This whole Mindtap business was an annoyance and a half.

I had dealt with finicky spells before, but they couldn’t hold a candle to the crap we were dealing with. Being in the spell was like trying to see through a dirty window and never knowing what was on the other side.

I twisted about, suspended as I was in the darkness of dream space. I squinted and leaned my head toward the ghostly shapes that drifted past me—washed out images of nameless places, faceless ponies. Still nothing. I couldn’t see through this damn vagueness that choked Luna’s dream like a dense fog.

At least I had control of my directionality this time, and a body. The feeling of drifting listlessly through a dream without any self-volition was disturbing at best.

I floated past the shadow of a yellow pegasus clinging to a storm-beaten raft. Another memory, too far out of reach.

I turned toward it, but something grabbed me by the scruff of the neck, and next thing I knew I stared bleary-eyed into my pillow.

“Easy, Sunset,” a voice said. “Easy… You’re safe. No lasers this time, okay?”

That was… that was Starlight’s voice. I was… where was I again? A sharp pain twinged right between my eyes, and I remembered all too clearly what I had been doing.

I put my hoof to my forehead to try and stall the growing throb. Getting artificially yanked out of a dream never did anyone any favors in the headache department. I blinked away the bleariness to see Starlight’s comforting smile overtop me.

“You alright there?” She brushed my mane back away from my eyes.

I jerked away and swatted at her hoof. I didn’t mean to be rude, just didn’t like people touching my hair. I must have done it harder than I meant, though, because she looked taken aback.

“Sorry,” I said. “I, uh, still waking up.” I forced myself upright and rubbed my head. “But yeah, I just…”

Just what? That was a load of bullshit if I’d ever tried shoveling any. “Well, no. Not really. I still can’t get any further than faint visions.”

Starlight’s smile didn’t waver. “Hey, Canterlot wasn’t built in a day. We’re still breaking ground here. To even get into somepony else’s dreams without Luna is something nopony’s ever done before.”

I couldn’t argue that. Still didn’t help that we’d been at this for almost twelve hours now and still basically on step one. Didn’t help the headache, either. Goddamn, it hurt.

“You got any water?” I asked.

Starlight levitated over a glass from the nearby counter. Room temp, but at this point it didn’t really matter. I chugged it in one go.

“Where’s Twilight?” I asked, wiping my mouth.

She was nowhere to be found. Which wasn’t like her, always hovering over me with a quill and paper whenever I woke up, ready to practically waterboard me for notes.

As much as we all wished Twilight or Starlight could dream dive, as we came to call it, it seemed I was the only one who could to any reasonable extent. We chalked it up to the Tantabus’s presence inside me.

“Right here!” Twilight trotted in with a stack of books trailing behind her and one shoved in her face. Magical Mixologies, read the front cover. “I think we might have been doing it the wrong way this whole time.”

“You think?” was the first thing out of my mouth before I could stop it. Starlight giggled.

“We’ve been trying to use a Mindtap Spell in order to tap into Luna’s mind,” Twilight said. “Obvious, I know”—she waved a hoof and gigglesnorted—“but I got to thinking about some of Starlight’s spells that she would mix together in our sparring lessons, and I was like, ‘hey, what if we tried that with our dream spell?’”

“Mixing a Mindtap Spell with something else?” Starlight rubbed her chin. “I don’t see how it wouldn’t work in theory. But what spells are we mixing, and what parts of them?”

“Well,” I said, standing up and taking the stack of books from Twilight. “For starters, we need the full Mindtap Spell, so we need to append the other spells, not mix them.”

“Not necessarily.” Starlight yanked Twilight’s book from under her nose, earning a frown, and skimmed it herself. “Just because you use the entirety of a spell doesn’t mean you tack another one on at the beginning or end. It depends how the spells interact.”

Well no shit. I took a quick breath to stop myself from snapping at her. God, I had to get this headache under control before it made me say something I regretted.

