I remembered getting a fire going and laying my head down for the briefest moment. Next thing I knew, the crackle of the fire pulled me out of whatever mental standby had me unstuck from time and rudely reminded me how much everything hurt.

Fuck, did I fall asleep?

I winced, pulling my hooves up to my nose. Bent out of shape and crusted with blood, it felt like I’d gone and run full sprint into a brick wall.

The simple motion brought with it a slew of other aches and pains. With no adrenaline to dull the pain, coming back to it all at once really fucking sucked. I wanted to curl into a ball and die. There weren’t any real spells for that, though, and the sensible part of me knew better than to trust my overdramatics. I latched onto that thought to get a hold of myself and take stock of my surroundings.

The campfire was still going beside me. It had died down some. Maybe an hour or two, then? Little sparks spurted off and rose toward the soot-covered ceiling of the hallway. Darkness encircled my little encampment, and the charred and splintered remains of furniture and other castle fineries made dancing shadows of the nearby walls.

Luna lay sleeping where I left her on the other side of the fire. Even asleep, the sight of her had me scuttling to my haunches, only to be rudely reminded of the leg she had snapped clean in half. I collapsed sideways and grasped at the bend in my shin that shouldn’t have been there.

“Fffucking shit.”

I sucked wind while trying to ride out the pain. Breathe. Just breathe like you’re good at. It’ll go away. God fucking damnit, it’ll go away.

“Sunset?”

Luna’s voice got the hair standing up on the back of my neck. She had sat up sometime during my little episode. The firelight danced in her eyes as if to compete with the stars twinkling in her mane. Quickly enough, she gazed into the flames and laid back her ears.

“It is good to see you awake,” she said.

I rolled onto my stomach and forced myself to a sitting position with my one good foreleg. “Is that supposed to be a joke?”

I was honestly curious. If she was here, then logic dictated I was still dreaming.

A tiny smile tugged at the corners of her lips. “I see your wits are as sharp as ever, Sunset. But I mean it within the confines of your dream, not true wakefulness.”

She let her smile fall back to that observant stoicism of hers, and her eyes came around to mine. There was a… a sort of yearning in them that pronounced when she roved over my injuries. Her ears perked forward, and I felt that sixth-sense-y animal magnetism—well, empathy, I guess—reach out to me.

“May I? she said. That… hopeful gaze lingered on me, but she didn’t approach.

May she? I remembered the whole fixing-her-face thing she did before our fight. I could still hear the way her teeth slid back into their sockets and just eugh.

But the look on her face didn’t spell out “eugh.” It… I didn’t know. As much as instinct screamed that I should back away and tell her to fuck off, I didn’t have much left in that department. All the aches and pains contributed their share of debilitation, and I laid down. Being angry was too hard right now.

“Sure. Whatever.”

She got to her hooves and rounded the fire for a better look at me. Rather than loom overtop of me, she laid down next to me, made herself as small as possible. Even her wingtips didn’t poke above the arch of her back like they usually did.

Gently, as if trying not to spook me, she lit her horn and brought it to my muzzle. A radiant warmth bloomed all the way into the back of my skull. The sensation of feeling my muzzle uncrunch and pop back into place got the squirmies going in me, and my sinuses went into overdrive to have me tearing and snotting up like I had just snorted a line of hot sauce. I could breathe through my nose again, though—something my brain hadn’t even considered until suddenly regaining that blessing.

One by one, she touched her horn to my other injuries—my shoulder, my shin, and the heaps of bruises all over my body—and that warmth rushed in to ease away the pain. Everything still hurt, but in a feverish ache sort of way rather than a run-over-by-a-stagecoach way.

When she pulled back, that warmth left me surprisingly cold, like someone opened a window in the dead of winter. She was sweating, but she wore a hesitant smile all the same.

“Better?”

I took a deep breath to steady myself, but it came back out shaky. Only now did I realize how tense I was. I couldn’t help the sense of invasion the whole deal stoked in me, even though I consented. Still, she deserved at least complacency for the gesture, and I did my best to relax.

“Yeah.”

She retreated to her side of the fire and sat down. Again, her eyes gravitated to the little flames dancing as if for her amusement. A moment’s silence before: ““How are you feeling?”

Now that had to be a joke. I let that thought show plainly on my face.

“I do not mean physically,” she said. “How do you feel?”

Tired? Stupid? Ashamed? Dozens of other, more self-deprecating words sprang to mind, all centered around how much of a fuck-up I was. How she beat the ever-loving shit out of me up until the last second, how much I had proven myself all bark and no bite. I settled on the most all-encompassing word among the flock:

“Like shit.”

She contemplated that awhile, her eyes lost in the dancing flames. Something about her had me following suit, and we stayed that way for a good minute.

“Why’d you stop?” I eventually asked. I looked her in the eye for any wordless answer she might give. “You had me dead to rights. Why’d you stop?”

