Chapters Black.
The ground below her was smooth and somewhat cold. The air was cold as well, and everything was silent.
She didn't know how she got there, or where 'there' was.
She decided that, wathever was happening, she would have had a better time figuring it out if she was able to see something, so she tried to use her magic to create some light.
And then she hit something.
"Ouch! Why are you running like that? And who are you?"
"Sorry, I heard something coming near me and I freaked out, I didn't mean to run into you." Answered Twilight, happy to have found something that wanted to talk to her rather than eat her. "My name is Twilight Sparkle, I'm an alicorn from the city of Ponyville."
"You must have run into a bhole. You're pretty lucky to have run away if that's the case. I've never heard of this 'Ponyville', guess you must be from somewhere far from here. And what's that about you being an alicorn? You think I belive that?"
Before she could answer Twilight felt a pair of hooves running along along her body, stopping first on her horn and then on her wings, then finally leaving contact with her body.
"Convinced now?" She asked, a smile on her face no one could see.
"Holy thunderforce! You actually are! And I thought your kind existed only in legends and fairy tales. What are you doing here anyway?"
"I have no idea actually, I just found myself here, but I don't know why or how I got here in the first place. I don't even know where we are!"
"Can't you just, you know, use magic?"
"I've tried that, but it doesn't seem to work. Neither do my wings. It's like every type of magic is just blocked by something."
"So you being an alicorn is basically useless right now?"
"Hey!"
"Sorry about that, but I guess..."
He was suddenly interrupted by the sound of something moving in their direction.
"We better get away from here. Follow me."
"How am I supposed to follow you when I can't see anything?"
"just grab my tail in your mouth"
"Why do I have to be the one to put a tail in her mouth?"
"I'd gladly let you lead the way if you want to. Do you know where to go?"
"..."
"Guessed so."
Reluctantly, Twilight grabbed his tail in her mouth and started to trot behind him.
"What were you trying to say earlier?"
"The fact that magic is blocked here would explain why there hasn't been a pegasus or unicorn born among us for so long. There apparently were some when we first arrived here, but nopony I know remembers ever having met one."
"We? How many others are there? When did you get here? Why? And where is 'here'?"
"Wathever happened when why first got here happened too long ago for me to know for sure. I know we moved to this land from somewhere else, probably running away from something. I don't know why we decided to stop here, in a place with nothing but darkness, especially considering how there are things like the bholes living here, but maybe we just got stuck here. As for the others, there are about a dozen different roaming tribes I know of, each fairly big, and the occasional family living on its own. I don't know where 'here' relative to the outside, I was born here and I'll likely die here, I just call this place 'home'."
"What are bholes?"
"The likely reason of why we're stuck here. I've never been close enough to one to tell you exactly what it is, and don't know of anypony who did. All I know is that they're big, they hunt alone, and they're slow enough that you can outrun them. And I've never found the body of a dead one, but I bet they eat those. I don't know what else they eat, but i'd rather not go inside their territory to find out."
"That sounds horrible. Why haven't you tried to run away from this place?"
"Oh, trust me, it has been tried. No one ever got far enough that we couldn't hear the screams. We don't know if they where bholes or something else, but every possible direction has been tested and they all resulted the same way."
"How do you even tell directions in here?"
"You just do. When you're born in a place like this you just get used to it. Or you don't, but those don't last long."
"Where are why going now? Are we going to meet the tribe you're from?"
"Actually, we're stopping by to eat first."
As she was about to ask what he meant, she suddenly felt the ground beneath her shift from being the same smooth surface it had been up until that point to what was unmistakably a layer of grass.
"So, are you going to eat some or do you prefer to keep my tail in your mouth? Anyway, there's also a river nearby, just follow the border of this and you'll find it, then come back the same way. I'll stay here."
Some time later, after having drank some water and eaten some grass, Twilight asked:
"..."
"Well? Aren't we going to meet your tribe?"
"We could try to meet up with someone, but I doubt they would wnt to have something to do with me."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Ponies don't usually live on their own. I wasn't away from my group when you met me, I'm always on my own. I've been, let's say, banished from other tribes. I'm not allowed to go near one."
"Why?"
"I've done some things that they thought weren't exactly nice."
"What did you do?"
"Do you really want to know? "
Something sounded off about his voice to Twilight. It seemed different. Somehow, it seemed familiar.
"You never told me your name."
Before she could be given an answer, something happened to her. She felt like something wasn't right, like she had to run away from there. She felt scared. Before she realized it, she was running away. She couldn't tell where she was going, or if she was being followed. She just kept running and running. And when she heard it, it was too late to turn back.
Twilight woke up.
This place was vastly different from the one before. The sky was a thick layer of dark blue clouds, the ground looked and felt like a glass panel with a series of perpendicular blu lines running inside it and pulsating, as if they were made of magic, and below that there seemed to be only pitch black darkness. She looked around and noticed a series of cicular towers tall enough to pierce the clouds far in the distant, their surface exactly like the one she was walking on, like someone had taken the glass and stretched it vertically. As she was looking at them, she heard something that sounded like the buzz of an insect, and noticed a couple of objects moving above her. They were a little smaller than her, black and shaped like cubes, with L shaped appendages attached to the left and right side.
She tried to fly towards them in order to inspect them, and as she did she realized she was now able to properly use her wings, so she tested to see if her horn now worked too and was able to successfully teleport herself back to the ground. She started to think about what she could do next, when she was suddenly distracted by something.
