Shades of Hades

Chapters

1. The Gates of Horn and Ivory
2. Persephone
3. Sisyphus, Tantalus, Ixion, et Al.
4. Orpheus
5. Elysium

1. The Gates of Horn and Ivory

It wasn't that Rainbow Dash had disliked carving Nightmare Night pumpkins back when she'd been growing up in Cloudsdale. It was just that, with the pranking and the candy and the costumes and the getting to flap around all over the neighborhood until way after dark, pumpkin carving barely made it into the top ten when it came to awesome things about the festival.

In her third year at flight school, though, when Mr. Nimbus had taught them how to whip up cyclonic microbursts, Dash had moved pumpkin carving solidly into fourth place. Because being able to cut holes in a pumpkin just by looking real hard at it, rearing back, waving her wings, and scissoring her front legs in the air? That was pretty darn awesome.

The rest of her time in Cloudsdale and after her move to Ponyville and during her friend-making and world-saving and all that, pumpkin carving had stayed right there in fourth place. Then Discord had started hanging around being a good guy or whatever, and the night before his first Nightmare Night, he'd been at Fluttershy's with them, a weird smile on his weird face while he watched them settle in to carve their pumpkins. A flash like the tiniest lightning bolt ever had drawn Dash's attention to where Discord was floating, and at the first touch of Rarity's knife, her pumpkin had screamed, jumped off the table, and tumbled wailing out the door.

Dash had taken off after it, Discord had followed, and the two of them had spent the next hour or so hooting and hollering, Dash chasing Discord's shrieking pumpkin puppet thing through the moonlit streets of Ponyville till Dash had managed to catch it in a whirlwind, spinning it through the air and fatally stabbing it onto one of the spires of Twilight's castle.

Gruesome? Sure. But awesome? Doubly sure.

The next year, she and the Cutie Mark Crusaders had nudged and wheedled and whined and just about begged until Discord had done it again, but with four pumpkins this time so they could each have one. And by the year after that, it had become what Applejack called "a full-blown thang," most of the town's foals and about half the grown-ups waiting eagerly with their gourds outside Town Hall—Fluttershy had registered her quiet objections after the second time they did it, so Discord had suggested what he called "a change of venue"—for what the mayor had dubbed the Third Annual Ponyville Pumpkin Chase.

So pumpkin carving? At this point, it was definitely the second best thing about Nightmare Night. No matter what Discord said.

Well, more snorted than said. "You ponies!" He shook his head from where he lay stretched all over Fluttershy's sofa like a big brown pile of overcooked spaghetti. "You're so blood-thirsty!"

They'd all just gotten back to the cottage with their candy, had coaxed Fluttershy out of her hidey-hole with promises that Nightmare Night was officially over, and were now deep into what had become their traditional after party. This had been Starlight and Trixie's first time going out with the group, too, and Dash had to admit that the two of them added a whole new terrific level of weirdness to the thing.

Of course, nopony outdid Discord when it came to weirdness. So seeing him not hopping up and down on the cider cask or swinging from the strings of paper bats on the ceiling, Dash had wandered over in her sphinx costume to see what was up with him. But now... "Blood-thirsty?" She took a sip of her cider and smacked her lips. "Tastes like apples to me."

He gave her a look from under his ruffling eyebrows. "I wouldn't be surprised if some of your acquaintances actually had apple juice flowing in their veins." He waved across the room to AJ, painted all over in black and red squares like a checkerboard. "But I'm talking about the pumpkins."

That made Dash blink some more. "Uhh, you know that pumpkins don't have blood, right? Just seeds and that stringy, gooey stuff?"

"Ah, Rainbow Dash." Discord sat up—which was at least a step in the right direction—and pressed his lion paw to his chest. "Your density is outdone only by your fragrance, and that's ripe indeed."

Deciding she was in too good a mood to be insulted, she laughed instead. "They're just pumpkins, Discord, and chasing them's just fun."

"Exactly!" a new voice said, one that sounded to Dash's twisting ears like Discord with a stuffy nose. "And there's nothing wrong with a little imaginary fun, am I right? Or am I right?"

Her head following her ears, she turned to find herself staring at another Discord—or actually at a scrawnier, shorter, glasses-wearing version of Discord. "And who," this other Discord went on in that nasal voice, "knows more about imaginary fun than Rainbow Dash, am I right? Or am I right?"

"Hayds?" the actual Discord asked. "Is that you, or is one of Fluttershy's chickens molting again?"

The other Discord's mouth tightened. "I've told you two hundred million, four hundred forty-four thousand, three hundred and six times, Discord: my name has two syllables. Yes, it's spelled H-A-D-E-S, but it's pronounced, 'Hay-dees.'" He held up two talons of his eagle claw while he said it again: "'Hay-dees.'"

Discord made a noise like air rushing out of a balloon. "And I've told you two hundred million, four hundred forty-four thousand, three hundred and seven times: saying it that way sounds like you're looking for bargains at a grocery store." He popped into place beside this Hades guy with a dozen rolls of toilet paper squirming in his arms. "Hey! Dese on sale?" The rolls all shot from his grip and exploded, wave after wave of paper shreds wafting down over Hades. "But no!" Discord finished, waving his now-empty paws. "You never listen to my advice!"

Dash tried not to laugh—another Discord wasn't really anything to laugh about, the more she thought about it. But the pinch-mouthed look on the little guy's face, his eyes all squinty behind his glasses and toilet paper hanging from his antlers, was just too priceless. The first snicker snuck out of her, and when the guy got even more squinty-eyed, she just lost it completely, rolling over onto her back and kicking her hooves.

"Rainbow Dash!" Discord shook a claw at her. "Laughing at a wimpy, weaselly little bucket of boring like my cousin before you've been properly introduced? What atrocious manners!" He held up a glass and tapped it with a fork.

The fork cracked with a honk like the world's biggest goose, orange liquid oozing out into the glass, and silence stumbled across the room, everypony snapping their heads over to stare. "If I might have your attention?" Discord waved the glass at Hades. "This is my cousin Hayds." He shrugged. "Or 'Hay-dees,' I guess he prefers." He swigged back the orange liquid, his eyes spun like a Los Pegasus slot machine, and when they came up double lemons, two tiny clouds poofed from his ears, the whole room suddenly smelling like the air freshener Dash's mom had always used.

"Hades?" Twilight stepped forward, the glow of her magic pushing her Songbird Serenade bangs out of the way to show her wide eyes. "The architect of Tartarus? That Hades?"

"Well, now." Hades brushed at the toilet paper; it turned to fog and drifted away. "It's nice to see that Cousin Discord isn't hanging out with the usual crowd of clods and bumpkins."

"But—" Somehow, Twilight's eyes got even wider. "The legends all say that Hades was a cruel and capricious monster who locked ponies away in Tartarus for no good reason and ruled over his domain with an iron hoof till the princesses defeated him and locked him away in one of his own cages." And only then did she take a breath.

"Really?" Discord's ears perked up. "Cousin? Have you been holding out on me?"

Hades scowled. "I don't know how these stories get started! I mean, it was all business, pure and simple! I was looking to retire, these nice young pony princesses were looking for somewhere to store their immortal enemies, and we made a deal. They gave me a nice box of gold—and no, I don't mean a prison cell—and I gave them the whole place: lock, stock, and Cerberus."

Discord's ears flopped sideways. "Yes, that sounds more like the draconequus I've been trying to avoid since just after the first moment of recorded history."

Twilight's eyes were shimmering the way they always did when she was about to learn something: Dash knew it when she saw it, and blowing out a breath, she decided she'd check out what was happening in the less eggheaded parts of the party. "Oh, wow!" Twilight was saying as Dash turned to go. "That's just so absolutely fascinating! Would you have a moment to talk about the thermodynamic uncoupling matrices that you used in constructing the—"

"Actually," Hades said, sliding past Twilight to step in front of Dash. "I was hoping I could talk to Rainbow Dash about a business proposal this evening." He glanced back at Twilight. "Because, yeah, I'd love to chat about heat sinks and Four Ear's law of conduction and all that, but right here and now isn't really the time or place for that: am I right, or am I right?" He snapped his claws, and a little notebook popped up in front of him. He took it, flipped it open, and grabbed a quill pen out of thin air. "I don't often get a chance to discuss those sorts of matters with anybody who'll understand them, so could we meet, say, tomorrow for lunch at your castle?"

"Oh!" Twilight blinked several times. "Of course! That would be great!"

"You bet." His notebook disappeared, and he aimed a claw at Twilight while making a little clicking noise with his mouth. "Watercress sandwiches for me, thanks, and I'll see you then." He spun once more, lay an arm across Dash's neck, and said, "But you're the mare I'm looking for, Rainbow Dash, to help me get this new project under way."

"Really?" Discord asked before Dash could. White light swirled around her, then it cleared to show a room that looked like the main office at Weather Central in Cloudsdale the one time Dash had visited there before getting posted to Ponyville: a big desk, a bunch of wooden bookshelves, carpet all over the floor. From a couch against the wall, Dash blinked at Discord in a big chair on one side of the desk, Hades in a much smaller chair on the other. "Well, then!" Discord was going on, "On behalf of my client, I'll need to know what exactly you have in mind before I'll allow her to sign anything."

"Client?" Hades looked over at her.

Again, Dash opened her mouth, ready to spit out a denial, but at Discord's snap, an apple wedged itself between her teeth. "You see, Cousin," Discord said, pressing his claws together, "I've spent the last bit of time getting to know the interesting ins and outs of friendship. And knowing you as I do, I find myself unable to simply abandon my bosom chum Paintball Splash here to whatever dull, soul-sucking scheme you're cooking up." He clapped and leaned forward, glee wriggling across his face. "So spill! Will there be fun? Will there be mayhem? Answer the second question first!"

A little touched—and a little suspicious—Dash chomped through the apple but decided not to get huffy about Discord acting like her agent or whatever. "Yeah!" she said instead, proud that she kept the spray of juice to a minimum. "I mean, not the mayhem part, but what's this all about?"

Hades's gaze wavered back and forth between them till it stopped on Dash. "It's something I started thinking about after your Princess Luna got back from her sabbatical and took over her duties in the Dream Realm again. Sure, she's there for the big important stuff every night, but what about the little reveries ponies drift into during idle moments now and then?" He tapped the desk. "Daydreams, Rainbow Dash. Who's in charge of daydreams?"

That got Dash blinking, and even Discord cocked his head and looked thoughtful. Hades gave a little shrug. "Say you've got a couple hours to kill on the train to Canterlot, or even just a couple minutes waiting for a friend to show up. If there was an organized Realm of Daydreams, a pony could pop in, have a little imaginary fun, then pop back out and get on with her schedule."

Discord rolled his eyes. "Organized..."

"A little." Hades held out his eagle talons, a golden mist drifting around them. "It wouldn't have to be as stratified as the actual Dream Realm, and certainly wouldn't be as big a construction as Tartarus. It'd just be a light and fun way for ponies to keep track of their favorite daydreams so they can bookmark when they have to leave off and pick it up the same place the next time. And you, Rainbow Dash, would be the perfect pony to help me let ponies know about it."

