Compatī

The Eversleep was an ever-fickle enemy.

It existed in a state of duality, as one might compare the ethereal plane to the material. It appeared that Sunset and I, though present in the physical aspects of this Eversleep, were not as bound to them as I had initially assumed. And as I hoped once discovering this, I could project my subconscious into this place much the same as when shepherding the Dreamscape, so long as my “conscious” self remained asleep. In doing so, I became a part of the ethereal half of this duality, physically disconnected from it as I was in any dream within my purview.

The recursive nature of this was not lost on me, and its implications vastly contradicted what I knew of the Dreamscape and what suppositions I had of the Eversleep at large. It stirred within me a sense of curiosity and desire to safeguard our subjects from any possible threat this may pose, but I dared not plumb it in our current circumstance. I chose to focus on its applications in the here and now, specifically in escaping this strange non-existence.

“Up” had forever symbolized and thereby manifested as a removal of one’s self, a return from the depths of the individual to the collective, and so I took to the sky in my dream form, to allow myself an outsider’s glimpse and to better make sense of this alien plane. However, try as I might, I could not pierce this place’s outer limits.

’Twas not a silken veil in the same sense that separated the Dreamscape from its dreams. Rather, ’twas like a curtain made of burlap, and just as unsightly. It surrounded us much the same as an oort cloud surrounds our solar system, but where one would find a sparse collection of space debris, here there was naught but the hungry chill of the void and violent, celestial tempests.

I daren’t chance venturing into that unknown, lest I be swept away on its currents to Orion knows where, and so I acquiesced for the time being, turning back to the ever-shifting landscape below.

I found our bodies amidst the grove of strange cherry trees. Sunset yet stood watch, her eyes blind to all but her ears at fox-like attention.

Like a ghost passing through the mortal plane, I alighted without disturbing even the softest patches of moss beneath our hooves. There, I looked upon our haggard forms, and I pondered our situation.

’Twas true that in this manner I could watch over both of us as I slept, but that would not be right. To do so would undermine Sunset’s sense of agency. She needed to be strong, and I had to allow her that opportunity.

I took flight again. On the chance the Nightmare had befallen this place same as us, I wanted to know for certain.

Beneath the shadow of the lone mountain at the center of this world, I hunted for a sign of our quarry. The eldritch and aberrant wandered and hunted of their own devices whilst I flitted past them in my ethereal state, unseen and unheard. My search took me through valley and grotto, over hills and around sheer cliffs overlooking oblivion, but no sight, nor scent, nor whisper of the Nightmare’s blight encroached upon this domain.

We were alone, it seemed. The Nightmare’s mark would be irreversible and unmistakable, even in as transient a place as this, and I cursed the universe for depriving us of the one blessing we could have hoped for. However, my illicit flight did not prove fruitless.

In my search for the Nightmare, I discovered an inkling of magic that corroborated my initial assumptions of the mountain itself.

The barrier between the Eversleep and the Dreamscape seemed to dip toward the mountaintop, as one would imagine the magnetic poles of Equestria. Just as the poles allowed solar winds to become trapped within their curvatures and give us the auroras our subjects so adored, so too I suspected this place to harbor a similar phenomenon, and with it, perhaps a way out.

My heart leapt at the prospect, and I did little to quell my hopes of stopping what may have transpired since this… misstep. However, I could not allow such feelings to stymie due caution.

I returned from my search, and there I found Sunset still keeping watch.

Though her eyes saw only darkness, she radiated with a resolve I had not seen this age. Come what hurricane dare challenge her, she would endure. And I, for what little it amounted to, would remain by her side to see her through the storm.

I merged with my still-sleeping self and opened my eyes on the material plane of this dreamspace.

Sunset twitched her ears, and a moment later her sightless eyes came around to mine. Even with the deadened gaze such sightlessness instilled, there remained an attentiveness about her, and if I were to allow myself the notion, a certain poetic beauty to be found there.

“You good?” she said.

“Indeed. Rest, Sunset. I shall keep watch for the remainder of the night.”

Her ears flattened back and her nose dipped ever so slightly as if she internally condemned the idea, but she slowly swiveled them toward me. “You sure?”

She needed to be strong, yes—for herself, for Twilight, for the world. But finding that strength also meant finding strength in others.

I nodded. “Yes. Conserve your strength. I do not doubt we will need it come morning.”

She pondered my statement. “To fight the Nightmare?”

“For whatever it is that lies ahead.”

“To fight the Nightmare,” she repeated. She looked away, but nonetheless laid her head on her lap without further argument and sighed. Soon enough, I felt her presence within my bosom, her soul coming to rest with that of the collective Equestrian subconscious. When I blinked, I caught snippets of a forest and sunshine, and I found myself enjoying the subtle motions of her slumber—the rise and fall of her chest, the little smile on her lips.

This, right here, was what we fought for: the gentle repose of a soul long denied that liberty.