She repaid my question with silence, or so I thought until she finally spoke up.

“You wished to fight me, Sunset. I did not wish to, as I felt it contrarian to our best interests. But to have denied you that fight would have been to supersede your desires, as would have ‘pulling my punches,’ as the phrase is said.

“However… in that moment ere besting you, backed into a corner as you were, the fear in your eye… I do not know if your mind went back to that moment, but mine did. I saw you as you were then. I saw you beneath me, and I… I could not do that a second time.”

That got me laying my ears back and my heart going. That unforgettable sensation of everything closing in, the inevitability, the hopelessness. It was all I could do to stare into the fire, but among the flames I saw her beneath me, the firelight glinting off the blood dribbling from her muzzle.

The same, and yet different.

“There is much anger in your heart, Sunset, and I am its rightful recipient. Hate me as you must, but you must also learn to control that anger, or it will consume you.”

It will consume you… Yeah. I felt that consumption well enough. I could still feel her blood on my hooves, the meaty thump of her body beneath me, how joyous it felt. Now that the heat of the moment had passed and the very real proposition of snuffing the life out of her crystalized in the forefront of my brain, the thought sickened me. And yet that felt almost self contradictory, like I shouldn’t be allowed to feel sickened, because I shouldn’t need to.

What she did was unforgivable, yet I couldn’t bring myself to enact the justice I had been denied for so long, as if part of me wished for some higher power to come dole out that justice on my behalf, just so I wouldn’t have to actually cross that threshold. And yet I knew there was no higher power. My situation was proof of that. No god worth praying to would have let this happen.

Fuck, what was wrong with me? I blinked away the afterimages of the fire and looked to Luna, if only to drag my brain out of that shitshow of a mental spiral. Just… something to focus on other than my own self-loathing.

I noticed the patch of raw and weeping skin stretching from her right breast to her wing joint, where she had shouldered my Fireball Spell as part of my beatdown. Same with her face. The rock I got her with left a trophy of a gash running from the bottom of her earlobe to her jaw. The blood matted her fur all the way down to her collarbone.

No healing magic for herself? Was that suddenly against the rules, or did she mean it to garner some twisted sense of sympathy? Whatever. I was too tired to care.

I looked away. No hope of finding a reprieve from the bad thoughts in her, and if she was going where I thought she was with this conversation, I didn’t want to tempt fate. Now didn’t feel like the best time for a lecture, even if it was part of some unofficial terms of surrender or whatever the fuck this little situation was turning into. I just wanted to sleep. Like, really sleep, and not think about anything for a solid week.

“Did Sister ever tell you why I became Nightmare Moon?” she asked.

I sighed. This lecture thing was gonna happen whether I liked it or not. Might as well get it over with.

“Not really,” I said. “All I remember is from that old pony tale. Everyone liked the way she ruled things more or something, and you were jealous.”

Luna contemplated that. “There were many reasons, more than simply that our subjects favored the day over the night.”

“And those were?”

“Love, for one,” she said.

“Love?” I looked up at her. There was a far-off pain in her eyes.

“It is… difficult to speak of, but yes. He… he chose Sister, and… I, I could not cope.”

Ouch.

Anything to do with unrequited love got me right in that sensitive, heart-shaped spot better left untouched. It didn’t matter if the only reason I could relate was because of her—that shit got me. I found it hard to hate, despite the principle that I should.

She’d lied to me from the moment she said hello back then, but I didn’t have any reason to think she was lying now. I’d gotten good at knowing when people were lying. Took one to know one, and this wasn’t it.

“What happened to him?” I asked.

She said nothing for the longest time, maintaining that distant gaze through the fire. Part of me wondered how normal it was for her to space out like this. A thousand years on the moon couldn’t do good things for a mare’s sense of time.

“I destroyed him,” she said finally. She let the sentence hang between us. The simplicity in her voice sent a shiver up my spine, and was lost in the firelight again.

“Does Celestia know?” It didn’t really matter much, but I was curious.

“Yes. ’Twas a… difficult dinner conversation.”

“Sounds like it.”

Luna sniffed at that. When I chanced a peek out the corner of my eye, there was a little smile on her lips. Or maybe it was a grimace.

“’Twas not the tipping point, but it was certainly the first spark to illuminate that dark path.”

“What finally did it?”

“The winter solstice,” she said. “Am I right in assuming there was no such festival related to it during your foalhood?”

I shrugged and quickly regretted the motion when my shoulder flared up. I rubbed it gingerly.

“The winter solstice was just the longest night of the year,” I said.

She nodded. There was a stiffness to her movement, as if she were trying to hold something back or keep herself together. Honestly, it was kind of frightening seeing her like that.