Wanting to ask why he thought that, Dash got cut off a third time when Hades kept talking. "You daydreamed about being the best cloudbuster in Equestria, and you made it to the top of the team monitoring the Everfree Forest. You daydreamed about being the best monster fighter in Equestria, and you helped bring down Nightmare Moon and the changelings and a certain goat-scented joker of our mutual acquaintance."

"Hey!" from Discord.

This time, it was Hades rolling his eyes before continuing. "And on top of all that, you daydreamed about being the best flier in Equestria before becoming a featured performer with the Wonderbolts." He gave a sharp nod. "You're pretty much the posterfilly for the idea of daydreams—am I right, or am I right?—and with you on board, ponies'd know they didn't have to worry about a thing. What do you say?"

It sounded like it might be the best thing ever, she wanted to say. But remembering what Twilight and Discord had said earlier about this Hades guy, she glanced in Discord's direction to see if he was shaking his head or anything.

He was stroking his beard. "It's actually not the worst idea I've ever heard. Not that I'd be interested in such a thing, but for ponies, the way they like things so regular and all..." He nodded to Dash. "You're already as close to being a professional wool-gatherer as a non-sheepshearer can be. Why not make it official?"

The scowl she aimed at him wasn't anywhere close to real, and Dash switched it for a grin when she slid her attention back to Hades. "I'm in," she said. "What's next?"

"Terrific!" Hades crooked a claw at her. That mist sprang up again, but this time, it shot across the room to wrap around Dash's head. Startled, she sucked in a breath and sucked in some of the mist, too, a sort of cinnamon crispness to it that made her think of breakfast. "I'm calling the place Mythos, and you're now credentialed as both a sysop and a beta-tester in the—"

A click came from the wall behind Dash, and part of the bookcase swung open to reveal Fluttershy, fireflies dancing around her head and bathing her in their gentle light. Her eyes went wide, her mouth curving into a circle, and she touched a front hoof to her chest. "Oh! I'm sorry! I didn't realize anypony was using the pantry!" She blinked. "As an...office?"

White light washed over Dash, and she found herself sitting in Discord's lap, Hades sort of squished against the shelves along the back wall of Fluttershy's pantry, the whole space smaller than the desk had been a second ago. "We're just wrapping up," Discord said, slithering out to stand on the kitchen floor.

Dash gave him a genuine glare this time and squirmed around so she could ask Hades, "So! How do I—"

Hades's wide-eyed stare stopped her, his mouth hanging open; as Dash watched, his glasses steamed up so thick, water started dripping from the edges. He was looking past her, though, and when Dash followed his gaze, she saw Fluttershy looking back.

Fluttershy did some more blinking, then she looked up at Discord. "If you've been splitting yourself into smaller pieces again, I think you left one behind."

"Hmmm?" Discord bent down and squinted. "That? No, no, my dear Fluttershy. Even in a dim light, that's no part of me."

"Fluttershy?" Hades muttered. "I— That is, you— That is—" Shaking his head with a slosh like a half-empty pickle jar, Hades took a breath, and the smile that spread over his snout reminded Dash more of a crack in a pumpkin than anything else. "Miss Fluttershy, I've heard so much about you that it's an absolute honor to finally make your acquaintance."

"Heard?" Fluttershy did that thing where she shivered and cringed without actually moving. "About me? I...I don't know how that could've happened!"

"It's okay, Eff." Dash gestured with a wing; Fluttershy blushed, took a step back, and Dash squeezed past her and out of the pantry. "This is Discord's cousin Hades. I guess you missed his introduction out front a couple minutes ago."

"Oh!" Fluttershy's ears fell, and she stepped through the little door. "I'm so sorry, Hades! I've been making sure we had enough mustard for the sandwiches, and I—"

"Now, now, my dear." Hades took one of Fluttershy's front hooves like he was picking a flower, and in the darkness of the pantry, Dash could see a weird shimmer spring up around his eyes. "You need never apologize to me, not in this world or any other." He leaned forward and touched his lips to Fluttershy's hoof, his eyes never leaving hers and never stopping their shimmer.

Wanting to bash him in the face, Dash instead loudly cleared her throat. "So, about this daydream thing?"

"Hmmm?" Hades's eyelids fluttered like he was coming awake, then he gave a little gasp and dropped Fluttershy's hoof. "Oh! Yes! Of course!" He snapped and vanished; the scrape of claws on tile behind her got Dash to crane her head around, and Hades was standing beside Discord, the larger draconequus aiming a frown down at the smaller. "I'll let you know about Mythos! I just— I need to— I— Yes!" His ears glowing bright red, his body blew up like a balloon, and he burst with a splashing sound, a day-old popcorn smell wafting across the kitchen.

"Finally!" Discord spun one of his claws like a little fan and pointed it at his face. "I thought he'd never leave!"

Fluttershy came out of the pantry, set down the jar of mustard she had clenched in her teeth, and gave a tiny shrug. "He seemed nice."

Dash was too busy swallowing to say anything no matter how much she wanted to shout that nopony got to look at or touch Fluttershy that way, but Discord waved his lion paw. "Oh, sure! If you like 'nice.'" He crooked his claws into little quotation marks when he said that last word. "In the cookie jar of draconequus society, he's oatmeal raisin: hardly one of us at all!"

With one last shake, Dash pushed her grouchiness away and stretched her wings. "Yeah, but helping ponies with their daydreams sounds like it might be kinda fun."

Discord blew a glowing green bubble, and the kitchen suddenly smelled so much like guacamole that Dash's stomach rumbled. "Well, even a stopped clock is right six or seven times every other fortnight." He cocked an ear in Dash's direction, produced a surgical mask between his claws, and tied it on over his muzzle. "Still, it sounds like we need an emergency sandwich transfusion stat!"

With a giggle, Fluttershy pushed the mustard jar forward. "Just what the doctor ordered!"

Flaring her wings, Dash swooped over, scooped the jar up between her hooves, and darted toward Fluttershy's front room. "Oh, yeah! Let's get this party started!"

"Ummm..." Fluttershy cleared her throat as softly as maybe a mouse might. "The party actually started a couple hours ago, Rainbow."

Dash rolled her eyes at Discord, almost made a joke about Fluttershy being denser than even Dash herself, but decided pretty quickly not to. "Then let's kick it up a notch or two!" she said instead, and burst out of the kitchen into the laughing and the dancing and the eating and the drinking.

Author's Note

The Gates of Horn and Ivory, according to their Wikipedia entry, are an ancient Greco-Roman "literary image used to distinguish true dreams (corresponding to factual occurrences) from false." And who am I to argue with Wikipedia?

Mike

2. Persephone

Coming awake, Dash found herself remembering very little of the party other than the drinking, and not all that much of that. A few hazy blinks told her she was lying tangled in her own blankets and sprawled over her own bed in her own bedroom, so she'd apparently made it home in one piece. That was a good sign, at least.

With more than a few yawns, she stretched gingerly, ready for the telltale pinches and kinks that would grouchily let her know that she'd maybe gotten carried away the night before, but nothing jabbed her, nothing stabbed her, nothing made her want to curl right back up or anything. She felt a little wilted around the ears and a little dry around the mouth, but other than that...

"Weird," she said aloud, and her voice didn't even crack. She sat up, looked around—

And the angle of the sunlight drifting through her window all over the cloudy floor almost shouted that it was past noontime.

Which seemed even weirder than the whole not feeling wrecked thing. Sure, she'd been just as careful as always about letting everyone from Spitfire to Derpy know that she was taking the day after Nightmare Night off, but every year, there was somepony—Pinkie or Twilight or Applejack usually—who either didn't get the memo or thought it'd be funny to pretend they hadn't gotten the memo. So the morning after Nightmare Night tended to crack over her with a voice shouting from down on the ground or a hoof nudging from the bed beside her or even a tortoise hovering overhead. But this year?

"Huh." A few more stretches still didn't rouse any sort of aches, so Dash hopped out of bed and took a quick look in the back of her closet where she kept her Nightmare Night candy to make sure her bag had come home with her. It had, so she flapped downstairs.

Tank was asleep on his cushion, but this far into autumn, that wasn't too weird. The kitchen didn't have a grain of food in it, but again, not too weird: she'd pretty much been expecting one of the girls to have dragged her into town for breakfast by this time, after all, and she'd spent all week at Barnyard Bargains picking up the stuff for her sphinx costume, not stocking the bread box.

That she was having trouble remembering the party told her it had been a blast, and a little grin curled her snout. Maybe she oughtta go wake Pinkie up for a change...

Whisking out the window, she did a couple barrel rolls through the blue and cloudless sky at the thought of her friends tumbling off their mattresses when she yelled their names instead of the other way around, but sailing over Ponyville, she couldn't help noticing the quiet. The day after Nightmare Night wasn't an official holiday or anything. So where was everypony?

A giggle tickled her ear, and Dash looked down to see Derpy draped over Davenport's mailbox outside Quills & Sofas. Her gray wings gave a little flap, but instead of rising into the air, she just giggled again.

Dash let herself smile. That was pretty much usual at any rate. Shifting course to glide down and ask if Derpy had seen Pinkie or Twilight or anypony out yet today, Dash caught a red flash from the town square: apples stacked up on Applejack's cart, AJ herself there beside it. Another shift sent Dash skimming along the ground toward her—talking with AJ didn't get her nearly as frustrated as talking to Derpy did—and Dash could see other carts were set up, too, more ponies standing here and there under the midday sun.

No pony seemed to be talking, though...

"Hey, AJ!" Dash called out, skidding to a stop beside the cart. She almost started to complain that none of them had woken her up this morning, but, well, she kept telling them not to do that, didn't she? So instead she went with: "Some party last night, huh?"

"Hmmm?" Blinking, Applejack swung her head toward Dash, and Dash wasn't sure she'd ever seen such a cloudy look on that usually sharp face. "Oh, hey, Rainbow. How're you...doing?" She yawned, her eyes went all unfocused, and her mouth closed into a little smile.

Three or four seconds ticked by, Dash feeling her own smile fade. "AJ?" she asked, waving a hoof in front of her.

"Hmmm?" Applejack did some more blinking, her gaze seeming to come into focus again. "Oh, hey, Rainbow. How're you...doing?" With another yawn, everything about her went soft, that same little smile curling back into place.

"Uhh..." Dash stretched her neck to peer more closely into AJ's face. "How hard was that cider you were pouring last night, anyway?"

"Hmmm?" For the third time, AJ blinked, straightened a little, seemed to catch sight of Dash, and said, "Oh, hey, Rainbow. How're you...doing?" That led to her yawn, to her relaxing, to her little smile, and to a shiver icing down Dash's back.

Snapping her head around, she saw similar little smiles nestled on the lips of the other ponies in the town square, some of them kind of swaying where they stood, all of them silent and not really looking at anything.

It took some effort for Dash not to shout, "Zombies!" when she leaped straight up into the air. It couldn't be a prank, after all, a part of her whirring brain insisted, 'cause Pinkie would never repeat herself like this. So quick as an indrawn breath, she burst across town to the front steps of Twilight's castle.