I knew not how long I watched her sleep. Admittedly, I found myself honored by the gesture, that she trusted me enough to sleep in my presence. However, with that honor came the inexorable truth of my evils.

I did not deserve her trust, and yet, however tentatively so, she gave it.

She was beautiful, as beautiful as any mortal mare could be and more. A heroine of this age, who bore the scars of a life she did not deserve, yet she was all the more beautiful for it.

Yes, she was beautiful.

So very beautiful indeed.

• • •

My eyes still weren’t working when I woke up.

The wind had picked up sometime overnight—or whatever “time” it was in this weird-ass place—and the trees rustled overhead. A pungent forest-y smell hit me as if to say good morning in as unique a way as this place could manage.

Luna was up and staring at me. I couldn’t see her, obviously, but I had one of those unnameable animal magnetism sixth sense sort of moments where you just know something.

“Are you ready to be off?” she said, confirming my assumption.

The thought of her watching me sleep was creepy at best, but I stamped that ice-water feeling down before it got shivers out of me. It’s… it’s what I agreed to. Sleeping in shifts, that is. And she didn’t do anything, like she promised.

“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”

We got up, and I shook off the last bits of sleep. I actually felt pretty good, as far as sleeping in a freaky, inhospitable dream world could get. My hind leg throbbed like a motherfucker, but that was peanuts to what it could have or honestly should have been.

That healing spell of hers did wonders. She really did care. That cold, clammy thought sent a wave of shame down my neck and shoulders. I still didn’t like it, but I couldn’t lie to myself. I sighed to give myself a moment to whisk those thoughts away, stretched out like a cat to crack my back in a way I oh so needed, and fell in line.

I followed Luna’s hoofsteps out of the grove, and the soft moss gave way to crunchy leaves, then hard stone. An angry wind howled down what sounded like a narrow canyon we were suddenly following. Talk about weird-ass biome transitions. Did I miss another dream coming down and twisting up the landscape? Of course we’d have that kind of luck.

And as if to spite me, the wind I heard howling moments before smacked me in the face, blowing my mane every which way.

“Careful,” Luna said. “There is a sheer drop to our right, and I do not yet believe I have to strength to fly.”

Noted. Not that I wasn’t going to follow exactly on her hoofsteps like a damn puppy. After last night’s little… adventure, and with this whole blind-as-shit thing going on, I wasn’t about to go wandering off on my lonesome.

It was… slow going. Luna wasn’t kidding about the sheer drop. If only she had mentioned how narrow our path got. A few careless hoofsteps on my part sent pebbles tumbling down into whatever hungry void waited far, far below. At some parts, I practically hugged the wall and still only had room for my hooves single file.

I could hear the distant rumbling of earth and the hiss of whatever the crap it was that made the landscape change on a dime. It got my heart going a million miles a minute hoping it wouldn’t change underneath our hooves to leave me falling to my death. The more optimistic half of my brain hoped that it would change under us, but to something less treacherous—strawberry fields forever or some other cliché deal. But I knew how latching onto that mode of thinking ended up.

We were heading down, at least. The way she described it, we were more or less on a hill about a mile out from this mountain she kept talking about. Make it down through the valley and back up to the mountaintop and off we’d go on some rainbow carpet ride back to sanity.

I mentally kicked myself for that and all the pessimistic bullshit that had been running through my head. She really was trying, and this place was still her area of expertise, no matter how out of sorts she was.

And as much as I hated all of this, I… I had to trust her. For Twilight, if nothing else.

I could feel the mountain ahead of us. It had that same static-y sensation like just before lightning struck—that ever-so-subtle tug at the individual hairs of my coat. Whatever it was, there was definitely something special about it.

Speaking of strange static-y sensations, I couldn’t feel that heart-tugging magnetizing-the-blood-in-my-veins one I got from the Nightmare. I initially chalked it up to how fucky this place was, but now that I had as much of my bearings as I could, I expected it to crop up again at some point along the way.

“It’s not in here with us, is it?” I asked, for lack of a better conversation starter. No immediate answer—just as much of a resounding “no” as anything else.

“We must hurry,” was all she said.

Well that wasn’t exactly the answer I was hoping for. Could have at least dignified my question with an actual “no.” I clenched my teeth before a “stupid bitch” or the like could tumble out and sighed away my annoyance.

This was all so… well, there was no right word for it other than fucked up. This whole situation was fucked up. And worse yet, the Nightmare was out there doing god knew what to the Dreamscape or Equestria at large.

She led me down a slope that thankfully wasn’t as treacherous as the cliffside we skirted earlier. It got warmer, and a forest-y scent caught my attention.

It was indeed a forest she led me through. The soft fronds of ferns and underbrush tickled my chest as we went, and I had to bend low beneath the windchime tinkle of Luna’s magic whenever she lifted a branch for me to pass under. It made for slow but steady going, and part of me rather enjoyed our little nature walk—just the sound of crunching leaves and twigs beneath my hooves and the smell of pine trees on the wind.