“Yeah, but the thing is,” I said, “if I remember my A-chem right, magical procession is always linear—it never flows backward. In other words, in order for the spell to work, we would have to arrange the spell matrix so that it never doubles back on itself. Otherwise, the spell fails and who knows what sort of backfire that could cause.”

“Or we homogenize the spell matrix to make a completely new spell.” Starlight threw on a big grin. “Believe me, I’ve run into that problem a few times myself.”

I… well shit. Should have thought of that myself. Damn this headache. I refilled my glass of water, considered it, then decided to just chug straight from the pitcher.

Twilight turned her frown to me. “You know that’s for all of us, right?”

I looked at her, then the pitcher, then her again. I offered her my water glass and a smile.

Twilight rolled her eyes and headed back to the blackboard. A short silence fell over the room as she busied herself with the equations.

The lull in conversation let my brain tumble back into its groove of overthinking things, and my eyes fell on Luna. That familiar, invasive chill clawed its way up my spine.

I remembered all the things she said, the honey-sweet words meant to turn me against Celestia and make a monster out of me. Every time I looked at her, my stomach tied itself in a knot and I wanted to stomp on her face until her teeth fell out.

No matter how hard I tried, I still saw only Nocturne in her. I would never admit it to the others, but I refused to turn my back on her, even while unconscious.

Luna shuddered like a foal having a nightmare and pulled one of the many surrounding pillows to her chest, curling into a fetal position around it. Here and there, the wing she wasn’t lying on spasmed as if she were being electrocuted, and her breathing came in quick choppy spurts. Whatever she was dreaming about, it looked horrible.

Good.

Twilight trotted over from her place by the worktable. She cooed as she pulled a blanket from the pillow pile up over Luna’s shoulders. Like a mother caring for her foal, she massaged Luna’s shoulders and brushed her mane out of her eyes. It made me sick thinking that someone could be so gentle, so nice to her.

“It’s okay,” Twilight whispered. “We’ll fix this. We’ll get you out.”

We’ll get you out.

The phrase sent a shiver down my spine, and a cold sweat started on my withers. It had me tensing up and got that weightless fight-or-flight sensation going in my legs.

No, no no, I was not thinking about that. Don’t think about it. Don’t let the bad thoughts in. Breathe. Breathe and think about the breathing like I’d gotten good at and any and all white noise to push out the memories that had no place here.

“Hey.”

Something touched me on the shoulder, and I jerked back on instinct. It was Starlight, and she stared at me with a mixture of emotions that landed her an expression somewhere between concern and fear.

But she didn’t pull her hoof away. Rather, she held it there, gave me something to focus on, lean against, add to my arsenal of white noise. In reality, it was probably the only thing that kept me from bolting.

“I think that’s our cue,” Starlight said, jerking her head toward Luna.

“I…” I cleared my throat to make sure what came next sounded convincing. “Yeah.”

She pressed her hoof into my shoulder a bit harder. “You’re sure you’re not just saying that?”

“I’m sure I’m not just saying that,” I lied. “Let’s get this over with.”

I didn’t want to do this. I really didn’t. But I had to, and now was the time to make good on the convictions I espoused yesterday, or my conscience would eat me alive.

I sat down in the glyph circle we’d chalked up around Luna, with Twilight and Starlight standing just outside with their array of surge crystals, ready to power another brief stint into the unknown. I took one, two breaths, readying myself for the influx of magic. But before the hum and raspberry glow of Twilight’s horn could fill the room, there was a knock at the door.

We all turned in unison as the left door swung open, and in stepped an impossible pony. A pony that shouldn’t exist. A pony that very much stood, living and breathing, wearing a great blue hat and cloak, with a big snowy beard that trailed all the way down to his hooves.

“S-Star Swirl?” I said. I couldn’t find any more words. He looked just like the portrait in Celestia’s room. Even the bells all around the brim of his hat and cloak looked spot on.