Through the doors, she slammed them and started darting from room to room. "Twilight! Spike! Starlight! Trixie, even!" But only her own voice echoed back along the crystal corridors.

When she stuck her nose into the library, though, three different shades of purple grabbed her attention, and she just about threw herself over to the book-stacked table in the center of the room where Twilight, Spike, and Starlight were sitting. "Guys! Something weird's happening!"

"Hmmm?" Twilight looked up, and Dash almost jumped backwards at the fuzzy smile and half-asleep gaze. "Oh, good morning, Rainbow. I didn't hear you...come...in..." She yawned.

Dash grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. "Wake up, Twilight! You gotta wake up!"

"Hmmm?" Shrugging, Twilight frowned slightly, her horn lighting up. The purple glow of her magic wrapped warm around Dash's hooves and pushed them away with a force Dash couldn't fight against. "I am awake, Rainbow." That smile came back. "I was actually planning on going over to your place this morning and...waking you up the...the way we...we..." She yawned again, and while her eyes didn't close, just like with Applejack's, they seemed to lose focus.

Her magic stayed solid, though, like two purple glowing hoof-warmers holding Dash in place. It took her a couple seconds of struggling till she could pop herself free. "C'mon, Twilight! This is no time for—"

The word "daydreaming" right on her tongue, Dash froze. A quick glance at Spike and Starlight showed it pretty clearly: the smiles; the distant gazes; the slow, gentle breathing. Spike was even humming a little, and as Dash watched, Starlight lazily turned a page in the book she wasn't quite looking at.

So, yeah. Not zombies. Just lost in—

"Hades." Leaping into a hover, Dash zipped back outside and whooshed toward Fluttershy's. As much as it was something she'd never in a million years thought she'd be telling herself, she needed Discord for this. And since she didn't know how to get in touch with him...

Zipping overhead, Dash could see all kinds of ponies out and around in Ponyville now that she knew what to look for. Roseluck and her partners had their booth open, but they were lounging around among the shelves with soft little smiles, their hooves sort of randomly moving bunches of flowers here and there. One guy she passed leaned against the side of his lawnmower in the middle of his half-mown front yard. Ponies hauling carts on the roads below would take a few steps, stop, shake themselves, take another few steps, then stop again. And nowhere did Dash hear any talking or laughing or singing or anything except a little tuneless humming now and then.

Fluttershy's cottage was quiet, too. Well, yeah, okay, Fluttershy's cottage was always quiet, but dropping down onto the path leading up from the bridge, Dash stretched her ears for the usual chitters and chirps from all the critters who hung around the place. Hearing nothing, she practically galloped up to the front door and shoved it open to see Harry the bear sprawled and breathing easy over the sofa where Discord had been last night, mice curled into little balls of snoozing fur along the walls, the birds with their heads tucked under their wings up in the rafters.

But no Fluttershy. Not in her bedroom or on her back porch or in her yard or out by the chicken coop, either. All the little food bowls had food in them, Dash noticed as she whipped around the place, and no dishes sat unwashed in the sink even after last night's party.

So maybe Eff had gone out into the woods before all this daydreaming had hit? Except Dash had seen her butterfly-embroidered saddlebags hanging on their usual peg in her bedroom, and she wouldn't've left without her pack. And memories of the night before, the way Hades had practically started drooling when he'd seen Fluttershy, made Dash grind her teeth there in the yard surrounded by sleeping weasels and rabbits and wrens and all.

"Discord!" she shouted. "If you can hear me, you big jerk, you better get over here right now!" She couldn't help wincing. "Okay, maybe I don't mean 'jerk,' but still!"

Two, maybe three seconds, Dash waited, and when nothing happened, she flashed back inside, grabbed the Discord-shaped lamp from the table, and smashed it to the floor, only a few ears on a couple of the animals even flicking. "I mean it, Discord! Right now! Or I'll—"

Dash had no idea how to finish that sentence, but fortunately, tiny shouts of, "Hey! Hey! Hey!" rang out from the carpet before she had to think of anything. All the shards of the lamp were squishing and stretching into miniature versions of Discord, hopping up and down and shaking their fists at her, but she barely had time to blink at them before they all ran into each other, bunching and bulking up until the regular-sized Discord stood there glaring at her. "You break it, you buy it, you know," he said.

"No time!" Dash flapped up so she could grab his shoulders. "Fluttershy's gone, and everypony in town's, like, nodding off into daydreams all the time!"

"Daydreams?" He blinked at her. "Fluttershy? What in the wide, wide world of Equestria are you—?"

"Your cousin Hades!" Spinning away, Dash waved her hooves at the dozing animals. "It's like this all over Ponyville, and after the way he was leering at Fluttershy last night, I'll bet he's carried her off to his evil lair or something!"

Discord's mouth went sideways. "In the first place, I doubt that wimpy little nerd even knows how to leer, and in the second place, you're more likely to have an evil lair than he is."

She folded her front legs across her chest. "We're talking about the guy who built Tartarus! And you couldn't've missed how he was ogling Fluttershy!"

All he did was blink a few more times. "Apparently, I wasn't watching as closely as some." Everything flashed, and Dash found herself lying back on a couch in the middle of the living room, Discord sitting beside her in a tweed jacket with a little notebook in his claws. "Tell me: do you often stare intently at Fluttershy?"

"Will you—?" To cover her blushes, Dash let anger flood over her, threw herself into the air, and rolled to where she could jab at that snaky tube of hair he called his chest. "We need to find where he's taken her, get her back, then figure out how he's making everypony all sleepy and make him stop!"

For the first time, Discord actually moved his head to look around the room, and for just the tiniest instant, Dash thought she saw something like worry in his eyes. But then he was shrugging, a dark brown fedora popping into place between his horns. "Well, playing detectives should liven up an otherwise dull afternoon." He aimed a claw at her, and Dash felt something settle onto her own head. "Still, it's your case, Inspector." Appearing right beside her, he nudged her in the ribs with an elbow. "So where do you wanna go to inspect her, hmmm?"

"Y'know? Forget it!" It was taking Dash a fair amount of effort not to wheel around and do her best Applejack impression against his face with her back hooves. "Our friends are in trouble, but I guess I was just being stupid when I thought you might wanna help them!"

"All right, all right." He rolled his eyes with a creaking like a rusty gate. "Like I said, though, you're the one with connections to Hayseed's little realm of polka sots and goonbeams. You'll have to daydream yourself in, and I can follow if you really think you can't handle things on your own."

And as much as she wanted to tell the big jerk to get lost and never come back, just the idea of being alone with Fluttershy in a land of daydreams made Dash's stomach turn to a solid block of ice. "Hades is a draconequus!" she hissed, pulling what sounded like an actually good reason out of the tangle of her thoughts. "And, yeah, maybe he's a midget one or whatever, but he can still do that freaky snapping and changing-the-world-around-me stuff, right?"

"Yes..." Another worried expression came and went instantly across Discord's snout. "You should know, however, that there are certain restrictions on what we draconequi can do to each other, especially when we enter a realm run by someone else." He blew a smoke ring. "Not that I'm worried, of course. Anything Hades can slap together, I can cover with chocolate syrup and eat with a spoon." Leaning back in his chair, he waggled his claws at her. "So go ahead. Shuffle off this mortal coil or slip the surly bonds of earth or whatever it is you ponies do to start daydreaming. I'll be right behind you."

Everything inside her still lumpy, Dash leaped into a hover, grabbed whatever he'd popped onto her head, and threw it to the floor—turned out it was one of those tall, blue, old-timey policemare's hats with a silver star on the front. "How?" she barely stopped herself from shouting. "My friends are maybe lost in some crazy dreamworld, Fluttershy's maybe been kidnapped, and the only help I can find is you! That's pretty much the opposite of anything I'd ever daydream about!"

His red and yellow eyes closed halfway, and he snapped his talons. White light whooshed everywhere, gravity spinning, and Dash squished into something soft and familiar: her bed back home, a quick look around told her, with Discord sitting in a fancy, high-back chair by her closet door. "Shall I sing you a lullaby?" Another flash, and a oversized wooden mallet appeared in his claws. "Or do you prefer the more direct approach?"

With a glare, Dash couldn't keep from imagining him shrinking down to something about the size of a Breezie so that the hammer, suddenly way too big, would keel over and—

The air shifted against her wings in a way she'd never felt it shift before; the colors all around got softer but somehow brighter, and Discord shrank, the hammer tumbling back, the handle catching him mid-chest to pin him against the back of the chair. "Hey!" he squeaked.

Dash stared, and another voice crowed, "Ha! Was I right, or was I right?"

Snapping her head around, Dash saw Hades peering in her bedroom window. "It never fails!" he was going on. "Cousin Discord has this uncanny knack for getting everyone he meets to eventually daydream about smashing him!" A flash brought Hades into the room, and he squatted down beside the chair, Discord struggling against the mallet. "This is a good one, too: nice and sturdy." He poked a claw into Discord's stomach, Discord freezing and his eyes going wide. "You've definitely got a gift for this, Rainbow Dash."

"What?" she finally managed to ask.

Hades spun, his mean little smirk making him look way too much like Discord back in the bad old days. "The only real limitations we draconequi have are those we've placed on ourselves, and they're all about the things we can and can't do to each other. If I tried to conjure up a stick to beat my cousin until he assumed the consistency of unbaked cookie dough, the universe itself would deform in a way that would conspire to stop me. But if I give the stick to a friend—or in this case, to a hapless stooge—they can wallop away at the jerkwad till all involved are blue in the face."

Discord, still wriggling under the hammer's shaft, waved a paw. "That's not how it works at all!" he cried, sounding like an unhappy kitten. "You can't just—!"

"Quiet, shorty." Hades gave Discord another poke, then turned back to Dash, his eyes glassy like he had a fever. "So thanks muchly, Rainbow Dash, for cutting him to the quick like this, and because I'm in a good mood, I'll give you a piece of friendly advice instead of fitting you for your very own cast-iron tuxedo."

As she stared, everything about him seemed to get sharper: his horns, his teeth, his claws, his glare, even his shadow stretching out longer and longer behind him. "It's simple," he said. "This thing I'm doing'll shake out one way or another before sunset, so have a great time while you're in Mythos, but don't get in my way. Things happen to ponies—and other semi-sapient life forms—when they get in my way. Am I right?" He reached over and flicked Discord in the side of the head with the clattering ring of an alarm clock going off. "Or am I right?" And with that, he puffed away like a vapor trail on a hot day.

Without a second thought, Dash jumped over to the chair, grabbed the hammer in her teeth, pulled it away from the struggling Discord, and dropped it to the floor with a thunk. "Are you okay?" she panted out.

He sprang, his wings buzzing like half a swarm of angry hornets. "Do I look okay?" he peeped, and as much as Dash didn't want to laugh, he just sounded too funny—like the time Pinkie had introduced her to the wonders of breathing from helium balloons.

That he was snapping and flailing without getting any bigger sobered her up pretty quickly, though. "What did he do to you?" she asked.

