Compatī

One moment I was freaking out riding on Luna’s back, the next I was tumbling through the weightless void of dream space.

I twisted around to get a sense of where and why and how.

Okay, so we weren’t dead. That was a start. The stars, in all their indifference, looked patterned the same as I remembered, which put Twilight’s dream… I turned to aim myself in the right direction, and there I saw Luna drifting toward me.

“Fear not, Sunset,” she said, putting a hoof on my shoulder. She spoke telepathically, her words passing through my brain like a thought I didn’t think myself. “We are free of that abyss, and I am with you.”

She gave me a smile, but the more I looked at her the less I could call it one. She looked… weakened. I didn’t know how to properly put it, but she was like a gem that someone had taken steel wool to. Whatever she did to get us both out must have taken a hell of a toll on her.

But she wouldn’t want me dithering over that, nor would it help any. We had to figure a way out of here.

“Come on,” I said wordlessly to the void. I assumed she could at least read my lips, if the telepathy didn’t work both ways. “Can you get us out of here?”

I tapped the tip of my horn to indicate magic, but the moment I did so, I saw hers.

Thick, ugly cracks spidered up her horn, indistinguishable from its natural spiral. Tiny flakes broke off to drift aimlessly in the zero gravity whenever she moved her head too quick.

Copper’s dad had that sort of thing going on with his horn, but not nearly to the same degree. His was like a wood grain striations type deal that gave it a sense of character, like a greying beard. Luna’s was blasted-earth levels of fucked.

Horn disfiguration ranked highest on my body-horror list. Just thinking about it got me queasy.

On second thought, we should look for an exit the old-fashioned way. At least until… that healed. If it ever did, I tried to not think.

In true bull-headed, martyr-like fashion, Luna tried lighting her horn to do any number of stupid irreversible fuckery to herself. The pain on her face had me cringing, and when the attempt left her spent and panting, she had the gall to look at me apologetically.

“I am sorry,” I heard between my ears. “I cannot draw us from the Dreamscape as I hoped.”

As if I would have wanted her to fuck herself up more trying to magic us out of here. I almost slapped her for being that stupid.

“You’re gonna kill yourself, you idiot,” I said. “Who the hell’s going to stop the Nightmare if you go and do that?”

I had half a mind to flick her horn like I used to do to Copper whenever she used magic to prank me, but the body-horror crawlies came back at the thought of it snapping off. I let my stomach make a monkey’s chain of itself while I grabbed her by the hoof and pulled her in Twilight’s direction, but I didn’t get very far before she yanked me back.

“Come on,” I said. “We need to find…”

She had craned her neck toward a nearby star, and the sight of it had me stopping short, too.

It looked… sickly? Malnourished? How did one describe the physical “health” of a star?

“This is… touched,” echoed her voice between my ears. She circled around, studying it from every angle. As stoic as she could be, there was no hiding the urgency in her eyes. “The Nightmare has been here.”

She could tell that just by looking at the thing? I mean, I had no reason to distrust her, and honestly, I—

“H-hey, wait!” I shouted wordlessly, as she pressed herself nose first into the star and faded from existence.

Goddamn it. If it wasn’t one thing she was off trying to kill herself with, it was another. She was in no shape to deal with whatever the hell might be in there, let alone the Nightmare. Did I have to put her on a goddamn leash? I dove in behind her.

That silky sensation of the Veil brushed over my coat, and the moment its final threads gave way, I got a hefty whiff of old meat.

We stood in a cellar. Water dripped from an unseen leak somewhere to my left, beyond the shadows that clung tightly to everything and everywhere. A dim spotlight gave us just enough visibility to squint by.

A colt no older than five sat huddled in the center of the dreamspace, crying his eyes out.

Luna was at his side in an instant. Her back right leg trembled, struggling to hold her weight, and her left wing hung folded just a bit lower than her other, but she brushed away the magic separating us all the same.

Bitch was fucking crazy. If the Nightmare was in here, we were beyond boned.

I breathed in the dank, rotten stench of this place for one, two, three breaths—and nothing. I spun around. Still nothing.