“So I am called, little filly,” he said in a wizened tone that fit better than any generic grandfather voice I could have imagined for him. He strode forward with all the dignity of royalty.

“Star Swirl!” Twilight all but tackled him in a hug.

The two shared a laugh, and Star Swirl straightened his hat. The bells jingled just like I always imagined they would.

“Twilight,” he said. “It is wonderful to see you again. And you, Starlight. I trust you two are doing well?”

“Well,” Starlight said. “As much as anypony can when unsuccessfully trying to exorcize a nightmare monster from Luna’s dreams, eh heh.”

Twilight threw a wing out in front of her and laughed nervously. “I, I think what she means is that yes, we’re doing great. Right, Starlight?”

Starlight rolled her eyes, but smiled.

“But how about you?” Twilight asked before the conversation could get any more awkward.

“I am doing particularly well, given the circumstances. But that aside, who do I have the pleasure of meeting here today?” Star Swirl asked, looking at me.

I blinked. Oh, he was asking me. I was kind of caught up in the whole flowing beard and the hat-bells and the trailing cloak and yes this was really him. The… The real Star Swirl. Not—

No, don’t think that. Don’t think that, don’t think that, don’t think that.

“I, er, sorry,” I said. “I’m Sunset Shimmer. I, uh. Wow. You, uh, you’re really him, huh?”

I must have looked like a complete idiot when I said that for how high he raised his eyebrow. “As we’ve established, yes. Now…”

He walked past me for the reversible blackboard, now crammed to the point of illegibility—up, down, sideways, and even a note-taking spell Twilight whipped up that shifted “layers” when tilting it up or down.

Star Swirl… Just rolling the name around in my head brought up bad memories. My eyes flashed toward Luna, though I didn’t mean to. I couldn’t help it. I wrenched my eyes away from her and took in the cloak and hat and beard again.

This was the real Star Swirl, not some fabrication, not some story meant to bleed my heart dry on my sleeve. This was the stallion who created the Amniomorphic Spell, the father of modern magic in the flesh. The real Star Swirl the Bearded. I had to hammer that into my head for like the fifth time in hopes it would actually stick.

“Interesting,” Star Swirl said, stroking his beard and having a go at tilting the board. “And you mentioned in your letter that you’ve already stabilized the connection without a grounding shard?”

Twilight grinned from ear to ear. “Well, we didn’t do it without grounding it to something. We just figured out how to use the dream-diving pony’s cutie mark as her own ground. And despite how that might sound recursive, it’s actually some pretty ingenious magic on Starlight’s part.”

Starlight smiled bashfully and rubbed the back of her neck. “I-it was nothing, really. Just a thing I learned back in my uh… yeah, I’d rather not talk about that.”

I grinned. She might not have wanted to talk about it, but that didn’t stop me from appreciating just how ingenious an idea it was. I mean, really, how in the heck did she figure out we could ground a channeling spell with the magic inside our own cutie marks? Trade off our special talent for a moment’s clearcasting. I had never heard of anything like it in A-chem. Didn’t think anyone had heard of it ever, except apparently Starlight.

Not that she didn’t have reservations, clearly. She practically begged us not to do it this way. But without feasible access to any capable grounding shards, given that this kind of magic needed ones well beyond anything even Celestia’s coffers could support, we had no other choice.

“So…” Star Swirl turned around with a swirl of his cloak and regarded Starlight with what came across as reserved interest. “How exactly does it work?”

Starlight’s smile turned strained. “I, I said I didn’t really want to talk about it…”

Star Swirl raised an eyebrow at her. “You discover a revolutionary means of magical safety for the sole purpose of this endeavor that you had personally called upon me to assist you with, and you desire not to share? My dear Starlight Glimmer, I recall our differences in our previous encounter, but surely something as paramount as this cannot go unmentioned.”