Pulling into a hover in front of her, he folded his arms. "The oldest trick in the book," he said, still as tiny and squeaky as before. "He got a mortal to do his dirty work for him. I'll bet you can't even daydream me back to normal, can you?"

"I—" She squeezed her eyes closed and imagined a regular old smarmy Discord sitting in the chair beside her. But when she opened her eyes, he was still floating there maybe twice as tall as her hoof. "You mean we're stuck here? And you're stuck like that?" As hard as she tried, she couldn't quite keep the panic from peering out around her words.

"Temporarily." He rubbed his forehead. "I hate having to reevaluate my opinions of my stupid relatives!" With a popping little flash, he became a small gray and brown violin with his head up by the tuning pegs. "But yes: he played me like I was a fiddle and you were the bow." He flashed back to his tiny self. "I'm not entirely powerless, so once I get the feel for this place, I'll be able to snap myself back to—"

"We don't have time!" Dash waved at the window. "Till sunset, he said! And, yeah, I don't know what he meant, but that's only, like, six hours away! We've got to find him before then and stop whatever he's doing to Fluttershy! And, y'know, everypony else, too, though they seemed pretty much okay when I saw them earlier."

Even on his postage-stamp-sized face, his smirk was infuriating, and Dash couldn't stop her teeth from gnashing when he said, "Fluttershy first, and then the others. Interesting..."

"Will you just—!" She pushed every thought from her head, gave a quarter spin, and stuck one wing out at him. "How 'bout you hop aboard, junior? Unless you think you can keep up with the Dash."

He scowled, then something more thoughtful tugged at his snout. "Hades is counting on us arguing too much to work together, so let's not do that, hmmm?" He flashed, and Dash felt something even lighter than most of Fluttershy's bird friends settle down between her wings, the pin-prick of his claws currycombing her neck. "Onward, then, my trusty steed! We shall rescue your maiden fair! And, y'know, everypony else, too."

Holding back the shout she wanted to aim at him, she instead turned toward the window, the whole thing rounder and its lines fuzzier than she thought they ought to be. "Hang on!" she called, and flaring her wings, she jumped through into whatever this daydream world might hold.

3. Sisyphus, Tantalus, Ixion, et Al.

Behind her, Discord gasped. "It's more horrible than I'd ever imagined! Oh, the grotesquerie! Oh, the degradation!"

"Umm..." Hovering in the way-too-blue sky, Dash blinked at what she could only call a cartoon version of Ponyville: the houses even more colorful and rounded than usual; the flowers and trees sort of dancing in place to music Dash couldn't hear; ponies strolling along the streets, the stallions with top hats and the mares wearing some other fancy sort of headgear—not bonnets, but a different word she'd only ever heard Rarity use. "Not seeing any horror here..."

She felt him shiver on her back. "This town's always been a comic book, but now? It's like some wholesome little foal devoured a box of crayons and a crate of cotton candy, then vomited the entire sticky-sweet mess everywhere!"

Dash shook her head. "Not a foal." A flap sent her gliding away from her cloud house. "This is the land of daydreams, right?" She gestured to the well-dressed folks below. "So who d'you think's gonna be dreaming about this?" Raising her eyes, she found Carousel Boutique sticking up a little too prominently in the center of town. "The question is: what're we s'posed to do? I mean, I couldn't wake Twilight or AJ all the way up in real Ponyville, so maybe...maybe we have to push them out from this side?"

"Of course!" Discord popped into the air in front of her like some large, misshapen hummingbird. "So we do what we do best: you crash, and I burn!" He rubbed his front paws together.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" As much as she wanted to grab him, she was pretty sure he wouldn't like the reminder that it was her fault he was all shrunken now. "These're still our friends! Let's not bust up their fantasy worlds if we don't have to."

He huffed a puff of dark green steam. "Fine. But if Rarity tries to put a little ruffled suit on me, I won't be responsible for my actions."

Nodding, Dash drifted closer to the boutique, and with the other buildings out of the way, she could see a line of ponies stretching out the shop's front door. As she watched, the back door opened, and a stallion in a tuxedo came trotting out. "Next!" she heard Rarity's voice call from inside, and the waiting ponies all shuffled forward.

Beside her, Discord vented more green steam. "If this is her daydream, then we really need to get her a special somepony..."

Very carefully not thinking about the words 'special somepony,' Dash aimed for the side window and peered in. Rarity stood in the center of the main showroom, a mare in front of her; Rarity's horn flared, and one of those big dresses that always made Dash think of cake surrounded the mare. The mare bowed to Rarity and trotted off, Rarity calling, "Next!" once more.

Discord was making a gagging noise in Dash's ear now. "I always suspected you ponies were boring at a cellular level, but this—"

"No." Dash couldn't stop a shiver. "This isn't— Rarity's not—" Taking a breath, she tried to find words for the prickly feeling that was plucking all up and down her wings. "Hades is doing this somehow. He's not letting them have their regular daydreams: he's, like, distracting them with busywork, letting them shift their brains down to idle so they're not any more awake here than they are out in the real world."

"A distraction?" Discord stroked his wisp of a beard. "So they won't notice whatever Cousin's up to?"

"Come on." Pushing the window open, Dash slid into the boutique, Rarity making another big gown appear around another mare. "Hey, Rares! How's it going?"

"Hmmm?" Rarity didn't quite have the same far-away look on her face as Dash had seen on the others earlier, but it was pretty close to that. "Oh, good morning, Rainbow." The tiniest trace of a spark glittered in her eye. "Have you come for a fitting?"

Completely on reflex, the biggest possible "No!" came bursting out of Dash's mouth.

"Oh." Rarity's spark guttered out, and she turned blank-faced toward the front door. "Then if you'll excuse me, I have customers who—"

"Wait!" Dash clutched at the fragment of an idea. "I mean, I'd like a fancy dress, sure—who wouldn't, right? But this?" She waved at Rarity's horn. "Where's the fun in that? What about the cutting and the stitching and the personal touches that make everypony who sees it know that it came from the heart, mind, and hooves of the greatest designer and dressmaker in Equestria!" Reaching over, she found a pyramid of cloth rolls next to her and grabbed the top three: gold and silver and copper-colored. "I want a real Rarity dress, not some weird conjured-up thing you barely had to think about!"

Rarity's jaw had been dropping further and further, her eyes going wider and wider, and now she stepped forward more like a sleepwalker than anything else. "Yes," she murmured, her entire attention on the rolls of cloth Dash had set on the floor. "Snipping the thread with one's teeth. Running one's frog along the bolts to know they're the proper length. The incomparable rustle and brush of the fabric." She reached out, touched one of the rolls—

And vanished without a sound, just gone like she'd never even been there.

All the other ponies, the ones waiting in line and the one in the fancy dress just stepping out the back door, every one of them did the same thing, and Dash glanced sideways quickly to make sure Discord was still with her.

He was, but he was staring at her with eyes almost as big as marbles in his tiny face. "How...how did you—?" His expression crumpled into something more annoyed, and he folded his arms. "Stealing my shtick? Really? Is that what it's come to?"

"What?" Dash waved a hoof. "Hey, I just figured that might wake her up, snap her back to reality or whatever! 'Cause Rarity's like me: she only wants stuff to be easy when she's worked for it. Yeah, maybe we'll daydream about not needing to earn it, but that's not what gets us up and outta bed every morning. We want the challenge and the—"

"Yes, yes, yes." When Discord sighed this time, Dash smelled rotten milk. "That was all very rousing and pep-talky, what you did to our marshmallowy little seamstress, but I'm talking about this!" He swooped over and landed on the stacked rolls of cloth. "One instant, there was nothing at all beside you, and the next instant, you're turning the fabric of space-time into actual fabric!" He spun to face her. "And worst of all, none of it's in my shade! Where's the orange plaid?"

"Wait." Gingerly, Dash poked the rolls. "These weren't here?"

"Trust me." He gave the cloth a long, snaky lick. "When something's been nothing, I can taste it."

That weird rustling passed over Dash's wings again. "It's Hades. Last night, he said he was giving me daydream powers or something, didn't he?"

Discord cleared his throat. "Perhaps you recall a few moments ago when you shrank me down to less than a pipsqueak?" A yellow arrow appeared in the air pointing down at him, the words 'Objects Should Be Larger Than They Appear' flashing along it. "That's the power he gave you, Chaingrow Mash. And you've already used it."

"Yeah, but—" Focusing, Dash imagined a set of patio furniture exactly the right size for him, and when he heaved another sigh and dropped back to drape himself over the chaise lounge beside the little table with the umbrella that hadn't been there a second before, Dash caught her breath. "It looks like I can still do stuff," she finally decided to say.

"Please." Reaching over, Discord took the half coconut with the curly straw sticking out of it that had appeared with the table and took a sip. "Your delusions are no more entertaining now than they've been for as long as I've—" He stopped, pulled down the sunglasses he hadn't been wearing till right then, and stared at his drink. "Apple juice? But I always conjure mango-papaya!"

Dash had been feeling the grin spreading across her snout, and when his gaze came up to meet hers, she couldn't help winking. "Looks like it's two of us against one of him." She gave a little shrug. "Well, okay, maybe one-and-a-half of us..."

"Now, now." Claws clutching the coconut, Discord swallowed, a clattering sound rattling down his neck like pebbles through a rainspout. "Let's not all fly into a panic at once. Because Hades leaving you with the ability to change things here would make less than no sense."

"Yeah?" Whatever worry Dash had been feeling about Hades kidnapping Fluttershy—and she hadn't been feeling all that worried, she told herself quickly—but that one little bit of it that had been congealing in Dash's gut like a lump of flight camp oatmeal, it was now dissolving quicker than dew on a summer morning. "Seems to me some guy I know used to say there's no fun in making sense." Imagining herself wearing her Wonderbolt flight suit, she reached for her goggles, found them right where they should've been, and pulled them into place. "Now, let's go get Fluttershy."

A huff of breath drew her attention back to Discord. "Fine." He set the coconut onto the table and snapped the goggles of his own minature Wonderbolt suit over his eyes. "But this color doesn't go with my complexion at all."

Flexing her wings, Dash turned for the window, bent her knees to jump through—

And a not-quite-familiar voice behind her bellowed, "Not so fast, Masked Marauder!" The world twitched, and Dash found herself facing a brick wall, the light suddenly all dim and shadowy.

"Oh, what now?" Discord muttered, and Dash snapped her head around to see a pony encased in blood-red battle armor, the figure standing with a pastern casually curled around the haft of a warhammer that sparked and hissed with blue-white magic.

The armor's faceplate slid open, and Pinkie's unmistakable blue eyes gazed coolly out. "I should've known," she more sneered than said. "Anytime there's big trouble in Ponytropolis, it'll be you behind it. I'd give that anonymous tipster a reward for telling me where to find you, but, well, y'know, anonymous." She giggled, and for half an instant, she looked the way Pinkie was supposed to look. Then everything about her hardened, and some little cannon things sprang out from her armored shoulders, more magic crackling from them. "And that's how they'll mark your tombstone, Marauder: A. Nonymous!"

