean on me, proud warrior. Shadow Hopper!"

What were we chasing? he wondered.

They had thought him among those arrayed against them on the main. They had forgotten that more had slipped through the crack than escapees from Tartarus. They had forgotten that there was some vileness that even the manifestations of corruption would shy from.

She hadn't known, and of course Hopper hadn't, what was in the mountain, not any part of it. Just that no mines ever prospered and that it was alone in the middle of a perpetually unhealthy little blasted heath of its own. They should have been more suspicious, but they never had time. They didn't know the ways within; who would have thought to find the husk of an Inconnu Juggernaut, and not the psychic trauma to reality screaming and evoking the merest portion of its horror when the wrong light fell upon Epona?

Whatever noxious miasma of forgotten unbeing was currently oozing and rippling through the shape Quirky Hoof left in reality knew exactly where it was going. Knew exactly how to get to that hole and rip it wide open

The world seemed to tremble, as though the core were getting worse. Was the Juggernaut's husk breaking? Buckling, the impossibility in strength there where he'd never even expected he could within the lifespan of a star and raining down, pushing him, pouring him through into the Entropic Defile!

No. Not yet. They… he… had to see the portal first. Had to know it was too late. And then Hopper could break it all, and it would never harm a soul living or dead again. Other than him. But it was too late for that, and he wasn't even there yet. The danger to her… the danger to our foals! Why are we down here? No one should ever be here.

"Apprentice!"

The portal was coming. Hopper was prepared, but he wasn't ready. There had been the thrill, yes, but the bile in his stomach, the poison radiating through his very bones, they had been there even before. The portal was coming, but he had begged and she had left. He couldn't hear her here. The pain was not for her, and nothing could save him now.

"Apprentice, I shall find thee. No matter where thou art encysted, thou art within my Dream, and I shall find thee, thus to carry thee hence. Call to me, my apprentice, call to me and thou wilt find sanctuary in my arms!"

Horror and pain leapt into Hopper's mind. The portal. We… He tried hard not to sob. He wouldn't break. He refused! He had been born and trained to fight their kind; he was of his father's mettle and his mother's making. The portal was coming. The Dholes. The qlippoth. The Defile.

He could fight, though they would break him. He could stop them, though they would infect him. His body tensed, and hardness that he hadn't even known was within came to the surface. This was his war, and every sinew, every muscle, every bone would serve. His fists bunched, and the mountain trembled. It must know. Know what he would do and how he would destroy it and complete its death at last.

---

"My love! My tender sweetling, call to thy Luna. I seek thee, but I would spare thee this and all else of this horror. It is spent, beloved. It is done. It cannot be unmade. Call to thy Luna, to the mare and Moon who loves thee, and thou wilt find shielding in my arms and succor in my breast. Call me, my love!"

---

That hadn't happened. Wait. "Luna? Luna, you have to fly! You got free, you have to be free, the portal is coming!" The portal was coming. They were coming. Pain and violation and the tearing and…

Dark wings tucked for a dive against dark hide. Things that shouldn't be on this side of the portal, that hadn't been, seemed to yawn up everywhere. He screamed; but there was an answering cry that had nothing of madness and everything of deliverance in its heat and strength.

Dark arms swept around him, and somehow, through the husk of the apocalypse mountain, they flew.

Hopper was struggling when Luna found him, buried inside a dream of the mountain he'd shattered and yet facing the foes from the other side, ripped from the residual defilement and poisons of that foul place. Still fighting them and their claws into his mind and soul.

Her poor, pretty stud fought them on every level, the dream of his body wielding smashing force that the cold Warmistress within approved of; fast and sweeping, but not leaving him vulnerable. But his will, ah, that beautiful soul and mind furious at the very existence of such filth. It had clawed into his spirit and infected his mind, but he rejected it even as it tried to subsume him.

He was still trapped, and that she would not abide. She was stronger here, greater than she was in the waking world, and she came for her stallion, swept his titanic body up into her giantess' arms. She held him dear, and flicked her wings.

The storm that scoured the dreamscape would have shredded a young alicorn like Hopper, had he not been within the grasp of the Princess of Dreams. She let loose such a cleansing as she had only but few times before, crackling the very essence of the dream's own fluidity, turning into an infinite number of infinitely fast grains of sand grinding itself into nothingness.

She had him, loved him, and would shelter him from any storm, least of all her own. Celly had said she'd cleansed his soul; Fluttershy said his body was mending. His mind was hers, and at last, she brought him out of its horrors and into wakeful light.

Luna was a traditionalist; she woke Hopper with a kiss.