That got a wince out of Starlight. She scuffed at the floor and looked embarrassed to the point of teleporting out of the room.

“Come now, Starlight,” he continued. “Perhaps one of your colleagues would be more inclined?” He looked to Twilight, who wore a look of uncertainty.

I took a step forward and cleared my throat before throwing on my best hopeful smile. If I were meeting my childhood idol for the first time, I needed to make a good impression. Well, better than the ditzy idiot impression I already made.

“Well, as you know,” I said, “grounding shards are made of diamond or some other gem that’s placed in circuit with a channeled spell so that, you know, everything doesn’t get all explodey if the spell goes haywire.”

“Elementary information, Sunset Shimmer,” Star Swirl said. He stared at me impatiently.

My mouth hung open, and I struggled to find my words. Wow. To the point, then. No need to be a dick about it. Apparently he was only patient with those he considered on par with him.

Fine. Easy enough. I cleared my throat again.

“Well,” I said, “we couldn’t get our hands on a shard strong enough for the magic we have to put into it, so we improvised. Turns out cutie marks, because of whatever magic they have to do with our special talent, can hold a lot of magic.”

“I don’t see why they wouldn’t,” he cut in. “Continue.”

“As I was saying,” I added a tad forcefully. If he was going to demand I prove my worth, he should damn well let me speak my piece. “We use the cutie mark of whoever is dream diving as a reserve for that channeled magic, which then acts as a substitute for the grounding shard.”

“And are there any dangers of this method?” He poked at the discarded, ineffective grounding shards we had lying on the table—emerald, ruby, diamond. He slanted his mouth.

I stammered. “No. Well, yes. But technically no.”

“In my line of work, Miss Shimmer,” Star Swirl said, again studying the board, “I have found room for many technicalities with regards to spells, curses, hexes, what have you.” He turned a steely eye toward me. “But in regards to their failsafes, I have yet to find any.”

I rubbed the side of my leg. “Well, the danger is that if the spell goes haywire, Starlight removes my cutie mark and the break from the circuit causes it to shatter and harmlessly end the spell, like a grounding shard would.”

“Shatter a cutie mark?” The look of disbelief on his face would have made top bidding for a candid camera, had that been a thing here in Equestria.

“Well,” Starlight offered hesitantly. “It’s either that or… boom.”

“Besides,” I added. “They’ll grow back.” That got a look of surprise from him. “The cutie marks. This version of Starlight’s spell won’t remove them forever.”

Maybe. Hopefully. Starlight said they would, so it was all I could go by.

“This is dark magic you speak of, Miss Shimmer,” Star Swirl said. “And you, Starlight.” He glared at her contemptuously. “Had I known you were privy to such knowledge, our first meeting would have gone much differently.”

Twilight stepped between them and put a hoof on his chest. If not for that strained but reassuring smile of hers, I doubted he’d have even given her the chance to say anything.

“Star Swirl,” she said. “This is new magic, yes. But desperate times call for ingenuity and a bit of luck. We’re working as hard as we can to save Luna, and we’re all aware of the risks we take to do that. We ask that you help us make it better, make it safer. Because I know you want to help. It’s why you came.”

She turned her gaze to Luna still curled up with that pillow between her legs. It almost made me feel sorry for her. Almost.

He studied Twilight for a moment. A million thoughts flickered behind his eyes, all of them bickering over whether or not he should trust her.

“Very well,” he said. He turned to Starlight. “For my dear Luna’s sake. Show me.”

Starlight cringed.

It had to be hard showing off a talent for something as taboo as cutie mark removal, especially in front of somepony like Star Swirl. But this was important. We needed him to—

The world went fuzzy and wibbly wobbly as my brain suddenly felt three sizes too large for my skull. I put a hoof up to my head, and I had no feeling in my face except for the distinct sensation that I was drooling all over myself, like I had just been doped up on novocaine at the dentist’s. The only thing I could feel was the ground trying to do somersaults with me still on it. Something hard hit me in the back of the head, and I could have sworn someone took my stomach and wrung it out like a wet towel.