Again, sheer reflex kicked in, Dash spinning away as bolts of lightning burst from the cannons. Something like thunder made her ears wince, the stink of hot asphalt smacking her across the nose, and she almost froze to see the pavement where she'd been standing buckle under the electrical onslaught from Pinkie's cannons.

"Yow!" she heard Discord squeal from somewhere, and a brownish streak whooshed out of the semi-darkness and into her mane. "Watch where you're pointing those things!"

"Oh, I will," Pinkie growled, a sound Dash had never even imagined she would hear. "I'll watch them turn you fiends into strawberry jam!"

The cannons swiveled toward her, and multiple plans flashed through Dash's mind: swooping past Pinkie to draw her fire across the face of the brick wall so it would tumble down on top of her; start whirling in place to get a cyclone going that would throw Pinkie off balance; maybe spin up a quick frontal system or a fog bank or a lightning storm of her own—

But then she remembered where she was and what was going on. Focusing, she imagined the beams of Pinkie's cannons boiling out and let them slam directly into her. "Oh, no!" she cried, flipping around and flopping to the ground. "You got me!" Grabbing her throat, she made as many gagging noises as she could manage. "To think that my career of villainy should end like this! Woe is me! Woe, I say!"

"Woe?" Pinkie repeated with several blinks.

"Woe!" Dash gave one last choke and sprawled herself across the alley with her tongue lolling out.

"Whoa!" Hopping up and down, Pinkie gave a squeak. "Hooray! Uhh, I mean—" She cleared her throat and went on in her harsher voice, "The weed of crime bears bitter fruit, malefactor! And that's why the Pink Knight always triumphs in the end." Turning away, she vanished as suddenly as Rarity had, but Dash still waited a few seconds before she sat up.

A miniature dust devil sprang from between her ears, Discord looking more rattled than she'd ever seen him. "What in Perdition's name was that?" He stopped and tapped his chin. "Say, what do you suppose ever happened to Perdition? She and I used to be so close..."

"Daydreams." Dash rolled to her hooves. "I guess Pinkie's got some whole 'masked avenger of the night' thing going on in one of hers." She couldn't keep from narrowing her eyes. "And I'll bet it was Hades who turned her loose on us." Flaring her wings again, she leaped into a hover. "Come on! We've gotta find him before he pushes us into another—"

"Shhh!" somepony hissed behind her, and everything shifted once more, the alley filling with wooden bookshelves reaching up to a vaulted ceiling and stretching off to the horizon in all directions. Dash was hovering in an open area, though, a few sofas and tables around her, and drifting around with a sigh, she was completely unsurprised to see—

"Starlight?" Dash couldn't keep from gasping in complete surprise.

At a desk with a Librarian sign attached to the front sat Starlight Glimmer, her mane tied back in a tight bun, little half glasses perched on her snout, and a fairly severe look aimed in Dash's direction. "Shhh!" she said again, touching a hoof to her lips before turning her attention back to the book she was reading.

Dash thumped onto the carpet and stood staring there for what felt like a couple minutes. Finally, though, she managed to shake herself and glance at Discord.

He was glancing at her, his claws holding a little card with a question mark glowing on it.

Giving a shrug, Dash peered down the rows of bookshelves, but she couldn't see any doors or windows—or even any walls, for that matter. Asking Starlight if she could show them the exit might work, but the itches along Dash's wings made her think not. This was a daydream, after all, and if it was like the others, she needed to wake the dreamer up from it in order to get out. So maybe...

She motioned for Discord to follow and padded as quietly as she could up to the desk. "Excuse me, ma'am," she said in a loudish whisper—she'd never been sure what the right volume was for asking questions in a library. "I was hoping you could help me with some information?"

Her wince all ready in case Starlight just sushed her again, Dash let out a little puff of relief when Starlight instead looked up with a smile. "Of course," she said, and her voice was just a little quieter than regular talking. "Librarians are always glad to assist."

"Great." Dash considered a couple quick plans, then decided to say, "I'm looking for information about Princess Twilight Sparkle."

Starlight's smile brightened. "Oh, an excellent subject!" Her horn glowed, and a neat stack of maybe a dozen books dropped gently into the desk beside her. "Are you interested in her early, friendless years in Canterlot? Her successful friend-making when she ran the Ponyville library? The way she befriended the entire world after becoming the Princess of Friendship but still manages to make every single pony she meets feel worthwhile and important? The multiple times she's saved both the realm and the world?"

"Well, now!" Discord buzzed over to the stack and settled on top of it with a plop. "Anything here about her love life?"

Dash could barely stop herself from reaching out to squash him like a bug, and the frown curling Starlight's muzzle made Dash pretty sure she was thinking the same thing. So— "Wow!" she said, drawing Starlight's gaze again. "Princess Twilight sounds pretty darn amazing."

That got Starlight's smile back. "Oh, she is. Powerful, smart, always ready, willing, and able to help." Her smile got a little wistful, and she sighed. "Truly amazing..."

Discord rolled his eyes so loudly, Dash was pretty sure she could hear it. Ignoring him, she tapped Starlight's desk and said, "So what if I said I was mostly interested in Princess Twilight's student?"

"Her...student?" The smile faded from Starlight's face.

"Yeah. Starlight Glimmer." Dash waved a hoof. "You wanna talk about amazing? She went from being a total bad guy to being a total good guy, y'know? And every time it got too hard and she got a little lost and tripped and fell and did something maybe a little bit stupid, she always saw she'd made a mistake, picked herself back up, said she was sorry, and started back the right way again." Pushing her goggles up, Dash met Starlight's wide eyes. "That's what I call amazing."

"Rainbow?" Starlight's words barely reached Dash's ears. "You...you really think that?"

"Everypony does." Not sure if it'd hurt or help, Dash still touched Starlight's foreleg. "And that's the thing. Equestria's already got a Twilight Sparkle. What we need is a Starlight Glimmer."

"I—" Starlight said, and then she was gone, nothing but empty air under Dash's hoof.

This time, Dash didn't wait; scooping up Discord, she leaped into the air just as the whole giant library vanished around them. Wrenching out the cork on all the nervous energy she'd been pushing down, she pumped her wings for the blue sky spreading itself above her and didn't stop till they were pretty high over the cartoon Ponyville. "Now!" She pulled into a hover and shook Discord just a little. "You've gotta do what I just did!"

"What?" He stared up at her as button-eyed as a rag doll.

"Get everypony outta their daydreams!"

"Me? But you're the one with the keys to this place!" He waved his arms. "I don't know anything about—!"

"Ho, dragon!" a deep voice called from below, and Dash looked down to see a tall, muscular, purple, two-legged figure wearing armor and a cape: some weird, grown-up, daydream version of Spike, she figured. He had a big jousting lance resting over one shoulder and was shading his eyes with his other hand to peer up at them. "Or wait. Are you a dragon? I'm kind of looking for a dragon, see..."

Dash couldn't help staring for half a heartbeat, then she forced her mind back into gear and focused again on Discord. "Look! If we let Hades have his way, we'll be popping one by one through everypony's daydreams all over town, and he'll finish building his brick wall around Fluttershy or whatever so she'll be trapped here forever!"

"But—"

"No buts!" She shook him again. "You know the ponies in Ponyville by now, and you just need to help them hit the mark! Sometimes it's a straight shot like the way Pinkie just wanted to be the hero and beat the bad guy, and sometimes it takes a little digging like the way Rarity thought she wanted to take it easy but really wanted to work and the way Starlight thought she wanted to be Twilight but really wanted to be herself! Just listen and think and act, and you'll do great!"

His lower lip quivering, Discord started melting like a candle.

"Don't you dare!" She tried to squish him back together, but he was too mooshy. "We're still a team, but if we don't split up, Hades'll win! And yeah, I'm just a dumb cloud jockey and you're just a giant bucket of annoying, but we're the only ones here, and we've each gotta do what only we can! That means I use whatever powers Hades gave me to find him and Fluttershy, and you use whatever brain you maybe have to get everypony out of here so you and Twilight and Starlight and Princess Luna and the rest can maybe figure out a way to come back and help!"

All of Discord's dripping goo froze, and with the grossest slurping sound ever, he reformed back into his tiny self. "I'll have you know, Sprainbow Brash, that I am a giant steamer trunk of annoying!" He wriggled out of her grip and zoomed directly into her face. "Mark my words, though: if Hades succeeds in absconding with Fluttershy, there will be a strongly worded letter about this tomorrow in the Ponyville Picayune Pioneer!"

His lips sprayed those last three words damp and stinging across Dash's muzzle, but before she could yell at him about it, he was swooping away toward Spike and calling, "A dragon, you say? Well, friend, I think I might just be able to help you out with that!"

For another instant, she stayed hovering there, her mind and stomach churning, then she swung away and shot off toward Fluttershy's cottage. Sure, it probably didn't matter which way she went—this was all daydreams, after all—but she needed every bit of help she could get at this point.

The rustic little house hove into view, and for once in her life, Dash didn't stop herself from focusing all her thoughts on her sweet, quiet, gentle, oldest and dearest friend. The sky around her seemed to shudder, chunks of it peeling away like really old wallpaper, and Dash barreled through the gaps, ready for whatever was waiting for her on the other side.

4. Orpheus

The strips of daylight sky crumpled away, leaving a cloudless, starry stretch of night. Below, where Fluttershy's cottage had been sitting, a big stone castle rose up, torches burning along the walls and tickling Dash's nose with smoke even though she was still pretty high above them.

Weirdly, she recognized the castle with its one tower sticking up right in the middle of the place. A light glowed dimly from the single window at the top of the tower, and the breeze that wafted over Dash carried an unmistakable sigh to her ears. "Oh, dear," a soft and familiar voice muttered. "Will nopony come to rescue me from this dreadful place?"

Dash's wings froze, dropping her a dozen yards or so before she could force herself to start flapping again.

"Ah, yes," a much snarkier voice said beside her, and she glared over at Hades sitting in a floating armchair, about two dozen balloons tied to it. "Daydreams are wonderful: am I right, or am I right?"

For all that she wanted to start yelling or kicking or maybe just flit on over there and pop his balloons, Dash instead asked, "You wanna tell me what's going on?"

"Maybe." He shrugged, then gave her a snaggle-toothed grin. "Congratulations on getting rid of Discord, by the way. That guy's always given me the creeps. He looks too much like me for comfort, y'know?"

"Really?" Dash let herself smile at him. "You creep yourself out?"

"You bet I do." Every bit of his grin vanished. "I'd creep you out, too, if you had half a brain in your head."

"Huh." It took some effort, but she kept everything cool and calm. "Too bad you're not dealing with somepony smarter, then, isn't it? 'Cause all I feel when I look at you is a little bit tired and a little bit irritated."

Hades nodded. "Oh, I hear you. I mean, if I had my druthers, I'd be tying rocks to your wings and punting you toward the nearest pit of hot tar right now."

Dash very carefully kept everything unclenched. "If you had your what?" she asked.

"Never mind." Sighing, he waved his lion paw at the tower below them. "How 'bout you just do what you came here to do, huh? Rescue the maiden fair, vanquish the villain, and return to your kingdom in triumph."