As archaic and high-minded as she could act at times, that almost unnoticeable tremor in her legs, the way her eyes stared a bit too intently past whatever it was she looked at, it all brought her back down from whatever pedestal she kept trying to set herself on. It… it reminded me of myself, how I tried to never be a burden on my friends.

“The Winter Moon Festival,” she said. “’Twas an idea that came to me one night whilst pondering the stars. Our subjects by that point had mostly forgotten me, or seen me as largely antiquated, as we had a few generations prior secured the southern border of Equestria along the Badlands, and the griffon raids in the north we had, at least, contained for the time being.

“Equestria did not have need of her Warrior Princess as she had before, when the dragons raided as they pleased and the Kirin marauders kept many a night watcher vigilant at their post.”

I looked Luna up and down. A Warrior Princess, huh? Explained the beating she gave me earlier. It also explained Celestia’s big schtick on diplomacy. A princess for war, and a princess for peace. No wonder Celestia needed the Elements to beat her.

“Sister had the Summer Sun Celebration, so why was I not allowed to have a festival of my own? Some might call such notions vain, but I did not mean it as an adoration of me and my rule. Rather, I wanted to show our beloved subjects that the night need not be feared, but exalted as Sister and her daytime were.

“I set to making it the greatest act of revelry Everfree had seen in a millennium. I poured my heart into its preparation, from turning back the cycle of the moon, to clearing the clouds with my own four hooves.”

Her ears fell back, and she looked at the ashes and bits of splintered wood in the fire. “However, not a soul attended. Not even Sister.

“The ponies complained that the moon was too bright and they could not sleep. Some even went so far as to demand I abdicate my throne, that I was both a burden and a liability for acting upon such foolish whims. To see Sister even consider their words…” She looked me in the eyes, and it was like she cast a spell to send goosebumps up my legs. “That, Sunset Shimmer, was the first time I felt true hatred in my heart.”

The look in her eyes reminded me of Celestia. It’d been seven years, but I never forgot that vindictive glare she gave me in the portal room after I attacked her. It sent an uncomfortable chill down my spine.

But Celestia had my best interests at heart. That much I could see now. It made me wonder if she had the same mindset for Luna back then.

“Did she really have no idea?” I asked.

Luna shook her head. “No. But she will be the first to admit fault. Do not disparage her. That said, jealousy and anger paved the path I walked, not her carelessness or that of others.

“Nightmare Moon was not a result, ’twas a decision. I chose to submit to my inner demons, to destroy Sister, and claim the throne for myself, that all would know not just the wonders of the night sky, but of the blood, sweat, and tears I poured into my role as Regent of the Night.”

She looked away. “And we all know the end of that story…”

I followed her gaze into the fire. It was a lot to take in, a lot to piece together how I fit into it all.

Banishment, relegation to a bedtime ghost story, being forgotten. One could argue that was a sentence worse than death, and wanting revenge equally justified.

It wasn’t an excuse for what she did to me, but it was a reason. The more I thought about it, the more I didn’t want to. I mean hell, playing second banana to someone better at hogging the spotlight, stabbing them in the back out of some perverted sense of justice, and then getting shafted for it by the world at large? That… that hit a little too close to home.

“Regardless of your feelings,” Luna said, “we are similar, you and I. The roads we walk bear an uncanny resemblance. I am merely farther down my own.

“I told you to meet with those you had wronged, because there were many that I had wronged as well, and I only found the strength to face myself once I had found the strength to face them.” She flitted her wings and refolded them at her sides—her version of an idle tick, if I could call it that. “Many I will never have the opportunity, so works the fickle hoof of mortality. I have only the ability to right my wrongs for those who yet live.”

She turned to me with that seeking look again. “We find the strength as we go. More often than not, life finds us before we are ready, and we must rise to meet it lest we are crushed underhoof.”

She looked away again. It might have just been the flicker of the campfire, but it looked like she was trying to hold back tears. The firelight was good at that, the way it danced just a bit more in her eyes.

“I myself was crushed.” Her voice came out as a pained whisper. “I believed myself strong when I turned from the light and became Nightmare Moon. However, that strength was little more than a weakness, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. I gave in to the anger, and in doing so, I gave in to my weakness. I do not wish to see it happen to you, any more than it already has.”

I stared into the firelight, letting her words sink in. Find the strength to face myself, huh? I remembered Twilight telling me about the Tantabus. Did Luna think we were really that alike? Were we that alike? I mulled over her reasoning, the series of choices leading to this very moment, and it eventually brought me to an uncomfortable fork in the road.

I scratched a little groove into the dirt. “So why’d you do it?” I asked.

“Do what?”

“You know what I’m talking about… I figured you needed me out of the way for your return from the moon, but what I don’t understand is… why go through the effort of all that? Of making me fall in love with you? What did fucking with my head accomplish? Why not just—” I shuddered at the thought of speaking so plainly about it. “—just do it and be done with it?”