Luna had already approached the colt. “Do not worry, little one,” she said, extending a wing to cup the colt’s chin and bring his eyes up. “I am here.”

“Princess Luna!” the kid said. He threw his hooves around her forelegs and bawled his eyes out, and if that wasn’t the most pathetic, heart-wrenching thing I’d seen all week, I’d eat a rainbow.

“You are safe now,” Luna said, pulling him close.

She took to brushing back the colt’s mane, like this was her natural habitat. No matter how beat to shit she was, she somehow found the strength to be his rock. But as all well and good as that was, I needed in the loop.

“So what’s going on here?” I said.

“’Tis an echo of sorts,” she said. “The Nightmare has been here, but it has since passed on, leaving its scars upon this dream.”

“If you say so. Does that mean we’re done here?”

She nodded to me before turning to the kid. “Be strong, little one. Stand tall and face the dark.”

She brushed his mane out of his face, and to the kid’s credit, he put on a brave smile for us.

“Go beat up that monster,” he said.

Even in my current mood, I couldn’t help laughing at that. “I’ll make sure to stick his nose in the mud for you.”

Luna tossed a playful smile my way, then the colt. She gave him a little nuzzle on the cheek, earning a giggle and another hug, and she again turned to me.

“Sunset,” Luna said. “If you would.”

What, the Wake-Up Spell? The expectation in her eyes bid I jump on that assumption, and so with a flick of my horn I wrapped us both in that weightless, falling-up sensation that pulled us back into the Dreamscape.

Huh, interesting. So the spell didn’t so much wake me up as it removed me from whatever dream I currently occupied? Or was it based on intent? I’d heard of emotional spell components that could alter things like that. I’d have to tinker with it later.

While I was busy all up in my head, Luna flitted over to the dream. She closed her eyes, touched her hoof to the star much the way I’d imagine her touching a crystal ball, and its inner light seemed to fade until it took on this strange transparency.

“Does that mean you woke him up?” I said without words.

“Yes,” came her voice between my ears. God, I was never going to get used to that. “’Tis safer that he remain awake for the time being. The corruption that has taken his dream is not so easily removed, and I am happy to offer him succor whilst we give chase to the Nightmare.”

“Uh, yeah, no. We aren’t chasing the Nightmare.” I poked her in the chest. “Not with you like this. We need to find Twilight and figure out a plan.”

“Sunset. You asked for my assistance, and that is exactly what I am doing.” A hint of annoyance sharpened her words to a knifepoint. “I shan’t hesitate if the opportunity presents itself to be rid of this once and for all.”

“No,” I said. “You shan’t shit. I asked for your assistance. Not to take the reins and re-up on your martyr bullshit. You’re in no shape to fight that thing, and I know you know that. It kicked both our asses, and that was when you were up to snuff. You don’t go walking into the boss room on one health. That’s suicide.”

She frowned at me. “I am unfamiliar with this metaphor of yours, but my duty to my subjects supersedes my own safety. It pains me enough to consider passing by these corrupted dreams and doing nothing.”

“You can’t do much if you’re dead, either,” I fired back.

“Be that as it may, we will accomplish far less if we remain here discussing our course of action.”

You’re the one with the stupid ideas that need discussing, I wanted to say.

The scowl on her face hinted that I had “said” it anyway. Yeah, well, if she could read my thoughts because I couldn’t control how this whole talking thing worked, then this would be the least of our conversations. That said, I could at least try and meet her in the middle. That little speech I just gave wouldn’t amount to much if I didn’t put in that ounce of effort.

“Look,” I said. “It’s a stupid idea to go rushing headlong into danger the way you always do. But if you’re absolutely dead set on it, would you at least let me try and patch you up first so it doesn’t off you the moment we catch up to it?”

She tried mustering whatever will held that damnable stoicism of hers together like duct tape, but she eventually thought better of it. “If that is what you wish.”

I closed my eyes and focused the magic at my horntip the way she taught me, felt it reach out and touch her. I felt the bruises under her skin and the patchwork of scars she earned from those hyena-dog things. Like molding clay, I smoothed them down one by one, eased them into the canvas that was her skin. Deeper still, tissue torn from bone I pulled closed, set straight the little bones of her pastern, sealed shut a hairline fracture in one of her ribs.