She dared one glance at the tower and could barely stifle her shudder. It was everything she'd ever daydreamed, after all—Fluttershy pining for a hero; Dash right there to swoop down, fight off the danger, and carry her away; the two of them flying to safety, Eff cuddling against Dash's chest, maybe stretching that incredible sunset-yellow neck and touching those lips to—

With all the discipline she'd learned during her years training on her own and then with the Wonderbolts, Dash stomped that fantasy out of her mind even more ruthlessly than she always did. "Nah," she said, turning back to Hades. "Y'know what I'd rather do?" Taking a breath, thinking about what was around her, feeling the itches along her wings, she concentrated, spun a couple times in place, and said, "I'd rather see where Fluttershy actually is right now instead of all this daydream stuff."

A strangled gasp beside her, and the night sky vanished, a bright, warm afternoon taking its place. Below her now stretched a field of flowers, purple and blue and orange and yellow, with woods around the edges and misty mountains beyond that. A single wide-spreading oak tree stood where the castle tower had been, and underneath it, Dash could see Fluttershy curled up, her eyes closed, her chest rising and falling, the smile on her face clearly visible even from this altitude.

"Now see here!" Hades shouted, and the idyllic scene sputtered out like a film slipping its sprockets, the castle and the stars and the torchlit landscape flickering back. "That's incredibly rude, you know, popping into another customer's daydream!"

"Is that a fact?" Dash folded her forelegs across her chest. "So how come you've been popping me and Discord around all over the place?"

"That's different." With a sniff, he pointed to the golden crown that sparkled into being around his antlers. "I'm in charge of Mythos. When I do something, it's legal by definition."

"Wow." Pointing at her own head, Dash imagined a similar crown—just sleeker and snazzier—swirling a little rainbow cyclone between her ears. "Turns out I can do stuff, too. Wanna compare notes?"

Hades snorted. "You're only here under my sufferance, y'know. And when I say suffer—"

"Whatever." Dash spun again, switched from the night and castle scene to the day and meadow scene. She still had no idea what Hades was planning, but if he wanted Eff asleep— "Yo, Fluttershy!" she shouted, pitching her voice to carry the distance. "You checked those woods for squirrels yet? Might be they need help with their nut gathering!"

"Will you just—?" Flames shot from Hades's claws, flashing across the sky and bringing back the night. "Are you trying to upset me?"

"Pretty much." Another spin, and they were floating over Fluttershy's tree again. "Squirrels, Eff! I'm telling you, they're probably all over the place out there!"

"That's it!" Hades leaped from his floating chair, all his balloons bursting and sending the stink of black pepper flooding over Dash. She couldn't stop a sneeze from squinching her eyes closed for a fraction of an instant, and when she forced them open, she and Hades were floating in an ocean of gray clouds, Hades with his fists on his hips and a sneer on his lips. "Do you want me to rescind your invitation to participate in this beta test? Is that what you want?"

Keeping her imagination stretched, Dash shook her head, laughed loudly, and waved at him like he was a gnat she couldn't be bothered to squish, all the while hoping that he wouldn't notice what she was really doing. "Get real! I mean, yeah, maybe you don't give me the creeps like you want to, but I definitely know that you are a creep! So if you could've made my powers go away, you would've done it, like, ten or twenty minutes ago! I don't know what the deal is with this place or why I'm all wrapped up in it, but—"

A deep bell went off somewhere, a slow gong that shook Dash's ribs and made the hairs at the base of her mane get all prickly. "That," Hades said, his eyes literally lighting up, yellow and red glowing embers embedded in his weird head. The bell tolled again. "That's what the deal is." A third chime rolled over them. "'Cause that's six o'clock."

"What?" Dash craned her neck around to see where the sun was, but everything was only clouds. "It was barely noon when I got here!" A fourth chime struck. "No way it's been six hours!"

Hades shrugged in time with the fifth chime. "Time flies when you're daydreaming: am I right, or am I right?" He brushed his claws against the fur of his chest as the sixth chime sounded. "And now that Fluttershy's slept an entire afternoon in my realm, she's mine, never to leave my side again for as long as—"

"Ummm..." It was the quietest little sound in the world, but Dash practically cheered when she heard it drifting up from below the gray clouds. "Actually, Hades, I've been awake for a minute or two now, ever since Rainbow started talking about squirrels."

As funny as it was, the way Hades's jaw came unhinged, swinging his bearded chin down to smack against the base of his long, thin neck, Dash couldn't quite laugh, not while everything was still so shaky. "It's odd," Fluttershy was going on. "I can hear you both, but I can't see you. Are you hiding in the tree?"

A flick of her imagination sent the clouds flying, clearing away to show Fluttershy standing a few paces away from the base of the oak and peering up at its leaves. "Here we are, Eff!" Dash called. Locking gazes with the wide-eyed Hades, she pointed to the ground. "How 'bout we join her, huh?" Not waiting for him, she angled her wings and drifted down to land beside Fluttershy. "You okay?"

Fluttershy seemed to consider the question. "A little confused, maybe." She gestured in that delicate way of hers past Dash, Dash glancing back quickly to see Hades settling like a grouchy little fog bank on the grass behind her. "Hades stopped by the house this morning to thank me for the party, and we got to talking while I did my chores." Her forehead wrinkled. "I remember feeling very sleepy all of a sudden and Hades showing me this lovely meadow to rest in." She gave a gasp. "Goodness! Have I really been napping here all day?"

"Looks like." Dash shrugged, sliding half a step sideways to keep Hades in her peripheral vision. "How 'bout we head on home now, though, huh?"

Even with the afternoon sky darkening to evening around them, Hades's eyes weren't glowing as much as they had been a minute ago. "I dunno," he said, and a metal and glass contraption that Dash recognized from school as a sextant appeared in his outstretched paw. Squinting into the eyepiece, he shook his head. "It's getting late: better you just stay the night here and start off fresh in the morning. Am I right, or am I—?"

"Will you stop saying that?" Dash couldn't keep from leaping into a hover. "It's maybe not the most annoying thing in the world, but it's in the top ten easy!"

"Hey!" Hades buzzed over, his chest stuck out and his head cocked back on his neck: all Dash could think of was how much he looked like a rooster. "You wanna piece of me, Flychick? That what you want?"

"Rainbow! Hades!" Even Fluttershy's scolding tone was gentle. "There's no need to be rude! We're all friends here! Although..." And while nothing about her got any harsher, Dash couldn't mistake the edge that entered her voice. "I find myself wondering just the tiniest bit, Hades, what you meant when you said that I was going to be yours and that I would never leave your side again."

"What, that?" Hades settled to the ground and flicked his eagle talons. "It's merely a common figure of speech where I come from! It means that I hope we'll always be the best of friends!"

Dash pretended to sneeze so she could cover up saying the word "Fewmets!" as loudly as possible.

The look Fluttershy gave her was nowhere near a glare, but Hades more than made up for it. He drew his head back like she'd smacked him in the face and asked, "Just what exactly are you implying, Rainbow Dash?"

And because Dash was sick and tired of him and all this stupid daydream stuff— "I'm saying that you're a liar and a jerkwad and a stinking ball of slime who wants to lock Fluttershy up in some box so you can take her out and lick her any time you want to or something! You don't care about her! You don't care about anything but yourself!" And just for good measure, she leaped up, cocked a hoof, and actually did smack him in the face.

"Insolence!" Hades rolled with the punch and spun into a cyclone, Dash rearing back with her wings spread to make herself as big a target as possible. The clouds rushed in again swirling and all acrackle with lightning, and Dash ground her teeth together, straining to imagine an eye of still air around her and Fluttershy.

"And the hypocrisy!" Hades went on, his voice blasting from the storm. "How are you any better, Rainbow Dash? Not even noticing when you kicked her off the clouds at flight school! Always treating her like she's an invalid or simple-minded or worse! Locking her up in the imaginary tower of your daydreams so you can swoop down and rescue her over and over again! I'm at least honest about the ways in which I want her to be mine! You don't even respect her enough to tell her how you've felt for all these years!"

The temperature inside Dash's gut dropped to freezing, and the little gasp of breath behind her seemed a hundred times louder than the crashing thunder and the wailing winds.

"Shut up!" Flinging herself into the roar of the tornado, Dash kept a part of her imagination focused on Fluttershy's bubble while summoning up every dive and trick and kick she'd learned wrangling the wild weather that came out of the Everfree. In her head, she saw herself scattering Hades's whole massive system with one sweep of her wings, and a fraction of an instant later, she actually did it, slicing the storm in half, smashing the lower part to mist against the grass of Fluttershy's meadow and grinding the upper part against the invisible wall of the tropopause until it became nothing but a slight breeze.

Panting, Dash gave a quick glance at Fluttershy below, huddled to the ground under the now-leafless oak tree. Then she glared at Hades, glaring back at her a dozen yards further up. "Fine!" he shouted. "You wanna make it a contest? We'll make it a contest!" He swooped down and shoved his frowning muzzle into Dash's face. "Winner takes Fluttershy."

It took some effort not to smack him again; instead, Dash concentrated, flapped her wings a little harder, and imagined the breeze into one that was strong enough to push him back a couple yards. "Fluttershy's a pony," she said through clenched teeth, "not a prize."

He snorted. "Shows what you know." His claws came up, light flashing from them, and Dash blinked to see that she was standing back on the ground beside Fluttershy and the oak tree, Hades in front of them. "So here's the challenge. You walk out of here, the two of you, and you don't look back. Simple: am I right, or am I right?"

The bare branches of the oak tree rustled, but Dash didn't move, waiting for the catch.

Again, the grin that slid along Hades's snout looked as crooked as a first-timer's try at pumpkin carving. "But if either one of you so much as glances back for any reason at all, Fluttershy's mine and you, Drainbow Gash, are out of my life and hers for good. Oh, and just to make it more fair?" He slashed the air, and Dash felt something rise from her back, a weight she hadn't really noticed she'd been carrying before. "Since you've wrecked the whole daydream realm of Mythos, I don't need your imagination to anchor it anymore. So there's all your powers gone."

Fog seemed to roll in, everything getting more indistinct, and Hades flicked his claws. "Go on, then," he said. "Turn around and start walking." Despite the haze, Dash could still see his jagged grin just fine. "Let's see how far you get."

Not letting herself scream or stomp or give him the kick in the head he so badly needed, Dash kept her narrowed gaze fixed on his. "Fluttershy?" she said. "Get going, and don't turn around for anything. You got that?"

"Rainbow?" The quiver in Fluttershy's voice almost shattered every plan Dash was trying to slap together. "What about you?"

"I'll be right behind you." Dash's throat tried to squeeze shut, but she forced the words out. "You know I'd never leave you hanging."

"You're right. I do know that."

The gentle shuffle of hooves in grass came to Dash's ears, and only then did she break eye contact with Hades, his grin still as toothy as before. Ahead of her, Fluttershy was stepping steadily toward the woods, shrouded in mist at the edge of the meadow. "I'll keep talking," Dash said, "so you'll know I'm here, but you've gotta promise me you won't turn around. Pinkie Promise even, all right?"