"Hello there, Twilight."
She turned around to see who was talking to her. He was a tall black pony, wearing a long black cape that hid his cutie mark and was tied around his neck, his face covered by a weird helmet shaped like a spheroid made of a dark glass like material.
"Who are you?"
"Oh, I am many different things, and I go by many different names and shapes. And I will tell you that you were lucky to meet me in this form. But it seems to me you really wish to have something to call me by; then I guess 'soul and messenger of the Other Gods' would be a fitting definition."
"Where are we?"
"A dream, of course. Your dream."
"Does that mean You're just part of my dream?"
"Does it? And does it matter? Even if I was, I'd still tell you I'm real, and even if I was real, how could you tell considering a dream would act the same way? This aren't the questions you should be asking."
Twilight was starting to feel nervous. She didn't trust him, and she could tell there was something wrong about this whole situation, but she had no other way of getting informations, so she kept going.
"If this is a dream, why can't I wake up?"
"Maybe you don't want to."
"That's ridiculous! Of course I want to wake up."
"Then I guess there must be something else keeping you from doing it."
"But what? And if I'm stuck here for some reason then why hasn't Luna come to help me?"
"Maybe she doesn't want to?"
Twilight became extremely angry at that. Yet she also felt something else. She wanted to justify her anger at him simply by the fact that he insinuated that Luna would for some reason not want to help her, but she couldn't shake away the feeling that she was using it as an excuse to distract herself from the real reason she felt that way.
"Or maybe she can't. Maybe that's why you're here, maybe not. You can't remember what happened, can you?"
"No." Twilight answered.
"In that case, I'm afraid there's not much I can do. I could tell you what happened, but you'd probably wake up before hearing it. If you can still call it waking up when you really just end up in another dream. But isn't life itself a dream? Do you really think you can tell what is and isn't real? But I'm just a part of your mind after all, so what point is there in asking this questions here?"
Twilight was feeling very confused. There was something in her mind that she couldn't quit focus on, no matter how hard she tried. Something important she felt like she needed to know. She looked at him and saw the world twist and spin at impossible angles around him, and she saw herself falling inside an endless void, unable to remember anything. And as she fell she felt like she recognized something pulling her deeper inside the void.
She was laying on the ground in front of him, her head still spinning from the experience, and as she looked up and tried to talk she felt she was unable to speak. Still, as if he had somehow heard her thoughts, he answered her.
"I already told you, I can't just tell you what happened. There's something, someone , who doesn't want you to know why you're here, and it will do anything it can to stop you from knowing it. I can't wake you up, you have to find what you're looking for on your own. I can help you get there, the question is do you want to get there?"
Twilight looked at him. She felt weak and she was unable to stay focused, and she still couldn't trust him. But somewhere inside her she felt like this was the right thing to do, despite thousand other voices screaming the opposite. She remebered reading about him, and she knew she was doing something dangerous, but if it was just a dream then there was nothing to fear, as she would have just woken up, and if this was something more than that then this might have been her only option to get out. She had to take it, no matter how dangerous.
"Where do I go now?"
"Forward."
As he said that, he smashed his hooves on the ground. Twilight heard the sound of glass breaking and she felt the ground below her collapse, and as she started to fall she could hear laughter coming from behind her. And so she kept falling, but she soon realized how wrong it felt. It was like she was being pulled away from the ground rather than going towards it, like she was falling towards the sky instead. And as she kept going faster and faster and her vision blurred out, she found herself yet again unable to use her magic or wings.
Twilight opened her eyes.
She decided to follow the road and see where it led, and as she did so she noticed what looked like the walls of a city in the distance, so she headed towards them. While getting closer to the city she started to hear voices speaking in a language she couldn't understand, and along the way she noticed they were coming from a group of ponies who were going in the same direction as her. She tried to call them but they didn't seem to hear her, so she teleported closer to them, but once she got closer and tried to talk to them again they just kept walking, and after various attempts at getting their attention she arrived at the conclusion that they couldn't hear or see her.
Wondering what was causing their inability to interact with each other, Twilight kept walking alongside them towards the city. Once she arrived at the entrance she realized that the walls were much taller than she had thought seeing them from the distance. They were a dark shade of blue, almost black, and their surface had no visible interruption, like they were made from a single block, and they stretched out on both sides beyond her ability to see. She entered the city through a large and tall arch, the outline decorated with a seashells pattern, and noticed how the walls were various times the size of a pony. On the other side of the gallery she saw a pair of opened gates, decorated with a similar pattern to that of the outline of the arch, and after crossing them she finally had a good look at the city.
Twilight couldn't help but gape at what she saw.
It was the most grand and impressive city she had ever seen, surpassing both Canterlot and the Crystal Empire.
Beyond the houses there were four huge towers made from the same material as the walls, each taller than any building twilight had ever seen, to which the smaller streets seemed to lead. In between the towers, where the two lateral major roads led, there were two gigantic statues, too big to see them in their entirety while close to them,shaped like what looked to be dragons, except for the fact that they had six limbs, a scorpion like tail and a series of tentacles attached between the end of their necks and their heads. They both were a deep shade of purple, their eyes emerald green, and one held a black scepter while the other a green sword. Between the two central towers, directly in front of Twilight, was a giant palace, taller than the statues, with a white staircase circling the base up to the middle of it, where another large square was located in front of the palace entrance. Twilight turned around to see the ponies that were with her while she came in and noticed that the entirety of the inner side of the walls was decorated with an intricate series of statues.