A long silence punctuated my question. I could see the gears turning in her head. Not the kind meant to churn out a mollifying string of words, but the honest reflection kind.

“’Twas not my intention at first,” she said, gazing into the fire. “You were a powerful unicorn whose capabilities were nigh limitless. To have you at my disposal after my return was a boon I could not overlook.” As she spoke, her wings slowly fell to the ashes gathered around her, the shame evident on her face.

“But ultimately, you were Sister’s protégée. No matter how completely you had fallen for my lies, you were a variable that I could not account for once my motives came to light—whether you would fight for or against me when that inevitable battle came to pass.

“You were a danger to my plan, and therefore nothing less than your guaranteed absence would suffice. The atrocity I committed against you I did out of necessity, once you made it clear you would not step through that portal willingly. Such logic is ruthless and unforgivable, I know, but that is the way of it.”

With my eyes, I followed the little groove I had dug out, all the little etches and individual granules of dirt. Luna, likewise, took to staring at the ground. She seemed almost shrunk in on herself, her wings held tight against her sides and her head low to her chest.

“I know it is the last thing you want to hear,” she said, “but the old me enjoyed hurting you. Watching you dance beneath the light of the moon, helping you grasp gently that single red rose…”

She took a strained breath through her nose, overcome with whatever thoughts wound through her head. When she opened her mouth, it came out as a shaky whisper:

“I am… glad. That, that Twilight and her friends defeated me. I am ashamed to know what horrors I would have wrought were I victorious.”

I nodded absently, letting her words roll around in my head. Yeah. If what she did to me was just the tip of the iceberg, I couldn’t imagine what she’d do, either. And if history had been rewritten so that my power fantasy came true… I didn’t need to think about that.

I should have felt disgusted. This whole conversation should have had me retching and clawing at my skull to make the thoughts go away. But I just couldn’t bring myself to care.

The exhaustion and soreness overwhelmed me to the point of apathy. I didn’t even care that I didn’t care, and I didn’t know if I should take that as a good thing or bad. Maybe a silver lining, at least. Whatever.

“In my many discourses with Sister since my return,” Luna said, still gazing into the fire, “she seems to believe that I have forgiven myself of the evils I committed. She knows of the Tantabus, as does Twilight, and they both have conflated my victory over it with victory over my past sins. But they would be wrong. One does not claim victory over such things, only mollification.

“In the years betwixt my imprisonment and my purification within the cleansing fire of the Elements, I… I can say that I have never done anything as heinous as what I did to you. ’Twas unforgivable, what I did. Likewise, I am not here for forgiveness, nor do I ask it of you. I am here because of the goodness that I can effect. I am here because you allowed me to be. I am here because it is the right thing to do.

“Some may see this call to action as little more than a selfish need to silence my own guilts, as you yourself have mentioned. I will not deny that I benefit from this journey, that I desire to see my own demons laid to rest. But those needs are forever secondary, and I will not allow them nor the fears of such accusations—true or not—to sway me from doing what I believe is right and just, so long as you would have me.”

Like a statue, she gazed long into that fire. Had it not been for the slow rise and fall of her chest, I might have thought she turned to stone.

“Do I forgive myself for what I did? No, nor will I ever. For I fear that in forgiving myself, time may work its sinister motives and see me to some semblance of complacency. Years. Centuries. I do not know how long such machinations would take to bear fruit, but I refuse them from now until the end of time.

“There is much that I do not believe myself forgivable for,” she continued. “But I take heart in the truth that I have, am, and will forevermore strive against. I must find that strength as I go, to right what I am able and to do good in the absence of that which I stole. That much I believe.”

With her little monologue finished, the silence on its coattails treated us to the steady crackle of the fire, and my eyes were naturally drawn toward the little embers that trailed up into the dark above.

She really didn’t forgive herself, huh? As she shouldn’t. At least she got that right.

Granted, she had said things to that effect a few times before. And, well… I guess the whole beat-to-shit thing finally had me in a low enough gear for that to actually stick. Just me being too dense to realize something, as always. Good or bad, sufficient or not, it was something, at least.

I timidly scratched at the little groove in the floor again, watched the dirt collect along the rim of my hoof. “So you still really think this whole talking-to-everyone thing is a good idea?”

After a long, strained moment: “I do,” and nothing else.

I gave another nod. It was all I could manage, other than laying my head down. I was just so tired. I closed my eyes, but sleep wouldn’t come.

For what it was worth, the crackle of the fire and the warmth on my face made up for the abhorrent silence. The need for something to take my mind off things came back—to not think and just be until I got past whatever hurdle stood in my way.

I kept my eyes closed and thought back to yesterday. The way I drifted off in Twilight’s arms, how she ran her fingers through my hair. It was the most wonderful thing I’d felt in years.