Fluttershy nodded. One front hoof came up to touch her chest, she said the word, "Cross—"

And white light burst out behind them. "Not so fast, Hades!" Twilight's unmistakable voice rang out.

The groan that followed, Dash knew, could only have come from Discord. "Do we have to use that cliché?" he asked.

"Silence, knave!" A mare's voice, deeper than Twilight's, but Dash couldn't—

Ahead of her, Fluttershy's ears perked. "Oh! That's Princess Luna! Rainbow, we're—!"

"You can't!" Hades was screaming so loudly, Dash could barely hear Fluttershy. "I won't—!"

The light snuffed out quicker than a candle under a water faucet, and through the fog around them, Dash saw that they were suddenly in the middle of the woods, a cold and utter silence drooping over them.

Fluttershy's shoulders twitched, and everything inside Dash clenched. "No!" she shouted. "Don't turn around! It might be a trick!"

"A...trick?" Fluttershy froze. "You think Hades would do that?"

"Oh, yeah." Coming up behind Fluttershy, Dash almost gave her a push, but that would likely startle her into looking back. "So let's just keep going till we're out—or, y'know, till Twilight pops up in front of us and tells us they've put Hades in a bottle. If she can prove she's Twilight, I mean."

"Can—?" Fluttershy's ears fell. "Can you prove you're Rainbow Dash? "

As much as Dash wanted to heave a sigh, she didn't. "Well, I'm the one telling you not to turn around, right? If I was Hades, I wouldn't be doing that."

"Oh. Yes. I—" Standing behind her, Dash couldn't see Fluttershy blush, but she knew from the way her head dipped that that gorgeous yellow face was turning more than a little orange. "I'm sorry," she murmured.

"Yeah, well..." A sudden realization struck Dash: for once in her life, she could look at Fluttershy as much as she wanted to and not have to worry about Fluttershy catching her. She swallowed, her gaze lighting for an instant on the gentle curves of Fluttershy's hindquarters, but she ground her teeth, forced herself to look away, focused on the shadowy trees to their right. "You just keep us moving. I mean, you go out into the woods all the time, so you know what a path looks like when animals use it, right?"

That got Fluttershy's ears to twitch. "I...I do know that, don't I?"

"Okay." Dash took a breath, somehow kept the churning in her gut from coming anywhere near her throat. "So see if you can find a way that's maybe had some traffic, and we'll see if that doesn't get us out of here."

"I can do that." Her ears came up almost the whole way, and she started forward. "And you'll keep talking, you said? So...so I'll know you're still there?"

Despite everything, Dash could almost laugh, falling in behind Fluttershy and very carefully keeping her eyes pointed at anything that wasn't sweet swaying yellow and pink. "Yeah, Eff. I'll talk about anything you want to."

"Ummm," was all Fluttershy said, but it was enough to get all Dash's innards clenching again. "When Hades turned into that cyclone, things got a little scary. So I'm not sure, but I think I heard him say something about—"

"Can we please talk about something else?" Most of Dash's muscles were whining their desire to stretch, to flap, to fly her away from this place and this conversation. But Hades had said 'walk out,' and knowing him, he meant it. "And by that, I mean anything else?"

"It's just—" Fluttershy's head dipped again, and this time, Dash was sure she could feel the heat from Fluttershy's blush. "He said you have...feelings?"

A trick: that's all this could be. Hades was trying to make her freak out, break and run and smash all her daydreams into nightmares. She had to stop this before her whole life went spinning completely out of control. "You're my best friend, Eff, the one pony who's always been there and always will be. That's why you know me better than any of the others ever could. You've seen me at my best and at my worst right from the starting line, and you...you're the eye of my storm, y'know?"

She'd clenched her jaw so tight, her teeth hurt, and while nothing she'd said was a lie, it was a lot closer to the truth than she'd ever wanted to get. Stupid Hades! Why'd he have to come along and tip over the careful and perfect balance Dash had spent so many years setting up?

A giggle from ahead perked Dash's ears: she'd been halfway expecting to hear a sob. "The eye of the storm." Fluttershy nodded. "I like that. I've always thought I was more a rock in the middle of a river, sitting there and watching everything flow past me."

"Nah," Dash said almost without thinking. "That's Applejack."

Fluttershy giggled again. "You know, she's the only pony I can think of who'd take it as a compliment if you called her a rock."

"How about Pinkie's sister?"

"Oh! Of course! Maud!" Fluttershy altered their course slightly, aiming their steps around the right side of a large elm. "You know, I've never thought about it before, but I wonder what she thinks about the tradition of birth stones. Do you suppose she finds it silly?"

"Are you kidding? She prob'bly invented it." Slipping into a monotone, Dash did an impression of Maud talking about what stones went with what personalities. That got Fluttershy giggling some more, and the talk moved to wondering about Pinkie's childhood, about Pinkie and Applejack being related, about Applejack's grandfather who'd recently moved back to Ponyville.

Safe topics, in other words, and Dash slowly let her bunched-up muscles relax. Time went on, though Dash wasn't sure how much, nothing anywhere but silence and fog and ghostly tree trunks drifting past. And while she always liked chatting with Fluttershy, after a while, Dash decided to try flexing her imagination just in case Hades really was as big of a liar and a jerk as she thought.

Fluttershy had been telling some story about Rarity's cat when she stopped in mid-sentence and said, "Rainbow? Is that something up ahead?"

"Maybe?" The fog did seem to be darker, and as they continued forward, Dash realized— "I think it's, like, the side of a mountain or a cliff face or something." She forced her wings to stay furled. "Just keep walking, though. It might be another stupid trick."

The darkness took on craggy features as they got closer, and Dash had to swallow. It looked like a big wall of rock stretching above the trees as far as she could see and away into the mist on both sides. How were they supposed to—?

"A cave!" Fluttershy pointed at the wall. "Rainbow? Can you see it? Straight ahead at ground level! It's lighter than the rock around it!" She broke into more of a trot.

"Yeah..." A way out was what Dash had imagined, and picking up her pace to match Fluttershy's, she could see through the rough archway to rocks and dirt with what looked like regular daylight shining on them.

Fluttershy's steps faltered. "Wait. Are we...inside a cave right now?" Raising her head, she glanced up and sideways.

"Careful!" Dash tried not to shout it; she didn't want to alarm Fluttershy into looking back, after all. "Just keep your eyes forward, walk right out into the sunshine, and don't turn around."

"Yes. Of course. Forward." With a crisp nod, Fluttershy moved into a canter that carried her quickly through the arch in the stone wall, and most of the ice in Dash's stomach melted. "Rainbow! It...it looks we're near the far end of Ghastly Gorge! Yes!" She pointed to the left. "That's where we had the finish line for your pet race!"

Taking a breath, Dash stopped just inside the cave, unfurled her imagination, and whispered, "You're gonna fall asleep now, Eff, and when you wake up, you won't remember any of this. It'll be like a dream. Nothing but a dream..."

Outside, Fluttershy gave a huge yawn. Her eyes folded shut, her knees buckled, and she folded herself into a cute little heap, her head resting on her forelegs and her breathing slow and regular.

With a swallow, Dash trotted into the sunlight, picked Fluttershy up, and flew her home.

5. Elysium

The third time the throat clearing rattled out from the foot of her bed, Dash finally opened her eyes just so she could glare at Discord, standing there all regular sized again. "You'll never get away with this, you know," he said, folding his arms.

She considered saying, "I don't know what you mean," then changed it in her head to, "I don't care what you mean," then decided to just roll over and close her eyes without saying anything.

He made a loud sniffing noise. "And it's no use taking that tone with me, young filly. I have committed to memory a vast repertoire of insipid pop songs from the last fifteen centuries, and I will show no hesitation about launching into the deadliest medley you or any pony has ever—"

"Will you just—!" Flinging off her blankets, Dash zoomed over to shove her snout against his. "Look, I'm sleeping in, all right? The day after saving Ponyville from whatever Hades was trying to do? Or is that too much to ask?"

His eyelids drooped. "You know what Hades was trying to do. And I know what you're trying to do."

"That's because I told you." She gestured to her pillows. "I'm trying to sleep!" Puffing a snort through her nostrils and into his face, she wheeled around and dropped back onto the blankets. "So how 'bout you get on with your life and let me get on with mine?"

"Oh, if only I could." A tap-tap-tap started like a slow leak from a rain gutter onto a tin roof. "Unfortunately, it's like you said when we parted in the daydream realm yesterday: I know the ponies in Ponyville by now. Fluttershy mostly, of course, but I seem to have become somewhat entangled with the rest of you candy-colored cream puffs as well. And from what I've seen, whenever any of you tries to stopper up your feelings this way, it only leads to upset tummies and doleful countenances all around."

The tap-tap-tap kept getting sharper and sharper, Dash wincing each time it jabbed her ears. "There aren't any feelings!" Grabbing a pillow, she wrapped it around her head to block out the sound. "Except maybe tiredness from not getting to sleep in the way I wanted to!"

"Oh, now, Strainflow," he murmured right into her ear, and she jerked her eyes open to see that she'd somehow managed to wrap him, all rough and scraggly, around her head instead of a pillow.

"Gah!" She flailed to get away, tangled her legs and wings in the blanket, and fell right off the edge of the bed, hitting the cloudy carpet with a dull thump.

"Honestly!" Discord grinned down at her from where he lay stretched over her sheets. "What does it say about your emotional state when Hades himself, the villain of our recent melodrama, came clean about his desire to utterly possess our buttery friend Stuttercry more readily than you do?" He gave a little shrug. "I mean, yes, Luna and Twilight and I had to give him a few stern looks before he fessed up, but now that he has, he's ever so sorry for what he did."

"Yeah, I'll bet," Dash couldn't keep from muttering.

Discord spread his front paws. "That's what I said! In fact, I voted to seal him up in Tartarus for a few centuries to consider the error of his ways, but no. Our various princesses decided to let him off with an apology tour." He sighed. "All day, Twilight, Luna, Cadance and yours truly have been following Hades around while he says he's sorry and performs a few middling tasks as a way of making amends to those citizens of Equestria whom he discommoded with his stunt." His voice and gaze took on an edge. "But what do you suppose happened when our little parade reached Fluttershy's?"

Dash tried to come up with a flip comment, but she found her throat had gone dry.

"She barely remembered meeting him!" Discord's gaze got even sharper. "She was almost entirely certain that she hadn't seen him since the party at her place on Nightmare Night! We all thought that a bit odd, but under gentle questions and with many a blush and a stammer, she did admit to having given him a role in one of her favorite daydreams while she'd been doing her chores yesterday: something about him locking her away in a midnight-encrusted tower where she pined away, waiting for her hero to swoop in and rescue her."

If Dash's throat had been dry before, it was an absolute sandbox now. "But...that's—" she coughed out but squeezed her mouth shut before the words 'my daydream' could pop from her lips.

Judging by Discord's sour expression, Dash wondered if he'd somehow heard them anyway. "And I thought to myself," he said, his voice low and gravelly, "'Didn't somepony of my acquaintance recently have power over daydreams?'"