But the more I reached in, the harder it got to maintain the spell and the more it seemed I stretched myself thin. Try as I might, I couldn’t get further than that. It seemed there was an upper limit to what I could actually accomplish. Rather than give myself an aneurysm trying to bash my head against that wall any harder, I cinched off the magic and gasped for breath.

Goddamn, that took a lot out of me. I wiped the sweat from my brow and gave her a once-over. Like before, I was no surgeon, but at the very least she didn’t look ready to fall to pieces. The smile on her face said she appreciated the effort, however much it actually helped.

I cuffed her on the chest and offered her a matching smile before I set off into the Dreamscape.

We followed the dreams into the distant dark. It was like following in the wake of a tornado, each dream worse than the one before. Some looked outright mangled, as if the thing had torn its way in like a goddamn shark through the bars of a diver’s tank.

Part of me thanked the powers that be they headed the same direction as Twilight—two birds with one stone and all—but that left a nagging pit in my stomach. If we didn’t stop it in time, Twilight’s dream was on the chopping block. Walking into that boss room on one health looked all the more necessary, and so we pressed on.

An hour turned into a day, turned into three. Time became irrelevant—a comment she made somewhere along our silent hunt. That was a phrase for it. Ageless wisdom from the ageless one herself.

I kept an eye on her throughout. She seemed charged with some supernatural energy. I couldn’t tell if it came from an inner fire or was tied to the Dreamscape. No matter how beat to shit she looked, she just kept going.

I couldn’t deny a certain respect for it. Stubbornness was a trait I had in spades, not that I was proud of it. It’s what made us oil and water at the best of times. But seeing it from an outsider’s perspective—not being the focus of it for once in my life—it was something to behold. That simple, unfaltering persistence. It felt like staring into a mirror at times.

How much did she really enjoy this life? Did the silence get to her, or had she overcome that mental obstacle? Was she really that much of a glutton for punishment that she didn’t mind? Or worse, had it already broken her to the point of apathy?

I thought about striking up a conversation.

I just… wanted someone to talk to, if only to keep myself from going insane. One “week” cooped up in my head was enough for a while. Any more and I might start hearing voices.

But part of me didn’t want to break her concentration. She looked like she’d fall to pieces like one of those old-timey cartoon jalopies if I did. So I kept to myself, and she to herself. Until finally she didn’t.

“There,” she said after a time, breaking a week’s silence with a single word. She pointed at a dream up ahead.

It took the form of a red dwarf, if I had my astronomy right, but the corruption gave it a greenish hue around the outer edges rather than the rusty reddish tinge it should’ve had.

“‘There’ what?” I asked. The hackles went up on the back of my neck before she even answered.

“With me,” she said, and in she went.

“No, wait—” I started, but she had already committed.

That was one way to get my heart rate through the damn roof. Shan’t hesitate god-fucking-damn it. I swore to god, if we survived this I’d kill her myself. I gritted my teeth and dove in after her.

I touched down on rough beige carpet in a nondescript maze of cubicles. “Luna? Where are you?”

Nothing. I strained my ears for an answer—far off, buried, what have you. Still only silence.

Dipshit must have touched down in a different spot. I had to find her and pull us out before she got herself killed.

“Lu—”

A clay pot shattered behind me. I spun around to see the Nightmare about ten feet down the cubicle aisleway with its back to me, covered in clay fragments and dirt. It prowled farther down the aisle, toward the far T-junction where an auburn-maned pegasus mare was trying to overturn a filing cabinet between them.

Shit. This wasn’t an echo like that last dream—not a shadow, not anything else Luna could make up names for. This was the real deal. And of course this happened when neither of us were ready to fight the damn thing.

The Nightmare growled, and the mare managed to overturn the cabinet just in time to bear the weight of its leap.

I heard the sickening crunch of metal as it caught the filing cabinet in its jaws and shredded it like a popcan in a blender. Papers scattered in the breeze, and in the half second I would have spent pissing myself were I in her shoes, she was off like a jackrabbit through the underbrush, the Nightmare hot on her heels.