Twilight…

I jerked up. “Twilight!”

I winced at the sudden pains that movement rekindled. Crap, how did I forget about Twilight? She was the whole reason I came back here.

“I feel her,” Luna said. She held a hoof to her heart. “Within my breast. A nightmare wracks her slumber.”

I grunted as I got to my hooves. The fire in my gut reignited, that burning repulsion for every little thing Luna did and stood for. My overwhelming exhaustion and soreness might have made for the perfect mix of inward-facing apathy, but nothing in the whole goddamn world or the next could chain me down when Twilight’s safety was at stake.

“Then why the hell didn’t you tell me that sooner?” I yelled.

“We had much to speak of, and she has time enough to persevere.”

Much to speak of, my ass. Twilight was more important than “us.” I tried casting the Wake-Up Spell, but all I got for that was a nasty migraine at the base of my horn. Our fight must have taken more out of me than I first realized.

“Before you go…” Luna said.

I rolled my eyes and shot her a pointed “What?”

“Cherish your friends. Remember what is most dear to you, what it is you truly fight for. And most importantly, never forget you are strong, and that letting others in is not weakness. There is a summit to that mountain, Sunset. I assure you.”

A few snide comments sprang to mind, and I almost threw them her way. But I remembered our little… argument and everything she’d said between then and now. I pushed them down. I nodded and finished casting the spell.

Thankfully, none of the aches and pains transferred into the real world, and I woke up feeling surprisingly refreshed. I stretched out like a cat to get the last bits of sleep out of my bones, and I was off to the portal room. No time to waste.

Twilight still lay inside the chalk circle beside Luna, and I set my sights on her with a determination I hadn’t felt since the Battle of the Bands.

Something touched my shoulder. It startled me out of my trance.

Starlight pulled back and held her hoof crooked against her chest. She looked alarmed, but more so concerned.

“I… did you say something?” I said.

“Yeah. I was saying that we figured out what Twilight did.”

“Oh,” I said. Didn’t think I was focusing hard enough to block her out, but whatever. “Well, yeah. She dream dived to fight the Nightmare and got hurt.”

It came out curtly, and I instantly regretted it when I saw the look on Starlight’s face. “Sorry, I—”

“No, I… I get it,” Starlight said. “We’re all worried. This is bad.”

Star Swirl stepped up beside her, even put a comforting hoof on her shoulder. “Indeed. Things are not going our way, but there’s still a chance this hasn’t gone as poorly as we assume. Twilight made numerous modifications to the spell, including a short-term Stasis Spell that appears to have shunted her into her own dream instead of Luna’s. I believe she meant it to act as a ripcord of sorts, in case the Nightmare went after her. Though, I fear learning how well it actually worked.”

“Do we know if she even made it into Luna’s dream in the first place?”

“Not without asking her ourselves,” Starlight said.

Not the most helpful information, but if I were to get her out, I had to assume the worst. It wasn’t farfetched to think the Nightmare would swap bodies, given the opportunity.

“So are you going to tell us what you were planning?” Starlight said. Her eyes flicked between me and my horn.

I looked back and forth between her eyes. Worry welled in them like tears. All we’d done this entire week was worry. They needed someone to show a little confidence, and not the bull-headed kind I’d been waving around.

“I gotta save Twilight.” I turned back to Twilight and did up a chalk circle just like we did with Luna.

“I don’t know if that’s going to work,” Starlight said. Her hooves clip-clopped up next to me.

“She’s locked up inside her own head,” I said. “Getting in hers can’t be any different than getting in Luna’s. You guys just need to power up the spell like normal. I’ll do the rest.”

I sat down in my part of the circle, eyes on Twilight. She looked so helpless, so… vulnerable. Was this what I looked like to her just yesterday?

“I have to fix my mistake…” I said.

Neither Starlight nor Star Swirl had anything to say to that. A quiet resolution settled over the room as they set about preparing a new Dream Dive Spell.

“Hang on,” I said, as they added the finishing touches. I grabbed a few of the pillows from underneath Luna and propped Twilight up so she looked comfortable. She grabbed one in her slumber and held it tight.

“I’ll get you out,” I whispered, brushing her mane out of her face. I took my place on my side of the circle and centered myself. “Okay. Ready.”

“You’ll only have so much time,” she said, readjusting Twilight’s surge crystal for her own use. “I can’t tell you how long.”

“I’ll make it quick, don’t worry.” I closed my eyes and waited for the magic to envelop me.

The familiar wash of not-water rained down my head, shoulders, hooves, until it soaked through my skin and held me aloft like a buoy on a choppy sea. I breathed it in, my sense of weight filling in from my lungs outward. My hooves touched stone, and I opened my eyes to darkness.