It took some effort for Dash not to back away from him, now stretched as taut as a bowstring across her bed. "It wasn't—" she started.

But a slash of Discord's claws slapped a big piece of yellow tape over Dash's mouth; she peeled it away and blinked at the phrase crime scene printed on it in black letters. "So I excused myself," Discord was going on. "The princesses had begun discussing with Hades and a rather confused Fluttershy the proper ways to respond when one develops a sudden crush, but I hove myself hither to see if perhaps somepony might've confessed her fervent admiration for some other pony while traipsing through Hades's realm, then used her abilities to erase that information from said other pony's mind before exiting said realm."

"No!" Dash leaped into a hover. "I didn't! I wouldn't! That's not what happened, and I won't let you go around saying it is!"

"Indeed?" Everything flashed white, and Dash found herself sitting at a table in the middle of her bedroom, Discord in a blue police uniform on the other side, a notebook and pencil in his paws and claws. "Then maybe you could tell me what did happen on the afternoon in question?"

"Nothing!" Unable to stay still, Dash shot up to the ceiling and whooshed around the walls in a swift circle. "Hades told us we had to walk out, so we started walking out! Then we heard you guys bust in on him, but since we weren't sure it wasn't a trick, we kept going till we actually got out! And I thought that Eff didn't need the stress in her life of knowing that this jerk kidnapped her and locked her up 'cause he—" Her voice wanted to catch, but she pushed through anyway. "'Cause he fell in love with her or whatever. So I let her file the whole thing away under daydreams, and that was that."

The silence below made her look down, the table and uniform gone, Discord staring up at her with wide eyes. "You both have the same daydream," he said quietly. "You dream of being the hero who she dreams is rescuing her."

And as much as Dash wanted to shout and lie and tell him he didn't have any idea what he was talking about, the heat of her blushing cheeks made her face feel too weird to do any of that.

Discord folded his arms. "You know—"

"Don't even start," she growled, all the arguments she'd waged so often inside her head springing right into place. "I mean, can you imagine what it'd be like for Fluttershy if the two of us were, y'know, dating or whatever? I'm a Wonderbolt, a star, and that's not ego talking: that's just fact! I'm out there performing in front of thousands of ponies a couple times a week during the season, and she's here with her animals and her woods and her picnic lunches and her quiet sunsets and all that! She's like a soap bubble, and I'm like a bowling ball! Or look at our cutie marks! She's a butterfly! I'm a lightning storm! We don't mix! We can't!"

Saying it all out loud for the first time in her life made her chest get all tight; she swallowed against it but still couldn't quite get her voice to start listing all the other reasons she'd come up with over the years for why she and Fluttershy could never happen. The weight of those other reasons made it hard to stay airborne, though, and she let herself drift to the floor.

More silence lay spattered around the room, then Discord said, "And you don't think she deserves a choice?"

Dash shook her head, the image flashing through her mind the way it always did, the image even Hades had known well enough to throw into her face. "I kicked her outta her clouds once when we were foals. I'm not gonna do it again. And what does it say about me that I keep imagining her all helpless and locked up and waiting for me to bust her out? She deserves a pony who can see the real her, not some stupid daydream version of her." She shook her head some more. "Setting up her animal sanctuary: that's what the real Fluttershy wanted, and she did it, too, without some dumb cloud jockey crashing through the middle."

All the head shaking was making Dash dizzy, so she stopped and let her head hang down. But when Discord didn't immediately burst into a shower of sparks or start smelling like bananas and mayonnaise or make a noise like a hundred ducks waddlng past, she looked up.

He was just standing there with his arms still folded. "And if I tell her about these feelings of yours?"

"You won't."

His eyebrows arched. "And why exactly is that?"

Everything got blurry, not just Discord but the wall behind him and the posters on it, too; it took Rainbow a bunch of blinks before she could see him clearly. "'Cause I'm asking you not to." She had to swallow some more. "Please."

The smell of burning toast started jabbing at her nostrils, but— "Fine," he said, drawing the word out all slow and grumbly, then shaking a talon at her. "But let the record show that I disagree with this peculiar and unnatural course of action in every way that a creature as peculiar and unnatural as me can disagree with it." With a nod, he shimmered away like a reflection in a pond after somepony had dropped a rock into it.

Dash kind of felt the same way, only in her case, the rocks seemed to be sitting in her stomach. Dragging her hooves, she made her way across the room to her bed, crawled into the pile of blankets, shoved her head under the pillow, and refused to think about anything.

Whether she actually fell asleep or not, she had no idea, but when a tapping reached her from downstairs and she sat up, it was dark outside her window. Her eyes seemed as dry as cotton balls in her head, but at least the rocks in her stomach meant she wasn't hungry. She doubted she could even manage a glass of water right now...

The tapping drifted through the air again, and with a giant sigh, she rolled out of bed, stumped down the stairs to the front door, pulled it open with a snarl already twisting her lips—

And a pumpkin sat on her stoop: a carved pumpkin, but it took her a couple seconds to realize that the shape on the front—double curves at the top meeting in a 'V' with a point at the bottom—was a 'Hearts and Hooves Day' heart, the candle inside making it shine in the darkness.

Staring and frozen, Dash again had no idea how much time went by, but a quiet little "Ummmm..." hit her like an electric shock, her mane prickling along her neck and her head snapping toward the sound.

Fluttershy stood just off to the side, her blush almost as bright, Dash would've sworn, as the glowing pumpkin.

The rocks inside Dash exploded, a sandy, swirling tornado now filling her gut, but she refused to flinch. "Hey, Eff," she said, though the words sounded slow and foggy. "Nightmare Night was, like, yesterday. Or two days ago. Or, y'know, something..."

"Yes," Fluttershy said, her gaze fixed on the lumpy white steps leading from Dash's door to the edge of her cloud. "It's funny, but I'm not sure how long it's been, either." Her eyes darted up as quick as mice, and the intensity there hit Dash so hard, she almost did some more flinching. "I...I thought I'd had a dream or a daydream or something like that, but after Discord convinced Princess Luna and Cadance to take Hades back to Canterlot for more lessons instead of bringing him here to see you, I talked to Twilight and Rarity and Starlight and Spike, and..." Fluttershy flinched then, and ducked back behind a long wave of pink hair. "And I started remembering."

Spring into the sky right now, a part of Dash's brain was whispering all fast and hissing. Spring and slide and slash the air to ribbons with your wings, do Rainboom after Rainboom after Rainboom till you've crossed a couple or three oceans, then settle down under a phony name somewhere where the ponies all talk with funny accents and wear weird hats.

But instead, Dash just stood there thinking about how nice it would be if she had a glass of water. "I'm really, really sorry, Eff," she said, and it felt like she was coughing up nails.

"Sorry?" Her mane parted, and Fluttershy peered out. "For what?"

"For everything." And the floodgates burst. "You're not helpless and not simple-minded, but I like to think of you that way because I'm a terrible pony who doesn't deserve to have you in my life! You're so good and so pretty and so gentle, and when you're sitting there out in the woods with the birds and the squirrels and everything all playing around you and the leaf shadows dancing over your coat, I just...I wanna flap straight up and bring the clouds down so they can see it, too!"

Fluttershy's eyes had gone big and round while her mouth had gone small and round. But Dash couldn't stop: not now and not ever. "I wanna shout to the whole world how great you are, then come back and settle all quiet in a tree somewhere close by so I don't bother you but can still see you and be ready in case something bad happens or you need anything! And I—" Her throat tried to squeeze closed, but she wasn't about to let that stop her. "I want that bad thing to happen," she nearly screamed, "so I can swoop down, beat up the bad guy, and set you back in place being all cute and gorgeous again!"

"Cute?" The murmer fluttered against Dash's ear. "Gorgeous?"

"Always." Dash wanted to stomp a hoof, but, well, that was the problem, wasn't it? "And I'm the crash, the smash, the explosion that busts out the windows and makes the roof collapse." Keeping her eyes averted, she focused on the glowing pumpkin ahead of her on the stoop. "I'm trouble, so I'm always looking for trouble. You're sweetness, so you're always looking for—"

"Ummm..." Yellow and pink moved at the edge of Dash's vision, and one of Fluttershy's hooves reached out to touch the pumpkin. "I brought this here to you, Rainbow: not to anywhere else, and not to anypony else."

Wanting to but also not wanting to, Dash raised her head, slid her gaze along Fluttershy's long, shapely leg, across her chest, and up to that perfect face. "Like I said," Fluttershy went on, "I started remembering. I remembered you saying that I was the eye of your storm, and I...I want to be that, want to be surrounded by you and pulled places by you and shown the sorts of things I would never—"

"No!" Without even thinking, Dash surged forward and caught Fluttershy by the shoulders. "I'll wreck everything! That's what I do!"

"That's what I need." Fluttershy cocked her head with a smile, and Dash's heart felt like a squirrel trying to escape from her rib cage. "When you did your first Sonic Rainboom back in flight camp, it was you knocking me off that cloud that gave me the earth, that showed me the butterflies and the bunnies and the fish and the snakes." When her hooves touched Dash's chest as gently as a summer rain, everything inside Dash went completely still. "I found my destiny because of you."

"I bully you," Dash heard herself say, her mind still lost in the depths of Fluttershy's eyes. "I run over you. I disrespect you. I demean you." Her jaw locked with her teeth clenched, but Dash still pushed out, "I sold you for a stupid Daring Do book!"

"None of that's true." Fluttershy's shoulders shrugged under Dash's hooves. "I mean, yes, all right, that last one is." She slid her front legs around under Dash's, Dash unable to stop a shiver. "But you gave up everything you wanted to get me back. That's got to mean something, doesn't it?"

About to snort, Dash instead froze when Fluttershy gave a little lunge forward and pressed her head warm and soft and unbelievable into the crook of Dash's neck. "Once I started remembering," she murmured, "I realized that you didn't want to put me in the position of making an awkward decision. But, I mean, I'd already decided on my feelings for you a long time ago, and now that I knew you felt the same, I...I had to do something!"

More than once during her career as a weatherpony, Dash had kicked a cloud wrong, its lightning sizzling up her spine, rattling her teeth, and making her taste copper. Fluttershy hugging her and saying what she was saying, Dash quickly discovered, was both exactly like that and entirely unlike it in every single way.

"I was fretting and fretting and fretting," the tiny part of Dash's brain that could still think heard Fluttershy say. "And then Discord arrived with this pumpkin, and he said that sometimes, it's a straight shot to find out what a pony really wants, and sometimes it takes a little digging. So I dug the insides out of the pumpkin, carved my heart into the front, and brought it up here to give to you. If...if you wouldn't mind, I mean."

Setting aside for the moment the question of how hard she was going to kick Discord the next time she saw him, Dash let her eyes roll closed, let her forelegs pull Fluttershy closer, let her wings spread out to stroke through Fluttershy's downy feathers. "This can't work," that tiny sensible part of her whispered through her lips. "How could this possibly work?"

"I don't know." Fluttershy's breath raised goose pimples over every part of Dash's hide. "I'd like to find out, though."

"Yeah." Dash knew she wasn't flying, but she sure felt like she was floating. "Me, too."