“Hey!” I yelled, scrambling after them.

I knew it’d be suicide to intervene, but I had to keep close. If I stayed near, Luna would show up eventually and I could drag her out before she did something stupid.

The mare led the Nightmare on one hell of a chase. Upstairs, down the hall, through another half-dozen cubicle-filled offices, upturning everything she could manage without slowing herself down.

The Nightmare made splinters and twisted metal of her little obstacle course. The only one she really slowed down was me. Even in the in-between state the Veil put us in, I was still bound to the dream’s physical state, and that included my own lack of athleticism. My lungs felt like I was making balloon animals out of them by the third office space.

Where the fuck was Luna? The last thing I needed was for her to burst onto the scene after I’d already passed out and throw back the Veil all high and mighty, just to get her shit stuffed.

A cubicle panel collapsed behind me, and there I saw Luna struggling to keep up.

Thank god. I thought I was going to die of a heart attack before she bothered showing up.

I turned around to grab her and cast the Wake-Up Spell, but it turned out that even in her half-dead state, she still had one hell of a shoulder check. She acquainted my face with the nearby water cooler and kept on trucking.

It took me a second to find my hooves. Fucking hell, my jaw. I could already feel it swelling up. Shan’t fucking hesitate, huh? With that kind of energy, maybe we stood a chance after all. I got up and took off after them.

She was like a goddamn revenant.

Over the twisted heap of metal that was once a cubicle, through a hallway door, across a skybridge, and there I caught up with Luna, where she had stopped at the threshold of what looked like the entrance into a hospital waiting area. A sign above the entrance read Surgery – Orange Tower. She heaved for air, her legs sprawled like those of a baby deer just learning to walk. Her wings hung at her sides, no small amount of feathers missing in disturbing tufts.

She was trying to light her horn, no doubt to join the fray. The fact she couldn’t even do that should have been warning enough for her not to try, but it seemed bullshit martyr complexes didn’t leave the heart as readily as I’d hoped.

I reached out to put a hoof on her shoulder. “Come on, we gotta—”

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of the mare, boxed in by the Nightmare not even five feet away. She had scrambled backward into the corner, wings snapped helplessly against her sides. Her eyes were locked with its massive jaws, and the deep growl that rolled out of its throat shook dust from the ceiling tiles.

The mare pressed her back into the wall, that look in her eyes… I almost lost my balance as the déjà vu settled in like vertigo. Something inside me snapped, and a primal urgency fired into the forefront of my brain like gasoline into an engine.

“No!” I shouted and ripped the Veil away myself.

The Nightmare’s attention was immediate and intense. It spun around with a slavering snarl on its lips and its hackles wafting into the looming dark in smoky tendrils. The muscles beneath its black, skinless form tensed and coiled.

“You get the fuck away from her,” I said.

Luna appeared beside me. Even after the Healing Spell I did earlier, her mane and wings still looked like she’d jumped through an industrial fan, but her eyes carried the rallied spirit of an army’s war cry.

“I call first dibs on this punching bag,” I said, then nodded at the mare. “Get her out of here.”

Bold words coming from a chicken shit like me, but I needed the little internal pep talk. No matter how gutsy I felt, I couldn’t shake the fact this thing had already handed our asses to us not once but twice.

Third time’s the ch—

It swiped a claw at me, far short of any mark it could have been aiming for. I didn’t even bother dodging, but that became a fatal mistake I realized too late when the shadows trailing in the wake of its swipe condensed and swelled to twice its original reach.

All I could do was flinch before it sent me sailing through the glass and into the main waiting room. I crashed into something hard, and my ears rang like someone had pulled the fire alarm. I got my bearings in time to see Luna duck underneath another shadow swipe and carve a nasty gouge in its belly.

Thick black smoke spewed from the wound like steam from a burst valve, and the Nightmare roared in pain. It dispersed into shadow as she brought her head back around for another spell. The empty air crystallized in jagged spikes of ice the size of my legs, and the drop in temperature happened fast enough that I felt a draft along my withers. My breath came out in thick puffs of vapor.