Still shocked by what she saw, she saw where the ones she had been following were going and went after them towards the palace in the distance. While crossing the square she stopped to observe the fountains decorating it, and noticed they spilled a metallic looking grey liquid. Some were shaped like columns with strange inscriptions on them, other were in the shape of animals, and she seemed to notice a pattern in their distribution. The central one caught her attention, and she observed how it was different from the others. It depicted an alicorn atop a rose shaped pedestal, a series of other ponies bowing before it around the pedestal. The alicorn had a crown, and Twilight couldn't help but feel like she recognized who it was, but before she had time to think about it she realized she was falling behind and ran towards the other side of the place.
While moving towards the palace, Twilight noticed a series of curved roads connecting the other ones, with obeliscs at the center of every crossroad. Along the way she started to meet more and more ponies, all headed towards the palace, and observedhow all the houses looked like the ones she had seen before. Finally, they reached the base of the staircase and started to climb it, and as they ascended Twilight noticed how the roads connecting each other looked like a series of waves originating from the main square, while the three major ones looked like rays departing from the sun.
Finally, they reached the top of the staircase and entered the palace's front square, which was now completly filled with ponies. The palace was completly white, with a vast decorated entrance flanked by columns with stone snakes coiled around them, statues similar to the two giant ones placed above the roof and a balcony at the center of the front side, a large golden window behind it.
Suddenly the window opened and everypony looked up to it as an alicorn came out of it onto the balcony. The alicorn started to speak, and Twilight noticed it was female. She was too far for Twilight to properly see her, but ther was something about her voice and aspect that seemed familiar to Twilight, like she knew her . While talking, the alicorn pointed her horn towards the center of the main square, and as she did many turned around to look at it, including Twilight. Then, for the first time, she finally saw the pattern the fountains traced on the ground. It looked like a six pointed star, the braces streched out, with two intersecting diamond like shapes in the middle.
Suddenly the fountains started to glow of a sick green, and Twilight turned around to see that this was due to the alicorn's magic. She looked back and saw that the green light had started to flow along the pattern, and the whole city was now filled by the same green glow. The ground started to shake, quietly at first, then stronger and stronger as time went on. As the vibration reached the intensity of an earthquake the ponies around Twilight started to chant, and she heard monstrous roars coming from the statues, strong enough to blind her. She opened her eyes again, and wished she hadn't.
In front of her, inside the city, something was manifesting itself. It wasn't completly there, like a vision of smoke flickering in and out of existance, but what was visible was enough to terrify Twilight. It looked similar to the creatures represented by the statues, but it was far more complex and twisted, and taller than they were. It had two heads like those of a dragon, green flames erupting from them like blood from an open wound, eyes twitching with madness. Its limbs seemed to move freely along the surface of its body, sometime plunging back into it to resurface somewhere else, giving it the aspect of a storm. It had a scorpion like tail, longer than the rest of his body, bending and twisting around its body at unnatural angles. As the chanting grew louder, more of it became visible, and Twilight noticed dozens and dozens of tentacle departing from its body to stretch all over the city, filling the streets and surrounding all of them.
Then, Twilight heard the alicorn's voice rising above the others, proud and sure of herself, and a magical ring appeared around the creature, starting to imprison it.
The creature was horrendous, even bigger than it had seemed before, thousands of appendages sprouting at completly wrong angles from its body, a pulsating mass of living darkness, its eyes pits to hellish landscapes in dimensions unknown, its skin a carpet of rotting bodies screaming in pain, its roar the scream of hundreds of souls forever trapped in agony.
The beast inched closer to the palace, and there was nothing Twilight could do but join the screams with her own, her body frozen in place by fear, all the ones around her trapped just like her.
Twilight was lying on a bed, and every part of her body was in pain. She looked around, struggling to open her eyes, and realized she was in an hospital room. She saw a series of empty beds around her, a closed door on the other side of the room, in front of her, and a window on her left, also closed, its curtains shut. She tried to get out of bed, but her limbs hurt too much for her to do it, so she just rested her head on the pillow and waited.
After some time had passed she heard hoofsteps coming from outside, followed by the sound of a door opening, and as she looked up she saw a nurse getting closer to her. She tried to speak but her mouth felt too dry, so she simply waved her hoof at the nurse to catch her attention. The mare came closer to her and looked at her. There was something weird about the way she looked at Twilight, but she was too tired to notice it. The nurse exited the room and came back shortly after holding a plate with food and a glass of water that she gave to Twilight before leaving again.
A few minutes later, after having eaten the contents of her plate, Twilight heard again the sounds of hoofsteps outside the room, but this time there was clearly more than one, and after they stopped in front of her door she could make out a voice speaking.
"She just woke up and she's still weak, you'll have to go in one at a time and you can only stay in for a little while. You'll also have to wait between visits."
The door opened and Rarity entered the room.
"Oh Rarity, I'm so happy to see you again!" Said Twilight, despite the words hurting her throat.
"Hi Twilight." The white unicorn answered. Her voice sounded flat and uninterested, and her eyes revealed no more empathy than what she would have felt if the she was speaking to the bed in front of her rather than the pony resting on it.
A look of confusion overtook Twilights face. Before she could reply, Rarity spoke again.
"I'd better go now, I'm not allowed to stay here too long and I don't want to tire you." And as she said so she left the room, leaving the door shut behind her and Twilight alone with her thoughts again.