A twig snapped to my left, and before I even flinched and thought to throw up a shield, Luna fired a bolt of magic that screamed over my shoulder. The meaty impact reverberated up through the trees, and I felt a warm spray of blood on my face.

Up went the baying of those hyena-dog things, but their stampede through the underbrush went the other direction, away from us. And just as their footpads died away, I remembered to breathe.

“Let us continue,” Luna said, and off went her hoofsteps as if nothing had happened.

I tried wiping the blood from my face, but succeeded more in napping the fur around my muzzle. Getting splattered with blood was becoming a more common occurrence than I cared for.

So her magic was back for the most part. Good to know. That could have been useful last night—just pop one of those bastards like a zit and watch the rest scatter. Regardless, that was one less worry on our plate. I took another deep breath and fell in line.

About an hour’s journey went uneventfully. We were heading up now, though. I noticed the incline maybe a quarter of an hour ago, but it wasn’t until now that the mountain itself seemed to acknowledge our approach.

I couldn’t see it, but I could feel and hear a massive emptiness yawning far above, and my sense of “down” shifted ever so insidiously toward it. It pulled at me like a gravity well, my mane and the individual hairs of my coat tugging toward what I could only imagine as some infinite darkness.

It was gentle in its onset, just a little bit more with every step up the mountain. I felt the dust and little pebbles lift from the ground beneath my hooves, brush past my coat, and briefly tousle my mane. The longer we walked, the stronger that attraction became, and eventually, the more violent.

Here and there, I heard the sound of tearing roots and hefty rocks ripped from the earth and sucked into the void. I found it weird that we seemed only minutely affected, as if by nothing more than a light wind. Maybe because we weren’t meant to be here. Who knew. I certainly didn’t, and if Luna did, she kept it to herself.

Luna stopped just ahead of me, and I knew to point my ears forward. I imagined her gazing pensively up into that yawning abyss.

“This is it,” she said.

“The top?”

“Indeed. The top of the mountain, the threshold back to sanity. The end of the line all the same.” She paused, and the absence of noise stirred in me the sensation of an ever-growing gap between us, as if we were on opposite sides of a tectonic fault splitting apart.

“Luna? What are we waiting for?”

The ground around us erupted, and the whoosh of boulders the size of mountains hurtled past us toward the sky. The ground at my hooves crumbled away to spray my face with dirt.

I staggered away from the ledge and spit out what got in my mouth. “The hell’s going on? Luna?”

“I do not know, but it is more violent than before. I fear what it portends, and just as much how capable we are in the face of it.”

“No shit. I think I got that part, but what the hell are we supposed to do?”

More of that damnable silence. I could picture her staring pensively at me, but as the moment wore on, I imagined a crease forming in her brow and the grim determination of a mare thinking in ultimatums. The words she spoke next got my hackles standing on end:

“Sunset, do you trust me?”

I swallowed the lump in my throat. A shaky breath kept me from firing off a multitude of sharp comments, but I couldn’t stave off the shiver that ran through me all the same.

“No,” I said. “I don’t. I really don’t. Not without knowing what the hell’s going on. But… but that doesn’t change our situation, does it?”

She left me to the darkness of my sightless existence for one, two, three terrible seconds before, “No, it does not.”

I let the silence bridge my answer in kind. “Then just fucking do whatever stupid idea it is you’re thinking. Stop wasting time.”

Another bout of this unbearable silence kept my muscles tense and ready to run. Soon enough, Luna wrapped her magic around me, and I felt myself lifted upward.

As her aura receded, that strange sensation of silk brushed over my shoulders. Vertigo settled in, and my head spun until I thought I was going to throw up. The next thing I realized, I could see. It was as if the universe decided I’d suffered enough, and with the snap of its fingers, my eyes opened.

I was… I was in outer space. The void of the cosmos stared back at me from all directions, broken by the distant specks of stardust and spiraling galaxies and the spray paint of red, blue, and purple nebulae.

“Luna?” I called out, but nothing followed. Like the vacuum of space, my voice didn’t carry in this starlit abyss, and Luna was nowhere to be seen.

Okay. Okay okay okay. Stop freaking out. Luna slingshotted me out of the Eversleep and into the literal reaches of dreamspace or something. This was… yeah, this had to be the Dreamscape. What else could it be? This was where she got into everyone’s dreams.

I didn’t have a clue where I was or what I should be doing or even what I was capable of doing. But this was my chance.

If this was the Dreamscape, then I… I had to find someone else’s dream. If I entered it, and they woke up, maybe that was the key to getting out of here. It made sense in its own chain of logic, and I had nothing else to go by. At the very least, I could hop in and talk to whoever I barged in on. I could at least get a message out.

Better yet, I could find Twilight’s dream and talk to her directly.

On the coattails of that desperate hope, I took off for the nearest galaxy.