As soon as the spinning, spinning, can’t-let-go-or-I’d-fall-into-space feeling reached its peak and my lunch was ready to make a Trixie-level grand entrance, the sickness eased away, and I sucked in a breath of fresh air. Oh, fucking hell… what in the world?

“Tadaaa…?”

Oh… That was… Was that Starlight? Yeah, that was Starli… Starlight’s voice.

I lifted my head. It wobbled back and forth a bit, and I had to blink away the last traces of what was definitely magic. And wouldn’t it just be the case that whatever it was left me lying on my back with my legs spread like a French whore.

Oh, goddamn. Yeah, she did the thing.

“Ungh, Starlight…” I squirmed onto my side and stretched a kink out of my neck. Now that my brain was done being scrambled eggs, I felt like I had been beaten half to death with a sock full of bar soap. I put a hoof up to my temple where it hurt most. “Could you at least warn me before you do that?”

I shook my head, and that gave the dream-dive headache from before enough reason to come rushing back like some ill-advised knight in shining armor. Truth be told, though, I’d take what amounted to a hangover instead of whatever the hell Starlight’s spell did to me any day.

I gave my flank a quick check to see what all this spell ended up doing. Sure enough, my cutie mark was missing, like she had taken a whole bottle of industrial-strength hair bleach to it, leaving only the faintest pencil-like outline. Looking really closely at the individual hairs, I could see the color inking back in from the outside in, like some invisible tattoo artist was airbrushing it back on in slow motion. Maybe a day or two and it’d be good as new.

“Barbaric…” Star Swirl stared at me with a haunted look in his eyes. He turned his gaze to Twilight, more in disbelief than fear. “And this mare is your pupil? You allow this?”

Twilight flinched as if he had struck her. She lifted a hoof to her chest, like she meant to say something but didn’t know what.

“I… I know it’s a lot to take in,” she said. “But Starlight is a good pony, and I trust her and her abilities.” She took a hopeful step toward him.

It was hard to miss the little smile that threaded across Starlight’s face, and I couldn’t help one myself.

Star Swirl measured Twilight up with tight lips. It seemed like he had at least a half-dozen arguments on the ethics of all this. He wouldn’t have been wrong, either, but we didn’t have time for that sort of thing.

Surprisingly, he didn’t say a word and instead scanned the blackboard in silence, tilting it up and down as needed. After a solid minute of awkward silence, he humphed and turned back to us.

“A cutie mark is the very representation of what a pony is. It is their namesake and their livelihood. You would risk that in this… this farce? This abomination of magic?”

Starlight turned away in shame, and that stoked an indignant fire in me.

“It’s not an abomination,” I said. “We’ve all made mistakes we aren’t proud of. She’s using what she knows for something good.”

“Good or not,” Star Swirl said, “an abomination is exactly what this is, Miss Shimmer, and I will have no part in it.” In a swirl of his cloak, he turned for the door.

“So what,” I said. “You’re just gonna bitch out on us? On Luna?”

He wheeled around faster than a stallion his age should have been able to. Magic billowed around him like a second cloak, little invisible traces of a dozen silent incantations reaching out to touch me. They waited on bated breath for his go-ahead to tear me to pieces.

“I do not ‘bitch out,’ whatever that phrase implies, you disrespectful”—he struggled for a word—“child.”

“Hey,” Starlight said, stepping up beside me. “Sunset isn’t—”

I put a hoof on her chest without breaking eye contact with the dickbag in front of me. “I don’t know how things worked back in the day, or what sort of sticky situations you’ve had to get yourself out of, but this is my friend you’re shit-talking. She’s done a hell of a lot to get us this far, a hell of a lot more than you.”

I furrowed my brow and took a step forward to match his. I could smell the cinders of some fire spell on his breath.