Minutes passed, and the door opened again. This time, Applejack came in.
"Hello Twilight." She said, her voice clearly angry, her face even more so.
"Applejack, wha..."
"What? Why am I even wasting my time here!" And with that she slammed the door shut behind her.
Twilight felt overwhelming confusion in her mind. She had no idea of what was causing her friends to act this way, and nothing she could do but wait. And so she waited.
The door opened once more, and a visibly sad Pinkie Pie slowly walked in. Hermane had almost gone completly straight, her coat was now a far less bright, and her head hanged low, her eyes pointed to the ground. She sat in the middle of the room, looked up at Twilight, and asked one simple question.
"Why?"
Twilight almost started to cry at the sight.
A short while later, the door opened again, just a little this time, and Fluttershy's head poked out of it, only to be taken back out a couple of seconds later.
Sooner than the other times, and with a clear disaggreing from the nurse, the door swung open again and Rainbow Dash entered the room. She looked furious, like she was about to shout, hate in her eyes. She spoke, and her words hurt Twilights heart far more than any knife ever could have.
"You! You! I..." Her voice shifted, and Twilight saw tears forming in her eyes. "I trusted you!"
After interminable minutes, the door opened one last time.guilt in her mind.
And then, silently as she had come in, the princess left, and Twilight was once again alone.
She looked up, and noticed the window was open. She looked outside and saw nothing but white. She didn't bother to clear away the tears from her eyes to see if that was the truth. If this was a nightmare, she wanted to wake up, if it wasn't, she would have preferred never waking up in the first place. But it had to be one. She hoped, she told herself it was, she tried as hard as she could to convince herself it was.
She closed her eyes, and she jumped.
Twilight regained consciousness. She felt sand under her and heard the sound of ocean waves nearby. The pain in her body had gone away, but she didn't want to get up. What she had seen had been a dream after all, but still it hurt her. She thought of the words that had been told her before, about how whomever was responsible for her situation would try to stop her. She had made it through this, but she feared for even worse things to come. Still, she was fully intentioned to discover the truth. She felt water reaching her body as the tide rose and she finally got up, once again ready to face the unknown.
She found herself on a beach of white sand. She looked behind her and saw an ocean devoid of any island stretching as far as she could see. In front of her was what looked like the edge of a forest, trees and leaves growing too thick for her to see through them. She decided to walk alongside the shore.
As she moved along in the never changing landscape, every step she took identical to the ones before, she started to wonder what she should have been searching in this dream. So far the passage from one dream to another had always just come to her, without the need to search for it, but it had always happened in a rather violent manner, usually from a great shock, which, she thought, made perfect sense, since they were dreams. She contemplated the idea of trying to drown herself to get out of this particular one, but quickly set aside the thuoght. She had no interest in finding out what it felt like to drown, assuming she would have even been to do so. And besides, she was curious to see what this dream had to show her, as she wondered if the ones she was going through had some sort of meaning or if they were simply meant to keep her prisoner.
After quite some time had passed and scenery around her still looked exactly the same as it had since she started walking, enough so that she started to wonder if she hadn't already circled the entirety of the island she might have been on, she decided to head towards the forest, and since it looked too hard to just walk through it, she chose instead to fly above it to look for a clearing inside inside it in which to land.
She took off and headed towards the forest, but once she was high enough to see above the treetops she realized the whole space behind them looked exactly the same. She tried flying higher to have a better view, but no matter how high she was she couldn't see any sign of a clearing or of something reaching above the trees, just an endless sea of green. She turned to the ocean and saw nothing but water in that direction. The beach she had been walking on, seen from up there, looked like a white line separating two differently coloured halves of an endless plane, one green and one blue, stretching endlessly into the horizon. Discouraged, she floated back down.
She laid her body on the sand and started to think about what to do next. Trying to drown was still an option, and in case it didn't work she could always just try falling from a high enough place, but she didn't want to have to resort to these means to move on. It would have felt like admitting defeat to herself if the best thing she could come up with to wake up was 'let's just try to kill myself'. Still, she had no other ideas. She tried concentrating herself on waking up, but it didn't work. She tried to use her magic to open herself a pathway through the forest, but the trees seemed unaffected by her powers. She tried to use it on the water, but the waves remained unchanged in their monotonous repetition no matter how hard she concentrated. She started to teleport herself further and further along the beach, but wherever she arrived it always looked just like the place she had come from. Frustrated, she stopped midway while casting yet one another teletransportation and instead discharged the magical energy as a blast towards the ground.
The spell blew a small crater in front of her. It wasn't anything more than a little hole, and soon the wind and the waves filled it back with sand, but for as long as it remained that part of the shore had been different than the rest. Twilight watched as it disappeared, then pointed her horn to the ground and started to use her magic to dig. She kept digging deeper and deeper, and when the hole had already become various times her size she felt something other than sand. She carefully used her telekinesis to estract it and then brought it closer to her to inspect it.
It was a slab of what looked like glass, with a series of words inscribed on it.I was running away when I arrived here, and yet now I wish I had stayed. I would have rather died there than here. But it's late now. I'm tired, hungry, thirsty, and using my magic on this has taken away what little energy I had left. Soon I'll be erased too, and nothing but white will be left. I see it. Or is it the world around me that's being erased? I must be losing my mind.'