It was a cave of sorts, the kind I’d expect to see deep below Canterlot Mountain, with row after row of stalagmites and stalactites reaching out like shark teeth. Puddles stretched along a narrow path, carving little grooves and divots through decades of erosion. The slow and rhythmic drip of water echoed throughout the cavern.

“Twilight?” My voice carried far beyond sight and called back to me. Another thought came to me. “Luna?”

Still no answer but my own echo. Strange. I half expected her to come galloping in like a white knight ready to save the damsel in distress in a dream like this. Maybe the magics that connected us relegated her to only my dreams and her own.

I shook my head. Couldn’t get hung up on useless tangents. Clock was ticking.

I lit a Magelight Spell at my horntip to light my way and set off down the path. The dripping water had run dozens of grooves into the stone, making every step an ankle-rolling hazard. Strangely enough, the water didn’t cling to my hooves, and I left no ripples in the many puddles.

It was weird. Luna’s dreams seemed piecemeal, their construction so after-the-fact and fractured the way real dreams felt. Hers never once felt as concrete or seamless as Twilight’s. It was as if—

My Magelight Spell cast a faint silver outline over an organic shape out of place in this world of rock and stone.

“Twilight!”

She lay in a pool of water, wings splayed. Her mane and tail blossomed around her in the water.

“Twilight!” I ran to her side. “Twilight, it’s me, Sunset.”

She didn’t acknowledge me, her eyes half-lidded and staring into the water an inch from her nose.

“Twilight?” I reached for her shoulder but phased right through her. This was… something like this happened before.

I tried remembering back to the last time I entered someone’s dream. That would have been Luna’s, way back when I traded the Tantabus for her soul. I was… observing, if I recalled correctly. I remembered the spell the Tantabus gave me, the one that let me pull away that silken curtain—the Veil, as Luna called it. I cast the spell and felt that same peeling sensation draw across my skin, and the atmosphere in this dream seemed to double.

“Twilight!” I said. She felt cold to the touch, like a slab of meat taken out of the freezer moments ago. I brushed her mane out of her eyes.

A drop of water fell an inch from her face, and that slow-motion sound reverberated off the cavern walls. Twilight focused on the spot.

There was something in her eyes, a sort of twisting darkness inside her pupils. It didn’t take Luna herself to know that wasn’t a good sign.

“Twilight, snap out of it!” I stomped my hoof in the water in front of her face, but it didn’t splash. It hardly even felt like I’d displaced it.

It did get her attention, though. Her eyes made a slow trail up my hoof to my face, and a faint glimmer of recognition kept my hopes alive.

“Sunset?” she whispered. It came out slurred and groggy, like she’d been drugged or something.

“Yeah, it’s me. I’m gonna get you out of here.” I looked around for anything that might attack us. I didn’t know if the Nightmare had jumped bodies—or if she had even successfully made that connection in the first place—but I wasn’t about to find out the hard way.

I could pull myself from a dream quick as a whip. Pulling someone else with me… I still didn’t know if it was possible, and I had no idea how hard it’d be or how long it’d take to focus that amount of magic, but I gathered it at the base of my horn all the same.

The Wake-Up Spell was an illusion-class spell, so it followed the same principles as dream diving, but I had to feel out the magical procession and figure out how to redirect it—leash it around Twilight without losing control.

A little blue light pulsed to life over my left shoulder. When I turned with a fireball ready at my horntip, I was instead greeted by the sight of Twilight’s library, suspended like a little facet within the cavern itself no more out of place than the stalagmites and pools of water. Specifically, it was the little nook in the back of her library.

She’d mentioned it a few times. It was her favorite spot, because of how the afternoon sun came in through the windows.

A dream version of Twilight sat propped up on a mess of pillows with a book in her lap. She spoke with Luna, who stood opposite her. Dream Twilight shook her head with a resolute frown, and Luna walked away, heartbroken.

“Twilight?” I took a step forward.

A hoof touched my foreleg, the real Twilight’s. She looked up at me with a groggy frown.

“Don’t… You’re safer this way.”

“Huh?”

“If I tell Luna not to talk to you, I can’t convince you to come back to Equestria. I can’t make you relive your nightmares. If I don’t help, you’re safe.”

I… didn’t know what to say to that. There was a disconnect in logic there, some past-present dream convolution going on, if I had to guess. Part of me wondered if it had to do with that darkness in her eyes.

“But… that’s not what happened, is it?” I asked, probing for more information.

“It’s what should have happened.” She stared wistfully at the not-memory.

“You’re being silly, Twilight. You’re…”

It was about then that a cold shiver set my nape on end as I realized the Nightmare hadn’t jumped ship to ravage Twilight’s dreams. These were her nightmares.

I remembered back to what Star Swirl said, about the reworked spell. He’d compared it to a ripcord, to protect her from the Nightmare. But however it worked must have dumped her into her own nightmares, possibly with her own personal Nightmare—that darkness in her eyes.