“Where’d it go?” the mare shouted, manic. She was still pressed into the corner like a frightened animal, her eyes trying to watch every shadow lurking in every corner at once.

“Don’t move,” I yelled at her. And as if the universe loved challenging any semblance of luck I might have, the Nightmare seeped out of the cracks in the drop ceiling above us and materialized beside her, its claws raised above its head.

Shit.

I lassoed her with a flick of magic and yanked her out just as its claws came down to the ear-splitting crash of wood and drywall.

The mare landed on top of me, surprisingly heavy for a pegasus. She gawked at me like someone had thrown a wrench into the cogwheels of her brain.

“You said don’t move!” she yelled.

“Yeah, that was before the giant claws of death, you idiot! Now get off me!” I shoved her aside.

“Focus!” came Luna’s voice.

I rolled onto my belly in time to see her throw up a bubble shield between us and the Nightmare. Its blue glow threw the Nightmare’s musculature into deep contrast to make it look more terrifying than I needed right now.

It threw its weight against Luna’s shield, visibly buckling the floor where she had anchored it.

Again and again, with shoulder and tooth and claw in a cacophony of metal grinding on concrete. Its drool oozed down the side of her shield like blood from a wound.

“Luna, we have to get out of here,” I said. I knew I was the idiot to pull back the Veil this time around, but it didn’t take much to realize we were in over our heads again. “We can’t deal with this right now.”

“Sunset, trust me.”

“You know what happened last time!”

“Sunset!” She caught my eye for the briefest moment, and there was no room for argument.

“Goddamn it!” I yelled, and I readied a spell.

Luna flinched with every blow against her shield, as if bearing the brunt with her own shoulders. The laminate tile beneath us caved in, and splinters of floorboard shored up against the inside of her shield. Any more of this and we’d probably fall through to the floor below.

“Now!” I yelled.

She released her shield as it reared back, and I fired off the biggest fireball I could manage. But my spell went screaming into the far wall, the Nightmare having vanished just before it connected.

The hell? “Where’d it go?”

What felt like a bear trap clamped down on my left hind leg and ripped me from my hooves. I screamed as it smashed me sideways into the registration desk, flung me up through the cork and metal framework of the drop ceiling, and slammed me into the floor. The impact knocked my sense of hearing offline, and I was left in a little bubble of ringing silence while a lancing pain in my leg ripped a muffled scream from me.

I reached for my hind leg to find that it simply wasn’t there. My hoof trembled as I brought it back covered in blood, and the slow realization brought the pain into searing focus. I squeezed my eyes shut, curled in on myself, and let out another scream lost to the void.

An explosion behind me rocked the building, raining dust and debris down on us. Metal yawned deep within its bowels, and down crashed an office desk from the floor above. The screeching, tearing metal broke through even my deafness and drove my ears against my skull.

A flash of blue light illuminated the dust from within like lightning in a storm cloud to silhouette Luna and the Nightmare midbattle. She shot out the top end of the cloud with a burst of her wings just as a massive paw reached out after her, followed by flashing fangs and the Nightmare’s relentless hollow eyes.

I almost couldn’t believe it. She was still going. Somehow, someway that crazy motherfucker trucked on. Her coat was more red than blue from a dozen open wounds, and she was missing half of her left wing. Every wingbeat painted the room with a spray of blood.

I had to get up. Get up get up get the fuck up and help.

I tried dragging myself to my hooves, but the moment I got to all fours, my back leg slipped out from under me in the pool of my own blood. Out of instinct, I tried catching myself with my other back leg and fell on the exposed bone with my full weight.

I liked to think I knew what pain felt like until that moment, but as I had so many times before, I learned the hard way how naïve I truly was.

The sensation of lightning shot through me, and I seized up before collapsing sideways, clutching at the stump. I couldn’t even muster the will to scream.

My brain went back to the first time we fought the Nightmare head-on and how I was the same joke of a fighter now as I was then. Except this time we were really gonna die.

There was no running from this. It could dream hop just like us. I had no lifeline to yank me back into the waking world, no Twilight to hold me and tell me everything was okay. And the fact that these thoughts ran through my head proved I was nothing more than a coward, a child crying for her binkie.