Twilight finished reading it, and then she put it back under the sand. She didn't know why, but she felt like she knew what to do now. She filled back the hole, and then she waited. She heard the sound of the waves, she felt the wind through her mane, and she looked at the white sand below her. And the more she looked, the more it looked like it wasn't sand, but only a color, and it filled her visionmore and more. And the wind and the waves grew distant, and then they stopped. And the world faded around her, and there was nothing but white.
There was only white around her as Twilight looked around, but it wasn't emptyness that she was seeing. Instead there were four walls, a ceiling and a closed door, all of which were made out of clouds. She opened the door and entered an equally white corridor that turned to the left at the opposite end. She started to walk down the hallway, and stopped before the corner as she heard two voices speaking to each other behind it. She tried to listen, but couldn't make out what they were saying, so she tried to get closer. As she did so, the talking stopped and she heard two sets of hoofsteps going in opposite directions, one leaving while the other was coming closer to her. She tried to turn around to go back, but instead stumbled on her hooves and landed face first in front of the pegasus who was coming around the corner.
"And you are?" He asked, stopping before he accidentaly stepped on her.
"Twilight Sparkle" Twilight answered, trying to act like nothing had happened after getting up as fast as she could.
"Eagleheart, pleased to meet you." Answered the pegasus, visibly surprised by having an alicorn in front of him.
Twilight looked at him. He was a tall, blonde maned pegasus, his coat a light shade of gray, his mane tied behind his neck. His eyes were bright red, and his cutie mark was a pair of wings spread above a black storm cloud.
"So, Twilight, what brings you here?" He asked her, still clearly uncomfortable with having to talk to a princess.
"Nothing in particular." Twilight answered, hiding her entertainment at the sight. "I was just passing by and decided to stop for a visit."
"Well then, would you like me to give you a tour of the factory?"
"Yes."
"Follow me then." He said as he headed down the corridor Twilight had come from.
Twilight started to follow him, but after a short while she realized the hallway looked vastly differnt from how she remembered it. It was far longer and had a lef turn she could swear wasn't there before. After another turn to the left they reached a section of the hallway in which the wall on the right side had squared holes that allowed to see behind it.
"That" Eagleheart said while pointing to the room behind the wall with one of his wings "Is the room in which the production process begins. Water vapor from the surface is gathered by a series of fans below the facility and is then carried to the condensator in there, from where the basic cloud material is then sent to the rest of the factory."
Twilight looked inside the room. There was a large cubical object occupying most of it whit what looked like a pipe attached to its side, connecting the device to the opposite wall. Both of those were made of clouds.
"So wait, you make clouds in here?"
"Well, yeah. Didn't you notice the giant 'Cloud Factory' above the entrance?"
"But why?" Asked Twilight, a look of confusion in her eyes.
"What do you mean why? It's not like clouds are going to make themselves, and we need them."
"But isn't this place made out of clouds too?"
"Yes. Your point being?"
"Then where did the clouds used to make this place come from?"
"I don't know. This place was already here when I started to work in it. And I don't see any point in wondering such a thing. They were probably made by some other factory." And with that he moved on, leaving a confused and slightly irritated Twilight behind.
He stopped near a valve from which a large pipe split into two smaller ones. "This is where the main separation between cloud materials happens. Part is sent to become natural clouds and to then be released outside, the other is turned into construction material. The amount that goes into one or the other depends on what the current requests are. If there's a storm planned the majority goes to the lower levels, if there's the need to expand or repair parts of the city then we direct most of it towards the upper levels." He explained before proceding down the corridor.
Twilight kept following him in silence, and after a short while they reached a set of stairs that connected their floor with both the ones below and the ones above. They started descending it and stopped at the first opening they encountered.
"On this floor the clouds you see outside are made. We have a room dedicated to each tipe of cloud. On the left side you can see the pipes that transport thunder to the storm cloud section, while on the right the ones carrying the refrigerator used in the production of winter clouds. Unfortunately entering those rooms require a special authorization which I dont have, so we'll have to skip over them." He explained before moving further down the staircase.
They eventually reached the end of it and reached a door. After opening the door Eagleheart led Twilight on a bridge hanging from the bottom of the facility, with an identical door on the other side. All around them were a series of giant horizontal fans, also made of clouds, which were sucking air inside the building. The temperature was lower, and Twilight felt shivers running down her as Eagleheart explained how this were the fans he had been talking about earlier.
They reached the other side of the bridge and re-entered in the factory, then started to ascend a staircase identical to the one they had used on the other side. They passed by the entrances of both florrs they had already seen, and Twilight noticed a series of other pegasi walking through the hallways, some of them turning their heads towards her as they noticed haer presence. They arrived at the entrance of a third floor and Eagleheart spoke once again.
"And this is where clouds are converted into building materials. I work in the quality control departement, my job is to test the clods they produce to see if they can handle strong enough winds. Would you like me to show around or do you have to go?"
"I don't want to sound rude to you, but I would like to go now."
"No problem. Follow me this way then." He said as he started to once again walk up the staircase.
They found a door on this end of the stairs too, and went through it to exit atop the roof the factory. From there, Twilight could see a series of cloud buildings in the distance, and below them wereclouds as far as she could see.
"That is the city." Spoke Eagleheart while looking in the same direction. "Most of it was built with the clouds we made here." An evident trace of pride was in his voice as he said so.
"What's that?" Asked Twilight noticing a building separeted from the rest.
"That is the Rainbow Factory, but nobody talks about it so I can't tell you much. And over there" He said while turning around." Is nothing."