“And if you think I’m gonna to just stand there and let you bash her,” I said, “then you’re either that arrogant or you’re going senile.”

“Sunset, Star Swirl,” Twilight said, stepping between us. She put a hoof up to my chest, wisely assuming I would make the first move if there was one. “That’s enough. Fighting isn’t going to accomplish anything.”

“Indeed,” Star Swirl said, his eyes never leaving mine.

I didn’t back down from his little staring contest. “Fine. Walk away. Walk out on your ‘Dear Luna.’”

Twilight glared at me. “Sunse—”

“Why are you here, Sunset Shimmer?” he asked. I could almost taste the venom dripping from his words.

“Because I have bigger balls than you, clearly.”

He opened his mouth to say something, but thought better of it. “What is Luna to you?” he asked instead.

His eyes studied me, into me. There was some kind of magic I couldn’t figure out in his eyes. They seemed brighter than earlier.

I scowled at him, then Luna. “She’s nothing to me. But she’s something to Twilight. And if she means that much to her, then I’m doing my part. With or without your help.”

He took another step toward me. I could feel the chill of his gaze rip right through me. There was definitely magic in that stare, some Insight Spell or other that tried its hardest to reach down inside me like some grasping hand for an answer I didn’t want to give.

“What exactly is it between you two?” he asked.

I looked away. “The same thing between you and me.”

“The same thing between us?” A slow, sardonic smile overtook him, and he chuckled. He took yet another step forward, close enough I could have slapped that look right off his face.

“Then I must ask what I am to you, Sunset Shimmer.” He narrowed his eyes. “I have spent the last few months learning the lay of the land and the ponies in it, and I must say, you’re the only one to receive me with disdain and mistrust.”

“Let’s just say that you remind me of bad memories,” I said flatly.

He raised an eyebrow and tilted his head just enough that I had to look up the length of his muzzle to look him in the eyes and god, was he just being an absolute shitbag. “What is it? Little Sunset can’t reconcile the legends with the stallion before her?”

I got up in his face with a glare that could have melted steel. “Don’t you ever call me that.”

“Oh, a touchy subject, I see,” he said. He raised his head all holier than thou, and I swore I could have blasted him back into Limbo right then and there.

“Don’t you even fucking start with me,” I said.

I felt the invisible magics he wove together around us and matched them with my own. If he wanted a tussle, he’d get one. I didn’t care if he was the real Star Swirl. I didn’t care if he was Celestia and her entire goddamn army with their spears at my throat. Nobody fucking talked to me like that.

“Heyheyhey.” Starlight trotted over. She put a hoof on my chest. “Easy.”

I resisted her hoof in a bid to keep squared up with that fucker, but I knew nothing good would come from a fight, as much as I wanted one. I huffed and shoved past him for the hallway.

The silence here was overwhelming, and the cavernous ceiling echoed with a nothingness I knew far too well. Past visions of Nocturne floated to the surface. Those cold eyes, that crescent-moon smile.

Little Sunset. Like a porcelain doll. A weak, delicate thing, ready to break beneath the slightest touch.

God, what the fuck was wrong with me? What was I doing here? I squeezed my eyes shut until I saw spots. This whole situation was an absolute mess.

“Sunset?”

It was Twilight. Her hoofsteps came up gently beside me. A wingtip brushed against my side, but she pulled it back.

I did my best to wipe away the tears before she could see them. “I can’t work with this asshole.”

I didn’t bother whispering, even knowing how shaky my voice would come out. I wanted that bastard to hear me.

Twilight gave me a pained look before starting in a hushed whisper. “Sunset, I know he’s a little… set in his ways, but please. Remember we’re here to help Luna.”

I looked away. I really wasn’t. I knew the little voice in my head wanted me to believe that—that all the feelings in my heart were me trying to be a good person and do the right thing. But honestly, the only reason I stood here at all was because of Twilight.