I turned back to the memories drifting past us—or rather, the ones we drifted past, the cave having morphed into a river with us along for the ride. We stood on the water itself, the river meandering like a conveyor belt, pulling us along.

The snippets we drifted past were all moments that had to do with me: there was our conversation at Coney Dog’s, over there were the two of us in my apartment, and more I didn’t recognize but could assume had to do with me in some way. But they all seemed different—artificial, even. The Twilights in them all acted cold and distant.

The Twilight beside me sat up, her eyes focused on the scenes passing us by. The drugged, saggy look on her face had faded, but a reserved, almost nervous look settled in, and I didn’t know which I hated more. She seemed to both realize yet not realize who I was. Maybe she was finally coming to.

“If I had simply done nothing,” she said, “none of this would have happened.”

We drifted past a vision of the portal room. My dream body lay on the floor beside Luna’s. All of a sudden, Dream Me screamed and flailed about before getting up and bolting for the portal. That… that had to be the day before last, when the Nightmare turned into Nocturne.

The looks of horror and confusion on everyone’s faces made me sick. How much had I made them all suffer for my actions?

We circled back on the first altered memory, that of her and Luna in the library nook. The real Twilight pitched her ears toward the scene as we drifted past, her eyes locked wistfully with her dream form.

“Twilight,” I said. “Go talk to her.”

She stared at me as if I asked her to commit murder. “What? No! I… I can’t. If… I-if I do, all it will do is cause you—”

“It’ll hurt me. Yeah. Believe me, I know. But this isn’t about me. This is about you. This is your dream, these are your fears.”

“But I can’t. Everything would have been better if I’d just let it be. I wanted to help you, but all I did was make things worse.” She flattened her ears back and stared at her reflection in the puddle.

The shadow in her eyes intensified briefly. It spread across her body, and the image of a pony plumed upward from her backside, like a ghost leaving its corpse. It looked like the depictions I’d seen of windigos in my history books, but took on a purple sheen a few shades darker than Twilight’s coat.

It landed beside her, its head craned over her—eyeless, yet staring. Twilight didn’t seem to be aware of it, but she shied away all the same, like she felt its presence rather than knew of it.

The temperature dropped enough to see my breath, and a sensation of being watched from the shadows bore down on me. That skin-pricking, hair-raising feeling of impending doom.

Was this… was this Twilight’s Tantabus? Was that a thing? Was there more than one?

I could barely keep it together as I watched this otherworldly being lean on her, pressing her down into the stone. The inch-deep puddle came up to her knees. I didn’t know much about dream symbolism and whatnot, but I’d spent enough time around Luna to know this wouldn’t end well if I didn’t intervene.

“Twilight, listen to me,” I said. “You can’t do this. This whatever-it-is you think you’re doing. You have to do what you believe is right.”

“It doesn’t matter, Sunset. I’ve hurt you enough. I’m not going to hurt you or anypony else any more than I already have. I’ve made up my mind.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. “And how are you going to do that?”

“By choosing to do nothing.”

“But choosing not to choose is still a choice,” I said.

“I know, but if my choice not to choose is the only way to keep me from hurting you, then it’s worth it.”

What in the world had gotten into her? Was this… was this thing making her think this nonsense, or was it simply feeding off that negative energy? She was submerged up to her chest now, and I couldn’t let her drown.

I reached my hooves into the puddle to pull her out before she went under, but where she sunk through, I hit stone.

Goddamn it. Only one way to get her out.

“Twilight, listen to me. You have to do what you think is right. I’d be hurting for the rest of my life if you hadn’t done what you did. Sure, it’s worse now, but… it’ll get better.”

Would it, though? I couldn’t say I believed my own words, but… no, I had to believe them. I had to know things would get better, because if not, all this pain and misery—my own and that of my friends—would have been for nothing.

“You don’t know that,” Twilight said. Up to her neck now. “Nopony does. What’s the point?”

Yeah, this was definitely not the Twilight I knew, but she was in there somewhere. I just had to find her.

“The point is because this isn’t you. Yeah, you don’t want to hurt other ponies, but not doing something tears you apart. I know it does.”

“If it makes others’ lives better, then I’m okay with that.”

I huffed at that. God, I could have slapped her for being this thick if time weren’t too precious.

“Twilight, you aren’t some bump on a log. You’re a part of this world, and you make things happen. Good things. You’re the goddamn Princess of Friendship for a reason. You wouldn’t have gotten there without having done at least one right thing along the way.

“You get things done. Because you care. I know you do, Twilight. And I know you’re afraid of causing more problems, but doing nothing isn’t the right way to go about it. You know as much as I do that success doesn’t…” I had to take a deep breath. The words I was about to say didn’t mesh with the kind of person I’d been these last few days. “Success isn’t about not failing. It’s about getting back up when you fall down.”