"What do you mean nothing?" Asked Twilight as she turned around to see an empty portion of sky.
"I mean there's litteraly nothing there. As far as I know at least, I haven't actually been there. or anywhere outside the city for that matter, I can't just give up my job here."
"But how can you be so sure of it if you haven't?"
"They say if you never leave you belive what you see , or something like that. Anyway, I guess this is goodbye, right?"
"Guess so. Well, it has been a pleasure meeting you." Twilight said as she started to hover in the air.
"Oh, the pleasure was mine." Eagleheart answered, and then waved his wing at her as she started to fly towards the empty sky.
Twilight kept flying forward until she could no longer see the factory behind her, then she looked at the white layer of clouds below her, stopped and then dived straight through it.
Twilight pierced the clouds and looked down. She saw a vast deep blue ocean, and in the distance a white shape of what looked like an island. She flew closer to it and noticed it was covered by a series of white stone buildings. She landed atop one of their roofs and looked around. The city seemed empty, but it did not look like it was abandoned. The streets were clean and the grass in the gardens was still short, as if it had been cut recently. Twilight looked at the sky and realized the layer of clouds was nowhere to be seen. Suddenly she heard the sound of voices nearby.
"Atavirra è."
"Eraf ommervod asoc? Os ol."
"Alomailgocca."
She looked down from the roof she was on inside a garden behind the house and saw two weird looking beings next to each other. They appeared to be composed of a series of intersecting and rotating geometrical shapes hovering in mid-air. As she looked at them she somehow felt like they had turned towards her. Then she felt a voice speaking to her in her mind.
"Welcome, Twilight Sparkle. It is our pleasure to welcome you in our home city. we will be glad to provide you with anything you might require in your journey while resting here."
Twilight flew down into the garden. She was confused and fascinated by the creature, but she did not fell scared. The tone in which the voice had spoke to her had seemed genuinely friendly, and she was interested in finding out more about the inhabitants of the island. She moved closer to them and spoke.
"Who are you? And how do you know about me?"
"Oleilgrid ommervod?" Said one of the two entities to the other.
"Erepas id ottirid li ah, ìs." Answered the other, Then the voice appeared again in her mind.
"We call ourselves 'Ilegna', althogh many have given us different names when their species discovered our existance. Not many civilizations have known about us though, as there are few who can acces the Dreamlands and maintain themselves within them. Princess Luna named us 'Dreamweavers', if I remember correctly, but I belive she never spoke of us to the Outside. We exist in the world of dreams, guarding over its travelers to see that they incur in no harms from which they can't escape, and to prevent the evils in this world from reaching the Outside. It is only natural that we would know of you, having looked over your journeys ever since you were trapped in the Dreamlands."
"But isn't Luna the one dedicated to guarding dreams? And what do you mean trapped? Do you know what happened to me?" Asked Twilight, her mind filling with more and more questions.
"Luna only has power over the dreams of ponies, but the realm in which your kind's minds rest at night is far from this place. These are the Dreamlands, the land where all dreams are born, in which only briefly do the dreamers usually venture, and oftentime the keep no memory of it. The worlds in which the dreams of the different races live and where universes of lies rise and fall in the endless cycle of wake and sleep of the mortals all are at the borders of this land, but here we exist beyond time and space, unaffected by the passing forces of the countless realities from which travelers venture here, an endless immortal land made of only thought and soul. You were banished here, Twilight, and while we do indeed know of the reasons that led to these events, we cannot tell you. For not even the Black Pharaoh in all his power could break the curse put on you without breaking your mind beyond repair. You see, Twilight, if you were to hear the truth from someone else, you'd forget all you heard and be cast away from where you are."
Twilight was saddened by what she heard. She had hoped she would finally find the cause of her wanderings, but instead had only managed to make the wall she had to climb appear far bigger than it had before. Still, she was glad to have found at least a deeper understanding of her situation. She looked up at the creature and talked.
"What can I do then?"
"Nothing but keep going forward. You'll reach your destination back to your own dream if you keep going. But be careful, Twilight Sparkle, the journey ahead is not an easy one. There are things in the Dreamlands that aren't meant to be faced by an outsider, and lands so beautiful they'll make you forget you should leave them behind. We can offer you knowledge of the dangers that will come and directions should you fear losing your way, and we'll allow you to rest in our city and prepare yourself, but we will not be allowed to interfere in your trials, so always remember you'll need to be strong if you truly wish to see the land you came from again. But now, you deserve to rest. Follow us." And with that the first dreamweaver started to move outside the garden, the presence in her mind disappearing once more as she followed it, the other one coming behind her.
They arrived at a small stone table at the shadow of a willow, and Twilight sat on a stone bench in front of it. Suddenly on the table appeared a dish, and on it were a series of small objects on it. They were seed shaped, about half the size of her horn, and looked like they were made of amber. Twilight used her magic to pick one up, and as she brought it closer she noticed the pleasant smell it had. It made her think of her home and her friends. Instinctively she ate it. It tasted like one of the cake Pinkie baked for a party, or like a fresh sip of apple juice on a hot summer day, and yet it tasted like none of them and like a thousand other things, and Twilight realized it tasted like memories, sweet despite being far away.