A scream cut through me like glass, and I snapped my attention toward the Nightmare.

It had Luna about the chest, her wings splayed at impossible angles between its teeth. Blood ran in ample streams down its jaws.

She flailed her back legs, kicking at its face, clawing at its eyes. The Spirit of War enraptured her even in the face of death, but fanaticism could only account for so much.

Undeterred, the Nightmare put a paw on her hips to pin them to the floor, arched its neck, and heaved.

She screamed. She screamed like I had never heard anyone before.

I shut my eyes to block it out, put my hooves over my ears and tried to drown out the popping, twisting, snapping and the sound I could only liken to a wet towel being wrung out on the floor, and my brain conjured the image of Luna simply being… separated. I whimpered to myself as the tears ran down my face.

I was next. I was next, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

Her screaming relented, and I found the tiniest sliver of courage to open my eyes. I didn’t know what shred of mercy the universe spared us from my imagination becoming reality, but I thanked whatever gods existed all the same.

Upside down, she hung limp in its jaws, like a fish freshly caught from a river, rent to ribbons but still whole. Blood ran up her neck, cheeks, filled in the spiral of her horn, dribbled into the tatters of her mane. She didn’t have the strength to move, but I saw the fire in her eyes still burning—flickering, smoldering, but there all the same. Still alive, still fighting. Fearless to the end.

She lit her horn, and I saw the Nightmare’s muscles seize up as a faint blue light rippled across its body. With the last shred of her strength, she looked me in the eye, and I read the words on her face as clearly as if she had screamed them.

Do it.

So I did. I gritted my teeth and thought of every single nightmare I’d had in the past seven years. All the pain and suffering and fear and anxiety—every negative emotion it had used to put my face to the grindstone. I pictured Nocturne, the swirling mane and those silver-trimmed wings, the lies and deceit, that crescent-moon smile, and I had all the ammunition I needed.

I opened my eyes with singular focus, my horntip burning bright like magnesium. When I let it fly, I felt the oxygen in the room go with it.

The Nightmare tried to move, tried to disperse into shadow, but the blue glow surrounding it held it both in place and form.

My spell struck home, punching a hole clean through its chest cavity and out the other side. I could see the burning hole in the far wall through the wound—and the wall behind that, and the wall behind that.

The spell’s release sapped all the adrenaline from me, and gravity reached out to remind me who the master was here. My head felt heavy. Everything spun. Next thing I knew, the world lay sideways.

I shifted my head to look at the Nightmare, watch it struggle for footing. That’s right, fucking suffer, you piece of shit. I picked my head up and gritted my teeth. Just one more spell. Just put this thing in the dirt where it belonged.

And I… I felt the magic fizzle and go static-y, and my legs turned to jelly. I was on my face again.

I was losing seconds to the lightheadedness. I lay on my stomach. Now my hooves were in front of my face. Get up get up get the fuck up you goddamn coward!

The Nightmare lay on its side… now raising its head. Somewhere in the paint swirl that was my vision, I saw it looking at me, looking into me. Its body took on that indistinct wispy form, seeped up through the ceiling tiles, and was gone.

I reached out toward it, gritted my teeth, tried again to magic a spell to my horn, but the pain was too much. I collapsed in the pool of my own blood and curled in on myself. Angry tears beaded at the corners of my eyes.

“Goddamn it!”

After everything we fought for, after everything we put on the line, it still got away.

The world was sideways again. Luna lay a few feet away, still breathing, if only barely. Every breath sounded like the last dregs of pop being sucked through a straw.

Her eyes tracked to me and for the briefest moment shared with me a spark of pride—and then nothing. Her pupils unfocused, and that long final death rattle raked the depths of my soul.

“No,” I said, the tears running freely down my cheeks. “No you fucking don’t.” I gritted my teeth to spite the pain and dragged myself across the blood-slicked floor until I was close enough to throw my hooves around her.

Fuck her martyr bullshit. She didn’t get the hero’s way out. I jammed my horn into her chest to dump everything I had left into her.

“Live, you son of a bitch,” I said, and I…

I…