I thought about Stone Wall and what he said to me. The smile on his face spurred me onward and assured me that what I felt in my heart was the simple truth.

“Look how far we’ve gotten. Look what we’re doing to fix what’s happened. Even if where we are right now isn’t where we want to be, we’re on the right track. Something good will come from all this. I know it will, because you’re the one doing it. But you need to trust me.”

I offered her my hoof. She was up to her jaw in the puddle, and my brain screamed at me to reach down and yank her out. But my heart knew she had to pull herself out of this.

She stared at the Twilight sitting in the nook, then at my hoof, then at me. A light flickered in her eyes, and it was like a veil had been lifted back. She saw me. She saw into me. Her eyes danced back and forth between mine.

She took my hoof, and she stepped out from the puddle as her Tantabus watched in silence.

I gave her a smile and jerked my head toward the Dream Luna across the way. “Go talk to her.”

Twilight’s eyes followed mine out, then back. She seemed unsure.

“I’ll be right here. I promise.” I took her hoof in mine and held it to my heart. “You made me who I am today, and I wouldn’t change it for the world. I believe in you.”

Slowly, her ears perked up, and she returned my smile. She left me with a little squeeze of my hoof before walking toward the library nook.

Her Tantabus followed behind and to the right of her, coming abreast when she stopped.

Words were exchanged. I couldn’t hear them, but as the conversation went on, her Tantabus got smaller. It shrank to her size, eventually turning and joining itself with her.

The Dream Luna smiled at Twilight—the real Twilight—and they shared a hug.

A gentle darkness crept in around us. Not a foreboding kind, but like someone had turned down the dial on the overhead lights. I felt lighter than a feather, like I could have jumped and spread my hooves to take flight.

My vision unraveled at the corners of sight, and I felt myself lifted off the ground without magic. That strange Veil brushed along my skin like a silk robe falling about my shoulders to the floor. My brain seemed to stop working for a second, and when I refocused, I saw Twilight lying next to me.

“Twilight?” I said.

She winced and let out a groan. “Sunset?”

“Sunset!” came a desperate voice.

Something tackled me hard in the ribs and stole what little breath I had. We went rolling for a good five feet before coming to a stop with the weight of the world on my stomach.

“Sunset!” that same voice said. “You guys are okay!”

Yeah, that was Starlight. Nopony else could weigh that much for her size.

“Oof, get off me.” I pushed her off so I could take a precious breath of air, then pulled her back in for a hug we could both agree on.

“Oh, what a dream…” Twilight rubbed her head. She opened her eyes, and when she realized where she was, she jerked back in surprise. She stared at the chalk circle around her, then at Starlight, then at me.

“Or… it wasn’t a dream?” She pointed a confused hoof at me. “Orrr it was, but you were still there? Or you being there made it a fake dream? But it was so real, there’s no way it could have been fake. Does that mean all real dreams are fake dreams?”

“Well, at least we know Twilight’s okay,” Starlight said. She gave Twilight a hug and helped her to her hooves.

“I’m so confused right now,” Twilight said. She stared at the floor for a while with that little hook of a frown on her face. She turned her eyes up to me, and I felt the connection between us.

A warmth like no other ran through me, and I couldn’t help but give her a smile. We shared a hug, and everything that had felt wrong about the last few days fell away. It was just me and Twilight in that moment, and nothing could have been more perfect.

“Thanks for that,” Twilight said. “What you said back there. I, uh… I needed to hear that.”

I gave her another squeeze before letting go. “I’m just glad you’re safe.”

“So, uh,” Starlight said. “Not to kill the mood or anything, but what do we do now?”

Good question. What did we do now? It felt like there was so much to do that I didn’t know where to start.

I wanted to ask Twilight about her Tantabus. How long had she felt that way? How could she think the world would ever be a better place without her?

I wanted to bombard her with so many questions in a way that would have made her proud, but I decided against it. My curiosity could wait. Right now, I just wanted to hold her.

She was the only reason I was here in the first place. I’d failed to keep her safe, because I was too afraid to keep my head on straight when I needed to most.

Never again. I saw with my own eyes what would happen if I gave up now. I couldn’t run away from this anymore, not even a little. Twilight needed me. Everyone needed me.

More than anything, I needed myself. I needed to know I could do this. I needed the courage and confidence to believe in me as much as they did. I couldn’t take no for an answer, no matter what questions I had to ask myself or what problems I needed to face. And with that epiphany, I knew where I had to start.

“I don’t know about you guys,” I said, “but… I’ve got someone else I need to talk to.” With that, I got up and headed for the door.

As much as I hated admitting it, Luna was right. The answer to all my problems sat square in my heart, in a Coppertone-shaped hole that needed filling.

Author's Note

Speaking as the author, up next is probably my favorite chapter of this story. Onward and Upward.