After she had eaten the creatures moved again, and she followed them in silence until they reached a small building near the center of the town. There they stopped, and upon entering it Twilight could do nothing but gape in awe at what she saw. Not only wers the interior of the building hundreds of time bigger than it looked like on the outside, but every wall was covered with nothing but books of all shapes. The sun was high in the sky when they entered, and it could no longer be seen when she was finally brought out of the library, much to her displeasure. She had learned many things about the Dreamlands in there, but still she had many questions that she knew would have gone unanswered.
They entered a small house with a bed in it, and Twilight noticed a pair of dark green saddlebags was placed near the bed. She opened them and found a flask, a compass and a scroll inside. Again, she felt the voice speak in her mind.
"These are our gifts to you. That flask will always be full should you need it. It'll be warm when you're suffering cold and fresh when you're suffering the heat, and if you ever fell hunger or thirst drinking from it will make it stop. That scroll is a map of the ever shifting world of the Dreamlands. It will always show you where you are and what's around you. That compass will always point in the safer direction to reach your destination, but it's up to you to choose what it points towards. Finally, those saddlebags. You'll never lose them as long as you wear them, and you will not feel their weight. No one else will be able to see them, and it'll be as if you don't have them, but as soon as you wish them to appear you will find they are still with you."
Twilight closed back the saddlebags and put them on. She didn't feel them at all, but when she looked for them she saw they were still there. She turned to her benefactors and thanked them.
"We aprecciate your gratitude, but before we leave you to sleep there are other things that we must tell you. A last series of warnings, if you will.
She layed on the bed. From outside, she could hear the voices of the two entities speaking in that language she still couldn't understand.
"Assets es a alraicsal otsuig ais isnep?"
"Alos eratnorffa eved ehc oiggaiv nu è ous li am, on."
"Iel rep ùip id eraf otutop ommerva am, orev."
"Elouv is ehc òic etoup is evod àloc ìsoc islouv."
She felt tiredness overtake her and she closed her eyes.
A loud, powerful noise, like that of a lightning striking the ground. Four times it was heard clear through the air, and three more times the four sounds repeated themselves.
Twilight opened her eyes. She looked around, but it was dark and she couldn't make out any shape. Suddenly a flash illuminated the world around her clear as day. It only lasted for a couple of seconds, but it was enough for her to realize she was entirely somewhere else than before. She saw a series of tall arching structures of a lavander shade, their surface irregular like that of a rock, their shape mostly similar to that of a curved pipe. Some where too small for her to pass under, while others were close to small mountains in height. She used her horn to cast light around her, but before she could move any further she saw the ground in front of her being swiped by a tremendous wave force, strong enough she could see the air compressing on itself as it passed.
After a few seconds the light flashed again, and then another wave struck. She took mental note of the time passing between each flash and wave, and noticed a repeating pattern. She waited for the next wave, then made a run for the nearest cover, and repeated this until she reached the base of a big enough arch where she could rest without the risk of being blown away.
She took out her map and looked at it. It showed an intricate series of purple lines around a white lighting bolt shaped symbol in the middle. Near the edge of the purple maze of lines she could see a pulsating red dot that she identified as being her position. Beyond the border of the lavander structures was a black zone. She picked up her compass and opened it. It was pointing to the outside, away from the source of the waves. She looked back at the map. She wanted to leave that place, but that symbol in the center fascinated her. She wanted to see what was creating the waves, even if it might have been dangerous to get closer. She looked back at the compass and noticed it had changed direction.
It was now pointing to a structure to her left, close to the center than she was. She put the map back in her saddlebags and started to follow the compass to one stucture after the other, careful not to be hit by the waves. As she got closer and closer to the center she realized the waves moved faster while near it, and slowed down the further they went. Not only that, but they were also stronger the more she neared the center. This made it harder for her to proced, to the point that she thought it would eventually be impossible to reach the next cover, but before she could be near enough to see what was in the center she found herself at the entrance of a tunnel.
She entered it, still following the compass, and walked deep down inside the earth. Once she reached the end of the descent she arrived inside a complex series of tunnels. They were large enough for a pony to comfortably walk through them, and in some places it looked like ther had been inscriptions on the walls, though they were unintelligible now. Twilight would have surely been lost were it not for the compass guiding her, as the tunnels stretched in all direction and, judging by some holes she noticed on the upper parts of them, they seemed to continue even inside the stuctures she had seen outside.
Finally she started to ascend again through the tunnels, and emerged inside what looked like a giant sphere made of glass. As she entered, a lightning struck the top of the sphere. The entirety of the stucture started to glow, and then stopped as the energy was redirected outside in the form of one of the waves.
Twilight put the compass back in her saddlebags and looked around inside the structure. The space inside it was empty, save for a white stone pedestal in the center of the area. She walked closer to it and started to inspect it. It didn't seem to have any distinctive features, its surface barren and cold to the touch. After trying to move the stone or see if it had any hidden mechanisms, she decided to interact with it with her magic instead.
As soon as her magic aura came in contact with the altar, signs started to lit up on it. She tried to stop in order to inspect it, but found she was unable to cut off the flow of magic from her horn. The signs kept growing of a brighter and brighter shade of light blue, and Twilight's eyes started to glow as she felt her mind being sucked away from her body. She did not lose cosciousness. Instead, Twilight was now feeling as if the surface of the glass sphere was her body. She could feel every part of it, and see and hear everything around it.