I… I trusted her. I trusted that she was right about Luna, and I couldn’t bear the thought of anything happening to her because of me. And like I told myself earlier today, I owed her. At least enough to try.

“I know we are,” I said. “But Star Swirl’s…”

“He’s not the pony he’s cracked up to be, I know. At least not on a personal level.” Twilight put a hoof on my shoulder and drew a smile across her face. “But he’s doing his best, just like we are. And we need all the help we can get.”

I stared at her like she grew another head. “Doing his best? All he’s done since he walked in was ‘hmm’ at your notes and shit-talk Starlight.”

“He just wants to make sure what we’re doing is safe, both now and for the future of magic. What we’re doing does break some… ethical boundaries. And given he’s from more than a thousand years ago, there’s no telling just how much that shakes the foundation of his beliefs in magic and how we use it.”

“I just…” I sighed. She had me there. “I don’t know, Twilight. I just… I need sleep.”

Twilight gave me a smile that could have stopped a raging bull in its tracks. “I’ll talk to him, okay? You go rest. I had Spike prepare you a room earlier.”

I tried and failed to hold in a chuckle. And fuck it, I wiped away a tear right in front of her.

“You knew before I did that I’d come back, huh?” I said.

Just when I thought her smile couldn’t get any more reassuring, she went and outdid herself. “I know you’re a good pony, Sunset. Sometimes we just forget it ourselves.”

Twilight leaned her head against mine, and I closed my eyes to better feel that connection. She was warm, warmer than any blanket or heating spell I could have asked for. She gave me a gentle squeeze, and with a final smile, we went our separate ways.

I knew her castle well enough to find the general area of her spare bedrooms, and from there I figured it out. Helps when it’s the only spare with sheets on the bed.

But anyway, I shut the door behind me, and when I turned toward the bed, my exhaustion warped into a creepy sense of déjà vu. It was the same damn room I dreamed about yesterday, right down to the area rug.

Whatever. I crawled into bed and let the downy comforter do its job.

The cool spots of the mattress sunk into my skin, and I found myself swishing my hooves around to soak up every last bit before lying uncomfortably twisted and tangled up in the sheets.

This day. This whole goddamn day. It was all so… so wrong.

I lay there like a log, waiting for sleep to do its thing. But even with nothing to do and all these thoughts hounding me, I didn’t want to fall asleep, either. I didn’t have the Nightmare in me anymore, but that thing—the Tantabus—would be there, silently judging me.

I sighed and rolled over.

I was doing this for Twilight. Whatever happened, I trusted her. I owed her that.

Sleep happened eventually, and as sure as I guessed, I sat in the dream version of Twilight’s room, and there was the Tantabus in its place between me and the door. A galaxy spiraled across its chest as I waited for something to happen.

But something was different. This dream, the Tantabus. Everything was… darker, and it was as that realization dawned on me that everything started changing.

Shadows bled down the walls to hide away the corners of the room. The moon, visible last time through a window to my right, had been plucked from the sky and not a single star took its place.

What little light filled the room came from the Tantabus, now sitting in a pool of its own golden-white glow. Where stardust and the twinkle of distant galaxies once drifted across its face in lazy spirals, two fierce supernovas burned in place of eyes. It stood and came forward with slow but determined steps.

I tried backing away, but my hooves had melted into the bedsheets and held tight. My heart thundered in my chest. Standing still meant death, but my hooves were useless and I couldn’t feel my horn.

As it got closer, the cold chill of space pricked against my coat, and my ragged breaths fogged in the inches between our faces. My neck grew stiff. I could only stare as it reached forward with its horn extended.

And when its horn touched my forehead, the distant screams of nameless ponies filled my ears. I wanted to scream too, but my mouth went numb and my legs turned to jello.

My eyes rolled into the back of my head, and everything went white.

Author's Note

I, uh... may have forgotten to post this yesterday. Whoops.

Onward and Upward!