Then, the lightning struck again. She felt an enormous amount of energy running through her new body. Then, as the energy was discharged again in the form of a wave, she felt herself moving with it. She felt herself being stretched in every direction as the wave moved further from the sphere. She could still feel every part of the surface of the wave as it moved along in its path, growing bigger and bigger as time went on. She crossed the maze of purple stuctures, but she did not stop there. Further and further the wave kept going, her mind becoming thinner as it was stretched across an ever growing surface. She crossed valleys and mountains, and bottomless abisses where no light had ever been, and from cold skies to colder empty spaces she still kept going, till her mind was flooded with far too much information, until she reached the edge of the universe.
Then, as suddenly as it had started, everything stopped, and her mind came crushing back inside her old body, making her collapse from exhaustion.
Twilight regained consciousness. She still couldn't properly feel her body, and her vision was still blurred out. The scenery around her was extremely bright, and she could make out luminous dots moving around her. She tried to move, but something felt off about it. She had moved forward, but she hadn't felt any part of her body moving. Instead, it was as if she had shifted her position as a whole, like her body was paralyzed and it had been moved by magic instead. Her vision became clearer and she tried to move away as she realized the entirety of the space around her was engulfed in flames.
After the initial shock, however, she soon noticed the fire had no effect on her body. She tried to look at herself but was unable to see or move any part of her body. As she was tryingg to make sense of what was happening, another thing struck her attention. She hadn't noticed at first, as she had just recently experienced something similar, but she was still seeing the world in all direction, like her body was nothing but a continuous set of eyes on every side. She could properly see what was around her now, and started to observe the orbs of light moving through the fire and flames.
They looked similar to what stars look like in the night sky. They had various colors and dimensions, and moved around at different speeds, some proceding in a straight line while others following a looped series of movements. She moved closer to a small green one to get a better look at it, but as she reached near it another one, red coloured and many times her size, suddenly took a sharp turn in her direction and moved towards her faster than she could get away.
She expected there to be a collision between her body and the red one, instead the two passed through eachother. As they did, however, Twilight's mind was suddenly filled by a series of visions. She saw green fields and valleys rolling below her at incredible speed while she flew through the air, and gigantic caves filled with gems. She saw vast lands where the earth was scorched and rivers of molten rock ran across it, while the sky was oscured by dark ash clouds rising from volcanoes in the distance. She saw other things, some that weren't proper visions but rather a series of feelings she couldn't understand, but before she had the time to properly examine what she was experiencing the influx of information stopped, and she saw the red globe moving away from her.
The one she had come close to was now nowhere to be seen, so she instead neared a grey orb about her size moving up and down in a repeating pattern. She made contact with it and again memories from another life came to her vision. This time she saw a series of caves and tunnels below the surface of the earth, and deposits of precious stones hidden from the sunlight. But the vision was repetitive and she grew tired of it, so she moved away.
She now reached a large orange sphere stationating still in its position. She entered it and saw in her mind deep abysses where the light of the sun was barely visible, populated by fascinating creatures of bizarre shapes, their skin a pale white or in some cases even transparent, bioluminescent organs located on some of them. She saw herself hunting and fighting against enormous fish-like creatures. But soon most of what she was seeing became only a long empty series of travels through lifeless unending oceans, and she grew tired of these visions as well.
Next she approached a large pale body and entered it. This vision was different from the others. There was nothing to be seen, no colors or light. Instead, there were loud sounds, louder than they should have been, and smells of which she could tell position and distance from their intensity. And the perception of what was at the edges of her body was far magnified, and she could fell as she crawled on a smooth and featureless cold surface towards a large body she soon started to consume, a body of a being she knew belonged to the same species of that she was in. Disgusted she swiftly separated herself from the creature.
In the distance she saw a massive black globe moving downwards. It was dozens of times the size of the biggest one she had seen up until that point, and all the orbs that came in contact with it grew dark and then disappeared. Afraid to get any closer to the thing she instead opted to reach a sphere located in the opposite direction, blue colored and moving in an eight shaped loop.
She touched it and was pleasantly surprised by what she saw. She was now inside what she could clearly recognize as the body of a pony, although it happened to be a pegasus' rather than that of a unicorn she had been used to. She watched the familiar land of Equestria unravel below her as she flew in its skies. She recognized cities and landmarks, and even thought she saw faces of ponies she was familiar with at some points. She remained within this particular set of memories for longer than she had in all the others, enjoying the sight of the homeland she was so far from, and even witnessed important events like the return of Nightmare Moon from a different point of view than her own. The visions kept flowing onwards through cheerfull days, but suddenly something changed. The grass died, the sun paled, and the world in front of her eyes became a grey desolated wasteland. Twilight's heart was filled with horror. She couldn't belive it. She didn't want to. She flinged herself out of contact from the orb and contemplated the space around her.
She saw a lavander globe, slightly larger than her, and she felt drawn to it. Something about it seemed familiar , and so she neared it and once again made contact. As soon as her mind entered, however, she immediately regretted her decision. She was standing on a cliff overlooking the same barren world she had just left, nothing but a dead land as far as the eye could see. What unsettled her the most, however, wasn't what she saw but what she felt. Where the previous vision had been filled with sadness at the sight, this one has no such thing. Instead, she could feel rage and hate in this one, and worst of all a twisted sense of pride and satisfaction, as if she had obtained some sort of great victory. She tried to get out but was unable to do saw, and as she tried to scream she felt her mouth open only for laughter to be heard. It was a sick laugh, the sound of which she feared she knew, and the shock from such dark and twisted thoughts she felt running through that mind was too much for her to handle.